Corner of a Small Town

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

  “There’s more than the letter,” Viv said, “but we’ve left the rest somewhere safe. There’s a receipt for the petrol, a plan showing the exact place where he started the fire – on your instructions, there’s even a note in your handwriting telling him where and when to meet him to be paid. Careless that was, mind.”

  “All of this doesn’t add up to evidence of my guilt,” Arfon said. “No one would believe a pair like you, a disgruntled employee and a poacher.” He began to bluster then. Alarm flashed from his eyes, twin beacons of distress. “No-hopers the pair of you, trying to blackmail me into paying for something you cooked up between you! Get out of my house or I’ll—”

  “Call the police, Mr Weston?” Viv asked with a smile. “We’ll just wait here till they come, shall we?”

  Suddenly deflated, Arfon said, “Just, just give me until tomorrow to think about this. I want to consider it carefully. It’s obviously a put-up job. I haven’t anything to hide, mind.”

  “Haven’t you, Mr Weston?”

  “No! I haven’t! Now go, and I’ll see you tomorrow evening. Here at seven. All right?”

  They were shown out by a frightened-looking Victoria.

  “What shall we ask for?” Basil said as he and Viv walked back down into the town.

  “I don’t know. I’d rather go to the police and see the man punished. Lording it over us like he does, and all the time he’s a criminal.”

  “You could ask to marry Megan,” Basil suggested. “I know about you two meeting.”

  “Dream time is it? All right, what would you ask for?”

  “A job.”

  “You? Ask for a job?”

  “A job and a house to rent. In a year, when her sadness has faded, I could ask Eleri to marry me.”

  * * *

  Mr Weston didn’t appear in the shop the following day, for which Viv was grateful. It would have been difficult to face him and not refer to the previous evening’s confrontation. The brothers-in-law Islwyn Heath and Ryan Fowler seemed to guess there was something going on but Viv ignored their attempts to pry.

  After once more escorting Eleri to work, Basil and Viv knocked on the Westons’ door. A nervous Victoria opened it and whispered, “The old man’s in a foul temper. He even shouted at poor old Gladys! You’d better watch your step.”

  “Just make sure you’re listening at the door,” Basil whispered. “We might be needing you to give evidence.”

  “Oh, whatever you’re planning, don’t do it! Funny mood he’s been in, all day.”

  “Just be sure and listen. Right?”

  “Forget it, what ever it is, and go home,” Victoria pleaded. Ignoring the warning, they sauntered in as if attending a social event.

  Arfon was standing in front of the fire as before and he was obviously going to try and flatter them and cajole them into burning the evidence. He offered them seats, which they refused, offered them a drink which they also declined. Clearing his throat he began, “I’ve thought carefully about what you brought to show me,” he said, “and first of all I want to thank you for bringing it to my attention. I appreciate your loyalty Viv, and it won’t go unrewarded.” He walked up and down as if he were giving a talk to a large audience.

  “Now, although I am convinced it is a practical joke – and a very good one,” he attempted a laugh here but Viv and Basil remained stony-faced, “it would be embarrassing for this to become public knowledge and my family would be unhappy at that sort of publicity, even though the end result would prove me blameless. It’s all so long ago! I think it’s best if we burn the thing and forget we ever saw it, don’t you?”

  “Damn it all! There we go again, Viv,” Basil said. “His first thought is to set fire to it.”

  Arfon continued as if Basil hadn’t spoken. “Now I want to reward you both for your effectiveness in spotting this for what it is and saving me and my family any distress. Hand me the papers and I will give you both one hundred pounds each.”

  “You deny what the letter accuses you of then?”

  “Of course I deny it. Setting fire to my own place? Why would I do that?”

  “The new premises built after the fire are smarter than the old one.”

  “I could have you for that!” the old man snarled. “That’s slander that is. Accusing me of deliberately burning it down to get a new building.”

  “Want to try it?” Viv asked.

  “I’d rather settle it between ourselves,” the old man muttered.

