Without warning they broke free and Martin opened the door behind him. Someone joined them in the room. He tossed away his cigarette but didn’t open the garage door until both Lily and Martin had left the kitchen and switched off the light. Only then did he remember the excuse he’d used to leave the house.
‘I said half an hour and we’ve been here two.’
‘And I’ll be glad when you’ve gone and can’t bully me any more,’ Helen bit back at Jack.
‘That will be soon enough.’ Jack rose to his feet and held out his hand to help her up from the sofa.
‘I didn’t mean …’
‘I know.’ He watched her as she walked past him to hug Judy, Lily and Katie. ‘See you downstairs in a few minutes, Martin.’
‘Just as soon as I’ve helped Lily clear up here.’
‘Thanks for the beer, Adam. See you around.’ He shook his hand. ‘Sam.’
‘Take care of yourself, mate.’ Sam shook Jack’s hand warmly.
‘You’ll call tomorrow,’ Helen asked Lily, Judy and Katie, as they walked with her and Jack to the door.
‘We’ll be round in the morning and Lily will join us in the afternoon,’ Katie answered brightly. Martin had cornered her in the kitchen earlier and told her about his and Lily’s plans.
‘Thanks, I really appreciate it. See you then.’
‘You’ll be up to say goodbye in the morning, Jack.’ Katie’s voice trembled. She was close to both her brothers and knew exactly what effect Jack’s absence was going to have on her. She had missed Martin dreadfully during the two years it had taken him to complete his National Service. And every day he had been far from her she had imagined him shot in Cyprus, or hurt in an accident, leaving her hundreds of miles away, unable to do a thing to help.
‘I will, sis. Goodnight, everyone.’ Taking Helen’s arm, he steered her gently out of the house.
‘If you don’t mind, I’ll be going too, Lily.’ Judy followed Jack and Helen out through the door.
‘But you …’
‘I’ll see you tomorrow.’ She walked up the street. It had been purgatory to sit in the same room as Adam all evening and pretend nothing had gone on between them. But the shame of what had happened the night before weighed too heavily for her to confide in her friends – or confront Adam again.
‘Dad, Joe, I’m back,’ Helen called as she opened the door.
‘In the dining room, love.’ John glanced up from a pile of papers as she and Jack walked into the room. ‘Joe left some books at Robin’s. He’s driven up to get them.’
‘Not whisky.’
‘Perhaps that as well. He told me to tell you that even if he stays over, he’ll be back in time to say goodbye to you tomorrow, Jack. You all packed and ready to go?’
‘As much as I’ll ever be.’
‘I think I’ll have an early night,’ Helen announced.
‘That’s the first good idea you’ve had since you came home, Helen.’ John glanced at his watch.
‘I know I stayed a lot later than I said I would, but …’
‘You and the girls couldn’t stop talking.’ Jack gave his father-in-law an apologetic look.
‘You wouldn’t be able to stop talking if you’d been locked up in a hospital with a load of schoolmarms for nurses, who shout “quiet there” every time someone as much as sneezes.’
‘You were going to bed, Helen,’ John reminded gently.
‘Goodnight, Dad.’ She kissed his cheek and turned to Jack. ‘Help me upstairs.’
He offered her his arm, noticing that she put more weight on it than she had done when they had walked around the house in Limeslade.
‘All of a sudden I feel shattered,’ she confessed.
‘I’m not surprised.’ He switched on the light and helped her to the chair.
She glanced round at the single bed, shelves full of books and bric-a-brac, some of it childish. It was the room she had slept in all her life and somehow Jack, big, burly and masculine, didn’t belong in its pink-and-white prettiness, even though he was her husband. ‘Some marriage this is turning out to be.’
‘It’s going to be a great marriage as soon as you’re well.’ He closed the curtains.
‘And you’re out of the army.’
‘Can you manage from here?’
‘I don’t need bathing and putting to bed like a baby, if that’s what you mean.’ If he had suggested he stay and share her single bed and just simply hold her through the night she would have kissed him and hugged him with all the strength she possessed, but he went to the door.
