Sophie Street

by Grace Thompson

  “This is it, then,” Rhiannon said, all laughter gone. “She’s kicked him out and he’s coming back to live with us. Oh Charlie, why can’t they behave?”

  “Wait a minute,” he said, as Lewis began to bang on the door. “He’s laughing!”

  All thought of sleep had gone as they went down to open the door to see that Lewis was indeed laughing.

  “You’ll never guess what’s happened,” he said, and they waited in silence for him to continue. “Next door’s cat came through the window with a mouse in its mouth. He let it go and me and your mam have been trying to catch it. At least, I’ve been trying to catch the wily thing. Dora’s standing on a chair trying to get up on top of the wardrobe! You’ll have to have her here while I get the poor thing out.”

  Gwyn had been woken with the midnight activities and said, “I’ll come as well. Three of us and a cat should be able to catch a mouse, eh, Grandad?”

  Dora was carried over holding her night dress tight around her and, as Lewis waited for Charlie and Gwyn to go with him, Rhiannon smiled at Charlie. “Better a mouse than a lodger,” she whispered.

  From the bedroom window, Rhiannon and Dora looked across the road and watched the antics of three men versus one mouse. If they hadn’t known better they might have thought they were witnesses to a blood-curdling drama: there were sounds of furniture being moved and the banging of a stick on the floor, presumably to persuade the poor little thing to run across an open space where they might stand a chance of capturing it; there were silhouettes of figures passing to and fro behind the still-closed curtains, this way, then that, but it was almost fifteen minutes before everything went quiet and Lewis’s face appeared.

  “It’s all right, love, Gwyn got him and he’s putting him out in the garden.”

  “Where’s that cat?” Dora shouted back.

  “Locked in the bathroom. And for heaven’s sake Dora, shut up! You’re waking the neighbourhood,” Lewis shouted back.

  “Damned cheek, I—”

  “I think it’s time to put the kettle on, Mam.” Rhiannon laughed.

  * * *

  After telling Sian Weston about the adventure the following day, Dora was asked, “How are things between you and Lewis now? Happy, are you?”

  “Ye-e-s,” Dora said hesitantly.

  “But?” coaxed Sian.

  “I don’t know. Yes, we are happy. But I have the feeling that I’m waiting for something else, that Lewis coming back home was only a first stage of this new life. There’s something missing, but I don’t know what it is. Daft, eh?”

  “I think I know what you mean. To have him back was something you’d wanted for a very long time, even if you’d never admit it, and now he is there, you’re left with a feeling of anti-climax.”

  “That’s it. But I don’t regret having him back. I couldn’t cope with losing him again. And Rhiannon and Charlie’s prayers were answered as well as mine, when Lewis came back to number seven. Lewis said their faces were a picture of unadulterated horror last night, when they thought I’d thrown him out again!”

  * * *

  With the approach of spring, the Griffithses’ cottage was in chaos. Janet was spring-cleaning and the whole family was suffering. Frank and Hywel were given instructions about painting the rough stone walls made smooth by years and years of painting, the layers filling in the gaps, disguising the uneven surface so it looked almost like plaster.

  “White again?” Hywel said rhetorically.

  “Except the bedrooms,” Janet surprised him by saying. “Caroline wants pink and we’ll have a cheerful yellow in Frank’s room.”

  “Yellow? What the ’ell sort of colour’s that to sleep in? No, white’s best,” he argued. He was still arguing as they went to Westons and carried home pink and yellow emulsion and white gloss, plus packets of sandpaper.

  “You’re never going to ask me to paint doors and skirting boards white, woman? Brown it’s been for as long as we’ve lived here and brown it stays.” He was still arguing as he handed the sandpaper and white undercoat to Frank. “Go on, son, you get on with this and I’ll get my potatoes in the ground, before she wants me to grow flowers instead. I don’t know what’s got into your mother these days, and that’s a fact.” He rubbed his beard up the wrong way which was a sign that he was seriously upset.

