‘Who knows,’ Eirlys laughed, ‘it might even bring Mam and Dadda together.’
* * *
Predictably, Bleddyn and Taff were pleased but Evelyn was not.
They met as they were each calling separately on Bleddyn’s house in Brook Lane. Evelyn proudly placed a cake on the kitchen table and told Bleddyn she had made it for him. Rather self-consciously Eirlys put her offering beside it. Annie had made him an apple tart with apple rings dried the previous summer. They eyed each other, the gifts a challenge.
Bleddyn smiled at them and said, ‘I’m beginning to see the advantage of having a couple of daughters-in-law.’
‘Rushing it, aren’t you,’ Evelyn hissed when Bleddyn left the two girls alone, ‘getting married before you’re even engaged?’
‘It’s Johnny who didn’t want to wait,’ Eirlys explained. ‘Why don’t you ask him?’
* * *
The wedding was fixed for the end of March, Saturday the thirtieth, and they both hoped that the army didn’t claim Johnny beforehand.
At once Annie started talking to Morgan.
‘You can forget that suit you wanted to buy, and your shoes will have to do for a while longer. I’m not having those Castles showing us up. You can hire a suit and I’ll get a good dress and we’ll show them how it should be done. Right?’
They had hardly exchanged a word since Annie had learned of his ‘carrying on’ with Irene Castle, and Morgan had only been allowed to stay on condition that he slept in the boxroom with the suitcases and the artificial Christmas tree, the discarded picture frames and boxes of children’s books and abandoned toys. She reminded him, when he complained, that a two-foot-six camp bed was better than he deserved.
Now that they had something to discuss, barriers fell, although the conversation was extremely one-sided. After Annie had reeled off lists of things to be done, she would glare at Morgan, who had been more or less silent throughout, and demand that he took a greater interest in his daughter’s big day.
‘I don’t think our Eirlys is really sure about this,’ Morgan said, doubtfully.
‘Nonsense. Of course she wants to marry Johnny Castle. They’ve been discussing it for weeks. It’s only this war that’s making them change their minds about waiting till next year.’
‘Will there be a party?’ Stanley wanted to know.
‘A boring one for grown-ups, I expect,’ moaned Harold.
‘Food?’
‘Plenty of it,’ Annie promised. ‘A really splendid meal.’
‘I just want the pudding,’ Percival told them firmly, ‘or I ain’t going.’
* * *
On the subject of where they would live, Johnny suggested asking his father if they could live there with Eirlys running the house for them.
‘I’ll be keeping my job,’ she told him, ‘but I can easily manage both.’
When they put the idea to Bleddyn he rudely refused.
‘I’ve run the house most of my married life,’ he said. ‘I don’t see the need to change that. You two can find a couple of rooms somewhere, can’t you, without me having to disrupt my life?’
Eirlys began looking at the ‘To Let’ columns of the local paper and asking all her friends to make enquiries. ‘We’ll find something soon,’ she said to Johnny, ‘and your father is right, we need to start off with a place of our own.’ She was hurt by the abrupt refusal but hid her feelings from him, supporting Bleddyn in his decision. She did not want to start married life by upsetting Johnny’s father.
* * *
Two days later, Bleddyn called on her. When Morgan saw the big man walking up the front path, an aggressive expression on his face, his heart began to race and he was filled with the desire to run. His injured ankle throbbed in sympathy with the rest of him and he felt the strength leak out of him. He wanted to hide but knew his legs wouldn’t support him. Bleddyn had found out about him and Irene! Why else would he call? He never called.
‘Annie? Eirlys?’ he called. ‘We’ve got a visitor.’ He waited for his wife or daughter to open the door. Like a coward he remained in his chair and succumbed to panic.
Bleddyn took off his hat and sat with it resting on his knee when Annie showed him into the living room. Morgan stuck out his injured leg as a shield to prevent attack, but Bleddyn smiled and shook his hand.
‘Good news about your Eirlys and my Johnny, eh?’ he said shaking the nervous Morgan’s hand. ‘It’s Eirlys I came to see. In, is she?’
