Love and War

by Siân James

  ‘When I write to Huw on Sunday, I’ll tell him about Alfredo. Then it won’t be such a shock for him.’

  ‘No, please don’t, Rhian. Let him come home safe first.’

  I suddenly feel very sorry for her. She’s a small-minded busybody, but she loves her son and he’s in danger.

  ‘Something tells me Huw is going to be all right,’ I tell her. ‘I really do believe that. He’s a survivor. And when he’s back home after going through so much; all the fighting in Africa and Italy and whatever’s to come in France, I think he’ll be able to take everything else in his stride.’

  ‘I hope so.’

  ‘I hope so, too.’

  ‘I’m glad that lodger of yours isn’t here,’ she says then. ‘That Ilona Hughes. You won’t hear anything said against her, I know, but she’s too flighty for my liking. She’s going around now with Mr Jones, the PT teacher. Leading him astray, I suppose. He used to come to chapel sometimes, but we seldom see him now.’

  ‘He was in the same rugby team as Huw, years ago.’

  Her voice softens. ‘Was he really? I didn’t know that. Perhaps I should get Mr Roberts to have a word with him. Not that he’d say much – Mr Roberts won’t believe badly of anyone.’

  ‘Oh, these Christians!’

  ‘Don’t make fun of me, Rhian.’

  For a moment we’re almost friends.

  *

  When she leaves, I sit with my head on the table and make myself think about Huw, about the sinful way I’m treating him. I promised to love only him, putting aside all others. And after all, I married him of my own free will – if there is such a thing. I think I always knew I should have waited – as my mother wanted me to – but how can you make a rational decision when someone is begging and begging you to get married and he’s being sent abroad in a few weeks’ time?

  I manage to stay miserable for about ten minutes. Then thoughts of Gwynn take over again: the way his eyes darken, the way his lips open a little and grow soft as he looks at me, the beauty of his head and his body and his large strong hands. I know physical beauty is not all-important nor unchanging, but it certainly makes you tremble. I’m trembling now as I think of him, what he can do to me. I’m so lucky; so wicked and so blessed.

  He’s moved back home now. He and Celine are talking again, discussing the future, trying to remain friends. She said she was sorry she’d sent the letter to the Head, but having done so, felt more ready to forget it, more ready to forgive me. When he comes out in the evening, she doesn’t ask him where he’s going or whether he’ll be seeing me. The French are realists, Gwynn says, ready to make the best of any situation, not the worst. Perhaps she’s managed to convince herself that his love for me won’t last, so she’s able to be tolerant.

  In my dreams, she looks white and angry, anything but tolerant. What’s to become of us all? She never did me any harm.

  The next week passes in a dream. It’s perfect weather. After school I walk the three miles over the cliffs to Celyn sands; Gwynn meets me there and we cling together, and talk and talk as though we’ll never get another chance.

  We walk back in the dark, many hours later, the sound of the sea filling our silences. I can hardly bear it when he leaves me to return home. It’s only the thought of the weekend we’re going to spend together in London that keeps me sane. We intend to meet on his first twenty-four-hour leave.

  I don’t even go home on Wednesday; I write to my mother telling her I’ll see her next week, letting her draw her own conclusions.

  He leaves on the early train on Friday. Naturally, I can’t go to the station to see him off, can only listen from my bedroom to the sound of the train taking him away.

  Sixteen

  IN THE PAST I’d always considered myself conscientious, dedicated, industrious; these were the qualities I admired in others and the ones that had made me a graduate teacher rather than a farm servant or a shop girl. Now something else had taken me over, and it was something very like madness. I was still coping with school, keeping my classes occupied, setting homework and marking it, but deep inside me was a weak, trembling, unstable girl who had lost her lover and was only just managing to choke down a fit of sobbing.

  Late every night I walked over dangerous cliff paths the three miles to Celyn sands, which no sane woman would have done at that time, and I’d lie in the places where Gwynn and I had lain together and moan for him and then stand at the edge of the sea and cry out till my throat ached.

