No Way Of Telling (29 page)

So, little by little, she had assembled from Colin and Ray the history of how they and their father and Mr Pugh had set out for the Gwyntfa on that memorable morning and been overtaken by the blizzard; of how they had struggled on, shouting and calling as they drew near to the cottage, and in reply heard only Mick barking. As clearly as though she had been there herself, Amy could imagine them bursting into the front-kitchen, and imagine the glances they must have exchanged of misgiving and worse, when they found it empty and heard Mick still hysterically barking in the next room. And she could imagine, as though she had been there with them, the horror of the scene that met their eyes when they threw open the side-kitchen door. Only Mick, clutched tightly in Mrs Bowen’s arms, had shown any signs of life. Mrs Bowen herself had seemed to be turned to stone. Opposite to her loomed a figure of gigantic proportions, while a second smaller figure lay stretched unconscious on the floor at her feet. Entirely misunderstanding the situation they had hurled themselves like heroes on the wrong man.

“Well, of course we did,” said Colin. “I’ve never seen anyone so ugly in all my life—
big!
We were bound to think it was him was the wrong ’un, a great monster like that.”

“Bartolomeo isn’t ugly,” Amy had protested.

“Oh, no!—like a gorilla, that’s all.”

“He’s coming to our place, to convalesce,” said Ray, “once he’s out of that hospital. Mum said he could. And you’re to be his teacher, Amy—that’s what the Ambassador told him. He told him you’d teach him to speak English.”

Amy had laughed. “What,
me
teach him?—Granny’s the one for that.” But after considering a moment or so she had changed her mind. “I might have a try, though. I think I’d like to have a try. Yes, I’ll teach him.”

Ivor, when he had first been allowed to visit Amy alone, had wasted not a second. Kneeling up on the foot of her bed, with a glance every so often over his shoulder for fear of being stopped by Mrs Bowen and sent away before he had finished, he poured out as fast as he could talk the tale of his triumph in outwitting and out-manoeuvring the terrible Vigers.

“I thought he was a marvel, to start with,” said Amy. It was true: she felt bound to confess it.

“Then all I can say is, you must have been barmy,” retorted Ivor. “I could tell what he was like, straight off. He’d got it written all over him, plain as print—
wicked!
”

“Well, it was getting dark, the first time I saw him,” said Amy, excusing herself. “And anyway, Ivor, that’s not fair—you’d heard about him already. I hadn’t. ’Tisn’t easy to tell what a person’s like just by looking at him. People can turn out to be a lot different from what you think they are to begin with,” she declared.

Ivor had agreed there might be something in this theory, and then proceeded to relate how, on the morning that now seemed so long ago to both of them, Harris—but here Amy had once again interrupted him.

“I still think of him as Mr Nabb,” she said.

“Well, you shouldn’t—that’s not his proper name. That was just their silly joke, wasn’t it? And I’ve got to be quick—do you want to hear about it, or don’t you?”

“Oh, yes, I do, Ivor. Please go on. I won’t say another word.”

So Ivor had gone on, and told her how
Harris,
as soon as ever he had recovered consciousness, was escorted back to Dintirion by Mr Pugh and Colin, it having been decided that Mr Protheroe and Ray should keep guard up at the Gwyntfa; for at that time they had no idea of what had happened to Vigers or when he might return. There had indeed been a moment of alarm and desperate resolution when a figure was seen climbing the hill with a pair of skis balanced across his shoulder, and Mr Protheroe, watching his approach from Mrs Bowen’s bedroom window, had felt no doubt at all but that it was Vigers, nor doubted that if he was obliged to shoot, he would. He had shouted a warning to the others, down below in the front-kitchen. Mrs Bowen had promptly mounted the stairs and joined him at the window.

“But that’s not
him!
” she had exclaimed aloud in consternation.

And then Mr Protheroe realised it was their friend and visitor, the Ambassador, on whom he had Harris’s revolver unwaveringly trained. For, as it later transpired, the Ambassador had taken it into his head to borrow Vigers’ skis so as to pay a visit to the Gwyntfa in person and observe for himself the scene of so much hazard and heroism.

