by Rosie Thomas
‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered. Somehow it had been tacitly understood between them that Laura was a chord not to be touched on.
The taboo disturbed Angharad, who believed that Laura would share and deepen, rather than disturb their happiness. But two or three times now she thought that the shadow of her friend had come between them, although Harry had never given that much away. He simply withdrew from her, and she was touched by the icy fear of being without him.
But now the tower of cloud slipped momentarily away again, and brilliant sunshine brought colour flooding back. Harry turned to her with his gipsy smile and wound a coil of damp fair hair around his finger. ‘I’m sorry too. Don’t change,’ he begged her again. ‘Anything.’
Perhaps, Angharad thought to reassure herself, he feels just like I do, wanting to keep and freeze all these moments we’ve had together, but feeling them slipping away and vanishing.
‘Nothing,’ she promised him, and he leant forward to kiss the end of her nose. He rubbed her dry with his sweater until her skin tingled, and they then sat and watched the changing sky until the first fat drops of summer rain exploded on their upturned faces. Hand-in-hand they ran, shouting to each other, to the shelter of Harry’s little grey van and Heulfryn Cottage.
‘Who is he?’ Gwyn asked one afternoon.
Angharad’s face immediately burned scarlet. Gwyn’s stare was shrewd and penetrating, and there was nothing in the cluttered studio to deflect it. Angharad shrank under it.
‘Is it so obvious?’ she asked at last, seeing that it was hopeless to pretend. Every day she had promised herself that after just one or two more secret days she would tell her family about Harry Cotton. But the days had rippled by and she had said nothing.
‘Transparently, to me,’ Gwyn said crisply. ‘I’m not sure about your father. If he knows, he’s chosen not to mention it to me. Who is he?’
Angharad groped for the right words. At length she said, ‘Nobody you know. But yes, I have met someone who has changed everything. I love him, Aunty Gwyn.’
Gwyn smiled, but Angharad thought it was a sad smile. Lines of anxiety showed in her face and there was a shade of disappointment in her eyes.
‘Couldn’t you have brought him home?’
‘I will, soon,’ Angharad promised desperately. ‘It’s just that …’ and her voice trailed away. Gwyn was still looking at her and she thought, She’s guessed. Somehow, she knows.
After a long, long silence Gwyn said, ‘I hope you’re being careful, Angharad, and I don’t just mean in the obvious way. I wouldn’t like to see you hurt yourself. Or anyone else.’ Dad. She means Dad, of course.
‘I know.’
Both women knew that there was nothing else to say, and the quiet closed uncomfortably around them.
Careful? The word dinned in Angharad’s head, amplified by a new anxiety that had only just started to flicker within her.
Harry hadn’t been careful with her, she knew that. He was nineteen years old, and he was handsome, and clever, and arrogant, and fatally used to getting his own way. She recognized all that, and forgave him, and loved him for his passion and vitality. Harry drew more out of her than she had ever dreamed existed. He made her laugh like a child, and then silenced her with the incredible adult reality of loving her in return. He made her feel open, and relaxed, and confident that whatever she said or did he would understand. Not even her closest friend, not even Laura, had ever made her feel like that.
But Angharad had been innocent, and Harry, impetuous and not innocent at all, had made love to her without thinking about it. It was only three days later that he said to her, ‘You aren’t on the Pill or anything like that, are you?’
She had answered him as lightly as he had asked. ‘No. I suppose I should be.’
‘There are clinics you can go to. Would you like me to come with you?’
Angharad had declined his help, fortified by an independent pride that half surprised her. The clinic, when she tracked it down, turned out to be a shabby outpost of the local hospital. Her ‘case’ was handled by a voluntary worker who reminded her uncomfortably of Aunty Gwyn.
‘And what’s your fiancé’s name, dear? You are engaged, aren’t you?’ Blushing, Angharad sat on her suddenly shamefully naked fingers and gave Harry’s name. Thereafter they had called her ‘Mrs Cotton’ until she was ready to scream. But she had come back with a bald, domed rubber cap which, when it wasn’t in use, lived in a discreet pink plastic case like a bulbous powder compact.
