Hearts of Gold (46 page)
Elizabeth was woken by a hammering on the door. She put out her hand and touched Evan as he left the bed.
‘It’s all right, I’ll see to it.’ He reached down to the floor for his trousers. ‘It’s probably one of the boys. Had too much to drink.’
‘They’d keep quiet, not make a racket if they were drunk,’ Elizabeth said, unable to conceal her fear. Bethan could have had an accident at the hospital. Eddie could have been hurt in a fight.
Haydn – oh God, not Haydn! She shivered at the thought of anything happening to her favourite.
‘They wouldn’t keep quiet if they were too drunk to find the key in the door,’ Evan said baldly. ‘Stay there, I’ll be back in a minute.’ He flicked on the light and checked the time on the battered alarm clock on the bedside table. The hands pointed to three thirty. When he opened the bedroom door, the hammering began again.
Haydn stepped out on to the landing. ‘Do you want me to see to it, Dad?’
‘No, I will. Is Eddie in his bed?’ Evan asked as an afterthought as he was half way down the stairs.
‘I didn’t look,’ Haydn replied truthfully. ‘I’ll check now.’
‘Who’s there?’ Evan demanded irately and somewhat ridiculously considering that the door had its key protruding from the lock.
‘Huw Davies.’
Evan opened the door, shivering in the blast of cold air that rushed into the passage.
‘What’s wrong?’ he asked staring at Huw’s uniform. ‘Official visit, is it?’
‘I’d rather talk in your kitchen if you don’t mind,’ Huw said, glancing up at Haydn who stood white-faced on the stairs.
‘He’s not there, Dad.’
‘You’d better come in, Huw.’
Huw lifted off his helmet and stroked his bald head nervously.
Pulling the edges of her dressing gown close together Elizabeth left her bedroom. ‘What’s wrong?’ she demanded.
‘In the kitchen, Elizabeth,’ Evan said, leading the way. He switched on the light and walked over to the stove. Opening the door he poked life into the coals.
‘Tea, Huw?’
‘When I’ve done perhaps.’
‘Well, sit yourself down, man.’
Huw took the easy chair Evan pointed to. Elizabeth and Haydn entered. Sitting quietly on the hard wooden kitchen chairs, they turned their faces expectantly to his.
‘They brought your Eddie into the station an hour ago,’ Huw explained bluntly, without embellishment. ‘He attacked a man.’
‘Is he hurt?’ Evan demanded.
‘Not your Eddie. He’s fine. The one he had a go at is a mess. We had to call the police doctor out to see to him. By rights he should be in hospital but he wouldn’t go. Leastways he wouldn’t when I left an hour ago.’
‘Who did he attack?’ Haydn asked.
‘Dr John. Dr Andrew John.’
Evan tightened his grip on the poker he was holding.
‘Your Eddie,’ Huw continued, ‘he could go down for a long time on this one.’
‘Can we see him?’ Evan asked.
‘In the morning. He’s already been charged. Evan, he’s going to need a solicitor.’
‘We’ve no money for one of those.’ Elizabeth retorted quickly.
‘Quiet, woman,’ Evan hissed, holding his head in his hands. He tried desperately to think. ‘You going back to the station now, Huw?’ he asked.
‘Yes.’
‘I’m coming with you.’
‘Me to,’ Haydn jumped up.
‘You’re staying,’ Evan said firmly. ‘Bethan will need fetching in a few hours. And someone has to stay here with your mother.’
‘Why me?’ Haydn replied without thinking.
‘Because you’re the only one here,’ Evan said harshly. ‘Go on, boy. Back up to bed. As soon as there’s any news I’ll get word to you. You’d best go on up too, Elizabeth,’ he said in a gentler tone, remembering that Eddie was every bit as much her son as his.
‘I’ll just make Huw a cup of tea while you dress, Evan,’ she said stoically, adopting the role she’d had most practice in. That of martyr.
‘I warn you now, they’ll not let him go without setting a bail too high for you or anyone around here to pay,’ Superintendent Hunt insisted dogmatically as he faced Evan from behind his desk. He’d had a bad night; hauled out of his warm comfortable bed just after he’d fallen into a deep sleep by a panic stricken telephone call from the station. Dr John’s son had finally had his head cracked by the brother of the pretty nurse he’d courted and abandoned to the tender mercies of a bigamist. His emotions were divided – pity for the pathetic, duped girl – admiration for Eddie for giving Andrew John what he deserved, and a desire to punish the lad at the same time for setting on the doctor in the middle of the night and disturbing his rest.
