Sinners and Shadows

by Catrin Collier

  ‘It’s a matter of the greatest indifference to me whether she finds out or not but it’s important we keep up appearances as long as we can for the sake of my practice. Mrs Ball can hire a brake to take you and your luggage to the station. You’ll have to change trains at Cardiff, and I’ll meet you there. I’ll book seats for us when I book the hotel. We’ll have a week with nothing more onerous to do than go for walks on the sands, eat cream teas, breathe in fresh air and do some shopping for you. You’re in desperate need of new clothes.’

  Rhian thought of the trousseau she and Sali had chosen with such care, which was still in Gwilym James in Pontypridd. ‘Me, in a hotel! Being waited on hand and foot!’ She was stunned by the thought.

  ‘You in a hotel.’ He smiled at her astonishment. ‘But first, promise me that you’ll see Joseph Evans.’

  It was then that she realized the trip was to be a reward for breaking the final, tenuous ties that bound her to Joey. Despite everything she’d said to the contrary, Edward was still worried that she’d leave him, and he wouldn’t be certain she’d stay until she had seen Joey again – and returned to him.

  ‘A letter has just come for you, Mr Evans.’ Miss Robertson knocked Joey’s open door.

  Joey’s heart beat a tattoo. He jumped up and took it from her. ‘Who delivered it?’

  ‘The doorman gave it to me.’

  Recognizing Rhian’s writing, Joey tore the envelope open. ‘Send him in, Miss Robertson.’ He had to rub his eyes to stop the letters dancing on the page.

  Mr Larch has told me that you call in the office every day to ask about me. If you want to see me, send a message to Mr Larch’s office, saying when and where, but it has to be a public place and I warn you, no matter what you say, it will be for the last time.

  Rhian

  ‘Not even Dear Joey …’

  ‘Miss Robertson said you wanted me, Mr Evans,’ the doorman muttered diffidently.

  ‘Yes. Who brought this?’ He held up the envelope.

  ‘Mr Larch’s messenger boy five minutes ago, Mr Evans.’ He waited. When Joey didn’t say anything else, he asked, ‘Will that be all, Mr Evans?’

  ‘Yes.’ Joey sat at his desk, picked up his pen and dipped it in his inkwell.

  Dear Rhian

  The sooner the better. Is my office public enough? I will leave the door open and I will be here for as long as the store is open.

  All my love, as always,

  Joey

  Thursday mornings were the quietest in Dunraven Street. Thursday evenings were bedlam because they were pay nights and the miners and their families swarmed into town to do their weekly shopping and payoff their ‘slates’ in the provision shops.

  The first Thursday morning of the miners’ fortnight holiday was the quietest of all. Unless they had several boys of working age, most miners’ families lived from hand to mouth. But the majority still managed to scrape together enough money to pay the train fare to a relatives’ house for one week, if not two. Some worked on farms for their keep, regarding two weeks in the open air as holiday enough, and even the poorest of the poor were taken on chapel-and-church-sponsored day trips to Pontypridd Park, Barry Island or Porthcawl.

  Joey’s reply to Rhian’s note had been delivered to Edward Larch’s office less than ten minutes after Edward had sent out the messenger boy. He took it into Rhian and told her he was lunching with a client so she wouldn’t have any excuse not to see Joey right away. At ten minutes to twelve, she went into the bedroom and opened the wardrobe door. She had sent her uniform dress back to Llan House via Mrs Ball and Harris, Edward’s coachman. Since then she had worn a blue cotton skirt and white blouse, and when they were in the wash, a grey cotton skirt and cream cotton blouse, which were the sum total of her summer wardrobe apart from her ‘best outfit’, a plain cream linen skirt and the silk blouse Sali had given her.

  She put them on, wound her curls into a bun at the nape of her neck, pinned on a straw hat and after glancing in the mirror to check that her face was clean and there were no marks on her clothes, left Edward’s rooms for the first time since he had carried her up the stairs. She knocked on Mrs Ball’s door on her way down.

  ‘Rhian, you look pretty,’ Mrs Ball exclaimed in surprise.

