A Small Country (18 page)

‘What shall I do, sweetheart? Tell me.’

Miriam didn’t answer. She knew he would go back to his wife. He was a good man, kind and dutiful. It was only because of the baby that he’d ever been able to leave in the first place.

She found his hand and kissed it.

‘It’ll only be for a short time,’ he said. ‘I think I’ll have to go back. What do you say? Oh, Miriam, say something. Please.’

She sat up in bed and looked towards the window. It was utterly dark, as dark outside as in.

‘There isn’t a choice,’ she said at last. ‘You must go.’ She felt his body slacken with relief.

‘It’ll be so difficult, though, won’t it. Seeing her growing weaker, trying to be patient. We shouldn’t talk about afterwards, I know, but we’ll be able to get married afterwards. Won’t we? Miriam?’

‘Perhaps so.’

‘Why perhaps? What can stop us? Afterwards? Miriam?’

But she had no more comfort for him. It suddenly seemed monstrous, what he intended to do. How could he leave her now? How could he?

‘Why should I want to marry you? What’s so wonderful about marriage? Christian marriage ordained for the procreation of children. Only that? It’s a denigration of love, it seems to me. Animals mate to procreate the species; human love is a different thing, surely, something larger – it’s got to be – an explanation of life, its health, the only thing that makes it bearable. I don’t want Christian wedlock. I don’t want to be locked to anyone, not even to you, and I’m not a Christian, I keep telling you that. I’m not a Christian.’

‘Never mind, never mind. I’ll have you as you are, freckles and all and thin as a whippet. Lie down, my little one. My little pagan.’

Josi’s voice was low and his hands tender and soothing, but she seemed in a fever.

‘I can’t lie down. I’m going outside. I can’t stay in bed. It’s too hot up here. There’s no air. Just over the stile the grass is cropped like moss, it’ll be soft and cold. Won’t you come out with me, Josi? Let’s pretend this hasn’t happened. The moon will be up soon. I want you, Josi, and I won’t have you long. You’ll go before the end of the week, I know, and I’ll be half mad for you. Walking round in my flannel petticoat and singing like old Marged Rhys.’

‘Lie down now, there’s a good girl.’ Josi’s voice was the one he had for a frightened animal. ‘Lie down now.’

‘I’m going alone, then. If you won’t come with me, I’m going alone.’

She sprang up from bed and almost made the door, but Josi was too quick for her. He was too strong for her; he picked her up, carried her back and laid her on the bed.

‘A hussy, that’s what you are, a shameless hussy. Can’t live decently between four walls. No. And you’re proud of it, aren’t you. Proud of being a man’s downfall. Proud of being a man’s whore.’

But she, having heard his monologue many times before, wasn’t attending to a word of it, only kissing him and crying and keeping up a monologue of her own, ‘Open up, oh ye gates, for the king of glory to come in. My beloved put in his hand by the hole of the door, and my bowels were moved for him.’

They found peace and oblivion at last. That one night more.

In the morning, Josi told his son that he would be returning to Hendre Ddu before the end of the week.

‘It’ll serve Isaac Lloyd right, that’s one thing I’m glad about,’ Miriam said. ‘The old fox. Only why should I call him a fox, a fox may be sly but he has his dignity and a sense of fair play; Isaac Lloyd has neither; he’s a twisted old miser and I’m glad you’ll be out of his clutches.’

‘I’ll have Prince and Mabon and the wagon here by day-break on Friday,’ Tom said. ‘We’ll load up; take every stick of yours with us. We’ll leave it all at Garnant Mill, they’ve got any amount of room. I can say it’s stuff I had at Oxford; they know I’m leaving.’

It’s all too easy, Miriam thought, swinging from one mood to another. It’s our little home which is being disposed of, it’s not just furniture. It’s too easy. Too easy.

Tom suggested getting lodgings for Miriam and the baby in Carmarthen, but Miriam had seen a vacant room advertised in Morfa, the seaside village they could see from the top of the hill, and was determined that that was where she would stay.

