Swansea Summer (15 page)

‘He does have a weird sense of humour,’ he conceded, as they headed down Christina Street towards the Kingsway.

Knowing she was on dangerous ground didn’t prevent her from risking a reference to the fight. ‘Which is presumably why Adam hit him.’

‘It wasn’t just Brian’s fault, we were all to blame,’ he admitted, shouldering his share of the responsibility. ‘Brian just happened to be closest when we told Adam what we’d done.’

‘And what was that exactly?’

‘Played a silly joke on him on Jack’s stag night.’

‘With scent and lipstick.’

‘How do you know?’ He wondered if Jack had told Helen what he’d done and she’d had time to mention it to the girls before leaving the Mackworth.

‘I was there when Jack came upstairs and asked Katie for them. I told him then that the bridegroom was supposed to be the target on stag nights, not his guests.’

‘The bridegroom didn’t like having his beer spiked with vodka,’ Martin said in an attempt to justify what Jack had done.

‘So Jack played the joke, and you and Brian took the punishment.’ She quickened her pace so as to keep up with him as they left the Kingsway for St Helen’s Road.

‘Neither of us took much punishment. Sam held Adam back when he tried to have a second go. And you are not to say a word to Adam as to who the real culprit was. It will only make him boiling mad again, possibly enough to confront Jack when he comes back.’

‘Sometimes I wonder if you boys ever grow out of the fighting in the playground stage,’ she said crossly, hating the thought of Martin and Brian fighting anyone, especially Adam, who was one of their crowd.

‘If I was ever into it, I’m not now. I’ll never hit anyone again,’ he pledged grimly.

‘Not even if they are trying to hit you?’

‘Especially if they are trying to hit me,’ he reiterated. ‘Lily, about last night …’

‘Forget last night. I have.’ Afraid he’d try to pick an argument with her again, she tried to move the conversation on. By inviting her to take a walk with him he’d proved that he didn’t want to finish with her – unless he intended to give her the unpleasant news now. She shivered at the thought.

‘You’re cold.’ Taking off his scarf, he wrapped it round her neck, drew the ends towards him and pulled her close enough to kiss the tip of her freezing nose before walking on. ‘Unfortunately I can’t forget last night and I doubt Adam will either.’

‘I hope you’re wrong. I hate quarrels and you’ve always got on well together.’

‘And us?’ He looked keenly at her as they stopped to cross the Mumbles Road. ‘Do we get on well together?’

She looked into his eyes. They were dark, serious in the cold late-afternoon light. ‘What do you think?’

‘Before last night I would have said yes.’

‘I asked you to forget last night.’

He removed her hand from his pocket as they crossed the Mumbles Road. ‘The evenings are getting lighter.’

Dismayed that he’d moved the conversation on to the impersonal, she murmured, ‘I’ve noticed.’

‘It was dark at half past five a month ago. In a few weeks it will be warm enough to swim.’

‘Auntie Norah used to say “Never cast a clout until May’s out”’.

‘My mother wouldn’t let us in the sea before June either, but Jack and I used to sneak off and swim in our underpants and dry them in the coalhouse afterwards. Mam could never understand why they were always black and sandy.’ He smiled at one of the more bearable memories from his childhood.

‘We used to borrow costumes from Helen. She always had half a dozen spares, and her mother didn’t watch her the way Aunt Norah used to watch me, or your mother and Mrs Hunt watched Katie and Judy. On Saturday afternoons we’d pretend to go to the pictures and catch a bus to Limeslade. Given the freezing Mays we’ve had over the years, and the fact that we were too scared to go home until our hair dried, it’s a wonder we didn’t catch pneumonia.’

‘So’ – he grabbed her hand again as they stood at the top of the steps that led down to the beach – ‘now we’ve established we both misbehaved when we were children, will you come swimming with me?’

‘Not next week.’ Was the casual question meant as an invitation to carry on going out with him until the weather was warm enough for swimming?

‘But you’ll be able to make that outing we talked about, next weekend?’

Confused by his present warmth after his offhand manner of that morning and the night before, she wondered if he was doing the one thing dreaded by all girls and written about at length by agony aunts in women’s magazines: ‘taking her for granted’. Deciding caution was the best option open to her she said, ‘If you want me to.’

