Swansea Girls

by Catrin Collier

  Richard Thomas flicked through the papers on his desk. ‘I see you managed to misplace several clients’ files.’

  ‘That was only in the first week ...’

  He glared at her above his half-moon reading glasses. ‘I am not unaware of your misdemeanours, Miss Griffiths, no matter what the rest of my staff have led you to believe. I am also neither blind nor deaf, not even to the efficiency or otherwise of the office junior. And as this is a review of your performance in Thomas and Butler, procedure dictates that you will answer either yes or no to my questions, not one word more. You will be given an opportunity to speak when I have finished. Understood?’

  ‘Yes, Mr Thomas.’

  ‘To continue, you misplaced several clients’ files?’

  ‘Yes, Mr Thomas.’ She wondered how he had found out. Isabel had assured her that no one would tell him, as everyone else in the office knew juniors needed time to settle in.

  ‘You jammed the switchboard when you relieved the telephonist during her lunch hour?’ He fell silent, evidently waiting for an answer. Mr Butler gave her a sympathetic smile but after four weeks in Thomas and Butler she knew Mr Butler carried no weight in the firm. She also realised that if Mr Thomas had been cataloguing her errors, that particular one could have been picked up by anyone trying to contact the office.

  ‘Yes, Mr Thomas.’

  ‘The senior secretary has had occasion to reprimand you several times about dirty teacups. I overheard her speaking to you,’ he added, in case she should dare to try to contradict him.

  ‘Yes, Mr Thomas.’

  ‘There are other misdemeanours mentioned in your file, but the ones I have outlined are sufficient to give you a formal reprimand. We will review your situation in two weeks. If you have made no effort to improve your performance during the intervening time we will have no option but to let you go.’

  ‘Yes, Mr Thomas, but ...’

  ‘But?’ He glared as he interrupted her.

  ‘I have been making a real effort this last week, Mr Thomas.’

  ‘Evidently not enough for us to notice, Miss Griffiths. Have you anything else to say in your defence?’

  She racked her brains, but all she could come up with was that her father would be disappointed if she lost the job and she could imagine the sneering comment Mr Thomas would make if she tried that one. ‘Only that I will try harder, Mr Thomas.’

  ‘Seeing is believing. Miss Griffiths. You may go.’

  ‘Yes, Mr Thomas.’ Helen closed the door behind her as she left the room.

  ‘You didn’t give her an opportunity to defend herself,’ Philip Butler remonstrated, as he rose from his chair and carried it to its customary place against the wall.

  ‘There is no defence against sloppy work, Philip.’

  ‘It’s her first job.’

  ‘And you’re a sentimentalist.’

  ‘Perhaps I could ask Isabel to keep a closer eye on her, help her ...’

  ‘And waste Isabel’s valuable time, that we pay dearly for, to supervise the lowest-paid member of staff in the organisation? I think not, Philip. If you are to succeed in this highly competitive profession it is not enough to merely know the law and win in court; you also have to think like a businessman. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a heavy workload.’

  Leaving the stack of files unopened in his ‘in tray’, Richard continued to sit, staring into space, after Philip left. One of the first things he had discovered on becoming a solicitor was the pleasure to be gained by studying the office girls and, to use the colloquial term, young Helen Griffiths was a ‘ripe little piece’, much the same as her mother had been at that age. He had always been attracted to the type – blue-eyed, well-built blondes with a healthy outdoor look about them – and he’d enjoyed seeing her around the office. But a totally unexpected pang of conscience after calling in on Esme to discuss her divorce and finding Joseph visiting her had led him to reconsider the situation. Afterwards, he’d decided it would be better for everyone concerned if Helen Griffiths left Thomas and Butler, not least because she was his son’s half-sister and her presence reminded him of his affair with Esme and – although he was loath to admit it even to himself – because it made him feel uneasy, as though he and the girl were related – he was even beginning to dream about seducing her.

  John Griffiths would be disappointed but he would soften the blow by putting the word out and finding the girl a position in another office. And it wasn’t as if he had fabricated the evidence against her. She was undeniably attractive, but she was also careless and slapdash. Another position would suit her better, preferably one where her slip-ups wouldn’t matter quite so much, one of the estate agents on Walter Road, perhaps: less pressure all round and the girl would be happier.

