Lilly seemed either unaware or she simply did not care. She didn’t attempt to hide her condition and walked brazenly around in a way that made Marged and Huw embarrassed and ashamed.
It was only three thirty a.m. After drinking a cup of tea, Marged went back upstairs hoping not to disturb Huw and slid back into bed. Huw didn’t stir but Lilly was woken and she lay there for a while, then decided she would like a cup of tea. In the ninth month of her pregnancy she was using her condition to persuade the rest of her family to spoil her. ‘Mam? Mamma?’ she called weakly, knowing that Marged would come running the moment she heard her.
Marged leaped out of bed, bleary-eyed and confused with newly found sleep, convinced that this was it, the baby was on the way. The fact that Lilly had broken into her sleep for at least the last fourteen nights didn’t stop her believing that this was the day.
‘What is it, love, getting pains, are you?’
‘I don’t feel well and I’m terrible thirsty, Mam,’ Lilly moaned.
After allowing her mother to persuade her that she needed a cup of tea Lilly said weakly that she would try to drink it and maybe have a biscuit or two. She listened as Marged went downstairs and filled the kettle.
Marged felt exhausted. After putting the kettle on to boil, she opened the kitchen door and pulling the heavy black-out curtain behind her, leaned against it allowing the morning air to wake her. Three times that night she had heard Lilly call her and every time Lilly needed nothing more than reassurance, afraid, dreading the pain to come. Compassion vied with irritation as the kettle began to sing. Surely Lilly didn’t need twenty-four-hour care? Babies were born all the time and carried with far less fuss than this one, she thought, as she stifled a yawn. How much longer would this baby keep them waiting? Lilly had been vague about its conception and her dates were unsure. Surely they didn’t face another month of this?
It was five a.m. In two hours she would be leaving to prepare the café for opening. Huw would be on the beach with Bleddyn unwrapping the stalls and setting up the rides. She would be on her feet all day in the café. Her sister Audrey would stay with Lilly and neighbours would look in to make sure all was well, but her daughter would be on her mind and she knew it would be difficult to concentrate on giving her customers cheerful service. Another hour’s sleep would have been nice. Now it was not worth going back to bed.
After taking Lilly her cup of tea and a couple of biscuits, she took out the makings of a cake. No point in wasting time if she couldn’t use it for sleep. Chocolate cake that contained no chocolate, a sponge cake using no fat. Nothing was real any more. Everything was ‘making do’. Substituting one thing for another, ingenuity was an essential requirement for cooks. Food rationing had made cooking a challenge to produce good food from poor ingredients. Thank goodness she had the grinder to make icing sugar from granulated. She sprinkled a little over the cakes when they were cooling to add interest to a product of which she would normally have been ashamed.
She heard someone walking across the landing and presumed it was Huw. She put the kettle on again. Time to get things moving. Then a scream rent the air and she went up the stairs two at a time and bumped into Huw on the landing.
It was Lilly and this time she was not pretending. Sending Huw for the midwife and the nurse, she comforted Lilly as she took her back to bed.
The cries and occasional screams went on for several hours. Huw had absented himself promptly and willingly to do what he could to keep things going at the café. Shirley’s mother, Hetty Downs, had been sent for and she helped organise the café for a few hours, while below, on the sands, men, women and a few children struggled with stiff and unwieldy tarpaulin as they uncovered the stalls and decorated them with sunshades and sunhats, windmills and beach balls, buckets and spades, water wings and flags, and other essentials for a day on the sand.
Huw’s brother Bleddyn was there and, as usual, doing the work of two, both uncovering and setting up the stalls and rides, and coping with them during the busy day. He was manning from the roundabout to the helter-skelter to the swingboats, coping with change, collecting money when it mounted up, while at the same time making a note of items to re-order – when they could get them.
Twelve-year-old Stanley Love, one of the evacuees who lived with Eirlys’s father, was there, earning a little pocket money before school began. Other children too were occupied with the activities, taking the place of the men who had been called up to fight. Some insisted that the school was closed that day and they could stay. Huw was so desperate to find people to help he pretended to believe them.
