A Silver Lining (36 page)

‘The round’s had to go, Dad. Charlie hurt himself and Eddie helped out on the stall and in the shop for a while. Now Charlie says he can’t manage without him.’

‘Is that the shop Charlie was thinking of opening a while back?’

‘It’s open now. It
is
good to have you home.’ She lifted the teapot down from the range. ‘Aren’t you hungry?’

‘I had some bread and cheese when I came in.’ Evan frowned. He didn’t want to ask the next question but he had to.

‘Where’s Phyllis Harry? I went to walk through Rhiannon’s and there’s new people in the house.’

‘They evicted her as soon as Rhiannon was buried.’

Evan’s frown became a look of anguish, and Bethan’s heart went out to him. For the first time since the death of her son she found herself feeling for the suffering of another, and despite the pain it exacted, it wasn’t entirely unpleasant. Something akin to the hurt that was a part of giving birth, an agony that had a purpose.

‘Charlie brought her here. It was the day Edmund died. She left in the early hours of the morning without saying anything. When we found out later that she’d admitted herself and Brian to the workhouse, Charlie went down to bring her back, but she wouldn’t come. She insisted that she’d bring disgrace on all of us if she lived here. Charlie offered her a job in his shop, said she could sleep in one of the spare rooms above it, but she wouldn’t leave ... Dad, where are you going?’

‘To bring her and the boy back where they belong.’

‘I hope she comes.’

‘You know, don’t you?’

‘I know Brian’s your son. I also know that Mam will never come back once Phyllis is here.’

‘She wouldn’t have come back anyway,’ he said with a grim smile. ‘And even if she had, I’m not entirely sure that I could have lived with her any more. Not the way we were. Prison does funny things to you. Makes you value what you’ve got and, think of what you want to do with the rest of your life.’

‘I’ll sort out the beds and make the tea. She’ll be sharing with you, Dad?’

He stopped in his tracks. ‘I ...’ he stammered, colouring in embarrassment for the first time in his life. He had been prepared for a lot of things, but not this much understanding from his daughter.

‘She can go in the box room. It is empty, isn’t it?’

‘I’ll make up your bed, and the box-room bed. That way Phyllis can choose whether she sleeps with you or Brian. I’ll move in with Diana.’

‘Love, about you and Andrew ...’

‘I don’t want to talk about me yet, Dad. Let’s get you and Phyllis sorted first.’

‘Just one thing –when is that husband of yours coming back to get you?’

‘I don’t know,’ she said carelessly.

‘He loves you, Bethan,’ he said earnestly. ’Just as much as you once loved him.’

She looked at her father in amazement. ‘Yes, I suppose I did love him. Didn’t I?’

Chapter Twenty-one

‘Name?’

‘Evan Powell.’

‘Householder?’

‘Yes.’

‘Occupation?’

‘Rag man.’

‘Relationship to the inmate?’

Evan swallowed hard. ‘Miss Harry is a friend of my family,’ he answered eventually.

‘You intend to offer the inmate a domestic position?’

‘Yes.’

‘You are married?’

‘Yes.’

‘As the inmate is an unmarried mother and deemed to be in moral danger, your wife should be the one making this application, Mr Powell, not you.’

‘My wife is not living with me.’

The thin, sharp-featured clerk laid his pen down on an adjoining chair and stared disapprovingly at Evan. ‘Do you really expect the authorities to release a woman into your care, Mr Powell, when by your own admission you are living apart from your wife ... with ...’ he glanced at the paper in front of him, ‘an extremely precarious way of making a living, to say the least.’

‘Miss Harry is a friend of my daughter and my niece. They are both living in my home with me, and my niece and my son both work in shops in the town.’

‘I see. You may have a reasonable income going into your household, Mr Powell, but if your daughter and your niece are not married, then I hardly think Miss Harry would be a suitable person for them to associate with.’

‘My daughter is married.’

‘Her name?’

‘Bethan John.’

‘Her husband’s name?’

Evan debated whether or not to tell the man. His son-in-law had already done a great deal for him. He was loath to make free with the connection and risk embarrassing him further, although he knew full well that Andrew’s name would probably accomplish what he had thought impossible a few moments ago. He looked up, saw the grey walls, remembered what it had been like for him in prison, and thought of what Phyllis was going through. The sight of the bars on the windows made the decision for him. ‘Andrew John. Dr Andrew John,’ he added, so there could be no mistake.

‘Dr John’s son?’ The clerk’s tone changed immediately to one of polite deference. Evan had disliked the official on sight; now, he decided, he hated him.

‘He is Dr John’s son,’ Evan agreed tersely.

‘Can I take it that this woman’s services will be required by your daughter?’

‘By all of us, to run the household. We have three lodgers.’

‘I see.’ The clerk tapped his nose irritatingly with the stem of his pen. ‘That puts an entirely different complexion on the matter, Mr Powell. I am sorry that I had to ask you those questions earlier, but you do understand that we can’t be too careful when we hand over inmates to prospective employers.’

