‘Well,’ he looked at her and smiled, ‘you have a whole day free, Cinderella, what would you like to do with it?’
‘Window shopping, the cinema, tea?’
‘Those were my suggestions.’
‘I haven’t any better ones.’
‘Lunch first? Or have you eaten?’
‘I haven’t eaten,’ she admitted.
‘Then lunch it is.’
He drove off the road in Taffs Well. Turning right he steered the car up a small country lane that meandered through the woods surrounding the romantic, fairy-tale Castell Coch.
‘Where are we going?’ Bethan demanded; a sharp edge of concern in her voice.
‘To have lunch.’
‘Up here?’ A chill prickled down her spine. Her mother’s frequent and disturbingly graphic warnings sprang to mind as she realised she was on her own, miles from anywhere with a man she scarcely knew.
‘Look on the back seat.’
She did, and saw the corner of a wickerwork hamper poking out from under a rug.
‘That’s lunch. I asked Cook to pack it for us. Now all we need is the right spot.’
He found it almost at the summit of the mountain. A narrow dirt track, its far end barred by a rotting wooden gate that looked as though it hadn’t been opened in years. He pulled to a halt and turned off the engine.
Evergreens and conifers hedged them on both sides, so closely that if they hadn’t travelled along the lane Bethan would have doubted its presence. The only open view was over the gate in front of them.
Andrew turned round and knelt on his seat. He handed her the blanket while he unbuckled the strap that secured the lid of the hamper.
‘It will soon be cold without the warmth of the engine so wrap the rug around yourself,’ he ordered briskly. ‘Now what have we here?’ He lifted out two steep-sided glass bowls topped with squares of gingham tied with string. He handed them to her, and took out two forks and a plate wrapped into a parcel of grease proof paper. ‘Brown bread, and lemon,’ he balanced the plate on the dashboard and gave her a fork. ‘And prawns in aspic.’ He took one of the bowls from her. ‘Try it.’ He removed the gingham and squeezed a slice of lemon liberally over the food. ‘It’s good. I know picnics should be held in summer, but I couldn’t resist the temptation to have one now. I love picnicking, brings back memories of childhood and all that.’
She took a wedge of lemon. Conscious of her vulnerability, she contrasted Andrew’s childhood memories with her own. The present fare couldn’t be further removed from the jam sandwiches wrapped in newspaper, a bowl of whatever wild berries were in season and the bottle of water that she and her brothers had devoured on the side of the Graig mountain when they were small.
Thrusting his fork into the aspic, Andrew began to eat. ‘Don’t you like prawns?’ he asked as she picked one out of the jelly and examined it closely.
‘This is the first time I’ve tried them.’ She put it into her mouth and began to chew. Her mouth was dry and she almost choked when she tried to swallow it.
‘They’re not unlike cockles. Fishy and salty with the taste of the sea.’
‘They don’t look like cockles.’ She extricated another from its bed of aspic. ‘They look … they look naked,’ she blurted out, without thinking what she was saying.
‘Naked?’ He lifted his left eyebrow.
She blushed. ‘It’s just that they’re so pink.’
He burst out laughing. ‘What it is to have the mind of a child.’
‘I haven’t …’
‘I’m sorry.’ He held up his hand in front of her. ‘I didn’t mean that the way it sounded. Glass of wine?’
‘Wine?’
‘It’s probably not as cold as it should be.’ He leaned close to her and she backed away, hitting her spine painfully on the door handle. Sliding his hand under her seat he pulled out a green bottle wrapped in a wet towel. ʻThere are a couple of glasses and a corkscrew in the glove compartment.’
‘Do you always think of everything?’ She handed him the corkscrew and held on to the glasses.
‘Only where picnics are concerned.’ He finished forking the prawns into his mouth, tossed the bowl into the back seat, and jammed the bottle between his knees. It was open in a minute. The wine was clear, sparkling, unlike anything she’d drunk before.
