Ethel was a widow and she had four sons. Phil was the local postman and Teddy worked in a factory in Swansea and was rarely home; his wife and three children keeping him busy. Sidney was a farm-worker like his father had been and Maurice, now just twenty-three, was the unexpected surprise, born when Ethel was almost forty.
The table was replenished by packages brought by guests and bottles of beer and cider emptied at an ever-increasing rate. The large kettle on the shining hob worked overtime making endless cups of tea and laughter rang out as tales of adventures long past were told and embellished and repeated.
At eight o’clock Fay arrived with Amy from the shop and Amy’s two children. Margaret, at eight, was quite thrilled to come out to a late evening party. Freddy, at fifteen, had come under protest but now chatted eagerly to Maurice.
‘Tell me about the army,’ Freddy asked. ‘I’ve been to the recruiting office and my name is going forward for selection.’
‘You joining the army? Are you twpsynl daft? Your mother’s moving to a fine house and you got a good job with your Auntie Prue’s building firm. It’s made for life, you are! What do you want to go in the army for?’
‘I don’t work for Auntie Prue any more,’ Freddy muttered. ‘Once Uncle Harry died I – it wasn’t the same.’
‘Miserable old bugger your Auntie Prue, I’ll give you that, but you have a chance of doing very nicely there. Don’t be soft, boy. Go back and tell her you’ve changed your mind. Big strapping lad like you, she won’t say no, with you being related an’ all.’ He felt the arms of the young boy and gasped. ‘You sure you’re only fifteen?’
‘It’s the army for me,’ Freddy said stubbornly.
Freddy couldn’t tell Maurice or anyone else the real reason for wanting to get away from Hen Carw Parc. The thought of going far away from everything he knew and loved was frightening, but he had to go. The reason was a secret never to be shared.
It was almost ten when Nelly arrived. She struggled up the lane and along the narrow track, the two dogs pulling her enthusiastically through unseen puddles and past cruelly sharp hawthorn and blackthorn branches which tore at her face and pulled her hair across her eyes. When she stepped into Ethel’s kitchen gales of laughter greeted her entrance.
‘The gwrach of cwm ych y fi!’ Maurice spluttered, hugging her affectionately. ‘The witch of mucky valley. Come and look at yourself. Thank God it isn’t Halloween or you’d have scared us all stupid!’ He hugged her again and added, ‘Nelly, it’s good to see you. My welcome home wouldn’t have been complete without you, or them damn dogs of yours.’
‘I fergot it was today you was comin’ ’ome, Maurice,’ Nelly wailed in a slightly slurred voice.
He helped her through the crush of knees and feet to where she could see herself in the mirror and teased her as he helped remove the dead crinkled leaves and a few twigs from her untidy hair. ‘How did you come? On a broomstick through the wood? It must be almost midnight. Where have you been till now?’
‘I come on a dog-sleigh,’ she laughed, ‘and it’s only just gone ten! I dug me ’eels in the mud an’ the dogs pulled me right to the door.’ She took off her coat and sighed as a cup of tea was handed to her. Maurice suffered a blast of beery breath.
‘I’ve bin to the pictures. Abbot and Costello Go To Mars is on at the Albert Hall. I couldn’t miss that.’
‘That’s not the only place you’ve been,’ Maurice said, shaking his head and grinning at her.
‘Had to take the dogs out when I got back. Look at ’em now, pinchin’ all the ’eat as usual.’
The two large dogs were sprawled across the hearth, pressed up against the fender. Ethel’s three cats were sitting further back, their tails swishing angrily at the impertinence.
‘Sorry, Nelly,’ Amy called across the noisy room, where she sat between Billie Brown and Phil. ‘We’d have called for you but I thought you’d be here hours before us.’
‘Fergot!’ Nelly slapped her head theatrically. ‘’Ead like a bleedin’ sieve these days,’ she shouted back.
She moved a bit closer to add something more and inadvertently touched Spotty’s tail with her foot. He leapt up and growled and the cats, thinking they were under attack, squawked in terror, spat at the dogs, clawed their noses and disappeared in the forest of legs. Spotty was so shocked at this treatment that, supported by Bobby, he began to chase the cats, knocking Nelly on top of Mr Evans who had just arrived. He tried to escape but his chair tilted back against the wall imprisoning them both. To make matters worse, when Billie tried to help he was bitten by one of the cats.
