Hearts of Gold (19 page)

‘I’m staying for a bit,’ Megan continued. ‘Just to see to the callers.’

‘It was awful …’ the tears she’d kept buried, beneath a surface of anger welled into Bethan’s eyes.

‘You don’t have to tell me, love,’ Megan said bitterly. I’ve seen John Joseph’s casting outs for myself.’

‘I should have done something.’

‘What?’ Megan demanded.

‘I don’t know. Something. I could at least have helped her to get out of the chapel quicker.’

‘If you’d tried to help Phyllis you’d only have given them an excuse to throw stones at you as well. No, love, it’s my guess that you did the same thing I did when your uncle cast out Minnie Jones the year our William was born.’

‘Sit tight and watch,’ Bethan said disparagingly. ‘That doesn’t make me feel any better.’

‘I didn’t say it would. But I made my protest afterwards,’ Megan said proudly. ‘I swore I wouldn’t set foot in the chapel again while John Joseph preached there, and I haven’t.’

‘Are you telling me to do the same thing?’

‘No one can tell you to do anything like that, love.’ Megan filled the kettle in the washhouse and walked back into the kitchen to set it on the range. ‘That has to be between you and your conscience. But I do know this much. If you decide to boycott chapel you’ll have your mother as well as John Joseph to contend with. And that’s without bringing God into it.’ 

Chapter Nine

‘Cat got your tongue?’ Andrew asked Bethan as he changed down into second gear, in preparation for the long slow drive up Penycoedcae hill.

‘No,’ she said abruptly. Too abruptly.

‘Come on, something’s the matter,’ he pronounced with an irritating superiority. ‘I know it is, so you may as well tell me first as last.’

‘Are you church or chapel?’ she demanded,

‘That’s a strange question. Why do you ask?’

‘I just wondered.’

‘Church. St Catherine’s.’ He named the largest church in town that stood, resplendent in all its Victorian glory in the centre of Pontypridd, next to the police station on Gelliwastad Road. A church that catered unashamedly for the crache of the town.

‘You would be,’ she said bitterly.

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

‘Nothing, take no notice. It’s just me.’ She stared blindly out of the car window, oblivious to the fresh spring beauty of budding trees and green fields.

‘Look, baa lambs.’

‘Second childhood?’ she enquired frostily.

‘I always think the mothers look so old and grubby compared with the young,’ he continued unabashed.

‘A bit like the difference between young girls and old women.’

‘You sound like one of the old women.’

‘I feel like one.’

‘I don’t know, you get Easter Sunday and Monday off, the two days any one of the staff nurses would give their souls, if not their virtue, for. Presumably you’ve had nothing more taxing to do this morning than go to church and eat lunch with your family. And now you have a highly desirable and amusing bachelor at your disposal, and what do you do? You growl in a mood more fitted to a night of thunder storms than a heavenly spring day.’

Lunch – she thought bitterly. Just one more word to remind her of the gulf between his family and hers. The crache consumed lunch on the Common, the working class downed dinner on the Graig.

‘I don’t go to church, I go to chapel,’ she snapped.

‘I beg your pardon,’ he apologised heavily. ‘I didn’t mean to upset your ladyship.’

‘I know you didn’t.’ Her anger deflated into shame. ‘I told you, it’s me.’

‘Would it help to talk about whatever it is?’

She closed her eyes against the glare of the sunshine and remembered the events of the morning. Each and every shameful detail was recalled in appalling clarity. John Joseph, his dark eyes shining as he stood triumphant and secure in the midst of his deacons. Phyllis pathetic and cowed, spittle running down her spring dress, blood on her cheek where the stone had hit her.

‘No,’ she said decisively.

‘In that case do you mind telling me where we’re going?’

‘Anywhere.’

‘Mumbles’ Pier so I can throw you off?’

She looked at him. He stuck his tongue out. She laughed in spite of herself.

‘That’s better.’ He narrowed his eyes against the strong sunlight. ‘Pass my sunglasses please, they’re in the glove compartment. Now can we discuss where we’re going?’

‘Anywhere you want to.’

‘Anywhere?’ He raised his eyebrows, and adopted an excruciating foreign accent. ‘Right, young woman, how about I carry you off somewhere warm and exotic. Like –’ he leaned across and whispered close to her ear – ‘a silk-draped harem in the wilds of the Sahara.’

‘Saw too many Rudolf Valentino films when you were young, did you?’ she enquired sarcastically.

‘Of course, didn’t every child? My mother used to drag me along every chance she got. Life with Father was so very, very humdrum.’

‘That I don’t believe.’

‘You’ve only ever seen my father directing patients’ treatments and hospital policy. At home my mother won’t allow him to be important.’

