Frank ate an enormous breakfast after his return from Mair’s cottage. He was finishing off with some thick toast made on the bright fire in the living room when his brother Basil came in.
“Any news about Helen’s baby?” Basil asked, and with his mouth full, Frank shook his head and nodded to the pile of freshly toasted bread. When Basil had found himself a plate and was spreading the toast generously with butter, Frank managed to say, “I think Mam’s at the hospital now.”
“You look pleased with yourself,” Basil said, as Frank happily munched his way through his food. “Your face isn’t a natural smiler. So, what’s happened?”
“I saw Mair last night and she’s given that Carl Rees the push.”
“Sure of that, are you?”
“Well, I hope so, but I’ll keep an eye on the pair of them just in case she changes her mind.”
“Don’t build your hopes up, brother Frank. Mair’s had a few boyfriends in her time, and besides, you’ll give our Dad a heart attack if you start talking of wedding bells and a policeman’s daughter in the same breath, mind!”
Frank looked uncomfortable. “Who’d have a bloke like me?” he said, but he was soon thinking of the way he and Mair had spent the previous night while her father was out, and the smile came back.
Basil waited awhile but as there was no sign of Janet coming home he left and returned to Trellis Street. He had wanted to talk to his parents, as his landlord had increased the rent and he had heard rumours that he was intending to get him and his little family out of their flat altogether. He had a regular job, but nothing saved, and he didn’t know how to deal with the threat.
As he left the shabby cottage, where he had had such a happy childhood, he stopped and looked thoughtfully at the outhouse which had been a bedroom until he and then Ernie had married and left home. Was it a possibility? He shook his head abandoning the idea as soon as it had been born. He couldn’t bring Eleri and the boys to live in what was little more than animal shelter. Things had changed and it was no longer possible to think of bringing up a family in such an inconvenient place. Eleri had lived with her first husband, Lewis-boy, at Dora and Lewis’s house. He had only provided a small, overcrowded flat and he couldn’t expect her to accept anything more lowly than that. What could he do?
He climbed the gate into the lane, his long legs making this easier than unlocking the gate and relocking it after him. He stood again, looking back at the shed-cum-extension and he was standing so still, so quiet, that he heard the sibilant hiss of tyres on the surface of the lane while the cause of it was still some distance away. Automatically, from ingrained practice, he stepped silently back into the shelter of a tree and watched.
Constable Gregory sailed serenely past on his bicycle, and when Basil called, “Good morning,” he had the pleasure of seeing the man wobble and almost lose his balance. The policeman stopped and glared at him. “What you doing skulking about in the hedges, Basil?” he asked.
“Wondering what you’re up to when you should be asleep,” Basil replied, remembering Frank telling him the man had been working the previous night.
“Sleeping? That’s a laugh. Off to work I am, watching out for the likes of you and your family! So behave!”
“Going in the wrong direction aren’t you?” Basil nodded in the direction of town and tilted his head enquiringly.
“None of your business where I’ve been or where I’m going, Basil Griffiths. Remember I’m after villains so watch it. Right?” Wearing a haughty, righteous expression he sailed on. Basil wondered which of his brothers had been wandering around Farmer Booker’s woods, or if his father had been the one most recently aggravating the man. The idea had its appeal and he went back to the cottage and collected a few things. Tonight he’d set a few traps. A rabbit made a good nourishing stew.
That night, Frank walked to Mair’s cottage and stood watching, half expecting and half dreading the sight of Carl Rees arriving. Mair’s father was at home, but that was no reason why Mair couldn’t go and meet Carl at a given time.
At nine o’clock the back door opened and Frank’s spirits dropped but it was her father who stepped out. He was not in uniform but he moved with care and went silently through the woods, unaware of being followed by Frank.
The night was dark and still, with not even a light breeze to move the branches. All his senses alert, Frank trailed Gregory’s progress through the trees. Then he heard the unmistakable sounds of someone else stepping cautiously through the trees. Such faint sounds that the constable seemed unaware of them. The thought that it might be one of his brothers or his father, made Frank take action to warn him. He shook a branch and ran through an area he knew was best avoided if he wanted to walk in silence; it was covered with dry, brittle twigs, the remnants of an aborted attempt to clear some of the intrusive brambles. His feet made a lot of noise and the constable turned and headed straight for him. Frank saw him with his night-trained eyes and easily avoided him, turning back to stand and watch once more across the lane from Mair’s home. He didn’t know who had been wandering the woods, but he thought, by the professional way the person had walked with hardly a sound, that it might have been his father, or Basil or perhaps Ernie, even though he should have been home waiting for news of his child.