‘I’ll be round as soon as I’m packed and dressed in the morning. About nine suit you?’
‘I’m not promising I’ll be out of bed.’
‘I hope you won’t. You need to rest. Goodnight, sweetheart.’ He kissed her gently on the lips, then left.
She continued to sit on the chair while he ran down the stairs. She heard him talking briefly to her father, then the front door opened and closed. As she struggled to her feet a pain shot across her operation scar. Tears came to her eyes.
Furious with her own weakness, she brushed them away with her hand, smudging mascara across her face. She looked a wreck – she was a wreck. If she were Jack, she’d want to get as far away from her as possible.
She thought of all the stories she’d heard about National Service and the girls who hung round army camps. Jack would have free time, he’d be able to go down to the pub, meet and talk to other girls. They’d flock round a boy with his looks. What if he fell in love with one of them? A pretty, healthy, girl who never cried and who could give him all the babies he wanted.
The lilting strains of a string quartet drifted out as Robin opened his front door.
‘I’m sorry, I don’t want to intrude …’
‘You’re not.’ Robin pulled Joe into the hall.
‘But you’re having a party.’
‘Mums and Pops have some Arts Society thing on, complete with real musicians. It’s boring as hell. Angie, Em and I have holed up in the billiard room.’ He opened the door just as Emily took a shot and skidded a cue across the baize.
‘You want Pops to kill me, Em?’ Robin shouted.
‘Let’s face it, Robbie, I’m just bloody hopeless.’ She smiled inanely.
‘Only at some things. Whisky?’ Robin waved his father’s decanter under Joe’s nose.
‘I came to get my book.’
‘Book!’
‘I left my John Donne here. Have you seen it?’
‘I haven’t looked at a book since our brainstorming session. The housekeeper dumped what she called “your rubbish, Mr Robin” in the corner over there.’
Kneeling beside the pile of odds and ends, Joe extracted his textbook.
‘You’re not going.’ Angie waylaid him as he went to the door.
‘I have a lot more studying to do.’
‘We’ve just persuaded Robin to take us away from this mausoleum to a party.’
‘Who’s having a party this close to the exams?’ Joe asked.
‘Our art class. A midnight swim on the beach in Oxwich.’
‘We picked the wrong subject, Joe, we should have studied art,’ Robin observed cryptically.
‘You can’t draw,’ Emily protested.
‘Neither can you.’
Instead of being furious at Robin’s observation, Emily giggled.
‘It’s almost time to go.’ Angie lifted her skirt above her knees as she sat on a stool. ‘Why don’t you come with us, Joe? It’s going to be fun.’
‘Puritanical Joe doesn’t understand the concept of fun.’
Robin took the cue from Emily and replaced it on the rack.
Joe hesitated for the barest fraction of a second. ‘I haven’t a costume.’
‘Borrow a pair of my trunks,’ Robin offered.
‘Thanks.’
‘That’s settled, then.’ Angie smiled.
‘It’ll be a good night,’ Robin confided as they went upstairs to his b
edroom to fetch swimming costumes. ‘The last one of these Jeremy went to, all the girls stripped off and went skinny-dipping.’
‘And the boys?’
‘Enjoyed the view.’
‘You’ll keep an eye on her for me?’ Unbuckling the belt on his jeans, Jack sat on a chair and struggled to peel a fourteen-inch jean leg over his foot.
‘That goes without saying.’ Martin sat on the bed and waited for his brother to undress. There wasn’t room for both of them to move around at the same time. ‘And the girls will be in Helen’s house every five minutes, even before they move out to Limeslade. You know what they’re like.’
‘They will all be working during the day.’
‘Did Mr Griffiths ask Mrs Jones …’
‘To work a couple of extra hours and keep an eye on her? Yes. But she’s no real company for Helen,’ Jack observed. ‘She’s an interfering old bat like Mrs Lannon.’
