It was almost closing time before Dai turned up. No, he had no definite news but he promised to have a word here and a word there and if she was in the town he’d let them know by ten o’clock the next day. Ten o’clock on the dot. He’d have some news for them. He’d require some money for what he had spent, but nothing more. He was prepared to do everything he could for the lovely lady who was so distressed.
‘Good night to you, Sir, and my kindest regards to your lady wife, Sir. Dai Kyffin at your service, Sir.’
The first piece of news came from the hospital. Little Sali had died in the night. ‘No, she didn’t want to be saved,’ the nurse told them, ‘no, she was quite determined to die.’ She had told the night nurse that she was sorry for all she’d done. Please to tell her sister that she was truly sorry. She had tried to persuade Mari Elen to go into the sea with her but she had refused and gone off in the direction of the town. She hoped Mari Elen was all right.’
Josi held Lowri and they cried together. Josi could hardly believe that Sali had done such a terrible thing. Lowri kept saying that her mother knew how strange and troubled Sali was but had been able to do nothing for her. Their father was dead.
When it was time for Dai Kyffin to appear, they couldn’t believe that there could be any good news but there was.
‘Oh yes,’ he said, ‘Nell and me, we’ve managed to trace the little girl, but we’ll have to go very easy now. She’s with a woman called Floss, who loves little children, but is liable to be hasty, and you wouldn’t want her hasty, you wouldn’t want to send the police in for instance because she don’t like the police and there’s no knowing what she might do. She had a lady’s little peke, she did, but when they sent for the police she’d killed the little dog, yes she had, Ma-am, not wanting anyone to get her if she couldn’t. Now, what we advise is this. Nell would take your lady wife, all quiet and nice like, to call on the lady called Floss. She’s very tender hearted and if she saw how the lady and the child was crying, wantin’ to be together, probably she’d be willing to let her go, Ma-am, for a small renumeration for the food, the chips more than anything, because she lives on chips, Ma-am, not able to cook much for herself. Would you be willing, Ma-am? You’d be in no danger I assure you, Nell being a very kind sort of creature and anxious, most anxious I’m sure to reunite mother and child.’
Lowri assured him that she would be very pleased to go with Nell, and indeed Nell was waiting outside to do her bit.
‘Well, you see,’ Nell said, ‘we knows one another from childhood, Floss and me, and I’ve got my ways and Floss has her ways, but is real tender hearted if approached without force or threats of any kind. I suppose she knows as she should have gone to the police about the little girl, but then Floss don’t like the police from way back, so what is one to do. Yes, I knew about the child because she turns to me and asks me about cough medicine and so on, so I know there’s someone what she’s looking after because she’s not coughing much herself and she’d soon get over it if she was. I suggest that you buy Floss a very handsome cake, Ma-am, to get her on your side, she’s very partial to fruit cake or cake of any kind and that would be a good way to show her that you’ve come friendly like.’
Lowri went to the nearest shop and bought a very opulent-looking cake, covered with jam and dessicated coconut, and they went on their way, Lowri fearful and extremely uneasy. Floss’ home was down a dark alley, the sort of place Lowri wouldn’t have thought existed in such a prosperous town; a large front door with peeling paint and a window with a heavy lace curtain. They stood waiting for her to come to the door. She came.
The hall was full of prams of all sorts, most of them standing on their front wheels to save space. ‘I has second-hand clothes as you know and Floss is one of my agents, she stores some of my stuff for me, my house being very small and sheds expensive to come by and mostly damp.’
There was no sign nor sound of Mari Elen. Nell introduced the two women and Lowri thrust the cake into her hands. It seemed like a ridiculously obvious tactic, but it worked.
‘Come for the little girl, haven’t you?’ she asked. ‘Well she’s been treated very kind as she’ll tell you. Only she’s not at all well today. She had a very heavy cold when she came after me, Ma-am, when I was getting my supper from Daly’s. She said she was hungry and didn’t she eat. Without a word of a lie, I had to make do with a piece of bread and scrape that night. But she must have caught cold in the sea. Yes, her little friend had had her in the sea and without no towel to dry herself. She’s slept with me in my bed, she hasn’t had no cold in my house, but she’s not at all well today, I must warn you Ma-am.’ She took them through to a room which served as bedroom, sitting room and kitchen and there in the small bed was Mari Elen, half dead and hardly conscious. ‘I must get a car to take her away and what do I owe you Madam for all your kindness and care of my little daughter?’
