Swansea Summer (9 page)

‘Consider what you’ve just said,’ he suggested patiently. ‘You know as well as I do what most people will think when you say “a girl like Lily”. And before you start on another of your tirades, remember I saw her mother – and in her working clothes. A Tiller girl wears more on stage and the woman who would be your mother-in-law if you persist in going after Lily didn’t have a body any man in his right mind would want to look at. Why can’t you see you’re well rid of the girl?’

‘Because I love her.’

‘How can you, when her mother trawls the docks every night offering herself to any man with a couple of shillings in his pocket and a stomach strong enough to face getting close to her for however long it takes.’

‘Lily didn’t even know she was related to the woman until she turned up at the party. You can’t hold her responsible for someone who abandoned her …’

‘Blood’s thicker than water. As my father says to his patients, it’s all in the genes. Hair colouring, eye colouring – character …’

‘Rubbish!’ Joe pronounced tersely, thinking of himself and his unknown father as much as Lily. If Robin was right, what had he inherited from the man who had walked away from his eighteen-year-old mother when she was carrying his bastard? A yellow streak of cowardice? His height? His dark hair? God forbid, his talent for writing. He wanted that to be his and his alone, not owed to some stranger who had abandoned him. He finished his pint and downed his whisky in one swallow. ‘Same again?’

‘Ever known me refuse?’ Robin followed Joe to the bar. ‘This fixation of yours for Lily Sullivan …’

‘I told you …’

‘You love her,’ Robin chanted sceptically. ‘I don’t buy this one woman/one man claptrap; that’s for poets and schoolgirls who’ve overdosed on Tennyson and Byron. There’s any number of women out there who’d suit you as well, if not better, if you’d give them a chance. I’ll grant you Lily’s not bad looking but I’ve seen prettier and she hasn’t one tenth of the class of Emily …’

‘If by class you mean the money to swan off to Paris to blow a year’s average wages on a shopping trip, you’re right.’ Joe referred to the holiday Robin’s girlfriend Emily and his sister Angela were taking with half a dozen of their wealthier girlfriends.

‘It’s not just money,’ Robin unconsciously reiterated his mother’s opinion. ‘It’s knowing how to say the right things. How to cultivate people who matter; how to dress, how to behave …’

‘Lily behaves a bloody sight better than Emily,’ Joe defended warmly. ‘She wouldn’t jump into bed with a man after two dates, as Emily did with you.’ Suddenly aware of people staring, he signalled to the barman. ‘Two pints and two whiskies,’ he ordered abruptly, resenting the grin on the man’s face.

‘Perhaps if you had taken her to bed, you’d have recovered from what happened at the party and got over her by now,’ Robin replied, refusing to get embarrassed or angry.

‘You make Lily sound like a disease.’

‘The way you’re carrying on about her I’m beginning to wonder. You know she’s seeing Martin Clay. She could be sleeping with him …’

From the savage look Joe gave him, Robin wondered afterwards if he would have punched him if it hadn’t been for the barman’s interruption.

‘Two pints, two whiskies, sir, that will be five shillings and sixpence.’ The barman eyed Joe as he took his money. ‘You two gentlemen all right?’

‘Quite,’ Joe answered brusquely.

‘We don’t want any trouble.’

‘And there won’t be any.’ Taking his drinks, Joe returned to their table.

Aware the barman was watching them, Robin smiled. ‘What are your pickled eggs like?’

‘We don’t serve bar snacks, sir. If you are hungry, may I recommend our upstairs restaurant?’

‘Thank you for reminding me.’ Taking his drinks, Robin carried them over to the table where Joe was sitting.

‘Lily’s only going out with Martin Clay to make me jealous,’ Joe snapped pre-emptively as Robin pulled out a chair.

‘She told you?’

‘All through the wedding reception she watched me while she flirted with him. And it was the same tonight when Martin went to pick her up to take her to the Pier. She knew I was getting into the car, so she kept him on the doorstep to make sure I saw her kissing him. But she only kissed him on the cheek.’

‘But you haven’t spoken to her.’

‘I don’t have to speak to her to know what she’s thinking. We were – are -’ he corrected, ‘that close. There’s no need for words between us. I only have to look into her eyes to feel what she feels …’

‘She is your
“ever fixed mark – the star to every wand’ring bark.”
’

‘Mock all you like. I deserve it for expecting a
Beano
-and-
Dandy-
reading moron who is incapable of seeing further than the physical, to understand true emotion – or the poetry of the soul.’

‘It is just as well some of us live in the real world.’ Robin sipped his beer. ‘Man cannot live by romance alone.’

‘Your idea of romance is a tumble between the sheets so Emily can scratch your itch, as you down a decanter of your father’s whisky.’

‘Pity you haven’t allowed a girl to scratch your itch. You’re proof of the theory that if you don’t get enough you go mad. And there’s my sister pining …’

‘I don’t love Angela.’

