A Small Country by Sian James Page A

to laugh. It was weeks after that before Lowri could look at him without blushing; Josi felt sorry and a little ashamed at the extent of her embarrassment. Somehow, though, he knew that she would never breathe a word about the encounter and he was right; she was a good girl.
    In fact no one was malicious enough to let Rachel hear even a whisper of the affair. Josi was a popular figure, a hero to many; the poor boy who had got himself the best farm in the district, how could he be expected to behave like anyone else? Had they heard that he was compromising Lady Harris’s elegant daughter, the Honourable Priscilla, it would have surprised no one; the fact that he had chosen such an ordinary, homespun girl, hardly pretty, let alone beautiful, seemed to display a most commendable modesty. ‘Good old Josi,’ they said.
    ‘Good old Josi. He rides over to see the little schoolmistress now and again. Well, nobody’s too old for a bit of extra schooling. One and one makes three, that will be the end of it, though, mark my words.’
    They were proved right.
    When Josi discovered that Miriam was pregnant he felt utterly happy; liberated from the bonds which had kept him tied to Rachel for so long. He was still conscious of his sin – he believed implicitly in the ten commandments – but as a sinner he could now allow that his clearest duty lay with Miriam.
    Miriam was not much concerned with sin or the ten commandments. Although as a teacher she had to pay it lip service, she had rejected the religion of her youth and could see no reason to search for another. She acknowledged the beauty of psalms and gospels, but didn’t care to be comforted by empty words; she had seen ‘God is Love’ displayed in homes filled with hate, ‘God shall provide’ above bare boards, while the most popular text, ‘Death is profit’, seemed a shameful denial of the value and beauty of life.
    She had no desire either to feel washed from sin or immortal. She acknowledged that there were many ‘saints’ whose enlightenment in the dark ages of superstition and cruelty had shone forth before men, but believed their vision to be a manifestation of their humanity rather than their divinity. As for herself, she was a most imperfect human being, she knew it, and could not do without Josi. And the price she had to pay was the knowledge that she was harming Rachel, when her most ardent wish was to harm no one; man, child nor beast.
    She had to have Josi. Sometimes she dreamed that she had given him up and woke up sweating and trembling.

    Miriam’s attitude to her pregnancy altered from day to day, almost from hour to hour. She was sad that she would have to give up teaching which she enjoyed, and leave the cottage which had been her home for six years; the only comfortable home she had ever had. She knew that she would also have to leave the village where she had been happy – even if she had been able to get lodgings there and been capable of holding up her head as an unmarried mother, her presence would affect Josi’s standing in the commun-ity; to be reputedly engaged in an affair was one thing, having a mistress and child quite another – she knew she had to leave.
    But while she would be struggling with the problem of where to go, how long her savings would last, how to bring up an illegitimate child, happiness would break in like a shaft of sunlight; Josi’s child and hers was there deep inside her, the act made flesh, she wasn’t barren as she had often thought: the miracle of procreation filled her.
    She remembered – she was quite a small child at the time – her mother taking hold of one of her hands and putting an egg into it, a large white egg. She had felt the mysterious pulsing inside the thin, smooth warmth of the shell. ‘That’s the chick,’ her mother had said, replacing the egg under the hen. The wonder of that moment had remained with Miriam through a quarter of a century.

    She gave in her notice before the Christmas