Tiger Bay Blues (32 page)

‘I just wish Peter had consulted me.’ Edyth sipped the brandy. She found it warming, given the chill in the air. ‘I thought the vicarage was to be my home, mine and Peter’s. It was selfish of me, but it never crossed my mind that Peter’s mother would want to move in with us. Peter speaks so often about your generosity towards her, I assumed she was settled here.’ She suddenly realised that, for all her apparent sympathy, Alice was Florence’s sister. Had she said too much?

‘Flo has never settled with me,’ Alice divulged. She produced an elaborately embossed gold lighter, lit Edyth’s cigar and then her own. She saw Edyth looking at it. ‘This was my husband, Theo’s. But he didn’t buy it and it wasn’t to his taste.’ She fingered the bull embossed on the front. ‘The managers of his butchers’ shops, God bless them, clubbed together and gave it to him on his fortieth birthday. Little did they, or I, think that it would be his last.’ She returned the lighter to her pocket. ‘Theo didn’t like Florence, either – or Peter’s father, come to that.’

‘How did you …’ Edyth stammered into silence.

‘It’s as plain as the very pretty nose on your face, my dear. But don’t worry; your secret is safe with me. Or at least, as safe as it can be, given that some looks speak a thousand words. And, to your credit, you gave Flo one of those before you left the dining room. Flo never has been what you might call lovable.’ Alice set her brandy glass on the ground.

They sat in silence for a few seconds. Then they heard Peter talking to his mother. His voice was low, reproachful; hers was soft, languid.

‘You knew that I wanted to tell Edyth in my own time, Mother.’

‘When, Peter? I am moving in with you next week …’

‘They’re in the sitting room,’ Alice whispered. ‘Would you like to see my greenhouse, Edyth?’ she asked in a louder voice. ‘It’s not at its best at this time of year, but the gardener has just planted the Christmas roses and they’re coming well. Not in bloom yet, but the buds are plentiful.’

‘I’d love to.’ Wanting to get as far away from Peter and his mother as possible, Edyth followed Alice to the back of her house. Her ‘greenhouse’ was the largest conservatory Edyth had seen. Only one small area had been given over to seedlings. Half a dozen chairs, two chaises longues and a bamboo table in Raj-style cane stood in the centre, surrounded by pots of rubber plants, geraniums and trailing vines.

‘I confess I’m to blame for Flo moving in with you, dear. I haven’t put myself out or changed my ways to accommodate her since the day she arrived here. In fact, truth be known, I’ve gone out of my way to annoy her. Revenge for her sanctimonious attitude towards me and Theo over the years.’ She drew on her cigar and blew a puff of blue smoke in the direction of one of the Christmas rose bushes. ‘Good – or rather bad – for the greenfly; they hate cigar smoke, which gives me an excuse to light up in here,’ she explained briefly. ‘I know from the frequent and tedious sermons Flo has positively relished giving me over the years that she believes cards, alcohol, tobacco and novels, with the exception of a few – very few – classics, to be the work of the devil.’

‘I remember you mentioning that you belong to a bridge club,’ Edyth recalled.

‘Not just belong, dear. I insisted they meet here twice a week after Flo moved in. Before that we used to meet in an upstairs room in the Bush Hotel. Although we still hold the larger tournaments in the Caswell Bay Hotel, which is why they know me so well there. I enjoy planning our buffets with the manager. He and I have very similar tastes. Then there’s drink. Theo always insisted on having a good bottle of wine with dinner and a brandy afterwards, and I saw no reason to change the tradition after he was buried or when Flo moved in.’

‘Peter drinks wine.’ Edyth drew on her cigar. The tobacco was stronger than she’d expected and she coughed.

‘Put it out it if you don’t like it, dear. They are an acquired taste. And yes, I was successful in developing Peter’s taste when it came to alcohol, but not in all things,’ Alice mused. ‘But to get back to Flo, God only knows where she got her sanctimonious, holier-than-thou attitude from. Listen to me blaspheme, that’s something else I do to annoy her, but sometimes I think Flo was born pious. She hates me calling her Flo, by the way, because it reminds her of our working-class upbringing, which is why I never call her anything else. But she can hardly argue with an older sister, especially one whose charity she’s been living on for the last fourteen years. Our parents were shopkeepers. They weren’t religious, far from it. Our father owned a tobacconist and we all worked in it. My mother, Flo and me. That’s where I met my husband.’

