Band of Angel by Julia Gregson Page A

or crying because he’s a mean old bastard?”
    “Both,” she said. She picked up her pipe, sucked on it, and looked at him, smiling at her own stupidity. “And don’t you dare talk about your father like that, even though I may have to kill him one day.”
    “Well, finish those before you do”—he gestured toward the saddlebags—“or he’ll be roaring again.”
    “Oh will he,” she muttered fiercely, dragging away on her pipe. “Oh will he? We’ll see about that.” She had his wonderful eyes and brown skin like a gypsy; the kind of woman who belonged outside.
    She got up to get Deio some food and then, to make him laugh, clenched her fists and waved them comically in the air. He never worried about her really: she was strong at the center, you could not crush her for long. Out from the oven came some bara brith, moist crumbs of fat gleaming and the currants still hot enough to hurt the mouth. Then she took down her bread from the cupboard, and the butter she had churned in the dairy. She poured him a glass of ale and some for herself and lit her pipe again, watching him from a distance through the smoke. She looked at her boy, wolfing down his bread and cheese as if he couldn’t wait to get outside again. Not bred for captivity. Just like his father.
    “So where were you this afternoon?” she asked softly.
    “Nowhere.”
    “Nowhere?” she said. She picked up a skein of thread from her basket and knotted it. “Not at her funeral then?”
    “Does it matter?”
    “Does it?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “Catherine,” she said, looking directly at her son, “was for a while like another daughter to me. Poor Catherine,” she said softly, her brown eyes very dark and still. “Poor love. Whatever will happen to her now?”
    Much later that night, after the animals were fed and watered, and the packs checked and rechecked and the leggings oiled and the dry socks soaped and waterproofed and the fodder tied down, the last gate opened and the cattle swept like a dark avalanche down from the hills and into the herding yards.
    Then Reverend Hughes, the Methodist minister from Sarn, came into the kitchen, stood at the head of the table and closed his eyes.
    “Let us pray,” he said, “for these brave men who face danger and cold and hardship to relieve the hunger of the starving men of England.”
    Meg Jones, almost feverish now from the high anxieties of the day, added two fervent prayers of her own: “Lord,” she prayed, looking through her fingers at her husband. “Keep him out of the kitchen but in my heart, and don’t let the railways come to the Lleyn.”
    She looked at her son who was pale and distracted. Normally on the night before a drove left, once everything was done, he got rowdy and his eyes shone with excitement. She closed her eyes again and thought without thinking that it was funny that the clergyboys warned you about sin and temptation, suffering and evil and all the rest, but the flamers never warned you about love.

Chapter 8

    A week after Mother’s funeral, Aunt Gwynneth took them to Caernarfon to supervise the purchase of black crepe and bombazine. She had insisted on staying on at Carreg Plâs to help the Poor Dear Girls through this Dreadful Time and was very keen for them to do things properly.
    Gwynneth’s presence in the house made Catherine almost mad with nervous irritation. Restless and wretched herself, her mind endlessly picking over the hours that had led up to her mother’s death and the part she had played in it, what she most wanted was silence—a state Gwynneth regarded as most unhealthy. For Gwynneth, with her red-rimmed, sympathetic eyes and her long damp hands, so ready always to stroke a brow or to mix beef tea, had taken up her position in the house as The One Who Understands. She specialized in flavorless sayings. “It’s all for the best whatever” was one, pronounced with a sweet wan smile. “There is nothing so certain as death” was another,