Tiger Bay Blues (40 page)

‘Edyth, Mother is speaking to you,’ Peter reprimanded.

‘Sorry, Mother.’ Edyth didn’t know why she was apologising. She wasn’t in the least bit sorry that she hadn’t listened to Peter’s mother. In fact, the less attention she paid her, the less likely she was to disagree with her.

‘I was saying how thoughtful it was of you and Peter to arrange our bedrooms next to one another, so I can call on you in the night, if I should need you.’

‘Why should you need me?’

‘I suffer from rheumatism and my sore throats are agony. Especially at night. Sometimes a hot drink can help me to get back to sleep. It was so inconvenient in Alice’s house. The maids slept on the top floor and Alice wouldn’t allow any of them to move down close to our bedrooms although there was a perfectly serviceable box room that would have been adequate for a maid. Should I need a drink or anything else, you will now be on hand to get it for me.’

‘If you’ll excuse me, I have to sort out Mrs Mack’s and Judy’s duties.’ Edyth left the table.

‘So soon? I thought we could talk over coffee, Edyth,’ Florence remonstrated. ‘Peter told me that there is a meeting of the Mothers’ Union tonight. I intended to outline some of my plans to you so you could implement them with the Young Wives. Two church groups working towards the same common aim would get twice as much work done.’

‘I need to make sure that both Judy and Mrs Mack will be kept busy while I am out. And I wanted to let Mrs Mack know that Judy is taking an hour off this evening. She has an appointment with her uncle and the police to discuss the theft of furniture from her grandmother’s house,’ Edyth explained, in case her mother-in-law thought she was in the habit of giving her servants time off in the evening. Florence had already subjected her to one lecture on lax household management and waste after unpacking the boxes of groceries, taking great delight in scrutinising every single item, complaining about its cost and suggesting cheaper alternatives that Edyth should switch to, and all of it within Mrs Mack’s earshot.

Edyth had managed to listen in silence but she knew that if she stayed and talked over anything with Florence Slater now, she would end up quarrelling with her.

‘You’re not doing your digestion any good, Edyth, rushing about like this,’ Florence warned.

‘It can’t be helped,’ Edyth said through gritted teeth. ‘I have a meeting arranged.’

‘The inter-faith meeting in the Mission doesn’t start until six o’clock,’ Peter reminded her.

‘I promised to call in on some parishioners at three.’ Edyth hoped Peter wouldn’t ask their names. ‘I also need to check the new mangle.’ She left the room, closed the door behind her and leaned against it for a moment.

She took a deep breath, looked down and saw Judy on her hands and knees scrubbing the tiles with a wire brush and, from the smell wafting from the bucket next to her, a strong solution of caustic soda. Judy gave her a tentative smile, but the look in her eyes was unmistakable: a mix of sympathy and commiseration. But then she recalled Micah telling her that Judy too had suffered the indignity of being relegated to ‘second position’ in another woman’s house.

She had been a fool to think that it could be possible for her and Peter’s mother to live in harmony together in the same vicarage.

‘I never thought I’d see the day when we’d entertain a vicar’s wife to tea.’ Colleen carried a brown earthenware teapot over to the hissing kettle and filled it.

Edyth looked around the room. She was aware of what went on in the house and knew exactly how the women made their money. Her mother had even talked to her and her sisters about what sex could be like for a woman when love wasn’t involved. But she still hadn’t quite known what to expect from a ‘house of ill-repute’.

That the women would be sitting around in their underclothes or half-naked, waiting for men to come along and choose one of them? That there would be red lampshades everywhere and crimson wall hangings, as described in the lurid novels that she and Bella had managed to lay their hands on, despite the efforts of their parents and teachers to censor their reading.

In fact, everything was crushingly normal. The kitchen was large, scrubbed, and cleaner and more comfortable than hers in the vicarage. There were four easy chairs and a large pine table. The cushions on the chairs were covered in wool-worked needlepoint covers and the tablecloth was blue and red checked cotton. A jug of white dahlias stood in the centre of the table, next to it was a plate of assorted cream cakes. Edyth smiled when she recalled Colleen promising her one.

‘Your tea, Mrs Slater.’ Colleen poured it, but a young girl handed her the cup.

‘Thank you.’ Edyth took it from her.

‘Gertie’s just joined us,’ Colleen explained. ‘She’s from Maerdy and she wants to be here, don’t you, Gertie?’