‘From the way Helen was talking earlier, she’s going to be too busy to be lonely. All those plans she has for moving out to Limeslade and redecorating the house.’
‘I don’t want her doing too much.’ Jack dropped his shirt and underwear into their laundry bag. ‘She’ll make herself ill and land herself back in hospital.’
‘There’ll be enough people round her to make sure she doesn’t.’
Jack pulled on his pyjama trousers and stepped past Martin towards the bed. Pausing for a moment, he extricated his wallet from his jeans pocket and opened it. ‘Present for you.’ He handed Martin a small, thin packet wrapped in brown paper.
Martin turned it over suspiciously. ‘What’s this?’
‘Something I should have used and didn’t until it was too late and won’t have a use for again.’
Martin unwrapped the brown paper. ‘French letters.’
‘As you recognise them I won’t embarrass you by telling you how to put them on,’ Jack teased.
‘I saw enough of them in the army.’
‘And used them.’ Martin’s silence told Jack what he wanted to know. ‘I got a couple … after – talk about locking the stable door after the horse had bolted. One of my mates said the best place to get them is in the barber’s in the Uplands. Unlike the chemist, there’s only blokes serving in there.’
Embarrassed, Martin pushed them into his underwear drawer.
‘I thought with the way things are between you and Lily …’
‘She’s a decent girl.’
‘And Helen isn’t.’
‘Of course she is. It’s just that …’
Jack started to laugh.
‘What’s funny?’
‘You, me, this conversation. Little brother giving big brother tips on how not to get his girlfriend pregnant. “Don’t do as I did, do as I tell you.” It sounds like one of those father-son conversations from a sentimental film, where the kid gets it all wrong because the father’s too strict. And about you and Lily …’
‘Some things I don’t talk about,’ Martin broke in curtly.
‘I don’t want to know. But just in case you’re too thick to work it out for yourself I saw the way she looked at you tonight. And if you’ve any sense you’ll use those’ – he nodded to the drawer – ‘before someone else moves in on her. She’s a good-looking girl and what’s more important, nice, and for some peculiar reason she likes you.’ Turning back the bedclothes, he climbed into bed.
‘I love her,’ Martin confessed.
‘I noticed when you were six years old. But it’s got a lot worse in the last ten years or so.’
‘I’ll never be able to give her the life she deserves on a mechanic’s wages.’
‘So you’re going to hand her to some rich guy because you’re poor?’ Jack asked.
‘No, but …’
‘Go forward one step at a time, Marty.’
‘And getting her into bed is one step?’ Martin questioned seriously.
‘Yes.’
‘A girl like that wants marriage.’ Martin sat on the chair and unfastened his shoelaces.
‘Eventually.’
‘Before she gets into bed with a man.’
‘Not necessarily.’
‘It was all so easy for you, wasn’t it,’ Kicking off his shoes, Martin pushed them under the bed. ‘You got Helen pregnant and there you were, new job, flat, wedding …’
‘And no baby and a sick wife.’
‘Helen will get well, there’ll be other babies.’
‘There won’t.’
Martin whirled round and stared at his brother, wondering if he’d heard him correctly.
‘Helen can’t have any more children.’
‘Are you sure … there’s other doctors …’
‘It’s definite.’
‘Oh God, Jack … I’m so sorry.’ Martin felt the words were totally inadequate. ‘What are you going to do?’
‘My National Service.’
‘When you’re ready, you could adopt …’
‘Perhaps.’ Jack didn’t want to discuss John’s offer to arrange a private adoption for him and Helen because, despite all the assurances he’d given Helen about ‘the right baby for them’, he wasn’t at all sure how he felt about taking on someone else’s child. ‘But that’s one of the reasons it’s important to me that you and Lily work out. I won’t make a father but I might make an uncle when the time comes. And there’s Katie, if she ever gets round to noticing boys.’
The misery etched on Jack’s face convinced Martin it wasn’t the right time to break the bombshell about their sister and John Griffiths.
‘You won’t tell anyone about Helen,’ Jack urged. ‘Not even Lily.’
