Pontypridd 05 - Such Sweet Sorrow

by Catrin Collier

  ‘He’s a lucky man. Well, goodnight, Miss Ronconi. Thank you for an interesting and eventful evening, and the pleasure of your company.’ He touched her hand with his. ‘I hope we can repeat the experience.’

  ‘I’d be happier if it wasn’t so eventful next time.’

  ‘So would I.’

  ‘Gina,’ she called to her sister, who was standing so close to Luke they’d merged into a single large shadow next to the wall.

  ‘You’ll be down the café tomorrow night?’ Gina whispered to Luke.

  ‘Yes,’ he murmured, his heart thundering at the thought of this enchanting, fascinating girl actually wanting to see him again.

  ‘Until then.’ Gina pressed her fingers briefly into the palm of his hand.

  ‘Gina!’ Tina repeated crossly from the doorstep.

  ‘Coming.’ Gina tore herself away and ran up the steps.

  ‘Pretty girls,’ Alexander observed as Luke joined him for the walk back down Llantrisant Road to Graig Avenue.

  ‘Beautiful,’ Luke agreed in a rare display of eloquence.

  ‘Going to the café tomorrow night?’ Alexander asked, his voice wavering in amusement.

  ‘Yes. You?’

  ‘See how I feel. At this moment I’d rather not imagine what another day down that pit is going to do to me. But, if I survive, I’ll be happy to join you.’

  ‘Thank you for coming up specially to tell me, Harry.’ Megan opened the front door to usher Harry out. Evan and Phyllis had tactfully remained in the back kitchen, Evan deciding that as circumstances had thrown Harry and Megan together, he had no right to interfere with their reunion.

  ‘It was the least I could do. That’s a brave girl you’ve got there, Megan,’ he complimented her.

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Would you mind if I called in tomorrow to ask how she is?’

  ‘I’ll get Evan to drop by the shop and tell you.’

  ‘Megan, nothing’s happened to change the way I feel about you.’

  ‘A lot has happened to me. I’m not the person I was.’

  ‘I can see that, but I still love you,’ he blurted out suddenly, realising he might never get another opportunity to tell her.

  ‘You’re also still living with your wife, Harry.’

  ‘Not for much longer.’

  ‘I’m tired, Harry. Bone tired. I haven’t the strength to face your wife cutting me dead every time she sees me on the hill, or the gossips watching everything I do and say, making me feel grubby and dirty, like a streetwalker.’

  ‘Supposing I left my wife, got a divorce? What then, Megan?’

  ‘Didn’t you take a long, hard look at me? If I was ever worth the sacrifice, I’m not any more. Goodnight, Harry, and God bless.’ She closed the door on him, leaving him to his thoughts and the walk down the hill.

  Harry turned his steps towards Vicarage corner. All the time Megan had been in prison he had looked forward to her release as a watershed that would mark a new beginning for both of them. But now he’d actually seen her he realised that he should have made the changes years ago.

  He’d condemned himself to living the stale, sterile life he detested, by taking the easiest option. Remaining with his wife, because leaving her would have meant embarking on an emotional trauma he’d been too cowardly to instigate or confront.

  And now he had reached a point when he was prepared to renounce the whole of his past life, Megan had turned him down. All his grand schemes shattered, and for what? So he could stay trapped in a sham marriage with a woman who didn’t love him.

  More bitter than he would have believed possible, he opened the side door and walked upstairs. The flat was silent and in darkness, just as it usually was when he came home late. He went into the kitchen, opened a cupboard and found a tumbler. The taste of the brandy Phyllis had poured into his tea lingered. He wanted more.

  He went into the living room and opened the sideboard, finding what he was looking for behind the sherry: a half-bottle of brandy, all that was left of the Christmas cheer he had bought for visitors, who apart from his sister-in-law and her henpecked husband hadn’t materialised.

  Pouring half the brandy into the tumbler, he settled back to continue with some serious drinking, so serious it didn’t seem worth the effort of leaving the living room for the single bed in the cramped, uncomfortable box room. And, as his eyes finally closed, he lay back and relaxed, forgetting all the threats he had made to his wife about sleeping in her bed that night.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Andrew leaned wearily against the door of the operating theatre and tore the cap from his head.

