A Silver Lining (37 page)

Her only regret about Phyllis was that it had taken Evan, not Charlie, to persuade her to leave the workhouse. So much time had been wasted when they could have been getting to know one another.

The day her father had returned to the house with Phyllis and Brian, she had helped Phyllis put Brian to bed in the box room that was now his. While they had been occupied upstairs Evan had explained to the boys and Diana exactly whose son Brian was. Eddie hadn’t liked the situation at first, but Phyllis’s gentle diffidence had eventually won him over, and if the neighbours tittle-tattled about the latest additions to the Powell household, or thought Evan’s relationship with Phyllis strange, none of them had yet found the courage to say anything openly to their faces.

Bethan opened the door to the front parlour and stared at the spot where she had kept Edmund’s pram. After the funeral Eddie and Diana had bundled up all of Edmund’s things and put them in the attic, but it hadn’t helped. She only had to close her eyes to picture the day cot, his teddy bear, his clothes, his frail, tiny frame ...

She turned her back on the parlour. Desperately trying to shut out the painful memories, she gazed blindly out of the window. The street was brilliant with sunlight. It was a warm, beautiful Sunday afternoon. The sort of day she had loved to walk out in dressed in a summer frock. Just the feel of light cotton against her skin after months of serge and wool had been enough to make her happy.

Evan had taken Phyllis and Brian for a walk up Shoni’s pond. They had asked her to go with them, just as Charlie, Diana and Eddie had pleaded with her to go to Cardiff. She had told them that she preferred to stay at home, and reluctantly they had been forced to take her at her word. But for the first time since Edmund had died she was beginning to regret her decision to stay in the house. Perhaps it was not too late. She could put on her shoes –go up the mountain...

The front door opened and she turned. Andrew was standing before her, spruce as always in an open-necked white silk shirt, navy blue blazer and grey flannels. She remembered washing and ironing the shirt and suddenly, unaccountably, tears started in her eyes.

‘Can I come in?’

She nodded, a thickness in her throat preventing her from speaking.

He closed the door and walked up to her. She was wearing a loose black and white cotton frock, a shapeless overall tied over it. She had put on weight since he had last seen her, but she still looked pale, tired and strained.

‘I was hoping you’d come for a ride with me.’

‘You have a car?’

‘Didn’t you see me pull up?’

She looked out. A shining new car was parked in front of the house, its black paintwork and chrome bumper glittering in the sunshine.

‘I’m sorry, I really didn’t see you coming. I was miles away.’

‘Please –’ he held out his hand but she didn’t take it. ‘Will you come?’

‘Where to?’

‘Does it have to be anywhere special? We need to talk.’

‘There really doesn’t seem to be a lot to say.’

‘We’re still married, Bethan.’

She wondered if he wanted to ask her for a divorce. She could hardly refuse him –not when she was living in Pontypridd and he was living in London.

‘Give me a few moments to get my shoes and a cardigan.’ She ran up the stairs, washed her hands and face, splashed lavender water on her neck and wrists, combed her hair and spread a little powder on her cheeks. She didn’t bother with lipstick; her face was so pale it would have made her look like a clown. She took off the overall and buttoned up the cardigan to conceal her thickening waistline.

Andrew waited for her to leave the house and followed her down the steps, opening the passenger door of the car for her. As she expected he turned left at the bottom of Graig Avenue, went up over Penycoedcae and took the seaside road that ran through Beddau and Llantrisant.

‘Are you going to Swansea or Porthcawl?’ she asked when they reached a point half-way up Penycoedcae hill.

‘You’ll see in a moment,’ he answered mysteriously, smiling at her.

She looked away from him, out of the window. ‘When did you come back?’ She didn’t really want to know: it was simply talk to break the silence that had fallen between them.

‘Late last night. I booked into the New Inn,’ he added, not wanting her to think that he’d run back to his parents.

‘And when are you leaving?’

‘I’m not. I’ve given up my job in the Cross, the lease on the flat, and moved all the furniture back. It’s being stored in my father’s garage.’

‘What are you going to do?’

‘That –’ he glanced across at her –’depends entirely on you.’

She retreated into silence again, resenting the idea that she had to take responsibility for his life as well as her own. He turned left into a drive. To their right loomed a huge house that she had seen often from the road and admired. A veritable mansion, she had equated it with the big houses Jane Austen had written about in her books, but she had never been so close to it before.

Double bays swept up either side of the pillared front door, from the ground to the second floor. Above them was a neat row of small attic windows. ‘What’s this?’

‘A house.’

‘Whose house?’

