by Siân James
‘Something like that,’ Jack says. ‘Yes, that’s right. Something like that.’
There’s another long silence. The small fire, which we’ve decided to let out, collapses quietly into the grate. For a time, we stare at the dying embers.
‘Well then, we’d better go,’ Ilona says. ‘They shut at ten.’
I don’t feel at all like a first visit to a pub, but I dare not say so.
‘The thing about a pub,’ Ilona says as we sit down at a small round table in a rather dark and very crowded room, ‘is that everyone is here wanting to talk, to escape some stress or forget some trouble. No-one is here for any grave or serious purpose. That’s what’s good about a pub. People talk and argue but it’s not a debating society with voting at the end. It’s nothing at all really, but a pleasant way of wasting time.’
‘They’ve sold out of beer,’ Jack says. ‘There’s only this stuff. Drink up, Rhian, it’s good for you.’
It’s dark and unpleasant, not unlike the ten-year-old iron tonic I recently found for my mother.
‘It’s stout,’ Ilona tells me. ‘A bit of an acquired taste. Leave it if you don’t like it, I’ll finish it for you.’
Some men are singing a hymn in the other bar. A superb counter-tenor orbits the last verse, but the general feeling in our bar is that he’s showing off. ‘It’s that Ieuan Harris again’ someone mutters. A pub is obviously not the place for choir practice.
After about five minutes, Ilona gives Jack money for another round. It’s not the thing, she tells me, for women to go up to the bar.
Apart from us, there are only two women, with about twenty-five or thirty men, and none apparently in the other bar.
‘Of course, they’d like it to be men only,’ Ilona says. ‘Welshmen are always happiest without women around. Even at funerals they try to keep us away. They pretend it’s because we’re not up to it emotionally, that they want to protect us, but of course it’s not that. Even death is more bearable in a black huddle of men... With the women in floral overalls seeing to the food.’
We watch Jack pushing his way through the smoke with two more glasses of stout.
‘Take Jack, now,’ she continues, ‘I bet he’s never brought a woman to a pub before tonight.’
‘No, I haven’t,’ Jack says. ‘And now I’ve got two.’
‘He doesn’t look too miserable.’
‘No. I feel happier than I have for a long time. Except that Gwynn Morgan is just coming over, look, so I’ve got the feeling I’m going to lose at least one of you.’
‘Drink up,’ Ilona tells me.
Gwynn sits at my side without a word. My heart is thumping so loudly, he must be able to hear it. Ilona lights a cigarette. Jack stares at his drink. I can’t think of anything at all to say.
I suppose this is what I’d intended all along. After all, wasn’t I well aware that he comes to the Ship most nights?
‘How’s the wife?’ Jack asks, after what seems an interminable time.
‘How’s the portrait going?’ Ilona asks. ‘What do you think of it? Is it good?’
Words start to flow. I try to listen to them, even to add a few of my own. Soon the room is thick with words and smoke. Gwynn’s knee is pressed hard against mine.
‘I bob un sy’n fyddlon’ starts up from the other bar. For a few moments we listen to tenors and basses exhorting us to enlist on God’s side against the Devil. After a verse or two, Jack joins in.
I smile tenderly at Gwynn. ‘Such a pleasure to see you here,’ he whispers, after the thorough trouncing of Satan’s legions. ‘Now I’ve got everything I want under one roof.’
I clutch his arm. ‘Wine, women and hymns.’
‘That’s right,’ he says.
When we leave, it’s very dark and the sea is loud and rough. The four of us stand for a while clutching the cold railings, listening to the waves crashing on to the rocks. The singers, still in good voice, have started on an anthem and the wind accompanies them as they walk up Marine Terrace.
‘It’s too cold here,’ Ilona says. ‘I’m going home. Are you coming with me, Jack?’
‘We’re coming, too,’ Gwynn says.
They lead the way and we follow. Ilona has taken Jack’s arm, but in spite of the darkness, I’m not so daring.
