Hearts of Gold (13 page)

Instead she felt unaccountably depressed, restless and angry. Angry with him for introducing her to something she could never have and for ending their relationship before it had even begun.

Chapter Six

‘And just where do you think you’ve been until this hour, young lady?’

‘Sorry, I know it’s late, Mam. Laura and I …’

‘That was Laura who walked you home was it?’ Elizabeth sneered. ‘Taking to wearing men’s clothes, has she?’

‘Mam, if you’ll let me explain …’

‘There’s nothing to explain. I know exactly what you’ve been doing, my girl. I can smell the drink on you from here.’ Elizabeth’s face darkened with a contemptuous, naked anger that Bethan had witnessed only a few times in her life.

‘I had a glass of wine with my supper,’ she retorted defensively.

‘Wine is it? I suppose you think wine is one step up from beer?’ Elizabeth’s voice rose precariously close to hysteria as she followed Bethan down the hall into the back kitchen. ‘Do you think it’s any better to be a rich man’s whore than a poor man’s?’

‘Mam!’ Bethan whirled around and faced her mother only to see her father standing in the passageway behind them. They’d been so wrapped up in their quarrelling they hadn’t even heard him come down the stairs.

‘That’s enough, Elizabeth.’ Evan advanced towards them bare-chested, his trouser belt hanging at his waist, his shirt flapping loosely on his arms.

‘Look at her! Just look at her!’ Elizabeth screeched. ‘Your darling daughter. The whore!’

‘I said that’s enough, Elizabeth,’ he repeated sternly. He turned to Bethan. ‘Go to bed, girl. Now,’ he commanded.

‘That’s right. Send your little darling to bed,’ Elizabeth mocked. ‘We all know she can do no wrong in your eyes. Your little darling … the whore,’ she hissed, repeating the word, conscious of the effect it was having on Evan. ‘My father always said that colliers, not the devil, invented whores. Well, collier or not, Evan Powell, I’ll not have a whore under my roof. I’m telling you now …’ she ranted, pointing at Bethan. ‘Get her out, or I’ll put her out. She’s no daughter of mine.’

‘You don’t know what you’re saying, woman.’ Evan pushed himself between her and Bethan.

‘Oh yes I do, and she goes …’

‘That suits me fine,’ Bethan shouted, goaded to breaking point.

‘I’ll pack my bags now.’

‘Don’t be silly, love. Where would you go at this hour?’ her father said testily.

‘She can go back to wherever she’s been until now.’

‘For Christ’s sake, woman, shut up.’ Evan turned fiercely on Elizabeth.

‘Don’t worry, Dad. I’m going.’

Bethan saw her parents through a red haze of anger that had been slow in coming but smouldered all the fiercer for its tardiness.

‘Just remember one thing,’ she flung the worst thing she could think of in her mother’s face, ‘I didn’t ask to come back here. You begged me because you couldn’t make ends meet. I can have a place in a nurses’ hostel any time for the asking. And I’ll be a damned sight better off.’

‘Bethan.’

The cry came not from her mother, but her father.

Her hand flew to her mouth. ‘Dad,’ she whispered. ‘Dad, I’m sorry, I never meant …’

‘See,’ Elizabeth crowed. ‘See what an ungrateful wretch you’ve spawned.’

‘Go to bed, Bethan.’ Evan leaned wearily against the door frame so she could pass him in the narrow doorway.

‘I didn’t mean …’ the words died on Bethan’s lips. Her father wasn’t looking at her. He was staring at her mother, a strange expression in his eyes. Head down, she ran along the passage and up the stairs.

Haydn and Eddie were sitting side by side on the top step, hunched and shivering in the nightgowns Elizabeth had patched together from Evan’s old shirts.

‘What’s happening, Beth?’ Haydn whispered.

‘Nothing.’ She brushed past him tearfully.

‘Noisy nothing,’ Eddie said tactlessly.

She slammed the bedroom door on them.

‘Beth?’ Maud’s voice echoed sleepily from the dark lumpy shadow that was the bed.

‘Go to sleep,’ Bethan ordered, banging her ankle painfully in the blinding darkness. She almost fell on to her side of the bed and began to undress, allowing her clothes to fall any shape on to the floor. Fumbling beneath her pillow she finally found her nightdress and pulled it over her head before she stole between the sheets. Tensing her body she tried to listen to what was happening downstairs.

