Lillian Evans knew she was slow. She had heard people say it often enough but she couldn’t understand how the word related to her. She knew she wasn’t fast. Everything she did took a long time, but she always finished what she began, and what was so terrible about taking a long time? So why did people shake their heads and sigh and say she was “slow, poor dab”, as if being slow was some awful disease?
And why didn’t anyone stop and talk to her? A nod was the most she ever had. Old Ebenezer Daniels was slow, he walked with two sticks and took forever to cross the road, but people stopped and talked to him. So why didn’t they ever talk to her?
It was the day after Brian’s funeral and she was walking along the bank of the river towards town. In her hand was a florin, worth two shillings and something she had to hold very tight, her mother told her. A florin was enough to buy potatoes and cabbage for a week and too much to lose.
Bertha had sent her to buy the week’s sugar ration in advance of Friday, making her chant the message, repeating it until Lillian was word perfect. “Mammy says, can we have a bit of sugar, from Friday’s ration, for to make a bit of cake.” she muttered, her lips moving exaggeratedly as she concentrated on the words.
She stopped and looked down into the water, sluggish now, as the tide, flowing in a few miles away, held it back. Catching sight of some small, brown, speckled fish, she knelt down to look at them. Fascinated and with her errand forgotten, she stretched out on the fresh grass and gazed with admiration at their movements as, to her contented eye, they seemed just to enjoy themselves in the warm, shallow water near the bank.
When she eventually walked on, her dress spotted with mud from the water’s edge, she left the florin in the grass. She was frowning as she went into the grocer’s shop and the frown deepened as she waited amid the other shoppers for her turn to be served.
“I want some off Friday’s ration.” she said, stuttering in her anxiety. “Mammy says – can she have – for Friday.”
“What is it she wants? Can you remember?” Betty Beynon asked, a slight edge of irritability in her voice.
“I think it was cake.” Lillian frowned.
“Cake isn’t on ration!” Betty tutted. Other shoppers laughed, good-naturedly, but it was enough to throw Lillian into complete panic.
“It was for tea,” she said, meaning the cake her mother was making was for their tea.
“A packet of tea? Right then, here you are, I’ll put it on her bill but you’ll have to tell her shes started on next week’s tea ration with this mind! There’s none left for Friday.” Pushing a bag containing the silver-foil packet into Lillian’s hands, she noted the purchase in her book and turned to the next customer.
Bertha was angry when Lillian returned with tea instead of sugar and without the change from the two shilling piece. When the girl admitted she had lost it, she punished her.
“For being so careless you won’t feed the hens tonight.” she said. “You’ve got to learn, Lillian. If you do what you’re asked straight away you manage fine. It’s when you dawdle you get forgetful. If only you’ll learn not to linger and daydream, you wouldn’t lose the money or forget messages.”
Tearfully, Lillian went to her room and gave a tea party for her dolls. If only her father would come home. She just knew everything would be all right if only he’d come back. He’d talk to her, she was sure of that. Perhaps tomorrow he’d come. She looked out of her window and saw her mother walking down with the bucket of mash for the hens and wished she could feed them. It was one of her favourite tasks.
Harriet was unnerved by the presence of Eric. She had expected him to be apologetic and after his first regrets he was not. She had presumed he would creep around the house trying not to intrude too greatly into her life but he walked around the house that had been his home with as much ease as she herself did. She behaved in a haughty manner but he seemed not to notice and when he spoke to her to ask for yet another favour there was not the slightest hint of humility.
Mill House, being large, had been easily separated into “hers” and “theirs” and apart from the kitchen, which they used by rota, they hardly needed to cross paths. The hall was the dividing line, rooms on the town side were for Eric and his “waifs and strays”, as Harriet referred to them, the rest for herself, Peter and Charlotte. There was even a spare room, which Harriet insisted Eric’s brood did not invade.
“It’s as if I’m a landlady with paying guests,” she said to Kath one morning when they sat in Vi and Willie’s café. “He doesn’t consider himself a part of our family, yet he treats me like a wife in some ways.”
