Sinners and Shadows

by Catrin Collier

  His single unhappy foray to Mrs Smith’s, coupled with Mabel’s continued refusal to sleep with him after the disastrous experience of their wedding night, when she had screamed every time he had tried to touch her, had given him the impetus he’d needed to engage a builder to convert the building into three separate sets of rooms. There was a shop on the ground floor with living accommodation behind, which was almost ready to be advertised. He’d rented the second floor to a collier’s widow in exchange for cleaning duties, the third floor he’d earmarked for his own use.

  He walked into a windowless corridor and switched on the electric light, installed as part of the refurbishment, before opening the door to the first of four rooms he’d had decorated to his own specifications. It was a spacious and comfortable, if somewhat old-fashioned, sitting-cum-dining room. The wallpaper was plain light cream, the woodwork brown, the chaise-longue, easy chairs and sofa upholstered in a dark green William Morris chintz that had been popular a quarter of a century before. The faded curtains and fire screen were of the same material. The bookcase in the alcove alongside the hearth held a selection of his favourite novels. A solid oak table, upright chairs and sideboard were set in front of the window and the general impression was of a room that belonged in a late Victorian rather than Edwardian home. Mabel would have hated it.

  He walked through to a tiny kitchen that held a zinc-topped cupboard, a small scrub-down pine table, two chairs, a Belfast sink and gas cooker. He sniffed the air, and his mouth watered. His dinner had been carried over from the White Hart and Mrs Ball, the miner’s widow, had put it in the oven to keep it warm.

  Taking a cloth from the table drawer, he lifted out the plate and set it on a tray that had been laid with a knife and fork, glass and bottle of beer. Removing the plate that had been placed on top of the food to stop it from drying, he smiled. Steak and kidney pie, cooked with plenty of onions, and served with lashings of mashed and roast potatoes, cabbage, cauliflower and gravy; a substantial, heavy meal and one he never failed to enjoy.

  He returned to the passage and opened another door that led to a bedroom and adjoining bathroom with plumbed-in bath, sink and toilet. The alterations had cost a small fortune, but not as much as the ‘improvements’ Mabel had made to Llan House, and on that basis he had decided to indulge himself. After washing his hands and face and checking the bedroom to make sure that the bed had been made, he returned to the kitchen to pick up his tray. He felt perfectly at home. But then he should. Everything in the rooms had come from the cellar he’d used to store the furniture he and Amelia had chosen together when they’d married, and Mabel had so summarily discarded.

  He took his time over his dinner, eating slowly, savouring the food whilst reading The White Peacock, a novel by a new young writer, D. H. Lawrence, that a member of his club had recommended on one of his increasingly rare visits. He enjoyed his solitary dinners, preferring the selfish luxury of his own company and the plain substantial cooking of the White Hart, to the strain and formality of eating the fancy nine-course dinners Mabel ordered. He felt guilty at leaving Julia alone to face her stepmother at meal times but not enough to join them.

  The last time he had dined at home, Mabel had invited Mrs Hodges and Mrs Hadley of the Ladies’ Circle, and their respective husbands to join them for what was probably the most expensive meal that had ever been served at Llan House. Mrs Williams constantly complained to him about the cost of caviar and buying exotic fruit, fish and game out of season. Even Cook had asked to see him privately so she could grumble about the time it took her to prepare delicacies alien to her repertoire: Italian, French and Spanish sauces, cocktails, fancy cake decorations and icings. She’d also voiced her objections to being ordered to produce four times her usual quota of chutneys, pickles, preserves and mustards so Mabel could donate the extra to Mrs Hodges and Mrs Hadley’s endless bazaars and bring-and-buy sales. Eventually, between the servants’ moans, Julia’s increasing reserve and Mabel’s icy politeness, these rooms had become more his home than Llan House.

  He finished his meal, stacked the tray with his dishes and carried it through to the kitchen. Taking a glass and a decanter of brandy from the sideboard, he poured himself a large measure and settled in an easy chair with his book. But not for long. At eight o’clock he was disturbed by a knock at the door. He shouted, ‘Come in.’

  Mrs Ball peeped around the door. ‘I’ve shown Maisie into your bedroom, Mr Larch. Will there be anything else that you want doing tonight?’

  ‘Only the removal of my dinner dishes, Mrs Ball, thank you.’

