“Come on now.” He put a tentative arm around as much of her shoulders as he could reach. “It’s time I moved on, isn’t it? I can’t go on being spoiled by you all my life. I’ve got to learn to stand on my own two feet.”
Mrs. Williams made a supreme effort to collect herself. A big shuddering sigh went through her body. “I suppose so,” she said. “I knew it would have to come someday.”
“Believe me, I’m not completely thrilled about it either,” Evan said. He bent to pick up a cardboard box of possessions from the floor of his room. “Cooking for myself after eating your good food for over a year—that’s going to take some getting used to. I’ll probably be as thin as a rake within a month.”
“You could come back here for your dinner anytime you wanted. You know that,” Mrs. Williams said.
“I know.” He smiled at her fondly. “But that’s not the point, is it? Bronwen won’t make any commitment until I’ve had a taste of living on my own.” He hoisted the box onto one shoulder and started down the stairs. “She’s perfectly right, of course. I went from my mother’s cooking to yours. I’ve never really lived alone before. How can I hope to be a husband and father someday if I don’t know how to look after myself?’
“So you’ve made up your mind? You’re thinking of marrying Bronwen Price and settling down then, is it?” Mrs. Williams’s tears were forgotten. She hurried down the stairs behind him. “We all knew you were courting her, of course, but …”
“I’m thinking about it,” he said. “I’ve turned thirty, haven’t I? About time I settled down.”
“You could do worse, I suppose,” Mrs. Williams said grudgingly.
“Worse? I don’t think I could do much better. She’s a lovely girl, isn’t she?”
“I won’t deny that. A nice-enough girl. Sensible too. But a little too serious, if you ask me. A man needs some fun in his life. He needs to go dancing from time to time. Let his hair down a little after a hard day’s work.”
“Are you saying I should be dating Betsy then?” He knew perfectly well what she was hinting. She had dropped the same hint, none too subtly, at regular intervals since he moved in.
“Betsy Edwards? Betsy-the-Bar? Escob annwyl! Indeed, I am not suggesting a thing like that. Betsy’s too flighty to make any man a decent wife. What you need is someone who is a good homemaker and knows how to have fun too.”
She reached around Evan to open the front door for him. A swirl of cold wind flapped the pages of a book on top of the pile. “Now, I know you haven’t liked to ask out our Sharon while you were living with me. I can understand that. A young man likes some privacy in his romantic dealings. He can’t go courting when the girl’s grandmother is supervising. But now you’ll be living on your own, why don’t you take her out—with my blessing? Then you’ll see—a lovely little cook, Sharon’s turning out to be, and a lovely little dancer too.”
Evan was glad his back was turned to his landlady so that she missed the involuntary wince. Sharon, Mrs. Williams’s granddaughter, giggled like a schoolgirl at everything he said, and she was too enthusiastic, all over him, constantly pawing at him. It was like fending off a Saint Bernard puppy.
“I’m sure she’ll make some man very happy, Mrs. Williams,” he said, “but you know me. I’m a quiet sort of bloke. I don’t go in much for dancing and that kind of thing. Bronwen suits me quite nicely, thank you.”
He stepped out into the blustery day, holding onto the objects on top of the pile that the wind threatened to snatch away. It was supposed to be spring, he thought gloomily, and yet there was another dusting of snow on top of Mount Snowdon last night. He glanced up at the mountain as he crossed the street, but the peak was hidden under a heavy blanket of dark cloud. On the other side of the street was a long row of terraced gray stone cottages, typical of any mining village. Evan put down the box outside the door of number 28. The only thing that distinguished it from numbers 26 and 30 was that it had a red front door. Such splashes of outlandish color were frowned upon in rural Wales. The last inhabitant, a widow called Mrs. Howells, had always been considered flighty on account of the red front door. She hadn’t shown any other signs of exhibitionism during her fifteen years of tenure, but the local women were still apt to speak of her as “Mrs. Howells Number Twenty-eight, you know, the flighty one with the red door.”
Now she had gone to live with her daughter in Cardiff, of all places—another sign that her judgment was slightly off. Evan had heard through the grapevine that the cottage would be vacant and he had jumped to take it. Not that there would have been too many others waiting to fight over it. The population of Llanfair, like that of most other Welsh villages, was aging and shrinking. No work since the slate mines closed and no prospects for young people apart from waiting tables and making beds at nearby hotels.
He fitted his key into the lock, turned, and pushed the door open. He picked up the box and stepped inside, conscious of the damp-cold feel of an empty house. It was so different from the warm friendliness of Mrs. Williams’s front hall that he looked back longingly across the street. He wondered how long it would be before he could turn this place into a home. So far he had a couple of saucepans and some mismatched china, courtesy of Bronwen, a vinyl-topped table, two chairs from the discount hardware emporium in Bangor, and a single bed. Hardly a promising start.
Evan carried the box through to the back room, which would serve as his living/dining room, and put it on the floor. The brown, pockmarked linoleum made the room feel even colder and gloomier. A rug would be one of his first purchases. Maybe he’d go down to Bangor or Llandudno this afternoon and do a rapid tour of the thrift shops. With his police constable’s salary he couldn’t afford to buy the kind of furniture he’d like all at once. He reminded himself this was just a temporary measure. With any luck the permits would come through for him to rebuild the old shepherd’s cottage in the national park above the village. This was his dream and he had been waiting patiently for several months with no word from the national parks people. When he finished building his own cottage, then he could start furnishing it the way he wanted—he corrected himself—the way Bronwen would want it. She had already expressed her willingness to live there, although she hadn’t mentioned anything about marriage. Neither had he, for that matter. It was still a hole in the ice around which they skated cautiously.
He wished that Bronwen were here to help him. But his department was on a cost-cutting drive and had started scheduling him to work every other weekend. This meant he was doing this on a Tuesday, when Bronwen was teaching at the village school. Evan took out a lamp, looked around the room for somewhere to put it, then stood it, for want of anywhere better, on the mantelpiece. He was just heading back to Mrs. Williams’s when the front door opened and Bronwen burst in.
“Haven’t got very far yet, have you?” She stood in the doorway, looking around disapprovingly. She was wearing a navy fisherman’s sweater that made her eyes look almost the same color, and her cheeks were pink from walking in the wind. Strands of ash blond hair had escaped from her long braid and blown across her face.
“What are you doing here?” Evan asked, his face lighting up. “You haven’t abandoned your pupils to come and see me, have you?”
