It was so easy to give in; there was so much at stake, not the least their child. How would she manage? Did she have the right to deprive a child of his father?
She went to talk to Hannah, who was distressed at her dreadful mistake and, somewhat hesitantly at first, Hannah talked about her first marriage.
‘It wasn’t just other women,’ she said in her quiet voice. ‘I ended up in hospital on several occasions and I feared for my life once or twice. And all the time my mother was insisting I stay with him, that a marriage was for ever and I had to obey the vows I had made in church. I had to defy my parents to leave him, and they still haven’t forgiven me for the embarrassment I caused them. It’s different with you and Ken. Love can get a bit battered around the edges in a stressful time like this, but I believe he loves you. I also believe that, however you feel at the moment, you still love him.’
Eirlys was sobbing as she walked home, but she wouldn’t have been able to explain whether it was for the sad marriage of Hannah or for the difficulties she and Ken had built around themselves.
* * *
Mrs Chapel was not feeling well. ‘Nothing serious,’ she assured Maldwyn, ‘but I think I’d like a few days away from the shop, so I can sleep late and be utterly lazy for a while. I get so tired these days.’
‘You know I’ll look after things here, so stay with your sister as long as you like. I’ll write to tell you how things are; and I’ll keep a journal for you to look at when you get back; and of course I’ll bank the money every single evening, even if it’s only a few shillings.’
‘Thanks, Maldwyn. I’ll go on Saturday, after we close the shop. Then when I get back we can start planning for the winter and you can take a few days off yourself. You haven’t had a holiday since you started.’
‘I don’t need holidays. I love my job. It’s great working with you, learning from you. You’ve been really kind to me and I appreciate it.’ He smiled as Mrs Chapel waved a hand energetically to push away his compliments. ‘Now,’ he said in a businesslike tone, ‘is there anything you want me to do while you’re away?’
On Saturday he walked with her to the station and carried her small case. ‘I’m glad we had new locks on the doors.’ he said. ‘Otherwise I wouldn’t be too happy about leaving the premises empty. I’d have asked if I could sleep there myself.’
‘You and that Vera?’ she asked wickedly.
‘Mrs Chapel!’ he laughed. ‘Be’ave, will you? No, not Vera, she has other fish to fry. Fish in uniform, I believe,’ he added sadly. Not being in uniform still made him feel ashamed.
‘Don’t forget there’s a spare key with Mr Elliot,’ she reminded him. ‘And my sister has another if I lose mine.’
While Mrs Chapel was away he took the opportunity to do some tidying. He tried to strike a happy balance between his fastidiousness and Mrs Chapel’s messiness, not wanting to irritate her by being over-zealous. The walls were given a fresh coat of whitewash and a few broken items discarded. The pots and containers he had collected ready for flower arrangements were stacked neatly on shelves and he knew that when she returned she would be pleased with his efforts.
Her intention had been to stay with her sister for three days, but a letter came on Tuesday to tell him she was still very tired and had seen a doctor.
Dear Maldwyn,
The doctor thinks I might have a bit of a heart problem — nothing to worry about, but a little rest wouldn’t do any harm. Gabriel is being very kind, spoiling me a bit, and my sister is enjoying my company. So, if you are sure you are managing all right, I’ll stay another week.
He wrote straight back and told her to stay until she felt well, assuring her that the shop was doing fine and he was happy to manage alone. He enclosed the week’s accounts and copied out the bank statements so she knew exactly what was happening, and also described the flowers he had bought and the new ideas he had for the winter displays, when flowers were so scarce and expensive.
She returned a week later, looking relaxed after her ten days away, and was glad to be home. She praised his efforts and coaxed him to take a few days off.
‘Later perhaps, but there’s no use you coming back rested then taking on the shop on your own and getting tired again. I don’t think you ought to be up early to go to the market just yet. My stepmother has a few jobs she wants me to do, so I might go late on Saturday and come back Sunday. But no longer, not until you’re back to normal.’
