The Lost Days of Summer (13 page)

The next day she did the rounds of the farm and pronounced herself well satisfied with her niece’s work, agreeing that she was now fit and able to take up her usual tasks. Nell was delighted, and set about doing her best to save Eifion some of the harder work, for he was finding the weather made even the simplest task more difficult, chiefly because his rheumatism became worse as the cold deepened. Unfortunately, the winter still showed no signs of letting up, though things were not as bad as they might have been for Nell now that she had some reading matter. She took her bedtime candle upstairs each evening at around nine o’clock and studied her farming books assiduously, and her aunt, who had been true to her promise to try to find Nell something to read, thought that she was gleaning her information from the copies of
Farmers Weekly
which she had brought back from Valley, and congratulated her niece on her intelligent use of the information.

Nell was delighted with her aunt’s interest and praise, but very nearly fell from grace one dark morning when her aunt had been suffering from a head cold and was consequently later up than usual. Nell took her a cup of tea and a couple of rounds of buttered toast and told her not to hurry down, since she and Eifion could manage all the yard work between them, even if they were somewhat slow.

‘You’re not a bad girl,’ her aunt said thickly, taking the tea and holding the mug cradled in both hands. ‘I’ll just drink this and eat the toast, then I’ll dress warmly and come down to help with the milking.’

Nell protested that there was no need and left the room, feeling that she and her aunt were making progress; they were almost friends. But on her return to the house for the customary mug of hot cocoa and couple of Welsh cakes, she found her aunt sitting at the table and staring at a small playing card, which Nell recognised with a sinking heart as one of the pack she had taken from the attic. She thought she had hidden everything well, but she took her place at the table as nonchalantly as possible, and helped herself to a Welsh cake just as Eifion came shuffling in, complaining loudly that the cold seemed to be getting worse, not better. He began to drink the tea Nell had poured ready for him, whilst selecting the largest of the Welsh cakes and winking at her. ‘Bitter cold out,’ he said. ‘Glad of hot tea I am.’

‘Yes, it’s bitter today,’ Nell agreed, then leaned forward and took the card gently out of her aunt’s hand. ‘I found that behind one of the drawers in the chest you gave me for my clothes,’ she said with all the casualness she could muster. ‘Do you know where the rest of the pack is, Auntie? If we had the whole set, we could play whist or something when it’s too dark to do outdoor work.’

Her aunt grunted. ‘Last time I saw a card like this, it were with a lot of old rubbish in the attic,’ she said rather coldly. ‘But of course you wouldn’t dream of going up there when my back was turned, I dare say?’

‘But Auntie, you said the floor was unsafe and there were rats,’ Nell said, opening her eyes very wide. ‘Can you play cards? I seem to remember you mentioning village whist drives and saying that chapel people thought they were wicked ’cos it was gambling, but that the rector organised drives when the weather permitted, to raise money for the church.’ She handed the card back to her aunt and raised her brows. ‘Where did you find it, anyway?’

‘It was lying on the floor, just in front of your chest of drawers,’ her aunt said. ‘I don’t usually go into your room, but seeing as how you’ve got all my work to do as well as your own I thought I’d give you a hand by making your bed. As for the cards, they aren’t an English pack. My – my husband brought them back from France and we used to play cards together when we were first married.’ To Nell’s surprise, her aunt gave a grim chuckle. ‘At first, I never won – we played for matchsticks – but after a bit I learned how to cheat. We both cheated, of course, and how we laughed over it! Eh, we had some grand times, so we did. We taught each other every card game we knew, and since the fellers’ only amusement in the trenches was playing cards we soon knew the lot – gin rummy, whist, cribbage, anything and everything. Of course the soldiers didn’t gamble for money any more than we did, because they didn’t have much . . . eh, even talking about it takes me back. And that’s not a bad idea of yours – to have a game or two of an evening – so I’ll look out a full pack when I’ve a moment. And now you can pour me another cup of tea before you and Eifion start on the day’s work.’

Kath had enjoyed her trip to Valley, cold, snow and all. It had been satisfying to chat to the people she had met, to exchange horror stories about the weather, and the waste of their produce when they could not reach their customers.

