Corner of a Small Town Read online

  Rhiannon turned and smiled at Gertie Thomas, who grunted as she lifted a small sack of parsnips up the step and into the crowded shop.

  “I just wanted a look at the sea,” Rhiannon said. “Although the war’s been over six years, I still get a thrill from seeing all the lights, don’t you?”

  “Daydreamer you are, Rhiannon Lewis.” Gertie lowered her voice pleadingly and asked, “Come and give me a hand bringing the veg in, will you love? There’s a good, lovely girl you are.”

  The pavement outside the shop window was narrowed by a line of benches on which Gertie displayed potatoes, carrots and onions in sacks and cabbages and caulis in crates. Rhiannon carried them inside and stacked them neatly in the back store room. She swept the debris, accepted Gertie’s thanks, then crossed the road to where the sweet shop was still open for business. Unable to pass without a greeting, she leaned in through the doorway. It was Barry who stood behind the counter.

  “Where’s your mam?” she asked in surprise as he stepped forward expecting to serve. “I only wanted to say good-night,” she explained, flustered by his unexpected appearance. “She was here when I walked past not fifteen minutes since.”

  “It’s Friday,” Barry said. “She usually leaves early on Fridays and takes work home. I’ll tell her you called.” He frowned as if wondering why Rhiannon, who only lived three doors away would bother to call in and say good-night to his mother.

  Rhiannon felt she needed to explain.

  “I walked to the corner to look at the sea and got caught by Gertie, who persuaded me to help,” she whispered.

  “Oh.” Comprehension seemed further and further away. “Did you want some sweets?” he asked.

  “No, I’m in the middle of getting supper for us all.”

  “Cooking it out there in the street?” He laughed then and offered her a Lovells toffee out of one of the dozens of jars displayed around the shop.

  “I often step out and look at the street as evening comes,” she said. “I like to look at the sea and hear the ships. Daft, I know.”

  “I enjoy the beach late at night. I don’t paddle in the tide though,” he smiled, remembering their walk. “The seashore is relaxing and a perfect place to think out a solution to a problem.”

  “Sounds lovely,” she said. She stood, not knowing what else to say. They hadn’t met since the afternoon of her birthday when they had walked to the beach together. Barry was wearing a half smile as if he too looked for something to add but couldn’t come up with anything worth saying.

  “Best I go,” Rhiannon said, “or my baked potatoes will be dried up like leather boots!”

  “I might as well close. There isn’t much doing.”

  “It’s hardly four o’clock, your mam’ll kill you if you shut before half-five,” she said in mock horror.

  Barry stepped out and watched as she ran back past the two terraced houses and waved as she looked back before entering the third.

  Rushing to the oven to check on the potatoes, Rhiannon felt a wave of excitement flood over her. She had known Barry Martin all her life yet that afternoon over a week ago was the first time she had really spoken to him. The experience was worth repeating she thought, as she began to grate the dried end of their cheese ration to add to the potatoes.

  She glanced at the clock. Only an hour before her mother and her father were due. Eleri was in her room getting ready to go to work. Viv closed Weston’s Wallpaper and Paint at five-thirty and would arrive soon after six. She wasn’t sure what time to expect Lewis-boy as he was attending a sales conference that day. She carefully cut an oval at the top of each baked potato, turned out the contents and mixed it with cheese before refilling the skins. Placed back in a low oven, they could be eaten as and when required with the salad she had prepared.

  A knock at the door surprised her and for a second her thoughts flew to Barry Martin. Could he be thinking of her and calling to ask her out again? She threw off her apron and straightened her skirt just in case, and opened the door.

  It was Barry, and she felt a blush suffusing her cheeks that had nothing to do with the hot oven she had been attending. But he didn’t look very pleased.

  “I want to speak to Lewis! Caught him properly this time. Ran out like a scalded cat he did but I recognised him, no mistake. He won’t wriggle out of it this time. His wife’s going to be told just what sort of a cheat and liar he is, carrying on with other women, telling his poor wife he’s working—”

  “Wait a minute!” Anger flared in Rhiannon’s dark eyes. “Wrong you are! He’s at a sales conference and I can prove it!” She picked up the telephone and asked to be put through to the hall where Lewis-boy was supposed to be, her fingers crossed as she prayed silently that she would be right and that her brother was innocent, this time at least. When Lewis-boy came on the line, she smiled sweetly and handed the instrument to a coolly confident Barry.

