Past Remembering

by Catrin Collier

  ‘Be sure to give my regards to Andy the next time you write, Bethan,’ Anthea instructed as she followed her mother out of the French windows and across the lawn.

  ‘I will,’ Bethan agreed hollowly as she took the baby from her mother-in-law, who wanted to see her guests out. By the time she returned, Rachel had thawed enough to sit on her grandfather’s knee.

  ‘I do wish you’d bring the children up here one or two days a week, dear.’ Andrew’s mother rang the bell for the maid to clear the tea things. ‘We hardly see them. It would help you as you’re so busy, and we would get to know our own grandchildren.’

  ‘They’re a lot of work at this age,’ Bethan warned.

  ‘Don’t I know it. There’s barely fifteen months between Andrew and Fiona, and they were little monkeys.’

  ‘That was a long time ago,’ her husband reminded her.

  ‘It isn’t as though I haven’t any help. If they got too much for me, the maid could take them.’

  Bethan thought of her father’s cosy back kitchen where Phyllis allowed the housework to pile up while she played with Rachel and her own small son, Brian, contrasting it with Andrew’s mother’s neat sterile kitchen that was geared for the maid’s convenience, not children’s.

  ‘I can manage, really, but if I ever need help, you’ll be the first I’ll call on. I’m sorry, I have to go. My father is coming up tonight. Charlie and Alma have been spending his leave with me, and I thought it might be fun to have a family get-together.’

  ‘You really do seem to be doing far too much, dear. You look exhausted.’

  ‘I’m fine, just missing Andrew.’

  ‘As I’m sure he’s missing you.’ Mrs John put her hand on Bethan’s arm and looked down at baby Eddie.

  ‘Just remember if there is anything …’

  ‘You could try praying for the war to end so Andrew can come home.’

  ‘I think we’re all doing enough of that already. The problem is, no one up there seems to be listening. They must be all out on tea-break,’ her father-in-law observed irreverently as he reached for the brandy bottle.

  Diana climbed the Graig hill to Laura’s house in Graig Street swinging a brown paper and string carrier bag in each hand. One held meat, the other cooked savouries from the shop Alma and Wyn had opened at the bottom of the hill. Even with the café supplies to fall back on, she suspected that Ronnie’s sudden arrival without ration cards had put a strain on Tina’s housekeeping, and as the food in the bags hadn’t been earmarked for anyone, no one would miss what she’d taken except Wyn and Alma when they counted up their profits at the end of the month. She knew, since she’d taken over the books when Alma’s mother had fallen ill, that the shop could easily withstand the small gift.

  She nodded to Mrs Richards who was heading into town, and walked on determinedly, pretending not to see her signalling to her to stop. She was enjoying her solitude far too much to indulge her old neighbour’s fondness for tittle-tattle. After a morning spent helping Wyn interview Vera Collins’s sister, Harriet, and checking and banking the takings in Alma’s shops as well as Wyn’s, before the three o’clock bank closing, and then putting her weekly order into Jenny’s shop and sitting with Alma’s mother to give the relief nurse time to pick up her own rations, she felt she’d earned half an hour’s peace. Usually the only thing she had to look forward to that wasn’t work, was bathing Billy at the end of the day, and Wyn and her mother’s company, but tonight was going to be different. Tonight there was Bethan’s party. An occasion she was looking forward to with mixed feelings, because every gathering emphasised the empty chairs. William’s, Haydn’s, Eddie’s, Andrew’s – she knew she should be grateful that she had Wyn. Or did she?

  Her marriage had given her material comfort, but not the security she craved. She couldn’t help wondering how long the quiet, safe world she and Wyn had built for themselves and Billy could last. Wyn’s mention of Erik and his determination to work with him in the munitions factory had continued to prey on her mind, feeding an ominous sense of impending disaster. Their marriage had been built on a web of lies, not to each other, but to everyone connected with them, making her feel like a conspirator – a criminal who was about to be caught and punished. But where and how – the workhouse?

