Nothing is Forever

by Grace Thompson

  At three o’clock in the morning Tabs went down and with great difficulty managed to get the ladder up to the landing without it touching anything and causing a noise. She opened the trap door cautiously, and in silence, stifling nervous laughter, they closed the trap and took the ladder back outside. They passed Aunty Blod who was snoring peacefully. Nervous laughter was imminent, but they got outside without disturbing the old lady and put the ladder back in the shed making very little sound.

  ‘I mustn’t stay. I’ll meet you in the park at lunchtime,’ Jack said, kissing her, holding her close. She waved him off and set off up the stairs to dream of his kiss and his love and revel in wonderment that she had found someone like Jack.

  Ruth awoke as Tabs was closing the trap door. The minimal sounds as the ladder was brought down the stairs, made her aware of something happening. Her senses heightened as she heard footfall and breathing, the sounds stopping and starting, with even a whispered comment she might have heard or might have imagined. But they were so faint she tried telling herself they were just the movement of the old building. Then the sound of the back door opening was clearly recognized and she sat up and listened with increasing fear.

  Footsteps were now coming up the stairs, there was no doubt now. Someone had entered the house and was heading towards her. She opened the door a slit and peeped through. A figure, unrecognizable in the almost complete darkness was passing her door and she watched as the shadowing figure went into Tabs’s room and closed the door. She listened for a moment then followed. She heard the creak of the bed springs and then a slight cough as Tabs settled into bed.

  Sighing with relief she knocked on the door. ‘Tabs? Are you awake? Was that you wandering around?’ She leaned over Tabs and switched on her bedside lamp.

  ‘Sorry, Ruth, I wanted a drink of water,’ Tabs said. ‘Sorry if I woke you.’

  Tabs was snuggled right down in the bed clothes and to save her disturbing herself, Ruth apologized and leaned over again to put out the light. Tabs wasn’t completely hidden by the blankets and she saw that Tabs was dressed, not in her nightdress, but in outdoor clothes.

  Martha and George were leaving friends where they had spent the evening. George was trying to drive but he was having difficulty after too much to drink, and it was Martha who was steering the vehicle as they went slowly along the road. They were both laughing. Common sense prevailed when they brushed against a hedge and almost frightened a stray cat hiding there, and they eventually parked the car and began to walk, still laughing.

  Approaching Ty Gwyn they began talking about his ungrateful daughter, Tabitha. Stopping for a rest, they saw someone coming out of the house. A man, but unrecognizable. He stopped once to turn and wave at someone standing at the open door. Martha and George sobered up and stared at each other.

  ‘Someone is visiting Ruth! Miss perfect Ruth Thomas that must have been, standing at the door in the middle of the night and waving goodbye to a man. And it wasn’t Henry Owen!’

  Chapter Five

  Martha was busy sorting out the lumber room, usually called the box room. The smallest of the three bedrooms, it had always been used to store items that were rarely used. Suitcases, boxes of out-of-season clothes, oddments of furniture, and lots of books, many from Tabs’s childhood. Some of the contents belonged to Martha, brought there when she and George married. She now had to decide what, if anything, she would keep.

  At the time it had seemed important to keep mementoes of the life before George, but seeing the pile of assorted oddments, she wanted to open the window and throw the whole lot out. She wasn’t so anxious to keep memories of her previous marriage This one was going to be very different. One box she decided she would keep. It was filled with old letters, and birthday cards she had particularly liked. She sat on a suitcase and browsed through them. Cards from school friends, many more than fifty years old, she put on one side. A few love letters from her first husband and previous boyfriends. Those she would keep. It was unlikely she’d have any more and it would be nice to dream about those happy, innocent days, when she remembered being beautiful.

  One letter puzzled her and she pulled open the envelope to find it was a note from an ex-neighbour and grandmother to Ruth Thomas. Tabs had asked about the family recently so she hesitated. It was only a note asking her mother to look in and feed the cat, as she would be staying in Bristol for a few days. That can’t possibly be of any interest. She threw it onto the pile destined for the ash bin.

  Giving up on her day-dreaming, the room was soon emptied. The new furniture had been chosen and would be delivered the following week. For this tiny room she had bought a second-hand bed and a chest of drawers and a few hooks for clothes, a chair and a tiny table. It would be a squeeze but once George had painted it and they’d spent a little on a new rug, Tabs would fit in there quite comfortably, leaving the other bedroom with its new furniture and quality bed-linen ready for her new arrangements.

  She set off for the hairdresser an hour later and on impulse, decided to call into the newsagent’s to tell Tabs about the letter. ‘Hello,’ Tabs greeted her nervously, expecting her to start once again on pleas for her to go back home.

  Martha told her about the letter. ‘I’m only mentioning it because you were asking about the family recently. No interest though, just a note about feeding cats, so I threw it in the ash bin,’ she said. ‘From Ruth’s grandmother it was. Neighbours we were, us and Ruth’s family.’

  ‘I think Ruth would like to see it,’ Tabs said. ‘She’s interested in anything relating to the family. Her mother died when she was only seventeen and there are so many questions she had no chance to ask.’

