Rhiannon and Gwyn prepared to cycle to the pebbly beach and the park beyond, at two o’clock on Sunday. The weather was overcast but with the air warm and cloud lifting, there was the promise of a breakthrough into a sunny day. Charlie had agreed, willingly, to look at Lewis’s car, although Rhiannon had been less than pleased.
“Can’t it wait, Dad?” she pleaded as she packed bats and balls and the last of the small picnic into her saddle bag and fastened the straps. “Gwyn’s so disappointed not to have his father along. They climb trees and jump about in streams, explore the woods and look for foxes dens, you know what boys like. It isn’t the same for him without Charlie.”
“Oh, come on, love. One afternoon won’t hurt him. He works with his dad and spends most of his time at home, he’ll be glad to get away from him.”
“No, Dad. He won’t!” She patted the dog, whose eyes showed disbelief at not being included on their excursion, and gave her a biscuit which Polly refused to eat on principle.
With her mind on the selfish attitude of her father, she rode for a while with hardly a word to Gwyn.
“Didn’t you want to come, Rhiannon?” he asked. “We’ll stay home if you like?”
“I want to go, I’ve been looking forward to it, but I wish your dad was with us, that’s all.” She smiled and added, “Lucky I am to have you. I’d be on my own otherwise, wouldn’t I?”
Cheered by the assurance that she really wanted to be with him, Gwyn challenged her to a race.
They waited until they reached the country roads, where the sharp bends made extra fun and there was little traffic to concern them, then they increased speed.
For a while Rhiannon concentrated on winning but then she relaxed a little and enjoyed the simple pleasure of speed with no effort as she coasted down a steep, winding hill to where she knew there would be a glimpse of the sea. Even without Charlie this was good. Gwyn raced on, his feet peddling so fast they were a blur. He disappeared around a bend in the lane then she saw him waving at her from the top of the next hill and waved back. He was standing beside his bike and leaning it against himself; he waved again, this time with both arms and she smiled. He was boasting at how much better he was than she.
Rhiannon knew the road well and remembered how it snaked around in a tight bend then travelled close to a small stream at the bottom of the hill. Gwyn was now out of sight, lost in the line of tall trees that sheltered the fields above. Increasing her own speed, she smiled as she thought how she would surprise him by how fast she’d catch up. A sharp turn left and she would have to begin the long climb to join him.
To help her up the approaching hill she peddled as fast as she could and enjoyed the sensation of the wind brushing past and enticing her long hair out into a trail behind her.
Because of the baffle effect of the trees and the bend in the lane, she didn’t hear the van. As she turned left, riding wide to make the most of the last of the downhill run, she suddenly faced it. The driver turned into the hedge on his left and she sailed past with inches to spare, lost control and went down the bank and into the stream.
Suddenly slowed by the deep water she was tipped off and thrown into the chill mud at the furthest edge. She wasn’t hurt apart from a scratch on both arms from the smaller branches of the roadside trees. Although the shock of the cold water made her gasp it had also softened the fall.
She was surprised to see Gwyn running through the water to help her even before she had recovered from the shock sufficiently to stand up.
“Are you all right? Oh, heck! You’re bleeding! Our Dad’ll kill me if you’re harmed. I was trying to warn you. Didn’t you see me waving?”
She began to laugh then. “Waving?” she giggled. “Of course I did. I just waved back.” It was all so funny that it was some time before she realised that a man was standing on the other bank, watching them.
“The van driver,” Gwyn whispered, gesturing with his thumb.
Still laughing, Rhiannon stood up and, recognising Arfon Weston, her brother Viv’s father-in-law, she quickly assured him she was unhurt.
Arfon’s wife, Gladys was in the passenger seat of the van and her most urgent worry was embarrassment at being seen in the unsuitable vehicle. And, by one of the common Lewises. As the head of the Weston family they had a position to keep and this awful van was not designed to impress. She urged Arfon to hurry home and get her out of it before anyone else saw her.
“We can’t drive off and leave them,” he protested mildly.
“Look at the girl,” she hissed, nodding a head towards Rhiannon who was trying to rescue her bicycle with Gwyn’s help. “I knew we shouldn’t have allowed our granddaughter to marry one of the Lewises! Can’t you take me home first, Arfon?”
