Unlocking the Past Page 8
“Tomorrow we’ll go down the Vale and have a pint or two in a pub. We’ll talk to people and have a laugh. Right?”
“There you go again! Out of town, in case we’re seen!”
“No, we’ll meet my brother there. You can play darts can’t you? We’ll have a game and a laugh.”
“Ha-blooming-ha.”
* * *
Frank continued to wonder what Ernie did on the increasing number of times he gave him the slip.
“It can’t be a girl, Viv. He’d tell me if he’d found himself a girl, for sure. Tell each other everything, we do.” Then he frowned as that niggling doubt returned. “I think our Ernie could be earning money without telling me. I hope he isn’t mixed up with that Percy Flemming. A girl, or money. It has to be one or the other.”
Sitting in the bar of The Railwayman’s, Viv and Jack discussed it and came to the conclusion that Ernie was seeing a girl but a girl of the kind he wouldn’t take home to meet his mother. Molly Bondo, was the name that came to their mind. Molly had introduced many young men to the joys of love, but Frank wasn’t sure. The idea of earning money seemed more likely.
His suspicions seemed to be confirmed one night as he was walking home across the fields. Once again Ernie had gone out without telling him he was going and he was angry at having to walk across the fields alone once again.
The van, their van, passed him as he reached the stile and he saw clearly that there was only one person in the cab: Ernie.
* * *
Hywel heard the disturbance and ran out, the light from the kitchen, where the goats still slept, silhouetting him in the doorway. Frank and Ernie were rolling on the floor, fighting so intensely that they didn’t hear him call. Hywel took one of the planks of wood from the pile made ready to build the goats their house and waved it wildly around. When he had heard two satisfyingly loud clunks of wood against bone, which he hoped meant one blow for each head, he went in and locked the door.
The following Sunday, Ernie, bearing two lumps on his head, one each side, walked sedately into the house with Helen Gunner, who had been invited for tea.
As always, few invitations had been issued, but Janet expected news of the visit to be broadcast and for many others, uninvited, to turn up. The television, one of the first in the town, was relegated to the shed, and sawn lengths of tree trunks were dragged in to serve as extra seating. Caroline came early to help with the food and to Janet’s relief, Barry was with her.
“He didn’t forget this arrangement,” Caroline whispered. “I think he’s aware of how he hurt me last time and he won’t do it again.”
“Good on him,” Janet smiled.
Rhiannon came with Jimmy Herbert, followed by her brother, Viv, and Joan Weston. Rhiannon was subdued, allowing the lively fun and games, the teasing and the laughter to swirl around her without feeling its touch. She had decided to tell Jimmy she wouldn’t see him again, except as a friend. He could hardly vanish from her life as he was a rep, selling sweets for Bottomleys, and he called at the shop regularly to take orders.
She sat and watched as Helen was introduced and teased, the girl giving back as good as she got and making friends of them all without the slightest awkwardness. She only watched, refusing to be drawn into the discussion, as Viv and Joan answered questions about their wedding plans. She admired Eleri and Basil’s little Ronnie, and was genuinely thrilled to be told that Ronnie was to have a brother or sister around Christmas. All the time she felt as if the activity around her was something apart. “It’s like I’m looking through a window and watching strangers talking without understanding what they say,” she confided to Eleri. “I’m so tense, wondering how I’m going to tell Jimmy goodbye, how he will take it. And half of me doesn’t want to finish with him for fear of being alone and never being a part of a family like this.”
“I know shouldn’t say this, Rhiannon, but I’m so happy with Basil I wake each morning and marvel at my luck. I loved your brother, Lewis-boy, you know I did, but he would never have made me as happy as Basil does.” She looked across at her long, lanky husband, standing beside his diminutive mother and, catching his eye, smiled so serenely, Rhiannon felt a lump swell in her throat.
“Basil adores you, doesn’t he?” she whispered. “It must be wonderful to be adored.”
“And I adore him. What I’m saying is, don’t settle for second-best. Wait for the one-and-only.”
