‘It’s beautiful, Joey.’
‘It’s not an engagement ring, but I thought you’d prefer to choose your own. I also hoped you’d like this one enough to wear it as well. Do you like it?’
She nodded dumbly.
‘And a lady could accept it and remain a lady, provided she agreed to marry the man who gave to her.’
‘You’re really asking me to marry you!’ Unwilling to believe what was happening, beset by a bewildering mix of emotions she turned aside.
‘If you won’t, I’ve been wasting my time for the last three months and more.’ He then did something he hadn’t done in all the days they had spent together. He wrapped his arms around her and kissed her.
The trees, the bank, the water swirled in a kaleidoscope of brilliant, sun-drenched spring colours. Dizzy and faint, she clung to him as the scent of his cologne filled her nostrils and the warmth of his body percolated to hers even through the thick layers of clothing they were wearing.
‘You will marry me?’ He drew his head back from hers and looked down at her.
Her voice rasped with suppressed emotion but there was no mistaking the finality of her reply. ‘No, Joey, I’m sorry, but I can’t.’
Chapter Four
‘Mrs Larch, Miss Larch, I have personally supervised the loading of your purchases into your carriage.’ Geraint Watkin Jones, the assistant manager of the Pontypridd branch of Gwilym James, breezed past the doorman and escorted the two ladies into Market Square where their coachman, Harris, was waiting.
‘Thank you, Mr Watkin Jones.’ Julia gave him a tentative smile.
‘Come along, Julia, I’ve booked a table for lunch in the Park Hotel, and we’ve no time to spare if we are to meet your father in time for the exhibition this afternoon.’ Mabel Larch climbed the steps the coachman had unfolded and entered the carriage.
Julia took the hand her stepmother had spurned and allowed Geraint to help her inside.
‘Hope to see you again, and very soon, Mrs Larch. Miss Larch. It was a pleasure, as always, to wait on you.’ Geraint watched the coachman fold the iron steps and close the door. The Larches’ carriage rounded the corner into Taff Street and he turned back to the store.
Having been brought up to expect to lead a gentleman’s life with an income sufficient to indulge his whims as well as cater for his needs, he detested having to work. But his uncle, who had also been his guardian, had gambled away the fortune his father had left him before he had been old enough to take possession of it.
He hated having to take orders from the store manager, Mr Horton. He hated seeing his sister, Sali – Mrs Sali Evans, since she had married a common collier for all that she called him an engineer – greet staff, customers and suppliers as if she actually enjoyed debasing herself by serving those born beneath her. But above all, he hated having to bow, scrape and be pleasant to people who wouldn’t have dared approach his father’s front door, and would have been diffident about knocking on the tradesman’s entrance at the back.
‘Taking the air, Mr Watkin Jones?’ Mr Horton joined him.
‘I saw Mrs and Miss Larch into their carriage,’ Geraint prevaricated.
‘Didn’t they leave some time ago?’
‘As they are valued customers, I took the time to exchange a few pleasantries with them, Mr Horton.’
‘You exchanged pleasantries with the new Mrs Larch?’ Mr Horton enquired suspiciously. It was common knowledge that Mrs Larch regarded people in trade so far beneath her; he doubted that she had exchanged a pleasantry with a shop assistant in her life. ‘May I remind you that your time is Gwilym James’s time, Mr Watkin Jones. They are short-staffed in household linens. Perhaps you’d be good enough to assist the supervisor in bringing down more stock.’
Geraint gave the only answer he could before returning to the store but the words almost choked him. ‘Yes, Mr Horton.’
Joey strode along the canal bank ahead of Rhian. When the strain of the silence that had fallen between them and the effort of trying to keep up with him became too much, she halted.
‘If you don’t want to spend the rest of the day with me, I’ll understand,’ she shouted at his back.
He turned a stony face to hers. ‘Are you refusing to marry me because of my reputation?’
‘Partly,’ she answered honestly.
‘And the other part?’
‘Because when you’re in this mood, I don’t want to know you.’
‘Surely you don’t expect me to take your refusal to marry me with a smile on my face after we’ve been walking out together for three months?’
