The uneven footsteps scurrying along the bare floor behind him were frightening. The man ran leaning against the wall to stay upright but it didn’t slow him down and he reached out and gripped Eynon’s shoulder painfully tight.
‘I only came in for a moment,’ Eynon said. ‘I wanted the lav, see.’
‘The lav’s out the back, not upstairs like the posh Piper family.’
‘I’m a Castle,’ Eynon said weakly. For someone supposed to be deaf, this one was quick to understand what was being said, Eynon thought. He hadn’t seen Alice repeat the words slowly so her father could lip-read. Confused by the pain, he struggled to escape the man’s firm grasp.
‘It’s all right, Dad.’ Alice tried to pull her father’s fingers free. She could see that Eynon was in pain.
Mr Potter gave Eynon a powerful push before letting him go and he slithered along the passage, fell but immediately recovered and made for the door. Alice opened the door and whispered, ‘See you tomorrow,’ before he was out in the night and running down the road. His shoulders hurt, but before he reached the corner he was laughing.
* * *
Marged and Moll looked through the albums sent by Mr Gregory but saw no one they recognised. Marged showed several of the snaps to Huw but he was clearly not interested - although she did see him looking through the tattered pages once, when he thought she wasn’t looking.
‘See anyone you know?’ she asked and he shook his head and threw the book down.
The girls browsed through the pages time after time, refusing to give up hope of finding someone they knew, but eventually the albums were put aside, another dead end.
Eynon considered himself one of Freddy’s closest friends since their talk regarding conscription. When he spoke of him he referred to him as ‘my butty’, the local name for a close friend. So when he was walking along the main road with his sister late one evening, after a second visit to Mr Gregory to return the albums, and saw Freddy coming out of the picture house with another girl, he quickly led Beth away so she wouldn’t see them. He was bubbling with barely controlled laughter, which eventually exploded as they turned a corner and left the main road behind, along with any possibility of the couple being seen by his puzzled sister.
‘Eynon? What’s struck you as so funny?’ Beth asked with a frown. ‘You’re always laughing these days.’ The frown faded and she began to smile, amused by his helpless laughter. They were soon sharing the merriment even though Beth still didn’t know the reason.
‘That Bernard Gregory, he’s got them long teeth and miserable eyes,’ Eynon spluttered between bouts of laughter. ‘He’s beginning to look like one of his donkeys.’
At any other time Beth would have been angry with her young brother for being so unkind, but with laughter already irresistibly out of control, she giggled louder. They went home in a cheerful mood but with no news for the two girls searching for their brother.
‘He found a few more photos of them but couldn’t remember a thing,’ Beth giggled.
‘We’d have done better to ask his donkeys,’ Eynon gasped, his eyes full of tears.
Irritated with their stupid behaviour, Marged told them to ‘be’ave’, and got on with her knitting.
‘Eh up, boy,’ Eynon said when he and Freddy met the following day. ‘You owe me a favour.’
‘What’s that, then?’
‘Saw you and some girl coming out of the pictures and I made sure our Beth didn’t see you, that’s what! I dragged her round that corner so quick she must have thought Hitler was coming!’
‘Oh, that was only Shirley Downs. Her mam works for your mam and dad. I met her inside and we walked out chatting, that’s all. Tell Beth if you like, but she won’t be very bothered,’ Freddy said. He hoped Eynon wouldn’t tell, however. He and Beth were supposed to be careful with their money and visits to the pictures were forbidden as unnecessary extravagances. He felt a surge of resentment. He enjoyed the pictures, Beth didn’t, so it was easy for her to give up going, pretending she was depriving herself of a treat!
Shirley was different. She loved the glamour of the beautiful women and the grand houses and the suggestions of wealth portrayed. She loved dancing too and twice they had slipped into the local dance hall, pretended surprise at meeting and danced happily for several hours. Beth and he never went dancing and she worked rather anonymously in the beach café, hidden away in the kitchen most of the time, so it was unlikely she would be told. He was recognised, of course, having worked in the town’s main gentlemen’s outfitters until recently, but Shirley Downs was such a good dancer and such lively company, he thought it worth the risk.
