One Crow Alone (20 page)

Magda was silent and looked down at her hands. She did not know why she had told them so many things.

There was a rattling of a door and old Bran Mortimer came in through his back door. “Morning, all,” he said, putting his boots to dry at the back of the Aga. He peered down at his granddaughter's scrawling. “So, what's the road to Dolgellau like, Callum?”

“It'll clear. You'd get down there easy enough with the tractor this afternoon.”

“Where's that foreign boy?” asked Anwen.

“He's still splitting logs, and it's good to see someone young and fit doing the work for a change.”

“They're illegals,” said his wife, folding her arms across her chest.

“What?”

“We've been having a chat with the girl,” said Callum, gesturing with his thumb at Magda.

“What if the army come round here asking questions?” Anwen said. “What do we do then, I ask you?”

Mrs. Gourty stood up and pulled on a large duffel coat. “What can you do? It's miles across country and the Liverpool boat won't come until spring.” She buttoned her toggles and pulled a knitted hat from her pocket. “Anyway, they can't go wandering about the countryside in this kind of weather.”

“Bet she's quite handy with animals and all that,” Callum said. “Country girl like her. And the boy—there's more wood needs chopping, isn't there, Bran? Fences to be laid. You could use a strong pair of hands, help in the house. And there's work up at our place too.”

“But what if soldiers come round asking?” said Bran. “What should we do then?”

“They've got enough on their plates without bothering about two kids. Don't worry. You won't be the only farm to have a few Poles mending the roof this winter.”

Bran rubbed at his scratchy gray stubble. “Can't pack them off in the snow right away anyhow.”

Mrs. Gourty wriggled plump hands into her gloves. “No. Well, we've got ponies to feed.” She leaned close to Anwen's ear. “And you can send Bethan up to our place as soon as she gets back in the spring. Callum gets bored of my company.”

“Mum.” Callum reddened under his beard and ushered his mother out the door. Their heavy-coated backs disappeared into the back porch.

Out in the snow-filled yard, Callum untied the pony. “Why did you say that about Bethan?”

“You can't just wait for apples to fall in your lap.”

“Bethan Mortimer's not interested in me. Or she wouldn't have left Rathged.”

“Well, it's very exciting having a couple of runaways out here.”

“Bran's lucky. We could use a pair of hands with spring on its way. But there's something that girl's not telling us.” He looped the rein over the pony's withers and helped his mother up into the saddle. He led the pony out of the yard and away under the trees, toward the river and their place on the other side of the hill.

From the kitchen window, Bran watched them plodding away in the snow.
Funny man, that Callum Gourty
.

Ivan came in from outside and laid an axe by the door. His face was red. Magda looked up at him. She had said too much and she was certain he would be angry. It had all unraveled like a ball of wool.

“They know about the soldiers,” she said.

For a moment he was still, then he took her by the elbow. “Let's go. Get your things.”

“Not so fast, lad,” said the old man, his hand on Ivan's shoulder.

“We will leave,” Magda said. “We do not want to cause any trouble.”

The little girl looked up. “Are they going to go away?”

Anwen, flustered, swiveled to the hob. She wrapped a towel over the handle, lifted it clear, and filled a large teapot on the sideboard.

“Please don't make them go,” said Alice. “She's too thin to go away, Granny.”

“Well, first off, let's all have a cup of tea,” said Anwen. “They've spent a night under our roof, Bran, and they'll have a bite to eat, even if I have to break a spade over the boy's head. That girl isn't being dragged out in the snow yet. For a start, she's wearing Bethan's clothes.”

“Well, there's no point telling it to me—” Bran tipped his head at Magda and Ivan, whispering at the end of the table. “They look more like two hares about to take flight than birds settling down to nest.”

“Right then, you two,” said Anwen—loud and matter-of-fact.

Magda and Ivan looked up as one, startled.

“Before you get too hasty,” Anwen said, “let's have some tea.” She held the large teapot like an offering. “Tea, and a chat about what we're all going to do.”

 

26

Magda and Ivan followed the old couple down a disused passageway with Alice skipping about at their feet. At the end of it was a low wooden door.

