Holidays at Home Omnibus
Page 6
Huw shouted insults at his brother, telling everyone jocularly that Bleddyn must have been a by-blow or had been changed at birth because he was taller and heavier than the rest.
‘Or better fed!’ Moll added.
Johnny was slightly uneasy at the happy expression on Eirlys’s face and as soon as the camera gave its loud click, he hurried away.
The party was held in the home of Granny Moll in Sidney Street as her house was the largest. Irene didn’t seem to mind that her son’s wedding party was held in someone else’s house rather than her own. ‘It’s less work for me,’ she said honestly, ‘and if everyone else wanted it, why should I complain?’ She disappeared a short while after the crowd arrived and apart from Bleddyn, who searched for her to drink a toast to the young couple as they set off for their honeymoon in Weston-Super-Mare, and Johnny, who wanted her to talk to Eirlys while he looked for Hannah, no one missed her.
Stanley, Harold and Percival had sat in a row at the wedding breakfast and were plied with food. Percival hid his under the chair but the others enjoyed the fancy food, the like of which they had never before seen.
When Bleddyn came and talked to them, he asked them about their home.
‘It ain’t nothing like this,’ Stanley said. ‘We got two rooms for the four of us and the lavvy’s in the yard.’
‘What about your father? Doesn’t he make five?’
‘Nah. He ’opped it years ago,’ Harold told him flippantly. ‘Good riddance too, Mum says, don’t she Stanley?’
‘I want to go home,’ Percival muttered.
‘Go on with yer, it’s all right with Auntie Annie and Uncle Morgan. And Johnny’s going to show us how to make a treehouse next Saturday.’
In a convoy of cars they had moved to Granny Moll’s house and continued the party there, with the numbers increasing as friends and neighbours came to join in. Marged’s sister Audrey had left the wedding breakfast early with her friend Wilf Thomas, and they had already prepared trays of glasses and set out food ready for the second half of the celebration.
Taff and Evelyn didn’t stay long. They had arranged to take a train at seven.
Seeing the couple off by taxi to the station meant everyone was out on the pavement. Up and down Sidney Street, doors opened and neighbours crowded out on to doorsteps, adding to the cheers and good wishes. Bleddyn looked for his wife but Irene was not among the crowd of well-wishers. Her son was going on honeymoon and she wasn’t there to see him off. Irritation flared and died. She was ill, he told himself, and couldn’t be blamed. He just hoped that Taff hadn’t noticed or would understand if he had.
Finding Eirlys with Annie and the three boys sitting in a corner, while Johnny began to play records on the gramophone, Moll sat near them. ‘I just hope Taff will be able to make that young girl understand that she’s now part of the Piper family,’ she said. ‘She can’t refuse to help on the beach next summer, not with the boys having to register for the armed forces. The family will have to stick together more than ever now. Piper’s will need every pair of hands.’
So filled with the happiness of the day, Eirlys was on the point of offering to help on her days off, but she stopped herself in time. How embarrassing to be so forward. She would have to wait to be invited. She wondered if Moll was leading up to do just that, when Marged and Huw and their son Ronnie heard what had been said and came nearer.
‘Oh, Granny Moll,’ sighed Ronnie. ‘Give the girl a chance. Married five minutes and here you are, complaining about how she’ll be next summer. Besides, we don’t want to think about the war, not today.’
‘Why not? It won’t go away because we pretend it isn’t happening. The boys will have to go, but the business carries on as usual. Evelyn must realise that.’
‘Olive doesn’t help, Granny Moll, we manage without her; perhaps Evelyn feels the same.’
‘I know she likes what she does,’ Eirlys dared to say. ‘She’s an inspector on a factory bench, isn’t she?’
‘I know full well what she does, and I also know that checking up on someone else’s work isn’t more important than working on the sands.’
