The Woman at the Window (15 page)

When I return to Henefail I find the boys in the kitchen playing chess. Katica made them all tea, including her daughter Rosita, who I suspect is taking refuge from the threat of bullying by being close to her mother's skirts. Wil Hafan has gone home but the boys are absorbed in their game and Katica is more than happy to watch. They are using my son Daniel's chess set and I am happy that they should do so. It offers a pleasing domestic scene and it has a soothing effect on my nerves.

***

The days are drawing in. Wil Hafan says he is determined to get the garden in apple pie order before Ffair y Borth, that is the old Menai Bridge Hiring Fair. Then he says he will take himself and his missus on a holiday to Bournemouth. ‘The ends of the earth,' Wil says. He doesn't care for it but ‘his old lady needs pleasing'. There are sounds of altercation in the kitchen. Katica wants Cyril and Cledwyn to take Rosita with them to the fair. They don't want to be lumbered with her. They say there will be a rock concert, with a celebrated Welsh language band playing later on, that Cledwyn wants Cyril to hear. Part of his education, Cledwyn says. Katica says no Rosita, no concert. They have reached an impasse. Just three days left to reach a compromise.

I have heard nothing of Gabriel. Katica and I keep fiddling about in his bedroom, in what we consider attempts to make it more attractive, more homely as she puts it, but I suspect Gabriel doesn't go in for ‘homely' much. I have a nice picture of my father framed. He looks bespectacled and ministerial, although he never wore a clerical collar. ‘It sets a man apart' he used to say, ‘when he should be mixing as an equal among his fellow men.' Although I never saw a man less inclined to mix. You could see him drive himself to be cheerful. I don't know what benefit Gabriel would derive from contemplating his visage and I can't decide whether or not to hang the picture up, and if so, where?

I wonder about this wanting to take a look at Wales first. It sounds suspiciously like those nineteenth, and for that matter twentieth-century guidebooks where the intrepid traveller is advised to advance into the unknown via Chester, Shrewsbury or Gloucester. Was I supposed to answer for the whole country? It was as much as I could do to answer for myself. Especially now that I had no longer to answer for Dennis. I always took the view that everyone should take their nationality for granted and certainly not make a song and dance about it. Under the influence of Dennis, I suppose, I was always inclined to believe that race, religion and nationality were a pain in the neck. Shackles to be broken. He would say the one place he felt most at home was in Lazio, because of the Etruscans not the Italians. The Etruscans were safely dead. The locals very quickly got on his nerves.

Right up to the day of the Fair I was in two minds about phoning Heather. I had no number for Gabriel. I doubted whether he had a mobile. It would be little help to him in his mystical explorations. If I rang Heather it might sound like a weakness. A lonely old woman pining for company and that sort of thing, which is far from the case. What I need is a companion in exploration. There is so much here to find out. We could begin together at the ruin of Gelliwen and fan out from there: to the Middle West of the United States in the nineteenth century and the humbler sphere of the family who stayed at home, and what it all means, if it means anything.

In the end it was Heather who rang me. 

‘Dilys.'

It sounded as humbly apologetic as Heather could get. I always felt that inside that shy beauty and musical talent, there was a backbone of steel.

‘I'm awfully sorry. Gabriel has gone off to India.' 

‘Good Lord.'

I try not to sound indignant or disappointed. Quite a balancing act.

‘When did that happen?'

‘He got as far as Swansea when he met this wonderful Indian girl, Vidya something. They've gone off to an Ashram that she says will provide him with all the answers he is seeking, and her as well of course.'

‘But what about all this business of testing the waters in Wales? All that sort of thing.'

I am trying hard not to get personal. She might think I was hurt that he had lost interest in my father and whatever it was he imagined my father stood for. Was Gabriel such an impressionable creature that he could be diverted from his purpose by the first exotic beauty he encountered? And what was he doing in Swansea? Didn't he know that in every country there is always a North and a South? Should I say something about going to Birmingham by way of Beachy Head? I could feel the distance between myself and my daughter-in-law lengthen the longer I waited for a reply.

‘He wasn't very impressed quite frankly,' Heather said, ‘with what he saw or heard. Second-hand English, he said, obsessed with rugby and being famous and getting their names in lights in the West End. Not very polite really. You know what he's like!'

The sad part was, I didn't. I had been looking forward to opening a door through which he and I could pass together, to reach a new level of understanding. Surely see the things my father cherished were more than dust in a Pharaoh's tomb? Now the door was to remain firmly shut.

‘He said it wasn't a place where anything meaningful could happen. Not as things are in the world these days. I'm sorry, Dilys.'

I suppose she was, in her own distant way. Being sorry doesn't mean much without the empathy in sympathy.

***

India or Sir Fôn we all belong to the same world in the end. Maybe Gabriel should have come here after all if he wanted to learn something new. Cledwyn and Cyril did go to the Fair. Mrs Price Siop Bach gave Katica reassurances and Rosita was diverted to listening to records with Cledwyn's cousin, Sioned, who was a little younger but docile. Cledwyn was accepted as reliable as well as large, and Mrs Price explained that the Welsh band was noisy but not unduly aggressive. The whole thing could be regarded as a modern extension of folk singing and older people had to accommodate themselves with youthful high spirits. What she could not know was that a small gang of youths from Bangor were out looking for trouble. Cledwyn and Cyril got caught in the middle of a street battle. Cledwyn knew his way around back streets and managed to escape, but Cyril was stabbed and left bleeding on the ground. Even when the ambulance arrived the paramedics were attacked and the police had to move in before poor Cyril could be rushed to hospital.

Katica was distraught. I had never seen a woman tear her hair out before. Mrs Price was sullen with guilt and Cledwyn slunk around with the weight of the world on his shoulders. It all became my business. I was elevated into the role of peacemaker. When catastrophes strike there is no time for reflection. They occur anywhere anytime in a split second, then leave you to spend the rest of your life wondering why they should have occurred; like worrying about the origins of the Universe.

