Hearts of Gold (32 page)

‘There’s nothing stolen in there,’ Megan began hotly.

‘Did I say there was?’ the sergeant continued conversationally.

‘Now what was I talking about? Oh yes, these forty thieves. They’re good, you know. If not the best.’ He walked over to the small window and peered out the back. ‘Shop detectives tell us they can get a frock off a display stand in the window of Howell’s in Cardiff. Even a twelve guinea red silk frock. Isn’t that right, Mrs Powell?’

Andrew blanched as he recalled the dress that Bethan had worn to the hospital ball.

‘They can go into a shop, act pleasantly, even innocently, and walk out with a dozen shirts or blouses tucked into their bags or under their skirts. Coats, costumes, make-up, lipsticks, face powder, perfume …’ He took the box from the table, rattled it, and carried it over to the window. ‘All child’s play to them. They even manage the odd man’s suit, or rug. Nothing’s sacred, too hot or heavy. Isn’t that right, Mrs Powell?’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’ She picked up a thick bar of green soap from the windowsill above the sink and began to grate it over the water.

The washhouse door banged and William walked in, still barefoot, his hair ruffled.

‘And who might you be, young man?’ the sergeant asked, stepping over the constable who was still rummaging in the dresser cupboard.

‘William Powell. Mr Powell to you,’ William asserted full of bravado.

‘He’s my son,’ Megan said defensively.

‘Where’ve you been, lad?’

‘Out back. Is it a crime now for a man to visit his own outhouse?’ He looked to the ceiling as a loud crash resounded from upstairs.

‘That depends on what a man keeps in his outhouse.’ The sergeant nodded to the constable. ‘Out there, quick. Check the coal shed, the outhouse and anything else in the garden.’

‘What right do you have …’

‘They’ve a warrant, William,’ Megan warned.

‘They’ve no bloody right to wreck our things.’ He picked up the dresser drawers from the kitchen floor.

‘Less of that language, young man,’ the sergeant warned heavily. ‘Or we’ll be arresting you for profanity. And for your information we’ve every right to search any household where we’ve reason to believe stolen goods are being concealed.’

‘You’ll find nothing stolen here.’

‘That’s not what we heard.’

‘If you wanted to turn our house over why didn’t you ask one of my uncles?’ William asked angrily. ‘They’re all po-faced coppers, just like you …’

‘William,’ Megan admonished.

‘Not just like me, lad. They’re related to you. That’s why we had to draft the Cardiff boys in to do this little job.’

Boots thundered down the stairs. The two constables came in with the entire contents of Megan’s wardrobe in their arms. They threw the clothes on top of the box of cosmetics on the table.

‘Good-quality clothes, Sarge, just like they showed us.’

‘So they are. You have anything to say, Mrs Powell?’

‘Those are the only clothes I possess.’

‘And?’

‘And nothing. Do you expect me to walk around naked?’

‘Not naked,’ he fingered a silk blouse, ‘but not dolled up to the nines either. Where did you buy these?’

‘Local dressmakers, mostly. Women on the Graig may not have the money of the crache, but we’ve eyes in our head. We buy material on Ponty market and copy what’s in the shops.’

‘Copy?’ He took a closer look at the stitching on the blouse.

‘Cheap sewing machines can sew as well as expensive ones,’ Megan pronounced bitterly.

‘Let’s get this straight.’ He held up the blouse. ‘You’re saying this was made here, on the Graig?’

‘I’m not sure.’

‘What do you mean, you’re not sure?’

‘I don’t keep books on where I get all my clothes. Some of them are presents from friends,’ she snapped.

‘Gentlemen friends?’

‘You mind what you’re saying to my mother,’ William broke in hotly.

The constable barged into the washhouse from the garden.

‘Nothing, back’s clean,’ he announced.

‘Sure nothing’s been pushed down the toilet?’ the sergeant demanded.

‘Nothing I can see, Sergeant.’

‘Put your hand down, did you?’ William enquired snidely.

‘No patches of loose earth, no signs of recent burial? Nothing under the coal in the coal house?’ the sergeant continued, ignoring William’s question.

‘Nothing, Sarge,’ the constable insisted. ‘I looked. And there’s precious little of anything in the coal house. Even coal.’

‘Price it is, are you surprised?’ Megan prodded as many of the clothes under water as she could.

‘You two, back upstairs,’ the sergeant ordered the two constables who’d carried Megan’s clothes into the kitchen. ‘And you, back to the dresser.’ He pointed to the policeman in the washhouse.

The constable pushed past Megan’s washtub. As he did so he looked down.

‘My Mam never does that,’ he criticised abstractedly.

