“What you thinking?” said Mari.
I stirred, suddenly aware of her, ringing her waist with my arm, drawing her against me.
“I am taking you away,” I said.
“Aye?” she said.
“Because I love you. Because I am sick of fighting.” I drew from her, and knelt, and she turned, cupping her chin on her elbow, following my finger.
“Nothing between us and America. Look. Nothing but sea and more sea, ships and gulls and sky. Go as an arrow and you crawl out on sand, Mari – to a new land, to a new life. Cae White is finished, Mari. There is nothing left here except hunger and labour; no chance for your Jonathon, no promise for my children,” and I caught her hand, kissing it.
“Next Sunday,” she said. “To travel costs money, sovereigns, mind, not shillings.”
“Five pounds a head steerage, that is all,” I answered.
“A fortune,” she said.
“I will find it, somehow.”
“What is this old steerage thing, then?” she asked.
“Working the passage, girl. Scrubbing and waiting, rope-coiling, tarring and labouring – cheaper steerage, see.”
“Eh, more labour, is it? Whee, I would rather go cabins.”
“Gentry, is it? Peacock feathers and parasols, is it? You be content with steerage.”
“You go steerage, then. I will go cabins.”
“Then near thirty pounds between us if we tie Jonathon to the yard-arm – where the hell do you think I am getting thirty pounds from, woman?”
“Got fifty,” said she, “all but two shillings.”
“How many toes has a pig got?”
“Take off your boots and count them,” said she. “Fifty pounds be mine all but two shillings.”
“O, aye? Not that much money in the county of Carmarthen. Addled, you.”
“So addled that I will give you every penny, man, if you kiss me proper. O, Jethro! Do I come down here for the town of Philadelphia, or for loving?”
The way she looked, then, the way she smiled, her mouth reaching for kissing.
How can a man know the heart of a woman. Frigid to freeze one minute, the flash in the mould the next.
“Mari,” I whispered.
As a mirage she was in the faint blue light, to be snatched at and lost in the parched desert of my longing. In the years of waiting I had been denied her, and now she was against me she still seemed a part of my dreaming; that the ghost of her would fade to the opening eyes. Yet the arms I held now were tensed and strong; no visions these arms; no mirage the eyes that lowered to the kiss, and her breathing no sighing of some distant wind. Sudden the tumult between us, as if the night had exploded in brilliance, leaving blackness that enveloped us, obliterating all save its gusty breath. Once she opened her eyes and looked at me with the look I have seen in the eyes of things trapped and shrinking to the grip of the iron jaw.
“Jethro!” she said, just once.
And I kissed her to silence, hearing nothing, reasoning nothing as the wall went down, thundering in the breast. Great is a man then with the shout of the Unborn thrusting within him, strident, demanding as the falcon’s cry; leaping to heights of power and beauty, denying the kiss as breath snatches breath in a perfumed fire; this, the song of the honeyed middle, the quenchless song, the chord that leaps from the fountain of life, that chains the singer and sung as one, and, chaining, transcends them as one, in joy.
I kissed her, and her cheek was wet.
“Mari,” I said.
A nightbird sang in the troubled light. Wave-thump I heard, the wind of the Burrows and blackness came as the moon fainted; gave him a glance above her head, and hated him. Generations of this and still he was virginal. But the stars still shone as if approving, with Orion beaming silver and Venus still waving at her latticed window her lamp that brought out Mars.
“Mari. …”
And she wept.
Something shrieked from the woods of the Reach and branches snapped in the clattering panic of wings, then all was stillness save for the sobbing restrictions of her breast, and she turned away her face as I bent to kiss her again. Three of us lying in sand, I knew; not one.
“Mari!” I said, and pulled her against me, forcing her to face me. “It is me, Jethro. It is Jethro who is loving you. Iestyn is dead.”
She stared at me, then closed her eyes again and her lips trembled to the inward breath.
“My woman now,” I said. “The past is past.”
I knelt as she sat up, head turned away, fingers working in a frenzy, straightening, tidying: brush away sand, straighten the lace; then flew to her hair, smoothing, patting and there’s a damned mess. Strange, these women.
“All over the place,” I said.
“O, no! Is it?”
“Through a hedge backwards, then over the haystack,” I said.
“And that Morfydd with eyes for a lynx,” she said. “Hairpins, see. That is the trouble,” and she went round on all fours, feeling and patting.
Never looked for hairpins in sand before. Please God I never do it again.
Like sea-urchins, the pair of us then; going in circles, holding up seaweed and shells, and excuse me, please, there’s one behind you, sweeping and smoothing half an acre. We were yards apart when Mari smiled. As a prowling dog I saw that smile.
