On his first day underground Alexander hadn’t believed that he could ever become accustomed to the foul air, filth, darkness and waterlogged atmosphere of the pit; now he peeled back the dust-encrusted flap of his haversack and extracted his tin without giving a thought to the unhygienic conditions.
Moving down the line he sat alongside Evan. He’d been Evan’s ‘butty’, or helper, for his first six months underground, and it had taken a great deal of negotiating with management by Evan on his behalf to promote him to the position of fully fledged miner. Leaning against the coal seam, he prised open his tin with fingers swollen by scabs and dirt and took out one of the dripping and salt sandwiches Phyllis had packed for him.
‘You seem to be a bit stiff. Your back still giving you trouble?’ Evan asked.
‘I saw the doctor on my last day off. He said it will take time for the bruises to work out.’ What he didn’t tell Evan was he’d seen an army doctor when he’d tried to join up, but as soon as the recruiting office had discovered he was a miner, they had given him his marching orders. The attacks on Britain’s merchant shipping fleet had given home-produced food and fuel a prized status they’d never enjoyed before the war. And much to Alexander’s chagrin, he discovered that mining had been designated a protected occupation by the War Office.
‘I would have thought three months was enough time to heal any injury.’
‘Apparently not this one. But then, I’ve no one to blame but myself.’ Alexander unscrewed the top on his metal flask and took a swig of cold tea. As with working in the pit, he had become accustomed to the strangely unappetising, metallic taste. ‘I never did explain why I was trying to crawl through Jenny’s bedroom window.’
‘Don’t feel you have to on my account. It’s your and Jenny’s business, not mine.’
‘Jenny’s your daughter-in-law.’
‘As I told her at the time, she’s a young widow; she can’t grieve for ever.’
‘She seems to be doing her damnedest.’
‘You haven’t spoken to her?’
‘Not since that night. I’ve seen her a couple of times, but she walked away from me. I tried writing, but she didn’t answer my letters.’
‘She told me she needed time to sort herself out.’
‘By the look of it, as much as my back needs to heal.’
Evan bit down on his sandwich, spitting out what might have been a piece of coal, or even a husk of grain. The national loaves were renowned for having peculiar objects in them.
‘We had been seeing one another before that night,’ Alexander admitted suddenly.
‘Half the Graig gathered that much.’
‘I didn’t want it to be a hole in the corner relationship, but she wouldn’t be seen in public with me. I tried to push her, but she kept on saying she needed time to mourn.’
‘Perhaps she did.’
‘That night, the night I fell, I went to the White Hart. She was there with a crowd of girls from the munitions factory, including Judy Crofter.’
‘Alf Crofter’s daughter from Leyshon Street?’
‘She certainly lives in Leyshon Street. I’d talked to her once on the train from Cardiff to Pontypridd. I don’t even like the girl, but that evening Judy latched on to me and wouldn’t let go. She more or less insisted I take her to a café. I tried to get Jenny to go with us but she wouldn’t. I even thought of telling Judy I was going out with Jenny, but Jenny was so obsessed with keeping our relationship secret, I knew she’d be furious if I as much as mentioned her name. By ignoring me, she practically pushed me into taking Judy to the café. So, I spent the evening with Judy, walked her home and left her there. Then I decided to visit Jenny to sort out exactly where I was with her.’
‘After spending the evening with Judy?’
‘I told you I didn’t want to. Only the night before I had asked Jenny to marry me.’
‘And what did she say to that?’
‘What do you expect? That she needed time to think about it. I gave her six months.’
‘And now?’
‘I thought you might have some idea of Jenny’s feelings towards me.’
‘You think because Phyllis and I call in on her she talks to us about you?’
‘I hoped she’d mentioned my name.’
‘Not that I’ve heard.’
Alexander pushed half of his uneaten sandwich back into the box. ‘I can’t stop thinking about her.’
‘Then do something about it.’
Alexander recognised the irritation in Evan’s voice.
