Chapter Three
THE SHOP BLINDS were pulled right down and the shop was dark in the early morning. It was not empty although it showed a closed sign on the glass door. Women in black coats reaching almost to their ankles, their faces covered with veils and shadowed by shawls, stood silently waiting for the funeral procession of Owen Owen, proprietor, to reach the door.
Cecily and Ada stood with the rest, although without a coat. They were close together, shivering slightly, partly because of the coldness of the winter air and partly because of the uneasy mood of the occasion. Today was a turning point in their lives: the death of their father and the news just confirmed by the solicitor.
Their faces were stiff with the effort of holding in their excitement, fearing the criticism from the mourning relatives gathered around them if the light of exhilaration showed in their eyes on this day, when sobriety was all.
Outside, all was quiet and when the horses eventually turned into the steep street, everyone fidgeted and prepared themselves. Ada opened the shop door and the bell tinkled merrily, incongruous in the awe-filled silence.
‘Should have hushed that bell,’ someone muttered and Cecily thought she recognized the disapproving one of Uncle Ben’s new wife, Auntie Maggie Prothero. The remark was echoed by Dorothy.
Oddly, it was the smells that Cecily and Ada remembered when they discussed the gathering later. A thousand shop-scents, from the obstinate fish and fruit to the more subtle spices and teas and coffees were there, a background to their everyday life, but over them all, intrusive and alien, was the powerful smell of mothballs and heavy perfumes.
As the hearse clattered to a stop outside, Ada whispered to her sister, ‘I’ll be glad when this lot have all gone home!’
Cecily nodded agreement. ‘It’ll be hours yet, mind.’
The shop filled as more people came through from the room behind to see Owen on his way. Dorothy came to stand near them with a hand on their shoulders. Her son Owen was in the car following the horse-drawn hearse but her daughter, the shy sixteen-year-old Annette, was nowhere to be seen.
‘Where’s Annette?’ Ada asked.
‘Oh, probably hiding in a corner! When is she not?’ Dorothy said in mild despair. ‘Such a trial, that daughter of mine. Thank goodness Owen is more sensible.’
Marged, the daughter of the other sister-in-law, Rhonwen, giggled nervously and Myfanwy hushed her with all the authority of her six years. ‘Hush,’ she warned, ‘or Auntie Dorothy will give us a wallop!’ She handed Marged a handkerchief. ‘Chew on this,’ she said, stifling her own laughter.
‘Girls are such a trial, aren’t they?’ Dorothy smiled at Rhonwen. ‘My Annette so shy and your Marged such a giggler, I don’t know which is the worst.’
The gentle Rhonwen gave her still-giggling daughter a hug. ‘Van will keep them in order, for sure,’ she whispered.
The cortege had stopped outside and the women crowded onto the pavement, hugging themselves against the biting wind that came in from the sea. They stood, some bending their heads in prayer, others just staring at the carriage with its four black horses bedecked with black feathered plumes and wearing black covers over their ears. Four men walked solemnly in and through the shop and returned a few minutes later, moving slowly along the orderly path made for them through the group of grieving women, under the burden of Owen Owen’s coffin.
The four men were distant cousins of the Owen family, all in their twenties and all pale-faced beneath the tall black hats they wore. Johnny Fowler was unable to manage his hat and it fell and rolled into the gutter, from where Van promptly retrieved it and held it against her like a shield.
Johnny’s thin hair was plastered to his head with grease, the hairs bonded together and trying to escape the curve of his head, sticking up along the side in a frozen fringe. Marged giggled again and suffered a dig in the ribs from Van.
The crowd in the shop emptied onto the pavement as the women stood to see the funeral procession turn to go back up the hill and onto the main road. Flowers were placed around the coffin and there were so many that some had to go in the following cars.
‘Dadda hated flowers,’ Cecily sniffed, her voice sounding loud in the silence broken only by the shuffling of the men’s feet and the metallic percussion of the horses’ feet on the road.
In a corner of the room behind the shop, Annette sat watching Willie, who had stayed with her until the last moment, before leaving to join the rest of the men.
