Broken Rainbows

by Catrin Collier

  ‘And Haiti, and England and now Wales.’

  ‘After the war there could be other places. A doctor can work anywhere in the world.’

  ‘I am only a doctor because my family made many sacrifices so I could continue my education.’

  ‘I still can’t imagine anyone telling me who to marry.’

  ‘Is this so much better?’ he asked. He didn’t have to elaborate. The lights had dimmed. Under the cover of darkness half the couples were dancing so close, it was difficult to see where American uniform began and evening dress ended. ‘I doubt that many of these people met before this evening, and looking at them now, I think there’s something to be said for the respect of the old Spanish colonial ways.’

  ‘In peacetime,’ she agreed, thinking of her own rushed marriage, and Eddie and Jenny’s. ‘But few people can afford the luxury of a slow courtship these days.’

  ‘I only hope that their marriages survive when the guns fall silent.’

  ‘Mine will,’ Jane said determinedly.

  ‘Tell me about your daughter. I have six brothers and sisters. I never thought I’d miss them, but every time I see a little girl about my youngest sister’s age, I get unbelievably homesick.’

  ‘It’s odd to finish the evening with two National Anthems,’ Alma observed as they queued in front of the cloakroom hatch.

  ‘Isn’t it?’ Bethan agreed absently, as she collected her own, Jane’s and Alma’s coats. ‘I’ll give you a lift back up to the fountain.’

  ‘There’s no need. Chuck – Major Reynolds – has offered to walk me home. He’s billeted above Frank Clayton’s shop next door,’ she added when Bethan gave her a knowing look.

  ‘I’m pleased for both of you. He can tell you all about his wife and baby, and you can tell him about Charlie and Theo.’

  ‘Were we that boring?’

  ‘No one had to listen if they didn’t want to. I think it’s wonderful that you’ve found a new friend to talk to.’

  ‘Do you think it’s wrong of me to let him walk me home, Bethan? After all, Charlie …’

  ‘Charlie and Chuck Reynolds’s wife might not have been sitting at our table tonight, but they were certainly there in spirit. I’m sure that if they could have seen you two together both of them would have been proud to be married to such loyal people.’

  ‘Do you really think so? I’m not so sure. I saw the way Mrs Llewellyn-Jones was looking at us.’

  ‘Mrs Llewellyn-Jones would look at any man and woman who’d bumped into one another in the street and assume they were about to commit adultery.’

  ‘Do you mind if I get to the counter, Bethan?’ Anthea Llewellyn-Jones snapped from behind them.

  Taking a deep breath, Bethan stepped aside. Handing Jane her coat, she smiled and nodded to Chuck Reynolds who was waiting at the top of the stairs, before kissing Alma on the cheek. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow. If the major’s free why don’t you bring him up for tea as well?’

  ‘I don’t know if that’s a good idea.’

  ‘He can always visit Colonel Ford if he finds the children too noisy. Tell him he’s welcome if he has nothing better to do.’

  ‘I will.’

  ‘That’s the first time I’ve seen Alma smile since Charlie was posted missing,’ Bethan said to Jane as they walked to the top of the staircase.

  ‘Ladies, I only have a motorbike which is most unsuitable for evening dresses, but perhaps I could arrange a lift for you?’ Captain D’Este stood halfway down the stairs shouldering his kitbag.

  ‘We have our own car thank you, Captain. A handsome man with ten times the charm of Lieutenant Rivers,’ Bethan whispered as they headed through the passages to the old coaching yard at the back of the hotel, where she had parked her car.

  ‘That’s not difficult. George Rivers is an idiot.’

  ‘Both of them had eyes for you.’

  ‘And my eyes are firmly fixed on Haydn.’

  ‘Even when he hasn’t been home in nine months?’ Bethan asked as they climbed into her car.

  ‘If you’re trying to tell me something, why don’t you come straight out with it, Bethan?’

  ‘I’m not trying to tell you anything. Just having a private moan that I hope won’t go any further. Tonight I saw more men than I’ve seen in the last three years, but as I looked at all those young American officers I couldn’t help wondering if I’d recognise my own husband if he had been standing among them.’

