“I should think so too!” Dora commented. “Fat chance of allowing people to forget previous mistakes with your lot barging in every time something disappears. When will you leave the boy alone?”
“Sorry, Mrs Lewis. I like the lad,” the policeman replied, “but we have to check on ex-criminals.”
“At least you refer to him as an ex!”
“This time we have a description and, well, the man was described as tall, which you are not,” he said turning to Charlie, adding with a grin “expensively dressed, polished shoes, carefully pressed clothes, well spoken and charming, all of which you are not!” After a final discussion of Charlie’s movements, the constable said, “All in all, this one’s a bit out of your class, boy. The items stolen aren’t your ‘quick sale, ask no questions’ type of robbery. No. Fancy stuff like this bloke takes, needs some real good contacts. Although,” he added warningly, “don’t think you’re out of the frame yet. Who knows what contacts you made in prison, eh? We’re watching you, remember that.”
Lewis was embarrassed when he heard about the latest inquisition and he went to number seven Sophie Street to talk to Dora.
“It’s humiliating living in a house where the police call whenever something like this happens. And our daughter being married to a criminal! Who’d have thought we’d end up like this, with the police around every corner ‘making enquiries’? It’s not right, Dora. We ought to do something.”
“Charlie’s not a criminal! He’s given up all that and you well know it! Our daughter’s happy, Charlie’s good to her, Gwyn loves her too. Think about it, Lewis. Do you want to do something to spoil that?”
“I know. I just wish—” He sat down in the chair that had always been regarded as his when the family lived at home. “I just wish we weren’t mixed up with the police. What if he is guilty? What if he—”
“Don’t say any more,” Dora warned, waving a threatening finger. “Just support them. They’re a lovely little family and they’re ours. Right? Besides,” she added more slowly. “There’s a bit of a look about Rhiannon that makes me think she might be telling us some exciting news very soon.”
“You mean…?”
“I mean you might be a grandfather next year. Make you feel old does it? Too old for women? Perhaps that’ll stop your shenanigans, eh?”
“Oh Dora,” he laughed. He stood up and opened his arms to her and she went to share in a hug.
* * *
Annie and Leigh Grant went to see Edward and demanded that he dealt with the latest of Margaret’s tricks.
“Only taken the chandeliers hasn’t she!” Leigh shouted as soon as he found Edward in the shop. “They were clearly marked as part of the sale. I want them back. Pronto. Right?” The man’s rage startled Edward.
“But nothing’s been moved out of the house, yet.”
“Go and look if you don’t believe me. Annie and I went to check a few measurements. You know what the women are like for getting ahead of themselves.”
Locking the shop, Edward went to find Margaret. She was nowhere to be found but the chandeliers were indeed missing. In their place, simple lamp holders had been fixed. As well as the lights, other things had gone too.
On Margaret’s desk Edward shuffled through papers and found scribbled on a margin a telephone number with the name Browns beside it. He dialled the number and found it was a curtains and loose covers agency. Determinedly he rang several other numbers he found and on his fourth attempt reached a Cardiff antiques dealer.
A threat of the police, a firm assurance that the goods were in fact stolen, and it was quickly agreed they would all be returned, and an invoice sent to Margaret with its own threat of police involvement.
When he told Margaret she had to repay the money he didn’t hear her reply. Anger blotted out everything but his determination to beat her every time she tried to cheat on the Grants.
* * *
In the old draper’s shop, progress had been fast. By the end of June, Frank and his father, with occasional help from Ernie, had cleared the rubble and emptied the basement. The builders had completed the rearrangement of the rooms by removing a wall and adding a new doorway to another. The shop fitters were already finished and the place was looking completely different from the sad place Edward had first seen.
“Heard anything about that money yet?” Frank asked.
“We’ve tried everywhere we can think of but William Jones, retired draper, seems to have vanished.”
“I asked Mam and Dad but they don’t remember where he went. Probably dead,” Frank said lugubriously. “Best you spend it.”
“I won’t give up yet,” Edward smiled. “Megan’s going to every shop in the road and asking if they remember the old man. Someone will eventually give us a clue I’m sure.”
Megan came in just then. She shook her head. “No luck yet,” she told them, and Frank hauled himself up off the floor where he had been touching up the skirting boards, and went to find some liquid lunch.
“I’m so grateful for your help,” Edward told Megan as they looked at the completed display area. “I don’t think I’d have made such excellent use of the space without your ideas.”
“I haven’t finished yet,” she said in her sharp manner. “So don’t dismiss me like an unwanted employee!”
“Thank goodness for that,” he smiled. “I was hoping you’d go through the orders and make sure I haven’t forgotten anything.”
“You’re brave to have decided to cover all sports including golf, and the increasingly popular ski holiday goods, Edward. They’re expensive and there’s a risk of money lying idle in the stock you’ll have to carry.”
“You think I’m wrong.”
“Not at all. Confidence is the key and will certainly pay off in this case. Edward, I’m proud of you.”
