Spoils of War (44 page)

‘Mam …’

‘I’m not going away just yet, Billy.’ Diana allowed Megan to lift the children from her lap.

‘They’re quite a handful,’ she said, as Ronnie closed the door behind Megan, before sitting in the chair opposite hers.

‘Most children are.’

‘Tina said something about having a party and inviting all her brothers and sisters; I had no idea she was serious.’

‘How are you feeling?’

‘Fed up with no one telling me anything. Overwhelmed at seeing two grown children, one I can’t even remember. Annoyed at missing four years.’ She looked at him, saw the way he was looking at her. ‘I married you!’

‘I wish that hadn’t sounded as though you were quite so shocked – or sorry.’

‘I don’t remember enough to be sorry. This is awful, like walking through a thick fog and not knowing who you’re going to meet when it lifts enough to see your hand in front of your face.’

‘How about we sit here quietly in front of the fire and I tell you everything so you don’t have to remember.’

‘You’d do that? The doctors –’

‘Have admitted they haven’t a clue what to do with you.’ Leaving his chair he kneeled on the hearthrug in front of her. Lifting back her hair, he ran his fingers lightly over the scar on her temple. ‘That must hurt.’

‘Not any more, although I sometimes get headaches. God, this is strange!’

‘Let’s see if we can make it any the less strange. Where do you want me to start?’

‘It still has to be uniform, I’m afraid. I might not have time to change later.’

‘Your hair looks tidier.’

‘You’re lucky I had time to comb it. You can’t just turn up at the nurses’ hostel like this, Peter. I could have been working, I could have been studying – and you can’t take my arm.’ She moved away from him as one of the staff nurses walked into the foyer. ‘I’m in uniform and shouldn’t even be with a boy.’

‘But you were sleeping?’ He followed her as she left the building.

‘I was.’

‘If you had been busy or I hadn’t found you I would have got back on the bus and gone home.’

‘Won’t your mother and father be worried about you?’

‘I am not a child.’

‘I’m beginning to realise that.’

‘What is this place?’

‘A teashop.’ She opened the door and looked around. There were half a dozen empty tables and she chose one by the window.

‘Nurses come to drink tea here when they don’t have to work?’

‘And eat,’ she said earnestly. ‘The food in the hostel is very bad.’

‘I have some money, what can I buy you?’

‘You want to save all your money. I can buy my own food and drink.’

‘I think,’ he rested his head on his hands and looked at her, ‘that very soon your money and my money will be the same.’

‘What would you like, sir, miss?’ The waitress pulled a notepad from her belt.

‘I’d like whatever is good, two of everything.’

‘Sir?’

‘Never mind him, he’s in a funny mood.’ Liza looked at the counter behind the girl. ‘Two hot chocolates, and are those fresh Chelseas?’

‘Made this morning.’

‘And two of those please.’

Ronnie sat back in his chair. ‘Have I said too much for you to take in?’

‘I think I’ve followed you.’

‘You have to bear in mind that I’ve only given the sketchiest outline of what your life has been like for the last two and a half years because I wasn’t here and I only have your letters and other people’s accounts to go on.’

‘I still can’t believe I married you. Of all the men in Pontypridd – you!’ She continued to sit staring at him with the same expression of blank incomprehension on her face that had set in when she had realised why he’d stayed in the room after the children had left.

‘Any reason in particular why you can’t believe it?’

‘You are so much older than me. You were always shouting and grumpy when you ran the café when I was growing up …’

‘You made the same objections when I first suggested we get married.’

‘I did?’

‘Yes.’

‘And you were married to Maud. I remember your wedding.’

‘You married Wyn.’

‘I know they’ve both died. Bethan told me. I wish they hadn’t.’

‘We both did a lot of grieving at the time.’

‘This is so peculiar.’

‘The first thing I have to do is convince you how much I’ve changed from the Ronnie you remember, but it’s not my shouting and moods you’re thinking about, is it?’

‘No.’

‘You’re trying to imagine making love to me and you can’t, because you married Wyn in the hope that you’d never have to sleep with another man again.’

‘How did you know that?’

‘Because we’ve never kept secrets from one another. Because I’m your husband and because I’ve made it my business to know your every mood and thoughts. We were together for over a year before I had to leave and I used that time to study you. I was a very attentive student.’

‘I remember asking Maud once if she was afraid of you.’

‘And what did she say?’

‘Not after she got to know you.’

