Broken Rainbows

by Catrin Collier

  Anthea Llewellyn-Jones, radiant in white silk, lace and satin, smiling as she walked down the aisle of St Catherine’s church beside Andrew. A very different affair to their hole-in-the-corner wedding in a London register office, with her six months pregnant and Andrew’s colleague and his wife as their only witnesses.

  His parents had barely spoken to her before Rachel’s birth: a few words at the funeral of their first child, that was all. Perhaps Mrs Llewellyn-Jones was right. Perhaps she shouldn’t have married Andrew John. If only she could see him, talk to him, discover if there really was anything other than the children left between them.

  ‘Mrs John … Mrs John …’

  Bethan opened her eyes sleepily, waking with a start when she saw the alarm on the bedside table. Ten o’clock!

  ‘Maisie, why didn’t you wake me earlier?’

  ‘Dr John telephoned at half-past five this morning. He said you’d been up half the night, and not to wake you because he’s arranged for you to do the afternoon shift.’

  Bethan groaned inwardly. She hated working two till ten because it meant that she couldn’t put the children to bed.

  ‘I’ve brought you some tea, and you’re not to worry about the children. I saw Mrs Phyllis when I took Rachel to school and she took Eddie and Anne. They wanted to go with her.’

  ‘They know it’s her baking day, and they’ll get first pick of any treats she makes. I’ll call in Graig Avenue on my way into town. Did Dr John say anything else?’

  ‘Only that your patient is holding her own.’

  Bethan sat up and drank the tea. Maisie had brought the post as well. There was a letter from Andrew. She opened it, but there were only the usual stories about what the men were doing to fill up their time, and fervent hopes and wishes that he’d be home soon and his love. She wondered if he really did still love her, or if it was simply a meaningless phrase to be tacked on to the end of every letter.

  She couldn’t get Anthea Llewellyn-Jones out of her mind. She knew only too well how desperate she must have been to place herself in the hands of a backstreet abortionist. When Andrew had left her pregnant in Pontypridd and gone to London, as she had thought at the time, for ever, she would have done the same thing if she had known where to go.

  As it was, unable to bear the thought of her mother’s reproaches and the shame she would bring on her family, she had tried to get rid of the baby herself. Fortunately for her, the doctor who had cared for her after her failed attempt had known both Andrew and herself, and kept the information from the authorities.

  She wondered if Anthea knew that trying to abort a child was a criminal offence. Would the police prosecute, or would it be hushed up because Anthea was the daughter of two pillars of the community? Then she remembered the other women who had died and realised that neither Dr John nor the police would allow a cover-up. Not while there was a risk of more women dying or suffering as Anthea had done.

  As she had plenty of time, she drew double the patriotic allocation of four inches of hot water, wallowing in the luxury of a deep bath, before dressing and going downstairs, where Maisie had made her porridge and toast.

  ‘I timed it from the bath water running out, Mrs John. If there’s nothing else I’ll go shopping.’

  ‘If you wait ten minutes I’ll give you a lift down the hill.’

  ‘Mr James is taking his horse and trap into town. He offered to take me, so I said yes. That is all right?’

  ‘Of course, Maisie.’ She heard steps on the gravel outside and looked through the window. Albert James, dressed in his Sunday suit, his red face ruddier than ever, was walking to the front door. A widower with three grown children, it was his youngest son Malcolm that she had assumed had a crush on Maisie. Suddenly she realised it wasn’t Malcolm at all, but his father.

  Typical farmer to pick out a good housekeeper and hard-working wife, but then, she reflected, it wouldn’t be such a bad match for Maisie either. She and her daughter would get security, something that Bethan might not be able to offer them after the war.

  ‘And you are certain of this?’

  ‘As I said, I found her, sir. And then I went to the hospital.’

  David Ford left his desk and walked to the window. He looked down at the crowds milling below him. A scandal involving Mrs Llewellyn-Jones’s daughter was all he needed just as a regiment of black soldiers had come in to be trained. He could almost hear the gossips as he looked down on them:

  ‘If a white officer can seduce a well-brought-up girl like Anthea Llewellyn-Jones and almost kill her, what will a black man do?’

