Authors: Catrin Collier
‘All I want is to be left alone.’
‘You can’t stay alone for ever. You and Eddie -’ he took a deep breath after saying his son’s name – ‘well it wasn’t all roses between you, I know that. Don’t try to live in the past, Jenny. If you do you’ll have a miserable life.’
‘You don’t mind?’
‘About you and Alexander? No, love. Why should I?’
‘But Eddie …’
‘If Eddie had been the one who’d survived, I would be giving him the same advice. You loved him while he was alive.’
‘I … I …’
‘Let’s say the best way you could,’ he interrupted tactfully, ‘and now it’s time to move on.’ He glanced at the clock. ‘I’d better be going. You sure you’ve got no message for Alexander?’
She shook her head.
‘Your mother is dead, your father is in hospital and not likely to come out for some time. Please, you’re as much my daughter as Eddie was my son. Don’t stay in every evening when you’ve a family to visit. Come and see us?’
She nodded.
‘You sure I can’t give Alexander a message?’
‘Just that I’m trying to make a life for myself, and between work and the shop there’s not much time left.’
‘You have to have some fun.’
‘I need time.’
‘You’ll talk to Alexander soon?’
‘Perhaps.’ It wasn’t much of a concession, but it was all Evan could get. ‘Mr Powell?’ He stopped and turned around. ‘Thank you for what you said about Eddie.’
‘I was his father. I know exactly how difficult it was to get on with him.’
‘But I didn’t help matters.’
‘It wasn’t you who killed him, love. A German bullet did. And don’t you ever forget it.’
‘You sure you should be doing that?’ Diana asked as she walked into the kitchen of the Ronconis’ High Street café to find Ronnie pushing a huge, old-fashioned, scrub-down table against the wall.
‘Dr Evans gave me a clean bill of health this morning. Where are the baking tins?’
‘There were so many, Alma talked George Collins into dropping them off for us later in his van.’
He leaned against the table and surveyed the kitchen, which was as clean as three days of scrubbing could make it. ‘How many is “so many”?’
‘About fifty, all that Alma could spare.’
‘And if they’re not enough?’
‘They’ll have to be. Haven’t you heard …’
‘… there’s a war on?’ he chanted. ‘I’ve picked up on the rumour.’
‘You can’t get tins, saucepans or metal kitchen utensils for love or money these days. They’re all being melted down into Spitfires.’ She looked around at the sacks of flour, Alma’s spare meat cutter, the mixing bowls and the implements that had been part of the café kitchen’s original equipment. ‘Alma’s taken on a fourteen-year-old boy to help in her shop and sending her chief cook up here.’
‘Good, because along with the all-clear this morning, I had a starting date.’
‘For munitions?’
‘Monday.’
Diana pretended to study the dismal view out of the high, narrow window in the hope that he wouldn’t read the expression on her face. Ronnie had become far too adept at sensing her moods during the weeks she had helped Bethan to nurse him and taken over the running of Laura’s house. And while she had grown closer to Ronnie, she had drifted further and further from Wyn, scarcely seeing her husband for more than a few minutes late at night when he came home from Jacobsdal, or horribly early in the morning before he left for the factory.
Ronnie stepped behind her and closed the communicating door between the café and the kitchen.
‘I’m going to miss seeing you every day.’
‘And I’m going to miss you.’ She forced a smile.
‘I’ve done about as much as I can here. What say you we mitch off and spend the afternoon in Shoni’s?’
‘I can’t afford the time.’
‘Come on, I bet you don’t get many invitations like that?’
‘The last one was when I was in junior school.’
‘We’ll celebrate me being able to walk without a stick by paddling in the lake. We could even take some food and a bottle of pop, and have a picnic.’
‘And pretend we’re six years old?’
‘No.’ He lifted her hand, unfolded her fingers and kissed her palm. ‘If you were six years old I wouldn’t be asking you.’
‘It’s certainly a glorious day.’
‘And I bet it’s the last one we’ll see this summer. Autumn is around the corner.’
‘You’re a pessimist; there’ll be a few more sunny days before winter sets in.’
‘For you perhaps, but not for me. I’ll be locked inside the factory six days a week, that’s why I was hoping to get some fresh air now.’
‘All right, you can stop nagging, I’ll go,’ she capitulated.
‘I’ll get my jacket.’
‘I’m not walking there with you. I’ll meet you later by the pond.’
‘That’s ridiculous.’
‘No it’s not. Can you imagine what Mrs Evans will say if she sees us walking down Pit Road together in broad daylight? And once she spreads the news, Mrs Richards will have us in the middle of a torrid affair that will relegate Tony’s outburst to the shade.’
‘Every cloud has a silver lining.’
‘Not that particular one.’
‘I still don’t see why you can’t walk up the hill with me after you sat with me in Laura’s house, day after day.’