A short distance away, his brother Basil picked up his abandoned equipment and continued setting his traps. His smile was reminiscent of Frank’s.
The following morning, Frank poured himself a beer from the flagon in the corner and told his mother that he was going to start on the bedroom for Jack and Victoria at last.
“You’d never believe the colour, our Mam. White woodwork and the door panelled in hardboard and painted yellow to match the walls. Could you sleep in such a room? Damn it all, it would be like sleeping in the daylight.”
“And when has that bothered you, Frank?” Janet teased.
“Well, I suppose it’s modern. But yellow? Now a soft blue or pink, that’s all right, mind. I like a bit of colour, but it has to be soft and soothing, not ‘wake up it’s morning.’”
Janet was laughing while she helped Frank to gather together his painting and wallpapering tools, when a red-faced Ernie came bursting in to tell them them he had a son. “Another grandson for you Mam. Where’s our Dad? Chuffed he’ll be for sure.” Frank was pleased with the news, thumping Ernie on the back and telling him well done. Janet began to cry but insisted the tears were happy ones. Hywel muttered something about being front line now there was a younger generation to push them up a notch and Ernie drank Frank’s beer. Frank remembered just in time not to start a fight.
As an excuse to call, Frank went to the sports shop to tell Mair of the arrival of a new Griffiths, and invited her to go for a walk with him that evening. Then he ran down to Temptations to tell Rhiannon, and the news began to travel.
That evening, Rhiannon and Charlie went to tell Dora and Lewis and, as they approached the house, they heard quarrelling. Dismayed, they called from the doorway before walking in. Rhiannon looked suspiciously from one to the other. “Not arguing, are you?” she asked.
Dora snapped, “Of course we are! Your father wants to fill the garden with vegetables we no longer need and I want a lawn and flowers!”
Rhiannon was so relieved she giggled and Dora joined in.
“I know what you were thinking,” she whispered when she and her daughter were making tea, “afraid I was about to throw your father out and you’d have him back as a lodger!”
“You should have seen their faces,” Dora told Sian the next morning when they were opening the Rose Tree Café. “Terrified they were. Poor Charlie was forcing such a smile, he looked as though he was being strangled!”
“Are their fears ungrounded?” Sian asked as she grated cheese into a bowl. “You don’t regret having Lewis back?”
“I wish I’d come to my senses sooner,” Dora replied. “I’m really happy now Lewis and I are back together again. Although, there’s still a sense of waiting, as if something has yet to fall into place. I’m happy, don’t doubt it, but – I don’t know – we aren’t complete somehow.”
“You still remember the early days, when the house was full to bursting, and there weren’t enough hours in the day to do all you wanted to achieve,” Sian suggested. “Life changes and we sometimes find it hard to accept it.”
Dora nodded. “You’re right about that. The house seems too big. All those empty rooms. I open the doors sometimes and look in and it’s as though I’m a stranger there, as though they belong to another life, ghosts have taken possession. In my melancholic moments I can almost hear the children shouting and laughing and then I return to the present and become engulfed by sadness. We rattle about like peas in a colander, me and Lewis, and I think we both feel it.”
Aware of having said too much, she turned to Sian and asked brightly, “And what about you? D’you hear anything about your delinquent, Islwyn? Or Issy, as that Margaret Jenkins insists on calling him?”
“So far as I know he and Margaret Jenkins seem to be content, although I do wonder sometimes. She must hate working as a housekeeper in the house her family once owned. And, Islwyn, well, he was never one for hard work. I doubt he’s changed even for his new love! I don’t think she can be exactly happy, do you? And she must hate seeing her brother Edward so successful and happily married. I don’t think Margaret is the sort to take pleasure from the happiness of others.”
“Poor Islwyn.”
“Not really. When you think of what he did – taking money from my parents’ business and doing nothing for it, cheating on the accounts to take even more, well, I think he’s lucky to have what he has got.”
“And you wouldn’t take him back?”
“No! There are better men than him in the world and if I wanted a new husband, I’d find one.”
“And, would you? Look for another husband?” Dora dared to ask.
“I might, once Islwyn has agreed to the divorce.”
Dora was surprised. If anyone had asked her, she would have been certain that Sian had no interest whatever in finding another man to share her life.
“It just shows,” she said to Lewis later, “You never really know another person, no matter that you believe them to be a close friend.”
