It’s the most peculiar garden to find a dead body in. Not that you ever see a garden that is normal for dead bodies. Not that you ever find a body that isn’t dead.
But this garden is planted with waist-high posts along a winding path and on each post a tiny object: miniature statues made of wire, broken crockery, wood and bones and beads. Large figures strut the retaining stone wall or cower under bushes. Some are probably meant to be birds or people but most look like, well, other things, but with heads. Weird.
So thinks the rookie police officer as he ambles behind his chief, his boss, his ... inventing slang is a useful deflection from the actual voice in his head: don’t be sick, don’t be sick, don’t be sick. This is about to be PC Jones’s first dead body.
The DS keeps stopping to look at the posts and their objects. Jones feels his guts clench in dread, then relax as each stop is found to be harmless; clench, relax, clench, relax. By the time they come to the blackberry thicket at the far end of the path he’s exhausted, and barely acknowledges the sight of a tipped-over pair of rain-soaked shoes just visible in the brambles and long grass, netted by a bit of spider web. Yesterday’s snow has been washed from the bank by overnight rain, and everything is dark with moisture.
Then he notices the same thing that had startled Jeremiah Jenkins away from his pre-dawn search for tigers at Ty Merched: the glimpse of a sock, the form of an ankle, the presumption of a foot inside each shoe. Finding himself unable to be sick thanks to his rigorous self-hypnosis, PC Jones faints.
Detective Sergeant Watcyns detachedly watches the damp grass soaking his new recruit’s uniform. He wonders how long until someone offers him a cup of tea. Torn between nabbing the glory of an actual crime, and the disruption any work might cause his normal routine, Watcyns is settling easily into his accustomed bad temper at this early hour.
The body is eventually uncovered from its swaddling of brambles, but the site is ruined; a nightmare of mangled evidence with so many pieces of fabric, blood and skin attached to those binding thorns it is impossible to attribute the rags of flesh and hair to either the body, persons unknown, or to the police team itself. The ground has been trampled into a quagmire, for yards around. And it is raining again.
Above on the bank, a fist-sized hollow where a stone has been dislodged is filling with rainwater the way the socket of a pulled tooth fills with blood. Down at the store, Jem Jenkins has every shopper’s attention. Every gaping mouth is swallowing his words with relish, every functioning ear is waggling in the breeze of his story.
Mercury has returned to the valley; a god of many things, including, today, being responsible for getting the dead to where they need to be.
The women of Ty Merched are unaware of the early-morning presence of PC Jones and his wet uniform on the grass of Sarah Maud’s garden, of DS Watcyns’s need for tea, or of old Jem hightailing it over their own stone wall on his running way to the shop, even though it’ll make him late to work– for gossip is gossip, and this is gossip of the highest grade.
Sarah Maud is abed. She expects to feel bad after every visit to the old bus, despite the pleasure of Mich’s conversation and the ideas they spin over the emptying flagons. But today the darkness is even closer—darker than yesterday—and Sarah Maud is shivering uncontrollably. Recently she’s felt more unravelled, more … past… and unable to hold herself in place. Her mind is cruelly clear, and dagger-like images are coming unwanted and intolerable behind her eyes: night shadows like quicksand over her face, and tinkling carnival sounds fitting their rhythm to the pain that crushed her flat; hot breaths of power, hotter breaths of shame, and a curse regretted as soon as spoken into the emptied air above her.
She presses her hands hard down her belly, to push her sullied skin away, slough off the mired flesh, get rid of herself, to let out the blackness pooling in her blood. Her body is burning with sadness, and she cannot rub or scrub hard enough to stop it. Sarah Maud reaches for something sharp. Her grief is unbearable and must be let out in silence, drawn off, drained away. But there is nothing sharp within reach. Sarah Maud uses her teeth to open the skin of her arm, let the sadness out.
And she hasn’t remembered about Jenner yet.