  One night before he’d left, when it had suddenly turned cold, he’d given me his old tweed jacket to wear; I’d managed to hold on to it, and every evening when I got back to the house, I took it out of the wardrobe, trying to draw some comfort from it, sniffing it all over for some memory of him, sleeping on it at night, rubbing my cheeks on the coarse material until they were sore, shedding so many tears on it that I imagined it smelt of our salt love.

  I couldn’t bear to sleep in the front room bed I’d slept in with Huw, so I persuaded Ilona to change rooms with me. I was happier, or at least less agitated, in the single bed in the small room overlooking the garden.

  I couldn’t bear to remember that I was, or ever had been, married to Huw. It was very difficult to go on having Sunday dinner with Huw’s parents, almost impossible to talk to them about him and about our future plans when I knew we had no future together. They, not surprisingly, in view of the imminent invasion and the danger he was facing, seemed able to talk of nothing else. When Huw comes home. When Huw comes home. When Huw comes home. And I could do nothing but smile my Judas smile.

  Writing to him was getting more and more difficult, too. I filled my letters with trivial news which couldn’t possibly interest him, so that I had little space for anything but ‘With love from Rhian’ at the end. He must surely have realised from those letters that something was amiss.

  I wrote to Gwynn every day, though: short letters about kissing and love-making with quotations from Keats and the Welsh love poets. It sometimes soothed me to think other people might have suffered some small part of what I was suffering, though I couldn’t really believe it.

  The desperate state I was in seemed to isolate me from everyone; even when talking to Ilona or my mother, I could think only of Gwynn. Sometimes his face – his beautiful wide lips, his dark eyes – would appear to me so clearly that it was all I could do not to groan aloud.

  One day, though, noticing that the waistband of Ilona’s summer skirt was stretched almost to bursting point, I realised that I’d managed to forget all about her problems and felt ashamed of myself.

  I turn to her and hug her. ‘How are you?’ I ask her, seeing her properly for the first time for weeks. ‘How are you? Are you getting enough to eat, love?’

  ‘No,’ she says, pulling away from me. ‘Is anybody, these days?’

  Then she looks at me, suddenly aware that I’m trying to make contact again. ‘But never mind,’ she says in a mild, placatory voice which I hardly recognise, ‘I’ve never been used to having enough to eat, have I? Nobody in Brynteg ever had enough to eat. Especially at the end of the week. The end of the week in our house meant cabbage and bread and dripping. And in other houses where there wasn’t a keen gardener like my father, it was just bread and dripping.’ She drops into a chair, pushes her shoes off and rubs one foot against the other. ‘But my father had a nice little garden, fair play to him; cabbages and leeks and carrots... Only the carrots always had blight and nobody liked leeks... Well, nobody liked cabbage either except at the end of the week, Thursday and Friday. On Saturday we sometimes had tinned salmon. That was my favourite. What’s happened to tinned salmon? You’d think they’d get some for pregnant women, wouldn’t you? All the extra I get is this condensed orange juice which is probably all right with gin but horrible on its own.’

  I suddenly feel very protective towards her. ‘Come home with me tomorrow night. My mother’ll make us some pancakes.’

  She smiles, then hesitates. ‘I’d really like to, but
Wednesday is my night for seeing Jack. Wednesday and Saturday.’

  ‘Can’t you see him tonight?’

  ‘No. He goes to play cards with Mrs Morgan – Celine – on a Tuesday.’

  ‘Does he? Every Tuesday? What an extraordinary man he is. He used to be so shy of women and now he’s engaged to one and has regular dates with two others. Don’t you mind his seeing Celine every Tuesday?’

  ‘Why should I mind who he sees? He’s just a friend. He means nothing to me.’

  ‘He’s a very close friend. You get on well. You’re always pleased to see him.’

  ‘I know. It’s a nice, easy relationship, but it’s not bloody love, is it?’

  ‘Isn’t it?’

  ‘You know it isn’t. Love is when you’re miserable all the time, when you’re jumpy every minute he’s out of your sight and jealous as hell if he looks at anyone else.’

