Free The Earth Hums in B Flat by Mari Strachan Page B

‘That Nanw Lipstick will find out you once went about with Ifan?’
    â€˜I couldn’t bear it. Not all the gossip,’ says Mam. ‘And what if she found out about . . . you know . . . Mam, as well. I couldn’t bear the shame of that.’
    â€˜Oh, Magda,’ says Tada. His voice is weary. ‘You were hardly a fancy woman, were you? How old were you? Just a girl. And as for your mother . . . well, we’ve gone over and over that, haven’t we? Over and over it.’ The bed thumps against the wall again as Tada turns over. ‘What happened to your mother is nothing for you to be ashamed about,’ he says.
    In the back yard John Morris has got into a fight with Nellie Davies’s cats. They fizz and spit at each other. Nellie Davies complains about John Morris all the time. I don’t understand why he’s such a good fighter when he’s so lazy. Maybe he has the spirit of a warrior in him. If foxes and spiders and dolls have spirits, a cat is sure to have a spirit too.
    I press my ear back against the wall.
    â€˜Anyway, that’s water long gone under the bridge,’ says Tada. ‘It’s poor Elin Evans we should be worrying about if he doesn’t turn up again, left on her own with those little girls.’
    Mam doesn’t make a sound.
    â€˜Nice woman like that,’ says Tada. ‘I can’t understand the man.’
    The silence stretches to the moon. I lie back and pull the sheet over my mouth again.
    â€˜Best thing all round would be if Ifan came back soon,’ says Tada. ‘Twm Edwards won’t be able to manage without a shepherd for long and Elin could lose the cottage.’
    Mrs Evans could lose Brwyn Coch! What would happen to her and Angharad and little Catrin, cast out into the cold by Twm Edwards? Catrin doesn’t like the cold. Where would they live? Where would Mrs Evans put all her books?
    â€˜Well, none of our business, is it?’ Tada says into the quietness. ‘But someone ought to find out where Ifan’s got to, fancy woman or no fancy woman. I wonder if Sergeant Jones is looking into it.’
    Mam doesn’t answer at all. The house sighs and grumbles around me as it settles down for the night. Bethan heaves over in the bed taking the blanket and the sheet with her. I haul them back. Bethan would like to know about Mam and Ifan Evans. Maybe Mam was only Bethan’s age. Just a girl, Tada said. It’s like Bethan liking Caroline’s brother, Richard. Yuck. Tada begins to snore, louder and louder, in a duet with Bethan. It’s difficult to think in all the noise. Now there are two things I’ve got to start doing tomorrow. I have to think of a plot to rescue the fox-fur from Mrs Llywelyn Pugh and give it a decent burial so its spirit will be sure to go to Heaven. And I have to find Ifan Evans. Then Mrs Evans and Angharad and Catrin won’t have to leave Brwyn Coch. And they won’t become homeless and nearly starve and Catrin and Angharad won’t die of scarlet fever because they’re living in poverty like the children in Little Women . Although I would help nurse them.
    I pull the sheet tighter over my mouth. The corpse bird hoots again and again in Bron-y-graig and I feel the beat of its heavy wings enter the rhythm of my sleep to carry me away into the night sky.

11
    I push my way through the side gate of the Police House. Beside the path the bluebells hang their heads under the weight of the morning’s rain. The clouds have turned even greyer and I feel goose pimples prickling all over my arms. A breeze blows up from the sea. I raise my hand to knock on Sergeant Jones’s door and it swings open in front of me. Sergeant Jones is struggling to close the window behind his desk, sneezing into a big white handkerchief at the same time.
    â€˜Martha’s beating the carpets,’ he says. ‘That breeze blew all the dust in through the window.’
    I can hear the