Barrass and William forgot their quarrel and exchanged glances. They were both thinking the same: Was Florrie the means by which the law knew of the movements of the supply boats?
* * *
When Penelope set off for London on the coach from Swansea, there were few to see her go. She stepped up into the vehicle with John, and found a seat next to the window. Huddled miserably as closely to the padded interior as she could, she remembered that other coach, with its families of mice and unsavoury smells, where she had been so happy with Barrass. She hardly lifted her eyes from the floor, where straw was spread to offer some warmth for the long hours ahead. It was only when she heard a slight gasp of anger from John, who sat opposite her, that she looked up, and saw two figures standing waiting to wave her off.
‘Olwen,’ she called, and waved a perfumed handkerchief furiously. The other figure, taller, broader and so much in her thoughts that she at first believed him to be a figment of her imagination, was Barrass.
The handkerchief faltered in its movement, and before she could call out anything further, John leaned across and pulled down the blind. Grimly, he glared at her, daring her to raise it again before the coach had lumbered out of the in yard. She stared, white-faced, at the floor, determined that she would not speak one word to him in all the five-day journey.
* * *
Winter had begun early with a sudden snowstorm and it ended late with another unexpected fall.
‘Daffy snow,’ Pitcher told Arthur and Barrass as he set them to clear a space outside the alehouse door. ‘Gone as soon as it’s arrived, with the daffs growing through it without any harm done.’
‘Then why are we wasting our time shovelling it in piles if it’ll be gone before evening?’ Arthur grumbled.
It lingered for an extra twenty-four hours, but when it had melted into the warming ground that early April day, it left the countryside shining and newly washed. As Barrass and Arthur walked up the hill to visit Spider and Mary, they saw as if for the first time the purple haze of the new shoots on distant birch trees, and the bright new green of the hawthorn leaves.
Flowers were appearing everywhere, spring squill patching the cliffs with blue, snowdrops with their dancing skirts of white and green, and daffodils pushing their leaves through the soft, warm earth in quill-ends of green, as they prepared to display their blooms. Star of Bethlehem, whose roots were sometimes roasted to provide food, and even a few early pansies were seen raising their faces to the sun.
Arthur bent to pick a bunch of the small pansies, tying their slender stems with hair from his head, and putting the posy in his pocket.
‘For Pansy,’ he blushingly explained. ‘I always gather a few of the first ones for her.’
* * *
With Penelope gone to London, Barrass had felt that his life would never again be happy, but the snow had livened his spirits in some indefinable way and the morning had enriched his feelings of wellbeing. When they reached the small white house on the cliffs they were both smiling with the exhilaration of the climb and the joy of the new season’s beginning.
Their happy mood was lost as soon as they came in sight of the open door and heard voices raised in anger: Dan and Enyd. Abandoning their intention of visiting, they turned and went back down to the village. They did not want the glorious day spoilt by quarrels.
* * *
Ceinwen and Mary sat on the bench at an angle to the fire, where a pot of cawl was simmering. Dan and Enyd sat on the floor facing each other, quarrelling.
‘But Dan, it’s a chance you’ll never have again!’ Enyd said. ‘Markus is offering you work! Staying on dry land, and never facing the dangers of the small boats. You’re a fool not to take it.’
‘Enyd, love, you know I can’t stay away from the sea, it’s my life. I’ve followed my father since I was barely five, and would have gone even before that if Mam hadn’t tied me to the door each morning until the boat had left the shore!’
‘You say you love me,’ she pouted prettily. ‘Aren’t I worth getting a proper job for, then?’
‘If you love me, can’t you see that I would be a different man if I left the work I know?’
Enyd rocked the cradle in which Dic was sleeping, her agitation showing with the speed of the movement. Mary gently bent down and moved the baby towards her.
Since Ceinwen had arrived with her daughter to give Dan the news of Markus’s offer, the two older women had said nothing, determined not to interfere.
