Then there was their youngest, Alice’s husband, Eynon.
Eynon had never wanted anything other than a life working on the sands, helping visitors to enjoy their stay in St David’s Well. In a mood of bravado he had followed his friend Freddy Clements into the recruiting office and signed up as a regular. Bullying had led to him absconding, and during the time he was being hunted by the Military Police, Alice had helped him and love had grown. They had married and spent a brief few days together before he’d had to return to his unit.
She stayed in the café until twelve thirty, then caught the bus back to change and get ready for work. Marged gave her a couple of pasties and some Welsh-cakes and she carried them with her through the gates at five minutes to two. She would eat them during her break. Another piece of useless information to tell Eynon in tonight’s letter, she thought with a sad smile.
When she went out the following morning, a young woman was walking past the house with a little boy on reins struggling to run ahead and a younger child in her arms. The boy’s reins were made of leather with straps leading back from the shoulders and others fastened at his waist. On the ornate leather front, bells were fastened and the little boy was jigging up and down to make them jingle. The mother pulled impatiently as she struggled with the obviously heavy child in her arms and tried to make the boy walk properly. Alice wondered why the mother didn’t have a pushchair.
‘Come here, Walter,’ the young mother called sharply and the boy turned to stare at Alice.
The boy walked towards Alice and asked, ‘Are you her mother, then?’ He gestured with a thumb to the child in his mother’s arms.
Alice laughed. ‘No, I’m not anyone’s mother.’ She looked at the young woman to share her smile but the woman had turned away and was hurrying back down the road, the boy crying as he was now dragged along, his feet tripping over each other as he tried to catch up.
Another fatherless family she surmised, the little boy perhaps getting muddled between mother and missing father. Then she saw the telegram boy turning the corner on his red bike and held her breath. ‘Please don’t let it be Eynon,’ she whispered and only released her breath when the boy passed her door, rode around another corner and out of sight.
She looked again at the woman with the two children, hurrying down the road. Had she been one of the unlucky ones? Had the red bike and its rider stopped at her door? She shivered as she turned and went up the road to the shops to buy her week’s grocery ration. At least, with no news to the contrary, for that moment he was safe. Another day had passed and Eynon was still alive.
Two
In the house in Sidney Street, Marged woke and, although it was very early, she slid out of bed without disturbing Huw and crept down the stairs. There was so much to do these days. However early she rose, there was never enough time to fit in all she had to do. Once the summer season began bringing the crowds to the town, her days were long. She made a cup of tea, then set up the iron and began dealing with the gingham tablecloths for the café on the beach.
It had been so much easier when her mam had been there to help with the many routine tasks, and when her sister, Audrey, had dealt with the housekeeping and much of the cooking. They had worked well together, cogs in the machinery of a St David’s Well summer. They’d all had a part to play and the routine rarely faltered. Yet even in those days there had been a rush to get everything done. Now, with Granny Molly Piper dead and Audrey having left them to run a café of her own, everything seems to land on my back, she thought with a sigh.
Nursing a second cup of tea, she sat, her eyes looking around the shabby, familiar room in which her children had grown up, ears listening in the silence for echoes of those long-lost days, her nose aware of the fresh smell of the newly ironed linen piled ready to take over the beach. The empty grate needed cleaning and resetting ready for the evening, although she and Huw rarely had time to sit and enjoy it.
The months of May and June were what her mother had referred to as a rehearsal; a slowly increasing introduction to the busy months of July and August, when the town and the beach would be filled with holidaymakers and day trippers. These early months were a time to adjust to the long days and to remind the members of the Castle family of their tasks. May was almost out and the difficulties of finding staff had not been solved.
Knowing it was futile self-indulgence, she sat back and wallowed in her memories. From the end of March, Huw and his brother had always worked on maintenance until the day the beach was open for business. Everything was cleaned, repainted where necessary and repairs dealt with until the stalls were as bright as new and the cafés shone with their efforts.
Before the Army had stolen them away, their four children and Bleddyn’s two were as full of enthusiasm as the holidaymakers who came bent on having fun. Now Bleddyn’s Taff was dead and Johnny was far away.
She knew she had been more fortunate than some, with only Eynon out there in the fighting. Ronnie was now running his stall though her hopes of him giving it up once summer came had been dashed. Olive had never liked working on the sands but the stall in the town’s market was different. She enjoyed selling fruit and vegetables to their regular customers, so Ronnie had stayed on the stall. Beth had also left the beach. Although now, with her new baby, Beth couldn’t help, even if she wanted to. If only she could persuade Beth to come back to the beach instead of returning to the café, she mused. Beth was so reliable. She had managed to work when her own four were small and between them they could look after this darling little boy. That is, if the will was there – but it wasn’t. The war had disrupted families in other ways besides robbing them of their sons. Beth would go back to the café as soon as she was able to leave the baby.
She felt irritation rise as she thought of her firstborn, their Lilly. For Lilly, life was a constant game to avoid work. She had never taken to the family business and had become adept at finding excuses to stay away from the stalls and cafés, even when the family was desperately needed, like now. Lilly, she thought with increasing anger, had succeeded in finding the perfect life, married to a man as old as her father, who demanded little and had the money to indulge her.
