Authors: Emma Smith
“You’ve been down to Tyler’s Place?—and that man was there?—and he did you no harm?”
Amy triumphantly nodded her head to the first two questions and shook it with equal vigour for the last.
“Oh, Amy—only to think what might have happened! Such madness!—whatever made you do it?”
Amy was silent, glancing round the room, which was exactly as she had imagined it when she was at the bottom of the hill: the fire blazing, brass winking, a smell of toast in the air.
“And he came back up here with you, just like that?” said her grandmother, incredulous.
“His arm’s bad—he showed it to me. So what could I do? We wouldn’t have let an old ewe with a bad leg stay on down there, would we? And it’s a lot worse, what he’s got, than a bad leg on a ewe, Granny. It’s worse than anything I’ve ever seen before.”
Mrs Bowen had one hand pressed to her heart. “You must just allow me a minute, Amy—I can’t get myself used to the notion, that’s all.”
“What do you mean to do then?”
“Why, we’d better have him in, I suppose,” said Mrs Bowen.
The man who had so terrified them two nights earlier was sitting on the chopping-block, his head tilted back against the hen-house. His eyes were closed. Mrs Bowen studied him.
“You wait till you see his arm,” whispered Amy. “It’s
horrible
.”
“He doesn’t any of him look too good to me,” said Mrs Bowen. She raised her voice. “Hey, mister!” she called. “You’d better come in—come on inside.”
He opened his eyes and seeing Mrs Bowen started up clumsily, knocking against the hen-house. His scarf had been knotted again to make a sling for his wounded arm. Mrs Bowen was beckoning to him.
“Come on in.”
They put him in front of the fire in Mrs Bowen’s basket-chair and gave him a bowl of porridge which he emptied in a few ravenous gulps.
“Give him some more, Amy,” said Mrs Bowen, bending over the frying-pan. “It’s food he wants first—we’ll see to that arm of his after. And fetch me out the blue carving-dish—we can’t expect him to balance an ordinary-sized plate on knees as big as he’s got.”
He finished all the porridge and devoured two considerable helpings of bacon and eggs and fried bread. Amy lost count of how many slices of toast she buttered for him or how many times her grandmother refilled his cup with tea. They waited on him vigilantly, like a pair of robins feeding a great cuckoo hatched unexpectedly in their nest, until at last he lay back in Mrs Bowen’s chair and lifted both hands to tell them he had had enough.
“What’s he saying, Amy?”
“Why, he’s thanking us, of course,” said Amy, proud of him for showing good manners. “He’s smiling, Granny! See what a nice face he’s got when he smiles!”
“Well, if you can make out what he looks like back of all that bristle and stuff you’re a whole lot cleverer than I am. Smile or not, he’s a sight to scare the crows. And I only wish to goodness he could speak a bit of English like anyone else—it seems unnatural to hear him talk and not to understand a word he says. Now Amy, you drink up that cup of tea and have a slice of bread and butter yourself—there’s no need for you to go hungry as well.”
“I can understand him all right. It was him pulled that old ewe out of a snowdrift. That’s what he was doing when I saw the light—he wouldn’t have shown a light if it hadn’t been he was getting the ewe out.”
“He
told
you that?”
“Well, he kind of explained it with a bit of acting. I acted for him how I’d seen the light and then he acted for me how he’d heard the ewe bleating and gone out and found her in a snowdrift, stuck fast, with her wool all tangled up in barbed wire.”
The grandfather clock struck once, a soft reminder. Mrs Bowen glanced up: it was half past eight.
“Amy—fetch me the bowl from the side-kitchen and make haste.”
Amy flew to obey her.
Mrs Bowen bathed the wound in warm water and disinfectant, having first spread a towel to catch the drips. She sucked in her breath gently as she did it, commiserating.
“I never have seen a nastier gash than this—no, never! I wonder how he came by it—if he could only tell us that we’d know better what it’s all about. I don’t like to let it go without proper attention—it ought to be stitched by rights, but no use thinking of that, I don’t suppose—and anyway I daresay it’s been left too long already—stitching ought to be done straight after. Why look, Amy—he’s got a tattoo and I thought it was dirt—I was trying to clean it off.”
Amy stood by holding the bowl of water. She was growing accustomed to the sight of the torn flesh and could look at it now without flinching. But when she glanced at the man’s face she was startled: it was indeed a sight to scare the crows, with the black brows drawn together into an agonised frown, eyes glaring from underneath, nostrils distended. He uttered no sound but Amy could see his other hand clenched tight on his knee.
