‘No.’ He moved behind the door and leaned against it, as though to emphasise the fact that he had no intention of remaining long.
‘Would you rather I switched off the light?’
‘I’d rather we went. Someone could come.’
‘Who? Laura’s in labour, Tony’s home with the children, Angelo’s in the café; Papa and Mama are with Laura.’ She moved behind him, rammed the bolt home on the door and switched off the light. Lifting her hands around his neck she kissed him. Unbuttoning his coat and jacket, she slipped her fingers beneath his waistcoat. ‘This is the way I wanted to say goodbye.’
As the warmth of her hands radiated through the layers of his shirt and vest, his defences weakened. Unbuttoning her coat he pulled her to him, holding her close, luxuriating in the soft, warm, deliciously feminine feel of her body against his.
‘I love you, Tina, but we shouldn’t be doing this.’ Summoning every ounce of willpower he possessed, he pushed her away.
She stood back and he heard the swish of cloth falling as she laid her coat over a neighbouring table.
‘Tina?’ he called softly, alarmed by her absence and the darkness that closed around him like a blackout curtain, dense, suffocating and totally blinding.
‘I’m here.’
‘What are you doing?’
‘Trying to make a comfortable place for us.’
She switched on the kitchen light; it filtered through into the café, filling the room with a soft, subdued glow. ‘Don’t worry, it won’t be seen from the street. Here.’ She dropped a bale of blackout material into a corner. Unrolling it, she transformed it into an improvised chaise-longue, with the roll acting as a pillow.
‘I don’t think …’ His voice died in his throat as she sank to her knees and opened her arms to him.
He hesitated for barely a moment before discarding his coat and jacket. He knelt beside her and kissed her, his hands exploring her face as his mouth closed over hers. She clung to him tightly, fiercely.
‘There’ll never be anyone else for me, you do know that?’ She stared at him intently. ‘So no doing anything stupid when you’re away.’
‘No French girls, I swear it,’ he smiled.
‘Or English, or Dutch …’
‘No other girls, ever.’ He lay on his back and pulled her down on top of him, so he could kiss her again. Her breasts strained against the thin material of her dress. Reaching up he caressed them through the layers of cloth. She pulled away from him.
‘I’m sorry,’ he murmured contritely.
Her fingers set to work unhooking the row of mother-of-pearl buttons that ornamented the front panel of her dress.
‘No …’ he reached up and gripped her hands, imprisoning them in his own.
‘We’re engaged. I think I’m entitled to send you off to war with more than the memory of a few kisses.’
Tugging her hands free she slipped the dress over her arms and tossed it aside. As she knelt over him, shivering in an opalescent silk shift, his self-control dissolved. He fingered the thin straps of the petticoat. She pulled them down before unlacing and discarding her bustshaper. Slowly, tentatively he reached up and caressed her naked breasts, his fingers lingering over the perfect pink aureoles of her nipples.
‘You’re beautiful.’
‘All I want is to make you happy.’
‘You do, Tina and you will. But you’re going to catch cold.’ Reaching for his jacket, he draped it over her shoulders as she sank down on to his chest. ‘I love you.’
‘And I love you, which is why I want to be here with you like this.’ She gazed up at him, her eyes dark, bewitching pools.
‘And why I should never have come. I wanted our first time to be special. After a huge white wedding with my sister and all of yours as bridesmaids. We’d be in a sumptuous hotel room with a four-poster bed, there’d be flowers and champagne …’
‘Can’t you smell the flowers? They’re carnations and freesias.’
‘White ones?’
‘What other colour is there? And the champagne bubbles have gone up my nose, I’m going to sneeze at any moment.’
‘This is hardly a four-poster bed.’
‘It’s a little smaller than I would have wished, but just as comfortable.’ She closed her arms even more tightly around his chest. ‘So kiss me, and let’s make the most of this room while it’s ours.’
