He was turning away and she called, ‘Fancy coming for a meal tonight? I’ve made a rabbit stew and I’ve even got some dumplings made with a gift of suet from a friendly butcher.’ He thanked her but declined.
That was a setback. She had hoped to borrow his car keys again, but when they had meet by chance, once in a café and once as they went into the pictures, she’d had no opportunity to reach into his pocket and retrieve them.
Borrowing someone else’s car turned out to be easier than she’d expected. It was a quiet neighbourhood with few cars. Men often left them in the street or parked on waste ground not far away. They were never locked and it was not unusual to find the keys still in them. So few people could drive, mostly the higher paid or reps and travelling salesmen who needed transport for their job, or those who worked a long way from home and could afford one. There wasn’t much risk of them being stolen.
She drove off in a Morris Minor, slowly at first until she accustomed herself to the slight differences, then as confidence grew she picked up speed so she didn’t attract attention and headed for Cwm Derw.
*
Jennie had been determined not to see Bill again. Her brief affair had caused so much distress both to herself and her family and to Ernie, who really didn’t deserve it. She had no idea where he was but presumed he was somewhere in London as he had once planned. A note came from him, the postmark confirming that he was indeed there, and she handed it to Marie to burn unopened. A second came and they wrote ‘please return to sender’ before slipping it back into the post box, and hoped that would end it.
When she left the shop to take some letters to the same post box. Bill was standing in front of it. At once she turned to go back to the shop, but he ran across the road and held her arm.
‘Wait, Jennie. I understand you don’t want us to meet, but I need to talk to you. It’s about Dad. He won’t talk to me and I’m worried about him.’
It was the only thing he could have said that would change her mind.
‘What d’you want me to do?’ she asked sadly. ‘I’ll do anything to make him forgive me. Anything.’
‘I feel the same, but we need to discuss it all and work out the best thing to do.’
They agreed to meet that evening at the end of the lane leading from the road to Badgers Brook, and it was there that Effie saw them.
They walked close together and at the end of their conversation they wrapped their arms around each other and kissed.
‘Another goodbye,’ Bill said sadly.
‘We were seen last time by your father,’ Jennie said with a shiver of apprehension. ‘Surely we can’t be unlucky enough to be seen again?’
They looked around as though a silent watcher would reveal himself, before surrendering to a final slow, loving kiss.
‘This really is goodbye,’ Jennie said, moving away from Bill’s persistent embrace. ‘We can’t meet again. If we’re to persuade your father what he saw was innocent, we’ll have to avoid each other permanently.’
‘That’s why I took the job in London,’ Bill said.
‘It seems so far away, but making it final is a good thing I suppose.’
‘I’m working on one of the big London stations. It’s interesting, and having a new job and a new neighbourhood to explore should occupy my mind and ease our parting.’
‘We have to try and convince your father he was mistaken,’ Jennie said. ‘I hate the thought of him being hurt.’
‘All right, we’ll prepare a story on the lines of what I’ve already tried to tell him, that I was upset after my girlfriend told me she didn’t want to see me again. You were listening and comforting me.’
‘True in a way.’ Jennie smiled ruefully.
Bill stood and watched as Jennie went back to the house, and for several minutes he didn’t move. He appeared to be expecting her to change her mind and run back to him.
Effie stared in disbelief, talking to herself tearfully as she started the engine. ‘This shouldn’t be happening. It’s all over, they shouldn’t be doing this. Why are they still together? Why didn’t she die when that car hit her? Why?’
When Ivor left the office the following day she ran up to him and said, ‘I saw your Marie yesterday. Did you know Jennie is living there? She’s been having a ding-dong with Bill James, would you believe. Married to the father, staying at Badgers Brook and having a ding-dong with the son. What a carry-on, eh?’
Ivor’s first thought was not what Jennie was doing, but why Effie was interested enough to get to Cwm Derw and back just to report on his family.