‘Ma-am, I won’t take a penny, though she has been a little troublesome, but not her fault. Oh, thank you. How very kind. This will really put me back on my feet what with the rent due next week. And you won’t go to the police, will you? They’d enjoy having something to charge me with. Don’t mention it Ma-am, she’s a lovely child who I treated like one of my own.’
Nell had managed to get a taxi and Lowri wrapped the sick child in her own coat and took her out. Nell stayed with Floss but telling Lowri how well she’d behaved. ‘You’re a real lady, Ma-am and God bless you.’ Perhaps she meant to have a share of the gold sovereign Lowri had pressed into her friend’s hand.
They arrived back at the hotel to find that Josi had rewarded Dai Kyffin, who at last had been prevailed upon to leave. ‘I’ve felt like someone in a Dickens’ novel all day,’ Josi said. ‘Would you believe that there are still those little mean streets and alleys and those tiny dark houses?’
Lowri couldn’t respond. ‘She’s very hot, Josi. Do you think we can ask Graham to come to fetch us from the station?’
‘Of course we can. If I send him a postcard now he’ll get it by the afternoon post.’
They bought a postcard of Tenby. ‘All’s well,’ they wrote. ‘Mari Elen has a heavy cold or perhaps worse. Can you fetch us from the station please? The three-fifteen train. Yrs Josi and Lowri.’
Mari Elen was very unwell, feverishly speaking of going into the sea and Sali trying to pull her into the water. It really seemed that poor, sick Sali had tried to drown both of them.
‘Thank God this one is a little fighter,’ Josi said. ‘Oh, Lowri what can I do to show you how much I love you? You’ve suffered as much as I have. You’re a wonderful woman. I married you thinking you were a sweet young girl, but I find that I’ve married a marvellous woman, wise and courageous. Mari Elen will be proud of you.’
Something of Josi’s anguish woke Mari Elen. She started to cry piteously. ‘Sali was my real mother and now she’s dead.’
The little girl was suddenly shaking with an attack of violent grief, crying and wailing.
‘You’re absolutely wrong, cariad. Your real mother was a lovely woman called Miriam Lewis who died. It’s been wrong of me to try to hide that from you. As soon as you’re better I’ll tell you all about her. She was a teacher in Rhydfelen school and all the children loved her. She was very clever and sang beautifully. Lowri married me so that she could love you and look after you. You love her too, don’t you?’
‘Oh yes, I do. I’m glad Sali was not my real mother because she tried to drown me. Lowri would never do that, would you Lowri?’
‘Sali was very sick, cariad,’ Lowri said. ‘She was so sick she didn’t know what she was saying or what she was doing. We all have to try to forgive her.’
‘I’ve got a very bad throat and my head is throbbing. I want a drink, but I can’t swallow. The lady called Floss put cold water in a flannel on my forehead and that was very nice. She was very kind to me and cried so much when I was ill.’
‘We gave her money for looking after you and you shall send her a nice present when you’re better. Graham is coming to fetch us from the train and because he’s a doctor he will know what to do to make you better.’
‘She promised she’d let me take the cat out in one of her prams when I was better. I’d have liked that.’
Lowri bought a woollen blanket to wrap her in and Josi carried her to the station for the midday train. He kept it from Lowri but he was terrified by the heat coming from the child’s body. She slept almost all the way back.
‘Do you think it could be diptheria?’
‘Let’s not speculate until Graham sees her. It may be only a very heavy cold.’
They both knew that it was something far more serious than a mere cold.
Graham met them, he didn’t seem as worried as they’d expected and when he said she had pneumonia they were comforted. Pneumonia was something they had known and dealt with, they knew people, Nano and Tom, for instance, who had pulled through attacks of pneumonia, whereas diptheria and scarlet fever were something alien and more frightening.
