One Crow Alone (18 page)

Or any man's.

Or woman's either.

And so we let her follow him. Like on that other night. With nothing said and not much understood. Trailing behind him, deep and weary in the virgin snow.

 

23

A man—Callum Gourty was his name—came in through the door of a low, stone-built farmhouse with a pile of firewood in his arms. He knelt down and began to chock stack the logs beside a stove.

“I'm going over to Rathged tomorrow, Mum. See how they're getting on. You want to come?”

“Bethan'll be back soon, won't she?”

“And?”

“I've got eyes in my head, Callum,” his mother said. “A man doesn't pretend
not
to see a pretty woman unless he's keen on her.”

Callum laughed. “Hard to remember what she looks like.” He threw a few logs onto the fire. The burning heat reddening his face.

Mrs. Gourty lowered herself into an armchair. “Well, I remember what you were like when she was here last summer. By the way, we're near out of sugar. And salt. When's the supply truck coming down to the Dolgellau base?”

“Tomorrow. I'm getting some things for Bran and Anwen too.”

“Well, let's hope the worst of the weather has passed us by now.”

“Huw Thomas came by this morning,” Callum said. “Lost some sheep in the storm. Trying to get the carcasses out of the snow before the ravens pick them to pieces. He bought a new pony off me for the job.”

“Did he pay good money? There are no flies on Huw Thomas.”

“Said he'd pay in spring when the sheep go on the boat to Liverpool.”

“Well, don't forget we'll be needing more candles,” said Mrs. Gourty, sitting back in the chair.

Callum stood up from the fire and lugged a saddle onto the kitchen table. There was a pot of grease and a rag, and he began wiping the sweat and hairs from the padding on the underside, then pulled off the stirrup leathers and undid the buckles.

“So you'll come with me to Rathged tomorrow then, Mum?” he said, turning the saddle over.

“Of course I will. It'd be good to see Anwen and Alice.” Mrs. Gourty rubbed her thick knees. Stared into the fire. “Anwen's as capable as anyone, but she's getting on. I worry about her. Loves that child more than her own self. It's a hard job for an old woman.”

“You shouldn't worry so much, Mum—just fetch the sloe gin from the cupboard.”

“Wouldn't mind seeing the first snowdrops sticking their silly heads out of the snow either. Could take them down to the church in Dolgellau. For Dad.”

“You stay there. I'll get you a glass. Snowdrops will be out soon enough. Don't worry about that.”

Callum put down his rag and wiped his hands on his trousers. He made his way across the brick floor of the low kitchen and opened the simple cross-braced door to the larder. They had enough supplies for a while yet: onions, flour, pasta, some long-life milk, the big hare he'd shot hanging from the hook. And high up on the shelf was the sloe gin. He took it down.

What would happen if Mum got ill? Really ill. He thought about what Huw Thomas had said—sitting over the table yesterday morning—talking in his gravelly Welsh voice.

“Oil's at seven hundred a barrel now, Gourty. Seven hundred! Can't afford to be buying any diesel next winter. Maybe just keep enough by for the generator. You could probably make a fortune selling your ponies, good hardy Welsh ponies like you've got. People will need them if it carries on like this. But your mother isn't getting any younger, is she. Maybe you should think about moving to the city. It's no good lifting your petticoats
after
pissing, is it? Now. Money for the pony in spring. That a deal then, Gourty?”

Callum smiled to himself and poured the glass of sloe gin for his mother.

“Do you hear that noise, Callum?” she said from the chair.

He handed her the drink.

“What?”

“That—”

A low drone in the sky outside. Growing louder.

He strode quickly to the front door, opened it up, and stepped out on the porch. Dusk was approaching. The sinking sun coloring the old stones of the house. The horizon was streaked with long mossy clouds, and the last light cast shadows on the snow-covered hill that fell down to the woods beyond the barn.

Callum looked up. The droning was almost overhead now. A crow rose, startled from the treetops, dark wings hauling it skyward for a moment, then it tumbled low and out of sight.

