Swansea Summer (41 page)

‘No.’

‘A reconciliation …’

‘I’ll talk it over with my solicitor – and Esme,’ John interrupted, his heart sinking at the prospect of having to live with her again. But if it was that or her life …

‘I wouldn’t concern myself too much about consulting Esme if I were you, John. She’s in no fit state. She made some preposterous allegations yesterday. I realise she was drunk but should she ever repeat them in public I would have no option but to sue her for slander.’

‘What allegations?’

Richard looked around to make sure they couldn’t be overheard, then lowered his voice. ‘That I am Joseph’s father.’

Chapter Twenty-three

The nursing home was set high on a hill on Gower Road. John had no problem finding it. Leaving his car, he walked to the door and rang the bell. A pretty young girl in a dark costume opened the door.

‘I’m here to see Mrs Esme Griffiths.’

‘Mr Griffiths?’ she asked.

‘Yes.’

‘Mr Thomas telephoned to say you were on your way. Please come in.’ She ushered him through a tiled hall into a waiting room furnished with leather chairs and sofas. ‘Would you like tea or coffee, Mr Griffiths?’

‘Neither, thank you.’ He didn’t know whom he was more irritated with, Richard Thomas for taking control of Esme’s life, or Esme for putting herself in a position where Richard had been able to do so.

A middle-aged woman joined them. ‘Mr Griffiths, I assume.’

‘Yes, matron.’ The receptionist closed the door behind her, leaving him alone with the woman, who looked friendlier and more approachable than the staff who had nursed Helen in Swansea General.

‘How is my wife?’ he asked.

‘Recovering well. Provided she has someone to take care of her, she may leave tomorrow.’

‘She needs nursing care?’

‘No, but …’ The matron cleared her throat. ‘When a patient is found in a situation where alcohol and pills are involved it is as well to keep a close eye. I understand she has been living alone.’

‘Yes.’

‘You will need to make other arrangements before we discharge her. Would you like to see her?’

He didn’t want to be alone with Esme but he could hardly refuse to see her when he was in the same building. ‘Is she well enough to receive visitors?’ he hedged.

‘Yes, her cousin, Mrs Green, is with her now. I’ll ask her to leave.’

‘No, please don’t. I know Mrs Green and given the situation between myself and my wife …’

‘Mr Thomas told us you were separated.’ She gave John a look he interpreted as reproachful. ‘If you’ll follow me.’

John walked behind the matron up the stairs and into a comfortable room that overlooked manicured lawns bordered by well-tended flowerbeds. Esme and her cousin Dorothy sat in chairs positioned to enjoy the view. Esme didn’t even look up as they entered, but Dorothy left her seat and kissed his cheek.

‘It is good to see you looking so well, John.’

‘Would you like me to send something up? Tea perhaps.’ The matron looked from John to Esme.

‘Tea would be nice, thank you,’ Dorothy replied for them. ‘Won’t you take my chair, John?’

‘I can stand.’

‘There’s no need.’ She pulled another chair into the semicircle before the window.

‘How did you know I was here?’ Esme sounded husky as if her throat were sore, and John recalled Richard Thomas mentioning that she’d had her stomach pumped.

‘Richard Thomas came to see me. How are you feeling?’

‘As you see.’

‘The matron told me you can leave tomorrow.’

‘We’ve just been talking about that,’ Dorothy broke in brightly. ‘I would like Esme to come and live with me.’

‘In your flat above the hat shop?’ John remembered Esme’s hostile reaction to the shop and flat he had offered her as part of the divorce settlement.

‘Only temporarily. I’m putting my shop on the market. It’s high time I did something with my life besides sell hats.’

John looked from Dorothy to Esme, not sure what was coming next.

‘If you give me cash instead of the shop and flat in Mumbles I’ll buy a place in Bath,’ Esme said flatly.

‘You want to move to Bath!’

‘I want to get out of Swansea and Dot has friends there. But I’ll need the annuity as well as the cash.’

‘And if I pay you both, you will go ahead with the divorce?’ John could scarcely believe what he was hearing.

‘On one condition.’ Esme turned to him and looked him coldly in the eye. ‘You make sure Katie Clay stays away from Joseph.’

Dumbfounded, it was as much as he could do to meet her angry stare.

‘Don’t look as though you have no idea what I’m talking about. I told you I saw the way she looked at Joseph at Helen’s wedding. It’s bad enough that Helen is married to a Clay without Joseph getting entangled with another.’

‘You don’t have to worry about Joe and Katie Clay,’ he muttered, finally finding his voice.

