When Bethan saw Haydn’s tall, fair figure lounging against the gatehouse she ran to him, too wrapped up in her own affairs to notice the expression on his pale, tired face.
‘Haydn, they’ve laid me off. I haven’t a job any more …’
He put his arms round her and told her as gently as he knew how, what Eddie had done to Andrew.
Bewildered no longer, she understood everything. Only too clearly. There’d been no Hospital Board appointment of a replacement nurse. Just one short, quick telephone call to Matron from Dr John senior. She ripped open the envelope Matron had given her. Inside were two five pound notes. Haydn only just stopped her from tearing them up. He was anything but proud of the way he did it.
‘We may need them for our Eddie’s’ defence,’ he muttered practically.
‘There you are, darling.’ Isabel John removed the lunch tray that the maid had brought up earlier, and smoothed the satin cover over the guest bed that Andrew was lying in. ‘You should feel a little better by tonight,’ she murmured soothingly.
‘For goodness’ sake, Mother,’ he snapped irritably. ‘It’s only a mild concussion.’
‘And cracked ribs,’ she emphasised.
‘Cracked rib,’ Andrew corrected bad-temperedly.
‘Dreadful.’ His mother shook her head as she fussed with the trunk that Dr John senior had arranged to have brought up from the station. ‘I don’t know what the world’s coming to when a man can’t walk down the main street of his home town in safety.’
‘I do,’ Andrew said shortly. ‘I had it coming to me. I didn’t exactly treat his sister very well.’
‘If I remember rightly you treated her extremely well,’ Isabel protested indignantly, watching him carefully out of the corner of her eye. ‘Took her to nice places. Introduced her to all the right people.’
‘And left her high and dry, knowing that she loved me.’ He couldn’t look his mother in the eye. Love between a man and a woman was something they’d never discussed in a personal context.
‘Loved you? Really, Andrew, you’re deluding yourself. The girl barely waited for you to leave town before getting married.’
‘Married? Bethan? Come on, Mother, don’t try that one on me. I don’t believe it.’ He rejected the news contemptuously.
‘Well, perhaps it wasn’t quite that soon after you left. I think it happened two or three weeks ago. Mrs Llewellyn-Jones told me all about it.’
‘She would,’ Andrew commented scathingly. ‘And who exactly is Bethan supposed to have married?’
‘Apparently a man who was lodging with her family. At least that’s what Mrs Llewellyn-Jones heard. A miner like her father.’ She slowed her speech, conscious of saying too much, too fast. She wanted to get the revelations just right, so he wouldn’t ask any questions of anyone else while he was in Pontypridd. He’d told her he only had four days’ leave. Trevor was getting married tomorrow so he wouldn’t see him. And really there wasn’t anyone else. At least not anyone who’d talk about Bethan Powell.
‘Anyway they’ve opened a lodging house down Broadway,’ she concluded. ‘So please, darling, don’t go upsetting yourself over a girl like that. She simply isn’t worth it.’ She picked up the tray from the floor. ‘Will you be all right with the maids if I go out? Normally I wouldn’t dream of leaving you, but the Reverend Price has called an emergency committee meeting of the Distress Fund …’
‘Go ahead please; I really would like a long sleep.’
‘Well, if you’re sure, darling, I’ll be as quick as I can. An hour or two at the most.’ She stroked the hair back away from his bandaged forehead.
‘I intend to sleep longer than that.’
‘I’ll see you later. Arrange a nice dinner to be brought up.’
‘I’ll get up for dinner.’
‘We’ll see what your father has to say about that. Sleep well, darling.’
Andrew lay back on the pillows and stared at the whitewashed ceiling listening to his mother’s footsteps as she descended the stairs. He couldn’t believe it! He didn’t want to believe it. And he didn’t. But he found it equally difficult to believe that his mother was lying. He knew she’d never liked Bethan. He just didn’t realise that the dislike ran deep enough for her to fabricate an entire story, lowering the standards of behaviour and integrity she’d adhered to all her life.
The last thing Eddie had shouted at him before he’d lost consciousness had been that Bethan was in a hell of a state … “One hell of a state”.
