‘Teifion,’ he called to his son the following morning. ‘What are we to do about Meriel Evans and this Lucy Calloway?’
‘What can we do? She has the right to open an estate agency, although I doubt she’ll make a success of it, competing with you is a bit optimistic.’
‘You know she’s stealing my clients? Going to see people and persuading them I’m not the best one to deal with their sale?’
Frieda came into the office, sobbing prettily. Beside her was a suitcase, which, George explained, was because this had upset her so much she was going to her sister’s in Brighton for a rest.
‘After all the lies she told and now trying to rob your father of his customers, you have to do something, Teifion,’ she sobbed. ‘It’s your firm too and one day when your father retires, you’ll find there’s nothing to inherit unless she’s stopped.’
‘I wouldn’t want to hurt her – or Lucy,’ Teifion said anxiously.
Guessing the attraction, George said, ‘Get them out of that office and you can offer Lucy a decent, secure job here, with you. You’d like that, wouldn’t you, son?’ As Teifion hesitated, he added coldly, ‘Need I remind you that the alternative is for you to have nothing to inherit?’
Over the following days Meriel suffered a few setbacks. The builder called at the office and instead of being dressed to continue with the work he was doing, he asked for full payment.
‘There’s been a few rumours, like,’ he said, embarrassment covering his face with a red glow. ‘Some say I won’t get my money and I can’t risk that. Only a small family business mine is, see, and I can’t take risks.’
She argued for a while then, anxious for the work to be completed, offered him a post-dated cheque on condition he finished two days sooner than promised. ‘Well, thank you Mr George Dexter,’ she said to an amused Lucy. ‘I think we won that round.’
An order for a sign to be made to go over the shop front was returned by post together with a complaint about the time already wasted on the project. An enquiry led to them being told that the order had been cancelled by telephone. This time it was Lucy who dealt with it, insisting that the work was done and delivered without delay after being so unbusinesslike not checking such a change of plan with them.
Having heard of these irritations, which Meriel told him in a light-hearted way, pleased at the way the tables had been turned, Walter went to Cwm Derw but not to see Meriel. Unable to resist a moment longer, he went to see George Dexter.
The result of the conversation left George devastated. Walter hadn’t tiptoed around but had told him he knew exactly what had happened to cause Frieda to ask Meriel to leave. At first George bluffed and refused to listen but as Walter added a clear description of the hotel and its location, he collapsed like a deflated balloon.
‘You knew, didn’t you?’ Walter said.
George nodded.
‘I didn’t know for certain, but so many little details have crowded in and built a picture that I didn’t want to see. What you’ve told me only confirms it. What shall I do? I love having her as my wife, being envied by my friends. The humiliation if she leaves me is something I can’t imagine.’
‘I’ll say nothing, but you have to make sure you don’t hurt my daughter any more than you already have. No rumours, except about her excellence, help her get started and we’ll forget this conversation. Right?’
George nodded, then offered his hand. So when George heard that Lucy needed to learn to drive, he sent his son to teach her. That should keep Walter quiet, he thought, as his ever-willing son ran to do what he asked.
Meriel and Lucy were delighted at the way everything was falling into place for them, unaware of the hatred George Dexter was really feeling. George discussed the situation with Teifion and persuaded him that one serious effort would rid them of Meriel for good, leaving his way open to offer Lucy a job. He flattered his son, tried to turn him against Meriel and increase his sympathy for his stepmother. ‘Just one more effort and it will all slip into place,’ he promised. ‘I know you can do it. You’ll be head of the company and Lucy will be your partner. Working with Meriel has been useful. Just think, it will be perfect, son.’ He watched the expressions passing over Teifion’s face. Heavens above, the boy is so weak, he thought with disgust. How could I have produced a son like him? He piled on the persuasions, increasing his allowance, buying him a new and better car, promising him Lucy as a partner in the business. Then, as doubt still shadowed Teifion’s face, he began to warn him of what might happen if he refused to do what he demanded. With his face white with anguish but fearful of upsetting his father any further, he agreed.
*
As Meriel predicted, Lucy took to driving without any difficulty. She really wanted and needed to drive, and, with her quick mind, the new skill was easily accomplished. She took over the deliveries from Meriel and in the first three weeks after they opened they had arranged the sale of two properties and the purchase of a third.
By the end of the first week they had their name over the door of their clean and smart new office, Evans and Calloway. Decorators had been working on the rest of the house and they hoped that they would soon be advertising for tenants.
‘Shall we ask Dexter’s to find us some tenants?’ Lucy joked.
Meriel growled, then showed her friend the new advertising on which she had added, “Letting agents for houses, flats and rooms”. ‘Well, once the upstairs is finished we’ll have at least one flat on our books,’ she said.
Teifion had called regularly for Lucy, to give her driving lessons, but had never come in. Neither had he spoken to Meriel since the time they had met in the picture house. So it was a surprise when he came into their office when Lucy was out, and invited Meriel out for a meal.
‘I’m grateful for the help you’ve given Lucy,’ she said firmly, ‘but there’s nothing that would tempt me to spend even a minute with anyone called Dexter.’ She opened the door to the street. ‘Goodbye, thank you for calling.’
