Hywel Griffiths was arrested at the end of March. It was an amicable affair, with Farmer Booker and the local constable escorting him to the police station to charge him, and at the same time discussing the best way to cook pheasant.
An appearance at court and a fine was hardly surprising and was not worth more than a brief few lines in the local paper alongside those habitual drunks that received a regular mention. For Hywel it was a turning point. He had no intention of giving up taking the occasional pheasant or rabbit for the pot, but the fines made it an expensive food and Farmer Booker was becoming more sophisticated and more determined in his campaign to stop poachers making a living from his land.
“Janet? Are you there?” he called when he went into the cottage, looking far from his usual happy self. A scowl creased his face and his dark eyes glowered with something akin to fury. He was not pleased with the day’s happenings so far. His rare lack of humour was due in part to his uncomfortable attire.
A court appearance necessitated looking respectable, and today Hywel had abandoned his misshapen denim trousers, which even after suffering the indignity of being scrubbed and hung out to dry still carried the imprint of his legs, and had dressed “tidy”. He wore a pair of pin-striped trousers, a long overcoat that had belonged to his father, and a trilby hat, that had seen better days, which he wore tilted rakishly across one eye. He didn’t possess any shoes but his boots had been scrubbed clean of mud and polished in the army manner with spit and polish and a lot of elbow grease until the toe caps shone like a calm sea in sunlight.
He was not a tall man like his sons, but he was strongly built and now, with shoulders squeezed into the coat and threatening to pop the seams in protest at the restraint, he looked dangerous.
“Hywel? What on earth has happened?” Janet asked as she hurried forward to relieve him of his coat, tugging to free it from the wide and well-padded shoulders of her irate husband. “Come on, I’ll get you a drink of cider, calm you down.”
“I don’t want to calm down. I want to stay angry,” he said, kicking off the heavy boots and feeling under the table with his feet for his slippers. “D’you know, them rabbits, them measly rabbits, cost me more than if I’d bought them legal, in the shop? Miserable sod, old Booker. I think he’s in cohorts with that damned magistrate. That fine is the last I’m paying.”
“What will you do?” she asked as she handed him a glass of foaming cider from the barrel in the kitchen. “Don’t tell me, you’re going to find a job!”
“Yes I am. And as well as chickens I’m going to keep geese, ducks and goats.”
“How will that prevent fines?”
“Every time I’m up there accused of stealing a wild rabbit from old Booker, the magistrate points out that I must be guilty as I have no other means of support. He natters on about not paying taxes and being a drain on the purses of decent people and slaps the biggest fine he can on me. I’m going to show that I’m gainfully employed and with eggs and milk, cheese and meat to sell, I might even pay tax! I’ll prove that I’ve no need to pinch his miserable rabbits and pheasants. I’ll plead not guilty.” His face lit up and he added, “Perhaps I’ll be able to summon Booker for defamation of character!”
“I don’t think that would work, Hywel,” Janet laughed. “They’d only have to look at your record.” With a sigh she added, “Yours and Basil’s and Frank’s and Ernie’s.”
“Perhaps not, but I can threaten him though.”
“You’ll have him shaking in his shoes, love!”
“You’re laughing at me.”
“Guilty!”
Hywel began searching the house and garden for things to sell to make the money to buy a few goats. He had been given the idea after talking to a woman at the court. She had a child who couldn’t tolerate cow’s milk and had to travel a long distance each day to buy milk from a goat-keeper in a village almost five miles away. The idea instantly appealed. He took her name and promised to get in touch if he heard of a goat-keeper nearer. He had reasoned that there must be others who would like the milk and cheese, beside one little boy. Although he wasn’t sure he’d try it himself.
“Eat anything, they will,” he said enthusiastically and incorrectly, to Janet. “We’ll soon persuade locals to bring their leftover food for them. They did it for pigs during the war didn’t they? Well, they can do it now for my little war against the magistrates and farmer John Booker!” It all sounded so simple, Janet thought with a sigh.
