Nothing is Forever (20 page)

She walked around the places where they had spent some time but there was no sign of him. As she walked she rehearsed what she would say although she knew without doubt that when she saw him every carefully planned word would vanish from her mind.

While Tabs was out on her futile search, Ruth told Abigail and Gloria about her new nephew, boasting about him, and she told Abigail how well Toni and Tommy were coping. To her alarm she suddenly noticed that Abigail was quietly crying. Tears ran down her cheeks and her mother handed her a handkerchief to wipe her face.

‘What is it? Are you ill?’ Assured she was not, by a concerned Gloria, Ruth asked, ‘Have I said something to upset you? I’m sorry.’

‘It’s all right, Ruth, I’ll just get her up to bed.’

‘Can I do something?’

‘No one can,’ Abigail said tearfully. ‘I had a baby you see, and talking about your baby Samuel, and Mickie, memories suddenly overwhelmed me.’

‘A baby? What happened?’

‘He died. I was obviously not a suitable mother and I lost him.’

Ruth glanced at Abigail’s hand although she knew full well there was no wedding ring there. Seeing the automatic gesture, Abigail said. ‘We weren’t married but we love each other and one day we’ll be together and then we’ll have other children and maybe the pain will ease.’

‘Of course,’ Ruth said. ‘Your husband-to-be, he lives a long way off? He’d have been here when you were in hospital if he’d been able, wouldn’t he?’

‘He came as soon as he could.’ There was hesitation and a slight alarm in the young woman’s eyes and at that moment Ruth suspected that the man who had fathered the child was Jack. She hurried out of the room apologizing for asking too many questions and filled the kettle noisily and rattled the tea cups and banged cupboard doors, singing to herself, hoping Abigail hadn’t see the expression of horror that must have shown on her face at the thought of Tabs, poor silly Tabitha, being fooled by Jack. Tabs, who at this moment was probably day-dreaming about him, a man for whom she was prepared to steal from friends, a man who was a cheat of the worst possible kind.

Tabs came in, made an excuse about reading in bed and went up. Ruth went into the kitchen to prepare the breakfast table without another word. If only Henry were here. She needed to talk about this but there was no one else she could tell. Suddenly she felt irrational fear, she was alone with only Tabs and two strangers for company and her footsteps echoed as she walked across the kitchen floor. She was a stranger and no longer belonged in the hollow-sounding house.

She took her tea and went to bed to read her library book, hurrying up the stairs as though ghosts were chasing her. The house wasn’t her own any more and she wanted it back, just as it used to be, a place loved by the family. Somewhere safe and friendly, not this place filled with other people’s problems making her walk a tightrope of caution every time she opened her mouth.

There was a light under Tabs’s door and unreasonably, she blamed Henry for the change in the atmosphere. Why had he persuaded her to let Tabs stay after he’d caught her stealing from him? Why hadn’t he called the police? Being completely alone couldn’t be worse than this.

The next day, Ruth was writing her weekly letters to Geraint and Hazel in London, and to Emrys and Susan in Bridgend, describing her nephew with fulsome praise. She usually began the letters at the weekend then waited until Wednesday, when she received theirs, before finishing off and posting them. That way the day-to-day news filled the pages and the replies to their questions and comments were quickly added. So when the post fell onto the mat she went to pick them up, expecting the usual accounts of their week. In Geraint’s letter was a request to phone him that evening at nine, a very unusual request; they normally communicated by letter.

Armed with a handful of small coins, she went to the telephone box on the corner. It was very cold and she shivered as she ran towards the lighted box. The night was dark and she wished she had remembered to pick up a torch. She rang the number and Geraint answered at once.

‘Geraint? Is anything wrong?’ she asked.

‘Wrong? Not really, but can I come and stay for a few days?’

‘Of course you can, silly. It’s your home, isn’t it?’

‘That’s what I want to talk about.’ Before she could add further assurances, he went on, ‘Look, Ruth, I can’t talk now, but I’ll see you on Friday. All right?’