“Not in that way?” Kath queried with a grin.
“Indeed not!” Harriet was outraged. “Not that he hasn’t tried, mind,” she lied. “I’ve had to make it quite clear on several occasions that there was no return to that sort of relationship! Good heavens, the nerve of the man!”
The truth was that Eric had treated her with kindness and utter politeness, nothing more. And although she knew that after his cruel treatment of her she couldn’t ever allow him back into her life to that extent, there was an insult implied in his lack of trying.
She had been startled by her reaction to his presence in the house. In spite of all the hurt she still loved him. She waited for some overture to a new beginning but there was none. Brushing past him in the kitchen when he helped Miranda prepare food, she expected a touch, or a look of returning interest, but he was never more than polite and friendly. Seeing him playing with the children in the garden made her ache with regret and a loneliness she thought time had healed.
She had been so desperate to forget the ending of their plans for a large family. A frantic social life seemed the only way to drown out the heartbreak and the emptiness of the house on the hill. She had been unaware she had ignored the children; she had grieved for those she would never see. She was unaware, too, of Eric’s equally painful grief, his need to stand still, resign himself to his loss. In her unhappy mind she was the only sufferer.
Now he was back and she grieved anew, for the babies they had longed for, and for Eric himself. She waited for a sign that one day they might return to what had been for her a happy marriage. The nights were the worst. When she lay awake thinking about the peculiar situation, she had longings that alarmed her. How could her body he so treacherous? She fought off the yearning for a while but gradually succumbed to wallowing in them. She thought about the feel of his cheek, the way he used to kiss her. She pictured him in his pyjama bottoms – he never wore the top – sleeping so near to her. She wanted him, and wondered if he were thinking about her.
The erotic thoughts tormented her. Because of her longings, she was sharper and more unkind to him during the day.
Two weeks after Rhoda’s miscarriage. Joe and Charlotte spent an afternoon with her trying to sort out how best to deal with the business. They met at Mill House, Harriet criticized everything Joe said; Peter offered advice and Rhoda cried… Charlotte felt exhausted. They all quickly realised that whatever state the business was in, Rhoda was unable to cope without a great deal of help. The manager Brian had employed since the end of the war had made it clear he was unwilling to take on more responsibility.
“Sack him.” was Peter’s advice. “Sack the man and find someone better. You have to have staff you can rely on.”
“I agree,” Joe said, which made Harriet disagree. They discussed the possibilities and Joe was asked by Rhoda and Peter to go and see Brian’s accountant the following morning.
When he reported back it was with the news that the business was on the brink of insolvency.
“What d’you mean?” Harriet demanded. “I knew we shouldn’t have sent you! What d’you know about high class trade? Brian was about to open a second shop. How can the business be in difficulties!”
“What he hadn’t told you,” Joe explained patiently, “was that the accountant advised against a second shop. He wanted Brian to wait at least another year before committing so much of his capital to this venture. He recommended that Brian bought another shop, a smaller, cheaper shop, but in place of the large one, not in addition to it. He saw it as an attempt to cut costs and keep the business afloat. He was strongly against Brian borrowing money he couldn’t afford to involve himself in grandiose schemes.”
“Let me see the figures again,” Peter asked, and Joe handed him the papers given to him by the accountant.
“Talking rubbish, isn’t he?” Harriet said, but her voice held less conviction.
“What do you think Rhoda should do, Joe?” Peter asked.
“Sell. The longer she leaves it the less she’ll come out with. Debts multiply in a frightening way. If she could get a buyer now, this month, there might be something left, but she won’t be able to save the house.”
“What d’you mean, save the house?” Charlotte asked in alarm. “Surely Rhoda’s home is secure?”
“It was, until last year. Brian took out a second mortgage then, and I doubt if the sale of the shop will repay the business debts and allow her to continue to live there.”
“The normal precautions would have prevented it being sold to pay the creditors of the shop but, unfortunately, Brian didn’t make them.” Peter said, sadly.
