‘All right if I have a bath?’ he called, and she went slowly up the stairs half fearful of rejection but loving him, wanting him so much. Netta’s spiteful words were forgotten within moments. His, ‘I love you my beautiful girl,’ dissolving the barbed words into the air, drifting away never to be feared again.
* * *
For Alice there was a tension about Eynon’s return that was making her almost tearful. He knew Netta, had greeted her like a friend. The child, Dolly, could possibly be his. Alice had worked out the date of the little girl’s conception and it would have been at the time of their marriage. A last fling and the result was the appearance of Netta just when everything was perfect, with Dolly, the child who might one day call him Daddy.
The reason for Netta following her, and her curiosity about members of Eynon’s family, was to ingratiate herself into the family circle, knowing Marged and Huw would be unable to ignore a child, sure of her place within it.
‘What’s the matter, lovely girl?’ Eynon asked as she touched the scar on his face, where he had been injured, so long ago, just before he had absconded on a country exercise to escape the Army and a bully, a trainee soldier like himself.
‘I can’t believe you’re really here.’
‘I’m here and I’m ready to prove it.’ He bent over her and as they were about to kiss, he stopped and asked again, ‘Is anything wrong, love? D’you want to wait a while?’
Why was she allowing Netta to ruin this wonderful day? Desire and love for him became stronger than her doubts and she held him tightly. ‘Tell me you love me again,’ she whispered.
‘I love you, Alice Castle, I love you more than before I went away. You are so beautiful, and I’ve been dreaming of nothing but this moment since the train took me away from you.’
Later, she thought again of the accusations made by Netta and wondered. Perhaps one day, the doubts would be resolved, and it would prove to be just more of Netty’s spiteful attempts to spoil the homecomings. Until then she was content to believe that Eynon loved no one but her.
It was October and darkness had fallen but as she closed the curtains on that wonderful day, Eynon said, ‘Let’s go over to the sands, lovely girl. I’ve lived with the stuff for years but I want to see our version.’
‘It’s dark!’ Alice said with a laugh.
‘All the better, there’ll be plenty of chances for kisses and cuddles. Come on, you can wear my army greatcoat if you’re cold.’
They caught a bus and walked on the promenade. It was chilly, but with arms around each other and desire building pictures of the night to come, they were unaware of the temperature.
The beach was deserted but the edge of the waves was visible, almost phosphorescent, being picked out by a half moon sailing above. The café, high up on the cliff path, was in darkness.
‘I can’t wait to be back on the swingboats and the helter-skelter, Alice. Not much of an ambition after all that’s happened, I know that. Most of the men I served with will be looking for something different, something exciting, but I’ll never want anything more. Will you?’
‘Life working the sands every summer and finding something to see us through the winter sounds perfect to me.’
Footsteps sounded and they pulled apart and looked around them. An arm waved and they saw to their surprise that Johnny and Hannah were joining them.
‘You two!’ Hannah said. ‘We might have guessed you’d be unable to wait a day before coming here.’
* * *
Beth returned to her market café in October. Her eighteen-month-old son, Peter, was taken to her mother’s house every morning and Marged looked after him until the café closed at five o’clock. Marged wasn’t busy during the winter months and willingly agreed to look after her grandson until the season began and then, Hannah would take over from her.
Beth knew it would be strange at first. Imagining the days without her infant son made her anxious, and putting in a full day at the busy café would be very tiring. Like many of the Castle family, her first thought was to approach Mrs Denver. The kindly, quietly capable lady offered to come in each morning for a week or two, until Beth found an assistant or learned to cope once again, and Beth was grateful.
She knew that being home with her baby, and spending time with her friends had gone on too long. She had to face rushed mornings, and evenings filled with small routine tasks that she had recently been able to do during the day. The small income she had earned by having a manageress running the café had been a help, but now Peter was home and starting to build a business, they needed more. Regretfully she gave notice to the woman who had worked for her for eighteen months and prepared herself for a busier life with little time for friends.
