Authors: Iris Gower
She felt his arm against her breast and hugged it closer. How she longed to throw herself into Boyo’s embrace, to cling to him, beg him to come back to her. She almost spoke her thoughts out loud but then he extricated himself and took a seat near the fire.
‘It’s very cold in here, Bethan, perhaps the servants allowed the fire to go out and then rebuilt it before you returned.’
‘Perhaps.’ She did not tell him that Ty Craig was always cold; even when the sun shone into the garden the house remained in shadow. ‘We will have some refreshment and then you can see father.’ She smiled but she was watching his face carefully.
‘Will you really go to Ireland to look for this girl?’ She could not help but question him even though she knew his reply would probably hurt her.
‘If she’s not here in Swansea, then yes, I will go to Ireland.’
They talked about other matters over a tea of light sandwiches and small cakes and Bethan saw that he drank little of the fine wine she had served him. He was looking about him as though his eyes could see through the ceilings into the floors above.
‘Would you like to see the improvements I’ve made to the house while I’ve been staying with Daddy?’ she asked innocently. Boyo’s gaze rested on her and there was a question in his eyes.
‘Very much.’ His reply was wary but she sensed the curiosity in his response.
‘Then please, help yourself. Perhaps you would care to explore alone, I have some instructions to give to the servants. I have a guest for dinner this evening, a very important guest.’
He rose at once and she was disappointed that her hint concerning her guest fell on stony ground. She frowned, her thoughts bitter, he did not care if she entertained a regiment of men and took each and every one of them to her bed.
She watched him look into the ground-floor rooms and then make his way upstairs. Well, he would find nothing, his harlot was safely locked in a room far away from here. A glow of warmth filled her at the thought. What a pity the girl had not lost her memory, traumas sometimes had that effect. If that had happened, the girl could have remained where she was indefinitely and would probably have been used by the beast, Jacob. Such a fate would serve her right. The bitch had slept with Boyo without a qualm of conscience and doubtless she’d been intimate with this Irishman too. Living with a boor and a bully would be what her kind deserved.
Bethan found herself smiling at the thought of what Catherine’s fate might be. Suddenly, for just a moment, she was appalled, wondering what was happening to her. Had she always been so vindictive and cruel? But no, none of this was her fault, it was the betrayal of her love that had made Bethan so bitter. After all she had been to Boyo he had turned to that strumpet with no breeding and no brains and had put her before his own wife.
Bethan went upstairs and looked into her father’s room, he was asleep, his face turned into the pillow. Bethan was relieved, she did not feel up to coping with his ill humour should he learn that her husband was in the house.
Boyo returned after a time and stood before the fire, shivering a little. ‘This is an odd house,’ he said, ‘it gives you the feeling of being watched.’
Bethan looked up at him, so he felt it too. ‘Nonsense!’ she said briskly. ‘It’s a very ordinary house.’
Boyo appeared not to have heard her. ‘I suppose it’s because there’s no view, no outlook, nothing but the towering hills rising above the house.’
‘Well,
you
do not have to live here, do you, so please do not criticize my family home.’
‘I’m sorry, it was rude of me.’ He frowned. ‘How many cellars are there here?’
‘Three; they are filled with discarded furniture and stores of wine. You can examine them, if you like, but if you have satisfied yourself that I am not hiding your little paramour in chains somewhere under my roof perhaps you’d better leave.’
She could see by the expression on his face that her barb had found its mark. He did not protest his innocence and somehow that only angered her more.
‘Well, that’s what you thought, isn’t it?’ she demanded. ‘You imagined I had a hand in this girl’s departure from Honey’s Farm, you might as well admit it.’
He looked down at her as though she was a stranger. ‘You are remarkably interested in the farm,’ he said, ‘that in itself is suspicious.’
‘Oh, Boyo,’ deftly Bethan changed tack, ‘if only you could see how empty my life is without you.’ The words were spoken before she could think clearly but for once she knew she spoke the truth.
She began to cry, much to her own astonishment. After a moment’s hesitation, Boyo took her in his arms and held her, smoothing her hair.
