Corner of a Small Town

by Corner of a Small Town (retail) (epub)

  Viv hurried home across the fields in time to answer the door to the twins.

  “We want to see your parents, and tell them how sorry we are,” Megan said.

  “Not our fault, mind,” Joan added.

  “You would have to add that, wouldn’t you?” Viv glared. But he opened the door and they went to where Dora and Lewis were standing. They were arguing and Lewis was waving a piece of paper about.

  “But she’s gone, Dora. Nia’s gone. It’s all over.”

  “Her choice. Not yours!”

  “That doesn’t alter the fact.”

  “You didn’t choose to end it! She did!”

  “Er, Mam, Dad, we have visitors.”

  * * *

  “What’s it all about?” Viv asked, when the Weston girls had gone.

  “Mam is divorcing our dad,” Rhiannon told him.

  “Because of Nia Martin?”

  “You don’t know the half!” She led him into the kitchen, where Barry was making yet more tea and tidying the last of the food onto smaller plates. White-faced, Rhiannon explained.

  “Apparently, Mam was going to have a baby before they were married and Dad made her give it up.”

  “You mean we have another brother or sister somewhere and Mam’s never told us?”

  “Yes. It’s weird, isn’t it? Mam says she was heartbroken over it but Dad insisted. His job was one with good prospects but if the scandal of a baby before the wedding had come out he’d have lost it. Always ambitious, our Dad,” she added bitterly.

  “So why does she decide to divorce him now because of that?” Viv looked at Barry, who stood silent and obviously distressed.

  “Because he was carrying on with Nia even then and she was expecting too but she was allowed to keep her child Joseph.”

  “Joseph was your half-brother?” Barry stared at them in utter disbelief. “Your father’s child? But that can’t be true.”

  “It’s true.”

  “And this affair with my mother has been going on all this time? More than twenty-four years? I don’t believe it.”

  They were all silent for a while, allowing Barry to digest this latest shock; then Barry spoke as if thinking aloud.

  “I remember Lewis being there when Joseph and I were small. Things come back to me that at the time didn’t seem strange. Kids accept life how it is without question. But now it begins to make a different sort of sense. Uncle Lew, we called him.”

  “I’ll ‘Uncle Lew’ him. I want to kill him,” Viv muttered. “He could at least have had the decency to keep away from her.”

  “She had the shop on the corner,” Barry said. “It was too easy. He only had to slip down the lane. No one would have seen him.”

  “What do we do now?” Rhiannon asked.

  “Support Mam, and stay away from the Martins.” He glared at Barry. “You were just going, weren’t you, Barry?”

  “Don’t blame me for this mess. I knew nothing about it until now. I’m just as shocked as you to learn that my mother’s double life began before I was born.”

  “Just get out before I kick you out.”

  Barry moved towards the door. “I’ll open the shop for you tomorrow, Rhiannon, but will you come and see me and let me know when you think you’ll be back?”

  “She’s not coming back!” Viv growled.

  “Viv! Don’t start making decisions for me. I’ll come and see you tomorrow morning,” she said and, as Viv clenched and unclenched his fist, she gestured for Barry to leave.

  “I know you’re angry, Viv,” she said as the door closed behind Barry. “But I feel sorry for him. His brother dead, his mother’s gone away and hasn’t told him where. He’s got no one. At least we still have each other, and Eleri, and Mam and Dad.”

  “Not Dad. I don’t want to see him ever again. It’s our Mam we have to look out for now.”

  Rhiannon didn’t argue further. Viv would think differently about Barry when he had calmed down.

  * * *

  At Christmas the mood was far from cheerful at the Lewises’ house. Rhiannon used the few days off to do some of the jobs around the house she had been forced to neglect. Dora was subdued, brightening up briefly now and then as if making an effort for the others, but the flame quickly died.

  Viv went out with Jack Weston and occasionally called at the Griffithses’ to see how Caroline was coping. Twice he had met Barry there, but neither spoke. Barry had become the innocent focus for his pain.