‘And where Peter’s mother met his father?’ Edyth asked.

‘Good Lord, no. Peter’s father never allowed wine, tobacco, spirits or, I suspect, Flo’s lips to touch his. As I was saying, Flo always did have a bit of a religious bent. When she was thirteen she developed a crush on a Sunday School teacher. She started to dress like her, talk like her and, I believe, even think like her.’ Alice finished her brandy. ‘She started going to church three times every Sunday. Morning and evening services and Sunday school. At fifteen she became a Sunday school teacher herself. Peter’s father was appointed curate to the parish and she fell head over heels in love with him. It wasn’t surprising. He was the handsomest man you ever saw and every unmarried girl in the church was after him. The only mystery was why he picked Flo. She never had great looks, but she did know how to pray. And he did have an odd way about him. Nothing you could put your finger on – just odd, not normal. You know what I mean?’

Edyth didn’t but she nodded anyway. ‘Does Peter take after his father?’ she asked curiously.

‘In looks and unfortunately, in my opinion, his dedication to the Church in Wales. He was a bright boy. He could have done well in any field he chose – medicine, the law, even the army – but Flo wouldn’t hear of him entering anything except the Church. And Peter’s biggest fault is a tendency to take too much notice of his mother. But in all fairness, he doesn’t appear to have inherited his father’s arrogance. Reverend Slater senior would have been very shocked and annoyed if he reached Heaven and discovered that the Good Lord hadn’t set aside a particularly saintly and holy cloud just for him. But for all his self-importance, Peter’s father never had the gumption to stand up to Flo. Sadly, Peter’s just as lacking in that department.’

‘But Peter’s parents did love one another?’

‘I think they did, in their own peculiar fashion.’ Alice ground out her cigar and immediately lit another. ‘I was married by the time Flo started courting. Every time I saw Mam and Dad they complained that all Flo could talk about was Reverend Slater. My parents weren’t too happy about it, but they couldn’t stop them from getting engaged on Flo’s eighteenth birthday. That was when Flo decided her future husband’s vocation was hers. Eventually she wore Mam and Dad down. They married when Flo was nineteen. But Peter didn’t put in an appearance for over twenty years. That’s why he’s so old-fashioned in his outlook. Old parents bring up old children, or so I’ve always thought.’

The description of Peter’s parents’ courtship was so similar to hers and Peter’s, Edyth couldn’t help thinking that history had repeated itself. ‘I’ve often considered some of Peter’s ways Victorian, but he told me that his parents were middle-aged when he was born.’

Alice laid a dry, arthritic hand over Edyth’s, ‘You can count on one ally in the family, my dear. You have any trouble with Flo, come to me and I’ll do what I can to sort her out.’

‘I couldn’t possibly.’

‘Yes, you could.’ Alice rested her cigar on the amethyst ashtray on the table. ‘I’ve tried every ruse I can think of and I couldn’t sway Flo an inch from her determination to move in with you. But I’ll do whatever it takes to stop her making your life a misery. And mark my words, she will if you let her. She’s a deceptively soft-spoken, tyrannical hypochondriac who likes to have the whole world running round after her. Start as you mean to go on, dear. Be firm, don’t put up with her nonsense. And if things get too much for you, come and stay here, or invite me down for a visit.’

‘I couldn’t impose.’

‘Yes, you could.’ The old lady’s eyes sparkled with mischief. ‘I can imagine just as many ailments as Flo when the mood takes me. And I’m just as capable of demanding my nephew’s hospitality as a right. Now,’ she leaned heavily on her cane and hauled herself upright, ‘let’s go in, finish lunch, drink coffee and eat petits fours as though all’s right with the world. That will throw Flo. She likes nothing better than to create a scene, then sit back and enjoy it, while pretending she had absolutely nothing to do with instigating it.’

*……*……*

‘I knew David was fond of Edyth but I had no idea he’d do anything like that,’ Mary murmured when Harry sat on the edge of her bed and watched her feed their new son. ‘Are you sure that he jumped deliberately? That he didn’t fall?’

‘We’re sure, love,’ Harry broke in softly. ‘Huw Davies and another officer saw him climb on to the parapet. And it was Huw who fished him out of the river.’

‘But David is going to be all right, isn’t he?’ She fought back tears as she looked to Harry for reassurance.

