Gull Island Read online

  ‘Afraid you’ll be shamed by being seen talking to me?’ resentment made Barbara blurt out. ‘Afraid your character will be ruined by my being seen at your door?’

  ‘Now just hold your tongue, you! You’re in no position to get lippy with me,’ Mrs Stock said with a glare of pure dislike.

  ‘What d’you want?’ Barbara asked cheekily. Something in the woman’s cold expression had made her lose hope of any assistance. Whatever the woman wanted, it wouldn’t be an offer of support. And she wasn’t in the mood to grovel. She wouldn’t grovel to her parents so Mrs Stock had no chance if that was what she had expected.

  ‘I thought you might like this photograph of my Bernard.’ She handed a glossy studio picture to Barbara, who took it but hardly glanced at it. She was watching the woman’s face. ‘There’s something else,’ she said flatly. ‘I’m willing to adopt this baby of yours. Whether it’s Bernard’s or not, well, I have my doubts, but me and Mr Stock, we’ll give it a home. There, what d’you think of that? Very generous in the circumstances, you must agree.’

  In words not normally used by a respectable young woman, Barbara told her no thanks!

  Chapter Three

  LEAVING MRS STOCK, Barbara didn’t know which was the stronger need, to laugh or to scream and shout her rage. It was laughter that won. Giggling almost hysterical laughter that threatened to tear at her throat as she tried to hold it back, she covered her face from the curious looks of those she passed as she hurried through the street towards Mrs Carey’s. First being thrown out by Graham Prothero and now this! What was wrong with her that no one was willing to support her?

  Thank heavens for Auntie Molly Carey and her amiable husband. They had so little yet they were giving her all they could spare. She was seventeen and there was no one in the world who really loved her. Melancholy thoughts but they still produced only giggles.

  ‘Well? What did Mrs Stock want then? Nothing useful I’ll bet a farthing,’ Mrs Carey asked as Barbara walked in.

  Sobering her tense, irrational laughter, Barbara told her what Mrs Stock had suggested. To her surprise, Mrs Carey looked solemn and not amused.

  ‘Offering to take the baby? Well, I suppose I can sympathize. She had a letter today, poor dab, from the war office.’ Then, as Barbara frowned, a wild thought entering her head that Bernard wasn’t dead but was coming home, she added, ‘Her Freddie is missing in action and we know what that usually means, don’t we? Her last surviving son. Now there’s no one but herself and that soft husband of hers. There’s a wicked world we live in, Barbara. They had a houseful of boys, four of them, and now they’re on their own. So I can understand her wanting Bernard’s baby, can’t you?’

  ‘She implied it wasn’t Bernard’s anyway, didn’t she? Said he wouldn’t do … you know, him being a Sunday school teacher an’ all.’ She saw a hastily hidden smile crease Mrs Carey’s face and went on, ‘But I didn’t do … that … with anyone else.’ That was funny too and her laughter returned.

  ‘Of course you didn’t and she knows it. She can’t help trying to keep him as an innocent child in her memory.’

  When a fresh outburst of giggles had ended in tears, Barbara didn’t know what to say. She would have been kinder to the woman if she had known about Freddie.

  ‘Seven killed on this street since last Christmas,’ Mrs Carey went on. ‘Never thought I’d be glad of my Henry’s bad chest. And the children being young means they’re safe at least from the bayonets and guns of the enemy.’ She smiled at Barbara. ‘Best you make the most of the baby’s early years – they get more and more of a worry the older they get. In their first years it’s bad enough, mind. Whooping cough, scarlet fever, diphtheria, consumption, measles and all the rest. Still, best not to be gloomy, and sitting moaning won’t get the baby a new coat! Come on, get cracking on those potatoes and we’ll get a meal ready. You’ll stay,’ she said rhetorically, ‘and spend the night and for as long as you like, if you can bear the thought of sharing a bed with the others.’

  Barbara hugged her and whispered her thanks tearfully. What a day. Tears and laughter and all in the wrong places too. She picked up the bucket of potatoes and washed them ready for peeling. As she began putting them into the large stew pan to cook on the fire, she wondered sadly why her own mother wasn’t as kind and sympathetic as Mrs Carey.