‘You don’t have to love a girl to go to bed with her.’ Robin suddenly felt as though he were talking to a small child, not a contemporary.

‘I do.’

‘There is such a thing as sex for sex’s sake. It’s good healthy exercise and more fun than a cross-country run.’ Robin looked closely at Joe and realised that in the last couple of months his friend had lost weight. His face was leaner, his dark eyes sunk in purplish-black shadows that gave him a slightly crazed appearance. Perhaps he’d hit closer to the truth than he’d realised when he’d mentioned madness.

‘I’m not like you, Robin.’ As the passion that had sustained Joe during their argument subsided, his voice softened.

‘I never thought you were.’

‘Don’t you see, if I don’t go to the Pier, Lily may think I’ve lost interest in her. She knows I overheard her and the others making plans to go there tonight. And she’s with Martin; if he’s anything like his brother Jack …’

‘He’ll have the knickers off the gorgeous Lily before you manage to get your leg over.’ Waiting for Joe to bite back, Robin drank half his whisky.

‘Why do you always have to bring everything down to a crude level?’

‘Because life is crude.’

‘I’ll go to the Pier on my own.’

‘No you won’t. In your state of mind you need someone with you to stop you from making a complete ass of yourself. And who knows, another couple of these’ – Robin finished the other half of his whisky – ‘might mellow you enough to see sense. God knows why, but my sister’s still keen on you. She’ll be back from Paris on Thursday and although she is my sister, I still say Angela’s a better prospect for you than Lily.’

Chapter Five

As the waiter helped her off with her coat, Helen studied the decor of the Italian restaurant the hotel manageress had recommended. It was smaller and far less grand than the upstairs dining room of the Mermaid Hotel in Mumbles and positively downmarket compared with the Mackworth Hotel in High Street. The walls were whitewashed; the tables and chairs simply made from planks of dark wood and the tablecloths and napkins a cheerful red gingham that suggested a country kitchen rather than the impersonal elegance she’d expected to find in a London establishment.

Her father had made a point of taking her and Joe out to eat at least once a week since he’d considered them old enough to sit at an adult table. As a result she’d never felt intimidated in even the grandest of the hotels her grandmother patronised and invited her and Joe to dine in on family state occasions. But she sensed from the look on Jack’s face as he handed the waiter his coat that he was ill at ease.

‘Will this suit, sir?’ The waiter ushered them to a table for two, set in a corner next to the window. As Jack looked to her for confirmation, she gave him a reassuring smile.

‘It will do fine.’ She continued to smile at Jack as the waiter pulled out a chair for her, lit the candles on their table and shook her napkin over her lap.

‘Would you like to see the wine list, sir?’

Helen reached for Jack’s hand across the table. ‘I’d love a lemonade, darling.’

‘Do you have beer?’ Jack asked tentatively, as the waiter flourished the wine list in front of him. The only places he’d ever eaten out in had been the Italian cafés of the egg, beans and chips variety in Swansea. This place with its black-suited, fawning waiters, elaborately printed menus and wine cellar was completely beyond his experience.

‘We have Guinness and Worthington, sir.’

‘My wife will have a lemonade and I’ll have a pint of Worthington please.’ Jack tried to look as though he ate out every day of the week as he took the menu the man handed him.

‘The manageress of the hotel was right, the prices here aren’t too bad.’ Helen scanned the card, as the waiter went to get their drinks.

‘The set dinner is three and sixpence. You can get sausage, eggs, beans and chips in the café by the bus station for one and six.’

‘But not tablecloths and waiters.’ She set the menu aside. ‘And this is our honeymoon.’

Jack ran his finger round the inside of his collar. It suddenly seemed too tight and the restaurant too warm for his liking. ‘What are you going to have?’

‘Tomato soup, lamb Italian style, and Italian ice cream, a large one with raspberry sauce. You?’

‘What’s lamb Italian style?’

‘I have no idea,’ she confessed lightly.

‘It could be horrible.’

‘And it could be wonderful. I won’t know either way until I try it.’

He stared down at the bewildering array of cutlery in front of him. His mother never had money enough to set more than one course on the table while he’d been growing up and generally there hadn’t been enough of that to satisfy his, Martin’s and Katie’s appetites.

‘I’m starving.’ Helen squeezed his hand as the waiter arrived with their drinks. ‘Besides,’ she whispered into his ear so the waiter couldn’t hear, ‘I’ll need to keep up my strength if your performance today is an indication of what the rest of our honeymoon is going to be like.’

Drawing confidence from her composure in these strange surroundings, Jack looked the waiter in the eye as he gave him Helen’s order and, after a moment’s hesitation, asked him to bring everything for two.

‘I thought you didn’t want to risk the lamb.’ Helen stirred her lemonade, sending the slice of lemon and ice cubes swirling around the tall glass.

