Eirlys blushed and Johnny looked uncomfortable.
A few enquiries were made around the area and most of the items were returned to puzzled owners. They hadn’t been missed.
‘Nor would they be, not till Christmas, and then we’d have been searching the house trying to remember where we’d put them,’ one old lady laughed as she claimed two pretty blue lustre fruit bowls.
‘I wonder who owns the caravan in the field next to the barn?’ Eirlys asked anxiously. ‘Someone there might have seen Stanley there and will tell the police.’
‘Oh, it’s a mess of a place, used now and then by a couple from Brecon when they want to do a bit of walking,’ Morgan explained. ‘Certainly never in winter. I met them once. Better than a tent, I suppose, but only just.’
The excitement and fears faded. Nothing more was heard about the robberies and the Price family were convinced that the Love boys, especially Stanley, had learned a powerful lesson.
Eirlys eventually went to a training session organised by the ARP but she was disappointed. The request regarding her driving lessons had been noted, but, it was explained, ‘We have to use the skills you can bring to us and yours, Miss Price, is the important skill of typing, making rotas, that sort of thing.’ She guessed her father was responsible. When Mr Johnston gave her a ten-shilling increase in her wages and told her she would be kept extra busy, she happily accepted and told the ARP officer that she no longer had the time to help.
Her next task at work was changing the offices around so a room could be cleared to hold the fire-watchers, who would be on duty every night once the air bombardments, which were already expected, had begun.
Moving furniture, placating staff who had to accept smaller accommodation or even share with a colleague wasn’t easy but the job was completed in a week. To be given a job to do and told to use her own initiative to do it was frightening at first, but immensely satisfying. She was hardly at home in the days following the ‘discovery’ of the stolen items. It was cold and misty and she wondered how Stanley and Harold and Percival were amusing themselves.
Morgan had made them a sled in readiness for the snow that would come after Christmas and possibly before. He had also promised them a bogie cart using a set of pram wheels and some planks of planed wood when the better weather returned.
Annie still complained about the amount of work they caused, rarely missing a chance to remind Morgan of the big house they had lost and the servant they had employed to enable her to work for various charities. Morgan seemed unaffected by her tirades and having Stanley, Harold and Percival clearly added joy to his life. He told Eirlys several times that he dreaded the day when they would go home.
* * *
Annie didn’t spend a lot of time talking to the evacuees. It had been Eirlys’s choice to take them in and it was her responsibility to look after them, she reminded her daughter when her help was requested at an inconvenient moment. But the distress on Stanley’s face when he had been threatened with separation from his brothers had upset her.
‘What do you think of my taking the boys up to London for the day to see their mother?’ she suggested one evening when the boys were settled in bed. ‘They have to stay with us, but if they think they can visit now and then, it might be easier for them.’
‘Or they might refuse to come back, or Mrs Love won’t let them! And where would that get them? Blown up and out of it. Is that what you want? Hitler might not have sent any bombs yet, but he will. And the IRA have planted a few, haven’t they? Some of them have been sent down, but there’ll be more. Take them back to London for a visit? Damn stupid idea, Annie!’ Morgan spoke with unusual anger. ‘If those boys go back home they’ll never come back and settle.’
‘You’d miss them, wouldn’t you, Dadda?’ Eirlys said.
‘Well, yes, I definitely would.’
‘What if I use it as a promise, then, for good behaviour?’ Annie said. ‘A bit cruel maybe, but I will take them, one day soon. There hasn’t been any bombing yet, or I wouldn’t suggest it. We should be safe enough. I don’t want to have my head blown off any more than theirs.’
Next morning she put the idea to the three boys. ‘Would you like me to take you back to your mam, just for a visit? You could all write her a letter asking her to find somewhere for me to stay. Then you can come back knowing she’s all right. Or if you prefer, she could come and stay with us for a night or two. How would that be, eh?’
‘I want to go home to see Mum,’ Percival said. ‘I eat when it’s chips from the chip shop, don’t I, our Stanley?’
