Read Liverpool Taffy for Free Online Page A

for you. Don’t resent the girl of his choice, Dai, my dear, but if you need a home while you come to terms with what’s happened, don’t forget my old friend, Nellie McDowell that was. She’s Nellie Gallagher now and if you need help, or … or anything … the sort of thing you’d have turned to me for … then Nellie will do what she can. Her address is in my little bureau. We still exchange letters from time to time. If you hurt, love, you must go to her. There isn’t a better woman living.’
    ‘Mam, Da wouldn’t … but I don’t want to talk about it. And if it pleases you, I’ll see this woman some time. Oh Mam, we love you so much, I don’t know what we’ll do without you.’
    Bethan had smiled, the thin face suddenly bright with real amusement. ‘I know well what your Da will do! Now give me a kiss and go about your business; I just wanted one quiet word.’
    Two days later she was dead and now … Dai gritted his teeth and thumped his knee with a clenched fist. Now his father had brought Menna from Amlwch into the house because he said it needed a woman’s touch – and it didn’t take any particular effort to realise three things. First, that Davy had known Menna for some time, and known her quite well what was more. Second, that he had not brought her in to act as his housekeeper but for a far more intimate purpose. Third, that Menna, whilst delighted to be living with Davy, had no desire whatsoever to share a house with his son.
    Oh Mam, Mam, how well you knew my Da and how foolish I was not to see that his weakness for a pretty face was stronger even than his love for you, Dai mourned now, staring blackly out over the sea. And what do I do now? Stay here, to keep at bay at least some of the scandal that will soon be rife? Or go? It will mean leaving the Sweetbriar , and the fishing, and my nice little attic room and pretty Rhona from the Post Office, but then a man has to leave his Mam’s home one day and make a home for himself. My time to leave has come sooner than I expected, because I’ve been so content here, but I can’t stay. Not when Da installs her as his wife, which he will do. It’s the only way; the villagers won’t have him living shamelessly in sin with a little town hussy who doesn’t know our ways.
    But what to do? The Sweetbriar was his own craft and he and his friend Meirion worked her together; theycould find the fish when others searched in vain, they were a good team and made money, quite a lot of money at times when fish was short and others could not find.
    There was the lifeboat, too. He had just been taken on as a deckhand and loved it, was almost looking forward to the heavy seas of winter as a chance to prove himself. If he left …
    The village had been his life for twenty years, he knew nothing else. Every man, woman and child here was his friend, would stand by him, agree with him if he told Da …
    But Mam had known this would happen and had warned him that it was no use resisting. She knew Davy well, his charm, the way his dark eyes warmed and softened when they fell on a loved one. She understood completely that Da couldn’t go on without a woman, and had urged her son to accept Da’s choice – but Menna! Brassy-haired, shrill-voiced, she was the kind of woman that Dai liked least, the sort he avoided when he took a boatful of fish round to Amlwch and popped into the pub afterwards to wet his whistle before turning for home.
    So leave then. No option, no choice. Just leave. Meirion would continue to fish the boat, give Dai a share of his profit if his friend was in need. So far as Dai was concerned Meirion could have the Sweetbriar and welcome; better him than Davy Evans, who would probably sell it to buy Menna a gold anklet chain or a locket or whatever silly frippery such a flibbertigibbet might desire.
    But go where? He did not intend to run to Liverpool, with his tail between his legs, to this woman friend of Mam’s – what was her name? Gallagher,