Spoils of War (25 page)

‘And you believe them?’

‘I believe Andrew John’s a fool for putting up with it. If Bethan was my wife she wouldn’t be allowed to give David Ford the time of day.’

‘Perhaps, unlike you, Andrew realises a wife is a human being with her own opinions, not a dog to be brought to heel.’

‘I’ll not have the town gossiping about you too.’

‘I’ll be working in an office that’s open to the public.’

‘Tina, you’re no clerk …’

‘You think I can get something better? The man’s offered to pay me three pounds a week to type his letters, man the telephone –’

‘You can’t even type,’ William broke in heatedly.

‘How do you know what I can and can’t do. You’ve been away for the last six years.’

‘Tina –’

‘And don’t try soft-soaping me. I’ve told David Ford and Dino I’m taking the job and that is exactly what I’m doing. Taking it. If you don’t like it, you can damn well lump it.’

‘I told you two not to get married.’ Ronnie stuck his head around the door.

‘And you can stay out of our business!’ Picking up the nearest thing to hand, which happened to be a clothes brush, Tina flung it at Ronnie’s head. He only just managed to close the door in time. The brush hit the door, denting one of the panels.

‘Why don’t you two go home and do your arguing in your own house?’ Megan called from behind the closed door.

William picked up his hat. ‘I mean it, Tina. You work for David Ford and I’ll …’ His voice trailed when he realised he couldn’t think of a single thing he could do if she defied him.

‘You’ll?’ She stood arms folded, coolly waiting for his reply.

‘You’ll be sorry,’ he warned, his temper rising again.

‘Talk to me like that and you won’t have a wife to come home to.’

‘You’ll move into the Park Hotel?’

‘I might just do that. On the other hand I could always rent rooms somewhere.’

‘Leave our house and you needn’t bother to come back.’

‘I’m going to say goodbye to your mam and Dino.’ She tried to pass him.

‘Tina …’ He grabbed her arm.

‘Let me go!’ Struggling violently, she kicked him in the shins.

‘That bloody well hurt.’

‘It was bloody well meant to.’

‘Why have you got to be so stubborn?’

‘Why have you got to be so stupid?’

They faced one another for what could have been one minute or ten, both of them wondering how they had reached this impasse.

‘Why can’t it be like it was when I came home on leave?’

‘Because when you came home on leave it was such a rare event everyone was prepared to rally round so I could drop everything to be with you. Now everyone’s home they have their own problems, which take precedence over ours.’

‘I won’t stop you working –’

‘You can’t stop me working,’ she broke in forcefully.

‘But does it have to be for an American?’

‘Are you concerned because of the Yanks’ reputation with women or because he’s looking for things that you and Ronnie are stockpiling in your scrap yard?’

Again she’d stumbled so close to the truth, he couldn’t answer for a moment. ‘I wish we had half a dozen kids to keep you busy,’ he said when he could finally speak.

‘When you give me one, I’ll consider giving up work, not before.’

‘You’re really going to take this job?’

‘Yes.’ She opened the kitchen door and pushed past Ronnie.

‘Told you before, Will, and I’ll tell you again,’ Ronnie advised as he joined him in the passage, ‘there’s no point in quarrelling with women. The secret is to let them think they’re running the marriage.’

‘And how do you do that?’ William asked sourly, lifting his overcoat from the row of pegs behind the door.

‘Give them everything they ask for while doing exactly what you want.’

‘So you think I should smile sweetly at Tina, and say,
“Marvellous, I’m so pleased you’ve found yourself a job. Go ahead and work for David Ford with my blessing”
?’

‘What!’ Ronnie dropped his cigarette on to the doormat. Stamping on it before it burned the bristles, he turned to Will. ‘Please tell me I didn’t hear that properly.’

‘You did. My wife, your sister, is working for the Yank who’s been ordered to look for what we’ve got hidden in our scrap yard.’

‘Will, you’re hopeless. If I’d been around I would never have let you marry Tina. You haven’t a clue how to keep her under control.’

