He lifted her and carried her to the bed. His loving was gentle and caring, it seemed as natural as breathing and it transported her to realms of exquisite joy. When she finally slept it was with his arms around her, his breath touching her cheek like a caress.
When she woke the next morning he was lying beside her, his hair tousled, his eyes glowing with rekindled desire. They showered together before going down to breakfast, and then they were driven back to the bed once more. In her eyes, he was her own, her protector; she had given herself to him and now they would never want to part. She marvelled at how quickly it had all happened and knew she was in love.
A stranger until a matter of hours ago, he was already so important to her happiness that she felt a momentary shiver of apprehension at the thought of him saying goodbye. But he wouldn’t. Would he?
Their last day was a dream. Everything was perfect; the weather, the places they visited, the meals they ate and especially the evening, when they once again came back to her room to make love.
‘For the first time since I was a child, I’m not longing to finish my journey and get home,’ she admitted on Sunday evening, the last of their stay.
‘You mean you were always as excited at getting home as setting out?’ Larry laughed. ‘Hell, I thought holidays were supposed to be fun! Didn’t you enjoy yours?’
‘Always! But I still found that going home was something to be relished. There’s the post, perhaps something you’ve been waiting for, or an unexpected letter from a friend. I even found a small Premium Bond win waiting for me once when I’d been away.’
‘A “Premium Bond”?’ he queried, smiling as she briefly explained. ‘But this time, it’s different?’ he probed. She stretched out her hand and he took it in both of his, holding it as if it were something precious.
‘This time it’s different,’ she whispered.
His arms reached for her and it was late before they finally slept.
So it was with a feeling of hurt and disbelief that she woke next morning to find herself alone in the bed. She looked around her room and saw in a moment that his clothes, strewn untidily across the floor last night, were gone. She hurriedly dressed and ran along the corridor to his room. The door stood ajar, the room was empty, the maid was already stripping the bed. It was as if Larry Madison-Jones had never existed.
She walked slowly back to her room and lay on the bed, unable to think. The alarm, set to tell her to rise and go for her train, puttered into life and she stood up and slammed it off, wanting to throw it out of the window, wanting to hit out at something, anything, to vent her anger and humiliation on the world. She prepared to leave, her mind in a daze.
Her brain began to work again as she settled her account and ordered a taxi. She realised that for Larry, she had been just a pleasant way of filling a couple of days. He’d been glad of her company and her ability to guide him around the treasures of London, a mild flirtation and nothing more.
For her, the few days had been magical, an experience she would hold in her heart and around which she would spin daydreams. In time she would forget. She repeated the words, trying to believe them. In time, she would forget the disillusionment and remember only a brief and pleasant interlude that held no special importance.
* * *
In the taxi she sat like someone still caught in the muzzy folds of sleep. She didn’t look out of the window, she didn’t answer when the friendly cab driver offered conversation. She paid him like an automaton and walked to the platform on Euston station, dragging her case behind her.
She followed the signs to her platform and looked about her, eyes dull and with a hurt expression that hadn’t left her since she had woken and found herself alone. Footsteps echoing on the hard surface, the morning hollow-sounding in the unbroken day. No curly head or laughing brown eyes hurried towards her.
She was confused, feeling a certain amount of guilt now she was back on home ground in a place where she could never have imagined behaving in such a casual way with a stranger, and with the guilt came bitter regret at the ending of the affair, with embarrassment and hurt. After the train journey, during which she had been lost in her own thoughts, she now wanted to fill the time with talk, and no longer be alone with self-recrimination.
The slow journey through small villages and the richly green fields was balm. The soft Welsh voices were soothing and welcoming. She felt at that moment she would never want to go away again. Sheep wandered the hills like fallen segments of the summer clouds; a heron flew up from a narrow stream and flapped lazily across to the untidy nest it had made in a tree. Above the hillside, a buzzard hovered, smaller birds flying nervously under its shadow. This, Rosemary thought, is all the excitement I need from now on.
As she left the bus and walked down the steps leading from the main road to where the cottages nestled on the edge of the stream, she saw that the door of the first one was open. Gethyn looked up, waved, then ran to meet her. An odd figure, in old-fashioned, ill-fitting clothes and painfully shy, it was good to see him. Tall, powerful and as familiar as breakfast toast, the welcoming smile on his face creased the folds around his dark eyes. He darted glances at her shyly, but with an unmistakable air of excitement at her return. His obvious pleasure almost brought tears to her eyes. His undisguised delight made her distress at Larry’s departure fade, become less painful. She was home, among friends, and those who loved her.
‘There’s empty it’s been all these long weeks,’ Gethyn said, ‘your house never showing a light. It didn’t seem right. Thank goodness you’re back safe.’
‘I’ve heard about your mother, Gethyn,’ Rosemary said at once, to save him the distress of telling her. ‘I’m very sorry.’
‘I’ve got milk in for you and a fresh loaf of bread and there’s cheese and fruit to see you through till you can go shopping tomorrow,’ he said. ‘I put it on the kitchen table.’
She was surprised at the way he ignored her words, but knew how difficult he found it to talk about things that really mattered. When she had been home a few days he would want to talk to her, go over the details of his mother’s death, she was sure of that.
