The rainbow colours of the wedding group had separated and spread their brightness among the crowd. Uncle Ben was there in a greasy waistcoat with his wife. Maggie’s hat had a hint of mildew around the brim. Johnny Fowler’s wife was overdressed but making friends wherever she went, her suit conspicuously like a man’s suit, cut and refashioned.
‘It’s exactly what was needed to show that war is really done and we can go back to enjoying ourselves,’ Cecily said. ‘Gareth, love, you know how sorry we are about Rhonwen. But we’re so glad you survived to come home safe and sound.’
As the wedding party returned to the cars to be transported to Bertie’s hotel for the wedding breakfast, Cecily and Ada held back. Gareth tried to usher them into one of the waiting cars but Cecily shook her head.
‘No, I won’t be going. I have to get back to Peter. I’m never happy leaving him when he’s like this.’
‘We’ll all come back with you and show him our finery.’ Marged appeared at Gareth’s side with a young man she introduced as ‘Martin, my husband’.
In the bustle of hurried introductions, Cecily saw only a pair of laughing eyes in a bearded face before being pulled away.
‘Come on, let’s walk,’ Gareth said. ‘They’ll catch up with us later. You all right to walk, Mam?’ he asked.
So they stood and watched as the guests departed in the procession of cars and the well-wishers, the gossips and the downright nosy had moved away, until they were the only ones left. Then they began to walk down the steep hill towards the town centre.
‘We should have ordered a taxi,’ Cecily said, looking back at Mrs Price-Jones in her ancient fur and the black dress beneath it. She looked cold.
‘Not for me,’ the old lady insisted. ‘I needed some fresh air. God help us, the smell of mothballs nearly did for me! Everyone must have dressed from trunks in their attics!’ The laughter was needed and the small group strolled on home.
‘Will you come in and see Peter, and stay for a bite to eat?’ Ada suggested. ‘We’ve got a small tin of salmon we’ve been hoarding this ages.’
The chattering party pushed through the shop door, the bell tinkling its welcome, and Cecily called to Peter. She stopped while they put their coats over the counters and was surprised when Peter didn’t appear in the doorway to greet them. She called again. ‘Peter, my love, we’re back and it was beautiful. You should have ….’ She stopped, hands to her face as she saw Peter on the floor. He was unconscious, his face red and shiny, his breathing shallow, hardly visible.
Gareth ran in and knelt beside Cecily briefly, then shouted, ‘Ambulance! Quickly!’
Cecily lay beside her husband telling him how much she loved him while they waited for the ambulance to arrive.
He didn’t regain consciousness in the ambulance or the hospital. He died with Cecily whispering to him, holding his hand, at four the following morning.
There were lights showing at the shop when she stepped out of the taxi and, to her surprise, Gareth and his mother were still there with Ada. Mrs Price-Jones it was who handed her a cup of tea to which brandy had been added, and she drank gratefully. Then, for the rest of that terrible day, she talked.
She talked about how she shouldn’t have gone to the wedding, how it seemed that Van had ill-wished her, from the moment she had learned about her illegitimacy, of how it was Ada’s fault for not having her crazy husband taken away sooner.
They all let her talk, accepting the accusations, and when she fell asleep it was Gareth who carried her upstairs and put her fully dressed into bed. It was Gareth who took away Peter’s pyjamas, which had been placed, waiting for him, on his pillow.
Gareth’s mother’s reaction was a revelation. She had always been such a difficult lady, keeping her son close and refusing to allow him to make decisions or friends of his own, but today she had been concerned, helpful and filled with pity for Cecily in her grief. Ada wondered whether it was the gentle persuasions of their cousin, Rhonwen, who for a while had been her daughter-in-law that had changed her into the kinder person she now was.
Grief hit Cecily anew when she woke and memory returned. The realization of what had happened slowly filled her mind. She relived the previous day, seeing herself walking away from Peter, laughing and joking, to face the embarrassment of seeing her daughter married, and knowing Van hadn’t invited her, didn’t want her there. The beautiful wedding, the walk home, no haste. Then the moment when she walked in to tell Peter all about it, and all that had followed.
