Swansea Girls

by Catrin Collier

  ‘One step at a time, Martin.’ Norah passed him the sugar. ‘I think Katie would be better off up here with Lily and me, until your mam comes home from hospital.’

  ‘And before you make up your mind one way or another, you’d best take a look at the place. It needs decorating as well as sorting.’

  ‘I did some painting in Borstal,’ Jack enthused.

  ‘Tell you what.’ Norah gave the boys a rare, tight smile. ‘If you decide to take it, how about we give you the first month rent free in exchange for clearing and decorating the rooms?’

  Chapter Eight

  Helen wiped the last of the pans, pushed it into the stove to dry, slammed the oven door and looked around the kitchenette. Everything appeared clean and pristine but she didn’t doubt her mother would find fault, just as she had done all day and, looking back, for as long as she could remember. Predictably, her father had chosen to inform her privately how disappointed he was at her behaviour before taking refuge in his customary reticence. If past experience was anything to go by, he’d forget – or pretend to forget – all about it in a few days and go back to loving her as unconditionally as he always had. She’d expected worse from her mother, but even Joe had been taken aback by the hostility and venom of Esme’s reaction. There hadn’t been a single word of sympathy for Laurence Murton Davies’s attack on her, or the medical examination she’d been subjected to, only cold condemnation for stealing the dress and making the family the focus of scandal and gossip.

  She couldn’t help but contrast her relationship with her mother with that of Lily and her Auntie Norah, or Judy and Joy Hunt. Judy and Lily discussed everything from make-up, fashion and hairstyles to boyfriends and sex with the women who had brought them up, and she envied them that close intimacy. Even when it came to important things like the facts of life, she’d had to rely on Lily and Judy for the details which Norah and Joy had shared with them.

  Revelling in her misery, Helen raked up every painful memory. Like all the times her school concerts had clashed with her mother’s rehearsals and her father had sat alone when everyone else had two parents to watch them perform. The horrendous rows whenever she had wanted to buy grown-up things like make-up and stockings; there had even been a fight over her first bra, her mother insisting she didn’t need one long after girls half her size had been wearing them.

  It was almost as though she hadn’t wanted her to grow up. As a child she had hoped things would change when she was older. Her mother was smart and sophisticated. Like Joy Hunt she enjoyed going to the theatre and cinema, but the longed-for invitations to join Esme on her outings had never materialised. Instead of accompanying her as soon as she’d been old enough, as Judy did Joy, she’d been relegated to the Cinderella role of clearing up whenever the daily wasn’t around, receiving the same sneering criticism for her effort whether she did the job properly or not.

  Her father was different. She loved him and was certain he loved her, which made his present disappointment in her difficult to take. But knowing he would forgive her made her ache all the more for a kind word from her mother.

  Uncertain how to cope with the intensity of Esme’s rage, Joe had cleared off half an hour after breakfast, using the excuses of picking up the car he’d left in Mumbles the night before and a non-existent Sunday study group to ignore her plea for support. The midday Sunday meal had been a silent, strained affair. Hardly anything had been eaten and Esme had left the house before dessert, announcing she was going to visit her mother before news of last night’s events spread to Langland. With a parting shot to Helen to clear up, she’d run to catch the bus. Her father had muttered something about stocktaking and walked out a few minutes later.

  Wishing that a friend – any friend – would knock at the door so she could talk about the way she felt and last night, Helen untied her apron, hung it on the peg on the back of the door and wandered restlessly from room to room. She picked up objects and set them down again without really seeing any of them. Normally on a fine Sunday she would have called on Lily, Judy and Katie. They would have taken the train down to Mumbles and walked along the seafront in the hope of seeing someone they knew – preferably male and good-looking – and afterwards visited one of the Italian cafés for ice cream. But even if she’d felt like going out and facing people – and she didn’t – both her parents had been adamant. If she dared leave the house they’d send her to stay with her mother’s great-aunt who lived in an isolated farmhouse in the wilds of Carmarthenshire. The threat wasn’t an idle one. Her mother had talked of sending her there anyway and she had a feeling it was only her father’s intervention that had prevented the ticket from being bought.

