Sophie Street Page 5
“Why bother to ask Viv, dear? He’s one of the Lewises and they’d hardly be experts in employing help in the house.”
“Viv and our Joan know a lot of people. It’s worth a try.”
“If you say so, dear, but I do so hate mixing with the Lewises.”
Arfon didn’t reply as he tried to disguise a smile. He knew it was hopeless to argue. Gladys would never think of the Lewises as more than peasants. Since Joan had married Viv Lewis and undertaken to help him run the family business, Gladys had been waking each morning hoping the whole thing had been nothing but a cruel dream.
Gladys and Arfon had spoilt Joan and Megan who had been used to getting their own way about everything and had been taught to accept nothing but the best. Gladys had thought this a certain way of making sure the girls married well, avoiding the mistakes that Sally and Sian had made. Lazy, useless men her sons-in-law had turned out to be: Ryan, suffering what was euphemistically called a breakdown, which Gladys considered to have been brought on by remorse and shame; Islwyn, leaving Sian and going to live with Margaret Jenkins. Now she was facing another wedding. It was her last chance of showing everyone how it ought to be done but Megan was insisting that, again, it wouldn’t be the town-stopping wedding for which she had hoped.
Their one grandson, Jack, taught at the local school. Jack had also offended Gladys’s standards of social niceties by marrying Victoria Collins who had been her servant. She sighed. She’d had such high hopes of her grandchildren, dreaming of them marrying the rich and powerful, but both Joan and Jack had married employees, and she still couldn’t accept it. At least Megan was marrying one of the Jenkinses of Montague Court, a family with an ancient tradition even if they were impoverished. She mulled over the word ‘impoverished’, it had a rather elegant ring, far better than ‘poor’.
Edward Jenkins and his sister Margaret had run their home as a hotel until financial problems after the death of their parents had forced them to sell. Now Edward had a sports shop in the town and his sister worked in Montague Court with Islwyn, Sian’s husband. Even thinking about that woman made Gladys’s anger rise. Not content with stealing her son-in-law away from his wife and son, she was living with him here, right in the town, for Gladys’s friends to see. No shame, no embarrassment, she and ‘Issy’, as she called him, were to be seen walking through the town as bold as you like and even calling to see Islwyn’s son, Jack. She lowered her head so Arfon wouldn’t see her eyes filling with tears. What had she done to cause such a mess?
Arfon did see that she was upset, and said gruffly, “Don’t worry Gladys, I’ll find you someone to help in the house.”
“Thank you dear,” she said, glad to use the excuse for her tears he offered.
* * *
During the cold months of January and February, Mair and Carl had met a number of times, mostly to go into Cardiff, meeting on the bus, to go to a cinema or just to walk around before finding a café to warm themselves and have something to eat. Mair wondered whether he would fade out of her life as the nights opened out into spring and the darkness was no longer available as a place to hide.
One Saturday evening, when she had not arranged to go out, she became restless, thinking about the ridiculous situation and wondering whether she could demand an explanation, a better one than the futile excuses he had so far given. There was no way of getting in touch with him and, suddenly, Saturday night was not a night to stay home alone. Her father was on duty from ten o’clock and, when he left their cottage at the edge of the wood to cycle into the town, she went with him.
“Where are you going at this time of night?” he asked in surprise when she reached for a coat, pulled on fur-lined boots and stood at the door. “Gone nine o’clock it is.”
“I’m going to the Railwayman’s,” she said, glaring at him, daring him to disapprove.
“Meeting anyone?”
“I hope so! Someone who’ll make me laugh, tell me I’m wonderful, help me to forget this boring Saturday evening!”
“That Frank Griffiths’ll be there, mind,” he warned.
“I’ll even settle for Frank. I was up at six, working in the shop from nine till half-past five and I come home to an evening sitting on my own, staring at the walls. What a life!”
“No Carl?”
“Carl?” she asked, startled. “What d’you know about Carl?”