  Barry listened for a while and then handed it back in disgust. “I’m not talking about your twerp of a brother. I went home and caught your father in bed with my mam!”

  * * *

  Rhiannon was trembling as she sat waiting for her father to come home. She was only eighteen and to find herself in the position of facing her father with something so unbelievably embarrassing as adultery was making her squirm. Barry sat opposite her, one foot resting on the other knee in such a relaxed manner that what he had told her was becoming less and less believable. Barry looked around the room, at the fire burning sluggishly, at the gas light humming and occasionally popping, at the pictures around the walls, waiting silent and tight-lipped, making her embarrassment more painful.

  How could she even think of Barry inviting her out after this? And how could she face her father and her mother knowing this terrible secret? She imagined the gossip and the half-smiling glances as people gleefully passed on the juicy item. It would be so distressing for them all. She did have a fleeting thought that perhaps some good might come of it; it might make Lewis-boy behave.

  “I wish I could run away from this,” she whispered after ten minutes had passed in silence.

  “Sorry I am that you’re involved in your father’s sordid behaviour.” Barry’s voice was harsh but she saw his jaw relax as he added, “Don’t be upset. It’s your father who should feel bad not you. You can go out of the room when your father comes in. You needn’t hear anything of what’s said.”

  “Thank you.”

  She rose from her chair and went to check unnecessarily on her cheese boats. She lit the gas under the kettle and stood waiting for it to boil, unable to return to her chair and continue to face Barry Martin in silence. She stood looking out at the patch of garden revealed by the kitchen light and was startled when he came and stood behind her.

  “I can understand how embarrassing this is for you,” he said, touching her shoulder comfortingly. “To have to face something like this involving parents whom we like to think are perfect. But I have to face your father, tell him I mean to keep him away from Mam. I tried to talk to her before I came here but she locked herself in her bedroom and refused to talk to me. Don’t you see, I have to end it before it gets any worse?”

  “Do you?” She turned to face him and saw the hurt and anger showing in the tightness of the powerful jaw and the frown creasing his wide brow. Her brown eyes looked black in the artificial light. “Can’t you go home and forget it?” she pleaded. “Surely Dad won’t see your mother again? Not now he’s been found out?”

  “Mam says it isn’t my business,” Barry said hesitantly.

  “I suppose she’s right. It isn’t anything to do with us what our parents do.” She smiled nervously. “Couldn’t we say nothing and see what happens? There’s bound to be gossip once you face him with it. The less we say the better if we don’t want people to snigger and spread exaggerated stories about them.” His eyes began to soften and the skin around them crinkled in the most fascinating way and she began to hope that the situation would at least be allowed to cool, when th
e door opened and her father’s cheerful greeting startled them both.

  “Hello? Anyone home then?”

  “Mr Lewis. Cheat and coward! Leaving my mother to face it alone!” Barry’s voice was a low growl.

  “Rhiannon, go upstairs, love. I’ll call you when Barry leaves.”

  “Too late to hide it from her, or anyone else, Mr Lewis.” The voice was still soft but the blow to her father’s face from Barry wasn’t.

  Rhiannon had an almost irrepressible urge to giggle as the expression of casual confidence left her father’s face, was replaced by one of utter disbelief and followed again by one of pain.

  She stood there, her hands covering the lower part of her face and her eyes twinkling as if she had just listened to a risqué story. Barry calmly returned to his seat, rested one foot on the other knee and patiently waited.

  “My nose, is it bleeding?” Lewis asked, his voice lacking clarity.

  “I don’t think so, Dad.” Warily Rhiannon approached her father, one eye watching to see if Barry was going to repeat his attack. “It looks a bit funny though.”

  “Can’t we meet later and discuss this, Barry?” Lewis said, gingerly touching his face and checking for damage. “This isn’t the place.”

