Love and War Read online

  Contents

  Title Page

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-One

  Copyright

  Love & War

  Siân James

  One

  THIS WAS THE DREAM: I was having a bath. I was in my own small bathroom; the blackout curtains were drawn, the water was none too hot and certainly not over the five inch limit, the face flannel in my hand was recognisably my own, the very one my lodger, Ilona Hughes, had recently made for me from a square of her father’s old flannel shirt, blanket-stitched in pink at the edges.

  The soap – a bar of liver-coloured Lifebuoy – was hard and gritty, but after I’d managed to work up a reasonably good lather, I set about washing myself as thoroughly and methodically as I do when awake.

  To my dismay I found that my breasts had completely gone. My chest was worse than flat, it was slightly concaTwo

  For the rest of the day, I’m conscious of being surrounded by something heavy and threatening.

  What an idiot I am. I can’t let my little adventure with Gwynn Morgan out of my head. God, my mind is in a pathetic state, as well as my body.

  But he was so friendly. What made him ask me to have a coffee with him? He really seemed to want my company, smiling so warmly. What made him come after me to Studio Laura?

  To be absolutely honest, Gwynn Morgan was once my greatest heart-throb. Of course, I never thought of him as remotely connected with everyday life: other girls had crushes on Spencer Tracy or Robert Taylor, mine was on Gwynn Morgan, Art; it was in the same realm of fantasy. As they cut out glossy pictures from movie magazines, I cut out his picture – smudged black and white – from the local paper or the school gazette. I probably still have one or two somewhere.

  I wonder if he remembers how I used to dote on him? He must, surely, have realised that something other than chance was responsible for our frequent meetings on the stairs and in the corridors. ‘Well, Rhian,’ he used to say when we came face to face for the third time in a morning, ‘we really mustn’t go on meeting like this.’ How I used to envy Bethan Morris and Ruth Talbot, who took Art in the Sixth Form, monopolising so much of his time. I cultivated a friendship with Bethan, so that I could join her when she ate her lunchtime sandwiches in the Art Room. (Not that he was present on those occasions, but it made me feel close to him.)

  His hair was black in those days.

  My heart almost burst with pride when he said he wanted to paint my picture. I think it took about six sittings, two hours each, in the Art Room after school. He used to give me a bar of fruit-and-nut chocolate, I remember, and five minutes’ rest after the first hour. He used to recite little verses to me when he thought I was getting bored, but I wasn’t allowed to smile.

  The finished picture was entitled ‘Schoolgirl’. My parents didn’t think it did me justice. ‘He’s given her a cast in the right eye,’ my mother said, ‘and it makes her look a bit simple.’

  ‘It must have been all that sitting still,’ my father said. ‘She’s got the look of a rabbit staring at a snake.’

  It got a prize anyway, in that exhibition.

  The only other time we were together was on Drama Club night. He was responsible for the scenery of the play we put on before Easter every year, but he took an interest in all of it: the preliminary discussions and the acting and directing. His interest and abilities were far more wide-ranging than any of the other teachers at our school; I remember being quite surprised, for instance, at how much Racine and Corneille he could quote. He spoke French well, too, with an enviable accent, someone said he’d once studied drawing in Paris.

  I wonder if he really was more interested in me than in any of the others? Some days I used to think so and go to bed faint with happiness.

  In my last year I played Rosalind in As You Like It. I remember Miss Eira Jenkins, our producer, getting rather annoyed because she thought he was getting too involved in what was, after all, her pigeon. But life could hold no greater delight for me than repeating those love-sick lines to him: ‘I tell thee, Aliena, I cannot be out of sight of Orlando. I’ll go find a shadow and sigh till he come.’

  I wonder if he knew that I was speaking directly to him? ‘I cannot be out of the sight of Orlando.’ I suppose he did.

  Naturally, I got over all that high romance years ago – when Huw started taking an interest in me, I suppose. With Huw, everyday life took over, and it was time it did. So why do I feel this damp cloud all around me and settling on my chest? Perhaps I’m in for a cold.

