Changing Patterns (3 page)

‘She’ll be in such a state she won’t know what to do with herself. She adores Tom,’ Ellen sobbed. ‘We have to go to her. Now.’ She pulled at the lapels of his overalls to stress her words. ‘Now, Ted, right away. She’ll need us.’

Hannah stopped in her tracks at the bottom of the stairs. ‘You’ll take – the kids with you?’

‘Of course we bloody will.’ Ellen didn’t look at his mother. ‘I wouldn’t leave them with you. I wouldn’t leave a dog with you.’

‘Well, you’ve changed your tune. You’ve foisted her – them – on me often enough in the past.’

‘Mother!’ Ted roared. ‘Go, get out – go to bed.’

‘Well!’ Crimson with annoyance she jerked the curtain aside and hauled herself onto the first step.

They waited, listening to the creak of the stairs under her heavy tread before either spoke again.

‘We have to go to Mary, Ted.’ Ellen could hardly get the words out. She felt as though her chest was bursting.

‘We can’t.’

‘Tomorrow, in the morning then, as soon as it’s light.’

‘Now just a minute, love.’ Ted took her face between his hands. ‘Look at me.’

She stared at him.

‘There’s nothing we can do. It’s happened. And Mary’s got Peter to look after her. I think she’ll want to be left alone. At least for now.’

‘What are you talking about?’ Her eyes widened. ‘Of course we have to go. She’s my sister. He was my brother. I want to be with her.’ She couldn’t believe what he was saying. ‘I need to be with her.’

‘Not yet.’

‘Yes.’

‘No, love. When it’s the funeral.’

How could he be so cold, so practical? Ellen pushed him away, took a few steps backward until she walked into the table. She gripped the edges. ‘I can’t stay here. I can’t carry on as though nothing’s happened. We have to go.’

‘I can’t leave the shop just like that.’

‘Why not? You’ve got Archie. You’ve said he bakes as good as you.’ Her voice was shrill.

‘I can’t.’ Ted came towards her, holding out his hand.

She knocked it away from her. ‘Why?’ she demanded again. She moved, putting the table between them. She didn’t trust herself not to hit him.

‘There’s still the shop. I can’t ask him to do both. He can’t bake and serve – wouldn’t be fair to ask him. And Doreen doesn’t know all the ropes yet.’

‘She’s been working for you for months. If she doesn’t know how to serve by now you should sack her.’

‘No. I’m sorry, Ellen, I can’t leave the shop just like that.’

‘Then shut the bloody place.’ Why he was arguing about something so important to her? So awful?

And then she knew. It wasn’t the shop he didn’t want to leave. She put the flat of her hands on the table, held her breath, swallowed. For a long moment they watched one another.

‘Then I’ll go on my own.’

‘Where’ve you been for the last two days?’ Nelly Shuttleworth hoisted the two heavy baskets of shopping onto the kitchen table and rubbed at the marks that the handles had left on her arms. Breathing deeply from her walk from the bus stop, she glanced through the back door where her son was slouched in a chair in the yard.

‘Why?’ George didn’t turn round. A swirl of cigarette smoke rose above his head.

‘Because I’m asking, that’s why.’ Nelly took out a long pin from the crumpled black felt hat, pulled it off with a sigh of relief and scratched her head. ‘You go off without a word for two days and don’t expect me to ask where you’ve been?’

‘Because it’s none of your business.’

‘My house, my business. So, where’ve you been?’ She unloaded brown paper bags of sugar and tea onto the table. Twisting the ends of the tissue paper wrapped around a large loaf, she put it into the white enamel bread bin in the pantry. Resting her hands on the stone slab she tried to catch her breath. The old corset she was wearing was now too small for her; she’d have to chuck it. ‘George?’

‘For Christ’s sake, I said – business!’

‘And I asked what sort.’ Nelly spoke sharply. ‘If you’re going to bring trouble to my door I need to know.’

‘Stop fucking nagging.’ George felt around on the flags by his feet, picked up a small stone and aimed it at a ginger tom that appeared on top of the yard wall. He missed but, frightened by the clatter against the bricks, the cat sprang onto the roof of next door’s lavatory. George grunted in satisfaction.

