Past Remembering (6 page)

‘I’m sorry, Charlie, this probably isn’t the homecoming you expected. My mother ill, the extra shop …’

‘You should have told me more in your letters. Even if I can’t answer them right away, I read them as soon as I can.’

‘I don’t want to burden you with my problems when you have more serious things to think about.’

‘If it concerns the shop, they are not your problems. They used to be mine; now I suppose I have to accept that they’re ours.’

She didn’t answer him. She didn’t even know how to begin to tell him that she hadn’t written about her difficulties because she clung to the irrational hope that if he had nothing else to think about, he’d have to concentrate all his energies on staying alive and coming back to her in one piece. But then what was the point in him returning to her when there was this awful gulf between them?

‘Charlie?’ she faltered, and lost courage. ‘Shall I dish out for you?’

He nodded, reminding her of his infuriating habit of speaking only when absolutely necessary. When he began to eat, she left the room and went into the bathroom. She bathed and changed into the light summer dress she had brought, taking care over brushing out her hair, putting on cold cream, touching her lips with the remains of the last lipstick she had hoarded against Charlie’s return. Dabbing scent behind her ears and powder on her nose, she left the room and walked into the bedroom. Charlie had unlaced his boots, taken off his jacket and was lying on the bed in his shirt-sleeves and braces. His eyes were closed. She went to the window and pulled the curtains. He didn’t move. She returned to the bed and lay on it carefully, so as not to touch him. She longed to reach out, place her hand over his, whisper his name, but the chill between them froze the conciliatory gestures before she summoned the courage to make them. Afraid of a rebuff she closed her eyes and pretended to sleep, and soon there was no need for pretence.

‘Here’s the idiot who ran past me.’ The ARP warden straightened his back as he raised the doorpost that had fallen on Haydn.

‘He all right?’ his colleague asked.

‘He’s breathing.’ He crouched down and checked Haydn’s vital signs, ‘but out cold. There doesn’t appear to be a mark on him.’

‘Thank God for that. We’ve had enough fatalities for one day. Call for a stretcher to carry him over to the FAP.’

‘That a baby crying?’

Leaving Haydn lying on the rubble the two men picked their way gingerly through the debris to the back corner of the house.

‘It’s strongest here.’

They began to move scattered and smashed planking and bricks in the slow, methodical manner of workers accustomed to their task. The cry heightened, reaching a crescendo that permeated Haydn’s subconscious. Dazed, he clambered to his feet. Rushing over to where the men were working he began to tear into the wreckage with his bare hands.

‘Steady, lad, or you’ll have the whole lot down on top of us, not to mention that poor little scrap,’ one of the men complained. ‘Slowly does it. Slow and steady …’

Dizzy from concussion, hangover and lack of sleep, Haydn continued to snatch at the stones that covered the area where the stairwell to the cellar had been. The wardens worked quietly, straining their ears for a repetition of the cry that had died before they had cleared the top step. As soon as he was able, the senior warden moved into the hole they had dug, and inspected the mass of shattered masonry that blocked his path.

‘It must have been a cat. Nothing larger could have survived this,’ he asserted authoritatively, eyeing the craters in the floor that were now on a level with his head.

‘There’s a door at the bottom,’ Haydn pleaded insistently. ‘A strong metal door.’

‘A door’s no use when the ceiling doesn’t hold, lad. Can’t you see how it’s caved in over there… and there …’ The more he looked, the more holes he saw.

‘You heard the cry. I know you did. We all heard it.’ Grey-faced from dust and anxiety, Haydn continued to burrow into the masonry. The skin hung in threads from his fingers, dripping blood with every movement, his nails were cracked, split to the quick, but he continued to delve with his bare hands. The wardens glanced at one another. The senior one nodded.

‘Keep going, shout when you finally break through, but for heaven’s sake watch that beam up there doesn’t come crashing down on both of you. I’ll go back to the ARP post and see if I can organise a hoist and tackle.’

Haydn didn’t even glance at the beam: all he could think of was that last, faint cry. He had never been a religious man, but as he dug he made a bargain with some vague, remote deity.

