Derek Green found the situation amusing. “Pity the old man didn’t live to see the mess his wonderful son’s got himself into,” he laughed to Shirley one morning.
“Granfer Jenkins would have welcomed him no matter what others think about it.”
“I mean my father,” Derek said. Then he quickly changed the subject. “Getting muddled up I am,” he muttered.
“You’ve always disliked Sam, haven’t you?” Shirley asked curiously. “Did your father admire him, then? He could be unkind. Did he compare you to Sam unfavourably?”
“Sometimes, but it wasn’t important. Here,” he took two five pound notes from his back pocket, “go and treat yourself to a day in Cardiff, you haven’t had a good day’s shopping for ages.”
“No, not since I last went with Gilly. Oh, Derek, I miss her. Isn’t there anything we can do to get her and Paul together again?”
“Best we leave it. There are plenty of more suitable girls for Paul to choose from, good families and with a bit of money behind them.”
“But I’m sure he loves Gilly.”
“Give it time. Now you go out and enjoy yourself.” He smiled at her and she bent to kiss him.
“You spoil me, Derek Green.”
“You’re right, Shirley Green,” he smiled back.
* * *
Lucy hadn’t taken Gee’s proposal seriously and Gee hadn’t mentioned it again. For a few days she waited for him to ask her more formally, planning to refuse gently and beg him to continue to be her friend. The proposal hadn’t caused any apparent lack of ease on the part of Gee, in fact he seemed completely unaffected by the contemplated shift in their relationship. But Lucy was embarrassed at discovering the lack of honesty in Teifion’s treatment of her. Gee knew how stupid she had been and the knowledge of that made her less relaxed with him.
One wild, windy day, Gee knocked on her door and asked her to help him. “I’m desperate for some ’elp. If you’re too busy I don’t know what to do,” he wailed dismally.
“Gee, what is it?” She was concerned. It was so unlike Gee to be anything but cheerful.
“Got this picnic to eat and there’s too much fer one. If you don’t come to Barry Island with me I’ll ’ave to eat the lot and Gawd knows what’ll ’appen to me.”
“Gee, you’re an idiot!” she laughed.
“Then you’ll come?”
“I’d love to.”
They set off early in the bright morning sun. The wind was lively, picking up the last of the winter’s leaves making them dance along beside them as they walked. They lived not far from the railway station and with a picnic basket pulling on Gee’s shoulders, they made their way there, meeting no one apart from the paper-boy and several dogs out on their early stroll.
When they stepped out of Barry Island station there were very few people about. None of the seasonal entertainments Barry Island beach had to offer were open yet for business.
Gee groaned about the large and obviously heavy basket, complained about the weight of it, but refused to let her share the load.
“It’s so windy, I can’t think where we’ll find a spot to eat a picnic,” Lucy said as they stood on the promenade and looked out over the wild waves. The tide was half way in, the sea lashing the rocks on Nell’s Point, sending spume up into the sky to fall like huge flakes of snow.
“I ’ope we can find a place soon, this weight is killin’ me,” he groaned in mock despair. “Ruined I am. Ruined fer life.”
As the tide came further up the sandy beach the wind increased and eventually Lucy suggested they hid the basket and went for a walk without it.
“Can we go for a walk up there?” she pointed to the cliffs to the right. “We can come back after we’ve walked to the top and perhaps find a place among the rocks.” The basket was left among some rocks and they set off to climb the path to Friar’s Point.
Without the heavy basket they began to enjoy the wildness of the coast and walked across the point to the old harbour. Catching a bus, they made their way to the Knap and found the Pebble Beach and, beyond it, the long climb up to Porthkerry Park. Birds sang in the trees, spring flowers bloomed everywhere in celebration of the new season and even the roar of the breakers behind them was no more than a murmured melody. Hand in hand they wandered and admired. Living in a town, the open space with its wide expanse of sky was a wonderland. Lucy looked at Gee and smiled, sharing with him her delight.