  Easing his conscience with that thought, he lifted the topmost file from the stack and opened it: Griffiths versus Griffiths – petition for divorce.

  ‘You all right?’ Isabel Evans asked, when Helen dropped a teacup on the floor of their small kitchen area.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Really?’ Isabel pressed, as Helen took a dustpan and brush from the cleaner’s cupboard and began sweeping up the fragments.

  ‘I’ve just had my review. It wasn’t good.’

  ‘We’ve all been through it, Helen. Mr Thomas’ bark is far worse than his bite.’

  Helen recalled the look in his eye as he’d threatened to let her go and wasn’t quite so convinced.

  ‘You don’t have to ...’

  ‘I don’t mind, Mr Griffiths, really,’ Katie insisted. ‘If I help out with the booking in and tagging now, the Christmas toys can be on the shop floor tomorrow morning.’

  ‘I thought you girls were going to a dance tonight. Helen’s been talking about nothing else all week.’

  ‘It’s only in the youth club, Mr Griffiths, hardly a special occasion. Helen’s probably only been talking about it because Jack’s group are playing.’

  ‘Well, it would be a help if you stayed on,’ John agreed, not too reluctantly because the warehouse manager and half the shop-floor girls had been press-ganged into working late and there was little likelihood of him being left alone with Katie, unless he offered her a lift home. ‘Hadn’t you better telephone your young man to let him know you’ll be late?’ he suggested, reassured by the thought of Adam Jordan. Helen had told him that Adam was madly in love with Katie and if that were really the case, then it really was time he forgot all about the kiss Katie had given him.

  ‘I’ll telephone Lily, Mr Griffiths. She’ll let the others know.’

  ‘And Adam Jordan?’ He smiled.

  ‘We’re just friends.’

  ‘Sorry,’ John apologised as she sorted the relevant paperwork, ‘but I thought ...’

  ‘There’s nothing between us,’ Katie protested more emphatically than he’d ever heard her speak before, ‘nothing at all.’

  I wish I could go to the dance with you tonight.’

  ‘So do I.’ Judy curled next to Brian on his bed. She knew her mother would be furious if she suspected that she and Brian indulged in what the magazines called ‘petting sessions’ in Brian’s bedroom when Martin and Jack were out, but it was comfortable – and safe – now she had firmly established her ground rules with him.

  ‘You going with Lily and the others?’

  ‘You don’t expect me to sit in and mope just because you’re on duty, do you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Yes, you do.’ She looked up at him. ‘I can see it in your face.’

  ‘What time does it finish?’

  ‘You only want me to tell you so you can turn up in your uniform and escort me home like some criminal.’

  ‘The thought had crossed my mind. I could even escort you down to the station. We’ve always an empty cell or two. I could lock you up and ...’ Wrapping his arms round her, he nuzzled the nape of her neck.

  ‘... Forget about me?’

  ‘You are the least romantic girl I have ever met.’r />
  ‘But a brilliant kisser.’ Linking her arms round him, she kissed him long and satisfyingly.

  ‘You ever think of the future?’ he asked, sliding his hands under her sweater and into her unclipped brassiere, the one liberty she allowed him to take.

  ‘All the time. I qualify in January.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘I’ve applied for a job with the BBC. I want to be a make-up and hair stylist.’

  ‘In Alexandra Road.’

  ‘Think about it, they don’t need make-up artists and stylists for radio.’

  ‘Cardiff?’ he asked cautiously.

  ‘London.’

  ‘London!’ Pushing her aside, he sat up.

  ‘I haven’t got it yet.’

  ‘And if you do?’

  ‘I’ll move up there.’

  ‘And us?’

  ‘Us? Brian you’re twenty-one, I’m eighteen.’

  ‘The same age as Lily and Joe.’

  ‘They’re idiots. I have absolutely no intention of getting married until I’m thirty.’

  ‘Thirty! You’re mad.’

