Nothing is Forever (8 page)

‘I told you, I bought it on Friday.’ She took out the form which the tramp had filled in and he snatched it from her.

‘What have I done?’ she asked. ‘I rang Sergeant Miller, what else should I have done?’

‘I gave this set to Ruth. How could she sell it?’

‘It wasn’t Ruth, Henry. A rather scruffy individual brought it in. I suspected there was something wrong, the way he looked, all nervous. But I checked and it was a good price and … Oh, I’m so sorry.’

‘She might not have brought it in, but I gave it to her and somehow it ends up here.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Tabs repeated.

‘Don’t be. Could you lock up for me, please, Tabs? I think I need to go and talk to Ruth about this.’

‘Of course.’

Henry took the silver and when he got to Ty Gwyn he unpacked it onto the kitchen table. ‘If you hadn’t wanted it you only had to tell me. I offered it but I wouldn’t have been heartbroken if you hadn’t liked it.’

Ruth stared at it.

‘But where has it been? I thought you’d changed your mind and taken it back. I didn’t accept it very graciously.’

‘I left it here, on this table and the following Friday it ended up in the shop.’

‘But how? I didn’t see it after you’d gone and I presumed you’d changed your mind about giving it to me.’

‘A man came into the shop and offered it to Tabs, who bought it, not knowing it was already mine.’

‘Then someone must have taken it. Truthfully, Henry, I didn’t see it after you’d gone.’ She was alarmed at the expression in Henry’s eyes. ‘Henry, I don’t know what happened. I only know I didn’t sell it or give it away. I wouldn’t. You must know me better than that. It must have been stolen the night I found the door unlocked. I thought at first I’d packed it away somewhere after another sleep-walking incident, but then, as nothing else was missing, I thought you must have taken it back.’

‘Another mysterious happening in this house?’

‘Yes, so it seems. It also seems that once again you don’t believe me.’

‘I do believe you. I’m trying to work out what could have happened.’

‘Well, seeing you looking at me with such a suspicious, disbelieving expression, I wish you’d work out what happened somewhere else! Please go away!’ She pushed him through the door and slammed it after him. ‘So much for my happy fresh start,’ she muttered. ‘No Henry, no Tabs as a lodger and, from the smell coming for the oven, no dinner either!’ She pulled the too large cottage pie out of the oven and sighed over its blackened edges and threw it outside the door.

Tabitha’s father was trying to move some of the furniture out of the bedroom into which he was going to bring his bride. Martha Howard had made it clear that she didn’t intend to move in and live amid the trappings of his previous marriage.

‘A fresh start is what you deserve, George, dear,’ she had explained, when he told her magnanimously that she could rearrange the rooms as she pleased. ‘We need a complete change. After all my taste is different from your first wife’s and poor Tabs doesn’t have much idea about furnishing a room. With some new furniture and some cheerful curtains instead of those drab, heavy old browns, you’ll feel like a young man just setting out on life.’

She had chosen the main bedroom and suggested the second bedroom would be perfect for the occasional guest.

‘Tabitha – silly name, dear – can manage in the box room. There’s plenty of room for her things and she can sit up there in the evenings for us to have some privacy. She’ll be quite comfortable there with a chair and a small table.’

‘But Tabs won’t be here!’ He smiled in expectation of her delight. ‘Surprise, surprise, dear. She’s moving out so we can have the place to ourselves. That’s my special news, Martha. The whole house will be ours, just like you wanted. We’ll be starting out like two young newlyweds should.’

Martha hid her disappointment well. She had imagined that Tabitha would be running the household as she always had, leaving her to enjoy the freedom of not having to deal with the boring chores.

Later, after she had cooked George his favourite meal of liver and onions and given him a glass of beer, she broached the subject again.

‘If Tabitha is leaving you without help, I hope you aren’t expecting me to do all the housework as well as the cooking, George.’

‘I thought you’d be pleased that I told Tabs to go.’

‘I am, dear, it was a wonderful surprise, but if she leaves us, we’ll have to have someone here to run things. I’ll be concentrating on looking after you, won’t I?’

What began as a discussion began to get rather strained and George considered the cost of employing someone to run the house and decided that wouldn’t be possible.

He relaxed, confident that over the weeks before the wedding he would be able to persuade Martha that being on their own, with no interference from servants –which he couldn’t afford – or his irritating daughter hanging around like a wet week, was the perfect way to start married life. Whenever he mentioned it her responses grew colder and he began to worry.

Jack gathered money from his various endeavours and bought a few decent clothes. As it was summer, a smart pair of slacks and a shirt was all that was needed to improve his appearance and he found a job in a green-grocery. His hands were still dirt-grained with the nails black edged with ground-in dirt from living rough but that would be put down to sorting out potatoes and the like. They would take a while to improve. A hair-cut and daily shaves improved his appearance and he soon had a regular group of admiring customers, attracted by his lively humorous chat and exaggerated flattery. With his wages safely hidden in his clothes, he slept out in abandoned barns and bus shelters for another week, then he found a room easily; there were many householders only too pleased to find a lodger to help pay their bills.