He fished a key out of his blazer pocket. ‘I can hardly expect you to live on the Common, and I’d rather not live on the Graig for reasons that have nothing to do with snobbery, but with your family’s well-founded dislike of me. So I thought we’d compromise and settle on Penycoedcae. This place isn’t so far up the hill that your family can’t walk here a couple of times a week. And if you don’t like the idea of trekking up and down to see them and Laura, you’ll just have to learn to drive, won’t you?’

‘Drive. Me drive a car?’

‘Why not? I’ve enough money set aside to buy another one, and driving is nowhere near as difficult as nursing.’ He climbed the steps to the front door and opened it. ‘Please Bethan, just take a look inside. I’ve taken my old job back in the Graig,’ he said as she walked slowly towards him. ‘Junior doctor, working under Trevor.’

‘Andrew, I know you. You won’t be happy with that for long.’

‘What I do know is that I can’t live without you. I’ve found out the hard way that my happiness depends on you. Please, Bethan, take me back. I know I’ve behaved like a fool, especially over Edmund. But after he was born I felt so guilty ...’

‘
You
felt guilty!’

‘If I hadn’t left you when you were pregnant, you wouldn’t have had to carry on working, you wouldn’t have fallen down the stairs in the Graig ... and you might not have had such a rough time when he was born. And even then I could have demanded a Caesarean but I didn’t until it was too late ... Bethan, please, love. What’s wrong?

What have I said?’ He reached out hesitantly and enveloped her in his arms as tears fell silently from her eyes.

‘It was my fault Edmund was the way he was,’ she sobbed. ‘All my fault ...’

‘How can you say that? Bethan, it wasn’t. Oh God I’m sorry. I made it so difficult for you. I’m sorry, darling. But it’s not your fault, it’s mine. Didn’t you realise he was damaged by the birth? It was my fault, not yours. All my fault. I should have seen the problems coming. I’m sorry, darling. So very, very sorry. I know I don’t deserve it, but won’t you please give me one more chance?’

Through the tears and half-understood words a horrible suspicion formed in her mind. She wrenched herself out of his embrace. ‘I suppose Trevor told you.’

‘Told me what?’

‘That’s why you want me back, isn’t it?’ she continued, too angry to listen to him. ‘Why you want to start all over again. Wipe the slate clean, pretend that Edmund didn’t exist. Try to blot out one baby’s life by having another. Well it won’t work, Andrew ...’

‘You’re pregnant!’

‘You didn’t know?’ she whispered, seeing the truth in the stunned look in his eyes.

‘How could you keep something like that from me, Beth?’ He sat down suddenly on the doorstep.

‘I left London, after ... after that night. I didn’t find out until I’d been in Pontypridd for a couple of months.’

‘You could have written.’

‘Why? To give you one more excuse to put Edmund away? To tell me that I couldn’t look after him and the new baby?’

‘I was there when Edmund died,’ he reproached her.

‘And you returned to London straight after the funeral.’

‘Only because you shut me out. You never once said you wanted me to stay. You turned to your brother, your family...’

‘Because they’re always there when I need someone.’

‘Oh God, what a mess. What a bloody awful mess.’ He covered his eyes with his hands.

‘You should have listened to your parents.’ Her anger died as suddenly as it had flared. ‘We were never really suited. It went wrong between us from the start. Perhaps my mother and Uncle Bull were right. Edmund was the way he was because of –’

‘That’s rubbish, Beth, and you know it.’ He lowered his hands and continued to sit on the step staring at the trees that shaded the rolling lawn he’d envisaged sitting out on in summer, eating picnic teas, playing tennis, croquet ... He’d been so wrapped up in his ideas of starting again, of being alone with her, making up for all the pain and loss she’d suffered, that it hadn’t once crossed his mind that they could have other children. Even now, he didn’t want to consider the strain that children would put on a relationship that was so fragile, so tenuous ...

‘It doesn’t matter either way now. Not really,’ she murmured. ‘It simply won’t work. There’s nothing left, Andrew.’

‘Bethan, I’ve changed,’ he protested earnestly. ‘I promise you this time I’ve really changed.’

‘So have I.’

‘Please, won’t you at least come inside, look at the house. Please.’

‘There’s no point.’

‘Then what? You’re leaving me?’

‘I left you months ago.’

He rose to his feet and wrapped his arms around her again. This time she didn’t pull away. Simply leaned her head against his shoulder, breathing in the old familiar scents she would always associate with him. Kay’s soap, Andrew’s cologne, tobacco ... Standing together in this peaceful garden in the sunshine she wanted to believe that they could begin again. But then she remembered Edmund, their estrangement, the gulf between them that no amount of talking would ever bridge.

