(1 Samuel 25:17)
From her bed, Tirzah can hear a visitor arrive. A familiar male voice is raised in answer to her father’s greeting. She sits up and listens, frowning, as the voices recede down the hall. So, it’s the front room for them. She lies against the pillows, the muscles of her lower back radiating a dull ache. Since her secret visit to the woods, she has not been feeling right. Mrs Betty Palfrey has been coming to do blood pressure readings and urine tests. Tirzah is bed-bound for a week, even though, for the past four days, all her results are healthy. She has tried to reread some favourite childhood books, but boredom floors her every time, and she lets each book slip from her fingers, incapable of holding on to her thoughts for more than a page or two. She is eaten up by how this baby is preventing her from doing what she has to do. It’s difficult to be calm, with her mind so full of things. Everyone is telling her to relax. We don’t want to be carted off to the hospital at this stage, do we? asks Mrs Palfrey, squeezing her little black bladder of air in her fist on one of these daily blood pressure check-ups. No, we don’t, Mrs P, Tirzah says, trying to take unhurried breaths.
Now the voice downstairs is bothering her, and she closes her eyes, the better to listen. Of course, it’s Pastor, she says to her room, conjuring up his narrow, indoor-pale face and winking steel-rimmed glasses. Why is Pastor calling all these weeks after the whole family have been thrown out of chapel? Except for Biddy, who is overjoyed about not going to services, they have been the strangest, saddest weeks she can ever remember. Her father spends all his spare time out in the garden, smashing up concrete with a pickaxe. The reverberating, muffled thump, thump, thump is almost normal now. Tirzah and her mother watch him through the kitchen window. He raises the swinging pickaxe, his body bending backward at an unlikely angle. Then he sends it crashing down. There’s something too extreme about the effort he is putting in. It reminds Tirzah of the time, years ago, when she and her mother watched him scythe their lovely garden flat. Now he’s on the rampage again, to restore it. Everything seems wrong in the house. Without the meetings to hang their days on, time has no proper shape. There are holes appearing, and they try to fill them in their own ways.
When Tirzah and her mother bump into members of Horeb around the village, it’s all glances and blushes, hemming and hawing, or righteous stares and the twitching of garment hems. Though, as her mother says, to be fair, this is not true of everybody. But there was one day when her mother came in from grocery shopping and sat in the kitchen like a bag of old charity clothes. What’s happened? Tirzah asked, kneeling to hold her balled-up hands. I believe Pastor’s wife just shook my dust off her robe, so to speak, her mother mumbled, voice distorted by tears. Tirzah looked puzzled. Well, her mother had said, warming up, what I mean is, the very fact I stood near her in the butcher’s might have contaminated her, and she brushed me off like this. And she re-enacted someone flicking something nasty off themselves. Oh, she did, did she? Tirzah had said, her temperature rising. I would like to do a bit of shaking myself. But her mother had chided her, and asked her to think what Jesus would have done. Tirzah was silent. Anyway, I’m happy that I was sick on her best shoes, she’d said at last, remembering Pastor’s wife’s black patent affairs all splatted. So am I, her mother answered, reviving enough to attend to her flattened, unpinned bun. May the Lord forgive me.
Now Tirzah sits and waits for what will happen next downstairs. I always seem to be skulking on the landing, and I’m fed up with it, she thinks, glad about her meeting with Derry tomorrow. At least that’s something different to look forward to. She wonders again why he said it was important they meet, but is distracted by her mother bustling out of the front room to the kitchen. The conversation escaping through the open door is lively. When the tea is made, her mother takes a tray in and shuts the door again. Tirzah sits on in the dimness. If the weekdays have felt strange, then Sundays have been so long and empty, with her father locked away in his study. The sound of her mother singing from the hymnal while she has a meeting on her own in the front room sends Tirzah into a black mood that only sleep can save her from. She can’t pray these days and doesn’t even care, she realises now. As always, she wonders how this has happened. If it wasn’t for all her worries, she would be as happy as Biddy never to go to chapel again.
Wrapping the dressing gown around her bump, she thinks about Biddy’s last visit. It’s all Ffion this, Ffion that and Ffion the other with her now. When Tirzah gazed at Biddy from her bed, trying to look interested in a story about some sixth form boys, she thought her face would freeze and fall off in one piece. I’m relieved when she leaves, she thinks. There is always a brief, airless gap when Tirzah is solitary again and she can examine her loneliness. It’s as if she and Biddy are on opposite banks of a river, each walking along in the same direction but unable to hear each other over the sound of the water. She would dearly love to know what Biddy is studying for A-level, but will not ask. She jumps a little on the step when the front-room door opens, sending a block of light into the hallway. Pastor is shaking hands with her parents before he leaves. She waits for the sound of the door closing, then goes down to them. Her mother’s eyes are red, and her father’s grim expression has something else bubbling behind it she can’t read.