‘How much will it be?’ Evan pressed tentatively.
‘The amount’s for the magistrate to set in the morning.’
‘Can I see Eddie?’
Instead of answering, the superintendent glared eagle-eyed at Huw who was hovering close to the door. ‘You’ve had quite a lot of favours between one thing and another with your family lately,’ he cautioned bluntly. ‘Go. Davies,’ he jerked his head towards the door. ‘Take him down to the cell to see his son. But no more than five minutes. And you stay in the cell the whole time. The last thing I need is an attempted cell break. As it is, my neck’s stuck out so far it’s likely to drop off with the next change of wind.’
Eddie didn’t look up from the floor as the door to his cell opened. He sat, stiff, immobile on the edge of the bare planks of the wooden bunk. The temperature in the basement was uncomfortably low; but seemingly oblivious to the cold, Eddie hadn’t attempted to make use of the blanket folded on the boards next to him. His jacket, belt, braces and shoelaces had been taken and he was dressed only in a thin, collarless cotton shirt and summer trousers. His laceless shoes and the turn-ups of his well-worn trousers were spattered with blood, his knuckles red from burgeoning bruises.
‘Are you all right, son?’ Evan sat down on the bunk next to him.
‘They shouldn’t have dragged you down here. Not at this time of night,’ Eddie said truculently.
‘If you’re in trouble I want to help.’
‘I’m not sorry for what I did.’ Eddie lifted his face, clearly unbowed and unrepentant. ‘If they’d let me get near the bastard I’d do it again. I only wish I’d done it last spring when he first started messing with our Bethan.’
Huw stepped inside the cell and pulled the door to, lest anyone overhear them. ‘That’s not the line to take, Eddie,’ he warned seriously. ‘Not when you’re seeing the magistrate first thing in the morning. You gave that doctor a good going over. Cracked ribs, cracked skull, he’s in a right mess. And the way they’ll see it is that he’s crache, and you’re as good as a professional boxer.’
‘I couldn’t give a damn what they see,’ Eddie retorted defiantly.
‘If you tell them about Bethan,’ Huw began doubtfully, ‘they might go a bit softer on you.’
‘No,’ Eddie interrupted quickly. ‘She’s been through enough.’
‘You don’t seem to understand. You could go to gaol. For a long time,’ Huw advised strongly.
‘I’d be happy to swing for the bloody swine. And I would be swinging if I’d had enough time to put him where I wanted to. In a box.’
‘Eddie, please, this kind of talk isn’t going to help you or Bethan.’ Evan put his arm round his son’s shoulders. Eddie was cold. Cold as ice.
‘I mean it, Dad.’ Tears rolled down Eddie’s face. ‘I mean it,’ he repeated, raising his arm and wiping his nose and eyes on the sleeve of his shirt. ‘I’m not sorry.’
‘Time to go, Evan.’ Huw opened the cell door.
Unlike Eddie, Evan had many regrets. But his biggest one when he left Eddie alone in the cell was that he hadn’t chanced upon Andrew John before his son.
‘Bethan,’ Sister Thomas walked into the ward and called her into the office.
‘You’re early,’ Bethan hung the patients’ duty sheets back on to a nail hammered into the wall and followed her. ‘I’m not quite ready for the change over.’
‘There’s no time for the change over,’ she hung her cape on the back of the door. ‘Matron wants to see you in her office. Now.’
‘I’ll come back afterwards, shall I?’ Bethan asked as she lifted down her cape.
‘I think Matron has other plans for you. She told me to make sure you took everything with you. Your cape, your bag. She could be moving you back on to maternity.’ Sister Thomas smiled. ‘If she is, good luck, and thanks for the help.’
Bethan put her things together and left the building.
The grey light of early dawn was just beginning to streak across the sky. It promised to be a fine, dry autumn morning, if a little cold. She hoped that the weather would hold until Sunday for Laura’s wedding. Shivering, she walked quickly across the yard.
The door to the office was open and Matron was already sitting at her desk. Bethan checked her watch. It was seven o’clock, a full half-hour before the day shift officially started.
‘Come in, Nurse Powell, and close the door behind you.’
Bethan did as she was asked and sat on the same hard chair that she’d occupied when she’d last been called to see Matron. The day she found out she’d qualified as a nurse. She looked back on the thoughts that had occupied her mind then.
Ideas of advancing her career – getting enough money together to buy Haydn and Eddie suits – ways to avoid dancing with Glan at the hospital ball.