At first Maud’s heavy breathing seemed to drown out all the other noises of the house. But then she heard the boys blunder their way back to their bedroom. Still listening intently she lay awake until the first cold fingers of dawn crept through the thick curtains lightening the shadows from black to grey.

No other sound reached her during those hours. No voice was raised in the kitchen, and no foot stepped on to the stairs.

*      *      *

Elizabeth sat up in the parlour all night. She was conscious of one thing and one thing only. Of the depth to which her children had sunk. Haydn working night after night in the Town Hall rubbing shoulders and heaven only knew what else, with chorus girls drunken spivs, played out musicians – the dregs of the theatrical world. Eddie practically living in the gym at the back of the Rupera Hotel, fighting, smashing men’s faces in and having his own beaten in for a pittance, and even more sickening because he enjoyed the feel and smell of violence. Bethan spending her evenings in public halls where drink was sold. Going out with men, drinking – and no doubt allowing herself to be pawed like an animal.

She recalled the time when she’d been able to control almost all of their waking moments.

Almost all, because she’d never been able to prevent them from visiting Leyshon Street. They’d been such plump, pretty children. She’d taken pleasure in bathing them, dressing them in warm flannel nightgowns and tucking them up in cosy beds. Most of the time they’d paid heed to her and done what she’d wanted them to. Now … now she felt as though her world was breaking up, her values shattering, and the children she’d struggled to keep clean and fed had gone the way of all the worthless working-class children around them.

She finally had to accept that none of them would now aspire to climb out of the back streets of the Graig, let alone to greatness.

Neither Haydn nor Eddie would become a minister of God like her father and uncle. The girls wouldn’t teach as she had done. Instead, Bethan, the most intelligent of all of them, had become a nurse. She wrinkled her nose at the thought of what Bethan did every day of her life. Messing with people’s naked bodies. Women in childbirth … she shuddered in disgust, wishing she’d never borne any of them. All motherhood was pain. The pain of conception – of birth, and this – the ultimate – and worst pain of all – the pain of losing them.

At a quarter to six in the morning Bethan lifted down the cardboard suitcase she’d carried her clothes home in from Cardiff. Then she remembered the look on her father’s face when she’d threatened to move out. Swallowing her pride she put it back on top of the wardrobe and washed and dressed ready for work.

She had to walk through the kitchen to go out the back. Her mother was alone, engrossed in black leading the stove. If she heard her entering she made no sign of it, nor did she acknowledge her.

For the next few days a mixture of mortification and smouldering anger kept Bethan away from the house as much as possible. She went there only to sleep. She ate her breakfast, dinner and tea, such as they were, on the ward, and had supper at Megan’s, buying bloaters, meat pies, pasties and slices of brawn in the grocer’s opposite the hospital to offset the cost to her aunt.

Megan, used to the vagaries of her brother-in-law’s household, was quietly supportive. Bethan’s father and her brothers tried to smooth things over, and Maud complained that she hardly saw her, but she excused her absences with brief references to pressures of work.

She wasn’t exaggerating about that. Her shifts began at six thirty in the morning and finished at seven in the evening.

Afterwards she stayed behind in sister’s office, studying until ten or eleven o’clock. The midwifery certificate covered a vast amount of both text and practical knowledge, and following Matron’s suggestion she made full use of the small library kept locked in the cupboard of Squeers’ office.

She soon found out that Matron had told her the truth. It was difficult to do a full day’s work and study at the same time. When she’d been a probationer in Cardiff Infirmary concessions to studying time, scant though they’d often been, had at least been made. Squeers didn’t even pay lip service to the idea. And now she and Laura were qualified the sister took care to see that every minute of their ward time was spent on their feet and working.

But although the job was demanding she enjoyed it, and she was grateful that it left her very little time to think of what was happening at home – or of Andrew John.

She looked for him constantly and even saw him occasionally, but never alone. He was either on ward rounds with his father and Trevor, or they were both gowned and masked with a patient lying between them. It didn’t help when Laura returned from a day off in the middle of the week with bright shining eyes, a definite lilt to her voice and tales of an outing with Trevor, whose free time had miraculously coincided with hers. Flushed with, if not love, at least the beginnings of fondness, Laura renounced her claims to Andrew in favour of Bethan. Bethan scoffed at Laura’s teasing but it didn’t stop her from manoeuvring to get close to Andrew whenever he visited the ward.

