Longing (34 page)

“Perhaps it can,” she said. “Are you going to the meeting at chapel tomorrow night? Huw told me about it. There is a chance, perhaps, for something to be achieved peacefully and amicably.”

“He is clever, I grant him that,” Owen said. “He thinks to quieten us with trivialities and make us forget the greater injustices we have suffered for centuries.”

Siân sighed. “I am going back home, Owen,” she said. “There is nothing to say after all.”

“Siân.” He stopped on the hillside and faced her. “Siân, you don't know how it hurt me, seeing you helpless on the ground like that, watching what happened to you.”

“On the other hand,” she said, “you do know how it hurt me, Owen. You learned how much the next day. Why did you take it so quietly?”

She was surprised and somewhat alarmed to see tears spring to his eyes.

“I would have lain there for twice as many lashes,” he said, “if they could have taken away the memory of yours, Siân. I felt I had deserved them, though I was not ashamed of what I had done. And I am not ashamed.”

She bit her upper lip.

“I betrayed my love for you,” he said. “For that I will never forgive myself. But sometimes something has to be put before love. I would ask you to forgive my betrayal, but it somehow does not seem appropriate. I would do it again, you see, if it seemed necessary. You took it bravely,
fach.
I was proud of you—if I have a right to be proud.”

Even now—oh, even now, she thought, looking up at him, she wished she loved him. Owen! And she was no better than he. No better at all.

It had to be said. “I betrayed you too, Owen,” she said.

His eyes widened. “It was you who told him after all, then?” he asked.

She shook her head. “In a personal way,” she said. “I betrayed you in a personal way.”

She saw comprehension dawn in his eyes before he nodded and turned away. “Well, I never did that at least, Siân,” he said, beginning to walk back toward the town, his hands shoved into his pockets. “I loved you. Past tense and present tense. I won't ask for details. I have no right to know now and don't want to know. Perhaps we can forgive each other and learn to live together in the same town without hatred.”

“Yes,” she said.

He stopped outside the gate into the back garden. “I won't come any farther,” he said. “I have no stomach for a brawl with Emrys.”

“Owen,” she said, “you are not going to go ahead with plans for the march, are you? You are not secretly making weapons?”

He laughed rather bleakly. “You don't think I am going to answer those questions, do you, Siân?” he asked. “When you are his woman?”

“I suppose,” she said, “that like you, I have no right to know now and do not really want to know. Be careful, Owen. I don't want to see you hurt. I cared for you. I care for you.”

He ran one knuckle along her jawline to her chin. “Good-bye,
cariad,
” he said. He hesitated before leaning forward and kissing her softly on the forehead.

“Good-bye, Owen.”

She stood at the gate for a few minutes watching him walk away toward his own house. He did not look back. She swallowed against a lump in her throat. And then she continued to gaze along the empty street as if she was looking along the avenue of her own future. Sometimes it was hard not to give in to self-pity. Sometimes it seemed as if there was nothing and no one left to live for.

*   *   *

Siân
was rolling out dough on the table when someone knocked on the door the following afternoon. She let her grandmother answer the summons. But she straightened up quickly, startled, when she heard the voice.

Her grandmother looked back at her, tight-lipped. “It is for you, Siân,” she said. Although it was a chilly day outside, she left the door open and did not invite Sir John Fowler inside.

“Siân?” he said. He looked uncomfortable and embarrassed.

She had thought many times about the strange dream she had had at Glanrhyd Castle. Perhaps she had known all the time that it had not really been a dream. She knew it now, and her cheeks grew hot at the memories. She pushed at a stray lock of hair with the back of one wrist.

“May I speak with you?” he asked.

Her grandmother was poking furiously at the fire, which did not need poking, Siân could see.

Siân looked down at her floury hands and at the half-rolled dough on the table. “I'll wash my hands and get my cloak,” she said.

Her grandmother looked speakingly up at her, but Siân ignored the look. He had come, she thought. He had come. It seemed she had waited all her life for him to come to her. But she hated him. She despised him. She wanted nothing to do with him. She had never been able to think of him as her father. She could not do so now. Her heart beat painfully as she washed her hands in silence, took the pins from her hair and shook it loose, and took her cloak from behind the door. Sir John had nodded at her words and closed the door. He was waiting outside.

“Gran,” Siân said.

“I will finish rolling the dough,” Gwynneth said without looking at her. “Go, you.”

