Holidays at Home Omnibus
Page 20
‘Something smells good,’ Johnny sniffed appreciatively.
‘They’re up in Sally Gough’s field next to where Mr Gregory’s donkeys spend the winter. Spending the morning sledging down the sloping grass on a sled Dad made them,’ Eirlys explained. ‘Not much snow left, but they insisted on trying to find a place. Why don’t you stay and eat with us? I’m cooking one of their favourites, sausages and mash.’
‘Thanks, I will. Is your dad eating with us?’
‘How do I know? If Mam is in, Dadda is out and vice versa. I don’t know what’s wrong, but they’ve had a serious quarrel about something.’
‘They’ll soon forget it. This isn’t the first time, is it?’
‘Not by a long way.’ She smiled ruefully. ‘Always arguing about something or other, and Mam usually wins. Even if she’s in the wrong it’s Dadda who does the apologising. Daft isn’t it?’
‘Anything for peace. I know a few blokes like that.’ He looked at her quizzically. ‘Will I have to say sorry when it’s you who burns my dinner?’ He nodded towards the grill, where the sausages were beginning to spit angrily.
She took them away from the heat and on to a rack to drain the fat into a basin. ‘Can’t waste good dripping. Not now fats are rationed.’
Johnny helped set the table then the boys came in, soaking wet, freezing cold and starving, and excited by a letter from their mother telling them that a few weeks ago, ‘their’ River Thames had frozen over. He waited contentedly while Eirlys took the boys upstairs to rub them dry and dress them in clean, warm clothes.
Stanley and Harold cleared their plates fast, but as usual, Percival pulled a face and chewed the same mouthful for a long time, reluctantly, with his lips apart.
‘These sausages is boverin’ me,’ he whined in a low voice. Before the words were out, two forks were winging through the air and the sausages were whipped off his plate.
‘You could at least ask!’ Eirlys scolded, glaring at the two elder boys happily chewing their extra treat. Then she saw Johnny trying in vain to hide his laughter and they relaxed and enjoyed the joke. Pudding was chocolate cake heated and served with custard, and this Percival ate with relish.
‘I’m concerned about Percival’s poor diet,’ Eirlys said as she washed the dishes.
‘“These sausages is boverin’ me”.’ Johnny mocked Percival’s complaint, laughing. ‘I don’t see why you worry. He eats what he wants and he’s the best judge of what’s good for him. You worry too much,’ he said, standing close, nuzzling her neck affectionately, his arms around her trim waist. ‘If you’re like this with strangers, what will you be like with your own?’
The prospect made her blush. ‘I can’t imagine letting my child go away from me to live with strangers. I’d want to be with him every minute. As he grows up, and wants to go out on his own, I’ll delay the day for as long as possible, then I’ll march up and down until he comes back to me.’ She smiled. ‘That’s how I feel now but I expect mothers gradually learn to let them go. We have to or we’d be a nation of madwomen.’
‘You’ll be a wonderful mother,’ he assured her.
‘Talking about mothers, I saw Hannah on my way home from work. She was dressing a small snowman for Josie and Marie. I watched as Josie and Marie threw snowballs at it, laughing, even throwing one at their mother. They were so excited. I think she’s wonderful the way she copes without any help. Don’t you think so?’
‘I do. Those little girls are so content and well behaved, she must be doing a remarkable job. We were right to invite them to share our Christmas, weren’t we?’
‘Perhaps we can invite them to tea when the weather is better and they can play in the garden with the boys.’
‘Or sooner, so the boys can introduce them to Snap, Old Maid and dominoes.’
‘All right then, what about tomorrow?’
Having given up on the walk they had planned, Johnny left by mid-afternoon. It was Saturday and he had promised to help his father in the chip shop that evening to give him an evening off.
