Unlocking the Past

by Grace Thompson

  “You go and have your talk in peace,” she said. “Hywel and I will entertain Joseph. He can help us make cakes for tea, eh Joseph? Dab-hand he is at mixing cakes.”

  * * *

  Barry drove Caroline to where they could park the van and look over the town and the sea beyond, in front of a small patch of woodland. They had left the van in a layby and walked through the fields where they had often walked in the days when they were married but just friends. Barry felt that a place where their relationship had been happy and uncomplicated, was the best place to discuss their future.

  “I’ve sold the business,” he began, and at once Caroline’s eyes clouded with alarm. This was it, he was going to tell her goodbye.

  “You’re going away?” she asked. “Making a new start?”

  “Only if you’ll come with me,” he said. “Caroline, I’ve gone about things all wrong. I expected you to support me and help in the business but gave nothing in return.”

  “It wasn’t easy for any of us.”

  “Something went wrong right at the start and I avoided it instead of trying to put it right.”

  “I was to blame,” Caroline said but Barry shushed her with a gentle hand.

  “It was both of us, love. We both started off with such a handicap we couldn’t succeed. We both loved Joseph. Your Frank said we’re both carrying a sense of betrayal and he was right. You felt you were being unfaithful to Joseph and I felt I was cheating on my brother.”

  “I haven’t stopped loving Joseph, I don’t think I ever will, but that’s in the past, only a memory.”

  “Can we forget all that and start again? Right from the beginning I mean, courting like we’ve just met, not rushing into a double bed so we have to have Joseph between us to give us the space we both need. Just slowly and gradually, no plans, just to see where it takes us.”

  “You said you’ve sold the business. What will you do?”

  “I’ve got a job in the plastics factory. I started last Monday. It’s a funny sort of job, machines pressing out things like combs and hair brushes and the like, but it’s reasonable money and no evening work, so we’ll be able to do things together like a family should.”

  “You did this for me?”

  “For us,” he corrected with a smile.

  “You’re still living at the flat?” she asked, afraid to hope that this time their rocky path might lead to something better.

  “Only until you find us a place where you’d be happy,” he said. “You and young Joseph. Somewhere far from the memories of Temptations sweet shop, but not too far from your Mam and Dad. And with places to walk and play football and do all the things I neglected to do before. Will you try again, love? D’you think we have enough to make something of our lives together?”

  “I don’t want to start again by making conditions, Barry, but will you promise me something?”

  “Of course.”

  “That if doubts creep in, we talk about everything openly and honestly.”

  “That’s an easy promise to give. If we’d done that to begin with we wouldn’t have wasted so much precious time.” He stood up and offered her a hand to rise and they walked slowly back to the van. As he helped her in, Barry touched his lips against her forehead. “We have to lock away the past.”

  “No, neither of us wants to forget Joseph. I think we have to learn to live with our ghost, remember him with love and affection, but make sure the past doesn’t ruin our future.”

  Back at the Griffiths’s cottage, Janet had made a cake in the hope that there was cause for a celebration. “If not I can always feed it to the goats,” she told Hywel.

  * * *

  Jack and Victoria arrived home on Sunday, and the following day Jack had to be at school for the first day of term. They went first to Victoria’s mother’s house in Goldings Street and the whole family woke and ran down stairs to hug and kiss them both. Jack left Victoria there and went to the house he would now call home, to check that Frank and his new mother-in-law had done all he had asked and that the house was in a fit state to receive his new wife. It was six-thirty when he returned to Goldings Street to collect his bride.

  They called at his parents’ house at seven, banging on the door and when it opened, standing there with Jack holding out Victoria’s hand for their inspection. Sian didn’t say a word, she just hugged them both and burst into tears. Islwyn laughed and said, “What a laugh! Well done, boy, well done.”

  Jack wondered whether his father meant well done on finding such a lovely wife or well done for outwitting Grandmother Gladys! He didn’t care. He was home, and every day in the future his wife would be waiting for him when he returned from school, a prospect that filled him with joy.

  Mrs Jones had done all they had asked and their pantry was filled and the house looked perfect when they went inside, with Jack romantic enough to insist he carried Victoria over the threshold. Supper was toast, which Jack burnt, and eggs which were forgotten so they stuck to the pan, as Jack kissed her.

  His plan to take things slowly faded as she responded to his kisses and, switching off the gas cooker, he led her up the stairs.

  * * *

  Janet was so overjoyed to learn that Caroline and Barry were together again, or would be when they found somewhere to live, that the thoughts of finding her sister were temporarily forgotten. So receiving news of her was something of a shock, made more so by the way she came by it.

  The long, stiff envelope sitting on the mat the day Jack and Victoria began their married life together, looked ominous. It had the certain look of officialdom and for the Griffithses that usually meant trouble. She took it through the house to where Hywel and Frank and Ernie were eating breakfast in the lazy morning sun and offered it to her husband.

  “You two haven’t been up to anything, have you?” Hywel asked of the boys, his wiry eyebrows meeting in a knitted frown.

