He had insisted on Charlie working on his car deliberately to spoil his day out. He didn’t like Charlie and wanted his daughter to come to her senses and leave him. Surely she’d thank him one day? His mood softened, the guilt that had been half recognised grew and almost overwhelmed him. He began to face the unpleasant fact that he was hoping for his daughter’s life to be ruined.
Rhiannon loved Charlie and young Gwyn. She’d be unhappy to lose them. What sort of a father was he, that he could wish for her to be miserable? After an hour he went back to Charlie and Rhiannon’s house and asked how she was feeling.
Assured she was feeling no effect from her muddy fall, he touched her arm and said humbly, “I’m sorry, love. It was my fault. If Charlie had been there he’d have been looking after you and this wouldn’t have happened.” The reaction to his apology wasn’t what he’d expected either.
“I was looking after her! I did what I could,” a distressed Gwyn retorted. “It was an accident. Dad said it was no one’s fault.”
“Gwyn’s right,” Charlie said with an edge of anger in his voice. “No one was at fault. Certainly not our son.”
“Tell me what happened, Gwyn,” Lewis said, ignoring Charlie. He listened to the full story and then, trying to make Gwyn feel better, he told the boy he had been very quick-witted to signal a warning. The pity was that Rhiannon hadn’t realised what it was. “Fancy her just waving back, eh?” he said coaxing a smile.
“I was looking after her,” Gwyn said again, rebelliously.
“I know you were. She’s lucky to have you. I know that. I was upset earlier, the words came out all wrong. I didn’t mean it to sound like I blamed you, Gwyn. Sorry.”
Gwyn said nothing; his young face still looked troubled.
“Thank goodness you were there,” Lewis persevered. “Things would have been much worse if you’d stayed to help your dad, wouldn’t they? You certainly guessed she was in trouble and got to the stream fast.” Gwyn still didn’t looked convinced and Lewis asked, “Swallow any fish, did she?”
“She didn’t half look a mess,” Gwyn said as a smile reluctantly appeared and slowly widened.
Lewis glanced at Dora and was relieved to receive a nod of approval.
* * *
Edward’s shop was set to open at the end of June and as the day drew near he worked hard, getting the tables and chairs set out ready for the opening party on Saturday the twenty-fifth of June. Mrs Collins had recovered from her fall and was helping, and the catering was being dealt with by Megan’s aunt, Sian Weston, and Dora Lewis. To Edward’s surprise, Lewis Lewis came with Dora on Wednesday afternoon with a selection of sweets with which to decorate the tables. He didn’t know that the gesture was to please Dora and not him and he thanked Lewis and invited him to the party.
“Margaret’s efforts to discourage people have failed,” Edward told Megan thankfully. “All the invitations have been readily accepted by everyone we chose to invite.”
“You’ll do well, Edward. I’m sure of it.”
“If I succeed, it’s down to you,” he smiled, his growing love for her showing in his eyes and the almost shy twist of his mouth.
“D’you know, Edward, you look a different person when you smile at me. You could be two people instead of one. Your formal, stiff-upper-lip, serious side is wiped away like magic with your wonderful smile. Two personalities, and –” she added, lightly kissing his cheek “– I like them both.”
“Then will you—”
She stopped the words with a finger. “After The Lump makes his appearance, we’ll talk. Not before.”
He looked at her. She was confident, brave and so beautiful. More so now, with that wonderful glow of pregnancy. And way out of his reach. He was fooling himself thinking otherwise. She and her twin Joan were very outspoken; they were famous for it. But he comforted himself that she at least felt something for him, enough to let him down lightly. The thought had a sweet melancholy.
To his relief, Annie and Leigh Grant had exchanged contracts on Montague Court. The sale had gone through without a hitch. Margaret hadn’t contacted him since they had signed away their home, but he heard from others that his sister, and Sian’s truant husband, Islwyn, were planning to buy a rather large house where they could boast a view of the sea. He felt content enough to wish them well, although he hadn’t invited them to the party.
“Perhaps you should,” Megan said when he remarked on it. “Now the arguments about whether or not to sell Montague Court are settled, there’s no point in you two behaving like pouting children any longer, is there?”
“Did I? Behave like a child?”
In reply she looked at him with her pretty head tilted and he acknowledged the accusation with a nod. He remembered the way he had thumped furniture about late at night and nodded ruefully. “I’ll write and invite her. Although, wait a minute! I can’t have Islwyn there as a guest with his estranged wife doing the catering, can I? Confrontation with both sides armed with sticky buns. It doesn’t bear thinking about!”
“Yes, I’d forgotten about my delinquent Uncle Islwyn. Perhaps it’s better to leave it and say the invitation must have been lost in the post,” she laughed.
The day before the party, when everything was set and only the food was to come, Edward invited Megan to go to the pictures.
“Thank you Edward, but I don’t think I will.”
“Are you feeling ill? Is everything all right with The Lump?” he asked anxiously.
“He’s behaving impeccably, kicking to remind me he’s there, but nothing more than that.” He put out a hand and waited until the baby moved and his gentle face softened with pleasure.
“Do you think he’d like to go for a stroll instead?”
