Sinners and Shadows (43 page)

‘Mr Grey wears his slum upbringing on his sleeve as if it's something to be proud of. He calls everyone with a posh accent useless.' Bronwen sat opposite Julia.

‘And you're no more useless than the rest of us. The work was new to all of us when we started.' Rhian sprinkled salt on her stew and passed the shaker down the table.

‘Any letters come today, Mrs Williams?' Bronwen asked.

‘One for you from France.'

‘Ooh, the collier corporal's written a love letter,' Meriel teased.

‘One for Rhian, two for Miss Julia and none for you, Meriel. They're on the dresser.'

‘I bet mine are from the solicitor.' Julia had been locked in a correspondence with Mabel through their respective solicitors since she had left Tonypandy. So far as she and Cedric could make out, Mabel had liquidated as many of Edward's assets as she could, cleaned out his bank account, put Llan House on the market and finally done what Edward had begged her to: returned to Carmarthen.

‘Well, you'd be wrong, Miss Julia.'

‘Julia,' Meriel corrected.

‘Old habits die hard.' Mrs Williams joined them at the table. ‘One of the letters is from your husband – Julia.' Mrs Williams ladled stew out on plates and passed them down to the girls. ‘You staying here for your week off next week, Rhian, Julia?'

‘We haven't decided. Can we let you know tomorrow, Mrs Williams?' Rhian asked.

‘You have until Saturday morning when I send the food order down to the shop.'

‘Thank you.' Rhian ate her stew quickly. She had received a letter from Sali yesterday and Megan the day before and she hadn't answered either. She had a premonition as to whom her letter might be from, but much as she wanted to find out for certain, she was prepared to wait. Because if she should be wrong, it would snap her last slim thread of hope.

When Rhian finished eating she carried her plates to the sink, picked up her letter and curled up on one of the wooden-backed settles inside the enormous inglenook fireplace. It had become her and Julia's favourite place to sit, read and gossip in the evening because it was the warmest place in the house. She tore the single sheet of blue paper carefully along the perforated lines and opened it out on her knee.

Dear Rhian,

I asked Sali and Lloyd for your address. I hope you don't mind me writing to you. Please, don't feel that you have to answer this. Lloyd writes regularly and he told me how hard you have taken Mr Larch's death. I would like to offer you my sincere condolences. I know that you would never have remained with him if you hadn't loved and respected him.

Rhian suppressed a pang of conscience. Love – how could Joey think that she had loved Edward after what they had once been to one another?

This is a hard letter for me to write, but if possible
I would like us to remain friends. All soldiers like getting letters, they are a link with home and prove that we aren't entirely forgotten, but letters from you would mean so much more to me than that. When I looked into your eyes outside the shop that dreadful day in Tonypandy I felt as though nothing had changed between us.

Please, whatever else you do, don't be kind. It would be better to leave things as they are if you feel nothing for me. My feelings haven't changed since the day I persuaded you to accept my mother's ring. And I won't pretend that I have spent every moment since then like a monk. There didn't seem any point when I thought you'd stay with Edward Larch.

So can we be friends, Rhian? Would it be possible to salvage at least that much out of what we once were to one another? I do hope so.

Dare I sign myself your, Joey?

‘Bad news?' Julia asked Rhian when she sat on the settle opposite.

‘Not exactly.' Rhian folded the letter into her pocket. ‘You?'

‘My solicitor said that the property market in Tonypandy is so slow because of the war that I could buy Llan House and all the contents for half its pre-war value.'

‘Will you?'

‘A few months ago I wouldn't have considered the idea, but now my stepmother has finally left I can't bear the thought of my family's things falling into the hands of strangers.' She gave Rhian a small self-conscious smile.

‘Your husband is well?'

‘Very by the sound of it.' Julia re-read his letter.

Dear Julia,

I enlisted in such a hurry we forgot to make arrangements to have the annuity you promised me paid into my bank account. The five hundred pounds you transferred after our wedding has almost gone and it is impossible to survive on my pay. In case you have forgotten
I enclose the details of my account. Monthly money transfers of one hundred and seventy pounds will be acceptable (I have rounded up the figures for convenience sake), quarterly payments of five hundred pounds, or one lump sum of two thousand pounds annually would all be equally acceptable, provided the full two thousand pounds is paid immediately as I have tailor's, mess and other pressing bills to settle.

I am well, I trust you are too. My condolences on the death of your father and brother.

Please seek legal advice on claiming their estates.

Your husband, Geraint.

Mrs Williams handed Julia a cup as she sat alongside her on the settle.

‘What's this?' Julia looked suspiciously at the contents.