“No, love, I can’t. What’s wrong with being seen in the van anyway? It’s ours and fully paid for!”
“If you don’t know, dear,” she sighed, “I won’t try to tell you.” Arfon looked at the bedraggled Rhiannon and began to chuckle.
In his loud, rather pompous voice he called, “I think I should give you a lift home, young lady,” he said. “For one thing, you can’t go wherever it was you were going, looking like that.” Rhiannon looked down at the once white blouse, the neat blue shorts and the sandals that were now thickly spread with mud. It was so funny she laughed again and this time a relieved Gwyn joined in.
Gladys groaned in what she hoped was a ladylike manner and accepted the inevitable. With the Lewises involved, everyone would know she had driven around the countryside in a van!
It was her father who saw Rhiannon first. He gave a shout of alarm as Arfon and Gwyn lifted their bicycles out of his van.
“They’ve had an accident!” he shouted and Charlie threw down the spanner he was holding and ran to where a still laughing Rhiannon, unrecognisable at first, was walking towards them. At once, Lewis began accusing Charlie of not looking after her as they ran to see what had happened. He tried to edge Charlie out of the way and get to Rhiannon first, but Charlie ignored the mud and hugged her, speaking softly, anxious for her not to be involved in an inquest until she was bathed and warm and fed.
After Rhiannon’s arm had been looked at and she had assured them it was nothing worse than a scratch, Arfon offered an apology and prepared to leave. Gladys looked pained and enbarrassed, having tried and failed to stay out of sight, as they drove away.
Lewis’s demands to know what had happened had finally been quashed by Charlie’s terse “Shut up, Lewis! Let’s get her inside and make sure she’s all right. Shall we?”
Outraged and offended, Lewis had left them and run to knock on the door of number seven.
His anger as he told Dora what happened didn’t receive the reaction he expected. “He doesn’t look after her. That’s the truth of it!” he almost shouted, expecting Dora to agree.
Scrabbling for her coat, a comfort rather than a need, Dora said, “You’ve got the fault for this Lewis! Doing something to your car wasn’t he? Something you could have done yourself and then Charlie would have been with them!” She pushed him out of the way and ran across to see her daughter. Lewis began to follow her but stopped and sat in his chair beside Dora’s fire instead. He wasn’t wanted. What a bloody life.
He made himself a cup of tea then sat staring into the fire, poking it occasionally, adding more coal, pushing a few sticks into the parts where ash had collected, concentrating on the simple and unnecessary tasks as if his mind were empty of thought. But behind the handsome dark eyes with their blank expression, he was feeling mean.
He had insisted on Charlie working on his car deliberately to spoil his day out. He didn’t like Charlie and wanted his daughter to come to her senses and leave him. Surely she’d thank him one day? His mood softened, the guilt that had been half recognised grew and almost overwhelmed him. He began to face the unpleasant fact that he was hoping for his daughter’s life to be ruined.
Rhiannon loved Charlie and young Gwyn. She’d be unhappy to lose them. What sort of a father was he, that he could wish for her to be miserable? After an hour he went back to Charlie and Rhiannon’s house and asked how she was feeling.
Assured she was feeling no effect from her muddy fall, he touched her arm and said humbly, “I’m sorry, love. It was my fault. If Charlie had been there he’d have been looking after you and this wouldn’t have happened.” The reaction to his apology wasn’t what he’d expected either.
“I was looking after her! I did what I could,” a distressed Gwyn retorted. “It was an accident. Dad said it was no one’s fault.”
“Gwyn’s right,” Charlie said with an edge of anger in his voice. “No one was at fault. Certainly not our son.”
“Tell me what happened, Gwyn,” Lewis said, ignoring Charlie. He listened to the full story and then, trying to make Gwyn feel better, he told the boy he had been very quick-witted to signal a warning. The pity was that Rhiannon hadn’t realised what it was. “Fancy her just waving back, eh?” he said coaxing a smile.
“I was looking after her,” Gwyn said again, rebelliously.
“I know you were. She’s lucky to have you. I know that. I was upset earlier, the words came out all wrong. I didn’t mean it to sound like I blamed you, Gwyn. Sorry.”
Gwyn said nothing; his young face still looked troubled.
