Keeping the World Away Read Online Free

emerged from the morning room and beckoned to them. Thornton and Gus were already there, standing awkwardly in front of their father, who had his back to the fireplace. He stood very still and erect, gazing far off over the heads of the boys. Then he told them. Afterwards, barely pausing, but touching Winifred’s hair as he passed, he walked into the hall and repeated the news. Then he went up the stairs, steadily, not holding on to the banister. They heard his bedroom door close. Winifred was weeping and Aunt Rose went to her and tried to embrace her but she wanted only Gwen. Gwen let out a loud ‘Oh!’, almost a shout, and Gus echoed it louder, and called out, ‘Mama! Mama is dead!’ and began to run round the room hitting things, and Aunt Rose could not stop him. He ran out into the hall and the other children followed him, crying and laughing at the same time, and he yelled over and over that Mama was dead and they laughed hysterically and sobbed and clutched each other. The aunts and the servants did not know what to do.
    All day, curtains and blinds were pulled tight shut, and the aunts sorted out sombre clothing for them. Mama was dead. How? Gwen wanted to know. When? Where? And did this mean they would not go to Broad Haven? Gus drew, all day. He covered white page after white page with mysterious crosses drawn in thick black charcoal. Gwen longed to be outside, anywhere. Inside, the walls pressed in on her and the ceilings lowered towards her and the doors came to meet her. She felt she would burst. She had to shut her eyes tight and rise out of the house and hover above. It was so exhausting and frightening.
    ‘Gwendoline has not wept a single tear,’ she heard Aunt Lily say to their father.
    *
    They were going to leave Haverfordwest and move to Tenby. No reason was given. Eluned was going with them, and Gwenda, who helped her. Gwen heard Eluned tell Aunt Rose that she would give it a try but did not know if she would take to Tenby. Gwen felt superior. She had been to Tenby many times, with her mother. She remembered the bay, and the beach with the bathing huts on it, and the palm trees. She felt glad to be going there, away from the house to which Mother would never return. It hurt so much to look into her bedroom and see Mother lying there and know she was not really there at all, that it was only her imagination. The room was empty. Her father had moved out of it. He had taken his clothes and moved to the bedroom next to the boys’, and no one went into that other room any more. Except for Gwen. She did not put the light on, or open the curtains, but stood with her back to the door, and looked. The room was all shadows, merging into each other, streaming across the quilt on the bed, an army of them. Half-closing her eyes, she made sinister figures out of them. They were frightening but that suited her mood. Being frightened was preferable to aching with misery.
    They all had to help to pack. The aunts had tried to organise the packing before they themselves left, but they were too distressed, and too concerned with their own departure, to succeed in getting the children to empty their drawers and cupboards and put the contents in trunks. Gwen had been surprised the aunts were not coming to Tenby, and had not understood why. It was, she thought, something to do with her father. Did he dislike his sisters-in-law? It was impossible to tell who or what her father liked. He did not talk to them, unless to give orders, and he had said nothing about the aunts, except that they had done their duty and he was grateful. Aunt Rose’s face, when he said that, in front of them all, was strange. Gwen did not know whether she had seen anger or contempt there, or perhaps only pain. There was no point in thinking about it. There was no point in thinking about a great many things, but she could not help brooding.
    It was exciting taking the Tenby road out of Haverfordwest. They had all wondered if they would cry when the