Hidden Currents

by Rowena Summers

  ‘Don’t talk so daft,’ Carrie snapped again, thoroughly out of sorts on a day that had begun so well. She was duty bound to stay and watch John race, but if it hadn’t been for that, she’d have turned tail and marched straight home again.

  Instead, she turned away from Billy’s too-knowing eyes, and watched the end of the first race, and the line-up of the next. For the next hour or so she clapped and cheered with the best of them, and couldn’t have told anyone who’d come in first or second. She was too deep in depression at the sadness of falling out with Elsie.

  It had been a serious falling-out too, and one that she sensed couldn’t be patched up too readily. They had each said bitter things to one another, and it had been far worse than their usual meaningless squabbles. The threat in Elsie’s manner had put a definite unease in Carrie’s mind. If she decided she wanted to do so, Elsie would waste no time in trying to prove that she could take John away from her. She’d do it just for sport … and for the first time, Carrie was guiltily glad that in a few days’ time, John would be far away from Bristol, and Elsie would be unable to get her hot little claws into him.

  She was angry with herself for imagining that John would be taken in by Elsie’s flirty ways, or that she herself was feeble enough not to keep her own man. But she knew she could never quite trust Elsie again, and she had discovered that the nasty little streak of jealousy inside her was stronger than she’d realised. It was so virulent that she would even put up with the sadness of being apart from John herself, if it meant she could also keep him away from Elsie. She didn’t much like the side of herself that she saw, but as she faced it, she knew it for her own personal Lucifer.

  She heard Billy’s sudden shout, and felt his hands on her arm.

  ‘John’s won his race!’ he shouted in her ear. ‘I knew he would. He’s the best, ain’t he, our Carrie?’

  ‘Yes, he is,’ she echoed, ashamed to realise she had seen none of it. But as it all came back into focus now, she could see John holding aloft the winner’s trophy for his class. Tucked into his belt was the talisman of her own blue hair ribbon. She could see no evident sign of Elsie’s, until she caught a glimpse of a bright yellow streamer floating down the river. And she was defiantly glad. She hated herself for being so all-fired petty., but she was triumphantly glad!

  * * *

  ‘So you did well,’ Ma said placidly, when the tale of the races had been told over and over, by John and Pa, and an exuberant Billy.

  ‘The boat did well,’ John said modestly, at which Carrie chided him at once.

  ‘A boat’s only as good as the man who steers it, John, so don’t sell yourself short. You were more skilful than all the rest of them put together.’

  ‘Well, thank you, my lady,’ he said, smiling. ‘I tried to see where you were, but you seemed to have disappeared among the crowds.’

  ‘Our Carrie and Elsie —’ Billy began importantly, and then he gave a howl of rage as Carrie trod on his foot and spoke swiftly.

  ‘There were so many folk there, we didn’t get the vantage point we wanted, but even when we couldn’t see you all the time, the folk at the water’s edge passed on the messages of who was winning to them at the back.’

  She glared at Billy as she spoke, seeing no reason why her shameful escapade should be broadcast to everyone else. She certainly didn’t want John to get wind of it, and Pa had already warned Billy not to go telling of it and upsetting Ma.

  ‘Come and help me carry in the mincemeat pies,’ she said to him now, ‘while Pa hands round the hot punch. If you’re lucky, he might even let you have a drop mixed with water.’

  She almost pushed him ahead of her into the scullery, where the sweet aroma of mincemeat and pastry wafted into their nostrils.

  ‘You just keep quiet about Elsie and me, you hear?’ she told him severely. ‘Pa told you it’ll only upset Ma, and it’s no business of yours anyway.’

  ‘All right,’ he said sulkily. ‘Will you give me a copper to spend if I don’t?’ he added hopefully.

  She gave a grin, seeing the speculation in his eyes. He was obviously destined to end up a businessman, she thought, with his eye always on the main chance.

  ‘I’ll give you a cuff around the ear if you do,’ she said smartly.

  By the time they went back to the parlour with the tray of mincemeat pies, John was relating his intentions more fully to her parents. And the thought of keeping him away from Elsie receded into the place it belonged, as the enormity of their own separation overtook her.

