Paul kept turning his head to look at her. The dress did something to her, the perfume that swirled around her was tantalising. He touched her cheek affectionately. The schoolgirl was still there in her shy smile but the woman he loved was gradually pushing her away. His smile widened and Gilly quirked an eyebrow.
“What is it?” she demanded, “have I got some lipstick out of place?”
He was thinking of how incongruous that funny hat she used to wear would now look on her and his smile softened to show his love. “Gilly, you look lovely,” he whispered, his voice catching, his breath touching her ear as he leaned as close as he dare with everyone watching. “You make me feel proud to be walking beside you.”
“And you, Paul,” she replied, blushing and imagining that everyone could hear. “Even arriving in a rush like a stampede of one, you look more handsome than all the rest put together.”
Customers began to fill the shop when they saw the shop door open but they were turned away. Gilly took off her beautiful dress and put on an apron to help serve food to the guests. Ivor took off his suit and disappeared. He didn’t enjoy crowds of adults.
Guests pushed their way in bringing the chill of the day with them. There seemed more than was expected as each one was larger than life, laden with winter coats, umbrellas, hats of various decoration as well as presents for the happy couple. Outdoor clothes were spread on the counters and the parcels put in a pile in the shop window, among them a carefully chosen gift from Gilly. When her mother opened it Gilly held her breath, waiting for the gasp of delight. Instead, Fanny looked at the delicate china ornament of two doves on a branch of blossom and said, “Thank you, Gilly, it’s very nice. Something else to dust, mind.”
“You ought to be proud of your Gilly,” Bessie said, defensive as always of her niece. “She has an eye for beauty and loves good things. She’ll never settle for second best, will you, Gilly, love?”
Paul, who had heard the remark, touched Gilly’s shoulder briefly. “You and I will never settle for second best in anything, will we, Gilly?”
“Granfer says if you settle for second best that’s what you’ll always end up with,” she said, attempting to sound light-hearted. “He says that’s often a person’s biggest mistake in life.”
“It won’t be ours. Let’s get this war over and done with and we’ll show them how to do things, won’t we?”
“We will?” She looked up at him, so important to her, boyishly handsome, making her shake with the intensity of his look. “You and me?”
“You and me, Gilly.”
The wedding celebration was a sombre affair. Although Fanny tried to appear light-hearted and happy she was ill at ease, watching Gerry flirting with some of the younger guests and fearing, so soon in their marriage, that it was likely to end in embarrassment and heartache.
“More like a funeral than a celebration of the nuptials,” Granfer confided to Gilly and Paul in his tinny voice. “If she wasn’t too old by far, some might think it was a shotgun wedding!” Gilly blushed and avoided Paul’s eyes.
To deflate the attempt at jubilation even further, flour arrived on the railway lorry and had to be hauled up into the loft. Vitbe, one of the flours still allowed to advertise under their own name and make the same flour as pre-war, came from Kent and, wedding or not, it had to be handled straight away.
Gerry shuddered at the prospect of changing out of his smart suit, so it was Gilly, a reluctant and practically useless Ivor, Paul and Dai Smoky who saw it in.
When they had cleaned themselves and returned to the party, the murmur of the crowd was low and everyone seemed to be waiting until they could politely leave.
After the wedding breakfast was cleared and the crowd had increased to include neighbours and other friends who had waited until finishing work to attend, things didn’t improve. Derek and Gerry slipped away and went into the bake-house to discuss their plans for a merger of the two businesses. Although cash was difficult to find, Derek paid Gerry another twenty-five pounds as a reward for altering the scales.
“Tomorrow,” Derek smiled, “I will make a phone call, anonymous, of course, and we’ll see how Green’s bakery benefits from the publicity after what the inspectors find here. If I can show the bank an impressive increase in my business they’ll support me for a while longer.”
“Give it another day or two, Derek, make sure I’m well out of the way when they come. I don’t want the family thinking I could have been involved. With a bit of luck they’ll blame the daft Ivor!”