For a moment Eirlys felt sympathy for Evelyn. Marrying Taff meant belonging to the family. And the head of the family, Granny Moll, was unlikely to allow her to forget it. Yet she was so anxious to impress, to make Moll look at her as a useful member of the family if she and Johnny became close, she swallowed her brief compassion, smiled at Mrs Moll Piper and said sweetly, ‘I agree, Mrs Piper. Piper’s is more than a business, isn’t it? It’ll be helping to win the war by keeping up morale. I’ve read about how important entertainment was in the last war in keeping up morale. I’m sure Evelyn will see it too, as soon as she calms down from the excitement of her wedding day.’
‘Yes, I must give her time, mustn’t I?’ She looked thoughtfully at Eirlys’s bright face and smiled. ‘You understand about Piper’s, don’t you Eirlys?’
‘Oh yes, I understand fully the importance of Piper’s,’ she replied as enthusiasm and the need to please blotted out common sense. She could give up her job and – She looked for Johnny, wanting, needing to tell him that she would accept what belonging to the Pipers really meant, and that she would willingly give up her job at the council offices to become a part of it. Then she felt colour suffuse her cheeks. What was she thinking of? Apart from a few kisses, Johnny hadn’t given the slightest hint that he thought about her in that way. Acting as though he had already proposed? She must be crazy! She had let today’s celebration, the romantic occasion, go to her head. But the dream warmed her for the rest of the day. At least she had Granny Moll on her side and that was a start.
* * *
Johnny found Hannah raising the fronts of the skirts of Josie and Marie’s dresses a little, with the aid of a couple of kilt pins attached to ribbon bows, to allow the little girls to run around more freely.
‘Is there anything they need?’ he asked. ‘They’ve been so good today. If there’s anything they want they only have to ask.’ He was bending from the waist and looking at the girls as he spoke. A shyness prevented him looking at their mother, a shyness which confused him.
‘Go and smack that boy over there,’ Josie said haughtily. ‘He’s been calling me names.’
Without looking, Johnny guessed that Harold was the culprit.
Hannah laughed, a pleasant musical sound, and Johnny was caught by the humour and joined in. ‘I think we’ll forgive him today, as he’s new, shall we?’ he said.
He walked Eirlys home with a sensation of doing a duty instead of it being a pleasure.
Eirlys lay on her bed for a long time without sleeping, wondering what had gone wrong. She went over all the conversations of the day. It was only during the one with Granny Molly Piper that she had presumed too much. Perhaps Granny Moll had repeated it and passed that presumption on to Johnny. Dismay filled her and she knew embarrassment would spoil her next meeting with Johnny.
* * *
On the morning after the wedding, Johnny’s first thought was of Hannah and her merry laugh. He lay there in the bedroom he had shared with Taff all his life, and wondered why.
* * *
Eirlys waited for Johnny to call the following morning, a Sunday. She had promised the boys a walk through the fields to search for a likely place to build a treehouse and she had hoped that Johnny would go with them. When eleven o’clock came and he hadn’t appeared she dressed the three musketeers, as they liked to be called, and set off.
Their route led them through the allotments where her father had once grown a few vegetables, though since the call to grow more food, urged on by leaflets issued by the Ministry of Food, more enthusiastic gardeners had clearly taken it over. Its neat, evenly dug surface was broken only where sprouts and a few leeks survived, all that remained of her father’s half-hearted efforts.
On through the lanes until they came to the field where more vegetation had been cleared. The field belonged to Mr Gregory, the owner of a small holding of
a few acres, who was increasing the crops he grew. As well as vegetables and a few flowers, he had ducks on the pond and chickens in the large hen-coops and wire runs. He was a well known figure, as he ran donkeys on the beach during the summer with his son, Peter, who was now away from home in the army.
Eirlys was strolling along enjoying the pleasant walk when she was startled by a yell of fright from Harold.
‘What the ’ell’s that!’ he shouted, and after the initial shock, Eirlys saw to her amusement that the boys had been frightened by the sight of a cow walking along the lane, followed by the rest of the herd, returning from the fields to the milking parlour for milking.
