Love and War (3 page)

At college I felt immensely privileged. The other girls who were in school with me worked in shops and offices, while my work was to get to grips with great minds. ‘A good book is the precious life-blood of a master spirit.’ Occasionally I can sense a little of that idealism in some of my Sixth Formers, but on the whole, teaching is uphill work, thirteen- and fourteen-year-old boys being as unresponsive to literature as an average herd of cows. In fact, you can recite poetry to cows and receive a flattering amount of attention; raising their large, mild eyes, they gaze at you without blinking or chewing the cud, while boys smirk and pass rude notes and anatomical sketches to one another. How do you make Shakespeare or Wordsworth relevant to great louts who want to be out in the fields playing? Or even lifting potatoes? For every pupil I manage to interest, there tend to be ten or twenty who remain sullenly bored. They are marginally less hostile to the rules of grammar, but I can’t spend all my time on parts of speech, punctuation and the comparison of adjectives.

I really don’t think I could endure a lifetime of teaching. When Huw comes home, I’ll probably have a family and become a full-time housewife, but this morning even that prospect fails to cheer.

There’s something lacking in my life. Perhaps it’s religion. This war has certainly strained people’s belief in God. With so much death and destruction being doled out everywhere, He obviously doesn’t care – so that He’s not all-merciful – or cares but can’t do anything about it – so that He’s not all-powerful. I know I seldom feel spiritually renewed after a Sunday service these days. Of course, there’s little of mystery and beauty about a Welsh chapel with its smell of Mansion polish and damp hymn books; even the singing lusty rather than uplifting. I often find myself studying the congregation instead of listening to the sermon and then, in no time at all, I’m thinking about clothes, hats and blouses and so on.

Why should I save all my money every month? I have a sudden urge to buy myself something new and frivolous. I’m so sick of my neat grey skirt and the hand-knitted jumpers and hand-sewn blouses I wear with it. What I want is a dress with a tightly fitting waist and a skirt that swirls. This very morning, before I change my mind, I’ll go out and buy myself a really pretty new dress, perhaps with a bolero. I can do my washing this afternoon, can’t I? Or even tomorrow morning instead of going to chapel? Why should I spend my whole youth being middle-aged.

My tea’s gone cold, but with unusual abandon I treat myself to a fresh pot.

On my way to town, I call in at the Post Office to see Ilona Hughes. It’s very quiet there, no one buying saving bonds or even stamps. She looks up as I walk towards her, sucking in her cheeks, trying to look hungry.

Taken item by item, I should be much better looking than she is. I’ve got thick, rusty-brown hair and pale grey eyes and a decent shaped nose and so on, while she’s got small down-drooping eyes, a too-large nose and mouth and a very small chin. But when she’s covered her freckles with make-up and put a lot of that shiny beetroot-coloured lipstick on her lips and Vaseline on her eyelids, she looks so pretty I could spit.

‘I’m going to get myself a new dress,’ I say.

She takes it in her stride as though it’s quite an everyday affair. ‘Go to Studio Laura,’ she says. (She pronounces it in a very affected, foreign way; ‘Studio LAWRA’.) Studio Laura – I couldn’t go there. It’s a tiny shop with nothing in the window but sand and pebbles and one hat. It’s a shop for English visitors and it usually closes in September; it’s remained open this year only because the owner’s London flat has been bombed. The owner, by the way, is called Tremlett Browne and he wears a narrow satin ribbon instead of a tie.

I’d intended to go to J.C. Jones. They’ve got quite a good selection of clothes there, all the reputable makes. That’s where I got the powder-blue dress and jacket I wore at my wedding and which I’ve worn to every school and chapel function since.

‘What’s wrong with J.C. Jones?’ I ask her, but she only raises her eyebrows and turns her attention to a large, red-cheeked farmer who’s just shouldered his way to the counter with a sizeable bundle of notes. She gives him an intimate little smile and nods her head at me as a sign of dismissal.

I wish now I’d given her a dab of my margarine.