Dora’s daughter looked up smiling as the confectionery rep got out of his car and hurried towards the shop. Before she had married Charlie, she and Jimmy Herbert had been close friends and it was as a friend she greeted him. It was raining and she opened the door for him to run straight in. Jimmy held a briefcase rather ineffectually over his head as he ran from the car.
“Tea?” she offered as soon as he had closed the shop door.
She usually persuaded him to stay a while when he called for an order. They reminisced about the dance class in Gomer Hall that they had enjoyed for a while, and discussed mutual friends, before he settled down to take her order. Jimmy worked for the same company as Rhiannon’s father, which gave them another link.
He was still there when Jennie Francis came in for some toffees. Seeing Rhiannon greet her as a friend rather than an unknown customer, Jimmy took out a sample of toffees and gave them to her. Rhiannon introduced them and went into the kitchen to find another cup. Before Jimmy left, he had learnt something about Jennie’s situation and had told her of a job going in a shop at the Pleasure Beach, selling nothing but seaside rock – in every imaginable shape and size.
“It isn’t what I want,” Jennie confided in her friend when Jimmy had gone. “But with the house being sold and me having to find somewhere to live, I have to earn some money. It would only be a stop-gap, while I sorted out my finances and got myself started in a business of my own.”
“No chance of a reconciliation, then? You and Peter?”
“I have hoped for things to come right,” Jennie admitted. “But whenever decisions have to be made, Peter always choses his mother to discuss them with rather than me and I can’t see that ever changing. She’ll get older and more demanding and he’ll become more and more guilty if he doesn’t do what she wants. I don’t want to be second best for the rest of my life. Would you?”
“No one deserves that,” Rhiannon said. “For a while I thought Barry Martin was the one for me, but he wasn’t as loving and caring as Charlie is. Better to wait for the right one, don’t take a chance telling yourself it will get better, because it almost certainly won’t.”
“The house will be sold in a couple more weeks. It doesn’t take long for your life to be pulled apart,” Jennie said sadly. “A few months ago I had a struggling business, a husband and a home. Now they’ve all gone. It’s hard to believe sometimes.”
“Come back and have some lunch with me,” Rhiannon said. “I boiled a joint of ham yesterday, we could have a sandwich. Then,” she added, “you could take a bus over to the Pleasure Beach and see about the exciting job selling sticky rock!” She was pleased to see Jennie smiling as she pulled down the blind and locked the shop door.
With some misgivings, Jennie took the job in the small shop overlooking the beach. She knew she had to earn some money, enough to find a room and feed herself. Imagine ending up in a bed-sit in some crummy old ruin, after owning a house. It was crazy. The debts accrued from the business should have been shared. Peter should have been with her, helping to sort out the end of her enterprise. Instead, she had a mental picture of him of standing beside his mother looking at her with disapproval as she struggled. Selling rock and listening to inane jokes as people bought sweet dummies and talked about the recipient’s reaction as though they were the first person to think of such a thing. She shuddered. At least it would bring in some money while she looked for something better. There was a part of her too that hoped the news would shame Peter into some offer of assistance once the house was gone and she was installed in her drab room. She was determined it would be a drab room. That way there was the greatest incentive for her to get out and move on.
Peter heard of her new job from Carl, whom he met in the High Street.
“What is she thinking of!” Peter was shocked. People he knew were likely to see her there and that would be embarrassing for him. And what would Mam say? He had to stop her before someone told Mam.
The house was empty when he got home. His parents were out on a rare visit to the pictures and his meal was on a saucepan of simmering water keeping warm. He hated that, eating alone with the gravy forming a dark rim around the plate. He thought of Jennie and wished things could have been different. If only she and Mam had got on.
His thoughts drifted back over other girlfriends he had brought home. Mam never approved of any of them. In a rare flash of honesty he knew that she had firmly discouraged them. It was Jennie who had fought against his mother’s determination to keep her away from him, and he had been flattered at the way she had fought for him. Even when they were married, Mam was always reminding him that nothing was for ever, that divorce was always an option and no longer considered as shaming as it had once been. She had warned him not to have children, too. Perhaps she had thought the arrival of a child would make the marriage more permanent, less easy to dissolve? Had Jennie been right? Had his mother been constantly undermining their marriage? Nonsense. She just wanted him to be happy.
Jennie hadn’t wanted children, this was the one subject about which Jennie and his mother didn’t argue. Mam always insisted that for them to have a child would have been a mistake. For the first time, he wondered why.
