The Earth Hums in B Flat (6 page)

‘Run off?' says Mam, pulling her dressing gown sash tighter around her. ‘What do you mean, run off?'

‘Run off,' says Nain again. ‘What do you think I mean? Run off and no one knows where he is. Elin won't be in Chapel this morning, that's for sure.'

Mam is still panting from the tight corset. ‘But . . . who says he's run off?' she asks.

‘Nellie said he didn't turn up for a meeting at the vestry with the minister yesterday evening, and when the minister went all the way to Brwyn Coch to see him, Elin said he hadn't been home since breakfast,' says Nain. ‘Not for his dinner or his tea. She didn't know where he was. And he left Mot tied up all day – have you ever known him go anywhere except Chapel without that dog?'

In my bad dream Mot barked and leapt on the end of his rope as the black dog galloped towards me across the field to Brwyn Coch and Ifan Evans laughed and laughed, his face as red as the Toby jugs' cheeks. Just before the black dog reached me I screamed and woke up. That was when Mam banged on the wall and shouted: Be quiet, Gwenni; I must have my beauty sleep.

‘But he's a deacon,' says Mam to Nain.

‘He's a man, Magda,' says Nain. ‘Don't know when they're well off, men. Look at Ifan; nice wife, educated but knows her place, a house like a pin in paper always, beautiful children. And he runs off.' She raises her eyebrows and shrugs. Her grey plait shifts off her shoulder. When it hangs straight down her back it reaches almost to her knees.

Bethan makes faces at me and mouths, ‘Good riddance.'

Nain looks at us. ‘What are you two doing standing there with your ears flapping?' she says. ‘Go and make the tea, that kettle's boiling its lid off.'

I go into the scullery, past all the faces in the distemper. They're not watching me this morning. They've closed their eyes and grown long ears so that they can listen to Nain. I pick up the tea tray and take it through into the living room.

‘I can't believe it,' says Mam. ‘Not Ifan. Oh . . . oh,' she clutches her face in both hands. ‘What if he's had an accident?'

I put two scoops of tea in the brown teapot and Bethan lifts the kettle from the fire and pours the boiling water onto the tea leaves. The water burbles like the stream at Brwyn Coch racing down to the Reservoir. Don't think about the Reservoir.

‘They've had the men out looking,' says Nain. ‘No. He's gone. Always had a roving eye, that Ifan. So they say.'

I stir the tea round and round and Bethan puts the kettle back in the grate quietly.

‘I hope you didn't get soot on your clothes, Bethan,' says Nain. ‘Terrible thing to get off, soot.'

Mam's face is as white as her talcum powder. ‘No. No,' she says. ‘Don't say that. He's a real gentleman.'

Bethan makes a throwing-up face at me.

‘What?' says Nain. ‘Not what I'd call him, though I've never had much to do with him, myself. I hear he can be a charmer when he isn't in one of his moods.'

‘Moods?' says Mam. ‘Ifan?'

‘Very moody, apparently,' says Nain. ‘But there, the girls would have liked that when he was young. And he was a bit of a piece when he was younger with that fair hair and those dark eyes; oh, yes, quite a good-looker. Turned many a girl's head; and not only before he married Elin, either. So I'm told.'

The wind howls in the chimney and a puff of smoke floats into the room and curls up around the Toby jugs.

‘This weather,' says Nain. ‘Though it hasn't snowed again, thank goodness. Dress up warmly for Chapel. You know how mean Mrs Davies Chapel House is with the heating.'

‘Would you like a cup of tea, Nain?' I ask.

‘No time, Gwenni,' she says. ‘Have to get on before your Aunty Lol gets up. That great horse of a girl just gets in my way.' She turns for the scullery door and on her way she says, ‘Let me know if you hear anything more about it this morning, Magda.' The back door slams shut behind her as the wind catches it and in the silence that follows I hear the scullery tap that Tada mended for the fourth time yesterday begin to drip-drip again.

Mam is staring into the fire, standing still the way Mrs Evans did when she stared out of the window at Brwyn Coch. Thinking.

I put milk into three of the teacups and Bethan lifts the pot to pour the tea. ‘Does that mean Ifan Evans has run off with another woman?' she says.

‘Don't talk rubbish,' says Mam. ‘He's a married man.'