As they reached the bottom step that led down to the deserted sands he pulled her into the shelter of one of the shops built into the arches under Victoria Bridge. Closing his hands round her back, he pressed the full length of his body against hers. Her head began to spin and not only from the breathtakingly bitter wind. His lips were warm, he smelled of scents she was becoming familiar with, Coal Tar soap, Vosene shampoo and Old Spice aftershave. His body was hard, unyielding even through layers of clothes, arousing new – and in view of what had happened to Helen – frightening sensations. But as he undid the buttons on her coat she didn’t want him to stop. Not even when his hands closed over the front of her sweater and he caressed her breasts through layers of cloth.

‘I’m sorry.’ A faraway look stole into his eyes as he removed his hands and released her.

‘For what?’ She hoped he was about to apologise for some of the things he’d said the night before, not the most passionate embrace they’d shared.

‘Dragging you out in weather like this. Your face is blue.’

Taking care not to show her disappointment at the prosaic pronouncement after his passion of a moment before, she turned her back to him. ‘Once we start walking, I’ll soon warm up.’

‘Where do you want to walk to?’

‘Mumbles.’ She looked at the lights nestling in the wooded curve of the bay.

‘Nothing will be open when we get there.’

‘We don’t always have to go somewhere.’

‘No, we don’t.’ He followed her as she left the shelter of the shops and struck out towards the tide line. It lapped high, leaving only a narrow stretch of sand to walk on. As they scrunched along a crust of blackened seaweed, pebbles and debris, the wind scudded into them, damp and gritty with a salt spray that stung their faces and knotted Lily’s hair, bringing tears to her eyes and numbing her body, even through her coat.

‘Look, Lily, you know I’m fond of you,’ he confessed suddenly.

‘After last night and this morning I wasn’t too sure.’ Tired of fighting the wind, she turned her back to it and looked out to sea. The sun was no more than a smudge of light on the horizon. Dusk was falling rapidly around them. As navy and purple shadows crept upwards from the beach shrouding familiar landmarks, they took on new and peculiar shapes. Only the sea remained constant, a vast, gleaming, blue-black pool crested by short-lived bursts of white foam.

‘But I’m not like Jack. The thought of marriage scares me to death …’

‘I told you last night I’m not looking to get married, Marty.’ She smiled in relief. He was finally talking to her about the reasons behind his strange moodiness.

‘But you will want to – one day, I mean?’

‘At the moment I have a good job, a great boyfriend …’

‘Great?’ He returned her smile.

‘Fantastic.’

He pulled her towards him. ‘I look at Jack and Helen all starry-eyed and happy, then I look around at the couples in the street who’ve been married for years and I can’t help wondering if they started out that way too and, if they did, what went wrong. There’s Helen’s mam and dad …’

‘Their divorce is hardly a surprise,’ Lily interposed. ‘According to Uncle Roy they’ve led separate lives ever since they married, him in the warehouse, her in the Little Theatre. And they are such different people. Mrs Griffiths, well, she’s Mrs Griffiths,’ she said guardedly, trying to conceal her dislike. ‘Even Helen says she’s always been more interested in her friends and fashion than her own family. And Mr Griffiths is more of a one for the quiet life. He seems to enjoy his work and helping people …’

‘Point taken,’ he interrupted, not wanting to think of all the reasons that lay behind John Griffiths’ kindness to his sister. Despite Katie’s insistence that nothing had happened between them until she had been working in the warehouse for some time, he remained deeply suspicious.

‘Why don’t you try looking at the happy people in our street instead of the unhappy ones,’ Lily suggested. ‘From what I can see there’s not much difference between the way Helen and Jack feel about one another and my Uncle Roy and Mrs Hunt.’

‘No, but your Uncle Roy and Judy’s mother haven’t been married for years.’

‘But they will be, and happily,’ she countered stubbornly.

He linked his hands round her neck and pulled her even closer. ‘If good wishes were wings I believe you’d have the whole world flying.’

She clung to him for a few minutes, resting her head on his shoulder. ‘I know you don’t like talking about your father,’ she began cautiously, ‘but Uncle Roy told me that he was different before the war. He thinks something must have happened to change him.’

‘My mother used to try to tell me the same thing,’ Martin released her and looked towards Mumbles. ‘I didn’t believe her then and I don’t now.’

