by Rosie Thomas
‘That’s very handsome,’ Jamie said appreciatively. They knelt down together on the carpet and began snaking the engines along the tracks and into the shed.
They couldn’t have looked a more perfect picture of a happy family, Angharad thought.
Angharad knelt down too. She wanted to hug William, to reassure herself, but he elbowed her absently aside. The boy was engrossed in demonstrating his construction to Jamie. She smiled, a little lopsidedly, and straightened up.
‘You don’t need me, you two, do you? I’ve got some things to do. Sausages for supper, Willum?’
Jamie looked round, but she had already gone. He frowned, hesitating, but William was pulling at his sleeve.
‘Isn’t it good?’ the child crowed. ‘Look, a space for every engine.’
Angharad went down to their bedroom. She sank down on the wide bed, looking blankly around at the wicker chairs, the Victorian patchwork quilt that had been her first extravagant present to herself, the pretty, well-polished furniture and her bottles of expensive scent beside Jamie’s silver-backed brushes on the tallboy. All the trappings of a comfortable life; a married life.
Not that Jamie and she were married. They had talked briefly about it when they bought the house, and Angharad had said no, as gently and as firmly as she could.
It had been the only possible answer.
Anne, the woman who lived in this sunny house and wore the elegant clothes in the long wardrobe in front of her, might have married Jamie Duff. Just as Anne would matter-of-factly have said that Harry was forgotten, dwindled to barely more than a name from long ago.
But deep inside Anne, Angharad still lived, unacknowledged in this orderly, prosperous life, and Angharad had never forgotten. Nor would she, ever. This afternoon Gareth Williams, who ought to have been no more than a stranger himself, had reached straight out and touched her hidden self. Her old love for Harry, her estrangement from her father, her son’s real heritage and the ties that bound her to the village, formed a knot of memories and feelings that she had buried, and then varnished over with Anne’s pleasant routines. But to single out one of those buried strands was to expose them all, so that they lay as raw as nervy ganglia under the surgeon’s knife.
Gareth had done that. Whether he was obliquely warning her about her father or not, he had brought the fear out. And with the fear came the old bitterness mixed with love, a fierce longing to go home, and knowledge that going back would reawaken too many old memories. How would all those memories affect herself and Jamie, and William, who bore the clear mark of his antecedents in his face?
Angharad shivered and pressed her fingers to her eyes. She had a premonition, and it drew her home so strongly that she knew she shouldn’t resist it. But of all the rest, the thousand knotted implications, she was afraid and apprehensive.
She heard a footstep behind her and turned to see William. He was watching her with his head on one side, serious-faced.
‘Mummy, why are you sad?’
Almost since babyhood, he had had the sensitivity to read her moods. Quickly she smiled, suppressing the urge to snatch him to her and hide herself behind his innocence.
‘People do get sad sometimes. You do yourself, don’t you?’
‘Not today, though.’
Angharad stood up and took his hand. ‘I’ll try not to be, either. Come on. Let’s go and see if we can find you some supper.’
Later, when William was in bed, Jamie and Angharad sat facing each other across the table in the long basement kitchen. The warm light winked on copper pans hung on one wall, and on the plates ranged along the dresser. Jamie drained his glass of wine and said cheerfully, ‘Shall we talk about this French trip? We should book soon, to get decent hotels, and to do that we must have an itinerary.’
Jamie loved plans, and maps, and making arrangements. They had been planning an early summer holiday, a slow meander down through Burgundy and the Rhône valley to the Mediterranean. They had always been good at holidays together. Some of their happiest times had been spent in Austria, in Italy and in the remote reaches of provincial France.
Angharad looked up from her glass. ‘French holiday?’ Her thoughts had been in Cefn, and with the letter she must write to Gwyn.
Jamie’s hand closed tightly over hers. She tensed herself to draw back, and then let it lie.
‘What is it? You haven’t spoken all evening. Don’t you want to go on holiday?’