She stayed in bed, not moving, just staring at the ceiling and trying to pretend it hadn’t happened. Her hand strayed across the cold sheets to search for his warmth and when he was not there she began to cry, a wailing cry, calling his name, pleading for him to come back to her.
The day was a nightmare, with people calling to offer their condolences from all parts of the town. The people who worked at the beach came and dozens of customers from his garage and workshop. People for whom he had done work and refused payment came for a final farewell. Uncle Ben and Auntie Maggie called briefly, quoted what they hoped were comforting words from hymns, sang a line or two and departed after promising to sing at the funeral.
Other members of the family came too including Johnny Fowler and his family, and finally, in the middle of the afternoon, when Cecily had given up hope of them appearing, Van and Edwin, who had cancelled their honeymoon to stay for the funeral. Van was pale and subdued and said little as she stood beside Edwin. They didn’t stay long and Cecily could see that Van was anxious to leave.
Later that day Van managed to slip away from Edwin to catch the Cardiff train. Gran had to be told.
Edwin saw her leave, wondering, not for the first time, where his wife went on such occasions. This time he determined to find out. What or who could be so important that on the day following their wedding and the death of her stepfather she had to leave the family and go?
She made no attempt to check she was not being followed and as she stepped onto the train, she didn’t see Edwin get into the final carriage. The corridor led no further so he felt it unlikely she would see him. Keeping her in sight as she walked swiftly out of the station was no problem either. She led him along bomb-damaged streets to the poorer area where, at a house shored up on one side where a landmine had demolished the rest of the row, she stopped. It wasn’t until Kitty Owen answered the door that he stepped forward and confronted her.
‘Van! How long have you known where Auntie Kitty lives?’ he demanded. He was unaware of the startled shout from the lady he had called Auntie all his life.
‘You’d better come inside,’ Van replied quietly.
Edwin’s anger frightened her. She had rarely heard him raise his voice and now he was marching up and down the small room, threatening to crack the weakened walls with his rage.
‘How could you, Van? What has she been telling you?’ he demanded of Kitty, who sat as far into an armchair as she could squeeze, wondering how the quiet boy she remembered had turned into this outraged man.
‘Only what I’d guessed,’ she said, ‘that Cecily and Ada haven’t forgiven me and wouldn’t welcome me back into their lives.’
Edwin turned again to Van, bending his powerful body in an arch so he could stare into her face and allow the full vent of his anger to show. ‘I see. You decided that for them, did you? Well I can tell you, Auntie Kitty, that Van was the one to invent such unforgiveness. Van’s mother is not the sort to harbour grudges and resentment against anyone for years on end. Only her daughter is capable of that!’
Kitty scuttled out to the dilapidated back kitchen to make tea and allow Edwin’s anger to subside. She was confused. What if Van had exaggerated Cecily and Ada’s resentment? Did it mean she might see them again? Her hands shook as she filled the kettle from the solitary tap on a stand pipe against the outside wall. When she went back into the room, Edwin was still glowering at Van, who sat, shaking, on a chair.
‘I’ve made Van promise to end this disgracefu
l situation, Auntie Kitty, and face up to her lies before the year is out.’
‘Thank you, Edwin,’ Kitty said tearfully. The inadequate remark was all she could manage.
‘You’ve lived here all alone since Paul and his father died?’
‘I manage all right,’ she said, as he looked around the damaged walls and the cracked window pane.
Before they left, Edwin promised to start enquiries about getting the dangerously weakened house repaired or for Kitty to be rehoused. ‘Something Van should have done,’ he reminded his still-shocked wife.
‘Thank you, Edwin,’ Kitty said again.
He was silent on the return journey but before he went into the house he held her firmly and told her she had to tell her mother what she had been doing. ‘You have to face your devils, Van, or you’ll never be free of them.’
