Gull Island (4 page)

The sun was surprisingly warm; it was just past midday and everywhere was silent. The air quivered with the heat. There was no birdsong, no
movement
apart from the ever-hopeful gulls and the sea steadily undulating on its relentless, unstoppable journey, its faintly heard murmur soothing and soporific. Uncomfortable as the rocky seat was, she slept.

A mist began to cover the surface of the water as the afternoon wore on, making the sun a hazy ball and the island a place of mystery. She stood up stiffly and walked to where Luke had moored his boat. She took a
notebook
out of her handbag. She wrote a message for him and, stretching into the boat, put it under the seat and anchored it with a stone. She sat a while longer then set off home to more lectures from her mother.

The sea fret now covered Gull Island and the cold was creeping between her clothes and her skin. She moved as fast as she could between the high hedges of the lonely lane, unhappiness clouding her vision more than the blanketing mist. She had been disappointed not to find Luke there when she needed to talk to him so badly. She felt he had let her down. Her
message had been brief, a reprimand: ‘Where were you? Bernard is dead. Rosita is safe. Why weren’t you here?’

She went first to the Careys’ and found the room crowded with all eleven members of the family at home, plus the extra children minded while their mothers worked. The noise they made, all clamouring for a meal, was
deafening
. Pushing two of her sons off the end of the sofa, to sit on sections of tree trunks that served as stools, Mrs Carey made room for her and handed her a cup of tea.

‘Get this down you and when I’ve fed this lot we’ll have a chat.’

She busied herself with a huge saucepan containing soup, ladling it out into an assortment of bowls and basins and handle-less jugs, guiding it around the confusion of raised arms and hopeful faces into eager hands. A chunk of bread was given to each child, Idris first, and Barbara thankfully accepted a share.

Mr Carey had just arrived home. He was still wearing the leather apron with a huge front pocket and carried the canvas bag his wife had made for him to carry the newspapers he sold. He made between ten and fifteen shillings a week, selling them in the street and delivering them through letterboxes. Beside him, having helped for part of the round, was Richard, his willing assistant, already able to give correct change for a tanner or a bob – a sixpence or a shilling.

‘’Lo Barbara,’ Richard called with a salute of a dirty hand.

The bogie cart which Mr Carey pulled on his journey was in the passage near the front door, where everyone had to climb over it to get in or out. Two cats had taken it over for the evening. A dog hid under the table but didn’t rise to greet Richard, afraid of being sent away from where he might find a few dropped morsels.

Mr Carey was a kindly man. His weary eyes twinkled in the tanned, over-thin face as he greeted Barbara. ‘Got a visitor have we, Molly? There’s lovely. A young lady in the house might make this lot behave,’ he joked, touching the head of each child in turn. ‘Now, what have I got in my pocket today?’

Spoons paused momentarily as they all watched their father slowly dip into his leather apron. He brought out a loaf of bread and a dead pigeon. Handing them to his wife he dipped again and this time brought out some small apples. There was one for each of them, sour, unripe, but hungrily accepted. The rest of the contents of his pocket were three eggs, and some potatoes, still encrusted with the earth from where he and Richard had stolen them from someone’s garden.

Once the pocket was empty the spoon returned to the attack and the last
of the soup was enthusiastically and noisily finished. The stolen, precious food was put aside by Molly Carey for the following day.

Clearing away and washing the dishes was utter chaos as everyone tried to leave the table at once. The dishes were placed under the table
individually
, with the saucepan, for the dog to lick, then piled near the bowl of soapy water to be washed.

‘Clear off out, the lot of you,’ Mrs Carey shouted above the din. ‘Barbara and I will see to the pots.’ The twins, Ada and Dilys, who were approaching their fourteenth birthday, were quick to move and set off to visit friends. They were making plans and made no secret of their intention of leaving as soon as they had finished school.

When the dishes were washed and order restored, and Henry Carey had gone to spend an hour on the garden, Barbara told Mrs Carey about Bernard’s death.

