‘As though we would,’ Tom said. ‘It’s proud of you we feel.’
‘I’m speechless,’ was all Josi could say. ‘Absolutely speechless.’
‘But I want to come with you,’ Mari Elen sobbed the next morning. ‘I’ve never been on a train in my whole life.’
‘We’ll go to the seaside by train before the end of the summer,’ Lowri promised her. She would have promised anything to escape the little girl’s hot, clutching hands.
‘But I want to come to London with you today. I want to visit my Auntie May and go to the zoo and see an elephant. I’ve already been to the seaside and I don’t like all that sand in my knickers and I don’t much like the sea, anyway, it’s too sudden and too splashy. And how do I know you’re ever coming back, even?’
‘I’ll be back tomorrow, probably before you go to bed. And if you promise to be a very good girl for your daddy, I’ll bring you a new doll.’
‘With yellow hair and blue eyes that open and shut like a real baby?’
‘Yes.’
‘And a white shawl all pretty holes like baby Rachel’s?’
‘Certainly.’
‘All right, I suppose.’ Heavy sigh and long sniff. ‘I don’t want you to go but I hope you have a nice time. Have you got a hankie and some mints?’
‘Goodbye, cariad. No, you must let go of me now or I’ll miss the train.’
Lowri managed to pull herself free and hurried out to the motor car where Graham was waiting to take her to the station.
‘I had a long talk with Catrin,’ he told her as soon as she was settled by his side. ‘I think she felt much better when I told her how I’d felt when my first wife, Angela, died. I told her over and over again how I’d suffered and how I’d never dreamed I would ever love again. And I insisted that though my love for her was a different sort of love, less passionate perhaps, it was still very deep and true. And eventually she accepted what I said and thought it might be similar to how she felt about me.’
‘I’m so glad. You both deserve some happiness. How long ago was it that your first wife died?’
‘Almost four years ago. It will be four years in September.’
‘It’s almost three years now since Miriam died. You know about Miriam don’t you?’
‘Yes, poor thing. And I think a suicide is more difficult to get over than any other type of death, even a death in battle. It seems such a betrayal somehow, such a failure of love.’
‘Yes. Poor Josi. I think he is still tormented by that. Graham, why do you think May has broken off her engagement to Tom? Have you any thoughts about that?’
‘Perhaps, looking back on her stay with us, she found us altogether too wild and strange. It took me quite a long time to get used to the Welsh and the Welsh way of life. And I was Scottish, a nearer clan altogether. The English are very unemotional and insular, I’ve found. Anyway, I’m glad you’re going to try to find out something else from her. Things really understood are easier to accept. Anyway, you’re a dear good girl and a great support to us all. Catrin loves you as a sister, I know that and I’ve always been very fond of you. Here we are. Now, take good care of yourself.’
On the way up to London, Lowri tried to work out a possible reason for May’s failure of nerve, and try as she might she still feared that it was something to do with her, possibly her low status in the family. It was that unease that had made her determined to travel to London.
She had a hot, tedious journey, with a very long delay at Oxford, and didn’t arrive at Paddington until six that evening. By that time, she was full of worries and doubts. Whatever is May going to think when I arrive at their house? What if she doesn’t invite me to spend the night? Where shall I go? Will she tell me where to find a small inexpensive hotel? Have I got enough money? Hotels in London are hideously expensive, I know that. Oh, I wish I was at home in Cefn Hebog.
Chapter eight
At last baby Rachel seemed to have got the hang of sucking and Catrin was feeling far more relaxed. From the blackness that had engulfed her she emerged smiling wanly, ready to wonder at May’s defection and at Lowri’s bravery in travelling to London to tackle her.
‘Look, Tom, look at her little blue eyelids, she’s really quite pretty, isn’t she, when she’s asleep and not crying, look at the curl of her lips, look at those perfect little fingernails. And now, look, she’s frowning in her sleep. Oh, Sidan bach. That was what Nano used to call me. Tom, you do love her, don’t you?’
