“You didn’t mind being left alone?”
“I loved it. I found I could be a better wife because of our being apart. I know it sounds unkind, I did love him, but I relished the times when I was alone.”
Rhiannon chuckled, forgetting for a moment who she was talking to. “It’s the opposite in our house. Mam gets mad with Dad if he’s out too long. On Sundays he’s taken to going for a walk to chat to one of his friends and Mam’s prowling like a tiger until he gets back.”
“With a busy household she ought to relax and enjoy it.”
“She doesn’t, er—”
“Doesn’t trust him,” Nia finished. “I know I’m to blame for that. But, if it’s any consolation, she’s never been in danger of Lewis leaving her for me. I wouldn’t have him. I enjoy my freedom too much.”
Aware that the conversation was getting beyond her, Rhiannon excused herself and went upstairs to wash the tea things.
When she came down, Barry and Joseph were there.
“Oh, what’s this, a gathering of the Martin family?” Rhiannon smiled.
“I’m delivering a repaired suit to a house in Sophie Street and I met Barry so we called to see if you want anything done by two strong, devastatingly handsome young men.”
“If you have the van, Barry, you can give me a lift home,” Nia said, reaching for her coat.
“I want a word with Rhiannon first,” Barry said. “I’m photographing three lively children this evening and I wondered if you’d come along and help keep them in order.”
“I don’t know that I’d be any help,” she hesitated.
“We stand a better chance with two than me on my own.”
“All right. It should be fun.”
When the Martin family had gone, Rhiannon stood staring into space for a full minute. A chance to spend some time with Barry was unexpected and she relished the prospect.
“Come on, gel, where’s your brain, on holiday?” Gertie Thomas stood at the door, turning her head to check that she didn’t have a customer waiting. “Envelopes and writing paper, that’s what I want and hurry up, love, I want to get a letter written and in the post for five o’clock.”
Startled out of her reverie, Rhiannon smiled, found the stationery and held out her hand for the money. “Sorry Mrs Thomas, I was working out the best way to fill the window.”
“Bit early for Christmas aren’t you?”
“Perhaps. But the children love a little advance excitement. I know I did.”
“I’ve got a few toys left in the attic from when mine were small, teddies, dolls and a rocking horse. It would fill it up and attract the kids, eh?”
“Not much room for a rocking horse, but a teddy and a couple of dolls, yes that would be lovely. Just what I need. Thanks”.
“I’ll bring them over tomorrow.”
For the rest of the day Rhiannon planned what she would wear when she met Barry. Something simple and workmanlike if she were to crawl on the floor trying to keep three children posed. She saw her mother returning from her collecting and called to her.
“Mam, can you get the meal started, I have to be out by six, helping Barry with some photographs.”
“Not posing are you?” Dora snapped. “I won’t have you doing that, mind.”
“Helping to control some children, Mam,” Rhiannon chuckled.
* * *
Lewis had finished his calls early and was on his way home. With little hope of pleasing Dora, he stopped to buy a bunch of flowers for her anyway and immediately regretted it. Better to have bought himself a buttonhole. There was little pleasure in going home these days and he wondered how long it would be before Dora stopped punishing him.
In his present mood he was unable to resist passing Nia’s house and, seeing the front door open, he parked the car and joined her in the front garden where she was tidying the roses with secateurs. Muffled up against the cold, she was carefully rescuing a few leafless buds.
“I have contacts with a firm selling fridges and freezers, madam,” he said as she turned and saw him. “Have you considered purchasing a freezer and making your life easier?”
“Lewis,” she frowned, “I thought we agreed we shouldn’t meet here? Specially now, with Dora acting like the fifth column and sending out spies to watch your every move!”
“Seeing you there snipping the last of the roses from that straggly bush, I thought, she deserves better than a few tatty old rose buds. So, isn’t it lucky I brought you these?” With a flourish he brought from behind his back the flowers he had bought for Dora. Seeing the delight on her face he couldn’t help comparing it with the expected reaction from Dora, who would have quoted the old cliche about flowers being a sign of guilt. Nia’s rewarding smile was much more pleasurable.
After checking that the car had been parked out of sight, Nia invited him indoors. “You can’t stay, mind, Joseph will be home in an hour or so. And Barry’s coming back early. Taking your Rhiannon with him to photograph some young children he is.”
“Rhiannon seems to like your Barry. Thank goodness it isn’t Joseph, eh?”
“Joseph is meeting one of the Griffiths and thinks I don’t know.”
“Not Caroline Griffiths? She’s thirty if she’s a day!”
“She’s quiet and gentle, and for a lively boy like Joseph, who’s always up to some nonsense or other it’s a strange choice, but they are seeing a lot of each other.”
“The Griffiths are a bad lot, Nia. You should discourage Joseph from seeing her. Caroline is the best of the bunch, but she’s still a Griffiths. Can’t you stop it? Joseph deserves better than one of that family. Living off their wits most of them. None of them has kept a job more than a month.”
“Caroline is working at the wool shop and has been for more than ten years.”
“Well, she’s still not good enough for Joseph, is she?”