By the end of the following day, Hywel had filled the van with implements no longer needed, or which they could do without for a while, and set off to sell them. His son Basil was with him. There was no one like Basil for finding what was wanted or knowing of a place where that same something was needed. Their destination was an estate of prefabs where every tenant was determined to outdo their neighbours by setting out the garden and filling it with flowers ready for the summer display.
Two old lawn mowers that Frank had persuaded to work, three rainwater butts, one complete with a tap that wouldn’t turn but looked good, an eclectic assortment of tools, some with the stamp of the local council only partly erased, plus several buckets containing shrubs, all rattled behind them as they set off to persuade someone they had just what he needed. They also had a dozen bottles of homemade wine. Hywel was loath to part with these but money was needed fast before his enthusiasm waned or Janet thought of more reasons for not increasing their animal population.
Watching Hywel starting to clear the ground to build housing for the goats was a diversion, but Janet’s mind was rarely free of worry about her daughter. Caroline continued to bring the little boy each morning and either she or Barry would collect him each afternoon, and on the surface everything looked fine. But Janet looked into Caroline’s eyes and saw the truth. Her lovely daughter was deeply unhappy.
Barry had never undressed in front of his wife, the unease she felt was contagious, and made him in some inexplicable way ashamed of his body. Did Caroline look at him, taller and a lot heavier than his dead brother and with more than a hint of fat around his middle, and grieve more desperately for Joseph who had been smaller, and darker and altogether more attractive? Joseph had been so handsome, and a lot more fun than the sober-sides he, Barry, had always been.
As the weeks passed, his confidence in himself, as well as the state of the marriage, slipped lower and lower. Caroline found him gross, she hadn’t said so, but he too looked into her eyes and saw the truth. He was big and ugly and boring, compared with his trim, light-hearted brother. How could he have believed he could compete with Joseph even now, more than two years after his death?
Yet he had to make something out of the mess. He couldn’t face the derision both in jest and in malicious gossip that would result in Caroline leaving him and returning to her parents. The humiliation would kill him. He would have to leave the town and start again somewhere else, and even then he would be trailing his empty marriage and pending divorce behind him. That capricious offer of help he had made when Caroline had been so desperately in need of a friend was ruining his life.
In all these considerations he hardly thought that the problem was as great for Caroline.
“Caroline, I haven’t any appointments this afternoon,” he said one morning as his sad wife was getting Joseph ready to go to her mother’s. “As it’s Wednesday, your half-day, I thought we could take Joseph to the park or to the beach. Shall I collect him and meet you outside the shop at one? I’ll bring a picnic, he’d like that.”
“Oh, Barry, I’m sorry, I’ve arranged to go somewhere with Mam.” She looked at him, her dark eyes trying to assess whether he was disappointed or pleased. “Why didn’t you tell me sooner? She’s borrowed the van and made arrangements for food and everything.” She frowned. “But perhaps I can ask her to change it until next week. I’ll talk to her when I take Joseph, shall I?”
“No, you go with your Mam. I should spend the time finishing off some prints anyway. I’ve got some new mounts I want to experiment with too. Go, love, we’ll try again in a week or two, when it’s warmer.” In a small corner of his mind he admitted to relief that he didn’t have to spend hours pretending to be a happily married man and a proud father. Although his feelings for Joseph were no pretence. He loved the little boy, who warmed him with his undemanding love.
Caroline wondered whether to tell him about her mother’s search for her missing sister or whether that would be breaking her mother’s confidence, although there was no conceivable reason for secrecy. But he didn’t ask where they were going. She sighed. He didn’t ask because he wasn’t sufficiently interested.
They both felt the marriage slip another notch.
Although it was early April and the weather was far from warm, Janet had prepared a salad for Hywel and the boys’ midday meal.
“They’ll grumble for sure but we won’t be there to hear them,” she chuckled as she and Caroline climbed into the van.
“I’m hungry, Nanna,” Joseph said pleadingly and stuck a thumb into his mouth.
“Eat your thumb and you get no picnic,” Janet said and the thumb was swiftly removed.
They stopped only a mile or two outside the town, at a place where they could park on the cliff and look down over the sea. Below them was a sandy beach with jagged rocks at each end spreading curved, protective arms. On the brown and rusty-red surfaces, greenery struggled bravely to survive.
