Pontypridd 01 - Hearts of Gold

by Catrin Collier

  Completely captivated, Evan watched her. She was beautiful when she smiled. Happiness softened the lines around her mouth and eyes, and lent her face a gentle radiance that never failed to warm his heart.

  ‘Phyllis, please listen for a minute.’ He took her hands into his own. ‘You know I haven’t got anything.’

  ‘No one can say I went after you for your money,’ she laughed.

  ‘Let’s go away together,’ he suggested recklessly.

  ‘I can’t go very far at the moment.’ She patted her stomach.

  ‘Have you still got the money I gave you from the bet I put on Eddie?’

  ‘Evan, it’s only five pounds.’

  ‘It’s enough to get us away from Pontypridd.’

  ‘To where?’ she probed gently.

  ‘Does it matter? Anywhere, as long as it’s away from here.’

  ‘It will matter when the five pounds runs out. And while we’re running what will Elizabeth and the children do?’

  ‘Elizabeth and the children don’t need me any more. Not even Maud. She’s going to work in a hospital in a month. Bethan’s married …’

  ‘Bethan!’ Phyllis exclaimed. Then she sensed the pain within him and fell silent.

  ‘The boys can take care of themselves,’ he continued quickly, agitatedly. ‘Haydn’s got a steady job and will see Eddie all right.’

  ‘And Elizabeth?’ she enquired softly.

  ‘I couldn’t give a damn about Elizabeth,’ he said harshly.

  ‘Evan, I want us to be together more than anything else in the world, but not like this. Not because you’re angry with Elizabeth. That would be for all the wrong reasons.’

  ‘What about this little one?’ He curved his strong calloused hands with their blackened, broken nails tenderly around her stomach. ‘Isn’t he reason enough for us to be together?’

  ‘Not when you have other duties and other calls on you, Evan. I never intended to trap you or make you unhappy.’

  ‘And you haven’t.’

  He left his chair and knelt at her feet. ‘Phyllis, if I talk to Elizabeth. If I square it up with her, will you come away with me?’

  ‘Please, sweetheart, don’t make it harder for me than it already is. You know I’d like to say yes, but I’m not sure I can. Rhiannon’s been good to me. I can’t leave her.’

  ‘We’ll find someone else to look after Rhiannon.’

  ‘Even if we did, running away from our problems won’t solve them. Nor will five pounds keep us for very long,’ she said practically.

  He sank back on his heels. ‘There has to be something I can do,’ he said, raging at his own impotence.

  She cupped her hands round his face. ‘Keep on coming to see me from time to time like this.’

  ‘And if I leave Elizabeth?’

  ‘Please don’t. Not on my account. We both have responsibilities. Me to Rhiannon. You to Elizabeth.’

  ‘Then we’ll never live together,’ he said bitterly.

  ‘I didn’t say that.’

  ‘Yes you did.’

  The grandmother clock ticked deafeningly into the silence. He buried his head in her lap. She ran her fingers through his thick black hair, noticing many grey strands that hadn’t been there a year ago.

  ‘If we could sit like this, “Sion a Sian” in front of a fireplace most nights, Evan Powell, I’d be happy,’ she murmured. ‘Even if the whole world shunned me in the day, and I didn’t have a penny to buy a lump of coal for the fire, or a slice of bread for the table.’

  He lifted his head and looked at her. ‘Do you mean that, Phyllis Harry?’

  She kissed the tip of his nose, and smiled into his black eyes. ‘I mean it, cariad.’

  ‘Then I’ll try to find a way for us to be together. I promise you, I’ll try.’

  ‘The only promise I want you to make is to call in and see me whenever you can,’ Phyllis replied. More realistic than Evan, she’d long since learned to be content with the cards that the fates had dealt her.

  Bethan was still writing out the patients’ reports when Laura walked into the office at five thirty in the morning.

  ‘You’re early,’ Bethan said, closing one of the files.

  ‘I saw your Haydn yesterday. Beth, how could you do it? How could you marry Alun Jones without saying a word to anyone? What about Andrew?’

  ‘He went to London.’

  ‘Beth, did you ever look into his face when he looked at you? Even that first night when he and Trevor took us to the theatre, and I wanted him for myself, I tried every trick in the book and a few more, but he wouldn’t take his eyes off you. If that wasn’t love I don’t know what is. The man clearly adores you.’

