The Legacy l-1

by Lynda La Plante

  dreadful painted woman at the window of the inn, just like Nellie Lanigan from the village, she knew the men paid money to go with her. Evelyne sobbed into the handkerchief David had once given her, and even through her tears she could smell him, his faint lavender perfume.

  Chapter 6

  THE TWO brothers died with their arms around each other, Mike and Will, but the cable Benjamin Rces brought didn’t mention that, simply the dreaded words, ‘killed in action’. Dicken wrote a letter from the front dated March 1917 — it took four months to reach the village, and that was when they learned how the two brothers had died.

  The Old Lion seemed to bend under the weight of their loss. The drinking had stopped when little Davey had been buried, and Hugh had found work in a small colliery. When the news of the boys’ death came he went straight back to work a double shift. Every morning he rose at dawn and, wrapped in his greatcoat and carrying his tea caddie, sandwiches and tools, he donned his cloth cap and silently left the house. Money was very short and there were now three lodgers who worked in the mine with Hugh.

  Lizzie-Ann had been very brave. Rosie was now almost eighteen months old, a pretty little girl with rosy cheeks and curly hair. Lizzie-Ann had made considerable progress as far as housekeeping and cleaning were concerned. She was skinny again, and spent hours chalking and polishing the front step. Often she had a faraway look in her eyes, daydreaming, but she never talked about London now. She was grown up, a widow with a daughter to look after, a widow and still only just eighteen.

  Evelyne worked at the local brick factory, tough, hard labour from six-thirty in the morning until three o’clock. In the afternoon she went to the schoolhouse to help the new teachers. Doris Evans was still at the school, but she taught the senior girls and boys. The only house without a lodger was Doris’ — she was still able to keep her four neat rooms to herself.

  Poverty was everywhere in the village. The children scavenged for coal chips on the slag heaps, the men no longer sat eating their packed lunches together, laughing at what the missus had landed them with this time. They all knew they had the same, bread and dripping and tea.

  Evelyne trudged up the hill to the schoolhouse. The rain was bucketing down, and she’d got soaked earlier in the day on the way to the brick factory. Her hands were raw and blistered, and she was as thin as ever. She had grown even taller, reaching five feet nine and a half inches. She was Hugh Jones’ daughter all right.

  The schoolhouse was cold, the small fire banked low, and the children huddled in their overcoats to keep out the freezing draughts. Evelyne helped in the junior class and also cleaned the school.

  Mr Matthews, the new headmaster, was elderly, and had actually retired, but he had come to take the place of the original headmaster who had joined up. He called Evelyne in.

  ‘Mrs Evans has not been in for the past two days, Miss Jones, will you look in on her?’

  Evelyne pushed open the polished front door and called out. When she got no reply she began to worry, and went along the passage into the kitchen. It was neat and clean as ever, but empty and very cold. She hurried into the tiny living room. There were books on the table as always, but no sign of Doris. Eventually Evelyne found her lying in her clean bed with the starched white sheets. She was extremely pale and as Evelyne pushed open the door she asked, with a strange look on her face, ‘Walter, is that you?’ Doris didn’t seem to recognize Evelyne at all as she bent over the frail, thin woman and rubbed her icy hands. She pulled more blankets from the wardrobe and laid them on top of Doris.

  The coal bunker was piled high, and Evelyne took the full bucket back into the bedroom, laid the fire and lit it. Then she found vegetables in their neat trays beneath the kitchen sink and made some broth. She held the frail woman in her arms, the skinny frame wrapped in the blankets, and gently spooned the hot soup into her. Slowly, Doris seemed to come to herself, and gave Evelyne such a heart-rending look that Evelyne said: ‘I’ll not leave you tonight, Doris, I’ll stay with you.’

  She sat by the fire and read Dante’s Inferno until Doris slept, then she banked the fire, pulled a rug over herself and went to sleep.

  The following morning Doc Clock came and examined Doris, muttering that she was not taking care of herself — and with her money! He stuck a thermometer into Doris’ bird-like mouth, and fumbled for the watch that wasn’t there, as usual. Doc Clock, the village said, would stick a thermometer into a dead man’s mouth and pronounce him perfectly fit.

