A Place of Meadows and Tall Trees Read Free Page A

it’s as if only he can see it.

Three
    The young men are eager to disembark. They go with Edwyn Lloyd in the small boat and row to the shore. Silas expects they kiss the land, imagines they dive from the boat and race each other to get there first. That is what he would do, if he were younger, or if he were unattached like Jacob, but as it is he has to wait until the next day. He has to help Megan and his two infant daughters to pack, and he has to listen to the wails of another mother who has lost her child in the night. The sound makes him gag on his morning biscuit and clutch Myfanwy so closely to him that she grumbles to be free.
    â€˜I want to play.’
    He shakes his head fiercely and draws her closer. Stay.
    â€˜I want to go.’
    â€˜You can’t.’
    â€˜Why not, Dadda?’
    He mustn’t cry. Not yet. Not now. Not any more.
    The other women cry too but Megan is quiet. It is as if she can withdraw her mind. Nothing flickers in her face. He watches her as she packs carefully, folding each item of clothing into the smallest possible space. She pauses over nothing. She makes no sound, looks impassively around her, checking to see that nothing of their life here remains – as strong and silent as a stone.

    The sea is gentle in this inlet, almost like a lake, and it takes just a few moments for Silas’ oars to fall into rhythm, sliding into the water in time with the first mate’s. If he shuts his eyes he could be back on the Conwy estuary again with its smell of salt and seaweed and the cry of birds. Just ahead would be the small house where there seems always to be a bright patchwork of washing spread to dry on the gorse of the surrounding headland. But here there are just cliffs, and behind him, the beach. He keeps twisting in his seat to look; a flat land coming closer, a haze of brown vegetation turning into small stunted trees and bushes. A strong wind blows from the land into his face, becoming colder and drier with every stroke of the oars. A persistent wind; it has not let up since they’ve anchored here. He shivers and checks that Myfanwy and Gwyneth are huddled into their mother. Megan is looking ahead, her eyes sometimes darting to his, and then back again at the coast, a grimace fixed onto her face by the wind.
    â€˜Nearly there now,’ he says, not expecting a reply, ‘nearly on land.’
    Winter. Maybe that’s all it is. Everything looks dead in the winter. In the spring there will be leaves, flowers, grass. He tries to hold onto the thought and believe it.
    The oar slips into the sea, drags at the water and then emerges again. They are in time with the waves crashing and then dragging at the beach.
    Browner. Colder. Beside him, Megan’s head swivels. Everything is clear now. Every detail. Yellow patches of cliff become pockets of dead gorse and weeds like bramble, and in between them the ground is bare, sandy, infertile. This is more than winter. It is as if something has killed everything. As if there’s been a plague. Nothing moves. Nothing makes a sound. Nothing lives.
    Megan’s eyes widen. ‘Silas…?’ She says. ‘Silas?’
    Nothing but banks of mud, pale cliffs. Sea.
    He reaches for her hand.
    â€˜Silas…?’ It’s as if she’s come alive. As if she suddenly sees.
    He is holding his breath. As soon as he realises he lets it go – and a brief small mist appears and then disappears in front of his nose. It is so cold it almost hurts him to breathe. He concentrates on the sound of his breaths and the way these small sighs fit between the quiet splashes of his oar.
    Then another sound. Something higher. Megan again. Her mouth open; clutching the babies so closely to her they are beginning to cry. ‘We have to go back,’ she says. ‘We can’t go there.’ She tries to stand and a slug of the sea spills in, adding to what is already there on the bottom.
    The first mate turns to