The Owl Service (5 page)

“‘Think'?”

Gwyn came down the ladder. He held out the cage. Inside was a hard-packed ball of bones and fur.

“I think it's a mouse,” he said. “Owls aren't fussy. They just swallow straight off, and what they don't want they cough up later. That's an owl's pellet: but I think it was mouse.”

T
hey had not heard Nancy come up the stairs. She was in the bedroom doorway. “It's taking you long enough to measure that door, isn't it, boy?” she said. “Is that all you're doing? What you need that trap for?”

“I've finished, Mam,” said Gwyn. “I'm going down the shop.”

“About time,” said Nancy. “I'm wanting flour for tea scones: be sharp.”

“Can I have my money now?” said Gwyn.

“You has pocket money Saturday,” said Nancy.

“I know, Mam. Can I have it early this week?”

“You think I'm made of it? There's nothing as can't wait. Saturday, boy.”

“But Mam—”

“Down the shop with you, and less cheek.”

“I'm not cheeking you.”

“You are now,” said Nancy.

Gwyn went downstairs and into the kitchen. Roger followed. Gwyn opened a cupboard and took his mother's purse from behind a cocoa tin.

“You're not going to nick it, are you?” said Roger.

“No,” said Gwyn.

“You don't need cash for the flour,” said Roger. “It goes on the account.”

“Yes,” said Gwyn.

“Do you have pocket money every week?” said Roger.

“Yes.”

“Bit quaint, isn't it?”

“Is it?”

“Though if that's how you're fixed I suppose it's OK to take some early. You're not pinching it – just anticipating.”

“Not even that,” said Gwyn. “I'm giving.” He opened the purse, and dropped the ball of mouse inside. “A poor thing, but mine own.” Then he closed the purse, and put it back in the cupboard.

Gwyn walked so fast down the drive that Roger had to run after him. His face was white and he did not speak.

“Should you have done that? It might give her heart failure,” said Roger. “After all, she is your mother.”

“After all,” said Gwyn, “she is.”

“What did you want your money for?”

“Ten lousy fags.”

“Oh.”

“Ten stinking fags.”

“Look,” said Roger. “If that's all it is, I can lend you—”

“No thanks.”

“You needn't give it me back. I get plenty.”

“Congratulations.”

“What's up with you?”

“Nothing.”

“Look. Stick it on the account at the shop. It'll never be noticed.”

“No thanks.”

“You make me puke,” said Roger.

The shop was in the front room of a cottage half a mile down the valley. The room was furnished to be lived in. There was a table of black oak, carved with herons, and on top an empty red plastic tomato that had once held sauce but was now an ornament. Jars of boiled sweets were on the sideboard among wedding photographs, and beside a grandfather clock were two dustbins holding sugar and flour. The ceiling was so low that a hole had been dug in the floor for the clock to stand in. Mrs Richards, the shopkeeper, was talking to Mrs Lewis-Jones in Welsh.

“I've been expecting it, Mrs Lewis-Jones, I've been expecting it. There was never a summer like it this week, and then Gareth Pugh's black sow ran wild on the mountain and they can't bring her down. Grandad used to say the beasts always know first.”

“They do,” said Mrs Lewis-Jones. “They're very excitable, like a baby on with its teeth. We can't come near our old bull, and the sheep are right up on the top there. Mr Lewis-Jones is out all hours mending fences as far as the Ravenstone.”

“That's a long way!” said Mrs Richards.

“I'll have two thin-sliced,” said Mrs Lewis-Jones.

“We've no bread yet,” said Mrs Richards. “The postman hasn't been.”

“To think we shall see it in our time, Mrs Richards!”

“Is it certain?”

“It is. Mister Huw came to tell us last night. He was going to all the farms. He says she is coming, and it's owls.”

“The poor things!” said Mrs Richards, and she looked sideways at Roger and Gwyn.

“Could we have—” said Roger.

“One minute, if you please,” said Mrs Richards. She cut a lump of butter from a block on the windowsill. “Is it to be the three of them again, Mrs Lewis-Jones?”

“Yes. There's the girl, too. Mister Huw says she's made it owls.”

