Holidays at Home Omnibus

by Wait Till Summer; Swingboats On the Sand; Waiting for Yesterday; Day Trippers; Unwise Promises; Street Parties (retail) (epub)

  The café high above the beach in St David’s Well opened at the same time as the stalls on the sands sprang up like mushrooms almost overnight, offering whatever the owners could find to sell. Home-made windmills painted in gaudy colours whizzed around alongside the last of the factory-produced ones. Bathing costumes were now available only with clothing coupons since clothes-rationing had begun in June 1941, but the few still in stock would be cautiously offered to interested customers ‘under the counter’ — a phrase increasingly used for illegal transactions.

  As well as the activities on the beach, the town itself developed an atmosphere of gaiety to entice the people to stay in the town and ignore the temptations offered by other, faraway places. At the same time, the town council ignored the other side of the plans, to reduce the numbers of people travelling, and did its best to coax people from other towns to visit. They wanted their own people to stay but saw nothing wrong with expecting other places to part with their citizens for a day or a weekend or a week to enjoy what St David’s Well had to offer. ‘Following the plan to the letter but not entering the spirit of it’ was how Huw put it.

  ‘Cheating, more like,’ Marged smiled as they watched the crowd emerging from the station and heading for the beach one Sunday morning. She and Huw were in the van, having been back to their house in Sidney Street for fresh supplies. With an unexpectedly mild weekend after a few days of rain, the crowds were greater than they expected, and at home, Marged’s sister Audrey had been making scones and mixing the ingredients for welshcakes ready for Marged to cook on the premises, offering tempting smells to whet the appetites of their customers.

  The café was full, with Bleddyn and Hetty struggling to cope, and at once Huw went to the counter to serve while Marged began unpacking scones and filling them with the thin jam and artificial cream that were all they could get, and turning on the heat under the bakestone ready to cook the welshcakes.

  There was the usual lull before lunch and they managed to sit and drink a cup of tea and eat a sandwich. Beth, Marged and Huw’s daughter, arrived at twelve to help and she busied herself preparing trays for the few who considered it warm enough to eat on the beach. Beth ran the market café, and as her husband, Peter, was in the forces, she came to help her parents and Uncle Bleddyn whenever she was free.

  Maldwyn, Delyth and Madge were among Beth’s first lunchtime customers. Once more they had met on the train, being unaware of their joint plan to make the half-day trip.

  ‘Hello again, you three,’ Huw smiled. Marged greeted the girls but only nodded at Maldwyn. He sensed her continued disapproval and guessed the reason.

  ‘Looking for war work we are,’ Delyth said. ‘Are there any factories around the town where we can apply? Got to be good wages, mind, we’ll have lodgings to pay.’

  Huw wrote down the names and addresses of a few places where they might apply and, ignoring the beach and its rowdy activities with regret, they went to seek out employment that would be classed as war work. Maldwyn wished them luck but didn’t go with them.

  ‘Why aren’t you looking for something similar?’ Marged asked, her voice harsh with criticism.

  ‘I know I’ll be turned down,’ he said, his voice tight with embarrassment. ‘I’ve tried seventeen times and been told the same thing. Everybody thinks I’ll have an accident and be more nuisance than help.’ Without waiting for further comment, he left the café and hurried out across the headland.

  ‘Now see what you’ve done!’ Huw grumbled. ‘We might have found ourselves a bit of help there, if you hadn’t been so disapproving! You don’t need perfect eyesight to count out a few coppers of change, do you? I can do it with my eyes shut! Poor boy was sick with shame.’

  Marged went to the window and looked out across the green grass that led across the hill and down to the next bay. Throwing off her apron, she hurried out to try to find Maldwyn.

  He was sitting in a hollow sheltered by bushes that were bent over against the constant wind from the sea, where she guessed he would be. It was where everyone sheltered when they wanted the view and not the cold breezes.

  ‘Want a job?’ she asked briskly. She wasn’t going to apologise, it wasn’t the thing to do if she were to become his employer.

  ‘I might.’