‘That's what Nain said,' says Bethan.

‘No, she didn't,' says Mam. ‘Gwenni, do you know anything about this?'

‘Me?' I say.

‘When you were there yesterday,' says Mam, ‘did you see Mr Evans?'

‘No,' I say. ‘I took Angharad and Catrin out to play and I helped Mrs Evans because she was in a lot of pain after Mr Price. Like you were, Mam, and she bled a lot, too. It was all over the floor.' I have that old family stomach as I remember it.

‘Don't talk to anyone about it,' says Mam.

‘Except me,' says Bethan.

‘About what?' I ask Mam.

‘Yesterday,' she says. ‘Gossip is nasty.'

Mam unties her blue satin sash. ‘Let's get this corset off,' she says. ‘It's making me feel quite sick pressing into my stomach. I'll wear the old one. And my winter costume.'

Bethan helps her pull the corset down. It comes off more easily than it went on. The talcum powder flakes away onto the linoleum like snow.

‘If you're not wearing your blue costume, can I wear your new half hat?' asks Bethan.

Mam doesn't answer.

7

We slide into our pew in Chapel just as Mrs Morris squeezes the last notes of her repertoire from the organ. That's what Mrs Morris calls it: My repertoire. The organ is old as sin and some of the notes are silent.

Mam sits in the middle between me and Bethan. She always sits in the middle. I shuffle closer to the door so that I don't have to breathe in so much Evening in Paris. Mam leans her head on her hand to pray. Whenever I ask her what she prays for she says: That's private, Gwenni. She prays for a long time this morning. There are still flakes of talcum powder on the back of her hand.

Nain was right. Mrs Evans and Angharad and Catrin are not in their pew behind the organ. And Ifan Evans is not in the Big Seat under the pulpit. All the other deacons are there in their black suits, looking like a row of old crows from the castle, and so is Alwenna's father, the song-raiser, who is allowed to sit there even though he's not a deacon.

A soft, red velvet cushion runs all along the Big Seat. But the deacons still fidget. Mr Morris turns to look at his wife, who ignores him, and Mr Pugh runs his finger around inside his collar again and again. Jones the Butcher has his arm along the back of the seat behind Young Mr Ellis and his meaty fingers tap on the polished wood. Young Mr Ellis looks at the ceiling. Alwenna's father flips through the pages of his hymn book and Twm Edwards whispers into the Voice of God's ear. The Voice of God looks up and nods at Alwenna's father.

I shift round in my seat to see if Alwenna is in her family's pew at the back of the Chapel, but Mam prods me with her elbow and I have to turn back and look to the front. Mrs Llywelyn Pugh sits two pews forward of us with her dead fox around her shoulders. I try not to look at the dead fox.

Alwenna's father clears his throat and says, ‘Hymn two hundred and thirteen.'

Mrs Morris begins to wheeze the tune out of the organ and I find that I've forgotten my hymn book and have to share Mam's. But I can't read the words because Mam's hand is shaking and the print jiggles about on the page. I pretend to sing. The congregation's song rises up to the Chapel ceiling and I hear Alwenna's voice soar above everyone else's. If her voice were to carry on through the Chapel roof and up, up into the sky it would melt into the Earth's song and all the people in the whole world would think there was a choir of angels in the sky and be filled with wonder like the shepherds when Jesus Christ was born.

Everyone sits down after the hymn and the Voice of God half chants a long prayer. I listen to every word but he doesn't mention Mrs Evans or Angharad or Catrin. Or Ifan Evans. I've already forgotten what he did mention. Alwenna's father raises another hymn and as the congregation sits down again after singing, the Voice of God ascends the pulpit steps.

The whole Chapel begins to settle itself for the next half hour. The heaters stop rumbling and people cough and splutter and make themselves as comfortable as they can on the hard pew seats. Somebody passes wind and the sound echoes around the room and along the high gallery. Mam pretends not to notice but Bethan snorts as she tries not to laugh. I pull my handkerchief out of my coat pocket to hold over my nose. The three pennies for the collection that I'd wrapped in the handkerchief drop to the floor and clink past several pews. Mam clamps her hand tightly on mine. The Voice of God pauses for a second as he opens the pulpit gate and he looks down on the Big Seat and the empty space between Mr Pugh and Jones the Butcher where Ifan Evans should be. Mam's hand starts shaking again and she lets go of me and leans back in the pew and her breath flutters as if she still has her new corset on.