Tom brought out a leather purse from his pocket.

‘Pay three months’ rent in advance,’ he told Miriam. ‘Pay whatever they ask. Don’t stint yourself in anything.’

‘I’ve got money,’ Miriam said, ‘I shall be quite all right.’

Tom, realizing at once how tactless he had been, looked apologetically at his father. But Josi was smiling and looking at Miriam so tenderly that Tom couldn’t wait to be away.

‘Don’t hate me,’ he said quietly to Miriam as he left. ‘Please don’t hate me.’ He was afraid to offer her his hand.

‘I must go too,’ Josi said after his son had left. ‘I must go to work.’ But he didn’t go. He sat down again in the armchair by the fire and took Miriam on his knee and when she cried, he cried, and they sat without a word, their tears mingling.

The baby was unsettled; crying even after Miriam had fed her, crying through the morning. I’m losing my milk, Miriam thought, whatever happens I mustn’t lose my milk. She didn’t ask to be born. Oh, Elen, smile at me.

In a panic, she drank almost a pint of buttermilk straight from the pitcher, then went out to sit on the doorstop in the sun and tried to will herself to think about anything other than Josi; their parting. She tried to think about milk, a land flowing with milk and honey, about water, about the pool in the river where she had swum as a child, how green and cold it was, dappled by shafts of sunlight breaking through the high elms. You could see fish darting about under the water. When she was about seven, she had won first prize for a composition about fishing, though she had never caught a fish or tried to catch a fish in her life, and Owen Brynglas, a famous fisherman, aged nine, had thrown a stone after her. Rain. That was another beautiful sight, rain, falling straight and silent on the land, possessing it. Rain. Once, it had rained so hard that her bed was soaked through in the night. She had had to sleep with her mother, then, and had discovered that she only had one blanket on the bed. After that they had always slept together in the driest part of the room, with three blankets. Rain. Rain. He shall come down like rain upon the mown grass; as showers that water the earth. The story of Noah; how moving. When the dove had brought back the green leaf. And God’s rainbow over the world. ‘And the Lord said in his heart, I will not again curse the ground any more for man’s sake; for the imagination of man’s heart is evil from his youth; neither will I again smite any more every thing living, as I have done. While the earth remaineth, seed-time and harvest and cold and heat and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease.’ That’s it. That’s all there is. Man is weak, imperfect, irredeemable, yet summer and winter and day and night shall not cease. That’s as much religion as I need. That’s enough for me. Who needs more?

Feeling calmer, Miriam fetched the baby and put her to the breast again, but again she rejected the offered nipple, turning her face away and crying as before.

Miriam, who had tried being calm and still, now felt compelled to action. She wrapped the baby in a light, carrying shawl and walked hurriedly down the steep hill to the village. She was in her ordinary working dress, a pale grey calico which she used to wear to school during fine weather – it was shabby now and stained – she was far from looking her best and she felt tired and dishevelled. In spite of it, she decided that she would call at the white-washed cottage near the beach, where she’d seen the vacancy advertised. The sooner she was settled in somewhere the better. It was her fault that the baby was upset.

It was the beginning of August, another cloudless day, but there was no one on the narrow shingle beach. The pale sea frilled on to the grey and white stones, seagulls bobbed on the gentle waves like ducks on a pond, the only sound was the soft splash of the incoming tide. It was a new world. She let the breath and pulse of it comfort her for a few moments.

Then her restlessness returned; she turned away from the sea and walked to the cottage.

She tapped at the open door. The slate-roofed, four-roomed cottage was the type she knew very well; they were everywhere in West Wales, only the smooth white stones decorating the front garden instead of flowers were different, and the shells arranged and set in intricate patterns around the door. The smell was different, too; seaweed and tarred driftwood instead of the familiar smell of chickens and cows.

‘I’ve come about the accommodation,’ she said. An elderly woman was suddenly before her.

‘Come inside, please.’