  As though she hadn’t heard, Martha went on, ‘Oh yes, I remember that lot really well. I can tell you all about the trouble they had; perhaps I will one day.’

  ‘Trouble?’ Tabs queried, but Martha shook her head refusing to be drawn. ‘Best you come away from Ty Gwyn. Things are happening there that a decent girl like you wouldn’t believe! Men wandering about where they shouldn’t. Worried about you, we are.’ She leaned closer to whisper. ‘There’s a criminal streak in that family, and things go on at night that I don’t think you should be involved with. You’d be safer back home with me and you father.’

  ‘I’m very comfortable there,’ Tabs assured her. ‘Ruth is so kind.’

  ‘There’s a side to her that you don’t know about. She isn’t as innocent as people think – men,’ she whispered.

  Tabs felt her heart lurch. Had she and Jack been seen? Was this what Martha was hinting at? Presuming it had been Ruth out there last night? She smiled inwardly. Having a reputation for being boring and a little stupid might be useful. No one would believe she had been creeping around in the middle of the night with a man.

  ‘I wish you’d come home, dear,’ Martha went on, tearfully. ‘Your father misses you something terrible and I still hope we’ll be friends. Won’t you think about it?’

  Tabs half promised, in her usual non-confrontational way, and Martha left, blowing a kiss from her heavily lipsticked mouth as she departed.

  Getting a taxi home was an extravagance, but after visiting a few shops she had several things to carry. The new rug for the room which she hoped would be Tabs’s and some china dishes she had bought cheaply. The curtain material was chosen and a neighbour would make them. All she had to do was place a few advertisements for summer visitors and persuade the irritating Tabs that her place was back home. The prospect of a small business of her own was very exciting but she felt exhausted at all it would entail without Tabs there to do most of the work. Once the tiresome girl was back home it would be easy to encourage her to stay in her room when there wasn’t any work to do. George’s boring daughter wouldn’t be too difficult to cope with. The alternative was too much work and that was something she didn’t want.

  Ruth was curious about the noises during the early hours of the morning and finding Tabs fully dressed. Why hadn’t she confronted her at once? She ad
mitted to herself that she’d been too cowardly, but, as the hours passed, she thought about it more and more and there seemed no other explanation apart from Tabs having a visitor. And it had to be a man; a girlfriend she’d have been told about. But a man? Meeting a man in the park, that’s fine, but bringing him here at night? It seems so unlikely she tried to convince herself it had been a dream, that she had been mistaken. Had Tabs really been wearing something other than the pink nightdress that appeared on the clothes line regularly? She shook her head. No, it couldn’t have been a mistake, or a trick of the light. It had definitely not been a pink nightdress, what she had seen was the rough tweed material of an out-door coat almost, but not quite, hidden by hastily pulled up bed covers.

  She finished her collections by half past three. It was one of the easier days; fewer places where she stopped for a chat and a cup of tea. This was mainly because many of the calls were to houses where no one was in, and she had to pick up the money and book from the garden, or a shed, and in several places, lift the window and take the money from the windowsill, replacing the book receipted in her neat writing. From her last call she cycled straight to Henry’s shop where he was serving a customer with an inexpensive vase. She waited until the woman had left.

  ‘I won’t get rich on customers like that one,’ he said smiling at her. ‘She’s a sweet old lady and I rarely make any money out of our transactions. I tell her a price higher than I expect to get and let her believe she’s beaten me down and got herself a bargain and she goes home happy.’

  ‘You like people, don’t you? You always have time for them and think the best of them.’

  ‘I suppose I do. I like seeing you best of all though. But today you look worried. Is there a reason you’re here, apart from wanting to see me?’

  ‘Henry, what do you know about Tabitha?’

  ‘Tabs? What is there to know? She’s lacking in confidence, mainly due to her father’s selfish way of treating her, and that’s a pity because she’s very knowledgeable about this business. If her mother had lived I imagine Tabs would be a very different person. Still quiet, still a bit old-fashioned, but probably less afraid of offering her opinions. She might even have had a business of her own.’ He frowned, then asked, ‘Why do you ask? Is something wrong?’

  ‘I don’t know, Henry. In fact the more time that passes, the greater my doubt whether I saw what I think I did. It seems so unlikely.’

  ‘Now you have got me intrigued!’

  She had thought a great deal about everything she had heard and seen, and the events were now clear in her mind. ‘Last night, about three o’clock, I was woken by some noises. I listened and it sounded like something being moved, then footsteps going down the stairs, slowly. I think there was something being carried. I heard the sound of something knocking on the banisters. I thought it must be Tabs getting a drink but I heard whispering and once a low chuckle of laughter.

  ‘I got out of bed, wondering whether I should risk confronting a burglar, then I heard the back door open and something banged against the window of the door, then more giggles.’

  ‘You must get a phone installed, Ruth. You’d have been able to call the police.’