  ‘Jealousy shouldn’t be a part of love,’ I say grandly.

  ‘Perhaps it shouldn’t be. But it is. You know it is.’

  ‘Women are only jealous because they don’t have the same power as men or the same resources. They always have to stay at home instead of being free to go out and do whatever men do, on equal terms.’

  ‘I don’t think it’s as simple as that. It’s only married women who have to stay at home. I’m free to go out and do whatever I want to, aren’t I? And take the women in the Forces, don’t they have the same power as men? I don’t mean about dropping bombs and things like that, but in their private lives? They’ve got away from home and they can do whatever they like.’

  ‘I suppose they can go out in the evenings and I suppose they’re free to mix with men, but it’ll take years for them to consider themselves equal. I can’t imagine any woman, whether she’s in uniform or not, making the first move and asking a man for a date. And while that’s still the man’s prerogative, the woman is bound to be the passive, dependent partner.’

  ‘I’m not passive or dependent,’ Ilona says.

  ‘Well, you’re different, I’ve always said that. Stronger than the rest of us.’

  ‘Don’t make fun of me. I’ve just admitted that I’m jealous as hell. I wouldn’t call that strong, would you?’

  ‘If you were married to Ifor, you’d learn to control your jealousy, I suppose.’

  ‘Ifor’s wife hasn’t learnt much control anyway. She cut up his best suit into ribbons when she found out he’d been seeing me over Christmas. Serves him right. I bet I’d have done the same.’

  ‘I hate the thought of Celine being jealous of me.’

  ‘Oh, enjoy it! You’ll be the jealous one next time round. What if he called here and you found him larking about with me?’

  ‘Ilona, has he ever flirted with you?’

  ‘You know he has. It’s his way, he flirts with everyone, you’ll have to get used to it. Every real man loves women and flirts with them. Gwynn does. Ifor does.’

  ‘Does that mean he’ll have affairs with other women? No, I’m serious. It’s something I’ve never really thought about.’

  ‘Perhaps he won’t. Not if he knows you really appreciate him.’

  ‘I do, you know I do.’

  ‘I should by this time. You’ve moaned about it enough.’

  We look at each other, give each other those soft, sympathetic, penetrating looks that show we’re completely preoccupied with our own lives, our own problems.

  ‘I always feel such sympathy for Blodeuwedd,’ I say at last. ‘You know... the unfaithful wife who was turned into an owl. You must have read the story in school. From the Mabinogion.’

  ‘The woman Merlin made out of flowers?’

  ‘Yes. Well, the magician was called Gwydion, but it was probably Merlin under another name. Anyway, she fell in love with a huntsman called Gronw Bebyr – as soon as ever she clapped eyes on him. Great Heavens, he must have been some man. But after all, she hadn’t wanted to marry Lleu. He couldn’t get a human wife because of a curse his mother had put on him. That’s why Gwydion had to create one for him out of flowers; broom and meadowsweet and the flowers of the oak.’

  ‘And he didn’t like her?’

  ‘Oh, he liked her well enough. Well, I suppose he did. It just says he slept with her at the wedding feast, that’s all it says. But after that, he probably started taking her for granted, going away on visits to friends, and so on. And once upon a time, when he was away from home, Gronw Bebyr arrived on the scene, so lusty and beautiful that she immediately fell in love with him. “There was no part of her that was not filled with love of him.” And he felt the same about her.’

  ‘Oh, the meadowsweet and the sweet broom flowers.’

  ‘And he told her he loved her. Oh, and they kissed and kissed. And that night they slept together. And when morning came, she wouldn’t, couldn’t let him go. So they plotted Lleu’s death, which was very wrong of them, of course. But after all, Blodeuwedd hadn’t asked to be his wife, hadn’t even been consulted. Oh, and it’s the same today, women made of sugar and spice, married off in a romantic haze because it’s what is expected of them. Women aren’t free, they marry whoever asks them, because they’re so afraid of the alternative which is being left on the shelf. For a time they might think they’re in love. They try to fit into the myth – romantic love, happy ever after – but in a year or two, or even less, they know it was all fantasy and that they’ve got the rest of their lives to regret it.’