  Doris went very fast and as quietly as she had lived. Doc Clock said she had a brain tumour, must have had it for years. Lizzie-Ann, who always got everything wrong, told everyone that Doris had died from a brain rumour, and that she’d had it for years. Evelyne wrote to Dr Collins, taking the penny postage money from Doris’ little leather purse. The money was needed, but there was no reply to her letter.

  Evelyne had to arrange for the coffin and the funeral, since there was no one else to do it. All the while she still worked at the brick factory and up at the school. She made sure Doris’ house was locked up tight, because already the coal bunker was empty and with things the way they were it was a wonder the furniture was still intact. Evelyne would shiver as she checked the house, knowing Doris was lying upstairs, cold and stiff.

  Doris was buried beside her husband, Walter, in a simple ceremony attended only by Evelyne and a few villagers. In her neat handwriting, Evelyne noted down all the expenses she had paid out from the money she had found in the house, and how much was left, and sent the list to Dr Collins. Still she heard nothing back and often villagers passing the cold house would mutter, ‘What a waste’, the four rooms could easily be let and be making someone a few bob a week.

  Lizzie-Ann ran from the post office with Dicken’s letter. All the women went every day and asked old Ben Rees if there was any news from the Front. Ben used to get angry, swearing that he did his three rounds a day with the post, and if there was a letter or any news they would be the first to know, but it still didn’t stop the women popping in and asking.

  The pub would be lit up and the piano wheeled out when any of the boys came home on leave, only to be wheeled back again when they had to go again after too short a time. Then there would be the tears at the station and the Sunday prayers that the boys would come home.

  Hugh and Rosie were sitting by the fire, playing with a bat and ball. Lizzie-Ann had gone on a date with a boy who had been invalided out of the army. He was a good-hearted boy with a bad limp, and Lizzie-Ann seemed to have some of her old sparkle back. ‘Will you not find yerself a lad then, Evie?’ Evelyne laughed, and carried the washing out to dry. Over her shoulder she told him she had no time to spare for lads. As she hung out the cold, worn trousers, she remembered the night she had danced with Lloyd George. She pictured David’s face and sighed. She still thought of him, almost every night and prayed every Sunday that he would be safe and unharmed. It was strange that she had received no word from David’s father in Cardiff, maybe they felt it best simply to forget poor Doris.

  Summer was coming on and the war still raged. The villagers found it hard to picture their menfolk fighting in another country somewhere, even harder to understand what they were fighting for. The old boys sitting in the pub said they were after the bastard Germans, and that the Tommies would ‘wipe ‘em off the face of the earth’ — their lads could do it, it was as if only Welsh lads were over there.

  Lizzie-Ann had decided to marry her young man with the limp. Evelyne made Jim feel welcome, even though it meant an extra mouth to feed in the house. He was good-hearted, and made Lizzie-Ann smile again. The wedding was a simple affair, and Lizzie-Ann wore the dress Evelyne had brought home from Cardiff. The couple had no honeymoon, they just took over the front room, and life went on as usual. At least the house (unlike so many others) throbbed with life now, a bit too much at times as they still had four lodgers. Lizzie-Ann dropped numerous hints about how awful it was that they could be so cramped while Doris Evans’ house stood emp
ty. It had been more than six months since Doris had been buried, and still no word from Dr Collins.

  Evelyne hurried home from the brick factory. It had been boiling hot in there, and working right next to the kilns made you sweat your guts out. She wanted a good wash before going up to the school. Already they called her a schoolmistress, although she wasn’t actually qualified, but she liked it and got on well with the two proper teachers.

  Ben Rees was standing by the door, his bike propped up by the wall. He had one of the dreaded yellow telegrams in his hand.

  ‘No, Ben … Ah, don’t say it’s for us, no, please … no.’

  Dicken was gone, and two days after the telegram arrived they got his last letter, telling them how well he was doing, and that he might make sergeant within the month.

  Hugh seemed unable to take any more pain, his whole body sagged as if the wind had been punched from his huge frame. He still struggled up every morning and went off to work, but he was so silent, so empty, it was as if his soul had already slipped from his body.

