Rhiannon had been so involved with arrangements to keep the household running when she started work, she hadn’t given much thought to actually working with Nia Martin. Fairness made her amend the words in her head as she reminded herself that Nia was only partly responsible for the breakup of her parent’s marriage. Dad could hardly have been forced into it.
Thoughts about it embarrassed her: she could hardly imagine her dad and another woman. She was irritated when an incipient blush warmed her face. If she were to colour up just thinking about them together, she wouldn’t last long working with Nia Martin at Temptations, would she? There would be comments and jokes to contend with, and she would have to watch her own tongue and avoid certain subjects. She began to have misgivings. Why had Mam agreed to taking her the job?
“Mam,” she said, when Dora came in from her collecting. “Are you sure you don’t mind me working with – you know who? I can tell her I’ve changed my mind if you like, get another job, something similar but not with her?
“You go, it doesn’t bother me. She’s welcome to your father if she wants him. I don’t! Carrying on with a woman like her. And it’s years, not a brief flighty fling, mind! When I think of them–” She stopped and hugged Rhiannon. “Sorry, love. I forgot who I was talking to. This is nothing for you to dwell on. Your dad’s left us and that’s all you need to remember. Manage fine we will. Your earning a bit of money and getting experience will help and, after a couple of weeks, you won’t have to see that Nia Martin, you can pretend she’s gone away.”
“She is going away. Barry said she was planning a long holiday.”
“I wonder if your dad’ll be carrying her bags!” Dora muttered.
“That isn’t likely, Mam. Living in a small room he is and hating it,” Rhiannon said softly. “Nowhere near – her.” Taking courage, she added, “He didn’t go to Nia Martin, Mam, he’s there in that awful room waiting for you to forgive him and take him back.” Seeing the anger flare in her mother’s piercing blue eyes, Rhiannon thought it politic to return to the cooking and she quickly left the room before her mother could reply.
As she mashed the boiled potatoes to make fish cakes, she decided she would have to divide her time and her loyalties like her father had done. At home she would support Mam. With dad she would be a comfort; at Temptations she would swiftly rebuff any attempt from customers to criticize Nia Martin. That her protection of Nia might gain admiration from Barry wasn’t part of the decision, she insisted to herself. It wasn’t. But it was exciting nevertheless to think about working side by side with him.
The hours spent working in Temptations and organising the running of the house quickly settled into a well-organised routine. After the first days, when Nia rarely appeared and Barry stood with her to guide her, Nia began to spend more time in the shop and, to Rhiannon’s relief, there was no embarrassment. Gertie Thomas went out disappointed when she asked Rhiannon how things were between herself and Lewis’s ‘fancy piece’. Rhiannon and Nia were soon sharing a smile each time some remark was made about the affair. Rhiannon coolly weighed Gertie’s sweets, cut out the coupons, remarked on the weather and pretended not to hear anything else.
“It’s happy working here,” Rhiannon told Nia at the end of her first week. “I think confectionery must be one of the most enjoyable businesses. Everyone goes out happy, don’t they?”
“Except Gertie Thomas who comes hoping to pick up some gossip to spread,” Nia chuckled. “She’s met her match though, with you and me!”
“I wouldn’t let your Joseph help here, mind,” Rhiannon laughed. “He’s a terrible tease and there’s no knowing what he’d tell her!”
Rhiannon continued to run the family home just as before. At first, Dora did a little more to help her daughter cope with the housework and cooking, but the insurance round involved hours of patient bookwork so her evenings were filled with keeping the ledgers up to date. As days passed, her involvement lessened until the many chores were once more Rhiannon’s responsibility. On her afternoon off, Dora wasn’t surprised when Rhiannon announced she would go for a walk. She had always enjoyed walking near the sea. Dora guessed that this time her daughter’s walk would take her to The Firs. She noticed with wry amusement the cottage pie hidden in the pantry, obviously intended as Rhiannon’s gift for her father.
Dora was philosophical about her children’s visits to Lewis. She had neither the inclination nor the right to expect them to turn away from a father they loved because of his dishonesty towards her and their marriage.
She missed Lewis and wished a solution could be found that would allow him to return. After all, his eye for women wasn’t something new. Even before they were married he had been tempted to roam. Her mother had warned her that although it was flattering to have a husband other woman admired, hers would never be a relaxed and easy life. Her mother had been right. She looked back over the years since she had known him and remembered just a few of the persistent women anxious to tempt him away from her.