‘Of course I do. I wish you’d stay here for a few months at least, so that I can really get to know her. A child’s uncle, her mother’s brother, was his closest relative in ancient Welsh culture. The identity of the father might well be unknown so the mother’s eldest brother took over his responsibilities.’
There was a long silence while they both gazed at the baby.
‘Were you as surprised as I was about that letter from May?’ Tom eventually asked her.
‘Of course I was. Graham and I spent ages trying to think of a rational explanation.’
‘But these things are never rational, are they? Falling in love is never rational. As soon as I met May I just seemed to be struck with the awareness that she and I belonged together. I never gave it any thought. It was as simple as that. A thunderbolt. I know some men try to start a relationship before being sent abroad simply because they want someone to write to them but I didn’t even have to ask May to write. I took it for granted that she would.’
‘And she seemed so ready to become part of the family,’ Catrin said. ‘We were so happy for you. What could have upset her?’
‘She must have decided she couldn’t marry a man who’s lost a leg and is also subject to terrifying nightmares. It’s not altogether surprising, is it?’
‘Yes it is. Having seen you two together, I find it completely surprising…. Oh, Tom, she’s waking up. Oh, heavens, she’s going to start crying again. Oh, just listen to her. She’s been fed and bathed and changed, what can she want now? Oh Tom, please help me. Oh, if only Lowri was here. Or Nano. They knew exactly what to do with Mari Elen.’
The tiny baby’s pathetic little bleats, laa-laa-laaa, seemed to fill the whole room, the whole world.
‘What about your little nursemaid?’
‘Molly? She was up for such a long time last night, I made her go to bed for a rest.’
‘Babies do cry; you just have to accept it. If only I could march about with her over my shoulder – babies like that. But I’m good for nothing.’
‘Please don’t start to feel sorry for yourself. You’ve been so wonderful.’
‘We’ll send for Mrs Prosser. Ring the bell for Maud, she’ll fetch her in no time.’
‘That’s a good idea, Tom. Oh, I feel so hopeless.’
‘Well, you’re a very new mother… but please don’t start feeling sorry for youself,’ he added pointedly.
‘Maud, could you please go over to ask Mrs Prosser to come here as soon as she can. We can’t seem to stop this little thing crying.’
‘Let me take her to the kitchen, Mister Tom. I think she’d like to be swaddled tight in a shawl. I know it’s very warm, Miss Catrin, but small babies always seem to feel safer wrapped in a shawl. Let me do it. I’ll walk about with her. What a dear little doll she is. She’s very like you, Miss Catrin.’
‘My goodness, you’ve quietened her,’ Tom said. ‘Maud, how do you know so much about babies?’
‘I’ve got seven younger brothers and sisters, Mister Tom, the latest not so much older than this one.’
‘Maud, will please you ask Mrs Hopkins whether she can spare you to look after baby Rachel this morning? I’ve sent Molly to have a little rest because she was up such a lot in the night.’
‘She’ll get used to it, Miss Catrin. I have.’
‘How old are you, Maud?’
‘Turned seventeen now, Mr Tom.’
‘And you must find the work here very hard?’
‘Oh no. This is a good place, Hendre Ddu, everybody knows that. We have comfortable, shop-bought beds and as much food as we want. I wouldn’t be anywhere else.’
‘You’re a good girl, Maud.’
Catrin and Tom were both exhausted after their five-minute ordeal with the baby. Now that she was quiet and in another room, nothing else seemed to matter quite as much.
‘Seven children as well as Maud,’ Catrin murmured at last. ‘I’m definitely only having one.’
‘Things will seem very different in a few years,’
Tom said.
‘I wonder whether things will come right for me,’ he added afterwards. ‘I don’t think so. It seemed too good to be true.’
‘May was lovely but no better than you deserve. You’ve been through so much.’
‘You’ve been through quite a lot yourself, haven’t you, one way or another? How could I have been so blind? I had no idea you and Edward cared for each other.’
Catrin stared at him:
Mae’r esgyd fach yn gwasgu,
Mewn man nas gwyddoch chi.
