Beggars and Choosers

by Catrin Collier

  ‘You say that before every party, Mari, but there are far prettier girls than me in Pontypridd.’ Sali studied her reflection critically in the mirror. She held no illusions about her appearance, but she was not displeased with what she saw. A slender young girl of middle height with an abundance of rich, chestnut hair pinned in an elaborate style, a small, neat nose, large grey-green eyes and a determined chin. She smiled and a dimple appeared at the corner of her mouth.

  ‘Gloves,’ Llinos reminded, handing Mari a pair of cream satin, elbow-length evening gloves.

  Sali held out her arms and Mari rolled them over her fingers, wrists and arms.

  ‘Jewels.’ Llinos opened the white satin-lined case and picked out the heirloom sapphire and diamond hairpin, bracelets, necklace and ring that had belonged to their grandmother.

  ‘Miss Harriet’s maid told me that Miss Harriet wears six hairpieces to pad out her evening hairstyles. I told her straight, my Miss Sali’s hair is that thick and long, she doesn’t need to wear a single one.’ Mari pinned the diamond hairpin to the side of the elaborate bouffant hairstyle she had taken over an hour to create. ‘Look at that, perfect.’

  ‘You don’t think it’s too elaborate for a family ball?’ Sali asked anxiously, turning her head.

  ‘Not for tonight.’ Mari fastened the twin bracelets over Sali’s gloved wrists, fastened the necklace around her throat and slipped on the ring.

  ‘Scent?’ Llinos unscrewed the silver cap of the blue and silver glass bottle that held Sali’s favourite essence of violets.

  ‘What would I do without you, muffin?’ Sali took the bottle.

  ‘Let me, or you’ll stain your gloves, or even worse your dress.’ Mari intercepted the bottle, removed the rubber stopper and upended the bottle on her forefinger. Dabbing carefully she applied scent to the back of Sali’s neck, behind her ears and sprinkled a few drops on her hair. ‘Where’s your hanky? We can risk staining that.’

  Sali handed over a scrap of silk and lace.

  Mari placed a dab, then screwed the cap back on the bottle and set it on the dressing table.

  ‘Grandma’s fan.’ Llinos flicked it together and Sali smiled as she took it.

  ‘Well, you’re as ready as I can make you. And if I do say it myself, you won’t disgrace your father when you stand next to him in the receiving line,’ Mari announced.

  ‘I don’t see why I can’t stand in the line,’ Llinos grumbled. ‘Geraint is, and he’s only four years older than me.’

  ‘And when you’re four years older, Miss Llinos, you’ll be able to stand in the line too,’ Mari said ruthlessly in an attempt to stamp out Llinos’s envy before it became any more apparent.

  ‘And by then I’ll be an old withered spinster.’ Sali hooked up her train and tried a twirling dance step.

  ‘That, I doubt,’ Mari countered.

  ‘Here’s your card.’ Llinos glanced at it before giving it to Sali. ‘Aren’t you terrified that no one will ask you to dance? If I have a single line left free at my first ball, I’ll die of shame.’

  ‘Then it’s just as well that you’re not going to the ball, Miss Llinos, because no girl is engaged for every single dance at a ball. Except perhaps your sister tonight,’ Mari amended. ‘Looking the way she does I wouldn’t be surprised to see the men queuing up as soon as they come through the door.’

  ‘That’s nonsense, Mari, and you know it.’

  ‘I know no such thing.’ Mari combed the hair from Sali’s brush, curled it round her finger and placed it in the hair tidy. ‘Right, now you’re finished, I’ll go along and see if I can help Alice with your mother.’

  ‘Do you think you’ll be able to persuade her to come downstairs?’ Sali asked.

  ‘I’ll do my best.’ Mari pursed her lips disapprovingly. Gwyneth Watkin Jones’s ‘delicacy’ was famed from one end of Pontypridd to the other and the ‘good days’ since the birth of her youngest son Gareth ten years before, had been marked by the occasions when she had relinquished the day bed in her boudoir, for the drawing-room sofa. ‘You run along, Miss Sali, you don’t want to be too late to greet your father’s guests.’

  ‘It’s horrible being the youngest. I’ll never be old enough to go to balls,’ Llinos muttered petulantly.

  ‘You can watch from the landing,’ Mari consoled.

