A Silver Lining (22 page)

At two o’clock she picked up the spare bottle and nappy she’d packed into a string carrier bag, put on her coat and hat and wrapped the baby and herself in a shawl. As an afterthought she filled an empty tin with her cakes and Diana’s biscuits. She glanced around the kitchen before she left.

It wasn’t as smart or modern as the London flat, but it had been her home as a child, and it had become home again, providing a safe haven when she had needed one. It looked shabby and worn, but also clean, and cosy with the stove belching out heat. The warm, welcoming smell of fresh baking lingered in the air. She imagined the boys and Diana walking in, and the thought occurred to her that she didn’t know how long she was going to be.

She took a pencil from the marmalade jar on the windowsill and the back of one of Andrew’s envelopes and scribbled, ‘In Rhiannon’s with Phyllis. Bethan.’

‘Rent.’ Bobby swaggered through the shabby door of Alma’s house, purposely kicking the bottom panel as he went. It splintered from its supporting nails and fell in three large pieces on to the flagstones. Glancing up from the wreckage, he saw Alma standing in front of the curtained doorway of the kitchen, her green eyes contemptuous as she held out her rent book at arm’s length.

‘It’s all there, folded inside. A ten-shilling note and a sixpence. Nine shillings for this week, plus the one and six I owe from last week.’

‘It’ll cost another ten shillings to mend this door. A pound for a new one if it can’t be fixed.’

‘You broke it. You pay.’ For the first time she noticed the deep black and purple bruise that spread from his chin along his jawline up to his left ear. There was a cut on his eye too. She could see its bloody jagged edge beneath the plaster that was covering his left eyebrow.

‘That rain guard fell off when I opened the door because you haven’t given it a single lick of paint in the last ten years.’

‘It was fine until you kicked it.’

‘I say otherwise, and seeing as how the landlord pays me to check the houses and collect the rent I know who he’ll believe.’

‘Not after last night.’

‘What happened last night, then?’ He stared at her cockily as he wrenched the rent book from her outstretched hand.

‘You know as well as I do.’

‘I know nothing.’

‘The mess on your face tells a different story.’

Bobby pushed past her, slamming her into the wall with his shoulder as he pulled back the curtain and walked into the kitchen. He laid the rent book down on the table and took a fountain pen from his pocket. He unscrewed the top with a flourish.

Although he had taken his time, waiting until he’d seen Alma’s mother walk off to the market clinging to Mrs Lane’s arm, he looked over his shoulder as he signed the book, just to make sure the house was really deserted. After last night he didn’t entirely trust Alma not to have someone lying in wait.

‘You Charlie the Russian’s bit on the side then now?’ he taunted after he’d ensured they were alone. ‘Is that where this-’ he stuffed the money that had been folded into her rent book into a bag –’came from?’

‘It’s my money.’

‘Not honestly earned, I’ll be bound, unless of course,’ he sniggered, ‘you count lying on your back working.’

She went to the window and opened it wide, letting in a draught of freezing air. ‘Just sign the rent book and go, Bobby,’ she said loudly.

‘Or what?’ Secure in the knowledge that not only was Mrs Lane out, but Mr Lane had taken advantage of his wife’s absence to walk around the corner to visit the illicit bookie shop, he pushed his face close to Alma’s. ‘Or you’ll go whining to your foreign friend and ask him to work me over again? Well, have I got news for you. I know a lot of funny people in this town, and Russian Charlie had better watch his back.’

‘You touch him and I’ll go straight to the police.’

‘And tell them what? That I turned down your offer to pay the rent without handing over any money?’ He caught her hair and twisted her head back. Planting his wet, greasy lips over hers, he kissed her. She kicked him on the shins and he yelped. This time she was quicker than him, fleeing down the passage and out through the front door before he managed to retrieve his pen from the table.

She stood outside, trembling, waiting for him to leave. He followed her, kicking aside the pieces of wood then opening the door as wide as it would go.

‘You’d better watch your Ps and Q’s,’ he warned softly as he walked into the street. ‘You can start by having this door repaired,’ he added in a louder voice. ‘And if it isn’t done by next week, I’ll see you out of here for neglecting the terms of your lease.’

‘You try that and I’ll tell your wife all about you, Bobby Thomas,’ Alma screamed after him, silencing the children who were playing in the street. ‘And don’t you come knocking at my door any more for the rent either. I’m walking up to Maesycoed to pay it to Mr Jones direct. And I’m telling him why.’

