One Crow Alone (22 page)

“Got him working already, Bran?”

“No point keeping a dog and barking yourself,” Bran said. The collie came over and sniffed at Callum's leg, wagging its tail.

“You need that new pup Huw Thomas has got ready.”

“He'll charge me enough, I reckon,” said Bran.

“Oh, I don't know. He can't feed a dog he isn't using.”

“But what about Mag then?” Mag the collie looked up at the sound of her name. “I can't afford to feed
two
dogs.”

“Can't help with that one,” Callum said. “But there's no getting round it. You'll need a youngster once the sheep get out on the hill.”

“It better be soon too,” said Bran. “There's not much feed left.”

“You know they dropped hay out on the hill the other night. Up near Huw's place.”

“Yes, well it would be a damn sight better if they got the roads clear and the power back on.”

“True enough.” Callum laughed. “True enough.”

Ivan came down the ladder, having successfully wedged the slipped tile back in place.

“Now then,” said Bran. “You can have a go at fixing the door, boy.” He led the way to the end of the barn, where it was plain to see the old wooden doors were sorely in need of work. There was a wheelbarrow of tools with a stack of planks balanced on top of them. Bran pointed out the loose and broken bits of the door and held up a saw and hammer. Ivan nodded and starting poking about at the rotten wood while Bran and Callum went into the barn and moved about among the sheep.

They were talking in a language Ivan could not understand, and he did not care much, for he was only counting the days. With his own fire and a warm girl.

It could have been worse.

Physical hardship was not much to Ivan. He had always been hungry, or bruised, or a little cold, or too cold, or too hot and never a bed to call his own. The only thing that had been truly his was Anna.

And now there was Magda. With her certainty, and her way of doing things. The strangeness of her country ways. And loving him.

She had surprised him when she said she loved him. She had said it in the bed last night because she did not fear herself.

But one thing Ivan knew about was human weakness. He knew things could never be taken for granted. The darkness always came back.

*   *   *

Bran looked over his shoulder at all the noise. “Ivan. Steady, boy. Hammer like that and you'll split the damn wood!”

 

SPRING

And the Spirit of Love leaned so close in the dark that the girl felt its breath on her cheek.

“You cannot build a house of gingerbread,” it whispered. “For the summer will turn it to ruin, and love will not care if you are buried in the snow. These mountains won't care. The birds and the wolves will not ask for you. The stones and the rivers will not mind if you are gone.”

“
Love?
” cawed Crow from the rafters. “
That old chestnut!
”

And the girl did not cry out, but was silent as ever. For the house, she was certain, was built on foundations of stone. And the summer was yet to come.

 

28

It was that first day: that first morning with a fuggy haze and unfrosted dew and a throaty pigeon calling from a branch and that old slanty sun rising high enough—just—to bring the smell of things warming and uncoiling within the earth.

It was a day like that.

A haze of woodsmoke sat about the roof of the farm and signaled breakfast. Ivan smelled it before he saw it. He had woken early and restless, and was now busy cutting back brambles from the path to the woodshed.

He straightened himself, stretched, and made his way to the back door, his boots damp from the wet grass.

He came into the house and Magda was there cleaning the stove in the dimness of the neat kitchen. The walls were pregnant with the smell of smoke. It got into every bit of clothing. Your hair and your skin even.

But the table was scrubbed clean and the pots laid up on the shelf. There was a sprig of holly in a jar on the windowsill, and the range would soon be as clean as a button. She was busy with these things. He saw it. Like a nesting sparrow.

He did not go to his place at the table, rather he greeted her briefly, then stomped up the worm-eaten stairs to the bedroom.

Magda heard him lifting the floorboard. She had not thought about it for some time. The bundles of passports stuffed under a loose plank.
Gulbekhian
. Her heart beat fast. Ivan came back down.

“What were you doing up there?” she said.

He threw himself roughly into a chair and slapped both his hands down on the scrubbed planks. Arms outstretched. “Look at me. I look like a peasant.”