“What will I do?” Rhoda whispered.
“We’ll sort something out, won’t we, Joe?” Charlotte said. For once her mother didn’t protest at Joe’s proposed intervention.
Rhoda went home and Charlotte helped her mother wash the dishes, and leave the kitchen tidy for Miranda to deal with her family’s needs. Peter and Joe discussed how to proceed to sort out the mess Brian had left. Charlotte saw the raw anguish on her mother’s face when laughter was heard coming from the kitchen, where her father’s “other family” were enjoying their meal. She felt a surge of aching sympathy for her.
“Why don’t you go and help them, Mam?” she suggested, guessing from her mother’s expression that she would love to become involved.
“Don’t be ridiculous, Charlotte. Your father’s illegitimate children are nothing to do with me.”
“Don’t call them that, Mam. They might hear you.”
“That’s what they are. And I think I’ve done more than most, allowing them to live here. Help them indeed!”
“I just thought—”
“Then don’t think!”
When Harriet and Peter settled down to listen to the radio, hoping to be distracted from their worries, Charlotte and Joe went for a walk.
It had clouded over during the afternoon and by nine o’clock the sky had lowered and a chill, damp air filled the quiet streets. They walked through the town, wandering without purpose until they found themselves heading downstream almost level with Rhoda’s large house with its gardens stretching to the river bank.
“Shall we go and see if she’s all right?” Joe said. Charlotte hesitated, she had really had enough of her sister for one day. Sensing her reluctance, Joe smiled and said. “No, let’s forget Rhoda and her problems for a while and sit in the cricket pavilion instead. It’s ages since you and I had a proper cuddle!” Laughing, he led her to the sports field alongside the school and there, in the dark of the abandoned building, with its smell of dust and rubber “daps” – the local name for plimsoles – and amid the discarded oddments of school children, they put their arms around each other and kissed, and held each other tight.
Charlotte enjoyed the closeness, was excited by his kisses and wondered if, perhaps, there was a hope of a future together after all. But they didn’t discuss marriage. Charlotte was thinking about her parents. Joe was thinking of Rhoda.
Joe walked Charlotte home after she had combed her hair and replenished her lipstick.
“The Dragon will still know what we’ve been doing,” he teased. “The eyes give it away, my pretty.”
He didn’t go in with her, he just stood at the gate while she walked down the drive and slipped in through the door with a final blown kiss. Walking back down the hill and over the road bridge, he was about to turn left and head for his Auntie Bessie’s cottage, but decided to check once more on Rhoda. She had been dealt another devastating blow, learning of the instability of Brian’s business, the likelihood of losing her home.
The death of her husband – for which she still blamed herself – losing her child and now this. For someone strong it would be hard but for someone like Rhoda, who had leaned so much on Brian, it was even more so. Some people seemed to have an inner reservoir of strength, but not Rhoda. She needed help, she wanted someone strong beside her. He warmed towards the unhappy widow. He loved Charlotte but could see how Rhoda’s helplessness would flatter a man.
Perhaps she’d be glad of a chat. It was half past ten, but he knew she was awake by the lights illuminating the house.
There was no response to his knock and gradually he became alarmed. He couldn’t explain it later, but he just knew something was wrong. Without wasting time trying to find the police constable, he banged loudly for a minute then smashed a window and climbed inside, calling her name, reassuring her it was “– only Joe, come to see you’re all right”.
Lights were blazing everywhere it was as if she were expecting visitors to arrive any moment, waiting for friends to burst in with laughter, chatter and loud music to chase away the shadows. But the silence was absolute, no sounds apart from those made by himself, each step, each breath, loud and intrusive.
He pushed each door wide and finding no one in any of the downstairs rooms, ran up the stairs. The bedrooms were lit, bulbs sparkling from ceilings and from table lamps, repeated in reflections from windows and mirrors, but there was no one there. The atmosphere was eerie. He was calling all the time but heard nothing but his own voice, hearing the panic, the breathlessness, as if it were that of a stranger.