She was shown into the kitchen which was bright and pretty; scarlet geraniums on the window-sill, a green chenille cloth on the table, a gleaming range, brass ornaments.

‘What a nice kitchen,’ she said.

‘What is it you’re wanting?’

‘Whatever you’ve got.’

‘Is it for a holiday?’

‘No, for longer than that. For some months at least.’

‘Just the two of you and the baby?’

‘I’m on my own. Just myself and the baby.’

‘What I usually have is people on holiday. I had a honeymoon couple last month. From the South. Merthyr.’

‘I could pay whatever you charge.’

‘It isn’t that exactly, is it?’

‘What is it, then?’

‘There’d be talk. A woman alone with a baby makes talk in these parts. Would your husband be coming now and then?’

‘I’m not married.’

‘Sit down there a minute.’

Miriam sat where she was told and looked at the woman; thin, bird-like, dressed in black with a black handkerchief over her hair, her expression neither kind or unkind.

‘Did he take advantage of you?’

Miriam realized that the woman wanted an excuse to take pity on her, but she wasn’t the type to ask or even allow favours.

‘No,’ she said. ‘It wasn’t like that.’

‘Haven’t you a home?’

‘My mother’s dead. I did have a house of my own, but it was a school house and of course I had to leave as soon as I knew about the baby.’

‘You were a schoolmistress, were you?’

‘A very small school. Twenty-three children.’

‘Where was this?’

‘In Carmarthenshire. Rhydfelen, Carmarthenshire.’

The baby, who had been comforted to sleep during the walk, woke again and started to cry. Miriam tightened the shawl around her and stood up.

‘I’ll go, then,’ she said.

‘What will you do?’

‘I’ll have to start telling lies, I suppose. Buy a wedding ring. Say I’m a widow.’

‘It’ll be easier to get lodgings in a town.’

‘I don’t like living in a town. Well, I may have to.’

‘Is it a boy or a girl?’

‘A girl.’

‘How old is she?’

‘Ten weeks.’

‘You’re welcome to sit and feed her.’

‘She doesn’t seem very well today. She doesn’t usually cry like this.’

Miriam sat again, feeling exhausted and dispirited. She took Mari-Elen out of the shawl and laid her across her lap. She could feel her little knees drawing up sharply, as though she was in pain.

‘They bring their love with them,’ the older woman said.

‘And their care.’

‘Yes.’

‘They say a woman is in her care when she’s carrying, but believe me, she’s in her care as long as they’re both alive.’

‘You have children, then?’

‘Three sons.’

‘Living nearby?’

‘No. In London. The eldest bought a dairy in St John’s Wood in London when his father died, and the others went up to join him. I never see them. Only the care I have now. I wonder if she’d take water from a spoon? There’s a drop in the kettle will soon cool.’

She brought Miriam some water, still slightly warm, and Miriam gave the baby a spoonful. She gulped and spluttered and then cried with even greater ferocity.

‘Let me have her.’

The woman took the baby and wrapped her very tightly in the shawl so that she couldn’t move her arms or legs. Then, tilting her slightly, she managed to get her to take a little of the water; three or four teaspoonfuls. Then she held her to her face and recited an old rhyme to her and then another. Soon the baby’s crying slackened and after a few minutes she was quiet,

‘Thank you,’ Miriam said. Once more she got up.

‘What you should do is get someone to foster her for you. Then you could get work.’

‘No, I won’t do that.’

‘I don’t mean have her adopted; she’d still be yours.’

‘I’d rather keep her with me.’

‘How will you live? Will her father send money?’

Miriam didn’t answer. She held out her arms for the baby.

‘You’d better stay here, I suppose,’ the woman said.

‘If it suits you.’

‘It will have to, I suppose. When do you want to come?’

‘Tomorrow evening.’

‘Five shillings a week, I charge.’

Miriam took out a sovereign from a purse in her pocket. She had five left; the last of the money she had managed to save while she was teaching. When that was finished she would really be a kept woman.