The Color of Secrets (20 page)

Chapter 21

J
ULY 1954

Louisa was watching her mother. Looking at her long, pale fingers arranging wild roses in a vase. It was a crystal vase. Aunt Rhiannon’s best. Louisa studied her mother’s face as she carried the flowers to the mantelpiece. It reminded her of a picture in the
Golden Treasury of Children’s Literature
. The one about the Little Mermaid walking for the first time. She remembered the words printed beneath it: “‘but each step you take,’ the Sea Witch said, ‘will be like walking on knives.’” Her mother set the vase down next to the photograph of David.

Louisa followed Eva, climbing onto the worn leather arm of the fireside chair to get a better look at what she was doing. The back of her mother’s short-cropped head was facing her, but her eyes were reflected in the framed glass of the photo. Louisa saw they were full of tears. Her mother cried often, but shearing time was the worst. And she knew why. That was when “it” happened. The thing she wasn’t allowed to talk about.

She knew it had something to do with ice cream because she’d overheard the shearers talking. Heard them whispering David’s name. But when she’d asked them what they were talking about, they’d turned away. She’d thought this very odd because the men were usually so friendly. They’d told her she had dancer’s legs and hair as soft as candy floss. “Where did you get that hair?” they’d say. “Can we have a bit?” And she would laugh and pat their bald patches. But long afterward their words would echo in her head. Where did her hair come from? Mam’s was not like it, nor Dad’s.

“Mam,” she said slowly, testing the ground. “Why did David have white hair?” She paused, waiting for a reaction, but none came. “Is it because Dad’s hair’s white?”

Eva turned, a handkerchief held up to her face. “No, silly!” She moved the hanky away, revealing a watery smile. “David didn’t have white hair. It was blond. It only looks white because the photo’s black and white.”

“Oh,” Louisa frowned. “What’s blond?”

“It’s sort of a golden-yellow color.” Eva sniffed and wiped her nose again, casting about the room for something to compare it to. “It’s like
. . .
” She glanced at the bookshelf in the corner of the room. “Like Rapunzel in your storybook. Remember the picture where she lets her hair out of the window for the prince to climb up?”

Louisa nodded.

“Well, her hair’s blond.” Eva’s eyes filled up again as she stroked Louisa’s brown curls.

“But why did David have blond hair?” A furrow appeared between the fine, feathered crescents of Louisa’s eyebrows. “Your hair’s auburn, isn’t it?”

“Yes, what of it?”

“Well, no one in our family’s got blond hair, have they? Dad’s got white hair, but you said it used to be brown, like mine, so—”

“Yes, well, everybody’s different,” Eva said quickly, turning back toward the kitchen. “Now will you go and call Dad and the men for me? Tell them lunch is nearly ready.”

Later that week, when the shearing was in full swing and Eva was busy helping the men, Louisa was bored. Aunt Rhiannon and Uncle Dai had both dozed off in their armchairs, so she put on her boots and walked the two miles to the nearest farm. She should have worn her hat. Her mother said she should always wear it in the sun. But she didn’t like it because it made her head feel itchy.

The Lewis girls were not her best friends, but it was too hot to walk all the way to the village. Anwen, who was nine, and her teenage sister, Elin, were just as bored as she was. The three girls wandered up the hill behind the farmhouse and lay on their stomachs in the warm grass, making daisy chains; Elin studiously ignored the younger girls as they jabbered away in Welsh.

“Who’s got the brownest arms?” Anwen piped up, leaning across so that her elbow touched Louisa’s.

Louisa peered at Anwen’s plump, tanned skin with its sprinkling of tiny dark hairs before glancing back at her own skinny arm.

“It’s Lou: no contest!” Elin’s daisy chain was already finished and adorning her head like a coronet. She gave her sister a haughty look.

“No it’s not!” Anwen complained. “We’re nearly the same, aren’t we, Lou?”

“Nearly,” Louisa nodded, casting a cautious glance at Elin. “Compare eyes, though: yours are definitely browner than mine.” The two girls peered into each other’s eyes. “Yours are nearly black!”

“And yours are sort of green-brown, aren’t they?” Anwen replied, mollified by this unchallenged victory.

“It’s called hazel, stupid,” Elin said.

“Wish mine were hazel,” Anwen muttered. “Everyone in our family’s got dark-brown eyes. It’s really boring. What color are your mam and dad’s?”

Louisa screwed up her nose as she pictured their faces. “My mam’s are sort of gray, I think, and my dad’s are dark brown like yours.”

“So who do you take after, then?” Anwen propped up her chin with one hand, looking at Louisa curiously.

“She doesn’t take after either of them, stupid,” Elin hissed, digging her sister in the ribs.

“Oh, yes, I forgot,” Anwen said. “I thought you got the brown bit from your dad, but you couldn’t have, could you?”

Louisa looked from Anwen to Elin and back again. “What do you mean?”

“Anwen!” Elin kicked her sister on the shin.

“Ow! What was that for?” Anwen glared at her sister, who mouthed something Louisa couldn’t make out.

“What did you mean when you said I couldn’t have got it from my dad?” she repeated. Anwen looked away, shamefaced.

Elin tutted under her breath. “We’re not supposed to say anything,” she said, “but Big Mouth went and put her foot in it, didn’t she? Come on, An: you’ve got to tell her now.”

Anwen stared at the grass. “He’s not your real dad,” she mumbled.

“What did you say?” Louisa jumped to her feet, seizing Anwen’s shoulders so that her head jerked up. “Tell me what you just said!”

“Your real dad’s an American,” Anwen said, blushing scarlet as the words came out. “Your aunt Rhiannon told our mam it was a secret.”