“Thank goodness you were there,” Lewis persevered. “Things would have been much worse if you’d stayed to help your dad, wouldn’t they? You certainly guessed she was in trouble and got to the stream fast.” Gwyn still didn’t looked convinced and Lewis asked, “Swallow any fish, did she?”
“She didn’t half look a mess,” Gwyn said as a smile reluctantly appeared and slowly widened.
Lewis glanced at Dora and was relieved to receive a nod of approval.
Edward’s shop was set to open at the end of June and as the day drew near he worked hard, getting the tables and chairs set out ready for the opening party on Saturday the twenty-fifth of June. Mrs Collins had recovered from her fall and was helping, and the catering was being dealt with by Megan’s aunt, Sian Weston, and Dora Lewis. To Edward’s surprise, Lewis Lewis came with Dora on Wednesday afternoon with a selection of sweets with which to decorate the tables. He didn’t know that the gesture was to please Dora and not him and he thanked Lewis and invited him to the party.
“Margaret’s efforts to discourage people have failed,” Edward told Megan thankfully. “All the invitations have been readily accepted by everyone we chose to invite.”
“You’ll do well, Edward. I’m sure of it.”
“If I succeed, it’s down to you,” he smiled, his growing love for her showing in his eyes and the almost shy twist of his mouth.
“D’you know, Edward, you look a different person when you smile at me. You could be two people instead of one. Your formal, stiff-upper-lip, serious side is wiped away like magic with your wonderful smile. Two personalities, and –” she added, lightly kissing his cheek “– I like them both.”
“Then will you—”
She stopped the words with a finger. “After The Lump makes his appearance, we’ll talk. Not before.”
He looked at her. She was confident, brave and so beautiful. More so now, with that wonderful glow of pregnancy. And way out of his reach. He was fooling himself thinking otherwise. She and her twin Joan were very outspoken; they were famous for it. But he comforted himself that she at least felt something for him, enough to let him down lightly. The thought had a sweet melancholy.
To his relief, Annie and Leigh Grant had exchanged contracts on Montague Court. The sale had gone through without a hitch. Margaret hadn’t contacted him since they had signed away their home, but he heard from others that his sister, and Sian’s truant husband, Islwyn, were planning to buy a rather large house where they could boast a view of the sea. He felt content enough to wish them well, although he hadn’t invited them to the party.
“Perhaps you should,” Megan said when he remarked on it. “Now the arguments about whether or not to sell Montague Court are settled, there’s no point in you two behaving like pouting children any longer, is there?”
“Did I? Behave like a child?”
In reply she looked at him with her pretty head tilted and he acknowledged the accusation with a nod. He remembered the way he had thumped furniture about late at night and nodded ruefully. “I’ll write and invite her. Although, wait a minute! I can’t have Islwyn there as a guest with his estranged wife doing the catering, can I? Confrontation with both sides armed with sticky buns. It doesn’t bear thinking about!”
“Yes, I’d forgotten about my delinquent Uncle Islwyn. Perhaps it’s better to leave it and say the invitation must have been lost in the post,” she laughed.
The day before the party, when everything was set and only the food was to come, Edward invited Megan to go to the pictures.
“Thank you Edward, but I don’t think I will.”
“Are you feeling ill? Is everything all right with The Lump?” he asked anxiously.
“He’s behaving impeccably, kicking to remind me he’s there, but nothing more than that.” He put out a hand and waited until the baby moved and his gentle face softened with pleasure.
“Do you think he’d like to go for a stroll instead?”
“A stroll would be wonderful.”
As the day had been rather dull, the pleasure beach wasn’t crowded; just a few strolling couples and two or three families carrying an assortment of bags and beach games, making their way back from their picnic and day out.
They walked along the promenade, before stepping down onto the warm golden sands to follow the edge of the tide, hand in hand. They hardly spoke, content in each other’s company and their own thoughts. Although, if they had discussed them they would have realised how close their thoughts were, both going through last minute details of the shop’s grand opening on the following day.
When they got into the car to drive home, Megan noticed a sizeable parcel on the back seat. “What’s that, something for tomorrow?” she asked.
“Silver light-fittings for the windows and stronger light bulbs for the flat and the basement,” Edward told her. “I’ll fix them tonight. The ones there at present are too weak. We need to make everything look as bright and cheerful as possible for the party, don’t we?”
