“Nothing wrong with a mess of potatoes, though,” said Mam. “God knows what we’d do without the old spud.”
“God knows,” I said, “until you eat them every meal.”
“And if the crop fails, you starve,” said Morfydd, “like Ireland. Potatoes, undernourishment; more potatoes, illness; no potatoes, death. And if you doubt me ask them in Dublin. Same with this country. A north country farm labourer is cheaper to employ at fifteen shillings a week than a Welsh labourer on half the money, for the Welshman has been reared on your precious spuds and his output is a third of the man from the north. If you flog him to work, he dies – worked out at thirty – open your church registers.”
“Happy little soul, you are,” said Mam. “Talking about death. Do you think we could talk about living for a change.”
“Give me something to live for and I’ll try,” replied Morfydd.
I chanced a look at her. Still beautiful, still vital, I could see her changing with every month at Ponty. For a tram-tower she was living on borrowed time; should have passed on years back.
“Something will have to be done,” continued Morfydd. “Wherever you look the coffins are out and doing, but few bishops die, except from overeating, arriving at the throne room with a chicken leg in each hand, side by side with the workhouse poor. One consolation, questions will be asked. The gentry the same – go to Carmarthen for the gilded carriages with their damned postillions whipping for a path. Eh, God alive! Banquets and feasts on the smallest excuse while we get by on oatmeal broth. Few gentry die, except from port.”
“How is Tessa these days?” asked Mari.
This as always, the discreet, the gentle; changing the subject, blunting the edge of Morfydd’s knife; God, I loved her, and flung my thoughts back to Tessa.
“I have not heard,” I said.
“Do you think it would be too much trouble to find out?” asked Morfydd.
“I have been to the Reach waiting every Sunday for months.”
“If I loved a man who was dying I would not knock at the door. I would be in there quick, and hook him out. You could have called, Jethro.” She looked at me.
“Leave it,” said Mam, frowning.
“Seconds back you were shouting about gentry,” I said, bitter.
Morfydd glanced up. “Gentry living and gentry dying are two different things. Poor little soul.”
“You cannot expect him to knock at the door,” said Mari. “Morfydd, they would only throw him out.”
“He is a Mortymer,” said Morfydd. “He does the throwing.”
“Better go up, boy,” said Mam. “For once Morfydd is right.”
Morfydd rose and went to the fire, hands spread to the peat blaze. “You don’t have to worry, they are sending for you tonight.”
“Who?” I asked.
“Squire. Don’t ask me more, I don’t know any more – heard it in the village. Tessa is nearing the end. …”
“God,” I said, and got up, wandering, gripping things.
“And Squire is sending down for Jethro?” whispered Mari.
There was a meeting that night up on the mountain, but I could not go now. Rising, I went out the back and looked at the sky. I was watching for rain about then, having in mind an early ploughing. Leaned against the back, dreaming. The fields were coming ghostly under the moon and he was as big as a cheese with him and rolling over the mountains. A nip of frost was in the air and a scent of peat fires, and I saw for the first time quite clearly the mud and wattle houses squatting on the foothills as little bullfrogs, their blind windows glinting for eyes. Went back into the house, cold away from the fire. And Mari was reading from the Book.
“‘By night on my bed I sought him whom my soul loveth: I sought him, but I found him not. I will rise now, and go about the city in the streets, and in the broad ways. I will seek him whom my soul loveth: I sought him, but found him not. The watchmen that go about the city found me; to whom I said, Saw ye him whom my soul loveth …?’”
Sitting down, I watched Mari’s face. No grief there, save for the brightness of her eyes, which could have been because of the beauty, then I looked at my mother. Stitching away like mad, she was, too busy for innocence, and Morfydd nodded at them a queer old look and a sigh. I knew what she was thinking.
“Can’t you find something happier, Mari?” I asked, sitting down.
“It is what Mam wants,” said Mari.
“Great is the Lord and with humour,” said Morfydd. “Heaven knows why we clad Him in sackcloth and misery, as if He never smiled.”
“My Reading,” said Mam. “There are other rooms in the house. Go on, Mari.”
And Mari read:
“‘It was but a little while that I passed from them, but I found him whom my soul loveth; I held him, and would not let him go, until I had brought him into my mother’s house, and into the chamber of her that conceived me …’”
My mother was weeping softly, stitching away.
“Mam, for God’s sake,” I said, and she raised her eyes at me, lowering them with a gesture of helplessness.
“No good hunting for tears, Mam,” said Morfydd. “There is enough to go round for the lot of us.”
Something was into me that night. I said, “A damned grave this is, not a house. Is it right to bleed yourself about Dada one
