Longing (5 page)

A
LEX
took his daughter for a walk during the evening. She should have been going to bed, according to her nurse, but she was fretful and he felt guilty for having left her alone all day. She had had nothing to do beyond exploring as much of the house and the park as her nurse had allowed. Apparently her nurse was rather fearful of Wales and the Welsh and had not given her a great deal of freedom.

Alex took her to walk on the hills. They looked very different in the light of evening, he found, the heather brightened on their side of the valley by the rays of the evening sun. Last night seemed now rather like a dream.

It was definitely picturesque, he thought, stopping to gaze down into the valley and across the river to the hills opposite. Verity clung quietly to his hand. Picturesque and peaceful. A different world. It seemed that he must be separated by oceans and continents from his own world. But it felt strangely good to be here. Perhaps in time he would come to understand the industry on which the wealth of the property depended. Perhaps he would come to know the people who lived and worked here. Perhaps he would be content to stay for a while.

“What are they doing, Papa?” Verity was pointing downward.

He smiled. He had noticed them too, the couple below, though he had kept his eyes off them until now. They obviously thought themselves unobserved.

“They are kissing,” he said. “Men and women do that when they
are considering marrying each other. And when they are married. It is to show that they care for each other.”

“Like you kiss me at bedtime,” she said. “But you do not take so long about it, Papa.”

“It is a little different with men and women,” he said. “But we must not stare and intrude on their privacy, even if they cannot see us. What do you think?” With a sweep of one arm he indicated the slope about them, the valley below, and the hills and sunset opposite.

“I think it is very lovely, Papa,” she said, “though I do not like all that smoke coming from those chimneys down there.” She wrinkled her nose and pointed to the ironworks, where the furnaces were kept lit day and night. “I think Grandmama was wrong, though. She said we were coming to the back of beyond, and she made it sound like somewhere no one would wish to be.”

He smiled. The setting sun was turning the sky orange behind the hills opposite and was making a gold ribbon of the river. He glanced down involuntarily at the lovers again. They were no longer embracing, but were still standing close together. A tall, slim woman with long dark hair, and a broad-chested, dark-haired man only a little taller than she. He had seen them both before, if the distance did not deceive his eyes. He was last night's leader and today's half-naked puddler. She was the maiden of Cwmbran. Though perhaps not a maiden after all.

Alex felt a sudden and quite unexpected stabbing of envy and loneliness. They seemed somehow a part of their surroundings. A part of this picturesque and remote Welsh valley whose steep hillsides closed it in away from the world.

Except that the world had come looking for it last night.

The sun was dropping behind the hills opposite, deepening the orange to red. Already it was dusk in the valley. Soon it would be dark. He felt something—some longing, some yearning that he could not quite grasp or name. Some sense, perhaps, of being an outsider in something that was beautiful. Some sense of being in a place where he did not belong but wanted to belong. Some sense
of—home. But no, that could not be it. He could not put words to the feeling. The valley was lovely despite the signs of industry, and he was seeing it at its loveliest, at sunset on a summer evening. Was it surprising that he was affected by its beauty and a little dissatisfied that there was no one with whom to share it except his young daughter?

The two lovers, he saw, looking downward again, were making their way down toward the terraced houses, arm in arm.

“Well,” he said, looking at his daughter, who was unusually quiet, “shall we go home before it gets dark and we get lost?”

“But I am with you, Papa,” she said, still holding tightly to his hand. “Are we going to live here forever?”

“Perhaps not forever,” he said. “But for a while. Will you mind?”

“No,” she said. And she added with the candor of a child, “It annoys me to be with Grandmama sometimes. She thinks that if I am enjoying myself I must be doing something wrong. That is silly, is it not, Papa?”

Yes, very. But one had to be loyal to one's mother-in-law. “Grandmama wants you to grow up to be a proper lady,” he said.

“If a proper lady frowns all the time, I do not want to be one, Papa,” she said firmly.

He wisely dropped the topic. But she was not quite finished.

“Nurse is just as bad,” she said. “She would not let me go downstairs today to talk with the servants, as I do at home. And she would allow me to walk only just outside the house, with her close by. You know how fast and how far Nurse walks. She will never allow me out here on the hills. She thinks I might get lost or eaten by wolves. There are no wolves, are there, Papa? People have funny ideas about Wales, don't they? I think Nurse is just lazy.”

And rather elderly. He had kept her as Verity's nurse because she was the one woman who had been with his daughter since birth—and because it was his mother-in-law who had originally selected her. But Verity needed more than a nurse. She needed companionship, but he could not spend a great deal of his own time with her.

“Perhaps it is time for a governess,” he said. “You are six years
old, after all. I shall have to see what I can do.” He should have thought of it before they came. He should have seen about hiring someone and bringing her with them.

“Grandmama taught me how to read and do sums,” she said, tripping along at his side. “I don't need a governess, Papa. Just someone to take me out. Someone who is willing to do things with me.”

A governess. Yes. “I'll see what I can do,” he said.

He wondered foolishly and uncharacteristically what
he
would do for companionship. And he thought again about the strongly muscled puddler and the dark-haired woman whom he himself had kissed the night before.

She had aroused an unwelcome yearning in him. He could still feel it.

*   *   *

Alex
slept, as always, with his window wide open. He woke during the night with the feeling that something had woken him, though he did not know what. It must be the moonlight, he thought, opening his eyes to find it in a bright band across his bed. In a short while it would be right on his face.

