‘But Peter’s parents did love one another?’
‘I think they did, in their own peculiar fashion.’ Alice ground out her cigar and immediately lit another. ‘I was married by the time Flo started courting. Every time I saw Mam and Dad they complained that all Flo could talk about was Reverend Slater. My parents weren’t too happy about it, but they couldn’t stop them from getting engaged on Flo’s eighteenth birthday. That was when Flo decided her future husband’s vocation was hers. Eventually she wore Mam and Dad down. They married when Flo was nineteen. But Peter didn’t put in an appearance for over twenty years. That’s why he’s so old-fashioned in his outlook. Old parents bring up old children, or so I’ve always thought.’
The description of Peter’s parents’ courtship was so similar to hers and Peter’s, Edyth couldn’t help thinking that history had repeated itself. ‘I’ve often considered some of Peter’s ways Victorian, but he told me that his parents were middle-aged when he was born.’
Alice laid a dry, arthritic hand over Edyth’s, ‘You can count on one ally in the family, my dear. You have any trouble with Flo, come to me and I’ll do what I can to sort her out.’
‘I couldn’t possibly.’
‘Yes, you could.’ Alice rested her cigar on the amethyst ashtray on the table. ‘I’ve tried every ruse I can think of and I couldn’t sway Flo an inch from her determination to move in with you. But I’ll do whatever it takes to stop her making your life a misery. And mark my words, she will if you let her. She’s a deceptively soft-spoken, tyrannical hypochondriac who likes to have the whole world running round after her. Start as you mean to go on, dear. Be firm, don’t put up with her nonsense. And if things get too much for you, come and stay here, or invite me down for a visit.’
‘I couldn’t impose.’
‘Yes, you could.’ The old lady’s eyes sparkled with mischief. ‘I can imagine just as many ailments as Flo when the mood takes me. And I’m just as capable of demanding my nephew’s hospitality as a right. Now,’ she leaned heavily on her cane and hauled herself upright, ‘let’s go in, finish lunch, drink coffee and eat petits fours as though all’s right with the world. That will throw Flo. She likes nothing better than to create a scene, then sit back and enjoy it, while pretending she had absolutely nothing to do with instigating it.’
*……*……*
‘I knew David was fond of Edyth but I had no idea he’d do anything like that,’ Mary murmured when Harry sat on the edge of her bed and watched her feed their new son. ‘Are you sure that he jumped deliberately? That he didn’t fall?’
‘We’re sure, love,’ Harry broke in softly. ‘Huw Davies and another officer saw him climb on to the parapet. And it was Huw who fished him out of the river.’
‘But David is going to be all right, isn’t he?’ She fought back tears as she looked to Harry for reassurance.
‘I told you he came round when we were there. He has a lot of broken bones and he doesn’t look too good now, but you know David. He’s as strong as a Welsh pit pony and he’s come through worse.’ Harry recalled the beating David had survived when he’d been forced to work on another farm before he and Mary had married and he had managed to secure her family home.
‘David kept telling me that he didn’t want our farm. I thought it was a phase he’d grow out of, but now this …’
‘You’re not to blame for what David did, Mary,’ Harry said firmly. ‘It’s not your fault any more than it’s Edyth’s for marrying Peter Slater. We all knew David was fond of her but he’s only eighteen, and I doubt he’s seen her more than a dozen times in the four years since we married, apart from that week she spent with us three years ago. And that’s no basis for marriage. If you want my opinion I think he fell in love with the idea of being in love, not Edyth.’
‘We didn’t see that much of one another before we married, Harry,’ she reminded him.
‘Ah, but it was the quality of the sightings.’
She was too upset about David even to listen. ‘I was stupid to try to keep David at the farm. Don’t you see? He fell in love with Edyth because she’s the first girl he’s really known who’s the same age as him. If I’d let him travel as he wanted to do, met more people …’ She looked down at the baby at her breast. ‘No matter what you say, Harry, it is my fault. I put the family farm before David …’ Her voice broke as tears welled in her eyes again.
‘I don’t want to hear another word like that from you, darling.’ Harry cradled both her and the baby in his arms. ‘For the last time: it is not your fault. David is the one who climbed on that bridge and jumped. He probably drank too much at the wedding, got maudlin, went out for a walk and did something stupid on impulse because he wasn’t capable of thinking straight.’
