Hosts of Rebecca

this, for if a man is begging for St Peter he should be assisted.
I helped my first salmon out of it soon after arriving. This summer I was waiting for my fifteenth; dozing on the banks of the Reach in the bee-loud silence, watching the waving of the water-lilies and the caress of bindweed where the quicksilver fins flashed bright in the depths. Ring-doves were shouting from the fringes of Cae White, rising as diamonds in the windless air. Sweating, I dozed, but a splash brought me upright. More fishermen – splashing along in a welter of foam, mam leading, dad following and three babies after him swimming demented. Whiskered noses swept the river, black eyes gleamed in sunlight – throwing a live trout from snout to snout, an arc of silver, wriggling, diving. Whistling, plunging, the otters played, and I never heard a footstep.
“Good afternoon,” said Tessa.
Up like lightning, fists clenched, looking for a bailiff’s chin, and the stick and noose slipped into the river and drifted down to Cae White. Through a pattern of branches Tessa made shape.
Am I supposed to tell of her with only words to use?
Pale was her face, lips stained red; thin and dark, a hand would have snappedher. Her long, summer dress was white and dainty with lace, her long hair black against it. And she held aside her pink parasol and smiled, her eyes coming alive in her face. Always known her behind glass before, never met officially.
“How are you?” I said. Just sat, awaiting sentence. Caught poaching on her dada’s river, and in daylight. And how the hell she got there was anyone’s guess just then.
“Jethro Mortymer, is it?”
Amazing what gentry know. Hooking at my collar, me.
“How is your mother, Jethro Mortymer?”
“Very pleasant.”
“Did you see the otters?”
“O, aye.”
“Beggars for the poaching, though. Listen to that, now,” said she, for the belly-flops of a salmon pursued came up the river and the otters were whistling and plunging as madmen. “O, that sound drives Waldo Bailiff demented. Do you come here often?”
“First time.”
“To poach salmon?”
“Upon my soul!” I said, shocked.
She laughed then, face turned up.
“There’s a pity, for one salmon more or less don’t make much difference,” which is not the way she said it but the only way I can tell it. “Especially when the otters kill for sport. You heard them at night?”
Nearer she leaned, her voice coming secret. “O, there is a wildness and freedom about otters, I do think, and a good full moon will always start them capering. Some nights, when the vapours are billowing, I pull back the curtains and listen till dawn. And old Grandfer Badger down in Bully Hole Bottom grunting and singing at the moon. Killed four fox hounds last fall – you seen him?”
“Never,” I answered, for he had his hole in Waldo’s preserves and I had sprung four gins to save him last spring. “Never seen a badger in my life.”
“You seen herons down on the estuary?”
“No,” I said, for the estuary was near the rabbit warren.
“Old Bill Stork on the mere?”
I knew him like a brother; shook my head.
“Backward, you, for a farming boy,” said she, peeved. “Hen coots you know of, I expect?”
“O, aye, seen tons of coots.”
“And heard the Reach curlews calling at dawn?”
“Then I be sleeping.”
“Good grief,” said she, and straightened herself tidy. “Reckon if Grandfer Zephaniah wants Cae White ploughing this year he must do it himself again.”
“Ploughed,” I said.
“But not by you, I vow.”
“Indeed?” I said, cool.
“Indeed,” said she, cooler, and we sat there just looking, knives chiefly.
I glanced at the sky for the sun had pulled up his trews again and the air of the river blew sudden cold, though a mite warmer than Tessa who had one shoulder turned.
“How old are you, Jethro Mortymer?” Duchess now.
“Hitting it up for fourteen.”
She eyed me sideways. “Is it true you’ve got a brother?”
I nodded, coming warmer, for this was Iestyn my god.
“In transportation, isn’t he?”
“Seven years he got at Monmouth,” I replied.
Her chin an inch higher now, untouchable.
“A criminal he is, says Waldo Bailiff. That true?”
“Seven years,” I said, hot. “For fighting against gentry like you and scum like Waldo Bailiff, to make things decent for people starving. And we are waiting for him, me and the family, keeping Cae White until he comes back.”
Eyes like saucers now with me standing over her.
“And when he comes back he will build the place up,” I said, hotter. “He’ll build Cae White as big as Squire’s Reach, and we will buy up the river and fish our own salmon, for he’d dust any ten round here with Waldo Bailiff to fill in time, so tell him watch out.”
Pretty worked up. Always the same when I spoke of Iestyn. She was staring at me, her eyes ringed with their sleepless nights of shadow, and as we were looking it rained.
No warning, just pelted; hitting the river into life in a sudden sweep of the wind.
“O, dear!” said Tessa, and up with her parasol. “Ben, Ben!”
“Who’s Ben?” I asked, standing over her with the flaps of my coat trying to keep her dry.
“My servant. Ben!”
Squinted through the trees, but no sign of him.
“O, my dress – just look at my dress!” She turned her face to mine, rain-splashed, appealing, and I thought she would cry.
“Up a dando,” I said, and knelt, lifting her, running like a demon to the veranda of the big house. There I set her in a cane chair, and turned, skidding down the steps from the holy portals of Squire to the teeming white of the river. Awkward questions to be answered if I hung round there. Away then, back to Cae White, reaching home just as Morfydd was fishing the stick and noose from the river and yelling to Mam that Jethro was drowned.
Damned near it.
I leaned against the shed at the back and looked up the Reach, thinking of Tessa. Wet was my face, and not all the wetness rain. For the cripples of Carmarthen