‘He was always a resentful boy, never pleased with anything he was given, always looking for more. He failed at school, failed at every job he tried and blamed others every time.’
‘Why isn’t he in the forces?’ Maldwyn asked.
‘He failed at that too,’ she said with a cynical laugh. ‘They said he was unsuitable, but no one told him why.’
‘He’s not strong?’
‘Oh, he’s strong all right, but not all that right in the head, between you and me. Gets on well enough though, cheating and wheedling his way through life. I feel sorry for my sister, but I can’t help the boy.’ She looked at Maldwyn, who was intent on painting some tall willow branches with a pale green dye, to form a frame for a corner display in the window. He waited for her to continue, concentrating on his brush strokes, saying nothing, afraid of adding to her criticism of a member of her family, thinking she might one day regret telling him.
‘I did think at one time that he could come here, work with me and one day take over the shop, but it wasn’t any good. He won’t work and, although I can’t prove it, I think he stole cash from me,’ she said sadly. ‘I didn’t tell my sister but I think she guessed.’
Maldwyn hadn’t been home for a while, although he kept in touch with Winifred by letter. When he finally arranged to go home the following Saturday, he was tempted to cancel his visit. He was not happy about leaving Mrs Chapel in the Hat alone. He still had no idea who had driven that lorry, or frightened Delyth, or ruined that fruit. All he knew was that it was in some way connected to him and his moving to St David’s Well. He also knew that, like Delyth, Mrs Chapel might be in danger — at least of threats — because of her connection with him.
As a precaution, and making light of the idea, he arranged for Sammy Richards to change the locks on both doors and add a bolt on each. He made sure this was done before he left, and again asked the miserable Arnold Elliot to be aware that Mrs Chapel was on her own.
* * *
The Castle family were looking for winter work. Once the stalls, helter-skelter and swingboats had been stored for the winter and the café had been cleaned and closed, Huw and Alice had to find jobs to help them over the following months. Bleddyn was responsible for the fish-and-chip restaurant, which he ran all the year, as did Beth the market café. Vera and the one or two casual workers were also hunting for work they could leave when summer returned. But many of the jobs in the town were seasonal, so there were plenty of people in the same situation as themselves.
Alice was tempted by the higher wages of the factories. It would mean more money saved for when Eynon came home. And the shift work would give her more time to spend on her garden when spring came. Many local women had been sent to work in a large munitions factory in a town about twelve miles away, travelling to and from the place by train. Alice didn’t want that. She needed to be here, close to Eynon’s home, where he could imagine her whenever he thought of her.
Vera still had visions of glamorous work. She believed that, as a winner of a beauty contest, she owed it to herself not to accept menial jobs like serving in a vegetable shop, as Beth had done a few winters ago. With a display of confidence she didn’t really feel, she went to Brook Lane to see Shirley. Shirley invited her in and Vera tried to explain how she felt.
‘Can you sing?’ Shirley asked. ‘Or dance?’
‘Well—’ Vera was about to admit she couldn’t, but changed her mind and instead said. ‘I haven’t really tried.’
‘Try now.’ Shirley coaxed. She limped over to the piano which Bleddyn had bought for her and picked out the beginning of a well-known melody. Vera lost her nerve completely.
‘I don’t think I can, not here, not like this. I need a proper stage and accompaniment.’
Shirley smiled and said. ‘Perhaps you just aren’t ready yet.’
‘I’d feel more confident if I had a few singing lessons.’
‘Why don’t you find work in a shop where you can use your talents to advise customers about what clothes to buy and how to wear them? That way you could earn the money to pay for lessons.’
‘Fashion, you mean?’
‘Well, with twenty-six clothing coupons to last a year, fashion is hardly a consideration these days. But yes, a clothes shop like the one next to Mrs Chapel’s flower shop. You’d be very good at it, I’m sure.’
‘D’you think so?’ Vera stood up and swirled around the room. ‘Yes, I think you’re right.’