‘Don’t you remember what he was like before he was called up?’

‘I was seven when he went away and if there were any good times they’ve been overshadowed by what came later. Whenever I think of him, I wish I’d done something to stop him from beating Mam.’

‘Like what, Marty?’ she asked, sensing and wanting to alleviate his pain. ‘You just said you’ll never hit anyone again, even if they hit you.’

‘I would have made an exception in his case. You have no idea what it was like to live with him day in day out. Terrified of what he’d do next – and which one of us he’d pick on. Dreading him having a go at me and hating myself whenever he had a go at one of the others because it wasn’t me.’

‘Katie told me you stopped him from hitting your mother after you came home from National Service. Before then you were a child who would have been badly beaten if you’d tried.’

‘Better me than my mother.’

‘There wasn’t a choice, Marty,’ she said firmly. ‘It would have been you
and
your mother.’

‘You have an answer for everything, don’t you,’ he said softly as he reached for her hand.

‘No, but since my mother gatecrashed my engagement party I do know there’s no use fretting over the past. It can’t be altered no matter how much you wish some things had never happened. All you can do is get on with life.’

‘Is your mother the reason you broke off your engagement to Joe?’

She glanced down, only just able to make out the veins of blackened coal dust in the gloom that covered the waterlogged sand. Another few minutes and it would be too dark to see them, or their footprints that held for the barest fraction of a second before being obliterated by the welling sea water.

‘Sorry, I had no business asking that.’ He dropped her hand, furious with himself for allowing his jealousy to surface. And it wasn’t simply jealousy. Lily had been engaged to Joe. Everyone accepted that engaged couples could ‘go further’ than couples who were simply ‘going out’ or ‘courting’ and he wasn’t even sure he and Lily had breached the barrier between going out and courting. Every time he thought of Joe and Lily or saw them together, he tortured himself by imagining the things she had allowed Joe to do her. There were bound to have been kisses – and touches. How far had her petting gone with Joe? Had she taken off her clothes -

‘Yes, you do have a right to ask that.’ Her declaration broke in on his thoughts. ‘And I don’t mind talking about it.’ She was elated that Martin had finally made an admission that he was resentful of her ‘almost’ engagement to Joe. ‘But as it’s freezing, do you mind if we carry on walking?’ She took his arm as she stepped close to him. ‘You were there, you saw how shocked Joe was.’

‘And you.’

‘I was horrified,’ she agreed.

‘Why?’ He slipped his arm round her shoulders. ‘You’re not responsible for your mother. She didn’t bring you up. You didn’t even know she existed until that day.’

Drawing even closer to him, she wrapped her arm round his waist. ‘At the time I honestly thought that because she’d given birth to me I wasn’t good enough not just for Joe, but any decent company. Then Uncle Roy explained that everyone of us is worth exactly the same as the next person, no matter where we come from, or what airs and graces we try to adopt. It’s the life we make for ourselves and what we give to others that’s important, not our past, or how much or how little money we may have.’

‘You really believe that.’

Once again she realised just how insecure and vulnerable he was. ‘Anyone who’s thought about it for more than five minutes has to, Marty. Otherwise what we have is more important than who we are and that kind of thinking would turn the world upside down – not to mention put the criminals who make their money dishonestly on top. Sorry,’ she apologised, ‘I sound exactly like Uncle Roy on one of his rants.’

‘That still doesn’t explain why you broke off your engagement to Joe.’ He set the conversation firmly back on course.

‘That’s so simple I thought you would have realised by now. I didn’t love him.’

‘Then why did you agree to marry him?’

‘Because he proposed to me on the day Auntie Norah was buried. Uncle Roy was wonderful but I felt very alone – and frightened of the future. I had no idea what was going to happen to me. Joe offered me security and a ready-made life as his wife. I didn’t have to do anything except say yes and I’m ashamed to say I was too much of a coward to turn him down. Later, after the party, I realised I’d accepted him for all the wrong reasons.’

‘You never loved him?’ Halting, he stood in front of her and linked his arms round her waist.

She wanted to say ‘not in the way I love you’, but unsure how he’d respond after his declaration about marriage, she settled for, ‘I only thought I did at the time. There’s nothing between us now, nor will there be again.’