No Way Of Telling (25 page)

Ivor forgot at once about numb fingers and empty stomach. He tightened the reins and the little pony halted. He listened: there was wind on the way—he could hear it. And even as he sat there the first few puffs of it reached him like ripples, every ripple stronger than the one before.

“We’ll get on a bit yet, Ginger boy,” said Ivor, signalling with his heels, and on they went.

But the wind grew more violent with each step they took, and buffeted them more harshly, and transformed the gentle snow-flakes into whips which lashed them with such cruelty that soon Ginger shook his head and dropped it down between his legs and refused to go further. Then Ivor realised that he could only raise his own head if he shielded it with his arm, and, having raised it, that he could see no more than a yard ahead. He was surrounded by snow rushing by him, over him, an avalanche borne on the wind, and it was so sudden and so fierce that he was shocked and even for a moment, in spite of all the storms he had ever known, afraid. A moment later and he was turning Ginger round, at the same time trying to quieten Ket who was behaving like a dog gone insane.

“It’s all right, Ket—we’re going home. Keep still or I can’t hold you.”

But Ket wriggled and twisted and uttered short high-pitched barks and then, with a final contortion, jumped clear out from the grasp of Ivor’s encircling arm.

“Ket! You fool!”

Frantically shouting at him, Ivor slithered to the ground. He was too late. Ket dodged and doubled round and vanished uphill straight into the driving snow. So his father was right: he had declared that Ket would never make a good working dog because he was unreliable. What a time to prove his unreliability! Ivor’s perplexity at what to do was so great that he actually laid his head against Ginger’s shaggy flank and groaned aloud. The next moment he was ashamed of himself, for Ket reappeared, bursting out of the storm like a bullet and wild with the delight of a good sheepdog who comes to tell his master that he has found a lost sheep.

“Never, Ket! You don’t mean it—you can’t!”

But Ket continued to insist unmistakably that he did mean it, that he did have something to show Ivor, and that Ivor must follow him. Whatever old ewe could it possibly be? There were none missing that Ivor knew of, except for those few over at the Gwyntfa and it was hard to believe one of them could have strayed this far in such conditions.

“Come on, Ginger—we’ll have to see what it is. Wait, Ket! Good boy! Come on
round,
Ginger—come
on!
”

But not all the tugging in the world would induce Ginger to turn again. He was adamant. His nose was pointing now towards home and he meant to keep it there. The best that Ivor could finally do was to shove him far enough into the snow at the side to be able to tie his reins to the very tip of a branch. It was more of a hint to Ginger to stay where he was than an anchorage to hold him.

“Right then, Ket—show me, boy!”

Bent almost to the ground, one arm flung up to protect his face, one hand holding on to Ket’s collar, groping, slipping, struggling, Ivor allowed himself to be guided forward into the fury of the storm. It was only for a few yards. Then Ket turned aside and scrambled through the deep snow and up the bank and crept, whining with excitement, under the low branches of a thorn-tree. Here it was that Ivor found Amy. Not one single word did either of them say. They could only stare in amazement. Amy was crouching against the stem of the thorn-tree, as close as she could get to it, shivering. Ivor was on hands and knees. For each it was such a marvel to see the other that speech was unnecessary and neither noticed the lack of it. Then Ivor grabbed her by the hand and backed out from under the prickly branches, and Amy crawled after him.

The moment they stood up the wind hurled itself on them from behind like a savage attacker determined to tear them apart and beat them to the ground, but Amy clutched the pocket of Ivor’s coat and he had hold of the belt of hers, and hooked together in this way they stumbled downhill. Through sheets of snow a tail materialised. It might have been the only part of Ginger to have survived, for his brown hind-quarters were already invisible beneath a coat of clinging white like the fur of a Polar bear. But he was there all right: he had waited, and Ivor loved him for it.

To get Amy on to the pony’s back was unexpectedly difficult. She had spent her last effort to reach the shelter of the thorn-tree and was stiff with cold and fatigue. Somehow between them, using the bank as a mounting-block, they managed it, and Ket jumped up in front of Amy, and Ivor took hold of the bridle and went ahead, meaning to steady Ginger on the downward slope, but at the second step he slipped and almost brought disaster to all of them by hanging instinctively on to the bridle to save himself. It might be better, he decided then, to let a hill-pony find its own way down off a hill. And so, relinquishing the bridle, Ivor clambered up behind Amy, and Ginger bore all three of them, boy, girl and dog, home to Dintirion.