‘Not yet,’ Annie warned, ‘but soon. Only as long as you behave yourselves, mind. Any stealing, either sweets or anything else and you won’t go, do you understand me, Stanley Love?’
‘Yes, Annie Price,’ he replied cheekily.
* * *
The postman was becoming increasingly important in the town of St David’s Well as elsewhere. Families waited for news of their sons and husbands and the Love brothers were no different. Teresa Love was not a great letter writer, but she managed to scribble a short message for her sons every other week. Eirlys made sure they wrote to her, Percival laboriously writing a brief message as a PS on the end of Stanley’s letter, with Stanley’s patient help.
One morning the postman brought two letters for the boys, the usual scribble and a reply to Annie’s suggestion that she take the boys to visit her.
This excited the boys and they whooped and cheered as they danced around the small kitchen until everyone was laughing. Plans were discussed, but Annie made sure they understood that no date had been fixed.
By the same post Eirlys heard from Ken Ward, who she learned had been turned down by the army but had found a job with the NAAFI, met someone called Max Moon and hoped to join a concert party travelling around entertaining the forces. Ken had a pleasant voice, she remembered, and also played the mandolin well.
She wrote straight back, friendly, affectionate, giving him impersonal news about the people he had known. She ended by wishing him luck.
She had no regrets about telling Ken goodbye, but hoped they would always be friends, wherever they ended up. His letter did unsettle her though. Everyone was doing something to support the war effort; there must be something she could do!
* * *
Annie was late leaving the bakery. She had been serving Hannah and had spent a while talking to her after locking the shop for lunchtime closing. She dashed into the house, handed Morgan his packed lunch, which she had bought in the shop, and saw him hurry off to work for the two o’clock shift. When he had left for work she settled to the sewing basket which was overflowing with the boys’ clothes, needing darning, replacement buttons and other repairs.
‘I would never believe how boys rip and dirty their clothes,’ she complained to Eirlys who was home for lunch that day. ‘I’ve heard people tell me how lucky we were to have a girl when you were born, and I didn’t know what they meant until now.’ She held up a pullover that had once been a carefully knitted Fair Isle design but which was now a tangle of pulled woollen threads with no recognisable pattern at all. ‘Climbing trees on the way home from school they were. This was given to me by Mrs Daniels last week. Almost new it was. I daren’t let her see it now!’
‘I was given a pile of wool yesterday, to knit things for the Christmas Bazaar in aid of soldiers’ comforts. There might be something suitable to repair it,’ Eirlys said without much hope.
‘I doubt it! We’ve been told to keep all our rags for some savings scheme or other – well, they can have this for a start-off,’ Annie said, throwing the offending article in the corner of the couch.
‘Why didn’t Dadda want me to go with him to the ARP meetings, d’you think?’ Eirlys asked.
‘Tell the truth, I think he and his cronies like a bit of an evening out without the women, and you’d cramp his style. They go for a drink after and he wouldn’t take you, would he?’
‘I’d still like to help, Mam, once
things at work have calmed down a bit. Everyone is doing something.’
‘Heavens, girl, you do plenty! All those extra hours of work and no overtime pay? What’s that if it isn’t helping the war effort?’
‘Will you have a word?’
‘I’ll try, but I don’t think he’ll be persuaded. You know what men are like, wanting to get together “off the leash” as they call it. Talk a lot of old nonsense and act the fool like a bunch of schoolboys they do. They’re all the same.’
Morgan didn’t go to the factory at two o’clock the next day. He drove a van on an errand for a friend, missing a shift, hoping Annie wouldn’t query the difference in his pay packet. When the van spluttered to a stop seven miles from St David’s Well he gave a groan. Now what could he do? He turned to the woman sitting beside him and after a brief conference and an affectionate kiss she left him and caught a bus back home.
Fortunately there was a phone box not far away and he telephoned his daughter at her office in greatly exaggerated panic.