‘I understand.’

‘You realise of course that you will be accountable for her welfare while she is in your employ. That you will be responsible for paying her a fair wage and for holding back a proportion to pay for the upkeep of her child ...’

‘I intend to remove the child from here as well.’

‘That is most unorthodox, Mr Powell, and something the authorities would never recommend. The child will interfere with this woman’s ability to carry out her duties.’

‘Until she came in here, Miss Harry was an extremely efficient housekeeper. The child lived with her then and didn’t interfere with her duties. It will be welcome in my house.’

‘Yes ... well. Without referring to the records I couldn’t tell you if the child is still here ...’

‘Where else would he be?’ Evan demanded, his blood running cold at the thought of something happening to his son while he was here, in the hands of strangers.

‘We have been fortunate in placing some of the younger babies with families who are prepared to adopt them.’

‘Surely you can’t do that without the mother’s permission?’

‘Not if the mother is capable of making her own decisions,’ the clerk hedged evasively as he left his chair and headed nervously for the door. ‘But then Miss Harry may have consented ...’

‘I know Miss Harry. She would never willingly give her child up for adoption.’

‘In that case he’s probably still here. I’ll look into it for you.’ He wrenched open the door and practically ran outside. ‘I also have to have this application checked. Placing inmates isn’t entirely up to me, you know. If you would wait here.’

The clerk closed the door behind him. Evan stood up and paced the floor uneasily, unnerved by the talk of adoption. Just what
did
go on behind these walls?

He hated asking for favours, even more than he’d hated using Andrew’s name, but he began to wish that he’d thought of calling in and asking for Trevor Lewis’s help on the way down the hill.

Like all unemployed miners he lived in fear of the workhouse, knowing just how easy it was to end up in the poor ward. Plenty of his workmates, and their wives and children, had been forced to throw themselves on the mercy of the parish. When he’d heard about their plight he’d wished them better days, but then he’d had no idea that it was so damned difficult to get out of this building once you were inside it.

He could hear hammering coming from the carpenter’s shop across the male yard to his right. He walked up to the door, put his hand on the knob and hesitated, debating whether or not to go in search of the clerk. Deciding against it, he turned and walked back to his chair. Time crawled by. He waited. And waited.

‘If you’d like to come this way, Mr Powell?’ The clerk appeared in the doorway. He led Evan across the entrance hall into a long, thin corridor. ‘There are some papers you have to sign.’ He tapped a door that had MASTER’S OFFICE on it in large black letters. ‘They are release papers.’ The man gave him a sickly little smile.

‘For both Miss Harry and her son?’

‘Her son was up for adoption, but he hasn’t been placed.’

Five minutes later the formalities were over. Evan only hoped that Andrew John would never have cause to regret the free use he’d made of his name. He was returned to the waiting room and left alone. Ten minutes later Phyllis appeared in the company of a nurse.

He hardly recognised her. She was wearing a long, grey, shapeless woollen smock. Her hair was straight, cut short in a most unflattering style. She hobbled with difficulty in unwieldy wooden clogs, her face downcast, her hands, redder and more work roughened than he’d ever seen them, clasped in front of her.

‘Phyllis.’

She raised her head. Forgetting the nurse who was standing beside her, she ran towards him, tripping headlong over the clogs into his arms. She fell, sobbing on his shoulder.

‘I’ll just get your son, Phyllis. I won’t be long.’ The nurse retreated tactfully, but neither Evan nor Phyllis heard her. They were holding on to one another as though they intended never to let go.

William was living in almost as much of a haze as Bethan, but for a very different reason. After an adolescent awakening to the pleasures of illicit “dirty” photographs, two quick kisses with Tina, and years of wondering, he’d finally discovered all the joy, ecstasy and passion of sex.

Totally obsessed with Vera, he lived for the moments she stole from George and so generously gave to him.

He’d heard one or two of the married boys down the gym complain that fun with women wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. That the craving wore off after a couple of months. That wasn’t his experience; as the weeks of his affair had turned into months so their lovemaking had become increasingly adventurous, urgent and frenzied. The moments they snatched together were all the sweeter for being forbidden –and fraught with danger.

He held no illusions about George’s jealousy, or the wrath that George would hail down on both their heads if he should ever discover what they were up to. But fear of George didn’t stop him –or Vera –from becoming bolder, more careless, or increasing the risks they took.

They made wild, abandoned naked love in George’s shed every Saturday and Wednesday night. George’s sherry bottle took a hammering as Vera fed as much of it to Carrie Hardy as she would down. And Carrie had never disappointed them. Sometimes it was one or half-past before Vera managed to creep outside, but whatever the time he was waiting and –as spring progressed and the nights warmed –ready.

On Tuesdays and Thursdays Vera did her shopping in town, slipping into the shed at the back of Charlie’s shop in between calls. At William’s insistence they never repeated the insanity of retreating behind the shutters of Charlie’s stall.