  ‘At least I’ve got Haydn’s photographs in the Sunday Pictorial to look at,’ Jane muttered apologetically, in an attempt to make amends for misunderstanding her sister-in-law.

  ‘Andrew told me in one of his letters that he’s going grey. Next year he’ll be thirty. Since we married we’ve spent as much time apart as we have together. Do you want to know my worst nightmare?’ She slammed the car into low gear as she negotiated the corner that led out on to Gelliwastad Road. ‘That this war is going to go on for ever and we’re going to waste our whole lives waiting for it to end, only to die before it’s over.’

  ‘You don’t really think it’s going to last for ever, do you?’

  ‘I don’t know. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have started this. All I’ve succeeded in doing is depressing you as well as myself.’

  ‘Most of the time I try not to think about anything except what’s in front of me. It’s easy enough in work when there’s endless bins of empty shell casings waiting to be packed with explosives. All I have to do is pick them up and fill them, but when the whistle blows at the end of the shift and I go home to Anne and read her a bedside story, it’s always from the books that you, Haydn, Eddie and Maud had when you were little. Books about normal families where Mummy looks after the children, Daddy goes to work and comes home …’

  ‘… in a suit and bowler hat, to a semi in Croydon.’ Bethan laughed at the memories Jane evoked. ‘That way of life was as alien to us as Hindu princesses and Baghdad caliphs in the Arabian Nights. There was my miner father going out every day looking like a tramp and coming home as black as a Negro .. .’

  ‘… and still doing the same.’

  ‘Are he and Phyllis all right?’

  ‘Very happy as far as I can see.’

  ‘I wish I had more time to talk to him, really talk to him the way I used to when I lived at home.’ Bethan reached out and touched Jane’s hand. ‘I’m sorry. I know how much you miss Haydn.’ She slowed the car, turning under the railway bridge that marked the beginning of the Graig hill.

  ‘I have his letters, and unlike Tina with William, I know he’s unlikely to be sent close enough to the front to be put in any real danger. The War Office would never risk a hair on the head of the chorus girls he travels with. Can you imagine the fuss the papers would make if any of them were hurt by a bomb or hit by a sniper?’

  ‘Those girls don’t mean anything to him. I know Haydn, he wouldn’t have married you if he hadn’t loved you.’ Bethan crossed her fingers under cover of the blackout. The man who came home on all-too-brief, intermittent leaves was very different from the younger brother she had grown up with. She might have known the old Haydn, but she certainly didn’t know the present one.

  ‘I’m lucky. When I think of Eddie getting killed at Dunkirk I can’t understand how Jenny bears it – or you and Haydn, come to that. I can’t even begin to imagine what it was like to have grown up with brothers and sisters only to lose them the way you lost Eddie and Maud.’

  ‘We have our memories, one another, and my father. He’s the real mainstay of the family.’

  ‘I worry more about what will happen when the war is over, than about it going on for ever. Can life ever go back to what it was? With so much destroyed, so many people dead …’

  ‘We’re getting far too maudlin. Let’s go to sleep on a happier note.’ Bethan cut the engine and coasted up outside her father’s house. ‘Have you heard from Haydn lately? Is he likely to be coming home?’

  ‘“Soon”, according to his last letter. Whenever that will
be.’

  Bethan leaned forward and hugged her sister-in-law. ‘Let’s hope this time the War Office isn’t stringing him along.’

  ‘You coming in?’

  ‘And disturb Phyllis and my father and the lodger at this hour? No, I’ll see you all tomorrow. You still have tomorrow off?’

  ‘My first free Sunday in two months. You didn’t think I’d give that up, did you?’

  ‘Isn’t it time you took a break from the factory? You don’t have to hand in your notice, just take a couple of weeks’ holiday.’

  ‘If you did the same we could take the children away for a few days.’

  ‘I can’t, not right now …’

  ‘You really fell for that one, didn’t you, Beth? I will take some time off, I promise. Just as soon as Haydn gets home. And thanks.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘Being honest. It’s good to know there’s someone I can tell the truth to. I’m fed up to the back teeth of trying to pretend that everything is wonderful.’

  ‘It was a good party.’

