Past Remembering (34 page)

She sat beside him.

‘Quiet times?’ he asked as he lifted the bags from the basket and laid them between them.

‘Thinking about the new kitchen. I’m not at all sure that I’m up to running it without you.’

‘If you make a complete hash of it, we’ll just have to sack you.’ He handed her a pastie.

‘That’s what I’m afraid of.’

‘On the other hand, with the labour shortage the way it is, we’re unlikely to find anyone better. You never know your luck, you might end up coping, but I think it’s only fair to warn you: if you do succeed in producing more than the two shops and the cafés can sell, you’ll only end up making more work for yourself. You and Alma will have to get a bus down to Treforest and look around for another shop for you to supervise.’

‘While you’re slaving away in the factory.’

‘Wyn’s surviving the experience.’

‘He doesn’t say much about it. In fact, he doesn’t say very much at all these days. But then I hardly see him. He spends all day in the factory, every evening in Jacobsdal and his days off sleeping and going over account books.’

‘You resent it?’

‘No, but I miss him. When we married we were close, and now …’ she glanced at him, looking away quickly when she saw a disconcertingly intense expression in his eyes.

‘And now?’ he prompted.

‘Other people have come between us.’

‘Erik?’

‘You know about Wyn’s friendship with him?’

‘There’s talk in the town. And it’s not only Erik, is it?’ he questioned softly.

‘I suppose it’s only natural,’ she continued hastily, not wanting to discuss what was happening between them, ‘considering we spend most of our time with other people. We’ve grown apart, but things will change after the war.’

‘If you think the end of the war will make a difference to you and Wyn, you are deluding yourself.’

‘I want to make a success of our marriage,’ she protested.

‘Don’t you think that’s an impossible task, given Wyn’s nature?’

‘No. You may not think so now, but we were ideally suited.’

‘I can’t see how.’

‘Wyn married me because he wanted a wife and family to stop the gossip, and his father from belittling him every chance he got. I needed a father for my baby, and I was terrified of the thought of a conventional marriage. We were happy those first few months, Ronnie. We really were.’

‘Happy, or relieved because you thought you’d solved your problems?’ He took a tin mug and the bottle of Vimto from the basket. After pouring her a drink, he screwed the top back on the bottle, went to the stream, jammed it between two rocks and left it there to cool. ‘Do you know you hardly ever mention Billy?’

‘Billy’s wonderful.’ There was a sparkle and animation in her eyes that hadn’t been there when she’d talked about Wyn. ‘He’s happy, thriving, and doesn’t seem to care who looks after him as long as he’s fed, changed and played with. He’s just as content in my mother’s or Myrtle’s arms as mine. But that doesn’t stop Wyn’s father from predicting all sorts of dire consequences for the death of family life after the war.’

‘Why, because grandmothers, grandfathers and aunts are taking over childcare from the women who are needed to do the work the men did before they were called up?’

‘He thinks a woman’s place is in the kitchen.’

‘If he lives long enough to see the end of the war, he’ll be in for a shock. Some women will never go back to being housewives.’

‘Bethan certainly doesn’t want to.’

‘What about you?’

‘I like looking after the business.’

‘You and Bethan aren’t the only women who actually want to work, and believe me, working mothers don’t do kids any harm provided there’s someone to look after them. There were so many of us at home, the younger ones never knew who was going to feed or bath them, just that they would be fed and bathed, and it didn’t make any difference to the way they turned out. At least I don’t think it did,’ he qualified with mock gravity. ‘Tina and Gina would have probably been just as difficult if they’d had my mother’s undivided attention.’

‘There’s nothing wrong with them.’

‘You’ve never lived with them.’

Diana wedged the mug in the long grass and leaned back against a tree. ‘I know it’s silly to allow Wyn’s father to bother me, but I can’t help worrying. It’s easier when I’m busy. There’s no time to think when I’m caught up in the daily chores. When I’m doing the banking, tidying, cleaning, or looking after one of the shops, I don’t have to consider anything beyond what needs to be done. Then, when I get some time like now, I imagine what it’s like in North Africa and Europe for the tens of thousands of soldiers who are fighting and getting killed, and I start worrying about William, Haydn, Andrew and Charlie, and the Nazis across the Channel. Now that they’ve almost conquered Russia, they might decide to turn around and invade us, and then heaven only knows what’s going to happen to us, and Billy …’

‘Or this planet once it blows up.’