Chapter Thirteen

Andrew decided that there was nothing quite like a bleak dockside at dawn on a winter morning, especially after a long night spent on a freezing, unheated train that, for all its ‘sleeper’ status, had afforded very little opportunity to actually sleep. Bethan had been hustled off to a ‘Ladies Only’ carriage, but from the numb and exhausted look on her face, it had been no better than the one he and Charlie had shared with two doleful Tommies returning to Germany to finish their last tour of duty before demob.

The beds had been nothing more than narrow boards let down from the carriage walls and covered with the thinnest possible straw mattresses, a single rock-hard pillow, rough, unbleached calico sheets that itched, and a solitary grey blanket. All of which had been pitifully inadequate to offer either comfort or warmth. But Charlie hadn’t complained. Andrew suspected that the Russian hadn’t slept either but every time he had looked across at him lying on his back on the top tier bunk opposite his own, his eyes had been closed.

Possibly it had been a trick of the light – only a single lamp had been left burning in the corridor outside their compartment – but he thought he’d seen evidence of tension beneath the outwardly stoic exterior. A deepening of the frown marks above Charlie’s eyes, a sharpening of the lines around his mouth, a slow tightening of his fists. Perhaps Bethan had been right. He shouldn’t have insisted on travelling up with them. He probably would have been more use staying in the Graig Hospital, within easy distance of Diana should there be any further change in her condition. Bethan was well able to cope with anything that happened to Masha or Charlie. And she would cope – that much he was sure of. She was a competent and experienced nurse, more experienced than some doctors, although it was hard for him to admit it after he had insisted she give up work.

He looked across at her, pallid and wan in the leaden grey, early morning light. She was standing slightly apart from Charlie, as self-contained as the Russian, as they both gazed straight ahead towards the towering, rusting hulk of the great ship, gigantic and forbidding in the chill dawn. Rain was falling – a light, steady drizzle that soaked into their overcoats and trickled down their necks, dampening their faces and making them feel even more miserable than they already were.

The gangplank had been dropped and, as Andrew watched, uniformed sailors bolted it to a sloping, metal walkway that had been hauled up to meet it from the dockside. Murmurs of anticipation rippled through the crowd beside and behind them as figures began to line up on deck. But Charlie continued to watch as silent and impassive as if he were waiting in a mundane queue for rations, rather than for the first glimpse of a wife he hadn’t seen in sixteen years.

Andrew glanced behind him to check on the position of the taxi rank. Only two cabs were waiting. He debated whether or not to walk over and engage one, and decided against it. There was no way of knowing how long Masha and Peter would be, and even after they disembarked there would still be all the formalities of immigration and the driver would be bound to start the clock the minute he spoke to him.

He went over the journey ahead in his mind. A taxi to the station, an uncomfortable, crowded regional train to London then another taxi to take them across London to Paddington. They could hardly expect Charlie’s wife and son, frail and delicate after their years in camps, to take the underground as they had done. He checked his watch again. They had reservations for the nine o’clock train out of Paddington to Cardiff, three hours away. Bethan had ordered a hamper to be delivered to their seats from a grocer’s the stationmaster had recommended because she’d been concerned that there’d be no time to eat, even supposing they could find a decent café or restaurant. Unfortunately station buffets and dining cars had long been consigned to memory and he was beginning to wonder if the country would ever get back to what it had been in 1939. After the full day’s journey it would take them to get to Cardiff they’d finally be able to pick up his car to transport them the last twelve miles to Pontypridd.

‘They’re beginning to disembark,’ Bethan murmured, her breath clouding in the cold air as the first figures appeared on the gangplank.

Fifty yards from where Charlie, Bethan and Andrew waited, and oblivious to their presence, Tony waved as a trim figure in a familiar brown suit and hat emerged on to the deck of the ship. She stood for a moment looking lost and confused as she scanned the sea of upturned faces. He waved even more frantically. Pushing his way through to the barrier that separated the welcoming crowds from the passengers, he had a sudden brainwave. Putting two fingers into his mouth, he whistled. Gabrielle stopped so he knew she had heard him but it took an age for her to walk the hundred yards from the ship to where he was standing.

‘Tony, darling.’ She rushed over to him, hugging him across the waist-high barrier. ‘You came to meet me.’

‘I wrote I would,’ he murmured, holding her as close as the barricade would allow. All his problems dwindled into insignificance as he finally embraced the one person in the world he felt truly understood him.