  ‘It was that belief that got me into the condition I’m in,’ Bethan retorted crudely.

  Laura’s hand flew to her mouth. ‘Oh Holy Mother of God! Haydn didn’t say …’

  ‘He was probably too embarrassed.’ Bethan put down her pen and leaned back in her chair. She was finding it a lot easier to talk about her situation than she’d expected.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ Laura demanded when she managed to speak again.

  ‘So you could do what?’ Bethan asked coolly.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Laura said in exasperation. ‘It’s just that I thought I was your best friend …’

  ‘You are.’ Bethan smiled. A grim, wintry smile that failed to touch her eyes. ‘Look on the bright side. I’m a lot better off than the Maisie Crocketts of this workhouse.’

  ‘But what about Andrew? Does he know you’ve married Alun?’

  ‘No, and I doubt that he’d care.’

  ‘Of course he’d care. He loves you. And if he knew there was a baby …’

  ‘He’d do sweet nothing. I really don’t want to talk about Andrew,’ Bethan said. ‘He left me, not the other way round. I have to think of myself.’

  ‘So you married Alun Jones?’

  ‘The child needs a name. Alun was kind enough to offer. No one else came forward.’

  ‘But you and Andrew were like Trevor and me,’ Laura persisted stubbornly. ‘You had something special …’

  ‘He had something special all right,’ Bethan said harshly. ‘He had a girl who was stupid enough to open her legs when he said he loved her.’

  Laura sat down abruptly. She’d come in early to give Bethan a piece of her mind, believing that Bethan had married Alun Jones on the rebound purely to spite Andrew because they’d had a silly row. Now she didn’t know what to think.

  ‘Is there anything that I can do?’ she asked finally.

  ‘You could congratulate me,’ Bethan suggested flatly.

  ‘But, Beth,’ Laura ventured tentatively. ‘Is this what you want?’

  ‘Whether I want it or not, this is what I’ve got.’

  ‘Oh, Bethan.’ Laura shook her head miserably. She felt suddenly guilty for having a wedding and Trevor to look forward to.

  ‘Please, no pity. Not from you, I couldn’t stand it. It’s friendship I need, now more than ever.’

  ‘You’ve got it.’ Laura crushed her in an enormous hug. ‘You’ll always have it. I promise you.’

  ‘Even when you’re a doctor’s wife and live on the Common?’ Bethan tried to smile but tears fell despite her efforts. She rubbed her eyes with her sleeve. ‘I’m sorry, all I seem to do these days is cry.’

  ‘That’s all right the starch in my uniform could do with softening. And yes, I’ll be your friend even when I’m a doctor’s wife. That’s if you’ll come to my wedding.’

  ‘Laura, I don’t know,’ she answered uneasily.

  ‘Please, you agreed to be bridesmaid.’

  ‘Not like this.’ Bethan laid her hand across her abdomen.

  ‘I’m getting married in six days not six months.’

  ‘In six days I will be almost six months.’

  ‘You don’t look it. Are you sure?’

  ‘You’re asking a nurse who almost made it to midwife.’

  ‘All right, I’ll
let you off being my bridesmaid,’ Laura compromised, ‘on condition you come to the wedding as an honoured guest. I hope you realise that this means that I’m going to have to put up with all five of my sisters trotting up the aisle after me in their Whitsun dresses, because if I choose just one, the others won’t speak to me for months, if ever again.’

  ‘Please, Laura, I’d really rather not come if you don’t mind,’ Bethan begged.

  ‘I do mind.’

  ‘I couldn’t face him.’ Bethan didn’t have to say who “him” was. They both knew.

  ‘I don’t think he’ll come,’ Laura said hesitatingly. ‘I made Trevor write to him …’

  ‘To tell him what?’ Bethan interrupted anxiously.

  ‘Nothing about you, I swear,’ Laura reassured quickly. ‘I told Trevor I didn’t want him at our wedding. Not if you two weren’t speaking. After all, you’re my best friend and Andrew’s …’

  ‘What?’ Bethan broke in quickly.

  ‘Only a friend of Trevor’s. And that puts him way down in the pecking order of importance when it comes to my wedding.’