  ‘Why won’t Mam help me?’ she asked. ‘If you don’t feel the shame of having me under your roof, well … I mean, my own mother.’

  ‘Your dad, he’s the one. He’s so angry she doesn’t stand a chance of talking him round. She’d have weeks and weeks of argument and him giving her less than usual money for food. Done it before he has, when you wanted to stay on at school, remember? He gave her plenty of his lip then, he did, and sulked for weeks, the big Jessie that he is!’ She hugged Barbara briefly. ‘No, cariad, it’s not that your mam won’t help – she can’t help.’

  She didn’t tell Barbara that Mrs Jones came every week with a few shillings for her to mind until Barbara needed it. There was over two pounds there now, hidden in a tin under some old nails and screws and odds and ends that no one bothered to look at. It was safe there until Barbara was really in need.

  Henry Carey came in, with Richard, his usual shadow, behind him. The rest of the family gathered around to see what luxuries he had brought that day. Even the surly twins looked hopeful. The bag didn’t contain much but, round eyed, the children applauded each revelation.

  ‘First of all, I found these shoes and thought they might fit Barbara, her having bigger feet than my Molly,’ he said, turning to Barbara to explain. ‘I try and walk along the back lanes just before the ash cart comes to empty the bins. It’s amazing what people throw away. I often find something we can use or sometimes even sell. A bit of carpet, a bowl or bucket that’s still got a bit of life in it. Even furniture, a table or chair once or twice, just missing a leg or needing a bit of a polish. Most things only need a bit of a polish.’

  Barbara thought of the abandoned rubbish in the yard waiting for Mr Carey to find time for a bit of polish or the right bit of wood to mend it, and she shared a smile with Mrs Carey.

  He pulled out a handful of hazelnuts, dropped from a broken bag as someone carried them home, and he shared them between the children. ‘And then,’ he said with a teasing smile, ‘and then I saw, sitting on the ground with no one to miss them, these!’ Like a conjurer he produced a cabbage, three carrots still covered in incriminating earth and three duck eggs. Amid cheers he pulled up his sleeve and showed a dog bite, admitting cheerfully, ‘I also got this, mind. I had to stick my hand through a fence to get the eggs. Richard couldn’t reach luckily or the animal would have had his hand off!’ He entertained the family with exaggerated stories about his battle with the dog, which grew larger and more ferocious with every telling.

  Helping Mrs Carey by minding the children and accepting occasionally offered work in someone’s kitchen when a member of staff fell ill, Barbara survived until the beginning of December. From what she had learned from one visit to the doctor and the information given by sundry ‘experts’ who had been through the birth of a child several times, Barbara guessed that the baby would be born near Christmas. Luke came to her mind suddenly as she remembered that his birthday was Christmas Day, and she wanted to see him again.

  She was surprised to realize that she also missed Graham Prothero and life at the farm. She often sat and stared into space with her blue, dreamy eyes and thought about him. Would it have been possible for her to live with him as his wife? He hadn’t suggested marrying her, she knew that, but if she hadn’t had a belly full of baby, what then? Would he have considered making her Mrs Prothero?

  She rolled the name around her tongue; it wasn’t such a terrible prospect. She remembered his strong physique with growing interest, and those large hands that could be so gentle. There was something very safe and dependable about Graham. She felt colour warm her cheeks as she compared him to Bernard and stood up abruptly to push away th
e excitement of where her thoughts were taking her. No, she still loved Bernard and she always would.

  Mrs Carey had arranged for the services of Mrs Block, whom her mother had once asked to perform an abortion, to be available at the birth. That thought frightened Barbara more than the anticipation of pain. What if she killed the baby at the moment of birth?

  ‘There’s daft you are, young Barbara,’ Mrs Carey said. ‘I’ll be there, won’t I? And I’ll promise her an extra shilling if the baby is strong and healthy. Now, does that make you feel better, girl?’

  Once or twice Barbara took Richard and a couple of the other children and walked with them to the beach near Gull Island. Mrs Carey was glad to have them ‘out from under my feet’ for a while, all except Idris, of course. Idris was still beautiful with golden hair that fell in natural curls around his chubby neck. His eyes were as blue as a picture Barbara had seen of a lake in a place called Switzerland.

