Tiger Bay Blues

by Catrin Collier

  ‘We did.’ Although he had removed his hand from her arm, her heart was pounding erratically.

  ‘Our next meeting is at half past six on Monday evening in the church hall. We have a dozen or so girls among our members. Unfortunately they have a tendency to indulge in horseplay and wear too much cheap scent and make-up. They might respond to the advice of someone like yourself. That is, if you can spare the time to give them a few tips. I noticed that you wear no make-up at all and your complexion is perfect.’

  Edyth didn’t have the heart to tell him that she was wearing the discreet make-up her mother had taught her and all her sisters to apply. ‘I would be delighted to help in any way that you think I can, Peter.’

  ‘See you on Monday evening, Edyth.’

  ‘Until then.’ Edyth spotted Maggie bearing down on them. She handed her Bella’s bouquet. ‘Be an angel and put these in water for me, please, Maggie, while I walk Reverend Slater to the gate.’

  Maggie snatched the flowers ungraciously and thumbed her nose at Edyth, just as Peter Slater turned to offer her his hand to say goodbye.

  Night had fallen when Harry and Mary returned from taking Toby and Bella to Cardiff station. The air in the garden was warm, thick, and velvety; heavily scented with flowers and wax from the candles that Sali and the girls had lit and dotted among the plants in the flowerbeds. The maids were serving coffee, cake and sweet biscuits, but mindful of the noise of the music carrying down to the town, Lloyd had asked the band to stop playing at ten o’clock and most of the guests had left. Harry and Mary found the musicians sitting at a table that had been carried out from the marquee, drinking beer and talking to the family.

  ‘Did the honeymooners make their train?’ Lloyd lifted the chair next to his out from under the table and offered it to Mary.

  ‘They did.’ Mary sat down. ‘But not before Toby and Harry quarrelled about Harry’s driving.’

  ‘I gave Toby a choice,’ Harry said airily. ‘I told him that I could either get him and Bella to Cardiff station on time or drive safely. Toby said he preferred me to drive safely. But Bella asked me to get to the station on time, and everyone knows it’s the woman who makes the decisions in every marriage.’

  ‘Well said, Harry. Here’s to the legions of hen-pecked men. Poor Toby has no idea what’s in store for him.’ Joey drained his beer mug and held it out to Harry. ‘As you’re getting yourself and Mary drinks, you may as well refill all our glasses.’

  ‘Thank you, Uncle Joey. You know I love to play barman.’ Harry took the glass and turned the tap on the beer barrel set up on a side table alongside an array of bottles of sherry, wine, raspberry cordial and lemonade.

  ‘I like to make everyone happy.’ Joey beamed at the table in general.

  ‘Especially yourself,’ Victor quipped. ‘How many shorts did you feed our little brother, Lloyd?’

  ‘As many as he fed you and himself, judging by the width of the smiles on all your faces,’ Sali answered for Lloyd.

  ‘Whatever you do, Ruth, don’t grow up into a nagging wife like your grandmother and great-aunts.’ Joey gravely addressed the sleeping child on his lap.

  ‘Let me take Ruth from you, Uncle Joey,’ Mary offered shyly. Harry’s extended family had welcomed her and her orphaned brothers and sister as if they were long-lost relatives, but her upbringing on an isolated farm in Breconshire hadn’t brought her into contact with many people and she still felt a little shy of them, especially when they were gathered en masse.

  ‘Absolutely not.’ Joey shook his head. ‘My children insist they’re too old for cuddles these days so I’m making the most of it.’

  ‘Does that mean you’re getting broody and there’ll soon be another Evans joining the clan?’ Victor asked.

  ‘Six is enough for me,’ Rhian stated decisively.

  ‘We only have five.’ Joey frowned at his wife.

  ‘Five and you makes six, and you’re more trouble than all the children put together.’ When the laughter died down she said, ‘I’m looking to the next generation to provide us with babies.’

  ‘As am I,’ Megan added. ‘Unless Sali would like to surprise us.’

  ‘There are no surprises coming from this direction but I would like dozens of grandchildren,’ Sali said, ‘especially if they’re all as pretty and sweet-tempered as Ruth. You’ve done a magnificent job of bringing her up, Mary, as well as teaching her the hardest lesson of all. She understands the word “no”. It’s a pity you weren’t around to tell me your secret when Edyth was small. If you had been, you might have saved her some broken bones.’

