Bobby's Girl (4 page)

She waited until the sound of Andy's car engine died away, before taking the letter from her pocket and handing it to her father.

Her father read the letter before returning it to her. ‘Do you remember what you said to your mother and me when we brought you back from America?'

‘I remember confessing I was pregnant and being terrified of your reaction. I expected a scene. But all Mam said was, “A grandchild, how lovely.” And you said, “We'll do whatever we can to help. It's your decision but I think you should finish college.”'

‘Which you did,' he smiled. ‘It took courage for you to finish your course in Swansea, Pen. Some people were still petty-minded about illegitimacy at the end of the Sixties. But to answer my question, what you actually said was, “Better I bring my child up alone than go begging to a man who doesn't want me or his baby.” But this,' he tapped the letter in her hand, ‘wasn't written by a man who didn't want you. What was it, Pen? I know his disfigurement wouldn't have stopped you from marrying him. Was it his money?'

‘It's not what it seems, Dad.'

‘Did he make things difficult for you? I've treated men who've been horribly maimed in the pits. Some did all they could to push their wives and girlfriends away lest love turn to pity,' he suggested astutely.

‘If that had been the problem, I believe, given time, I could have overcome it.'

‘Was it his grandmother? Charlotte Brosna certainly didn't want you to see him after the accident. She couldn't wait to get you out of the States. Even bought you a flight ticket home.'

‘Which you refused to take.' She finished her coffee and set her mug on the floor.

‘I didn't like the way the woman tried to assume control, not only of her grandson's life but my daughter's.' He wrapped his arm around her shoulders. ‘But bullying has its own reward. Charlotte Brosna reached a ripe old age.'

‘After Bobby recovered as much as he's ever going to, I doubt Charlotte could have stopped us from seeing one another – if we'd wanted to.'

‘She wanted Andy when she found out you were pregnant.'

‘She couldn't do anything legally without Bobby's permission. I have him to thank for respecting my decision to bring him up alone.'

‘Pen, those letters you wrote to your mother and me from America, you were besotted with Bobby Brosna. If you really meant that much to one another, I can't understand why you wouldn't let him help you to bring up Andy. Tell me, if it wasn't the accident, what really happened to separate you two?'

She couldn't answer him because the secret wasn't hers to tell.

‘Do you want to talk about it, sweetheart?'

She shook her head, buying time to fight the tears pricking the back of her eyes. She didn't give herself long enough. Her voice wavered when she finally answered. ‘The choices I made seemed right at the time.'

‘But not now?'

‘I don't know what I feel now, Dad.'

‘You do know you have to tell Andy about his father – and this legacy.'

‘Not until after he's sat his exams.'

‘There I agree with you. I've seen how a little money can unhinge a teenager. But billions? Even I, at my advanced age, can't comprehend wealth on that scale.' Her father rose to his feet. ‘I'll leave you in peace, Pen. If you want to talk, you know where to find me. Whatever you decide, your mother and I will be behind you as we've always been. Just one word of advice.'

She looked up at him.

‘For the first time in eighteen years and almost two weeks think about someone besides Andy. Think about yourself, Pen. Then do what's best for both of you.' 

Penny couldn't settle after her father left. She picked up her paintbrush and looked critically at the unfinished canvas on her easel. She'd never aspired to be Andy Warhol, but long hours and hard work had eventually paid off. For the last seventeen years she'd made a reasonable living painting book jackets for crime and romance novels. It helped that she'd never had to buy a house or pay rent. Her parents had converted an old barn at the back of the family home into self-contained accommodation for her and her baby before Andy was born.

They'd refused to allow her to pay rent but she'd insisted on paying her own bills from the outset and, as soon as she could afford to, she'd set money aside to repay them. Before Andy's sixth birthday she'd cleared the debt. Two years later she'd made enough to rebuild the derelict stables adjoining her barn conversion and
turned them into a studio. Since then, she'd brought in enough money to meet her own and Andy's needs and most of Andy's wants, as well as set aside savings for Andy's college fund.

The background on the jacket of the bodice-ripper she was working on was exotic eastern – the scene tropically garish but the heroine didn't look right. The publishers had asked for sultry, but the girl she'd painted looked sulky. Penny wondered if it was her fault or that of the model she'd hired to pose in harem dress. She studied the photographs she'd taken at the shoot and couldn't decide.

She busied herself mixing fresh paint but even as she lightened and darkened shades on the palette, she knew she was about to make a bad job worse. After scrubbing off a couple of daubs and smudging the canvas, she accepted she wouldn't do anything worthwhile in her present mood.

She packed away her paints, cleaned her brushes, hung her smock behind the door, threw a poncho over her shirt and jeans, and left the studio. She'd intended to head for the open mountain, her own and her brothers' and sisters' playground when they'd been children. And her sanctuary since the birth of Andy had forced her to accept that she'd ‘grown up'. But something held her back and she found herself standing at her front door.

