Ice Cream in Winter Read online

  ‘Of course, Dad, and I’m sure it’ll work out all right. It’s just a bit frightening, that’s all. I thought I’d stay in this house for the rest of my life, looking after you.’

  ‘Good heaven’s girl, there’s more to life than that! Just wait till the war ends, you’ll find an interesting career and make a fortune. Or you could go back to nursing. Or marry a millionaire.’

  ‘Or marry old Mr Caradoc and look after him instead!’

  ‘Patricia,’ he laughed. ‘Why d’you want to look after someone? Why not look after yourself?’

  ‘I think it’s the only thing I can do,’ she said seriously. ‘I’m not clever, I couldn’t work in a bank like Elizabeth. Marion will find a husband before she’s eighteen but there’s poor me looking after sheep and pulling potatoes without a thought in my head to do anything else.’

  ‘Pity I sold the shop,’ Leonard said quietly. ‘You’re good at organising. You run this place and don’t think we aren’t aware of it. You’d run a business without any trouble at all.’

  * * *

  On the first of January Patricia finished work at one o’clock and hurried home. Her father had been out of the house far more during the six days since Christmas. The once secret affair between him and Nelda Roberts was news on everyone’s lips. Now there was talk of marriage everyone seemed to know.

  The freedom she had felt at what she had presumed was his release from mourning, had faded. The nightmares were worse, and worries about the future made the days as unhappy as the nights. Jacky Davies had been through this latest problem, he would be able to tell her what to expect when a parent remarried, and how to cope.

  There had been a fleeting moment when she had wanted to talk to Vanessa’s brother about it but, although Roland was much older, he hadn’t been married, nor been through the difficulties of losing a parent. No, best she talk to Jacky.

  Elizabeth was not at work and had promised to see to dinner. She had made a cottage pie the evening before so all Elizabeth had to do was remember to put it in the oven and keep the fire burning steadily. She pushed through the door sniffing hopefully. It was called cottage pie, but made with root vegetables and lentils in the place of meat, moistened with Bisto gravy.

  ‘Tasty though,’ she told her sisters. ‘Thank goodness for Bisto! If Britain wins the war it’ll be thanks to Bisto.’

  Jacky was out when she went around to where he lived with his Auntie Beryl in Ebenezer Street. Disconsolately she walked to the youth club which took place at the school, where a New Year dance was in progress. She helped Nelda Roberts run the Youth Club, dealing with the programme for courses, and arranging for payments to be met from the subscriptions handed in at each meeting. Nelda ran the sewing classes, cooking classes and flower arranging courses, and Patricia helped arrange the classrooms and set out chairs, helped by her father. But Patricia rarely attended the dances that took place there because her early mornings also meant early nights.

  The Youth Club was closed for the school holidays but her father had told her there was a dance on that evening. He had been called upon to stoke the boilers, clear the hall of most of its chairs, and he would be going in later to clear up.

  Waving away the hand held out for her sixpence, she went into the darkened room to find a dance in progress, couples in the dim glow of a few coloured lights were moving around the school hall with difficulty, to the sound of Al Bowley singing ‘Ferryboat Serenade’. Girls and a few boys lined the edge of the dance floor on chairs, tapping their feet and looking hopefully for someone to ask them to dance. Best dresses and heavy make-up that wouldn’t be allowed if their mothers’ knew showed the girls’ first painful steps towards growing up. Slicked back hair and uncomfortable collars and ties already adrift, revealed a similar suffering for the boys.

  Jacky needed very little persuasion to go for a walk. He had danced three times with Meriel Griffiths and had hoped to walk her home. But the chance of seeing Patricia was better. He liked Patricia but she always pushed aside his tentative invitations with a joke.

  ‘It depends on whether she likes you I suppose,’ he said when Patricia broached the subject of her father’s new ladyfriend. ‘If they marry, she might move in and settle down as a part of the group, but if you or your sisters make it clear that she isn’t wanted, then she and your dad’ll either find a home somewhere else, or ask you to move out.’

  ‘You’re cheerful! And there’s poor me expecting you to tell me I had nothing to worry about!’