‘I never meant to hurt you so badly, Bethan,’ he said softly. ‘I believed ours was a marriage of mutual respect and liking and perhaps of a little love. I never thought you would be so hurt when I…’ his voice trailed away.
She looked up at him, her defences down. ‘I know, Boyo, I thought our marriage was mainly one of convenience at first. But I grew to love you and to need you and now my life is empty without you.’
‘I’m so sorry.’ He kissed the top of her head and in that moment Bethan was tempted to tell him everything: how she’d had Catherine watched, how everything had gone wrong and how, in the end, Tom had called in a doctor to care for the girl. Surely Boyo would understand that none of this was Bethan’s fault. She even opened her mouth to speak but then he released her, moving away from her, his shoulders bent, his eyes unwilling to meet hers.
‘I love Catherine, God help me, I love her more than life itself. I can’t help it, Bethan, I just can’t help it.’
She drew herself up to her full height and forced back the tears. ‘Go your own way to hell then and that slut with you.’ She turned her back on him and did not look round even when she heard the door close quietly behind him.
She remained frozen for some minutes, hearing his voice in the hall as he asked the maid for his boots and she flinched as the outer door slammed.
The beat of horse’s hooves on the gravel outside seemed to echo within her and she sank down onto the carpet before the fire, trying to warm herself at the flames. But she was alone now, alone in a house with a sick old man, alone in a house that did not welcome her, where the ghosts of the past inhabited the rooms. She crashed her fist against the marble hearth.
‘Catherine O’Conner, I could kill you!’ Her words rang out harshly and Bethan almost believed she heard the sound of ghostly laughter echoing around her in the gloomy emptiness of the room.
‘Why are you keeping me locked up when all I want is to go home?’ Catherine was sitting in a chair beneath the high window, her foot resting on a stool. The raw-boned woman who brought her food looked at her without expression.
‘How can you go home when we don’t know where you live?’ She placed the bowl of thin stew on the rickety table.
‘Can’t I talk to whoever brought me here?’ Catherine asked tightly, her hands gripped in her lap until her knuckles gleamed white. She longed to strike out at someone. ‘Speak to me, damn it!’
The woman straightened and stared down at her with unwavering eyes. ‘
Duw
, cursing now, is it? Grateful to be waited on hand and foot like this, you should be, madam. Why, you even had a doctor in to look at you which is more than I’ve ever had.’
‘But why am I being kept prisoner?’
‘I told you, don’t grumble, just think if you hadn’t been found you might have died all alone in the wet and cold. A word of advice: just don’t go asking questions. I can’t answer nothing so you are wasting your time.’
‘You can tell me your name, can’t you?’ Catherine said more quietly. ‘You are the only person I see, it can’t do any harm if I know what to call you, can it?’
‘Winnie, that’s my name, now are you satisfied?’ The woman went to the door and looked back over her shoulder. She stared at Catherine, a long hard look and then her face softened.
‘Look, love, your foot is getting better and your bruises are all but gone. Now just think, how would you have managed on your own? No doctor, no-one to bring you food and keep you warm, how long do you think you’d have lived if you hadn’t been cared for by me? She nodded as though to reinforce what she was saying. ‘Now just be grateful and show a bit of patience. You are a pretty girl, no real harm has been done to you and look, I’m sure you’ll be able to go home soon, so be good and don’t give me any trouble, right?’
When she was alone, Catherine looked around her helplessly. If only she could get out of this room she might find out where she was, she imagined she must be quite a few miles from Swansea, Winnie spoke with a different accent to that of the townsfolk.
She closed her eyes, the woman was right, of course, she would have died out there in the mud of the farm if someone had not taken her in. But unanswered questions still raced through her head.
With a sigh she fell back against the pillows. There was a gleam of hope now, Winnie had said that Catherine might be sent home soon; she hoped so, she could not stand this room for much longer.
And when she got home, what then? The farm would be in a dreadful state and the animals, what had happened to the milk cows? Had they all died of milk fever by now?
She was a failure, she had to face it, she had no money, no ability to run a farm properly and her love life was a mess. She was what her mother would call a loose woman.