Magda stared across at his dirty hands, cut by brambles and dirt under the fingernails.
Should you tell him now? Are you even sure?
“There is nothing wrong with working in the earth,” she said quietly.

He picked up his egg and began to peel the shell.

“Why can you not be happy here?” she went on. “We have the house. No one has come looking for us.”

He looked up. “What about your mother, Magda? You don't speak of her anymore.”

“Because I don't know where she is.”

“It's spring now. We can find Gulbekhian in Liverpool and get back to Krakow, get the money.” He put the egg, whole, into his mouth.

“Maybe there is nothing back there,” Magda said. “Things are still bad everywhere. It is you who always talks of today. Today is good. Here.”

“I promised to deliver the package.”

“Oh, so now you don't think that things have changed, that things don't look a little different?”

“What?”

“You said that to me in Krakow.
Can't you see, Magda, things have changed?
”

“It is not what I meant.”

“What did you mean? What is wrong with being here?”

“I don't want to live like this, Magda. I don't want to have dirty hands and an aching back and no salt on my food. You really like it that much?”

“We have each other, don't we?” she said. “Why can't we wait a little longer. Until we know more?”

She tried to see something soft in him. Sometimes in the dark of the night she saw something soft in his eyes. When he needed her. But it was not as simple as she had imagined, this
love
. And now here he was prizing up the floorboards and thinking of going to Gulbekhian. After all these months.

Ivan did not look at her softly now. He did not say another word until he had finished his food. “I won't get the money until I go back to Krakow. You know that. It's your money too.”

“But you can't know that your bandit friends are still there in Krakow, or even this Gulbekhian in Liverpool? You know nothing of how it might be. Even to go there will be so hard.”

Ivan stood up, pushed back the chair. “I thought you were different, Magda.” He took the snare from the back of the kitchen door. “I thought you were strong.” He slung his bag over his shoulder and left the house without a backward glance.

You must tell him. Tomorrow maybe,
she thought.
Today he is just angry.
But she had a terrible feeling, something growing inside her, that it was more than that. A wave of tiredness overtook her. She rearranged their belongings on the shelf: the few books she had taken from the house, the jar of holly twigs and the old coins she had found when digging the patch of earth by the back door. But it would not distract her, so she crept up the stairs and lay down on the bed.

*   *   *

She woke an hour later with the sound of Ivan feeding sticks into the stove. She swung her legs over the mattress and came downstairs. A handful of wild fennel and a dead hare on the table.

“Are you better now?” she asked, snuggling close by his side and bending her head to his chest with her arms around his waist. “Don't be angry, Ivan. Please.” Her finger found a hole in his sweater. “You're always getting holes in everything.”

“I've got to skin the hare.” He pulled away from her and took his knife from the shelf.

“Well, don't get blood all over the table,” she said. “Take it outside.”

Ivan carried the hare out onto the grass and rolled up his sleeves. Magda sat heavily on the stone step of the porch and watched him work.

“Why do you want to leave? It isn't so bad here.”

He looked up. “I've got a feeling things will be worse if the winter is cold again. And if someone comes asking questions, what will we do?”

Magda thought about the journey in the truck. Everything that had happened. Her hands began to tremble a little, but she hid them in her lap, tried to sound calm. “Maybe your friends in Krakow are not there anymore. What will we do then?”

We? We?
The word sat behind Ivan's eyes like a cold, hard stone.
But there was some truth in her words.
The darkness of the loneliness that had followed him like a hungry dog since childhood, it had seeped away a little. He had been happy here in his own way.
You are a real Ukrainian wolf, Ivanchik!
Valentin always said. Valentin did not have earth beneath his fingernails, or porridge in his guts.

Ivan got up and pushed past her. He stuffed the hare into a lidded pot on the kitchen table and stomped back out, pulling down his shirtsleeves. “Gulbekhian will be there in Liverpool.”