‘What did Celine say about your call-up papers?’
‘She didn’t make such a fuss as you did.’
I can’t see the expression on his face, but his voice sounds as though he’s rather proud of it; the fuss I made.
‘It came as such a shock to me.’
‘You think of me as an old man, do you?’
‘I suppose it must have been that. A venerable old man. Far too old to go to war.’
‘Too old, too old for anything,’ he says, his voice still full of pride and tenderness.
I want him to crush me in his arms. My mouth is dry. My flesh and my bones desire him, but I’m too nervous even to take his arm.
Ilona turns back towards us. ‘Jack and I are going for some fish and chips. What about you two?’
‘No, I’ve got to get home,’ Gwynn says. ‘Will you go with them, Rhian?’
‘No, I need to get back, too.’
He and I walk up Hill Street on our own.
‘I had quite a shock to see you in the pub,’ he says. ‘Will you come again?’
‘I expect so.’
‘And another shock to see Jack with Ilona Hughes. How long has that been going on?’
‘There’s nothing going on between those two. No, Jack’s accounted for. He’s seeing Mary Powell again in the holidays. Though they’re not getting married. Not at the moment, anyway.’
‘I know. He told me about her mother.’
‘About her mother? He didn’t tell us anything about her mother.’
‘Her mother died in an asylum, it seems. She became ill when Mary was born and never recovered. Mary’s father took Jack out to a pub and put him in the picture.’
We don’t speak for some minutes. The hill seems steeper than usual.
‘But that doesn’t mean anything, does it? Mary doesn’t have to be insane because her mother was.’ My voice is shrill.
‘No, I know. All the same, no-one could say that she’s altogether normal, could they? No-one could describe her as well-balanced.’
Poor Mary. I’m ashamed of my anger and impatience towards her; I should have been kinder. I look up at Gwynn. ‘How cruel life is.’
‘I know, love, I know. Life seems pretty terrible for everyone at the moment.’
‘That’s true.’
I find I’m almost pleased about it; the way it evens things out. ‘It’ll certainly be terrible for me when you go away. I won’t be able to bear it.’ I put my hands over my ribs to steady the sudden thumping of my heart.
‘And I thought you were still angry with me,’ Gwynn says.
‘No. Didn’t you get my note?’
‘No.’
‘I sent you a note by a little girl from 3C. Mali Vaughan. Third period this afternoon.’
‘I didn’t get it. I was in my room all afternoon.’
‘Where the devil did she take it? She certainly took it somewhere. She came back looking very pleased with herself.’
‘She probably took it to the Head. She’s not very bright, Mali Vaughan. What was in it?’
‘Nothing much. A few words of love, that’s all.’
If he’s worried, he doesn’t show it. As we reach Sea View, he puts his arm around my shoulder and pulls me towards him. For a second or two, I can feel his breath on my cheek; I can smell his skin.
Ten
THE EASTER HOLIDAYS. Ilona Hughes goes home to Brynteg for the weekend. She’s been tired and irritable for the last few weeks so it may do her some good to get away. She has a perm before she goes. She looks different. ‘You look different,’ I tell her. ‘Different better or different worse?’ ‘Just different.’ Why do I have to be so honest? It cost fifteen shillings. Telling a little lie w
ouldn’t kill me.
Gwynn takes his wife to Anglesey where he’s got a brother, a sister-in-law and nephews and nieces. He promises to send me a postcard. When I ask him whether he’ll miss me, he becomes angry. ‘Don’t flirt with me. You know how I feel towards you, don’t trivialise our love.’ I go over and over the words in a sweet daze. He’s got his medical a week after he gets back.
As soon as he goes, I’m as miserable and lonely as if he’d already been sent abroad. He says he and Celine are nothing to each other now, nothing but friends. But people get closer on holiday. I keep thinking of them walking arm in arm along quiet Anglesey lanes.
