Sinners and Shadows

by Catrin Collier

Sali took off her hat and shook the snow from her collar. She saw the anxious look on Rhian’s face. ‘It went well. Lloyd and Julia are waiting for you in the car. They thought this would be the best time for you to visit the grave. All the mourners have gone back to Llan House, and there aren’t likely to be many visitors in the cemetery in this weather.’

  ‘The service really went well?’ Rhian sought confirmation from Victor when she went into the hall to fetch her coat.

  ‘Mr Rowan read beautifully and the hymns were moving. I’m not sure how Julia managed it, but apparently they were all Mr Larch’s favourites.’ Victor held out her coat for her.

  Rhian slipped her arms into the sleeves, pulled on her hat and gloves, and wound her scarf around her neck. ‘You sure you don’t mind us going now, after you’ve prepared a meal?’ she asked Megan.

  ‘Cawl is all the better for keeping,’ Megan said. ‘Go, the sooner you do, the sooner you’ll be back.’

  Rhian left the kitchen and opened the door to the cupboard off the back hall. She picked up the wreath she had made of ivy and spring flowers that Victor had bought for her. Holding it close to shield it from the wind and snow, she ran out into the yard to Lloyd’s car. Lloyd had left the engine running. Julia, who was sitting in the back, opened the door and helped her on to the seat beside her.

  ‘Thank you. Are you sure this is all right?’ Rhian looked from Julia to Lloyd.

  ‘There won’t be anyone around in this weather to see you.’ Lloyd put the car in gear and drove slowly out of the yard.

  ‘You haven’t put a card or a message on your wreath, Rhian?’ Julia checked. ‘Because if you have, the undertaker will collect it with the others and send it up to my stepmother.’

  ‘I haven’t.’

  ‘I’m sorry that you have to sneak around like this. My father would be furious if he were here.’ Julia gripped Rhian’s hand.

  ‘If my putting a wreath on his grave will cause trouble, I won’t do it.’

  ‘You have more right than any of us to say goodbye to him. After all, you were the one who was living with him. Besides, I doubt that my stepmother will go near Trealaw cemetery again.’

  ‘Surely she’ll want to visit his grave?’

  ‘Not even for propriety’s sake,’ Julia said caustically. ‘She’s already talking about returning to Carmarthenshire to live. The one thing my father wanted her to do more than anything else, and she finally gets around to talking about it after he’s dead.’

  Rhian looked down at her wreath. ‘Even now, I find it impossible to believe I’ll never see him again.’

  ‘I know what you mean.’ Julia would have found the ten days that had elapsed since her father’s death unbearable if she hadn’t had so many practical decisions to make. ‘I spoke to the stonemason this morning. He said there won’t be any problem putting a memorial to Gerald on my father’s headstone. Will you help me with the wording?’

  ‘I’m not sure I’ll be much use.’ Rhian knew that Julia was trying to be kind but she couldn’t bear the thought of phrasing the last words by which Edward would be remembered. That privilege should fall to someone who loved him more than she had. ‘I’m sorry, this must be so much worse for you than me. Losing your father and your brother, so soon after your mother.’

  Julia looked grim. ‘My dislike of my stepmother keeps me going. Did Father tell you that he was making a new will and outright gifts of Llan House and the house next door to his office?’

  ‘He said something about giving Llan House to you and your brother.’

  ‘He did intend for the house to go to Gerald and me. My stepmother was to have an annuity. The shop and the buildings in Dunraven Street, along with the residue of his estate were to go to you. Unfortunately he died before he signed the papers.’

  ‘Possessions don’t matter, only memories.’ After the terrible day that Edward had died, Rhian wasn’t sure if she was talking about Edward or Joey. She had good memories of both, but she had never loved Edward the way that she loved Joey. And for that she felt guilty. Almost as if she had stayed with Edward simply because of what he could give her, not material things, but sanctuary from her emotions and peace of mind.

  ‘You don’t mind that Father’s wishes weren’t carried out?’ Julia sought approval for the arrangement she had made with Mabel.

  ‘Yes, but only because he would have minded. The money’s not important.’

  ‘You are right. All the money in the world can’t help Father, Mother or Gerald now.’