‘Don’t tell your mam, she’ll kill me for missing a shift,’ he said. ‘Can you find your Johnny and ask him to help? Keep his tongue in check he will, for sure.’
Eirlys gave him Moll’s number as very few people had a telephone and Piper’s didn’t run to the expense of providing Bleddyn with one.
Eventually, after a second even more frantic call from Morgan, Eirlys used her lunch hour to go and find Johnny. He took the firm’s van and went to Morgan’s rescue, and, on seeing the ladies’ scarf fallen down between the seats, promised to say nothing about the incident.
He told Eirlys though. ‘Seems he was giving a lift to a lady waiting for a bus that had failed to arrive and he knows how suspicious your mam would be,’ he laughed. ‘Left her scarf she did or I’d never have known.’
‘You’re sure it was innocent?’ Eirlys asked. ‘It’s odd him losing a whole shift to do a favour for someone and then giving a lift to a mysterious woman.’
‘Some people seem to court trouble and it’s often good-natured people like your father,’ Johnny told her.
Thinking of Ken and his recent letter, Eirlys was reminded about how important it had been for her to stay at home where she could keep the peace between her parents.
* * *
Johnny went home and under promise of secrecy, told Bleddyn and a disinterested Irene something of Morgan’s problem.
‘What was he doing?’ Bleddyn asked.
‘Collecting some leaflets from Cardiff on how to deal with incendiary bombs was what he told me,’ Johnny replied, ‘I didn’t see any, mind!’
Irene walked away from the table and put on her coat with the fur collar.
‘You aren’t going out again?’ Bleddyn complained. ‘Only now this minute you’ve come in!’
‘If I don’t get some fresh air I can’t sleep,’ Irene replied.
‘Shall I come with you?’ ‘No, I’ll be all right.’
* * *
Irene kept well away from the field in which the barn stood. The police had hinted that they would be watching it in case the thief returned with more of his stolen goods. Instead, she went along the lane towards the next village, turned in through a farm gate and walked around the field, feeling her way in the darkness, wary of unseen branches, guessing how far she had come before crossing to come up against the caravan. Three knocks and the door was open and she slipped inside.
‘Hello love, it’s perishing cold. Isn’t there anywhere else we can meet?’
‘I’ve got the fire ready to light.’
‘Well done, love. Well done.’ Slipping off the wellingtons she kept hidden in the barn, she stepped inside.
* * *
Eirlys was walking out of the office a few days later when a tall, thin young man approached her.
‘Miss Price?’ he asked hesitantly. ‘Eirlys Price?’
‘That’s me,’ she replied pleasantly, amused at the height and the thinness of him and the sparseness of the red hair on his head. ‘You are… ?’
‘My name is Max. Max Moon and I’ve been sent to ask for your help. I am starting to arrange for children’s entertainment in the locality next summer and although it’s looking a long way ahead, we want to get a few programmes in place.’
The name rang bells but she couldn’t place it. Frowning, she said, ‘I’m sorry, there must be a mistake. I don’t know anything about children’s entertainment. I think you want to talk to the Pipers who work on the beach. They’ll know all about what’s available.’
Max Moon took a pad from a pocket and ran a pencil down a list of names. ‘Would that be Mrs Molly Piper and her family?’ he asked.
‘If you wait while I go and tell Mam I’ll be late, I can take you there,’ she offered. ‘I know them quite well.’
He thanked her and, bending slightly to talk to her and referring to his neatly written list, explained a little more of his plans.
‘With the war creating shortages of fuel, we are already starting to think about encouraging people to stay at home instead of going away for a holiday,’ he explained.
‘Going away for a holiday? Who does that? I’ve never been further than Cardiff!’ she laughed.
‘Well, you live in a town where people come for a break, so you know what I’m talking about and you can imagine the saving in travel costs if they all stayed home.’
‘I know a few families here who would go hungry too! We depend on holiday-makers and day-trippers,’ she said. ‘What d’you think will happen to this town if we discouraged visitors?’