‘I told you he came round when we were there. He has a lot of broken bones and he doesn’t look too good now, but you know David. He’s as strong as a Welsh pit pony and he’s come through worse.’ Harry recalled the beating David had survived when he’d been forced to work on another farm before he and Mary had married and he had managed to secure her family home.

‘David kept telling me that he didn’t want our farm. I thought it was a phase he’d grow out of, but now this …’

‘You’re not to blame for what David did, Mary,’ Harry said firmly. ‘It’s not your fault any more than it’s Edyth’s for marrying Peter Slater. We all knew David was fond of her but he’s only eighteen, and I doubt he’s seen her more than a dozen times in the four years since we married, apart from that week she spent with us three years ago. And that’s no basis for marriage. If you want my opinion I think he fell in love with the idea of being in love, not Edyth.’

‘We didn’t see that much of one another before we married, Harry,’ she reminded him.

‘Ah, but it was the quality of the sightings.’

She was too upset about David even to listen. ‘I was stupid to try to keep David at the farm. Don’t you see? He fell in love with Edyth because she’s the first girl he’s really known who’s the same age as him. If I’d let him travel as he wanted to do, met more people …’ She looked down at the baby at her breast. ‘No matter what you say, Harry, it is my fault. I put the family farm before David …’ Her voice broke as tears welled in her eyes again.

‘I don’t want to hear another word like that from you, darling.’ Harry cradled both her and the baby in his arms. ‘For the last time: it is not your fault. David is the one who climbed on that bridge and jumped. He probably drank too much at the wedding, got maudlin, went out for a walk and did something stupid on impulse because he wasn’t capable of thinking straight.’

‘If he recovers –’

‘When
he recovers,’ Harry corrected emphatically, ‘we’ll talk to him.’

‘And let him do whatever he wants?’ she pleaded.

‘Within reason. I draw the line at letting him join the Foreign Legion.’

‘Harry –’

‘Sorry, darling, bad joke.’

‘Martha, Matthew and Luke need to be told.’ Mary sniffed back her tears.

‘My mother told them that David’s in hospital after a fall. They don’t need to know any more for the present.’

‘And Edyth? She’s going to feel dreadful.’

‘My father and Uncle Joey have already left for Swansea. We talked about it, and decided it was too much of a risk to try to keep it from her. People are always travelling from here down to the coast and Dad didn’t want to tell her on the telephone. So you see,’ he forced a smile, ‘you have nothing to worry about except yourself and little Will there. My mother and the girls are enjoying fussing over Ruth. Martha, Matthew and Luke are having the time of their lives tearing around the park with Bella and Toby, and Mr Jones is running the farm like clockwork. He told me so on the telephone not half an hour ago, when I rang him to warn him not to expect us back for a few weeks.’ Mr Jones was the farm manager they had employed to ‘help’ David. ‘The time to concern yourself with David is when we manage to get him home. He’s going to need a lot of nursing and I have a feeling that he isn’t going to be the easiest of patients to look after.’

Harry kept the police threat to prosecute David to himself. If Huw Davies’s ruse worked, Mary need never know about it. If it didn’t, David’s future didn’t bear thinking about. Used to living outdoors, prison would crush his spirit and finish what he had begun when he had taken that leap from the bridge.

‘Why didn’t you tell me that your mother was going to move in with us?’ Edyth had waited to broach the subject until she and Peter were walking through Singleton Park on their way from his aunt’s house to Mumbles. The clouds they had seen over the sea early that morning had blown inland, darkening the sky and threatening rain. Alice had offered them the services of her chauffeur to drive back them back to the hotel. But, wanting privacy to talk, Edyth had insisted they walk.

‘I was going to mention it,’ he mumbled shamefacedly.

‘When?’ she questioned evenly.

‘Sometime this week. It wasn’t the sort of thing I wanted to put in a letter.’

‘I can understand that it needed some discussion, which is why I’m unhappy about the way I found out about it.’ She took a deep breath and braced herself. ‘Was it your mother’s idea or yours?’

‘It was always … sort of assumed between us that when I had my own place she would leave Aunt Alice and live with me.’

‘To keep house?’

‘If you had told me when I received my posting to Pontypridd that I would be married by October I would never have believed it, so the answer to that is yes. Probably to keep house for me.’

‘So, you knew that your mother intended to move in with us the day you came to Pontypridd and bought my wedding and engagement rings?’