“He told me afterwards he looked at everything,” said Ivor to Amy. “The window you climbed out of, and the rope you made. And he went on down to Tyler’s Place, too. He had to see it all with his own eyes, he said. And then he went along the top of the Dingle and fetched back your toboggan. That’s what they used for getting your old granny down on. I think it’s good, your toboggan,” said Ivor generously. “I mean that—it’s
good.
Specially considering you didn’t have me to help you. I took mine up when I went along with Dad to fetch away your chickens and our ewes, but only because mine’s bigger than yours, Amy. We put the chickens in boxes, and tied the boxes on to my toboggan—that’s how we got them down.”

For the rest of that uncertain and anxious day Vigers had remained in the cellar like an invisible Jinn corked up in a bottle, and Harris had been kept locked into the larder at Dintirion; all that day and until some hours after nightfall, when cars came for them. They were taken away in a buzz of subdued activity and orderly confusion, an atmosphere of lowered voices, of strangers’ faces half-seen, preoccupied, grave; an atmosphere that made Ivor feel as though the familiar kitchen had become suddenly unfamiliar and that it was he and his family, not these people occupying it, who were shadowy, unreal. But in twenty minutes or less everything had returned to normal again: the anonymous crowd of invaders had come and before Ivor managed to distinguish one from another, or even to be sure how many of them there were, they had gone. The Ambassador departed with them. Both of the prisoners wore handcuffs, Ivor told Amy.

“I watched them go off. Your granny didn’t, though. She said she never wanted to set eyes on them again.”

“That’s how I should have felt,” said Amy.

“We’ve got to keep our mouths shut about it still, it seems—they didn’t tell us how long for. ’Tisn’t finished yet, that’s why. There’s more of ‘em to catch and easier to catch ‘em if they don’t know exactly what’s been going on. It’s up to us to hold our tongues so as it doesn’t get in the papers.”

“I don’t know exactly what’s been going on, either,” Amy had remarked.

“Of course you don’t, and I’m not allowed to explain it to you, not yet,” said Ivor, remembering belatedly his undertaking to Mrs Bowen. “I promised your granny I wouldn’t say too much. You have to be kept quiet, she says—not excited, or it might start your temperature off again.”

There was really no danger of Amy becoming over-excited. Her illness had curiously separated her from the terrible events that had preceded it, and she could look back at them with a calm detachment, as at a range of distant hills, between her and which lay a wide flat plain. They interested her extremely, but she no longer felt threatened by them. Nor did she feel in any hurry to hear all those colourful extras, recollections, embellishments, that she knew lay stored in her grandmother’s memory, ready to be brought out for their mutual entertainment on many a patchwork-making evening of the future.

So it was that when, on this particular rainy afternoon, Mrs Bowen declared herself willing to talk provided it was not about anything too agitating, Amy replied serenely:

“It’s all right, Granny—it wasn’t about
that
I was wanting you to talk.”

Mrs Bowen came and stood near Amy’s pillows, and folded her hands, and smiled at her.

“What was it you were wanting me to talk about, then?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Anything—just anything. You know what I was thinking, lying here? How much I like this room. I like the way the ceiling bulges, and the beams are so low if I was to stand up on the bed I’d hit my head on them. It’s so big and dark—friendly. I don’t know why Mr and Mrs Protheroe don’t have it for theirs—I would if I was them—instead of keeping it for the spare.”

“Molly chose not to have it on purpose, just because of it being so big and dark. She’s such a cheerful soul herself she likes to have everything round her the same.”

“Oh, but I think it is cheerful,” said Amy, “specially with a fire in it. It’s the sort of room,” she went on dreamily, “that makes you feel you’re welcome.”

“Well, Amy! It’s funny to hear you say that, because this is the room you were born in.”

Amy was so surprised she sat straight up in the huge bed. “No, Granny!—was I really?”

“Yes, indeed you were—in the middle of the night, in the middle of a storm. Lie down, child!—whatever do you think you’re doing, sitting up like a Jack-in-the-Box when you perfectly well know you’re meant to stay quiet.”

“Tell me about the storm, Granny. Was it a snow storm?”

