The Quality of Love

by Rosie Harris

  ‘That’s all very well, Mam, but we don’t want you to be stressed out, it won’t help you, you know.’

  ‘Your wedding is less than a month away so nothing is going to happen to me between now and then, is it, so I want the three of you to stop making such a fuss.’

  In that Lorna was wrong. A week later she started coughing up blood and when the doctor was called in he instructed her to go into hospital right away.

  She struggled feebly against his decision. ‘If I’m that ill and it means that I’m near the end then I’d rather stay here and die in my own bed,’ she protested.

  Two days later she was in a coma. The doctor visited twice a day but there was very little he could do for her except administer morphine to help control the pain she was in.

  Owen was in complete agreement when Sarah said they must call off the wedding. He also arranged for both Sarah and Lloyd to take time off from work so that they could be with Lorna.

  ‘Bryn Morgan agrees with me,’ he told them when they protested. ‘You can’t possibly concentrate on what you should be doing here, so it is far better that you have the time off.’

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Lorna died three days later. Lloyd and Sarah were with her at the end; one on each side of the bed holding her hands, devastated to be losing her but thankful that it was very peaceful.

  At Easter they found themselves arranging a funeral instead of a wedding. Lloyd was beside himself with grief because he hadn’t realised how ill she was. There had been so many times when she’d been quiet and withdrawn and probably in pain but he had been so wrapped up in his own troubles that he had said nothing. Now, he was certain that if she’d gone into hospital earlier they could have done something for her.

  Both Sarah and Owen tried to explain to Lloyd that there was as yet no treatment or known cure for the sort of illness she’d been suffering from and that they should all be grateful that her life had ended so peacefully.

  Several of the neighbours they were on speaking terms with came to pay their last respects. As they were about to leave the churchyard Sarah felt a hand on her arm and gasped in surprise as she turned and found herself face to face with Gwyn Roberts.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ she asked. It was six years since she’d last seen him and she was shocked to see him there.

  ‘I spotted your mother’s name at the office on a list of bereavements that we receive to alert us about current happenings and I thought it would be an opportunity to see you again. I wish it could have been under better circumstances. I am so sorry for your loss. I know how close you were.’

  Sarah nodded. She felt awkward and wished he hadn’t intruded at such a time.

  ‘You remember my dad, of course,’ she said hesitantly, remembering how much her father disliked Gwyn.

  ‘Of course I do.’ Gwyn turned and held out a hand to Lloyd. ‘As I have just said to Sarah I am very sorry about your loss; your wife was a wonderful lady.’

  Lloyd shook Gwyn’s hand and nodded but from the dark look on his face Sarah wasn’t too sure that he wanted to remember him.

  ‘This is Owen, Owen Phillips, my fiancé,’ she said, introducing the two men to each other. ‘Owen, this is Gwyn Roberts. I have mentioned him to you.’

  The two men shook hands, weighing each other up and saying nothing.

  ‘Well, I must get back to the office,’ Gwyn stated, replacing his black Homburg. ‘Perhaps we could meet sometime; I’d like to have the chance to catch up.’

  ‘Well, I’m not sure about that,’ Sarah said hesitantly, looking at Owen.

  ‘If you can spare the time, the three of us were going for a meal, perhaps you’d like to join us,’ Owen invited.

  ‘I’m sure Gwyn is far too busy to do that,’ Sarah said quickly. ‘Perhaps some other time.’

  ‘No, I would very much like to join you,’ Gwyn affirmed as he fell into step alongside them.

  Sarah felt sick with embarrassment. What on earth would they talk about, she thought anxiously. With the mood her father was in at the moment, if he did recall everything that had gone on between her and Gwyn there might well be ructions. It wouldn’t be so bad if Owen wasn’t there but things she had skimmed over might well be discussed in detail and that could be very disturbing for all of them.

