chamber. The Prime Minister’s supporters cheered, but others yelled at him to resign.
Lloyd was bitterly disappointed. ‘How can they want to keep him, after all that?’
‘Don’t jump to conclusions,’ said Bernie as the Prime Minister left and the noise subsided. Bernie was making calculations with a pencil in the margin of the
‘But is it enough to force him to resign?’ Lloyd said impatiently.
Bernie spread his arms in a gesture of surrender. ‘I don’t know,’ he said.
Next day Lloyd, Ethel, Bernie and Billy went to Bournemouth by train.
The carriage was full of delegates from all over Britain. They all spent the entire journey discussing last night’s debate and the future of the Prime Minister, in accents ranging from the harsh chop of Glasgow to the swerve and swoop of Cockney. Once again Lloyd had no chance to raise with his mother the subject that was haunting him.
Like most delegates, they could not afford the swanky hotels on the clifftops, so they stayed in a boarding house on the outskirts. That evening the four of them went to a pub and sat in a quiet corner, and Lloyd saw his chance.
Bernie bought a round of drinks. Ethel wondered aloud what was happening to her friend Maud in Berlin: she no longer got news, for the war had ended the postal service between Germany and Britain.
Lloyd sipped his pint of beer then said firmly: ‘I’d like to know more about my real father.’
Ethel said sharply: ‘Bernie is your father.’
Evasion again! Lloyd suppressed the anger that immediately rose in him. ‘You don’t need to tell me that,’ he said. ‘And I don’t need to tell Bernie that I love him like a father, because he already knows.’
Bernie patted him on the shoulder, an awkward but genuine gesture of affection.
Lloyd made his voice insistent. ‘But I’m curious about Teddy Williams.’
Billy said: ‘We need to talk about the future, not the past – we’re at war.’
‘Exactly,’ said Lloyd. ‘So I want answers to my questions
Ethel said: ‘You know all there is to know,’ but she was not meeting his eye.
‘No, I don’t,’ he said, forcing himself to be patient. ‘Where are my other grandparents? Do I have uncles and aunts and cousins?’
‘Teddy Williams was an orphan,’ Ethel said.
‘Raised in what orphanage?’
She said irritably: ‘Why are you so stubborn?’
Lloyd allowed his voice to rise in reciprocal annoyance. ‘Because I’m like you!’
Bernie could not repress a grin. ‘That’s true, anyway.’
Lloyd was not amused. ‘What orphanage?’
‘He might have told me, but I don’t remember. In Cardiff, I think.’
Billy intervened. ‘You’re touching a sore place, now, Lloyd, boy. Drink your beer and drop the subject.’
Lloyd said angrily: ‘I’ve got a bloody sore place, too, Uncle Billy, thank you very much, and I’m fed up with lies.’
‘Now, now,’ said Bernie. ‘Let’s not have talk of lies.’
‘I’m sorry, Dad, but it’s got to be said.’ Lloyd held up a hand to stave off interruption. ‘Last time I asked, Mam told me Teddy Williams’s family came from Swansea but they moved around a lot because of his father’s job. Now she says he was raised in an orphanage in Cardiff. One of those stories is a lie – if not both.’
At last Ethel looked him in the eye. ‘Me and Bernie fed you and clothed you and sent you to school and university,’ she said indignantly. ‘You’ve got nothing to complain about.’
‘And I’ll always be grateful to you, and I’ll always love you,’ Lloyd said.
Billy said: ‘Why have this come up now, anyhow?’
‘Because of something somebody said to me in Aberowen.’
His mother did not respond, but there was a flash of fear in her eyes. Someone in Wales knows the truth, Lloyd thought.
He went on relentlessly: ‘I was told that perhaps Maud Fitzherbert fell pregnant in 1914, and her baby was passed off as yours, for which you were rewarded with the house in Nutley Street.’