She came away from the phone box wearing a frown. Something was wrong, something he couldn’t talk about over the phone. She went through all the possibilities. A re-think about the divorce? Confession about an affair? News that he was seriously ill? Then she wondered whether he was about to ask if he could come back home permanently. The frown left her face, her heart raced with joyful excitement and the night became less dark. Friday seemed a long way off.

She stopped before going inside, savouring the thought of being needed again. The night wasn’t really dark; the sky was lit with the glow from the street lights in the town, and several windows nearby were un-curtained, allowing early Christmas lights to shine out, and the air was no longer chilly, but crisp with the feel of the season and tinged with happiness.

As she went into the house she wondered if Geraint’s visit would justify planning a family Christmas party. The house would love a party, she thought fancifully. It always seemed different when the rooms were filled with people celebrating something; cosy, warm, well used and loved. The house needed people as much as it needed a strong roof.

It was very late on Friday when her brother finally arrived, almost eleven o’clock. To her surprise, Tommy and Bryn were with him and, as she was about to close the door, she was even more surprised to see Emrys coming in behind them.

‘Don’t tell me you all want to stay,’ she said with a laugh. ‘I’m definitely not the one who’ll be sleeping in the bath!’ She hastily set the kettle to boil and took pasties out of the oven. ‘Not many,’ she said gesturing towards them. ‘I didn’t expect all of you.’ They all looked serious as they found places around the large kitchen table and she felt a growing fear. This was a parody of the party she had imagined, and she couldn’t begin to guess the reason for it.

Her hands were shaking as she poured tea for them and her voice, when she spoke, sounded strange. ‘Come on then, let’s have the bad news.’

Geraint spoke first, while the others lowered their eyes, concentrating on the cup of tea in front of them. ‘We want to sell the house.’

‘But we can’t. It’s our home, all of us.’

‘Toni and I want to buy a place and selling this would give us a deposit,’ Tommy said.

‘Me too,’ Bryn added quietly. ‘The flat isn’t big enough now we have a baby to consider.’

‘What about Aunty Blodwen? You know how she loves to come here. She needs a break from that tiny place of hers sometimes and it was her home, where she was born and brought up.’ No one spoke and she added, a little angrily, ‘What about me?’

‘That’s what we’re here to consider,’ Geraint replied. ‘We’re so grateful to you for being there when we needed you, but now things have changed and we all want to go our own way, build a new life.’

‘Without me.’

‘No!’ they all chorused.

‘We want you living close and being a part of our lives just like you’ve always been!’ Tommy added.

Ruth stared at him. ‘Not any more, not since you and Toni married.’ She calmed her voice and added untruthfully, ‘I can understand Toni wanting things her way. But she reminds me at every opportunity that I’m no longer needed and it hurts. Now this. I don’t know what I’ll do if I have to leave here.’

‘Marry Henry?’ Emrys queried.

‘Because it’s convenient for you?’ she demanded.

‘Because it has always been convenient for us to have this place, somewhere to come back to, and have you here for us, but now it isn’t convenient any longer,’ Geraint said, his voice sounding harsh and even irritable to Ruth’s sensitive mind.

‘We’ve all enjoyed having this place as the centre of things,’ Bryn said more softly, ‘but now it’s time for changes, you must see that. We’re all settled, Ruth, we’ve all made lives for ourselves, we have homes of our own.’

‘We’re well aware of how much we owe you.’ Tommy added. ‘You were so good to us, giving up years of your life to care for us.’

‘You did a wonderful job,’ Emrys added, ‘but it’s over and now you’re free to do what you want.’

‘What I want is to stay here,’ she whispered.

‘Sorry, Sis, but we think it’s for the best, for us all,’ Geraint said. ‘Including you.’

‘And what about Abigail and Gloria? They don’t have anywhere else to go.’

‘Then they must find somewhere. They aren’t part of our problem,’ Geraint responded firmly.

‘But I am?’

‘Of course you are. We have to consider you first of all.’

The one consoling thought in it all, she decided as she went up to bed, was she’d be able to tell Tabs to leave.

The following morning Geraint explained that he would like to stay and do a few repairs and some decorating. Ruth knew it was spiteful, and was ashamed afterwards, but at breakfast time, she told Tabs to leave. ‘Geraint will be staying for a while and it won’t be convenient as he’ll be decorating the rooms, starting with yours,’ she said.