Nia made a cup of tea and produced some cakes which she had managed to make with the remains of the weekly margarine ration. After an hour, Lewis got up to leave. On impulse he said, “It’s dark now, what about driving over to the beach for half an hour? It’s dark so no one will see us.”
“If it’s dark we won’t see the sea either,” she chuckled, but she reached for her coat and they went through the silent garden to where he had parked the car. He tripped over a fallen tree branch and exclaimed in irritation. “But,” he whispered, “there’s one thing about this damned dark season, there isn’t much chance of us being spotted by nosy neighbours.”
He was half an hour later than usual when he parked the car in its usual place. Not far away Gwyn Bevan was delivering the evening papers. He walked along, slouched against the still heavy bag, idly switching his torch on and off. The beam of light caught something gleaming and he bent to pick up an earring. He had no conceivable use for a single earring but he dropped it into his pocket in the way of all small boys and would have forgotten it.
Lewis was taking his books and leaflets from the back seat of the car. The car door stood wide open as he carried the first armful to the porch. Seeing the back door of the car open and Lewis out of sight, Gwyn’s fingers touched the earring and with gleeful hope that the action would cause the man some trouble, he lobbed the sparkling object into the back seat. Serve him right if his wife gets on at him, he chuckled. That’ll teach him to almost run me over then tell me off. Still smiling, preparing to tell the story to his mates, he cheerfully finished his round.
Rhiannon returned from helping Barry with the recalcitrant five, six and seven year olds with a sense of anticlimax. She wasn’t sure what she had expected, but she had thought about the meeting as a sort of date. She had found time in the half an hour between shutting the shop and Barry calling for her to brush her rich mahogany hair, wash, change into a pair of trousers and a jumper, eat the meal Dora had prepared, and be standing at the door watching for the headlights of the van.
There was no van. It had gone in for a repair. Barry arrived struggling with a tripod, lights, c
ameras and an assortment of items she failed to identify. She accepted some of his load and they walked to a house half an hour distant, by which time she was beginning to wish she hadn’t agreed to come. It was cold, rain that had a hint of sleet in it was falling steadily and her shoulders ached with the uncomfortable shoulder bag he had given her.
Whatever she had expected, he wanted simply what he had stated, her help in persuading the children to stay in the same place for long enough to get some pictures. She soon forgot her disappointment when she began to involve herself with the children. She played with them and succeeded in distracting them from the presence of the camera. Then, after thanking her casually, Barry had brought her home. He had only asked her to go with him so he had help carrying all his equipment, she thought angrily.
When she went into the house, Dora was missing. It was so rare for her mother to go out in the evening without a word she at once began to fear the worst. Viv went to fetch their father and Lewis-boy walked around the street in the hope of seeing her. At midnight they had not found her.
It was Jack Weston and Basil Griffiths who found Dora. Jack was accompanying Basil on one of his night-time forays setting traps for rabbits when they came upon a woman huddled against a tree not far from the edge of the wood, shivering with cold and seemingly unable to tell them how she got there.
“She’s not far from home,” Basil whispered, “but the woods are strange territory so she might just as well have been a hundred miles from Sophie Street.”
Jack agreed. “She’s probably been wandering around in circles unable to find a way out of the trees.
They took Dora to the Griffiths’ cottage and at once Janet wrapped her in blankets, filled hot water bottles to place around her, while Basil ran to tell her family she was safe.
Janet was a skinny woman with surprising strength and while Catherine prepared a hot drink of a nightcap called Instant Postum, she heaved Dora up the curving staircase and on to the spare bed.
Administering the drink, Catherine talked soothingly and Dora slept. In the morning she had recovered sufficiently to explain how she had managed to lose herself so near to home.
“I went for a walk. I was restless and I knew I wouldn’t sleep,” she said slowly and drowsily. “I thought I was taking a short cut home through the wood but I lost the path. I only had my old mac on and it was freezing. Bitter wind it was, went right through to my skin. I got so cold my brain seized up and I couldn’t think. I seemed to forget where I was and where I was going. Although I kept on walking until my legs wouldn’t hold me up, I didn’t come to the end of the trees. Must have been wandering in circles. Isn’t that what people do when they’re lost, wander in circles, getting tired but never making any progress? I sat against that tree and I feared for my life. I remember thinking, where’s Lewis? Why doesn’t he come and find me, but no one knew where I was, did they? Luck that your son was out after rabbits. Saved my life he did.”
“You were lucky to be found, Dora, and I hope you won’t try anything like this again,” Janet said firmly. “You don’t have to be miles away on top of a mountain to die of the cold!”
“The only thing that kept me going was my determination not to die and leave Nia Martin free to have Lewis,” Dora said, anger returning to the blue eyes. Catherine shared an amused glance with her mother.
All that day and the following night, Dora stayed with the Griffiths, with Rhiannon, Eleri, Lewis-boy and Viv sitting with her turn and turn about. Lewis arrived too and sat with his wife, anxious and afraid. They took turns watching as she slept and talked in subdued tones while she lay awake.
“You ought to stay with her, Lewis,” Janet whispered. “She needs looking after. She seems very emotionally fragile.”
