‘If it’s anyone’s fault it’s Anthea Llewellyn-Jones’s and Dai Station’s,’ he said, softening his tone a little. ‘And please stop crying. You know how I hate to see you cry.’
She opened her handbag and rummaged in its depths for a handkerchief.
‘Here,’ he pulled open the door of his locker and extracted one of the freshly laundered handkerchiefs Myrtle had brought in the last time she’d visited. ‘I’ve never known you to have a handkerchief at any crisis point in your life.’
‘As soon as you leave here, I’ll look for another job.’
‘Why?’ he demanded furiously.
‘Because there’s only one shop now. You can manage that on your own, you won’t need me.’
‘Take a good look, Diana. I can’t even walk to the bathroom unaided. Haven’t you noticed I’m a cripple now?’
‘I saw Dr John, he says you’ll soon be up and about.’
‘On crutches. For pity’s sake how do you think I’m going to run a shop when I can’t even stand like a man?’
‘You won’t be on crutches for ever.’
‘Oh yes, I forgot, the great aim is a stick, isn’t it? If you think I’m going to serve behind a counter –’
‘Why shouldn’t you serve behind a counter?’ she interrupted, finally beginning to lose patience with him.
‘I was going to say “only to have every customer point at me and regard me as a freak” if you’d let me finish.’
‘You served behind a counter often enough before.’
‘I wasn’t a cripple before.’
‘So you’re going to allow this accident to ruin your life?’
‘There’s no “allow” about it. It has.’
A nurse came to the door and he realised he’d been shouting.
‘Can I get you anything, Mr Rees?’
He shook his head. ‘I’m fine, thank you,’ he answered in a subdued voice.
‘If you could keep it down. Some of the other patients are trying to sleep.’ She gave Diana a hard look.
‘I think it’s time I went.’ Diana rose and picked up her handbag.
‘If you like I could get you a wheelchair so you could accompany your lady friend to the door, Mr Rees?’
He stared at the nurse as though she was insane.
‘You did well in the chair earlier.’
‘I’d rather not put on a display right now, if you don’t mind.’
Diana looked despairingly at him, then walked slowly to the door. ‘I’ll see you again on Wednesday, Wyn.’
‘If you bring the books in, I’ll go through them.’
She gripped the door frame as a sudden giddy spell weakened her legs. Wyn either didn’t see her reel, or chose to ignore it. As soon as she recovered she walked away, not knowing what else she could do or say. For the first time since she’d struck up a friendship with Wyn, he’d retreated into a shell she simply couldn’t break through. Dr John was wrong. If Wyn was going to make a recovery, it wouldn’t be down to anything she did. Not while he chose to close her out of his life like this.
‘That has to be the best ever.’ Jenny ran her fingers through the thick mat of curling hair on Eddie’s chest.
‘Oh, I don’t know –’ he leaned over the edge of the bed and rummaged through the pockets of his uniform until he found his cigarettes and matches – ‘there have been one or two other occasions I can think of.’
‘Eddie Powell!’ She picked up a pillow and hit him on the head with it. Then she looked around. ‘What’s that smell?’
‘Oh God, Auntie Megan’s stew.’ He shot out of bed and into the kitchen. Without stopping to switch on the light, he picked up the pan, dropping it almost immediately into the sink.
‘You clown, you’ve burnt your hands, haven’t you?’ Without waiting for an answer Jenny turned on the tap, grabbed his hands and pushed them under the running water. ‘There goes a week’s meat ration,’ she said as hissing water splashed back at them from the burning pan.
‘I have some money. Knowing Ponty, there has to be a black market. I’ll talk to the people in the slaughterhouse on Monday morning.’
‘I wish we could go away, if only for a few days.’ She clung to his naked back, running her hands down to his thighs.
‘I have to report back on Tuesday night.’
‘Eddie, that gives us no time!’
‘Forty-eight hours is normal, a pass like this, unheard of except in special circumstances.’
