But this place of wraiths is the arbour of lovers, for ghosts are forgotten in the heat of kisses, and because of its name the Burrows were free of peepers. One pair of eyes was enough to have us round the village. So I waited, dry in the mouth and trembling, for Mari to come.
I fell to wondering, then, how many kisses had been given and taken in this haven clear of the sea, and new visions rose on the crested waves. Flying pennants I saw then; the curved bows of foreign invaders came driving in on the surf. Lance and mace flashed in fierce sunlight, swords were raised high. Invading banners I saw, strange tongues I heard, naked legs splashed to the shores as the horde drove in to lock in battle with the fur-clad ancients. Flung spears I saw, the skull-splitting hatchets, the new tide bloodstained to the wallowing dead. And then the conquest, the drunken goblets of the conquerors, the chained oars of the conquered creaking on the road to Rome.
But then I thought of lovers, the giving and taking of foreign kisses in this place where I was waiting to make love to Mari. Roman warrior and Saxon maiden, conquering Greek and Celtic matron; mouth on mouth, breast against breast on this same sand while the same moon as mine, hooded and broody as a Benedictine monk, pulled up his skirts to shield his eyes as two became one. By here, just where I was sitting. Plaited hair I saw, the Nordic breast, the armour flung aside. I touched the rock beside me, feeling under my fingers its dumb eternity. O, that it had eyes and a mouth with which to speak that it might tell of my people from the time of the club; talk of the tears, the sighs, the laughter of children, the riven steel of the armour, the crumpled skirt. Here the invader, pining in his dreams of columned cities, has leaped to the arms of the humble cottager and buried his longing in the tumult of her breathing.
“Jethro!”
And the visions were banished in the shock of reality. Leaping up, I swung to her voice.
Mari, standing above me, her hands clasped, smiling down.
“You came!” I gasped.
“But not for long, mind – Mam will soon miss me.”
Joyful that we were together I reached up and lifted her down beside me, and we stood clasped, shivering at the sudden nearness after the barren years of standing apart.
“Anyone see you?”
“Good grief, I saw to that. Came on all fours round the edge of the Reach!” Holding my hands she looked about her, then up at the moon, her eyes coming wide and bright as if startled. “O, Jethro, what a lovely place!”
“Secret,” I whispered, holding her. I felt her heart thumping, thumping.
“And you behave,” she whispered back.
“I’ve been doing that years,” I said. “O, Mari!”
“Then another half an hour won’t do you any harm,” and she kissed my face. “What happens now?”
“Down by here,” I said, squatting at her feet, patting sand.
“O, aye?”
The wind had her hair, whirling it about in a sudden warm gust from the sea, and she stood above me, tying it back, patting it, smoothing it, with downward flashes of smile, knowing her mastery.
“Down here,” I said, dragging at her skirt.
“Safer up standing. I know you Mortymers.”
Gave her ten seconds to enjoy her mastery, then I rolled towards her snatching at her ankle and pulled her kneeling in a cry of laughter. Whirling like a sand-crab I was there beside her, and I lay there holding her helpless while she shivered and giggled. Young again, girlish again … the years of sitting and darning over, the barrier crumbling. I was just content to lie there holding her, my face above her, her lips an inch from mine, waiting. Waiting for the final crash of the barrier, the rolling dust of its storm to drift to the sea. And there was no sound but breathing and wavelap to the incoming tide. Eyes shut tight, her face was turned away; as Morfydd lying there; the same deep shadows of her cheek; black her lips in that misty light. Smoothing her hair, I lay, watching, contented at last, whole for the first time in my life, since she was near. Strange is love in these moments of quiet, this the proof of love; to lie without demanding. No jangle in this loving, no sweeping hands, no hotness then. I lowered my face to hers, and we lay, just breathing, listening to heartbeat, at peace. Wind-murmur was in the cave, and the sand beneath us thumping to the fist of the breakers, and I raised my head, seeing beyond the tangle of her hair an emblazoned sea of moonlight with the solitary sails of a lonely ship, three-masted, standing against a line of silver. And farther beyond were the wastes of the Atlantic, thousands of miles of nothingness to the seagull cries of the shores of Newfoundland, and farther still to Philadelphia where the ovens of iron flash at the sky. This my industry, the call of the iron; calling again as it forever called me. Strange the call at a time like this, crying to a man on the breast of a