  ‘Oh, Laura,’ a peculiar expression, half pain, half tenderness, crossed Bethan’s face.

  ‘Then you’ll come?’

  ‘I’ll see.’

  It wasn’t the assurance Laura wanted, but she knew that for the moment it was all she was going to get.

  The pride that had sustained Bethan in her encounters with her father and Laura left her, and she felt weak, tired and sick when she finally left the hospital after seeing Matron at the end of her shift. Without thinking she turned right instead of left in High

  Street and began to walk up the Graig hill towards Graig Avenue.

  She reached Temple Chapel before she realised she was going the wrong way.

  Feeling extremely foolish she turned and began the walk down the hill and out along Broadway. Another two weeks … that’s all she had left in the hospital before she’d be spending every minute of every day in Alun’s company.

  The interview with Matron hadn’t gone as smoothly as she’d hoped. Astute and experienced in life, particularly in Pontypridd life, Matron had taken one look at her, asked if she was pregnant, and dared her to say no.

  Bethan had to admit it. There was generally only one reason for marriages as quick and secretive as hers and Alun’s, and when she recalled the gossip she and Andrew had generated in the hospital – gossip Matron was undoubtedly aware of – she had blanched in embarrassment.

  ‘To be honest, I’ll be sorry to lose you, Nurse Powell,’ Matron announced briskly. ‘Good nurses who are responsible, reliable and prepared to work nights are few and far between.’

  Bethan wondered if there really had been a flicker in Matron’s eye when she’d said the words “responsible” and “reliable” or if it had been her imagination. ‘But as you no doubt appreciate, I cannot have a pregnant nurse working on the wards,’ she continued practically. ‘Particularly the maternity ward where there’s so much heavy lifting to be done.’

  ‘I’m sorry to leave,’ Bethan apologised.

  ‘Well, at least I know why you’ve neglected your studies of late.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Matron,’ Bethan repeated dully.

  ‘I suppose it’s perfectly understandable, if disappointing given the circumstances. Young girls will marry. But don’t allow that brain of yours to atrophy, Nurse Powell. You’re an intelligent woman. Don’t forget it. And should your circumstances change and you ever want to return to nursing, please come and see me first, before applying to any other hospital.’

  ‘I will, Matron. Thank you.’

  She’d walked away, trying not to think of her shattered career, of Alun waiting for her in the dingy house on Broadway. She shuddered at the thought of what lay ahead of her that morning.

  The imminent prospect of sharing Alun’s bed, of his sweaty, hairy body lying next to hers, of him touching her as Andrew had. Kissing her, sharing the most intimate moments of her life.

  She almost turned back when she reached the slaughterhouse at the town end of the road. Then she remembered she had nowhere to go. She thought of Hetty and something akin to envy stirred within her. Oblivion seemed a preferable alternative to the life that stretched before her in that damp, bleak, run down house.

  She walked on along the shining, waterlogged grey pavement, glancing up at the other houses in the terrace.

  Some were bright, clean, gleaming with new paint and freshly washed lace curtains at the windows. If it had been the old Andrew of the spring and early summer who’d been waiting for her further down the road instead of Alun, she’d be running towards him, not dragging her feet. Making plans to transform the house into a comfortable and cosy haven from the world.

  She had to force herself to recall that Andrew had rejected her. That he despised her, never wanted to see her again. It was Alun not him who was waiting …

  ‘Can’t go in there, Nurse,’ a young constable barked officiously as he rocked on his heels in the doorway, full of self-importance at the task that had been entrusted to him.

  ‘I live here,’ Bethan protested mildly.

  ‘Do you now?’

  ‘She does.’ Megan’s brother Huw interrupted from the porch behind him. He looked down at Bethan. ‘You’d better come in, love,’ he said gently. ‘I think we’ve got some news for you.’

  The young constable stepped aside. She followed Huw down the passage, squeezing past two policemen who were standing in the open bedroom doorway watching Alun dress. One of them stepped inside and closed the door as she passed.

  ‘What’s going on?’ she demanded of Huw. The sight of so many officers milling around in uniform took her back to that fateful Sunday morning in Megan’s. And all the foul, disastrous repercussions of that awful day.

