Love and War (23 page)

‘I understand that. Even if you’d chosen wrongly, you’d still have had to stick together to make the farm pay. Yes, but the atmosphere here would have been different.’

‘We were a Christian family.’

‘All right. I was lucky to have been brought up in a Christian family where “love one another” was practised not just preached.’

‘I don’t know what that means and I don’t want to know. I’ve never wanted to talk about private matters. In this house there was Christian love – and whom God has joined together, let no man put asunder.’

‘You think Christian marriage ensures this ever-present flow of love?’

‘I’m not as feeble-minded as you seem to think, my girl. Christian marriage is only the first step. The second step is two people’s determination to make it work because it’s the only choice they’ve got, the only road before them.’

‘Divorce being always wrong?’

‘Divorce? Divorce is only for the rich and foolish. Who ever heard of divorce round here – except for Lord Killin who never had anyone’s respect in the first place, so had nothing to lose.’

‘There are unhappy marriages round here, though, you can’t deny that. What about Eben Jenkins and Louisa? They didn’t speak to each other for years. Used to leave notes for each other behind the clock. Made their children’s lives a misery.’

‘There’ll always be a few stubborn people who can’t pull together.’

‘So wouldn’t it be better for those people to part?’

‘No. Who knows when the day and the hour may come when their hearts shall be reconciled again.’

I let her have the last word. All the same, I’ve never felt more sure that my life with Huw is over, that I married him without thought, that to remain married to him and have his children would be an act of wickedness and folly. And naturally I’m aware that there’s no easy way out. How will my mother take it? Is a woman who leaves her husband even eligible for a teaching job in this part of the world where there are already too many teachers? What else could I do for a living? If only Ilona and I could go away together and start some new life. If we were English it would be easy; English women have such self-confidence.

‘Do you remember those two English women who ran that private school in Llanfryn before the war? Betty Price went there when she failed the scholarship.’

‘In that big house next to the cottage hospital? Yes. Croft School they called it. The girls wore grey and red uniforms. The fees were very high, they say, and the dinners cost more than dinners in the Dolphin. Anyway, Betty Price didn’t learn much for all the good money spent on her. Her mother used to boast about those elocution lessons she was having, but when I asked the girl about them, she could only remember that you had to pronounce Powell like pole. What a lot of nonsense. The name comes from Ap Hywel, so how can you make pole out of that. They’ll be telling us to pronounce Hywel like hole next. She’s got three or four children now, anyway, so I don’t suppose she remembers much about any of the fancy things they were trying to teach her. A very foolish place it seemed to be, run by two very foolish women who’d have been much better off married with children of their own. Private school indeed. What ever made you think of it?’

I feel I’m in one of those dreams where an avalanche is slowly but surely coming nearer.

‘I suppose I’d better be thinking of going back.’

‘Yes, I suppose so. I’d better make you a cup of cocoa before you set out.’

‘Is Alfredo coming tonight?’

‘No, he still can’t get out at night. He comes over when he can. I see him once or twice every week.’

‘Can I bring Ilona Hughes with me next Wednesday?’

‘Of course you can, girl. But I thought she was always out.’

‘She’s quietened down a lot. She’d like it up here. I’ve told her about the cowslips in the orchard.’

‘I’ll make a nice meal, then. Something a bit special.’

‘Her boyfriend’s been sent away. He was stationed in Tonfaen, but most of them have left there now.’

‘This old war! I’m the only one who’s got something out of it, it seems to me.’

‘And you’ve only got a Roman Catholic.’

Gwynn isn’t meeting the bus. I can’t believe it. I ask the driver whether we’ve arrived earlier than usual but he says no, a few minutes later. I walk as far as the station clock and he’s right; it’s a quarter to ten.

My heart feels heavy as a stone as I walk home. Why didn’t he tell me he wouldn’t be meeting me? What’s going on? I couldn’t go to his house on Monday and tonight again, I’m not going to see him.