Tabs turned away and stared into the fire. Where could she go? This was the worst possible time to be friendless and homeless. Controlling her panic, she said, ‘I understand, Ruth and I’m grateful that you allowed me to stay this long. Especially after my stupidity. Really grateful.’

How Ruth hated that word. ‘Grateful’ sounded as though she did everything grudgingly, ‘grateful’ was when you did something you didn’t want to do and although that might be true in Tabs’s case, it certainly wasn’t true about the care she had given to her brothers and sisters-in-law or Aunty Blodwen. They were family and she cared for them out of love. Tinged with duty, maybe, but still out of love.

She heard Tabs running upstairs and being sick and guessed the shock had been more than she had shown. She really was a mouse, she thought guiltily and I should have told her in a kinder way. But I’ve made excuses for her, forgiven her for her actions and she deserved to be upset. Then compassion returned and she went up to see if there was anything she could do.

After dealing with breakfast, she decided to swallow her pride and go to see Henry. She felt completely alone, all her brothers and their wives were against her and she had to try and put things right between herself and Henry, and explain to him why she had asked Tabs to leave.

She stayed less than two minutes. When she told him of the brothers’ ultimatum, he told her he knew what they were planning, but was asked not to say anything. She shouted at him and ran out. In the whole, big wide world there was no one on her side.

Abigail couldn’t see her way out of the mess she had created. They needed a home and to achieve that she had to work. But she couldn’t work and leave her mother to be cared for by Ruth, who was out at work for most of the day anyway, and without working she couldn’t get them a home. Round and around the problem went until she was exhausted with the search for a solution. She had applied for her job back but without a car and the loss of several big customers due to her absence she was refused. Someone else had stepped in and was doing good business and they saw no reason why they should ask the new employee to leave. She knew she had let them down by leaving without notice and without keeping in touch more regularly but her mother’s illness and her own miscarriage, followed by the fire that might have cost her her life had been so frightening she had no thought for how much they needed the coverage in the areas she had built up and had so enjoyed.

Henry had been considering a change. Nothing was right. The business wasn’t making him happy any more: it was growing, and recently he had met a man who was approaching retirement but was looking for work in the business he knew best. He had run an antiques shop in a small town outside London for many years and, after selling it and returning to South Wales, had found retirement less than enjoyable.

They had met at an antiques fair, spent a lot of the day together and Henry learned that Peter James’s knowledge of furniture was impressive. Henry didn’t want a partner; he enjoyed being independent and making his own choices, but he offered to sell the business and Peter looked at the books and the properties and accepted without hesitation.

Henry hadn’t mentioned his decision to Ruth. Each time they had met recently she had been on the defensive and any discussion had been impossible. Besides, Henry thought about his mother’s words and began to wonder if she had been right, and his wisest move was to walk away.

Ironically, Ruth heard about the shop being offered for sale, not from Henry as she might have expected, but from Tabs. That made the news even more difficult to accept. There was something in the old saying, ‘Don’t shoot the messenger’, as her anger was as much towards Tabs for telling her as towards Henry for not.

She went to the shop when she finished her collections but he wasn’t there. She badly wanted to talk to him but in this instance was glad he wasn’t at home. She would have made a difficult situation much worse by walking in and complaining at being excluded from such an important decision.

She calmed down and rode back to Ty Gwyn. It was time for her to decide what she wanted from life and whether she could imagine living a life without Henry. She wondered where he was and mused sadly that until recently she would have known exactly what his plans were.

Henry was on the way to Rhossili. He stopped at the house where Lillian lived and knocked on the door. She came around the side of the house, holding a heavy raincoat around her shoulders explaining that the front door was stuck again.

She invited him in to a room that was beautifully decorated with holly and ivy and strings of Christmas cards, and he handed her a box of cakes he had brought.

‘Problems, Henry?’ she asked, placing the cakes onto a plate.

‘I’ve sold the business. All three shops and I’m not quite sure what I want to do next,’ he told her.