“I wish we could help,” she sighed. “But even with our Ernie gone, there’s still your sister. Why she can’t live with Barry and act like a married woman should, I don’t know. But there isn’t room for the four of you, even if she and little Joseph-Hywel moved out.”
She promised to ask all her friends and tried to reassure him. “There’s a place waiting for you, and you’ll find it when the time is right. I’m sure of it, son.”
“I wish I could believe you,” he said as he raised his long skinny form from the chair and set off back home.
Janet wished she believed it too.
* * *
The following day, Mair had arranged to meet Frank to go for a walk. She had suggested taking a picnic and had bought bread and an assortment of sandwich fillings plus fruit and a chocolate cake. Frank brought the makings for tea, piling kettle and pot and china into the old hamper the Griffithses had used for years. Janet had added a few pasties and Mair remarked that they had enough to survive for several days.
“You don’t know Frank like I do!” Janet replied.
Mair was pleased: a sunny day and plenty of good food. She wanted it to be special. Today, she had decided, she would have to tell Frank about the baby. Any longer and it would be too late, the gossips would tell him first and she didn’t want that. She was already changing shape and having to loosen her belt, although only three of the nine months had gone. Several friends had looked at her with suspicion and some glee, the promise of some gossip clearly anticipated with the usual pleasure.
Frank had borrowed the van and they drove to a small bay and carried their food to sit among the rocks, just out of reach of the incoming tide, the line of flotsam and jetsam a guide. She set out the food, while Frank built a fire and set the kettle he had brought to boil.
“Frank, I have something to tell you,” she began as the kettle began to hum cheerfully. Frank’s face drooped. She was going to tell him goodbye, tell him there was someone else. He turned his soulful eyes on her and waited to hear the dreaded words. “I’m going to have a baby. Our baby, Frank. I went to the doctor on Friday and he confirmed it.”
The expression on his face underwent a transformation, the lugubrious heavy-eyed look opened out and he stared at her like a child opening a present on Christmas morning. “And we’ll get married?” he said.
“You don’t have to,” she said, lowering her gaze dejectedly. “Not if you don’t want to.”
“Want to? Of course I want to! When shall we tell Mam and Dad? And your father of course. Oh heck, he won’t be well pleased, will he, you marrying a Griffiths?”
“I don’t care what he thinks, as long as you’re happy,” she said.
Awkwardly he hugged her and slowly they kissed.
“He’ll be beautiful,” he said a look of such rapture on his face that Mair wanted to cry. “He won’t be long and skinny like me, will he? I want him to be like you.”
“Short and fat, you mean?” she laughed, breathless with the excitement emanating from him. For a moment, his joy had made her forget the true situation.
“No, no. Cuddly, dark-haired and – oh, Mair, he’ll be perfect!” Then his eyes opened wider still. “Mair, what if it’s a girl? Mam’s got grandsons and a girl would be just perfect.” He went to hug her again but held back. “Daft isn’t it, being shy, after all that we’ve been up to, but that’s how I feel. Shy and a little in awe of you,” Frank said. “We’ll be Mam and Dad. Oh, Mair, I can’t believe my luck.”
“Nor me, Frank. Nor me.”
After the picnic, of which Mair ate little and Frank demolished much with great enthusiasm, they drove home. “Come over tonight, and we’ll celebrate proper. Dad’s working from ten o’clock,” she said as they parted.
“It won’t harm – I mean—” he said shyly.
“Everything will be fine, Frank.”
He wondered in his slow way, why PC Gregory was so frequently on the night shift. He decided it was a good time to find out. Tonight he’d follow him and see whether he went to report for work or had found somewhere else to spend his nights. If there was something suspicious going on, it might be useful to know. It might stop Gregory from playing the irate father when Mair told him her news, and stop him killing me, Frank thought grimly.