  He didn’t leave his chair until he heard the old woman walk down the stairs, then he went into the bedroom where Maisie was sitting wrapped in her cloak on an upright chair.

  If Maisie had another name, he didn’t know it. She had told him she was eighteen. She looked forty. Her hair was badly bleached and had the texture of straw. Her cheeks were heavily rouged, her eyelids painted bright blue and her face blotted in a thick layer of powder, all of which presumably helped to announce her profession to the world.

  Returning late one night from a business meeting in Pontypridd, he had seen her outside the station. He had watched her approach three men, all of whom had walked away, before inviting her to share a glass of brandy with him in his office. She had wanted him to take her to one of the pubs that let out rooms to prostitutes but he had insisted on his office or nowhere.

  That first meeting had led to others. She now visited him twice a week. The widow let her in and it was a discreet but unsatisfactory arrangement. He had been terrified of catching a disease from her even before Cedric’s warning, and no matter how many times she assured him that she was ‘clean’ he was acutely aware of her other ‘clients’.

  Dirty, grubby men who thought nothing of using a dozen prostitutes in a week, men who went to women who were possibly incubating both kinds of pox that Maisie could pass on to him – or already had.

  ‘You’re ready?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’ She left the chair and removed her cloak, a sober garment that could have belonged to any respectable woman in the Rhondda. She stood before him, naked apart from a pair of red silk stockings and showy black and gilt garters. ‘On the bed or the chair, sir?’

  He stared at her. Try as he may, he couldn’t feel anything for the girl. If he’d asked, he didn’t doubt that she would tell him some horrendous hard luck story about her descent into prostitution, but he couldn’t escape the fact that he didn’t given a damn about her. The simple truth was he needed the relief she gave him while despising himself for being reliant on it.

  ‘Or do you want to take some photographs of me, sir?’ she said archly. There was a camera permanently set up in the corner of the room and he had once paid her two guineas for an hour’s posing. Money she had used to clear her rent arrears and buy her cloak and a black silk frock, because her better-class ‘gentlemen’ preferred her quietly-dressed.

  ‘No photographs.’ He had paid her to pose but had scarcely looked at the results. Instead of exciting him as he’d hoped, they’d disgusted him and he had shoved them into a drawer and forgotten them. He loosened his belt, unbuttoned his trousers and lay on the bed. She climbed up next to him and her scent wafted thick and overwhelmingly sweet, making him nauseous. ‘I wish you’d use a better perfume.’

  ‘Most of my customers like this one, sir.’

  He flinched at the mention of customers.

  Realizing she’d made a mistake, she tried to reassure him, only to make things worse. ‘They’re all gentlemen like yourself, sir. There’s nothing wrong with me, or them, sir.’

  ‘Just get on with it, Maisie,’ he said sharply.

  She opened his drawers. Slipping her hands between his thighs she fondled his erection, swiftly and expertly bringing him to a climax.

  He opened a drawer in the bedside cabinet, removed a handkerchief and cleaned himself up. ‘Your money is on the mantelpiece, Maisie.’

  ‘Thank you, sir.’ She picked up
the ten-shilling note, slipped her cloak back over her shoulders and pushed the note into her handbag.

  ‘You came here like that?’ he asked, shocked at the thought of her walking naked beneath her cloak around the streets.

  ‘My clients like me naked, sir, and it saves time. Tuesday and Thursday are my nights for home visiting.’ The casual mention of ‘home visiting’ made her sound like a district nurse.

  ‘Have you thought what would happen if the police stopped and searched you?’

  ‘The station is my last stop, sir. Same time as usual on Thursday, that’s if there is nothing more that I can do for you now?’

  Revolted to the pit of his stomach, he said, ‘I may be busy Thursday. I’ll send for you when I next want you. You’re living in the same room?’

  ‘I am, sir. Look, sir, if I’ve done anything to upset you I’m really sorry. Your ten bob a week is the only real regular money I can rely on getting. So if there’s anything else that I can do to please you, just ask, no matter how funny it is. Nothing’s peculiar to a girl like me, sir. I’ve seen it all.’

  Ghastly images of all kinds of unnatural practices flooded his mind. ‘I don’t doubt you have, Maisie. But if you’ll excuse me, I have things to do.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’ Holding her cloak around herself, she left. He rose from the bed and went into the bathroom. He lit the geyser above the bath, put the plug in and ran the water so hot it spurted from the pipe in great boiling dollops.

