A Place of Meadows and Tall Trees (23 page)

Megan sniffs him cautiously, and then steps aside. Sometimes he smells too strongly of the pigs or the sheep or the dung of cattle.

‘I'm sorry,' she says, ‘I've not been feeling well – that is, I've been feeling sick.' She looks at him meaningfully and pats her stomach.

He dives towards her but she backs away, laughing. ‘Later,' she mouths.

  Beside them Myfanwy is practising her letters using chalk on the table. She looks up at him and smiles and Silas pats her on the head.

‘She would improve with some paper,' Megan says.

He nods. At last their long-awaited supplies have come, and together with the food, seed and agricultural equipment he has heard there are a few less essential things like paper and ink and books for the children.

‘Jacob's talking about starting a proper school.'

Silas had snorted. ‘It's too early for that.'

‘No Silas, it's important. Just because…' She stops and finds something to pick up from the floor. Just because you can't read, that's what she meant to say, but she won't. She straightens up and smoothes out an ache in her back and looks at him. ‘The children need to learn to read. Books, paper, pens, and pencils – they make things feel less desperate. Anyway, Jacob says everything's waiting for you.'

Silas had been putting off going to the warehouse for days.

‘Get it over with, man,' Mary had told him. ‘You've got to do it sometime. Take the cart.'

‘Two sacks each, that's how it works out,' Edwyn says.

Silas takes his without comment.

‘We will have a harvest this time, Silas, this seed is superior, by all accounts.'

He nods and lifts a sack onto his shoulder. He will bide his time. Only five months before they leave – less than one hundred and fifty days.

‘If we all work together, we will succeed, don't you agree?'

Edwyn holds Silas' second sack against his body and waits for him to reply.

Silas sighs. ‘No, I am not agreed. We both know what will happen. The seed will be sown and then it will die and then we will leave. All of us. This stupidity will stop and we will start again – somewhere green, with grass and trees and cows that I have seen with my own eyes.'

‘It will grow, Silas. It is important that you believe that. Only if you believe in success will you succeed.' Edwyn tries to fix him with his eyes but Silas looks determinedly away.

‘Are you going to give me that grain, or aren't you?'

‘Why will you not give the man a chance?' asks Jacob plaintively, striding beside him as Silas determinedly leads his horse and cart out of the village. ‘He has done so much for us all. We should all be grateful, all of us.'

‘I can never be grateful to that cheat, that liar – you, of all people should be able to understand that. Richard and Gwyneth would still be with us, if it wasn't for him – and his lies.'

‘You can't know that, Silas.'

Silas stops. The man is always so earnest and righteous.

‘We should try to love one another. Turn the other cheek.'

Silas grips the horse's reins so tightly the horse is beginning to strain away. ‘I can't.'

‘You can, Silas, pray, ask for forgiveness.'

He turns so that Jacob can see his face. The minister makes a couple of backward steps, his eyes blinking.

‘Me – ask for forgiveness?' Silas' voice cracks. ‘What about him?'

‘Edwyn doesn't need to.'

Silas lets go of the reins. ‘Go away from me, Jacob,' he says carefully, keeping his voice steady. His hands curl into fists, and rise slightly in front of him.

Jacob blinks more rapidly and takes another step away. ‘I'm just saying you should examine your conscience, Silas. It is not good for your soul to hate a man as much as you do.'

‘GO AWAY FROM ME!' He makes a single lunge forwards, his fist an extension of his words and Jacob's teeth clink together like small pieces of china.

Silas stops and looks at his hands. It's as if they don't belong to him. As he watches they fall back down to his sides.

Jacob feels his mouth. ‘You hit me!' he says incredulously, looking at the blood on his hand. Then his round astonished eyes travel up to Silas' face and for a few seconds stay there while a small, satisfied smile tugs at his lips and a dribble of blood appears. ‘You hit me!' he says again, wondering, and then scurries away towards the fort.