So that was being careful, wasn’t it? If … But Angharad shut her mind to the black shaft opened by that if.
But in the other, unobvious ways that Gwyn had meant too, she knew that she was being fatefully reckless.
The longer she delayed it, the harder it would be to tell William what was happening to her. And the angrier he would have every right to be for the deception. She began to wish that she had had the courage, right at the very beginning, to tell her father and to meet the consequence then.
Now, with every day that passed, Harry grew more a part of her. He lived under the electrically sensitive surface of her skin, and walked behind her eyes. The hours apart from him stretched, and their times together burned up so fiercely that it frightened her. She had explored and learned every inch of him with her eyes and hands, and had given herself as openly in return. Nor was it just their bodies, but heads and minds and hearts. Angharad saw that behind Harry’s old mask of casual smiles and flippancy, a different, passionate Harry stalked. He loved her just as much as she loved him, except when Laura’s long arm reached out for him, and took him away from her with an abruptness that Angharad didn’t understand.
August was nearly over, and she began to feel almost feverish. There was a lurid, overblown tinge to their happiness that told her it couldn’t last. I love you, they told each other, over and over, in the dimness of the cottage and out on the open side of The Mountain. They clung to each other avidly, and fell asleep in exhaustion only to wake and start all over again.
Something will happen soon, Angharad comforted herself. With Harry, I can face anything.
At the end of the month, she began counting the days.
A day late. That’s nothing. It’s happened before.
Two days late. It’ll start today. Or tomorrow, at the latest.
Three days. It isn’t that. It’s just because of what’s been happening. Intense physical and emotional excitement are bound to have an effect. Probably hormonal changes too. There’s no need to worry yet. We’ve been careful. Except at the very beginning.
The fourth day she spent with Harry at Heulfryn. The long, intensely hot summer had come to an abrupt end. Needles of grey rain pinged at the windows today, and the damp rising from the bare floor told Angharad what she already knew, that Harry couldn’t live here very much longer. His film was almost completed. She often caught him looking at the pile of black cans which held the exposed film, stacked safely in the coolest corner of the cottage.
‘What happens next?’ she had asked him, and he had answered vaguely.
‘A lot of work. Cutting and editing. Sound mixing.’
Today she kept her eyes averted from the cans of film. She had cooked lunch for them as she had done so often before, and when they had eaten, Harry stood up and came round to the back of her chair. His hand slid over her shoulders and she felt his cheek against her hair.
‘Angharad,’ he murmured. ‘Come and lie down with me?’
Under the red blanket, needing it for warmth now, they lay and looked at each other. Harry’s face was very soft and serious in the grey light, with all the teasing smiles and taut, confident lines rubbed away. The tiny light squares of the window were reflected in the clear blue of his eyes, and as she looked past the reflections she saw how much he loved her too. The happiness of the knowledge was tempered with anxiety.
‘I think I’m frightened,’ she told him.
Not just the specific fear now, but of the sudden importance, and
fragility, of everything.
‘I know.’ Harry was watching the shadows cupped in her collarbone and at the sides of her throat. ‘It started so simply, didn’t it? And now it isn’t simple at all. It’s real. I don’t want anything to change, and I don’t want to leave here, and I don’t want to lose you.’
Angharad heard the unspoken words ballooning threateningly between them.
But things must change, however often we promise each other that we won’t let them.
I have to leave, because I can’t go on living here.
And I don’t want to lose you, but …
‘You won’t lose me,’ she said firmly. Harry cupped her face in his hands and kissed her.
‘I hope not.’
Watching him, she recalled the other moods she had seen him in, intent on his work or indolent in the sunshine, frivolous and slightly drunk or angry with some trivial detail, companionable or passionately demanding, and thought that now he was none of those things. Seeing him like this, quiet and serious and touched with sadness, she thought that this must be the plain, unvarnished Harry that Laura loved.
