Goodbye to Dreams

by Grace Thompson

  Dorothy had forgotten the long-awaited letter and it was much later, when it was almost time to put Owen to bed, that it came back to her mind. With pain and anger boiling inside, believing she could lay all her troubles at Cecily and Ada’s door, she told Owen to re-dress and put on his coat.

  ‘You too, Annette. You’re both coming with me.’ She threw on her own coat and sent Owen to the stand beside the picture house to get a taxi. They set off in silence, Dorothy looking strained, Annette convinced the journey was to do with her and Willie, Owen wondering if he could persuade his mam to buy him some chips.

  Their first call was on Gareth’s mother who fortunately was alone. Leaving the children in the taxi, Dorothy opened the letter and handed it to the woman.

  ‘But this means – oh, my poor boy!’

  ‘You agree he must be told?’

  ‘There’s no other way. I’ll come with you now. Wait while I get my coat.’ The shocked expression left her face as she raced up the stairs in a way that would have amazed her son, who thought her frail. She smiled in satisfaction as she collected her coat and jammed a felt hat on her head.

  At the shop, arrangements for the forthcoming wedding were being discussed. The wedding dress had been tried on and was now carefully wrapped in blue tissue paper and hanging outside the wardrobe, in their parents’ room. Now, Cecily, Gareth and Ada were discussing lists of guests, and the sisters’ suggestions for the meal were resulting in long columns of ideas, crossed out, added, then crossed out again as they struggled to plan the best menu.

  ‘Can I try on my dress again?’ Van pleaded.

  Ada laughed. ‘Not while Gareth is here. He mustn’t see how beautiful you are until the wedding day.’

  ‘Or I might change my mind and marry you instead,’ Gareth said, picking her up and dancing with her round the chenille-covered table.

  There was a knock at the door and Cecily looked at Ada. ‘Go, will you, love? I expect it’s someone wanting serving. Honestly, I think some people use us as their pantry!’ She put down the pencil she was using and hardly stifled a groan as Ada returned with Dorothy and Mrs Price-Jones. This would probably mean even more changes in the guest list. Not that she minded. They could afford it and she wanted it to be a memorable day. She stood up and found seats for Owen and Annette, and only when the silence penetrated did she look up and see the grim expression on her future mother-in-law’s face. The long thin nose looked more sharp, the eyes showed undisguised dislike. What have I done now, she wondered irritably, but she asked politely, ‘Is something wrong, Mother-in-law?’

  ‘Your mother-in-law I am not! Nor will I ever be!’

  Dorothy thrust the letter that was shaking in her tight grip and both women watched Cecily’s face pale as she read it.

  ‘Mam? What is it?’ Gareth looked from one face to another, stepping towards Cecily, and Van, aware of the atmosphere of suppressed anger, sidled closer to Ada.

  Dorothy snatched the letter and waved it. ‘It’s about Cecily, your intended. Did you know she’s Myfanwy’s mother?’

  When the mists of pain, shock and disbelief had cleared, Cecily looked at Gareth and knew he would never forgive her. His eyes were wide as he stared at her but there was no disbelief. He hadn’t, even for a moment, doubted what had been said. Thoughts tumbled through her brain. To deny was useless, to defend even less likely to wipe the look of horror off the faces of Gareth and his mother – suddenly so alike with their pursed mouths and the raised, tilted heads as they looked down their long noses.

  Her confused mind wrestled firmly with the need to make Gareth understand, but with his mother standing close to him, like a lioness protecting her young, there was little chance of that. Oh, why hadn’t she told him long ago? She had intended to so many times. Now, as she looked at his closed expression, she knew there was no chance of him listening to her. ‘Who told you?’ she asked at last. Her face was clouded as she tried to guess. Who knew, apart from herself and Ada? Then she remembered one other. ‘Danny, how could you?’ she breathed. The room began to spin and waver and she felt for the edge of a chair, sensing rather than seeing Ada push it under her and guide her trembling body into it. ‘Gareth, I would have told you, in my own time,’ she whispered.

