A String in the Harp (29 page)

“If there were an earlier one though, it would belong here, wouldn’t it? In the Museum.” Jen dared not look at Becky or Peter.

“Without question. It would provide us with an invaluable
link to a part of the past we still know sadly little
about.
It would be terribly important to historians and music scholars. But look here, I’m dreadfully
sorry
to have to leave you like this, but I really must get back to my office. So nice to have met all of you and I do
hope
you’ll enjoy the rest of your visit. Do give Gwyn my regards, David, will you?”

Jen faced Dr. Owen with a kind of desperation. She had to catch him now or lose her chance. “Suppose someone found something really old. It might be possible to find one of those keys, mightn’t it? I mean you might come across one lying around outside somewhere?” She couldn’t let herself think about what she was saying, she had to say it quickly. “Suppose I found it, or my brother, for instance. We ought to bring it to you, oughtn’t we? It wouldn’t belong to us, really. Any more than the chalice belonged to that farmer. It would be our
duty
to give it to you.”

David was frowning at her in perplexity. Peter, behind him, had gone absolutely rigid, his face white, his left hand clenched in his pocket, his right clasped protectively to his chest.

Dr. Owen, who had been rather absently answering Jen’s questions, his mind already gone ahead to the work in his office, brought his attention back sharply to her. His eyes narrowed speculatively; her desperation had reached him. “Now, what’s this?
Have
you actually found something? There’s a chance it might be important—worth a look anyway.” He glanced at David. “Naturally there are a lot of
nonessential
artifacts—spearheads, bits of pottery, now and then a coin—but we’ve got to check every possibility. Sometimes even
children

“It’s so hot in here!” said Becky suddenly, and burst into tears. Jen’s moment was gone, the focus shifted to her sister. Other people in the hall looked at them, then quickly away. David went down on one knee beside Becky, his hand to her forehead.

“Don’t you feel well, love?” he asked anxiously. Becky shook her head, gulping with sobs.

Dr. Owen was clearly not prepared for anything of this kind, but kept his composure. “Hadn’t she better go outside? Perhaps some air—?”

“I’m sorry,” said David brusquely. “I’m sure she doesn’t want to upset anyone, she’s obviously not feeling well. I think fresh air would be a very good idea.” He turned back to Becky with concern. “Do you want a cold drink? Or something hot?”

“No,” she said, her voice blurred with tears. “I’d like to go outside, please.”

David thanked Dr. Owen again, formally and briefly, took Becky’s hand and headed toward the main entrance. Jen’s last glimpse of Dr. Owen was as he walked quickly in the opposite direction without glancing back; there was nothing she could do but follow her family. Becky was all right, Jen knew that. It had been the tension, the awfulness of what was about to happen. Becky had stopped it and saved Peter’s secret, and Jen felt strangely relieved. It had gone out of her hands, but at least she’d tried.

Outside on the front steps of the museum, Becky was mopping her eyes and blowing her nose on David’s handkerchief and assuring him that she was fine. “I don’t know what happened,” she said, taking deep breaths. “It got very hot and I didn’t think I could breathe. I thought I might be sick. I’m much better now.”

“Thank heaven for that!” David exclaimed.

“We don’t have to go back in, do we?”

“No. I think Dr. Owen is feeling well quit of us by now. At least we can say we saw him.”

“And escaped,” added Becky, much recovered.

“It was good of him to spend so much time on us.” But David was only mildly reproving.

“I didn’t like him much,” said Becky candidly.

“Neither did your brother. It’s a good thing Dr. Owen
wasn’t particularly sensitive to you lot! Jen looked miserable most of the time, and I don’t think you opened your mouth at all while we were with him, Peter. Not an unqualified success, I’d say.” He shook his head. “Still, you never can tell ahead of time, and the museum, what we saw of it, is fascinating. We ought to come back later and spend a day
without
a guide. And where, may I ask, Jen, did you find your sudden interest in harp keys?”

Peter, who had been sitting hunched over on a step, staring at his hands between his knees, seemed to stop breathing.

“I just wondered, that’s all,” said Jen lamely. “They were curious looking, and I suppose you might find something small like that. It might not occur to you it was important.”