Lizzie is abed. She must be dead today if it didn’t happen last night. She aches everywhere and mostly in her head. Her belly feels watery, the dregs of the cider gurgling round the bends and loops of her old guts, pooling in her bladder and loosening her bowels; but, so far, she’s resisted the urge to move. Maybe if she moves there’ll be an accident, a spillage, and Lizzie cannot face the thought. Ooohh William, bugger this! She can feel William smile, through the clouds in her head: now, now; language, cariad. She draws her mouth tight shut, grips her arms around her stomach.
Lizzie’s satisfaction in being tough, her determination in proving herself worthy to her mother and grandmother with an unconscious, contained elegance that brought farmers to pencil their names in her dance card every hunt ball, long after William had died; Lizzie’s confidence at the stock sales for half a century and more, wearing her husband’s moleskins and shirt; Lizzie’s ease through her physical body, quick childbirth, easy menopause and no arthritic aches and rheumatic pains—no need for reading glasses, no problems with hearing—Lizzie’s stamina through ten decades of valley winters and mountain summers; all these things have been lost in genetic translation from Lizzie’s bird-like body forever on the brink of regained youth, to Myfanwy’s mediocre bulk, forever on no brink at all. Myfanwy is as tough as Lizzie, but she wears it like a sweat-stained harness; Lizzie has aged with grace, like the ruby necklace.
But this morning when Myfanwy put her head round the door to check on Lizzie, she could see a difference in the old woman. A lamp that has burned almost all the oil in its reservoir, Lizzie is going dim.
Now, Myfanwy is making excessive noise in the kitchen. The fire is blazing, and the boiler is roaring, for she needs to be scrubbing and washing and banging the silence out of the place. She had talked late with John last night, spilling out her fears for Jenner and her blame of old Lizzie with a freedom that is foreign to her, while the dirty dishes wallowed in grey water and the night drew long. No one else would care what she thought; John’s uncritical attention has loosened her tongue and Myfanwy has said more than she meant to, to a stranger. Now she’s cross, rueful. Once more she feels the need to re-establish her influence somewhere, but her domination over the kitchen is the only satisfaction she has within reach today. She doesn’t want to recall that once she might have used Jenner as a target in such a mood. She bangs the pans louder.
Not unkind, I was never unkind, thinks Myfanwy.
That all depends on what you mean by ‘unkind’, think the ghosts.
She has been out at first light to see to the hens and the sheep. Now, it’s the noise of the geese that alerts her, something is up. Next, a polite pounding on the side door.
A large policeman of some authority politely barges his way into the hallway. Over his shoulder Myfanwy can see a green-faced policeman with a few dead leaves stuck to his soaked uniform. She thinks of Jenner, but her fear of bad news saves her from immediately speaking the name out loud. Clearly the centre of the large one’s focus is the kettle he can glimpse on the stove behind Myfanwy.
DS Watcyns is a polite man, so bobs his head once to the woman, to her flowery cross-over apron and capable arms, to the apparent fact that she’s some sort of kitchen person.
‘DS Watcyns. This,’ he moves a shoulder slightly to indicate behind him, ‘is Constable Jones.’ Watcyns lifts his ID badge about an inch out of his breast pocket, drops it back. ‘Tea, two sugars, thanks. Where is your husband, is it? I wants a word.’ PC Jones had tried to brief the DS on their way up from the Ponty station, but the prospect of a murder was too exciting; Watcyns had not been listening.
‘Well now, he’s up by chapel’ Myfanwy looks at the mud running off the constable’s trousers and pooling on her clean flagstones. ‘But you won’t find him much to talk to. Can I help?’ she looks up at the sergeant. The earlier thoughts of how she used to treat Jenner have made her defensive, no matter that she longs to have the child safe home again.
‘I usually speaks to the man of the house; I’ll wait. Cup of tea would be great; two sugars, a bit of cake if you have it.’ He looks carefully at the kitchen chairs, for DS Watcyns is a large and unfit man and the chairs look both appealingly comfortable and dangerously fragile.
