Holidays at Home Omnibus

by Wait Till Summer; Swingboats On the Sand; Waiting for Yesterday; Day Trippers; Unwise Promises; Street Parties (retail) (epub)

  His head throbbed alarmingly, the wound still refusing to heal properly due to the knocks it received when he went in and out of his various shelters. He’d get it seen to one day, when he was ready to face up to the punishment that awaited him.

  * * *

  Maude and Myrtle looked eagerly at the local paper, read the letter they had submitted and waited hopefully for a response. None came. A week later, Audrey took them to see Sarah.

  The late autumn day was bright, with a watery sun creating shadows reminiscent of summer. Walking into the overheated and dark room was unnerving.

  The old woman looked into their palms for a long time, glancing up, dark intelligent eyes twinkling, smiling at them as if highly amused at their nervousness. She told them only good things about their future. ‘Love and laughter, comfort and ease,’ was her summing up. ‘A very good reading, the best I’ve seen all this week. Go, children, and be happy.’ Then she removed the black velvet cover from her crystal ball and stared into its depths for a long time.

  ‘You will find the answer to your question in the grave,’ she said briefly as she held out her hand and stood, dismissing them. Audrey placed the coins on the outstretched hand and, thanking Sarah, led the girls out again into the bright sun.

  ‘Did she mean we won’t know till we’re dead?’ a frightened Myrtle asked.

  ‘I thought she’d be able to tell us,’ Maude said sadly. ‘Uncle Huw said she’d talk a lot and say nothing; I know what he meant now!’

  ‘Why didn’t she tell us?’ Myrtle asked Beth when they returned home and told her about their expedition.

  ‘Perhaps she did,’ Beth said. ‘I think she meant that you’ll have to search in the cemetery, you know, look at the names on the graves.’

  Accepting that the cemetery was where they would find the graves of their parents they pleaded with Audrey to take them. She adamantly refused.

  ‘No! I will never set foot in the place, now or ever! So don’t you dare ask me again.’

  The girls were surprised at her implacability. She rarely refused to help. But on this she remained firm. They put it down to the fact that as she was quite old, she had a fear of the place where she would certainly end up.

  Huw promised to take them, but when Marged heard of their plan she persuaded him not to go. Eventually it was Beth who set off one Sunday afternoon for the cemetery with two subdued and anxious girls, without telling either Marged or Audrey where they were heading.

  A horse and cart approached as they walked hand in hand, arms swinging, along the road towards the cemetery gates, and Beth was delighted to see Peter and his father riding on the pony and cart, waving to them enthusiastically. The cart was filled with bales of hay which they were taking up to the donkeys’ winter home.

  ‘Climb up if you can and we’ll give you a lift,’ Mr Gregory called. And with some apprehension regarding their Sunday best dress and coat and shoes, Beth sat between Peter and his father on the board seat and the girls laughingly found places for themselves between the hay bales.

  ‘Which first, cemetery or donkeys?’ Peter asked, when told of their destination.

  ‘Donkeys,’ Myrtle said at once. She was afraid of the gloomy place visible over the wall from their high perch, and besides, if yet another disappointment was in store for them, she wanted to delay it.

  A chill wind blew as they left the houses and rode out to the field where the donkeys lived. They were in a huddle, heads together, backsides to the wind. ‘Like a group of gossiping women,’ Peter said, making the girls laugh.

  While Bernard Gregory attended to the daily feed of hot bran and potatoes, Myrtle and Maude admired the donkeys and Beth and Peter talked.

  ‘Heard from Freddy lately?’ Peter asked.

  ‘Just the usual scribbled note, nothing of interest,’ she replied.

  ‘How much longer are you going to put up with him making a fool of you, Beth?’ he asked softly.

  ‘He’s so far away from home, how do I know how he’s coping with it all? How can I judge when I’ve no idea what’s happening to him? We aren’t all natural letter writers like you are, Peter.’

  ‘You say that as though I should be ashamed of my ability to write when life is difficult.’

  ‘Peter, I love your letters. I read them again and again, they’re full of interest, amusement and – and—’

  ‘Affection?’ he offered.

  ‘And affection,’ she agreed with a smile. ‘Please don’t stop writing.’