  “I’m waiting here until your wife comes home. I want her to know what sort of man she’s married to.”

  “That won’t solve anything, boy. Your mam knew what she was doing. You’re talking as if I seduced a young girl. Willing she was, and for your information she’ll be willing again! You can’t tell her what to do. Damned impertinent of you to think you can.”

  His confidence was returning; he seemed to have forgotten his daughter was still in the room and he turned angrily and added, “I thought I told you to go upstairs! Listening to things that don’t concern you – go on, get out!”

  “She might as well stay!” Dora Lewis had come in as their attention was on Rhiannon and she glared at her husband with her blue eyes flashing, then stepped up and slapped his face, hard.

  This time Lewis’s face wrinkled up like an ancient apple as he prepared himself for the blow, but he didn’t yell. He had expected it the moment he saw his wife watching him. “Dora, love, I can explain—”

  “All some misunderstanding, is it then?” She stepped forward to hit him again but this time he ducked. “Come, on, Barry, tell me the full story before I ask you to help me kick him out through the door.”

  Rhiannon escaped into the kitchen then. Shock and excitement made giggling and tears fight an equal battle. Words flew to and fro, Barry’s voice low and calm, her father’s and mother’s rising and falling as excuses were offered and discarded. Viv, Lewis-boy and Eleri came home and were pushed unceremoniously through the living room into the kitchen, where Rhiannon explained in hushed tones the events of the last hour.

  Eleri said the least. Always a quiet, gentle girl, she sat watching her husband, a curious expression on her round, rosy face. More than once Rhiannon wondered what she was thinking. Then she asked one question and Rhiannon knew her thoughts as if she had spoken them aloud. “Barry’s sure is he? That it was your father and not – anyone else?”

  “It was our Dad all right,” Rhiannon said firmly. “I confess, Eleri, I thought at first he meant Lewis-boy – no reason mind,” she added quickly. “It was only because I thought our dad too old for carrying on like that. I phoned Lewis-boy at the conference and Barry spoke to him. No, it was our dad all right. Poor Mam, eh?”

  “So that was what that mysterious phone call was all about!” Lewis-boy laughed. “Had me puzzling all the way home that did.”

  The voices in the next room had gone quiet and Rhiannon slowly opened the door and looked in. Her parents were sitting glaring at each other, her mother’s face tight with pain and fury, her father’s already swelling and becoming discoloured from Barry’s punch. They were alone. Barry Martin had gone.

  “Wait in the kitchen!” Dora’s high-pitched voice snapped. “Your father is going up to pack a suitcase now this minute. Going to see if his fancy woman will give him back his bed for the night.”

  “Dora, I’m not going anywhere—” Verbal battles recommenced and Rhiannon swiftly shut the kitchen door. It was an hour later that she offered the cheese boats and salad, but no one was interested.

  With disbelief in his eyes, made stupid and slow by the speed with which events had overtaken him, Lewis saw his wife hand him a packed suitcase through a haze of confusion.

  “Dora, you can’t mean for me to go. You can’t!”

  “Don’t bother coming back, I’ll have the locks changed first thing tomorrow and,” she added shrilly as Lewis glanced at Rhiannon, who was once more peering around the door, “— don’t try and persuade Rhiannon to argue your case, mind. I won’t listen. Get out! And I hope your tart will be as pleased for you to come as I am for you to go!”

  Nia Martin wouldn’t even open the door to him. “It’s best you go and let things calm down,” she told him and dejectedly, still glancing around half expecting to see Dora coming to tell him she’d forgiven him, Lewis wandered along the main road to a shabby boarding house called, rather grandly, The Firs, where he booked in for one night. Sure to get it all sorted tomorrow he thought, with futile optimism.

  * * *

  It was Rhiannon who took the worst of the neighbours’ tongues. She wanted to avoid going to the corner shop for the few hours she helped Gertie Thomas but decided that it was better to get it over with, let people have their say, make their jokes, then allow the situation to cool.

