‘Oh yes,’ she said, putting her arms around his neck. ‘Truly.’ She was quite sure now.
They stood eye to loving eye under their romantic sunset, alone together, loving one another and aware of how strong their emotions were.
‘Am I to stay the night?’ he hoped.
If he was, there were things that had to be talked about. ‘I’m not on the pill or anything.’
He looked down at her. ‘I’ll take care of you,’ he said.
‘Can you? I mean…’
‘Fully prepared,’ he said and felt he had to explain further. ‘Not that I was expectin’ anythin.’ Just bein’ on the safe side.’
She wasn’t quite sure how to take that.
‘An’ I haven’t got AIDS or anythin’ like that,’ he said.
That surprised her. ‘How do you know? Have you been tested?’
‘I’m a blood donor,’ he said. ‘They have to test you.’
‘Of course,’ she said, admiring him again. ‘I might have known that. You’re just the sort of person. A giver.’
‘So it’s all right?’
‘Yes. It’s all right.’
He took her hand and laid it tenderly against his cheek. She watched him, feeling full of love for him – until she suddenly realised that her hand was so black with grime it was leaving smudge marks on his face.
‘I need a bath,’ she said, abruptly changing mood. ‘I’m filthy.’
‘So?’ he said, still holding her hand and smiling into her eyes. ‘We’re both dirty, come to that. What d’you expect? We been workin.’’
‘A bath each,’ Alison said. ‘That’s what we need. I’ve got some Radox.’
‘There’s romantic you are,’ he laughed. ‘Lucky the immersion’s on.’
‘I’ve got a bathrobe in the bathroom box,’ she said, walking into the house. ‘I bought it for Rigg ages ago, but he never wore it. Wasn’t flash enough. Shall I find it?’
She found soaps, Radox, a whole stack of towels, even bathsalts. The only problem was that once they got upstairs they discovered that there were no light bulbs in any of the sockets.
‘I was caught out like this last time,’ Alison said, as they stood in the darkness in the kids’ bedroom. ‘I should have been forewarned.’
‘I’ll get the table lamp,’ he said. ‘We can use it like a candle.’
Which they did. And, although the central heating in the house didn’t seem to work at all, there was more than enough hot water for two baths, his first and then hers.
Morgan waited for her to finish her bath in a state of such heightened desire he could hardly breathe. He prowled the bedroom. He sat on her bed in the darkness with the bathrobe wrapped round him. He stood by the window and watched the rich blue of the night clouds rolling endlessly by. The scent of her bathsalts seeped under the bathroom door, filling his mind with imagined glimpses of her beautiful nakedness, rosy under the water.
She entered the bedroom, softly, on pale bare feet, while he was looking out of the window. She was wearing a blue and green towel like a sarong and another turbaned round her head and she carried the lamp before her in both hands. In the amber light, her wet hair shone dark and glossy on her temples and her bare arms glowed as though they were giving off a radiance of their own. He was bewitched by the sight of her.
‘Mermaid,’ he said, admiring and desiring.
‘I can’t find my hair dryer,’ she said.
‘Are you always so practical?’ he asked.
‘No,’ she said, smiling at him shyly. It was a protective device and a very necessary one. She was acutely aware that they were on their own in a bedroom, and that she had virtually invited him there, with no kids as chaperons, and a whole night before them. And to make her dilemma more acute, she knew she wanted him very much.
‘Come by here,’ he said, patting the bed. ‘I’ll dry it for you if you like.’
She tucked her sarong firmly in place, set the table lamp on the bedside table, and sat on the bed beside him in the pool of soft light it cast. The room was full of packing cases and tea chests, bulky ugly things, lurking in the shadows like prehistoric beasts, nails glinting. The bed was the one civilised object in the room, its duvet tinted amber by the lamp light, the pine bedstead rich as honey. Morgan waited beside it, patient and amorous, his robe dark as red wine.
‘How’s your shoulder?’ she said, as he rubbed her hair with the hand-towel.
It was difficult to find even one word to answer her with, his desire was so strong. ‘Better.’
‘Good,’ she said. She was breathless too.
