Broken Rainbows

by Catrin Collier

  ‘He really is going to be all right?’

  ‘As all right as anyone can be after a week trapped underground with a ton of rock on top of him. He was lucky that his head was free and the boy found the snap boxes. Clever lad, he fed him, rationing out the cold tea, but it was just as well the rescuers broke through when they did. It had all but gone.’

  ‘Boy?’

  ‘Luke Grenville. Isn’t he the one married to Gina Ronconi?’ He didn’t wait for her to answer. ‘Well, she’ll be happy. I’ve checked him over. Hardly a scratch on him. I want to keep him in at least until morning, but he insists on going home.’

  ‘Does Gina know he’s alive?’

  ‘Not yet. Huw Davies is doing the rounds of the families, but Luke refused to allow him to go up Danycoedcae Road to tell her.’

  ‘What about the others … Alexander Forbes … Mr Richards …?’

  ‘Your father and Luke were the only survivors.’

  ‘Mrs John, I thought I heard your voice.’ Luke padded towards them in a skimpy workhouse nightshirt that revealed the blackened bruises on his legs and arms.

  ‘Dr John just told me you saved my father’s life, Luke. How can I begin to thank you?’

  ‘I wish I could have done the same for the others.’

  ‘It’s a miracle you and Evan Powell survived, boy,’ Dr John said gruffly.

  ‘Please, ask them if I can go home, Mrs John? You know me. You can see I’m all right.’

  ‘You’re in shock …’

  ‘Supposing I keep an eye on him and check up on him every couple of hours,’ Bethan suggested.

  ‘Haven’t you got enough to do?’

  ‘Not until my father is discharged.’

  Luke looked hopefully from the doctor to Bethan.

  ‘See if someone can find you something more substantial to wear, Luke. We’ll set the whole town talking if I take you up the hill looking like that.’

  While Luke dressed, Bethan stole into the cubicle next to the sister’s office. Her father’s face was ashen, bleached by the subdued lighting and the startling, pristine whiteness of the bedlinen. She laid her hand on his forehead noticing the traces of coal dust ingrained in the stubble on his chin and the lines of his face. Folding back the bedclothes she checked the cage that had been placed over his shoulder to take the weight of the blankets. Replacing it after she had noted the extent of the damage, she smoothed his hair away from his temples and bent her head to kiss him.

  ‘He’s going to need a lot of care, Bethan, you do know that?’

  ‘And he’s not going to make an easy patient.’ She smiled awkwardly at Dr John. ‘He’s used to getting his own way. Doing what he wants, being active.’

  ‘Take some time off.’

  Squaring her shoulders, Bethan set her face, determined not to break down as she had the night David Ford had found her. ‘When he leaves here I might take you up on that offer.’

  ‘Not before?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘Bethan …’

  ‘I’m all right. I’d better take Luke home. I’ll see you in the surgery tomorrow.’

  He watched her walk away. She had lost weight since the accident and she looked as though she hadn’t slept in a month. He couldn’t even write to Andrew to ask him to tell her to slow down. It would only make him worry all the more about what was happening back home. Possibly even drive him over the edge. There had been some disquieting reports about deaths in German POW camps. Quite understandably. He couldn’t imagine being locked up as long as Andrew had been with no sign of a reprieve.

  ‘Thank you, Mrs John. I really appreciate you getting me out of there.’

  ‘I’m not sure I’ve done you a favour. You still look in shock to me. I could have brought Gina down to the hospital.’

  ‘I don’t want anyone to tell her I’m all right except me. Have you seen her? How is she?’

  ‘How do you think? Upset. Bearing up because there was nothing else she could do.’

  ‘That’s why I have to see her. To convince her that I really am all right. All I want is to be with her. Mr Williams has given me a few days off.’

  ‘That was big of him.’ Bethan couldn’t keep the sarcasm from her voice.

  ‘It could be longer, I have to see Dr John at the end of the week.’

  ‘You’re quite a hero, Luke.’

  He clenched his fists. ‘I didn’t do anything to save the others.’

  ‘Did they die in the fall?’ She hated asking the question, but she had to know.

