A New Beginning

by A New Beginning (retail) (epub)

  He had been looking up anyone he remembered from the days when he and Sophie had been planning to marry. At first he had searched for Sophie’s family, but there had been little information to help him. Then he remembered Daphne and hoped that by some good fortune the two friends had kept in touch.

  All he knew about Daphne was her name and the area where her family lived. The name was unusual and he found Mrs Boyd working in a cafe in Weston.

  He asked if she could help him find Sophie Daniels. After he had fully explained his reasons, she gave him the address of the public house where her daughter worked.

  Since being demobbed he had been very restless. Finding his previous job in the electricity company unsatisfying, he had moved to one that took him out of the office for four of the five days he worked. He represented a firm making leather goods, which he sold to gift shops throughout the southwest of England. The large area he covered meant he had a car.

  He was due a holiday soon, and he decided that he’d use it to go to Cwm Derw and complete his search. It was a bit late to apologize, but he didn’t think being jilted was something easily forgotten. Even after all this time he had to explain why he hadn’t turned up for their wedding. He owed it to her to tell her why he had let her down then failed to get in touch.

  *

  Ed called to his sister as he opened the side door of the Ship. He stepped inside, still calling, feeling foolish asking permission to enter the place that had been his home. But the way he had left Betty without warning combined with his unfortunate marriage and its sad outcome had made him less confident of how people felt towards him. He knew he had been criticized for what he planned for Elsie, and even though his intentions had changed, the disapproval would remain for a while.

  Betty came out of the bar, wearing her working overall over skirt and jumper, pulling off the sacking apron used for dirty work. She looked hot and a little tired, her face as red as her hands. ‘Daphne has the day off and I’ve had to wash the floors,’ she said by way of explanation.

  ‘Done the filling up yet?’ he asked. ‘I’ve got an hour if you want the shelves filled or a barrel tapped.’

  ‘Thanks. There’s dregs in the barrel so I’ll need a fresh one for tonight. I was going to ask Harry Sutton, he doesn’t mind giving a hand when I’m stuck.’

  He went down and sorted out the stock, wiping the bottles and putting the new behind the old, and set the new barrel in its cradle and checked the connections to the bar. He even polished the copper and washed the cellar floor. Then he went up to where his sister had a tray of tea ready. She was pouring the boiling water on the tea leaves as he came in.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said, offering the biscuit tin. ’You didn’t have to do that, Ed, but I have to say I’m glad. I struggle to manage sometimes.’

  She was lying. She and Daphne managed the work with ease.

  ‘I’ve been selfish, haven’t I? Letting you down like I did.’

  ‘Of course not. Taking a chance of finding happiness and companionship? I don’t call that selfish.’ She thought Elsie had been the selfish one, marrying him without telling him she was ill, but she said nothing. ‘Least said soonest mended’ was a true saying.

  ‘Every decision I’ve made has been the wrong one.’

  ‘I don’t agree with that, either. You married Elsie without knowing the facts.’

  ‘I’m going to look after Elsie. She should stay in her own home for a long as it’s possible. The truth is, I’m scared of illness, and the thought of having to look after someone really sick was terrifying. But now I wonder how I could ever have thought of sending her away. She’s good company and I enjoy being with her. We’re really happy together. This dreadful sickness won’t change her; the real Elsie will still be there, won’t she? It will just make it harder for her to do what she’s always done.’

  ‘We all say and do stupid things when we’re upset and you were certainly upset.’

  ‘Well I’ve thought it out now. I’ll arrange help for the things we can’t do and run the guest-house as it’s always been run.’ He reached for the teapot to replenish his cup. ‘I’ll be here any time you need me, too. For a couple of hours while Elsie rests, so I can do the jobs you find hard.’

  ‘There’s no need.’

  ‘I need to. I want to put everything right. Between us we can manage, like we always have, ever since Mam and Dad died.’

  He peered into the biscuit tin and shuffled the contents ‘Is this the best you got?’ he said, a smile assuring her everything was back to normal.

