Magda's Daughter Read Free

Displaced Person’s camp before she was able to get the papers she needed to come to Wales. And it hasn’t been that easy since. Managing the shop and bringing me up single-handed. Always having to worry if there’d be enough money to pay our bills and educate me.’
    â€˜Magda’s tough and she does have her good points,’ he conceded. ‘They say look at your girlfriend’s mother and you see her in twenty years’ time. I’ll count myself a lucky man if you resemble Magda. But that only goes as far as resilience and looks,’ he qualified.
    â€˜That’s not likely given our very different colourings.’ She laid her hand over his. ‘Does that saying apply to men and their fathers?’
    â€˜Not in my case, because I’m much better-looking than my father ever was.’ Ned squeezed her fingers lightly, before lifting his hand and brushing his hair back from his forehead.
    â€˜I’ll tell him you said so.’
    â€˜If you do, I’ll say you made it up. Just look at this!’ He braked as they hit a traffic jam on the Treforest Trading Estate. ‘You and your endless goodbyes. We’ve caught the five o’clock factory rush hour.’
    â€˜I was ready to leave when I finished ironing my hair. You were the one who insisted on delaying.’
    â€˜So I did.’ He couldn’t resist a smile. ‘Where do you want to go first – my parents’ house or your mother’s flat?’
    â€˜My mother’s, to drop off my things.’
    â€˜You don’t want my parents to see how much junk you’ve accumulated in Bristol.’
    â€˜That’s right.’ Helena leaned back in her seat and closed her eyes. She couldn’t stop thinking about the teaching post she’d been interviewed for. She’d longed to emulate her much-loved English teacher, Miss Addis, ever since she’d taken her first English lesson in the Girls’ Grammar School after passing her eleven-plus. That examination had seemed an insurmountable obstacle at the time, and there’d been so many others since.
    For over ten years she’d dreamed of realising her ambition to teach. She’d frequently pictured herself in the same classrooms she’d sat in as a pupil, inspiring a love of English literature and poetry in generations of young girls, just as her beloved mentor had done. But, despite Ned’s optimism, she now felt she’d been over­ambitious, and should have set her sights on a lesser position in a primary school.
    â€˜Are you going to stay in the car all night?’
    Helena reluctantly abandoned her fantasy of a procession of highly-acclaimed female authors who’d returned to the Grammar School to thank her for her encouragement. She opened her eyes and discovered Ned had parked outside the cooked meat and pie shop that her mother managed.
    Ned climbed out. ‘I’ll carry your cases upstairs. We’ll take the boxes of books and other things straight up to the new house to save me humping them twice.’
    â€˜That’s sensible.’ Helena moved a box of long-playing records onto the driving seat, and reached for her handbag.
    â€˜Hello, Magda, you spotted us.’ Ned dutifully kissed Helena’s mother’s cheek, as she stepped out of the side door that led up to the flat above the shop.
    â€˜I expected you two hours ago,’ she reprimanded him.
    â€˜We would have arrived at the crack of dawn if Helena hadn’t got all maudlin. She had to say goodbye to every hole in the carpet and stain on the wall of …’ he paused, only just stopping himself from saying ‘our’, ‘her bed-sit.’
    â€˜That’s not true, Mama.’ Helena hugged and kissed her mother.
    â€˜It would be understandable. A part of your life is over. Your student days are behind you. Now you’re a young lady who has to earn her own living.’ Magda frowned at