‘Bleddyn and Hetty are coming to the meeting too. I thought we’d make a few sandwiches.’
‘Already done and in the pantry under plates to keep them fresh,’ he said. ‘The big tray is set ready for teas.’
‘Oh Wilf, what would I do without you?’
Again that little stab of fear.
* * *
Marged, Huw and Bleddyn were at the beach looking around to make sure nothing urgently needed fixing before the season began. The two brothers kicked the sand discussing where on the beach they would place the helter-skelter and the swingboats. Soon, the stalls would appear; stalls that had once sold ice cream and toffee apples, sweets and sticks of rock, but had changed to selling any items that could justifiably be called requirements for the sands. The powerfully built, bearded Bleddyn ran his heel around, gouging out a line in the sand to mark out the areas they would need. He and Huw discussed the men they would need to help when they took the prefabricated buildings out of store.
Before leaving the environs of the beach, they met Bernard Gregory with his string of donkeys, which gave rides to children on the beach throughout the summer months.
‘You’re too early, Bernard,’ Huw shouted. ‘There’s no one on the sands yet.’
‘I like to give them a walk now and then so they don’t forget what they have to do,’ Bernard said, lifting his trilby. ‘I can check that the saddles are comfortable, too. Won’t be long, mind. A couple more weeks delivering logs and firewood then their tips come off.’
The donkeys weren’t allowed to give rides on the sand wearing tips or shoes, in case they accidentally trod on a child’s foot. But a few of them worked during the winter and these needed shoes for walking the roads making deliveries. Removing them was the first sign that summer was about to begin.
* * *
Eirlys called in at the handicraft shop where she had arranged to meet Hannah and Alice Castle. Eirlys, Hannah and Beth Gregory ran the shop between them, each doing as many hours as they could spare. Alice also helping when she could. She shouted, and Alice came out and helped her carry the pram inside. Anthony was asleep and they were able to talk.
Taking a half-finished pair of gloves, Eirlys picked up stitches for the first finger and said, ‘You are sure about sharing the care of Anthony if I go back to work full-time? I don’t think we can rely on Ken for much. He’s afraid of being in charge of such a young child. He’ll be fine when Anthony’s older, I’m sure.’
Hannah, who was married to Bleddyn’s son Johnny, handed her a page of writing. It was a neatly printed timetable of how the shared responsibility would work.
‘I can manage a few evenings, Eirlys,’ Alice said, ‘but Hannah’s children mean that she can’t. So if you need to work after five o’clock, you’ll have to make sure I’m on the right shift at the factory.’
‘Thank you,’ Eirlys said warmly. ‘I’m so grateful to you both. Dadda will help, of course, and between us I think we’ll cope. If there are any problems, well, Anthony comes first and I’ll have to learn the art of delegation.’
‘You’ve talked Ken round, then?’ Alice said.
‘More or less. Although in truth it’s more less than more, if you see what I mean,’ Eirlys said with a laugh.
‘Good luck,’ Hannah said softly, her gentle face a little troubled.
Leaving the baby with her friends, Eirlys went to see her bosses and told them she was ready to return to her normal duties. Mr Gifford and Mr Johnston were delighted and promised to lend her one of the office girls for a few weeks while she caught up with what had been happening in her absence.
‘There’s the usual start-of-season meeting next Tuesday,’ she was told by Mr Gifford. ‘All the showground people and hotel and guest house owners have been invited, including the Castle family and others with businesses over on St David’s Well Bay. I’ll chair and you can take notes, that way you’ll slip back into the swing of things with ease.’
Eirlys went home pleased, but apprehensive about telling Ken what she had done.
Meanwhile, in the handicraft shop, Alice took out a letter she had received that week from her husband, Eynon, one of Marged’s sons. ‘You can read it if you like, Hannah,’ she offered, so Hannah in turn opened her handbag and gave her friend a letter she had received from her husband, Johnny. Both letters were short, saying little more than that they were well, things were quiet and they hoped to be home very soon. In both, a sentence had been ‘blue-pencilled’ out and the letters ended with loving words that made them feel sad and empty.
