Summer’s Last Retreat
Page 39
It was an enormous surprise, not the least of it his own response to the whispered invitation. All these years he had shown outrage at the doings of the illegal importers, and now he was willing to help them cheat the law and the king. He stretched to his full height and smiled widely. A great weight had been lifted from his broad shoulders. He was being accepted at last. He was no longer an outsider, an incomer with no place here, he belonged! He wanted to tell Olwen but she was gone to finish her work at Ddole House, her Sunday freedom refused for this week. He went out with the last straggling churchgoers and walked up the bank to talk to Kenneth.
Ceinwen, Kenneth and Tom were already sitting at their meal, cold meat and a few chopped vegetables in deference to the vicar’s demands that no one worked on the sabbath. He thought with a wry smile that at Ddole House, where the vicar was one of the supper guests, they would have found a way round that inconvenience.
He refused their invitation to eat, just wanting a bit of company for a few moments, while he savoured the sudden decision. He knew it was one he dare not discuss with Kenneth, and for a moment worried in case someone saw him come straight to the letter-carrier and think the worst. He stayed only long enough to receive his second surprise and to hear the words he had longed to hear above all others.
‘Kenneth is still unwell and he thinks it would be best if you accepted the position of letter-carrier officially,’ Ceinwen said. ‘Best we still use this place as the sorting office, mind, and I will deal with the books until you can find yourself someone to help you.’
She went on explaining how they would arrange the changeover, and how her recommendation would for a certainty persuade the postmaster to allow him to take the post, but he hardly heard. His large eyes seemed moist enough for tears. He thanked them and started across the road to the alehouse to celebrate with Arthur and the dog, but changed his mind and ran all the way to Ddole House. This was something he had to share with Olwen.
* * *
It was after ten o’clock when Olwen finished the last of the pans and pots and walked out of the door into the dark night. She had seen Barrass waiting outside and was in an agony of impatience to know what he had to tell her that caused his face to have set in a constant smile. As soon as she stepped outside he blurted out the news of Kenneth’s retirement and his willingness for him to carry the letters officially.
‘At last, Olwen, I have what I have always wanted. I am the Letter-Carrier for Gower!’ He picked her up and spun her around, laughing when the dogs began to bark and the gruff voice of David in his room above the stable warned them to hush.
‘I work for the King’s Mail!’ he shouted, and taking Olwen’s hand, ran down the drive, with her dancing alongside him.
* * *
Tom went back to join his regiment and for the first time since he had treated her so roughly, Olwen felt free of him. She had not spoken of the incident to anyone, but Barrass guessed that something unpleasant had happened and one day it slipped out and he knew.
‘Tom has gone back then,’ he said as they walked one late evening on the cliffs. ‘Funny life, that of a soldier. No chance to make friends, coming and going and never knowing where you’ll be at any time. I don’t think I would like that.’
‘Best he’s gone if you ask me,’ Olwen said, then she stopped, wishing she had not spoken.
‘Why?’ Barrass asked. ‘He didn’t bother you, did he? A bit of a show-off I gather, and keen for everyone to listen to his adventures. Bored you with his talk, did he?’ Then he looked at her face and asked, ‘But it wasn’t talk, was it, Olwen? Was it Tom who bothered you and made you cry that night you came in near to tears?’
She told him then, of how she had foolishly gone with Tom to sit in the small secret place in the rocks and how he had pulled at her clothes and frightened her. The expression on Barrass’s face frightened her even more.
‘But how could he bother you like that. You’re only a child!’
‘No, Barrass, I am not.’ She stared at him for a while, then walked away.
* * *
That night Barrass worked beside Spider in the cold sea, hauling in the boats and handing up the tubs and packages they contained, helping to push out the empty boats and waiting while they were refilled and returned. No guilt over breaking the law worried him. He was one of the villagers and this was one way of filling empty bellies during the harsh winter months as well as giving the locals a taste of a few luxuries.
* * *
Kenneth braved the open air and walked across to the alehouse. Ceinwen had made it clear that he had to begin to meet people, allow them to have their say, then hopefully forget his disloyalty. The first time, he had only stood a few paces from his door, which Ceinwen shut firmly behind him. Then he had run after Pitcher with a letter he had left behind, the open air seeming fraught with unseen dangers. But today he had determined to take the worst the locals could give. He would sit outside the alehouse and face everyone. The sooner he took their abuse the sooner it would all be ended, Ceinwen was right about that.
