On Wednesday Rosemary went to work, having prepared a meal ready to put into the oven, put a bottle of wine to cool and made sure everything in the cottage was as neat as she could make it. At the library she was in a state of excitement, wondering when Larry would arrive. Every time the phone rang she would run to it, so, eventually, no one else even attempted to answer it. When a query forced her to leave the desk, she ran frantically to deal with it to hurry back to the phone and wait again for it to ring.
She allowed herself a long lunch-break with the collusion of Megan and luxuriated in a session at the hairdressers where she had a tint and a fluffy cut that changed her appearance startlingly. She stared at her reflection and marvelled at the change from the sober, rather stiff-faced Rosemary of just a few weeks before, to this modern, and well-presented young woman that stared back at her like an attractive stranger.
At four she left the building and stepped out into a dull, rather chilly afternoon and looked around the town car park with rising disappointment. There was no sign of the Citroen Dolly that Larry had been using the last time they had met.
She reached her car without seeing anyone remotely like Larry and began to drive home. She turned in just before the road bridge and went slowly down the lane. There was no Citroen to be seen.
Parking on the opposite side of the stream next to the Capri belonging to the student, she looked across, but the house seemed exactly the same as when she had left. There was no one standing at the gate looking out for her. She collected the salad and fruit she had bought at lunch-time and walked across the wooden footbridge and into the house. He wasn’t coming.
She opened the door with her key and stepped inside and at once knew someone was there.
‘Larry?’ she called. There was no reply and she tiptoed along the small hallway and into the living room. He was stretched out on her settee and fast asleep.
She didn’t stop to wonder how he had got in. Dropping her shopping onto the carpet, she knelt down and kissed him lightly on his forehead. He stirred slightly and she kissed him again, this time on his lips. His eyes opened and crinkled into the smile hidden from her by their closeness. His arms slid around and held her close against him and she was breathless when he released her.
‘Larry? What are you doing here?’ she asked, her eyes showing undeniable delight at finding him there.
‘You don’t mind, do you? Only the queer fellow next door said he had a key.’
‘The “queer fellow”? You mean Gethyn?’
‘I guess so. Big, dark and kinda bashful?’
‘Yes, that’s him,’ she laughed.
‘I ran out of gas, would you believe! I walked three miles on empty roads. No vehicle passed me and I didn’t see a house. What a wild place this is! Give me New York where you can’t blink without missing something! I was almost in the village before I found anyone to help so I decided to wait here ’til you could come along and rescue me.’
As he stood up she saw heavy scratching and a purple bruise on the side of his face.
‘What happened to you?’ Her voice was light-hearted but she was alarmed by the severity of the bruising.
‘I got in the way of someone practising for the shotput I guess. A rock came through the window of the car while I was stationary. Hey! It’s okay! Don’t look so worried! Whoever heaved that rock must be feeling pretty sick. It couldn’t have been intended. Who around this place knows me well enough to want to crack my head? Come on. It’s nothing serious, but it was one hell of a shock at the time. I thought the natives were supposed to be friendly!’ He laughed away her concern and insisted it must have been an accident. But privately, he thought differently. What I came to Wales to find out is worrying someone, that’s for sure, he thought, as he explained where he had left the Citroen.
After putting the meal into the oven and the salad in the fridge, they set off to rescue the car. The driver’s window had been smashed by the rock that had hit Larry’s face. Despite further attempts on Rosemary’s part to find out what had happened, Larry insisted it was nothing more than an unfortunate mistake.
When they had taken petrol to restart the car and stopped at a garage to fill it up, they returned to the house to find the meal ready. They sat, companionably discussing the irritations of motoring.
It was dark by the time they had finished chatting and Larry yawned and said, ‘Rosemary my love, it’s time I was leaving.’
She tried to hide her surprise and disappointment. Finding him in her home she had presumed he was staying at least for a night or two.
‘Where are you staying?’ she asked.
‘In a town with an unpronouncable name!’ he laughed. He showed her on a piece of paper.
‘Machynlleth,’ Rosemary laughingly interpreted for him. It was only later that she realised that once again, he hadn’t answered her question.
