The Color of Secrets (21 page)

It was hard, keeping quiet about a secret as big as that. After a week Louisa began to wonder if it would be all right to say something to her parents. Her mother was looking better now. Being outdoors every day with the shearing had done her good. She didn’t look nearly as ghostly next to the men as she had before. And after all, she reasoned, Aunt Rhiannon hadn’t made her promise
never
to say anything.

On Sunday, during chapel, she caught Elin Lewis giving her sly looks. She was going to have to do something before the end of the summer holidays. She could avoid Elin and Anwen for now, but not when school started. She needed to know more. Something to throw back at the Lewis girls if they started in on her again. She decided to talk to her aunt about it after lunch. Find out if it would be all right to ask her parents a few questions.

She glanced along the pew to where Aunt Rhiannon and Uncle Dai were sitting. Uncle Dai’s mouth was lolling open, like it always did when he was trying to say something. Everyone else was singing “All Things Bright and Beautiful,” but he just made strange grunting noises. No one looked at him because they were all used to it.

Louisa looked back to the pulpit, but as she did so, she caught a flash of movement out of the corner of her eye. She heard her aunt cry out as Uncle Dai’s arm flailed in the air and he collapsed, knocking her sideways. Her head hit one of the wooden pillars holding up the roof.

The organ played on as people in the pews around them scrambled about, the men trying to pull the unconscious Dai off his wife’s body. As the notes of the hymn petered out, Louisa caught a glimpse of her aunt’s legs, sticking out at strange angles from underneath Uncle Dai’s bulging stomach. She stared in shocked fascination as five men, including her dad, counted to three before heaving her uncle back onto the pew. Aunt Rhiannon lay on the hard stone floor like a crumpled rag doll. Her dress was up around her thighs and Louisa could see a suspender peeping out from beneath the fabric. She thought how embarrassed her aunt would be when she found out the whole congregation had seen her like that.

“Don’t look, love!” Eva was suddenly beside her daughter, covering her eyes and pulling her away. “Come on,” she said, pushing past the people who were crowding the aisle to see what had happened. “We’ve got to go and fetch the doctor!”

The next few days were a blur to Louisa. She spent most of her time sitting in a corner of the kitchen, pretending to read but more interested in watching the comings and goings of the adults. She hardly saw her mother, who was camped out in her aunt’s room and refused to leave her bedside for more than a few minutes at a time.

Her father was out looking after the animals and a procession of old ladies from chapel took turns feeding Uncle Dai, who slept in a chair in the parlor nearly all day, waking only to eat a meal. She heard the doctor tell her father that Uncle Dai had had another stroke, but only a mild one. No one would tell her what was wrong with Aunt Rhiannon, but she could tell from their faces that it was bad. On the fourth day she came down to breakfast to find her mother sitting at the kitchen table. She looked pale and tired and her hair was sticking up, as if she hadn’t brushed it for days.

“What’s the matter, Mam?” As Louisa ran to her, she saw a tear trickle down her mother’s face. She stopped in her tracks, as if by instinct. She had learned long since not to ask questions when Mam was like this.

Eva reached out a hand for her. Catching hold of Louisa’s arm, she hugged the child to her. “Don’t mind me.” She sniffed, blowing her nose. “I’m just sad because Aunt Rhiannon’s gone to heaven to look after David.”

For a long moment Louisa couldn’t open her mouth. Her throat went tight, as if she’d swallowed something that wouldn’t go down. “Why?” she whispered at last, her voice wobbling. “I wanted her to look after
me
!”

Louisa wasn’t allowed to go to the funeral. She sat making sandwiches with Mrs. Pugh, one of the elderly women who had been helping to look after Uncle Dai. Mrs. Pugh was very deaf and didn’t say much, but she seemed able to slice bread much faster than Louisa could butter it. Soon there was a mountain of bread in front of her so high that she couldn’t see out of the kitchen window.

As she reached for more butter, she heard a noise coming from the farmyard. It was a sort of meowing sound, which surprised her, because the sheepdogs rarely let any cat venture inside the gates.