It was as if she had spoken the name aloud.
Harry answered her by saying, very quietly, ‘I had a letter from Laura. She’ll be home on Friday.’
Wednesday today.
Angharad’s heart thumped painfully in her chest. She heard her own voice, coming from a long way off.
‘I’m glad. She’s been away too long. There’s such a lot to talk to her about.’ Harry said nothing at all. She waited for him to, but he didn’t. Instead he hugged her, and kissed her so that her hair spread over their faces, and then she let herself cling to him too. For a few minutes she forgot her specific fears and the other, vaguer ones that were in a way more threatening.
They were very tender with each other now. In the last days their love-making had grown almost violent, but the time for exploration and feverish discoveries was past. Harry stroked her shoulders and touched her breasts as if for the first time, and Angharad’s fingers counted the rounded knobs of his spine like beads in a familiar necklace. When he came inside her, they moved together slowly, as if they were afraid of hurting each other. Their eyes stayed open, not wanting to lose sight of one another, and they watched how their own reflections moved like films over the nakedness beneath. The gentleness and slowness made Angharad think that this must be how people who had known each other for a long, long time made love. Married people. Grown-up people.
Even as she gasped, and shivered under the waves of intense pleasure, a tiny voice asked her Grown-up? But we are grown-up. We have to be, now. And people who have babies are married, aren’t they?
Afterwards she shut her eyes, longing to keep everything at bay for just a few seconds more.
‘I love you.’
‘I love you.’
Neither of them had anything else to say. Angharad sighed and heavily began to dress herself and get ready to go back to Cefn. A resolution was forming inside her head. She would begin, at least, to fight her way out of the net that was closing around her by telling her father that she had fallen in love with Joe Cotton’s son. The decision made her feel a little better. When that hurdle was crossed, she would see. After all, she wasn’t sure about anything else, yet.
The unprotected Harry had slid away again behind a brisk, positive veneer. ‘I’m going home to Llyn Fair,’ he told her, making a wry face. ‘Better present myself to Joe and Monica before Laura gets back. And,’ with a quick, sardonic smile, ‘I want to make some calls to LA. Easier to do it from there than the kiosk outside the shop.’
‘Of course.’ She didn’t ask him what the calls were about. The thought of him moving on, pursuing his films, was frightening enough.
By the old fountain he hugged her and kissed the top of her head. ‘Okay? I’ll see you at the weekend sometime. Laura and I could make you a special supper at Heulfryn.’
He was suddenly cheerful and Angharad went cold. She knew what he meant. That she needn’t cook for once, that it would be a party for her. But she didn’t want that. It wasn’t Laura and I anything, any more.
Was it?
Seeing Harry’s surprised stare, she said, ‘Yes, I’m okay. Tell Laura how much I’m looking forward to seeing her.’
Abruptly she turned away and began to walk up the shiny, wet road towards the village.
The house was claustrophobic. Angharad wandered from room to room, picking things up and putting them down again. From the study came the irritable peck, peck of her father’s typewriter. Angharad prepared a meal, watching the clock and knowing that there wasn’t time, now, to talk to William before going out to do her evening’s work. She served their early supper and ate it in listless silence. William looked at her over the top of his glasses and said, ‘Do you feel ill?’
She answered, ‘No, of course not.’
Another day. Five days late, now. On Thursday, Angharad worked the day shift, and she came home at six in the evening utterly exhausted. The empty evening opened ahead of her, offering no refuge of an excuse.
Tonight she would have to face her father.
She thought briefly about Harry, wondering what he was doing. Perhaps packing up his few possessions ready to leave the old cottage. But he seemed remote, oddly not a part of the anxieties that possessed her now.
After supper, William picked up the newspaper and made as if to go back into his study.
Angharad said quickly, ‘Shall I make us some coffee? I’d like to … I’d like to talk to you.’