‘Watch your mouth.’ Nelly tipped potatoes, carrots and peas from the other basket into a big ceramic bowl. ‘And there’s no need to be cruel either.’

George stood and came to lean against the doorframe. ‘If anybody asks, I was here all the time.’

‘Who’ll ask?’

He lifted his shoulders. ‘Dunno. Anybody.’

‘And the truth?’

‘If you must know I was in Manchester with Harry Bradshaw.’

‘Up to no good, then.’ Nelly set her mouth in a grim line.

‘Just some old business I had to deal with.’

‘What old business?’ Why did she suddenly feel uneasy? She studied him. There was something in his eyes; a glittering excitement, a look of malicious triumph. Nelly wondered which poor sod had got on the wrong side of her son this time.

‘Nothing for you to bother your head about.’ George walked over to her, put his arm around her shoulder. ‘Nothing to bother about at all.’

‘I wanted to be here. I couldn’t bear the thought of you on your own.’ Ellen spoke in shuddering breaths and clutched a sodden handkerchief. As soon as the children had gone to bed she’d burst into uncontrollable tears.

‘I’m not on my own, love, I’ve got Peter.’ Mary gave Ellen a wan smile. ‘Still you’re here now and I’m glad.’ Even as she spoke Mary wondered why she’d said it. It wasn’t true. She wanted only to be left alone to grieve.

Having Ellen and the children here meant she had to be strong. She’d realised that as soon as Ellen fell tearfully into her arms, leaving Peter to lift the children from the train. Her sister still assumed it was her right to be indulged and protected, Mary reflected with some bitterness, and that
she
would provide that comfort when all she wanted to do was to sleep to block out the awful images of Tom dying in the road.

Despite this, it hurt that Ted hadn’t come to Wales. He had been Tom’s best friend once. The least he could have done was brought Ellen and the children in his van, even if he had to go back to the shop. Stranger still, her sister hadn’t once mentioned her husband.

‘Where is Peter?’ Ellen wiped her eyes and hiccupped.

‘Next door. He went round to see if Gwyneth’s okay. She’s been in a right state since … since it happened. She was very fond of Tom, you know that.’ And getting Ellen’s hysterical telephone call in the middle of Saturday night hadn’t helped.

‘Did she see what happened?’

‘No.’

Ellen sighed. ‘I suppose that’s something, anyway. An old lady like that.’ She gulped.

‘Yes,’ Mary said softly, ‘it was horrible.’

‘Did you see the driver?’

‘No, just that the van was white with an orange oblong line along the side. It came from nowhere.’

They sat in silence. A car passed on the road outside. Listening to it Mary closed her eyes.

Ellen leant forward on the settee, crossing her arms over her waist and swaying back and forth. ‘I did love our Tom, Mary, you know that.’ It had to be the tenth time she’d said those words since she arrived. It was obvious Ellen expected some sort of reassurance. ‘I didn’t always understand him, you know, all that pacifist stuff during the war. I mean, I know he didn’t want to fight, he was so – gentle. But deliberately doing things so he kept going back into prison? Why did he do that?’

‘I’ve told you before. He believed war was wrong,’ Mary said calmly. ‘They kept trying to get him to go back to work in the Civil Service. He wouldn’t work for a Government which had taken the country to war.’

‘But it didn’t get him anywhere, did it?’ I mean, what did he achieve?’

‘Enough now, Ellen.’ Mary went over the sideboard, took two clean handkerchiefs from a drawer and gave one to Ellen. ‘Try not to cry any more, love, you’ll make yourself ill. How about going upstairs to see what the children are doing?’

‘I can’t.’ Ellen blew her nose. ‘I don’t want them to see me like this. Will you go instead?’

When Mary came back, Ellen was moving restlessly around the room fiddling with the curtains, straightening the horse brasses on the wall, running her hand over the long white crocheted mat on the sideboard where all the photographs were.

‘They’re asleep,’ Mary said. ‘Must be yesterday’s journey on the train.’

