A Silver Lining (14 page)

‘Vera ...’ he babbled, aroused beyond logic.

‘Do you want your Irish stew now, George?’ she asked innocently.

‘I think I want something else.’

She hung her head modestly.

‘I am
your husband Vera,’ he reminded her.

‘Of course you are, George. And I promised to obey you. It’s just that I don’t like you talking about anything ... like that.’

‘Nor should any decent woman,’ he reassured her as she climbed from his lap. ‘Vera?’

‘Yes George,’ she murmured as she preceded him up the stairs.

‘Do you think you could take
all
your clothes off this time?’

‘Oh, George.’

He felt an absolute brute as he heard a tremor in her voice. ‘It doesn’t matter.’ He resigned himself to having to deal with her modesty.

‘Well, perhaps if you switch the light out, George,’ she agreed meekly as she turned back the blankets on the bed.

Elizabeth sat on one of the hard, upright kitchen chairs, her hands clasped together on the table, knuckles white with strain. ‘I’ll never be able to hold my head up in this town again. And to think my own son allowed Maggie Richards to be the one to tell me? Why didn’t Eddie come back this morning? That was the least he could have done.’

‘Mrs Richards has only just heard about the sentence, and her husband’s involved just as much as Dad. Perhaps Eddie didn’t find out anything this morning, and maybe he still doesn’t know,’ Bethan suggested mildly, her sympathies lying entirely with her brother. If she had been given the choice between carrying news of her father’s trial and imprisonment to her mother, or running off to wherever Eddie was hiding, she knew which she would have chosen.

‘Eddie must have known about the sentence,’ Elizabeth protested. ‘He and Charlie left here at seven for the police station.’

‘It’s possible the court hadn’t finished by then –’

‘Then they should have gone on to the court!’

Knowing there’d be no reasoning with Elizabeth in her present mood; Bethan opened the kitchen door and went down the passage. The pram and her suitcase were still outside under the bay window where she had left them.

The bag containing the baby’s things was just inside the front door. Edmund needed to be changed and fed, and his bottles were dirty. The soiled nappies from the journey were wrapped in a rubber sheet. So much had to be done, and she was absolutely and completely exhausted.

‘You’ve always taken your father’s and the boys’ part against me,’ Elizabeth said angrily when Bethan returned to the kitchen with the shopping bag.

‘Mam, we won’t know anything for certain until Eddie comes home.’ She glanced at the baby to make sure he was in no danger of rolling off the chair, then she picked up the kettle.

‘I suppose you want tea? A time like this and all you can think about is your stomach.’

‘The baby needs changing and feeding. I need boiling water to wash his bottles.’

‘There’s plenty in the boiler in the stove, but then, I suppose that won’t be good enough for you.’

‘I’d prefer it on the boil,’ Bethan said. ‘It sterilises better.’

‘There’s no bed made up for you,’ Elizabeth announced, almost triumphantly, ’Diana’s in your old room.’

‘Then I’ll share with her.’

‘You and the baby?’ Elizabeth scorned. ‘I can’t see Diana being enamoured with the thought of sharing with a baby that cries every four hours.’

‘He’s slept right through for the last month.’ Bethan struggled to keep her temper in check.

‘I suppose Diana could move back into the box room. But don’t expect me to start changing bedclothes around at this time of day.’

‘If there’s a bed in the box room I’ll make it up as soon as I’ve seen to the baby.’

‘There’s nowhere for him to sleep, either down here or up there,’ Elizabeth persisted, venting her frustration on her daughter. ‘I kept the cot you all slept in as babies, but your father threw it out when he cleared the box room so Diana could move into the house.’

‘I have a pram,’ Bethan said coldly, more irritated by Elizabeth’s indifference towards Edmund than with the cold reception she was extending towards her.

‘A pram? How big a pram? One of those ridiculous coach jobs that will scratch all the paintwork in the hall, I suppose.’

‘It is big,’ Bethan conceded.

‘Where is it now?’

‘Outside the front door.’

‘For all the neighbours to see that you’ve left your husband and come running home. As if they won’t have enough to talk about with your father’s doings.’

‘I haven’t left Andrew,’ Bethan remonstrated.

‘Well I know the neighbours around here, Miss, even if you don’t. And that’s what they’ll be saying, especially with you producing a child like that ...’