Chapter Thirteen

Phyllis was upstairs, sitting watching at Rhiannon’s deathbed with her small son playing at her feet, when she heard Bethan call her name softly in the downstairs passage. She rose quietly from her chair and picked up her son. He looked anxiously up into her face from large brown frightened eyes as she smoothed the hair away from Rhiannon’s face.

He didn’t understand what was happening, only that his mother and Mamgu were very quiet, and Mamgu didn’t get out of bed or want to play with him anymore.

‘I heard about Rhiannon. I came as soon as I could. Can I look after the little one for you?’ Bethan asked as Phyllis walked down the stairs.

Phyllis bit her lip in an effort to hold back her tears. Her shame at bearing a bastard had led her to expect ostracism, and the indifference she had affected after his birth had frustrated the efforts of even the most determinedly helpful of the women in the street.

‘Please. You know that if my Aunt Megan were here, she’d be with you.’ Bethan put a finger from her free hand into Phyllis’s son’s hand. He took it and smiled.

The smile decided Phyllis. Since Rhiannon had taken to her bed two days ago, she had felt more alone than she had ever done in her entire life. With Rhiannon lying unconscious, having to be washed, fed and changed as though she were a helpless baby, and without Evan’s daily visits, she had felt cut off from and neglected by the world.

‘Thank you.’ She set her son down on the floor close to Bethan.

Bethan held out her hand to him. ‘What’s his name?’

‘Brian. I named him after my father,’ Phyllis said as the child tottered unsteadily towards the kitchen door.

‘Come on Brian, you can help me make some tea.’ Bethan hesitated for a moment. ‘Is there anyone I should send for, Phyllis?’

‘Rhiannon has no family left.’

‘What about you?’

‘Charlie,’ Phyllis said decisively without thinking who she was speaking to. ‘Please, send for Charlie. He’ll know what to do.’ She turned and walked back upstairs.

Bethan was totally bewildered. If anyone had asked, she would have said that Charlie and Phyllis didn’t even know one another.

Keeping a firm grip on Brian’s hand she opened the front door and walked out on to the top step. A ragged collection of boys were playing football with a tin can lower down the street. Three young girls were walking up and down following the game, taking it in turns to push a battered old pram containing a small baby. Cheaper and more readily available than a doll, Bethan thought wryly. She stared at the boys, hoping to see one she recognised, but it was difficult. A few months away in London and none of the faces looked familiar.

Finally she settled on one she thought she recalled from Eddie’s schooldays.

‘Martin Gibbs?’

‘That’s not Martin, Nurse Powell. That’s his brother Michael,’ one of the young girls, dressed in a cotton frock that was too thin for the cold weather assured her knowledgeably.

‘Run and get him for me would you please?’

‘Our mam told us not to play near this house,’ one of the girl’s playmates commented gravely to Bethan. ’She said that old Mrs Pugh is dying and she deserves a bit of peace before she goes, without us yelling in the street outside.’

‘She is dying,’ Bethan murmured softly, clutching Brian’s hand all the harder. ‘And I’m sure she’s grateful to you for keeping quiet.’

‘You want me, Nurse Powell?’ The boy Bethan thought was Martin ran towards her.

‘I’d like you to run an errand for me.’ Bethan pulled her purse out of her coat pocket.

‘Down the shop?’

‘No, down the market. You’d better tell your mam where you’re going.’

‘She’s out gossiping, she won’t miss me.’

‘There’s no one in your house?’

‘My dad.’

‘Then tell him.’ She produced a penny. ‘You can have this and two more when you come back.’

His eyes grew round. Three pence was birthday money for a child on the Graig.

‘I’ll go with him, Missus.’

‘And me.’

‘And me ...’

‘Just you.’ Bethan handed the penny to the boy. ‘You know Charlie’s stall in the meat market?’

‘Course I do. Everyone knows Russian Charlie.’

‘Ask him to ... tell him ...’ Bethan thought for a moment, wondering how best to phrase Phyllis’s message. ‘Tell him Mrs John needs him in Rhiannon Pugh’s house. And tell him it’s urgent.’

Phyllis sat on one side of Rhiannon Pugh’s bed holding her withered hand, and Bethan sat on the other. Bethan had helped Phyllis to change the old lady’s bed earlier and remake it with rubber draw-sheets and the deep blue satin coverlet that had been kept for ‘best’. Now it lay over the smoothed sheets and blankets, and the frail figure of the old lady who’d treasured it all her married life. Phyllis had hung the unbleached linen shroud and white stockings that Rhiannon had stitched against this day over the central mirror of the dressing table.

