Swansea Girls

by Catrin Collier

That breast, not your breast. The sergeant’s dismissive tone stung as Helen turned her back and scrambled into her knickers under cover of the blanket.

  ‘No doubt about it, a virgin,’ the doctor murmured but not too low for Helen to hear as the sergeant focused the camera and waited for the flash to charge.

  ‘You surprise me. Sit on the couch and drop the blanket to your waist.’ The sergeant clicked the shutter.

  ‘And apart from the scratch, not a mark on her. Your desk sergeant said something about a boy.’

  ‘He has cuts and bruises. He’s down the corridor.’

  ‘I’ll find it.’ The doctor glanced at Helen as the sergeant took a second photograph. ‘If you were my daughter you wouldn’t sit down for a week. You had a lucky escape tonight, young lady. Go out in a dress like that again and you might not be so fortunate. One of the constables said you come from a respectable family. They won’t be regarded as quite so respectable if they have to visit you in an unmarried mothers’ home.’

  ‘He’s right,’ the sergeant added. ‘Put your coat on. I’ll get your father back in here and then perhaps you’ll finally tell us the truth.’

  Roy paused as he walked behind the reception desk. Following the duty sergeant’s orders, officers were still interviewing Jack Clay to see if he would change his story to bring it more in line with the one telephoned in by Larry Murton Davies’s solicitor. After hearing both, he doubted it was going to happen. ‘Still no sign of Mrs Griffiths?’ he asked the duty constable.

  ‘The patrols have checked out both the addresses you gave us twice, Roy. If you’ve any other suggestions I’ll get the boys to call.’

  ‘When can I take my brother home?’

  Roy looked across to see Martin sitting next to Brian in the public area. ‘When our enquiries are complete, Martin.’

  ‘All he was doing was defending Helen.’

  ‘Doctor’s examining her now. We’ll know more when he’s finished. Why don’t you go home?’

  ‘I’m not going anywhere without Jack.’

  ‘Powell, you’re off duty.’

  ‘No harm in sitting with a friend; besides, I’m a potential witness.’

  Roy decided it wasn’t the time or place to tell the boy he wasn’t doing himself any favours with the brass by sitting with the brother of a suspected felon. Leaving them, he returned to the corridor. The sergeant was showing John into the examination room. Roy caught a glimpse of Helen sitting hunched in her coat. The sergeant closed the door on John and joined Roy.

  ‘I’d appreciate it if you sit in on this one, Constable Williams.’

  ‘I know the family, sir.’

  ‘That’s why I want you in there. Tell me, off the record, what do you think happened?’

  Roy took his time over answering. The sergeant didn’t hurry him; Roy habitually thought out every word before he opened his mouth, which was exactly why so many officers sought his opinion – and advice – but this time Roy knew he was being used to find holes in Murton Davies’s solicitor’s argument.

  ‘Jack Clay’s a wide boy, sir, but I can’t see him going near crache in a dinner jacket, let alone attacking one unless he, or someone he knew, was being threatened.’

  ‘Then you don’t think Clay attacked this girl and Murton Davies came to the rescue?’

  ‘Is that what Murton Davies’s solicitor is saying now?’

  ‘Clay agrees he arranged to meet the girl outside the ballroom. He could have got carried away.’

  Roy shook his head. ‘He didn’t have time to do more than take the drinks outside and jump on Murton Davies. It’s obvious, sir, he was protecting the girl. Besides, a good-looking boy like Clay doesn’t have trouble getting girls to go out with him. And every rapist I’ve come across avoids public places. Jack Clay would know that most youngsters leaving the Pier choose to walk past that cliff face rather than take the steep climb to the top of Limeslade. And the bar in the Pier was already closing as he left. Jack would have realised he had only a few minutes at best before the crowds followed. But it’s my guess Murton Davies doesn’t mix with the kind of youngsters who go down the Pier, so he wouldn’t know any of those things.’

  ‘Did you know it was Murton Davies’s birthday?’

  ‘Someone did mention it, sir.’

  ‘Young lad like that, high-spirited, a few drinks, if the girl led him on ...’

  ‘Everyone’s agreed she was in the ballroom and he wasn’t. So there’s little chance of her leading him on, sir.’

