Free Such Sweet Sorrow by Catrin Collier Page A

Charlie know before I set up the stall. He’s either going to have to find someone to take it over, or give it up before next Wednesday.’
    ‘Something wrong, Will?’
    Diana was standing on the stairs already dressed for work, her hair neatly waved, a touch of lipstick heightening the colour of her mouth.
    ‘Monday,’ he answered briefly. ‘The Ronconi boys will probably be going the same time.’ He kissed his mother’s crinkled cheek. ‘We’ll have a couple of days together, Mam.’
    ‘Yes.’ She tried to smile at him before returning to her room, but the smile didn’t touch the frost blighting her eyes.
    William climbed back up the stairs. Three days! So much to do in such a short space of time. Tina had wanted an engagement party; it would have to be held on Sunday, or left until his embarkation leave. Seven weeks from now he could be facing the German guns on the French borders, but before then he’d have to face something far worse – Tina’s father.
    He bundled his clothes under his arm and carried them down to the wash-house. Suddenly the familiar routine was filled with poignancy. He sensed his whole world closing in around him. Ahead loomed another. A strange, alien environment full of foreboding and menace. Would he have killed his first man two months from now?
    He pushed open the door to the kitchen, appreciating the warmth that flowed towards him. Phyllis was cutting bread on the table and his uncle was heaping small coal on the fire to bank down the flames.
    ‘The good thing is, they’re not giving you any time to change your mind,’ Evan commented, sensing something of the unease William was feeling.
    ‘Probably afraid to in case I do a runner.’
    ‘Best not try that, boy. I haven’t heard that they’re shooting deserters yet, like they did in the last one, but I’ve no doubt they’ll start if they think they’re losing too many.’
    ‘Salt fish and bread and butter?’ Phyllis asked as she went to the frying pan to turn the fish over.
    ‘Not this morning, thanks. I haven’t time if I’m going to tell Charlie I’m leaving before I open up the stall.’
    ‘You’re not going to be any use to your customers or Charlie on an empty stomach,’ Evan warned, ‘and Charlie’s entitled to his last two days’ work out of you.’
    ‘Small piece then, please, Phyllis.’ William glanced at the clock as he walked into the wash-house. Five o’clock. The stall should be opened at six, and it would take him an extra quarter of an hour on top of the usual half to walk down the hill and give Charlie the news.
    Tomorrow he would work on the stall from six in the morning to seven at night. It could be worse. The council had cut the town’s traders’ opening hours at the beginning of the war. Before, he’d been lucky to finish before eleven on a Saturday. The only time he’d really have to say goodbye to Tina was Sunday, and he wanted to spend some time with his mother.
    ‘Watch you pull the curtain over the door before you go out the back,’ Phyllis shouted as he pressed down the latch.
    ‘I have, but you think Dai Station would have better things to do than creep along back lanes watching people go to their ty bachs. This warden business has given every dirty old man in Ponty an excuse to turn peeping Tom.’
    Phyllis carried on cutting and buttering bread as Diana walked in, Megan following soon after. The morning rush in the house was eased by the tradition of the women washing and dressing in their bedrooms, the men in the wash-house.
    ‘What can I do?’ Megan asked.
    ‘Sit down and have breakfast,’ Phyllis suggested shyly.
    ‘No fear. I’ve never been waited on hand and foot in my life, and I’ve no intention of turning into idle crache now. If I’m going to live here, I’ll pull my weight.’
    ‘You will, soon as we’ve got this lot off to work,’ Phyllis promised, conscious that as Evan’s sister-in-law, Megan had more right to be in Evan’s house than she