  ‘I’m glad you enjoyed it, ma’am.’

  ‘The name is Mrs Powell, Jenny to my friends.’

  ‘Jenny, ma’am.’ Kurt Schaffer pulled up the handbrake of the Jeep as he stopped at the white cross Jenny had painted below the window of her corner shop. ‘It’s just as well they blacked out the coastal areas of the US of A before we came over here. At least we’re used to finding our way around in the dark.’

  ‘But not some of the other aspects of war like rationing, judging by the amount of food and drink on offer tonight.’

  ‘Uncle Sam looks after his own.’

  ‘And looks after them very well.’

  She didn’t resist as he pulled her into his arms, or find any difficulty in returning his kiss. His lips were cold, but proficient, and in the event it was he who moved away from her.

  ‘Would you like to come upstairs?’

  ‘Ma’am?’ he murmured, unsure he’d heard her correctly.

  ‘For tea?’

  ‘What about your folks?’ he asked, wary not only of her family, but the colonel’s directive.

  ‘My mother’s dead, and my father’s in hospital and likely to be there for some time.’ She omitted the word ‘psychiatric’ in front of hospital. Not everyone understood mental illness, and some of her more outspoken neighbours had already asked if she was likely to inherit her father’s condition.

  ‘That’s a damned shame.’

  ‘It all happened a long time ago.’ She deliberately kept her voice light. Glancing up she saw a flicker of movement in the window above the greengrocer’s across the road. ‘But if you’re coming in, you’d better move the Jeep. Mrs Evans opposite has nothing better to do than watch my comings and goings. She’d love to see an American car parked outside my house all night.’

  ‘All night?’

  ‘Tea can take a long time to make, and then we have to drink it.’

  His mouth went dry and his hands clammy. He wondered if he’d picked up a professional. Usually he knew exactly where he was with women. In his extensive experience they fell into two distinct categories: the ‘good’ and invariably inexperienced and naive whose seduction required protestations of undying love and promises of marriage, and the whores, who no matter what price they initially quoted, had always cost him dearly. He’d placed Jenny Powell firmly in the former category. Although she was a widow, what else could the sister-in-law of Colonel Ford’s landlady possibly be? Deciding she was joking about the ‘all night’, he asked, ‘Where do you suggest I hide it?’

  ‘Lower down the hill, on the right-hand side of the road outside the chapel,’ she directed mischievously. ‘When you come back, turn down the lane at the side of the shop. There’s a back entrance. I’ll be waiting behind the storeroom door. If you’ve got a torch, bring it. I don’t want you crashing into the ash bins, but whatever you do, don’t switch on the light until you’re behind the yard door.’

  ‘Afraid I’ll get hurt?’

  ‘Afraid of the neighbours hearing you.’

  He climbed out of the Jeep and walked around to help her out. She kissed him goodbye for Mrs Evans’s benefit before he scrambled back into the driving seat. Waiting until he’d driven off, she didn’t open the gate that led into the yard until she saw the blinds move a second time in Mrs Evans’s window.

  Lifting the latch Jenny unlocked the stockroom door. There had been a time when she would have found Alexander waiting for her, but she had relieved him of his keys to her house after his last fit of jealousy. Kurt Schaffer wasn’t long. Less than five minutes later the gate creaked. Opening the door, she heard him call out softly.

  ‘My torch battery is flat, and it’s as black as a pig’s nose in here.’

  ‘Can you feel my hand?’

  ‘Got it.’

  ‘Walk towards me … careful there’s a step. I’ll put the light on as soon as I’ve closed the door.’

  ‘Floundering in the dark can be fun,’ Kurt muttered as he crashed into her.

  ‘Not as much as floundering in the light.’

  He breathed in sharply, as her hand brushed across the fly on his trousers.

  ‘There.’ She clicked the light on in the shop, locked the back door and opened the side door to reveal a staircase. ‘Switch off the light behind us, will you?’

  She ran up the stairs, lifting the long skirt of her evening gown above her knees. ‘The living room is through there.’

  ‘What’s this?’ He opened the door in front of him.

  ‘The kitchen. If you’re good at doing dishes, there’s a pile in the sink.’