Sir John Fowler had ruined Gran's daughter, Siân thought, and caused her to be driven from chapel and from Cwmbran. It was no wonder that Gran had no love for him. As Siân herself did not. She hesitated, but there was nothing to be said. She left the house without another word.

“Shall we walk?” he suggested. “Along the river?” He did not offer his arm or smile. Of course he did neither. He was as cold and as impersonal as he had ever been.

“How is your back?” he asked as they walked.

“Still quite sore,” she said. “Iestyn still has the marks on his back. I suppose I will too for a long time. Perhaps always.”

“You have no job?” he asked. “Craille told me that you resigned as his daughter's governess.”

“Yes,” she said. “It seemed the right thing to do.”

“Siân,” he said as they were walking past the ugliest section of the river, next to the coal mine, “you must let me support you. I'll buy you a house somewhere and give you an allowance. Or I'll find you employment somewhere if you would prefer. If you want a good
husband, I'll see what I can do. Whatever you wish. I'll do whatever you wish.”

“I don't want anything from you,” she said quietly, “thank you.” And yet her heart cried out to her that she lied.

He did not pursue the matter. He was quiet for a while. “Why did you not come to me for help?” he asked. “I have heard that they gave you the customary three days' warning, Siân. You must know Scotch Cattle well enough to realize that they are not to be defied. Why did you not come to me?”

She looked at him in some amazement. “You are the last person I would have thought of turning to,” she said quite truthfully.

His mouth and his jawline tightened. “I don't know where you came from, Siân,” he said. “Apart from the fact that you look like your mother, I can see nothing of her in you. You are cold to the very heart and always have been. Even as a very young child.”

“Well, then,” she said, shivering inside her cloak, “I must resemble my other parent, I suppose.”

They had passed the mine and were in pleasant countryside if they did not look back. Siân was reminded of the Sunday afternoon walk she had taken there with Alexander and Verity weeks before.

“You resented me,” he said, “because I was not married to your mother.”

“I did not even realize for many years,” she said, “that there was something odd about that. I think I always hoped that you would look at me as you looked at her. I think that as a child I used to watch for you for hours and days on end. And then when you came you had eyes only for her. You used to disappear upstairs with her and I had to amuse myself downstairs. In time, I suppose, I stopped watching for you.”

“You used to hide from me,” he said, “and glower at me. You used to throw down the toys I brought you and deliberately play with some old thing your mother had made for you. You were cold.”

“They were bribes,” she said, “to keep me quiet while you spent your hour or so with Mam.”

“They were gifts, Siân,” he said. “You were my little girl.”

She sighed. “Why did you come now?” she asked. “And why did you come to Glanrhyd Castle? I didn't dream it, did I?”

“Craille sent to tell me what had happened,” he said.

“Did he?” She turned her head sharply to look at him. “And you came.”

“I came,” he said, “as I did not come when your husband died, Siân, or when my grandson was stillborn. I stayed away from you then because you had rejected me and put me from your life. But I saw you that day at the castle when my wife and daughter were with me. It had been so long. This time I could not stay away.”

Siân closed her eyes briefly and drew in a breath of chilly air. “What did you call me?” she asked. “What was dream and what was reality?”

“Your mother used to use the Welsh word,” he said. “I could never bring myself to use it or even the English equivalent out loud. You hated me. But in my heart you were always my little one, Siân.”

She felt absurdly close to tears. “Then why did you never say so?” she asked. She was surprised to hear her voice shaky and accusing. “Did you not understand that when a child is cold and sullen, she is crying out for love?”

“I didn't know much about children, Siân,” he said. “I was afraid of you. I used to dream of holding you on my lap, your head against my shoulder while I told you stories. But you would have nothing to do with me.”

“Oh,” she said, “Mam always used to say we were two peas in a pod, you and I. I used to think the idea was absurd.”

“Do you remember what you called me at the castle?” he asked her softly.

“Yes,” she said. “Absurd coming from a twenty-five-year-old woman, wasn't it?”

“You made me cry,” he said.

“Sir John Fowler crying,” she said. “It seems a contradiction in terms. Except that I remember you cried when Mam died. Alexand— The marquess had given me a double dose of laudanum. I was very heavily drugged. I called you Dada, didn't I?”

“Yes, my little one,” he said.