‘I’ll be back soon,’ he promised. ‘Don’t worry, I’ll see you’re all right.’
Willie had come across Annette, the shy daughter of the anything-but-shy Dorothy, in the stable with the horses. The prospect of sitting among the relatives and almost certainly being criticized by her mother was too much for her. Willie had coaxed her into the house, found her a chair behind a door where few would see her and had stood there, shielding her from the rest, encouraging her not to be afraid.
He knew it wasn’t just people, or her mother, that had made her run and hide between the warm living softness of the two horses where Willie had found her, but also the thought of the coffin and its contents. He boldly gave her hand a squeeze and hurried out to join the others.
At a signal from Johnny Fowler, who had been appointed to walk in front of the cortege of carriage, cars and carts, it moved slowly off, the horses’ hoofs slipping briefly on the frosty surface. The plumes on the horses’ heads swayed backwards and forwards as if in an attempt to help them up the steep hill to the main road. Then they were on their way, up and out of sight, along the main road where cars and horse-drawn traffic and pedestrians stopped to watch them pass, men removing hats and women reaching for handkerchiefs as they grieved for the man on his last journey.
In the shop, the door closed and the weeping slowly subsided. Some mourners went home and a few comments were heard as they passed through the shop porch.
‘Waldo Watkins from the big grocer’s shop looked bad, didn’t he? Pale as a corpse himself.’
‘Did you see the way those girls were grinning? Trying to hide it, mind, but I saw them. There’s wicked with their father dead and gone.’
‘They don’t realize it yet but they’ll miss him, old drunk that he was. Who’s going to look after that little girl while they go gallivanting night after night now? Tell me that.’
It was mostly the female members of the family who were left and they found seats in the room behind the shop to sit and wait for the men to return from the cemetery. Cecily and Ada went through the passage to the back kitchen where they had already prepared the food. They shuddered at the strong smell of flowers that pervaded the room and opened the back door to help it escape.
On the gas stove stood the large soot-blackened kettle humming gently. Its usual place was beside the fire in the room behind the shop but just for today, Cecily had insisted on doing it ‘proper’. Ada thought it was wrong to show off on the day of their father’s funeral but Cecily had insisted and Ada finally agreed. She guessed it was the presence of the critical Dorothy that made Cecily so extra fussy, with tray cloths and the best tablecloths on display.
‘Thank goodness that part is over.’ Cecily threw off the hat she had been wearing and sent it winging across the room and out through the open door.
‘Cecily!’ Ada glanced at the door passage. ‘Don’t let those in there hear you talking like that!’
‘Oh, Ada, he was our dadda and I loved him, but all that moaning and groaning in there is nothing to do with our grief that he’s gone.’
Ada shushed her and pointed to the door. Myfanwy stood there, her eyes large, her small face bewildered by the strange events of the day, having been brought back from a visit to Beryl and Bertie’s home.
‘Can I go to school now, Auntie Cecily?’ she asked in a low, wavering voice.
‘No, indeed! You’re having the day off.’ Both sisters bent down to comfort her. ‘Go now and talk to your aunties and cousins. The uncles will be back soon and yo
u can help us serve the food. Glad of your help we’ll be.’ Cecily gently patted the blonde head and watched her walk back to the room behind the shop.
‘She can sleep with us tonight, can’t she?’ Ada suggested.
‘Good idea. Come on,’ she said briskly, ‘you cut the cakes and I’ll arrange the sandwiches. You do the cakes much neater than me.’ They both bustled about setting out the food on large meat-plates that were usually used only at Christmas and special occasions, to be carried into the living room.
‘I’ll do both if you’ll serve the teas,’ Ada said. ‘I hate pouring teas. Dorothy only has to look at me and it all goes into the saucers.’
They worked swiftly and in unison as always, each able to take over what the other had started, agreeing wordlessly on how things should be done. They had always been close and rarely disagreed about anything.
‘He didn’t come then,’ Ada stated after a pause.