‘Beef tea, you need it to keep up your strength.'

‘I'm fine.'

‘I don't think so, and you can't carry on working in the factory, either. If you go in tomorrow, make sure it's only to hand in your notice.'

‘I'm really fine …'

‘You say that you're hungry but you can't keep any food down long enough for it to do you any good. You look pale, even when you've walked up the hill from the tram stop, and the other girls have roses blooming in their cheeks. And you've that far away look women get in their eyes. So when is the baby due?'

Rhian gasped in surprise, but when Julia looked at Mrs Williams she saw that further denial was pointless. She did a rapid calculation. ‘Christmas, or thereabouts.'

Mrs Williams looked at the letter on her lap. ‘Have you told your husband?'

‘Not yet.'

‘You should, it will give him that much more reason to be careful when there's bombs and bullets flying about. All men turn soft when they know they're about to become fathers.'

Julia thought of Lloyd and Victor's pride in their children, and realized with a start that her child would be their niece or nephew. ‘You're right, Mrs Williams, I should tell him.' She wondered if the revelation would prompt Geraint to ask for a divorce or an increase of his allowance because he had an unfaithful wife. And she wondered if it was technically possible to be unfaithful to a husband she'd never made love to.

‘It's a marvellous thing to happen so soon after your father and Gerald's death, Julia,' Rhian said. ‘The baby won't make up for losing them, but at least you'll have a family again.'

‘Yes, I will,' Julia glanced across at Rhian and realized she wasn't aware that she hadn't seen Geraint since last August either.

‘You will tell them in that factory that you can't carry on working there. The Lord only knows what that yellow stuff is doing to your skin and hair, or what it will do to a baby,' Mrs Williams left the settle. ‘And drink that tea,' she ordered. ‘That mite you're carrying needs it.'

‘Why didn't you say anything about the baby?' Rhian asked when Mrs Williams left them.

‘Because with everything that's been happening I've put it out of my mind.'

‘But you are pleased?'

‘Yes,' Julia smiled. ‘Yes, I am.'

‘I'll be an aunt – of sorts.'

‘And a good one.' Julia hoped that Rhian would never find out who the father was. Because Joey had summed it up perfectly. It had been
one of those wonderful moments that will never bear scrutiny.
Yet it would result in the birth of a baby who would become the most important person in her life.

‘You will tell them in work tomorrow?' Rhian pressed.

‘Yes, but I won't leave here. I'll see if Mrs Williams will rent me a room.'

‘You don't want to go back to Pontypridd?'

‘Perhaps after the birth. I like it here near the sea, I enjoy your and' – she made a wry face when she looked at the other girls who were still sitting around the table – ‘most of the other girls' company. And Mrs Williams will be here to help me when I need it.'

‘She certainly will.' Mrs Williams passed both of them wrinkled red winter apples.

‘And knowing that you've been listening, do you think that your cousin will rent me a room, Mrs Williams? I don't fancy staying in the dormitory with noisy girls getting up at an unearthly hour every morning.'

‘I dare say we'll find one for you. The front bedroom is empty. It's large and it has a good view over the estuary. But you'll have to pay extra.'

‘That goes without saying. I intend to be a very difficult boarder. I'll want a fire lit there every day until the weather gets warmer.'

‘I'll warn the girl who does the heavy work.' Mrs Williams smiled. ‘It will be nice to have one of you here during the day, you'll be company for me and it will be almost like the old days in Llan House.'

Rhian yawned and left the settle.

‘You going to bed already?' Julia asked.

‘If you don't mind. I really am exhausted. See you all in the morning. Goodnight, everyone.' Rhian lit a candle from the lamp on the table, lifted the latch on the door and went into the hall. She climbed two flights of stairs to the loft that Mrs Williams had turned into a dormitory, placed the candle on a scarred pine chest next to her bed, and took a pen, bottle of ink and notepaper from her suitcase.

She sat on the bed, picked up a book to press on, smoothed out Joey's letter, and made a note of his rank and serial number before beginning to write.

Dear Joey,

Thank you for your condolences, although given my relationship to Edward, I'm not sure that I am entitled to receive them. Yes, I would like to write to you and see if we can be friends. You say you haven't lived like a monk. Given my situation with Edward you know I haven't lived like a nun so perhaps it would be better if we didn't dwell on the past but looked to the future. There are two boys in the factory who have been invalided out of the army; one has lost a leg, the other a foot. They told us about the dreadful conditions at the Front and after listening to them I don't know how you stand it. Hopefully it won't last much longer and you can all come home.