  When the holiday was over everyone was relieved to return to work and normality. In the evenings now, Dora found herself alone again. The thoughts of the baby she had lost came flooding into her mind. Since the death of Lewis-boy she hadn’t the time or the courage to think about the revelation that Lewis had allowed his ‘bit on the side’ to keep her child and made her give up hers. The fresh tragedy of Lewis-boy had shut it out of her troubled mind but now the day of her first child’s birth returned in a rush of deep anguish.

  How could he have done it to me? Dora kept repeating to herself. She tried to conjure up a picture of the tiny face she had never seen even for an instant. Her arms ached to hold the long gone child. Then she charted her daughter’s imaginary course through all the childhood stages, crawling, walking, climbing, and laughing. Always laughing. Through school and work, she saw the little girl as a replica of herself. But perhaps it hadn’t been a girl? It might have been a boy and grown up like Lewis-boy. To Dora, it seemed the final insult that she didn’t even know whether she’d had a boy or a girl.

  Dora rarely drank. But unable to bear her own company a moment longer, she put on her furry boots and a heavy coat and walked to The Railwayman’s. As the party mood of Christmas gave its final fling, she joined in the singing, and after several port and lemons and a few sips of someone’s gin, she climbed onto the table and did a dance. It was Barry Martin who took her home.

  “I feel so sad about that poor little baby, you see, Barry,” she sobbed on the walk home. “Caroline will understand because I don’t suppose them Griffithses will let the poor girl keep her child either.”

  “What child?”

  “She’s going to have a baby, your Joseph’s baby, and with its father dead they won’t let her keep it. Poor Caroline, how she’ll suffer when she’s my age and has no one of her own.”

  Barry was stunned. He’d had no idea. The mutterings in the church hadn’t yet reached him. Another shock to deal with!

  “Wish I was dead,” Dora muttered. Barry was too lost in his thoughts to console her further.

  * * *

  The following morning, Barry called at the wool shop and waited until Caroline had attended to the customers who were browsing through the various leaflets and skeins of wool.

  “Barry. This is a surprise. Is there something wrong?” Her voice was low, spiritless.

  “Everything is fine. I just called to see how you are.” He could see that grief for her loss of Joseph was eating into her. Shadows darkened her eyes and the pallor on her once rosy cheeks was startling.

  “I’m all right.” Again, he was struck by the change in her voice. Flat, lifeless as if she had been beaten by life.

  “Nothing you need?” He couldn’t bring himself to ask if what Dora had told him was true.

  He just waited and hoped she would confide in him. But all she said, was, “Life goes on, Barry. Mam and Dad and my brothers are good to me. I’ll be all right.” He left, promising to call again.

  Barry had reverted to using the flat above Temptations again to store some of his stock, telling Rhiannon there was not enough space at his new premises. It was an excuse, really, to call on Rhiannon. Since the sympathetic hug followed by the disturbing kiss she had been very cool with him. Shyness might have been the reason and he hoped that by seeing each other every day she might overcome this and relax into the easy friendship of before. In the middle of January she agreed to come out and help him photographing a family with small children. Once there, she was soon busily involved in play
ing with the children, relaxing them and making the occasion fun. Walking home, Barry asked her to go to the pictures with him on the following weekend.

  “Saturday night, so it won’t matter if we’re a bit late,” he said.

  She agreed but made him promise not to tell her mother. “Mam is so distressed about finding out Joseph was Dad’s child I daren’t even mention your name,” she explained.

  “Is that why you’ve been so distant with me?” he asked in some relief. “Why didn’t you say? I’ve wanted so much to spend time with you. I thought you disliked me.”

  “Hardly that,” she said shyly.

  “I’m fond of you, Rhiannon, and I feel we might have a future together. Does that idea please you?”

  “It’s mam, I don’t know how she’d take it if we saw too much of each other.”

  “Sins of the fathers,” he quoted. “Can we be expected to suffer because of your father’s behaviour?”

  “And your mother’s!” she retorted.

  “And Mam,” he agreed smiling at her. “What a mess they’ve landed us with. But we can’t let it ruin our chance of a good life, can we?”