‘Andrew ...’

His mouth was on hers, silencing her. She surrendered to the magic of his touch, the sensation of his lips. It was easier to allow herself to be swept along on the tide of his passion than to resist it. After all, it was something she’d done so many, many times before.

A cloud drifted across the face of the sun, the air grew cooler, the kiss ended and the spell that had held her in thrall shattered. ‘It’s hopeless, Andrew,’ she protested as he finally released her.

‘You want me, Bethan. If you didn’t you wouldn’t have kissed me like that. You ...’

‘I want you.’ She looked up into his dark brown eyes, tawny and gold with reflected light. ‘Oh, I want you, but when the kissing stops the problems start, and we can’t live out the rest of our lives in bed.’

‘But I love you.’

‘And I love you.’ She looked away from him, unable to bear the pain and hurt reflected in his eyes. ‘But sometimes love simply isn’t enough.’

Chapter Twenty-two

The houses were small, red and yellow brick set in a typical dockside terrace of two-up, two-downs with lean-to washhouses and outside ty bachs, but the minute Alma entered the street she sensed she’d moved into an alien world. Even the smell was different: spicy food, exotic perfume, strange drink and tobacco, and judging by the widest smile she had ever seen spread across Charlie’s face, she knew that somehow the foreign atmosphere held a little of the essence of Russia.

More animated than even William had seen him before, Charlie wandered up and down the street, greeting people of all races and colours, introducing them to Africans, Russians, Chinese and Norwegians, sampling food from the tables that the women had set up on the pavements, laughing and slapping men heartily across the back; the whole time speaking in a harsh guttural language that transformed the old familiar Charlie of Pontypridd into a gregarious native of this new and outlandish place.

‘Feodor! Feodor Raschenko!’ A burly man built like a bull, who towered above William by a head, gave Charlie a bear hug, swinging him high off his feet.

‘Was that Charlie’s ribs I heard cracking?’ Diana asked as Charlie’s blond head almost disappeared into the man’s long black hair and beard.

‘You old fool, where have you been hiding yourself?’ The man kissed Charlie on both cheeks before setting him down on the pavement.

‘I haven’t been hiding anywhere,’ Charlie protested. ‘Your mother always knows where to find me. Come on you old rogue, meet some friends of mine.’

‘Russian?’ the man beamed at Diana and Alma as he strode over to where they were standing next to William and Eddie.

‘Welsh,’ Charlie corrected.

‘That’s an unusual nationality to find in Bute Street.’ He extended a hand the size of a meat plate. ‘Any friend of Feodor is a friend of mine,’ he shouted, pumping William’s hand up and down enthusiastically then turned to Eddie. He bowed elaborately before Diana and Alma and kissed their hands. ‘Especially young ladies as beautiful as you. But then, Feodor, you always have had good taste in women.’ He lifted an enormous shaggy eyebrow in Charlie’s direction.

‘And as they’re my friends,’ Charlie smiled pleasantly, ‘I expect you to treat them like princesses.’

‘Why wouldn’t I?’

‘Because you’re drunk, Nicky.’

‘And what else would I be on my name day? Come. Come?’ he beckoned them through the front door of his house and into the kitchen where the table was groaning from the weight of punch howls, bottles and an array of odd glasses. Charlie extracted two bottles of beer from the bag he’d brought, and handed them to the boys, depositing the remainder beneath the table.

‘Punch for the ladies.’ Nicky slopped out the fruit covered contents of a punch howl into two large glasses. ‘And for the men, a man’s drink, eh, Feo,’ he said, producing a flask of clear liquid. Swigging it directly from the bottle, he downed a third before handing it over to Charlie, who did the same. ‘You want some in your beer?’ he asked the boys,

‘Go easy,’ Charlie warned William and Eddie, somewhat incongruously considering the face he was making after swallowing Nicky’s vodka. ‘And especially you,’ he whispered to Diana and Alma. ‘I know what this man puts in his drink.’

‘You know nothing, Feo,’ Nicky shouted at the top of his voice. ‘You never have. Come on, it is time for dancing,’ he cried as the sound of music drifted in from the street.

‘Feodor, you have come to see us.’

‘Mama Davydova!’ Feodor swept a fat old lady off her feet, and kissed her soundly on the mouth.

‘I have a feeling this is going to prove an interesting party,’ William muttered as he sipped sparingly from his beer bottle.

‘And I have the feeling that I never knew Charlie at all,’ Diana echoed in bewilderment as an assortment of women dragged him away from them, out into the street.