‘We went out together as friends,’ she protested.
‘You said we were friends, Rhian, not me.’
‘What was I supposed to think when you’ve never even tried to kiss me before now?’ Emotionally and physically drained, wishing she could take back her thoughtless remark; she leaned against an ivy-clad oak for support.
‘So, you wanted me to kiss you?’ He rested his hand above her head.
She looked up into his eyes, dark and enigmatic in the muted green light beneath the trees.
‘Did you want me to try and kiss you?’ he reiterated softly.
‘We were just friends,’ she repeated hollowly.
‘I had hoped we could be a whole lot more.’ When she refused to meet his gaze, he stepped back, took off his hat and ran his fingers through his thick black curls. ‘Obviously you didn’t feel the same way.’
‘I never thought about it,’ she lied.
‘And that’s it? You don’t like my past and it’s “thanks for the good times, Joey, and goodbye”?’
‘Don’t put words into my mouth.’
‘You wouldn’t think any the worse of me if I’d sneaked around with girls behind everyone’s back, because you wouldn’t have known about them,’ he said defensively.
‘You tried sneaking round with the married ones but the gossips found you out.’ Rhian couldn’t resist reminding him of the rumours that credited him with destroying several marriages, including his neighbour’s and the local schoolmaster’s.
‘The damned gossips have never left me alone. Sometimes I wonder who they would have talked about if I’d never been born.’ He paced to the canal and stared into its murky waters before turning back to her. ‘For what it’s worth, I never made love to a woman who didn’t want me to, and if some of them happened to be married, all I can say is they couldn’t have had much of a marriage if they wanted to spend time with me.’
‘That doesn’t make what you did right,’ she reproached.
‘No, it doesn’t, but it took two of us to break the rules and I’m the only one on trial here.’
‘You’re not on trial.’
‘No, I’m not,’ he concurred bitterly. ‘You’ve convicted and sentenced me without even bothering to listen to my side of the story.’
‘It’s not just the gossip, Joey. Listen to yourself, there’s no reasoning with you when you’re in this mood.’
‘Is it any wonder I’m angry? The old wives in Tonypandy credit me with seducing half the women in the Rhondda. Not to mention all the barmaids and every chorus girl who has ever danced in the Empire, and you choose to believe them. Stupid, narrow-minded gossips have led such sheltered lives they’ve no idea how impossible it is to seduce an unwilling woman.’
‘You’ve tried?’ Her pathetic attempt to lighten the atmosphere fell flat.
He looked her in the eye again. ‘You were the most difficult of all. But I fooled myself that I’d succeeded.’
‘It’s been wonderful going out with you. I’ve had some really good times.’ Her intended compliment sounded patronizing.
‘And that’s all I was to you, the provider of a good time on your day off?’
‘I know gossips exaggerate, Joey, but you have to admit you’ve been wild. And as we only see one another once a week, I wasn’t sure that I was the only girl you were walking out with.’
‘I told you that I wanted our re
lationship to be special –’
‘Yes, you did. The first afternoon we spent together. How was I to know that you were serious?’
‘Dear God, you thought I was joking!’ He stared up at the sky. ‘You want to know something? Right this minute I’m sorry that I ever looked at another woman before I fell in love with you, but I can’t turn the clock back.’ He took the ring box from his pocket and held it out to her. ‘You won’t reconsider?’
‘Not now, Joey.’
‘Perhaps sometime in the future?’ He clutched at the possibility.
‘Maybe … I don’t know.’ She knew that even if she made an effort to ignore the gossip and jokes about Joey’s past, she wouldn’t forget how angry the girl in the sweetshop, Sara, had been with him. Or the warning she’d given her about going out with him. And in the last few months Joey had been forced to introduce her to dozens of ‘Saras’.
And there was the way that the girls who worked in Gwilym James flocked around him every time he walked on to the shop floor. She couldn’t help feeling that he revelled in their adoration. And she knew that she would find it difficult, if not downright impossible, to live with a husband who constantly sought and needed the attention of other women.