‘There’s sorry I am,
fach
. I knew, see, but as you didn’t tell me who was the father and I didn’t like to ask, there was no way I could prepare you for the shock.’

‘Mam must have known though.’

‘Yes, she knew.’

‘What happened?’ Barbara asked dully.

‘From what I’ve pieced together from his poor mam’s version and what the police told my Henry, Bernard was on a train near London and he didn’t have a ticket. Tried to hide, he did. When the ticket inspector started to come down the train he planned to go into a lav with a friend who would show his ticket through a partly opened door so they’d think there was only one person in there, but they were too late and the lav was in use. So, the silly boy tried to jump off the train and, well, sufficient to say he was killed.’

‘Why didn’t someone tell me?’

‘Next of kin are informed, love. Girlfriends don’t count, not till you’re married are you next of kin. His mam couldn’t have known how fond Bernard was of you or she’d have sent a message for sure.’

‘She knew.’ Barbara’s voice was bitter.

‘What are you going to do?’

‘Keep the baby. Perhaps when Mrs Stock knows it’s Bernard’s daughter she’ll help me. I don’t think Mam and Dad will.’ She tried to hold back the tears but soon gave way to them and was cuddled in Mrs Carey’s skinny arms.

Mrs Carey went with her the following evening to talk to Bernard’s mother but they were shrilly and angrily told to leave.

‘Keep out of my affairs, Molly Carey, and take that trollop with you! My
Bernard wouldn’t have done anything like that! Sunday-school teacher he was, remember. Don’t try and put that bit of trouble on
me
or I’ll have the police on
you
!’

‘Pity you feel like that, Mrs Stock,’ Molly Carey said quietly. ‘With only one of your lovely sons left I’d have thought you’d welcome a grandchild. I know I would in your place.’

Both Barbara and Mrs Carey thought that as time passed, Mrs Jones would forgive her daughter, accept the situation and allow Barbara to have the child at home, but a few days later Mr Jones won almost a pound on the horses. He’d had a run of good luck which gave him the confidence to take a chance and to his amazement, when he picked out a double both horses had romped home first. He gave five shillings to his wife and with the rest he and his friends got drunk.

Unfortunately, in his inebriated state he told the group of people who were helping him celebrate about his daughter’s ‘bit of trouble’. Encouraged by his friends’ supportive outrage, he came home, threatened Barbara with a tightly clenched fist and told her to leave.

Mrs Jones pleaded but Barbara thought her arguments were less than enthusiastic as she repeatedly reminded her daughter that she had no one to blame but herself anyway and could hardly expect others to be
sympathetic
. Frightened and unable to think what to do, her mother’s words racing through her brain, Barbara walked through the streets the following morning until an advertisement caught her attention. It seemed the answer, at least to her immediate problem.

A week later, in response to the advertisement, Barbara handed in her notice at the shop, said a stiff goodbye to her family, and went to work on a small farm twenty-seven miles away from her home town, on which there were cows, sheep, chickens and geese, and cornfields sloping down to the sea.

Luke was sitting in his Cardiff office staring out at the hazy sunshine and wishing he was on his boat fishing off Gull Island. He wore a sports jacket adorned with leather patches on sleeves and elbows, with a blue and green check shirt, and a plain green tie. He felt a fraud. The clothes were worn to conform to the image people expected when they walked into his shop to buy. If he were to dress in the shabby shorts he wore at weekends and in which he felt more comfortable, more himself, he would fail to persuade them that he was offering a quality service as he took their money.
Second-hand
books was one of the many occupations where formality was important. 

He left his chair and walked over to smile politely as a couple came in to look for a book on formal gardens of the eighteenth century. He led them to the relevant section of shelves and shared their delight when they found what they were looking for, but even at such a satisfying moment, he still longed to be free.

He had been born into a wealthy family and his father initially prepared him to work alongside him in the wine business that had been in the family for three generations. But Luke had never settled into the
business
with a father who held for him ill-concealed dislike. Luke’s happiest times had been the hours spent with Roy Thomas and his lively,
affectionate
family. It was to them that he had scuttled whenever there was an hour to spare.