While he kissed her, she unbuttoned his shirt. She helped him to remove his waistcoat and draw down his braces. He pulled his vest over his head, and drew in his breath sharply as her naked breasts brushed against his bare chest. Trailing the tips of his fingers over her back and arms, he lingered over every inch of skin, every curve, imprinting the shape and feel of her into his memory. When he came to the flat of her stomach which was still covered by her petticoat, he rolled over, taking her with him, so he lay above her. He kissed her again, his senses reeling, lost in a kaleidoscope of colour, sounds, images, scents and jumbled memories. The sweetness of their first stolen kiss at the back of the Catholic Hall, the damp, cloying darkness of the blacked-out night when he had first told her he loved her and wanted to marry her. The parlour in the Ronconi house where he had asked Tina’s father for her hand, and her father’s and his own voice echoing back from the Lewises’ kitchen not an hour before.
‘And a good night’s sleep first, which means you take her straight home, young man.’
‘I will, Mr Ronconi.’
He sat up abruptly. Leaning forward, he sank his head into his hands.
‘Will!’ Tina was beside him, her hand on his shoulder. ‘What’s the matter?’
‘So help me, I can’t do this. I’m sorry, Tina, I can’t. It will be different when we’re married I promise you, but this isn’t the time or the place for us.’
‘I’m beginning to wonder if there’ll ever be a time and place for us,’ she cried angrily. ‘Will, I’m prepared to give you all I have to give. Everything! Why won’t you take it like any other man would?’
‘Because I’m not any other man.’ He was on his feet pulling his vest over his head. Scooping up his shirt, tie and waistcoat he flung them on top of his jacket on the table, and continued to dress.
Turning her back, Tina picked up her bust-shaper. He was dressed before her. Lifting the blackout material he re-rolled it and carried it into the kitchen. She pointed to a shelf and he stacked it on to it. Taking the keys from her hand, he walked her to the door, opened it and locked it carefully behind them. They climbed the hill in silence. Only when they stood outside her front door did he kiss her again, and this time she sensed it was a final goodbye:
‘I love you.’
‘I love you too, which is why I had to end that back there. I’m sorry, but if anything had happened between us I know I couldn’t have left you afterwards. Not even if it meant going to prison. And that wouldn’t have done either of us any good.’
‘There’s nothing to be sorry about.’ She clung to him, her face pressed against the rough wool of his overcoat. ‘You’ll write?’
‘Every chance I get.’ Disentangling her arms he turned away. His footsteps rang out into the darkness and she was left on her doorstep, cold and more alone than she’d ever felt in her life before.
Chapter Eight
‘I think that’s the cry you’ve been waiting for.’ Andrew stirred, and nudged Trevor’s foot as he forced himself out of the half-waking, half-dozing stupor in which he’d passed the night.
Trevor needed no spur to move. He was out of his chair before Andrew spoke, and halfway to the door when Mrs Ronconi shot out of the parlour where she’d finally been persuaded to retire in the early hours of the morning.
For once Trevor abandoned all courtesy. Pushing Mrs Ronconi aside, he bounded up the stairs two at a time. Bethan was waiting on the landing.
‘Are they …’
‘Your wife has something to show you.’ She pushed open the bedroom door. Picking up a bundle of soiled linen she walked slowly do
wn the stairs.
‘You look exhausted,’ Andrew commiserated as he took the bundle from her.
‘I don’t know why, it was a textbook delivery. Although Laura isn’t very pleased.’
‘It’s a boy?’ Mr Ronconi enthused from the passage. ‘I knew it would be.’
‘I’ll stay and look after them,’ Mrs Ronconi announced from the stairs.
‘Looks like you’re redundant.’ Andrew went to the table and poured Bethan a cup of tea from the barely warm pot.
‘And you’ve got Trevor’s rounds to do as well as your own.’
‘The patients can wait until we’ve picked up Rachel and I’ve taken you both home.’
‘Andrew,’ Trevor shouted down the stairs. ‘Come and see him! He’s positively beautiful and perfect.’ Dashing down the stairs, he burst into the kitchen, picked Bethan up and swirled her around. ‘Thank you.’ He kissed her soundly on the lips.
‘If I’d known how you were going to pay my wife for her midwifery services I might not have allowed her to volunteer.’
‘Come on, Andrew.’ Trevor dragged him up the stairs.