‘I’m sure there’s a better explanation than Jennie and Bill having a “ding-dong”,’ he said, to give himself time to think. ‘Perhaps the house is being decorated and both Ernie and Jennie are staying with Marie. Because you didn’t see Ernie doesn’t mean he wasn’t there. Or Jennie might be planning a surprise for her husband.’
‘Shock more like,’ Effie said. ‘As if there haven’t been enough shocks in that family: Bill’s mother dying of a heart attack, then Bill’s fiancée knocked down and killed, now this mess. D’you think he should be told? Ernie, I mean, in case he doesn’t know?’
‘No, I think it’s best not to interfere.’
He tried to edge away but Effie touched his arm, tightening her grip as she said, ‘Geoff is at your house quite a lot.’
‘Good. Marie needs all the help she can get, working all day, running the home and trying to deal with the garden.’ Every word seemed like a dagger in his heart. Instead of idling his life away, filling in hours walking aimlessly, reading or watching boring films, he should be with Marie, helping her, taking care of them all.
‘Don’t worry about the garden,’ she said airily. ‘Roger and Royston are working hard with Geoff’s guidance and it’s looking great. They still go fishing to help out the food ration but they’re proper licensed now. Geoff sees to that for them. Good boys they are by all accounts.’
‘I didn’t think the boys were interested in gardening.’
‘Oh, they seem to like it. Royston is building a sort of greenhouse with windows taken from a bombed house that’s been left in ruins since the raid that all but flattened it. Geoff’s encouragement again, I suppose.’ She turned to him and asked, ‘Why don’t I cook us something and I can tell you all that’s been done. Very observant I am.’
Almost unconsciously he followed her back to the room he had once shared and he sat on the solitary chair while she chattered and prepared a simple meal of tinned oxtail soup and meat paste sandwiches.
‘Tell me, Effie, why do you go to see what my family are doing?’
‘Concern for you, of course,’ she said, biting enthusiastically into a sandwich. As she chewed, she spoke in disjointed sentences, explaining that she knew he was worried and her observations were intended to reassure him.
‘It’s a long way to go, Effie.’
‘Not really. There’s a bus to the Graig and another to Cwm Derw then it’s only a short walk.’
‘Still, it takes a lot of your time.’
‘I don’t mind. I wish I could drive, though. It’s only about twenty minutes in a car. Not that I could afford a car. After paying the rent of this room and buying food, there isn’t enough money to save up, or even run a car. Poor me, eh?’ There was no criticism in her tone but he winced just the same. Another woman whose life he had messed up.
He left after he had eaten, vaguely agreeing to Effie’s suggestion that they meet again soon. He was puzzled by Effie’s interest, but something was not adding up. She obviously hoped that they would become more than friends, even though he had done nothing to suggest it – apart from his stupidity in agreeing to share a room. That had been a serious error. If word of that got out he’d be found guilty without trial. Anyone hearing of it would automatically believe they had been sharing a bed. How could he have been such an idiot?
Twice during the following week he saw Effie waiting outside the office, and each time he waited until she had g
one, hiding like a child in the dark office until he felt it was safe to leave. He would have to find the words to tell her kindly and firmly that they had no future apart from friendship, and even friendship was at risk if she persisted in forcing herself on him. No! That wouldn’t do! But how could he word it to sound strong and at the same time let her down gently?
Sometimes, after staying late to avoid her, he didn’t go back to his lodgings but went to the pictures instead, staring at the screen with no attempt to follow the story. When he came out into the dark streets it was too late for supper, which was served at nine thirty. He wasn’t hungry anyway.
Most of the cafés were closed by five thirty, and the only one still open served unappetizing, and often stale, food. If only he could go home, back to Marie and the children. A bus came along, and in the same unthinking way he had gone back with Effie a few days previously he got on and made his way to Cwm Derw.
