Broken Rainbows (10 page)

‘At least I've got Haydn's photographs in the
Sunday Pictorial
to look at,' Jane muttered apologetically, in an attempt to make amends for misunderstanding her sister-in-law.

‘Andrew told me in one of his letters that he's going grey. Next year he'll be thirty. Since we married we've spent as much time apart as we have together. Do you want to know my worst nightmare?' She slammed the car into low gear as she negotiated the corner that led out on to Gelliwastad Road. ‘That this war is going to go on for ever and we're going to waste our whole lives waiting for it to end, only to die before it's over.'

‘You don't really think it's going to last for ever, do you?'

‘I don't know. I'm sorry, I shouldn't have started this. All I've succeeded in doing is depressing you as well as myself.'

‘Most of the time I try not to think about anything except what's in front of me. It's easy enough in work when there's endless bins of empty shell casings waiting to be packed with explosives. All I have to do is pick them up and fill them, but when the whistle blows at the end of the shift and I go home to Anne and read her a bedside story, it's always from the books that you, Haydn, Eddie and Maud had when you were little. Books about normal families where Mummy looks after the children, Daddy goes to work and comes home …'

‘… in a suit and bowler hat, to a semi in Croydon.' Bethan laughed at the memories Jane evoked. ‘That way of life was as alien to us as Hindu princesses and Baghdad caliphs in the
Arabian Nights.
There was my miner father going out every day looking like a tramp and coming home as black as a Negro .. .'

‘… and still doing the same.'

‘Are he and Phyllis all right?'

‘Very happy as far as I can see.'

‘I wish I had more time to talk to him, really talk to him the way I used to when I lived at home.' Bethan reached out and touched Jane's hand. ‘I'm sorry. I know how much you miss Haydn.' She slowed the car, turning under the railway bridge that marked the beginning of the Graig hill.

‘I have his letters, and unlike Tina with William, I know he's unlikely to be sent close enough to the front to be put in any real danger. The War Office would never risk a hair on the head of the chorus girls he travels with. Can you imagine the fuss the papers would make if any of them were hurt by a bomb or hit by a sniper?'

‘Those girls don't mean anything to him. I know Haydn, he wouldn't have married you if he hadn't loved you.' Bethan crossed her fingers under cover of the blackout. The man who came home on all-too-brief, intermittent leaves was very different from the younger brother she had grown up with. She might have known the old Haydn, but she certainly didn't know the present one.

‘I'm lucky. When I think of Eddie getting killed at Dunkirk I can't understand how Jenny bears it – or you and Haydn, come to that. I can't even begin to imagine what it was like to have grown up with brothers and sisters only to lose them the way you lost Eddie and Maud.'

‘We have our memories, one another, and my father. He's the real mainstay of the family.'

‘I worry more about what will happen when the war is over, than about it going on for ever. Can life ever go back to what it was? With so much destroyed, so many people dead …'

‘We're getting far too maudlin. Let's go to sleep on a happier note.' Bethan cut the engine and coasted up outside her father's house. ‘Have you heard from Haydn lately? Is he likely to be coming home?'

‘“Soon”, according to his last letter. Whenever that will be.'

Bethan leaned forward and hugged her sister-in-law. ‘Let's hope this time the War Office isn't stringing him along.'

‘You coming in?'

‘And disturb Phyllis and my father and the lodger at this hour? No, I'll see you all tomorrow. You still have tomorrow off?'

‘My first free Sunday in two months. You didn't think I'd give that up, did you?'

‘Isn't it time you took a break from the factory? You don't have to hand in your notice, just take a couple of weeks' holiday.'

‘If you did the same we could take the children away for a few days.'

‘I can't, not right now …'

‘You really fell for that one, didn't you, Beth? I will take some time off, I promise. Just as soon as Haydn gets home. And thanks.'

‘What for?'

‘Being honest. It's good to know there's someone I can tell the truth to. I'm fed up to the back teeth of trying to pretend that everything is wonderful.'