“What shall we do now?” asked Becky, folding up the handkerchief and giving it back. “Is it time to go?”

David consulted his watch. “Very nearly. We should get back to the bus station, I suppose.” He looked from Becky to Jen to Peter with a slight frown, as if to say, “I don’t know all that’s going on here, do I?” then got up. “Come on, Peter, let’s see if we can find a taxi. I’m tired.”

They walked off together and irrelevantly Jen noticed that Peter was almost as tall as David now; his wrists stuck awkwardly out of his jacket sleeves and his stride matched his father’s. Aunt Beth would have taken him shopping for clothes that fit. There was so much Jen didn’t know how to do.

“You were going to tell, weren’t you?”

She turned on Becky defensively. “What if I was?”

“You mustn’t.”

“What if that thing of Peter’s is valuable? He can’t just hide it.”

“But he has to decide what to do, not you, Jen. It isn’t yours.”

“It isn’t Peter’s either. It doesn’t really belong to him—I agree with Dr. Owen, it belongs to Wales.” She knew she was sounding stuffy. If only Peter’s key didn’t upset her so much, she could be much more objective about it.

Becky said gravely, “Maybe that’s true, but Peter found it, so it’s up to him. It’s to do with him, Jen, not you.”

“And you pretended to be sick to keep me from telling.”

“No, I didn’t. All of a sudden everything felt awful and I did feel hot. I couldn’t help it. I didn’t want you to tell, though, not Dr. Owen. And what about Dad? Will you tell him now?”

“I don’t know,” said Jen helplessly. She didn’t feel like telling anyone anything at the moment.

“Don’t. It won’t help.”

“I’ll make up my own mind,” she said stiffly.

Becky sighed. “We’d better go after them or we’ll lose them.” She started down the steps. “Jen?”

“What?”

“Please don’t be cross with Peter. Or me either. I know you don’t feel the same way about the Key, but it’s all worse if you’re mad.”

Jen didn’t answer. She wasn’t sure how she felt any more. She’d been so close to telling—what would have happened if she had? Would it really have been the end of the Key? And she knew it wouldn’t have been.

In the terminal David bought them all orange drinks in the crowded cafe, and they sat on stools along a sticky counter sipping and watching people until bus time. They were quiet on the trip back to Aberystwyth, sunk in various thoughts. Becky took a nap, though she indignantly denied it later. The day had been exhausting.

T
HE
W
ELSH WINTER
was not like a New England one. Through December, January, and February, the country lay cold and damp, the trees bare, the hills behind the Bog muted with frost. But there was no snow; there were no hard freezes. Inland, two or three miles, the country was often dusted with snow and it lay deep among the mountains of Snowdonia in the north. But along the coast there were only long days of rain. Sometimes the rain came in fierce, sudden showers; usually it lay as a gray curtain across sea and land for hours at a time.

The hooks in Bryn Celyn’s front hall seemed always to be full of dripping macintoshes. Umbrellas dried open beside the stairs, and there was a jumble of wellingtons inside the front door.

Gwilym had looked genuinely surprised when, one extremely wet afternoon on the bus to Aber, Jen had complained loudly about being shut in the house all day by the weather.

“Why should you be?” he asked.

“Because it rains all the time,” Jen answered crossly.

Gwilym’s forehead wrinkled thoughtfully. “I suppose I don’t really notice. I have things to do outside whether it’s
raining or no, and a bit of water doesn’t hurt. I just wear my boots and a mac.”

“Well, yours must be better than mine because I get wet even when I wear them,” retorted Jen.

“Ah, see now,” Hugh-the-Bus put in, smiling at Jen in his rearview mirror, “there is a wise man said either you wear a mac and get wet, or you don’t wear a mac and get
very
wet, you see?”

Even Jen, sitting there dripping, couldn’t keep herself from laughing.

***

But as the winter blustered by, the Morgans adjusted to it. The damp air was fresh and smelled good—it cleared the head of too much thinking and stuffy rooms. There were always dry clothes to change into after being in the rain: wool socks and warm sweaters; and the heat of the stove in the kitchen or the coal fire in the lounge could be counted on to take the chill out of fingers and feet.

