Holidays at Home Omnibus Read online

  ‘It’s half seven, she’ll be awake. Go and see her now, while the boys are still sleeping. I’ll listen for them waking. I won’t be going to bed yet. I thought I’d stay up and help your mother with breakfast.’

  Eirlys hugged her father affectionately. ‘Thanks, Dadda. I knew you wouldn’t mind me taking them on.’

  ‘Go on with you. I’ll chuck ’em though the window if they don’t behave, mind. Oh, and call at the bake house and ask for a loaf of bread, will you? The shop won’t open till nine and the lads ate all we had last night. On second thoughts, better get two.’

  * * *

  Hannah Wilcox and Eirlys were friends even though their age and their circumstances were different. Hannah was twenty-nine, and had been married to a man who, she had soon realised, was a heavy drinker. While alcohol was in control he had been violent towards her. After a fourth stay in hospital, to her parents’ embarrassment and shame she had sued for divorce – something unheard of in most families – and they steadfastly refused to accept it. They were both members of a local chapel where punishment was considered to be ennobling, and the rules of life were rigid. No mitigating circumstances were ever considered.

  Hannah knew the religion was one that suited her parents’ needs. They hated her but couldn’t admit it, so the breakdown of her marriage was something of which they could disapprove and for which they could punish her.

  Their hatred of her and the need to punish her was because her brother Rupert, whom they had adored, had died of pneumonia after she had passed the flu on to him, and they blamed her for being alive when he was dead. Her refusal to stay with her husband was a gift to them in their unhappiness. They constantly pressurised her to take him back, insisting that he was her husband until death. That solution was something Hannah had thought about often, after a severe beating had left her in pain and she could see no way out of her situation.

  It had been Eirlys Price and her parents who had helped her and supported her through the traumatic early months of the divorce procedure. Every move she made had been discouraged both by her parents and their friends, and the solicitor together with his staff also lacked sympathy, believing that a wife had to stay with a husband through everything.

  Members of her parents’ chapel called on her and talked until she thought her head would burst with the frustration of stating her case to uncaring ears, and listening to their lectures on her wickedness. She was ‘selfish’, ‘thinking only of herself’, ‘a wicked daughter’, she was told repeatedly. She should ‘spare a thought for the shame her parents were suffering’, she was reminded. It was only Eirlys and her parents, Morgan and Annie Price, who saved her sanity.

  After the separation and the plans for the divorce had shamed them in front of their Chapel ‘friends’, Hannah’s parents, intent on a reconciliation, had twice allowed her husband back into the house and tricked their daughter into being there alone, and twice he had made Hannah pregnant, each time also landing her in hospital with cuts, bruises and broken bones.

  Even when her parents visited her in hospital, they still refused to consider Hannah a free woman and insisted that she was married and should take her husband back. They quoted the marriage vows at her whenever she tried to reason with them, chanting them to drown out her reasoning. When they had reluctantly allowed her to return to their house, after she had been forced to give up the flat above the china shop, they had made sure she lived as unobtrusively as possible, confining her and the children to the two small rooms she had been allotted, not even allowing her to take the babies into the garden to play. Her shame was never to be forgotten. The world had to see they did not condone their daughter’s behaviour.

  When Hannah opened the door to Eirlys on the morning after the evacuees had arrived, she greeted Eirlys with a warning finger on her lips and they tiptoed into the living room where a fire burned low and a gas light flickered and popped in the draught.

  ‘Eirlys, this is a nice surprise.’ Hannah smiled as she poked some life into the fire and turned the gas light up a notch. ‘Anything important?’

  ‘I went to collect our evacuee and came back with three,’ Eirlys laughed. ‘Dadda was fine about it but our Mam wasn’t pleased.’ The smile slipped a little as she thought about her mother’s reaction, wondering if her mother would be persuaded to allow them to stay.

  ‘She’ll be as kind as your dad, don’t worry,’ Hannah assured her. ‘Her bark is always worse than her bite.’ She waited for her friend to say something more but recognising the hesitancy, guessing there was a favour to be asked, said, ‘Can I help? Mam and Dad can’t take one, not with us being here – at least that’s a point in my favour,’ she laughed. ‘But if I can do something to help you?’