Do you remember that song? I sang it – unaccompanied – in the school eisteddfod one year. Won first prize, too. Poor Edward and poor Rose. She lost him too. I wonder how she is? I’d like to meet her. I’ve had two or three letters from her.’
‘Did she ever find out about Edward’s feelings for you?’
‘Yes. He wanted to make a clean breast of everything before that last battle. I think he had a premonition that he was going to be killed.’
‘So many of us were, especially in that first year, that first big offensive at Ypres. Everything that could go wrong, did. There was so much quite unbelievable incompetence. Oh, I’m lucky to be alive and out of it.’
‘I’m so glad you’re back here safe and sound,’ Catrin said. ‘I’m so fond of you, Tom. I never used to be, but I am now.’ She put her hand on his arm.
When Josi and Mari Elen came back from their morning at Cefn Hebog they found Catrin much calmer and the baby fast asleep. To their surprise, Mari Elen had also chosen to have a nap on the sofa, a thing she hadn’t done for months.
‘She’s been very active, fair play,’ Josi said, ‘but I think she also doesn’t like not being the centre of attraction and wants to be a baby again. Tom was the same. When you were born, he even started to wet the bed again, I remember.’
‘Well, thanks for that,’ Tom said.
‘You know I’ve been thinking a lot about Nano,’ Catrin said quickly. ‘I’m not really happy with your explanation of that money she had. Yes, maybe she had some affair with our grandfather, but I can’t believe she took money from him. That would have made her what she would have called “a wicked woman”. Like the ones in the Bible. You know, “She lieth in wait for him at every corner and sayeth unto him, Come, I have peace offerings with me.”’
‘Is that in the Bible?’ Josi asked. ‘I don’t think we have that in the Welsh version or I’d have found it as a boy. We lads used to spend a lot of time in Sunday school searching for the interesting bits…. It was educational,’ he added.
‘I tend to agree with you, Catrin,’ Tom said. ‘I was thinking along the same lines myself when I was lying awake last night and trying not to think about May. But I can’t come up with any other explanation. Not for five hundred pounds.’
‘Unless he left it to her in his will. Because she’d turned down offers of marriage, for instance, and chosen to stay with Mother when she was very young. He might have wanted to repay her loyalty.’
‘But five hundred sovereigns would have been excessive,’ Josi said. ‘He was his father’s son, after all. Not an out-and-out tyrannical miser like old Thomas Morgan I grant you, but a miserable old fellow all the same. Trust me, I know. I had plenty of dealings with him. Fifty pounds in his will I could just about believe in, but not five hundred. Never.’
‘And when I got into debt in Oxford that time, I can’t believe that Nano wouldn’t have let me have twenty sovereigns if she had all that.’
‘But she might have considered that spoiling you. She was very keen on teaching us right and proper principles, wasn’t she? I’m going to look through her papers again. Lowri put them all together, so you can help me, Tom, this afternoon.’
‘It will help pass the time, I suppose,’ he said, without much enthusiasm. ‘I wonder when we can expect Lowri back?’
‘I’m very anxious about her,’ Josi said, ‘don’t you start. She’s never been further than Carmarthen before, and she didn’t enjoy that. She’s like me, not happy unless she has fields and trees around her.’
After dinner – and Mari Elen had brought herself to the table as soon as she’d heard the sound of cutlery – and when the baby had had another long but fairly successful feed, Catrin went up to Miss Rees’ bedroom and brought down the large cardboard box Lowri had filled with her mementoes: drawings, letters and cards. Finding the drawings, all by Catrin or Tom at various stages, was like coming across an old diary of their lives; they could remember the occasions they had been asked to record: a new puppy, a new pony, a birthday party, a snow storm, Christmas and New Year’s Day. In some of the old letters the writing was faded and yellow, but most of them were just about decipherable. There were long letters from their mother ‘to my beloved Nano’ whenever she was on holiday and later when she was at boarding school in Malvern and very homesick. They were all highly interesting to her children, but they came across nothing referring in any way to the mysterious money.
Though Molly had got up before dinner, so that Catrin could feel quite easy about the baby, they both felt too tired to finish the whole collection.