With Hetty Downs and young Alice Potter who had been borrowed from the sweet and seaside rock shop on the prom, the café coped without too many disasters. Maude and her sister Myrtle, who had been found living rough and who had been rescued by Beth and her mother, were in charge of a stall as well as the swingboats, supported by Bleddyn when necessary. The Castle family survived another day, but how much longer they could continue, Huw was not certain.
The café was extra busy and, without Marged’s guiding hands, throughout the day many jobs had been neglected. When Huw went home, exhausted, at eight thirty, having helped Beth to clear up and leave the café as orderly as they could, the house in Sidney Street was quiet. He didn’t investigate; he flopped into a chair and his eyes closed of their own volition.
He thought he must have dozed off because when he next opened his eyes he could hear voices. Pulling his sluggish, sleep-heavy body from the chair he went to the bottom of the stairs. He didn’t want to go up until he was sure of what he would find.
‘Marged?’ he called. ‘Lilly? You all right, love?’
‘She’s as right as rain, Mr Castle,’ a strange voice replied. The nurse he supposed. ‘I’m Mrs Denver, Phil’s mother.’
‘Him that called himself Phil Martin and got my daughter in the family way?’ Huw bounded up the stairs prepared to shout and rage but when he saw the pink gentle face of Mrs Denver he fell silent. She seemed unperturbed by his anger and he felt the outrage leave him. ‘Where’s your mam?’ he asked Lilly, looking at her for the first time. It was only then that he saw the bundle in Lilly’s arms and became aware of her smiling face.
‘You’ve got a granddaughter, Dad. Isn’t she beautiful?’
Huw’s reaction, quite unexpected and unselfconscious, was to cry, ‘Lovely girl you are, our Lilly, beautiful she is, just like you. Oh, Lilly, what a wonderful little girl you’ve got. What’s her name? Where will she sleep? Do you want me to get anything for her? I’ll go and fetch your mam, is it? And Ronnie and Olive, and your Uncle Bleddyn will want to know and—’
‘Dad, she’s called Phyllis Vera Castle. Do you like it? Phyllis is for her father, Philip.’
Clumsily, Huw leaned over and kissed his daughter, then nervously kissed the child. ‘Perfect she is. Lilly. Just perfect.’ He took a few deep breaths to recover and then said, ‘I’ll go and find your mam and send one of the neighbours to tell your Uncle Bleddyn.’ He turned to Mrs Denver as though just realising she was there. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘I’m Phil’s mother,’ Mrs Denver replied. ‘I’m the little mite’s grandmother.’
‘The grandmother. Oh.’ Still frowning as though unclear about her presence in his house. Huw went downstairs. Nor knowing what else to do, he put the kettle on and spooned tea leaves into the teapot.
News of the birth spread in the magical way of small communities and by late evening a troop of neighbours and friends had called to congratulate the family, although with some, aware of the absence of a father, their comments were muted and almost sorrowful in their praise of the child.
* * *
In London, Eirlys heard the news from Lilly’s sister Beth by letter and wondered how the lazy Lilly would cope. A letter from her father giving the same news came the following day.
Morgan wrote to his daughter every week although Eirlys had never written to him during the time she had lived in London with
the Ward family. This time he had felt certain of a reply. Both the news of Lilly’s baby and his own announcement would surely persuade her to address a letter to him and not send news via the boys?
Taking both letters, Eirlys wrote a brief congratulatory reply to Beth regarding Lilly’s baby, addressing her friend as Auntie Bethan, and sat looking at her father’s letter for a long time. He asked her what she thought about him marrying Teresa and adopting the three boys. Her first instinct, strong and protective, was to tell him ‘no’. A part of that immediate response was because she missed her mother but there was also the cold certainty that, at the end of it, her father would suffer more.
She didn’t trust Teresa, and was convinced by past events that one day soon her father would have to face disappointment. Marriage would only complicate things, it would not change the likely outcome.