Edward and Megan Jenkins loved their daughter Rosemary but since their wedding, Edward was a little worried. The baby’s father was his cousin, Terrence and although Terrence had shown no interest in the child, Edward was well aware that should he want to, Terrence could make life difficult for them.
“Megan, how do you feel about my adopting our daughter?” he asked one evening as they were settling the nine-month-old into her cot. “That sounds ridiculous, but she is ours and I love her dearly. I just think that if I formally adopted her, there wouldn’t be any problems to rise up and bother us in the future. What do you think?”
“I want her to be ours, legally ours, Edward. I’ll start making enquiries tomorrow.”
“Should we write to Terrence and tell him what we plan to do?”
“Better to leave him out of it until we know the facts and are ready to start proceedings,” she replied. “I doubt he’ll be bothered, but he might try and make some money out of it, don’t you think?”
“Make us pay to stop him formally protesting you mean?’’
“He’s always broke and he’s quite capable of it, isn’t he?”
“Yes, you’re right. We’ll make enquiries and say nothing.”
In the large kitchen of Montague Court, Edward’s sister Margaret was browsing through an old newspaper, before wrapping up vegetable peelings in it and putting them in the waste bin. Her eye caught a picture of her brother. It was an account of the wedding of Edward to Megan and, as she read it, she felt unreasonably angry. Because Edward had refused to stay at Montague Court and help her build it up into a prestigious hotel and restaurant, she had lost it. Now he was successful in his small-minded way and she was working in a menial job in the place around which she had spun her dreams.
For a while she had accepted her situation but, seeing Edward’s smiling face looking out of the local newspaper, reminded her of all she had lost. She sat there for a long time, thinking of her brother and his wife, Megan, one of the once high and mighty Weston family, and their daughter, Rosemary.
Rosemary was not Edward’s child she thought with some relish. Perhaps a word to her cousin Terrence might be interesting. Complacency was always Edward’s failing. He let things happen and didn’t worry too much about what the future might hold, only about the immediate situation. She very much doubted whether Edward had contacted Terrence to ask if he wanted any part in baby Rosemary’s upbringing. With time on her hands, bitterness in her heart, Margaret started to write a letter. Money. That was always the best way of persuading cousin Terrence to do something. Money was something of which Terrence could never have too much.
“Darling,” she said, when Islwyn came in with some freshly laundered bedding. “I’ve decided to write to my cousin Terrence.”
“Why bother?” Islwyn replied. “He’ll be here looking for money before the ink’s dry!”
“I might have a way for him to earn some,” she said, gathering him into her arms.
Basil and Eleri were worried about their housing situation. Every day, Eleri went to various estate agents and looked at every flat they had on their books. She also toured the shops, looking for notices of places to rent and looked at any she saw advertised. The results so far had been disappointing. They simply couldn’t afford anything decent.
Basil asked everyone he knew and investigated every avenue without success.
As she often did, Eleri went to talk to Dora, of whom she was very fond.
“We could put a notice in the café for you.” Dora suggested. “But wouldn’t it be better and simpler just to pay the extra rent and stay put? It’s so costly to move, even from rooms. Nothing fits and you get rid of things you’d rather keep and buy stuff you like less. And there are the boys. They might not be as happy as they are now, close to the shops and the park you are, and not far from the school.”
“I’d have to work.”
“Yes, and pay for someone to mind the boys. I’d look after them for you, you know that, but with the café, there’s only the evenings.”
“I’ve thought of everything and there doesn’t seem to be a solution,” Eleri sighed.
Dora’s blue eyes were bright and thoughtful for a long time after Eleri had gone.
Lewis came into the café soon after Eleri had left with her two boys. Sorry to have missed them, he abandoned thought of a cup of tea and went straight out again, hoping to offer the little family a lift home. Instead he saw Mrs Glory Collins getting off a bus, struggling with a large parcel. He stopped and invited her to get into the car.
“It’s some sewing I’ve done for Mrs Adams,” she explained as Lewis took the heavy parcel from her. “Curtains that needed lining. Sam – Mr Lilly – offered to come down and fetch them but I thought I could manage. Glad to meet you I was, believe me.”
“Why do women have to try and be independent?” Lewis smiled. “You can talk of equality all you like but we’re built differently for different tasks. Right?”
“Leave the heavy stuff for the men, is that it?”
“Why not?”