The old lady had asked her to remove the garments from her chest when she’d taken to her bed, and had also extracted a promise from Phyllis that she would dress her in them before the undertaker placed her in her coffin.

In front of the grave clothes stood a blue vase inscribed with gold lettering that read, ‘A present from Porthcawl’. It was filled with daffodils that Charlie had brought up from the market. A gesture that had amazed both Phyllis and Bethan.

Neither of them had ever considered the Russian thoughtful before; although as Bethan watched him stand impassively at the foot of the bed next to the door, arms folded as he kept silent vigil with them, and remembered some of the things he had done for her family over the past three years she realised it was an adjective he well deserved.

He had arrived on Rhiannon’s doorstep with the flowers in his hand and Trevor Lewis in tow. Respecting Phyllis’s need to be with the old lady, Trevor had examined Mrs Pugh in her presence, shaking his head gravely as he tucked his stethoscope into his bag.

Bethan had given him tea afterwards, and he had taken the opportunity to check Edmund over, and to chastise her for not coming to visit him and Laura more often. She promised to do so as soon as time allowed, and he left, muttering something about coming back later.

Diana had arrived at Rhiannon’s door within five minutes of coming home from work and reading Bethan’s note. Sizing up the situation, she took Edmund off Bethan’s hands and went home to make Eddie and William’s supper.

Bethan washed the endless empty cups dotted around Rhiannon’s kitchen, bathed Brian in Rhiannon’s enormous stone sink, and put him to bed in the big double bed he shared with his mother.

Sensing something was wrong, Brian listened intently while Bethan sung him a lullaby, accepted her good-night kiss without a murmur, snuggled down with a knitted rabbit and fell quietly asleep, which was probably as well, because for the first time in his life his mother didn’t come to kiss him goodnight.

Once Brian was asleep, Bethan’s evening became a marathon of making endless cups of tea, ferrying them to Phyllis and Charlie upstairs ... and waiting. And at eleven o’clock all was much as it had been when Bethan had arrived at two in the afternoon.

Rhiannon hadn’t stirred. Her eyelids hadn’t even flickered when Bethan and Phyllis remade her bed around her. The cheese sandwiches Bethan had made stood, curling and untouched where she’d left them on Rhiannon’s dressing table at six o’clock. Phyllis hadn’t drawn any of the curtains all day, and as dusk fell Charlie lit one of the stubs of candle on the dressing table.

As in most of the houses on the Graig, Rhiannon’s electrical lights only extended as far as the downstairs rooms.

The candle flickered, silence reigned, and the old tin alarm clock that had woken Rhiannon’s husband every day of his working life continued to tick away the final minutes of Rhiannon’s life.

Charlie watched the light of the candle flicker across the old woman’s face and remembered another deathbed. It had been spring then too. But not a damp cold spring like this. Dry days had burst sunny and warm, melting snows into life giving water, coaxing buds to unfurl on the trees. And the curtains in the death room had been kept open so the occupant could see the apple-blossom cloud, pink and fragrant on the branches outside the window.

He remembered the fragile weight of his grandfather’s wasted hand in his. ‘It is your time now, Feodor. Enjoy it. Enjoy it while you can. Every minute, boy. Life is wonderful. But for me now, it is over.’

He stepped from the doorway towards the bed. He trod softly, and if the rickety floorboards hadn’t creaked beneath his weight Bethan wouldn’t have noticed he’d moved.

She shook herself from her reverie and watched as he laid his hand lightly on Rhiannon’s neck, just as a doctor would have done. The action was so fluid, so natural, she didn’t even think about it.

‘She’s gone,’ he murmured, wrapping his arm around Phyllis’s shoulder. Phyllis turned to him and he helped her to her feet. She stood there, head buried in his chest while Bethan went to Rhiannon.

Charlie was right: the spirit that had animated the frail bundle of bones had left.

‘It’s not right,’ Phyllis sobbed. ‘Saying nothing ... going without a word, like that ...’

Bethan recalled some of the deaths she had witnessed as a nurse. Deaths lacking in dignity where people had gone out fighting, rattling and screaming to the last.

‘It’s the kindest way, Phyllis,’ she said quietly. ‘Believe me, it’s what I want for myself, and I’m sure it’s what Rhiannon would have wanted if she’d been given the choice.’