Martin shook his head. Sometimes it felt as though his life was nothing but secrets, and always other people’s.
Joe stood on the beach, staring at the moon as it painted a shimmering silver path across the sea towards the horizon. Oblivious to the squeals of Angela’s and Emily’s classmates as they ran in and out of the waves in half-hearted attempts to evade the boys chasing them, he concentrated on conjuring Lily’s image. Her eyes shining with reflected light as they danced in the Pier ballroom – the sad smile on her face when he had asked her to marry him in the churchyard at Oxwich – she and Martin in her kitchen, mouths glued together, Martin’s hand fumbling beneath her sweater …
‘You should go in, Joe. The water’s fabulous. It’s always warmer at night than during the day.’ Shaking out a towel, Angela threw it round her shoulders as she stood beside him.
‘I may do, later.’
‘Thinking of your examinations?’ she probed.
‘Yes,’ he lied.
‘Robin says you’re bound to get a first.’
He glanced at her. She was wearing a gold two-piece swimsuit, splattered with tiny white flowers that glowed silver in the moonlight, the waist cut snugly into her slim figure, highlighting her slenderness, and the top plunged low, revealing the valley between her well-rounded breasts.
‘Like what you see?’
‘I only have to look down there to see a whole lot more.’
Following his line of vision, she saw Robin running after a nude Emily, brandishing her one-piece swimsuit.
‘That girl strips at the drop of a hat.’
‘Only Robin’s hat that I can see.’
She gazed coolly at him. ‘Robin’s right, you are a Puritan when it comes to sex.’
‘If by that you mean I think it should be special between just two people who keep their bodies for one another, I’ll agree with you.’
‘You’re only young once.’
‘Angie, save me.’ Emily ran up behind her. Unhooking Angela’s top, she tossed it to a boy behind Robin.
‘Rules of engagement. Lose your top, you lose your bottoms.’
‘Help, Joe.’ Angela flung a towel round herself and ran ahead of him up the beach.
He followed, conscious of a couple of boys running behind them but when they reached the dunes they were alone.
‘I’m freezi
ng. Dry my back for me.’ Stripping the towel from her shoulders, she tossed it to him before turning round.
‘You are cold.’ He touched her shoulders.
‘I said I was. Ow, not so hard. I’d like to be warm and keep my skin if possible.’ Turning back, she faced him. ‘It’s too dark for me to see your blushes.’
‘Or me you.’
‘But you can feel.’ Taking his hands, she opened his fingers and clamped them over her exposed breasts. ‘Still coy, Joe? You can call it heat treatment if you like.’ When he didn’t remove his hands, she kissed him and as her cold, damp body pressed against his, he first caressed, then pinched her nipples, all the while wondering if that was what Martin had been doing to Lily under cover of her sweater.
‘So you’re not a Puritan after all,’ she murmured, moving her head away from his.
‘We should be getting back.’
‘We should. There is nothing quite as uncomfortable as making love in sand. It gets in all the wrong places.’ Wrapping the towel round herself once more she took his hand and led him back towards the sea.
‘You’re catching the ten-o’clock train?’ Helen knew the answer to her question but she felt she had to say something to fill the silence that had fallen between her and Jack.
‘That’s the time on the warrant.’ Jack paced to the window and looked out over the vista of gardens, backyards and the backs of the houses fronting Mansel Street.
‘You’ll write?’
‘As soon as I have an address.’ He turned to face her. ‘You?’
‘I’ll start a letter tonight and send it the minute I get your address.’
He sat on the bed beside her. ‘Six weeks’ training will soon pass …’
‘It already feels like a lifetime.’
He hugged her. ‘You knew I hadn’t done my National Service when we married, sweetheart.’
‘To be honest, I didn’t even think about it. There was … were’, she corrected herself, ‘so many other things to think about.’
‘I might not be stationed too far away.’
‘And you could be sent abroad.’ She shivered at the thought of being separated from him by hundreds of miles.
Swansea Summer Page 37