The Woman at the Window (21 page)

It took some time for all the objections to be overcome. The exams were over and so was the hay harvest and similar obstacles. Subject to results that the staff room considered a foregone conclusion, Zofia was expected to do medicine in Liverpool and Ifan to do languages in Bangor. The adult world was within reach and it seemed the perfect time for her visit. He was quite put out when Zofia declined the invitation. They were sitting on the green mound beneath Cricieth Castle when she said it wouldn't be a good idea.

‘It would spoil things.'

They should have been contemplating the wondrous beauty of the bay and the majesty of the hills on such a fine summer afternoon. Harlech Castle on its rock was visible through a pale haze. Ifan had lines written about it all he wanted to repeat to her, but the invitation had to be made first.

‘I'm foreign really, as well as strange. From what you've told me your parents are very…'

‘Very what?'

‘Conventional. Chapel and all that.'

‘You've never met my grandfather. You can't imagine anyone so – open minded.'

‘Later on perhaps, Ifan. When we've both been away, more independent.'

Ifan was upset. This became their first disagreement. He argued there was no theory or principle involved. It was just a simple invitation to tea. Zofia shook her head in sorrowful puzzlement. He was so upset she had to make a further effort to explain.

‘You are the apple of their eye. They won't see me fit for your company. Where I come from is too far away and that makes me too unknown for them. You are their ideal. They would see me as spoiling your image.'

A precious summer afternoon was fading away into futile argument and silences and sulks. Before they cycled their separate ways, Zofia realised the relationship she valued hung by the slender thread of an invitation to tea. She had to accept.

It was the end of a week of warm, close weather and Zofia wore a bright floral frock for the occasion. The dominant red in her frock contrasted with the muted greys and browns of the farmhouse interior. Farmer Gwilym seemed happy to welcome a splash of colour. Zofia had shown an intelligent interest in the age of the farm buildings and their history. Mrs Roberts was far less pleased with the girl's appearance alongside her Ifan. She was an inch taller which seemed inappropriate and this made her look older and more sophisticated than her angelic son. Surely there were better- looking girls around with authentic Cymric connections? Her son deserved better. Whether Zofia understood or not she muttered to her husband as he came into the kitchen.

‘She looks old enough to be his mother.'

The parlour table was laden with a farmhouse tea, everything proudly home-made from the bread and the butter to the delicate ham sandwiches, sponge cakes and scones. In time-honoured custom, Ifan was dispatched to the bottom of the ancient staircase to inform his Taid that Tea was ready. The Reverend Hughes made a benevolent entrance, bowing to the guest and proceeding to his chair at the head of the table with the same dignity that he ascended a pulpit. The initial politenesses were shy and uncertain. Ifan had never heard his Taid hold forth in English before. He became seismically sensitive to any reaction that could pass across Zofia's face. Did the old man sound stilted and even pompous? Her expression remained politely attentive. Inevitably the conversation turned to the aftermath of war. 
The Reverend Hughes felt obliged to place events in historical perspective and in doing so made clear his own pacifist convictions. He attributed the ruthless increase in error and destruction to the licensing of bombing from the air.

‘There was a disarmament conference you know in the nineteen twenties that wanted to outlaw bombing from the air. Great Britain objected. It needed to bomb natives on the north-west frontier. In the name of law and order. Now the Chinese invented gunpowder many many centuries ago. But they considered it too barbaric, too uncivilised for warfare, so they reserved it for fireworks. We could have done the same in the West for bombing from the air. But we didn't. And within two decades what do we get? The atomic bomb.'

The theorem concluded, he dissected a scone, placing a segment firmly in his mouth and chewing delicately. He glanced at the young persons in turn and smiled as if inviting comment. They remained thoughtful and silent. Gwilym felt obliged to speak.

‘I don't know,' he said. ‘These things go too deep for me. It takes me all my time to keep this farm going. What does your father think, Miss… Zofia?'

‘My father? My father says if the Nazis got here we would be the first to be hanged from the nearest lamp post. Or tree should I say?'

She smiled to show she was prepared to discuss her father's conviction lightly. The effect was quite the opposite. The Reverend Hughes looked rebuffed and even offended. 
Ifan was so disturbed he could barely sit still in his chair. It was an inescapable fact like a thunder clap; a world-wide war, the obliteration of cities, the death of millions, had been necessary to preserve the peace and tranquillity of Maen Bedo and its way of life. In one moment all he had heard from his grandfather was rendered obsolete. If that were the case would the compass of his life be left with anything he could call his magnetic pole? Everything was relative and beyond human control and there was nowhere he could stand and say he could do no other. He felt ignorant and lost.

‘And what does your mother think?' Mrs Roberts said. 

She had no taste for abstract discussion. That was what 
men engaged in when their stomachs were full and they had nothing better to do. She would draw her own conclusion by ascertaining a few basic actualities.

‘I wouldn't know,' Zofia said. ‘My parents are divorced.' The interval of silence was long enough to express shock 
and even disapproval. 

‘Really.'

This was all Mrs Roberts could think of saying to dispel the silence.

‘She works for a music publisher in London,' Zofia said. ‘Before the war she had a musical career as an oboeist. In Warsaw. Of course I don't remember any of that.'

Everyone around the table was attempting an agreeable smile as if no-one would hold Zofia responsible for the tribulations of history.

‘And you stayed with your father.'

Mrs Roberts spoke in a neutral tone, not ready to praise or condemn.

‘Somebody had to look after him.'

‘Fair play to you, girl!' Gwilym said, happy to demonstrate his approval.

