Valley in Bloom

by Valley in Bloom (retail) (epub)

  Police Constable Harris was sitting at one of the tables and, although he had glanced at her, he had not recognised in the smartly-dressed lady with the expensively cut hair, the drab, untidy woman he knew as Hilda Evans. Her dark eyes stared at him and for a moment or two made him squirm uneasily. She chuckled as she called his name and watched the sudden realisation dawn in his eyes.

  ‘Surprising what a bit of a trim will do, isn’t it?’ she laughed, patting her short, dark hair with a coyness that, days ago, would have made her look ridiculous.

  ‘Mrs Evans. I… well you do look nice. Getting ready to visit Griff?’ he asked in a hoarse whisper.

  ‘No, I’m off to the pictures. Pity to waste all this on Griff, isn’t it?’

  Constable Harris began to squirm again. For a moment he thought she was going to ask him to go with her! There was a look in her eye that made him wish he’d gone to the pub instead of coming for a quiet cup of tea. He stood up, leaving his unfinished cake and half of his tea.

  ‘Got to be off, Mrs Evans, I’m meeting someone. Got to go.’ He sidled out from behind his table, paid for his snack, and left.

  Hilda laughed. This was fun. You could almost see the release of steam as he sighed with relief to be away from her. Hilda Evans, femme fatale! The power of it made her laugh out loud and a waitress came across to see if everything was all right.

  ‘The tea could be hotter,’ said the new Hilda. She was gratified with the speed at which her complaint was rectified.

  * * *

  The bus slowed as it reached the beginning of the village and Johnny Cartwright swung from the platform and ran alongside the vehicle for a few paces to keep his balance. He called ‘Da bo’, and waved goodbye to the conductor and turned to cross the road. Walking towards Sheepy Lane he hesitated and looked left, wondering whether to call on his mother who lived in the row of cottages past the school, but decided against. He wanted to be home before Fay, to have a meal ready so she could eat and then rest. Her pregnancy hadn’t reduced her capacity for work and he worried about her.

  Fay sold hats to shops over a large area of South Wales and was often out of the house for twelve-hour stretches, when her visits took her to Breconshire or down to Pembrokeshire. Today she was working closer to home and he thought she would be home about six o’clock. Time, he thought, to get a couple of pork chops in the oven with a bit of stuffing and a few roast potatoes.

  He hurried up the hill, his movements quick, his face holding the usual excitement at seeing her. She was so lovely that every day he blessed his luck in winning her. He was never completely sure that Fay was his. His love for her was still an unbelievable dream come true. At the slightest hint that she was less than content he felt the beginning of a cold, creeping fear. Now there was a baby on the way he thought he would never ask for anything more. The baby would mean she would be there every time he entered the house, a luxury he had dreamed of but never really thought would come true.

  Johnny was a small man with dark straight hair and smiling brown eyes and there was about him the bounce of youth. There was also an air of strength and power; a hint that the aura of amiability he habitually wore could be quickly dispersed if the need arose. He liked everyone, except Prue Beynon whom he had christened ‘Nosy-Bugger Beynon’. His face was that of a boy and even the moustache he grew in the hope of adding a few years didn’t hide his youthfulness. To his chagrin at twenty-five he looked little more than eighteen.

  He walked up the hill, an overcoat and a thick woollen scarf hiding the uniform that showed his job to be a bus driver, and almost ran the last few yards, so anxious was he to look down the close to see if by any good fortune Fay was home before him. The car wasn’t there and, with his initial disappointment smothered, he hurried on and let himself into the neat, rather sparsely furnished house and began to prepare the meal.

  At six o’clock he heard the car and opened the door to great her. She smiled and his heart turned over.

  ‘Hello, Johnny, what’s that I smell cooking?’

  ‘Enough to feed the pair of you my lovely. Duw Annwyl, you’re cold,’ he gasped as he kissed her. ‘Come on in by the fire. It’s been on for a while so the room’s warm.’

