Love and War (28 page)

The train is three hours late, arriving in Paddington a few minutes past midnight. I find Gwynn asleep on a bench at the exact spot where he’d promised to be. He opens his eyes as I sit down beside him. ‘Good girl,’ he says, ‘I knew you’d be here.’

I feel very shy with him. He looks tired and almost ugly with his cropped hair and his bulky, ill-fitting uniform. ‘You’re looking lovely,’ he says. ‘I was hoping you’d wear that dress, I think a lot about that morning we bought it. It seems like another life.’

‘You’re not sorry about what happened?’

‘No, no. I can’t spare the time to think about anything except wanting you, wanting your hands and your lips and your body.’

He doesn’t touch me, but my body feels as though he’s already inside me. I can hardly stand up for the shock of desire I feel. Is it the same for him? We look at each other in the dim, greenish light of the station, unable to smile, hardly able to breathe.

‘I’ve found us a room in a nice clean hotel,’ he says at last, ‘and they’re keeping sandwiches for us.’

I can’t believe I’m in London. The buildings are solid menacing shadows in the darkness. Even in the streets there’s a close, acrid smell as though we’re still walking in a huge railway station. ‘I love you,’ Gwynn says. We find the hotel. It’s relatively small and not at all grand as I’d feared. When we sign the register – Gwynn and Rhian Morgan – the tired, blank-faced woman at the desk becomes quite friendly, telling us her husband now fighting in Burma, came from Anglesey. And then, she and Gwynn talk about Anglesey for what seems too long, but afterwards she brings us some lovely hot potato soup to go with our sandwiches, so perhaps it was worth it.

And then she gives us a key and points the way to our room – small and shabby with dark, faded wallpaper and a musty smell – but what do we care. We close the door, set down our small overnight bags and look at each other.

Gwynn is slow and formal, undressing me very slowly and gently, kissing every bone and sinew and fold of flesh until I’m naked and trembling at his touch. ‘I have to do this properly,’ he says. ‘Remembering this will have to keep me going for weeks and weeks.’

‘I can’t bear it,’ I say, overwhelmed by thoughts of a long separation. ‘Oh, I can’t bear it.’

I drop a tear on his lovely caressing hand and pull him towards me and then formality is forgotten and we’re closely and deeply and noisily together, one flesh. Oh, one flesh.

It’s the first time we’ve ever been together in a bed. We try to stay awake, but keep falling asleep in short snatches, then waking again to the warm sweetness and wonder of being together. ‘It isn’t only lust,’ I tell him, at one waking. ‘I must tell Ilona. It’s tenderness as well. And honesty.’ Once, Gwynn wakes and recites a verse he’d found in a book of Forces Writing he’d bought that afternoon.

Heart of the heartless world

Dear heart, the thought of you

Is the pain at my side

The shadow that chills my view.

He can’t remember any more except the last line:
Don’t forget my love
. We say this over and over to each other as we wake and sleep:
Don’t forget my love
.

We miss breakfast, staying in that hard, lumpy, lovely bed until the cleaning lady rattles the door knob at eleven o’clock.

When we leave the room half an hour later, Gwynn goes along the corridor to find her. ‘Sorry to keep you waiting,’ he says, pressing a shilling into her hand. ‘I’ve only got a twenty-four hour leave.’

‘That’s all right, dear,’ she says, winking at him. ‘As soon as you called out I was quite happy. Only, last week I had a soldier kill hisself in that room. That’s why I was worried, dear.’

Gwynn grips my shoulder and we shiver as we hold each other. That a soldier had taken his life in that little, dark room saddened but hardly surprised us; love and despair were so close that day.

‘I’ve written to Celine,’ Gwynn tells me when we’re sitting over weak tea and grey bread and butter in a cafe later on. ‘I’ve told her she can have the house and the furniture and an insurance policy which will mature next year. When I get back, you and I will move to Lleyn and try to get by on what I can make from painting. Other people manage it.’

‘I may be able to get some sort of teaching job.’

‘No,’ he says, ‘you’ll be too busy coping with all those babies we’re going to have.’

‘Will I? Will I really?’ My heart thumps against my ribs. ‘What a good thing we’ve both been brought up to rough it.’

