On the night before the funeral, he began to talk and Dora thought he would never stop. He talked about Nia, about their life together, and how they had always loved each other. As an afterthought, as if suddenly aware of who he was with, he told Dora that he had loved her too, but Dora only gave Rhiannon a grim smile and said nothing.
He talked until he fell asleep but instead of allowing him to stay where he was, on the couch near the still glowing fire, Dora woke him.
“Lewis, tomorrow’s the funeral. You have to be at the house and go with it from there. Barry needs you, and you need to be there.”
“I don’t know what I’ll do,” he said as he shrugged himself into his coat. “The house is for Barry and Caroline, I’ve always known that. I don’t know where I’ll go.”
“There’s always The Firs.” Dora’s eyes gleamed with malice as she remembered the discomfort of the shabby rooms in that place, where Lewis had spent some time after walking out of their home. “It isn’t as if you don’t know the place, is it?”
Dora stood at the door as the car drove away. She still loved him, she always would, but he wouldn’t come back. She had more pride now, and would never make a fool of herself over a man again. Not any more.
* * *
The funeral was a large one. Nia had been in business in the town for many years, taking over Temptations from her mother, and she had been well-liked. Lewis walked with Barry, and the Griffithses were with them, offering support.
Lewis stood between Viv and Basil and kept looking around as if waiting for Nia to come and tell him he’d had a nightmare, unable to accept what had happened. He stared at the coffin in which his happiness lay. “I’ve lost Joseph, and now Nia, why am I being punished so?” he murmured.
“You lost our Lewis-boy too,” Viv reminded him. But the words of reproach seemed not to penetrate the haze of misery and despair.
Dora was standing near and she said, “You had years of happiness, some never manage any.” Her voice was tender. She ached to comfort him but didn’t know how. Even a hand reaching out to touch his arm had been quickly withdrawn. Best to wait. Then, gradually aware of her concern and angry with herself for feeling it, her expression hardened and she walked away.
“He’s not coming back,” she told her daughter, wagging a warning finger. He had loved Nia too much for that to be possible. He wasn’t going to come back and treat her as a bolt-hole in his misery. Never again would she accept second best.
* * *
Farmer Booker saw the mournful Basil and Frank and Ernie at the graveside and murmured, “Not planning any more shenanigans here are you?”
“What the ’ell d’you mean?” Frank asked.
“That bit of poaching you were supposed to have done the night the graves were disturbed. The rabbits in that bag were as stiff as a load of firewood.”
Frank and Ernie, Viv and Jack took him on one side and explained to him what they had been doing. Booker’s laughter startled the mourners and frightened a few sparrows away from the newly-turned soil of the graves.
“Well, what could we do?” Frank demanded in a hoarse whisper. “Old sod he might have been, but we couldn’t have an uncle lying on top of Mrs Pryce-Yeoman for ever could we? It wouldn’t have been proper!” The laughter came again, louder, and Booker had to walk away from the crowd to enjoy it.
“I’ll drop the charges,” he said between helpless hoots of laughter. “You’ve given me the best laugh this ages.”
Full of consternation at Booker’s generosity, the three Griffiths boys went to see him later that day and, somewhat bemused, he agreed not to withdraw charges of trespass and poaching. They needed the trespass charge. It was an alibi, of sorts, for being innocent of the more serious charge of desecrating the graves.
* * *
Barry and Caroline quickly confirmed that the house in Chestnut Road was theirs.
“What shall we do about Lewis?” Caroline asked after the visit to the solicitors. “This is his home. We can’t just tell him to go, can we?”
“Let him stay for a while. Until he finds somewhere else. There’s plenty of room until our Joseph has a brother or a sister,” he said, touching her rosy cheek with his lips.
“We have to find this Mr Davies, the man she married in London. He ought to know, and there’s the painting and the other things she left him in her will.”
Lewis had the man’s name and address and, on the advice of the solicitor, they wrote to him.
The reply came very quickly. He offered his condolences and said how sorry he was that they had never met. He would be very happy to receive the small gifts and the Paul Nash painting, which he had bought for Nia as a wedding present. Without delay, Barry parcelled them up and posted them off.
* * *
The party to celebrate the engagement of Ernie and Helen was attended by half the town’s young people. Or so Hywel thought as they trooped in; a never-ending stream. The TV was pushed into the shed and Farmer Booker surprised them all by turning up with a gift for the young couple and playing them a few tunes on a piano accordion. By eight o’clock the party was off to a good start.
Caroline and Barry were there, sober and looking pale, although Janet was relieved to see a different light in Caroline’s eyes when she and Barry exchanged glances. When she had a chance, she asked how things were, and Caroline hugged her and said, “It’s going to be all right, Mam. Barry and I are all right.”
Grieving for Nia hadn’t been allowed to stop them celebrating the engagement of Caroline’s brother. As Barry reminded them, they were his only family now and he was going to treasure them.
As Lewis wouldn’t be there, Dora walked across the fields with Rhiannon, Charlie and Gwyn, and Viv and Joan, who made excuses for her twin Megan, explaining that Megan had a previous engagement.