“Always this
Gulbekhian
!” she snapped.

“Shh—” Ivan tipped his head.

Mrs. Gourty was coming through the apple trees with Alice skipping beside her. Ivan grabbed his jacket and strode past the old woman with the most cursory of nods, and he was over the gate and off down to the stream and into the woods beyond.

“What's wrong with him?” asked Mrs. Gourty.

Magda hauled herself up. “Oh, nothing.”

“Mummy's come back!” Alice blurted out, throwing herself around Magda's legs.

“Bethan is
here
?” said Magda.

“Near enough.” Mrs. Gourty beamed. “Callum is bringing her up from the Barmouth boat.”

“What good news.” Magda stroked Alice's head and the little girl beamed up.

“Yes, yes,” said Mrs. Gourty. “Anwen's like a headless chicken in there. You must come and help get Alice cleaned up and put the water on the boil for the wash.”

“I think the washing will have to wait for another day if Bethan's coming today.”

“Can't afford to miss this good weather, Magda,” said Mrs. Gourty. “You'll have damp sheets hanging in the barn all week if it rains again. You should have been here when Alice was little and a thousand nappies a day on the line. Poor Anwen. Suppose you'll be thinking of having children yourself one day.”

Magda blushed.

“Wouldn't want to be bringing children into the world these days. Mind you, it's different enough when you're young and you just get like a bird wanting to make a nest and lay eggs in it. Can't do anything about that when it happens.”

“You sound like my grandmother.”

Mrs. Gourty laughed. “No doubt I do. Right, Alice, let's get you ready to see Mummy.”

Alice dropped what she was doing and jumped up. “Mummy coming back. Mummy coming back.” She pulled on Magda's hand. There was no need to drag the child out of Magda's kitchen today.

They stood for a moment, Mrs. Gourty and Magda, looking out across the orchard. The day had come up bright like its early promise.

“Should be a good crop of apples if you get a bit of sun this summer,” Mrs. Gourty said.

And an old crow, sitting in an apple tree, swept out across the orchard at the sound of that noisy child and the sight of that homely back door with women chatting on the step.

Mrs. Gourty pointed after it. “Get your washing done quick, Magda—one crow alone, a sign of foul weather, for sun and good cheer there'll be two crows together—”

“I think the day will be fine,” said Magda, smiling. “My grandmother would have told you that was foolish superstition!” And she pulled on her boots and went with Mrs. Gourty and the prancing child up through the orchard.

Yes, everything will be fine. Whatever else happens—spring is on its way. The daughter has come home and tonight you will make a good stew with the hare and Ivan will be happy again.

*   *   *

They had not seen Callum Gourty so well turned out nor as cleanly shaved as he was when he came up through the still-bare trees with Bethan Mortimer seated beside him on the cart.

Even the pony had been brushed to a shine. With a plait in its tail!

“Mummy!” Alice ran down faster than Anwen could stop her and Callum pulled up the pony and Bethan jumped off and picked the little girl up in her arms and kissed her, and then she came up to the house and there was much greeting and hugging and soon they were seated around Anwen's kitchen table with cups of tea.

*   *   *

Bethan was an attractive young woman with an unmade-up face and the hint of a laugh about her eyes and mouth. She wore clothes that were old but that had been put together with some care.

“The house looks clean,” she said, Alice glued to her lap.

“All thanks to Magda,” said Anwen.

“It's so good to be home.” Bethan relaxed in her chair, suddenly looking tired. Alice snuggled against her, thumb in mouth. “Has Alice been all right?”

“Oh yes, she's been well. Missing you though. But tell us, what's it like in Liverpool?”

“Well, they dropped our wages. Again.”

“Again?” said Bran.

“They can treat us how they like, with so many people looking for jobs. But the hotel has been as busy as anything. I pinched some soap for you before I left—”

“Bethan!”

“Oh, come on, Mum. They're making enough out of us already.”