Paint on the Smiles (29 page)

‘He’ll treasure it as much as I will.’

‘Clever Peter,’ Ada commented when the others had all gone.

‘Clever?’

‘You’ve enough money to live on comfortably without bothering with the shop, or anything else for that matter. But he tied you up learning to run a garage and taking over the cafe at the beach.’

‘He certainly didn’t intend me to be idle.’

‘He knew how much you relish a challenge. You could never settle down to doing “good works” and living an aimless life. No, he knew you really well, your Peter.’

D
URING THE WEEKS
following Peter’s death, Cecily was kept very busy, as Peter had intended. She spent a lot of time with Johnny at the garage and examining the books of the small, seasonal cafe that had been Peter’s hobby rather than a real part of his income. As always, she quickly grasped the main points of each business and was able to pick out areas where improvements could be made. She called on cafe owners and listened to them, absorbing everything of value while appearing to chat aimlessly about the seasonal occupation.

Between visits to her new businesses, she cleaned the shop. It was therapy rather than necessity but she scrubbed the shelves and cleaned out cupboards using a large bar of Sunlight soap and some scouring powder to bleach the wooden boards. She washed walls and polished windows and treated the marble slabs until they looked new. She even whitewashed the stables, where Jack Simmons still kept his horse, Whizzer, and the brightly painted cart.

Jack’s shop was thriving. As men returned from the forces and wives began to improve homes in which there had been few changes over the war years, furniture was sold to Jack and replaced by utility furniture as it became available, although it was rationed like so many other commodities. The discarded pieces were eagerly taken by young couples starting out. Tables, chairs, benches and stools as well as buckets and bowls and galvanized washing baths, were taken by Jack for a few pence, cleaned up and sold to new and grateful owners.

With his horse and cart, Jack went out each morning and returned to open his shop in the afternoons but soon found it worthwhile to take on a young boy to help, and it was David – the red-headed boy who had worked for Cecily and Ada until told to leave when Danny’s divorce was being discussed – who turned up one Monday morning, full of enthusiasm for the fascinating trade. At times the shop was crammed full of
assorted stock, then it would gradually empty. Then Jack would extend his rounds to refill it, buying anything on which he could turn a profit, not resting until it was barely possible to find a path through the clutter to the rooms above, where he lived.

Every afternoon at four, he came in and had a cup of tea with the sisters. He put a notice in his window which read ‘Dave is here but I’m next door having a cuppa’ which made his customers smile as they searched among his eclectic displays for a bargain.

One afternoon, he invited Cecily to see what he had done with the rooms above the shop. He pushed back chairs and sofas and tall bookcases, boxes of saucepans and kitchen paraphernalia to make a path for her through the shop and led her up the stairs, now boasting a thick, only slightly worn carpet, and into his living room.

Cecily was surprised. The room was attractively furnished in good quality items. Not too much, and with every piece set to show to advantage. The windows were draped with velvet, deep red like the carpet and a perfect setting for the seven-piece suite. This consisted of four dining chairs, two armchairs and a chaise longue, all upholstered in rich dark leather.

The room looked out over the docks, the view enhanced by the demolition of several buildings that had blocked the shop in. The dining table was standing near the large window so diners could look out and catch a glimpse of the distant sea.

The bedroom had curtains of green, and a deep fluffy eiderdown and bedspread adorned the double bed. Here too there was an air of opulence Cecily hadn’t expected from the man whom she had once refused to employ as an errand boy after he’d been in a fight with Willie.

She praised him fulsomely and admired his excellent taste.

‘It’s for the wife and my kids, when I find them,’ he said. ‘Poor we was, see. But Sally, she always loved a bit of “posh” she did.’

‘You haven’t had any luck tracing her?’

‘Not really – only a few false trails that led nowhere. There’s a possibility that she remarried, see, her not knowing I was still alive, so I don’t even know her name. Can’t blame her, like. She won’t be the only one caught in a mess like that. But the Citizens Advice Bureau and the Salvation Army are looking. I know she’ll come back to me, her proper husband, when I finds her.’

