Money was on her father’s mind that night. He had missed a couple of shifts that week and he knew Annie would demand her usual housekeeping. He had nothing in his pocket, not a penny. When Eirlys had gone to bed, he asked Annie for the loan of ten shillings.
‘Where do you think I can find a spare ten shillings?’ she asked. ‘If you didn’t get to work too late to start your shift you wouldn’t be broke all the time. I have to work and I manage to get there on time, so why can’t you?’
‘I hate the job, that’s why,’ he muttered.
‘Pity you let the business fail then, isn’t it!’ she snapped.
‘But I can’t go a week without any cash at all,’ he pleaded.
Annie went on in her usual way, reminding him about how he had failed her and Eirlys by not looking after the successful business his father had left him.
Upstairs, Eirlys covered her ears with her hands. When the argument went on and Annie’s voice grew louder she ran downstairs and begged them to be quiet before they woke the boys.
Annie eventually gave Morgan a half-a-crown coin – two shillings and sixpence. He stared at it in the palm of his hand until she went upstairs, then he took another one from her purse.
He needed money. How was he going to get some without working extra shifts in that damned factory?
* * *
Johnny worked well beside Max most evenings when he wasn’t needed to help out at Bleddyn’s fish-and-chip shop. They soon had their stage sets worked out and, with Max drawing the scenes in outline, and Johnny and several others filling them in with paint, they had all the scene changes they needed, and stored them in a garage behind one of the shops. Lighting was the province of Johnny’s cousin, Ronnie, helped by Morgan.
With a week to go and only final rehearsals of the acts to worry about, Max felt content.
‘Will the invitations be for the evacuees only?’ Johnny asked him one evening when they had closed the door of the local hall on another evening’s work.
‘I think we’ll have room for a few more. In fact, I was intending to go to the school to ask the teachers if there are any children who would benefit from a night out.’
‘There’s Hannah, who made the curtains,’ Johnny suggested. ‘She has two girls, Josie, four, and little Marie who’s three. There’s no father and I don’t think they get many treats.’
‘I think that’s an excellent choice. Thank you for telling me, Johnny. Will you invite the girls when you next see them?’
Johnny excused himself from walking Eirlys back to Conroy Street and called on Hannah on the way home.
As usual, the sewing machine was in use, with pretty pink-and-white material under the foot, the needle poised for Hannah to continue.
‘Don’t you ever rest?’ he asked as she propped the door open and invited him in.
‘I’m lucky to have this much work,’ she smiled. ‘This dress is one of five I’ve promised for the end of the week. They’re for children who are to sing at Max’s concert. Aren’t they pretty?’ She held one up for him to admire.
Josie and Marie were still up, looking at a book, sitting beside the fire in their nightdresses.
‘I’m good at reading stories,’ he offered and Josie handed him the book. Trying to ignore the open door, he settled beside them and began to read, accompanied by the sound of the treadle machine as Hannah continued with her work. He gradually ignored the words in the book and instead invented a story using the characters in the pictures. Josie frowned and looked at the page as though searching for the part of the story he had found, but soon they were both sitting enthralled as he wove tales about beautiful princesses and magical animals and tables that only needed a tap to produce the most wonderful food.
Reluctantly, he stood to go when Hannah said it was time for bed. He waited while Hannah attended to the nightly routine and settled the girls in their bed in the next room.
‘It’s about the concert I’ve called,’ he explained when she returned and settled once more into her seat. ‘Max would like you to take Josie and Marie.’
‘Oh, they’d love it. But isn’t it for the evacuees?’
‘More a practice run for Max,’ he grinned. ‘There are some spare places. A dozen or so of the London children have gone home and we don’t want the entertainers to perform to a half-empty room, do we?’
‘Thank you,’ she smiled.
‘Don’t thank me, thank Maxie Moon.’
‘I think the invitation comes from you, and I appreciate it,’ she insisted.
Johnny ran home with her voice ringing in his head and a happy feeling around his heart.
* * *
When Eirlys had completed a small woollen pink and blue rug of which she felt reasonably proud, she went to see Hannah and gave it to her for putting beside the girls’ bed. ‘It’s a practice piece to see how well the wool works,’ she explained. ‘I made a smaller hairpin shape of wire, of course. The tufts are smaller and the pattern easier to plan.’
‘But I can’t accept this!’ Hannah held up the neatly patterned rug, which was pink squares on a mid-blue background. ‘You’ve already given me one.’
‘Why ever not? If it wasn’t for you I’d never have tried.’
‘Nonsense. You and Johnny are more than generous to my girls.’
‘Johnny?’
‘He called yesterday and told me that Josie and Marie are going to the concert. There are a few spare seats, he said, but I know he arranged it as a treat for them.’
‘Oh, the concert. Yes, he knew you’d be pleased,’ Eirlys said, although it was the first she had heard about the idea.
‘He loves children, doesn’t he? He plays so well with my two, and he reads to them like a professional actor. I can see he’ll make a wonderful father one day.’