‘If you’re saying that to get your precious divorce …’

‘Joe is spending a lot of time at the Watkin Morgans’. He went to a beach party with Angela yesterday.’

Esme smiled, a sad little smile of pathetic triumph that reminded John just how seldom he had seen her happy.

When he left the nursing home Dot walked John to his car. As he turned to her to say goodbye, she kissed his cheek. ‘I’ll be honest with you, John, there is no way I would be able to afford to move to Bath if you weren’t buying a place for Esme. My flat and the shop are heavily mortgaged. When I cash in all my assets and add them to what I inherited from Esme’s mother, I’ll have barely enough to buy myself into a new business venture I’m trusting to provide me with a living.’

‘And if it doesn’t work out?’ he asked, sincerely concerned for her.

‘I’ll be in trouble. But’ – she smiled wryly – ‘don’t worry. I won’t come running to you to bail me out. My business partner has more than enough capital to keep us afloat until the profits start coming in.’

‘Are you sure, Dot? I’m fond of you and not just because of what you’re doing for Esme,’ he said awkwardly. ‘You’ve always been kind to me and Helen and Joe. I’d hate to see you get hurt.’

‘I won’t – financially, that is,’ she qualified. ‘Emotionally is another matter. You’ve probably guessed my partner isn’t just my business partner.’

‘I’m in no position to judge anyone.’

‘He also has a wife he has no intention of leaving.’ She paused, waiting for him to say something and, when he didn’t, added, ‘No one can accuse me of going into this venture wearing rose-coloured glasses.’

‘I’ve never been able to understand why a kind, caring, compassionate, beautiful woman like you isn’t happily married with a dozen children.’

‘The answer to that is simple. I made the mistake of marrying the wrong man and then the even bigger mistake of divorcing him before my twenty-fifth birthday. People in Swansea don’t forget a divorce, or forgive a divorcee. I count myself lucky that I was able to sell hats to them for as long as I did.’

‘You could have married again,’ he suggested.

‘I might have, if anyone had asked me,’ she said briskly. ‘Esme has one thing right. Decent people don’t socialise with divorcees and decent men don’t marry them. They make passes at us, because they assume that every woman who’s lost her man to the courts has to be panting for attention of the bedroom kind. But no matter how much they may protest they like a woman in private, if she has a broken marriage they take care never to be seen in public with her.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘You’re not to blame for the faults of Swansea society, and Bath is far away enough for Esme and me to make a fresh start. We’ll tell everyone we’ve lost our husbands to the graveyard, rather than the divorce courts. That will make us marginally more respectable. Then we can embark on new careers as hard-working merry widow businesswomen.’ She smiled optimistically.

‘I can’t see Esme working, let alone hard. And certainly not at the kind of thing that brings in money.’

‘You never know, but then, with what you’re paying her, she doesn’t need to. And I have heard there is a very good amateur dramatic company in Bath.’

‘You’ve done your homework.’

‘I thought I should, as I intend to live there a long time.’

‘Have you gone as far as picking out a house?’ He opened the car door and leaned on it.

‘Apartment. On the ground floor of a Georgian town house with a well-proportioned, high-ceilinged drawing room, two large bedrooms and bathroom. The kitchen is small, dark and poky but then as neither Esme nor I is a cordon bleu chef, we’ll make do with cold meat, salads and sandwiches on the days we can’t afford to eat out.’

‘How much is it?’ Leaning forward, he slotted his keys into the dashboard.

‘Less than you would get for the shop and flat in Mumbles if you put it on the market. I’ll ask my solicitor to send you details.’

‘Richard Thomas?’

‘My business is too insignificant to warrant his attention.’ She stood back as he stepped into the car. ‘Do you want an actual figure?’

‘If it’s too much I’ll let you know.’

‘I won’t rook you.’

‘I never thought you would.’ He held out his hand. ‘I wish you – and Esme – well, Dot.’

‘Esme was a fool.’ She held on to his hand after she shook it. ‘If she’d had any sense she would have taken good care of you and your marriage after the way you came to her rescue.’

‘I wasn’t aware that I was rescuing her at the time. If I had been, I probably wouldn’t have married her.’

‘She told me you never once reproached her.’

‘That’s not to say I didn’t want to.’

‘Really?’ she murmured in surprise. ‘You never gave me the impression of being bitter.’

‘I wasn’t about Joe. The anger and the bitterness came later, after Helen was born and we stopped sharing our lives and a bedroom.’

‘I’m surprised you’ve waited this long to divorce Esme.’

