Ice Cream in Winter Read online

  ‘It’s such fun when they come back on leave,’ she whispered to her sisters when Leonard had gone. She hugged the fan of letters and added, ‘Although they never have any money, they’re good for a laugh and their attentions are flattering. It’s no use asking you, Elizabeth, with you courting that Will Caradoc up at the farm, but why don’t you come with me Patricia?’ Marion was genuine in her belief that the letters she wrote livened their tedious days, and the memory of a few kisses helped during the dangers and the loneliness they suffered. If Dad found out – specially about the kisses – he’d lock her in for the duration!

  ‘Sis, will you do me a favour?’ Marion asked in a hoarse whisper when Elizabeth had left them.

  ‘Oh, here it comes. I knew it. You never help with the dishes except when you want something!’ Patricia sighed.

  ‘I only want to change beds. If I slept in your room, Elizabeth wouldn’t know what time I got in. Please, Sis.’

  ‘When I think of all the fuss you made to sleep in Elizabeth’s room, and now you want to change back.’

  ‘I moved in with Elizabeth to get some sleep. You were ever so restless, Sis. Nightmares, remember?’

  ‘I remember.’ Patricia didn’t tell Marion that things hadn’t changed very much, but said, ‘All right, if Elizabeth doesn’t mind. But I have to get up early and that will disturb you, so be warned.’

  ‘Warned I am. Worried I’m not. It’ll take more than you wandering about searching for your clothes to wake me, after the time I get to my bed!’ she chuckled. With a brief explanation to Elizabeth that was far from the truth, the beds were changed and Marion’s clutter was added to that of Patricia’s in the back bedroom of number three Woodcutter’s Row.

  When Patrica was ready for the party, she saw to her surprise her father was dressing to go out again. His overcoat was buttoned up and his trilby pulled down over one eye which she insisted was an affectation he had adopted after going to see Humphrey Bogart.

  ‘I’m just going for a chat with Cyril Philips,’ he said. ‘I promised to call over the holiday.’ He turned and said warningly, ‘I want you home from the party at half past nine, mind.’

  ‘Oh, Dad! Ten o’clock, isn’t it?’

  ‘All right,’ he grinned. ‘Half past ten it is, but a minute later and I’ll come and drag you out, and embarrass you in front of your friends, right?’ He pecked her cheek and went to the door. ‘Enjoy yourself, love,’ he called as the door closed behind him.

  She saw his scarf lying on the chair and picked it up to give him. He’d need it if he was walking over to Cyril Philips’s house. She could just see him through the window in the door and something yellow flared out. Opening the door she saw he was putting on a long woollen scarf. It was a bright yellow.

  ‘Hey that’s a bit bright, our Dad! Where did you get it?’

  ‘I – er it was a gift from some of the teachers in school.’

  Something about the way he said it made her doubtful it was the truth and she remembered the scarf worn by the man who escorted Nelda Roberts away from the hut in the wood. Nelda Roberts was a teacher. Her eyes widened as realisation came. Nelda Roberts and her dad? Never! He couldn’t have been the man. Yet there flashed upon her memory a picture of Nelda’s escort, stooped in a protective way, but in retrospect, familiar. The screen of memory became clearer and she saw the angle of the shoulders as the man walked away with his arm around Nelda Roberts, one slightly higher than the other, where he had been injured in a fall from a tree as a boy.

  But it couldn’t have been him. Not Dad with another woman. He loved Mam and wouldn’t go out with someone else! Besides, what could they be doing that they had to go into the cold copse to do? Jacky’s face and suggestive words had told her, although she hadn’t realised it at the time.

  ‘Best you didn’t see,’ he’d said. He must have known it was her Dad with that woman. The thought of him with another woman was frightening. What would happen to her if Dad married again? It was her job to look after Dad. What would she do if Nelda Roberts wanted to take her place? What would she do with her life?

  Suddenly, the life she had always envisaged, marrying, living here, caring for her father, was threatened and she didn’t know what would replace it. A second wife didn’t always want the children, she knew that. Jacky Davies had been sent to live with an auntie when his dad remarried.

