Swansea Girls

by Catrin Collier

  ‘The right man will change your mind.’

  ‘I’ll never change my mind. Do you ever wonder what it would be like to sleep with a man in the same bed? To allow him to do all the disgusting things men want to do with women to you. Just the thought of taking all my clothes off in front of a man makes me feel sick without trying to imagine him actually touching me.’

  Remembering the severity of Katie’s mother’s injuries and her aunt’s damning observations on the way Ernie Clay treated his wife, Lily thought carefully for a moment before speaking. ‘Auntie Norah told me it can be wonderful when you love the man and he loves you. She said living with the right person, knowing you’re not alone and won’t be ever again, is like nothing else in life. And although her husband was killed in the war she still feels he’s with her. That’s why she’s never wanted to get married again.’

  ‘So you do want to sleep with Joe.’

  ‘Katie, I was talking about Auntie Norah and her husband, not Joe and me.’

  ‘But you must think something of him to have gone out with him tonight, and when he kissed you, didn’t you wonder what it would be like to sleep with him?’

  ‘No, I did not.’

  ‘Then you’ve never thought about sleeping with a man?’

  ‘Only in general, after Auntie Norah told me the facts of life. I certainly haven’t thought about it with Joe.’ Lily crossed her fingers, hoping Katie couldn’t tell she was lying.

  ‘So you’re not in love with Joe.’

  ‘After only one date?’

  ‘Some people say they only had to look into someone’s eyes once to know they’d met the one person they wanted to spend the rest of their life with.’

  ‘No doubt across a crowded room. You’ve been reading too many Woman’s Weekly romances.’

  ‘If you don’t feel that way about Joe, then why go out with him?’

  ‘Because he’s the first and only boy who has asked me and I like him.’

  ‘Like, not love, so if someone better-looking comes along you’ll drop him and go out with them.’

  ‘The minute Gregory Peck knocks on the door.’

  Katie started to laugh. ‘Can you imagine it, “Sorry, Joe, can’t go to the pictures with you tonight, Mr Peck’s called in his Rolls-Royce to take me to the Savoy.”’

  ‘Shh,’ Lily hissed although she was laughing as much as Katie. ‘We’d better go to sleep before Auntie Norah shouts at us for keeping her awake.’

  They both closed their eyes. Katie’s breathing soon fell soft and quiet but no matter how hard Lily tried to relax, sleep eluded her. She raked over every single detail of her evening with Joe. His eagerness to please – she suspected that if she’d asked him to buy her the whole range of cakes on offer in the Kardomah he would have. Then there was the odd way he had looked at her in the cinema. He had thought her engrossed in the film but she hadn’t been too engrossed to watch him. And afterwards in the café he had been keen enough to press her to go out with him again – but he’d also admitted he’d been out with other girls.

  Where were they now? Where she would be a week or two from now – a memory for Joe to smile over when he took out his next date or the one after that? One evening didn’t give her any rights over him, so why did the thought of him with other girls, especially kissing them, hurt so much?

  ‘Want to go to the pictures?’ Martin asked Jack as they left the hospital after visiting their mother.

  ‘I have skiffle group practice.’ Jack checked his watch. ‘But I’ve time for a quick pint.’

  ‘All right, one pint, but you’re buying.’

  ‘Why not you?’

  Still arguing, they crossed the road and walked down the street towards the Bay View, an old Victorian pub that overlooked the town end of the beach.

  ‘Mam looked rotten,’ Jack said flatly as he carried the beers over to the table Martin had commandeered.

  ‘Hardly surprising, considering what she’s been through.’ Martin tried to sound casual as he sipped the froth off his pint, but he had been as shaken by his mother’s appearance as Jack. And it wasn’t just her injuries – although they were worse than even he’d imagined – it was the distant, detached way she’d greeted them, barely opening her eyes, too weary to talk – almost to breathe – as though life itself was too much for her. ‘I could kill the old man,’ he burst out suddenly and savagely.

  ‘She wouldn’t thank you for it. I don’t think she even listened when we tried to persuade her to move in with us when she leaves the hospital.’