He waited while she went into the house on Chestnut Road, the house where he had lived so happily with Nia Martin before her death. He had accepted the loss of his love and knew he was happier than he deserved to be with his wife. Dora loved him and had been able, eventually, to forgive him for his long-standing relationship with Nia. But there were moments when he longed to see Nia’s gentle, smiling face, hear her softly spoken voice telling of her love for him.
He was quiet on the way back to Goldings Street and Mrs Collins looked at him aware of his good looks: black hair, slim moustache, slightly tanned smooth skin and those devastatingly appealing eyes. He was always neatly dressed; shoes shining, dazzlingly white shirt, well-pressed suit with just a line of a handkerchief showing in a top pocket. She wondered whether he was true to Dora now, or whether those attractive features had led him into further liaisons. Knowing Dora, she hoped not.
There was another woman filling Lewis’s thoughts, but Nia was dead and he couldn’t imagine loving anyone else as he had loved her. Pulling his mind back from melancholy, he stopped at a florist and bought flowers for Dora, and a smaller bunch for a delighted Mrs Collins.
Mrs Dreese quite enjoyed working for Gladys and Arfon Weston. Gladys’s imagined importance amused her and she flattered the old woman and pretended to admire her in a way that delighted Gladys. There was no malice in Mrs Dreese’s actions, she just liked pleasing her employer. It amused her to see Gladys’s behaviour, the way she scored points over her friends, her pretence that she was from a grander background than she could truthfully lay claim to.
Before her husband’s troubles had taken everything from them, Mrs Dreese had owned a larger house than Gladys’s and had employed several people to help, including a full-time housekeeper and a gardener. About this she had said nothing.
After all, it was the present that counted and, apart from the few pieces of furniture she managed to cram into her and Carl’s rooms, she owned next to nothing.
She was aware that one of the things that gave Gladys pleasure was the fact that she was well spoken and well mannered. She knew that when she went through the wide, hall with its oak panelled walls to answer a knock at the door, Gladys would sometimes stand listening while she asked the visitor’s name and business before showing them into the hall and asking them to wait while she enquired.
One morning, Gladys’s curiosity got the better of her and she asked her tall, elegant ‘servant’, to join her for her morning coffee.
“How long have you been a widow, Mrs Dreese?”
“Not long. My husband died of a heart attack when my son, Carl, was twenty-two. He was a clever boy, but all hope of college was abandoned when we realised how little money we had.”
“How sad,” Gladys commiserated. “He does some carpet-fitting for my husband’s business, doesn’t he? Doesn’t mix socially much, I gather, apart from some fishing with my grandson, Jack. Jack was brilliant you know, but he was determined to be a teacher. He had a call, you see. He could have done anything he wanted, but it was as a teacher that he was called.”
“How wonderful,” Mrs Dreese said. “To give up on a great career because he was called to help in the local school.”
“Of course your son is rather fond of Constable Gregory’s daughter, Mair, isn’t he?” Gladys whispered conspiratorially. “Poor Mair. She worked for me for a while you know, but she wasn’t trained.”
“I wouldn’t know about his social life. I don’t interfere,” Mrs Dreese replied evasively.
“Your husband was in business, was he?”
The firm and very emphatic “Yes,” with no further supplements, made Gladys realise she had asked too many questions, too soon. Perhaps she would go and see Joan and Viv to find out more. Carl did carpet-fitting for them from time to time and they might have learnt something about the man. “Time we were getting on, I think,” she said, dismissively, as though it had been she who had ended the conversation. Mrs Dreese smiled, gathered the cups and returned to the kitchen.
When she went home, Mrs Dreese knocked on the door of her son’s room before entering her own. Carl answered and rather ungraciously invited her inside.
“There’s still gossip about you and this Mair Gregory,” she said at once. “You have to be more careful. You don’t want to face defending yourself in a paternity order. Or worse still, get married.”
“There’s no chance of either of those things happening. I have been careful. No one has seen me with Mair except in very public places. Anyway, it’s not your concern. I’m twenty-eight years old, for heaven’s sake!”
“Of course it’s my concern! You have a debt of honour to repay. You promised. You can’t forget it and play around dangerously like this. You’ve taken her out, you can’t deny that. Spent money on her, money we can’t afford to spend.” She sat down on the edge of the couch that was also his bed, drooped a little and went on, “Don’t give up, Carl, please don’t give up on your promises.”
“Don’t give up? Giving up is all I ever do! And all in the name of my dear departed father! He let me down! I had to give up on college, give up on girlfriends, give up all thought of doing something for myself! Why should I carry on? He’s dead! Nothing I give up will change that!”
“He was a good man,” she said softly.