‘I know but it’s so far. I looked in an atlas, you travelled hundreds of miles to be here …’ She was crying and laughing at the same time. ‘My luggage, my box …’

‘Keep going. Straight on to Immigration and Customs, miss.’

Tony glared at the Customs officer. Had he been unduly abrupt with Gabrielle, or was it his imagination?

‘This way, miss.’ The officer held out his hand and helped a girl behind Gabrielle who was struggling with a bag. ‘Here, I’ll get a trolley for you, miss.’

‘Thank you so very much, officer. You are so very kind,’ The girl gushed in a French accent.

‘Anything for our allied war brides, miss.’

And nothing for our enemy war brides, Tony thought bitterly as he watched Gabrielle struggle towards the immigration shed with a case that was larger and very obviously heavier than the French girl’s.

Masha and Peter were the last to leave the ship, a frail, hunched, elderly-looking woman who stumbled along as though she were crippled, helped by a tall, thickset man with a shock of white hair escaping from beneath a peaked, navy workman’s cap. Andrew looked and looked again. This couldn’t possibly be Charlie’s son, the feeble, starved child they’d been expecting – the product of years of deprivation and harsh, brutal upbringing in labour and death camps.

Bethan reached out and touched Charlie’s arm as he leaned against the barrier, but he continued to stare straight ahead, unaware of anyone’s presence except Masha’s. Slowly, infinitely slowly, the woman continued to totter towards them, hand on rail, half carried, half supported by the man at her side.

As she stepped down on to the dock she looked across at Charlie, and Bethan felt as though an electric spark had sprung between them. There was instant and soul piercing recognition. Like Alma, Masha’s eyes were green, a deep, true, emerald green that carried within them a hint of the beauty she had been. Her features were finely drawn, but her skin was creased like that of an old woman. And not even the shapeless brown overcoat she was wearing could disguise her painfully emaciated figure.

‘Feodor!’ was the only intelligible word Bethan made out in the outpouring of incomprehensible Russian that flooded from Masha along with tears as, to her consternation, Charlie breached the barrier and ran to meet his wife. As they clung to one another, an official marched towards them but, too embarrassed by the display of emotion to admonish Charlie for contravening dock regulations, he contented himself with a discreet, if loud cough.

Bethan looked around for Andrew and saw him talking to an officer at the door of the immigration shed. She smiled at the boy who was standing behind Masha but the smile died on her lips and she shivered as though someone had walked over her grave. He
was
Charlie. The lodger who had moved into her Aunt Megan’s house when he’d come to run a market stall for a Cardiff butcher ten years before. A Russian who had yet to be christened ‘Charlie’ by a fellow stallholder who couldn’t get his tongue around ‘Feodor Raschenko’.

Tall, powerfully muscled, with chiselled features, white hair and ice-blue eyes, so familiar – and so frightening for all his similarity to his father. She reminded herself that before she had come to know Charlie, she had been terrified of him too. Self-possessed, taciturn, the Russian’s overt strength coupled with his protracted silences and habit of never speaking until spoken to had once unnerved her. But this boy was something else – just as powerful, just as self-assured as his father, but there was no underlying humanity or warmth in the expression on his face, only hostility. And she was left with the uncomfortable feeling that he would think no more of killing a man – or woman – than he would of swatting a fly.

Disconcerted by his stare, she pointed to herself. ‘Bethan John. I know your father.’ She spoke slowly in the hope that he’d understand friendship was intended behind the gesture.

‘Peter,’ he answered briefly without offering his hand.

‘Your father has been so looking forward to you and your mother’s arrival.’ She watched as Charlie finally managed to untangle himself from Masha’s arms and lead her towards the immigration shed where Andrew stood waiting.

‘Why has he been looking forward to it, Mrs John?’ Peter enquired in English. ‘Guilt from abandoning us? Or perhaps he would like to divorce my mother so that he can carry on living with his second wife?’

To Bethan’s astonishment his English was impeccable, his accent as refined as if he’d attended one of the top public schools.

‘Are you surprised that I knew my father had married again, Mrs John?’