  ‘Mrs Evans and Katie may have better luck. That’s why I gave you the nod to leave early. Mrs Evans seems pretty determined to get her to move in with her for a couple of weeks’ convalescence.’

  ‘Do you think for one minute that Mam will listen to her?’

  ‘There’s no good brooding about it until she’s ready to come out. And you heard the doctor. It won’t be for weeks yet. Have you seen the old man?’

  ‘No. Why?’

  Martin eyed Jack over the top of his glass. ‘Because I wouldn’t put it past you to have a go at him.’

  ‘As I just said, what would be the point when Mam sticks up for him no matter what he does to her? Although, now I think about it, it’s surprising he hasn’t been round to try to get one of us back. He never could bear to clean up after himself.’

  ‘He wouldn’t dare knock on the door to Roy Williams’ house.’

  ‘He’s not scared of Constable Williams or anyone else when he’s drunk. When he’s sober is another matter. Then he snivels like the coward he is. Marty, would you give up the flat and move back home if Mam does insist on living with him again?’

  ‘No, and as I’ve said, I’d lock her up if she tried.’

  ‘You couldn’t do that.’

  ‘I’ll not allow her to take Katie. The girl’s a bag of nerves. Move her back in with Dad and she’ll have a breakdown.’

  ‘It’s a bloody mess all round, isn’t it. Another pint?’

  ‘I thought you said you only had time for one.’

  Jack glanced at his watch. ‘I can squeeze in another if you twist my arm.’

  ‘Consider it twisted. My shout, I think.’

  ‘Pass the salt.’ Esme’s request was snapped out in a staccato that announced she had neither forgiven her husband for telling her she was free to leave, nor her son for taking Lily out.

  As Helen picked up the cruet set and handed it to her mother she checked the time on the new orange and purple dining-room clock. Ten minutes past seven – only one minute had passed since she had last looked. She was having trouble concealing her impatience. What if her mother decided to spend an evening home for once? Her father and Joe wouldn’t think to look in on her if she spent the entire evening in the basement but her mother was bound to come poking and prying, especially if she suspected she was enjoying herself. And Jack had agreed to come round at ten. Only this time he was going to jump the wall and walk to the back door to lessen the risk of anyone seeing them together.

  ‘You’re dressed up to sit around the house, Helen,’ Esme reproved suspiciously.

  ‘I had a bath and changed earlier. I was filthy after cleaning out the other two rooms in the basement.’

  ‘As no one ever goes in the basement I can’t see why you bothered, or why you had to put on that pale-blue shirtwaister. It shows every mark.’

  ‘It will wash.’

  ‘Mrs Jones has more important things to do than your unnecessary washing and ironing.’

  Hoping for support, Helen looked at her father. He was staring down at his plate, poking at his ham salad in a desultory fashion, apparently oblivious to her presence and the conversation.

  ‘I’m going mad, locked in this house. I wanted to do something useful. Nothing wrong with that, is there?’ Helen tilted her chin upwards.

  ‘There’s plenty, young lady, if you think what your antics led to last Saturday night.’

  Crumpling her napkin into a ball, Helen threw i
t on to her plate and knocked over her chair as she ran out of the room.

  ‘Playing happy families is getting to be a habit around here.’ Joe pushed his plate aside and lifted Helen’s chair upright.

  ‘Where are you going?’ Esme asked as he headed for the door.

  ‘Robin’s. We’ve arranged to study.’

  ‘Take the Rover.’ Fishing the keys from his pocket, John tossed them over.

  ‘Thanks, Dad.’ Striding into the hall, Joe grabbed his coat.

  Esme gazed in disgust at her children’s plates. ‘I don’t know why I bother.’

  ‘You don’t.’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’ She looked carefully at John.

  ‘Mrs Jones does.’

  ‘I do the shopping, I make all the arrangements ... I ...’

  ‘I’ll clear up, Esme.’ He left the table. ‘We can’t have you being late for the auditions, now can we?’

  The sharp retort on the tip of Esme’s tongue remained unspoken. ‘And you?’

  ‘Kind of you to ask. I expect I’ll find something to amuse myself with as I have done every evening for the last twenty years.’

  ‘If you object so much to my involvement with the theatre, why haven’t you said anything before?’