Both mothers were surprised when Dan agreed to go to Markus and inquire what the new job entailed. Mary’s face showed shock, Ceinwen’s a small satisfaction, but neither spoke.
‘But I’m going alone,’ Dan said firmly.
Later that day, when Enyd sat at home waiting for his decision, Dan walked to Markus’s house and sat down against the gatepost. He picked a stalk of newly sprouted grass and chewed the sweetness for a while, staring across the fresh green bracken that was uncurling itself towards the sun. He dozed for a while undisturbed, enjoying the warmth on his weather-browned face, then rose, stretched, and walked back.
‘No,’ he told Enyd firmly. ‘I could not work for Markus. Now, will you settle for what I am and marry me?’
‘No,’ Enyd said equally firmly.
* * *
Barrass had hardly seen Olwen since he had apologized rather coolly for believing she had told William about his meetings with Penelope. He had felt foolish for his unreasonable anger and she knew in her heart that by mentioning the coach house to Florrie, she had in fact been as guilty as he thought her.
Each day he hoped that she would appear and begin chatting to him in her usual enthusiastic way, their disagreement forgotten, and each day Olwen went about her work at Ddole House hoping he would find some way of meeting her. But days went by and they did not meet. In such a small community it seemed that fate was separating them.
Barrass was surprised at how he missed her. Olwen had been his shadow for so long it seemed odd to walk along the cliffs and meet a girl without having her dogging his steps and spoiling his plans. It was so empty without her cheerful chatter that he stopped meeting Harriet and took to spending what spare time he had either with Spider and Dan on their fishing expeditions, or walking with Arthur and the dog.
When they eventually met it was, surprisingly, at Pitcher’s alehouse.
Pitcher, with Barrass’s help, had finished the new room and Emma happily began preparations for a party to celebrate. For months Pitcher had seen her arriving back from Swansea with materials and pieces of furniture and the enormous bills to go with them, and wished he had been strong enough to say no when she first asked him to build the new room. But he smiled as she came in with the twins in tow, her plump, red face glowing with delight at the final purchases. If she wanted something, he knew he would always get it for her.
The days before her intended supper party were days he hated. She had no time to do anything but prepare his food, and pass the occasional peremptory word, lost in a world in which there was no place for him. She bustled about the house, sorting out even the most rarely used cupboards and drawers to make sure that everything was spotless for her guests.
‘What makes you think they will look in small corners, Mrs Palmer?’ he said irritably one morning when he found her half disappeared under a chest of drawers.
‘I would,’ she said with a glare, ‘I would!’
The food was cooked in their own kitchen but with the help of extra servants. Finding it difficult to hire girls locally and unwilling to have them living in, even for a brief period, she spoke to William Ddole when he and Pitcher were sharing a quiet few minutes in the bar-room.
‘I will speak to Cook,’ he offered, ‘I am sure she will lend you a girl.’
So Olwen, to her surprise and delight, found herself working in the same building as Barrass a few days before Emma’s party. Admittedly they were separated by a staircase which was guarded by Emma with the ferocity of a soldier protecting his fo
rt against a horde. But they managed to speak, and to send messages by Arthur, who, being almost a part of the building he had been there so long, was allowed to come and go as he needed.
Olwen was coming down the stairs with a pail to empty outside when she saw Barrass emerging from the cellar, his dark head appearing over the trap door, then coming into view in the shadowy area behind the bar-room.
‘Barrass,’ she whispered, ‘I’m helping “her upstairs” to get the house prepared and supper cooked, and on the day I’m staying to serve at table. What d’you think of that then?’
‘Olwen! It’s so long since I’ve seen you, where have you been hiding?’
‘Thought I’d been sent to London with Penelope, did you?’
‘Don’t talk about that, I’m sorry I blamed you,’ he said in a low voice.
