‘Mrs Williams sent my clothes down in an old Gladstone.’
‘Use it. We’ll buy you new luggage in Brighton when we buy you a new wardrobe.’ He looked back at her from the doorway. He knew she was going to start crying once he left, and he was coward enough not to want to see her tears.
The pang of guilt he had felt when she had told him about Tonia George’s letter intensified. For all her protestations to the contrary, he suspected that she would have married Joseph Evans, if he, Edward Larch, hadn’t made love to her.
But he would make it up to her next week. He had already made enquiries. One of the largest seafront hotels had an expensive suite with a balcony vacant. He would book it by telephone that afternoon and introduce her to a life of luxury she had never experienced. He’d take her to the best restaurants, theatres and shops that Brighton had to offer, buy her clothes, perfumes, jewellery and books – anything she wanted. Give her all the things he had longed to lavish on Amelia when they had honeymooned, and he hadn’t been able to afford as a young man. He was determined to make it a perfect holiday, one they would both remember for the rest of their lives.
‘When Sali last called into the store, she told me that I could take as much time off as I wanted to. And with it being miners’ fortnight, Dunraven Street’s never been quieter. Sam’s ambitious, he won’t want to remain an assistant manager for ever, and there won’t be a better time for him to learn to run Gwilym James on his own.’ Joey dropped the small suitcase he’d packed inside the kitchen door and set his straw boater on top of it.
‘I can understand you wanting to get away, but wouldn’t it make more sense to wait until morning?’ Billy Evans was concerned by Joey’s abrupt decision to leave. His son had walked into the house unexpectedly in the middle of the afternoon and informed him that he’d finally seen Rhian. He said she’d broken their engagement, returned his mother’s ring and asked him to cancel the church and the other arrangements that had been made for Saturday. But he’d refused to elaborate as to why she wouldn’t marry him.
‘I want to go now,’ Joey said flatly. ‘Will you do me another favour, please?’
‘If I can.’
‘Write to Aunt Jane and tell her that I won’t be needing the house on the Gower for the next two weeks, but I’ll be happy to pay her the rent if she can’t let it to anyone else.’
‘I’ll write, but I doubt she’ll need your money. There are always people looking to rent places down there at this time of year.’ Billy reached for his walking stick. Leaning heavily on it, he levered himself to his feet. ‘Is it too much to ask where you’re going?’
‘Swansea. Being a port town it’s livelier than the Gower villages and far enough from here for me not to meet too many people I know. It has a beach I can sit on, pubs I can drink myself stupid in and music halls if I feel like being entertained.’
‘Sounds to me as if you may need some help to guide you back to your bed at night. Want some company?’
‘No thanks, Dad.’ Joey’s refusal was firm. ‘I’ll be all right,’ he added unconvincingly. ‘I just need some time on my own.’
‘You going for the full two weeks?’
‘Yes.’
‘And when you come back?’
‘I’ll live here and carry on working in Gwilym James. What else do you expect me to do?’
Billy laid his hand on his son’s shoulder. Sali and Megan were the demonstrative ones in the family, kissing everyone indiscriminately on the cheek, men as well as women. He and his sons rarely embraced one another. ‘If you don’t look after yourself you’ll have me to answer to when you do get back, boy,’ he warned gruffly.
‘I know.’ Joey tried to smile, but it was a shadow of his usual roguish grin. ‘Say goodbye to Victor, Lloyd and the girls for me, kiss my nieces and nephews, and tell them I’ll be back with sticks of rock.’
‘Do you have enough money?’
‘More than enough, Dad. I’ll send you a postcard.’ Joey picked up his straw boater, pushed it on his head without checking the angle in the mirror and walked out through the door.
Hearing noises in her husband’s dressing room, Mabel Larch crept out of her bedroom, stole along the landing and froze when she saw that the doors to Edward’s dressing room and bedroom were open.
Edward walked through the inner door that connected the two rooms and dropped half a dozen starched white shirt collars into a suitcase that lay open on the day bed in his dressing room. He glanced up and saw her watching him. ‘Careful, Mabel, you’re almost in my private quarters. You may see something that will bring a maidenly blush to your cheek.’