  ‘The fact is, they don’t have many clothes and the ones they do have are very worn. I wondered if you could make them some trousers and shirts out of some of Dad’s old ones? It will be expensive to buy new for all three of them. We’ll pay of course.’

  ‘Bring around what you’ve got and I’ll look in my odds-and-ends cupboard and I’m sure we’ll sort out something. Good practise maybe. There was a piece on the paper last week about us having to manage without new clothes if the war lasts more than a year or so.’

  ‘But it won’t, will it? This time next year we’ll be laughing at all the scaremongering, won’t we?’

  ‘The last war went on for four years,’ Hannah said doubtfully.

  ‘Yes, but we’ve learned something since then, haven’t we?’

  Hannah didn’t think so but she said nothing. Talk of war was frightening and rumours varied from a brief skirmish, over by Christmas, to years of deprivation and horror. Hannah didn’t want to think about it. Like many other women she preferred pretending the battles would happen far away and to people she didn’t know.

  ‘How is Johnny?’ she asked, hoping to change the subject. ‘What does he think of Stanley, Harold and Percival Love?’

  ‘Oh, I didn’t see him last night. Sorting out the evacuees took most of the evening. Luckily we were meeting at his mam’s house so I wasn’t letting him down. Besides, he knew the evacuees were coming; he’d have guessed what happened and understood.’

  ‘What is he doing now the beach is closing for the winter? Has he got a job yet?’

  Because Johnny Castle’s family ran Piper’s Café and their stalls on St David’s Well Bay during the summer months, when the town was filled with day-trippers and holiday-makers attracted to the small town and its lovely sandy beaches, they all had to seek other employment during the winter.

  ‘He’s decorating old Mrs Piper’s house at the moment, and hating it. Johnny loves working on the sands, and likes to be out of doors, working with people. He dreads the end of the beach season. He never minds painting the stalls and swingboats and the like, smartening them up for the season, that’s a part of the work on the beach, but painting Granny Molly Piper’s house is not a favourite pastime.’

  ‘Poor Johnny. Mrs “Granny Moll” Piper isn’t even his real gran, is she?’ Hannah smiled.

  ‘No, but she acts as though he is. He and Taff have to do as she says the same as their cousins.’

  The friends said goodbye, with the decision made to use the newly washed clothes as a guide to making new outfits for the boys in time for the following week when they would all be starting at the local school.

  Eirlys was thinking about Johnny Castle as she closed the gate behind her. She knew something of the protest about the name of the cafés and stalls owned by Molly Piper.

  It was the Castle family who ran the businesses belonging to Moll Piper, which had been started by her grandparents, Joseph and Harriet Piper, with a small wooden café close to the sands. Moll Piper’s daughter Marged and her husband Huw Castle had worked on the sands since they were children and Huw’s brother Bleddyn had worked beside them. As soon as they were old enough, their own children had become involved, the cousins working happily as a team. Although most members of the workforce wer
e called Castle, the name of Piper was still used and would be, Moll told them, until the last Piper was dead.

  As she and her unmarried daughter, Marged’s sister Audrey, were the last two, Huw and Bleddyn constantly tried to persuade her to change her mind and rename the business – but to no avail. Bleddyn and Huw felt it was an injustice, as they had managed the business since Moll’s husband had died and Moll had practically nothing to do with the day-to-day organisation. Huw’s wife Marged avoided discussing it; agreeing with her husband, agreeing with Moll, using lots of words but saying nothing.

  It was past eight o’clock that morning as Eirlys walked thoughtfully back to her parents’ house in Conroy Street. She hastily prepared breakfast for them all, offering toast and eggs to the subdued boys. Then, leaving her father to look after them until her mother returned from work at one o’clock, when he would at last be able to get some sleep, she made her way to the council offices and the continuing work of arranging schools and checking on the accommodation for the children.

