Three weeks before the wedding, to his intense relief, Harry landed the job with the Chester Parks and Gardens department, and Bethan bit her tongue, swallowed her pride, and agreed to move across the border, to England.
They bought a rambling and crumbling redbrick terraced house at a discount price in Alfred Street beside the Chester City Walls, a house the estate agent described as needing work, a property Harry and Bethan could only afford because Harry’s father, a bank clerk, put up most of the deposit, and arranged the mortgage on preferential terms.
Before they moved in, Harry and Bethan enjoyed a spectacular honeymoon in the Llaethlyd Lleuad Guesthouse, roughly translated as the Milky Moon, on the coast at Aberystwyth. Harry would always enquire as to the meaning of Welsh words. He was determined to learn the lingo, as he described it, but after three months of trying, gave up. It was too difficult for an Englishman to master, he said, and he wasn’t the first to utter the phrase.
Bethan wasn’t disappointed, because she could still curse him in her native tongue whenever they fell out, knowing that he wouldn’t have a clue what she was chuntering about, something that happened, but never for long, and anyway, the making up after an anghytuno’n chwyrn, a disagreement bordering on the violent, was always the best bit.
During the honeymoon beside the seaside the sun shone every day, as the balmy onshore summer breeze blanched their locks. Bethan turned red and burned; Harry an attractive dark brown, for this was long before Factor Eight or Factor anything else had been invented.
Afterwards, they would spend all of Harry’s working life in that rambling house where he, in his spare time, would turn it into a desirable residence, adding bathrooms, a spectacular kitchen, and a large nursery that would soon be full to overflowing.
Four big boys grew up in 17 Alfred Street, and in time fledged the nest and scattered across the globe to Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and Tegucigalpa, wherever the heck that was. Glyn had always been the odd one out, the rebellious child who opted for the most difficult decision, or the weirdest choice available.
Bethan and Harry enjoyed ten grandchildren they seldom saw.
The day after he collected his gold watch, Harry drove Bethan along the North Wales coast. They were bungalow hunting. He thought that as she had allowed herself to be taken to England for so long, the least he could do was to repatriate her to Wales, and spend their retirement in her beloved Cymru. Bethan was coming home and her heart sang at the prospect.
They found a beautiful but ancient, grey stone bungalow, with its original Welsh slate roof still intact, set high in the hills, not five minutes drive from where she grew up, and yes, she would still glare across the Dee estuary far below at the Saeson, the English, on the far side.
Despite her forty-five years living amongst them, she retained some hostility toward them for what they had done, though perhaps they weren’t as bad as she had imagined. Three of her sons were confirmed Saeson, and that remained a deep regret for Bethan, though dearest Glyn remained stubbornly Welsh, and the only one who had mastered his mother’s tongue.
Harry and Bethan shed a tear when Jones & Sons, Removals and Storage, a distant cousin of Bethan’s, loaded up the blue and white pantechnicon, slammed the rear doors on their possessions, fired up the smelly diesel engine, and rolled away from Alfred Street for the last time.
The bungalow was heavenly. The fresh air bracing, the sound of the lambs somehow comforting, the large sloping lawn soon trimmed and lined and weeded to Harry’s exacting standards.
Eighteen days after they moved to Wales, Bethan announced she would that night go to bed early, not only that, but she would sleep alone in the spare room, something she hadn’t done since nursing the boys all those years before.
Harry put it down to the slight cold she had. He’d noticed she had taken two glasses of Spanish red wine with her dinner, or tea, as she still preferred to call it, when one at most was all she would take. She had been irritable too, he’d noted that, and that was unlike her, but he imagined she would be better in the morning.
She wasn’t.
Harry found her lying on her back, like Sleeping Beauty, the covers pulled down and straight across her waist, her porcelain white Welsh skin still almost unlined, and as beautiful as the day he first set eyes on her in the Dringo tearooms. Her eyes were closed and her hands were clasped together before her, with no hint of pain on her death mask. She reminded him of some of the life-size marble memorials in the cathedral.
Eighteen days at home, eighteen precious days.
Bethan had always been a private lady. She often kept her feelings and innermost thoughts to herself; something that Harry had occasionally cause to chastise her over. There were some things she insisted she did in private and dying was one of them. She had never wanted any fuss. Bethan would do it in her own way, alone, and bravely, and that was what she did.
She had returned home to die.
Harry understood that now, as he kissed her dry lips and knelt down beside the bed in the spare room, wearing only his blue and white striped pyjamas, as he spoke aloud a prayer for his beloved Bethan, ending with one of the few Welsh phrases he could ever recall, rwy’n dy garu di, Bethan Jones. I love you Bethan Jones, and after that, he cried, and after that still, he went to the telephone and rang the Right Reverend James Kingston.
Chapter