And then they passed. Two large army cargo planes, stout gray fuselages looming over the trees on the hillside. A pony neighed in fright on the other side of the barnyard.

The roaring passed over. His mother clutched at his side.

“Look. They're dropping something out of the back!”

She was right. Large bale-like bundles dropped from the rear. They watched the droning planes disappear over the white peaks of Cader Idris, far away to the west.

“You best ride down to the base tomorrow and find out. Before we go over to Rathged. Aye, that's a good idea. Now let's get this door shut. You're letting out all the heat. And you need to feed the ponies.”

“I know, Mum, I know.” And Callum Gourty stuck his feet into his Wellingtons and tramped across the yard to the hay barn. Thinking about it all.

It's no good lifting your petticoats
after
pissing, is it?

He lifted a bale onto the wheelbarrow, the twine cutting into his palms.
Maybe take a boat trip up to Liverpool come the spring, sell some ponies.
He threw the hay over the rails. Leaned over the stable door. Rubbed a few warm noses in the darkness. Smelled the pony smell rising up from the deep litter of the barn.

Soon as the weather cleared. Go and have a sniff about town. Think about what Huw Thomas had said. Maybe it was madness—staying out here all winter.

“Callum”—there was a shout from the house. “Callum, it's the news on the radio. Get in quick if you don't want to miss it.”

Mum using up the batteries again. Still, at least there was a signal.

He made his way back across the darkened barnyard to the house—boots crunching in the snow.

Yes, a lot to think about.

*   *   *

“Well. Charles is dead.” Mrs. Gourty shifted in her seat. “Suppose it'll be William's turn now. Can't see how they're going to have much of a coronation with all the trouble though.”

Callum sat opposite her in the high-backed wooden chair, his socked feet stretched out by the fire.

“It's the least of our worries if they've started shooting people on the streets—”

“Do you think they'll send the trucks to Dolgellau if they close the wind farm? What will we do if that stops? It's our lifeline in the winter. Barmouth's so far.'

They were quiet as a log fell in the fire. The glowing cubes of charcoal slumping in the grate.

“Maybe we should think of getting out. Going to Liverpool,” said Callum. “Or Manchester. Soon as spring comes.”

His mother was very still. She looked over at her son. Not made to be stuck in the city.

“Can't leave the ponies, Callum,” she said with a firm smile. “I'm as fit as I've ever been. It'll be spring soon. And all this nonsense will die down. It's only a bad winter.”

Callum looked at her. “Ten bad winters, Mum.”

But she saw that he wanted to believe her.

 

24

Frozen to the marrow from hours of wading through knee-deep snow, Magda slid down a steep verge between a line of rotten ash trees. She fell, tumbling in a long disused runnel.

Ivan helped her up, wind whipping the flaps of his coat.

“I can't feel my feet anymore,” she said, teeth chattering.

He pulled her close. Shouted above the wind: “There are some trees. It is not far. Look. Under the hill. We will stop in there.”

He helped her through the drifts and grabbed at branches in the hedgerow on the other side of the track, pulling her across a shallow-ditched verge.

A dark woodland spiked far off against the white. On they crept, strength fading, cheeks stinging with cold. The hard boots of the boy from the park rubbed at her frozen, blistered feet. Would Ivan never let her rest?

They stopped at last in the fringes of the wood, floundered under the lee of the trees, branches whipping ominously above.

Magda pulled the matches from her pocket, barely able to feel her fingers. “We must light a fire. I don't care who sees it.”

“Not yet,” he said, taking the matches gently from her hand.

“Please. I can't go any further.”

But Ivan trudged ahead into the branch-fingered dimness.

An old stone wall poked out of the snow. He climbed over it onto a track between the tree trunks. Two weather-beaten posts loomed in the darkness. He approached them and peered up at the snow-spattered name carved upon the old gray stone.

RATHGED FARM

He passed between the gateposts, his lone figure a small, dark shadow against the white. Something swept up through the trees. A whir of wings.

And he saw ahead of him, against a gentle hill, the woodland had been cleared. And there it stood.