When Nia arrived with Rhiannon’s father she was carrying an armful of clothes.
“They’re yours, Barry. I thought you might need them and they’re no use stuck in a wardrobe in Chestnut Road.”
Barry took the clothes from her and held them against himself one at a time to decide whether or not he wanted them. Shirts and trousers and a couple of jackets. Caroline came over to help him. He put one jacket across him and saw at once that it was obviously too small.
“Oh, sorry,” Nia said with a painful expression on her face. Her eyes filled with sudden tears as she explained, “That’s one of Joseph’s. I thought they’d all gone.”
Barry took it and handed it to his mother, embarrassment making him want to leave. It reminded him how big and awkward he was compared to his brother and he couldn’t look at Caroline. He concentrated instead on little Joseph, who would probably grow up as perfect as his father had been. At least he wouldn’t have a memory of his true father to compare unfavourably with him.
Janet busied herself with food, loading the table with a variety of food few households could manage to gather at one time, but while she worked at making sure everyone had what they needed, she watched Barry and Caroline. She didn’t like what she saw. Barry was attentive all right, but in the role of father to little Joseph and not as a husband to her shy, gentle daughter.
When Ernie had taken his girlfriend home and the others had drifted into that semi-sleep state where the party was over but no one believed it, Janet spoke to Hywel.
“I can see why Caroline is unhappy, can’t you? Barry is happiest when he’s boasting about our Joseph, his clever step-son. When little Joseph’s not around, our Caroline doesn’t exist.”
“Seems our lovely daughter was right, love. Barry stayed married to her for the child’s sake. There’s no love in him for Caroline, nor ever will be.”
Chapter Five
Making a home for the goats was not as easy as Hywel had anticipated. A quickly tacked-up three-sided box and a few rolls of wire was a serious undertaking by him, but to the goats it was a joke. For his first effort at confining them, he hammered in a few posts to which he attached chicken wire about two-feet-six inches high. This the goats jumped immediately, turning to look at him with an expression on their faces that showed they thought it a game.
The housing was another problem. No temporary lean-to for these cheerful characters. When it rained, they ran for shelter as fast as greyhounds. Having no second coat they felt miserable when wet and were determined not to let it happen. As the first spots touched them they made for the kitchen by the shortest route and there they stayed until it stopped. The back-kitchen was given up to them and they spent the nights there, while Janet used the main kitchen for everything, crowding in the washing bath and the table on which she cleaned and washed vegetables as well as the vegetables themselves. Even the rickety chair on which they cleaned shoes was found a corner, and trying to cook a meal with all the other activities carrying on around her made Janet wish she hadn’t agreed to their keeping goats. Although, come to think of it, she didn’t think she had anyway!
One of the goats, which Hywel had named Ermintrude, took a great liking for Frank and whenever he was around the goat followed him, even trying to squeeze past “sentinel” Janet and trot after him up the stairs.
“Whoever thinks that country life is peaceful ought to try living here for a few days!” Janet sighed one morning.
The enclosure finally succeeded – at least temporarily – when Hywel put up a solid six-foot wire enclosure supported by metal post
s and thick, twisted-wire supports. But, as he had spent so much time building abortive fencing there was still no shelter, so their occupation of the kitchen continued, as did Ermintrude’s adoration of Frank. She looked towards the lane each evening, listening for his footsteps, seeming to be aware of his imminent arrival long before the family.
* * *
Frank walked disconsolately along the lane towards his home, his two-miles-an-hour, long-legged movement evidence of the previous hour spent in the mourning procession of a local man. His dark suit and white shirt, the highly polished black shoes, all looked out of place on him. His hair, which he always wore extra long, was normally pushed carelessly back, but now it hung, neatly parted, down over his ears.
The reason for the gloomy expression was not sadness for the recently departed but disappointment over the disloyalty of Ernie. He might have used the family van once or twice to impress Helen Gunner, but on the two occasions he had seen him driving it, Ernie had been alone. No, Ernie was up to something. He was making money somehow without dealing him in.
