Olive ran down and read the letter and, trying to stop him worrying, said cheerfully, ‘Don’t worry, love. You’d be a liability to anyone except me!’
‘It’ll be routine, won’t it? They can’t send me back, not like this.’ Unconvinced, he added, ‘I’ll go this morning to see if Mr Gregory has any ideas where we can get a few Christmas trees to sell on the stall, shall I?’
In Sidney Street, at both Audrey’s house and Huw and Marged’s further down the road, the day had begun slowly. Long after Shirley and her mother had started work, Marged was cooking breakfast for Lilly, Beth and herself while they all tried to persuade Beth to leave Freddy.
‘Face up to the facts,’ Marged said, slapping a plate of toast and one of Mr Gregory’s hard-boiled duck eggs in front of her. ‘You know he’s been coming home on leave and not telling you. You suspect he’s seeing more of Shirley Downs than he’s telling you. There’s certainly a lot he isn’t telling you! What more do you need to be convinced?’
‘I’d know what he’s up to if he was my fiancé,’ Lilly said. ‘You wouldn’t catch me playing second fiddle.’
‘You what?’ Beth laughed. ‘What’s that lump then, if it isn’t second fiddle?’
‘Enough,’ Huw said. ‘Lilly’s only trying to make you see sense, like the rest of us.’
‘Let her try and sort herself out,’ Beth retorted. ‘Why doesn’t she go and see the man and tell him he has to help?’
‘Because he’s dead, that’s why.’ In the silence that followed, Lilly told them that the man had been killed in combat. Then she decided to tell them the rest. ‘I had a photograph of him and I put on Granny Moll’s wedding ring so she wouldn’t be upset, and went to give it to his wife.’
‘You met her?’ Beth sat down and stared at her sister. ‘That was brave – or stupid; I don’t know which.’
‘Stupid as it happens. He wasn’t married after all, he’d only told me that so I couldn’t expect him to marry me. It was his mother I saw.’ Lilly glared at her sister and went on, ‘So you’re right, I don’t have the sense I was born with, and shouldn’t be trying to tell you what you should do about that waster of yours. At least Freddy isn’t very good at covering up.’
No one knew what to say. Beth hugged Lilly and Marged stared at Huw, urging him to say something, anything, to make Lilly feel better.
‘Glad we are that you won’t have to marry him,’ Huw said gruffly. ‘I don’t want to lose either of my girls just yet and I certainly won’t want to lose this baby of yours. He’s a next-generation Castle, and we’ll love him, won’t we, Marged?’
‘Mrs Denver thinks it might be a girl,’ Lilly said, attempting to laugh.
‘Then she’ll have to keep her name when she marries, eh?’
‘Denver?’ Marged frowned. ‘Not Phil Denver, him who calls himself Phil Martin?’ She stared at her daughter in disbelief. ‘But everyone knows about him telling that old story! It’s been a joke for years!’
Lilly lifted her head, her face pale and taut with dismay. ‘Everyone knew, did they? Then why didn’t someone tell me?’
* * *
Ronnie still limped badly and the doctor told him that he would not improve much further when he was called back for another medical to see if he was fit enough to return to his unit. He and Olive waited nervously for the decision. He knew it was unlikely that he would have to go back – even with a desk job he would be a liability if his unit was sent to the front line – but with more and more men, and women, being called to register every week, nothing was certain.
When the letter came, he and Olive looked at it together.
‘No return to active service,’ they read aloud.
‘That’s such a relief,’ Olive said. Then she looked at her husband’s serious face as he read further. ‘Ronnie? What is it?’
‘I have to work in a munitions factory, reporting in two weeks’ time, unless there are extenuating circumstances for which a waiver might be granted.’
They wrote straight away, pointing out that without his help, as his wife and partner in business was expecting their first child, the market stall, their only source of income, would have to be closed. The reply came almost by return post; their request was denied.
Another form was filled in explaining their need to keep the business intact, this time with a word from Ronnie’s own doctor to add weight to the plea.
