Beth was surprised at her sister’s compassion. Expecting a child had made her a nicer person.
She had written to Peter telling him the outcome of their sad discovery and he had written back, promising to go with her and her aunt and clean up the site when he was next home, ‘which won’t be until after Christmas,’ he added.
When she had a letter a few days later telling her that Freddy would be unable to get home for Christmas, it was less of a disappointment. He still wrote occasionally, and she had developed the habit of sending him ten shillings every two weeks, for which he thanked her.
She saw Peter’s father often. He called sometimes to see whether they needed fresh vegetables and when he had a few rows of young leeks which he wanted to clear so he could plant broad beans, he offered them to Olive and Ronnie for their market stall. This had led to them buying and selling on other things, including rabbits, which were a popular addition to the meat supply.
Towards Christmas he began taking orders for chickens, which so far were not included in the weekly meat allowance.
‘Got a couple of geese too, mind,’ he said when he called into the bustling, noisy market. He wrote their order in his scruffy notebook, which he kept tucked inside the lining of his hat.
‘Never cooked a goose,’ Olive said. Mr Gregory enjoyed a few moments telling them the best way of putting it in the oven, hanging it above a drip tray to remove much of the grease.
‘And keep the goose grease, mind,’ Janet Copp said as she arrived with their morning tea. ‘Good for rubbing on chests when you’ve got a cold, mind.’
‘Thanks, Janet,’ Olive laughed. ‘But I think I’d rather have a cold!’
Between dealing with the occasional customer, they watched as the Christmas decorations went up. There was such a happy atmosphere they were unaware of the time passing. It was a surprise when the inspector came out of his cubby-hole of an office to remind them it was time to close.
‘Tomorrow we’d better do something to add to the rest,’ Ronnie said as they set off for home. ‘I bet Auntie Audrey will have some trimmings tucked away. She’s sure to find a few streamers and baubles we can borrow.’
As the next day was Sunday the market was closed. On Monday, Ronnie tried to deal with the complicated task of fixing the trimmings, but he didn’t get very far. Besides the impossibility of bending his injured knee, his fear of climbing too high in case of falling and damaging it further thwarted him. Exasperated by his uselessness he sat on his stool and resigned himself to waiting for Olive to help.
‘Stuck for a bit of help, is it?’ the woman on the other fruit and veg stall called. Ronnie shrugged expressively and she gave her husband a nudge. ‘Go on, Arthur, give the poor lad a bit of a hand.’
Arthur came across smiling cheerfully and, with his wife shouting instructions and Ronnie helping where he could, the stall was soon as brightly decorated as the rest, right down to the sprays of holly, which Arthur sold on his stall, and the strategically placed bough of mistletoe.
Ronnie was as pleased with the Christmas display as he remembered feeling as a child. Every year about this time he had come downstairs one morning with Beth and Lilly and Eynon to find the tree sparkling and the room filled with streamers that dipped down from the centre light to the corners and along the walls to the door. Magic. The stall was almost as good; he couldn’t wait for Olive to see it.
Olive declared it ‘wonderful’, and went straight away to thank the couple for their help. Arthur and Sally told her it was a pleasure.
When the market closed and everyone had finished packing their stalls away for the night, Olive called to Janet and told her about the discovery of the grave of Ronnie’s baby cousin and the distress it had caused in the family. Inevitably the conversation then returned to the discovery of that other grave, Myrtle and Maude’s mother, a few weeks previously. ‘Copp she was called, like you. Strange, isn’t it?’
‘I don’t think it’s any relation of mine, though,’ Janet said. ‘Pity, mind; I’d have liked a couple of long-lost sisters. But so far as I know I don’t have any other relations. Certainly not round here. From Birmingham my family were, not South Wales. But, tell you what, I’ll wrap up a parcel for each of them girls for you to put under the tree, and tell them that having the same name is sure to make us friends. How will that be?’
* * *
Lilly’s pregnancy progressed easily. She did less and less around the house, insisting that she needed fresh air every day and had to avoid any heavy work. As ‘heavy work’ included practically every type of housework, she found very little to tax her energy.
She daydreamed a lot, imagining seeing Phil on the day he was demobbed and presenting him with the beautiful child and him falling in love with them both and leave his wife and – There the dream ended every time, bringing her down to earth with a jolt.
She had never discovered exactly where he lived or she would have paraded up and down from time to time hoping to catch him on one of his leaves and persuade him to at least help her. When she had asked about his home he had been evasive and the only clues she had were that he came from the direction of the beach when he walked up to meet her. She had also seen him on one occasion walking along one of the roads not far from the promenade, with a slim, fair young woman carrying shopping. Lilly presumed she was his wife.
She had walked along that road once or twice but hadn’t seen Phil or the woman he had been with that day. So she enjoyed a dramatic few moments every day wondering if he was safe or injured, or perhaps a prisoner of war in some dreadful camp. If only she had news of him. Perhaps his wife didn’t write very often. He might be glad of more letters from home. If only there was some way of finding out what was happening to him.