  ‘Left it a bit late, didn’t you?’ Mrs Price-Jones snapped. ‘And it was Dorothy who found out and she felt duty bound to tell me.’

  ‘And I wish she hadn’t,’ Gareth muttered as he stumbled from the room.

  Cecily rose to follow him but his mother leaned towards her, glaring, daring her to move and she sank back into the chair, too weak to fight. ‘I wish Mam was here,’ she said to Ada.

  They had forgotten the presence of Van until Cecily saw Gareth’s mother turn to the child and open her mouth to speak. Then she found the strength to stand up and threaten. ‘Say one word to Myfanwy and I’ll push you through the door so fast your feet won’t touch the ground!’ Mrs Price-Jones opened her mouth but didn’t speak. She left the room and the sisters stood as footsteps receded across the wooden floor of the shop and ended with the shop door banging and the discordant tinkle of the bell.

  Cecily looked at Van. The girl was deathly white and the flesh seemed to have left her face, enlarging her eyes. Her mouth was a disbelieving ‘O’. Both sisters hugged her and, holding each other tight, Cecily and Ada cried.

  Van didn’t respond to their hug or join in their tears. She stared unseeing across the room, the hurt already growing into coldness towards them.

  Dorothy and her children walked home. It was a long way but she needed the time to recover from the confrontation. She had decided to say nothing about Annette and Willie. Gossip materialized from the slightest word and Annette would recover quicker without that. Better she was sent away and that could be arranged very quickly.

  Van was very late going to bed that night. Cecily tried to talk to her, explain about her denial of her daughter, her intention to tell her one day when she was old enough to understand, but the words wouldn’t come. Van was too young to accept this. Besides, the memory of Gareth’s face and the way he had stood beside his mother – a united front against her – made rational thought impossible. She hugged the little girl, finally telling her she loved her and had concocted the story to make things easier for her. She promised that all the explanations she needed would be given in the morning. Van went to her bed bitter and confused.

  She sat up in bed watching as the light of morning touched her curtains, remembering all the teasing she had endured, which could have been avoided. She sat silently thinking of how Mrs Price-Jones and Auntie Dorothy had looked at her. The expression on those faces had frightened her.

  Panic, fear and resentment grew in her like a black miasmic cloud, the centre of which was the face of Cecily. She hated her and the thought made a shiver of fear ripple down her spine. Hating someone was wicked, she knew that, but Cecily deserved it. The way Gareth and his mother had looked at her had made that clear, made it all right to feel that way.

  As soon as she was old enough she would leave. Then everyone would be sorry. Edwin would know what to do. She’d go with him and find a place where she’d never see Auntie Cecily and Auntie Ada ever again.

  Downstairs, Ada and Cecily talked until morning. Ada announced that she would cancel her plans to marry Phil. ‘It wasn’t official, anyway,’ she said.

  ‘But you can’t do that!’ Cecily pleaded. ‘Dorothy will have succeeded in ruining both our lives if you change your plans. She’d be in her cups! Happy, like she hasn’t been for years! Please, Ada, love. Don’t cancel your wedding. I’ll be all right. I’ve coped with only you for support for so long, and you’ll still be there, won’t you? I’ve lost Gareth but things here will go on just the same. Who knows, perhaps Van and I will be even closer now she knows I’m her mother. Why spoil your life for no purpose? I’ll soon get over this, see if I don’t.’

  ‘No, I’ll talk to Phil tomorrow – I think I mean today,’ Ada said tearfully, lifting the curtain
aside. ‘He’ll see it’s for the best. We couldn’t be happy thinking of you and Van suffering the humiliation of people knowing. We agreed more than seven years ago that Van would be our shared responsibility and that will never change.’

  Van enjoyed a certain notoriety which she didn’t really understand and she soaked up the sympathy she enjoyed when news leaked out, and added her own criticisms of Cecily. The attacks on her mother became the only believable part of her life and Cecily saw her daughter moving further and further away from her, affection gone, replaced by resentment eagerly fuelled by others.

  It was this as much as Gareth’s defection that made Cecily spend even more of her considerable energies in building up the business. Time passed and the business grew, but Van and Gareth remained cold and accusing.