‘If you finish the prawns, we can move on to the next course.’ He pulled open the door of the glove compartment, and placed the bottle and glasses on it. Then he produced two large plates individually wrapped in damp muslin and thick folds of greaseproof paper.
Uncovering hers, she discovered slices of cold chicken breast, lean ham and neatly turned out moulds of potato salad, grated carrot and rice. She tried her best to eat, but could barely manage a quarter of what was on her plate. Even his food emphasised the difference between them. When she organised a picnic, the best she could manage was bread and dripping, brawn, sliced cold heart and dry bread. For the first time she found herself wondering what his home was like. He’d casually mentioned “Cook.”
There would undoubtedly be other servants – kitchen and parlour maids, the sort of position Maud would apply for when she left school, and count herself lucky to get. A daily “skivvy” for the heavy work. Someone like her Aunt Megan. An odd-job man cum gardener, young like Eddie … or an unemployed miner like her father.
‘And here we have the piece de resistance.’ Andrew held a glass preserving bottle in front of her. ‘It looks disgusting I grant you,’ he said, struggling with the top. ‘But looks can deceive.’
‘Preserved fruit salad,’ Bethan ventured staring at the mishmash of pale fleshy bits floating in murky liquor.
‘My father’s idea of a winter fruit salad.’ He wrenched open the lid and decanted the contents into two china bowls decorated with red and burgundy coloured cherries. Bethan tentatively dipped her spoon into the mess, extracted a piece of soggy, colour-bled strawberry and put it into her mouth.
‘What is it?’ she gasped.
‘Summer fruits in Jamaican rum.’ He spooned a generous portion into his mouth. ‘My father’s favourite dessert. And the only thing in the house made entirely by him. As the season progresses he puts a couple of pounds of every fruit that ripens in the garden into a huge earthenware pot that he inherited from his father, covering it with rum as he goes along. By the time winter sets in, the pot is full enough to keep his after dinner conversations genial until the next lot is ready.’
She felt as though her mouth was on fire, but for politeness’ sake she dipped her spoon into the mess again. This time she found a cherry.
‘There are oranges in here,’ she said in surprise. ‘Surely you don’t grow those in your garden.
‘Only in my father’s imagination. Here.’ He refilled her wine glass.
‘Are you trying to get me drunk?’ She wouldn’t have asked the question if the mixture of rum and wine hadn’t already gone to her head.
‘No,’ he replied quietly. ‘Just trying to get you to relax a little. I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone who’s been quite as nervous or suspicious of me before.’
She took the glass and stared into it.
‘Don’t you like it?’ he asked.
‘It’s better than the fruit salad.’
He picked up the bowl from her, and winding down his window tipped the contents outside. She sat back in her seat and looked over the gate down into the valley below. She followed the course of the river Taff as it wound between patchwork fields, wooded copses and narrow threads of stone houses.
‘I hope the rain stops when we get to Cardiff,’ she said for the sake of saying something.
‘It won’t make any difference to us if it does. The arcades are best for window shopping, and I’ll try and find a film with plenty of sun in it. It’ll be black and white sun of course,’ he said earnestly.
She smiled.
‘That’s better. Here, let’s finish this.’ As he emptied the last of the wine into their gla
sses, his hand accidentally brushed against her arm. She jumped as though she’d been scalded. ‘I didn’t bring you here to have my evil way with you,’ he said quietly, gazing into her eyes.’
‘I’m sorry.’ She was close to tears.
‘You really are in a state, aren’t you? Here – ’ he wedged the bottle of wine in the hamper and handed her his handkerchief.
She dabbed at her eyes with it. It smelt of fresh air and new starch.
‘Would you like anything else?’
She shook her head.
‘In that case I’ll pack up and weʼll go.’
He folded the dirty plates and crockery into a cloth, then drained his wine glass and laid it on top before closing the lid.
‘I won’t be a minute.’ He picked up the starting handle.
‘Andrew, I’m sorry. Really sorry,’ she said with difficulty.
‘For what?’ he smiled, ‘Being a nice girl?’
