Past Remembering (9 page)

‘They know the service here is worth waiting for.’ Opening the door that led to the living quarters upstairs, she ran ahead of him. As he used his crutch to clamber up awkwardly behind her, her skirt flared high around her legs. They were long, slim and elegant, like the rest of her. He hated himself for even noticing. He hadn’t as much as looked at a woman since Maud had died. But Jenny exuded a warm, seductive sensuality that disturbed him, threatening his arid, monk-like existence. Just being alone with her was enough to make him feel as though he was committing adultery, which was ridiculous considering he no longer even had a wife.

‘They’re in here.’ Apparently oblivious to the impact she was having on him, she walked along the landing and ushered him into the front bedroom. ‘This was our room. After I had the telegram I couldn’t bear to sleep in here, too many memories I suppose, so I moved into my parents’ old bedroom in the back. What do you think?’ She unlocked the door of a cumbersome, old-fashioned oak wardrobe and started lifting out coathangers.

He looked around. The bed had been dismantled. The mattress wrapped in dust sheets and propped on its side. The smell of damp, disuse and mothballs was overwhelming.

‘He was quite a dresser,’ he complimented as she peeled back the muslin protector on a suit to show him the cloth.

‘He spent a lot of his boxing prize money on clothes,’ she boasted proudly, ‘and the last couple of years before the war he earned good money in Charlie’s shop. There’s a dozen almost new shirts, braces, sock suspenders, two caps, a hat, ties, a couple of pullovers and cardigans, a sports coat, blazer and three pairs of trousers as well as three suits, and his underclothes of course, that’s if you don’t mind wearing them. Could you use them, Ronnie?’ she asked, her face darkly serious as she fought back tears evoked by the clothes.

‘I have one torn shirt, one pair of worn trousers and these -’ he put his hands in the pockets of the trousers he was wearing – ‘which as you so astutely pointed out, don’t fit. So if you really don’t mind, I could use them.’

‘What size shoes do you take?’

‘Ten.’

‘Same as Eddie. They’re all in boxes at the bottom of the wardrobe. Why don’t you try some of the things on now, then I’ll pack up what’s left this evening.’

‘You sure about this? I don’t know how I’d feel if I saw another woman wearing Maud’s clothes.’

‘If it was someone in the family who’d lost everything the way you have, you wouldn’t mind.’

‘Perhaps not.’ He lifted a shirt from a shelf in the wardrobe and fingered the fine cotton. It had been a long time since he had seen clothes laid out in this kind of domestic order. Why did everything, especially the small things, always remind him of his life with Maud? ‘Thank you, Jenny.’

‘There’s nothing to thank me for. Are you staying on in Pontypridd?’

‘I don’t see that I’ve got much option at the moment, with this -’ he held up his crutch.

‘What are you going to do? Go back to running the cafés?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘It’s difficult to make plans when it feels as though your world has come to an end.’

‘You understand that too?’

‘They need workers in the munitions factories. I start next week.’

‘What about the shop?’

‘I’ve found a girl in Leyshon Street who is prepared to run it for me. I’ve wanted to do something to help the war effort ever since Eddie got killed.’

‘I would have thought you were doing enough in managing this place.’

‘With the Germans about to invade at any minute?’

He would have liked to contradict her, but the one question on everyone’s lips at the RAF base where he had been debriefed, was ‘what are the bastards waiting for?’

‘I want to make the bullets and shells that will kill the men who murdered Eddie. It was murder, you know. William was there and he told us about it. Eddie’s whole unit was shot by German soldiers after they surrendered their weapons.’

‘I didn’t know.’ He shuddered, not at her story but at the venom in her voice. He’d long since discovered that it wasn’t only those who were killed who had been destroyed by the war.

‘You must come around one evening. I could make supper for us. It would be nice to talk to someone who understands what I’m going through.’ She gave him a sad little smile as the shop door rattled. ‘I’d better go and open up, before whoever that is breaks something.’

He stripped off down to Tony’s underpants, changed into the shirt and one of the suits, and looked around for a mirror. There was a full-length cheval in Jenny’s bedroom. Turning his back on the feminine clutter of hairpins, cold cream, scent bottles and brushes on the dressing table that reminded him too acutely of his wife, he studied his image in the glass. The suit hung loosely on his skeletal frame, and the trousers would have fallen down without the braces, but Jenny was right about his and Eddie’s height. The length of the trousers and sleeves was perfect. Bundling Tony’s clothes under his arm, he limped down the stairs into the shop and straight into Mrs Richards, Evan Powell’s neighbour and the Graig gossip.