“Oh, don't.” She looked sharply away from him. “You cannot know how much I need love and tenderness at the moment. I get them from Gran and Grandad and Emrys and from Gwyn's family too. But I am weak at present. I crave more. I crave—”

“A father's love?” he said. “You have it, Siân.”

“Oh.” She stopped walking and spread her hands over her face. “Did you know why I was whipped? Did you know that Owen was one of the Scotch Cattle who took me away? Did you know that Alex—, that Alexander fought him up on the mountain in front of all the men of Cwmbran over it? Did you know that I love Alexander and left my employment at the castle because I cannot be his mistress as Mam was yours? Did you know that my heart is breaking? Did you know how much I needed you?”

She could not remember his ever holding her in his arms. The touch of him was unfamiliar and the smell of him. She had never before really noticed that they were almost the same height. She fit comfortably against him. Her head fit comfortably on his shoulder. On Sir John Fowler's shoulder. She closed her eyes very tightly.

“Dada,” she whispered.

“Siân.” He rocked her. “My little one.”

He held her hand when they walked on. A broad, square hand. An older man's hand. A father's hand.

“Tell me what I may do for you, then,” he said. “A cottage somewhere quiet in the country, Siân? Where I can visit you sometimes and be the father I have always failed at being? Or a job? Or a husband?”

She did not want to leave Cwmbran. Cwmbran had always been her dream of home. It had haunted her during her school years in England. It had been the obvious place of refuge after her mother's death even though she had never lived there and did not know her grandparents. But the dream had turned sour. Owen lived in Cwmbran. People who had suspected her of being an informer and perhaps still did lived in Cwmbran. And Alexander lived there and had said that he would continue to do so.

“A teaching job?” she said. “I like teaching. I think I do well at it. Somewhere away from this valley. But not outside Wales. My spirit would die if I had to leave my country. Perhaps down Cardiff way? Or even Swansea? Can you find me something?”

He squeezed her hand. “I'll find you something,” he said. “You'll be happy, Siân. I'll see to it that you are happy, my little one.”

She laughed suddenly with genuine amusement. “I am almost as tall as you,” she said.

He laughed—she could not remember his laughing before. “But I see you with a father's eye,” he said. “If you were a foot taller than me, Siân, you would still be my little one.”

They walked on quietly. She felt rather as if someone had applied cooling cloths and ointments to her raw and battered emotions, Siân thought, looking across at the man who had fathered her and now held her hand.

Alexander had sent for him. He had known that she would need him. And he had come, her father.

He had come.

H
E
was going to have to do something about Verity. She had become sullen and bad-tempered. She was not willing to do any of her usual indoor activities. Nor was she willing to go outside. Even when he suggested walks, she would not go with him. “No” had become her favorite word—spoken sharply and petulantly more often than not. When he had suggested sending to London for another governess, she had had a screaming tantrum. When he had offered to send her to her grandmother for a few weeks, she had locked herself in her bedroom and refused for longer than eight hours to come out.

There was so much else to occupy his time and his energies. The meeting at the chapel was more poorly attended than he had hoped, though both men and women came. He knew the reason. A meeting had been called on the mountain for the same night. Barnes had found out about it and told him. But Alex had told them they were free to meet and make their own decisions. He made no attempt either to stop or to spy on the meeting.

It was a Chartist meeting. They had not given up, then. They must still be planning their march. He had just hoped that it would be peaceable, that there would be no weapons involved. But he did not know for sure. Weapons had been seized in other places, he read in his letters from London, and there were many caves in the hills that would be suitable for both making and storing weapons.

One fact at least relieved him. All the men of Cwmbran did not attend the Chartist meeting, and yet the following nights were
blessedly free of Scotch Cattle howls. Perhaps at least he had been able to persuade the men that each one should be left to make up his own mind. Unanimity was not always necessary for the success of an enterprise.

In the meantime he was busy having the records of both the works and the mine for ten years back gone over carefully to identify those men and women who had been forced permanently from work by injuries sustained on the job or by the coughing sickness that seemed to attack miners more than other workers. Those people were to be put on pensions for life. Pensions were to be given to widows of men who had died on the job, unless or until the widow remarried.

There was so much to do. If it were not for Verity, Alex thought, he would be able to bury himself in work and perhaps forget his personal unhappiness. But there was Verity, and when all was said and done, she was the most important person in his world. If he must hire a manager—someone different from Barnes—and take her back to England, then so be it. Perhaps it would be better for him to go back there, to treat Cwmbran only as a business enterprise—to keep control of it, but from a distance.