‘I can’t have the waiter thinking my wife is braver than me.’ He sipped his Worthington. It was colder than any beer he’d drunk before.

‘It is only a restaurant.’

‘My experience of restaurants is standing outside and reading the menu, and as I could never afford more than a plate of bread and butter in one, the café always seemed to be a better bet.’

‘The way you work in the warehouse you won’t ever have to count the pennies again.’

‘We won’t be able to eat out very often,’ he warned.

‘It could be our treat, say once a month.’

‘And when the baby is born?’

‘I’ll want to stay in and look after him – and you until – he’s old enough to join us.’ Resting her chin on her hand, she gazed at him. ‘This is wonderful. Us, eating out alone in London, with fourteen whole days to do exactly as we please ahead of us.’

‘And where do you want to go tomorrow?’

‘The Tower.’

‘And if it’s on the way, back to the hotel via Harrods.’ He returned her smile.

‘Admit it, you’re as curious about the place as I am.’

‘Worried more than curious. Their prices are supposed to be out of this world.’

‘I promise not to spend more than … five shillings? How’s that?’

‘And what do you intend to buy for five shillings?’

She felt his hand fumbling for hers beneath the cover of the tablecloth. ‘A tie for my husband.’

‘What’s wrong with the one I’m wearing?’

‘You don’t know?’

He shook his head.

‘That’s exactly why I need to buy you a new one. To start developing your taste.’

‘Are you trying to change me already, Mrs Clay?’ he asked seriously.

‘And if I am?’ Her blue eyes glittered in the candlelight.

‘I’d expect a reward for submitting to your bullying.’ He leaned back as the waiter brought their soup, along with a basket of small brown bread rolls.

‘Perhaps I’ll give you one when we get back to the hotel.’

‘If it’s anything like the reward you gave me when we arrived, you can make that extravagance ten shillings.’

‘I’ll hold you to that.’

He watched her take a bread roll and set it on her side plate before picking up her spoon. After carefully taking note of where she’d lifted it from, he followed suit.

‘Don’t take this the wrong way, but what would you do, if I did give up my job in London and come back to Swansea?’ Judy asked, as Brian slid a tray of drinks on to their table and handed her a bottle of Babycham and an empty glass holding a cocktail cherry speared on a toothpick.

‘What wrong way is there to take it?’ He moved his chair, sat down and pretended to study the couples on the dance floor.

‘Like I said earlier, you’d be the first to know if I do decide to take my mother up on her offer.’

‘So, you are still thinking about it.’ He reached for his pint of beer.

‘I told you I’d give London a chance.’

‘But you’re not sure you want to.’ He finally looked at her.

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

‘I have absolutely no idea.’

Her temper rose as she glared at him. ‘What did you say?’

‘I have absolutely no idea what I’d do if you came back here,’ he explained, refusing to rise to her bait.

‘You wouldn’t return with me.’ She was suddenly alarmed at the thought.

‘To do what?’ He lowered his glass back on to the table.

‘Take your old job back.’

‘I wouldn’t get it. The brass aren’t too fond of policemen who switch from one force to the other every five minutes. And if we talk any more about this tonight, we’ll argue, so let’s not.’

‘We can’t just sweep it under the carpet,’ she persisted.

‘We can for tonight.’ He tapped his foot as the band went into a swinging version of ‘Rock-a-Beatin’ Boogie.’ ‘Dance?’

She knew he was right to want to drop the subject but she couldn’t leave it alone. ‘Look …’

‘No, you look,’ he interrupted, allowing his irritation to surface. ‘You were the one who wanted to be footloose and fancy free. Have you changed your mind?’

She fell silent.

‘Dance?’ he repeated, looking towards the floor where Martin and Lily, and Katie and Sam were jiving.

As she rose to her feet, Adam barged into their table with a full pint glass sending it and their drinks rocking.

‘There are plenty of girls out there looking for partners.’ Brian was aware that Adam was on his fourth drink, when he’d just bought everyone else’s second.

‘You and Martin have staked claims on the only two worth dancing with,’ Adam slurred.

Judy realised the mention of ‘two’ meant Katie’s rejection was still a sore point. ‘That’s rubbish, Adam. And if you want to dance with either Lily or me, you only have to ask.’

‘Brian wouldn’t let you.’

‘Brian doesn’t own me.’ She smiled at Brian as she pulled Adam on to the dance floor.

Brian had to allow that even half cut, Adam was a better dancer than he was. He and Judy looked good together, so good that a dozen or so couples stopped dancing, formed a circle around them and began to clap.

‘You allowed Adam to borrow Judy.’ Martin sat beside him and idly twirled Lily’s empty glass, tracing the lines of the deer transfer with his finger.

‘He’s well on the way to getting sozzled again. I thought the exercise might help.’