Angharad breathed in deeply. ‘I can’t go, Jamie. I want to go home, instead.’ A pool of silence seeped outwards from the table. Angharad’s head was bent so that he couldn’t see her face, although he stared sharply at her. He was looking for signs of the old Anne, as he secretly called her. The old Anne was the mysterious, half-tamed girl who had come to his restaurant and begged for a job. And had then borne a child, and wiped their joint histories clean like a slate. She had fascinated him and then unbalanced him into love, but he preferred the woman he had now. ‘His’ Anne believed in and wanted the same things as he did himself.
Except marriage.
Now he watched with covert anxiety for flickers of the other girl. She had a streak of Celtic wildness in her, and a fierce stubbornness. And she came of a culture that he couldn’t begin to understand. It was a measure of her versatility, he thought now, that she had absorbed his own culture so seamlessly. Yet now, alarmingly, it was the other unknowable girl who sat opposite him.
‘Home to Wales?’
She nodded. ‘A man came to the restaurant this afternoon …’
Jamie sat very still. ‘A man? The one I met?’ He saw again the dark-haired Welshman with the cheeky, confident air. Suddenly an abyss opened at Jamie’s feet.
‘Just a man I used to know, used to play with, from the village. He said that Dad had been ill. I think … he was warning me, telling me I should go back. I’ve got to, Jamie.’
He flinched from the fire in her eyes, but he felt a wave of relief too. ‘Of course. But wouldn’t Gwyn have told you if it was anything serious?’
‘You know she wouldn’t.’
That was no more than the truth. Gwyn’s instinct, her judgement blurred by age and isolation, would be to protect one of them against the other. She would hope for William to improve, so that Angharad would not have to be worried at all.
Jamie’s hands were chafing comfortingly now. At last she looked directly at him. ‘He’s an old man. I’m afraid that he’s going to die, before we see each other again.’
He said, ‘You must go. As soon as you can. And take the boy with you. But write to Gwyn first, won’t you? Find out what’s really wrong?’
‘Yes. Of course that’s what I’ll do.’
If only it would be as simple as that, she thought. With her heightened perceptions the way they were sitting, facing each other with their hands linked across the table, reminded her of Heulfryn. Past Jamie’s shoulder she could see Harry’s face, every line of it clear and sharp, and she stared into the eyes.
Was the memory of Harry going to haunt her for ever?
Before bed, Angharad went up to her desk and took out a sheet of writing paper. Quickly she wrote a letter to Gwyn, explaining that she had unexpectedly met Gareth Williams, and he had mentioned her father’s illness. What’s really the matter? How serious is it? Please tell me, Aunty Gwyn. I’d much rather know. I can come home at once.
The letter finished, she folded it and sealed it in an envelope. In rummaging for a stamp her fingers met the edge of a small folder. With a quick backwards glance, Angharad made sure that she was alone. Jamie was still in the kitchen, sitting with the newspaper and a glass of whisky. She took the folder out and opened it. It held a small sheaf of cuttings and photographs.
The first picture, brittle with age now, showed herself, childish, and Laura, sitting together on the school pavilion steps. Angharad had kept the picture pinned on her school bedroom wall for a year because she saw the lines of Harry’s face within his sister’s. Now, looking down at it, she could
only see Laura herself. She was looking into the camera with her challenging, faintly mocking stare.
Underneath the picture lay an announcement roughly torn from The Times engagement columns.
The engagement is announced between Laura Veronica, only daughter of Mr and Mrs J. J. Cotton, of Llyn Fair House, Llyn Fair, Clwyd, and Mr Jeremy Argent, of London SW1.
It was dated three years ago, when Laura would have been just out of Cambridge.
The rest of the cuttings were all about Harry.
There were several film reviews, nearly all favourable, although there were one or two that seemed to confuse personal with professional disapproval. The other items, much more numerous, were snippets from gossip columns. One picture showed Harry and his wife arriving in evening dress at a première. The caption archly mentioned wedded bliss. Angharad kept her eyes turned away from it, although she knew the words by heart. Another piece, not much more recent, insinuated that the happy couple weren’t quite as happy as all that. Six months later there were reports of a separation, and then a divorce. Bibi Blake was quickly remarried to an older, much-married household name. ‘I wish them the best of luck,’ Harry was reported as saying. ‘Especially him.’