  Even while expressing sympathy for the girl, Gertie was not averse to spreading gossip and Rhiannon felt her cheeks redden as Gertie took some of her closest friends upstairs to her flat to ply them with tea and the latest details to emerge. Rhiannon suspected that what Gertie couldn’t find out she invented.

  The days following the revelations about Lewis and Nia Martin were difficult ones for all the Lewis family. As Rhiannon had guessed, within hours, the neighbourhood was discussing it. Each member of the family had told someone in confidence, those people had passed it on to one person – in confidence – and within hours it was being passed practically from door to door. The gossip was more eagerly spread as the Lewises were considered to be a bit uppity, better off than most, being able to afford for Rhiannon not to work, apart from the few hours she helped Gertie Thomas in the corner shop. There was unanimous glee in reporting their trouble.

  Dora wondered if her husband would lose his job. Respectability was very important in a job like his. She tried to tell herself she didn’t care. He deserved everything that happened to him. “I hope the bed he rents is full of fleas!” she said aloud to a surprised Viv one morning. “And if he loses his precious job it’ll serve him right!”

  Viv looked at his mother and frowned. “Hang on, mam. There’s a chance that the gossip about Dad might filter through to the Westons and if it does I might lose my job. Gladys and Arfon Weston and their miserable sons-in-law are very holier-than-thou in their attitude to such things.”

  “Jack Weston’s your friend, he wouldn’t let them.”

  “He mightn’t have a choice. The precious Westons try to protect ‘the Weston girls’ from anything remotely sordid. Damn me, if old man Arfon knew half of what they get up to he’d have a fit!”

  Gladys and Arfon Weston’s granddaughters, the twins of Sally and Ryan, were always referred to as ‘the Weston girls’ even though their name was actually Fowler. With wealthy grandparents who adored them, Joan and Megan Fowler happily encouraged it.

  The Westons were relatively wealthy in that they owned a large house with a view over the sea and could afford a cleaner and a young girl whom they called their servant. Victoria Jones was only fourteen and was expected to help in the kitchen, removing her apron whenever she left it. She also had to answer knocks at the door, at which times it was her duty to tell Mrs Weston who was calling and return to either invite the caller in or announce that Mrs Weston was not “At Ho
me”. Not at home did not mean Mrs Weston was out, Gladys had patiently explained to Victoria but that she was not at home to visitors. Neighbours and those attempting to be friends were amused at Victoria’s nervous – “Mrs Weston says for me to tell you she isn’t in, I mean at home.”

  Mr Arfon Weston had made most of his money during and immediately after the war, dealing in property. Gradually selling it as restrictions on building were relaxed, he was in a position to make a lot more. Arfon was not inhibited about his increase in wealth but proudly flaunted his ability to provide his family with the luxuries of life.

  Arfon and Gladys had twin daughters, Sian and Sally, now in their forties. Both were married and the brothers-in-law ran Weston’s Wallpaper and Paint shop in the high street. Sian and her husband Islwyn had a son, Jack – who also used the name Weston, which his parents had added as a Christian name to support Gladys Weston’s determination to found a dynasty.

  For Sally and Ryan, history had repeated itself and they had twin daughters, Megan and Joan, now twenty and both ridiculously spoilt by their proud grandmother, Gladys.

  On the Monday morning following the revelations about Lewis Lewis and Nia Martin, Viv Lewis was called to the private office of Weston’s and told to wait outside the door. Soon afterwards, sixty-six-year-old Arfon Weston arrived.

  Nervously, Viv entered when called, and stood in front of the huge desk behind which sat Arfon Weston with his two sons-in-law, Ryan Fowler, father of the Weston girls, Joan and Megan, and Islwyn Heath, father of Viv’s friend Jack. The three men wore such similar expressions of disapproval they could have been carved from stone, Viv thought. He shrank as he waited for one of them to speak.

  “We have heard some unpleasant gossip regarding the Lewis family, Mr Lewis,” Arfon began.

  “Yes, my father has embarrassed all of us,” Viv muttered.

  “Not only you, but the firm of Weston’s. I’m afraid I can’t allow the name of Weston’s to be besmirched.”