‘We have all the time in the world to get to know one another again, Diana.’

‘What if I never remember that you’re my husband?’

‘We’ll have to make a whole lot of new memories for you to think about.’

‘It doesn’t worry you?’

‘The only thing that concerns me at the moment is how I’m going to keep you out of the clutches of the doctors and that hospital. Do you want to go back?’

She shook her head vigorously. ‘Absolutely not.’

‘Then, we’ll have to make sure you don’t. Come on, Di.’ He left his seat and helped her out of her chair. ‘The others will be wondering what’s become of us, and if I don’t get you back in the kitchen for tea, Andrew’s going to batter down that door to get at you. Oh, and by the way, your mother has insisted we have separate bedrooms until you do remember me.’ He raised his eyebrows. ‘Which is such a pity. I don’t know if you’ll take my word for it, but the one thing we are really good at is making love. You used to insist on practising every chance we got.’

‘That was good.’ Peter laid a neat pile of coins on top of the bill, stacked his cup, saucer and plate and leaned over the table closer to Liza. ‘And if I hadn’t come, you would have slept and not eaten and gone straight to the ward.’

‘Yes, and I’ll probably curse you at the end of my shift when I’m worn out, but right now, thank you, Peter.’ She looked at her watch. ‘I have to go.’

‘I’ll walk you back.’ He held out his hand, and this time she took it.

‘Can’t I come to your room, even for a moment?’

‘Girls have been thrown out the Infirmary for less.’

‘But I want to kiss you.’

‘In broad daylight?’

‘If I can’t see you later, yes, in broad daylight.’

As they reached the gates of the hostel she took him to the side, into the shrubbery. As soon as the bushes screened them, he closed his hands round her waist and, almost lifting her off her feet, kissed her.

‘You’ll be my girl?’ he asked when he released her. ‘You’ll be my girl, Liza?’

It was almost a command. She thought about Angelo and the well-meaning lecture Bethan had given her about Peter’s peculiar upbringing and how he had no experience of normal, family life and relationships with women. But the more she considered it, the more she realised that she’d meant every word she’d said. There was simply no decision for her to make.

‘I can’t be your girl until I tell Angelo that I can’t go out with him any more.’

Wrapping his arms round her, he pulled her close. ‘And then you’ll marry me?’

‘Not until I finish my training.’

‘And if I can’t wait that long?’

‘Peter, I hardly know you,’ she murmured, using Bethan’s argument. He continued to gaze into her eyes. ‘Your mother was right,’ she whispered. ‘You do only have to look into someone’s eyes to know that you love them.’

‘I hear you won’t have a job for too much longer, Dino.’ Andrew couldn’t hide his delight at the thought, and Bethan knew he was anticipating David’s imminent departure.

‘Not after what these two uncovered.’ He nodded to William, who’d left his seat at the table to give Ronnie a hand to help Diana through the door.

‘You told her?’ Andrew looked to Ronnie.

‘Yes,’ Diana answered, ‘and as you see, Dr John, I’ve survived the experience.’

‘Did you find everything you were looking for in the scrap yard, Dino?’ Ronnie asked, eyeing the children who were busy playing with Megan’s animal-shaped iced biscuits – but, he suspected, still listening in on the conversation.

‘Our men are still out. We called for reinforcements, they’re starting again at first light, but the colonel seems to think we’re well on the way to recovering a good third of our missing property.’

‘Who would have thought that Glan and Alfredo had it in them?’

‘That’s my brother you’re talking about, Will,’ said Tina.

‘Ours, Tina, but that doesn’t make him any the less guilty.’ Ronnie helped Diana into a chair. ‘Sorry to have to tell you this, love, but it appears that my brother Alfredo is something of a wide boy.’

‘What’s going to happen to him?’ Megan asked.

‘We’ll work something out,’ Dino said airily.

‘I seem to remember occasions when you weren’t that far off being a wide boy, Will, or you.’ Diana looked at Ronnie.

‘We’re both as respectable as they come these days,’ Will protested.

‘I’ve been out of it that long?’

‘I keep them respectable.’ Tina picked up the teapot. ‘You two want tea?’

‘Please.’ Ronnie grabbed Billy, who’d just received Megan’s permission to leave the table, and tickled him.

‘Don’t, Daddy. Mam – tell him.’

‘Tell him what, darling?’ She took Catrina, who’d held out her arms to be picked up as soon as she sat at the table.