‘Please, Meriel. None of this is my fault, and anyway, wasn’t it a good thing, giving you the opportunity to start your own business?’
‘You really think I’m glad your father sacked me and told lies about my honesty? If I’d been less well known he could have ruined my life. Go away!’
He didn’t go. He sat down on the chair where clients sat and stared at her. He really was rather good-looking, she thought with a flash of weakness. His expression showed no sign of regret, in fact his brown eyes were shining with a hint of amusement. The little-boy-lost expression no longer there. ‘Come on, say yes,’ he coaxed. ‘You know we could become friends. Just you and me, no George Dexter and no Walter Evans. You –’ he said slowly – ‘and me.’ Meriel wondered cynically whether the idea had come from George, but curious, she went anyway.
They met at the edge of town. She parked her car and he drove her to a place a long way from Cwm Derw in a small village close to the sea in the Vale of Glamorgan. The fourteenth-century thatched building where they stopped surprised her. ‘We’re eating here?’ she asked doubtfully.
‘A drink first, then we’ll go to the place where I’ve booked a table.’
The fascinating inn, with its history proudly told by the barman and displayed on posters on the ancient walls, interested her and they were late leaving. When they reached the restaurant the tables were all occupied but the waiter found them a place near the kitchen doors where people dashed in and out with steamily laden plates and wafting tempting smells towards them, but also those piled up with the messy dregs of meals. It was hardly a pleasant place in which to eat.
With little interest, wishing she hadn’t come, Meriel chose a meat pie and smiling, Teifion asked for the same. She looked at him, puzzled by the look of nervousness. He seemed restless and edgy. Was he going to be a nuisance on the drive home? She wasn’t too worried. She had successfully discouraged more than one over-eager boyfriend in the past.
A bottle of wine finally appeared and Meri
el sipped appreciatively. She was hardly aware of him topping up her glass as they talked easily, sharing details about their lives previous to their meeting. She wasn’t aware of George sitting at another table watching and nodding encouragement to his son. It wasn’t until she stood to leave that she realized she had enjoyed the wine a little too much. Looking around she noticed they were the last to leave.
Outside, the car park was deserted and very dark. Then Teifion began to fondle her in a way that alarmed her and she pushed him away. ‘Stop that!’ she shouted, and staggered as she walked away, her legs stiff and awkward, her leaden feet stumbling over the uneven ground. He opened the car door and held her close as he helped her in and again she pushed him away. This time he tripped over her leg and fell. Instead of apologizing, she giggled.
He got into the driving seat and said, ‘Get in, you stupid woman, or I’ll go without you.’
‘Stupid woman?’ she said with a frown. ‘Who are you calling stupid?’
‘You, and myself, for imagining you’d be good company. No wonder you steal from friends, you need it for alcohol. You disgust me!’ he shouted.
To her utter disbelief he slammed the door and began to move off. He hesitated then, but behind her, he could see his father gesturing for him to leave. With a wide-eyed terrified glance towards her, he started to drive away. Meriel stared in disbelief, not aware of George and his friend getting into their car. ‘Come back at once!’ she yelled. The car reversed and the window rolled down. ‘Phone your father,’ Teifion said, his voice trembling with embarrassment. He threw a handful of coins towards her and drove away.
Meriel stared at the coins strewn at her feet, then at the now empty road. He was leaving her miles from home and she did not know where she was. Tearfully she telephoned her father.
*
Badgers Brook was silent when she went inside, seeming to disapprove of her behaviour. Walter was non-judgemental. ‘Can you tell me how much you drank, love?’
‘We had a bottle of wine and I can’t remember Teifion topping it up but he must have done. But I couldn’t have drunk that much, there was more than half a bottle left when we came away.’
‘I think you might have had a Mickey Finn,’ he told her, his eyes bright with anger. ‘Something stronger added when you weren’t looking. You could have been seriously hurt. Even if you’d got a lift or a taxi, you’d have had to drive the car back from the other side of town.’ he added grimly. ‘Was that to make sure no one saw you together? Or to make sure someone did? Whatever the reason, what he did could have resulted in a serious accident. It seems that George Dexter and his son haven’t forgiven you for finding out Frieda’s nasty little secret.’ He knew that the hatred between himself and George went back a lot further than that, and seemed unlikely to end.
He helped her to her room and, leaving a candle burning on the landing windowsill in case she got out of bed in the night, he went down and lay on a couch.
He didn’t know what to do. He’d agreed to say nothing about Frieda’s secret ‘other life’ but this evening’s behaviour negated any such promise. His darling daughter might have been seriously hurt. George’s campaign of spite had to be stopped. It might have been Teifion spiking the drink while pretending friendship but the idea was almost certainly his father’s.
Teifion wasn’t capable of thinking out such a malicious idea, although his pathetic need to impress his father obviously made him willing to carry it out. ‘Why, oh why had Meriel chosen Cwm Derw to settle?’ he said aloud.
He waited until he heard Meriel get up and made a tray of tea, leaving it outside her room. ‘All right, love? I’m just going out for a paper, I’ll come back and see how you are, then we can go and collect the car.’