  One Saturday afternoon, early in December, leaving Mrs Carey baking a pie which she planned to fill with swede and potato and a few scraps of leftover meat, and Mr Carey treating himself to a visit to the football game, Barbara walked out to Luke’s cottage near Gull Island. Leaving the children making sandcastles on a patch of coarse sand, she went into the cottage, hoping for a message from Luke. She wanted to tell him all was well with Rosita, but the place was neat and tidy and there was no sign of him ever having been back. Leaving another note in case he turned up, she spent a while playing with the children, awkwardly finding a place where she could rest with a minimum of discomfort.

  She had brought a loaf and a small amount of jam wrapped in paper and a cloth. They ate it with great enjoyment and quenched their thirst at the pump from where Luke gathered his water, but she didn’t allow them into the cottage – that would have been an intrusion, unless Luke gave permission.

  When it was time to leave, Richard was missing. Immediately Barbara was in a panic. The tide was swirling around the island and almost covering the causeway, wrapping the island in a wild and murderous embrace. She thought of Mrs Carey’s words about her family being safe from the fighting in far-off France. Surely she couldn’t lose a five-year-old to the sea so close to home?

  Screaming his name in her panic, clutching her swollen belly, she sobbed as she ran around the cottage and the ruins of others nearby, but the waves drowned her call and the seagulls laughed at her. The other children, sensing her fear, began to cry, running with her, pulling on her skirts, frightened but not knowing why.

  It was less than two minutes before she saw him casually sauntering out of a ruined building some 200 yards further along the beach, but in those terrifying seconds her mind had sped through the loss of him, finding his body, telling his mother he was dead.

  Seeing him alive and unharmed, she ran up and hit him furiously about his head and shoulders. She was crying then as she hugged him better and said she was sorry, trying to explain her fear.

  ‘Come and see what I’ve found,’ Richard said, when they had both stopped crying. ‘There’s this house, see, and I wonder if I could come sometimes and play in it.’

  ‘No you can’t. It belongs to someone,’ Barbara explained. ‘You can’t go in a house that doesn’t belong to you, as I explained when I wouldn’t let you into my friend Luke’s cottage.’

  ‘We wouldn’t do no harm,’ Richard protested. ‘Come on, Barbara, just have a look-see. Or I’ll tell our mam you clouted me for nothing,’ he warned.

  ‘Oh, all right.’ She grinned at him. ‘Then we really do have to get back.’

  The house had been empty for a long time and there was little sign of previous habitation. Walls once whitewashed were mottled with old paint and moulds in a variety of colours, all drab. The corners of the room were dark with stones and branches and oddment of nets and sacking and vegetation that the wind had brought in. The fireplace was nothing more than a hole, empty of any appliance with which to cook. Rusted metal gave a clue that there had once been a hook on which to hang a cooking pot. Or, Barbara mused, there might have once been a small range or more likely a Dutch oven to stand in front of the blaze. Leaving the other children to play with pebbles on the stone-slabs floor, she and Richard went upstairs.

  ‘Careful, Richard, the wood must be rotten. I don’t want you falling through onto the slabs below.’

  ‘Promise not to hit me if I hurt myself?’ he asked cheekily.

  There were two bedrooms and the remains of a third, which had once been supported by a porch. The porch had gone, blown away by some fierce Atlantic storm, and the floor of the third and smallest room hung at a dangerous angle.

  They were all dirt-streaked from the dust of the old place by the time they left but Barbara used the edge of her full skirt and by dipping it into a rocky, barnacle-encrusted pool wiped off the worst of it before shepherding them along the lanes towards home.

  She was tired, and decided not to walk the four miles there and back again until after the baby was born. Even Mrs Carey, who answered her many questions as well and thoroughly as she was able, had not prepared her for the cumbersomeness of her body, or the aching back and legs, or the terrible weight between her legs when she had been on her feet too long. She wished she could have seen Luke. He was her lucky charm, her merrythought – not that she had seen many of those! The wishbone, or any other part of a juicy chicken, was not for the likes of her, unless one should crawl, suicidally, into Mr Carey’s pocket!