The Voice of God declares that his sermon is about the resurrection, the greatest miracle of all. Isn't flying a great miracle? Or falling like Alice into Wonderland? Bethan begins to cough. Mam takes a packet of Polo mints from her pocket and gives one to Bethan. The silver paper rustles like a mouse in Mam's shaky hand. A sweet mintiness mingles with the smell that's always in Chapel, of mice and must and Mrs Davies Chapel House's beeswax polish and mothballs from suit pockets and Evening in Paris.

My plait has fallen forward over my shoulder and it tickles my chin. I throw it back and the pink polka-dot ribbon I took from the middle of the bed this morning to tie around the end flies off like a butterfly into the aisle. I lean over the pew door to reach it but Mam pulls me back and holds on tight, tight to my arm. I feel her trembling but I can't move.

Jones the Butcher shouts, ‘Amen. Amen,' as he agrees with part of the sermon and the Voice of God starts to build up to a fervour in the pulpit, already half singing some of his words and murmuring others so that the congregation has to lean forward to hear him. Mam is watching the Voice of God as if she's mesmerised. ‘Amen,' shouts Jones the Butcher again, but Mam doesn't blink, her eyes are as wide open and still as the glass eyes on Mrs Llywelyn Pugh's dead fox.

I try not to look into the dead fox's yellow eyes. They remind me of the fox Ifan Evans flung at me when I went to look after Angharad and Catrin last Christmas holidays. I'd never been inside Brwyn Coch before and Mrs Evans showed me all those books in the parlour, the ones that Mam won't let me borrow. It was dusk when I walked home. The grass sparkled with frost in the white light of the moon and it crunched beneath my feet as I walked across the field. I looked back from the top of the stile to watch the Christmas star flicker in the sky above the cottage. When I turned round again I saw Guto'r Wern leaping down the road, wailing like the fire brigade siren, his crow black coat flapping open as he ran. I climbed down the other side of the stile and didn't notice the fox on the bottom step until I almost put my foot on it. There was a red wound in its side and I saw the fox's spirit leave the wound like a warm breath in the cold air. Then, from nowhere, Ifan Evans appeared in front of me. He picked up the fox and swung it at me, laughing all the time. He said: This would make you a fine fox-fur if you were a fine lady, Gwenni. His face was scarlet as a holly berry and his breath smelt sweet. He made as if to put the dead fox around my shoulders. I couldn't move quickly enough off the stile and I saw the fox's eyes stare at me just before I felt its warm blood on my cheek. Mot, or perhaps it wasn't Mot, perhaps it was the big black dog, leapt up and started to lick the blood from my face. I screamed and Ifan Evans laughed again. He staggered away and the dog went after him and I ran all the way across the next field to the gate and all the way down the hill and didn't stop until I got home. Mam said: Don't make such a fuss, Gwenni; it's only a bit of blood. And she sent me into the scullery to wash my face. When I told her how piteous the fox looked she said: Don't be silly, Gwenni.

In the pulpit the Voice of God intones, ‘And on the Day of Judgement, by that greatest of miracles, we shall all be resurrected, and we shall all be equal in the eyes of the Lord. The greatest and the least of us shall be . . .' He pauses, and the congregation leans forward. ‘Equal,' he murmurs.

‘Amen. Amen,' shouts Jones the Butcher.

Mrs Llywelyn Pugh re-arranges her dead fox around her neck. Its tail has lost its bushiness and its ears droop and its fur is dull. Its little face is between its front paws, dangling down the back of Mrs Llywelyn Pugh's pink jacket, and just on the end of its chin the fur is a creamier colour. Its glassy eyes stare at me and now I return the stare and see the sadness in those eyes. Is it sad because it didn't have a decent burial? When our old Siani Nanti died Tada wrapped her in the
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and buried her in the back yard. Tada said: She was a good mouser; let's give her a decent burial. Did the fox's spirit go to Heaven, like Siani Nanti's? Will it rise again? The dead fox lowers both eyelids in a slow blink at me just like John Morris does when he's being friendly. I turn my head sharply to look at Mam but she's too entranced by the Voice of God to notice that the greatest of miracles has taken place two pews in front of her.