Goodbye to Dreams (13 page)

Her knock on Phil’s door was answered promptly. He wiped his stained hands down his overall before offering her one. ‘Come in, come in!’ he said, opening the door wide. ‘Business, is it? Or am I lucky enough to have a social visit from the prettiest lady in town?’

‘Don’t talk daft, Phil Spencer,’ Ada laughed. ‘Come for the bill-heads I have.’

Mrs Spencer came out of the living room and smiled a welcome. ‘Lovely it is to see you again, Miss Owen. Phil’s been so hoping you’d call.’

‘Mam!’

‘Well, the truth won’t harm anyone.’ She picked up the local paper and tapped her finger on the relevant place. ‘Seen this, have you? A road race on roller skates in fancy dress. There’s fun that’ll be and there’s going to be a Grand Fete with a carnival queen an’ all, an end-of-season spectacular with summer nearly over. Lots will be going, won’t they? Holiday-makers and locals alike. You taking your Myfanwy?’

She didn’t need or expect answers as she went back to the fire which burned dully in the sunshine streaming through the window, busying herself with kettle and teapot.

‘Sit down,’ Phil fussed, plumping up cushions in the most comfortable chair. ‘I’ll just get your order.’ In his ungainly manner he went through to the workshop-cum-office and returned with a neatly parcelled box.

‘How did you come?’ he asked.

‘I walked down from the park. The bus dropped me there. I didn’t have time to walk all the way after meeting Van.’

‘I’ll take you back in style if you like. I’ve bought a van. What d’you think of that, then?’

Ada looked out of the window, stretching up to see past the wide window sill in the two-feet-thick wall. A van stood outside and painted on the side in beautiful scroll work was the legend ‘Phil Spencer, Master Printer and Sign Writer’.

‘I bought it from a man called Peter Marshall and he gave me ten minutes’ instruction and left me to drive it home. Damn me! I never had such a hair-raising ride in all my life. Talk about chaos! A policeman saw my erratic progress and thought I was trying to end it all, in the dock! Came with me he did, walking and running alongside, shouting
instructions
through the window and him never even been in a car before!’

He went on describing the journey home and the subsequent trips he had made since as he slowly became more proficient. Ada drank tea, ate cake and laughed and forgot about time. When she heard the clock in the corner rumble and strike five thirty, she stood up, wiping tears of laughter from her eyes and insisted it was time she left.

‘I don’t know whether I should trust myself to you and your van, though,’ she said, ‘after all the disasters you’ve told me about.’

‘Safe as houses you’ll be with me. I’d never let anything harm you, I can promise that.’ He stared at her for a moment, his merry eyes in the sharply featured face very intense. He helped her into her jacket and Ada thanked Mrs Spencer for the tea and cakes, then he bustled her out into the still
warm evening. She sat in the van that smelled pleasantly of polished leather, Phil still chattering.

‘Caught the button of my sleeve in the steering wheel, see, and there was this bloke trying to get away and every way he turned so did I as I
struggled
to release the button. Damn, it was funny. Like a flaming rabbit he was. Young Jack Simmons. Know him, do you?’

Ada hardly said a word until they stopped outside the shop and Cecily and Myfanwy came out to meet her.

‘Well,’ Cecily teased. ‘Walking indeed!’

‘You want to get one of these for your Willie, for delivering orders. Save a lot of time it will and it looks good to the customers, don’t you think?’

Phil held out the package for which Ada had called, hoping she would come back to him for one final word. All the way to the shop he had filled the air with words while trying to pluck up the courage to invite her out. Unless she came back to collect the package he had left it too late.

He watched the doorway and just as he’d decided he must take it to her, she came back. He held it towards her but when she grasped it he didn’t let go. ‘Meet me on Sunday for a drive down the coast?’ he asked in his fast, anxious way. ‘Please,’ he added, staring at her, blue eyes laughing, his expression as eager as a child’s.

‘Yes, Phil. I’d like that. About two o’clock?’

‘I’ll be here, tooting my horn with impatience.’

He was sick with excitement as he released the brake and moved away. He hoped she wasn’t watching as he mounted the pavement and almost ran over a cat.