‘Thank you Gethyn, you’re so kind. That’s just what your mother would have done for me.’
He dropped her luggage on the hall floor and with a brief smile which did not include his eyes meeting hers, he went into his house, next door to her own, without another word.
Mrs Priestley from number four arrived with a plateful of cakes before Rosemary had finished unpacking. She held the plate aloft while under her other arm was her old black cat. She announced that she had called to welcome Rosemary home and tell her the news. Rosemary put down the post she had begun to examine and put the kettle on to boil.
‘I know you’ll be dying to hear what’s been happening in the weeks you’ve been away,’ she said conspiratorially. ‘Well now, where do I start? Mr and Mrs Hughes next door at number three are well but they’re away at present visiting their youngest in Bala.’ She followed Rosemary into the kitchen and, still carrying the patient animal, helped Rosemary prepare a tray of tea to go with the cakes. Then, with the cat comfortably sleeping on her lap, she settled in one of the armchairs for a chat.
Resigned to it, knowing from past experience how impossible it was to discourage Mrs Priestley when she was in full flood, Rosemary forgot all thoughts of unpacking and sat opposite her near the empty fireplace.
‘The Powells have gone to Canada for a year and the house at the end is let, to students,’ Mrs Priestly went on. ‘Very nice they are, mind, not a bit of trouble so far. There’s Huw and Richard; he’s got a car and I’ve driven to the shops in style twice already!’ she chuckled.
‘I feel as if I’ve been away for months instead of three weeks!’ Rosemary said.
‘Seen Gethyn next door, have you?’ The smile faded and the shrewd hazel eyes looked towards the wall shared with Gethyn’s house, she lowered her voice and added, ‘Gethyn, poor dab, he’s devastated.’
‘He came to help me with my luggage from the bus and he bought some groceries for me just like his mother would,’ Rosemary told her. ‘What happened? He didn’t seem willing to talk about it.’
‘One of the shepherds found her. She had been walking home with a basket of logs for her fire. No need for her to do that, mind. Everyone knew Gethyn was always on to her to stop struggling with heavy loads, you know how he fussed over her. But she was stubborn and insisted on going up the hill beyond the church, gathering firewood in that old woven straw basket of hers. Fell into the quarry she did. Found lying there near the decomposing bodies of a couple of sheep.’ Mrs Priestley shuddered dramatically as she went on.
‘Her heart they say it was, we had an inquest and all. She’d had several blows to the head. From the rocks it must have been, although for a while they weren’t sure, mind. Going over that steep edge as she did, she was bound to be battered as she fell. Poor Gethyn. Poor dab. What’ll he do without her? That’s what we’re all wondering.’
‘He’s only twenty-seven!’ Rosemary defended. ‘He’ll make a new life for himself. Thank goodness he lives in a place like this and not in a town. He won’t be alone, he has all of us to comfort him and help him find his feet.’
* * *
The emptiness of the house hit her when Mrs Priestley had gone. Somehow the journey and the bustle of arriving home, unpacking and sorting through the post, as well as catching up on the local news with Mrs Priestley had deadened the impact of the return. Now, in the silent house, her mind went once more to Larry and his abandonment of her after three days of companionship and two nights of loving. The interlude had blanked off the American holiday so it seemed like something that had happened months before. Her immediate memories were so strong, so filled with mixed emotions that they overrode the two and a half weeks in New York.
She hung up the new yellow dress and stared at it. She had intended to wear it to the library the following morning but now, seeing it without the background of the capital city and the modern hotel room, she decided against it. The idea of changing her image was possible while she was away and with Larry beside her, but now she was home in the grey stone cottage on a low hillside besides a Welsh stream, the idea seemed laughable.
She took from the wardrobe a grey skirt and a pale grey and blue check blouse. The thought of changing had been exciting for a while but it was far easier to stay the way she was.
* * *
Gethyn Lewis watched from his front window as Mrs Priestley went into Rosemary’s house. He watched as she left an hour later and wondered what they had been discussing. Himself and the death of his mother for sure, he decided. It had been the talk of the neighbourhood since it had happened.
Gethyn wanted to go and talk to Rosemary about it, explain how he felt. She’d understand how it was both a sadness and a relief not to be tied to his elderly mother any more. She had been forty-five when he was born and now, at twenty-seven, he remembered the years of resentment at being known as ‘The Lad’ or ‘The Lewis Boy’. But now she was gone and he could decide who he really was.
He stood up and cleared the remnants of the simple meal he had prepared on the old-fashioned, wooden, scrub-top table. Perhaps he could go in to see Rosemary now? Tomorrow she’d be at work. He pulled a comb through his hair with little effect, and straightened his shirt collar. A glance in the mirror showed him a tidily dressed young man, paler than usual, giving his dark features a rather sickly look. He looked away in doubt.
What if Rosemary didn’t feel the same as he did? What if the absence, instead of making her realise how much they meant to each other, had instead had the effect of making her take a wider view and spreading her wings?
