Love and War (34 page)

‘Well, come now, you’re not too bad, are you? We’re going to give you a lovely bath, not too hot, not too cold, and it’ll make you feel ready for anything. It’s such a pleasure to bring a baby into a house with a bathroom, it makes it so much easier for the mother. A bath is the most soothing thing at this sort of time. My job would be child’s play if every house had a bath and an inside lav.’

I escape to run the bath while Ilona is telling Lydia that having a bath is the last thing in the world she intends to do, that she might as well try to persuade her to have a dip in the sea while she’s about it. She’s still refusing to contemplate the idea even as Lydia is helping her into the bathroom, telling her how well she’s doing and what a pleasure it is to see such a fine-looking body.

I think her body looks terrible, as though it might burst open at the navel at any moment. What if the baby was born in the bath? Would it drown? I wonder if Lydia Owen’s been drinking. She looks half-drunk, but then she always does.

‘I think she’d like a nice cup of tea now,’ Lydia says after about fifteen minutes during which time Ilona has been soaking in the bath, steadily cursing and groaning, ‘because we’ve got quite a few hours wait. After I’ve got her out of the bath and comfortable, I’ll be off home to get my ironing done. I’ll be back around midnight.’

‘It’s going to be quite straightforward,’ she tells me as I show her out some time later. ‘Everything is perfectly normal. We’ll have a beautiful baby here before morning service tomorrow.’

‘Shall we have a game of cards while we wait?’ I ask brightly as I go back to the bedroom.

‘Get out of this room and stay out.’

*

She does seem more comfortable after the bath, better able to bear the pains, though they gradually come more often and last longer. After each pain I sponge her face and arms with cold water and tell her how brave she’s being and then wait for her to start groaning and shouting and swearing again.

Lydia Owen comes back at midnight as she promised, and the baby, a lusty boy, is born at twenty to two, the time in between being both frightening and thrilling.

At only an hour old the boy is already sucking, a remarkable feat according to Mrs Owen, and there’s a rich birth smell which I recognise from the farm. By three, Lydia has left and there’s such a weight of peace in the room that I want to fling open the windows to share it with the sleeping town, with the world.

I think about my birth on Fair Day when neither the doctor nor the midwife could be contacted, so that an old long-retired nurse had to be brought by horse and trap from a nearby village. ‘Of course, you were born by the time she’d arrived, your grandmother had done everything for me, well, she’d had nine children hadn’t she, and there wasn’t much she didn’t know, but old Nurse Oliver stayed the night anyway and made herself useful getting some supper for your father.’ Every birth has its own importance, its own history. I realise that Ilona and I will talk about this one while we both draw breath.

At five, Ilona wakes and feeds the baby again. ‘Isn’t he absolutely gorgeous. Look at his little ears. Look at his eyebrows.’ I can hardly believe it’s Ilona talking. She’s suddenly become heavily maternal, but I don’t suppose for a minute it will last. ‘Don’t you think you’d better get some sleep now?’ she asks me with a sweet solicitude I’ve never before heard in her voice.

‘No, I’m still too excited. I’ll wait now till Lydia Owen comes again at nine. Perhaps I’ll go to bed for a few hours when she leaves.’

‘In that case do you think you could do me a big favour? Do you think you could possibly go to the kiosk to make a phone call for me?’

‘Whoever’s going to be awake at this time of morning?’

‘Ifor will be. If you go now, you’ll catch him before he goes out milking.’

‘Yes, all right.’ I can hardly refuse. ‘What exactly shall I say?’

She looks sideways at me. ‘You’ll think I’m being very unreasonable,’ she says meekly.

‘You? Never! How could I think that?’

‘The thing is, I don’t want him to come here today. I don’t want to see him. Could you tell him not to come? I’m not supposed to ring him except in an emergency, but this is very important isn’t it? To stop him coming down all this way.’

‘Yes, of course. But I don’t see why he shouldn’t put himself out a bit.’

‘Only, I don’t want to see him, Rhian. Isn’t it strange? For the first time for ten years, I feel free of him. Absolutely free.’

‘It’s having the baby. Some spiders are the same.’

