Swansea Girls

by Catrin Collier

  ‘She did what she thought was best for herself – and you – at the time. You saw how frightened and worried Helen was tonight. Try to imagine what it’s like for a girl to be alone, abandoned and pregnant.’

  ‘I hope she rots in hell.’

  Exhausted by the intensity of Joe’s anger, John sat back and looked at the man he had regarded as his child since the day he’d been born. He could understand Joe lashing out, wanting to hurt someone – anyone. He had felt like it often enough himself after his parents’ death. But understanding didn’t bring him any closer to knowing how to cope with, or ease, Joe’s pain.

  ‘All those late nights, all that time spent away from the house, she was with other men, wasn’t she?’

  ‘I never asked her.’

  ‘You’re divorcing her for adultery.’

  ‘She’s divorcing me.’

  ‘Now you’re telling me you’ve got another woman,’ Joe sneered.

  ‘I wanted to be free, not to have to think about who your mother was with, or what she was doing. My solicitor arranged a set-up. I was photographed today in a hotel room with a stranger.’

  ‘God, you disgust me.’

  ‘Because I want to divorce your mother and put an empty marriage behind me?’

  ‘Because you put up with her for so long; because you resorted to subterfuge rather than force her to face the truth about herself to get rid of her. You must have known. I was a kid, I had some excuse, but you, all those nights out, her coming home in the early hours ...’

  ‘I was afraid to question her because I thought that I, and you and Helen – no, that’s not fair – just me, couldn’t live without her. Then I suddenly discovered I could and I didn’t want to carry on living a lie any more.’

  ‘And all these years you never thought to tell me that I wasn’t your son.’

  ‘I hoped you’d never find out.’

  ‘Hoped! Haven’t you heard a word I’ve said? I’m another man’s son. That makes me a bastard and you a stupid dupe. I can’t even look at you.’

  ‘Where are you going?’ John called after him as he left the room.

  ‘To see Lily. Perhaps she can help me sort out whether I’m Joseph, Joe or someone who wants nothing to do with either of his so-called parents.’

  ‘Joe, it’s eleven o’clock. She’ll be in bed.’

  ‘Then I’ll wake her.’

  ‘You’ll be back?’

  ‘I don’t bloody well know.’

  ‘For Christ’s sake say something, Lily. Don’t just sit there looking at me as if I’m a worm you want to squash.’

  Tightening the belt on her dressing gown, Lily sat next to Joe. It hadn’t been easy to persuade Mrs Lannon and her uncle to let her talk to him alone at that time of night. She only hoped her uncle was keeping his promise and watching the door to make sure Mrs Lannon didn’t creep back downstairs and try to eavesdrop. ‘What do you want me to say, Joe?’

  ‘That you couldn’t lower yourself to marry a bastard.’

  ‘You’re not and it wouldn’t make any difference to me if you were. No one can hold a child responsible for his parents’ actions.’

  ‘Haven’t you heard a word I’ve said? My father ...’

  ‘That’s just it, isn’t it? Your father! And he is your father. He brought you up, paid for your uniform when you went to grammar school, sent you to university, taught you to drive, and I remember that time Helen caught measles from me. When I went round after I recovered your father was sitting in the living room with both of you on his lap, reading you stories.’

  ‘I don’t understand what you’re getting at.’

  ‘I’m trying to say it’s not who fathered you that’s important, but who brought you up.’

  ‘Rubbish.’

  ‘Perhaps it is,’ Lily murmured, ‘but I happen to believe it and if you came here hoping I’d agree with you, you’re going to be disappointed. You picked the wrong girl, Joe. I have no idea who my father – or mother – was. But I do know if they turned up on the doorstep tomorrow they could never take the place of Uncle Roy or Auntie Norah in my heart. Because my uncle and aunt were always there when I needed someone to take care of me, like when I turned up on Swansea station as a three-year-old with a label on my coat. And again when I was six and terrified of the dark. Auntie Norah sat by my bed, holding my hand until I went to sleep every single night that I can remember for three years. They checked my schoolwork, met my teachers, advised me how to fight my battles, made tea for me and any friends I brought home, encouraged me at least to try whenever I thought I couldn’t tackle something and loved me unconditionally when I made mistakes. Just as your father did you. Now, if that’s all, I think you should go.’