He called on Delyth while he was at his stepmother’s house. She was pleased to see him and invited him in to listen to a couple of new records she had bought. She wanted to know all the news from St David’s Well.
‘It’s very quiet now the season’s finished,’ he said. ‘There’s only the pictures or the dances, and I’m not much of a dancer.’
‘You are, you dance well! At least I think so,’ she added shyly.
‘If you could stay at the house in Sidney Street again, you and Madge, we could go one Saturday night. If you’d like to that is.’
‘Love to! And I think Madge would enjoy it. She’s written to that policeman and I think he’s rather smitten.’ She grinned. The thought led her to ask, ‘How’s Vera?’
‘She’s hating working in a factory, where she has to cover up her hair and wear overalls, but she’s making friends and seems happy enough. I suspect she’s got a boyfriend but for some reason she won’t let on who he is.’
Delyth smiled, and hoped her relief didn’t show.
Maldwyn left her, happily thinking of taking her in his arms and dancing a slow waltz. It was a far from unpleasant prospect. When Winifred asked him why he was smiling later that evening, his smile only grew wider.
He caught the evening train back to St David’s Well on Sunday, and arrived in the town at eight o’clock. Although it was rather late for social calls, he went to see Mrs Chapel. He had been unhappy about leaving her alone.
As he walked along the street, he could see shards of glass on the pavement ahead. Quickening his pace, he found that the shop had been broken into and most of the stock destroyed.
Ten
The police investigating the break-in at Mrs Chapel’s flower shop made it clear that they suspected Maldwyn. Leaving Mrs Chapel in the shop with nothing to sell and a huge mess to clear, they took him into the store-room, where every dried flower and leaf had been broken, every vase smashed, every bucket buckled, and questioned him.
‘The incidents both here and involving Delyth Owen have all been when you were around, Mr Perkins, and you are the only one apart from Mrs Chapel with a key to this shop. I find it very difficult to consider a third person being involved. There’s you, Mrs Chapel, and this mysterious person no one ever sees and who has managed to get himself a key. You do see my problem, don’t you?’
‘What about the key left with a neighbour in case of fire? The regulations insist on that, don’t they, in case of incendiary bombs?’ Maldwyn suggested, helpfully.
‘That would be Mr Elliot next door. We’ve checked and it’s still there.’ He waited patiently for Maldwyn to offer more suggestions.
‘Delyth thought the “incidents”, as you call them, were due to her habit of drawing people and perhaps catching someone where they ought not to be. I’ve tried to make her believe they were connected with me and not her, so she’d be less afraid.’
‘If you are responsible she has every reason to be afraid, Mr Perkins.’
‘But I’m not!’
The detailed examination of the premises, particularly of the doors and their locks, went on, and when he told them where he had been over the weekend, they told him his alibi would be thoroughly checked as well.
‘Alibi? What do I want with an alibi? You can’t really believe I’d do all this? It’s made a lot of extra work for Mrs Chapel and me to replace all that’s been lost, and the containers we’ve collected over the past months ready for Christmas sales can’t be replaced,’ he said angrily. ‘Why waste time investigating my movements instead of tryi
ng to find the person responsible?’
‘Calm down, sir. We’re doing everything we can but we have to eliminate the most — er — those closest to the crime.’
Maldwyn knew the officer had been about to say ‘the most likely’, and the fear shrank his insides in an unpleasant way. He could protest all he might but he was the main suspect. ‘Go and see my stepmother and Delyth; they’ll tell you where I was, and the porter on the station saw me coming home on Sunday.’
‘We already have, sir. But St David’s Well is only an hour or so away from your home. And the night is long.’
‘It couldn’t have been at night. The damage caused couldn’t have been done without noise. Mrs Chapel would have heard.’
When they had gone, he went into the shop and persuaded Mrs Chapel to go upstairs and leave the clearing-up to him.