  ‘Operation go well?’ His father was sitting in the small room the doctors used as a changing room.

  ‘Not wonderfully.’

  ‘From what the admitting sister said, it was bad. Both legs crushed beyond repair.’

  ‘I’ve tried to save one.’

  ‘The other?’

  ‘I had to amputate below the knee. It should heal well enough. It’s the other one I’m worried about. God only knows if the bones will knit back together. If they don’t, he’ll be facing another major operation, probably an amputation, within the week. He told me he joined the Guards yesterday. Poor devil, one thing’s certain, they won’t want him now.’

  ‘Look on the bright side: this accident may have saved his life.’

  ‘Are you saying he’s better off crippled in Pontypridd than dead on the fields of France?’

  ‘A lot of men would have given a great deal to be offered that option in the last show.’

  ‘I suppose they would, but I can’t see Wyn being overly grateful for his present state.’ Andrew pulled off the operating gown he was wearing and tossed it into a linen bin. ‘What are you still doing here? I thought Diana’s injuries were superficial?’

  ‘Apart from mild concussion they are. Cuts, grazes, contusions, and a bad case of worrying about Wyn Rees. I gave her a sedative and they found her a bed. She’s been sleeping for the past two hours.’

  ‘You could have gone home and gone to bed yourself.’

  ‘I wanted to have a word with you. You always seem to be in a hurry when you’re in the surgery, and you and Bethan never call in to see your mother …’

  ‘Don’t start that again, Dad.’

  ‘Your mother would like to see more of Rachel.’

  ‘I know.’ Andrew resigned himself to receiving yet another lecture. His father was a doctor, his parents ‘crache’ who looked down on Bethan and her family because her father was a miner. But class differences hadn’t prevented him and Bethan from falling in love, and staying in love, even through the trauma of the death of one baby, and a temporary estrangement that at one time had threatened to become permanent.

  ‘I think you should teach Bethan to drive.’

  ‘What?’ Andrew had been expecting many things, but that suggestion hadn’t been one of them. ‘You know something about my interview on Thursday, don’t you?’ he asked warily. His father had influential contacts. It wouldn’t take much for him to find out exactly why his son and the other junior partner from the practice had been called to register.

  ‘They’re expecting trouble to break out in France at any moment, and they’re doubling the number of field hospitals to cope with the expected casualties.’

  ‘You mean we’re going to start dropping more than paper on the Germans?’

  ‘There may be a way to get you out of this …’

  ‘Oh no you don’t.’ Andrew turned on his father. ‘If I find out that you’ve pulled strings to keep me out of the army, I’ll go to the recruiting office and enlist in the first regiment that will take me as a private.’

  ‘It’s not just me and your mother, it’s Bethan and the baby.’

  ‘I’ve discussed it with Bethan. She doesn’t want me to go any more than I want to, but the one thing we’re both agreed on is that if I’m called up, I go.’

  ‘You always did have a stubborn streak.’

&nb
sp; ‘And I know who I got it from.’ He glared angrily at his father. The older man returned his stare for a moment, then his face crumpled into a grimace that might have been a smile, or some other emotion Andrew didn’t care to think about.

  ‘If you insist on going, your mother and I would consider it a privilege to do whatever we can for Bethan and Rachel.’

  ‘I know you mean well, Dad, and I’ll tell Bethan what you said.’

  ‘We only want to help …’

  ‘How much time do I have?’ Andrew cut in abruptly.

  ‘Not much. They want you to report for duty next Monday.’

  A sick, hollow feeling rose from the pit of Andrew’s stomach as he reached for his jacket.

  ‘Dr Evans and I can run the practice until then. Take some time off.’

  ‘Don’t be stupid.’

  ‘What’s stupid about it? We’re going to have to do without you and Trevor after this week, so we may as well get used to it now.’

  ‘Surely you’re going to get replacements?’