‘Leave the singing until you’re ready.’
Shirley saw her out and knew that the following summer Vera would be back in Castle’s Café, still dreaming of a wonderful career on the stage. She knew that for some dreaming was as far as they got, and sadly Vera was one of them. Unless she concentrated on earning a living, placing her feet firmly on the ground, her life could be ruined by being the winner of that one local beauty competition.
Pushing the chairs aside, she stood up and began her exercises. She had to work at getting strong, or she would be nothing more than a dreamer herself.
Vera called to see Arnold Elliot later that day and asked for a job.
‘Nothing at present,’ he told her. ‘Me and my son manage all right, until we expand, then I might have need of an extra assistant.’
Vera looked around the shop with a frown. ‘It seems to me, Mr Elliot, that you could do with some help now, not some time in the distant future. Look at the way those dresses are displayed. I know clothes are rationed, but you want people to spend their coupons here, not somewhere else, don’t you? Boring, they look, but by giving them a touch of an iron and pinning them properly in your window display. I bet you’d sell more than you do now. Give me a try, I’ll definitely increase your sales.’ Her heart was thumping like an out-of-control engine, her legs were shaking, but she kept the confident smile on her face, and the spark of devilment shone in her eyes.
‘I’ll think about it. Give me your address,’ he said gruffly. Perhaps the girl did have a point. So many came in and left without buying. He needed something to boost sales if he were to have the confidence to buy old Mrs Chapel’s shop when the time came. Marking time while he waited was dangerous. A business went down faster than it went up.
* * *
Delyth took her film to be developed and waited excitedly for the snaps. She collected them on Saturday at lunchtime, and shared the first viewing with Madge. The pictures taken at the church were good: clear, with subject and background well balanced. Moving through the twelve shots, she was surprised to see two of herself, taken from behind as she sat on the beach. The shadow of the photographer was spread over her, contrasting with the brightness beyond. ‘Did you take these?’ she asked. Madge shook her head.
‘Then who did? Someone picked up my camera and snapped me, and—’ her hands shook as she pointed to something on the sand beside her — ‘oh, Madge! What’s this?’ On the ground behind her chair was a long-bladed knife. ‘Madge!’ she gasped. ‘Look at this! What does it mean? Who did this?’
Madge was frightened, but determined not to show it. ‘They’ve got your snaps mixed up with someone else’s; that’s always happening. A customer told me the other day she had a view of a caravan she had never seen.’
‘It’s him again, isn’t it?’ Delyth whispered. ‘He’s telling me to persuade Maldwyn to leave St David’s Well. But why?’
‘I think it’s a mistake,’ Madge insisted.
‘But it’s me on the photograph. How can it be a mistake? He was standing behind me while I was unaware of him. Madge, I’m frightened.’
‘Check the negatives before you panic.’
With shaking hands. Delyth examined the negatives and there it was: just before she had gone to snap the wedding guests coming down on to the beach, all laughing, having fun. As she had sat there, unaware of the danger, someone was threatening her, placing a knife beside her and making sure she understood his intent.
‘We have to go to the police.’ Madge said, looking through the negatives
to confirm the truth.
‘No. I want to speak to Maldwyn. He must know what this is about. There has to be a reason and he’ll have to work it out.’
‘We can’t go to St David’s Well again. It’s too dangerous.’
‘I have to talk to Maldwyn. Whether he realises it or not, he knows why this is happening.’
She wrote to Maldwyn that evening, unaware that he was staying with his stepmother not far from her home, and told him what had happened. She arranged to go to St David’s Well the following Wednesday.
Maldwyn was at the station to meet them. The weather had changed; the warm summer days had gone as though for ever, and a cold wind blew across the platform as they stepped from the train. They went first to a café, where they ordered toast and tea, and showed the photographs to Maldwyn.
‘Police?’ Madge suggested.
‘Yes, but not yet. I want to think about this, and try to work out why I am the target.’