She raised her eyebrows as he closed the door that led to Jenny’s private quarters. ‘Well, I see you’ve wasted no time in visiting old friends, Ronnie?’

‘Ronnie’s been helping me with something upstairs,’ Jenny intervened.

‘It’s handy for a widow to have a man to call on,’ Mrs Richards smirked knowingly. ‘And good to see someone home in one piece,’ she added in an acidic tone that implied she would much rather have seen her own son, Glan, home from the POW camp he’d been consigned to for the duration.

‘Not quite one piece, Mrs Richards.’ Ronnie lifted his crutch.

‘You’re alive, aren’t you, and you’ll mend. Sorry to hear about Maud, but then she always was sickly.’

He nodded, not trusting himself to reply.

‘You two have a lot in common now, both married to Powells who’ve passed on. Nice to see you consoling one another like this.’

Ronnie took half a crown from his pocket and pushed it across the counter. ‘Twenty Players please, Jenny.’

‘She was serving me,’ Mrs Richards snapped.

‘Ronnie only wants cigarettes and he is in a hurry.’ Jenny turned to the tobacco shelves above the till. Handing Ronnie his change and cigarettes, she said, ‘I won’t forget to give those things to Bethan, and your rations. Gina dropped your coupons in this morning.’

He knew perfectly well Gina had done no such thing, because his food coupons were snarled up in the same bureaucratic web as his clothing coupons. ‘Thank you for everything, Jenny. See you soon.’ Nodding to Mrs Richards he opened the door and left.

‘Well, it’s easy to see what’s on his mind,’ Mrs Richards declared in a loud voice before he managed to pull his crutch out behind him.

‘Do you have a list, Mrs Richards?’

‘Here it is. I’m putting a food parcel together for my Glan in the prison camp. They have it rough, you know. According to his letters they have nothing to eat except potatoes, swedes and black bread. All I can say is, I hope it’s not black from mould. Disgraceful the way those Jerries are treating our boys.’

‘At least your Glan is still alive to be treated disgracefully, Mrs Richards.’ Jenny bit down hard on her bottom lip as she watched the back of Eddie’s suit disappear across the road and down the hill towards Laura’s house.

‘Constable Davies, how nice to see you,’ Myrtle greeted him as she opened the door to his tentative knock.

‘Just thought I’d call in and see how Megan’s doing.’

‘I’m sorry, you’ve missed her. Mrs Lane called in to let us know that Pegler’s have had a consignment of tinned fruit in, but if you’d like to wait, she shouldn’t be much longer.’

‘I wasn’t expecting to find you home at this hour.’

‘My section finished two hours earlier than usual today. We ran out of materials, which probably means we’ll have to put in extra time tomorrow when the supplies arrive. Please, come on through to the living room. Would you like some tea?’

‘I should go on into town to pick up my rations.’

‘I’ve just made a fresh pot. My father always takes a cup when he goes for his afternoon nap.’

‘Myrtle? Myrtle? Who’s there?’ the old man called peevishly from the front parlour.

‘Only Constable Davies for Megan, Dad.’

‘Turn up the radio will you? You’re making such a racket I can’t hear it.’

Myrtle went into his room and did as he asked before returning to the hall. ‘Please, do come through. I need someone to keep me awake until Megan gets back. I’m looking after Billy and I’m so tired I could easily fall asleep and not hear him crying.’

‘From what I recall of the noise he makes, there’s not much danger of that.’ He followed her into the living room.

‘Please, sit down. I’ll pour the tea.’

‘Your shift begins the same time as usual in the morning?’

‘I’ll be leaving on the five o’clock train, but really, you don’t have to walk me down.’

‘It’s easy to time my beat to coincide with the departure of the munitions special.’ He summoned his courage as he took the tea she handed him. There’d never be a better time. He’d been rehearsing the speech he was about to make all morning when he had been lying in his bed, trying to sleep. ‘I’m off on Sunday. If you are too, I thought we could go for a walk in the park,’ he blurted out. He leaned back in the chair, weak with relief. He’d done it. He’d finally breached the barrier that marked the dividing line between friendship and courtship.