‘Surely you know what a cow looks like,’ she teased.
‘No one told us they was that big!’ Harold said in awe.
Eirlys explained their usefulness in providing milk, butter and cheese and, after studying the creature with disapproval on his face, Percival announced that he wouldn’t touch another drop of milk till he was home where it came in bottles.
The oak tree at the furthest end of a sloping field was the site Eirlys had chosen but she knew that without Johnny or her father helping, she would be unable to do what she had promised.
There was a stone building in one corner of the field and as they approached, the boys running about and shouting in delight at the wide spaces where they were allowed to roam, she saw someone leaving the place and, for a moment, thought it was her father. But it couldn’t have been him. Why would he be out here when he should be at home?
Curiously she began to head for the place to investigate but once the boys realised which tree would be ‘theirs’ there was no holding them back. As though they had been climbing trees all their lives they clambered up into the ancient branches and for a while played happily as the tree became a house, then a mountain, then a ship.
When they had decided on the position of their house, Eirlys led them back to the corner where the stone barn stood. She was just about to enter when a voice called and she turned to see her father waving to her.
‘Didn’t I see you coming out of this old stone barn?’ she asked. He shook his head.
‘No fear, love. Mud, rubbish and rats is all you’ll find in there.’ He waved an arm to encompass the whole field and went on, ‘There used to be a rubbish dump in this field. Crawling with rats it is. Best you keep right away.’
‘I will,’ she said with a shudder.
‘What’s this about a treehouse then?’ he asked the boys. He listened to their plans and instructions and told them that he had found just the thing. ‘But a lot closer to home than this,’ he said, frowning at his daughter. ‘We need to be able to get hold of you quick if the air raid siren goes, don’t we?’
‘Sorry, Dad, I didn’t think. I remember there was one here years ago and thought we might use the same spot.’
By evening Morgan had the base of the treehouse made. When darkness came the work continued as he used his skill of splicing thick rope to make the all-important ladder. The boys went to bed contented, but Eirlys was disappointed that Johnny hadn’t called. Everything had been so wonderful until the day of the wedding, so what had happened overnight to change it?
* * *
Johnny didn’t go out that day. Several people had referred to Eirlys as his girlfriend and his denials were treated as a joke. Then Granny Moll cornered him and told him how pleased she was that Eirlys realised the importance of Piper’s and would be more than willing to take her place if she married into the family.
‘But Granny Moll, I’m not marrying her. Friends we are.’
The knowledgable look that appeared on Moll’s face as she said slowly, ‘We’ll see,’ terrified him.
How easily things could get out of hand. Taff had been right, it had been a mistake to invite Eirlys to the wedding. He needed to be very careful if he wanted to go on seeing her, and he did. There was no one he enjoyed being with more. But he wasn’t ready to commit himself to a permanent partnership with her. Her kisses pleased him but had so far failed to engender that special excitement he knew they should.
Just how much of his reticence was due to the sight of Hannah as she tended her little girls he wasn’t sure. But that was silly. Hannah was far too old for him, getting on for thirty. Yet in his imagination, when he felt his lips touch her soft, generous mouth it was a joy and a happiness, and he longed to make the dream a reality.
He decided that if he stayed away from Eirlys for a while, then casually invited her and the boys to go out for a walk, and avoided even the most casual of kisses, then things might return to how they had been. It was nice having a pretty girl on your arm. He enjoyed her company, but didn’t want things to develop an impetus of their own and take him along a way he didn’t want to go.
Three
Later that month, Morgan joined the local Air Raid Precaution group. Working shifts at the factory he was able to spend some time on most days helping to organise the rotas and deal with finding a place in which to meet and get the unit under way.
Because he had once owned his own business, the others presumed it was something he would do well, and it was. He wrote letters, persuaded the council to allow them to use a room in the school for their meetings, he acquired equipment and gathered information and set it out in leaflet form to distribute among the members of the organisation.