‘It was a good party.'

‘I'm glad you enjoyed it, ma'am.'

‘The name is Mrs Powell, Jenny to my friends.'

‘Jenny, ma'am.' Kurt Schaffer pulled up the handbrake of the Jeep as he stopped at the white cross Jenny had painted below the window of her corner shop. ‘It's just as well they blacked out the coastal areas of the US of A before we came over here. At least we're used to finding our way around in the dark.'

‘But not some of the other aspects of war like rationing, judging by the amount of food and drink on offer tonight.'

‘Uncle Sam looks after his own.'

‘And looks after them very well.'

She didn't resist as he pulled her into his arms, or find any difficulty in returning his kiss. His lips were cold, but proficient, and in the event it was he who moved away from her.

‘Would you like to come upstairs?'

‘Ma'am?' he murmured, unsure he'd heard her correctly.

‘For tea?'

‘What about your folks?' he asked, wary not only of her family, but the colonel's directive.

‘My mother's dead, and my father's in hospital and likely to be there for some time.' She omitted the word ‘psychiatric' in front of hospital. Not everyone understood mental illness, and some of her more outspoken neighbours had already asked if she was likely to inherit her father's condition.

‘That's a damned shame.'

‘It all happened a long time ago.' She deliberately kept her voice light. Glancing up she saw a flicker of movement in the window above the greengrocer's across the road. ‘But if you're coming in, you'd better move the Jeep. Mrs Evans opposite has nothing better to do than watch my comings and goings. She'd love to see an American car parked outside my house all night.'

‘All night?'

‘Tea can take a long time to make, and then we have to drink it.'

His mouth went dry and his hands clammy. He wondered if he'd picked up a professional. Usually he knew exactly where he was with women. In his extensive experience they fell into two distinct categories: the ‘good' and invariably inexperienced and naive whose seduction required protestations of undying love and promises of marriage, and the whores, who no matter what price they initially quoted, had always cost him dearly. He'd placed Jenny Powell firmly in the former category. Although she was a widow, what else could the sister-in-law of Colonel Ford's landlady possibly be? Deciding she was joking about the ‘all night', he asked, ‘Where do you suggest I hide it?'

‘Lower down the hill, on the right-hand side of the road outside the chapel,' she directed mischievously. ‘When you come back, turn down the lane at the side of the shop. There's a back entrance. I'll be waiting behind the storeroom door. If you've got a torch, bring it. I don't want you crashing into the ash bins, but whatever you do, don't switch on the light until you're behind the yard door.'

‘Afraid I'll get hurt?'

‘Afraid of the neighbours hearing you.'

He climbed out of the Jeep and walked around to help her out. She kissed him goodbye for Mrs Evans's benefit before he scrambled back into the driving seat. Waiting until he'd driven off, she didn't open the gate that led into the yard until she saw the blinds move a second time in Mrs Evans's window.

Lifting the latch Jenny unlocked the stockroom door. There had been a time when she would have found Alexander waiting for her, but she had relieved him of his keys to her house after his last fit of jealousy. Kurt Schaffer wasn't long. Less than five minutes later the gate creaked. Opening the door, she heard him call out softly.

‘My torch battery is flat, and it's as black as a pig's nose in here.'

‘Can you feel my hand?'

‘Got it.'

‘Walk towards me … careful there's a step. I'll put the light on as soon as I've closed the door.'

‘Floundering in the dark can be fun,' Kurt muttered as he crashed into her.

‘Not as much as floundering in the light.'

He breathed in sharply, as her hand brushed across the fly on his trousers.

‘There.' She clicked the light on in the shop, locked the back door and opened the side door to reveal a staircase. ‘Switch off the light behind us, will you?'

She ran up the stairs, lifting the long skirt of her evening gown above her knees. ‘The living room is through there.'

‘What's this?' He opened the door in front of him.