When he told Mair that he wouldn’t see her that night, she was upset. She didn’t show it, she just smiled and said, “Tomorrow then?” and went in with the remnants of the picnic, turning at the door to give him a rather sad wave.
He was going to change his mind! He would talk to his parents and they would persuade him against marrying her. Desperation overcame her as she prepared supper for her father and packed his snack box. As soon as she had seen him off on his bicycle, in his uniform, presumably not coming back until the following morning, she grabbed a jacket, locked the door and set off in the same direction. She would have to try again to talk to Carl.
* * *
Only minutes before she left the house, Frank had moved out of the trees and followed her father. Constable Gregory didn’t ride fast on his ancient sit-up-and-beg style vehicle. He just sailed along, with his headlight piercing the darkness like a nervously held sword, making it easy for Frank to keep up with him. As the lane twisted and turned, Frank slipped through the fields and trees and waited for him at the next bend. It was soon quite clear that the man was not going to the police station. So where was he going? Frank’s heart swelled with hope as the bicycle turned away from the town and into the small road where several houses had been turned into bedsits and flats. He was going to discover something useful that might save his life.
Constable Gregory propped his bike against a hedge and Frank watched as he slipped through the hedge and tapped gently on a french window. Heavy curtains moved aside. It opened, and Gregory went inside. It was obviously a regular arrangement.
Counting the gates, he went to the front of the houses and counted along again until he was certain which one Mair’s father had entered. He made a mental note of the number and decided he could make some enquiries the following day. The postman and the newsagent were usually happy to talk. Once he knew who lived there, he could start working out why Constable Gregory called there so regularly, although it was almost certainly a woman. “Dirty old devil!” he said aloud. “Just let him say a word to me and I’ll have ’im.”
He heard footsteps then and he pushed himself deep into the hedge and lowered his head so his pale face wouldn’t be seen. Someone was going to call at the same house but this time at the front door. How many more called here at night? It had to be a woman, but what was going on?
Hardly daring to breathe, he stood perfectly still as the footsteps approached. Not a man this time, but a woman, he realised as they drew closer. Then the gate opened and a figure stepped so close to him he could have touched her. She knocked at the front door and waited.
After a second knock the door opened, a light switch clicked and a weak bulb bleached the night air. In the dim light he saw to his dismay, that the man answering the knock was Carl Rees and the woman who pleaded to be allowed in, was Mair.
Chapter Nine
Frank saw Carl Rees open the door wider and invite Mair in. Watching her take the single step that took her inside and out of his reach was as painful as anything he had ever experienced. In just a few seconds he had lost everything. Before she had turned up and knocked on Cad’s door, he had been full of excitement at the thought of marriage to Mair, a child, a home where he could look after them both. Now it was all gone. He had never felt more like crying. His shoulders drooped and his face took on the lugubrious expression so useful in the days when he had walked beside funeral processions and led the mourners.
What could he do? Facing Mair again was going to be difficult. Would she carry on as though this secretive visit to Carl hadn’t happened? And if she did, should he do the same? That would be the easiest thing to do: carry on, make arrangements for them to marry. But if he did that, all the time he would be
watching her, waiting for her to leave him and go to Carl. It was Carl she loved and if Carl proposed, she would accept and tell him – poor, dull Frank Griffiths – ‘sorry, and goodbye’.
He didn’t leave the shelter of the hedge. He wasn’t sure why, but at the back of his mind was the certainty that whatever was happening inside the house, Carl couldn’t be relied on to make sure Mair got safely home. There had been no explanation yet, of why some weeks ago she had been attacked and, besides, Carl wasn’t the caring kind.
It seemed hours but in fact it was only ten minutes before the door reopened and Mair’s huddled figure came out. The door closed behind her before she had left the step. Frank didn’t reveal his presence but waited until she had passed him before starting to follow her. It was late, after eleven, and quite dark. She had a hood over her head as she bent forward and began to run. By simply lengthening his stride, Frank had no difficulty in keeping up with her.