  Fay allowed him to fuss over her and she ate the meal he had prepared with real appreciation. It was after they had washed the dishes and were sitting sipping the cup of coffee that Johnny insisted he made with milk, that she brought the conversation around to the one flaw in Johnny’s happiness.

  ‘Darling, I’ve been talking to my manager, about my plans for when the baby arrives.’

  ‘You’re leaving work! There’s glad I am. It’s too much, all this driving around and carrying boxes in and out of shops, and the evenings filling in your books. Next week, is it?’

  ‘Johnny, I want to go back to work as soon as I’ve had the baby.’

  ‘Fay, you can’t mean it. We’ve discussed it and you agreed.’

  ‘I love my job and I can’t see me sitting around making goo-goo noises day after day. It really isn’t me.’

  ‘Fay, don’t you think—’

  ‘Let me finish, Johnny. You never let me finish. I didn’t want this baby and for a while I was sorry it had happened, but not because I don’t want to have your child, it’s the thought of giving up work. We need the money apart from everything else. I’d hate to have to “manage” as your mam’s done for years. I’m not the sort to “manage” and to “make do”. I need to be able to buy what we need when we need it, not put money into a jam-jar until there’s enough for a pair of shoes or whatever. I’d be unhappy and because I was unhappy, you would be, too.’

  ‘I’d never be unhappy with you to come home to, my lovely.’

  ‘Johnny,’ Fay said in exasperation, ‘you aren’t listening!’

  ‘You can’t really expect me to take you seriously when you suggest leaving our baby with someone else to bring up?’

  ‘I am serious. And she won’t be brought up by someone else, only minded for a few hours each day while I work. I’d be better at selling hats than bringing up a child anyway.’ To her irritation, Johnny grinned widely.

  ‘She? D’you think it’ll be a she?’

  ‘Johnny!’

  ‘Talk about it later, shall we? When she’s arrived. There’ll be time enough then.’

  ‘I want to start looking for someone now. I know April’s a long way off but I want to be sure I find the right person.’

  ‘More coffee, lovely?’

  She gave up trying to discuss what was for her a very important issue and accepted the refill of her cup with a controlled smile. Tomorrow she would call in and talk to his mother. There she might have a better response, only might, she thought with a long sigh. It was so difficult to make other people realise that for her having a baby wasn’t the end of a career.

  * * *

  Netta Cartwright heard the front gate opened and looked through the window to see her daughter-in-law coming towards the front door.

  ‘It’s Fay, Nelly,’ she said to her first visitor of the morning. ‘I wonder what she wants calling so early? I hope nothing’s wrong.’

  ‘That ain’t the way to greet ’er, Netta,’ Nelly laughed.

  ‘It isn’t often that she calls, and she usually comes with Johnny.’

  She went to the door and opened it wide, ‘Fay, love, there’s a nice surprise on a dark morning. Not working today, then?’

  ‘I’m sneaking an hour off to talk to you, mother-in-law,’ Fay smiled as she entered. Then she saw Nelly’s two dogs sprawled across the hearth rug and she hesitated. ‘If you’ve got Nelly here it doesn’t really matter,’ she said. ‘I’ll just have a cup of tea and then go.’

  ‘I’m just off,’ Nelly said, pulling herself up out of Netta’s deep armchair with a groan and a showing off her gappy teeth. ‘Blimey, I’m gettin’ that stiff I’ll need an oil can to get me going in the mornin’s soon!’

  On impulse Fay gestured for her to sit back down. ‘No, don’t
go, Nelly, I’d like to hear your opinion on what I have to say.’

  Nelly sank back with obvious relief, her bright eyes polished with curiosity.

  Netta went into the tiny kitchen which housed a bath as well as a cooker and a sink and a washing boiler, and emerged with a tray of fresh tea. Netta Cartwright was a small dumpling of a woman, spotlessly clean, with rosy cheeks, dark brown eyes like her son, and her beautiful hair, once black but now perfectly white and full around her head, like a shining halo. The tray was set with an embroidered tray-cloth and her best china cups. A plateful of welsh-cakes was set on a crocheted doily. She knew how much Fay appreciated nice things and always made a special effort when she called.