‘Yes,’ Gertie answered enthusiastically. ‘I want to make money and I can make more in a week here than I would in six months if I went into service.’

‘Most of us choose this life,’ Colleen said as though Edyth had asked what they were doing there.

‘I see,’ Edyth murmured, not knowing what else to say.

‘It’s nice to have a woman visitor for a change.’ Anna offered Edyth a plate and the cakes.

‘Thank you.’ Edyth picked up a chocolate éclair.

‘I know what you’re doing, Mrs Slater,’ Colleen said archly.

‘You do?’ Edyth looked at the Irishwoman in surprise.

‘You’re wondering if we have any naked men chained to the bedposts upstairs.’

‘Leave it off, Colleen,’ Anna snapped. ‘Mrs Slater’s married. She knows what goes on here. And the fact that she’s here means she’s broad-minded, so there’s no need for you to make her out to be anything else.’

‘I’m not trying to make her out to be anything,’ Colleen bit back. She sat next to Edyth, ‘Respectable young woman like you, Mrs Slater, is bound to be curious. Newly married – just found out what fun four bare legs in a bed can be, and what two people can get up to when there’s no one to stop them. You must be curious about the extras we give that tempt a man to stray from his wife’s bed. And come back to us time and again for more. Maybe we haven’t the Reverend Slater calling on us yet –’

‘Nor are we likely to,’ Anna interrupted, giving Colleen a warning glance.

‘Oh, I don’t know. People like a change. One man even had the gall to tell me he came calling on me because his wife was perfect and it palled after a while. He liked a bit of rough and tumble as contrast.’

‘What are the Reverend’s tastes?’ Gertie asked naively.

‘As if she’d tell us,’ Colleen laughed. ‘But I bet now you’ve found out what they are, Mrs Slater, you must wonder what it would be like with someone else. And there are plenty of good-looking young men around the Bay. Although I’ll grant you not many can hold a candle to the Reverend. He is very pretty.’ She raised her eyebrows and puckered her lips.

‘I … I …’ Edyth could feel her cheeks burning as colour rushed into them.

‘Happy now you’ve succeeding in embarrassing her, Colleen?’ Anna reprimanded. ‘I don’t know what you’re trying to achieve. We can all remember what it was like to be a bride. Even me. When we were first married, my Patrick and I couldn’t keep our hands off one another.’ She smiled at the memory. ‘Not even in church. I remember him sliding his hand up my skirt during a sermon. But then it was a very long one and most of the congregation were asleep – at least, I hope they were, because he went home with my drawers in his pocket.’

Edyth barely heard the end of Anna’s sentence. There was that phrase again. The same one Bella had used when she’d talked about Toby:
Couldn’t keep our hands off one another.

‘You were married, Anna?’ Edyth asked, sensing everyone expected her to say something when the room fell silent.

‘We all were at some time or another. Why the surprise?’ Anna finished her cream doughnut, lit a cigarette and leaned back in her chair.

‘What happened to your husbands?’

‘One of three things,’ Colleen answered. ‘They died, left us, or we left them.’

‘My Patrick was killed in the Senghenydd pit disaster.’ Anna’s eyes darkened with a grief Edyth suspected she had never come to terms with. She knew just how few miners’ bodies were brought to the surface for burial after an explosion or fall in a pit. The owners generally thought it uneconomic to dig them out. And at Senghenydd 440 had been killed.

‘I’m sorry,’ Edyth murmured, wishing the words didn’t sound so inadequate.

‘It was seventeen years ago this week,’ Anna said briskly. ‘You’d think I’d have forgotten it by now, wouldn’t you? He was only eighteen. Sometimes I sit and wonder what he would have been like if he’d lived. He came to Wales from Donegal when he was fourteen because he heard there was work in the pits. I was skivvying in the house he lodged in. We lied about our ages and got married. Did all right too for a while. Rented a house, I did the housework, he brought home the money. We were looking forward to the baby I was carrying. He was born three months after Patrick went. I called him Patrick after his father. But he didn’t last long, neither. Died in the workhouse of scarlet fever before he was a year old.’ Anna shuddered. ‘But a lot of water has flowed in and out of the docks since then.’

‘I had a boy when I was fifteen,’ Colleen said.

‘James?’ Edyth asked, struggling to keep her voice even after hearing Anna’s story.