‘You’ve made up your mind, haven’t you?’ he broke in on her thoughts. ‘Nothing that I say or do will make the slightest difference.’
‘Please, Joey, don’t let this spoil our day.’
‘My day’s already spoilt,’ he retorted acidly. ‘But what the hell? Sali’s expecting us for lunch. And, as I already have the tickets, we may as well go to the exhibition. It’s good of you to give a condemned man the pleasure of your company for a last good time.’
*……*……*
Tonia George glanced surreptitiously at her reflection in the mirror behind the display of ladies’ hats. Her ‘uniform’ of plain black ankle-length wool skirt, crisply starched white cotton blouse and black bow tie was immaculate. Her shoes gleamed with polish, her stocking seams were straight and her hair was neatly tied back with a bow that matched her tie. She had been working in the hat department of Gwilym James’s Pontypridd store since the middle of February. She had preferred it to Tonypandy from the outset. And not only because her supervisor, Miss Adams, was less strict than Miss Robertson.
She glanced up, ostensibly looking out for customers while secretly studying Geraint Watkin Jones. He, too, was perfectly turned out in a grey pinstripe suit, stiff white starched high collar and broad-knotted grey silk tie. When he stopped to speak to Mr Hughes, who was putting the final touches to a display of mannequins in tennis clothes, she listened intently. Mr Watkin Jones’s voice was too low for her to hear what he was saying but not too low to make out his beautifully modulated tones.
‘Mr Watkin Jones is a real gentleman, isn’t he?’ Miss Adams whispered.
Tonia realized that she had been too obvious in her admiration. ‘He is.’
‘Did you know that he had a fortune and a big house? His uncle lost the lot before he was old enough to inherit. And now he has to work for a living. It’s such a pity.’
‘Why is it a pity that he has to work for a living?’ their junior, Belinda asked. ‘We do.’
‘We weren’t brought up to expect better, Belinda. And juniors never speak unless they are asked a direct question.’ Miss Adams handed her a duster. ‘Polish that mirror.’
Tonia sneaked another look at the assistant manager. His features were clean-cut, his eyes and hair a deep rich brown. As Miss Adams had said, he looked a real gentleman, and although there was no difference between the cut of his suit and Mr Hughes’s, it was obvious that Geraint belonged to a superior class. The only wonder was that she could have ever believed herself in love with Joey, when there were men like Geraint Watkin Jones around. But then, she had never met anyone quite like him before.
Miss Howard from ladies’ fashions commandeered Miss Adams and Belinda to ferry hats to a private fitting room for a bridal party who were co-ordinating their outfits, leaving her with an elderly lady who insisted on trying on every black hat they had in stock.
When the lady moved on after an hour without making a single purchase Tonia could have screamed. She had observed the Gwilym James’s rule of replacing every hat in its allotted display position as soon as it had been rejected. But the lady’s companion hadn’t. And while she’d been trying to please her customer, the irritating woman had repositioned most of the hats, ruining the entire display.
‘Miss George?’ Geraint handed her a hat that had fallen behind a chair.
‘Thank you, Mr Watkin Jones.’
‘I will be needing help this afternoon with the stocktaking. I hope you don’t mind me asking Miss Adams if you can be spared.’
‘Not at all, Mr Watkin Jones.’
‘I am glad to hear it.’ He walked on but glanced back after he’d taken a few paces. Lowering his eyelid, he gave her an unmistakeable, if inappropriate to Gwilym James, wink.
Her spirits soared. But then she knew exactly what that wink meant.
‘What’s the matter with Joey?’ Sali asked Rhian, after he left for the stables with Harry, who was home for the Easter holidays, and Mari had carried Bella and Edyth off to the nursery for their afternoon naps.
‘We had a few words before we came here.’ Rhian followed Sali into her bedroom.
‘Judging by the look on your faces, they weren’t good ones. Here, sit on the stool and I’ll brush out your hair for you,’ Sali offered.
Rhian opened her handbag, found her hairbrush and comb and handed them to Sali.
‘Anything Lloyd or I can do to help?’ Sali asked.