‘I only went to church for the morning service. I wasn’t out for more than an hour and when I came back—’
So why did they make me think it had happened during the night, when I could have conceivably been responsible? he wondered angrily. Trying to trip me up. That’s why!
‘You make us a cup of tea, Mrs Chapel, and I’ll clear this lot, and first thing tomorrow morning I’ll see what I can find at the market.’
‘There’ll be nothing much there on a Monday,’ she said sadly.
‘Mrs C, there’ll be something in your windows tomorrow, even if it’s a row of Mr Gregory’s cabbages. Right?’ Coaxing her to go back up to her flat, he began the task of clearing away the mess.
He worked until long past midnight and when he left Mrs Chapel was safely in bed, the doors were firmly locked and the shop was empty but ready for business. He had no idea who could have caused the damage, but had a suspicion that Mrs Chapel had forgotten to lock the door. Seeing the premises open, some opportunist idiot had walked in, had some ‘fun’ and managed not to be seen or heard.
This couldn’t be connected with Delyth or with him. Surely there was no one who disliked him that much? To his knowledge he had never offended or hurt anyone badly enough for them to seek revenge in such a cowardly way. He was frowning as he walked through the dark and silent streets back to Mrs Denver’s and slid the key into the lock. But he didn’t turn it. Instead he withdrew it and returned to the shop. Leaving Mrs Chapel alone was something he couldn’t do. Letting himself back into the silent shop, he curled up on the floor and slept restlessly till morning. At five he got up, afraid to go back to sleep in case he woke too late for market.
When Mrs Chapel woke, the shop was full of flowers and Maldwyn was whistling cheerfully as he filled the tall, battered containers with his purchases.
‘Maldwyn, you’re such a good friend,’ she said emotionally. ‘I’d never manage without you. It’s all getting too much for me.’
Her words chilled him. If she were to give up and sell the business, he’d be out of a job, and he doubted whether he would ever find one he liked more. ‘Come and sit here and serve while I go and make us a nice cuppa,’ he said. While the kettle boiled on the small ring in the back room, he began to think about what the future held, and it made him sad.
He couldn’t go back home. Winifred didn’t want him there, even though no man had appeared so far to take his father’s place. Vera had made it clear she was not interested in him. There was Delyth, of course. Her face appeared in the shadows of his mind and he began to weave his dreams around her. A shop of his own with Delyth as his partner. The future began to look more rosy and he was smiling as he handed Mrs Chapel her steaming cup and offered to go to the baker’s to get them a cake.
* * *
Ken and Eirlys no longer slept in the same room. Eirlys made the excuse that being so ungainly, and having to get up several times each night to go to the lavatory, Ken wasn’t getting his rest.
Morgan guessed that all was not well with his daughter’s marriage, although he said nothing. He took the boys out whenever he could, giving Eirlys and Ken the chance to talk, but on several occasions Eirlys elected to go with them, preferring not to listen to the tedious repetitions of Ken’s promises.
October was almost ended and the mornings were dark and rather cold. Her first task of each day was to light the fire but she came downstairs one morning to see it lit, and a kettle on the hob beginning to sing. She went into the kitchen, expecting to see her father there, but it was Ken.
‘Oh, it’s you,’ she said ungraciously.
‘Yes, it’s me. Is that all you can say? Even the milklady gets a polite good-morning from you, but you’re too self-righteous to give me anything more than a snarl. Well, you’ve won. As soon as the baby is born and arrangements have been made, I’ll do what you ask and go. But remember this. Eirlys: you’ll be on your own, and it might be for the rest of your life. You left me once before, convinced that Johnny Castle was your love. Then that ended. Now you’re back with me and telling me to leave. Are you incapable of love?’
She set the table for breakfast, made some toast against the glowing fire and planned what she would give the family for the day’s meals, but his words refused to leave her brain. They repeated themselves time and again. Could she love someone enough to forgive their mistakes? Was she even capable of inspiring a love that would allow them to forgive hers? Being efficient was one thing, but being convinced of her own perfection was another thing entirely.