Then, when Luke had been approaching his eighteenth birthday, Roy paid a rare visit to him. They were in his bedroom, enjoying a playful fight, and his father had come into the room and in a rage told Roy to leave and never come to the house again. There had never been an explanation.

When Luke’s mother had died, Roy had defied the order and come to comfort his friend. Luke had been so shocked by the loss of the one person who had made the house a home, he had been unable to cry. Seeing Roy had released the tears and when Luke’s father found them, arms around each other, both with tear-stained faces, his rage almost became apoplectic.

Roy was marched from the house and Luke pleaded for him to be allowed to stay.

‘He’s my friend and I love him,’ he said, and, white-faced with disbelief, he heard his father tell him to leave. In a voice trembling with anger and hate, Luke’s father told him he was unclean and not fit to dwell with decent people. When Luke continued to plead, his father hit him again and again.

Luke had been so devastated both by the implication of his unnatural love for his friend, and by his father’s intransigent disapproval and
embarrassment
, that he spent weeks doing nothing more than reel from one bar to another. He was arrested three times for being drunk and disorderly and twice spent time in prison on remand, as his father refused to offer bail. Both incidents were for breaking the windows of his father’s house.

His mother would have understood, or at least allowed him to talk about it, but she was dead. So it was his grandmother who had helped start him in a career by introducing him to the wonderful world of books and historical maps.

She had rented a small shop and spent several weeks travelling with him to buy books and maps to fill the shelves, mostly books of little value at first, but gradually he began to deal with more interesting and rare volumes, and almost without thinking he began to specialize in books on
gardens and the countryside. He also had room on the walls of his shop for the work of local artists, mostly seascapes.

Once he had accepted the need to work and a purpose to rise each morning, he quickly began to succeed. The second-hand book trade was absorbing, his knowledge grew and he was soon respected and well liked. Having none of the aggression of many and without the domineering and condescending attitude men often showed towards women who worked alongside them, the offer of friendship came from all who met him. But apart from Roy Thomas, who was now away fighting in France, he remained a loner.

His business acumen was strong but in his dealings with people he was patient, helpful and without guile. He smiled a lot and made customers believe he had been waiting just for them to come in and cheer his day, but his smile hid his constant loneliness. Unhappiness, guilt, confusion and, most of all, disappointment at his family’s attitude still festered under the veil of quiet contentment.

At five minutes to five he closed the ledger on which he had been working, tilted his chair back and stretched luxuriously. He wouldn’t go back to his lodgings; he would send a message to his landlady and go to the beach for a few hours of peace and quiet. With Roy in France fighting a bloody, insane battle there was no one to notice if he was late or, he thought with sadness welling up, to care if he didn’t get home at all.

As the train took him to the station nearest to Gull Island, he began to wonder about Barbara. Had she succumbed to the pressures of her family and allowed herself to be led to some dark house where some old woman would perform atrocities on her lovely young body and destroy the life within it? What was it about some families that pride, the opinion of others, was of greater importance than love and support?

Barbara was still on his mind when he reached the cottage and changed his clothes. He saw at once that she had been there. The teapot was slightly out of its precise place and the cup and saucer she had used was out of alignment. He was so fussy; like an old woman, he knew that. Roy often teased him about it.

He ate some stale biscuits and drank two cups of tea then went to the boat. He saw the note at once. The baby was safe, thank goodness. Although short, it was such a bossy note he found it impossible not to smile. Terrible to know Bernard was dead, poor Barbara; but at least the baby was safe. He exuded his breath in a long sigh of relief. He hadn’t realized just how important it was.

Surprisingly, it being so late in the season, he went out in the darkness and caught a few mackerel, baked them over a fire and ate them.

Just before he left, as the darkness was complete and only faint
variations
, black against grey, showed him where the rocks were and the shape of his boat, he sat on the cooling beach, caressed by the offshore breeze, and wrote a reply in the light of his torch, guessing she would go there again.