“Can we drop them off at the shop now?”
“It’s late and you should be getting to bed. The Lump needs his sleep.”
“You have remembered that we’re calling at Grandmother’s early tomorrow to collect the cot and all the bedding she and Grandfather have bought for me? We’ll need the space in the car.”
“Perhaps we should take them now then. It won’t take long.”
He parked outside the shop, told Megan to stay in the car and unlocked the door. There was a strange sound and he paused as he pushed the shop door open.
“What is it?” Megan demanded.
“Stay there. I can hear something down in the basement.”
“I’m coming with you.”
From her tone he guessed it was useless to argue but he made her walk behind him as, putting on the shop lights, he went towards the basement stairs. In a steady stream, beginning halfway down, water from a hosepipe was making a waterfall of the new, polished wooden stairs.
Below, they could see that a couple of chairs were over turned, the tables had been piled up in a corner and were bare of their decorations. Balloons cheerfully filled a corner and a glass bowl, still containing a few sweets, floated like some jaunty little nursery rhyme boat. The floor was completely awash and the tableclothes which Mrs Collins had made and put in place were moving sluggishly in the flood.
“What on earth has happened?” Edward gasped.
“At a guess, I’d say Margaret has ‘happened’,” Megan said angrily. “The furniture hasn’t been moved like that by the water. Someone has deliberately pushed things about to make as much mess as possible, wouldn’t you say?”
Edward couldn’t take his eyes off the disaster scene that had once been a room prepared for a party.
“Now, Edward,” Megan said, in a cold, calm voice. “Are you going to stare at it all night? Or will you go and shut off the tap?”
After driving Megan home Edward went back to the ruins of his opening party. He threw all the furniture outside and piled the once pristine tablecloths, stained with the crepe paper table centres, into a galvanised bucket for Mrs Collins to wash.
By the time he had brushed the worst of the flood outside, dried the floor and wiped down the furniture, it was after four o’clock. Too late to go back to Montague Court, where, anyway, his bed would probably be covered with furniture once again.
He had no clothes into which he could change and he was very chilled, so he went up to the room that would soon be his bedroom, turned on an electric fire with fingers crossed that the water hadn’t touched any of the cables, and tried to sleep.
If Margaret was responsible for this, why was she still so angry? Selling up had been inevitable; in spite of her protests she had known that. It should have happened years before and would have if their father hadn’t been so determined to let their mother finish her days there. Edward drifted off into sleep thinking that if it weren’t for Megan, he would probably have been weak enough to allow Margaret to talk him round. She was so strong and she would have battled until he had given in and agreed to stay and work at making Montague Court into a viable business. It would have failed, he was sure of that, and they would have ended up penniless. Megan had been his salvation. He smiled as dreams took over and Megan’s face swam into view. He was so glad he hadn’t given in to Margaret. Megan was equally strong, but with her decisions were discussed, shared. And besides, with Megan, life was much more exciting.
The party was cancelled. Edward gave Gwyn Bevan a pound to go around on his bicycle and tell those people he couldn’t reach by telephone. He went to see Dora and Sian himself.
“What d’you expect us to do with all the food we’ve prepared?” Dora demanded.
“Whatever you wish,” Edward said sadly. “I’ll pay for it, of course, but if you can think of anyone who would like it, well, I’ll leave it to you.”
Sian and Dora exchanged glances. In chorus they said, “The Griffithses!”
Hywel and Janet greeted the news with excitement. “A ready made party?” Janet said. “No problem for us, eh, Hywel?”
No invitations were written. There was never any need for the formalities. The television was moved into the shed, logs for the fire were brought in, and logs to be used as extra seating appeared from under the stairs. Caroline unwrapped the plates she and Barry had been given as wedding presents and had never used. Caroline’s nearly three-year-old son, Joseph-Hywel, was promised a ‘late pass’ by his uncles, Ernie and Frank, and Hywel had a bath.
In the inexplicably speedy way of such things, everyone who should be told was told, and by lunchtime, the talk through the small town was of the ‘do’ that night in the small cottage on the edge of town.
“I think I might go,” Megan said when she went to see Edward later that day. “Will you be there?”
