Dougie always knew people in the queue in this shop and this time was no different. He chatted his way to the till with hassled mums, their arms filled with packed-lunch goodies, with younger kids trying hard to be mature enough to purchase the bottles of dry cider clutched to their chests and the old boys coming to buy their tobacco and rolling papers for the next day.
Alfie and Dougie continued their short walk to Dolerw park. Needing just a small excuse, Dougie threw a stone into the River Chwefru and Alfie hurled himself in after it, cavorting through the water in a way that would bring tutts and dismay forth from fishermen a mile up and downstream.
Everyone who has any affinity with Glan Llanfair has many feelings for the Chwefru. By summer day, children play in the river, their parents oblivious to the dangers of organophosphates and dead sheep. But by summer nights, adults frolic also, the little piles of clothes and shoes left on the side as a warning for people not to come too near. Of course, occasionally these little piles of clothes reach home before their owners do, but this is all part of living in a small town…
The wise old trees that frame the riverside walk so perfectly, have seen things that would make younger saplings blush. Loves won and lost on the benches, the triumphs and the broken necks played out on the rugby pitch and now the man and his dog. The dog swimming round and round until it dives for the exact stone its master threw in and the master sitting with his Chelsea buns and a cool beer hugging a secret – a feeling – to himself, with a smile that he doesn’t know is there.
Chapter 19
Today’s Specials…
The phone calls became a happy ritual that both Lettie and Doug looked forward to. Both tried hard to be nonchalant about it and would feel it their duty to be “out” occasionally when the phone rang and of course, sometimes they really would be, but they would then make an effort to phone at a different time.
Both worked long days and although Lettie’s job was not physical in the same way as Doug’s, she rarely got time for a break. For many of the busiest days, she would be rushing around the restaurant from the moment she entered the small wooden door with the bullseye panes, until the stewed coffee and tip count at six o’clock.
Dougie’s job was strenuous and relentless. He and his partner worked by contract and therefore time not working was time without pay. Apart from their bait break at ten, and a half hour or so for lunch, they selected, climbed, chainsawed, chained up and generally lugged all day. Because their market niche was small plantations that did not warrant the vast tracks that would allow the bigger machinery in, they accepted that their work was manual, and it was hard.
Nine o’clock became Dougie and Lettie’s habitual time to phone. Both would gather their supper, or a pot of tea, and graduate to their respective kitchens and get comfy. They took it in turns to ring so that neither felt they were being stalked. And for sometimes five minutes, but more often thirty, they would chatter, giggle, moan, rant and giggle again.
Although they had never met and had no real idea of each other’s looks, they had built up a picture in their minds of the other’s characteristics. In Lettie’s eyes, Dougie was a hairy-arsed lumberjack with a checked shirt, big shoulders and a massive beard. Even though Dougie laughingly denied the beard, he accepted that it was part of him and for his next photo, he borrowed a brown sheep’s fleece from the butcher’s chiller cabinet, put on his reddest and butchest lumberjack-shirt and with great difficulty attached the fleece to his face. The photo was even better than Lettie had hoped as he had misjudged his position on the wind-down stool in the post office photo booth and chopped off the top of his head and, unfortunately for Dougie, his deep blue eyes were in a blink, but he sent it anyway and Lettie loved it.
In Dougie’s imaginings, Lettie had two identities. The first was a down-at-heel waitress slopping round in dirty mule slippers, with an off-white paper cap perched on the top of her head and a cigarette dangling from her mouth. She had charm bracelets galore and sagging tights. To Lettie’s delight, she found a 1950s style postcard of a cartoon of such a parody with the caption “Lyme Regis Welcomes You” and sent if off with the message: “Still living off the royalties, Lettie.”
The second identity was that of a buxom serving wench, rubbing her enticing cleavage on the backs of old men’s necks as she leant a little further over the tables than she really needed to. Doug imagined her laughing at the feeble jokes of her customers, flirting just enough to catch their attention, then scuttling off, flouncing her skirt to reveal her stocking tops as she went. Needless to say, Dougie preferred the second image and it was this one that crept into his dreams.