April was coming to its end and celandines and violets carpeted the woods close by. Catkins still hung on the hazels and the hedgerows were splendidly decorated with blackthorn blossom, a few brave hawthorn hinting at the delight to come. But although the signs of spring were all around, the air was crisp with the threat of snow. Daffy snow, Janet called it. Frank idly wondered, during the biting chill of evening, whether he could lock Ernie out and make him sleep in the back-kitchen with those goats. At times like these he remembered that Ernie was a cousin and not a brother and he spitefully wanted to remind him.
A pheasant got up in the field beside which he walked and he raised his arms grasping an imaginary gun, and shouted the thwack of a cartridge that probably would have missed anyway. Basil was the expert with a gun, Frank’s favourite tool was a ferret plus small nets. He wondered idly whether it would be worth going out and bagging a few rabbits. They would earn him money for a pint or two. He kicked at the grass verge and growled out an explosion of anger. He needed to get his hands on big money. What with the fine still to pay and his contribution to the household overdue, life was becoming a worry. “Damn Ernie,” he shouted aloud.
“What’s up with you, then?” a voice asked.
“Nothing to do with you, Percy Flemming!” Frank replied. He had been startled at the man’s silent approach. “And don’t creep up on me like that or you’ll get a nasty shock!”
“Creep up? Damn me, boy, I called you from the corner of the wood and there’s you lost to the world, standing there pretending you could hit that poor pheasant.”
Percy Flemming was a man in his early forties. He had been married twice and lost each of his wives to other men. No one knew how he survived financially on his low wages as assistant gardener at a local hospital, although most suspected it was not honestly. He paid for the upkeep of two illegitimate daughters plus the woman with whom he now lived, Claire Wheel, and their two girls. Claire was a friend of Molly Bondo, a local prostitute, and had shared her occupation before Percy had set her up in a small house near the centre of the town and kept her “decent”. His daughters seemed to lack nothing.
Frank looked at Percy now, smartly dressed in good quality clothes, looking more the country gent than a man who, by all accounts, lived mainly on his wits. Perhaps he could pick up some tips on making money. Percy certainly never seemed short of cash. “I need money desperate, Percy,” he admitted with an exaggeration of his normal lugubrious expression. “There’s the fine, see, and I have to pay Mam and Dad for my keep, and with only our Dad’s van to earn money with, I’m out of ideas.”
“Would a hundred pounds sort you out?” Percy said quietly, after looking at Frank thoughtfully for a long moment. “For a night’s work and a still tongue afterwards, I’ll give you fifty pounds. There’s another fifty in a month’s time if you want it and you manage to keep your mouth shut.”
“What do I do?”
“I have to be convinced you can keep your mouth shut. Not a word to anyone, specially that Ernie. A few pints and he’d gab non-stop.”
“I wouldn’t tell Ernie!” He looked outraged at the suggestion and Percy nodded knowingly.
“Quarrelled have you? Now there’s a pity. When you make it up you’ll share every last thing. I know you two of old.”
“You have my word, Percy. I won’t tell a soul. Ever. Now, what d’you want me to do?” Whatever the job he would do it. Fifty pounds! He could settle his fine and wouldn’t Ernie be narked over that! And he could give Mam a tenner. He doubted whether she’d ever seen a ten pound note. Was there such a thing? Or would he hand it to her in a fan of twenty ten-shilling notes? That would be fun. He smiled as he imagined her face. The smile faded when he saw the doubt on Percy’s face.
“You can trust me,” he assured him. “I want this so bad I’ll do anything.” He had to convince Percy. He had to get one over on Ernie.
Percy stared at him again, as if assessing the risks, then he nodded. “Right then, you’re in.”