  ‘It’s not the same.’ Llinos crossed her arms and glared at the housekeeper.

  ‘It’s no good looking at me like that, Miss Llinos. Everyone would quite rightly look sideways at your father if he allowed you to go gadding around downstairs tonight at your age. But if you go along to the nursery, I think you’ll find an early present for you and one for Master Gareth on the table, along with some cakes and Christmas biscuits.’

  Llinos frowned. ‘What’s the present?’

  ‘I’m not saying anything,’ Mari answered mysteriously.

  ‘Please, Mari,’ Llinos pleaded.

  ‘Now, let me see.’ Mari stared at the ceiling. ‘Didn’t someone say something about wanting a puppet theatre...’

  Llinos shrieked, jumped off the bed and darted out of the room.

  ‘Your father spoils her and Gareth something awful.’ Mari picked up the sheet she had laid on the floor to save the skirt of Sali’s dress from dust, folded it and put it away in the bottom of the wardrobe.

  ‘No more than he spoils Geraint and me.’ Sali checked her reflection one last time.

  ‘The difference being, you’re so sweet-natured you deserve it.’

  ‘I was just as difficult and awkward as Llinos at her age.’

  ‘No, you weren’t.’ Mari watched as Sali went to the door. ‘If you didn’t look so perfect I’d risk hugging you.’

  ‘I’ll give you a thank-you hug for making me look like this later.’ Sali walked on to the landing in time to hear the first knock on the door.

  ‘I know we’re early, Harry, but I couldn’t contain Mansel a moment longer. He’s been like a jack-in-the-box that’s outgrown the box since he came home from the store.’

  Edyth James waited until Harry Watkin Jones’s butler, Tomas, removed her fur evening cape before offering her cheek to her nephew.

  ‘Thank you for coming so early, Aunt Edyth.’ Harry watched Sali walk sedately down the staircase. ‘You look very beautiful,’ he complimented.

  ‘The dress is beautiful,’ Sali corrected. ‘Thank you for buying it for me.’

  ‘Thank your aunt, she was the one who suggested it as an early Christmas present.’

  ‘In that case, thank you, Aunt Edyth. You have exquisite taste.’ Sali kissed Edyth and held out her hand to Mansel.

  ‘Steady,’ Harry warned, as Geraint charged down the stairs at speed, fastening his gold cufflinks.

  ‘Am I late?’

  ‘No more than usual, Geraint.’ Mansel shook Harry’s hand.

  ‘Harry, Mrs James, Mr James, children.’ A tall, gaunt, dark-haired, sallow-faced man entered the house, removed his overcoat and handed it to Tomos.

  ‘Morgan,’ Harry greeted his wife’s brother. ‘Thank you for accepting my invitation.’

  ‘I won’t stay long, Harry. It isn’t done for a minister to be seen on such frivolous occasions, but I called out of respect for Gwyneth.’

  ‘She will be downstairs shortly.’

  ‘Then she is well?’

  ‘I believe so,’ Harry replied tersely. He disliked his brother-in-law intensely, not least because he felt that he encouraged his wife in her fanciful notions of ill-health.

  ‘Sherry, sir, madam?’ Robert, the footman held out a tray.

  ‘As you well know from my previous visits to this house, I never indulge in strong drink,’ Morgan replied curtly.

  ‘Thank you, Robert.’ Edyth took a glass.

  ‘Thank you,’ Mansel took a second.

  ‘Why don’t you three bright young things go and tell the orchestra what to play while Harry and I receive the guests?’ Edyth suggested.

  Harry hesitated for the briefest of moment
s. ‘Go ahead, Sali.’ He knew exactly what Edyth was trying to engineer and hoped that she wasn’t reading too much into a relationship he had been monitoring since Sali’s eighteenth birthday.

  ‘You can’t take them all,’ Sali protested, as Mansel James pulled her into a corner of the deserted library and proceeded to write his name against every single dance on her card.

  ‘Who says I can’t?’ His blue eyes twinkled with mischief and he continued to scrawl his signature.

  ‘There are other boys –’

  ‘Are there?’ He stood in front of her, effectively imprisoning her in the corner.

  ‘I was going to add “who are coming to the ball”.’

  ‘How can someone who looks so lovely be so hard-hearted?’