  For Willie, too, it was a difficult time. Annette had vanished almost overnight and he couldn’t find out where she had gone. Eventually it was Marged, Rhonwen’s giggly daughter, who told him a part of the story, and he spent hours driving around searching for her. He was kept very busy with the shop and his growing carpentry business with Danny Preston but every moment he could spare was spent asking, seeking the slightest clue to her whereabouts. He knew he would find her. He would never give up.

  Life for the Owen sisters became a round of shop and sleep, with only the occasional evening out for relaxation as they both felt unable to leave Van. They were afraid the slightest sign of indifference would add to the child’s unhappiness.

  Van wasn’t unhappy. She enjoyed the way she had the sisters running about trying to please her and soon discovered that, however she behaved, disobedience was met with soothing understanding. She rarely smiled at them and it was only when she was with Edwin, who refused to listen to her tales of largely imagined anguish, that she acted normally. Edwin was her strength and his acceptance of Cecily’s deceit almost persuaded her she was wrong to harbour bitterness and hatred. Almost, but not quite. She derived too much pleasure from it to give it up. Forgiving her mother would never, ever happen. She dreamed in her child’s mind of some distant day when she would take her revenge. Revenge – that was a word she liked.

  Chapter Ten

  NEW YEAR 1935 was a sober affair for Cecily and Ada. In five years so many dreams had been lost. Since both Cecily and Ada had cancelled their wedding plans, they had found little time for dancing and having fun. Instead all their energies had been spent building their business. Cecily had heard, through friends, that Danny and Jessie had finally married after several cancellations. She wondered vaguely whether they were happy.

  This year, the sisters dressed warmly in the swagger coats they had recently bought, and took Van, now eleven, to the square outside the town hall to join the crowd waiting there for the clock to announce the arrival of the New Year. The streets leading to the square were packed with people heading for the point at which they hoped to join up with friends.

  Arms rose in a forest and shouts echoed across the street as friends called to friends, laughing, jostling each other in almost impossible attempts to gather in groups of families or friends. Van walked between Cecily and Ada, looking for Edwin Richards, who had promised to try and find them by the large Christmas tree near the steps.

  Cecily was quiet. She disliked New Year. It was a time when, instead of looking forward, she looked back at all the disappointments and missed opportunities. Rich they might be, by their parents’ standards, but happy they were not. Since everyone had learned that Van was Cecily’s daughter, things had been difficult, Van the most difficult of them all.

  Cecily looked at her now. Taller than her friends, slim and already showing signs of the beauty to come. Her features were small with a tilt to her nose that gave her an elfin attractiveness. But there was a hardness in her and it showed in the firmness of her mouth, the hint of disapproval in her blue eyes, and the almost constant frown on her brow.

  Cecily had long given up trying to explain her reasons for behaving as she had, but continued to hope that one day she would be able to make her daughter see how it had been for her in 1924, when adoption had been the only alternative: an option she hadn’t for a moment considered. Although Van’s accusation that she had been protecting herself had been partly true, the invention of a friend had been a convenient cover story.

  ‘There he is!’ Van jumped up and down, waving excitedly towards the tree, where Edwin was waving a large flag. ‘He said I’d see him easily, he’s so big!’

  She dragged the sisters in her wake as she ploughed through the good-natured crowd and reached Edwin, flushed and glowing with the cold and the exhilaration of the occasion. She took his arm and said to Cecily, ‘You two can find your friends. Edwin will make sure I get home safe, as soon as midnight has struck.’

  ‘No, lovey, I think we’ll all stay together.’ Ada was struggling to stay with them.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ a familiar voice said, ‘Beryl and I will stay with them. Go and have fun, you two.’

  ‘Beryl! Bertie! Happy New Year!’ the sisters chorused. ‘And to you, Edwin, dear.’ They shared kisses all round then left Van in their friends’ care and pushed back into the sea of people, holding hands for fear of losing each other, to look for more familiar faces with whom to share greetings.

  They were looking for Phil Spencer among others and he, being much shorter than most, was difficult to spot.