A twist of jealousy went through Eirlys and she didn’t stay for the proffered cup of tea. Johnny seemed to be seeing rather a lot of Hannah, and, she decided, it was her own fault. She had begun to take him for granted.
She stood for a moment outside the door to allow her eyes to become accustomed to the darkness, and to allow her painful thoughts to settle.
Morgan was walking past when she moved away from Hannah’s door. He recognised his daughter’s voice as she and Hannah called their goodnights, and darted into an alleyway between two houses, before crossing a garden into the next road. One good thing about this blackout, it meant you could take short-cuts over gardens without being seen.
He stopped when he came to the house of Bleddyn and Irene and melted into the shadows.
Eirlys set off home, but for some reason she was edgy. It was only half past nine, and on that Friday evening there was a slight remnant of a moon and the night was crisp and clear. Yet there was an eeriness about the streets lit only by moonlight, and with no lights to mark the pavements. Deep shadows in doorways, beside trees and in the entrances to lanes and alleyways gave a sensation of emptiness that was unnerving. Her footsteps echoed in the silence and it sounded as though someone was following her. She hurried, anxious to get inside and warm herself at the fire. She wished she had asked Johnny to go with her. Voices and laughter would have driven away her foolish imaginings.
Her anxieties were not all that foolish, she reminded herself. The blackout had caused numerous accidents and she didn’t want to be a victim of a fall from unmarked kerbstones or a knock from a bicycle gliding almost soundlessly past, or trip over an unseen cat, as someone had done the previous week, resulting in a broken leg.
She remembered that it was one of the nights for the ARP meetings and decided, impulsively, to go and wait for her father. The place where they met, a small stockroom in the school, wasn’t far and it was better than allowing her fears to build up and make her afraid of the familiar streets. If she allowed that to happen she would be a virtual prisoner, as many already were, afraid to go out once darkness fell.
Like every other building in the town, the room in the school building was in darkness. Blackout restric
tions were strongly upheld and no chink of light was allowed to be seen. She felt her way through the school gates and walked warily across the yard. In the wan moonlight she could make out the walls of the building and made her way to the main door. She pushed but it was locked.
She called but there was no reply. Perhaps they used another entrance.
She made her way back along the wall and screamed when a voice close to her said, ‘What are you doing here, miss?’
Even in the weird light she recognised the unmistakable outline of the warden with his blinkered torch and his helmet.
‘It’s me, Eirlys Price. I was hoping to catch my father and walk home with him,’ she explained.
‘No one here, miss. There isn’t anything here on Fridays.’
‘I thought the ARP—’
‘Not Fridays,’ he said firmly, and she began to smile. Mam was right, he used the ARP as an excuse to meet his friends. He was probably in the pub!
‘I’ll walk you to the end of the road, miss. Conroy Street won’t be far then.’
She thanked him and was grateful for the chatter that drove away the emptiness of the dark night.
In Brook Lane, Irene stepped out of the empty house. Bleddyn was working at Piper’s fish-and-chip shop, and Taff no longer lived at home since he and Evelyn were now married. Johnny hadn’t been home since morning.
A shadow separated as Morgan stepped away from the fence and reformed as she melted into his arms.
* * *
Teresa Love, the boys’ mother, wrote more frequently for a while after their visit. She wrote separate letters to Annie too, and in these she usually asked for money. Once it was the gas bill. Being unable to settle it would mean she had no heating and no way of cooking food.
As Annie had seen no sign of anything to suggest she ever cooked, she wasn’t too concerned. Percival’s famous chip shop was only a few houses away, she thought wryly. She had sent five shillings on an earlier occasion and two shillings on another, but this time Teresa had asked for ten shillings to pay the rent, stating that unless the money was found she would be out on the street in less than a week.
Annie put the letter away in her drawer, wondering whether Teresa was telling the truth. She had told Annie she worked in a shop where the wage was likely to be low, but from what she had surmised during her short visit, Teresa depended on men friends to feed her and the expenses of that tiny, drab room could hardly be crippling. She didn’t dress like a struggling mother either. And those fancy sheets told her plenty!
She said nothing to the boys but discussed it with Morgan and Eirlys when the boys were in bed.
‘I don’t think she can be that desperate,’ Annie said. ‘She hasn’t got the boys to feed and there’s only the rent and heat for that one little room.’
‘You’ve seen it, we haven’t,’ Morgan said. ‘You know better than us if she’s telling the truth.’
‘I don’t think for a moment that she can’t find the rent. So I think I’ll write back and tell her I haven’t any money to spare. What with us feeding her sons an’ all, she’s got a real cheek, hasn’t she, to ask for money as well? Besides,’ she couldn’t help adding, ‘we aren’t rich. You hardly earn enough to keep us in plenty, do you?’
Morgan looked away. Annie never missed an opportunity to remind him.
Eirlys looked thoughtful. ‘What if it is true? What if she’s got herself into debt and she really is threatened with eviction? How would we feel if we were told she had been thrown out on to the streets because she hasn’t enough to pay the rent?’