  ‘I wasn’t that bad.’ Edyth handed Harry her empty sherry glass.

  ‘As I recall, you spent more years with your legs and arms in plaster than out of it.’ Harry looked around. ‘Everyone have a drink?’

  ‘We do. Cheers and good health to the father and mother of the bride for hosting the wedding and hiring us to play here today.’ Jed King rose to his feet and lifted his glass ceremoniously. ‘And here’s to the bride and groom, Mr and the new Mrs Ross.’

  ‘Lucky ducks, going to America,’ Susie murmured sleepily.

  ‘Do you play at many weddings?’ Joey asked.

  ‘That’s something you won’t need to know for a few years yet, Joey. You have to keep your girls for a while longer before you can marry them off,’ Victor warned.

  They all laughed again. Joey’s eldest daughter was only ten.

  ‘Parties like this and audiences like your family are unfortunately rare for us, Mr Evans,’ Jed answered.

  ‘I’ve a feeling that much as we all enjoy them, parties will become rarer still in the next few years,’ Lloyd said cautiously. ‘Times have been hard since the Wall Street crash last October and they will be getting harder. The government is expecting the number of unemployed to reach two million next month, and that’s bad news for everyone.’

  ‘It’s catastrophic for those of us living on Cardiff docks, Mr Evans,’ Micah Holsten said quietly.

  ‘Why worse for those in Tiger Bay?’ Harry lifted a chair out from another table and sat next to Mary.

  ‘Because trade is always the first casualty of a recession,’ Micah explained. ‘Markets shrink, fewer goods are produced, fewer ships sail and hundreds of seamen will find themselves without a berth, which means their families will go hungry. And fewer ships also means a cutback in the number of workers needed to load and unload cargoes. Dockers or seamen, coloured men are always the last to be taken on by those hiring labour and the first to be let go. And a large proportion of the seamen and dockers in Tiger Bay are coloured.’

  ‘It would be naive of us to suppose otherwise,’ Lloyd said seriously. ‘I’ve spent my life fighting for workers’ rights and an end to discrimination based on class, colour and creed, but I sometimes wonder if we’ve made any progress since my father and his fellow miners formed their unions in the last century.’

  ‘You’re too hard on yourself, Lloyd. We’ve come a long way in the last fifty years.’ Victor opened a packet of cigarettes and offered them around.

  ‘We have further to go than we’ve come,’ Lloyd said thoughtfully.

  ‘There’s no discrimination within our community, Mr Evans. Thank you.’ Jed took one of Victor’s cigarettes. ‘We’ve all sorts living on Bute Street and in the smaller houses behind it. Black, brown, white, yellow, Arab, Muslim, Hindu, Jew –’

  ‘A regular box of liquorice allsorts,’ Tony King joked.

  ‘And no one there gives a toss about colour.’

  ‘Except for some of the constables and their families, who live in the Maria Street police station,’ Tony chipped in.

  ‘Most of them are fair blokes,’ Jed qualified. ‘Generally speaking, we’re like one big happy family.’

  ‘With a few black sheep.’ Tony nodded at Micah. ‘Take this one, for example. He’s too forgiving with the drunks and certain ladies –’

  ‘Tony, you’re not in the Pilot in George Street now,’ Jed interrupted.

/>   ‘I heard a lot of stories about Tiger Bay when I went to that party in Moore’s shipping offices with Bella and Toby.’ Edyth took a biscuit and broke it in half. ‘I’d love to walk around there and see the place for myself.’

  ‘What kind of stories?’ Lloyd enquired warily.

  ‘One of the clerks was telling us that he and his brother had been invited to someone’s house for supper, but they never made it. He said as soon as they left Bute Street and went into the side streets, everyone was singing and dancing, all the front doors were open and he felt as though they’d walked into one enormous street party. They ended up eating supper with total strangers.’

  ‘It can be like that around carnival time,’ Jed agreed, as relieved as Lloyd that Edyth hadn’t been referring to anything more risqué than the music that was played in the streets around the docks practically every night. ‘It only takes one person to bring out an instrument and start playing to get the whole neighbourhood joining in.’

  ‘With spoons, comb and paper, and saucepan drums, if that’s all they have.’ Micah flicked his cigarette into the ashtray on the table. ‘In Tiger Bay, music has an impromptu and international flavour.’