  She curled up on the windowsill of her room and looked down at the garden three floors below. Her father’s vegetable plot was ready for harvesting and it was an indication of the uproar in the house that he wasn’t working on it. All this trouble – all this upset – was entirely her fault. Her mother was right. No decent boy would look at her again. Only ones like Laurence Murton Davies who wanted to paw her and do disgusting things ... She shuddered at the humiliation of the medical examination, the contempt in the sergeant’s face as he’d photographed her breast.

  Resting her chin on her knees, her head sank on to her arms and she cried harsh salt tears that burned her eyes and dried her throat. It would be better if she were dead. Then she would no longer be a disgrace to her mother and Joe. How did people kill themselves? Hanging? She stared up at the light fitting. The electric cord looked flimsy; if she tried to tie herself to that it would be bound to break, probably bringing half the ceiling down and bare wires with it. She might even be electrocuted. She’d heard someone say that when a person was electrocuted their flesh fried and smelled like bacon.

  She could hang herself from the stairwell. Just the thought made the hairs prickle on the back of her neck. She had always been terrified of heights. She could never bring herself to step off into nothingness, which was ridiculous when she considered she was plotting ways to put an end to her life.

  There were pills. Mrs Bootley from the Promenade whose husband had run off with their next-door neighbour had killed herself that way. Leaving the sill, she went into the bathroom and inspected the cabinet. The sum total of medicines amounted to half a dozen aspirins and a packet of laxatives, but there were several bottles marked ‘poisonous if ingested’. Hair preparations, perfumes, disinfectant – but what if they didn’t kill her, only hurt her in some horrible painful way, or turned her into a mindless cabbage? She had read about a child who had drunk poison that had damaged her stomach and made her life a misery. And poisons weren’t certain. She wanted something that would make her mother realise she had been serious and knew there was no chance of being saved.

  She pictured her funeral. The curtains closed in the front windows of the house, the cortège leaving, her father, inconsolable in grief, her mother throwing herself on to her coffin, showing her more affection in death than she had ever shown her in life. Joe and his friends in suits and black ties looking suitably sombre at the graveside as her coffin was lowered into the earth ... she could put her head in the oven. Then she remembered her mother’s new stove was electric.

  Wandering back downstairs, she went into the kitchen. A knife? She opened the drawer, took out the largest of the carving knives and ran her thumb down the edge. Deciding it was blunt, she replaced it in the drawer. Then she saw blood drip from her hand on to the floor. Picking up a tea towel, she ran to the cold tap to staunch it. The blade was so big, she doubted she could bring herself to plunge it into her heart but she could cut her wrists. Wasn’t that the way Hollywood film stars killed themselves? Her history teacher had said something about Romans doing it in the bath because hot water made the blood run faster. But that would be messy if she kept her clothes on and too many people had seen her naked last night for her to want to make a spectacle of herself again – even in death.

  She stared at the knife then went to the pad next to t
he telephone in the hall and scribbled,

  I couldn’t bear to live with the disgrace I’ve brought on you, I’m sorry,

  Love Helen.

  Taking the knife, she unbolted the door in the hall that led to the basement and the back garden. She would cut her wrists, but not in the house where her mother could accuse her of making a mess. She would do it outside where the last thing she would see was the endless blue sky and the clouds just like – like – she had a vague recollection of reading something similar in a book but she couldn’t remember which one.

  ‘Mrs Evans mentioned you were moving in down here. I thought you might need a hand.’ Brian stood at the door at the foot of the staircase that opened into Roy Williams’ basement and waited for Martin to tell him to shove off.

  ‘We need all the hands we can get. Mr Williams said there was a mess down here and he wasn’t joking.’ Martin kicked aside a box of old newspapers. ‘It looks as though it’s been used as a dumping ground by the entire street, not just this house.’

  ‘How many rooms are there?’ Brian stepped back as Martin tossed a broken wooden clothes horse down the passage.