“A foolish one! And I’m wasting my life because of his foolishness! He ran his business into the ground, giving to people he thought were in need. Gullible to every pleading face, that’s the truth of it, isn’t it, Mam?”
“No. He was trusting. Too trusting. I’ll admit he was too trusting. But foolish? No. How can you say such a thing?”
Instead of answering, Carl grabbed his coat from the back of a chair and left her. Standing in his room, staring at the swinging door which led into the narrow, stale-smelling hall, she looked less confident, even a little afraid.
Her own rooms were larger than those of her son. From her sitting-room, french windows opened onto a rather bedraggled garden which gave her a sense of greater space and freedom. She went in, pulled back the heavy maroon velvet curtains, and opened them, then held the kitchen door ajar with a pair of boots Carl had given her for the purpose. The breeze was refreshing. Staring out into the bright garden, her dejected mood making her aware of the untidiness, rather than of the beauty of the fresh green of the trees and the cheerfulness of the flowering shrubs. She wondered how much longer she could persuade her son to carry on.
Carl came back after an hour and knocked on the door of her room. She raised her arms and they hugged in silence.
“Let me have a look through father’s papers,” he said as he sat on the board which covered the bath in the kitchen. “If I had some idea of how much we still need, I might be encouraged.” Mrs Dreese shook her head. “No, Carl, my dear. I don’t want to take them out of the box. I want to leave them just as your father placed them there when he entrusted me with all this. You know the full amount, fifteen thousand pounds, and I won’t open the papers until we’re almost there.” She opened her purse and showed him a couple of five pound notes. “This is what I’m contributing this month. Not bad, eh?” She put it inside a teapot on a high shelf.
He hugged her again and handed her a ten shilling note. “Mam, I’m sorry. Take this and treat yourself to an evening at the pictures. I was going to join Viv Lewis and Jack Weston for a pint. Better you have a night out instead. You’re working so hard. You make me ashamed for losing heart sometimes like I do.”
Sally went back to Glebe Lane one afternoon, rushing because she was late, thinking ahead of the meal she had to prepare. She had been up to Rose Tree Café to see her sister and had stayed too long. Now she was carrying the new potatoes she had extravagantly bought, which she was intending to serve with poached salmon and salad. It had been the ease of the simple meal that had encouraged her to take an hour off. An hour that had extended into two, and now she was late. New potatoes took forever to scrape.
She unlocked the front door and stepped inside. There was an hour before any of her guests were due. She didn’t encourage them to return before six o’clock. That gave her plenty of time to prepare the meal and gave them time to change.
Some of them bought wine, a growing habit, she understood, and one which restaurants were beginning to take seriously. She kept each bottle in her larder clearly labelled with the owner’s name and brought it to their table each evening. Her shopping bag contained a bottle of wine she had bought as a spare. It might be worth offering a glass and making an extra profit, so long as no one reported her for selling without a licence, she thought with a surge of guilt.
The girl she had recently engaged to help with the cleaning had gone and she was pleased with the clean, lavender smell of furniture polish that met her as she went inside. She was humming as she dropped her shopping bag in the hall and began taking off her coat. Then a sound in the kitchen startled her, her first thought was that Ryan had come back.
“Hello, Mrs Fowler-Weston, I thought I’d make a start on the dinner as you were a bit late back.”
“Mr Powell! What are you doing here? I have repeatedly explained that my kitchen is out of bounds.” Startled, she sounded more upset than she would normally have been. The guests did sometimes return early, but they always went straight to their rooms.
“Maxie, call me Maxie,” he said as if there had been no reaction to his interference. “I’ve cooked potatoes and opened a tin of meat so we can have a cottage pie,” he said smiling as he helped to hang up her coat. “Vegetables will have to be carrots and swede, they won’t mind missing greens for once. Feed us well you do, Mrs Fowler-Weston.”
Sally stared at him. “Mr Powell, I do not need your help in dealing with the running of this place. I have dinner arranged. Will you please leave my kitchen!”
As she spoke she was planning how she would tell him to leave and not come back. She would do it this very evening, once she had sorted out the meal for the others. She couldn’t have this. She had to be strong. Oh, how she wished Ryan were here, or even Megan. Someone to stand with her when she told this amiable but unwanted man to go. Maxie Powell didn’t make her nervous, like others had done, but she couldn’t cope with someone interfering and using her kitchen as though it were his own. It just wouldn’t do.