  Ilona Hughes approves of my dress. ‘Well, it makes you look different anyway, and that’s something,’ but insists that I get a roll-on, now, to wear with it and some wedge-heeled shoes.

  When I tell her about my meeting with Gwynn Morgan, she’s even more interested. ‘Gwynn Morgan?’ she says. ‘Yes, I know him quite well. He comes to the Ship most nights. I feel rather sorry for him, though. He’s always got to go home after the one drink, he can never stay more than half an hour, he’s very definitely under his wife’s thumb.’

  ‘Well, she’s English,’ I say, as though that explains a lot.

  ‘No, she’s not, she’s French. Convent-educated and all that. Very religious.’

  ‘Fancy that. And him an atheist.’

  ‘Atheist? He’s a Catholic, like she is. What made you think he was an atheist?’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Yes. Denzil sees them in Sant Ioan’s. That’s how I met him. Through Denzil.’

  Denzil is her current boyfriend: Liverpool-Irish, a soldier stationed in Tonfaen.

  I take my dress back upstairs and hang it in the wardrobe. When will I wear it? To Prize Day, in the summer? To Fflur’s wedding, if she invites me? It seems altogether too worldly for chapel. Why ever did I buy it?

  What a strange day it’s been. A Red-Letter day, I suppose. Write a composition entitled A Red-letter Day. ‘I’ve never ’ad one of those, Miss.’ ‘Will one side be enough, Miss?’

  A Blue-Dress Day.

  Oh, but the way he looked at me when I came back into the shop wearing it. No one ever looked at me in quite that way before: admiring, almost deferential, but troubled at the same time. It set my pulse racing, I can tell you. And if I was completely honest, I’d admit that it was passion I felt in that look, not deference or even homage. ‘The red rose whispers of passion, And the white rose breathes of love. Oh, the red rose is a falcon, And the white rose is a dove. But I send you a cream-white rosebud, With a flush on its petal tips...’

  Rubbish, what absolute rubbish. What’s the matter with me? Again I have to remind myself that I’m a respectable married woman, brought up to know the difference between right and wrong, between true and false, between doves and falcons. Dear Huw, I’m a respectable married woman, but buying this new dress seems to have taken my wits away. I’m sorry. Love, Rhian.

  I make myself think of Huw. I go to the window, standing behind the curtains to look out: a moonlit night, the pavements gleaming, the sky pewter-grey but lighter at the horizon, the rim of the sea just visible beyond the huddle of the town.

  Will Huw be feeling lonely on this Saturday night? Homesick for Llanfair? Somehow I don’t think so; Huw is an extrovert, ready to make the best of any situation. As long as he’s with his mates – his letters are full of stories about Nobby and Jock, Bill, Sandy, Ginger and T
ich Gordon – Huw won’t be too unhappy anywhere. I hope he isn’t unhappy.

  Will he like my new dress, I wonder. I can’t remember his ever taking much notice of my clothes. How strange he’d looked in his hairy, khaki uniform, the little forage cap tilted over one eye. After the war, he’ll wear ordinary clothes again and I’ll have his Sunday shirt and his workshirts to wash and iron. How odd it will seem to have him living here instead of Ilona Hughes. Will it be better?

  Why didn’t Gwynn Morgan admit to being a Catholic? Fancy his having a French wife. Strange they have no children. When she comes to Prize Day or the Saint David’s Day concert, she doesn’t speak to anyone but the Headmaster’s wife. The dress she wore last year was of some thick black material and much too long; I wish I could say she looked dowdy, but she didn’t. She looked strange and different, but definitely not dowdy. She’s quite striking-looking, I suppose. And French as well.

  Ilona Hughes is having mackerel for her supper. She offers me some, but I’ve got a piece of vegetable pie left from yesterday. I give her some rhubarb and custard which I’d intended for tomorrow and she eats it as though it’s the only thing she’s had all week. She loves custard, but she’s never got any sugar to make any. She could easily learn to drink tea without sugar – anyone could – but when I suggest it, she almost cries. Sometimes I think she’s not all there.

  She finishes off the rhubarb and custard and then scrapes out the bowl and the jug.