‘I’d like to,’ he said quietly.
‘As I said, it’s between you and her,’ Evan said as he unscrewed the top on his metal bottle.
‘I’d welcome some advice.’
‘Talk to her.’
‘I told you, I’ve tried.’
‘Obviously not hard enough.’
The whistle blew signalling two minutes to the end of the break. Evan opened his haversack and pushed his empty tin and metal flask into it.
‘You don’t think I’d be wasting my time?’ Alexander hauled himself to his feet.
‘Only she can answer that.’
‘If she’ll meet me.’ Alexander resolved to make one last effort to see her. After all, the worst that could happen was she’d tell him to leave her alone, which was precisely what he’d been forced to do since he’d fallen from her window.
‘Why is the water always so cold here?’ Diana asked as she sat on the bank of Shoni’s, slipped off her sandals and dangled her feet in the lake.
‘Because it has a stream flowing in at one end and out of the other.’ Ronnie sat alongside her, his jacket slung over his shoulder, the basket he’d brought on the grass behind them.
‘But it looks calm enough in the middle.’
‘You ever swum out there?’
‘Not since William told me it has no bottom.’
‘And you believed him?’
‘He and Eddie were horrible when they were boys. I remember coming here once with Maud, and Eddie jumping in from the diving rock and dredging up a disgusting black thing that he told us was a rotting dead dog. He and Will chased us with it, and Maud and I ran screaming all the way home.’
‘And was it a dead dog?’
‘Five years later Eddie told me it was a log.’
‘Girls are so gullible. I remember playing the same trick on Laura and Bethan with a bag of dead kittens.’
‘And it was a log?’
‘No, a bag of dead kittens.’
‘That’s revolting.’
‘Children are revolting.’
‘Are you going to tell me what’s in the basket?’
‘Surprises.’
‘I hate surprises.’
‘A blanket for us to sit on, pasties from your shop, a bottle of Vimto, and -’ he delved into the bottom and produced a Mars bar.
‘Chocolate! Wherever did you get it?’
‘Ask no questions …’
‘I’m sick of that phrase.’
‘Isn’t everyone?’ He rolled up his shirt-sleeves and pushed his hat to the back of his head. ‘It’s hot here. Shall we follow the stream up the valley, find ourselves a shady spot and have a picnic?’
She was about to protest that she’d rather stay by the lake, when she saw a procession of small boys with home-made fishing rods cobbled together from sticks, twine and bent pins walking in Indian file along the opposite bank. On fine days, there were generally as many children around Shoni’s as there were in the park. It was closer for everyone who lived in Penycoedcae and on the Graig, no one had to dress up in their best clothes to walk down Pit Road, the lake was cool for swimming in, and less crowded than the paddling pool in the park, not to mention free, which was more than could be said for the baths. The only drawback was Shoni’s reputation for being the drowning pool for every unwanted cat and dog in the district and, so rumour had it, the occasional bastard baby or difficult granny or grandfather.
Picking up the ba
sket, Ronnie held out his hand and helped her to her feet. They walked slowly up to the top end of the pond, where the water was fringed by thick, close-growing woods; one of the few surviving remnants of the primeval forest that had once covered the whole of Wales. Entering them was like penetrating a dark tunnel that led to an altogether cooler, different, more mysterious world.
As a child Diana had equated these woods with the mystical, savage world of the ancient Druids. Wandering beneath the tall trees in the half-light that filtered down through the close-growing leaves and branches, she found it easy to believe in the old pagan gods she had heard about in school. Her teacher would have been horrified if she’d known that her class had been more enthralled with the stories of Druidic brutality and human sacrifice, than her educational tales of the Christian good that had superseded the old Celtic ways.
‘It never ceases to amaze me that flowers bloom in this gloom.’