Getting down from her seat, she dodged around the table to the window. Standing in the yard was a woman holding a baby. The baby was making the strange wailing sound, kicking its little legs out under the shawl wrapped around its middle. The woman was looking at the house and, as Louisa watched, a man appeared, leading a horse and cart.

Louisa tugged at Mrs. Pugh’s sleeve. “There’s someone coming to the door,” she said, as loud as she could without shouting. Mrs. Pugh frowned and bent down, cupping her hand to her ear. Before Louisa could repeat the words, there was a loud rap at the kitchen door. Mrs. Pugh appeared not to have heard it, so Louisa went, thinking the funeral must have finished already and this was the first of the guests for the wake.

“Is Mr. Melrose at home?” The man standing on the threshold was taller than anyone she had ever seen. He looked at Louisa in a strange way. The kind of way Elin Lewis had looked at her in chapel. It made her feel frightened.

“He’s not here,” she blurted out, as Mrs. Pugh came sidling over. “He’s gone to a funeral.”

“The funeral’s today?” The man’s expression changed to one of angry confusion. He turned to the woman and the baby and said something in a language that Louisa couldn’t understand. “You’d better let us come in and wait,” he said to Mrs. Pugh, pushing past without waiting for a reply. “I’m Trefor Jenkins. This is my farm.”

Louisa stared at him, her brow furrowed as she worked out who he was. “Are you Uncle Trefor from Italy?” She looked from the man to the woman and her baby.

“That’s right,” he said, unsmiling. “I’m not really your uncle, though. I’m your mam’s cousin.” His eyes narrowed as he looked at her with the same curious expression as when she had answered the door. She stood rooted to the spot as he looked her up and down. She felt hot with embarrassment as his eyes lingered on her chest, where two slight contours in her sweater marked the beginnings of breasts. “Yes,” he nodded slowly, a sneer curling up his mouth on one side, “and you must be the Yankee nigger’s bastard!”

Louisa felt the blood surge from her neck to her face. She didn’t have a clue what the words meant, but she could tell by the twisted smile on his face that it was something nasty.

A sudden clatter of hooves in the farmyard distracted him. “Oh, here she comes, your mam.” He arched his eyebrows and settled himself into the big farmhouse chair her dad always sat in. “You’d better go and pack your suitcase, miss!”

Chapter 22

A
UGUST 1954

It was a bad day to be on a train. Louisa was hot and thirsty and tired of playing I-spy with Eddie. Eva was staring out of the window. She hadn’t joined in their game and Louisa wondered if she’d noticed any of the animals, fields, or rivers they were leaving behind.

The train slowed as they pulled into yet another station. “Is this it?” Louisa gasped, jumping up when she saw the sign for Wellington out of the window.

“No, love, not yet. It just begins with the same letter.” Eddie patted her shoulder. “Sit down. It won’t be long now. Only another couple of stops.”

After a few more miles the fields began to give way to squat brick factories with towering soot-blackened chimneys. The stately River Severn with its swans and weeping willows was replaced by mean little canals, dead straight and murky yellow. Smoke hung in the afternoon sky like a gray curtain drawn across the sun.

“Where have the sheep gone?” Louisa demanded, her nose pressed to the window. “And why is everything so dirty?”

Eva bit her lip and fiddled with her bag.

Louisa turned to Eddie. “Why is it, Dad? Why are those big houses so dirty?”

Eddie laughed. “They’re not houses, sweetheart, they’re factories. Places where people make things.”

“But why is everything so black?”

“Ah, well.” He chuckled. “This is the Black Country! It’s where me and your mother were born.”

“The
Black
Country?” Louisa wrinkled her nose and looked at Eva to see if her father was joking. But Eva had closed her eyes and was leaning back against the shabby upholstery.

“That’s what they call it, cross my heart.” Eddie smiled. “But it’s not as bad as it sounds. You’ll soon get to like it.”

“But there’s no grass! And look at those horrible yellow rivers!”