  ‘We need help desperate. Looking after the rides, taking the money, helping sometimes on the stalls selling the usual necessities for a day on the beach, whatever we can find. Interested?’

  ‘I don’t know. I’ll have to—’ He was about to say, ‘I’ll have to ask Mam,’ when he realised how stupid that would sound. ‘I’ll be needing lodgings. If I can find a place to live I’ll come and talk to you, OK?’

  ‘OK,’ Marged said. ‘Now if you like you can come back and have a cup of tea and a welshcake, no charge. Call it staff perks.’

  * * *

  Vera Matthews wasn’t in St David’s Well that day. She was at home, trying various make-up tricks to disguise her bruised face. The previous night, after being refused permission to go to a local dance at a nearby RAF camp, she had slipped out through a window and gone anyway. Her father was waiting for her when she reached home and went in through the door her sisters had promised to open for her. The slap and the ensuing argument had ended with her father saying she had to behave or leave. She didn’t think the choice would be a difficult one to make.

  * * *

  Delyth and Madge were unlucky with their quest for work. The small town had been designated a holiday area, with no plans to build factories, which had been sited in places convenient to roads and railways that would allow the goods to be moved quickly to their destinations. The town boasted few buildings suitable for converting into factories apart from those already used to store food for the Army, so there was very little employment that could be justified with the name of war work.

  They reached home that night, having listened to Maldwyn telling them of his promise of work on the beach, despondent and resigned to staying at home for the duration of the war and probably for the rest of their lives.

  ‘Let’s go further afield and try for work in one of the larger towns,’ Delyth suggested. ‘Desperate I am to get away from home. Mam and Uncle Trev mooning about like two lovesick schoolkids and me feeling more and more that I’m in the way.’

  There were letters waiting for them telling them that unless they found suitable occupations beforehand, they had to report to the local machine-parts packing sheds in three weeks and sign on there for work.

  ‘Damn it all, Madge,’ Delyth sighed. ‘We might have left it too late.’

  Madge touched her husband’s photograph and tried not to show her relief.

  Two

  Among hundreds of day trippers heading for St David’s Well one Wednesday afternoon, Delyth, Madge and Vera were on their way to enjoy a day of sunshine, sea and sands as promised by the holiday posters on the railway stations.

  Delyth and Madge chattered happily about how they would spend their few hours of freedom. Vera sat silent and alone. She was attempting to hide another bruised face: her father had seen her being escorted home by a young airman. She had seen the friends at the station but, being tired of inventing stories to explain her injuries, she avoided them. Maldwyn hadn’t appeared and she was disappointed. She wouldn’t have minded explaining to him, and having his sympathy pouring over her like a soothing stream. She desperately needed a friend at the moment.

  She waited until the train emptied at the terminus and watched everyone push their way through the exit, laughing and making plans. When the platform was clear, she went out. Offering her ticket, she pulled her dark hair as far as she could over her face but the damage caused by her father’s hand didn’t escape the sharp-eyed ticket collector.

  ‘What happened to you, love? You could do with a piece of steak on that.’

  ‘If I had a steak I’d eat it!’ she snapped, snatching back her ticket.

  A few people waiting outside the station looked at her with curiosity. Red
-faced, angry with the ticket collector for bringing the embarrassing sight to their notice, she hurried towards the exit. Wearing a red swagger-style coat, tapping on very high heels, she carried a medium-sized suitcase and a couple of small bags. In haste, she pushed her way clumsily through the entrance as she struggled with the weight and awkwardness of them. Almost running down the sandy slope to the promenade, she quickly found a place in the rocks on the left-hand side of the sandy bay, gathered her possessions around her and settled to work out what to do next.

  * * *

  In the town centre three local girls. Eirlys, Beth and Hannah, sat together, sewing and knitting, making gifts to sell in their shop. Eirlys had been given a rare aftemoon off, having stayed in the office until nine o’clock the previous evening, working out some of the entertainments the town was planning for the summer to attract visitors.

  Marged and Huw Castle’s daughter, Beth, had the half-day off as every Wednesday the market closed at one o’clock. With Peter away and her father-in-law busy on his smallholding, she was glad of something to fill the time and offer company. She was working on a colourful pair of mittens made from oddments of wool given to her by Eirlys.

