A Small Country (27 page)

‘Is Sali keeping Mari-Elen tonight?’ she asked.

‘Of course not. She’s coming with us. She doesn’t like Sali.’ Josi tightened his grip on Lowri’s hand. She was a good girl.

‘A night or two wouldn’t make any difference.’

‘Yes, they would. She’s only one and a half.’

Josi left Lowri and her mother together. ‘What are you thinking about, Miss Rees?’ he asked the old woman. He found a chair by her side.

‘I’m thinking how fond I am of you.’ she said.

‘You’re not jealous of me any more. That’s what it is.’

‘I suppose you’re right. You see, I never thought you were good enough for her. Now that I see you in your own light, I like you.’

‘Well, I’m Mr Tom’s father anyway, so I’ve had my uses.’

Her laugh rang out. It was a long time since he had heard it and it cheered him.

Lowri’s grandfather sat by the fire, squat and black and unsmiling. His daughter-in-law had put him in his chapel coat that morning and polished his face with a piece of flannel. He was still angry. He spat into the fire from time to time. Josi took over the tin of tobacco he’d brought for him. At Lowri’s request.

‘Are you going to the war?’ the old man asked, puzzled by the gift
.

‘Too old, man,’ Josi said.

‘Too old?’ The old man cleared his throat noisily.

‘You think I should fight, do you?’ Josi asked, amiably.

‘For the bloody English. No.’ The little man spat squarely into the flames. ‘They wanted me to fight once; against the Russians, I think, or the Turks. Not I. My family fight against the bloody English, not for them. My father burnt his ricks in the tithe war, ready to starve rather than pay the tithes.’

‘It was the church you were fighting then.’

‘Same thing, church and state. My grandfather was one of ’Becca’s maidens in the hungry forties. They were fighters if you like. Pulled down all the bloody toll gates. Dressed as ladies, but it couldn’t hide their men’s hearts. Toll gates. Bloody English.’

‘Lloyd-George is a good little man to my way of thinking,’ Josi said peaceably, ‘and he’s one of the English now.’

‘Turn-coat from the North.’

‘Good little man to my way of thinking,’ Josi said again. ‘Not my business, though. Not today.’

The old man spun round to face him, the light of understanding in his eyes at last.

‘You’re the bridegroom, are you?’

‘Aye,’ Josi said. ‘That’s right.’

‘You old ram.’

‘Will we tell her about Miriam later on?’ Lowri had asked Josi as they’d tucked Mari-Elen up in her new bedroom that night. She was the only one who had ever mentioned Miriam in his presence.

And hearing her name spoken, after so long a silence, had a strange effect on him. ‘No,’ he’d said, ‘I don’t think it will be necessary. It would only confuse her.’

He had felt the pain engulfing him again, but when it had eased a little he had taken Lowri to the other bedroom and closed the door, and the encounter he had only been able to think about with dread was accomplished with some love, some passion.

She was a sweet, simple girl, still calling him Mr Evans most of the time. She was distantly related to him, her mother was his second cousin, she had the same pretty colouring as the women in his family.

He would be good to her, see that she never had to work too hard. He would have no qualms about taking whatever he wanted from Hendre Ddu. He still regarded himself as the boss there; he’d take his wages in kind. He certainly didn’t intend to kill himself or have Lowri slave away to make Cefn Hebog self-sufficient.

Tom had written to say that if he was killed in the war, Hendre Ddu would be his. But he didn’t intend to take it, come what may. If the worst happened, he would let Catrin have it. She and Andrews could live there and let Jâms Llethre and Davy Prosser manage the farm between them. He was sorry that Catrin intended marrying Doctor Andrews, though he had nothing tangible against him. Perhaps she loved him, though he thought it more likely that she didn’t. Some people could do without love, he supposed. Perhaps he could have done without it if Miriam hadn’t come into his life with her acorn-coloured eyes and skin, and her spirit like steel. ‘Like the white blossom on the black thorn,’ he sang softly, longing for her.

Lowri was unused to sleeping alone. At Hendre Ddu she had slept with Sali and Megan; with Mari-Elen in her cot on the far side of the room; at home she had always slept with at least three of her five sisters. She wished Mari-Elen would wake and cry so that she could fetch her; she was as soft and warm as a puppy. She mustn’t fetch her, though, in case Josi came back to bed.

‘Your breasts are lovely,’ he had said earlier, ‘lovely. You mustn’t be shy with me, Lowri. I expect you’ll have a baby yourself quite soon. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?’

‘Yes,’ she had said. ‘I’d like that. Yes.’

But what she really longed for was the night he would turn to her and sleep by her side instead of going up to the loft where he had slept as a boy and walking about there until she had fallen asleep. But she knew she mustn’t expect it all at once. She had often seen Miriam Lewis, Rhydfelen, and had thought her beautiful. Not in the same way as Miss Catrin, who turned her beauty on you like a lamp, but in a secret way you could almost miss, a way you could hardly describe; the silence after a blackbird’s song, a blue coil of smoke in the woods, the faint scent of flowers in the night. She didn’t suppose a man could forget a woman like that in a hurry; she would be in his bones.

So she sighed as she looked at the dipping moon through the small, uncurtained window. Nothing is ever perfect, she said to herself. Nothing is ever quite perfect. Miss Catrin was going to marry Doctor Andrews, she said, but her eyes were empty and hard. I’m the lucky one it seems to me, she told herself. It’s as though I’ve been chosen, somehow.

The white light of the moon ennobled her plain, good-natured face. She put her hand across the empty space at her side and smiled and fell asleep.

seren
is the book imprint of Poetry Wales Press Ltd Wyndham Street, Bridgend, Wales

© Siân James, 1979, 1999

Introduction © Stan Barstow, 1999

First published in 1979

This edition published in 1999

ISBN 978-1-78172-121-6

A CIP record for this title is available from

the British Library

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