“All right, there’s no rush for a day or two. I won’t make the call until you and Fanny are safely arrived in Weston on your honeymoon,” Derek promised.
Granfer had been carried downstairs by Paul and his father so he could share the afternoon’s festivities, but by five o’clock he was tired and asked to be taken back upstairs again.
When Paul again offered to help carry him he beckoned to Gilly and instead persuaded them to take him into the snug. As they went through the bakery they met Paul’s father and Gerry coming out. Both, to Granfer’s mind, looked shifty.
“Showing Derek how a bake-house should be kept, are you, Gerry?” the old man asked.
“Discussing improvements,” Derek replied. “If I can only persuade the bank to cover for me I’d show you the proper modern way to bake bread.”
“Not on about gas again are you? Tastes on the loaf it does,” Granfer said, but he was frowning as the two men left to rejoin the party.
“Sorry, Paul, but I don’t trust them buggers,” he growled. “They’re up to something, and for the purpose there’s me not able to keep an eye on them like I should.”
“You don’t think Dad—” Paul began.
“Whoever it had been, seeing him sniffing about my bake-house with Gerry-lazy-sod-Daniels would make me suspicious,” Granfer replied. “And the whisper is that your dad’s in financial trouble. Sorry if I’m speaking out of turn, like, but there it is. Your father and Gerry together make a cocktail called trouble.” Before Paul could protest at the words, Granfer went on, “Paul, my boy, go and have a look at them scales will you? I think the loaves are under weight.” While Paul went to look at the brass scales, Granfer turned to Gilly and asked, “It’s funny them inspectors haven’t called yet. Hot as mustard they are if there’s a suspicion that something’s wrong with the weights.”
“Granfer, in all the excitement, I forgot!”
“You what? Gilly girl, how could you? If they come here before I get to them there’s no end of trouble in store for us. Go now. Damn me, for the purpose they’ll be closed! Put a note through, quick, I’ll write it now. Pass me my notebook, a page of that’ll do. And not a word of this, mind,” he warned Paul. “Specially to your Dad.”
“But my Dad wouldn’t—”
“Oh yes he would! That Gerry’s tried more than once to pass a few customers his way and you can’t tell me Gerry – dull bugger that he is – thought it up on his own. Just look at the scales, see if you can see any evidence of skulduggery. Crafty and clever, your Dad, mind, like his father before him.”
“Mr Jenkins!” Paul faced the old man, offended and ready to argue.
“Do what I ask or sit down and keep quiet. How do you spell anticipation?” Granfer asked, licking the end of the indelible pencil before beginning to write.
“Can I see what you’ve written, Mr Jenkins?” Paul asked stiffly. “If you mention my father, I’ll tear it up.”
Folding the note and putting it into an envelope Granfer pressed his lips tightly together after licking and sealing the envelope and with an air of finality handed it to Gilly.
“Take this and put it through the letter box. I’ve put a time as well as the date on it and you can be a witness as to the accuracy of it. Go on,” he insisted as Gilly hesitated.
“Will you come with me, Paul?” She asked the question quietly, afraid of the tension in Paul’s jaw and the way he refused to look at her.
Paul’s voice was equally lo
w as he said, “To deliver an accusation against my own father? Gilly, how can you even think of taking it. After all my mother has done for you? You can do this?”
“I’m sure he hasn’t mentioned your father, have you, Granfer?” The old man didn’t move a muscle in reply. His small face retained a look of offended dignity. “He wouldn’t involve Gerry either, not now he and Mam are married.”
“Tear it up, report the discrepancy tomorrow morning or I’ll go now and tell Dad what you’re accusing him of,” Paul said, white-faced now with shock and fear.
“Take it, Gilly,” Granfer said softly. “If he’s so sure his Dad isn’t involved, what’s he getting so upset about?”
Gilly picked up the note and put it down again, looking from one to the other of the people she loved the most.