Silas washes his hand in the river and tells no one. After a day of deliberately forcing the scene from his mind, he finds he can convince himself it has never happened at all. There was no blood. Jacob's teeth didn't rattle. On Sunday he makes his usual excuse that, like many of the colonists, he feels his clothing is too scruffy and unsuitable for chapel. It is weeks since he has been.

‘I shouldn't think the Lord minds how you are dressed, as long as you praise him,' Megan says, as she lowers herself into the cart with Myfanwy. She is heavier now and the cart sinks beneath her. ‘They miss your voice.'

‘But not the rest of me, then.'

‘Silas!' But he notices that she doesn't deny it.

He is out in the field sowing the seed when she returns. At first he doesn't see her. He has made a brush from a few branches of thorn and has attached this to the horse. Now he is coaxing the horse up and down the field to brush the loose earth over the seed. It is easy this way because the soil is dry and friable. Too dry, too friable – it is just like last year – if there is any growth it will be short-lived.

He stops at the head of the field nearest the cottage. Megan is on her own, Myfanwy off with Miriam and the three younger Jones children, and for a few seconds he catches her just standing, gazing over the fields at nothing, short strands of hair playing in the wind. Her face is still, but he can tell she is angry: her fingers straddle her hips, and her chin thrusts upwards. Then she sees him, and turns to face him.

It is hot, late spring, and she is wearing a thin blouse, her best Sunday one, newly made from some pale material that came with the last supplies. She waits before he is almost beside her before she speaks.

‘Is it true?' she asks.

‘Is what true?'

‘That you punched my brother?'

‘It was hardly that.'

For a while she glares at him. ‘Are you going to tell me what happened? Or am I just going to have to rely on what they say?'

After he has told her, she looks distractedly around her. Her hands clench and unclench. Say something, he thinks. Anything. She walks a few feet away from him and kneels down to inspect the soil while he stands exactly where she's left him: stiffening, waiting.

‘Why are you planting the grain
here
?' she says at last. She keeps her head down so he can't see her face. Her voice is strained, tight, as if she is struggling to keep it under control.

He wants to run to her, shake her, make her tell him he's right and they're wrong. But all he does is swallow. ‘Because it's easier,' he says. ‘It is all going to die anyway; there's no point looking for work.'

‘But the soil by the river looks more fertile.' One careful word and then the next. Ignoring all that he'd said before, as if it means nothing.

‘I don't care!' His voice comes out too loud, too close to a wail.

She makes a couple of steps towards him and grabs his hand. Her eyes are glistening; too wet. ‘Oh Silas, please try and make it up with them. We've got to live here. You've got to get on with them. I want to be included.'

Silas snorts.

‘I can't bear it, Silas!'

He turns away from her and strides across the field that the horse has just brushed, making large deep footprints in the soil.

‘Silas, stop!' She is coming after him. Her smaller boot prints are beside his, two for each of his one. She catches his hand. He looks sideways at her. The slight bulge beneath her skirt is lifting her hem a few inches above the ground. The thought of this new life calms him and makes him triumphant. His child. There is nothing more precious. Maybe he should feel pity, perhaps try to forgive – just a little – but he can't; every time he tries he discovers new lies, new deceits. Richard. He closes his eyes. If he forgave Edwyn he would betray his son, his daughter. Thoughts creep in on their own. It's as if they're falling into a void: the boy's head arched back on his pillow gasping for breath, one wheeze and then another; an old man's lungs in a young boy's chest. He opens his eyes and looks at Megan. Her eyes are searching for his now: anxious, slightly beseeching. ‘Please try,' she says.

He reaches out and draws her close before she can struggle free. ‘If we stand together,' he says, ‘nothing can defeat us. We don't need anyone else.'

He releases her and she frowns and smoothes down her dress as if she is brushing away the impression of him. ‘No, Silas, I need more than that. Two are not enough. A couple can't survive here on their own.' She stands upright and regards him. ‘Will you try to fit in? Would you just agree to do that?'

He nods resignedly.

‘Thank you.' She steps smartly up to him and kisses him hard on the lips. She pats her stomach fondly, then looks around her. ‘Look at the river!' she says abruptly.