‘He’s still very shocked and I know he isn’t sleeping very much,’ he explained. ‘I hear him wandering downstairs at odd times, and I sometimes find him sitting looking through photograph albums as though trying to find a clue to her unhappiness. It was the way she died that makes it worse,’ he went on. ‘Dad can’t accept that Mam chose to leave us. We hoped the verdict would be accidental death, but the note, and the deliberate way she went to a place where she was unlikely to be seen, all suggested suicide.’
‘Was she always ill? I mean, when you were small, did she play games and have fun?’
‘It was Dad who played games and provided our fun. I asked him if he knew before he married her that she suffered with her nerves, and he said her family kept it from him. That was wrong, I think.’
‘I wish I could help, but your father is a solitary man, isn’t he? He’ll deal with it in his own way and in his own time.’
When Johnny left Eirlys, he didn’t go straight home. There were a couple of hours yet before he needed to get ready for the chip shop. Unplanned, his feet led him to Hannah’s door.
With the brief discussion about his mother still in his mind, when Hannah invited him inside, leaving the door open and letting in the cold wind, he continued his thoughts with her.
‘Why can someone hate life so much they want to die?’ he asked. They were in the kitchen leaving the girls in the living room where they were too far away to hear him.
‘I know that kind of despair,’ Hannah told him sadly. ‘I wanted to die when I could see no way out of my situation. But with your mother it couldn’t have been anything like that,’ she added hastily. ‘She seemed to me to have everything she could possibly want.’
‘I should have seen her desperation and been able to help her.’
‘You have to accept that she was sick, Johnny, seriously sick, and no one could help her get well. There are many kinds of terminal illnesses, remember. She suffered from one that is less easy to accept.’
Her words soothed him as no others had. He felt the strain of the past weeks leaving him. Her suffering had not made her bitter but more sympathetic; she had a greater understanding because of it.
‘Your marriage was deeply unhappy. Can I ask you whether he was violent before you married, and whether you were warned?’
‘He had beaten up a young boy once, when he was sixteen. His parents and he convinced me it had been an experience he would never repeat. When you’re in love, Johnny, you hear what you want to hear, believe what it’s comfortable to believe.’
‘Dad and Mam didn’t have a real marriage. Eirlys’s parents are rowing all the time. You suffered real distress. I wonder if there is such a thing as a happy marriage.’
‘Don’t become cynical. Some couples argue but still love each other. Don’t mistake that for an unhappy marriage. Like terminal illnesses, there are many different kinds of marriage, except most kinds of marriage are good.’ She went in to see that the girls were warm enough then returned to the kitchen where, for the moment, with her mother out shopping, they were able to talk in private.
‘I married at twenty-two, to escape from my parents’ criticism and disapproval, and went from one set of problems into another. They disliked me for being alive when my brother was dead. He died of pneumonia you see. I had the flu first, just after the last war, when I was eight. I recovered, I passed it to him and he died, so his death was my fault and there was never a day when they didn’t remind me of that.’
‘That’s so cruel,’ Johnny gasped.
‘Yes, I found it hard to bear. So when Laurie came along and offered freedom, I took it. We had two rooms over a china shop in Barry, and I thought I was in heaven. I worked in a shop not far from where we lived and he worked on the docks. The first few months were good ones. Then he was injured. He suffered a broken leg, crushed ribs and head injuries as he was unloading a cargo of pig-iron, and he changed from a loving husband into a foul-tempered bully.
&
nbsp; ‘He accused me of neglecting him if I was late back from the shop. Then I discovered that he was using our money for drink. We couldn’t pay the bills and were thrown out of the flat. I found us a room and he went on blaming me for everything. He hit me if the meal wasn’t to his liking, or for some other imagined slight.’ Her lovely eyes clouded. ‘I lost the baby I was carrying, and he and my parents blamed me for not taking proper care of it. My parents told me it was God’s punishment. As if a caring God would kill an innocent baby to punish me! I was never that important, was I? No God of Love for them. Their God was just an excuse for disapproval and punishments.’
‘So you left him,’ Johnny coaxed as she paused.
‘So I left him. My parents disapproved of my leaving him and wouldn’t help. I stayed with a friend, and James, but my mother told Laurie where I was and he came and—’ She couldn’t go on.