As you wrote to me here, Lloyd must have told you that I am working as a munitionette. The hours are long, the work hard and you'd run a mile if you could see me. All the people who work in the factory have turned yellow – skin, hair, everything – except the blondes like me. Our hair turns green.

The good thing is I am with the girls I worked with in Llan House, the maids you know: Bronwen, Meriel – who used to be Cook – and Mrs Williams, who keeps house for us. Edward's daughter Julia – I still find it odd not to call her Miss Julia – is also here. I don't think you met her, or perhaps just once at that Wild West Exhibition. She works alongside us and insists that we forget that she was once our mistress. She organizes surprises and treats like books, magazines and chocolates at the end of the week for us. She married Sali's brother, Geraint, just before the war, and he enlisted soon afterwards. She hardly ever mentions him and I have the impression that her marriage isn't happy. But there is one marvellous piece of news. She is having a baby and after losing her father, and brother at the front, it is wonderful to know that she will still have a family. She only told us about it tonight and I don't think she would have done so if Mrs Williams hadn't guessed. She hasn't even told Geraint.
I don't know if you are in the same regiment or even see him but I would be grateful if you didn't mention it until she has had a chance to write to him.

Even before you wrote
I thought of you often, Joey. I do so hope that we can still be friends. I will wait for you to answer this before writing back.

Rhian thought for a moment, then signed the letter

Your friend, Rhian

Chapter Twenty-two

Mrs Williams walked into the attic dormitory carrying a candle. Shielding the flame from the draught that whistled through the door behind her, she went to the curtains that covered the dormer windows and pulled them wide. Rings rasped and grated over the metal rod and a clear, grey dawn light flooded in, dispelling the soft gloom. She blew out the candle and called out, ‘Good morning, girls.'

‘What's good about it?' Jinny turned face down in her narrow iron bedstead.

‘It's six o'clock. Breakfast will be on the table in half an hour.' The housekeeper cheerfully ignored Jinny's moans.

‘I don't know how you can be so bright in the morning, Mrs Williams, I don't want to move,' Bronwen murmured sleepily.

‘You never do first thing in the morning.' Meriel flung back her bedclothes, sat up and stretched her plump arms above her head.

‘All of you, in the kitchen in half an hour or you'll be late for work.' Mrs Williams took her candlestick and left.

Rhian waved a tentative hand outside her blankets. ‘It's warmer than yesterday. Summer must have finally arrived.'

‘It's not warmer, it's bloody freezing.' Meriel threw a robe over her sleeveless nightgown.

‘Must you always swear, Meriel? It's so common,' Bronwen complained.

‘Why must you always be so bloody prim, Miss Goody-Two-Shoes? Bags I the ty bach first.' Grabbing her towel, Meriel pushed her feet into her slippers and barged out of the door.

‘I don't know why we always let Meriel go first and steal the lion's share of the hot water every morning.' Bronwen reached down, opened the chest alongside her bed and lifted out the American cloth toilet bag where she kept her soap, toothbrush and hairbrush.

‘Because the rest of us will do anything for an extra five minutes between the sheets.' Jinny lifted her pillow and burrowed her head beneath it to block out the light.

‘Lazybones.' Bronwen left her bed, lifted her robe from the hook next to her bed and headed for the door.

‘That's me,' Jinny mumbled. ‘Lazybones. And I swear now that when it's my next week off, I won't leave this bed for anything. Not to eat. Not to drink …'

‘Not to go to the ty bach?
'
Rhian asked.

‘Perhaps that,' Jinny conceded, ‘but nothing else.'

‘You all right?' Rhian peered anxiously at Julia who lay, still and pale, curled on her side under the blankets in the bed next to hers.

‘I feel sick.'

‘Stay there. I'll ask Mrs Williams to bring you up a cup of tea and I'll tell the supervisor that you're too ill to work.'

‘The least I can do is see this week out. You know how short of workers we are.' Julia closed her eyes to stop the room from spinning round her.

‘You really do look ghastly. I think Mrs Williams should send for the doctor.'

‘For morning sickness?' Julia questioned. ‘That would be silly.'

Bronwen returned and scooped her evening clothes from the chair where she'd left them the night before. ‘I forgot these, and Mrs Williams will go doolally tap if I traipse dirt through the house tonight in my working clothes to fetch them.'

‘Must you make so much noise?' Jinny complained irritably.

‘It could be something more,' Rhian suggested in a low voice to Julia. ‘Mrs Williams said last night that you look peaky.'

Julia opened one eye and closed it quickly again. ‘Mrs Williams might be a Mrs but it is only a courtesy title afforded to housekeepers. Whatever she knows about having babies, she's heard second-hand.'