‘You needed nursing, you were ill.’
‘Not that ill.’
‘That’s debatable.’
‘If we don’t stop arguing we’ll never get there. When and where do you want to meet?’
‘The top end of the lake in an hour.’
‘Make it an hour and a half?’
She knew he wanted her to ask why he needed the extra half an hour, so she didn’t. ‘Fine, that will give me time to check the shops.’
The deafening clatter of picks and shovels dwindled to a few ragged tappings as the whistle sounded. A hush descended over the close, fetid darkness of the coal face, as men downed their tools, stretched their aching muscles and reached for the snap boxes that held their cold dinners.
On his first day underground Alexander hadn’t believed that he could ever become accustomed to the foul air, filth, darkness and waterlogged atmosphere of the pit; now he peeled back the dust-encrusted flap of his haversack and extracted his tin without giving a thought to the unhygienic conditions.
Moving down the line he sat alongside Evan. He’d been Evan’s ‘butty’, or helper, for his first six months underground, and it had taken a great deal of negotiating with management by Evan on his behalf to promote him to the position of fully fledged miner. Leaning against the coal seam, he prised open his tin with fingers swollen by scabs and dirt and took out one of the dripping and salt sandwiches Phyllis had packed for him.
‘You seem to be a bit stiff. Your back still giving you trouble?’ Evan asked.
‘I saw the doctor on my last day off. He said it will take time for the bruises to work out.’ What he didn’t tell Evan was he’d seen an army doctor when he’d tried to join up, but as soon as the recruiting office had discovered he was a miner, they had given him his marching orders. The attacks on Britain’s merchant shipping fleet had given home-produced food and fuel a prized status they’d never enjoyed before the war. And much to Alexander’s chagrin, he discovered that mining had been designated a protected occupation by the War Office.
‘I would have thought three months was enough time to heal any injury.’
‘Apparently not this one. But then, I’ve no one to blame but myself.’ Alexander unscrewed the top on his metal flask and took a swig of cold tea. As with working in the pit, he had become accustomed to the strangely unappetising, metallic taste. ‘I never did explain why I was trying to crawl through Jenny’s bedroom window.’
‘Don’t feel you have to on my account. It’s your and Jenny’s business, not mine.’
‘Jenny’s your daughter-in-law.’
‘As I told her at the time, she’s a young widow; she can’t grieve for ever.’
‘She seems to be doing her damnedest.’
‘You haven’t spoken to her?’
‘Not since that night. I’ve seen her a couple of times, but she walked away from me. I tried writing, but she didn’t answer my letters.’
‘She told me she needed time to sort herself out.’
‘By the look of it, as much as my back needs to heal.’
Evan bit down on his sandwich, spitting out what might have been a piece of coal, or even a husk of grain. The national loaves were renowned for having peculiar objects in them.
‘We had been seeing one another before that night,’ Alexander admitted suddenly.
‘Half the Graig gathered that much.’
‘I didn’t want it to be a hole in the corner relationship, but she wouldn’t be seen in public with me. I tried to push her, but she kept on saying she needed time to mourn.’
‘Perhaps she did.’
‘That night, the night I fell, I went to the White Hart. She was there with a crowd of girls from the munitions factory, including Judy Crofter.’
‘Alf Crofter’s daughter from Leyshon Street?’
‘She certainly lives in Leyshon Street. I’d talked to her once on the train from Cardiff to Pontypridd. I don’t even like the girl, but that evening Judy latched on to me and wouldn’t let go. She more or less insisted I take her to a café. I tried to get Jenny to go with us but she wouldn’t. I even thought of telling Judy I was going out with Jenny, but Jenny was so obsessed with keeping our relationship secret, I knew she’d be furious if I as much as mentioned her name. By ignoring me, she practically pushed me into taking Judy to the café. So, I spent the evening with Judy, walked her home and left her there. Then I decided to visit Jenny to sort out exactly where I was with her.’
‘After spending the evening with Judy?’
‘I told you I didn’t want to. Only the night before I had asked Jenny to marry me.’
‘And what did she say to that?’
‘What do you expect? That she needed time to think about it. I gave her six months.’
‘And now?’
‘I thought you might have some idea of Jenny’s feelings towards me.’
‘You think because Phyllis and I call in on her she talks to us about you?’
‘I hoped she’d mentioned my name.’
‘Not that I’ve heard.’
Alexander pushed half of his uneaten sandwich back into the box. ‘I can’t stop thinking about her.’
‘Then do something about it.’
Alexander recognised the irritation in Evan’s voice.
‘I’d like to,’ he said quietly.
‘As I said, it’s between you and her,’ Evan said as he unscrewed the top on his metal bottle.
‘I’d welcome some advice.’
‘Talk to her.’