After that Harry’s name was coupled with about a dozen others, but hardly more than once. Angharad read the latest one, a few months old now. It was no different from any of the rest.
‘Has lovely Helene Oriel set her heart on Harry Cotton, Hollywood’s not-such-an-enfant terrible? If she has, our advice would be to think again. My spies tell me that Harry shows no sign yet of wanting to stop playing the field.’
Angharad frowned faintly, puzzled by the vulgarity of it. He sounded so different from the Harry she had known. Had he changed so much? And if he hadn’t changed, how could he let them write things like that about him? She gathered up the cuttings and thrust them back into the folder. It was a slender enough history, but it told her as much and more than she needed to know.
She buried the folder again beneath her papers, found a stamp, and stuck it firmly to her letter. Behind her, she could hear Jamie coming up the stairs. He came in, and put his arms round her as she sat still staring down at the envelope.
‘Don’t worry any more until you know for sure,’ he said gently. ‘Come on. Let’s go to bed.’
Later, with Jamie’s arms wound around her, Angharad stared sightlessly up into the dark. They had made love, gently and considerately, as always. It was a pleasant, intimate habit, like so much else in their life together. Jamie had drifted off to sleep. Angharad clenched her teeth, and felt the muscles tighten all along her back and down to her calves, in an effort to lie motionless. Anxiety gnawed at her as she thought back to the meeting with Gareth.
Only this afternoon in her office she had felt remote and disaffected, cut off from life by the thick glass walls. Just a few words had changed that.
Would they send her home?
Home, perhaps to a dying man. The image of William hobbling along the village street under the concerned eyes was a sickeningly persistent one. It was there, whether she screwed her eyes shut, or went on staring into the dark. Today’s had been a chance meeting, she thought, but something like it would have happened sooner or later. She would have had to face the thought of going home, and seeing the old knots come snaking out from their burial place. Involuntarily Angharad rolled her head on the pillow and Jamie stirred in his sleep. He murmured something, and his arms tightened around her.
What was right, for little William, and for Jamie, and herself?
To go on living with the muffled senses that she had come half to accept, or to turn back to Wales and to risk the vivid memories and all their potential for pain?
Angharad didn’t know. She felt the years of experience flaking away, to leave her eighteen again.
It was very late when she fell into an uneasy, dream-riddled sleep. Bright light shining into her eyes woke her again, and she lay blinking, trying to grasp the reason for the heaviness and foreboding that made her want to dive back into sleep.
Then she saw that the pretty draped blinds at the window were drawn up, the spring sunshine was striking into her face, and she remembered. The letter to Aunty Gwyn, lying on her desk, ready for the post.
Angharad could hear Jamie whistling in their bathroom.
Then, with the sound of bare scuffling feet, William launched himself from the doorway. He was still in his red pyjamas, and his hair was tousled from sleep. It was his self-appointed job to bring up the post and the newspapers in the morning, and he was carrying them now. He leapt on to the bed, scattering the envelopes, and dived under the covers with her.
‘Wake up, it’s late. Jamie and I have been up for ages.’ He was squirming and kicking, half wanting to be cuddled but too impatient for the day to begin to lie still for more than a second. He wriggled away and began to bounce on the bed. ‘Lots of letters. All bills, I bet.’ He sounded, for an instant, just like Jamie.
‘I bet,’ Angharad agreed weakly, and rolled over to pick them up. She saw at once, lying on the pale grey carpet, an envelope with Gwyn’s upright handwriting. It had grown much less firm over the last few months.
Angharad snatched it up and her fingers shook at tearing it open. There were two closely-written sheets. She skimmed quickly through them, feeling as if there was ice with the blood in her veins.
William was shouting something and tugging at her arm, and she shook him off with anxious asperity.
