Hearts of Gold Read Online Free PDF Page B

Aunt Megan’s house. They missed her warmth, her love and her cuddles, but fortunately Megan’s house was within easy walking distance even for small legs, and for once in his life Evan stood up to Elizabeth, overrode all her objections and actively encouraged his children to visit his mother and sister-in-law.
    Much to Elizabeth’s chagrin Evan also developed the habit of dropping into Megan’s whenever he walked the Graig hill. The neighbours began to fall silent when Elizabeth passed. She sensed fingers pointing at her behind her back, whispers following her when she left the local shops. She didn’t need her Uncle John Joseph to tell her that, in Graig terms,
    “Evan had pushed his feet under Megan’s table”.
    As jealousy took its insidious hold, Elizabeth reacted in typical martyred fashion. She became colder and at the same time, a more efficient housewife. Whatever else was being said she made certain that no one could cast a critical eye at her house or her children. Everything and everyone within the confines of her terraced walls shone and sparkled as only daily rubbing and scrubbing could make them.
    In time the inevitable happened, the gossip mongers tired of talking about Megan and Evan, and turned their attention to other things. But Megan, young, attractive, footloose and fancy free, was never out of the limelight for long. Interest in Evan was
    superseded by interest in Megan’s lodgers particularity one Sam Brown, an American sailor turned collier who’d made his way to Pontypridd via Bute Street, Cardiff, and the first black man to live on the Graig.
    Caterina’s presence in Leyshon Street kept Megan just the right side of respectability – just – because other gentlemen callers beside Evan and Megan’s brother Huw found their way to her door.
    The most frequent visitor was Harry Griffiths, a corner shop keeper. By Pontypridd standards Harry was comfortably off; by Graig standards he was a millionaire. Popular and well-loved by his customers because he and his father had almost bankrupted themselves by financing the grocery credit accounts of the miners during the crippling hungry strikes of the twenties. He could do no wrong in the eyes of his neighbours. Megan couldn’t have picked a better, “gentleman friend” if she’d tried. He was married, but the gossip had long since discovered that it was a marriage in name only as his wife refused to give him “his rights”.
    They lived above his shop which was housed in a large square building that dominated the corner of the Graig hill and Factory Lane.
    Old Mrs Evans, who lived in rooms above the fish and chip shop opposite, saw him pulling the curtains of the box room less than a week after his wedding, and it wasn’t long before everyone on the Graig became acquainted with the Griffiths’ sleeping habits.
    Mrs Evans continued her reports at regular intervals. The old iron single bedstead in the box room acquired a fresh coat of paint and a blue spread. Harry’s clothes were hung on hooks behind the door, and a rag rug laid over the bare floorboards.
    Mrs Evans was obliged to adjust her hours, and change to a later bedtime when Harry took to eating supper every evening with Megan in Leyshon Street, but then, as she whispered to Annie Jones who worked in the fish shop, “A man’s entitled to a bit of comfort, and if he can’t get it at home, who can blame him for straying”.
    Certainly not the women whose credit was stretched by Harry when their husbands fell sick or were put on “short time” by the pit owners.
    Megan had steeled herself to face worse.
    Fingers were pointed, but not unkindly. Only Elizabeth gave her the cold shoulder, but the relationship between her and Elizabeth was already so strained, Megan barely noticed the difference.
    The war widows on the Graig generally fell into one of two categories. There were those who became embittered, afraid to love anyone, man, woman or child, lest they suffer loss again, and