Love and War (17 page)

She gives me another long look. ‘Or perhaps you intend to paddle in shallow water for a while before you take the plunge... Something like that. Yes, I’ll come with you. I’ve got nothing better to do.’

‘He’s coming round at nine. Apparently he’s going to see Mary in the holidays, but perhaps he’s beginning to see sense because he didn’t mention getting married.’

How was I to know that Ilona would bring up the subject within about half a minute of his arrival?

‘Well, Jack, are you getting married in the Easter holidays, or not?’

‘No,’ he says, ‘as a matter of fact, I’m not.’

‘Why not? Did you decide against it, or did she?’

‘It’s all right, Rhian,’ he says, noticing, I suppose, the way I’m glaring at her. ‘Don’t worry, I was going to tell you sooner or later.’

‘So you may as well tell both of us,’ Ilona says blithely, ‘because she’ll tell me everything eventually.’

‘It was her father,’ he says. There’s such a long pause, then, that I get my coat on, thinking it’s as much as he’s going to say. It was her father who had... advised postponing the wedding, perhaps.

‘What about her father?’ Ilona asks. ‘What exactly did he say?’

Jack sighs. ‘It’s a long story.’

‘Well,’ Ilona says, settling down more comfortably into her chair, ‘let’s have it. It’ll do you good to get it off your chest.’

Jack looks at each of us in turn, seeming none too anxious to unburden himself.

‘What does her father do?’ Ilona asks. ‘Start there. What does he look like? How old is he?’

‘Works on the railway. A clerk, I think. Quite ordinary-looking. Short and thick-set. About fifty.’

‘And the mother?’

‘A step-mother. Quite ordinary-looking, too. A bit younger.’

I try to help him. ‘I remember Mary saying she didn’t get on very well with her step-mother.’

‘She seemed all right. She seemed concerned about her. There are two step-sisters, too, about seven and eight. But I only saw them for about ten minutes and then they were off to bed. There’s a dog as well, nearly blind. A big yellow dog. Carlo.’

‘Let’s get back to the father,’ Ilona says in her most patient voice. ‘He seemed quite a nice chap, did he?’

‘Yes. He took me out to his local after supper. I deserved a drink, he said.’

‘Did he mention Alun Brooke?’ I ask.

‘Don’t take any notice of that girl,’ Ilona says. ‘She’s obsessed with Alun Brooke.’

‘Mary hadn’t told them about Alun Brooke. They didn’t know she was engaged to him. They didn’t even know of his existence.’

‘He didn’t
have
any existence,’ Ilona says, her eyes turned to the ceiling. ‘That’s the whole point.’

‘But the Head had sent them a telegram asking them to phone him at school, and he told them about him – I mean Alun Brooke – and about Form 3C and about me and how he was convinced she was having a mental breakdown. And a lot more, it seems – Alfie Morris and so on.’

Jack looks very upset.

Even Ilona seems a little downcast. ‘Yes,’ she says, ‘I get the picture. The father, Mr Powell, this rather old, quite ordinary-looking man, thanks you for being kind to his daughter and advises you to hold your horses until she recovers her mental stability. Something like that.’

‘Something like that,’ Jack says. ‘Yes, that’s right. Something like that.’

There’s another long silence. The small fire, which we’ve decided to let out, collapses quietly into the grate. For a time, we stare at the dying embers.

‘Well then, we’d better go,’ Ilona says. ‘They shut at ten.’

I don’t feel at all like a first visit to a pub, but I dare not say so.

‘The thing about a pub,’ Ilona says as we sit down at a small round table in a rather dark and very crowded room, ‘is that everyone is here wanting to talk, to escape some stress or forget some trouble. No-one is here for any grave or serious purpose. That’s what’s good about a pub. People talk and argue but it’s not a debating society with voting at the end. It’s nothing at all really, but a pleasant way of wasting time.’

‘They’ve sold out of beer,’ Jack says. ‘There’s only this stuff. Drink up, Rhian, it’s good for you.’

It’s dark and unpleasant, not unlike the ten-year-old iron tonic I recently found for my mother.