They sat together in the basement at the table Basil had brought in, enjoying the sun shining over the rooftops and warming them. Edward flicked through the pages of orders he’d completed. Sports clothing in every size from school sports wear to extra large adult garments. Tennis rackets and cricket bats, through darts and table tennis and bowls equipment and even skipping ropes and, when they could find room, fishing would have its own section too.
“Whatever there’s a demand for we’ll stock it, that’ll be our motto,” Edward said.
”Our motto?” Megan queried with a tilt of her head.
“Ours if you want it to be, Megan. In fact, I can’t imagine running the business without you on hand.”
“I’m afraid The Lump might have other ideas.” She patted her distended belly with a small sigh.
“Don’t be sad about becoming a mother.” Edward put a and over hers. “The little one won’t stop you doing anything you really want to do. He’ll be much too considerate.”
There was a glow of excitement in his eyes as he reassured her about the baby, an inner fire that seemed to grow as her body swelled with each passing week.
“You’re quite as excited about the birth as I am, aren’t you?” she said curiously.
“I suppose I am. But only because it’s yours. I’ve never been involved in the development of a baby before and I’m longing to see this little mite.”
“He’ll probably look ugly, I’m told they often do. Red and wrinkled and quite awful.”
“How can he be anything else but beautiful if he’s yours?” He seemed suddenly to realise the compliment was too impertinent and turned away, rustling the pages of the order book as if searching for something elusive and important.
“Thank you Edward. That was a lovely compliment,” Megan said with a wide smile. She placed her hands over the page he was pretending to read. “You’re a kind man and I’ll be sorry when you don’t need my help any more.”
He was trembling and he almost ignored the opportunity to tell her how he felt. He glanced at her and there was something in her expression that implied she was ready to listen. “Megan, I won’t ever be content without your help. I wan
t you with me always.”
“Always, Edward?”
“Not only in the shop. Every moment. Do I stand a chance of keeping you with me always?”
“Ask me again when the baby’s born, will you?”
He thought she was turning him down gently, but she was afraid that imagining a child looking sweet, all white frills, and scented with soaps and powders, to admire and nurture, would be different from the actual situation. A baby that cried and demanded attention, and grew in his need of her would disrupt his life in a way he could not comprehend at this moment.
Even though she thought he was in love with her, he could end up feeling trapped and in utter despair. No, it was best to wait, even though she could imagine nothing more wonderful than to spend her life beside this shy and gentle man.
“Just until August and you see what life with a baby is really like,” she said softly. “I suspect it will be a shock to us both.”
* * *
Sian and Islwyn’s son Jack was a schoolteacher and he had startled his family by falling for his grandmother Gladys’s maid, Victoria. A further surprise had been their elopement and marriage at Gretna Green. Victoria had been overwhelmed and terrified by Gladys’s interpretation of what their wedding should be and she and Jack had taken matters into their own hands. Yet another revelation was how happy they were. Even Gladys, who thought marrying beneath you was a recipe for disaster, had to agree that Victoria had made Jack content.
Victoria’s mother, Mrs Collins, was a widow with six children still at home. She taught piano on an instrument bought for her by Jack and also did some domestic work as her daughter had done. She had agreed to deal with the last minute cleaning of the old draper’s shop for Edward.
Most of the clearing and initial cleaning had been done by Frank, but she gave the shop area a final spit and polish, and straightened the displays with enjoyment. The place still held some dust and she found satisfaction in making everything sparkle. She knew that the basement remained filled with clutter and guessed that the dust which coated everything was probably coming from there, with the back door open to freshen the place and dispel the smell of new paint. She finished long before the time Edward had given her so she decided to go and see whether wetting the basement floor would help settle the dust and assist in keeping the place dust free for longer.
There was a sack of sawdust in one corner, left by the carpenter and forgotten by Frank when he had cleared up. Wetting some by putting a few shovelfuls into a bucket of water, she mixed it up and threw the wet sawdust all over the floor then began slowly to sweep it up, taking with it the worst of the dust and the few remaining pieces of rubble.
The steps to the shop from the basement were new and freshly polished. To avoid marking them with wet feet she placed pieces of cardboard on each tread as she went up and down the stairs.
She looked around her, satisfied with her morning’s work and went up to wash out her dusters in the kitchen that was part of Edward’s new home. The flat above the sports shop was sparsely furnished but she knew that once the sale of Montague Court was completed, Edward would bring what he needed from there, sharing the contents with Margaret and selling what they neither of them wanted.
She stood for a while imagining how she would furnish the place if it were hers, then, as the town clock struck twelve, suddenly remembered the children coming in from school for lunch. Grasping the dusters and some pegs, she ran down to hang them on the clothes line, slipped on the cardboard on the steps and fell to the bottom.
It was her son-in-law Jack who found her. When she didn’t arrive to take the youngest children from Victoria who was looking after them, he went to the shop to look for her.
There was no reply to his knocking and he couldn’t get in, so he went around to the back garden, where he found the broken gate propped up. He pushed it aside and went in. She was sitting on the basement steps, pale and obviously distressed.
“I’m all right,” Mrs Collins assured him hurriedly. “It’s only my wrist. I felt a bit shaky that’s all.”