  Topping it up with a thin trickle of cold, he stripped off his clothes and gingerly lowered himself in. He added more hot water until his skin burned bright red and scrubbed himself with a stiff-bristled, unvarnished wooden brush and carbolic soap. But it was useless. The more he scoured himself, the less clean he felt, and before he had finished washing he had to clamber out of the bath to vomit the meal he had enjoyed, down the toilet.

  He only wished he could as easily rid himself of the revulsion he felt at using a girl like Maisie.

  Sali and Lloyd were sitting, curled together on the garden bench outside the French windows of the drawing room in Ynysangharad House, sipping Mari’s home-made parsnip wine, breathing in the heady midsummer flower perfumes and watching the sunset, when the butler, Mr Jenkins, coughed discreetly in the room behind them.

  ‘I’m sorry to disturb you, Mrs Evans, Mr Evans, but Mr Geraint is on the telephone. He would like to speak to you urgently, Mrs Evans.’

  ‘Thank you, Mr Jenkins.’ Sali swung her feet down on to the gravel path and felt for the shoes she had kicked off earlier.

  ‘After the last time you two talked, it might be better if I spoke to him,’ Lloyd suggested.

  ‘He’s my brother and he hates me. But for absolutely no reason that I can fathom, he hates you more.’

  ‘Don’t let him upset you again,’ Lloyd warned.

  ‘I’ll try not to.’

  ‘Can I get you anything before I lock up for the night, Mr Evans?’ Mr Jenkins asked after Sali left for the hall.

  ‘Nothing, thank you, Mr Jenkins. When Mrs Evans returns we’ll probably go to bed. I’ll lock the French doors when we come in.’

  ‘In that case I’ll say goodnight, Mr Evans.’

  ‘Goodnight, Mr Jenkins.’

  The old man left the drawing room and Lloyd reflected that they had come a long way since his first visit to Llan House before he had married Sali. Then the butler had made it clear that working-class men should use the tradesmen’s entrance.

  A mutual respect had developed between them but it had been a slow and occasionally painful process. The butler had found it demeaning to recognize him as master of the household, and Lloyd had found it just as difficult to set aside his ‘every man is equal’ Marxist principles and live in a house staffed by a butler, housekeeper, cook, footman, coachman/chauffeur and maids. But he had been forced to accept that everyone in the house had a job to do for wages they needed to support themselves, and, in some cases, their families. However, he still found it difficult to give any of the servants a direct order, and he would far rather get himself a drink, or serve himself at table than have someone do it for him.

  ‘Is Geraint all right?’ he asked when Sali returned.

  ‘He couldn’t be better.’ Sali joined him again outside. ‘He was telephoning from Cardiff station. He and Julia Larch are eloping to Scotland.’

  ‘Edward Larch’s daughter? The red-head the gossips say has inherited a fortune?’ Lloyd stared at her in disbelief.

  ‘That’s what he said.’

  ‘But she’s …’ he faltered.

  ‘Plain,’ Sali supplied succinctly. ‘But as Geraint is marrying her, I think we can take it the gossips are right about her fortune. He’s been trying to marry into money ever since he lost his own. Remember how he tried to court Elizabeth Hadley?’

  Lloyd re-filled their glasses from the bottle he’d balanced against the leg of the bench. ‘I only hope Miss Larch realizes that it’s her bank account Geraint loves, not her.’

  ‘So do I, but their elopement when she is of age suggests that Julia Larch doesn’t think her father will approve of Geraint as a son-in-law.’

  ‘Having money again might make Geraint less aggressive.’

  She sipped her wine. ‘It might.’

  ‘Do you think we should try to stop them? I have Edward Larch’s telephone number.’

  ‘Geraint said they were catching the ten o’clock sleeper to Scotland. It’s ten minutes to ten now. Even if we telephone Edward Larch, there is nothing that he can do at this short notice. And if we telephoned the railway station or the police, they couldn’t stop them. She may be foolish and Geraint avaricious, but they are both over twenty-one. Besides,’ she added, ‘as Geraint just pointed out to me, Julia Larch’s reputation will never survive if they don’t marry now. He also said that eloping was her idea.’

  ‘Then she definitely knew that her family wouldn’t approve. Did he say anything else?’