‘What, lad?’ the sergeant asked.

‘Put dark clothes in with light. She says they run.’

The next thirty minutes crawled past at a snail’s pace. Bethan stood, frozen to the wall that separated kitchen and passage, too shocked and too shamed to look Andrew in the eye, as the policemen pulled garment after garment from the boiler. All were dripping wet. Some had shrunk. On some the colours were running but most were still recognisable as quality clothes. And each and every one matched a description on a long list that the sergeant constantly referred to and checked them off against.

Megan stood still and silent, a pale effigy as they dragged the clothes from the tub. She didn’t even object when they heaved the sopping, soaking mess of cloth over the rug and table in the kitchen, through the passage and out of the front door.

Only when the tub contained nothing but water did the sergeant ask if she had anything to say. She lifted her head, looked at him once before turning to William and Bethan.

‘Only that I and I alone am responsible for this. No one in this house except myself knew where my stock came from.’

‘Your suppliers?’

‘I’m not prepared to say any more,’ she said sternly, lifting her chin defiantly.

‘You won’t tell us who did your thieving for you, yet you expect us to believe that your family are innocent? That they lived here, saw you sell these clothes to your cronies day after day, without knowing where they came from?’

‘It’s the truth,’ Megan insisted fervently.

The sergeant studied her. Cool, calm, unflustered, she showed no signs of emotion and he knew he would get no further with her while they remained in the house. He shouted for the constables to finish whatever they were doing in the front room and upstairs.

Charlie left the position he’d taken up in the hall while they’d carried out the clothes, and returned to the kitchen. William put his hand on his mother’s shoulder.

‘Go to Diana, William,’ she said abruptly. ‘You’ll have to look after her now.’

‘Mam …’

‘Just do it,’ she said harshly. ‘Go on, Will,’ she added in a softer tone. ‘For me.’

He pushed his way past the policemen on to the stairs where Diana and Maud, still wearing their nightdresses, were huddled together. He stepped over them. Sitting one step behind, he put his arms around their shoulders.

‘Dr John,’ the sergeant addressed Andrew, ‘I’m sorry to have kept you here, sir, but it’s against regulations for anyone to enter or leave a house during a search, excepting police officers.’

‘Of course.’

‘I hope you understand.’

‘I understand,’ Andrew said hollowly, looking anywhere but at Bethan.

‘You’re free to go.’

Andrew walked over the soaking wet linoleum and rug towards the door.

‘Aren’t you forgetting something, sir?’ the sergeant asked as Andrew reached the door.

‘Like what, Sergeant?’

‘Don’t all doctors carry a bag?’

‘Only sometimes, Sergeant.’ He turned on his heel, walked out of the house, and straight into a tightly packed crowd of people. The pavement was jammed for a good twenty yards either side, with women, children and men craning their necks, desperate to catch a glimpse of what was going on inside the house. A sudden loud screaming to the left caught everyone’s attention.

The sea of heads turned as though pivoted on an extension of a single neck. Three large, red-faced, burly policemen were dragging a plump, dishevelled woman from the house next door. She was completely hysterical.

A man stood behind her, hemmed in the doorway by another policeman. He was holding a baby in his arms and a toddler by the hand. He shouted something to the woman, but the sound of her cries drowned out his words.

Three other children of various ages and sizes tried to keep a grip on the woman’s skirt, all of them bawling at the top of their voices. Two of the policemen uncurled their fingers as the third bundled the woman into the van. The door slammed, the engine started and the van careered off up the street. Someone threw a stone. It hit the side of the van and rebounded into the crowd.

‘Next one to pull a trick like that gets arrested,’ an authoritative voice shouted. ‘Man, woman or child. It makes no difference.’

Andrew recognised the imposing figure of Superintendent George Hunt who ran Pontypridd police station with military precision.

‘Dr John,’ he greeted Andrew. ‘I wouldn’t stay here if I was you,’ he cautioned seriously. ‘There might be trouble.’

‘I came here on a call,’ Andrew explained, perpetuating the fiction Bethan had concocted.

‘If we need medical assistance we’ll send for the police surgeon,’ the superintendent said shortly.

‘I was just on my way.’ Trying to ignore the angry faces, and angrier talk of the crowd, Andrew fought his way to his car. One or two men blocked his passage, but once they saw who he was they stepped aside, allowing him to open the door and climb in.

All he could think of as he drove down the Graig hill was just how narrow an escape he’d had. Not only his own, but his father’s hard earned reputation would have been on the line if the police had decided to take him down to the station for questioning along with Megan. And Bethan – he was grateful to her for her quick wits. He could never have lied as promptly, or manufactured an excuse as good as the one she had, which enabled him to leave straight after the search. It had been clever of her. But at the same time he was absolutely bloody furious that she’d risked his good name and character by taking him to Megan’s in the first place.