  ‘I am not,’ she asserted.

  ‘No?’ he questioned with mock gravity. ‘You refuse me your dances after stealing my heart in the summer. You disappear back to college in September for nearly three months leaving me in purgatory ...’

  ‘That I don’t believe. I heard you took Harriet Hopkins to the Market Company ball.’

  ‘Only because Aunt Edyth insisted I couldn’t go without a partner. And I only danced one dance with her. I didn’t hold hands. Not once. Or,’ he lifted his eyebrows, ‘try to kiss her.’

  ‘You promised you wouldn’t say that word again. Not after what you did last summer.’

  ‘You said you were going to forget about it.’

  Sali’s fingers wandered to her lips. She could no more forget the first kiss Mansel had given her – the first she had ever received – than she could forget her own name. But before she had time to recall all the emotions he had evoked, he bent his head to hers and kissed her again. A soft, gentle, warm kiss that made her spine tingle and tinged the room with a soft, pink haze.

  ‘Marry me?’

  She stared up at him.

  ‘Tradition demands that you give me an answer, not gaze at me open-mouthed.’ He gripped her hands in his. ‘Please say yes. There is an alternative, but I’d prefer not to think about it.’

  ‘Mansel ...’

  ‘You don’t love me?’

  ‘You know I do.’

  ‘Then I can speak to your father?’

  ‘Yes. Please.’

  ‘Remember your dance card is full.’ He kissed her again, and then he was gone.

  ‘Sali, where have you been?’ Harriet Hopkins accosted her as soon as she walked into the large drawing room that her father had ordered to be cleared of furniture to make room for dancing.

  ‘Checking the supper buffet arrangements with the housekeeper,’ Sali prevaricated, glancing around the room. Neither her father nor Mansel were there and, although she knew that they could be in the library watching the card players, or in the small drawing room drinking tea with her mother and the ‘ladies’, she sensed they were closeted in his study. It was desperately unfair. Her whole life depended on the outcome of their interview and she wasn’t even allowed to be present.

  The orchestra struck the final chords of a waltz and the dancers applauded politely before moving off the floor.

  ‘... If he’s half as dangerous as they say, I’m surprised your father invited him into his house.’

  ‘Who is dangerous?’ Sali asked Harriet in confusion.

  ‘That man?’ Harriet nodded towards a tall dark man who was talking to a middle-aged matron on the other side of the room.

  ‘Mr Evans, my father’s deputy manager in the colliery?’ Sali said, surprised. ‘Why on earth should he be dangerous?’

  ‘My father says he’s working-class, has extreme political views and shouldn’t be allowed in polite society. Oh, quick, he’s coming this way, pretend we haven’t seen him.’ Harriet turned aside and feigned great interest in an oil painting of the old bridge hanging on the wall behind her as the band struck up a polka.

  ‘Miss Watkin Jones, may I have this dance?’

  Sali barely glanced at Lloyd Evans, as Mansel stood in the doorway and beckoned to her. ‘I am sorry, Mr Evans, I am engaged –’

  ‘With me,’ Mansel interrupted. He held out his arm to Sali. ‘Your father would like to speak to you, Miss Watkin Jones. He and your mother are in the study.’

  ‘Miss Hopkins.’

  Harriet giggled nervously as Lloyd Evans switched his attention to her, and Sali saw her simpering and blushing as he led her out on to the dance floor.

  Sali gripped Mansel’s arm tightly as he led her from the room. When she had embarked on her teacher training at Swansea Training College two and a half years before, nothing had seemed more purposeful or worthwhile than shaping young lives at the very outset of their academic careers, but as she gazed at Mansel’s blond profile she couldn’t imagine anything more wonderful than marriage to the man she loved.

  ‘Sali is very young,’ Gwyneth Watkins Jones drawled in her painfully languid voice.

  ‘She is two years older than you were when you married Harry, Gwyneth,’ Edyth reminded her tartly.

  Harry looked across at his daughter. ‘You have already accepted Mansel?’

  ‘I gave Mr James permission to speak to you, Father.’

  ‘But you do want to marry him?’ he pressed.

  ‘Yes.’ She gazed into Mansel’s eyes. ‘Yes, Father, I do,’ she said steadily.