They walked back to the deserted Pebble Beach and Lucy began to feel hungry. She look towards the distant Whitmore Bay. They had walked a very long way from the picnic basket. It was mid-afternoon by this time, the clouds were already beginning to gather for evening, and she looked hopefully at Gee.
“Don’t you think we ought to go and find the basket? I’m starving.”
“It wouldn’t do yer much good,” he grinned. “There ain’t nothin’ in it except a couple o’ newspapers. I’m going to treat you to a slap up meal in a café, what d’you think of that?” He delved into his pocket and produced a bar of Cadbury’s chocolate. “Ere, I saved you some chocolate from me rations to keep you goin’ ’til we find a place where we can get some decent grub.”
“You mean you carried that case all this way and there was nothing in it?” She burst out laughing. “Gee, you’re crazy. Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I tricked yer into comin’ didn’t I? Said I got a lot of food to eat?” He was serious then and her laughter faded, too. “I promise that’s the first and last time I’ll ever lie to yer. Now, what say we get married?” Rather clumsily he kissed her and she found, to her surprise, it was what she had wanted for a very long time.
Abandoning the basket to its fate they caught a train from Barry Island into Barry town and found a place to eat. Eyes sparkling in the candlelight they ate without tasting and drank without thought and discussed their hopes and dreams for the life they would share. “What say we get wed in London? I got a family there and from what you say you ain’t got no one special to invite around ’ere?”
It was agreed and Gee wrote to his family and asked them to arrange a knees-up, for 13 March – so they could claim a tax rebate.
They decided to keep the two rooms they rented and use one for a living room and the other for a bedroom. “Just ’til we get on our feet,” Gee promised. “Give us a year an’ we’ll be out of ’ere and in a place of our own.”
“I don’t care how long it takes,” Lucy smiled, “as long as we’re together.” When she went to bed that night, she found she couldn’t clearly recall Teifion’s face.
* * *
Cyril became a regular caller at Marigold’s house, the place in which they had begun their married life. Stella greeted him with delight although, on Marigold’s instructions, he didn’t always have a treat for her in his pocket. Slowly, the two people, with love on both sides, drew closer together.
There were no legalities to consider if they should decide to resume their interrupted married life. There had been no legal separation, not even preliminary enquiries regarding a divorce. Cyril knew that once they had declared their love for each other and he had accepted Marigold and Stella into his life, there was nothing to bar them from a happy reunion.
Nothing except his memory of killing Fanny Daniels.
He couldn’t tell Marigold about it. There was no one he could tell. Not even the vicar at the church he attended each Sunday. He had tried and, although he had got as far as telling the man he was troubled and had even admitted to a killing, Cyril didn’t disabuse him of the idea that it had happened during his war-time service.
Eventually Cyril left the room he had been renting and, gathering up his few possessions, returned to his wife. In his pocket was his pistol he had carried to the river and to the beach night after sleepless night. But something had always prevented him from throwing it away. He hid it away in a box of books and put it into the loft where it was impossible for Marigold to find it. One day he would dispose of it, but not yet. The pain of tha
t awful night was still with him. It would have to fade before he could throw the gun away and let the past truly rest.
* * *
Sam was in the living room when he heard the shop door open. He looked up expecting to see Gilly but it was his brother who poked his head around the door, the first visit since they had left to begin their travels.
“Viv, hello, boy. How is Vic? Better is he?” Grinning and saying nothing the twin walked into the room and Sam stared, wondering what he was about to say. “What is it? Good news by the stupid look on your face.”
“Never thought I’d catch you out, Sam. I’m Vic!”
Sam stared at his brother in amazed delight. The thinness and the sickly palour had gone. Vic was still under weight but the lines of suffering were gone. “Vic! You look marvellous!”
“Viv’s idea was a good one, although we both felt mean for letting you cope alone.”
“I’ve managed, and it’s worth it to see how much better you are. Where’s Viv, then?”