He had come to stand close to her so they could whisper in the dark passageway undisturbed. Olwen soaked in his presence like a balm, a comfort so needed and sadly absent over the recent days that she wanted to hug him and bury her face in him, revive the memory of his smell and the sensations of him holding her close. Parting without properly healing the breach in their friendship had made her suffer rejection for which she had to accept the blame. She wanted to throw herself at him and thump him with her small fists as she had always done in the past, but there was some emotion preventing her from the childish act.
It seemed that as she waited to grow up and become the woman he would turn to for love, they had instead grown apart; her maturing had developed into an obstacle, so she was unable to be natural and hug him as she would once have found it so easy to do. She forced herself to reach out and put a small hand on his arm, shyness making her arm heavy to raise, an inexplicable reluctance holding it back.
The warmth of him through the sleeve of the Welsh flannel shirt produced a response from her body that shocked her, engulfed her in new knowledge, so she backed away, although her need of his touch was an urgent clamour in her heart and her heavy arms ached to enfold him. She knew that her days of being a child were fading away and she would be filled with new sensations and needs that he might not recognize. She slumped against the wall, swamped in ineffable sadness. Without putting it into words she knew that days of fancy-free happiness were over and that new joys were still a long way off.
Emma’s voice as she came clattering down the wooden stairs made Barrass push her on her way.
‘Best she doesn’t see you talking to me,’ he whispered. His lips briefly touched her hair and he was gone.
Stunned with the bewilderment of emotions so rare they were like pains, she stumbled towards the back of the house to retrieve the pail she had abandoned seemingly hours before. For the rest of the day she worked like the hands of Pitcher’s clock; the movements automatic and unmanaged by her dulled brain.
* * *
On the day of the long-awaited supper party Olwen arrived at the alehouse as dawn slipped silver fingers across the horizon and speared the dark sea with gradually spreading light. She let herself in and settled herself into the kitchen to begin the vegetables. It was still early in the season and there were only a few rather dried-out carrots, wild parsnips and some leeks already thickened with seed-head stalks. She concentrated on making large quantities of cawl with some small chickens for flavour, and tried not to think of Barrass only a few paces away.
While the cook and Emma argued about the correct way to deal with a saddle of lamb and the fish that Dan had brought, Olwen kept herself busy. Between shouted instruction from either Emma, who could not keep away from the centre of activity, or the more and more irate cook, she found cleaning to do – polishing the cutlery and wiping the plates, cleaning up the drips of fat from the meat the moment they appeared, until Cook shouted for her to ‘Keep from under my feet!’
She went outside to tidy the abandoned trimmings of the meat and vegetables and the hastily sorted oddments that Emma had discarded to make her home neater and less cluttered. Among the items thrown out were several books, and with her rapidly growing skills in literacy, Olwen examined them with interest. She began reading first pages, and finding them to her liking and well within her ability, she decided to keep them.
She went through the house and into the bar-room, where men were already sitting in groups around the fire and at the window, long pipes issuing blue smoke, heads bent in earnest discussions. It had been her intention to look for Arthur, or so she told herself, and it was with mendacious dismay she greeted Barrass.
‘Looking for Arthur I was,’ she said, wailing silently at the prickly unease she felt at seeing him, convinced he sensed her discomfort and wondered at it. She avoided his eyes and looked around the room vaguely as if Arthur would materialize from under a table.
‘Gone on a message for Pitcher,’ Barrass smiled. ‘What have you got there?’
‘Books,’ she said inanely.
‘That much I had guessed.’ His smile widened as she glanced at him.
‘Thrown out by her upstairs and I thought I would use them to practise my reading,’ she explained, holding them behind her so he could not see that they were romances. She was not able to take teasing, not now, and from Barrass.
‘That is an excellent idea, the more varied your reading the greater your ability will be.’ He held out his hand. ‘Shall I mind them for you? I will take them home for you, or keep them here, whichever you wish.’
‘I thought Mam would like me to read them to her.’ She blushed as he took them from her.