‘Come, come, you dance.’ Nicky put one arm the size of a tree trunk around Alma’s shoulders, the other around Diana’s, then, afraid after Charlie’s warning that he might have offended them, he straightened up to his full height, removed his arms and offered them a hand each. ‘Princesses,’ he said with a twinkle in his eye.

Alma burst out laughing. ‘Princesses it is.’

‘I won’t give up, Bethan. I want you to know that. I won’t ever give up.’ The sky had darkened to a rich, dark gold in the west. Over in the woods on their left a bird was singing its last plaintive evensong.

‘I can’t argue with you any more, I can’t even think straight.’ Bethan was sitting with her back against an enormous chestnut tree whose branches spread over a quarter of the lawn. She was annoyed with herself for breaking down and crying when Andrew had offered to drive her home an hour ago. He had tried to comfort her, but his apologetic words and gentle caresses had only served to upset her all the more. She had been unable to regain control of her emotions, crying bitter, salt tears that had left her throat burning, her eyes heavy and an after-taste of exhaustion that made her feel weak and totally unable to cope, either with Andrew’s constant pleading, or with the thought of going home to face Evan and Phyllis’s caring concern.

‘I only know that I can’t risk my own, or your happiness again. It hurts too much when it all goes wrong.’

‘And the baby?’ he pressed, attempting to come to terms with the idea of becoming a father for the second time.

‘I’ll look after him,’ she said trying not to think of Edmund, and how she had failed him.

‘And me?’

‘You can see him. You can ...’

‘Say hello to both of you when I pass you in the street? Think about what you’re doing, Bethan. We could be a family ...’ he wanted but couldn’t bring himself to say “again”. He moved closer, sitting opposite her on the stone steps of a wooden summerhouse that had fallen into dereliction.

“A family!” She had a sudden very real image of herself and Andrew sitting out on cane chairs in this garden with babies playing on a rug at their feet. Then she thought of her life in Graig Avenue, surrounded by people yet always alone, because she missed the close, loving relationship that she and Andrew had once shared – and could share again until –until when? Until something else went wrong? She rose abruptly, dusting off the skirt of her dress with her hands.

‘Look, as we’re here and I have the key –’ he played for time, wanting to keep her with him and prepared to go to almost any lengths to do so –’won’t you at least look around the house with me? It may save me making another trip.’

‘Andrew, I’m not going to change my mind about living with you because of a house.’

‘I know that.’ He smiled at her, the old boyish smile that had once made her heart turn somersaults. ‘But I have to live somewhere, and I rather like the look of this place.’

She reluctantly followed as he led the way through a tiled porch that was about the same size as the room Charlie lived in. The hall would have swallowed the back kitchen in Graig Avenue three times over and still had room to spare.

Doors opened from it on to vast imposing room, after room ... so many rooms. ‘You’re thinking of living here by yourself?’ she asked in stunned amazement, taken aback by the sheer size of the place.

‘I need a house.’

‘But Andrew, this is ridiculous.’

‘I’ll grant you it needs some money spent on it, and it has to be decorated, but when it’s finished it could be quite lovely.’

‘It’s too big for any sense.’

‘That’s only because it has no furniture in it at the moment.’ He consulted the estate agent’s sheet. ‘Look at this.’ He opened a door on to a huge kitchen that ran the full width of the back of the house.

‘More doors?’

‘Butler’s pantry, ordinary pantry, dairy ... stores ...’

‘A butler’s pantry?’

‘It would make a marvellous storage cupboard.’

‘For what? I don’t know of any housewife who makes enough jam to fill those shelves.’ She left him and walked back into the hall where she sat on the bottom step of the magnificent sweeping staircase.

‘I know it doesn’t look too good now, but believe me it’s solid, all it needs is decorating.’

‘It’s so isolated.’

‘That’s one of its attractions.’ He sat beside her, careful to leave a few inches of space between them. ‘I had hoped we could get to know one another again without too many distractions.’

‘Junior doctors are always on call in Pontypridd. It’s not like London.’

‘We’ll have a live-in maid so you won’t be alone when I have to go out.’ He sensed a yielding, but was wary of pushing too hard, too fast.

‘How many bedrooms are there? ’Four main ones, and eight smaller ones.’

‘And you want one live-in maid?’

‘We’ll get as much help as we need.’

‘On a junior doctor’s salary?’

‘I have money set aside.’

‘You won’t have it for long if you take this place on.’

‘Bethan ...’

‘No.’ She left the hall and walked outside into the garden.

‘Bethan, I know I’ve behaved badly. I know I don’t deserve another chance, but I love you. I need you. The flat, London, it was all so empty without you. I’m sorry I made such a lousy father. I’m sorry I didn’t understand about Edmund. Please ...’