Sadness took the sharpness from her face as she recalled those who had succeeded, albeit only temporarily, to make him forget his marriage vows and slip away from her. He always came back though, she had forgiven him, so why was this affair with Nia Martin so different? There was the horror that everyone had known, that people had been laughing at her, making snide remarks behind her back that really cut deep. Humiliation was a cruel thing to cope with, especially now, when, past forty, she felt less able to fight back.
Her eyes filled with sudden tears. Self-pity was not something she usually indulged in but today, with Lewis separated from her and her daughter creeping away to visit him so she wouldn’t be hurt, it was all too much. After all they had coped with together it was so stupid for it to end like this. She blinked back tears, the fierceness returning to her bright blue eyes as she took out the flour and suet and the pathetic remains of the small joint – which had only been a few small lamb chops to start with.
The suet from around the kidneys of the lamb had been an under-the-counter gift from the butcher and although she wasn’t much good at pastry, she had promised Rhiannon she would make a pie. She sighed. Everything ended up in a pie these days, it was the only way to make the ridiculously small ration of meat feed the family.
She caught sight of her reflection in the mirror. Red crinkly hair, pale complexion, blue wild-looking eyes and already a smear of flour across her cheek. She reached for her handbag and touched her face with rouge, replenished her dark red lipstick. No need to look like a washed out old women, even if she felt like one. She felt marginally better and gave a deep sigh. She had better get on with this pie and stop feeling sorry for herself if they were to have a hot meal. Perhaps she ought to do her best to make it appetising, she mused, a slice of it would probably be spirited away by Rhiannon to end up at The Firs.
As she slowly added cold water, she began to think about the time before she and Lewis were married. All the girls in school were in love with him. He could have taken his pick – and probably did, she thought with mixed pride and torment.
Only kids they were, the pair of them, but so much in love. Sex had soon been impossible to ignore and in the sweet, sun-bleached cornfields, snugly tucked into the side of a haystack they had made glorious love. No thought for the consequences, they had been aware only for their need for each other and the wonder of discovering such magical release from their strong and almost painful passions.
In her melancholy mood, Dora’s thoughts went back to the pregnancy. Like a kaleidoscope the memories flickered past: she had found out the facts from friends who had pooled their information like a team of international spies. She remembered her reluctance to tell Lewis for fear of losing him, the prayers that she was mistaken and it was all going to be all right. Telling Mam, then Dad. Accepting their abuse and their disappointment, weights that dragged her down. The doctor’s casual attitude to yet another child-mother. Then, last of all, telling Lewis. She had waited until she had been certain, then, with no further excuse to delay, had explained that she was going to have a child.
The imagined scene in which Lewis would hold her, tell her everything would be all right, that they would marry soon and bring up their child together, had been shattered with his first words.
“You’ll have to have it adopted.”
She had argued and pleaded but Lewis had been adamant. He was not going to start their life together with such a burden. Either she gave the baby away or they were finished, he had told her.
At the age of seventeen, she had been forced to chose between having her child and bringing it up alone, or marrying Lewis. She chose Lewis. Still, she was constantly, painfully aware that some where out in the world, perhaps as far away as America, perhaps as near as the next street, was a child she had given birth to, then abandoned.
Anger flooded through her. She hated him for what he had done. He had ruined her life. Thinking of the child he had made her give away always helped when she wanted to hate Lewis.
She rubbed the grated suet into the flour with clenching fists. There was too much hate in her for pastry making and she knew that the stodgy mess would result in a heavy and unattractive pie. For once, she didn’t care.
Rhiannon gathered up the small shepherd’s pie and walked along the main road, turning in to where The Firs stood in pale sunshine. The sun added a mellowness to other buildings in the row but it showed The Firs in all its shabbiness. Cracks in the rendering were sprouting greenery, the window sills were rotted and, in two places, hanging down drunkenly. The chimney was cracked and leaning at what appeared to Rhiannon to be a dangerous angle. She hoped her father would be out of there before the winter added to the strain of the walls to keep the place upright. She wouldn’t have been surprised to see the whole building collapse one day.
The Firs had been the victim of a bombing raid during the war and the houses to either side of it had been demolished completely. The remnants of the other buildings and the tangled evidence of once beautiful gardens, added to the look of desolation and made her sadness for her father’s plight increase with every step that took her closer to its doors.
Inside the building the cranky stairs seemed to tilt more than ever. She avoided holding the banister and touched the mildewed wall for confidence as she climbed to the top landing.
Her father’s door was open but the room was empty. She heard his laughter and glanced across the landing as the door of room number eight opened and Lewis came out followed by a pretty young woman of about thirty, carrying two or three neatly folded shirts. The woman blushed when she saw Rhiannon standing clutching the pie.