  ‘What are you doing tonight?’ she asks me.

  ‘I’m going to darn my stockings and listen to Saturday Night Theatre. It’s a nice old-fashioned play with a butler.’

  She sighs. ‘Would you like to come to the pictures with Denzil and me?’

  ‘Heavens, no. I mean, no thank you. I mean, three’s a crowd, isn’t it? I wouldn’t want to spoil your fun.’

  She looks relieved. ‘But I don’t like to think of you with a new dress and nowhere to go.’ she says. ‘If I see Gwynn Morgan, I’ll ask him to call round to take you out for a drink.’

  ‘I hope you’re joking.’

  ‘I can’t see the harm.’

  ‘I can manage my own affairs, thank you.’

  ‘Can you? What affairs? Well, let me know if you change your mind. I don’t suppose you could lend me some lipstick, could you? The Yardley cherry? I seem to have mislaid mine.’

  I lend her my lipstick, but can’t bring myself to tell her that Gwynn Morgan wants her as a life-model for five shillings an hour. I’m afraid she’ll accept and fall in love with him, I suppose. I’d certainly object if she started bringing him back here every evening. I wouldn’t be able to bear it.

  Our minister gave a really good sermon this morning; I listened attentively for once.

  Many of the older people don’t like Mr Roberts because he hasn’t got the eloquence of the great preachers they remember, but I like him the better for it. I’m suspicious of a sermon which grips you by its dramatic intensity rather than by its message. Perhaps the old-type preachers, whose voices pitched and soared, whose hands fluttered like doves or stabbed home a point as though they were driving a nail into a wall, perhaps they had their own integrity. But I can’t help thinking that even if they’d lost all belief, they’d still be able to build up an extraordinary edifice; emotive phrases, rising and falling cadences, rhetorical questions, alliteration and quotation around emptiness.

  Mr Roberts is quiet and unemotive and his message is stark: hating the enemy, we sin against a loving God.

  The congregation, many with sons, grandsons, brothers or nephews in the forces, don’t want to hear about love and forgiveness but only of the noble fight against aggression, of defending the right to be free. Etc.

  Huw’s mother, for instance, thinks the minister is undermining her son’s sacrifice. ‘Is my Huw wicked to fight, tell me that?’ she asks him on the way out.

  ‘Your Huw is very bravely doing what he conceives to be his duty. I’m not trying to deny the great courage of our soldiers.’

  ‘You’re dodging the question, Mr Roberts.’

  ‘Come along to Sunday School this afternoon, Mrs Evans, and we’ll see if we can find some New Testament verses to enlighten us.’

  ‘No thank you. I’ll stick to my way of thinking and you can stick to yours.’

  I’m having dinner with my in-laws and Huw’s mother is still ranting on about poor Mr Roberts as we lay the table.

  ‘To hear him carrying on about the Germans being God’s children, only led astray, is deeply offensive, don’t you think so, Rhian? Gwilym Martin, Horeb, isn’t such a milksop, I can tell you. No, Mr Martin gets to the point quick enough, praying for the forces of God to smash the legions of Satan, and no nonsense about forgiveness either. I’d switch to Horeb in a minute, only Bryn’s afraid of losing custom in Tabernacle. Rhian, I hope you won’t let Huw know how disloyal Mr Roberts is being. I’m sure it would be no comfort for him to realise that his own minister is siding with the enemy. I hope their Padre – not that I like that name, very High Church it sounds – I hope he’s at least on the right side.’

  ‘I bought a new dress yesterday.’ I say blithely. I’ve long realised that’s it’s not a bit of use trying to alter or modify my mother-in-law’s views on anything; all I can do is wait for one of her dramatic pauses and then seize the opportunity to change the subject.

  She’s astonished. ‘A new dress?’ Nobody can be as astonished as my mother-in-law. ‘A new dress? Did you need a new dress?’

  ‘I thought I did. Yes. I haven’t had one for ages. Not since the wedding.’

  ‘Well, well, well! A new dress!’

  She lets the idea permeate into her mind as she mashes the potatoes.