“Here, Sam.” Viv poked his head around the door and grinned widely. “Come on, where’s our little nephew, then?” Sam led them into the back kitchen where Gilly and Lillian were trying out a new fatless sponge recipe. The baby, watched over by a doting Ivor, was in his pram.
Sam watched his brothers’ faces as Lillian picked up the baby and held him out for their inspection. He saw nothing but admiration and delight.
“Damn me, Lillian, he’s beautiful. Look at those eyes! He’ll have half the girls in the town camping on our doorstep when he starts winking them!”
Vic and Viv took it in turns to hold the little boy, cooing and making funny noises and faces and remarking on how clever he was and how strong. Sam felt a peculiar, almost painful pleasure as he listened to them. He began to realise that the sensations he was experiencing were almost like pride.
Later that night when the women were in bed, Sam told Vic and Viv about the sale of Green’s bake-house. “I’ve had a solicitor looking into it and so far as he can tell, there’s nothing illegal about the sale. It was correctly signed by members of the family and the forms were in order. I must have been stupid not to realise that we hadn’t been receiving rent for the place.”
“What if you had? You’d have found out earlier but there would still have been nothing you could do,” Vic reminded him.
“I want to find that Gerry Daniels. He married Maisie Boxmoor and they live down the Vale somewhere. I want to find him and wring his neck!”
“We’ll find him,” Viv said at once. “Their whereabouts can’t be much of a secret down there, a tart and a scrounger. The villages are small and everyone must know everyone else.”
“What else is new, then?” Vic asked.
“Only a letter from Dad. He left it with Gilly and she forgot until after Lillian and I were married.”
“What did it say? Anything interesting?”
“I can’t say, not yet. Just that I’ve got another search on my hands. Cardiff this time. And for the purpose I’ve just finished looking for Lillian and expected to have a bit more time to myself.”
“Who are you looking for, then?” Viv asked.
“I can’t say, not yet, but I’ll give myself a couple of months and if I have no luck I’ll let you see the letter and we’ll all discuss it, right?”
With that they had to be content.
The letter, kept hidden in Gilly’s satin handkerchief case for so long, told Sam that Granfer Jenkins had an illegitimate daughter. Sam had read the words in disbelief, then he had grinned. The old bugger, demanding obedience and good upright behaviour all those years, pontificating about morals and honesty and the very first time he’d been let off the leash he been and gone and found himself a loose woman. The two-faced old devil! It was so unbelievable.
Sam wondered if he should do anything about it or simply burn the letter. What would Bessie say? How would people react to the ancient secret? From the little he was told Sam worked out that the woman would be about Bessie’s age, in her late forties or early fifties. Would she welcome such a revelation? He doubted it very much, and yet a curiosity prevented him from throwing the letter into the flames.
There wasn’t much chance of finding the woman anyway after all this time and with so little to go on. Cardiff had suffered so much destruction during the bombing it was not even likely that the road Granfer described was still there, but he had to do what was asked of him. It must have been important to the old man for him to have left the note.
“I’m coming with you,” Lillian said in her quiet way when he explained the new mission.
“There’s no need. It’s very tiring, wandering around the streets looking for someone, you’d be better staying home with the baby.”
“His name is Wayne, and we’re coming,” she said firmly. “I’m an expert on illegitimate babies, remember.”
“We’ll go on the train so we can take the pram, then.”
“No, I’ll carry him.”
With baby Wayne cwtched against Lillian’s warm body wrapped, Welsh-fashion, in a woollen shawl, they set out one Sunday to begin their enquiries.
Field Street was still partially there, but there were several gaps in the terrace where houses had been destroyed and not re-built. With a sigh of resignation Sam began by knocking at the first door in the street. Several hours later when they had walked around the area without any luck they looked at each other and sighed.
“Oh, my aching feet! It isn’t going to be easy, is it?” Lillian said.
“Not easy, no, but I’ll do my best to find her.”
