Ice Cream in Winter

by Ice Cream in Winter (retail) (epub)

  ‘I’m glad you didn’t.’

  Roland walked her home. She heard him have a brief word with her father before he left, having refused to come inside. When Roland had gone and Patricia had been fortified with strong, hot, sweet tea on his instruction, an argument broke out as Nelda and her father were explaining their plans for Marion to stay on at home.

  ‘What? Stay here with you two lovebirds, our Dad? Not blooming likely!’ was Marion’s response.

  ‘I thought you’d be pleased?’ Leonard said, looking at Patricia and Elizabeth in exasperation.

  ‘I’ve already spoken to Joanne and her Mam’s agreed for me to go there. I’m paying one pound a week for food and she’ll do my washing.’

  ‘You’re getting married on the twenty-sixth?’ Patricia said in dismay. ‘My wedding is on the twelfth! It’s all such a rush.’

  She was losing her home and although she would have a home of her own, she still needed to know it was there for her, a door always open. When that man attacked her she knew she had somewhere safe to run to. Whatever happened to her she always had this place to run to for comfort and help. Once her father and Nelda married, this wouldn’t be a home for her ever again. She was frightened by the speed at which everything in her life was changing. She shivered involuntarily at the thought that if she didn’t marry Matthew she would have nowhere to go. She had painted herself into a corner and there was no possible route out of it.

  Why was she thinking such dark thoughts? Of course she would marry Matthew. Fear of him dropping her as he had Vanessa hadn’t surfaced before and now she was twisted up in agony at the thought that had been simmering beneath the surface of her mind without her being aware of the cause of the pain.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ Leonard asked. ‘This won’t affect your plans, will it? You and Matthew will be settled into your new home before Nelda and I come here.’

  ‘What if I don’t marry?’

  ‘It’ll be a good thing if you ask me!’ Marion said.

  ‘What are you talking about?’ Patricia demanded.

  ‘Well, to tell the truth, love,’ Leonard admitted, ‘I’m not happy about you marrying the man who left Vanessa so suddenly, either.’

  ‘He left Vanessa because he didn’t love her. He loves me!’

  ‘Does he?’

  ‘Of course he does!’

  ‘Loving is caring, and Matthew left you alone in the dark to walk past a drunk, knowing you were uneasy about him, according to young Roland. That doesn’t sound like love to me.’

  ‘Roland had no right to tell you that. He didn’t see what happened. Matthew left me while the man was moving away. He couldn’t have known he’d turn and come after me.’

  ‘Your father wouldn’t have taken the chance, Patricia,’ Nelda said quietly, ‘with you girls or with me.’

  ‘This is no business of yours.’

  ‘Patricia!’

  ‘She’s right, Leonard. I had no right to speak. I’m sorry, Patricia. I’m sure you’re right and Matthew didn’t realise you were in any danger, or he’d have walked home with you.’

  ‘I’m sorry too,’ Patricia said, touching Nelda’s arm apologetically. But she knew they were right.

  Matthew had known and he had laughed and called her a silly name when he should have shown his love by walking those few yards out of his way to see her safely home. She knew this would be another night when sleep wouldn’t come easily.

  * * *

  Julia didn’t sleep either that night. She was counting the days she had left to dissuade Patricia from marrying Matthew. The man didn’t love her she felt certain, and what life would the girl have stuck up there in that isolated cottage all alone while he was in the army? His being away would have been an opportunity for so many things. Getting started on a career for one, and gaining a little more experience of life before accepting domesticity. She was of good stock and had the potential for so much more than marriage to Matthew would offer.

  She eventually slept on the decision to see Patricia at the flower shop and talk to her, make her see the sense in delaying the wedding for a year, and instead come to live with her at Rose Cottage. When they were living under the same roof, she would be able to make the girl see what she was missing. That father of hers hadn’t even attempted to make her aware of her capabilities.

  The following morning she set off, intending to wait until Sally Drew was out of the shop on one of her deliveries and insist Patricia listened to her. On the way, she saw the van approaching and smiled. Now was the opportunity, she thought, as she hurried her steps.

