Sinners and Shadows (18 page)

‘I didn't mean to interrupt you,' Julia apologized when Edward returned and moved a pile of papers to the side of his desk to make room.

‘I'm not dealing with anything urgent, just a will. Did you just call in on the off-chance that I'd be free or did you want to talk about something in particular?'

‘Something in particular.'

Miss Arnold brought in a tray and set it on Edward's desk. ‘It is nice to see you, Miss Larch. Will there be anything else, Mr Larch?'

‘Nothing, thank you, Miss Arnold. My daughter will serve us. As soon as you have finished typing the rental agreement on Mr John's shop you may break for your own tea.' Edward waited until his secretary left the room before broaching the subject uppermost in his mind. ‘I know that things have been particularly difficult at home between your stepmother and me lately, and I haven't been spending much time in Llan House –'

‘That's not why I called, Father,' Julia interrupted before he launched into revelations that would embarrass them both. ‘It's about this garden party.' She opened her shopping bag and removed one of the cards her stepmother had ordered from the local printer and she had offered to pick up.

Her father took the fine white board from her and ran his finger over the letters, confirming his suspicions that they were engraved. The process was much more expensive than printing. He had given Mabel an adequate allowance, but it wouldn't allow for extravagances on this scale.

Mr and Mrs Edward Larch at home.

6.00 – 8.00 p.m. Saturday,
25 July.

Llan House, Tonypandy.

Dress formal. Canapés and Champagne.

RSVP

‘Mabel asked you to order these?'

‘She ordered them; I volunteered to pick them up.'

‘And how much did they cost?' he enquired sharply, doubting that Mabel had budgeted for them. The costs of her recent parties had exceeded her allowance and he'd already given her two warnings about excessive expenditure.

‘Three guineas for sixty.'

‘She's invited sixty people to the house!'

‘Probably more, if she's had sixty invitations printed. But she did discuss it with you at breakfast a week ago. I was there.' She prompted his memory.

‘As I recall, she mentioned a garden party but she said nothing about engraved invitations or sixty people.' He leaned back in his chair and pressed his fingertips together. ‘Damn the woman, I wish I'd never set eyes on her,' he muttered feelingly.

‘I wanted to ask your permission to invite a friend.'

‘It's your stepmother's party,' he pointed out. ‘If it were up to me it wouldn't be held.'

‘She'd refuse me permission.'

The moment had arrived that he'd been dreading for weeks. ‘You want to introduce me to Geraint Watkin Jones?'

‘You know?' She felt as though her heart had leapt up her throat and stuck there.

‘I know that you've been seen in Cardiff with him. Julia –'

‘Before you say anything about him, I know he only invited me to spend time with him because I have money.'

‘And that doesn't bother you?' Edward questioned incredulously.

‘I'm not pretty.'

‘Your stepmother has a cruel, vicious streak, particularly when it comes to you. I think she's jealous –'

‘She is also realistic,' Julia cut in calmly.

‘Have you fallen in love with this boy?' He drummed his fingers impatiently on the desk, dreading her reply.

‘No more than you did with my stepmother when you first met her,' she answered evasively, wondering if she had fallen prey to the same blind infatuation that had flared so briefly in her father when he had first met Mabel at a family wedding shortly after her mother's death.

‘Then you'll get over it. Don't expect me to say I'm sorry and not just because he's after your money. Harry Watkin Jones was a fine man and he gave that boy a good education. I was sorry to hear that Harry's brother-in-law turned the family into paupers, but Geraint was of age. He could have done something other than turn to his eldest sister to bail them out.'

‘I may not be in love with Mr Watkin Jones, Father, but that doesn't mean I won't marry him.'

Shocked, Edward knocked over his teacup and tea flooded his desk. Julia whipped the cloth from the tray and stemmed the flow before it reached his papers.

‘You are that unhappy living in the same house as Mabel?' he asked her seriously.

‘Yes,' she replied honestly.

‘This is my fault. I never should have married her.'

