A Liverpool Lass (13 page)

‘I’m sorry to trouble you,’ she stammered, therefore, ‘but are you Mrs Evans? And is Davy Evans your ...’

With an exclamation the woman pulled the door wider and gestured her in.

‘A friend of my Davy is always welcome; come in with you and warm yourself ... Duw, it’s bitter cold out there, girl!’

‘Thank you,’ Nellie said. She walked into the room, aware as she felt the warmth of firelight and lamplight how cold she was. She looked around her, at the flames licking up the chimney, the rugs on the well polished boards, the gleam of a Welsh dresser laden with ornate and rosy china, at dark oil paintings in gilded frames on the bulging, whitewashed walls. A homely room ... and in a chintz-covered armchair pulled up close to the fire an old man, bent and as bald as an egg, was eating something from a round blue dish. He looked across at Nellie, gave her a brief and toothless grin, then returned to his meal.

The woman who had invited Nellie in turned to the
old man and spoke loudly, in Welsh. Nellie guessed that her presence was being explained even as she was pressed gently into one of the easy chairs.

‘Sit you down, girl. Da don’t speak no English ... I suppose you’ve had no news of Davy? They wrote and told me he was missing after the
Milligan
went down, but there’s always hope, that’s what I say ... though they were in the Baltic sea and it’s cruel cold out there.’

‘Missing?’ Nellie quavered. ‘Oh, dear God, and I’ve prayed for him every night and morning, I’ve begged for his life ... does missing mean there is hope, then?’

‘Hope cannot die,’ the other woman said. She looked attentively at Nellie. ‘Tell me, cariad, just what were you to Davy?’

‘We were to be married,’ Nellie murmured. Scalding tears were chasing each other down her ice-cold cheeks and there was a low, nagging ache in her back. ‘Oh, Mrs Evans, we were to be married!’

‘Married?’ Mrs Evans, Nellie saw through her tears, was staring at her with curious intentness. She was as dark as Davy, with a gentle, very youthful face and black, bright eyes, widening as though with shock and then narrowing to stare. Nellie noticed that her hands were gripping each other so tightly that the knuckles were white and she thought again how like Davy she was with her black hair, though her curls were softer, falling beside the oval of her face like two bunches of grapes. ‘You poor scrap of a thing, to come all this way just to hear news like that! He had promised marriage, then?’

‘Well, not in so many words; we’d been courting for more than a year though, and he was looking for a couple of rooms so we could set up home together when we could afford it. I knew he’d be away a lot but
what did that matter? When he was home we could be together.’

‘True. He’d not told us, you see – his Da and I. But doubtless he meant to bring you home here some time?’

Mrs Evans’s voice was quiet, yet there was pain in it, and resignation, too. Almost as though she had expected sadness.

‘I don’t know, but I suppose so. He talked about you both ...’ Nellie rubbed her eyes and then looked narrowly across at the woman she had taken to be Davy’s mother. ‘I got the idea you were old and ill ... are you Mr Evans’ second wife? For now that I look close, I can see you’re not much older than Davy!’

‘Call me Bethan,’ Mrs Evans said. ‘Cariad, I’d best tell you the truth though I hate to give you pain. It’s not Davy’s mother I am but his wife. His mother is bedridden, she keeps to her room all winter, though when Davy is home ... when he was home ... he would carry her down in summer to sit outside in her chair. However, she’s very deaf and his Da only speaks Welsh so won’t have understood a word of all this, which is two people easier in their minds for ignorance. They worshipped Davy, you see, and he was very good to them. Sometimes I thought he only married me to have someone here to take care of them whilst he was away.’

Nellie shook her head. She must be going mad, she thought that Davy’s mother had just said she was not his mother but his wife, but everyone knew that Davy was going to marry her, Nellie McDowell, and live with her in Liverpool when he was not sailing the seas.

‘The kettle’s boiling,’ Bethan said. ‘A nice cup of tea now, that will help you to get things straight. It’s worse for you than for me, Nellie, because I’ve got something to mourn – seven good years – whereas you had only
the promise of bliss to come. And I always teased him, see? Said he had a girl in every port and half-believed it. Because he was beautiful, was Davy.’

Was. Then it was true, Davy was dead. Bethan said so and you only had to look into her face to know that she would never lie, not even to comfort.

‘Yes, he was beautiful,’ Nellie echoed. ‘He couldn’t have married me, then? Not even when I told him ...’