  ‘What’s a sink?’

  ‘I can see where your expertise lies.’ She leaned back against the bedroom door. He kissed her again, his hand caressing her breasts through the lace bodice of her dress.

  ‘Don’t!’

  ‘Sorry.’ He stepped back, kicking himself for misreading the signals. Resorting to the well-worn excuse he had employed in similar situations, he murmured, ‘I lost my head. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen a girl as beautiful as you.’ His eyes widened as she pulled down the sleeves and low-cut neckline of her dress, exposing her breasts.

  ‘This frock shows every mark, Lieutenant, especially finger marks.’ Her blue eyes sparkled with suppressed humour as she savoured the shock on his face. Slipping her hand behind her, she opened her bedroom door and walked backwards into the room. Still gazing at him, she stepped out of her dress and petticoats and laid them on a chair. With her left foot on the bed she unclipped and rolled down one stocking, then the other. Holding them up to the lamp at the top of the stairs, she shook her head. ‘They’re laddered, and they’re my last pair.’

  Swallowing hard, he muttered, ‘I can get you more.’

  She unhooked the suspender belt at her waist, pulled it free and flung it on top of her clothes. Standing before him naked, except for a pair of lace-edged, cream silk knickers, she held out her arms. ‘Are all Americans so tardy?’

  He stepped towards her, hardly daring to believe his luck.

  ‘You do have a French letter?’

  ‘A …’

  ‘I don’t mind spending the night with you, Lieutenant, but I don’t want your baby.’

  He unbuttoned his top pocket, praying that he still had one of the American rubbers left. The English ones were so damned small and tight. His luck was in. He kissed her again as she began to peel off his jacket.

  Afterwards Jenny tossed restlessly on her pillow while Kurt slept soundly beside her. Unable to endure the thoughts swarming through her mind, she switched on the bedside lamp, sat up and lit a cigarette. What was she trying to prove? That sex with one man was very like sex with another? At least Alexander cared for her, loved her, even wanted to marry her, but this man was no different from a hundred others. Anything for a quick, cheap thrill: she, or a common prostitute, either would have done. She had seen through him the moment she had met him – so why had she allowed him to
take her home and invited him into her bed?

  Since she’d received the telegram telling her that Eddie had been killed, nothing had felt real or touched her emotions. It was almost as though she’d been sleepwalking since that moment, trying to convince everyone, especially herself, that the only way to live was minute by minute. Justifying her more outrageous actions with the excuse that as all pleasures were fleeting, she should take what came while it was there for the taking.

  Alexander – Kurt – what was the difference? Now she had discovered that making love to either was just like drinking a bottle of Alexander’s good wine. Once finished, she felt just as flat, lonely and despairing as she had done before.

  It hadn’t been like that with Eddie. Or had it? Was her memory playing tricks, painting an idyllic portrait of the physical side of her marriage, because the rest of it had been so disastrous?

  Eddie had abandoned her on their wedding night believing, with good reason, that she loved and wanted his brother Haydn, not him. By the time she realised just how deeply she did love him, he had joined the Guards and left for France, and there had been no time to make amends other than one brief, two-day, compassionate leave after her mother’s death. Did he … could he have known how much he had meant to her? Fighting back tears, she reached out to reassure herself that she wasn’t alone.

  ‘Baby …’ Kurt mumbled thickly as her hand caressed his naked back.

  Crushing her cigarette in the ashtray beside her, she switched off the lamp. Bending her head she kissed his neck, her fingers seeking pulse spots that had aroused Eddie. As Kurt responded to her touch, it was enough to know that for the moment, there was someone lying beside her who could dispel the black thoughts crowding in on her. Tomorrow she would be alone again. But then, tomorrow was hours away.

  Chapter Six

  Bethan woke early to the sound of voices drifting up from the garden. Throwing back the bedclothes she went to the window and lifted a corner of the blackout in time to see David Ford climb into his car. Lieutenant Rivers and Sergeant Morelli were with him. Sunday or not, the Americans were working. She was glad. The rare free days when she was able to organise a family tea had become all the more precious since they had introduced round-the-clock shifts in the munitions factories and pits in an effort to step up production.