“Rhiannon! Lovely girl! What a lovely surprise.” Lewis hugged her, then introduced her to the woman. “Cathy’s husband’s working today, he’s a driver on the railway.” He lowered his voice conspiratorially, “So, while he’s out she took pity on me and has ironed a couple of shirts for me. Isn’t she a sweetie?”
“Lot of ol’ nonsense he’s talking,” Cathy laughed. “My husband is in by here reading the Sunday papers!”
“See you tomorrow, when your husband’s out then, is it?” Lewis said, unrepentant. “Knock four times, dot dash dot dash, we’ll have a nice cup of tea, just you and me – if I remember the milk!”
Rhiannon laughed as Cathy, blushing furiously, disappeared into her room. “Dad, you’re a terrible tease.”
“Go on, she loves it. A bit of flirting does wonders for a woman’s ego.”
“It doesn’t do much for Mam’s,” Rhiannon said quietly.
“Your mam never objected to my teasing other woman and doing a bit of flirting. But Nia Martin, she’s more than a bit of flirting, love. When you’re older you might understand.”
“You’re not saying you love her? How can you when you love Mam, and me, and Lewis-boy and Viv?”
“Nia has always been important to me.”
“But it’s over now, isn’t it? If it’s over then you’ll soon be coming home.”
“She’ll always be special. I can’t change that. You like her, do you?” he asked. “Find her easy to work with? She’s treating you well?”
“I’m happy working at Temptations, yes, but—”
“Let’s talk about it some other time, shall we love? Now,” he asked brightly, “what’s that you’re clutching in your clever little hands? A present for me, is it?” Rhiannon opened the paper and showed him the pie. “That looks delicious. Marvellous little cook you are, and you’ll make someone a wonderful wife one day.”
As soon as Rhiannon had left The Firs, and after waving goodbye from his window, high above the street, Lewis picked up the pie and knocked on the door of number eight. “What about warming this up for a late supper, Cathy? Plenty for two, there is.”
“Not three? Not a share for my mythical husband?” she laughed as she slipped into his arms.
Walking home, Rhiannon felt uneasy. She kept seeing the blushing face of the woman from the room across the landing. Cathy obviously found her father attractive even if she was married to a railwayman. It was strangely unnerving to realise that your father was attractive to women. It gave Rhiannon feelings of insecurity. Fathers should just be fathers, not handsome men who could make the eyes of other women glow like Cathy’s dark eyes had done, not make pretty women blush to his teasing. And not someone who loved his wife and loved Nia Martin at the same time and had caused them all this misery!
She walked home slowly, wanting to rid herself of her painful thoughts about her father before she faced her mother. It was almost as shocking a revelation as when she’d discovered that her parents did more than sleep when they got into their huge bed!
As she passed the silent sweet shop and opened the front door of number seven Sophie Street, she was still uncomfortable with the idea of her father’s blatant sexuality and wondered why she had never been aware of it before.
On the day the Westons left for their holiday in southern France, Viv Lewis unlocked the shop door of Weston’s Wallpaper and Paint filled with apprehension. The rest of the small staff were there waiting for him, to demonstrate that they were with him, willing to do everything they could to help. He thanked them for being early and went at once to the – to him – imposing office, usually occupied by Islwyn and Ryan, the sons-in-law of Arfon and Gladys Weston. The desk looked too large and he had an image of himself sitting there looking like a small child, peering over the highly polished surface. When he actually sat in the chair he didn’t feel small; it had the pleasant effect of increasing his stature. He felt important, and he liked it.
His first task was to fit a new roll of paper in the till and write on it the date, the time and his signature. He then placed a float of fifteen shillings in the various compartments in the wooden drawer. At exactly nine o’clock, after glancing around to see that the two assistants were in clean overalls and at their posts, he unlocked the door for business.
Back at his desk he nervously opened the ledgers and reminded himself of how they should be filled. Two deliveries came and he entered them, creating his first disaster by using the wrong coloured ink. On turning a page in a different ledger he entered information in the wrong column and had to squeeze the date into the margin. A simple task, but at the end of it he was sweating and had to open the window, which created a draught and muddled up the invoices.
After the tea break, which he took in his usual place with the others, Viv didn’t know what to do. He knew he had to look busy, that was important, but with the books so meticulously up to date and the stock checked only a few days before, he felt a bit of a fraud. By four o’clock he was in the stock room helping one of the others by cutting the edges off some rolls of wallpaper ready for a customer coming to collect them at five.
Rolls of wallpaper arrived unwrapped with a narrow strip of non-patterned paper down each side to protect the edges. Sitting on a chair with his legs out in front of him, with the roll supported by his upturned feet, Viv was carefully removing the surplus with long scissors, taking care not to remove any of the pattern, re-rolling the paper as he went. Unfortunately the customer had asked that only one strip be cut so he could overlap on one side to join the pattern. Absentmindedly, Viv cut them both.