She reminded herself that the situation was only temporary, that one day soon, their Eynon and Bleddyn’s Johnny would come home and everything would be as it should be. Even as the thought leapt into her mind, a protective false confidence, she knew she was kidding herself no longer. How could anything be the same as before?
It was almost seven thirty and time to wake Huw. She cleaned out the grate and set the paper sticks and cinders ready to light when they returned that evening, then made a fresh pot of tea and went to call him. Her footsteps sounded loud as she walked along the passage to the stairs. In her mind she heard the running footsteps and shouts of long ago as they all tried to get into the bathroom first.
In the house next door, her mam and Audrey would be waking at the same time and they would knock on the wall to reassure each other that all was well. Ronnie and Olive now lived there in rooms upstairs, and with Audrey and Maude and Myrtle now living above Audrey’s café in the town, the rest of the house next door was as empty as this one.
Carrying the cup of tea, she went in to wake Huw, wondering why everything had to change; why couldn’t life stay at the time when everything was perfect? Unaware of her melancholy thoughts, Huw nevertheless answered her.
‘Thank goodness we’re past the stage of small babies,’ he said, taking the cup of tea and drinking gratefully. ‘Can you imagine waking up several times each night to pacify a demanding child?’
‘I loved it,’ Marged said sadly.
‘Course you did, Marged, and so did I. But I’ve loved all the other stages of our life too. Thankful I am that things change and we’re still together and can enjoy it all.’
* * *
Over several days, Alice saw the young woman watching her. Curious, she tried to approach her and ask what she wanted, but each time the woman turned and hurri
ed away. She saw her twice in the vicinity of her home in Holby Street and several times near the factory gates.
‘She seems to be noting my movements,’ she told Auntie Audrey, after a week of these odd occurrences.
‘Don’t let it worry you, dear,’ Audrey said. ‘She’s probably bored, living in a couple of rooms with two small children and she’s just filling her time watching others.’ Although she reassured Alice that there was nothing to worry about, she mentioned it to Keith, and asked him to look out for the young woman and, if possible, find out something about her. Keith was a builder and he worked in and around the town on building-repair work. It was likely that some time their paths would cross.
Then a week went by without Alice seeing her and the incidents were forgotten in the rising activity in the town as the summer season got underway. Alice had taken the holiday due to her and, relieved to be free from the factory, was helping in the Castles’ café high above the sands on St David’s Well Bay.
‘Perhaps she’s lost sight of me with the change in my routine,’ Alice said when Audrey asked towards the end of the week.
‘Or perhaps she’s found someone else to be curious about.’
Alice was sorry to finish the week at the beach and have to face returning to the factory. Besides preferring to work out of doors among the cheerful day trippers and holidaymakers, she knew that Marged and Huw were finding it hard managing without sufficient help. They had to depend on seasonal help from strangers, which was anathema to the family-orientated Marged.
* * *
Stanley Love, who had come to the town as an evacuee with his two brothers in 1939 and had stayed, was an enthusiastic member of the team. Huw often said that with a couple more like Stanley he could put his feet up. The fifteen-year-old encouraged the hesitant ones, pleaded with the children to ask their mothers to pay for a ride on the helter-skelter or the swingboats, cajoled others to have a second ride and gave cheeky comments that shocked some and amused many. As Huw and Bleddyn often remarked, ‘Stanley Love is a natural.’
Like many others who worked on the sands, Stanley had found a job for the winter months and now he had given his notice and looked forward to spending the season helping Huw and Marged, Bleddyn and his wife Hetty with the stalls and rides set up on the sandy beach.
With his brothers, Harold and Percival, Stanley Love lived with Eirlys and Ken Ward, their small son Anthony and Eirlys’s father Morgan Price. It was a full and busy household but Eirlys ran it efficiently as she did everything else. She had a very difficult and hectic job organizing the summer entertainments programme in the town. Working out of the council offices, she managed to deal with the various aspects of a complicated schedule, besides running the household efficiently and feeding them all. Her husband, Ken, was also involved with show business, arranging tours and concerts to entertain the forces and factory workers or, to raise money for one of the many war charities. Although their work was similar in nature, they rarely worked together. Ken was often away from home and Eirlys managed the household and her job without apparent regrets at his absences.
As a typically busy person, Eirlys also managed to make items to sell in the gift shop run by friends of hers. Hannah Castle, married to Johnny, was a dressmaker and she did most of her work in the shop. Her father-in-law, Bleddyn, had bought her a second sewing machine to make this possible. Eynon’s sister Beth also worked for the shop whenever she could, although, at present she was fully occupied dealing with her café and her baby.
For the gift shop there were no fixed hours, the three girls all did what they could and worked together in relaxed harmony. When Eirlys returned to work, Hannah and Alice between them also looked after baby Anthony. Life was complicated but they managed to do what was necessary to enable those who worked to feel confident their children were cared for.