Frank went home in a more cheerful state of mind. It was much later before he wondered exactly what Percy had let him “in” for. He tried to reassure himself that the stories about Percy were exaggerated. It couldn’t be anything terrible, Percy wouldn’t get him into real trouble. Although, a hundred pounds was a lot of money and might involve a lot of risk. He shrugged the uneasy thought away. A hundred pounds! The fan of notes swam before his eyes in a dazzling array. Whatever the risk, he was in, and in he would stay.
* * *
In Trap Lane, Ernie and Helen were near the gate of Helen’s house, using the tall privet hedge as a screen to hide their goodnight kisses. After a few hurried words confirming their plan to meet later in the week, he reluctantly walked away. Helen watched him go, then turned to walk up the short path to her front door. As she put out a hand to push her key into the lock, the door was wrenched back on its hinges and her mother stood there and demanded how long she had been meeting one of the dreadful Griffithses.
“Oh Mam, they aren’t that bad, just a bit different, that’s all.”
“Different? I’ll say they’re different. Thieves they are the lot of them. You don’t see him again, d’you understand?”
“Sorry, Mam, but Ernie and I like each other a lot. I like all of the Griffithses, they’re good fun. I have no intention of ending our friendship.”
“Friendship? Is that all it is?”
“For the moment,” Helen said, glaring at her mother. There was a look in Helen’s eyes that Gloria Gunner recognised of old. It had appeared the time they had tried to make her stay at school and she had been determined to leave. And again when she had asked to go to London with two friends to visit the relation of one of them and they thought her too young. Without another word being spoken, Gloria knew that to argue now would only entrench them in a battle of wills, which she would almost certainly lose.
“Your father and I insist that you bring him here so we can judge him for ourselves,” she said finally. If she made sure to pull out all the stops and prepare a grand meal with serviettes and an array of cutlery, Ernie was sure to be ill at ease. That would show Helen how unsuitable he was. Better than trying to make her point with words. A little subtle action was called for here.
* * *
Dora and Sian met at seven Sophie Street to complete a menu that would please Gladys Weston, a daunting task but one which they were determined to achieve.
“Your Viv doesn’t like us doing the catering for his wedding any more than my mother does,” Sian admitted when they took out their lists and compared notes.
“All the more reason for getting it right,” Dora said firmly. “Thank goodness rationing will be finished by then.”
“D’you think it will? I can hardly believe it after so long.”
“Joints of ham and pork will be easily dealt with the day before, and we can do some large flans too.”
“Oh yes. They add to the ta
ble displays, don’t they?” Sian ticked away at her list. “Then there’ll only be the vegetables and salads to do on the day, that shouldn’t be difficult, so long as we start early.”
“We need to be at the hall by seven, if we can get the key.”
“Mother’s talking about vol-au-vents for a starter,” Sian said, referring again to her list.
“Unless she wants to roll up her sleeves and make them, she’ll have soup and like it,” Dora said.
They made a diary of things to do and then went to look at Gomer Hall to make sure they had a clear picture of the kitchen facilities and how they would set out the tables.
The hall was rather shabby having been untouched throughout the war and the years following. Being empty, it was easy to see the worn decorations, the peeling and chipped paint. It was a dirty cream and a gingery brown on which an attempt had been made to brighten it with borders of stencilled green leaves and flowers.
“My mother will have a fit!” Sian exclaimed. “A Weston wedding in a place like this!”
“Once the tables are set and flowers add their colour she won’t notice the walls. When we’ve finished, every eye will be drawn to the tables, I promise you,” Dora assured her friend.
“I’ve never been here before, have you?” Sian said when they stepped through the double doors.
“Yes, years ago, when Lewis and I enjoyed dancing. It seems strange to remember those times now our Rhiannon and Viv come here and do the same.”
“Not quite the same,” Sian chuckled as they went through the foyer and into the main hall. “Rock ’n roll, jitterbugging and jive doesn’t have the same ring as the slow foxtrot and the Viennese waltz.”
“They don’t allow much of that carry-on,” Dora said with a grin and she pointed to a notice hanging in the corner of the hall: “Jitterbuggers keep to the corners”.