‘The kitchen. If you're good at doing dishes, there's a pile in the sink.'

‘What's a sink?'

‘I can see where your expertise lies.' She leaned back against the bedroom door. He kissed her again, his hand caressing her breasts through the lace bodice of her dress.

‘Don't!'

‘Sorry.' He stepped back, kicking himself for misreading the signals. Resorting to the well-worn excuse he had employed in similar situations, he murmured, ‘I lost my head. It's been a long time since I've seen a girl as beautiful as you.' His eyes widened as she pulled down the sleeves and low-cut neckline of her dress, exposing her breasts.

‘This frock shows every mark, Lieutenant, especially finger marks.' Her blue eyes sparkled with suppressed humour as she savoured the shock on his face. Slipping her hand behind her, she opened her bedroom door and walked backwards into the room. Still gazing at him, she stepped out of her dress and petticoats and laid them on a chair. With her left foot on the bed she unclipped and rolled down one stocking, then the other. Holding them up to the lamp at the top of the stairs, she shook her head. ‘They're laddered, and they're my last pair.'

Swallowing hard, he muttered, ‘I can get you more.'

She unhooked the suspender belt at her waist, pulled it free and flung it on top of her clothes. Standing before him naked, except for a pair of lace-edged, cream silk knickers, she held out her arms. ‘Are all Americans so tardy?'

He stepped towards her, hardly daring to believe his luck.

‘You do have a French letter?'

‘A …'

‘I don't mind spending the night with you, Lieutenant, but I don't want your baby.'

He unbuttoned his top pocket, praying that he still had one of the American rubbers left. The English ones were so damned small and tight. His luck was in. He kissed her again as she began to peel off his jacket.

Afterwards Jenny tossed restlessly on her pillow while Kurt slept soundly beside her. Unable to endure the thoughts swarming through her mind, she switched on the bedside lamp, sat up and lit a cigarette. What was she trying to prove? That sex with one man was very like sex with another? At least Alexander cared for her, loved her, even wanted to marry her, but this man was no different from a hundred others. Anything for a quick, cheap thrill: she, or a common prostitute, either would have done. She had seen through him the moment she had met him – so why had she allowed him to take her home and invited him into her bed?

Since she'd received the telegram telling her that Eddie had been killed, nothing had felt real or touched her emotions. It was almost as though she'd been sleepwalking since that moment, trying to convince everyone, especially herself, that the only way to live was minute by minute. Justifying her more outrageous actions with the excuse that as all pleasures were fleeting, she should take what came while it was there for the taking.

Alexander – Kurt – what was the difference? Now she had discovered that making love to either was just like drinking a bottle of Alexander's good wine. Once finished, she felt just as flat, lonely and despairing as she had done before.

It hadn't been like that with Eddie. Or had it? Was her memory playing tricks, painting an idyllic portrait of the physical side of her marriage, because the rest of it had been so disastrous?

Eddie had abandoned her on their wedding night believing, with good reason, that she loved and wanted his brother Haydn, not him. By the time she realised just how deeply she did love him, he had joined the Guards and left for France, and there had been no time to make amends other than one brief, two-day, compassionate leave after her mother's death. Did he … could he have known how much he had meant to her? Fighting back tears, she reached out to reassure herself that she wasn't alone.

‘Baby …' Kurt mumbled thickly as her hand caressed his naked back.

Crushing her cigarette in the ashtray beside her, she switched off the lamp. Bending her head she kissed his neck, her fingers seeking pulse spots that had aroused Eddie. As Kurt responded to her touch, it was enough to know that for the moment, there was someone lying beside her who could dispel the black thoughts crowding in on her. Tomorrow she would be alone again. But then, tomorrow was hours away.