  ‘It won’t help Mrs Larch either.’ Rhian rubbed a hole in the frost that covered the inside of the window and peered outside. ‘Nothing and no one’s ever been able to make her happy.’

  ‘If you served her the world on a plate with two teaspoons of the best caviar on the side, she’d still be miserable,’ Julia agreed.

  Snow was still falling but the tracks Lloyd’s car had made when they’d driven up to the farm weren’t completely obliterated and he was careful to drive in them. When they reached the main road the traffic had churned the snow into a thick, dirty black watery slush and he was able to go faster.

  He stopped the car outside the main gates of Trealaw cemetery. The ground was white, the ledges on the massive Victorian tombstones ornamented with six-inch layers of frosting. He turned off the engine, left the driving seat and opened the back door. Julia slipped her hand beneath Rhian’s elbow and helped her out of the car.

  ‘Tread carefully,’ Lloyd warned, ‘there’s ice beneath the snow.’

  ‘We will.’ Julia led Rhian up the path towards her parents’ grave. She looked ahead and was thankful to see that the grave diggers had finished their work. The mound was heaped high with floral tributes, some colourful, most a simple green and white.

  ‘So many flowers.’ Rhian wiped her eyes with her leather gloves, smearing cold, salt tears that stung over her face. ‘They are beautiful.’

  ‘Aren’t they?’ Sensitive to Rhian’s feelings, Julia stopped at the foot of the grave and allowed her to pay her last respects alone.

  Rhian walked slowly, looking down on the wreaths and reading the messages as she passed. A circle of red berries and white lilies bore a card inscribed‘To a colleague and friend who will be sorely missed, Cedric and Elizabeth’. A cushion of hothouse pink rosebuds:‘Your loving and heartbroken daughter, Julia.’ A large plain wreath of greenery ornamented with white dahlias: ‘From all your friends and neighbours in Dunraven Street’.

  Tears started in her eyes again, blurring the remaining cards. She lifted the simple wreath she’d made and laid it on the side, below an enormous six-foot cross of red roses. It was so ostentatious she guessed who it was from, and deliberately turned away from the card not wanting to see what Mabel had written.

  She knelt beside the mound, felt the cold seep from the ground through her skirt, petticoats and stockings to her knees, and wept.

  ‘Megan said that Rhian’s had nightmares every night since she moved in with them,’ Lloyd told Julia when she returned to the car and stood alongside him.

  ‘She has taken my father’s death hard.’

  ‘It is good of you to comfort her.’

  ‘I am not sure who is comforting whom, Lloyd,’ Julia replied. ‘I never thought I’d have to look at a grave that will bear my brother’s as well as parents’ names.’

  ‘I know we can never take their place, but you have me, Sali – and Geraint,’ he reminded her.

  ‘Sali and you perhaps. I’m not too sure about my husband.’

  ‘You and Rhian have a home with us whenever and for as long as you want.’ He allowed her comment about Geraint to pass.

  ‘Thank you. Has Rhian told you that she wants to go to the boarding house that Mrs Williams is running and work in the munitions factory in Pembrey with the other girls from Llan House?’

  ‘Yes, but it’s so far away from everything she has ever known, I’m not sure it is a good idea.’

  ‘I think it is, and I feel the sooner she leaves
, the better. I’m going with her.’

  ‘To work in munitions?’ he asked in surprise.

  ‘Why look so shocked, Lloyd?’

  ‘You’re the last person I expected to volunteer for factory work.’

  ‘And why would that be?’ She dared him to answer her honestly.

  ‘If you want me to say because you’re too posh, I’ll say it.’

  ‘According to the Government, if we want to win this war, we all have to do our bit. And I could never really see myself sitting in that house outside Pontypridd, whiling away my time arranging flowers and doing ornamental embroidery until Geraint comes home. That’s if he does.’

  ‘Geraint’s a survivor.’

  ‘I don’t expect him to die in battle,’ she countered.

  ‘You expect him to leave you?’

  ‘We made a bargain when we married, my independence in exchange for an annuity for him.’

  ‘The mercenary sod! I’ve never liked him, but –’

  ‘We both got what we wanted, Lloyd. Isn’t that what marriage is all about?’

  ‘On a superficial level, maybe.’ Remembering that he was talking to a lady, he brought his language and temper under control.

