The Gift (3 page)

“Yes,” he said cautiously. “What?”

“I want you not to ask your father about the gift. I want you not to talk to him about the other Davy. Not ever.”

“Then who can I ask?” he said. “I've got to know, haven't I?”

She turned at last and threw the scone crumbs out of the kitchen door, where her chickens raced chuckling for them. Then she fetched her stool up to the table and settled onto it and began to twist the wide whitish ring that she wore on her left hand.

“I must tell you myself,” she said quietly. “That I should ever tell it to a child! Like a fairy story! Oh, Davy … Well, that other Davy, he was a good man. He worked up at the quarry, because there was not work for two men on the farm, but he lived in this house. Davy was a careful man, and sober always, so they gave him charge of the explosives. Not a lot of explosive you use in a slate quarry, you see, because the explosions spoil the slate, but you must use some. Davy had a mate, Huw was his name. They were like comrades in a story, putting their lives in each other's hands, handling that terrible stuff while the rest of the gangs stood clear. But they were a laughing pair, and handsome. Indeed, when Davy married a girl from down the valley, Huw was best man. But then … well, two years and three months after the wedding, it was, and Davy was sitting by this fire, tired in the evening, with his wife sewing in that chair, he saw one of his pictures. I do not truly know what the picture was, but perhaps it was his friend Huw lying on a bed, not wearing a nightshirt either, and looking up from the pillow and laughing, and a hand coming into the picture to touch his naked chest. Davy would know that hand by the rings on it. There would be a thin ring of gold and a wide ring of flat silver cut with wavy lines that had been hundreds of years in his own family. Yes, it was his wife's hand.”

Granny was talking to herself now, in a quiet chant, as if she were trying to undo all the old grief by making a magic of it with words. But Davy understood quite well what she was talking about because a year ago they'd been living in a housing project where one of the neighbors had held the police at bay for a day with a shotgun because of what his wife had been doing with another of the neighbors. Mum had talked the story over with friends a hundred times until Davy worked out what it all meant, though he'd still thought it another example of the extraordinary manners of adults. But that had all been fun and excitement. Granny's story was different.

“I told you Davy was a careful man,” she said. “He spoke no word that night, and next morning he went up to the quarry as usual. There was blasting to be done that day, and he and Huw set the charges. His wife was here in the kitchen, washing his shirt, when she heard the explosion from the quarry. The explosions made a flapping noise always and shook the air, which shook the windows. But that one shook the solid hill so that the beams groaned. And after that the foreman came down from the quarry to tell her, with his hat still on his head, that her husband, who had been such a careful man always, had set too big a charge in the rock and used too short a fuse, and he'd blown himself and his mate Huw to pieces.”

“I'm sorry,” Davy had said. Then, after a long pause, because he was the sort of boy who likes to be sure about guesses, he had added, “What did the wife do?”

Granny had looked down at the flat silver ring on her finger.

“She married Davy's brother,” she said. “Your Dadda.”

2

DADDA

And now they were all quite different people.…

Davy lay on the grass above the quarry cliff and tried to remember all he could about the three children who had first come to the farm on that strange extra holiday seven years ago.

Yes, quite different people. They had started changing almost at once. Perhaps it had been discovering that Mum couldn't be relied on either that had pulled them so close together, made them sentries of their own little fort, back to back, facing the world, relying only on each other.

They were still like that in a way, he thought. That hadn't changed. Even Ian, nineteen now, with his beard and his terrible old motorbike and his odd friends from Cardiff University and his odder ones in Llangollen … He still made jokes, but they were bitter ones. He lived in a cloud of scorn, except for a few things such as the Welsh language and the Palestine guerrillas and the music of Berlioz. He never spoke to Dad if he could help it; he was polite to Mum and helpful with anything she wanted, but all without love. Dadda and Granny were the people he loved. He was protective with Penny and Davy, but very silent, even on the long journeys when he drove them up to the farm in Dad's latest car.

Penny was different, too, not just because she was fifteen and wore eye shadow. He turned his head on the grass to look at her and found her looking at him.

“What's up?” she said, grinning.

“I was thinking about when we first came here and how different we all are now. Except Dad.”

“Oh, Dad. Well, you can't expect … I don't know about Mum. I wonder what she'll come back with this time.”

Davy laughed. Last time Mum had gone off on one of her “holidays” she'd got home with a black eye and two brand-new suitcases, scarlet, with gold-plated clasps.

“Well, she's stopped doing it in term time, for instance,” he said.

“That's because she knows we can look after ourselves at home now. What she really enjoyed was upsetting the teachers by making us go away from school. Haven't you noticed how she hates teachers and loves mucking their arrangements about? I think it's because she still feels a bit guilty about not treating us right and so she resents anyone who might be treating us better.”

“I expect that's it,” said Davy. He was used now to Penny knowing so much about why people did what they did and were like what they were like. He himself always found people quite mysterious. The gift seemed to make it harder for him to understand them, not easier. He had a fresh lesson in that fact almost at once.

“There goes another one,” said Penny. “Hey!”

Davy looked along the cliff lip and saw a sheep poised as if it were making up its mind to dive into the abyss. At Penny's shout it did so, with a dainty little flounce.

“Idiot animals,” said Penny, not moving.

“I expect it'll get out okay,” said Davy.

Penny, walking up that way after breakfast, had found a sheep trapped on a tiny ledge about eight feet below the lip. It must have jumped down for the little strip of greener grass that grew there and then been unable to jump back. She'd fetched Davy, and he'd climbed down to the ledge with a rope and a wide canvas bellyband, but the sheep had decided that he was some sort of dangerous predator and, driven by terror, had made a frantic, scrambling rush at the rock and somehow reached the top. Penny was still laughing when Davy reached the top, hot and nervy with height. He'd stopped swearing at her when he suddenly saw a large hawk spiral up from beyond the quarry, barely moving its wings but floating up like a glider on an invisible thermal. They'd lain side by side on the grass to watch it until it reached its altitude and sped north, straight and swift, as though it had a business appointment in Liverpool.

