Love and War (29 page)

‘Haven’t you heard about Mr Gwynn Morgan?’ Ilona asks. ‘Killed by one of those flying bombs on Wednesday evening. We’ve all had a terrible shock, but he was a special friend of Rhian’s.’

‘Mr Gwynn Morgan? No, I hadn’t heard about Mr Gwynn Morgan. There was nothing about him in chapel this morning. Well, he wasn’t one of our members, was he? He turned Catholic, didn’t he, with his wife? And he’s been killed, has he? Well, that’s a great pity indeed. Dear, dear, I heard he’d joined up.’

She perches on the arm of the chair, staring at the beans, but thinking of other things. After a moment or two she looks up at me with narrowed eyes. ‘But I’ll tell you one thing,’ she says. ‘If you don’t pull yourself together, girl, there’ll be talk of you and this Mr Gwynn Morgan. I’ll tell you another thing, married women are not supposed to have special friends, especially when their husbands are overseas fighting for their king and country. And another thing, my son wouldn’t be very pleased to hear about this sort of carry-on, not coming to chapel and sitting around all Sunday morning and being sick of this and that.’

‘I’m sorry. I’m very sorry.’

The room becomes even more tense. I suppose my apology is almost a confession of guilt, I don’t think she’d expected it.

‘I’ll go,’ she says quietly. ‘I suppose I’d better go.’

‘It was better to have it out,’ Ilona says smoothly. ‘She’ll probably hear rumours and speculation and now she’ll be able to check them. I can just hear her, can’t you? “Are you trying to insinuate that there was something wrong in the relationship between my daughter-in-law and Mr Gwynn Morgan? They were friends and colleagues, nothing more. And I’ll tell you another thing, there’s something very sick about anyone who can cast aspersions on those who have made the Supreme Sacrifice.” Great Heavens, she’s a pain.’

‘She’s Huw’s mother.’

‘She didn’t deserve those beans, anyway. To think of the way I’ve been coddling them, watering them every evening and singing them lullabies.’

‘My mother’s got plenty of beans.’

‘Well, don’t forget to bring some back with you on Wednesday. Only, I hope your mother doesn’t put too much manure on them. It does something to the taste, I don’t care what anyone says.’

*

Will I go to see my mother on Wednesday? Will I go to school tomorrow and for the rest of the term? Will I go on breathing and drinking cups of tea and shoving food into my mouth and going to bed and getting up, my body like some horribly efficient machine, built to last? The thought of the rest of my life stretching out before me in a long, long procession of empty days and weeks and years makes me groan.

All day long I sit in my nightgown, shifting around from chair to chair, sighing and groaning. My mouth feels as though I’ve eaten metal polish, my feet are swollen, like an old woman’s. Ilona tells me about a woman in Brynteg who developed dropsy after her husband died. Because she couldn’t cry, her tears flooded her body and eventually drowned her heart. The people Ilona knows in Brynteg! She says they’re descended from a tribe of night-worshippers.

The next day, I manage to go to school and to take my classes. My teaching is completely mechanical, words I’ve used many times before flow out of my mouth in what seems an appropriate sequence and my pupils take notes, stare about them, mumble messages to those sitting nearby in quite the usual way. I begin to think I can count myself among the walking wounded.

In the afternoon, though, Arthur Williams in 2A manages to ground me again. He’s developed a great shambling calf-love for me because I ask after his father who’s still in prison. ‘Miss,’ he says, ‘isn’t it terrible about Mr Morgan, Art? I was watching you in Assembly this morning, Miss, when the Head told us about him getting killed, and you went as white as a potato. It’s not right is it, Miss? Old men like Mr Morgan having to go and fight for the English? It’s not right, is it?’

‘No, it’s not right,’ I say, sitting heavily at my desk, the drift of my lesson lost in the blackness in my head.

He prompts me. ‘Dafydd ap Edmwnd, Miss,’ he says ‘How his poetry compares with Tudur Aled’s.’

‘Thank you. And don’t interrupt me again, Arthur.’

‘No, Miss.’

The two girls in the front desk smirk at one another.

Does the whole school know what I’m going through?

Does it matter?

