The Owl Service (7 page)

Whirr.

“That is right,” said Huw.

Click.

“Finished,” said Roger.

“Lleu is a hard lord,” said Huw. “He is killing Gronw without anger, without love, without mercy. He is hurt too much by the woman and the spear. Yet what is there left when it is done? His pride. No wife: no friend.”

Roger stared at Huw, “You're not so green as you're grass-looking, are you?” he said. “Now you mention it, I have been thinking – That bloke Gronw was the only one with any real guts: at the end.”

“But none of them is all to blame,” said Huw. “It is only together they are destroying each other.”

“That Blod-woman was pretty poor,” said Roger, “however you look at it.”

“No,” said Huw. “She was made for her lord. Nobody is asking her if she wants him. It is bitter twisting to be shut up with a person you are not liking very much. I think she is often longing for the time when she was flowers on the mountain, and it is making her cruel, as the rose is growing thorns.”

“Boy, you're really screwed up about this, aren't you?” said Roger. “And you'd have me as bad. I've been here a week and I've got the ab-dabs already. There's a world outside this valley, you know. It's not cherubs blowing their gaskets and a whale in the top left-hand corner.”

“I been outside the valley,” said Huw. “Once. That's why I'm Huw the Flitch.”

“I don't see the connection,” said Roger. He telescoped the tripod and slung the camera round his neck. “I must go,” he said. “I'll be late for dinner.”

“I am coming up the house,” said Huw. “So I can tell you.”

“All right,” said Roger. “I'll buy it. Why are you called Halfbacon?”

“We are very short of meat in the valley, old time,” said Huw. “And there is a man in the next valley. He has some pigs. But he is not letting anyone have them.”

“So what did you do?”

“I go to him and I ask him to let me take the pigs in exchange for what I will give him.”

“Fair enough,” said Roger. “Did he agree?”

“Yes.”

“And you took the pigs, and that's how you got your nickname.”

“Yes.” Huw laughed. “I am tricking him lovely.”

“What did you give him for the pigs?”

“Twelve fine horses,” said Huw. “With gold saddles and gold bridles! And twelve champion greyhounds, with gold collars and gold leashes!”

Huw staggered with his laughter.

“You did that swap for a few greasy pigs?” said Roger.

Huw cackled, showing his teeth, and grabbed Roger's arm for support.

“You're mad,” said Roger. “You're mad. You're really mad.”

“No, no,” said Huw. He wiped his eyes. “I am tricking him!”

“Then I'm mad,” said Roger. “Mad for listening to you.”

“No, no,” said Huw. “You see – them greyhounds, and the horses, and the trappings and all – I was making them out of toadstools!”

T
owards the end of dinner Gwyn stacked the plates in the hatch and then went to light the fire in the sitting-room. He fiddled with paper and twigs and fed them strips of birch bark. Then he rearranged the logs in the basket by the hearth. Then he lit the lamps. He propped more wood against the fire back, trying not to send smoke into the room.

Roger and his father came through from the dining-room and settled themselves in easy chairs. Gwyn put the hanging lamp on the chimney. He had to work it gently into place inside its shade so that the asbestos mantle would not break. He kept the wick low to warm the glass. Then he rearranged the logs in the basket and brushed the hearth. He turned the lamps up slowly in case they flared.

Then he put more wood on the fire and rearranged the logs.

“I think we're suited now,” said Clive. “Thanks a lot.”

“I'll make sure the lamps are right, Mr Bradley,” said Gwyn.

“They look fine to me,” said Clive.

“And I'd better bring you some logs.”

“We'll manage,” said Clive. “I'd toddle along now, if I were you.”

“Oh – Yes—”

“Good night, Gwyn.”

“—Good night, Mr Bradley.”

“One small point, old son.”

“Yes, Mr Bradley?”

“If you've anything you want to tell my daughter, let's all hear it, shall we? Let's have the brussels sprouts served straight, without notes inside them, eh?”

Gwyn stood in the dark at the foot of the stairs between the dining-room and the sitting-room. He dragged his fist against the wall, trying to hurt himself.

“Had any luck with the snaps?” he heard Clive say through the open door.