‘I can’t.’
‘You have to,’ was his final word.
Peter’s funeral had been almost as large as Waldo’s. It had held up the traffic, for it seemed half the town was there to pay their respects to the quiet, kindly man. A number of people came back after the service and crowded into the room above the shop for refreshments. When all but the interested parties had gone, Mr Grainger, now in his eighties, began to explain the bequests in Peter’s will.
He began by telling them that the money in his account, after everything was settled, was for his darling wife who had made him so very happy. Next was the house, which he had rented to Johnny and Sharon. ‘The house is to go to Cecily, but with the hope that she will allow the Fowlers to remain there for as long as they wish.’
‘Of course,’ Cecily agreed at once. She smiled at Johnny, who showed his relief by returning her smile.
‘The garage is to be shared ownership,’ Mr Grainger went on. ‘Peter wishes that you, Cecily, and Johnny Fowler share that responsibility. He believes that Johnny’s enthusiasm and your sound business sense will be a perfect partnership.’
Cecily blew a kiss at Johnny. ‘I’m so glad Peter thought of that. It’s what I’d want anyway.’
‘The cafe at the Pleasure Beach is for Cecily in the hope she will keep it and spend a few afternoons there during the summer and enjoy being a part of the happy season.’
The rest of the will contained little of interest, except a sum of money for Willie and Annette. His gold watch was also for Willie, to replace the one he had ‘lost’ during Phil’s house-breaking period.
‘For young Victor after your time,’ Cecily suggested.
‘He’ll treasure it as much as I will.’
‘Clever Peter,’ Ada commented when the others had all gone.
‘Clever?’
‘You’ve enough money to live on comfortably without bothering with the shop, or anything else for that matter. But he tied you up learning to run a garage and taking over the cafe at the beach.’
‘He certainly didn’t intend me to be idle.’
‘He knew how much you relish a challenge. You could never settle down to doing “good works” and living an aimless life. No, he knew you really well, your Peter.’
Chapter Fourteen
DURING THE WEEKS following Peter’s death, Cecily was kept very busy, as Peter had intended. She spent a lot of time with Johnny at the garage and examining the books of the small, seasonal cafe that had been Peter’s hobby rather than a real part of his income. As always, she quickly grasped the main points of each business and was able to pick out areas where improvements could be made. She called on cafe owners and listened to them, absorbing everything of value while appearing to chat aimlessly about the seasonal occupation.
Between visits to her new businesses, she cleaned the shop. It was therapy rather than necessity but she scrubbed the shelves and cleaned out cupboards using a large bar of Sunlight soap and some scouring powder to bleach the wooden boards. She washed walls and polished windows and treated the marble slabs until they looked new. She even whitewashed the stables, where Jack Simmons still kept his horse, Whizzer, and the brightly painted cart.
Jack’s shop was thriving. As men returned from the forces and wives began to improve homes in which there had been few changes over the war years, furniture was sold to Jack and replaced by utility furniture as it became available, although it was rationed like so many other commodities. The discarded pieces were eagerly taken by young couples starting out. Tables, chairs, benches and stools as well as buckets and bowls and galvanized washing baths, were taken by Jack for a few pence, cleaned up and sold to new and grateful owners.
With his horse and cart, Jack went out each morning and returned to open his shop in the afternoons but soon found it worthwhile to take on a young boy to help, and it was David – the red-headed boy who had worked for Cecily and Ada until told to leave when Danny’s divorce was being discussed – who turned up one Monday morning, full of enthusiasm for the fascinating trade. At times the shop was crammed full of assorted stock, then it would gradually empty. Then Jack would extend his rounds to refill it, buying anything on which he could turn a profit, not resting until it was barely possible to find a path through the clutter to the rooms above, where he lived.
Every afternoon at four, he came in and had a cup of tea with the sisters. He put a notice in his window which read ‘Dave is here but I’m next door having a cuppa’ which made his customers smile as they searched among his eclectic displays for a bargain.