With news of the war shown on the Gaumont British News every day, many went just to see a pictorial version of the latest events. The next day Beth decided she would like to go, since the newsreel was said to contain pictures of the new Home Guard. Huw and Uncle Bleddyn had joined and she had a fanciful idea that they might be shown. Once again, Freddy had to pay to see a programme he had already seen right through. It was as they were coming out that someone remarked on his enthusiasm for the film.
‘So good you’ve seen it twice?’ one of his friends called. Quickly, Freddy hustled Beth out on to the street, but the young man followed. ‘Oh, aye, a different girl too. You old devil, Freddy Clements!’
‘Get lost! You’ve mixed me up with someone else.’
Beth stared back at the young man as Freddy hurried her along pavements which were wet after several days of rain.
‘Ignore him, Beth. Stirring up trouble is his idea of fun. Start a war he could with his so-called “only joking”!’
He was irritable when Beth tried to question him and when they got back to Sidney Street, Beth didn’t invite him in. She was frowning as she went into the living room, where her brother Eynon was the only occupant.
‘He’s always bumping into that Shirley Downs,’ she said half to herself.
‘He told you then, did he?’ Eynon said. He was studying the evening paper, quite unconcerned, and didn’t see the shock that crossed his sister’s face. ‘I told him I wouldn’t split as you’d be sure to get the wrong idea. Met her inside he did, nothing suspicious about that, is there?’
‘Nothing,’ she said, the words forced out of tight lips. ‘Except that we’re trying to save and he’d promised not to go without me.’ Memories of their laughter the previous evening returned and she glared at her brother, who was trying to read the newspaper, with suspicion in her dark eyes. ‘You saw them, didn’t you?’
‘Yes, I did, and he was upset, afraid I’d tell you, so he must have decided to tell you himself.’ He tutted and looked superior. ‘Fancy getting married to a bloke and not trusting him. Asking for trouble that is, sis. He’s all right, our Freddy. Real butties we are.’
* * *
Freddy walked around the town, restless and unable to face going home, getting to bed and trying to sleep. Having signed on for the armed forces was no longer an adventure, a bit of fun. It was frightening. Now he was on the edge of losing his job again, and being made to do something about which he had no choice until he was called up, all because the foreman had it in for him and complained about his timekeeping. He felt cut off from everything that had once seemed normal. He was detached from Beth too: his happiest moments had been spent with Shirley during the past weeks and instead of feeling guilty about that, he felt trapped.
He no longer felt safe and secure. A door was opening and he was going to step through with no idea what was on the other side. When he tried to analyse how he felt, he had a premonition of death. There was no one he could talk to. Perhaps his thoughts were usual at such a time and everyone went through a period of morbid imagination? He needed someone to tell him this was so, and that he would feel different once he met others and found companionship and confidence from the numbers involved. He wouldn’t be alone, he kept telling himself, and alone was how he felt at the moment.
The following morning he went to the bank and withdrew t
he remainer of his and Beth’s savings. What was the point of leaving it there if he was going to die?
* * *
Mrs Downs again found a small amount of tobacco ash in the corner of the café one morning and she told Moll. ‘This time it couldn’t have been pushed through the letter box. It’s too far away and so neatly placed there had to be an intruder, or someone wasn’t doing their job!’
‘It has to be inefficient cleaning,’ Moll insisted. ‘The place is securely locked.’
When Huw told her he had cleaned the floors the previous evening, she still argued that it was the only explanation. A few days later the same thing happened and this time it was Mrs Downs who had dealt with the mop and bucket.
‘I’ll do it myself tonight,’ Moll said. ‘Then I’ll believe it’s something other than sloppy cleaning. Right?’ She and Huw both suspected that the culprit was Mrs Downs, the only non-family member in the café team. The woman did her job but resentment was there. The occasional snide remark showed it. Huw believed the mystery of the litter on the floor was nothing more than Mrs Downs trying to agravate Moll and Marged, and recommended they forgot it. As usual, they ignored him.