  ‘Do you think Richard Reide knew she was pregnant, Schaffer?’

  ‘I don’t know, sir.’

  ‘Goddammit, Lieutenant, relations between us and the natives in this backwater are tricky enough without you playing dumb.’

  Kurt hesitated for a moment before pulling an envelope from his pocket. ‘I found some of the men looking at these, sir. I thought I should confiscate them.’

  David opened the envelope. Several glossy black and white photographs spilled out on to the forms on his desk. They were of a girl, naked, amateurishly posed, but indecent and lewd enough to fetch a few dollars from sexually naive, frustrated soldiers deprived of female companionship.

  ‘Is this who I think it is?’

  ‘It’s Anthea Llewellyn-Jones all right, sir. I should know, I lived in her house for long enough.’

  ‘And she’s still in the hospital?’

  ‘She was when I left there with my fiancée last night, sir.’

  ‘Your what?’

  ‘My fiancée, sir. That’s my application to get married.’ He pointed to a form beneath the photographs.

  ‘Damn and blast it, not you too! What the hell are we running here, an army or a marriage broker’s?’ David Ford turned to him in exasperation.

  Feeling that the colonel didn’t really expect him to answer his question, Kurt turned back to the subject of Anthea. ‘A constable called on us this morning to see if we’d remembered anything more. He told us that although Miss Llewellyn-Jones will almost certainly recover, she’ll never have any children.’

  David Ford thought rapidly. He could blame American army policy, the official discouragement of marriages between USAAF military personnel and UK civilians, or he could blame himself for burying his head in the sand and ignoring the inevitable. But however he considered the situation, Richard Reide had no business getting engaged to anyone, not when he was married with four children.

  Bethan John had been right. She had tried to warn him that something like this was going to happen the night he had moved into her house. And all he had done was talk sanctimoniously about the whores in Station Yard.

  He glanced at the photographs of Anthea Llewellyn-Jones as he pushed them back into the envelope. Whatever else, this girl hadn’t been a whore before they had come into town and Richard Reide had made her one.

  ‘Tell the clerk to get me the Llewellyn-Jones home on the telephone.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘And Schaffer? Warn your fiancée that she faces an interview with a social welfare officer.’

  ‘Do you have to do that, sir?’

  ‘It’s standard procedure.’

  ‘In that case I withdraw my application.’

  ‘Problems, soldier?’

  ‘I haven’t quite got her to agree to marry me yet, sir. But I will.’

  Isabel John felt as though she was presiding over a house of death. A sense of bereavement hung, heavy and foreboding over every room. Dorothy Llewellyn-Jones insisted on lying on her bed, fully dressed in black. After taking the sedative prescribed for her, she had refused to allow anyone except her sister and oldest friend into the house.

  It was a disloyal thought, but Isabel suspected that Dorothy was secretly wallowing in her daughter’s disgrace. Her moans about never being able to hold up her head in the town again, and never knowing the thrill of holding a grandchild, rang selfish and hollow when she recalled
her husband’s description of the damage done to Anthea by the butcher who had tried to abort her child.

  The telephone clamoured into the silence. Ordering the cook and maid to remain in the kitchen, Isabel closed all the doors in the hall before answering it. Leaving the receiver on the hall table she walked up the stairs and knocked on Dorothy’s door.

  ‘I can’t talk to anyone.’

  ‘It’s Colonel Ford. He wants to speak to you about Anthea.’

  ‘Tell him I don’t know anyone of that name,’ came the curt reply.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Bethan picked up her nurse’s bag and glanced around the surgery to check if she’d forgotten anything.

  ‘Going home?’ her father-in-law asked.

  ‘In time to put Rachel and Eddie to bed, if I’m lucky.’

  ‘Isabel asked me to invite you and the children to tea on Sunday. You are free?’

  ‘I’m free.’ She was only confirming information he already knew. The timetable for staff shifts was pinned to the board above his desk. ‘And we’d love to,’ she replied, unable to think of a good excuse for not going.

  ‘There’ll only be us.’