He seemed to have been in the house for a long time but it could only have been a minute before he pushed at the bathroom door. There was no sound, and the door was locked. Without stopping to consider, he put all his weight behind it and snapped it open.
Rhoda was in the bath. The water was a sickening red.
He hauled her out, wrapped towels and Brian’s thick dressing gown around her and ran downstairs to the telephone in the hall. After phoning the doctor, he wrapped the wounds on her wrists tightly, hoped he was doing the right thing, promised himself he would join the Red Cross and learn for future incidents, and made her drink hot, sweet tea.
When she seemed safe to leave for a few moments, he telephoned Charlotte and, trying to keep his voice calm, told her what had happened.
“No, don’t come down,” he advised, when she said she was on her way. “I’ll go with her to the hospital. Don’t tell your parents until tomorrow, there’s no point in them being told now.”
“But what if she—” Charlotte couldn’t bring herself to say the word.
“I don’t think she will. But I’ll telephone you from the hospital.”
“Promise?”
“I promise. Now, rest if you can and I’ll talk to you as soon as the doctor’s seen her.”
Constable Hardy was Rhoda’s first visitor. He didn’t discuss her attempted suicide; that was for others to consider. Instead, he talked about Brian. Stories of when he and Brian were at school together, funny stories and embarrassing ones. He kept his tone light, making sure the conversation didn’t end in a maudlin display of sympathy. He wouldn’t allow her to change the subject, although she tried, guessing that she had not been allowed to mention Brian’s name in her mother’s presence, and in the weeks since his death she had seen almost no one else. He was upset when tears filled her eyes but didn’t try to discourage them.
He held her hand and when she had calmed down and was sleepy he stood to leave. “When you are recovered, we’ll go the the seaside for the day,” he said. “A few breaths of a sea breeze will be such a benefit.”
She nodded sleepily and smiled. “That would be nice, Ned.”
Yes, Ned Hardy thought as he left the hospital grounds, it would be nice. Very nice indeed.
Over the following weeks, Joe spent a lot of time with Rhoda. Besides helping Peter and the accountant to deal with the selling of the business, he often called and spent an hour with her in the late evening. Sometimes Ned Hardy was there and he didn’t stop more than a few minutes. Twice, when he was aware of the danger of another suicide attempt, he stayed for the whole night.
He was conscious of that fact that he had little time for Charlotte. Besides the time given to Rhoda, his own business affairs were taking a lot of his time. The sale of the bicycle shop was constantly being held up, by the purchaser of the shop delaying for one reason then another. The most recent problem was not the fault of the purchaser but a flood. Heavy rain plus a sudden and exceptionally high rise in the flood waters of the river, had reached the lane behind the premises, and the back wall of the shop had to be replastered.
He was cycling away from the factory one lunchtime, having talked to Jack Roberts about the need for someone to take over the day-to-day running of the business, when he saw Charlotte leaning over the gate of Mill House talking to a tall young man. From the way Charlotte was laughing, they seemed to be friends. The man was unknown to him. He saw he had a kitbag at his feet and he wondered what he could be doing wandering so far out of town on a road that led nowhere except for the hills, and the small bookbinding factory.
He stopped and watched them, and instead of calling and waving a greeting to Charlotte, he waited until the man had set off back down the hill and Charlotte had gone back inside Mill House.
When he knocked at the door a few moments later he waited for her to tell him who she had been talking to. When she did not, he was unwilling to ask. Their meeting, the first for a week, was strained and he went back and opened the bicycle shop, putting the kettle on for tea and refilling the heater that was drying out the walls; automatic tasks to mask his agitated state of mind. Seeing Charlotte with the stranger had left him feeling uneasy and more than a little frightened. So much was against him and his plans for the future.
Danny visited Eric and the children at Mill House but there was not room for him to stay. Harriet was adamant about the small spare room. He was glad. It wouldn’t be wise to spend a lot of time around Eric. He was still angry over the death of his young mother. In her short life she had produced seven children, been bombed out of one home and, due to the dishonesty of someone she believed to be her friend, had lost the house her husband had bought for her just before he was killed at Tobruk. Unreasonably, he blamed Eric for all her disasters and her death. Best he stayed away.