Ilona isn’t in, so there’s at least a chance that she’ll have seen him at the Ship, that they’ll have talked together, that he’ll have sent me a message; some sort of explanation.

I try to mark some books as I wait for her to come back. ‘I really love
The Mill on the Floss
,’ a girl in Form V has written. ‘It’s one of the books I shall keep for ever, dipping into it every now and then, even when I’m old.’

How could I, my father’s daughter, have married a man who doesn’t love books? The only books Huw possesses are
The Cricket on the Hearth
– a school prize –
The Rules of Rugby Football
and a hymn book. I didn’t even realise that it was important. I didn’t think it mattered that he thought Wordsworth was boring and Keats a joke.
Dear Huw, Forgive me for being so blind, unable to understand what a child should have understood. I should have known that first time you came down to visit me at college when I’d got tickets for the English department’s production of Duchess of Malfi and you said over your dead body, and I thought it was amusing. I don’t think it amusing now, neither your words nor the determined way you said we’d go to the pictures instead. Why didn’t I realise that in letting you decide that, I was already half way to forfeiting my independence? With sadness, Rhian.

I have no-one to blame but myself and that’s the most difficult thing to accept.

I don’t know what to do. I can’t write telling Huw I want to break with him when he’s abroad and in danger, but surely to let him think everything is all right between us is equally irresponsible. Will I be able to think more clearly when Gwynn has been called up?

‘What’s the matter now?’ Ilona asks when she comes in. ‘Anyone would think that you’re the one in trouble.’

Her cheeks are pink from the wind. She’s got the sort of face a wicked angel might have, her eyes bright and glittering and her permed hair a frizzy halo round her head.

‘I am in trouble. I don’t love my husband.’

‘Of course you don’t. You haven’t seen him for three years. No-one can love a photo on the mantelpiece. When he comes back he’ll be older and tougher and more experienced, and you’ll be older and tougher and more experienced and you’ll get on like a house on fire.’

‘I don’t think so. Anyway, I won’t be here to find out. I’m going to leave before he gets back, move right away from Llanfair.’

‘No you’re not.’

‘You don’t think I’ll have the guts, do you?’

‘I don’t think you’ll be so stupid. Not without finding out what he’s like now. He’s not going to be the same small-town lad who went away.’

‘If he’ll have changed at all, it’ll be for the worse. I can’t think being in the army will improve anyone. You say he’ll be tougher, he’ll certainly be more insensitive. Think of the things soldiers have to do, the things they have to see. Can those things improve anyone? I don’t think so. I know very well that I haven’t a hope of any sort of future with Gwynn, but he’s made me realise what love could be.’

‘Gwynn will never leave his wife.’

‘I know that, Ilona. That’s exactly what I just said. Why don’t you listen to me? Did you see him tonight?’

‘No, he wasn’t in the Ship. I was with Jack again. There wasn’t any beer so we drank lemonade and played dominoes.’

‘You ought to marry him, Ilona, just to get him away from Mary Powell.’

‘Why should I go round rescuing people? Who do you think I am? The Salvation Army?’

‘He’s full of promise, somehow. He’s developing. He thinks for himself, which is very unusual, especially in a PT teacher.’

‘I don’t think he will marry her, anyway. I don’t see it coming off.’

‘He’s thoughtful of other people. He’s got good manners. I don’t mean please and thank you and walking on the outside of the pavement, but the sort of manners that mayketh man.’

Ilona has slumped into her chair, sitting on the small of her back, her legs thrust out in front of her. She yawns very thoroughly. ‘Once, when I was seven or eight,’ she says, ‘a woman gave me a shilling for going to the shop for her. She must have thought it was a ha’penny, but she didn’t like to take it back when she saw it was a shilling. That was good manners, wasn’t it?’

‘What did you do with it?’