  ‘I’ll look forward to it.’ She only just stopped herself from heaving an audible sigh of relief. She knew that her mother-in-law still spent part of every day with Dorothy Llewellyn-Jones, who persisted in playing the role of bereaved invalid a month after Anthea had been hospitalised.

  ‘And, just in case you didn’t know, Anthea’s leaving hospital tomorrow morning.’

  ‘She’s made a full recovery?’

  ‘As full as she’s ever likely to. She’s decided to join up.’

  ‘The services?’

  ‘WAACs.’

  ‘Mrs Llewellyn-Jones still refuses to see her?’

  ‘Or even acknowledge her existence.’

  ‘Poor Anthea.’ Bethan suffered a twinge of conscience. She hadn’t visited Anthea since the night she’d been admitted to the Graig Infirmary, justifying her absence with the excuse that her sympathy might be misunderstood.

  ‘Give the children a hug from me.’

  ‘I will.’

  She went to her car and drove directly to the hospital. The sister was on break, but the staff nurse called out a friendly greeting as she made her way to the cubicle Anthea had been wheeled into on the night of her arrival. Fortunately she was still there, lying on the bed, listlessly flicking through the pages of a wartime-thinned copy of Good Housekeeping. She glanced up at Bethan as she walked in.

  ‘If you’re expecting me to thank you for saving my life, don’t hold your breath.’

  ‘I’ve come to wish you luck. Dr John told me you’re joining up.’

  ‘Wish me luck, or gloat?’ Anthea’s mouth twisted into a thin, hard line and Bethan saw that her eyes were full of bitterness.

  ‘Wish you luck,’ she responded evenly, sitting on the chair at the side of the bed.

  ‘Luck? What have I got to look forward to? No man will touch me now.’

  ‘You’re an attractive girl. You’ll find one. The right one this time.’

  ‘I’ll never have children, you do know that?’

  ‘You can adopt.’

  ‘That’s an easy thing for a woman with two children and a husband who adores her to say.’

  ‘Anthea, I didn’t come here to upset you. I really would like to help. You and Andrew were friends for a long time. He -’

  ‘Loves you,’ Anthea broke in acidly. ‘Dear God, when I think of all the times he promised to marry me when we were children, I could scream. I always knew that we’d be separated when he went away to college, but I waited. And how I waited – for six long years, only seeing him at holidays and weekends and then when he came back, all he could think and talk about was you. I tried everything. I called into his house every time I saw his car turning in through the gates, persuaded my mother to invite him to dinner practically every night of the week, lowered myself to plead to be included in every invitation that was sent his way. I even wrote to his sister, inviting myself to her house in London when he went back there, but it was hopeless. From the minute he saw you there was no other woman for him.’

  ‘I always thought he married me because of the baby,’ Bethan murmured without thinking what she was saying, or who she was saying it to.

  ‘He would have walked from here to Timbuktu for you, even if there hadn’t been a baby.’

  ‘I didn’t know.’

  ‘You didn’t recognise love when it was staring you in the face?’

  ‘You must think I’m a fool.’

  ‘A lucky one.’

  ‘Anthea, I’m sorry.’

  ‘I don’t want your pity.’ Anthea dropped the magazine and swung her legs over the side of the bed. ‘Then again, perhaps I only ever loved the boy, not the man. Andrew seemed like a stranger when he came back from London after he’d qualified. An eligible stranger that both our families expected me to marry.’

  ‘Family pressure can make things difficult,’ Bethan agreed warily, conscious of Anthea’s brittle mood.

  ‘You know how it is.’ She smiled too brightly, ashamed of having said more than she’d intended. ‘I couldn’t wait to fall in love, and he was the most convenient and obvious candidate at the time. Like Richard.’ The fragile facade finally broke and tears started into her eyes.

  Bethan sat on the bed and hugged her. ‘I want you to know that you’ll always have friends here. And not just Andrew.’

  ‘Not to mention a mother who’ll make my life hell if I stay in Pontypridd.’ Reaching for a handkerchief, she broke free. ‘I’m not going to be charged with anything. Did you know that?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘It seems wrong. I murdered my baby.’

  ‘You did what you thought you had to at the time. You can’t blame yourself for taking a desperate way out of an impossible situation.’

