Love and War (10 page)

‘For goodness’ sake, Mary, don’t be so morbid. You’re not helping Alun by spending your time rehearsing his death. Write to him as often as you can and try to keep cheerful, that’s the only way you can help him.’

She doesn’t seem to hear me, but carries on in a high, wavering voice, like someone in a fever. ‘You hear about women who don’t stay faithful to their men when they’re overseas. How can they bear the guilt when that telegram comes? Don’t you think it would drive them mad?’

‘Mary, if you’re not careful, you’ll be the one who’ll go mad and Alun will come back and find you in Brynglas Asylum.’

‘Oh, that’s cruel.’

‘I was only joking, girl. Look, we’d all go mad if we spent our time dwelling on all the terrible things that could happen. Everyone has got somebody they’re worried about; son, father, husband or friend. You’re not the only one.’

‘I know. Why can’t I be reasonable and calm like you? I’ve lost my faith, that’s the trouble, I think. I can’t even pray any more. Religion has always been such a big part of my life and now it means nothing.’

‘You should go to see Mr Roberts after school. He’s so understanding about doubt and weakness. He’d really help you.’

‘Do you mean, Mr Roberts, Tabernacle?’

‘Yes.’

‘Oh, I couldn’t, Rhian. You see, he’s Congregational and I’m Baptist.’

‘He won’t mind. You remember how Christ was always ready to associate with sinners and publicans? Well, Mr Roberts is like that even with Baptists.’

She manages to smile – and Mary Powell doesn’t often smile. She looks very like the young woman in the
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advertisement, the one so badly in need of Parkers’ little pink liver pills. Perhaps I should get her some.

‘I must go back to my room now,’ she says. ‘I’ve got some Form Three boys coming in to do their corrections.’ Her voice becomes shrill. ‘And if they don’t finish them this dinnertime, I’ll keep them in tonight until they do. There are some evil boys in 3C.’

Mary Powell can’t keep any sort of discipline, poor thing. She should never have become a teacher. The sooner Alun comes back and takes her away, the better for all of us.

When I tell Ilona Hughes about Gwynn Morgan coming to the house, she says she’s off to the pictures, which is very decent of her. It’s a double feature programme; Esther Williams swimming in one and Dick Haymes singing in the other; she’ll be bored out of her mind. I give her some of my sweet coupons.

She goes at ten past seven and then I don’t know what to do with myself. I can’t imagine why I suggested he should come to this house. What could I have been thinking of? What if my mother-in-law decides to call on me? She doesn’t come often, admittedly, but what if she happens to be at a loose end and takes it into her head to come up to criticise my new dress? What if she can’t resist calling to ask if I’ve heard from Huw? We’ve got an arrangement that if I get a letter before school, I call to tell my next door neighbour, Sam Jones, a retired railwayman, who’ll immediately go down to let her know, but I don’t think she trusts me to remember. Every time she happens to see me in town she asks whether I’ve had any news. You can’t blame her, I suppose; he’s her only son, the only fruit of her womb. And besides, she remembers him when he was sitting up in his pram, clapping his hands and gurgling. I try to think about him, far from home, trusting me completely. It’s shocking, but I can visualise Ilona’s Denzil more clearly. Huw seems like someone I used to know in a previous life.

I wash up, tidy the living room, make up the fire and brush the hearth, all the time trying not to think of the sin I committed: marrying without love. It’s Gwynn I love – and that’s another sin. All day, while pretending to be anxious about my mother, what I’ve really been suffering is an anguish of love. And now my heart is aching again, my breath laboured.

Can I live through the next half-hour until he comes? What else can I do to use up the time? I can’t settle to read the paper or write a letter. I’ve brushed my hair, put on some lipstick and rubbed it off, changed my shoes, washed my hands for the third or fourth time, gone upstairs again to look out at the road he’ll walk along, counted to five hundred and recited the long psalm.

And then, just as I’m telling myself that if he doesn’t come in the next four and a half minutes, he’s going to be late, there’s a knock at the door. And as I’m warning myself not to rush, to keep some semblance of calm, I’m there opening it.