“A stroll would be wonderful.”
As the day had been rather dull, the pleasure beach wasn’t crowded; just a few strolling couples and two or three families carrying an assortment of bags and beach games, making their way back from their picnic and day out.
They walked along the promenade, before stepping down onto the warm golden sands to follow the edge of the tide, hand in hand. They hardly spoke, content in each other’s company and their own thoughts. Although, if they had discussed them they would have realised how close their thoughts were, both going through last minute details of the shop’s grand opening on the following day.
When they got into the car to drive home, Megan noticed a sizeable parcel on the back seat. “What’s that, something for tomorrow?” she asked.
“Silver light-fittings for the windows and stronger light bulbs for the flat and the basement,” Edward told her. “I’ll fix them tonight. The ones there at present are too weak. We need to make everything look as bright and cheerful as possible for the party, don’t we?”
“Can we drop them off at the shop now?”
“It’s late and you should be getting to bed. The Lump needs his sleep.”
“You have remembered that we’re calling at Grandmother’s early tomorrow to collect the cot and all the bedding she and Grandfather have bought for me? We’ll need the space in the car.”
“Perhaps we should take them now then. It won’t take long.”
He parked outside the shop, told Megan to stay in the car and unlocked the door. There was a strange sound and he paused as he pushed the shop door open.
“What is it?” Megan demanded.
“Stay there. I can hear something down in the basement.”
“I’m coming with you.”
From her tone he guessed it was useless to argue but he made her walk behind him as, putting on the shop lights, he went towards the basement stairs. In a steady stream, beginning halfway down, water from a hosepipe was making a waterfall of the new, polished wooden stairs.
Below, they could see that a couple of chairs were over turned, the tables had been piled up in a corner and were bare of their decorations. Balloons cheerfully filled a corner and a glass bowl, still containing a few sweets, floated like some jau
nty little nursery rhyme boat. The floor was completely awash and the tableclothes which Mrs Collins had made and put in place were moving sluggishly in the flood.
“What on earth has happened?” Edward gasped.
“At a guess, I’d say Margaret has ‘happened’,” Megan said angrily. “The furniture hasn’t been moved like that by the water. Someone has deliberately pushed things about to make as much mess as possible, wouldn’t you say?”
Edward couldn’t take his eyes off the disaster scene that had once been a room prepared for a party.
“Now, Edward,” Megan said, in a cold, calm voice. “Are you going to stare at it all night? Or will you go and shut off the tap?”
* * *
After driving Megan home Edward went back to the ruins of his opening party. He threw all the furniture outside and piled the once pristine tablecloths, stained with the crepe paper table centres, into a galvanised bucket for Mrs Collins to wash.
By the time he had brushed the worst of the flood outside, dried the floor and wiped down the furniture, it was after four o’clock. Too late to go back to Montague Court, where, anyway, his bed would probably be covered with furniture once again.
He had no clothes into which he could change and he was very chilled, so he went up to the room that would soon be his bedroom, turned on an electric fire with fingers crossed that the water hadn’t touched any of the cables, and tried to sleep.
If Margaret was responsible for this, why was she still so angry? Selling up had been inevitable; in spite of her protests she had known that. It should have happened years before and would have if their father hadn’t been so determined to let their mother finish her days there. Edward drifted off into sleep thinking that if it weren’t for Megan, he would probably have been weak enough to allow Margaret to talk him round. She was so strong and she would have battled until he had given in and agreed to stay and work at making Montague Court into a viable business. It would have failed, he was sure of that, and they would have ended up penniless. Megan had been his salvation. He smiled as dreams took over and Megan’s face swam into view. He was so glad he hadn’t given in to Margaret. Megan was equally strong, but with her decisions were discussed, shared. And besides, with Megan, life was much more exciting.
* * *
The party was cancelled. Edward gave Gwyn Bevan a pound to go around on his bicycle and tell those people he couldn’t reach by telephone. He went to see Dora and Sian himself.
“What d’you expect us to do with all the food we’ve prepared?” Dora demanded.
“Whatever you wish,” Edward said sadly. “I’ll pay for it, of course, but if you can think of anyone who would like it, well, I’ll leave it to you.”
Sian and Dora exchanged glances. In chorus they said, “The Griffithses!”
Hywel and Janet greeted the news with excitement. “A ready made party?” Janet said. “No problem for us, eh, Hywel?”
No invitations were written. There was never any need for the formalities. The television was moved into the shed, logs for the fire were brought in, and logs to be used as extra seating appeared from under the stairs. Caroline unwrapped the plates she and Barry had been given as wedding presents and had never used. Caroline’s nearly three-year-old son, Joseph-Hywel, was promised a ‘late pass’ by his uncles, Ernie and Frank, and Hywel had a bath.
In the inexplicably speedy way of such things, everyone who should be told was told, and by lunchtime, the talk through the small town was of the ‘do’ that night in the small cottage on the edge of town.
“I think I might go,” Megan said when she went to see Edward later that day. “Will you be there?”
“At the Griffiths’? You surely aren’t going to spend the evening in that awful hovel, are you?”
