‘What’s this?’ she asked Nelly, holding up an old camera.
‘Ain’t used it fer years. It took some good snaps of my Evie once. Ain’t you seen a camera before?’
‘Not one like this. My dad’s got one but I’m not allowed to touch it.’
‘Not allowed? I bet that doesn’t stop yer!’ Nelly laughed. ‘Bring it down if you like, we can look at it together. Pity we ain’t got a film. There’d be some good pictures in my garden today!’ She picked up the kettle and made a large pot of tea. ‘Come on, carry them sandwiches and I’ll carry the teapot.’
They went into the garden, Nelly’s face beaming with delight at the hordes of people standing and sitting watching the antics of the men and women digging out the trench. It was Johnny Cartwright’s turn and Netta, his mother, was teasing him, pretending to help him lift the spadeful of soil.
‘Come on you lot, come an’ ’ave a cuppa while it’s ’ot.’
Johnny threw down his spade and others followed suit and everyone crowded around reaching for the cups as soon as Nelly had filled them. The table which had been used for the children’s tea party was in service again and Dawn carried out tray after tray of food. Although she was kept very busy, Nelly noticed that Dawn seemed ill at ease.
‘Probably seein’ so many of the people she’s teased and pestered,’ she whispered to George. ‘I’ll keep ’er busy.’
It was as they were all eating that Delina arrived. Since the trouble with Sheila had caused Delina’s wedding to be cancelled she had rarely been seen in the village apart from her journey to and from the school in Llan Gwyn where she taught. Nelly offered her a cup of tea and invited her to help herself to food.
‘Come to ’elp with the diggin’, ’ave yer?’ Nelly asked. But Delina shook her head.
‘I’m looking for Dad. Mam isn’t too well. I’d like him to decide whether or not we call the doctor out.’
‘What is it?’
‘Her arm. She fell a while ago and broke a bone. It’s still painful and she has to go to the hospital occasionally to get treatment to ease it.’
‘Ain’t that yer dad over there with Phil, talking to young Dawn?’ As Delina made to go over to her father, Nelly called her back. ‘’Ere, you’re a teacher, what d’you make of Dawn? She be’aves badly and leads ’er dad a right dance, but I don’t think she’s that bad, just un’appy.’
‘Would that be Dawn Simmons? I’ve heard about her escapades. I’ll have a chat to her if I get the chance. You’re probably right, Nelly, she needs friends. A new area and only her father for company, it must be difficult for her to enjoy being a little girl.’
Victor’s face lit up when he saw his daughter approaching.
‘Come to join the fun, love?’ he said. But his face changed equally fast when she explained her presence.
‘Mummy didn’t want me to come,’ she told him, ‘but I don’t know whether she needs a doctor or if we’d be wasting his time. It isn’t as if she were ill, but she is in pain. Perhaps I should get some aspirin?’
‘I think the shop will still be open. I’ll slip across and get something and go home to see how she is. Unless it’s serious, I’d like to stay and do my part of the trench. Daft, I know, but it’s money in good cause. Stay here and talk to Dawn.’ He turned to introduce her but Dawn had disappeared. ‘Oh, she’s here somewhere, helping Nelly with the food. Look out for her, will you? She’s supposed to be a bit of a nuisance but she’s got no mam. Makes a difference, that does.’
He was anxious that Delina should stay, now she had faced the village again. The news about Sheila was good, Maurice was far away in Australia and there was no longer any need for Delina to hide herself away. He had no real interest in Dawn who he thought needed a good smack rather than sympathy, but he used the girl as persuasion for her to wait for him.
He went past the kitchen door and up the path to the gate, intending to go to Amy’s shop for some tablets. He was smiling at the legitimate excuse to see her. A man was standing at Nelly’s gate, looking hesitantly into the garden.
‘Come to help with the digging?’ Victor asked. ‘Better hurry, man, there’s not much left, although I wouldn’t put it past Nelly to fill it in and start again!’
‘I’ve come back to fetch my daughter, a little girl aged ten. Seen her have you?’