When I see him, I know at once that things are not going to be easy. Suddenly I feel cold and quiet.

‘I shouldn’t have come,’ he’s saying, as he comes in.

‘I shouldn’t have suggested it. It’s my fault.’

‘No, it’s mine. I shouldn’t have behaved so wildly. I’m older than you, years older, and should know how to keep a grip on myself. I’m sorry to have embarrassed you.’

When he sits down, it’s on the very edge of the chair.

‘I didn’t know you intended to meet the bus. You didn’t mention it.’

‘I was afraid you’d tell me not to.’

‘I suppose I would have. But, of course, I would have wanted you to come. Oh Gwynn, I’m torn in two. All the same, we mustn’t meet like this – I know that much.’

‘You’re too young. You’ve got too much to lose. Good God, I was your teacher – and Huw’s too, for that matter. How can I let you risk breaking up your marriage?’

‘Why would it be a risk to my marriage, but not to yours?’ It’s not that I want to argue with him, but I need to understand his reasoning, because I know I’ll be going over his words again and again when he’s gone.

‘My marriage... Oh, my marriage is a very settled thing, Rhian. Yours is new and full of hope.’

‘Why did you ask me to your house? Was it so that I should see for myself how lonely and vulnerable your wife is?’

He looks hard at me for a moment or two. ‘Not really,’ he says at last. ‘Nothing as complicated. When I asked you to let me paint you, you said no. I thought – rightly, as it turned out – that you might come to sit for her. I need to see you occasionally, need to talk to you, it’s as simple as that. Was it difficult for you? Did you dislike it?’

‘No, it was interesting. And of course, I enjoyed having tea with you afterwards. We’ll have that time, at least, won’t we? For the next few weeks?’

‘It’s not what I want, Rhian, but it’s as much as I can have.’ He looks into my eyes again. ‘Come on, ask me what I do want. Won’t you?’

I shake my head. ‘How can I?’

I can’t look at him. I can’t ask him what he wants, because hearing it would bring tears to my eyes, and where would that lead us? If he makes a move, takes me in his arms, it must be his decision not mine and he mustn’t regret it afterwards. I can’t look at him because I’m aware – angrily aware – that I’m not as much in control as he is.

He’s completely in control again. ‘You asked me whether my wife was a good artist,’ he says now, ‘and you may decide that I misled you. I’m afraid she’s only a beginner. I hope you won’t mind.’

I can hardly bear to think of his wife, but I have to. ‘I thought the portrait she did of you was very impressive.’

‘She hasn’t done a portrait of me, Rhian. That’s a self-portrait. How could you have thought it was hers?’

‘It was with her other paintings. I took it for granted, I suppose.’

‘You should be able to recognise my work by this time.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘No, I’m being arrogant as usual. Why can’t I accept that I’m not an artist, only a teacher in a small school in a Welsh backwater.’

‘You’ve had your work exhibited. You’ve won prizes.’

‘Rhian, don’t patronise me.’

‘You should be proud of your work.’

‘I’m a conceited ass and if I had any sense I’d go before you throw me out.’

‘I won’t throw you out.’ The simple words sound like a declaration of love. I feel as though I’m blushing; my cheeks are warm and my lips feel soft and swollen.

‘Would you like a cup of tea?’ I ask, in what I hope is a brisk no-nonsense voice.

‘I would, please,’ he says, very quietly.

When I go out to the kitchen to put the kettle on, he follows me.

‘Pretty house,’ he says, ‘much as I’d expected. I love these small, artisan cottages.’

‘Then why do you live in that great posh house?’

‘God knows.’

‘I was only joking. It’s a beautiful house.’

‘I’d like to live here with you.’

‘Oh, Gwynn, don’t.’

We’re both stunned by this second lapse.

He takes the cup of tea from me and we sit one on each side of the table in the kitchen. We don’t say a word for a long time.