  As the meal progressed Sarah began to relax. She quickly discovered that Gwyn hadn’t changed all that much. He was still adventurous and kept them all entertained with stories about his trips as a foreign correspondent. It appeared that he’d been to most parts of the world and as she listened to his lively dissertation Sarah couldn’t help feeling that Owen seemed very reserved in comparison.

  Owen was curious to know why Gwyn was back in Cardiff covering what must be such a very minor occasion.

  ‘I’ve come back to take up my new appointment as Assistant Editor on the Western Mail,’ Gwyn explained. ‘I happened to see the name Lorna Lewis and recognised the address and, of course, it immediately brought back memories of the past and I thought it would be rather nice to pay my respects.’

  ‘So does that mean that from now on you will be based in Cardiff?’ Owen questioned.

  ‘For the present. My next step will be an editor’s chair. There probably won’t be a vacancy where I am for a long time to come so I will have to move somewhere else. It will all be good experience, though, and one day I’ll be back again as Editor of the Western Mail. That’s always been my ambition, hasn’t it, Sarah?’

  ‘Yes, I think you did mention it when we were at university,’ Sarah said non-committally. ‘Things have changed since those days,’ she added pointedly.

  ‘Some things never change,’ Gwyn countered.

  Sarah felt a prickle of fear tingle down her back as he raised his thick eyebrows and stared back at her speculatively. She was aware that Owen was listening and watching the interchange between them and she felt uneasy, wondering what he was thinking.

  Sarah found that with the funeral over and both of them returning to work it was difficult to establish a routine that suited her father and herself.

  In the past Lloyd had never had to lift a finger around the house when it involved anything to do with domestic matters because Lorna had taken care of everything.

  He was used to being waited on and his meals being on the table when he arrived home from work. He expected his shirts to be washed and ironed ready for when he needed them, and having his buttons sewn on and his socks darned.

  He handed over the housekeeping money on a Friday night and everything was taken care of from then on. He never asked how Lorna spent it.

  Now, he was expecting Sarah to do the same. On the first Friday when he sat down to his meal he placed the housekeeping money on the table.

  ‘I think we’ve got to talk about sharing the responsibility of running the home,’ she told him as she pushed it back towards him. ‘Perhaps you should be the one to pay the bills for a start.’

  ‘You’ll be doing the shopping so you’ll be the one needing the money,’ he pointed out.

  ‘You are much better placed to do it than I am,’ she told him. ‘I don’t finish work until six o’clock, whereas you finish at five. The shops are still open then so you can buy what we need on your way home.’

  ‘Are you asking me to shop for groceries?’ Lloyd exclaimed in a startled voice.

  ‘I’m not only expecting you to shop for them but I’m also hoping you’ll learn to cook them as well. You are home an hour before me so there’s nothing to stop you starting the dinner before I come in.’

  ‘Don’t talk rubbish, cariad; I’ve never cooked a thing in my life. That’s been your mother’s job.’

  ‘Yes, but Mam’s not here now and I can’t do everything. I work just as hard as you do and I’m tired, too, when I get home. As well as the shopping and cooking there’s all the housework and the washing and ironing to be done. Either we share the load or we pay someone else to come in and do it for us.’

  Neither suggesti
on appealed to Lloyd. He simply wanted things to go on as they’d always been, but Sarah knew that wasn’t possible; there simply weren’t enough hours in the day.

  She’d worked hard to justify Bryn Morgan’s faith in giving her a job in his firm and she still needed to be alert to keep on top of things there.

  Instead of being willing to discuss it and trying to find a solution, Lloyd pushed the money back across the table towards her. ‘You do whatever you think best,’ he told her. ‘I don’t know anything about these sorts of things.’

  Sarah hadn’t the heart to argue with him. She suspected that even thinking about domestic matters only brought back memories of her mother and that was why he couldn’t do it.

  For a while she struggled to do everything herself, not only because it was easier but also so that the home her mother had loved so much stayed pristine. She got up an hour earlier, usually so that she could prepare their evening meal before she went out in the morning. That way it took very little time to cook in the evening. If she was able to cook it the night before so that all she would have to do would be to heat it up when she got in, then she’d spend the extra hour in the morning cleaning and doing other domestic chores.

