Unaware that Irene’s body had been found, Morgan walked up and down the living room. It was four in the morning and he hadn’t slept. The air was painfully cold and most of the searchers had given up at three a.m. planning to begin again at dawn. Even the places they looked for her would have to be examined again, as, with the limited light from weakening torches, no one could be sure she hadn’t been there, tucked up small, hiding from them in her confusion.
Where was Irene? He dreaded her being found. This time she would have a reason to explain her black mood: his refusal to accept her child and go away with her. He had avoided her since her announcement. She was bound to tell Bleddyn, and Annie was certain to find out. Or, worse still, she would come here and tell Annie to her face about their affair. He had to save Annie from that humiliation. He had to tell Annie himself. At least then she would be able to prepare her response, salvage a little dignity. He owed her that.
He imagined Annie opening the door to Irene, inviting her in, smiling and welcoming, then listening as Irene told her about her affair with Annie’s husband, told her she was carrying his child. That would be cruel, and, coward as he undoubtedly was, he had to save Annie from that.
His thoughts drifted and returned to the shock of the note Irene had sent him. He had to see beyond the words. It had been a wanting that Irene would tell Annie and Eirlys if he didn’t agree to take her away. She wouldn’t kill herself as the note threatened, that was just a touch of drama, to frighten him into agreeing to go away with her.
He had kept the fire burning and the room was stifling. He opened the back door and to his surprise it was snowing. He imagined Irene lying somewhere, slowly, silently being covered by the beautiful but insidious and deadly flakes. Shivering more from the image than the temperature, he closed the door and leaned against it trying to blot out the fearful pictures his mind was creating. He had to find her, but where could he look? He searched his mind for clues but thought only of the caravan, their secret love nest. How pathetic that sounded now.
He went into the living room and lifted some ashes to liven the fire. It burned brightly in the frosty air. He still shivered. Would he ever feel warm again? Sticks snapped and blazed but he didn’t add coal; he needed the flames to take away the darkness in his heart. But he knew the brightness was a sham, just as his pretence of loving Irene had been. The fire burned itself out, became a heap of grey ash, and looked dead.
At five thirty a.m. he could wait no longer. He made a tray of tea and went up. He shook Annie, pulling her reluctantly from a deep sleep. ‘Annie, love. There’s something I have to tell you.’
He would never forget the way his words altered her sleep-rosy face. The way her eyes – reluctant to open – suddenly widened in disbelief. Her scream of anguish woke Eirlys who came running, presuming her mother had had a nightmare.
‘Nightmare? No, Eirlys, not a nightmare, this is real. Your father—’
Morgan stopped her by putting a hand across her mouth. ‘Think, woman. We don’t want our daughter to hear all this.’
He released his hand and Annie stared at him in silence.
‘Go back to your room, Eirlys, love. Your mam and I have something serious and very private to discuss.’
Puzzled and not a little worried, Eirlys did what she was told, getting back into bed and covering her ears with a pillow. It was yet another row and she didn’t want to hear, to try to take sides.
Ashen-faced, Annie stared at her husband. ‘I want to hear the full story,’ she said, her voice distorted by grief.
‘Irene Castle and I have been meeting secretly for months.’
‘Where?’ Annie demanded.
‘Sometimes at her house in Brook Lane, and we had a caravan where we used to spend some time.’
‘Go on.’
‘Now she says she’s going to have a baby and she wants me to leave you and I can’t. I don’t expect you to understand this, but I love you, Annie, and I haven’t the slightest excuse for the stupid way I’ve behaved.’
‘A baby? Irene was going to have a baby? Your baby? But she’s past forty. I was told it was too late for us when I was much younger than that.’
Both were momentarily distracted from the present, thinking back to the large family they had both wanted. Irene’s baby was the greatest agony of all. Neither of them knew what to say.