At the telephone box she hesitated as though considering making a call and he waited. She went inside, dialled and then replaced the receiver. Running now, along the dark lane, a barely concealed shadow, he heard a low wailing and realised with deep sadness that she was crying.
When she was safely inside the lonely cottage at the edge of the wood, he stood for a long time watching, guessing her movements and remembering with heart-wrenching unhappiness, the room where she slept, which he had sometimes shared over the past weeks. If Carl had agreed to marry her, would she have passed the baby off as his? That thought increased his wretchedness.
Seeing the light go on in her bedroom he turned away and went home to seek comfort from the warmth and friendliness of the goats. There was no point in trying to sleep. As dawn broke he was back in the woods, armed with a shotgun and an empty sack. Patiently waiting at the edge of a field where rabbits regularly fed, he watched until a group of three grazed close together. His shot killed two and dazed the third, which he quickly dispatched. He put them in his sack and slowly walked home. He was preoccupied with his cruel disappointment, and made no attempt at evasion as he passed close to Farmer Booker’s farmhouse. He wasn’t surprised or particularly disappointed when Farmer Booker appeared and demanded he open his sack.
“The police have been informed,” Booker told him, and Frank didn’t argue. “See you in court, then?” was all he said.
An appearance in court, well, it wasn’t exactly excitement, but it would remind him that life goes on, even with a broken heart. He was in this maudlin state of mind, a lovelorn, simple man undeserving of the cruelty of the fates, when he suddenly remembered Mair’s father. It was the constable whom he had set out to follow, and he had gone into the same house as Mair. What was going on?
* * *
Mair lay on her bed all that night, switching the light on, then off, trying to read then throwing the book from her, unable to sleep, wondering if she had lost Frank. It was so unexpected for him to say he couldn’t see her and not explain why. Perhaps he had talked things over with his parents and they had guessed that the child wasn’t his. Yet how could he? There hadn’t been time. No, any change of heart had been Frank’s. Memories of her late-night pleading with Carl returned: the humiliation of being turned away; the long, lonely walk back through the lane, her distress numbing her fear; her aborted telephone call to her father, knowing she didn’t want to talk about it to anyone, certainly not to him. As on other occasions, she wished her mother had lived, or that she had a sister with whom to share such moments.
She rose at six and made a cup of tea. Dad would be in soon, perhaps she’d have the fire lit for him. Even in June the house needed the comfort of a fire for at least part of the day, shaded from the sun as it was, by the thickness and height of the surrounding trees.
Frank saw her stepping outside in her dressing gown, to collect coals and some sticks. He wanted to go and take the heavy bucket from her, offer to get the fire going while she made them a cup of tea, but he didn’t. She didn’t want him, he reminded himself. It was Carl she loved and for a while she had thought he, dopey Frank Griffiths, would be an acceptable second best.
Unaware of his nearness, Mair wiped away persistent tears and wondered if she dare go and visit the Griffithses and try and talk to Frank. All she would lose was pride, and Carl had taken most of that from her anyway. If only she could stop crying.
* * *
At seven o’clock, Dora was up, dressed and out in the warm, misty garden.
Lewis called from the bedroom window, “Dora? What’s the matter, I haven’t overslept, have I?”
“No, I was just measuring up the garden. Which way should we extend the lawn d’you think? Somewhere that gets the best of the sun. The swing can go further down, near the lane. What d’you think?”
“I think you’ve gone mad! Wait, I’m coming down.” He reappeared a few moments later, with a dressing gown flapping around his pyjamas, his hair still a little tousled, his fine dark eyes wearing a slight frown. Very handsome. Dora sighed as she watched him approach.
His film-star looks had made him attractive to women of all ages – his looks and his charm. Lewis had frequently found their adoration impossible to resist and his affairs had caused Dora many distressing moments. She promised herself that now they were together again she would live with it, and not accuse him of infidelity if something happened to make her suspicious. Nia Martin had been her greatest threat and now she was dead, she believed the worst of the danger had passed.
