Two Penny Blue by Robert David

Author:Robert David
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Spiffing Covers

14

CORPORAL GARETH LEWIS 22

HORST OBERMANN GEFREITER 19

Salute: ‘Good morning, Gerhard.’

‘Good morning, Howell. You were late home last night. Did it go well?’

‘It did.’

‘And Aled?’

‘He’s going to live with Gwen. Nesta’s going to stay for a week or two, at least until he starts school. We spent most of the day at the beach.’

Gerhard smiled. ‘So everyone enjoyed themselves?’

‘Yes. A load has been taken off my mind, but I am going to miss him.’

‘A solution has presented itself.’

‘It has, Gerhard. As you said it would.’

‘I’m glad for you and for Aled, for all of you.’

One day soon, a car? But, for now, a bus, a train and then another bus to Cardiff Prison.

As Gwen waited outside for visiting time to start, she recognised some of the faces and thought some of them recognised her. They were becoming familiar and it would only be a matter of time before she was asked, ‘What’s he in for?’

And she would have to say, ‘Murder – but he didn’t do it.’ Would she say that?

The doors opened and they filed in.

That smell, the purposelessness; comfortless pillows ground out like pestles.

Alan was waiting for her at the same table, barely lit by the light coming from between the bars in the high windows, although it was another hot and cloudless day outside.

This time, they held hands without hesitating.

‘Well?’ he asked.

She smiled. ‘Aled’s with Nesta in Carmarthen. Howell brought them down. They didn’t tell me they were coming and it was a big surprise. But it’s agreed, Alan. He’s coming to live with me.’

His shoulders gave way and his head bent to the table. He sobbed in full view of the other inmates and their visitors with small, stuttering explosions, jolting her arms. His only privacy was not to look at them. If he had fallen to the floor and died, a blanket would have been placed over him.

She watched helplessly: her strongest man.

‘Thank you, Gwen,’ he said, at last.

A haze of weak sunlight drifted in as if it didn’t belong and melted away.

‘No,’ she said, ‘he is the link to you, and Jack and Huw, and Jean too.’

‘Yes, he is. But to think of it that way?’ He grasped her hands tighter. ‘We know what my future is, but Aled’s is before him. He is all our futures, he mustn’t carry the past with him.’

‘He didn’t make the past, Alan. It’s not his fault, but he mustn’t find out on his own, and he’s bound to, so I’m going to tell him as soon as he’s old enough.’

He shook his head. ‘I dread it.’

‘He’d never forgive us if we didn’t.’

‘How you will explain it, Gwen?’

‘With the truth. What else is there? And I think I should tell Jean, even if she doesn’t understand.’

‘But supposing she does? No, please don’t.’

‘But I feel like I’m usurping her.’

‘You’re not. He needs you. Don’t tell her, Gwen, please? It’s best she doesn’t know, not like she is now.’

‘That’s what Howell said to Nesta.’

Alan nodded. ‘Howell was very close to Jean, closer than the others, I think.

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