  She shivered as she passed the high grey walls, superstitiously crossing the road to escape their shadow. Instead of dwelling on all the things that could go wrong, she tried to concentrate on all the things that were right: like the complete honesty that marked her relationship with Wyn, and the pleasure Billy’s arrival had given both of them. She and Wyn had made such plans. Opening a bank account in Billy’s name, an embryonic nest egg, so that unlike her and her brother, William, he would be able to stay on in grammar school until matriculation. Wyn had already decided he was so bright, intelligent and forward for his age he was bound to pass the entrance examination. During one rash flight of fancy, Wyn had even mentioned college and university. She imagined Billy grown up, passing through college gates, something tall and imposing like the ones she’d seen in Goodbye Mr Chips. A dark, attractive, young man – everyone complimented her on him inheriting her colouring, but then they didn’t know the truth.

  She turned left, crossing a triangular patch of grass to the pavement outside Laura’s house. She turned the key and stepped inside, walking straight down the stone-flagged passage into the kitchen.

  ‘I’m sorry, I thought you’d be at the café,’ she apologised, as she crashed into Ronnie’s outstretched legs.

  ‘I wasn’t expecting anyone.’ He looked as though he’d been sleeping. His black hair was ruffled, his eyes heavy, the dark shadows beneath them more prominent than when she had last seen him in the restaurant. It was obvious he hadn’t expected to be disturbed. When he’d lived in Pontypridd she had never seen him in anything less formal than a jacket, collar and tie; now he was in shirt-sleeves and braces, his collar hanging loose from one stud. He shifted the stool he’d rested his feet on so she could edge her way around him. ‘But seeing as how you’re here, you can make me a cup of tea.’

  ‘You haven’t changed a bit, but I warn you now, everyone else around here has.’

  ‘So I’ve noticed. The women aren’t anywhere near as obliging as when I left.’

  ‘If by that you mean we can’t be bullied into waiting hand and foot on you men any more, we can’t spare the time.’ She opened the door to the pantry and unpacked the food she had brought. When she’d finished she returned to the kitchen, lifted the kettle from the range, and went into the washhouse to fill it.

  ‘You don’t have to make tea,’ he murmured, half apologising. ‘I’m so used to teasing my sisters, I can’t get out of the habit.’

  ‘It’s all right, you’re no different from William.’ She picked up the hooked metal bar that opened the hotplate, and put the kettle on to boil.

  ‘I’m not so helpless that I can’t make tea for myself, so don’t feel that you have to stay on my account. I know it probably upsets you to see me without Maud.’

  ‘No it doesn’t,’ she answered thoughtfully. ‘Because you married so quickly I have very few memories of you together.’

  ‘I suppose it was a rush wedding.’ He drifted into the comforting world of memory. It was easy to slip into the past in this house. His wedding breakfast had been held in the front parlour and, because of the confines of space, virtually every other room. He and Maud had sat here together. If only he could reach out and tear down the curtain of time they could be together again …

  ‘Do you want anything to eat? I brought up a couple of pasties.’

  Jerked back to the present, he struggled to regain his composure. ‘Half a pasty might be nice. My appetite isn’t up to Pontypridd standards yet.’

  ‘I was hoping to catch you alone some time.’ She lifted down cups, saucers and a plate from the dresser.

  ‘It was good of Tina and Gina to organise that get together, but I was tired, and there were just too many people there.
’

  ‘Have you thought what you’re going to do with yourself now?’

  ‘The munitions factory is desperate enough to take me on once my injuries have healed.’

  ‘Tina said you’d been shot.’

  ‘The Germans like to use non-Aryans for target practice.’ Something in his voice warned her not to trespass further.

  ‘As it looks like you’ve done more than your fair share towards the war effort, perhaps you should forget munitions and take things easy for a while, and then later on, when you’re up to it, you could go back to running the cafés?’

  ‘You might think that’s a good idea. I’m not too sure Tina and Gina would agree with you.’

  ‘They surprised everyone when they took over. Both of them have worked incredibly hard.’

  ‘You don’t have to tell me. I know exactly how much graft is involved in running a café.’