  He rose to his feet.

  ‘You’ll think about what I said, Joe?’

  ‘I’ll think about it after I find out what kind of bastard fathered me and abandoned my mother.’

  ‘Joseph, what a surprise, and so early.’ Esme left the table to kiss him as the housekeeper ushered him into the breakfast room.

  ‘Where’s grandmother?’

  ‘She has breakfast in bed these days. She says a lady of her advanced years shouldn’t put in an appearance before eleven. Have you eaten? If you haven’t I’ll ask Mrs Brannigan to make you something.’

  ‘I’ve eaten.’ He closed the door. ‘I’ve come for information, actually.’ Looking her straight in the eye, he asked, ‘Who is my father?’

  Esme gripped the edge of the table, wrinkling the fine damask cloth. ‘Who told you John wasn’t?’

  ‘Helen.’

  ‘How ...’

  ‘She overheard you and Dad ... John Griffiths talking.’

  ‘I see.’ Esme reached for her cigarettes.

  ‘I think I have a right to know who he is.’

  ‘A right?’ She looked him in the eye. ‘A right to know a secret I’ve kept for over twenty years.’

  ‘When it concerns me, yes. A child should know its parents.’

  ‘Not if the parent isn’t aware he has a child.’

  ‘So you won’t tell me.’

  ‘I can’t. And even if I did it wouldn’t do you any good.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘You’re my son. I brought you up as best I could and you didn’t want for anything. I think that’s reason enough for you to accept the situation and be grateful I didn’t have you adopted.’

  ‘Be grateful that you brought me up by deceiving an innocent man and forcing him to take me on as his child!’

  ‘If I deceived John Griffiths I paid for it with twenty years of marriage and the daughter I bore him.’

  ‘I talked to – Dad – last night.’ Joe hesitated over the word but he was finding it almost impossible to think of John as anything other than his father. ‘He told me he’s prepared to admit adultery to be rid of you. Personally, I think it would simpler all round if he and I just had blood tests.’

  ‘Blood tests can only prove that a child wasn’t fathered by a man.’

  ‘Precisely.’

  ‘Joe, you wouldn’t – not after all these years. You can’t. I won’t let you turn my life into a mockery.’

  ‘It seems to me that you’ve managed to do that very well yourself, Mother.’ Turning on his heel, he opened the door, strode out of the room and the house.

  ‘So what do you want to do, Joe?’ John asked. Joe had turned up in the warehouse at midday, raging and upset, and John had done the most politic thing he could think of, taking him to Swansea’s best and most expensive hotel for lunch in the hope that the privacy of their table would encourage Joe to do some real talking and the public setting discourage him from making a scene.

  ‘I don’t know. If she won’t tell me who my father is ... I just can’t bear the thought of not knowing.’

  John took the bottle of white wine he’d ordered from the ice bucket and replenished both their glasses. ‘Have you thought that he could be dead?’

  ‘You suspect someone?’

&nb
sp; ‘No. I met your mother for the first time a month before we married. She played the part of a love-struck young girl extremely well. Never mentioned anyone else. I admit I’ve occasionally wondered if it could be this or that one of her family friends, but it was only wondering. I never discovered any evidence and your grandmother was very fond of telling me I was Esme’s first and only boyfriend.’

  ‘You really don’t know.’ After confronting Esme, Joe knew she would never tell him the truth and he felt his last hope slipping from his grasp.

  ‘I really don’t know,’ John echoed. ‘What did Lily say when you told her about it last night?’

  ‘That your birth parents don’t matter as much as the people who brought you up.’

  ‘Sensible girl, Lily. You’ve done well for yourself there.’

  ‘Better than I deserve.’

  ‘I wouldn’t say that; a father always wants the best for his son and I was hoping you’d still think of me that way.’

  ‘To be honest, I’m finding it difficult to think of you as anything else. Just don’t ask me to forgive my mother.’

  ‘As I said yesterday ...’

  ‘She did what she thought was best. But I’ll never believe she was thinking of anyone other than herself. She certainly wasn’t thinking of you – or how I’d feel when I discovered I was another man’s son.’