  ‘Hardly; I was upstairs and if I had a phone it would have been in the hall! Anyway, I went to the window and looked out. There were two figures, one taller than the other and I feel sure that one was a man. They went towards the shed carrying something but I couldn’t see what. A torch flashed weakly once or twice but only for a moment. The back door closed a few moments later and I hesitated. I didn’t know what to do. If I put lights on they – whoever they were – could come back. So I waited. Then footsteps came up the stairs, they were so quiet I wasn’t sure they were real and not a part of my imagination. Then, and this is the puzzling bit, I went into Tabs’s room and she was awake and I switched on her bedside lamp and in the light of it I saw that she was wearing outdoor clothes. It must have been she who woke me; she’d had a man in the house.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Henry! What a ridiculous thing to say! Of course I’m sure!’

  ‘Have you found anything to be missing?’

  ‘No, and apart from a few scratches in the varnish on the banisters and a couple of marks on the kitchen wall, there’s nothing to prove what happened. But it did, Henry. Tabs was fully dressed under the bed covers and I saw her and a man, taking something to the shed. Please don’t insult me by saying I dreamt it.’

  ‘But Tabs? Bringing a man into your house? It is hard to believe, isn’t it?’

  ‘So you don’t believe me! Right!’ She began to leave and he held her arm then pulled her against him.

  ‘I believe you, Ruth. Of course I believe you. What I find difficult is it’s just so out of character for someone like Tabs.’

  ‘She’s fooled us all. Obviously.’

  He continued to hold her and she relaxed. ‘What shall we do?’ he said and she gave a sigh of relief. He hadn’t said, what will you do, he’d said we.

  ‘I thought you’d believe her and insist I was inventing it or dreaming after too much supper!’

  ‘You come first, Ruth. You always will. But what are we going to do about Tabs?’

  ‘She can’t stay. If she can bring a boyfriend to her room, allowing him to creep in at night without telling me then she can’t be trusted and she’ll have to go.’

  ‘Her freedom from her father and meeting this man must have changed her personality completely. It’s very odd.’

  ‘You’ve seen him?’

  ‘She’s been meeting someone in the park at lunchtime. I’m curious enough to have tried to see him but I’ve had no luck so far, apart from a distant glance. He was too far away for me to be able to recognize him again.’

  ‘I’m telling her to go. I have to. I wouldn’t feel safe at the thought of men I don’t know wandering in at night. But I don’t think we should do anything more than that. It isn’t our business.’

  ‘Right. Then will you find another lodger, or will you marry me at last?’

  She looked at him, smiling. ‘Henry, your proposals are becoming more mundane, I’ll have to think about them carefully before they dry up completely.’

  ‘Please do, Ruth. Time is passing. I’m thirty-four in a month’s time.’

  ‘I’ll have to think of a special present.’

  ‘The only present I want is for you to say, yes.’

  The following day Henry went out to attend a house sale in a village the other side of Cardiff. He didn’t wait to see Tabs and ask for her explanation of the visitor. He had to wait until he and Ruth were together and question her carefully, just in case there had been a mistake, although Ruth had seemed quite clear about what she saw and heard and she wasn’t one for flights of fancy.

  At the newsagent’s it was almost lunchtime and Tabs was locking everything carefully before closing the shop when her father and Martha arrived.

  ‘Hello, dear,’ Martha said. ‘We were wondering if you’d like to come home and have lunch with us. Lovely it’ll be to have you there for a little while. I can show you the changes we’ve made. We’d value your opinion, wouldn’t we, George?’

  Tabs glanced at her watch, thinking about Jack, who might be waiting in the park, even though the weather was not really warm enough to eat outside and rain threatened. It was never easy for her to lie but she shook her head. ‘Sorry, Dad, but I have to go on an errand for Henry. Another day?’ She glanced at her watch again.

  ‘Why don’t you come this evening, then?’

  ‘Good idea,’ George said with a smile. ‘Because you choose to live away from home, that needn’t mean we never see you.’

  ‘Sorry, Dad, but not tonight.’

  ‘Something special planned?’

  ‘Not special but I can’t change it.’

  When they had gone, Tabs hurriedly closed the shop and ran across the road to the park. It was a dull day and there were few people about. She went to where she could see the bench wh
ere they habitually met but it was empty. Holding the pack of sandwiches, cake and fruit she had brought for their lunch, she walked disconsolately on and sat near their usual place from where she could see the entrance.

  George and Martha watched and Martha nodded wisely. ‘She’s meeting someone, I knew it. The way she kept looking at her watch, the extra care with her hair and lipstick an’ all. I knew it wasn’t work she was worried about. Oh, George, dear! It couldn’t have been Tabs we saw with a man at three in the morning, could it?’

  Abigail’s sickness was as unexpected as it was severe. She was ill every morning and although it eased, she was never free of it until the evening. A car coming slowly alongside hers at traffic lights, or seeing a movement of a sign swinging in the breeze, were enough to start her stomach churning. She called on fewer and fewer customers and her sales went down until she had to tell her boss that she was expecting a baby. With regret, they told her she had to leave.

  It was several days later that she began to look at her finances and discovered how serious her situation had become. She had spent all she’d earned, confident there was plenty more to come. She was a very successful saleswoman, but, as her boss had pointed out, her skill in selling had a great deal do to her good looks, her dress sense and her ability to model the hats and make people believe they would look as good as her if they bought one.