Love and War (30 page)

But I find I can’t post it. I feel sure that he must be in the fighting by this time and I can’t take the risk that getting my letter will make him even a jot less determined to survive.

What I decide is to take the letter to his parents, telling them what’s in it, explaining that I’m letting them decide when to send it to him because I feel that they are now his next of kin.

I know that I’m going to hurt them badly, yet as I walk down the hill to their house I’m feeling almost peaceful, almost serene. It’s been raining and I get a sense of well-being from the cool, damp air. The pavements are full because it’s a Saturday morning but I feel detached from everyone. Two girls from Form Five call out to me and I smile at them, but hardly knowing who they are and hardly caring.

The mood lasts. I say what I’ve planned to say quietly and firmly, almost as though I’m only delivering a message from someone else, as though I’m not really responsible for any of it.

I haven’t given any thought to their reaction. My mother-in-law stops unpacking her shopping basket and sits down at the kitchen table, too stunned to speak. She’s never thought that I’m the right person for her son; she’d have much preferred a frivolous, gossipy little town girl, someone who’d be running to her three times a day for advice and help, but now she’s thinking only of Huw. She opens her mouth but immediately shuts it again. She picks up the letter as though she can hardly bear to touch it. She doesn’t raise her eyes to look at me.

My father-in-law reminds her that he’s come in for his lunch and that he hasn’t got all day. She turns on him. ‘Yes you have,’ she says. ‘You’re staying home this afternoon.’

It’s only then that he realises the seriousness of the situation. He sits down, too. ‘But I always work till four on a Saturday,’ he says truculently.

I repeat that I’m sorry for the way things have turned out.

‘Didn’t we give you everything you wanted?’ he asks me, managing, as ever, to reduce life to the most basic level.

‘You’ve always been very generous,’ I tell him. ‘But from now on I’ll be giving you Ilona Hughes’s rent and paying you the same amount myself.’

It was the right thing to say; he nods his head and grunts a bit. ‘That seems fair,’ he says.

My mother-in-law though, is still silent; not being so mercenary, she’s not so easily appeased.

‘I have to go now.’

As I close the back door behind me, I can hear her anger against me beginning to break out. I go and walk by the sea which is blue and still.

I wish I could think of that visit as a great ordeal, but I can’t. I suppose I was carried along by the knowledge that I’d feel less stifled, less hypocritical after writing to Huw and handing over the letter, and this proved true. After that Saturday morning, I really felt I could breathe more easily. I felt I’d only done what I had to do; what my life had been leading up to.

A few days later I write a letter of resignation and take it to the Head. I tell him about the letter I’ve written to Huw, tell him that I intend to burn my boats and move to North Wales with Ilona.

He’s silent for a moment or two, his face blank. ‘How about your mother?’ he asks at last. ‘How will she feel about your moving away?’

‘She’ll be all right. She’ll be getting married again as soon as the war’s over. She’ll be all right.’

‘Well then, I can’t object, can I? I’ll be sorry to lose you, that goes without saying. I’ve got nothing but praise for your teaching. You can depend on me for a decent testimonial.’

‘Thank you.’

‘And perhaps I ought to tell you something else, now that you’re leaving us.’

I look at him quickly and wait for what’s coming. He always enjoys his power to surprise. ‘I never really blamed Gwynn Morgan,’ he says. ‘How could I?’

I try to smile, to acknowledge whatever affection or admiration he intends, but I can’t manage it. I sit opposite him, my eyes red, my throat sore, but feeling his sympathy.

‘No-one will talk to me about Gwynn. Everyone is too embarrassed. If I were his widow, people would be willing to talk about him and it would keep him alive for me.’

He clears his throat. ‘He came to see me before he left, told me how things were between you, how you were going to move away together when he came out of the army.’

‘He told you that!’

‘You’re surprised. Well, he was on my staff for almost twenty years, you know. I suppose we were quite close in a manner of speaking – that is to say, I never interfered with his department and he kept out of my way. A good working relationship. We weren’t friends exactly, but we certainly weren’t enemies. Anyway, he told me about his plans for the future, how he was going to try to make a living from painting.’