‘Just for a minute, then I’d better go and keep the practice running.’
‘I’ll give you a hand.’
‘Absolutely not. Take a week off, you’re not indispensable yet.’
Bethan dumped the bedding in the wash-house before following Andrew and Trevor upstairs. Laura was sitting up in bed, exactly as she’d left her, a tired but triumphant smile on her face as she cradled her newborn son.
‘And here’s your godmother back to see you,’ she crooned as Bethan appeared behind Trevor, Andrew and her parents.
‘I’ll call in this evening to check on you.’
‘My husband’s a doctor, I have my mother who’s had more children than hot dinners to fuss over me, and you want to leave your own baby to check on me?’
‘He’s my handiwork, I don’t want him spoiled.’
‘Got a name for him?’ Andrew asked.
‘Angela Bethan,’ Laura chipped in quickly.
‘He’ll hate you for it when he’s older.’
‘I like John. It’s plain and simple and you can’t do anything to it,’ Trevor said.
‘With all due respect to Andrew, it’s a reasonable surname but a boring Christian name,’ Laura protested.
‘Time we left,’ Andrew turned to his wife.
‘See you later.’ Bethan kissed the baby on the head and Laura on the cheek. ‘We’ll see ourselves out,’ she said to Mrs Ronconi.
‘Anything special I should do?’
‘As Laura said, you’ve had more babies than any of us.’
‘But not recently.’
‘Nothing changes. Keep the baby warm, dry and fed and see the mother rests.’
Andrew went ahead of Bethan. He paused at the foot of the stairs to lift down their coats from the hooks behind the door. While he was patting his pockets in search of his keys, the postman pushed a bundle of letters through the letterbox. He picked them up, slipping one from the top of the pile to the bottom, but he wasn’t quite quick enough. Bethan had seen enough to work out that it was addressed to Trevor. She had also seen the address of the sender on the back. Ministry of War.
Harry Griffiths’ wife was short-tempered and difficult at the best of times, and on the rare occasions when Harry risked depression by contemplating his married life, he inevitably came to the conclusion that for him and the woman he’d married there had been no ‘best of times’. Even their courting had been conducted under the eagle eye of his future mother-in-law, who’d arranged a magnificent wedding as measured by the Pontypridd yardstick, only to put the finishing touches to the day by dispatching her daughter on honeymoon with the advice that the ‘private side of married life was disgusting, but a woman had to put up with it’, thus setting the scene for a disaster of titanic proportions.
Harry’s wedding night had been the first and last that he’d shared a bed with his wife, and the one and only time his wife had permitted him to lay his hands on her. He had left the honeymoon hotel in Porthcawl for the debt-ridden shop he had inherited from his father, tired, and aching from sleeping on the floor. But their initial catastrophic encounter had resulted in the single saving grace of his marriage: his daughter Jenny. He’d done his best to stop his wife from priming Jenny in the art of frigidity, but when Jenny’s husband, Eddie, had returned to his father’s house the day after their wedding he had seen his own frustrations mirrored in Eddie’s anger, and he’d been deeply saddened by the thought of history repeating itself. But the final blow had fallen a few days later when Eddie had left Pontypridd to join the Guards, amidst a welter of scandalous rumours about Jenny and Eddie’s brother, Haydn.
He’d tried to discuss Eddie’s abrupt departure with Jenny without success. It pained him to stand impotently by and watch his beloved daughter move between the shop and the flat upstairs, rarely going out, and then only as far as the post office to forward the latest in a flow of letters that, to his knowledge, hadn’t elicited a single reply. But Eddie’s protracted silence didn’t stop him from standing at the window of his shop every morning at about the time the postman climbed the hill, to watch and wait for an envelope that might – just might – bring a smile to Jenny’s face.
Bert Browne pushed open the shop door, setting the bell clanging. Still puffing, he dumped his sack on the floor and handed over a small pile of buff envelopes.
‘Three today, Harry.’
‘Bills by the look of them.’ Harry pushed them aside in disgust.
‘You know what Percy said in the Observer last week. Patriots pay their bills promptly to aid the war effort.’