  “And you’re definitely not guilty?”

  “Of course I’m not guilty!”

  “Pity. We thought you’d at least be honest with us.”

  “Where are you going?” Arfon asked, as they moved towards the door.

  “We hoped you’d be honest, sir,” Viv said.

  “All right. All right! I did pay that Daniel what’s-his-name to burn it. All right? Now, let’s settle the matter and that’ll be an end to it.”

  “And you’ll pay us one hundred pounds, each?”

  “You’ll have it tomorrow morning.”

  “No thanks,” Viv said. “We’re going to the police. Now, does this mean I’ve been sacked again?”

  Leaving the room they told Victoria to put on her coat and meet them at the back door, then the three of them went to talk to the police.

  * * *

  The investigation took several weeks. Arfon was called in for questioning several times. The local papers took as much of the story as the law allowed. Viv and Basil both had a turn of fortunes: Viv was out of a job and Basil applied successfully for work as night watchman at the furniture factory. They were treated like heroes by some and as fools by others. Megan viewed him as a traitor and vowed never to speak to him again.

  “It would never have worked, I know that,” he told Jack. “She and Joan have been spoilt by your grandmother, given everything they want. How could I compete with that? No, it was only a dream.”

  “You couldn’t have afforded her handbags, let alone her clothes,” Jack chuckled.

  “Doesn’t it upset you, them having so much more than you? I don’t see old Mrs Weston giving to you like she gives to them.”

  “Grandmother Weston spoilt her own twin daughters, and now she’s able to do it all over again with twin granddaughters. It’s as if she’s been given a second life, living it all just like before, with two lovely girls and the money to give them practically everything they wish for.

  “No, I don’t begrudge her her fun. I don’t need all the fripperies the girls do. It gives Grandmother so much pleasure and pushes back old age. She’s that young mother again with enough money to indulge her daughters, not an old lady approaching the end of her days. She’s that young mother sharing their confidences, helping them disobey their father, involving herself in their flirting and the silly extravagances which they keep secret from their parents.”

  “After a childhood like that, she couldn’t love someone like me. It couldn’t possibly work.”

  “Not if you hate old man Weston enough to get him sent to prison, it couldn’t!” Jack said harshly. “Why did you do it, Viv?”

  “Because no one should get away with a crime like that. And, if I’m honest, because I was bitter about not being allowed to go out with Megan, and angry because Rhiannon lost Barry and with Dad for messing everything up. I wanted to hit back. Hitting back is childish, Jack, but it definitely helps.”

  “And now?”

  “Get a job I suppose.”

  “If someone will trust you!”

  “You think I was wrong to expose him?”

  “He’s my grandfather.”

  “Pretend he isn’t. Was I wrong?”

  “No. If it had been anyone else I’d have to say you weren’t.” Although Jack admitted he had been correct to expose the crime, Viv knew he had lost him as a friend.

  After a few days of searching for something better, Viv accepted a job in an ironmongery warehouse checking stock and ordering replenishments – and hated it.
There was so much repetition and he was working alone, so the hours hung heavily. He told Rhiannon that his days seemed as much like a prison sentence as the one hanging over old man Weston! But he needed to earn money and he didn’t think another decorator’s suppliers would take him once his betrayal of Weston was general knowledge.

  He had some savings, money put away in the futile hope of one day having something to offer Megan. But that was a fanciful dream only. Although dreams did sometimes become reality, and the Lewis family was surely due for something good.

  During those days in the new job, Viv dwelt on what he and Basil had done with some shame. He hadn’t thought it through, dwelling only on the gratification of seeing the high and mighty Westons brought down. The idea of Arfon Weston ending up in prison was something that made him wish they had done what the old man had asked; burnt the letter and forgotten all about.

  Another result of the evidence of arson, however, cheered him more than a little. The accounts of Weston’s Wallpaper and Paint were thoroughly examined and the evidence of another fraud came to light. Jack’s father, Islwyn Heath, had been stealing from the company steadily over several years.

