Hosts of Rebecca

but she still had him on the breast. We saved the easy work for her for she was still making up for her breech-birth labour; couldn’t pull round on oatmeal soup, said Mam. But satisfying Jonathon was harder than kitchen work with his cooings and bubblings and reaching for her breast. Strange that I was jealous of Jonathon. His whimpering offended me because she was slave to him, leaping to serve his first strangled cry. His pear-shaped bottom was vulgarity to me – something that was smoothed with oils in public, reflected in mirrors, even kissed. The body of a girl child to me is a thing of beauty, and the body of a baby boy atrocious. For one paints its picture of the fountain of life, and is fruitful. But the body of a boy is all cherubs and cupids, the lie to manhood with its belly-rolls and wrist bangles.
Sometimes, from my chair in the corner, I would watch Mari with Jonathon; one eye on the Cambrian, the other on his suspended animation, frenzied in his fight for freedom while she gripped his fat ankles between fingers and thumb. Head dangling, upside down, he would catch my eye and bubble his smiles, exposing his nakedness without a blush and his shocking maleness with pride. And Mari, pins in mouth, would be ardent to do best by him in sweating concentration; wiping stray hairs from her eyes, forearm on his chest, tiptoeing her knees up in case he rolled off. And fighting to get the rag round him he streams his indecency down to her ankles.
“O, Duw! O, there’s a horrid boy, Jonathon. O, Jethro, look now, drenched, I am drenched!”
Up with the newspaper, pretend not to look, and he crows his delight in shouts and gurgles. Hand up, she threatens, but never brings it down.
“I will smack you next time, mind, or call Uncle Jethro, for he is handy with smackings. Dirty old boy!”
“Taking after his uncle, though,” says Morfydd, sewing, needle held up to the light. “Remember, Mam – a soaking baby if ever there was one, that Jethro.”
“Whoever was nearest, girl. You, me or the Bishop of Bangor.”
Up with the Cambrian.
“And the time he drowned old Tomos back home, remember?” Morfydd again. In her element, the bitch. “And Tomos dressed for speechifying. Aye, aye, and the Sunday trews his speciality, too.” She winks at Mari. “But take a tip, girl – contented was Jethro. Two and a half and still on the breast – never got a fork into solids till he was nigh on three, and what we lost in the soakings we saved on the stomach gripe, eh, Mam?”
“And the belly band – remember the belly band.” Mam now, treadling away.
“O, aye, girl. Never without it. It do cut the wind for certain do the belly band.”
And there was Mari’s eyes sober serious, meeting mine over the top of the Cambrian with her sweet, sad smile; not knowing of the torment, pure in heart.
Too pure in heart to realize that the inch of her breast was curvcd in whiteness, switching my eyes.
Eh, this business of growing to manhood.
Now she stood beside me to serve my plate in the kitchen, with something of love in her face.
“Jethro,” she said.
“Aye?” I turned away, breaking bread.
“Jethro, you will reap the corn for me? Never mind the old coaling down in Ponty – it can wait, and with Morfydd labouring it is enough for a family. Ashamed, I am, with Grandfer sleeping drunk, but already the fields are turning. For a field of blackened corn is as sad as a funeral cloth, and everyone has their barns stacked save us.” Back at the hob now, she turned. “I will cook and mend for you, as I did for my Iestyn. O, but a boy you are, but there is life in Cae White and you must not let it die.”
“I am a furnace man and collier,” I said. “I know nothing of farming.”
“But you will try?”
Just went on chewing, wanting to hear her voice.
“Mam and me will work, too, and Richard will come for the gleanings. To build Cae White for Iestyn, Jethro – for when he comes back.”
“Long years yet, Mari.”
“But they will pass. O, I have been waiting, waiting, and you have made no move.”
“All right, all right,” I said.
Her face was radiant. “Today?”
Strange the glory in seeing her pleading.
“Yes,” I said. “Now send Mam in, it is her turn now.”
“I am here,” said Mam. “Do not worry.”
“Jethro,” said Morfydd from behind her. “Mam do want to speak to you, official.”
“Away the lot of you,” I answered. “I am entitled to breakfast.”
“He is reaping, he is reaping!” cried Mari, dancing.
“Should be worth seeing,” said Morfydd, in now. “Two feet shorter by the time he comes in tonight. And the point of a scythe can get into funny old places, so mind.”
I just ignored it, feeling superior. Never before was I so wanted; walked out and left them, in search of the scythe.
I have seen white beards waving over the snathes of sythes, and arms no thicker than my wrist that have swung from dawn to dusk; the sinewy bodies of grandfathers too old to die, the pendulum bellies of drunkards that have swayed to the sigh of the whetted ground. Spitting on my hands I gripped the splits, and swung, and sunfire flashed on the edge of the blade as it hissed for my ankles. Leaping high, I fell, with the thing pitch-forking as something alive.
Gently, this time, the point held low, I cut a few stalks at a time, feeling for the balance, for the touch of a gorse-fly’s wing is enough to send the point diving. An hour of practice and I was revelling in the singing cut of the steel, though I knew it would take a lifetime of learning; left foot forward swing, and the corn lies down; the backward swing, then forward in the rhythm of Nature. The sun, flushing after his