‘It has been worked out that the local people would make up for the lack of visitors and there would be very little difference in the income of the town. Everyone would cater for their own local people, that’s all.’
‘Rubbish! We cater for our own people already.’
‘We need to keep the railways and roads free for the troops,’ he patiently explained.
Unconvinced, Eirlys led her new acquaintance, who insisted she called him Max, to have a brief word with her mother before they set off for Johnny’s house in Brook Lane.
‘What did you want from me?’ Eirlys asked curiously, as they reached the door of Johnny’s house. ‘The only time I’ve been involved with children is when I helped Mrs Francis with the evacuees.’
The door opened then and she left Max to explain the reason for his visit to Bleddyn.
Bleddyn invited them in but shook his head when asked for help. ‘Trouble is, we’re very busy in the season. Working from early morning to eleven at night sometimes, with the sands then the chip shop. I don’t think I’ll have time to help with extra entertainments. Now Eirlys knows a lot of people at the council offices and I’m sure she’ll put you in touch with a few willing and able people with a few hours to spare, eh, Eirlys?’
Max turned once again to Eirlys. ‘Seems I’ll need your help after all,’ he smiled.
Johnny was out so Eirlys didn’t stay. ‘I think you’d better come back to the house with me and see if I can think of a few likely names for you,’ she said to Max.
Talking about entertainers brought Ken Ward to her mind and the name Max Moon found its slot in Eirlys’s memory.
‘You’re a friend of Ken!’ she said in delight. ‘He wrote to me about you!’
After exchanging news and giving Max messages to pass on to Ken, they continued the walk back to Conroy Street like old friends.
Johnny was visiting Hannah. He had a box of apples which he planned to offer to Hannah for the girls. Carrying the box of fruit he manoeuvred his way around a new, shuttered porch, lifted a heavy curtain hanging outside the door and knocked.
She opened it, and seeing him, said, ‘Johnny? How nice. D’you have some sewing for me? How can I help?’
‘Not work this time, Hannah. I’ve brought a few apples for the girls. Some are cookers and some are eaters,’ he explained. ‘I know they like to take an apple to school. Given to me they were, a friend at the wholesaler had a lot left and as Piper’
s is such a good customer, what with the potatoes for the chip shop all the year and the beach café in the summer, he asked if I could find them a good home.’
‘Thank you.’ Hannah smiled her delight. ‘Will you come in?’
The door to the front room stood open and he could see into the over-crowded room. A sewing machine stood against the window with material spilling out of it across the couch beside it. Hannah was making curtains. He wondered how many of the night hours she spent earning a living for herself and her daughters.
He stepped backwards and pushed the front door shut behind him, but to his surprise Hannah moved around him, reopened it and propped it open. It was a chilly night, dank with unshed rain, mist wreathing the trees and hedges. Curious, he asked her why she didn’t close it and keep the warmth in.
‘One of Mam’s latest rules,’ she said, clearly embarrassed. ‘That’s why she had the porch and the double curtains fitted, to keep the light from showing. The door isn’t to be closed when I have a man caller. A lot of fuss, eh?’
‘Why? Do you have many callers?’ Johnny asked, disbelievingly amused.
‘Oh, the man delivering groceries. The man come to read the meter, a husband collecting some sewing for his wife, a friend bringing apples.’ She tried to smile but there was deep sadness in her lustrous eyes.
He put the box on the table and asked, ‘Are we all suspect, then?’
‘No, not the men, it’s me my mother doesn’t trust. Wicked and wanton I am, didn’t you know? I divorced my husband and that is something my parents will never forgive.’
Impulsively Johnny gave her a quick hug and said, ‘Never think you’re without a friend, Hannah. If there’s ever anything I can do you only have to ask.’
After he left, Hannah stood watching the movement of the curtain until it was still, separating her from him. She heard his footsteps crossing the road and daydreamed, imagining how sweet life could be.
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