She worked late into the night and sometimes woke bleary-eyed and had to force herself to get up and cook breakfast for Stanley and Harold and try to coax Percival to swallow a few mouthfuls of porridge. She even sat and cut strips of material ready for the evening as they ate their breakfast.
The disappearance of the camp bed gave Eirlys hope that the latest, and by far the fiercest row between her mother and father was fading away, although they were still not speaking to each other. Her parents sometimes sat and cut material for her during the evenings, and she tried to tease them out of their ill humour by laughing at them working together, looking in opposite directions and pretending not to know the other was there. On one occasion, Annie’s response was to pick up a pile of material and throw it at Morgan.
Her father was working regularly, first having a lift to the factory on the back of a friend’s motorbike and later, under his own steam, walking to the bus stop and being dropped at the factory gates by kindly bus drivers. The plaster was off and apart from a walking stick – to give him confidence rather than support – he was recovering satisfactorily from his accident.
He was gradually relaxing from the fear of Bleddyn learning about his ‘carrying on’ with Irene, and growing more and more convinced that neither Bleddyn nor Eirlys would ever find out. Surely if they had been seen, if something had been noticed, it would have come to light before this?
The postman’s visit was always one highlight of the boys’ day as they waited for letters from Teresa. Her notes were short but filled with loving messages for each of her sons, and the pile under Stanley’s pillow was taken out regularly and re-read when they went to bed.
Eirlys received letters from Ken describing his progress in becoming involved in the forces’ entertainments plans. His letters were full of affection and he always asked about her interests. ‘Have you learnt to drive yet?’ he asked in one letter. ‘How many rugs have you sold?’ in another. It was enjoyable to write back and tell him of her progress and her ideas for the future. Ken was a loving friend and she valued him greatly as such, but she always made sure she saved his letters for Johnny to read so they wouldn’t give rise to misunderstanding. Sometimes Johnny even added a note of his own when she wrote to Ken, reassuring her he understood.
Johnny was a little worried, though. He sensed that something was worrying Eirlys and hoped it was not belated regret at letting Ken leave without her. His own recurring doubts made him aware that she too might be less than certain about their marrying. One evening when they were sorting through one of the boxes bought from Mrs Hibbert, he sat untangling a skein of soft blue baby wool and asked, ‘Are you going to tell me what’s wrong, love?’
‘Wrong? There’s nothing wrong. I’m frowning because I’m concentrating, that’s all.’
‘You haven’t changed your mind about marrying me so soon?’
‘I love you, Johnny Castle, and I want to be your wife. In fact, I think I might have found us a couple of rooms.’
‘Really? That’s marvellous. Where?’
‘Mrs Hibbert told your father and me that she’s changing the shop back into a room where she can sit and look out at the street. She said she has always hated living at the back with nothing to look at except the garden. She has two other rooms downstairs and said she might be renting them. Shall we go and take a look?’
They examined the two rooms and, seeing them overfilled with Mrs Hibbert’s treasured possessions, Eirlys had to force herself to show interest. The rooms were shabby and would need a lot of work before they could move in. It would involve a lot of time and, for her at that moment, time was precious. Finding a place to live was beginning to become an upheaval and the thought of it had the opposite effect than it would have had a few months previously. Why couldn’t they simply move in with her parents and wait until something really suitable turned up?
Right now, all she wanted was to find people to work for her and get her business under way. Home-hunting was an unwelcome chore. She was ashamed of her reaction and knew she was cheating on Johnny by not explaining how she felt.
Every day she was told of young men going away to join the army or the navy or the air force, and every week there were reports of injuries, imprisonment and deaths. She understood the urgency felt by Johnny and thousands of others, to marry and get their lives in order, but it was an urgency she didn’t feel able to share.
Johnny too continued to have doubts but they were hidden in a flurry of enthusiasm for his marriage to Eirlys. He had to face a life without Hannah, and he constantly reminded himself how fortunate he would be to have a wife like Eirlys: talented, intelligent, very lovely, and someone who would build up a business of her own.