* * *
With the war changing everything and many families in mourning, the town had an air of false gaiety as December speeded up, heading for the celebration. Cakes concocted with the most unlikely ingredients were made and were the cause of much laughter. Flagons of beer were carried back home to be stored until Christmas Day with a bottle of port or sherry, which for most was as much as they could afford.
The shops quickly emptied of anything that could be considered seasonal, queues forming when anything in short supply was rumoured to be available. Chickens and rabbits were snapped up by those who had the money to buy them and the bacon ration was saved for several weeks so a small joint could give the illusion of extravagance.
Marged couldn’t think of Christmas with her usual enthusiasm. How could she when she didn’t know where Eynon was? A couple of cards arrived purporting to come from Auntie Ethel and a Mrs William, a sentence to let them know he was well and hoping to see them soon. Although the writing was a scrawl, Marged knew the cards had been sent by Eynon. William was his second name. But she was unable to discuss them with anyone except Huw, and there was also the fear that something had happened since they were written and now, this moment, he could be far from well, all alone and in serious trouble.
The military police still called on occasion, starting by warning her of the seriousness of keeping his whereabouts from them, but as she didn’t know where he was, and the postcards wouldn’t have helped anyway, she said nothing. Now, with this everlasting disagreement between her and Huw, she grieved for him in lonely silence.
Beth didn’t relish the thought of the holiday. With her parents hardly speaking to each other, Audrey and Wilf grieving anew for the child lost so many years before, and Lilly insisting on being spoilt, it was only the thought that it was Maude and Myrtle’s first Christmas as a part of the family that made her do what she could to add some festivities to the house on Sidney Street.
Mr Gregory had promised them a chicken so it was with some surprise that she saw one arrive, in a box, well and truly alive.
‘He wouldn’t send it for us to kill!’ Beth said, reaching for her coat, intending to go to Goose Lane.
Huw came in just as she was leaving and said, ‘Oh, it’s arrived then.’
‘And I’m just off to tell him he can come and take it back!’ she said.
‘What’s the matter with it? I won it fair and square, I did.’
‘Won it?’
‘In a raffle at the pub, With the one we’ve ordered from old Gregory we’ll have enough to invite the whole family around.’
Thankfully, Beth removed her coat and sat down. ‘What will you do with it, Dad? You can’t kill it.’
‘Who can’t? Of course I’ll kill it. What d’you expect me to do, buy it a present for under the tree?’
Beth reached for her coat again. She had kept well away from Mr Gregory’s while the slaughtering was going on, but she had to stop this situation at once. He would give the poor thing a home. What was her father thinking of?
‘I’m going to see Mr Gregory. And,’ she told her father, ‘I’m not going to let you kill that poor little creature, whatever you say. Even if I never have a Christmas dinner ever again!’
Huw watched his daughter leave then picked up the beautiful speckled hen. He went into the yard and with feet wide apart took hold of the hen’s body in one hand and its head in the other. Then a scream rent the air and he dropped it. The hen ran off and hid behind the shed. Maude and Myrtle stood at the door with such an expression of horror on their faces Huw felt like a man caught about to commit a m
urder.
‘Murderer,’ Myrtle choked, confirming his thought.
‘How can you, Uncle Huw?’ Maude said, sobbing loudly.
The chicken came out from behind the shed pecking the ground, aimlessly searching for edible morsels, apparently unharmed and unfazed by her narrow escape.
‘What d’you want me to do with it?’ Huw asked irritably. ‘Keep her as a pet?’
‘Oh, Uncle Huw, thanks,’ Maude said.
‘This is the best Christmas present we’ve ever had,’ Myrtle echoed.
Leaving the girls to decide on a name, Huw chuckled as he went back inside. Thank goodness they had ordered one from Mr Gregory. At least they wouldn’t recognise that as anything more than a few slices of meat. Then he crossed his fingers. He didn’t want them refusing to eat the meat they had spent so much money on, or spoiling his own appetite by making him feel guilty! He sighed, a mixture of irritation and amusement. ‘I suppose I’d better build the thing a coop,’ he shouted after the girls.
