Rosie Thomas 3-Book Collection

by Rosie Thomas

  One, to find somewhere cheap to live. Gwyn’s money wouldn’t last long at this rate.

  Two, to find a job. For the same reason.

  Tomorrow she would buy newspapers and read the classifieds. She could look at the cards in newsagents’ windows, too, if such homely things existed here. Angharad stretched out on the bed, hearing the roar of traffic out in the Earl’s Court Road through the wedged-shut window as if it was in the room with her. The noise pursued her into her dreams when at last she fell asleep.

  Angharad worked hard at her objectives. She ran through the advertisements for rooms in the early edition of the Evening Standard, and stood in a grimy booth at the tube station with a pile of change ready to make her calls. Quickly she discovered that most of the ads were placed by accommodation agencies, and began a wearying round of registering with them. The tube journeys and the walks to and fro were endless and yielded nothing. The few cards in newsagents’ windows offered nothing but French lessons.

  The search for a home took five days, interrupted by a wet Sunday when she sat for hours in her family room and fought to keep the despair at bay. Images of Harry kept coming cruelly back to her, lying with his face close to hers or laughing across the table at Heulfryn. The pain they brought was physical, doubling her up like savage cramps.

  Angharad felt continually sick and her instinct was to stop eating to save money. But for the baby’s sake she forced herself to drink pints of milk, and carefully reckoned up the valuable calories in bread, cheese and apples. She knew that she was physically strong, but she would risk nothing.

  Then, on the sixth day, she found something. The room was on the first floor front of a tall, peeling stucco house not far from her hotel. It had been carved with hardwood partitions from a once-grand drawing-room. Half of an intricate and beautiful plaster cornice decorated the distant ceiling. The little room was higher than it was long, and was just wide enough to take a narrow bed beside the door. But the walls were freshly white-painted, and the tall, graceful window at the end made it airy and light. There was a spartan bathroom across the linoleum landing, and a kitchen cubby-hole, both to be shared with the other occupants of the floor.

  ‘Four pounds ten a week,’ the landlady said, looking not unkindly at her. ‘Young ladies only. I live in the basement, and I stand no nonsense. But if you need anything, I’ll help if I can.’

  Angharad believed her. ‘I’ll take it,’ she said, and paid her deposit and two weeks’ rent in advance. Her reserves of cash were dwindling with frightening speed.

  Finding a job was even more difficult. There were advertisements for catering jobs, but nearly all for kitchen porters or washers-up. It might yet come to that, Angharad thought grimly, remembering Old Lil at the sink in her wellingtons, but not just yet. She bought the trade papers and ringed the possible vacancies. Yet again and again her lack of experience and qualifications eliminated her before even the first round.

  She went for one interview, for a job in the kitchens of a big restaurant chain near Leicester Square, but it was first thing in the morning and the sight of the huge, cylindrical metal bins overflowing with potato peelings and scraps of congealed food made her feel so ill that she had almost to run away.

  Two weeks passed, and Angharad felt the tide of panic rising. She had almost resolved to give up the stupid pursuit of a cook’s job. It was absurd and illogical to want one so much when even the sight of food made her feel sick. Surely she could be something else? A filing clerk, or a telephonist? Yet she promised herself over and over again ‘just one more day’, and went on scanning the catering columns with stubborn hope.

  One morning she found herself in the Fulham Road. It was a bright day at the very beginning of October, and the plane trees were showing a mixture of yellow and ochre with the dusty green. Angharad’s attention had been caught by a restaurant frontage, and she had stopped to look at it because it was so pretty.

  It was painted white, and the pavement was shaded with a scalloped green awning. Two round-clipped bay trees stood in terracotta pots on either side of a white front door with winking brass plates. ‘Duff’s’ was painted in big white letters on the wide window, and the window boxes underneath it were full of late scarlet geraniums. A very young waiter in a white jacket was sweeping the step. He looked carefully to see that not a speck of dust remained, and saw Angharad. He smiled at her, and she noticed that he was very dark, probably Italian, with even white teeth.