He glanced at her frequently as they continued their journey. She sat perched on the edge of her seat smiling tautly with her mouth but not her eyes, very obviously what his mother called “sitting on pins”.
He recalled the first time he’d seen her tall, slim figure striding briskly along the hospital corridors. Even the convent veil that covered her hair, and her pale complexion drained by overwork and the drab surroundings, had failed to detract from her exotic Mediterranean beauty. Then she’d turned, and a single glimpse of her magnificent dark eyes had been enough to make him forget his current girlfriend and offer to cover for his father on any maternity ward emergencies.
At the hospital ball he’d seen the humour and intelligence that lurked beneath the surface of basic insecurity and the evening at the circus had shown him how very different she was from the self-assured, middle-class, somewhat selfish and often mindless girls he’d known in London.
When he’d moved to Pontypridd to join his father he’d assumed that he would follow the carefree path of many and varied girlfriends and happy off-duty hours spent in search of the good times that he’d had in London. But he’d reckoned without the effects of the economic slump. The dour grey stone buildings and air of grim poverty that clung to streets in the town soon came to epitomise the word “depression” for him.
“Good times” in Pontypridd were few and far between, even for the young. Survival, not fun, was the major concern and preoccupation. He knew from something Laura had said that Bethan’s father was on short time and her brother out of work. That made Bethan with her regular job the family breadwinner. So he put her serious outlook down to too much responsibility too soon. And that made him want to introduce some harmless frivolity into her life. If anyone needed it, she did. Every time he looked at the patients in the maternity ward he saw her as she might be ten years from now. Married to an unemployed miner. Her slim, lithe figure bloated from bad food and constant childbearing, her pale, delicate skin chapped, roughened and reddened by cold weather and even colder water and a life lived out in a smoky back kitchen. The prospect saddened him. He liked her, felt sorry for her, and at the same time longed to protect her from the miserable effects of the soul destroying poverty that ultimately crushed most women of her class.
Part of her attraction lay in her vulnerability. As an incurable romantic her plight brought out the Sir Galahad in him that his mother had nurtured with frequent readings of Arthurian stories.
But he recognised that his romantic feelings for Bethan were just that – romantic. And he knew from previous liaisons just how transient romanticism could be. As his father light heartedly but frequently pointed out, it was one thing to court a girl, quite another to marry her, and he was astute enough to realise that whatever happened between him and Bethan probably wouldn’t last very long, simply because she didn’t fit into his world any more than he fitted into hers.
He’d never known anyone like her. Unlike any other girl he’d gone out with, she was working-class and, despite her diffidence, possessed a mind of her own. The differences between them were far greater than the common threads that bound their complementary professions but if anything the disparities made him more interested in her as a person. Or at least that was what he tried to tell himself. He’d never been quite so confused about what he felt for a girl before. Wary of the stage and film stereotype of the caddish middle-class male who deliberately sets out to seduce the poor working-class girl, he decided that for once he would be the perfect gentleman, opting for platonic friendship in the true tradition of Sir Galahad.
So with a sharp pang of regret he pushed from his mind all thoughts of enjoying the kind of sensual and easy physical relationship with her that his looks, carefree manner and open purse had brought him with the London ladies.
Not for one minute did he consider that he wouldn’t have thought her friendship worth cultivating if she’d been fat, frumpish or looked other than she did. His paternalistic desire to give her and incidentally himself, the elusive good time closed his mind to everything except the kindness he sincerely believed he was bestowing on her.
He parked the car close to Queen Street station, and from there they walked to the shopping centre. Bethan had often spent afternoons in Cardiff with Laura when they’d been at the Royal Infirmary, but Andrew stopped to browse in small out of the way shops she never knew existed. Second hand bookshops crammed to the ceilings with musty, leather bound volumes, and framed prints; galleries, that displayed black framed oils and watercolours on crooked walls above rickety staircases. And antique shops, as different from Arthur Faller’s pawnbroker’s shop in Pontypridd as chalk from cheese.