‘Who? Gareth? I expect his mam was ill again.’ They sighed and shared a look of impatience.
Gareth Price-Jones owned the barber’s shop which had been his father’s. It had kept him and his mother in moderate comfort all his life. When Evan Price-Jones died, Gareth had taken over the business and after a few disasters, was now a competent hairdresser with a regular clientele who called once a fortnight for a trim or twice a week for shaves.
He was not an unattractive man and he had charm, but he was rather shy. He showed his reserve in the way he walked, head forward, and it was only on the dance floor that he held himself proudly and shone with confidence, especially when he partnered Cecily or Ada, who were such excellent performers like himself.
On the day of Owen Owen’s funeral, he didn’t close his shop. He wanted to, he felt ashamed at not doing so, but his mam had insisted he did not.
‘Your father built that business up by being reliable, Gareth,’ she had warned. ‘Go on, then! Shut the place and send all your customers somewhere else to get their shaves and haircuts! That is, if you want to see the place close completely and watch all your poor dear father’s efforts to provide us with a meagre living go down the drain!’ She puffed angrily. ‘Go on, then. Shut the shop and go to the funeral with them two girls. Oh, yes,’ she added quickly before he could answer, ‘I know it’s them girls you want to see, not show respect for that disgusting old drunk who was their father.’
‘Mam, that’s not fair on him! He was a local businessman and everyone will close for an hour or so. People won’t be disappointed at seeing the shop shut; it’s what they’ll expect.’
‘If the shop’s too much for you and you need a flimsy excuse for a few hours’ rest, then say. We’ll see about selling it, although what you expect us to live on I don’t know.’ She lifted a perfumed handkerchief to her rather prominent nose and sniffed quietly as if holding back tears. Gareth knew when he was beaten.
‘All right, Mam, I’ll stay open. But I bet there’ll be some talk.’
‘If someone had bothered to tell us what was happening and if we’d been asked to visit and stay for the funeral, it would have been different,’ she muttered to herself. ‘Above themselves the Owens, always have been, and her running off with the coalman!’
So the funeral cortege passed the shop while Gareth was shaving old Busby Morris and, seeing the crowd gathering outside raising their hats or sniffing into elegant handkerchiefs, Gareth left the old man soaped and half shaved and stood in the wedge-shaped porch of his shop as the procession made its way through the main road, his face red with embarrassment.
The funeral was a large one, Owen being a well-known tradesman, but with so many of his family lost during the war, most of the younger men filling the cavalcade of assorted vehicles were not relations but friends and fellow shopkeepers. Beside the vehicles, a considerable number were walking.
Gareth caught the eye of the wealthy Waldo Watkins, a rival in a friendly way to the grocer now carried in the oak coffin behind the plumed black horses. Gareth looked down guiltily. Mam was wrong and he should have gone. Damn me, you don’t wait to be invited to a funeral! Why wasn’t he strong enough to defy Mam and do what he knew was right? he wondered angrily. But the anger was towards himself, not his mam.
In the car following the horse and carriage sat Bertie Richards, the prosperous landlord who had always been a close friend of the Owen family. Again, Gareth lowered his head in shame.
Traffic had pulled into the side to allow the funeral free passage and in the distance, Gareth could still see the thin figure of Johnny Fowler walking ahead, setting the pace for the rest. As the last of the walkers passed the shop, he went back inside to where a slightly impatient Busby Morris – so called because he had once been in the guards – was beginning to shout his complaints. He collected fresh hot water and, apologizing earnestly, finished the shave.
As he worked he only half listened to his customer’s chatter. His mind was at the grocery shop where friends and relations would be gathered to learn the fate of the business. He knew it was impossible for Cecily and Ada to run it themselves. Two young women without a man there? Not possible. They would need a man and there was only Willie Morgan and a fat lot of use he’d be, him only a skinny lad of sixteen.
He wondered how soon he might go and see the sisters and ask them how things would be arranged. He wished he’d gone to the funeral. Mam was difficult at times. Now he’d be uneasy going there, expecting a coolness at his apparent indifference.