Chapter Six

Bethan woke early to the sound of voices drifting up from the garden. Throwing back the bedclothes she went to the window and lifted a corner of the blackout in time to see David Ford climb into his car. Lieutenant Rivers and Sergeant Morelli were with him. Sunday or not, the Americans were working. She was glad. The rare free days when she was able to organise a family tea had become all the more precious since they had introduced round-the-clock shifts in the munitions factories and pits in an effort to step up production.

She returned to her bed and looked at the box on the side table. It contained all the letters Andrew had written to her since he'd left for France. Five short notes before he'd been captured at Dunkirk, and over a hundred longer epistles since.

She reached for them, then, changing her mind, she replaced the box on the cabinet and opened the drawer in the table. Taking out one of the blue letter/envelopes the authorities insisted on for prisoner-of-war correspondence, she unscrewed the top from her fountain pen, sucked the end thoughtfully, and began writing.

Dear Andrew,

It is six o'clock on a Sunday morning and our new lodgers …

She hesitated. If she told Andrew there were Americans billeted in the house, the censor would not only blank out the relevant sentences but could even impound her letter.

…
who have taken over the top floor of the house have left for work. Their company doesn't make up for your absence. It never could, but at least I have new people to talk to in the winter evenings when I am not on duty.

I saw your parents last night, they are both well and anxious for news about you. Unfortunately Mrs Llewellyn-Jones was with them. I'm sorry, darling, I can't like that woman even for you and your parents' sake.

She wished she could write something reassuring about the party. He knew the Americans were in Britain, but did he and his fellow prisoners know about the success the Yanks were having with British women? How could she tell him that she was immune to their charms without worrying him? It was easier to write about the children.

Eddie and Rachel continue to thrive. Both of them are very sociable, but no matter how many hours I work, I make sure they know exactly who their parents are. Eddie's vocabulary is quite extensive, and he certainly recognises his daddy. If anyone mentions you, he runs straight to your photograph. Rachel is going to start in the nursery class in Maesycoed primary school after Christmas, much to your mother's disgust. I think she would have preferred a private school, but I hope you agree that it is important for our children to be able to mix with people from all walks of life. Your father does. He says that after the war, class differences won't matter so much. How can they when labourers are working alongside public schoolboys in the most unlikely situations?

I also want to tell you how much Maisie and Liza Clark, the eldest evacuee I took in, help me to run the house. I couldn't manage without either of them. I suspect that you may get a letter from your mother about my insistence on keeping the Clark girls. Their father has been killed and Mrs Llewellyn-Jones wanted to put them in the workhouse. No matter what your mother says, they are not much of a drain on our resources as the two eldest are working and Alma and I are sharing the cost of the younger girls.

I know this may be difficult for you to understand, but I dare not look too far into the future. Like most people in Pontypridd I live one day at a time. I have to, Andrew: Work takes up most of my time, my few free hours are spent with the children, and although Maisie and Liza are marvellous, I still have to watch that everything runs smoothly and do the household accounts. (That's one job you can have back the minute you walk through the door.)

Everyone in Pontypridd keeps talking about ‘when the war is over'. They assume that everything will return to what it was in
1939,
but sometimes, like Jane, I wonder if life can ever go back to what it was? Most of the evacuees can go home, but what about the ones who have no one and nowhere left to go to, like the Clarks? If it finished tomorrow, Liza and Mary will be earning barely enough to support themselves let alone the other two. And then there's Maisie. I know your mother disapproves of my employing an unmarried mother to look after the children, but she has no one else and I can hardly put her and her daughter back into the workhouse …

She leaned back on the pillows and read what she'd written. What was she thinking of? There was no way she could burden Andrew with her problems with the Clark girls, Maisie, and especially her fraught relationship with his mother and Mrs Llewellyn-Jones. Regretting the loss of the pre-paid envelope, she tore it up, took another from the drawer and began again, this time without voicing a single complaint or criticism of his mother or Mrs Llewellyn-Jones, a mention of the Clarks or giving him the slightest cause to worry about her, the children, the house or what was going to happen at the end of the war. She even finished with a white lie.