Eirlys entered the room and he said at once, ‘I’m sorry, Eirlys. I was very rude to you when you suggested moving in with me. It was a generous thought and I shouldn’t have been so unkind.’
‘It’s all right, Mr Castle. It was Johnny thinking you needed looking after. I knew you were perfectly capable of running your life without any assistance from us,’ Eirlys replied.
She tried to smile but her lips were stiff with tension. From his demeanour it was clear he had something more to say, and she waited, dreading to hear his opinion that they were wrong to plan the wedding so soon. It had to be that. Why else would he have called? Like her father she thought, he never calls.
Bleddyn took a piece of paper out of his pocket and slowly unfolded it. Morgan, guilt making him imagine the worst, peered over to try and read it, envisaging a newly discovered letter from Irene, telling of his guilt. The man was tormenting him, playing him like a cat with a mouse, hoping he would relax before he dealt the first blow. Then he realised it looked like an address.
For a moment he felt relieved, then he remembered. The caravan! Bleddyn had found out about their meeting at the caravan! He sank deeper into his chair, wishing he could disappear.
‘What’s the matter with you?’ Annie asked coldly.
‘Bellyache. Too many pickled onions last night!’
‘This shop is closing down,’ Bleddyn explained, handing the paper to Eirlys. ‘It was a wool shop and there are boxes and boxes of wool to be sold. Skeins of every colour so far as I could see. I thought, with your rug-making, you might take a look, and if you can use it, I’ll help you to buy it if you wish. Some of it is in a right old muddle; looks as though a cat’s had fun with it, so it’s bound to be cheap.’
Morgan was shaking when Bleddyn and Eirlys left to investigate the possibilities and Annie told him that if he was getting a cold he could sleep downstairs as she wasn’t going to risk catching it. He wondered if anyone except Eirlys knew he and Annie weren’t sharing a bed. It would only need a slight suspicion and something like that could start Bleddyn thinking.
Two and two weren’t difficult to add up, he thought anxiously. He was still in danger of something being said. Someone could easily have seen them together and it would only take a word to Bleddyn for him to guess the rest. He shuddered.
‘I’ve made a decision,’ he said to Annie firmly, although afraid to look her in the eyes. ‘I’m not sleeping on that damned camp bed any more. If you don’t let me come back to a proper bed so I can have a good night’s sleep, I’m going to find lodgings. And,’ he went on, as courage grew out of desperation, ‘and I won’t go to our daughter’s wedding either. It’ll be a farce with me pretending to be your husband, and, well, I’m not doing it. So?’ he asked, daring to look at her.
For a moment he thought his gamble had failed then she nodded and said, ‘All right, but—’
‘No buts,’ he interrupted. To his relief she turned away, nodded and said nothing more.
He went upstairs and folded the camp bed and threw it at the bottom of the garden. The sooner it rotted the better.
* * *
Eirlys was smiling. Keeping her job and her interests wouldn’t be a problem after all. With the strong-minded Moll as head of the family she had been so afraid it would be impossible to marry Johnny on her own, not unreasonable, terms. But Bleddyn was helping her with the rug-making so he must understand about her unwillingness to give up everything for the Pipers.
Marriage to Johnny; belonging to that large, affecti
onate family and keeping what she wanted from the old life to take to the new – everything was perfect. Nothing could happen to spoil it.
Nine
When Eirlys saw the amount of wool waiting for a buyer, she was daunted at first, but as she examined the variety of the stock, some very old and uselessly tangled, some perfect, she admired the colours and the varying thicknesses and began to imagine the swirls and concentric circles and diamonds within diamonds that she could create with them, and her interest grew.
‘I don’t think I can afford all this,’ she whispered to Bleddyn, who had come with her to introduce her to the owner, Mrs Hibbert.
‘I could help if you think you can use it,’ Bleddyn offered. ‘I don’t want you to take it if you aren’t sure, mind. The amount could be frightening. Although you could sell most of it easily enough, I would think.’