  ‘If we can. But a town like this isn’t going to be high on the list of priorities when there’s a whole army in France waiting for a war that’s due to start any day. I mean it. Make a holiday of what’s left of the week. I’ll take it as a personal affront if you don’t. I was running the medical side of things in this town before you were born.’

  ‘And it looks as though you might be running them when I’m gone. Sorry – I didn’t mean that the way it came out.’

  ‘You’ll take my advice, about teaching Bethan to drive? She’ll need to, stuck all the way up Penycoedcae hill.’

  ‘She passed her test last week.’

  ‘You could have told us.’

  ‘I intended to.’

  ‘You’ll come to tea? Thursday would be nice. I know your mother would prefer to hear the news from you.’

  ‘We’ll be there.’ He walked his father to the door. The silence between them was palpable. For the first time in his life, Andrew had an urge to hug the old man, but something, probably the stiff upper lip instilled in him during childhood, held him back. He shook hands with his father at the door, and watched him walk down the steps holding the regulation torch downwards, shining the spotlight on his feet as he headed for home.

  The brief moment of intimacy had passed. Andrew knew better than to try to recapture it. He regretted its passing but he wasn’t to find out just how much, until later. Much, much later.

  ‘You awake, Tina?’ Gina whispered in the depths of the double-bed they shared.

  ‘I was trying to sleep.’

  ‘Do you think Diana will be all right?’

  ‘Dr John said so, and he should know. I’m not sure about Wyn Rees though.’

  ‘He looked…’

  ‘Gina, there’s no point in talking about it. We’ll find out what state they’re in tomorrow.’

  ‘What do you think of Luke?’

  ‘So that’s who you really wanted to talk about. In a word, scruffy.’

  ‘Tina!’

  ‘Ssh, you’ll wake the others.’ Tina pulled down the bedclothes and peered over the edge. The blackout curtains were so thick she couldn’t even see the bed her three younger sisters were sleeping in, let alone the girls.

  ‘He is not scruffy!’ came an indignant whisper from beside her.

  ‘He’s a conchie.’

  ‘You walked home with Alexander, he’s a conchie, and you’re engaged.’

  ‘I didn’t walk home with him in that sense.’

  ‘I’m not sure William would agree with you. I saw the way Alexander was ogling you, and he’s crache. You know what William thinks of crache.’

  ‘I could hardly leave you alone with Casanova, now could I? It’s obvious what he’s after.’

  ‘He’s not after anything. He’s all alone here. Everything’s strange …’

  ‘And you’re a sucker for a sob story.’

  ‘I am not. I can tell when a man –’

  ‘A man? How old is he?’

  ‘Eighteen.’

  Tina giggled mockingly.

  ‘There’s nothing to laugh about, we’re of age,’ Gina asserted indignantly.

  ‘To get married? You meet him for the first time tonight and already you’re planning your wedding?’

  ‘Just because it didn’t happen that quickly between you and William, you’re jealous.’

  ‘You know nothing about the way it happened between me and William.’

  ‘I do know that if I loved a man who’d joined up I wouldn’t bother with an engagement. I’d get married straight away.’

  ‘Oh, shut up!’ Tina turned over, pulled her pillow over her head and pretended to sleep.

  Before William had left she had wanted to marry him, but now, only one day later, her mind was filled with images of Alexander Forbes. She didn’t want to think about the man, but aspects insisted on intruding into her thoughts: the cut of his clothes, the quality of the cloth in his camel-hair coat, his exquisite manners, his accent – the way she’d felt when he’d put his arms around her after she’d seen Diana lying on the road. How could she even think of Alexander when she’d promised to marry William? Was it possible to love two men at the same time? Why couldn’t she remember William’s face clearly? Why couldn’t she feel him close to her? Why couldn’t she think of him every minute of every day and ignore Alexander? And what was she going to do for the next six weeks when William wouldn’t be around and Alexander would?

  Concerned at the possibility of Wyn going into clinical shock from loss of blood, Andrew spent the night at the hospital. After telephoning Bethan to warn her he wouldn’t be home until morning, he dozed fitfully for a few hours in the sister’s office. It brought back memories of his early courtship, when Bethan had still been nursing and he’d used every excuse he could to visit her when she’d been on night duty.