It was very unpleasant. As news spread through the houses that he was sitting there, the scene quickly developed into something similar to the village stocks, as a wide assortment of rubbish was thrown at him, covering Pitcher’s windows and porch with an indescribable mess. It was difficult to take until drink began to soften the edges of the cruel abuse. He forced himself to sit there and take the insults and the physical indignities. Better this than having to move away and start again amid strangers.
He ordered drinks in rapid succession to give himself the courage to stay. Arthur darted in and out of the alehouse door, weaving to and fro to avoid the missiles. His dog managed to find a variety of tasty morsels amid the garbage and seemed not to mind the occasional hit.
It was a Thursday, and when Barrass returned from his route and went to hand the letters and money to Ceinwen, he glanced across to discover the cause of the noise coming from the alehouse, and saw Kenneth sitting there almost covered from head to foot in disgusting filth. Everything from rotten eggs and fish to hard lumps of coal and even a few rocks had reached their target so that, besides the food, Kenneth’s face was multi-coloured with bruises.
‘What has happened?’ he asked Ceinwen.
She glanced casually across, and as if the unfortunate man who sat there was a stranger to her and of no importance, explained,
‘I told him he had to face them some time or start wandering to where no one knew him and where no one would give him work or food or even a place to stay.’ She smiled amiably and added, ‘Locked the money away I have, and refused to cook for him, so he had to face them or starve. Best for you, I told him, and finally he agreed.’ She went back inside while Barrass ran across to talk to her husband.
The man was very drunk and, Barrass suspected, past feeling any of the missiles that were still being pelted at him with untiring enthusiasm.
He called for Arthur and together they dragged the almost unconscious man from his seat and into the alehouse porch where he was at least partially protected from the crowd.
‘She knows about Betson-the-Flowers, see,’ Kenneth slowly explained. He seemed to be having trouble with his tongue, which had become too large to fit properly into his mouth. ‘Starve me she will, made me come out and take this, she did. “Best for you,” she said, although I don’t think she meant it, like.’
Barrass, after seeking Pitcher’s permission, carried the small man out into the yard behind the alehouse and settled him in a corner.
‘Good to me you are, Barrass, my boy.’
‘My boy,’ he repeated slowly and with great emphasis. ‘You are, you know. You are my boy – my son. I’m the father you’ve been seeking all these years.’ He giggled idiotically and went on, ‘Fancy you searching everywhere and me being here all the time.’
Barrass, reeling with the shock of It, ran out through the building and up onto the cliffs, trying to shut out the words that were going round and around in hi
s head. Kenneth his father? No, that could not be.
* * *
Olwen found him there when darkness had fallen and Arthur had sent her a message to tell her what had happened. She walked slowly up to where he sat, sprawled on the early summer grass, and sat down beside him.
‘It cannot be true,’ he whispered. ‘He is nothing like me! How can he have fathered me? Just look at us and compare. He must have been larking me.’
‘In their drinking mugs men often speak the truth they no longer have the wits to hide.’
‘You believe him?’
‘I think it probably is so, yes.’
‘But all those things my mother told me…’
‘Truth in your remembering too?’ she said softly. She decided then to cheer him out of it if she could.
‘Tall?’ she teased, saying the word slowly and in a voice that was low, ‘and him no bigger than a pint measure?
‘Red-haired?’ she added in the same low voice, willing him to smile, ‘and him with less hair than one of Ivor’s discarded paintbrushes?
‘Honest?’ Her voice went down to its lowest and she was at last rewarded with a laugh. ‘So fade the dreams of childhood.’
He moved closer, his face a half-seen, half-remembered image in the dark, with only the white of his teeth showing her that he was smiling.
‘Oh, Olwen, what would I do without you?’
‘You will never know,’ she said quietly. ‘Whether you want me or not, I am yours and will always be there for you.’ She stretched up and kissed him, firmly and confidently, on the lips.
She felt him stiffen with shock, and a crease showed in the faintly seen image of his brow.
‘Olwen, you are—’
‘Just a child?’ she finished for him. ‘No, Barrass, as I keep telling you and as you will see if only you will look I am not.’
He remained perfectly still, looking down at her until she began to believe they would still be there when dawn broke, Then they both moved and were soon wrapped in each other’s arms.
‘Oh, Barrass,’ she sighed softly, ‘sometimes you are a-w-ful slow.’
First published in the United Kingdom in 1992 by Random Century Group
This edition published in the United Kingdom in 2017 by
Canelo Digital Publishing Limited
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Copyright © Grace Thompson, 1992
The moral right of Grace Thompson to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 9781911591801
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places and events are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
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