  ‘Unless she did her leading on outside. But when we get down to it, it’s no more than Jack Clay’s and the girl’s word against Murton Davies.’

  ‘Was she raped, sir?’

  ‘She’s a virgin, so you’re right about her not being a professional. The only mark on her is a scratch on her breast, which was more than likely caused by the watch strap.’

  ‘Then we’ve a case against Murton Davies.’

  ‘His solicitor has agreed to drop the assault charge against Clay if we drop all charges against his client.’

  ‘And you’re happy with that, sir?’

  ‘I think it’s best. The one thing Murton Davies and Clay agree on is Clay threw the first punch so it will be as well if Clay and the girl forgo any idea of counter charges.’ He looked at Roy. ‘You’ll persuade them, Williams?’

  ‘And there you have it, Mr Griffiths. The doctor made a thorough examination. Your daughter is a virgin, which rules out the possibility that she was raped. He also confirmed she is unhurt apart from a slight scratch on her breast which was most likely made by the watch strap of the young man she was with.’

  For Helen, the word ‘virgin’ was the final straw after the indignity of the medical examination. She burst into tears again.

  ‘All we are left with is the possibility that your daughter was subjected to an indecent assault.’ The sergeant took a deep breath before facing Helen. ‘Miss Griffiths, were you assaulted tonight?’

  Helen’s sobs grew louder.

  ‘Is that a “yes” or a “no”, Miss Griffiths?’ The sergeant drummed his fingers on the table. ‘As you see, Mr Griffiths, it was your daughter’s inability to answer simple questions coupled with the circumstantial evidence that led me to believe a medical examination necessary.’

  ‘Circumstantial evidence?’ John repeated in bewilderment.

  ‘I wouldn’t have allowed a child of mine to go out in public wearing a dress like that.’

  ‘I didn’t mean to ...’

  ‘What dress, Helen?’

  Roy picked up the torn dress from the examination couch and handed it to John. The ruined bodice flopped down over the skirt.

  Recognising it as part of the warehouse’s new and expensive winter collection, John rose to his feet. ‘You took this from the warehouse? Did you?’ he repeated softly when Helen refused to answer.

  Staring down at the floor, she nodded wretchedly.

  ‘And how did the bodice get torn?’

  ‘That horrible boy attacked me,’ she whimpered, struggling to control herself.

  ‘Who ...? What boy? My God ...’

  Roy motioned John back into the chair. ‘Helen, don’t you think it’s time you told us what happened?’

  ‘That boy attacked me and Jack.’

  ‘Jack Clay!’ John’s face darkened in rage.

  ‘I’m going to be sick.’

  Quicker than the sergeant, Roy picked up the bin and thrust it under Helen’s mouth, just in time.

  ‘So that’s it; you keep me here half the night, then you say I can go?’ Jack’s voice rose precariously as he confronted the sergeant.

  ‘You should thank your lucky stars that Mr Murton Davies isn’t pressing charges. Well-respected family, the Murton Davieses.’

  ‘And mine isn’t?’

  ‘Come on, Jack.’ Martin took his arm. ‘Time to go.’

  ‘He’s right.’ Brian laid his hand on Jack’s shoulder.

  ‘Martin?’ Roy stopped him, as they were
about to walk through the door.

  ‘Now what?’ Jack demanded.

  ‘Jack, please,’ Martin pleaded wearily. ‘Go on with Brian, I’ll catch you up.’

  Roy waited until he and Martin were alone in the passageway. ‘When I dropped Katie off I found your mother in a bit of a state.’

  ‘What kind of a state?’ Martin didn’t know why he was asking. He already knew.

  ‘She said something about your father coming round and her falling against the sink.’

  Martin closed his eyes tightly. ‘I should never have left her.’

  ‘You can’t be with her twenty-four hours a day, boy. Norah has taken her to hospital. Katie was upset by seeing your mother hurt and all this nonsense so I thought it best she spend the night with Lily in our house.’

  ‘I’ll go to the hospital.’

  ‘They won’t let you visit at this time of night. Chances are, they’ll have kept your mother in, but if they haven’t, Norah will have made up a bed for her. Best to leave seeing her until the morning.’

  ‘Thank you, Mr Williams.’