‘It's not your fault, Father. Even if you hadn't remarried, I'd consider marrying Mr Watkin Jones.'

‘And burden yourself with an idle husband for the rest of your life?'

‘An idle husband is a small price to pay for the respect that comes with being a married woman. You have no idea of the contempt spinsters are held in. Everyone assumes they are unloved, unwanted and useless. Think of the life I'd lead if I didn't marry. Growing old in your house because it's unthinkable for an unmarried woman to live alone, even if she has the means to buy and run her own house.'

‘Women can do more than run a house these days, Julia,' he said impatiently. ‘We are in the twentieth century.'

‘We are, but I'm not bright enough or trained to do anything other than run a house.'

‘I take it that Geraint Watkin Jones has proposed and you've made up your mind to accept him, which is why you want my approval to bring him to Mabel's garden party?'

‘He hasn't proposed.'

‘Thank heavens for that,' he said feelingly.

‘But he will.'

‘What can I say, other than by all means, bring him to Mabel's garden party.'

‘You want me to see how other people treat him?' she asked suspiciously.

‘I'll not deny it.'

‘And then you'll try to persuade me to change my mind about him.'

‘You can't stop me from voicing my opinion.'

‘No, Father, I can't. But I rather think you already have.' She set her teacup back on the tray. ‘You're dining at your club in Cardiff tonight?'

‘Yes. Are you going to your evening suffragette meeting?'

‘I am,' she confirmed. ‘I'm just going back to the house to change before taking the train to Cardiff.'

‘Then I'll see you at breakfast.'

‘Goodbye, Father.' She studied the door set in the back wall of his office. It had been carefully painted with the same brown paint as the one that led into the passage. But the paint was marginally brighter than that on the dado and skirting board. If she hadn't visited the office constantly as a child she might never have noticed the new addition.

She wasn't the only one whose secret had been discovered. People liked to talk. She didn't doubt that whoever had told her father that they had seen her with Geraint Watkin Jones had enjoyed tittle-tattling. Almost as much as Mr Hadley when he'd asked her if her father had stopped visiting his club in Cardiff because her stepmother was keeping him home at nights.

*……*……*

Ironically for two people who'd agreed that they never had enough time to talk, Rhian and Joey walked the rest of the way into Tonypandy in silence. Joey waved to and returned the greetings of his friends, but they didn't stop to talk to anyone. By tacit agreement they approached the house through the building site of the new school. And, although the street was deserted, they walked around the side of the house and in through the basement door just in case any of the neighbours were watching the front.

Heart pounding, Rhian followed Joey up the stairs into the kitchen. He helped her off with her cardigan. While he hung it together with his jacket in the hall, she unpinned her hat and set it on the table.

She glanced at her hair in the small shaving mirror on the window sill. It was coming loose and she pulled out the pins. It cascaded in a tangled mass of blonde curls over her shoulders to her waist. She continued to stare into the glass, barely recognizing the pale-faced girl who stared back at her. She couldn't believe what she was about to do after all the resolutions she had made and everything she had said to Joey about waiting until she had a wedding ring on her finger.

She heard his footstep. She turned and he was in the doorway watching her.

‘Leave your hair just as it is,' he said, when she pulled it back away from her face.

‘It's a mess.'

‘It's a lovely mess.' He held out his hand, she took it and he led her up the stairs and opened his bedroom door. She had seen the room once, before Victor had married Megan and he and Joey had shared it. But since then she had spent hours imagining his life at home, if anything, even more since his father and Betty Morgan had moved into the farm. But the reality took her by surprise.

‘It's so neat, tidy and clean. Of course, Mrs Hopkins comes in.'

‘Not any more.' He froze momentarily at the memory of his neighbour walking in on him and Tonia.

‘You do your own cleaning?'

‘You think men can't clean?'