  ‘Your boyfriend’s waiting for you,’ Isabel muttered sotto voce to Helen as she passed her desk. ‘Do you think you could ask him to stand somewhere less conspicuous in future. If Mr Thomas should see him ...’

  ‘I’ll see to it.’ Helen cut Isabel short as she closed her desk drawer and went to the coat-stand. She didn’t need Isabel to elaborate. A labourer dressed in the filthy jeans and ripped sweater that was almost a uniform on the building sites in and around Swansea was not a sight Richard Thomas would want near Thomas and Butler. And neither was Jack. Even clean and tidy, dressed in his best suit, he was not the sort of young man Thomas and Butler would wish their office juniors to associate with.

  ‘Hi, Jack.’ Helen walked out of the front door and gave him an enormous hug and kiss in full view of the office window.

  ‘Some greeting, I take it you’ve missed me.’

  ‘I’ve been told to ask you to stand somewhere less conspicuous when you pick me up in future, as the sight of a labourer offends the sensibilities of the refined Thomas and Butler staff, but I’ve decided to hell with Thomas and Butler, and their job.’

  ‘You’re leaving?’ he asked warily.

  ‘I’m not going back there to be told where my boyfriend can and can’t stand.’

  ‘You’ve been sacked?’

  ‘Threatened with it in two weeks if I don’t change my ways. It’s a foregone conclusion.’

  ‘So what do you do now?’

  ‘We’re getting married ...’

  ‘Not for a week or two and you’ll still work ...’

  ‘How can I? I’ll have the flat to look after. What difference does it make if I stop work now or a couple of weeks from now?’

  ‘I’d say at least twenty quid if you carry on until you start showing. And that will buy a lot of nappies.’

  ‘My father has all the nappies we need in his warehouse.’

  ‘I won’t have you running to him for every little thing after we’re married, Helen.’

  ‘You won’t! And who are you to tell me what I can ask my own father for, Jack Clay?’

  ‘Your soon-to-be-husband.’

  ‘Talk to me like that again and you won’t be anything of the sort.’

  ‘If we’re going to make it on our own ...’

  ‘Why should we struggle when my father can help us?’

  ‘Because you’ll be my wife and that makes you my responsibility, not your father’s. Didn’t you hear what he said to us last night? We made the mess, it’s up to us to sort it out.’

  ‘And I thought you’d care enough about me to want me to stay home and rest until the baby’s born.’

  ‘Rest where, Helen? Your father wants to put a proper kitchen and bathroom into the basement. Even if everything goes to plan that’s going to take weeks and you’d be better off spending your days in a clean office until it’s finished.’

  ‘You don’t expect us to move in until it’s ready, do you?’

  ‘Where else?’

  ‘When my father has all those rooms ...’

  ‘Your father’s rooms, not ours.’

  ‘And in the meantime, you expect me to work.’

  ‘For pity’s sake, you’re pregnant, not incapacitated.’

  ‘You want me to make an exhibition of myself ...’

  ‘What exhibition? You won’t be showing for a couple of months, and in the meantime we can do with all the money we can lay our hands on to furnish the flat and buy the things we’ll need for the baby.’

  ‘My God, I can’t believe I’m hearing this!’

  ‘It’s not as if I’m suggesting you go down a coal mine, Helen. And it is only for the next couple of months. I wouldn’t expect you to carry on working when the baby’s born.’

  ‘That’s big of you.’ Turning, she stalked off up the hill.

  ‘Helen ... Helen ...’ He ran after her. ‘What’s got into you?’ he panted as he caught up with her.

  ‘You, Jack Clay. Expecting me to work in my condition.’

  ‘Your father was right, he has spoiled you.’

  ‘How dare you ...’

  ‘I dare because it’s the truth. And if we’re going to make a go of it ...’

  ‘Forget it, Jack. I wouldn’t marry you now if you were the last man on earth.’

  ‘So you’re going to run back to Daddy, is that it?’

  ‘It’s none of your business where I go.’

  ‘Go ahead, then,’ he taunted as she began to walk away. ‘But you can’t ignore what’s coming, and when you see sense I’ll be waiting.’