  ‘We can’t all be as lucky as you and Sali.’

  ‘If you can’t stand the work, or if either of should change your mind about working in the factory, you will return to Ynysangharad House?’

  ‘Of course, and we’ll visit whenever we get leave. A couple of months from now, you’ll wish you’d never invited us.’

  ‘I doubt it.’ He walked around to the driver’s door. ‘Rhian’s coming. I’ll warm up the engine.’

  Julia crossed the backyard of the boarding house behind the other girls and followed them into the washhouse. Although she had left the factory over an hour before, the tune of the last idiotic song that the girls had sung while they worked was still running through her head:For you don’t know Nellie like I do, said the naughty little bird on Nellie’s hat. She tried to put it out of her mind but You are my honey, honeysuckle, I am the bee popped in instead. She had been working in the factory for eight weeks. All the workers sang the full lengths of their shifts and their voices continued echoing in her mind through all the waking and sleeping hours that followed.

  She closed the door behind her, checked all the girls were inside and latched it before going to her two pegs. The first thing she pulled off was the beret that completely covered her hair. Her hair, cut six inches shorter by Rhian, was wound into rubber bands that were painful to remove. But no one was allowed to wear anything metal that might cause a spark in the factory.

  She untied the cloth belt from her thick, woollen, serge knee-length tunic, unfolded it and hung it on the hook where she kept her ‘dirty’ danger clothes. Her munitionette uniform was impregnated with the powder they used to fill the shell casings; it was also heavy, ugly and uncomfortable to wear. She unbuttoned the rubber buttons that held up her itchy trousers and dropped them. Pulling up a stool, she sat on it, unlaced her brown shoes and pulled them off, as well as the knitted men’s socks that were two sizes too large for her.

  ‘I could sleep for a week.’ Quicker than Julia, Rhian slipped off the collarless flannel shirt they all wore beneath their tunics and peeled off her linen drawers and bustshaper.

  ‘We’ll be able to next week when we’re off.’

  Rhian went to the bucket of warm water nearest to her clothes, threw in a flannel and began to wash herself. Within seconds the water was blood red.

  Shivering and naked, Julia stood alongside and soaped her own flannel.

  Meriel, who was behind them, looked into their buckets and shrieked in delight. ‘Look,’ she shouted to Bronwen and her sister Jinny, ‘Miss Julia and Rhian’s water is as red as ours now. Comes of being on shell filling,’ she nodded knowledgably.

  ‘Miss Julia is plain Julia,’ Julia reminded. Her skin, fingernails and toenails had turned bright yellow. On the plus side so had her hair. But much as she’d hated her red hair, she had to admit blonde suited her even less.

  ‘You could be a bloody Chinese, but not Rhian,’ Meriel laughed. ‘Her hair makes her look like a pixie.’

  ‘Less of that language, you’re not on the factory floor now,’ Bronwen reprimanded.

  ‘Sometimes I think you’re in training to become a vicar’s wife,’ Meriel grumbled.

  ‘Do you think our hair will stay this colour?’ Rhian pulled a strand forward and examined it. Whereas Bronwen, Meriel and Jinny’s brown and black hair had turned gold, and even Julia with her red hair had been transformed into a blonde, her fair hair had turned a ghastly shade of green.

  ‘One of the men told me the colour takes a full year to work out of your system,’ Meriel crowed.

  ‘Would that be the foreman Dai Watson I saw you with round the back of the loading bay?’ Jinny asked. ‘You do know he’s a married man only out for what he can get?’

  ‘You shut your mouth or I’ll push this into it.’ Meriel brandished a bar of carbolic soap only to have Jinny snatch it out of her hand.

  ‘Ladies, please!’ Bronwen shouted.

  Julia dried herself, went to the hook where she’d hung her evening clothes and pulled on her ‘clean’ drawers, bust-shaper and vest. She rolled on her stockings and because the temperature in the unheated washhouse was freezing, dressed as quickly as she could in thick flannel petticoats and a warm woollen skirt and sweater.

  ‘Anyone going down the pub tonight?’ Meriel asked.

  ‘After a twelve-hour shift, I’ve barely energy enough left to eat supper and crawl into bed,’ Rhian replied. Meriel asked the same question every night and although Bronwen and Jinny had accompanied her down the pub twice during the last week, she generally went alone.