  ‘I don’t know anything about romantic love. I don’t think anyone could get romantic about Ifor, he’s not the right build, somehow. It was pure lust with Ifor. Or impure lust, perhaps.’

  ‘I sometimes think lust is the only thing you can count on, the only thing you can’t fake. “There was no part of her that was not filled with love for him.” That’s the only start for a relationship, it seems to me. Passion may not last for ever, but perhaps life after it is like a summer evening, the blood still warm with the heat of the sun.’

  ‘Who’s being romantic now?’

  ‘I’m not being romantic. Passion is real, real as hunger.’

  At this point Ilona looks at me with what I might interpret as agreement, even admiration if I didn’t know her better. No, she’s just hungry. ‘All right, I’ll make you some chips.’ I tell her.

  We’re friends again.

  At the beginning of June, Gwynn is due for his first twenty-four hour leave and I travel to London to meet him.

  I’m very excited, of course, but at the same time dreading the journey – a first visit to London – and terrified I won’t find him even if I manage to get there. In a way, though, I’m pleased to be undertaking something so difficult; it seems like one of the impossible tasks set lovers in fairy tales so that their love is strengthened and purified.

  I have to leave school early to catch the afternoon train. This in itself is difficult enough. ‘Will it be possible for me to leave this afternoon at three-fifteen?’ I ask the Head, a light sweat breaking out over my body. ‘I have to catch the three-forty train to Paddington.’

  He scowls at me for a long time without answering, then nods his head. ‘As long as you don’t make a habit of it,’ he says.

  ‘What is there about that Gwynn Morgan?’ I hear him ask himself as I leave his study. ‘I used to be handsome myself when I was young, but perhaps I always talked too much.’

  I race home, change into my dark blue dress, with a pale grey summer coat made by the needlework teacher at school for twelve and sixpence and a tiny pink hat borrowed from Ilona, and set off for the station. I’m so nervous about the journey that I can hardly believe that there’s no one there to try to stop me getting on the train. ‘Third-class return to Paddington,’ I tell Roderick Edwards at the ticket office. ‘Huw not home, is he?’ he asks politely. ‘No, I’ve got an interview for a job.’

  Why did I say that? Perhaps it was at that moment I decided to hand in my resignation at school and move away from Llanfair.

  At first the journey is pleasant enough. I’v
e only rarely travelled by train because bus journeys are so much cheaper. I always went to college by bus and it was by bus that we went for our days out by the sea when I was a child.

  I only remember one occasion when we travelled by train. It was when we went for a week’s holiday to Ogmore-on-Sea. I wonder why we went for a whole week? And by train? Perhaps the harvest had been particularly good that year. I’ll have to ask my mother.

  A cousin of my mother’s, Alun Edwin, a clerk with a timber firm in Llandysul, came to help Dafi Blaenhir manage the farm, arriving a few days before we left, to be shown exactly what he had to do. I think it was the first time I’d met him. He was a small plump man who looked rather like an overgrown child. He had a child’s sense of fun, too, almost everything making him laugh, and often till he choked, his shoulders hunching up and his neck sticking out in front of him and moving slightly from side to side like a tortoise we once had. I remember him dressing up in my mother’s floral pinafore and giggling like a girl as he swept the kitchen floor and did the washing up. I loved him and sometimes wished I was staying home with him instead of going to the seaside with my staid and serious parents.

  It was a good holiday, though, with unexpected treats like tea in a fish-and-chip shop and a visit to a cinema in Swansea – a first for all three of us – as well as long afternoons on the sands with a new bucket and spade. Chapel on Sunday, of course, but a walk along the cliffs in the afternoon instead of Sunday school.

  The train journey, though, was the greatest treat of all, I wanted it to last for ever. The things we saw! How could people read newspapers when there were whole new worlds to see through the windows? And the excitement of the corridor with a WC at either end of it; a basin with brass taps for hot and cold water and a lavatory that flushed. I must have wanted to go at least ten times.