His laugh frightened her. ‘I don’t want to be sensible. Just leave me alone. You go to bed, I’m all right, Margiad.’
‘It’s that bitch,’ she shouted in his face.
He got up, went close, ‘Will you leave me alone?’
‘The look in your face, you’re threatening me,’ she said.
‘I’m threatening nobody, I just want to be left alone,’ he said.
‘I saw that one once, yes, close as close. Oh God! When I sit and think of the peaceful days at Hengoed, and now this one comes here, turning you into a real fool. No peace at all now, ashamed, that’s what I am, all these weeks, the days long, and the nights longer,’ and she sat and buried her face in her hands.
For a moment he thought she was going to cry.
‘I’ve asked you to leave me alone,’ he said.
‘I’ll never do that, never. It’s nearly midnight. Did you know that? If I went out this moment I would see only a single light shining in all this street. This one, this house,’ and she threw her arms round him, crying, ‘Mervyn, Mervyn.’
He broke free and rushed to the door, but she was behind him, and now barred his path. ‘I wish to God I could cry about it.’
‘Then cry, cry’ he shouted, and suddenly she appeared to go limp, clutching at the door, and he heard the break in her voice.
‘I’m sorry, but I cannot help it, Margiad,’ he said.
She was livid with anger, and for a moment he thought she might even spit at him. He went into the hall, and she followed after.
‘I really begin to think my sister is hating me,’ he said.
‘She’s a whore.’
She saw his shoulders slump. ‘And that is the living truth of it, brother.’
He did not move, seemed hardly to realise that she was still there and then he glimpsed her hand searching for his own. ‘I wish,’ she began, ‘I wish…’ but the remaining words froze upon her tongue.
He made as if to go, but did not move; he wanted to look so closely into her eyes, to feel her breath upon his cheek.
‘D’you remember, Mervyn, how once, in the cool of an evening, we would go out and walk to the top of the hill and look down the valley. But not now, no, not now.’
She drew away from him, as if in an instant she realised that she was too close to something beyond her comprehension, and was in this very moment afraid to touch. He watched her move slowly back into the sitting-room, and, on reaching the chair, collapse into it. He thought he heard a sob, yet remained motionless, staring down at the carpeted hall.
‘Good night, Margiad,’ he said, ‘and God bless you. Sleep well.’
His hand found the knob, and the turn of it sounded thunderous in the silent house. Through spread fingers his sister stuttered, ‘You - - - you - - - ’
He turned and looked back at her, but said nothing.
‘Not even a light in your room these nights, Mervyn. Sitting in the dark you are, so still and silent. Perhaps you’re afraid to look into your mirror, of what you will see, locking yourself up in a mad dream.’
He moved, stopped in the threshold.
‘Very soon things will be too late. You’ll wake up when the laughter crashes in your ears.’
She heard the door close.
‘In God’s good time he’ll be left alone,’ she thought.
She started to dampen the fire, locked the doors, shut the window, and turned out the light. Climbing the stairs seemed endless. She passed his room. It was in darkness. And no door had ever seemed to slam shut with such resolution, as though it were now closed forever. She slipped quietly into her bedroom, undressed in the dark. She knew she would not sleep, and remembered how late one night she had seen the light still burning in his room, and going there, had found him slumped in his chair, still dressed. Wasn’t he going to bed?
But he had remained dumb, motionless, indifferent. She thought of it now as she tossed and turned in her bed. Was he, even now, sitting in that chair, and all the emptiness about him? She got out of bed, crept along the landing, quietly opened his door, and looked in. She leaned forward, listened.
‘Poor man. Silly man,’ she said to herself.
The curtains were fully drawn, the darkness black, and the heightened silence seemed to give to the room another dimension. She crept back to her bed, and lay there, wondering, wishing, hoping. If that woman had never come. If that hotel had never opened. If Jones had never been born. If only they were back at Hengoed, happy in those other days, and Mervyn safe in his purpose, safe with his duty.
‘I could go and see Dr Hughes in the morning.’
She got up, and quietly opened her window. It had ceased raining.
‘I could talk to that woman. Yes, that would indeed be best.’ And suddenly Mari Richards was talking in her ear.
‘Yes indeed. I know. Queer it is, Margiad, queer, your brother like that. I saw that woman from nowhere, in the Penuel that night, close to her I was. Duw! She looked like one that has been lost for a hundred years, and your brother staring, staring. And no one saw her come. Works for that Mr Blair, say she has no friends, wants none, and holds her head very high up whenever she passes a girl from his office, and often goes walking along the shore, all by herself, and that Islwyn Jones told Tegid Hughes that she stays in her room and keeps her door shut tight, and Tegid said to him perhaps Minister Thomas wants to marry her for her money, very keen he is, always following her around, once he tried to speak to her. Mr Blair likes her because she is very quiet and works well. Mrs Blair once asked her to tea, but Miss Vaughan said she had a prior engagement, whatever that would be, I don’t know. Strange, isn’t it, Margiad.’
And the words rocked like many tiny boats inside her head, and she turned and turned in her bed, and again she thought of Dr Hughes, reaching out to him with imaginary hands, wishing him to come, to talk to her brother. So sad and silly, all of it, no peace now, and people talking about the good man that might be walking too near a rocky road, and leaving God Almighty behind him, that was even worse.
When she closed her eyes she saw immediately the vivid green of a place called Hengoed, her brother walking a lane, and the ‘good mornings’ crowding in on him as he went on to his chapel. Not so much rain at Hengoed, and the sun more kind. She lay still in her bed, memory a balm, a child voice sharp in her ears, a smiling brother beside her at the festival.
‘Ah!’ and she gave a great sigh, and thought again of the next room, and the utter silence and stillness.
‘In the morning, first thing, yes.’