‘And not just about having babies,' Jinny muttered in muffled tones from beneath her pillow. ‘I doubt she's seen a man without his underpants on in her life.'

Rhian thought back to the conversation she'd had with the housekeeper about her ‘moment' but said nothing.

‘There's a lot more to life than seeing men naked, Jinny, and after what happened to you, I trust that you won't see another one without his trousers on until you have a wedding ring on your finger.' Believing that her sister's ‘sin' reflected badly on her and the rest of her family, Bronwen had never entirely forgiven Jinny for giving birth to a bastard.

‘I pity poor Ianto when he gets his next leave,' Jinny retorted. ‘After months at the Front he's entitled to a bit of fun.'

‘You can have fun with your clothes on. And Ianto and I happen to think that some things are best left until after the wedding,' Bronwen snapped back prudishly.

‘Given the length of time you two have been engaged and the time this war is taking, you won't be getting married until you're both too old to do anything more than look at one another,' Jinny teased.

‘You're disgusting.' Bronwen flounced out.

Jinny suddenly flung her pillow to the foot of her bed and looked at Julia. ‘You've got morning sickness?'

‘Yes.'

‘You're having a baby?'

‘The two generally go together.' Julia sat up slowly in the bed.

‘Is it congratulations or commiserations?' Jinny demanded.

‘When I'm not feeling like this, definitely congratulations.' Julia managed a weak smile.

‘Your husband must be thrilled.'

Julia glanced at Rhian. ‘You go on ahead. I'll be downstairs in five minutes. That way I get to miss the queue for the toilet.'

‘You sure?' Rhian was reluctant to leave her.

‘I'll be fine in a few minutes.'

Rhian slipped on her robe, gathered her evening clothes and ran down the stairs. She walked through the kitchen where Mrs Williams was frying slices of ‘farmhouse' bacon, thick white layers of fat with two minuscule lines of pink running through them, and went outside.

The heads on the daffodils in the border by the back door had shrivelled and the tulips were already losing their petals. Another few days and they'd be finished too. But Meriel was right. The early morning air was still chilly. So much for the weather being warmer by the sea, she thought irritably. Despite Mrs Williams's efforts with the fires, it had been a lot colder in the boarding house through the tail end of winter than it had been in Llan House and Dunraven Street.

She went into the washhouse and hung her evening clothes on the peg next to her work clothes before waiting her turn for the ty bach
.
As Bronwen had predicted, when she came to fill her bucket, she found that Meriel had taken the lion's share of hot water – again.

‘We ought to take it in turns to come down before Meriel and grab the hot water for ourselves. I hate washing in cold.' Bronwen dipped her fingers gingerly into her bucket and winced.

‘We noticed,' Meriel commented when Bronwen gave her face the most cursory of splashes.

‘It's your fault. I've never known anyone as greedy and selfish as you. Julia, you all right?' Bronwen asked in concern when she walked slowly through the door.

‘Fine.' Julia gave a wan smile that belied her words. ‘Do me a favour, Rhian. Tell Mrs Williams I don't want to put her to any trouble, but ask her if I can just have tea and toast this morning.'

‘You ill?' Meriel wound her belt around her tunic and fastened it.

‘Pregnant.' Julia decided there was absolutely no point in trying to keep it quiet now that Jinny knew.

‘And I knew before you,' Jinny crowed, washing vigorously and deliberately splashing cold water over Meriel.

‘You did that on purpose, Jinny.' Meriel dried her tunic with her towel.

‘I did. What you going to do about it?' Jinny dared.

‘Get you back any way I can later on today, so watch out,' Meriel threatened. ‘That's lucky you getting out of the factory, Julia,' she said enviously. ‘If I could find a man to keep me, I'd get pregnant tomorrow. It would be worth having a baby to leave that stinking place.'

‘There isn't a man daft enough to take you on,' Jinny taunted.

‘That's what you think.'

‘So, where you hiding him?' Bronwen asked.

‘Wouldn't you like to know?' Meriel was first out of the washhouse and into the kitchen. When Bronwen, Rhian and Jinny joined her, she had already piled her plate high with fried bread, eggs and bacon.

‘Leave some for the rest of us, won't you,' Jinny grumbled.

‘First come first served, that's what I always say.' Meriel dropped four sugar lumps into her tea.

‘We noticed,' Bronwen commented acidly.

‘There's plenty for all,' Mrs Williams called from the stove, where she was frying more eggs.

‘Just tea and toast for Julia, please, Mrs Williams.' Rhian helped herself to bacon and an egg.

‘So, when's her ladyship going to break the news to management?' Meriel asked Rhian when she sat at the table.

