“No,” I said.
“O, God forgive you,” says she, pale. “Hell and Damnation for you if Dai Alltwen do hear you, mind.”
“And to hell with Dai Alltwen via Carmarthen,” I said.
This sets her scampering and I mooched over to Morfydd, digging her. “Damned starved, I am,” I said. “You coming?”
But she, like the rest, are into it proper now. Nineteen to the dozen they go it after Chapel; hands waving, tongues wagging; dear me’s and good grief’s left and right, shocked and shamed and shrieking in chorus; the crescent jaw of the crone with her champing, the double chin creases of the matron and the quick, shadowed cheek of the maiden, all lifting in bedlam to a chorus of harmony, hitting Top C. And God put Eve under the belly of the serpent.
“Good God,” whispered Morfydd. “Look what is coming!”
Osian Hughes Bayleaves, six-foot-six of him, with a waist like Hettie’s and a chest as Hercules, white teeth shining in the leather of his face. Low he bows, jerked into beetroot by his high, starched collar.
“Good morning, Miss Mortymer,” he murmurs.
Down they go, all eight of them. Pretty it looks, mind.
“My mam have sent me to ask you to tea, Miss Mortymer.”
“Eh, there’s a pity,” says Morfydd to me. “Today of all days, and we have company, eh, Jethro?”
“First I’ve heard of it.” Gave her a wink. For beauty as Morfydd’s must duck its own trouble.
“Damned swine,” she whispers, smiling innocently. “Some other time, Mr Hughes, and thank your mam kindly.” And away she goes in a swirl of skirts, giving honey to Osian and daggers to me.
“But Osian Hughes has prospects, remember,” says Mam on the way home.
“You are not bedding me with prospects,” says Morfydd. “Give me a man a foot lower and fire in him, not milky rice pudding. Pathetic is that one,” and she sniffed. “A body made for throwing bullocks pumped into passion by the heart of a rabbit.”
“Time you was settled, nevertheless,” and Mam sighs.
“I don’t do so bad, mind,” said Morfydd, and I saw Mam’s dig.
We had put up with all this before, of course. I wandered beside them kicking at stones in visions of the lips of Tessa Lloyd Parry, dying for manhood that I might honour her. The wind whispered as we laboured up the hill, and it was perfumed.
“You cannot live in the past,” said Mam to Morfydd.
No answer from Morfydd, but her eyes were bright.
“You must think of your Richard. Soon he will ask for a dada.”
Out came a handkerchief.
“Now, now!” said my mother, sharp.
“O, God,” said Morfydd.
It was the Richard that did it, the name of her son and the lover who sired him three years back.
“Hush, love her,” whispered Mam, holding her. “Jethro, walk on.” But a bit of sniffing and wiping and we were back to normal and Cae White grew before us ruined and turreted, blazing in the sun, with Mari, my sister-in-law, waiting in the doorway with Jonathon, her baby, asleep in her shawl.
O, this Mari!
CHAPTER 3
STRANGE THAT I knew Cae White was mine the moment I set foot in it; that I would shoulder the burden that Mari’s grandfather had carried for life, and mate with it, and bring it to flower. Beautiful was this old Welsh gentry place gone to ruin, standing in its thirty acres with pride of nobility, shunning lesser neighbours. No time for it, said Morfydd – too damned proud – and how the hell Grandfer got hold of it I will never understand. Cheap, mind, at a pound a week rent, land included. Fishy. For places half the size Squire Lloyd Parry was charging double and he was not a man to lose sight of a pound. Most of the villagers worked for Squire, but not Grandfer, and Cae White was stuck in the middle of Squire’s acres as a ship in full sail. Left and right the little farmers were being pushed out by rising rents and the gentry were forcing out their land enclosures faster than a wizard mouths spells, but nobody shifted Grandfer who had the power of the Devil in him, some said. Others said that Squire was pixilated and had never set eyes on Cae White though he passed it most days of the week. And I had seen him and Grandfer walk within feet and neither offer the other a glance while grown men were tugging out forelocks and their wives draping the ground. Indecent, said Morfydd, there are secrets at Cae White.
Things were happening in Carmarthenshire just now. The gentry were forming Trusts for road repairs and setting up tollgates to pay for the labour, but drawing fat profits for the money invested by charging the earth for tolls. Left and right the gates were going up now, placed to trap the small farmers. Graft, too, as usual, for some gentlemen’s carriages passed the tollgates free and bridges were being built to serve the needs of big houses. Men were flocking away from the land, queueing for the workhouses, and at the beginning of spring whole families were starving. And I was starving for Tessa Lloyd Parry.
“You keep from that one,” said Morfydd. “Hobnails mating with lace.”
“Leave him be,” said Mam, sewing up to the light, squinting.
“To make a fool of the lot of us? Listen, you!” And Morfydd peered at me. “Gentry are running this county same as back home. You heard of Regan Killarney?”
“South of Ireland,” I said to shift her.
“Transportation for twenty salmon – dished out by a clergyman magistrate yesterday – getting his protection for the water he owned. While men like Killarney stink in the hulks for Botany Bay you’d best keep away from gentry Welsh lest the working Welsh call you traitor. You listening?”
“Half the county’s listening,” said Mam, stitching, sighing.
“Too damned young to be courting, anyway,” said Morfydd,