These shops didn’t even hold goods against future payment. The merchandise on display was uniformly old, in good condition, and not an item of clothing amongst the stock. Fine French china and porcelain, elegantly turned mahogany Regency furniture. Scenes of rural landscapes no longer recognisable as part of modern industrial Wales. Ornate highly wrought late Victorian jewellery heavily encrusted with precious and semi-precious gems and lighter, more tasteful early ornaments that Andrew examined with interest.
They were in a small booth in the arcade when he appealed to her for assistance.
‘It’s my mother’s birthday next week,’ he explained. ‘Would you help me choose a piece for her?’
‘But I don’t know her taste,’ Bethan protested.
‘Good.’ He smiled at her perplexed look. ‘Good taste,’ he qualified patiently. ‘Which is what I suspect yours to be.’
Flattered, Bethan bent over the glass display table and studied the pieces. ‘I like that,’ she said slowly, a little uncertain of herself.
‘The blue enamelled and gold locket?’
She nodded.
‘My suspicions are correct. You do have good taste.’ He called the proprietor.
‘Very nice, sir, very nice,’ the man repeated, sensing a sale in the air. ‘The lady has an eye for excellence if you don’t mind my saying so.’ He unlocked the cabinet with a key that hung on his watch chain and delicately removed the locket laying it out, face uppermost in the palm of his hand. ‘Late Regency and in superb condition, which isn’t surprising considering where it came from. Can’t say any more than that, sir. Confidentiality you know,’ he whispered close to Andrew’s ear. ‘The maker’s mark is on the back,’ he continued in a louder voice. ‘French, authenticated early nineteenth century and I can offer it to you for a very good price.’
The very good price sent Bethan reeling. Twenty pounds! She thought of what her family could do with twenty pounds.
Andrew carried the locket over to the window and while he examined it more closely she wandered around the rest of the shop. Judging by the mound of black leather jewel cases on display, there was no shortage of women prepared to part with their rings and necklaces, and there was an abundance of other valuables. Silver and gold cigarette cases, watches, hairbrushes and ladies’ toilette sets. She couldn’t even begin to imagine having enough money to buy such luxuries and envied the people who had t
hem to sell. One gold cigarette case would buy new outfits for Haydn, Eddie and her father. And put Sunday dinners on their table for a month or two.
‘Ready? Ready to go?’ Andrew repeated in reply to her quizzical look.
The shopkeeper opened the door for them with much bowing and scraping. The heavens had opened while they’d been in the shop and Andrew turned up the collar of his coat and opened his umbrella as they reached the mouth of the arcade, placing it more over her head than his own.
‘Here, take my arm,’ he said as he looked up and down the street. ‘Is there anywhere special you’d like to visit?’
‘Nowhere.’
He pulled his pocket watch out of his waistcoat and flicked it open.
‘It’s too early for the cinema, we could have tea? Are you hungry?’
‘Not really.’
‘We could visit my favourite place in Cardiff. Game for a mystery tour?’
‘I’d be interested to see your favourite place.’
‘Favourite place in Cardiff,’ he qualified. ‘Let’s go.’
He walked past a large department store and into another arcade that opened out next to a churchyard.
‘It’s so quiet here,’ she murmured. The only sound was the rain pounding on the gravestones and the thick leaves of the yew trees. ‘You’d never think you were in the middle of a city.’
‘Or next to the market’ he agreed. ‘Sometimes when I come to Cardiff in the summer I just sit here for a while, watching the world go by.’
‘You watch the world go by?’
‘Occasionally,’ he replied unconvincingly.
He clenched her arm tightly in the crook of his elbow as they left the shelter of the arcade for the open street. Turning left he led her up a step into a building. He shook the umbrella and folded it while she wiped the raindrops from her eyes and hat, then she looked around in amazement.
‘I’ve never seen anything like it.’
‘I have, but not in Wales. Isn’t it magnificent?’ He was as pleased with her reaction as if he’d been personally responsible for the decor.
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