‘But we’re only just …’
‘Getting to know one another?’ He turned around and cupped her breasts with his wet hands. She stood there, trembling as his fingers roused her nipples while his eyes appraised every inch of her body. ‘Don’t you think I feel the same way?’ He slid his hands downwards between her thighs.
‘I hate this war.’ She pressed herself against him, kissing the back of his neck so he couldn’t read the unspoken question in her eyes. ‘What did you want to go and join up for?’
‘There’s a lot will agree with you on that. But if we go back to bed for ten minutes I’ll guarantee you’ll forget about the war.’
‘Promise?’ She stepped towards the door and switched off the light.
‘Why don’t you come and see?’
Dr John led Diana to a chair in the foyer of the hospital and made her sit down while he fetched his car.
‘Are you feeling ill?’ he asked, as he helped her down the steps, ‘or was it just the hard time our patient gave you?’
‘You were listening?’
‘The whole ward was. You know I’m not sure you gave yourself a chance to get over that concussion. A bang on the head can be quite a serious thing and my wife said you were back in the shop within three days of the accident.’
‘Someone had to run Wyn’s business.’
‘Better the place stay closed than you risk your health.’ He squinted at her through the darkness as he started the engine. ‘You haven’t been getting any headaches? Seeing flashes of lights that aren’t there?’
‘No.’
‘Nausea?’
‘I have been feeling sick lately,’ she admitted.
‘Just sick? No headaches?’ he repeated.
‘No headaches.’
‘If you don’t feel better soon, come and see me or Dr Evans in the surgery.’
‘I will, but it’s probably just running the shop for Wyn. I open it first thing in the morning and it has to be kept open until the interval in the second house of the cinema. By the time I get home it seems too late for tea.’
‘I’m not surprised, eating late at night is no good to you. Stays on the stomach and gives you nightmares. Can’t you get Myrtle Rees to take over to give you a meal break?’
‘I don’t like to bother her. She has Wyn’s father to look after.’
‘An hour out of the house would do her good, and it certainly wouldn’t harm Mr Rees. Do you want me to ask her for you?’
‘No, there’s no need, thank you, Dr John. I’ll ask her myself.’
‘Be sure you do, because I’ll be seeing her some time this week, and if you haven’t talked to her, I will. The last thing that boy in there needs is to start worrying about how he’s going to replace you if you fall ill.’
The only light in the bedroom was the glow of Eddie’s cigarette as it arced from his mouth to the ashtray on the floor. Jenny was asleep, her head on his shoulder, her arm tightly wrapped around his waist. Her naked body was warm, comforting and sensuous against his bare skin, but he couldn’t help thinking that nothing had changed. The sex between them had been bloody marvellous, it always had been. When it came to lovemaking Jenny always had been game for anything. He’d met French whores who were more inhibited. But then, there’d never been any shortage of girls willing to take their clothes off for him. He wanted more, much, much more from his wife.
Physically he knew Jenny: every curve of her body, the feel of her skin, the scent of her hair, the lilt in her voice, the way she smiled – in fact e
verything about her except her thoughts. Some of her letters had been too gushing, too glib as though she’d copied them from a book. He’d even dreamt up a title: ‘Letters to cheer a serving soldier’. The problem was he wanted to believe what she had written, that she was missing him, that she did love him, that there was a wonderful life waiting for them at the end of the war.
He felt for the packet of cigarettes on the bedside table and tipped them forward. Extracting one, he lit it one handed on the dog-end that still burned in his mouth. Exchanging them, he stubbed the spent cigarette in the ashtray and continued to smoke blindly, mechanically without enjoyment.
Two more days, and nights. Tuesday would be taken up with travelling back. Tomorrow he wanted to see his sister Bethan, and he’d promised William that he’d look up Tina and give her a letter from him, one that hadn’t been read by a censor. And he had to talk to his father and pretend that everything was fine, even when it wasn’t. His father had enough problems without worrying about him.