“Wherever has that boy got to, I wonder,” said Mrs Protheroe, worriedly. The table was covered with dirty cups and saucers and plates and she was leaning across it, stacking them together. “It’s a real blizzard come on—you can’t hardly see out of the window.”

But no sooner had she spoken than the clatter of hooves sounded in the back yard, and barking and the whinny of one pony answered by others.

“That’ll be Ivor now,” she exclaimed, a note of relief in her voice. So far as any answer went, she might as well have been alone and talking aloud to herself in the big dark shadowy-cornered kitchen. But Mrs Protheroe chattered on, undeterred. She was not someone who required the encouragement of a reply; a listener was enough, and she had a listener. “Off on that pony of his, and never a word to me, of course! Though I might have guessed he was bound to follow the snow-plough—he never could bear to be left out of anything. Oh, well, I don’t blame him, not altogether. He’s a boy, after all. I suppose his father let him keep on as far as Casswell’s Gate and turned him back there—he certainly didn’t intend Ivor to set one foot beyond, and a good job too. After what we’ve been hearing I shan’t feel easy till they’re all of them safe home again, Mrs Bowen and Amy included. Though mind you, I don’t believe there’s a soul could have got across the forest this weather—indeed, I don’t!—not unless they had wings, and from the stories you were telling us last night it sounds more as though they’d have forked tails than wings. Ivor! Is that you?” she called.

There was a bursting open of doors, a rush of cold air. Ket came bounding into the kitchen, scattering snow.

“Out of this house, you bad dog! Look at the mess! Ivor—what are you thinking of to let him in?”

“Ket’s the best dog we’ve ever had, Mum,” replied Ivor exultantly. “Don’t you scold him—he found Amy.”

Mrs Protheroe whirled round. There in the scullery doorway stood, not one, but two figures.

“Amy?” she whispered, incredulous.

With a proprietary arm across her shoulders, Ivor brought Amy shambling further into the room.

“She was up the hill, Mum, under an old thorn-tree. She must have come the short way over—just fancy that!—all on her own, and got caught in the snow. Lucky me and Ginger and Ket happened to have gone up there on the look-out.”

“And me so sure you were with your father! Lucky indeed!” said Mrs Protheroe, attempting to draw Amy nearer the fire. But Amy resisted her. As though there were something of which she had to make quite sure before she could move another inch, she stood transfixed, struggling with powerless fingers to undo the buttons of her coat. Full of solicitude and wonder, Mrs Protheroe went to her aid.

“Oh, Amy—is it true what Ivor says? Have you really come over the top?—just now? I wouldn’t have thought it was possible, not for a grown man, even. It’s a marvel how you ever got by the Dingle, let alone up Cader Ddu! Whatever made you do it, Amy? It’s not your granny, is it? Did she go and slip on the ice, maybe? We’ve been in such a fret for the two of you. Dad and Mr Pugh and the boys are on their way up to the Gwyntfa this very moment, so they’ll see your granny’s all right, whatever the trouble. Did she slip or was it something else?”

But Amy seemed unable to respond to Mrs Protheroe’s anxious questioning. She had allowed her coat to be unbuttoned but dumbly and obstinately refused to have it taken off her afterwards. And still she fumbled awkwardly with her clothes, plucking at her jersey.

“Leave her alone, Mum—don’t keep on at her so. It’s food she wants—she’s just about famished, and so am I. And half-starved as well. Cold! You’ve no idea what it’s like out there,” said Ivor, a little boastful after what he had been through.

Amy by now had achieved her object and was holding a crumpled envelope in both hands flat against her chest.

“I’ve got to post this,” she said to Mrs Protheroe. She pronounced the words, which were the first she had spoken, with some difficulty, as though her tongue had been frozen to the roof of her mouth and was not yet properly thawed.

“What is it, then—a letter? Why, you don’t have to bother your head about that now, Amy. You give it to Ivor—he’ll take it down the village for you later—won’t you, Ivor? But there’s no hurry for it—they don’t clear the box till close on five, if they clear it at all today, which I doubt, the way things look at the moment. Never you mind about that now. You just let me have your coat and come by the fire. A good bowlful of porridge inside you, that’s what you need, like Ivor says—you’re famished, the two of you.”

“I’ve got to post it myself,” said Amy.