‘I didn’t intend to marry her,’ he says at last. ‘I honestly didn’t. I had no money, no prospects; I certainly didn’t mean to be a teacher in those days. She invited me to a Sunday meal at her home and because I accepted, her parents took it for granted that we were engaged and immediately started planning the wedding. They lived in a small town, about seven miles outside Rouen. I expected them to be worldly and sophisticated, I thought all French people were worldly and sophisticated, but they were more narrow-minded and provincial than the people round here, all lace curtains and genteel poverty and dressing up in their best clothes to walk to the nearest couple of shops. And every evening we endured excruciatingly boring visits from grandmothers and aunts and great aunts and cousins bringing very ugly wedding presents. It was a horrendous time.’

‘You must have been very much in love.’

‘I suppose I was. Oh, of course I was. But I’d never, for a moment considered marriage. My God, I was only twenty-one, a diffident Welsh art student, very proud of having won the attention of this elegant French woman of twenty-five, but intending only a relationship for my six-months’ stay in France. Not for ever.’

‘I can’t imagine that you struggled very hard to get out of it.’

He sighs. ‘No, I don’t suppose I did. She was very gentille and, yes, quite a lot more, too. She’d been engaged to a young lad from the next village while she was still at school and he was killed in the war and her family was resigned to the fact that she’d be on the shelf for the rest of her life. I think they felt ashamed of her – she became a governess and they were looked down on, you know, and treated very badly.’

‘She told me that the people she was with were very good to her.’

‘I don’t think so. You tend to remember the good times and forget the humiliations.’

‘So you got married in France?’

‘Yes. In September 1924.’

‘I was only five, then.’

‘Yes. Just starting school, I suppose. Big dark eyes and little fat bottom.’

‘I wish I could have seen you when you were twenty-one.’

We sit for another half-hour, I think, hardly speaking. When he says he should go, I jump up to open the door for him.

‘Good-night.’

‘Good-night, Rhian.’

I would have gone with him to the edge of the world.

Seven

POOR MAY POWELL IS IN TROUBLE. She banged some boy’s head against the classroom wall – one of those boys in 3C she was moaning about last week – and his mother comes up to school to complain.

She declines an invitation to the Headmaster’s office, preferring to confront him in the corridor, where, the time being exactly ten to nine, she has the largest possible audience of pupils and staff. Cynrig Williams, the Head, has to spend a considerable time saying how sorry he is, explaining about the fiancé fighting in Burma, and how she, Miss Powell, is yet another casualty of war. Complete strangers might think he was quite a compassionate man.

The boy’s mother is a thin, acid woman with royal blue turban, long grey coat and a magnificent voice which she hoists up and down like a banner. ‘Miss Powell’s fiancé is nothing to me, Mr Williams, wherever he is and whatever he may be doing for his country. But my boy has ringing in the ears, and if it leads to something serious I’ll sue Miss Powell and you and your school with every means at my disposal. I’m taking him to Dr Oliver at ten o’clock this morning. You shall hear from me again, Mr Williams.’

‘Strictly forbidden, Miss Powell,’ the Head says in the quiet of the staff room after she’s been persuaded to leave. ‘Physical violence by any member of staff is strictly forbidden. You should have sent the boy to me, Miss Powell. I’m allowed to administer the cane quite freely as long as it’s entered in the corporal punishment book – the cane, as you all know, is not physical violence but permissible chastisement. And now I want everybody in Assembly as soon as possible, please. The children are already agitated and excited.

‘I can’t go, Rhian,’ Mary says as soon as he’s left. ‘Everyone will be looking at me. I’ll faint, I know I will. Oh, I’m so ashamed. How could I have done it? Oh, and I’ve done it several times, if I’m honest. I just lose control of myself, something seems to snap inside me. They’re evil, those boys, the things they say, the way they snigger. What can I do? I certainly can’t go to Assembly.’

‘Then I won’t go either. I’ll stay and make you a cup of tea.’

‘Don’t worry, Mary,’ Jack Jones, the boys’ PT teacher says as he goes out of the room. ‘I know that Alfie Morris – all the little bugger wants is a morning off school. He’ll be back, bright as a button, this afternoon. I’ve laid him out before this. He’s a little devil, but he doesn’t bear grudges.’