Ice Cream in Winter

by Ice Cream in Winter (retail) (epub)

  On the way home, picking her way through the narrow lanes and footpaths, hardly needing her torch, Patricia paused at the turning to Matthew’s solitary cottage. She and Matthew hadn’t arranged to meet but she looked through the window and saw Matthew sitting on the floor rubbing purposefully on the skirting board with sandpaper. Surprisingly, she saw Mrs Drew washing the woodwork. While she hesitated, wondering whether to call in or creep away, Mrs Drew looked up and saw her. There being no escape, she rattled the window and called, ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘Varnishing,’ Matthew called back, ‘want to help?’ She pushed the door and went in.

  ‘We’ve just got to clear up the last of the dust and we’re ready for the first coat of varnish. I’d be glad of some help,’ Matthew said. He managed to give her a quick kiss while Mrs Drew was bending over, rubbing.

  ‘Vanessa was coming,’ Mrs Drew said, ‘but when she got home from college she was too tired. I told her to stay home and rest. She shouldn’t have gone in. She will insist on doing more than she should and over-taxing herself.’ Patricia glanced at Matthew. That was not how it was at all. Vanessa seemed to have a great skill in avoiding doing anything she considered remotely tedious. Patricia wondered if Vanessa would become stronger if she weren’t so lovely, or if people weren’t so kind. Perhaps, she pondered, if her time was filled with useful activity rather than being allowed to sit for hours on end and do nothing but think, she might be less inclined to consider herself ill. But now wasn’t the time to say so. ‘Come on then, Matthew. Hand me some sandpaper. I was only going back home to wash my hair.’

  ‘Have you seen the curtains and cushions Vanessa is making?’ Mrs Drew said, as they worked slumped in an awkward position making their way towards the doorway.

  ‘Beautiful,’ Patricia replied. ‘She wants to be a designer. Her music will only be a hobby I think, don’t you? Pity she’s lost so much schooling, her being ill all the time.’

  ‘You wanted to be a nurse, didn’t you?’

  Patricia laughed. ‘Fat chance! I was needed to run the house. Oh, my sisters help but I organise it all. You ask Dad. Then, with the war coming, I had to get out and get a job to help the war effort like many more. I don’t have time for dreams.’

  ‘You can go back to it when the war’s over.’

  ‘I might be married by then,’ she laughed, with a glance at Matthew. ‘And I’ll still have Dad to look after. I’ll always be needed to run the house for him.’

  ‘That isn’t what I’ve heard. Isn’t he keeping company with that young school teacher?’

  ‘Still need me they will, don’t doubt it.’ Patricia crossed her fingers as she spoke.

  Leaving Mrs Drew to finish washing the skirting in the downstairs room, she went with Matthew to begin varnishing the wooden floor of the bedroom, which would be covered with rugs. Side by side they worked, a patch at a time, and Patricia drew a face on hers before covering it with even brush strokes. Matthew laughed and said it reminded him of her father. She whispered it was Mrs Drew.

  As they neared the door they were alongside. Their hips touched and Patricia nudged him harder as if in retaliation. He moved closer and for a moment their hips moved in unison. Patricia knelt up and waved her sticky hands at him. ‘Right. For that you can finish on your own.’ She wriggled backwards, out through the doorway but before she stood up he was beside her. He picked up a cloth soaked in turpentine and began cleaning her hands, then wrapped it tightly around them and pulled her towards him. His fascinating eyes, with their half-smile, were looking directly into hers.

  ‘You’re so kind. So beautiful.’

  ‘Hush, Mrs Drew’ll hear us.’ Matthew was staring at her intently; she had to make a joke of it, turn his gaze from her.

  She began to chatter, about Marion, Elizabeth and Will, about her father and the problems with Nelda, anything to distract him and make him look away. There was such longing in his eyes. Her words were stopped in mid-sentence by his lips pressing firmly against hers. She was stunned. This was too risky. She stared wide-eyed as he slowly released her.

  ‘Beautiful and kind and more than Vanessa deserves in a friend,’ Matthew whispered.

  ‘Some friend, kissing her fiancé!’ she whispered back.

  He pulled her towards him again.

  ‘Don’t Matthew,’ she whispered. ‘Please don’t.’ Her words were unheeded and he kissed her with all the fervour of a lover.