“I love you in the mornings, Lewis,” she said softly, and the slight irritation faded from his face and he hugged her.
“I’m glad, Dora Lewis. Very glad. But,” he added, “I still want to know what you think we’re doing, setting up the garden for children. Rhiannon and Charlie and Gwyn will provide all their baby’s needs, it isn’t for us to do.”
“I know love, but ‘Heshe’ will spend a lot of time here. We’ve got a better, bigger garden for one thing, they only have an ol’ yard.”
“All right. What d’you want to do?”
“Make a bigger lawn.”
“It’s the wrong time for seed.”
“Turf,” she said. “I’ve already made enquiries and it isn’t very expensive. And a swing.”
“A swing. For a baby who isn’t born yet.”
“Ready for when it’s needed.” She didn’t tell him of her other plan. Lewis had to be coaxed. If she came straight out with it now, he’d say no. There was time to persuade him, plant the idea at the same time as they planted the new lawn. That way he’d be half convinced that the idea was his, a sure way to make certain that when the question was raised, he’d say yes. She made tea and toast and they sat outside, discussing the position of lawn and swing and even a sandpit, before they went in to dress.
* * *
Rhiannon was already in Temptations talking to Barry, when Dora dashed past hurrying to catch her bus. She waved to her mother and said to Barry, “Always in a hurry, our Mam. She does so much before she goes to work you’d never believe.” She was smiling as she turned back to Barry and the discussion about when Rhiannon would leave work and prepare for her baby.
“How do you feel?” Barry asked. “Will you be able to work a few more weeks?”
“I’ve got more than two months to wait, if I stopped now I’d be bored silly in a week!”
“Caroline said you were complaining of backache, is it better now?”
“I feel fine. If I could stay on until August, then the last few weeks would fly.”
“So we need to start looking for your replacement in about a month.”
“If I hear of anyone, I’ll let you or Caroline know.” She coloured up and then said, “Barry, I’m sorry. I’m looking at this from my point of view. You and Caroline might prefer me to go now, and not work here until I’m waddling around like a duck.”
“Stay as long as you can, that’s what Caroline and I want.” He smiled. “You’ll be hard to replace.”
A routine visit to the doctor a few
days later changed Rhiannon’s mind. The doctor recommended that she spend an hour or two each day resting with her feet up. The work at Temptations meant standing for long hours and she had to admit that there were days when she felt very tired. She said nothing to Barry, giving herself another couple of weeks before making up her mind to leave. Her successful, problem-free pregnancy had restored her confidence and she no longer worried so much about losing the child. She told Charlie, but played the doctor’s advice down a little, only saying she should consider stopping work sooner that she had intended.
“How soon is ‘soon’?” he asked anxiously.
“How long is a piece of string? I’ll give it two more weeks then tell Barry to look for someone else. Right?”
* * *
Jennie met Carl one day, quite near the shop she had once rented. He walked her past it swiftly. She thought he was being kind and not allowing her to mope over the loss of her business. As they crossed the road, he asked her about the sale of the house.
“It’s going through and I have to get out in a couple of weeks,” she replied.
“You have somewhere to live? Or are you going to live with Peter’s parents?” he asked.
“Not a chance! No, I haven’t found anywhere yet. I haven’t treated the problem as urgently as I should, it hasn’t seemed real somehow. I suppose I didn’t really think our marriage would end so – so – casually. I’ll have to do something soon, though, or I’ll be sleeping on the beach beside the dreaded seaside rock shop!” she laughed.
“You know Sally Fowler-Weston, don’t you?” Carl said. “She has paying guests. It might be an idea for you to take a room there, at least until you decide what you’re going to do. Better than rushing into something you might not like.”
“I hadn’t thought of that. Meals provided too, it does sound tempting.”
Sophie Street Page 19