  ‘I wish you didn’t have to take on this job, John,’ she murmured.

  ‘It will only be for four months, love. I’ve had that stipulation put into my contract with Garfield Pond.’

  ‘What’s one of them stip things?’ Billy said at once.

  ‘It means a condition,’ John told him. ‘It means that once we’ve both signed the contract, neither one of us can change our minds on anything. We’re signing at a lawyer’s office in Queen Square tomorrow. My Aunt Vi’s arriving from Keynsham the day after, and it’s likely the tour will be moving on at the end of the week.’

  ‘So soon?’ Carrie said, feeling her heart jump at the thought. Of course she had known it must be soon, but to have days and dates all spelled out made it far too definite.

  ‘The sooner it starts, the sooner it will finish,’ John said, which didn’t make her feel any less edgy at all.

  She didn’t want him to go. Still less, did she want him to risk being injured or disfigured, or even brain-damaged. She had heard tell that some of the more unfortunate victims of vicious opponents could be …

  Before he left for home, they managed a short time together in the small inner front porch of the house. The family left them discreetly alone now, and Billy was forbidden to interupt them.

  ‘I hate the thought of you going away to be a fighter,’ Carrie said, her mind still full of the parting to come. He tipped up her face with one finger, his voice teasing.

  ‘It didn’t look that way this afternoon, when you and Elsie were scratching at each other like wild-cats.’

  ‘I didn’t think you saw!’ Now she was doubly embarrassed.

  ‘If I hadn’t, young Billy would have told me soon enough,’ he said dryly. ‘And I gather that neither of you came off the winner.’

  ‘We both ended up as losers,’ Carrie said, knowing the truth of it. ‘I lost my best friend, and so did Elsie.’

  ‘She’ll come round. In a couple of days, she’ll be knocking on your door again.’

  Carrie shook her head. ‘She won’t care enough,’ she said, a lump beginning to fill her throat. ‘She’s tougher than me, and besides, she’s got other interests now. I’ve lost her, and I’m about to lose you too.’

  ‘It’s not going to be for ever, sweetheart. I’ll write to you as often as I can, of course, but you’re not to worry if you don’t hear too quickly. The mail coach takes its time when the weather’s bad.’

  Everything was conspiring towards change, Carrie thought. It unsettled her so much, even though she wasn’t daft enough to think things could always stay the same. People grew up and moved on … but not all at once. Not so that it seemed that it was Carrie Stuckey’s life that was turned upside down, while all these other folk had good things happening to them.

  First Frank, then Wilf, and now John. Even Elsie, who wouldn’t care two hoots that she’d lost her best friend, when she could be cosy in the arms of Dewi Griffiths … and Miss Helen Barclay was moving on too. There was little doubt in Carrie’s mind that this new Honourable Rupert Egerton was going to figure in that young lady’s life from now on.

  That left Billy, who could be discounted, since he was still a babe in arms compared to the rest of them. Pa, who still wasn’t himself and seemed to have lost his direction in life. Ma, who would be glad and thankful when the new babby arrived, but who was still forbidding Pa to bring the old baby carriage into the house because it was bad luck.

  And Carrie, who seemed to be
going nowhere faster than any of them. She felt a welter of self-pity wash over her, and buried her head against John’s thick jacket for a moment as a feeling of fear swept over her.

  ‘You’ll visit Uncle Oswald now and then, won’t you, love?’ She heard his voice, rumbling deep in his chest. ‘Aunt Vi’s dying to meet you, since we’ve both been singing your praises so much.’

  ‘Yes, I’ll visit your folks,’ she said bitterly. ‘It’ll be all I’ve got left of you, won’t it?’

  He didn’t say anything for a minute, and then he gave her a little shake. ‘Carrie, I’m not going to pick a fight with you. There’s no point in wasting the time we’ve got left in arguing. What’s done is done, and come the spring, you’ll be counting the days till I come back.’

  But there was a long way to go between winter and spring, and try as she might, she couldn’t rid herself of feelings of doom.

  ‘Besides, you’ve got plenty to think about between now and then. There’s to be a wedding in June, if I recall. Or have you changed your mind about that?’