“At the Griffiths’? You surely aren’t going to spend the evening in that awful hovel, are you?”
“I most certainly am! It won’t be the first time, and don’t get on your high horse, Edward. They’re really rather good fun!” Edward went on with his task of washing down the stair case and didn’t reply. Even for Megan, one of the famous Weston Girls, for whom the outrageous was to be expected, he still thought visiting the Griffithses socially was a bit much.
At five o’clock that afternoon, Edward went back to Montague Court. It no longer looked like his home. Furniture had been moved or was missing altogether. The walls were sadly marked with the paleness and staining where pictures and furniture had been moved after many years in the same place. The carpets showed indentations filled with dust where heavy cupboards had once stood, and there were several dark stains, their origins long forgotten.
He decided not to mention the flooded basement. Better not to know for certain that it had been Margaret’s doing. He forced himself to speak normally when Margaret appeared.
“Annie and Leigh Grant will have a difficult task getting ready for reopening, won’t they?” he said to Margaret.
“They had a bargain, thanks to you. You don’t expect me to clean it for them as well, do you?” she snapped.
He didn’t bother to reply, overcome by a feeling of isolation. As the day of departure drew near he had bouts of sadness and Margaret’s attitude was an added reminder that with the end of their life at Montague Court, he no longer had a family.
Margaret was so bitter he doubted whether they would ever overcome their differences.
As he began checking the lists of items he and Margaret had decided to keep and started planning their removal, Margaret and Islwyn came through from an adjoining room, staggering under the weight of a grandfather clock.
“Where were you last night?” Islwyn asked. “My niece keeping you from your bed? Or are you keeping her from hers, eh?”
“Neither! And I suggest you keep your filthy thoughts to yourself!”
“What time did you come in, Edward?” Margaret asked.
“I didn’t! I was trying to clear up the mess in the shop.”
“Mess? What mess?”
Again, Edward didn’t bother to answer.
He went back to the shop that evening, imagining the food prepared for his party being eaten by the enthusiastic Griffithses. Electric fires were burning and gradually drying the basement, giving the building an eerie glow. He shivered. The place was still strange to him and he wondered how he would settle once he had moved out of his former home.
Megan didn’t come and he was at a loss to know why it upset him so. They had become so close, discussing everything, learning to understand each other. He had come to expect her to be there all the time, not to go off to a party he’d said he didn’t want to attend.
They had been surprisingly open with each other during the short time they had become friends. He had been embarrassed at first by the way she spoke of personal affairs, but her free acceptance of the weaknesses of both herself and other people gradually made him deal with life with the same honesty and understanding.
He had told her how he had injured his leg while in Egypt, and his disappointment at not becoming a good enough tennis player and how his family had insisted he abandoned his secondary plan to open a sports shop, and concentrate on the family business instead.
He spoke about his fiancee who had rejected him when he returned from Egypt and his suspicions that his family had discouraged Rachel for reasons of their own. He even admitted that for a while he was fascinated by a young woman called Maisie Vasey, who came to live in Pendragon Island, caused chaos, and then moved away.
Megan talked openly about running away from home and her brief sojourn in London with Terrence, Edward’s wayward cousin – the father of the child she was expecting. She spoke of her attitude to Terrence and to the baby she carried.
They were the closest of friends, so why had she gone to the party without him? Was he expecting too much? Was he dreaming when he imagined she cared? Of course he was, he told himself angrily. I should be counting the hours she spends with me, savouring them, storing them to remember when we have said our goodbyes.
In his heart Edward hoped for a happy ending, but in his head he knew it was impossible. She was too remarkable a woman to settle for someone as dull as he was. She was simply using him to fill in the time until her child was born, that’s all. Be grateful, he told himself. Be grateful.
The evening was going to drag, he knew it. He wasn’t hungry and he was too lethargic to do any more cleaning but he didn’t want to go back to Montague Court. There was nothing there for him and he wished he’d finished moving into the flat so he could begin his new life. The fires burning warmed the air and made him drowsy and he sat on the top of the basement steps, leaned against the wall and wondered whether Megan was enjoying the party.
For Megan, sitting next to Hywel and Janet’s daughter Caroline, the talk was of babies. She was uncomfortable, squeezed up to make room for the growing number of people still arriving in a steady stream. Her sister Joan came in with Viv and seeing the expression on Megan’s face guessed, wrongly, that it was due to thoughts about the baby.