Come into the front room, he says. We have good tidings of great joy. Tirzah sits beside her mother on the hard sofa and holds her hand. Let us pray, her father says, as if he were a deacon again. Tirzah looks at her mother questioningly and gets a wet-eyed nod back. The prayer rambles on until her mother coughs. Tirzah gathers that they are all welcomed back into the fold. Her father has thanked the Lord for softening the hard, judgemental hearts of the brethren and sisters, and convicting them of their erroneous ways. Amen, Lord, he ends sonorously. So be it, and amen. Tirzah and her mother echo him in whispers. Then he leaps to his feet, and grasping his hands around the hilt of an imaginary sword, makes swishing movements above their heads. I beseeched that the Lord would take His righteous sword in hand and slay them all, he shouts, eyes shining, and my prayer was answered. Calm down now, Gwyll, her mother says, ducking and looking uneasy. The fellowship is all over the place, and that’s nothing to be triumphant about in my book.
Tirzah starts to ask questions, but her father will not be rushed. Of course, I knew it was only a matter of time before they begged me to come back, he goes on, settling into his chair. Didn’t I say so, Mair? No, you did not, Gwyllim, she answers. And that’s God’s honest truth. She turns to Tirzah. The fellowship has split into two, she explains. Pastor and some of the fellowship want us back, and Osian’s father and his faction don’t, so they’ve left. She starts to cry, fumbling for her hankie. I have never felt so guilty in my life. Hooray, thinks Tirzah. Good riddance to them. Well, Mam, she says, you must admit, some of them were very nasty to us. Her mother is crying into her hankie. We will be in Horeb, the house of the Lord, and apparently they will meet in the room above the surgery, her father tells her. And that zealot will lead the poor articles. See how they like that. He’s rubbing his hands and smiling broadly. I don’t know why you’re snivelling, Mair, he adds. This is a victory. But her mother shakes her head, covering her mouth. Tirzah sits silently. If Mama feels guilty and she hasn’t actually done anything wrong, then how much more should I feel, she thinks, patting her mother’s shoulder. Everyone to bed, her father announces. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof, I think.
In the morning, when Mrs Palfrey comes, Tirzah is up and dressed. You’re looking perky, she comments. That’s what I like to see. I told her to stay in bed, her mother says, but she is a naughty, wilful girl who knows best. Mrs Palfrey laughs. Don’t you fret, Mair, she says. Tirzah’s as strong as a little horse. Later, when her mother is busy polishing the hall tiles, Tirzah tiptoes down the stairs and out through the back door. She has to rush but manages to catch the bus to town. When she gets to the park it’s early, so she sits on a bench and looks up into the linden trees. A breeze is lifting the skirts of the yellowing leaves so they show their silvery underthings. Most leaves have a bunch of fuzzy sage-green berries hanging with them. Their smell of candied fruit is all around her. Golden sunlight lies over the silent bandstand and the barely swaying swings. Tirzah is content to wait. Soon she is half-asleep. Then a shadow falls on her face and she wakes. Derry is looking down at her. Sleepin’ Beauty, he says, and sits by her side.
The warmth and drowsiness of the empty park have sent Tirzah into a peaceful, distant sort of mood. So, Derry, she says, smiling. You needed to speak to me about something? The effort of turning her head to look at him is huge somehow. He talks quickly and emphatically, and Tirzah makes an effort to listen. Incredulously, she hears him say he loves her. I wan’ us to get ’itched, he finishes, running out of steam. Well? he asks, nudging her when she doesn’t answer immediately. Wha’s your answer? I’m sorry, Derry, Tirzah manages to say, I can’t. He drops down on to one knee and opens a tiny box. But have a gander at this, he says. Tidy, tha’ is. Tirzah’s bag falls off her lap. Derry is holding up the box with its sparkling ring for her to look at. Put that away, she says, unsure of what to do next. Get up, dear Derry, she adds at last. You are so sweet, and I know you want to help me. However, I won’t marry you. Derry wipes his nose on his sleeve and shoves the box back in his pocket. I knew you’d say tha’, he continues, getting to his feet and sitting beside her. But I always loved you, see? From the first time I clapped eyes on you, I knew I’d love you for ever, and tha’s the truth.
His face is young and entirely unguarded, his eyes magnified by tears. You sure? he asks after a moment, his Adam’s apple jigging up and down. Yes, she says, her own eyes watering. You should have a pretty girl who is mad about you, not some nutty, pregnant mess like me. He shakes his head. It’s only you I do want, he says, his lips quivering. The thing is, I don’t have to even think about it, Tirzah tells him, forcing the words out. I won’t marry anybody. It’s not just you. She links arms with him. I’m so sorry to make you sad, though. The wind in the trees sounds like distant applause. They sit side by side on the bench. So, it was love, was it, when you went and shoved your hand up my skirt? All those times you gave me the eye? Tirzah asks, nudging him. Smutty, that was, he says. Didn’t know no better then, see? The gilded quiet is all around them, and here and there coppery leaves twirl to the ground. Anyway. Let’s just sit by ’ere for a bit. I need a fag.