After a week she was enjoying being back. The other stallholders welcomed her and with Ronnie and his wife on a nearby stall, she quickly felt she hadn’t been away. Peter spent a lot of time preparing the ground for his agency and they both shared thoughts and ideas on how he should proceed, once the evening meal was over and young Peter was in bed.
‘I thought food-rationing would end once the war was over, but there’s even talk about cutting the rations further. Would you believe it?’ she said to her mother one day, when Marged had brought young Peter in to see her.
‘It will be years before we see the end of the shortages,’ Marged replied. She looked around her at the women with empty baskets, in the ongoing search for food. Someone said that there were some late apples on Ronnie’s stall and like a magnet, the fruit and vegetable stall was quickly surrounded by hopeful women.
‘Don’t worry,’ Marged said. ‘Our Ronnie will save some for us, sure to.’
Beth took a tray and collected used dishes from the tables. ‘Everyone’s so tired, Mam. The victory was an anti-climax in some ways. It’s still so hard for us all.’
‘But the men are coming home. Your Peter and our Eynon and Johnny are safe. There isn’t a day when we don’t see a few houses with their Welcome Home banners and hopeful faces.’
‘Everyone reunited, except Eirlys. She and Ken have parted. He’s in London and she’s staying here. Neither will give in and go with the other. Strange isn’t it, after all the separations we’ve all suffered, they choose to live apart?’
‘Eirlys put everything into her job and now it’s been taken from her. I don’t think they’ll stay apart much longer. She’ll be bored soon enough.’
Beth thought about her mother’s words later that evening. At eleven o’clock she was getting ready for bed, Peter was filling in forms and Bernard was standing on the door smoking his final pipe of the day, ‘Are you coming up, Peter?’ she asked.
‘No, dear. Not for a while. I need to complete these forms ready for tomorrow. Thank goodness Eirlys is helping me. I’d never cope without her coming in a couple of times a week. Thank goodness I can afford a decent office.’ He looked around the overcrowded room where they sat in the evenings, and where his father’s roll-top desk filled a corner with papers spilling out of every space, then at the table on which he struggled to organize his own work. ‘Some office this would be, eh? Eirlys will be very impressed!’
Eirlys had agreed to stay in the office for two mornings a week to enable Peter to interview prospective employers. He had found it worthwhile to visit places before sending someone for an interview and he had already turned down several places he didn’t consider suitable for clients on his books.
When Ken came home for a visit he was surprised to learn that Eirlys was working for nothing. Eirlys explained what she was doing and he stared at her with such smouldering anger, she was afraid.
‘Ken? What is it? I’m helping a friend, that’s all.’
‘I see. You’ve lost your job, the work you put before everything else and now you’re helping Peter Gregory. For nothing. What about me? I need help, but as usual, I don’t count. If you won’t come with me to London you could at least be earning money.’
‘It was such a shock, Ken. I can’t think of
another job yet. The truth is, I’d hoped, and almost believed, that Ralph wouldn’t be able to manage and they’d ask me to go back.’
‘You’re assisting Peter to build an agency. I’m in London on my own, trying to do much the same thing. Why aren’t you helping me?’ His voice had risen until he was shouting, glaring at her, and she backed away from his anger.
‘Because you’re too far away!’ she shouted back. ‘If you bring work home, or post it to me, I’ll gladly help you,’ she added defensively. ‘We’re in an impossible situation, Ken.’
Ken didn’t get home very often and when he did, their time together was continuously marred by arguments. Eirlys knew she had been wrong not to follow him to London. She had received no money from him since he went away, and she guessed that, with the rent and advertising and the travelling around involved in starting an agency, it was unlikely that she would.