To compound the image further, Lettie bought a slice of home-made ham and egg pie from the local delicatessen, reminiscent of yesteryear’s picnic hampers. She wrapped it carefully in greaseproof paper, stuffed it in a padded envelope with a note attached reading, “More pie for Zir?” signed with a generous lipstick kiss and sent it off in the first class post, knowing that it would arrive as a pile of crumbs and mush. But, it had the desired effect and Dougie poured it into his lunch box. He opened it gleefully at bait time, to the confused and slightly concerned look of those around him, who felt that this blossoming relationship was getting odder by the moment.
It was in their fourth hour of conversation that Lettie alluded to her past loves. It was in the fifth that she made light of Alan’s behaviour, and in the seventh that she cried. Dougie did not know what to say or how to say it, but in just listening and making the occasional noises that ensured she knew he was listening, he was the best medicine she had.
“I just don’t know what to say to you, Lettie, you poor love.” He called me a love! He called me a love! “But if you ever want to casually drop his name and address to me, I’ll go and sort him out.” Lettie gave a snuffley giggle and they moved back onto lighter subjects.
“You have to meet him,” stated Jill one night after the tip count and their second cup of stewed coffee. “He might be a right idiot and then you don’t need to waste any more time on him.”
“I can’t. What if he doesn’t like me? Or thinks I am an ugly slapper like Alan did?”
“If he’s worth his salt, which from what you’ve said he is, then he’ll love you whatever. Even if he does think you’re an ugly slapper!” Her wink and grin as she pulled the remaining twists of tobacco through the tiny rollie, made Lettie smile and nod.
“You have to meet him,” said Alex, as she twisted wire into a beautiful bouquet arrangement of white roses, allowing her to curl variegated ivy amongst it.
“Yes, but…”
“Yeh but, yeh but – you’ve said that all your life, Lettie. Just get on with it. Anyway, he sounds gorgeous!” The two sisters grinned at each other.
“I still think you should speak with Brian, dear. A mother knows what’s best for her daughter, you know.” Grace patted her bouffant. It was three days since it had been welded into place at the local hair stylist and still not a single hair had dared to escape from its allocated position.
“Well, Mum, I am going to meet Dougie soon, so if that comes to nothing, I promise I will ring Brian. How’s that?”
“Well, a man like Brian won’t wait around for ever you know, dear. A man like him will have plenty of other options.”
“Yes. Indeed.”
It is said that you have to be looking to find love and most will agree that this is true. People who are content in their own love look upon acquaintances with very different eyes than those who are searching. Eye contact is not sustained, rooms are not scouted and those crucial next steps are not taken.
There is no doubt that both Dougie and Lettie were looking, but neither was sure what they were actually looking for. Lettie had ideas about a man who would be kind to her and would not need to control or abuse her to show his love. Dougie, if he were honest, was probably just looking for what his mates had: unfortunately, this tended to amount to a couple of years of romance and excitement, followed by a lifetime of medio
crity and someone to share the bills, the housework and the kids with – and to collect him from the pub when he had spent too much and was feeling blue… Basically, someone to help him become the norm, to stop him being the butt of comments, the hilarious impotency jokes and the digs in the ribs whenever a group of women entered the room.
Neither was really expecting or even anticipating true love; the real love that people feel when suddenly the songs on the radio speak to them, when they wake up and think, “So this is what the fuss is all about; this is what people mean.” The kind of love when to look at someone is to smile at them and to know what pleasure can be had in stroking eyebrows and smoothing hair.
However, as Rizzo constantly said, they could not care for each other without actually knowing one another and they couldn’t truly know one another without actually having met. But the warmth and the inner glows that they both got from the endless telephone chatter and giggles made their budding relationship a thing to be nurtured.
