The Lost Days of Summer (35 page)

Kath shook her head. ‘No, I’m ashamed to say I didn’t; I felt I could never love anyone but John and at least I was honest with Owain. I pointed out that his frequent visits to Kingfisher Court had given rise to false hopes in Trixie’s young breast and I said that I’d never love anyone the way I had loved John, but he said he knew all that and it made no difference; it was me he wanted. By this time, incidentally, Trixie had realised that Owain was not interested in her but in me, and she grew very bitter. She accused me of stealing her beaux, first John and now Owain, and in the end I suspect it was this which drove me to consider Owain’s proposal seriously. He said in his quiet, thoughtful way that he was sure he could make me happy, that many couples fell in love after marriage, that I would be best away from Liverpool and all the memories of John it evoked. He said he hated to see me so pale and thin, so unhappy, swore that living in the country, on the farm his family had owned for generations, would bring the roses back into my cheeks . . .’

Once more Kath’s voice faded into silence, as she stared at the fire and saw . . . what? Nell did not know, but she could guess. After a moment, she said tentatively: ‘Auntie? Is – is that why you don’t think much of my mam? Because she thought you had stolen Owain from her? Only, if you married in the spring of 1919, and my parents were wed in June, surely Mam can’t have borne a grudge.’

Kath laughed. ‘Poor little Trixie! I knew I was guilty of stealing her beaux, if one person can be accused of stealing another! It’s been my guilt which has made me so bitter towards your mother, and it’s taken me all these years to admit it. But now I have, I’ll do my best to make amends. I’ll write to her, explaining that I had no idea she’d been widowed and telling her how lucky she is to have such a delightful daughter.’

‘That’s nice,’ Nell said, trying to keep the surprise out of her voice. ‘So you married Owain and came to live at Ty Hen, and were you happy, Auntie? I remember you telling me once that it took time before you appreciated how beautiful the countryside is.’

Her aunt made an impatient gesture. ‘Who’s telling this story?’ she demanded, quite in her old, sharp fashion. ‘I’m sure I don’t want to spend the whole night in the kitchen whilst you air your guesses, because that’s all they can be.’

‘Sorry,’ Nell mumbled. ‘I won’t interrupt again, I promise. So you came to Ty Hen . . .’

Kath nodded. ‘So I came to Ty Hen, as you say. When we first arrived, Owain’s grandparents, who had brought him up after his parents died, were living here and I promise you I’m not exaggerating when I say his nain took against me from the start. There was a girl the old lady had had her eye on for Owain, a good Welsh girl, brought up on a farm, with whom he had been friendly before the war. Folk marry later in rural communities, and it seems she had considered herself as good as betrothed to Owain, so the grandparents were embarrassed as well as disappointed when their grandson turned up with a bride. Owain had told them over and over that he was courting an English girl, but they chose to believe it was a whim, which would fade and die when he returned home.

‘When Owain and I arrived at Ty Hen, both his nain and his taid would speak nothing but Welsh and ignored Owain’s requests to use only English when I was present. I tried to understand how they felt, tried to make myself as useful as possible, but I could not conquer the dislike and suspicion with which the old lady viewed me. Indeed, in the first few months, the only person who befriended me was the young woman I had supplanted; but she married an Englishman and moved to Caernarfon. I missed her dreadfully, though I was beginning to learn a little Welsh, which made my life easier.’ She smiled rather grimly at her niece. ‘The old man, Owain’s taid, tried to be friendly, but he could scarcely smile at me or bid me good morning when his wife was around.’

‘Gosh!’ Nell said. ‘Go on, Auntie; saying “gosh” isn’t interrupting.’

Kath laughed. ‘Very well. You asked if Owain and I were happy. The truth is I was so unhappy at first, so lonely and miserable, that I wanted to die. However, hidden away amongst the few personal possessions I had brought with me was the only photograph of John I ever owned. I valued it more than I can tell you, but had few opportunities to look at it, for either Owain’s nain and taid, or one of the farmhands, or even the girl who helped in the dairy, to say nothing of Owain himself, was always around.

‘Then, one day, when Owain’s grandmother had a tea party for members of her Merched Y Wawr, it occurred to me that I had never visited the attic. I knew I wasn’t wanted in the parlour, would be humiliated if I so much as carried a plate of scones into the room, so I scuttled up the wooden stair, pushed open the trapdoor and was immediately enchanted. Old toys, books, clothes, a lovely horsehair sofa . . . well you know yourself that it’s full of treasures. I was intrigued and enchanted, especially when I found . . .’

