Swansea Girls

by Catrin Collier

  ‘Do we have to talk about this now, in the middle of Norah’s funeral?’ Joy lit a cigarette as Judy and Brian disappeared down the steps into the garden.

  ‘Yes, we do. I came to look for you to tell you people are leaving and want to thank you for organising the food, and I find you screaming at Brian Powell just because the poor lad asked your daughter out. If you hate policemen so much, what have we been doing for the last ten years?’

  ‘Bill was a policeman.’

  ‘And a good one, as I remember, before he enlisted. Are you going to tell me he was a wife beater now, like Ernie Clay?’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous.’

  ‘Constable Williams, Mr Griffiths and the funeral director ...’

  ‘I’m coming, Mrs Lannon. Mrs Hunt, I’ll call round later to pay you for the food.’

  ‘There’s no need ...’

  ‘Eight o’clock,’ he said in a voice that brooked no argument. ‘You will be in?’

  ‘I’ll be in,’ she conceded, sensing that in his present mood he was quite capable of making a scene if she said she wouldn’t.

  ‘I’d rather you kept it, even if you don’t want to wear it yet.’ Joe pressed the ring Lily had slipped from her finger into her palm and closed her hand over it.

  ‘No.’ She handed it to him carefully. ‘I’ll take it back when Uncle Roy gives us his permission and not a minute before.’

  ‘How soon can I ask him?’

  ‘When I tell you it’s all right.’

  Taking the ring box from his jacket pocket, he opened it and replaced the ring on its velvet bed. ‘Do you think that will be in a day or two, a week, a ...’

  ‘What did your parents say when you told them you wanted to marry me?’ she interrupted.

  ‘My father was delighted.’

  ‘And your mother?’ His silence told her all she wanted to know. ‘You’ll need her permission, Joe.’

  ‘I have my father’s and my mother will come round to the idea of us, given time.’

  ‘I won’t marry you without her blessing.’

  Joe recalled the look on his mother’s face when she discovered that he had asked Lily out instead of one of her beloved debs and changed the subject. ‘Would you have preferred a trip to the jeweller’s to look at the rest of their stock to me choosing for you?’

  ‘No, I loved our ring the moment I saw it, but I never in a million years thought you’d buy it, or want to give it to me.’

  ‘I’ve earned a lot of money this summer. It was just sitting in my bank account, gathering dust.’

  ‘But an engagement ...’ Lily was suddenly overwhelmed by the responsibility and implication of accepting Joe’s proposal.

  Sensing her wavering, he kissed her. ‘You said you loved me.’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘Then there’s no problem we can’t face together.’

  ‘Except you. You’re a writer, you’ve published poems, you’re studying in university. You’ve been out with smart, sophisticated girls; you go to parties full of clever, wealthy people. I’m not part of your world ...’

  ‘You’re all the world I want.’ He stilled her protests by kissing her again.

  ‘But I hardly know you,’ she murmured when he released her.

  ‘That is easily remedied. We’ll both make an effort to become better acquainted with one another’s foibles and faults before we walk up the aisle and I’ll make a start right now. Are you listening?’ He smiled, waiting until she nodded. ‘I like my eggs scrambled on toast in the morning. My favourite meal is steak, chips and salad. I hate tinned peaches, apricots and pilchards. I take milk and three sugars in my tea. I love animals but my mother would never let me have pets, so be warned, I’m likely to fill our house with cats and dogs. My favourite colour schemes are blue and cream, gold and green and black and white, which aren’t fashionable but as I’ve been almost blinded by my mother’s walls, which look as though Mickey Mouse has been sick over them, I’m likely to be firm on the question of how our house should be decorated. My father is Labour, my mother Conservative, which is why I tend to avoid talking about politics and when the time comes I’d like to have four children.’

  ‘Four!’

  ‘Not all at once. And I don’t believe in working wives, so when we’re married you’ll stay at home, which I’m hoping will be a cottage in the country but as I intend to buy a car and teach you to drive ...’

  ‘Me? Drive a car?’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Cars are expensive.’

  ‘I have news for you, soon-to-be, Mrs Joseph Griffiths. We are going to be quite comfortably off. I have enough money set aside in my trust fund to buy a house and two cars without resorting to paying on the never-never and my job has a good starting salary.’