Diana looked around, seeing the deep pink of campions and the purple glow of violets peeking out of the long grass that covered the roots of the centuries-old oaks. Buttercups spread across their path, their brilliant, yellow petals reflecting the few rays of sun that penetrated the dense mantle of greenery. The stream bubbled alongside them, it’s cool, clear water frothing over smooth brown pebbles that children had banked up in the shallows to create stepping stones.
‘I never used to appreciate nature,’ Ronnie continued as they penetrated deeper into the woods, ‘until I worked on the farm.’
‘I can’t imagine you on a farm.’
‘I’ll have you know I made an excellent farmer.’
‘I think it’s probably the clothes. I can’t picture you in dungarees and a straw hat.’
‘I can wear dungarees covered in cow muck, and chew straw with the best of labourers.’
‘To me you’ll always look at home in a suit, shirt and tie, leaning against the counter of the café, shouting orders to the cook or the waitress.’
‘That was the old me before I learned to plough a straight furrow, clean out pigs and milk cows.’ He stepped off the narrow path and pushed his way through a copse of may into a small clearing hemmed in by flowering brambles and beech trees. Stamping down a patch of nettles, he opened the basket and spread the blanket. ‘Your picnic spot, madam?’
She sat beside him.
‘Quiet times?’ he asked as he lifted the bags from the basket and laid them between them.
‘Thinking about the new kitchen. I’m not at all sure that I’m up to running it without you.’
‘If you make a complete hash of it, we’ll just have to sack you.’ He handed her a pastie.
‘That’s what I’m afraid of.’
‘On the other hand, with the labour shortage the way it is, we’re unlikely to find anyone better. You never know your luck, you might end up coping, but I think it’s only fair to warn you: if you do succeed in producing more than the two shops and the cafés can sell, you’ll only end up making more work for yourself. You and Alma will have to get a bus down to Treforest and look around for another shop for you to supervise.’
‘While you’re slaving away in the factory.’
‘Wyn’s surviving the experience.’
‘He doesn’t say much about it. In fact, he doesn’t say very much at all these days. But then I hardly see him. He spends all day in the factory, every evening in Jacobsdal and his days off sleeping and going over account books.’
‘You resent it?’
‘No, but I miss him. When we married we were close, and now …’ she glanced at him, looking away quickly when she saw a disconcertingly intense expression in his eyes.
‘And now?’ he prompted.
‘Other people have come between us.’
‘Erik?’
‘You know about Wyn’s friendship with him?’
‘There’s talk in the town. And it’s not only Erik, is it?’ he questioned softly.
‘I suppose it’s only natural,’ she continued hastily, not wanting to discuss what was happening between them, ‘considering we spend most of our time with other people. We’ve grown apart, but things will change after the war.’
‘If you think the end of the war will make a difference to you and Wyn, you are deluding yourself.’
‘I want to make a success of our marriage,’ she protested.
‘Don’t you think that’s an impossible task, given Wyn’s nature?’
‘No. You may not think so now, but we were ideally suited.’
‘I can’t see how.’
‘Wyn married me because he wanted a wife and family to stop the gossip, and his father from belittling him every chance he got. I needed a father for my baby, and I was terrified of the thought of a conventional marriage. We were happy those first few months, Ronnie. We really were.’
‘Happy, or relieved because you thought you’d solved your problems?’ He took a tin mug and the bottle of Vimto from the basket. After pouring her a drink, he screwed the top back on the bottle, went to the stream, jammed it between two rocks and left it there to cool. ‘Do you know you hardly ever mention Billy?’
‘Billy’s wonderful.’ There was a sparkle and animation in her eyes that hadn’t been there when she’d talked about Wyn. ‘He’s happy, thriving, and doesn’t seem to care who looks after him as long as he’s fed, changed and played with. He’s just as content in my mother’s or Myrtle’s arms as mine. But that doesn’t stop Wyn’s father from predicting all sorts of dire consequences for the death of family life after the war.’
‘Why, because grandmothers, grandfathers and aunts are taking over childcare from the women who are needed to do the work the men did before they were called up?’
‘He thinks a woman’s place is in the kitchen.’