It wasn’t until later, after he’d shaved, bathed and retired to bed for a couple of hours sleep, that Andrew thought about the full implications of Megan’s arrest from a viewpoint other than his own. If – and from what little he knew, the “If” was likely to be accomplished fact, “if” Megan had been charged with selling stolen goods that made Bethan, Laura and half the women on the Graig guilty of receiving them. A scandal on that scale would rock Pontypridd. He could hear his mother’s voice, scathing in its condemnation, ‘Did you really expect anything else, dear, from a girl born and brought up on the Graig?’

Chapter Sixteen

Megan’s house fell unnaturally silent after she was taken away. Charlie alone seemed capable of logical thought or action. First he saw to the two girls sitting on the stairs with William.

‘Hadn’t you better get upstairs and dress?’ he suggested gruffly in his guttural accent. The sound of his voice roused Bethan. She stared despondently at the chaos around her. Then she thought of Megan, alone in the police station, no, not alone, they had taken Judy Jones and Betty Morgan, she’d heard their screams. Her tired brain groped with what needed to be done, trying to sort out tasks into order of priority. The house had to be put back together again. But Megan needed help.

‘William,’ she said urgently. ‘Run home and get Daddy …’

‘But your mother …’

‘Don’t speak to my mother. Just tell Daddy we need him. Now, quickly. And while you’re there find Haydn. Ask him to run to Griffiths’ shop and tell Jenny –’ she hesitated for a moment, then threw caution and euphemism to the wind. Megan had been arrested. If that wasn’t an emergency she didn’t know what was, ‘and Harry what’s happened. Perhaps if Harry Griffiths comes here he can talk to Daddy. Between them they might know what to do.’

William still sat, shell-shocked, on the stairs.

‘Go on, William, what are you waiting for?’ she demanded angrily.

‘I think I’d better put a pair of shoes and a shirt on first,’ he said wearily.

She looked at him and saw that he was still dressed only in his trousers. ‘Sorry. Of course you’d better dress.’

‘Diana, Maud,’ she called out, after William had left the house. ‘As soon as you’re dressed see what you can do to tidy the mess upstairs.’

‘Bethan, it’s awful,’ Maud wailed. ‘They’ve torn the pillows and bolsters open. There’s feathers everywhere …’

‘Find Auntie Megan’s sewing kit. Diana will know where it is. Stuff the feathers back in and sew them up,’ Bethan ordered.

She stopped down to the floor and began to gather the contents of the dresser.

‘I’ll start in the washhouse.’

She jumped at the sound of Charlie’s voice. She’d forgotten he was there. A few minutes later she heard the sound of the boiler being dragged over the flagstones towards the back door, closely followed by the gush of running water as he turned the tap set in the bottom of the boiler on, over the outside drain.

She put the things she’d picked up on to a chair. Then, she looked at the floor. It was soaking wet and filthy, heavily marked by the dirt carried in on the hobnailed boots of the constables.

She gathered the rag rugs and carried them out the back, then she went to get the scrubbing brush and bucker from under the sink. She found the bucket along with the soap Megan had been grating, but there was no sign of the brush or floor cloth. She looked around before walking across to the boiler and lifting the lid, but there were only the dregs of dirty water in the bottom.

‘Have you seen the scrubbing brush?’ she asked Charlie.

‘If it was in here they probably took it with the clothes,’ he heaved the boiler back into position.

Bethan’s self-control finally snapped. ‘The swines. The absolute swines,’ she shouted, wanting to scream something far worse but unsure what. ‘How in hell can we clean up when they haven’t even left us a cloth or a brush to do it with?’ Venting her anger she kicked the boiler viciously. Then, as abruptly as it had erupted, her fury subsided. She sank weakly against the drum and began to cry.

‘Nurse Powell? Bethan?’ Charlie’s fingers banded around her forearms like metal vices. ‘Come on, pull yourself together. You have to be strong,’ he hissed quietly. He was close, so close she could see the frown lines etched in his pale forehead, ‘William and Diana are good children. But they are just that. Children. They need you.’

‘They have you and Sam,’ she muttered mutinously.

‘No they don’t,’ he asserted forcefully. ‘Sam and I are lodgers. Drifters. Here today, gone tomorrow. No one can rely on us. Do you understand? No one. You have to pull yourself together for their sakes. You and your family are all they’ve got.’