  As she had done all her life, Evelyne held the last tenuous threads of the family together. She had to keep on working, she had to keep going up to the school, but she no longer went to church, she couldn’t, and she didn’t care what wrath He sent down on her. How could there be a God who would take each and every one of her brothers, and leave them with nothing?

  In August, one of the hottest Augusts ever, Evelyne prepared for another burning day in the factory. She noticed her Da had gone off to work without his tea caddie. She sighed, he’d be dying of thirst by twelve, she’d just have to be late. The sun blazed in the cloudless sky, birds sang, the grass smelt good and all over the hedgerows the flowers were blooming. The further up the mountain she walked the cleaner the air was. The raspberries hung thick and ripe, and she ate them as she walked, thinking that on the way back she would fill her skirt with them to make a tart.

  She walked down the further slope of the mountain, crossed two streams and a field of cows. Her legs were getting tired, and she realized just how strong a man her father must be to take this long trek day in and day out. The winter months must have frozen him, the rain soaked him, and then he spent all those hours down the mine. When she reached the small pithead she asked for Hugh Jones, and was directed to a shaft at ground level. Black-faced men called ‘hello’, and five women sitting in the sun called to her and waved. This new mine took quite a few women at the pithead to sort the coal. They were as black as the menfolk, but they were laughing and joking and soaking up the sunshine.

  Evelyne edged along the coal seam. She had to bend almost double, and the blackness was just as Mike had described, so thick she couldn’t even see a shadow. She called out, directing her voice towards the sound of hammering and the click-click-clicking of the pickaxes.

  She passed two trams being pushed out by Dai Roberts, who grinned at her and said to keep on walking, and to watch her step as it sloped steeply. The air was getting so thick she was gasping for breath as she inched her way along the tunnel — her hands were her only guide.

  ‘Hugh Jones. Hugh Jones!’

  She could barely draw breath and the blackness was so heavy she didn’t know whether to turn back or go on …

  ‘Hugh! Hugh Jones…’

  As Evelyne turned a bend in the tunnel she saw her father, lit up by the flame of a single candle. His face was stricken, his eyes stared into the blackness as in a nightmare. Evelyne ran to him, knowing what must be in his mind, that he must have thought there was some other tragedy, could there be another? She was quick to shout that she’d brought his tea caddie.

  Hugh held his blackened arms out to her and she clung to him. With barely enough air to keep the candle flame flickering, with no more than four feet of space to work in, the massive man had to hunch himself nearly double to chip away at the face.

  Evelyne felt his powerful arms holding her as he had when she was a little girl. In the blackness the grief that filled both of them was released, and they cried together, their tears mingling with the coal dust that dominated their lives.

  The war was over, and home-made paper chains were strung across the streets, trestle tables were erected on the cobbles and from God knew where came buns, cakes, biscuits and lemonade for the kids.

  There was hardly a family in the village that had not lost a loved one in the mines or in the mighty war that had raged across the Channel. Now the lads who had survived were coming home, and their families went crazy. They sang in the streets, they belted out the old tunes on the piano and they held hands and sang ‘God Save the King …’

  Evelyne rushed around handing out cakes, and handmade crackers with no bang! in the middle, but containing little gifts made by some of the old women for the children. It was a wonderful day, and everyone crowded into Mrs Morgan’s to drink her home-brewed wine.

  Evelyne was standing well to the back of the crowd as the home-brewed wine took effect, and the singing reached a raucous level … Evelyne left the stuffy house. Some older women, well inebriated, grouped on a corner, looked at her with pitying faces as she walked on up the cobbled street.

  ‘Ah, poor thing, she’ll never get herself a lad now, left it too late … or maybe with her being so tall she’ll get one who’s injured, disabled, you never know.’

  Evelyne Jones was twenty-one, that was all, but her eyes mirrored the anguish she had experienced. Hugh Jones could see her striding up the hill, her lean, tough body, high cheekbones and flame red hair, her strong legs like an athlete’s … he closed his eyes, dear God, how he wished she was one of his boys come home.