‘I’ll see to the bottles.’

Not trusting herself to remain in the same room as her mother a moment longer, Bethan carried her bag into the washhouse. She didn’t know what she’d expected when she’d run home on impulse. Her thoughts had all been centred on her father; his strength, his support. Now that he wasn’t here and she was faced with her mother’s carping about everything from her father to their lack of money, she didn’t know what to do, or where to turn. She only knew she was too drained to spare a thought for the appalling predicament her father was in, let alone cope with what was expected of her. Even the simple, mechanical things like seeing to the baby, feeding him, bathing him, washing his clothes, loomed over her, chores that demanded far more energy than she possessed.

She rinsed out the bottles with cold water and left them to soak, delaying her return to the kitchen until the mounting steam began to rattle the kettle lid. Thankfully there was no sign of her mother, and when she heard a creak overhead she assumed that Elizabeth had taken refuge in her bedroom.

The baby was lying where she had left him on the chair. The one good thing about having a child like Edmund, she thought bitterly, was he always stayed where he was put.

She washed and scalded the bottles and made up two feeds before venturing back down the passage and opening the front and parlour doors. Moving her mother’s prized octagonal mahogany table aside, she wheeled her pram into the parlour and dumped her suitcase next to it. One thing at a time ... wash ... change ... feed and afterwards if there was time before she had to begin all over again –rest.

‘Beth? Is that really you?’ Eddie flicked on the light as he walked into the kitchen. Bethan started, clutching the baby closer to her. He wailed and Eddie smiled.

‘I knew it had to be you when I saw the pram and suitcase in the parlour. Did you come because of Dad? How did you know about it? How did you get here so quickly? It’s great to see you, sis.’ Eddie’s questions tumbled out faster than she could answer them. She looked past him at the old, grease-stained clock on the wall. The hands pointed to eight o’clock. She had slept for over an hour.

‘Where’s Mam?’ Eddie asked, noticing the empty table and stove. Mindful of her duty towards her lodgers, his mother always had the table laid and tea cooked and ready when they came in.

‘She went upstairs after Mrs Richards told us that Dad had been sentenced to six months’ hard labour.’ The nap had restored Bethan enough for her to appreciate the full enormity of her father’s plight. ‘Is she right Eddie? Is Dad in gaol?’

He nodded, pulled a chair out from under the table and sat down. He wanted to move closer to the fire, but he’d just spent the last hour offloading his day’s pickings in the rag-sorting sheds down Factory Lane, and an itch told him that he was probably carrying an unwelcome boarder that would just love the upholstery.

‘What did he do?’ Bethan demanded. ‘Mrs Richards said something about Dad hitting a policeman, but I can’t see him doing anything like that.’

‘He did,’ Eddie said shortly. ‘He and Charlie went to the Mosley meeting yesterday –’

‘And they got into a fight?’

‘With Mosley’s Blackshirts. According to Charlie a policeman got between Dad and one of the thugs. He took the full force of a blow Dad intended to land on the Fascist. The last thing Dad said to me this morning was to tell everyone that he’s all right. That he’ll be fine, and six months will soon pass.’

‘Then you knew about the sentence this morning?’ Eddie nodded sheepishly. ‘If I’d known Mam would take to her bed I might have come back. But you know what she can be like, Beth.’

‘I know.’

‘But even so, it’s not like Mam not to have tea ready.’

‘No it isn’t. Perhaps she went to sleep. Either way I don’t think we should disturb her. There’s bound to be something in the pantry that I can cook.’

‘Give me ten minutes to wash and change, and I’ll mind the little fellow for you while you sort it out.’

‘Would you? You know he’s delicate?’

‘Trevor told me.’

‘And you’re not afraid of nursing him?’

‘Of course not. I’m looking forward to getting to know him. After all he is my nephew.’

Eddie was bewildered by the expression on Bethan’s face. He wasn’t to know that it was the first time anyone had offered to hold the baby for her since the day she’d left the maternity ward.

Bethan opened the pantry door and switched on the light. Everything was neat, orderly and immaculate, just as she’d expected. The Welsh maxim, “She was so clean you could eat off her floor”, had always applied to her mother’s housekeeping.