  ‘How long has this been going on?’ Unheard, unseen, Mrs Drew was standing behind them on the stairs, her face reddening with anger.

  ‘Sorry, Mrs Drew, but we can’t hide it any longer.’ Matthew’s voice was barely heard. ‘I’m sorry, but I can’t marry Vanessa.’

  As Mrs Drew continued to stare in shocked silence, Matthew added. ‘You wouldn’t want me to, would you? Not now you know I no longer love her?’

  ‘I want you to come to see Vanessa, now, both of you. I don’t want to prolong her misery. If she had found out the way I did, seeing you two sneaking about kissing in this furtive manner, like thieves, stealing from her, she’d never get over it. You Patricia, you know better than anyone how sensitive she is and how much she loves Matthew.’

  The words went on but Patricia heard none of them. She only knew that she had to face Vanessa and try to explain.

  Mrs Drew walked behind them like a shepherd with reluctant sheep. Defiantly, Matthew took Patricia’s hand and held it tightly.

  ‘I think we should marry as soon as the banns have been called,’ he whispered. ‘The house will be ready in about a month and there’s nothing to be gained by waiting.’

  ‘Live in the cottage?’ Patricia stopped and stared at him. ‘But I thought we’d move in with Dad. He needs me to run the house.’ It wasn’t true, not with Nelda only too anxious to take over, but she was suddenly overwhelmed at the pace of developments.

  ‘I need you to run the house, you stupid girl, and I think Nelda will be delighted that one of you is leaving. Don’t you?’

  Patricia felt the shock of loss, realising anew that her father did not need her to live at home, that her sisters and Nelda could manage without her. As they walked down Deepcut Lane towards the Drew’s house, the feeling faded, but the euphoria of knowing she was going to marry Matthew and live in a home of her own didn’t come. There was only apprehension that the step she was about to take was irrevocable and a little frightening.

  She was trembling as they were marched in to see Vanessa, who was playing the piano.

  ‘Matthew? You finished sooner than you expected.’ She looked at Patricia. ‘Where did you spring from then?’ She looked Patricia up and down, taking in the flat shoes and thick trousers, and asked, ‘I thought working at Auntie Sally’s shop would make you tidy yourself up a bit. What on earth are you dressed like that for? Don’t say you were helping too?’

  ‘More than helping with the varnishing,’ Mrs Drew said. ‘Vanessa, love, Matthew has something to tell you.’

  When the words were hesitantly spoken, Vanessa did not react. Her expression didn’t change. She asked, politely, when they planned to marry, but without looking at them. The ring on her third finger glittered in the fire light. Mrs Drew stood with a hand on her daughter’s shoulder. The tableau remained in Patricia’s memory as clearly as a photograph long after she and Matthew had left to tell her father and sisters.

  Leonard showed even less reaction than Vanessa, and Patricia wondered if she were dreaming. Only Matthew’s hand in hers gave the scene any validity.

  ‘I suppose you’ll be moving into the cottage you bought for yourself and Vanessa?’ he said, after Matthew nervously explained that they wished to marry in April, before he was called into the army.

  ‘We want to start out on our own, yes,’ Matthew said.

  ‘I can still help here, Dad, I won’t expect not to,’ Patricia said, still clinging to the need to be needed by him.

  ‘Just as well,’ Leonard said, as if she hadn’t spoken. ‘You and your sisters w
ill have to find somewhere else to live. Nelda and I will be marrying about the same time.’

  Patricia left the house in a dream. Everything was topsy-turvy. Yesterday she was still running the house and looking after Dad and dreaming, in a fanciful way, of marrying Matthew. Today everything had changed. The mirage of a life with Matthew had become solid reality and she couldn’t take it in.

  ‘Where are we going?’ Matthew asked and from his subdued tone she guessed he was as bemused as she.

  ‘I’d like you to meet Mrs Llewellyn. She lives in Rose Cottage at the end of the village.’

  ‘The place that’s been empty for years?’

  ‘She’s a friend, I’d like us to tell her our news.’

  The door of Rose Cottage was unlocked but the house was empty and Patricia led Matthew around to the back, where they found Julia busily engaged sorting out what appeared to be a rather large outhouse.

