Love and War Read Online Free

town, I call in at the Post Office to see Ilona Hughes. It’s very quiet there, no one buying saving bonds or even stamps. She looks up as I walk towards her, sucking in her cheeks, trying to look hungry.
    Taken item by item, I should be much better looking than she is. I’ve got thick, rusty-brown hair and pale grey eyes and a decent shaped nose and so on, while she’s got small down-drooping eyes, a too-large nose and mouth and a very small chin. But when she’s covered her freckles with make-up and put a lot of that shiny beetroot-coloured lipstick on her lips and Vaseline on her eyelids, she looks so pretty I could spit.
    ‘I’m going to get myself a new dress,’ I say.
    She takes it in her stride as though it’s quite an everyday affair. ‘Go to Studio Laura,’ she says. (She pronounces it in a very affected, foreign way; ‘Studio LAWRA’.) Studio Laura – I couldn’t go there. It’s a tiny shop with nothing in the window but sand and pebbles and one hat. It’s a shop for English visitors and it usually closes in September; it’s remained open this year only because the owner’s London flat has been bombed. The owner, by the way, is called Tremlett Browne and he wears a narrow satin ribbon instead of a tie.
    I’d intended to go to J.C. Jones. They’ve got quite a good selection of clothes there, all the reputable makes. That’s where I got the powder-blue dress and jacket I wore at my wedding and which I’ve worn to every school and chapel function since.
    ‘What’s wrong with J.C. Jones?’ I ask her, but she only raises her eyebrows and turns her attention to a large, red-cheeked farmer who’s just shouldered his way to the counter with a sizeable bundle of notes. She gives him an intimate little smile and nods her head at me as a sign of dismissal.
    I wish now I’d given her a dab of my margarine.

    I often wish I’d been born a Roman Catholic; the Catholic church looks dark and mysterious in its cobbled yard. It would be so restful to sit in there, quietly gazing at beautiful pictures and statues. Why not? I can’t even imagine the smell of incense. What if it does dull the brain? I quite often find myself planning next week’s lessons during Mr Roberts’s long sermons; surely it would be more appropriate to be even muzzily thinking of God.
    Of course, my mother is convinced that the Pope is the Anti-Christ and that all the Roman Church’s rituals and ceremonies are mumbo-jumbo. She seems so certain of everything. Will my opinions have crystallised by the time I become a mother? Is it part of the ageing process, like hardening of the arteries?
    But I wish I could feel that my life contained some divine spark: ‘A presence that disturbs me with the joy of elevated thought.’ Why don’t I have elevated thoughts? Even my infrequent dreams are pitifully down-to-earth.
    I walk past J.C. Jones and down Marine Terrace.
    ‘Well, Rhian.’
    It’s Gwynn Morgan, Art. He was the art teacher even when I was a pupil: too old now, I suppose, to be called up. (I wish I didn’t feel so awkward with him – never sure, for instance, whether to call him Gwynn or Mr Morgan.)
    ‘What’s the news of Huw?’
    ‘I haven’t had a letter for two weeks.’
    ‘I thought you looked a bit peaky. Try not to worry, Rhian. It doesn’t help him or anyone else. Got time for a coffee?’
    Peaky. What a horrible word.
    ‘I’m getting myself a new dress. From Studio Laura.’ How dashing it makes me feel, even saying it.
    ‘Come and have a coffee first. You rush about too much, Rhian. I watch you at school. Rush, rush, rush. It’ll make you old before your time.’
    Peaky and old. That does it. We turn into Gwyn Owen’s, walk past the queue at the bread counter and go upstairs. Several pairs of eyes follow us. What am I doing having coffee with a man ? This will get back to my mother-in-law before I’ve taken the first sip.
    Gwynn Morgan may be middle-aged but he’s still very handsome; a long, lean face