‘This is the first time you’ve been home in four days and you’re packing.’
‘I have business in London.’
‘You’re leaving tonight?’
‘In the morning.’ He went to the tallboy, opened it and removed two piles of drawers and undervests.
‘You are staying here tonight.’ It was an appeal more than a question.
‘No.’ He dropped a boater into his hatbox, closed the lid and fastened the leather strap. ‘I have an early start and I wouldn’t want to disturb you. I have ordered Harris to pick me up at my rooms in Dunraven Street.’
‘You will at least stay for dinner.’ She was almost begging him. And not only because Mrs Hodges and Mrs Hadley had taken her aside to warn her that she wouldn’t remain respectable for long if her husband persisted in living apart from her.
Since Julia and, more especially, Edward had moved out of Llan House, she was lonely. She had discovered that fundraising coffee mornings, charity bazaars, bring-and-buy sales and afternoon teas with the Ladies’ Circle were no substitute for family meals, even ones fraught with tension. And perfectly decorated rooms were simply empty spaces when she didn’t have anyone to share them with.
‘I have ordered dinner to be brought to my rooms from the White Hart.’
‘How long will you be gone?’
‘I will return to Tonypandy one week Sunday.’ He flicked through the ties on the rack in his wardrobe and chose two.
‘To here?’
He turned and gave her a cool smile. ‘No.’
‘This is your home. You haven’t slept here –’
‘I did warn you, Mabel,’ he cut in dispassionately.
‘You could at least try to keep up appearances.’
‘I’m here now, aren’t I? I haven’t thrown you out on the street. I give you personal and housekeeping allowances.’
‘We’re married –’
‘I think not, Mabel, and that’s not an invitation to discuss the subject. You know my feelings.’
‘I miss you.’
‘Really?’ Sock-suspenders and braces in hand, he stared at her in astonishment.
‘I’ll do anything –’
‘Then open that door for me, please. I asked Mrs Williams to bring up the rest of my laundry. But, as it happens, I don’t need it. There are more than enough clean clothes here to last me the week.’
‘Edward, please. I am trying.’
He couldn’t help but contrast her clumsy attempt to make amends with Rhian’s effortless lovemaking. ‘As you don’t want to obey me and open that door, I’ll take the opportunity to tell you something before you hear it from Mrs Hodges or Mrs Hadley.’ He dropped a bundle of socks into the suitcase, snapped it shut, lifted it down to the floor and set it beside his hatbox. ‘I have a mistress, we live in the rooms next door to my office, she has made me very happy and no, she is not Mrs Ball, the elderly widow I employ to clean the building.’
‘You have another woman!’ She couldn’t have looked more pained if he’d struck her.
‘It shouldn’t come as a surprise after I told you that I would look elsewhere for what you wouldn’t give me.’
‘And you’re happy living in sin, knowing that you will go to hell for turning your back on God and the Christian way.’
‘Much happier than I was living in respectability with you,’ he divulged
frankly. ‘When I return from … my business trip, I will examine my finances. You brought very little into our marriage, but I will make a settlement on you, and a more generous one than the allowance your father gave you before you left his home. However, there is a condition. You will have to return to Carmarthenshire to live with your parents for the greater part of the year. We could let it be known that your father or mother is in ill-heath and you’re needed to look after them.’
‘You are talking about a separation and I have been an exemplary wife.’
He lifted his eyebrows. ‘Really, Mabel, we both know that is not true, as do the servants. And witnesses are forced to swear the truth and the whole truth so help them God in court.’
‘You would bring up our private life in court?’
‘Eventually, in ten years or so, when I retire from business.’ He was polite, icily so. He’d answered every question she’d asked him. He’d left her nothing with which to reproach him, no cause for criticism other than his absence from the house and her life.
‘Edward, please –’
‘Think about what I’ve said, Mabel. This house is expensive to maintain. If I reduce the staff and close up most of the rooms, it will mean more money in your pocket. And if we handle our separation discreetly, no one need know how final it is until I retire.’ He checked his reflection in the mirror, straightened his tie and smoothed the grey hairs back above his ears.