  The van slowed as if to do a three point turn but misjudged the width of the road and with a rather undignified lurch, landed in the ditch. More in temper than in any hope of success, Sally revved the engine and the wheels spun in the thick mud, sending out a stream of dirty water, and the engine screamed its protest at the futile effort. The car didn’t move an inch.

  Sally leaned out of the window and uttered a list of swear words and then waved to Julia. ‘Go back and ring for Jacky Davies to come and pull me out, will you?’

  ‘I’d better see that you’re all right first.’ Julia put down her shopping basket and hurried to help the woman out of the car and up from the muddy ditch.

  ‘I’m all right, love, but I don’t think I can drive my poor ol’ van out, do you?’

  ‘Hang on, Miss Drew, perhaps we can push it.’ Leonard and Roland were turning the corner of the lane, running, having heard the noise of the accident.

  Sally was helped out and as Julia made sure she was unharmed, Roland went to telephone from Rose Cottage for assistance. Uneasily, Julia stood beside Leonard as they waited for Roland to return. He couldn’t recognise her. They had never met. She was his mother-in-law and Patricia’s grandmother, but Leonard had no idea who she was.

  She turned away from him, afraid that her dislike of him must show and start him wondering. They had hated each other for more than twenty years but had never come face to face. When Leonard had married Julia’s daughter, Julia and her husband had already moved to London. They had hoped to separate them but her daughter had abandoned college and her hopes of becoming a doctor like her parents, and returned to Nant Cysgu and to Leonard. She had forsaken any hope of what might have been a brilliant, rewarding career, accepted marriage and children and the separation from her family, all for this man.

  If there had once been a similarity between herself and her lovely daughter, age had destroyed it. Her hair, once as black as Patricia’s, was now white and less luxurious. The eyes, still dark, were now hooded and had lost their bright sparkle. Even her name had changed. She was no longer Doctor Fearn. A second marriage had made her Doctor Julia Llewellyn. Even her full name, Julietta, had been dropped in favour of the simpler name.

  Leonard said very little. He walked around the van working out the mechanics of how they could exhume it from its muddy grave. She answered his few comments briefly. A conversation would make them more than the slight acquaintances they were. She didn’t want to know him and risk him finding out who she was, not until she had made good the loss of her daughter by guiding her granddaughter away from the same terrible mistake.

  Roland came back and told them the breakdown truck was on its way.

  ‘If you’ll excuse me, then, I won’t wait,’ Leonard said. ‘I have to collect a chair that’s been repaired and get back to the school.’

  When he had gone, Julia was aware of Roland’s stare.

  ‘What is it?’ she asked. ‘Do I have something unpleasant on my face?’

  ‘No, but you have something unpleasant on your mind, I think.’

  ‘Riddles? On a Monday morning?’

  ‘You’re Patricia’s grandmother, aren’t you? Leonard Lloyd’s absent mother-in-law?’

  ‘What rubbish!’

  ‘Mrs Lloyd’s mother was a doctor. Doctor Julietta Fearn. Changed your name? You can’t change your face, and every time I’ve seen you I’ve had the feeling I knew you.
I saw the likeness between you and Patricia, yet it didn’t fit together in my mind. I know it now. The photograph on the sideboard convinced me. Your son, Marco. I saw him once when he came to visit you. In R.A.F. uniform and with his hair much shorter than on the photograph, but he’s so like Patricia it has to be family.’

  ‘The artist’s eye,’ Julia said quietly.

  ‘I’m right, aren’t I?’

  ‘He is her mother’s half-brother actually. My second marriage you see. He arrived unexpectedly when I was forty.’

  ‘You haven’t told Patricia have you? Why? Are you afraid her father will spoil your friendship? Or that she will hate you when she finds out how you abandoned your daughter when she decided to marry someone beneath you?’

  ‘Something like that.’

  ‘You’ll have to tell her sometime.’