But he wanted to be close enough to see his sister and half-sisters and baby brother whenever he was home.
“Try Bertha Evans.” Willie Walters suggested. So he found accommodation with Bertha and her daughter Lillian, next door to Joe and his Auntie Bessie.
At once Lillian was fascinated by the tall, pleasant young man. He talked to her, listened to what she replied, never rushing her. He seemed unworried by her hesitant pronunciation of words and smiled encouragement as she struggled to complete a sentence. Usually she gave up, aware of the listener’s impatience. With Danny Saunders, her confidence grew.
When she made him laugh with one of her tales about her forgetfulness she thought she could never be happier. He would sit on the grass outside the cottage and blow smoke rings, and tell her she was “cute” and she adored him.
Joe saw them there one evening when he had finished work and stopped to speak to Danny, recognising him as the young man whom he had seen talking to Charlotte.
“Hello, you must be Joe the bicycle man,” Danny said, standing up and offering a hand. “I’m Danny, brother or half-brother to that brood of Eric’s.”
“Glad to meet you,” Joe said. “Staying at Mill House with the rest of them, are you? Bit of a crush, isn’t it? How many kids are there?”
“Seven of us altogether, including me and my sister Miranda, but no. I’m not stopping there with that mob, thank you very much! Got a room for my week’s leave with your neighbour, Bertha Evans and her lovely daughter here.” He winked at Lillian, who giggled, backed away, then turned and ran indoors.
The two young men chatted for a while, each sizing up the other. Joe wondered if the arrival of this personable young man would change things between him and Charlotte. He decided to spend less time with Rhoda and remind Charlotte that their wedding date had still to be confirmed. Too much time had been allowed to pass already and if he didn’t get things on a firm footing he could see her slipping away from him forever.
After he had eaten the meal of fish and boiled potatoes with parsley sauce his Auntie Bessie had ready for him, he changed and went to see Charlotte.
“She’s gone out,” a smug Harriet told him. “Out with a handsome sailor boy. She can do better than you, Joe Llewellyn, and best if you don’t bother her any more.”
The words burned into him but he refused to let Harriet see his emotion. He left a note inviting Charlotte to go with him to the pictures the following evening. He signed it, “Your loving Joe” and left it with Peter, to be sure she received it. With the Dragon he could never be sure.
Vi and Willie looked up when Harriet walked into the café. They looked around for Rhoda, who was recovered enough to meet her mother there sometimes. But to their surprise Harriet was followed in by three little girls.
“What’s this then?” Willie chuckled. “That Eric got you looking after his by-blows, has he?”
“Cheek of the man, isn’t it?” Vi added, with a shake of her head.
“Miranda had to take the baby to the clinic, and, as Eric is working, I said I’d bring them here for a drink of lemonade, but if you’re going to make personal remarks then I’ll take them elsewhere!” Harriet said sharply.
“Lemonade and a cup of tea coming up,” Willie said with mock humility.
“Coffee. I’ll have coffee.”
“Have them on me, God love ’em,” Willie said. “Earache, pass the lady a coffee and I’ll get the kids their pop!”
“I’ll give you Earache…” The couple went into their usual arguments but Harriet didn’t hear. She was busy taking the cruet and the sugar bowl away from Louise and trying to stop Petula from slipping off her chair.
This was the third time Eric had asked her to mind some of the children. She had agreed each time, tight-lipped and declaring it would be for the last time.
Joe met her coming out of the café, hat askew, make-up less than perfect and, heavens above, wearing stockings that had a great long ladder at the back.
“If she knew that, she’d be devastated,” he chuckled to Willie.
“Nothing like kids for sorting out the snobs, eh, Joe?”