On that subject Granny Moll didn’t agree with him and she asked him to try again to persuade Eirlys to help in the summer season on the sands. She promised help with the rug-making during the winter months as compensation. He had called to collect clean white overalls for the chip shop that evening and as Moll handed him the carefully ironed clothes, she asked him to talk to Eirlys.
‘Don’t count on it,’ he warned, then speaking proudly he added, ‘She wants to start a business of her own, Granny Moll. Isn’t she marvellous having such a grand ambition? She’ll succeed too for sure.’
‘She’ll soon forget all that,’ Moll said confidently. ‘When she’s a part of the Piper family, she’ll be happy working with us all.’
Johnny shook his head. ‘I want to help her get the business under way. I don’t want to pressure her about Piper’s in any way. Then, when she’s ready I think she’ll come and work with us at the beach, just part time, mind, when she can fit it in. She’s told me several times how much she would love to work on the sands in the summer.’
‘She told me that too. Don’t fret, boy, this rug-making is only a phase. Lots of girls worry a bit about committing themselves to a man and a marriage. An intelligent girl like your Eirlys, she’s bound to feel trepidation at having to look at your face every morning!’ she joked.
Johnny laughed at her teasing, told Moll how much he loved Eirlys and how lucky he was, but he was still unconvinced. How could he love Eirlys and still think about Hannah?
Johnny and Eirlys took the three boys to the pictures that evening and after walking them home and leaving Annie to put them to bed, Eirlys took out some of the diagrams she had drawn. Even with the straight lines that resulted when the ‘hairpin’ method was used, variety could be added with pattern and colours.
‘I thought I would use the same pattern and make it in several colours now I have plenty of wool in hand,’ she said, writing on the pattern the colours she planned.
‘Good idea, although most people would chose something dark and practical,’ Johnny said. ‘Not that I want a room that’s dull and sensible, mind. When are you going to make one for our fireside?’
She picked up a few skeins held together with an elastic band. ‘That’s what I wanted to talk to you about. Do you like these?’
She handed them to him with a canvas on which a design was printed. A design of tree branches, leaves and cherries. The colours were bold, and he nodded agreement.
‘Great,’ he said approvingly.
‘Will you help me wind the skeins?’ she asked. He held the wool on his hands with arms outstretched and she unwound the skeins and rolled it into a ball. As they worked they talked.
‘Have you thought about next summer?’ he asked. ‘I probably won’t be here and neither will Taff. My cousin Ronnie will be called up too if our attempt at deferment fails and Granny Moll will be desperate for some help.’
‘Johnny, I don’t want to give up my job,’ she said, putting down the finished ball of wool and taking up another skein. ‘I thought you understood. I earn a fair wage and it’s right through the year, not just in the summer. We’ll need a nice nest-egg for when you come out of the army. With the rug-making and perhaps expanding into other handcrafted items, I’ll be building a secure base for us.’
&
nbsp; ‘You used to say how much you’d love to work on the sands.’
‘I did. I still would. It’s just that now, with this rug-making idea, I’m distracted from it. I find the idea of having a business of my own, even though it’s a lowly one compared with Piper’s, great fun. I have to give it a try, Johnny. If it doesn’t succeed I won’t be as unhappy as I would if I don’t try.’
‘I understand,’ he smiled, offering his hands for another skein of wool. ‘I’ll help all I can; I promised Granny Moll I’d ask, that’s all. Dad has agreed for you to use the spare bedroom as a store room indefinitely. Keep the wool and materials there and also the finished rugs, until you’re ready to sell them.’
‘Thanks, Johnny,’ she said, hugging him. ‘It’s our future, you know. I want to keep my job at the council offices and if I can start selling rugs too, well, we’ll have a good start when you come home. I’ll save every penny I can. I know how important the family business is to you and I’m grateful for your understanding, really I am.’