The Head summons me to his room at the end of the afternoon. ‘Funeral on Wednesday,’ he says. ‘Two-thirty in the Catholic church. The school will be dismissed at two-fifteen. Of course all the staff will want to go, black arm-bands are all that will be necessary. That’s all, I think, Mrs Evans. Oh, and Mrs Evans, I just want to say that I’m not disappointed in you. Full marks again, Mrs Evans. That’s all.’

I look him straight in the eye. ‘Thank you for coming up to tell me on Saturday.’

‘That’s all right, Mrs Evans. Sometimes I can be quite human, can’t I?’

I learn the difference between grief and grief. When Gwynn and I had to part – and it was a parting full of sorrow for his absence, anger that he’d had to go and fear for his safety – my heart seemed to be agitated by quivering cross-currents, an extreme disquiet that I thought might kill me if it went on too long. When I knew he was dead, it seemed as though my heart was muffled and buried. I could feel black dust and choking darkness. It was like being already dead.

I keep on remembering poor Marged Rees whose young husband was thrown from a horse and killed and who’d gone out every morning for years – at least six or seven years – looking for him, pulling at people’s sleeves and asking ‘Have you seen Elis?’ ‘He was killed, Marged fach,’ someone would tell her, ‘and you bought a black coat and had him buried tidy and decent in Bont.’ And then she would remember and go to the churchyard and spend the rest of the day there in all weathers. When her mother died a few years back, they had to take her to the asylum in Carmarthen but she doesn’t speak at all now, according to the one or two people in Tregroes who still visit her. I keep on remembering her. Marged Rees. No-one could do anything for her, though everyone tried; the doctor and the minister and the district nurse and all her neighbours.

*

The funeral isn’t as bad as I’d feared; in fact the desolate music and the unfamiliar Latin words give me a small measure of comfort. Ilona has had time off from the Post Office and I’m sitting between her and Jack.

Celine, in black from top to toe, manages to look both dignified and dramatic. Her face, behind her velvet hat’s black veil is luminously white. I suddenly see her naked; sensuous and white. She and Gwynn were married for almost twenty years, slept together for almost twenty years. I’m ashamed of the rage of sexual jealousy I feel. In a church, too, and during a funeral service. Tears rise to my eyes but before I can blink them away, Ilona hisses something in my ear. I turn towards her. ‘Mary Powell,’ she mouths. ‘What the devil does she want? Tell Jack she’s here.’

I catch sight of Mary at the opposite side of the church and point her out to Jack. As I stare at her, she catches my eye and I can feel a stab of hatred coming from her. And I’m suddenly aware that it was Gwynn she was in love with and that her spite against me wasn’t because I was angry with her about Alun Brooke, but because she suspected or had found out that Gwynn was in love with me.

For a moment I feel sorry for her. Gwynn had once taken her home for Sunday tea because she was lonely and shy, and she’d fallen in love with him. And all the nonsense about Alun Brooke had grown out of that.

Poor Mary Powell with her round face, her shapeless body and her awkward ways. How lucky and blessed I was to have been loved back. I’d lost him, I’d lost him, but I’d never lose the knowledge of his love.

I love you
, I whisper to him in the dark, incense-smelling church.
I love you. Don’t forget my love.

When the service is over, I break away from Ilona and Jack, determined to confront Mary Powell.

I come across her almost at once and manage to turn her from the path to the patch of grass between the church and the priest’s house. She’s wearing a short black coat which is too tight for her and her face is the colour of porridge. My sympathy towards her has gone.

‘You were in love with Gwynn Morgan weren’t you?’

A tear trickles down her nose. ‘What if I was? What’s it to you?’

‘I’ll tell you. He’s dead now and no-one can claim him, but I won’t have you ruining Jack’s life. You don’t love Jack. You only need him to soothe your pride – I know you don’t love him.’

She looks bewildered, as though she’s trying to place him. ‘But I don’t want Jack,’ she says at last. ‘I’ve had some money come to me from my mother’s brother and I’m going to Cambridge to study Law. It’s nothing to do with you, but I wrote to Jack last week to break off the engagement.’

