Gull Island (7 page)

Doubtfully, Luke went to look more closely at the walls and then, seeing the anxious look on the boy’s face and realizing that this was a part of his dream, he nodded. ‘You’re right. Once that porch is re-built it wouldn’t make a bad home.’ A look of pleasure lit Richard’s young face, and the thin shoulders dropped in relief.

‘I got a plan, see,’ the boy said.

Luke was curious but didn’t ask. If and when Richard wanted him to be involved, he’d tell him.

Among his food supplies, Luke had some Gong soup that cost twopence for three packets. Not much of a meal to offer a guest but at least it only took a few minutes to make and it would warm them. He made up two bowls and filled them with bread and they ate with enjoyment.

Richard had a rather ancient apple in his pocket, which he solemnly cut in half. They curled their faces at the sourness but by dipping it into the sugar bowl ate everything except the core, which they gave to the mouse.

‘Give little Rosita a hug from me, will you?’ Luke said as Richard
reluctantly
stood to leave.

‘Lucky you are that she isn’t living with you,’ Richard sighed, tutting and shaking his head in his old man gesture. ‘Noisy beyond she is. There’s always knocking from them in the next room or them up above complaining and asking us to keep her quiet. Fat chance of anyone getting that one to stay quiet.’

When Richard had gone, Luke sat for a long time on the stony beach near the embers of the fire, staring out at the slowly receding tide. He had enjoyed the company of the boy and now, even though the night air chilled him, he couldn’t face returning to the loneliness that stretched out before him once he closed the cottage door behind him.

He kicked the fire into a blaze and threw on more wood. Better out here where he could at least believe in the existence of others even if they were miles away, than shutting himself in the cottage and the unbreakable silence behind a closed door. After an hour, during which he went over the
conversation
between himself and the six-year-old Richard Carey, smiling occasionally at brief memories, he went in, fed the mouse and went to bed.

The following morning he was wakened early by the sound of someone entering. Curious but not alarmed, he sat up and reached for his clothes and in moments he was on his way down the stairs. To his initial delight, he saw his father standing near the fireplace – tall, well dressed but with
such a look of hatred in his eyes that the smile of welcome froze on Luke’s face and the contents of his stomach curdled.

‘Father? Good to see you. Sorry I was still in bed. I’ll soon have the fire lit and some tea made.’

‘Get out.’

‘What?’ Luke staggered as if the man had hit him. ‘What d’you mean?’

‘Get out of this house and do not come back. This cottage belongs to the family and you do not.’

‘But I come here at weekends to get away from town and what harm can I do, just living here for a few days a week?’

‘It’s a family property and you are trespassing. Your sister told me you were living here and I won’t allow it, d’you hear?’

‘You can’t mean it, Father.’ Luke was trembling. He hadn’t realized just how much he had hoped that once he and his father met and talked, things would have come right between them. But, as usual, in his father’s presence, he couldn’t muster his thoughts to even begin. ‘I’m your son,’ he stuttered painfully. ‘I love you and you must love me. How can that not be so?’

‘Don’t say that word! Coming from your mouth it’s unclean. I’ll wait outside while you gather your things then the door will be locked and you will give me your key.’

In a daze, Luke went upstairs and returned with his clothes and few possessions in a leather bag. His father refused to take the key from his hand but told him to place it on the table in a cigar box presumably brought for the purpose. Didn’t he even want to touch something I’ve handled? Luke wailed inwardly at the insult. Foolishly, in that moment of anguish, he thought of the mouse.

‘I have a pet mouse – he depends on me for food,’ he said, stuttering madly.

‘No more he doesn’t.’ His father kicked the carcase of the mouse towards the centre of the room, the mouse crushed with his heel as it came trustingly to greet him. Luke stumbled from the house and didn’t see his father leave.

He was absent from the bookshop all that week, having broken the lock and slept in the cottage, guessing his father wouldn’t bother to check that he had indeed left. He had to see Barbara and Rosita before he returned to Cardiff, give them an address where they could find him. They at least wouldn’t abandon him. But he wondered if even Barbara would turn away from him if she knew how much his father hated him for saying he loved his friend Roy. He knew he mustn’t ever mention Roy again, but just hold the happy childhood memories of the Thomas family close to his heart.