‘Did you try to dissuade him?’

‘Oh yes, I thought it my duty to try to dissuade him. I didn’t mention his private affairs, you understand, but I did remind him about his pension and all that. But he said...’

‘What? What did he say? Please tell me.’

‘“Bugger the pension,” were his actual words. An inelegant phrase, I thought, but expressive enough. “Bugger the pension.” Yes.’

‘And was that all?’

‘That was all. He was sitting... no, he was standing, but with his foot on the rung of that chair, and at that point, he shoved his hand out towards me, we shook hands and then he left.’

‘Thank you.’ The Head gets up, shaking his head like a dog that’s been out in the rain. ‘He left some of his drawings in the Art room,’ he says. ‘I thought I’d get Miss Simpson to mount some of them for the Prize Day exhibition, but if you’d like one or two, perhaps you should have them.’

Without further word, he marches me out along the crowded corridor and up the two flights of stairs to the Art room, the chop and cross-currents of voices dying out as we progress by.

I haven’t been in the Art room since Gwynn left at the end of last term and I have to battle with a flood of memories. If the Head had said anything to me in those first moments, I think I’d have burst out into a noisy bout of crying.

But he doesn’t. He turns his attention to small, grey-haired Miss Simpson, Gwynn’s replacement, who’s mixing paint for her afternoon classes.

‘Well done,’ he says. ‘All preparation completed before the bell is my fundamental rule for all practical classes. I hope you’re not mixing too many colours, though, Miss Simpson. Three colours are quite sufficient for any piece of work these days.
Five
! Miss Simpson I’m afraid you haven’t learned to husband your resources. The war may last another six months, you know, or even another year. In the meantime, three colours only and much smaller sheets of paper, Miss Simpson. Please don’t forget.’

Miss Simpson, realising how lucky she is to get even this temporary post, smiles as he bullies her. The bell rings for the beginning of afternoon school. ‘We won’t disturb you for long, Miss Simpson,’ the Head says. ‘Mrs Evans and I are here to decide what to do with Mr Morgan’s paintings. I’m sure you’ll see to it that your class – 4B isn’t it? – doesn’t disturb us.’

4B crowd in with their customary bang and flourish, see the Head and start twittering like a classroom of small birds. Miss Simpson has backed her small frame into a corner, but by this time I’m feeling well enough to frown threateningly at them, and slowly they lapse into silence.

The Head takes out the portfolio of drawings and watercolours: landscapes and seascapes; some very delicate, some bold and dark; about a dozen altogether. He spreads them out on a table at the back of the room.

‘Which would you like?’ he asks me.

‘I’d like them all.’

He looks at me sullenly; they’d certainly have made an impressive show in the Hall on Prize Day. But he gathers them up carefully, replaces them in the portfolio, hands it to me and marches to the front. ‘Thank you, Miss Simpson. That will be all.’

The swell of voices gathers again before we’ve reached the top of the stairs.

‘I must go to my class. Thank you, Mr Williams.’

‘I shall expect very hard work from you, Mrs Evans, for the rest of this term – exceptionally hard work and some spectacular examination results. By the way, I don’t think Delia Morris is coping too well at the moment. Is she perhaps spending her time around the town cafés in the evenings? If I were you I should have a talk with her. Is it more encouragement she needs or more homework?’

He knows everything about everybody, but at the moment I don’t hold anything against him.

‘I’ll speak to her. I’ll sort it out.’

When I get home I pin the drawings and watercolours up around my small bedroom and they bring me a measure of comfort when I pace about at night.

On the Wednesday of that week – and for the first time since Gwynn’s funeral – I go home to Tregroes.

Huw’s parents have called on my mother and told her about my letter to Huw: I’m for it.

Adultery, she says, is not a nice word. I agree with her. ‘It’s certainly not one of my favourites,’ I say, ‘but compared with
death
for instance, I find it relatively undisturbing.’