  ‘I have it on good authority that some of the local boys are home on leave,’ Meriel added persuasively.

  ‘I give you my share of them,’ Bronwen offered magnanimously.

  ‘You could waste your whole life waiting for Ianto to come home, when for all you know he could be lying dead in a field in France this very minute.’

  ‘That’s a vicious thing to say,’ Jinny admonished. ‘We all know that you’re jealous because you don’t have a fiancé.’

  ‘I could have one if I wanted one. And if I did, I certainly wouldn’t settle for a collier turned corporal.’

  The washhouse door opened and Mrs Williams shouted, ‘Supper’s on the table. Come and get it while it’s hot, girls.’

  ‘What is it, Mrs Williams?’ Julia asked.

  ‘Rabbit stew, homemade bread and sponge cake, raspberry jam and custard.’

  ‘I am ravenous.’ Julia finished brushing her hair and followed Mrs Williams across the yard into the kitchen. After the cold of the washhouse and munitions sheds it was blissfully warm, clean and cosy. She sat on one of the bench seats at the table.

  ‘You look peaky, Miss Julia.’ Mrs Williams set a plate of stew in front of her.

  ‘That’s not to be wondered at considering how cold this spring has been and the way we have to work.’

  ‘We all work as hard as one another.’ Meriel sat on the bench alongside Julia and helped herself to bread.

  ‘That’s why I said the way we have to work.’ Meriel could be aggressive and Julia tried to be diplomatic in her dealings with her. ‘And, unlike the rest of you, I’m not used to hard work, as management has found out to their cost the last couple of weeks. Mr Grey even went so far as to call me worse than useless yesterday.’ Julia had thought she was hungry but as soon as she looked down at her plate, her appetite disappeared.

  ‘Mr Grey wears his slum upbringing on his sleeve as if it’s something to be proud of. He calls everyone with a posh accent useless.’ Bronwen sat opposite Julia.

  ‘And you’re no more useless than the rest of us. The work was new to all of us when we started.’ Rhian sprinkled salt on her stew and passed the shaker down the table.

  ‘Any letters come today, Mrs Williams?’ Bro
nwen asked.

  ‘One for you from France.’

  ‘Ooh, the collier corporal’s written a love letter,’ Meriel teased.

  ‘One for Rhian, two for Miss Julia and none for you, Meriel. They’re on the dresser.’

  ‘I bet mine are from the solicitor.’ Julia had been locked in a correspondence with Mabel through their respective solicitors since she had left Tonypandy. So far as she and Cedric could make out, Mabel had liquidated as many of Edward’s assets as she could, cleaned out his bank account, put Llan House on the market and finally done what Edward had begged her to: returned to Carmarthen.

  ‘Well, you’d be wrong, Miss Julia.’

  ‘Julia,’ Meriel corrected.

  ‘Old habits die hard.’ Mrs Williams joined them at the table. ‘One of the letters is from your husband – Julia.’ Mrs Williams ladled stew out on plates and passed them down to the girls. ‘You staying here for your week off next week, Rhian, Julia?’

  ‘We haven’t decided. Can we let you know tomorrow, Mrs Williams?’ Rhian asked.

  ‘You have until Saturday morning when I send the food order down to the shop.’

  ‘Thank you.’ Rhian ate her stew quickly. She had received a letter from Sali yesterday and Megan the day before and she hadn’t answered either. She had a premonition as to whom her letter might be from, but much as she wanted to find out for certain, she was prepared to wait. Because if she should be wrong, it would snap her last slim thread of hope.

  When Rhian finished eating she carried her plates to the sink, picked up her letter and curled up on one of the wooden-backed settles inside the enormous inglenook fireplace. It had become her and Julia’s favourite place to sit, read and gossip in the evening because it was the warmest place in the house. She tore the single sheet of blue paper carefully along the perforated lines and opened it out on her knee.

  Dear Rhian,

  I asked Sali and Lloyd for your address. I hope you don’t mind me writing to you. Please, don’t feel that you have to answer this. Lloyd writes regularly and he told me how hard you have taken Mr Larch’s death. I would like to offer you my sincere condolences. I know that you would never have remained with him if you hadn’t loved and respected him.