“Carl Rees, who worked for Jennie Francis and now does a few carpet-fitting jobs for Westons and any other job he can find.”
“I didn’t think you knew,” she said lamely. “We haven’t told anyone. Except Rhiannon. I bet Frank knows too,” she added.
“Of course I know. D’you think I wouldn’t find out something about a fellow you were seeing, Mair? What sort of a father d’you think I am, eh? Specially someone who you don’t tell me about. Got curious, didn’t I?”
“He’s a bit shy, that’s all. Nothing sinister. He’ll be working all the weekend, or so he says. Fixing shelves and cupboards and decorating a kitchen for someone.”
“Like Frank? He does painting and papering and a bit of carpentry, doesn’t he?”
“Yeh, but when Carl fits shelves they don’t fall down!”
“Be fair, Frank does a good job, when he can be persuaded to work.”
“Carl is a craftsman, Dad,” she argued.
“Frank is cheaper! Come on then,” he urged, “you’ll be cold on your bike, mind.”
“My bad temper will keep me warm!”
In spite of her bravado, Mair didn’t like walking into the public house alone. Women rarely did and, even though she would know most of the customers already there, she had to force herself to go in, and not turn and cycle back home. There was a gale of laughter as she opened the swing doors and stepped gratefully into the steamy warmth. The fire burned brightly at the end of the bar and round the room there was a sea of faces, most of them red with sweat and over-indulgence.
She saw Basil and Frank Griffiths straight away; With Viv and his wife, Joan, they had formed a group in the corner behind the entrance, their usual place. Frank saw her at once and stood up to greet her, his long gangly legs stepping over knees and tripping over feet in his haste.
“Mair. Nice surprise.” He looked expectantly at the door. “You with someone then?”
“Not unless he’s invisible!”
“What you havin’ then? Port an’ lemon, is it?”
She thanked him and went to where the others were making room for her next to Joan. “Who we talking about tonight?” she asked in a hoarse whisper.
“You’ll do for a start,” Basil said. “What’s this about you going out with that Carl Rees and him trying to keep it a secret?”
“Keeping it a secret? In Pendragon Island? There’s more hope of two Christmases in a year!”
“Keeps you out of sight though, doesn’t he?” Frank said. “That’s not natural.”
“That’s not your business either, Frank Griffiths!” she retorted.
Someone entered the pub but stood in the doorway, out of sight of the group in the corner, and Viv shouted, “Shut that flamin’ door!”
“Sorry,” a voice said, and both Mair and Frank recognised Carl’s voice from the single word. He came round the doorway and was clearly shocked when Mair stood up, glass in hand and waved to him. “Mair! I didn’t expect to see you here.”
“Nor me you. Been working, have you?” she asked, although she already knew that he had.
“Yes, putting up kitchen cupboards, but I ran out of wall plugs and it didn’t seem worth starting on something else so late.”
He went to the bar and ordered a pint and came back to stand near the group, but away from Mair, who tried in vain to appear indifferent. No one offered to find him a seat and he was reluctant to push in without being invited to do so. So he stood, sipped his drink and looked around the room at the groups involved in their various discussions, some producing laughter and others frowns of disapproval. He wished he hadn’t come.
Frank groaned. “Not more decorating?”
“Afraid so. Jack and Victoria want a bedroom smartened up. They’ve bought new carpet an’ all, they have.”
“Not a nursery?” Joan asked.
“Jack didn’t say,” he said evasively. “But if Frank goes to see them, he can report back, eh?”
“Don’t be ridiculous, Viv. Jack’s my cousin, I can ask him!”
Remembering Victoria’s sad face, Viv hoped she wouldn’t.
Carl was obviously listening but didn’t join in as Jack and Victoria were discussed. When there was a lull, he leant over and asked Viv, “Any chance of a bit of fishing next weekend? I might be able to borrow Jennie Francis’s van now she doesn’t have a use for it. We could go down west and try a bit of sea fishing, the tides are suitable for an evening session.”