‘If we were going to live together again, I would want a say in where we live and how it’s furnished, and that,’ she pointed to the huge house behind them, ‘isn’t it.’

‘Then you’ll look at something else with me?’

She hesitated, caught in a trap of his making. ‘I didn’t intend to say that.’

‘You still love me.’

‘I loved Edmund as much.’

‘I know.’

‘Andrew, we could go on this way for ever, fighting all the time, hurting one another ...’

‘I promise I’ll never, never hurt you again.’

‘No one can make promise like that.’ She smiled despite the pain gnawing inside her. Two steps and she could be at his side. In his arms. It was that easy. Two steps ...

‘All we need is a beginning, something to build on. Beth, can you honestly say that you haven’t woken up lonely in the night?’

‘I’ve been lonely,’ she admitted.

‘Then give me one more chance.’

She looked up at him, her dark eyes frightened, enormous in her pale face. ‘You don’t know what you’re asking, or what you’ll be getting. I feel ... I feel cold, Andrew. Cold and dead.’

‘I want you however you are.’

‘I won’t be easy to live with.’

‘I don’t want easy, just you,’ he persisted urgently, hope rising within him. ‘I want a smaller house than this one.’

‘You can have whatever house you like. I’ll even live on the Graig if it will make you happy.’

‘That would be too great a sacrifice to ask for.’

He detected the glimmer of a smile.

‘And if you were hoping that by offering me the Graig I’d reciprocate by agreeing to live on the Common, you’re mistaken.’

‘There’s some nice houses in Graigwen.’

‘So they say.’

‘Bethan, can we try again?’

‘I’ll never forget Edmund.’

‘I wouldn’t want you to.’

‘And if this one isn’t perfect?’

‘You’ll have to teach me to love him. I don’t seem to be very good at it.’

Two steps. She clung to him, her hands around his neck. ‘I’m sorry, Beth,’ he murmured, brushing the top of her head with his chin.

‘Both of us are going to have to get into the habit of talking, of trying harder.’

‘I know. Here, I have something for you.’ He pulled a jeweller’s box out of his pocket and opened it.

‘My locket! You redeemed it.’

‘I wanted to give it back to you months ago, but there never seemed to be a right time until now. Here,’ he fastened it around her neck.

‘What do you think of old furniture?’ she asked, fingering the locket as they walked towards his car.

‘What kind of old furniture?’ he enquired suspiciously, wondering if she was testing him.

‘Late Victorian.’

‘You know I hate it.’

‘I like it,’ she said determinedly, thinking of Rhiannon Pugh’s furniture stored in Mavis’s house. She had always liked it, and if she could persuade Andrew to buy it for her, Phyllis would have some money of her own for once. ‘Tell you what. How about we compromise? You can have a modern dining room and I’ll have an old-fashioned parlour.’

‘Fine, as long as you share your parlour with the children’s toys and we have a modern sitting room for company. There’s room for both in this house, and it’s going cheap too.’

‘No.’

‘I’ll let you furnish the kitchen and bedrooms as well.’

‘I’ll hold you to that.’

‘Does that mean you’ll reconsider the house?’

‘I’ve reconsidered enough for one day.’

‘Do you want to drive around Pontypridd and look at more houses, or do you want to come back to the New Inn and have dinner with me?’ He halted in front of the car and pulled her gently towards him.

‘You want to show me your room?’

‘It’s a nice one.’

‘I’m sure it is.’

As he opened the car door, he bent to kiss her. They had a long way to go, but they’d made a beginning. And he was determined that in this beginning would be the right end, for both of them.

Mama Davydova was playing an instrument that Charlie; during one of his more lucid moments had gravely informed Alma was a balalaika. The soft, haunting melody filled the street with a romantic atmosphere eminently suited to the twilight and the shadow silhouettes of the women as they moved swiftly and silently, clearing the tables of empty plates and replacing them with full ones.

Nicky was slumped in an easy chair he’d carried outside his front door, his head resting low on his chest, his long hair falling across his face, concealing his eyes.

Alma was sure he was asleep, but when the playing stopped he was the first on his feet, clapping and cheering, making more noise than half a dozen ordinary mortals. A guitar strummed somewhere behind them, another picked up the tune, and another, until a rousing Cossack dance-beat echoed through the air.

Nicky looked round, saw Charlie and slapped his arm across Charlie’s shoulders. Both men shed their jackets and began to dance, side by side, twisting and turning on their heels, their slow movements gradually, almost imperceptibly, growing faster and faster with the throb of the music until they whirled like dervishes, jumping higher into the air than Alma would have thought possible, to the accompaniment of resounding whoops from the crowd.