He’d been such a fool. Far better to have kept on courting Jenny. But his father had been right: blinded by lust and her sweet, willing body he couldn’t wait to marry her – God knows why when she was already sleeping with him. What was that saying Mrs Richards was so fond of? ‘Marry in haste, repent at leisure.’ Well, repenting was certainly what he was doing now. And three days was nowhere near long enough to put the whole world to rights.
‘Can’t you sleep, Eddie?’
‘I feel as though I’m still travelling.’
‘What’s France like?’
‘Flat.’
‘No mountains at all?’
‘Not where we are. You can stand in a field and see for miles, rivers, trees, houses …’
‘I’d like to see it.’
‘Perhaps you will when the war is over.’
‘Are the French girls as exciting as everyone says they are?’ Her fingers moved lightly downwards from his chest, teasing, tickling, tantalising.
‘We don’t see many.’
‘Everyone says they flock around the British boys.’
‘Perhaps I just don’t look,’ he lied.
‘I know you. The day won’t dawn when you stop looking.’
‘Or you. There’s enough men left in Ponty. And there’ll soon be more now they’ve started using conscripts in the mines.’
‘There’s only one man for me.’
‘Is there?’
She wished she could shout back at him, ‘How can you say that?’ but the past lay too heavily between them. Would it always be there? Would she end up with the same kind of silent, sterile marriage as her parents? ‘Eddie, if there’s any way to prove to you how much I love you, just tell me and I’ll do it. Anything you want.’
Squashing out his cigarette he turned and grabbed her head between his hands. Lowering his face to hers he kissed her. It was easier to make love to Jenny than try and talk to her, particularly when they had so little time left.
It was just getting light when Luke, dressed in the Sunday suit he had bought for ten shillings on the second-hand stall in the market, sneaked out of the house and walked to the end of Graig Avenue. He could see a small pale figure standing at the beginning of the mountain path at the end of the terrace. Gina, dressed in her Sunday-best outfit of grey coat and hat.
‘You made it?’
‘You thought I wouldn’t get up?’
‘You have to get up early every other day of the week. Most people like a lie-in on Sundays. Where does everyone think you are?’
‘I told them I was going for a walk.’
‘Then Alexander will think you’re seeing me?’
‘What if he does?’
‘I don’t mind Alexander knowing, as long as it doesn’t get back to my father.’ She set off down the rough track that led over to Treforest. ‘Papa wouldn’t approve of my being so friendly with a boy at my age. I tried telling him and Mama that I’m grown up now, but they wouldn’t listen. It’s so unfair. Particularly when I consider that Mama was married at my age, and Maud Powell was only sixteen when she married my older brother Ronnie.’
‘I think sixteen is old enough to know what you want from life.’
‘You agree with me?’
He slipped his hand shyly into hers.
‘I can feel the calluses on your hands through my gloves.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘What’s to be sorry about. It’s real work, man’s work. You should be proud of them.’ She grabbed his arm. Since the first night they’d met and he’d taken her home after Wyn’s accident, he’d walked her home every night; but the presence of her sister coupled with his shyness had kept him from doing more than holding her hand. He longed to kiss her, even at this unearthly hour of the morning, but uncertain how she’d react, he held back.
‘You could come to mass with me,’ Gina suggested.
‘I don’t think so,’ he murmured hesitantly.
‘Your father wouldn’t like it?’
‘From what little I know, I think your religion is at the opposite end of the spectrum to mine.’
‘Quakers believe in God, don’t they?’
‘Of course.’
‘And the saints?’
‘Not to worship.’
‘We don’t really worship them. But as they’re in heaven and closer to God than us, we light candles under their images when we want them to intercede for us.’
‘Intercede?’ He looked at her blankly.
‘We ask for their help when we want something.’
‘And what do you want?’
‘The war to end, so my brothers will come home and take over the cafés again so Tina and I can have the occasional night off.’ She looked up at him and smiled, ‘and the usual things every girl wants. A home, husband, children.’
‘This husband of yours? You have anyone in mind?’
‘Yes.’
‘I see.’
