Sinners and Shadows

by Catrin Collier

  ‘I’m on holiday, Frank. It’s the only two weeks I get off a year and I intend to enjoy both of them.’ Joey succeeded in pinning Effie’s hand to his knee.

  ‘A week can be a long time in a war that’s only going to last a few months. I’m going to write to my brother tonight. Come on, it’ll be fun to go with a mate.’

  ‘We’ve only known one another a week,’ Joey protested.

  ‘But I feel as if I’ve known you all my life.’ Frank downed his whisky chaser in one and made a face. It was obvious he didn’t enjoy the taste.

  ‘So do I.’ Effie slipped the buttons on Joey’s flies with her free hand. He lifted the hand he was holding on to the table, and held it there. Grabbing her other hand, he pinned it together with her first, while he refastened his buttons.

  He saw Frank wriggling. Judging by the colour in his cheeks, and Susie’s look of studied innocence, he wasn’t the only one to have his flies opened in the saloon bar of the Grand Hotel.

  ‘Spoilsport,’ Effie whispered in his ear.

  ‘Drink up.’ Joey lifted his whisky chaser. ‘If we’re going to the Bioscope we’d better get a move on.’

  ‘I think we should go home.’

  ‘Home?’ Julia repeated in bewilderment. She and Geraint were dining in the conservatory of a country hotel two miles outside York. He had insisted on making what he referred to as a ‘wedding trip’, not honeymoon, and they had left Gretna Green for Dumfries, followed by Edinburgh, Glasgow, Berwick, Newcastle and Scarborough, where they had stayed an entire week before travelling on to York. But she had come down to breakfast that morning to find Geraint studying a railway map of Britain, and as the first question he had asked her before she’d even sat down was ‘Would you like to see Leeds before we go on to Manchester?’ the last thing she’d expected him to say was, ‘I think we should go home.’

  ‘Yes, home – Pontypridd,’ he clarified, realizing how odd it was to say ‘home’ when they didn’t have a house to call their own. ‘I’ve been reading the papers and I think the editorials are right, this war is changing everything. If Great Britain as we know it is to survive, every man must do what he can, volunteers as well as professionals.’

  ‘And you are thinking of volunteering?’

  ‘They are already shipping soldiers out to France. The army needs a hundred thousand men. I’m guessing that Kitchener intends to deploy them on garrison duties in Ireland and the colonies to free the professionals for the fighting. They are especially short of officers. I received some military training at school and university so I’m guaranteed a commission.’

  ‘I see,’ she murmured, not quite sure what else to say.

  ‘If I didn’t go, I don’t think I’d be able to hold my head up in years to come.’

  ‘If you feel that way, then you should certainly enlist.’ She drained her wine glass. They had been married for over three weeks, shared meals, trips, travelling, spent almost every waking hour except late in the evening together, slept in the best hotel suites their current town or city had to offer – Geraint always insisted on a suite with a sitting room and two bedrooms – and he had never once shown her any more affection than he would have his sister.

  Attributing his disinclination to touch her to her lack of looks, she hadn’t brought up the subject of the intimate side of marriage and, as a result, developed a more formal version of the relationship that she had with her brother.

  ‘It would mean leaving you to do everything on your own.’

  ‘What everything?’ she enquired.

  ‘Finding, buying and furnishing a house.’

  ‘Even if you volunteered your services, it wouldn’t necessarily mean that you’d have to leave immediately.’

  ‘I don’t think we could count on my being around for long.’

  The waiter removed their plates. The wine waiter replenished their glasses and held up the empty bottle.

  ‘Yes, please, we’ll have another,’ Geraint said, ‘and Champagne with the entrée. And could you ask the receptionist to check the times of the trains and details of the connections we’d have to make to reach Cardiff tomorrow?’

  ‘Of course, sir.’

  Geraint smiled at Julia. ‘Thank you for making it easy for me to go.’

  ‘As we have a long journey ahead of us, perhaps we could pass the time by discussing what kind of house you would like and how you would like me to furnish it.’