  ‘Then it appears to be a match made in heaven.’ Harry slapped Mansel soundly across the shoulders. ‘I can’t imagine a better husband for you, Sali, or a better friend for Geraint and Gareth. But,’ he frowned, ‘Sali has yet to finish her education. Are you prepared to wait until the summer to marry her, Mansel?’

  ‘You give your consent, sir?’ Mansel could no more stop looking at Sali than she could at him.

  Harry took his daughter’s hand and placed it in Mansel’s. ‘Nothing would give me greater pleasure. However, there are conditions. Sali would not be allowed to continue in the college should the engagement become public knowledge. And, although I think it desirable that a married woman should be as well educated as her husband in these modern times, there are those who would disagree with me. So, why don’t we hold off announcing your engagement until after Sali has finished her finals and in the meantime go ahead with all the legal arrangements that have to be made. Like the marriage settlement.’

  Sali leapt to her feet and hugged her father.

  ‘And no ring, not yet,’ Harry warned Mansel. ‘Sali isn’t allowed to wear anything other than a bracelet watch in college so it will have to wait. You can give her one when she comes home after she has sat her finals in June. We’ll hold a ball and make a formal announcement then. Until that time, the engagement will remain a secret between everyone here and my solicitor who will draw up the marriage settlement.’ Harry held out his hand. ‘I would say welcome to the family, Mansel, but you’ve been a part of it since the day you became Aunt Edyth’s ward.’

  ‘Thank you, sir.’ Mansel shook Harry’s hand vigorously.

  ‘I dislike long engagements, but I suppose it will give Mansel and Sali an opportunity to arrange all that needs to be organised,’ Edyth interposed.

  ‘Long?’ Harry laughed. ‘How can you call seven months long, Aunt Edyth?’

  ‘I was engaged for three weeks before I married Gwilym, but then,’ Edyth turned to Sali, ‘fewer things were expected and demanded of women in those days. I agree it’s just as well that Sali finishes her education. The wife of Mansel James will have many duties to carry out and for the town’s benefit as well as her husband’s.’

  ‘Morgan?’ Harry looked up as his brother-in-law walked into the room without knocking.

  ‘Forgive me. I presumed the room was unoccupied. I was looking for somewhere quiet to sit. The drawing room is full of ladies, card players are in the library, and the buffet is laid out in the dining room.’

  ‘The morning room should be quiet, Morgan.’ Harry pulled his watch fob from his pocket and singled out a key. ‘Ladies, Gentleman, it is time we returned to the party.’

  He waited u
ntil everyone had dispersed before leaving his study and ostentatiously locking it.

  ‘Wonderful ball, Harry.’ Edyth James kissed Harry, then Sali. ‘See me to my carriage, Geraint.’

  ‘I would be honoured, Aunt Edyth.’

  ‘You taking flirting lessons from Mansel, Geraint?’ Edyth tapped his arm with her fan.

  ‘Mr Watkin Jones,’ Mansel stood in front of Harry and Sali in the deserted hallway, ‘may I take Miss Watkin Jones riding in Aunt Edyth’s fields after chapel tomorrow? We have a great deal to discuss.’

  ‘I am sure you do, Mansel,’ Harry said dryly. ‘You and Sali have my permission to go riding after chapel and you can tell Aunt Edyth from me, that now she has had her way and you two are unofficially engaged, she can stop her scheming. There are no overbearing Victorian fathers or wicked ogres on the horizon to blight your happiness.’

  Sali relaxed her hold on the reins and gave her horse his head as she approached the gate. Lancelot cleared it and she reined him in, waiting for Mansel to catch up with her. It was a cold, crisp day with a hint of frost in the air that had hardened the ground, making it easy-going for the horses.

  ‘That was grossly unfair, you had a two-minute start,’ Mansel complained after jumping his stallion, Brutus, over the gate and drawing alongside her.

  ‘You should check your stirrups are the right length before you leave the stable.’ She leaned forward and stroked Lancelot’s neck.

  ‘Back along the lane?’

  ‘Had enough of racing?’

  ‘I’d prefer to talk to you than race after you. We have a lot of decisions to make.’

  ‘Like?’

  ‘What kind of wedding we’re going to have, how many flowers, bridesmaids, hymns, where we’re going on our honeymoon, where we’re going to live, how many personal maids you need ...’