  She hurried to her room, sat on her bed and thought frantically of where she would live if Nelda came and she was thrown out. Oh, why did things have to change? She was happy with her life. She was over the disappointment of having given up her ambition to nurse, settled to a future of being the one who stayed at home. Even if she never married she’d have a home here with Dad. She frowned, her dark eyes looking solemn and a little frightened. Perhaps she could return to that dream, become a nurse? No. The excitement had gone, it was easier to stay on at the farm with Mr Caradoc, at least until this stupid war ended and his son, Will, returned. Oh dear, another change was likely whether she stayed with her father or not. There wouldn’t be enough work for her, even part time, once Will came home. But if she didn’t stay, where would she go?

  She looked in the mirror. Pity about the dead straight black hair and the horrible brown eyes. Why had she been the one to follow her mother in colour but without her loveliness? Why hadn’t she been fair like Dad and Elizabeth and Marion? She turned her head and looked at herself sideways. She wasn’t too ugly, perhaps she would find someone to marry her.

  She thought of Jacky and shook her head. He never seemed to take her seriously, always joking. She had to find someone desperately in love with her, like Vanessa was with Matthew. Vanessa said she’d kill herself if Matthew left her. Although secretly she thought that was a bit strong.

  But she did dream of someone loving her with some desperation. If she didn’t find him she wouldn’t take second best but remain single and pure, she decided with a half smile.

  Jacky was nice mind – but no, things weren’t that desperate! If only Matthew Morris had noticed her before falling in love with Vanessa.

  Out of her confused thoughts a sudden freedom emerged. If it had been her Dad, doing God knows what with Nelda Roberts, then it meant he was no longer grieving for Mam. It must mean he no longer blamed her for killing her mother by her disobedience.

  Pulling on her working jacket and the heavy boots, she ran around the corner to Ebenezer Street where Jacky Davies lived with his Auntie Beryl and banged on the door.

  ‘Tell me the truth, it’s important,’ she said at once as he opened the door. ‘Who did you see in that wood today?’

  ‘Well, I’m not sure, see, I only—’

  ‘The truth, Jacky, it’s important,’ she pleaded.

  ‘Your Dad and that Nelda Roberts. Been meeting for weeks they have.’

  ‘Slap and tickle you mean?’ she whispered.

  ‘That and more.’

  ‘You’re sure?’

  ‘Well, perhaps I shouldn’t say for certain, like.’

  ‘Are you sure, Jacky Davies? That’s all I’m asking!’ Hands on hips she glared at him.

  ‘I’m sure. They’ve been doing a bit of courting like, these months. They stay on at school sometimes, pretending to prepare for the Youth Club. And they often meet in town. Back row of the pictures,’ he added in a whisper. ‘They’ve been seen by others too, mind. Don’t think I’m inventing it.’

  ‘You can call for me if you like. I’ll be ready at half past seven.’ Without waiting for his reply, she hurried back home. Suddenly she felt warm enough to wear the taffeta and perhaps she’d wear her summer sandals too, they flattered her legs better than her winter lace-ups. Her father was no longer grieving. She had been forgiven. Perhaps the nightmares would no longer torment her.

  Back home she looked around the living room, then impulsively threw her father’s old scarf on the back of the fire and watched it burn with nothing less than glee. She was free. She no longer had the weight of someone’s death on her youn
g shoulders.

  Running up the stairs, she threw off the layers of clothes and put on the shivery, cold taffetta. She was going to the party knowing that this was the beginning of the best time of her life.

  ‘You’ll freeze in that!’ Marion gasped as Patricia headed for the door to answer Jacky’s knock.

  ‘Never!’

  ‘Patricia,’ Elizabeth said pompously. ‘Where is your sense!’

  ‘Up on the shelf behind the hot-water bottle!’ And she was off.

  * * *

  Boxing Day was the day Julia Richards returned to the village where she had lived as a child. Her second husband had died a month before and having worked as a doctor all her life she had decided to retire and move back.