Words deserted them both. He rubbed her hair dry, kissing her face whenever she turned it towards him. And her mouth whenever she would allow it – which was more and more frequently. Soon they were caught in a timeless, magical trance of rising desire, as towels and robe were flung aside – love driven, flesh eager, sense hungry.
‘Now?’ he asked. ‘Is it all right?’
Oh yes. More than all right. Much, much more than all right. Inevitable and gratifying and magical.
Afterwards, when they’d got their breath back, they talked, relaxed and easy with his arm still under her neck and her head on his shoulder.
‘I want to marry you,’ he said, ‘when you’ve divorced him. You know that, don’t you.’
‘Yes. I know that.’
‘You will many me?’
The question confused her. Did she want to marry him? She really didn’t know. Marriage was such a risk. In any case, it was an academic question when she was still technically married to Rigg. ‘Probably,’ she temporised, not wanting to upset him by a direct refusal at such a tender time. ‘I don’t know. Possibly not. It’s too soon to say. I can’t even think about it while I’m still married to Rigg. I’ve got to get divorced first.’
But that’s eleven months off, Morgan thought, and that’s a long time to have to wait. A long time to live this sort of half life. But what else could he do?
‘Don’t let’s talk about it,’ she said, kissing him. ‘I know it’s childish, but I’d rather not think about it, not for the moment, not till I have to. We’ve had so many awful things happen to us in the last year, me an’ the kids, I’d like a summer off just to enjoy life again.’
It was the least he could give her when she was in his arms and so loving. ‘Then that’s what you shall have, cariad,’ he promised.
The next morning they both overslept. Alison woke first to the realisation that it was past eight o’clock and someone was hammering on the door. She got up quickly, put on her dressing gown and ran down the stairs. It was Brad, her bald head gleaming, delivering the children and the hedgehog.
‘They’ve had breakfast,’ she said, walking through into the kitchen. ‘Mr Tiggywinkle didn’t like the journey. I’d get him out in the garden pretty quick, if I was you, and you’d better burn the shoe box. Morning Morgan.’
He was standing in the doorway, dressed in his shirt and trousers and scratching his head.
For a second Alison was embarrassed to see him there and wished he’d had the sense to stay upstairs, at least until Brad had gone. Then she worried in case his presence in the house upset the kids. But neither of them seemed at all phased by it.
‘Come an’ see our hedgehog,’ Jon said. ‘We’re going to put him in the garden.’
‘He’s done a huge poo in his box,’ Emma confided.
‘What’s his name?’ Morgan asked. And when he was told, ‘There’s lovely. Mornin’ Brad.’ Now that the first embarrassed moments were over, he was as easy as if he’d been living in the house for years.
‘I’m off to work,’ Brad said, ‘or I shall be late for the old dears. They’re all yours, Ali. They been ever so good. You here for the day, Morgan?’
‘Duw no,’ Morgan said. ‘I’m due in Guildford in fifteen minutes.’
‘Oh well!’ she laughed at him. ‘You’ll do that easy. I’ll come round after work, Ali.’
‘Do you want breakfast
?’ Alison asked when Brad had gone.
‘Why not,’ he said, smiling at her. ‘I’m so late now, there’s no point rushin.’’
So Alison settled the hedgehog in its new quarters and began to cook breakfast while Morgan went upstairs to wash and get properly dressed. Despite their breakfast with Brad, the children decided they’d like cocoa and biscuits, so the four of them sat down to enjoy their first morning meal together, in their strange clean kitchen, at their familiar scrubbed table. Their lives seemed to have shifted into a new and more comfortable gear. They talked about the hedgehog and the move and their plans for the weekend. As the meal proceeded, it occurred to Alison that she and Rigg had never sat round a table like that at breakfast time in all the years they’d been married.
Afterwards Morgan kissed them all goodbye and drove off to Guildford and excuses. And on an impulse, Alison took the children down on the beach. She’d already arranged for Jon to stay off school until Monday so they had Friday and the weekend ahead of them to settle in. What better way to start it than to walk beside the sea?