  Janet watched as Hywel’s thick fingers struggled with the flap and sat as he unfolded the crisp pages and began to read. His face took on a deeper frown, then he smiled and said,

  “Bad news and good, love. Your brother, Adrian, died and you inherit something or other. You have to go to the solicitor’s office tomorrow morning and arrange an appointment to read the will.” He put the letter down and touched her hands, covering their smallness with his large palms and curling his fingers around them in reassurance. “Sad to hear of a death, but don’t grieve for someone you never knew.”

  “I’m not going to grieve, but I wish I’d seen him before he died, just to see if he’d changed. He might have changed, Hywel.”

  “No love, he hadn’t changed. And I didn’t like to tell you but you have seen him.”

  “I have?”

  “Remember that man who came to look at the goats when we thought to sell them? The man you disliked so much you wouldn’t let him have the goats?”

  “That was Adrian?”

  “Nasty bit of work he was, you were right to stay away from him.”

  “I wonder why he came? He must have known who we were. Why didn’t I recognise him? My own brother?”

  “You did, love,” Hywel said softly, “You didn’t name him but you saw what he was, said he reminded you of your father, remember? You recognised that cruel streak for sure.”

  “Perhaps he knew he was ill and came to say goodbye?”

  “Maybe, if you can imagine him being sensitive enough to do such a thing.”

  * * *

  Hywel went with her to the solicitor and waiting outside the office door were two women, a small, tired-looking lady who looked about seventy-five and a woman who, Janet guessed, was in her fifties.

  “Janet?” the elderly woman queried. Janet had found her sister, Marion.

  * * *

  Caroline found a flat overlooking the docks in a large house that had been converted into three flats. It had been given the grand name of Valencia Villa, and to Caroline it was perfect. The front rooms looked across the road towards the docks and
from the back they looked out on a long garden which would be a perfect playground for Joseph.

  When she took Barry to see it, one evening after work, she showed him around as if she were a saleswoman and he a prospective purchaser.

  “Three bedrooms if you count the room they call a box room, and a kitchen and a proper bathroom and,” she announced as she opened the final door, “the biggest living room anyone could want!”

  They stood at the bay window and looked out to where ships from every seafaring nation called, bringing food and luxuries in ships with foreign names, and foreign crews, and which, once emptied of their treasures, were loaded with Welsh coal and steel to transport it far and wide. Joseph would never grow bored with watching their comings and goings.

  “What d’you think?” Caroline asked, apprehensively. So far Barry had said hardly a word. He seemed to be looking at her more than the rooms she was so proudly presenting.

  “Perfect,” he breathed. “Perfect, like you.” Caroline turned to him and in an agony of shyness, revealed by the rich colour rising on her face, said, “This time I’ll try really hard to make it work, Barry.”

  “We can’t fail, my love.” He kissed her and desire hardened his lips and his arms became a vice and she pulled away in something akin to fear and stared up at him, her dark eyes full of reproach.

  “I’m sorry, Barry. It’s no use. I can’t belong to you, not like that.” Tears flooded her eyes and she whispered, “There have been too many difficulties.”

  He walked away, leaving her in the flat. After standing in the silent room for an age, she went out, closing the door on her hopes of a marriage and a home of her own, with a loud click of the key.

  * * *

  The two newly-wed couples settled happily into their new lives. Joan and Viv Lewis worked together at Weston’s Wallpaper and Paint, and dreamed of further expansion. Victoria and Jack Heath – who to Gladys’s further dismay had abandoned the addition of the name Weston – were developing a pattern of living that suited them both. Victoria was content to stay at home and keep the house perfect for Jack’s return, when she would have a meal ready to put before him which they would share while they discussed the events of their hours of separation.

  * * *

  Rhiannon knew something was wrong with Caroline. After hearing of her meeting with Barry and their plans to find a home and begin their tortured married life again, she had expected Caroline to be excited and filled with plans. Instead, she was subdued and when they met refused to discuss her hunt for a place of their own.

  “I’m sorry if I’m being nosy,” Rhiannon said when her innocent enquiries met with a blank silence. “I thought you’d like to talk about your progress. I’m sure I would if it were me.”

  “There isn’t any progress. Barry and I seem to take a few steps back every time we take one forward. We seem further apart than when we made the foolish decision to marry.”

  “Thing are bound to be difficult, starting with a mock marriage, but if you love each other—”

  “He says he loves me but I think he’s in love with the idea of being married and having a home. After all, roughing it in the discomfort of the small flat over his mother’s shop isn’t much of an existence, is it? No, it’s that hollow miserable life he’s living that makes him want to try again. Unable to go home to his mother, who’s blissfully happy, settled with Lew—your father,” she amended in embarrassment. “I think even marriage to me would be better than night after night on his own in that flat with no hope of change. Don’t you?”

  “That isn’t why he wants you to be together! He loved little Joseph before he loved you, I think,” Rhiannon said trying to be completely honest. “But love for you quickly followed. I could see it happening, remember. In his heart he gradually left me and turned to you. He wants a home and a family, but only with you.”

  “I keep seeing Joseph when he comes near,” Caroline whispered. “Instead of seeing Barry I see Joseph and then he’s all wrong. Oh, I know it sounds as if I’m in love with a ghost but it isn’t like that. I want to love Barry but I can’t help thinking that we both still love Joseph too much.”