  ‘Go carefully,’ Roy warned as Martin stepped through the door into the chill early-morning air. Martin knew he wasn’t warning him about what he might meet in the street.

  ‘Up to bed, both of you,’ John ordered bleakly as he opened the front door.

  ‘Dad ...’

  ‘Bed, Joe, I’m in no mood for talking this out now.’

  Helen needed no second bidding. Clutching her coat close to her, she ran upstairs. Joe hesitated for a moment, then followed.

  John dropped the brown-paper carrier bag that held the ruined dress and closed the front door. He glanced at his watch. Two o’clock and his wife’s camel-hair coat still wasn’t on its hanger on the hallstand. Somehow it was easier not to question the late hours Esme kept when he could pretend to be asleep in his attic bedroom.

  Unfastening the buttons on his lightweight Burberry, he tossed it over the newel post at the foot of the stairs and limped into the parlour. He winced as he switched on the lights. Esme had recently redecorated ‘contemporary’ style and he loathed it.

  The house had been his grandparents’. He had moved in with them after his parents’ early death and hadn’t realised how much he loved the place until Esme had used the easing of post-war rationing restrictions as an excuse to introduce the latest decor and replace the oversized, solid Victorian furniture with spindle-legged, flimsy fashionable pieces. Perhaps it had been as well that both his grandparents had died before he had married so they hadn’t witnessed his wife’s modernisation of their home.

  Refusing to make any concessions to the age or style of the house, Esme had called in a carpenter to board over the doors. Acid-etched and stained-glass panels had disappeared beneath sheets of hardboard nailed to within an inch of the door edge and framed with beading. The carved banisters on the stairs had suffered a similar fate. Then all the woodwork had been painted to ‘complement’ the new multi-primary colour schemes, although he failed to see how bright orange and red skirting boards complemented anything.

  The parlour, now renamed ‘lounge’, had undergone the most radical change. It had been on the gloomy side with nets, Rexene-upholstered three-piece suite and a massive chenille-covered table, but it had also been a haven of tranquillity. Now, even the iron-framed and tiled grate he had once toasted bread in had been torn out, replaced by a recessed square set a foot above the floor to house an ugly gas fire. The lino was crimson, the nylon carpet square, green and purple intersected by black lines ‘Picasso style’, and the back-aching three-piece suite upholstered in an itchy grey and black nylon tweed that picked at the skin around his fingernails.

  And it wasn’t as though he could sit anywhere other than this newly decorated ‘lounge’. The dining room had suffered the same indignity, the walls painted purple, the furniture replaced by an uncomfortable steel-and-Formica ‘dinette’ suite. Even the old kitchen at the back of the house had lost its range and been transformed into a ‘kitchenette’, ‘ette’ being the new appendage to almost every word that applied to household furnishings.

  Occasionally, when he overheard housewives’ conversations in the warehouse he felt as though the whole world had gone diminutive. The only room on this floor that had retained its original name was the scullery, but it had cost him a small fortune to replace his grandmother’s copper boiler and mangle with the latest washing machine and electric wringer.

  Esme’s and the children’s bedrooms were also ‘contemporary’. Only the three rooms in the attic, one of which he slept in, had escaped Esme’s thirst for change. The basement, at his insistence, held all the old furniture that he had categorically refused to throw out.

  Loosening his bow tie, he went to the cocktail cabinet and pulled down the flap. Lights sparkled on highly polished mirrors, sending infinite rows of gold squiggle decorated glasses into the distance as the tinkle-plonk music-box strains of ‘Stranger in Paradise’ filled the air. Reaching for a bottle of whisky left over from Christmas, he poured himself a stiff measure.

  ‘I didn’t expect to find you up.’ Esme appeared in the doorway, a frothy concoction of feathers and netting perched on her immaculately styled blonde permanent wave, her duster coat open, revealing a narrow brown cocktail frock.

  He closed the door of the cabinet. ‘And I didn’t expect you to be so late.’

  ‘Malcolm organised an end-of-run party. We got talking.’ She shrugged her shoulders in a well-rehearsed gesture. ‘You know how time goes.’

  ‘Malcolm?’

  ‘Our new leading man. I have mentioned him, but you obviously weren’t listening. He recently joined the English department at the training college.’ She stood, waiting.