  *

  Daphne was surprised to find her work had been done and insisted on taking Betty shopping. ‘Tea and a cream cake somewhere, and I need a big bunch of flowers to thank Hope for transforming that armchair. Because it’s for Sarah she refuses to accept any money.’

  ‘How will you deliver it?’

  ‘Push it down the road, how else?’ Daphne laughed. ‘Want a ride?’

  *

  Owen arranged to open another account, called Land Development West, in Cardiff. The money was transferred from the bank account he had been using for money taken from the farm payments. He went there on a rare weekend off and paid in a large cheque and an address in the Somerset town of Portishead.

  It was a risk to take so much soon after Tommy had written a large cheque for Gareth, but with Tommy’s decision to sell within the year there was no time to waste if he was to get away before enquiries began.

  In the farm van he drove along the A48 through Newport, past the turning for the route that would cut miles off his journey but where he might be remembered, to Chepstow, Lydney, Blakeney and on to Gloucester. He crossed the River Severn and turned on to the route for Bristol. After passing through Berkeley and Thornbury, as the river widened, dividing England and Wales, he travelled on to the small town beside the estuary where he was buying a property.

  It wouldn’t be his for a few more weeks but, like a child, he had to have another look, focus on the dream of his new life far away from the family he had served so well and who had treated him so badly.

  The day was a pleasant one, an unexpected treat, as autumn had begun to grip, and he wished he had invited Sarah and Bertie along. Although it was too soon to share his secret. He smiled as he imagined telling Sarah and driving down with her beside him on their way to a new beginning.

  It was as he turned into the narrow lane leading to the property he was buying that a car reversed out of a driveway and swung around without warning. The driver’s side of the van collided with the driver’s side of a smart new Vauxhall and the screech of metal mingled with Owen’s shout of anger. This couldn’t happen. It mustn’t happen. He didn’t want to explain what he was doing here.

  He left the car by the passenger door and began to shout at the other driver, who held up his hands in defeat. ‘My fault entirely,’ he admitted. ‘I drove out without looking and I admit full responsibility. It’s such a quiet lane, you see.’

  Taken aback, expecting argument, Owen said. ‘I’d rather not involve the insurance company. So if we can deal with it between us?’

  ‘Sorry, but it isn’t my car, so I’ll have to tell my employer.’

  Taking a couple of large, white five-pound notes from his wallet, Owen said, ‘Shall we say a drunken driver who didn’t stop?’

  ‘Suits me. Better than explaining my stupidity.’

  The man thanked him and they went their separate ways.

  ‘Look at this! I parked for just a few minutes while I bought some bread and some idiot bounced off the van and drove off,’ Owen told Gareth when he returned to the farm. Gareth was unlikely to know what the mileage had been, but just in case, Owen drove it straight to a garage.

  *

  Sophie and Bertie were walking down the lane towards Badgers Brook at the same time as Owen was walking back from the garage. He stopped and offered Bertie a Sixpence, ruffling the boy’s hair before walking away. He was whistling cheerfully as he headed for the wood.


  ‘A tanner, miss. A bag of chips, unless… If you’ve got something nice for dinner, I could save it for when we move.’

  ‘Has your mum found anywhere yet?’

  ‘The house with the angels is too far away but she was looking at somewhere today, when she finished at the shop.’

  When Sarah arrived, she looked puzzled.

  ‘It’s Owen,’ she explained. ‘He said not to look for somewhere else to live, he has something in mind that would be perfect.’

  Sophie smiled. It probably meant nothing and she pretended to enjoy the mystery. Everything Owen said and did was suspect and added to the puzzle of what he was planning. Better she tell Rachel and Tommy, though, in case what was making him so apparently happy would affect them. Or, better still, she would write to Ryan. They corresponded a little, but she still felt she needed an excuse to contact him.