“You don't want to take a walk in the hills?” he asked Verity early one evening. “With Papa?”

“No,” she said, reaching for her doll but setting it down again almost immediately. “It is cold outside.”

“We can wrap up warm,” he said, “and see who has the brightest cherry nose when we come home.”

“No,” she said. “I don't want to go.”

Pouting and sullenness always made him impatient. He resisted the urge to stalk from the room and leave her to her misery. But they were out of character with Verity. He sat down on one of the nursery chairs and looked at her. Feeling his eyes on her, she snatched up her doll again and began to rock it without even watching it.

“Sweetheart,” he said, “what is it?”

He knew very well what. For more than a week he had been persuading himself that with the resilience of childhood she would
forget and return to her more normal sunny nature. But
he
could not forget. The ache inside him was still raw—it was pain more than ache.

“Nothing,” Verity said crossly. “I just don't want to go for a silly walk.”

“A book, then?” he asked. “Will you read to me? Or shall I read to you?”

The poor doll was tossed down onto the floor. “I don't want to do anything,” Verity said, and stared at him with hostile, unhappy eyes.

He looked back. The name had to be spoken. He did not want to say it. He did not want to think it, though for more than a week he had thought nothing else. “You are missing Mrs. Jones?” he asked.

“No!” Her eyes blazed for a moment. “I hate her. I don't ever want to see her again. She was not a good teacher.”

He inhaled slowly. “Why do you hate her?” he asked.

“Because she doesn't like me,” Verity said. “She went away without saying a word to me. But I don't care. I hate her anyway.”

He reached out a hand to her. “Come here,” he said.

She looked sullenly at his hand for a minute and then came to climb onto his lap. She set her face against his waistcoat and began to cry noisily. “Am I a bad girl?” she managed to jerk out. “I tried not to be a bad girl, Dada. She shouldn't hate me. I tried to be good. I hate her.”

He held her in the warm cocoon of his arms and kissed the top of her head. “I didn't tell you what happened to Mrs. Jones,” he said. “I thought you would be upset. I told you only that she was not feeling well that day she went to bed in one of the guest rooms. I think I had better tell you.”

“She didn't feel well because she didn't like me,” Verity said.

“No.” He kissed her head again. “Some wicked men had whipped her the night before and made her back all swollen and raw. Do you remember the wild animals you heard out in the hills one night?”

He told her about the Scotch Cattle and about what they had done to Siân and why.

“She went home,” he said at last, “because the people of this town would always have been suspicious of her if she had kept coming here, and she loves the people of Cwmbran.”

Verity was silent for a while. “Doesn't she love us, Papa?” she asked.

He closed his eyes and saw Siân naked below him on the bed, her body joined to his, her eyes soft and luminous with love. He felt as if a knife tip were needling at his heart.

“Yes,” he said, “she loves us. But she belongs with them.”

“And we don't, do we?” Verity said sadly.

That feeling of intense yearning with which he was becoming familiar was so strong on him for a moment that it was almost like despair.

“Yes, we do,” he said, “but in a different way. We live here in Glanrhyd Castle and are very wealthy. Papa owns all this land and pays the wages of the people who work here. I am responsible for seeing to it that their lives are comfortable. We are English.”

“But I speak some Welsh,” she said. “Mrs. Jones said that soon I would be able to speak it fluently.”

He laughed softly. “My little Welsh Verity,” he said. “but we will always be a little apart, sweetheart. It is part of the price we pay for the privileges of our life. But we can always work for the respect and loyalty and even affection of our people.”

She seemed comforted and fetched him some of her books a short while later. She read him one and he read her three. When he tucked her into bed, she seemed quite her old self.

Yet much later in the night Alex was woken by his valet, who had been sent by Verity's nurse. Verity was crying inconsolably and the woman was beside herself, not knowing what to do. Alex dismissed her when he reached his daughter's bedroom, and scooped the child up and sat with her as he had on a previous occasion, a blanket wrapped warmly about her.

“What is this all about?” he asked, kissing her. “A pain?”

“I want Mrs. J-o-n-e-s,” she wailed.

God. A thousand devils. Damnation. So did he.

“Mrs. Jones will be sleeping,” he said.

Her wailings increased in volume.