As they were about to close, the irate man brought back the wallpaper and demanded a replacement. It was, Viv told his family, the end of a very unsatisfactory day.
Tuesday was better. He even took time to go and see how Rhiannon was getting on at Temptations when he went to deliver an outstanding account which Mr Weston had asked him to do.
“Where’s the sauciest sweets seller in Sophie Street then? Where’s Pendragon Island’s answer to a young man’s prayer?” he said, as he popped his head around the door.
Barry Martin came through from the back room in a rush that startled Viv, and glared at him.
“Mam isn’t here, and if you’ve come to make some insulting remark about my mother you’d better go before I knock you into the middle of next week!” he growled.
“All right, boy, all right. Keep your hair on.” Backing towards the door a confused Viv stuttered, “Expecting to see Rhiannon I was.”
“Oh. Well. That’s all right. She’s gone to Mam’s house on a message. Won’t be long.”
“Still bad is it? People’s reaction to your mam and my dad?”
“We can cope,” Barry spoke gruffly.
“And my sister? How’s she doing at her new job? Better than me I hope!”
“She’s doing all right. A bit daunted by the rationing, all those coupons to deal with. But she’s very quick to learn. Not going very well for you at Weston’s then?”
“Like a new boy I am, forgetting the simplest things.”
“Come for a pint after work, I’ll be in The Railwayman’s about seven.”
Viv guessed it was Barry’s way of apologising for his outburst. “Tell Rhiannon I’ll be late then, will you?”
Rhiannon knocked on Nia Martin’s door with some anxiety. What if her father were here? Whose side would she be on then? She knocked again, louder, anxious to pass on the message and be off. It was Barry’s brother Joseph who answered and she almost audibly sighed with relief. If Joseph were home there couldn’t be any meeting between Dad and Nia Martin.
Joseph was two years older than Barry.
“Hi, Rhiannon. Mam hasn’t given you the sack already, has she?” he teased.
“No, Barry asked me to bring this book. She wants to work on it at home.”
“Not here,” he said, shaking his head. “I thought she was at the shop. I wonder where she can be, who she’s with?” He rolled his wicked brown eyes upward, his lips tutted in disapproval.
“Oh, well, I’ll leave it with you.” Rhiannon looked at him in horror. He was making it clear that Nia wasn’t working at home as she had told Barry. Joseph was telling her she was with her father. Her father hadn’t finished the affair with Nia as he had implied. Liars they were the pair of them! They were together now, this minute! She scuttled down the front path, afraid of what else might be said. She didn’t want to think of Nia with her dad. She didn’t.
A persistent knocking made her look up as she closed the gate and she saw with undisguised relief that Nia was at the window, standing beside Joseph, who was laughing. He had been teasing her, guessing where her thoughts would take her.
Viv expected to leave the shop at six with the others but was surprised at how much time was needed to close everything down for the day. On that Tuesday, he made himself a notebook for queries and entered a confession about the wrongly trimmed wallpaper, and some rusted putty knives he had found in the back of the store room, then dealt with the till and the bank statements. It was almost seven when he locked the door and set off to put the bank pouch in the night safe.
The Railwayman’s Arms was open; the sounds of merriment could be hear. He went in, joined Barry and Joseph Martin. He felt like an exhausted businessman after a day of doing high finance deals. When he admitted that his most distressing moment was when he realised he’d trimmed five rolls of wallpaper by mistake, the brothers couldn’t stop laughing.
Viv joined in the laughter. He thought the evening one of the happiest he’d spent. If only Jack Weston were here instead of in France with his family, it would have been perfect.
It was ten when he reached home, tired, happy and with eyes that looked out on a slightly fuzzy world. It wasn’t until he was undressing that he realised he’d lost the keys to the shop. He was still puzzling about what he should do when sleep overtook him.
In the Martin’s house, Joseph asked his mother to call him early. “I have to be at the Lewises’ house before half past eight to stop Viv killing himself,” he said jingling Viv’s keys on the banister rail.
Dora was trying very hard not to give in to despair. A breakdown, or ‘nerves’, was something she dreaded experiencing again. Whenever she felt the dreaded blackness hovering around her she forced herself up and out of its clutches, but it was hard. It would have been far easier to give in. She thought of the effect illness would have on Rhiannon and Viv and Lewis-boy and that gave her strength to fight. This, and her determination not to let Nia and Lewis see how badly they had hurt her, gave her strength. But the nonchalance she determinedly showed was becoming harder and harder to fake. She sometimes wished she hadn’t thrown him out; if he were here she could hit him!
