“You are a fine one to talk,” I replied. “Fight and be damned, it was, less than six months back.”
“We are doing all right!” said she, thumping the chair. “We are making a living, What else do you want?”
“What living we have you are making. If you came from Ponty we would start starving tomorrow for there is nothing in farming. Every yard I move now swallows the profits.”
“Then let the farm rot – come back to Ponty.”
“Any day now,” I said, “but there is more to it than that now. You may be beaten, but I am not. Whole families are starving between here and Pembroke, bled to death by grasping landlords. The magistrates are corrupt, the workhouses spilling from the windows – whole families are queueing at the doors – children torn from parents, husbands from wives, living like animals on scraps, working their fingers to blood on the oakum. Is it decent for men to sit down under this?”
“And you will fight for them, is it?”
She looked at me steady. The fire blazed suddenly, lighting her face, and she never moved her eyes from mine.
“Are you sure you are fighting for the poor?”
“For the lot of us – for you, Mam, the children – even for Grandfer.”
“But not for Mari?”
Still those eyes. Uncertain, I moved away. She was watching me. The clock ticked in the sudden silence.
“A bitch of a sister, isn’t it?” she said.
“For … Mari, too,” I said, sullen.
“Thank God she’s mentioned. You love her, don’t you?”
“Not in the way you think.”
Damned women. They take a lever to the soul and prise and peep.
“Think again, Jethro.”
This swung me. “I do not love her as you call love!”
“All right, all right. You are not selling pigs. I only asked.”
A moth flapped over the lamp, creeping from his rot-corner, thinking it was summer, and the shadow of him was as big as a bat on the wall as he pecked at the glass.
“Singe your wings,” said Morfydd.
“I do not love Mari!”
“Half dead if you didn’t. If I were a man I would want her lying. Couldn’t help myself. I would want all of her, soul and body.”
“You and me think different,” I said to wound her.
“Much obliged. We think the same, but I am more honest.”
“She is Iestyn’s wife!”
“Thanks for reminding me.” Very smooth now, possessed, smiling. She rose. “Listen, you. You are hitting seventeen now – big enough for double your age – big enough to be talked to straight. The way you love Mari is the way you love me, Jethro. And any other kind of love you can save for Sixpenny Jane down at Betsi’s place, though the way she looked at you Fair Day I reckon you could get her free.”
“You don’t understand,” I said, furious.
“About men?” She laughed soft and low. “Duw! If you know of one wild enough you can send him down to Morfydd for taming, just to keep my hand in. If you throw enough buckets you quench the fire but the sister still burns bright, thank God. Aye, I know most about men and you in particular, including the birth mark somewhere special …”
“Please don’t be vulgar.”
“Right, then, but hear this, Jethro. To love Mari wrong is to love her vulgar, and I will not have it, not while Iestyn breathes.”
Gave her a glance and wandered about. Witch-black she sat, hands folded in her lap, her eyes following my every move.
“You do her no credit, Morfydd,” I said, but I could have struck her.
“And I do you less, boy, but I know I am right. Poor Jethro.” She cornered me by the fire and her arms went round me. “Do not be ashamed,” she whispered. “To love her is dangerous. It will grow and grow inside lest you knife it quick. O, the little shrew, she is, being so beautiful, being Mari. Jethro, come back to Ponty. I will help you, I will make it easy.”
“I … I would not touch her, you understand?”
“Yes,” she said.
“Not … not even give her a look.”
She nodded, kissing me although I twisted away. She caught my hand then and we stood together. Strange the heaping love I felt for her then.
“If you must fight for Mari, then do it careful, Jethro. Look now, there is soot on your collar.” She ringed it with her finger showing the black.
“Those are the mistakes,” she whispered, “sometimes the difference between life and death. When you blacken your face for the night meetings tuck a rag round your collar first. Has Flannigan mentioned that?”
I shook my head.
“Saw it last night,” she said. “Now look at the fire. Do you see the grooves of your fingers scratching on the chimney? Take it with your palm, boy, not the tips of the fingers, for the first thing they looked for in Twm Carnabwth’s house was the marks of his fingers on the back of the fire. None there, and as white as snow was his collar. They knew who broke the Efail-wen gate, but no one could prove it. Another thing.”
I listened.
“Watch for informers – the prissy men like Osian Hughes, the evil men like Waldo Rees Bailiff, though he will never join Rebecca. But a man like Hughes would not stand for two minutes with his hands tied