Needing to know more, he fought his instinct to rest. He waited until the front door opened and closed. The Distress Fund committee meeting would well and truly buzz with gossip this afternoon, he reflected sourly. A few minutes later he rang the bell.
‘You wanted something, sir?’ Mair knocked the door and opened it a crack as though he were a wild animal that would bite.
‘Yes, Mair.’ It didn’t occur to him to ask Mair whether Bethan was married or not, his mother had brought him up too well to see servants as people with lives and minds of their own. ‘Would you make a telephone call for me to Dr Lewis? You do know how to use the telephone?’ he added as an afterthought.
‘Of course, sir,’ she said, offended.
‘Tell him I need to see him as soon as possible. It’s very urgent. Can you remember that?’
Trevor was packing in his rooms when the call came. Another five minutes and he would have left for the house that he and Laura had rented in Graig Street, opposite St John’s church. It wouldn’t have a telephone for another two weeks and three days. All the honeymoon that he’d managed to squeeze out of Andrew’s father.
* * *
‘It’s good of you to come. I know you must have things to do for the wedding tomorrow.’
‘I was in the middle of moving out of my digs into the new house,’ Trevor said ungraciously.
‘Are you and Laura going away?’
‘To London for a week. She’s never been there.’
‘You should have told me. I could have arranged a hotel …’
‘All done. I knew of a good place close to Marble Arch.’
‘Hope you have a good time.’ Smarting at Trevor’s dismissal of his offer of help, Andrew waved a bandaged hand at the surroundings. I’d rather be in my own rooms,’ he said, changing the subject. ‘But Father insisted on putting me in here, so he and
Mother could keep an eye on me.’ He realised Trevor was watching him with a professional eye. For all of his efforts to appear normal, he knew his speech was slurred, like that of a drunk. And quite apart from his throbbing head, his bandaged ribcage stabbed into his chest every time he drew breath.
‘I saw your father briefly in the hospital this morning. He said you’ve got concussion and a cracked rib. Considering Eddie’s talents, you’re lucky.’
‘Very,’ Andrew agreed drily. ‘I think he was out to kill me.’
‘That’s hardly surprising,’ Trevor commented coolly.
‘Look, won’t you sit down?’ Andrew asked as he struggled to sit up.
‘I can’t stay long.’
‘I know. It was good of you to come.’ Andrew fumbled on the bedside table for his cigarettes, holding out the case to Trevor. ‘It hurts having to ask this, especially when it’s a question that I of all people should be able to answer, but I didn’t know who else to get in touch with.’
‘If I were you, I’d lie down. You’re not making much sense.’ Trevor took two cigarettes. He lit them with a lighter Laura’s father had given him and handed one back to Andrew.
‘I need to know how she is. I don’t need you to tell me I don’t deserve to. I treated her abominably that last night.’ Andrew puffed nervously at his cigarette, avoiding Trevor’s eye. ‘I wrote to her. Three letters. She didn’t answer one of them. I don’t blame her, not really, not after what I said …’
‘You wrote to her and she didn’t reply?’
‘Not a word. That’s why I came back a day early. I hoped to straighten thing
s out between us before your wedding tomorrow. I behaved like a bloody fool.’ He drew hard on the cigarette and tapped the ash out into a tray on the floor. ‘I should never have left for London the way I did. But my father said …’ he looked up at Trevor, ‘No,’ he said vehemently. ‘No, that really would be the easy way out wouldn’t it? Blame him. Blame everyone except the person most at fault. Me. The simple truth of the matter is I went away thinking I’d soon get over her. But I didn’t realise what I had,’ he murmured softly. ‘Not then. Not until weeks later. You could say I didn’t really appreciate her until I lost her. I thought I’d find another girl to take her place.’ He laughed derisively. ‘I found plenty all right. But not one to touch her. There wasn’t anyone who could come anywhere near her.’
‘And now, after everything you’ve done, you’ve come back to carry on where you left off?’ There was incredulity as well as anger in Trevor’s voice.
‘I hoped to,’ Andrew said defensively. ‘I thought I had a chance. She’d told me she loved me. I still love her …’
‘My God!’ Trevor turned on his heel, opened the window and threw his cigarette outside.