He had to wait until Sunday. That seemed the most likely day for Barbara and the children to come. To occupy himself while he waited, he began repairing the porch of the house in which Richard had taken such interest. There were a few tools in the cottage and the remains of the porch were scattered but mostly still sound. He went into town to order wood and cement, which was delivered immediately, Luke himself riding with it on the back of the firm’s horse and cart.

Stones for renewing the walls were easy to find and by the time Sunday had come, the porch was as good as new. It was surprising how much the place improved with a good brushing and scrubbing. He even whitewashed some of the walls, taking pleasure in the transformation and enjoying the physical hard work, using it to blot out the expression of hatred on his father’s face.

The third bedroom still needed a lot of work but he knew a bag of plaster, strips of skirting board and a few pots of paint would work a small miracle. It was tempting to take another week away from the shop and continue with the tasks he had set himself, but he had to get back. The bookshop was his sheet anchor and without that reason to rise each morning, he would soon succumb to misery and despair.

He bought potatoes from a local farmer on that Sunday morning and put them into the edge of the newly lit bonfire. He watched the lanes and listened for the sound of the children coming. He’d hear them soon and they’d be singing. They were always singing. At three o’clock, with the day already darkening, the potatoes were cooked and he had abandoned hope. Cleaning himself up, he changed into his town clothes and went to the station.

A
S
1918
MOVED
along on leaden feet, the newspapers continued to print photographs of young men who had been killed, wounded or gassed, or were missing in one of the many battlefields. The list seemed endless, with some mothers begging for news of a missing son and others taking what comfort they could from the words of praise for their sons’ bravery and coolness in action. A few believed the oft-repeated words.

For all the mothers it was their little boys they lost, children who had been given a uniform and told they were men. To the mothers they would never be anything but their naughty boys, whom they had expected to come in dirty and hungry from some street game or other.

Food had been rationed in February 1918, when everyone thought the government had abandoned the idea completely and would continue to persuade the country to eat less imported foodstuffs without the law making it impossible to do otherwise. It affected some more than others. Mrs Carey, living in two overcrowded rooms and trying to survive on a very low wage, didn’t see the point of complaining when the government demanded two meatless days each week – for her family there had often been meatless weeks. Mr Carey refused to eat margarine when they could not afford butter – he insisted it couldn’t be edible as it was cheaper than cart grease!

Barbara felt the war was happening somewhere else, between peoples whose arguments didn’t concern her. Cardiff was only eight miles away and she had never been there, so how could events across the sea in a land where they spoke a different language affect her? The only way war affected her was by seeing the letters in the now-familiar envelopes
delivered
almost daily to families around the street until she thought that there couldn’t be any more young men left to die in far-off fields.

Eventually, even those small dramas failed to really touch her. She would shake her head, her lovely eyes filling with tears, and she would say the expected words, like, ‘There’s a shame,’ ‘Pity for her,’ ‘Isn’t it sad?’, but
nothing felt real any more. Bernard was dead and there couldn’t be anything as hard to bear ever again.

Bernard’s mother came several times to the overflowing house in which Barbara continued to live. Barbara was not happy about her coming but was sympathetic to her need. Each time she came, the unhappy woman sat and criticized Barbara, and nursed her granddaughter, her thin shoulders stooped as she
cwtched
the crying child.

‘Always crying she is,’ she said in reproof. ‘Anyone can see she’s unhappy. She’s ill fed and just look at her clothes,
ach a fi
! This old blanket she’s wrapped in isn’t fit for a mangy old dog.’ Each time she came she offered to adopt Rosita. Her requests became demands as she criticized Barbara more and more strongly for allowing her child to suffer
unnecessary
deprivation.

‘Stubborn you are, my girl, and an uncaring mother. She’d be brought up in comfort and without having to eat stuff like that!’ She pointed to the ‘bread and scrape’, as Mrs Carey called the bread thinly coated with margarine and the seven-pound jar of jam that had been placed on the table. ‘Proper food she’d have and a room of her own and decent schooling too. Not like Mrs Carey’s ragamuffins wandering the streets following their useless father! The best is what she’d have with us. Selfish mother who’d deprive her child of all that!’

‘It’s only Richard who won’t go to school,’ Barbara defended. ‘Like a man he is for all his lack of years, delivering papers and doing whatever else he can to help the family.’ But her thoughts were not on winning
arguments
. Mrs Stock’s words penetrated and were causing her to feel guilt. Of all the jewels offered, the thought of a room for her own use seemed to Barbara the most luxurious. Without moving her head she allowed her large, gentle eyes to glance around the overcrowded and very shabby room.