“I don't know,” said Roger. “I'll see tomorrow when I develop them. If they come out it'll be no thanks to that Halfbacon moron. He was trying to louse it up all the time. Honest, Dad, you'll have to do something about him. What I was telling you—”

“Yes, I know,” said Clive. “But he's harmless.”

“Is he, though?” said Roger. “He's as strong as an ox. And he's a real nutter.”

“Yes, but he's been here all his life: he knows the ropes. And where would we find anyone for the job? The place would go to pot.”

“I'd not lose sleep over that,” said Roger.

“And there's Margaret, too,” said Clive. “She wouldn't have much of a holiday if we had to go scrounging for a new man.”

“Of course,” said Roger. “I was forgetting Margaret.”

Gwyn stepped back into the shadow as someone came down the stairs. It was Alison. She carried a small lamp, and when she reached the bottom of the stairs Gwyn moved forward so that she could see him. He waved towards the dining-room. Alison hesitated. She looked at the open sitting-room door. Clive and Roger were still talking. She looked at Gwyn, and again at the doorway, and then Gwyn watched her pass by him, within a yard of him, into the sitting-room, and watched her close the door.

“Hello, old stick,” said Clive. He rose when Alison came in. “Now where is it? Aha. Here's a little nonsense I picked up in town today. Thought it might amuse the lady. And I managed to get you your tracing paper, by the way.”

“Oh Clive, how sweet,” said Alison. She took the box. “You are a darling.”

Gwyn ran through the dining-room and the lamp-room to the kitchen, and stopped when he came up against the sink. He stood still. Then he turned the taps on, and leant with his hands flat against the sink and watched the water rise. He squirted some detergent into the sink, picked a dirty wineglass from the draining board, and began, slowly, methodically, to wash up. Then he dried everything and put it away. He made hardly any sound from start to finish and it was only when he went to hang the cloth to dry that he noticed his mother by the stove.

She sat on a kitchen chair, gazing at the closed firedoor. One hand gripped the towel rail, her wrist flexed as if she was trying to unscrew the rail, but her fingers slipped on the bright steel.

“Hello, Mam,” said Gwyn. “Didn't see you there. Shall I light another lamp?”

“No, boy,” said Nancy. “Leave it.”

“Not like our own fire at Aber,” said Gwyn. “Is it, Mam?”

“I should never have come,” said Nancy. “I shouldn't have come. It's not right. Never go back, boy. Never go back.”

“What's the matter, Mam? Got a bad head?” said Gwyn. He could not see her eyes, but he heard the rasp of her breath that was as close as she ever came to tears.

“If there was justice in Heaven,” said Nancy.

Gwyn put his arm round his mother's shoulder.

“What's wrong, Mam?”

“I shouldn't have come.”

“Then why did we?” said Gwyn. “How did they find our address?”

“He gave it her. Then she wrote.”

“We still needn't have come.”

“It's good money, boy,” said Nancy. “But I should never have listened to her soft soap.”

“Who had our address?” said Gwyn.

“That idiot outside.”

“Huw? Why should he have it?”

Nancy's hand worked on the rail.

“Mam,” said Gwyn. “Listen, Mam. We got to talk about it.”

“There isn't nothing to talk about.”

“Yes there is. Listen, Mam: just once. Please.”

“I told you not to have anything to do with him. I mean it.”

“Mam: just listen – Please, Mam!”

Nancy was silent.

“You told me so much about the valley,” said Gwyn, “it was like coming home. All my life I've known this place better than Aber. Mam, I even know who people are when I see them, you described them that good! So why didn't I know about Huw Halfbacon?”

“He don't count,” said Nancy.

“Yes he does,” said Gwyn. “People in the valley don't call him a fool. He's important. Why haven't you told me?”

“Who you been listening to?” said Nancy. “You been talking behind my back, have you?”

“No, Mam,” said Gwyn.

“You on their side, are you?” said Nancy. “Giving my character!”

“Mam!”

Gwyn was standing by the kitchen table. Nancy was sitting on the chair. She had not looked away from the door of the stove since Gwyn had first spoken to her, but now both hands were on the rail.