Johnny guessed she was thinking about rape and he hugged her until her sobs subsided. ‘Don’t tell me any more, love. It’s upsetting you too much.’
‘If you can bear it, Johnny, I want to tell you the whole story. I can’t talk about it to anyone else.’
Johnny continued to hold her as she went on, ‘One day he attacked my friend Iolo thinking it was me and the police caught up with him.’
Iolo and her husband took me to a doctor then to a solicitor, and they supported me through the divorce. Then, unfortunately, they moved away to look for work. It was Eirlys and her parents who were my only friends at that time. Using their quasi-religion against them they persuaded my parents it was their Christian duty to give us a home. My parents reluctantly agreed to my sharing their house. I’m here under sufferance, but I stay so Josie and Marie can have some stability in their lives.’
‘I think your parents should be immensely proud of you,’ Johnny said, pressing her against him as her sobs began again. For a long time they didn’t move. The kiss when it came seemed the most natural thing in the world, and when they walked back into the living room to sit with the girls, who were playing with a doll’s house Hannah had made from shoeboxes, they sat close together, hand in hand, silently digesting what had just happened between them.
* * *
Annie didn’t think she would have coped with Morgan’s revelation without Stanley, Harold and little Percival. Although she had been unwilling to accept them at first, she dreaded every letter they received from their mother, expecting that, like the rest of the evacuees, she wanted her boys to go home. So far the feared bombing of London had not happened, with the Germans fighting on land, pushing their way through France, and using the might of the Luftwaffe to destroy shipping.
Teresa’s letters were full of cheerful little anecdotes about the building of air raid shelters and the boring lectures given to householders about the way to deal with incendiary bombs. She wrote about the queues and the meanness of the grocers when they doled out the ration of butter; no pleading would persuade them to allow the knife to slip back beyond the weekly allowance of four ounces, she reported. Annie sent her a cake, made with butter, for which she had exchanged some sugar of which she had plenty.
She wrote assurances that the boys were missing her but were well and happy, reminding Teresa of the importance of their staying in St David’s Well where they were safe. With the estrangement between her and Morgan continuing into the foreseeable future, she needed the boys as much – if not more – than they needed her.
* * *
Johnny couldn’t get Hannah out of his mind. They had parted that afternoon without anything being discussed. Memories of the kiss had shone in Hannah’s eyes as they said their goodbyes, and he knew she could recognise the desire lingering in his. He had to talk to someone, but who?
He was in love with Hannah. He had to admit it and face the consequences. She refused to marry him but how could he marry Eirlys feeling this way about another woman? Could he persuade Hannah to change her mind? Every strand of common sense told him he was being stupid, giving up someone like Eirlys for a woman who was older, divorced and with two little girls. He was very fond of Eirlys and she was a perfect choice for a wife – clever, ambitious and quite lovely – so what was wrong with him? Perhaps he should wait until the army took him away from St David’s Well and marry neither.
The thought of going to war loomed and momentarily obliterated his confusion. He could walk away. He had to forget Hannah and marry Eirlys. Once they were married the dreams of another life would fade. Wouldn’t they?
He went to the chip shop and worked there until eleven o’clock, staying behind to drain the fat, clean out the cooking range and wash the last utensil. His actions and responses had been automatic and he remembered hardly a thing about the hours he had spent cooking and serving the food.
He walked home past the houses of Granny Moll Piper and his Uncle Huw and Auntie Marged. No light was visible in either house, but on impulse he knocked on the window of Granny Moll’s and waited to see if she answered.
The door opened and Moll’s sharp voice asked who was there.
‘It’s Johnny, Granny Moll. I know it’s late, but can I come in?’
Juggling with the blackout curtain, Moll led him into the living room, where a low fire still burned, grey ash at the front with only a faint glow of red at the back. ‘The fire’s gone next door,’ Moll said, with a smile, adding a couple of logs to rouse it.