As a child, equating love and warmth with the slightly chaotic domestic disorder of her Aunt Megan’s home, she had often wished that her mother hadn’t been quite so obsessive about the house. It might have made for a happier childhood but now, when she was about to make a meal, in what felt like a strange house, she was grateful for her mother’s strict regimentation.

She opened the meat safe and peered inside: two breasts of lamb, already boned, rolled and larded, were stacked on a soup plate. As they’d take at least two hours to cook and everyone was expected home within the next half-hour she assumed that the news about her father had done the unthinkable –made her mother forget her duty as a housewife. She sniffed the meat and put it aside; it would keep until tomorrow. Behind the lamb she found two strings of sausages hanging on a hook. Hoping her mother wasn’t keeping them for the lodgers’ breakfast she took them out and looked around for something she could cook with them.

Elizabeth had always preferred to go without rather than risk wasting food. And with money being short, her pantry was under a tighter and sparser control than Bethan remembered. Half a sack of potatoes, one of carrots, a slab of margarine, a pound of butter, a full milk jug, a loaf of uncut bread and a three-inch crust of another, a dozen eggs, two cake tins, one of Welsh cakes, one of scones, bags of flour, and sugar, packets of tea and cocoa, a row of pots of home-made blackberry jam, two dripping pots, one with pale skimmings of the best quality, the other speckled with the brown jelly that settled on the bottom, which her mother used as a sandwich spread.

‘How does toad-in-the-hole sound to you?’ Bethan called to her brother, settling on something that wouldn’t require too much effort.

‘Sounds fine.’

Lifting down the ingredients Bethan stepped back into the kitchen.

‘Who’s a fine fellow then? Look at me. Come on, look. Say hello. I’m your uncle.’ Eddie was holding the baby firmly upright in his two hands, supporting Edmund’s lolling head with his outstretched fingers as he dangled him on his knee.

Bethan almost dropped the mixing bowl in amazement. ‘I had no idea you were good with babies,’ she commented.

‘Which proves you don’t know everything about me.’ Eddie tucked the baby into the crook of his arm and started tickling him gently under the chin. ‘Joey Rees always gets me to look after his granddaughter when he brings her down the gym.’

‘A baby? In the gym?’ Bethan smiled at the notion as she broke an egg into the bowl.

‘Joey has no choice but to bring her. His son gassed himself when the means test people refused to give him any money until he’d sold off his radio and furniture. A week later his son’s widow ran off with a commercial salesman and left the baby with a neighbour. Joey’s wife died years ago, so Joey had to either take in his granddaughter or put her in the workhouse.’

‘How old is she?’ Bethan asked.

‘Eighteen months. And she’s so bright for a dot of her age. You should see her spar ...’

‘Spar! Don’t tell me you lot are teaching her to box?’

‘Of course. What else do you expect us to teach her in a gym?’

Bethan shook her head in despair as she began beating the batter.

‘I’m home, and I’m starving. Charlie worked every last ounce of sweat out of me today.’ William slammed the front door and walked down the passage into the kitchen. ‘Good God!’ He stared in amazement at Bethan who stood, dressed in her mother’s overall, at the kitchen table. ‘When did the wind blow you in, Beth?’

‘A couple of hours ago.’

‘And this is my little nephew?’ He walked across to Eddie and joined him in tickling the baby.

‘He can’t be your nephew, you’re not my brother,’ Bethan pointed out tartly.

‘He’ll forgive you for not having the sense to be born into the right family. Won’t you, butch?’ William addressed the baby gravely. ‘Take a good long look at your Uncle William now. I’m easy to remember. I’m the handsomest one you’ll see around here.’

Eddie snorted. Bethan cut the sausages, laid them in her mother’s biggest baking tin and poured the batter over them.

Despite her exhaustion she was content for the first time in months. Who would have thought that the boys, of all people, would have accepted her son so completely, and unquestioningly?

The front door opened and closed again, quietly this time, and Diana, closely followed by Charlie walked in, bringing with them the cold, fresh smell of rain and the outside.

‘Bethan!’ Diana wrapped her arms around her cousin and hugged her tightly. ’It’s great to see you. I was so upset when Will stopped off to tell me about Uncle Evan. Is there anything I can do to help?’ she asked scanning the cooking debris on the table. ‘Where’s Aunt Elizabeth?’

‘Upstairs resting,’ Bethan replied. ‘I’m afraid tea’s going to be late.’