All the same the little girl was very ill. It seemed to comfort Lowri’s mother to help nurse her; her little Sali had gone, but helping to keep Mari Elen alive seemed to ease her pain. She was willing and eager to sit with the patient at any time during the night so that Lowri and Josi could have some sleep. For over a week Mari Elen was in danger, but on the following Sunday night she sat up in bed and called out for bread and butter and a cup of milk. And demanded to know why everyone was crying. She seemed to have forgotten her ordeal. Sali wasn’t mentioned, neither was Floss, neither was the sea; she was back with them as though she had never been away.
Sali’s funeral took place very quietly. The fisherman who had tried to save her life came to her funeral. He seemed to be utterly distraught that the young girl he had managed to save had later died. He became very friendly with Lowri’s mother, he was a bachelor whose mother had recently died and in no time at all she had agreed to go to Tenby to be his housekeeper. At first Lowri wasn’t happy about the arrangement; she wanted to put Tenby out of her mind for ever. But gradually she got to like Arthur Williams and felt that something good had come out of the whole sorry episode. He called to see Mari Elen and painted a picture for her, a black and white cow at a gate. He was a competent artist and when it was too rough to go to sea he painted postcards which he sold to the tourists. Mari Elen loved her cow whom she called Betsan and would often ask after the big bearded man who had painted it. Later, it seemed to be the only thing she remembered of her long illness.
When she came downstairs for the first time, she had lost all her baby fat and was two or three inches taller, her hair, becoming tangled because of her fever, had been cut short and curled around her head. ‘My goodness,’ Tom said, ‘she was a pretty little girl, yes, but now she’s a beauty.’
‘She looks like Miriam,’ Lowri said softly.
‘She was my mother, wasn’t she?’ Mari Elen asked. She must have been thinking of the girl who had pretended to be her mother, but she didn’t mention her. How much was locked into her little head, Josi wondered.
Yes, she was going to be a real beauty. Catrin’s face was too perfect, she lacked that one salient point that made people stare, but Mari Elen had her mother’s smile and her downward glance, she was going to make men suffer, no doubt about that.
Josi looked at her and shivered. How she would put them through it, and he too old to fight. The affairs of the last few days had made him look old. Tom saw that he wasn’t such a large man as he’d always appeared to be; he was hardly taller than Tom himself, but something about his father’s great spirit, his ebulliance, had lent him inches. Suddenly it occurred to him that Lowri had married an old man. Well, if she had, she certainly seemed to dote on him, so that was all right.
‘May and I want you and Catrin to be matrons of honour at our wedding,’ he told Lowri. ‘We must put this episode behind us and look forward now. We’re going to be married in London in the New Year and we want all the family with us. Mari Elen shall be the bridesmaid with you two keeping her in order. And baby Rachel shall wear her grandmother’s christening gown and her great-grandmother’s shawl and she won’t cry all day.’ Baby Rachel turned to Tom and smiled at him. It was her first real smile, it was a miracle. It was taken as a smile for a wedding.
‘I’m glad I don’t have to wear a very, very old white dress,’ Mari Elen said. ‘I’m going to Regent Street to get my outfit. That’s very near Buckingham Palace where the king lives,’ she told them.
‘I’m frightened of this one already,’ Josi said. ‘And I haven’t got five hundred pounds to play with.’
‘Ah, but the bride’s father pays for the bridesmaids’ dresses. One day up in Town and my doting father will pick up the bill for the four of us, that’s the bride’s father’s prerogative. And he’ll pay for a wedding breakfast in the Ritz as well. Oh, we’ll have a wonderful day. Tom talks about having a secret wedding, just the two of us and the family. Well, I’d love that. But I’m all my poor old father’s got and he’ll want it to be an occasion to remember. All his relatives will be there and his neighbours will be invited in to see the photographs. It will keep him happy for years.’
‘Or at least until the birth of the son and heir,’ Catrin said.
Chapter eleven
After a few days spent getting over all the trauma and sadness of the previous week, there was more excitement. Tom got an official letter telling him that he was going to be awarded a Military Cross for extreme bravery. ‘For outstanding gallantry in bringing in the wounded under fire.’ For the duration of the morning, Tom was pleased, indeed almost proud of the honour, but as the day wore on he became more and more truculent and angry.