  ‘Not yet. Please, allow me to tell her in my own time. I want to help her and if she knows who I am she won’t accept it.’

  ‘She’s my friend too. I’d be lying by default if I keep this from her.’

  ‘Please, just give me a little more time.’

  ‘I’ll give you until she marries, then she must be told, either by you or me.’

  ‘If she marries.’

  ‘You think she won’t?’

  ‘I hope she won’t. Don’t you, Roland?’ She stared at him, a question in her dark eyes and he turned away, knowing she could see something he was trying to ignore, that he wanted Patricia, and as more than a friend.

  The breakdown truck arrived and Jacky Davies hitched up the van and efficiently towed it out and took it away for cleaning and an examination. Roland nodded a dismissal at Julia and walked back home. He had intended to go and see if Mr Caradoc wanted help for a day, needing to relax, allow his confused thoughts to settle, achieve a sort of peace through exhausting, back-breaking work. There was no chance of peace at home, he needed desperately to get away from where his sister sat silently watching the days pass until Matthew, her ex-fiancé, married her ex-best friend. Now he headed back home, his plans ruined, surprised at his aggressive confrontation of the woman from Rose Cottage.

  * * *

  Julia called to see Vanessa that afternoon. She was alone. Mrs Drew had gone to a Sisterhood meeting at the church hall and Roland had taken a small rucksack, intending to walk the hills until dark.

  ‘Doctor Llewellyn? This is a surprise,’ Vanessa said. She invited her visitor inside and fell in a rather elegant position across the couch, where, Julia guessed, she had lain for some time.

  ‘How are you my dear?’ Julia asked as a preliminary. ‘Tell me how you are feeling, now the wedding is so close.’ She guessed that the question would open Vanessa’s lips to a description of her ailments, real or imaginary, and that would open the way for her to say what she had to say.

  ‘Why let it happen?’ she said as Vanessa’s sad monologue slowed down. ‘If you really love Matthew, why don’t you fight for him?’

  ‘How can I? I feel so ill.’

  ‘But you wouldn’t if he returned to you, so summon up your strength and get him back.’

  ‘I thought you were Patricia’s friend. How can you be saying this?’

  ‘It’s because I am her friend. I don’t want to see her married to a man who is so clearly in love with someone else. Matthew wants you, Vanessa, but he can’t do anything about it. That is up to you. I’m sure you’ll think of a scheme. They are going to the cottage on Thursday as they always do. To fill the larder, make up the bed and get everything ready.’

  Julia left a very thoughtful Vanessa, and walked to the flower shop, but she didn’t stop and talk to Patricia. She hoped there would be time enough for that later, if that boring and useless Vanessa would only make an effort, and set in motion the cancellation of Patricia’s idiotic plan to marry Matthew Morris… as quickly as possible.

  Chapter Six

  As March blustered on, the days grew imperceptibly longer, and in between running the house and the preparations for her wedding, plus work at Cottage Flowers, Patricia spent time with Julia Llewellyn. She and Matthew seemed to have reached a period of limbo in their relationship. There seemed to be less and less to say to each other now their wedding day was almost here. For Patricia, the reason was guilt – once again ruining her peace of mind. Building happiness on the misery of another was not something with which she could easily cope.

  The joyful time she had presumed an engagement would mean had not materialised. There was none of the fun, or the feeling of importance she had imagined. Sharing it with Vanessa was, of course, impossible. But even choosing presents to furnish the cottage was more a necessity than a delight. The place where Patricia felt happiest was at Rose Cottage, with Julia.

  The garden of Rose Cottage was cleared of the overgrown trees and shrubs, and rose trees flourished in their place; signs of spring were welcome: neat, polished leaves sprouting from their once bare branches. Julia had a skill with flowers and as the bedding plants came into the shops she planned to fill the newly created beds with incipient glory.

  For Patricia, the re-organisation of Julia’s garden was a revelation. She began to plan a garden of her own, behind the cottage where she and Matthew would make their home. Her dreams were more involved with building a garden, assisted by Julia, than with life as Matthew’s wife and all that marriage would bring.