“Don’t worry, Megan,” she said, having peremptorily moved Caroline out of her place to sit beside her sister. “It’s only a few more weeks and they’ll soon pass.”
“It isn’t the baby,” Megan assured her. “I just don’t feel in the mood for a party.” She didn’t explain that the usual Griffiths’ fun was not enough to make her forget Edward all alone in the shop.
“Come on, admit you’re depressed and worried about the birth pains; I would be. You’ll be fine once he’s born. Thank goodness we aren’t the kind of twins who suffer for each other,” Joan added with feeling. “I think I’d hate him long before he’s born.”
Janet showed her a coat she was knitting and Hywel and Barry promised to make him his first push-along truck. She thanked them all, asked Basil to go to the kiosk and ring for a taxi and left before what Hywel called the first round – when everyone relaxed and left behind their inhibitions – was over.
Barry was trying to talk to Caroline, but each time he approached her, either someone stole the seat he was heading for or she saw him, sensed his need to talk and moved away.
He played with little Joseph until Caroline declared it was time for him to go to bed, and was refused when he offered to read him a story.
“Not tonight, Barry, thanks. He’s had enough excitement for one day. He’ll never sleep!”
The sense of rejection was strong and he left soon after Megan.
At half past nine Edward was thinking of going to find something to eat. He still wasn’t hungry but he thought that if didn’t find some food then, he might be hungry later and then he’d be too late. He heard a car pull up, then drive off. Footsteps he thought he knew hurried towards the shop door and then there was the welcome sound of a key in the shop door.
“Edward, will you take me out and feed me?” Megan said as she walked in and sat down beside him.
“Of course, but what about the party?”
“I went, and everyone was there having the usual idiotic fun, but the thought of all that lovely food being prepared for our little ‘do’, well, it seemed traitorous to eat it. I kept thinking I should be here, being miserable with you. So, here I am.”
They sat for a long time, in a close embrace, with only a low light burning, staring down into the dark depths of the basement.
At ten o’clock, Edward said. “I was miserable here without you. I should have gone. Forgive me?”
“Only if you buy me fish and chips. I’m starving and so is The Lump.”
He turned to her, his eyes intent and serious as he touched her lips with his own. The kiss, gentle at first, deepened and left neither of them in any doubt of their feelings.
“Megan, I—”
Once again she stopped him saying the words she longed to hear. “We have to wait my darling. I want you to understand fully what life with me would mean.”
“I don’t care what happens, I want you and—”
“Soon, Edward. Very soon.” The kiss that stilled his words was so sweet that he argued no further.
As they were leaving to buy fish and chips to eat in the car, they both heard a noise. It came from the garden and with a terse, “Stay here,” to Megan, Edward crept slowly down the basement stairs. As he reached the bottom he became aware that as usual, Megan had ignored him and was following.
There were crackling sounds and the strong smell of wood burning and for an awful moment Edward thought someone had set fire to the place. He fumbled with the door, which was new and rather stiff, and by the time he had opened it, the garden was empty. Someone had started a fire, but not near the house. Sticks were burning brightly and beside the newly lit blaze an upturned bucket had been set up as a table, containing half opened newspaper-wrapped packages of food. “A tramp,” Edward said with a sigh of relief. “Well, he’s welcome to sit and eat his supper, as long as he keeps his bonfire under control. But I think we ought to get that gate fixed soon.”
“We’ll see Frank about it tomorrow,” Megan said. She went over and added sticks to the fire which was in danger of burning out. “Poor lonely man. It makes me realise how fortunate I am, Edward.”
“Me too.” He placed a half-crown coin on the makeshift table and, with their arms around each other, they went back through the shop to go and buy their supper.
Percy Flemming was standing in the overgrown shrubbery of the Waterside Restaurant. His innocent informant, the local milkman called Reggie Rogers, had casually mentioned that the owners would be away for a week, before returning to deal with their move.
Having parked the old van in the narrow lane beside the property, he began transfering cases of wines and spirits from the house. The stuff was easily sold but it was a time-consuming exercise and he didn’t take the complete consignment.