‘It’s stout,’ Ilona tells me. ‘A bit of an acquired taste. Leave it if you don’t like it, I’ll finish it for you.’

Some men are singing a hymn in the other bar. A superb counter-tenor orbits the last verse, but the general feeling in our bar is that he’s showing off. ‘It’s that Ieuan Harris again’ someone mutters. A pub is obviously not the place for choir practice.

After about five minutes, Ilona gives Jack money for another round. It’s not the thing, she tells me, for women to go up to the bar.

Apart from us, there are only two women, with about twenty-five or thirty men, and none apparently in the other bar.

‘Of course, they’d like it to be men only,’ Ilona says. ‘Welshmen are always happiest without women around. Even at funerals they try to keep us away. They pretend it’s because we’re not up to it emotionally, that they want to protect us, but of course it’s not that. Even death is more bearable in a black huddle of men... With the women in floral overalls seeing to the food.’

We watch Jack pushing his way through the smoke with two more glasses of stout.

‘Take Jack, now,’ she continues, ‘I bet he’s never brought a woman to a pub before tonight.’

‘No, I haven’t,’ Jack says. ‘And now I’ve got two.’

‘He doesn’t look too miserable.’

‘No. I feel happier than I have for a long time. Except that Gwynn Morgan is just coming over, look, so I’ve got the feeling I’m going to lose at least one of you.’

‘Drink up,’ Ilona tells me.

Gwynn sits at my side without a word. My heart is thumping so loudly, he must be able to hear it. Ilona lights a cigarette. Jack stares at his drink. I can’t think of anything at all to say.

I suppose this is what I’d intended all along. After all, wasn’t I well aware that he comes to the Ship most nights?

‘How’s the wife?’ Jack asks, after what seems an interminable time.

‘How’s the portrait going?’ Ilona asks. ‘What do you think of it? Is it good?’

Words start to flow. I try to listen to them, even to add a few of my own. Soon the room is thick with words and smoke. Gwynn’s knee is pressed hard against mine.

‘
I bob un sy’n fyddlon
’ starts up from the other bar. For a few moments we listen to tenors and basses exhorting us to enlist on God’s side against the Devil. After a verse or two, Jack joins in.

I smile tenderly at Gwynn. ‘Such a pleasure to see you here,’ he whispers, after the thorough trouncing of Satan’s legions. ‘Now I’ve got everything I want under one roof.’

I clutch his arm. ‘Wine, women and hymns.’

‘That’s right,’ he says.

When we leave, it’s very dark and the sea is loud and rough. The four of us stand for a while clutching the cold railings, listening to the waves crashing on to the rocks. The singers, still in good voice, have started on an anthem and the wind accompanies them as they walk up Marine Terrace.

‘It’s too cold here,’ Ilona says. ‘I’m going home. Are you coming with me, Jack?’

‘We’re coming, too,’ Gwynn says.

They lead the way and we follow. Ilona has taken Jack’s arm, but in spite of the darkness, I’m not so daring.

‘What did Celine say about your call-up papers?’

‘She didn’t make such a fuss as you did.’

I can’t see the expression on his face, but his voice sounds as though he’s rather proud of it; the fuss I made.

‘It came as such a shock to me.’

‘You think of me as an old man, do you?’

‘I suppose it must have been that. A venerable old man. Far too old to go to war.’

‘Too old, too old for anything,’ he says, his voice still full of pride and tenderness.

I want him to crush me in his arms. My mouth is dry. My flesh and my bones desire him, but I’m too nervous even to take his arm.

Ilona turns back towards us. ‘Jack and I are going for some fish and chips. What about you two?’

‘No, I’ve got to get home,’ Gwynn says. ‘Will you go with them, Rhian?’

‘No, I need to get back, too.’

He and I walk up Hill Street on our own.

‘I had quite a shock to see you in the pub,’ he says. ‘Will you come again?’

‘I expect so.’

‘And another shock to see Jack with Ilona Hughes. How long has that been going on?’