Paper peeling from a corner where rain had penetrated through weakened brickwork. A ceiling patterned with cracks, missing plaster and coloured with endless years of smoke. Wasn’t Mrs Stock right? Wouldn’t Rosita be happier with her grandmother than with her? What can I offer, she asked herself, except a continuation of this dreary life we’re leading?

She rolled her pale blue, dreamy eyes back to the solemn face of Mrs Stock and shook her head. She always had a look of calmness and even now, while her thoughts were in turmoil over her decision, she spoke quietly. ‘Rosita’s mine. She’s best with me.’ Whatever happened, she knew she had to at least try and keep Rosita with her. She strengthened her resolve, remembering the urgency on Luke’s face as he made her promise never to allow anyone to take Rosita from her. She half smiled,
remembering
his certainty that the baby would be a girl.

‘You can smile and look as smug as you like. It’s easy now, being
sheltered
from reality by the kindness of poor Mrs Carey, taking room and energy she can’t spare. Selfish, that’s what you are, but I’ll have her in the end, see if I don’t!’

Looking at the thin-faced, unhappy woman who needed the child as a substitute for the family she had so tragically lost, Barbara vowed silently that whatever happened, Rosita would never live with Mrs Stock. That house might have many things others would call luxuries but there would also be misery, bitterness and a lack of laughter. No, Bernard’s mother would never take Rosita, not while she had a tongue in her head to shout a protest.

If only things had worked out on Graham Prothero’s farm. Plenty of space there, enough and to spare. Fields for Rosita to wander in and woods to explore. Plenty of fresh food too. Heaven that would have been for Rosita to grow up in – such freedom, she couldn’t have failed to be happy. But the freedom was too costly a price – her own in exchange for Rosita’s. Besides, she reminded herself, she hadn’t been given the choice once Graham had discovered about Rosita. Pointless to regret the decision to leave when there hadn’t been one to make.

No, there was nothing to think about with regret. And it was hardly luxury she had walked away from. Best not to invent dreams that were pure fantasy. Although, memories of the place weren’t all bad. Hard work for sure, but Graham had been fair in his own way.

Leaving Rosita with Mrs Carey whenever possible, Barbara did several jobs to earn her keep. Working odd hours and taking what work was offered, she managed to pay Mrs Carey for her food and buy the
necessities
for the baby. Most days, working and bringing up Rosita kept her busy from early morning until she fell exhausted, into her shared bed, late at night.

Mrs Carey continued to help without complaint, but sickly, and with another child of her own on the way, Barbara knew it was only a matter of weeks before that good lady asked her to find somewhere else. Mrs Stock had been right about that, she admitted silently. She mustn’t depend on Mrs Carey’s good nature for much longer.

There were rumblings of discontent from Mrs Carey’s landlady too. She issued frequent reminders that the rooms were overcrowded and the bogie cart and piles of newspapers were a nuisance to other tenants, going in and out past these obstacles.

Noise from Rosita’s constant wailing didn’t help. Whatever they did to try and pacify her, she cried for most of the twenty-four hours of each day. The walls resounded to the banging of irate lodgers trying to sleep, their
complaints reinforced by the landlady’s requests to be ‘more considerate, if you please. That child is noisy beyond!’ The prospect of the whole family being thrown out onto the street was a growing fear.

There were nights when even fatigue from the hectic work-filled hours couldn’t keep her from lying awake wondering how she would manage once they parted from the Carey family. Here there was security, with baby Rosita sleeping in the wooden crib made by Mr Carey, watched over with something approaching adoration by Richard.

Now eighteen months old, Blodwen needed him less, so Richard took responsibility for Rosita’s wellbeing. He accepted care of her like he took care of everything else: very seriously. It was he who fed her with the bottle of Nestlé milk which Barbara made before she left for work in the
pre-dawn
dark. He who wrapped some sugar in muslin for her to suck to keep her quiet for a few precious minutes while his mam rested.

Idris rarely left his mother’s side and Barbara heard him cry softly, as if trying not to, then admitting that Rosita’s crying kept him from sleeping and gave him a pain in his head. Several times during the night, Mrs Carey would drag herself from her bed to nurse Rosita so her golden boy could sleep.

Barbara disliked Idris as much as she loved young Richard. Idris stole from her meagre purse although Mrs Carey refused to accept this. He also stuck his fingers into the tin of Nestlé condensed milk and licked them, so there was often none for the baby’s bottle.