Later he sat listening to the wireless and wondering how he could prevent Christmas being spoilt for the rest of the family by Marged’s attitude. They tried to keep it from the family, but they hardly spoke to each other and continued to sleep in separate rooms.
Beth, Lilly and Ronnie knew that their parents were having difficulties and Lilly was worried. It is frightening to realise that your parents, on whom you rely for security and comfort and advice, aren’t getting on. In a rare fit of willingness, Lilly was helping Beth wash up after supper when she voiced her worries.
‘What will become of us if they decide to leave each other?’ she whispered to Beth. ‘Our Dad’s gone to meet friends and colleagues from the beach this evening, and Mam refused to go with him.’
Peeping through the door, they looked at Marged sitting in her usual chair at the side of the fireplace, knitting furiously and saying nothing, anger apparent in her expression and in the speed of the flashing needles.
‘It was a meeting about next season, and the restrictions on catering and all that. Important enough for her to want to be there, don’t you think? Running the stalls and the cafés is her life. It must be serious if she’s refused to go.’
‘Mam? Why didn’t you go with Dad?’ Beth asked. ‘The new season is going to be difficult with the new regulations and all. You have to know what’s happening.’
‘I don’t need to go to listen to a lot of gossiping old men trying to tell me what to do. I know how to deal with the beach trade. I’m a Piper and I’ve done it all my life.’
‘At least Dad and Uncle Bleddyn have gone.’
‘And they needn’t think they can come back here and tell me what I must do,’ Marged warned.
‘It’s their business too, Mam,’ Lilly dared to say. ‘God ’elp, they’ve been involved since they were about eight!’
‘None of your cheek! And I get enough of that talk from your father. It’s Piper’s, and your father won’t change that.’
‘But we’re Castles. Dad and Uncle Bleddyn run it now Granny Moll is dead.’
‘And we’ve run it since we were children!’ Huw had walked in and stood, glaring at their mother.
The two girls backed away into the kitchen and continued to discuss the rift in whispers. They finished clearing up and got into bed while below them the row still rumbled on.
‘What will we do?’ Lilly said. ‘I can’t bear it, Beth. If only Granny Moll was here none of this would be happening. Talk some sense into them she would.’’
‘I think it’s Granny Moll that’s the trouble,’ Beth told her. ‘Ever since Dad found out about Auntie Audrey and the punishment she suffered – Granny Moll not allowing her to marry, treating her and Uncle Wilf like criminals – Dad’s been angry. Mam obviously supported Granny Moll, didn’t she? The worst bit of all for Dad was being married to our Mam all these years and not being told. Since then they haven’t spent an hour in each other’s company without rowing, have they?’
‘I still don’t understand why.’
‘Neither do I. It must be something to do with Granny Moll being so hard. I think Dad and Uncle Bleddyn want some recognition of the work they’ve done to keep the business running. The story of Auntie Audrey just made him realise how much she needed her own way in everything.’
Lilly shrugged. ‘It still doesn’t make sense.’
The bedroom door opened and their father stood there.
‘Sorry I am that you’ve heard all this. But your Mam and I don’t seem able to sort this out. I’m going to stay with Uncle Bleddyn for a while, until she accepts that we’re a partnership, all equal. Me and your mam and Uncle Bleddyn. All of us Castles.’
They stared at the closing door, their hearts racing with fear. What would happen to them now? Predictably, Lilly began to cry.
They heard the front door close and their father’s footsteps fading as he walked up the street to where he parked the van. They heard the van drive away and a few minutes later, in the silence of the night, they heard the water drawn to fill the kettle and the fire being poked to boil it.
‘Come on, Lilly. I think we’re entitled to hear Mam’s side of things, don’t you?’ Together, they went down the stairs to face her.
* * *
Huw went into his brother’s house and Bleddyn saw at once that something serious had happened. Evelyn was there and Hannah was ironing in the kitchen.