It was in late October that she determined that his next visit would be a happy one. He would soon tire of coming back if all he had was arguments. Thank goodness Anthony showed none of their confused feelings. He accepted his father’s visits with joy and that, she decided, was what she would also do. Choosing her smartest winter coat and a saucy ‘Robin Hood’ hat with a long pheasant’s feather, with Anthony dressed in a suit and coat specially made for him by the talented Hannah, she stood at the station as the train bringing him home steamed noisily alongside the platform.
She greeted him with affection and walked with him arm in arm back home where she had a meal waiting for him. Two weeks’ ration of cheese, plus a little extra, some hard, stale pieces given to her by the grocer, had been made into ‘cheese boats’ by baking potatoes and adding grated cheese to the contents, then browning them with more cheese on top. It was one of Ken’s favourite meals and, served with a salad, she knew it would please him. Her father and the three boys had eaten earlier and had gone out: Stanley to meet Myrtle and the others to the pictures.
‘Aren’t you working today?’ he asked, trying to sound civil.
‘I only help when I have free time, just manning the office so Peter can interview prospective employers. Most of my spare moments are spent in the gift shop. I’ve started making rugs again, although it’s more difficult to find the material these days.’
‘What else is new?’
‘Let me see,’ she pondered. ‘Oh, great excitement. Cassie Davies is having the most amazing sales. I bought a dozen pillowcases with nothing worse than a bit of dust on the folds. No coupons either, that’s the best part. I haven’t any coupons left until the new issue.’
‘That’s absolutely wonderful,’ he said and she realized he was laughing. ‘What a boring life we lead, Eirlys. The highlight of our week being off-ration pillowcases for you, and a small booking for me, a singer who, incidentally, should be selling newspapers instead of trying to make a living on the stage.’
She shared his laughter and felt an optimism for their future together she hadn’t felt for months. Risking a return to their usual wrangling, she put her arms around him, pressed her face against his and said, ‘Ken, darling. Come home.’ She held her breath waiting for his reply.
‘I’ll give myself until the New Year and if I’m not at least breaking even by then I’ll come home. I’ll have to anyway,’ he added. ‘My savings won’t last any longer than January.’
It was a pity he added the last few words. She wanted him to come home to her and Anthony, not give up because he had been defeated by lack of funds. The happy mood she had striven to create was ruined.
* * *
Myrtle and Stanley saw a lot of each other that summer and autumn. Stanley would be waiting for her when the café closed and Auntie Audrey told her she needn’t stay to help clear up. On her day off, they would go out for the day. When the weather was fine they would take food and walk through the fields and woods, just glad to be alone.
Stanley had found work in a second-hand shop where he was gradually learning to help the owner repair furniture ready for resale. He had developed an unexpected skill in the work, patiently sanding and planing, making pieces to replace worn joints and strengthen legs, and was enjoying the new-found talent for working with wood.
Alf Thomas promised that soon he would start taking him on his rounds, examining furniture he was offered and negotiating a price. The scruffy-looking man also visited the council tip on occasions, returning with something that only needed a fresh coat of paint or a polish before ending up in the window with a price ticket on it. With so many difficulties involved in buying new, good-quality second-hand furniture was a thriving business.
‘It’s magic, Myrtle. The old man can spot a decent piece even though it’s covered with muck. In a farmer’s barn last week he saw this broken old cupboard covered in chicken sh— feathers, it was,’ he amended quickly. ‘And now it’s in the window for sale and he’s asking thirty bob. It’s a good business to be in and I’m enjoying it.’
‘But you’ll want to go back to the beach when summer comes?’
‘Yeh, I can’t see me wanting anything else. Not in summer. Summer’s for the beach and larking with the visitors. I’ll miss working with Alf, though.’
‘He looks a bit rough, wearing old clothes and that greasy cap on his head looks older than Mr Gregory’s trilby!’
‘That’s a ploy. People feel sorry for him, see, and when he offers them less than they’d hoped, they give in and let him take it. No good wearing a suit in his line of work, Myrtle.’