‘Please God let them be all right, and if they are, I swear I’ll send them back to Wales. I won’t keep them with me. Just let them be alive. Please God …’

Alma woke to see Charlie standing over her with a tray in his hands. He cleared a space on the dressing table and set it down. ‘I’ve made tea and toast. You didn’t eat any breakfast.’

‘I was too tired.’ She sat up on the bed as he passed her a cup. ‘I’m sorry, I should be waiting on you.’

‘Why?’

‘You’re the fighting man. You only have three days’ rest and I’ve wasted one of them by sleeping.’ She glanced out of the window. The light had turned from silver to gold. Even if the small hand on the alarm clock on the bedside cabinet hadn’t pointed to four, she would have known it was late afternoon.

Charlie took his tea over to the window, and drank it looking down the valley at the oaks and chestnuts budding into life.

‘What would you like to do with what’s left of the day?’ Alma ventured.

‘We could go for a walk before the light fades.’

‘I’ll wash my face.’ She finished her tea and swung her legs over the side of the bed.

‘Alma?’

She turned and smiled.

‘Nothing.’ He watched her leave the room, not knowing how to breach the wall between them, despising himself for resenting the fact that life had gone on in Pontypridd without him. It was obvious Alma didn’t need him any more, not even to cope with the trauma of her mother’s final illness or the stress of expanding the business he had set up. And where did that leave him? A pawn on the chessboard of the secret war no one, least of all him, dare mention? An irritating disruption to his wife’s daily routine when he was given leave? But then, wasn’t that what he had wanted? He had come home with the intention of telling her to get on with her life no matter what happened to him. But now, when he was faced with an independent Alma and a newly returned and bereaved Ronnie Ronconi, it was unbelievably hard knowing he wouldn’t even be missed.

‘If you don’t take a break, you’re not going to be any good to man or beast, let alone whoever’s buried under this lot,’ an elderly cockney ‘helper’ warned, as Haydn stopped digging to wipe the blood from his split and shredded fingers.

‘Quiet!’ the warden ordered abruptly.

Haydn sat half-way down the steps they had cleared and strained his ears. He heard it again. Could it be the mewing of a trapped cat his wishful thinking had transformed into Anne’s cry? Neither of the wardens ventured an opinion. He picked up a chunk of masonry and handed it to the cockney who in turn handed it to a warden.

He drove himself on, hauling more and more debris to the surface. Finally he reached the steel door that had closed off the cellar. It was leaning drunkenly in its frame, the hinges and the surround buckling beneath the weight of shattered stonework. Beyond it lay a mass of rubble interspersed with splintered wood – and a severed arm – a woman’s arm complete with rings and wristwatch.

He tried to cry out, but his mouth was caked with dust. The urgency that had sustained him suddenly ebbed and his knees gave way, pitching him forward. The warden behind him blew his whistle to summon help.

‘Leave it to us now, lad. We’ll do everything that can be done. Stand down and go and get yourself a cup of tea. We need all the room we can get here.’

Haydn retreated to the ruins of what had been the ground-floor apartment and waited while others fought to free his wife and child. His family were his entire world, he would have willingly laid down his life for them, and yet here he was, sitting impotently on a blasted window-ledge, framing prayers he hadn’t the strength to utter while others dug them out.

‘Steady … easy … here we go. You recognise her?’

Haydn closed his eyes not wanting to look, clinging to the absurd thought that as long as he didn’t see Jane dead, she would still be alive.

‘We need to identify her. Come on, there’s a good lad.’

He opened his eyes and scrutinised the corpse laid out on the ground. She had been young and pretty, but now she was motionless, her hair and skin overlaid by a fine layer of powdered mortar that had transformed her flesh to stone. Apart from a thread of crimson that ran from her temple down to her eye she was perfect. So perfect he had the peculiar notion that she ought to be exhibited like a sculpture in a gallery.

‘It’s Mrs Allen’s granddaughter from upstairs. Her name was Nancy. She worked in the canteen at the War Office.’

‘You sure, lad?’

‘I’m sure.’ Haydn staggered to the hole that marked the boundary between house and street. He clung to a fragment of wall, leaned outside and was horribly and thoroughly sick. A young, pretty girl he had known and liked, one who had her whole life in front of her, was dead, and the only feeling he could muster was fervent and sincere gratitude, that it was Nancy Allen not Jane Powell who was being rolled on to a collapsible mortuary stretcher.