‘The kaleidoscope,’ Nell breathed, completely forgetting she was not supposed to interrupt. ‘And you found how to put the photograph in it, so that you could look at it whenever you pleased, without anyone realising. But I’ve just thought, wasn’t there a telegram that was sent to the families of all the troops who died? And a commemorative coin . . . I remember seeing something of the sort in Mrs Wormington’s house in the court. She said it had her son’s name on . . . oh, I’m sorry, I forgot; do go on.’

Kath sighed. ‘Asking you not to chatter is like asking the tide not to come in,’ she said resignedly. ‘The coin wasn’t a coin, but a plaque which was sent to the next of kin of servicemen who died in the Great War. The fellows called it the Dead Man’s Penny or the Widow’s Penny and Owain gave John’s to me. It’s a big, clumsy thing, made of bronze . . . but I’ll show you.’ She went over to the dresser, produced a disc about five inches in diameter from the bottom drawer, and handed it to her niece, saying as she did so: ‘Some folk give them pride of place on their mantelpiece and polish them every week, but to my way of thinking that’s idolatry. Daft, too, because it brings back memories which are best forgotten.’

Nell examined the disc with some curiosity. Around the rim were the words
He died for Freedom and Honour
, whilst the figure of Britannia was depicted holding a laurel wreath above a rectangular tablet, upon which was inscribed the name
John Williams
. At Britannia’s feet a lion roared, presumably representing Great Britain. Nell tapped the plaque. ‘Why the fish?’ she said bluntly. ‘And what is the thing below the lion’s paws? It looks like a bird.’

Kath took the plaque back and walked across the kitchen, replacing it in its drawer. ‘One question at a time,’ she said. ‘The fish aren’t fish at all, but dolphins, and they represent British sea power – the Navy, I assume – but the other is a bit more complex. Owain told me it was the German eagle, being torn to pieces by the British lion.’ She shut the dresser drawer with a decisive click. ‘Well, I suppose it helped some people to come to terms with their grief, but it did nothing for me, nor for Owain either, so it was put away in a drawer and more or less forgotten. As for Owain, he mourned his friend John as faithfully as I did. I honoured him for it.’

She heaved a deep sigh and returned to her chair by the guttering fire. ‘However, having told you so much, I had better tell you the rest. As I said, when Owain first brought me back to Ty Hen his mother’s parents were living here and though I promise you, Nell, that I did my very best, it was never good enough. Owain told me I should call them Nain and Taid, as he did himself. But since they never answered any question I asked, or indeed spoke to me in any language I could understand, I soon simply stopped addressing them.’

‘Gosh, how awful,’ Nell breathed. ‘But surely they must have known, once you were married, that there was nothing they could do about it? Oh, I know people do get divorced, but I shouldn’t have thought it was exactly common in a rural community like this one. Why, even a tiny little swear word horrifies folk, so surely the very idea of divorce . . .’

‘To tell you the truth, I really don’t know what their aim was, but when I asked Myfanwy she said the old ’uns hoped I would be so miserable that I would simply run away, or perhaps kill myself . . .’

Despite fully intending not to interrupt, this was too much for Nell. She gave a scandalised gasp and spoke indignantly. ‘How wicked, Auntie Kath! But of course I expect they regarded you as a scarlet woman – perhaps not scarlet, but dark pink at any rate – because you weren’t Chapel. So in a way I suppose they felt that getting rid of you would be a – a holy act, so to speak.’

Kath laughed, giving a regretful little nod. ‘Yes, you’ve got the right idea. Myfanwy said someone had told the old lady that a perfectly respectable divorce can be obtained by a man if his wife runs off and is gone for seven years. No adultery or misbehaviour from either party is necessary. So I told myself that the old couple thought they were releasing Owain from the worst mistake he’d made in his life. Once free of me, he could turn to some nice young Welsh girl. And the fact that we had no children was another black mark against me.’