  He looked in on Diana a couple of times. The sedative his father had prescribed had certainly done the trick. She continued to sleep soundly. Eventually the night sister came into the office bearing a cup of tea. He sat up stiffly and took it from her.

  ‘Dawn broken?’

  ‘I have it on good authority that it’s on its way.’

  ‘How are our patients doing?’

  ‘The same as when you looked in on them half an hour ago.’

  ‘I was trying to be discreet and not disturb the ward.’

  ‘You have a home to go to and, knowing you, rounds to do.’ The sister wouldn’t have dared be so familiar with Dr John senior, but Trevor and Andrew were proving to be quite a different breed from the older generation in the practice.

  ‘My father is taking over for me.’

  ‘And Dr Evans will be in shortly to take over here. Your patients will be in safe hands.’

  ‘I’ll wait for Diana Powell to wake so I can take her home. She’s my wife’s cousin,’ he added in answer to her quizzical look. Taking his tea he left the office and walked out into the corridor to stretch his legs. The lights were still dimmed to night-time strength. He tweaked back a blackout blind. The Common was swathed in darkness. If dawn was on its way, there was no sign of it.

  ‘How’s Wyn?’

  He turned to see Diana, up and dressed behind him, the bandage on her head only marginally whiter than her face. ‘How are you?’

  ‘Fine,’ she replied irritably. ‘How’s Wyn?’ she repeated urgently.

  ‘He’s going to live.’

  ‘His legs?’

  ‘I’ve had to amputate one below the knee. I’m sorry, Diana, I had no choice. He would have bled to death if I hadn’t operated.’

  ‘When we came in, one of the nurses warned me that he might lose his legs.’

  He pushed the cup and saucer he was holding on to the window-ledge and put his hands on her shoulders.

  ‘I’ve tried to save his other leg. It’s early days yet, but it may recover.’

  ‘Even if it does, Wyn will still be crippled.’

  ‘If the bones
knit back together he’ll be able to use it again. The other leg will be fitted with an artificial limb and after physiotherapy hardly anyone will notice.’

  ‘He’ll be crippled,’ she reiterated bitterly, ‘and it will be my fault.’

  ‘None of this is your fault, Diana. If anyone’s to blame it’s the driver of that van.’

  ‘Wyn wouldn’t have even been on the road if he hadn’t pushed me out of the way. He was going into the army.’

  ‘Once his leg heals he still may be able to. There are plenty of jobs a man with his disability can do.’

  ‘Who are you trying to kid?’

  ‘The first thing Wyn said when he came around after the operation was, “How’s Diana.” He obviously thinks a lot of you. Perhaps it’s time to repay the compliment. He’s going to need all the help and friendship he can get in the coming weeks.’

  ‘Can I see him?’

  He looked at her, wondering if she’d heard the gossip about Wyn Rees’s sexual preferences.

  ‘Please, Andrew.’

  She looked so wretched, he capitulated. ‘Only on condition that you don’t try to talk to him. Then I’m taking you straight home, and no arguments.’

  ‘I’ve got to sort out the shops.’

  ‘Pontypridd can do without its sweets for one day.’ Putting his arm around her shoulders he led her down the corridor. He opened the door quietly and looked at the nurse sitting beside Wyn’s bed and nodded. Taking Diana by the hand he guided her through the door. She bit her lip and clenched her fists as she stared at Wyn lying, ashen and bloodless against a background of snowy hospital bedlinen. She stared at the tent that had been placed over his lower legs to keep the weight of the blankets from his injuries.

  ‘I’ll let you know when he’s well enough to receive visitors,’ Andrew whispered as he pulled her back into the corridor.

  ‘Promise?’

  ‘I promise,’ he answered mechanically, wondering if he’d be around to let her know. First he had to make a telephone call to Trevor to tell him what lay in store for them, then he had to go home. And facing Bethan was going to be the hardest of all.

  Harry dreamed there was a fire. The bells of the fire engine were ringing, loud, aggravating, as the engine raced up the Graig hill, louder, louder …