He beamed at her, full of affection, and she quailed. ‘Ah, that would be nice. I don’t feel that I’ve seen you properly for days. About College, is it? How much work have you been able to fit in, with playing about down at that pie-shop?’
‘No, not exactly about that.’ Angharad laid a tray for coffee and ground the beans, wondering if William could tell from the rattle of the china how much her hands were shaking. They went into the living-room and sat down under the moon-face of the grandfather clock.
‘Well now, what’s all this about?’
The clock ticked, unbelievably firm and measured when everything else in the world was racing and swaying.
‘I … Dad, remember I told you I met a friend at the August Meeting?’
William snorted, still cheerful. ‘Making a film. What nonsense.’
‘Please, Dad. I want to tell you this as directly as I can. I’ve seen a lot of him, lately, and I’ve grown very fond of him. He’s unusual, and special. And important to me. I’ve fallen in love with him.’ Angharad spread her hands out wide, thinking how feeble and jejune she sounded.
Amusement and suspicion dawned together in William’s face. ‘In love?’ There was a pause before he nodded, as if considering, and went on, ‘I suppose it’s natural, and charming in a way, that you should feel that at seventeen. And I’m flattered that you should take me into your confidence, Angharad. I’ve thought, lately, that we had somehow gone past that. If you want my reaction, it’s that I can’t see any reason why you shouldn’t be in love at your age, provided that you don’t do anything stupid and it doesn’t interfere with your work.’
Interfere? A wave of panic brought the sweat out on her palms and at the nape of her neck under her hair.
‘What’s the boy’s name?’
Tick, tock. The clock’s ornate hands stood at ten minutes past nine, and she wished that she could freeze them there for ever.
‘That’s what I have to tell you. Harry Cotton. Joe Cotton’s son.’
It was worse, much worse than her worst imaginings. William’s head snapped round like a puppet’s under the hand of a manic puppetmaster.
‘Who?’
Angharad moistened her lips, trying to say the name again, but there was no need. William had heard clearly enough. He had gone white with anger, and there was a fleck of froth at the corner of his mouth.
‘You dare to sit there and tell me that you are in love with the son of that scum? What do yo
u know about love? Not the first thing. Not even love for me or any of your family, obviously. What did I say to you, six years ago? Or have you conveniently forgotten? I told you that you were to have nothing to do with the Cotton family. And that I never wanted to hear the name mentioned in this house. And now you creep up to me and say that you love them.’
Her childhood terror of his rages came back to Angharad and she shrank under his words as if they were blows. But at the same time her spirit sprang up inside her. She wanted to run and hide, yet she heard herself flinging back at him, ‘I didn’t say them. I don’t care for his parents. I don’t know what they’ve done to you because you’ve never chosen to tell me. But Laura Cotton is my friend and I love Harry. Yes. However much you shout or mock at me, you can’t change that.’
William was carried away, so consumed by his anger that his face terrified her. ‘Your friend? I told you six years ago that you could choose another friend, any one of the bloody little girls in the world except that one. But you couldn’t, could you? And you’ve been deceiving me, like a meek little mouse, for all that time?’
Angharad’s chin went up and her eyes blazed back at him. She was furious, and terrified, and torn so hard by loyalty that she wished she could break in half.
‘Yes.’
William’s hand flashed out and caught her cheek. It was no more than a brief, stinging slap but it whirled them apart so that they stood, separated by the domestic space of the hearthrug, staring at each other. Angharad’s fingers went to the blazing red mark on her cheek. The hands of the clock had moved on only a couple of minutes, but it might have been a lifetime.
‘Don’t,’ he breathed, ‘ever … let me … hear you say those names again. I’ve failed with you, Angharad, and I’m bitterly ashamed. You’re too old now for me to forbid you. Or to try to give you a sense of what is morally correct. You must do what your distorted reasoning dictates. But don’t ask me. Do you understand? I don’t want to know about you,’ William heard the harshness of his own words, then, and tried to temper them, ‘unless you promise me, here and now, that you will see no more of any member of that family. That might convince me that you are my daughter after all.’