“We must bear it,” said Mrs Richards. “There's no escaping, is there? Aberystwyth isn't far enough.”

“You've said a true word there, Mrs Richards. “I'll have a packet of soap flakes.”

“Excuse me,” said Roger. “If you've a lot of shopping, I wonder if we could possibly have some flour. We're in rather a hurry.”

“Certainly,” said Mrs Lewis-Jones. “Are you the young gentleman from up the house?”

“Yes,” said Roger.

“There's nice,” said Mrs Lewis-Jones. “And you Nancy's Gwyn, are you?”

“I'm Gwyn.”

“There's nice. I was girl with your Mam. You having a nice time?”

“Yes – thanks,” said Roger.

“Good,” said Mrs Lewis-Jones. “It is a nice valley for the holiday.”

“Six pound of flour for the house, please, Mrs Richards,” said Gwyn.

“Righto, boy.” Mrs Richards dipped a scoop into one of the dustbins. “She's coming, then?”

“She's coming,” said Mrs Lewis-Jones. “The poor lady.”

“If it takes that long to ask for half a pound of rancid butter and a packet of Daz I'm glad I don't speak Welsh,” said Roger when they were outside. “I thought we were going to be there all day.”

“They were talking,” said Gwyn.

“And how,” said Roger. “What about, anyway?”

“The weather.”

“Typical,” said Roger. “Women. Hey, I didn't see old Ali when we came out, did you?”

“No.”

“I hope she managed those plates without being nabbed. Queer do about the trap, wasn't it? I wonder what made her put that grisly mouse in. I'd have thought she was too squeamish, even for a laugh.”

“No laugh,” said Gwyn. “And she didn't.”

“She must have.”

“She didn't. It was still warm.”

“You're joking,” said Roger. “I'd like to see the owl that could take a mouse out of a trap, eat it, and spit the pips back in.”

“I shouldn't,” said Gwyn.

“You know, it's darned rude of them, speaking Welsh like that,” said Roger. “How would they have liked it if we'd started up in French?”

“Very thoughtless, yes: seeing as they're Welsh round here.”

“Keep your shirt on,” said Roger. “You were behind me: you didn't hear: they were speaking English until we went in.”

“What were they saying?”

“Something about some bigwig coming. I didn't catch it. They clicked into Welsh when they saw me. Some kind of centenary, is it? A festival? A May Queen, or something? I don't know.”

They walked under the shadow of the Bryn and along the drive. Alison was sitting in a deck chair on the lawn reading a book.

“Hi, Ali,” said Roger. “Did you manage to stash the plates OK?”

Alison's eyes were hidden behind the black discs of her sunglasses.

“What plates?” she said.

“A
w, play the other side, Ali,” said Roger.

“What are you talking about?”

“Hah,” said Roger. “Hah. Hah. Hah. Is that better?”

“Yes thank you, Roger,” said Alison, and went back to her book.

“Where's them plates?” said Gwyn.

“What plates?” said Alison, without looking from the page.

“Don't come that.”

“I don't make a practice of ‘coming' anything. Now may I read my book, please?”

“Where've you put them plates, you stupid nit?”

“Please,” said Alison. “You're not at home now.”

“Don't come that with me, girl!”

“And don't talk to me like that. You'll be sorry.”

“And who'll make me? You, you jumped-up snob? You and who else? We got to have them plates! They're loaded!”

“Give him a lollipop, will you, Roger?” said Alison. “He's just like his mother.”

Gwyn lashed out with his foot and kicked the book from Alison's hands. It landed yards away, splayed on the grass.

No one moved. There was silence. Then, “You shouldn't have done that,” Alison said.

“You shouldn't have done that.” Her knuckles were white on the edge of the deck chair. Her neck was thrust forward. “You shouldn't have done that.”

Gwyn could see himself reflected in her sunglasses, and at the corner of the lens something fluttered like a wounded bird. He turned his head. It was the book. It came for him through the air. Its pages rattled, and disintegrated, but still came for him, like a tail after the red binding. Gwyn dropped the flour bags and protected his face as the book swarmed at him.

“No!” he shouted.

Gravel from the drive stung his hands and ears.

“Stop!”

