Why was her mother working for the Pipers, whom she insisted she hated? And why, after being dismissed for causing mischief, had she been willing to return?
* * *
The Castle family believed that they had lost all their young men and there were no more surprises in store, but Lilly was still to become the final victim of the urgent demands from the government for more soldiers. The shop where Phil worked in apparent safety had been handed over to a fifty-six-year-old man, releasing Phil for call-up. He went just three weeks after being told that the decision on his deferment had been revised.
Lilly was devastated and, because of the situation, couldn’t even seek sympathy from friends and family. From being the one member of the Castle team to work hard at avoiding work, she needed to pack as much into her day as possible. She needed to fill the hours and also tire herself for sleep. After only a few days the plan began to work, and she found the untypical enthusiasm exhausted her so much that bed was welcome. In fact she fought against tiredness sometimes during the afternoons.
She interfered with everyone’s tasks, disrupting the routines that had been set out at the begining of the season and were working well. She often seemed to be on the verge of tears but Beth, instead of being irritated by her, was patient and understanding. Beth hadn’t been told the reason for Lilly’s unhappiness but as her sister hadn’t been out during the evening for weeks, she guessed that her secret boyfriend had either left her or had been called up.
Lilly was desperate to fill the hours, and even found some extra cleaning to keep herself from grieving. As the secret lover of a married man, she couldn’t expect to have news of him, as any letters would go to his wife. Until he was given leave and could slip away for an hour, she wouldn’t know where he was or how he was feeling. He had already told her he wouldn’t be able to write.
‘Everything I write will be read before it’s posted,’ he had explained, ‘and I can’t risk anyone finding out about us. Not yet, not until I decide the time is right for my wife to accept that our marriage is over. I have to choose my time, love, for your sake. You can see that, can’t you?’
Since he had never been so specific before about his intentions to leave his wife, Lilly was deliriously happy. Of course he couldn’t write while he was away, she understood that, but as soon as his wife could cope with it she would be told. For herself and Phil, it would mean their love would be out in the open for everyone to see how happy they were. Once the war was over, life would be bliss.
* * *
Eynon sat in the lorry that was taking them into mid-Wales for an exercise and listened to the chatter all around him, news and opinions and confidences which he was not allowed to share. His leg ached badly from last night’s violent kicking after he had inadvertently touched Kipper’s bed. He wondered how he was going to climb mountains and march over rough ground for endless hours and cope with the pain.
The lorry lurched to a stop and they began to jump down.
‘Wait there, Titch,’ Kipper growled as Eynon stood and allowed the others to get down. ‘Wait there till I say you can jump.’
‘Why don’t you give up this tormenting and leave me alone,’ Eynon sighed. The response was a punch that sent him reeling, staggering against the sides of the vehicle and making the dark night even blacker.
He was aware of voices, of soft laughter, and then the lorry crunched into gear and began to move. He had to get out. There would be no excuses allowed if he lost contact with the others. He scrambled over the tailgate and, although the lorry had picked up speed, he dropped off. There was a sharp bend at that moment and the driver, with a view hampered by the low lights, didn’t see it until he had almost passed it. The resulting swerve as Eynon fell caused him to knock his head on the corner of the lorry, and he fell and rolled until his fall was stopped by a boulder placed to mark the edge of the road.
He wasn’t sure how long he had lain there. It was only very slowly that his memory returned. It was still dark. Perhaps it had been no more than a few minutes. He stood, groggily wondering which direction to take, and tried to walk, staggering along holding his head in his hands. He had to find the others. He listened but there was a ringing in his ears that made it impossible to hear anything else. Perhaps he was deaf like Alice Potter’s father and would only be able to walk by leaning against a wall? Holding back the need to sob, he made his way back in the direction he thought he had been travelling.
* * *
Huw was nervous when Mrs Downs was in the café. He avoided talking to her and when he had any instruction he asked his wife to convey it.
‘Come on, our Dad,’ Beth teased, ‘she isn’t exactly a dangerous woman, is she? Poor dab, she lost her husband in a road accident more than ten years ago and lives in a poky little flat above a newsagent; what can she possibly do to harm you?’
Huw didn’t tell her, but he lived with the fear that one day Hetty Downs would tell his family the truth. He watched the woman, convinced that she was planning some disaster in which he would be the central player.
Marged was pleased with the way the woman worked, often staying late when the day had been particularly busy and never complaining about sharing the tedium of washing endless dishes and cleaning the same things day after day until they all felt like robots.
September dragged lazily on and the people who had booked into hotels and boarding houses diminished to the families and couples not tied to school holidays. Fewer children being around changed the mood, but the buses and trains still brought day-trippers. Now the busiest days were at the weekend, when coaches would growl their way into the car parks and trains puffed their fussy way into the railway station, unloading streams of excited hordes set on having a day to remember. By this time, many of the beach traders were weary and longing for a break in the daily round, but none of the tiredness showed in their faces. They all treated the newcomers as they had treated the first to arrive, months before, determinedly making sure their holiday or their day out sent them home with only good memories.