‘If I did, I know different now.' The room smelled pleasantly of fresh air, lavender water and toilet soap. The brass bed and oak furniture gleamed in the muted light that filtered through the lace at the window. The high bed was covered with a hand-crocheted white cotton spread. And beside the oil lamp next to the bed was a silver frame containing the photograph of herself that she'd given him.

He saw her looking at it. ‘I told you I'd kiss it every night before I go to sleep and I do.'

She heard the key turn in the lock and saw him move away from the door.

‘I couldn't take the key from the front door,' he explained.

‘People would talk if they saw it missing,' she agreed.

He folded back the bedcover, revealing white, starched bed linen and grey striped Welsh flannel blankets. Sitting on the bed, he unbuttoned his jacket, pulled it off and draped it over a chair. ‘You're still sure?' He looked up at her.

She unclipped the cameo brooch he had given her from the high neck of her white lawn blouse. He took it from her fingers and set it on the bedside cabinet. Slowly and with a patience she would never have suspected him of possessing after what had happened on the mountain, he slipped the row of tiny pearl buttons on the front of her blouse. When he finished, she unbuttoned her cuffs. He slid the blouse from her shoulders and draped it next to his jacket over the seat of the chair.

‘If we are going to do this, there is something you should have.' He opened the drawer in his bedside cabinet and removed a ring box. ‘Recognize this?' He held out the wedding ring.

‘I can wait two and a half weeks.'

‘You don't want to wear it now?'

‘No, it would bring us bad luck.' She turned her back to him, unbuttoned her cream linen skirt and stepped out of it. She heard the swish of cotton and linen as he undressed behind her. When she had stripped to her petticoats, she stopped.

‘I'll clear off for ten minutes, if you like,' he offered.

‘No. This is something I … we … are going to have to get used to.'

He stepped in front of her and her heartbeat quickened at the unexpected impact of seeing him dressed only in a thin pair of summer cotton drawers.

‘Here, let me help you.' He untied the strings on her petticoats and helped her out of them. After she laid them over her skirt he unhooked the bust-shaper on her corset.

Nervous, she said the first thing that came into her head. ‘You're an expert on women's underclothes.' She could have bitten her tongue when she remembered how he had acquired his knowledge.

‘Only yours and the ones we sell in the store from now on.'

She set her foot on the edge of the chair, loosened her garters and rolled her stockings from her legs, before peeling off her corset. She faced him in her camisole and drawers. He slipped down the straps on her camisole, exposing her breasts.

‘You are even more beautiful than I imagined and I imagined a lot.' He slid his hands down the side of her body, and it took a few seconds for her to realize that he'd removed her two remaining garments. Lifting her into his arms, he carried her to the bed and set her on a towel that he'd placed over the bottom sheet.

After kicking off his drawers, he lay next to her, exploring her breasts with his fingertips and lips, teasing her nipples to firm peaks with his tongue before moving down her body. Pushing her legs apart with his knees, he stroked, teased and caressed every inch of her, evoking new and overpowering emotions.

All thoughts of right and wrong, his past, the future dissolved in the intensity of the passion he unleashed. She clung to him, digging her nails into his shoulders, wanting what he was doing to her to last for ever, right up until the moment when she could stand it no longer, and he, sensing her crisis, finally penetrated her body with his own.

Afterwards, when she lay, spent and exhausted in his arms, she remembered his other women. She opened her eyes. He was lying back, his head on the pillow, his dark curls tousled, his eyes closed. And she wondered how anyone could do what they had just done without being totally, completely and utterly in love.

‘I wish it too.'

‘What?' she asked, startled because she had assumed he was sleeping.

He opened his eyes and cupped her breast. Lowering his head, he kissed each of her nipples in turn before meeting her steady gaze. ‘That I'd waited so this could have been the first time for both of us. But then this has been a first for me too. The first time I've made love when I've been in love.'

‘I can't imagine doing that and not being in love,' she murmured with more honesty than thought for his feelings.

‘It's like the difference between watching a colourless silent film and experiencing reality.'

She sat up. ‘I have to wash.'