  Viv realised that although Jack hadn’t resented his cousins being given more than he, his father obviously had. Islwyn Heath said in his defence that it was to make up for the unfairness of the treatment of the Weston girls compared with that of his son. He said truculently that he didn’t feel guilty, he had just redressed the balance.

  Chapter Ten

  The town bristled with outrage at the revelations about the Westons through late spring and early summer of 1952.

  It was even more difficult for Viv and Megan to meet, with the families so estranged, but in spite of Joan clinging to her, and Jack watching her every move, Megan managed to escape one day and wait outside the ironmongery store at five, when Viv finished for the day. He was so pleased to see her, and in daytime too, breaking their rule, that he thought she must have spoken to her parents about them.

  “Megan! Does this mean you’ve told your parents about us?” he said. “I can’t believe it!”

  “That’s just as well because I haven’t! After what you’ve done? Grandfather is worried half to death and Uncle Islwyn is having some sort of breakdown and all because of you Viv Lewis! Any hopes you’ve had of being more than just a man who worked for my father are well and truly gone.” She slapped his face so hard he staggered, and walked off.

  A few days later when he saw the two of them walking towards him, laden as usual with shopping bags, Viv had no reason to think either Megan and Joan would speak to him. But some devil in him made him try. After all, he did have a sort of excuse. He stopped and asked, “Got a minute for a friend?”

  “You’re a fine one to offer friendship,” Joan retorted. “Thanks to you we’ve lost all ours.”

  “Typical,” Viv retorted. “Your grandfather commits a crime and you’re trying to blame me for the effects! I told on him, yes, but who was it who lit that fire? Then pretended it was accidental and took the money, eh? Your sainted grandfather. Who had his hand in the till, stealing from the family firm, eh? Your uncle that’s who! So who’s to blame for all your friends leaving you? Arfon Weston, and Islwyn Heath! Not Viv Lewis, right?”

  The twins were wearing short white dresses with white shoes and billowing cloaks of multicoloured fabric. A band of the same fabric held back their hair. The skirts of the dresses were flared and showed a lot of leg. Although they received a fair number of disapproving looks for their unusual apparel, Viv thought Megan looked beautiful.

  “What did you want?” Joan asked.

  “The Griffiths are having a party, they asked me to tell you they wouldn’t mind if you came.”

  “A party in that filthy shack? We aren’t that desperate for friends, Viv Lewis!” Joan began to walk away.

  “What sort of party is it?” Megan asked, holding her sister back.

  “Just a party. They never need an excuse.”

  “Can you imagine what a place like that would do to our clothes?” Joan protested. “How can you think of asking us?”

  “I didn’t. I wouldn’t dream of it! Basil did.”

  “It might be fun,” Megan said slowly, staring at Viv in a very disconcerting way.

  “Please yourself,” he said, staring back.

  “But what could we wear?”

  “Wear khaki!” Viv snapped. He was walking away when they called after him, agreeing to be there after all.

  He didn’t tell them Victoria would be there. “They might enjoy a bit of ‘slumming’, something to laugh about with their friends,” he chuckled to Rhiannon, “but going to the same party as their grandmother’s former servant? Never!”

  “Why are they coming?”

  “Why do they do anything? To be outrageous and shock their family. Why else?”

  * * *

  Rhiannon tried repeatedly to persuade her mother to go and see her father. She called at The Firs on occasion and tried the same plea in reverse. But both parents were adamant. Each insisted that the other should make the first move. Both insisted they were happier without the other, but Rhiannon disbelieved them. They were both grieving and coping badly with it alone.

  “Mam, you sit here on Sundays while we’re all out with the cycling club and I know you hate the empty house. Just go and see dad, there’s plenty to talk about, even if it does only concern the divorce!”

  “He’s the one in the wrong. He would come here if there was anything to say.”

  “You threw him out. The next move has to be yours.”

  “Then your father’ll wait a very long time!”

  Dora snapped. “Now let’s hear no more of it!”