  ‘But it’s Freddy from whom you want to hear, isn’t it?’

  ‘Freddy isn’t the most thoughtful of men, I know that, but we’ve been together all our life and I can’t abandon him at a time when he’s unable to defend himself against my decision, can I?’

  ‘Does he correspond with anyone else?’ He meant Shirley Downs but it would have been indelicate to name her.

  Beth smiled to herself. ‘Correspond’ indeed. She would have said ‘write’.

  ‘Why are you smiling?’ he asked.

  ‘I like the way you say things,’ she replied.

  ‘And does he? Keep in touch with anyone else?’

  ‘His mother and father of course, and I think he might write to Shirley Downs. He feels sorry for her. Her mother is deeply unhappy, mixed up, disappointed with life, and she sometimes drinks heavily. It’s difficult for Shirley to cope with it.’

  ‘Freddy can be thoughtful at times, then,’ Peter said pointedly. ‘Look, I know I haven’t the right to say anything, to interfere in your private life, but don’t let him make a fool of you, Beth. You’re worth more than that.’

  Before she could reply, the girls shouted with laughter and, turning, they saw that Mr Gregory’s arm had been knocked by an enthusiastic animal and the food he was carrying had spilled on the grass.

  ‘Damn and blast it, Dorothy, when will you learn to wait for it?’ Mr Gregory said as the donkeys pushed him aside and began to eat.

  Beth and Peter said very little as the now empty cart wended its way slowly back to the ornate gates of the cemetery. Mr Gregory tied the pony to a convenient post and they all went in, without any set plan, to read the inscriptions on the gravestones.

  ‘Wait a minute,’ Peter said, waving them back to where he stood. ‘Let’s do this military style. You two look on the left, and Dad, you look on the right. Beth and I will take the next path.’

  Beth had brought a notebook and with Peter searching one side of the path, she bent to examine every inscription, looking for some name that might tie in with the little they knew about the girls.

  The name given to the home had been Carpenter and this was the name they hoped to find. They found several, but none were the right time or the right age to have been Myrtle and Maude’s parents. Nevertheless Beth wrote the details meticulously into her notebook in case something fitted into the information they already had, limited as it was. Any entry might be the clue that would lead them, eventually, to the answer they sought.

  Mr Gregory called urgently to Beth and his son, signalling them not to alert the girls.

  ‘This is strange, Beth; is this one of yours?’

  A small tombstone, barely visible amid ivy, brambles and nettles in a neglected corner, had been partially cleared by Mr Gregory’s rough hand. A small bunch of roses, faded and brittle, falling into fragments, lay across it, and at one side another bouquet, brown and even older than the roses, was half pressed into the earth. Mr Gregory rubbed his hand across the lettering to reveal the legend:

  BOBBIE PIPER

  BORN SEPTEMBER 1910

  DIED NOVEMBER 1910

  GREATLY MISSED BY HIS MOTHER

  ‘Could it have been a brother?’ Beth wondered as she wrote the information down with a trembling hand. ‘A baby born to my mother before she married my father?’ She felt a sense of guilt, as though she had been caught prying into someone else’s business.

  ‘Your mother?’ Mr Gregory said, staring at her strangely. ‘Why not your Auntie Audrey?
She’s a Piper too, isn’t she?’

  ‘But she couldn’t have-’

  ‘Couldn’t have what, loved someone when she was a young woman?’ Mr Gregory said.

  ‘I don’t know.’ Beth shook her dark head in confusion. ‘I can’t imagine her in that situation, I suppose.’

  Mr Gregory smiled sadly. ‘Why are the young incapable of seeing the older generation as anything but ancient? Why do they never accept that we were once young and capable of love?’

  A shout of excitement came from a short distance away, in a section that, though newer, was almost as neglected.

  ‘Beth, come quick. I think we’ve found something,’ Maude was calling.

  The three left the mysterious and uncommunicative grave and went to where the girls were dancing up and down and pointing to an ivy-covered gravestone.

