A Sixpenny Christmas (35 page)

Nonny looked relieved. ‘Maybe you’re right; if Mr Lawson can manage without me for three days perhaps a week wouldn’t be too much to ask. By then we’ll know just how ill Mrs Pritchard is. Oh, Mum, what a thing to happen, and especially when they were going to give an eye to Cefn Farm in your absence!’

‘If you’re going back to Cefn Farm tomorrow, Mum and I will come with you,’ Lana said firmly. ‘Mum can take charge of household tasks at the Pritchards’ and I’ll help Rhodri in any way I can. I’m sure if I tell them at work that Mum and I have been called away because of illness in the family they’ll let me take unpaid leave for a week or so.’

Molly was about to reply that it really wasn’t necessary when she heard Ellen’s tread on the stair. Ellen, arriving in the bedroom breathless but determined, argued that
Lana would be a great help, that her job could be done by anyone else in the typing pool and that her help on the farm would not be negligible, and every time she caught Molly’s eye she grinned and winked, causing her friend considerable embarrassment. Nonny and Lana might not realise, but Molly knew that Ellen would be only too delighted to get Lana away from her unsuitable boyfriend for a week or so. The fact that the relationship was not serious had clearly not yet penetrated to Ellen.

‘Discussion over,’ Nonny said briskly, whilst the two older women were still discussing the pros and cons. She seized Lana’s hand. ‘Come on! We must go straight to our offices and see what can be sorted out. I think relatives in trouble is going to be my excuse, if you have to call it that.’

When the girls had clattered down the stairs, Molly began to explain to her friend that Lana was really serious when she said she had no intention of going steady with anyone, and especially not her current boyfriend. She expected Ellen to be delighted, but instead the other woman pulled a dubious face.

‘She’ll say anything when she’s not with him, but it’s a different story when he calls to take her dancing or to the flicks,’ she said bitterly. ‘What a bloody nuisance that I told her not to bring him round here on Chris’s first day home. I’d feel far happier if you could meet him, Molly; you’d know how to deal with him, I’m sure.’

Molly sighed. ‘I don’t know why you think so; Rhys is the only man I’ve ever been serious about, so I don’t see that my advice could possibly help.’

Molly had come up to the bedroom ostensibly to unpack and arrange the room for the Robertses’ temporary
occupancy. Now she laid her nightdress out on what she knew to be Nonny’s single bed, and then the two women left the room and began to descend the stairs. Molly thought, sadly, that in one way Ellen’s pleasure was her pain, for there was Ellen happy to get her daughter out of Liverpool and away from the undesirable young man for as long as possible, and there was she, Molly, reluctant to have Lana back at Cefn Farm and thus very much in Chris’s eye. But she comforted herself with the thought that, all things being equal, Lana might take a fancy to Rhodri and never give Chris another thought. Of course he was ten years older than Lana and spoke Welsh as his first language, but that might not prevent him from being attracted by the pretty, lively girl.

By the time she reached the bottom of the stairs and turned into the kitchen Molly had dreamed up a whole scenario in which the bridal couple were smiled upon by Ellen and the elderly Pritchards. If Lana and Rhodri did fall in love, Molly thought, then it would be only natural for Ellen to come and live with them and manage the house, at least until Mrs Pritchard regained her full strength. Oh, it was undoubtedly the answer, both to Ellen’s problems and to her own.

Molly followed her friend into the kitchen and glanced up at the clock above the mantelpiece. Rhys had gone down to the telegraph office to send the Pritchards a telegram promising an early return the next day. Since it was almost five o’clock and dusk had already begun to fall, Ellen had gone over to the pantry and was bringing out the makings of the supper she meant to serve, so Molly, sighing, began to lay the table. She had had such plans for the next couple of days, but now they would
all come to naught. She had meant to visit the shops; it would have been an opportunity to buy Christmas presents, a chance to look at the new fashions, and she had been resolutely saving her egg money for weeks and weeks. Now all that would go by the board and she would have to look elsewhere. Chris had taken his driving test before he left for Canada, so if he or Rhys could ever spare the time to take Rhodri and his father to visit Mrs Pritchard, assuming she had been taken to the big hospital in Bangor, perhaps she, Molly, could go with them and do her Christmas shopping there . . .