So many changes. So much had happened in the space of two short seasons. She felt like an old, old woman when she recalled the girl she had been. And all the changes including the ageing process had stemmed from Andrew who’d been waiting for Squeers to allocate him a second nurse.
She wondered if her life would be any different now if she’d been working on the men’s ward instead of maternity.
‘I’m sorry, Nurse Powell,’ Matron said briskly, facing an unpleasant situation the only way she knew how, ‘but I’m going to have to ask you to resign your post.’
‘Resign?’ Bethan echoed in amazement. ‘But I’m leaving at the end of next week.’
‘You
were
leaving at the end of next week,’ Matron corrected. ‘I had a telephone call late last night from the chairman of the Hospital Board. They’ve found a replacement for you. You may go immediately. Here,’ she opened her desk drawer and withdrew an envelope. ‘This is for you, payment for services rendered to date and a little extra.’
‘But yesterday you said …’
‘I think this is for the best, Nurse Powell,’ Matron said kindly. ‘After all you really should be resting more at this stage.’
‘And after the baby’s born,’ Bethan pressed. ‘You said that I might be able to come back.’
‘Get in touch with me by all means.’ Matron evaded the question. ‘But I’m not sure there’ll be anything. Goodbye and good luck.’ She rose majestically, shook Bethan’s hand and ushered her through the door, closing her out into the corridor.
Hugging the envelope to her, Bethan walked away in bewilderment. Something must have changed since she’d last talked to Matron. But what?
When Bethan saw Haydn’s tall, fair figure lounging against the gatehouse she ran to him, too wrapped up in her own affairs to notice the expression on his pale, tired face.
‘Haydn, they’ve laid me off. I haven’t a job any more …’
He put his arms round her and told her as gently as he knew how, what Eddie had done to Andrew.
Bewildered no longer, she understood everything. Only too clearly. There’d been no Hospital Board appointment of a replacement nurse. Just one short, quick telephone call to Matron from Dr John senior. She ripped open the envelope Matron had given her. Inside were two five pound notes. Haydn only just stopped her from tearing them up. He was anything but proud of the way he did it.
‘We may need them for our Eddie’s’ defence,’ he muttered practically.
‘There you are, darling.’ Isabel John removed the lunch tray that the maid had brought up earlier, and smoothed the satin cover over the guest bed that Andrew was lying in. ‘You should feel a little better by tonight,’ she murmured soothingly.
‘For goodness’ sake, Mother,’ he snapped irritably. ‘It’s only a mild concussion.’
‘And cracked ribs,’ she emphasised.
‘Cracked rib,’ Andrew corrected bad-temperedly.
‘Dreadful.’ His mother shook her head as she fussed with the trunk that Dr John senior had arranged to have brought up from the station. ‘I don’t know what the world’s coming to when a man can’t walk down the main street of his home town in safety.’
‘I do,’ Andrew said shortly. ‘I had it coming to me. I didn’t exactly treat his sister very well.’
‘If I remember rightly you treated her extremely well,’ Isabel protested indignantly, watching him carefully out of the corner of her eye. ‘Took her to nice places. Introduced her to all the right people.’
‘And left her high and dry, knowing that she loved me.’ He couldn’t look his mother in the eye. Love between a man and a woman was something they’d never discussed in a personal context.
‘Loved you? Really, Andrew, you’re deluding yourself. The girl barely waited for you to leave town before getting married.’
‘Married? Bethan? Come on, Mother, don’t try that one on me. I don’t believe it.’ He rejected the news contemptuously.
‘Well, perhaps it wasn’t quite that soon after you left. I think it happened two or three weeks ago. Mrs Llewellyn-Jones told me all about it.’
‘She would,’ Andrew commented scathingly. ‘And who exactly is Bethan supposed to have married?’
‘Apparently a man who was lodging with her family. At least that’s what Mrs Llewellyn-Jones heard. A miner like her father.’ She slowed her speech, conscious of saying too much, too fast. She wanted to get the revelations just right, so he wouldn’t ask any questions of anyone else while he was in Pontypridd. He’d told her he only had four days’ leave. Trevor was getting married tomorrow so he wouldn’t see him. And really there wasn’t anyone else. At least not anyone who’d talk about Bethan Powell.
‘Anyway they’ve opened a lodging house down Broadway,’ she concluded. ‘So please, darling, don’t go upsetting yourself over a girl like that. She simply isn’t worth it.’ She picked up the tray from the floor. ‘Will you be all right with the maids if I go out? Normally I wouldn’t dream of leaving you, but the Reverend Price has called an emergency committee meeting of the Distress Fund …’