  ‘You’re welcome to visit any time you want, Miss Evans. My grandmother would love to make your acquaintance,’ Judy Hamilton offered shyly.

  ‘Thank you, Miss Hamilton. After your performance here today I suspect I’ll have the life plagued out of me until I bring the entire family down for a visit.’ Lloyd glanced at Glyn, who was almost asleep on the chair next to him. ‘It’s time the little ones were in bed.’

  ‘I’ll chase them.’ Sali left her chair.

  ‘I’ll give you a hand,’ Rhian offered.

  ‘We should round up the boys and head for home, Megs.’ Victor rose to his feet. ‘You did Bella proud, Lloyd, Sali. It’s been a wonderful day but my legs feel as though they don’t belong to me. I’m getting too old for dancing.’

  ‘Judging by the amount you’ve done since I met you, I’d say that you were born too old for dancing, my darling.’ Megan left her seat and slipped her arm around Victor’s waist.

  ‘Stay here, Uncle Victor, Auntie Megan.’ Harry finished his beer. ‘I’ll find the boys for you.’

  ‘I can see the smoke wafting over the shrubs by the gate the same as you, Harry.’ Victor squeezed Megan’s waist lightly.

  ‘Let me at least go down there and warn them that you’re on your way.’ Harry set his glass on the table.

  ‘You’re not one of the kids any more, Harry. Not now you have one and a half of your own. A grown-up’s job is to stop kids from having fun.’ Joey looked down at Ruth who was still fast asleep on his lap.

  ‘I’m trying to take over from where Granddad left off. Not that I could hope to fill an inch of his shoes,’ Harry said ruefully. ‘But he never allowed anyone to get caught doing something they shouldn’t at a family party.’

  ‘Possibly because he was usually the one instigating the naughtiness,’ Sali recalled fondly. Lloyd’s father had died four years ago, yet everyone in the family who was old enough to remember him still missed him, especially at get-togethers at Christmas, weddings and christenings.

  ‘Please, stay and have another drink,’ Lloyd pressed the musicians, who were leaving their seats. ‘Don’t feel that you have to go, just because we’re sending the children to bed.’

  ‘It’s a long drive back to Butetown, and as it’s my van we’re using and I have to be up early tomorrow to take services; it’s high time we left.’ Micah Holsten picked up his saxophone case.

  ‘Take services?’ Harry questioned.

  ‘Micah is the Lutheran pastor at the Norwegian mission,’ Jed explained.

  ‘But we Catholics forgive him because he makes our kind of music,’ Tony joked.

  ‘And, as good Catholics, we also have to be up early. The wife insists on all of us going to first mass.’ Jed slipped a protective arm around Judy’s shoulders. ‘Thank you again for hiring us, Mr Evans.’

  ‘Thank you for making Bella’s day special. It certainly went with a swing.’ Lloyd shook Tony’s hand before slipping his hand into his pocket and pulling out an envelope. ‘There’s extra in there to replace Miss Hamilton’s dress. I’m sorry our cook stained it.’ He repeated the story he, Sali and Jed had concocted to explain Judy’s change of outfit to the rest of the band and the guests.

  ‘There’s no need –’

  ‘Yes, there is,’ Sali said firmly. She kissed Judy’s cheek.

  ‘I’ll send this frock back.’

  ‘Please don’t,’ Edyth pressed. ‘It looks much better on you than me, and to tell the truth it was getting too tight for me.’

  ‘Too many of Mari’s chocolate puddings, miss,’ Joey teased. ‘Well, we all know where to come the next time we need a band.’ He stretched his hands above his head and yawned.

  ‘From the look of everyone, it’s just as well tomorrow’s Sunday.’ Rhian lifted Ruth from Joey’s lap.

  ‘I can’t see anyone in this house getting up for early mass or church,’ Lloyd commented.

  Edyth didn’t contradict her father. But as she said her goodbyes to the musicians, and her uncles, aunts and cousins, she was already planning the outfit she would wear to the early church service at St Catherine’s in the morning.

  Chapter Four

  Judy Hamilton woke with a start the next morning when the church bells started ringing out over Tiger Bay. She threw back the bedclothes and shot out of bed. Hating mornings, especially after late nights, she’d taken the precaution of laying out a clean uniform, shoes, stockings and underclothes before she had left for the wedding the day before. Scooping them from the rickety wooden chair next to her bed, she ran down the uncarpeted wooden stairs into the kitchen.