Now she had visited and found the situation at home a firm if irregular arrangement, she knew she had to make a decision. She had a choice between the truth and what her father wanted to hear. She could tell her father exactly how she felt and risk upsetting him, and that reaction would probably be fuel for Teresa to convince him he wasn’t loved. If she continued with her disapproval she might never return to the closeness she had once felt for her Dadda. Alternatively she could relax and accept the fact that Teresa was there as a permanent fixture; at least then there was a chance of one day things returning to normal.
Picking up her pen and opening the ink bottle again, she decided on the former. Being truthful, she ignored the fear that her letter would be read by Teresa, and told her father firmly that although she understood his need to have the Loves living there with him, marriage to Teresa would be a big mistake. She wisely gave no arguments to support her comment. Morgan knew the facts about Teresa’s dishonesty and her unsavoury past better than she did.
* * *
Ken came home that evening and they went into the West End to the pictures. Coming home, an air raid began, and they hurried to the shelter where they stayed until the following morning. The noise of the bombing seemed a long way off, muted by the depth of the shelter, but it was frightening just the same. Like many other couples, they clung together and whispered reassurances, telling themselves that Ken’s family would be all right, that the raid sounded to be coming from a different direction from their home, that the shelter was a hundred per cent safe – which no one believed – and that it would be over soon – which it wasn’t.
The crumping sounds and the wilder explosions that followed continued and their words of comfort became more personal. The kisses that began as morale-boosting soon increased in fervour and Eirlys felt her head swimming with the remembered pleasures they revived. Around them everyone had fallen quiet. The lively chatter, the rude remarks about Hitler’s army that always began during the wait for an air raid to be over, had long ago come to an end. Some of the children slept, and in the tube-like concrete shelter the bench seats along each wall held a series of grouped figures in various positions of sleep.
‘I still love you, Eirlys,’ Ken whispered. ‘I know I promised not to talk about us until you were ready, but in the circumstances, with us likely to be blown to smithereens any moment, I want you to know.’
‘I love you, Ken, I always will, but not enough. You deserve more than the little I can give you.’
‘I’d settle for anything.’
Eirlys didn’t reply. She feigned sleep to avoid continuing the conversation, but she was excitingly aware that sleeping in his arms was a far from unpleasant experience.
It was early the following morning before the all-clear sounded, and the disparate collection of people emerged from the underground shelter, their eyes filled with sleep, their movements stiff, and looked around them.
The city was hidden from view by the smoke from a hundred fires. The smell was choking and most held handkerchiefs to their faces. Shouts were heard as the rescue teams went about their business, haste in their voices and movements in the knowledge that there was so little time to find those buried in the rubble of their previous homes.
As Eirlys and Ken walked towards where they hoped to find an underground station, the scene unfolding itself in front of them looked like something from a nightmare. There was nothing they could recognise, with many buildings reduced to dust and rubble and others nothing more than framework that surely could never be rebuilt.
Craters blocked their way and the streets were unfamiliar as they tried to find their way. It was impossible to work out where the underground station was and it would almost certainly be out of action if they could find it. When they asked where they were, the warden refused to tell them. Instructions not to help anyone who might be an enemy sympathiser (or worse) seemed ridiculous but the man wouldn’t be moved. Walking in what they hoped was the right direction they set off to walk home.
It was almost an hour before they worked out where they were and Eirlys was on the edge of tears seeing what had happened to the sobbing people who were searching through the debris of their homes, perhaps in the hope of finding a treasured article, until they were led away by the harassed and exhausted firemen, policemen, ARP workers, wardens, ambulance crews and others. Once clear of the worst of the devastation they saw the unbelievable sight of one of London’s buses, with the conductor on the platform urging the passengers to, ’Urry along inside if you please, ladies and gents, I’ve got breakfast waiting for me at ’ome. Tomatoes on toast, Gawd ’elp us. Tomatoes! I ask yer! Exciting, eh? Damn ol’ Hitler’s whiskers.’ Whistling cheerfully he rang the bell and came along the aisle selling tickets and with a cheerful quip for many.