Approaching the end of October the woods smelled of dampness and that evocative, earthy scent that accompanies the approach of winter. In several places there was the cone-like shape of a bonfire in preparation for Guy Fawkes celebrations just over a week away. The thought of fires reminded him of his childhood: the fearsome memories of a school burning, and the attempt by his mother to set fire to the house of a neighbour who had offended in some way. Bonfire night was not something he enjoyed. The reminder of his mother’s mental state was always with him but never more so than on the night when people commemorated the attempt to blow up parliament in 1605. His mother’s penchant for starting fires in retaliation for some offence and his father’s inability, his unwillingness even, to stop her was why he was living alone, outside his family, hoping and praying that whatever madness he had inherited would not develop or, worst of all, reveal itself in his beloved daughter, Violet. Staying away was the only way he could help, a faint hope that not seeing his decline might make her own less likely. Foolish, unfounded, but it was all he could do.
Unclear why he was there and not knowing what to do, he stood just within the wood for a while, taking in the moist earthy scents of the late evening, feeling the chill melancholy of the dying summer, imagining the warmth just yards away from him inside the house where all his doubts and anxieties had been so cruelly revived.
Until he had learned that his father was living in the vicinity he’d been able to pretend, convince himself that he was nothing to do with him, that he had no connection with the behaviour that had ruined his childhood. On realizing that he could deny it no longer, he had done the cowardly thing and walked away without any explanation, leaving his family hurt and confused and in financial difficulties; their misery caused by him.
The chance to tell Marie had been when their darling Violet was born. But how could he explain why he had feared for the baby? Tell her the illness that had tainted his childhood might come back to haunt him anew, revived in the innocent child? For almost ten years he had watched Violet develop into a wonderful, bright and happy child, but seeing his father had wiped away his confidence and he could no longer pretend the fear wasn’t there. He had reasoned that if he were to leave them, somehow the danger would be eased. If he had shown signs of illness such as his parents had suffered it might be contagious, like measles, and just having him there would be a catalyst and cause it to happen.
The curtains were drawn across the windows and only once, when one of the twins opened the door to take in a bucketful of coal, was there any sign of life. In the cold air a thread of smoke rose from the chimney, increasing into a sudden cloud as fuel was added to the fire within. His memory was touched by the smell of toast, a favourite bed-time snack, for which the children would be clamouring once the fire had taken up the fresh fuel and burned to a steady glow. He could picture it all so clearly. The warmth of it touched him and became almost real: sights and smells tormented him and the pain of being there made him turn and hurry towards the bus stop.
A bus loomed into view almost immediately, and as he jumped on a car passed him, the driver illuminated briefly in the light from the bus. A fleeting glance only, but the way she sat forward showed her clearly, her thick hair falling in curls around her face, and he was left in no doubt. It was Effie, who had told him on several occasions that she couldn’t drive.
*
Jennie received a letter asking her to attend a solicitor’s office the following week. She tried again to talk to Ernie. But even when she went into the hairdresser’s shop she found the house locked and there was no reply to her desperate knocking. She had told Lucy most of what had happened, but Lucy was careful to avoid too strong a comment; she wanted to keep her job now she had been made manageress.
Jennie tried to persuade her friend to give Ernie a note. There had been no reply to previous letters so she thought that if Lucy handed it to him he’d have to at least admit to receiving it.
‘Don’t ask me to get involved, Jennie,’ Lucy pleaded. ‘Whatever happens between you, I’ll be able to keep my job if I stay well out of it. My loyalty is to you, but it wouldn’t help either of us if I lost my job, would it?’
Jennie felt a worse rejection than Lucy realized. They’d had so many friends until she married Ernie and now there was no one. So she asked Marie to go with her to hear what Ernie had decided to do.
With the owner’s permission the shop was closed, and Marie dressed in a good quality mid-calf-length skirt and a jacket with padded shoulders in a soft green fabric, which she had bought for the occasion. Jennie dressed smartly but not outrageously, and her wild blond hair was pulled back and calmed with a green felt hat.
When they got off the bus, Jennie caught hold of the bus stop pole and bent over.