“They’re called canals,” Eddie said, “and yes, they do look a bit nasty—but there are loads of good things in Wolverhampton. Like the cinema: there’s the Odeon, the Savoy, the Gaumont—I can’t wait to take you, you’ll love it!”

Louisa frowned at him, unconvinced.

“And as soon as I get my first week’s wages, I’ll take you and your mother into town to buy some new clothes,” he went on. “You won’t believe it when you see the shops, Lou. I’ll take you to Beatties. They’ve got three floors with everything you can imagine. Dresses, hats, shoes, toys—you name it. We’ll have a whale of a time, won’t we, Eva?”

Louisa looked at her mother. Her eyes were still closed, but she wasn’t asleep. Her fingers were moving, pulling at a bit of loose thread on the strap of her bag.

Louisa had never ridden in a car in her life; during the taxi ride from the station she felt like Cinderella on her way to the ball. She perched on the wide leather seat, bewildered by the streets full of shops and the crowds of people. She had never seen so many people. And they looked so strange. So different from the people she was used to. Their clothes, their hair, the brightly painted lips of the women—as far as Louisa was concerned, they might have come from a different planet.

“Where are we going?” she asked, as they left the town center behind and swung into a wide road with tall terraced houses along one side and the huge glass edifice of the Midland Counties Dairy on the other. “Are we going back to your old house, Mam?”

The expression on Eva’s face told Louisa she’d said something wrong. Her mother looked as if she was about to say something, but Eddie patted her hand and answered instead.

“No—we’re going to a new house!” he beamed at Louisa, who was looking anxiously at her mother. “It’s just round the corner from your new school and only ten minutes’ walk from the place I’m going to work, so we’ll both be able to come home for lunch: that’ll be nice, won’t it?”

“So I won’t have to take an egg to school?”

“No. And you won’t have to get up so early either.”

Louisa smiled at the prospect of not having to trudge for miles through muddy fields on dark winter mornings to get to the school at Devil’s Bridge.

“And there’ll be other children living in the street,” Eddie went on. “Someone for you to play with without having to walk miles to find them.”

The taxi stopped on Sycamore Street—a long, narrow canyon of two-up, two-down terraces. If sycamores had ever graced its gray pavements, there was no evidence of them now. Number thirty-six was decidedly shabbier than its neighbors. The front door and the window overlooking the street were a dull brown, with the odd fleck of maroon showing through where the paint had begun to flake and peel.

“It’s not as big as the farmhouse, is it?” Louisa said as they trooped into the narrow hall. “Where’s the kitchen?”

“In here.” Eddie led her into an L-shaped room at the back of the house.

“Where’s the table?” Louisa’s eyes ranged over the grease-
spattered walls.

“There isn’t space for one in this part of the house,” he replied, “but we can eat through here.” He took her into the front room, where a narrow table was pushed up against a wall. “Look,” he said, “you can pull it out to make it bigger.”

Louisa looked at its spindly legs and the round white burn marks on its surface. “Can we see my room now?” she said, turning on her heel and darting up the steep stairs.

Eddie found her staring through a narrow sash window at the high brick wall at the end of the yard.

“Do I
have
to have this one?” she asked. “I can’t see anything. I used to be able to see the sheep and the rabbits
. . .
” All she could see was her own reflection in the glass. A sulky face with two stupid, sticking-out pigtails. With a grunt she pulled out the ribbons and slides, raking her hair into a fluffy halo.

“Don’t worry,” Eddie said, “your mother’s going to fix up some nice curtains and a bit of net, and then you won’t be able to see that horrible old wall. Here,” he dug his hand into his pocket and pulled out a few pennies. “There’s a shop at the end of the street. You go and get yourself some sweets while we sort out the bags.”

Louisa had never chosen sweets for herself before. Her aunt would always bring some back from her monthly trips to Aberystwyth, but as Louisa was not allowed to go with her, she usually ended up with a bag of pear drops, which were Rhiannon’s favorite, or a licorice bootlace if money was tight.

As she walked along the street with the coins clasped in her sweaty little hand, she tried to work out how many pear drops or bootlaces she was likely to be able to afford.

