Chapter 13 - One Last Spring

By the beginning of November, Gwen felt as though she was finally adjusting to her new situation. She still had moments of homesickness, but they didn’t last as long and were not as severe as they’d been during the first few weeks of living in Llanfyllin. It had been hard to transition into a new environment and a new school all at once. She was now living in a bustling country town—bigger and noisier than anywhere she’d been before.

Unlike Llanwddyn, where it was the birds and an occasional rooster that welcomed the morning, here it was the sound of tradesmen opening their businesses and farmers with their horses and carts that woke her each day. It was challenging to get to know people by name because there were so many more names to learn.

Mrs. Pritchard was everything Ed the Post had promised, and although she didn’t express much warmth or affection, Gwen was thankful to be staying with such an equitable woman. Her meals were not always the best tasting, but they were warm, filling, and always served on time, and Gwen’s bedroom, although spartanly furnished, was a welcome refuge when she needed one.

At first Gwen had felt somewhat isolated at school. Most of the other students knew at least one other person in class, either because they’d been going to school there for years or because they were attending with friends from their own villages. There were no other students from Llanwddyn, and Gwen had been forced to reach out to strangers. In the process, though, she had found friends.

She had sat next to Rosamond Owen on the first day of her English, French, and Latin classes and had already benefited immeasurably. Rosamond had a gift for languages and had helped Gwen with pronunciation and memorization; Gwen now felt that she could keep up with the class. Alice Jones excelled in needlework and field hockey, two seemingly unrelated subjects but both areas in which Gwen needed a little extra coaching. Alice was patient and kind and had even gone as far as to repeatedly invite Gwen to play on her hockey team despite the fact that she was still learning the rules.

Most of the students at school came from homes where Welsh was spoken, but unlike Gwen and Rosamond, Alice’s first language was English. She understood Welsh fairly well, but when they were together, the girls usually spoke in English, which meant Gwen’s English vocabulary increased rapidly, along with her confidence in communicating in that language.

To her surprise, she also discovered that her love for arithmetic put her at the top of the class in algebra and geometry. Rosamond and Alice had started coming to her when they were stuck on particularly challenging math problems, and Gwen was glad to have found a way that she could reciprocate their kindness to her. As time went on, their warm, laughter-filled, girlish friendship filled a void that had been empty for too long.

It was not quite powerful enough to take the place of another unique friendship, however. And there were times, particularly during the quiet of night, that Gwen found her thoughts drifting to Lewis. When they did, she experienced the same empty ache she’d felt when he’d said good-bye on the mountain. She wondered if Mabel was still making regular visits to the smithy. The thought irritated Gwen more than it should, but she had no way of putting her mind at rest because even though she’d written to both of them, she’d received no letters from Mabel and had only heard back from Lewis once.

She tried not to let Lewis’s lack of communication hurt too much. After all, they had not always enjoyed a close friendship. But she was disappointed. She’d kept her promise and had written to him soon after school had started to tell him about her lodgings with Mrs. Pritchard, the subjects she was studying, and some of the people she’d met at school and in the town. He’d written back a short note telling her he was glad she was settling in well and that there had been no big changes in Llanwddyn during the couple of weeks she’d been gone.

In her second letter, she’d told him about Rosamond and Alice and about how she’d recently studied the various trade routes between England and India in her geography class. She’d waited a couple of weeks, and when no reply had come, she’d written to him again. This time she’d told him of her love of geometry and her dislike of Latin. She’d described the speckled, rock-hard slab that Mrs. Pritchard called bara brith and regularly served for supper. And she told him how much she missed visiting the mountain and, in particular, the boulder in the clearing. But again she’d received no response.

Gwen also wrote to her aunt. Aunty Jane wrote short letters back, but her news was usually limited to the weather, the state of her garden, and the subject of the minister’s most recent sermon. Occasionally Aunty Jane would pass along news about someone in the village, but she never once mentioned Lewis or Mabel, and Gwen could not bring herself to ask about them.

The only surprise Gwen received in the mail during that time was a small package that arrived on her seventeenth birthday. Gwen had already determined that since Robert was undoubtedly hundreds of miles out at sea, Lewis didn’t know her birthday, and Aunty Jane did not approve of frivolity of any kind, it was unlikely that the sixteenth of November would be any different than any other school day. So the brown paper package waiting beside her bowl of oatmeal at the breakfast table that morning was completely unexpected—as were her tears when she opened it to reveal a crocheted green scarf with matching mittens.

Gwen blinked the moisture away and picked up the card from inside the box. Happy Birthday, Gwen. Love, Aunty Jane. She wrapped the scarf around her neck and picked up the mittens, touched by her aunt’s thoughtfulness. It was not hard to picture Aunty Jane sitting in the rocking chair by the fire each evening, her crochet hook flying as she worked on this gift. As soon as she finished her breakfast, Gwen ran back up to her room to write a thank you note before school started.

Rosamond and Alice noticed Gwen’s new scarf and mittens as soon as they saw her, and when they asked about them, Gwen admitted they were a birthday gift. The girls then insisted that they stop at the local shop at the end of the day, where they pooled their money to buy Gwen a few pieces of treacle toffee. By the time she went to bed that night, Gwen determined that it had been the best day she’d experienced since she’d moved to Llanfyllin.