When she went into the kitchen she saw that the pie had been made, neatly marked with a fork and decorated in attractive swirls on the creamy potatoes, and was ready to go into the oven. Carrots had been carefully sliced into even sticks and swede was already on the cooker top waiting to be boiled.
A tray had been set with a cup and saucer and a plate of biscuits. He turned away from her and poured boiling water into the teapot and said, “There, you sit down and drink this, I’ll go and pick a stalk or two of parsley to decorate the pie, shall I?” She might not have spoken for all the notice he had taken.
Unable to decide on the best action, she allowed the meal to pass without saying anything to Maxie or even glancing in his direction. When the others guests praised her for the delicious food, only then she did look at him. But like the others, he was looking at her and joining in the comments on her excellent cooking. It was bizarre to say the least.
“Freshly poached salmon and new potatoes, tomorrow,” she said weakly.
She was washing up when he came into the kitchen and this time she was going to make sure he understood.
“Mr Powell. I appreciate your concern when you thought I was too late back to prepare dinner, but I do not want you to come into the kitchen again. Ever. Do you understand? If you do, I will ask you to leave and not come back.”
If she expected him to be subdued by her words she was wrong. He smiled widely and opened his arms.
“Don’t fight it, dear lady,” he said, and she stepped back as though stung. “I know that what has happened between us is sudden and hard to believe. But I knew the moment I saw you that we were meant to be together. You need a man here and, with your husband gone—”
She slapped his face so hard her hand hurt. “Please leave. Now, this minute!”
“I’ve spoken too soon, have I?” he said, rubbing his face ruefully. “Proud woman that you are.”
At the back gate, Ryan watched the scene in the kitchen and at once ran up the path and burst into the house.
“What’s going on?” he demanded.
“Nothing I can’t handle,” Sally said. “Will you both leave at once.”
Ryan looked at Maxie, who was still rubbing his cheek.
“I thought she and I were friends, that’s all,” Maxie said. “I’ve helped cook the dinner and done everything I can, and now she’s telling me to go,” Maxie spoke as though in shock.
To Sally’s increasing alarm, Ryan took Maxie’s part.
“You should be ashamed. Taking advantage of the man who pays to be here. If you can’t manage this stupid idea of yours of running a lodging house, then admit it and give it up.”
“Guesthouse,” Sally protested in a whisper. “And I can manage.” Leaving the two men commiserating with each other on the unfairness of it all, Sally ran to her room and locked herself in.
Maxie left after breakfast but on the following Friday when he was next due to stay with her, he came back as though nothing had happened.
Frank was surprised at the change in Mair’s attitude to him. Instead of telling him to get lost whenever he invited her out, she actually instigated some of their meetings. Besides visits to the pictures, which he didn’t really enjoy, the seats being very uncomfortable for his long frame, there were walks during which they stood and kissed and suppers at her home where her father was sometimes present and sometimes not.
Mair became a regular visitor at the Griffiths’s untidy cottage, calling in after the sports shop closed, certain of a meal and a pleasant evening. Gradually, the idea of being married to Frank and being a part of this unconventional family was no longer a thought to be dreaded. She sometimes wondered, when she saw Janet looking at her when Janet thought she was unaware, if Frank’s mother had guessed the situation and knew the reason for her sudden interest in her son. Perhaps, one day, she’d admit it, but not yet. She had to show Janet and Hywel that, if she married their son, she would be a good wife and a loyal one. Only then could she contemplate admitting how she had used him.
Rhiannon also wondered about Mair’s change of heart and as she thought of the interest Mair had shown in her plans for the new baby, she was suspicious of the girl’s motives.
Frank talked to his brother about it one morning. He met Basil as he walked towards the factory where he and their brother Ernie now worked.
“D’you think there’s a chance she’ll marry me? I don’t have anything saved, or a job, but if I thought there was a chance I’d look for work and even promise her dad I’d give up fighting and poaching.”
“Duw, there’s love for you!” Basil teased. “You’d get a job?”
Ignoring the jibe, unable to see the funny side of his situation, Frank went on, “Has she just turned to me because she misses Carl? Viv said something about marrying on the rebound. Is that all it is?”
“If it is, then I’d work fast, Frank. Ask her before she either goes back to Carl or finds someone else to grieve with.”
“I’ll go and see her when she closes the shop for lunch talk to her and ask her how she feels about me.”
“You’re sure, are you? There’s more to marriage than savings and a job, mind. Take this problem we have with the flat. I think we’ll be evicted before the summer’s over. I have to deal with it, find a place that’s comfortable and that we can afford. Would you be able to sort out problems like that? You can’t take on a wife and not be prepared to look after her proper.”
