A Small Country by Sian James

come,’ Miriam said.
    ‘I locked the door.’

    They lay together in the cold schoolroom until it was quite dark, until, through the narrow windows, built high in the walls to prevent the children catching sight of the lovely world outside, they could see the first white stars.

    ‘I came to this school when I was a boy.’
    ‘I know. I found your name in an old register. Joshua Matthew Evans.’
    ‘You look for my name then, do you?’
    ‘No. You were on the list when the school opened. I noticed it.’
    ‘You happened to notice it?’ Josi’s voice had a laugh in it and a hint of danger, too. She was aware of both.
    ‘Why is that? Because you love me? You do love me, don’t you? I know you do.’
    ‘I saw your photograph, too, in the first log book. About twelve, I think. Such a great, scowling boy. Joshua Matthew Evans.’
    ‘Have you ever been in love before, Miriam?’
    ‘Not before, not now either.’

    The moon rose and the sky lightened.
    ‘I must go home. They’ll be out looking for me.’
    ‘Who will?’
    ‘Someone. Neli Morris, Nant Eithin, will notice there’s no light.’ ‘You shall go home when you’ve told me you love me.’
    ‘Is that important? After what’s happened?’
    ‘It’s more important after what’s happened. I know you love me. Say it, Miriam.’
    ‘I don’t love anyone else, that’s all I can say.’
    ‘You mustn’t see that bank clerk any more, that’s one thing. It’s not fair on him.’
    ‘I shall decide that. In my own good time.’

    There was silence between them again for a minute or two. An owl hooted in the clear, frosty night.
    ‘Oh Miriam, it isn’t fair on me,’ Josi said at last. ‘I love you, Miriam. You mustn’t see him again, you mustn’t. I love you. I can’t bear it. Come, I’ll take you home.’
    ‘I love you,’ he said again when they reached the cottage. As they kissed, Miriam could feel the tears on his face. She tried to see his face in the dark.

    Josi adored her; her lively mind, her toughness, her complete acceptance of the situation which he found so difficult to accept.
    ‘This isn’t the life for you,’ he would say as he held her in his arms on the classroom floor, on the hillside bracken in summer, eventually in her little cottage, in spite of the danger of it.
    ‘You gave me enough time to think it over,’ she would say, ‘I’d decided to have you long before you’d come round to it.’
    ‘Oh, it’s me they’ll all blame,’ she would say. ‘The shameless hussy. Lusting after his body and her only a little bit of a thing, wouldn’t you think she could have been satisfied with less, Gareth Vaughan’s, say.’
    To Josi with his strict chapel upbringing, to hear a girl talking openly and delightedly about the joys of sex, using a fair sprinkling of the words he’d been thrashed for knowing as a boy, went to his head. He would never have enough of her, he knew it. She was as important to him as the weather.
    Every time he went to the cottage – late, so as to avoid any likelihood of other callers – it was like the first time; his heart racing. When they met by accident, in a concert or singing festival or public meeting, he would address only a few words to her, but his eyes would return to her for the rest of the evening. If another man talked to her or hung about her, he was tormented; not with jealousy; he knew now that she loved him; but because he, himself, was not able to be at her side.
    However careful they might be in public, there were the few occasions when someone saw them together and naturally there was a certain amount of talk. Once, they had bumped into Lowri, at that time the second maid at Hendre Ddu. She lived in a hillside hamlet about a mile outside Rhydfelen, and Josi, having forgotten that it was her day off, was taking Miriam for an evening walk that way. When they met, Lowri had blushed and Miriam, on his arm, had grown pale. Josi had made some remark about a lily and a rose and tried