  ‘That looks lovely, Mother,’ Fay smiled. ‘You shame me, always having home-made cakes whenever I call.’

  ‘We all do what we do best, Fay,’ Netta said in her quiet, gentle voice. ‘Can you imagine me trying to do what you do?’

  ‘That was what I wanted to talk to you about.’ Fay put down her cup and saucer and smiled at Netta and Nelly. ‘What I do best is sell hats and when the baby is born, that’s what I want to continue to do.’ She watched the faces of the two women for the disapproval she knew would come, but to her surprise Nelly nodded and said, ‘If you ain’t ’appy bein’ ’ome all day, then neither you, nor Johnny nor the baby will be content, don’t you think so, Netta?’

  Netta thought carefully before replying. She didn’t want to outwardly disagree but neither did she want to agree so promptly that Fay would guess at her insincerity.

  ‘I don’t think it’s for me to say, my dear. I want you to do what’s best for you. So long as you get someone utterly reliable to look after the baby then I don’t think you should worry about what I or anyone else thinks. I do know this, it isn’t the time you spend with the baby that’s important, but how you are with him when he is with you. A loving relationship is what you and he will want, not a resentful mother who wishes she was somewhere else.’

  ‘Take my Evie, now she’s a resentful mother an’ no mistake,’ Nelly added. ‘I ’ates to say it but it’s true. She loves Ollie, I’ll give ’er that, but she’d be ’appier an’ so would ’e, if she’d been honest enough to face facts and let someone else take the burden off of ’er ’ands.’

  ‘Then you don’t think it’s wrong for me to find someone to mind the baby?’

  ‘Lots of people did it during the war and I think more and more women are considering it. I think the days when children did the same as their mothers and fathers is disappearing fast.’ Netta smiled and added softly, ‘Not that I regretted staying at home, mind. I wouldn’t have missed a minute of it. But there, I wasn’t a career woman and you are. You do what you think best. You and Johnny are a partnership, work it out between you.’

  ‘With his shifts there’ll be some days when we won’t need anyone,’ Fay’s face was smiling and she slipped back in the deep armchair more relaxed that Netta had ever seen her.

  ‘There you are then, it isn’t even every day. And, although I wouldn’t take on the job full time even if you wanted me to, I’m too old to chase after babies, I can help in and out, if necessary.’

  ‘Thank you mother-in-law. You don’t know what a relief it is for you to take the news like this.’

  * * *

  ‘How d’you really feel?’ Nelly asked her friend when Fay had driven off to her first appointment. ‘You don’t agree, deep down, do you?’

  ‘I only know that I think I passed some kind of test this morning. I could have reacted like the typical mother-in-law, interfering and trying to persuade someone to do what they didn’t want to do. No, I don’t like the idea of someone else bringing up Johnny’s child, but if it keeps Fay happy that, in the long run, is what’s best for them all. Fay isn’t like us, Nelly, she thinks in a completely different way and I don’t want that to make a barrier between us. I need her to treat me like a friend. And —’ her dark eyes twinkled in the calm face – ‘there’s months yet for her to change her mind?’ She picked up the tray and carried it into the kitchen. ‘Now, Nelly, tell me more of what happened at the meeting.’

  Chapter Five

  While Sheila was reading his letter saying he wouldn’t be coming home, Maurice Davies was already setting off on his journey back to Wales. On accepting the ten-pound-passage to Australia to escape from his marriage to Sheila Powell, he had also accepted staying in Australia for at least two years. Having decided that he didn’t want to stay, he was only allowed to return when the full fare had been repaid.

  The money had been sent to him after being raised by a collection among members of his family. His mother, Ethel Davies, and his brothers Phil-the-post, Sidney, who worked with George on Leighton’s farm and Teddy, who worked in a factory in Swansea, had all given a contribution. Even his parents-in-law, Mavis and Ralph Powell, had given something in the vain hope that with her husband home Sheila would cease to worry them.

  The letters Maurice had written to Sheila and his mother had been written after a brief but exciting affair with the wife of another immigrant. Now that was over and he again felt the need to be on home ground.