She looked at him, made a supreme effort and stiffened her resolve along with her back. ‘I’m sorry,’ she apologised bleakly. ‘That was unforgivable. It won’t happen again.’

He released his hold on her, but she could still feel the force of his fingers compressing her flesh. Lifting her arm she wiped the tears from her eyes on her sleeve. Charlie looked at her, and nodded briefly as though he approved of her self-control. ‘I’ll go up the road and borrow what we need. Then we can start cleaning this mess up.’

A procession of neighbours came to Megan’s house that morning. They brought dinner plates piled high with thick wedges of bread pudding and Welsh cakes, pop bottles filled with home-made elderberry, blackberry and nettle wine – and sympathy.

They sat on the chairs in Megan’s kitchen and spoke in reverential, hushed tones. The only way they knew how to express their feelings for what had happened was by following the pattern that had been set down to cope with a different kind of loss. But it took Diana to voice what was uppermost in everyone’s mind.

‘Anyone’d think someone had died here,’ she said loudly as one group of visitors trooped out and another in.

Haydn came with orders from Evan that Maud should go home at once, and stay there. He told them that that their father had decided to walk across town to Bonvilston Road to see if he could find Megan’s brother Huw, the one person Bethan hadn’t thought of contacting. William was walking down the hill with him as far as Harry Griffiths’ shop.

Old Mrs Evans and Annie Jones knocked on the door and followed Haydn into the house. They took one look at the feathers floating down the stairs and set to work with Megan’s mending kit. While they repaired the damage Haydn gave Charlie a hand to move the heavier pieces of furniture back into position.

With Annie’s help, Diana and Bethan soon managed to restore order to the bedrooms, and once the repairs were finished and there was only cleaning to be done, Bethan left Diana to it and went to see to the downstairs.

She was scrubbing the constables’ dirty footprints from the washhouse floor when William returned with the news that Harry Griffiths had thrown all caution to the wind and was going to the police station in person.

‘Are you sure that’s what he intends to do?’ she asked.

‘I’m upset, not stupid, Beth,’ he said angrily.

‘Does his wife know?’ she questioned anxiously.

‘She was in church. As Jenny wasn’t too keen on the idea of staying at home to face her mother’s return on her own, I brought her back with me.’

‘I don’t think that was a good idea, William.’

‘If you won’t make Jenny welcome I know someone who will,’ William said irritably, watching Haydn sneak a kiss from Jenny when they thought no one was watching.

Bethan decided that Harry Griffiths was a fool to flaunt a relationship that he and Megan had struggled to keep discreet if not secret, for so long. But not wanting to add to Diana and William’s problems she kept her opinion to herself and carried on scrubbing.

When the floor was clean enough for her, she washed out the scrubbing brush Charlie had borrowed, tipped the dirty water down the outside drain and rinsed the bucket. Then she took a short breather. Leaning against the outside wall of the house she watched the sunshine as it played over the square of tilled earth where Megan grew a few vegetables. Then she noticed her uniform.

Her dress, apron and stockings were filthy. It was just as well that the sun was shining, she thought wearily, because at the risk of offending Mrs Richards and the other chapel going neighbours, who checked back gardens for evidence with which to confront those who broke the “No work on the Sabbath rule” she’d have to wash them before the stains had time to set. Mud was a devil to shift, even when it was fresh.

She picked up the bucket, stowed it under Megan’s sink and checked the meat safe that hung high on the pantry ceiling. There were two breasts of lamb in it. While Haydn stoked up the oven with a bucket of coal, she boned and rolled the breasts, leaving Jenny and Diana to prepare the potatoes and cauliflower that she found on the pantry floor.

Someone – she wasn’t sure if it was Haydn, William or Charlie opened one of the bottles of homemade wine while the dinner was cooking. Forgetting her sleepless night and the fact that she hadn’t eaten since midnight she downed the glassful Haydn handed her in one gulp. It went straight to her head and her limbs. They felt strange, heavy and leaden, but the feeling didn’t stop her from drinking a second glass. Or a third. And by the time Evan returned with the news that Huw was going to the police station to see if he could find out anything, the second bottle had been opened.

It seemed ridiculous to stick rigidly to tradition in a household that had been turned upside down during the course of one short morning, but she dished up dinner at one-thirty, as Megan would have done. No one was very hungry, but all the bottles of wine that the neighbours had brought round were drunk. The brews weren’t quite up to the standard of the hock or sparkling wine in Dr John senior’s cellar, she decided critically when she was well into her third glass of blackberry wine, but they certainly had the desired effect.

‘This is good wine, Dad,’ Haydn commented as he refilled the tumblers. ‘Why don’t we ever have home-made wine at home?’

