The Homecoming Read online

  * * *

  The following Tuesday, Molly set off to the woods on the sea side of the castle. A terrace of small houses – one of which belonged to the Howes – ran along the road facing the sea, and behind them a path ran between houses and the tree-covered slope. A track led up through a strip of woodland to the castle mound. A sea mist was adding to the chill of the October evening. It was dark once she left the lights along the road, but nevertheless, she kept to the shadows as she worked her way around between the backs of houses and the beginning of the wood.

  The trees made strange shapes that seemed to move as she passed them. Leaves touched her face and branches of straggly brambles caught at her trousers and pulled her back. Trying to walk without making a sound added to her fear, the small noises she did make frightening her. The castle loomed up into the sky as she climbed the grassy mound, black and very different from its day-time tranquillity. She was relieved when she finally stood near the corner of the building which had once been the chapel.

  Following the high walls, she worked her way blindly, feeling the walls for guidance, nervous now there was no light at all to guide her to the next corner. There a window had been weakened by the regular visits of Neville Nolan and his gang and she stopped and waited for her man-friend to arrive.

  The path at this point was narrow, reduced in width by a stream of water coming from the castle wall that had weakened the earth causing it to slide down occasionally to rest against the allotment fence. The blackness of the night got to her and she couldn’t stay there listening for him.

  The path was hardly wide enough for her to walk and she sidled sideways, her back to the walls, moving around towards the gateway, where once a portcullis had protected it from invasion. The silence was palpable, the night air pressing in on her, clammy and still and seeming to hum in her ears. Her heart was racing as she stood expecting to hear a sound that threatened her. But with what she hadn’t any idea, it was just that the night seemed to crackle with danger.

  This wasn’t a good idea. Why hadn’t she insisted he met her on the road below and walked with her through this eerie place? Bravado had made her laugh when he had suggested it. Now she regretted her confidence. She decided that in future she would arrange to meet him where there was some light, and they would walk through the trees and around the walls together. Adventure or not, this was definitely the last time.

  As she reached the corner where, at each side of the gateway, the walls recessed for towers which had never been built, she gave a small sigh of relief. At least there were distant lights, the shops along the road giving out a glow, and there was the sound of people and cars passing not far away. More confident now, but still intending to make this the last time, she stepped into the tower recess and a figure appeared and stopped right in front of her; big, threatening and too close for her to run.

  Afterwards, she thought he had been as startled at the confrontation as she, but at the moment it was all her nightmares and fear reaching fruition at once. She attempted to scream but the push he gave her sent her sliding then falling, off the path, down through the undergrowth which hid a steep bank, until she came to a stop, unharmed but breathless and terribly afraid, near the fence of the allotments.

  She held her breath and listened but there wasn’t a sound. Where was he, the man who attacked her? And where was her boyfriend? Why wasn’t he rushing to help? She stood up and pressed herself into a blackthorn bush unaware of the discomfort of the prickly branches, and stared, wide-eyed, around her. The light coming from the road was limited but she could make out the dark towering walls of the castle above her.

  Then the faint light from the street lamps began to fade as rain began to fall, softly, with a gentle hiss that obliterated all sound. Where was he, this hooligan who had frightened her? Was he still up there watching her, waiting for her to move? Intending to push her again? Only this time to wait until she was near the high wall from where he could push her down onto the road far below? Afraid to move, shivering with the chill of the rain that was slowly soaking her right through, she listened, half imagining she could hear his breathing above the softly falling rain.

  After an age, she moved out of the shadows and, slowly at first, then at a low, scuttling run, hurried down the grassy slope towards the gate opposite Stella’s house. The castle gate was locked as she knew it would be but nothing would persuade her to go back through the wood. Having to climb the gate made her utter small squeaks of fear, expecting at every moment the man to reappear and attack her.

  Then she heard footsteps running towards her. She felt her fingers weaken, the muscles in her legs failed her and she fell back from the gate and prepared to run, not thinking where, just running from whatever new danger threatened.