The bread was stale, and the toast was cold before they took a first bite; the minimal amount of margarine didn’t alleviate the tastelessness.
‘Even the seagulls wouldn’t be thrilled with this,’ Madge muttered, scraping the toast into a handkerchief.
‘Don’t dare give it to the birds, or you could be fined for wasting food. It will go into the bins to feed the pigs.’
‘Poor things too,’ Madge said sympathetically. ‘Who’d be a pig in wartime, eh?’ She was trying to lighten the mood but nothing took the anxiety from her friend’s eyes.
Delyth wanted to go to the bay. ‘I want to defy him, show him he isn’t worrying us. We’ve brought a few sandwiches and some more life-threatening food — a slice or two of fatless sponge cake. So why don’t we go up on the cliff path and find a sheltered spot to sit for an hour?’
‘Don’t you think that’s dangerous?’ Maldwyn warned. ‘Until we find out who’s doing this, we ought to stay away from dangerous places, and from each other.’
‘More toast?’ the waitress asked and they all laughed when Delyth said, ‘No fear!’ and added in a whisper, ‘I reckon her toast is more dangerous to life than the cliff path!’
The wind made them hurry, bending forward against the chill, but they were all suitably dressed in overcoats and scarves, and the girls wore head-hugging knitted hats. Delyth went to the top of the precarious path and down through the rocks a little way until she could see the entrance to the cave. The tide was high, and moving up and down at the entrance was a long shape that could have been a roll of carpet but just as easily could be a body. Giving a scream, she ran back to the others. This time they did call the police.
It was more than an hour before the mysterious package was recovered and examined. Firstly they had to wait for a police launch to make its way around the coast, with the Army standing by in case it was an explosive. While they waited, a police constable talked to Delyth, trying to get information but at the same time taking her mind off her fear that the object was a body.
She told him about seeing the boat with the broken mast and her hobby of sketching what she saw. As he coaxed her to talk, she also told him about Ken. ‘He warned me not to tell his wife about the drawing I did of him with another woman, one day in the park back home. I knew it wasn’t his wife, see, because I met her and she’s not as tall as the woman he was with.’
‘Very observant of you, Miss Owen. I don’t suppose you did any drawings of the boat you mentioned?’
‘I did, but they were lost.’ She didn’t want to add to Ken’s troubles by telling the police it was he who had destroyed them, but Madge did.
‘That was Ken Ward again,’ she said. ‘He took all Delyth’s drawings.’
‘Could you draw what you remember?’ the constable asked.
On a scrap of paper Delyth sketched the boat as she remembered seeing it, with the bundle athwart the vessel, half hidden below the seat.
Maldwyn muttered. ‘Well done. You’re amazing, Delyth. Quite amazing. Isn’t she, Madge?’ He took her hand and held it in both of his, looking at her from time to time with pride — and was there something else in his gentle eyes, something like affection? Whatever it was glowing there, it warmed her and made her feel safe.
Still trying to take her mind off what was happening below, the constable admired her simple drawing and said, “You’re very observant. We could do with people like you in the force. What about the man in the boat? What can you tell me about him?’
‘The mast was snapped, so I don’t have a very good guide, but I’d say he was about as tall as Madge’s dad.’
‘It wasn’t him!’ Madge gasped, and they all laughed.
‘Tall, but although he looked heavily built, he had so many clothes on I could be wrong. Dark trousers tucked into wellingtons and a coat that looked like the stuff tents are made of, sort of stiff and pale beige, brown, nondescript. Oh, and the wellingtons had been cut down and spread, you know, so he could slip them on and off easily.’
The policeman made copious notes and again congratulated her on her sharp observation. Maldwyn continued to hold her hand and told her how well she was doing. ‘You’ve been given more help than the police usually get, eh, constable? I imagine most witnesses remember very little and what they do recall is only partly accurate. Marvellous, isn’t she?’
‘She is that, sir. A quite remarkable witness.’