They discussed the advantages of a market stall and other ways of displaying the rugs. Johnny suggested using one of the showcases in the seaside rock and sweet shop on the promenade which was run by Granny Moll’s unmarried daughter, Auntie Audrey. ‘It’s closed now of course, but later you could use it to show one or two samples, with your name and address on a card.’
‘Your Granny Moll Piper would never agree to that, specially when I tell her I can’t help in the summer.’
‘Leave Granny Moll to me. She’s very fond of me, and very susceptible to flattery! I’ve called her my gran since I learnt to talk. I can persuade her, I know I can.’
When Johnny discussed the idea with his father, Bleddyn offered to go with him to talk to Granny Moll Piper. At first, Moll was doubtful.
‘How can you put floor coverings and sweets in the same shop? It doesn’t make sense,’ she complained. But when Bleddyn spoke to her alone and reminded her how worrying it was that Johnny was attracted to Hannah, and how much better it would be for Piper’s if he married Eirlys, Moll agreed.
‘In fact, there’s no reason why she can’t put one or two in the window now, while the place is closed,’ she offered. ‘People walk on the beach and along the prom even at this time of year,’ she added and glanced at Bleddyn for his smile of approval. ‘There are a few sticks of seaside rock in the window we’ll have to dispose of, but I think Stanley, Harold and Percival Love might help us with those!’
Johnny met Eirlys from work the following lunchtime. He hadn’t slept and yet his mind was clearer than it had been for a long time. He knew he had to commit himself to Eirlys. There were plenty of unhappy marriages because one or the other didn’t do just that. Granny Moll was right, once he was married, he would forget he ever felt any doubts.
‘I spoke to Granny Moll and she says using the shop to display your work is all right with her,’ he told her.
‘Really?’
‘In fact, she suggested putting one or two in the empty window now, as there are often people strolling along the prom when the weather is mild.’
They hugged and walked home, buying chips on the way, talking excitedly about their plans. ‘Because,’ Johnny told her, ‘they are our plans, not just yours.’
In the days following, they both felt as though they had reached a turning point in their relationship. Johnny faced up to the knowledge that his future did not include Hannah, while Eirlys began to believe that she could marry Johnny and still follow her dream.
Eirlys didn’t think she could be happier. She still worked on the rugs in odd moments, completing the cherry design for her and Johnny’s future home. Johnny came when he could to help her sort out colours and even added a few geometric designs to her book of patterns.
She loved the Readicut designs but still made many using the method with which she began, the strips of material and the giant ‘hairpin’. These were popular and quick to make.
Bleddyn painted an old chest of drawers for her use, built shelves to store her wool and even sat patiently untangling some of the worse skeins, amid much teasing from his elder son Taff when he and Evelyn called.
Evelyn seemed to accept the forthcoming wedding with a distinct lack of enthusiasm, and when Taff and Johnny asked her to help with the redecoration of the two rooms in Mrs Hibbert’s house, she refused.
‘If you’re getting married in March, Eirlys will have to forget her stupid mats and start making the rooms into a home, won’t she? It isn’t my place to do her work for her.’
Puzzled by her attitude, Johnny and Taff failed to get her to explain.
‘I suppose she simply doesn’t like Eirlys. We none of us like everybody, do we?’ Bleddyn said, unworried by the mild disturbance. ‘They’ll settle down when they know each other better.’
* * *
Eirlys’s fears that the decoration of the rooms would use up too much of her time were unfounded. It was Johnny who worked there every moment he could find and his brother, Taff, who helped him. Bleddyn too did a lot of the initial cleaning and it was only a few weeks before the place was smart and looking inviting. They were given a few pieces of furniture to begin with, which they would discard when they could afford new. Bleddyn painted delicate floral designs on some of the dull pieces, much to Johnny’s and Eirlys’s surprise and delight.