  ‘What’s mad about it? Women can manage very well without a man to run round after. I want a career that will bring in enough money for me to live comfortably so I can have a lot more fun than my mother who was housebound at eighteen with a child and widowed at twenty-eight.’

  ‘That was because of the war.’

  ‘Which was started by stupid men.’

  ‘I thought ...’

  ‘That we’d get married?’ Kneeling on the bed, she struggled to fasten her bra and tuck her blouse back into her skirt.

  ‘Eventually, yes,’ he admitted seriously.

  ‘And how eventually is eventually?’

  ‘Six months, maybe a year.’

  ‘What is it with you boys? Girls are supposed to be the ones who want the wedding rings but, from what I can see, you lot can’t wait. Joe with Lily, Jack with Helen and he hasn’t even done his National Service.’

  ‘Now I agree with you there. They are being stupid.’

  ‘No more than you, expecting me to forget my training to walk up the aisle with you. I’m in no hurry to contract out the rest of my life to cleaning, cooking, scrubbing and having babies.’

  ‘Marriage doesn’t have to be like that these days. You could work if you want to.’

  ‘Where, in my mother’s salon?’

  ‘It’s where you work now.’

  ‘It’s where I train and I have no intention of staying there. I want a life.’

  ‘You think I don’t?’

  ‘I don’t want a policeman’s wife’s life in Swansea, Brian.’

  He swallowed hard as her words hit painfully home. ‘And London is going to be so much more exciting?’ he mocked.

  ‘I don’t know, but I hope so and I think it’s worth going there to find out.’

  ‘So these past few weeks you’ve been marking time with me. Amusing yourself until you go to London.’

  ‘And you haven’t been amusing yourself with me?’ she challenged furiously.

  ‘Apparently not in the same way,’ he answered coldly.

  ‘Brian ...’

  He left the bed and opened the door. ‘I think you’d better go, now, before one of us says something we’ll both regret.’

  She looked at him for a moment. ‘This is it, we’re over because I won’t agree to marry you in the next six months?’

  ‘You finished it, not me.’

  She flounced off the bed. ‘Go find yourself a nice little “ yes” girl who can’t wait to get a wedding ring on her finger,’ she snapped as she walked past him, ‘but if I were you I’d try the Arabian slave market first. You obviously haven’t heard that women in Britain are emancipated now.’

  ‘You don’t have to keep coming to the youth club with me,’ Lily said, as Joe escorted her from the dance floor to a trestle table laid out with orange juices, lemonade and crisps.

  ‘I know and that’s why I’m taking you to a party on Saturday. It’s time you met my university friends. I want to show you off before our engagement. You haven’t changed your mind about asking your Uncle Roy, have you?’

  ‘No, he’s on afternoons this week. I thought I’d tell him about us when I go back tonight.’

  ‘Want me to come in with you?’

  ‘I’d rather you didn’t.’

  ‘Because he might be difficult.’

  ‘Because it might be a bit of a shock.’

  ‘Surely not after all the time we’ve spent together the last few weeks.’

  ‘Perhaps it won’t come as much of a shock to him as it did to me on the day you asked me to marry you.’

  ‘What do you think? Engagement next weekend and July wedding after my finals?’

  ‘Sounds perfect.’ She smiled.

  Tossing a shilling on to the dish holding the money, he picked up two orange juices and led her to the back of the hall. ‘We haven’t talked about where you’d like to go for our honeymoon.’

  ‘Anywhere would be perfect, it only matters that I’m with you.’

  ‘London, Cornwall, Scotland, Ireland, France ...’

  ‘France!’

  ‘Why not, and please don’t mention the expense. We have enough money.’

  ‘Surprise me.’

  ‘I may do just that.’ Taking her empty paper cup, he crunched it together with his own and threw them into a litter bin. ‘Want to stay?’

  ‘Not particularly.’

  ‘My father’s working late, Helen’s here, how would you like to come back to my house for half an hour?’

  ‘I’d like to.’ She slipped her hand into his. ‘Very much indeed.’

  ‘I thought you weren’t going to the dance,’ Joy sniped as Judy ran downstairs in a new straight skirt and skin-tight black polo-neck sweater that she disapproved of, but had remained silent about, on the premise that it was better keep her condemnation for larger transgressions – like Brian.