The hardy samphire that smelled a little like lavender and was once used as a vegetable, made attractive mounds that softened the harsh angles of the rocks. Wild spinach and thrift clung defiantly, spreading their roots down through cracks and finding moisture enough to survive. Under their feet, thyme crept leisurely and imperceptibly along the ground, colonising any space and offering a delicious scent to those who touched its leaves as they passed by.
The sky was blue but the wind was cold, whipping the turquoise and jade coloured water into tips that Joseph told them looked like a birthday cake. It made Janet shiver at the thought of paddling in it, as some foolhardy youngsters were doing. The shrieks of their laughter soared up to reach them on their high vantage point.
“Coward that I am, I think we’ll eat our picnic in the car,” she said, catching hold of Joseph’s hand and hurrying him along.
“Mam, I want to come back home,” Caroline whispered when they had eaten their fill and Joseph had dropped off to sleep in her arms.
“And welcome you’d be. Me and your dad would love to have you back, but not yet. It wouldn’t be right to give up on your marriage before you’ve given it a real try.”
“It’ll never come right. I thought I loved him enough but, well, the truth is, I look at him and all I see is a man who isn’t Joseph.”
“Joseph is gone, love. There’s no future for you or for little Joseph if you insist on looking over your shoulder to what was once there. Playing fanciful games, imagining that somehow everything will change, and Joseph will walk back into your life and laugh and tell you it was all one of his practical jokes, is wrong and very foolish. You have to accept that it’s over. You have to look forward, love.”
“It’s hard. On Barry as well as me. He tries to please me but he isn’t sure either. I can sense that, and his hesitation adds to my own and we’re drifting further and further apart. Today he said he’d take an afternoon off and we’d go for a picnic but I couldn’t face it.”
“What couldn’t you face? A pleasant afternoon out with Barry? You and Barry have always got on well.”
“We still would if we hadn’t been stupid enough to try and make this parody of a marriage into a reality.”
“Come on, let’s go and indulge ourselves in a real wallow in the past, and try and find my sister.” Janet smiled as she stepped outside and with the starting handle, cranked the engine into reluctant life. Then she laughed. “Hark at me telling you not to look back and at the same time talking about finding a sister I lost sixty years ago!”
Rhiannon closed the shop at one o’clock and at two-thirty was back there, keeping the blinds down while she tackled some cleaning. As usual, a few customers knocked on the door and pleaded for her to serve them with a forgotten card or a few sweets for the pictures. One of these was the paper-boy, Gwyn Bevan. He held out a shilling piece and asked for a Lovell’s nougat wafer and some Poor Ben’s aniseed gums.
Trying not to sound suspicious, Rhiannon asked him where he’d got the money from.
“My paper round, Miss. Dad lets me keep it and I’m saving for a bike, but Dad’s taking me to the pictures today and I’m buying the sweets.”
“That’s smashing, Gwyn. I hope you enjoy it. Dad not working yet?”
“Yes, he’s got a job, Miss. Works in a garage he does, and he’s learning to drive so he can deliver cars back after repairs.”
“Windsor’s was it?” she asked.
“Yes, Miss. He said he’d train our dad to be a top mechanic in no time.”
So, Rhiannon smiled to herself, Mr Windsor had kept his promise. “There’s pleased I am. Well done you for keeping the paper round all winter. Easier in the summer, eh?”
“I did it for Gran, but now I’m doing it for me,” he grinned. “It’ll be great to have a bike.”
Gwyn Bevan, who was a small thirteen-year-old, had been living in Sophie Street, opposite the Lewises, since he was a tiny baby; sharing the shabby, bomb-damaged house, after his mother had left him and his father in the care of Maggie Wilpin, his mother’s grandmother.
Maggie Wilpin had cared for the boy as well as she could during the several times his father, Charlie, had been in prison. She had died soon after Charlie had been released in January, and now he and his son seemed to be trying very hard to make a life for themselves. Charlie’s most recent imprisonment had been for breaking into and stealing from Temptations Sweet Shop and Rhiannon felt guilty at being the cause of his arrest.