  ‘Silly old fool,’ Ada said, shaking her head in bemused affection as she said it. ‘I told him it would be impossible to meet in this crush.’

  ‘He should have come to the shop and walked up with us,’ Cecily shouted above the roar of voices.

  ‘I asked but he wouldn’t. Said something about having a important job to do first. Wouldn’t tell me what. You know him, he likes to keep secrets and squeeze every last ounce of fun from an occasion. I wonder what he’s up to this time?’

  A few people began to sing, old favourites that everyone knew, and soon the air was filled with voices; some beautiful, some discordant but all enthusiastic. Cecily stood for a moment and joined in, then they started to move again, slowly threading their way to the far side of the square.

  ‘Don’t go too far over,’ Ada shouted. ‘We don’t want to stand outside the men’s lavatories!’

  Unbelievably Phil found them. In a gathering of at least 2,000 merry-makers he spotted their hats and, bending forward and burrowing through like a ferret, he surfaced beside Ada. ‘Happy New Year, ladies,’ he said, kissing them both. ‘And where is young Van?’

  Ada pointed to the Christmas tree. ‘Over by there with the Richards.’

  He stood with them and joined in the singing, his voice a pleasant tenor. After they had been singing for a while, Cecily became aware of another, beautiful bass voice close by.

  ‘Hello, Cecily. A Happy New Year,’ Danny said.

  ‘And to you, Danny. Is your wife with you?’

  ‘No. Come on, let’s have a talk, just for old times’ sake.’

  ‘No. I don’t think that’s a good idea.’ She moved slightly away from him, as much as the solid mass of humanity would allow, but he moved with her and she felt the touch of his hand on her elbow.

  ‘Cecily, I must talk to you.’

  ‘Talk to your wife, Danny Preston! I thought that now you’re married I wouldn’t be bothered by you any more.’

  ‘You’ve heard, then?’

  ‘Heard what? No, don’t tell me. I’m not interested.’

  ‘Go on, let him tell us,’ Phil said enthusiastically. ‘Go on. I won’t sleep tonight if I don’t find out what he wants to say.’

  ‘Stop eavesdropping.’ There was a hint of laughter in Ada’s voice, amused as always by Phil’s irrepressible nosiness. ‘Old woman you are.’

  ‘Jessie has left me,’ Danny told them. ‘She says I’m too cold and also that I’m a bore. What d’you think of that, then?’

  ‘She’s probably right!’ Cecily again tried to move away.

  The clock began its rumble on the way tow
ards striking the hour of midnight and miraculously the crowd was hushed. The chimes began and a cheer rose into the sky and everyone turned to kiss partners and anyone near. Some swayed and tried to hold hands for the traditional Auld Lang Syne.

  Cecily felt a lump in her throat as her sister moved away from her to be held in an enthusiastic hug by Phil, leaving her stranded and alone in the middle of the crowd. Then Danny held her and his kiss was as wildly exciting as the chimes and the shouting and the magic that was part of the first moments of 1935. It wasn’t until the echoes of the final chime had died away that he let her go.

  Since 1930, when she had met him after a gap of seven years, Danny had appeared to share with her the first minute of each new year. She might see nothing of him during the months before, but always, as the last moments of the old ticked away, he would be there.

  She wondered where Gareth was now, and who he was sharing the celebration with. She tried to force him into her mind and disassociate herself from Danny’s disturbing kiss and the romantic way he appeared at midnight.

  She still grieved for Gareth and knew that this sensation Danny aroused was not love as she had known love with Gareth, which would have been an all-encompassing love on which a lifetime could have been built. It included the calm, easy companionship she had rarely enjoyed with Danny. He disturbed and confused her. Gareth would have given her a life of unexciting contentment.

  ‘Cecily?’ Danny’s voice forced her back to the present. ‘Come with me. Ada and Phil don’t want you around, do they?’

  ‘Go away.’

  She made her way through the laughing crowd, hoping to lose him in the confusion of the people moving about, many trying to leave. Some held balloons which they suddenly released to soar up into the night sky. The sound of fireworks banging and hissing was accompanied by screams and hysterical laughter and dozens of enthusiastic revellers waved flags.