“No doubt,” said Morfydd. “This will settle Tom Griffiths and Waldo Bailiff. Hairpins falling, lovers calling – eh, just look at that!”
“Inside quick, it is not decent watching,” said Mari, and swept us all in with her skirts. But I went to the window and watched them from there: speaking no words by the look of them, with Mam only up to his shoulder, gripping his arm down the path to the house, and Tomos smiling down. I will always remember how I saw them, walking down the path with the trap behind them, enwrapped in the love and respect that leaps from old friendship. We waited pent, the three of us, holding the boys steady from confusion as the door opened and they stood there hand in hand.
“He has come back,” said Mam, her eyes bright. “The day he said he would, to the very hour.”
“O, Tomos!” exclaimed Mari.
“To claim her,” boomed Tomos. “Five minutes late for this one would make a man a fool.”
“And not a word to the family, mind,” I said. “Driving the men of the village demented, and pledged to another all the time!” I gripped his hand, drawing him in. “God bless you, Tomos. Mari, get the kettle on – Morfydd, lay the cloth. …”
“Eh, hark at the head of the family!”
“And am I not the head of the family – for who will give her away? Food first,” I cried, “and then Mam will walk him twice round the village hand in hand to settle the suitors!”
“Suitors? What suitors?” rumbled Tomos, eyebrows bushing up.
“Now, hush!” cried Mam, going scarlet.
“Nothing to get bothered about, Tomos,” said Morfydd, sitting him down. “Just a little trouble with the men, it is – always the same when attractive widows are loose, but we kept her on the right path.”
“O, Morfydd, you vixen,” said Mari.
And there was Mam beside him wriggling and blushing as a young girl, with protests, giggles and peeps at his face. It is at such times that you see the woman in the mother, I think, as an eye behind the white starched apron that prises at the secrets. And the heart you see is young again, beating fast; no longer a couch for your head, that breast, but soft to the touch of another, and the lips that have scolded and crooned at you are strange lips for kissing, and red. Strange is the bitterness; that another should lie in her bed, turning at midnight in the place I had moulded. So great her lover.
“Mind,” said Tomos, getting the spirit of it. “If she has been tempted in my absence I will make inquiries, and heaven help her if she is found wanting. More than one suitor, is it?”
“Queueing at the door,” I said.
“With flowers every Sunday,” added Morfydd. “Wearing out knees with biddings and beggings. Another five minutes and you’d have been too damned late, man.”
“Tomos, Tomos! Do not heed them!” begged Mari, pulling at him. “Indelicate, they are.”
“Not very considerate to your mother, I must say,” said Mam, sniffing.
“O, Mam!” we cried while Tomos guffawed.
“All very well,” she answered, well into her dignity. “But anyone human is likely to take it wrong.”
Up with us then, dancing around her, pulling at her and kissing her, with Mari taking swipes at us and the boys screaming with joy. And there was Tomos with his arms around her consoling and teasing her in turn till we got her back mellow. Tea then, everyone happy, sitting at the table well into dusk, with Tomos telling us of his journey down and the state of things back home in Nanty.
“And so,” said he, “after these years I return to you, fulfilling the promise I made to your mother that, should she remain unwed, I would offer her marriage and a home. …” Deep and pure was his voice as we sat in respectful silence. “I come in humility,” said he, “having little to offer save food and a bed, being of little money. Yet I offer her more than life itself if I offer her service in the way of the Lord. For did she not spring from the black cloth of the manse? And is it not true that service to His children is the true path to joy? Elianor …” and here he used her name the first time I had heard it since the days of my father. “Will you come back with me to Nantyglo, to the town you learned to hate because of your Hywel who died there, and give me the chance to teach you how to love it?”
I stayed just long enough to see her touch his hand. Golden, this tongue, deep and sincere his offer. I knew my mother would not refuse him, this friend of my father, though I could not bear to see her accept a continuation of the poverty she had borne so long. Tomos would set her soul in diamonds, leaving her body to fend with sackcloth, yet this, I knew, was the way she would prefer it; this was how she was raised; as a flower pressed in the leaves of the Book of God, ending her life on the arm of Tomos, loving my father in the bed of his friend.
Dusk and bats had dropped over Cae White as I stood there at the back listening to the laughter of Morfydd inside, the excited chatter of Mari, the protests of Richard and Jonathon as they were hooked up to bed. Silence was about me save for wind-whisper and the flea-scratching of crickets. The hens were still loose in the shippon, walking the path in their spiked, measured tread, the cockerel standing in his petrified confusion, mouthing unholy thoughts. I remembered the old days of Blaenafon where I was born and the care my mother took over her chickens; as a young girl she was then with her unbridled laughter; her childlike joy at finding an egg, her tears