Another knock at the door and Rhiannon sighed. “I don’t know why I bother to come in and do some work, there’s never a minute passes without an interruption.”
“Sorry, Miss.”
“Oh, it’s all right, I don’t really mind. Enjoy the pictures.”
The newcomer was Gertie Thomas who kept the shop on the opposite corner, selling groceries and vegetables.
“Sorry to my heart to bother you, lovely girl, but seeing you’re serving Gwyn, can I have a card for our Florrie? Sick real bad she is, and her with a birthday tomorrow and me forgetting to send.”
Rhiannon served Gertie with a card then locked up and went home. Today was not the day to get things done, she might as well go for a walk. Perhaps she’d go and see Eleri and ask Basil to look out for a good secondhand bike for young Gwyn.
Janet drove up to the cottage in the middle of the row on the village street. Number twelve, the letter had said. A Mrs Grant. She left Caroline and Joseph in the van and knocked on the door. Superstitiously, she crossed her fingers and hoped the old lady’s memory was clearer than her windows.
It was some time before the door opened to reveal a small, white-haired lady wearing what looked like a dozen layers of clothing ending with a wrap-over apron.
“I’m sorry to bother you,” Janet began, stooping to speak to the sharp-faced occupier. “I wondered whether you can help me. I’m looking for my sister.”
“Nobody lives here except me and my son!” the woman’s voice was sharp and unfriendly.
“She used to work for you, many years ago and I expect you’ve forgotten all about her,” Janet persevered.
“I never forget a thing.”
“Oh, good. Then would you have an idea where I might find Marion Williams.”
“Marion who?”
“Marion Williams. She lived at Hayes Brook Farm, but I believe she worked for you many years ago.”
The frown on the old woman’s face deepened as she thought back. “Marion? Would that be a little bit of a thing, scrawny and with eyes like a scared rabbit? She was here when the children were small but she’s gone this long time. Lived in Spring Cottage after she left me, but I haven’t seen her for years.”
“You really remember her? It must be over fifty years,” Janet marvelled.
“Not such an achievement, she was the only servant I ever had. I was ill, see, after the second child and I couldn’t do the housework. But I didn’t think her name was Williams mind. Jolly? Colly? Something more like that. It’s no use, I can’t remember. Perhaps it was Williams? No, I don’t think so – still, I suppose at eighty-two I’m entitled to get something wrong.”
“You don’t know where she might be now, I suppose?”
“You suppose right. Never seen nor heard of her in years, but you could try Spring Cottage.”
After thanking her for her help, Janet returned to the van. “I forgot to ask directions. I wonder where the post office is?” she said to Caroline. “We have to find Spring Cottage.”
To their dismay Wednesday was half-day closing in that village as well as in Pendragon Island. A knock at a door resulted in another elderly lady asking how she could help. On asking for Spring Cottage, they were directed through the village, up a narrow lane and into a muddy turn-off about a mile further on.
They reached the muddy lane without mishap but it was obvious that the van would not be able to cope with the thick mud and deep, water-filled craters of the dark, tunnel-like track.
“What can we do?” Caroline asked. “We’d need a tractor to get up there.”
“I’ve got wellingtons in the back. You stay here and I’ll go and see how far the worst of it is. If someone lives up there it has to be navigable, surely.”
“No, Mam, we’ll go together. Come on, I’ll wear Dad’s boots and we can carry Joseph between us.”
They set off, laughing like children as their feet squelched in and out of the mud and once or twice they screamed as their feet slipped and they were in danger of landing full length in the thick, glutinous mess.
It wasn’t very far but the lane twisted and turned so each time it straightened out they still looked to be a long way from the end. Branches met overhead and hid the spring sunshine. Beside them they could hear the chuckling of a small stream, hidden from sight by a rich variety of wild flowers including Jack-by-the-hedge and Herb Robert with its red stems and its distinctive scent, and garlic and the first leaves of hedge parsley and a dozen others, so it smelled fresh and clean in spite of the thick mud oozing around their boots.
Once they were out through the last of the gloom, there were fields ahead of them and beyond, a headland rising up. In the distance the wheeling gulls and the chug-chug-chug of a ship’s engine told them that the sea was just out of sight.