‘I wanted to talk to someone and I thought you might still be awake,’ Johnny began. ‘Not the call-up, is it?’ Moll asked at once. ‘I don’t know how they expect us to run the business if they take all our able-bodied men.’
‘No, nothing yet, although I don’t think they’ll hang about much longer. Millions gone and it still isn’t enough. No, it’s about how I feel about Eirlys; that’s what’s worrying me.’
‘Don’t tell me you’ve changed your mind about marrying her? I was depending on Eirlys joining the family to help us next summer! People will still want to come to St David’s Well Bay for some fun, Hitler or no Hitler. We’ll need her on the sands or in Piper’s Café.’
‘I don’t know how I feel about her any more.’
‘What went wrong?’ Moll asked, pushing the kettle over on to the fire and stirring the coals with a poker.
‘I have strong feelings for someone else.’
‘Who is she? Someone who’d fit in with the family business?’
‘Granny Moll! It’s my life I’m thinking about, not Piper’s cafés and stalls!’
‘We have to be practical.’ Moll grinned. She got up and began to mix cocoa, sugar and milk in the bottom of two cups, then added water from the gently simmering kettle. ‘Drink this and tell me all about it.’
When Johnny mentioned Hannah she frowned. ‘She’s too old and she’s got a ready-made family. That’s not what your father would want for you, Johnny.’
They talked over the situation until two a.m., by which time Johnny was far more confused than when he came. Moll’s advice was for him to arrange to marry Eirlys as soon as possible. He was assured that once he was married and settled down in a home of his own with a loving wife, all thoughts of other women would magically vanish from his mind.
Walking home through the dark, silent streets, Johnny wondered wryly whether Moll’s solution was the best one for him or for herself and Piper’s Café. She might be right about that early wedding, though. Several of his friends had married sooner than intended, wanting to be sure there was someone waiting for them when the war ended and they came home. They told him that it would make them strong to have someone to survive for and now he was beginning to understand what they meant.
* * *
When Johnny discussed Moll’s idea of an early wedding, he put it to Eirlys as his own, explaining that his application to defer call-up on account of the family business might not be successful.
‘I want to know you’ll be here, waiting for me while I’m away. Helping on the sands, keeping everything safe until I come home. Lovely word that, “home”, i
t’s what you’ll be making for us while I’m away.’
There were the usual misgivings in Eirlys’s heart, so she didn’t answer him immediately. She loved Johnny, she longed to be his wife, but she didn’t want to give up on her dreams and become a housewife until she had created a life of her own. So far the idea of how that would be achieved had not materialised.
‘I love my job,’ she told him, trying to explain how she felt. ‘Now, with fewer men available, I’m being given more and more responsibility and I love it. The stalls in the summer would be fun but it wouldn’t be enough for me, specially if you go away. I want a career or a business of my own, not sharing your family’s.’
‘And is that the only reason you’re refusing me?’
‘I’m not refusing you. I love you, Johnny and I want to be your wife more than anything in the world. I want us to have a home of our own. I could build it ready for when you come home, but I don’t want to give up my job and ambitions and work for Piper’s.’
‘You don’t have to. Although,’ he added with a grin, ‘I’ll be surprised if Granny Moll doesn’t persuade you to spend some spare time helping out, mind.’
‘I’d like that very much.’
‘So if we can find somewhere to live, a place where we can build a home, you’ll say yes?’
She loved him. Why was she hesitating? Unromantically she knew too that at twenty-two she might not have another chance to do all the things women wanted to do, marry and have children, create a home. If she let Johnny go because of some vague idea of a business of her own she would be a fool. There would never be anyone else she could love as much as she loved Johnny. There was also the pull of belonging to the Castles’ large and lively family. Apart from Taff’s wife Evelyn, they had all been very welcoming.
‘All right, Johnny, let’s get married soon.’
A little later, when they had celebrated their decision with a kiss, Johnny laughed and said, ‘I’m so happy, Eirlys.’ For a while, he meant it.