  Surprisingly, Dora had recovered remarkably well. She had no symptoms, at present, of the ‘nerves’ she sometimes suffered. She was full of energy, cycling around the town collecting the weekly payments, dealing with her paperwork and still able to help with the running of the house. Somehow the troubles the family had endured had given her strength rather than taken it away.

  Although she tried to hide it, Dora hated Sundays. Her accounts were always finished on Saturday evenings. She worked late in an attempt to tire herself in the hope of sleep, but this left Sundays a void to be filled with trivia.

  One blustery day, when the house felt to her like a prison, she put on her smartest coat and shoes, and went to see Lewis. She walked, taking as an excuse for her visit a small parcel of clothes he had left in the house. She planned to discuss other things to strengthen her reason for calling.

  She chanted these reasons all the way and was still mentally checking them as she knocked on his door.

  The door of number eight opened and an elderly woman came out and asked what she wanted.

  “I’m looking for Mr Lewis.”

  “You won’t find him here on Sundays, love. Goes up to London every Friday he does. Says he’s looking for some woman friend, but between you an’ me I reckon he’s found her. Carrying on he is, and going all the way to London to do it. Now there’s a thing!”

  Stiff-lipped, Dora thanked the woman and throwing the parcel against his door, she hurried home. Still looking for Nia was he? Or perhaps, as the old woman had surmised, he had found her and they were spending every weekend together while she had only the radio for company. Life was so unfair! What had she done to deserve this? A child dead, another taken from her before she had even been told whether she had a son or daughter. The family grown up and practically off her hands and now, when she and Lewis should be enjoying the freedom of being a couple once more, he was still after that Nia Martin like a tomcat on the prowl.

  So much for Rhiannon’s idea that they still had something to say to each other.

  When Rhiannon, Eleri and Viv returned from their outing, they knew something had happened, as Dora was furiously angry. It was directed mainly at Rhiannon, but they didn’t learn the reason why.

  “Something to do with Dad or Nia,” Viv whisper
ed. “It’s got to be.”

  * * *

  Rhiannon prepared the shop for what she hoped would be the final months of sweet rationing and continued to build the sales of china and other gifts.

  Barry called often and his first words on every visit and phone call were to ask if she had heard from his mother, but as weeks passed, Nia’s whereabouts remained a secret.

  * * *

  At the end of July, Caroline went into labour. Barry took her to the hospital and walked up and down in the way of so many expectant fathers, until her baby son had safely arrived. When Hywel and Janet came with Basil, Frank and Ernie, he left, inexplicably saddened by a sense of isolation and of not belonging. All he had supplied was his surname. It was several days before he asked the baby’s name and wasn’t surprised to learn that he was to be Joseph Hywel.

  On hearing the news, Dora thought sadly that although her husband was the child’s grandfather, Joseph Hywel Martin would never call her gran.

  With so much gossip flowing about the scandals affecting the Westons – one of the most important families in the town – little notice was taken of the birth of the little boy. Those who were aware of it remembered that other scandal which had driven away Barry’s mother. Some asked Barry if she were pleased, unaware that Nia didn’t even know she had a daughter-in-law and certainly not that she had become a grandmother.

  A few counted the weeks since the wedding, but most didn’t bother.

  A month after leaving hospital with Joseph Hywel Martin, Caroline went home to the Griffiths’ shabby cottage.A month after that she applied for divorce with Barry’s full approval. Barry missed her company but was philosophical about it. He had done what he’d promised and given Joseph’s son his rightful name.

  * * *

  In the Weston household, in an attempt to dispel the gloom of the investigation and the prospects of their affairs being broadcast to the whole town in court, Gladys had ordered a television set. Theirs wouldn’t be the first; several of their friends had already bought one in readiness for the first transmission to South Wales. Gladys hoped that at least a few of their friends might call if they advertised their ownership of the new status symbol. It would be something of a victory if she could persuade a few of them to join her family for an ‘At Home’.