Lillian began to feel confident for the first time in her life. It was almost a physical thing, growing and swelling inside her and threatening to burst as her happiness increased. She no longer thought Danny was being kind like Auntie Bessie Philpot and Joe; he really liked her. When he asked her to go for a walk down the river bank and into town to buy some fish and chips she put on her best hat, the one she only wore to church. It was made of green felt and had a brim that wavered a little with age and was decorated with flowers and ribbons which hung over the edge, half hiding her eyes. Danny laughed when he saw it.
“God ’elp, there’s daft you look in that! You aren’t daft, Lillian, far from it, so why let them scrag your hair back and dress you up in funny hats?” He picked it off her head and threw it in the river.
At first she was alarmed, imagining what her mother would say when she went home without it. Damn it all, she wouldn’t be allowed to feed the hens for a week! Then, as it floated slowly downriver like an abandoned bird’s nest, she joined in his laughter. Hands to her face, fingertips in her mouth she laughed until tears flowed.
Danny pulled gently at the alice band that held back her hair and pulled the long strands around her face. Then he smiled, and said, “Now that’s more like it. You don’t have to let them dress you as if you’re half-baked.”
They bought their fish and chips and decided to eat them out of the paper, something Bertha did not allow, down by the river. Although it was summer, the clouds were heavy over the hills, obliterating them in a grey shroud. The peculiar light and the humidity gave a hint of thunder. The first crack came at the same time as the rain began, quietly at first, then in a hissing curtain.
“I should have saved my hat!” Lillian wailed.
“Yes, it would have sheltered us both!” Danny tucked the newspaper-wrapped parcels in his coat and grabbed her arm, pulling her towards the back of the Main Street shops. The gate of Joe’s yard was open and they went in. The storage shed was padlocked but the back door of the shop only needed a push for them to get inside and shelter from the heavy downpour.
“We’ll get a terrible row for this,” Lillian said, but she was laughing.
When they had eaten their supper. Danny pulled out a cigarette packet and lit two Woodbines. He offered one to Lillian, and amid more merriment, she took her first puffs. Danny watched her innocent young face in the light of the small match-flame, shiny from the cold and the rain, but with eyes as large as a child’s at Christmas.
His evening had been well spent. The memory of the adventure would keep Lillian in happy dreams for weeks. The thunder rumbled around them for ten minutes, while Lillian puffed her way through the cigarette and asked for a second. As the rain slowed to a trickle, he stood to leave. Disappointedly, she stood beside him. Pulling the door shut he took her home.
Two hours later the rain had eased and Constable Hardy stepped out of his parents’ house, where he had sheltered during the worst of the storm. No one would know he hadn’t cycled around his route for a few hours, there wouldn’t be many bent on mischief on a night like this.
He saw the light flickering and at first thought it must be a bonfire. People were always burning rubbish in their back gardens, although after so much rain they hadn’t chosen a very good time.
He walked down the street, leaving his cycle against a lamppost, trying the doors, warning two young lovers that they ought to be home, and turned to walk back to his cycle along the back lane. Then he realised that the bonfire was in fact one of the shops on fire. He ran to his bicycle, and peddled as fast as he could to the phone box.
The fire engine arrived quickly but by then the interior of the shop was already well ablaze. Hoses sent streams of water glistening down the roofs of the adjoining properties as others flooded the inside of the shop.
When Joe arrived he saw that the plans to move into his and Charlotte’s “marble hall” had suffered another setback, one which might never be overcome.
It was five o’clock in the morning when, smoke-stained, red-eyed and weary he went to tell her.
“But it can’t be burnt!” she gasped. “Have you seen it? Are you sure it was your shop? Joe, how could it happen in the middle of the night? You say it was after six when you left there. No one else could possibly have got in and done this. Oh, Joe, what an awful thing to happen.”
“I won’t be able to move into our Marble Hall for months – if ever,” he said. “Charlotte, you will wait for me to get this sorted, won’t you?”
“Oh what a disaster.”
But the worst disaster was yet to come. Ned Hardy and an inspector asked Joe to explain how his shop, which he was desperately anxious to get rid of, had been set alight, and Joe realised they suspected him of arson.