I have put Cyril in the bedroom prepared for my grandson Gabriel. It is the best place for his convalescence. Katica can cluck over him like a mother hen without leaving work. Cledwyn comes here to play chess with his friend and run messages for him: carrying his schoolwork to and fro. I find myself engaged in the kind of diplomacy my father excelled in when dealing with disputatious deacons. It will be easier to persuade Katica to forgive Mrs Price than to get that proud shopkeeper to accept forgiveness. These things take time. Some kind of a household is forming, and in my own mind I can call Henefail, and the village and this ancient sprawling parish, home.

The Ring and the Book

‘WELL now. I'll leave you two dear people together,' the director's assistant said.

She spoke as though there was much for her to attend to. She was a smart, bright young thing, conspicuously so at the Riviera Residential Home for the Elderly. If asked, she always said she loved her job. The Home was a noble establishment among landscaped gardens, tucked away off a cul de sac with a distant view of the Mediterranean and within walking distance of a nice little shopping centre. It was surrounded by a high wall and trees and there was something or other in bloom all the year round and most of the elderly were calm and comfortable with loads of accommodation; and if they were not there was a staff of carers and nurses, and English was the spoken language of the Home, and her French was good enough to get by – so what more could a young unattached female ask for?

‘I'm sure you have such a lot to say to each other.' 

Raymond shuffled to his feet. He was tall and rather bent over and, as his sister Rosamund put it, as thin as a whittled stick. She remained seated, plump, powdered, prosperous, an exemplary resident, with many rings on her fingers.

‘Unless of course you would like some tea?'

There was some polite dumb show before both declined and the young woman bustled out. It was a beautiful autumn afternoon and through the long windows residents could be seen moving about in the garden sunlight or sitting in the shade. For the time being, sister and brother had the Common Room to themselves. The quiet suggested each was waiting for the other to speak first. There was no denying a degree of estrangement. Raymond's wife Sybil had dubbed Rosamund's husband, Victor, ‘a commercial conman' and Rosamund had found that unforgivable. In return, Victor and Rosamund had called Sybil a ‘snob' and a ‘culture vulture'. Raymond was distressed by it all and deeply regretted what he called ‘entrenched positions', but there was very little he could do about it. He took refuge, and consolation, in his theatrical adventures. But now Sybil was dead, Victor had died long ago, and brother and sister were not exactly shipwrecked on life's further shore, but both widowed, isolated and drawn together towards the end to be closer to what they had been at the beginning. As Raymond saw it, childhood and old age had come together for an ultimate encounter. All that came between, more than sixty years, needed to dwindle to a vanishing point.

Rosamund was ten years older, doting on her little brother. They were evacuees together, tucked away in Glanaber, the family holiday home on Anglesey, above Traeth Coch where the ebb line revealed a stretch of sand two miles wide, and the high tide would erode the foreshore, leaving a network of grassy earth islands, where little Raymond, blue eyed and with golden curls, could leap about giving the islands the names of countries and continents. His imagination never ceased to delight her. Her bicycle was bigger than his and she would circle around to make sure he did not stray beyond the incoming tide. His piping voice and excited cries were carried on the wind like the calling of sea birds. She was in charge and he was so trusting and cheerful and good-natured.

Their mother rarely came out of Glanaber. She was stricken with ill health and self-pity, forever moaning the loss of a plantation in Malaya, which was her inheritance. ‘We lost absolutely everything,' she would intone at the first opportunity. She needed sympathy more than children. Father was away from home, his factory of bathroom ware and household fittings diverted to urgent war effort, and when he visited, he would tease his wife by saying she sounded like something out of Somerset Maugham. ‘You've got nothing to complain about,' he would say, ‘living in this oasis of tranquillity, while the world is tearing itself to bits.' He made dire predictions about the end of Empire and the children invented endless games they could play on the shore. When the wind blew, as it so often did, they made paper kites, and it warmed her with happiness to watch little Raymond dashing about. And now he was this worn, thin creature sitting in front of her and they were contemplating a conversation like strangers in a train.

‘You look very comfortable here. A nice place?'

He was the first to speak and to venture a friendly smile. 

‘So far, so good,' she said.

‘I was thinking of Glanaber,' he said. ‘Happy days.' 

‘Happy days indeed.'

Rosamund bowed her head in regal concession. The happy days were all very well, but there had been other days that had been far from happy. The name, Glanaber, for her, had not retained the talismanic quality it clearly had for him. It marked the first serious breach in their relationship. She and dear Victor had been married barely a year and he was badly in need of a break from his strenuous efforts to restore the family business. He needed to take a deep breath of those refreshing breezes before initiating the next phase of expansion… and what did they find? One of those black spots that mark the passage of time.

Glanaber was already occupied by Raymond and an awful actress named Meleri something, whom Raymond was besotted with. That was not the worst of it. The girl was recovering from an abortion and her brother was not responsible, for goodness sake. The man in question was a leading man as famous as anything in those days, with a name, which she had made a strenuous effort to forget, emblazoned brazenly outside a certain theatre in the West End. The foolish boy did everything for her, and then she flew off and the Lord alone knew where she had landed. She gave up her stage ambitions and married a lord. That's what Rosamund had heard. They lived somewhere abroad in luxurious anonymity. Wherever it was she had broken the The Ring and the Book silly boy's heart and he had never been the same again. It was probably the emotional damage he had suffered that made him such easy prey for that vulture Sybil, who was much too old for him. Of course she had the money and she encouraged him in some of his more ridiculous adventures. 

‘Would you be wanting to retire there?' she said. ‘No more theatrical adventures.'