  ‘Patricia, my dear, and is this Roland?’ Julia asked, although she knew perfectly well it was not.

  ‘No, this is Matthew, we – we’re getting married in April, Julia,’ she felt uneasy as she said it. She hadn’t had time to tell herself yet; become used to the sound of it. Saying out loud that Matthew was her fiancé and their marriage was imminent was still unreal. It wasn’t yet a fact, deep within her. She wondered shakily if it would be before the date for their wedding came around. It was all so sudden and there had been no time to think.

  ‘Congratulations, my dear. How do you do, Matthew? Go and put the kettle on will you, Patricia? I’ll just put all this stuff back then I’ll join you. I hadn’t realised how cold I am.’

  ‘What is this?’ Matthew asked, looking at what appeared to be boilers and deep cylindrical containers of stainless steel. There were tins too, many having lost their labels. There were tattered remnants marked with rust but giving clues to their original contents. Strawberry, Raspberry, Vanilla. ‘Was this once an ice cream factory?’ he asked. ‘I’d heard there was once one in the village.’

  ‘Yes, Matthew.’ Mrs Llewellyn smiled. ‘It was my grandfather Andriotti who began it.’

  * * *

  Arranging flowers came naturally to Patricia. With the patient guidance of Sally, she was soon making up bunches that stood outside the shop in the traditional green buckets, and even going to market when Sally’s feet were playing up, to buy in their needs. She soon mastered the skill of making the frames on which the flowers were arranged and surprised Sally with her easy ability.

  She made mistakes, like putting tulips in the same vases at daffodils and reducing their life considerably. Sally was philosophical.

  ‘The only people who don’t make mistakes are them that never try anything new. Chuck ’em in the bin and start again.’ That phrase became a catchword, a slogan for Patricia’s apprenticeship.

  ‘Sally, why have these rosebuds drooped like they were picked last week? Did I get cheated at the market?’

  ‘They like to be right up to their little necks in moisture,’ Sally explained. ‘Bury them deep in the damp moss and they’ll live for days. As for these – chuck’em in the bin and start again,’ she chanted with a chuckle.

  At home things were less pleasant. Nelda was there more often for one thing, and Patricia interrupted the couple sorting through drawers and cupboards, putting things aside for jumble sales, or to answer the calls for scrap. Large saucepans used only at Christmas for boiling the puddings; clothes they had once thought smart and which now were intended for dusters, all ended up in Nelda’s rubbish collection. Photographs hidden in the back of a cupboard since the death of her mother were dragged out and threatened with a bonfire.

  ‘You can’t really want to keep them, Leonard,’ Nelda protested. ‘All that was so long ago, I want us to have a fresh start, not begin stifled with shadows and ghosts of previous years, events and people in your life before we had even met.’

  ‘It’s my mother,’ Patricia objected.

  ‘Then you take them, I can understand you wanting to keep some remembrance of your mam. But you can understand my position, can’t you? I’m starting from the beginning, not building on the ashes of someone else’s remnants. Just take them from here and pack them away ready to take when you leave.’ Her voice softened and she added pleadingly, ‘I don’t want to enter your father’s life as an interloper. From now on, I want this house to belong to us, your father and me. We’ll build our own memories and good ones they’ll be too. I promise you that.’

  Chapter Five

  As Patricia lay in bed that night, she realised with sadness that the bedroom seemed no longer hers, no longer a familiar and safe haven. Already she saw the room through Nelda’s eyes. She saw the paper where she had scribbled some verses when she was a child, and the damaged piece where she and Marion had torn it while fighting over a doll; the patch on the ceiling where the water tank had rusted and leaked and caused excitement in the middle of the night one January when she and Elizabeth woke to the sound of running water and screamed for their father. Not much of a room really. Of course Nelda would want it changed.

  The bedroom she and Matthew would share at the cottage was going to be a much nicer room. Waking up to the sounds of birdsong, looking out across the fields… why, she asked herself, wasn’t she more excited?

  At midnight she was aware of a draught amd tried to summon the energy to get up and close the window. Some time later, it might have been minutes or hours, she heard a slight disturbance and guessed drowsily that Marion was sneaking out to meet a boyfriend. She turned over in her bed and ignored the muffled swearing as a chair was scraped along the oil cloth. Marion ought to be more careful. If Dad heard… Sleep had all but reclaimed her when hands touched her head, stroked her cheek.