‘I have to go back to London early tomorrow. Can you meet me there, say on Saturday?’ he asked.
‘Well, I have to work on Saturday morning, but the following Monday is a day off, will that do?’
‘Perfect!’
They were standing outside her doorway and he hugged her.
‘Where shall we meet?’ she asked, touching his injured face gently with curled fingers.
‘I’ll book a room,’ he said. ‘I’ll ring you to tell you when and where. Okay?’
Rosemary sighed as she waved him goodbye. She would be spending the next couple of days glued to the telephone once more, waiting for him to tell her the name and the address of the hotel where they were to stay. He was, she decided with a smile, a man who loved childish secrets. And she was a woman in love with a man who loved childish secrets. He was her mystery man, and she knew she should insist on knowing more about him or tell him goodbye, but something about him made her want to trust him, to wait until he was ready to talk. But, she prayed silently, please make it soon. In the front window of number one, Gethyn watched their affectionate leave-taking with a heavy heart. This then was the reason for the change in Rosemary. The words of a song from a recently borrowed library tape, Aspects of Love, came into his mind, ‘Love, love changes everything—’ Her love was not for him, but it was going to change things for him, all his soaring hopes were going to fall to the ground with a dull thud.
On a Sunday evening, late in June, when she had succeeded in completing the first draft of a new story, she put aside the freshly typed pages and stretched luxuriously. She had been sitting at her desk for too long. She stepped outside intending to walk along the stream for a while and look at the river, but stopped when she heard a car approaching the parking space on the other side of the footbridge.
It was two weeks since she had been let down over their planned sojourn in London. She had heard nothing from Larry. So it was in disbelief that she covered her eyes against the bright sun and looked across to see his tall figure standing beside the red and white Citroen Dolly.
She forced herself to stand still and allow him to come to her, watching his long-legged stride crossing the wooden bridge. She tried to guess his intentions from the look on his face but failed. He looked just the same as always; warm, friendly, pleased to see her. There was no doubt in his expression that his pleasure and delight at the reunion would be reciprocated.
‘Honey, you’re beautiful and I’ve missed you. I’m sorry it took longer than I planned.’
‘What do you mean?’ she asked, stepping back a little from his intended embrace. ‘What took longer? I have no idea what you’re talking about.’
‘About having to cancel our weekend in London, what else?’
‘So far as I remember, you didn’t cancel, you just didn’t tell me where we were to meet as you’d promised.’
‘But you had my note?’
Hope flowed through her as she stared into his eyes.
‘Note? I received no note, no phone call, nothing. I waited here expecting you to tell me where to meet you and there wasn’t even an apology for letting me down.’
‘I passed through on the way to Heathrow. I had to go back home for a few days on family business. I put it all in the note and promised to ring you when I returned. I came instead. Aren’t you pleased to see me?’
‘Larry, I had no message of any kind. I thought you’d decided to forget it.’
‘Are we going inside to talk about this or do you want me to go?’
She led the way in and gestured to the drinks cupboard but he went straight to the kitchen and the percolator.
‘Coffee,’ he said. ‘I’ll have coffee. I’ve a feeling I’ll need all my wits about me if we’re to sort this out.’ He switched on the coffee maker and turned to her. With a hand on each of her shoulders he slowly pulled her closer and kissed her. ‘Now, my darling Rosemary, tell me what has been happening.’ Rosemary’s resolve began to melt. They soon agreed that the note Larry had placed in her letterbox on Friday had blown away.
She put aside her doubts and, remembering Megan’s words, determined to enjoy the moment and not look too far into the future. Larry was good company and they laughed a lot as they shared a meal.
Doubts remained but she cast them aside, convincing herself with ease that it would work out, that Larry wasn’t treating her as a casual and convenient pit-stop while he made his enquiries in Wales. She wanted him so much that any niggles of doubt left her as they climbed the narrow stairs to her room, hand in hand, pausing for a kiss on the way.
It was strange to have him share her bed. Different from sharing a bed in an hotel where they were anonymous. Here in the house where she had shared a room with her sister, with only the wall between them and their parents, and Gran in the small back room she had been forced to use when the family came.