  The one task she couldn’t do in the morning was the washing because it took too long to heat up the copper, boil the clothes and then rinse them and hang them out to dry. Occasionally she did wash them the night before and then hang them out before she went off to work.

  Eventually she began doing the bulk of the household chores at the weekends. Although she knew her father hated her doing the washing on a Sunday, it was really the only day when there was enough time to do so.

  It also meant that after shopping and cleaning on a Saturday she was far too exhausted to want to go out with Owen in the evening and although he was very understanding she could see that he was beginning to get very perturbed by her constant claim that she was too tired to even go to the pictures.

  Lloyd spent his evenings and weekends slumped in his armchair and although the newspaper was on his lap more often than not his eyes were closed, and he completely ignored what was going on around him.

  ‘You really should get him to help you,’ Owen told her. ‘There’re quite a lot of jobs he could be doing around the house to give you a bit more time for yourself.’

  To prove his point he drew up a list, dividing up everything that had to be done each week between what Sarah should be responsible for and what Lloyd should be doing.

  When Sarah studied the list she started laughing. ‘Can you see my dad peeling potatoes and scraping carrots? Or cleaning the windows,’ she gasped.

  ‘I don’t see why not. There are men who make their living cleaning windows so surely there’s nothing wrong with him doing them on the inside?’

  ‘Some of the neighbours might spot him.’

  ‘I really don’t see how that would matter. They’d admire him for pulling his weight.’

  ‘I don’t think that either of us could convince him of that.’ Sarah smiled.

  ‘Well, he could lay the fires and clean out the grate every day; he used to do that for your mother. He could also do quite a lot of the preparatory things in the kitchen as well as help with the washing-up. Anything is better than for him to be sitting there brooding.’

  ‘I know,’ Sarah agreed. ‘It worries me to see him looking so depressed and unhappy.’

  ‘Then why not encourage him to do some cooking. You never know, he might discover that he has hidden talents and that he actually likes doing it.’

  Although all Owen’s suggestions were good ones they simply didn’t work. Lloyd had been brought up to consider running a home as women’s work. Nevertheless, he did agree to light the fire and clean out the grate. When it came to the other tasks in the kitchen that Owen had listed he did them so badly, and had so many accidents, that Sarah was glad to take over again.

  She decided to stop trying to do all the washing and ironing at home and to send everything except her own personal items out to the laundry.

  At first her father strongly disapproved of this but when he found that it meant he always had clean clothes and well-ironed shirts he stopped objecting and accepted that there had to be changes in the way the household was being run.

  Sarah also arranged for one of the neighbours to come in two mornings a week and do most of the cleaning. She decided not to tell her father and if he noticed that things were being organised better he made no comment at all.

  Gradually she was able to resume her nights out with Owen. Sometimes she felt quite guilty about going out and enjoying herself, especially when she went out on a Saturday night and left her father slumped morosely in front of the fire, listlessly turning the pages of the newspaper on his lap.

  Owen still came to tea on Sundays and occasionally her father would join in their conversation. For brief spells as he engaged in an argument about something the old Lloyd would shine out and Sarah would feel hopeful that perhaps at last he was pulling himself out of the doldrums and would soon be his old self again.

  One Sunday they had an unexpected visitor. As her father went to answer the door Sarah thought it was Owen arriving a little early and rushed upstairs to finish getting ready. As she came back down again a few minutes later she realised that although it was a man’s voice talking to her father, it wasn’t Owen’s.

  ‘Surprised to see me again?’

  Sarah stopped in the living-room doorway in surprise. ‘Gwyn, what are you doing here?’

  ‘I came to say goodbye; I’m going to America. I’ve landed myself another new job, this time as Editor on the New Hampshire Echo.’