‘But at least the weather’s kept Hitler’s planes on the ground, the same as it has ours,’ the postmaster remarked, as he dispensed stamps. ‘There’s been no flying from Valley airfield since the bad weather set in, and that’s meant lives saved, if you ask me. I was talking to one of the young fellers who services the planes and he says it’s the sand; it blows into the engines and clogs them up . . .’ He looked at his audience, one brow rising quizzically. ‘What the devil did they expect? The day the wind don’t blow a perishin’ hurricane on the island will be a cold day in hell!’

Kath grinned and saw others doing the same, though guiltily. Mr Mason was an Englishman and allowed a good deal of licence, being regarded by the older inhabit ants as a poor savage who knew no better. The younger ones admired his frankness, copied his slang, and kept their opinions to themselves.

But though her legs had remained unbroken and her spirits high, it had been on that trip that she had contracted the heavy head cold which had laid her low for a couple of days, and the cold had been the cause of her going into Nell’s bedroom, not to see what the girl was up to, but simply to make her bed for her, since Nell would be busy all day doing her aunt’s chores as well as her own.

Her discovery of the card had been a shock, and one from which she had not fully recovered, despite Nell’s perfectly plausible explanation. Kath had pretended to accept it, but now, in the privacy of her own bedroom, she could not help wondering. When she had first come to Ty Hen as a bride she had put all her personal possessions in a large, old-fashioned trunk and stowed it away in the attic. In those days she had regarded the attic as her own special place and had spent a good deal of time up there when she was not working on the farm. She had loved the distant view of the sea, the peace and quiet of the place, and of course, being young and therefore inquisitive, she had enjoyed sorting through the fascinating jumble of stuff – the rubbish of ages, Owain called it – which generations of her husband’s family had abandoned in the large room. Only the swallows, nesting in the eaves, looked in on her, for Owain respected her desperate longing for a place of her own, and would not let anyone disturb her when she climbed the steep stair to her refuge.

She climbed into bed, pulled the covers up to her chin, and gave the matter of the playing card some thought. She remembered how lost and lonely, how far from friends and family, she had felt when Owain had brought her to Ty Hen. She supposed, grudgingly it must be admitted, that her niece, too, must have felt lost and lonely, far from everything she knew and loved. At least I had Owain, she reminded herself. A good, kind man who taught me the language, tried very hard to make his family accept me, and let me have the attic for somewhere to be alone. Is it possible that Trixie’s daughter might have found her way into the attic when I was away from the house that day, the day I managed to reach Valley with my dairy products? Oh, dear God, suppose she finds . . . but I’m being downright stupid. Even if she found something I’d put up there to be out of sight, it would mean nothing to her. And anyway, it’s all my own fault for making it so obvious that I didn’t want her to go up there. Anyone with an ounce of grit would decide to take a look . . . and whatever I may think of Trixie, her daughter has her fair share of spunk. But what made her take the cards – if she did, of course.

At this stage in her musings, however, sheer weariness overcame her and Kath Jones, who had once been Kath Ripley, the prettiest as well as the oldest of all the Ripley girls, fell deeply asleep.

And dreamed.

The dream began innocently enough as a tiny, bright picture a long distance off. Despite herself, Kath was fascinated, though somewhere in the back of her conscious mind a little voice was warning her that if she went nearer she might regret it. But this was a dream, wasn’t it? She went nearer and saw the little picture grow in size, until it was like a picture show at the cinema, only in glorious colour, not black and white.

A step nearer and she could hear as well as see, though she could not make out a single word. But now there were voices, girlish, excited . . . and suddenly the scene began to blur and sway as though she was seeing it through water. She grew frightened, wanted to withdraw, was suddenly unable to do so. Like a swimmer caught in a strong current she was helpless to change direction, felt herself sucked into the scene before her, could hear the voices properly now, could feel the bedroom floor beneath her feet, could smell the scent – Californian Poppy – with which her sister Lou was anointing herself . . .

It was real, her sisters were real, she must go through with it – whatever ‘it’ was, she had no choice.

‘Kath, oh, darlin’ Kathy, say I can come with you! I’m old enough to go to dances, I’m sure I am, so why shouldn’t I go with you? You’d take care of me, best of me sisters, and I’d be good, good as gold, good as . . .’

