The Earth Hums in B Flat Read Free

be able to tell the time by the sun.
    Robinson Crusoe could have escaped from his desert island if he’d been able to fly. When I was little and wanted to fly I would crouch down and wrap my arms around my knees, like this, and then I would lift above the ground and skim over it. Fly, I say to myself now. Fly, fly, fly. But it won’t happen. All I do is fall over. If I were a lizard on Robinson Crusoe’s island I could stay here all day basking in the sun’s warmth; I wouldn’t have to go to Brwyn Coch and see Ifan Evans with his raw face and his eyes that are dark and sour as sloes. When I told Mam and Tada that Alwenna calls him Paleface, Tada laughed until Mam frowned at him. That Alwenna has no shame, she said.
    Look, the primroses on the bank at the side of the road are open and tiny violets hide their heads in the grass beside them. I’ll pick some primroses for Mam on the way back and I’ll pick a posy of violets now to take to Mrs Evans. Mrs Evans likes violets; she read a poem to us in an English lesson at primary school about a girl as shy as a violet, and once she made fairy cakes for a chapel supper that had pretty sugared violets on the icing. I can taste them now, sweet and scented and fizzy on my tongue. A posy of violets will cheer her up before she goes to Price the Dentist.
    Mr Price took out all Mam’s bottom teeth when I was five. She came home and sat on the step at the foot of the stairs and whimpered with pain, a handkerchief of Tada’s pressed to her mouth and soaked with blood. Alwenna says that Mr Price has to have a glass of whisky to steady his hands before he takes your teeth out; that’s why his breath smells so sweet. Tada says it’s worth the pain, he says his false teeth are much better than the real thing.
    Deep down where the stems of the violets leave the ground the grass is cool and wet. I tease several of the flowers from the bank and some of their true-hearted leaves to put about them, and then tie the stems around and around with a long blade of grass to make a posy.
    When I look up the Reservoir walls loom at me from the other side of the road. Last summer a dead sheep lay in the Reservoir for weeks before anyone found it. Alwenna says that maggots came through the taps in her house. My stomach shifts at the thought of it.
    There’s Mrs Williams talking to Guto’r Wern at the house gate to Penrhiw farm. Alwenna says everyone knows that Guto’s mother dropped him on his head when he was a baby so that he grew up strange. And now his mother’s dead and he can’t look after himself although he’s a grown man. Once, Guto told me he could fly, and he tried to show me how, but it didn’t work. Mam says I’m not to encourage him but Tada always says: There’s no harm in him, he’s innocent as a child. Mrs Williams waves me over to her; Guto waves, too, the torn sleeve of his coat flapping up and down, up and down, like a crow’s wing. Mrs Williams gives him a little push and he moves away, eating the bread and butter she’s given him. We both watch him hop and skip down the road to the town.
    â€˜That poor boy,’ says Mrs Williams. ‘I don’t know what’ll become of him.’ She turns back to me. ‘So, Gwenni, are you off to Brwyn Coch this morning? Elin mentioned that she was having a tooth out. And how’s your nain? I haven’t seen her for weeks. Don’t tell me, I know what she’d say: Mustn’t grumble, Bessie. That’s what your nain always says, bless her: Mustn’t grumble. Tell her I’ve been churning butter and I’ve got plenty of buttermilk. She likes her buttermilk, I know. You look more like her every time I see you. How time flies. Last time I saw your Aunty Olwen was when the Silver Band came round playing at Christmas. Must be a bit noisy for your nain to live with that trumpet. Are those flowers for Elin? Don’t stand there with