‘How are those girls of yours?’ Huw asked Hannah after greeting the others. ‘Looking forward to Father Christmas’s visit? I’m hoping for a new razor; I think Marged trimmed the oilcloth with mine,’ he joked.
Evelyn went out into the kitchen and closed the door, guessing that the brothers needed to talk in private.
‘Can I stay a couple of nights?’
‘Stay here? Why?’ Bleddyn asked.
‘Marged and I’ve had a row and until she sees sense I’m not going back,’ Huw replied. ‘I can’t get her to see that this business wouldn’t be here at all if it wasn’t for you and me. Moll did all the shouting, but we did all the work. Wicked she was, treating us like idiots and poor Audrey like a criminal. I can’t really explain why, but it was the last straw for me, her treating her own daughter so badly and Audrey still doing penance all these years after.’
‘You won’t get anywhere by staying away, not talking to Marged. Go home and insist on her listening to what you have to say. That’s my advice.’
‘She never listens. As soon as I start talking, her ears close and you can see her about to explode with the need to say her piece. No matter what I said, the answer would be no.’
‘Shall I try?’
‘If you want to, but I don’t think it’ll do any good. Moll trained her well. Thinks she’s the top of the heap because she’s a Piper. Being married to me all these years hasn’t altered that!’
‘You’ve seen the chip shop then?’
‘She never changed the sign back!’
‘She did. Got Will Morton to take down the new one and put the old one back.’
‘Well, tomorrow it’s coming down again. No sign at all it’ll be, just an empty board, until she agrees to it being called Castle’s. Right?’
‘Right. Er – I think. What will we do if she refuses right up to the new season?’
‘Then there won’t be a season, will there? If it’s Piper’s she wants, then she and Audrey can run it and see how well they do. Now, have you got a bed I could use? I’m worn out with all this wrangling, and that’s a fact.’
They talked a while longer. Evelyn and Hannah and the two sleepy girls said goodnight and left, with Bleddyn and Huw walking them home to where they all now lived, as the night was so dark. When they returned, Bleddyn settled Huw into a single bed in his own room, as it had been simplest for both of them to use the room in which there was a heater, and lay there wondering what would become of them.
Huw also lay with his eyes open, sleep a vague hope. He thought about Lilly and her baby, about Beth and that pain in the ars
e Freddy, Marged and her stubborn righteousness – inherited from the other pain in the arse, Moll.
‘Damn it all, Moll wasn’t a Piper anyway until she married that useless Joseph! She was a Jones!’ Huw said in exasperation.
‘Shut up and go to sleep,’ growled Bleddyn.
‘Made me suffer all these years because of—’
‘Shut up!’
* * *
Beth and Lilly tried to persuade their mother to talk about what had happened between her and their father but Marged refused. She made tea, gave them a cup and sent them back to bed.
‘It looks serious,’ Beth whispered, ‘our Dad walking out like that. What will happen, d’you think?’
‘Mam won’t let the café go, whatever happens she’ll open that next year.’
‘She can’t do it all on her own though.’
‘We’ll have to help as much as we can.’
‘I can’t!’ Lilly said at once. ‘I’ll have a baby to look after.’
‘So did our Mam when we were small, remember. She still managed to keep everything going, didn’t she?’
‘I’m not like Mam. I couldn’t do it,’ Lilly admitted as she drained her cup. ‘But I can’t see any other way of earning my keep and with our Dad gone, I suppose I’ll be expected to, won’t I?’’ On that sad note, she turned over and tried to sleep.
* * *
Christmas was the happiest time but it could also be the loneliest, Eynon thought as he trudged along an empty country road on Christmas Eve. He thought longingly about the Christmas dinners he’d enjoyed at home, and the games they had played after tea. Hot and tired and overfed he’d been, and so happy that laughter came without the need of an excuse.
In his pockets now he carried a couple of maggotty apples and a bar of chocolate stolen from a shop when he went to ask the time. Both had been saved for the day when the celebrations would be under way. He would pretend to be sharing Christmas day with his family. And Alice.
Holidays at Home Omnibus Page 58