  Rhian thought she detected a note of condemnation in the widow’s voice, and wondered if she were being over sensitive. Mrs Ball had confided that she had been one day away from the workhouse when Mr Larch had offered her a job, so she was hardly likely to risk her home and livelihood by passing judgement.

  ‘I’m going out, but I won’t be long. Mr Larch has given me the front door key.’

  ‘I’ll put the groceries in your kitchen when they come, shall I?’

  ‘Please.’ Rhian ran down the remaining stairs and stepped out. She felt odd, almost as though she had been ill and this was her first outing after being incarcerated in a sickroom. Only she hadn’t been sick – unless heartsick counted, she thought bleakly.

  She faced the road. The street seemed bigger than the last time she had been in it, the trams, carriages, bikes and carts, noisier. Pungent scents wafted from the shops and the road and she breathed in the smell of raw and smoked meats, shoe leather, lamp oil, freshly baked bread, overripe cheeses and horse manure. A van rattled past with an unsteady load and she jumped, startled by the noise.

  She faced Gwilym James. Pretending not to hear the whispers of her fellow pedestrians or notice the stares of the doorman and staff in the store, she headed straight for it and didn’t stop walking until she reached Joey’s office.

  He had seen her and was standing, waiting in front of his desk. Edward hadn’t exaggerated about the change in him. He had lost an alarming amount of weight and looked as though he hadn’t eaten or slept since she’d last seen him.

  ‘Please, sit down.’ He offered her a chair. ‘Would you like something? Tea? Coffee?’ He was so polite; he might have been talking to a stranger.

  She shook her head. Tears burned at the back of her eyes and a lump rose in her throat, preventing her from speaking. She pulled the chair away from the front of his desk and sat down.

  ‘I got your letter. Did you get mine? That is a stupid thing to say,’ he said quickly. ‘Obviously you’ve read my letter. If you hadn’t, you wouldn’t be here. Did you have to come far?’

  ‘Across the road.’

  ‘You’ve been in Edward Larch’s office for the last two weeks?’ He lowered his voice at a noise outside his door.

  ‘I’ve been living in rooms in the house next door to his office.’

  ‘The house that Michaels the builder has been renovating?’

  ‘Yes.’ They were exchanging words, but she was aware that neither of them was saying what they wanted to.

  ‘Rhian, what you saw – me and Tonia – it wasn’t what you thought.’

  ‘I read Tonia’s letter.’

  ‘And it didn’t make any difference?’

  ‘I meant what I said in my note, Joey, this is the last time that I’ll see you alone like this.’

  ‘Why, when –’

  ‘Please let me speak, Joey. I have had two weeks to think about what I’m going to say to you, and it’s not going to be easy to remember it all. When I saw you holding Tonia and she told me that you’d been having an affair and she was carrying your baby, I believed her. Until that moment I didn’t think a heart could break but I felt as though mine had cracked.’

  ‘I have felt that way for the last two weeks.’

  ‘I loved you so much …’

  Loved – past tense. Joey gripped the edge of his desk until his knuckles turned white but he didn’t interrupt her.

  ‘… And then, when I received Tonia’s letter and she said that she’d lied, that the secret you’d kept from me was that she’d been having an affair with Geraint Watkin Jones, I realized it didn’t make any difference. I loved you, I should have believed in you but I didn’t.’

  ‘Because of my past?’ he questioned.

  �
��Doesn’t it bother you, that I was so ready to believe the worst of you? A wife should stand up for her husband no matter what he’s accused of. Murder, robbery, rape … all Tonia accused you of was loving and sleeping with her and I believed her.’

  ‘So you’re saying that we should end our engagement just because you believed Tonia’s lies?’ he demanded incredulously.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Oh, no, Rhian! I’m not going to allow something so stupid and vicious to end what we have.’

  ‘You have no choice.’

  ‘Yes, I do. Do you think for one minute that I’d stand back and let you walk away without a fight?’

  ‘There’s nothing left for you to fight for, Joey.’

  ‘You’ve stopped loving me?’ he challenged.

  ‘Love is nothing without trust and we’ve proved that I don’t trust you. Don’t you see that if we married, I’d turn into a nagging, jealous wife?’

