Bethan cried herself to sleep tonight. I leave her hiccupping and snoring as I rise up, up, up into the sky where the air is as soft to rest upon as Mrs Williams Penrhiw’s powdery bosom. Up here, far away from everybody, the night is peaceful; there’s no sound except the hum of the Earth. At school, when I sang the note to Mr Hughes Music he said it was B flat but he laughed when I said it was the note the Earth hummed. He said: You’ll be hearing the music of the spheres next, Gwenni. But he doesn’t know how the Earth’s deep, never-ending note clothes me in rainbow colours, fills my head with all the books ever written, and feeds me with the smell of Mrs Sergeant Jones’s famous vanilla biscuits and the strawberry taste of Instant Whip and the cool slipperiness of glowing red jelly. I could stay up here for ever without the need for anything else in the whole world.
I drift above the town. Now and then the clouds part to let moonbeams glance and glint on the roofs below. Almost all the house lights are out. I don’t want to spend time above the town tonight, or fly up into the hills towards Brwyn Coch so I turn and swoop down to the castle, then up and over the Red Dragon waiting in its green and white cage, and out towards the sea. If I could fly across this sea, I could fly for ever. But the watchers see me; the eyes of millions, billions, trillions of shrimps, crabs, fishes, whales, mermaids, monsters are watching, watching to see if I dare to fly away. Tonight the smell of the sea is strong; a stench of fish and seaweed seems to rush towards me. Is this another premonition? Or maybe I’m too close.
My belly cramps with fear and I begin to plummet towards the water. First my feet, then my legs, touch the cold spray and I land half on top of Bethan and the bed is soaked. I scream and scream. Mam bangs on the wall and shouts, ‘Be quiet, Gwenni, I need my beauty sleep.’
Then Bethan snorts and wakes and begins to shout, too. ‘Mam, Mam, Gwenni’s wet the bed.’ She heaves herself out of it. ‘You’re disgusting, you stupid baby,’ she says to me.
I’m lying here, cold and wet, as Mam comes through the door and switches on the light. It’s so bright after the dark of the sky that I can’t open my eyes. I can still smell the fish from the sea; perhaps I’ve brought some back with me, caught in my nightdress.
‘Bethan, my own Bethan, your old things have started,’ says Mam. ‘I’ll get you one of my cloths to put on. I’ll have to buy you some proper pads tomorrow.’
‘At last,’ says Bethan. ‘But I didn’t think there’d be so much blood.’
I open my eyes into slits. There’s blood everywhere. All over Bethan, all over me and all over the bed. I can feel it begin to dry and crimp on my arms. I try not to think about it.
‘It just looks a lot because Gwenni’s been tossing and turning in it,’ says Mam. ‘But we’ll soon change that old sheet. Gwenni, get out of there.’
‘What is it?’ I say. ‘What is it, Mam? Is it the fish?’
‘Don’t be silly, Gwenni,’ says Mam. ‘It’s Bethan’s old things started.’
‘My period,’ says Bethan. She begins to jig about. ‘I’ve started, I’ve started,’ she sings.
‘I gave you that pamphlet about it, Gwenni,’ says Mam. A long time ago she gave me a pamphlet from Woman’s Weekly. I thought it was about eggs; I’m sure it didn’t say anything about blood.
‘Come on, Gwenni,’ says Mam. ‘I want to get back to my bed. You and Bethan take off those nightdresses, and you strip that sheet off. I’ll have to put those in to soak in some salt right away or that blood will never come off.’ She stops for a second, staring at something we can’t see. ‘It’ll never come off,’ she says. ‘Never. Never.’ She covers her mouth with her hands, then gives her head a little shake; she pulls her blue satin sash tight, tight around her dressing gown and goes out.
Bethan takes off her nightdress and rubs her arms and legs with it. I turn my back to Buddy Holly and try to take my nightdress off without it touching my face. Bethan’s blood is all over it. I can still smell fish so I narrow my eyes and look all along the bed in case I’ve brought something back with me from the sea. Bethan rolls up her nightdress and throws it on the chair, right on top of Mari the Doll. I hold mine in front of me and try to rub the blood off my arms with its sleeves. Now, as well as the belly cramps I got because I was frightened, I’ve got that old family stomach. I try not to think about so much blood; I try not to think about the fox with the bleeding wound; I try not to think about the sticky floor at Brwyn Coch; I try not to think about Mrs Llywelyn Pugh and her blood running like a river under the bathroom door.
‘Here, Bethan,’ Mam says as she comes through the door. Her hands shake as she gives Bethan a long piece of old towel and a pair of baggy knickers. ‘You’ll have to wear these for now. I’ll get you a proper belt as well as the pads tomorrow.’ Mam pushes Bethan’s blood-stained nightdress and Mari the Doll off the chair and puts a fresh sheet and clean nightdresses on the seat. She wraps her arms around her middle and looks at us. ‘You’ll need a wet flannel, Gwenni,’ she says. ‘You can’t get into a clean nightdress and a clean bed in that state. I suppose I’ll have to get it for you.’
I stand shivering while Mam goes down to the scullery for the flannel. Bethan is trying to get the cloth folded into the knickers. ‘Just wait until I tell Caroline,’ she says. ‘She thought she was starting last week, but she never did.’
I never, ever want to have periods.
John Morris is scrabbling at the back door but Mam shouts at him to go away. He starts yowling instead. Perhaps he can smell the fish, too. Nellie Davies will be opening her window to see what the noise is about in a minute.
The flannel, when Mam brings it up, is as cold as the seaspray. I rub hard to get the blood off where it’s dried on my arms, and I dab and dab at my legs until the grey flannel turns bright red.
Bethan has stopped struggling with the knickers and is watching me. ‘Mam, it isn’t me,’ she says. ‘It’s her. Look.’
She and Mam look at me. I try to cover myself with the flannel. I can feel something warm trickling down the inside of my left thigh, all the way down to my ankle and to the linoleum beneath my feet. I look down. It’s blood.
‘It’s not fair,’ says Bethan. ‘Why are all the unfair things happening to me?’
‘I don’t want to have old things,’ I say. ‘You can have them.’
Mam is still watching me and watching the blood, but her eyes are seeing something else. ‘So much of it,’ she says. ‘It bloomed like the roses in her garden.’
‘Whose garden?’ says Bethan. ‘What are you talking about now, Mam?’ She pulls off the knickers and cloth and throws them at me. ‘Here,’ she says. ‘It’s just not fair. I should have started first. I’m older than her.’ She snatches her nightdress from the chair and drags it over her head. She looks at Mari the Doll where she’s tumbled on the floor and then she looks at me. ‘Stupid doll,’ she says and kicks Mari the Doll under the bed. ‘What a baby you are, Gwenni.’
I have to stop the blood running. I pull the knickers on and arrange the cloth inside them. Then I rub my arms and legs dry with a patch of my nightdress that is clear of blood and put on my clean nightdress.
‘Change the sheet, Gwenni,’ says Mam. ‘Take the dirty things and put them in some cold water in the sink, and put plenty of salt in with them. I’m going back to bed.’ She leaves the bedroom with a swirl of her dressing gown and a gust of Evening in Paris that mingles with the smell of the fish. I hold my breath and look at Bethan. She’s crying again.
‘You made all the mess,’ she says. ‘You clear it up.’ And she folds her arms and stands with her back to me looking at her picture of Buddy Holly and his Crickets, and her shoulders shake and shake.