* * *
Shirley was still puzzled and hurt by the continuing absence of Freddy Clements. Where had he gone? So far as she could discover, no one else had spoken to him either.
She went to the cemetery one afternoon with Bleddyn and her mother. There was no grave for Bleddyn’s son Taff, but he took flowers for him and left them on Taff’s mother’s grave.
His first wife was buried in a half-hidden corner of the graveyard, where graves of those who had committed the sin of suicide were laid to rest. It was not a place to grieve for his young son, but there was nowhere else and wouldn’t be, unless some small plot in a far-off country was dedicated to him, once the confusion had eased.
There were a few figures walking around, some leaving flowers, some tidying their plots ready for the winter. Shirley felt the depressing place lowering her spirits. It was always a sad occasion, trying to understand why a young, happy, innocent man had become a victim of someone else’s fight.
On the way home, Shirley said, ‘Mam, I want to buy some flowers, but for you to enjoy in the house. That’s where Taff lived,’ she said to her stepfather, ‘and where you remember him. Not in this solemn place. I didn’t know Taff very well but I do know he wasn’t solemn.’
They went along the main road and Shirley went into Chapel’s Flowers, where Maldwyn Perkins was setting up a display of preserved autumn leaves ready for the window.
‘Hello, Shirley. If you want a pretty bunch, I’ve just had a delivery of little button chrysanths. Lovely they are.’
Shirley selected some bright-yellow blooms and as they were being wrapped in the South Wales Echo, owing to the lack of decorative paper, she asked, ‘Are you and Delyth happy in the Clementses’ old house?’
‘Very content,’ he replied. ‘Funny you should mention the Clementses. We’ve seen Freddy a few times since you asked about him.’
Shirley’s heart leapt. ‘Where?’ she asked impatiently.
‘Outside the house, looking up as though remembering days when it was his home. There’s sad it was, losing both mother and father so sudden. Where’s he living, d’you know?’
‘I was about to ask you,’ Shirley replied sadly.
‘No idea. Sorry.’
As she handed him the money Shirley asked, ‘If you see him again, will you tell him I want to see him? I have some property belonging to him and I’d like to return it.’
‘Certainly I will. And I’ll make sure Delyth knows too. We called to him one day, mind, and asked if he wo
uld like a cup of tea. He looked kind of lost. But he only shook his head and waved as he turned away.’
Instead of being pleased at having news of him, Shirley fell deeper into gloom. He was still around and making it clear that he didn’t want to see her.
‘Mam,’ she said as they turned towards home. ‘I’m going to try for a part on the London stage. I need to get away for a while.’
‘Good on you!’ Bleddyn said. ‘If there’s an opportunity out there you shouldn’t miss it.’
* * *
Freddy didn’t know what to do with himself. There were many men who couldn’t adjust after the horrors they had experienced; tramps, wandering around the countryside, doing casual work or begging to survive. Perhaps that was how he would end up now he had no base, no place from which to begin again. He hadn’t the money to stay in the hotel any longer and the thought of a lonely room sounded worse than existing in fields and barns, depending on the whims of others for food.
He thought then of Maude and Myrtle, whom the Castle family had found living in a derelict stable, surviving on other people’s leavings. He couldn’t understand at the time but now he knew how easy it would be to slip out of the safety of conventional living if there was no one to care enough to hold you there.
He was walking along the road, his coat collar turned up, his shoulders hunched against the cold. He saw someone approaching, limping slightly, and although the rain had darkened an already dull day and made it impossible to be sure, he knew it was Shirley. His heart leaped and the longing to see her made his feet hurry towards her, but then he stopped and turned into the lane and was soon out of her sight.
Shirley knew it was him although she wasn’t close enough to see him clearly. It was the way he had hesitated, then turned away that convinced her. There was no doubt in her mind. Not any more. He was avoiding her. There was no hope of his coming to see her. The time when he might was long past.
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