‘If he recovers –’
‘When he recovers,’ Harry corrected emphatically, ‘we’ll talk to him.’
‘And let him do whatever he wants?’ she pleaded.
‘Within reason. I draw the line at letting him join the Foreign Legion.’
‘Harry –’
‘Sorry, darling, bad joke.’
‘Martha, Matthew and Luke need to be told.’ Mary sniffed back her tears.
‘My mother told them that David’s in hospital after a fall. They don’t need to know any more for the present.’
‘And Edyth? She’s going to feel dreadful.’
‘My father and Uncle Joey have already left for Swansea. We talked about it, and decided it was too much of a risk to try to keep it from her. People are always travelling from here down to the coast and Dad didn’t want to tell her on the telephone. So you see,’ he forced a smile, ‘you have nothing to worry about except yourself and little Will there. My mother and the girls are enjoying fussing over Ruth. Martha, Matthew and Luke are having the time of their lives tearing around the park with Bella and Toby, and Mr Jones is running the farm like clockwork. He told me so on the telephone not half an hour ago, when I rang him to warn him not to expect us back for a few weeks.’ Mr Jones was the farm manager they had employed to ‘help’ David. ‘The time to concern yourself with David is when we manage to get him home. He’s going to need a lot of nursing and I have a feeling that he isn’t going to be the easiest of patients to look after.’
Harry kept the police threat to prosecute David to himself. If Huw Davies’s ruse worked, Mary need never know about it. If it didn’t, David’s future didn’t bear thinking about. Used to living outdoors, prison would crush his spirit and finish what he had begun when he had taken that leap from the bridge.
‘Why didn’t you tell me that your mother was going to move in with us?’ Edyth had waited to broach the subject until she and Peter were walking through Singleton Park on their way from his aunt’s house to Mumbles. The clouds they had seen over the sea early that morning had blown inland, darkening the sky and threatening rain. Alice had offered them the services of her chauffeur to drive back them back to the hotel. But, wanting privacy to talk, Edyth had insisted they walk.
‘I was going to mention it,’ he mumbled shamefacedly.
‘When?’ she questioned evenly.
‘Sometime this week. It wasn’t the sort of thing I wanted to put in a letter.’
‘I can understand that it needed some discussion, which is why I’m unhappy about the way I found out about it.’ She took a deep breath and braced herself. ‘Was it your mother’s idea or yours?’
‘It was always … sort of assumed between us that when I had my own place she would leave Aunt Alice and live with me.’
‘To keep house?’
‘If you had told me when I received my posting to Pontypridd that I would be married by October I would never have believed it, so the answer to that is yes. Probably to keep house for me.’
‘So, you knew that your mother intended to move in with us the day you came to Pontypridd and bought my wedding and engagement rings?’
‘Yes, but we were having lunch with the Bishop and Reverend Price. Edyth, you’re not unhappy
, you’re angry.’
‘Yes, I am.’ She stopped and looked at him. ‘I am angry that you didn’t consult me.’
‘Mother’s frail. You’ve met Aunt Alice, heard the way she talks. She likes company and an active social life. Mother is more refined; she prefers to spend her time contemplating, reading and meditating. You won’t even know she’s in the house, I promise you. And don’t forget, we’ll both be busy with parish business. Mother can keep an eye on Mrs Mack and see that the house is run properly.’ He tossed off the last remark as an afterthought.
‘Knowing that Mrs Mack is a poor cook and, from the state of the house when I saw it, a dismal housekeeper, you told her that we would keep her on?’ she asked incredulously.
‘Yes.’
‘I was only there for a short time but the vicarage was dirty, Peter. There was dust everywhere and the tiles in the passage looked as though they hadn’t been washed in months.’
‘She was busy looking after Reverend Richards. I could hardly throw her out, Edyth. She’s been at the vicarage for forty years. And –’
‘And?’ she pressed, furious that he had not only arranged for his mother to move in with them but also engaged an incompetent housekeeper.