It wasn’t until someone had the sense to open the door and allow the animals to escape that order was partially restored.
‘Damn dogs,’ Nelly said with sombre seriousness. ‘You’d think they was pissed, not me.’
Maurice laughed and wiped his eyes, ‘Duw, I’ve missed all this.’ He turned and poked a laughing Freddy, ‘You won’t get this in the army!’
* * *
Amy’s shop was a miracle of orderliness. Every shelf was packed with tins and packets, bottles and jars containing practically everything the inhabitants of the village could want. Many customers were tempted to buy far more than they intended, due to her skill in displaying the right things in the right places. The variety was endless and yet it took no more than a moment for her to find what was wanted on the closely packed shelves.
A few weeks before Maurice’s return, the shop had been extended by knocking down a wall and combining it with the room at the back that had been a store room. A new store room had been built in the yard and a small kitchenette fitted in beside the door. The result was a well-stocked shop with a separate counter for the post office work, and a little more room for her customers to stand in.
As always in these last moments before she released the blind on the shop door, she looked around and thought of Harry Beynon, who had created the new shop for her out of the undersized and cluttered room she had managed with before. Harry was dead, and every time the thought entered her mind it sent the shiver of shock and horror through her body and a longing for him that never seemed to lessen.
Harry had been married to her sister, Prue, but through the years he and Amy had been lovers. That he was dead, and the death, a blood-chilling murder that had stunned the village for weeks, made it seem like a nightmare from which she would one day wake. She still expected someone to tell her she had been hallucinating and that Harry, strong, lively Harry, who had laughed and loved with such an enthusiastic joy, was not dead, but there, within sight of her doorstep, his hand hovering over the ’phone, waiting for a private moment to dial her number and arrange for them to meet. A thousand times she had picked up the ’phone and fallen into an abyss of despair when the voice at the other end was not his.
She stood for a moment longer, swallowing her grief and patting her fair hair in a nervous gesture, slipped up the blind and opened the shop door. There were a few waiting outside and they began talking as she smiled a greeting and went behind the counter. Her son Freddy ran down the stairs from their flat above as he heard the shop doorbell announce the beginning of the day, and he stood there waiting, ready to fetch and carry as needed.
‘Any orders to put up, Mam?’ he asked, glancing at the spike on which orders were placed as they arrived. Amy usually had a messenger boy to take customers’ weekly groceries to their doors, but now Freddy had taken on the job while he waited to hear from the selection board.
‘Can you put these sacks outside first, Freddy?’ She pointed to the pile of sacks and boxes which usually stood outside lining the narrow pavement beneath the window.
‘Something for Constable Harris to moan about, Mam?’ he grinned.
He set about the task of dragging the sacks of potatoes and crates of greens through the doorway. They both knew the policeman would be along soon and they would be told to bring them all in again. But once he had made his official complaint, he rarely bothered to insist. Amy’s shop was a
necessary part of village life and he knew he would face a storm of protests if she had to give up selling the many items which gave little profit but saved the locals a long haul from the town.
Sacks of carrots and onions, chicken meal and dog-biscuits, barrels containing brushes and mops went out, and, with winter approaching, there was even a basket of daffodil bulbs to tempt the gardeners.
The first rush of customers was over and Amy went to the back of the shop to put the kettle on for a cup of tea.
‘Did you speak to Maurice last night?’ she asked. ‘He was in the army for five years and should know the ins and outs of it all.’
‘I still want to go, Mam.’
‘But you were so happy with the idea of working for Uncle Harry. His death didn’t change that. Auntie Prue still wants you to stay.’
‘I changed my mind. I want to get away, for a while at least.’
Amy handed him a mug of tea. She longed to cry and beg him not to go. She would miss him so much, but she knew it would be wrong to persuade him. Freddy was not yet sixteen but he was a man and had to make his own decisions.