When they left, the floor gleaming with the thorough treatment Moll had given it, Mrs Downs dropped a few matches, throwing them unnoticed behind the door as Marged and Huw locked up. That’ll show her, she thought. Accusing me of not washing the floor properly! Well, Moll Piper left herself open for that one! She enjoyed telling Shirley when she got home.
Shirley still worked for the small café in the town, having refused to consider working for the Pipers. But she hoped that the following year she might be offered a full-time summer job now an approach had been made. Freddy would put in a good word for her, she thought with a smile. The beach was a more exciting place to work than a café patronised by the boring and the elderly who came to sit and gossip. She would pick up a nice tan and put on pretty dresses instead of the black dress and white apron she was presently forced to wear.
She met Freddy on the day he finally got his cards from the factory. He had overslept again and when he walked in, to the jeers and cheers of his workmates, his wages were made up and he was told to leave.
Shirley had been sent to the wholesaler to try and buy some tomatoes for the café where she worked, and was carrying the box out of the entrance when Freddy approached.
‘Freddy! What a bit of luck. Can you help me to carry this box? It’s cutting into my side something chronic.’
He walked with her back to the café, then stayed and was rewarded with a cup of tea and a cake.
‘What’s up?’ Shirely asked as she pretended to take his money. ‘Why aren’t you in work? Your papers haven’t come already, have they?’
‘I was sacked for bad timekeeping. You’d think they needed people desperate enough to overlook a few minutes, wouldn’t you? Where’s this war effort we’re being told about? A few minutes late and I’m sacked.’
‘I bet it wasn’t the first time.’ Shirley grinned. ‘Late nights and early mornings don’t go well together, do they? Dancing – pictures…’ she teased.
‘Fancy going to the dance tonight? There’s a live band on.’
‘And I bet there’s not one of them under fifty,’ she laughed. ‘Yes, I’ll come, Freddy. We won’t have many more, will we?’
‘Don’t say that!’
‘I only meant for a while, you daft thing. You’ll be home for leaves with stories to make me laugh sooner than you think. And this nuisance of a war won’t go on for ever. We’ll celebrate every leave, shall we? You and me? And we’ll really celebrate when the war ends and you come home for good.’
She could see he was still unhappy so she added, ‘In fact, let’s really celebrate tonight, shall we? Just for the practice?’
Promise was in her dark brown eyes and neither of them heard when her employer twice called for her to serve some newcomers who were becoming impatient.
* * *
Mrs Downs went in first when they got to the café next morning. She opened the door wide and held it for the others to enter. Moll saw the matches on the floor and looked accusingly at Mrs Downs, who stared at her enigmatically.
‘Did you just drop these?’ she asked, pointing at the pink-tipped matchsticks.
‘How could I? I’ve just opened the door for you. What are you looking at me like that for? You did the floor. Going to show us all how it should be done, weren’t you?’
‘You left them there,’ Moll said. ‘You dropped them last night as we were leaving.’
‘Ridiculous!’ Mrs Downs replied angrily.
‘Look at them. The ends have softened and spread. They were put on a wet floor, wet like when we all went through the door last night.’
‘You can’t accuse me, we all left at the same time.’
‘But you were expecting me to find them,’ Moll insisted. ‘It was written on your face.’ Taking money from the float she handed Mrs Downs her wages. ‘I’m not telling you to go because of a few matches, whatever you choose to tell your friends. I can’t work with people I don’t trust.’
‘I’ll work the day. I’ll stay in the kitchen and do the dishes, you’ll be hard put to manage on your own.’ Mrs Downs was beginning to regret her stupid action.
Marged saw this, and also saw the queue already forming. She forestalled Moll’s refusal. ‘She’s right, Mam. We’re going to be busy today and we’ll be glad of your help today, Mrs Downs. Thank you.’