She stood in front of him. The sky had lightened to a cold grey, casting her in a silvery glow. He had never seen her looking so beautiful, or so remote. Standing on her toes she put her arms around his neck and kissed him, hurriedly and inexpertly. By the time he’d plucked up courage to put his arms around her, she had walked on. ‘That’s the first time I’ve ever kissed anyone.’
‘Me too,’ he confessed.
‘Have you had breakfast?’
‘No.’
‘Me neither. You’re not supposed to eat before mass. I could mitch off for once and cook us both breakfast in the café in High Street. Papa doesn’t open it on Sunday mornings.’
‘Won’t that get you into terrible trouble?’
‘Only if Papa finds out. You’re not going to tell him, are you?’
He shook his head.
‘Come on then. We can cut down here to Graig Street. Just duck if you see Laura looking out through her window. Not that she’d tell on me, but she wouldn’t half give me a lecture.’
Tina finished serving breakfast to a crew from the railway station in the Tumble café and returned to the counter. Trade hadn’t diminished since the advent of the war, but the amount the customers were prepared to spend had. Times were still hard, and more people called in for tea and biscuits and tea and bread and butter than cooked meals or breakfast. So much so, she was beginning to wonder if it was worth paying a cook’s wages every day. It had been different when Angelo had been doing the cooking. Family never took a full wage out of the business.
Business? She was actually thinking about business for the first time in her life. And she’d shouted at the staff in the Taff Street place she’d taken over from Laura. If she wasn’t careful she’d end up grumpy and miserable like Tony and Ronnie, and then no one would go near her.
Looking around to check no one needed her, or was likely to for a few minutes, she opened her handbag and slid out a bundle of letters tied in blue ribbon. Every one that Will had sent her since he had left. Twenty eight days, and twenty-eight envelopes. She opened the one
at the top of the pile, the one that had come second post yesterday. Hopefully there would be another waiting for her when she got home after midday mass.
She glanced up at the clock. Another two hours before she could reasonably expect Gina to take over from her. Opening the envelope she spread the letter on the counter and began to read.
Dear Tina,
Not my dear Tina, or Darling Tina! She always wrote ‘my dear William’ or ‘Darling’ hoping he’d take the hint, but he hadn’t so far.
I am well, I hope you are well.
He might have been writing to a maiden aunt.
As I wrote yesterday they are keeping us very busy. Nothing but square bashing and drills, so we will probably all be half the size we were, and worn out by the time they finish with us.
Not much has happened to write about. Tony perseveres with the cook. As I wrote to you, we play cards with him nearly every night, and he has lost so much money to us he’s paying us in kind. Last night it was three bacon sandwiches. The bacon was destined for the officers’ mess, so it was really good. We are hoping to have a pass to go into the nearest town this weekend. Angelo is trying to find himself a girl, although Tony and I have warned him no girl is going to look twice at him. You should see him in his short back and sides military haircut. And he hasn’t learnt to wear his uniform properly, but at least he has learnt to polish his buttons without getting polish all over his tunic. Two weeks to go and we should get embarkation leave. I must go now, there’s another card game starting and Tony and Angelo (and me) are hoping for more sandwiches.
Best wishes
William
‘Miss! Miss!’
She looked up from the page.
‘Any chance of two teas and two slices of bread pudding?’
‘Milk and sugar in the teas?’ she asked.
‘Yes, please.’
She set about serving the man and his wife, all the while thinking of William and the letters he wrote. How could a man kiss a woman the way he had her before he’d left, and then write a letter so totally bereft of emotion? She carried the teas and the thick glutinous slices of pudding to the table and returned to the counter. Folding the letter she stuffed it back into the envelope. Not even a cross at the foot of the page to denote a kiss. Not a single mention of love from beginning to end. Where did that leave her? Or him? Had he taken up with a camp follower? Was it only Angelo and Tony who were out looking for girls? Or had he joined them? Only four weeks ago they’d got engaged and it already felt like four years since she’d seen him.
Pontypridd 05 - Such Sweet Sorrow Page 26