“No, not that time, it wasn’t. That night it was thunder and rain and lightning. Your father sent Benjy Cadwallader over to the Gwyntfa to fetch me. They weren’t expecting the baby—which was you, as it turned out, Amy—not for some while, but there’d been an accident—never mind what, now; like many an accident, it was everyone’s grief but nobody’s fault. Anyhow, be that as it may, poor Benjy was so much afraid of the thunder no power on this earth would induce him to stir again from my front-kitchen once he got there. So I had to set off on my own and I was in such a hurry I took the short way over the top, Amy, the same as you did, and I as near as an eyelash went over the very same cliff as you did, too. I’ll never forget that night and that journey, not as long as I live. Drenched! The rain came down so hard it all but washed me clean off the rocks. And pitch dark except for the flashes of lightning—there were plenty of those and just as well—it was all I had to see by. And afraid to my heart every step of the way—not of the storm but of what I should find when I got here, for your father’s message was that Catherine—your mother, that’s to say—was going fast. He was wrong, as it happened. She stayed with us a few weeks more, long enough to name you and love you and give you to me to care for.”

“You came the short way over in a thunderstorm the night I was born and you never told me about it before, Granny, all these years?”

“No, I never did. Well, it was a long while back and a saddish time for all concerned and I’ve never been much inclined to dwell on the past. I take more of an interest in the present, I suppose,” said Mrs Bowen.

“But I like to hear about the past as well,” said Amy, “even if it is a bit saddish. I’m glad you told me.”

“Your father was born in this room too, as a matter of fact,” said Mrs Bowen, laughing. “I’d almost forgotten it myself—that’s going back a while further. There now, I’ve been chatting on for long enough. I mean to fetch you up your soup, and if you like I’ll tell Ivor he can keep you company the few minutes I’m gone—I know he’s got something he wants to show you.”

Amy lay back to wait for Ivor. She was touched and a little awed by the drama of that far-off night, but it was too remote for her to be saddened by it now. Instead, she felt warm and safe, lulled by the movement of the flames on the ceding, lapped round by love, empty of all desire, contented. The door opened creakily.

“Hullo, Ivor. What have you got there? Oh, it’s a lamb!”

“It’s our first. It came from one of those ewes you kept over your place in the snow, and Dad says he’s giving it to you—that’s why I thought you’d like to see it.”

Amy touched the tightly crinkled wool on the hard little body with the tips of her fingers.

“Born today—but not in this room! Did you know it’s where I was born, Ivor, and my father too—in this room. Granny’s just told me.”

“I’m not surprised,” said Ivor. “Bowens have been at Dintirion for generations. Protheroes are new. Do you ever stop to think it might have been your home instead of ours, and wish it was, and wish we weren’t here?”

“Oh, no!” said Amy, much shocked. “I like it how it is—you and Ray and Colin and Mrs Protheroe and Mr Protheroe at Dintirion, and me and Granny over at the Gwyntfa. I don’t want it different. Besides, I’ve never known exactly how it did come to change.”

“I do,” said Ivor. “I know all about it. I’ve heard it talked about, time and again. Your granny was the school-teacher, wasn’t she?—and she married your grandfather and came to live here at Dintirion, because in those days Dintirion was your grandfather’s place. My mother says it was hard on your granny, her having no folks of her own round these parts.”

“She hasn’t got any folks of her own round anywhere,” said Amy, placidly, “except for me and my father. She was an orphan, raised in an orphanage down in Cardiff. She doesn’t mind, though. She doesn’t feel the need of folks. Some people don’t. Friends are as good, and not too many of those either—that’s what she says.”

“Does she?” said Ivor. “I don’t agree with her. I like folks, and I like friends, plenty of both. Anyway, what I was telling you was about your granny, how she married your grandfather and came to live here, only he got killed, and your father was born—or maybe it was the other way round. So that made Mrs Bowen a widow, didn’t it, and she couldn’t manage the farm on her own so she rented it off to my grand-dad. He was the tenant at Dintirion till your father grew up, and when your father grew up he took it back, so as to farm it himself. And I can’t say for sure if Mrs Bowen came back here to Dintirion with him, but I think she did, and kept house for him till he married your mother—that was Catherine Davies from down Denver way.”

“You don’t have to tell me who my mother was,” said Amy. “I know all about her. And when I was born Granny was living over at the Gwyntfa, and they sent her a message and she came in the middle of the night, the short way over, just like I did. It was a terrible storm, thunder and lightning. She’s just told me.”

“I never heard about the storm before,” said Ivor. “Well, so then your mother died and your father didn’t want nothing more to do with Dintirion after that, so he sold it, and my grand-dad bought it, the very same farm he’d been tenant of earlier on, only of course he was old by now and he’d retired, so it was his son he got it for—that was my dad—and he gave it to him and he came to live with us here, my old grand-dad, and he died here too, later. I can remember him, just.”