‘Can you milk a cow?’

‘Of course I can. Can’t you?’

‘No, we only kept sheep. And chickens of course. But I’m good at building sheds and putting up fences.’

‘All those manly things.’

‘That’s right. All those things.’

I rub my face against his sleeve. We sit so close together that our bones hurt. We order more tea and bread and butter and settle on a little whitewashed cottage with three or four acres looking out on Bardsey Island. ‘
Mae gen i dipyn o dy bach twt
,’ I sing to him ‘I have a bit of a tiny house, a tiny house, a tiny house. I have a bit of a tiny house. The wind calls round each morning.’

And heigh-ho, the wind and the rain.

We sigh, thinking of hard weather and the lack of money. Two Welsh peasants, our feet firmly planted on stony ground, even our dreams modest.

For the rest of the day we wander about London. We see the Tower and the Thames and many, many bomb sites and then sit in Saint James’s Park, kissing when we can, before setting off for Paddington again.

I can’t remember our parting at the station.

All the way home, though, fighting back tears and trying to swallow the painful sobs rising from my chest, I keep telling myself: One day I’ll think of this as the happiest day of my life.

The Wednesday of the following week is D-Day. Everyone is absorbed with news bulletins. The Head has a wireless in his study and bursts out on anyone who happens to be in the corridor with the latest headlines: ‘A hundred miles of Normandy coast under attack’ ‘A thousand planes in the airborne operation.’ ‘A thousand troop-carriers in the first blow.’ ‘Ten thousand tons of bombs and shells.’ Vast numbers, huge quantities, cold, impersonal statistics to hide the fear in everyone’s heart. I think of the tired-looking lads travelling with me on the train. Perhaps Huw, who may still be in Northern Italy, is not in such immediate danger.

Seventeen

IT’S THE HEADMASTER who lets me know. He knocks at the door, Saturday morning, ten o’clock. ‘Bad news,’ he says. ‘Better go in and sit down.’

He follows me to the living room. The walls are coming towards me. ‘It’s Gwynn Morgan,’ he says. ‘It’s Mr Gwynn Morgan. Killed by one of these new-type bombs on Wednesday night. His wife sent me a message this morning and I thought I’d let you know myself.’

He’s sitting in the big arm-chair staring down at his shoes.

‘Shall I get you a glass of water?’ he asks me, his voice strange, as though full of cold or fever. ‘Would you like me to make you a cup of tea? Do you have a drop of brandy? Take some deep breaths. That’s the way.’

I don’t think I manage to say a word. It’s difficult to breathe; the air has become thick and heavy. I can’t concentrate on anything but the way he’s staring down at his shoes. How well polished they are. I wonder if he can see himself in the shine. I gulp for air.

‘The noblest and the best,’ he says then. ‘This war has taken the noblest and the best.’

He’s quiet again, waiting, I suppose, for me to say something or show some sign of life, but I can’t respond in any way.

He goes through to the kitchen and brings me a cup of water. I grip it tightly and look into it. There’s a tea stain at the bottom of the cup and another about half an inch from the top. When he goes I’ll rub them with a pinch of salt.

‘Mrs Morgan had a letter from his CO. Death was instantaneous, that’s what he said. Instantaneous. The whole canteen was wiped out. Fourteen soldiers killed. All new recruits. All fine men.’

His words came from a great distance. When he’s gone, I’ll clean all the cups; put some salt on a rag and get all the stains off. I’ll clean everything.

‘I must go now. Why don’t you drink some of that water? It would do you good. Or will you make yourself a cup of tea? I must go now. I must call on Mrs Morgan to offer her my condolences.’

I try to get to my feet.

‘No, no, please sit down, Mrs Evans, I’ll let myself out. I wanted to tell you myself. Killed by one of these new type bombs on Wednesday evening. Very bad news. Sorry to have to give you such very bad news.’

Sorry to have to give you such very bad news. Even after he’s gone, the words skate about crazily in my head. Such very bad news.

He’s only been away seven weeks. We hadn’t even had our week-end together. We were going to meet in the Cotswolds in three weeks’ time and have two whole days, two long nights, together.