‘Would that be young Dawn?’ As the man nodded, Victor added, ‘Helping Nelly with the food and working very hard too. Go on in, Phil will charge you entrance mind,’ he warned, before hurrying off down the lane to the main road.
Tad Simmons walked down Nelly’s path to where Phil stood waiting.
‘Sixpence if you’re coming to watch,’ Phil said.
‘I’ve only come to fetch my little girl. Don’t have to pay for that, do I?’ The man’s belligerent reply startled the good-natured Phil and his face opened up with shock, eyebrows raised, his mouth an “O”. ‘You going to stop me going in?’ Tad demanded.
‘Go you,’ Phil said. ‘And if it’s Dawn you’re wanting, she’s probably with Nelly.’ Phil pointed over his shoulder towards Nelly’s kitchen. ‘In by there.’ He stared after the scowling man, who looked briefly into Nelly’s living room then pushed his way past Phil to stand looking at the increasingly boisterous crowd churning the soil around the trench.
Victor Honeyman returned from buying the aspirin for his wife and, passing Phil, offered another sixpence entrance fee.
‘Is Delina still here?’ he asked in a whisper.
‘I haven’t seen her pass,’ Phil told him. ‘Hey, did you see that misery that came in now just? No wonder that kid’s a nuisance if that’s her father!’ He put a finger to his nose as a warning for Victor not to reply as Tad walked towards them.
‘Found her, have you?’ Phil asked.
‘Yes, she’ll be staying a while longer.’
‘There’s a cup of tea in the kitchen,’ Victor offered, curious about the surly man who looked downwards, his thin shoulders hunched as if trying to avoid acknowledging anyone.
‘No thanks.’
‘I’ll treat you,’ Victor said, ‘it’s only a couple of coppers and it’s for the church-hall fund.’
‘Oh, I didn’t understand. I thought it was some sort of party.’
‘It is really. It’s Nelly Luke’s daft idea. She’s charging people to dig her trench for her. The funny thing is that it’s working. There’s a few pounds been made this afternoon. The trench is looking a bit sick, mind.’
Delina approached them, holding Dawn’s hand.
‘Dad, I have to go. I want to make sure Mummy’s all right.’
‘I went up and she was asleep,’ Victor told her. ‘Stay five more minutes, love.’
‘This is Dawn’s father. Get him a cup of tea, will you?’ Phil asked. ‘I’ve got to go and see George and Nelly.’ He pushed Delina gently in the direction of Tad Simmons, winked at Dawn and hurried around the side of the house to see how the trench was progressing. Victor had been right, the once-neat trench was sagging sadly on each side as too many people crowded around to watch the fun.
Victor followed Phil, with a glance back to see his daughter, still holding Dawn’s hand, talking to the still-scowling Tad. She was already looking more relaxed than she had for weeks. If she could be persuaded to take her place in the village again the afternoon would achieve more than money for the fund. As Tad, Dawn and Delina disappeared in the direction of the back door, he crossed his fingers and offered up a brief unholy prayer. ‘Please God, don’t let that miserable old bugger upset her.’
Delina was someone who loved stray dogs, and Dawn plus her scowling father were certainly in need of a friend. He thought that a difficult and unhappy child might be just what his daughter needed, as long as Tad would allow her to help. There’s nothing like a “cause” to help you forget your own troubles, he mused as he strode off.
* * *
Johnny Cartwright arrived late. He drove the local bus and finished in the early evening. He brought his
wife, Fay, who had dressed sensibly but smartly in a blue tweed suit and thick leather brogues. She wore a scarf around her shoulders and a small hat with a band to match the scarf. As her job was selling hats, she was rarely seen without one, considering herself as much a display as a shop window. Even on an occasion like this, in the churned-up mud of Nelly’s garden she was dressed as neatly as when she went into town to meet a client. Johnny was very proud of her. He had loved Fay all his life and couldn’t believe his luck when she consented to be his wife. But their wedding had, for a time, been cancelled when Alan French, Fay’s previous fiancé, turned up having been believed killed in the war. A few weeks later, with only a few friends to witness Fay and Johnny’s wedding, they had finally married. Johnny never felt sure of her though and even now there was anxiety in his dark eyes, knowing that for her village fun like this was just a duty.