  “Perhaps Barry knows that, he might even think that every time he touches you, you’re wishing it was Joseph.”

  “Then how can we ever put things right between us?”

  “Determination to make it work is the only way.”

  “Wanting to isn’t enough,” Caroline sighed.

  “I’m dreaming of having a place of my own, too,” Rhiannon told her.

  “You and Charlie Bevan?”

  Rhiannon nodded. “Most people accept that he’s given up his criminal past, all, that is, except our Dad.”

  “It’s never easy, is it?” Caroline sighed.

  * * *

  Rhiannon and her courtship with Charlie was once more the subject of conversation in Nia and Lewis’s house in Chestnut Road. Lewis was trying to think of ways to persuade his daughter to stop seeing the man.

  “Leave them, Lewis, love,” Nia pleaded when he complained to her about how often Rhiannon was out with “that damned ex-jailbird”.

  “He’s more than an ex-jailbird, my dear. No one is simply how one person sees him. You have one opinion of Charlie, I have another and Rhiannon a different one again. Three impressions and Charlie is all of them. Rhiannon believes he will stay on the path of honesty and why should we think we know better? Let’s give him the support she wants us to give. That way she’ll relax and look at things more calmly. If we continue to fight her on this she might jump too soon into the biggest mistake of her life.”

  Lewis saw the sense of her words and when Nia suggested inviting Rhiannon and Charlie and young Gwyn for tea that weekend, he agreed.

  “Whole-heartedly mind, Lewis love,” she warned gently. “If you’re thinking of using the invitation as an excuse for gibes and accusations, best we leave it.”

  “All right,” he smiled, kissing her cheek, “you’ve convinced me I have to behave.” He kissed her again and added, “I’ll get sweets and a present for young Gwyn. What d’you think he’d like, a jigsaw puzzle?”

  “A water bottle or a new bell for his bike might be better,” she suggested. “He loves that bike, and he goes for quite long rides with Rhiannon and Charlie on Sundays.”

  Lewis agreed, told her she was wonderful and decided to buy all three.

  * * *

  It was with some trepidation that Charlie, dressed in his smartest suit and a new tie bought for him by Rhiannon, walked up the drive and knocked on the door of Nia’s house. Lewis answered the door, and, with what was obviously a forced smile, welcomed them inside. Nia kissed Rhiannon and gave Gwyn a hug and led them out into the garden.

  The garden was quite large with shrubs and a few old trees with one or two flower beds, a perfect place for Gwyn to explore. Leaving him to his own devices, the four adults sat in the chairs set out near the rose bed and talked.

  Lewis said little. Promising Nia he would say nothing impolite had robbed him of anything to say. But Nia and Rhiannon chatted easily and brought Charlie into the conversation like experts.

  He eyed the young man warily and had to admit that he seemed genuinely fond and respectful of his daughter.

  Charlie continually glanced around checking on what his son was doing. When he hadn’t heard or seen him for a few minutes he went to investigate. Lewis followed him as he left the group and wandered towards the largest tree. Looking up, Charlie called,

  “Come down, Gwyn. You should ask before you do anything like climb a tree. This isn’t a park, remember.”

  Clambering down easily, then hanging onto a branch with one hand, Gwyn swung until his father stepped forward and helped him to the ground.

  Nia had followed them and she said, “I really don’t mind you climbing the trees, Gwyn, but that one isn’t safe. A few branches have fallen and I think it should come down. I’m so worried that it’ll fall while little Joseph is here.”

  “Ne
xt weekend, I promise,” Lewis said.

  “Want a hand?” Charlie offered and with a glance from Nia, Lewis accepted his offer.

  “Next Saturday?”

  “Right then,” Charlie said happily. “Saturday afternoon it is.”

  Rhiannon went home feeling reassured that, once her father really knew Charlie, he wouldn’t raise any objections to their marrying.

  * * *

  Since that first brief meeting at the solicitor’s office, Janet Griffiths and her sister Marion Jolly hadn’t met. Marion had made excuses for every suggestion that their families should meet. There was a lack-lustre look in Marion’s eyes as if the thought of getting to know her relations was too much of an effort. Now, at the meeting arranged to hear the reading of Adrian’s will, while she stared at her sister and tried to encourage her to smile, Janet learned that they were joint inheritors of their father’s farm.

  It was a shock for Janet. Having had no news of her brother during all the years she had been away, she had presumed he had married and had children of his own to whom the farm would pass. Knowing he had lived his life alone, with only occasional help, saddened her.

  “I should have at least made enquiries and tried to help him,” she told her newly-found sister. “I was so glad to get away, and Hywel and I have been so happy, I’ve hardly given Adrian a thought.”

  Marion, who lived less than fifty miles from Pendragon Island, shrugged away the regret. “You can’t think with today’s attitudes and information of what you should have done years ago. Then you were still hurt and angry at the way he treated us, and of his cruelty to anyone near enough to be at the receiving end of his fury. That couldn’t be altered. From what I’ve learnt, he didn’t change even slightly from the bully we remembered. So, no regrets as we see him go to his grave.