Rosie Thomas 3-Book Collection

by Rosie Thomas

  ‘I know,’ she whispered. ‘I’m sorry. They don’t know how long, at the hospital. It could be days, or months. I must be with him, Jamie. A restaurant would give me a reason … and I can see how to make it work … it’s an idea, but it’s not crazy.’ And she was already clinging to it tenaciously.

  She heard Jamie’s distant sigh. ‘Let’s talk about it when I get there, okay? I must go. Big kiss to William. Goodbye, darling.’ Jamie hung up, and after a moment Angharad replaced her receiver.

  It had been an inconclusive call, but then she hadn’t expected any more than that.

  She pushed out of the kiosk and began to walk slowly along the street. There was a stone trough full of daffodils in front of the nearest house, and when she paused to admire them, the owner opened her window to talk. The old lady had taught Angharad at the age of three in Sunday school, helping her to smooth cut-out Old Testament figures on to a felt backdrop.

  ‘Lovely to see you back, Angharad,’ she said. ‘And your little boy too, I hear. Well done, well done.’ Just as if Angharad had successfully added the cut-out group of seven lean kine to the seven fat ones. ‘Not missing London, are you?’ ‘Not a bit,’ Angharad smiled at her.

  That was how it had been. In two days the village had assimilated her again, taking her long absence and her abrupt reappearance with a six-year-old son in tow completely at face value. Angharad realized with relief that they were only interested in what happened here, in the immediate and understandable vicinity. London was remote and mysterious, and anything could happen there.

  She had said as much to Jessie.

  Her reunion with her old friend had lasted over several hours and two bottles of wine. She hadn’t mentioned Harry, but she had said, warily, ‘I’m not married, you know. And Jamie, my … partner … isn’t William’s father.’

  Jessie had laughed merrily. ‘Feeling like the scarlet woman of Cefn? We’ve moved with the times up here too, you know. You’d be surprised at how free-thinking we all are compared with your day. Nothing like the shame there used to be. Remember poor Eluned Ellis?’

  Angharad did. It was the memory of her poor, pregnant walk down the street under the watching eyes that had haunted her in the last horrible days before she had left home. The thought of it brought a quick beat of gratitude and the recollection of how much she owed to Jamie Duff.

  Now Angharad said a cheerful goodbye to her old teacher, promising to come again soon for a proper talk. She would go on up to the happy little house on the new estate and see Jessie again.

  Jessie saw her coming and waved through the kitchen window. William and his new and inseparable friend Teck were sitting at the formica-topped table busy at some very messy painting. Jessie’s little girl was playing under the table, and the baby was asleep in its pram beside the back step.

  ‘I don’t want to go yet, Mum,’ William said as soon as he spotted her. ‘Teck and I are busy.’

  ‘How’d the call go?’ Jessie pushed back a bright strand of hair and reached to put the kettle on. Her figure had spread, and her freckles seemed wilder and her hair more unruly than ever, but to Angharad she seemed vibrant with contented happiness, and prettier than her girlhood had ever promised.

  ‘Not exactly a rapturous response.’

  Jessie paused with the kettle of water in her hand and looked at her. ‘You don’t want to go back, do you?’

  Angharad was staring out of the kitchen window, watching the wind driving dapples of shadow over The Mountain. ‘No.’ She heard her answer dropping like a pebble into a clear pool of silence. She thought of London and the shell of life there that she had left behind. Now that she was home, it was inconceivable to think of leaving here again.

  ‘Look, Mum.’ William held up his painting, and she smiled at him. What would that mean, for William? And Jamie? Angharad shivered. Talk to Jamie first. Perhaps between them they could make it work.

  ‘Is the restaurant idea an excuse for staying?’ Jessie was shrewd.

  ‘No. I can make it work, I’m sure of that. There’s nothing like it near here, and it’s close enough to holiday places, and business centres, for a wide potential clientele. It’d be very simple, Jess, but very good. Just a few covers, local produce …’

  Jessie saw the enthusiasm chasing anxiety out of Angharad’s face. She put her teacup down in front of her and said, diffidently, ‘Can I help you?’