‘It’s not going to, is it?’ she asked anxiously.

‘It might, but there’s no point in worrying about things we have no control over, Diana. It’s hard enough just trying to live out the day we have. Another pastie?’

‘No. How can you make jokes about serious things?’

‘Because you’re a solemn little goose, and I think I’ve fallen in love with you.’

She stared at him, wondering if she’d misheard what he’d said.

‘I warned you months ago that we were playing with fire, yet you still kept coming to see me.’

‘You were ill, your sisters were too busy to look after you.’

‘And now?’

‘There’s the business.’

‘Hang the business. I only allowed you and Alma to use the kitchen in the High Street café because it gave me an excuse to see you.’

‘You know the way I am.’

‘Because you’re that way now, it doesn’t mean you’ll always be the same.’

If he’d kissed her, tried to make love to her, she could have run from him, but by simply talking to her he gave her no excuse to leave. The old, sick feeling of fear crawled over her skin. She shivered uncontrollably.

He bent forward and kissed her the way he had that first time: tenderly, lightly, so lightly she couldn’t be certain his lips had actually touched hers. He leaned back on his hands and looked into her eyes. ‘Any more than that will have to come from you.’

‘It won’t.’

‘Perhaps not yet, but it will.’ Children’s voices echoed towards them from the direction of the pond. ‘Come back with me?’

‘To Laura’s house?’

‘Please.’

She thought of Wyn, of Billy, of her life: a lonely, arid one for all of her husband’s kindness. Was it so wrong of her to want to be loved just this once? She rose to her feet. ‘I have to do the banking.’

‘Then come this evening?’

‘No.’

‘You could sneak in the back way, over the mountain if you don’t want to be seen. I’ll leave the kitchen door open for you.’

‘I said no, Ronnie.’

‘I heard you, I just didn’t choose to believe it.’

‘I like you …’

‘You love me. Almost as much as I love you.’ The silence between them was almost unbearable. ‘Come on, woman,’ he went to the stream and picked up the bottle, ‘are you going to leave me to do all the clearing up?’

Jane sat; one of an assembly line of girls strung out in front of a canvas conveyor belt that turned out fuses for shells. The first girl put a spoonful of powder into the fuse, the next pressed down the powder before passing it on to the girl who layered cordite over the powder. A detonator was slotted over the cordite before another worker pressed everything firmly together. The girl who sat beside her put the cap on; she slipped in the plunger.

It was slow, dangerous work, and although Jane had only been working in the factory eight weeks, she’d already seen five small accidents on her line alone. What the management called ‘minor incidents’, although they were anything but minor to the girls whose fingers had been blown off, split or burnt.

Pushing yet another completed fuse towards the girl who took them to the X-ray machine to check they’d been assembled correctly, she heard the tinny clatter of the bell signalling the end of their shift. The belt slowed as the next shift walked on to the floor.

Glad to relinquish her seat to her relief, she stretched her aching fingers and walked towards the door to the cloakroom. Peeling off the thick woolly overall and dust cap she bundled them together with her shoes, stowed them away and crossed to the ‘dirty’ side. Opening her locker, the first thing she took out were her cigarettes and matches, although she’d have to wait until she was on the train before she could light up.

‘More women pick up bad habits in this place than on the streets,’ Maggie observed, as Jane climbed into her own clothes.

‘I need something to buck me up,’ Jane complained as she finished dressing.

‘You and me both,’ Judy echoed. ‘Coming to the White Hart with us?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘You need to think about it?’

‘The way I feel I’ll fall asleep in my beer. It’s so hot.’

‘It won’t be once we hit Ponty. Autumn’s on its way, can’t you feel it in the air?’

Pulling on her cotton summer dress and brushing out her short hair, Jane picked up her bag and followed Maggie and Jenny down the ramp to the platform. Judy was close behind them. It was difficult travelling to and from work with both Jenny and Judy. The two women rarely said a word to one another. Maggie had hinted that the strained atmosphere had something to do with Alexander falling off Jenny’s roof, although Jane had failed to see the connection between Judy and Alexander.