  ‘I was only five, mind. I suppose five-year-olds are a bit of a nuisance. Your Marion is the youngest and she’s fifteen – and acting twenty! I expect it’ll be different for you.’

  ‘But you think I’d better let her know I’m on her side?’

  ‘Wouldn’t do any harm, now would it? You know her well enough anyway, her teaching at the Youth Club.’

  She walked home, leaving Jacky to return to the dance, and pondered on what was to be done. First, talk to her sisters. Then ask Dad to bring Nelda home to discuss it all properly.

  Marion took the news well, surprised but intrigued at the thought of their father courting.

  ‘Fancy our Dad being formal and polite and all that. D’you think he buys her flowers? And chocolates? Opens doors and lets her go first, like boys do with us – until we get to know them too well!’

  Elizabeth had known already.

  ‘I bumped into them at a café in Cardiff when I was shopping with a friend,’ she explained. ‘I think we should simply offer our congratulations. We’d embarrass them if we asked to discuss it as if we were the parents and they the young and foolish lovers.’

  ‘Now he’s found someone else, d’you think he’s stopped blaming me for causing Mam’s death?’ Patricia said quietly.

  ‘Silly ass if you think he ever did!’ Elizabeth said in her superior tone.

  Marion squeezed Patricia’s hand and nodded. ‘If he ever did, then this will make him forget, won’t it?’ She guessed that the lightly asked question was a symptom of Patricia’s constant guilt, and the cause of her bad dreams. ‘Hey!’ she shouted, suddenly outraged. ‘That’s my perfume you’ve go on! Elizabeth, she’s been stealing my perfume. Don’t deny it,’ she said as Patricia opened her mouth and prepared to argue. ‘I can smell it, no mistake. You must have used half the bottle.’ The two younger sister’s were soon arguing and laughing in a mock battle, which was stopped by the more serious Elizabeth.

  The question that had haunted Patricia for years had been exposed and dealt with, both sisters had reassured her in their way. The matter of her father and his ‘friend’ Nelda was being given some light too and Patricia hoped that tonight she would sleep peacefully and without dreams to frighten her.

  Her last thought was about seeing their father and Nelda up on the hill and she chuckled as she wondered what Elizabeth and Marion would have said if she had told them about their father and Nelda creeping out of the thicket on one of the coldest days of the year.

  Used to waking early, even when darkness made it seem like the middle of the night, Patricia stepped out of bed next morning at six o’clock and hurried to the bathroom with a dressing gown around her shivering shoulders. She wanted to start the day with a bath and the only way to get any peace was to get in before the rest of the household woke up. Working the odd hours the farmwork required meant she had been given a room of her own, now, with Marion sleeping beside her, she slid out with care. She was glad to have Marion there, to discuss the trivial happenings of the day, but at times like this it was a disadvantage.

  The geyser made a dreadful noise and she put her hands over her own ears as if to keep the sound from the rest of the family, but her father and sisters slept on. At seven-thirty when Elizabeth and Marion came down groggily demanding tea, she had the fire roaring, the breakfast table set and the kettle simmering cheerfully.

  ‘What are you going to do in Cardiff?’ Elizabeth asked, spreading a scrape of butter on the toast Patricia had made against th
e fire.

  ‘Talk about Matthew I expect!’ Patricia replied with a sigh. ‘Wherever we go, whatever we do, that’s all Vanessa does these days. Daft about him she is.’

  ‘At least Roland will be there, he might steer the conversation away from the nuptials,’ Elizabeth said.

  ‘He’ll drag you from art shop to art shop and expect you to be enthusiastic about cadmium blue and yellow ochre,’ Marion laughed.

  ‘Stop it you two or I’ll send a message to tell them I’ve got a headache and can’t go!’

  She wasn’t looking forward to the trip. Although pleased at the time Roland had suggested it, her thoughts had run very much on the lines of her sisters’, even though they were teasing.