  ‘He asked me to give his apologies and his notice to Mr Horton and Mrs Jenkins in the lodge. And to turn his Gwilym James staff account into a personal shopping account, which he’ll clear when he returns from honeymoon.’

  ‘Look on the bright side, sweetheart.’ Lloyd rose to his feet and offered her his hand. ‘He’ll never annoy you or Mr Horton in work again.’

  ‘It’s not me or Mr Horton I’m worried about, it’s Julia Larch.’

  ‘You know her?’

  ‘I’ve met her at the suffrage meetings. She may not be pretty, but she’s sharp, intelligent and incredibly well read.’

  ‘Then all I can say is for an intelligent woman she’s picked herself a dolt for a husband. But you’re right, there’s nothing we can do about that now. I’ll telephone Edward Larch first thing in the morning. Meanwhile, let’s go to bed.’ He raised his eyebrows before kissing her.

  ‘I know that look, Lloyd Evans. We’ll have a son nine months from now.’

  ‘No, we won’t,’ he contradicted, ‘we’ll have another daughter, and we’ll call her Maggie.’

  ‘We’ll call him Glyn after my grandfather.’

  ‘She won’t like it.’ He took her empty glass from her. ‘You go on upstairs and check Bella, Edyth and Harry; I’ll take these into the kitchen.’

  ‘I love having Harry home.’

  ‘So do I, sweetheart, but much as I hate to admit it, your Mr Richards was right about Harry settling down in school. After the Christmas holidays I was sure he wouldn’t, but did you hear the way he was talking about his cricket and tennis lessons and the school picnics?’

  ‘Yes, and I hate the thought of losing him.’

  ‘You won’t,’ he assured her. ‘He’ll always be our Harry, no matter how much he enjoys school and being with his new friends.’

  ‘I hope you’re right.’

  ‘I am. See you upstairs in five minutes.’

  Sali said goodnight to Mr Jenkins, who was locking and bolting the front and porch doors, and made her way up the sweeping staircase to
the nursery. A shaded nightlight burned in the corner nearest to Mari’s door. She crept in and pulled the blankets over Bella, who had kicked them off in her sleep. Tucking her favourite brown teddy bear that Victor and Megan had bought her under her daughter’s arm, she tiptoed across to Edyth who was lying curled on her side, her face flushed with sleep, her tiny fist curled loosely above her head.

  She slipped out of the room, closed the door silently behind her and walked down the landing to the bedroom she had prepared for Harry as a summer holiday surprise. He too was fast asleep, a comic book open on the pillow beside his head, his small, slight figure lost in the depths of the double bed.

  She picked up the children’s paper, which was illustrated with pictures of Cowboys and Indians, and realized that Joey must have given it to him on his last visit. She left it open on the bedside table and stole back along the landing to her own bedroom.

  ‘If we have any more children, it will take you until dawn to check them all,’ Lloyd teased.

  ‘Only in the school holidays because they will all be boys.’ She unbuttoned her blouse and dropped it into the linen bin. ‘I wonder what Geraint and Julia are doing now.’

  He unclipped his pocket watch from his waistcoat and opened it. ‘Speeding north, I’d say.’

  ‘I hope he’ll have the sense to make her happy.’

  ‘So do I, sweetheart, but knowing Geraint, I doubt he’ll even try.’ He tossed his shirt on top of her blouse.

  Sali thought about Julia as she continued to undress. She liked and admired the girl and resolved to write her a letter to welcome her as a sister-in-law. But she also couldn’t help agreeing with Lloyd: Julia Larch had chosen a dolt for a husband.

  Feeling too sick and tired to make his way home, Edward Larch threw on his dressing gown and returned to his office. He telephoned Mrs Williams at Llan House, told her that he’d been unavoidably delayed in Cardiff, was staying at his club and would be home in the morning. He set down the receiver before giving her a chance to ask any questions.

  He locked the connecting door behind him when he returned to his rooms. Slipping between the sheets of the bed, he rested his head on the pillow, closed his eyes and took solace in recalling every detail about Amelia. The way her blonde hair had curled around her forehead. Her seductive smile when she undressed. The sensuous feel of her skin, as she had lain naked next to him night after night in their big brass bed. The loving look in her eyes when she first caught sight of him after every absence, no matter how brief.