‘You’ll be waiting a while. There’s not been a man here for, oh, decades. Not in the house here, no.’ Myfanwy tops up the kettle and puts it on the hot part of the stove, having decided she can sweeten bad news by serving this oaf as he clearly expects. Myfanwy has heard a bit about the new ideas of women, and liberation; about not being ‘sub servants’ to men, but, since she was rarely in the company of men, it was an idea she was puzzled by, had missed out on. The only woman she connects with her need for liberation is Lizzie.
She reaches down the cake tin from the pantry, lifts out the last two inches of a bara brith from the party and places it on the bread board in the middle of the table, then makes a fresh pot of tea. She sets out two cups and saucers, is just getting her own from the draining board.
‘One cup will do me’ says DS Watcyns. Myfanwy looks at the constable. The constable looks at Myfanwy. She pours two cups, then her own, sets out the milk jug and sugar bowl and teaspoons. As Myfanwy turns to get the bread knife, DS Watcyns puts the whole piece of bara on his saucer, puts his cup on the tablecloth, slops a puddle of tea. Myfanwy in the presence of the DS draws close to Lizzie in the presence of the vicar.
DS Watcyns drinks noisily. ‘No man?’ He looks around. Polished dressers and china in matched sets, tidy array of cans and jars and packets, a bright fire and dry windows; no smell of damp or manure or silage. Not at all like the usual hill-farms he visits. ‘How ever do you manage?’
‘We gets by.’ She leaves it at that. ‘Should I get my mother then? What is it you want?’
‘Your mother? God, woman, isn’t she in the ground as well? How old is your mother and still standing?’ DS Watcyns spits out a laugh, a currant crumb spilling from his mouth and bouncing down his uniform onto the tablecloth. Myfanwy thinks about burning her bra; right here, right now. If only she’d got into the habit of wearing one.
‘I’ll tell her you’re here. What did you say your name was?’ Myfanwy has learned something from Lizzie, that’s certain.
-oOo-
Over the hills, in the Llandovery convent, Jenner has been left to sleep while the nuns worry about her thinness, her fainting, her pallor. Last night they had washed the clothes she’d been wearing, and they’re drying on a line in the boiler room. A novice keeps an eye peeped through the cubicle door to where Jenner sleeps. Mother Superior is looking through the charity bins for warmer clothes to fit a thin girl. Jenner is feverish and silent and is kept in bed all day. She resists, then she sleeps. Twice she wakes for food, followed by more sleep. The novice, at the change of shift, says it’s like they could almost see through the child while she slept, so pale she was on the pale pillow. The next shift, they think the girl is running with wild horses in a fever dream.
The Llandovery police sergeant calls at the convent front door later in the day; he felt the need for a walk and thinks he’d like an update. No, she hasn’t spoken yet. No, she’s not from round here. The sergeant goes back to his desk, satisfied with his astute decision of the night before.
Smalldog is sitting by a small fire in a tiny kitchen a few miles distant from Llandovery and the policeman’s desk. He’s lost his sense of direction, has lost Jenner, and lies flat and dejected, resting his muzzle on one front paw. A woman of uncertain age, height and colouring comes in from her yard: ‘Have you finished your breakfast, little dog? Here then.’ She takes a crumpled posy out of her raincoat pocket, tucks it into a soft twist of fabric she’s tied round his neck. Smalldog feels a bit better, looks up a moment. But drops his head onto a front leg again, for he’s only a little bit better.
She settles down beside Smalldog on the hearth rug, makes the posy sit more comfortably against the back of his neck, strokes his head. ‘I knows,’ she says, ‘I knows.’ She takes a battered old book, wrapped in a scrap of oilcloth, out of her pocket, settles the loose pages—of English words in a child’s script—into place, resumes her reading. Over their heads, a white and green Welsh tapestry blanket is drying on a rack.