Upstairs, clinging to the banisters and leaning as low as he could to catch every word, Stanley’s heart was racing. He was shivering from his chilly eavesdropping as he got back into bed, but it was nothing to the chill in his heart. His sleep was disturbed by frightening dreams, seeing his mother lying ill and neglected on a pavement, while Annie walked past her uncaring, and the snow slowly covered her lovely face. He had to do something. He was eleven now, and head of the family. There was no one else to help her. It was up to him. The promise to Auntie Annie didn’t count any more, not with Ma in need of help. He needed money and he needed it fast, and there was only one way to get it.
Harold and Percival picked up on his concerns and when he explained about the lack of rent money, they began to feel afraid.
‘If she sleeps on the pavement, will she end up stiff like that dead cat we found once?’ Percival asked in a trembling voice.
‘Don’t be daft, our Percival! I look after you, don’t I? Ma sleep on the pavement? Course not! Got friends up there, ain’t she? One of them’ll ’elp until I can get her some cash. An’ I will, I promise yer.
Not a word to Auntie Annie or Uncle Morgan, though. They mightn’t understand.’
* * *
Morgan and Irene spent many moments together in the various places they had discovered during the past months. As the increasingly cold weather made spending time out of doors less and less appealing, they began to use the caravan for most of their illicit meetings.
Irene still used her depression, from which she genuinely suffered, as an excuse for her wanderings. Since very early in their married life Bleddyn had been aware that his wife suffered from ‘nerves’ and twice she had threatened to take her own life. Because of this he didn’t interfere when she spent days living apart from them in a world of her own. He looked after the house as well as he could and made sure their sons didn’t suffer neglect. He had no way of knowing that several of these periods of ‘depression’ coincided with a brief love affair, although that special glow in her eyes when she came home straight from a lover should have told him.
For Irene the affairs had never before been important, just a way of adding a little spice to her boring days. This one, with Morgan Price, was different. She wanted him to leave Annie and take her away from St David’s Well so they could start a new life together. So far she had failed to persuade him. He treated her suggestions as part of a game they played, a ‘let’s pretend’ game of which they were very fond.
If only something would happen to change the game into reality, to make him understand that a fresh start was possible.
Then her prayers were answered.
They met one day when Morgan came off the morning shift and walked deep into the bleak countryside to meet her at ‘their’ caravan. Morgan lit a fire in the tiny grate and they lay on the bed and pretended.
‘This is a beautifully furnished room, isn’t it darling? So spacious and with such wonderful views of the garden.’
‘I love the smooth bedspread, such a rich green satin, and the eiderdown is so warm.’
They played the foolish game for a while, pretending they couldn’t smell the damp rising from the cushions or hear the wind on the windows, or the tin-kettle sound of rain on the roof.
‘Why don’t we make it all come true, Morgan?’ Irene whispered. ‘We’ve only one life and why should we spend it in misery? Annie expects too much of you; Eirlys is grown up, earning a good wage and doesn’t need you to stay. I’m stuck in that house all alone, while Bleddyn is so tied up in routine I know what he’s doing every moment of every day. I feel I’ll go mad with the boredom of it all.’
‘We’d be so happy, wouldn’t we, Irene darling. Just you and me with no one else to think about.’
‘Just us, and maybe later our children.’
‘If only we could. We’d be so happy.’
‘Then why not do it? Take ourselves off and start a new life?’
‘We’d need money. I’d have to make sure we had enough to see us through until I found a job. A job I enjoyed, not that damned factory.’
‘I’d work too, Morgan. I’d work if it meant being with you, even though I wouldn’t help Bleddyn and that Molly Piper. She expected me to work on the sands every summer once we married. Who did she think I was, to expect me to do what I was told by the likes of her! Bleddyn, Huw, Marged and Moll, they all tried to persuade me it was my duty to help the fam
ily business. I soon put them right on that. But I’d get a job if you were with me, Morgan, love.’
‘First we need some money, a lot of money,’ Morgan said, but to him it was still fantasy, still the unattainable vision of sitting in a beautifully furnished room in a beautiful house in dream country. Irene was extending the game they often played; she didn’t really mean they would abandon their families and walk off together into the sunset. He wouldn’t know where to start.
Irene put a hand against her stomach and imagined the tiny speck of a thing that was hers and Morgan’s child, and smiled contentedly. ‘One day soon everything will be perfect, Morgan, love.’
‘Just perfect,’ he agreed.
* * *
Johnny found himself searching for excuses to call on Hannah. With the decorating in Granny Moll’s house completed, he now worked as general dogsbody in a shop selling linoleum, hardware, kitchenware and tools. Boring jobs: tidying up, cutting customer’s requirements and delivering goods in the firm’s van.
There were no leftovers in this business to offer her. No more apples. The invitation to take the girls to the concert seemed to be the last excuse. Then he thought, Why do I need an excuse? Eirlys is busy at the hall, I could just stop by and ask if I can read to the children, take a few sweets. A friend would do that, surely?
Hannah answered the door to him and invited him in, making sure as always to prop open the front door with its protecting porch and heavy curtains.
‘No one can see in,’ he whispered, ‘so what’s the point of letting the icy cold wind into the room?’
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