“Then so you shall, my darling. We’ll have to put a stamp on it first, though. Where’s it going to—Australia? Is it a letter for your father?”

Amy shook her head. “I must post it
now!”
she said. “I must—I promised I would. I promised Bartolomeo.”

Mrs Protheroe’s attention was arrested as suddenly as though she had collided with a stone wall. All at once she became aware of the obsessive nature of Amy’s concern. “Promised?” she echoed.
“Who
was that you said you promised?”

Amy licked her lips. She had to explain and it was hard to explain when her lips were dry and her head was buzzing. “It’s Bartolomeo’s letter,” she said. “He wrote it. He gave it to me to post. It’s very important. I’ve got to do it.”

“But
Amy,”
said Mrs Protheroe, increasingly apprehensive, “who’s Bartolomeo?”

“I don’t know who,” said Amy. “He came—and they’re after him—and he wrote this letter.” She held it up in front of her to study, for the first time, the address on the envelope. “London, he’s put—or at least I think it’s London, meant to be. And then there’s something above with a capital P, but I can’t read the rest of it. He’s not very good at writing—and it’s foreign, of course. I can’t make out what the name at the top is—it looks like Senior, and then there’s a word that starts with an A and ends with a Z. Suppose the postman can’t read it either—how’s it ever going to get there?”

Amy looked towards Mrs Protheroe for an answer; and she may have answered, but if she did Amy heard nothing of it. Her ears seemed to go dead with the shock of what her eyes saw over Mrs Protheroe’s shoulder: a movement which, unbelievably, became a man. Believably after all, for it was a man, someone she had never seen before, rising up from the settle where he must have been sitting the whole time concealed by its high wooden back. And her ears were not dead, for when he spoke she heard what he said, although each word sounded like a separate and horrifying piece of nonsense.

“We shall have no need to trouble the postman,” he said to Amy. She thought he was smiling. His eyes, though dark, were very bright. “If you give it to me you can feel quite confident that your letter has reached its destination.”

Amy’s breath came in short gasps. His sudden appearance filled her with terror. He was a total stranger and strangers were terrifying; they were dangerous. Those other two had been total strangers. If she could have run away from him she would have done, only she was incapable of any kind of movement.

“It’s all right, Amy,” said Mrs Protheroe, putting her arm round Amy’s waist so as to reassure her. “He won’t hurt you. He spent the night here,” she whispered. “He’s from London.”

“He’s an Ambassador,” added Ivor loudly, not feeling it necessary, as his mother did, to lower his voice when giving information about their visitor.

But still Amy drew her breath in painful gasps and she had begun to shiver again. She tried to control herself, tried to see him better, to understand what he meant. She felt as though her life depended on seeing and understanding this man completely but it was hard to do either and getting harder every moment. She made a supreme effort: from the way he spoke he was not a Welshman, nor was he an Englishman. Perhaps he came from wherever it was that Bartolomeo came from—but if so did that mean he would be a friend to Bartolomeo or an enemy? He was saying something, speaking. She actually saw his mouth opening and shutting before she heard what he said, as though he were standing a great distance off and the sound took time to reach her.

“Yesterday,” he said, “when I was brought here on a—on a—what do you call it?—a snow-plough, as one might somewhere else have arrived in a taxi, I was naturally hoping for news of some kind but I never dreamed there would actually come a messenger with a letter! Shall I tell you what you are for me? A miracle!” He nodded his head at her, repeating with lingering emphasis, “A miracle!”

Amy was steadier now. The black mist of her panic had receded; she could see him and she could hear him. But how was it possible to be sure by listening to a voice if the words it uttered were true or false? Or to know by staring at a face if the thoughts it concealed were good thoughts or bad ones? She had been frightened at first of Bartolomeo and thrilled at first by Inspector Catcher. This man standing in front of her was middle-aged or perhaps older, with thick grey hair and a leathery skin, brown and lined as though much weather-beaten in years past. His face was long, and his nose was long, and his eyebrows were bushy, and his mouth, when he had finished speaking, shut together in a firm line. One by one she noted each of his features: but although they would enable her to recognise him should she ever happen to see him again, they were of no help to her now in deciding what he was like. And even though he gave an impression of friendliness, that was no guarantee: it was easy enough, Amy knew, for anyone to pretend to be pleasant. With hands behind his back and head tilted to one side he was watching her watching him. Mr Nabb had watched her too.