At her door he hesitated. Then he lost his nerve. Why would she want to talk to him? She must be tired after her long journey. He couldn’t imagine travelling all the way to London, let alone flying across the Atlantic to America. Why had she wanted to go? What was the sense in exploring a place filled with strangers, when everything she needed was here?
He walked past her door up the hill to the woods, then, turning, came down to the church half hidden between the woodland and the hill and stood beside his mother’s grave. Tomorrow he would talk to Rosemary. Tomorrow for certain.
* * *
Rosemary’s return to work was a sham. She forced herself to make an adventure of her weeks in America, exaggerated the laughs she had shared with the people she had met. Made more of the simplest event so that the people she worked with, and the people who called to exchange a book, all enjoyed the telling and believed she had had a marvellous time. In fact, the memories of the visit were already vague, overshadowed by the few days in London with Larry Madison-Jones.
She met her friends, Megan and Sally, and they went out for a meal so they could hear all her news. Sally hadn’t been working with them for very long and Rosemary was a little disappointed that Megan had invited her to join them, but she added to the hour, laughing enthusiastically at the humorous stories and listening avidly to the adventure in the London hotel.
Sally was red-haired, loudly spoken and very confident. Rosemary was afraid their personalities would clash but Sally seemed anxious to make a friend of her and went out of her way to please her. She tried to make the leap from new acquaintance to close friend in a matter of hours, to become a confidant without the preliminaries of getting to know each other and that, Rosemary did not like. Sally even suggested they went to Aberystwyth that weekend to do some shopping then go back to Rosemary’s cottage for a meal.
‘You’ll have your photographs by then,’ she urged. ‘We’d have a lovely evening looking at them and you telling us all about the occasions. Go on, let’s have an apres-holiday evening.’
Feeling herself pushed into something for which she was not ready, Rosemary refused.
‘But I’ll bring them into the library for you to see,’ she promised with a sideways look at Megan. Megan raised an eyebrow as if to say, she’ll need watching or she’ll take over our lives.
Rosemary got back into the mood of the evening quickly, pushing aside the slight irritation, making them laugh, inventing thrilling stories out of the most ordinary events to give the impression that it had all been such fun, but in fact it was already a part of the distant past. Only Megan, much later when Sally had left them, heard the truth about the few days in London. Older, wiser, she sympathised momentarily then said firmly, ‘Rosemary, you are a fool. To have an adventure like that with someone as handsome and attractive as this Larry sounds, well, you shouldn’t feel sadness, shame, guilt, or any other destructive emotion. You should pack it away in your memories to be enjoyed over and over again. Not treating it as if it were the most terrible disaster!’ Rosemary gasped in amazement at her friend.
‘I thought you’d be shocked!’ She stared at the mouselike Megan, fifty years old, grey and set in her ways but still with a younger, more modern outlook than her own, it seemed.
‘Me, shocked? Jealous more like!’
‘But he used me and abandoned me like some tart he’d picked up on the streets!’
‘So, you used him! You must have enjoyed it, so why pretend you didn’t?’
As she told Megan more and more of what they had done, what they had seen, Rosemary began to see that Megan was right. She had enjoyed it and her only fault was expecting more of the incident than she should.
‘Being brought up in a small village and used to the gentle, unworldly ways of the neighbours, imagining that what we see on the television isn’t real, has made me unaware that outside the boundaries of this place there’s a great big world,’ she said.
‘An exciting one too and there’s lucky you are to have touched it for a day or two.’ Megan chuckled and went on, ‘I thought I was world class when I won a weekend in Paris! And I came back no different from when I went!’
* * *
After work, Rosemary drove home and went into her house. Megan’s words had cheered her and put the
whole episode into a different mould. She didn’t stay in the house long but closed the door and set off again without seeing any of the neighbours. She looked at the row, Gethyn in number one, herself next door. In number three were the absent Hughes’s, Muriel and Harry, and Mrs Priestley was at number four. At number five were the students. She must call and see them soon, introduce herself and offer assistance if and when they needed it.
She put on an old anorak and some walking shoes and, taking the flowers she had bought, she walked up over the hill to the churchyard, intending to place one bunch on her grandmother’s grave, and the other on the new grave of Gethyn’s mother. She didn’t lock her door, she rarely did except when she went to work and at night. It didn’t occur to her that she should. A key was left with a neighbour in case she locked herself out. It had always been that way, relaxed and easy.
She walked up between the uneven and tilting gravestones in the evening shadows, slowly, lazily, enjoying the soft breeze on her cheeks and the scent of flowers on the air. To her horror, she saw that the new grave had been dug up, earth thrown across the paths and onto the nearby graves. Vases lay smashed, the flowers that had once been arranged in them were torn into shreds and scattered.
Who could have done such a thing? She tidied it as well as she could, planning to buy some new vases the next day. She hoped she could straighten it all out before Gethyn saw the desecration.
Walking back through the village she saw a Citroen car, a red and white ‘Dolly’, and for a moment the driver looked like Larry. She stopped and stared after it, then laughed aloud. She was behaving no better than a lovesick teenager! She reminded herself of Megan’s wise words and walked briskly home, admiring the hedgerow flowers and the song of the birds. They were real. Larry no longer was.
Search for a Shadow Page 3