“I tell you what,” he said. “You stop crying and Papa will put you back to bed and tuck you in, and tomorrow I will take you to visit Mrs. Jones. How does that sound?”

She sniffed and hiccuped. “Will she see me?” she asked.

“If she is at home, I am quite sure she will,” he said.

“Will she come back here?” She looked up at him suddenly with reddened eyes and glistening cheeks.

“No,” he said, kissing her eyes one at a time. “But I think she will agree to let you visit occasionally. I'm sure she will, in fact.”

It was not quite the answer she had hoped for, but he could see that she was very tired. She settled her head against his shoulder and sighed. Though he could not see her face, he could tell five minutes later that she was asleep again. He held her close. He could not think of a warmer, more comforting feeling than to hold one's sleeping child in one's arms. To feel oneself so trusted. So loved. He set his head against the chair back and closed his eyes.

He had not seen her in more than a week. She had not come to the meeting in the chapel. He had not expected her to do so and had been disappointed when she had not. He had not once set eyes on her.

Siân!

He should not have let her go. He should have persuaded her to stay until her back was properly healed. He should have refused to allow her to leave her job. He should have pressed ahead with the impossibility, with the idea that had terrified him at the time and still terrified him now.

But no—he had been right to let her go. He could not possibly make her his wife. She was an ironworker's granddaughter, a coal miner's widow. She was illegitimate. It was unthinkable. He would never be able to take her back to England with him. She would not fit into his world. It was not that he would be ashamed of her, but it would be impossible for her. And here in Wales the lines seemed to be even more firmly drawn. He could not pull her over into the loneliness of his world.

But he needed her. His need for her was almost a tangible thing. He wondered if her need for him was as powerful. He wondered if she lay awake at nights longing for him, reliving those three occasions when they had come together.

Well, tomorrow he would take Verity to her and ask if his daughter could spend an hour with her. He would go back for her after the hour was over. For two brief spells he would be able to feast his eyes and his senses on Siân Jones. For two brief spells he would be able to torture himself.

Alex fell asleep, his daughter curled up warmly on his lap.

*   *   *

Siân
was on her knees on the floor, singing while she rubbed blacking into the grate. It was a hard and a dirty job, but she liked to be able to sit back on her heels every so often and admire the gleaming surface of what she had already done. She looked ruefully down at her blackened hands and smiled. Not so long ago blackened hands and face and hair and body had been the norm of her days. And yet now she was wrinkling her nose at a small area of dirt. She sang on and polished on.

It was not that she was feeling happy. She wondered if it would be possible ever to feel happy again. But life was reasserting itself, and life, when all was said and done, was worth living. She knew that from the ups and downs of past experience. And she had had more than her fair share of downs, it seemed.

Sir John Fowler—her father—was going to find her a teaching job. It would not be easy to find a good one since most of the teachers in Wales were men, but she trusted him to find her something suitable. He had sent her a note the day after her visit and a silver locket that had been her mother's. She wore it about her neck now despite the dirtiness of her job. Soon she would be moving away to a new job—there was a great emptiness in the pit of her stomach at the very thought. But there was also a welling of optimism. She would be able to start a new life.

She needed to get away and start afresh. It was painful now to live in Cwmbran. She dreaded coming face-to-face with Alexander,
yet it was bound to happen sooner or later if she stayed. And she did not want to live in the same town as Owen. She could never quite forgive him for what he had done to her or herself for what she had done to him. And yet there was a leftover affection for him that pained her. She had come so close to loving him. She had come so close to living the life she had always dreamed of living.

She would miss her family. And Iestyn. He had called on her the evening before and gone walking with her. She had not even known about the Chartist meeting up in the hills. She did not even know if Emrys or her grandfather had been to it—it was not so easy to know now that she slept upstairs. It seemed that everyone was being very careful to withhold from her any information that she might leak to someone who did not know, she thought rather bitterly. Iestyn had not attended it—he had gone to the meeting in the chapel instead. She did not ask him about it.

“Is the demonstration still planned, then?” she had asked him.

“Yes,” he had said. “It will be soon too, I think, Siân. I have heard that there are piles of iron-tipped pikes up in the caves and some guns.”

“Oh, Iestyn.” She had looked at him sharply. His face was rather pale. “There will be trouble.”

“I am afraid of it,” he had said, “though everyone insists that it will be peaceful, that the weapons are just for defense.”