  ‘You already have a job?’

  ‘I didn’t intend for that to slip out, but yes, I do and please don’t say a word about it as only my father knows at the moment. My mother isn’t going to be happy. She always assumed I’d become a teacher and eventually a headmaster like my grandfather but I’ve accepted a post at the BBC.’

  ‘In Swansea.’

  ‘Cardiff.’

  ‘Uncle Roy ...’

  ‘You’ll be able to see him whenever you want. Cardiff is only an hour and a bit away by train and more or less the same by car,’ he added, stretching the truth.

  ‘We’ll have to live there.’

  ‘Near my work, yes.’

  ‘You’ll be on the radio.’

  ‘Probably working more behind the scenes than behind a microphone but who knows, in a year or two I may be switched to television. Even my father thinks that every family in the country will buy a set in the next few years.’

  ‘Uncle Roy wanted to get one for the Coronation but Auntie Norah wouldn’t hear of it – he thinks that was because watching a screen would have interfered with her sewing.’

  ‘You won’t tell anyone?’

  ‘Only Uncle Roy, and you asked me to.’

  ‘I mean about the job.’ He looked into her eyes, tawny gold, sparkling in the sunlight. ‘I’d like to shout that you’re going to marry me from the rooftops, Lily.’

  ‘Lily can put the crockery and cutlery away as she knows where everything goes.’ Esme untied her apron and folded it into her handbag. ‘It’s the least she can do, considering she and Katie disappeared when we most needed their help.’

  Joy Hunt glanced around the kitchen and dining room. Apart from the crockery and cutlery piled high on the kitchen table, the rooms were relatively tidy.

  ‘I could push the Hoover over the floor,’ Doris suggested.

  ‘Lily has the rest of the week off, Roy told me. She won’t have anything to do besides housework and she’ll want to be kept busy to take her mind off Norah. I, however, have a home to go to and a meal to prepare for my family.’

  ‘If they come back in time for it, Esme.’ Doris smiled knowingly. ‘I saw your Joe sneak off with Lily. It’s obvious which way the wind’s blowing there. I couldn’t be more pleased for them. They make a nice young couple.’

  ‘There’s nothing going on between Joseph and Lily Sullivan,’ Esme contradicted abruptly.

  ‘Like the nothing that’s going on between our Adam and Katie.’ Doris beamed. ‘Katie’s a lovely girl but I must admit I’m none too pleased about it. Not with Ernie the way he is. I have nightmares at the thought of him smashing down our door like poor Norah’s ...’

  ‘Much as I’d like to stay and chat, I have to organise our evening dinner.’ Picking up her apron, Esme almost ran out of the door.

  ‘I hope I haven’t said something I shouldn’t have.’ Doris dried the last plate and stacked it on top of a pile on the table. ‘Lily’s a nice girl. I’d be proud as punch if Adam brought her home. Not that I’ve anything against Katie, except as I said, her father ...’

  ‘But your Adam isn’t in university and you’re not a snob like Esme, Doris.’ Joy untied her apron and checked her hair in the mirror over th
e sink.

  ‘Our Adam is in the Civil Service.’

  ‘Somehow I don’t think Esme sees the Civil Service in quite the same light as university. But I agree with you, Lily is a nice girl. I only hope she hasn’t bitten off more than she can chew with Joe Griffiths.’

  ‘Our Adam likes Joe.’

  ‘Joe’s not the problem. But I have a feeling that Esme’s ambitions for him might be.’

  ‘You knew about this!’ Beside herself with rage, Esme confronted John in their lounge.

  ‘If you’re asking if I knew Joe was driving Lily down to Oxwich to see her aunt’s grave, the answer is yes. I gave him the car so he could.’ John calmly poured himself a whisky from the bottle he’d taken to leaving out of the cocktail cabinet so he wouldn’t be subjected to ‘Stranger in Paradise’ every time he wanted a drink.

  ‘How could you?’

  ‘What, Esme?’ John looked her coolly in the eye. ‘Lend Joe my car, or give him my blessing?’

  ‘She has no family, no standing, no money, she’s a ...’

  ‘Nice girl, and our Joe will be a lucky man if he gets her to marry him.’