But for all of his obsession with Vera, or to be more precise, her body, William never considered himself and Vera a couple. On the rare occasions he thought about his future he saw himself with Tina Ronconi, although his commitment to Vera meant he rarely went to the café, and never on market nights. Sometimes days at a time passed without him seeing Tina.

Constantly preoccupied with scheming and planning out his next meeting with Vera, he failed to see that Tina was cool towards him on the few occasions when he did go into Ronconi’s. In public he was careful –very careful indeed. He avoided looking into Vera’s eyes; he tried not to say too much, or too little when he had occasion to pass George’s stall, and he believed –really believed –Vera when she assured him that they were too clever to be found out. But neither of them had reckoned with the all-seeing eye and cunning of a jealous man who’d married a woman a third of his age.

For the first time in his life, George neglected his customers, watching every move his wife made instead of attending to their needs. He didn’t worry about Wednesday and Saturday nights when he joined the card school in the Queen’s, because he continued to pay Carrie, and pay her well, to walk home with his wife and stay there until he arrived. And sure enough, every time he staggered into his house in the early hours Carrie was snoring in the easy chair, and Vera was sleeping like a baby in their bed.

It was then that guilt beset him most. When he watched Vera as she slept, her fair curls falling across her face, her eyes closed, her mouth relaxed in a sweet innocent smile, he wondered how he could ever believe her capable of betraying the trust he had placed in her on their wedding day.

Then the next morning she’d exchange a glance with one of the handsome young assistants who worked the market, and a murderous rage of jealousy would rise to consume him all over again. And none of the assistants on the market came any more handsome, charming or amenable than young William Powell.

All Vera had to do was make a detour around Charlie’s stall on her way to the “Ladies” and swing her hips provocatively within William Powell’s sights, for all George’s nagging doubts to surface.

Gradually he became convinced, absolutely convinced, despite Carrie Hardy’s watchful eye, that William Powell had his feet under Vera’s table. But conviction wasn’t enough. He wanted and needed proof. And he knew just how to get it.

A firm pattern of trade had been established within a short time of Charlie’s shop opening. Alma knew that on Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays she would be run off her feet, so she was grateful when Bethan John came in to give them a hand, although she would have liked to know exactly what was “going on” between Bethan and Charlie.

Mondays they had the rush of people who’d eaten their pantries and cupboards bare on Sunday, which left Tuesday and Thursday mornings as quiet times.

Both days William worked the morning in the slaughterhouse and the afternoons in either the shop or the kitchen. And every Tuesday and Thursday since the week Charlie had opened, William had asked her to keep an eye on things for half an hour or so and disappeared into the old shed at the back.

She’d look up from pushing pasties on to plates in the kitchen one Thursday afternoon to see William peeking round the door into the yard. Moments later Vera Collins had tiptoed out behind him, her face flushed, her curls in disarray. He’d straightened her hat, kissed her on the lips, slipped his hand under her skirt to give her a friendly squeeze, and let her out-of the side door that led into Penuel Lane.

Suddenly everything that had puzzled Alma about William fell into place. His absentmindedness, the times he hadn’t heard what she’d said because he’d been too busy daydreaming, the stupid mistakes he made. It was too close to what she’d been like during the early days of her affair with Ronnie Ronconi. She knew exactly what William was going through. And she felt for him. Really felt for him.

‘Want to go to a party?’

Alma looked up. She was alone in the shop with Charlie. His hand had healed and he was removing the empty plates from inside the glassed counter. Eddie was out the back slicing a whole ham ready for the late-night rush which inevitably came round about six on a Saturday.

‘Are you asking me?’

‘Yes.’ Charlie straightened up and looked across at her. ‘Diana, William and Eddie are coming and, if we can, we hope to persuade Bethan to join us.’

‘What kind of a party?’

‘A Russian one. Down in Bute Street.’

‘Cardiff docks?’

‘Don’t believe all the stories you’ve heard about the place.’

‘My mother would have a fit.’

‘Then don’t tell her.’

‘Charlie!’ She pretended to be shocked and he smiled.

He’d grown accustomed to working with Alma and although the atmosphere between them was always professional, it wasn’t professional enough to prevent her sharing the occasional joke with Eddie, William – and him.

‘I lived down there for a while when I first came to Wales, and I have a friend who’s celebrating his name day.’

‘What’s a name day?’

‘The day of the saint he’s named after.’

‘How are we going to get there?’

‘Bus. Everyone works in the week so Sunday is the best time. It will go on all day.’

She thought for a moment: William, Diana, Eddie, Bethan ... with that number of people around, nothing could possibly happen to incite any gossip about her and this boss.

‘All right, I’ll come.’

‘Meet you on Broadway bus stop at ten in the morning.’

‘I’ll be there.’

Bethan paced uneasily from room to room in Graig Avenue. Everything was neat and tidy, clean and orderly. Phyllis had proved to be a good housekeeper, and, after a strained beginning, was proving to be a good friend. Her son filled the house with his chatter, taking to the boys and Diana, and her and, through no fault of his own, making her heart ache even more for Edmund, and everything she had lost with him.