She found out in the harshest way possible. Each week the local paper listed the reported deaths and there was his photograph and his name, Philip Martin Denver. Not Philip Martin, the name he had given her, but there was no doubt about the picture. It was Phil, and while she had been daydreaming about a joyous reunion and being happy ever after, he had been killed.
Surprisingly she didn’t burst into noisy tears. She was stunned by the news; her head hurt as though from a blow and was filled with a kind of pressure that blocked out all sensation and all thought. As the shock slowly receded she was calm and controlled. There was absolutely nothing that she could do. Nothing at all. She couldn’t tell anyone and she couldn’t be seen to grieve.
She knew that even at a moment like this she couldn’t tell anyone. Selfish as she often was, she couldn’t distress his wife more by letting her know that her husband had been unfaithful. She grieved silently, seeing before her a future empty of love. In the privacy of her room she hugged herself, seeking comfort from her unborn child who was unequivocally without a father, even an absent one.
Marged and Huw noticed how quiet she was, how less inclined to argue, but they decided there was no serious problem.
‘Nothing to be alarmed about,’ Marged said, and Huw agreed.
‘Our Lilly’s always been moody.’
* * *
The shops lacked their usual displays. They all had black-out material over their windows, so instead of the usual glitter of Christmas cheer, with grocers and butchers and toy shops, making a walk through the main shopping streets an exciting event for the town’s children, everything became dark as soon as the day ended. No coloured lights enticed window-shopping children with bright eyes, marvelling at the magic, to wander and hope and dream.
Once darkness fell, most people stayed home and listened to the wireless, where news came of waves of German aircraft filling the skies night after night, many of them to be destroyed, but others coming in their place, relentlessly continuing to bomb the larger cities, leaving them wondering how anything could survive. Pity for the victims was mixed with relief that that St David’s Well had nothing of strategic importance to the enemy.
Eynon gravitated towards St David’s Well as Christmas drew closer. H
e didn’t know what to do to extricate himself from the mess he had made. One evening, he walked along the promenade where the silent shops gave no sign of the bright days of summer. Some were boarded up against the winter gales, others still showed posters advertising the ice-creams that were no longer allowed to be sold. Leaves and piles of sand filled the once neat doorways and everywhere was a travesty of the golden days of the past summer.
At the rock and sweet shop he stopped and thought of Alice. Where was she now – still looking after her sick and foul-tempered father? He smiled sadly as he remembered his plans to save her from that, dreams in which he would flirt a little and perhaps become seriously involved. Then he had been ready for fun and adventure, now he would settle for having a friend.
Footsteps approached, running, accompanied by soft laughter. They slowed to a walk, then were running again. There was a shout of anger, then more running.
He stepped into the doorway of the rock and sweet shop and hoped the shadows would hide him. His eyes were used to the dark, living as he had far from towns and people for the past months, so as the girl and the dog who was causing the trouble passed the doorway, he recognised her.
‘Alice!’ The word was out before he thought of the risk he was taking. Appearing like that so soon after she had filled his thoughts, he was unable to help himself.
‘Eynon? But I thought - I thought you were missing,’ she said, grasping the dog’s collar in an effort to hold him still.
‘I shouldn’t have spoken,’ Eynon said. ‘Please, Alice, please forget you’ve seen me.’
‘Is it true then? You did run away?’ she gasped.
‘I ran away from a situation that I thought couldn’t get worse, and I was wrong. Now I don’t know what to do.’
‘Everyone thinks you’re missing, or a prisoner of war.’
‘That’s what I am, but I’m in a prison without walls.’
‘Dad’ll be asleep; will you come back and have a bath and some food? I can cook you something.’
‘I can’t do that. If you’re seen to be helping me, you’d be in serious trouble.’
She stepped into the doorway beside him. ‘I’ll risk it. Come on, I’ll tell them I was trying to persuade you to give yourself up.’ Then she saw the unsightly scar on his head and asked, ‘What’s that? It looks painful.’
‘I did it when I fell from the lorry on manoeuvres, the day I ran away. I was knocked out for a few minutes. That was weeks ago and it just won’t heal. It’s a bit sore at times because I keep knocking it.’
‘You needed a few stitches, that’s why it won’t heal.’
‘I know, but it’s too late now,’ he shrugged.
With Alice’s father asleep upstairs, Eynon went into the kitchen and filled the galvanised bath with warm water and soaked luxuriously for a while. Beside him, half shielded by a curtain, Alice prepared eggs on toast, planning to tell her father that she had dropped them while cleaning the cupboard.
Daringly, she led him upstairs after he had eaten and showed him the spare room. There was a gas lamp on the wall and the curtains were open.
‘Don’t light that, whatever you do,’ Alice whispered.
He opened the window and stared out. The sky was clear and a moon shone over the town. Roofs were touched with its silver light and the street below, sharply etched, looked unreal.
Homesickness overwhelmed him and Alice held him as he took deep breaths to contain his grief. Then he slipped under the sweet-smelling sheets and was asleep within minutes. Alice watched for a while, thinking about how young he looked, in spite of a roughly chopped beard, and of how unfair life could be.
The next morning she called him early and he left with pockets filled with bread and her ration of cheese, promising he’d be back as soon as he had sorted everything out.