‘I’m sorry, you startled me. I wasn’t expecting you to speak English – and so well.’

‘There were many opportunities to learn languages in the camps.’

‘Bethan.’ Andrew signalled for them to come forward. He held out his hand to Peter, who ignored it. ‘Hello, I’m Andrew John, a friend of your father. I see you’ve met my wife, Bethan. Shall I take the bag, young man?’ He took the weight of the rucksack on Peter’s back.

‘Don’t you dare touch that!’

‘As you wish.’ Andrew was as taken aback as Bethan by Peter’s animosity and perfect command of English, but unlike her, he managed to conceal his surprise. ‘I’ve arranged for us to wait in an office until your luggage has been passed by Customs.’

‘The bag you just tried to take from me is our luggage, Mr John.’

‘Dr John,’ Andrew corrected automatically. ‘In that case I’ll see if I can get us a taxi.’

Bethan didn’t ask how Andrew managed to bypass the queue at the taxi rank. She was only grateful that he managed it. As the cab drew up next to the shed, Andrew opened the door and Charlie helped Masha into the back. Folding down the seats that backed on to the partition that separated driver from passengers, Andrew took one and offered the other to Peter. Bethan sat alongside Masha, who was still tearfully clinging to Charlie.

As soon as Peter closed the door the driver set off. As he drove along the quayside Bethan reflected that it was going to be a very long journey to Pontypridd – quite possibly the longest she had ever experienced.

‘Diana,’ Dr John senior looked round the door of her room, ‘you have a visitor.’

Diana turned her head and held out her right hand as Megan walked through the door, loaded with a box of chocolates Dino had scavenged and an enormous bunch of hot-house flowers that Ronnie had insisted on buying, although in her opinion they were wickedly expensive.

‘Mam, what beautiful flowers!’ Diana exclaimed.

‘I’ll put them in water.’ The nurse took them from Megan.

‘They’re from all of us.’ Megan took the chair Dr John pulled up to the right side of the bed for her.

‘Wyn?’

‘Everyone.’ Megan struggled to maintain her composure in the face of Dr John’s warning look. ‘Now tell me, because everyone will want to know, how are you feeling? The truth mind.’ She tried not to look at Diana’s left hand lying, twitching uncontrollably on the bedcover.

‘Billy …’

‘Is well and as happy as he can be without you to look after him.’ She glanced up at Dr John, seeking his approval. She had spent the last half-hour sitting in the ward office, listening to him lecture her on what she could and could not say to her daughter. ‘You’re the one we’ve all been worrying about. You’re so thin and white. Are they giving you enough to eat?’ She squeezed Diana’s right hand as she sat down.

‘They’ve done nothing but bring me food since I woke up.’

‘Only because you need it. Are you in pain?’

‘I have a bit of a headache, that’s all. And they’re giving me tablets for it.’ Diana looked to Dr John. ‘But Billy …’

‘Is fine.’ Megan only just stopped herself from adding,
‘and working hard in school.’
It was all very well Andrew’s father warning her to keep the conversation general and not to mention the last five years but with Diana looking at her she was finding it a lot harder than he had suggested it would be.

‘And Wyn? Why hasn’t he come in to see me?’

Megan looked to Dr John for guidance.

‘Because we thought it best that you see your mother first, Diana,’ he said quietly. ‘As I explained to you earlier, we can’t risk you getting upset or excited. Not so soon after coming out of a coma.’

‘But Wyn’s the last person to upset me. He’s’ quiet and kind …’ She looked from the doctor to Megan and back. ‘Something has happened to him. I know it. Otherwise you’d tell me how he is. What are you keeping from me, Mam? Is Wyn hurt – ill … ?’

‘Everyone’s fine, Diana.’ Dr John moved to the other side of her bed and patted her shoulder in a futile attempt to calm her.

‘Then why isn’t Wyn here?’

‘I think it’s time for you to go, Mrs Morelli. We can’t have our patient getting upset.’

‘Mrs Morelli? Mam – what’s going on? Don’t go. Don’t leave me. Mam, please tell me what’s going on.’

‘I’m going to give you something to make you sleep, Diana.’

‘I don’t want to sleep. Mam, stop him!’

‘You need to rest, Diana.’