Maldwyn held her closer, as though sharing in the man’s praise.
They could hear from the voices below that the object had been discovered, and Maldwyn put an arm around each girl to comfort them in case the discovery was an unpleasant one. It could be a sailor thrown from a wrecked ship, or an airman from a ditched plane, or even a careless walker fallen and dragged into the cave by the tide. When the object was taken aboard the police vessel, one of the men shouted up to tell them that it was nothing frightening. It was food: tins of powdered egg and milk, as well as carefully wrapped joints of bacon and several packages of meat.
Excited now and unwilling to leave, they waited while the cave was explored and learned that it contained more food, as well as clothes and equipment that appeared to have been taken from Army supply stores.
The constable, whose name they learned was Charlie Groves, walked them back to the police station, where they were asked to make a statement. The police phoned through to Bryn Teg and an officer informed their families that they would be late and would be taken home by police car. The afternoon that began with such fear was turning into an exciting adventure.
There was a sense of anticlimax when the questioning was over and Charlie Groves told them he was ready to take them home. Before they left they were told that an examination of the photographs suggested that the knife was not a real one but a children’s toy.
When they reached their gates, Charlie Groves told Madge that if she came to St David’s Well again to be sure to call and see him. She smiled and said she might, but thought she wouldn’t. She was still grieving for John and it would be a long time before she was ready to date someone else. ‘Pity, though, he was very nice,’ she told Delyth as they went their separate ways to report to their families on their eventful day.
* * *
The next morning, when the unsigned letter arrived, Maldwyn hid his panic, said nothing to Mrs Chapel, and opened the shop. He didn’t look at it again until he had finished arranging the displays in the window and doorway, and had the shop looking as Mrs Chapel liked it. When she called down to tell him she was making coffee, he took the letter out and read it again.
Liked the pictures of your girlfriend, did you? Go back home or you know what will happen to her. Not all knives are toys.
He took it to the police at lunchtime, but they seemed to think that finding the cache of food and supplies was the connection and that now it was discovered he had nothing more to fear.
‘It seems to us that someone didn’t like you and your friends spending so much time up on the cliff, where you might see what was happening. Now we know about th
eir hiding place, they won’t be going there again. Forget it, Mr Perkins. I’m sure the men will soon be caught.’
He wasn’t convinced, but decided to write to Delyth and tell her what the police said, to reassure her, without divulging the contents of the threatening letter he had received.
He had enjoyed the time they had spent on the cliff that day. He and Delyth had been brought closer by the anxiety of wondering what the men would find in the bundle that looked suspiciously like a body. Life with Delyth would be good. She was pretty, talented and certainly interesting company, and one day, when he had a shop of his own, he could imagine her sharing it with him, helping him to make a success of it, either here in St David’s Well or some other small, friendly Welsh town.
That evening he sat for a long time with Vera on the periphery of his mind, her image slowly fading while thoughts of Delyth grew. He knew he had no chance with Vera. She had ambitions and hopes far beyond owning a flower shop. Though perhaps one day she might settle for less, like most people did. The vision of her standing beside him in a flower-filled premises grew for a while then faded away, and Delyth’s was the face he saw smiling up at him.
He went back to his letter and ended it by saying he hoped to see her very soon but would come to see her rather than wait until she visited the seaside again. ‘I can’t wait until next season before seeing you,’ he added rather boldly, and signed it Your loving friend.
Vera burst in then in great excitement, to tell him she had persuaded the owner of the clothes shop that she was just what he needed. ‘I went back to ask if he’d thought about it and I’ve got a job, Maldwyn! I don’t have to go home for the winter. Isn’t that wonderful? We can spend the winter here, you and me, having fun. There’s bound to be plenty of dances and you aren’t too bad on the dance floor.’ She kissed him fiercely, then again more tenderly, and ran upstairs — to take all the hot water as usual, he sighed with a wry smile.
Holidays at Home Omnibus Page 108