“Right—” Anwen pushed at it. “Haven't—been”—she gave it a hearty shove with her hip—“in here for a while.” The swollen boards scraped across an uneven flagstone floor. Alice scooted around her grandmother's legs and peered into the room. It was dark inside, and smelled of damp—a grayness falling in between cracks at a boarded window.

“You'll have to go outside and pull the boards off, Bran. Let in some light.”

“I'll fetch a hammer,” he said. “Come on, Ivan.”

“I think it's going to have lots of spiders,” said Alice, climbing up on one of the wobbly chairs at a small pine table.

“It's the old farm kitchen,” said Anwen. “Been boarded up for years.” Her breath misted the cold air. “There's a range—it's an old thing but”—she stepped around a stack of rotting tea chests and mice-eaten cardboard boxes—“should work.”

Outside, there was a creaking, as first one board, then another, was jimmied away from the snow-piled window. Ivan looked in through the dirty glass, and when he had pulled the last plank away from the window frame, the room was flooded with the cold light.

“There
are
lots of cobwebs, Nain!” cried Alice.

“Well, there won't be too many flies then, will there?” Anwen tugged at the oven and the rusty door creaked open on heavy hinges. She swiped at the cobwebs. “The whole place needs a good clean. Oh, there's a larder too.” She lifted the latch on a narrow door, the dusty shelves inside lined with red-and-white-checked plastic. “The larder always used to be chock-full of jams and preserves and a big homemade cheese or two when I first came to Rathged. Bran's mother was still alive then,” she said. “And here's a door into the back garden.” She pulled aside a mildewed curtain and rattled the bolts. “Need to unlock it from outside. Like I said, all the place needs is a good clean and a fire to dry up the damp. There's a small bedroom upstairs.”

“Can I see?” Magda asked.

“Of course.”

A narrow, worm-eaten staircase led up to a tiny landing. The bedroom had stained black floorboards and faded rose-spray wallpaper peeling at the edges. A metal bed frame was pushed against the wall, the striped mattress beyond repair, clumps of stuffing falling out where small creatures had ransacked it for bedding of their own. There was a small fire grate and a narrow mantelpiece. And in the corner a folding wooden clothes rail and old-fashioned tin bathtub with enameled handles.

Magda went to the window. There were dead flies on the sill and cobwebs as thick as lace. She pulled back a faded curtain and rubbed at the glass.

Down below was an orchard all bare and frosted, a spiky hedge and a squat stone wall bounding the low end of it, and rising up to the right was the stable block and a narrow gate leading to the yard behind the main house.

Puffing and creaking, Anwen twisted herself up the narrow stairs. “What do you think then? Spot of work about the farm and it's all yours.”

Magda turned silently back to the window and the trees outside. She tried to imagine them in leaf, heavy with apples, birds singing in the hedge, the grass new and green. “And we can have firewood? And maybe some blankets and things for the kitchen?”

“Yes,” said Anwen, looking around the bare and dusty room. “We could find another mattress for the bed and you can burn all the boxes out in the orchard. There's nothing in them that will be any good anymore.”

Ivan poked his head through the door.

“We can stay here, Ivan,” Magda said. “All we need to do is work a little on the farm…”

He saw her bright face. “Yes. We will stay. Until the weather clears.”

*   *   *

They threw the old boxes and tea chests onto a bonfire out in the orchard. Alice stood in the doorway, mesmerized by the shooting flames leaping out over the snow. Finally, Ivan hauled the lumpy cotton-filled mattress from the bed and pushed it down the stairs.

“One, two, three—” They swung it onto the top of the fire and waited for it to catch. Anwen gathered up a box of spare pots and pans and brushes and cloths from her own kitchen, and rattled them down on the table.

Magda hauled two buckets of water from the house and put them, sloshing, on the kitchen floor.

Ivan wheeled several loads of firewood from the log shed and began to stack them in the lean-to by the back door. Magda cleaned the ash in the range and laid a bed of twigs and old paper in the grate.