Brought up in a house without a father, he had taken on the role of family head when he was still a child. Now, as she looked at his tall broad figure, and the young face and serious eyes behind the glasses, at the fair hair on his chin and the hint of a moustache, she knew she had to let him go. She would sadly miss his strength and reliability but she couldn’t risk swamping him by her selfish need of him.
Children, she mused as she served Milly Toogood with a half pound of biscuits, were only borrowed for a few years, then they had to go, a step at a time, to achieve independence. But for all his size, and the moustache, it was impossible to think of him as more than her baby, and someone who needed her for day-to-day support.
Freddy found a box in the store room and began making up the order for Brenda Roberts, wife of the bossy ex-sergeant.
‘Bert Roberts, he was in the army, I might have a word with him when I take the order,’ he said.
Amy began dusting the shelves where she had left off the previous day. ‘You haven’t quarrelled with Auntie Prue, have you?’
‘No, Mam, we haven’t quarrelled. Got on all right we did.’ Freddy paled at the thought of his mother knowing just how well he and his aunt ‘got on’. The affair between him and Prue had been brief and strange, and embarrassing and exciting. Discovering the joys of sex in an unacceptable relationship with his aunt had been a thrill. But Uncle Harry dying in such a horrific way had seemed like a punishment and his muddled feelings of guilt and anxiety were now driving him from home.
‘Uncle Harry would have wanted you to stay with the firm he’d built up from nothing. To have a member of his family still involved would have meant a lot to him.’ A lump filled her throat as she spoke the name. To lose someone she deeply loved and whom she had been unable to openly mourn was so painful. A mistress was not allowed the luxury of grieving.
She was torn from her melancholy by the shop bell and looking up smiled her brightest smile for Constable Harris.
‘Sorry, Amy, but them sacks have got to be moved. You know they’re impeding the passers-by.’ He smiled apologetically.
‘Not impeding!’ she teased. ‘How can that be? They don’t pass anyway, they all come in.’
‘Got to tell you to move them. If it was only one or two, it would be all right, but there’s more every time I look, it seems to me.’
Amy put her head on one side appealingly. ‘They’re only there ’til I get the floor washed.’
‘Yes, I know that one. And you’ll be too busy all day right ’til closing time so you can’t get it done.’
Amy smiled, her earrings sparkling as she shook her head. ‘You know me too well, Mr Harris.’
‘I’ll just have an ounce of my tobacco while I’m here.’ He carefully counted out three shillings and seven pence, and taking the silver packet, nodded and went out.
‘If you don’t need me this afternoon, I thought I’d go to the new house and do a bit of gardening,’ Freddy said later as they sat eating a snack lunch. ‘I miss doing Auntie Prue’s garden.’
‘The house isn’t really ours yet,’ Amy warned. She knew that if Prue could stop her from inheriting it from Harry’s will, she would. She had tried once already but her sudden decision to withdraw her protest had been a surprise and the reason for the change of heart was a mystery.
‘I thought I could start to plan it, and maybe plant a few bulbs so you have something to look for in the spring. I can keep it going when I come home on leaves.’
‘Yes, Freddy, that would be lovely.’ She hid her face, fussing with the teapot as loneliness again overwhelmed her.
They were sitting drawing sketches of the garden and discussing the plants they would need when they heard the shop door being rattled.
‘Nelly!’ Amy said, getting up and reaching for another cup. ‘I forgot that she’s cleaning the flat today instead of tomorrow.’
Freddy put their plates into the sink and went down to open the door, but it wasn’t Nelly who had knocked so impatiently. A young woman of about twenty looked at him with growing interest in her wide blue eyes. She was dressed in a trouser suit with the jacket open revealing a red roll-necked jumper, amply filled. The rest of her figure was slim but shapely and Freddy was unable to resist looking her over with interest.
‘Sorry if I disturbed you,’ she said, her pert head on one side, her body thrust slightly forward. ‘I called to see Mrs Prichard. Is she in? I’m Sheila Powell and I’m coming to live in the flat.’
‘Be a bit crowded,’ Freddy grinned. ‘There’s three of us already!’
‘I mean when you all move out, of course. I wondered if I could measure up for curtains.’ She looked up at him and added sweetly, ‘You can stay to help if you want.’
‘I’ll call Mam.’
‘Who is it, Freddy?’ Amy called.