Bleddyn’s two sons came home for their embarkation leave and they chose to spend it working on the beach with the rest of the family, inisting that they too needed the memories to see them through whatever lay ahead. Taff’s wife, Evelyn, came with him when she could, but working in a factory meant shift work and sleeping at odd times of the day. Hannah was less willing to spend time with the Castles, still afraid of being made to feel unwelcome at this emotional time. But one afternoon, she brought her two girls down and stood with Johnny as he served ice-cream and sold buckets and spades, flags, balloons and windmills and the rest. The day was warm for so late in the season and Josie and Marie stripped their clothes off with her help, giggling behind the stall, and got into their bathers.
‘You can’t go in the sea, mind,’ Hannah warned the disappointed girls. ‘I didn’t bring my bathers with me and you can’t go in on your own.’ There were wails of disappointment but she was adamant.
During a lull, Bleddyn left the swingboats to come over and talk to them. He heard of their dismay and said, ‘I’ve got my dippers on under these white trousers, I can go in and look after them if you like, Hannah?’
Hannah was about to refuse, belligerent in preparation for the rebuffs she had expected, but seeing the rather anxious expression in his face, she changed her mind, smiled, thanked him and told the girls they could paddle after all.
Taking an inflatable beach ball with them they walked to the water’s edge, the girls glancing back occasionally for their mother’s encouraging wave. Then they forgot about her as Bleddyn played games and they were soon shrieking with laughter with the rest.
Bleddyn was happier than he had been for a long time during the hour that followed. He lifted the children one after the other and, wading out, allowed them to kick in the waves. He pretended to struggle to blow up the beach ball until the nonsense brought them to their knees laughing at his uselessness.
‘Mam can do it easy,’ they said
scornfully when he allowed the air to escape once more. He blew up the ball with their shouted encouragement and threw it for them, fell when he missed it, and generally acted the clown.
Hannah and Johnny were laughing too when the three of them walked back up to the stall.
‘Two delightful youngsters you’ve got there, Hannah,’ Bleddyn said. ‘I hope you’ll bring them to see me some time.’
‘Thank you,’ Hannah said hesitantly. ‘They’d like that.’
‘They’ve just invited themselves to tea in Piper’s Café,’ Bleddyn went on. ‘And I’m told that it’s to be beans on toast with tomato sauce like their Uncle Johnny makes it,’ he teased, looking at his son.
The nights were drawing in more quickly as summer came to its end but the gloomy evening seemed less so that day as Bleddyn walked home, still smiling at the happiness of his time with Marie and Josie and the glimmer of understanding with their mother and his younger son.
When Johnny was helping at the beach a few days later, Bleddyn decided he would call on Hannah and the girls.
‘No, I won’t come in,’ he said when he presented himself at the neat little house near the centre of town. ‘I just came to tell you that I’m there if you need anything, and if you and Marie and Josie would like to come and spend a little time near the beach, well, I’d like to see you, that’s all.’ He turned and walked away. Hannah had been slow to reply and he didn’t want to cause embarrassment to her or himself if she did not want to give him any of her time.
He was closing the gate to the small front garden when she called, ‘Mr Castle, thank you. That’s very kind and, if you like, you can come to tea on Sunday and the girls will make you a cake.’
Bleddyn turned and nodded. ‘Thanks, Hannah. I’ll come – when, about four?’
She smiled agreement and he went home proud of his good sense in contacting the little family whom his son loved so much. He had gained three friends where he might have lost a son. He must remember to thank young Olive.
Hannah took a deep breath. Now she had to tell her parents.
* * *
Marged and Huw were concerned about Eynon. His letters were short and there was no mention of his having leave. Marged continued to write and one morning she was startled to answer a loud knock at the door to see two military policemen standing there.
She listened in disbelief as they told her that Eynon was absent without leave.
‘He must be hurt. He wouldn’t do that without a reason,’ she said. ‘What have you done to him? Tell me the truth, where is he? What’s happened?’
Coldly, indifferent to her distress, they told her that if he got in touch she must inform the police immediately, and if she did not, she would be committing an offence. Questions tumbled out of her mouth but they walked away as though she hadn’t spoken.
In utter panic she ran out of the door, remembering after several seconds that Huw was at the beach and not there to comfort her. When she found him, Huw stared in disbelief. ‘He must be injured, lost somewhere, he wouldn’t run away. Not our Eynon.’ He tried to picture the happy boy who had left and could only visualise him dead. He said nothing of his fear to Marged.
‘He’ll get in touch as soon as he’s able,’ he said reassuringly. ‘It has to be a mistake.’ But within himself there was a paralysing fear for his son’s safety.
* * *
Ronnie was in France and his letters were short and heavily blue-pencilled. Olive tried with a magnifying glass to read beneath the heavy pencil in the hope of gleaning more of his thoughts. She wrote to him regularly and hoped that somehow he would receive her letters. But for the past few weeks she hadn’t heard from him. She still kept on writing but terror filled her heart and she had to calm herself for fear the worries would reveal themselves in her letters to him.