‘Marie, I feel awful. I’m shaking so much my legs won’t hold me. I think I’m going to be sick.’
‘Nerves, that’s all,’ Marie comforted, leading her to a seat. She watched as the colour returned to Jennie’s face. ‘We’re early so you can sit for a while. This is quite an ordeal for you. Hardly surprising that you’re upset.’
‘It’s the embarrassment that’ll be the worst. If it ends in divorce the papers will be splashing the story all over the town.’ She protested that she couldn’t go and begged Marie to telephone to tell them she was ill, but Marie persuaded her.
‘It’s only a few steps and were there, and today could see the end of the worst of it. Come on, get it over. I’ll be there and we’ll all help you.’ Slowly Jennie stood and walked arm in arm with her to the office of Harold J. Howells, Solicitor.
Ernie was sitting in the outer office, and she smiled and said. ‘Hello, dear,’ to which he gave the slightest of nods.
She only half heard what the solicitor said, waiting for the chance to say her piece. When he paused, she asked in her sweetest, most childlike voice, ‘Can I tell you what I think happened? My husband refuses to listen.’ The solicitor glanced at his client but Jennie didn’t give him a chance to refuse.
‘Bill’s girlfriend, of whom he was very fond, had told him she didn’t want to see him any more. He was devastated, and, being in love myself,’ she glanced coyly at the stony-faced Ernie, ‘I perfectly understood how he felt. I listened to him, offered sympathy, and,’ she paused theatrically, ‘I kissed him and told him his father and I would do all we could to help him get over it. It must have been this that Ernie saw and misunderstood.’
‘And that was all there was to it?’ The solicitor looked surprised. ‘No long-term, er, affair? Forgive me, Mrs James, but I have to ask – there was no adultery?’
‘There was not! I’m a happily married woman, Mr Howells! Or at least I was, until someone spread unkind rumours and upset my Ernie.’
Mr Howells coughed and said, ‘Mrs James, would you be kind enough to wait in the outer office? Miss Griffiths will make you a cup of tea.’
A few minutes later, after several biscuits and a cup of weak tea, Ernie came out and said, ‘You’d better come home with me. We have to sort this out.’
‘No dear. I’ll s
tay where I am for a while, just until you’re quite sure you don’t have any doubts about me. An affair indeed. And with your son. I don’t know whether I can forgive you, Ernie, I really don’t.’
‘Have you ever thought of acting?’ Marie said as they were leaving the austere building that held the offices of Mr Harold J. Howells.
Jennie threw off the hat she was wearing and pulled her hair out of its restraining clips. ‘I don’t know how I managed not to laugh,’ she said, her eyes shining with humour. ‘Poor man, he didn’t stand a chance of getting rid of me, did he?’
‘When will you go back to him?’
Jennie frowned as she concentrated. ‘In good time for my birthday I think, don’t you?’
They returned to reopen the shop, singing ‘They say that falling in love is wonderful’, cheerfully unaware of the irony of their situation in which love had been far from wonderful, bringing them nothing but sorrow. Marie thought it was a long time since she’d been as happy as since her sister had come to stay.
*
Ivor was puzzled by the obvious lie, when Effie again told him she was unable to drive. He knew she had been brought up on a farm, and one day he mentioned that many farm-workers learned to drive a tractor long before being allowed to drive on the roads.
‘My father wouldn’t let me, even though I pleaded to try,’ she replied to the remark. ‘If I had a child I wouldn’t hold them back from doing anything they wanted, so long as it wasn’t dangerous, of course,’ she added.
‘You did have vehicles though?’
‘A boyfriend I once had promised to teach me,’ she said. ‘But he left me for someone else when things became, you know, complicated, and I lost my chance.’
‘How complicated?’ he asked. He saw the frown of concentration cloud her eyes and she shook her head.
‘It’s all so long ago and I’ve forgotten,’ she said unconvincingly. ‘I hope he hasn’t forgotten though. He doesn’t deserve any luck after what he did to me.’
The House by the Brook Page 25