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Josi still went on saying that there was no problem, that he knew many couples who had had no luck for two years, but by this time had a flourishing family and, though May smiled at him once or twice through tears and pretended to believe him, she knew in her heart that she would never conceive. It became the only thing she could think of. Sometimes she felt she was going mad.

Chapter seventeen

One morning in late September Lottie had a strange piece of news for Lowri. ‘You know that Harry Hughes, the school teacher who was courting Maudie? Well, honestly, everybody’s talking about him. He sold all the good furniture his mother had for him and he’s bought a motor car. Honestly. Who ever heard of a school teacher having a motor car? Well, they’re only for doctors and lawyers and rich farmers aren’t they. Teachers have bicycles, don’t they? Everyone is making fun of him and saying it’s only that he’s trying to impress Maudie Williams. He’ll be able to motor down there now and worry the poor girl to death. It’s hard enough to say no to a decent man once, isn’t it, and now she’ll probably have to go through the same thing every Saturday and Sunday. But perhaps she’ll say yes, now that he’s got a car. It’s a small square sort of car, mind, not at all like Mister Tom’s.’

‘I don’t think Maudie will have him,’ Lowri said, ‘motor car or not. I think she has her mind set on someone else, though I don’t know who.’

‘Yes,’ Lottie agreed. ‘But that one was married, I believe, and she’s too sensible a girl to waste too much time on someone out of her reach. I wouldn’t anyway. I only wish that Harry Hughes would look my way. I’d have him like a shot, though his face is covered with ginger freckles, though quite pale ginger in the winter. But a motor car would make up for those and his red hair.’

Lowri smiled and made an excuse to leave the kitchen.

‘Josi,’ she whispered to her husband in bed that night. ‘Harry Hughes has sold all his mother’s good furniture and bought himself a motor car.’

‘Well, good for him. Do I know this Harry Hughes, say?’

‘Of course you do. He was the school teacher at Llanfair Boys’ School who wanted to marry Maudie.’

‘Right. And do we have to concern ourselves about him and his motor car?’

‘They say he’s bought it so that he can continue to chase after poor Maudie.’

‘I see. If poor Maudie was still here with us I would certainly try to protect her from any unwanted admirer, but with her over at Brynyddol and it being well gone my usual bedtime, I don’t feel I can do much at the moment. Perhaps you’ll kindly talk to me about it again when I’m properly awake.’

‘Oh, Josi, you are a silly old thing and I do love you. I’m the luckiest woman of all, I’m sure of that.’

Eventually Tom got to hear of Harry Hughes’ motor car. ‘She can never be mine, so why should I care who’s courting her?’ he said to himself. But of course his heart felt as though it was being stabbed every time he heard of her. And he hated – and envied – his rival. Sometimes he wished she would marry this school teacher Hughes so that she would come back to live in Llanfair and that he might visit them from time to time. Would that be possible? But he didn’t know whether seeing her would ease his pain or increase it. His mind was in turmoil.

At last he wrote her a short, a very short, letter. ‘I feel the same as ever. I married too soon but must live with that. Dearest girl, there is no alternative.’

He felt he was giving her her freedom, though it hurt him to do so. He felt tormented and waited for a reply from her. But there wasn’t one. He asked Lottie after Harry Hughes from time to time and she thought he was still courting her every weekend.

The only time he felt at peace was when a painting was going particularly well so that he could feel he had something to live for. He never doubted now that he was, or certainly would become, a prominent artist. Another exhibition of his work was planned for London in December and this time it would be showing several paintings as well as the many black and white charcoal studies of trench warfare. He was still suffering from occasional nightmares and getting these scenes down on large sheets of paper was still the best way he knew of dealing with them.

He knew his political life was over. Officials in the Labour Party had let him know that if he stood as parliamentary candidate in Carmarthenshire and did well, though coming last in the polls after the Liberals and Conservatives, he could well be invited to represent Labour in one of the safe Labour seats in the South Wales mining area. May had objected to that, saying it would hurt and offend her father deeply, and Tom had felt secretly relieved. He knew that there were other men from the area who would be better informed than he was and, unlike him, would be prepared to give it all they had. Life as a member of parliament, dividing his time between London and a constituency in South Wales, held no attraction for Tom. He was a countryman, loved his home acres and never wanted to move from them. Even beautiful Pembrokeshire with its sandy coves and gorse-covered cliffs wasn’t as dear to him as the fields and cwms of Hendre Ddu. He’d found a way of remaining on his farm and though the money from his painting was not guaranteed, that one traumatic visit to the bank had meant that the farm was gradually becoming more self-sufficient. No other maid had been employed to replace Maudie, Lowri was working hard as always and even May who had never before had to turn her hand to housework was becoming interested in cooking and was encouraged to do her share.

Politics was still of the utmost importance to him and he still gave all the money he could to the Labour Party. He was filled with despair that the soldiers who had served so gallantly and suffered so much hardship were, on being repatriated, finding themselves without jobs and without hope. One of his latest charcoal drawings was of a dole queue; it was inspired by a newspaper photograph, but the men in his picture were the soldiers he remembered from his company, the tough little ‘mynufferni’ men from South Wales he had admired so much for their political fervour. He called it 1919 and it eventually became the first of his drawings to break the five hundred pound barrier. He gave all the money that picture earned to the Unemployment Fund. As it turned out it was also one of the last of his black and white drawings.

He had become obsessed with colour and with painting in oils. And his paintings were full of the discoveries he was making. One distinguished reviewer said that the influence of the Fauves, the French ‘wild beasts’, was strong on his work. It was only then that he started finding examples of their work in Cardiff and was proud to be thought to be in that tradition. He spent hours finding out how the proximity of one strong colour changed another and the effect that had on a painting. He would spend a morning dabbling with colour, learning which became lighter and which deeper in conjunction with another and they were wonderful mornings. As a result of all his experiments he learnt to produce some remarkable effects of great boldness and vitality. After returning from holiday he had turned his hand to painting flowers from the garden, the colourful autumn dahlias and canna lilies, and managed to produce a wonderful luminosity so that May said, ‘You can smell those flowers and see the dew on them’.