  Without giving herself time to think, she stepped up to him. ‘I suppose,’ she said diffidently, ‘they don’t need an extra kitchen hand in there?’

  The waiter looked at her again. It was so long since she had thought about herself in relation to new people that she was astonished to see admiration kindle in his black eyes.

  ‘Who knows?’ He shrugged easily and jerked his thumb over his shoulder. ‘You could try asking chef. Through the restaurant and past the double doors at the back.’ He watched her go, twirling his broom and with his lips pursed in a whistle.

  Angharad went inside. The room was lofty and cool. The floor was white terrazzo tiles, and there were baskets of lush ferns in the corners and hanging from the ceiling. Another waiter was laying up the wide-spaced tables for lunch, white starched cloths over green ones.

  Angharad nodded at him and marched determinedly past. The swing doors into the kitchen were sparkling white too. She pushed them open and found herself in a wide tiled space hung with scoured pans. A man in a spotless starched toque, white apron and chef’s trousers was standing at a scrubbed table, slicing raw steak into melting pink curls.

  ‘Oui?’

  Angharad licked her lips. Her heart was thumping because this was, suddenly, so very important.

  ‘I’m looking for a job. Commis chef, actually. I’m quite experienced. I’ve worked in a restaurant in Wales, completely responsible …’ She exaggerated, but carefully. The chef listened with Gallic scepticism.

  ‘Mmm. And where did you train?’

  ‘Well, actually I haven’t …’ No good after all. But the swing doors behind them opened and someone came in. The chef put down his long, sharp knife and straightened his apron. Angharad looked, and saw a very tall young man in a dark suit. He had a pink, healthy face, short-cropped curling fair hair and a deeply-cleft chin.

  ‘What’s this, Pierre?’

  ‘A young lady looking for a job. This,’ he said to Angharad, ‘is Mister Duff.’

  The proprietor prowled round the table looking at her. He had very keen pale blue eyes. ‘Well now. What can you do?’

  Angharad started off again, but he cut her short. ‘Tell me this. We’ve got a box of fine apples here, and we need a pudding for today, let’s say. You know our menu, presumably, or you wouldn’t waltz in here out of the blue to ask for a job. So, what will you make for us?’

  Angharad’s heart sank. Too clearly, there would be no hoodwinking Mr Duff. Frantically she pieced together a picture of a restaurant. Slick, but not pretentious. Young, prosperous clientele, like the owner himself. Healthy, with no taste for over-ornate food.

  ‘Tarte aux pommes,’ she said firmly. ‘Simple pâte sucrée, apples sliced and poached in butter and sugar with a hint of vanilla. No glaze, just the pan juices swirled with a little calvados. Served hot. Cream, if they insist.’

  Mr Duff laughed merrily. ‘You pinched all that from Mrs David. But it’s not a bad answer. Go on, then.’

  Angharad stared but he nodded amiably at the marble pastry slab. ‘Pierre will give you what you need. Or, wait. Tell me first how many tarts you’d make. Forty-five covers for lunch.’

  She was home at last. A summer of buying for Y Gegin Fach had made her confident of that. She reckoned quickly, and told him.

  ‘Good. But one will do for now.’

  Angharad set to work, and Mr Duff sat on a tall kitchen stool munching cheerfully at one of the apples. Pierre went quietly on with his work, but she knew that he was watching her too as she dripped in the iced water
, moulded the pastry with quick, light fingertips, remembering Mrs Price at Y Gegin Fach. That seemed half a lifetime ago now. She left the pastry to rest while she prepared the apples. Soon the delicious buttery smell filled the kitchen. Angharad dared not let herself hope, but she wanted to work at Duff’s.

  While the pie was in the oven, Mr Duff said lightly, ‘Are you honest?’

  Angharad looked straight into the sharp blue eyes and said, ‘Yes, of course.’

  ‘Our last commis wasn’t. You look the very opposite of him. What’s your name?’

  She told them, and added. ‘It’s Welsh. I’ve just come to London, from Wales.’ At once she saw the shrewd, appraising flicker in Mr Duff’s face, and shrank from it. She didn’t want him to know anything about her beyond the fact that she could cook.