‘Just how many other women would you like in this harem of yours?’

‘That depends on how quickly you wilt in a hot climate.’

‘Why you …’

‘Don’t hit me when I’m driving or we’ll end up in a ditch.’ He swung the car around the corner past the Queen’s Hotel, carried on for a couple of miles until the few cottages that were Penycoedcae were well and truly behind them, then pulled into the side of the road. Leaving the engine running he reached across, wrapped his arms around her and kissed her full on the mouth.

She relaxed against him, warm and secure in his embrace. They’d come a long way since the awkward beginnings of their first outing to Cardiff.

‘Right, for the last time where do you want to go?’ He released his hold on her and turned to face the wheel.

‘The sea?’ she suggested.

‘Don’t you have to be back early?’

‘No. I told my father to expect me when he sees me.’ She could have added “and now my mother knows better than to interfere” but her strained relationship with her mother was something she’d kept from Andrew.

‘Good.’ He pulled his watch from the top pocket of his silk shirt and flicked it open. ‘Two o’clock.’ He did some quick calculating. ‘If we get a move on we can have at least four hours there and still be back before midnight.’

‘Four hours where?’

‘You’ll see when we get there.’ He put the car into gear and pulled out into the lane, with his arm round her shoulders he steered skilfully along the winding road. She snuggled up to him, conscious of the warmth of his body beneath his blue blazer and thin shirt, the smell of his cologne as it clashed with and, finally overpowered the essence of violets she was wearing.

‘Share a cigarette?’ he asked.

‘Do I ever?’

‘It sounds more polite than asking you to light one for me.’

She slid her hand into the blazer pocket closest to her and removed his gold lighter and cigarette case; lighting one, she placed it between his lips.

‘Thanks.’ He wound down the window and rested his elbow on the open ledge. ‘Settle down, we’ve a long way to go.’

‘How long?’

‘The Sahara side of Porthcawl.’

Knowing she wouldn’t get any sense out of him while he remained in this mood, she did as he suggested. Resting her head on his shoulder she closed her eyes, pushing the images of the morning’s service to the back of her mind.

She wondered at the miracle that had enabled her to build a happy, relaxed relationship with Andrew despite the strain of their first outing together. Although they went out in a foursome with Trevor and Laura as often as staff rosters allowed, she preferred and treasured the times, like now when she and Andrew were alone. He was less of a public entertainer, more sensitive and aware of her feelings without an audience. And, although she still occasionally woke in the small hours, cold at the thought of where their relationship might end, afraid because she knew she’d come to rely on him far too much, she continued to be free of such worries while they were together. She felt incredibly alive when she was with him, a kind of elation that blocked out every other aspect of her life. It was as if she only really lived in his presence.

Those who were close to her – Megan, her father, Laura, her brothers and Maud suspected that she was in love, but she continued to stop short of analysing her feelings. If anyone had tried to present her with the evidence she would have laughed.

For quite apart from the social gulf, underlying the strong emotion she felt for him, was an inherent fear. She had seen first-hand the damage that love could cause. Her mother wielded the power it gave her like a lash, using it to strip her father of everything he valued and held dear, dignity, independence, even the small pleasures he tried to take in the simple everyday facets of life.

She was aware that there were other kinds of relationship: those in which gentleness and consideration prevailed over the desire to subjugate. Some marriages were undoubtedly based on mutual understanding and affection. She only had to look as far as her father and compare the air of patient, resigned sadness he wore like the proverbial hair shirt whenever he was in her mother’s company, with the jolly exuberance of Laura’s father, who was always hugging and kissing his plump, happy wife.

But until now she’d never considered such a partnership relevant to her. When she’d taken up nursing she’d mapped out her future in terms of a career where hard work and celibacy came before any thoughts of a personal life.

There’d never been much time for boys. An occasional, unmemorable trip to the cinema in Cardiff with Laura and one or two of the porters from the Royal Infirmary. And before that outings with her brothers and William and Laura’s brothers. They’d gone out as a crowd, visiting the cinema when they had a few pennies to spare, and Pontypridd Park, Shoni’s pond or the Graig Mountain when they didn’t.

Once, after she’d returned home from the Infirmary, she’d visited the White Palace with Glan. Neither had forgotten the evening but for different reasons. He, because he was continually nagging her to repeat the experience; she because the evening had ended with her slapping his face soundly when he’d tried to kiss her.

Now … she wrapped her arm around Andrew’s and snuggled closer to him; now she actually liked being kissed.

‘We’re here.’

Disorientated, she opened her eyes and looked around. She hadn’t known that the world could be so green. Even the air seemed green, filled with a clear jade light that danced off the thick, curling new leaves of trees and bushes.