‘Trevor, what’s wrong?’ Andrew pleaded. I know something’s happened, but no one will tell me anything. Mother gave me some cock and bull story about Bethan getting married …’
‘It’s true.’
‘It can’t be!’ Andrew protested. ‘She loved me. She cared for me.’
‘Oh, she cared for you all right. That was the blood trouble.’
‘She really is married?’ Even Andrew’s lips were white, bloodless.
‘You bastard!’ The vehemence in Trevor’s voice hit Andrew with a greater force than Eddie’s blows. ‘You walked away leaving her destitute and now you’ve got the gall to lie there and ask me questions about her marriage.’
‘Destitute? She had her job …’
‘For Christ’s sake, man. Do I have to spell it out for you? She tried to keep it a secret from everyone, but I found out when she fell down the stairs in the hospital.’ He faltered, remembering the reason for her fall. ‘Afterwards she told me the truth. That you went to London to get away from her and the baby.’
‘The baby?’ Andrew stared at him dumbfounded.
‘The baby. Your damned baby. Why else do you think she’d marry a man like Alun Jones? She wanted to give it a name.’
‘My God.’ Andrew felt as though the room was spinning around him. ‘Do you think I’d have left her if I’d known there was a baby?’
Trevor stared at him. ‘Didn’t you know?’
‘No.’
It was such a flat, blunt denial Trevor couldn’t help but believe him. ‘She said she’d told you. That you’d gone to London to get away,’ he finished slowly.
Andrew sank back on the pillows. ‘Do you really think so little of me?’
‘You must admit you couldn’t wait to go. You even asked me to take her a letter and say goodbye for you.’
‘I did, didn’t I?’ he murmured as if he was talking about someone else not himself. ‘God, how she must hate me. Not to have said a single word … Trevor, how is she?’ he pleaded.
‘As well as can be expected. I haven’t seen her for two days. But I do know that she was given her cards and her pay at the hospital this morning. It’s not done for a nurse to have a brother who beats up the senior Medical Officer’s son.’ He couldn’t resist the gibe.
‘Then she’s still working?’
‘Until this morning.’
‘What about … about her husband?’ he asked, choking on the word.
‘Alun Jones? He’s in gaol.’ Trevor admitted sheepishly, regretting the impulse that had made him want to see Andrew squirm. ‘He was arrested the morning after the wedding. Apparently he had a wife already in North Wales.’
‘Then Bethan’s not married?’ Andrew stared at him keenly.
‘Not legally, no.’
‘Did she love … did she …’
‘I’ve told you all I know,’ Trevor said finally as he moved restlessly towards the door. ‘She doesn’t confide in me. After Alun was arrested the family closed ranks around her. You know what they’re like.’
‘I can imagine.’ He lifted the bedclothes back. ‘She’s living with them now?’ He sat up and swung his legs out of bed.
‘You don’t think for one minute she’ll see you?’
‘Eddie will when I go to the police station to drop the charges against him. I just hope he’ll listen to me. And take her a message.’
‘I doubt it,’ Trevor observed realistically. ‘You’d be better off lying there until you can think straight and talk coherently.’
‘Do me a favour?’ Andrew said grimly, wincing as he opened the wardrobe door and reached for a shirt.
‘What?’
‘It’s nothing too dreadful.’ Andrew stripped off his pyjama jacket. ‘Go and call me a taxi.’
‘The police station is on my way back to the Graig. If you’re set on going there anyway I suppose I could drive you down seeing as how you’re incapable.’ He smiled at Andrew for the first time.
‘That would be good of you. Just one more thing?’
‘What?’
‘Do up my shoelaces there’s a good chap. My head hurts like hell when I bend down.’
‘This is most irregular, sir,’ the duty sergeant protested.
‘Not at all,’ Andrew said evenly. ‘Don’t you understand? There was no fight.’
‘But …’
‘No “buts” either, sergeant.’ Andrew smiled wanly as he leaned against the high desk in the reception room. ‘I fell over and hit my head. The boy was trying to help me.’
‘But he ran off when our man came.’
‘Very possibly to avoid the type of accusation he’s facing now.’
‘You expect me to believe this fairy story?’ the sergeant demanded aggressively.