  Angharad knew in a flash that it was just what she needed. To work in tandem with Jessie, practical and cheerful and quick-witted, as she knew of old, was the perfect answer.

  ‘My Mam, or Dicky’s, would have the baby so I’d have all the school hours free, and Dicky’d be here in the evenings …’ There was no mistaking how much Jessie wanted to do it.

  They looked at one another with dawning delight.

  It would, Angharad realized, be fun. Hard work, because she had already calculated that they would have to open for this summer’s season in a matter of weeks. But fun. With a little shock, she realized that that had been missing from her life almost since the beginning of Le Gallois.

  Smiling, she raised her cup to Jessie. ‘You do realize,’ she asked, ‘what you’re suggesting? We’ve got a month or so to plan, convert and launch a restaurant? And running it after that? Thirty hours a day?’

  Jessie lifted her cup too. A broad grin split the freckles. ‘Count me in,’ she said.

  They drank their toast in lukewarm tea. Glancing away again at the sun and shadow outside, Angharad felt an irrational glow of happiness. For all the obstacles to be surmounted, her wild scheme felt right. Righter than anything had felt for a very long time.

  An hour later, with the glow still warming her, Angharad was on her way to the hospital once more. This time William was in the seat behind her. The little boy was masking his apprehensiveness at meeting his remote and vaguely threatening grandfather with sulks at being separated from Teck.

  ‘Don’t want to go,’ he scowled, when Angharad smiled at him in the mirror. ‘Don’t want a grandpa. I’ve never had one before. Why should I need one now?’

  He had the heartless and unshadowed logic of childhood, Angharad thought, recalling her own. And how she herself had judged her father. She compared that sharpness with the endless, shifting shades of grey that wrapped around her now.

  Anxiety began to seep back again. What had seemed for so long to be unthinkable was about to happen. She was taking Harry’s son to meet her father. What if the old man turned on him, seeing the stamp of Joe Cotton’s features? Worse, what if the boy recoiled in fear from his emaciated, almost otherworldly grandfather?

  Angharad winced at the hurt that that could cause.

  Could this be the wrong time? Should she wait until later, perhaps another day, another week? If only it could have been sooner.

  Then she saw that William’s clear blue eyes were watching her face in the driving mirror.

  It was now. It must be done now.

  ‘Grandpa has always been here. It’s just that I have never brought you to see him. In a way, Willum, it’s my fault that you haven’t made friends before now. You see, your grandfather and I had a quarrel, years ago, before you were born. I left home and went away to London, and I never felt … brave, or generous, enough to come back. Now Grandpa is ill, and he wants to see us both, because he loves us. Do you understand?’

  William was still mutinous. ‘How can he love me if he’s never seen me? I don’t love him. I’ve got you, and Jamie. I don’t want anybody else.’

  Angharad looked back at the road, and at the wide metallic glimmer of the sea ahead. Her fingers tightened on the wheel, and she found herself counting the thumps of her heart.

  ‘He loves you because you’re my son.’

  She stopped the car again in the shelter of the closed-up theatre, and hand-in-hand they raced across the spray-wet promenade. William was dancing with the exhilaration of the air and shouting over the gusts of salt wind. ‘Run, Mum. Look, there’s a pier. And miles of sand. Can
we go in the arcades?’ Angharad remembered how exotic and enticing the slot machines and coloured lights and tinny music had seemed when she was a child. She could almost smell the candyfloss and cockles on the empty April wind. The excitement had communicated itself to William, even though most of the façades were still shuttered against the winter storms.

  ‘The season hasn’t begun. They might just open at weekends. Jamie might bring you when he comes.’

  ‘Oh yes.’

  They dodged across the road to the red-brick portico. The contrast of close, medicated hospital air with the bright bluster outside was sharp. William was subdued at once. He ducked behind Angharad, holding on to the folds of her skirt.

  From the door of the ward she saw the old man. He was propped up against a bank of pillows as before, but this time there were tubes running from his forearm to inverted bottles on a metal stand overshadowing the bed. Angharad braced herself. ‘This way.’ With her hand on William’s shoulder, she steered him towards his grandfather’s bed. The boy came reluctantly and stopped a little to one side. The sick man’s unnaturally bright eyes, deep in their sockets, saw Angharad at once and then darted to the child.