‘Bethan’s got quite a little farm going here,’ Alma commented, needing to break the interminable silence that had fallen between her and Charlie. Even impersonal, commonplace remarks seemed better than nothing.

Charlie ran an appraising eye over the pig pen and chicken run that closed off one end of the garden, and the hutches that housed hares and rabbits bordering the vegetable plots.

‘It’s the same everywhere. People do whatever it takes to survive.’

‘Even where you’ve been?’ Alma risked asking a question she knew she shouldn’t.

‘Food’s scarce all over Europe.’ He went to the chicken run and clicked his tongue against the roof of his mouth. The hens came running.

‘I almost forgot. You told me you’d grown up in the country.’

‘Don’t you know the saying, scratch a Russian and find a peasant?’

‘Would you like to farm after the war?’

‘I can’t look that far ahead.’

‘Why not?’

‘How can we plan a future we may not have?’

‘Then you think the Germans will invade us?’ she asked, deliberately choosing to interpret his remark on a global not personal level.

‘I listened to the news when I made the tea. London’s been bombed again. They delivered the usual propaganda about the undefeated Cockney spirit, but I’ve been caught in a raid and I don’t mind admitting I was petrified. There’s only so much people can take.’

‘We can’t lose now. Not after all the lives this war has already cost.’

‘People in Germany are saying the same thing.’

‘You’ve been there?’

‘You know I can’t talk about where I’ve been.’

‘Charlie -’ she blocked his path feeling like a nervous child waylaying a rather formidable headmaster – ‘I love you,’ she blurted out uneasily. ‘I don’t know what’s happening between us, but everything I do, the shops, work, everything, it’s for you after the war. If I didn’t think it was going to end and that you were coming back I wouldn’t want to go on.’

‘You’ll survive,’ he reassured her gravely. ‘Look at you, expanding the business, taking care of the shops and your mother …’

‘Nothing means anything without you.’ She stepped closer and laid her head against his chest. After a few moments she felt the warmth of his powerful arms around her shoulders. ‘We’ve wasted one whole day. I want to go back up to the bedroom, close the door and shut out the entire world. Please, Charlie, just for tonight?’

He looked down into her eyes. She locked her arms around his neck and pulled his head to hers. He kissed her. It was simpler than trying to grapple with the mixed emotions whirling through his mind.

When she released him he led her towards the house. She trembled at her own audacity and the prospect of making love for the first time in over a year to a man who seemed more like a stranger than her husband.

‘This is a fine place.’ She stood back, pretending to admire the house.

He studied the triple bays that swept up to the turreted roof and row of attic windows. ‘Andrew John knew what he was doing when he persuaded Bethan to let him buy it for her. It’s the right sort of place to bring up a family.’

‘We’ll be a family one day,’ she declared, embarrassed because she suspected that he’d seen through her delaying tactics.

‘Perhaps.’ He put his arm around her, hugging her in an attempt to soften the pain he knew his vague answer had caused. He had lost his family home, his first wife and unborn child in Russia, and all reason told him he was about to lose Alma and the life he had built in Pontypridd. But just like the last time, he could do nothing to prevent it from happening. He, along with thousands of other men across Europe, was no longer master of his own destiny. The day after tomorrow he would leave Alma and board a train. And knowing what he did about his destination and the life expectancy of people in his line of work it would more than likely be for ever.

Earlier he had been angry because she had built a life for herself that excluded him; now he knew he should be grateful for her self-reliance. He would ask Bethan to organise that party. It might be as well to remind Evan Powell that he held his will, and perhaps add a letter to tell Alma all the things he couldn’t bring himself to say to her face.

Chapter Four

‘Someone take him from me.’ The dome of the warden’s tin hat appeared above the hole that hid the cellar steps. He handed out a blackened, dust-encrusted shawl, a shawl Haydn recognised. It moved, and the cry came again, thin, weak and wailing. Haydn stumbled over the wreckage and grabbed the baby.

‘It’s a her, not a him.’

