Dead Man's Embers by Mari Strachan

nearest to the door and sits in a huddle, staring at the wash basket. He lays his imaginary rifle carefully on the ground at his side and cups both his hands over his eyes. Non edges forward on her seat; she has not seen him do this before. Davey lets his hands drop to his sides, a helpless gesture, and begins to rock slightly back and forth, his eyes closed.
    Was that when the worm had entered the bud, when she thought Davey no longer cared even to write to her? She would not have known if he were alive or dead, she thinks, if it had not been for the occasional mention of his name in other men’s letters home. She had felt the cruelty of that keenly. But as she watches him rock and rock she knows that she had had no notion of what he had been enduring. Who could think of home and the people they loved when they were experiencing the kinds of horrors that Davey was suffering here every morning? She wishes she had known, but she had not.
    And because she had not, she had tried not to think of him. She had tried to assuage her loneliness and longing in ways otherthan looking ahead to how wonderful it would be when Davey came home again. She had begun to encourage attention from Owen, flirting shamelessly with him. She squirms on her chair at the embarrassment of it, a married woman behaving like a young girl looking for a husband. She knows she was not the only woman to behave in that way – some of the remedies she was asked to provide were proof of that – but that is no excuse, and neither is the knowledge that though she was foolish she did nothing improper. Her association with Owen never went that far. It had been too easy to allow the monthly visit to Aberystwyth and Owen with her supplies of herbs for the War effort to become more frequent. She had liked Owen from the start, he was a knowledgeable herbalist, and interested in her stories about her father and his work. She had lent him her father’s herbal, and he had been impressed by it. She remembers now that she had felt a little sorry for him, too, there had been a sadness about him that moved her. He had been spared from the War because of his club foot, but he told Non that his family were Quakers and that he would have objected to fighting, anyway. I would have become an ambulance driver or a stretcher-bearer, he had told her. But he had not had the choice. Unlike Davey, she thinks now, Davey had to choose to leave all he loved to go and do his duty. She has not seen or been in contact with Owen since Davey returned, she had pushed away every thought of him – her guilty secret – until Gwydion spoke of meeting him. She should have been more gracious towards Owen, she thinks, he had never been anything other than kind to her. But she no longer remembers how she felt about Owen. Her feelings have been confused since the day Davey confessed his infidelity, and now there is Osian’s likeness to Davey to add to the confusion. She bows her head and closes her eyes. Maybe she should—
    A sudden noise startles her into opening her eyes. Davey is crawling out from beneath the table. She holds her breath for fear of disturbing him. He stands up straight, as if he is in a military parade, settles his rifle on his shoulder, aims it at the basket of dirty washing, squeezes the trigger and staggers back with the recoil, so that Non thinks he will fall over her in her chair. But Davey folds up and sinks to the ground in a heap, banging his forehead on the flagstones. Non leaps from her chair and crouches beside him. His eyes are shut, and his collapse continues slowly until he lies there, fast asleep. He will not want me here when he wakes, Non thinks. She takes a cushion from the fireside chair and lifts his head to slip the cushion beneath it.
    She opens the back door, lifts out a flapping Herman with her foot as he tries to rush past her into the kitchen, turns around and begins to drag out over the threshold the basket of washing that set in