Chapter 16
It is a terrible thing to have a conscience, Cora thought the next time Elisavet came to clean.
In the same way that she had wanted to return the cap to the soldier all those years ago, she wanted to make things right for Elisavet today, because she was grateful to her for translating the notebook.
It was a failing of hers to want to make people happy.
There was obviously no chance of Lottie moving in with her and she still felt vaguely insulted by the sharp refusal, even though it had been Fiona’s idea in the first place, not hers.
‘I’m just off, Elisavet,’ she said.
Elisavet was cleaning the bath vigorously and Cora stood awkwardly in the doorway with her bag over her shoulder.
Elisavet straightened up to face her and blew a strand of hair away from her face. ‘Okay.’
‘Listen – I’ve got a bedroom going spare here. It’s yours if you want it. It might be more comfortable than living in Queen’s Lane.’
For a moment, Elisavet looked blank. ‘I am comfortable,’ she said defensively.
‘Yes, I know. What I’m asking is, would you like to live here, in this house?’
Silence. A frown. Then: ‘Live here with you?’
‘Yes.’
‘Thank you, but no. I like to be private,’ Elisavet said, and she went back to cleaning the bath.
Megan answered the door with her hair tied up into two fluffy grey bunches. ‘I’m trying out a new style,’ she explained, puffing them up like pom-poms. ‘What do you think?’
Cora glanced at a sceptical Gladdie and then took another look at Megan’s new style.
‘If you want my opinion, Meg, you look like an elderly Mickey Mouse.’ Cora was still smarting from Elisavet’s swift refusal.
First Lottie, now her! It stung. ‘But it suits you,’ she added quickly to soften her opinion.
‘Sorry, I’m feeling out of sorts today. Out of the kindness of my heart I told Elisavet she could move in with me and she said no, she likes to be private.
I’m not that bad, am I?’ she asked. ‘You’d move in with me, wouldn’t you, Megan? ’
‘I don’t know.’ Megan pursed her lips. ‘Depends on the circumstances.’
‘Go on then. Name them.’
‘If my house fell down, for instance. In a storm in the dead of night. And I was desperate. Then yes, I’d consider it.’
‘I’d move in with you, Cora,’ Gladdie said encouragingly, ‘as long as we had a rota for shopping and cooking and TV viewing and that sort of thing. I’ve got my Dymo label maker, we could label everything so there’s no confusion.’
Cora thought about it briefly. ‘There’s a lot to be said for living alone,’ she decided.
‘Elisavet’s very unhappy, there’s no doubt about that,’ Megan said.
‘I heard her crying in the kitchen as if she’d lost all hope.
I told her there was always hope, that she shouldn’t worry because people can change – thinking of Enid, I was.
It’s funny, before that I hadn’t thought about her in years but it was the sound of her crying that took me back. ’
The three of them sighed in unison. There was a story to boost the spirits and give you hope! You would have to have a heart of stone not to be cheered by it, even if Enid did suffer the worst fate anyone could imagine.
‘I always thought Enid was the closest Bridgend had to a film star,’ Gladdie said.
‘Beautiful, she was,’ Megan said, ‘like Rita Hayworth with her copper hair.’
Cora agreed. ‘She shone her glow on us. Men looked at us differently when we were with her.’
Enid had dived headfirst into the war years as if it was her element, as if she was born to freedom and glamour. But the trouble was, at the time Enid didn’t care at all who she splashed on the way in.
The following week, Gladdie said she was taking the art club to the Royal Ordnance Factory memorial in the centre of town to give Elisavet a taste of local history and inspire her with the interesting story of Enid.
They would be painting in the wild, she said, making it sound as if they were on safari, and so they would need to take sketchbooks.
The three of them walked from Island Farm Avenue through green fields and along the leafy path by the side of the clear, rushing River Ogmore. They were meeting Elisavet on the Old Bridge.