  Hywel went to the top of the garden and dug furiously for the rest of the day. Janet wasn’t getting restless, was she? Wanting carpets? And yellow bedrooms? It wasn’t natural.

  During the next few weeks the preparations were done for planting the vegetables. Two long lines of bean sticks were arranged. “North to south,” Hywel told Frank, who was unwillingly helping him, “so they all get a bit of sun either in the morning or the afternoon, see.” Frank tried to escape this annual torment, but Hywel insisted he helped. “This is what you do to earn your keep, boy. You eat here, you work here, right?”

  “Right.” Frank began clearing out the greenhouses ready to grow the tomatoes and cucumbers which Hywel and he sold from the van. Why argue? He had nothing better to do. Mair wouldn’t speak to him except to tell him to ‘get lost’. Basil and Ernie were both involved with their wives. He was on his own, so he might as well give in and do what his dad wanted without argument. Dad could still land him one, and thought he had the right to do so if he didn’t do what he was told. What a life! And a future containing more of the same. What a prospect! If only Carl Rees would drop dead.

  * * *

  Carl found temporary work on a building site where three houses were nearing completion. Finishing off the kitchens when the regular carpenter was off sick suited him admirably. Short-term jobs with several other offers of work coming in almost daily. He was able to charge a good price and work for as many hours as he could stand up. He only had to work like this for a few more years and he would be clear of the debt.

  The houses were in Twill Lane, the other side of the town from Bella Vista, but by using the van he had bought cheaply from Jennie, he had no difficulty in working any reasonable distance from home.

  One of the labourers offered friendship and they sat sometimes sharing their snack during the half-hour break at midday.

  “In lodgin’s, are you?” the man asked. “Or still home with Mam?”

  “Lodgin’s,” Carl replied. “And you?”

  “Home with Mam at present, but I’m hoping to get my feet under the table at a very nice widow lady’s posh house soon. Softening her up I am. Pretending to have a better job than this. I stay there sometimes, as boarder, mind, nothing more. But I know she likes me and I think I’ll give it a few more weeks, then invite her out.”

  “Expensive hobby, courting,” Carl warned. “And if she’s a wealthy widow, she’ll expect more than a picture show and a bag of toffees, won’t she?”

  “I think she needs someone. Livin’ alone has its drawbacks for a woman.”

  “Dream on! You’ll need to offer more than companionship if she’s wealthy!”

  “Runs a guesthouse she does and she needs a man about the place.”

  “I’m Carl Rees,” Carl held out a hand. “I’ll be intrigued to know how you get on,” he smiled.

  “I’ll keep in touch, Carl,” said Maxie Powell.

  Chapter Four

  Sally was determined to change the attitude of her guests and keep herself distant from them. A few pleasantries was all she would allow herself. She began this new regime by talking to the four people staying there that evening, including Maxie Powell.

  “I would like to thank you for your kind thought in offering to help in some of the small tasks I perform for you, but I would prefer you to accept that my kitchen is out of bounds, except when I have given permission,” she said, smiling and hoping her words were not too harsh.

  Maxie stood up, throwing his napkin across the table dramatically. “No,” he said kindly. “No, Mrs Fowler-Weston, we don’t want you to think we mind helping. We don’t, do we?” He looked at the other three for agreement and w
ent on, “You work very hard here and your day is a long one, waiting up to give us a late-night snack as well as serving breakfast from eight o’clock. We love helping by starting your day with a cup of tea and if there’s any other way we can spoil you a little, you only have to say. So, please, not another word about it.”

  Wrong-footed, Sally could only retire to her kitchen.

  Carl Rees arrived before she had finished serving breakfast and when he saw Maxie, carrying out the cereal dishes to an obviously flustered Sally, he was surprised, then amused. So this was the widow Maxie thought he would cultivate. Mrs Fowler-Weston, who was married to Ryan who was very much alive.

  “Hello, Maxie,” he said, when Sally had offered him tea and asked him to wait until she was finished. “Don’t tell me this is your fancy woman who’s about to fall into your arms?”