“I don’t expect where to live would be a problem, she’d want to stay and look after her father, wouldn’t she? That cottage belongs to him. We’d be all right there.”
“You sleeping in the same house as a policeman? You’d never feel safe enough to close your eyes!”
“Oh, I would,” Frank said with a sideways grin. “Already tried it, haven’t I?” He left Basil at the plastics factory gates staring at him in surprise, and walked back the way they had come. He wouldn’t wait for the shop to close for lunch, he’d go and see Mair now, this minute.
Sam Lilly was another man with marriage on his mind. They hadn’t known each other long, but he wanted to take care of Glory, give her some of the ordinary treats that her life had sadly lacked. Since the accident on the way back from Tenby he had been afraid to invite her to go for a drive, although, when she referred to the incident she never suggested that any of the fault was his. If she knew about his poor eyesight, that was never mentioned either.
When she turned up for work one morning and told him that Jack had offered to teach her to drive, he was delighted. If he ever felt he was no longer able to drive his car, then Glory would be able to take on that task for him. He offered her the use of his car, but declined to give her lessons himself.
“I don’t think I’d be such a good teacher as Jack,” he admitted. “I once tried to teach my sister and we didn’t speak to each other for a month!”
It was only much later that he felt the beginnings of doubt. What was he doing? Training Glory to be his slave? He hadn’t thought about how she would feel, acting as his eyes, and perhaps giving up all thought of her own needs and desires to look after him. He felt ashamed. How could he be so selfish?
For the next few weeks he was out when she arrived for work, although she noticed he had attended to many of the tasks he habitually dealt with. There was no word and he never called to see her and check on the lovely garden he had given her and in which he took such a pride and pleasure.
They met once in the High Street, when she was looking for some material to make dresses for her daughters, Elisabeth and Margaret. Caroline Martin, Barry’s wife was serving her with buttons and cotton when Sam walked in with his sister. He greeted her with obvious pleasure and, at his invitation, the three of them went to the Bluebird Café for a cup of tea and some cakes.
The talk was trivial: Glory and Martha discussed the material she had bought and the style of dresses she would make and Sam sat for the most part in silence, watching her and obviously pleased to be there.
“How are you getting on with your driving?” he asked as they prepared to part outside the café.
“Very well,” she replied. “I enjoy it more than I’d imagined.”
“Use the car whenever you need to practice,” he said again. “If anyone would like to give you an hour or so.”
She was aware of him standing watching as she walked away and turned for a final wave. She wondered why he had suddenly begun to avoid her when he still enjoyed her company and cared about what she did. Was he afraid she had begun to think about marriage? ‘Be wery careful o’ vidders all your life’, Dickens’s Sam Weller had warned, she remembered with a frown. Perhaps she had better look for another house to clean and leave Sam Lilly well alone. The thought was inordinately sad.
That she had made the right decision seemed to be confirmed when she told Mrs Adams the following week that she no longer wanted to work for her.
“I thought you’d be off as soon as you knew,” Martha said and Glory was startled by her bitterness.
“Know what?” she asked. “I’ve simply decided to look for something closer to home, somewhere I can walk to where I don’t have to catch a bus.”
“You don’t convince me. You can’t face it, can you?”
Puzzled, Glory went to see her son-in-law and asked him what Mrs Adams had meant.
The following day Jack called at Goldings Street and told her that Sam’s sight was failing and that within a couple of years there was a chance he’d be registered as blind.
“Why didn’t he tell me? Why didn’t he trust me?” she said, hurt more than dismayed by the revelation.
“Give him a chance to tell you. He might just need more time.”
“I’ve told Martha I won’t be going there any more.”
“Go back and talk to her, tell her how you feel, tell her you’ve changed your mind. Women do, all the time.” He smiled, and led her out to his car and gave her a lift back up to Chestnut Road.
It was Sam who answered and invited them in. Jack left the room and closed the door as she said, “Sam? Are you avoiding me?” There was a pause, then she went on, “You are, and I find it very hurtful. Is it because you can’t talk about your sight problem? A problem that hasn’t even begun?” Another pause, then, “That accident was not your fault, Sam. You can see perfectly well or you wouldn’t consider getting into a car and driving. You’re thinking too far ahead. Any changes in the future can be dealt with as they arise.”
Jack was shamelessly listening at the door and he smiled as he heard his mother-in-law’s gentle laughter after listening to Sam’s response.