The Allied invasion of France is expected in late spring or early summer, but surely Gwynn won’t be involved in that. At his age, he’ll surely be stationed in this country or in England. I suppose Huw is bound to be in the fighting; every night I try to pray for his safety. The anger I felt towards him seems to have completely gone. What I feel now is a despairing kind of affection; he seems someone I knew and cared about a long time ago; I don’t love him, I shouldn’t have married him. I know I’m going to hurt him, but at least I won’t do it lightly.
All in all, I’m in a turmoil of love and anxiety and guilt ‘How are you?’ my mother asks when I get home. ‘Me? Oh I’m fine.’
My mother is well again and very busy with six calves, thirteen piglets and several broods of chicks and ducklings.
Alfredo has forged ahead with his English by this time reading and understanding newspaper headlines and talking well. Unfortunately it’s much more difficult for him to get out in the evenings; the friend who covered for him having been transferred to another camp. However he seems to find it necessary to give Gino and Martino some help and advice several times a week, so we still see him fairly often.
On the Saturday after Easter, I watch him and my mother mending a fence. He’s several inches shorter than my father was, but he has the very same way of tackling a job, the same unhurried way of walking round, studying the problems from every angle, the same economy of movement when he gets started, the same easy grace. Every time I see him I’m reminded of my father.
When the fence is finished, my mother goes to feed the calves in the upper field and he comes up to the house alone.
I offer to make him a cup of tea but he says he wants only my company in talk.
‘The war is over already in six months,’ he says, ‘and then I must go to my country to see my sons.’
‘How old are they?’
‘In between boy and man. Not old enough for the army.’
‘Do they work on the land?’
He shrugs his shoulders. ‘I have no letters for many months. Perhaps they work, perhaps not.’
‘They’ll be very glad to see you.’
He frowns. ‘Glad? I don’t know glad.’
‘Happy. They’ll be happy to see you.’
‘Yes. Also, they’ll be happy and glad to see your mama.’
Does the poor deluded man imagine that my mama is going to go with him to Italy? She’s never been out of Wales except on a day trip to Shrewsbury. Which she didn’t enjoy.
‘Is she going with you to Italy?’
He smiles at this ridiculous notion. ‘No, no. After the war is all over, my sons will come here.’
‘Good.’
‘To see my wedding and my home.’
Gwynn was right. He said they’d marry when the war was over.
‘Of course. Very good. Perhaps one of them will stay here with you?’
‘No. I think this country is too cold for young men to be happy and glad.’
‘But not too cold for you?’
He lifts his chest and throws out his arms. ‘But I have a wife and much work, I think.’
‘I hope you like my idea,’ he says then.
‘Oh, I do.’
I go for a walk in the afternoon. It’s sunny, but the wind is cold. The buds on the sycamore trees are shell-pink and almost ready to burst open. The hedges are a faint delicate green and there are violets and celandines everywhere.
I feel as emotional as I used to when I was fifteen. Then, I knew that the word for the mood threatening to overwhelm me was ‘yearning’, but what I was yearning for, I was never quite sure. For love I suppose; I certainly never wanted adventure or travel or money or to get away from home. Now at least I know why I’m so close to tears; I love Gwynn and can’t have him. I bang my fist against the trunk of a tree. We could be happy together. We’re well-suited, with similar backgrounds and ideas and ideals. We’re moved by the same things. The same things make us laugh.
He says he loves me. Perhaps it’s a love a man feels for a younger woman when he’s been married for twenty years, something essentially trivial which he’ll indulge in just as long as it doesn’t threaten his marriage. I don’t think so. When he says, ‘I love you. You love me,’ there seems a weight of truth in his words. I choose to believe in his love, but I must also accept that he can’t leave his wife. Ay, there’s the rub.
I know I could leave Huw, but that’s different, because he’s young enough to start a new life. I’m sure that I’ll never live with him again. That makes me sad, too; sad and angry at the mistake we made, at the sheer stupidity of it all; the way we let one day and another day follow a first almost unconsidered meeting, until the stranglehold of all those days led to our marriage. I’ve felt bitter about it often enough, but here on home ground, in the shelter of this round-backed mountain, I feel at my lowest ebb.
