Swansea Girls

by Catrin Collier

  ‘Our Lily’s excited about going to the Pier.’ Roy sank down on the bed, untied his shoelaces and removed his boots. ‘I thought the novelty would have worn off by now.’

  ‘It won’t wear off until she finds a young man to take her somewhere other than dancing on Saturday nights.’ Joy lit the table lamps she’d arranged on the bedside cabinets and dressing table before switching off the main light. Daylight never reached this room. She had left the blackout curtains up after the war and kept them permanently closed to support her story of dereliction. But when the lamps and gas fire were lit, and the cream velvet drapes she’d hung at the back of the blackout curtains closed, the room was warm, welcoming and inviting. ‘Judy’s just the same. Not that she’ll have much energy to dance after the way I worked her today.’

  ‘You sure you’re not too hard on that girl, Joy?’ Roy suggested mildly.

  ‘Are you criticising the way I’m bringing her up?’ she snapped defensively.

  ‘No, but...’

  ‘There are no buts when it comes to youngsters today. They’ve got it too easy. Full employment, more money in their pockets at the end of the week than we used to see in a year when we were their age. I don’t want Judy growing up thinking that she can have whatever she wants without working for it and before you say another word, Norah agrees with me and is bringing up your Lily the same way.’

  Knowing better than to push his point to an argument he would inevitably lose, Roy hung his tunic on the back of a chair before unbuttoning his braces. Folding his trousers on the creases, he laid them over his tunic. His shirt, collar and underclothes received the same careful attention before he climbed into bed.

  ‘I’ll never understand how you women put up with corsets,’ he commented, as she unclipped her stockings from her suspenders and rolled down her girdle.

  ‘Because we’d flop everywhere without one.’

  ‘Men like the bits that flop.’

  ‘That I don’t believe.’ Turning back the sheet, she climbed in beside him.

  ‘It’s true.’ He picked up her hand and kissed her fingertips. ‘I love every bit of you, especially the floppy bits, and I wish I could see more of you.’

  ‘A widow with a young daughter to bring up...’

  ‘Can’t be too careful of her reputation,’ he finished for her. ‘But all I want is...’

  ‘More than I’m prepared to give you at the moment. I’ve told you a hundred times; I won’t turn you into a wicked stepfather or Judy an ungrateful stepdaughter. I love both of you far too much to allow our lives to become a battleground.’

  ‘It wouldn’t be like that.’

  ‘Perhaps, perhaps not.’ Snuggling down, she rested her head on his shoulder. ‘But it’s not worth running the risk of spoiling what we have. Is it?’ She looked up, before kissing him.

  He tried to hold back but it was impossible. He had done – and would continue to do – anything she asked of him. Ten years was a long time to wait for a settled home with the woman he loved but he would carry on waiting. The only alternative was a life without Joy and that was simply unthinkable.

  Helen yanked up the bodice of the dress as she stood in front of the mirror. It was no use, no matter how hard she tugged, she couldn’t pull the bead-encrusted satin more than an inch above the bra cups and they barely covered her nipples. She was beginning to regret her boast to the girls. Lily was right – the evening gown was too much for the Pier Ballroom on a Saturday night but she could hardly chicken out now. Perhaps she could say a seam had split. It was tight ...

  ‘Helen.’

  ‘Can’t come in, Joe. I’m changing.’ Before she’d slipped on the dress, she’d fastened a rug hook she’d purloined from her grandmother into the top of the zip. Stretching behind her back, she breathed in and pulled. After twists, turns and wriggles worthy of a contortionist she’d seen in the Grand Theatre, she finally managed to slide the zip home but, try as she might, she couldn’t reach further than the tip of the wooden handle of the hook to unclip it.

  ‘Dad telephoned. He said I could take the car. Do you girls want a lift to Mumbles?’

  ‘We’ve arranged to go on the train,’ she gasped, struggling to bend her arm higher.

  ‘That’s silly when I’m going that way anyway.’

  ‘Aren’t you picking up the boys?’ Giving up on the hook, she lifted her coat from the wardrobe.