It was another lovely spring day and they had the shore to themselves. The tide was on its way out, so the beach was washed clean and fresh and ready for a new day, the pebbles polished and the long sands ridged by the retreating waves. Above their heads the arc of the sky was already richly blue and below it the sea shone in the sunshine, the curve of each tumbling wave polished smooth as green glass. It seemed entirely fitting to Alison that she should be out in the open air and in such a beautiful setting after such a night. There were still problems to be faced and difficulties to overcome but for the moment she was simply and entirely happy. A new day, a new home, a new life.
‘Oh kids!’ she said, ‘isn’t it great to be alive.’
Chapter Twenty-Five
Like all complicated changes, Alison’s transformation from deserted wife to established lover was achieved by degrees – not all of them easy and some of them surprising.
Over the next few days, she gradually put the house to rights and got to know some of her new neighbours. One, an outspoken redhead called Lola, was particularly friendly and had some useful information.
She called in one Friday to ask if Alison would like her to get anything from the local shops.
‘No,’ Alison said. ‘I don’t think so. That’s very kind of you.’
‘We’ve got to stick together,’ Lola said, explaining her kindness, ‘all us one-parent families.’
‘How did you know that?’ Alison asked. Once it would have been a shock to be so easily recognised; now she felt relaxed about it.
‘I’ve seen you up the school,’ Lola said. ‘Takes one to know one, I expect. You get to know the signs after a while. That Welshman’s just your feller, isn’t he.’
‘Yes,’ Alison admitted, surprised at how quickly that news had travelled. ‘My husband walked out thirteen months ago.’
‘Join the club,’ Lola grinned. ‘You’re the eighth in this street alone.’
‘Is that right?’
‘Too bloody right. There are skunks running out on their wives and kids everywhere you look. It’s an epidemic. Still, I can tell you one good thing about it. In this neck a’ the woods, you don’t need to worry about the cohabiting rule. ‘We don’t grass one another up.’
That was a very definite relief, especially to Morgan, because he wanted to visit whenever he could and he’d been worried in case his presence in the house got Alison into trouble with the DSS. Reassured, he came down at least once during the week – when he wasn’t working away – and every weekend. He usually arrived on Saturday night and stayed until early Monday morning, so Sunday became their special day. He and Alison had their first argument over whether or not he should pay her housekeeping, which he won easily, claiming that paying for his food wasn’t ‘cohabiting’ and that, in any case, if he wasn’t allowed to pay for the food, he wouldn’t eat it.
The days became weeks and the time they spent together grew more and more rewarding and easy – although Alison had to accept that Rigg was still a part of her life. It annoyed her that she didn’t know where he was and angered her that he still owed her mother all that money. She didn’t talk about him to the children and tried to put him out of her mind, but Jon remembered him.
She was stripping the beds early one Monday morning so as to get the sheets out on the line before they went to school and to work, when the little boy asked one of his sudden questions.
‘When Daddy comes back,’ he said, as she fitted the clean bottom sheet, ‘where will he sleep?’
Alison went on smoothing the sheet to buy time. It was such an impossible question she didn’t know how to answer it. ‘He might not come back,’ she said, cautiously. ‘I don’t know where he is.’
‘But he’s my daddy,’ the child protested. ‘He’s got to come back, hasn’t he. He could sleep in my bed when Morgan is here.’
‘He owes a lot of money to a lot of people,’ Alison said. ‘He can’t come back till he’s paid them.’
That meant nothing to a five-year-old.
‘He hasn’t seen the hedgehog,’ Emma said from her perch on her own bed. ‘He’ll like the hedgehog, won’t he, Mummy.’
‘He might,’ Alison said guardedly. ‘Hop off for a minute, there’s a good girl. I’ve got to change your sheets now.’
‘They’re not wet,’ Emma said, with some pride.
‘No. I know they’re not. You’re a good little girl.’ Wet beds were gradually becoming a rarity. Thank heavens. But she’d hoped it was because they’d forgotten about their father and the way he went on. The problem bothered her all day.
‘I don’t understand it,’ she confided to Morgan that night. ‘I thought they were glad to see the back of him after the awful way he behaved last time they saw him.’