‘Not James, Tom. I named him for his father, but that bastard up and left me. I heard he’s living with a woman in Liverpool now. My Tom went to sea as a cabin boy when he was ten. He’s an able seaman now,’ she said proudly. ‘He’s somewhere in the Pacific. I had a letter from him two days ago. James is the son of one of my regulars. He’s bright because he takes after his father, who’s real crache and kind, not like some. Gives me money for James, as well as myself.’ She saw the bemused expression on Edyth’s face. ‘We all have regulars, every one of us.’

‘Change your tune, Colleen,’ Anna rebuked. ‘This is no conversation to be having with a vicar’s wife. Perhaps it was a bad idea to invite you here, Mrs Slater. Someone seeing you walk through the door could put two and two together and make a hundred and four, if you get my drift.’

‘Please, call me Edyth, and I’m sure that everyone who knows me would realise I am only visiting you and the other …’ she hadn’t meant to hesitate but she did, ‘ladies.’

‘Well,’ Anna said doubtfully, ‘I suppose it’s all right in here. But I don’t want you – none of you,’ she looked at the women assembled in the kitchen, ‘talking to Mrs Slater outside, lest anyone thinks she’s become one of us.’

‘Given what the Reverend Slater –’

‘Enough,
Colleen.’

Anna silenced Colleen so quickly Edyth wondered if Peter had come into the brothel before they married. Surely not. If he had, he wouldn’t be so reluctant to come to her bed, unless he had picked up one of the ‘diseases’ people whispered about. Was that it? Had Peter visited the brothel and caught something he was afraid of passing on to her?

‘You take any nonsense from anyone about letting our kids come to Sunday school?’ Anna changed the subject.

‘No,’ Edyth answered. ‘My husband thinks it’s a good idea. One of the things he wanted to do when he came down here was to open the church to everyone on the Bay.’

‘He’s certainly done that,’ Anna agreed.

‘We all want our kids to be educated so they can have chances we never had.’ Colleen tore a piece from a newspaper, twisted it into a makeshift spill, pushed it in the fire and, when it flared, lit a cigarette. ‘This isn’t a bad life but it’s not easy to bring up kids when you’re working. On the other hand, none of us can turn down the chance to make a few bob, because we all know how short a working girl’s life can be.’

‘Why short?’ Edyth asked.

‘When your looks go, you’re out, because there’s always up-and-coming fresh competition.’

‘But that doesn’t mean the scrap heap,’ Anna chipped in. ‘I’ve almost enough money put by to buy a shop, like Jenny Fish.’

‘She worked in a house for twenty years, now she owns a fish and chip shop,’ Colleen explained.

‘Not in Cardiff, mind. Llandaff.’ Anna spoke as if Llandaff was somewhere exotic, not a village four miles up the road.

‘And then there’s Llinos Bakewell, she’s a real success story.’ Colleen drew heavily on her cigarette. ‘She went home to Carmarthen and passed herself off as a widow. She had a tidy bit of money and bought herself a nice house and shop that she rented out. Every widower and bachelor for miles started courting her but she ended up marrying the local doctor. Talk about landing on your feet.’

‘Or on your back, and that’s where we’re all headed if we’re lucky, girls.’ Anna left her chair and glanced at the clock on the wall. ‘I heard Llinos caught him with her winning ways between the sheets. He thought he was in God’s pocket marrying a widow with readies and a bit of experience. Wonder if she’ll ever tell him just where she gained the experience. It’s time for us to go to work, Mrs Slater – Edyth – and time for you to leave. You don’t want to bump into any of our clients. Like I said, if they see you here they might get the wrong idea.’

‘I like the ones who leave work early.’ Colleen flicked her ash into the range. She mimicked an English accent. ‘“Just off to the bank before I go home, Miss Smith.”’
Sotto voce
she added, ‘Via Anna Hughes’s for a spot of jiggery-pokery.’

‘You can set your clock by our clients.’ Anna smiled. ‘The ones who come before seven.’

‘“Sorry, dear, must go into the office early. I have letters to write before the meeting. No, don’t disturb yourself; I’ll get the girl to bring you a nice cup of tea in bed.”’ Colleen dropped the accent. ‘Then it’s a quick whizz round here for a bit of mattress-bouncing for half an hour to set them up for the day.’

‘The real bosses come round mid-morning because they can afford to extend their elevenses into lunch,’ Anna observed.

‘Unlike the clerks, who steal ten minutes from their lunch hours for a quickie.’ Colleen stretched her arms above her head, throwing her breasts into prominence. ‘Followed by the crache who come after lunch and like a snooze before going back to the office.’