  ‘Admit it, John,’ she bit back viciously, ‘you’re actively encouraging Joseph to marry beneath him just to spite me.’

  ‘What would you have me do, Esme? Tell him to marry a deb, so he can land himself with a wife like you?’

  ‘Joe’s not your class, not your ...’

  ‘Son?’ he questioned. ‘After the years I’ve spent bringing him up and the nights I’ve sat in with him while you were out, I think he’s as much my son as yours, whoever his father was.’

  It was the first time either of them had ever mentioned Joe’s real father. Esme fell silent.

  ‘Please, Esme.’ He lowered his voice, trying to be reasonable. ‘Can’t we walk away from this marriage with our dignity intact? There’s nothing between us. There never was, not from the very beginning, only I was too naive and besotted to see it at the time.’

  ‘I gave you Helen, I ...’

  ‘It’s over, Esme, Don’t make it any uglier than it was.’

  Heart thundering at the finality in his quiet words, she steeled herself to look him in the eye. ‘We can’t divorce, John,’ she pleaded in a small voice. ‘Think of the children ...’

  ‘Think of the misery we’ll subject them to if we carry on as we are. Please, don’t make me hire a private detective. He may track you down to the Mermaid Hotel.’

  ‘John, I ...’

  ‘I’m instructing my solicitor to go ahead. You attempt to block the divorce and I’ll hire that detective and tell him to question everyone you know, starting with your family and all the members of the Little Theatre.’

  Turning, Esme ran out of the room and up the stairs. If she hadn’t been quite so distraught she might have seen Helen closing her bedroom door.

  Chapter Nineteen

  ‘And where do you think you’re going, young lady?’ Joy demanded as Judy ran down the stairs in her green shirtwaister and starched net petticoat.

  ‘To meet Brian.’

  ‘I told you ...’

  ‘You told me you didn’t want me to go out with him but you didn’t give one reason why I shouldn’t, except he’s a policeman. I’ve thought about it and decided that’s not good enough.’

  ‘I’m your mother ...’

  ‘And you taught me never to listen to other people and do what I think is right. Well, I like Brian, and I happen to think it’s right for me to go out with him.’

  Furious at having her own principles quoted back at her, Joy clenched her fists to contain her anger. If Judy had cried or thrown a tantrum she could have shouted her down, but the girl was right, she had brought her up to think for herself and take responsibility for her own actions. She was the one who’d made Judy old before her years but then, she had never realised that Judy’s maturity would result in a situation like this. ‘If Brian were a decent boy, he’d respect my wishes as your mother.’ Joy hated herself for coming out with the kind of platitude she had always despised other women for resorting to.

  ‘Why should he, when you don’t respect him?’

  Joy stood in front of her daughter as she picked up her handbag from the hall table. ‘I absolutely forbid you to leave this house. You walk out through that door and ...’

  ‘You’ll what, Mam? Throw me out? Fine, I’m earning enough to rent a room. I’ll leave.’

  ‘You earn what I pay you.’

  ‘There are other hairdressing salons in Swansea. I could pick up my apprenticeship in anyone of a dozen places and you know it. So, what’s it to be? Do I go out and stay out, permanently, or do I return by half past ten?’

  The doorbell shrilled, shattering the tense atmosphere. Joy glanced at the gold watch Roy had given her and realised it was eight o’clock.

  ‘Your lover’s here.’

  ‘My what!’

  ‘You told me the facts of life. Surely you didn’t think me too naive to see what’s been going on between you two for years? And in case you hadn’t noticed his uniform, he’s a policeman. Just like my dad and Brian.’ Judy opened the door. ‘Good evening, Constable Williams,’ she greeted him with exaggerated politeness.

  ‘Hello, Judy. I wanted to thank you for your help this afternoon.’

  ‘That’s all right. Don’t rush off, Mam’s all dolled up and waiting for you.’

  ‘Pardon?’ Roy looked from Judy to Joy.

  ‘She’s wearing her second-best dress and the perfume she keeps especially for you.’

  ‘Judy ...’

  ‘I have to go, Constable Williams, I’m late already,’ Judy broke in, interrupting her mother. ‘But I would consider it a special favour if you try to change my mother’s mind about policemen making unsuitable boyfriends.’