‘To stop.’

‘Do you want him to?’ She smiled as Ronnie swung Billy down on to his foot and lifted him back up to table level.

‘Sometimes.’ Billy started laughing again.

‘You look exhausted, Di.’ Ronnie set Billy down on the floor. ‘You could have your tea in bed.’

‘That would be a good idea,’ Andrew concurred drily, ‘if you were going to stay the night.’

‘You will let me?’ Diana begged.

‘You can’t be thinking of taking her back to that hospital?’ Megan protested. ‘The poor girl needs rest and a fat lot she’ll get there with that dragon witch stomping around.’

‘I should have known better than to think you’d let her leave once she came over the doorstep. All right, if she goes to bed right this minute and you promise to telephone me the second there’s any change or if she gets ill, feverish or faints …’

‘None of which I intend doing,’ Diana maintained.

‘I promise,’ Ronnie interrupted.

‘Then she can stay. Just for tonight. I’ll be round first thing in the morning.’

‘Not to take her back.’

‘One thing at a time, Megan. I’ll only let her stay now if Bethan sees her safely between the sheets.’

‘Bully,’ Diana grumbled, but both Ronnie and Andrew noticed she didn’t need any further coaxing to leave her chair.

‘Read us a story, Mam?’ Billy pleaded.

‘Not Mam, Daddy,’ Ronnie said firmly, ‘and it’s too early. How about we go in the parlour and finish our game of tiddlywinks first?’

‘Catrina’s thrown the counters everywhere.’

‘Then we’ll have to pick them up, won’t we, young man?’

‘And Catrina won’t be playing with you, because she’s coming to her Auntie Tina, aren’t you poppet, and we’re going to look at a picture book.’

‘I forgot, you haven’t been in this house before.’

‘I haven’t?’ Diana looked at Bethan and they both burst out laughing.

‘This is the bedroom your mother made up for you.’

‘It’s lovely.’ Diana ran her hands over the beechwood suite. ‘Is this new?’

‘Dino had the money and the contacts to buy it. The bathroom’s next door. You can have a bath if you like. Andrew and I aren’t in a hurry and I’ll stay here, so you can shout if you need me. Look, your mother’s bought you a new nightdress and – trust Ronnie.’

‘What?’ Diana looked at the book Bethan had picked up.

‘Some bedtime reading. It’s a photograph album.’ Bethan opened it; the first picture was of Ronnie and Diana on their wedding day. ‘You’ve got quite a husband, Diana.’

‘It’s a pity I can’t remember being married to him. He says we were happy.’

‘You were, blissfully. And if he has his way I’ve a feeling you soon will be again.’

‘I’m sorry about this weekend,’ Andrew apologised as they closed the door of the children’s bedroom after reading Rachel and Eddie two more stories than they’d originally been promised and conceding Polly and Nell an extra half-hour reading time.

‘Can’t be helped. Patients, especially my cousin, come first.’

‘That’s the problem, Beth, with all our relatives and friends, three-quarters of the population of this town come before us.’ He opened the door to the small sitting room next to the bedroom and started in surprise.

‘I asked Nessie to light a fire in here before she left for her father’s house.’

‘And the sandwiches and brandy?’

‘Nessie made the sandwiches. I’ve been hoarding a tin of American ham Dino gave me for months, and I cadged the brandy off your father.’

‘Grown-up time.’

‘Our time. The children are in bed; the girls won’t disturb us unless there’s an earthquake. I’ve told Nessie she can stay home until Monday morning. It’s not the chalet on the Gower, Andrew, but we are together and I thought that we might try to pretend.’

‘Drink?’ He held up the brandy.

‘A small one.’

‘Did something happen that I missed?’ he asked as he wrestled with the cork.

‘I told David Ford I wouldn’t be around town to bump into him any more.’

‘And you told me there wasn’t anything between you.’

‘There wasn’t, Andrew. And now there never will be.’

‘And you’re sorry.’

‘You told me before we married that you’d had – and I mean literally – other girls.’

‘One staff nurse who was so large she was known as Two-Ton Tompkins. I got drunk at a party and she took advantage, pinning me down so she could have her evil way with me before I could put up an effective resistance. Another, I’m ashamed to say, was one of my professor’s wives, who, unfortunately for him, poor soul, had an insatiable appetite for her husband’s male students. I was weak and frustrated but it was a cold and embarrassing experience.’