‘I think there’s something worrying our Van,’ Ada said one evening as they wearily packed away the last of the goods from the porch and windows. ‘She hasn’t said anything to you, has she?’

‘No. Perhaps she’s still grieving for Dadda. Or it might be something to do with my plan to marry Gareth. I’ve tried to involve her in all the
preparations
and talked about everything openly, but she might still be afraid of being left alone. She was only seven last April and it’s not easy for her to explain what’s worrying her. I could have said too much or not enough.’

‘I asked Beryl and Bertie but they don’t know. And I asked Waldo. He and Melanie have taken her out a few times but they can’t help. She seemed perfectly at ease with them.’

‘Don’t let’s cook tonight. We’ll go for some fish and chips and try to get her to talk.’

It wasn’t difficult. As soon as they sat down to eat, Cecily shut off the wireless, which was giving a news report and weather for the following
day, and asked softly, ‘What is it, Van, lovely? What’s bothering you? Tell your aunties and we’ll soon put it right.’

‘What’s ill-e-giti-mate?’ The little girl said the word as she had learned it, syllable by horrible syllable, repeating the word and forcing herself to remember it, chanting it like a litany. Illegitimate. Something very bad, something wicked.

The sisters looked at each other in surprise. Whatever they had expected, it wasn’t this.

‘Where did you hear that word?’ Ada asked.

‘In school. The boys were calling me that, said it meant I didn’t have a father. But Marged and Owen don’t have a father and they weren’t called that.’

‘Your mother was our best friend,’ Cecily told her. ‘Your father was a kind, loving and brave man.’

‘Who died in the war like Uncle John and Uncle Victor?’

‘No, lovey. He died around the time you were born and the war was over by then.’

‘Tell me about them.’

Gradually they reassured the anxious little girl and built a picture of her parents. They had done this many times but, as before, memory faded and she needed reminders of the story they told her. They talked until she seemed content and when she went to bed, they both stayed with her, one each side of the bed, until she slept.

On Sunday, Annette made an excuse to her mother and went for a walk. She set off through the town, up the hill, on past the shops until the houses became fewer and fewer and there were fields on either side of the road. Then houses appeared again, each with its own colourful garden where Phlox, lupins and tall daisies nodded their heads lazily in the warm sunshine. Wallflowers jutted out precariously from crevices in garden walls, slow and small but determined to add to summer’s show. One day, she thought, I’d like a garden where I can grow flowers.

Some gardens were large and she saw rows of vegetables neatly tended and coops where chickens chortled and clucked. There was even, on
occasions
, the unmistakable and powerful smell of a pig sty, its occupants sprawled contentedly on the warm earth. Other cottages had small plots but these had been used to full effect and flowers crept up walls and over fences to make use of every inch of soil and were masses of rich texture and colour.

For a while her path followed the brook, as it worked its convoluted way between the higgledy-piggledy arrangement of odd cottages. It
widened in places and ducks made use of its shallows to find food. A heron flew across her path to settle in a tree beside a bedraggled and now empty nest.

Annette didn’t know the area well, but from the instructions Willie had given her she found his cottage easily. It was the most recently painted and shone in the August sun, dazzling her eyes as she paused to admire it.

As she looked, the door opened and Willie came out, strangely
unfamiliar
in shirt sleeves and the trousers of a navy suit. She had never seen him in anything but a jacket and shirt, collar and tie. Today he looked a different man. He ran to meet her and took her at once to his neighbour, Gladys Davies.

‘Mrs Davies, this is Annette,’ he said proudly as the woman opened her door. ‘Will you come with us while I show her my home?’

‘Now in a minute,’ Gladys said. ‘I’ll have to take my potatoes off the boil or they’ll be a mish-mash – no good for the pasties I’m making.’ She
disappeared
inside and Annette and Willie looked around self-consciously, unable to look at each other although that was what they both wanted. ‘You look nice,’ he said eventually.

Annette stroked the skirt of the blue dress she wore, its gathered waist accentuating her rather full hips. ‘Thank you.’

Annette wondered why they were so different today. Usually they began talking the moment they met and were still thinking of things to say long after they parted. They were beginning a new stage of their relationship, no longer two separate people but a couple, with nothing they didn’t share. Both were silently, almost unconsciously accepting the fact.