  ‘I think Alexander died yesterday. Mr Richards the day before. I’m not too sure about the exact time, it was difficult to tell what day it was. I had the foreman’s watch, but when I slept I lost all track. I couldn’t tell if it was day or night. And when the batteries failed in the last of the lamps it was hopeless. Only four of us survived the fall, and apart from me they were all badly injured. I tried to do what I could, but I couldn’t even dig the others out. They were trapped under the rocks and I was afraid that if I tried to free them, the whole lot would come tumbling down on top of us.’ Guilt, raw, choking, lay behind his simple explanation.

  ‘I can’t even begin to imagine what it was like down there. Not knowing whether you would be rescued or not. It says a great deal that you found the strength and courage to save my father.’

  ‘And myself,’ he added drily.

  ‘You can’t take the blame because you survived and the others didn’t.’

  ‘No, but I don’t have to feel good about it either. If you want to talk about heroes, talk about Alexander. He was crushed from the waist down. An intelligent, educated man like him must have known it was hopeless from the start, yet he kept us all going. Talking, making suggestions about rationing out the food in the snap boxes. Even cracking jokes.’

  They passed the shadowy figures of the first miners going out on early morning shift as they turned the corner into Danycoedcae Road. Turning off the ignition, she pulled on the handbrake.

  ‘Would you mind coming in with me, Mrs John?’ he asked diffidently. ‘I didn’t like to tell Dr John, but Gina could be having a baby. She’s not sure yet, or at least she wasn’t a week ago. I don’t want to risk her getting upset. My mother lost her third when her brother was killed in a farm accident, and the midwife put that down to shock.’

  ‘Would you like me to go in first?’

  ‘What do you think?’

  ‘How about we go in together?’

  Gina’s cries of relief and joy were still ringing in Bethan’s ears when she left Danycoedcae Road ten minutes later. She had two more calls to make before returning to her own house and she hoped that Phyllis would forgive her the delay. Heading back down Llantrisant Road she turned right into Graig Avenue, spotting the gleam of the white flashes on Huw Davies’s helmet and armbands as she drove up the road. When he heard the engine of her car, he stopped. She parked outside her old house, and opened the door.

  ‘Is that you, Bethan?’

  ‘Have you been to see my mother, Uncle Huw?’

  ‘Not yet. I’ve only just left Mrs Richards.’

  ‘Is she all right?’

  ‘No, but I left Mrs Morris and Mrs Evans with her. They both know what she’s going through, having lost their own husbands.’

  ‘Then I suppose it’s up to me to call on Mam. Do you want to come with me?’

  ‘After what she did to Phyllis and you? Try and stop me.’

  Bethan ran up the steps and knocked on the door. She knocked half-a-dozen times, but it was Huw’s cry of ‘Police’ that finally prompted Elizabeth to leave her bed and walk down the stairs.

  ‘Who is it?’ she called from behind the closed door.

  ‘Huw Davies, Elizabeth.’ He placed a reassuring hand on Bethan’s shoulder. ‘We have news about Evan.’

  ‘Who’s we?’

  ‘Bethan is with me.’

  Drawing the bolt, she switched off the light, opened the door and peered out at them.

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bsp; ‘Dad’s alive, Mam, but he’s injured. He’s going to need a lot of nursing. You’ll need us to give you a hand to pack up the things in the parlour and move a bed in there.’

  ‘I enjoyed that,’ Huw said as Elizabeth closed the door on them.

  ‘I didn’t.’ Bethan had hoped that her mother would invite them in. But she hadn’t. Merely told them that she’d be returning to her Uncle John Joseph’s house in Tonypandy by midday and they could move Evan in then. Bethan hadn’t told her that it would be weeks before Evan could leave the Graig Hospital. Elizabeth had shut the door without giving her a chance to say any more.

  ‘Have you been to see Jenny?’ she asked.

  ‘No. Should I?’

  ‘There was something going on between her and Alexander Forbes. Phyllis said he wanted to marry her.’

  ‘Poor Jenny,’ Huw mused, remembering the day he’d read her the telegram telling her that Eddie had been killed. There were times when he hated his job. Jenny would be his sixth call that night. Could he really go through another four?