  The garden at home had never been more than a ragged lawn around which a few stunted bushes grew, and since war had begun, it had been taken over completely by vegetables. Sadly, that was the eventual fate of Julia’s plot. The front garden as well as the back was ordered to be cleared and re-planted with foodstuff.

  ‘They can’t make you do this,’ Patricia complained, as the beds were changed from artistic curves serenely awaiting the arrival of the annuals to be filled with them into rigid rectangles and orderly squares.

  ‘Perhaps not. But I can’t indulge myself so shamefully while others do their bit and ‘Dig For Victory’,’ Julia sighed. ‘My roses will stay, and I have enough containers to add quite a lot of colour. With that I will have to be content.’

  Digging up the old, established lawns was heavy work and Patricia was tempted to ask Matthew for his help. Julia shook her white head. ‘There must be someone else who would give us a few hours. What about Jacky Davies?’

  It was Patricia’s turn to disagree. Matthew discouraged her friendship with Jacky and she didn’t want to cause a quarrel and risk losing another friend. ‘I’ll ask Vanessa when Roland is coming home,’ she said. ‘He wouldn’t mind helping. I ought to go and see Vanessa anyway. She hasn’t been to school much recently. Although, she’ll probably refuse to see me. I haven’t been to the Drew’s since – once I called daily,’ she ended sadly.

  She saw Vanessa only occasionally when her friend passed the shop on her way to and from college, or on an errand for her mother. There were many days when Vanessa failed to appear and Patricia found herself watching for her at the time she might be passing and worrying when she did not.

  With her wedding so close, she should have been counting the hours but instead she watched for Vanessa, and wished she could go back and change what had happened, taken more time and allowed Vanessa to accept that Matthew no longer loved her. She missed Caradoc’s farm too and knew Mr Caradoc missed her. So many changes and in such a brief span.

  Elizabeth went to the farm to visit her future father-in-law but refused to dirty her hands with even the lightest chore. She was marrying a farmer’s son but made it quite clear that she would not be a farmer’s wife. She did deal with the paperwork though and for that Mr Caradoc was very grateful. Elizabeth also helped Mrs Francis, who lived in the farm worker’s cottage next door to Mr Caradoc. Glyn Francis was in the army and his wife struggled to cope with a small son and help Mr Caradoc when she could, to earn an extra few pounds.

  Everyone seemed fulfilled and busy and Patricia felt unwanted and melancholy. This was not as she had imagined it would be in the weeks approachi
ng her wedding. As she cycled to Rose Cottage for the final onslaught on the grass, she tried to shrug off her sombre thoughts and hide her dark mood from Julia.

  ‘How are the wedding plans coming along?’ Julia asked brightly. She rarely spoke of Matthew and although her opinion had been less than outspoken, Patricia had received the clear message that Julia did not approve of her marrying him.

  ‘The cottage isn’t really furnished yet, but we do have a table and chairs to eat our meals, one armchair and a hearthrug given to us by Nelda. It’s looking a bit sparce, but we’ll manage. I’m making curtains from some we no longer use, and Elizabeth is embroidering a pair of cushions.’

  ‘My family bought us everything we needed when we were married,’ Julia said, a dreamy look in her dark eyes. ‘An uncle even bought us a couple of good oil paintings, so when we moved in, after a two week tour of Europe, it was a perfect home. Everything had been chosen by us and bought by my loving family. I thought my world was complete.’

  ‘Only thought?’ Patricia questioned. ‘Did it all go wrong then?’

  ‘We had a daughter, and she grew up into a beautiful and talented young woman. Then she married a man who had very little and expected her to live on what he could provide. My husband refused to see her again.’

  ‘And you? Did you keep in touch?’

  ‘I was as hurt and disappointed as he and I waited for her to contact me,’ she said sadly. ‘She never did. It seems unbelievably stupid when I think of it now, me loving her, aching to hold her, yet refusing to surrender my pride. I waited for her to apologize. As if it matters who makes the first move. I waited too long.’