Holidays at Home Omnibus

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

  ‘I don’t believe in that stuff normally, but from what people say she’s able to see things in advance of their happening,’ Beth admitted. ‘I’ve made you some romper suits already but I’ll make a few dresses as well, in case she’s wrong.’

  As she thought about the wise woman’s words Eirlys realised that what she had actually said was not that she was with the wrong man, she only thought she was. Her spirits lifted. Perhaps things would work out well after all. Hannah and Beth assured her she was right. ‘She was telling you not to worry, that everything would be all right,’ Beth said.

  ‘And if she’s right about the baby being a boy, then she could be right about other things,’ Hannah boldly said, acknowledging Eirlys’s unhappiness.

  ‘And I’ll have to wait until November before I’m sure,’ Eirlys laughed, her mood more cheerful than it had been for weeks.

  They left the shop early and went to the beach to join Ken and the boys for a last hour or so. The weather had been dull all day and the beach was far from crowded. The cafés were doing good business, and the shops selling the usual seaside gifts were filled with enthusiastic customers. They walked past Castle’s Seaside Rock and Sweets, which had reduced its selection since sweets-rationing, announced for the end of July, had made it impossible to continue. Alice Potter was there, selling the last of the novelties made from the sticky confection so loved by children and adults alike. The shop was changing its stock and there were postcards and a few traditional gifts, some made from seashells. Beth popped in to ask whether Alice had heard recently from Eynon. Beth’s brother and Alice were engaged and would marry on Eynon’s next leave, but as he was in North Africa that day was probably a long way off.

  Leaving Beth’s Aunt Audrey to cope with the trickle of customers, Alice joined them and they walked towards the sand. Eirlys spotted Ken, and near him three industrious boys digging a moat around a huge castle which had been decorated with everything from flags, shells and rock to what looked like cakes, which had presumably been dropped on to the sand and rendered inedible. She called and went over, followed by the others. Happiness showed on her face, the words of the gypsy still repeating in her head; Ken was the right man for her, and she glowed with the promise of happiness some day soon.

  Ken kissed her lightly and said, ‘Shall I go and get a tray of teas? I’m worn out entertaining this lot.’ He smiled when he said it, reassuring Eirlys that he was joking.

  ‘I’ll go,’ Beth offered. ‘Mam and Dad give me better rates than you!’

  Hannah’s children were there with her sister-in-law Evelyn; she had been widowed early in the war, and Bleddyn had determined that she still belonged to the Castle family. A voice called them and they turned to see Beth’s brother Ronnie, with his wife Olive and their baby Rhiannon, struggling across the sand carrying the baby’s pushchair. Ken jumped up to help them.

  Marged, Huw and Bleddyn came down to join them all for a few moments, helping to carry the loaded trays and leaving Hetty and Vera to cope in the café.

  ‘Marvellous, this is,’ Huw beamed, admiring his son’s baby daughter. ‘Practically all my favourite people together on our beach.’

  ‘We only have to think of Johnny and Eynon to know they’re thinking of us and feeling happy we’re all together,’ Bleddyn added.

  Then the air-raid siren sounded. There had been few air raids in the town, no more than a couple of dozen, and each time the inhabitants had seen nothing more worrying than enemy planes crossing the sky, very high and clearly intent on other targets. People looked up expectantly, and only slowly began to pack up and leave the beach.

  An air-raid warden ran up calling for them to hurry. ‘Please, get a move on. Leave your stuff here, you can collect it later,’ he shouted between loud blasts on his whistle as people stood casually folding and packing their belongings. ‘This is a bomber raid. Hurry up and get to the shelters.’

  With a little more haste, but no panic, the exodus began with the impatient warden, joined by two others, continuing to shout and attempting unsuccessfully to impart urgency.

  * * *

  For Delyth, the day had a calming effect. She and Madge had met Maldwyn as arranged and gone up to the place where Ken had scared her. They told Maldwyn what had happened and he agreed that the best thing to do was to go back.

  ‘Here, I’ve brought you a present,’ he said to a surprised Delyth.

