A Place of Meadows and Tall Trees (27 page)

‘And your chest!'

He sits without moving while she looks for the butter.

‘It's like looking after another child,' she says, then stops. He has lifted his bandaged hands to cover his head. ‘Oh
cariad
!' she says and she holds both his shoulders until they stop shaking.

Edwyn is talking about Jacob. ‘The man is happy in Buenos Aires; I thought it better to leave him there,' he says, glancing at Silas. ‘He is making influential friends, and getting quite a reputation. I think to have Jacob a little longer in Buenos Aires will be of benefit to everyone.'

  Edwyn stops. His eyes flick over to Silas again. He reaches over and touches his hand. ‘I'm sorry,
brawd
.' He's said it before but Silas hasn't heard. He doesn't hear it now. He sits without responding, looking blankly ahead, rocking slightly. She is gone. He tries to hate her but he can't. If he could hate her he thinks it might make him feel better.

Edwyn sighs and looks around. ‘Anything else?'

Everyone is subdued. It is hard to concentrate on what is being said.

‘Has there been any word about the
Denby
?' Selwyn says at last.

Edwyn inspects his hands on his lap and for a few seconds everyone waits.

‘The
Denby
, Edwyn, have you heard anything?'

He shakes his head, his beard that has become more grey and grizzled, brushes against his jacket – one sweep to the right, another to the left. ‘No. I'm sorry. There's been no word from either Patagones or Buenos Aires. All anyone can tell me is she left Patagones on 16 February. There were strong winds the next day, they tell me. And as we all know the condition of the ship was not… good.'

Silas looks up. The
Denby
. Her feet. The things she said. Misery overwhelms him like a wave.

‘I am very much afraid we are going to have to assume the worst.'

At the back of the room someone gasps.

For several minutes it is silent.

‘All those men!' Selwyn's voice cracks. ‘Dewi, Gareth… so many of them.'

It is quiet again. Towards the back someone sniffs.

‘We can't give up, not yet. There's still a chance – look what happened to the
Maria Theresa
!'

‘It's been longer than that, man – much longer.'

They are silent again. Everyone is looking at the floor remembering faces.

‘
Jiw, jiw
.'

‘What a waste.'

‘It is going to be difficult without them,' Edwyn says eventually.

‘It's a punishment!' Silas stands. Suddenly everything is clear. ‘That's what it is.' His voice is high, taut, trembling. ‘Don't you see? We're not meant to be here and we're being punished. A flood and then a famine – it's like the bible. Like when Moses leads them away. We have to go too – maybe back to Wales or Santa Fe.'

‘But the crops, Silas, they're growing strongly now, surely that's a sign to stay,' Selwyn says quietly.

‘No, we should go.'

Everyone waits in silence. Eyes stare at Silas and then at Selwyn and then at Edwyn. The
Meistr
is trembling. For a few seconds Edwyn's face twists as if a sequence of emotions is being played out in his mind and banished one by one: anger, sorrow, fear, then nothing – as if someone has wiped it clean. Edwyn stands and pulls Silas to him, hugs him close and pats him on the back while Silas stays as he is, his arms stiff and outstretched. Then, still holding him by each shoulder, he looks into his face. ‘I'm sorry,
brawd
. You are suffering, I know that. You've lost her and it is hard to bear. But she is with the Lord now, happy.' He smiles sadly. ‘We can't know His ways,
ffrind
, we must just accept them.' He lets him go. ‘Come now, go with Selwyn and rest. You are tired and God needs you well.'

But Silas stays where he is. ‘How do you know what God wants?' he asks quietly. ‘What gives you the right to say?'

Edwyn looks at him calmly. ‘I can't know,
brawd
, all I can tell you is what I feel in my heart.'

Silas rides. He has taken his strongest stallion, the one which doesn't have to be encouraged too much to gallop. He grips with his knees and forces him faster, along the valley and out of it, into the desert where there is nothing. Then he shouts – cries without words. There is no one to hear him. He shouts until his throat hurts, then he crumples on his saddle and allows the horse to walk until it is darker and the wind has risen. The evening is clear. Around him the wind is blowing a haze of dust, making the ground seem higher. Above it is something like a small bush, the branches tangled around each other as if they are locked in a complicated embrace, and it is rolling above the haze as if it is floating on water. Silas watches it until it stops, caught on a cleft of rocks. Then he watches it as the wind tugs and it edges slowly around, floating there like leaves on water, like rags no one cares about, like Megan. ‘I loved you,' he screams but there is no reply. He looks back at the bush and sobs until he is thirsty and has run out of water.