  As they passed the turning leading to the railway station, it was almost dark, the moon not yet filled with light, and she hardly looked at the steaming monster that was snorting impatiently at the platform. Blodwen, who rarely wanted to move from her place on the bogie, cried to be picked up to see it and, groaning at the extra strain on her back, Barbara did so.

  As the engine pulled away, the lighted carriages towed like a column of fireflies, a figure came down the bank from the station, saw them and called. Barbara waited with fingers crossed in hope and to her delight recognized the small, neat figure of Luke. She was surprised by how different he looked, dressed in formal city clothes.

  ‘Barbara! What good luck. I’ve been hoping you’d come to see me before this. Is everything all right?’

  ‘Me and Rosita are fine and being looked after by Auntie Molly Carey.’ She smiled her delight at seeing him. ‘These are some of her tribe as you’ll remember. We’ve been for a picnic.’

  ‘You didn’t cross to the island, I hope.’

  ‘No fear. Too many to look after.’

  ‘Don’t go unless I’m with you, will you?’

  ‘I won’t. Never sure of the tide and with these to look after—’

  ‘I don’t need looking after,’ Richard protested, bristling with outrage.

  Barbara and Luke stood smiling at each other, making inconsequential remarks. Richard watched them, frowning and gathering the others around him, waiting for her to move on. Occasionally he would sigh to remind her they were there and the sigh was echoed by little Blodwen.

  ‘Best I go,’ Barbara said at last. ‘Pity we didn’t meet earlier. Got to get them back for supper, see.’

  ‘Come again soon,’ Luke said. ‘I’m usually here on Sundays.’

  ‘Soon,’ she promised.

  It was with undisguised regret that she turned away from him. She glanced back several times to wave at the thin, lonely figure until it faded and became a part of the shadows, swallowed up by the night.

  ‘Is he going to be your ’usband, then?’ Richard asked.

  ‘No, he’s just a friend.’

  She wondered why she had never thought of Luke as a prospective husband. It was normal as breathing for girls of her age to consider the possibility with any new acquaintance. Probably because she still grieved for Bernard Stock, but also because the affection Luke showed was of a different kind. He was a loving friend and she doubted if he could ever be anything more. She also realized that for him it was the same. They had struck up an immediate rapport but altho
ugh love might grow between them it wouldn’t be the kind she had felt for Bernard and never would be.

  Too tired to work it out, she said aloud, ‘Luke is the one person I can say anything to and be sure he understands. Now, sing, all of you, to cheer ourselves and hurry our steps back home.’ They all began to sing with her, ‘Show me the way to go home, I’m tired and I wanna go to bed.’

  A strong wind began to blow through the bare hedgerow, and the moon sailed along in a clear sky. It filled and shed a soft light that picked out the frost glittering on the leafless branches. The air was chill and the wind made the best of it, finding gaps in their clothes and whistling around their bare legs.

  The children in their thin clothes began to wail. Cold, hungry; what was she thinking about keeping them out so late? Fine mother she’d make! Changing the slow song to a march to keep them more cheerful, she sang, ‘Jolly good luck to the girl who loves a soldier.’ She picked up the youngest, set up the fastest pace the rest could manage and headed once more for the Careys’ poor home.

  Luke continued to smile until the small group had dissolved in the darkness, the sound of their singing no more than a ghostly echo, then his shoulders drooped and he walked slowly to the cottage. Inside, he lit the paraffin lamp, busied himself making tea then sat in the chintz-covered chair to read his sister’s letter.

  His heart was racing as he unfolded the flimsy page, hoping for a message of support but fearing disappointment. He had written to her address on the outskirts of Cardiff asking if he might visit her at Christmas and see her children. The reply was brief, stating baldly that he would not be welcome at Christmastime or at any other.

  Turning the lamp low, wanting to hide his sorrow in darkness, he sat for more than an hour wondering if, and how, he should kill himself. He ought to make a will. There was no doubt in his mind who should benefit from everything he owned. Barbara and Rosita should receive whatever money the business achieved.