“Take it, Gilly, because if someone did this on purpose and you don’t report it, we’ll be fined and embarrassed and we’ll lose a lot of customers. Over to Green’s they’ll go and isn’t it a coincidence that that’s what’s needed to help Paul’s dad out of a bit of a mess, eh, Paul?”
Paul left the room, banging the door behind him after glaring first at Granfer then Gilly.
“Go on, girl, quarrels are soon mended but if this ends in us being summonsed for giving short measure, there’s no knowing how it will end.”
Sobbing in distress, Gilly grabbed a coat and hurried out to do what Granfer asked. Outside the shop door Paul followed her.
“Don’t do this, Gilly. If you think anything of me and Mam, don’t do it.”
“Paul, I have to. Granfer would be so shamed if Jenkins’ were fined for under weight loaves, you must see that?”
“But he’s more or less accusing my family of worse!” She hurried up the hill towards town, willing Paul to stay with her, to understand that she had no choice. Breathless with the steepness of the hill and the sobs that threatened to choke her, she didn’t reply and finally Paul pulled at her arm and made her face him.
“A schoolgirl, that’s what you are, Gilly Collins. A silly schoolgirl who will never grow up and live in the real world. I don’t know why I’ve wasted my time on you. But I won’t waste any more and that’s for sure!”
“Paul! Please listen to me, I have to take it, don’t you see?” But he was already out of her reach, striding down the hill, a scarf waving behind him. She felt a flurry of snow and fancifully saw it as confetti made from her dreams, remnants of the wedding she and Paul would never have.
When she returned to the shop on Bread Street there was no sign of Paul. Shirley told her he had gone home pleading a headache.
“I’ve got one, too,” Gilly said sadly. “And I don’t think mine will ever go away.”
* * *
Marigold had watched the wedding leave the church and behind the smiling face of the bridegroom were the ashes of her own marriage. Since Cyril had come home, looked at her swollen belly and walked out again, she hadn’t heard a word from him. Her mother-in-law had called, full of sympathy and asking how she and Daddy could help: her own mother had offered to try and talk to Cyril on her behalf, but Marigold refused all attempts to assist her.
“I’ve got myself into this by my own stupidity,” she told them all, “and I’ll have accept the consequences.” To everyone who asked she refused to give the father’s name. “It’s me that’s to blame, what good will it do to bring someone else into it and bring trouble to even more people.”
“He’s married then, this man who got you into this mess?” her mother asked.
“I’m not saying a word, Mam. You and Dad can try to worm the truth out of me for the rest of your lives but I’m not saying. Best to keep the trouble confined to me and my baby, not spread the problems further and further.”
“It’s my problem, too, and your father’s, and there’s Cyril’s parents. D’you think they don’t care?”
“And d’you think it’ll help if Cyril goes round and punches someone’s jaw?”
“He already has, or almost did,” Mrs Philpot said quietly. “First he grabbed that Ivor, the simple boy from Jenkins’, half demented he was, poor dab, when Cyril accused him of – well, you know. Cyril’s been watching your house from all accounts, seeing who visits you and how often. The postman stayed longer that he thought proper and he got a punch, too.”
“Mr Gregory? Oh, the poor man.”
“Not hurt bad, him being a keen boxing fan, he managed to duck out of the way so he didn’t get the worse of it. No, it was your Cyril who was hurt, fell he did, him with that terrible bad leg. So you see, Marigold, the trouble is spreading. If you told us the man’s name, the trouble would at least be aimed in the right direction and soon be over with.”
“It’ll pass, Mam. Cyril can’t spend the rest of his life waiting for someone to visit me too often. No chance of that now anyway. Everyone thinks of me as untouchable.”
“Will the man, whoever he is, help you with money?”
Marigold laughed bitterly. “That’s a joke that is. He’s never got enough money for himself and whatever happens to him he never will. If he married a millionaire he’d soon be broke again.”