Louisa dropped the daisy chain, her boots crushing the petals as she pelted down the track. She didn’t stop running until she was nearly home, slowing her pace only to dodge out of sight of one of the shearers, who was chasing a stray sheep across the yard. She dived into the kitchen and hid under the table, curling herself into a tight ball. Great sobs shook her little body, the tears making round, dark patches on the pale-blue fabric of her skirt.

“Louisa? Is that you?” Aunt Rhiannon was suddenly peering at her, the embroidered tablecloth hanging around her ears like a veil. “Whatever’s the matter,
cariad
?” She pulled a handkerchief from the pocket of her apron. “I thought it was one of the dogs whimpering about under there!”

“Nothing,” Louisa mumbled, burying her head and clasping her hands tightly around her knees.

“Well, it doesn’t look like nothing!” With a grunt of effort Rhiannon lowered herself to her knees, shuffling slowly and painfully under the table until she was alongside Louisa. “Come on,” she said, gently pulling the child’s hands apart and lifting her chin to dab her nose and eyes. “What’s upset you so much that you have to hide yourself away under here?”

Louisa’s eyes brimmed with tears. Her aunt was her friend, her ally. The one she went to when her mother was too sad to talk. But Anwen had said it was Aunt Rhiannon who had told this great big lie. “Why did you tell them he’s not my dad?” she blurted out. “You said my real dad’s an American—but it’s not true, is it?”

Rhiannon’s face crumpled. “Who told you?” she whispered.

“Anwen and Elin Lewis,” Louisa sniffed, looking at her aunt with growing alarm. “They’re telling lies, aren’t they?”

“Listen
, bach
,” her aunt said, “will you be a brave girl for me? Because I know you
are
a brave girl.”

Louisa nodded, mesmerized now by the shock of what her aunt was saying.

“Your mam and dad were going to tell you when you were a bit older.” Rhiannon shifted herself into a more comfortable position, bracing herself on her elbows. “Anwen and Elin weren’t telling lies. Your real dad
was
an American. A soldier, he was.” She glanced up at the rough underside of the table, pressing her lips into a thin line. “A very brave soldier,” she said, nodding her head, “who got killed in the war like Huw Morgan’s dad.”

There was a moment of complete silence as Rhiannon and Louisa looked at each other.

“Was he David’s dad as well?”

“No,
bach
.”

Louisa frowned as her aunt’s eyes welled up. “I don’t understand,” she said. “David was my brother, wasn’t he? So how can we have different dads?” She shuffled sideways toward the pointed edge of the tablecloth. “I’m going to go and ask them,” she muttered.

“No!” Her aunt grasped her arm. “Please, Louisa! Not today, of all days!”

“Why not?”

“You know what today is, don’t you?” Her aunt looked at her with pleading eyes. Louisa nodded. She knew that today was the anniversary of when “it” happened, and that “it” was the reason she no longer had a brother. Why would nobody tell her what “it” was?

“Promise me you won’t say anything to your mam and dad about what the Lewis girls said?” Rhiannon’s grip on her arm was beginning to hurt. “It would upset them so much
. . .
”

She didn’t need to say any more. Louisa knew better than to say anything that might set her mother off. “All right,” she said, wriggling out of her aunt’s grasp, “I promise. But you’ve got to promise me something in return.”

“What?”

“I want to know what happened to David.” Louisa’s eyes narrowed. “No one ever tells me anything and I’m not a baby!”

Rhiannon looked at Louisa with such a strange face that she wasn’t sure if she was about to shout at her or burst into tears. “All right, all right,” her aunt sighed, her face sliding back into its normal, calm expression. “Give me a hand getting out from here, and we’ll have a nice cup of tea and some cake, and I’ll tell you all about it, if that’s what you really want.”

Louisa’s cake lay half-eaten on her plate as she sat, stunned, listening to her aunt’s story.

“It was the first summer after the war ended,” Rhiannon said. “You’d just turned two and your mam took the pair of you to Aberystwyth for the day to meet a friend of hers from Wolverhampton who was having a trip to the seaside. David had had the croup, and she thought the sea air would do him good.” She paused to dab her eyes with the same lace-trimmed handkerchief she had offered to Louisa. “It was the ice cream, they said in the end. Hundreds of people got it. It was this one man. Selling it from a cart on the prom, he was. Don’t know where he came from. Foreign, probably. Not from round here, anyway. And he’d got it. Hadn’t washed his hands properly, the dirty beggar.” She paused, shutting her eyes tight to keep in the tears. “They sent David to the isolation hospital at Tan-y-Bwlch. Wouldn’t let your mam or dad stay with him, though they begged to.”

“Why didn’t I catch it?”

“They didn’t give you any ice cream. Your mam said you were asleep when they bought it.”

“And did everyone die who caught it?”

“Not everyone. Only a handful in the end.” Rhiannon gazed out of the window at a shorn sheep that was being chased out of the yard. “It’s a funny disease, typhoid. Only seems to catch the weak ones. Maybe if David hadn’t had the croup
. . .
” She blew her nose loudly.

“I don’t remember it.” Louisa frowned. “I don’t remember the sea, or Mam’s friend, or anything.”

“Well, you wouldn’t.” Rhiannon sniffed. “You were too young. And your mam and dad haven’t been near the place since. Wouldn’t go there for love nor money.”

“Wouldn’t go where, Mrs. J.?” The grinning face of one of the shearers appeared around the kitchen door. “Can I borrow this young lady for a minute or two?” he asked, without waiting for a reply. “We need an extra pair of hands on the gates.”

“Off you go,” Rhiannon said, putting out a skinny hand to stroke Louisa’s cheek. “And remember what you promised!”