‘It’s one I can show Johnny’s father,’ Hannah said as she replaced it in her handbag. ‘I always share them when I can. The news is so precious.’
‘They tell us so little. I wonder if we’ll ever learn what these years have been like for them.’
‘I doubt it. I think Eynon and Johnny will both want to forget and settle back into the pretend, fun and sun world of St David’s Well Bay, don’t you?’
‘So will I,’ Alice replied fervently. ‘Children having fun, families all together, dads as well as mums. Laughing at nothing at all and enjoying the ordinary things. I can’t wait to have Eynon home and to be a part of it all again.’
* * *
‘Mrs Thomas?’ Audrey heard as she bent down to pick up the milk one morning a few days later. She looked around and saw a neighbour pointing up at her roof. ‘You got a slate slipped,’ the woman informed her, pointing up to a place near the smoking chimney.
Audrey remembered seeing a man working on a roof in a street nearby and she went around and arranged for the builder, Keith Kent, to call and ‘take a look’.
Keith went up and examined the fault. It wasn’t a big job but it might be worth doing at a low price, or even for nothing. The Castles had several properties and this might lead to regular maintenance work if he did a good job.
When Audrey told Wilf that she had approached a builder, he didn’t seem pleased. It was usual for her to deal with such things and she was surprised by his reaction.
‘A man called Keith Kent is coming to look at the job this afternoon,’ she had told him. and Wilf had nodded and said he would be there to deal with him. In fact, he sent him away. When Audrey asked him why, he explained that he would fix the slate himself. ‘No need to waste money on a simple job like that.’
‘We can afford it, so why risk a fall? Even Huw jibs at a repair on a high roof. Keith Kent is a builder and he’s used to heights. You are not either.’
She said nothing more and when the slate was still out of place a week later, she went to find Keith, who was working on an extension and repairs at the local hospital. A brief explanation, a little subterfuge and she had arranged for him to come at a time when she knew Wilf would be out.
Keith came as promised and dealt with the repair quickly. If Wilf noticed that the work had been done, he didn’t remark on it. She was puzzled by his refusal to deal with the small repair. She was more curious a few days later when she proudly told him she had saved enough clothing coupons for him to have a new suit, and to her surprise and dismay he refused that too, insisting it was an unnecessary waste of money.
She tried to persuade him to explain. ‘Are you saving for something special? Is that it? The holiday I mentioned, maybe? We can’t stop buying what we need to make sure we have a holiday, Wilf. Besides, we don’t need to economise that much — we can afford a new suit and have repairs done and go on a little holiday. Once the season’s over, that’s what we’ll do, all right? A few days in Devon or Cornwall, just as you wanted.’
‘There’s nothing to explain,’ he said airily. ‘I just don’t think we should be spending money on things we can do without. Besides, I don’t want one of these utility suits with a single-breasted jacket and no turn-ups on the trousers. No, forget it, Audrey love. I want to take you on a wonderful holiday and I want that more than I want a slate straightened or a new suit.’
‘But we can afford all those things, can’t we? Come on, love, we
aren’t young anymore and we have enough to see us through a comfortable old age, so why not enjoy ourselves?’
‘Audrey, if anything happens to me, I want you to be comfortably off. I want you to be able to stop working if you feel you want to.’
‘There is something wrong! I knew it! Tell me, Wilf, please.’
‘There’s nothing to worry about. I’ve been thinking about things that’s all. My birthday is probably the cause. We’re getting older. It’s nothing more than that.’
‘Promise me?’
‘I want you to promise me something.’
‘Don’t, Wilf. Promises can be unwise, creating a burden that gets heavier as the years go by.’