  ‘I’m meeting them at the party. That’s the door. You expecting anyone?’

  ‘Lily. Let her in.’ Helen slipped her arms into the sleeves of her coat. Whatever people thought of the dress, there wasn’t time to change now.

  Although Joseph Griffiths was two years older than Helen, he couldn’t recall a time when his sister’s friends hadn’t been around. Charging in and out of the house when he least wanted them to, deliberately annoying him and being as irritating as only immature giggling girls could be. Growing up, he had tried to ignore them, adopting the same offhand, superior attitude he used on Helen. If he deigned to notice them at all, it was only to tease. Some time during the last few months he had seen that Judy Hunt was turning into a fairly good-looking girl, but that evening when he opened the front door to Lily, he saw that she too seemed different.

  Lily was as dark as his sister was fair – ‘Gypsy dark’ his mother had pronounced in one of her more critical moods – and so short he had carried on thinking of her as a child, even after he had been forced to acknowledge grudgingly that his sister was on the brink of womanhood. But that evening Lily’s black hair was swept up in a new style and she was wearing make-up. Lightly and carefully applied, as opposed to Helen’s, who caused enormous arguments with their mother by stubbornly clinging to the belief that the more expensive the cosmetic and the thicker it was slapped on the more effective the result.

  Suddenly aware he was staring, he muttered, ‘Nice frock.’

  Lily eyed him suspiciously. Joe had never said anything complimentary to any of Helen’s friends that she’d heard before. ‘Hoping I’d say you look good in evening dress?’ she asked as he fiddled with his gold cuff links, pulling his shirt cuff the regulation three-quarters of an inch below the sleeve of his dinner jacket.

  ‘I don’t need to be told I look good. I know I do and that really is a nice frock.’

  ‘Honestly?’ she questioned sceptically. ‘Auntie Norah made it. You don’t think the full skirt makes me look like a Munchkin?’

  ‘A what?’

  ‘Munchkin. You know – Judy Garland – The Wizard of OZ – little people wearing tents.’

  ‘Not Munchkin at all, more like upside down mushroom.’ The flippant remark was out before he registered it sounded insensitive.

  ‘Tell Helen I’ll be a few minutes. I’m going home to take this petticoat off.’

  ‘I was joking, you look great.’

  ‘You sure?’

  ‘Unless a man feels he has a good enough memory, he should never venture to lie.’

  ‘Shakespeare?’

  ‘Michel de Montaigne.’

  ‘Your education is showing.’ Familiarity with Helen had led to familiarity with Joe and Lily had no compunction about teasing him the way he teased her.

  ‘And that, I take it, isn’t a good thing.’

  ‘Only if you want to make people feel inferior.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’ Joe’s apology was sincere. Set apart from the other boys in Carlton Terrace by his grammar school and university education and the company he kept, but most of all his own sense of intellectual and social superiority, he didn’t want Lily to think him a snob too. ‘But I am serious about the frock. You look almost good enough for me to ask you to dance.’ He had never noticed that her irises were flecked with gold before or her eyelashes so long ...

  ‘Almost! Is Helen ready?’

  He stepped back. ‘Come in, I think she’s applying the final coat of lime wash. You going to the Pier?’

  ‘Where else? Helen said you’re going to a university party.’

&nb
sp; ‘One of the boys’ birthdays. I offered you lot a lift in the car.’

  ‘Your father lets you drive it?’

  ‘When he’s in a good mood, doesn’t need it and my mother can’t think of anywhere she wants to be taken to beyond walking distance, which is about every other blue moon.’

  ‘There won’t be room for all of us.’ Helen walked down the stairs clutching the edges of her coat together at the hem, in the unlikely event that Joe caught a glimpse of dark-blue satin and recognised it as a new frock.

  ‘Yes there will. One in the front, three in the back.’

  ‘The three in the back will crease their dresses.’

  ‘With the number of layers you lot wear under your skirts, no one will notice if the top one’s creased.’

  ‘Are you saying boys look at what a girl’s wearing under her skirt?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then you’re the only one who does?’

  ‘Grow up, Helen.’