“You’re hurting him, Granny.”
“Well of course I’m hurting him, bound to be, aren’t I? How he stands to let me touch it I don’t know, let alone picking and poking the way I’m doing, but I’ve got to get it clean, Amy, else there won’t be a chance of it mending. He’s brave enough, I’ll say that for him—I’d have been screaming long since.”
“Do you think those policemen are going to come back here, Granny? Was that why you said for me to hurry?”
Mrs Bowen laid a folded length of flannelette sheeting over the wound and fastened it on with strips of plaster. Then she began to bandage the whole arm from shoulder to elbow.
“All I’m thinking is—if they were to walk through that door now, Amy, it wouldn’t be much good for us to say there’d been nobody by. There, I’ve done what I can, but I don’t like the look of it. Rightly speaking he ought to have a doctor.”
Amy was at the window.
“They’ve been once and he wasn’t here. What makes you think they’ll come back, Granny?”
“Because when the police are after something they’ll search for it over and over, same as I would if I dropped a needle on this floor—I’d know it was somewhere about and I’d keep on and on until I found it. The sooner he’s from here the better for all of us.”
“But where’s he to go to?”
“That’s not our business, Amy.”
“Why, Granny! You can’t want them to catch him—not now?”
“I never said I did. If that’s what I wanted I’d be more inclined to keep him here. But as soon as ever I’ve put some food together for him he must go—and I mean it for his own sake, Amy, not just for ours.”
“He’ll think we don’t want to help him any more.”
“You must make him understand then—you said you could. And Amy—leave Mick out by the porch. He’ll give us a bit of warning, suppose anyone comes.”
Amy went outside with Mick. It was snowing again, a veil of small flakes dropping lightly without wind from directly overhead where the sky was low and grey. There was not a glimmer of sun. There was nothing to be seen but the snow falling.
“Stay there, Mick—good boy!”
She shut the door and leaned against it, full of misgivings. For if Mick were to bark, suddenly, what could they do? It would be too late already. Her grandmother was right: he must go at once—now—before the Gwyntfa changed for him from a haven into a snare. But how was she to explain? Acting was all very well but it might be unreliable. She wanted to be sure he understood exactly what she was telling him.
Amy sat down at the table where Mrs Bowen was hurriedly making bread-and-cheese sandwiches, and got her block of writing paper and a pencil out of the drawer.
“Dear Dad,” she read, “I hope you are well. Me and Granny are well. There is nothing much to say. It is snowing here.”
She tore off the sheet of paper and crumpled it up. On the next page she drew two matchstick men. She drew them sideways so as to be able to show the skis on their feet, and in the hand of one of them she put a gun. At the top of the page she drew the cottage, with a row of dots and arrows from the figures to the door.
“How can I make him know it was yesterday they came, Granny?”
“Show him the calendar.”
“He won’t know what date it is, will he?”
“Never mind about that—he’s not so dull. Show him today—it’s the 22nd—and point him the day before. It shouldn’t be hard for him to puzzle that out if he’s as sharp as you say he is.”
He sat so still that Amy thought he must have dropped asleep, lulled by the comfort of food and warmth. It was disconcerting to find instead that he was wide awake, staring intently into the fire, absorbed by unknown calculations. She touched his shoulder. He looked up and said something, but she shook her head, not recognizing the sounds. He said them again, two syllables, over and over.
“I think he’s saying London, Granny.”
“Well, if that’s where he wants to go to he might as well be saying the moon, this weather.”
Amy handed him her sheet of paper. Would he realise what it meant? She watched him closely and saw his expression change as he looked at it. Then he was on his feet. His actual words were incomprehensible to her but he was plainly asking: was this true? Had these men really come?—here?—to this house?
“Yes!” she cried aloud, as though by some miracle he could all at once understand what she said. “They’re after you—two of them. They’re the police and they came for you yesterday and you can’t stop here in case they come again.”
And in pantomime she repeated what she had said and had tried to draw for him.
It was clear that he did understand her: he was transformed. He might have been a different man from the one Amy had found lying on the floor at Tyler’s Place like a huge piece of wreckage washed up and abandoned, past caring what happened to him, hungry, cold, in pain, defeated, despairing. He looked now as he had looked when they first saw him—dangerous and wild. He crushed Amy’s sheet of paper and tossed it away, buttoning his coat. Mrs Bowen thrust a package of food into each pocket. He caught her arm, stooping over her, and again they heard him utter those two savage-sounding syllables.