  ‘Is it all right if I tell her, Sarge?’ Huw asked the same sergeant who’d supervised the ransacking of the houses in Leyshon Street.

  ‘Go ahead.’ The sergeant squinted at Bethan as she left the back kitchen. ‘Haven’t I seen you before, Nurse?’

  ‘Yes,’ she answered briefly, not about to volunteer the information as to where.

  Huw guided her into the kitchen where the kettle was just beginning to boil on the stove. Without stopping to take off her cloak, she walked over to the range, lifted it off the hotplate and picked up the hook to replace the cover.

  ‘Don’t do that, love,’ Huw stopped her. ‘I’ll make us both a cup of tea. You look as though you could do with one. It’s a long cold walk from the hospital to here in the rain.’

  ‘It is,’ she agreed, taking off her cloak and sitting in one of the chairs.

  The tea caddy, sugar basin, milk jug and cups were already laid out on the table. Huw put the kettle back on to boil while he warmed the pot and spooned in the tea.

  ‘You got married yesterday then?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes,’ she answered flatly.

  ‘Bit sudden, wasn’t it?’

  ‘No doubt you’ve guessed the reason why,’ she retorted sullenly, resenting his prying.

  ‘We were afraid of that.’

  ‘We?’ She looked questioningly at him as he spooned three sugars into both of their teas without asking her what she took.

  ‘Me and my sergeant.’ He handed her a cup.

  ‘Who I marry is none of your, or your sergeant’s, concern.’

  ‘If it’s Alun Jones it could be,’ he said mysteriously. ‘And then again from what Megan told me I never reckoned on you marrying Alun. I thought you were going out with that doctor fellow.’

  ‘I was.’

  ‘Tell me,’ he eased his bulk into the small rickety chair opposite hers, ‘do you love Alun?’

  ‘Why do you ask?’

  ‘It could be important.’

  ‘No,’ she answered honestly, taking a sip of the strong, bitter-sweet tea. ‘Why? Has he done something terrible?’

  ‘To you, love, yes. Mary Bennett came down the station last night. Know her?’


  ‘I’m afraid I don’t.’

  ‘I thought you might at least have known the name. Alun’s had his feet under her table for years, if you take my meaning.’

  ‘Is she the widow who lives down the bottom of the Graig hill?’ she asked, recalling something Megan had said.

  ‘That’s the one. She heard the gossip about you and Alun yesterday and came to see us. Appears he told her years ago that he wanted to marry her but couldn’t because he wasn’t free.’ He took Bethan’s cup from her fingers, and enveloped her freezing hands in his great calloused paws. ‘He’s already married, love. Left a wife and two children in North Wales ten years ago. Never sent them a word or a penny in all that time. Not even a present for the kiddies at Christmas or on their birthdays. We telegraphed Wrexham last night. There’s no doubt that it’s him. He even admitted it when we tackled him about it this morning. He thought he could get away with it. And, knowing you, love, I’m not surprised he tried. You would make any man a wife to be proud of. I’m only sorry that I have to be the one to tell you.’

  She stared at him, dumbfounded.

  ‘It’s not that you’ve done anything wrong.’ Huw tried to reassure her, putting his huge tree-trunk of an arm around her shoulders. ‘But you’ve still got to come down the station. Just to make a statement. There’s nothing to worry about, I promise you. I’ll stay with you all the time if you want me to. And afterwards I’ll ask the sergeant if I can borrow a police car and driver to take you home.’

  ‘Home?’ She stared at him blankly.

  ‘Graig Avenue,’ he suggested gently.

  ‘Alun’s already married,’ she repeated dully, trying to digest the enormity of what he was telling her.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then the ceremony yesterday?’

  ‘Doesn’t mean anything, love.’

  ‘The wedding certificate?’

  ‘Isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on.’

  She began to laugh. A high-pitched giggle that bordered on hysteria.

  ‘Please, love, don’t take on so.’

  She bent her head and kissed Huw’s bristly cheek. ‘I’m not married?’

  ‘No,’ he replied, bewildered by her reaction.

  ‘Uncle Huw, you’re a wonderful, wonderful man. Don’t look at me like that,’ she commanded between gales of laughter. ‘Can’t you see how hilarious this all is?’