  Furniture and art shops. What a way to spend a precious day off. Dull, boring, unexciting, when she could spend the time sitting near the fire reading a book. ‘You’re right, nothing will happen, except I’ll get chilblains and be sick of hearing about Matthew,’ she groaned. ‘Why don’t I go and do your food packing and you go to Cardiff instead?’ she said to Marion.

  ‘If he didn’t treat me like a child, I’d love to go with Roland,’ Marion sighed dreamily.

  ‘Roland!’ Patricia sniffed. ‘He’s ancient! And about as exciting as watching a goldfish swim around a bowl!’

  * * *

  They went by train. Alighting at Cardiff Central Station, they caught a bus and went to Roath Park. Roland and Vanessa had brought bread and cake crumbs to feed the birds on the lake. To her relief, Vanessa hadn’t mentioned Matthew once, instilled, it seemed, with the rare pleasure of a day out with her older brother, she had left all thoughts of her wedding behind her. Arm in arm, the two girls returned swiftly to their previous close friendship. So close that Patricia told her in giggling whispers about seeing her father and Nelda Roberts on the hill and of Jacky’s remarks about cold bums. The picture of it sent them into a fit of laughter and Roland smiled, even though he wasn’t privy to the secret.

  Cakes and tea in a café and a walk around the lake feeding the ducks and sea-gulls took up part of the afternoon. It was a freezing cold day and they slipped into a café a second time simply to warm themselves. Back at the town centre they wandered around the shops, where, to Patricia’s relief, Vanessa didn’t want to stare at china and bedding and furniture but shared Patricia’s enjoyment of buying two of Tommy Dorsey’s latest records, ‘And so do I’ and ‘Tradewinds’, and browsing through the bookshops. Roland almost bought a record of Anne Ziegler singing ‘Tales From Vienna Woods’, but was teased and finally talked into buying ‘Rumba Rombero’ by Xavier Cougat instead. Everything was fun. Roland was excellent company and it was as if Matthew didn’t exist.

  They planned to go to the pictures, but Roland promised them a meal first so they found a café and ordered pie and chips, wondering if they would find meat or the usual disguised vegetables inside. At half past six, only minutes after the official black-out time, the air-raid warning sounded and they half stood, prepared to run, then sat again as Roland said calmly.

  ‘Finish your dessert and we’ll go down to the shelter. Don’t rush. There’s more chance of being hurt struggling through an anxious crowd than by a bomb.’ In this he was wrong.

  When they had reached the doorway, the night was as bright as day as flares lit the sky. Incendiaries fell and exploded into flames, bringing terror and disbelief as fires quickly grew that made a ring of flames around the area.

  Roland stared wide-eyed for a second then dragged the girls back into the spurious safety of the café.

  The sound of high explosive bombs began with the scream of their descent, then the unholy roar and crump of their landing. Within minutes, the night was an inferno of flames and falling masonry, screams pierced the air between unrecognisable roaring and rumbling. It was all impossibly alien to the once peaceful scene of people quietly eating their meals. Patrica’s head was filled with a sickening fear and she clung to both Roland and Vanessa. Lights flashed through the windows around the edges of the blackout curtain which had been shifted by the gusts of air from the explosions. The flickering and startlingly bright flames outside easily found gaps as the wind disturbed the curtains. Vivid scenes added to their fears as a sudden and very close explosion shattered the windows and blew open the door.

  Roland stepped forward to close the door, which, made of glass and covered with protective tape, seemed a barrier to the insanity beyond. As he struggled to push the distorted wood back into place, the force of another explosion blew it off its hinges, throwing him with it across the room, slamming him almost playfully against the counter. The girls ran to him and held his arms as he recovered.

  Looking around through dust and devastation, they realised that everyone else had gone. The owners and waitresses obviously to some pre-arranged place of safety, the customers out and heading for a street shelter.

  ‘Come on, let’s find our way through to the back yard. The streets aren’t safe. There must be a shelter of sorts there.’ Holding the hand of both girls, he led them through the café to the kitchen. A curtain hung against a wall and presuming it would lead them to the yard, he moved towards it.