  Hannah Castle, Bleddyn and Hetty’s daughter-in-law, was using the sewing machine, making a skirt from what had once been a smart pair of cricketing trousers, the quality material creating an attractive garment under her skilled hands. Beside her, a dress small enough for a baby was awaiting the finishing touches.

  Two of the three girls had received letters. Beth had heard from Peter. He was training men and women to be dropped behind enemy lines to organise escape routes, but she told few people what he was involved in: careless talk cost lives, as the posters constantly warned them. One of the lives could be Peter’s, so she usually said nothing more than that Peter was in an office doing some of the boring but necessary form-filling needed for administration purposes.

  Hannah told the others that her letter from Johnny said little more than that he was well and safe, the stilted sentences offering little clue to his whereabouts except that he was in the desert.

  Beth told her friends that Peter had been to a concert where a famous comedian had performed. ‘I also had a letter from Freddy Clements,’ she added. She and Freddy had once been engaged, until he made it clear he found Shirley Downs more fun. ‘I think I might go and show it to Shirley Downs; I think they still keep in touch.’

  Eirlys finished what she was doing, stood up and reached for her jacket. ‘If you’ll put the kettle on, I’ll go to the baker’s and see if there are any cakes left; I’m feeling peckish.’

  ‘Not fancying anything like kippers and jam, are you?’ Beth teased, knowing that Eirlys was carrying a child.

  ‘Be careful or that’s what I’ll bring back for you — or worse!’

  When a customer came into the shop, Beth put the knitting aside, smiled and went to attend to the young woman and her little girl. The customer invited her three-year-old to choose from a basket filled with hand-knitted dolls. The variety offered kept the little girl busy for quite a while before she decided on a doll in traditional Welsh costume. Watching them, Beth had an idea. Instead of continuing with the knitting, she reached for a scrap of paper and a pencil and asked Hannah, ‘What do you think of a dolls’ tea party as an event in August?’

  Hannah put down the baby dress on which she was embroidering hearts and daisies and said, ‘My two girls would love it, and I suppose Josie and Marie are fairly average. When do you think it could be held? And where? There’s always the weather to contend with.’

  ‘Eirlys will sort it all out. She did a brilliant job last year, didn’t she?’ Eirlys, in her role as organiser of the summer entertainments, was always looking for fresh activities that would involve a lot of people, and they both knew the suggestion would please her.

  They discussed the idea for a while. Beth rapidly filling a page with their ideas. Eirlys would be delighted, and they watched the door between their note-making, waiting for her return with their snack. The suggestions continued to flow.

  ‘Best-dressed-doll competition.’ Hannah offered.

  ‘Prettiest face?’ Beth wondered.

  ‘Most patriotic?’

  ‘Smallest? Largest?’

  It was almost five, and the shop was so quiet as they sat thinking about further possibilities that when Eirlys and Ken burst in, arguing loudly, they both gasped in surprise and looked to Eirlys for an explanation.

  ‘Ken promised to take the boys to the pictures. They’ve been ready for hours and then he tells them he has to go to Cardiff and interview someone for some concert!’

  ‘There is a war on, you know!’ Ken retorted.

  Hannah and Beth stared from one to the other and back again as the argument raged on. ‘I’ll make that tea, shall I?’ Hannah went to the back of the shop, where a single gas ring provided their only means of heating water. She hated arguments of any kind and she didn’t want to get involved in this one.

  Ken had a job to do and it was a complicated one, arranging concert parties and dances to entertain the troops and raise money for the Red Cross parcels for prisoners of war and other worthy causes. Hannah guessed that Eirlys was aware that his absences from home were often without a valid reason, but couldn’t face the fact that Ken Ward just didn’t like living with Eirlys and her father, plus three demanding boys who had come as evacuees and stayed. Stanley was thirteen, Harold was eleven and the lugubrious little Percival was almost nine.