Both felt and agreed with the practical need to move a stage further and meet, but both were enjoying the glow too much to risk the next step. What if he preferred blonde hair to her dark, or she pale skin to his weathered? What if his lean did nothing for her and her curves not a thing for him? What if the dogs fought?
So in order to give him a greater insight into her life, she sent postcards of Lyme of which there were a-plenty. She sent nineteen-seventies ones that had sat on the metal wire racks, curled from the years spent in slightly damp storage and then exposed to the ravages of the seaside weather… Postcards in which the sky was bright turquoise, the sea a deep blue and the buildings an airbrushed pink. She drew stick people and dogs on the beach to denote herself and Molly and drew an arrow to a large lady in a bulky bikini and wrote captions such as “Your last girlfriend?”
She also sent more arty ones of sunsets and rough seas, pointing out features such as “good chips”, “best ale” and “first shag”. Dougie’s postman was the first person to appreciate these cards, then – if they were worthwhile – the rest of the posties and finally Dougie himself, and so the courtship was played out in open forum.
There was only one postcard of Glan Llanfair, showing the beautiful stone arched bridge that spanned the Chwefru, so Dougie bought a dozen and sent them off at intervals with a variety of drawn-in additions – a shopping trolley in the river, him with his biggest fish, the high flood mark where his grandparent’s house had flooded and the spot where he first showed a girl his willy and the direction she ran away in.
After a few weeks of such correspondence, confidence grew on both sides and eventually the decision was made to meet. In a week’s time, somewhere easy to get to, on mutually independent territory. They would make their own arrangements to get there, would have a drink together for an hour and only move on for dinner if they both wanted to. Oh, and he would wear a red carnation and carry a copy of the Brecon and Radnor, so that if she felt he were hideously ugly, she could walk straight by.
Chapter 20
Sour Milk
Throughout these weeks, Alan Bentley had retreated to the bleak comfort of his parents’ house where he licked his wounds. His first thoughts swung from popping round to make it all up to dismissing Lettie as a “stupid bitch”. This was followed by complete indignance when a policeman had arrived to discuss the matter. It was the same policeman to whom he had reported a lost wallet to six months previous, also the same policeman he’d shared a couple of beers with when the wallet had been returned, untouched, a couple of days later.
The policeman had been young and was obviously not very comfortable in the role of telling an arrogant and overconfident older man that he really shouldn’t do something like that again. The young man’s superior was a client of Rich’s who had offered one of her officers to go round and “shake Alan up; make him realise that he is being watched”. Alan had dismissed the officer with a few curt phrases about circumstantial evidence and the pointlessness of the meeting if he weren’t going to press charges. But, the conversation hit home and Alan was annoyed that no one seemed to be listening to his side of the story.
The policeman could no longer meet his eyes when they passed in the street, but this didn’t bother Alan. He felt that that was the policeman’s problem. He prided himself on thinking he would carry on as usual, Lettie or no Lettie. But he couldn’t.
Being away for most of the week was usual for Alan, but he missed the amusing text messages and the occasional phone calls in which they would discuss their days. Seeing as Lettie’s days were usually the same, he would tell her about his conquests, the deals he’d struck, the bonuses he’d earned. She would have saved snippets about the people she’d served and the latest trials of the summer waitresses and, she would make him laugh.
On top of this, there were, of course, the weekends. Time spent at Lettie’s, even if she were in an odd mood, was far better than time spent at his parents’ house. Her homely den, although a little smaller and tattier than what he had in his mind for his own place, had a welcoming charm that he took for granted. The wine rack always had wine in it, the fridge had a goodie box especially for him and his Friday night bath, which she would run and then sit next to while they shared a bottle of that wine, was a wind down after a busy week that he hadn’t realised he would miss so much.