Involving themselves in so many activities was not unusual. Most women in the town did one, two or even three jobs, many of them also sharing child-minding with friends to enable them to work. There was little spare time between work, child-minding, the necessary household chores and the endless search for food, as well as the voluntary work for which most women found at least a few odd moments. The only escape from the frantic hours, and the frustration of trying to feed and clothe their families, was the cinema, giving a glimpse of a pretend life where women were beautiful, lived in palatial houses with teams of servants, dressed in smart clothes and ate wonderful food.
When Hannah and Alice took Hannah’s children to the Saturday-morning cinema as a special treat, they saw Lilly strolling through the shops with her daughter, three-year-old Phyllis. They watched as she went into a café and, through the window, saw her join a young woman who was trying to control two children who seemed set on destroying the place. They were running around, in and out of the tables, threatening to knock dishes to the floor.
The boy, who looked to be about four years old, was chased and dumped on to a chair and a wagging finger warned him to stay put. Then the little girl of about two years, who, in her excited determination to defy her mother, was unsteady on her feet, was grabbed and pushed, wailing and struggling, into a high chair provided for customers’ use. It was a tight squeeze but the mother was determined and the little girl, pouting and red faced, glared and continued her struggles to be free.
‘I bet Auntie Audrey’s glad they haven’t chosen her café for their morning coffee,’ Alice said with a laugh. ‘They look like hard work and I bet young Phyllis won’t need much coaxing to join in.’ She watched for a moment as the young woman fastened Phyllis’s walking reins around the back of a high chair and then gasped and turned to Hannah. ‘That’s the young woman who seemed to be following me a while back.’
‘I wouldn’t worry about her. She looks harmless enough.’ They were words Alice would remember.
* * *
Lilly sat talking to her friend and ignoring the behaviour of the children. Phyllis was usually a placid child, but seeing the little boy getting down from his chair and running around the crowded café and the little girl freeing herself from her mother’s half-hearted attempts to restrain her and climbing down from the high chair, she was keen to join in the fun. The little girl followed her brother, dragging her reins, which were getting caught in various obstacles, and it was so much like a party, the temptation was too much for her. Down she got and ran with them to the annoyance of other customers.
Lilly laughed as Phyllis helped herself to a cake from someone’s plate. When the manageress was called, Lilly drew herself up to her full height and complained loudly when she suggested they left.
No one supported her and she huffily dragged her daughter away from where she was attempting to enter the kitchen with her friend’s little boy. They were escorted to the door and her surly attempt to pay their bill was waived. ‘I’m never coming in here again,’ she remarked and the manageress, with great self-control, declined to make the obvious reply.
‘Where shall we go?’ Lilly asked. ‘My sister Beth has a café in the market, we could go there. If I tell the temporary assistant who I am we’ll probably get a free lunch.’
‘The market caff? That’s a bit of a comedown after being thrown out of that posh place, isn’t it?’ They both laughed.
‘The beach it is, then. Quick, here’s the bus!’ They scrambled on and took the back seat, where the three children could look out of the window and Lilly said. ‘Like the beach, do you? My family own the rides and stalls on the sand.’
‘You aren’t related to the Castles, are you?’
‘I am. And if they had their way they’d have me slaving away from May till September selling teas and snacks, washing endless dishes, scrubbing floors. Huh, I soon gave that up!’
‘But fancy, having all those stalls and things. They must be rich.’
‘Not short of a penny,’ Lilly agreed. ‘And neither am I since I married Sam Edwards.’ She turned to her companion. ‘What does your husband do?’
‘
In the Army, I think. He left me before little Dolly was born.’
‘Oh, there’s sorry I am. My stepson is in the fighting. He’s Sam too. His dad worries about him so much.’ She laughed at the question forming in her friend’s mind. ‘Yes, a stepson the same age as me, strange, eh?’
The two women hadn’t known each other long. They had met in the small park in the centre of town where they went regularly to allow the children to play. They began to talk, politely at first then they began to share confidences in the fascinating beginnings of friendship. They began to look out for each other and keep a place on a seat, and had recently taken a further step and ended their afternoons by finding a café and sitting for a while over coffee, which Lilly hated but considered smart. They had exchanged names, Lilly learning that the girl was nineteen and called Netta Mills.
The age of the little boy, whose name was Walter, made her realize that Netta Mills must have been barely out of school when he was born, but she avoided the topic of dates and ages. After all, her wedding to Sam had taken place long after she had given birth to Phyllis.
Netta lived some distance from the park and said how pleased she was that she had called there one day after visiting the library and had met Lilly.
‘I’m pleased too. It’s nice to have a friend to talk to. It’s lonely sometimes, even with my Sam. Him being so much older than me we run out of things to say.’
At home, Sam was preparing their meal and while the potatoes were cooking ready to mash for the cottage pie, he was finishing ironing Phyllis’s little dresses. On the table was a letter from his son. He had opened it and read it and excitement glowed in his eyes. Sam Junior was coming home on leave. Seven days, then he would be sent back. He wondered whether the leave was before Sam was transferred to the army preparing for the invasion of Europe which government officials denied and everyone knew would happen.
Holidays at Home Omnibus Page 148