‘I told you, I’ve tried.’
‘Obviously not hard enough.’
The whistle blew signalling two minutes to the end of the break. Evan opened his haversack and pushed his empty tin and metal flask into it.
‘You don’t think I’d be wasting my time?’ Alexander hauled himself to his feet.
‘Only she can answer that.’
‘If she’ll meet me.’ Alexander resolved to make one last effort to see her. After all, the worst that could happen was she’d tell him to leave her alone, which was precisely what he’d been forced to do since he’d fallen from her window.
‘Why is the water always so cold here?’ Diana asked as she sat on the bank of Shoni’s, slipped off her sandals and dangled her feet in the lake.
‘Because it has a stream flowing in at one end and out of the other.’ Ronnie sat alongside her, his jacket slung over his shoulder, the basket he’d brought on the grass behind them.
‘But it looks calm enough in the middle.’
‘You ever swum out there?’
‘Not since William told me it has no bottom.’
‘And you believed him?’
‘He and Eddie were horrible when they were boys. I remember coming here once with Maud, and Eddie jumping in from the diving rock and dredging up a disgusting black thing that he told us was a rotting dead dog. He and Will chased us with it, and Maud and I ran screaming all the way home.’
‘And was it a dead dog?’
‘Five years later Eddie told me it was a log.’
‘Girls are so gullible. I remember playing the same trick on Laura and Bethan with a bag of dead kittens.’
‘And it was a log?’
‘No, a bag of dead kittens.’
‘That’s revolting.’
‘Children are revolting.’
‘Are you going to tell me what’s in the basket?’
‘Surprises.’
‘I hate surprises.’
‘A blanket for us to sit on, pasties from your shop, a bottle of Vimto, and -’ he delved into the bottom and produced a Mars bar.
‘Chocolate! Wherever did you get it?’
‘Ask no questions …’
‘I’m sick of that phrase.’
‘Isn’t everyone?’ He rolled up his shirt-sleeves and pushed his hat to the back of his head. ‘It’s hot here. Shall we follow the stream up the valley, find ourselves a shady spot and have a picnic?’
She was about to protest that she’d rather stay by the lake, when she saw a procession of small boys with home-made fishing rods cobbled together from sticks, twine and bent pins walking in Indian file along the opposite bank. On fine days, there were generally as many children around Shoni’s as there were in the park. It was closer for everyone who lived in Penycoedcae and on the Graig, no one had to dress up in their best clothes to walk down Pit Road, the lake was cool for swimming in, and less crowded than the paddling pool in the park, not to mention free, which was more than could be said for the baths. The only drawback was Shoni’s reputation for being the drowning pool for every unwanted cat and dog in the district and, so rumour had it, the occasional bastard baby or difficult granny or grandfather.
Picking up the basket, Ronnie held out his hand and helped her to her feet. They walked slowly up to the top end of the pond, where the water was fringed by thick, close-growing woods; one of the few surviving remnants of the primeval forest that had once covered the whole of Wales. Entering them was like penetrating a dark tunnel that led to an altogether cooler, different, more mysterious world.
As a child Diana had equated these woods with the mystical, savage world of the ancient Druids. Wandering beneath the tall trees in the half-light that filtered down through the close-growing leaves and branches, she found it easy to believe in the old pagan gods she had heard about in school. Her teacher would have been horrified if she’d known that her class had been more enthralled with the stories of Druidic brutality and human sacrifice, than her educational tales of the Christian good that had superseded the old Celtic ways.
‘It never ceases to amaze me that flowers bloom in this gloom.’
Diana looked around, seeing the deep pink of campions and the purple glow of violets peeking out of the long grass that covered the roots of the centuries-old oaks. Buttercups spread across their path, their brilliant, yellow petals reflecting the few rays of sun that penetrated the dense mantle of greenery. The stream bubbled alongside them, it’s cool, clear water frothing over smooth brown pebbles that children had banked up in the shallows to create stepping stones.
‘I never used to appreciate nature,’ Ronnie continued as they penetrated deeper into the woods, ‘until I worked on the farm.’
‘I can’t imagine you on a farm.’
‘I’ll have you know I made an excellent farmer.’
‘I think it’s probably the clothes. I can’t picture you in dungarees and a straw hat.’
‘I can wear dungarees covered in cow muck, and chew straw with the best of labourers.’
‘To me you’ll always look at home in a suit, shirt and tie, leaning against the counter of the café, shouting orders to the cook or the waitress.’
‘That was the old me before I learned to plough a straight furrow, clean out pigs and milk cows.’ He stepped off the narrow path and pushed his way through a copse of may into a small clearing hemmed in by flowering brambles and beech trees. Stamping down a patch of nettles, he opened the basket and spread the blanket. ‘Your picnic spot, madam?’