One Crow Alone (23 page)

“Are you still working with that girl you like?”

“Yes. She's staying on for the summer though.”

“Do you think you'll still have a job to go back to?”

“I don't know.” Bethan kissed Alice on the head and smelled the child's hair. “I don't know if I'll go back this time.”

There was a moment of silence around the table.

“Well, that's the best news we've all heard in a long time,” said Anwen. “Isn't it?”

Callum reddened and mumbled in the affirmative.

But Bethan had begun to cry.

Anwen got up and put her arms around her daughter. Said quietly, “It's for the best, love. We don't want you to go away again.”

Bran looked down, embarrassed, his hands clasping his mug of tea.

Bethan sniffed and wiped at her red face. “It's getting so bad now. You don't know the half of it. People are talking about all sorts of things that might happen—and if I can't bring back a bit of money, who can?”

“Now come on, love. We'll find a way somehow, won't we, Bran?”

Bran nodded. “It's not the end of the world, Bethan. Just a few bad winters. Let's enjoy today without thinking about such things. Eh?”

“Magda made me snowshoes,” said Alice.

“Did she?” Bethan snuffled and tried to smile. “She made you snowshoes? Lucky you.”

Then she looked up at all the friendly faces around the table and burst once more into tears.

 

29

Magda had taken Mrs. Gourty's warning of rain quite seriously after all, so she excused herself and got on with the washing. Her hair was tied back and she was sweating a little with the exertion. For it was a fair bit of work pounding the sheets in the copper tub.

“They're not going to want us about now that
she's
back.”

She jumped at the sound of Ivan's voice. Wiped a strand of hair off her forehead with the back of her wet hand. “Ivan. I didn't hear you come in.”

“Well, they're not, are they?”

Magda picked up the empty bucket and went to the sink.

Ivan grabbed her arm. “They're not going to want us here, Magda.”

She stopped. “You don't know that, Ivan. Think of all the things we do for them. I don't know how they would manage without us.”

“Well, I don't want to sit here like a tame pigeon. Working for nothing except turnips.”

“How can you say that? They feed us turnips because that's all they've got, and they didn't need to. They could have told the soldiers. Left us out in the snow.”

“So we just stay here forever.”

“We are very lucky. You didn't hear what Bethan said about the city—”

“Lucky? I don't feel lucky. We can go now on this boat and get back to Poland, make some money. Maybe head east. Make a home somewhere the sun shines, and we won't have to wear ourselves out chopping logs and digging the earth. Look at your hands, Magda. Look at them.”

But she didn't. She looked up at his face. “I am happy here, Ivan. With you. It doesn't have to be forever. But for now it's good.”

“We came here to find your mother and you don't talk about that much anymore, do you?”

“Don't pretend you came here to help me find her, Ivan. You let me come with you because I had the money.”

“You know that's not true,” he said. “You know that is not the reason.” He pulled her close, but she was stiff in his arms. “I liked you the first time I saw you sweating away in the snow on the mountain. Never looking back. Remember? You didn't look back then.”

She set her face in defiance. “It's not me looking back, Ivan. It's you.”

And she pushed past him and went to the pump for more water.

Her hands shaking.

*   *   *

That afternoon, when the others returned, Magda sat at the table and listened with half her heart to Bethan's stories of the city. And when it was time enough she said goodnight to them all, and at last she made her way down the darkened corridor to her own kitchen.

It was very late by the time Ivan returned. Quietly through the back door. Hanging his bag on the hook.

He ate the stew.

Magda watched him with her still-shaking hands in her lap.

But he did not talk about Gulbekhian and going back.

And when they were in the darkness of their bed he was very soft and gentle with her and afterward he lay for a long time looking at the side of her face in the candlelight.

Havemercy
. He remembered her calling out in the forest. And how he had thought of helping her. Then finding her in Krakow. He had not needed her. Not even her money. It was only now that it came to him, came to him that things were not so simple within his heart: that, though she was drawn to him, he too was drawn to her.

“You'll always settle down and make a nest, won't you,” he said fondly. “Wherever you land. Even if it's just a couple of twigs in a bare tree.”

Magda turned her head, her hair rustling on the pillow. “Why do you say that?”

He closed his eyes and breathed in the smell of her.

“I love you, Magda,” he said.

It was the first time.

So easy it was for the demons to grow silent.

He loves you. And you love him. And everything will be all right.

And without a ripple now disturbing the pool, Magda fell asleep with her head on his shoulder at last.

 

 

But the new day would come.

 

*   *   *

It was barely light outside.

Paleness rimming about the hills.

A blackbird—
chee chee cheeee cheeee chee
—dipped past the window and woke Magda from her sleep.

She sat up in the bed. Queasy in her stomach.

Instinctively she felt for Ivan beside her.

The sheet was cold.

He has probably gone out to fetch wood.

She got up and pulled a blanket about her, stepped down the stairs, hand against the wall in the dimness.

The kitchen was empty. The faint lingering of warmth in the burnt-down stove. Table clean and tidied from the night before. The remains of last night's stew in the pot.

Smiling, she went to the door and unlatched it. Stood out on the damp step with the first birds singing.

“Ivan?” she called.

It had rained in the night. The long grass was wet with it.

“Ivan?”

The birds seemed so loud. The tiny leaves on the hawthorn coming now so fresh and green, sprays of white mayflowers among the matted branches and the spiders' webs glistening in the dew of the hedge.

There was no sign of him.

She went back inside, pulled the door, and looked behind it.

His bag was not there.

She tapped with her hand. His knife—gone from the shelf.

Maybe he has gone out for a hare?

But her heart beat like a drum as she hurried back up the stairs and knelt down on her knees by the bed, prizing frantically at the floorboard.