  Pearl, her grandmother, was up, dressed in her flowered work overall, and mixing oats in the porridge pan. The smell of soda hung, nose-stinging, in the air, the flagstone floor was damp from its morning scrubbing and the range gleamed with newly applied black lead.

  ‘Morning, Gran.’ Judy dumped her clothes on the only easy chair in the room.

  ‘You’ll do yourself an injury rushing around like that.’

  ‘I’m late.’

  ‘No, you’re not,’ Pearl contradicted. ‘It’s not half past seven yet. What time did you come home last night?’

  ‘A reasonable hour,’ Judy answered evasively.

  ‘I heard you and Jed talking at the door after midnight. But seeing as how Sunday’s your half-day, I suppose you can have a nap later.’

  ‘I will, Gran.’ Judy kissed her grandmother’s wrinkled cheek and went out the back. The family referred to Pearl King’s garden as a ‘cultivated wilderness’. The sprig of jasmine she had planted next to the

  ty bach when she had moved into the house as a bride over sixty years before now covered the roof of the outhouse as well as the walls. Knee-

  Chapter Four

  Judy Hamilton woke with a start the next morning when the church bells started ringing out over Tiger Bay. She threw back the bedclothes and shot out of bed. Hating mornings, especially after late nights, she’d taken the precaution of laying out a clean uniform, shoes, stockings and underclothes before she had left for the wedding the day before. Scooping them from the rickety wooden chair next to her bed, she ran down the uncarpeted wooden stairs into the kitchen.

  Pearl, her grandmother, was up, dressed in her flowered work overall, and mixing oats in the porridge pan. The smell of soda hung, nose-stinging, in the air, the flagstone floor was damp from its morning scrubbing and the range gleamed with newly applied black lead.

  ‘Morning, Gran.’ Judy dumped her clothes on the only easy chair in the room.

  ‘You’ll do yourself an injury rushing around like that.’

  ‘I’m late.’

  ‘No, you’re not,’ Pearl contradicted. ‘It’s not half past seven yet. What time did you come home last night?’

  ‘A reasonable hour,’ Judy answered evasively.<
br />
  ‘I heard you and Jed talking at the door after midnight. But seeing as how Sunday’s your half-day, I suppose you can have a nap later.’

  ‘I will, Gran.’ Judy kissed her grandmother’s wrinkled cheek and went out the back. The family referred to Pearl King’s garden as a ‘cultivated wilderness’. The sprig of jasmine she had planted next to the ty bach when she had moved into the house as a bride over sixty years before now covered the roof of the outhouse as well as the walls. Knee-high lavender bushes bordered both sides of the crazy paving path below the washing line, and clumps of poppies bloomed, adding splashes of crimson to the shadows beneath the garden walls.

  Judy unhooked the tin bath from the back yard wall on her return from the ty bach, carried it into the washhouse and half-filled it with jugs of water that she drew from the cold tap set above the outside drain in the yard. She stripped off her nightgown, stepped into the water and washed as quickly as she could coax lather out of the carbolic soap in the freezing water. After drying herself, she dressed in her plain black cotton maid’s uniform. When she’d finished, she dragged the bath outside and emptied it down the drain before wiping it and returning it to the hook on the wall.

  ‘Breakfast is ready.’

  ‘Coming, Gran.’ She went into the back kitchen and sat at the wooden table, covered with a darned checked tablecloth which was older than her.

  Her grandmother set a bowl filled with porridge in front of her. ‘I don’t see why Mrs Protheroe has to have you in on a Sunday.’

  ‘I keep telling you, Gran, she likes me to do the fires and make her dinner. I won’t be long; she only eats salads in summer.’

  ‘Everybody is entitled to one day off a week,’ Mrs King grumbled.

  ‘I had one yesterday,’ Judy reminded her.

  ‘From Mrs Protheroe, maybe, but it was no day off for you when you were out singing with Jed’s band all day.’

  ‘Singing’s fun, not work. You should have seen the wedding.’ Judy’s eyes sparkled as she concentrated on the early part of the day and pushed Charlie Moore’s attack from her mind. ‘The wedding breakfast was in a massive house and they’d put up a huge tent on the lawn. The food was out of this world. The family even laid a buffet in the kitchen for the helpers, including us. And the bride was stunning. Her frock was satin and all the bridesmaids were dressed in gold –’