Hosts of Rebecca

“Jethro!”
Didn’t mean to do it, sorry now; but I’d do it again if she so much as looked. Sat back then and watched her in profile, seeing the flash of the river behind her, and her eyes were all mystery and brightness. Gave me a glance then, the glance of a woman, and I reckoned she knew what I had in mind, for she put on her straw hat and set it tidy, very prim, tying the bows again, looking away.
“If you don’t mind,” she said.
“Many happy returns,” I said.
“Thank you,” said she. “But my birthday. Not yours, remember.”
O, beautiful, she looked just then.
“I am sorry,” I said.
Silence, save for the wind and the splash-plops of the river, and gurgling.
“But a child you are, Jethro,” she said then. “Do not make it hard.”
Poor Tessa. Just wanted to hold her then and soothe and kiss her, but I did not dare. Had to say something.
“Look,” I said. “Old Grandfer Badger is down in Bully Hole Bottom, girl. Roaring and raging, he is, for I’ve just had him out by the tail. You ever seen Grandfer?”
“No,” she said. Eyes low now, threatening tears, fingers ripping at her little lace handkerchief.
“Not interested?”
She shook her head, lips trembling.
“O, Jethro,” she whispered, and wept.
I held her. All the heat gone, I held her, and her old hat fell off again and her hair went down again. Just the two of us in the world then.
“Thought I’d forgotten?” I asked, holding her away. “See now, here is a valuable. Your birthday, and I’ve been saving up for months. Tessa, don’t cry. Look, look!” and I fished out the brooch. Wonderful was her face as she blinked away tears and her eyes opened wide at the sight of it. God knows what would happen if Morfydd saw it on her.
“Jethro, you shouldn’t have done it!”
“Cost a small fortune,” I said, but I know it cost twopence for I watched Morfydd buy it from the tinker. “Got it down in Whitland,” I said. “Fair day.”
“O, it is lovely!”
“Shall I pin it on, girl?”
Eyes up at this. “I can manage myself, thank you.”
“Tessa!”
“Eh?”
“Will you be my girl now and stick to me, is it?”
“Not much chance of me running,” she answered. “Look, boy – is it tidy?”
“There’s an old wacko you are,” I said. “Pretty it do look on you,” and I leaned forward as she reached for my lips.
“Pretty for you,” she said.
“Till death do us part and down in wooden suits,” I said. “You are my girl now, you promise?”
“Yes.”
“Dry up, then,” I said. “Do not look so mournful. Down to Bully Hole Bottom with us, is it?”
“How can I walk to Bully Hole Bottom? Jethro, have sense!”
“On my back,” I cried. “I could carry an elephant. Look, if we hurry grandfer will still be there and I will fetch him out again for you. Come on!”
“O, stay!” she replied, and just looked. And the way she looked.
“To the devil with badgers,” she said. “Jethro!”
The lips so curved are dying for kisses, and her eyes closed to the sun as I drew her against me, and saw, in a rift of her hair the distant roof of the mansion and the poplars of the Big Field misted in sunlight and the silver ribbon river winding to the hills.
Cool is the kiss at the beginning, then growing to warmth as the kiss is longer, steaming dry to fire as the breaths come quicker, till the kissed is a quarry that seeks escape from the circling iron of the capturing arm and she sighs and faints in the greater strength. O, mad is that strength!
“Jethro!”
I did not answer and she clung to me, and I saw the faint white scratches of my chin on her face, that would later turn red.
“Jethro, do not touch me, not again!”
“Tessa,” I said, and was ashamed.
“Just … kiss me. So I can remember?”

CHAPTER 9
NOW I STOOD in a universe of nights and days boiling in the inch between boyhood and manhood, and listened to the call of the scythe. The wind sighed through the grasses and the corn of Grandfer’s acres were as gold. Coo-doves called from the woods, herons from the Tywi where the salmon swirled up for their act of creation and Tessa’s otters barked in moonlight.
Waking early that morning I pulled on my boots and went down to the kitchen to the back, listening to the tinkling splashes from the mere as the hencoots got busy among beaks where the bulrushes stood in shimmering silence. There came to me a song then, not the song of Ponty, sweating and grimed, but the windy sighing of corn falling obliquely to the scythe, its razor edge flashing and stained with clover flowers that clung to the wetted shine of boots. I saw, in my sleep-gummed eyes, the line of the reapers, waist-deep in the corn, their naked backs sweating in midday heat, and the swing of their blades made sunfire in the gold. Earth smells came; the scent of burned pine; sour stinks from the rotted dumps of kale, the perfumed wind of overflowing barns. Great was Cae White then, as a ship at sea with billowing mists sailing in her turrets.
The women were stirring in the bedrooms now, curtains swishing to let in sunlight; pot-clanking, bed-squeaks as Morfydd got out and her son’s thin protest at the sudden bedlam. She awoke like a man, this one, with all the palaver of a man, and what damned time do you call this and get to hell out of it. She washed as a man, too, stripped to the waist in frost.
“Diawl!” she said at the door now. “Somebody’s got a conscience. Have you put her in trouble?”
Venus, complete with arms, towel dangling, hair on her shoulders.
“Don’t worry about me,” I said. “Just come naked.”
She smiled at this and came to the water butt beside me and flung back her hair and tied it with red ribbon, and I turned away as