One afternoon, he invited Cecily to see what he had done with the rooms above the shop. He pushed back chairs and sofas and tall bookcases, boxes of saucepans and kitchen paraphernalia to make a path for her through the shop and led her up the stairs, now boasting a thick, only slightly worn carpet, and into his living room.
Cecily was surprised. The room was attractively furnished in good quality items. Not too much, and with every piece set to show to advantage. The windows were draped with velvet, deep red like the carpet and a perfect setting for the seven-piece suite. This consisted of four dining chairs, two armchairs and a chaise longue, all upholstered in rich dark leather.
The room looked out over the docks, the view enhanced by the demolition of several buildings that had blocked the shop in. The dining table was standing near the large window so diners could look out and catch a glimpse of the distant sea.
The bedroom had curtains of green, and a deep fluffy eiderdown and bedspread adorned the double bed. Here too there was an air of opulence Cecily hadn’t expected from the man whom she had once refused to employ as an errand boy after he’d been in a fight with Willie.
She praised him fulsomely and admired his excellent taste.
‘It’s for the wife and my kids, when I find them,’ he said. ‘Poor we was, see. But Sally, she always loved a bit of “posh” she did.’
‘You haven’t had any luck tracing her?’
‘Not really – only a few false trails that led nowhere. There’s a possibility that she remarried, see, her not knowing I was still alive, so I don’t even know her name. Can’t blame her, like. She won’t be the only one caught in a mess like that. But the Citizens Advice Bureau and the Salvation Army are looking. I know she’ll come back to me, her proper husband, when I finds her.’
He shook off the serious discussion and went into the small kitchen where a rather old gas stove had been installed, and turned up the jet under a hand-painted, enamel kettle. There was a teapot to match and he set cups and saucers on the table and asked, ‘You’ll stay for a cuppa and a cwlff?’ He cut a thick slice from the loaf and offered a two pound jar of damson jam, telling her to ‘dig in’. The furnishings were elegant but there was no false image of grandeur about Jack.
‘You’ve done marvellously well here,’ she began but gave up politeness to concentrate on the food. She spread jam thickly on the cwlff and ate with lack of etiquette, biting into the huge, overloaded slice as he did, without cutting it, the jam sliding off and being licked into shape with their tongues, like hungry children.
She and Ada sorted out a number of unwant
ed items and gave them to Jack, insisting they were gifts, and refusing payment. The treadle sewing machine Ada offered to Sharon who accepted it with delight. They also gave a number of ornaments and cushions and books to a fund collecting to give the little extras to people who had been bombed out and needed the smaller items to help make their houses into homes.
They were sorting out a few things their mother had left behind, when Van called.
‘I still miss Mam,’ Cecily said, fingering one of her dresses that should have been discarded years before.
‘So do I,’ Ada agreed. ‘When something worries me, I long for her to come, talk to me, promise everything will be all right.’
‘She’d have helped when Phil was ill, and when Peter died,’ Cecily added.
‘Rubbish, you never need anyone. Too self-contained you are, everyone knows that.’
Startled by the vehemence in Van’s voice, they stared at her.
‘You won’t remember her,’ Ada said. ‘She was someone we could talk to about anything and everything and she always understood.’
‘She’d make problems go away.’
‘Stop pretending!’ Van stormed out, slamming the shop door and making the bell jangle angrily. Do they know? she wondered. Are they trying to make me feel guilty?
But if they had found out about her visits to Nan they would tell her straightaway, not play games. She hoped that was so, she still needed the secret, she needed to be able to smile and tell herself she had Nan for herself.
The shop was still very quiet. With the stocks having been allowed to run down, it was very difficult to find things to sell, but slowly the customers came back.
‘Once summer comes bringing visitors to the town, then we’ll see a difference,’ Ada said, but Cecily didn’t expect it to be that easy.
Paint on the Smiles Page 26