After that they'd simply lain there, drowsy with noon, making the most of the soft hill breeze.

“Gadarene sheep,” said Penny, not moving but looking where this second idiot had disappeared.

Davy yawned.

“Do you suppose Dad …” he began.

“Let's leave him out,” said Penny snappily.

“Okay, okay.”

He rolled on his back and tried to spot a lark that was tinkling somewhere in the blue. Already the cuckoos had stopped calling from hill to hill and were gone. In four more days he'd be back in Spenser Mills. In six the autumn term would have begun. But now … now if he lay here much longer, he'd be asleep. He shut his eyes.

He saw a checked yellow oilcloth—the little table in Penny's bedroom at Spenser Mills. Her homework books in a pile. An open exercise book with a half-finished map of Australia showing. Her right hand picking up one of the black and orange pencils which Dad had brought home from his new job, very nice pencils with the firm's name in gold letters on the side. The hand moved as if to write, but stopped. Her left hand rose from the paper and gripped the point of the pencil. The right hand shifted its hold so that both thumbs pressed against the middle of the pencil. The finger knuckles whitened with strain. The wood snapped. He could not hear the clang as she dropped the pieces into her khaki metal wastepaper basket, but the picture was so solid that he could almost feel it.

“That was a waste,” he said. He only spoke because he was off guard and surprised.

“What was?”

“Breaking a new pencil like that.”

Her face became stiff and white.

“How do you know?” she whispered.

Davy was frightened and ashamed. He'd long ago made a rule not to see any of his family's thoughts if he could help it. He had found he could drive them out by thinking hard about something else. But the picture had seemed so homely and harmless and then had changed and made him inquisitive, and then the gift had worked this quick, small treachery.

“How did you know?” said Penny again, in more of a croak than a whisper.

He made her promise to keep the secret, then told her. Her cheeks were still white, and her lips kept trying to moisten each other. She didn't look at him at all, and before he'd really finished, she got up and walked stiffly along the top of the cliff. She stopped when she was about a hundred yards away and stood looking in the direction the hawk had flown, with the mild wind floating her hair sideways. He did not watch her long. Even at that distance he felt her need for privacy and turned his head away from the small figure outlined against the swelling mound of Moel Mawr. He was helping an ant find its path between grass stems when he heard the rustle of her returning feet, and looked up. The wind and the warm sun had already dried the tear streaks on her face.

“I'm sorry,” he said. “I can't help it. It just happens.”

“You're quite wrong!” she shouted. “I don't hate him! I love him! I love him!”

“I thought …”

“Well, you're wrong! He's a good man, sort of. Anyway, he's full of love. It's only the things he
does
… Those pencils … I know they're meant to be given away, so it wasn't even stealing. But … it was the
way
he did it, Davy, as if it were all something special for me, something he'd taken a lot of trouble over, something he expected me to love him back for …”

“All right,” said Davy. “I suppose I like him. I don't think I love him, but …”

“But he hasn't got any friends,” said Penny.

“He's got hundreds!”

“They aren't
friends
. They're … they're cronies. He knows everybody; he remembers all their names even if he hasn't seen them for years; they cheer up when they see him. But you don't feel that any of them would help him at all if he got into trouble.”

“I suppose it's surprising he hasn't.”

“What do you mean? He's
always
in trouble. Don't you remember when …”

There were a lot of whens to remember—contracts of employment not read—or that time three truckloads of industrial filters had been promised to different customers when there was only half a load in existence—or the launderette where the economical homemade detergent seized up all the machines in one morning and turned the customers' clothes yellow—or …

“Real trouble,” said Davy.

“Let's hope,” she said. “You know, I think Spenser Mills is going to be different. I think he might settle down.”

Davy shrugged. Penny settled cross-legged beside him and said in a voice which he could hear she was deliberately keeping calm, “Do you do it often?”

“See what you're thinking? No. I try not to, in fact. It happens, I can't make it happen. It's like weather, Granny said. Mostly when I'm tired or bored.”

“Okay. I see. Only don't tell me if it happens again. It's horrible—someone else knowing what you're thinking. It's like people coming into your room when you're not there, looking through all your drawers, reading all the bits of paper.”

“I'm sorry. Anyway, I don't know what you're thinking—only what you're thinking
about
. You've got to be somebody who thinks in pictures to start with—Ian doesn't and Mum not much. And then … well, I know Dad and Granny quarreled and Dadda tried to keep the peace. I've seen their faces, shouting. Dad used to be quite thin then. But I don't know what the quarrel was, or why it was so bad. I think it might have been something to do with the gift.”

“I don't see why.”

“Granny said it always brought grief—I expect that's right. I mean, look how you felt just now, when I let on. I expect it can be a lot worse than that, though.”

“Grief? I was angry, but … yes, I suppose it could spoil things between us forever—if we let it.”

Davy said nothing.

“Grief's a funny word to use. Did Gran give you any for-instances?”

“There was another Davy …”

He stopped. It was Granny's very private story—he didn't think even Dadda knew. But there, at that moment, it seemed to him more important than anything not to let the gift break the trust and closeness that existed between Penny and him—so he went on with the whole story, trying to use the exact words Granny had used in the farm kitchen seven years before. When he'd finished, Penny wriggled to the cliff edge and gazed down into the silent levels and screes.

“I wonder if it was true,” she said.

“Of course it was.”

“I mean she might only have been having a sort of fancy about being in love with Huw, but Davy thought it was real.”