‘Yes, but it’s not that. I know you won’t understand this, I hardly understand it myself, but I’m not in love with him anymore. Not a bit.’

‘Oh.’

‘You see, Rhian, I think I’ve fallen in love with someone else... I think I’ve fallen in love with Jack.’

My mind is spinning. ‘Have you? With Jack? Well, I’m very pleased. Naturally, I’m very pleased. I think it’s very suitable and sensible.’

‘It’s nothing to do with being suitable and sensible.’

No, of course not. It wouldn’t be. ‘What exactly happened?’ I ask her.

‘It was just... well, it was when we said goodbye yesterday. He was going home and I went to the station to see him off. Just for old time’s sake. We’ve been good mates for the last few months. And, do you know, he kissed me.’

That seems as much as she’s going to say. ‘Oh,’ I say again.

‘Yes, he leaned forward and kissed me. It was the first time he’d ever kissed me. And it was one of those kisses that start something. Oh, don’t look at me like that. Close your mouth. You know exactly what I mean. We couldn’t even get close because of the baby, but there was something so loving in the way he was looking at me; you know, something very strong and very tender at the same time. And I wanted him to stay so badly. And when the train left, I was so furious that I’d let him go without saying anything, that I walked right up to Beacon Point to try to calm myself and that’s when the pains started.’

‘And you still feel the same today? About Jack, I mean. You still...

‘Yes. Listen, I’ve fallen in love with him. I don’t fall in love with people very often – hardly ever, in fact. It’s always been bloody Ifor.’

‘Well, Jack is certainly in love with you.’

‘Is he? Oh, but he won’t want anything to do with me now. Not when he sees me with a baby. Oh yes, he knew it was there inside me, but now that it’s born, he’ll see me differently. Men are very changeable.’

‘So different from us,’ I murmur, but my sarcasm is lost on her.

‘I’ll tell you what, I’ll adopt this one and then you’ll be free again.’

The boy is in my arms, looking with great concentration at a spot somewhere beyond my left shoulder and gripping my finger. If only I’d conceived when I was with Gwynn: I’d willingly put up with every slander and hardship to be in Ilona’s place.

‘Give him to me. I don’t even want you to take him out of the room.’ Her voice plunges. ‘Oh, look, I think he recognises me. Oh, his eyes are so dark. Like damson jelly. Great Heavens, aren’t I lucky that Ifor won’t want a share of him. He’ll be glad to get shot of me.
H
e’ll be glad to get shot of me, too. He couldn’t quite let me go, but I think I’ve been a burden to him for years.’

She seems relatively untroubled at the thought.

‘Is that Ifor Meredyth? This is Rhian Evans, Ilona’s friend She’s had the baby... Yes, early this morning. And the thing is, she doesn’t think you should come down today. In fact, she doesn’t really want you to.’

‘I see,’ he says, slowly and carefully.

‘But she’d like you to go to her grandmother’s to let her know that she won’t be with her for another two or three weeks. To explain to her. She’ll be writing to her, tell her, to let her know how she’s getting on.’

‘I see.’

‘They’re both well,’ I tell him, beginning to feel that he isn’t going to ask.

‘I’m very pleased about that,’ he says. ‘Very pleased. Tell her I’m very pleased about that.’

He has a slow, lazy voice. I can see him vividly; a sensuous, well-fed, well-to-do farmer, used to his own way and his own importance at home, in the pub and in the market.

‘I will. Look, I’d better go back to her now, she’s on her own. You will go to her grandmother’s?’

‘Yes indeed.’

‘Boy or girl?’ he asks, then. ‘Her grandmother will want to know.’

‘A boy. A seven pound boy.’

‘Very good,’ he says. ‘Very good. And I suppose she gave you a pretty bad time, did she?’

There’s a sort of lazy indulgent affection in the question, but I can’t let it pass. ‘
She
had a pretty bad time, if that’s what you mean,’ I say sharply.

‘Oh yes, I know about these things,’ he says. ‘Look, why don’t I come down later on today in any case? For a visit, like. I’ve made all the arrangements now, got the wife’s cousin in for the milking tonight. I could still come, you know.’