I often wish I’d been born a Roman Catholic; the Catholic church looks dark and mysterious in its cobbled yard. It would be so restful to sit in there, quietly gazing at beautiful pictures and statues. Why not? I can’t even imagine the smell of incense. What if it does dull the brain? I quite often find myself planning next week’s lessons during Mr Roberts’s long sermons; surely it would be more appropriate to be even muzzily thinking of God.

Of course, my mother is convinced that the Pope is the Anti-Christ and that all the Roman Church’s rituals and ceremonies are mumbo-jumbo. She seems
so certain
of everything. Will my opinions have crystallised by the time I become a mother? Is it part of the ageing process, like hardening of the arteries?

But I wish I could feel that my life contained some divine spark: ‘A presence that disturbs me with the joy of elevated thought.’ Why don’t I have elevated thoughts? Even my infrequent dreams are pitifully down-to-earth.

I walk past J.C. Jones and down Marine Terrace.

‘Well, Rhian.’

It’s Gwynn Morgan, Art. He was the art teacher even when I was a pupil: too old now, I suppose, to be called up. (I wish I didn’t feel so awkward with him – never sure, for instance, whether to call him Gwynn or Mr Morgan.)

‘What’s the news of Huw?’

‘I haven’t had a letter for two weeks.’

‘I thought you looked a bit peaky. Try not to worry, Rhian. It doesn’t help him or anyone else. Got time for a coffee?’

Peaky.
What a horrible word.

‘I’m getting myself a new dress. From Studio Laura.’ How dashing it makes me feel, even saying it.

‘Come and have a coffee first. You rush about too much, Rhian. I watch you at school. Rush, rush, rush. It’ll make you old before your time.’

Peaky and old. That does it. We turn into Gwyn Owen’s, walk past the queue at the bread counter and go upstairs. Several pairs of eyes follow us. What am I doing having coffee with a
man
? This will get back to my mother-in-law before I’ve taken the first sip.

Gwynn Morgan may be middle-aged but he’s still very handsome; a long, lean face with curly greyish hair and rather wicked eyes which look sideways at you. He painted my picture when I was in Sixth Form and it won a prize in some exhibition in Brecon.

‘I’ve still got that painting I did of you,’ he says, as though reading my thoughts.

‘Have you? I thought you painted over your old ones.’

‘I usually do. But that was one of my better efforts. My Renoir period. You were quite plump in those days. It showed very nicely even under your gym-slip... Two coffees and two buttered scones, please.’

‘I had such a strange dream last night.’

‘Nothing in the world bores me as much as other people’s dreams. Even my own bore me.’

‘I wasn’t going to tell you, anyway. It was a bit rude.’

He leans towards me. ‘I don’t mind them so much if they’re rude.’

He’s got a really friendly smile which completely changes his rather melancholy face. I wish I saw more of him. His room is at the very top of the school and he keeps himself to himself.

‘Are you Church or Chapel?’ I ask him, my mind still hovering on the Catholic Church and the peace it seemed to promise.

‘Is that always the first question you ask a man who invites you for a coffee? What if he doesn’t intend any serious entanglement? Sorry, love. I was brought up chapel. Congregational.’

‘Like me. But I’ve never seen you in Tabernacle.’

‘Haven’t been for years. Don’t believe in any of it.’

‘Really?
Really
? Do you mean you’re an atheist? Like Shelley? How very interesting. I think you’re the first atheist I’ve ever met. Do you mind if I stare at you a bit?’

The waitress, a girl from up our way, brings us our coffee. ‘We’ve had quite a run on the sultana scones,’ she says, ‘but I’ve brought you some Madeira.’

Gwynn Morgan doesn’t say anything, just looks sourly at the two yellow slabs of cake on the thick white plate.

‘Thank you,’ I murmur, ‘very nice. Thank you.’

‘Perhaps you’ll sit for me again, sometime,’ he says, after a moment or two.

‘Oh no. How could I?’

‘Do you mean because I’m an atheist?’

‘Because I haven’t got the time. I don’t get any free periods this year. Not since Roy Lewis was called up.’

‘You could always come to the house. You know where I live.’

‘Oh, but I wouldn’t want to do that. I couldn’t – there’d be talk. Anyway, I’m not pretty any more.’