“No piano lessons for a while then?” he said, trying not to show his alarm. She was bruised all up one arm and the side of her face had been scraped on the rough slate floor. “Come on, let’s get you home.”
* * *
Margaret heard of the accident and immediately used it to her advantage. “It’s an unlucky place and I don’t think the business will succeed,” she told anyone who would listen. She was in the Bluebird Café in town one morning when she knew it would be crowded. Her sole reason for being there was to spread gossip. “It’s an unlucky place that shop of Edward’s,” she remarked to the woman behind the counter. “That business will never succeed you know. I tried to warn my brother but he’s so stubborn.”
The woman nodded understandingly. “Men so often are, is my experience.”
Several women for whom superstition was never far below the surface of their minds, listened intently. Gladys Weston and Megan were drinking tea at a table near the window and Margaret hadn’t noticed them.
“Mrs Collins slipped on cardboard placed on polished steps. Careless that is, not unlucky!” Megan said sharply. “She said herself that she should have had more sense!”
“Fancy coming in here brazen as you like, after stealing your Uncle Islwyn from his wife and family!” Gladys whispered softly. “How she has the nerve to show her face I don’t know.”
Trying to appear unconcerned by the unfortunate encounter, Margaret ignored them and, speaking to the assistant, went on in a loud voice, “No one knows what happened to the previous owner, you know. Disappeared, leaving all his money. Poor Edward. No one will support him. Anyone with sense will go into Cardiff for their needs, where there’s a better choice and no fear of reprisals from a restive spirit either. Yes, it’s haunted. How d’you think that poor Mrs Collins fell down those stairs? An unhappy spirit pushed her. Keep away, that’s my advice.”
Megan stood up and glared at her. “What rot you talk Miss Jenkins. But what can I expect of someone who stole someone else’s husband? Too unpleasant to find one of your own, aren’t you, Miss Jenkins?” Followed by an embarrassed and tearful Gladys, Megan left the café.
Margaret left soon after, having restored her confidence by repeating her warnings. When she got back to Montague Court she telephoned Edward’s firm of shop fitters and advised the manager to get his money as quickly as he could as there was some doubt about all the workmen being paid. The same with the builder, and with Frank Griffiths. It was Frank’s mother who guessed what Margaret was trying to do and she told Edward, advising him to scotch the rumours of financial problems immediately.
He wasn’t sure what to do, and he had as yet done nothing when Margaret saw one of the suppliers’ reps going into the still unopened shop. She called to him and invited him to share a cup of coffee at Montague Court. There, she warned him of the risk involved in letting her brother have goods on the six weeks’ credit arrangement.
“He hasn’t sufficient funds, you see,” she explained in mock sorrow. “He was depending on my helping him out, but with this lovely house so slow to sell and our difficulty in finding a place for the restaurant we plan to open, the money simply isn’t there.”
Playing the worried and supportive sister was easy; laughing about it later with Issy was hilarious.
* * *
With the bank behind him, Edward paid all demands immediately, but the stock was a problem. He had depended on that six weeks’ credit in the hope that the sale of Montague Court would be completed and the money would be there.
Putting aside his anxieties he went to see Mrs Collins to make sure she wasn’t too badly hurt. At first she made light of it, but seeing her hand bandaged and some bruises on her forearm, Edward insisted on knowing the full story.
“Unfortunately it’s my hand and, as I teach piano to a few pupils it’s made things difficult,” Mrs Collins admitted. “But it’s only for a week or so. I’ll manage,” she said.
“I’ll pay for the lessons you miss,” he assured her and put a crisp white five pound note into her hand. “Please tell me if there’s more practical help I can give.”
She stared at the note long after Edward had gone. She’d never owned one before. “I don’t think I can bring myself to spend it,” she laughingly told her daughter Victoria, when she and Jack called later that evening.
* * *
“What am I going to do about Margaret’s stories?” Edward wailed to Megan. “I’ve had several firms asking for payment in advance of orders being sent. It’s never heard of!”
“Have a big extravagant party,” Megan suggested.
“What d’you mean, a party? I don’t even have a home in which to hold one. I can hardly hold it down in the basement!”
“Why not? Advertise a great opening do, invite reps and managing directors of the firms you hope to deal with, and tell anyone who’s interested to come.”
“I couldn’t do all that.”
“Mrs Collins and Janet Griffiths could. And if they don’t want to, there’s always my Aunt Sian and Dora Lewis. They run the Rose Tree Café and do anything else in the catering line they’re asked to do. They did Joan and Viv’s wedding didn’t they? Go on, it will show everyone you’re up and running and will quash rumours of a shortage of money.”
“Here?”
“Here!”
* * *
Rhiannon had a suspicion she was expecting a baby. She said nothing to Charlie, afraid of disappointment. In a few more weeks she would go to the doctor and only then would she tell him and Gwyn, and her parents, and her brother Viv, and Joan and – She stopped, the list was too long. What fun it would be sharing such wonderful news with all her family and friends. It made her realise how fortunate she was to have so many people who cared for her.
A Shop in the High Street Page 9