Unleaving, p.1
Unleaving, page 1
Gomer
First published in 2019 by Gomer Press, Llandysul, Ceredigion SA44 4JL
ISBN 978 1 78562 308 0
A CIP record for this title is available from the British Library.
© Siân Collins, 2019
Siân Collins asserts her moral right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988
to be identified as author of this work.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without permission
in writing from the above publishers.
All characters involved in the action of this story are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
This book is published with the financial support of The Books Council of Wales.
www.gomer.co.uk
Acknowledgements
Spring and Fall
Chapter 1
Carmarthenshire, Wales
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Acknowledgements
The staff at Gomer for being willing to take a punt on me; my wonderful family, for unfailingly cheering me on; Bruce, Kate, Matt, Clemmie, Kath, Susie and Lynda for reading drafts and putting me straight; the Arvon Foundation whose residential course gave me the self-belief to begin the novel; the jolly band of talented writers at Wrights Emporium; my dear friends and fellow ‘bookies’ Monica, Lynne, Jessica, Lesley, Ella and Gwyneth. I owe the greatest debt of gratitude to my editor and ‘fellow traveller’, Rebecca John. Her wisdom, shrewd critical judgement and constant encouragement have been invaluable. Last, but never least, I am grateful for the landscapes and communities which inspired this novel – the beautiful Dyffryn Tywi, place of my heart, and the Drakensberg mountain region of KwaZulu Natal, which I first encountered in my twenties and have never forgotten.
Spring and Fall
to a young child
Margaret, are you grieving
Over Goldengrove unleaving?
Leaves like the things of man, you
With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?
Ah! as the heart grows older
It will come to such sights colder
By and by, nor spare a sigh
Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;
And yet you will weep and know why.
Now no matter, child, the name:
Sorrow’s springs are the same,
Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed
What heart heard of, ghost guessed:
It is the blight man was born for,
It is Margaret you mourn for.
Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-89)
Carmarthenshire, Wales
Spring 1916
Chapter 1
Margaret
The dead bird stirred in the breeze blowing cold through the open cowshed door. Its head lolled sideways at the end of the long neck, the sharp yellow beak still agape. A bright hunter’s eye, stilled to dullness. Margaret stood on tiptoe to take a closer look, gritting her teeth against the stabbing pain in her left ankle. She examined the small dark stain on the breast where the bullet had pierced the bird’s soft feathers.
‘Poor thing! Why’s it strung up like that?’
Wil paused in his sweeping of the cowshed floor and regarded the dangling bird. The answer was obvious, wasn’t it? Look around you, girl, work it out for yourself. He shrugged his shoulders and returned to his work. Margaret put out a tentative finger to stroke the soft, cold creature and noted its strong-boned wings jutting at ugly angles from the body, the sharp V of the tail feathers stiffened by death.
Mr Hughes, passing through the shed with a barrowload of dung, glanced briefly at the dead bird. ‘Vermin, that’s all they are, Miss. Scavengers. We hang ’em up there for a warning.’
‘Warning of what?’ Margaret persisted. She hated mysteries. But Mr Hughes was already gone, heading to the midden in the corner of the yard to deposit the load. A cow shifted restlessly in the gloom at the far end of the shed and kicked against the wooden side of the stall which separated it from the others waiting to be milked. Who would you want to warn? She frowned at her feet, irritated by the puzzle. Faint splashes of bird blood beaded in the muddy straw, red smears on brown. One of the tail feathers was lying on the ground. She picked it up and held it to the light. Delicate filaments of red tipping the grey.
‘Look, Wil.’ She held the feather out to him. ‘It’s beautiful isn’t it?’ He took it from her, turning it slowly in his hand. His fingers were long and slim, not stubby like hers. Strong too. Less than an hour ago she’d been sprawled on the muddy riverbank, her leg trapped in a tangle of broken branches and alder leaves. He had scooped her up and half carried her back to the farm. Served her right, he said, for ignoring his warning not to climb so high, the tree wouldn’t hold her weight. For once, though, he hadn’t mocked her for being clumsy.
He was still examining the tail feather, his thick dark eyebrows knotted in that funny way when he was thinking hard about something.
‘Dad strings them up like that to keep the other birds away.
It scares them.’
So that was it. Like heads on pikes, she thought, remembering her history lessons.
‘All the farmers round here say they’re pests, worse than foxes. You should see what a mess they make of the sheep, lambs especially. Eyes pecked out, guts ripped, blood everywhere.’
Margaret shivered, feeling the suffering of the lambs. It wasn’t fair, the poor creatures had only just begun their lives.
Wil considered the hanging bird. ‘You’re right, he is quite a beauty. Y barcud, that’s what we call him in Welsh. The red kite.’ She relaxed, knowing he understood her feelings for the bird, and saw he was looking at her – the dark bright eyes, the familiar lopsided smile.