‘I can’t see how paying George Collins for his cheese before I need to will help anything besides George’s bank balance. Ten Woodbines?’ he asked as Bert dug in his pocket.
‘I need something to keep me going.’ Bert glanced slyly at Harry. ‘Heard Megan Powell is out?’ he asked, feigning a casual air as Harry turned to the tobacco shelf. It had been common knowledge on the Graig that Harry’s feet had been ‘under Megan’s table’ for years before she’d been sent down. And no one had thought any the less of him for it, except the strict chapel goers. Everyone knew Harry’s wife wouldn’t give him his dues, courtesy of old Mrs Evans whose bedroom window faced the single-bedded box room Harry slept in alone.
‘Megan has years more to do.’ Harry’s hand shook as he scooped the coins Bert had laid on the counter into the wooden drawer that served as a till.
‘Police sergeant told me they’re letting out all the non-violent convicts to make room for the Nazis. As long as they lock up Mosley and all those like him, that’s what I say. Mind you I feel sorry for Megan. Saw her in town yesterday with her brother-in-law. She’s not what she was, but then what can you expect after years of hard labour? Shame,’ he shook his head as he balanced a Woodbine on his lower lip. ‘She was a pretty little thing. I remember turning green at the gills when I heard William Powell had snapped her up. Lucky sod, he might not have had her for long, but then a year spent with a woman like Megan would give a man more to crow about than twenty with some I could name, including my own missus.’
‘What’s all this about Megan Powell?’ Harry’s wife – slim, blonde, better-looking and better-dressed than any woman had a right to be at her age and at that time in the morning – stood glowering in the doorway that separated the shop from the stairs that led up to the living quarters.
‘They let her out because of the war.’ Bert opened the shop door, setting the bell ringing again. ‘Well, must be off. See you, Harry, Mrs Griffiths.’ He touched his cap.
Harry turned his back on his wife and fiddled with the boxes of sweets laid out in the window while the silence between them grew more and more ominous. His wife was the first to break.
‘If you think I’ll stand idly by and let you take up where you left off with that woman, Harry Griffiths, you’re making a big mistake.’
‘Keep
your voice down,’ he growled. ‘Our Jenny’s upstairs.’
‘She’s married, she knows what men are like. Driven by what’s between their legs the same as alley cats. After every woman who lifts her skirt –’
‘I’ll not have you talking that way about Megan Powell,’ he broke in harshly.
‘Why? Because you’re one of the pack who lifted her skirt?’ she taunted. ‘You didn’t think you were the only one, did you? I’ve seen her stop on the hill and talk to a dozen men, one after the other …’
‘Talk, and only talk. Because unlike you she’s a pleasant friendly soul who thinks the best of everyone.’
‘You expect me and every other decent woman on the Graig to think the best of her? To turn a blind eye when she’s moved in with that brother-in-law of hers who’s living in sin with the mother of his bastard? Like everyone else I’m wondering if she takes turns with Phyllis Harry, or if they sleep three in a bed.’ She stepped back as Harry moved swiftly from behind the counter.
‘You say one more word about Megan Powell and I’ll hit you into the middle of next week, woman,’ he warned grimly, as he stood in front of her with a look on his face that sent her reeling back into the door.
‘I’m your wife,’ she shouted defiantly. ‘I have a right –’
‘A wife has every right. You, being no wife, have none. I suggest you remember that.’
‘I’ll leave you.’
‘I’ll give you a hundred quid to see you on your way.’
‘After I suffered all the agonies of hell to give you a daughter. Not to mention the best years of my life …’
‘If it had been up to you, Jenny wouldn’t have been born. You’ve given me nothing, woman. Nothing except heartache and frustration!’ Lip quivering, she stared at him for a moment before bursting into tears and running up the stairs.
‘Wrong time of the month, Harry?’
The colour drained from Harry’s face as he turned to see Huw Davies standing in the shop.
‘Sorry, didn’t hear the bell,’ Harry muttered, as he moved back behind the counter.
‘Ten Players, please.’ Huw pulled a shilling from his uniform pocket.
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