Loaded was Grandfer, with only his staff to keep him upright; as a leathery little goat complete with beard and his little pot of a waistcoat tearing at its seams above his bandy, gaitered legs. Bald as an egg, toothless, he had been good in his time, said Waldo Bailiff, but cooled after sixty, and the more virgins he had around him now the holier he felt, something we were short of at Cae White.
“Grandfer!” cried Mari, ducking his stick.
Belching, drooling, the senility blundered in, taking breath to keep its quarts down, glazed in the eye, dragging its feet. Hobnails clattering it leaned on the table, wagging its head in grief.
“Knowest thou the biblical? Ah, me!” said he. “Woe is Grandfer! The house is filled to the brim with suckling children and female Nonconformists.” He belched deep, begging our pardons. “Knowest thou the murmurings of the Israelites through the speeches of Moses? ‘Have I conceived all these people – have I begotten them that thou should sayest unto me, carry them in thy bosom as a nursing father beareth a suckling child?’ Eh, dear me! ‘I am not able to bear all these people alone because it is too heavy for me. Kill me, I pray you, out of hand, let me not see my wretchedness.’”
“Amen,” said Morfydd.
“A fine one to talk of the biblical!” said Mari, shocked. “He is not himself today, forgive him.”
“Old and feeble, he is,” whispered Mam. “Do not take it hard, girl. A smell of the Black Boar pints and he is standing on his head.”
“Not true,” I said. “He can sink twenty without breathing.”
“You will speak when you are spoken to,” said Mam, eyes wide and flashing.
“Leave Grandfer to me,” said Morfydd, taking his arm. “I can handle grandfers.”
“Twenty years back you wouldn’t,” said he, leering into her smile. “Look upon her now, this vision of beauty!” Swinging wide, he fell into Morfydd’s arms. “The only woman among you with the spunk of a man. Rebecca and Chartist, a fighter for the rights of men – Venus reborn! Clear the house of infidels and varmints, especially God-forsaken poachers – may they soil themselves in their pits of iniquity, but save me Morfydd. Still got an eye for a pretty woman, mind, and I like them rebellious.”
“Take him up to bed,” said Mari in disgust.
“Will you take me up to bed, Morfydd Mortymer?” Evil was his eye.
“As far as the landing,” said she. “You are not as old as I thought. Come, Grandfer.”
Bride and groom left for the bedchamber.
“O, he is disgraceful,” whispered Mari, red and ashamed.
“When the ale is in the wits are out,” said Mam, soothing. “But I know the truth of it, we should not be here. Too much to ask,” and she followed Morfydd to see fair play, leaving me and Mari alone.
Tragic is the one who is meat in the sandwich. Oblivious of me she paced the room, her teeth on her lips, holding back tears. But more tragic still is the one to whom love flies and the longing to give comfort, but words are useless things between boy and married woman. I sat and longed and found no words. At the window now she picked up her baby Jonathon, hugging him against her.
“I am sorry, Mari,” I said.
A brush at her eyes, a flash of a smile.
“With his tongue submerged he can still use it,” she said. “O, God, if only my Iestyn were here.”
“He will come back,” I said.
As stabbed she stopped pacing and swung to me. “O, do not take on so, Jethro!” Fingers at her wedding ring now, twisting. She did this when the talk was of Iestyn. “I see him in your face, your smile. Jethro!” She wept, turning.
Up like lightning and she was in my arms. No ring, no Iestyn. Back even quicker to Morfydd’s clatter on the stairs. Strange the guilt.
“Now, that is over,” said Morfydd, coming in. “A cup of decent tea, for God’s sake. Fought like a demon when I put him in his nightshirt – like the rest of the men, he is – all promises. Supper, is it?” She kissed Mari in passing.
Nothing like a table for taking away gloom. And I think a house is happy with its table dressed in its white, starched apron and its spoons tinkling as people go past. Come from a gentry house, Grandfer’s table, serving rye bread and buttermilk now, but dreaming its past of silver plate and feasts; of crinoline gowns and fingers touching secretly in its curtained darkness. And pretty was the kitchen at Cae White with its great Welsh dresser standing in polished dignity on the flagstones, heavy with its scores of jugs and their sighs of a thousand cows. My women were beggars for the polishing, like most – flicking the dust from one corner to another, burnishing the brass trinkets for shaving in. The low ships’ timbers bore down upon us, the sea murmuring in their splits; faded wallpaper where the bed-warming pan flashed copper light; a painting called Lost was above the mantel, where a man of icicles groped in a blizzard. God Bless Our Home hung in laurel leaves next to the portrait of Victoria whom Morfydd had managed to crack. But best of all was that table made for a company of Guards. Grandfer, now absent, always sat at the top with Mari on his right and Mam and Morfydd on his left, with Richard aged three beside me and Jonathon in Mari’s lap. And at the end sat the ghosts – four empty places that my mother always laid – for my father and sister who had died up in Monmouthshire; Richard, Morfydd’s man who was shot by redcoats, and Iestyn my brother who was in Botany Bay. Only Morfydd railed at this palaver – let