‘Reckon she knows her father.’ The warden smiled in relief as he relinquished his hold on Anne. He rarely pulled live victims from the wreckage wrought by the blitz, especially babies. Haydn unwrapped his daughter gently and carefully, checking every limb and inch of skin as he brushed clumps of black mortar from her hair and face.

‘My wife?’ Haydn’s voice sounded strange. Hoarse and rusty as though he hadn’t used it in years.

‘There’s two women close by.’

‘Are they alive?’

‘Can’t tell yet, lad.’

Haydn knew from the tone of the warden’s voice that they weren’t.

‘Take care of the little one while we get them out. There should be powdered milk and nappies down at the centre.’

Haydn rose to his feet just as the cockney ‘helper’ dragged a second lifeless body to the surface.

‘Jane!’ The anguished cry turned to a sob. He clutched Anne tightly, before realising that the woman was too old and too fat to be Jane.

‘This your wife?’

Haydn shook his head. ‘Mrs Collins from downstairs.’

‘Can you give us an idea of how many were down here?’

‘There were twelve flats in the building. We didn’t know everyone.’

‘Hazard a guess?’ the warden pressed impatiently.

‘The last time I was home during a raid there were twenty people in the cellar.’

‘Keep looking, boys.’

‘I’ve picked up on a voice over here,’ the Cockney shouted.

Anne began to cry but Haydn remained rooted to the spot. Rocking his daughter in his arms he watched the senior warden climb to the surface and tie a rope around his waist.

‘When I tug the rope twice, pull me back, but mind you do it slowly,’ he warned the cockney before lowering himself down the hole again. Haydn was aware of the blood rushing to his head and his heart thundering erratically against his ribcage. A shout came from below. He stepped forward, someone – he didn’t notice who took Anne from him. He turned to see a VAD standing behind him.

‘The baby’s dehydrated, we have to get her to the first-aid post.’

‘Please, can you hold on for just two minutes, I’m waiting for them to bring out my wife.’

The nurse took Anne out of the shadow of the crumbling walls into the comparative safety of the street.

Haydn watched her go but his attention remained riveted on the rubble around the hole. The tin hat appeared again, and Haydn saw that the warden was carrying a woman over his shoulder. A woman in a dark skirt and light blouse.

‘Jane?’ He knelt beside them.

‘Go easy, lad. She’s alive, but she’s in shock and she may be hurt.’

Haydn cradled Jane in his arms as the warden heaved her to the surface. Her eyes flickered as she closed them against the strong afternoon sunlight.

‘Anne?’ she pleaded urgently.

‘She’s here, she’s fine.’

‘I told you we would be, didn’t I? My handbag?’

‘I’ve got it.’ The warden pushed it into her hand.

‘I’ve saved the ration books, and the bank book.’ Dazed she opened her eyes and looked around the ruins of the block. ‘We’ve lost everything …’

‘Nothing that can’t be replaced,’ Haydn reassured, holding her close.

‘Best get her and the little one down to the centre as quick as you can, lad.’

Haydn lifted Jane high in his arms, picking his way cautiously over the debris into the street, before stopping and turning back. ‘I can’t thank you enough. All of you.’ He looked from the wardens to the old cockney.

‘It’s all in a day’s work, thanks to bloody Hitler. I only hope our RAF boys are giving them what for over there, that’s all I can say,’ the cockney groused as he continued to dig.

‘I can walk,’ Jane protested as he nodded to the VAD who was carrying Anne.

‘After you’ve seen a doctor.’ He followed the VAD towards the centre. ‘And then any walking you do will be in the direction of Paddington station.’

‘Haydn …’

‘No arguments.’

His face was grim, set, and she realised no amount of coaxing, cajoling or lovemaking would sway him. Not this time.

Alma and Charlie lay wrapped in one another’s arms in Bethan’s bed, watching the sun sink slowly over the hills.

‘I’ve been dreaming about that for a long time.’ He pulled her even closer, locking his hands around her waist.

‘It’s probably wrong for a woman to say so, but so have I.’ She ran her fingertips over the smooth skin of his shoulders, wishing that it had been like this between them from the first moment of his leave.

‘Why is it wrong for a woman?’

‘I don’t know. Welsh chapel morality, maybe? Didn’t you know that women aren’t supposed to like lovemaking, only put up with it for their husbands’ sake?’ She smiled at him. ‘It is going to be all right between us, isn’t it?’