It was the length of time the affair had gone on that was the hardest to bear. To think that Nia worked on the corner, sold sweets to the family almost every week, smiling in the most friendly way imaginable. Temptations was only three doors away, and until a year ago, Nia and her boys had lived there too, in the flat above the shop. How could she not have seen them together? Even now, Nia lived in a house where Dora passed each week while making her collections.
She had to cycle past Nia’s home that Wednesday morning. She rode with her eyes straight ahead. How was it that no one had reported seeing Lewis’s car there? The road comprised detached houses with driveways that were mostly shrouded by trees and hedges. This would conceal a car, but the road itself was wide and well used. Surely neighbours must have noticed Lewis if he went to the house regularly? The cycle wobbled as the thought reoccurred that dozens of people must have been fully aware of what was going on. She was the stupid wife who, traditionally, was the last to know. She would never forgive him for shaming her like this. Never.
She dismounted and went to her first call. When a woman opened the door, Dora stared at her, looking for a sign that she, too, had known of Lewis’s behaviour, watching for a hint of amusement about the mouth and eyes. The next house she called at was a venue at which she was regularly offered a cup of tea. She prepared her excuses. For the next few weeks she would decline any invitation that might involve conversation.
Dora didn’t return home via her usual route, but turned instead down a steep hill which would take her past the end of the road where Lewis had a room. She wasn’t hoping to see him. But she held on to the brake and freewheeled slowly, giving herself time to look at the pedestrians and cars, and giving fate a chance to engineer a meeting.
It was as the corner of his road came into view that she saw him. He drove past her and stopped at the bottom of the hill. Stepping out of the car, he signalled for her to stop. Then he stood in front of her, one leg each side of the cycle’s front wheel, holding the handle bars. “Dora,” he smiled.
“Lewis!” she replied sharply. “Will you please move away, I have to get home.”
“We ought to talk, love.”
“We have nothing to say and I’m not your love!”
“You are, and you always will be. Come back to my room and let me make you a cup of tea.”
“I’m in a hurry, move out of the way.”
“Only round the corner it is. Two minutes. Five minutes to talk. You’re early for a Wednesday, you can spare me seven minutes, can’t you? Please, love?”
Dora was curious enough to agree. She wasn’t taking him back. She’d never take him back. But, she did want to see how he was managing. The delight she would take in seeing the mess he was in would help her to cope.
At The Firs he went in first, leaving her to park her bicycle. “At the top,” he called back.
“Room number seven.”
Looking through a door leading from the hall, she saw the gloomy room where the boarders ate their breakfast and dinner. She went up the dingy staircase; disapproval of the shabbiness and the stale food smell made her lip curl. Why had he chosen such a disgusting place? He wasn’t used to this and could afford better. She decided to lecture him on his choice as she reached the top landing.
Lewis was talking to a young woman of about twenty, standing at the door of number six. She stopped, waiting for them to speak to her, but Lewis thanked the girl and came towards her carrying a brown paper bag containing white powder. “I’ve borrowed some washing powder to soak my socks overnight,” he explained.
“You don’t soak woollen socks,” Dora began.
“Lucky I asked Miss-her-over-by-there. I was going to boil them in the saucepan!” he said seriously. He opened his door and ushered her inside. All his movements were hasty. He wasn’t a man to sit idle, always rushing through his tasks and looking for something else to occupy himself.
The bed was neatly made and a small table was set ready for tea. He put a battered tin kettle on a gas ring to boil. He sniffed the bottle of milk doubtfully before pouring some of the liquid into two cups. Dora wished she had refused to come. It was so terribly sad. Not at all gratifying to see how useless he was. In a corner a few shirts, inexpertly ironed, hung on a chair. Lewis hurried to the solitary tap and, into a bowlful of cold water, put a pile of socks and what appeared to be a whole box of washing powder.
“Lewis,” Dora sighed. “You’d better come home.”
When the car was filled with his belongings and the rent had been paid, there was an argument about Lewis’s ration book, each woman insisting she was entitled to the full week’s supply, it being only Wednesday. Dora, with her quick anger, won the battle and snatched the book from the landlady’s hand without further words.
Rhiannon was home when they arrived and Dora was preemptory with her explanations. “Your father’s back, but only for as long as he behaves himself.”
With a wink at his daughter, Lewis carried his suitcase and a few carrier bags up to the bedroom he shared with Dora. In less than a minute they had been thrown down the stairs and a shrill voice from above, called: “The settee for you, Lewis Lewis – and if you start arguing I’ll boil your socks and give them to you for tea, with custard!”