‘Perhaps it’s taken me this long to realise that a marriage doesn’t necessarily have to be for life.’

‘I hope you find happiness, John,’ she said earnestly. ‘You deserve it, although I can’t begin to imagine the woman who would be good enough for you. Do you know that if I’d got to you before Esme she wouldn’t have stood a chance?’

‘Now you tell me.’

‘Take some advice from a woman who really messed up her marriage. Try to concentrate on the good things. You’ve done a wonderful job of bringing up Joe and Helen.’

‘Thank you.’

‘Give them my love and tell them they’re welcome to visit their mother in my place any time they want to before we leave for Bath – and afterwards. I’ll make sure there’s a bed settee in the drawing room.’

‘I will.’ He gunned the ignition.

‘Just one more thing.’ She leaned in through the car window. ‘Tell Joe to be careful around Richard Thomas.’

‘Then he is …’

‘I spoke to Richard earlier. He told me what Esme said. He took the precaution of warning the staff in the nursing home about her accusations in case she made them again. He threatened to sue anyone who repeats them. If you or Joe mention it he might do worse than sue.’

‘He asked you to warn me.’

‘He didn’t have to. I know Richard just as well as, if not better than, Esme, and in exactly the same way. Now do you understand why I’m so eager to leave Swansea?’

John drove towards the gates of the nursing home and stopped the car. If he turned left he could be in the warehouse in fifteen minutes. He glanced at his watch. It was three o’clock, plenty of time to take his new secretary in hand and show her how to use a dictionary but to his right the road snaked over Fairwood Common and down the Gower. Cliffs – sea – beaches – rolling hills and countryside – green farmlands bordered by woods … He had to do some serious thinking and the office was no place for that. He turned right.

He didn’t stop until he reached the end of the peninsula. Parking the car above the steep cliffs of Rhossilli Bay, he limped down the path that led towards the causeway and the promontory of Worm’s Head. Although the sun shone from a clear sky, the wind that blew in from the sea was cold and cutting. He stopped and looked around, breathing in what felt like the first real air he’d inhaled in months.

Sheep grazed everywhere, finding footholds on precarious narrow ledges. Gorse bloomed yellow against the pale, coarse coastal grass. Below, to his right, gulls circled, crying above the skeletal timbers of the wreck of the
Helvetia
that thrust upwards through the sand, reminding him of the ribcages of the dinosaurs he’d seen in the Natural History Museum when he’d taken Joe and Helen on a trip there over ten years ago.

He had always loved Rhossilli. It was one of the most inaccessible beaches and consequently the least frequented. His disfigurement had led him to seek out solitude until first Esme, then the children had come into his life. And Katie …

He walked on, gradually sinking deeper into his thoughts until he became impervious to both the wind and the beauty around him. In a few months he would, if Esme kept her word, be free. She had promised to contact Richard Thomas that afternoon, sign the divorce papers and grant him his freedom. The decree could be finalised in a month or two. And then?

It was what he wanted, but where did that leave him with Katie? He came up with all the reasons why he shouldn’t be optimistic. Esme had proved fickle before; she might prove so again despite all her assurances. And Katie had come to terms with the way things were between them. It hadn’t been easy for her, but she was forging a fresh life for herself. She’d begun a new job, she’d be meeting new people, perhaps even someone nearer her own age, who could offer her more than he could. Someone younger, without health problems who wouldn’t need nursing through a decrepit old age when she was still a young woman.

It would be best not to tell her what had happened with Esme. To leave things as they were, rather than run the risk of disappointing her a second time. If and when his divorce was final he would see her again. That shouldn’t prove too difficult as she was moving in with Helen. Then he would find out if she had built herself another life. One in which there was no part for him to play.

‘Where do you want this, Helen?’ Martin shouted as he and Sam manhandled an enormous trunk into the house.

‘Upstairs, in the front bedroom,’ she called back from the depths of the cupboard under the stairs.

‘What you got in here, dead bodies?’ Sam stopped and propped the end of the trunk on his knees so Martin could negotiate the first few stairs.

‘Six. All boys I killed for not working hard enough.’

‘The way you’re driving us, I believe it,’ he retorted acidly.

‘I could make it seven.’ Helen adjusted the scarf she’d tied corner-wise over her hair with a bow on top, as she emerged from the cupboard with her aunt’s ancient carpet sweeper.

‘Just as well we borrowed the largest van your father has, Helen. You girls don’t half accumulate some stuff.’ Adam walked into the living room with a suitcase. ‘This is the third one I’ve taken up for Lily. ‘When Martin and I were in the army we were allowed one kitbag …’