  *

  Sarah went again to look at the cottage Tommy had found for her. It would need an awful lot of cleaning and she wondered if she dare ask Sophie and perhaps Daphne to help her. When news got around she was overwhelmed with offers. Beside, Sophie and Daphne, Betty, Kitty and Bob, Stella and Colin and several others volunteered. The chair was delivered to Badgers Brook to wait until the place was ready for her. ‘So many friends,’ she said tearfully. ‘Nothing Owen Treweather came up with could be as good as this.’

  Eleven

  Writing to Ryan was always difficult. An attraction for him vied with a fear of misunderstanding his feelings for her, making her afraid of looking foolish. She realized that through this lack of confidence she could lose him, but she couldn’t relax and feel easy about their growing fondness.

  After several attempts at a casual letter that each time tangled into a muddle of over-cautious politenesses, she went to the shop and bought a couple of postcards showing local views. A sentence saying only that Owen had promised Sarah a solution to her housing problem seemed so ridiculous that she tore it up and threw it away. Whatever she and Daphne suspected, the bald facts would tell him nothing.

  Later that day she again scribbled the brief facts on a postcard and pushed it into the post box before she could change her mind.

  *

  Sarah and Bertie’s move went easily. With so many helping the decorating was swiftly done. Geoff had contributed some tins of paint, and had even found some suitable wallpaper amid his old stock. With Connie’s help he painted and put up wallpaper. Bob and Colin dealt with the garden. Owen didn’t appear. ‘So much for his “revived affection” and his promise to care,’ Sarah said to Sophie.

  ‘Just as well, there wouldn’t be room here for any more helpers, would there?’

  Everyone worked well together and in ten days the place was clean and the garden under control, with Colin and Bob conferring with Bertie about where his vegetable garden would go and the position of his swing.

  They didn’t have many possessions and most of them arrived on Tommy’s farm van. As usual when friends were involved there was a party mood from the moment Sarah gave Bertie the key to open their door. Tea was immediately made for the inevitable breaks, but it was still only midday by the time everything was in place.

  The last item to arrive was the newly covered armchair, pushed amid great hilarity by Bertie and some of his school friends, guided by a patient Bob Jennings. The oddments of furniture looked lost in the rooms. Floors had been varnished, and on the front doorstep red tiles shone like new. Sarah felt a mild panic at the thought of sitting in the orderly but soulless place. Somehow it reminded her how alone she was. Friends were wonderful but she feared the silence that would inevitably descend when the door closed for the last time and Bertie was asleep in his own bedroom.

  She thought of Owen and his revived attentions and wondered whether life with him would be better than loneliness, but shook her head with irritation. She wasn’t that desperate: she wasn’t yet thirty, hardly an old woman! There was plenty of time to think about remarrying. She made up her mind to urge Owen to make haste with the divorce. This was a time for new beginnings.

  *

  Sophie often went to the old farmhouse, beside which the ruins of her one-time cottage home still remained. The months since she had left had added to the look of decay, the rotten wood with the crumbly consistency of biscuits providing homes for myriad insects, the old stories weathered into various shades of green, grey and yellow by lichen: miniature fields over which snails grazed.

  She had explored the farmhouse, which was now seldom locked, and had sheltered there sometimes when rain tempted her into its protection. The place was still sound, with the exception of one window, now boarded. The cupboards were empty, their bare wooden shelves ridged with years of scrubbing. She wondered idly whether anyone would live there again.

  Outside, nature had taken everything back with the exception of the fruit bushes and the neat herb garden that she had nurtured. Rosemary and sage bushes, fennel, lovage, chives and the three different kinds of mint that had to be controlled from taking over the rest. She looked after them and used them in all in her cooking.

  To her surprise she heard someone coming, singing an old but still popular song, ‘Sing a song of sunbeams, let the notes fall where they may…’

  She stepped away from the farmhouse and waited until Sarah came into view, then sang along with her.

  ‘Oh! Hello, Sophie, I didn’t expect to see anyone out here.’

  ‘I’ve come to collect a few herbs,’ Sophie said, showing her the bunch she had picked.