‘There’s nothing going on between those two. No, Jack’s accounted for. He’s seeing Mary Powell again in the holidays. Though they’re not getting married. Not at the moment, anyway.’

‘I know. He told me about her mother.’

‘About her mother? He didn’t tell us anything about her mother.’

‘Her mother died in an asylum, it seems. She became ill when Mary was born and never recovered. Mary’s father took Jack out to a pub and put him in the picture.’

We don’t speak for some minutes. The hill seems steeper than usual.

‘But that doesn’t mean anything, does it? Mary doesn’t have to be insane because her mother was.’ My voice is shrill.

‘No, I know. All the same, no-one could say that she’s altogether normal, could they? No-one could describe her as well-balanced.’

Poor Mary. I’m ashamed of my anger and impatience towards her; I should have been kinder. I look up at Gwynn. ‘How cruel life is.’

‘I know, love, I know. Life seems pretty terrible for everyone at the moment.’

‘That’s true.’

I find I’m almost pleased about it; the way it evens things out. ‘It’ll certainly be terrible for me when you go away. I won’t be able to bear it.’ I put my hands over my ribs to steady the sudden thumping of my heart.

‘And I thought you were still angry with me,’ Gwynn says.

‘No. Didn’t you get my note?’

‘No.’

‘I sent you a note by a little girl from 3C. Mali Vaughan. Third period this afternoon.’

‘I didn’t get it. I was in my room all afternoon.’

‘Where the devil did she take it? She certainly took it somewhere. She came back looking very pleased with herself.’

‘She probably took it to the Head. She’s not very bright, Mali Vaughan. What was in it?’

‘Nothing much. A few words of love, that’s all.’

If he’s worried, he doesn’t show it. As we reach Sea View, he puts his arm around my shoulder and pulls me towards him. For a second or two, I can feel his breath on my cheek; I can smell his skin.

Ten

THE EASTER HOLIDAYS. Ilona Hughes goes home to Brynteg for the weekend. She’s been tired and irritable for the last few weeks so it may do her some good to get away. She has a perm before she goes. She looks different. ‘You look different,’ I tell her. ‘Different better or different worse?’ ‘Just different.’ Why do I have to be so honest? It cost fifteen shillings. Telling a little lie wouldn’t kill me.

Gwynn takes his wife to Anglesey where he’s got a brother, a sister-in-law and nephews and nieces. He promises to send me a postcard. When I ask him whether he’ll miss me, he becomes angry. ‘Don’t flirt with me. You know how I feel towards you, don’t trivialise our love.’ I go over and over the words in a sweet daze. He’s got his medical a week after he gets back.

As soon as he goes, I’m as miserable and lonely as if he’d already been sent abroad. He says he and Celine are nothing to each other now, nothing but friends. But people get closer on holiday. I keep thinking of them walking arm in arm along quiet Anglesey lanes.

The Allied invasion of France is expected in late spring or early summer, but surely Gwynn won’t be involved in that. At his age, he’ll surely be stationed in this country or in England. I suppose Huw is bound to be in the fighting; every night I try to pray for his safety. The anger I felt towards him seems to have completely gone. What I feel now is a despairing kind of affection; he seems someone I knew and cared about a long time ago; I don’t love him, I shouldn’t have married him. I know I’m going to hurt him, but at least I won’t do it lightly.

All in all, I’m in a turmoil of love and anxiety and guilt ‘How are you?’ my mother asks when I get home. ‘Me? Oh I’m fine.’

My mother is well again and very busy with six calves, thirteen piglets and several broods of chicks and ducklings.

Alfredo has forged ahead with his English by this time reading and understanding newspaper headlines and talking well. Unfortunately it’s much more difficult for him to get out in the evenings; the friend who covered for him having been transferred to another camp. However he seems to find it necessary to give Gino and Martino some help and advice several times a week, so we still see him fairly often.

On the Saturday after Easter, I watch him and my mother mending a fence. He’s several inches shorter than my father was, but he has the very same way of tackling a job, the same unhurried way of walking round, studying the problems from every angle, the same economy of movement when he gets started, the same easy grace. Every time I see him I’m reminded of my father.