‘… And she’s a friend of the Bishop’s wife’s cousin,’ he finished lamely. Large, fat raindrops fell heavily from the sky. He opened his umbrella and held it over her. ‘We can stop in the Mermaid Hotel for tea, if you like.’
She thought of the last time she had been in the Mermaid Hotel with her parents. ‘No, thank you,’ she said abruptly.
Offering her an olive branch, he said, ‘We can go anywhere you like, Edyth, I’m sorry. I should have been more open with you.’
‘Yes, you should have.’ She pulled her hat down as far as it would go to protect her hair. ‘Did you think that I’d refuse to allow your mother to live with us?’
‘I hoped you wouldn’t.’
Forced to accept that Mrs Slater had outmanoeuvred her, she resolved to make the best of the situation. ‘Peter, she’s your mother. Of course we can offer her a home as she has none.’ She took his arm. ‘Let’s go to the George Hotel. And, if this rain doesn’t let up, we can get a taxi from there back to the Caswell Bay.’
‘Thank you.’ He kissed her cheek.
‘Just one thing, Peter,’ she clung to his arm as he headed for a belt of trees that offered a little shelter as the downpour escalated into a cloudburst, ‘from this moment on, we discuss everything that affects our married life.’
‘I promise, Edyth.’ He clutched her gloved hand. ‘I’m sorry. I know it’s not much of an excuse, but I’ve been a bachelor for so long, I’m not used to considering the wishes of others. Have a little patience with me?’
She quickened her pace to match his. They had what was left of this week and one whole week to put the vicarage in order before his mother descended on them. And if she took the opposite tack to Aunt Alice and went out of her way not to annoy Florence Slater, perhaps she could make a friend of her, after all.
Even as she formulated the thought, she suspected that putting her idea into practice was going to be difficult, especially as she doubted that Peter’s mother would make any concessions to her position as Peter’s wife and mistress of the vicarage.
The clerk left his reception desk and met Edyth and Peter at the door of the hotel. ‘Reverend Slater, Mrs Slater, two gentlemen have called to see you; they insisted on waiting. I showed them into the Residents’ Lounge.’
‘Did they say what they wanted?’
Edyth didn’t wait for the clerk to answer Peter. She ran into the lounge, tripped in the doorway and, to her astonishment, saw her father and Uncle Joey sitting at a table with pints of beer in front of them.
‘Falling over as usual, I see, Edyth.’ Joey left his seat and kissed her cheek. ‘Hello, Peter.’ He shook Peter’s hand when he joined them.
‘Dad? Uncle Joey? What on earth are you doing here?’ Edyth looked at her father.
‘What’s wrong?’
‘Sit down, Edie. You too, Peter.’ Lloyd closed the door and told them in as few words as possible what had happened to David.
Peter sat, outwardly at least, unperturbed, but Edyth clutched her handkerchief to her mouth as her eyes rounded in horror.
‘You really think David tried to kill himself because I married Peter?’ she asked her father.
‘No,’ Lloyd assured her. ‘It’s as Harry said. David’s spent practically all his life on the farm. He doesn’t know many people and, as a result, he put far more store by the friendship you offered him than you did, that is all.’
‘How is Mary taking it?’ Peter asked.
Lloyd turned to his son-in-law. ‘As you’d expect, Peter, badly. She and David are very close. But we have to concentrate on the good news. David spoke and recognised Harry when we went to see him this morning. He’s in excellent hands and everything that can be, is being done for him.’
‘We came because we didn’t want you reading about it in the newspapers or hearing it from someone else,’ Joey explained. ‘People from Pontypridd visit Swansea all the time, commercial travellers and the like. You know how people gossip.’
‘I do, and I’m glad you came to tell me.’ Edyth clasped her father’s hand.
‘Are you staying the night? Because if you are, I’ll get you a room.’ Peter left his chair.
‘No, we both have to work in the morning.’ Lloyd glanced at his wristwatch. ‘The trains leave Swansea for Cardiff on the half-hour.’
Edyth glanced at the grandmother clock in the corner of the room. The hands pointed to five o’clock. ‘Give me half an hour to pack and I’ll come with you, Dad.’
‘Don’t be silly; Edyth, this is your honeymoon,’ Lloyd emphasised. ‘I would never have come here if I thought you’d interrupt it.’