‘Don’t, William. This is an important letter. Go and talk to Jamie, will you?’
The child went away, startled, looking back at her once from the doorway with a wide, puzzled stare.
Angharad smoothed the letter out and read it again, slowly. It was written from Angharad’s home, the square house at the end of the village, instead of the old schoolhouse.
Darling Angharad,
I’m afraid that the news isn’t so very good this time. You see, William has been poorly lately. At first we thought it was a winter chill, then a stomach bug, and then Dr Hughes thought that he might have an ulcer. He took him in to Queen Mary’s for a few tests. I didn’t mention it to you, cariad, because I didn’t want to worry you with you being so busy, and Dr Hughes was sure that it wasn’t anything to worry about. Now the tests are done, and the doctor in the hospital wants to keep him there longer for some observation and some treatment. They don’t seem sure yet what’s the matter, but I know they’re doing their best. Your Dad has been in some pain and not in the best of spirits, so I moved myself down the street here to look after him. Now that he’s gone in the hospital I’m staying to keep an eye on it in case he’s worrying himself. He’s much better in the hospital where they can see to him properly, but he’s not a good patient, as you can imagine.
I’m sure he will be out and about again soon but, my dear, what would you say to coming home for a few days? I know how hard it will be for you after so long, and with your work down there and everything, but will you try? William hasn’t mentioned it, but I know that in his heart he wants to see you, and the boy.
The rest of the letter dealt, with determined cheerfulness, with village news. Don’t worry, the last line read. But I think it’s time for all these old breaches to be healed, don’t you?
Before it’s too late, Angharad grimly supplied. I know what’s the matter with him. I can hear it in the doctors’ very euphemisms, of tests and observation and treatment.
And dear, loving Aunty Gwyn, writing just as she talks, knows it too, but can’t bring herself to say it.
Angharad pressed the heels of her hands briefly into her eyes, and then straightened up. She walked briskly through into the bathroom where Jamie was shaving. William was playing with his shaving brush, daubing his own smooth cheeks with blobs of white foam.
Silently, Angharad held out the letter. Jamie took it and read it.
‘You must go immediately,’ he said. So she wasn’t imagining the urgency. Jamie felt it too. ‘What are things like at
the restaurant for the next couple of weeks?’
‘The restaurant?’ Angharad frowned, surprised to realize that it hadn’t entered her thoughts. ‘Oh. Hectic.’
‘Louise will have to cope. Pierre and I will help out where we can. We can get a relief manager if … if it turns out that you have to stay longer.’
She nodded gratefully, but already London seemed unreal.
Going home, she thought.
William’s face was turned anxiously up to them.
‘Where are you going? Where, Mum?’
The adults’ eyes met, and Jamie nodded. He understood, and agreed with her, that it was important for William to go too.
‘How would you like,’ Angharad asked him, ‘to come with me for a holiday to stay with Aunty Gwyn? All the way to Wales?’
‘Yes. We’re going on holiday, on holiday.’ He was already whirling in excitement around the room when a thought struck him. ‘Can’t Jamie come too?’
Jamie caught him up and swung him round. ‘I’ll try,’ he promised, ‘to come for a weekend if you’re away for more than a few days.’
He didn’t look at Angharad. He was suggesting it so tentatively that he wouldn’t say it to her direct, she thought, as she turned away. The years of her life before they met had stayed unspoken of for so long. What would happen now, when all of it was brought back to confront them both?
Angharad was heavy with anxiety and foreboding as she went to send a telegram to Aunty Gwyn.
It took two days to make the necessary arrangements. On the third morning, while Jamie was putting the cases into the car, Angharad stood in their sunny drawing-room. Every book and ornament was familiar, but she felt as if it was somebody else, not herself at all, who had lived here for so long. Down in the street, through the wrought-iron work of the little balcony, she could see William waving impatiently from the car. Quickly Angharad took the first letter to Gwyn from her desk, where it had lain forgotten for three days, and tore it up. Then she locked the drawer on the little secret folder and turned away.