‘Who told you that?’
‘Mari Richards .…’
‘Her again,’ he exploded.
‘Tegid Lewis, The Lion, told her. She heard it from that God’s fright, Jones.’
‘He’s a liar.’
‘Tell him that.’
‘I’ll break his back with a word.’
‘Break it.’
He flung his hands into the air. ‘What is the matter with everybody?’
‘Perhaps Mrs Gandell laughed loudest, the English sometimes do.’
‘She is an English bitch,’ he said.
She clapped hands to her head, covered her face. ‘Mervyn! Mervyn!’ She rose, then pushed him away, and made for the door, at which she turned, and said, ‘I think you’re going mad, Mervyn Thomas. I can’t believe it. Once the words were like lambs at your lips, but not now, no, not now. The change in you these past months, it makes me sad, I mean sad. It’s like a stain on this house.’
He rose and walked the room, up and down, and she still stood there, angry, frustrated, ashamed. She made to speak and could not. Half way across the room he stopped.
‘How bitter you are,’ he said.
‘Not bitter. Sad,’ and her voice faded out, ‘that’s all.’
‘There’s somebody knocking.’
‘There’s nobody knocking.’
‘There is,’ and quite involuntarily, screeched it at him.
‘I’m going now.’
‘Go.’
She moved aside and he reached the door, and then she rushed after him, caught his hands, and looked hard and long at this changed brother. Her voice suddenly lost its outright harshness, the anger. ‘I was thinking last night of my father’s house, of your own mother, Mervyn, shining with goodness she was,’ and she gave a heavy sigh. ‘It’s a long road indeed to travel and find only stupidity at the end of it. You, a grown man.’
Very quietly, he said slowly, ‘Perhaps the desert will grow between us.’
‘One day you’ll return to this house and find that I am not here.’
‘You will always be here, sister, I know that, as I know that you are a good person,’ and he went out into the hall.
She immediately followed, and again caught his hand as he opened the front door. ‘Wait,’ she cried, ‘wait.’
He turned and said roughly, ‘Well.’
‘Listen,’ she said. ‘I remember one in my own father’s time, that was just like you, his head turned by a bitch, and had this terrible storm in him when the knife was showing in his years. Yes, and you knew him, too. That man’s pride fell away from him with a terrible thud, Mervyn, a terrible thud. Lifted beyond your height, Mervyn, that’s what it is. Now … you tell me something.’
He only closed his eyes and stood silent, his fingers trembling on the doorknob.
‘Well?’
And he was silent.
‘Yes, silent, that’s you, you can’t see, can’t hear, you’re stuffed with a vanity that can only be laughed at. Yes indeed, you remember that man, and I remember him, too, as I recall the echoes in his chapel that grew louder and louder, and nothing left for him except the miserable sheepdog that whined at his heels. Her voice faded, became hollow. ‘There was no one else, there was nothing, I mean nothing, empty, cold, lost, so foolish he was, so driven. One day you’ll be nothing, and you’ll remember the day that I said it to you, Mervyn.’
He stepped down into the street. It had begun to rain.
‘I will not be long,’ he said, and he walked off into the darkness, and she stood there, peering after him, and heard his heavy, halting steps in the deserted street. She slammed the door and went straight up to her bedroom. She sat in the darkness, and thought about her brother. Perhaps she, too, should get up and go out, into the air that was cool, into the silence. She thought of going down and continuing her knitting, and already she could hear the rhythmic click of the needles. Her thoughts rocked. Perhaps it would help calm her. But she sat on in the darkness, undetermined, bewildered, sad.
‘Perhaps I’d better go down,’ she thought.
But everything seemed bewildering, and everything was strange. She shut her eyes, sat stiffly, twiddling her fingers.
‘I don’t know,’ she cried, into the empty room. And she didn’t. ‘How things change, life, people, words, and now … this. Like a wound in the house. How can he be so silly, at his age.’
She went down, made herself comfortable by the fire, resumed her knitting. The needles clicked, the fire spat occasionally, and outside the rain poured down in the darkened town. And as she knitted she thought of their lives, the order of their days, the peace, the acceptance of what was right. She thought of the Penuel, his life.
‘I wonder where he is, now, at this very moment?’ And suddenly she was thinking of rushing out, looking for him, bringing him home. ‘No, no. I couldn’t do that. Not nice.’
She thought of the odd-job man at the Decent Hotel. Jones, Islwyn Jones, and she remembered her first glimpse of him as he came out of the back entrance of The Lion. Decent Hotel indeed. It would not last long.
‘Ah well,’ and she got up and went into the kitchen and put milk into a pan, and sat and watched it heat. When it was boiled she returned to the sitting-room. From time to time she glanced up at the clock, thinking of Mervyn, worrying about him. Where does he go, what does he do?