It is twenty yards in front of them, part of a shimmering silver meander. ‘It is high, this year,' she says, ‘have you noticed? Much higher than last, I think.'

‘Perhaps.'

‘I know so. Last year it stopped down there.' She points. ‘Don't you remember?' She points to an area now covered in water. She looks around her. They have had to climb steadily to get onto the levee made by the floods. ‘Look, it's higher than our land this year... Silas! Look, will you?' She stamps her foot and he stirs – he had been gazing at her in a reverie, not listening.

  ‘The river, look at the river.' She points with her arm stretched out. ‘It's higher here than where you've planted the seed.' He follows her finger and nods thoughtfully. The river is higher. Along its length there are several levees of gravel and sand, left there by floods of high water, and behind this the land where he has just sown the seed is lower and drier.

‘You know, if you dug a channel through there, and it would only have to be a narrow gully, the water would spill through. You could water the land as much as you liked and then block it off again.'

‘Not sure it's worth it.'

‘It would only be a small channel – I could help.'

‘No you can't!'

‘Well, I shall do it unless you say you'll do it.'

He looks at her. She has her hands on her hips again, her feet are planted firmly apart and her lips pressed tightly together, her bottom lip protruding. Her determined look – it's a long time since he's seen it. He knows it is pointless to try to resist but he offers her a token anyway: ‘Maybe in a few weeks if these seeds show no sign of sprouting.'

‘No, now, Silas.'

‘But it's Sunday!'

‘All right, tomorrow then.'

It is decided. Megan grins at her victory.

The digging is not quite as easy as Megan thinks it is. The ground is either weed-choked or so friable it is difficult to stand and gain purchase. At last he manages to enlarge a small natural opening and work backwards. The water pours in behind him as if it is grateful to be let out of the river. It swirls forcefully at the sides of the gully until they collapse and the channel widens quickly behind him. He feels the water lapping at his feet and he digs more quickly, wondering if he has done the right thing and then worrying that he will be able to close it again. He digs a little deeper and the water seems to gurgle appreciatively, nudging at the soil, urging him onwards. He reaches the edge of his field and looks back. The water is forming small lakes and then tributaries of its own as more and more of it flows onto the land. But it is calmer now; the initial flood has slowed. He breathes out loudly. His feet are wet and most of his legs too, but he is happy. There is a hot breeze and it is quite pleasant to feel the coolness of the water. He clears away the final stretch of gravel and the water gently escapes into the lower ground. It seeps forward without disturbing anything and the soil, which is a rich-looking black and smells strongly of loam, is soon covered in a few inches of water. He finds he can block off the river easily with a few shovels of the dug out soil, and then makes another small channel connecting this higher field to one that is lower to the east. Soon there is a shallow lake of water over all his land. He calls Megan and Myfanwy to see. A stray flamingo comes to look too, makes a swift haughty inspection, and departs. Then Myfanwy calls the younger Jones children, and they come to gawp too, but by then the water has almost gone, sucked away by the thirsty ground. Silas inspects his barrier to the river and ensures it is tight – a little controlled inundation is welcome but he doesn't want to wake up tomorrow morning to find his cottage surrounded by a lake.

In another week there will be just four months to go. But today he has to go to the village, and the shortest route is along the river. This errand is something he has put off for as long as possible again, reluctant to face Jacob or Edwyn – but now there are things that he needs, and he is hoping that he will be lucky and Selwyn or Caradoc or one of the other men will be in charge. It is such a beautiful day he has decided to walk alongside his horse and cart to give the animal a rest. There is a cool breeze providing some relief against the heat of the early sun and even the Chubut is looking desolately beautiful. He looks around him indolently. He will take his time – he has little else to do. The sky is reflecting in the river and it is bluer than he has ever seen it before. Beyond it the ground is so dried out it is a bright yellow. He admires the intense colours. He will tell Megan about it when he returns. He clears a slight mound. He sniffs at the dry sweet air. The breeze is unusually slight. In front of the blue river the soil will be a rich brown. Brown, blue, yellow: the colours of the Patagonian desert.