‘I’ll take it there,’ said Primmy; and before they could stop her had darted away across the little paved yard and was gone.
Abel and Rohan started after her but the girls held them back, clinging to their arms. ‘If she’s seen, no one will blame her for anything. Besides she knows the way.’
‘Besides,’ said Evaine, ‘she loves him. She wants to be the one to go.’
It was five o’clock. The sun was high and bright so that the shadows made dark troughs between the tall bean rows and the air was hot with the scents and smells of a farming countryside. Melisande went into the cottage and made a great can of coffee, carrying it out to them carefully on the wooden tray with two rather wobbling stacks of pottery mugs. They crouched on the dry ground about the bench and when the children toddled up to claim love and petting from them, gently sent them back to play. There was perhaps no love to spare from their passionate protection of one who so deeply, deeply needed it.
On the mountain behind them, two small boys hung about aimlessly, kicking out with stout scuffed shoes at the curled fronds of the bracken. ‘Say we’ve been here the whole time, Llew. If anyone asks you, say we was up here on the mountain. Never went near the woods above Cwm-esgair, never went near the kites….’ A dozen pairs of kites or less, in the British isles, and their nests guarded jealously, with penalties for disturbing, let alone robbing them. But a man in Llangwyn was offering two pounds for an egg. ‘Playing cops and robbers up here on the mountain,’ assented Llewellyn, comfortably. Given a little to the histrionics, Llew; you could always rely on him to embroider things…
And Nancy and Blodwen, creeping back down the side of the mountain, along the sheep track, the short cut to Llangwyn. Been to the cinema—there’s sinful! A dirty old picture—Blod’s big brother Idris had told her about it, warned her not to tell Mam. But once there, they hadn’t dared to go in to the picture house after all. Blod had seen Mam and Da talking to a man—it was mart day—and suppose they’d glanced up and seen her, and Nancy in that bright red dress! ‘Well, all right, say there’s lots of red dresses like that,’ said Blodwen impatiently. ‘We was never in Llangwyn, we was sitting over there in the fields below Cwm-esgair, reading our books.’ They had at least contrived some somewhat highly coloured magazines. ‘Come on now, get to the fields!’ Nancy was silly, really; and fancy coming to the Llangwyn at all in such a bright dress! ‘One day, Nancy James, I won’t be best friends with you any more.’
Primmy had returned from her errand. Her lovely face was very grey and strained but she was triumphant. ‘I had a better idea, I put the note on a bush near the entrance to the cave. Anyone passing down the path would see it. Otherwise, if no one went into the cave—and they mightn’t for ages—’
‘Did you—see her, Primmy?’
‘Well, I… I just went into the middle of the cave, where you can begin to see the river. She’s still there. I could—I could see her legs.’ Plump, sun-burned legs, like a child’s legs, toes turned down and digging into the grass. She confessed: ‘I couldn’t bear any more.’
‘There was no point,’ said Melisande in her own kind, comforting way. ‘You couldn’t do her any good, if she was dead.’
Christo struggled to his feet again. ‘If no one goes to the cave—she’ll be lying there. She might lie there all night. We can’t leave her, we couldn’t.’
‘Christo, love, she’s dead.’
If Christo found a dead creature in the woods, he made a grave and buried it: not with little crosses and sentimentalities—he just said it wasn’t decent, it was too pitiful. Even to animals, he showed respect. And now…‘Just lying there—with her head hanging down into the water…’ He said miserably: ‘It was bad enough to run away and leave her: even for a little while. If it hadn’t been for the cave—but it seemed to be pressing down, lowering down, just there behind me. We can’t leave her there all night.’
‘If someone sees the note—’
‘Who’ll be using that path?’ said Melisande, reluctantly.
‘It gets more and more awful,’ said Christo, ‘to think I just left her there.’ He took a huge and frightening resolve. ‘I must go and tell the police.’
They were terrified. ‘Wait, Christo, wait! There must be another way out.’
‘If it was children that found her!’ said Evaine; there were two small children always playing about at Penbryn, across the valley.