She stared around her at the dark and rather gloomy shop. The shelves were tumbling with piles of knitting patterns and needles were strewn about carelessly in their assorted sizes and colours. The wools were no longer set out in an orderly arrangement, but mixed up, higgledy-piggledy, revealing the lack of interest on the part of the owner.
‘I know it’s a mess,’ Mrs Hibbert smiled. ‘I’ve just lost interest and I want someone else to take it all off my hands.’ She shrugged and added, ‘I thought of having a closing-down sale, but the stock is in need of sorting and I can’t be bothered.’
The shop was far from full and the stocks hadn’t been replenished for a long time. There were large quantities of some colours, small amounts of most. Customers would want enough of one colour and shade number to knit a jumper or something similar, and Eirlys surmised that there were few colours with sufficient amounts in the same shade. The yarns that remained in larger quantities were rather dull. Perfect for background for her rugs, but not exciting enough to tempt someone to tackle the work involved in knitting a complicated pattern.
An idea for using the smaller amounts and oddments began to grow and Eirlys searched through the piles of knitting patterns that littered the shelves and slithered to the floor.
After stepping outside and discussing it with Bleddyn, who seemed very willing to help, she made an offer, which Mrs Hibbert accepted with relief.
‘I can change this back into a room where I can sit and watch people walking past,’ the old lady said happily. ‘Hate living at the back, I do. Nothing to look at and no one to talk to once the shop closes. I might rent the back of the house. It’s too big for me to look after.’
‘That’s a good idea,’ Bleddyn told her. ‘Better than being on your own in a big old place like this.’
They made their excuses and left, after arranging for the goods to be collected on the following Sunday morning.
‘Now,’ Eirlys laughed, ‘now, all I have to do is find somewhere to keep it all!’ The van belonging to Piper’s Café was filled twice with boxes of wool, which Eirlys would have to sort out at a later date. The priority was to empty the shop so Mrs Hibbert could arrange for it to revert to its previous use as a living room, or ‘best parlour’ as she had called it.
The wool was taken to Brook Lane after further discussions, and housed temporarily in the stable in Bleddyn’s yard. It couldn’t stay there long as mice would quickly ruin it. Once there Eirlys and Johnny began sorting through it. The immediate fears over the large quantity had fled and for Eirlys, this was what she had been looking for: the beginning of a business of her own, a way of being independent. She wondered why she felt the need, now she and Johnny were planning their wedding. For most of her friends, marriage was an end of something, for her it was a continuation.
It was still very cold but on several evenings, sometimes with Beth’s help and sometimes with Johnny and even Bleddyn, the wool was separated into colours and type and in quantities suitable for the various items Eirlys had in mind. Running through her fertile mind were ideas for soft toys, children’s garments and simple novelties beside the rugs with which she had begun.
She became so absorbed in her plans she neglected the arrangements for her wedding. It was Annie who dealt with the immediate preparations which consisted mainly of making a great many lists.
One lunchtime, when Eirlys would have preferred to stay in the warmth of the office, she had to do some shopping in her lunch hour and had promised to go home. The weather was harsh and the town looked grey and gloomy from the effect of the lowered clouds. Even the slates on the roofs of houses looked a different colour, Eirlys thought, a dullness she associated with the approach of snow. The air was still and painfully cold and the streets were empty, the threat of more snow keeping most people indoors. Eirlys was curled up and tense with the effort of keeping warm as she ran from the bakery to the greengrocer where Johnny’s cousin Beth worked.
She felt cold but Beth looked seriously chilled. ‘Can’t you get an hour off and come home with me for a warm meal?’ Eirlys coaxed. ‘I have lots to tell you, and Mam will be there with something hot ready for us.’
A pleading look at her boss and Beth was given permission to take one hour. She pulled on a fur-trimmed coat and covered her black, neatly bobbed hair with a woollen scarf and the two girls ran through the streets to Eirlys’s home where the fire burned brightly and Annie was warming up some potato and leek soup.
Annie finished work at one p.m. and Morgan was on a morning shift, but she had managed to get home to have food hot and the fire lit for when her daughter arrived.