So far he hadn’t been lucky. If this was the house his father had spoken about, then the family had vanished. He mentioned the name to several customers, but all he had was a frown and a shake of the head. Searching for his father’s family and his inheritance was frustrating. He knew so little about his father’s childhood and now he could no longer ask. This town had seemed likely to be the one as he had added the few clues and oddments of memory together.

He went into the antique shop and spoke, almost as a last hope, to Tabitha. She might be the lead he’d been searching for; he had seen her coming out of the house, the name of which he half remembered, several times, Ty Gwyn. The place was almost exactly as his father had described it to him.

There were fields around it, a church on the next corner and the oak tree in the garden. There was even a pond, now dried up but it was there, just like the picture that had been in his mind all these years. It seemed so right, but how was he going to find out? To do that he needed to get into Ty Gwyn and with time for a proper search. For the people he’d seen in and out of Ty Gwyn, Tabitha seemed the most likely to fall for his approach.

After a few questions about the shop and its contents, he asked about the house called Ty Gwyn and whether it was owned by a family called Tyler.

‘Tyler? No, I’m sorry. The family there are called Thomas. I know them so would you like me to ask them whether the name is known to them?’ She felt breathless with embarrassment and she hoped her voice didn’t give her away. ‘If it would help?’

‘You’re very kind, Miss—’ His heart thudded similar to hers but for a different reason. This plain, boring-looking woman was someone he needed to cultivate. ‘Miss—?’ he invited again.

‘Bishop,’ she said, her face reddening with embarrassment.

‘I’m Jack.’ He offered a hand apologetically. ‘Sorry about the state of them, but serving potatoes and cleaning up rotten vegetables makes a mess of them.’

‘Is that what you do?’ she asked hesitantly.

‘Come out and have a cup of tea and a cake and I’ll tell you all about me,’ he said. ‘We’ll both be off at one, half-day closing. I’ve just been to the bank for some change,’ he explained, ‘and I saw your friendly face and just had to come in.’

At one o’clock she closed the shop and looked around anxiously. As she had expected there was no sign of the young man. She was about to turn the corner when a shout stopped her. ‘Miss Bishop! Wait!’ Jack ran to her and said, ‘Come on. What’s your first name? I can’t call you Miss Bishop, it makes you sound like my aunty!’

‘You aren’t from around here, are you?’ she said.

Laughing eyes looked at her. ‘How can you tell?’ he said. ‘Is it the way I say “aunty”?’ He pursed his mouth and said aunty in an exaggerated way and she laughed.

‘I hate telling people my name,’ she said.

‘Tell me, it can’t be worse than Miss Bishop!’

‘Tabitha.’ She waited for the exclamation of amusement or disbelief.

He looked at her for a moment then said. ‘Yep. Tabitha is fine. Unusual, but not boring, in fact, it makes you sound interesting. Too much of a mouthful for me, though, so come on, Tabs, lets find a café that sells real creamy cakes.’

On that first date he didn’t question her about the Tyler family. It was clear she was very unsure of herself and he could easily frighten her off, so he encouraged her to talk and, in a startling moment of realization she was aware of sitting talking to this handsome stranger and she felt embarrassment overwhelm her. She was talking too much, he must be bored, what was she thinking of!

She put down the cup she was holding, missed the saucer and spilt tea across the table. She gasped and went to stand up but he held her hand and beckoned to the man behind the counter. ‘Give him something to do,’ he whispered. ‘He looks bored standing there. He isn’t as lucky as me, having someone as exciting as you to share an hour with.’

She didn’t believe him. He was being kind.

‘I’m clumsy,’ she said. ‘I’m always dropping things and breaking things.’

‘Not true,’ he said firmly. ‘That boss of your wouldn’t employ you in that shop if you were. So don’t tell me porky pies. That’s an expression my father used to use.’

‘My father calls lies Tom Peppers.’

After the table had been wiped, he talked to her while she calmed down. He told her a little about his childhood – most of it pure fantasy.

‘My father was born in Wales but his parents took him to England when he was very young. Just a baby I believe. I don’t know anything more than that.’ That wasn’t true either but it was all she needed to know.

‘So you don’t know where your family are?’ Her eyes were moist with sympathy.

‘Or even if I have any.’ He looked glum, but his eyes were twinkling as he teased, ‘Sorry for me, are you, Tabs? Are you going to look after me to ease my loneliness?’

Tabs thought that was a role she would willingly accept.

They parted after an hour and she walked back into the house and hurried to her room. It had been such a remarkable day she needed to sit and think about it or she would imagine it had been a dream. She wondered whether she would see him again and began counting the hours until the shop opened and she could watch the door in hope.