Mrs Davies walked with them the short distance across the unmade road and Willie ushered them both inside, and leaving the door open, followed them in. He showed them around with modest pride, pointing out the things he had changed since his family had left.

‘You made this table?’ Annette said admiringly. ‘But you’re very clever to do that.’

‘Danny Preston helped.’

‘You wait till you see the bed he made.’ Mrs Davies’s pride in her
neighbour
was apparent. It was she who pointed out the painting and the renewing of floorboards and the cupboard with its shining hinges which she polished every week, and the oven range that Willie had dragged back from a rubbish dump and spent many evenings polishing. It gleamed dully in the light from the fire.

‘It’s a beautiful home, Willie.’ Annette’s cheeks reddened as they climbed the stairs to see the bed. There was a patchwork quilt over it and the wooden frame was well made and firm. As she suddenly thought of lying
there beside Willie, her blushes increased alarmingly. She went out of the room hoping Willie hadn’t guessed the reason.

‘I want you to tell me about curtains,’ Willie said when they were back in the living room. ‘I’ve started making a rag rug and Mrs Davies is helping, so it won’t be long before it’s finished. Then the curtains are the final thing. Will you help? I want something really nice. Thick and cosy.’

‘It will be expensive,’ Annette warned.

‘I’ll have the money in a week or two.’

They arranged to meet at a small drapers on the following Thursday between his deliveries. ‘If we see Mam we can pretend we met by accident.’ Annette was smiling happily. Seeing his home, helping him choose curtains: what an exciting day.

Gladys Davies loved being involved in the secret meeting. She could have helped Willie choose curtains but seeing the young couple together, knew this was one time when it was better not to offer.

‘I’ll walk with you to the bus,’ Willie said as Annette prepared to leave. They waved to Mrs Davies as they set off up the green lane to the park.

As they approached the park gates they could hear the sound of a brass band and soon saw a small crowd, listening to hymns and occasionally joining in with the well-known words. Willie led her past and when they were out of sight, he leaned forward and kissed her.

Startled at first, she soon warmed to the new sensation. Her arms, from hanging limply at her sides, moved slowly up and around him, feeling his lean frame pressed against hers until the kiss filled her entire body. They walked closer together when they broke away and their pace slowed even more as they were reluctant to reach the end of the tree-lined path and face strangers once again.

‘I’ll see you tomorrow.’ Willie’s voice was hardly a whisper and her own sounded freakishly low as she replied, ‘Yes, Willie. Tomorrow.’

The bus came too soon and she turned in her seat to watch until he was no more than a memory, before facing the front and wondering what would happen when her mother found out. She relaxed, thinking of the kiss and decided that Willie was resourceful enough to cope. She could rely on him completely.

Phil Spencer’s van was passing the bus as Willie and Annette were saying goodbye. Ada saw they were holding hands and from their expressions, in the brief glimpse she had, they were not meeting for the first time. She’d better have a word with Willie. There was no possibility of Dorothy allowing a romance to develop between her daughter and an errand boy. When she explained to Phil he laughed.

‘Spoilsport you are, Ada Owen! Leave them be. If they love each other
nothing will stop them getting together and if they don’t, well, there’s no point in you messing up their fun, now is there?’

‘It won’t hurt to have a word with him,’ she protested.

‘It’ll do less harm to say nothing. Thinking no one knows is part of the magic. Love is wonderful and it enhances every sight and sound, every moment of every day. Leave them be.’

‘You’re very poetic today.’ Ada glanced at her companion, who seemed to have his eyes everywhere except the road.

‘Love does that. I should know, I’m in love myself.’ As Ada turned and looked at him, he grinned, winked broadly and added quietly, ‘With you, Ada Owen, soon to be Ada Spencer, with you.’

‘You’re daft! I don’t know you well enough to call you a friend, let alone consider marrying you!’

‘What’s taking you so long? I knew ages ago!’ He began to whistle merrily and when there was a verge suitable for parking, he stopped the van and turned in his seat to face her. ‘Well? Will you marry me?’ His thin face and bright eyes staring at her in such concentration made laughter threaten. ‘I promise I’ll give you all you need and most of all you want. And plenty of laughter too. What more can you want?’