She ran up the stairs past the bedrooms and headed for the attic stairs. There were skylights in the roof. It had been boarded out as a playroom-cum-study for Andy. But during the conversion she'd asked the builder
to erect a partition wall at the far end. The result was a storage area six feet deep by twenty feet wide. A ‘glory hole' she and Andy used to house things they no longer needed but couldn't bear to part with.

Andy's study area was unnaturally tidy. His BBC computer unplugged, and his videos stacked in a neat pile next to his video player and TV. A sure sign he'd be away for a few days.

Penny crossed the room and unlatched the door to the cupboard, fumbling for the light switch because there was no window or loft light in the area. Three of the walls were shelved. As she'd made a point of labelling everything before storing it, and insisted Andy do the same, the labels read like a history of their lives.

Andy's high chair, cot, pushchair and baby walker, shrouded in plastic sheeting. Andy's early Fisher Price toys. Why had she kept them when she could have passed them on to nieces and nephews who were younger than Andy? A desire to bring them out some day, show them to her grandchildren and say ‘your father loved this toy when he was your age'?

Had she dreamt of a family life for Andy with a wife and children because circumstances had made her a single mother? She turned her back on Andy's toys and found what she was looking for under a pile of boxes that held Andy's early paintings and schoolwork.

It was a battered canvas holdall in green tartan with vinyl handles. She'd bought it on a stall on Pontypridd market for her trip to America. She could even remember the banter she'd exchanged with the good-looking young stallholder.

‘Going somewhere nice, love?'

She'd tried not to boast, but it had been difficult. ‘
America
.'

‘Ooh, get you. Well there's enough room in that bag for me. When do you want to pack me in it?'

She set the boxes aside, picked up the bag and shook the dust from it. It was heavy. She switched off the light, closed the door and carried it down the stairs to her bedroom. She set the bag on the cream crewel work rug beside her bed, instantly regretting it when she saw the dust smudges it made. The zip was stiff, rusted with age, the vinyl cracked. She persevered and broke two fingernails before she finally managed to open it.

On top was a photograph album. The plastic cover she remembered as white had yellowed. She opened it and was faced with a photograph of herself and Richard ‘Rich' Evans taken on their first day at Swansea Training College. Underneath, she'd written
Two head teachers in the making
. She'd meant it ironically. Neither of them had the slightest intention – then – of pursuing a career in teaching.

Rich was going to be an actor. The only question was whether his career would progress along the Royal Shakespeare Company, classic theatrical route, or the film star path that led to Hollywood. She was going to be a groundbreaking artist who would create ‘true art' – or what she at eighteen believed ‘true art' to be.

Both Rich's parents and her own had insisted they have ‘qualifications to fall back on' because their chosen professions were notoriously precarious. They'd picked Swansea because it had been one of the first colleges to
offer a Bachelor of Education degree. It was also the only college to offer them both a place. And, as they, but not their parents, considered themselves engaged to be married, they'd refused to be separated. Rich had opted to study English; she, art.

Penny turned the page. Her with Kate Burgess, her best friend since their first day in Pontypridd Girls' Grammar School in 1959, and her travelling companion on that fateful 1968 trip to the States.

She leant back against the bed, thought of the letter she'd received, pictured the disfigured recluse who'd written it, closed her eyes – and the years tumbled away.

If she hadn't cut her moral philosophy class to play chess with Rich in the common room, she might never have gone to America. Within an hour of the announcement being posted on the noticeboard, all the flight tickets had been reserved and deposits paid. A fist fight broke out in the union offices over the last two. But thanks to Kate, she'd booked hers before the trip had been advertised.

She and Rich had tucked themselves into a corner and were in the closing stages of a game. The room was unpleasantly warm. The college could never get it right. In winter, the students either froze or baked. The atmosphere was dense, blue with cigarette smoke, and heavy with the mixed odours of coffee, sweat, cheap aftershave and scent. She was about to checkmate Rich in six or ten moves, depending on whether or not he'd seen through her strategy, when Kate burst in.

Everyone turned when Kate slammed the door back on its hinges. She looked as though she'd been under a shower. Her nylon mac dripped puddles on the vinyl tiled floor; her white tights were grey with mud splashes, her short blonde hair was plastered to her head but her cheeks glowed with excitement.

Kate shouted but she couldn't hear her above the political arguments raging against a background of Jimmy Ruffin's ‘What Becomes of the Broken Hearted' being belted out on the record player. She shook her head and pointed to her ears.

Kate charged across the room. Oblivious to their game her overflowing bag hit their chessboard. A yoghurt and monster bar of chocolate spilt out knocking over half a dozen pieces.

‘Pen, you'll never guess—'

‘Thanks for killing our game and so much for your diet, Kate,' Rich griped. He and Kate had hated one another for years. Neither of them bothered to disguise their mutual loathing. She'd told both of them it wasn't easy having the love of her life and best friend at constant loggerheads but her protests hadn't had the slightest effect.

‘I'm talking to Pen, not you,' Kate snapped.

‘That's my rook you sent flying across the room. And I was winning,' Rich carped, when Kate swept the board again with the edge of her mac.