  ‘Judy!’ Joy rushed to the door as her daughter walked away. ‘Back in this house by half past ten,’ she shouted furiously. ‘Not one minute later.’

  Judy waved without turning her head, leaving Joy wondering if she’d heard her last injunction.

  ‘I’m leaving.’ The tick of the carriage clock on the display cabinet was deafening as Esme waited for John to comment. ‘Don’t you want to know where I’ll be?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘There is no of course about it, you’re driving me out ...’

  ‘Esme, please.’ He murmured patiently. ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘My mother’s. I telephoned her, told her you’ve thrown me out and want a divorce. She said she’d never have me back when I married you but I think she’s pleased that I’ve finally seen sense now. Although she’s not looking forward to the scandal ...’

  ‘You know full well that I wouldn’t throw you into the street, Esme; you can leave any time you want but I won’t play the hypocrite and pretend I’ll be sorry to see you go. Will you be taking the children?’ he asked, in an attempt to limit the conversation to practical matters.

  ‘You expect me to take them to Mother’s, knowing how frail she is?’

  ‘I don’t expect you to take them; in fact, I’d prefer it if you left them with me.’

  ‘You’ll continue to pay my full allowance into my bank account?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And the shop?’

  ‘My original offer stands, the shop and half your allowance or your full allowance.’

  ‘And if I want both?’

  ‘That isn’t my offer.’

  ‘You’re right,’ she said coldly, ‘I do need to see a solicitor. I’m only taking one case, I’ll send for the rest of my things.’

  ‘You have your key; you can get them any time. I’ve no intention of being petty.’

  ‘What will you tell the children?’

  ‘That you’ve left.’

  ‘I’ll telephone and tell them the truth.’

  ‘What truth would that be, Esme?’

  ‘That you threw me out.’ She walked into the hall. He heard the ‘ping’ as the telephone receiver was lifted
from its cradle, her voice, agitated and excited, as she called for a taxi; the harsh rap of her high-heeled shoes as she ran upstairs.

  Pouring himself another drink, he continued to sit and wait. Ten minutes later a taxi blared its horn in the street. Esme ran downstairs, called the driver and asked him to carry her case. A few moments later the front door closed. John poured himself a third whisky as the cab drove away.

  Esme had gone, finally walked out. It was what he’d been hoping would happen ever since the Saturday night the police hadn’t been able to find her. But he couldn’t understand the thick, suffocating feeling in his throat, the burning at the back of his eyes or why his hand was shaking so uncontrollably, spilling whisky all over Esme’s nylon-covered sofa.

  ‘Judy knows about us.’

  ‘Us?’ Roy sat in the chair Joy offered him.

  ‘Don’t be so bloody thick, Roy. Us, you and me, what’s been going on between us.’

  ‘She’s a bright kid.’

  ‘Is that all you can say, “She’s a bright kid”? Look at the example we’ve set her. Lovers, but no sign of a wedding ring ...’

  ‘Whose fault is that, Joy?’

  ‘Mine,’ she retorted bitterly, slumping on the sofa opposite him and reaching for the cigarette box on the side table.

  ‘So what do you intend to do about it?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she shouted, still angry.

  ‘How about you start by explaining to me why you didn’t want Judy to go out with Brian Powell, just because he’s a policeman.’

  ‘I didn’t want Judy to go out with Brian because of Bill. He was a policeman.’

  ‘And a good husband and father.’

  ‘Come off it, Roy, you know as well as I do that he couldn’t walk past a woman between sixteen and thirty-five without making a pass at her.’

  ‘You knew?’

  ‘I knew. Oh, you lot tried to keep it quiet inside your nice little boys’ club down the station, but there were too many disgruntled husbands and boyfriends in Swansea for the word not to spread. Bill fooled around with as many women as he could fit into and at either end of his shifts, and it was all so easy for him. Tall, well-built, good-looking chap, they flocked around him and the job helped. Policemen work all hours, everyone knows that, and wives are expected to be understanding, not spend their lonely hours trying to work out whether their beloved is telling the truth about doing overtime, or stealing time to be with his latest popsy. You only have to look as far as you and me. Norah never questioned your comings and goings, or where you were, all those hours we spent in the bedroom over the salon.’