He feared he could never be a great artist because he’d had no training in an art school, had not learnt any theories of technique or colour, had never copied from the old masters, but he was hopeful that he could, at least, become a good artist. He realised that luck had played a big part in his early success, that Hammond had taken him on largely because he was a wounded soldier and an MC. He was convinced that his work had become much better over the last two years, but he wasn’t sure that the public would remain loyal and buy the new paintings. Still, he was enjoying all the experimentation and the new work. He found that when he went to Arwel woods and stood sketching and studying its colours he might go home and choose different colours altogether, might add paths where there weren’t any because they helped the rhythm of the composition. And he realised as he went on with the painting that he wasn’t depicting what he had seen but what he felt about those woods he had known since childhood. And yet he knew better than to let himself be carried away by his feelings, the composition was always of the greatest importance. He was also experimenting with different brush strokes, finding that long brush strokes produced different effects from bold jabs of colour. He knew he was learning a great deal with every painting. He painted what he loved and hoped other people would love the finished pictures. He drew comfort from every acre of his land, they weren’t the most fertile in the area, but to him they were home and Wales. His love of his country and
his countrymen was the great lesson the war had taught him.

Chapter eighteen

‘Tada, can I rely on you to go on running Hendre Ddu now that I’m unable to? How do you feel about Cefn Hebog? Now that that youngster, Isaac Jenkins, is such a good manager and he soon to get married, I’m hoping that you’ll be satisfied to let him bring up his little family there. When you do choose to retire, well it’s your place, you know that, and I’ll manage to re-house the family, building them a new house if necessary. But I’d like to know that I can depend on you for the next ten or fifteen years.’

‘Of course you can. This is my family and my duty lies here. And though I say it myself, you’d find it difficult to manage without me. I’m turned fifty as you know but I reckon I’m still able to do a good day’s work.’

‘You needn’t tell me that. I realise it every day and old Prosser tells me the same thing every time we stop to talk. The farm is beginning to do well and it’s all down to you.’

‘It’s down to all of us, even to the women who keep us so well fed and healthy. Aye, we’re a good team at the moment. And I’m not forgetting your contributions either, my lad. It’s due to you that we can make really worthwhile purchases like the new tractor and can enhance our stock when we need to. Money well spent is a great blessing.’

‘I’ve only got one major worry. I’m afraid poor May is really suffering at seeing Catrin and Lowri both so happily pregnant.’

‘It’s very hard for both of you. Graham, though, keeps on saying that it might still happen. You haven’t been married a full two years yet and apparently some women become pregnant after ten years.’

‘So I tell May, but I can see the deadness in her eyes whenever I do. She thinks our marriage is a failure. She even speaks now of going to spend a month or two with her father to shorten the winter.’

‘It might be a good thing for her and for her poor father who must be very lonely without her. Perhaps she’ll come back in a more positive mood. I should encourage her to go if I were you.’

The one who objected to May’s journey was Mari Elen. She wanted to go with her. ‘You know how I love my Grandpa. I want to stay with him for two months too.’

‘Cariad, we’d all miss you too much. And you’d miss your old Dad wouldn’t you?’

‘I suppose so. Why can’t he come to live with us here? He’s May’s father and he could have the little room next to mine.’

‘May will ask him to come to stay in the late spring, when it’s your birthday, and you can send him a letter of invitation.’

Mari Elen had to be satisfied with that.

Tom missed May and felt aggrieved that she had left him for so long. Sometimes he wished he had sinned so that she really had something to punish him for.

He longed for Maudie but he hadn’t seen her since taking her the mourning clothes for her aunt’s funeral and she hadn’t answered his one short letter. He wondered if she had opened her little village shop and how it was getting on. He had a feeling that she would succeed in anything she set her mind to, she had a fine brain. What a dreadful injustice that she’d had to leave school at fourteen with no prospects of any work except domestic work. He felt sure that a Labour Government would improve life for working-class children, so that many of the brightest should have the opportunities of education.

Whenever Lottie had a letter from Maudie she would pass details of her new life to Lowri, but Tom could never be sure that Lowri would consider them worth passing on. Finally he decided to ask Lottie for any news she might have.

‘Yes, well she opened the shop a couple of months ago and she’s working hard. She has to be open before the men go to work so that they can call in for a newspaper or a packet of cigarettes and she can’t close until they’re all back in the evening. She makes toffee in the evening and her home-made treacle toffee is very popular. Do you remember that we used to make it here when Nano was in a good mood? It’s very good for colds and coughs. But she’s very worried about little Ianto, he’s bored when she’s in the shop because of course he doesn’t have all the interests he had here, aunties and uncles and all his friends and cousins.’

‘And that school teacher is still calling on her, I suppose?’

Tom, desperately trying to sound nonchalant, succeeded in making Lottie stare at him, as though understanding something for the first time. ‘Harry Hughes. Yes, I think so. But she doesn’t care for him, I know that much. She’s told me that she never intends to get married. She’s too independent, and besides she’d have to live with his mother.’

‘But I thought you told us his mother was dead. Didn’t he sell all her good furniture to buy his motor car?’

‘But she didn’t die, she just moved in with him. You see, the poor woman had a stroke last spring and needs a great deal of looking after. Maudie wouldn’t get herself involved in anything like that. You’d have to love someone a lot before you’d take on a mother-in-law with a stroke. I would do it for him, yes, but he’s never looked my way.’