I wait for him to contradict me – I must be looking at him rather expectantly – but he doesn’t.

‘This cake isn’t as bad as it looks,’ I say, to cover my disappointment. ‘Try some.’

He shrugs his shoulders, drinks some of the pale grey coffee and takes out a cigarette.

‘I’ve been feeling depressed lately,’ I say, ‘and wondering whether what I need is some new, vital sort of religious experience.’

He looks at me with an expression I can’t quite fathom. ‘I thought it was a new dress you were after,’ he says.

I consider this. It seems an important moment. ‘Well, perhaps it is. I’d better go – Studio Laura shuts at twelve on a Saturday.’

‘I wanted to ask you about your lodger,’ Gwynn Morgan says, stubbing out his cigarette in his saucer. ‘Ilona something, isn’t it?’

‘Ilona Hughes,’ I say, sitting down again. ‘What did you want to know about her?’

‘Do you think she’d sit for me?’

‘I could ask her. Do you really want me to? Do you think she’s pretty?’

He seemed to give my question serious consideration. ‘She looks like a Cranach painting. Little squashed face, small breasts, big hips.’

I almost smile. ‘I’ll ask her. I’ll let you know on Monday.’

‘Tell her I pay five bob an hour for a life model.’

I can feel myself blushing. ‘Thank you for the coffee.’ As I get up again, I catch sight of the sea from the window; bathed in a stormy, violet light, its chilling beauty takes my breath away.

The window of Studio Laura has nothing in it but a twisted tree with hundreds of pink paper leaves and a very plain damson-blue dress.

I sidle into the shop, empty except for an oak chest of drawers with two brass candlesticks on the top. I find myself wishing I was at the great mahogany counter of J.C. Jones where Mrs Edith advises against buying ready-made. ‘Run it up yourself, love,’ she says, ‘it’ll only take three and a half yards at two and elevenpence. Think of the saving.’

‘Good morning, Madam.’ Mrs Edith would die sooner than call anyone ‘Madam’.

‘I’m looking for a dress, actually.’

I don’t think I’ve ever said ‘actually’ before. ‘I’m looking for a dress actually,’ with a clipped English accent. I suppose being called Madam has unnerved me.

Mr Tremlett Browne inspects me with head slightly tilted to one side.

‘You’ve got a fine figure,’ he says.

What a nerve. I didn’t come in here for him to run his eyes over my body.

‘I should think a size 36, Madam, is that right?’

I make a little bobbing motion with my head, as ducks do when they know they’re being watched.

‘I see you in something very tight. You’ve got good shoulders. What does Madam think about the model in the window?’

Before I can say a word, he’s got it out and is holding it up before me.

‘I wanted something pretty,’ I say feebly.

‘Oh no, Madam. Nothing pretty. You want something... well, something like this. You take it through and try it on. You’ll see what I mean.’

I look for a price tag, but there isn’t one. ‘How much is it?’ I ask, but he’s turned away and is staring at the pink-leaved tree and the sparkling sea beyond it.

Of course, it’s a perfect fit and makes me look so different that I feel dizzy to see myself in the mirror. It’s made of a thick, matt silk, so cleverly cut that it seems to reveal rather than hide my body; my breasts seem bigger and rounder, my hips and thighs harder, more sculptured. It’s turned my brownish hair red as conkers. I don’t think for a moment that I’ll ever have the occasion or the courage to wear it, but on the other hand I know that to leave without it would be as difficult as leaving without my skin.

I go back into the shop.

Gwynn Morgan is there leaning against the door.

‘Yes,’ he says, nodding his head. ‘Yes, that looks just right. Lovely. No need to try anything else.’

‘How much are you going to charge her?’ he asks Tremlett Browne, who mentions a sum which is almost exactly what I earn in a month.

‘Nonsense,’ Gwynn Morgan says. ‘She can’t afford that sort of money. She may look somebody in that dress, but she’s only a teacher, man. Take half off and she may consider it.

‘I do the window for him,’ he tells me, ‘so he owes me a favour.’

‘You get paid.’