  Peter and Beth knelt down, scraped away more of the moss and pulled at the persistent ivy, and Peter read:

  IN MEMORY OF MARTHA MAUDE COPP

  MOTHER OF MAUDE AND MYRTLE COPP

  DIED 1931

  ‘If that’s us, then our name isn’t Carpenter, it’s Copp. Janet Copp must be a relation,’ Maude said.

  ‘No, I don’t think so. Don’t get your hopes up,’ Beth told them. ‘This can’t be your mother. It’s just a coincidence.’

  ‘But it says 1931, that’s when Mam and Dad died,’ Maude argued.

  ‘Then why isn’t your father buried here too?’ Peter asked softly.

  Frlzlntic now to prove the connection, Maude and Myrtle sobbed as they read the stones nearby. The others helped but without much enthusiasm.

  ‘I know this was our mam,’ Maude said, ‘I can’t explain the name, but I’m sure it’s our mam.’ She hugged her sister and they stared, white faced, at the neglected grave.

  ‘Why did Mam tell everyone we were called Carpenter, then?’ Myrtle wanted to know.

  ‘I don’t understand why,’ Maude said tearfully, ‘but it’s her, I’m sure of that.’

  ‘Perhaps she was ashamed of us,’ Myrtle said, also on the edge of tears. ‘Mam hated us and pretended we weren’t her daughters, that’s why.’

  Ashen faced, the two girls were led from the gloomy grounds and helped back on to the cart.

  Peter told them silly stories in an attempt to cheer them and Beth started singing one of their favourite songs, ‘When Father Papered the Parlour’. Mr Gregory joined in, but the girls remained silent and tense, each wrapped in their own thoughts, trying to come to terms with what they had learnt.

  ‘I really don’t think that grave was anything to do with you,’ Peter said, ‘but perhaps you could write to the paper again, this time in the name of Copp?’

  Beth agreed with forced enthusiasm, but the gloomy expression of the girls’ faces didn’t change.

  * * *

  When Olive and Ronnie were told the outcome of the search, they explained it all to Janet Copp when she brought tea to them on their stall at the market. When she heard the story, she promised to befriend the girls and help them to gradually accept that they were on their own.

  ‘They’ll soon realise how lucky they are to have found the Castles and been given a ready-made family. Just think of what might have happened to them if Beth hadn’t been curious about young Myrtle. For one thing, Maude might not have survived the winter.’

  Hannah continued to visit Bleddyn and give him news of his son Johnny whenever she received a letter. Then she had a letter that made her hesitate. In it, Johnny asked her to marry him.

  I love you more than I can tell, and I want to be with you for always. Marry me, darling Hannah, and I’ll ask nothing more of life. I love you and I adore Josie and Marie, and I know we can create a happy home for them to grow up in. On my next leave – heaven alone knows when that will be – we can make plans. I want us to get married as soon as we can arrange it. Don’t let’s wait, this is a precarious life and I don’t want to waste another moment of it.

  There were more endearments and pledges and promises and as a PS he had written, ‘I bet this is one letter you won’t show my Dad!’

  She was smiling as she handed it to Bleddyn, watching his face for his first reaction: a reaction on which her answer would depend.

  ‘Darling girl, I’m delighted. I couldn’t wish for a better daughter-in-law.’ He hugged her and handed back the letter. ‘Thanks for showing me. I don’t think Johnny expected you to, mind! That PS wasn’t a joke, it was a plea, so if you don’t tell him, then I won’t.’

  ‘Thank you. I was going to ask you not to say anything; I’d hate him to be embarrassed – although, why is it, d’you think, that love and affection and caring for someone other than ourselves causes embarassment? More than some crimes cause, it seems to me.’

  ‘When will you tell the girls?’ Bleddyn asked.

  ‘As soon as I’ve posted my reply’ – she patted her pocket – ‘and told the rest of your family. There’s your Taff, and Evelyn. Perhaps I could write to Taff, if Evelyn doesn’t mind? Then Beth and the others, quite an ordeal.’

  ‘I’ll come with you to see Evelyn if you like. She’ll be pleased, as we all will.’

  ‘Perhaps.’

  ‘Why are you so worried? Is it because you were married before?’

  ‘That and the children, and the fact I’m eight years older than Johnny. It’s a big difference.’