‘This isn’t a promise like your mother made you give, tying you to stay and help your sister Marged for ever, and to never leave the business. That one should have been forgotten as soon as it was made, not been allowed to hold you back from what you wanted to do for all these years.’ There was a hint of bitterness, then he smiled. ‘All I want is a promise that you’ll forgive me if I’ve done anything you disapprove of and that you won’t waste the years you have left, that if I go first, you’ll do something with your life, not spend the precious days grieving and being a slave to my memory.’
‘We have to make those promises to each other, my love,’ she said, hugging him to hide the fear that must surely show in her eyes. ‘Please God, it won’t happen for a long time yet.’
‘Amen to that, lovely girl.’
Two
Myrtle pushed the heavy carrier bicycle wearily up Mill Lane, thankful that the delivery of groceries to Mr and Mrs Grange was the last. Since the age of thirteen she had helped whenever she could with the deliveries of weekly orders for the corner shop’s customers. Now that she had left school and worked on the beach during the summer, the job was becoming tedious, and she was aware that most deliveries were undertaken by boys not girls, and all of them were much younger than herself. She was becoming more and more conscious of her mature status as an ex-schoolgirl. It was becoming a bit embarrassing, although the two shillings and sixpence she was paid was welcome.
As it was only April, the season was not yet underway in the small Welsh seaside town of St David’s Well, and during the winter months she had done a variety of jobs, afraid to take on something permanent as that might mean she wouldn’t be free to work on the sands when summer came. With the war into its fourth year, everyone was expected to do something to help the fight against Hitler. If she had been a little older, she would have been forced to take on work that helped the war effort and the Castle family would have lost another enthusiastic member of the team that worked on the sands.
It was only the fact of her young age and the continuing need for entertainment to help people to cope with the shortages and the losses of war, that enabled her to avoid factory or farm work. Myrtle loved the beach, and enjoyed helping the Castle family with their swingboats and helter-skelter and the various stalls and cafés they owned.
Myrtle, and her elder sister Maude, had been placed in a children’s home when they were very young, after their parents were killed in a road accident. A belief that somewhere there were people to whom they were related, had made them run away to search for them and it was while they were living rough, and Maude was seriously ill, that they had been found and taken in by Marged and Huw Castle. Now, they were regarded as part of the family and treated the same as the rest.
They lived in Sidney Street with Audrey and her husband Wilf. Running a business together meant the family was a close one and for Myrtle and Maude their belonging had brought them contentment, although Maude still had nightmares about their months living alone and surviving on what they could beg or steal. She constantly needed reassurances from Myrtle that she wouldn’t be left to cope alone. Maude’s greatest fear was that Myrtle, who was only fifteen, would find a boyfriend and abandon her. That fear made her act unreasonably at times, as nightmares of living alone and perhaps being ill and no one knowing or able to help, returned frequently to haunt her.
Myrtle was remarkably tough, showing no sign of their deprivation, while Maude had never recovered robust health after her adventurous weeks living out of doors during a cold, wet autumn and winter without proper food. Tall, with long, light brown hair and mischievous dark eyes, Myrtle was painfully thin and with the black woollen school stockings she still wore, was often teased; something with which she coped well, her bright mind returning insults with ease.
Riding along, her feet off the pedals now, allowing the heavy bike to freewheel down the hill below which she could see the blue sea, Myrtle sang and shouted, and thought she couldn’t be much happier. Life would be perfect if only Maude would get out more and make friends of her own instead of depending on me so much, she thought with a sigh. She had been invited to spend an evening with Eirlys and Ken Ward. She’d had to refuse though, knowing how upset Maude would have been if she suggested leaving her on her own. If she weren’t included in an invitation, Maude had a knack of making her feel too guilty to accept.
Maude gave regular but subtle reminders of the promises Myrtle had willingly given when Maude had been so ill. A promise never to leave her had gradually extended to only accepting invitations if Maude were invited too.