  As she stood with her arm around his shoulder, partly protective and partly offering him to her father’s unblinking gaze, she felt their difference. Her own, slight, fair-haired figure beside William, already tall for his age, with his dark hair and distinctive eyes.

  Exactly like Harry’s.

  At last old William held out his free hand. ‘Won’t you come closer, so that I can look at you?’

  William stepped out of the circle of his mother’s arms and went to him. The veined hand closed over his and there was a long moment of silence.

  Then, to Angharad’s relief, William chose to display the old-fashioned manners of the Goulds’ nursery instead of his own, more natural, unruly self.

  ‘Hello, Grandpa,’ he said. ‘Are you feeling better?’

  ‘Hello, William.’

  Angharad saw the effort it cost him to tighten his hand on the boy’s and draw him closer still.

  After another moment, with his eyes still greedily on the child’s face, he said, ‘You’re a real little Owain, aren’t you?’

  ‘Of course I am,’ William said stoutly. ‘William Owain, like you. Mum said.’

  It took her a moment to understand the words, repeating them foolishly in her head. Then a current of relief flowed through her. Of course.

  A real little Owain. William was desperately ill. He had no time, now, to see anything but what he wanted to. Somewhere there must be a touch of Angharad, even a reflection of himself, in the boy’s face. She had never been able to see it herself.

  But then Harry’s face had always been more vivid to her than her own. She felt a stab of sorrow for his loss. If he could have been here. Would it have helped the pain of seeing this, too late?

  ‘Sit down here.’ Old William’s hand was patting the bedclothes. ‘Don’t let the sister see you.’

  Little William’s sulks were forgotten. He was already perched on the bed, following his grandfather’s directions to locate chocolate in the locker. He broke off a piece and held it out before taking his own.

  ‘Here’s yours, Grandpa.’

  He shook his head and nodded at the bottles over the bed. ‘That’s my food in there. Goes straight in. Saves the bother of eating it.’ He kept his eyes averted from Angharad’s.

  William was fascinated but unconvinced. He peered at the tubes disappearing under the white tape binding the emaciated arm.

  ‘It doesn’t look very nice. And it isn’t a bother to eat chocolate. Not like carrots or something. Hurry up and eat it so that you can come home to Cefn and play with me. Do you know Teck? I haven’t got my train-set up here yet, but Mum says we’re staying longer than she thought so Jamie can bring it up when he comes. Teck can’t play with it, but you can if you want.’

  From William, it was an offer of unparalleled generosity. The old man thanked him with serious gratitude and the childish talk ran on as the chocolate disappeared.

  Watching, Angharad saw the rapport spring up between them. Old William said almost nothing, but the way he listened and prompted seemed to compel the child. It made her remember, painfully, how fiercely she had loved and admired him as a child herself. More deeply than she had loved Gwyn, even though it was Gwyn who gave all the warmth and sympathy and protection.

  At length, William began telling the story of St Winefride’s Well, just as he had told it to her on their visit years ago. The little boy listened spellbound, just as she had done. But clearly the effort exhausted him.

  ‘Ask your mother to take you,’ he said wearily, when it was over.

  ‘You take me. Please, Grandpa.’

  Old William seemed to have shrunk into the bedclothes and his skin was drawn even tighter. ‘I’ll try,’ he said, barely audibly. ‘One day.’

  ‘We must go,’ Angharad said. ‘Grandpa wants to go to sleep now.’

  He looked at her, seemingly for the first time since they had arrived. There was a faint, vanishing smile. ‘Thank you,’ he said.

  Thanking her for bringing the boy. Thanking her for her generosity, after so much. Not generous at all, Angharad thought. I’ve been stupid and blind. Just like you. Poor Dad. She felt the tears stinging her eyes.

  Then she looked and saw that her father was crying too. There were tears on his eyelashes. His throat was left bare by his pyjamas, and she could see the thin, clenched muscles working in it. He was too tired to reach out for the handkerchief on the locker.