‘I’m looking for people to work for me,’ Eirlys explained to her mother and Beth. ‘I have design ideas for rugs which I will pay people to make for me, then once a month on my Saturday off I’ll take a market stall and sell them.’
‘How many rugs d’you think you’ll sell?’ Annie asked pessimistically. ‘It’s not like a packet of sweets. You’ll be wasting your time.’
‘I’ll have a shop one day,’ Eirlys said firmly.
‘Selling only rugs? How often do people buy a rug?’
‘If they only buy one every five years, I’ll want them to buy it from me.’
‘Looking a long way ahead that is, Eirlys. In a small place like St David’s Well you won’t get rich on a few rugs. Best you marry Johnny and forget it.’
‘The wool from Mrs Hibbert’s shop has started me thinking,’ Eirlys said, ignoring her mother’s discouragement. ‘Most people knit and I could get people to knit toys from the small oddments of wool I’ve bought. I would make them up – that’s where the skill lies, stuffing them and sewing them professionally – and I’ll pay the knitters for their work.’ She looked at Annie, hoping for a show of interest or even an offer of help, but Annie shook her head.
‘Toys? That’s even dafter than selling rugs!’
‘I’ll ask a few people I know who might be interested,’ Beth offered, as they walked back to work, restored by Annie’s soup and chunks of fresh bread. She listened for a while longer as Eirlys explained her plans more fully, then asked, ‘What does Johnny think of all this? Won’t you be expected to work on the beach in the summer? I’d hoped you’d be working with me in Piper’s Café, or with Johnny and Taff and my brothers Ronnie and Eynon on the sands below.’
‘Your Granny Moll has already decided where and what I’ll be doing, but she’ll be disappointed. I don’t intend to give up my job for a summer session on the beach followed by a winter looking for anything that I can find… Oh, Beth, I don’t mean to belittle what you do. In fact, when Johnny and I first started going out together, it was my dream, to work with the Piper family.’
‘Castle family,’ Beth corrected. ‘We’re all Castles except Granny Moll and Auntie Audrey who hasn’t married.’
‘Sorry. The truth is, I’d have wanted nothing more than to work with Johnny and the rest of you. But things have changed and I’m no longer so willing.’
‘What changed it? You still love Johnny, don’t you?’
‘I love Johnny, of course I do. I think my attitude changed when I was given more responsib
ility at work. I might have stayed an unimportant clerk, not believing I was capable of more, if it weren’t for the war and men being called up. Now I have a big, big dream of owning my own business, and the trouble with having a really wonderful dream is that it throws all your other dreams into turmoil.’
‘I never wanted anything other than working on the beach and becoming Mrs Freddy Clements. Oh Eirlys, can’t you do both? You’d have a perfect winter occupation and that’s something most of us don’t have.’
‘I’ve thought of it, but every time I think of doing something else, the big, big dream comes back and gives me a nudge and I know I can’t do anything else but make a seriously concentrated attempt to succeed.’
‘Poor Johnny,’ Beth laughed.
‘Why poor Johnny?’
‘He’s got a successful businesswoman on his hands and you know how men hate to be bested.’
‘He won’t be bested,’ Eirlys said seriously. ‘He’ll have as much from me as he needs, more probably, as I’ll be happy doing something I enjoy.’
‘Good luck, Eirlys. I think Johnny’s a lucky man.’
Walking back through streets, taking care on the icy pavements, Eirlys was engulfed by feelings of guilt. Was Johnny lucky? She no longer felt able to offer him the commitment she had previously felt. The excitement of planning a future, of owning a business in which she was her own boss, had filled her mind to the exclusion of everything else. Plans for a wedding to take place in just over two months seemed trivial by comparison. She should be boring people by talking about nothing else, planning every last detail, dreaming romantic dreams. Nevertheless, rugs were what she dreamed about, and every spare moment she could find was used to build a stock of hand-made rugs.
Some would be thick and practical for kitchen use, made from strips of strong material given by various friends and sometimes found in second-hand shops. Others were less robust and delicately coloured, intended for a bedroom or a nursery.
Holidays at Home Omnibus Page 21