‘Yes, I can imagine,’ Nell said, nodding. ‘But didn’t they begin to soften towards you as time went on? Things got a great deal easier for me once I began to learn the language. Surely, when you could understand every word they said and could reply in the same tongue, that must have eased matters? It certainly did for me. If you remember, when I first came to Ty Hen, I was in a similar position to your own. But once I conquered the language things got very much easier.’ She grinned as her aunt’s face grew pink. ‘You went on speaking rather too frankly for several weeks until you suddenly realised I understood. I think from that moment we began to get on better.’

Kath put her hands up to her flushed cheeks. ‘Oh, Nell, I’m so ashamed! Having suffered myself at the hands of Owain’s grandparents, I should have been a friend to you. But I’m afraid I wasn’t even nice. However, that’s all behind us now and I promise you, cariad, my behaviour to you was nothing compared to the way I was treated by Nain and Taid. As I said, Taid wasn’t nearly as bad as his wife, but she was really dreadful. She was supposed to teach me how to milk, how to make butter and cheese, and to cook and market; Owain thought she was teaching me all her own skills, but she did nothing of the sort. The girl who came up from the village to help in the house, Glenys, did her best to teach me whenever the old lady wasn’t about, but Nain got her own back by docking the girl’s wages whenever she saw us either working together or chatting. In a way, that was a good thing because it drove me out of the house and on to the farm. I learned all about stock and ploughing, sowing and reaping. I explained to Owain that his grandmother resented me and he tried to make her see how much easier our lives would be if we all pulled together. She pretended to agree, but after a couple of weeks Owain began to realise that his attempts to change her ways would always be fruitless.

‘By this time, we had been married for fifteen months and I was beginning to appreciate what a good and loving man Owain was. He had told me that I might consider the attic my own private domain. The old people couldn’t manage the steep stair and he told Glenys that the attic was out of bounds. Then, one warm summer day, he told me to pack a picnic because he was going to take me down to the shore, to a place which his family had owned for generations. He explained that it was an ancient farmhouse which the Joneses had used as a sort of dower house; when the parents could no longer manage Ty Hen and the younger generation could manage without them, the old ’uns took over the ancient farmhouse. They could cope with a few hens, a couple of sheep, a pony to put between the shafts of the cart to take them to market . . . you know the kind of thing.’

Nell nodded. ‘I expect he was taking you—’

‘Hold your tongue,’ Kath said at once, but there was a lurking twinkle in her eye. ‘What a know-it-all you are, young woman! Yes, as you’ve guessed, he was going to take me to the Swtan. He had chosen a bright sunny day and we took the pony and trap. Owain had been managing the land and keeping an eye on the cottage ever since the previous occupant had left, and now he wanted to see what needed doing to get the place up and running again. You see, he had finally realised that we would all get on a good deal better apart, so he had decided to move Nain and Taid into the old place, but before he told them of his plan he wanted to make sure that everything was as it should be in the Swtan.’

‘Who was the previous occupant, then? What happened to him?’ Nell twinkled at her aunt. ‘Do go on,’ she said graciously.

Kath explained that when he joined the army Owain had employed a manager and the man had lived in the Swtan, since old Mr and Mrs Thomas did not want the bother of his presence at Ty Hen. As soon as peace was declared, however, Owain’s manager found far more prestigious and better paid work on the mainland, and by the end of February 1919 the man had departed, which meant that the Swtan had been empty for over a year.

‘Owain was proud of the old place and said it could soon be put to rights, but from the outside, the Swtan looked a real mess . . .’

June 1920

They had tied the pony up to a tethering post near an old mounting block and Kath stood back for a moment, eyeing this cottage, which her husband had told her was called a Welsh longhouse, with very mixed feelings. It was thatched for a start, unlike Ty Hen which was slate roofed, as were most of the properties she had seen on the island. Kath saw that the thatch was in need of attention, and supposed that the strong winds from the sea were responsible for its ragged, weathered appearance.

The cottage was stone built, the great uneven stones roughly cemented together. The whole place had been whitewashed once, but most of this had gone and being, presumably, not necessary for the manager’s comfort had never been reapplied. The wooden window frames and door were painted green, but the paint on them was flaked and blistered and the garden, which was enclosed by a wall built of the same stone as the Swtan itself, was a tangle of waist-high weeds. Kath’s fingers itched to start work there when she saw gooseberry, black and redcurrant bushes and even raspberry canes strangled by the luxuriant growth of brambles, nettles and couch grass.