‘Write to me,’ were her last words before he slipped out of the back gate and hurried away in the early dawn.
* * *
Two weeks after the death of Phil had been reported, Lilly was idly looking through her ‘treasure box’, a chocolate box with a sentimental picture of kittens on the front, in which she kept her private memorabilia. She found the only photograph she had of Phil, taken when the beach photographer had snapped them unaware. If he’d thought about it at all, he would have presumed the negative had been destroyed without a copy being made, but he would have been wrong. She had kept it hidden in her treasure box, to take out occasionally and relive some precious moments. She had hoped that one day, when they were together and their love was no longer a secret, she would show him and they would laugh at her mild deception.
Now she wondered whether she should give it to Phil’s wife. She needn’t tell her the truth, just that she knew Phil from the repair shop. She could say that the photographer had taken the snap when they had met by accident, and that she had kept it as it was a flattering one of herself. It was a plausible story and to add to its authenticity, she would wear a wedding ring to reassure the poor widow that she was no threat. Granny Moll’s ring was in the house and would fit well enough.
* * *
Most people managed to decorate their rooms with either homemade streamers or ones saved from previous Christmases, but for Beth, any attempt at adding the usual trimmings came to nothing. Every time she painstakingly put something up, her father frustrated her by pulling it down.
‘What is it, Dad?’ she asked when the artificial tree she had found in a cupboard had been thrown into the ashbin. ‘You might be angry about something, but for the rest of us, it’s Christmas and we want to enjoy it.’
‘No cheek from you!’ he snapped and she sat down, the crépe-paper streamers she had made resting on her lap.
‘Dad, why are you so angry? It’s been ever since Auntie Audrey told us about the baby. Why has that upset you?’
‘I can’t talk to you about something like that, girl!’
‘Why not? Our Ronnie’s wife is expecting and I do have an idea of how that happens, Dad!’
‘None of your impertinence, right?’
‘Cheek, impertinence, there’s a terrible daughter I am,’ she teased, hoping to coax a smile.
‘All right, it isn’t about the baby, it’s about your Granny Moll. She ruled this family, insisting on having the last say in everything.’
‘Piper’s was her business, and her father’s before her. I suppose she thought she had the right.’
‘It was me and your Uncle Bleddyn who ran it, and we ran it in spite of her interference not because of her help. Lazy sod her old man Joseph Piper was. Never did a stroke of work unless he was forced. Bleddyn and I came into the firm when we were still at school, working dawn till dark. We worked full time, and I mean full time, when we were only fourteen and slaved like fools all these years with neither praise nor credit. And all the time Granny Moll was telling everyone how her grandfather Joseph brought the business round after he took over from Mrs Downs’s grandparents.’
Beth only half believed what her father was saying. Anger and disappointment can easily distort the truth in the most honest people.
‘But why are you suddenly angry about this now?’ she asked.
‘Because of what she did to your Auntie Audrey. She was a bully, her righteousness was a hammer which she wielded on us all, me, Bleddyn, your mother, poor inoffensive Audrey, and even you, Lilly, Ronnie and our Eynon, insisting that you worked on the beach even though you might have wanted something different.’
‘I didn’t, though,’ she protested.
‘How do you know? Ever since you were born, you and Lilly and Ronnie and little Eynon weren’t given the choice. You were told by devoted Granny Moll that your future was Piper’s. Damn it all, it’s a couple of cafés and stalls, not a flamin’ dynasty!’
He went out soon after and later Beth learned that he had gone to the fish-and-chip café, after collecting the sign he had ordered some days before - which had been changed to ‘Castle’s’.
Huw was still sufficiently angr
y to relish the moment when Marged first saw it, and he smiled in anticipation. He was determined it would stay if he had to sit up on the roof all night and guard it!
* * *
Lilly made up her mind. With the item in the newspaper giving her sufficient clues, she would find Phil’s wife and give her the photograph. It was the last thing she could do for him. He had let her down when he learned about the baby she was carrying, but she still loved him and knew that he had loved her, at least a little. Not enough to behave honourably, but she could hardly blame him for that. Every family had its secrets, she knew that, particularly now, since the truth had come out about Auntie Audrey’s lost child. It had made her feel less alone, knowing poor Auntie Audrey had been through something similar although with a far less happy outcome.
She searched through her mother’s small collection of jewellery and slipped her Granny Moll’s ring on her wedding finger. Tomorrow she would go to Queen Street and knock doors until she found her.
The road was a long, stone-built terrace, one of three closely arranged rows climbing, one behind the other, up a steep hill from one of the town’s busy shopping areas. She went to the first house and asked for the family of Denver and was directed to the house at the far end. She knocked and waited apprehensively for the woman who was Phil’s wife to answer.
Suddenly she was afraid, and wanted to run away. How could she face the woman she had cheated on in the most degrading way? What had happened to Auntie Audrey could have happened to her: Mam and Dad could have forbidden her to keep the child. Then she might have been forced to tell the truth about its father. How could she stand here so blatantly and face the woman and pretend she was on an errand of kindness and friendship?
Holidays at Home Omnibus Page 56