  The three young Londoners had been through many changes and suffered miseries of poverty and neglect, which Eirlys and her father had determined they would forget. They wanted the rest of their childhood to be happy. For Ken, the presence of the boys just added to the miseries of being married to the wrong woman.

  Hannah handed a cup of tea to Eirlys and offered one to Ken. He shook his head angrily and after a brief apology he left. Eirlys burst noisily into tears.

  Hannah and Beth said very little, knowing that saying the wrong thing was a strong possibility. Hannah felt particularly sad. Eirlys had once been engaged to marry her own husband, Johnny Castle, and she constantly had pangs of guilt over the fact that she and Johnny were so happy and Eirlys and Ken clearly were not. She often wondered whether Johnny would have settled happily for a lifetime with Eirlys if they had married before she and Johnny had met, or whether, as for Ken, it would have been a sad acceptance of second-best.

  She was relieved when a late customer came in and she was able to put aside her worries. When she went home she would take out Johnny’s letters and re-read them all, and reassure herself that Johnny loved her and their marriage had been honourable and guilt-free.

  Beth had none of the hang-ups suffered by Hannah. She had no regrets or guilt about ending her engagement to Freddy Clements when he had clearly preferred Shirley. Marriage to Peter had brought her great happiness. She encouraged Eirlys to talk, wiped away her tears and finally persuaded her to go home and take the boys to the pictures herself. ‘Best to accept that Ken’s heart isn’t in it where the boys are concerned,’ she advised. ‘And why should it be? Most people start married life being a couple. He married you and not the whole tribe! The boys are evacuees who are being fostered by your father. Nothing to do with him.’ She glanced at Hannah, who was washing teacups, and whispered, ‘Those two were an exception, mind. Johnny loves Hannah’s girls like they’re his own. But it doesn’t always happen so neatly. Give Ken a thought in all this.’

  ‘We shouldn’t have married until we could get a place of our own. Now, with the baby coming, I feel trapped.’

  ‘I think that feeling is experienced by women in the happiest of marriages. A child means you can’t change your mind if you want to, and really Eirlys, deep down, you don’t want to leave Ken, do you?’

  ‘Perhaps not. But I think he wants to leave me.’

  Waves of guilt flooded over Hannah. She and Johnny had built their happiness on the misery of another. Superstition made he
r shiver. She hoped Johnny didn’t have to die to punish her. Beth touched her shoulder as they watched Eirlys hurrying away from the shop.

  ‘I hope you don’t feel responsible for Eirlys’s unhappiness, Hannah. We can’t wave a magic wand and make everyone happy. Some people never achieve it, no matter what happens to them. I have the saddest of feelings that that’s true of Eirlys.’

  ‘She doesn’t deserve to be so unhappy.’

  ‘A marriage needs you to put everything into it, heart and soul. Eirlys didn’t treat Cousin Johnny as the most important thing in her life. He’s so lucky to have married you.’

  * * *

  Marriage seemed an impossible dream for Vera Matthews. Her father slapping her for allowing a neighbour to put an arm around her and kiss her cheek, and being caught by the man’s wife, had led to another wallop. Then, when a local teacher called on her parents to tell them to keep their daughter away from his wife and stop encouraging her to go to dances and pick up men, no one would listen to her protestations of innocence. She had seen the teacher’s wife at several dances and they had walked home together on two occasions. If there had been men walking the woman home on other nights Vera knew nothing about it, but no one would believe her.

  Dance halls, with their cheerful decor, sparkling lights and lively music, plus the fun of dancing with fascinating strangers, were magnets for bored young women. When war had been declared Vera had been a schoolgirl, and the only people she knew were people she had always known. Now, three years on, she had glimpsed a wider world and found it impossible to be restrained by the boundaries of home as she once had.

  Her mother had remained silent when her father had given her an hour to pack up and leave home. Optimistically, she delayed taking a case down from the top of the wardrobe to fill it with what little she owned; instead she watched her father, glancing at the clock, convinced that when the sixty minutes had passed he would relent. He did not, and with only ten minutes left she had grabbed what she could from the bedroom she shared with her sisters and fled, just in front of her father’s flaying belt.