‘It’s always been all right between us.’ He reached for the jacket he’d flung down next to the bed. Fumbling in the pockets he pulled out a packet of cigarettes and the lighter she had given him the last Christmas before the war. A lighter that lay in his locker in base camp in between ‘jobs’ because he dare not take anything of English manufacture where he went.

‘I don’t just mean bed.’

‘I know, Alma.’

‘I was being silly and selfish earlier when I said I wouldn’t want to go on without you. You mustn’t worry about me. Especially when you are away.’

‘I’ll never stop worrying about you, that’s a husband’s prerogative.’ Turning his back to her, he leaned on his elbow and lit a cigarette.

‘Charlie, I need to say something and, please, don’t interrupt me before I’ve finished, because I’ll never pluck up enough courage to bring this up again. I think I know where they send you, and you told me once that your first wife and baby may still be alive somewhere in Russia …’

‘You have no idea how vast Russia is.’

‘Please, Charlie, I said no interruptions.’ She sat up and looked earnestly into his ice-blue eyes, cold no longer, but warm with love and tenderness. ‘What I’m trying to say is that if you do find her, and want to stay with her after the war, that’s all right.’

‘Alma …’

‘I won’t pretend to like it, but I’ll understand. You warned me before we married that Masha had prior claim on you.’

‘Just as Ronnie Ronconi had on you.’

‘Ronnie was my lover, not my husband, Charlie, it’s not the same thing. I want our relationship to be built on honesty and trust, that’s why I told you everything about me before we married. We were truthful with one another then, and I want no secrets between us now. Neither of us could have imagined anything like this war happening. We both thought we would live out our lives quietly in Pontypridd. That Masha would remain somewhere where you couldn’t reach her, and Ronnie would stay in Italy with Maud, but now things are different. This has nothing to do with Ronnie,’ she emphasised. ‘I will never go back to him no matter what happens. I promise …’

‘No.’ He laid his finger across her lips. ‘Don’t make promises you may find yourself unable to keep. You were right to say that we had no idea how this war would affect us. We have even less idea what else is coming our way.’

‘I promise,’ she reiterated fervently. ‘There will
never
be anything between me and Ronnie Ronconi ever again. But I mean it about Masha. If you do find her and decide to stay with her, I will be all right here. But please, Charlie, I beg you, let me know you’re alive. That’s all I ask. Don’t let me go on believing you’re dead, if you are alive and happy somewhere.’

Charlie drew on his cigarette, and exhaled thoughtfully. ‘If by some miracle I do find Masha, I think that after twelve years, she, like me, will have a new life.’

‘And if there’s room in it for you?’

‘How do you expect me to answer that? I don’t know what Masha and I will think of each other after twelve years. Yesterday you felt like a stranger after only a year’s separation.’

‘But we’re not strangers now,’ she whispered, curling her body around his and burying her fingers in the hair on his chest.

‘If I don’t come back, you’ll be free to marry again.’

‘Free, maybe, but I won’t marry.’

‘You can’t say that.’

‘I can. Just look at Ronnie. There was only one woman for him, now she’s dead he’ll go on living, but all the joy has gone from his life. He’s a broken man. He’ll never marry again.’

Charlie turned aside and tapped his cigarette into the ashtray at the side of the bed. Alma wholeheartedly believed in what she was telling him, but no one knew better than him that ‘never’ was a long time. Ronnie was heartbroken – now. If he didn’t return he knew that Alma would be too – for a while. Just as he had been when he’d returned to his village and found his pregnant wife and entire family gone. The pain of that loss was with him still, but it was a grief that he had learned to endure and live with. His sorrow hadn’t prevented him from marrying Alma and finding happiness a second time. Just as he suspected Alma and Ronnie might if he was killed. They had been lovers once, why not again? And why did the idea of Ronnie and Alma taking solace in one another, and building a future together, hurt him so much? He hardly had the right to object when he wouldn’t even be around to see it happen.

