Band of Angel by Julia Gregson Read Free Book Online

roses around the door; not pretty dresses and nice young men and darling babies, but hard and ugly and awkward; from now on, her only hope lay in facing up to this.
    She changed the bedclothes, drawing back in horror in spite of herself from the steady stream of green and black lochia that flowed from her mother. There would be no turning back now to the life of beautiful lies. Gently, Catherine touched the tips of her two fingers against her mother’s face.
    “Don’t struggle anymore,” she said clearly, without knowing where the voice came from. “Go now.”
    Once again Mother pushed her cheek against her fingers, like a kitten hungry for affection. Her lips moved slowly and painfully, without making any sound.
    “And I love you,” burst out of Catherine. “I love you.”
    A collection of terrible and painful thoughts seemed to be massing behind Mother’s skin, exhausting, inexpressible thoughts.
    “Don’t talk,” Catherine begged, “get better.”
    But there was no getting better, she knew. The dark wave was gaining in speed, poised against the black sky, ready at any moment to roll over all of them. Outside, the sound of animals being fed: the clank of a pail, a pig shrieking with joy. Dawn was breaking in a breathless pink outside the window.
    Eliza and Father came in, came to the bed.
    “Can she talk to me?” he asked Catherine in a loud boom that made her wince. She shook her head.
    He sat down so heavily on the bed Catherine wanted to cry out, “Watch her, you fool. Be more careful.”
    Father took Mother’s hand into his red paw and said in the softcrooning voice he usually reserved for horses, “Don’t worry, my darling, we’ll soon have you right. You’re a good old girl.” He raised her hand to his lips. “A very good girl.”
    It was the closest he’d ever come to saying love words. Felicia seemed to nod, her eyes to flicker.
    “Is all well between us?” he struggled on. “Is all well? Squeeze my hand if you say yes.”
    Whether she squeezed or not, Catherine never knew. She turned away, unable to bear the sight of them slumped on the bed together, head to head, like broken dolls.
    A few moments later, the color of Mother’s face changed from white to mottled mauve. Her breathing came in several hoarse rattles, and then stopped. As Father plunged down to listen to her breathing, Catherine saw that his breeches were torn, and that she could see straight through to his combinations. She hated him at that moment: hated him, blamed him, pitied him. Herself and him.

Chapter 6

    On the day of Mother’s funeral, the body was moved out of the front parlor, then carried by a black plumed horse to the top of a lonely hill at Clynnog Fawr, to St. Beunos Church, the only local church that performed English-language ceremonies.
    When the door creaked open, the candles flickered and a fresh blast of chill air swept up the aisle. The vicar, Reverend Norman, a thin, high-shouldered man working out his last year before retirement, shuffled up the aisle. Behind him Father and Alun, Twm and Mr. Pitkeathly, the church warden, carried the coffin.
    “I am the resurrection and the life,” the vicar said in his thin wheezy voice. He cleared his throat and started again.
    “I am the resurrection and the life. He that believeth in me, though he were dead, still shall he live.”
    Catherine, looking through her fingers at the coffin, felt such a wave of anger and despair that she wondered if it would be possible to go on living in such pain. Before, all her griefs had been such little ones—a trifling punishment, the death of a dog, a row with Eliza. She had existed in a bubble of happiness and protectedness, and now the bubble was burst and she was left shivering and defenseless. All at once she felt the desperate loneliness, the unlivedness of her mother’s life. She had never fitted in here, never properly been known or loved or understood for herself. Only two people had even come to see her during the