Then Annie pushed the tray angrily from the chair beside her bed and stared at it as it clattered to the floor. Morgan bent to pick up the shattered china but stopped. Picking up broken cups, clearing up the mess was too ordinary. They stared at each other in confusion. Both were stunned. This was something for which neither of them was prepared. If only he hadn’t had to tell her about the baby.
Annie’s mind flittered over all her friends and their families, aware than none of them had ever been involved in anything as sordid as this.
‘I’ll go and see Johnny and ask if there’s any news,’ he said, backing out of the room.
‘No you don’t! I’ll go!’ Annie announced, bouncing out from under the covers. ‘I want to see this Irene when they find her; I want to tell her she can have you as from now this minute. I never want to set eyes on you again. Ever!’ Turning to her husband she stared at him as though he were repulsive and said harshly, ‘Get out! I want you and your things out of this house before I get back.’
‘Don’t try to see her, Annie. You’ll be better off hanging on to your dignity and saying nothing.’
‘Give me the pleasure of telling her to her face what I think of her and her nonsense about depression! Depression indeed. Just an excuse to hang around waiting to meet her fancy man. Or men! It’s unlikely you’re the only one, so don’t kid yourself you’re so special! Or that you’re the father,’ she added bitterly.
‘I told her I wouldn’t leave you, that’s why she went off like she did,’ Morgan said.
‘Well, you were wrong! As always, I have to make the decisions in this house. You are leaving and you’re never coming back.’ She held back a sob as she added, ‘You and that tart and her child – who might or might not be yours – gone from this house you’ll be before I get back. Right?’
Morgan followed her downstairs, where Annie reached for a long mackintosh and wellington boots. ‘Annie, love, you can’t go out like that!’ he protested. ‘You have to get dressed.’
‘Why? The mood I’m in, how I dress isn’t important. Scragging that woman’s neck is!’
‘You’re in the position of strength here, you haven’t done anything wrong. Dress and put your make-up on, look smart and in control. That’s the way to best someone.’
Annie sagged as though all the strength had flowed out of her. ‘You’re right. For once in your miserable life! I’ll have a cup of tea, calm myself down, then I’ll dress and go and face her. She’s bound to be home by now. Stupid woman. Forty-five if she’s a day and having half the town chasing after her as though she was a runaway child!’
There was a knock at the door as she was filling the kettle and she opened it to Johnny. At once she felt a twisting pain. How could she face him, knowing her husband had been having an affair with his mother? She stepped back and invited him inside.
‘Mam’s dead,’ he whispered.
She gestured for him to go into the living room where fire glowed meanly amid grey wood ash. Behind her she heard Morgan gasp. She turned and he pleaded with his eyes for her not to stay what was on her lips. He pulled her aside and whispered, ‘Wait, Annie, please. Not for me, for others. If we don’t want to ruin everything for Eirlys and Johnny, we have to keep this from her. Don’t say anything yet. Think of how this would wreck her and Johnny’s life if she finds out. Let him tell us what happened, shall we?’
Somehow the plea worked and Annie remained silent and continued to make the tea with hands that shook uncontrollably.
They went into the living room where Johnny was sitting upright and uncomfortable on a hard chair. His voice shock as he told them how his mother’s body had been taken from t
he dock after being found in the water by soldiers. She had been seen as the dawn light exposed her body, caught in some lengths of wood, her dress tangled and holding her from the depths.
Morgan heard him out then ran upstairs and locked himself in the bathroom. Imagining the scene as Irene had been pulled from her watery grave, he was crying like a child. He kept pulling the chain of the lavatory to drown the sound of his despair. He needn’t have told Annie; that was the cruellest part. She need not have been made to suffer the pain of his betrayal. He could have avoided her ever finding out. If he had only waited another hour, he would have been safe. What an irony to have ruined his life and Annie’s, for the sake of an hour’s silence. To think he had woken her at that unearthly hour instead of waiting till morning.
Johnny waited while Annie woke Eirlys so she could be told. Morgan left the house then, and went across the picturesque fields, white with the brightness of the rising sun, to sit in the cold caravan, wrapped in misery, shame and the remaining mildewed blanket.