‘He’s still their father, I suppose,’ he said. ‘They’re bound to think about him.’
I shall never be really free of him, Alison thought. He’ll always be their father no matter what I do. That’s one part of my life I can’t change. And the thought depressed her.
By now, Morgan had become part of her family. He was included in all their outings and sneaked off to the pub of an evening with Mark and Greg – and Andy and Clare whenever they were down. So it was only natural that when June began and it was the school half-term, he should invite her to Port Talbot for a week’s holiday to meet his family.
The visit was an exhilarating success for, as Alison discovered on her very first evening, the Griffiths and the Warehams were similar tribes, warm, noisy and friendly. She was welcomed into the family at once, even – as Morgan’s father joked – ‘though you’re not Welsh, which is a definite blemish. Still, we got to make allowances!’
Morgan drove her from house to house and cousin to cousin, to see Nan in her hillside house in Blaenhydyglyn, and Hywell and Bronwen in the valley, and little Morgan, who was a fine fat child who instantly befriended Emma and had to be carried about by Jon. They visited each of Morgan’s sisters in turn and were fed like royalty at every house. They went to Swansea and the Mumbles as though they were tourists. And on their last afternoon, as the sun was shining, they climbed the green side of the Mynydd to see the panoramic view of Port Talbot from the top.
Alison thought it was breathtaking. ‘You can see everything,’ she said. ‘Look Jon, there’s the harbour, and there’s the beach. I didn’t realise it was so long, Morgan.’
‘It’s a good beach,’ Morgan said, enjoying the sight of its sandy length stretching to the west of the town. From their crows’ nest on the Mynydd, the waves rolling in to shore looked like lace frills. ‘There’s the steelworks, look Jon, where my dad used to work.’
‘It’s the size of them I can’t get over,’ Alison said, squinting into the sun. ‘They’re enormous.’
‘That’s nothing to what they were before the closures,’ Morgan told her. ‘You could see the glow of the furnaces as far as Swansea in those days. At night the sky
was orange for miles.’
On the mountainside opposite, windscreens flashed like diamonds.
‘Look at those cars, Jon,’ Alison said. ‘Aren’t they tiny?’
‘Morgan’s car is ‘normous,’ Emma said. ‘Isn’t it, Morgan?’
‘You ought to drive you know, Ali,’ Morgan said. ‘I wonder you don’t learn.’
‘I have learned,’ Alison said. ‘I passed my test when I was eighteen. I just haven’t got a car, that’s all.’
‘Then get one.’
She laughed at that. ‘What with?’
‘I’ll lend you the money.’
She laughed at that suggestion too. ‘How would I repay you?’
‘All right then,’ he said. ‘I won’t lend you any money if you don’t like the idea. I won’t give you so much housekeepin’ an’ you can pay me back that way. You could have one of our company cars at its trade-in price. We’ve got two replacements on order for August. How would that be?’
It was a four-year-old Metro and, on those terms, just about possible. But when Morgan drove her to Guildford to collect it, she felt very unsure of herself behind the wheel of a car.
‘I haven’t driven for years,’ she said.
‘Why not? You had a car, didn’t you?’
‘That was his,’ she explained. ‘He wouldn’t let me drive his precious BMW. Oh Morgan, what if I do it wrong?’
‘You won’t,’ he reassured her. ‘It’s like riding a bicycle. It’ll come back to you. Come on, we’ll go for a spin in the country and you’ll see.’
It was a disaster. She crashed the gears, she over-steered, she made a mess of her first right turn and finally – to her horror – she ran out of road on an easy bend. She’d come into the bend too fast, and she knew it, but she’d forgotten how quickly everything happens in a car. For a few frantic seconds she stood on the brakes and pulled on the steering wheel, her heart pounding. But it was no good. There was a bump followed by a dreadful scraping noise and by the time the car came to a halt she realised she had scraped the near-side bumper along a rough stone wall.
Fortunately there was no other traffic about. She got out of the driving seat and walked shakily back along the road to inspect the damage, feeling hideously ashamed of herself. There didn’t seem to be much wrong with the wall, which was covered in scratches old and new – but the bumper was mangled.
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