Viv agreed to ask Jack. Basil thought he might join them, but Frank said nothing. If Carl was fishing, it might be an ideal time to call on Mair.
There was a shuffling of feet as Viv and Basil went to buy more drinks. This time they asked Carl for his choice but he shook his head. He looked at Mair when the opportunity came and gestured with a slight movement of an eyebrow for her to leave. He made his excuses and left and, within a few minutes, Mair followed. She didn’t get up at once, but relaxed as though settled for the rest of the evening. She waited until Frank was at the bar.
She didn’t want him spoiling things by following them. Carl was waiting for her outside.
“I wanted to come and see you but it was a bit late and your father wouldn’t have been pleased if I suggested a walk, would he?”
“Dad isn’t there,” she said, as she began to walk beside him pushing her bicycle. “He’s on nights this week.”
“In that case I’ll see you safely home. But, love, can’t we dump this bike? It’s like a mobile chastity belt and its digging into my hip something awful.”
Laughing, she pushed it into some bushes, where she guessed it would be safe until morning and they strolled on, arm in arm along the crisply cold country lane. Opening the cottage door the warmth that met them was not as welcoming as that of the Railwayman’s.
“I bet the fire’s out.” she sighed. “Hardly worth lighting it.”
“Oh, I don’t know. You shouldn’t go to bed cold, you won’t sleep for ages if you do.”
Gathering some sticks from the pile in the hearth, Carl soon had the fire burning and at once the room had a more friendly feel. The living room was small, over-full of furniture, with shelves of knick-knacks in every available space. It had the clutter of years displayed and, for the first time, Mair recognised its unworldliness and felt embarrassed. She had changed very little in the house in the years she had been looking after it. Conscious that its carelessly arranged, old-fashioned muddle was her mother’s and father’s choices, she had been hesitant to suggest modernising. Now she wished she had.
“I love this room,” Carl surprised her by saying. “It’s warm, and friendly and it makes me realise what I’ve missed not having a family. It’s the centre of people’s lives, just like a home should be.”
“There’s only me and our dad,” she said. “He likes it this way. The clutter is to hide the emptiness, I think.”
Carl stood up from the grate, where he had brushed the hearth clean, and waved his coal-blackened hands in front of her playfully. “Take me to the kitchen or I’ll clean them off on your pretty face.” He washed his hands then put the kettle on to heat, taking out cups and adding tea to the teapot as though he had been there before.
* * *
Looking through a slit in the carelessly closed curtains, Frank had the same thought and was saddened. He left and went back to where he had seen Mair leave her bicycle. Perhaps he’d collect it and deliver it to her tomorrow morning. He tried never to miss an opportunity to call. Surely that showed her how much he cared? A Griffiths, visiting a copper?
* * *
When he had made the tea Carl sat on the couch and pulled Mair onto his lap. Slowly, his hands caressing her body and, he turned her to face him. He wrapped his arms around her and held her close, sliding down on the worn old couch with a sigh that made her tremble. Then he kissed her. It was the first time and, being nervous, she had to make a joke of it.
“Better than the pictures, eh?”
He kissed her again and soon it was no longer funny, it was the most wonderful sensation and she didn’t want him to stop, ever. She had kissed any number of boys but the feelings Carl evoked were new to her. The kiss didn’t stop with her lips but spread in waves of urgent excitement throughout her body. Desire was strong and demanding, the need for fulfilment reaching through her nerve ends to the tips of her toes and she knew she was too weak to refuse him.
He lifted her up, his lips still firing her body with longing, and carried her to the foot of the stairs where he raised his face slightly above hers, staring deeply into her eyes, and tilted his head, a query for which there was only one answer.
* * *
Frank watched as the lights in the small cottage went on and then off; downstairs and then up, telling him a story he didn’t want to be told. It was freezing. The ground crackled beneath his feet. The cold air penetrated through his clothes but he still didn’t move. Surely Mair wasn’t in her bed with Carl? It couldn’t be happening. It couldn’t, he kept telling himself.