Such very bad news.

We had so little time.

What shall I do now? Such very bad news. I tilt the cup in my hand and let the water trickle very slowly onto the carpet and watch the dark patch spreading. Darkness. Darkness spreading.

Some time later Jack lets himself in. He squeezes my hands makes up the fire but doesn’t say a word.

Then Ilona is back from the Post Office and we have the first of many, many cups of tea. Such very bad news.

‘You don’t feel like screaming?’ Ilona asks me. We wouldn’t mind, would we Jack? It might do you a lot of good.’

I don’t feel like screaming.

‘A long walk? A nice hot bath?’

‘I’ll be all right. I don’t want anything.’

There, I’ve spoken. It’s like trying to speak underwater. Jack and Ilona look at each other triumphantly as though all their problems are over.

‘Now you can go, Jack,’ Ilona says briskly. ‘Jack’s got a cricket match to umpire this afternoon. He’ll be back later.’

*

Some time afterwards I can hear her in the kitchen making herself a meal. She thinks I should tackle a little something. A boiled egg. A poached egg. A scrambled egg. What about a small piece of toast. Potato mashed up with milk and butter. Potato with buttermilk.

‘No thank you.’ ‘No thank you.’

‘No thank you.’

‘Another cup of tea, then.’

‘Where will the funeral be?’

‘Back here, I suppose.’

‘In Llanfair?’

‘I suppose so.’

‘They’ll bring him back here?’

‘They’ll bring the body back. Yes.’

‘I don’t suppose I’ll be able to go to the funeral?’

‘Of course you will if you want to. All the teachers will probably be going, perhaps the whole school. I’ll certainly be going. All his friends will. You can go with Jack and me.’

At about seven o’clock Ilona makes me some te sincin, slightly burnt buttered toast cut up in strong tea. The butter glistens on the surface of the tea like oil on a puddle of rain. My grandmother used to have it for supper when she’d taken her teeth out. Even without her teeth my grandmother had a lovely smile. And a lovely delicate smell, too, like cedar wood or old silk.

Ilona lets me feel her baby kicking; a tiny movement, faint as the pulse in a thrush’s throat. Nothing can comfort me.

The day draws to a close. I feel that I am dead. When I crawl into bed my eyelids drop heavy as pennies on my smarting eyes. All, all is lost.

I sleep deep as a stone in a pond and wake to the knowledge of my burning loss.

I can’t summon up the energy to go to chapel. To tell the truth, I don’t much want to hear Mr Roberts with his long, ardent prayers for the return of peace and sanity. As far as I’m concerned, the whole world can burn to a cinder now.

I’m still in my nightdress when my mother-in-law comes up in the early afternoon. ‘Good gracious, girl, whatever’s the matter? Have you got the flu, or what? Why weren’t you in chapel this morning? You knew we were expecting you for dinner. And me with a nice piece of best-end in the oven. I’d have thought you’d at least have had the good manners to let us know you were ill.’

‘I’m not ill. No, I’m just sick of everything, that’s all. Sick of sermons, sick of lamb and mint-sauce and Sunday school and hymns and anthems and psalms. Sick of everything.’

‘Rhian, whatever is it? What’s got into you? Whatever’s happened to you? Is your mother all right? Is is something I’ve said? Is it something to do with Huw or what?’

‘No. It’s nothing to do with you or Huw or my mother. I’m sorry to have upset you. I just couldn’t drag myself to chapel this morning, that’s all. My mind is sick, that’s all.’

Ilona comes in from the garden, a small bundle of broad beans in her hands.

‘This is Ilona Hughes. My mother-in-law.’

They look at each other with little nervous smiles. I tip my head at Ilona. ‘Give her the beans, love.’ I’ve come out in a sweat and can’t think of anything else to say. I want my mother-in-law to go.

Ilona hands over the beans, the smile hardening on her face,

‘Well, thank you very much, I’m sure. A little boiling of beans will be very welcome, I’m sure. Quite a nice size, too, fair play. Nice full pods. Well, I’ll go, then. And I can only hope you’ll be better soon, Rhian. What can be the matter with you, girl? I can only hope you’ll come to your senses soon.’