Eddie has just toddled
in. He sends you a kiss, but unfortunately demands all my attention. I will write again soon, darling. I love you, yours as ever, Bethan

She looked up at the closed door. Her letters were getting shorter, but what else could she write about? Day-to-day problems he wouldn't understand, and even if he could, was powerless to help her solve. Given the choice over the Clark girls would he have sided with her, or his mother and Mrs Llewellyn-Jones?

The most painful thought was not that he might do so, but that she couldn't be sure what he would do. He was her husband, and she didn't even know him any more.

Jenny fastened the last button on her blouse, leaned over and poked the comatose figure in her bed. ‘Wake up!' When he refused to stir she prodded him again, harder this time. ‘Come on, wakey wakey!'

Kurt Schaffer opened his eyes, screwed them against the glare of the electric bulb and peered up at her. ‘Hi,' he mumbled sleepily, smiling at the memory of their uninhibited lovemaking and the night they'd shared.

‘Hi,' Jenny said brusquely. ‘You've five minutes to get dressed and out of here.'

‘What time is it?'

‘Five-thirty. ‘

‘Jesus H. Christ! I should be in combat gear and on manoeuvres.' Leaping out of bed he dived for his dress uniform which was still scattered over the floor where Jenny had thrown it the night before. ‘Hell! I have to go back to my billet to change. What do I tell the old battleaxe if she asks where I spent the night?'

‘That you were praying in a chapel?'

‘She'll never believe me.'

‘I don't care what you tell her as long as you don't mention my name or the Graig hill. And while we're on the subject, make sure no one sees you leaving.'

‘Who's watching your door at this time in the morning?'

‘Nosy parkers.'

‘I just love your language. What exactly are parkers?' he asked as he heaved on his pants.

‘Out!' She folded the blankets to the foot of the bed and stripped the sheets.'

‘All right, so you don't want to talk. I can understand that at this unholy hour. I'm not feeling so good myself. See you tonight?'

‘I'm busy.'

‘Tomorrow?'

‘Busier.'

‘Give a guy a break?'

‘I've given you all I'm going to.'

‘Come on. Last night -'

‘Last night was fun,' her blue eyes took on a frosty glaze as they gazed into his, ‘but let's not turn it into something it wasn't.'

‘You don't want to see me again?' he asked incredulously, his ego shattered by the first rebuff he'd experienced.

‘The very next time you organise a party.'

‘That could be months away. I thought after what happened last night, you'd be my girl.'

‘I'm my own girl.'

‘You really don't want to see me again?'

‘How many ways are there of saying no?'

‘You weren't like this last night.'

‘Last night I wanted your body.' She blanched when she realised how true that was. Last night, almost any young and presentable man would have done to alleviate her loneliness. Picking up his jacket she thrust it at him. ‘We'll go out the back way. Wait in the yard for five minutes after I'm gone. Mrs Evans should have pulled her blackout back by then.' Handing him his boots, she herded him through the door and down the stairs.

‘Do you mind if I call in later in the week? You could change your -'

‘I won't.' She strode through the shop and unbolted the storeroom door.

‘Am I allowed to talk to you if I see you in the town?' he asked caustically.

‘That depends on who I'm with, Lieutenant.' She pushed him into the yard.

‘The name is Kurt, Kurt Schaffer, and it's freezing out here,' he protested, hopping from one foot to the other.

‘Nice to meet you, and thank you so much for stating the obvious,' she replied, adopting his sarcastic tone.

He threw his boots to the ground, sat on the step and tried to push his numbed and frozen feet into them. ‘Goddamn it, it's impossible to dress out here.'

‘Ssh, keep your voice down.'

‘I need a bathroom.'

‘There's a ty bach in front of you.'

‘What in hell's that?'

