He wrote to Rhian every night before he went to bed. He thanked her for the photograph, which he’d framed and placed on his bedside cabinet, just as he’d told her he would in January. He told her how much he loved her, how happy he was that she’d agreed to be his wife, and as the week progressed, outlined his thoughts and ideas for their wedding, honeymoon and future. But whenever he tried to broach the subject of Tonia’s visit, he found it impossible to explain why he and his cousin were alone together in his house late at night, without breaking his promise to Tonia. And the mere fact of mentioning it without the explanation, made the visit sound as though they’d planned it.
Rhian sent back gentle, loving letters that always began ‘My dearest darling Joey’ and ended ‘all my love now and for ever’. In between she agreed to all the practical suggestions he made for turning his father’s rarely used middle parlour into their private sitting room, and organizing a small reception after their wedding in the Catholic Hall because his father’s house wouldn’t be large enough to accommodate all the friends he’d like to invite.
When she wrote that she couldn’t wait to honeymoon in his aunt’s farm cottage in Port Eynon on the Gower because she had never seen the sea, he realized that despite what Sali had told him about Rhian’s past, he had given very little thought to the kind of life she’d led before she’d begun work in Llan House. He began both to long for and dread her next day off. When Tuesday finally arrived, he rose earlier than usual. After lighting the fire and tidying the house, he dressed in his best suit and set out for Llan House.
Feeling guilty, although he couldn’t quantify why, and wanting his relationship with Rhian to begin, as he intended it to continue, in complete honesty, he rehearsed various speeches in his mind as he walked.
There was the ostensibly casual approach: ‘Guess what, Rhian? When I got home last Tuesday, Tonia was waiting for me … No, I’ve absolutely no idea why she was there. She ran off before she explained.’
The solemn declaration: ‘Tonia came to see me last Tuesday night and Mrs Hopkins saw us together … No, of course we weren’t doing anything but, well, I saw her doing something with someone. I can’t say what, or who the person was.’
He could try to be direct: ‘Has anyone said anything to you about Tonia and me?’ which would undoubtedly make her suspicious and lead her to ask all sorts of questions he couldn’t answer, which in turn would make him sound guiltier than ever.
‘Talking to yourself now, Joey Evans.’ Mrs Williams’s voice shattered his concentration. Obviously he had spoken aloud. But had he said anything incriminating? Adopting what he trusted was an innocent expression, he raised his trilby and managed a ‘good morning’ when she caught up with him at the gates of Llan House.
‘That’s the first sign, you know.’
‘First sign of what, Mrs Williams?’ Joey was too shaken to try to make sense of what she was saying.
‘Madness, or so they say.’ She handed him a basket loaded with sodden, newspaper-wrapped parcels. ‘I’ve been to the fishmonger’s. I always go down at the start of the season to pick out the best of the salmon. If I ask them to send up a couple they always give the boy the small ones no one else wants, and Mr Larch enjoys a thick-cut, broiled cutlet in shrimp sauce.’
‘That’s tradesmen for you.’ Joey automatically repeated the standard Tonypandy housewife’s lament. ‘How are you, Mrs Williams, and how is Rhian?’ He tried to sound as if he were merely making conversation.
‘I’m as fit as a flea. Rhian is as crazy as a collier after he’s downed twelve pints in the Pandy. If she weren’t, she wouldn’t have agreed to marry you. But then, there’s no accounting for taste. Her head’s been in the clouds all week, and it’s infectious. All the maids can think about is white lace, satin, orange blossom and wedding marches. I’ve had to warn all of them twice this week about dusting in the corners of rooms.’ She opened the kitchen door and breezed in. ‘Put the basket on the table. Do you want a cup of tea?’
‘No, thank you.’ Joey did as she ordered before removing his hat. Cook nodded to him as she checked the cabbage Mair was shredding. There was no sign of Rhian or Bronwen.
‘Take a seat. I’ll tell Rhian you’re here.’ Mrs Williams disappeared through the door that led to the back staircase. Joey sat in the housekeeper’s easy chair at the side of the range and waited in trepidation. It was no use reminding himself that he had nothing to feel guilty about. He simply did. And with nothing else to occupy his mind, he began counting the minute lines off the railway-sized clock that dominated the room.