“Sounds like that Gerry Daniels, him that’s married that poor fool Fanny Collins. Bet she’ll find her money slipping away like water down the drains in the thunder storm now she’s got him to keep.” But she didn’t seriously consider Gerry as a candidate for Marigold’s secret lover. Gerry was too smarmy and Marigold too wise to be taken in by an act like his.
“Is he all right, Mam? Cyril, I mean. I thought he looked desperately tired and ill in the brief moment he was here. It’s only his leg that’s been injured, isn’t it?”
“Gives him a lot of pain, but the doctors say it will mend.”
“Poor Cyril. What a homecoming.”
“I’m more worried about you. Will you mend after all this?”
“I’ll have the baby and bring it up. If Cyril wants to divorce me, well, I won’t contest it. The guilt is there plain to see isn’t it?” She touched her belly and smiled wryly. “Can’t deny this can I? And him being away for too many months. So what’s the use of trying to argue? But, Mam, I wish he’d come home. I… I still love him, see. If only the baby was his.” She wiped her eyes with an angry movement. “But there, it isn’t and there’s no one who can make this come right.”
“Only Cyril,” her mother said sadly.
* * *
Lucy went to Teifion’s house several times but she failed to see him. She tried writing letters after knocking at his door and calling through his letter box produced no response apart from a twitching curtain. The letters achieved nothing. It was as if he had vanished from the face of the earth. Then she wondered if the family had been the victims of an air-raid. He might be wounded, or ill? Perhaps he had gone away suddenly, without the chance to let her know? Surely he couldn’t really believe the story the Slades told about her, even if they were his aunt and uncle?
But when she saw him at one of the shops where she had called hoping for a job while she and her mother built up their stocks again, she knew she was deluding herself. He had dropped her like the proverbial hot brick!
He saw her at the same time that she saw him and he lowered his head, his trilby shadowing his face, his shoulders drooping as if to hide him from her sight. He turned and began to walk away across the carpeted floor of the department store and in a sudden, furious rage, she ran, pushing aside the woman who was coming to interview her for a job, and sending several customers staggering in her haste. Standing in front of him she pushed his shoulder with the heel of her hand like a child in a playground quarrel.
“Teifion! How nice to see you. Mammy given you permission to come out and play, has she? What d’you mean by ignoring my letters and treating me like a leper?”
“Not here, Lucy, please.”
“Why not here? Why not on the town hall steps? I’ll arrange an interview on the BBC if you like! Let everybody know what a fool you are! You believed that slimy Slade and his
lying wife, didn’t you? You really believed that I’d make a pass at that… creature? Can you imagine me or any other decent woman intentionally touching that disgusting, filthy-minded maggot? God help, the thought of being in the same room as him makes my skin creep!”
Teifion tried to quieten her but, seeing that she was set to continue for some time, he grabbed her arm and pulled her out of the store. On the pavement, he glared at her.
“I didn’t believe them. I thought I knew you better than to think you’d behave as they said you had. I told my parents I thought Uncle Trevor had exaggerated, even though you hadn’t told me about working for them or why you eventually left.” He looked at her with doubt in his eyes. “But I wanted to give them time to calm down before seeing you again. Now, after this display, I wonder if I do know you? If you could behave in such a manner in front of people on whom I depend for my living, well—”
Lucy grabbed his case with his samples in it and opening it with frantic fingers, she tipped out the contents and stamped them into the puddles in the gutter. Walking away from him she had the satisfaction of seeing a cyclist ride over them followed by a van.
She ran for some distance, then walked, sauntered and finally sat on a bench while anger simmered and eventually died.
Time for a fresh start, she decided. The loss of all their work had been a blow, and the loss of a weak-minded, gullible, disloyal boyfriend was already becoming less of a disappointment. How could she have thought she loved a man like that, who at the first sign of trouble had backed away?
There was no point in trying to revive the interview for the job in the department store. She doubted if she would ever go there again. Melancholy overwhelmed her then, and she walked home through the busy streets where errand boys whistled cheerfully and shoppers bustled towards the market, hopeful of a bargain. A fresh start, indeed. Where to start?
Family Pride Page 18