  ‘I have not,’ she whispered swiftly, and felt his mouth seeking hers in the seclusion of the front porch. ‘Oh, John, I have not!’

  ‘No more have I,’ he responded just as swiftly to her sudden ardour. He held her so tight she feared for her bones, but she never wanted to let him go. She just wanted to stand like this, and hold him like this, for ever and always …

  ‘It’s time that young man went home,’ they both heard Pa call out a few minutes later. ‘His uncle will be wondering what’s become of him.’

  ‘What your Pa means is, am I ravishing his lovely daughter?’ John whispered wickedly in her ear.

  He hadn’t been doing any such thing, of course, but for a wild sweet moment, Carrie almost wished he had. He would surely never have left her if she was in trouble …

  But that was the wickedest thought of all, and she was too flustered to face her family while it was still so hot in her mind. Instead, she hurried through to the scullery and began banging pots and pans about in a pretence of clearing up, rather than admit to such wanton longings inside her.

  Chapter 19

  Elsie hadn’t really intended to flounce away in such a huff, but the more she thought about it, the more she intended to let Miss high-and-mighty Carrie Stuckey stew in her own juice for a while. She didn’t need to keep running to the Stuckeys for anything. She was quite capable of managing her own affairs, thank you very much. And affairs was not a bad word, in the circumstances.

  She paused in her haphazard sloshing of beige paint over the walls of the scullery in the waterfront cottage. It didn’t improve things much, and the old cooking splashes would soon show through, but since Dewi Griffiths had once mentioned how his Mam was such a dab hand with the cleaning and cooking in their neat little Welsh terraced house, she had decided it wouldn’t hurt to give her a bit of competition.

  She had never cared a jot about such things before, and nor did she ever expect to meet this wonderful person who went to chapel twice on Sundays and mended Dewi’s socks almost before the holes showed through.

  Normally, such information would have got her scoffing. She couldn’t abide such prissy attention to detail … even the regimented daily routine of the Stuckey household soon had her panting for air … but all that was before she’d had her head turned by Dewi Griffiths.

  Or rather, her back, she thought, with a wicked little shiver of pleasure. She paused in her paint splashing, to remember the last time she’d got so all-fired hot and bothered in his arms.

  ‘You do love me, don’t you, Dewi?’ she’d breathed, as his hands had fumbled everywhere in an attempt to rid her of her clothes in the fastest possible time.

  ‘Of course I do, cariad,’ he’d said thickly. ‘You don’t think I’d be spending so much time with you if I didn’t think a lot of you, do you?’

  ‘Say it then,’ she’d insisted, clamping her knees together as they lay wrestling on the squeaky old bed in what had been Granpa Miller’s bedroom. ‘I’m not letting you do nothing until you say you love me!’

  ‘Duw, what a fusspot you are!’

  She could see the beads of sweat on his brow, and feel the heat in his body through her remaining undergarments.

  ‘Tell me, then,’ she insisted.

  ‘All right, I love you, see? Does that satisfy you, witch? Now, for God’s sake, stop your teasing, or I swear you’ll be doing me untold mischief, bach.’

  She capitulated then, letting her limbs go slack, and hearing his groaning sigh as his hands sought and found their goal. And so did hers … Elsie was nothing if not curious, and these new games of forbidden pleasures were to be savoured to the full. And Dewi swore that he’d be careful … that nothing was going to happen, except that they’d each feel a damn sight better for it afterwards.

  It might not be the most romantic of remarks, but it suited Elsie, and she wasn’t the sort to wallow in soft words for too long. Not like Carrie would … Carrie would take a month of Sundays extracting vows of everlasting commitment from a fellow before she let him touch her like this …

  As Dewi’s exploring fingers went deeper, and his breathing got heavier, it was easy to forget all about Carrie’s prim little Sunday face, and glory in this new and nerve-tingling experience with this lusty Welsh boyo.

  It was only much later that she marvelled at herself for asking if he loved her. And especially for saying that she loved him back! It wasn’t Elsie Miller’s style. But then, she’d never met anyone like Dewi before, so dark and intense that she was set to shivering just by thinking about him. You never knew how topsy-turvy you were going to feel until it happened. You just never knew.