Last term, I contrived to see Gwynn for a few moments every day; his loving glances sustained me. We had a longer time together every Monday after the portrait-painting and every Wednesday evening he met my bus and walked home with me. It was something – a great deal – though much less than I wanted. I wanted to risk an out-and-out affair with him, I admit it, but I accepted that he had more to lose, and of course, admired his loyalty even while suffering for it.
Next term, he’ll be in the army and I’ll lose contact with him. It will be his wife he’ll write to, and how will I bear it? I close my eyes against the sudden dazzle of tears.
My self-pity sickens me and I make an effort to switch my thoughts to my mother’s affairs, to get some pleasure from the fact that her life now looks full of promise; Alfredo seems hard-working, warm-hearted and uncomplicated. If only his prediction – that the war will be over in six months – comes true. Everyone is waiting for news of the invasion. Ilona has a school-friend living in Worthing who says the whole South Coast is swarming with American soldiers.
Down by the brook, the ferns are unfurling their golden-green and a robin sings a full-throated courting song.
When I walk home the wind has dropped and the rain is full of melting sunshine.
We have bacon and eggs for supper. Rationing, for my mother, means going short of tea and sugar, which we’d always gone short of because of the cost. Of eggs, butter, cheese and meat she has plenty and plenty of home-grown fruit and vegetables. She gives me little quick, sideways glances as she eats, but as usual, says very little.
‘I like Alfredo,’ I say, when I realise that she’s not going to broach the subject. ‘He’s a good worker and he’s interesting and lively.’
‘Your father was an exceptional man and a poet,’ she says, as though to bring the conversation to an end before it has a chance to begin.
‘I know that. That’s not in question. I knew him for years.’
She closes her eyes against my flippancy.
‘I know he was,’ I continue, more seriously. ‘But Alfredo is exceptional too. For instance, he’s learnt English very fast.
She frowns at this, as though what she wants from me is greater loyalty to my father. ‘He already knew more than he admitted to you, girl. You made him nervous, that first time.’
‘I must say, I’m quite taken by him. But of course, if you’re not, that’s the end of it. You’re the one, after all, who’s got herself involved with him.’
I finish eating
, lay my knife and fork neatly together as she likes me to, and try to look as though the conversation is now closed. ‘I’d like a piece of cheese, please. Or is there pudding?’
‘When did you or your father ever go short of pudding?’
‘Never.’
‘Rice pudding, bread and butter pudding, rhubarb fool, egg custard, Eve’s pudding, jam sponge, blackberry tart and cream.’
‘Your blackberry tart! That alone is worth coming over from Italy for.’
‘Whatever are you talking about, now?’
‘Those sons of his. He said something about them coming over on a visit.’
She flings her head back. ‘That’s all a lot of nonsense. When the war is over, the man will go back to his own country where he belongs.’
‘Yes. But he intends to come back here afterwards. He may find there’s more for him here than in his own country.’
She goes to the pantry to fetch me some bread and butter pudding left over from our midday meal. It smells of vanilla and eggs.
‘It’s your cooking he’ll come back for,’ I tell her. ‘My bread and butter pudding tastes like soggy bread and butter, but yours is angel food.’
She doesn’t eat pudding – she never has – but enjoys watching me eating mine and doesn’t speak until I’ve finished.
‘On the other hand,’ she says, ‘I don’t think your father would want me to be lonely for the rest of my life.’
‘He wouldn’t. When he was ill, he was terribly concerned about all the extra work you had to do.’
‘He was concerned about you, too. Don’t ever forget that.’
‘I won’t.’
‘And don’t scrape your plate like that, girl. It’s not good manners.’
‘Why not? It shows appreciation.’
‘It seems as though you’re hinting for more.’
‘I am.’
‘Tch, tch, tch.’ She loves it when I behave like a child.