  ‘Go away,’ she said, her voice slurred with tiredness.

  A soft voice, laughing, lips touching her ear.

  She sat up, bumping heads with someone. She swung her arm wildly, reaching for the light switch swinging above her head. As the room flooded with light her eyes widened with shock. There was a man in her room. If anything, he looked more startled than she.

  ‘Marion?’ the man stuttered. ‘I thought this was Marion’s room? She and I – Oh hell! This must be the wrong house!’

  ‘How did you get in?’ Keeping her voice down to a harsh whisper, Patricia saw the curtains, partially open and the window fully raised. ‘Pull the curtains, you idiot! You’ll have the wardens screaming in a minute!’ She gave him a mighty push and he lost his balance and fell back, knocking his head on the corner of the washstand.

  A door opened somewhere and her father’s voice called, ‘Patricia? You all right, love?’

  ‘Quick, get down beside the bed!’ she hissed. Jumping out of bed, thankful her nightdress was thick and fleecy, she pushed him across the room and he skidded on a rug and slid across the room to land heavily against the wardrobe door with its handle jabbing him in the ribs. ‘Shut up,’ Patricia said unsympathetically as he groaned.

  ‘Patricia?’

  She couldn’t let her father come in, he’d see at once that Marion wasn’t there. Grabbing her dressing gown, she pulled it around her shoulders and opened the door a crack. ‘Sorry, Dad,’ she whispered. ‘I must have been having a bad dream. I don’t think I woke Marion.’

  ‘Come downstairs and we’ll make a cup of tea. That’ll settle you down.’

  Oh heck! This was becoming a farce! She couldn’t let Dad go downstairs either, or he’d catch Marion coming back in!

  ‘No, Dad. You go back to bed,’ she said. ‘I’ll make one and bring it up. Okay?’ She sighed with relief as he returned to his room.

  She opened her bedroom door, where the man was crouched, listening to the conversation. The door knob caught him in the eye and he staggered back, holding a hand to his face.

  ‘Get out the way you came and don’t come back or I’ll call the police!’ she said harshly.

  ‘Don’t worry!’ a voice whispered in reply. ‘I’m safer in France with
Germans popping shots at me than anywhere near you!’

  ‘And don’t make any noise!’ was Patricia’s furious reply.

  It was a long time before Patricia had calmed down sufficiently to allow the posibility of rest but, eventually, she relaxed and felt that heavy feeling she recognised as the forerunner of sleep. A scratching at the window startled her and made her heart race. Not another one! Anger woke her within seconds and she reached once more for her dressing gown. If it was the same man she would push the ladder away from the wall and let him take the consequences, she thought irritably. But it was her sister’s pale face staring in through the pane.

  ‘Marion!’

  ‘Some idiot bolted the door and locked the back kitchen window,’ she gasped, as she slithered over the sill. Patricia took a deep breath, preparing to tell her sister what she thought of her behaviour but suddenly the ridiculousness of the situation took its hold and as Marion undressed and slid into bed beside her sister, the two of them began to giggle.

  Between stifled laughter, Patricia told of the man’s injuries and Marion told where she had met him and promised him a secret rendezvous to get rid of him and his unwelcome pestering. ‘I didn’t realise how seriously he’d take me or how smart he’d be at learning my real address.

  ‘See, Patricia, he was a real nuisance. So I gave him the address of Old Harry Thomas, deaf as a post. He’d never hear him climbing the ladder or his gentle tapping on his window but his daughter might and you know how she’d welcome a midnight visitor. She keeps a bucket of water ready for an intruder ever since that man tried to break in to steal their wireless!’

  ‘When are you going to get serious about a boy?’ Patricia asked, as they lay feeling too strung up to sleep.

  ‘I think I am already. I met this boy a few weeks ago and although we’ve only been out together once or twice, I think he’s the one. Paul Symons, he’s called and he’s from Cardiff, but he spends his leaves in Nant Cysgu because his mam and his sisters were evacuated here after their house was bombed. It was the raid you and Roland were caught in, last January.’