‘Don't you dare refer to Julia as her ladyship,' Rhian countered protectively.

‘You have to admit she's slumming it,' Meriel said a little sheepishly when the others looked angrily at her. ‘Well, come on, be honest, you wouldn't catch any of us working in the factory if we had her money.'

‘That's the difference between Miss Julia and you, Meriel.' Mrs Williams topped up their cups with tea. ‘She has a conscience and wants to do her bit to help win this war. All you can think about is how much money is in your pay packet at the end of the week, and the men you can meet down the pub in the night.'

‘Good morning.' Julia pushed the plates of fried bread and bacon away from her chair when she sat at the table.

‘And good morning to you. Here you are, Miss Julia … Julia,' Mrs Williams corrected herself. She left the stove and served her. ‘Weak tea and toast. And don't forget to tell them in work that today will be your last.'

Rhian stopped at the top of the lane that led from the boarding house to the tram stop, and waited for Julia to catch up with her. Her two favourite times of day were mornings and evenings and she had never been able to work out whether she preferred, watching the sun rise or set, especially over a stunningly beautiful landscape like the estuary in front of her.

A pale band of grey light hung low in the sky; below it the water shone still and gleaming like polished pewter. Gulls whirled above the mirror-like surface, screeching loudly as they dipped low in search of fish.

‘You didn't have to wait for me, Rhian.' Julia drew alongside her.

‘I was drinking in the view. I could never get tired of looking at the sea.'

‘Neither could I after living in Tonypandy.'

‘Besides, we've plenty of time to get to the tram.'

‘We won't get a seat if we're late,' Julia warned.

‘You will, because Meriel always manages to get one and I'll turf her out of it.' Rhian linked her arm into Julia's and they started to walk.

‘I don't want anyone to fuss over me,' Julia protested.

‘We're fussing over your baby, not you.'

‘Same thing.'

‘No, it's not. What do you want, a boy or girl?'

‘I honestly don't know, I haven't had any time to think about it.' It was the truth. Until Mrs Williams had voiced her suspicions last night, Julia had pushed all thoughts of the coming child from her mind, never even considering it as a person in its own right.

‘I thought it was traditional for men to want sons and women girls, until Sali had the girls. Lloyd seems actually to prefer them to boys. But then it's become something of a joke between them. Every time she gets pregnant, they argue about girls' versus boys' names for nine months. But after living with them, you'd know that. And your husband might be different. He might want a boy.'

‘He might,' Julia said.

‘Did you ever talk about having a family?'

‘Never.'

Julia's reply was so finite Rhian wondered again if her friend's marriage was a happy one. She rarely mentioned Geraint, and when she did it was usually in response to a direct question. Even their letters were weekly as opposed to the almost daily notes Bronwen received from her Ianto, ‘You have so many things to think about and do. You'll soon be putting on weight and you'll have to make new clothes for yourself and the baby. I can help there, I love sewing. So does Mrs Williams and she's brilliant at embroidery. Baby clothes always look better for a bit of colour on them. And you'll have to choose names for both a boy and a girl.'

‘That will be easy. If I have a boy I'll call him Edward Gerald after my father and brother, and if it's a girl, Amelia after my mother.'

‘They are lovely names.'

Julia caught a wistful note in Rhian's voice. ‘Would you like to have children?'

‘Eventually,' Rhian replied guardedly, recalling how much Joey had been looking forward to becoming a father when they'd been engaged.

‘I've never thought about it before, but you and my father could have had children.'

‘He …' Rhian had never entirely overcome her embarrassment at talking about her private life with Edward with his daughter. ‘He didn't want me to get pregnant while I ran the shop in Tonypandy because it would have led to gossip, so he used something.'

‘Used something?' Julia repeated blankly.

‘A French letter, men put it over themselves before they make love and it stops women getting pregnant.'

‘Do all men know about them?' Julia asked, her curiosity roused.

‘I don't know much about all men. I was engaged to Joey and then I was with your father.'

‘I'm sorry; I didn't mean anything by that. But I've never even heard the term French letter before. I suppose it wasn't considered a suitable topic of conversation in polite society. But come to think of it, it is surprising that I didn't hear about them in the suffrage society. Some of the married women used to talk about educating women so they could control the size of their families, but Miss Bedford always changed the subject before they could go into details.' Julia wondered why Joey hadn't used a French letter when he'd slept with her. Then she remembered that he'd just come from France and arrived ‘lousy'. Perhaps he hadn't been expecting to find an accommodating woman on his leave, or possibly they were difficult to get hold of at the Front. Either way, when she thought of her baby, she was glad that he hadn't.