‘I was there, Sergeant,’ Andrew pointed out calmly. ‘You weren’t.’
‘And this gentleman?’ Sergeant Thomas looked at Trevor.
‘Offered to bring me down here. I have a concussion.’ Andrew pointed to the bandage on his head. ‘I didn’t think it safe to drive myself.’
‘And you’re sure you want to do this, sir?’
‘How many times do I have to tell you? I’m absolutely sure that there are no charges for the man to answer to. If I’d been fully conscious last night they wouldn’t have been made in the first place.’
‘If you’d take a seat, sir.’ The sergeant moved out from behind his high desk. ‘I’ll get the paperwork.’
The “paperwork” turned out to be half a dozen forms of interminable length, each of which seemed to require at least three signatures to a page.
‘He will be released straight away?’ Andrew asked as he signed the last one.
‘As soon as we can bring him up from the cells,’ the sergeant replied suspiciously. He wondered if the doctor had some sort of private revenge lined up for young Powell once he left the security of the police station.
‘I’d like to see him if I may,’ Andrew said, reading the sergeant’s thoughts. ‘I’d like to thank him.’
‘Thank him, sir?’
‘For coming to my assistance.’
‘I’ll ask him if he wants to see you. If he does, I’ll bring him here.’
Trevor waited until the sergeant left before speaking out.
‘Wouldn’t it be better to wait until you can be sure he’s calmed down? Eddie’s always been a hothead, from what Laura’s told me.’
‘I have to see Bethan and the quickest way to her is through Eddie. Trevor …’
The door opened and Eddie, jacket slung over one shoulder, stood framed in the doorway.’
‘Come back for more, John?’ he threatened viciously, raising his fist. ‘I’d like to kill you here and now …’
‘No fight?’ Sergeant Thomas queried disbelievingly, pushing his bulk between Andrew and Eddie.
‘No fight, Sergeant,’ And
rew said flatly. ‘Mr Powell has clearly been upset by spending a night in the cells. A natural enough reaction from an innocent man. I’d like to apologise, Eddie. For everything,’ he emphasised warmly. ‘If I’d known what was happening last night you wouldn’t have been put in the cells.’
‘You …’
The sergeant pushed Eddie into a corner so Trevor and Andrew could walk past. ‘You’ll have to sign for your things,’ he told Eddie sharply.
‘Come near me again if you dare, John,’ Eddie called out savagely. ‘Five minutes. That’s all I need. Five minutes and you’re dead.’
‘Now what?’ Trevor asked as they walked into the car park, which was bounded by a low grey wall built of the same stone as the police station.
‘Drop me off at the railway station and I’ll get a taxi.’
‘Home?’ Trevor asked hopefully. When Andrew didn’t answer, he said, ‘You’re going up there aren’t you? To Graig Avenue?’
‘I have to see her.’
‘I doubt you’ll manage that. The rest of her family are likely to be as friendly as Eddie.’
‘I have to at least try.’
‘Get in. If you’re hell bent on killing yourself you’ll need a doctor along with you.’
Andrew sat slumped in the front seat as Trevor drove slowly up the Graig hill. He pulled his hat down low, to hide his battered face and avoid recognition. The streets were teeming with people. Women and children hauling heavy bags of vegetables and offal up from the market; boys hanging around the outside of shops, barefoot, bare-headed, hoping to earn an extra penny or two running errands for the shopkeepers; groups of men congregating around lamp posts, hands in pockets, caps pulled down over their eyes. Idlers who didn’t want to be idle; miners with no money in their pockets and no prospect of earning any.
‘If I park in Graig Avenue you’ll have every neighbour in the street nosing at the car.’ Trevor commented. ‘This really isn’t a good idea.’
‘Drop me off at the vicarage.’
‘I’ve a better idea. Why don’t I ask Laura to go down there and see her for you?’
‘Would she?’
‘I don’t know,’ Trevor replied honestly. ‘But I think Laura’s a better bet than trying to get past Bethan’s brothers or father.’ He stopped the car outside Laura’s house in Danycoedcae Road. Even when he was standing on the pavement he could hear feminine giggles and raised voices of excitement.
Pontypridd 01 - Hearts of Gold Page 46