  “Give Mama a bit more time. She’s very low at the moment.”

  “All right. We’ll wait until the end of the month, then I’m going to tell her I want to marry you.”

  “Barry!”

  “Come on, Rhiannon, is it that much of a surprise? You must know how I feel.”

  “I feel the same,” she said, sliding into his arms, “but I didn’t dare hope.” The kiss was no tentative affair this time, both showed in the embrace the true depth of the feelings they had for each other and it left them breathless.

  Telling her mother was not going to be easy but the more Rhiannon thought about it the less sense there seemed in delaying. The shocks were coming thick and fast in the Lewis household; better to get it all over at once. That evening she told Dora she and Barry were thinking of getting married. What ever response she expected it was not this.

  Dora leapt out of her chair and glared at her daughter, her eyes wide with fury. “Marry Nia Martin’s son? No, No, No! Never, while I’m alive. You can’t!”

  Rhiannon thought it was distress causing the outburst and she tried to sooth her mother. “Mam, it isn’t anything to do with us, what Dad and Nia have done.”

  “Isn’t it? And what makes you so sure Barry isn’t your half-brother too!”

  The shock had Rhiannon reeling. She phoned Barry and told him in a voice of steel that she could never marry him, under any circumstances. She didn’t explain, she couldn’t bring herself to speak aloud the dreadful words. She only made it clear that nothing he could say or do would ever change her mind.

  “I’ll work in Temptations for a week to allow you to find my replacement but don’t come near. I don’t want to speak to you ever again.”

  “But why? What’s happened?”

  “Your mam and my dad. That’s what’s happened. I’ll never marry you. Now please leave me alone.”

  “Stay, please. At least stay at the shop. I promise I won’t come near unless you ask me to. Please, Rhiannon. My world has fallen apart. Help me by staying on at the shop.”

  “Only if you take everything of yours out of the flat. I don’t want you to have any excuse to come near me.”

  “If that’s what you want.”

  “It is,” she insisted in her new harsh voice. It wasn’t until the receiver was replaced that her voice broke. How ironic that he had told her he didn’t want to be a big brother to her, yet that was exactly what he was. A half-brother, someone she had no right to love.

  * * *

  The evening was clear, the sky a high dark blue dome and stars glittered like a thousand bright promises. Barry couldn’t sleep. Looking out of his bedroom window in the empty house his mind was snarled up with dreams about Rhiannon, sadness at the loss of his brother and worries about his mother’s disappearance. At three a.m. he decided a walk on the sands might settle his mind.

  A moon had risen and its eerie light made the rocks into fantastic shapes from which his mind conjured pictures. The waves rose and fell sluggishly, lazily making their way back down the sand. He sat on a ledge oblivious to the chill air, his hands grasped around his knees until anyone looking would have thought him a part of the formation of rocks.

  A shadow emerged from the top of the beach and he watched idly as a figure glided towards the edge of the waves. Another insomniac like himself, he wondered. Perhaps this was a regular meeting place for those unable to make better use of the dark hours.

  He was surprised to see that the figure was wading into the shallow waves. It took a moment for him to realise that the person was not going to turn back. He ran then, half climbing, half falling down the rocks to the sand, then he ran straight into the icy water as the beach shelved and the water reached higher and higher. If he didn’t catch up with the person soon he’d have to swim. Then the figure vanished; he called wildly for him to come back.

  By sheer luck he saw what he thought was a head. Striking out, Barry quickly covered the distance between them. Grabbing at clothing, he struggled until he had his arm under the man’s chin and with relief he felt him relax and accept his ministrations. Slowly he hauled him back to the shallows. Making the man stand, he said, “All right, you’ll be all right. Everything will be better tomorrow. It always is.”

  He guided the dripping, huddled figure up the beach, talking reassuringly. “I’ve had a bad time of it and believe me I can understand your need to get away from troubles, but I know it will be sorted if I only face up to things. Come on, now, I’ve got a van over here. Where shall I take you?”