‘That was generous of you.’

‘Judy and I were only arguing anyway. It’s what we do most of these days.’ Brian took the cigarette Martin handed him. ‘Where’s Lily?’

‘Ladies. Something she didn’t want me to know about snapped under her dress.’ He lifted the glass of beer Brian had bought him. ‘Cheers.’

‘Cheers.’ Brian sipped his pint again before lighting their cigarettes. ‘As soon as this dance finishes, I think we should take Adam to one side and tell him what really happened, or rather didn’t, between him and Lifebuoy Lettie last night. It’s too late to stop him from getting plastered but it might slow his pace.’

‘He won’t be happy with us,’ Martin cautioned.

‘We can’t put it off any longer.’

‘I suppose not.’

‘And we can always blame Jack.’

‘I’d agree, if Jack had emigrated to Australia as opposed to gone on a two-week honeymoon in London.’ Martin reflected that he couldn’t stop playing the big brother, even now when Jack was married with his own responsibilities. ‘Adam may have a temper but Jack has a worse one and I dread to think what might happen if Adam tried to have a go at him.’

‘And if we allow Adam to go on thinking he jumped Lettie he might say something to her and then we’d look like right idiots,’ Brian pointed out.

‘You still volunteering?’

Brian thought before answering. ‘Why not. Seeing as I’m leaving tomorrow, he won’t be able to get at me for a while.’

‘It might be better if the three of us tell him. He can hardly take us all on.’

‘I’ll go with that,’ Brian agreed.

‘So, bearing in mind that I’m only trying to help, what were you and Judy arguing about?’ Martin ventured.

‘Nothing – everything – stupid niggles every couple quarrel over.’ Brian looked at Judy and Adam again. ‘Rock-a-Beatin’ Boogie’ had given way to ‘Unchained Melody’ played in waltz time. Adam had one hand on Judy’s shoulder the other round her waist, but she was careful to keep him at arm’s length. He wondered if she’d bother if he weren’t around – like back in London – and she were here permanently.

‘Lily and I have never had an argument.’

‘Go out with her much longer and you will.’ Brian turned his back to the dance floor and picked up his beer.

A shiver of foreboding ran through Martin, as he saw Joe and his friend Robin Watkin Morgan walk into the room and head for the bar. There was only one reason why Joe Griffiths would lower himself to enter a public dance hall on a Saturday night. How could he possibly compete with all Joe had to offer? And given his background and prospects, did he even have the right to try?

Jack sat on one of the chairs in the hotel bedroom watching Helen as she moved around, tidying away clothes, pushing her stockings into the laundry bag, brushing out her hair, securing it with a band and cleaning off her make-up with cold cream and cotton wool. Despite his misgivings, the meal in the restaurant had been good – very good. After three courses and two pints of Worthington he felt sated and, looking at Helen, blissfully happy and just the slightest bit smug.

‘You look like the cat that’s got the cream.’ She picked up her toilet bag, nightdress and negligee.

‘I know just how he feels. That restaurant,’ he blurted uneasily, ‘it was nice. Thank you for insisting we went there.’

‘Are you saying I was right and you were wrong?’ she teased.

‘If it had been up to me, I would have looked in and walked away, and we would have ended up eating fish and chips on the street corner.’

‘There’s nothing wrong with fish and chips on the street corner – in between visits to restaurants,’ she qualified.

‘I’ve a feeling you’re going to change the way I look at things along with my life, Mrs Clay.’ Catching her round her waist, he pulled her on to his lap and kissed her. As she linked her hands round his neck and responded, he tugged her blouse free from her skirt.

‘Not as much as you’ve changed mine, Mr Clay. And I’m surprised you can move, let alone think what you’re thinking after the meal you’ve just eaten.’

‘You’re too full?’ He stopped slipping the buttons on her blouse from their loops.

‘No, but I was about to have a bath. Then again’ – her fingers wandered to his belt – ‘we could have one later.’

‘Together!’

‘Why not, the bath is big enough.’ She was amused by the shocked expression on his face.

‘What if someone sees us?’

‘You heard the manageress say no one else is staying on this floor and I was going to lock the door.’

‘But if anyone came up the stairs they might hear us and know we were in there.’

‘We’re married, Jack. It’s legal.’

Picking her up, he swung her high into his arms and on to the bed. ‘God, you’re wonderful.’

‘I know.’ Pulling him close to her, she kissed him.

‘You what?’ Adam’s eyes gleamed, ice-blue and furious, as he glared at Brian in the men’s cloakroom.

‘Played a practical joke on you,’ Brian repeated, taken aback by the venom in Adam’s voice.

‘It was a stag night and I wasn’t the bridegroom.’

‘It was just a joke, Adam.’ Turning off the tap, Martin shook his hands over the sink before drying them on the roller towel.