* * *
Eirlys went at once to see Bleddyn when Johnny told her the news.
She expected to help, but Bleddyn told her firmly, ‘I’ve managed more or less on my own all these years, I don’t think I’ll suddenly become useless.’
‘I just thought, with the funeral, and all the running around you’ll have to do, I might help Evelyn prepare the food or something.’
‘It’s all in hand.’ Bleddyn spoke abruptly and Eirlys shrugged and looked at Johnny as though to say, Well, I tried.
For days the snow stayed on the ground and frost had the streets in such a grip that people had difficulty getting around. The pavements were cleared and immediately covered again with treacherous ice and a covering of snow, and several people fell and broke bones.
Morgan stayed indoors and grieved for Irene and for his ruined marriage. Annie went about her usual routine: the bakery each morning, household tasks and shopping during the afternoon. She and Morgan didn’t exchange a word. The pain of his betrayal ruined every moment of every day for Annie, remorse and bitterness affecting his.
Eirlys knew something was wrong but had no idea what it could be. She did tell her mother once that with Johnny’s mother dead they should be thankful they had each other and manage to agree at least until the funeral. Annie shouted at Eirlys in such anger that she burst into tears without, for once, Annie’s comfort there for her.
* * *
The post mortem revealed no pregnancy. No rumours had reached Bleddyn’s ears about Irene having a secret lover. He believed that her insistence that there was both had been pure fantasy. Irene had lived in a fantasy world, cut off from reality; the imagined baby and lover were just symptoms of her sickness.
The newspaper reports were kind. They said that she suffered from depression and had become confused, and added that her devoted family were in shock.
Having read the reports, Morgan was convinced he was safe from discovery, and on the day before the funeral he dared to visit Bleddyn. In a bag, hidden under a few apples, he had a large tin of corned beef.
‘Don’t ask where it came from because I don’t know and I daren’t ask,’ he said, lifting the heavy tin from the bag. ‘I thought it might be useful for you to make sandwiches when the mourners come back. Hide the tin, mind. It has Ministry of Food stamped on the side!’
‘I want to get rid of her clothes as soon as possible,’ Bleddyn said accepting the tin and putting it on the table.
‘Hide it, man, unless you want us both arrested!’
‘It’ll upset Johnny and Taff to see her clothes hanging there, and they wouldn’t like to help me to clear them out.’ He seemed not to have heard Morgan’s warning. ‘I don’t suppose you’d help, would you? Perhaps your Eirlys would like some of the stuff for her rug-making. I hear she’s sold a few. Clever girl she is, mind. A clever girl. Johnny’s a lucky man.’
Morgan felt sick. If Bleddyn only knew what he was asking him to do. Yet he couldn’t refuse. He looked at Bleddyn’s face, strong and without a sign of suspicion. If only he hadn’t told Annie, the secret of their meetings would never have come to light. Confession good for the soul? That’s a laugh!
Bleddyn handed him a clean sack and beckoned for him to follow. He began to sweat as he walked up the stairs and couldn’t believe how casually Bleddyn was talking. It was more like a discussion on the possessions of a stranger than his wife, and the mother of his sons.
‘You seem very calm,’ he said, as Bleddyn led him upstairs and into the room where, so recently, he and Irene had spent passionate moments.
‘Outwardly perhaps. I show control and strength for the sake of Johnny and Taff. Inside it’s different. I think anger is my greatest emotion at the moment. How could she have cared so little for the boys and me that she could kill herself?’
‘Best you believe it was an accident,’ Morgan advised. ‘That would be easier to cope with, and she was wandering around the docks in pitch blackness, wasn’t she? How are we to know she didn’t slip?’
‘Because she left a note, telling me she was sick of her boring life and sick of me.’