  ‘The house would have to be detached and in its own grounds with two master suites of bed and dressing rooms. An indoor, plumbed bathroom is essential and at least six guest bedrooms. I’d prefer completely separate servants’ quarters and staircase. In addition to drawing, morning, breakfast and dining rooms, I think we should have two studies and a library …’

  As Julia continued to listen to Geraint’s very definite ideas on furniture and decor, she felt as though he were describing an actual house not an ideal. But she had no idea that he was. Apart from the addition of a modern bathroom, he was describing Danygraig House, the family home his grandfather had built, where he had grown up, which had been sold by his uncle and demolished by the purchaser to make way for the YMCA building in Pontypridd.

  ‘I find it odd to think that we are at war.’ Rhian clung to Edward’s arm as they walked the length of Brighton pier. Night had fallen, the lamps had been lit and the warm breeze carried snatches of music from the concert party playing in the theatre.

  ‘“Land of Hope and Glory”,’ Edward remarked. ‘Now that the first shots are about to be fired I believe we’re in for a severe dose of patriotism.’

  ‘You don’t approve of the war?’

  ‘I don’t approve of any war. Neither did my father. His brother thought it would be a lark to enlist when we were fighting the Crimean War. He was killed two days before his twenty-first birthday. As my grandfather said at the time, and excuse the language, “It was a bloody awful waste of a promising young life.”

  ‘It must have been dreadful for your grandmother.’

  ‘She died shortly afterwards. My father said of a broken heart.’

  ‘You won’t enlist, will you?’ She was alarmed by the thought of losing the one person left in her life.

  ‘They don’t want old men. Only young healthy ones who can run fast enough to dodge bullets.’

  ‘You’re not old.’

  ‘I am nearly fifty but thanks to you I haven’t felt so young in years.’ He smiled at her. ‘Would you like to go back to the hotel for supper and a nightcap?’

  ‘I couldn’t eat another thing after that dinner.’

  ‘Not even ice cream? One of those deliciously cold raspberry sundaes covered in whipped cream and nuts?’ He mentioned the delicacy on the hotel menu that had become her favourite.

  ‘I’ll burst.’

  ‘No, you won’t, and you can wash it down with an apricot brandy.’ They leaned on the rail and gazed down at the sea.

  ‘I’d seen pictures and postcards of course, and when I lived close to the River Taff I used to pretend it was the sea. But nothing prepared me for the real thing. I never imagined it was so beautiful, especially at night. Always moving, shimmering even in the dark, and the scent.’ She breathed in deeply. ‘It’s like God packed all the oxygen in the world above it and sprinkled it with salt.’

  ‘And the aroma of fish,’ he laughed. ‘Why didn’t you tell me that you’d never seen the sea before we came here?’

  ‘Because I didn’t want you to think that I was ignorant.’

  ‘Given the number of books you’ve read and the speed with which you tackle a new one, I could never think that.’ He offered her his arm again and they resumed walking.

  ‘Home tomorrow,’ she said wistfully.

  ‘I’ll bring you here again next year,’ he promised, ‘and in the meantime we’ll have weekends away – lots of them – in places nearer home like Penarth, Porthcawl and Barry Island.’

  ‘Someone might see us and tell your wife.’

  ‘I to
ld Mabel that I had a mistress.’

  ‘But you didn’t tell her who I was.’

  ‘I will when we go back.’ He covered her hand with his.

  ‘Thank you for bringing me here.’ She lifted her long skirts in preparation to walk up the short flight of steps to the hotel entrance.

  ‘And thank you for bringing happiness back to my life.’ He kissed her hand. ‘Do you want the ice cream and apricot brandy in the supper room, or our bedroom?’

  ‘What do you think?’ She gave him a smile he had come to know well during the past week.

  ‘You go on up; I’ll order it.’

  ‘Poor darling.’ Lloyd dipped his fingers in the glass of brandy on his bedside cabinet and rubbed them lightly over Edyth’s gums. She stopped crying and looked up at him, tears sparkling in her eyelashes, a wan smile on her face.

  Sali unbuttoned her blouse and draped it over a chair. ‘You are a wonderful father, Lloyd.’