  “Carl! What are you doing here? Not a word about where I work, please, she thinks I’m a stationery salesman.”

  “Surprise surprise, and you think she’s a widow. Sorry to disappoint you, mate, but her husband is still with us – even if not with her at present.”

  Subdued, Maxie went back to the dining room to continue his breakfast.

  * * *

  Sally had very little help, but twice a week she employed a young girl, Anne Davies, to change and wash bedding, vacuum floors and do the dusting. She arrived as Carl was starting to measure up for the work Sally wanted done and throughout the day in odd moments, they talked. When he finished at five thirty, he gave her a lift home.

  Anne lived in a run-down street only a few doors away from Molly Bondo, a well-known prostitute.

  “See all sorts coming and going at that house,” she told Carl. “People you’d never expect would stoop so low. And that brazen you’d never believe! Walk in as though they’re calling to buy a newspaper they do. I ought to have kept a diary. There’d be a few upset families if I had and that’s a fact. Respectable ones too, mind.”

  Carl said very little at the revelation. He’d often seen Molly at the Railwayman’s, and had bought her a drink once or twice. He would have to be more careful. There were watching eyes everywhere.

  He didn’t go straight home after leaving Anne. He went to the back lane behind Edward’s shop and knocked on the door of the basement flat. Ryan opened it and asked what he wanted. The man looked surprised, Carl thought, and wondered if he ever had any visitors. From what he had learnt, his family didn’t bother with him; nor had he been the sort to make many friends.

  “I’m doing some work for your wife,” Carl said.

  “So what? I’m not responsible for her debts,” Ryan said irritably.

  “This isn’t about a debt, Mr Fowler-Weston.”

  “Fowler. The name’s Fowler.”

  Embarrassed and wishing he hadn’t come, Carl said, “It’s just that your wife has a lodger, who I think might be a nuisance. Maxie Powell he’s called, and he—”

  “What d’you expect me to do about it?” Ryan demanded.

  “Nothing.” Carl began to move away. “Nothing at all. Sorry I bothered you.” Perhaps Maxie had a chance after all, if the Ryan Fowler’s attitude was one of such indifference?

  After Carl had gone, Ryan grabbed a coat and went out. White-faced with rage, believing that Sally had sent the man to plead for his help, he headed towards Glebe Lane, once his home.

  The closer he got to his destination, the slower his footsteps got until, at the end of the lane on which several expensive houses stood, isolated from each other by large gardens, he stopped. He knew he would only lose his temper again, which would make him feel ill and then he might not be well enough to go to work the following day. He turned and retraced his steps back to the basement flat, where he felt safe.

  * * *

  Jennie and Peter both felt their lives were in a strange sort of limbo waiting for the next stage but unable to do anything to set it in motion. There had been no serious discussion about divorce, yet Peter continued to live with his parents and only occasionally contacted Jennie, usually to argue about the bills she posted on to him.

  Jennie had made no effort to find a job, it seemed like defeat to be independent now: it was what Peter wanted. If he blamed the breakdown of their marriage on her attempts to be a modern woman earning money by running her own business, well, he’d have a taste of keeping her, while at the same time paying for a house he didn’t use. Peter was always careful about money and it would worry him. There was childish satisfaction in that. She went through the post, gathered together the few bills that had arrived, including one from Carl for replacing the putty in a window, and addressed them in her large scrawling writing to her husband, care of Mr and Mrs Rodney Francis.

  He called that evening on the way home from work. She opened the door, but didn’t step back and invite him in. “I’m sorry I can’t be sociable, Peter, but I’m going out.”

  He was breathless, as though he had been running. “It’s Mam,” he said. “She’s ill.”

  “Oh? Got the usual cold, has she?”

  “No, I wish it was that simple. She can’t get out of bed. She couldn’t even get tea for me and Dad,” he said, in mild outrage.

  Jennie laughed. “Poor Peter, that must be worse than having an ambitious wife.”