The shop seemed dark after the brightness outside. It smelled funny too: like the moldy potatoes she’d once unearthed at the back of the farmhouse larder. As her eyes got used to the gloom, something caught her eye. A whole shelf of chocolate bars. She turned her head to one side to read the wrappers: Cadbury Dairy Milk, Toffee Crisp, Fry’s Chocolate Cream. The very name of the last one made her mouth water. As she reached out to pick it from the display, she heard a voice behind her.

“Sorry. We don’t serve blacks.”

She turned her head, curious to see what was going on, expecting to see a person as dirty as the factories she had seen from the train. But there was no one there. She walked up to the counter and put her money down next to the bar of chocolate.

“You deaf?” A woman with stringy hair and a tight, low-cut top appeared from behind the till. She pushed the coins back at Louisa. “We don’t serve niggers,” she hissed.

Louisa stared at her. That word again. The same one Uncle Trefor had used. So that’s what it meant.

“I am
not
black!” She held the woman’s gaze, although she could feel the sting of tears coming. “I wash my hands and face every day—and I have a bath every Sunday!”

“You can wash yourself till kingdom come,” the woman sneered, “but you won’t get nothing in this shop!”

Angry and bewildered, Louisa opened her mouth, then clamped it shut. Instead of arguing, she snatched the chocolate bar and ran out of the shop, her money left behind on the counter. Her feet pounded on the pavement as she hurtled along the street. Seeing a group of women coming toward her, she dived into an alley. She found herself running along the backs of houses, the air musty with the smell of pigeons, running and running until she left the houses behind and found herself scrambling onto the weed-covered wilderness of a bomb site.

Scuffing her sandals on a half-buried kitchen sink, she stumbled into an old air-raid shelter. She crouched there, panting for breath in its crumbling mouth, watching white fluff drift from the tatty heads of rosebay willow herb. The sun beat down on the concrete walls of the shelter and the rank smell of other kids’ wee filled her nostrils as she pulled the wrapper off the chocolate and bit off a big chunk. Her mouth was so dry, it stuck to her tongue. As she tried to chew, the melting white cream ran down the back of her throat, its sticky sweetness making her retch. She spat it out and thrust the bar back into her pocket in disgust.

“Stupid sweets!” she hissed. “Stupid shop!” Turning her head, she shouted into the darkness of the shelter: “I AM NOT BLACK!”

“Black
. . .
black
. . .
black
. . .
black
. . .
”
Her voice echoed like a gang of angry ghosts.

“I CAN’T BE A YANKEE NIGGER’S BASTARD!” she screeched, “BECAUSE MY REAL DAD WAS A SOLDIER! AN AMERICAN!”

“Can!
. . .
Can!
. . .
Can!
. . .
Can!”
The spooks of the shelter teased back.

She ran back up the steps, grabbed a handful of stones, and hurled them at the withered petals of the nearest weeds. Clouds of fluffy seed cases flew into the air, dancing in the sunlight.
Like fairies
, she thought, glaring at them. So delicate. So
white
.

She found a stone with a sharp edge and started scraping it on the shelter wall.

“
Rydwi ddim yn ddu!
I am not black!”

She thought the Welsh version looked much more impressive, so she rubbed the English words out, replacing them with her initials and the date. Then she retraced her steps, stamping hard on all the seed cases that drifted across her path.

It was getting dark by the time she found her way back home. She pushed past Eddie when he opened the door, running toward the kitchen as he called after her.

“Lou! Where on earth have you been?” He chased her down the hall. “Your mother’s out looking for you!”

She turned on the single tap over the sink, sending water cascading to the floor as she splashed it onto her face.

“Lou? What’s the matter?”

She grabbed the hard new bar of soap, rubbing it furiously until suds oozed out between her fingers. “She said I was dirty!” she muttered, a beard of lather slithering down to her chin as she attacked her face.

“What?” Eddie pried the soap from her hands. “Who said that?”

“The woman in the shop!” she yelled. “She said I couldn’t buy any chocolate because I was black!”

“She
what
?” Eddie’s hands were around her waist, hoisting her onto the draining board.