  The bedraggled heap straightened and turned to face him and he gasped in disbelief. “Caroline!”

  They drove back to his mother’s house. Barry ran a bath and found some clothes belonging to his mother. Between turning on an electric fire and preparing some food, he kept going to the bathroom door and checking that she was all right. He had removed the door key. When he thought she had been in the water long enough, he pulled her unceremoniously out, wrapping a thick towel around her.

  “Now, will you dress yourself or will I do it?” he said firmly. She pushed the bathroom door closed and began to dress.

  “Why, Caroline?” he asked, when they were sitting drinking tea and eating hot toast buttered with the whole of his week’s ration.

  “Your family are supportive, aren’t they? Basil’s thrilled with the idea of becoming an uncle.”

  “This baby should have been a Martin. Now he won’t have his father’s name. It suddenly seemed all wrong. I couldn’t bring him into the world without a proper name.”

  Two weeks later, Barry proposed to Caroline and she accepted.

  “Don’t worry,” he assured her. “It will be a marriage in name only. Just to give the baby his rightful name.”

  * * *

  Viv heard the news in The Railwayman’s. Basil and Frank and Ernie came in with Barry and celebrated the engagement, which was to be followed by a quiet wedding by special licence at the end of the month. It was Basil who went to collect Eleri from work and walk her home, something he was more and more willing to do. Eleri at once told Rhiannon.

  “He can’t be in love with her,” Rhiannon said, deeply hurt.

  “No, I think it’s because of the baby. It wouldn’t have happened if you hadn’t refused him.”

  “He wasn’t in love with me either, Mam,” she told Dora later. “With Joseph dead and Nia gone away he wanted someone to fill the house and make him a home.”

  “Lucky escape you’ve had my girl,” Dora said.

  Then why am I so miserable? Rhiannon asked herself.

  Chapter Nine

  Like many things in the life of the Griffiths, the wedding was a cause for celebration. Although Caroline pleaded with them to make it an ordinary day, Janet and Hywel made plans. Basil’s contribution was food. Rabbits to make some tasty pies, plus a couple of wild duck shot as
they left the pond to fly out to sea where they spent the nights. He also brought some farm butter and cheese, for which he had bartered an illegally caught salmon. A new dress for her mother and even a white shirt for her father had Caroline in despair.

  “Mam, we don’t want everyone to know about this wedding. It’s not a real marriage. Barry is marrying me so the baby will have his father’s name. He’ll be born a Martin instead of a Griffiths, that’s all there is to it. Now, can we forget parties and guest lists and treat it like a trip to the pictures, please?”

  Janet thought it unlikely that it would stay a pretend marriage for long. How could a man be expected to stay under the same roof as his legal wife and not make the marriage a proper one? She smiled at her daughter and said, “No harm in making the day special, is there? Besides, you never know. My old mother-in-law used to say that propinquity contributed more to falling in love than a pretty face.”

  Caroline had to laugh at this bit of nonsense. “Mam, my gran could neither read nor write so I’m sure she wouldn’t have known a word like propinquity!”

  “Well, that’s what she meant!” Janet retorted.

  * * *

  Barry didn’t buy a new suit. With every penny needed for the new business it seemed an unnecessary expense. Besides, without his mother there it didn’t seem to matter somehow. He wondered where she was and if she would hear about the wedding and the grandchild Caroline was going to give her.

  Melancholy overwhelmed him as Rhiannon came to mind and he was tempted to cancel the wedding and try once again to see her. But she had been so adamant. The goings-on of his mother and her father had been the cause, he was sure of that. But there must have been something more. If only she would talk to him, he might be able to change her mind. Perhaps it was her mother? Dora wouldn’t have relished the idea of Nia, her husband’s bit-on-the-side, becoming part of her family.

  He had tried ringing the shop but once he gave his name he heard only the sound of the receiver being replaced. Ever since she had told him they could never marry, she had refused even to look at him. If he went to the shop she walked out and didn’t return until he left, and the phone calls were nothing more than silent reprimands, but for what, he didn’t really know.