  ‘Molly? Is that you, love?’

  ‘Thank goodness!’ she sobbed. ‘Where have you been? Why were you so late? There’s a man… and he pushed me, and…’ Explanations were muffled as she clung to him across the metal barrier. Then he was over the gate in a leap and holding her trembling body to his own. She smelled of damp earth and rotting leaves.

  ‘Come on, love. Whoever he is he’ll be well gone now. Some idiot of a tramp most likely, frightening you away from the spot he’d chosen for the night.’ He helped her over the gate, concern for her fright making him careless of being seen, and talking soothingly, began to walk her home.

  ‘Molly?’ Lydia stepped out of a shop doorway where she had been admiring some shoes, and bumped into her friend. For one heart-stopping moment she thought Molly’s companion, with his arms draped so affectionately around her shoulders was Glyn. Then she realised it was Glyn’s brother. So Tomos was Molly’s secret lover. No wonder she wanted to keep his identity a secret!

  ‘Tomos! So you are the married man who’s wife doesn’t love him? Molly, how could you?’

  ‘Please, Lydia, keep it to yourself,’ Tomos pleaded, after trying in vain to bluff it out. ‘All right, we’ve been seeing each other for a year, what can you tell us that we haven’t already said ourselves a thousand times? Melanie and I have never loved each other, you know that’s true. We both know our marriage was a mistake.’

  ‘Please, Lydia, we don’t want it all to come out now, not like this.’

  Molly explained about the attack and gradually Lydia’s outrage cooled. ‘You could at least be honest enough to tell her,’ she said. ‘Others will soon know.’

  Lydia was shocked. It was one thing to share the secret of a love affair but very different when you knew and liked the unsuspecting wife. How could she keep quiet and watch Melanie being cheated?

  ‘We will tell Melanie, and soon,’ Tomos said, ‘but not now. Please, keep quiet for a little while longer? Let me tell her when the moment is right?’

  After a lot of persuading, Lydia gave her word. She was still raw with the unhappiness of Glyn telling her he had found someone else and knowing Tomos’s parents and his wife made her more sensitive than she might otherwise have been. ‘I won’t cover for you, mind,’ she said firmly. ‘Not like I did the day you pretended to go home with a bilious attack.’ She saw from Molly’s expression that her guess had been correct. ‘I’ll keep quiet because it’s best for Melanie to hear about this from you, Tomos. But don’t even think of asking me to be your alibi because that is something I will not do.’

  After the frightening experience in the castle grounds, which had resulted in their being seen by Lydia, Tomos and Molly continued to meet there, although Molly would never venture alone further than the gate, which was near Lydia’s Auntie Stella’s. There the street lights and the activity around the fish and chip shop on the main road at least gave them warning of someone approaching. Together, Molly clinging to him nervously, they would walk up through the allotments over a weakened section of fence. They would make their way to their favourite place at the back of the castle behind the chapel block and snuggle against its walls in precious privacy.

  One evening Tomos arrived early. His wife, Melanie
had gone to the pictures and he slipped in via the wood and wandered around the castle looking for a way inside. He saw that he could gain access through a window which had been carelessly blocked. With little trouble, he pushed some of rocks aside and widened the hole which, he guessed, was regularly used by children.

  Although she was afraid, Molly wouldn’t show it: she was the ‘bit of fun’, wasn’t she? Always ready for laughter and adventure, taking on any ‘dare’. Not the established and complaisant wife! With encouragement and stifled laughter they went inside and found a room with the roof intact. It smelled unpleasantly of dampness and other indistinguishable odours but it promised a winter of, if not comfort, at least shelter from the wind and rain and, with the public forbidden entry, blessed privacy.

  ‘Thank goodness Lydia promised to keep our secret,’ Molly said. ‘At least she’s the only one who knows.’ In this, however, she was wrong.