Gwyn ran.

A heap of grass clippings exploded on his back, moist and sour, and pine cones showered his head. He blundered across to the wood, and the chippings fell away, but now twigs and leaves and pebbles and dead branches from the trees spun at him. A flour bag burst, and the next hit him, but he ran down towards the river, until there were only the living branches whipping him as he forced himself through. A few spent pebbles smacked in the mud by the boundary fence where Gwyn hung, sobbing, against the wire.

He looked past his shoulder, but no one had followed, and there was nothing except the wood. On the other side of the fence were the river and the mountain. He was over his shoes in the marsh.

The wood lay still. The air throbbed with insects, and flies hovered and disappeared and hovered. Meadowsweet grew in a mist of flowers, and the sun glinted on the threads of caterpillars which hung from the trees as thick as rain.

“By,” said Gwyn, “there's axiomatic.”

He thrust himself off the fence and walked uphill out of the marsh. He stopped at the two splashes of flour. From here there was a trail of litter towards the house. He rubbed his head, and some paper stuck to his hand, fragments of the book. Not only had the leaves disintegrated, but the paper itself was in shreds. He tried to read one of the scraps: it made no sense, but he recognised the print.

“Dicky Nignog!” cried Gwyn. “Dicky flaming Nignog!” He snatched another piece off the ground. It was the same print, from the same book. “Dicky Nignog,” he groaned. But then a word caught his eye, and Gwyn looked closely. He read:

– and enchantment to conjure a wife for him out of flowers', and he then a man in stature, and the handsomest youth that mortal ever saw. And then they took the flowers of the oak, and the flowers of the broom, and the flowers of the meadowsweet, and from those they called forth the very fairest and best endowed maiden that mortal ever saw –

“Land of My Crumbling Fathers!” said Gwyn. He gathered more fragments, but he could do nothing with them. He followed the trail back through the wood, collecting the pieces, and at last he fitted two together.

– go in the form of a bird. And because of the dishonour thou hast done to Lleu Llaw Gyffes thou art never – thee wherever they may find thee; and that thou shalt not lose thy name, but that thou be for ever called Blodeuwedd.”

Blodeuwedd is “owl” in the language of this present day. And for that reason birds are hostile to the owl. And the owl is still called blodeuwedd. –

“Dicky Nignog,” said Gwyn. “Dicky, Dicky Nignog.”

When Gwyn reached the house Alison and Roger were tidying the lawn.

“Have you the binding off that book?” said Gwyn.

“It's by the deck chair,” said Alison.

Gwyn opened the cover. “Dicky Nignog,” he said.

“Who?”

Gwyn pointed to the bookplate gummed inside the cover: Ex Libris R. St J. Williams. Llangynog. “Dicky Nignog,” said Gwyn. “Our English master at Aber. He puts these labels everywhere. He's a raving book fetishist: washes his hands before reading. It nearly killed him to lend me this, but he said I had to read it, and the library copies were all out. He'll blow his top.”

“I'm sorry,” said Alison.

“Couldn't be helped,” said Gwyn. “Looks like a wedding, doesn't it? Confetti by courtesy of R. St J. Williams, Esquire,
B.A.
”

“Oh, Gwyn, I'm sorry.”

“What was it like? You read it, did you?”

“Bits. They were short stories. Fine if you like that sort of thing – wizards and blood all over the place.”

“Don't knock our National Heritage, girlie. Them old tales is all we got.”

“What's the name of that stone again,” Roger called, “down by the river?”

“The Stone of Gronw,” said Gwyn.

“Is this the same?” said Roger. He was holding another scrap of paper.

– to Lleu, “Lord,” said he, “since it was through a woman's wiles I did to thee that which I did, I beg thee in God's name, a stone I see on the river bank, let me set that between me and the blow.” “Faith,” said Lleu, “I will not refuse thee that.” “Why,” said he, “God repay thee.” And then Gronw took the stone and set it between him and the blow. And then Lleu took aim at him with the spear, and it pierced through the stone and through him too, so that his back was broken, –

“I read that,” said Alison.

“The whole story?” said Gwyn.

“I think so.”

“Here, look at these. Is it all the same story?”