She stopped short. Bethan, who had been pouring water from the steaming kettle into a fat brown teapot, stopped as though she had been turned to stone. Then, very slowly, she completed her task, stirred the pot, went across the room and disappeared into a low doorway, coming back presently with a jug of milk and two pink tea cups. She made the tea and put a cup right into Nellie’s hands, then sat down in the chair opposite and fixed Nellie with her dark and brilliant gaze.

‘Not even when you told him that you ... that you were going to have a baby? Is that why you came so far, Nellie, and look so pinched and pale? Are you carrying my Davy’s child?’

And Nellie, worn out, cold, frightened and terribly alone, simply nodded and put her cup of tea down, struggling to her feet.

‘Yes, I think so. I’ll go now. I’m sorry to have troubled you, I only came for news of Davy. If I’d known ...’

‘Sit down, Nellie! You shan’t stir from here tonight. You can sleep with me, I’ve got a double bed upstairs, we’ll go up after I’ve put Father to bed for the night – he sleeps down here, on the box-bed in the wall. I can’t get him upstairs, see, though when Davy was home – or Dickie, of course – one of them would help me to get him into a proper bed. Then tomorrow, when you’re rested and are over the shock, we’ll talk.’

‘There’s nothing to say,’ Nellie said wearily. ‘But you are so good! – I’ll leave first thing tomorrow, then.’

‘And you with Davy’s baby in your belly and me with nothing ...
nothing
to remember him by? You shall not leave, you have as much right here as I – more, perhaps, since Davy and I could not make a child no matter how hard we tried!’ Bethan came across and knelt on the floor in front of Nellie, putting her warm arms up round the younger girl’s shoulders. ‘Davy didn’t know? He longed for a son you know – or a daughter, come to that, but he mostly spoke of a son. He would not want a son of his to suffer in any way and what’s more, he’d want him brought up here, in Moelfre, with the Welsh coming easy to his tongue and his good relatives around him. Ah, how I wish the babe were mine! Indeed, for all people need know, he could be mine, and this cottage and the fishing boat, the cows in the top meadow and the pigs in the sties, the bit of money the old’uns have saved, it could all be his, Nellie, if you’ll stay with us.’

‘I’m too tired, I don’t understand,’ Nellie said, but the warmth and the tea at which she sipped was renewing her strength minute by minute. By morning, she thought, I will have accepted that Davy is dead, that I am going to have his baby and that this girl – Bethan – is his rightful wife. ‘All I want now is to sleep.’

‘And so you shall, cariad,’ Bethan promised. ‘But when did you last eat, girl? So pale you are, like milk!’

‘I don’t feel hungry, though I’ve not eaten since yesterday,’ Nellie said vaguely. ‘I had fried fish and a drink.’

‘I baked today so we’ve new bread in plenty; and there’s an apple pie – we’ve several fruit trees out the back. A slice of apple pie will do you no harm, whilst I settle Father.’

She brought the apple pie and another cup of tea. Nellie ate, staring into the flames, though she was aware of Bethan helping the old man out of his trousers and thick fisherman’s jersey and into a nightshirt. Then Bethan opened a cupboard and a bed came down out of the wall and she assisted the old man into it. They talked all the while in Welsh, the old man saying little but Bethan’s voice purring quietly on, as full of affection as though this was her own father and not that of her dead husband.

At last she turned to Nellie.

‘So you managed to eat it all. Good. Now let me show you to your bed. I’ll stay down here whilst you undress, then come up later.’

Nellie followed her hostess wearily up the short flight of narrow wooden stairs. A tiny landing at the top had three doors, all crooked at the top because of the sloping roof. Bethan threw open the right-hand door and ushered Nellie into a sizeable room. There was a brass bedstead, a stout table with a jug and ewer on top, and a huge, old-fashioned wardrobe and dressing table. On the wall framed texts and a couple more dark oil-paintings could be seen by the light of the lantern Bethan carried, and the small window set into the depth of the thick old wall was curtained with crisp cotton and had a diamond-patterned cushion on the broad sill, making it into a perfect window-seat.

‘Here we are; pop your things off. Got a nightgown? No? Well, no need of one, anyway, you’ll be warm enough – it’s a featherbed of course – and two blankets. We’ve another room as well as the one Mother sleeps in, but the bed there isn’t aired, or I’d offer that instead of a share of this one.’