  Careful to rest his glass on one of the half-dozen Formica coasters chosen to match the carpet, he helped her out of her coat and carried it into the hall.

  ‘Hang it up properly; you didn’t get the shoulder seams straight last time,’ she called after him as she unpinned her hat.

  He hesitated as he returned, staring at her, while he searched for the right words to tell her about Helen and the police station.

  ‘When you’ve finished studying me, I’ll have one of those.’ She pointed to his whisky as she reached for the cigarette box set on a side table.

  ‘I thought you always held your last-night parties at Dot’s.’

  ‘Malcolm’s bought a place in Belgrave Gardens. It’s more comfortable and convenient than Dot’s flat.’ She crossed one elegant, silk-clad leg over the other as he poured her a drink.

  He slammed the cabinet door to silence ‘Stranger in Paradise’. ‘I wish you’d told me where you were going.’

  ‘It was one of those spontaneous things. None of us knew where we’d be until we were there.’

  ‘You could have telephoned.’

  ‘You were in the Mackworth.’

  ‘Only until eleven.’

  ‘Don’t tell me you missed me.’

  ‘I didn’t, the police ...’

  ‘Police ... Joe!’ She dropped her glass, spilling whisky over the sofa. He watched the stain sink in as it spread, hoping it would ruin the upholstery and provide an excuse to have the suite re-covered.

  ‘Joe is fine, and Helen – now.’ He couldn’t resist adding the last word or making it sound like a reproach. ‘Helen was taken to the police station. She was attacked.’

  ‘Attacked!’ Esme dabbed ineffectually at the stain with her handkerchief. ‘My God ...’

  ‘She wasn’t hurt, not seriously, but she was badly shocked. The police doctor examined her. He confirmed she’s still a virgin.’

  ‘You allowed a doctor to examine her intimate ...’

  ‘I had no choice. Helen was hysterical, you were nowhere to be found.’

  ‘You’re blaming me for this?’

  ‘No one’s blaming you for anything, Esme. From what I can gather, a boy attacked Helen outside the Pier Ballroom and tore her dress, another boy came to her res
cue and stopped him but because the boy who attacked her was Larry Murton Davies ...’

  ‘Joe was going to a party at the Murton Davieses’ tonight. Larry’s twenty-first. There’s no way Larry would have been down the Pier,’ she contradicted, finally lighting her cigarette.

  ‘Joe was with him – not when Helen was attacked, of course ...’

  ‘Joe knows about this?’

  ‘He went to the station with Helen. There’s no doubt about it, Esme. The boy Helen was with hit Larry Murton Davies and from all accounts saved her from a lot worse than having her dress torn.’

  ‘What boy?’

  ‘Jack Clay.’

  ‘One of the Clays in the street! The one who went to Borstal! My God, the Murton Davieses will never invite Joe to their house again.’

  ‘Helen was attacked by Larry Murton Davies and all you’re concerned about is whether or not the Murton Davieses invite Joe to their house again? If Joe hasn’t the sense to tell them to go to hell after this, then I’ll do it for him.’

  ‘You said Helen’s fine, she wasn’t hurt ...’

  ‘I said she was shocked. It could have been much worse.’

  ‘But it wasn’t!’ she exclaimed, her voice rising in hysteria. ‘You’ve never grasped that it’s who you know that’s important in this town. Joe had an invitation to a party at the Murton Davieses. He had no need to go down the Pier ...’

  ‘He went there to pick up Helen and her friends.’

  ‘You let him have the car?’

  ‘I wasn’t using it.’

  ‘Joe – the university, his career – this could affect everything I’ve ... he’s worked for. Why on earth did you allow the police to ...’

  It was the first time since their marriage that John had seen his wife flustered. ‘I didn’t allow the police to do anything. I wasn’t even there when Joe and Helen were taken to the station. They sent an officer to the Mackworth to get me.’

  ‘Then it will be all over town tomorrow that Joe and Helen were arrested. You fool,’ she hissed, needing to blame someone.

  ‘Joe wasn’t arrested, he was supporting his sister and it’s Helen you should be concerned about.’

  ‘Helen’s always looking for trouble. And that’s entirely your fault. You spoil her. Where’s Joe?’