‘If he lives long enough to see the end of the war, he’ll be in for a shock. Some women will never go back to being housewives.’
‘Bethan certainly doesn’t want to.’
‘What about you?’
‘I like looking after the business.’
‘You and Bethan aren’t the only women who actually want to work, and believe me, working mothers don’t do kids any harm provided there’s someone to look after them. There were so many of us at home, the younger ones never knew who was going to feed or bath them, just that they would be fed and bathed, and it didn’t make any difference to the way they turned out. At least I don’t think it did,’ he qualified with mock gravity. ‘Tina and Gina would have probably been just as difficult if they’d had my mother’s undivided attention.’
‘There’s nothing wrong with them.’
‘You’ve never lived with them.’
Diana wedged the mug in the long grass and leaned back against a tree. ‘I know it’s silly to allow Wyn’s father to bother me, but I can’t help worrying. It’s easier when I’m busy. There’s no time to think when I’m caught up in the daily chores. When I’m doing the banking, tidying, cleaning, or looking after one of the shops, I don’t have to consider anything beyond what needs to be done. Then, when I get some time like now, I imagine what it’s like in North Africa and Europe for the tens of thousands of soldiers who are fighting and getting killed, and I start worrying about William, Haydn, Andrew and Charlie, and the Nazis across the Channel. Now that they’ve almost conquered Russia, they might decide to turn around and invade us, and then heaven only knows what’s going to happen to us, and Billy …’
‘Or this planet once it blows up.’
‘It’s not going to, is it?’ she asked anxiously.
‘It might, but there’s no point in worrying about things we have no control over, Diana. It’s hard enough just trying to live out the day we have. Another pastie?’
‘No. How can you make jokes about serious things?’
‘Because you’re a solemn little goose, and I think I’ve fallen in love with you.’
She stared at him, wondering if she’d misheard what he’d said.
‘I warned you months ago that we were pla
ying with fire, yet you still kept coming to see me.’
‘You were ill, your sisters were too busy to look after you.’
‘And now?’
‘There’s the business.’
‘Hang the business. I only allowed you and Alma to use the kitchen in the High Street café because it gave me an excuse to see you.’
‘You know the way I am.’
‘Because you’re that way now, it doesn’t mean you’ll always be the same.’
If he’d kissed her, tried to make love to her, she could have run from him, but by simply talking to her he gave her no excuse to leave. The old, sick feeling of fear crawled over her skin. She shivered uncontrollably.
He bent forward and kissed her the way he had that first time: tenderly, lightly, so lightly she couldn’t be certain his lips had actually touched hers. He leaned back on his hands and looked into her eyes. ‘Any more than that will have to come from you.’
‘It won’t.’
‘Perhaps not yet, but it will.’ Children’s voices echoed towards them from the direction of the pond. ‘Come back with me?’
‘To Laura’s house?’
‘Please.’
She thought of Wyn, of Billy, of her life: a lonely, arid one for all of her husband’s kindness. Was it so wrong of her to want to be loved just this once? She rose to her feet. ‘I have to do the banking.’
‘Then come this evening?’
‘No.’
‘You could sneak in the back way, over the mountain if you don’t want to be seen. I’ll leave the kitchen door open for you.’
‘I said no, Ronnie.’
‘I heard you, I just didn’t choose to believe it.’
‘I like you …’
‘You love me. Almost as much as I love you.’ The silence between them was almost unbearable. ‘Come on, woman,’ he went to the stream and picked up the bottle, ‘are you going to leave me to do all the clearing up?’
Jane sat; one of an assembly line of girls strung out in front of a canvas conveyor belt that turned out fuses for shells. The first girl put a spoonful of powder into the fuse, the next pressed down the powder before passing it on to the girl who layered cordite over the powder. A detonator was slotted over the cordite before another worker pressed everything firmly together. The girl who sat beside her put the cap on; she slipped in the plunger.
Past Remembering Page 31