‘Open the door and find out.' Stepping around him, she locked the storeroom door, and opened the gate. Walking through it, she slammed it in his face. He was left staring at the planks of wood in the early morning gloom, wondering if he'd broken any peculiar Welsh rule of conduct that no one had thought to tell him about. For the first time in his life a girl had used and abandoned
him.
Until now, he'd always been the one to cut and run and he discovered that the taste of rejection, like bile, lingered sourly in the mouth, and he didn't like the sensation. Not one bit.

Bethan sat back in her chair watching Eddie stagger on chubby, unsteady legs from her father's knee to her own. He collapsed in a fit of giggles as Ronnie reached out and tickled him.

‘That one's going to run in the Olympics one day, mark my words,' Megan predicted as she brought in a plate of sandwiches from the kitchen.

‘Mam always sees a glowing future for the Powell children.' Diana's dark eyes shone warm with love as they rested on her husband.

‘What about Ronconi children?' Ronnie asked in mock indignation.

‘They'll count as Powells.'

Megan gave her daughter a sideways glance. Ronnie and Diana might have been married only a few weeks but there was a dreamy look about Diana that made Megan wonder if she was already pregnant.

‘Reeses are important too.' Catching hold of his small stepson, Billy, Ronnie swung him high in the air.

‘Careful! That's my grandson you're about to drop.'

‘I wouldn't drop you, would I mate?'

‘Dada,' Billy chanted, grinning cheekily at Megan.

Taking two sandwiches from his mother-in-law, Ronnie handed one to Billy, and demolished the other in a single bite.

‘Looks like you've got your work cut out keeping those two in order, Diana,' Evan smiled, happy for his niece. Both she and Ronnie had been married before. Diana's marriage had ended in tragedy when her husband had been killed in an explosion in the munitions factory. And when his younger daughter, Maud, had died of tuberculosis, her husband, Ronnie, had seemed inconsolable. Ronnie and Diana's wedding had been the one bright spot in an otherwise bleak year.

‘They gang up on me all the time.' Diana pulled a wriggling Billy from Ronnie's lap. ‘Go and play with your cousins.' She set him down and pushed him in the direction of the hall where Rachel, Eddie and Anne were playing a complicated game of tag that was beyond adult comprehension.

‘If the noise is anything to go by, the next generation of Powells are likely to be even wilder than the last.'

‘If you and Ronnie want some peace, Dad, why don't you sit in Andrew's study?' Bethan suggested.

‘And miss the chance of being nagged by my wife and mother-in-law?'

‘You don't know what nagging is, my boy,' Megan threatened as Ronnie went down on all fours and growled at Eddie and Billy who were creeping towards the door pretending to be bears.

‘What do you say to some peace?' Evan asked his youngest son, Brian, who was sitting in the corner lost in an old book of Andrew's.

Brian was too engrossed to answer. Although he was only four years older than Rachel, he already had a reputation as a bookworm. Evan's common-law wife, Phyllis, looked fondly at her son. ‘He's always the same. Once his nose is in a book you can't get a word out of him.'

‘Just like his big sister.'

‘Was I really that bad?' Bethan asked.

‘You can't remember?'

‘Any sign of Haydn or William coming home?' Ronnie said as he returned to his chair; the boys had tired of the game.

‘None that I know of,' Jane said flatly.

‘Tina was going spare yesterday.' Megan bustled in with another tray and began setting cups out on the table. ‘She hasn't heard from that son of mine in weeks. I'll brain him when he comes home. How long does it take to write a postcard?'

‘Not as long as it takes a mail bag to get from North Africa to here.' Evan pulled out his pipe.

‘Tina'll be up later with Alma. You never know something may have come in today's post, but I wouldn't bank on it. Andrew writes at least two letters a week, some take six months to get here, others only three and a half. The post is in a right mess. Everyone you talk to who has family serving overseas complains about it.'

‘If there'd been trouble with either of the boys we would have heard.'

‘I suppose you're right, Evan.' Megan walked to the window. ‘Your Americans are back, Beth, and Alma and Tina are with them.'

‘And Alma's major?'