‘Sorry about the mud, lovely,’ Johnny said as they reached the chewed-up part of the garden. The constant tread of feet had changed the almost untouched area into a sea of crumbly soil, and they saw that Nelly had changed her black shoes, worn on special occasions only, for her Wellington boots.
‘Damn me, she’s a character,’ Johnny laughed, pointing to where Nelly was struggling through the loose earth to carry a tray of tea to the men supposedly working hard on the gradually curving trench.
There were three men trying to complete their stretch but they had been stopped by Bert who held out a rule and was trying to explain to anyone who would listen that they were heading in the wrong direction. Bert was red in the face as he gesticulated towards the wavering line of string marking where he thought the trench should go.
‘What’s going on, Bert? You holding up the works again? Never saw a bloke so set on following the rules.’
‘They won’t take a blind bit of notice!’ Bert shouted. ‘I’m trying to get the trench straight. Off at a tangent they are and they won’t listen!’
‘Never!’ Johnny gasped in mock horror, ‘You don’t say! Never mind, Bert, you can come back tomorrow and put it right, all by yourself.’
‘Someone will have to, for sure!’
Johnny took the string with which Bert was desperately trying to mark the direction of the trench, that now wavered right, then left and seemed to be heading for the lane.
‘Damn me, Bert, you’ve really put the mockers on this,’ Johnny teased.
‘Me!’ The irate man threw the stick marking the end of the trench into the air and strode off. ‘I’m going for a cup of tea!’
‘Quick, George, while he’s out of the way,’ Johnny said and with Victor, Phil and young Oliver, they set to work. When Bert emerged from Nelly’s kitchen, where Delina and Tad sat talking, he nodded his approval importantly.
‘Yes,’ he said, as if the improvement were all his doing. ‘That’s what I wanted.’
‘Well done, Bert.’ Johnny grinned at Phil and winked at Oliver. ‘Damn good job you’ve done by here today.’
Bert smiled contentedly.
When Delina reappeared, she was not content. Her blue eyes blazed with anger. As she came round the house into the garden, Victor approached her and asked at once what was wrong.
‘That insufferably ill-mannered man in there!’ she said. ‘I tried to talk to him about Dawn. It’s obvious the child is unhappy, but he accused me of interfering and of accusing a ten-year-old child of crimes, over what was simply childish fun.’
‘It’s not like you to upset people, Delina,’ Victor said anxiously. ‘Are you sure you didn’t say too much too soon? What did you say, love?’
‘Very little. All I did was gently agree with him, then he turned on me and told me not to talk about things I couldn’t possibly understand and—’
‘All right, love, don’t get upset. He’s lost his wife apparently and the little girl is quite a handful for him, no doubt about that. Afraid of having her taken off him I suppose. That would be enough to make him oversensitive.’
‘He isn’t the only one to have lost someone. Why should he think he’s so special?’
‘People do, don’t they, when trouble hits? It’s easy to forget that others are in the same situation, or one that’s worse. I know that,’ he added gently.
‘I feel as if I’ve been isolated from everyone for months and the very first time I try and step outside my circle of misery I have to meet someone like Tad Simmons!’
‘Come on, love, we’ll go home. I’m glad you came though, aren’t you?’ He turned around to see the laughing and jeering that accompanied Nelly’s latest attempts to dig out a section of the trench. ‘It’s good to laugh even if you’re sad inside.’
Bert Roberts was being helped on to an upturned, broken barrel that had once been used to collect rainwater. He stood rather nervously upright and demanded silence. There were murmurs of “what now?” and various criticisms but they all stopped to listen.
‘I think we could all stay a bit longer and help Nelly and George with the clearing up,’ he said, and this was greeted with groans. ‘I mean,’ Bert added slowly, ‘we could have a bonfire and burn some of this rotting wood that’s no good for anything else.’
‘Smashin’’ Nelly agreed and went at once to find paper and kindling.
‘Gran,’ Oliver followed her, ‘Gran, can we cook some potatoes?’
Delina took her father’s arm. ‘Perhaps we could stay a while longer, if you’re sure Mummy’s all right?’