Forgetting the search for a moment, they plodded on and up until the sea was spread before them, sparkling in the afternoon sun with the sails of a few boats gliding across making use of the slight breeze to tack lazily home.
“Wales is a land filled with delights,” Janet announced, “with a surprise around every corner.”
There was no time to seek a way down to the beach, which was rocky from what they could see, but they promised themselves they would come again, prepared with food and the accoutrements of a day out, and explore.
As they turned back to the tunnelled path Janet frowned. “We haven’t seen a cottage, have we? We’d better look around a bit before we go back to the van. It has to be here somewhere.”
The overgrown path seemed to lead nowhere else but the way they had come, but they still went left and right of it in the hope of finding the route to Spring Cottage.
Hidden by the undergrowth of many years, they discovered rusted machinery and household implements. A wheelbarrow, bed springs, numerous buckets and a kettle colonised by a community of woodlice. Joseph shouted in delight when he picked up a toy car, which he insisted on taking him with him “for Barry to mend”.
The sound of water led them to a stand of trees, bent over and distorted over the years of their growth by the gales from the sea. There, beside the spring that had obviously given it its name, was a ruined house. The name, Spring Cottage, was still visible on the drunken door, but it was a ruin, its roof partly open to the skies.
They stopped for a drink of the clear, ice-cold water and returned to the van. “The trail ends here,” Janet said briskly. “Ah well, it was worth a try.”
“Sorry, Mam. It must be a disappointment.”
“Not really. I didn’t expect anything more than a dead end. I’d be foolish to hope for more, wouldn’t I? It was fun though, for Joseph as well as you and me. An excuse for a lovely day out. I think we should come here again.”
They were getting into the van, scrubbing the worst of the mud from their boots in the grass when a man came along with a dog beside him.
“Been to look at the view?” he asked. “Not many go that way now, so it’s very overgrown.”
“We were looking for Spring Cottage. My sister lived there many years ago, but it’s a ruin now.”
“Lost her have you?”
“Lost touch more years ago than I like to count.” Janet lifted Joseph into the van and added, “Too long to have a hope of finding her again. She’d be seventy, if she’s still alive.”
“If she lived round here why don’t you put a notice in the post office? Someone might remember. There are plenty of old dears long past that age.”
“What a good idea. Oh, I can’t, at least, not today, it’s closed.”
“Give me your name and I’ll do it for you. Cost you threepence mind.”
Expecting to lose the money and have the advertisement forgotten, Janet nevertheless wrote a message on an old envelope and handed it, with the coins, to the man. He tucked it in his pocket, whistled for the dog, and walked on.
“That’s sure to be a waste of money but it was worth risking threepence,” she explained to Caroline. “Don’t tell your father, he’ll call me all sorts of a fool.”
“Forget all about it. That’s best.”
They said little on the journey back until they reached the outskirts of the town, then as they turned down the lane that lead to the back of the cottage, Janet said, “About you coming back, love. Will you leave it for another month or so, see what happens? I know you’re unhappy, and that worries me. But if you abandon it all without giving yourselves a chance you might regret it for years to come. My old mother-in-law used to say it’s lonely not having someone to share the good as well as the bad.”
“Better alone than unhappy together.”
“Does it have to be one or the other? Barry isn’t unkind and certainly not uncaring, is he?”
“No.”
Janet noted that the word was elongated, a hint that the answer was not completely truthful perhaps.
As the van stopped and the engine fell silent, Janet looked out at the lighted house in front of them. Hywel came out and was silhouetted against the glow from within. Barry stepped out and stood beside him. Janet patted her daughter’s arm and said softly, “It’s nice to look across and see someone who’s looking at you, knowing they care.”
“When I look across at Barry, his eyes are staring far away from mine.”
“Love is worth a bit of a fight though, even when the battle seems to have been lost, love.”
“Is that another of your mother-in-law’s wise sayings, Mam?” Caroline laughed.
“All right; I admit it. I made that one up too!”
Seeing Caroline laugh was worth putting up with a bit of teasing.