  Every placement had to be investigated, the schools prepared for the extra pupils, meetings arranged for the families to sort out any difficulties before they developed into problems. There were endless reports and forms to deal with, people to send out with questionnaires regarding the evacuees and their welfare. She ate a snack lunch at her desk, stopping only briefly to look out at the bustling town. As all the shops and offices closed between one and two o’clock, the shoppers gradually disappeared and only a few people walked the pavements.

  She saw Johnny riding past on his bicycle and guessed he had been sent to buy more paint to finish his decorating for Granny Moll Piper. She didn’t wave. He wouldn’t expect to see her there at her window high above the street.

  He was whistling and wobbling his way through a group of workmen standing examining a delivery of buckets and stirrup pumps that had been unloaded on to the road. How everything was changing. Even though not a single bomb had been dropped, the town was being turned inside out in preparation for war.

  She shivered as she thought of the dangers to come in the pretty little town, and the young men who were leaving in droves to fight an invisible enemy far away across the sea.

  She thought of Ken Ward from whom she had parted recently. He had wanted so badly to join the army and fight, but asthma had meant he received Grade Four at his medical, too low for any kind of enemy action. His family had moved to London and Ken had accepted a job with a small theatre group there and had asked her to go with him, but she had refused to leave St David’s Well. She had often wondered if the decision had been the right one and each time decided it had been.

  She wouldn’t have stood on the railway platform without regret and watched him leave if she had really loved him. An unwillingness to leave her parents and a job she enjoyed wouldn’t have entered her mind. She missed him, though; they had been friends for several years.

  At five thirty, when she began to tidy her desk and prepare to leave, she was handed another pile of papers and asked to try to get them filed before she went home. With a sigh, she agreed. She was anxious about the evacuees, and wondered how they had fared during their first day, but the work at the council offices had to be kept up to date. With so many men already gone to join the forces she couldn’t refuse to work longer hours.

  She stretched her arms, yawned widely, walked around her desk a few times to refresh herself. A cup of tea, then back to the paperwork. She gathered the papers and began to sort them out. Judging by the size of the pile, it looked like being two more hours before she could go home.

  As she walked up the back path towards the kitchen door later that evening, she almost fell over a bike. With the blackout already in force the nights were dark with only the occasionally ground-facing light of a bicycle passing, or the partially covered car lights that only made the night seem darker.

  ‘Who left their bike where I could fall over it?’ she demanded as she closed the door and switched on the kitchen light to examine her shin.

  ‘Me, and I’m sorry,’ Johnny Castle grinned.

  Her spirits lifted at the sight of him, her tiredness was forgotten. He was small, as most of the Castle family were, only five feet seven, dark and strong and bursting with an energy that seemed to have laughter as its main ingredient. Johnny, more than the others, seemed to be filled with the joy of life. No one, Eirlys thought as she leaned forward for a brief kiss, no one could be miserable with Johnny Castle near.

  ‘Sorry about last night, Johnny. I’ll take the magazines to your mam later. Did you hear about the three boys? Stanley Love, aged ten, Harold aged eight and little Percival who is six.’

  ‘Yes, the news has spread, so I thought I’d call to see how you’re managing. Granny Moll said she has some bedding if you need it, and some boys’ clothes left from my cousins. Heaven alone knows why she kept them but perhaps we’ll be glad she did, eh?’

  ‘Thanks. I’ll go and see what she’s found at the weekend.’

  ‘Who looked after them while your mam was at the shop?’

  ‘Our Dadda. He’s so good about taking them in.’ She turned and smiled at Morgan, who was reading the paper. ‘He should have been sleeping after working the night shift, but until we get them into school and properly settled we have to muddle through.’

  ‘I took them to the park,’ Morgan told them, ‘then Mam made them some chips. Harold said they weren’t bad, but little Percival told her they weren’t as good as the chip shop,’ he laughed.

  ‘He’s going to be hard to please, that one,’ Johnny smiled. They crept upstairs and looked at the three sleeping children. Stanley and Harold looked peaceful, but there was a scowl on Percival’s face that made them smile.

  ‘He’s a cheerful-looking chap, I don’t think!’ Johnny said as they went down again.