‘No, Mr Evans, Edyth is right,’ Peter said to Lloyd and Joey’s surprise. ‘Edyth’s place is with her family at a time like this. I know her. She won’t rest a moment until she sees Harry and Mary. And David, if that’s possible. And, as her husband, my place is at her side. I’ll go and book out of the hotel and telephone my mother and my aunt to let them know we’re leaving. I’ll just say that a member of your family has been taken ill, Edyth.’ He clasped her shoulder.
She laid her hand over his. ‘Thank you,’ she said gratefully.
‘You certainly won’t be able to see David for a while, Edie,’ Lloyd warned, recalling the ward sister’s attitude.
‘But I will be able to see Mary and Harry, Dad, and I need to. If you won’t wait for us, I’ll only catch a later train.’
‘I don’t doubt you will, Edie,’ Lloyd agreed wryly. He looked from Peter to Edyth, and recognised the tell-tale signs of obstinacy on his daughter’s face. ‘Very well. Both of you go and pack, and tell the hotel and Peter’s mother that you’re leaving. In the meantime I’ll order some sandwiches.’
‘We had a very good lunch, Dad.’ Edyth went to the door.
‘You might have, miss,’ Joey said, ‘but we certainly didn’t.’
Chapter Seventeen
Bella carried a clean nightdress, vest and nappy into Harry and Mary’s room. Believing herself to be alone, she lifted them to her nose and sniffed them before laying them on the end of the bed.
‘Let me guess, they’re warm from the airing cupboard and scented with lavender water.’
Bella turned and saw Edyth curled on the window seat. ‘I didn’t see you there. Five years ago you would have jumped out and shouted boo to scare the living daylights out of me.’
‘Ah, but now I’m all grown up.’
‘And married,’ Bella reminded.
‘Do they smell of lavender water?’
‘Of course.’ Bella straightened the sleeve of the long cotton and lace nightdress.
‘The smell of our clean nighties when we were little is one of my happiest memories. Bedtime, cocoa, cheese sandwiches and stories read by Mam or Dad.’
‘More oft
en by Mam than Dad. I must ask Mari exactly how much lavender water she sprinkles over the laundry so I can get ours to smell the same way.’ Bella sat in the nursing chair Harry had carried up from their mother’s study. ‘You all packed?’
‘Just about.’
‘Some honeymoon you and Peter have had,’ Bella sympathised.
‘I would have had a wretched time if I’d stayed in Swansea. I’d have worried about what was happening here the whole time,’ Edyth answered. ‘And, as Peter said, we can honeymoon any time. It was more important that I spend this week with Mary and Harry. I feel awful –’
‘Don’t, and stop it,’ Bella broke in. ‘We’ve talked David’s stupidity over until I’m sick of it. I agree with Harry, he must have been drunk to do what he did. And you heard Dad and Harry when they came back from the Infirmary on Wednesday. David is going to recover.’
‘Yes, but it’s going to take months and he may never walk the same –’
‘But thanks to Uncle Huw, he won’t be going to gaol,’ Bella said strongly.
‘I suppose that’s something,’ Edyth allowed grudgingly, although she was amazed that anyone, let alone Huw’s superiors in the police force, had believed that David had jumped off the old bridge to rescue a dog. If he really had seen one struggling in the water – which she doubted – it would have made more sense to run down the bank and wade in, not jump off a high bridge.
‘And here’s our gorgeous little man.’ Bella gave Edyth a warning glance to drop the subject, before swooping down on Harry as he carried in Will, who was damp and wrapped in a towel.
Harry set the baby on the bed and tickled him under the chin. I’ll leave you two to adore my son. Just make sure Mary doesn’t do too much.’ He looked sternly at his wife who walked in with Ruth. ‘I still don’t think that you should be out of bed, let alone bathing Will and playing with Ruth.’
Mary’s response was to laugh and kiss him. ‘Go on, off to work in the store.’
‘You will be back for lunch?’ Edyth asked Harry.
‘I wouldn’t miss your farewell lunch for the world, sis. Ruthie darling,’ Harry lifted his daughter into his arms, kissed her and deposited her on the bed next to Will, ‘look after your brother and Mam for me while I’ve gone, will you?’
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