  ‘Three and, as you see, all packed full of junk. Apparently there’s everything we need somewhere beneath this lot and after we’ve excavated it Mrs Evans said she’ll give us enough bed linen and towels to be going on with.’

  Brian glanced around the corner and saw a sink, stove and bath ranged along the walls. ‘A kitchen and two bedrooms?’

  ‘That’s it.’

  ‘How much rent you paying?’

  ‘Nothing for the first month but we have to paint and decorate the place. The rent will be a pound a week after that.’

  ‘How about I pay ten bob a week straight off for one of the rooms and give you a hand with the decorating?’

  ‘Why would you do that? You’ve got it cosy upstairs. All home comforts, meals laid on, washing done ...’

  ‘And my every move watched. Supposing I find a girl?’

  ‘I thought you did last night.’

  ‘Give me a chance. Let’s just say Judy’s more my style than Maria was.’

  ‘Even so, you’re still a copper and you shouldn’t mix with criminals, and whichever way you look at it, your lot regard Jack as one.’

  ‘How about you let me worry about “my lot”?’

  ‘And if you catch Jack doing something he shouldn’t?’

  ‘Like beating up the crache?’

  The irony wasn’t lost on Martin. ‘What do you say, Jack?’ he asked as his brother walked in from the garden where he’d been building a bonfire.

  ‘About what?’

  ‘Brian moving in and paying half the rent. It would mean us sharing a room but we could save some money for Mam to buy the things she’ll need when she comes out of hospital.’

  ‘You want us to share this place with a copper?’

  ‘I’m not a copper off duty.’

  ‘A copper’s a copper in the buff or his uniform, the pub or on the beat.’

  ‘He helped you last night,’ Martin reminded.

  ‘And afterwards I heard you tell him to sod off.’ Jack picked up the clothes horse.

  ‘I’m thick-skinned.’

  ‘I’ve noticed.’ Jack threw the broken wooden frame out of the door.

  ‘I work shifts, you’d hardly know I was here.’

  ‘We could use the money.’ Martin picked up a crate of empty beer bottles.

  ‘I’d find the extra.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Round and about.’

  ‘That’s what I’m afraid of. It might pay to have a copper in the house to keep an eye on you.’

  ‘Suit yourself, you always do.’ Jack kicked a path through the rubbish in the passage.

  ‘You’ll have to move out when my mother and Katie move in,’ Martin warned, handing the crate to Jack.

  ‘Thanks. At least that’ll give me a breathing space. How about I start clearing the front room?’

  ‘Find a bed and it’s yours.’

  Joe strolled through Mumbles towards the café where Helen and her friends usually stopped for ice cream. Glancing in the window, he saw Judy, Katie and Lily sitting at a table. He pushed open the door, hesitated, then put his head down and walked away. After the events of the previous evening he wasn’t certain of the reception he’d get from any of them.

  Lighting a cigarette, he wandered into the amusement arcade and watched a crowd of young boys empty their pockets into the machines. Recalling the sour taste the loss of his allowance had brought when he’d been their age, he turned on his heel and headed for the beach. The tide was coming in, the sand almost covered. Soon the water would be lapping at the pebbles. Since childhood he’d loved the sucking, slurping noise the waves made as they ebbed and flowed among the rocks. Sitting on the sea wall, he looked out across the bay towards Port Talbot and thought about Larry. He didn’t need to talk to him to know how he’d treat last night’s incident. He could almost hear his braying laugh: ‘If it had been anyone’s sister other than your own, Joe, you would have been ogling her tits along with the rest of us. No harm done!’

  ‘No harm done.’ It was what Larry, Robin and even he had said dozens of times, after one of Larry’s ‘larks’. Like when Larry had propped a ladder against the window of the bathroom outside the girls’ hostel in the training college and tried to peer in through the skylight before almost breaking his neck when the ladder went crashing to the ground. Or the time he had dived into the Watkin Morgans’ swimming pool and pulled down the top of Angie’s French pen pal’s swimming costume. The time he’d ...