  * * *

  Gimlet was fuming. He went round to Billy Jones’s house and stumped up the stairs from the kitchen without waiting for an invitation. ‘Talked about, we are, and all because of that stupid son of mine.’

  ‘Which one?’ Billy asked, offering him a chair.

  Gimlet was too angry to sit, he paced up and down the room glaring at the walls as if the blame was written across them. ‘That damned stupid Tomos of course! Only gone and found himself another woman, hasn’t he!’

  ‘Never!’

  ‘And his little wife Melanie sitting at home embroidering pillowcases for when they get a place of their own. What are we going to do, Billy?’

  ‘We?’ Billy chuckled. ‘We? Nothing to do with me, and glad I am to say it.’

  ‘I want to give him a real fright, got any ideas?’

  ‘Tell him you’ve let his room and want him out?’ Billy suggested. ‘I’ve always thought your Mary has made them too comfortable, mind.’

  ‘You’ve got to help me, Billy. Imagine what it’s like me having to face his poor wife knowing what I know. Terrible it is.’

  ‘What can I do?’ Billy asked in exasperation.

  ‘They’re meeting at the castle tonight and I thought we’d arrange a sort of welcoming committee. I want to warn them off and I don’t want to be overheard. The fewer that find out the better. Facing them in their little ‘love nest’ will be more of a shock. But first I thought we’d have a bit of fun. You with me, boy?’ When he explained what he had planned, Billy nodded agreement.

  ‘Too good to miss,’ he smiled. ‘We aren’t too old for a bit of a lark!’

  Tomos and Molly weren’t meeting at the castle that Tuesday evening. Melanie had gone to visit her mother in Cardiff for a few days, and they were making the most of their unexpected freedom. They were going to town to see a film and pretend for a while that they were a normal, happy, courting couple.

  Two hours later, while Tomos and Molly were happily enjoying the comfort of sitting in the warm, dark cinema with their arms around each other, Gimlet and Billy were shivering with the cold, waiting in the castle for them to appear. Fortunately the night was clear and dry. Between them the men carried a couple of sheets and several torches with which they planned to frighten the couple, have a bit of a laugh before revealing themselves, sharply changing the mood to one of seriousness and warning them that their secret was well and truly out.

  Unaware they they were being watched by a group of small boys led by Neville Nolan, they practiced opening the sheets and covering their heads with them, using the torches held in their mouths to light the apparitions, planning the unearthly moans.

  As they were so engaged, the boys, who had entered the castle close behind them with the ease of regular practise, crept up behind them and, while they were ensconced in the sheets, touched them and whispered a low moaning wail in their ears.

  Leaping up, frantically trying to escape from the clinging folds, dropping the torches and bumping into each other, the two men finally extricated themselves and ran to where they had entered, and, each trying to be first, made their escape.

  As the first conspirator reached the ground he was hit severely across his head. When Gimlet finally managed, with fumbling fingers, to find the spare torch, he discovered that Billy was unconscious and bleeding from a head wound.

  Chapter Three

  Leaving Billy on the ground with a coat thrown over him and a torch, lit, near his hand, Gimlet ran to the gate, vaulted over it like a two year old and rushed to knock on Stella’s door. Although it had been a serious attack, Gimlet did not want the police involved.

  ‘Just go and phone for Glyn, will you?’ he asked the bemused lady. ‘Best I go back and wait with Billy.’ He explained where he would be and ran back to sit beside Billy who was sitting up looking around and wondering what had happened.

  After the phone box call to Howes’ Taxis to explain to Glyn that his father needed him at the castle, Stella called on Lydia to tell her Billy was hurt. Lydia insisted on coming at once.

  Her mother’s reaction was to begin to sob and cry and demand sleeping tablets to shut out the pain.

  ‘Mam,’ Lydia patiently explained, ‘I’ve got to go and see to Dad. You’ll have to stay awake until I get back. You’ll want to know how he is, won’t you?’

  ‘I can’t face it. You’ll have to go for the doctor.’