  She leaned across him to reach the teapot, giving a small start as she glanced down and noticed his slippers.

  ‘I’m sorry, these are Eddie’s.’

  ‘I know. I should have expected it. Jenny told me she’d given his clothes to you. Both of us thought it was a good idea. Far better than lying mothballed in a wardrobe.’

  ‘I know he was more like a brother to you than a cousin.’

  ‘Just as Maud was more like a sister. We shared the same room when we worked in the Infirmary and I helped to look after her when we came home after she’d been taken ill, but we can’t go pussyfooting around their memories for the rest of our lives, Ronnie. Both of them would have hated the idea. They were real people, not saints to have their names whispered in reverence by the living.’

  ‘In the case of Eddie, a very real person.’

  ‘Uncle Evan used to dread the sight of my Uncle Huw in his police uniform. I wanted to see you to tell you that we all know how much you did for Maud. Did you know that we used to write to one another every week before the war broke out? Her letters were full of your life together. You made her so happy …’

  ‘Diana, please.’

  ‘I’m sorry. I’m being selfish. It’s just that ever since you told us she was dead, I’ve felt this need to talk about her. It must be painful for you, almost like reliving her death again for our benefit.’

  ‘It’s not that.’ He covered his mouth with his hand, but his eyes were anguished, full of pain and something else, something she couldn’t quite decipher.

  ‘Ronnie, what is it?’

  ‘You – Bethan – Evan – Pontypridd.’

  ‘I’m sorry …’

  ‘For Christ’s sake stop apologising. Don’t you understand that I can’t take any more of this “you saved Maud’s life by taking her to Italy”, “she had happy years she never would have had if you hadn’t married her”. If I don’t tell someone what really happened I’ll go mad.’

  ‘But … but … the tuberculosis returned,’ she stammered in bewilderment. ‘You said as much, and Andrew and Trevor warned us that it might …’

  ‘Forget the tea, Diana. Sit down, and then I’ll tell you exactly how good a husband I was to Maud.’

  Chapter Seven

  ‘To think of an old married couple like us getting carried away like that,’ Alma murmured as she straightened her clothes.

  ‘Must be the sun.’ Charlie lay back, locked his hands beneath his head and stared up at the wispy clouds drifting above the trees. ‘There were times when I thought last winter was never going to end.’

  ‘It was a hard winter where you were?’

  ‘Freezing,’ he replied shortly. Reaching out he picked a long stem of grass and pushed it into his mouth. Below them the stream frothed and gurgled into the top end of Shoni’s pond. Dragonflies hovered low over the water. The croaking of a frog joined in with the birdsong. He felt contented and at peace with himself, Alma, and the world, for the first time since he had come home. But it couldn’t last. This evening there would be other people; afterwards just one final night together. The talking that had to be done had to be done now, or not at all. And he still had to make amends for the harsh things he had said when he had arrived.

  ‘This High Street shop of yours, it’s doing well?’

  ‘It averages ten pounds a week clear profit after all the overheads have been accounted for,’ she said proudly.

  ‘That much?’

  ‘Of course it’s split between us and Wyn and Diana.’

  ‘If you too can increase production enough to supply more shops, perhaps you should go ahead and open up in Treforest as well as Rhydyfelin. If they show a profit, you could use our savings to give you the capital you’ll need to open more. There’s Cilfynydd, Ynysybwl and the valleys. Cardiff even, if you feel like venturing that far.’

  ‘You trust me with your savings?’

  ‘Our savings. If you can trade successfully during wartime with all the restrictions imposed by rationing, you’ll do even better in peacetime.’

  ‘And if the Germans invade?’

  ‘Not even the Nazis can shut a country down. Look at France. The people there still have to buy food.’

  ‘You were the one who thought I had enough to do with running one shop.’

  ‘You seem to have a good partner in Wyn.’

  ‘It’s not Wyn who has the business head. It’s Diana.’

  ‘Diana? But she has a baby.’

  ‘Having a baby doesn’t affect a woman’s brain. She was the one who did all the costings and kept an eye on the stock for the first couple of months the shop opened, but if you think we mere females can handle it, we’ll expand.’