Realistically she guessed she would be watching the door for many days until she had to give up.

On Saturday morning, Ruth went shopping and she expected either Megan or Mali to be there when she got back. To her dismay the house was empty and worse, the back door was unlocked. She went inside and stood listening for a long time before starting to look in the rooms. The silence was in her head like a hissing sound, and she imagined someone watching her as she forced herself to look in every room. Foolishly, she carried a teapot, the first thing her hand touched when she had put down her shopping basket.

The downstairs was empty and nothing had been moved, but she was still frightened as she slowly went up the stairs. Each room she checked was empty and showed nothing out of the ordinary. There was a muddle in Megan and Mali’s room. The unused one looked the same as normal.

Her own, left until the last, was where she had the biggest fright. The wardrobe doors stood open and the clothes had been moved, slid along the rail gathered at each end. She looked around her half expecting someone to jump out and attack her. Then logic prevailed. Of course no one had been in the house. Who would want to look through her things? There was nothing in the house apart from oddments the family had gathered over the years. Personal things. Certainly nothing of value. Nervously she touched the few clothes she had and looked behind them before adjusting them so they were neatly spaced.

She must have closed the door carelessly, she told herself, a sleeve or the hem of a coat must have stopped it closing properly and a gust of wind or something would have been sufficient to allow doors to slide open.

She went back down only half convinced. The house had always been filled with people and nothing like this had happened before, or was she so tense that she noticed things more? She had told herself that the dressing table drawers being tipped out in her bedroom was due to her sleep walking, even though she had no knowledge of ever having done so since she was a child, and now she was telling herself she had not closed the wardrobe properly and given herself another fright. She went into the kitchen and turned the radio on very loud and sang along with Johnnie Ray, ‘Walking My Baby Back Home’.

She told no one about the open wardrobe, gradually accepting that she had been responsible, but last thing at night when she was alone in the kitchen setting the breakfast table as she always had, she shivered and knew that the house was different, less friendly and she couldn’t understand why. It hadn’t changed, so she must have done. She needed to get out of the place, find something to keep her coming and going, in and out, then it would soon be as ordinary as it had always been. But she didn’t want a job, she couldn’t work. Not while there was a chance she might be needed by her brothers.

She took out her work basket filled with assorted cottons and with every colour of darning wools she had used for darning the boys’ socks. The white wool wrapped in tissue looked out of place among the dark colours and she picked it up and began studying the knitting pattern for the baby’s coat. She was unlikely to sleep tonight so she might as well do something useful.

When she went around to see Toni and Tommy on Sunday morning, Toni was on her own. ‘Tommy and Bryn have gone to work,’ she said by way of greeting. ‘I’m going in later for a hour or two.’

‘On Sunday? Wool shops don’t open on Sundays.’

‘I’m going in while the shop’s closed to sort out the knitting patterns, they’ve got in a bit of a mess.’

‘And Tommy and Bryn?’

‘They’re finishing creosoting a barn for one of the farmers they do occasional work for.’

‘Why didn’t you say? I’d have invited you for dinner.’ She reached into her basket and handed Toni a tissue-wrapped packet. ‘I’ve brought you this. I made it for the new baby, sat up half the night so my gift would be the first,’ she said with a smile. ‘Now, I want you to tell me how I can help.’

‘We’re managing fine, Ruth, but thanks.’

‘Oh, I don’t mean now, although I have a cake to bring over later, when I’ve iced it. But later on, you’ll need lots of support when the baby comes and I want you to know that whatever you want me to do, I’ll be happy to help. It’s such an exciting thing, a baby in the family. I couldn’t sleep last night, thinking about him – or her.’ Well, that was almost true.

She looked at Toni’s face and the young woman’s expression shocked her. Tight-lipped and eyebrows almost meeting in a frown. ‘Is everything all right, Toni, love?’

Then she saw the packet, lying still unopened on Toni’s lap and thought, with a stab of pain, that she knew what the girl wanted to say. ‘The baby, he’s still all right, isn’t he?’

‘The baby is fine, we’re all fine, but Ruth, this is our life now, mine and Tommy’s and we’ll cope with our baby when he comes.’ She looked uncomfortable and her voice was tense as she went on, ‘We appreciate all you’ve done, of course we do, but now you have to find a life of your own and leave us to deal with ours.’ She was silent for a moment allowing Ruth to speak but Ruth just stared at her. ‘You really need to get a job, Ruth, get out of the house for a while each day. We won’t do things your way but we’ll manage. And now, with all four brothers married, this is time for yourself. We’re all settled and getting on with our lives, really we are.’ She tried to smile to take the sting out of her words but it wasn’t successful. ‘Look, I’m not doing this very well, but your brothers are all really grateful for the way you’ve looked after them since your parents died and they always will be. You kept the family together. It’s thanks to you that they’ve had a home all these years. But it’s time now to let go, find a life of your own, they all want that for you.’