  When she opened the package and found drawing materials, she smiled and thanked him for his thoughtfulness, but shook her head sadly when he suggested she use them. ‘I don’t think I can. No, best I forget drawing and just sit here and see nothing.’

  Maldwyn took the book and made a few squiggles on it, which he insisted were a boat on the waves in a storm. Laughing, Delyth adjusted his lines and was soon engrossed in depicting the scene around them. She worked fast and with only a few strokes of a pencil could portray a subject that was easily recognised. When Maldwyn, lying on the ground and pretending to be asleep, asked whether she could make a drawing of him if he sat up and smiled, she agreed she would, but later.

  As he lay dozing in the warm sun she sat a couple of yards back from his bare feet and filled a page with a cartoon-style drawing of his feet viewed from below, knobbly and exaggeratedly large. Grass grew around them and hanging on one small toe were his heavy horn-rimmed glasses. In one of the lenses, faintly visible, was a likeness of his face.

  When he saw it, she jokingly prepared to run from his outrage but he was thrilled and promised it would hang on a wall in the flower shop, if Mrs Chapel agreed.

  Daring to go closer to the edge at last, and encouraged by the sound of a small engine, Delyth saw again the small boat with the broken mast. It had a bundle of some sort near the single seat. Her fingers drew the man sitting with his hand on the tiller. Turning to Maldwyn, she said:

  ‘I hope he isn’t doing something he shouldn’t! My nerves won’t stand it!’

  They were packing their things, ready to leave and meet Vera, when she heard the sound of the boat’s engine again. Crawling towards the edge, she looked down and saw the same boat, and the same man, but this time there was no sign of the mysterious bundle. She said nothing to the others but didn’t think she wanted to visit this place again.

  Like the people on the beach, they took little notice when the wail of the air-raid warning filled the air. Then, as the bombers came over, Maldwyn made them shelter against the rocks until the planes had passed. There were no wardens around to insist they stayed sheltered, so they walked back along the cliff path to Castle’s Café to wait for Vera. The sound of the heavy planes was alarming, so different from the usual toy-like aircraft high above them. Fighter planes came and began harassing the bombers, but they seemed indifferent to the attack and continued on their way, ominous, threatening, making people aware of the war in a very different way.

  When the first bomb dropped, some distance away, the result was shock. Then the movement of people who had not sheltered changed from a slow stroll into a run as everyone rushed for cover. Several more explosions filled the air and brought fear to the faces of the adults and nervous giggles from the children; when the all-clear sounded everyone looked around, expecting there to be some visible damage, but the bombs had fallen several miles away, no one knew where.

  Ken took the hands of two of the boys and they all made their way back to the sands, where the abandoned belongings gave the usually cheerful beach a forlorn look. He looked into the sky and wondered whether the attack was anywhere near Janet. She had told them that the camp had been filling up with soldiers ready for overseas; that would have made a tempting target for the enemy, he thought woniedly.

  There were a few half-hearted attempts to revive the mood of the afternoon, with games and castle-building, but many families simply gathered their belongings and left.

  Huw went to check that Hetty and Vera were coping in the café then came back down. ‘Heard where the raid was?’ he asked one of the wardens.

&
nbsp; ‘An Army camp, so we heard. Not sure, like, but that’s what we heard.’

  Ken asked where the camp was, and at once he picked up his coat and hurried off. ‘I have to see if one of my friends is all right,’ he explained.

  Eirlys ran after him. ‘Where are you going?’ she demanded.

  ‘I know someone on the camp the warden mentioned and I have to go and make sure she’s all right.’

  ‘She? Someone I know?’

  ‘I mean he, Des Cummings, he’s my second-in-command.’

  ‘I’m coming with you.’

  ‘There’s no need!’

  ‘Ken, wait. I’m coming with you.’ She ran back and asked Beth to take the boys home. ‘I’ll come and fetch them when we get back,’ she said.

  Later, she had no idea why she had insisted. Perhaps it was the thought that they could share something, if only the news of Ken’s colleague’s safety.