  Sheila would have been surprised to know that in his pocket Maurice carried a picture of her. In it she was wearing her favourite dress which was tight-waisted and low-necked and with a skirt that was very full and unfashionably short. She was on the grass in front of the woods above Nelly’s cottage, half sitting half lying, her head propped up on her arm and showing her tantalising figure to perfection. He often looked at it and dreamed of her passionate loving and wondered if, now time and travel had separated him from the disappointment of losing Delina, he could ever settle and build a marriage with her. She was certainly exciting but they had little in common except desire for each other and, wild and restless as he was, he knew it wasn’t enough.

  In another pocket, less often studied, was a photograph of Delina. This one was taken with her school class and she stood straight at the side of three rows of children with no attempt to look attractive let alone provocative. Without trying Delina was beautiful. Just standing there with a bunch of seven-year olds, she made his heart beat faster. He pushed it away and stared into space, seeing what might have been, and his eyes were sad.

  * * *

  Sheila had had several ‘pin-ups’ on her bedroom wall. The latest had been Nigel Knighton, with whom she had begun a friendship that she had hoped would lead to better things. He was an accountant and very much a gentleman. She had begun to imagine a role for herself in which she lived in a large house wearing expensive clothes, playing the role of a successful man’s adored wife. Nigel said goodbye when he discovered that she was married. His picture had replaced one of Cornel Wilde and it had followed it to the dustbin.

  When the letter from Maurice came, telling her of his wish to come home, she had filled the place on the wall beside her bed with a picture of them both on their wedding day. Now she tore it down and glared at it. Wanting to come home! Only for as long as it took him to find another woman! she thought angrily. She threw the black and white picture into the corner of the room but later retrieved it and put it in a drawer. They were married and he still might come back to her.

  It was a Sunday and having finished the usual weekend tasks that took up most of her Sunday she felt restless. It was almost four o’clock and dark outside, but she put on a thick cardigan and a shining plastic mac which she tied tightly around her waist and set off for a walk. Down Hywel Rise and into Sheepy Lane to the main road she went not really thinking about where she was going, just enjoying the chill air on her face and the exercise.

  She looked across the road and to her right and saw that there were lights on in the flat above Amy’s shop. She thought of her parents sitting there, listening to the wireless and occasionally discussing what they heard. Dull people, nervous, anxious people and a world apart from herself. She walked past Evie and Timothy’s house on the corner of Sheepy Lane and then past the church and the school. She
crossed over the road then and saw Nelly and George with their two dogs approaching. More dull and boring people. She didn’t want to talk to them so she went down the lane at the side of the fish and chip shop to the lane behind.

  It was like the inside of a deep cave, she thought, the blackness was complete, almost like a wall in front of her, tangible and solid, and very unnerving. She paused, afraid to go further, imagining a thousand terrors awaiting her, close but beyond her vision. Best to wait until Nelly had passed then go back on to the road where there were lights and the possibility of people. She turned to face the glow from the main road, pressed her back against the wall of chip-shop yard and immediately felt safer.

  There were lamp posts in the lane but they weren’t lit, and beside the darkness the place was almost silent. Almost, but there was a sound, unrecognisable at first. Then she realised with rising curiosity that the faint hissing and sniffing was the muffled sound of someone crying.

  The darkness held less threat as she recognised the nearness of another person. It must be Bethan, she decided. Making her way down the wall she called when she reached the gate, ‘Hello, anyone there? Bethan, it’s me, Mrs Davies, Sheila Powell as was. Are you all right?’

  A light was switched on in the yard and she heard footsteps coming down the path to open the gate. A latch lifted. The gate opened and Bethan peered around its edge, the light behind her throwing her face in shadow but her voice revealing her recent crying.

  ‘What d’you want?’ Bethan asked.

  ‘Nothing, I heard you crying and I wondered if you were all right. Can I do anything?’

  ‘Not unless you can chip half a hundredweight of potatoes for me.’ Bethan opened the gate wider. ‘Best you come in, it’s cold standing out here.’