A Small Country Read Online Free Page A

been sent away to school and to Oxford?
    ‘I’m going to Derwen Pool tonight,’ he heard young Glyn telling some of the others. ‘Anyone coming?’
    ‘I may, later on,’ Tom said, knowing that he wouldn’t go, and that the others would be embarrassed if he did. ‘Good night, now.’
    He took his boots off and went through to the parlour. ‘Isn’t Mother down?’ he asked Catrin. He had set great store on her promise.
    ‘She did get up this morning, but she had a letter by the second post which upset her again. Don’t ask me what it was; she just read it and went back to bed. She won’t say a word to me. Not even to Nano. One cup of tea, nothing else. You see if you can get anything out of her.’
    ‘I’ll have a bath first. No sign of Ned?’
    ‘Not yet. What are we going to tell him when he comes?’
    ‘I don’t know. Let me find out what’s in the letter; we’ll decide afterwards. What’s for supper?’
    ‘Chicken soup. Lamb’
    ‘Good.’
    ‘Mr Tom.’ Nano came out from the kitchen as he was going upstairs. ‘I’ve made some beef tea for Mrs Evans, and if she won’t have it I just want to say that I won’t be held responsible; you’ll have to get Doctor Andrews to see what he says to her. Three times I’ve taken up little bowls of this and that; egg custard, arrowroot, milk jelly and three times I’ve had to bring them down. She’s had nothing all day but some coffee and a small piece of toast for her breakfast. Nothing else all day but a cup of tea. I just want to say that I won’t be held responsible if she doesn’t have the beef tea.’
    ‘I’ll see to it Nano, as soon as I’ve had a quick scrub.’
    He kissed her, as though he was still a boy, and tore upstairs.
    ‘Hello, Mam, I’m home,’ he called as he passed her door. ‘I’ll be with you now.’
    Stretching out in the warm bath, towelling himself dry afterwards, his spirits soared as they had on the hay-field earlier. He put on the clean shirt Nano had put out for him, his newly pressed trousers, his blazer. He had a different look on his face, though, as he tied his tie and brushed his hair: the dutiful son ready to see his mother.
    He knocked on the door and went in. She turned her head to look at him but didn’t smile. He sat on a chair at her bedside.
    ‘Are you going to let me see the letter?’ he asked, with no preliminaries.
    ‘There,’ she said, indicating with a slight movement of her head, the white envelope on the bedcover. Tom saw his Father’s large, bold handwriting as he took out the single sheet of paper.

    Dear Rachel,
    We have been married almost twenty-three years and good years they’ve been for me. Now you have a grown-up son and daughter to help you run your farm and to support you in every way. It’s not for any young girl that I’ve left you, though you’ve been jealous of my very innocent attentions to them from time to time, but for a grown woman, nearly thirty, who has my child and who has no one else. She was the schoolmistress of Rhydfelen school. She gave in her notice, perhaps you remember, saying that she had to return to her family in Carmel. She has no family. At the moment we are in her aunt’s cottage in Llanfryn. We shall soon be moving from the area.
    I have very affectionate feelings for you and our children.
    I hope Tom will bring me some of my clothes and other necessities.
    I have taken £20 from the bank which I will pay back before Michaelmas. I’m sorry I couldn’t tell you instead of writing. I meant to and would have except that you haven’t been so well lately, so that somehow I couldn’t get it out.
    I don’t know how to end this letter.
    Forgive me if you can.
    Joshua Evans.

    Tom sat at his mother’s bedside, watching the lamp flickering, the blue outside the window turning blue-black, pitch-black.
    Once, long ago, his pony had died. Suddenly. No one knew why. He was eight or nine. ‘Dead?’ he had shouted and screamed, banging his fists against his