He closed the shop early – a small defiance – but walked home the long way round so Mam wouldn’t know.
At Owen’s shop, with everything ready for the meal, Cecily and Ada stood among the black-coated women waiting for the shop bell to ring and tell them the men were back. They went into the back kitchen occasionally to reassure themselves that everything was done. Holding hands with them both, Van went with them.
‘Where will we go if we have to leave here?’ Van asked.
‘Don’t worry, lovey.’ Ada smiled. ‘We can’t talk about it yet but as soon as we’re on our own, we’ll talk about everything that’s happened today. Right?’
The men returned and Cecily poured water into the waiting teapots, four of them. That should be enough for a start. The murmur of conversations filled the air and the sound of people running up and down to the bathroom. The house had a fullness that at any other time would have been pleasing, but today was alien and unwelcome, an intrusion into their grief.
‘All ready, love?’ Beryl Richards called as she went up with Myfanwy’s coat over her arm. ‘Coming with us, you are, just for a while. Coming to play with our Edwin.’ Beryl and Bertie had been friends of Cecily and Ada all their lives and Myfanwy and Edwin were used to spending time in each other’s home. Beryl and Bertie lived in a large house with servants to keep it the way they wanted it and Van loved spending time there with Edwin.
Beryl went off, Myfanwy holding one hand, her eight-year old son Edwin holding the other. She was a large woman but today she looked larger than usual in a fur coat which, like so many others, left the smell of mothballs in its wake.
‘I hope there’s plenty to eat,’ Waldo Watkins called through the passage. ‘I’m starving.’
‘That’s no surprise,’ Cecily laughed. ‘When are you not?’
Carrying food and teas on trays, they went upstairs to the large living room above the shop. There was a piano there, draped with black material in deference to the occasion. Black crepe bows were fastened to the curtains with ends hanging almost to the floor. Two bows hung over the mantelpiece, and the wall gas-lights were lit. A fire burned cheerfully in the hearth, yet inside, the drawn curtains and the darkly dressed figures filling the room gave the impression of night time and defied the clock telling them it was the middle of the day.
The wallpaper in the heavily furnished room was dark, with cherries and roses interspersed with dull green leaves on a black background. The ladies had lifted their veils but hadn’t removed their hats. The men in suits were like white-breast
ed blackbirds with the white shirts picked out by the flickering gas-lights. An elderly man entered and sat in a corner. Several recognized him as the local solicitor.
Cecily and Ada greeted him, then continued walking through the few people still there, offering food and drinks. A few stood to leave.
‘No, please stay, all of you,’ Cecily and Ada pleaded.
The two sisters-in-law, Dorothy and Rhonwen, sat together with their children huddled near them. In their different way they had prepared themselves for what was to come, Rhonwen with little interest, and Dorothy smiling in confidence. Cecily felt a shiver of apprehension.
‘Shall we begin, Mr Grainger?’ Ada asked the thin, elderly solicitor. Cecily looked at her sister then down at her hands. What would they say when they knew?
‘Would you prefer that I go?’ Waldo asked. As he was not a relative he had no right to be present at the reading of the will. But he and Melanie were their closest friends and they were asked again to stay.
Mr Grainger stood up, producing a fold of papers. He placed them on the piano, straightened his wire-framed glasses and coughed to gain attention.
‘On this sad day,’ he began, ‘it is my duty to bring to your notice the will and last wishes of my dear friend, Owen Owen, who had lived in this house since his birth. As the vicar said in his sermon “he wearied of life and God took him for rest”.’
‘It was an accident not a disease,’ Johnny muttered.
‘But God’s will,’ the solicitor admonished gently. ‘God’s will.’
‘What happens now?’ Dorothy asked.
‘You have helped Cecily and Ada through the difficult weeks since Mrs Owen … er left us,’ he went on. ‘Family meetings to discuss every change in the running of the shop have been an enormous help to the sisters left holding the reins, as it were, of the family business. Now, with the death of their father, things must change.’
Goodbye to Dreams Page 5