  She couldn’t run as fast as normal with the baby slowing her down and Ken ran on ahead as though determined to go alone. She pushed herself and caught up with him at the ticket office. They ran to where a train waited on the platform, filled almost to overflowing with people leaving the beach, and climbed in.

  They didn’t say much and when the train reached the station where they had to alight Ken left her and told her he would try to phone and get the information from there. He came back smiling. ‘It’s all right, the camp wasn’t the one where Dennis is stationed. I should have thought of the phone earlier.’

  Eirlys said nothing, but she wondered why the man was called Des on one occasion and Dennis a short while later. Perhaps she had misheard. But there was also that slip of the tongue when he referred to the friend as ‘she’. Her heart began to race as she wondered whether Ken’s absences were not always due to his work.

  She tried to think herself back into the happiness of a few moments ago but she couldn’t. The look on Ken’s face told her nothing, except that he certainly wasn’t pleased to have her beside him. Even ‘All-seeing, All-knowing’ gypsy princesses could be wrong.

  * * *

  Beth walked slowly back to Goose Lane, following her father-in-law and with Stanley, Harold and Percival beside her, chatting about the bombing raid. Having lived in London before becoming permanent members of Eirlys’s household, they had known the reality of bombs raining down on them far closer than a raid on some distant Army camp, and when she and Mr Gregory spoke of their concern the boys scoffed at their anxiety.

  ‘But men and women could have been killed,’ Beth reminded them sternly.

  ‘Yeh, like our mam was, and Eirlys’s mam too,’ Harold said.

  ‘I wish Auntie Annie was here,’ Percival said softly, and she realised he was frightened by the reminder of death that the raid had brought. She picked him up and sat him on one of Mr Gregory’s donkeys. Charlie didn’t always approve of being ridden once his day on the beach was over, but this time he didn’t object.

  Beth realised that they couldn’t be expected to grieve over strangers, and children’s resilience was partly due to the impression that war was a game and people being hurt and killed was a kind of adventure. It was only when it came near enough to destroy someone close that it had any reality.

  Mr Gregory cut a stick, which he habitually carried but never used; the donkeys knew the route well enough and the thought of their supper gave them sufficient incentive to keep moving. He lit his pipe and caught up with Beth as they walked slowly on, taking the pace of the string of animals and content to do so.

  Six

  Vera seemed to be in a bad temper when she met the others after the air raid ended and the café closed. The customers had irritated her with their boring talk, and she was fed up of repeating the same responses to remarks about the weather and the war. She was tired of admiring noisy children and telling proud mothers how remarkable their offspring were. At first, Maldwyn didn’t pick up on her sour mood. They leaned over the sea wall and looked down at the continuing exodus from the sands. The sun had gone and clouds were approaching, deepening the shadows, changing the colours to more sombre shades. She was scowling but he was smiling contentedly.

  ‘Don’t you love it here?’ he whispered. ‘Just look at the way everything is changing as the day ends. I don’t think I could ask anything more of life than living here, working at the flower shop.’

  ‘Boring people. Small town and small minds!’

  ‘You aren’t happy here? I thought you enjoyed living by the sea? I love everything about it. Being a holiday town I feel I’m on holiday too. I find the variety of visitors brings excitement to the town. It isn’t the same from one day to the next. Yes, life is good, living here and having you for my—’ He hesitated.

  ‘For your friend?’ she finished firmly. Every time he thought their friendship might develop into something closer, she made sure he understood that was not her plan. He tried to ignore her tense irritability. Whenever he spoke of his enjoyment of the moment, she snapped some reply; after a while he stopped talking and just drank in the scene spread out before him.

  Tables had been formed in the sand, tea towels used as tablecloths held down with seashells, pebbles or pieces of rock, and on them sandy remnants of picnic meals were spread. Mothers searched for toys half hidden in the churned-up sand. Deck-chairs that had been abandoned were being collected by a young man who whistled cheerfully as be stacked them away for the following day. Three young boys were gathering up any empty bottles they could find to take back to the shop and claim the deposit.