A quick look around and he picked up two Dresden figurines and some Victorian china before driving off with moderate speed to where he planned to hide the Victorian stuff until he could drive to Newport and deliver it. He hid the van in the garden of an old vicarage where it was well hidden by a high wall and a belt of tall trees. The drink was first delivered to a pub not far from town and at three in the morning he was sleeping soundly.
The police were criticised once more when news of the robbery came to light. They responded with the reasonable excuse that they were simply unable to watch every house in the town, and begged people to be vigilant and report anything suspicious.
Once the place had dried out and the decoration had been made good, Edward decided to move in. Transporting what he had chosen to keep from the furniture of his former home took most of the day, with Hwyel Griffiths providing the van and Frank and Ernie providing the muscles.
Annie and Leigh Grant had agreed to buy most of the surplus and Margaret was storing what she and Islwyn had selected for their restaurant and future home. The few pieces not wanted by any of them went to a second-hand shop in the town, which did brisk business. Everyone wanted a souvenir of the Jenkins’s former home. Vases and pictures of little value were snapped up. Oddments of china, plates, cups and even saucers found a new home. Incomplete sets of cutlery that needed regular sharpening and polishing were tossed in a couple of baskets and displayed to be sold individually as people scrambled for a memento of Montague Court.
Gladys and Arfon Weston bought a huge overmantel in gold trimmed mahogany. Ryan bought a picture of the Somerset town where he and Sally had spent their honeymoon and gave it to his wife, promising her that from then on their life would be as happy as those early days of their marriage.
Lewis saw an umbrella stand and bought it for Dora to put in the entrance of the café. He also bought a model of a Spitfire that had once stood on a desk in Edward’s bedroom, which he presented to a delighted Gwyn.
Through the town, people displayed items from Montague Court proudly as though the ownership of the trifles were prizes captured in battle from the demise of the once great family.
Saddened by the empty rooms and drab remnants of their former home, Edward and Margaret, in a brief moment of togetherness, decided not to go there again.
Spending the first night in his now furnished bedroom above the shop, Edward slept fitfully, the unfamiliar noises of his new property strange: wood expanding and shrinking with the changes of temperature; the wind finding spaces through which to whisper and sigh; traffic causing movement as it passed along the road; a curtain swaying in an undetected breeze.
Creaks and groans startled him on several occasions. Besides the unacustomed sounds of the building he heard people walking around on bare floors and decided in his half awake state, after calming down from believing they were in the house with him, that they were coming from next door.
The following morning Edward remembered to his alarm that the houses on both sides were vacant. So, what had he heard? Had it been the tramp using an empty house for a comfortable night’s sleep? For his own peace of mind he decided that that was what had happened, pushed the worries aside and began to search for breakfast.
Cooking breakfast showed him a serious lack of basic needs. A frying pan was no use without something to fry. A loaf of bread needed a sharper knife than the ones he had chosen to bring from Montague Court. How could he be so helpless?
He made a list and went out to buy what he needed. There was just time to deal with it before he opened the shop at nine-thirty. Megan would be there soon but he didn’t want to admit his absentmindedness to her. Not today, when he was opening his doors to business for the first time.
Time passed slowly and he was restless. Returning to the mysterious noises of the previous night he decided to go through the gardens and investigate.
As he had guessed, the house next door was not secure. Pushing open a broken door from which one hinge was missing he went inside. He’d brought a torch but he didn’t need it. The place showed clear evidence of someone using it, with clothes and bedding strewn around and in a corner, a cache of food. He left, satisfied that the noises he’d heard were explained.
There was a knock on the shop door and he went to answer it, nervously adjusting his tie. Someone was anxious to be the first customer – it wasn’t yet nine-fifteen. When he opened the door, Inspector Leonard stood there with Constable Gregory. They saw Edward smiling a welcome with a dirt-streaked face, and leaves and small branches in his hair from where he had pushed his way through the hedge. There were moss stains on the sleeve of his shirt.
“Mr Edward Jenkins? We’d like you to come to the station with us, if you please.”
“What, now? I’m just about to open my shop.”
“We’d like you to answer some questions regarding your whereabouts on the days and nights of these robberies.”
“I don’t understand.”
Inspector Leonard looked him up and down. “We might begin by your explaining where you’ve been to get in such a mess, sir.”