Rhian bit her lip thoughtfully. She needed advice from someone and if any other man had asked her to marry him she would have gone straight to Sali. But Joey was Lloyd’s brother …’Promise you won’t tell anyone, not even Lloyd,’ she begged.
‘Not if you don’t want me to.’ Sali crossed her fingers in the hope that Rhian wasn’t about to confide a secret she’d find impossible to keep from her husband.
‘Joey asked me to marry him.’
‘And you said no.’
‘It was so sudden, so unexpected.’ Even as Rhian came out with the excuses, she felt they were ludicrous when she considered that she had spent every minute of her free time with Joey since January.
‘You never thought that he might be falling in love with you?’
‘No … yes … But there’s his reputation …’
‘Which I thought might have put off any sensible girl from walking as far as the corner shop with him. But given the number of girlfriends he’s had, it didn’t deter them – or you.’ Sali spoke quietly in an attempt to soften the sting.
‘I like Joey, he’s fun to be with and, as I said the first time we came here together, we agreed to go out together as friends.’
‘You might have thought you were friends, I’m sure Joey never did.’
‘So he told me this morning,’ Rhian said sadly.
‘So what happens now? Given the way he behaved at lunch I hardly think you can go to Broncho Bill’s Wild West Exhibition and have a good time.’ Sali removed the last pin from Rhian’s hair and allowed her curls to fall to her waist.
‘We can go to the exhibition but a good time is out,’ Rhian agreed.
‘I wouldn’t like to say which one of you looks the most miserable.’ Sali began to brush Rhian’s hair from the bottom up, gently teasing out the tangles. ‘I’ve suspected for months that he loves you.’
‘Why didn’t you say something?’ Rhian picked up the hairpins she’d dropped on Sali’s tray and made a neat row that she pushed between her fingers.
‘Would you have listened, or repeated that you were just friends?’
‘Probably repeated that we were just friends,’ Rhian conceded miserably.
‘I know Joey. He wouldn’t have asked you to marry him if he didn’t love you. The question is: do you love him?’ Sali twisted a strand of hair into a neat curl that she pi
nned at the nape of Rhian’s neck.
Rhian hesitated before answering. Joey might be Sali’s brother-in-law, but Sali knew his faults as well, if not better, than most of the women he’d gone out with. ‘Joey’s had so many girlfriends. You have no idea what it’s like being the latest in a long line. No matter where we go, a shop, a cafe, a hotel, Tonypandy, Pontypridd or Cardiff, it makes no difference; there’s always at least one girl who knows him and from the snide remarks, better than she should.’
‘But you knew it would be like that before you agreed to go out with him.’
‘Yes, but –’
‘You’re not sure that you can forgive him his past?’
‘Life’s so unfair for women.’ Rhian waited until Sali had finished pinning up her hair before turning on the stool and looking up at her. ‘On the one hand there’s poor Jinny –’
‘Who is poor Jinny?’ Sali interrupted.
‘One of Bronwen’s sisters – the girl I share with in Llan House. She was a maid at the vicarage. She went out with the same boy for over a year, but the moment he found out that she was having his baby he cleared off. Her mistress threw her out, her father refused to allow her to come home, so she had no choice but to go to the workhouse. If she’s lucky they’ll find her a job after the baby’s born but she’ll have to leave it in the orphanage and no man will ever look at her the same way again. Overnight she’s gone from being a “good” girl to a “bad” one. Yet boys like Joey can sleep with as many women as they like and no one thinks any the worse of them.’
‘I do,’ Sali countered firmly. ‘And the same goes for Joey’s father and brothers. Until he started going out with you they were always lecturing him about his behaviour.’
‘But it didn’t do any good.’
‘It didn’t until January. But you were the one who said “boys like Joey”. Fair or not, generally people don’t think any the less of a boy for sowing his wild oats, which is why most of them behave so badly. I’m not making excuses for Joey. He’s behaved worse than most and he’s certainly been talked about more than any other boy in Tonypandy. If a girl tried to do a fraction of the things he’s done, she’d be ostracized from decent society and sent to the workhouse for moral re-education.’
Sinners and Shadows Page 7