‘You should keep his feather for good luck.’ His voice was softer than usual, less matter of fact. He placed the feather gently in her open palm. ‘At the rate we’re shooting them, there won’t be any kites left soon. Someone needs to remember them.’
Later that day, in her room, Margaret wrapped the kite’s tail feather carefully in tissue paper and placed it in the top drawer of the dressing table along with her other treasures. She thought about the bird still spinning on the end of its noose, pictured the downy breast feathers falling to the ground like dead leaves, smothering the bloodstains.
Downstairs in the hall Betsan was ringing the bell for dinner and here she was, still in her dirty outdoor clothes; they would be waiting for her with long faces and the usual tut-tutting. She closed the drawer and hobbled over to the wardrobe to extract a rumpled navy skirt and blouse from the heap of clothes at the bottom. She was wearing some of David’s old things today and the trousers were far too long. The bottoms were all torn and muddy from the riverbank and when she lifted her right arm she saw there was a big rip in the side of his flannel shirt. Not that he’d notice the damage when he was next home on leave, such a swank he was these days in his officer’s uniform. She made a bundle of the clothes and thrust them underneath a chair. Mair would surely find them there tomorrow morning when she cleaned the room and there’d be another scolding. She dressed quickly and pulled out a pair of smarter shoes from underneath the bed, struggling to ease her swollen ankle inside the stiff leather. The sound of footsteps running up the stairs, stopping outside her room.
‘Miss Margaret, you must come down now please. They are wanting you in the dining room.’
So much fuss her parents made about being on time, not keeping people waiting; she would tell them how hard it was to get dressed with a sore ankle. Betsan’s quick breaths on the other side of the door. ‘You have to hurry, miss. They are waiting for you.’ Her voice didn’t sound right, the words coming out all of a rush.
Margaret glanced at herself in the wardrobe mirror as she tried to pull a comb through her tangled hair, teasing out the bits of alder leaf and bark still lodged in it from her fall. There were mud spots on her face; she spat on her fingers and rubbed them away, then twisted her hair into a rough plait. That would have to do, Betsan’s voice was scaring her. She opened the bedroom door and went out on to the landing. In the hallway below she heard the maid’s quick footsteps receding towards the kitchen. Slowly, painfully, leaning on the wooden banister rail to take the weight off her foot, she made her way down the long curve of the stairs.
The dining room door was open and she could hear the low steady tick of the grandfather cl ock in the corner nearest the window. She halted on the threshold. Mother was sitting at the table with her back to the door, her head buried in her arms; her shoulders shook slightly, the only discernible movement in that still room. Father was in his usual chair at the head of the table. His hands were clasped tightly in front of him, his head was bowed and his eyes were shut. Could he be praying? In all her thirteen years she’d never seen him do that; in church he always sat ramrod straight and grim-faced in the family pew, refusing to kneel for the prayers. She hovered awkwardly at the doorway, a visitor intruding on a private scene. Then she remembered Betsan’s urgent summons and stepped into the room. The air smelled keenly of daffodils, spring-bright and joyous in the tall vase on the dark mahogany sideboard. Father raised his head. His eyes were blank, as if she were invisible; then he blinked, became his normal self again.
‘There you are, Margaret. Close the door if you would.’
Her mother stirred, adjusting her bony shoulders to their habitual stiffness under the high collared cream blouse. Her small hand reached round to the nape of her neck, felt for the neat coil of fair hair, delicate fingers threading the wayward strands.
‘Sit down here, my dear.’ Margaret made her way slowly to the chair beside him. He seemed not to notice she was hobbling even though she put on quite a show of pain.
A small piece of paper rested on the table between them. She read the telegram’s geometry – the neat black lines, the brief handwritten message below the busy Post Office crest – and felt a sharp pain in her chest like the twist of a blade. These days the village talk was telegrams: the twins at Ty’r Efail, Tomos and Daniel Jenkins, killed in Ypres last month; Mair’s cousin Dylan Davies just before Christmas; the Evans boy from Maesybont, blown to pieces by a mine somewhere in Flanders. All of them knew her brother.
Margaret felt her father’s cold hand clutch her own; she dared not move her fingers inside the freezing grip. A muffled, gulping cry and the sound of Mother’s chair scraping across the parquet. Then she was stumbling towards the door, wrenching it open. They listened to the urgent tap-tapping of her little boots, fading away as she crossed the hallway. Margaret half rose from the table to follow but Father was holding on to her hand; his face was a ghastly white, the deep lines in his forehead and cheeks like ink strokes. The illness was back, how had she not seen the signs earlier? The same haunted look as last autumn when they thought he might die.
‘Let her alone for a while, she’ll be better soon. It’s been a terrible shock.’
His chest was making those wheezy sounds again. He released her hand and delved into his pocket for a handkerchief. She waited for the spasm – the painful, racking coughs – to subside.
Her father pushed back his chair and got to his feet, mustering the usual briskness.