‘If there are too many women then maybe some of us are going to learn how to be men,' says Miriam; she throws down her sewing and stands. Her eyes are level with Silas'. ‘Looks like I'm halfway there anyway,' she says. When he just looks back at her blankly she punches him hard on the arm. He winces back. ‘Well, what do you think? I am just as strong as my brothers, I think. I can even beat Ieuan at running.'  

He looks at her slowly, trying to take her in. He finds it difficult to concentrate, difficult to follow what is being said. He looks at her trying not to see Megan. She is as strong and tall as Megan but Megan's strength had a softness about it, something that yielded and welcomed him to her – sometimes in spite of herself. Now, while she knows his eyes are on her, Miriam touches her nest of black hair with the tips of her long fingers. They seem to curve backwards slightly as if the tendons inside pull too hard. ‘Will I do, do you think?' She holds her head to one side and blinks at him slowly like a young calf, then laughs at herself.

‘Yes, I think you will do very well,' he says.

She looks a little surprised, struggles to control a smile that is more triumphant than demure and then says, ‘You were supposed to disagree, Silas. You were supposed to say you couldn't imagine how I could be mistaken for a man.'

He is still looking at her fingers. She follows his gaze, turns her hands over and inspects them herself then shrugs. ‘Come on, Myf,' she says and marches out.

The fields are more impressive this year than last. They started sowing earlier and each acre is showing much promise, the stems of wheat growing high and strong. Silas rarely looks. Each time he does he sees the ghost of Megan standing there, her hands on her hips, gazing out at the irrigation ditches then looking back reproachfully at him. My idea, she seems to be telling him. Without me there would be nothing. Without me you would be gone.

Then her ghost follows him inside. Each time it is the same. He catches her in the twilight sitting on her chair with Arianwen on her lap. You killed me, she says calmly. Once he catches himself replying. Once he finds himself weeping by her chair, his head on its empty seat, clutching the arms. No, Megan you did it to yourself. But she shakes her head.

Then there is a touch at an elbow, and there is Miriam, darker and leaner than she was, her mouth slightly open, looking into the place where the voice had been.

‘Can you see her?' he asks.

‘No,' she says, shaking her head.

‘Did you hear her?'

Another shake, but she keeps peering into the gloom, squinting  a little until Silas has dried his eyes.

‘Sometimes I think I see angels,' she says. ‘They are trapped here you know. They can't go to heaven and they don't fall to hell. All they want is to be with God, but something stops them.'

For a few seconds he sits while she stands next to him in silence. Then he sighs, brushes himself down and stands next to her. There is just the room, empty except for a man and a girl. He smiles at her. ‘You've not made tea, have you?'

Myfanwy has put her favourite doll – which is just a stick she has clothed with scraps of cloth – onto her mother's chair. Silas catches her talking to it – though whether she is talking to the doll, the chair or her mother's ghost is difficult to tell. ‘I have a new Mam now,' she says and smiles contentedly in front of her.

He smiles at her and pats her on the head then returns to his mending. Yesterday one of the stools he made for the kitchen broke and mending it is turning out to be more difficult than he thought. He has mended this stool before – whittled at this same piece of wood until it fitted into the hole. He remembers the kitchen, the warmth of Megan behind him, the faint odour of her milk, her blouse wet as Gwyneth whimpered to be fed.

He stops his work. Tears are dripping on the wood and it is difficult to see. He looks around. It is getting dark, time for him to light some lanterns. Miriam has gone somewhere. He had been tired yesterday and remembers now that he had been a little irritable with her. She had been tidying things away and he had been unable to find his chisel. When she'd told him that she hadn't touched it he hadn't believed her and had stamped around the place cursing and tutting until he had found it where he had left it. He had gone back into the kitchen with an embarrassed grin replacing his frown but she had gone and had not come back that night. Today when he had gone to her mother's house to find out where she was he was told she had gone off on an errand for her father. Mary had been a little short with him, he realises now. Maybe he ought to go and talk to her, offer an excuse for his irritability, maybe take her some flour.

He looks up. Everything has gone quiet. The room is empty. Myfanwy is probably in the kitchen. He picks up the stick and whittles at it again. This time it fits. He stands the stool on the floor and presses down. It is steady on its three legs. He sits back, listens. There is not a sound anywhere. He stands. He has been sitting so long in the same position the whole of his left leg is numb. He stamps on it as he goes out to the kitchen and the blood returns painfully. They are not there. The door is open. He is sure he shut it behind him, maybe Myfanwy managed to let herself out. He runs into their small yard but there is no sign of them.

‘Myfanwy?' he calls.

There is no reply.

The sun is setting, the scene is lit in yellows – a mustard field, shimmering gold river, lemon cliffs. He looks around for movement but it is quite still, the wheat in the field upright and silent. How quickly can a child move? He looks around him inspecting the sand, then sees a shuffling track leading between bushes.

