MORNING SERIAL
PEGGY would have already chosen where they would be going that Saturday night. They had a choice of the Windsor or Empire cinemas in Neath or the extravagance of a live variety show at the Grand Theatre in Swansea.
There would be a train back. Fish and chips at Jeff’s, eaten as they walked to the Neath and Brecon low-level railway station, over the river bridge, to catch the train for Onllwyn. It was the way most valley courting couples travelled on a Saturday evening. The on-corridor carriages, with their low-voltage wartime light bulbs, offered the young lovers the only privacy they could hope to enjoy because of the chronic housing shortage. Then warm and full after the journey there would be supper at Peg’s mother’s, then home.
Sunday morning came early, breakfast, a read of the Sunday papers and a check of his mother’s football pools’ coupon. Sunday dinner, listen to the Forces Favourites on the radio. Then a bath and a change and all ready to travel back to Plymouth. He needed to be back into his billet before reveille and before he was missed on Monday morning. Peg would borrow her father’s 1938 Morris 8 and drive him to catch the 8 o’clock evening train to Bristol. There would be time for food on the station at Neath. Delicious steamed steak and kidney pies that hissed when they were prodded with a fork, and a coffee in the café-cum-billiard hall at the side of the station. At almost every window of the train, there would be a service man leaning out kissing his sweetheart or his wife goodbye. Soldiers were still being killed eighteen months after the war had ended: from Malaya to Palestine. For any one of the young couples it could very well be their last kiss goodbye.
The day stretched ahead for him. At last, the London to Fishguard express pulled into Cardiff. There was plenty of room on board. Once the war had ended the trains were not as crowded. Hundreds of thousands of allied servicemen had returned to their own countries.
There was more elbow room all round. After a bitter Arctic winter, the lovely summer of 1947 was more than welcomed by everybody. It was a time of hope.
> Boys of Gold by George Brinley Evans is published by Parthian at £4.99 www.parthianbooks.com
CONTINUES TOMORROW