“Tell me how to look after her!” wailed Lewis. “She won’t let me back home.”
“Tell her if she doesn’t look after herself, take you back and settle down, Nia Martin will win,” chuckled Janet.
* * *
Joseph had been late home most evenings during the past couple of months and, as Nia had suspected, it was because he was meeting Caroline Griffiths. He left the gentlemen’s outfitters at five-thirty and strolled along to the wool shop in time to meet Caroline coming out. Plump, dark-haired and with a rosy face that would have seemed better suited to a country woman who spent her days out of doors, she was, to him, a heartwarming sight.
Instead of catching the bus home, they developed the habit of walking together through the dark streets, talking companionably about their day. It was rare not to have a difficult customer or two to report on and laughter filled the air around them.
Occasionally they had met after work and slipped into the nearest picture house to sit and laugh at one of their favourite comedians. On these occasions, Caroline supplied a picnic of bread rolls and sometimes, a piece of cake, which they ate in the cinema along with others doing the same thing.
On the evening after his mother had gone for a drive with Lewis, he saw Caroline home and arranged to meet her later that evening for a walk along the country lanes to the next village where a small pub was occasionally known to have pork sandwiches. Caroline wasn’t keen on the atmosphere of the pub but as it was difficult for them to find a place where they could sit and relax, she willingly agreed.
By coincidence Nia had a second bunch of flowers that day. Joseph gave her a bunch and told her quietly that he was going to ask Caroline to marry him.
It wasn’t unexpected and she smiled and said she was pleased for him and asked when she and Caroline were to meet and get to know each other.
“On Sunday?” he suggested, but Nia shook her head.
“Sundays are difficult,” she said. “Saturday evening all right? She must come to supper.” So it had been agreed.
“So long as she says ‘yes’,” Joseph added, a serious expression sitting strangely on his usually lively face.
“Of course she’ll say ‘yes’,” Nia enthused. But she was overwhelmed with sadness that her son had chosen to become involved with the Griffiths family. What would Lewis think of it all?
*
When they were seated in their usual corner near the wood fire Joseph took Caroline’s hand. “Marry me, Caroline,” he said without preamble. “I love you and want to spend the rest of my life with you.”
“Joseph Martin. You can’t mean it? Your mam would die of shame you marrying a Griffiths.”
“She wants you to come and have supper with us on Saturday so she can start getting to know you. When she does she’ll love you as much as I do.”
“But I’m older than you. I’m thirty in a few weeks time.”
“A Christmas baby, yes I know.” He laughed then. “Caroline, aren’t women supposed to keep their age a secret? You’ve told me at least six times since we’ve been going out together.”
“I didn’t want you to be under any illusions.”
“I love you. Marry me, please?”
“I want to say yes, but—”
“Then say it!”
“I will if Saturday goes well. If I sense any difficulties from Barry or your mother – well, I think we ought to wait a while, tell them when they’re more used to the idea.”
“You love me?”
“Of course I love you, Joseph. I’d ask nothing more of life than to be your wife but—”
“No ‘buts’. We’ll tell Barry on Saturday evening and,” he paused and waited until she was looking at him before admitting, “as for Mam, she already knows and she’s thrilled.”
After a second and third drink by way of celebration they walked home through the fields, laughing as they stumbled and running in mock fear when a fox ran out of the hedgerow and across the field and when an owl hooted its mournful cry close by.
* * *
On Sunday afternoon, Lewis went off as usual for his supposed walk with his friend Wilf. Having finished her usual chores and brought her books up to date, Dora decided to meet him. She freshened her lipstick and wrapped
a cheerful scarf around her red hair and set out about half an hour from the time she expected him to return home. At the end of the road where his friend lived she hesitated. Perhaps this visit by her would be misconstrued.
Since returning to her bed Lewis had been kind and attentive, and she was beginning to soften in her attitude. He was right; she couldn’t go on mistrusting him, and, she admitted guiltily, this plan to walk home with him was really a chance to assure herself he was actually doing what he said he was doing, passing an hour in idle conversation with Wilf. No, she had to learn to let go, to trust him. She turned back the way she had come.
That weekend he had brought her flowers, had helped with her accounts and put up the trellis she had asked for to support a new rose.
She frowned, her face angry as she searched her mind intently for something she could do to surprise him. As she was turning the corner at Temptations she thought of the car. She would get a brush and duster and give the inside a good clean. He always appreciated that. It was one job he hated. The frown softened as she imagined his delight.
Dora found the earring straightaway. It wasn’t tucked down hidden in the folds. It winked up at her blatantly from the brown leather seat.
* * *
Lewis’s mood was sombre when he walked in through the gate. Nia had told him that Joseph and Caroline planned to marry. Joseph and Barry were not his responsibility, he knew that, but caring for Nia meant he cared for her boys too. It wasn’t a good idea for Joseph to align himself with the Griffiths. But it was only an engagement, there was plenty of time for Joseph to change his mind. Telling his mother had been one thing, meeting the Griffiths and telling them was another! Cheered by the thought, he pushed open the door and called, “Anybody home?”
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