It would be a good night to get a couple of pheasants, Farmer Booker would be in his warm bed if he had any sense. But he didn’t have the heart for it. Not tonight when he had to accept that Mair would never belong to him.
He went home and tried to sleep, but his imagination kept wandering back to Mair, and to the lights on and then off, in the Gregorys’ cottage. At five o’clock he took a shotgun and called to a rather reluctant dog, thinking that he might get a couple of birds after all, and went silently back through the trees to watch outside the cottage. The night was quiet and still. Frost glistened on the ground and on the gates. He stood just within the trees, guessing that with Constable Gregory due home in little less than an hour, Carl would have to leave soon. In his patient way, he stood against a tree, hunched his shoulders within his coat and watched. At his feet the dog curled up and leant against his skinny legs, trying to find a little warmth.
It was five thirty when the light went on in the bedroom. It was so quiet that Frank heard the tinny sound of an alarm clock ringing. Cautious bloke, this Carl Rees, he thought. Not a man to take risks. He wondered where the risk was in letting people know he and Mair were courting? Did Carl have a wife somewhere? Perhaps if I can find out, he mused, I could warn Mair and comfort her when she was confronted with the fact. Then he shook away the stupid daydream of Mair falling into his arms. If I were the one to tell her, she’d hate me more than she’d hate Carl.
He saw lights go on downstairs and within a few minutes the back door opened and Carl came out. At the corner of the building, he saw Mair. She waved, but the man didn’t turn and acknowledge her salute. He put his head down and hurried off down the lane.
Frank followed.
Carl lived in a row of seven houses called Bella Vista. Large properties with three rows of windows, the topmost jutting out of the roof in a gable, they had once been homes for the middle class wealthy. Now they were run down and sadly in need of repair. Paint had peeled, showing the effect of weather damage; wet winters and dry summers had each done their worst. The exposed wood had softened into an ugly drabness.
The once-splendid houses had been divided into separate dwellings: mostly bedsits, a few two-roomed apartments with a shared kitchen and a bathroom, and one or two flats. Frank watched as Carl went into number four. No lights came on, the front door closed softly behind him and there was no other sign or sound of his entering. After waiting for half an hour, without knowing what he was waiting for, Frank turned and went home. The next day he didn’t wake until eleven and he then went stra
ight down to Bella Vista and chatted to neighbours and to the woman in the corner shop, gathering as much information about Carl as he could. It wasn’t much.
“The man’s a mystery,” he said to his father when he went home to eat. “I think Mair ought to be warned that if someone is secretive it’s usually because he’s got something nasty to hide.”
“Mair’s a sensible girl, Frank. She wouldn’t be taken in by someone like that.” Hywel said.
Hywel was uncomfortable with this sort of conversation. If he told the truth and said he thought Mair was a tart, Frank would start a fight. and if he said she was gullible, then that would be wrong too. “Go an’ talk to your mam,” he said.
Chapter Three
The Griffiths family lived in an almost self-sufficient way, growing food, poaching fish, rabbits and wildfowl, bartering for the rest of their needs and working when absolutely necessary. Janet and Hywel had three sons, although one of them, Ernie, was in fact a nephew who Janet and Hywel had adopted when he was a baby. Basil and Ernie were married: Basil happily, to Eleri who had once been the wife of Dora and Lewis’s son, Lewis-boy, who had died in an accident; Ernie less contentedly, to Helen, whose parents were trying to educate him into the proper way to behave. Frank was unmarried and his dream was to be wed to Mair Gregory although he had very little hope of that ever happening.
Janet and Hywel had one daughter and for her, married bliss seemed an impossible dream. She had been expecting a child, when her future husband Joseph Martin, had been killed and her marriage to Joseph’s brother Barry hadn’t worked out. Caroline now lived at home with her parents and worked in a wool shop in town. Her son, Joseph-Hywel was looked after by her mother during the day and Janet sadly thought that the arrangement wouldn’t change.