  ‘You have no idea what I went through. What it’s like …’

  ‘I tried to do exactly the same before Andrew married me. Not with a backstreet abortionist, although I probably would have, if I’d known where to go. I had just enough nursing knowledge to attempt it myself, and if I’d succeeded no doubt I’d have ended up in here, like you. As it was, Edmund was born with horrendous problems and died when he was only a few months old. And I have to go through the rest of my life not knowing whether his defects were the result of what I did, or not.’

  ‘You tried to get rid of your baby?’

  ‘My first,’ Bethan confessed, noticing that Anthea’s eyes were as moist as her own.

  ‘But you have two children now. And Andrew …’

  ‘Who I haven’t seen for three and a half years, and am not likely to see for God knows how many more.’

  ‘But he’s yours.’

  ‘If there’s anything I can do to help you, Anthea, I will,’ Bethan answered, deliberately steering the conversation away from her husband. ‘You could stay with me. I can’t promise you peace and quiet. The house is crowded with evacuees and GIs.’

  ‘Thank you, but no. I know what my mother would do to you if you took me in.’

  ‘I could give you money. A loan until you get on your feet.’

  ‘I have plenty. But thank you for the offer.’ Anthea opened the locker at the side of the bed and pulled out her handbag. ‘I’m a banker’s daughter, and I’m overage. My mother might like to see me destitute, but she can’t stop me from using my savings or the money my grandmother left me. Dr John has pulled some strings and arranged for me to join the WAACs. And once I’m there, no one will know who I am, what I’ve done, or where I come from. In my new condition, I can sleep with an entire American regiment without having to worry about getting into trouble. So you see, from now on, my life is going to be one big party.’

  Bethan kissed her cheek, before rising to her feet.

  ‘Perhaps if I’d made an effort we might have been friends,’ Anthea said, leaning back on her pillows.

  ‘It’s as
much my fault as yours that we weren’t. I used to tell Andrew that the bridge between the Graig and the Common hadn’t been built and never would. Take care of yourself. If you like, we could write to one another.’

  ‘I would like that. Christmas cards and things.’ Opening her handbag she took out the small leather-covered boxes Richard had given her. ‘Please take these.’

  Bethan opened them. ‘I couldn’t possibly.’

  ‘They look good but they’re not worth anything. Just a gold-plated shank set with glass stones, and gold-plated hooks set with imitation sapphires. Not the real thing at all. Just like the man who gave them to me. When Rachel is old enough, give them to her and explain their history. Warn her to be a lot more careful than I was with the company she keeps. That way they might do some good after all.’

  ‘And here’s to the success of our boys and the downfall of all dictators.’ George Rivers held up his glass.

  ‘May they all topple and resign as easily as Mussolini.’ Kurt Schaffer tightened his hold around Jenny’s waist.

  ‘And here’s to everyone who is fighting in Italy coming home safely.’ Diana gave David Ford a searing glance.

  The garden party had been the idea of the Americans. But it had grown out of all proportion to the simple cook-out Dino had envisaged to celebrate the Allied successes in the invasion of Italy. David Ford had invited the town councillors and the officers of his own and every regiment within travelling distance of Pontypridd. The rest he had left to Bethan. She had asked her family, her in-laws and most of the people she worked with. Secure in the knowledge that the Llewellyn-Joneses were still refusing all social invitations, she had even dared to send them a card in the colonel’s name. As a result of their combined efforts they had ended up with a guest list of over a hundred. Concerned about the safety of her vegetables, she had moved the venue from her garden into the field that Andrew rented out to Albert James.

  The food had proved a great success; the hastily improvised band Kurt had cobbled together from all the Negroes in the regiment who had any pretensions to musical talent, even more of a triumph. The afternoon had flown past, and as the bright July day had dimmed into romantic twilight and several of the older guests had left and the younger ones been put to bed, the Americans had produced bourbon and beer. But it was the dancing not the drink that had proved the biggest attraction, and the small wooden platform Kurt Schaffer had erected close to the band was packed with couples by the time the moon rose, full and bright in the clear, night sky.