‘Did you? I hadn’t heard that. I’m sorry I said what I did. But you’re doing the right thing, believe me. You’ll do well in Cambridge.’

For a moment we look at each other with something approaching kindness. Then the moment hardens. ‘You were just making use of Jack,’ I tell her. ‘It wasn’t right.’

‘I suppose you think you’re blameless,’ she says venomously.

‘No.’

‘I know about you and Gwynn Morgan. I used to watch you going up to the Art room every lunch hour and I knew quite well what was going on. And you a married woman with a husband on active service. And he married too, and both of you entrusted with shaping the lives of innocent young people. It was disgusting. You had sexual relations together, didn’t you?’

‘Yes, we did as a matter of fact.’ What makes me admit to it? Pride? ‘Yes, we did.’

Her face seems to disintegrate. ‘I don’t ever want to speak to you again,’ she says. ‘Let me go. You’re disgusting you are. I’ll tell you what you remind me of. My step-mother’s got a rose in the parlour in a glass vase. A very beautiful red rose it looks, but that’s only the half of it. The other half is the thick, ugly stem in the water, a vivid green with great thorns like beaks sticking out of it. That’s you, that is. Oh, you’re pretty enough, but cruel and evil as well. And you weren’t the only girl he was after. You know that, don’t you?’

My blood is boiling now. All I want to do is hurt her. ‘I know he was never after you anyway. He invited you home to tea once because he felt sorry for you, because you were so lonely and pitiful. And you made trouble for him, telling everyone he’d taken you out for a birthday celebration. He didn’t even know it was your birthday. He was certainly never after you.’

‘I don’t ever want to speak to you again,’ she says, ‘I’m going straight to the station to get the next train home. I intended to have a few words with Mrs Morgan, but I can’t face her after this.’

‘She’ll survive that.’ Ilona is suddenly at my elbow. ‘Yes, his wife will survive that very well. We’ll all manage to survive your departure with great fortitude, so don’t delay it on our account. Come along, Rhian.’

‘You’re a fallen woman, Rhian,’ Mary Powell says, ignoring Ilona and looking at me with round, frightened eyes. ‘I’d never, never have believed it. I thought you were only flirting with him, and that was bad enough.’

‘For pity’s sake, don’t let that crazy woman upset you,’ Ilona says as we follow the crowd to the churchyard.’

‘She hasn’t upset me. She’s written to Jack, releasing him from the engagement, so I suppose I can forgive her anything. I wonder why he didn’t tell us.’

‘He told me, but it didn’t seem important. All I’ve been able to think about is you and Gwynn.’

But of course, Mary Powell’s words did upset me. ‘You’re a fallen woman, Rhian.’ Those frightened, accusing eyes. I was even more upset though by the way I’d attacked her.

Eighteen

DAYS PASS, AS THEY DO. The summer term is always too full, but I suppose the extra work involved in getting the Fifth and the Upper Sixth ready for their examinations means I have less time to brood. I don’t mean that I’m beginning to recover, but beginning, perhaps, to get over the shock and to be reconciled to my enormous loss.

I start going to chapel again, smiling carefully at Huw’s parents but avoiding them after the service. It surprises me that my mother-in-law is able to let things ride; she’s usually a great one for Having Things Out. She’s built that way; thirteen and a half stone of well corseted flesh with – on a Sunday morning – a straw hat on the top.

I get three letters from Huw in less than a week, all written, I think, before the invasion, but I can’t answer them. Even the short, uncommitted letters I’ve been writing for the last few months now seem too false.

Eventually I decide to tell him the truth. Too much has been hidden from too many people; suddenly I feel the need to proclaim my love and my loss. My dear Huw – I underline the ‘dear,’ feeling very tender towards him as though he’s a character in a story, someone rather young and innocent who impulsively married a foolish, worthless girl. I tell him about my passion for Gwynn and how I succumbed to it, admitting to breaking every marriage vow and giving him permission to feel free of me. He can divorce me, I tell him, when he comes home. I promise to give up the house and furniture and to make no financial demands on him. I’m quite sure he’ll never forgive me, but I hope he’ll eventually recover his trust in women and find somebody else. It’s quite a long letter, stilted, but still moving. I cry a lot over it.