  ‘No, you don’t need the doctor, not this time. Dad’s been attacked and I have to go.’

  ‘You don’t understand,’ wailed Annie. She crawled from her bed and took sleeping tablets as soon as Lydia closed the door behind her.

  Lydia and Stella hurried back through the dark streets, each wondering if they should stop at the police station but agreeing that, until they knew exactly what had happened, they were wisest to do as Gimlet asked and avoid telling anyone.

  Lydia was shocked when she saw her father’s face and she gasped before preparing to ask the obvious, ‘What happened?’

  ‘Don’t ask,’ was Billy’s mournful greeting. ‘One minute we were climbing down from the castle window and the next Gimlet tripping over me, then there was poor me on the floor and out as cold as a fish on a slab and now I’m as giddy as a ten-pint jelly. And neither of us knows what happened.’

  ‘What were you doing in the castle at this time of night for heaven’s sake!’

  ‘Oh, it was all a bit of a lark,’ Billy hedged, glancing at Gimlet.

  Lydia took the bowl of water and bandages which Stella had brought and began bathing her father’s face. He appeared to have fallen flat on his face, the skin was grazed and bruises were already darkening his chin, nose and forehead. On the back of his head was a frighteningly large swelling, which he was refusing to explain. She was so intent on her father’s injuries she hardly noticed the presence of Glyn. When he spoke she was surprised at his presence.

  ‘Sorry your father was hurt, Lydia,’ Glyn said, stepping towards her. ‘What were the daft pair doing?’

  ‘I don’t know, but I’m not moving from here until we’re told!’ she said firmly.

  He took the bowl from her and took it back to the kitchen. ‘I’ve put the kettle on for more tea, I think we could do with it, while we wait for the explanation,’ he said.

  ‘Best we tell them, Gimlet,’ Billy muttered and Gimlet nodded solemnly.

  They waited until the tea was poured, then, in sepulchral tones Billy tried to explain that they were preparing to be ghosts. ‘I found out that Tomos has a girlfriend. Sneaking about seeing another women he is, while his poor wife sits at home trusting him.’ He looked at Glyn and the others to see how they were taking the news.

  ‘We thought we’d have a bit of fun, you know, frighten them a bit then get serious and give them a lecture.’

  ‘But it was you two who had the fright?’ As the explanations became more detailed under questioning, Glyn’s serious expression collapsed and he and Lydia shared a grin which exploded into laughter which was partly relief and partly pure merriment.

  ‘Really, Dad, what a stupid thing to do!�
� Lydia tried to scold but failed to stop giggling.

  When the laughter had subsided, Billy said quietly, ‘Fools we were for sure, but what puzzles me and Gimlet, is this. What reason would someone have to discourage us from going into the castle?’

  ‘It was kids surely?’

  ‘Kids it was who frightened us, and serve us both right for that, mind. But this slap on the head, now,’ he touched his bandaged head carefully, ‘this wasn’t the work of no kids, was it? Someone doesn’t want us around the castle.’

  ‘I think we should tell the police,’ Stella said. ‘Whatever reason they had for being there, it couldn’t have been an honest one if they did that to poor Billy.’ She touched his head, adjusted the bandage, obviously anxious about him. But she spoke briskly when she added, ‘Silly fools you were, the pair of you.’

  Billy began to shake his head, but groaned as it began to hurt.

  ‘No, Stella,’ Gimlet said urgently. ‘Please, let’s keep this to ourselves. I wouldn’t want to explain, not about Molly and – he stopped and looked at Glyn and Lydia.

  ‘All right, we’ll say nothing about that fool of a brother of mine.’ Glyn spoke with obvious disapproval, but he agreed with the others that perhaps it was wisest to forget the incident. ‘But,’ he added, if there’s any more trouble up there, I’ll change my mind and go straight to the police. Right?’

  ‘If there’s more trouble up at that damned castle, we won’t be involved, for sure!’ Billy replied, ‘Eh, Gimlet?’