Giving up trying to make Mrs Carey believe her, Barbara took extra care of her pennies and hid the milk whenever she went out, telling only Richard where to find it.

In the local fish restaurant, Barbara cleaned fish ready for cooking and scrubbed the yard. Chilblains covered her hands and her ankles but were ignored as she went from the fish cleaning to a house where she again used cold water to prepare vegetables and then wash floors. Summer was coming, wasn’t it? And with it respite from the painful condition. Things were bound to improve once summer came. Plenty of jobs then, once the summer visitors started to arrive.

At The Anchor public house, where her father was a regular customer, she emptied toilets and washed the floor of the barn that housed them. A dozen jobs, each unpleasant, earned her sufficient money to survive. She refused nothing. As long as there were hours in the day she was determined to fill them earning money to keep herself and her daughter.

Mrs Jones, Barbara’s mother, still gave the occasional florin or half a crown to Mrs Carey to help her daughter, although Mr Jones knew nothing about it. Mrs Carey hid the money and managed without it, knowing that one day soon, Barbara would need money to find a place of her own.

The newest Carey child was born in April, a tiny scrap of a girl they called Meriel. For a while, Barbara abandoned several jobs to look after Mrs Carey. Mr Carey seemed more weighed down by the event than his wife and sat for hours at a time on a chair in the back garden staring at the apple tree as if it could somehow supply an answer to their growing
problems
. Richard tried to persuade Idris to help with the newspapers but Mrs Carey refused to allow it.

‘Not Idris, ask one of the others, Richard,
bach
,’ she pleaded. ‘He keeps me company and he’s helpful beyond with the new baby.’

Richard knew that his useless brother did nothing but he sighed stoically and carried on alone.

One day in May, when she was blessedly free of work, Barbara borrowed an old pram and took Rosita for a walk. The day was clear and
sweet-scented
with the early blossoms that decorated the trees and hedges, adding a beauty that gladdened her heart. She pushed the ancient pram to the local Pleasure Beach. There, amid other more prosperous strollers, with beautiful clothes and shiny new prams in which warmly dressed children looked out on a comfortable world, she made the decision to leave the Careys.

She had to find a regular job which included a place to live. Otherwise it would mean paying someone to mind Rosita and that would take most of what she could earn. It was a frightening prospect, to strike out on her own without Auntie Molly Carey to support her. Almost as frightening as when her mother told her she was going to have a baby, or learning of Bernard’s death falling from a London train.

Briefly, she considered going to see her parents but the idea froze and faded almost as soon as it was conceived. She saw in her mind’s eye the expression on her father’s face and knew he was implacable. She had seen him several times when she went to clean at The Anchor and he ignored her totally. Nothing would make him change his mind and have her back home.

Once Rosita started crawling, Auntie Molly Carey would find it hard to cope, with a new child of her own and Blodwen, that solemn-faced little girl, whom Richard still treated like a doll and was still less than two years old.

Several of the Carey children were now working. The twins had left the crowded rooms with ill-concealed glee and found places as live-in servants in large houses. They earned little more than their keep and refused to spare even a few pennies to help their mother and their family. Alun and Billie found labouring jobs putting in a few hours after school finished, and Jack and Gareth earned a few shillings delivering groceries around the streets for local shops.

Richard seemed to be the strength of the Careys. He had been helping his father with the paper round and other, less legal occupations, since he was three, but the money he helped to earn was little enough.

Barbara shook off the prosaic musings and took a deep breath, absorbing the tantalizing scents of the afternoon with its hint of approaching summer. Children’s voices called, mothers scolded,
grandmothers
soothed. Here was a place where people came to forget their worries, even the war seemed to have failed to reach this pocket of frivolity.

The sun warmed her cheeks and she closed her eyes for a moment and pretended she was on holiday, staying at one of the smart boarding houses with Bernard, who had just that moment gone to buy her an ice cream. She walked as slowly as she could, while making sure the pram moved enough to prevent Rosita from crying. She felt the need to stay with the cheerful crowd for a while, watching with some envy as grandfathers dug into
well-filled
pockets to pay for rides for excited children.

There were few fathers present and those that were were in uniform. They stood to attract abuse if they were seen in civilian clothes and obviously
able-bodied
. Many would suspect them of being conscientious objectors and proclaim their disapproval loudly. She sighed. The war couldn’t be forgotten for long, not with almost every family grieving for a loved one.