“Of course. You aren’t the type to give up.”
“Next week I’ll come on my own,” he said stiffly.
“No you won’t. I’m coming with you every time and remember, my brother Geoff lives in Cardiff. Next week we’ll look him up. You never know, he might be able to help.”
The following week, Geoff met them at the railway station and together the three of them knocked on door after door, followed lead after lead, but failed to find the person they were looking for. Someone called Mary, possibly Jones the letter had said.
“Blimey, couldn’t you have found an easier name than Jones?”
Geoff sighed. “Everyone round ’ere’s called Jones, or ’as a neighbour called Jones. An’ what if she married, what’s her name now? It could be anything. Someone who used to live in Cardiff called Mary?”
“Field Street was the starting place and I’m going to follow Gilly’s advice and go back there and start again. There must be someone alive who remembers her. Small she was, and with red hair.”
The second time they met Geoff, who had promised to continue enquiries during the week, he introduced them to his fiancee. At once Lillian and Lucy began talking about the wedding. Lillian was delighted to meet her future sister-in-law and could see at once that she and Geoff would be happy.
“But I have one question,” Lillian said when they sat to drink a cup of tea. “Why d’you call him Gee?”
Geoff explained about the two people in the bakery of the same name and they laughed when Lucy said, “I’m still going to call him Gee. I don’t want to marry someone who’s name I don’t recognise.”
“Well, don’t expect the vicar to call me Gee or we’ll never get the ceremony over and done with!”
The search for the lady called Mary and possibly called Jones didn’t get very far on that day. The conversation was all about the wedding planned for the end of the month.
“Pity Lucy’s old mum wasn’t alive to help with the dress, a real marvel with hooks and needles was Polly,” Gee said.
Lucy began to describe the wedding dress they had designed for the girl who was marrying her soldier and Sam looked at her with interest and asked, “Polly? That’s a name Dad mentioned. A sort of nick-name, sometimes given to girls called Mary. It isn’t very common is it, not like Jones!”
“Blimey, Lucy, don’t tell me we’ve been searchin’ all these weeks and it turns out to be
your mother!” Gee laughed.
“No. I don’t think that’s very likely,” Lucy smiled. “Mam was called Lewis. Polly Lewis.”
Sam said nothing more but he arranged for old Smoky Vic to come and help Dai in the bakery the following day, and went into Cardiff again. It took him all day but the birth notifications were there and he realised with a lurch of disbelief that, through Lillian, he had found not Polly, but her daughter. Lucy was his niece, the child of Granfer’s illegitimate daughter.
“Damn me, Lillian, it’s a miracle that we found her.”
Lillian looked at the adorable baby sleeping in his cot and said softly, “Miracles happen all the time, Sam, but often no one bothers to notice. Every baby is a miracle, even surprise ones, like mine – and Granfer’s.” The admonition was gently done, the reminder that Granfer’s lapse was no different from her own, but Sam felt the heat touch his cheeks. Lillian was right, he was guilty of double standards.
* * *
They had no means of getting in touch with Vic and Viv so Sam and Lillian said nothing about finding Lucy until the twins arrived for another brief visit. Then they invited Bessie and the Smokys around. He introduced a shy Lucy and waited anxiously to see the reactions from them all. Ivor looked excited but seemed not to understand what was being said. Vic and Viv nodded and said they were pleased to meet her, in a formal and self-conscious manner. Bessie said repeatedly that she didn’t understand.
Gilly shyly smiled at her new cousin and wondered why Granfer hadn’t told them before. It was a sin, she knew that, but after all the sin was his and not this girl’s. She stared at the stranger and wanted to hug her welcome. It was like suddenly discovering she had a sister.
“Would you like to see the house while Auntie Bessie makes some tea?” Gilly asked, guessing that Lucy was over-whelmed by so many people at once. Together they walked from room to room while Lucy asked endless questions about the family and Gilly happily replied.
Family Pride Page 30