  ‘I’m not the one discussing underclothes.’

  ‘Perhaps I should call our mother out of the theatre so she can see how much make-up you’re wearing and check what you’re hiding under that thick coat in the middle of summer.’

  ‘It’s September, that’s autumn, not the middle of summer, and I’m hiding nothing.’

  ‘So nudity’s your secret weapon. Thank you for solving the mystery. I’ve often wondered why boys dance with a girl as ugly as you.’

  ‘You beast! I’d rather walk to the Pier than get in the car with you.’

  ‘You wouldn’t get as far as Christina Street in those shoes.’

  Helen hesitated. She hated dancing with boys shorter than her and as few were taller when she wore high heels, she normally wore flat pumps to the Pier Ballroom. But Adam Jordan was six foot one, so for once she had thrown caution to the wind and slipped on her white, three-inch stilettos. The winkle-picker points pinched her toes, the narrow heels made her wobble when she walked and they didn’t even match the blue satin dress, but her legs looked slimmer in them and as Adam was bound to look at her legs ...

  ‘What’s it to be?’ Joe demanded impatiently.

  ‘As Lily’s got the widest skirt, she can sit in the front with you,’ Helen capitulated. ‘Judy, Katie and I will sit in the back.’

  ‘Keep your head down. I’d hate it if any of the boys who don’t know you’re my sister saw you and thought me desperate enough to pick up a hideous bird.’

  ‘Why do you think I want to sit in the back?’

  ‘Shouldn’t we be going?’ Lily suggested, knowing that once Joe and Helen started sniping they could go on for hours.

  As Joe turned to the door, Helen whipped back the hem of her coat an inch so Lily could see she was wearing the blue satin.

  ‘I’ll get the car out of the garage and meet you at the end of the street. Don’t take all night to collect the others.’

  ‘We’ll be five minutes.’ Lily stepped in front of Helen so he wouldn’t see his sister sticking her tongue out at him.

  ‘I must have left it in my bedroom.’ Katie searched fruitlessly through the contents of her brown-paper carrier bag for the tenth time in as many minutes.

  ‘I can lend you money,’ Judy offered.

  ‘It’s not just the money; I need my bag to put my comb, compact and lipstick in. I’ll have to go back.’

  ‘As long as you’re quick about it. Helen and Lily will be here any minute.’

  Katie raced down the stairs and out through the front door. She looked up and down the street. There was no sign of her father. Crossing her fingers tightly in the hope that he was safely in the pub, she turned the corner and ran down the steps to her family’s basement.

  ‘I thought you were going straight to the Pier.’ Her mother’s voice was soft, low, as she carried dishes from the table to an enamel bowl in the Belfast sink.

  Katie’s heart leapfrogged to her throat. Her mother’s whispering meant her father was in. It was his night off and as he always spent daytime pub opening hours before his free nights in the Tenby and closing hours in bed, she guessed he had overslept after his afternoon session, cutting into his evening’s drinking. Something guaranteed to put him into an even worse mood than usual.

  ‘I forgot my bag.’

  ‘Go quietly down the passage.’

  Katie didn’t need the warning. Opening the only other door in the kitchen as noiselessly as she could, she slipped off her shoes and tiptoed over the worn quarry tiles, past her parents’ bedroom door on the left and down the passage. Of the three rooms in the basement, the one at the end would have admitted the most daylight if it hadn’t been partitioned into two. The smaller of the two cubicles had an alcove, which her mother had curtained off to hold her clothes, and a single bed, which took up ninety per cent of the remaining space. It was also as black as a coal-hole, because the window was in the cubicle shared by her brothers.

  Retrieving the bag from a shelf in her makeshift wardrobe, Katie retraced her steps, but not quickly enough.

  Her parents’ bedroom door slammed back on its hinges and her father staggered out on bare feet, braces dangling over crumpled, baggy trousers, his flies open below his beer-stained vest. He stood in the doorway of the kitchen, effectively blocking her escape. ‘Tea, woman,’ he growled.