‘What are you dreaming about, Molly gal?’ Ellen’s voice cut across Molly’s thoughts. ‘I wonder how long they’ll keep the old lady in hospital? I’d like to say I’ll stay until she’s back on her feet, but I got me lodger to think about. Lana’s a good girl, but she’s never took to cooking or housework, an’ I reckon if I didn’t come home with her the place’d be a pigsty by the time I got back and Mr Taplow as thin as a rake, ’cos she’d feed him on bread and butter and tea rather than try her hand at cooking.’

‘Oh, Ellen, she wouldn’t let you down, not your Lana,’ Molly said quickly. ‘The truth is, you spoil her rotten. Our Nonny doesn’t just pitch in with the farm work and the sheep, you know: she’s a good little housewife already. If you’d taught Lana to bake bread and make cakes and pies . . .’

‘Oh, I don’t have the patience to keep going over and over the same thing,’ Ellen explained. ‘Besides, chances are she’ll wander off halfway through. She likes an excitin’ sort of life does my Lana.’

Molly sighed. ‘There’s no reply to that,’ she said
ruefully, ‘except what you sow you jolly well reap, Ellen O’Mara. The man your girl marries isn’t going to thank you for letting her get away with saying “I don’t know how” every time he suggests she does a bit of cooking. Tell you what, why don’t you enrol her for evening classes in cookery? They call it domestic science, but it’s still cookery. Nonny would go along with her, because she was telling me they learn real fancy stuff – she’s got a friend who did that class last year – and I know she’d like to have a go. It would keep them out of mischief two evenings a week for the whole winter.’

Ellen’s face had brightened. ‘That’s a grand idea so it is,’ she said excitedly. ‘That Harry Wilkinson expects Lana to jump when he says jump, if you know what I mean, but mebbe Lana would tell him no if he come round here wantin’ to take her out when she and Nonny were off to this here cookery class.’

Molly opened her mouth to say again that from what Lana had told her she was honestly convinced that Harry Wilkinson had shot his bolt and was no longer a contender for Lana’s attention. Then she shut it again. No point in nagging, and anyway, it would do Lana a deal of good to learn to cook and housekeep. She turned her most beguiling smile upon her friend. ‘The girls have gone to ask for a week’s leave without pay, so why don’t we do their packing for them? Then when they get home again we can talk to them about the cookery course. It’ll give them something to look forward to when they get back from Cefn Farm.’

Nonny and Lana were successful in their application for a week off, though Nonny, ever honest, felt she had to
warn Mr Lawson that she might have to leave for good if things at home proved too difficult. Mr Lawson, a grey-haired, middle-aged man with three daughters of his own, reminded Nonny briskly that he valued her and would be very disappointed to lose her, but admitted that a week, or a fortnight at the most, must be the maximum length of her absence if she were to retain her job. Nonny thought that this was fair enough and commiserated with Lana, who was told bluntly by the head of her typing pool that her place could be filled half a dozen times over. ‘Your shorthand’s not bad and you type fast, I’ll grant you that, but you’re too chatty by half,’ the older woman had concluded. ‘However, the men seem to like you, which is all you worry about, I dare say. But don’t you exceed the leave we’ve given you, or you’ll find yourself out of a job, Miss O’Mara.’

Lana had not confided in Nonny what she had replied to this remark, but Nonny guessed that she had said something either saucy or cutting, for all the way home she had talked about other work with the air of one who expects to be job-hunting in the near future. She fancied working at one of the big stores; Lewis’s, for example, where sales ladies could also act as mannequins and show off their fabulous and expensive clothing. Shorthand and typing would not of course be involved, but Lana told her friend airily that her qualifications would still be there if she decided at the end of six months that she would prefer office to shop work.

On their return to Bethel Street the girls found that their mothers had done a great deal of work in their absence. Fortunately, perhaps, Molly and Ellen had been so busy talking upon their return to the house that Molly
had not unpacked the large case which she and Rhys had shared, so when the telegram had arrived all she had had to do was remove their nightwear and washing things from the case and leave everything else neatly packed away. Ellen had packed her own case and Lana’s, made arrangements with a neighbour to look after Mr Taplow if he happened to return before the week was up, and put the evening meal on the table.