Her happiness that day, however, paled in comparison to her joy two weeks later. She was sitting in her French class enduring the torturous ritual of conjugating irregular verbs when the headmaster walked in. Immediately, all the students stopped what they were doing and rose to their feet.

“I apologize for interrupting.” The headmaster directed his remarks to the French teacher. “I need to excuse Gwen Humphreys from the remainder of class today.”

The French teacher gave a nod of assent. “Gather your books, Gwen,” she said.

Rosamond turned to look at Gwen, her eyebrows raised, but Gwen could offer no explanation. Trying to ignore all the curious looks from her classmates, she hurriedly gathered her books and dropped them into her satchel before leaving her desk and joining the headmaster at the door. Nervous butterflies danced in her stomach as she faced the imposing man. What could this mean? Had she done something wrong?

The headmaster opened the door and allowed Gwen to precede him into the hall.

“You have a visitor, Gwen,” he said. “He’s waiting for you in my office. I understand you have not seen him in some time, so I am excusing you from your classes for the remainder of the day.”

Stunned, Gwen could only stare at him. “A visitor, sir?”

“Yes.” He pointed down the hall. “Come along.”

She was halfway there when a young man stepped out of the headmaster’s office. He wore gray flannel trousers and a black sweater. His chestnut hair could just be seen beneath his peaked hat, and when he smiled, his green eyes sparkled.

“Gwennie!” he said.

Gwen felt as though her heart would pound out of her chest. “Robert!” She prayed this was not a dream. “Robert! You’re home!”

“Almost,” he said with a grin. He held out his arms, and without sparing the headmaster or decorum another thought, Gwen ran into them.

After a tight hug, she pulled back and studied her brother. “You’ve seen a lot of sun,” she said.

Robert laughed. “Almost every day until we came into English waters. I don’t think my face will ever be rid of all these freckles.”

The headmaster stepped up behind Gwen and offered Robert his hand.

“Thank you, sir. I’ll make sure she’s back in school tomorrow,” Robert said.

“Excellent.” The headmaster gave Gwen a stern look. “I will inform your other teachers of your absence this afternoon, but I expect you to catch up the missed work.”

“Yes, sir. Thank you.” Gwen wanted to laugh and cry at the same time. Robert was back, and she was to spend the rest of the day with him.

The headmaster gave them both a final nod of dismissal, then entered his office, and Robert, with his own duffel bag over one shoulder and Gwen’s satchel over the other, led the way to the school doors.

Gwen stopped long enough to retrieve and put on her coat. She pulled her new mittens out of her coat pockets and handed Robert her scarf.

“Here,” she said. “You don’t have a coat on.”

Robert didn’t argue. “It’s beastly cold here,” he said as they walked into the blowing, drizzling rain.

“It’s the end of November,” Gwen reminded him.

“Yes, and it’s sunny and warm in India,” Robert said.

Gwen linked her arm through his. “Are you going to tell me all about it? India, your ship, the crew, everything?”

Robert laughed. “Of course. Just find us somewhere warm and dry to sit, and I’ll talk as long as you want.”

Gwen led her brother to Mrs. Pritchard’s house. After having been introduced to Robert and reassured that Gwen had the headmaster’s permission to be away from school, Mrs. Pritchard offered them the sitting room and went off to the kitchen to make them a cup of tea. Robert sat as close to the fireplace as he could.

“Probably not the best time of year to come back,” he said.

“Probably not,” Gwen agreed with a smile. “But I’m so glad you did. Now tell me all about your adventures. Did you see a monkey?”

He grinned. “They were everywhere! There was a market not far from the dock, and the place was crawling with monkeys. They ran through the tables, swung from the awnings, and leaped from the rooftops.

“The Indians hated the cheeky blighters. One minute a merchant would be bartering with a customer over the price of his fruits and vegetables, and the next minute a monkey would jump onto his table, steal the biggest banana, and be back up on a rooftop before anyone could do anything about it. The merchant would yell and shake his fist at the monkey, and the monkey would screech back at him, then sit in full view of the poor bloke while it ate the stolen fruit.”

Gwen wasn’t sure whether to be fascinated or terrified at the thought of monkeys running wild through a marketplace. “Did they ever hurt people?”

Robert shrugged. “I daresay they’d bite if they felt threatened. And Monk had a fistful of hair pulled out by one of them.”

Gwen felt her eyes widen, but Robert was chuckling at the memory.

“What happened?” she asked.

“Every few days, Monk would head down to the market and buy a whole bunch of bananas for the crew to share. He’d carry them back to the ship on his head, just like the natives do. One day, he must have chosen the same bunch that one of the monkeys had had its eye on, because the monkey wasn’t having it. He jumped onto Monk’s shoulder and tried pulling the bananas off one by one.”

“The monkey was on his shoulder?” Gwen gasped. Terror was definitely winning over fascination.