‘But if you cut back on the staff and close up most of the house, I won’t be able to hold my head up in Tonypandy or the Ladies’ Circle ever again.’
‘That is the least of my concerns.’
‘How can you say that when the Ladies’ Circle is so influential and we all live here!’ she exclaimed.
‘I doubt Julia will come back to Tonypandy. Hopefully, she is a respectable married woman by now. And no matter what we may think of her choice of husband, I am confident that he won’t want to settle too close to her family.’
‘There’s Gerald.’
‘Who was only too glad to accept his friend’s invitation to holiday in France because it meant that he didn’t have to come home and face you this summer.’ Edward’s voice was neutral but, rightly or wrongly, he blamed his children’s problems and his estrangement from them on his disastrous marriage. ‘And, as he spends most of his time away at school and will soon go on to university, any alteration in our domestic circumstances will have very little impact on him.’
‘I live here,’ she reminded him in a small voice.
‘The way we are at the moment, I am sure that you would be happier returning to your father for most of the year. You could assist him with his work just as you did before. Think about it, Mabel.’ He retrieved his cases. ‘We will discuss the subject on my return. Please open the door.’
She swallowed hard and tensed herself as though she were preparing to jump into a pool of icy water. Stepping quickly inside the door, she closed it behind her. ‘I could try …’ Colour flooded her cheeks as words failed her.
‘Try what, Mabel?’ he grinned, amused by her embarrassment.
‘To do whatever it is that you want me to. I could … I could undress, if you like,’ she stammered.
‘Now, here?’
Closing her eyes, she unfastened the buttons at the neck of her blouse. She pulled it free from her skirt. Shivering, but not from cold, she dropped it to the floor. She unbuttoned her skirt, allowed it to fall and stepped out of it. She kept her eyes closed as, one by one, she removed the rest of her garments.
As a child her father had always taken her into his study and stripped her before slapping her buttocks with his bare hands to punish her for her misdemeanours. She had felt totally mortified and humiliated, but not as much as when he had rubbed goose grease on to her skin to take the sting from his blows later. And there were things … other things that he had done to her, things that he had insisted she’d made him do, although she hated him touching her that way. And he had warned her not to tell a living soul about them on pain of far greater punishments from heaven than he could ever mete out.
Still keeping her eyes closed, she dropped her final garment, her drawers. She continued to stand, shamed and waiting. ‘I’m naked, Edward.’
‘So I see.’
She opened her eyes. He was staring at her. ‘This was what you wanted me to do, wasn’t it?’
‘Maybe on our wedding night, Mabel.’ He couldn’t help comparing her to Rhian – his wife’s body was plump and flabby, her breasts sagging – but he couldn’t resist dropping the cases he was holding, reaching out and touching …
She turned aside and vomited over her clothes when his fingers brushed her bare skin. He took his winter robe from his wardrobe and handed it to her. ‘I think you’ve just proved that it’s a bit late for you to be taking wife lessons, Mabel.’ Retrieving his cases, he walked into his bedroom and left by the other door.
Owing to a summary rejection by the German Government of the request made by His Majesty’s Government for assurances that the neutrality of Belgium will be respected, His Majesty’s Government have declared to the German Government that a state of war exists between Great Britain and Germany as from 11.00 p.m. on 4 August 1914.
‘You reading about the war?’ the plump young barmaid asked Joey.
‘I was.’ Joey folded the two-day-old newspaper and pushed it back into the corner of the saloon bar where he had found it.
‘We’ll show them bleeding Huns they can’t order Britain about. Just you wait until our Welsh boys get over there. They’ll give them what’s what.’ She pulled a second pint of beer and set it on the tray next to the shorts he’d ordered.