* * *
Megan was discontented. She missed the company of her sister and on the occasions when they did meet Joan was no fun any more. Marriage had sobered her. Once, The Weston Girls, as they had always been known, had a reputation for doing the unlikely and even the unacceptable and outrageous. Now things had changed and Megan hated it. She, who had mainly followed her sister’s lead, was looking for excitement.
Knowing that her family did not want her to involve herself with Terrence Jenkins, with whom she had once had a brief affair, she invited him to go with her to the Griffithses party. An hour after Joan had made her excuses, she walked in. The expression on Joan’s face alone, made it worth the bother.
On Joan’s insistence, Viv told Megan they would walk her home, but Megan clung to Terry’s arm and shook her head.
“Terrence will look after me, won’t you?” She smiled up at Terrence, a handsome if rather haughty-looking individual, and stretched up to touch her lips against his chin, which was as far as she could reach. “You don’t have to worry about me while I’m with him,” she assured everyone.
Terrence was far from comfortable in the shabby and over-filled house. He thought of other places where they could have spent their time and constantly glanced at the clock and wished it was time to leave. He was afraid to suggest escaping too soon, he was anxious to please Megan even to the extent of staying in this awful room with these awful people she amused herself by calling her friends.
Marion and her family arrived at nine o’clock and left again at half-past. They hardly spoke, in fact Fred stood clutching his cap, wringing it out, obviously embarrassed in company. Janet waved them off and thought it unlikely she would see them again. It had been exciting, searching for them. “But sometimes it’s better to leave the past locked away,” she whispered to Hywel.
“You had as much chance of teaching that lot to enjoy themselves as teaching a goldfish to ride a bike!” was Hywel’s reply.
During the evening Megan stayed close to Terrence and made sure she was seen kissing him, behaving in a way that embarrassed those present. She looked at the others with thinly veiled contempt. All these couples doing the convention
al thing. Surely life could hold something more?
When it was time to leave, she walked to Terrence’s car, clinging to his arm with the concentration of a drunk.
“Megan, love, does this mean you’ve forgiven me?” Terrence asked. “I promise you I haven’t seen a girl since we parted. I want to marry you.”
“Oh no, Terrence, don’t let’s be boring. The town has had a surfeit of weddings and engagements, for heaven’s sake! Let’s run off to London and have some fun.”
“Run away and get married like Jack, you mean?”
“No! No, just have some fun before life squeezes us into our allotted rut.”
* * *
The Gunners were determined to disapprove, and were helped in that aim by Ernie’s announcement that he had lost his job. His days as a bus conductor had ended ignominiously after starting a fight with a passenger who dared to tell him his bus was late.
Gloria told him he could forget his hopes of marrying Helen until he found a job and kept it. Helen smiled and cancelled out the threat with a wink. For the rest of the evening, Gloria tried to show everyone how upset she was, but the laughter got to her and the teasing which included herself and Wilfred softened her resolve and she enjoyed the evening in spite of her determination not to.
Charlie and a sleepy Gwyn walked across the fields with Rhiannon and Dora and Viv and Joan. On the doorstep of seven Sophie Street, sitting huddled against the cold night air, was Lewis.
“Wrong house, Lewis,” Dora said sharply. “Memory going is it? You live at Chestnut Road now, or The Firs if Barry’s thrown you out.”
“I just wanted to hear how the party went, Dora. That’s all.”
“It was the usual lively evening, with the Griffithses on top form and poor Helen on a knife-edge, trying to be her mother’s polite little girl and at the same time hold her own with the Griffiths boys. They’ll be all right, Helen and Ernie.”
“I suppose they’re my family now, aren’t they? Nia’s son married to Caroline, their little Joseph my grandson.”
“We’re your family,” Viv said, with an arm around his mother. “You turned away from us, we didn’t leave you.”
Viv stood with an arm around his wife and his mother, Charlie stood with Rhiannon and his son. Lewis stood up and nodded to them all before walking slowly to the car. Before getting in he listened to the sound of them, laughing and chattering as they closed the door on him, then he drove away.
* * *
When the guests had gone and the debris of the evening was scattered around them, Janet and Hywel summed it up.
“Well, so much for our new relations, love,” Hywel sighed. “Stayed less than an hour, showed their embarrassment at our uncouth ways and walked off with their pathetic noses in the air. How dare they think themselves superior to us?”
Janet chuckled. “Who doesn’t? Did you see the way Terrence glared at us all? And the way Helen’s mother looked at the food? A soul-sister to old Gladys Weston she is for sure, or tries to be! She, actually shuddered when I brought in that plateful of brawn sandwiches and a seven-pound sweet jar filled with pickled onions!”
“She was more likely upset at the way everyone tucked in! They all eat as though they’d been starved for a week. Small-minded lot, our new relations, you’ll never change them. Some people never change.”
“You’re right, love.” Janet laughed and pointed to the mantelpiece on which stood a long envelope. “Nothing changes. Our Basil and our Frank and our Ernie are in court again next week, for trespassing and poaching.”
First published in the United Kingdom in 1997 by Severn House Publishers Ltd
This edition published in the United Kingdom in 2016 by
Canelo Digital Publishing Limited
57 Shepherds Lane
Beaconsfield, Bucks HP9 2DU
United Kingdom
Copyright © 1997 by Grace Thompson
The moral right of Grace Thompson to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 9781910859551
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places and events are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
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