‘So you’re Freddy, are you? How do you do?’
‘Nicely thanks.’ He was a bit confused by the rather blatant way Sheila showed her approval of what she saw, and he was glad when he could leave the interview to his mother and disappear upstairs.
He was washing the dishes when heavy, slow footsteps announced Nelly’s arrival.
‘Who’s she when she’s ’ome?’ Nelly whispered, pointing down to the shop.
‘Sheila Powell. Her parents are renting the flat when Mam and Margaret move to the new house.’
‘’Er and ’er mam and dad, ain’t it?’
‘I think so. She wants to measure for curtains or something. I’ll be off, I’m going to start on the garden at the house when I’ve delivered the last of the orders.’
‘If you was a couple of years older, Freddy me boy, I reckon you’d be in luck there. She looks as if she might be a lively one. Sheila what, did you say?’
‘No, Nelly, Sheila Powell,’ he grinned and ran down the stairs to where his carrier bike was already loaded with the full boxes.
When he was returning the bike before setting off to start on the garden, Freddy saw Sheila again and stopped to say hello just as she was about to turn into Sheepy Lane. As he was trying to think of how to begin a conversation, Maurice called and ran down the lane to join them. With regret, Freddy introduced them and left them talking while he went back to the shop. He saw them walk up the lane together as he parked the bike and set off to walk to ‘Heulog’, their new home.
* * *
When Nelly had finished her work she sat on the bottom stair and waited until Amy had closed the shop.
‘Thought I might as well stay and give you a hand washing the shop floor before I goes,’ she said, picking up the mop and bucket she had filled with soapy water.
‘There’s no need, but thanks,’ Amy smiled.
They worked together while Freddy waited for the floor to be washed and covered with newspapers before bringing in the sacks and boxes.
‘Seen the paper today, ’ave yer?’ Nelly asked as she
poured away the dirty water and washed out the mop-bucket. ‘Seems like we’re goin’ to see an end to the ration books after this one finishes. It says there won’t be any more issued. Good news ain’t it? I thought I’d never see the day.’
‘Thank goodness for that! No more counting up coupons and finding them short, and panicking about being too generous with the fat bacon.’
‘And no more pretending you got a bit of meat mid-week by coverin’ yer veg and ’taters with Bisto gravy.’ Nelly tilted the heavy bucket upside down to drain, then added, ‘Ere, Amy, what about comin’ to the pictures with me next week? Abbot an’ Costello are on again, at the Carlton this time. Good laugh they are. An’ there’s a Tarzan picture with it. Come, why don’t yer? Take your Margaret and my Ollie if you like.’
Amy looked at Nelly’s red, eager face and shook her head regretfully. ‘Sorry, Nelly, but I’m too busy. What with the move, and renting the flat, there’s a lot to do.’
‘I’ll ’elp yer! An’ you don’t need to pay me for the few extra hours,’ Nelly coaxed.
Still Amy shook her head. ‘No, but thanks for asking me.’
Nelly hung her head in disappointment. ‘I wouldn’t let yer down, Amy. I’d dress tidy.’
Amy laughed and patted Nelly’s plump shoulder. ‘I wouldn’t be ashamed of you! What an idea! Friends, aren’t we?’
‘I know I’m a bit on the scruffy side. “Dirty Nelly” they calls me when they think I can’t ’ear.’
Amy felt guilty. She had used the nickname herself. ‘Let me down indeed! All right, sod the work. I’ll come.’
Nelly’s teeth appeared in a crooked grin. Her ruse had worked. She was very fond of cheerful, kindly Amy and knew how deeply she had felt the death of Harry Beynon. A good laugh is what she needs, she thought, nodding her head wisely.
* * *
On Monday morning Nelly helped Amy with some extra cleaning. She scrubbed the wooden floor of the bedroom, which had been emptied of carpet and linoleum ready for the move. She hummed happily in tune with the music on Amy’s wireless, wishing she could afford one for herself. Netta Cartwright was very good, inviting her to stay and listen to her favourite Goon Show and other programmes she enjoyed, but with Fay and Johnny living there she didn’t go as often as she had previously, thinking it unfair to crowd the small room.
Valley Affairs Page 4