  She smiled now, remembering. And she gave a small impatient sigh, getting bored with the painting, and deciding to leave it for another day. Dewi wouldn’t be here to see it until next week, anyway. He came over to Welsh Back Market once a week on the trows, and stayed for two nights before going back to work at the Cardiff markets for the rest of the week. He’d always stayed in lodgings in Bristol before, but from now on, he was going to stay with Elsie.

  And that was certainly something she wasn’t going to tell Carrie Stuckey about! she thought decisively. She could just imagine the disapproval on her face, and if Carrie ever let her Ma get wind of it, there would be another lecture on the evils of fornicating before marriage … the wicked word slipped into Elsie’s head without warning, sending a chill down her back for a moment, but only for a moment.

  She brushed it aside, thinking instead that it suited her very well for the present that she and Carrie were at loggerheads. The less she saw of her friend, the less Carrie could tell her what a fool she was being, and what risks she was taking … she could even smile at how she’d once connived as to how she could get her own back on Wilf Stuckey for snubbing her so badly. Now, she couldn’t have cared less about Wilf, because now she had Dewi.

  * * *

  A week later, Carrie was far too anxiously watching her mother to be bothered with thoughts of what Elsie Miller might be doing. The baby was due, but it didn’t seem at all keen to put in an appearance, though the vague aches and pains Ma kept getting was certainly keeping Carrie’s mind off any other topics.

  Wilf went off jauntily to his workshop every morning now, and she had said a tearful goodbye to John as he went off on the brightly painted Garfield Pond promotion wagon, along with BIG LOUIE and several other brawny fellows who seemed to be all part and parcel of the set-up. Carrie couldn’t help thinking it was all a little like a circus act.

  ‘If you don’t stop inspecting me every five minutes, Carrie, I shall begin to feel like a pan of stew being watched,’ Ma finally said crossly. ‘There’s no hurrying babbies, and this one won’t come until he’s good and ready. Why don’t you find summat to do? There’s the beds to be made yet, and I daresay your Pa will be wanting a hot drink soon. He’s been hammering away in that yard for this last hour.’

  They all knew what he was mak
ing. A small boy on the other side of the river had died of the measles, and Sam Stuckey’s modest fees for turning out a fine coffin at rock-bottom prices were becoming well known. He’d been glad of the work, but after being approached at a tavern by the boy’s heartbroken father, his skills weren’t giving him any pleasure.

  There was also a somewhat shameful thankfulness at knowing the weather was cold enough for folk not to be out and about so much as usual, for measles could spread like wildfire, and it could be a killer. The evidence of that was in the little mite who’d be placed in the narrow wooden box Sam was shaping. He hated these jobs.

  Making a coffin for a child was surely a man’s saddest occupation. But somebody had to do it, to make a fitting resting-place for the last send-off for a loved child. He gave up a small prayer of thanks that his own family had always been a healthy brood, no matter how they went without.

  He remembered to mentally cross his fingers as he thought it, not stopping in his work, and spitting the tacks out of his mouth for the tap-tap fastening together of the coffin-sides, to hold the glueing in place.

  ‘A cup of hot chocolate for you, Pa,’ he heard Carrie say, and he gave a start. He’d been so engrossed in his task, he hadn’t heard her approach.

  He eased his back. It was a cold morning for the first day of a new year, but dry and clear for all that. The snow had mostly gone, and it was only the softest of men who’d scorn working outside in a yard.

  ‘That’s a welcome sight and no mistake,’ he told her, taking the mug from her hands. ‘What about one of Ma’s currant cakes to go with it, then, or am I on short rations now?’

  Carrie laughed. Maybe Pa was being extra cheerful to keep his mind off the end-result of his task; and maybe she was trying to be extra cheerful to keep from worrying about Ma’s confinement. Whatever the reason, she was more than happy to chafe along with him for a few minutes, as she pulled her shawl around her shoulders to keep out the bite of the morning.

  ‘Perhaps you should be,’ she teased. ‘You don’t look as if you’re starving!’