Morgan’s heart leapt painfully. ‘Did she say anything else?’ He looked at the powerfully built Bleddyn. Had he found out about him and Irene? Had he led Morgan up to this room so he could thump the life out of him? But the man seemed in control.
‘She said she had a lover, but I don’t believe that.’
‘Trying to hurt you, was she?’
‘Succeeded too, for a while, until I realised she was living a fantasy. She also said she was carrying this man’s child. She was going on forty-five, for God’s sake! Anyway, the post mortem found no sign of it. The doctor told me she was very upset at being told it was probably the change of life and not a baby. She had a fear of getting old.’ He pulled open a drawer and began throwing clothes angrily onto the bed, his control slipping for a moment. ‘Fantasy, that was how she lived, by pretending that some wonderful life was just around the corner. A life that didn’t include me,’ he finished quietly, and for the first time Morgan saw a hint of sadness and grief in the big man’s dark eyes.
* * *
The funeral was sombre and made worse by the messy snow that still lingered. Morgan attended and stood beside the family, shaking with fear lest something about his involvement should come to light. He began to work out an escape route, but with this damned plaster he couldn’t even run away. What was he doing here? Annie had insisted, telling him he owed the woman this final show of regret and reminding him he must look at the coffin and take at least some of the blame.
He had the face of a grieving man, but the grief was for himself and his ruined marriage.
* * *
Annie wondered how she would manage on her own. With Eirlys and Johnny getting married soon and her insistence – so far ignored – that Morgan should leave, she would be on her own for the first time in her life. It was tempting to forgive him sufficiently to allow him to stay, but her pride was strong. She dug her nails into her hands, trying to make the tears come. If only she could have a damned good cry and release the awful agony, she might start to feel stronger. Thank goodness she had Stanley, Harold and Percival. It was partly for their sake she hadn’t thrown Morgan out on that first day. They needed him and didn’t deserve to be deprived of an important person in their lives because of her pride and unhappiness.
Stanley and Harold and Percival had integrated well at school and with the neighbourhood’s children. Most of the other evacuees had left and they were separated from their school friends only by their spurious maturity and their accents, although Percival was already beginning to copy his friends, coming out with pronunciation different from his brothers’ accent, and Welsh word patterns.
Sledging and snowball fights were not new experiences for them but walks in the woods and fields were, and they came home at night cold, soaked right through to their skins and starving. Their appetites were enormous apart from Percival, who still ha
d trouble with anything that needed chewing.
The snow returned, and, much to the boys’ delight, Morgan had to dig his way around to the coal house and cut a path to the street. As it was a weekend they were introduced to the delights of sledging.
Dragging the home-made sled through the field, with Percival sitting on it like a disapproving master pulled by servants, dressed in so many layers he could barely move, their progress was a noisy, colourful sight. Led by Eirlys and Morgan, with Stanley and Harold pulling their small brother, they were not the only ones heading for the steep field beyond those owned by Mr Gregory. They were soon at the head of an ever-growing procession with others appearing from different directions. Some had sleds and gathering around them hoping for a ride or two were several of their friends.
Once the snow had been flattened and the ice had done its bit, the rides became faster and faster, the shouts louder and the faces redder. Scarves and even coats were discarded as they toiled up the slope dragging the sleds ready for another ride down the steeply sloping field, to come to a juddering stop on the hard furrows of the ploughed field below.
There were moans of regret when Eirlys and her father insisted that it was time to go. Even Percival ate without complaint when Annie served up some warm stew and freshly baked bread and they all declared it was their best day ever. Annie wondered whether they would be able to resist the temptation of running away from school if the snow was still there on Monday, and decided to ask Eirlys to walk them there and make sure they went in!
* * *
On the following Saturday, with the snow ‘still hanging around for more’, as her mother insisted, Johnny called, and Eirlys apologised for not being ready to go out with him as planned. ‘The boys are due back from the fields any minute and Mam has had to go out. Sorry Johnny, but I have to be here to dry them off and get them a hot meal.’
Holidays at Home Omnibus Page 19