  ‘Come on, little un,’ one shouted to another, ‘you have to help, mind, or we won’t give you a share of the chips.’

  ‘Poor dab.’ Maldwyn chuckled as he watched the five-year-old struggling to hold two pop bottles pressed against his chest with his small hands.

  ‘Come on, Maldwyn. I want to go home,’ Vera sighed. ‘I’ve been working if you haven’t.’

  Before he could reply a chuckle made him turn to see Delyth laughing at the antics of the boys, who had stuffed bottles up their jumpers and were waddling like ducks, trying to suppon their load.

  ‘That’ll make a good picture if you can capture it,’ he said. He watched in fascination as Delyth drew not the children but himself and Vera leaning over the wall, the boys reduced to small matchstick figures far below.

  ‘That’s nothing to the picture I’ll make when I enter the beauty competition,’ Vera said, jealous of the way Maldwyn was admiring Delyth’s work. She wasn’t interested in him, but he was a useful companion until something better came along. He didn’t respond to her demand for flattery, and impatiently she pushed herself away from the wall and walked off.

  ‘Wait,’ he called, but when she broke into a run he didn’t go after her. He was happy, and he wasn’t willing for anyone to spoil it. Later he couldn’t have explained just what it was about that day, but the hours on the quiet of the cliffs, the frantic rush for shelter when the siren warned of approaching enemy aircraft and the slow, easy end to the evening added up to a day he would always remember.

  Delyth smiled at him. ‘You’ve enjoyed today, haven’t you? I have too. For the first time since that lorry drove at us I feel relaxed and no longer afraid.’

  ‘I’m glad.’

  Madge had been talking to Hannah and her children and as she joined them Maldwyn said, ‘I’ll walk with you to the station, shall I?’

  ‘We’re going for a cup of tea first,’ Madge said.

  ‘My treat,’ he offered.

  It was as they were coming out of the café and Madge had to pop back inside for her bag that the man suddenly grabbed them. They were standing not far from the café, near a front-garden hedge. There was an alleyway between the houses and there was no one about when the man jumped out and pushed them both into the hedge, face first. Delyth screamed as twigs cut her cheeks and the man pressed them further into the privet, whispering to Maldwyn, ‘Get back home where you belong, or your girlfriend will have worse than a few scratches.’

/>   Frozen momentarily by the suddenness of the attack, Maldwyn swerved out of the man’s grasp and turned, but he was pushed so roughly that he staggered. He recovered to see a figure he did not recognise running at great speed and disappearing around a corner.

  He started to run after him, but a cry from Delyth stopped him. Holding her close and taking out a handkerchief, he held it for her to lick before wiping some of the trickles of blood from her face. ‘Who the hell was that?’ he muttered.

  ‘The man who was driving the lorry I suppose.’ Delyth sobbed.

  ‘Did you recognise him?’

  ‘No, I didn’t really see him. I had the impression he was taller than you by a little, and heavily built. That’s all.’

  ‘That’s right! Delyth, you’re marvellous,’ he said. ‘It’ll help the police a little.’

  ‘I don’t want to tell the police. It’ll make it worse if the police are involved, make it more real. I can pretend it’s a case of mistaken identity or something if we don’t report it.’

  ‘Delyth love, it isn’t you who’ll be talking to the police. I was the one he threatened, and I’m beginning to think that the lorry driver was aiming not at you but me.’

  The police noted the story and tried to reassure Delyth that she had nothing to fear. ‘I think you’re right. Miss Owen. Mistaken identity, or someone having a bit of fun frightening you.’

  ‘They didn’t seem convinced that Maldwyn was the intended victim, then?’ Madge asked when they were standing at last on the station platform.

  ‘No, but I am.’ Maldwyn said emphatically. ‘Delyth was unfortunate being with me each time.’

  He watched as the train pulled out and walked sadly back to Mrs Denver’s, the happiness of the day destroyed. He wondered whether Delyth would ever be confident enough to visit the town again. Perhaps she would never feel safe there, would find another place for her days’ outings. That prospect deepened his misery. He realised now that the joy of the day had been largely due to her company.