17

At this time, Twm was in his final two years in the County School, and because he had to concentrate so hard on his work he was once again lodging in the town. At first he went to stay with Sioned, his sister. She seemed keen to have him, although his parents felt that they would rather he went to stay with a stranger. He took most of his food down with him. He bought the ingredients for his dinner in town, and he paid his sister three shillings a week. Before long his butter, his bread, his bacon and his eggs began to run out before the end of the week. He knew that that shouldn’t be happening, since he could count how many eggs he was eating, even if he couldn’t keep tabs on the other food.

One week his bread, eggs and bacon had run out by Thursday morning, and he had to buy a loaf of bread with his pocket money. This had happened once before, but he had had more money then. This time, though, he couldn’t afford to buy anything apart from the loaf. On Friday morning at breakfast Sioned said,

‘You’ve eaten a lot this week.’ Offering him a pat of some soft, shop-bought butter, she said,

‘Here, you can have some of my butter.’

Twm lost his temper.

‘Your butter indeed; keep your rubbish! It wasn’t me who ate the pound of butter I brought from home on Monday morning, and it wasn’t me who ate the eggs either. I’ve only had four of them.’

Sioned slumped in her chair and started to cry, and Bertie glared at Twm as if he had just murdered his sister.

‘You should be ashamed of yourself, upsetting Janet* like that. Are you accusing your sister of stealing your food?’ he said, in that affected, effeminate voice of his.

‘No, I’m not,’ said Twm, raising himself to his full height, which was pretty tall by this time, and towering over his brother-in-law. ‘I know that she borrowed my food because she doesn’t get enough from you.’

Sioned started bawling at this, and Eric the little boy came downstairs also in tears. Bertie attempted to stand on his dignity, saying to Twm, with his arm around his wife,

‘You’d better leave this house right now.’

‘I’m going,’ said Twm. ‘I was a fool to come here in the first place. I’ve seen things that I really didn’t want to see.’

He grabbed his bag and went to School, with the sound of Sioned’s crying still resounding in his ears. He called for his friend, Arthur, on his way. He was still having his breakfast of bacon and eggs.

‘Hello,’ he said, seeing Twm there so early and so white about the gills, ‘what’s up?’

‘Nothing,’ said Twm, giving his friend a wink behind his mother’s back, ‘I just got up early, and thought I’d take a stroll on the quay before going to School.’

When they got outside he was able to explain to Arthur what had happened.

‘Come back with me this very minute,’ he said, ‘so that you can have some breakfast.’

‘No, I won’t come now,’ said Twm, ‘I can’t eat anything at the moment. But I’ll come to have a bit of dinner with you later if I can.’

‘Of course, you’re welcome,’ said Arthur, who was a shopkeeper’s son and knew that there would be something for dinner every day.

‘But nobody’s to know about this except you and Elin. I’ll have to make up some story, and I’ll go to Elin’s for my tea, and tell her all about it.’

‘Mam,’ said Arthur at lunchtime, ‘can Tommy have some dinner with us? His sister’s not very well and has had to go to bed.’

‘Of course, with pleasure, my boy; what’s the matter with your sister?’

‘I don’t know, but she’s not very well.’

‘Well, look, wouldn’t it be better for you to stay here with Arthur until she gets better?’

‘We’ll see,’ said Twm. ‘I’ll go up there from School this afternoon to see how she is.’

‘Well, yes, you haven’t got the time to look after yourself, with this year being such an important one for you at School.’

Instead of going to Sioned’s house for tea, Twm went to Elin’s and told her everything.

‘Well,’ said Elin, shaking her head, ‘I said that no good would come of that marriage. But we have to hide this from Mam.’

‘Well, I’m not going back there to stay, anyhow, even if Sioned and that little corgi of hers begged me to on their hands and knees.’

‘Why?’

‘Oh, I don’t know, I just don’t like that Bertie, and I don’t like getting too close to a husband and wife who are only pretending to be a couple. I felt like hitting that Bertie this morning, seeing him holding Sioned so tenderly, and knowing that she probably isn’t the only one he holds like that.’

‘Twm!’

‘Alright, maybe it’s just me being suspicious. I’d better not say any more. But what shall we do now? – that’s the question.’

‘Look, go and stay with Arthur until Saturday, since they’ve been so kind, and go to the woman who keeps the old lodging house that you used to stay in to ask if you can go back there, and then you can tell Mam that you can’t study properly in Sioned’s house because Eric makes too much noise.’

Jane Gruffydd believed Twm’s reason for changing his lodgings since it was a reasonable enough excuse. It didn’t dawn on her that anything was wrong in her daughter’s house. When she asked Twm on Saturday how Sioned was, he had his answer ready. He would say that he’d seen her the previous evening. But in reality he never saw her except sometimes in passing on the street. When he went there on the Monday after the row to pay for his lodging Sioned was as snooty as Bertie, and she didn’t ask him to call again.