Ifan looked at his father with greater affection than usual. His rough translation of a friendly blessing was a positive contribution.

Zofia was pressed to eat and expressed deep admiration for her piece of sponge cake.

‘So light,' she said.

‘Light as a feather,' added Ifan and they both laughed as though they had jointly composed a witty compliment. The Reverend Hughes recovered quickly in the warmer atmosphere. He was ready to expound further.

‘It's not a pleasant thought,' he said. ‘But it seems possible we are on the threshold of the first atheistic age in the history of mankind. Man has always believed in one god or another. He has to worship something. If we cease to believe, where do we anchor our moral code? What kind of religion justifies Hiroshima? A false religion, we say. A religion of power; the power of destruction and the power of money. Not a cheerful prospect. Now you young people must become the conscience of mankind. We call this the year of our Lord, nineteen fifty two but the danger is it is not His anymore.'

Ifan could see that Zofia was listening to his grandfather intently. The visit could be turning into the success he had hoped for.

‘We have to struggle, don't we,' Zofia was saying. ‘There is a struggle ahead to survive!'

It seemed to Ifan that the two wisest people he knew were in sufficient agreement. His mental compass, which had wobbled so violently, was beginning to stabilise. There would be a way ahead.

It emerged within a few weeks that Zofia and Ifan had both won prestigious scholarships. Mrs Roberts' pride in her son knew no bounds. She could not at all see why the boy hadn't gone to Oxford or Cambridge, they sounded so much nicer. She comforted herself that the young people were just good friends, associated by brilliance, without any dangerous romantic intentions. She was pleased when Ifan insisted that Bangor would provide the best grounding for the studies he needed to reinforce his literary ambitions. She began to nurse a secret hope that one day she would see her son both chaired and crowned at the National Eisteddfod.

Going their separate ways at the end of September Ifan and Zofia were cheerful enough. They were looking forward to fresh experiences that would deepen their understanding of the world. They would keep in touch as closely as they could and they would pass on any fresh insights as enthusiastically as ever. Bangor and Liverpool were outside cycling range, they joked, but part of their scholarships could be set aside for train fares. It didn't take many weeks for disappointment to set in. In the case of Ifan brought up on a farm and well used to amusing himself, reserved and circumspect by nature, he did not share the undergraduate relish for companionship and company. He lingered watch- fully on the margins and was not impressed with what he saw. The literary societies appeared to be obsessed with polishing traditions and criticising follies of the past about which little could be done in any case, and bunkering down, he felt, against the winds of change. In Liverpool, for her own reasons just as retiring as Ifan, Zofia was surprised by the lack of interest in a world that she knew was fraught with dangers; the few women were intent on their careers and the men absorbed with sports and bent on proving how manly they could be. A post-war dust still lay heavily over the place and the people.

Solitude compelled them to realise how much they depended on each other. They were so busy that summer being bright and objective they had never displayed any affection for each other. Let alone use the language of love. A new restraint entered their discourse. They had begun to feel more than they could put into words and this in itself sharpened the pains of solitude. What they could not express to each other they could barely formulate to themselves. There were telephone conversations that came to a troubled halt. An eagerly awaited meeting in a shelter in the promenade in Llandudno ended in a misery of misunderstanding. The helplessness of the wider world had become a virus infesting them too. Neither could find a way to declare openly being unable to live without the other.

***

Zofia describes: I was early. It was an absolutely still day. I remember the sun setting, leaving an afterglow behind the black promontories and the bay was like a great gold undulating parchment and the water at my feet so clear, the ebb gently sucking at the small stones, and for the first time I felt a deep attachment to the place.We couldn't go on living unwittingly. This place, this relationship has become the centre of my being. The line of my life has been drawn across continents to be planted here. Here and now is everything. That's settled and I'm settled.

The caravans we had been inclined to despise and make fun of, were behind me. Closed and after season. But not closed to us if I followed out my intention. It wasn't all that cold. I was shivering from nervousness and fear. I knew by this that I loved Ifan, but I couldn't be certain he loved me in the same way. He was deeply attached of course, dependent even, but more perhaps to a muse than to a person? He was at times as abstract as a musical phrase, his head in the clouds, and of course that made him all the more precious to me. He not only looked like a poet, he was a poet. But unworldly. He was a farmer's son and must have been acquainted early with the facts of life and reproduction but I doubted whether he had any knowledge of human female anatomy and physiology: his parents were far too old- fashioned ever to have enlightened him.

I was watching the stencilled edge of the mountains merging gently into a dusky blue sky and the first star appearing when Ifan came up behind me. We had our rough bench sheltered by the edge of the old quarry. There was a bell ringing far away by the harbour. Ifan was too distressed to apologise for being late.

‘The Americans have set off a hydrogen bomb! An island in the Pacific a mile long burnt for six hours and then evaporated. That's our world for you. Elect a President and let him blow up the world. It's not the superhuman dictator that will tear the world to bits. It's the fears and angers of little mister nobody, the democratic voter…'

‘And rocks melt in the sun…'

I thought the line would calm him down. He was so full of his anxieties he barely heard.

‘What are we except a species of mass murderers? The world would be better off without us. All we are good for is creating weapons of mass destruction. At least if we killed ourselves we wouldn't wipe anything else out. Suicide makes sense. When there's absolutely nothing else we can do about it.'

He sounded desperate enough to do anything. He looked cornered. Trapped. Unaware of what he was staring at.

I had to take the gamble. I couldn't let him escape me. I needed him too much. Being together was so much more important than any career.

‘Yes, there is,' I said. ‘Something we can do.'