  ‘Providing you were my nagging, jealous wife, I wouldn’t mind.’ He smiled, a ghost of his old mischievous smile, and it was as though someone had stabbed her and twisted the knife.

  ‘You would mind in time, because you would learn to hate me and I couldn’t live with that.’

  He propped his elbows on the desk, sank his chin on to his hands and stared at her. ‘I can understand you wanting to postpone the wedding after what has happened, but if we continued to see one another –’

  ‘No, Joey, I’ll not lay myself open to your persuasion a second time,’ she countered firmly.

  ‘Mrs Williams told Sali that you’d left Llan House.’ He had to ask the question, although he dreaded the answer. ‘Are you moving from the Rhondda?’

  ‘No, Mr Larch is opening a shop in the building he’s had renovated. I am going to manage it for him.’

  ‘Then we will see one another.’ He continued to clutch at the hope, unwilling to let it go.

  ‘There’s something else that you should know, Joey.’

  She glanced uneasily at the open door.

  ‘Shall I close it?’

  She looked at the window that overlooked the shop floor. Everyone there could see them, but they wouldn’t hear anything that she and Joey said if the door was closed. ‘Yes, please.’

  He left his seat and walked past her chair to the door. He had to tense his muscles to stop himself from reaching out and embracing her. She was like a magnet drawing him inexorably towards her, and he couldn’t bear the thought of never being able to touch her again. Of never making love to her …

  He closed the door.

  She stared at his back, so broad and finely muscled beneath his shirt and waistcoat. Noticed the way his hair curled above his collar. Traced the line of his jaw …

  He turned and walked back to his chair, taking a detour around hers. ‘What is this other great revelation, Rhian?’

  ‘I have become Edward Larch’s mistress.’

  He stared at her dumbfounded for a full minute and when he found his voice it was hoarse from shock and anger. ‘He took advantage of you!’

  ‘If anything, I took advantage of him,’ she said quietly. ‘When I ran from here I didn’t know where to go. Mr Larch has always been kind to me so I hid in the yard behind his office.’

  ‘In the hope that he’d find you?’

  ‘I wasn’t thinking that clearly.’

  ‘But he did find you.’

  ‘The woman he pays to look after his offices and the new building did. She fetched him.’

  ‘And then you went to bed with him.’ Joey left his desk and pulled the blind on his window.

  ‘Mr Larch wanted to take me to Ynysangharad House. I wouldn’t go. And I refused to return to Llan House. I didn’t want to talk to anyone. I wanted to be alone. He asked the woman to take care of me then went home to Llan House.’

  ‘And afterwards? How long was it before you jumped into bed with him?’

  ‘What difference does that make?’ she asked uneasily.

  ‘I have a right to know when you are engaged to me.’

  ‘I made love to Mr Larch when I realized that I didn’t trust you and never would, and that was no basis for a marriage.’

  Joey turned his back to her and ran his hands through his hair. ‘Do you love him?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Does he love you?’

  ‘I don’t think he’s capable of loving anyone other than his first wife.’

  ‘You don’t love him, he doesn’t love you and yet you’re prepared to remain his mistress? Why?’ he demanded harshly.

  ‘Because we respect one another. And because we don’t care deeply enough about one another to inflict pain. I know I’m being selfish, Joey, but I feel safe with Mr Larch. I can be totally honest with him knowing that he’ll take care of me, no matter what I do.’

  ‘You trust and respect him? A married man who sleeps with you instead of his wife, and yet you leave me because you think that I might cheat on you? I promised you I wouldn’t –’

  ‘But your promise wasn’t enough to make me believe you,’ she reminded him. ‘Mr and Mrs Larch’s marriage is a disaster. It was from the outset. He spends more time with me than his wife.’

  ‘Then why did he marry her?’

  ‘Because he went insane with grief after his first wife died.’

  ‘If I lost you I’d go insane too.’ He looked into her eyes.

  ‘I’m sorry, Joey.’

  ‘The day after tomorrow is our wedding day.’

  ‘You haven’t cancelled it.’ She paled at the thought of all the hours he’d waited for her to return.