  ‘I changed my mind.’

  ‘Brian changed shifts?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Judy, I really do need to talk to you.’

  ‘Later, Mam. I want to get in the hall before they close it to latecomers.’

  ‘Adam, I had no idea you were waiting out here.’ John dumped the boxes he’d carried out to the cage where the warehouse paper rubbish was kept for collection by the refuse department. ‘If you’d knocked you could have come in. But please, come in now.’ He opened the door and ushered Adam inside.

  ‘Lily said Katie was working late. I thought I’d meet her to see if she still wanted to go to the dance.’

  ‘Katie.’ John called her over from the rack where she was checking the last batch of teddy bears to go out on the floor. ‘Adam’s here, if you’d like to go with him ...’

  ‘No, it’s all right, Mr Griffiths, I don’t mind finishing up here.’

  ‘There’s barely half an hour’s work left, thanks to you. The shop-floor girls, Mr Harris and I can do the rest. I insist you go.’

  ‘The dance is on until ten-thirty,’ Adam interrupted. ‘If we hurry we can be there by half past nine. I thought you’d like to hear Jack play.’

  ‘I’ll get my coat,’ Katie agreed unenthusiastically.

  John watched her as she left the warehouse and climbed the stairs to the office. She suddenly seemed subdued, flat, totally unlike the girl he thought he had come to know so well and was at pains to keep his distance from.

  ‘Lift at eight o’clock tomorrow?’ he asked as she returned downstairs.

  ‘Yes, please, Mr Griffiths.’

  ‘And remind Helen she has to be home by eleven, whether your brother has packed up all his equipment or not.’

  ‘I will, Mr Griffiths, goodnight.’

  ‘You angry because I came to get you?’ Adam asked as they walked away from the warehouse.

  ‘There’s a rush on to get the new Christmas stock on the shop floor; Mr Griffiths could do with all the help he can get.’r />
  ‘He said you could go.’

  ‘Only because he’s too nice for his own good. My leaving now probably means he won’t get away for another hour or two.’

  ‘It is his business,’ Adam reminded her.

  ‘And my job, and I happen to like it.’

  ‘It’s obvious he thinks a lot of you, so he’s hardly likely to sack you.’

  ‘That’s not the point. He gave me a chance to prove what I could do when no one else would. He deserves my loyalty.’

  ‘Please, Katie, let’s not quarrel. Look, there’s a bus. If we hop on it we’ll save ourselves a ten-minute walk uphill.’

  ‘This sofa is the most uncomfortable I’ve ever sat on.’

  ‘Most definitely.’ Joe moved closer to Lily and kissed her again.

  ‘On the other hand the sofa in Helen’s room is comfortable. Why are you looking at me like that?’

  ‘Just wondering how well acquainted you are with the sofa in the basement.’

  ‘I’ve sat there often enough with Helen.’

  ‘Sorry, yes, of course you have.’ Cupping her face in his hands, he kissed her again. She moved even closer, slipping her hands beneath his sweater.

  ‘Any more of that from you and we’ll be having our wedding night nine months early.’

  ‘We haven’t talked about that.’

  ‘Yes, we have. You agreed tonight that our honeymoon was to be my surprise to you.’

  ‘I mean about how far we should go before our wedding night,’ she said shyly. They had talked about just every other aspect of life – money, houses, furnishings, food, pets, even children, but never sex. Lily had discovered while she’d still been in school that Norah had been far more open with her than most mothers with their daughters, explaining not only the sexual act itself, but the emotions it generated and how important a slow courtship and a gradual awakening of the senses was to a satisfactory married life. But Joe had never done any more than kiss her. And although she was the first of her friends to get engaged, Helen’s inability to keep a secret and Judy’s frank admission that she often removed her blouse and brassiere for Brian had led her to believe that she and Katie lagged behind the rest of the group.

  It wouldn’t have worried her if Joe had discussed his reluctance to go any further. But even when they were alone, their lovemaking remained oddly chaste and Norah’s lessons had made her wonder if he was expecting too much from her on their wedding night.