At Mrs. Rhys’s suggestion, Jen bought four hot water bottles, and filling them each night, then sliding them between cold sheets half an hour before bed, became a ritual like brushing teeth. Grumbles and complaints grew less frequent and more good-humored, as the Morgans got used to a different kind of living.

Routine settled in again after the trip to Cardiff: school, university, housework, meals. And gradually the days began to spin themselves out so that it was no longer necessary to go off in the morning and come back in the afternoon in darkness. No one mentioned Dr. Owen or harp keys; David asked no questions, Jen made no explanations. But without apologizing to him, she made a kind of peace with Peter, leaving him alone, but not ignoring him.

Jen found plenty to keep her busy during the week. The formidable routines of housework came easier with practice and she no longer had to think so much about the chores she
did. She discovered she had not the least compulsion to clean corners and scrub the front doorstep like Mrs. Davies, but she could manage to keep Bryn Celyn in pretty good order and still have time to herself.

Rather to her surprise and pleasure, Mrs. Rhys took a lively interest in Jen’s domestic progress and invited her to stop in for coffee any morning Jen was coming to Aberystwyth on errands. Over sweet, milky coffee and delicious homemade scones, Mrs. Rhys taught Jen to knit, listened to problems, and gave all kinds of advice on scores of subjects; she was very good company indeed.

And one afternoon Jen discovered the tiny Borth library, stuck away in a shabby building by the station—just one room lined with books, open apparently according to the librarian’s whim rather than regular hours. Some days Jen would be lucky and others she would find it locked and dark. The librarian was a tiny, white-haired man, bent over with age. He sat in a corner reading—always the same huge book, moving slowly through it, then starting again. She wished she knew what it was, but it was in Welsh. He smiled at her when she came, and she at him, but she couldn’t understand a word he said, and she hunted through the books on her own. Many of them were in Welsh, all of them were old and well-worn, but she unearthed an endless series of identical romances, which caused David to raise his eyebrows when he found her reading them, and an ancient copy of Mrs. Beeton’s
Cookery and Household Management,
which caused Mrs. Davies to snort, and dark little volumes with the titles worn off: the history of Cardiganshire, Welsh folklore and customs, poetry, biographies of Owain Glendwr. Jen had a lovely time exploring them.

On weekends she and Becky, sometimes even Peter, usually climbed back up the valley to Llechwedd Melyn. There, in the comfortable farm kitchen, Mrs. Evans showed Jen how to make Bara Brith—speckled bread full of currants and raisins—and flat spicy Welsh cakes in an iron skillet.
These were eaten hot with cinnamon sugar or butter and honey. Mr. Evans and his sons got used to finding two or three Morgans at their table for Saturday tea.

A little nervously, Jen tried making her own Bara Brith at Bryn Celyn one Wednesday afternoon. She did everything Mrs. Evans had told her, and the dough did everything it was supposed to. The loaves came out of the oven miraculously rounded and golden, filling the house with their rich smell, and Jen felt like crowing. From flour and sugar and yeast she had made her
own
bread instead of buying it in a shop.

David, when he came in tired and damp as usual, found his three children sitting companionably around the kitchen table, devouring new bread, strawberry jam, and tea. Peter, with a book open in front of him, and Jen, cutting more Bara Brith, were listening to Becky relate the latest Borth scandal about a young English professor at the University and the respectable widow, ten years his senior, with whom he’d been keeping company.

“Where on earth did you get that from?” inquired David.

“Mrs. Davies,” said Becky promptly.

“I’ve never thought of her as a gossip. Jen, could I have a piece of that—and is there another cup of tea in the pot?”

“Oh, she’s better than anyone else. She knows
every
thing.”

“And so do you now.”

“I was helping to fold sheets this afternoon. She wasn’t really telling me, she was telling Hugh-the-Bus, but I don’t think he was listening.”

“I’m not at all sure you should have been!” They all watched David take his first bite; he looked up and found their eyes on him.

“Is it all right?” asked Jen, struggling to sound casual.

“Mmm. Very good. Why?”

“Jen made it!” said Becky. “This afternoon.”

“You did? From scratch?”

Jen nodded.

“Wherever did you learn that?”

“From Mrs. Evans.”

“Congratulations to both of you—it’s delicious!”

Jen grinned triumphantly. “And
that
cancels out the chicken!”