‘You know why,’ Evan replied tersely.

Bethan kicked Haydn under the table. She was old enough to remember the arguments between Caterina, who’d been an expert wine brewer, and her mother, who wouldn’t have a bottle of anything alcoholic kept, let alone drunk or brewed in the house.

‘You working tonight, love?’ Evan asked her.

‘Yes,’ she answered, surprised that someone should want to talk about the normal world. In all the trauma of Megan being carted off to jail she’d forgotten about mundane things like hospital and work.

‘In that case you’d better go home and get some sleep.’

‘I’ll clear the dishes first.’

‘Diana and I’ll wash them,’ Jenny offered, ‘and Haydn will dry.’

‘If you get him to do that, you’ll get him to do more than he’s ever done at home,’ Evan joked.

‘I do plenty at home.’ Haydn protested.

‘I could sleep on one of the beds upstairs,’ Bethan interrupted.

‘No point, love,’ Evan said. ‘I’m staying. Tell your mother I’ll stop here for as long as I’m needed.’

‘I’m nineteen, Uncle Evan,’ William said angrily, spoiling for a fight. ‘Old enough to look after the house and my sister.’

‘No one doubts that, Will, but when your Uncle Huw gets here there’ll be decisions to be made on things like solicitors. Three heads will be better than one. And tomorrow morning you may need an extra pair of legs to run errands to the bank, or police station.’

‘I suppose you’re right,’ William conceded grudgingly.

‘Go on, girl, off with you,’ Evan said to Bethan.

She left the table and took her cloak from the peg behind the door.

‘Thanks for staying and doing everything, Beth.’ Diana gave her a bear hug and a kiss.

‘Thank you,’ William said gratefully.

‘See you later? I’ll call in on my way to work.’ Bethan walked unsteadily to the door. The crowds had dispersed, but there were still puddles on the pavements where the police had heaped the wet clothes. Without thinking she turned left at the end of the road and walked up to Rhiannon Pugh’s house. Opening the door she went in and bumped into Phyllis in the passage.

‘I’m dreadfully sorry,’ she hesitated, ashamed and embarrassed at breaking in on Phyllis’s privacy unannounced.

‘It’s all right,’ Phyllis said. ‘You’ve come from your aunt’s?’

‘Yes.’

‘We’re very sorry, Bethan. It’s a terrible thing to have happened.’

‘Thank you.’ Bethan was amazed that Rhiannon and Phyllis incarcerated as they were by Phyllis’s shame, should have heard the news so soon.

‘If there’s anything we can do?’ Phyllis offered hesitantly.

Bethan struggled to suppress the tide of hysteria that rose in her throat. The thought of the outcast helping the criminal seemed very peculiar. ‘There’s nothing anyone can do,’ she said finally. ‘That’s why I left.’

‘I shouldn’t keep you.’ Phyllis glanced self-consciously at her stomach.

‘Phyllis,’ the wine had loosened Bethan’s tongue, and she spoke where she normally would have stayed silent. ‘If you ever need a nurse who’s half a trained midwife I’m only across the road. I’ll come over day or night, you do know that.’

‘Thank you.’ Phyllis blushed crimson. ‘I might be grateful for help some time.’

‘I’d better get going. I’m whacked. I worked all last night and I’m on again tonight.’

‘You must be exhausted,’ Phyllis agreed. She opened the back door. ‘It’s been nice talking to you, Bethan. You’ll be coming through tonight?’

‘If you don’t mind.’

‘We’ll be glad to see you.’

Bethan walked up the steps, opened the door in the back wall and stepped out into Graig Avenue. A crowd of children’ were playing in the dirt in front of her house. They fell silent when they saw her, a sure sign that the news had already travelled from one end of the Graig to the other. She passed them, climbed up to her front door and opened it. A foul smell of burning cloth greeted her. Panicking at the thought that hot coals had dropped out of the stove on to the hearthrug, she dropped her cloak on the passage floor and ran into the kitchen.

Her mother was standing in front of the stove, a knee-deep pile of clothes heaped on the rag rug at her feet. The stove door was open and she was picking up the garments one by one with wooden tongs and stuffing them on top of the coals.

‘Stop!’ Bethan screamed. She ran across the room and tried to pick up as many of the clothes as she could in an attempt to save them.

‘Dad told her to do it, Beth.’

She turned and saw Eddie sitting in the dark corner of the room behind the dresser. ‘Chances are they’re all nicked and we can’t take the risk of the police coming round and finding them. Not after what’s happened to Aunt Megan,’ he said despondently. ‘Dad said they could have us up for receiving.’