“Mam. I got to know about Huw. And them plates.”

“I'm telling you, boy,” said Nancy. Her voice was slow. “If you says another word to that old fool, or if you says another word about it to me or anyone else, I walk out of this house, and you leave that school. No more for you: you start behind the counter at the Co-op.”

“You can't do that,” said Gwyn.

“I'm telling you, boy.”

“You can't.”

“It's bad enough having to bow and scrape before them in there,” said Nancy. “I'll not stand it from my own flesh and blood. I've not slaved all these years in Aber so you can look down your nose at me like one of them.”

“I'm a Premium Bond on legs, is that it?” said Gwyn.

Nancy went to the kitchen dresser and fumbled in one of the cupboards. “I'm telling you, boy. – Where you off now?”

“Bed. Good night.”

“Where's the aspirin?” said Nancy. “I got one of my heads.”

“‘I have got',” said Gwyn. “‘I have got one of my heads.' It's uncouth to omit the auxiliary verb. And if you want aspirin, have you tried your purse?”

S
he'll not go through the kitchen, because Mam bolts it. She'll not go out the front, because it's two doors to unlock. So it'll be the cloakroom. Right, girlie. Don't hurry.

Gwyn stood on the high terracing of garden above the back of the house, overlooking the cloakroom. He stood against a tree by the hedge, where the road came nearest the house, passing a few yards away at roof level as it curled round the Bryn. He had been standing there for two hours and had not moved.

You're going to come out of that door, and the only way to nab you is to watch, and keep watching, and nobody would have the patience to stand here and do that, would they? Such a bore, old stick.

At first Gwyn had thought it would be impossible. The darkness was unrelieved, and he wanted to move – only a few steps, and back: anything to pass the time. But he had set himself against the trunk and gradually the night separated into cloud and mountain, and trees, river and wind, and sound in leaves and grass. A stoat killed near him, but he did not move.

The moon shone.

And Gwyn began to play with time, splitting a second into minutes, and then into hours – or taking an hour and compressing it to an instant. No hurry.

His concentration was broken once, when he was alarmed by the quick drumming of hoofs, but the next moment he grinned as a motorcycle swept along the road. Its headlamp spun shadows in his face.

Kick start!

Lights moved inside the house as the family went to bed. Two lights came to rest, one room above the other. Roger and Alison. Alison's window darkened first.

Don't be impatient, girlie.

But Gwyn misjudged her. He saw the curtains part, and a smudge of face appeared. She was sitting on the window ledge. Gwyn willed himself to sink into the tree trunk. He felt that he was floodlit. But Alison was watching the reflection of Roger's light on the steep garden, and when he blew the lamp out Alison left the window.

Now let's see how good you really are, thought Gwyn, and he began to count.

It was nearly an hour, as far as he could tell, before he saw Alison's torch flash in the bedroom.

“Not bad,” said Gwyn. “Not bad at all.”

When Alison unlocked the cloakroom door Gwyn was above her, ready.

She went along the back of the house and past the billiard-room. Gwyn stayed well up the road. She could be making for the back drive or the wood. She was wearing trousers and an anorak and rubber-soled climbing boots.

Alison crossed the open space by the kennels. Gwyn had to let her go. He dared not start after her until she was on the path that led down from the kennels to the drive. The path was between bushes.

Gwyn gave her an extra ten seconds, but the path was dark, and he had to grope his way, and when he came on to the drive Alison had disappeared.

Gwyn swore. There was no sigh of her. Below him the wood stretched through marshland to the river, and in front was the drive, lined with trees. He ran along the whole length to the road gate, but found nothing. He ran back towards the house. If she had gone this way to the front of the house he would have heard her when she reached the gravelled part of the drive. Alison had to be in the wood. Gwyn stopped, and began to watch and listen again. Far away among the trees, deep in the marsh, he saw a light.

Gwyn moved into the wood. As soon as he left the drive he was struggling with old roots, old ditches, slime, rocks, old paths. Brambles and nettles he found by touch, and trees heeled over when he tried to steady himself, their roots adrift in the peat. The wood was reverting to swamp.