When the boys went to school and her father left to put in a couple of hours on his allotment, she sat wondering whether she was too sure of herself. So sure that she had invented the illusion that she didn’t need anyone else?
Looking into the future that dull, late-October afternoon, she could see a life of looking after her father as he grew older and less able, and caring for the boys and her own child until they found their own homes and produced their own families. She saw herself with a slowly fading role in their lives, leaving her with nothing but memories.
Even the job she loved might possibly end once the war had been won and the men came home. They had been promised jobs to come back to, and that meant her returning to her previous, less interesting role of supporting others while they did the work of which she was capable. It was time to think about love and life, and stop being locked in her own selfishness. But what could she do? She could hardly tell Ken she had changed her mind and expect everything to fall into place. They needed some catalyst, some event to make them both see whether their love was worth fighting for. But what?
‘How did you know you loved Mam?’ she asked her father when he came back from the allotment with a few early sprouts and a root of Welsh onions. ‘How could you be sure?’
‘I didn’t want to be with anyone else. I was only really happy when she was happy, and, if I’m honest, I needed her to look after me, do all the things I couldn’t do, and in return I did the things she needed help to do. I failed her though. My father had a good business which he left to me and I let it run down and down, so we lost the beautiful home we had, and she had to work, and I’m always ashamed of that.’
‘She forgave you.’
‘I don’t think she ever really forgot what I had lost for us. If I’d been a better businessman we’d have been comfortably off, and she wouldn’t have had to work in the bakery. She never stopped loving me though. I know that.’ He was staring at her as they talked, wanting to say something useful, helpful, guessing the reason for the questions. ‘Has Ken done something that makes you think he’s stopped loving you?’
‘He has stopped loving me. There was someone else, for a while. He tells me it’s over, but I can’t forget it.’
‘Your mam managed to forgive me, remember, and we returned to the happiness I’d all but thrown away.’
She blushed at the reminder of her father’s involvement with Bleddyn Castle’s first wife, who had committed suicide in the cold waters of the docks in a distant town. She shivered at the memory of that terrible time.
‘Ken is here, isn’t he?’ Morgan went on. ‘He might have been tempted b
ut it’s you he wants to stay with. This war has agitated and thrown aside so much we could once depend on, people dragged away from their homes instead of staying close to their families and all the security that gives.’
‘The war’s an excuse that’s worn a bit thin if you ask me.’ She sounded bitter.
‘He must be tired and lonely at times, and there are girls who would deliberately set out to — you know.’
‘This wasn’t like that, Dadda. Not a momentary madness, sudden temptation. It’s someone I know, and like.’
‘You have to decide whether Ken’s worth forgiving, and if so you have to accept what’s happened and make up your mind not to throw it up at him every time you have a row. That will be the hardest thing, not to use it whenever you have a row.’
She hugged him and silently admired his common sense. But was she capable of being sensible at a time like this? The baby kicked, rubbing its foot across her belly as though trying to get out and join in the argument. He had to be considered in all this. She couldn’t condemn him to a life without a father, and with an absentee mother who worked for most of his waking hours. So many children were already facing that deprivation.
* * *
In the gift shop, Hannah and Beth discussed the letters they had received. Hannah told Beth that Shirley had received several on one day from Freddy Clements.
‘I had one as well.’ Beth smiled. ‘Oh, it’s all right, Peter doesn’t mind. He understands the need of men so far away to have news from home. Father-in-law writes to Freddy too.’
‘I think Freddy’s letters have cheered Shirley and helped her cope with her injuries,’ Hannah said. ‘He doesn’t offer sympathy. Rather the reverse. According to Shirley, the closest he gets to sympathy is to tell her she needs to get strong again because when he gets home he’s going to get seriously legless and will need her to carry him home!’
Holidays at Home Omnibus Page 111