‘But I’ve told you, queen, that I’m going with a friend – a young man – and so I wouldn’t be able to look after you properly,’ Kath said patiently. She, her sister Lou and the baby of the family, Trixie, were in their bedroom in the house on the corner of Kingfisher Court, just off the Scotland Road. Now, Kath smiled at Trixie through the mirror and pulled open the little drawer in their big, old-fashioned dressing table. She extracted her box of face powder, her small pink stick of lip rouge and the little pot of Vaseline which she brushed on to her lashes; dark lashes, the envy of all the other Ripley women, who were blessed with richly curling blonde locks and, alas, the white brows and lashes that go with such colouring.

Trixie, who was watching every move from her perch on the foot of the bed she shared with Kath, sighed enviously. ‘Why can’t I have black lashes and eyebrows like you, Kathy? Everyone says you’re the prettiest of the Ripley girls and it’s because you don’t have horrid white eyelashes. I’m sure my complexion is roses and cream, and—’

She was interrupted by a loud laugh and then by a raspberry, blown by Louisa, who was vigorously brushing her yellow curls into a fashionable bob. ‘Roses and cream! Honest to God, kid, the things you say! And as for white lashes, what’s mascara for if not to darken ’em?’ She snorted. ‘And there’s no way Mam would lerrus take you to the Grafton, so you’d best make up your mind to waiting a few years.’

Kath, who had been carefully dusting her nose with powder whilst her two sisters argued the toss, interrupted. ‘Don’t tease her, Lou,’ she said good-naturedly. ‘You were young once; you must remember how horrid it was to be left out of things just because you’re the baby of the family.’

‘Oh, darling Kathy; then you will take me!’ Trixie squeaked, bouncing up and down on the bed and seriously crushing the patchwork quilt the girls had made the previous winter out of scraps of material discarded by an aunt, who had a second-hand clothing stall on Paddy’s Market. ‘I
knew
you would, best of me sisters!’

Kath put her makeup away in its little drawer, then turned to Trixie, shaking her head sorrowfully. ‘Not this time, queen. And just you tidy that bed before you go down for your tea or you’ll be in big trouble.’

The two older girls made for the door, ignoring Trixie’s shriek of protest and her threat that not only would she make the bed, but she would conceal a spider in Kath’s side of it, and how would dear, clever Kath like that when she returned, worn out, from dancing all night. Or whatever else she did that meant she could not give an eye to her youngest sister and which she clearly preferred that Mam should not know about, Trixie added threateningly.

Receiving only mocking laughter from her elders, Trixie pursued them down the stairs, alternately pleading and threatening, until she reached the kitchen where Mrs Ripley quickly put a stop to such behaviour. ‘I don’t care what your sisters may or may not have promised; you aren’t going dancing, at the Grafton or anywhere else, until you’re sixteen and have developed some manners,’ she said severely. ‘I’ve worked hard all my life to bring you up nice and what thanks do I get? To hear you shrieking like a fishwife and calling names gives me more pain than – than a knife in my heart.’

Kath was about to tell her mother that she and Lou had teased Trixie, letting the child think she might accompany them, when the scene changed and without so much as heading for the door she found herself on the dance floor, and in the arms of a handsome young man. He was telling her some story, but she was only half listening, for as she twirled around she saw, to her astonishment, Trixie . . . not the child who had begged to be allowed to go to the dance but an older and very much more sophisticated Trixie, smiling up into the eyes . . . oh, God, into the eyes of the young man whom Kath had already decided she liked more than anyone else she had yet met.

Hastily, she tried to break free from her partner, but he hung on to her, laughing at her efforts, and then he was no longer a handsome young soldier but an elderly man, grey-haired, pot-bellied, who spoke to her in Welsh, sweaty hands clutching her waist even as he whispered into her ear that she might as well make the best of him, for her lover had returned to France, was even now plodding through the thick, slimy mud, heading back to the trenches.

‘I’ll show you where he is . . .’ he said, and taking her face between his hands he forced her to gaze into his eyes. To her horror, reflected in their rheumy depths she saw, for one terrifying instant, the trenches, the mud, the relentless rain . . . and the despairing face of the man she had agreed to meet that evening.