  ‘Would it have made any difference if I had?’ He looked up from the table and into her eyes.

  ‘Of course it would have. You’re my husband ...’

  ‘Am I?’ As he continued to watch her he realised he felt nothing for her, nothing at all. Whatever there had been between them, even if it had been only one-sided, had disappeared, leaving indifference in its wake.

  ‘What kind of talk is that?’ She was conscious that she was talking too quickly and loudly to conceal the fear that he would ask her for a divorce, a social stigma guaranteed to make any woman an outcast, even one as indispensable as she believed herself to be to the Little Theatre. Divorcees were regarded as ‘fast’ by respectably married women and easy game by men who would never dare make a pass at someone’s else’s wife – in public.

  ‘We’ve never done things together in the way most husbands and wives have.’

  Suspecting that he was referring to their separate bedrooms as much as their independent social lives, she chose to ignore the inference. ‘We have the children ...’

  ‘They’re grown-up, Esme.’

  ‘Helen ...’

  ‘Is no longer a child, no matter how hard you try to keep her one.’

  ‘Me! Saturday night ...’

  ‘She made a mistake she might not have made if you’d taken the trouble to talk to her about the kind of things most mothers discuss with their daughters. Boys, clothes, make-up...’

  ‘She’s impossible. I try to guide ...’

  ‘You shout, not guide, Esme. Have you talked to her about Saturday?’ he pressed. ‘I mean really talk, not lecture, laying down even more rules and punishments.’

  ‘You think she should be allowed out to make a spectacle of herself again?’

  ‘I think the surest way to get Helen to repeat her mistakes is to lock her up and force her to go sneaking behind our backs.’

  ‘I’ll not allow her out of this house ...’

  ‘Then I will. Keeping her from her friends will only make her all the more determined to defy us.’

  ‘We should discuss this.’ She glanced at the clock.

  ‘But not now, you’ll keep people waiting and more important people than your own daughter,’ he mocked.

  ‘The auditions tonight are for the next production. If you want me to stay home I’ll ask the committee to find another director for the play. I’ll spend more time with you and Helen...’

  ‘And play the martyr. No thank you.’

  ‘I’m trying to do what you want.’

  ‘That’s just the problem, Esme,’ he said wearily, lifting the tray on to the table. ‘After twenty years of marriage there is absolutely nothing that I want to do with you.’

  Helen crouched on the landing, her face pressed against the boarded-in banisters, listening hard. She’d heard her father offer Joe the car keys and caught a glimpse of the top of her brother’s head as he left the house, but since then everything had been quiet. She’d caught a few distant murmurs of conversation, but they’d been too faint for her to make out the words. Suddenly the ringing click of her mother’s stiletto heels resounded across the lino in the hall. Shrinking back, she darted into her bedroom and closed the door just as her mother ran upstairs and into the bathroom. A few minutes later Esme returned downstairs and Helen crept out of her room again.

  The bathroom door was open, the air redolent with Chanel No. 5, her mother’s favourite perfume. The clatter of dishes downstairs suggested her father was clearing the table. Her mother never lifted a finger once she was dressed to go out. A rustle of fine wool cloth lined with silk came from the hall as Esme removed her camel-hair coat from the stand. Not daring to look lest she be seen, Helen counted off the seconds, imagining her mother adjusting her coat, setting her hat on the back of her head, pinning it into place. Reaching for her three-quarter-length brown leather gloves, checking there were no wrinkles round her fingers and, the final touch, tying her brown silk scarf round her throat ... Before she had finished picturing everything the front door opened and closed.

  Heaving a sigh of relief, Helen charged downstairs and into her father who was taking his own coat from the stand.

  ‘I’m going to the pub. Finish up in the kitchen for me, Helen.’

  He didn’t even wait for her to reply before following her mother out of the door.