  ‘Rubbish! You and our Johnny are perfect together. Come on, let’s go straight away. Evelyn’ll be back from the factory about now.’

  Evelyn was abrupt in her congratulations. ‘Although,’ she pointed out rather coldly, ‘it isn’t official yet, is it? You haven’t replied and Johnny hasn’t asked you face to face. It might have been a moment’s loneliness that made him write that letter and afterwards regretted it. I’d wait before you tell everyone, in case it falls through.’

  ‘Evelyn!’ Bleddyn said. ‘What an odd way of greeting the news. Of course Johnny meant it. He’s already spoken to me about how he feels about Hannah and her girls.’ He glanced at Hannah and added, ‘It wasn’t such a surprise as you thought, but I didn’t want to spoil your telling me, unlike some!’

  ‘Sorry. Well then, congratulations, Hannah.’ The words had softened but not the coldness of Evelyn’s expression. ‘Will you marry soon?’

  ‘Johnny is somewhere in Europe so far as we know so it’s impossible to answer that. But it will be as soon as we can arrange it – if that’s what Johnny really wants,’ Hannah couldn’t help adding.

  ‘Wouldn’t it be wiser to wait until the war’s over?’ Evelyn persisted.

  ‘I don’t think either of us wants to wait that long. It could go on for another year or more.’

  Telling the rest of the Castle family was easier. Beth hugged her and Marged too. Huw shook her hand and asked when she was going to bring the children to see them again.

  Lilly looked up from the magazine she was reading and asked, ‘Will you want the baby clothes back in case you and Johnny have another, then?’

  ‘Of course not,’ Hannah said, her face reddening in embarrassment in case they thought she was expecting a child. ‘That isn’t the reason Johnny wants to marry so soon. It’s the war and the uncertainty of everything. If he manages to get home he’ll certainly be sent abroad again, he could be away for a very long time the way things are going, and he wants to know we’re there, building a home for when he comes back.’

  ‘Where will you live?’ Beth wanted to know.

  Hannah laughed breathlessly. ‘I haven’t given it a thought. This is all so new. I’m so excited about his proposal. I won’t be able to stay with Mam and Dad, that much is certain. When he gets his next leave we’ll plan everything and hopefully book the wedding date.’

  When she walked back to collect the girls whom she had left playing with friends at a neighbour’s house, she felt a sudden draining of confidence and began to feel that she had spoken too soon. When another letter appeared the following day, repeating his proposal and threatening to ask her e
very day until she said yes, she was relieved. That one was more loving than the last and it was one she didn’t show to Bleddyn.

  * * *

  A meeting was called by the entertainments officer for the town. He asked that everyone connected with holiday-making attend. Beth went along with her parents and Uncle Bleddyn, anxious to know what was being planned for the following year, now that there were so many restrictions on everything they had previously taken for granted.

  A gloomy audience awaited the speakers, expecting to be told that, like so many other places, St David’s Well Bay would be sealed off from the public for fear of invasion. In fact the opposite was true.

  ‘With fuel in short supply, and transport needed for our servicemen and their needs, the call is on for people to forget travelling to other towns for their holidays, and the slogan is “Holidays at Home”,’ the chairman announced. ‘Every town in the country is asked to make plans for next year’s season, and make sure no one wants to go anywhere else but the area in which they live. We have to do everything we can to persuade the local people that the best holiday they can have is right here. In St David’s Well we are fortunate. We have the beach, numerous parks and many other attractions and we have to make sure everyone knows it. This means starting now, to plan for the summer.’

  The first business was to find a representative for each of the the various groups involved: landladies, hoteliers, café owners and of course the beach stall-holders, who voted for Huw to stand as their representative.

  Once this was accomplished, and some shuffling had taken place to allow the various delegates to sit together, the chairman asked for suggestions. The other two speakers on the platform started it off by giving their ideas for entertainments that would involve the whole town.

  A carnival with floats representing every organisation, a choir chosen from the schools to sing in the parks, brass bands, dancing, sandcastle competitions and a donkey derby were all proposed. The list went on until the noise in the hall was deafening. People forgot about addressing the chair and spoke to their neighbours, sharing ideas and forgetting the speakers completely.