Nellie, swaying with tiredness, pulled off her blouse, kicked off her shoes, and wriggled out of her
long skirt. Her cloak was downstairs, hanging up behind the door just as though she was a proper visitor to the cottage instead of an intruder, the woman who had, albeit unknowingly, stolen Bethan’s husband from her. Bethan had left her, but she had also left the lantern and turned down the bed. Nellie looked at the fat featherbed and the long bolster and then just climbed wearily onto the coarse linen sheet and pulled the blankets up. She had not even extinguished the lantern, but then Bethan would need to see when she, in her turn, came up to bed.

Lying there, with sleep hovering, it suddenly occurred to Nellie that she was in Davy’s bed. Oh, the pain of it, the sudden, startling sense of actual physical deprivation! The fact coming home suddenly, cruelly, that she had lain in his arms for the last time, had known his sweet kisses and the easy strength of his lovemaking for the last time. Never more to hold and be held, never more to be Davy’s beloved, nor he hers!

She had been in his bed before, from the very first time when they had lost Lilac and he had taken her to the lodging house and slipped into bed with her, promising to do nothing that she would not like. The trouble was, she liked it too well, had needed no persuasion to lie with him again whenever they had the chance. And they had made the baby together, though Davy had not known what he had done, and she had been frightened when she knew for sure she was pregnant in case he was not pleased, tried to abandon her and the unborn child, chose to turn from her.

As if he would have! She knew, now, that Davy had loved her in his way, even though he had been married to another woman. But she could not believe Davy had loved Bethan, or he would never have pursued Nellie and taken her virginity from her. Though thinking
back, to the things he had said, the way he had behaved, Nellie concluded sadly that Davy might well have thought there was no harm in having a wife in Moelfre and another in Liverpool.

Poor Davy. After all, two wives meant a doubling of responsibility as well as a doubling of pleasure. And he, who had meant well by both of them, Nellie was sure, had gone down with his ship, seaweed in his hair, fish nibbling his chilling flesh, all the thoughts and hopes and fears, all the longing for a son, come to nought.

Except that it hadn’t come to nought, since she was pregnant. She had recently felt a faint fluttering within her, as the captive minnow flutters against the imprisoning palm, and knew it was the baby moving. Later, perhaps, she would be afraid again – of the birth, of the responsibility for the child, of her own helplessness when it came to earning money, providing a home. But right this minute she was not afraid. She would manage, somehow. She would bear her son – or daughter, if so it proved – and bring the child up right, not to lie or cheat, because Davy, bless him, had lied to her and cheated Bethan, but to be honest and kind and true. She would find a way to earn money sufficient for the two of them and she would raise the baby to be proud of his Welsh father, to love his heritage.

But this exalted frame of mind did not last long. She turned her head on the pillow, and caught a faint masculine scent, something of Davy still on the bedding, some indefinable something which spoke of his recent presence. Nellie had not seen him since September; had he been with Bethan in the last few weeks? Jealousy, raw as a whip, flicked over her. And then came despair and loneliness and fear.

When Bethan came to bed a few minutes later she
put warm arms round Nellie and rocked her soothingly, as though Nellie was no older than Lilac.

‘Poor Nell, poor Nell,’ she crooned. ‘Go to sleep now, go to sleep, and we’ll talk it all out in the morning.’

Nellie stirred in her arms.

‘I want Davy,’ she sobbed. ‘I want him so badly, Bethan!’

‘So do I, cariad,’ Bethan whispered, her voice breaking. ‘Oh, so do I!’

‘How did you sleep, Nell? You poor little thing, you were still sound off when I got up to see to Mother and Father so I let you lie. They’ve both had breakfast, Father’s outside on the bench watching the fishing boats prepare for sea and Mother’s nicely settled, reading a magazine the lady from the post office sent over. Later, you must come in and have a word with Mother; she’s a brave old lady. She’s lost her favourite son and Davy’s brother, Dickie, is at sea too, and he’s a trifle simple, so of course she worries about him more, but you’d never know it. Crippled with rheumatism she may be, but she’s always got a smile and a cheery word. Now no hurry, girl, but we have to talk, and it had better be out of doors that we do our talking, I’m thinking. Still, take your time.’

It was a cold, bright day. Nellie, who had slept like a log, had only woken when Bethan’s cheerful voice had called her name, forcing her into wakefulness. Now, washed and dressed, hair neatly brushed into a bun on the nape of her neck, she went into another bedroom to be introduced to old Mrs Evans and found her as Bethan said, a tiny, wizened hazelnut of a woman, all bent and doubled up with rheumatism, but
with a bright, affectionate smile for them both and a welcome for Nellie, though she seemed to be under some misapprehension since she greeted Nellie as though she and Bethan were related.