He went out, knocked on George’s door and when George opened it he pushed him roughly inside and followed. ‘Touch my daughter again and you’ll regret it.’
George blustered and insisted he didn’t understand, but Walter, although a successful businessman, had come up the hard way and he could have fought with the man and won, but he didn’t. He simply warned him of the consequences if Meriel was harmed in any way, and from the look on his face, George understood.
‘Call yourself a man? Causing distress to a young woman of twenty-two? Putting her in extreme danger?’
At the top of the stairs Teifion cringed with shame. What sort of a man was he, doing his father’s dirty work, too afraid to refuse, trying to pretend to like it? How weak was he, allowing himself to be persuaded to do such a terrible thing?
He went to the office to offer to bring back Meriel’s car, but saw it standing outside. With racing heart he went in and tried to apologize, but Meriel and Lucy threw him out, one each side of him, like a couple of crazy policemen. Feeling more embarrassed and miserable than ever before in his whole life, he stood there for an age, trying to decide on his next move.
Going back inside he asked Meriel the true reason behind his father’s dislike of her. Meriel refused to tell him, but Lucy had no such qualms.
‘He doesn’t deserve protecting, after what he’s done to you,’ she said to her friend, and told Teifion exactly why Meriel had been told to leave.
‘I can’t tell you how ashamed I feel. How could I have been persuaded to do such a terrible thing? I’ve been so anxious to get my father’s approval I’ve become a little mad, I think. He threatened to leave everything to Frieda, leave me penniless. I – I believed him and couldn’t face it. I’m so ashamed, but also in an odd way I feel free of him. Please believe me, Meriel, when I promise I will never ever do anything so stupid or cruel again. I feel as though I’ve just woken up from a nightmare.’
Meriel and Lucy stared at him throughout his speech without a word. When he finally stopped, Lucy said brightly, ‘Bye then. Close the door after you.’
At the door he paused. ‘I can’t expect you to forgive me, it stretches the imagination for someone my age to have acted so stupidly, but if I can ever do anything for you, anything at all, you only have to ask,’ he said in a choking voice.
Neither girl replied.
Teifion went back to his father. ‘Is it true?’ he demanded, after repeating what Lucy had told him. He didn’t need a reply, it was clear from his father’s expression that he wasn’t going to deny it. Two hours later he had taken a room in the guest house of Elsie and Ed Connors, and began looking for a job.
When Meriel learned of his leaving Dexter’s she took no pleasure in the news. ‘It’s that stupid father of his,’ she said to Lucy. ‘How can he be so besotted with that woman he can treat me, a stranger, so badly and watch as his son walks away?’
Lucy sighed. ‘Lucky Frieda. It must be good to be loved so much and treated as someone very special.’
‘Love? Rubbish! George Dexter uses her like a status symbol, better than the latest Rolls Royce she is, making him feel a heck of a great guy. I don’t think love comes into it at all.’
Lucy stared dreamily out of the window remembering how close she had once been to love, a home of her own and children. The damned war had lost her the only chance she’d ever have. ‘If only Gerald had thought as much of me, we’d have married and I’d have a couple of children by now.’
‘Why don’t you look him up?’
‘Too long ago.’
‘You think he might be married? Do you know what happened to him?’
‘Nothing much. I see his mother occasionally and apparently he went back to his job working with his father repairing motorbikes. And he still lives at home. Not very exciting, eh?’
‘Not like you, running a business and… look out, pretend to be busy, there’s someone coming in.’
Lucy began adding a few scribbles in her desk diary, so anyone looking would imagine they were doing better than they were. A young couple came in looking for a couple of rooms to rent.
‘Yes, we can certainly help you with rooms, but we also have something far better. Will you follow me?’ Happily, Lucy took them to see the flat
above the shop, fingers crossed that they would manage the higher rent once they saw the clean and spacious, neatly furnished accommodation.
Lucy showed them around, dreamily describing how ideal the place was for newlyweds, in her mind seeing herself living there with the man in airforce uniform she had once loved so much.
They had a visitor later that morning. Leo called and invited both girls out to lunch. Not having seen him for a while, Meriel was aware for the first time of changes in the man she had known for so many years. He had always been neatly but poorly dressed, in clothes that were never a good fit. Second-hand or passed on from his father or someone’s older brother, she had assumed. With his mother and three sisters bemoaning the shortage of clothing coupons, Meriel had guessed he had been too generous towards them and had shared his allowance with them.
He was good-looking in a schoolboy kind of way, his hair was mid brown, very straight and difficult to style, always falling across his eyes. There was a serious expression in his grey eyes and he had the earnestness of a pupil listening to a teacher when he was in conversation. She always believed he was really interested in everything she had to say.
Now, although that hadn’t changed, his appearance had. Since clothes rationing ended the previous year he had begun to dress well. Today, he wore a pair of grey trousers and a good quality Harris tweed jacket. His shirt was immaculate and his shoes shone like glass.
He was attentive to them both, making sure they enjoyed the brief break from their work. Afterwards, Lucy said, ‘You know I said it must be nice to be thought of as someone very special? Well that’s how Leo thinks of you.’
The Heart of the Home Page 5