  He sat up and looked at her. His heart skipped a beat just as it had the first time he had gazed into her sea-green eyes. It wasn’t just the after-effects of separation or the uncertainty of war. He knew he would feel this way about her until the day he died. ‘I’m beginning to think you can handle anything you want, Mrs Raschenko.’

  ‘The only thing I want to handle right now is you, Feodor,’ she addressed him by his Russian name before returning his kiss.

  There were many things that needed to be resolved between them, but time was so short, so precious, she felt they couldn’t afford to waste a single minute – not in talk.

  The clock ticked like a metronome into the stillness of Laura’s kitchen. Ronnie filched a packet of cigarettes from the pocket of his shirt. It was empty. Before he could reach for his jacket and the packet he had bought in Jenny’s shop, Diana opened her handbag and offered him one of hers.

  ‘Since when have you smoked?’

  ‘Since the retreat from France.’ She leaned forward and lit her cigarette on the match he struck.

  ‘Poor Eddie.’

  ‘From what William said, it was quick. He never knew what hit him. As Uncle Evan said, there are worse ways to die.’ She looked into his troubled eyes, willing him to start telling her about Maud, but he continued to sit, white-faced, shivering, staring into the fire. A barely recognisable shell of the handsome, cynical Ronnie Ronconi who had swept Maud off to Italy before the war.

  Summoning all her patience she forced herself to remain still and wait for him to begin. It wasn’t easy. Like Bethan, Tina, Alma and all the women she knew, since war had been declared she lived out her days in an escalating sense of urgency, trying to cram more and more into every minute. Sometimes she felt as though she was chained to a treadmill that she had to keep turning at all costs, because if she stopped, she’d have time to think about what she was doing and then she might fall apart.

  Her son – the single most important being in her world – spent more of his waking hours with her mother than he did with her. Anything extra like this time with Ronnie ate into the precious minutes she set aside for him.

  ‘When the war broke out and Italy remained neutral we seemed to have no other option but to lie low and sit it out,’ he began hesitantly. ‘Apart from worrying about everyone here, I can’t pretend I was devastated at the thought of not being able to do more. Maud had always come fi
rst with me, and what was happening in Britain and the rest of Europe seemed remote from our life on my grandfather’s farm. Then, when Mussolini ordered the registration and call-up of all men of military age, Maud and I left my grandfather’s house. I was damned if I was going to fight for the Fascists and there was no way I was going to leave her. And, Maud was British,’ his mouth twisted wryly. ‘In Fascist Italy she was the enemy alien. So, rather than wait for the government officials to come and get me and intern her, we went up into the hills.’

  ‘You joined the Resistance?’

  ‘That’s a rather grand name for a rag-tag collection of men and women whose only thought was to get out of the war and into some peace and quiet. Don’t forget Mussolini didn’t even declare war on the Allies until after Dunkirk, and by then Maud had been dead for seven months.’ He drew heavily on his cigarette as he continued to stare into the fire. ‘After the depression Wales was in bad shape, Italy even worse. Do you know Mussolini’s soldiers were marched barefoot into Greece? The Italian army has no money for boots, let alone guns. The country’s bankrupt. Everything is in short supply – food, clothes, money. Government troops could at least live off the land because there were enough of them to terrorise the farmers into handing over what little they’d hidden to feed their families. Anti-Fascists like us simply starved. That winter of ‘39 was damned cold, and we had to keep moving to stay one step ahead of the police and the army. We took refuge in caves and shepherds’ huts, and when there were none, we made shelters out of turf and whatever wood was to hand. At night a few of us would go down into the valleys to scavenge for food. Sometimes we struck lucky, sometimes we stole. I’m not proud of it, there wasn’t enough for the peasants, they couldn’t really spare any for us, but no matter how bad things were, Maud never complained, not once. All the time I thought I was being so damned careful, but as it turned out I wasn’t careful enough. I got Maud pregnant.’

  ‘She told me in her letters that she wanted your child.’