How stupid of Moll to sack someone over a bit of nonsense that should have been treated as a joke! Staff were more and more difficult to find, with women being offered good wages in factories and taking jobs previously undertaken by men. They needed to build goodwill, to have people they could call on when the new season began. It seemed a long way off, but it was essential to look forward and plan ahead.
Mrs Downs was smiling when she left. She was leaving sooner than she had hoped, but the scene was set for a revenge for which she had waited a very long time.
Six
‘What about painting the helter-skelter and the swingboats red, white and blue?’ Huw suggested one morning as they were leaving for the beach.
‘That’s ridiculous, Huw,’ was Marged’s instant response. ‘They’ve always been yellow and red.’
‘That’s no reason not to change them. All the businesses in town are doing something to make people proud of being British, so why shouldn’t we?’
‘We’ll keep them the same, Huw. Mam wouldn’t hear of making them so gaudy.’
‘Gaudy? It’s patriotic!’
‘Why d’you always want to be different, Huw?’ Marged asked in exasperation. ‘Whatever will you think of next?’
‘There was something else,’ he said, eyeing her to assess his chances.
Marged put down the bag she was filling with the laundry and stared at him, lips tight, a look of irritation on her face. ‘Look, it’s Piper’s and we’ll keep everything the way it was first planned. Right?’ She bustled around gathering everything they needed to take with them. But curiosity got the better of her and she asked, ‘What was it then, this other fancy idea you had?’
‘The Home Guard need somewhere to sit and have a cup of tea during their shift, and the fire-watchers and the wardens pass there often. I thought Bleddyn and I could take it in turns to provide teas and perhaps a cake or sandwich during the evenings. What d’you think?’
‘I think we’re going to be late, and you and Bleddyn have enough to do helping to keep my business running. Piper’s is as much as you can manage without idling your time chatting to the Home Guard and their buddies.’
‘Your business?’ He said the words slowly. ‘Your business is run by me and my brother, and we’re Castles, not Pipers. It hasn’t been Pipers running things since you married me. Bleddyn and I do most of the work, you run the café. Without us you wouldn’t last a month. Yet I can’t offer an opinion. The time will come, Marged Castle, when Bleddyn and I will have had enoug
h. Right?’
Halfway down the stairs, Beth and Lilly listened in horror. They hated hearing their parents argue. Lately the arguments were increasing and they were always about Piper’s.
‘Dad’s right, mind,’ Beth said. ‘Gran and Auntie Audrey are the only Pipers left. The name should be changed. Dad is head of the family. It should be called Castle’s.’
‘You think the man should be in charge whatever the situation?’ Lilly sneered. ‘I don’t think so. If our Ronnie and Eynon gave up the beach and I married, there’s no chance my husband would ever be in charge!’
‘I don’t think that’s right.’
‘You ought to be thinking the same,’ Lilly went on. ‘Imagine if you took over. Your Freddy would never keep his hands out of the till for a start. And as for work, well, it isn’t his favourite pastime, is it? No, with Freddy in charge you’d fade to nothing in weeks. Your Freddy hasn’t the head for business, he’ll never succeed.’
Beth continued to defend Freddy but her heart wasn’t in it. She had the strongest of feelings that Lilly was right.
In a small town like St David’s Well nothing could remain a secret for very long. Several people asked Beth whether she and Freddy had broken off their engagement and more than one commiserated before asking for confirmation, having seen Freddy once or twice with Shirley Downs.
She soon became adept at lying, insisting that she knew and understood about Freddy’s addiction to the films and that he occasionally met Shirley, also a film fan, inside.
She told him quite casually what she had been told, and he said apologetically, ‘Sorry, Beth, but I really enjoy the pictures and, knowing that you aren’t so keen, well, I sometimes go on my own.’
‘That’s all right, Freddy, I’m not going to be the jealous girlfriend, just because I’m wearing your ring.’ She smiled and added, ‘Just as well you enjoy the pictures. When you’re away from home it will be a way of filling in the lonely hours, won’t it?’
Holidays at Home Omnibus Page 43