  She realised as soon as the car stopped outside the post office in Ebenezer Street that it had been a mistake to come on a dark winter evening, even though she didn’t want to be noticed. Even the fish and chip shop was closed. And the buildings were so carefully boarded against light escaping and revealing the presence of a town to enemy air craft, that if there was a pub she had no way of finding it. Not that she’d have entered if she found one. A woman on her own walking into what was firmly a man’s domain was a certain way of being remembered and discussed. That was something she hoped to avoid.

  There were few people about. Radios could be heard when she stopped to try and gather memory and find what she was looking for. Why did everything look so different at night? And the blackout made everything worse. The powerful car prowled around the small streets, anonymous, dark and gloomy with the lack of light. It was all so unfamiliar. She had imagined driving through and recognising shops and houses with ease. She passed a warden and rolled the window down and asked, ‘Excuse me, this is the village of Nant Cysgu, isn’t it?

  ‘Couldn’t say, Madam. I couldn’t tell you the name of the village.’ He didn’t stop his slow, steady walk and she drove the car alongside him.

  ‘Oh, come on!’ she said irritably. ‘I’m not a German spy! I used to live here.’

  ‘Then you won’t need to be asking me, will you?’

  ‘I’m a bit confused, that’s all. I thought there was a shop in Ebenezer Street called Llewellyn’s. Grocers it was. Do you know where it is?’

  ‘Llewelyn’s? Can’t say I know it, madam.’ He moved away from the slowly moving car and said, ‘Now, you’ll excuse me madam, but I can see a chink of light over by there and it’ll have to be dealt with.’ He crossed the road in front of the car, making her brake fiercely, and his torch showed in brief flashes as he opened a gate and walked up to a front door and banged loudly, demanding that the occupant, ‘Put that light out!’

  Giving up on Llewellyn’s grocer’s shop, Julia eventually found one place she was looking for, a house at the far end of the village, on a corner site surrounded by a large garden. She shone a pencil torch on the map beside her and frowned, then her dark eyes cleared. She had been confused by coming into the village from a different direction from the one intended. Damn the war and the stupid idea of removing all sign posts. She had wandered around the lanes for ages searching for the place.

  In the faint glow of her blinkered headlights she could see the for sale sign, although she was unable to make out the name on it. ‘Rose Cottage for sale,’ she murmured. ‘It was a miracle that brought me here at this moment. It was meant to be.’

  * * *

  It was too dark to see anything. The high hedge around the property made even a cursory exploration of the garden impossible. But she had to try. Parking the car on the grass verge she walked up the garden path and peered at the front. Risking a flash of her torch beam, she could see that the paint on the front door was peeling and in need of repair. The paintwork had been pink her grandfather had told her, and the walls a dirty white. He had changed that, working every daylight hour until the house was as perfect as his many skills could make it. The door was still white, the colour her grandfather had chosen when he had moved in.

  Small it had been then, only two rooms and one bedroom up in the thatched roof. As his family and his prosperity had grown, the house had grown with them. By the time Julia and her husband had left, it had become a five bedroomed house with a huge family kitchen and a modern bathroom. Slate had replaced the picturesque thatch and the white walls had been painted pink to match the name.

  Julia touched the door gently; almost a caress. It was where she had been born and where her grandparents had come when they had arrived, as penniless immigrants from Italy. Then her parents had lived here and continued to build the family business; it was here she had lived until university, college and eventually marriage had taken her to London. After that, her visits home had been rare, but now she wanted to return.

  The curtains were little more than rags behind dirt-ingrained windows. The door was ill-fitting and the place had all the indications of being empty and unused. Given a push, the door opened with an alarmingly loud scraping sound, and inside she found neglect and decay. She walked around from room to room remembering the furnishings, the curtains and carpets that had made the place such a comfortable home and laughter echoed in her thoughts as she also remembered it had been a happy one.

  The kitchen looked out over a very large garden which it was too dark to see. She wondered if her grandfather’s factory was still there and doubted it. Although solidly built of brick, the out-house would have fallen down years ago if the house itself was in this state, yet she hoped that the machinery with which ice cream had been made would have somehow survived. It had been grandfather’s ice cream that had brought the family from poverty into wealth and had paid for her to train as a doctor and make a good marriage. It had promised to give her daughter the opportunity for success too.