  ‘He’s only six and I don’t think he can possibly understand what’s happening to them.’

  ‘I’ll bring them a stick of seaside rock tomorrow, and at the weekend perhaps we can introduce them to the joys of the beach, eh? The swingboats and the helter-skelter and the stalls have all gone but Auntie Audrey is still opening the rock and sweet shop this month.’

  ‘Do you know, Johnny,’ Eirlys said in wonder, ‘Mrs Francis told us they might never have seen the sea. Isn’t that amazing?’

  When Eirlys’s mother came into the kitchen and saw the pile of old clothes on the kitchen table, sorted for Hannah to use as patterns for newer ones, she put her hands on her hips, a well-known gesture meaning she was not pleased.

  ‘When am I going to get this table cleared so I can set it for supper?’ she demanded.

  Seeing them together it was clear that Eirlys had inherited little from her mother. Annie was not tall, but she was plump, with dark eyes, and her long straight hair was always falling out of the bun with which she tried to control it. Eirlys was so like her father with their fair curly hair and blue eyes, and the wonderful milk-and-roses complexion to match. Johnny thought Eirlys would be ever young and Morgan would look as youthful when he was fifty as he did today. They were both slimly built and with an elegance in the way they walked, and a neatness that was always apparent, whatever task they undertook.

  After greeting Johnny, Annie turned to her husband and daughter. ‘What were you thinking of, girl?’ she demanded. ‘I was told we had to have one.’ She waved a solitary finger in front of Eirlys’s face. ‘One girl. Now you and your father tell me we have three and you expect me to have them permanently? And boys at that. I never could cope with boys!’

  ‘I’m off,’ Johnny laughed. ‘Remember the Queensbury Rules, mind, Mrs Price!’ He could hear the shrill voice complaining as he jumped on his bike and wobbled his way down the path and on to the road. Thank goodness Eirlys followed her father in temperament as well as looks, and not her quick-tempered mother.

  * * *

  Johnny Castle lived in Brook Lane with his father Bleddyn, his mother Irene and his brother Taff. Apart from his rather sick
ly mother, Irene, who refused, they all worked on the sands during the summer months, sharing responsibility for the various entertainments as well as Piper’s Café on the cliff above the beach and Piper’s fish-and-chip shop and café in the town. Bleddyn’s brother Huw and his family were the owners of the businesses together with Granny Moll, whose parents had begun it all, but Bleddyn had helped since he and Huw were children and he was very much involved, although, to his occasional irritation, Granny Moll, Huw’s mother-in-law and owner of the business, always had the final word on any decision.

  Running the fish-and-chip shop in town was Bleddyn’s main duty, and as Johnny parked his bicycle in the shed and went into the house, he was closely followed by his father, who had just closed the café for the night.

  ‘Been somewhere nice?’ Bleddyn asked. ‘Pictures?’

  ‘No, Eirlys couldn’t come. She’s been helping find homes for the evacuees who arrived yesterday and guess what?’

  ‘Don’t tell me we’ve got to have one?’ He frowned. ‘Your mother couldn’t cope, could you Irene?’

  ‘No, not us, but Eirlys only came home with three boys!’

  ‘What did Mrs Price have to say to that?’ Bleddyn laughed. ‘I bet she let everyone know she wasn’t pleased. Annie Price doesn’t whisper at the best of times and they probably heard her reaction in Grange Road!’

  ‘Mr Price seemed all right about it. He’s a good-natured man, isn’t he?’

  ‘Yes,’ Bleddyn agreed. ‘I get on well with Morgan Price. He’s all right, isn’t he, Irene?’ He looked across the room, trying to encourage his wife to take part in the conversation.

  ‘What are they like, these kids from London, then?’ Irene asked, ignoring his comment about Morgan Price.

  ‘Most of them were tidy enough but a few of them looked real poor. Eirlys said theirs were clean and well nourished but they need clothes and a few possessions to make them feel at home. I was wondering, Mam, would you mind if I took my old train set over? And perhaps a few of our games and books?’