  Lizzie-Ann could have given herself a miscarriage, she ran so fast. The thick bundle of letters all addressed to Evelyne Jones was in a brown paper parcel, and she had to sign for them at the post office. She signed after a hell of a row with Ben Rees, who was livid because he hadn’t had a chance to snoop through them. He’d dropped his bike in fury — that bloody girl was always a little bugger, and her with another kid on the way when she was no better than one herself. Ben picked up his red bike and threatened to strangle Alfred Moggs’ illegitimate grandson, half coloured he was, with black, curly hair. The little bugger had already let the air out of Ben’s tyres once this morning.

  Evelyne took the thick brown envelope with the red line across it and started to open it, with the entire class of nosy children peering through the glass door, the headmistress looking on, and Lizzie-Ann gasping. Before Evelyne had a chance to examine the contents, Lizzie-Ann’s waters broke, and the children sniggered that she’d wet herself. The headmistress, a flat-footed woman in her late sixties, took over the class while Evelyne ran for Doc Clock.

  The Doctor now had the only privately owned motor vehicle in the village. This was patted, polished, and sat in by the Doc but in the driver’s seat he was absolutely hopeless. More than once he had been found still sitting in the car as it teetered on the edge of a ditch, his face concerned and puzzled, his specs dangling from one ear.

  ‘Christ almighty, there’s something wrong with it again, it turned right when I wanted to go left.’

  Doc Clock arrived just in time as Lizzie-Ann gave birth in the school kitchen. He shouted that it was a boy, but when he put his glasses on he realized it was a girl.

  ‘No, it’s a girl, it’s a girl.’

  Lizzie-Ann, sweating and exhausted, screamed.

  ‘Oh, Christ Almighty, I haven’t got twins, have I?’

  Evelyne held her hand and stroked her head, saying it was all right, it was just the one.

  The Doc huffed and puffed and dropped them all home. The trip in his car made Lizzie-Ann forget the letters for a moment, but she was soon reminded when Evelyne eventually opened the package and gasped, then fainted, out cold, in the kitchen.

  Doris Evans had named Evelyne Jones as her heir, leaving her the little four-roomed house, which no one had realized she’d owned outright, and two hundred pounds. The news went round faster than Mrs Morgan’s radio could hav
e blasted it. In the first version, Evelyne had had a heart attack and a daughter at the same time, but eventually the news filtered through that she had received a legacy.

  When it got straightened out and the story told in the right order, there was a strange calm. The villagers whispered, spread the story from house to house, pub to pub. Suddenly the Jones family’s cramped house had an aura to it. Evelyne Jones had a legacy and overnight, out of the blue, the tall schoolmistress became extremely eligible. She had money, she owned Doris Evans’ house, actually owned it. She was now a woman of property — more than the village realized, because Doris had not only left Evelyne her house in the village, but also her half-share in the Cardiff house. There were, of course, the gossips in the washhouses that said no good would come of it, but they all secretly wished they had been a little more friendly to poor old Doris.

  There was no word from David in the lawyer’s letter, just a stiff, formal note from the doctor thanking Evelyne for coping with all the arrangements for Doris’ funeral, and that was all.

  Lizzie-Ann had cried and Rosie had howled, though not really understanding why everyone in the house was so emotional. Evelyne insisted they move into Doris’ house. There was no question of rent, it would be theirs for as long as they wanted it.

  She stood and watched the couple running in and out of each room, hugging each other, then they would kiss Evelyne and thank her for the thousandth time. Evelyne took very little from the house, just Doris’ books and pens, a silver-framed photo of Doris and Walter on their wedding day, and two pairs of linen sheets and pillow-cases, a set for her own small bed and another for her father’s.

  Evelyne’s first purchase with her legacy was a wireless, which was installed in the kitchen. Hugh moaned and muttered that he wouldn’t go near the infernal noise machine. The house was quiet now, no lodgers. Evelyne and her father were alone, and spent long evenings sitting by the blazing fire. He still rose before dawn to go to the mines, and she still prepared his tea caddy and sandwiches. Evelyne couldn’t help but smile as Hugh rushed in from work and turned on the wireless. He listened intendy and would talk back to the speakers. On one occasion when she was late home from school she found him standing, fist clenched, shouting back at the radio that the man was talking rubbish, let him spend some time down the mines before making these rules and regulations. Unemployment was out of control, the blasted politicians were talking out of their arses.