Rhian knows that Tonia and I were alone in my house and she believes the worse: she does, she doesn’t, she does, she doesn’t …
*……*……*
Rhian secured Julia’s hat with a jet-headed hatpin, stood back and surveyed her handiwork.
‘It’s kind of you to spare the time to do my hair on your day off,’ Julia said gratefully. ‘I know you can’t wait to see your Mr Evans.’
‘I can’t,’ Rhian confessed. ‘This last week has felt more like seven years than seven days. Mrs Williams didn’t send me into town on a single errand all week.’
‘So you couldn’t even see him for a few minutes,’ Julia sympathized.
‘He’s written to me every day.’
‘It must be wonderful to be in love,’ Julia murmured pensively.
‘It will happen to you one day, you’ll see.’ When she managed to set her doubts about Joey’s faithfulness from her mind, Rhian was ecstatically happy and wanted everyone to be in the same blissful state.
‘People like me don’t fall in love.’
‘Yes, they do, and you never know, it could be today. You look wonderful, all bubbly and cheerful as if you’re going to a party. Are you sure you’re only attending a suffrage committee meeting?’
‘Promise you won’t tell a soul?’ Julia was bursting to tell someone about her plan to invite Geraint Watkin Jones to go to a meeting with her. And Rhian was the obvious choice. The more distant she’d grown from her father and brother, the closer she’d become to the maid.
‘Not if it’s one of your secrets, Miss Julia,’ Rhian assured her.
‘I’m going to see someone.’
‘A man someone?’
‘It’s nothing, not yet.’ Julia hesitated.
‘But it could be,’ Rhian broke in eagerly.
‘That’s my father calling.’ Glad of the interruption that she sensed had come just in time to stop her from making a fool of herself, Julia left the stool. There was nothing between her and Geraint Watkin Jones and, given his good looks and her plain ones, there was never likely to be, other than in her dreams. ‘I’m taking the carriage to Pontypridd and dropping Father off at his office on the way.’ She grabbed Rhian’s hand. ‘Tell me everything that happens today.’
‘I will.’ As keen as Julia for the day to start, Rhian forced herself to walk calmly to the end of the corridor to the servants’ staircase, then charged up to the attic as fast as she could, to fetch her coat.
‘You never consider anyone other than yourself, Julia,’ Mabel Larch rebuked her stepdaughter. ‘I believe you only volunteered to help Miss Bedford with the correspondence of the Women’s Suffrage Society because it would give you an excuse not to attend my coffee morning.’
‘I didn’t realize the dates clashed when I agreed to the arrangements.’ Julia was unable to look either Mabel or her father in the eye.
‘It is most unbecoming for an unmarried woman of your age to involve herself in the Suffrage Society. Sensible men abhor feminists and consider them to be laughing stocks.’
‘I disagree,’ Mabel.’ Edward folded his copy of The Times and tucked it under his arm. ‘In fact, I’d go so far as to say that sensible men admire and respect women as intellectual beings and have sympathy with the cause. Some even attend their meetings.’
‘But no woman of social consequence in the Rhondda would dream of demeaning herself by attending,’ Mabel maintained reso
lutely. ‘Mrs Hodges and Mrs Hadley abhor the Suffrage Society and despair of the way it encourages women to neglect their domestic duties and renounce their femininity in favour of unbecoming masculine pursuits. And both ladies have promised to attend this morning. Think how it will look when you will not be here to greet them, Julia, They will assume that you have no respect for me as your stepmother, or desire to offer them the courtesy that is due to them as our friends and neighbours. They will take your absence as a personal affront.’
‘This is your coffee morning, not Julia’s, Mabel. Arranged by you to impress people neither I nor Julia wish to become better acquainted with,’ Edward interposed.
‘Mrs Hodges and Mrs Hadley are highly respected ladies –’
‘Not by me, Mabel.’ He shrugged on his overcoat. ‘You’ve ordered the carriage, Julia?’