  ‘It’s all ready for you, Ernie, bar the fresh tea, and I put the kettle on when I heard you stirring,’ Annie muttered nervously.

  ‘Is that the bloody time?’

  ‘It’s not half past seven.’

  ‘You know I wanted to be out by opening time.’

  ‘You hadn’t had any sleep since yesterday. I thought ...’

  ‘You thought – you thought!’ He stepped into the kitchen and scowled at the table. ‘Is this all the ham there is? You gave the rest to those bloody boys, didn’t you?’

  ‘No, Ernie. I didn’t. I swear it. They had cheese like they always do.’

  ‘You bloody liar!’

  ‘There’s a drop of tea in the pot. It’s still warm.’ Annie fluttered around him like a sparrow feeding a fat cuckoo that has taken possession of her nest. ‘Would you like it to be going on with until the kettle boils?’

  ‘Knowing you, it’ll be stewed.’

  ‘Shall I cut more bread and butter?’ Annie moved to the breadboard after she poured his tea.

  Steeling herself, Katie prayed that for once – just this once – she’d be able to walk through the kitchen and out of the door without her father passing comment or creating a scene. Summoning her courage, she forced herself to put one foot in front of the other.

  ‘’Bye, Mam.’ She walked behind her father’s chair, leaving as wide a berth as the room and furniture would allow. Kissing Annie’s reddened cheek she headed for the door.

  ‘And where are you off to, miss, all dolled up like that?’ Ernie pushed his chair back from the table.

  ‘The Pier.’

  ‘You can’t be paying your mother enough if you can afford to buy a new dress.’

  ‘It’s Judy’s.’ Katie knew she’d made a mistake the second the words were out of her mouth.

  ‘So, you go begging round your rich friends for castoffs now.’

  ‘Girls are always borrowing one another’s clothes, Ernie.’ Annie hurried to the table, picking up the teapot as Katie backed towards the door.

  ‘I’ll not allow a daughter of mine to go out in another girl’s clothes so everyone in the street can point their finger and say I don’t bring in enough to keep my family decent.’

  ‘Please, Ernie, no one points ...’

  ‘This is your fault, Annie.’

  Katie winced as her father’s fist connected with the table sending his cup and saucer rattling. He raised his arm. Annie stepped back, but not far enough. The back of Ernie’s hand slammed across her face. Annie dropped the teapot. It shattered in a mass of brown clay shards, damp clumps of tea leaves and sticky brown puddles as she reeled into the Belfast sink.

  ‘Hit her again an
d I’ll knock you into the middle of next week.’

  Katie sank down on the step as her brother Martin stepped through the door that connected their basement with the rest of the house.

  ‘You?’ Ernie sneered as Martin moved between him and Annie.

  ‘It’s my fault ...’

  ‘It’s not your fault, Mam, it never is. Jack and I could hear him upstairs. So could Mrs Lannon and we were helping her move furniture on the top floor.’

  ‘I pay the rent. I’ll make as much noise as I like.’

  ‘You can have a brass band playing down here for all I care. But you’re not hitting Mam again. Not while I’m here to stop it.’ Unlike Ernie, Martin was calm, composed and completely in control. Katie had never been so afraid of, or for him. ‘I mean it. Touch Mam again and I’ll hit you harder than you ever hit any of us.’

  ‘You young ...’ Ernie drew back his fist. Martin caught it mid-air as their brother Jack walked in behind him. Gripping his father’s arm, Martin flung Ernie into the only easy chair in the room. Ernie jerked back. The thin cushion proved no protection against the wooden frame. Katie heard her father’s head crack against the top bar. Dazed, he stared up at Martin in disbelief.

  Wiping her eyes on the dishcloth, Annie winced gingerly as she moved from the sink towards the chair.

  ‘He’s all right, just stunned.’ Martin turned away in disgust as his mother hovered over his father.

  ‘Better all round if you’d killed him,’ Jack pronounced acidly.

  ‘Now I’m home from National Service and bringing in a wage, Mam, you and the kids can move out of here. I’ll look after you.’ Martin glared contemptuously at his father. ‘And better than he ever has.’