She said nothing about her fears to his parents, or to Granny Moll. She lied about hearing from him and assured them that everything was all right. She didn’t want Marged or Moll worrying him about not hearing from him. She tried not to imagine him in the thick of the fighting. There were plenty of other reasons why he could have been unable to write. She tried to think of some, but her mind was a blank. Best she kept her fears to herself, she realised; she didn’t want him upset by the others writing and complaining and telling him how worried they were. However well meant, anxiety from home was something he could do without.
* * *
With the season coming to an end, the café was less busy and Marged told Mrs Downs that after the end of the week she wouldn’t be needed any longer.
‘Haven’t you got anything in one of the other businesses?’ Hetty asked, glancing at Huw. ‘There’s the fish-and-chip shop and café, couldn’t I work there, at least part time?’
Huw turned away after giving Marged a warning stare, and Marged said with regret that there was just enough work for the family. ‘We usually have to look for winter work ourselves, but with the boys away, we can probably manage without having to,’ she explained, untruthfully. ‘There aren’t any places to fill, sorry.’
The following morning, there was evidence that once more someone was using the café after it closed. A toffee paper was found and a small amount of cigarette ash. Lilly was involved in the discovery, but this time she knew that she and Phil were not the culprits. Phil was a member of His Majesty’s forces and couldn’t even write to her, she reminded herself sadly.
The mystery was still unsolved by the time October came and they had to close the café for the winter. After a week’s rest, the family was kept busy cleaning everything and making sure the building was secure enough to cope with the winter weather.
Phil came home on leave and Lilly expertly escaped from the final cleaning, taking the spare tablecloths and tea-towels home and forgetting to go back.
When she and Phil met it was already dark. They let themselves into the café, which was redolent with the smell of strong carbolic soap, and settled into ‘their’ corner. They laughed about the mystery of the cigarette ash and Phil dropped some more to cause puzzled frowns when Granny Moll and Marged came on one of their weekly checks throughout the winter to ensure there were no leaks or other damage.
Their need for each other was greater because of the weeks they had been apart. They were reluctant to go, knowing it would be several weeks before they could meet again.
‘It’s past eleven o’clock,’ Lilly whispered, shining a small torch on to her watch. ‘What did you tell your wife?’
‘I told her it was a friend’s stag party. I wish it was mine, the night before our wedding.’ he said as desire for her grew once more.
Passion spent, they lay together and Lilly asked, ‘Isn’t there a way that I can write to you? I need to tell you things and not being able to write is cruel.’
‘What things? You can tell me things now, can’t you?’
‘Special things. I want to write them down as I think of them, so you know what I’m thinking, what’s happening to me. And I want to hear the same from you.’
She did have something to say but avoided saying it. She knew that a letter, which he could reread and mull over before deciding on a reply, was the best way of telling him.
‘I’m cold,’ she complained as a shiver ran through her. He wrapped his arms around her once again as they promised themselves just half an hour longer.
* * *
Marged and Huw were relaxing, having finished the seemingly endless chores. Huw had changed out of his work trousers and wore grey ones with a V-necked Fair Isle pullover and an open-necked checked shirt underneath it. He puffed slowly on a pipe, his face brown with sunburn which ended at his collar line, his hair slicked back with Brylcreem.
Marged’s hair was tightly enclosed in dinkie curlers and she wore a skirt and blouse with fluffy slippers on her feet as she concentrated on finishing the khaki sock she was knitting. She and her daughters and many other enthusiastic people were helping the war effort by knitting socks and scarves for the forces. Cloth
es factories had been modified and instead of making civilian clothes had been set up for the manufacture of khaki battledress, kit bags, camouflage net, parachute silk, tents, and all the other necessities of war. But there was a shortage of woollen items and women were encouraged to make scarves and socks which were collected at special centres and sent to where they were most needed.
‘It’s late, Huw, our Lilly should have been in ages ago.’ Marged looked up from her casting off. ‘Did she say she’d be late?’
‘Probably meeting her secret boyfriend,’ Beth said. ‘If he exists. She’s invented him if you ask me, as an excuse to get out of work.’
The door opened at that moment and Lilly came in, greeted them mournfully and went to the cupboard to take out writing paper. Huw stood up and went to throw the bolt on the front door. ‘Thank goodness you’re in, Lilly,’ he said. ‘Now we can go to bed.’
Lilly grunted and, with her arm shielding what she was writing, began to scribble on the paper.
‘Where’s your boyfriend, then?’ Beth wanted to know. ‘Too ashamed to bring him home, are you?’
To everyone’s surprise, Lilly burst into tears.
‘Whatever is it?’ Marged asked, trying to comfort her daughter.
Lilly couldn’t explain that Phil was at that moment on his way home to prepare to return to duty after a forty-eight hour leave. Between sobs she explained that she was thinking of Ronnie, Taff and Johnny.
‘I was trying to write to our Ronnie but I don’t know what to say,’ she wailed, tearing up the paper and throwing it into the embers, poking it until it flared and blackened.
At that moment there was a loud knock at the door. Puzzled, Huw went to open it, with Marged close behind him. ‘Bleddyn? What is it?’
Holidays at Home Omnibus Page 45