‘Yes, Father.’ Julia’s hands shook as she buttoned on her gloves. She would never have lied to her stepmother about assisting the headmistress of Pontypridd Intermediate Girls’ School with the secretarial duties of the Women’s Suffrage Society if her stepmother and the headmistress moved in the same circles. But they didn’t. Miss Bedford was a passionate advocacy of feminism and Mabel had no interest in anything or anyone outside of the social circle she was aspiring to penetrate.
Julia tried to console herself with the thought that she hadn’t entirely told an untruth. Her offer to help with the correspondence had been accepted and she was meeting Miss Bedford and the other ladies at five o’clock that afternoon.
‘I won’t need the carriage again until my train gets into Tonypandy station at ten-thirty tonight, Julia, so Harris can wait and bring you home after your suffrage meeting. I will be dining at my club in Cardiff, Mabel.’
‘You’re never home these days.’
‘It is business,’ Edward snapped. ‘Good morning, Mabel.’
Mabel went to the dining-room window after Edward and Julia left. She watched her husband hand his daughter into the coach.
‘May I clear the table now, ma’am?’ Mindful of Mrs Williams’s rule that no maid was to remain alone in the same room as the mistress, Bronwen hovered in the hall.
‘Yes, Bronwen,’ Mabel snapped. She walked to the door. ‘Has Mrs Williams returned from the fishmonger’s?’
‘Yes, ma’am.’
‘Tell her that I want to see her in the library immediately. The ladies will be arriving in two hours. You have prepared the drawing room?’
‘Yes, ma’am. Mrs Williams ordered it done first thing.’
Mabel crossed the hall and entered the drawing room. Everything was exactly as she’d envisaged it during the planning stage. The Victorian brown varnished paper, oak dado and flowered frieze had been ripped out and replaced by tasteful wallpaper; a most becoming small blue flower pattern on a cream background. She had banished the dark oak furniture her predecessor had chosen, exchanging it for up-to-the-minute pieces that she had picked out from the catalogue of Liberty’s in London. Two elegant beechwood sofas and three chairs, all upholstered in cream velvet, were grouped around the fireplace. The antique bronzes and Staffordshire ornaments Edward’s father had bequeathed him had been packed away. In their stead stood a collection of brass candlesticks she had inherited from her maternal grandmother and modern silverware that she had bought for an exorbitant price from the catalogue of a silversmith in Bond Street.
The drapes and tablecloth were cream damask; the oil painting that hung above the fireplace an original her father had given her and Edward as a wedding present. Painted by a Carmarthenshire artist who had once exhibited at the Royal Academy and entitled Noontide Peace, it depicted four horses and a dog sleeping in a sun-drenched field.
The room had pleased her – until she had compared it to Mrs Hadley’s recently refurbished drawing room. Now, the furniture looked dated. It was, after all, several months old, and Mrs Hadley had opted for a patterned dark blue chintz. So much more serviceable than plain cream, which showed every mark, including the one Gerald had made when he had dropped a lobster mayonnaise sandwich on to the sofa at Easter tea-time. Probably deliberately just to annoy her.
She loathed boys and, although she would never have admitted it, was a little afraid of them, regarding them as clumsy, sniggering and disrespectful louts. She wished Edward would find somewhere other than Llan House for his son to live during the school holidays. Mrs Hadley sent her sons to France every summer. The entire roomful of ladies had laughed when she had told them about it.
‘They can learn the language and do whatever it is boys want to do without disrupting my household.’
If only she were on better terms with Edward so she could suggest it to him.
Not wanting to think about how far her relations with her husband had deteriorated, she returned to her critical study of the room. The candlesticks also looked wrong. Brass was not only old-fashioned, it belonged in a farmhouse. But then her grandmother had been a farmer’s wife. And the silverware she had lavished so much time choosing and so much of Edward’s money in buying was too shiny, too contemporary and too ostentatious. She imagined Mrs Hadley whispering in Mrs Hodges’s ear.
‘You can see she comes from farming stock. So nouveau riche.’
She ran her finger over the mahogany mantelpiece, hoping to find fault so she could reproach Mrs Williams. But she was disappointed. Her finger left a smudge on the polish and the more she rubbed it, the worse it became.