She couldn’t help feeling guilty every time she was with Jenny, because no matter how hard she tried, she wasn’t comfortable in her company. Jenny was her sister-in-law – a member of Haydn’s family – the only family she’d ever had, but Jenny behaved no differently towards her than she did to any of the other girls in the factory.

‘Are you going for a drink, Jenny?’ Jane asked, offering her a cigarette as the train pulled in.

‘Of course.’ She climbed on to the train and grabbed a seat opposite Myrtle, ‘You going to the Hart, Myrtle?’

‘Perhaps,’ Myrtle answered absently. Leaving her seat for the window she looked down the platform for her brother. Wyn and Erik had been called into the manager’s office just before the end of the shift, and there was no sign of either of them. If they didn’t get to the platform soon the train would leave without them, and because only the munitions specials pulled into the factory station they would have to make their way into the main station in Bridgend to get home; a detour that could put as much as two hours on to their travelling time.

The whistle blew and doors slammed up and down the train.

‘You waiting for Christmas to take your seat?’ Judy asked.

‘Just checking …’ the train lurched forward as Wyn, grim-faced and serious, ran down the platform alongside Erik. Someone opened a door for them and she saw them climb into a carriage lower down the train as it moved out. Turning round, she finally took her seat.

‘You seeing the law tonight, Myrtle?’ Judy enquired snidely.

‘Not tonight, he’s on evening shift,’ she divulged as colour flooded her cheeks.

‘You want to pinch a grenade to put under that one. It will take an explosion to spur him into proposing.’

‘Judy’s right,’ Maggie advised. ‘You’re not getting any younger, and the rate he’s going, you’ll still be courting when you’re ninety. Tell him you want an engagement ring.’

‘Not everyone’s as pushy as you, Maggie,’ Jenny observed frostily.

‘You seen this, Jane?’ Sally handed her a magazine as Myrtle pulled a library book from her bag.

‘What is it?’ Jane asked warily. The
News of the World
photograph had preceded a whole string of articles and interviews with Haydn. She had barely recognised her husband in the description of the popular singer and male pin-up the journalists portrayed, but with a five month absence between them punctuated by few letters, and the ever-present guilt of the last day and night they had shared, she was no longer sure she knew what Haydn thought.

‘Go on, read it,’ Sally urged.

Jane glanced at the page. In the top right-hand corner was a pre-war photograph of Haydn. The impossibly handsome man she had fallen in love with, a warm smile curving his lips, eyes slightly misty as though he were focusing on something just out of camera shot, blond hair gleaming, impeccably dressed in a black evening suit and bow tie. The headline HAYDN POWELL WOWS THE TROOPS appeared above another photograph, this time with the Simmonds girls. They were wearing short skirts that showed off their legs and low-cut summer blouses that left little to the imagination.

‘I’m glad my Paul is fighting, not looking down on a view like that.’ Sally took her cigarettes from her bag.

‘The photographer wouldn’t have dared take that if they’d been leaning forward,’ Judy commented, looking over Jane’s shoulder.

‘Haydn’s tour seems to be a roaring success,’ Sally said as she offered her cigarettes round.

‘It would be, wouldn’t it?’ Jenny said as she took one. ‘The troops don’t exactly have a choice of theatres they can visit.’

Jane was too busy scanning the article beneath the photograph to contribute to the conversation. After the usual flattering paragraph about the morale-boosting programme Haydn and the girls were presenting, there were a couple of sentences that unleashed the jealousy she was finding more and more difficult to keep in check.

…
troupers to the last, the performers who normally sleep in the best suites and eat the finest French cuisine West End hotels have to offer, bunk down in slit trenches, wash in canvas buckets, dress and make up in the backs of lorries, and stage their shows without curtains or props, wherever and whenever they can find an audience.

A little bird told me that even in these primitive conditions, or perhaps because of them, romance has flourished. The question on everyone’s lips at the front is, ‘Which one of the Simmonds girls has caught handsome Haydn Powell’s roving eye? Is it Ruth or is it Marilyn?’

‘We both adore him,’ cooed Ruth to our on-the-spot reporter. ‘He’s the tops, not only with the WAACs and nurses, but with the men.’