  Losing her lovely daughter to a man without ambition or the strength to allow his wife to finish her training had destroyed Julia. She remembered the quarrel that had parted them for ever, and shivered. Perhaps the house had shades of those dreadful days when she saw her daughter walk away to join the man she had defied her parents to marry, and heard her swear she would never see them again.

  She went out into the dark, damp, overgrown garden and, ignoring the threat of the prowling warden, she used the thin beam of her torch to have a cursory look. There were lots of flowers in what had once been borders. She experimentally pulled at a few dead phlox and lupins, filling her palm with seedheads. This had been a beautiful herbacious border with colour all through the year. Over there had been a bed of roses which climbed up the fence and peered over into the road for passers-by to admire and, occasionally, steal.

  Cold forced her back inside out of the wind. But she wasn’t ready to leave. In the back porch she found an oil lamp and, filling it from the nearby can, she lit it. Its glow was kind and gave the kitchen a softness that disguised the damp patches and the scuffed oil cloth and the rime of mildew on the chairs. Leaving it on, she walked through to the front door and listened to the quiet of the night. After London, it would certainly be strange. Now in her sixties, was she able to cope with all this? She knew she had to try.

  Footsteps approached and a young couple appeared in the shaft of light showing from the open front door. ‘Hello,’ Patricia said. ‘Are you moving in?’

  ‘I might be, in the spring,’ Julia replied. ‘My name is Doctor Julia Llewellyn. Who are you?’

  ‘I’m Patricia. Patricia Lloyd. This is Jacky Davies.’

  ‘Off to a party we are, but we were a bit early so we came for a walk first, like,’ Jacky contributed. Then he added politely, ‘Best you shut that door and cover the windows, if the warden sees a light you could get fined.’

  ‘That’s right, our dad got fined ten shillings a month ago. It was me who forgot to draw the blinds, though,’ Patricia confessed. Julia thanked them and went back inside. Her dark eyes were glowing. ‘Rose Cottage for sale AND meeting Patricia Lloyd… it was definitely “meant to be”.’

  * * *

  Twenty-seven people were already squashe
d into the Drew’s living room when Patricia and Jacky walked in and more arrived before they had removed their coats. The extra luxuries of Christmas had been saved and a spread of food on the kitchen table made them gasp. Besides sandwiches and the piles of welsh cakes and drop scones made on a griddle, there were pasties and sausage rolls, and the iced cake. Patricia groaned.

  ‘Mrs Drew, I wish I hadn’t eaten so much bubble and squeak,’ she complained.

  ‘Take some home for your packed lunch tomorrow, fach,’ Mrs Drew chuckled. ‘Roland, find a bag and put some bits and pieces safe for Patricia, will you?’

  Patricia turned to smile at Vanessa’s brother Roland whom she hadn’t noticed standing behind the door. ‘No Roland, no, I mustn’t.’ Before he could argue she added swiftly, ‘All right then, you’ve talked me into it.’

  He stepped forward and gave her a hug. ‘You’ll have an extra pasty for your cheek!’

  All the coats and hats had been left on the spare bed and she ran down a few minutes later wearing her party dress and headed straight for the fire. Squashed between Roland and Vanessa, with Vanessa’s fiancé Matthew Morris on Vanessa’s other side, she sat and listened to the buzz of conversations around her. She was buoyed up on the feeling of excitement swirling around her, as if the party were for her, and not her friend. She was so happy she doubted if even Vanessa, who was wearing Matthew’s engagement ring, felt as full of heart-bursting exhilaration. She was free of the guilt of five long years. Rightly or wrongly, it had been been lifted by that Nelda Roberts carrying on with her dad. She sparkled with the joy of it.

  She caught Matthew’s eye once or twice and was disconcerted by the way he stared at her, dark eyes slitted as he smiled. Matthew had the most beautiful eyes. Her heart jumped at the warmth in them. He was a boy she had always admired but, after meeting Vanessa, he had had eyes for no one else. She wasn’t jealous, it was obvious they were meant for each other, but he still made her blood over-heat in a rather delicious way.