On being congratulated, he sighed and wished he had found it as easy to cope with running his own business. He had lacked the enthusiasm for the complicated store his father had left him; it had been too big and he felt he had failed because its success had been so essential for Annie and Eirlys. If he had been able to treat it as a hobby rather than a necessary full-time commitment, he might have managed better. It had been its importance that had made him fail, he was sure of that.
Annie didn’t mind his involvement in the air raid precaution group although she did doubt its usefulness. The war showed no sign of ever coming to St David’s Well; it was centred on France and how could that make their little seaside town vulnerable? She understood that the war effort needed everyone to do their bit, though, and she decided that looking after three evacuees between them was not enough.
‘Perhaps I’ll join too,’ she said to Morgan one day. ‘I can’t do any evening work with the boys to look after, but I could help with the training classes, once I have been trained myself.’
Morgan discouraged her. ‘Plenty of people at the moment,’ he told her. ‘It’s later, when the novelty wears off and the enthusiasm wavers, that people will probably stop bothering. That’s when we’ll need new recruits.’
Annie shrugged. She wasn’t very keen to give up more of her time; there was plenty to do now she had evacuees as well as the part-time work in the bakery.
She didn’t enjoy working in the shop. It was hard to forget that they had once owned a business and employed four people besides having help in the house. Reminded of it, she showed her irritability with Morgan and asked why he didn’t do more to help her instead of spending so much time with the ARP.
‘You let the allotment go and you never do the decorating that the house needs. I work all the hours the day holds and you just disappear and meet your friends.’
‘More than that, Annie,’ Morgan protested.
‘It isn’t even needed at the moment,’ she went on. ‘I think you men just use the meetings as an excuse to get out of the house and idle away a few hours.’
Aware that she was steamed up and ready to argue, Morgan said nothing, just waited for her to continue.
‘Years I’ve had to work at the bakery. Years of people talking to me as though I were their inferior. Ever since you lost the business your father left you. Comfortable we’d be now if you’d looked after it properly.’
‘I wasn’t made to run a business. I tried to tell Dad, you know I tried to persuade him to sell. But he was convinced that given the chance I’d do all right.’
‘Wrong he was then, wasn’t he?’
Morgan’s
father, Reginald Price, had owned a successful business fulfilling the various requirements of farmers and smallholders. Fencing, barbed wire, chicken wire and the like. Creosote and special paints. Sheep dip, harness soap and polishes, cart-grease, buckets. Everything he was asked for he somehow found room to stock.
Morgan had allowed the business to run down and down until it was sold as a property only, a property on which he had borrowed until there was nothing left. He had taken a year to pay off the remaining debts. He didn’t think Annie would ever forgive him.
He waited until Annie had finished listing her complaints, then told her he was going to work. It was early, but sitting chatting to the men was kinder on his ego than listening to her telling him how he had failed everyone, including his poor dead father.
* * *
On Sunday morning, leaving the three musketeers helping Annie to make a cake, Eirlys went to take a closer look at the barn where she thought she had seen her father. There was no real reason, it was simply an excuse for a walk, a destination to head for. On an autumn day when the sun shone weakly with a pretence of warmth, it was a pleasure to be out of doors.
Around the entrance, deeply rutted mud revealed the regular visit of cows and she almost turned back but she forced herself to ignore the mess creeping up the sides of her shoes and delicately made her way across to where she could look inside, although by this time with little hope of seeing anything of interest.
The door was partially open and she squeezed inside and stood a while waiting for her eyes to become accustomed to the poor light. There was nothing there but old, abandoned farm machinery. A broken-down tractor that looked as though it had been cannibalised to repair others stood drunkenly against the far wall and other, less easily recognisable pieces of metal were strewn carelessly around amid empty sacks, coils of baling twine, oddments of barbed wire rusted and decorated with dead leaves and rotting hay.