The room would have looked better if Edward had allowed her to change the fireplace. She had even picked the one she wanted. A design featuring cherubs in light cream marble, just like the one in the garden room at the manor house nearest to her father’s vicarage. But Edward had not only baulked at the price, he had disliked the style, referring to it as ‘overblown and tasteless’.
She sank her head in her hands. All her life she had wanted a husband and a home of her own. But she had never expected to pay the price of loneliness to achieve her goal. Or be so despised by the man she married, once she’d realized it.
Chapter Seven
‘Joey, I didn’t expect you this early.’ Rhian breezed into the kitchen in her knitted suit, carrying her coat and hat. Her smile was infectious, her pleasure at the sight of him so obvious, Joey weakened in relief. He had considered asking Mrs Hopkins not to mention Tonia’s visit to anyone, but he suspected that she would take his request as an open invitation to spread gossip. And the one thing he was certain of was that if his neighbour had said anything to anyone, the news would have reached Mrs Williams by now.
‘I want to make the most of our time together. Sali’s commandeered an hour, remember?’ He helped her on with her coat.
‘I remember.’ She kissed his cheek and Mair giggled self-consciously.
‘Quiet, girl!’ Mrs Williams scolded.
Rhian pinned on her hat and checked her reflection in the mirror above the sink. ‘Bye, everyone.’
‘In before ten o’clock, mind, Rhian.’ Mrs Williams continued to put the finishing touches to a tray of vases she had filled with white tulips, white being Mrs Larch’s preferred colour of the moment. ‘Joey, as you are now officially engaged to Rhian, you can walk her to the back door and give her a goodnight kiss. But I’ll be watching from the pantry window and if you misbehave in any way or keep her out until one minute past ten –’
‘You’ll get out your carpet-beater,’ he grinned.
‘You’ve got it in one.’
*……*......*
Julia ordered her father’s coachman, Harris, to set her down in the yard of Pontypridd railway station and asked him to pick her up outside Miss Bedford’s house in Tyfica Road at seven o’clock that evening. She waited until he drove off, before walking briskly down Taff Street. She had spent the last week trying to devise excuses that would allow her to visit Pontypridd – alone – so she could call into Gwilym James and see Geraint Watkin Jones. When her stepmother had set the date for her all-consuming, all-important coffee morning, she had seized the o
pportunity it offered. But now the moment was actually upon her, she didn’t feel anywhere near as brave or determined as she had done in the privacy of her bedroom.
She entered Market Square, faced Gwilym James, squared her shoulders, forced herself to put one foot in front of the other and marched towards the front door as if she were about to go into battle.
‘Miss Larch.’
She nodded to the doorman and kept walking. Everything depended on her seeing Geraint Watkin Jones, And if she didn’t? If today should prove to be his day off? What then? It might be months before her father’s wife organized another coffee morning, especially if it didn’t turn out to be the success she hoped for.
‘Miss Larch.’ Geraint Watkin Jones joined her as she hesitated in the aisle that separated hosiery from lingerie.
‘Mr Watkin Jones, can you help me?’ she blurted breathlessly. ‘I am looking for a birthday present for my father.’ Her father’s birthday wasn’t until September but Geraint Watkin Jones wasn’t to know that.
‘I am always delighted to help you in any way I can, Miss Larch,’ he replied smoothly. ‘Have you any particular gift in mind?’
‘None.’ She looked up into his deep-brown eyes and felt the colour rush to her cheeks. She was big-boned, square and clumsy and had a face like a horse. Would a man as handsome and cultured as Geraint Watkin Jones really consider marrying her, even for the fifty thousand pounds her grandfather had left her?
‘Perhaps I might suggest a few things. Clothing, or perhaps jewellery? A gift of cuff links or a tiepin is always considered acceptable.’
‘Do you have any of the new wristwatches?’ Ever since she could remember, her father had worn the pocket gold watch her mother had given him as a wedding present. But wristwatches were becoming more common. Her brother had mentioned that the boys at his school found them more convenient. She wasn’t sure her father would appreciate one, but the fashion in wristwatches was not dependent on the season, so she wouldn’t have to explain why she was giving him a lightweight summer shirt in September when the warm weather was ending.
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