‘Myfanwy?'

He lights his lantern and follows the path to the river. The ghosts follow him, whispering things he cannot quite hear. He bats them away, shakes his head. ‘Go, leave me, you've done enough.'

Then, in the silence following his call is a tiny sound.

‘Myfanwy?'

The sound comes again.

He runs forward towards the river and stops. There is the small willow with its overhanging branches and there is the child. He tastes bile in his throat and forces the burning mixture back down to his stomach. ‘Myfanwy!' he whispers. The child is near the edge of the water where the current is strong and the water deep. She stops, looks around. ‘I'm looking for Mam's ghost.' She smiles, turns around, reaches towards him but her foot slips on the wet mud. He lurches forward but she slithers away from him. She cries out and this time it is as if he is answering her. ‘Myfanwy!' She is going, disappearing from view. He scrambles after her, reaches out, calls her name. Gone. The surface of the water undisturbed as if there is nothing there. She must have sunk quickly. He reaches in but he can feel nothing but cold. ‘Myfanwy.'

There is no hope. The child will have been carried away by now. He slips heavily on the mud. There is a chuckle behind him. She is caught on the bole of the willow, nestling in a hollow there. He touches her to make sure she is real. Then, as he clutches her to him something moves above his head, as if some great bird had departed from the branch and now is leaving them alone together.

There are many women and not many men so the women marry young and the men take whom they please. It is a small obvious step for Silas to marry Miriam. She doesn't even have to move homes, merely rooms.

It is Mary Jones who suggests it as he returns weeping with Myfanwy in his arms. ‘It looks to me, Silas, as if the sooner you get yourself a wife, the better.'

He follows her gaze to Miriam who is pretending not to listen as she reads her book by the lamplight at the table. ‘Well, what about it, girl?'

‘What?'

‘He's asking you to marry him.'

Her eyes are small, but her eyelids long with dark skin. She looks at him and blinks once slowly. It reminds him so much of a fawn that something inside him weakens. With the entire Jones family and Myfanwy watching, he bends down on one knee. ‘Miriam Jones, I would be greatly honoured if you would agree to become my wife.'

Her hair is loose around her face. The dense tight curls look a little like wool. She tips her head so her face is sheltered.

‘Miriam?'

Her shoulders are shaking. He thinks she is laughing but she is not. He steps forward and parts her hair. It feels like a coarse version of Myfanwy's. ‘What do you say?'

Her long-fingered hands leap to her face. ‘It's not how I thought.'

‘Miriam? Are you going to answer Silas?'

She looks up. He has never seen her cry before. ‘What do you say, Mam? Yes?'

‘I think it would be a good choice.'

‘Well I don't.'

‘Why?'

‘Isn't it obvious?'

‘Am I too old, is that it?' Silas shifts on his knees.

‘No.' She has stopped crying now, but her eyes are still glinting. ‘There is something you've forgotten. Something everyone's forgotten.'

‘What's that,
cariad
?'

‘That! Love. Just some mention of it.'

‘Love you? Well of course I love you.' His knees are aching. Something rasps inside one of them as he rises again, levering himself to standing with the help of the table.

‘And I love you, too,' Myfanwy says. ‘Please say yes.'

Miriam looks at her and gives her a small, tight grin. ‘Seems like I have no choice then.'

Caradoc Llewellyn is not even pretending to be happy. He has arrived at Silas' house without warning, striding through Silas' open door and now pacing up and down the short length of the kitchen without taking off his hat. ‘It's too early,' he says. ‘Megan is barely cold in her grave.'

Silas is sitting alone at the kitchen table; Myfanwy is with Mary Jones' brood. ‘My child needs a mother, Caradoc, and I need a wife.'

‘Could she not just continue to help you for a while? Wouldn't that be better?'

‘Why?'

‘Think of your reputation, man. Think of the reputation of the colony. How old are you now? Forty?'

‘Thirty-nine.'

‘More than twenty years older than her then. She is still a young girl. It is indecent...'

‘Indecent? All I am doing is trying to survive in this place, and help my child survive. Don't you care about that?'

‘But it is wrong, Silas. If I could, I would forbid it. A mature man like you should not take such a young girl. Especially a man so recently widowed.' Caradoc stops pacing and stands before him. ‘Cancel it, man, for the sake of all of us. Say you've been a little hasty. Everyone will understand.'

‘No.'

Caradoc sighs. ‘I just want you to consider what you're doing. You are ruining not just your life but hers too.'

‘Miriam knows her own mind. Surely you know that.'

‘Yes, I know she is a strong girl, in will as well as body. But I also know she must dream like all women of her age do – of flowers, of courtship...' Caradoc raises his head and looks at him. ‘...of love.'