Clinging to each other throughout one long, cold winter, hiding away from authority while they searched in vain for someone they could regard as family, had made them abnormally dependent on each other, afraid to be apart, something the friendly Myrtle had quickly outgrown. Maude was just eighteen but she was utterly dependent on her young sister, and as she grew and wanted to enjoy a wider social life, Myrtle found the situation worrying. With increasing guilt for what Maude quietly implied was her selfishness, she wondered whether she would ever be free like other girls, to enjoy new friendships offered by girls — and boys. Or was she to remain forever tied to her unhappy and gently demanding sister?
As part of her weekly routine during the winter months, Myrtle also went each weekday morning to a children’s home similar to the one in which she and Maude had lived. There, she helped with the cooking and earned enough to give something to Audrey for her keep. Most afternoons she went to help at Bernard Gregory’s smallholding and she arrived there this afternoon in April to find Bernard’s neighbour, Sally Gough, there.
Bernard and Sally were in serious conversation, so she waved and went through to where the tools were kept and began gathering the items she would need. Today, she had promised to hoe between the spindly carrots, spring onions — locally called gibbons — and radishes, all just showing above the earth in what had once been the old orchard.
Sally Gough owned the field in which Bernard Gregory kept his string of donkeys during the winter months. Bernard had built stables for them which were close to the boundary between Sally’s land and Bernard’s property. Sally had come to tell Bernard that the land was no longer hers.
‘It seems the government insist the fields are used for growing crops, and as I’m too old, I have to let them out for someone else to work or they’ll be confiscated,’ she told Bernard. ‘I wondered if you’d take them on. With your own field being so close, it seems the best solution.’
Bernard relit his pipe and looked thoughtful. ‘It’s a bit late in the year for starting new ground, mind,’ he said, puffing on a recalcitrant pipe. ‘It should have been prepared last autumn. And I’ll need a bit of help, too. Tell you what, I’ll think about it and call you in the morning, when I’ve slept on it.’
‘Don’t leave it any later,’ Sally warned. ‘Powers they’ve got these days and the government can send men to come and take the field from me without notice.’
‘I’ll talk to young Beth, she’s got a good head on her shoulders and she’ll help me think it out.’ He watched as Sally walked up the lane to where her small cottage stood, smoke climbing lazily upward from the chimney, and sighed. Sally had lived there all her life, as had three generations before her. Now it was nothing more than a n
eglected building surrounded by a couple of small, abandoned fields. She was lucky the land hadn’t been taken from her before. The war had given the government necessary control, but at times it was frightening.
Myrtle worked until it was almost dark, the bright day lengthening the evening, so time slipped past with only hunger reminding her it was time to leave. She saw Beth coming home from her café in the local market, as she headed towards her bike. Beth was Marged and Huw Castle’s daughter and was married to Bernard’s son, Peter, and seemed to be in deep conversation with Bernard.
‘Myrtle, sorry you’re late, I forgot the time, but can you spare a couple more minutes?’
She stood, legs astride the ancient bicycle that Mr Gregory had found for her and waited curiously. Mr Gregory told her briefly what Sally Gough had said and he asked her what she thought about him extending his activities by taking over the fields.
‘Best if you do, Mr Gregory.’ she said politely. ‘You won’t know who your neighbour will be otherwise, and it might be someone who cares less about the land than you do. With some extra help you’d manage and it’s all to heat old Hitler. isn’t it?’
He smiled and nodded. ‘I must admit I like the idea. It’s something I’ve often thought of, but we’re into April and the work of clearing the ground should have been started months ago.’
‘You’ll soon get ahead. Will it be potatoes to start with, to help clean the ground?’
‘You’re a quick learner, young Myrtle!’ he said with a laugh. ‘All right, I’ll go and see Sally first thing in the morning and take things from there.’ He looked at her thoughtfully. ‘Would you be willing to work here full-time? I’ll need extra help and I’d take on someone temporarily at first to deal with the heavy work of clearing the ground. I wouldn’t expect you to do that, Myrtle, but afterwards I think you’d do well. What d’you think?’
Holidays at Home Omnibus Page 119