  He chose to ignore her ironic tone. ‘Aren’t I?’ he echoed smugly from the depths of their four-poster bed, where he was nursing Edyth who had been unusually fractious, even for a teething day.

  ‘But I wish you’d realize that brandy isn’t the cure for every childhood ailment.’

  ‘Edyth Evans, your mother is a mean spoilsport,’ he said solemnly to the baby before lifting her on to his bare shoulder and patting her back.

  Sali watched the baby’s eyelids droop as she gradually relaxed against Lloyd.

  ‘Almost ready to put down?’ Lloyd whispered.

  ‘By the time I’ve finished undressing she will be.’ Sali unrolled her stockings and dropped them into the laundry bag.

  ‘I bet you a pound to a penny she’ll sleep through tonight.’

  ‘The amount of brandy you’ve given her, she’ll probably wake with a hangover in the morning.’ She took Edyth from him, and set her down in the cot they’d moved out of the nursery into their bedroom.

  ‘I doubt she even tasted it.’ He held back the bedclothes while she slipped off her drawers and chemise. When she climbed into bed, he lifted his arm, draped it over her shoulders and pulled her close.

  ‘She tasted it all right. Didn’t you see the way she smiled when you rubbed it on to her gums a second time? That was a drunken Evans smile if ever I saw one. And I should know, I’ve seen it on you, Victor and Joey often enough.’

  He reached out with his free hand and turned down the wick on the oil lamp, plunging the room into darkness. The trustees were about to extend the electric lighting circuits to the upstairs of the house, but the work wasn’t scheduled to start until after the holidays.

  ‘You’re worried about Joey, aren’t you?’ Sali asked as he lay back beside her.

  ‘Only because he hasn’t been in touch after he promised my father that he’d send a postcard.’

  ‘Perhaps one will come tomorrow.’

  ‘If he hasn’t been too busy chasing women to write,’ he countered cynically.

  ‘It will take him a while to get over Rhian.’

  ‘My point exactly. Since the day he was born, my baby brother’s always acted before he’s thought. You knew how besotted he was with Rhian. There’s no saying what losing her will do to him.’

  ‘I wish I knew where she was. I could explain about Tonia.’

  ‘My father said the letter Tonia wrote to Rhian explained everything.’

  ‘Then I can’t understand why Rhian called off their wedding.’

  ‘You can’t make the whole world happy, sweetheart,’ he dropped a kiss on her forehead, ‘so you’d better just get used to making me and the children happy.’

  ‘I can’t bear the thought of Joey and Rhian being apart. They belong together and no matter what their problems are, I’m sure they could work them out if they went the right way about it. I wonder what they’re both doing now.’

  ‘I have no idea.’ He kissed her again. ‘But I know what I would like to be doing, sweetheart. Could you try to put Rhian and Joey’s problems out of your mind, just for a little while?’

  Rhian lay soaking in hot, violet-scented water in the private bathroom in the luxurious suite Edward had engaged for them. Her hair, cut and set at the beginning of the week by the hotel’s hairdresser who had finally succeeded in taming her unruly curls into an elegant style, was loosely knotted on the top of her head. At Edward’s instigation, her finger and toenails had been manicured at the same time and she lifted her hands and feet out of the water to admire their perfect oval shapes and glossy French polishing.

  She felt privileged, pampered and, after the raspberry sundae and apricot brandy, pleasantly tired, full and relaxed.

  Edward wandered in, two brandy glasses in hand. He had taken off his jacket and waistcoat and was in shirtsleeves, his braces dangling over his trousers. ‘Would you like a brandy?’

  ‘I’ll be seeing double if I drink one that size.’

  ‘It tastes so much better after the glass has been warmed in a bath.’ Edward handed one to her. ‘Want me to wash your back?’

  ‘Please.’ She sat up and leaned forward.

  He squeezed a sponge in the water, rubbed a bar of purple, violet-scented soap over it and gently massaged her shoulder blades, trickling water down her spine.

  ‘You said my back,’ she protested when he sponged her nipples.

  ‘A man would have to be made of stone not to stray. And bathing you is like …’ A strange expression she couldn’t quite decipher clouded his eyes.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Like all the dreams and fantasies I had as a young man come true. You’re not only beautiful, you’re uninhibited. Have you any idea how rare that is in a woman who isn’t …’ He’d only just stopped himself from saying ‘a whore’.