If he turned over onto his side, could he ignore it? He felt too cozy and too lazy to get out to close the curtains. But he did so with a sigh. Moonlight on his head would definitely keep him awake.

He stood at the window for a few moments before pulling the curtains. He rested his hands on the sill and drew in a deep breath of fresh air as he looked out over treetops to the hills. It was as bright a night as last night. Though a little chillier, he thought, shivering slightly. He reached up a hand to one of the curtains.

But his hand froze there. There it was again. The sound that had woken him. He remembered it now that it was being repeated. A mournful and prolonged howling. Wolves? He frowned. Were there wolves? There was more than one of them. But more than one animal too. There were howls, but there were also bellows, as if there were cattle out there.

Alex shivered again. The sounds seemed somehow out of place in the peace of the valley. And almost human in their plaintiveness.
He must remember to mention them to Miss Haines, his housekeeper, in the morning. And to Barnes. He did not want Verity wandering outside the park, governess or no governess, if there really were wild animals out there.

He pulled the curtains together and went back to the warmth of his bed. He heard the sounds three times more before falling back to sleep.

*   *   *

Siân
came surging awake and up to a sitting position in her cupboard bed. Oh, no. Oh, Lord. Dear Lord. Pray no. Pray she had only been dreaming. She stared wide-eyed into the darkness, listening intently. But there was nothing. She had been just dreaming after all.

After a minute or two she lay down again, but she still stared upward, alert for the sounds she dreaded to hear. It was just that she had been worrying about Iestyn. Dear, sweet-tempered Iestyn, always her favorite brother-in-law. He had been only twelve when she had married Gwyn. She had tried to fill his thirst for knowledge by sharing her own remembered store of knowledge from schooldays, though he had learned to read and write at Sunday School. She had listened to his dreams and her heart had ached for the boy who was destined for the mines regardless of dreams. She had been worrying about him all day and when she had fallen asleep. That was what had made her dream the sounds.

And then she was sitting bolt upright again, in a cold sweat. Howls, wails, bellows.
Scotch Cattle.
Oh, Lord. Oh, dear Lord. She prayed frantically and incoherently.

Scotch Cattle!

She had not heard them many times in her life, but the sound of them had always had the power to turn her legs to jelly and her stomach to a churning mass. She had always burrowed far beneath the bedclothes and pressed her fingers into her ears. But this time she could not so dissociate herself from what was going on outside. This time Iestyn might be involved. It might be Iestyn they were after.

But he was just a boy. And he had signed the Charter. Surely they would not hold it against him that he had refused to pay his
penny to join the Chartist Association? They must have bigger prey than Iestyn.

But even that thought was not consoling.

The Scotch Cattle were a secret organization of men who appointed themselves enforcers of group action in the valleys. They always worked at night and always wore disguise. No one knew who they were. It was said that Cattle worked in valleys other than their own so that they would not be recognized and so that sentiment would not soften their hearts. But who could know for sure?

If ever there was an attempt to form a union or to get unanimous action on a strike, the Scotch Cattle became active. For always there would be some dissenting voices, some men who for one reason or other refused to act with the majority. There was usually a warning first, a frightening nocturnal visit from the Cattle or perhaps merely the leaving of a note if the recipient was known to be able to read. Then punishment—the destruction of possessions, sometimes total. And very often a whipping up on the mountain.

Siân had always considered it a scandal and a disgrace. Life was so very hard. Surely the only way it could be made bearable was for the people to cling together in love and mutual support. And they did much of the time. Life was lived richly in Cwmbran despite the long hours of work and the hard and dirty conditions and the danger and low wages. But always times like this came along to spoil everything. And to terrify them all in their beds.

But there were men—and women too—who would say that the Cattle were necessary. She remembered Owen saying the night before that unanimity was essential. Perhaps it was. But did it have to be enforced by terror and violence? She would never believe so.

And then the howling came again, and Siân pressed a clenched fist against her mouth to stop herself from screaming and giving in to panic. Who were the recipients of their visits? Was it just the warnings tonight? Or were there men even at this moment being dragged up the mountain? She heard a creaking on the stairs and moaned.

“Siân?” It was Emrys's voice.

She pushed back the blankets and stepped out barefoot onto the kitchen floor. “Uncle Emrys?” Her voice shook. “Scotch Cattle?”

“Yes,
fach,
” he said. “Scared, are you?”

She crossed the room toward his darkened form and pushed her hand into his reassuringly warm one. “I hate it,” she said. “It is not necessary, surely?”

“There were those who would not sign the Charter,” he said, crossing to the window and holding the curtain back with his free hand so that he could peer out. “It is important that everyone sign. The government in London must be made to see that it is not just a few cranks who are demanding the changes.”

“But if anyone's conscience is against it—” she said.

Emrys clucked his tongue. “This is not the time for conscience,
fach
,” he said. He looked carefully up and down the street. “There is nothing to be seen. It looks as if no one on our street is for it.”

Siân heard herself sobbing before she could stop herself. “Will it just be those who did not sign, then?” she said. “Not those who did not join the Association?”

“I don't know,
fach,
” he said. “But back to bed and back to sleep now, is it? And keep our noses out of places where they do not belong? We have to be up early.” He squeezed her hand tightly before letting it go.