She inclines her head a little, accepting my rebuke. ‘I was sorry to hear about Mr Gwynn Morgan,’ she says.

‘You can call him Gwynn, Mam. He might have been somebody else’s husband, but he was my lover and we were going to live together.’ The sob in my throat almost chokes me.

‘How could you have lived together, girl? He with a wife and you with a husband. Where ever could you have lived? Who would have wanted you as neighbours?’

‘We were going to go away together. We were going to have children together.’

‘Heaven help us! Illegitimate children they’d have been. What ever would your father have said?’

‘He’d have been very distressed, I know.’

‘I would have been very distressed, too. So would Fredo. But don’t cry, girl. It didn’t happen.’

‘I wanted it to happen. I wanted to live with him and have his children. More than anything in the world. That’s why I’m crying. Because I loved him with all my heart and soul. As a woman is supposed to love a man.’

‘As a wife is supposed to love a husband.’

‘Yes, that’s how I loved him. As the hart panteth after the water brooks.’

‘Blasphemy, now. Taking the Lord’s name in vain.’

‘I don’t mean to be blasphemous. I know too much of the Bible, that’s my trouble, it comes into my head unasked. As the apple tree among the trees of the wood, so is my beloved among the sons. I sat down under his shadow and his fruit was sweet to my taste. He taketh me to the banqueting house and his banner over me is love.’

‘Don’t cry, girl, don’t cry. I won’t say anything else, I promise you. He’s dead, poor man. It’s over. And I suppose you might change your mind about Huw after a while. That’s what I told his parents, anyway. I don’t know whether I believe it or not.’

‘No, I won’t change my mind. I’ve given in my notice at school and I’m applying for a post in Caernarfon so that I can live with Ilona.’

‘With Ilona Hughes? Is she going back home, then?’

‘Yes. She’s got to look after her grandmother who’s had a bit of a stroke. And I’ll get some lodgings nearby. It’ll do me good to get away from Llanfair.’

My mother looks shaken but doesn’t try to dissuade me. ‘Well, don’t stay away too long, girl. I’ll miss you, you know that.’

‘I’ll get back every holiday.’

‘You’ll pine after your little house.’

‘No. It was Huw’s house, his father’s house, his grandmother’s – but not mine.’

‘You’ll take your father’s books with you?’

‘Of course I will, and all the other things you gave me. I’ll have to start packing before long.’

‘Everybody on the move! Fredo is going to Italy quite soon.’

‘Before the end of the war?’

‘Italy is on our side now, it seems, and the Italian prisoners of war are going to be repatriated. When there are ships available, they say, but when will that be? It’s very hard on him, poor man. He hasn’t heard anything about his sons all this year. Huw’s father was tamping mad about Fredo too. “That Eyetie” he called him.’

‘He probably thinks we’re both loose women. What does it matter? What does anything matter?’

But I suddenly think of Mary Powell at the funeral. ‘You’re a fallen woman, Rhian,’ and feel hot and angry again. And ashamed, too, I suppose.

After supper I’m too restless to sit long. I walk up the hill with great angry strides waiting for the evening to pass. No one will be meeting me from the bus.

My mother is listening to the wireless when I get back; fierce fighting continuing in Normandy with the Allies making steady advances along the Cherbourg peninsula. Huw could well be in the thick of it. I can’t pray, but I cross my fingers for him.

‘I must go, Mam.’

‘I’ll come a step or two with you. Come, Floss.’

Hewl Fach is ablaze with wild roses and honeysuckle, their scent as sweet and delicate as though there were no such things as war and death. I take my mother’s arm and when the bus comes I can hardly bear to leave her.

Next morning the Head isn’t in Assembly. Talfan Roberts, Deputy Head, scrapes his throat and reads, rather haltingly, a long passage from Deuteronomy, tries but fails to lead the hymn singing, drones out the announcements, then walks out, having forgotten to dismiss us.