Outside the window, darkness was closing in on the unremarkable landscape. Catherine was tired, so very tired. She climbed painfully onto the bed. It was cold in the room, she pulled the worn blankets over her and closing her eyes, she drifted into an exhausted sleep.
It was still dark when she woke to find Winnie beside the bed holding a lighted candle. Outside the birds were beginning to sing, it must be early morning.
‘Get up, love, I thought you might like a bath.’ Winnie’s attitude seemed to have softened and Catherine felt a lift of hope, perhaps this was it, perhaps, at last, she was going home.
‘I would love a bath, Winnie.’ And she would welcome the chance to be out of the room where she’d been kept for what seemed an eternity.
Winnie helped her to her feet, ‘There, see, you are nearly able to walk on your own now.’ She helped Catherine through the open door into a spotless but spartan kitchen. There were bare flags on the floor and in the centre of the room stood a huge scrubbed table. To the side was a battered dresser full of oddments of crockery, but a cheerful fire burned in the grate and before it stood a tin bath filled with steaming water.
‘If I can get you into the bath do you think you could stick your bad leg out of the water?’ Winnie asked and Catherine resisted the desire to burst into hysterical laughter.
‘I think I can manage,’ she said shakily. It took a great deal of manoeuvring but at last. Catherine sank into the hot water with such a sigh of pleasure that Winnie’s stern features relaxed into something of a smile. She leant over Catherine like a mother and began to wash her hands and arms.
‘What’s going to happen to me now, Winnie, am I to go home?’ Catherine asked, taking advantage of the change in the woman’s attitude.
‘I don’t know, love, all I have been told is that you are to be washed and dressed.’
‘Am I to meet whoever brought me here, then?’ Catherine asked eagerly and Winnie shook back a curl of grey hair that had fallen across her forehead.
‘What a girl for asking questions; questions I don’t know the answers to. Now shut up and let me wash your hair.’
Afterwards, Winnie brought her clothes, washed and pressed and mended, and helped Catherine to dress in them. A pair of boots, much mended, stood ready for her. Catherine’s feet slipped into them easily, they were several sizes too big. She wondered what had happened to her own boots but that was not really of any importance now, she was going home.
As Winnie dragged the bath easily through the door, Catherine felt the rush of cold air and shivered. She huddled near the fire and then, lifting her head, became aware that someone was talking to Winnie outside.
Winnie returned and fetched one of her own shawls from the back of the door. ‘Wear this, you’re off out of here. Take care, love, just take care.’
Catherine stood quite still for a moment, unable to believe the suddenness with which she was being released.
‘Go on then you daft girl, don’t look a gift horse in the mouth.’
Galvanized into movement, Catherine hurried out of the kitchen into the dark of the early dawn. A man was standing in the shadows, holding the reins of a horse which was harnessed to a small cart.
‘Get in, miss.’ The voice was gruff, that of a working man. Catherine shivered in the misty dampness that hung over the land, obscuring the view.
‘Where are we going?’ she asked meekly. The man was silent for a moment.
‘Swansea, miss. Get in the cart.’ Catherine climbed awkwardly onto the cold, damp boards and as she sank back into the wooden seat, she felt relief pour through her; she was going home.
But home to what? On the heels of relief, she felt frightened for her future. The farm would be neglected, the house unused and damp, the fields would be overgrown with weeds. There would be a lot of work needed to get the land under control again and no money with which to accomplish it. And worse, out there, in the darkness, was someone who had attacked her and might attack her again.
As the cart jerked into motion, Catherine looked back at the building she was leaving. It was difficult to distinguish anything through the mist but she could see that the house was small, little more than a hut, and it was set against the folds of an unfamiliar hill. Where was this place where she had been kept? Still, it did not matter now, nothing mattered so long as she was free.
She was jolted against the hardness of the seat and she winced at the pain in her bruised bones, closing her eyes, telling herself that everything was going to be all right. She would soon be home.
She still could not quite believe it, after fearing the worst she had been released. Sometimes, in the dark of the night, she had believed that she would eventually be killed off in this remote place, Winnie had grumbled enough about what a trial she was.