“We could probably do with cleaning the chimney,” said Bran, watching her. “But I'm sure it'll do for now.”

Alice came pushing past his legs and peered in at all the bustle. Anwen too poked her head around the door. “I'll give you a bit of help if you want it.”

“No,” said Magda cheerfully. “Thank you. I will do it myself. You have your own work. And when I have finished I will come and take my clothes to wash, and if you have anything for me to do…”

Anwen nudged Bran. “See,” she whispered in his ear. “Gourty was right. I think we'll get on very well with them.”

*   *   *

Magda's knees ached as she knelt on the flagstones and cleaned the range with a wire brush. As she worked, clouds of rust came floating from where she scrubbed. Ivan gave the window a shove. Cold air welled into the room, gusting out through the back door. Magda looked about at the bare, dirty, dusty, freezing, cobwebbed room. “It will be good when it is clean,” she said.

Ivan smiled, watching her wrap a cloth around her hair. Perhaps it was her certainty that he liked.

“What?” she said, hands above her head tying the knot.

“Nothing. Just you, Havemercy.”

“Don't you have logs to stack?” She picked up the broom.

*   *   *

It was a hard bit of effort sweeping around the old beams in the ceiling, with the broom snagging on hooks and nails, and her hands in the air the whole time. Ivan came in and laughed, and she said, “
Stop laughing
.” So he took the broom and made a passable job of the room upstairs to save her aching arms.

Then she made him carry the table out into the snow, and the heavy oak dresser too so she could clean the floor.

“Who are you expecting?” he said.

“You want to sleep in a sty?” She knelt down and lit the fire in the grate. She tipped her head to one side and peered into the oven. The twigs had caught and so she fetched some logs and put them in with a billowing cloud of smoke that made her cough. Then she closed the window and filled the copper with water and an arc of warmth began to spread out across the room.

“Ivan—”

But Ivan had sneaked to the orchard to poke meaningfully at the remains of the bonfire with a smile across his face.

*   *   *

When Anwen came in to announce that there was food ready, she was not prepared for the change that Magda had wrought in the old kitchen. She opened the door to a warm and spotless room, bare indeed, but her old pans arranged neatly on the shelf, the sink scrubbed clean, the floor damp in the corners but drying from where it had been washed.

A neat stack of logs had been piled beside the range and Magda sweated over the pine table with a stiff scrubbing brush.

Clomping sounds from upstairs suggested that the boy, Ivan, was busy in the bedroom, and Anwen was satisfied that these two strangers were indeed
a good bet
. It was a shame, she could not help thinking, to be burning another fire in the house, but that was unavoidable.

“Here's something to eat,” she said, putting a pot on the table. “And I must say you've made a thorough job of this place, Magda. It's all very cozy. In the morning we'll see what jobs need doing about the farm if you're feeling well enough for it. Well—” She looked about one more time with a satisfied gaze. “Goodnight.”

Anwen closed the door. They heard Alice twittering on down the passageway, and the dog gave a bark from the depths of the house. Finally, a door closed far off and Magda hurried up the stairs to the bedroom.

“There is food, Ivan—”

Ivan was kneeling on the floor by the bed. His coat lay beside him, the bundle of illegal passports and the wedge of remaining zloty in a pile on top of it. He was prizing up a floorboard with a piece of metal.

Carefully, he laid the passports and money between the joists and put the floorboard back in place, hammering the nails in over a cloth to deaden the sound.

He looked up at Magda. “Until the weather clears.”

*   *   *

After they had eaten, Magda lit a candle on the mantelpiece. Outside, the snow had stopped falling and the wind had died and there was a quiet peace. She fetched an armful of logs from the shed and shut the door. Just the small dark window was an ominous black eye in the room, and she hung a cloth over it.

“You have made a good job of this place,” Ivan said, coming up close behind her as she stretched up on her toes to hook the cloth over a nail. He rested his chin on her shoulder and crept his hands about her waist. “Must be time for bed…”

“I don't know why the English do not have shutters,” Magda said, taking his hands from her waist. “Every room is like being naked.”