-oOo-
Myfanwy, in her own place, leaves DS Watcyns staring at her pantry shelves in bemusement, while from the shelves the ghosts stare back at DS Watcyns equally unsure of what they’re looking at but dying of curiosity.
The house is paused; Myfanwy’s slippered feet make no sound as she passes all the enmeshed clutter of the ancient hallway and taps on Lizzie’s door. But before Lizzie can draw breath to reply, the stillness snaps apart. From the next room Sarah Maud is making an inarticulate wail, so much in the minor key it seems to be sinking into Sarah Maud, not coming from her.
Myfanwy in the doorway is now staring perplexed at the window. Lizzie hasn’t had time to register what is going on, as sitting up upon Myfanwy’s entrance has precipitated an emergency. Her body overrides all else, forces her out past Myfanwy and into the bathroom, where she just manages to shut the door before she is sat on the toilet, passing a great purging shit of cider. She hears Sarah Maud and Myfanwy trying to talk and cry at the same time.
Myfanwy is banging at the bathroom door, then gone again and in the kitchen: talking at someone. Lizzie doesn’t know who else is out there and she’s afraid she cannot move. Please, she begs the void, am I dead yet?
No, she is not dead. But someone is. And Sarah Maud is sobbing at the bathroom door.
‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry,’ says Sarah Maud. Lizzie doesn’t know what she’s sorry for, or who she’s sorry to, but the words are said with a rare conviction. Lizzie shakes herself together and opens the door. Bent over in the doorway, Sarah Maud has twisted two sides of her nightdress hem around her wrists, holding them pressed against her chest so she is naked from the ribs downwards; blood is soaking the fabric, and smears of more blood are drying on her arms. But that is not why she’s sorry, not what she’s crying about. Sarah Maud says she has seen the dead go past her window. Lizzie opens her arms, and Sarah Maud falls into her shaking embrace.
A man is standing open-mouthed in the kitchen doorway. He’s chewing on a lump of cake and looking at Sarah Maud’s naked backside before he sees Lizzie regarding him coldly around Sarah Maud’s shoulder.
‘Who,’ she asks with crisp pronunciation, ‘y ffwc, are you?’ He retreats backwards into the kitchen as Lizzie draws Sarah Maud into the bathroom and shuts the door.
When she has seen Sarah Maud washed and bandaged and quiet in bed, Lizzie goes into the kitchen.
Watcyns has been making notes on his little notepad, with his pencil. They don’t say anything of relevance to anything but Watcyns’s own amour-propre. PC Jones has been steaming gently by the fire and Myfanwy has been standing guard, shifting between the stove and sink, uncertain what line to steer and waiting to see where Lizzie takes things. Myfanwy has seen what made Sarah Maud cry: a shrouded body on a stretcher, carried past the windows. Was the body a small one? She can’t remember, but the question drowns out all other thought.
‘Is there tea for the girl?’ Lizzie addresses Myfanwy and ignores the men. For Lizzie has not seen the stretcher. There is tea, and Myfanwy takes a cup into Sarah Maud, and a secret piece of bara in her apron pocket. Lizzie in her nightgown and ruby necklace considers the strangers.
‘Are you the...?’ Watcyns is unsure what the word might be, leaves all the options hanging mid-air.
‘Mrs Coombe,’ Lizzie manages more propriety than a queen.
‘DS Watcyns, PC Jones,’ Watcyns, repeating his earlier gestures, indicates the other officer, nudges his badge in his pocket.
Lizzie focuses on the pocket. After a pause, DS Watcyns takes the badge out.
‘Hmmm’ Lizzie clearly speculating that the badge might be chocolate inside a foil covering. ‘And what can we do for you, Mr...?’
‘DS Watcyns. Mrs... A body has been found on your land. Mrs Coombe.’
Myfanwy at the door ‘A body in Sarah Maud’s garden, Mam!’ and locks eyes with Lizzie. The women draw together, the rest of the world is invisible for this moment.
‘Who is it?’ Lizzie holds her shoulders rigid, eyes closed.