“You’ll never get to London, boy,” said Mrs Bowen, pityingly. “It’s hundreds of miles from here, and snow every inch of the way.”
He turned towards Amy, who stretched her hands wide apart to indicate immense distance.
“Ha!” he said.
He was fumbling for something inside his shirt, lifting whatever it was with difficulty clear over his head and then forcing it roughly into Mrs Bowen’s hand. When he patted Amy’s shoulder she almost lost her balance. Then he was gone. By the time Amy had darted through the side-kitchen and into the shed he was already several yards up the hill, ploughing steadily forward through the thickening snow. She forgot all caution and shouted after him, pointing away to the right in the direction that led to Dintirion.
“London—that way!”
He half turned and raised his hand, but kept going straight on without altering his course.
Mick had come rushing round from the front porch to join her, and was causing consternation amongst the sheep. But still Amy stood in a state of anguish, watching that huge bowed figure vanishing little by little into the white oblivion of snow. She went slowly into the side-kitchen and shut the door, and slowly into the front-kitchen.
“He hasn’t gone the Dintirion way, and there’s no other way on past Tyler’s Place—he’ll get lost if he tries. Unless he means to stop on down at Tyler’s Place for a while. Do you think he does? But then why was he asking for London? Or was he thinking to try along the bottom of Billy Dodd’s Dingle?”
“Amy,” said Mrs Bowen, “we’ve done what we can for him and now it’s best if we put him right out of our minds.”
“Yes, I suppose.” Amy wandered round the room. “Maybe it’s just as well he didn’t take the top way—he’d as likely as not have gone over the cliff—it’s snowing again. Do you think we ought to have sent him down the valley, Granny? It would have been a big risk for him, though—now, in daylight. Night time he could have gone—”
“Haven’t I just said, Amy, there’s no sense for you to keep on thinking about it. What’s done is done.”
“I know it’s done,” said Amy, wretchedly, “but how can I stop myself
thinking?
How can I stop myself wondering if what’s done mightn’t have been done better? What was it he gave you, anyway?”
“Oh, that! I declare, I’d forgotten it.”
Together they examined the small enamelled medallion hanging on a thin silver chain.
“Why look, Granny—there’s a little picture on it. Is it a lucky charm?”
“I think it’s what they call a holy medal. I’ve heard of travellers wearing them, and sailors. That’s meant to be a saint, I’d say. It could be St Christopher. I believe he’s a sailor, Amy—those clothes he was wearing, and that tattoo on his arm—and now this medal, or whatever it is. He reminds me of fellows I used to see long years back when I was a child in Cardiff. Sailors, they were, and I believe he’s the same.”
“He was trying to thank you, Granny—that was why he gave it.”
They looked at each other, much troubled.
“Poor man,” said Mrs Bowen. “He won’t get far. They’ll catch him, sure to. And what’s he done?—that’s what I keep asking myself. And as for our share in stirring the pudding, Amy, I don’t feel easy about it, not a bit. He must be a criminal.”
“We don’t know he is.”
“He
must
be, Amy. And we’ve been helping him. That means we’re going against the law.”
“It can’t be wrong for us to give food to someone who’s hungry—or to look after a person who’s hurt.”
“Well, no—maybe not, if that was all. But we ought to be helping those policemen to catch him, not helping him to get away.”
“They don’t need us to help them. You’ve just said they’re bound to catch him anyway.”
Mrs Bowen stooped down and raked the fire.
“If they come back here, Granny, do you mean to tell them about him?”
Mrs Bowen went on raking the fire as though hoping she might be able to rake an answer out of it. Then she put away the poker and straightened herself and sighed, as she always did when doubtful.
“I’m sure I don’t know, Amy. I don’t know what I ought to do. Who would ever have thought it could be so hard to tell right from wrong?”
“You keep on wondering what he did, that’s why. But we don’t know anything about that—it’s only guessing and that’s not fair. It’s how he’s acted to us, that’s what we ought to go on. That’s what counts for us because that’s all we know for certain. He took those blankets and food and stuff, but I don’t blame him any more—he didn’t hardly know what he was doing that night. He never hurt us, though—you said it yourself. And Mick doesn’t bark at him, not now, and he was stroking Queenie, and he gave you that medal. He thinks we’re friends of his, Granny—you can’t give him away when he thinks we’re his friends.”