  ‘I wish I’d have known you were thinking of a new dress, Rhian. You see, I’d have offered to make you one. I’ve got a yard and a half of lovely pre-war material – beige – which would have been ample for the bodice. Such lovely quality. Two yards of some contrasting colour for the skirt, say a nice apple-green, was all you’d have needed to buy. About five shillings was all you’d have had to spend. And perhaps six pence for a packet of fasteners.’

  ‘What a shame you hadn’t mentioned it.’

  ‘A new dress! Oh, I hope it didn’t cost too much.’

  ‘No, it was quite reasonable.’

  ‘Where did you get it? At J.C. Jones?’

  ‘No. I went to Studio Laura.’

  ‘To Studio Laura? Oh Rhian, what a pity! Didn’t I tell you about that Mr Browne who owns Studio Laura? Well, Mrs Watkins, Park Villa, is convinced he’s a German spy. Yes, she saw him out very late one night when she was taking Mot for his last walk, and there he was, lurking in the shadow of the breakwater and staring out to sea with a pair of binoculars.’

  ‘Great Heavens! I hope she reported him to PC Jones.’

  ‘Don’t make fun of me, Rhian. If he’s not a spy, why isn’t he in the army?’

  ‘Well, I suppose he could be too old. I should think he’d be about the same age as Gwynn Morgan, Art, who seems to be a friend of his.’

  She sighs again as she carries the meat to the table.

  ‘That Gwynn Morgan. He’s another fine one. Always has to be different, that man. Why doesn’t he dress like a teacher, for a start? Probably fancies himself as one of these artists. And his wife is some sort of foreigner. It wouldn’t surprise me to find that Gwynn Morgan is another of these conchies, like Mr Roberts.’

  ‘Or a spy. I know for a fact that he’s got a pair of binoculars.’

  Huw’s parents have an oppressively ugly house. It’s crammed full of nasty new furniture: a three-piece suite and pouffe in cabbage-green velvet with bronze braiding, tables and chairs and an outsize sideboard in shiny, yellow wood and an Axminster carpet – A1 quality – in autumn’s most vulgar shades. Every flat surface is covered with a display of glass and china ornaments which shiver when you shut a door.

  To me, every object seems one too many, but Huw’s mother cherishes each one, tenderly rec
alling its date of purchase and price, and dusting or polishing or blowing on it every day. Almost every week she’s altered the position of something or other; the double-decker tea-trolley or the brown standard lamp or the large technicolour painting of Cader Idris, and I’m called upon to comment on the result. ‘Oh yes,’ I say, nodding my head sagely and fast to indicate that she’s now got it to a T ... And I’ll be equally enthusiastic when it’s back in its original place the following week.

  Huw’s father is proud only of how much it all cost. ‘No one else in Llanfair has got things as expensive as these,’ he says. ‘Well, it’ll all be yours and Huw’s when we’ve gone.’

  His wife frowns, none too pleased to be reminded of that day she’ll have to leave even the Al Axminster and the Royal Derby plates behind her.

  The house where I was brought up is different, the poverty of generations of my farming family ensuring that nothing was ever replaced. Most of the furniture is scrubbed pine, centuries old, well-worn but still reflecting something of the skill and integrity of the country craftsman who made it. The floor is of blue flagstones.

  After Sunday School, I write to Huw.

  Dear Huw

  It’s been another quiet week here. I wonder where you are and what you’re doing. There are so many rumours. Everyone seems to think we’ll be hearing something as soon as spring comes, something momentous. The papers are full of phrases like ‘the beginning of the end’. Whatever happens, you know that I’ll be thinking of you and praying for your safety.

  I bought myself a new dress yesterday, dark blue and quite plain. Well, I thought I needed something to cheer me up, I suppose. I went to the new shop on the prom. It was rather expensive, but luckily I’d happened to meet Mr Morgan, Art, when I was having a coffee in Glyn Owen’s and he said he could get a discount for me because he does the window-dressing there. Anyway, he came with me and the owner, Mr Tremlett Browne, took a third off the price. Mr Morgan asked after you and sends his regards.