  ‘You’ll wait a long time if you expect me to come back to you after what you’ve just said, Jack Clay,’ she called over her shoulder.

  ‘And what have I said that’s so dreadful? That I expect you to pull your weight when we’re married?’

  ‘When I’m pregnant,’ she corrected.

  ‘For God’s sake, Helen, you can’t afford to be childish now we’ve a baby to consider.’

  ‘I’ve just told you. You have nothing to consider, Jack Clay. And if you think I’ll marry you or let you have anything to do with the baby after what you’ve just said, you have another think coming.’ Keeping her back firmly turned to him, she quickened her pace.

  Chapter Twenty-four

  ‘Helen, Joe, anyone in?’ John walked from the deserted lounge through the dining room into the kitchen.

  Helen was sitting alone on the window seat, apparently reading a novel. He might have been more convinced if it hadn’t been upside down.

  ‘You’re late, Dad.’

  ‘A few problems with deliveries,’ he hedged evasively, making a note to watch his timekeeping until she married Jack. ‘Joe not in?’

  ‘Playing engagement parties with Lily.’

  ‘Talking of which, have you and Jack fixed a date for your wedding? I think it will have to be Register Office ...’

  ‘I’m not marrying Jack.’

  ‘Oh?’ He lifted the lid on a pot of stew that Mrs Jones had left on the stove. It didn’t look as though it had been touched. Setting a match to the gas beneath it, he opened the cupboard and lifted down two soup bowls. ‘I take it you haven’t eaten.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Shall we sit in here or the dining room?’

  ‘Wherever you like,’ she snapped in a brittle tone.

  ‘In that case let’s make it here.’ Laying the bowls on the table, he opened the cutlery drawer.

  ‘Aren’t you going to ask what happened?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Don’t you care?’

  ‘Of course I care, Helen, I just assumed you had made other plans for yourself and the b
aby.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I see.’ He stirred the stew with a wooden spoon before reaching for the bread bin.

  ‘Jack expects me to work until the baby is born.’

  ‘Until the day before it’s born?’

  ‘Until I begin to show.’

  ‘He’s probably thinking of the money. You could do with all you can get.’

  ‘That’s what he said.’

  ‘He’s right.’

  ‘You won’t help us?’

  ‘I’m helping you by employing Jack and converting the basement.’

  ‘I see.’ Tight-lipped, she left the seat.

  ‘You can’t run away from this one, Helen.’

  ‘So I have to marry Jack no matter what. Is that what you’re saying?’

  ‘No. You have other choices.’

  ‘An unmarried mothers’ home and adoption,’ she scoffed.

  ‘That’s one.’

  ‘You’d see your own grandchild put up for adoption?’

  ‘He or she might get a more mature mother that way.’ He was aware that she’d been about to slam the door. He’d even braced himself for the bang.

  But instead she continued to stand and look at him. ‘I’m behaving like a spoiled brat, aren’t I?’

  ‘You said it, not me, love. Think about what you want. If you’re not sure marrying Jack is the right thing to do, then don’t. There’s nothing quite so heartbreaking or messy as divorce, especially when there’s a baby involved.’

  Joy Hunt walked past Roy’s front door twice, before plucking up enough courage to ring the bell.

  ‘Mrs Hunt, how nice of you to call. Please come in.’ Lily ushered her through the hall into the parlour where she and Joe were sitting.

  ‘I came to see if I could help with the buffet on Saturday night,’ Joy prevaricated.

  ‘Thank you, but I think we have everything under control.’

  ‘Mrs Hunt, I thought I heard your voice.’ Roy stood in the doorway in his uniform.

  ‘Constable Williams.’ Joy knotted and unknotted the handkerchief she was holding.

  ‘I was just off to the station. Can I walk you home?’

  ‘Yes, thank you,’ she stammered.

  Joe winked at Lily as Joy left the room. ‘There’s something going on there.’

  ‘Sh.’ Lily waited until the front door closed behind them. ‘It’s been going on for years. Auntie Norah said she’d given up waiting for an announcement. But perhaps now we’re getting married and Judy’s going off to London they’ll finally get together.’