A String in the Harp by Nancy Bond Page A

else is stirring yet.”
    “Felt like getting up.”
    “Good enough reason. Have you got anything special planned for today?”
    “No.”
    “I thought maybe you and the girls would like to come in to Aberystwyth and meet me for lunch somewhere.” He glanced at his son, but Peter’s face was carefully blank.
    “All right,” he said without enthusiasm. David sighed.
    Often, when he was alone, Peter imagined sitting down and really talking to his father. He would tell him why he was unhappy and explain why he had to go home. David would listen to him sympathetically and reasonably and would offerhelp. They would be friends and they would understand each other. But somehow, whenever he was with his father, it didn’t happen. Peter couldn’t make himself say the right words and David wouldn’t listen properly, and they’d end by getting furious with each other.
    Jen and Becky arrived after the gas for the grill was safely lit and the kettle boiling, Jen still shivering from her stint in the bathroom.
    “I never would have thought you could take a bath in steaming hot water and still get goose-pimples while doing it! The bathroom is unquestionably the coldest room in this house,” she declared.
    David smiled at her. “That’s to keep you from staying in it too long. Do you all want toast? I was suggesting to Peter before you came down that you might come into town this morning and I’ll take you to lunch.”
    “Good,” said Becky. “We need money for Christmas decorations. We don’t have any at all.”
    “Money,” asked David, “or decorations?”
    “Either one.”
    “All right. You can show Jen the sights and shop while I’m working.”
    “That should take about five minutes,” muttered Peter, out of his father’s hearing.
    They caught the bus at ten past ten. There was a stop outside Mr. Williams’s store. Jen was beginning to think Mr. Williams’s store was the hub of Borth. Hugh-the-Bus was driving, cap tilted to the back of his head, whistling through his teeth. He was a big, gentle-faced man with snow-white hair, a wide, amused smile, and very blue eyes. “Morning,” he said to Jen when Becky introduced them. “Going to town, is it? Good day for that.”
    “I’d like to see them all together,” Jen whispered as they sat down. “Gwilym and Mrs. Davies and Hugh-the-Bus, I mean.”
    “And Susan and Sheila,” added Becky with a giggle. “I know. It’s too bad Gwilym doesn’t look like Hugh-the-Bus.” She voiced Jen’s own thought. “Hugh-the-Bus is real Welsh, but Gwilym’s only half Welsh because his mother’s English.”
    “So?” said Peter.
    “It makes a difference,” Becky informed them. “He doesn’t quite belong, and she doesn’t at all. Oh, she fits in, but she doesn’t belong.”
    Under the low sky the air was clear and the feet of the mountains stood out in sharp detail though their shoulders and tops were shrouded in thick rolls of cloud. Jen hardly glanced at the little bungalows that lined the road out of Borth. Her eyes went instinctively to those dark, wild slopes, scattered with sheep and boulders. She listened with half her mind to Becky, who was listing all the decorations they needed, and said, “Yes” and “I don’t see why not” at the right moments, but she was watching the hills.
    In twenty minutes they reached the top of Penglais Hill in Aberystwyth. The hills were gone, and Jen paid attention to Becky who was pointing out the landmarks.
    “All the buildings on the left are the new University buildings where Dad teaches. His office is down in the old building, though. You’ll see it later.”
    “Inspiring, aren’t they?” commented Peter.
    Jen had to admit they weren’t really handsome. They were gray concrete and still raw and new looking. Below the University was a big, fortresslike building that, Becky told her, was the National Library of Wales. Very grand. No, they’d never been inside, but their father had. But what really fascinated