‘It took ages and it was hard work trying to manage both of them on my own.’ Ellen picked up a portrait of Tom and their mother standing arm in arm in the garden, both in wellingtons and overcoats. ‘When was this taken?’ She waved the frame in the air. ‘I’ve forgotten.’

‘Just after we got here. March, ’46.’ Mary watched the careless gesture and half lifted her hand, afraid Ellen would drop the photograph. It was the only one she had of the two of them together. ‘Why didn’t Ted bring you?’

‘He said he would have if I’d waited until he could sort something out with the shop. I can’t see why he couldn’t just shut it for a couple of days.’

‘So you’ve fallen out.’ It wasn’t the first time they’d quarrelled and Ellen had turned up on the doorstep.

Ellen shrugged, her apparent unconcern contradicted by the tears that trailed down her cheeks.

‘Do you want to talk about it?’

‘No.’

‘Okay. I’ll make a brew in a minute.’ Mary took the photograph from her, wiped the glass with the sleeve of her cardigan, and carefully put it back in its place. ‘It was freezing cold the day this was taken,’ she remembered. ‘But they insisted on getting the vegetable plot ready for planting. Mam went mad at first when I got the Kodak out and took this of them.’ She touched their faces. ‘We have to remember the good times, Ellen. Tom was a good brother. You don’t have to try to understand what he did, how he thought.’ She smiled. ‘I’ll always be grateful to him. If he hadn’t written that letter and left it with you, Peter would never have found me.’

‘It’s not every day an ex-POW knocks on your front door.’ Ellen gave her a tremulous smile.

‘And I’ll always be grateful you didn’t turn him away.’

‘Our Patrick was there, that day. Sometimes it seems he’s always at our house.’ Ellen spoke absently. She leant against the back of the settee and wiped her hands over her face. ‘I was scared to death. It could have caused right ructions. You know what a moody bugger he is at the best of times. Think how he’d have been if he’d seen him; just one mention of the war, Bevin Boys or the Germans sets him off again.’

‘Perhaps it will never be over for him.’ Mary bit her lip. They’d all grown up on the receiving end of their younger brother’s temper. ‘He put the telephone down when Peter first rang him to say what had happened. He had to try again.’

‘Typical!’ Ellen nodded. ‘Apparently, the other day a chap who lives on Church Road, an ex-POW from the Granville, asked him for a job on one of his market stalls. Ted said he thought Patrick was going to hit him.’

Mary flinched at the mention of the prisoner-of-war camp where she’d been a nurse and Peter a German detainee. An image of Frank Shuttleworth flashed through her mind. She forced it away. His face haunted her sleep. To hear the name of the camp spoken so casually made her stomach turn. Even though it was where she and Peter had first fallen in love, they didn’t talk about the Granville. As though each of them instinctively knew the distress it would cause. ‘Did he hit him?’

‘No, just gave him a pretty nasty mouthful from all accounts.’

‘If Patrick’s still hanging on to old resentments it’s his own doing. I don’t really care.’ She did, but she wouldn’t acknowledge the hurt. ‘I’ve spoken to Jean. She says he won’t be at the funeral but she will.’

‘That’s big of her. She’ll probably come swanning in trying to organise everything as usual.’

‘Stop it, Ellen.’

‘Well, she didn’t like Tom, not really.’

‘She’s my best friend. And she’s our sister-in-law as well. She should be here.’

‘So should Patrick.’

‘It’s his choice.’ Mary shrugged.

She studied Ellen for the first time since she’d arrived in Llamroth. The black sweater and A-line skirt revealed how thin she was, and her blonde hair, scraped back into a French pleat, emphasised the gauntness of her face and the dark shadows under her eyes. ‘You look awful.’

‘Thanks.’

A thought struck Mary. ‘Has Linda broken up from school for the summer holidays? Is it the end of term?’

‘No, it doesn’t matter if she misses a couple of weeks.’

A couple of weeks? It could be longer than that before the funeral. The police had told her there would have to be a coroner’s inquest first. Surely Ellen wouldn’t want to be away from home, from Ted, all that time? ‘You’ll have the truancy man coming to your door.’

‘Well, I’m not there, so there’s not much he can do, is there?’