The board came away easily enough.

She rummaged with her hand. Maybe they were pushed further underneath.

But they were not.

The bundle of passports was gone.

And yet the roll of money. The last of the money for Bogdan Stopko's pony. She counted the notes. Two hundred and forty zloty. He had halved it.

It came to her in that instant.

She fell forward, bent over with her long hair pooling on the dark floorboards, head in her hands, thumbs pressing stars into her screwed-up eyes.

It came from the very depths of her quaking guts, without a bend in the river or any impediment, a pool that welled up from her simple heart and burst from behind her eyes and poured from her mouth in a cry that filled her head and her body and every single part of her.

Ivan had gone.

And she knew, because he had not told her, because he had crept away like a thief in the night leaving half the money, that he was not coming back.

She dragged herself up from the floor and leaned against the wall.

I love you, Magda.

Why why why?

And she saw herself. And not for the first time. A foolish country girl with hair smeared across her wet face.

This was the new day and what it had brought.

You had not told him, you had not told him.

And the tears came again and she crawled onto the bed.

And that is how Anwen found her, with the swollen-uddered cows calling out by the gate:

“Magda—the milking. It's seven already!”

 

SUMMER

Then the night grew dark as soot.

And words that Crow had spoken rang like Clappers in Bells.

“
If you but cry out once, my misery will be doubled
.”

And the Spirit of Faith sang from the Chimney and circled her head like a shadow of bats. It beat about her face and tangled in her hair and hung from the mantel with tiny sharp claws.

“Faith!” cawed Crow from its lofty perch. “Faith always sings in the dark.”

And still the girl was silent. Alone on that wide, wide bed as the flames in the fire grew low.

 

30

But the hands of the clock—the old long-case clock in the stone-flagged hallway at Rathged Farm—would not stop their working round: second by second, minute by minute, hour by hour, day by day.

The sun crept up, unveiled by those clouds that had swollen the stream and wet the slates on every roof for seven whole days.

Behind the fluttering, full-leafed apple trees below her window, Magda's sleep had been restless as usual.

She had woken early, enjoying, for that brief moment of deliverance, the light on the sill and the promise of a new day. But like every waking moment of calm, all her certainty had crumpled in a second like a castle of dust.

The sheet still bare beside her.

Dressing slowly, she went to the window and put her sad head against the pane.

Did she expect to see him down there, looking up at her window? Even now? Had she really waited so long?

*   *   *

She went out to the waiting cows in the milking shed. Their warm smell and prodding noses were her morning comfort now. When the urn was full of milk, she lugged it to the dairy, lifting the heavy latch with one hand and pushing her way inside with her elbow.

The room was cool and quiet with that sweet sour smell from the scrubbed benches. The bowls sat clean and washed from the day before.

She took out last night's milk and placed the new urn into the bucket of cold spring water and covered it with a cloth for the cream to rise.

The curd cheese that had been hanging in muslin bags was strained, and Magda filled clean bowls with it, sealing the tops with boiled cloth and wooden lids. She tied each bowl with string to make a handle on the top and layered them in sturdy boxes. The curd cheese always sold, and the hard cheese, the ones she could spare, fetched enough money to buy salt.

She had made twelve pairs of snowshoes from the hazel rods Bran cut for her, and they were tied in bundles by the door.

“You do that cleverly enough,” Bran had said. “But people forget the snow when the sun's shining. No one will buy them.”

“Yes they will,” Magda told him. “You'll see.”

But she hadn't really cared whether they would or not. The main thing was to keep busy. If that meant blistered palms from bending sticks, or sore feet from standing over the cheese, or aching arms from sweeping the kitchen floor, or fingers pricked from darning Alice's socks—it was all one to her.

She followed the day with these chores, chasing the hands of the clock until bedtime came around and sleep gave her some peace from thoughts of Ivan.

*   *   *

The crunch of wheels in the yard signaled Callum's arrival. He had come up to the house with the stocky pony, Mill Boy, hitched to the cart.

Magda came out to greet him, folding her apron in her hands. She looked over the rail at his bundles of sheepskins and jars of honey. “I'll bring the cheese out,” she said. “I've packed it in boxes. Where's your mother? Isn't she coming too?”

“She's not feeling too well, hasn't got over her cold yet.”

“I think I'll go with you then,” said Magda. “I can give you a hand and the change of scenery would be good.”

“What about Bethan?” said Callum, looking disappointed.

“I'll run in and ask her.” Magda smiled. “I'm sure Alice would enjoy the ride.”

*   *   *

And so it was that Callum Gourty went to market with two young women and an excited little girl sitting up beside him on the seat. He slapped the reins on the pony's back and they jolted off down the drive, out between the old stone gateposts of Rathged Farm and onto the overgrown lane that led down to Dolgellau.

The wheels rumbled and creaked over the narrow roads where mossy grass now clung to the tarmac and dandelions found purchase in a thousand cracks. And happy enough was Callum Gourty with Bethan Mortimer swaying beside him.

“It's been a good summer,” Bethan said. “Maybe we'll have an easy winter of it this year. It can't go on getting colder and colder, can it? Things will get back to normal—surely.”

Magda pulled Alice up onto her lap and held her little hands, clapped them gently together.

“Clap, clap, little hands,

Babula is still in bed,

Babula will give us milk;

While dya-dya bakes a gingerbread.”

“More, more!” Alice chortled. “More.”

The cart rolled along and everyone fell silent, even Alice. There was a kind of soporific rhythm to it, the tail of the pony swishing now and then, the nodding of its head. The sound of metal rims on the grassy road.

“Look! It's Huw and Geraint,” Bethan said.

Callum looked out across the fields and saw the old man and his son shepherding a large flock of sheep down the hill.