She felt his presence in the house like a new life beckoning. It was no longer the place where she had spent family holidays, no longer a house in which she had lived alone.
Since she had taken the house for herself, when Gran had moved into a retirement home, she had shared it with no one. Even her parents never stayed when they came on one of their rare visits, but drove to and from home in the same day. She wondered if the neighbours would notice or, if they did, if they would care? Gethyn, Mrs Priestley, the now absent Hughes’s and the Powells, had known her since she was born, and would perhaps be surprised. The students were strangers and wouldn’t be interested in what she did. Everyone slept with boyfriends these days, didn’t they? And even if Gran had been born in a time when behaviour was, at least on the surface, very different, she thought she would understand and not judge her harshly.
Her parents knew he was here; they had spoken to him on the phone and had said nothing to suggest they minded. She wondered if they did or whether, like Megan, they accepted the new morality even if they didn’t like it. She knew they would love Larry when they met him. One day she might arrange it, but not yet, it might remind him of how much she accepted him as a part of her life, and run, like Mrs Priestley’s Leonard had done!
They went to bed and afterwards they both went into the small bath. Their laughter filtered through the shared wall to where Gethyn was sitting reading.
Larry watched her with admiration in his eyes and marvelled at the unexpected joy of her. When he had first seen her he wouldn’t have given her a moment of his time. It was only the opportunity of knowing someone so close to the area he needed to search that had made him follow her and make her acquaintance. But she had proved herself a beautiful and generous lover and a calm, gentle companion; she hadn’t been out of his thoughts for a moment.
He re-dressed but Rosemary put on the silky nightdress she had bought for her London visit. His eyes, watching her as she came down the stairs, showed she had chosen well. The fitting bodice with its generous insets of lace, the scooped neckline that just revealed the swell of her breasts, the slinky, swirling skirt widening out to a four metre hem, all showed her lithesome body to perfection.
‘I wonder what the people who know you in the library would make of you if they could see you now!’ he whispered. ‘Sober dresser, formal manners, country-girl habits,’ he said, with a glitter of amusement in his eyes. Then he went on, exaggerating to tease her, ‘bookish expression, brogue shoes, dull brown skirts, chilly willie hair cut.’
‘Larry! I wasn’t that bad!’
‘Sorry my sweet, adorable chrysalis, for that’s what you are, a butterfly that burst out of a “stay away from me” disguise to dazzle and overwhelm me. But, you’re so easy to tease.’
She laughed with him, determined to make his stay free of even the slightest difficulty, but she wondered if, behind his banter, there wasn’t the hint of truth. Perhaps he saw her still as that brown, quiet, closed-in person she had been when they had met. She was unaware she had sighed, but Larry heard it and was dismayed that his teasing could have upset her.
‘I go too far,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry. My sister is always telling me I don’t know when to stop. It’s just that seeing you laugh is such a wonderful sight, such a beautiful sound I want to make it continue and,’ he ran his fingers through his curly hair, ‘I go too far. You were never anything other than beautiful to me, although I do think you were a chrysalis waiting for me to come along and persuade you to open out.’
‘Your sister?’ she probed. Perhaps tonight he would begin to talk about himself.
‘My sister Rosalie, she’s twenty-eight, and the youngest of us.’
‘How many are you?’
‘Four. I have two brothers, older than myself, as well as my sister who is younger. And you?’
‘There’s only my sister and me.’ She hesitated, then asked, ‘What does your father do, Larry?’
‘Nothing, he’s retired and he plays golf a lot and sails in Florida, where they have a summer place.’ He had simply repeated what he had told her before. Was it too automatic? Rehearsed?
‘Good heavens, he must be comfortably off?’
‘Yes, he’s comfortable,’ he conceded. ‘But I still have to work,’ he sighed. ‘Thank heavens for a three month vacation!’
‘“He” is comfortable? Don’t you mean “they”?’
‘My mother died about five years ago.’
‘Larry, I’m sorry.’
He still hadn’t told her what his father’s job had been. Perhaps he was unaware of how elusive he was? Or was she being too inquisitive? Whatever the reason, trying to learn about him was like searching for a shadow in the inky blackness of a moonless night. Trying a different tack she asked, ‘Have you found out anything about your family’s history?’