‘Love? Of course I love her. She is like a daughter to me.'

‘A daughter?'

‘Yes. And that,
brawd
, will have to do for now.'

‘This match is wrong. I shall pray for you to come to your senses.' Then, without another word, he disappears out of the door into the early morning sun.

Mary Jones arranges the wedding with her customary efficiency. For days Silas is tormented by smells of cakes baking and he gives her several bags of flour and sugar, and every egg his hens produce. Their diet, in consequence, consists mainly of meat but Myfanwy assures him that Miriam has told her it will be worth it in the end.

Megan, of course, does not approve. In fact Silas thinks that she has disappeared in disgust. One night he comes home and finds that Miriam has rearranged the furniture and added small items of her own. It gives the place a warmer feel: several brightly coloured rag rugs on the floor, cushions tied onto some of the chairs, a few more books on the window sill, and a new cloth over the table. She stands at the bedroom door watching his face as he enters, smiling as his eyebrows rise and he looks around with his mouth slightly open.

‘What do you think, Dadda?' says Myfanwy hopping up and down. ‘Miriam thinks it looks more homely, and so do I.'

‘Well,' he says, seriously, then smiles, ‘yes, it is welcoming, quite a transformation.'

After that she adds pictures to the walls, drawings by Myfanwy of animals they have seen, and replaces the plain brown curtains with a red print. She uses the same cloth to pad the chair that used to be Megan's so that it becomes something entirely different, and covers the blankets in the bedroom with quilts of her own.

They have built a chapel in Rawson now. It is made of bricks and has small windows made from rhea gut. Inside there are a series of crude benches, each one owned by a family, and a small platform and table at the front. It is well used: Sunday school, morning and evening services, prayer meetings, choir rehearsals, bible study as well the council and court and Jacob's school – which Caradoc reluctantly attempts to continue.

Although it is John who is officially on the council, it is invariably Mary who speaks – a situation which is acceptable to everyone, especially John.

‘This chapel needs more benches,' she says. ‘If we hurry we can build them in time for Silas' wedding.'

Only Caradoc and the two Baptist members sitting next to him do not agree. Caradoc sits with his arms folded. ‘We don't think it's right,' the man next to him says. ‘It's unbecoming. Too hasty.'

Silas opens his mouth, but Edwyn is there before him. ‘But it's really not your business, though, is it?'

‘Well, Edwyn, I'm afraid it is,' says Caradoc. ‘It's the business of us all. She's too young. It gives the whole colony a bad name. What will the people back home say when they hear? We're allowing child brides?'

‘She's hardly that.'

‘Well, we think it should not be allowed.'

‘And I don't think we should condemn.'

‘He needs help,' points out Mary, ‘he can't look after a house and child on his own.'

Silas is opening his mouth and closing it again like a goldfish. Every time he goes to speak someone butts in for him. He sits back.

‘Yes,' says Edwyn. ‘His child needs a mother. We have to be practical,
brodyr
a
chwiorydd
, this is Patagonia, not Ceredigion. It is a harsh place, wild, and there are not many of us here. A man needs a woman.' He sighs. ‘And a man with a child needs a woman more than most. Love, romance, courtship – all those – have to be forgotten, what we have to do now at the moment is survive.'

There is silence. Silas is looking at Edwyn. He has forgotten entirely about closing his mouth.

‘Are you saying we should not love,
brawd
?' Caradoc says.

‘Of course not. I am just saying we need to adapt to where we are and make sacrifices. After all that is what the Lord expects from us, is it not?'

‘Yes,
brawd
.'

‘So I think we should all offer our congratulations and look forward to the day. And Caradoc?'

‘Yes?'

‘I expect it to be the shortest sermon you have ever written.'

‘But…'

‘And your most amusing.'

‘But I can't…'

Edwyn sits back and smiles. ‘I know. Just do your best.'

The morning before their wedding Miriam opens the windows of Silas' cottage wide. He has replaced the rhea gut now. It is crude stuff for windows, thick and in some places almost opaque, but at least it is sturdy, doesn't rattle in the wind and, for the moment, has little smell.

‘There,' she says, ‘the old replaced with the new.' It is September and one of the last winds of winter blows in. It rushes around the room whistling to itself, displacing the heavy warm air that was there. Silas fancies he hears moans and faint cries, creaks and curses as if something is being shifted and doesn't want to move. He looks at Miriam to see if she feels it too, but if she does she makes no sign.

When she closes the window again the house feels different. It is not just the smell of the fields outside but a different charge in the air. He sits in the chair that was Megan's and for once feels relaxed and comfortable. Everything is well. He reaches out for Miriam's hand. ‘
Diolch
.'