  ‘I’ll tell her.’ Bethan opened her car door.

  ‘You don’t have to. It’s my job.’

  ‘I know I don’t have to, Uncle Huw, but I feel I should.’

  ‘Bethan …’

  ‘Eddie was my brother. And despite everything I think he loved her. I’ll tell her.’

  Elizabeth pushed the bolt across the front door, dropped the blackout and switched on the light. She walked slowly down the flagstoned passage into the kitchen. Her brain was pounding inside her skull, throbbing unrelentingly as though it was about to burst free.

  Resignation and acceptance of God’s will. That was the lesson that had been drummed into her from birth by her minister father and, after his death, by her uncle. How often had both of them warned her never to question the wisdom of the Supreme Being? That her life was significant only in that it was an infinitesimal part of a greater plan she could neither begin to understand nor question, because to even attempt to do so would jeopardise her immortal soul.

  She laid her hand on the latch of the kitchen door and pushed it open. This was her home. She had cleaned every corner of this room more times than she could remember. Polished every inch of brass rail in the range, blackleaded every corner of the ironwork. She had sewn plain, serviceable, grey cotton curtains, and chair covers that had been discarded. And in their place was evidence of Evan’s whore’s work. In her home.

  She knew she should pray for guidance and above all forbearance. But for the first time in her life, the words refused to come. Why was she being put to the test? Why had God destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah, yet allowed the filth of those cities to live on, here, in her home?

  Her home – she would never have sewn patchwork curtains, or patchwork covers for the chairs. She would have put the hours it had taken to make those garish patterns out of rags to better use. She ran her fingers above the door frame, disappointed when she found no dust.

  She stepped inside the room. She had a right to remain here, but she couldn’t stay, not with Evan. Never again would she allow a man to do such filthy things to her. The fruit of his loins – their children – stared back at her from a photograph on the mantelpiece. Her children – not the whore’s. But Evan’s whore had put the small posy of artificial flowers next to the frame. An offering commemorating their father’s vulgar, morbid grief. In His infinite wisdom God had chosen to take their younger son and daughter, and for their sins, He had given them no grave in their home town, no marker, where they could be mourned by their family. So why make a memorial here? In the house their mother had been ousted from by a whore.

  She continued to stare at the smiling faces. Bethan, with her arm around Maud; Haydn and Eddie standing behind the girls. Suddenly sweeping her arm across the mantelpiece she sent the frame and the china ornaments surrounding it crashing to the hearth. Still the photograph stared up at her. Slowly, deliberately, she pulled the broken glass, shard by shard, from the frame, heaping the fragments into the coal bucket. Opening the door on the range she pushed the photograph and the frame on top of the coals. She sat back on her heels and watched it burn. When it was no more than a smudge of white ash on the glowing coals, she opened the dresser cupboard and took the first photograph album. When she had transformed it into a pile of curling, flaking, black ash, she took the next … and the next … until the cupboard was bare. Then she turned her attention to Evan’s books. Books she would never have allowed in the house. Marxist filth, Russian novels penned by degenerates who wrote about things decent people would never think of, much less study.

  She pulled down the curtains, ripping the pole from the wall; the covers from the chairs, the rag rugs, the pictures from the walls. Looking down at the pile she’d made on the floor, she realised it would take for ever to burn it all. Picking up the workbox she reached for the scissors and attacked the cloth, not only the loose covers but the chairs themselves. Emptying the shelves on the dresser she dropped the plates, cups and saucers that had belonged to Evan’s grandmother on to the flagstones where they shattered into slivers too small to mend. She looked at the dresser itself, big, solid and heavy. There was an axe in the coalhouse. She glanced up at the clock. She had until midday. It would be time enough. Then Evan could have his precious house back. If he still wanted it.

  Bethan had prepared herself for an outburst of grief, but Jenny sat, dry-eyed and white-faced. There were no tears, screams, or protestations of anger, only a calm acceptance that sent shivers down Bethan’s spine.

  ‘Alexander survived the fall but he died before the rescuers could reach him. He saved Luke’s and my father’s life with his suggestions for rationing the food. He even made jokes to keep up their spirits.’