‘Come on, I’ll introduce you.’ He turned off the car engine, opened the door stepped outside and walked around to her door. She stretched her cramped limbs and left the car, breathing in the cool spring air.

‘Over there, look.’

A breath-taking view over a thickly wooded hillside swept down towards a wide flat grassed valley floor branded with a meandering snake of silver river. And beyond the river, towering green capped cliffs sheltered pale golden fringed sands fringed by crashing breakers.

‘You wanted the sea.’

‘It’s beautiful. It’s like it’s never been touched.’

‘Oh, but it has.’ He opened a low barred gate that she hadn’t noticed and beckoned her forward. She followed him up a narrow gravel path bordered by hedges of white blossomed May, or “bread and butter” trees as the children on the Graig called them, eating the leaves when they had nothing tastier to put into their mouths. Encroaching on the path were clumps of poppies. Andrew halted in front of a wooden door, bleached dry by the sun.

‘It’s not much,’ he smiled. ‘Just a wooden summer chalet, but I used to have great fun here when I was a kid.’ He produced a huge key from the top pocket of his blazer and unlocked the door. Pushing hard he scraped it over a flag stoned floor. ‘Faugh!’ He wrinkled his nose in disgust. ‘I hate being the first one in after the winter.’

She followed him into a small, pine-boarded kitchen.

‘Welcome to the John summer residence.’ He opened a casement window set over the sink. ‘It may look dirty, damp and musty now, but there’s nothing amiss that a good scrub and a summer’s warmth won’t cure. Do you like it?’

‘Like it? I love it.’ She looked around. A square pine table, four pine wheel back chairs round it, stood in the centre of the room.

A pine dresser, its shelves bare, its cupboard doors closed, stood against the wall opposite the door. Brightly coloured rag rugs lay on the floor next to the door and in front of an old stone sink with a brass tap.

‘All the comforts of home.’ He turned on the tap, nothing happened. ‘Well almost, water’s still turned off.’ He crouched beneath the sink and twisted the stopcock. ‘My mother bought the rugs at a church sale of work. She used to enjoy shopping for this place when we were small.’

‘The “we” being you and your sister?’

He nodded.

She knew from hospital gossip that he had a married sister a couple of years older than himself. But this was the first time he’d mentioned her.

‘Come on, I’ll show you the rest. Not that it’s much.’ He walked out of the kitchen into the gloom of an inner hallway. There was no window. From the light that filtered in from the kitchen she could see that the wood planking walls were painted cream. There were four doors. Three led into good-sized double bedrooms with large windows overlooking the woods. Two contained sets of twin beds, the third a double. The bedsteads were plain unvarnished pine, with mattresses wrapped in rubber sheeting to protect them from the damp. The wall and floors were of stripped pine planking, the furniture pine, chests of drawers and ottomans, no wardrobes. And like the kitchen and hall, all the rooms had a pervasive, thick musty atmosphere of neglect and disuse.

‘My father got a local chap to cover this area in when he bought the place. Must be over twenty years ago.’ He opened the fourth door. An overpowering dry warmth wafted out to greet them. ‘It used to be a veranda, but he had the walls planked and put in windows. The door from here to the garden stuck three or four years ago, and I never bothered to plane it. If you want to get out in a hurry you have to use the windows.’

‘Sitting here must be like sitting in a goldfish bowl in the woods.’

He laughed. ‘I suppose it is. The best view is down this end.’ He walked past the two large picture windows that framed the woods, turned left around what had been the corner of the house and paused before a massive window that looked out over the headland towards the bay.

‘Three Cliffs’,’ he said as proudly as if he were showing her a painting. ‘The finest view on Gower.’

‘It’s wonderful.’

‘Isn’t it just? Here, help me pull off these dust sheets, I don’t know why I bothered to lay them out last autumn, there’s so much glass here the damp disappears as soon as the sun shines.’

They uncovered a rattan three-piece suite with cushions, upholstered in thick, faded but serviceable green linen. She pressed down on one with her hand. It was quite dry.

He sank down on a chair, and pulled her on to his lap. ‘I’d forgotten how much I love this place. Strange, I used to spend more weekends here when I was living in London than I do now. Get the train from Paddington to Pontypridd on a Friday night. Borrow one of my father’s cars, motor down eat supper here, and stay until Sunday afternoon.’

‘You used to come down here a lot?’ She left his lap and stood in front of the window, a maggot of jealousy worming away inside her at the thought of all the girls he must have brought here. Girls like Anthea Llewellyn-Jones who would have been only too happy to go away with him for a weekend.