A house.

Faint light at a window.

He watched it for some time, then turned and hurried back under the trees.

“Magda, get up. There is a house.”

*   *   *

Rathged Farm was low and rambling. It had been built from stone blocks laid deep in the walls and dressed neat around windows and doors. A solid bulwark against the incessant winds and soaking Welsh rains. Outhouses were tumbled at one end of the building in an odd mishmash of weathered oak lintels and stepped slate roofs that clearly ran around the back of the dwelling to some sort of yard.

Save for the addition of a corrugated-tin porch, the house itself was in no way eccentric, with small, square windows and thick barred panes, the upper ones scowling like dark eyes under mean eaves. It was a house that had built itself of the landscape and a long tradition of restraint that brooked no decorative overhang or ceiling higher than a man might need to stand under. No slate had been split or timber sawn to please man's eye.
Just get the house up quick. But warmth you must have
—and narrow chimneys poked up from each end of a snow-rounded roof. From one of these broken chimney pots came a dribble of smoke, beaten every which way by the howling wind that cut and tumbled from the hillside.

Magda and Ivan came closer. The hint of a light glowed behind a dirty windowpane, overgrown rhododendrons thrashed around the door and rattled on the porch. Ivan lifted the knocker, and with one quick glance at Magda he rapped three times.

*   *   *

The muffled sound of barking.

A wait in the tumbling snow.

A pulling back of bolts.

It was a man who opened the door: an old man, and not too tall. But he was not frail. Not a bit of it. Thick homemade socks were pulled over his patched trousers, the fronts of which were worn to a sheen. A bulky sweater, darned at both cuffs, frayed over his hands—and to complete the look of dishevelment, a pair of heavy-soled slippers anchored him to the doormat.

There was a dog—evidently the source of the barking, wheezing now as its tail slapped at the old man's legs. It was a portly, ancient collie, pulling back its lip out of habit.

“What do you want?” the old man grunted, hanging back suspiciously in his dark porch. Then the man saw. Without a word he let the strangers inside and closed the door firmly behind them. As they squeezed into a dingy hallway, the smell of house—a strange new smell, of other people, and dog, and wood, and cloth, and plaster; a sharp, slightly pungent smell, and not altogether pleasant—flooded their senses.

Dirty wellies and slippers spilled out onto a worn rug by the door: coats, hats, waterproof capes, and bulky sweaters hung several to a hook on the wall. An old woman peered from the dimness of the hallway, curling gray hair framing her face.

The man picked up a candlestick from among a collection of ceramic dogs neatly arranged on a small table. He held the flickering light up.

“Where the bloody hell have you two come from then?”

Magda's head swam. Blood sank to her feet. A sound like water in her ears.

“Bran,” the old woman cried out, “Bran. Quick. The girl's falling—”

*   *   *

With candlelight guttering on the whitewashed walls, Ivan followed the beckoning hands up the creaking stairs.

*   *   *

A door was opened. Voices talked in hushed whispers. But Magda barely heard them. Let herself be laid on a bed.

“Babula?”

The spirits from the forest crept up.

She felt them on her chest. Could feel the sharpness of their fingers pricking her clothing.

Why did you leave the village?

Ha! Put your left shoe on your right foot and your right shoe on your left foot
—

Brunon? Brunon Dudek?

A terror filled her. Her eyes would not open. Her hand could not move.

She was awake, but knew she was dreaming. Wanted the dream to stop. But still her arm would not move.

It lay cold on the snow.

So cold.

She felt Crow's hard claws on her chest. Her fingers twitched.

Crow screeched, wings beating around her face, feathers scratching her skin. It cawed again.

“No invite, bitch.”

The crow no longer a crow.

That grimacing mouth, breathing on her. It held up broken fingers. Laughed.

“We're gonna have a little tumble—”

She saw it now. That startled lifeless face in the snow. Yes—it was a lifeless face, blood at the ear where her blow had struck.

She struggled. Lashed out with her arms.

*   *   *

“Magda—wake up, it's just a dream.”