He shook off the serious discussion and went into the small kitchen where a rather old gas stove had been installed, and turned up the jet
under a hand-painted, enamel kettle. There was a teapot to match and he set cups and saucers on the table and asked, ‘You’ll stay for a cuppa and a
cwlff
?’ He cut a thick slice from the loaf and offered a two pound jar of damson jam, telling her to ‘dig in’. The furnishings were elegant but there was no false image of grandeur about Jack.

‘You’ve done marvellously well here,’ she began but gave up politeness to concentrate on the food. She spread jam thickly on the
cwlff
and ate with lack of etiquette, biting into the huge, overloaded slice as he did, without cutting it, the jam sliding off and being licked into shape with their tongues, like hungry children.

She and Ada sorted out a number of unwanted items and gave them to Jack, insisting they were gifts, and refusing payment. The treadle sewing machine Ada offered to Sharon who accepted it with delight. They also gave a number of ornaments and cushions and books to a fund collecting to give the little extras to people who had been bombed out and needed the smaller items to help make their houses into homes.

They were sorting out a few things their mother had left behind, when Van called.

‘I still miss Mam,’ Cecily said, fingering one of her dresses that should have been discarded years before.

‘So do I,’ Ada agreed. ‘When something worries me, I long for her to come, talk to me, promise everything will be all right.’

‘She’d have helped when Phil was ill, and when Peter died,’ Cecily added.

‘Rubbish, you never need anyone. Too self-contained you are, everyone knows that.’

Startled by the vehemence in Van’s voice, they stared at her.

‘You won’t remember her,’ Ada said. ‘She was someone we could talk to about anything and everything and she always understood.’

‘She’d make problems go away.’

‘Stop pretending!’ Van stormed out, slamming the shop door and making the bell jangle angrily. Do they know? she wondered. Are they trying to make me feel guilty?

But if they had found out about her visits to Nan they would tell her straightaway, not play games. She hoped that was so, she still needed the secret, she needed to be able to smile and tell herself she had Nan for herself.

The shop was still very quiet. With the stocks having been allowed to run down, it was very difficult to find things to sell, but slowly the customers came back.

‘Once summer comes bringing visitors to the town, then we’ll see a difference,’ Ada said, but Cecily didn’t expect it to be that easy.

Although customers were few, the stream of visitors to Owen’s shop didn’t lessen. Bertie and Beryl called often, bringing news of the baby and descriptions of the house which Van had bought and to which neither Cecily nor Ada had been invited. Johnny brought his family over to tea one Sunday and this became a regular event. With Uncle Ben and Auntie Maggie, Gareth and his mother, and even Dorothy also appearing from time to time for a meal of sandwiches and homemade cake, there was little time to grieve.

The sisters mused over how people had changed. Uncle Ben, white haired, less large and important-looking but still with the booming voice of old. He called with his small but less disapproving wife and offered any assistance in ‘matters you girls can’t manage’. He had returned to his easygoing self, always too willing to burst into song or thump out a melody on the piano. Dorothy too found nothing to complain about in the sister’s behaviour, and took opportunities to be kind whenever one offered. Gareth’s mother seemed to have found a fondness for Cecily that no one would have imagined. War had harmed so many, had touched almost every life with tragedy, but perhaps it made some more content, remembering how much had been lost and how thankful they should be for what they still had.

With Christmas approaching, Cecily sometimes went over to the beach and just wandered, reviving memories of days spent with Peter, and already planning ways of coaxing the stall holders to become customers of Owen’s shop again. This Christmas was something to ignore. Without Peter, and with Phil in a hospital for the mentally ill, how could they decorate the house and pretend everything was fine? Then she stopped her tearful thoughts and hurried home to Ada.

‘Ada, love. This is the first Christmas of peace, we can’t let it slide by as if it isn’t important. Whether you are aware of the religious meaning or not, it’s still a family celebration. This house has always welcomed family and friends and this year won’t be any different. Right?’

‘If only Mam would come back.’

‘If only.’ Cecily sighed. ‘It’s obvious she doesn’t want to or she’d have come for Dadda’s funeral, or our weddings, or the birth of Van’s baby. No, she cast us aside all those years ago and her coming back to us is a dream we might as well forget.’