At first, he played it cool, the same as he usually did after their rows. The letter and the police had thrown him a little, but he had no questions about his ability to return if and when he chose. But, as time had rolled on, he found it increasingly difficult to manipulate the situation. Just as when he had spotted Alex through the lounge window, whenever he saw Lettie in town she was with someone or was walking so forthrightly that he felt that she must be on her way to an appointment. He had approached the house a couple more times since, but he had been set back on each occasion by a feeling that the timing was wrong.
Late one Friday night he was driven from his parents’ house by sheer frustration. His mother had been fawning nervously around him since he’d arrived home. There had even been a bath drawn, with a glass of wine and candles, for him but it felt ridiculous in the bathroom of his youth, with its dated pink suite and large pink and white marbled tiles. The smell of bleach could not be overwhelmed by the apple bubble bath and the two combined to make him cough.
His dressing gown was hung in readiness on the back of the bathroom door, but it was a grubby green and white striped one, its towelling frays hanging from it as medals to its age and use. It was certainly not the same as the luxurious blue one that Lettie had bought him for Christmas. That one had a hood and deep pockets that usually held a treat – a small bag of fudge or a beer if she had been prepared. A potato or a Brussels sprout if she hadn’t.
Alan grimaced at the cheap wine – God, didn’t his mother know that white should be chilled? He climbed out of the bath cross and still in need of a proper wash. He went into the lounge and sat, in his dressing gown, with bad grace. She hadn’t even emptied the old tissues out of the pockets.
The Bentley home was immaculate, built in the times that made it a fit home for a hero. But it lacked the individuality that surely such a hero would have brought home with him. Everything in the sitting room was tan or cream – any colour will go with that. Unfortunately, no colour ever needed to.
The sheepskin rug in front of the old gas fire had never had a couple making madly-passionate love on it. The tan sofa had never had two sets of feet, especially with shoes on, cuddled up in it. The covers were sensible enough to be easily cleaned and the lace doilies over the seat backs had been won at the Women’s Institute Christmas bazaar fifteen years earlier and still looked good as new.
The television had centre stage and was on day and night, regardless of whether anyone watched it. A picture of a charmless couple on their wedding day stared down from one side of the television and a photo of Alan clutching a blank paper scroll on his graduation day from the other.
The same scene in similar
rooms, with slight variations, was played out across the land by people who felt a need to fit in, be accepted and no more; a slice of the community who worked very hard for what they had and didn’t dare ever risk getting it wrong.
Alan’s father, Alfred, sat in “your Father’s chair” and they had their usual Friday night conversation, although this time Alan was in a ridiculous dressing gown and still slightly red from his bath. Mother brought in their tea on trays so that they could eat in front of the television. Both men accepted their trays with neither acknowledgement nor thanks. The roast chicken dinner was followed by chocolate roll and custard. Alan knew his mother, Clara, was trying to make him feel better and she only just refrained from saying, “this used to be your favourite”, but her efforts simply burrowed deeper into his nerves.
Alan bolted his pudding, ignoring Clara’s attempts at starting a lively debate, put the tray on the floor and headed to his room. In her attempts to make him forget Lettie, his mother had laid out clothes that he might like to change into on the bed and these he swept onto the floor with increasing annoyance. Rummaging in his week’s bag, he dragged out his trusty black polo neck and black jeans, grabbed his denim jacket and slammed his way wordlessly out of the house. His father raised his eyebrows and slowly shook his head, his mother wrung her hands and said, “Oh dear, oh dear.” Neither missed a frame of the programme.
Chapter 21
Last Night’s Curry for Breakfast
Alan walked straight past his usual pub – a pub where the local boys gathered to swap bravado and compare gadgets. Instead, he sauntered along the seafront, the cool breeze calming his frustration. He sought the softer environment of a harbour-front hostelry that seemed to base its marketing strategy solely on hanging baskets. It was full tonight. The fine early June night had brought the crowds from their homes or their self-catering apartments. The beer garden was busy, the gas outdoor heaters allowing an extension to the cosy bar area.
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