  ‘A wife,’ she finished for him.

  ‘Exactly.’ Taking her glass from her, he set it together with his own on the window sill, before sliding his hands beneath her and lifting her from the water.

  ‘Edward, you’ll get us both soaking wet.’ She laughed as his sodden shirtsleeves dripped rivulets of scented water over both of them.

  ‘Then we’ll play at being sea creatures. I’ll be the octopus.’ Setting her down on the bath mat, he wrapped a towel around her and blotted her skin as tenderly as if she were a baby. ‘I love seeing you like this.’

  ‘Naked?’

  ‘I wish you’d never wear clothes again.’

  ‘Pass me my robe, please.’

  ‘Let’s stay here a while longer.’

  He lowered her to the floor, before stripping off his clothes. She closed her eyes, knotting her fingers gently into his hair, as he smoothed scented cold cream over her skin.

  ‘I’ll be as slippery as a –’

  ‘Mermaid.’ He began to caress and explore her body with his fingertips and lips, teasing and tantalizing her until she began to writhe in unrequited passion.

  ‘Please, Edward, let’s go to bed.’

  ‘Not yet.’

  She returned his caresses with a technique born of intuition and practice. In the last few weeks she had come to know his body well. The touches that roused him and gave him pleasure, the places he liked to be kissed, the responses she could expect to provoke. But she still kept her eyes closed.

  Edward was similar to Joey in some ways; in others they couldn’t have been more unalike. When it came to lovemaking, Edward felt and tasted different, his cologne was sharper, more astringent, but by shutting her eyes she found it easier to ignore the differences between her two lovers and imagine herself with Joey.

  She hoped that a time would come when she would want to stop pretending and that, until that time came, Edward wouldn’t discover her deception.

  ‘My love …’

  Guilt prompted her to murmur, ‘Eddie.’

  ‘Amelia …’

  It saddened more than shocked her to realize that she wasn’t the only one who was pretending. Edward Larch was considerate, affectionate – and using her to fool himself that his first wife had
come back from the grave. But was his self-deception any worse than hers?

  And was it so terrible to use someone if they, in their turn, used you?

  Chapter Sixteen

  ‘Come on, Joe, be a sport,’ Frank coaxed.

  Because he couldn’t bear the thought of any other girl calling him Joey, he had told his new friends in Swansea to call him Joe, with the result that it took him a few seconds to realize that Frank was talking to him and not the barman in the Mermaid Hotel. ‘I’m not putting up with Effie in our room all night, just because you want to sleep with Susie.’

  ‘We can hardly chuck the poor girl out and expect her to roam the streets until morning,’ Frank pleaded. ‘Please, Joe, the landlady’s as blind as a bat and deaf as a post. She’ll never cotton on if one of us switches with one of the girls. And, unlike you, Effie, Susie and I are leaving in the morning. We’ve only one night left, and it was bloody uncomfortable on the beach last night. Susie moaned like hell about the places the sand had got into. And I’ve a rash on my knees from kneeling on seaweed.’

  ‘The answer is no,’ Joey said obdurately.

  ‘It’s not as if I’m asking you to make a great sacrifice. Susie was only telling me tonight that Effie’s more than willing to give you a lot more than you’ve taken so far. She’s really disappointed that you haven’t made a real play for her. A few kisses are all right, but why stop there when the lot is on offer?’

  ‘Hasn’t it occurred to you that I might not want more of what Effie’s offering?’ Joey suggested.

  ‘Is there something wrong with you?’ Frank gave Joey a sideways look.

  ‘Now I have to have something wrong with me, just because I don’t want to sleep with a tart?’

  ‘Quiet, the girls are coming.’ Frank smiled as the sisters left the Ladies and headed towards them. Both girls had combed their hair, and, as they came closer, it was obvious that they had split the best part of a bottle of Attar of Roses between them. But their bright red lipstick was smudged and the boot black on Effie’s eyelashes had fallen below her eyes, making her look as though she was in the final stages of consumption.