  He could go on and on. Never once had he or Robin suggested Larry’s pranks were juvenile, in poor taste, or had upset the girls Larry targeted. And to his shame he realised that if Larry had torn the dress off anyone’s sister other than his own last night, he might even have thought the incident amusing. But then he’d had to look at Helen’s face this morning and listen to the names their mother called her, all the while knowing that nothing that had happened was Helen’s fault, apart from the initial purloining of the dress. Jack Clay had been right to tackle Larry, he was only sorry Jack hadn’t given him a more thorough going over. But then, that might have resulted in Jack being returned to Borstal as punishment for doing what he should have done: protect Helen. Worst of all was his mother’s blind assumption that he was mixing with the cream of Swansea society. She was completely unaware that most of the people she regarded as the ‘cream’ assumed they had the right to ride roughshod over any and everyone with less money and influence than they, and that included him, Helen and probably their father.

  The one thing he was sure of was he didn’t want to see Larry again, because if he did, he’d more than likely pick up where Jack Clay had left off. But where did that leave him? Ostracised by the in-crowd dominated by Larry and Robin that his mother had been so pleased he’d infiltrated, and still cold-shouldered by the boys in the street he had played with as a child because he’d been to grammar school and university.

  ‘Hello, Joe.’

  Suddenly and acutely aware of the scent of Lily of the Valley, he turned to see Lily standing beside him.

  ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to disturb you but I wanted to ask after Helen.’

  ‘You coming, Lily?’ Judy called as she and Katie walked down the steps on to the narrow strip of beach, all that was left above the tide line.

  ‘In a minute. You go on, I’ll catch up.’ Folding her skirt beneath her, Lily sat on the wall beside him. ‘Is Helen very upset?’

  ‘What do you think?’

  ‘I’d be, but I’m more of a coward than Helen.’

  ‘Helen’s not brave, just stupid. No girl in her right mind would have worn that dress to the Pier last night.’

  ‘I did wonder if we’d pushed her into it.’

  ‘Egged her on?’ he asked in surprise.

  ‘Not exactly. But she showed it to us before we went out and we tried to persuade her to w
ear something else.’

  ‘And suggesting to Helen that she shouldn’t do something is the best way to get her to do it.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘It’s hardly your fault.’

  ‘But you must feel dreadful after bringing that boy to the Pier in your father’s car.’

  ‘Yes.’ He climbed to his feet. ‘But I’d rather not talk about him or what happened last night.’

  ‘Of course. I’m sorry.’

  ‘Stop apologising.’

  ‘Tell Helen I was asking after her, will you, please?’ Jumping down from the wall, she went to the steps.

  ‘Lily.’ He followed, catching up with her as she reached the beach. ‘I didn’t mean to be short with you. It’s just that after last night I’m so angry I don’t know what to do with myself.’

  ‘Uncle Roy always tells me to bite my big toe when I feel like that.’

  ‘I can’t imagine you ever being this frustrated.’

  ‘I’m good at hiding my feelings.’

  He took a deep breath. ‘I love the sea. I’m still angry, yet I can look at those waves and almost forget all the rows and arguments at home.’

  ‘Were your parents furious?’

  ‘With Helen for taking the dress. She’s been locked up as a punishment. Forbidden to go anywhere except work for six months so you won’t be seeing anything of her unless you call, and that’s only if my mother lets you in.’

  ‘Poor Helen,’ Lily murmured, deciding it wasn’t a good time to tell Joe that she and Judy had been ordered not to talk to or visit her.

  ‘So, to change the subject, this isn’t last night and I’m not taking you home, but would you like to go out with me?’

  Speechless, Lily stared at him in amazement. She hadn’t believed Helen’s assertion that he was after her for an instant.

  ‘Is that look a “yes” or “no”?’

  ‘I’m only allowed down the Pier and to the pictures with Judy and Katie.’

  ‘Are you telling me that because you don’t want to go out with me?’

  ‘I’ve never thought about going out with you,’ she replied, not entirely truthfully.