It was after ten o’clock when Diana Rees walked up the steps to the front door of her father-in-law’s substantial, semi-detached villa in Tyfica Road. Like every other house in Pontypridd since the influx of evacuees and munitions workers, it was full, only in their case with family. She and her husband, Wyn, shared a bedroom with their six-month-old baby. Her mother Megan, and Wyn’s spinster sister Myrtle each had a bedroom that was more like a box room, and her invalid father-in-law slept downstairs in what had been the front parlour.

Occasionally, she would have given a great deal to have been able to walk through the door and retreat into a space that was wholly and solely hers. Especially after a hectic day like today, when she had divided her time between watching over Alma’s mother’s deathbed, and checking on Alma’s shop, takings and staff. But peace, quiet and privacy were luxuries that existed only in the memory, like bananas and slab chocolate.

‘You look as though you’re sleeping on your feet, love.’ Wyn greeted her at the front door.

‘I am. How did you manage without me?’

‘You’re not indispensable yet.’ He said as he helped her off with her coat.

‘You ready for your supper now, Wyn?’ Megan called from the kitchen.

‘Both of us are. Diana’s just arrived.’

Diana removed the pearl-headed pins from her black velvet hat and hung it on the stand before following Wyn into the back kitchen where Megan was presiding over a simmering pot of cawl.

‘How has he been?’ Diana leaned over the day cot pushed into a corner next to the range.

‘As good as gold.’

‘He didn’t notice you’d gone,’ Wyn’s father added from the depths of the sofa. He pulled the blanket that covered him to the chest higher, and shook the rocker on the cradle as the baby began to snuffle. ‘He knows his grandfather.’

‘Then you’ve terrified him into silence.’ Wyn had meant the quip to sound light-hearted, but the remark fell heavily into the strained atmosphere. Relations between him and his father had improved since he’d married Diana, and her mother had moved in with them, but only because the introduction of extra people into the household had forced his father to temper his constant criticism of every single thing he said or did.

‘Myrtle went to bed early. The shifts have been extended at the factory. They’ll be working twelve-hour days next week.’ Megan sliced a loaf of soda bread into quarters and set it on the table.

‘Fine hours and work for your sister to be doing, while you ponce around like a sissy serving up sweets in the New Theatre,’ the old man grouched from the corner.

‘I sieved some stew for the baby and tried him with a few spoonfuls at the six o’clock feed,’ Megan broke in, hoping that Wyn would ignore his father’s taunting.

‘Did he like it?’ Diana asked.

‘Lapped it up.’

‘Good, the sooner he gets used to ordinary food the better for me and anyone who looks after him.’

‘Sit down and eat up while it’s hot.’ Megan carried the pot to the table and ladled out two bowlfuls.

‘How is Mrs Moore, Diana?’ Wyn’s father asked.

‘Unconscious most of the time and incoherent when she does wake. Bethan says she hasn’t eaten in days.’

‘Then she’ll not last long. And to think she’s a good ten years younger than me,’ the old man cackled gleefully.

‘The way you’re going, Mr Rees, you’ll outlast us all.’ Megan handed the old man his supper of bread and cheese on a tray. She and Wyn’s father were the only ones who were able to eat at regular meal-times. Myrtle generally ate in the factory canteen to save bother, while Diana and Wyn usually only managed breakfast and supper at home, filling up in between on pies from the shop and tea in Ronconi’s café.

‘Strong constitution to begin with.’ The old man smiled, which made him look more sickly than ever, reminding Diana that Alma Moore’s mother wasn’t the only one who had been given a death sentence.

‘How is Bethan?’ Megan sat down opposite her daughter and son-in-law at the table.

‘You know Beth, looking after all the sick in the town, her evacuees, running errands for all and sundry.’

‘Anything not to think about Eddie, and now Maud,’ Megan frowned. ‘She heard from Andrew lately?’

‘She didn’t say.’

‘That means she hasn’t. Sometimes it feels as though letters are the scarcest commodities of all.’ It had been a month since Megan had heard from her son, William, who as far as she could make out was ‘somewhere in North Africa’. The closest she could get to him were the daily trips his wife, Tina, made from the Tumble café to see if her mother-in-law had received any news she hadn’t.

‘This is the best cawl I’ve ever eaten, Megan. Just what I needed.’ Wyn pushed back his chair and stretched his legs out to the fire.