‘No you weren't. Pen had a cunning plan to checkmate you in three moves. She always does.' Kate picked up the rook and turned her back on Rich. ‘The union's chartered a plane. It's leaving for New York the first week of June
and returning mid September. Forty-eight pounds return and they'll help any student who wants to go to find a job.'

‘Forty-eight pounds! You sure?' She abandoned the game.

‘Where are you two going to find forty-eight pounds?' Rich scoffed. ‘It's two weeks into term but everyone I know has an overdraft.'

‘Not me. After watching my mother struggle with the tallyman for years I know how to hold on to my money.' Kate had been brought up by a widowed mother on a council estate. The poorest and roughest in Pontypridd.

‘Do you have forty-eight pounds?' she asked Kate.

‘I handed in my cheque ten minutes ago.'

‘Rob a bank or gone on the game, Kate?' Rich goaded.

Kate ignored him. ‘I met Joe Hunt in town. He was on his way back from a meeting at the university union. The notice won't be on the board until tomorrow morning. There's bound to be a rush for seats because the offer's open to all Swansea students in the Uni, Tech and Art colleges.' Kate gave Rich a mocking smile. ‘As for the forty-eight pounds, the Dragon Hotel was advertising for a waitress. All day Saturday and Sunday and two week-night evenings. Five pounds a week plus tips and a free ride back here at the end of the shift.'

‘You've taken it?'

Penny didn't know why Rich had asked. It was obvious from the triumphant look on Kate's face she had.

‘It gives me four months to replace what I've taken from my grant cheque and save spending money.' Kate
wrinkled her nose. ‘Not that we're going to be allowed to take more than fifty pounds out of the country. Stupid government and their stupid penny-pinching rules to stop the rich spending abroad; if we don't find jobs within a day or two in the States, we'll be sleeping in the street.'

‘Do the union want all the money upfront?' Penny'd tried to calculate how much was left of her grant cheque in her bank account. She'd a massive overdraft before Christmas and spent more than she should have on presents for her family.

‘Do you think I would have handed my cheque into the union office if they didn't? I'm still living off what I made working in the Post Office at Christmas. I haven't touched my grant. I won't need any extra cash for a few weeks and, when I do, I'll have my Dragon wages to fall back on.'

‘You're going to wear yourself out, waiting tables two days and four nights a week as well as studying. Most people who flunk out do so after the second-year finals.' Rich couldn't resist the opportunity to forecast doom for Kate.

‘You're thinking of students of low intelligence and no stamina, like yourself,' Kate bit back.

Rich ignored Kate and glared at Penny. ‘You can't seriously be considering going, Pen?'

‘It's America.'

‘It's not like the TV shows.' Rich was always teasing her and Kate about their addiction to American westerns, like
Bonanza
and the
High Chaparral
. ‘The cowboy films you watch are their idea of serious history. And
Hollywood is a right dump. Worse than the council estates around Ponty.'

‘Been there, have you, Rich? The council estates as well as Hollywood?' Kate sniped.

Rich remained unabashed. ‘Face it, Kate, you live on an estate. You know what I mean.'

‘No, I don't. Would you care to explain?' Kate demanded.

Penny'd stepped in. ‘Stop quarrelling.'

‘Kate started it.'

‘No she didn't. You're being childish. We've moved on since Victorian times. No one gives a damn where people come from these days.'

Even then she'd occasionally wondered why she stayed with Rich. It wasn't as though she hadn't had offers from boys just as attractive. But whenever she came close to moving on, Rich would say or do something heart-meltingly sweet, like drive her down the Gower so she could photograph and sketch the landscape while he stood around freezing. Or produce tickets for a Royal Shakespeare production in the Aldwych they were both desperate to see. Or escort her to an art exhibition that bored him witless just so she wouldn't have to go on her own.

‘Coming with us, Rich?' Kate taunted, knowing Rich's teacher father insisted both his sons work on their grandfather's farm every holiday ‘to keep their feet on the ground'.

‘I suppose I could ask my old man if he'd let me off herding sheep, milking cows and mucking out horses this summer.'

‘Don't bother. You'd cramp our style.' Kate wasn't joking and Rich knew it.

Tired of listening to Kate and Rich fence words, Penny'd left her chair. ‘You going to the hostel, Kate?'

Kate stuffed the yoghurt and chocolate back into her bag. ‘Yes, before I get any more gibes about my diet.' She waved the bar of chocolate under Rich's nose. ‘Alison asked me to get this when I said I was going into town.' She bent close to Rich's ear. ‘It's for her little brother's birthday,' she shouted, making him jump.

‘What about our game, Pen?' Rich questioned petulantly.

‘Kate's right. You were losing.'

‘I wasn't. And, you said you wanted to see
The Magic Roundabout
.'

The only time the common room was full was the ten minutes when the cartoon was shown on television before the evening news.

It was Rich's remark that made her decide, no matter what, she was going to the States. If for no other reason than it would prove her independence.