‘I’m sorry, I’m working on Sunday.’

‘It doesn’t matter.’ His heart sank. He should have braced himself to take disappointment. What right had he to think that a woman like Myrtle would want to bother with him?

‘My next day off isn’t until a week Monday. Because the production line is kept flat out twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week we can’t pick and choose our time off’

‘I have a week Monday off too.’ He didn’t, but as there were a few officers in the station who owed him a favour, he didn’t envisage any difficulties in changing shifts.

‘Perhaps we could go for a walk then?’ she suggested shyly.

‘Or Cardiff,’ he hazarded boldly. ‘There’s more to do there. We could go to a matinee in the pictures and have tea in a Lyons afterwards.’

‘I’d like that.’

‘I’ll pick you up here about twelve, give you a chance to have a bit of a lie-in.’

‘No,’ she answered swiftly, thinking of her father. It was one thing to have Huw Davies visiting Megan, quite another to have him calling to take her out. ‘I’ll meet you at the station.’

‘I’ll get the tickets.’

‘About twelve, then.’

‘I’ll be waiting in the booking office.’

The door opened and closed. As Myrtle helped Megan unpack the tins she’d queued an hour for, he sat back and drank his tea, his triumph marred by the thought that Myrtle didn’t see the outing in the same light as him. How could she, when she didn’t want anyone else in the house to know that he was taking her out?

‘The postman saw your car outside, and dropped this in.’ Phyllis set down the tea she’d brought for Bethan on the bedside cabinet, and laid the letter on the bed.

Bethan picked up the blue and white envelope and turned it over. ‘It’s from Andrew.’

‘Take your time reading it, Rachel’s having a nap and I’ve just changed and fed Eddie.’

‘Thank you.’ Bethan glanced at the alarm clock next to the bed. She’d asked Phyllis to wake her at two and it was five to the hour. She could steal ten minutes.

As soon as Phyllis closed the door she tore open the envelope.

Dear Bethan,

Thank you for your letter and the photograph of our son which I had yesterday, eight weeks after you sent them. What do you want me to say? That I’m grateful to you for keeping this pregnancy from me? You say you didn’t want to worry me, but as I’ve nothing to do here except think about you and Rachel, all you’ve succeeded in doing is making me feel excluded from your life more than ever.

I don’t mind if you name our son Eddie …

She picked up her tea and sipped it slowly, wondering if Andrew hated the idea of naming their son after her brother. He had never really got on with Eddie, but by the time he’d had the letter telling him of the birth it would have been too late for him to have made a contribution to the name anyway.

Perhaps he was right, perhaps she should have told him about her pregnancy before Eddie’s birth; only after the complications she’d had in her first pregnancy, she couldn’t bear the thought of him sitting in a prison camp, day in, day out, with nothing to do except worry about her, the way she worried about him and the survival of their marriage during the few odd moments when she was free to think at all.

I hope you are taking it easy and looking after the children…

She started guiltily, glancing at the date on his letter. It had taken nine weeks to get to her, and it was obvious hers took just as long to reach him. She hadn’t even had an address for him until four months after he’d been captured. Although she’d written to him four and sometimes five times a week since, the missive in which she’d dropped the bombshell that she had taken the district nurse’s job had to be stuck in a mailbag somewhere.

Things here are the same as ever – crushingly boring. I have set up a small infirmary to treat the sick and wounded, but infirmary is a grand name for an eight by twelve wooden hut, with three bunks and no XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

She studied the thick black lines, but it was hopeless. The German censor had done a thorough job. There was no deciphering the words beneath the crossings out. She guessed that Andrew had written: drugs, medical supplies and bandages.

We do all kinds of crazy things to keep up our spirits. Some of the boys are building a theatre. The entertainments committee make an effort to put on a variety show at least once a week and it will be good to have a place where everyone can congregate to watch, instead of a small number of us squashing into the largest barracks. The chorus of our sergeants in drag has to be seen to be believed. We also have a few good singers, although none of them are up to Haydn’s standard. I hope he is still singing somewhere through all of this. As I said before, being a POW or KRIEGIES as we’re known to the guards (my German is better than I’d like it to be) is not too onerous, but when you can spare the money, rations and the time, food parcels are very desirable and books even more so.