  ‘No.’

  ‘But you will?’

  ‘Only if you make me.’

  ‘I won’t be at the church, Joey.’ She gripped the back of the chair for support as she rose to her feet. ‘It’s time I went.’

  He blocked the door. ‘Your sleeping with Edward Larch makes no difference to me, Rhian. I love you. I still want to marry you.’

  ‘It would make a difference in time, Joey. And I’ve told you why I can’t marry you. If you want me to see Sali, Megan, your brothers and your father to explain the way I feel, I will.’

  ‘I’ll do all the explaining that has to be done.’

  ‘Then I’ll write to them.’ She opened her handbag and removed the handkerchief containing his mother’s ring. She untied the knots and laid it carefully in the centre of his desk.

  ‘You may as well keep that; I won’t be giving it to any other girl.’

  ‘I couldn’t keep it, Joey. Not now. Please, try to understand, if I wasn’t so afraid of being hurt again or turning into a shrewish wife I would …’

  ‘Marry me?’

  She shook her head. ‘Goodbye, Joey.’ She stood in front of him and he stepped aside.

  She walked past him and he reached out and gripped her hand. She returned the pressure of his fingers for a few seconds, then opened the door and walked away. She didn’t look back, not even when he finally released her.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Edward Larch was sitting in the living room, ostensibly reading a book, when Rhian returned from the store. He watched her remove her hat and gloves, walk into the hall and put them away in the cupboard. She returned, sat on the edge of the chair opposite his and stared into the empty fireplace. Disturbed by her silence, he asked her a question he already knew the answer to, because he had seen her enter Gwilym James from his office window.

  ‘You saw Joseph Evans?’

  ‘I returned his ring, and told him that I couldn’t see him alone again. I also said that I was going to manage your shop for you and,’ she raised her chin defiantly, ‘that I am your mistress.’

  Shocked, he said, ‘I know we may not succeed in keeping the rumours at bay, but is he likely to tell anyone?’

  ‘After this afternoon I doubt that Joey will want to mention my name to anyone ever again.’

  She looked so crushed and devastated that he longed to gather her into his arms and offer her comfort, but he sens
ed it was too soon. ‘I’m sorry; it must have been difficult for you.’

  She continued to stare at the vase of dried flowers that filled the grate.

  ‘You look exhausted. How about we send out to the White Hart for dinner tonight?’

  ‘If you like,’ she answered carelessly. It made no difference whether she opened or closed her eyes; the desolate expression on Joey’s face had imprinted itself on her mind. She could still feel his hand burning hers. Hear the emotion in his voice as he had pleaded with her to reconsider. She loved him! She’d even told him she loved him! Why had she walked away?

  Then she recalled the agony of seeing him with Tonia. The way she’d felt afterwards. And she knew she had done the right thing. She was hurting, but she knew from the painful experiences of her own childhood that time was a great healer. Whereas marriage to a man like Joey would be interminable torture because she would never be able to trust him out of her sight.

  ‘If you pack, we could leave first thing in the morning. It would give us an extra day.’

  ‘Leave?’ She looked blankly at Edward.

  ‘That holiday we delayed the opening of the shop for. The one we’re going on this Saturday, remember?’

  ‘I remember,’ she murmured distantly.

  ‘I checked the railway timetable.’ He switched the conversation to practical matters in the hope of gaining her attention. ‘There’s a train leaving Cardiff at nine o’clock tomorrow morning for London. We can change there for Brighton.’

  ‘Don’t you have to work tomorrow?’

  ‘I only have two appointments. I’ll ask my secretary to cancel them, clear my desk, then go to Llan House and pack. I’ll stay here tonight and leave an hour before you in the morning. I’ll buy our tickets at Cardiff station and meet you there. We’ll breakfast in the dining car on the train.’

  ‘Won’t Brighton be full at this time of year?’

  ‘The cheaper boarding houses perhaps, but not the best hotels.’ He left his chair, leaned over her and stroked her cheek with the back of his fingers. ‘Get some rest. I’ll be back for dinner. Do you have a suitcase to pack your things?’