‘That would be kind,’ he said softly. He frowned then, his face darkening as his brows knitted. ‘Olwen, is something amiss? Are you still angry with me for doubting you?’
‘How could I stay angry with you, Barrass?’ she forced herself to answer lightly. ‘I have to go now, or her upstairs will be shouting my name for all the village to know I’m avoiding my duties.’
In the late afternoon Olwen was allowed a few hours off, to change her clothes before serving the guests with their meal. She ran home, clutching the books that Barrass had hidden for her, and showed them to her mother. There was no time to start reading them though, Mary had several tasks for her daughter to complete during the luxury of a free afternoon.
‘Go and help Dan bring up some seaweed from the beach, will you?’ Mary greeted her as she ran breathlessly into the small room. ‘It isn’t too early to start replenishing the pile to dry for burning. And if there’s any driftwood, put it aside for when your father goes down later.’
Disappointed, imagining a brief moment of her mother’s time to share the stories, she wandered back down to the beach. Dan was piling up some planks brought in by the midday tide, ready for breaking into firewood, and sitting watching him was Enyd.
‘If you two are going to quarrel all afternoon, I’m going back to the alehouse!’ she said as she approached them. ‘There’s enough row going on there with that Emma scratching the eyes out of everyone she sees and accusing them all of time-wasting, but I’d rather that than seeing you two tearing each other to bits with your barbed tongues! It’s a-w-ful wearying, truly it is,’ she added with a sigh. Then she opened her blue eyes wide, the whites seeming to reflect the sky as she stared at them. They were both smiling. ‘Friends are you?’ she asked in amazement. ‘Never!’
‘If only Enyd would accept that I can’t ever be anything other than a fisherman,’ Dan said with a sigh. ‘Getting married then, we’d be.’
Enyd opened her mouth for a sharp reply but Olwen hurriedly told them she didn’t want to hear their nonsense. The couple smiled and set off back to tell Mary once again about their difference of opinion, begging her to help them resolve it.
Olwen watched them go and felt no pleasure at their happiness, only a deflating sadness. Was she becoming an old misery already and her not more than fifteen? There was no point in going back to the house so, ignoring her mother’s request for once, she spent the rest of her free time sitting on the chilly beach, hugging her knees and looking out across
the huge expanse of the water, daydreaming of a wedding in which she was the bride and Barrass, tall and handsome beside her, the proud groom. The disconsolation now a constant partner to thoughts of Barrass engulfed her again and she walked back to the alehouse, her head bent as if searching among the pebbles for favourite seashells to add to her collection, but seeing nothing.
Part of her depression was the sensation that she was overlooked and unimportant. She was pushed this way and that in the kitchen as last-minute preparations were completed around her. She eventually stood against the wall watching the others. It was as if she were invisible yet still managing to be in the way! An unwanted stranger there, she wished she could run away back to her mother and never leave home again. Her thoughts were muddled between a determination to accept this new adulthood that she teetered on the brink of, and wanting to sink back into being a dependent child at her mother’s knee, doing as she was told and with no rebellious thoughts of her own.
When the guests began to arrive, on a collection of carts and wagons and a few carriages, she still kept out of the way, watching with interest as the beautifully dressed people were ushered past the bar-room full of craning necks and curious eyes, and up the staircase, where they were relieved of their cloaks and hats by the constantly bobbing maids.
Olwen forgot her mood of melancholy in listening as the visitors passed, their voices artificially loud, apart from some confidentially whispered remarks of regret for foolishly having accepted an invitation to visit a family who lived in a common drinking house.
William Ddole’s sharp eyes saw her and he nodded kindly to her, managing to whisper a few words of encouragement. She was surprised to see Dan there as a guest, accompanying Enyd and following Kenneth and Ceinwen with their son Tom, resplendent in the uniform of private soldier in a foot regiment. She wondered how she would manage not to laugh as she offered her brother food, in her temporary role of serving maid.
Summer’s Last Retreat Page 34