“I most certainly am! It won’t be the first time, and don’t get on your high horse, Edward. They’re really rather good fun!” Edward went on with his task of washing down the stair case and didn’t reply. Even for Megan, one of the famous Weston Girls, for whom the outrageous was to be expected, he still thought visiting the Griffithses socially was a bit much.
At five o’clock that afternoon, Edward went back to Montague Court. It no longer looked like his home. Furniture had been moved or was missing altogether. The walls were sadly marked with the paleness and staining where pictures and furniture had been moved after many years in the same place. The carpets showed indentations filled with dust where heavy cupboards had once stood, and there were several dark stains, their origins long forgotten.
He decided not to mention the flooded basement. Better not to know for certain that it had been Margaret’s doing. He forced himself to speak normally when Margaret appeared.
“Annie and Leigh Grant will have a difficult task getting ready for reopening, won’t they?” he said to Margaret.
“They had a bargain, thanks to you. You don’t expect me to clean it for them as well, do you?” she snapped.
He didn’t bother to reply, overcome by a feeling of isolation. As the day of departure drew near he had bouts of sadness and Margaret’s attitude was an added reminder that with the end of their life at Montague Court, he no longer had a family.
Margaret was so bitter he doubted whether they would ever overcome their differences.
As he began checking the lists of items he and Margaret had decided to keep and started planning their removal, Margaret and Islwyn came through from an adjoining room, staggering under the weight of a grandfather clock.
“Where were you last night?” Islwyn asked. “My niece keeping you from your bed? Or are you keeping her from hers, eh?”
“Neither! And I suggest you keep your filthy thoughts to yourself!”
“What time did you come in, Edward?” Margaret asked.
“I didn’t! I was trying to clear up the mess in the shop.”
“Mess? What mess?”
Again, Edward didn’t bother to answer.
He went back to the shop that evening, imagining the food prepared for his party being eaten by the enthusiastic Griffithses. Electric fires were burning and gradually drying the basement, giving the building an eerie glow. He shivered. The place was still strange to him and he wondered how he would settle once he had moved out of his former home.
Megan didn’t come and he was at a loss to know why it upset him so. They had become so close, discussing everything, learning to understand each other. He had come to expect her to be there all the time, not to go off to a party he’d said he didn’t want to attend.
They had been surprisingly open with each other during the short time they had become friends. He had been embarrassed at first by the way she spoke of personal affairs, but her free acceptance of the weaknesses of both herself and other people gradually made him deal with life with the same honesty and understanding.
He had told her how he had injured his leg while in Egypt, and his disappointment at not becoming a good enough tennis player and how his family had insisted he abandoned his secondary plan to open a sports shop, and concentrate on the family business instead.
He spoke about his fiancee who had rejected him when he returned from Egypt and his suspicions that his family had discouraged Rachel for reasons of their own. He even admitted that for a while he was fascinated by a young woman called Maisie Vasey, who came to live in Pendragon Island, caused chaos, and then moved away.
Megan talked openly about running away from home and her brief sojourn in London with Terrence, Edward’s wayward cousin – the father of the child she was expecting. She spoke of her attitude to Terrence and to the baby she carried.
They were the closest of friends, so why had she gone to the party without him? Was he expecting too much? Was he dreaming when he imagined she cared? Of course he was, he told himself angrily. I should be counting the hours she spends with me, savouring them, storing them to remember when we have said our goodbyes.
In his heart Edward hoped for a happy ending, but in his head he knew it was impossible. Sh
e was too remarkable a woman to settle for someone as dull as he was. She was simply using him to fill in the time until her child was born, that’s all. Be grateful, he told himself. Be grateful.
The evening was going to drag, he knew it. He wasn’t hungry and he was too lethargic to do any more cleaning but he didn’t want to go back to Montague Court. There was nothing there for him and he wished he’d finished moving into the flat so he could begin his new life. The fires burning warmed the air and made him drowsy and he sat on the top of the basement steps, leaned against the wall and wondered whether Megan was enjoying the party.
* * *
For Megan, sitting next to Hywel and Janet’s daughter Caroline, the talk was of babies. She was uncomfortable, squeezed up to make room for the growing number of people still arriving in a steady stream. Her sister Joan came in with Viv and seeing the expression on Megan’s face guessed, wrongly, that it was due to thoughts about the baby.
“Don’t worry, Megan,” she said, having peremptorily moved Caroline out of her place to sit beside her sister. “It’s only a few more weeks and they’ll soon pass.”
“It isn’t the baby,” Megan assured her. “I just don’t feel in the mood for a party.” She didn’t explain that the usual Griffiths’ fun was not enough to make her forget Edward all alone in the shop.
“Come on, admit you’re depressed and worried about the birth pains; I would be. You’ll be fine once he’s born. Thank goodness we aren’t the kind of twins who suffer for each other,” Joan added with feeling. “I think I’d hate him long before he’s born.”
Janet showed her a coat she was knitting and Hywel and Barry promised to make him his first push-along truck. She thanked them all, asked Basil to go to the kiosk and ring for a taxi and left before what Hywel called the first round – when everyone relaxed and left behind their inhibitions – was over.
A Shop in the High Street Page 11