  Another screaming descent of a bomb could be heard, then a muffled but ear-splitting bang, followed by a roar of bricks falling. Dust filled the room and blinded them. Disorientated, they turned back and crouched on the floor. Roland urged them to crawl to where the dimly-seen, heavy, chopping table offered a little protection.

  ‘I want the toilet!’ Patricia said. ‘That’s the first thing I’ll do when it stops.’

  But it didn’t stop. The cacophony of madness raged on around them. The back door flew off its hinges and staggered as if walking on its corners to rest against the cooking range. Patricia heard screaming and realised it was Vanessa. Hugging her close, she murmured reassuring words, while her own terror mounted. They were going to die. No one could survive this.

  The screaming of bombs and the roar of their landings continued. More than an hour passed and the raging attack increased. After one particular terrifyingly loud explosion that shook the building like the hand of an angry giant, Patricia still talked to her friend but her voice sounded odd and she realised that the sounds had grown distorted since the bomb landed close by. She knew that if she survived, she would be deaf. She thought sadly that she would never hear her new record, she touched it and knew it was broken, lying in its sleeve in pieces.

  Blasts of hot air came through the doorway. Intensely hot. Enough to burn their breath. Each time, she expected it to develop a heart of fire and kill them all. The flames of burning buildings were clearly visible beyond the door, and with the horrendous noise now dulled by the damage to her eardrums, fire seemed to be the greatest threat, moving inexorably closer, soon to engulf the whole building. She could taste the soot and smoke on her lips, the air brought the stink of broken buildings with a cocktail of drains, ancient mortar and dampness.

  There were fires all around them, the sky was a fantastic firework display as flares floated down, some hovering in the air like chandeliers. Yet in the middle of such conflagration they were shivering. The intense cold of the night deepened as the hot air came and went. Outside, the night was filled with smoke and fire, and still the bombs rained down. In the hellish glow she looked at Vanessa’s face and saw her friend’s lips moving, her neck sinews stretched as if she were shouting but no sound came. She was deaf! She would never hear anything again. She was so glad to feel Roland’s arm around her.

  His arm tightened its grip as the floor on which they crouched began to move. At first she thought it was just her imagination but soon the floor jerked and tilted so they had to cling onto each other to stop themselves from sliding towards the open door. A sudden flare of light from beyond showed her that the doorstep was two feet below the bottom of the door. They were about to be dropped into the cellars.

  ‘Grab a hold of my legs and I’ll hang onto the counter,’ Roland shouted. Neither girl could understand what he was s
aying. He pointed to his legs and mimed in occasional flashes of light for them to hold on and he reached out and grabbed a firm hold of the built-in counter on which food was normally prepared. Patricia sobbed. She would have preferred to take her chance on dropping into the cellar, just to feel his arm around her. She held his leg and Vanessa did the same. Roland hoped he would be able to take their combined weight if the tilt increased.

  Hours passed and they slipped nearer and nearer to the edge, beyond which the darkness was even darker as the cellar awaited them like a hungry monster. They were all depending on Roland’s ability to support them. Slowly, Patricia reached out and managed to secure a hold on a joist and he sighed with relief as she took some of the strain from him. Vanessa continued to cling, her face a rictus of a silent scream.

  Fires still lit the damaged room intermittently and Patricia tried to reach her friend, to touch her and comfort her, but Vanessa stared towards the doorway, her mouth wide at the horror of their situation. They were all exhausted with the tension of believing every moment must be their last. Time ceased to have any meaning.

  It was past four on the third of January, before the darkness returned and the bombing slowly subsided. Ten hours after the warning was sounded, when the announcement finally went out, ‘Raiders Passed’.

  Patrica risked moving and slid closer to Vanessa and Roland, hugging them both and sobbing quietly. Freezing cold and shaken with the experience and thoroughly exhausted, they all relaxed their aching muscles, cuddled together for warmth and comfort. For a long time no one moved. Fits of coughing seized them as the dust fell and filled their mouths and nostrils and after each bout they returned to the closeness and reassurance of close contact with each other. For a long time there was no thought of moving. They could hear nothing and if people were outside calling to see if they needed help, the voices went unheard.