  ‘He would have.’ There was no bitterness or rancour in Jenny’s voice. Leaving the sofa she walked to the window and pulled back the curtains.

  ‘The blackout,’ Bethan warned.

  ‘I forgot.’ Dropping the curtain she glanced at the clock. ‘I have to be in work in an hour.’

  ‘They’ll understand if you take the day off.’

  ‘There’s no need.’

  ‘Jenny, you have to give yourself time to get over this.’

  ‘There’s nothing to get over,’ she murmured flatly. ‘It wasn’t as if we were married. It’s not like losing Eddie. Alexander wasn’t my husband, only my lover. I’ll find another.’

  Bethan laid her hands on Jenny’s shoulders, forcing her to look into her eyes. ‘Give yourself time to grieve. If you don’t, you could have a nervous breakdown.’

  ‘I’m fine.’ Jenny smiled, but her blue eyes remained cold, dead. ‘You see. I’m fine, Bethan. There’s nothing to get over. Nothing at all.’

  Chapter Fourteen

  Kurt Schaffer buttoned his greatcoat as he waited in Station Yard. Winter was slowly but surely giving way to spring, but it was a cooler spring than he was accustomed to, and in early evening the damp air still had the power to penetrate layers of uniform. When he saw the blonde head he’d been waiting for, he took a deep breath and stepped forward.

  ‘I was hoping to see you.’

  ‘Were you?’ Jenny stood back and watched the crowd of girls she’d travelled with walk on without her.

  ‘Some people get all the luck,’ Maggie shouted.

  ‘Don’t eat all of him, Jenny,’ Judy called back over her shoulder. ‘Leave some for me.’

  ‘I wanted to tell you how sorry I was about your boyfriend,’ Kurt murmured, glad when Jenny’s companions moved out of earshot.

  ‘Alexander wasn’t my boyfriend, Lieutenant Schaffer, He was my lover.’

  Kurt stared at her completely lost for words.

  ‘I’ve embarrassed you?’

  ‘Not exactly. It’s just that I’ve never met anyone quite as direct as you.’

  ‘And?’

  He continued to gaze at her blankly.

  ‘Is this an accidental meeting, or did you meet my train to offer your condolences?�
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  ‘I’ve been hoping to see you for some time.’

  ‘Let me guess – ever since Alexander was killed, because you’d like to move in and take his place?’

  He whistled under his breath. ‘Ma’am, there’s honesty and then there’s brutality.’

  ‘Let’s settle for the unvarnished truth, shall we? My guess is that you want a girl to sleep with while you’re in town. Someone who’s willing, able, not too demanding, and won’t make a scene when you wave goodbye?’

  ‘No,’ he protested hastily. ‘I don’t want that at all.’

  ‘That’s a pity, Lieutenant Schaffer.’ She took his arm and led him across the road towards the White Hart. ‘If you had, you might have been in luck. And then again you might not have been. I’m looking for a lover, you’ve already presented and proved your credentials, so as far as I’m concerned you fit the bill. But, I’d be very careful what I was getting myself into if I were you. My price may prove to be a high one.’

  ‘Price?’ He glanced back at the professionals standing outside the booking office. ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘My husband was killed at Dunkirk, and now Alexander’s body has been shipped back to his parents. You’ve heard of the kiss of death?’

  ‘Come on …’

  ‘I’m deadly serious, Lieutenant. Some women are cursed. Ask any RAF pilot if you don’t believe me. Make love to me again, and it may be the last thing you do.’

  ‘I don’t believe all that superstition bullshit,’ he retorted irritably.

  ‘No? You’d be a fool not to.’

  He pushed open the door of the Hart, and stood back to allow her to walk ahead of him. ‘Can we start by forgetting what you’ve just said and have a drink?’

  ‘Don’t ever say I didn’t warn you.’

  As he watched her enter the back room he wondered if she’d had some kind of a breakdown following Alexander Forbes’s death. After what had happened to her husband it would be understandable. All he knew was, no other girl had ever made him feel the way Jenny Powell did, and he wanted to put a smile on her face. Just like the one she had worn when he had first met her in the café.