  “It isn’t a joke, she really is ill this time.”

  That was the closest he had come to admitting that there were times when his mother was a bit of a hypochondriac. “I’m sorry. Is there anything I can do?” She felt ashamed.

  “No, unless you could do a bit of washing for us and—”

  “No, Peter, I couldn’t do that. You left me, remember?”

  “She’s in a bit of pain,” he said.

  She was tempted to help, urged on by guilt at her immediate reaction, but she hardened herself and shook her head. Peter’s mother had caused her more distress and pain than anyone else in her whole life, and had made sure their marriage had failed. She owed the woman no favours whether she was genuinely ill or not.

  “I’m sorry she’s ill and I hope she’s well soon. But I really don’t think I can help. She doesn’t like me, and seeing me in her kitchen would probably make her feel worse.”

  Peter went home still carrying the bills and the cheques he had intended to return to Jennie. If Mam were ill for more than a few days, what would they do? He knew that making a meal was beyond him, and his father was no better. Mam had always looked after them and there had never been a need to learn.

  What was wrong with Jennie that she didn’t want to be a proper wife like Mam? All this mess was her fault, leaving him to fend for himself while she played at running a business. Women’s work was women’s work and men should have no part of it. He called in to the fish and chip shop and carried home the steamy package with something approaching despair.

  The reason he had left Jennie was because he couldn’t cope with her casual approach to looking after him. Mam had promised a meal on the table when he got in from work every day, a cooked breakfast every morning, washing taken away and returned to his bedroom drawers without fuss by the following day. It was what he’d been used to.

  With Mam out of action he was more than a little anxious. What if she was ill for a long time? Who’d look after him then? The fish and chips in their newspaper-wrapped parcel issued an appetizing smell and he began to run, wanting to be home, wanting to be reassured that everything would soon be back the way it should be. The door was open when he reached the front gate and the hall light was on. Voices from upstairs murmured and he ran, still carrying the fish and chips, up to his parents’ bedroom.

  “Mam’s got to go to hospital,” his father said stiffly. “The ambulance is on its way.”

  When the ambulance had taken his parents, Peter threw the supper into the dustbin and stood for a moment wondering what to do. Closing the door, he went back to tell Jennie. Surely she’d help now? The house was in darkness. She was obviously out. He sat down on the front step and stared into the night. He’d have t
o come back home. Irregular meals were better than none. Pouting like a small boy, he muttered, “Dad will have to shift for himself.”

  * * *

  For Basil, Frank and Ernie Griffiths, poaching was a way of life. They had kept their family – and several others besides – well fed during the long years of food rationing and, Janet thought, they had been rather disappointed when their illegal talents were no longer needed. They still used their expertise to get meat though, and although not as frequently as before, every now and again one of them would appear in court. If it wasn’t for poaching or trespassing with intent, it was for fighting.

  The routine was well practised. Best suit on, a freshly ironed white shirt, the one kept for all of them to use for these, ‘special occasions’. A trip in the van, usually driven by Hywel, an appearance in court and a plea of guilty, then a fine and a countdown to the next outing for the white shirt and best suit.

  With Basil and Ernie now married it was only Frank, and on occasions, Hywel, who went out at night and returned with something for Janet to cook. Now, Frank needed the expert skills of his brother, Basil. He wanted a salmon and he didn’t want to pay for it.

  Frank met Basil one morning when he was on his way to work at the plastics factory.

  “Help me net a salmon, will you?”

  “What for, our Mam planning a party is she?”

  “No, its not for Mam, it’s—” He hesitated and Basil stopped his long striding walk and waited. “It’s for a bit of owns back. That Carl Rees is messing Mair about.”

  “How will giving him a salmon help?”

  “If it’s illegal, and he’s caught with it, it’ll cost him money, that’s a start. Too mean he is, only takes Mair on long walks on dark nights. Never gives her a real treat. Never a box of chocolates. He should be taught a lesson.”