From a distance they saw Elisavet leaning on the bridge wall waiting for them, her dark hair blowing in the breeze. Behind her, framed by a narrow alley, was a glimpse into the centre of the town.
Cora always felt the arched stone bridge was a portal into a different world.
‘There she is with her sketchbook, bless her!’ Gladdie said. ‘She’s in for a treat!’
Cora had been wondering a lot these last few days about what they had learnt during their long lives, if anything, that was worth talking about.
It wasn’t a question that could be answered easily, but Enid was a perfect example.
Beautiful Enid. It was a love story turned on its head if ever you needed one!
And it was a way of telling Elisavet more about themselves without being self-centred about it.
The Royal Ordnance Factory memorial was situated on New Bridge, the next bridge along from Old Bridge.
They were taking Elisavet to see it because it was a tribute to their work during the war years.
The list of names was surprisingly short, considering the thousands of people the factory had employed.
The inscription on the slate read:
Remember with great gratitude all those who worked at the Bridgend Arsenal and especially those who were killed there.
‘That’s us,’ Cora said. ‘We worked there.’
‘We weren’t killed there, obviously,’ Megan added helpfully to Elisavet, making a joke.
Cora gave her a look. It was no use trying to make jokes with Elisavet. She was very literal because it wasn’t her first language.
‘This place, ROF 53, this is where we made munitions,’ Gladdie told her. ‘We were filling shells. Bombs,’ she clarified. ‘It’s gone now, of course. It closed down after the war.’
‘Okay.’ Elisavet’s dark hair blew across her face and she tucked it behind her ear.
It was one of those days when Elisavet looked young, Cora thought. Maybe it was the housework that aged her, or maybe it was them. They were an acquired taste.
Cora wondered how old she actually was but for some reason she couldn’t just ask out of the blue because that would seem as if it was something that mattered. It didn’t, particularly, it was just curiosity. ‘We had a friend, her name was Enid. She came to Bridgend from North Wales.’
‘Beautiful girl,’ Megan added warmly, ‘with hair like a newly minted penny.’
‘Older than us,’ Cora said. Funny how age mattered even if you tried to pretend it didn’t. ‘She came to Bridgend to get away from her father, who was a drunk. You know what I mean, an alcoholic?’
Elisavet nodded seriously. ‘Yes, I know it.’
‘She was looking for a husband and she fell in love with Temperance. Mostly because of his name. Ha ha! I’m joking.
He was much older than she was, round faced, lively, and the truth was, she could have had anyone she wanted, so he was happy.
She was like a beauty queen, wasn’t she, Megan?
Made to a better standard than the rest of us.
Taller, prettier. She turned heads. When she was fifteen she had attended the Home Training Centre to learn domestic skills, which was four months of being told how to cook nutritious meals, how to launder shirts, how to darn, knit and sew, how to clean the house.
The Ministry of Labour had set the scheme up in order to make women more employable as servants, or wives, which was much the same thing in those days.
It was compulsory, wasn’t it, Gladdie? If you were unemployed. ’
‘Don’t get me started,’ Gladdie said, fanning herself.
Elisavet was clutching her sketchbook, frowning at them.
‘To be fair, that’s got nothing to do with the story,’ Megan pointed out.
‘It’s got a bit to do with it,’ Cora said, ‘because Temperance could see she was good wife material and that’s why they got married. If you don’t like the way I’m telling it, Megan, why don’t you tell it, then?’
‘See, ultimately,’ Megan said to Elisavet, ‘the Ministry of Labour made girls into better wives so they would have a man to look after them, you see? When Enid met Temperance she could see the advantages of marrying him because she’d been trained for it and he was a good earner. It was a means to an end.’
Elisavet frowned and tossed her hair away from her face. ‘Your friend Enid,’ she asked them, ‘she didn’t mind staying home and being a wife?’
It was an interesting question.
‘Oh, yes, she minded,’ Cora said.