Chapter 28
They were standing by the cenotaph in the middle of Bridgend, reliving the past with their sketchbooks in their hands, when Cora saw her son Gwyn coming over the bridge, talking to one of the town councillors. ‘Hey! Gwyn! Over here!’
He looked around, saw them, said something to the town councillor and came across the road to join them, blue tie flapping, with the kind of honest grin that you gave when you were happy to see someone.
‘Is this the art club?’ he asked.
‘It’s supposed to be,’ Gladdie said, ‘only Cora has taken us on a long trip down memory lane. We’re filling Elisavet in as regards local colour.’
Gwyn looked at Elisavet, head tilted, his smile gentle and amused. His hair ruffled in the breeze. ‘Lucky you.’
For a moment her dark eyes softened as she held her hair back and looked at him. ‘Lucky me,’ she agreed.
Cora tried to imagine what would have happened if she herself had said ‘Lucky you,’ to Elisavet in that way. Well, she would have broken something, probably. But Gwyn was like that, he talked to everyone, he liked people, and as a result, they in turn liked him. He gets that from me, Cora thought.
It was an age thing, that was the truth. The young spoke a different language. Elisavet and Gwyn were of a generation which didn’t blindly adopt the opinions of their elders. They challenged them, which was no bad thing because, thinking of her own mother, Jane, parents weren’t always right.
‘Do you want to see our little efforts?’ Gladdie asked him, handing him her spiral pad quickly in case he said no thanks, he was fine.
‘Interesting,’ Gwyn said.
Cora didn’t have anything to show him because she hadn’t drawn anything at all. ‘I didn’t bother drawing anything either,’ Megan said, looking at the war memorial. ‘It’s a statue of a half-naked woman and the inscription is meaningless unless there’s a name on it that you recognise.’
‘You’re right, I was just thinking that myself,’ Cora said. ‘Let’s have a look at your picture, Gladdie. What’s that? Lor! It’s not another bird, is it?’
‘It’s a pigeon. It’s been sitting at the top of the statue all this time.’
Cora looked at the drawing suspiciously. ‘No footwear on him? Lost his wellies, has he?’
Out of the corner of her eye she caught Gwyn and Elisavet exchanging a glance.
It was intriguing and also slightly annoying because she felt as if the meaningful look they shared was about her but didn’t include her.
It was the kind of glance that people exchanged when they knew each other well and something had similarly amused them.
She wondered if Gwyn and Elisavet knew each other better than she’d realised.
She looked at Megan, and Megan was staring at her, eyebrows slowly raising in a query.
Cora shrugged equally slowly. No idea! It was none of their business anyway, she reminded herself.
Now Gwyn was looking at Elisavet’s sketch.
She’d ignored the war memorial too. She’d drawn the shoppers hurrying by in Dunraven Square, all heading in the same direction.
‘Was this in May?’ Gwyn asked Elisavet.
‘Yes, when it started,’ she said.
It was as if they were speaking in code!
And when Gwyn said it was nice seeing them all but he had to get back to the office, it took all Cora’s willpower not to run after him and ask him what on earth was going on.
Elisavet left them soon afterwards to go home and the three friends headed back to Island Farm Avenue. They stopped on Old Bridge to discuss the one subject on their minds.
‘Did you see that look?’
‘You can’t set too much store by a look,’ Cora argued.
It put Gwyn in a bad light if he was cheating on Fiona, because that made him too much like Les, who had come fresh into her memory after all these years and who they hadn’t thought much of at the time and thought even less of now.
‘Gwyn’s friendly with everyone. You know what he’s like. ’
‘Perhaps he’s heard about Fiona,’ Gladdie said.
‘Heard what?’
‘About her enjoying herself with in the cafe with a man. And she was enjoying herself, Cora, you can’t deny it.’
‘Never mind, I’m not going to interfere. It’s none of my business. It’s none of yours, either, Gladdie. Just saying.’
Gladdie grunted. ‘If you ask me, Elisavet suits him better than Fiona.’
‘I’m not asking you.’
‘What if she wants him to go back with her to the war zone, Cora?’ Megan asked. ‘That’s what she was drawing, wasn’t it, crowds running from the Serbs. Gwyn saw it straight away, which was quick of him. It was only when he mentioned May that I saw what it meant.’
‘It passed me by completely.’ Cora felt her stomach plummet at the thought. ‘So they weren’t shoppers going by in Dunraven Square?’ she asked hopefully. ‘After all, art can be anything you want it to be.’
‘Bless you,’ Megan said and gave her a kindly pat on the shoulder.
‘A war zone,’ Cora repeated. ‘I’m pretty dim sometimes.’ She expected Gladdie to make some smart remark, but she’d become thoughtful too.
‘Remember how we carried on through it all, acting normal? It was strange because in between the times when life wasn’t normal, it was perfectly normal, wasn’t it?’
‘It was imperfectly normal,’ Megan said.
Cora frowned. ‘Gwyn’s an adult,’ she pointed out.
‘He’s allowed to do what he wants.’ In theory, that was perfectly true, of course.
But the idea of him leaving was awful; it appalled her.
‘Anyway, her fiancé might have a change of heart. That was the whole point of me telling her about Enid, love against the odds, giving her a bit of hope, like.’
‘Ahhhh!’ Gladdie and Megan said in unison, enlightened. ‘Love against the odds!’
‘We wondered where you were going with it,’ Megan said.