  ‘So you’ve made it; you’re going to be an editor at last,’ Sarah said with a beaming smile. ‘Congratulations!’ Impulsively she walked over and kissed him on the cheek. She felt she could be magnanimous now she knew he would be leaving the country.

  ‘It’s an important stepping stone but don’t worry, I’ll still be back here in Cardiff the moment the top job becomes vacant on the Western Mail,’ he said, grinning.

  A second knock heralded Owen’s arrival so Sarah went to let him in, leaving Gwyn talking to her father about his new job.

  Owen seemed rather taken aback to see him there and barely congratulated him on his achievement. His mood became even darker when, to their great surprise, Lloyd invited Gwyn to stay and have tea with them.

  Even Owen’s brusque, withdrawn attitude couldn’t stem Gwyn’s garrulousness. He was absolutely bubbling over with enthusiasm about how much he wanted this job in America and what tremendous opportunities it would provide for his journalistic skills. He even regaled them with all the changes he was planning to make on the paper once he took over.

  ‘So you’ve more or less reached the pinnacle of your ambitions,’ Owen commented dryly.

  ‘Oh no, I’m not quite there yet.’ Gwyn smiled. ‘There are one or two more important things that I still intend to do,’ he said, looking directly at Sarah.

  ‘And those are?’ Owen challenged, eyeing him grimly.

  ‘Well, for a start, I am determined that one day I’ll come back here to Cardiff and be Editor of the Western Mail.’

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Gwyn stayed the entire evening, making it quite obvious that he was waiting for Owen to go home. Eventually, since Gwyn was in deep conversation with Lloyd, he decided to do so. Sarah went to the door with him and after he’d kissed her goodnight, he muttered, ‘I don’t like that fellow. I was hoping he’d leave before now.’

  Sarah’s inward smile at his obvious jealousy quickly vanished when she came back into the room and found Gwyn and her father discussing her. Sarah had been amazed that her father had invited Gwyn to stay let alone converse with him so amicably. He had definitely mellowed in his old age. However, she didn’t like the fact that the conversation had turned to her. It was one thing for them to have been discussing Gwyn’s career prospects but she didn’t want things to get too personal.

  �
�I was just telling your dad all about what I’ve been doing since we last met and how this job in America is a stepping stone to even greater things,’ Gwyn said, turning to her.

  ‘I rather gathered that from what you’d been telling us all evening,’ Sarah commented.

  ‘Yes, but there’s a lot more to it than what I said in front of that Owen chap. We don’t want him to know too much about our private business, now do we?’

  Sarah struggled to keep back the sharp retort she wanted to make and before she could think of an appropriate answer Gwyn was already in full stream.

  ‘I’ve been telling your dad that the time has come for us to get together again – only properly this time. I want us to be married and for you to move to New Hampshire with me.’

  Sarah stared at him in astonishment. ‘Are you out of your mind, Gwyn? I haven’t seen or heard of you for years and now suddenly you come storming back into our lives and expect everything to be as if nothing has changed. Can I remind you that I am engaged to be married – to Owen.’

  ‘I know all about that, but I’ve been travelling, all over the world, see, so how could I have time for writing letters and such like?’ he blustered. ‘The only writing I’ve done is what I’ve been obliged to do and damned hard work it has been, I can tell you. Well, it’s paid off, cariad, and now I’m not only back home again but I have fine prospects and I’m in a position to offer you marriage.’

  ‘And you think I am going to change all my plans and accept, just like that? You spring up from nowhere and expect me to fall at your feet again as if nothing has ever gone wrong between us?’

  ‘Come on, Sarah, it’s not like you to hold a grudge. The pair of us were just kids and we rushed into things because we were too young to know what we were doing.’

  ‘We’re older now, though, and have a great deal more sense,’ she said coldly.

  ‘Of course we are, that’s what I’m trying to say. We’re old enough to know we are right for each other. We’ll have a good life together, I can promise you. I’ll be earning good money and I’ll be able to provide you with a fine home and everything you want from life.’