Joey almost reminded her that it was the Belgian Government that the Germans were ordering about, not the British, then he reflected that the last thing he wanted to do was start an argument about the war with a patriotic barmaid. In the three days since it had been declared, he’d heard enough people’s opinions on the conflict to last him a lifetime. The sight of a uniform of any description was enough to set men, women and children cheering and waving the flags that had miraculously appeared overnight on every souvenir stall in Mumbles and Swansea. Military bands had taken to marching up and down the main thoroughfares as well as occupying the bandstands as part of a recruiting drive. And to his disgust, that morning, he’d even caught himself humming ‘Soldiers of the King’ when he was shaving.
‘How much is that?’ he asked the girl.
‘Two double whisky chasers and two double gins and peps, at sixpence each and two beers at sevenpence, that’ll be three shillings and twopence, sir.’ She held out her hand. He flicked through his change, and to her disappointment handed her the exact money. He knew she’d been hoping for a tip, but his holiday was proving expensive enough without treating barmaids.
However, he hadn’t bargained on meeting Effie and Susie or Frank, although in all fairness to his new friend Frank, he paid his corner. He picked up the tray and pushed his way through the crowd to the table where a stocky young man with brown hair was sitting next to a couple of attractive brunettes.
His train had pulled into Swansea station at ten o’clock at night eight days before. The hotels he’d tried in town had been full, so he’d caught the train to Mumbles. His determination to spend his two weeks holiday alone had crumbled in the face of the village’s shortage of accommodation. Everywhere he went it was the same story; town and village were bursting at the seams with holidaymakers. Eventually a landlady had offered him a half-share in a double bed. The other half had been taken by Frank Badham, a miner from Ammanford, and at breakfast the next morning they had found themselves sharing a table with two sisters, Effie and Susie, housemaids from Llandaff, whose employers had gone to Torquay for a fortnight.
‘Ooh, you bought us large ones, you naughty boy, Joe.’ Effie dug Joey in the ribs when he sat on the bench seat next to her. ‘Well, I’m telling you now, you’d be better off asking me for whatever it is you want, than trying to bri
be me with gin. I can drink any girl and most men, under the table.’ She batted her eyelashes, which she’d smudged with bootblack.
‘Perhaps that’s exactly where I want both of us, Effie. Under the table.’ Joey winked suggestively. It was the kind of flirtatious banter that had come easily to him before he had begun to go out with Rhian, and he was amazed at how quickly he had slipped back into his old, shallow ways.
‘Ooh, and I thought you were such a nice boy. I can read the wicked thoughts in your mind.’ She turned to her sister. ‘You were right about Joe, Susie. He has designs on me.’
‘Is that designs or desires?’ Frank interposed.
Effie gave a noisy, throaty giggle that sounded as though she were gargling with salt water. Susie whispered something in Frank’s ear and they both burst out laughing.
Excluded from her sister’s conversation, Effie grabbed Joey’s arm and whispered breathlessly, ‘So why did you buy me a double gin and pep?’
‘To save going up to the bar twice before we go on to the People’s Bioscope Palace, that’s if you still want to go.’ He took a long thirsty pull at his beer.
‘Want to go!’ Susie shouted in Frank’s ear, making him wince. ‘You heard those boys at the bar. They’re showing pictures of what’s going on in Belgium. We’ll see guns and soldiers and fighting –’
‘It’s too soon for fighting,’ Frank curbed her enthusiasm.
‘But we’ll see the boys marching in,’ Effie enthused. ‘I so-o-o love a man in a uniform,’ she sighed theatrically.
‘I’ll warn all the tram conductors in the town then, shall I?’ Joey said dryly.
‘Ooh you, I’ve never known a card like you, Joe.’ She elbowed him again and he spilled his beer.
‘Steady on.’ Joey pulled his handkerchief from his pocket and mopped his trousers.
‘You think any more about what I said?’ Frank looked at Joey over Effie’s head.
‘About what?’ Joey made a grab for Effie’s hand. She was scrabbling around the top of his thighs under cover of the table.
‘Enlisting, of course. I told you, my brother’s in the South Wales Borderers. He could have a word with his sergeant and we’d be in before the big rush starts. If it’s going to be over by Christmas, there won’t be that much time for us to do our bit, let alone win any medals.’
Sinners and Shadows Page 28