‘No, I don’t think she’d want that.’ I take a deep breath and look out at the sea. ‘You see, things are changing for her. Well, in fact, things have already changed for her. I’m sure she’ll be writing to you later on. To explain everything – you know what I mean.’

‘I see,’ he says again, catching my drift at once. ‘I see.’

There seems both regret and relief in his voice; though perhaps I’m sensing only what Ilona has already told me.

‘Well, tell her I’ve been to the solicitor, will you? Tell her she’ll be hearing from him. And tell her –’

The operator comes on the line. ‘Your time is up caller. Do you wish to pay for further time?’

‘No thank you,’ I say firmly.

‘Well, goodbye, Mr Meredyth.’

‘Tell her to... to get in touch with me.’ His voice has taken on a measure of urgency; I smile at myself in the little mirror over the phone as the operator cuts us off.

I stand for a minute looking out at the sea emerging from the darkness; little shivering silver plates on the olive green darkness. It must be beautiful to see the sun rising over the sea, but here we have the blaze of red and gold only in the evening. At daybreak, the sea begins to gleam very gradually with a light which seems left over from the previous night’s excesses, cleansed and calm and very peaceful.

My eyes seem full of sand. I shall write to Jack later on today when I’ve had some sleep. I feel too light-headed at the moment to tell him all that’s happened since he went away.

Twenty-One

AS ILONA HAS PROMISED, life becomes a little easier in North Wales. Now that I no longer live in Huw’s house surrounded by his family, his friends, his neighbours, I certainly suffer less guilt.

Now I have only Gwynn’s death to contend with and though this is an immensity of loss which I can only think of in Biblical terms, immeasurable like the love of God, it’s no longer a bitterness which burns my throat every time I swallow. I’m getting used to it, I suppose, getting used to feeling half a person leading half a life.

Starting a new school means hard work and discipline. Every day I feel that I’m sitting an examination; studying the paper, tackling the first question, completing it, ticking it off and going on to the next, not allowing my mind to stray for a second.

My digs, with an elderly widow called Lily Thomas, are clean and quiet. She brings my evening meal, simple but adequate, into the chilly front room which is my sitting room, and exactly half an hour later takes away my empty plates and cup and saucer, spreading the green baize cloth back over the little table so that I can get on with my marking. The highlight of the evening is when she taps on the door to invite me to the kitchen to listen to the nine o’clock news. As soon as it’s over, she goes up to bed, but I’m allowed to sit up and read in front of the kitchen fire – almost out by this time – until ten. If I stay a minute after, she taps gently on her bedroom floor to remind me of the electricity I’m using. She’s a tiny woman and she creeps about the house in carpet slippers, as though her chief aim in life is to disturb the air as little as possible.

I don’t go to Ilona’s very often because her grandmother has taken a dislike to me, insisting that I’m the district nurse coming to take her away, whether to the asylum or to the workhouse she doesn’t say. I’m not even allowed to nurse the baby.

He’s thriving in spite of that. Ilona has named him Thomas Gwynn – Gwynn so that I leave him my money, she says – but he’s called Tommy and it suits him; he’s plump as a little bird.

I was afraid that Ilona would find it too difficult to break away entirely from Ifor Meredyth now that she’s back in Brynteg, but she never sees him as far as I know. She gets money from his solicitor every month and says it’s all she wants from him.

To my great disappointment, Jack has written to her only once; a short letter, friendly enough, congratulating her on the baby’s birth, but making no reference to the letter I sent him. I go over it in my mind, wondering if I was direct enough. ‘She’s become very fond of you,’ I’d written, ‘and she was upset that she’d let you go on the train without managing to let you know. Why don’t you come to see her before we go to North Wales?’ Surely that was plain enough.

He’d certainly seemed in love with her, so what had happened?

‘He’s met someone else,’ Ilona says if I mention it to her. ‘Why shouldn’t he? Why shouldn’t he find someone attractive and easy-going? After all, he’s quite a catch, he’s got a good job and he’s fairly good-looking. Why should you think a bad-tempered, unmarried mother is all he’s fit for? He’s probably interested in that woman they appointed to your job. I’ve stopped thinking about him long ago.’