  All he said was, ‘Good Lord. I can’t cope with that, and I’m certain Pierre can’t either. May we call you Anne?’ He held out his large hand. ‘I’m Jamie Duff. I’m a lawyer, but my heart is in my stomach. Hence Duff’s.’ He waved, with distinct pride, around the orderly kitchen.

  When the pie was ready, the restaurateur and his chef broke off a chunk of the crust apiece. Mr Duff held open the door into the restaurant courteously and said, ‘Shan’t keep you long.’

  Angharad waited in the cool green and white space with her heart thumping painfully. If she couldn’t work here, she didn’t want to work anywhere else. Please, she whispered silently.

  When Mr Duff pushed the door open again, he was smiling.

  ‘Pierre says that it is most irregular, and I have to agree with him. But I’ve got one of my hunches, and he knows what that means. When can you start?’

  ‘At once.’

  ‘Fine. Twelve pounds a week, and a month’s trial. More money after that, if you prove to be worth it. You work to Pierre, and do just as he tells you.’ Then, with another smile and a nod, Jamie Duff was on his way.

  Angharad felt herself shaking with relief. Pierre was looking warily at her and she took a deep breath. It would be best, now that the job was hers, to be as honest as she could.

  ‘I’m not trained. But I can …’

  Pierre interrupted her, but not unkindly. ‘I can see zat. You are a cook, not a chef. But, you have a certain touch. You can be sure that I will not give you anything to do until I am convinced you are capable of it. Make yourself ready, therefore, for a good deal of vegetable preparation. Starting at ten a.m. sharp tomorrow, if you please.’

  Angharad nodded meekly.

  ‘At least,’ the chef went on drily, ‘I don’t think you will be slipping the steak fillet into your handbag.’

  They looked at each other, and exchanged the first ghost of a smile. Pierre would be a hard taskmaster. She would have to work, and watch, and learn everything she could to satisfy him. And she could do that, she thought, with a flutter of nearly forgotten hope. I’m sure I can.

  Almost light-heartedly, Angharad went back to her bare room. She sat down at the table under the pretty window and wrote to Gwyn.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ she wrote. ‘I have found a room, tiny but light and clean, for only four pounds ten a week. And even better, I have a job, a real job, in a smart little restaurant under a French chef. I will be learning all the time, just think, and getting paid as well. Twelve pounds a week, to start with. I can live on that, I should think. As soon as I have my first pay-packet, I will send you back all your money that I have left. It will take me a little while to repay the rest, but I will do it.’

  That much was easy. Angharad bit her pen and stared out at the teeming houses opposite. The rest was much harder. At last she scribbled the words in a rush. ‘Is Dad all right? What did he say? I wish I had said goodbye instead of just running away like a coward. I wish I could tell him how much I love him, and how sorry I am for all of it, everything, including whatever happened years ago to hurt him so much. Please tell him I miss him. And that if he wants me, I’ll come back somehow. Don’t worry about me, Aunty Gwyn. I can do whatever I have to, for the baby’s sake. You know I love you too, and how grateful I am.’

  Angharad printed her address carefully and walked to the end of the road to post her letter. She let go of the white corner of it reluctantly, thinking that in just a few hours it would reach Cefn.

  There was not a word of Harry in it, although she had felt the wild questions dinning in her head as she wrote. Please, have you seen him? Is there a letter for me, anything?

  The thought of him, or rather the continuous ache of his absence, was with her every waking moment and his face was the recurring image of her dreams. He was still so close and vividly real to her, so much more true and real than anything else, that she couldn’t believe he wouldn’t appear, at her door, on the next street corner, or staring at her from the crowded opposite platform of the station.

  Then she would remember her last glimpse of him. Black with anger, hounded by guilt and dread. He wouldn’t ever come back. How could he, after that? Angharad would often see Laura’s face too, and reflect sadly that she couldn’t even assuage herself with hating her. Laura had been too long and too closely her friend. She found herself missing her, and sadness at the lost friendship added to her isolation.