Eirlys took Stanley, Harold and Percival to Mrs Hibbert’s one day to show them the place where she intended to live with Johnny. The two rooms were freshly papered and the paintwork gleamed. The floor was covered in linoleum and she explained where the items of furniture they had managed to collect would be placed. There was a kitchen which she would share with Mrs Hibbert, and beyond, a short passage and an outside porch leading to a lavatory. There was no bathroom, but, she explained to the three boys, ‘Johnny and I will manage well enough in the kitchen with the door locked and we’ll go home to bathe once or twice a week.’
‘We never had no bathroom,’ Harold told her disparagingly. ‘Our mum says a bath is a wicked waste o’ space.’
After showing them the bedroom, stripped of its wallpaper, ready to be transformed, she was conscious of how small the place was and wondered where she would find the space to work. Harold disagreed.
‘Two great big rooms all for yourselves? Blimey, we’ve never had that much room, have we, Stanley?’
‘Of course you have,’ Eirlys said disbelievingly. ‘You could hardly fit three boys like you, and your mother, into less space than this!’ Annie had described the tiny room in which the Love family had lived but Eirlys had decided it had been an exaggeration. She thought the boys were exaggerating too.
‘One room, we had. Although our mum called it a flat to show off a bit. Stick in a couple of beds and a cupboard and stuff, and there ain’t much room to move, is there, our Stanley?’
‘Surely there was a kitchen?’ she teased. ‘And what about a bedroom?’
‘A kitchen? What for?’ Harold asked. ‘We ate out of the chip shop most nights, except when mum was broke and we just had bread.’
‘I like chips from our chip shop,’ Percival said, his whine suggesting serious deprivation.
The boys had never told her much about their home in London, and if she thought about it at all – even though her mother had told her of its lack of comfort and conveniences – Eirlys had imagined they had lived in a block of flats with better facilities than many families in St David’s Well. No one could live in a room as small as Annie had described. She was convinced her mother had belittled their situation to increase her affection for the boys who had landed on their doorstep a few months ago.
She wondered what would happen to them when they eventually went back to Teresa. Unless things had changed, they would return to the small room her mother had visited when she took the boys to visit Teresa. It was hardly a flat, Annie had told her, just a large bedroom divided into two sections to provide a bedroom and a living room, with a sink and cooker which didn’t work in one corner. There har
dly enough room for one, and it was certainly not large enough to accommodate the boys plus all the possessions they had accumulated since they had come to live at St David’s Well. Perhaps she hadn’t overstated their situation after all.
They were the only evacuees left now. The others had trickled slowly back, having been collected by loving, caring families unable to bear being separated any longer, especially since there had been no bombing in London so far.
In her newly strengthened happiness with Johnny, and the reminder of the poverty from which they had sprung, she felt even more benevolent towards the three boys and after looking at the rooms being prepared for her and Johnny she took them to buy an ice-cream.
She let them choose and they bought a knickerbocker glory but after a few mouthfuls, Percival lowered his head and solemnly declared that, ‘This ice-cream is boverin’ me.’
‘Eat it up,’ she told him. ‘If the war doesn’t end soon, there might not be many more.’
‘Good,’ he grumbled, chewing painfully slowly on a piece of fruit and making them laugh.
* * *
Teresa had lost her flat. After failing to pay the rent and causing a disturbance one night when she brought a few rowdy friends back, she had been told to leave. At first she wasn’t worried. There were several people who would let her sleep on their couch for a night or two. She managed to keep herself looking smart and picked up men easily enough. Offering money to her friends, insisting they took it, made it harder for them to tell her to go. But when she had spent a few days with everyone willing to help, and seeing the rest turn away, she began to wonder what would happen to her.
Her friend Maureen lived near with her ten-year-old daughter. Her husband was in the forces and for a while she was glad of Teresa’s company. Meanwhile, Teresa looked for a flat she could afford, but without success. Then she saw an opportunity to steal the wallet of a man she was drinking with. She helped herself to twenty-four pounds.
Holidays at Home Omnibus Page 22