  Helen cleared the dining room and kitchen in record time, scraping the leftover ham salad and chips into the pig-swill bin, washing and drying the plates with more abandon and less care than her mother would have approved of, wiping the smears she had missed with the tea cloth. Slinging the stained tea cloth into the linen bin in the scullery, she untied her apron and hung it on the back of the door. It wasn’t even eight o’clock. She had plenty of time to steal some of her mother’s Chanel and redo her make-up and hair. She hesitated as she walked past the door to the lounge. Sneaking in, she opened the cocktail cabinet, starting at the sound of ‘Strangers in Paradise’. She closed the door quickly before realising there was no one besides herself in the house to hear it.

  Opening it again she studied the contents: half-empty bottles of whisky and sherry that would certainly be missed, a full bottle of gin and at the back a second untouched bottle, probably Christmas gifts from warehouse suppliers who weren’t aware that neither of her parents drank gin. She had enough money saved in her room to replace one. She could persuade Joe – no, not Joe – Jack, who had made it clear on Saturday that he was accustomed to going into off-licences and pubs, to buy another. Taking the bottle, she closed the cabinet and ran downstairs.

  Chapter Fourteen

  ‘Katie, Lily?’

  ‘Isn’t that Adam Jordan calling you?’ Norah asked as they left the hospital.

  Lily looked across the road and saw Adam running to meet them.

  ‘Martin, Brian and I were just going into Joe’s Ice Cream Parlour,’ he panted, lying through his teeth. He had bumped into Martin and Brian in the Bay View and they had been on their way to the White Rose with thoughts of beer, not ice cream, on their minds. ‘Would you like to join us? My treat. You too, Mrs Evans,’ he added hesitantly.

  ‘I’m a bit old for ice cream in the evening, thank you all the same, Adam, but I’m sure the girls would like one.’ Norah sniffed the air in front of him. ‘You haven’t been drinking by any chance, have you?’ she enquired sternly.

  ‘Only half a pint, Mrs Evans. After work.’

  ‘You sure?’

  ‘Absolutely, Mrs Evans.’

  ‘In that case the girls can go with you.’ Norah gave him a look that told him she didn’t believe a word he’d said. ‘I was going to call in on Mrs Lannon anyway, Lily,’ Norah reminded, pre-empting any protest. ‘She wanted to be measured for a skirt.’
>
  ‘If you really don’t mind walking back on your own, Auntie.’

  ‘I’d welcome the peace.’ Norah glanced at Katie who was close to tears. Annie hadn’t been well enough to say more than a few words. The doctor had taken them aside and warned them her injuries weren’t healing as fast as he would have liked, which had upset Katie as much as seeing her mother vacant-eyed and withdrawn. Norah suspected Annie’s problems were as much psychological as physical. In Annie’s position she wouldn’t be in a hurry to leave the caring environment of the hospital and three square meals a day for the uncertainties of life with Ernie.

  ‘We’ll see the girls get back safely, Mrs Evans,’ Adam promised.

  ‘Before half past ten,’ Norah cautioned. ‘They both have work tomorrow.’

  ‘Knickerbocker glories all round?’ Adam suggested, hoping to impress Katie with his generosity, as they crossed the road to where Martin and Brian stood waiting.

  ‘A small strawberry ice cream would be about all I could manage,’ Lily demurred. ‘Auntie Norah’s teas don’t leave room for much supper.’

  ‘Katie?’

  ‘The same please.’

  ‘Marty?’

  ‘Just coffee, thanks.’ Martin’s stomach was revolting at the thought of ice cream after all the beer he’d drunk. He’d meant to go home after Jack had left the Bay View but he’d run into Brian who persuaded him to have ‘just one more’ that had somehow become another two. He wasn’t exactly drunk but he was also aware that he wasn’t exactly sober either.

  ‘Same for me too, please, Adam,’ Brian called after him as they walked into Joe’s, ‘Judy not with you?’ he asked as they sat down, although it was patently obvious she wasn’t.

  ‘It’s her night for evening class.’

  ‘So, where have you girls been?’

  ‘Visiting Katie’s mam in hospital.’ Lily saw Martin pale and changed the subject. ‘So are you going to see Jack play on Saturday in St James’s?’

  ‘Jack’s in a play?’ Martin queried as Adam laid a tray of coffees and ice cream on their table.

  ‘His skiffle group are playing in the Youth Club dance. Hasn’t he said?’ Adam handed the girls their ice creams.