Envy hadn’t been part of Bethan’s nature until she watched Trevor and Laura during the week that followed. She grew taciturn and silent, particularly in Laura’s presence. Totally preoccupied with thoughts of Andrew she regretted what she saw as her dark, Amazonian figure, contrasting it with Laura’s pert, petite appearance.

Would Andrew have asked her out again if she’d been prettier? More talkative, like Laura?

She grew paler, lost weight, and close to the end of her unbroken stint of duty, she felt both physically and emotionally drained. She had a two day break coming to her, but she was dreading it.

She’d toyed with the idea of spending most of it in the reading room in Pontypridd’s lending library, resolving to get up early and study in the morning after buying a few dainties in town. She would invite herself to Megan’s for tea and supper. But she took no pleasure in the prospect. In fact she took pleasure in very little except Haydn’s good fortune in getting work, and the rapid progression of her studies.

Two days before she was due to take her leave Squeers came down with influenza. The night sister was moved to day duty, and Matron sent for Bethan and asked her if she’d work two nights, to cover for the night sister’s absence. Pleased to be singled out for the responsibility, she agreed, leaving late in the afternoon to catch a few hours’ sleep before returning for the night.

She tossed restlessly on the bed from three o’clock until five, then finally rose to wash and dress. Downstairs she walked in on the entire family, who were sitting around the table in the kitchen eating tea.

Her father, Maud, Haydn and Eddie greeted her warmly, and for the first time in over a week she was persuaded to join them. Her mother had made an enormous bread pudding, heavy on the stale bread and light on the fruit, like all the others she’d baked since Evan had been put on short time, but it was topped by a thin layer of delicious sugary pastry.

Cooking, like the other domestic skills, had been studied by Elizabeth until she had passed from mere proficiency to mastery. The only factor that blighted her recipes was the quality of food she could afford to buy.

Evan, airing paternal pride, asked Bethan how she was progressing with her studies, but the rest of the family were even more silent than usual. Maud had caught a cold and coughed between mouthfuls of warm pudding and tea. Bethan laid her hand on her sister’s forehead and discovering that she had a temperature, suggested that her sister go to bed after the meal. Before Elizabeth could complain about walking up and down stairs with trays, Evan offered to make a batch of the home made, vinegar based remedy that Caterina used to brew whenever one of the family went down with a cold.

Eddie had been withdrawn and sullen since the night he’d been used as a punch bag in the gym and he ate quickly. Without a word he carried his plate to the washhouse and disappeared out of the back door and up the garden, ignoring Haydn’s shouts.

‘I was going to walk down the hill with him,’ Haydn complained, finishing his pudding.

‘I’ll walk down with you,’ Bethan offered, picking up his plate as well as her own.

‘I’ve got to go in five minutes.’

‘So have I.’

Bethan left the plates in the enamel bowl on the wooden board next to the sink in the washhouse and looked for the stone foot warmer that only came out when one of them was ill. She found it behind a sack of carrots on the floor of the pantry.

‘Who’s that for?’ Elizabeth demanded when she saw her filling it with hot water from the boiler.

‘Maud, she has a fever,’ Bethan replied when she’d recovered from the shock of hearing her mother speak directly to her.

Elizabeth sniffed loudly, but said nothing more.

Bethan followed Maud upstairs and tucked her into bed with a scarf around her throat, a handkerchief under her pillow and the foot warmer at her feet.

‘Dad will be up in a minute with some of Mam Powell’s tonic. See you in the morning.’ She smoothed Maud’s hair back, away from her face.

‘Thank you,’ Maud croaked, snuggling under the bedclothes.

‘What are big sisters for?’

‘To pay for little sisters to go to the pictures?’ Maud suggested hopefully.

‘You’re not going anywhere,’ Bethan pronounced authoritatively, lifting the blankets up to Maud’s chin.

‘Not now, but I might be on Saturday.’

‘We’ll see.’ Sleep well, see you in the morning.’

Although the sky was heavy with the promise of rain, it was still dry when Haydn slammed the door behind them.

‘Long time no talk, Beth,’ he said cheerfully.

‘Sometimes I think all there is to life is work, work and then more work.’

‘I know what you mean,’ he sympathised. ‘It’s the same in the Town Hall. “Haydn get me this, Haydn get me that, Haydn clean this floor. Haydn sweep up between the seats. Haydn …”’