The bus deviated several times from its usual route, but as though he had done the trip in its present conditions a hundred times, the conductor put his passengers down at the spot closest to their destination, pointed the way and waved them goodbye as though they were old friends.
‘Winston Churchill would be proud of him,’ Ken commented with a wry grin. ‘London’s unquenchable spirit personified.’
The severity of the raid had frightened Eirlys and for a few days she considered returning to the safety of St David’s Well. Then memories of how everything had changed returned to worry her, and reminders of the impossibility of living at home with Teresa and her father sharing a bed. She no longer belonged there. She would be an intruder in their lives. The waters had ceased their concentric rippling and her place in the life of the town had vanished. Best she faced it and forgot any hope of going home.
Yet there was still a niggling thought of the shop she had planned, the business she had started to build. Perhaps, one day, but after a year it was still too soon to contemplate.
There was also the growing affection for Ken. She couldn’t deny that her feelings for him had changed. Could she walk away from him again? Could she live in close proximity to Johnny and Hannah and their marriage made in heaven? No, better to forget St David’s Well with its lilting voices and its friendly holiday atmosphere and settle here, with Ken’s family, and treat Dadda and his new family with polite formal friendship. She was Dadda’s little girl no longer.
* * *
Shirley Downs was still searching for a dance partner. There was often someone who danced well but they were either with a girlfriend or a wife, or they were passing through and she would never see them again. It was frustrating. Starting so early in the mornings to get the papers out, she had a few hours off each afternoon. Instead of resting she went to the market café to see Janet Copp and pleaded with her to go with her. She had long since changed her mind about the competition Janet threatened; Janet offered a second route to stardom and stardom was on Shirley’s mind.
‘Hi yer,’ she called cheerfully as she approached the busy market café. ‘Come to ask you to come to the Saturday dance I have. You’ll love it, the dance band isn’t bad and there’s always a crowd. We can do a number or two and have a bit of a laugh. What d’you think? You’ve got quite a nice voice,’ she added kindly.
/> ‘I don’t know.’ Janet hesitated. She lacked the ambition that was more and more apparent in Shirley. Singing and dancing were fun, but not important.
‘Why don’t we ask Ronnie and Olive Castle to come too?’ Shirley suggested enthusiastically, nodding towards the fruit and vegetable stall. ‘It’s always more fun going in a crowd.’
‘Fat chance of that,’ Janet laughed. ‘Ronnie’s got a bad leg. Invalided out of the army, remember? And Olive is too shy and besides, she’s expecting!’ She tilted her head on one side, considering. ‘All right, you’ve talked me into it, Shirley. I’ll come. Not this week mind. I’m going to the pictures with a friend.’
‘Oh no! Can’t you bring your friend with you?’
‘Sorry,’ Janet said as she poured tea from the large cream enamel teapot.
Shirley couldn’t face staying in on a Saturday night so in despair she pleaded with Joseph Beynon to take her when she saw him walking past the shop. It just wasn’t the same going on her own and standing waiting, hoping for a partner.
Joseph looked doubtful at first. He knew he was not a suitable partner. Sliding around the floor using his limited knowledge of the steps and the minimum amount of movement was not what Shirley needed and her frustration made his feet even more awkward than usual. And since she had made it clear that she was using him when she had no one better, he had been determined not to take her again. Her pleading persuaded him, however, and it was a pleasant prospect to walk in with a good-looking girl like Shirley on his arm, her shining curls bouncing around her shoulders, her eyes sparkling like stars.
The dance hall was more crowded than usual and there were a large number of uniforms among the dancers. She gathered that there was a group of soldiers gathered for a training exercise and with such a choice of partners, wished she had come alone.
For a while she danced most of the numbers with Joseph but as her skills became apparent, she was in increasing demand and soon Joseph was reduced to standing in a corner just watching. He was disappointed but didn’t blame her for taking the opportunity to dance with men with more ability than himself. And at least he would be the one walking her home.
Holidays at Home Omnibus Page 64