  At ten sharp the next morning Angharad presented herself at Duff’s. Pierre greeted her formally, and introduced her to the other kitchen staff. Later the manager came in in his black jacket and shook her hand. Mario, the young waiter she had met on the front step, winked at her from behind the sommelier’s rigid back, and she half-smiled in spite of herself. Duff’s was impeccably run, but there was a courteous, considerate feel about it that warmed her too.

  As she began her first task, cleaning the day’s vegetables brought back by Pierre from the Covent Garden market, Gwyn was holding her letter up to the light of the schoolroom window.

  She read it through twice and then folded it back into its creases with a sigh. She had no good news to relay to Angharad. William had surprised and shocked her with his bitter rigidity. Gwyn had told him gently that Angharad had gone to London for a while, to find a job, and he had whirled round at her with his face white and deep, frightening lines etched from his nostrils to the corners of his mouth.

  ‘Waste,’ he had hissed at her. ‘A waste of everything she has done and learned. She’s no good, Gwyn. I don’t want to hear any more.’

  And he turned away again, with bowed shoulders. Gwyn had been unable to find the courage to tell him about Angharad’s child. Harry Cotton’s child.

  Gwyn turned the folded piece of paper around in her fingers. No mention of the boy in it. What had Angharad said?

  I can’t see him again. Ever.

  If only, Gwyn thought, it was possible to know whether she meant what she said. That would provide the answer to the impossible dilemma Gwyn found herself in.

  Harry had come two days after Angharad’s departure. Gwyn had opened the schoolhouse door to the insistent knocking and Harry confronted her, one hand still raised. Gwyn saw the light in his eyes and stepped back from him.

  ‘Where is she?’ Harry had asked.

  Gwyn would have closed the door if she could, but Harry was already past her and pacing her little parlour like a caged animal.

  ‘Gone,’ she told him coldly. ‘I don’t know where to.’

  It was almost the truth. She had no address yet, and no idea where to reach Angharad.

  ‘How was she?’

  Gwyn forced herself to look at him, pushing back the weight of dislike and the memories that flooded back to her.

  This, then, was Joe Cotton’s son. Their physical likeness seemed so startling that Gwyn had to remind herself that this was only the son, not the father she had hated since the day of Angharad’s birth.

  ‘Please, how was she?’ Harry repeated. Gwyn blinked, and suddenly it was an anxious boy standing in front of her, not Joe Cotton at all. There was none of Joe’s coarseness and brutality here. Harry was strikingly handsome, with the ascetic features of a saint in a stained g
lass window. Except, of course, that Harry Cotton had proved himself to be no ascetic. The Cottons, father and son. Wrecking and maiming all over again. Hatred, hot and powerful, surged through Gwyn.

  ‘How was she?’ she repeated. ‘More or less as you would expect. Or rather braver, perhaps.’ Gwyn saw the pain in Harry’s eyes. Yes, she thought. Not just for what you’ve done to my Angharad, but for all that your family has done to mine.

  ‘I want to find her, Miss Owain. Will you help me?’

  To hurt her again? Gwyn thought. Why should you be any different from your father?

  ‘No,’ she said, with brutal finality. ‘I don’t think she wants to be found. She told me, “I can’t see him again. Ever”.’

  Harry’s hands clenched, and then opened to hang loosely at his side. For a moment he looked as if Gwyn had struck him, but he quickly recovered his defiance.

  ‘Well, I shall try to find her anyway. Does her father know where she has gone?’

  ‘He doesn’t. And I wouldn’t advise you to try asking.’

  ‘I’m not afraid to.’

  The blue eyes holding hers were very clear and unwavering. Of course you’re not afraid, Gwyn thought. Whatever your faults are, I’m sure fear isn’t among them.

  Harry turned to go, but at the door he faced her again. ‘If … if there’s any message for me from her, will you see that it gets to me?’

  Gwyn thought for a long moment, struggling against her instincts. She longed for Harry simply to go, to disappear out of Angharad’s life and leave her niece in safety. But if Angharad wanted or needed Harry Cotton, however much Gwyn mistrusted him, then that was different. She made her decision.