Whatever the weather during the early days of December 1945, Ada
went to see Phil in hospital and Cecily went to the beach where she walked from one end of the promenade to the other. The biting cold winds of early winter helped to blow away the frowns. The buffeting gusts made her laugh, releasing some of the fun that had been locked away since Peter’s death. She would smile, remembering other days, other gusting winds and other rainstorms she had shared with him.

One cold, damp Wednesday, she had just reached the bus stop, preferring to be a passenger, the others on the bus making her feel less alone, when the door of the barber’s shop opened and Gareth stepped out with his trainee. He was locking the shop when she called to him.

‘Where are you off to on your afternoon off? Feel like a blow, over the beach?’

‘The beach? In this weather? You must be mad, Cecily Owen.’

‘Why not?’

He grinned and agreed, ‘Why not?’ He called to his apprentice and asked him to take a message to his mother, then stood with her waiting for the bus. They walked together over the deserted promenade, laughing at the wind’s attempts to bowl them along with a few discarded pieces of paper. They ate at a cafe at the far end of town but on the following Sunday they met again and this time Cecily took pasties made with potato, onion and a scrap of cheese, and they found a spot sheltered from the wind and ate their simple picnic. They sat and reminisced, looking out to sea and along the sad, empty sands, remembering all that had happened to them since the days when they had danced together.

Ada was on her way back from seeing Phil and began talking to someone sitting beside her on the bus, and by chance she mentioned Jack Simmons and his search for his family.

‘Thought he was dead, she did, and married again. At least, she took the man’s name. I don’t remember any ceremony,’ she was told.

Excitedly, Ada asked for the name. ‘Jack wants to find them and understands that, like many others, Sally might have a new husband. They’ll sort it out if only he could find her.’

‘Let me think.’ The woman was irritatingly slow and Ada was convinced she would reach her stop before the woman remembered. She would stay on, travel to the next town if necessary. ‘Robbins, yes, I think he was called Bertie Robbins,’ the woman said at last. Although she knew she wouldn’t forget something so important, Ada wrote it down. ‘You don’t know where they lived, do you?’

‘Somewhere near a railway station, but I don’t know which one. I just remember her saying that the children used to enjoy watching the trains passing.’

Ada ran into Jack’s shop and called excitedly, ‘Jack, I think I’ve found a couple of clues!’

Jack left Dave in charge and went for the bus, intending to start at one station and work his way through them all, as far as Cardiff. He needed a car. Whizzer and the cart wasn’t any use for all this wandering. He tried not to get excited, but spent the journey working out the best way of approaching her if he found her. Sally would still believe he had been killed. He was sure of that. She’d have come back to him if she knew he had survived. For him to suddenly appear could be a shock, but how could he approach her without her thinking he was a ghost?

For two days he searched the area around the small railway stations through the town and the smaller places, spending hours knocking on doors, asking passers-by, but no one had heard of a Mrs Robbins who had three children including twins.

‘Could you have misheard the name?’ he asked Ada, who shook her head.

‘I wrote it down.’ She showed him. ‘But she might have been mistaken – she did take a long time before coming up with the name. Robbins. Could it have been Robinson?’

‘There’s a pub called the Railway Inn. Closed now and abandoned, but that used to be nicknamed the Station. Could she have been mistaken about that too?’ Jack wondered.

Jack set off again and two days later he found her. The area was very run down and he almost didn’t bother to ask, but someone pointed out a place not far from where the railway line ran. A pair of small cottages were near the old public house. Curtains were at the windows, the door stood open and they looked occupied.

He stood at a distance and watched. A small, thin, poorly dressed woman came out and began hanging out washing. It wasn’t Sally. Dejected he began to approach her and ask if she knew where he could find his wife, then the young woman called, ‘Dolly, love, will you bring some more pegs?’ And he recognized her voice. Then a child ran out, a young child, too young. Not his.

‘Sally?’ He almost whispered the name and she looked up and stared, before bursting into tears.

He went into the sad little home, sparsely furnished but surprisingly
clean. Clothes hung over a wood fire and there was the smell of something cooking in the oven. He took all this in in seconds, then opened his arms for his wife.