Phyllis stifled her sobs, gripped Charlie’s shoulders, and turned round to face Bethan. ’You’ll help me lay her out?’

‘I’d be honoured.’ Bethan looked at Charlie.

‘I’ll go downstairs and bring up some hot water. Then I’ll walk to the Graig Hotel and telephone Doctor Lewis.’ He glanced at the clock. It had stopped. He pulled out his pocket watch.

‘Half-past eleven. Rhiannon died at half past eleven?’

Phyllis nodded. Picking up the grave clothes she held them tightly in her hands. Suddenly they seemed to be all she had left.

At midnight, Trevor Lewis arrived in response to Charlie’s telephone call. A few minutes after he’d signed the death certificate in Rhiannon’s bedroom; there was a knock at the front door.

‘I called the undertaker,’ Trevor explained apologetically to a startled Phyllis. ‘I thought you’d need a coffin.’

Phyllis took one of Rhiannon’s cold hands in her own and kissed it as Charlie went down to open the door. Outwardly Phyllis was composed, but inwardly she was desperately trying to cling to what little routine remained of her life.

As long as the old lady lay here in her own bed she was at least an integral part of the household. Coffins had no part to play in life. They belonged to cemeteries, to the ceremonies that underlined the finality of the ultimate separation. Phyllis realised that once Rhiannon was removed from this bed, she would never again see the woman who had been more of a mother to her than her own.

She would be on her own, as she had never been before. Alone with sole responsibility for her son; the prospect terrified her.

‘I wasn’t sure which model you wanted. I’ve brought a standard pine with wooden fittings to be getting on with. If you want it replaced with mahogany and brass ...’ Fred Jones’s voice floated up the stairs. Charlie murmured a reply, too low for Bethan and Phyllis to hear.

‘If it’s all right with you we’ll set it up in place now, then carry the body down. I take it; she is in one of the bedrooms?’

Phyllis and Bethan considered Fred Jones’s voice loud and insensitive for a house of death, but experience had taught the undertaker that it was easier to be misunderstood when you spoke in hushed tones.

Charlie looked at the narrow stairwell and nodded agreement. While he rearranged Rhiannon’s heavy old Victorian furniture in the front parlour, the undertaker brought in trestles and set them up in pride of place in the centre of the room.

After Charlie had given him a hand to carry in the coffin, he fussed around, inching the supports first one way, then the other in order to give anyone looking in from the passage the best possible view of the coffin, and its contents.

‘Not that I suppose there’ll be that many who’ll come in to look at her,’ Fred asserted when everything had been arranged to his satisfaction. ‘From what I hear they led a quiet life in this house.’

In the end it was Charlie who carried Rhiannon’s body, wrapped in the best bedcover, down the stairs, and Phyllis aided by Bethan who arranged the cheap machined cotton frill around the old lady’s face and shroud.

‘She looks peaceful, doesn’t she?’ Phyllis asked, seeking confirmation.

‘I hate to get down to brass tacks at a time like this,’ Fred interrupted in a rasping voice, before either Bethan or Charlie could answer. ‘But the sooner the business side is tied up to everyone’s satisfaction, the sooner you can get on with your mourning.’

‘Can’t it wait?’ Phyllis pleaded as she folded Rhiannon’s fingers around the gold crucifix her husband had bought to celebrate the birth of their only son over sixty years ago.

‘I’ll sit with Rhiannon while you talk to Mr Jones,’ Bethan interposed, knowing how important ‘corpse sitting’ was to the women of the Graig, especially during the first night after death.

Phyllis reluctantly returned Rhiannon’s hands to the coffin, and with one final backward glance, left the parlour. Trevor, Fred Jones and Charlie filed solemnly after her into the kitchen. Without thinking, Phyllis filled the kettle, put it on the stove to boil and counted heads. She went to the open-shelved dresser and lifted down three of Rhiannon’s ‘best’ blue and gold cups and saucers for the men, then three more, one for herself, one for Bethan, and one for Rhiannon. When she’d realised what she’d done, the tears began to flow again.

Charlie took the last cup gently from her trembling hands and replaced it on the shelf.

‘I take it Mrs Pugh was insured?’ It was after twelve. Fred had downed several brandies in the New Inn, and all he wanted now was his bed. Preferably warmed by the plump body of his wife. He resented being called out on a Saturday night. Any other night of the week he didn’t mind, but a Saturday night was special.