‘Wait there.’ He went to the Citroen and brought back a file of papers which he began to spread over her table. He began to explain the connections he had so far made and demonstrated how they fitted into his family tree.
‘My great-grandfather was a farmer, here in Wales. Why did his name have to be Jones! It’s gotta be the most difficult name to research ever known. Still, I’ve made some progress. From what I can discover, the farmhouse in which he was a tenant was called Ty Coch, red house, right?’ She nodded, looking at the details which he had written down and handed to her.
‘It’s near Aberystwyth,’ she said, reading the address.
‘My parents came here when I was very small,’ he said softly, ‘stayed in Aberystwyth, and climbed Consti Hill, just like we did.’
‘Did they find the Red House?’
‘No.’ He looked tight-lipped and troubled but then relaxed again and said, ‘Time sort of ran out for them.’
‘And that’s why you came?’
‘I promised Mom I’d come back, one day. This year seemed right for me to keep that promise.’ There was more, she felt it, was convinced of it, but she was equally certain he was not going to tell her.
He stayed two nights and they spent a day in the university library where he concentrated on finding Ty Coch, the Red House. Rosemary worked too, gathering information she needed for a chapter of her book.
‘Now you can help me with my research,’ she said when they were once more out in the air looking down at the magnificent view from the university buildings high on a hill above the town and the sea. ‘I want to include a walk to Borth in my story, so, tomorrow, get your comfortable shoes on. All right?’
‘We’ll take a picnic,’ he said. ‘I want to do all the things that people living in a wild place like this do, so I can remember when I’m back in my noisy old city.’
The reminder that one day soon he would be returning to America was not a cheering one. At least I can make the memories good ones, Rosemary thought, and began to plan what she would cook in preparation for the picnic on the following day.
Before they left in the morning, the post arrived and there was a letter addressed to Larry Madison-Jones. Curiously, Rosemary handed it to him.
‘I’m sorry, I should have asked first, but in haste I gave your address to a colleague who has promised to send some material to me. Information on finding my great-grandfather’s house, I hope.’ He opened it, read, then shrugged and said, ‘Nope! No luck. But there are still a few avenues left to explore.’ He didn’t show her the letter but pushed it into his jacket pocket. Something in the way he looked as he read it made her certain that whatever it contained, it was not what he had told her. The letter had made him angry and he had not quite managed to hide it from her.
As they left, Mrs Priestley, nursing her tail-swishing cat, waved them off.
‘Mind that ankle, Rosemary,’ she called. ‘A sprain can be nasty, mind.’
‘I will,’ Rosemary called back, then she turned to Larry. ‘How could she possibly know I twisted my ankle yesterday? Honestly, her nosiness is unbelievable! How does she do it? She couldn’t have a permanently crossed telephone line, could she? Or perhaps that cat is a walking microphone!’
The walk started off well. They had a ride in the cliff railway to the top of Constitution Hill and set of in the direction of Borth along the cliff-edge pathway. They couldn’t walk side by side because of the narrowness of the path, but talked in shouts, pointing out various flowers and birds as they walked. The day was dull and overcast and the clouds lowered, darkened and threatened a downpour. It began to rain before they were half way and either returning or continuing meant a soaking, so they turned back. It wasn’t cold, only uncomfortable so they didn’t hurry unduly; heads bent, they walked at a steady pace back to the top of Consti.
In the little cafe there were others who had been caught out by the rain, laughing and shaking the worst of the wet from their coats. One of a group of girls, whom Rosemary guessed to be students, waved and Rosemary looked curiously but did not know her. She turned to see if the girl was waving to someone beyond her but was in time to see Larry smile and wave back.
‘A friend?’ she asked.
‘We met in London,’ he surprised her by saying. Rosemary began to smile a welcome as the girl stood up and began to walk towards them. Then, to her surprise, the girl walked past them, still smiling, and sat beside someone at the table near the window behind them.
‘Oh,’ Larry chuckled. ‘I guess I made a mistake!’
‘You bet you did,’ an angry voice growled and a man behind them, previously unnoticed, came up and punched Larry on the mouth.