‘Well, how should I remember? I only remember that feeling I had: half of me thrilled and half of me wanting to give it back to her. I didn’t, of course. I didn’t get much money. I had an uncle, though, who used to give me half a crown for Christmas and my birthday. I used to have five shillings saved up for the Sunday school trip. We usually went to Rhyl.’

She yawns again, but I don’t suggest going to bed. Somehow I’m aware that she’s in a warm, confiding state of mind.

‘One year I bought a pink chiffon scarf in the Woolworth’s there. It was a lovely shade, shell pink perhaps, and it had such a lovely smell. Do you remember how Woolworth’s used to smell before the war? Everything bright and new as though there were no such thing as death in the world. Anyway, in the charabanc on the way back, I let a boy fly it out of the window like a banner – it was so beautiful, so soft and shiny. And he let go of it and it blew away. I think that was the worst moment of my life.’

‘How in Heaven’s name could you have let him have it?’ I ask her. With all our worries, she pregnant and I illicitly in love, we’re both suddenly full of concern for a sixpenny scarf.

She sighs. ‘He was my sweetheart, I suppose. I suppose it was that. I suppose I’d have let him have anything.’

I don’t say a word. What is there to say?

‘He had my virginity a few years later. I didn’t mind losing that half as much.’

A companionable silence descends on us. It seems several minutes before I can bear to break it.

‘What happened to him?’

‘Don’t ask.’

‘I’m asking. What happened to him? Where is he now?’

‘He married this rich girl. He got her into trouble and they let him marry her. Made him marry her, according to him. Eight or nine years ago now. Oh, Jesus! Things can only get better as far as I’m concerned. D’you know, I’m really looking forward to being old and ugly, and able to be hideously rude to everyone.’

‘What was his name?’

‘Ifor. Ifor Meredyth.’

‘Does he still live in Brynteg?’

‘Yes. Well, three miles outside. On his wife’s farm. Two children. Could be three by this time, I suppose.’

‘Do you ever see him.’

‘From time to time. Oh, he tries to keep me interested. Of course I pretend to have got over him, but he’s not taken in.’

‘And he’s the baby’s father, I suppose?’

‘Yes.’

We sigh like a couple of old women. ‘You keep trying to push Denzil at me, but Denzil and I were never like that. We were just mates.’

‘I didn’t understand. How could I? You’ve never mentioned this Ifor Meredyth. I’ve never heard your voice like that before.’

‘Like what?’

‘Soft and... well... a bit sloppy.’

‘Soft and stupid,’ she says. ‘That’s me, all right.’

‘Does he know about the baby?’

‘Yes, he knows. But what can he do about it?’

‘I suppose he could leave his wife and set up house with you. If he loved you.’

‘Ifor? Ifor doesn’t love anyone but himself. His wife is rich, so he’s rich. Oh yes, he’s somebody in Brynteg; around the market and in the pubs. He’s become self-satisfied and important. He’s not going to turn his back on all that. Anyway, what about the children? Two little boys, fat as moles, following him about everywhere.’

‘Will he help you financially?’

‘He’ll do what he has to. I’ll be all right financially. My Gran’s got a bit put by.’

‘That’s why you left Brynteg, I suppose? Because of him?’

‘Yes. Because of him. He thought I should be content with the occasional Saturday night encounters we used to have when he could get away. Well, I wasn’t. I started to go around with someone else. To spite him, I suppose. And when he heard about it, God, he was like a madman. Bellowing outside the house for half the night. My father had to go out with a shotgun before he’d go.’

‘You had a lucky escape, it seems to me.’

Another long silence.

‘No, he was all right, Ifor was. Do you know, Rhian, if I’d been able to marry him, I might have been reasonably happy. I mean that. We’d have had our fights, I know, because we’re both of us bad-tempered and stubborn, but we’d have had more good times than bad and a lot of laughs – and that’s about as much as you can hope for in this world. And all that prevented it was that rich tart he ran into that Friday night when I’d stayed in to swot for my school certificate.’