“Yes,” Robert said. “But it didn’t stay long once Monk started yelling. It gave up on the bananas and settled for a chunk of Monk’s hair instead.” He laughed. “The rest of the crew teased Monk for days. They said the monkey must have known his nickname and thought it was time he looked more like the bald monks at the monasteries.”

Gwen shook her head at Robert’s shipmates’ antics. “What about you?” she asked. “Did you like bananas?”

“Yes,” he said. “But I liked mangos even more.”

“What’s a mango?” she asked, repeating the strange-sounding word.

“It’s a fruit,” Robert told her. “It’s about the same size and shape as a large pear, but the inside’s orange, and it tastes incredibly sweet.”

A light tap on the sitting room door announced Mrs. Pritchard’s arrival with the tea tray. The older lady placed the tray on the small table beside Gwen’s chair, made sure they both had everything they needed, then returned to her work in the kitchen again. Robert waited only until Gwen had poured the tea and handed him his cup before picking up his narrative again.

“The animals in that part of the world are so different from the ones here in Wales. Enormous birds with bright red, blue, and yellow feathers, cows with horns on their heads and humps on their backs, elephants of every size.” He leaned forward in his seat, his eyes shining with excitement. “I even saw dolphins. When we were still in the warmer waters of the Indian Ocean, a school of dolphins swam alongside us for an entire day.”

Robert’s enthusiasm was contagious, and for the next few hours, Gwen listened with rapt attention as he recounted one adventure after another. He told her more about his short time in India, then about his ship and his shipmates, including Captain Owen and Monk and a host of other men whose names all blurred together. It was obvious that while there were some crewmembers he’d avoided, he had also made some good friends. He described his experience on board ship, his mistakes, his victories, and his slow road to improvement as cabin boy.

Gwen was quite sure he’d purposely omitted some of his more difficult experiences, especially when he glossed over their time trapped by rough seas and sail-ripping wind, but it was easy to see that despite her own heartache over his departure from the village, her brother had been right. Going away to sea had given him a joy for life he’d not had before.

“We arrived in Liverpool early last week,” Robert told her. “I truly think the Talookdar may be the fastest ship on the seas. Once again, we made port earlier than expected.”

“How long will you be home?” she asked, already dreading the answer.

“I’m expected back on board in three days,” he said.

“Three days!”

Robert nodded. “When we first arrived, we had cargo to unload and repairs to take care of—sails that needed mending, ropes that needed to be replaced, parts of the ship that needed fresh lacquer. It took time. We’re due to sail again at the end of the week.

“Your letters were waiting for me in Liverpool, and I read them as soon as we got into port. I wanted to see you here in Llanfyllin to make sure you were well and as happy as can be expected while attending school.”

Despite herself, Gwen laughed at the grimace on her brother’s face. “Oh, Robert, we are so different! You thrive on adventures into the unknown, and I love poring through books at school. So don’t worry; I’m happy here. Mrs. Pritchard has been good to me. I’ve made new friends, and I’m managing quite well in my classes.”

Relief filled Robert’s face. “I’m glad,” he said. He reached out and took her hand. “I need to travel to Llanwddyn to see Aunty Jane. I wish I had longer to be with you, but I feel that I must go there.”

Gwen nodded. “Lots of people in the village will want to see you—Lewis, Ioan Llanwddyn, the minister, Dai Williams. But especially Aunty Jane.”

“Has she forgiven me for leaving the way I did?” Robert asked.

“Yes, I think she has,” Gwen told him. “She’ll be happy to see you.”

Robert came to his feet. “Then I’d best be on my way,” he said. “It’s a long walk to Llanwddyn.”

Gwen glanced out the window. The days were shortening, and already dusk was close. “But it will be dark soon,” she said.

“I’m not afraid of the dark,” Robert said with a smile. “And I know that road well. If I’m lucky, someone will pass by in a cart and take pity on me. I don’t have the luxury of extra time. If I’m to visit Llanwddyn, I need to go tonight.”

Gwen rose and picked up her scarf and mittens. “Take these,” she said.

“But what will you . . . ?”

“You can drop them off on your way back,” she said quickly.

Robert considered that for a moment. “Thank you,” he said.

He took the scarf and mittens and pulled her into a tight embrace. Then, before she could say anything that could slow him, he pulled away and walked to the door. “Look after yourself,” he said.

“You too,” she whispered.

He smiled. “Always.”

And then he was gone. Gwen ran to the window and watched him walk up the High Street until she couldn’t see him anymore.

Two days later, when Gwen arrived back at Mrs. Pritchard’s house after school, there was a small brown package waiting for her. Inside she found her scarf, mittens, and half a dozen Welsh cakes wrapped in wax paper. A note written in Robert’s virtually illegible pen said, The Welsh cakes are from Aunty Jane. She also gave me some. You were right; she has forgiven me. I will always be grateful for the good people in my life, especially you. Cofion cynnes. Robert.

That evening, Gwen couldn’t help but feel disappointed that she’d missed seeing Robert on his way to the train station, but when she opened her bedroom curtains the next morning, she was glad he hadn’t waited any longer to return to his ship. The first snow of the season had arrived. Large flakes, like gently falling goose feathers, were softly spiraling from the sky, and a sparkling white blanket already covered the ground.