‘I’m riding over to see the Thomases at Dan y Bryn. Young Hywel was killed the same day; he was in David’s regiment.’ He patted her shoulder as he passed. ‘Be brave for your mother, there’s a good girl.’
The clock beat out each slow, hollow second.
When she emerged from the dining room, Betsan was hovering in the hallway. Her normally cheerful round face was reddened and blotchy.
‘There’s some hot soup and bread for you in the kitchen, miss, if you was feeling hungry. Mrs Lewis says she don’t want nothing.’
She was hungry, ravenous in fact. It had been an eventful day. Such a shame she hadn’t seen the otter cubs in the river bend. She went through the servants’ passage to the kitchen. The room was warm with cooking and the smell of Mrs Hughes’s crusty brown bread. This news about David, it was just a piece of paper, not real like falling from a tree and hurting your leg. She devoured the chicken broth, wolfed down cheese and a slice of bara brith, generously smeared with butter. Betsan came in and out of the kitchen, busy with laundry chores and tight lipped. She wanted to tell her about the fall from the alder, enlist her sympathy, but now wasn’t the time.
Margaret limped upstairs to her room and fished out the bundle of clothes from beneath the chair. She took off her formal clothes, the too tight shoes, and pulled on the muddy trousers and the torn shirt. She was shivering, her skin puckered with goosebumps. In the bottom of the chest of drawers was David’s green fishing jersey, another borrowing. She pulled it quickly over her head and it came down to her knees, comforting as a warm blanket, smelling of bracken and the pipe he used to smoke out of doors when nobody was watching. She left her room, quietly crossed the landing, and went down the back stairs. In the boot room David’s old walking boots were in their usual place on the rack, alongside the outdoor shoes, galoshes and wellingtons. She crouched on the stone flags, kneading the boots’ stiff leather laces until they opened wide enough for her feet.
Bad luck, Mags, you’ll never be a dancer with those clod- hoppers of yours! She smiled. He must be in the cupboard where they kept the fishing rods and tackle. He was moving around in there, knocking into things, deliberately giving the game away as usual; she would pretend she hadn’t heard him. The boots were a tight fit; she winced as she fastened the laces across her left foot. The pain would disappear if she ran fast, took the short cut down through the wood to the lake. That way she might reach the summerhouse before him.
Even the trees of Coed Mawr were weeping. Bare branches like pinched bones, a few skeletal leaves, winter’s leftovers. Icy tear drops, frozen mid fall. A thin white mist of cold hung wraith-like over the lake and a tangle of half-submerged leaves dragged the surface of the water. Such heavy stillness. Only the rustlings of small animals seeking shelter and the anxious thudding of her heart. She hugged David’s jumper tightly around her, the rough wool scratching her neck. His trousers were already soaked through from her plunge down the steep bank to the lakeside and her ankle was throbbing badly. She noticed the backs of her hands were streaked with blood from rose thorns and clutching bramble.
She leaned against the summerhouse door, the wood under her hands soft and sticky with damp. The door gave way easily and she stumbled inside. One of the window panels had collapsed and her boots crunched over shards of glass and jagged splinters. In the dim spring light ivy tendrils snaked their way through holes in the walls; her old nursery chair lay upturned in a dusty corner, dead leaves humped in a brown
drift beneath the little writing table. The whole place smelled fusty, unloved, long abandoned.
She picked her way across the room to where the tattered copy of The Jungle Book lay among the debris of summers past – scrunched up paper, bits of string, old sweet wrappers. She knelt down and picked it up, blew the dust and cobwebs off the faded brown cover. Some of the pages were stuck together, limp and mottled with mould, and the ink had run. Carefully, gently, she prised open each sticky page until she came to their story. It was still intact, thank goodness, the fingers of damp hadn’t spread that far. David’s funny cartoon of the two of them was palely visible in the left-hand margin. He was Nag the cobra, sleek and dangerous; she the plain little mongoose, Rikki Tikki, with hair like a bottle brush, ‘eaten up from nose to tail with curiosity’. She closed her eyes and summoned up the old battle chant, the delicious shiver of dread before their chasing game began:
Eye to Eye and head to head
This shall end when one is dead;
Turn for turn and twist for twist –
Hah! The hooded Death has missed!
He was six years older, just nineteen and swift as a hare, how dare he let death catch him. No one warned her this could happen to him. She ripped the page into tiny fragments and hurled the book into the corner of the room, to land amongst the shrivelled corpses of flies in their cobweb shrouds.
Voices were calling her name, distantly, somewhere up beyond the trees. She got stiffly to her feet and went outside. The light was dimming, the afternoon turning so quickly to the darkness. Anxious birds called across the lake.
‘Margaret! Where are you? Please answer…’
A sudden crashing through undergrowth, a squawk of birds scattering in fright. Gwennie burst out of the bushes and hurled herself at Margaret, a crush of happy Labrador, all stinky breath and muddy paws. Beloved dog. She buried her face in the animal’s soft fur.