‘We don’t yet know, Mrs Coombe. Is anyone missing from this household?’
No reply for a heartbeat, then:
‘Any man missing, Mrs Coombe? Maybe a farm hand?’ PC Jones feels the need to clarify.
Lizzie and Myfanwy resume breathing. They hold each other a moment, hands on upper arms, then Myfanwy turns back up the hall to soothe Sarah Maud.
‘Man? No, no man that I know of’ Lizzie notices her legs are failing her again, sits quickly by the table and reaches for the teapot. PC Jones steps across, hands her the pot and even looks for a clean cup on the dresser. The ghosts are beginning to like PC Jones.
DS Watcyns is continuing to dislike his tyro. That the body was a man was something he’d wanted to keep in reserve for a while. One naked beauty, as mad as a hatter, and two ancient witches, one as sharp as nails; there is something unsettling about these women and this house. What with the body, and the garden of figurines, it’s adding up to an unusual morning for DS Watcyns. He never does like unusual mornings. He decides to regain control of the interrogation, by—
‘Was there a wallet, maybe a driving licence?’ Lizzie gets in first.
By the way Watcyns shifts his haunches on the chair PC Jones recognises that Watcyns will shout at him for the next few days, at least. ‘Perhaps more tea for the DS?’ he suggests to Myfanwy as she returns to stand guard over the stove. She reminds him of his aunt.
Myfanwy is willing to make fresh tea. And the colour is coming back into Lizzie’s cheeks.
‘We can’t release that sort of information to the public,’ says DS Watcyns. He has not looked for a wallet, or a driving licence. Someone else can touch the body; someone else can look for a wallet. He looks with interest at the cake tin, but there is no more bara forthcoming. DS Watcyns gurgles his tea down, heaves himself off the chair and kicks his boot into PC Jones’s ankle before PC Jones can get out of the way.
All day there is traffic through the yard, in stops and starts. Now that DS Watcyns has gone back to Ponty, Myfanwy makes hot Welsh cakes for PC Jones and the other officers sorting through the wet grass for anything that might explain who the man was and why he was there. Myfanwy begins to enjoy the attention, and the distraction, but: where is Jenner?
Sarah Maud is fretting, as memory returns: where is Jenner? The sheep need tending, but there are strangers in her garden; she starts to rub again at the bandages under her long jumper sleeves. Lizzie is keeping close to Sarah Maud, seeing the younger woman’s distress; Ah, William bach, where is Jenner?
The geese are hissing nervously in the pond, the hens are off the lay, broody on their nests; the ghosts are shivering on the roofs as they watch the living and dead come and go. Where is Jenner, they all ask.
Mercury, god of communications, god of trickery: there’s a slippery combination. The neighbours begin to suggest thing. To each other, at first. The vicar hears whispers as he leans against the inside of his bolted front door; some of them are from outside his skull. No-one would have said the vicar was an evil man, but he is becoming one.
For the first time in years, fragile and tired, Sarah Maud does not go to the pub. For the first time in years Reverend Morgan does go to the pub. He is acquiring the look of a man taken to walking the village at night; his boots are damp and uncleaned. He nods to all but sits alone at the bar. He holds his brandy and lovage cordial close in his curled arms. He mutters as if he’s praying to himself; in a way, he is. The words he speaks are unholy, though they lilt and scroll along the polished bar like incense. He speaks about blood at midnight, about the foreboding and the forbidden, bent shapes in the forests; he speaks about these things and Jenner is in every story, every sentence. No-one is looking at Reverend Morgan. Everyone is listening.
After closing, Gwyn the Publican makes a call to a number he knows by heart, speaks low and softly.
‘Hello, Mai bach, can I speak to your father…? … ah, now, Watcyns? Rhiwfawr Gwyn it is. Listen man, here’s the thing…’ Gwyn the Pub hopes thereby to pay off a very old debt that the DS has been quite meticulous in maintaining.