Parents came to find children, children came to find parents, and several, including Amy, arrived as soon as their day’s work had finished. Some of the men brought flagons of beer and the garden was full of laughing, chattering people enjoying the unexpected party.
So it was almost eleven o’clock when the digging party finally departed. The trench, the reason for it all, was a sorry sight. Children had had a lovely time jumping across it, slithering down it and the walls in several places had collapsed and, even where it was not weakened, the dampness and the threatened overnight rain would help it to slither into a snake of disturbed earth with nothing to suggest it would allow a line of drainpipes to be buried.
George put an arm around Nelly’s shoulders as she carried in the last of the china, and chuckled.
‘Tomorrow’s my day off, and I’ll have to spend it re-digging the trench! But,’ he added, hugging her plump shoulders tightly, ‘it was a good day and we’ve raised six pound seventeen shillings and three-pence half-penny!’
‘Gawd only knows where the half-penny came from!’
When Nelly went inside, she noticed that the camera she had been showing to Dawn had disappeared. ‘I ’ope she didn’t pinch it, George, I wanted to give it to ’er. Shame if she’s spoilt my little surprise, ain’t it?’
Chapter Four
Oliver was a quiet boy and, at nine, was small and thinner than most of his school friends. Margaret and he spent a lot of their time together and it was with her that he wandered the fields and visited the farm where Billie Brown lived with his sister Mary. They walked there one Sunday in June and watched as Mary finished the last of the evening milking, then helped her to wash the milking parlour with the snake-like hose and the thickly bristled brushes.
As the children hoped, Mary invited them to stay for tea in the big farmhouse where a fire burned, whatever the strength of the sun. Today, the weather was cool enough for the fire to be a welcome sight, and while Margaret went into the stone-flagged kitchen to help prepare the food, Oliver sat in an old wooden settle with sides and a roof that made it similar to a half-completed sedan chair and where he sat to dream about being transported to imaginary lands, and wonderful scenes of colour and exciting smells and sensations.
Today, his daydreaming was halted by an item in the local paper which Billie had left, half-folded on a stool. Oliver did not read well. It was a constant worry to his ambitious parents that with a headmaster for a father he failed to achieve even an average result in his academic endeavours. But with Nelly’s gentle coaxing, he had improved to th
e point where he could read enough to understand at least the general outline of a newspaper article.
The headline that had attracted him referred to a celebration planned to mark the one-hundred-and-fiftieth anniversary of the opening of the famous Mumbles Railway, the first passenger train in the world. He could not grasp all the details but learnt that there was to be a replica of the various trains that had been used on the track. It would begin with a horse-drawn carriage and end with the present tram engine which ran from the centre of Swansea along the edge of the beautiful Swansea Bay to the pier at Mumbles in view of the lighthouse.
When Billie came downstairs, having changed from his working clothes into a cowboy shirt and dungarees identical to those he had taken off, apart from their cleanness and neatness, he found Oliver on the floor, bending over the newspaper, his finger laboriously following the words as he concentrated on reading them.
‘What’s that, Oliver? Something has attracted your interest. You usually sit and daydream in that old chair.’
Oliver blushed. He had not realised anyone had guessed. Billie saw his discomfort and added, ‘I don’t think many sit in that old chair and not dream. There’s something about it. The sides hide you from everyone else and you can feel safe to enjoy letting your mind wander. Magic in that chair, Oliver, at least, when I was a boy I used to think so.’
Oliver smiled at him, his small face still showing the red cheeks of his embarrassment, the need for it already fading. Billie understood. He was a bit like Gran, he decided. She never made fun of anything he said or did. Billie was becoming one of his favourite people, along with Gran and Margaret. He held out the newspaper and pointed to the relevant item.
‘It would be fun to go and see, wouldn’t it?’ The light- blue eyes were bright, his straight fair hair falling over them pushed hurriedly back as he thought of the day out.
Billie noticed that the boy’s hands were grimy from his work in the yard and he patted the boy affectionately and suggested, ‘Why don’t I read this while you go into the kitchen and wash your hands for tea?’
The Changing Valley Page 6