  Angharad put it into his hand and kissed his forehead before turning away. She had never, in all their years, seen him cry before.

  So it takes dying, she thought bitterly, to peel the defences of pride away. The boy was waiting for her, tactfully silent.

  As they walked down the ward together she felt the weight of her love for him. And with suffocating intensity came the determination never to let barriers like that slide between herself and her own child. It was the knowledge that they surely would, in one way or another, that saddened her more than anything else on that sad day.

  They retraced their steps along the gloomy corridors towards the dazzling freshness outside.

  ‘I like my grandfather,’ William said.

  ‘I’m glad,’ she said, taking her hand in his. ‘I’m very glad.’

  As she had known he would, Jamie arrived at the weekend. Angharad had driven William and herself up in their unobtrusive estate car, so it was inevitable that Jamie would materialize in the Porsche he used for running about Town, as he put it, only half satirically. Angharad thought that the gleaming, opulent car looked shamefully blatant parked in the narrow road outside the schoolhouse. She said as much to Jessie, wondering what the rest of the village was saying.

  ‘Don’t knock it,’ Jessie said gleefully. ‘It must be the first Porsche ever to do more than blink and miss Cefn. The general opinion is that you must have done ve-ery well for yourself. Everyone also, as I do myself, thinks that the car’s owner is impressively distinguished and handsome as well as nice. Everyone except you, that is.’

  There was no hiding anything from Jessie’s sharp eye.

  ‘I like him very much,’ Angharad said, turning away.

  ‘Mm. I like you. And old Jones the butcher. I even like Trevor the Wagon. But it’s not quite the way I feel about Dicky.’

  ‘You’re married. I’m not married to Jamie.’ There was a note of steel in Angharad’s voice that stopped Jessie short.

  Angharad saw the flicker of surprised hurt in her friend’s face and was contrite at once. ‘I’m sorry, Jess. One day, if you have the patience to listen, I’ll tell you all of it. But not yet. Not just yet, until … I can see it better myself. Is that enough?’

  ‘Of course.’

  They sat down together at once to the sheaf of hasty plans for the restaurant that they were to show to Jamie.

  From the moment of his arrival, Ang
harad had felt the incongruity of Jamie’s presence in Cefn. It was only partly his country turn-out of corduroys and expensively-cut tweeds, his Porsche, and the obvious fact that he was rich, whereas everyone else, in work-stained farming clothes or unconsidered chainstore outfits, was clearly the opposite. More important, Jamie was citified to the core. He understood metropolitan life perfectly, in all its nuances. As far as country life went, Angharad reflected, he was probably perfectly at home on his cousins’ Scottish grouse moor. But in Cefn he was isolated, both socially and culturally. He looked uncomfortable, and Angharad felt reproached both because he was here, and because she was rewarding him for their years together by turning into a different person, apparently overnight.

  She had put aside the clever, expensive designer separates that he admired her in, and adopted jeans and sweaters like Jessie’s. She tied her hair simply back from her face, and left her skin bare in the clear air rather than applying her careful London make-up. She felt comfortable and happy as she scrambled about the old schoolhouse with a measuring tape, the local builder admiringly beside her. But when Jamie came, she knew that he saw the London gloss disappearing overnight, and she knew that he was watching, and wondering.

  On the first morning of his visit, they walked slowly away from the old schoolhouse and down the village street. Everyone they passed waved at them, or called a greeting.

  ‘You really do know everyone,’ Jamie said. ‘Don’t you find it rather claustrophobic?’

  ‘I used to.’

  ‘It’s so small,’ he went on, looking around him. It was true. Jamie looked almost as tall as the little houses. ‘I’d imagined something bigger, and less … grey.’

  More like a Cotswold show-village, Angharad thought, with a quiet, bitter defensiveness that surprised her. Jamie seemed only to see the narrowness, and feel the weight of parochial inquisitiveness. He hadn’t taken in the grandeur of the humped mountain, and the contrast of the snug village huddled against its protective sweep, or the way that the afternoon light from the west turned the slate and stone from grey to lavender. Nor had he seemed to taste the exotic sweetness of the milky air.