In the overcrowded terraced cottage in Goldings Street, Jack Weston was pleading gently with Victoria.
“If we’re to be married in August, we have to make plans.”
“I go to see your mother with all the best intentions, Jack, but once she and your grandmother start discussing colours and seating arrangements and etiquette, and the rights and wrongs of every little thing, my mind closes up and I leave them to it. Then they ask me a question and I pull myself out of a daydream of a quiet wedding with just a few friends and ask them to repeat what they were saying, and they’re convinced you’re marrying an idiot!”
Jack laughed but he could see that Victoria was genuinely worried, and said so.
“Worried?” she exclaimed. “More than worried, Jack. I find it all terrifying.”
“We can’t have this. There must be a better way of handling what should be the happiest day of our lives.”
“Perhaps I should go and talk to your cousin, Megan? She might help me with the dresses. Hers and Joan’s and mine.”
“Good idea. We could go now.”
Mrs Jones was upstairs getting the younger children to bed. They could hear her soft voice telling a story which was punctuated by laughter. The older boys were out in the street playing football in the light from the solitary street lamp, the thump of the ball against the house a reminder that they were due to come in for the night.
It was apparent that his bride-to-be was not enthused with the idea of visiting his cousins, but he gently persuaded her.
“They’re all round at Grandmother’s this evening. We were all invited to dinner but I declined for both of us. I hope you didn’t mind, but I couldn’t face it.”
“It wasn’t that you couldn’t face it with me there, was it?”
“You know it isn’t!”
“I do try to fit in but it’s hard for me not to get up and start clearing the dishes,” she laughed, and he joined in, hugging her and telling her how happy she made him.
After a clear April day the night was crisp with frost and they ran through the empty spaces where Philips Street had stood, and up onto the main road. Still walking briskly, they stopped twice to shelter in a shop doorway and enjoy a kiss. When they went into Arfon and Gladys Weston’s big house overlooking the docks, they were rosy-faced and with eyes that were bright with love.
For Victoria the worst was always the first few moments. Once she had deposited her coat and found somewhere to sit, she relaxed a little, confident that Jack wouldn’t leave her to the mercy of his grandmother’s carefully veiled put-downs.
The conversation began between herself and Jack telling the others what they wanted for the wedding day but from then on, the words flew around the room, ideas offered by Gladys, picked up and rearranged by Jack’s mother and aunt, and his cousins Joan and Megan, before being presented to her again. Only for her to glance at Jack and for them both to shake their heads.
When they left two hours later nothing had been decided and the only progress was that Victoria had arranged to meet Joan and her mother Sally and the formidable Gladys, in Gwennie Woodlas’s shop on the following day.
“I wish,” Victoria said with deep dismay, “that they would allow my mother to arrange a quiet wedding.”
“The Westons? Gladys Weston? Can you imagine Grandmother arranging a quiet anything? There’s not a chance. We’ll just have to grin and bear it, love.”
“Then let’s make it sooner than August and get it over with.”
“August is when the school closes. I don’t want us to bring it forward, rush it, fit it in over a weekend.”
He was thinking more about his plan to get a house bought and ready for them to return to after their honeymoon, but that was to be a surprise and couldn’t be included in the general discussion. “No,” he smiled, “we’ll go along with it all and stamp on anything too outrageous.”
“All right. There doesn’t seem to be an alternative, does there?”
“I have some good news. I didn’t want to tell the family in case they try to get involved in that, too, but on Saturday we are going to look at that house we saw for sale. It’s going for eight hundred pounds and I think we can afford it.”
“And we’ll look at it together? Just the two of us?”
“Just the two of us,” he smiled.
“And furnish it together?”
“Just you and me, with Basil’s help no doubt.”
“You are wonderful, Jack.”
“And so are you.”
The house was in Gethyn Street leading on from Trellis Street where Jack’s parents now lived. A turning off Brown Street, it ran behind Sophie Street, convenient for shops, the school where he worked and not far from Victoria’s mother.
Before Jack went home, they walked down Goldings Street, across Brown Street and along Gethyn Street to take another look at it, then they both went home, to dream their dreams.