The family ate hurriedly and then went straight up to bed, since Rhys meant to start early next morning, as soon as the sky was sufficiently light for him to see his way. As Molly climbed into bed, she thought sadly that this was a very different homecoming from the one she had planned, for she was aware that Chris, having lived for eighteen months in another country, might find Britain strange indeed. But she knew that Mrs Pritchard’s illness would affect them all. She remembered her first impression of old Mr Pritchard’s tiny little wife. Brown and wrinkled, grey-haired and almost toothless, but with bright dark eyes and a cackle of laughter never far from her lips, she had endeared herself to the Robertses by her unfailing cheerfulness and her eagerness to help in any way she could. Rhys had called her ‘the mousewife’ at first, but had had to stop doing so when he saw her toting a load a man in his prime would have had difficulty shifting, and it was not long before the whole family came to know her worth.

But now the gallant little woman was ill and in a hospital far from home, and how in heaven’s name would her husband and son manage without her? Molly did not believe Mr Pritchard would know how to boil an egg, let alone wash sheets or bake bread. Their farm was
not large, but Molly knew how the family had had to strain every nerve to keep their heads above water. She also knew that Rhys helped out whenever he could, as the Pritchards had once helped him, but any suggestion that the family at Cae Hic might employ a labourer to ease the load was greeted with a shake of the head. Pritchards, he was told firmly, had farmed in these mountains for maybe thousands of years and did not intend to risk losing their land by having to pay a worker.

Molly knew that old Mr Pritchard was one of five sons, so in his youth his parents had not needed to employ anyone. But as time went on his brothers had left Cae Hic to make their own way in the world. One of them had gone to Australia, one to New Zealand and another to the flat fields of Norfolk. Only Gwilym, the youngest, had left agriculture altogether, marrying a corn merchant’s daughter and taking over her father’s business when he retired.

Of course the Robertses had not liked to point out that times had changed, and now it was too late to do so. Both Rhys and Molly knew how terribly hard the Pritchards worked; knew also that without Mrs Pritchard Cae Hic was unlikely to remain in Pritchard hands for another thousand years. Molly knew that Rhys had no idea of their old friend’s financial position but suspected that, like most hill farmers’, it was hand to mouth, and three people was the absolute minimum needed to run the farm.

Sighing, Molly punched her pillow, telling herself that she simply must go to sleep or she would be no use when they set off at the crack of dawn the next morning. But she knew her dreams would be full of the Pritchards’
predicament. If only their place wasn’t so remote! It was several miles further into the mountains than Cefn Farm, and Molly remembered that one of the reasons she had wanted to send Nonny to Liverpool was because Cefn Farm, too, was a long way from neighbours and indeed from civilisation. Furthermore, the farmhouse itself was small, for the house in which Mr Pritchard had been born and raised had been old-fashioned and tumbling down and as soon as Rhodri was old enough to give a hand the family had worked like crazy, cannibalising the stone from their old home to build a dwelling which was more like a cottage, or one of the old Welsh longhouses which had once dominated the area. It had a dairy, a couple of small bedrooms and a kitchen–living room which old Mrs Pritchard loved, especially the Aga which her husband had bought second hand when a farm at Beddgelert had been put up for sale. Molly had advised the purchase, and possibly because of every hill farmer’s dislike of change they had got the stove for a tiny fraction of its real worth. Molly knew that before its arrival her old friend had baked in a camp oven and had made food as tasty and nourishing as any which Molly herself could produce, but the Aga eased her load considerably.

In addition to all her other tasks old Mrs Pritchard, like Molly herself, had sown and planted a sizeable vegetable garden, which provided them with most of their fresh food. Like the Robertses, Mrs Pritchard also grew fruit: gooseberries, blackcurrants, long pink sticks of rhubarb and raspberry canes. She kept poultry too, and in theory at least the egg money was hers, as was the money for the fatteners in their small pigsty, though Molly suspected that everything Mrs Prichard made was
automatically taken by her husband. Despite herself, Molly smiled; if she had kept the money, what would Mrs Pritchard have spent it on? In all these years Molly had never seen her in anything but a long black skirt, a black blouse, and in winter so many black shawls, wraps and scarves that you could scarcely see the older woman’s small, seamed face.