  ‘I don’t know why I’m here. I just set off for a walk after a bit of gardening. Bertie’s with Kitty and Bob. I found myself on the muddy track and became curious to see the place where Owen and I once lived. Having a house of my own after all this time, I suppose.’

  ‘Fred Yates’s cottage has gone. It fell about my ears! But the farmhouse is still sound,’ Sophie told her and together they wandered through its echoing rooms.

  ‘I’ve been thinking a lot about Owen in the past few days, and perhaps I wanted a gentle wander down memory lane. We lived here when Rachel and Tommy moved to the new house, and we were happy here, for a while.’

  ‘Pity everything has to change.’

  ‘It didn’t just change, I caused it all to fall apart.’ Sarah didn’t sound angry, just sad.

  ‘Is there no hope of mending it?’

  ‘Owen is more civil these days, and he made that half promise to help us find a new home, but he’d never accept Bertie even if we did think of giving it a try.’

  ‘He enjoys his company more these days, I think. He’s taken him for a walk around the fields once or twice. Answering Bertie’s endless questions, pointing out things of interest. He must know none of this is Bertie’s fault.’

  ‘Maybe, but there’s no logic in anger, is there?’

  There were a few odd cups on a shelf, covered with dust. They had been discarded by Sophie when she left the cottage. She washed them under the outside tap and offered Sarah a drink of water. They sat silently looking round them at the residue of generations of living and loving. Hollow rooms and a garden left to disappear under layers of summer growth. There had been paths but they were gone, choked by rampant grasses and wild flowers. Without thought, Sarah began to pull at some of the larger plants until the paving stones beneath were revealed.

  Sophie helped and after an hour they smiled in delight at what they had achieved. The area between two line posts was cleared.

  ‘At least the ghosts can now hang out their washing,’ Sarah said, as they washed the worst of the dirt from their hands.

  Sophie saw Sarah turn to look sadly back at the place that held the ghosts of her marriage. ‘Why haven’t you and Owen divorced?’ she dared to ask.

  Sarah frowned. ‘I don’t really know. It’s never been discussed until recently, and then Owen didn’t follow it through. Neither of us has met anyone else, I suppose.’

  ‘You still love him, after all this time?’

  ‘I don’t thi
nk what I feel for him is love. I let him down, hurt him dreadfully. Anyway, I’ve asked him to sort it out, arrange a divorce. He seems unwilling,’ she frowned. ‘Strange how the marriage vows are such a strong tie, isn’t it?’

  ‘And Owen, has he ever…?’ she left the sentence unfinished.

  ‘I thought for a while that he and Daphne might care for each other. In fact, I thought meeting her was what led him to see a solicitor, discuss divorce. But nothing seems to have come of it. I don’t know what’s happening, but he hints about leaving the farm. He wants me to go with him and start again somewhere else. Do you know if it’s true, that the Treweathers are selling and he’s going away?’

  ‘There are so many rumours, but I can’t imagine Rachel and Tommy sending him away. It’s his home as well as his job. He’s one of the family.’

  ‘He isn’t always treated as though he is, mind. I’ve never understood why.’

  They walked back up the field and through the wood, Sarah reminiscing about her childhood, and the time she and Owen had lived at the farmhouse. Sophie listened, adding an occasional word to encourage further memories, and occasionally thinking about the life she herself had once led, a happy family life that had been so cruelly ended.

  ‘Haven’t you ever met anyone you wanted to marry?’ Sarah asked as they left the wood opposite Badgers Brook.

  ‘Once, but he changed his mind and I waited at the church in vain.’

  ‘You mean he jilted you!?’ Sarah was shocked. ‘But why?’

  Sophie smiled sadly. ‘That’s one of the many things in my past that I can’t understand. If I knew why, I might one day feel free of it.’

  ‘What an unlucky pair we are.’

  ‘Unlucky? In your case, yes. In mine, my disasters have been because I thought I knew best. Lacking confidence can bring unhappiness but having too much can be far worse.’ She didn’t explain, and Sarah knew better than to ask.