Chapter Twenty-one
Lloyd lifted the latch on Sali’s bedroom door and peered into the darkness. ‘Are you asleep?’
‘Yes.’
‘You talk in your sleep?’ Lloyd stole into the room, closed the door behind him, felt his way to her bed and sat on it.
Sali sat up, panic stricken. ‘You can’t stay here. Your father and brothers will be in any minute.’
‘There’s no work tomorrow, so my father won’t leave Father Kelly until the whisky bottle is dry and that won’t be for hours yet. The Pandy is open until midnight, and as there’s no chance that the barmaid Joey is chasing will be free until then, he won’t be home until one or two in the morning. And Megan’s uncle and his brothers are with Joey, so Victor won’t return until they come home and disturb him and Megan.’ He struck a match and lit the candle he had carried in from his own room. She was leaning against the brass headboard. Her eyes, dark and enigmatic, reflected the flickering flame, betraying none of her thoughts. ‘I’ve spoken to Connie.’ He set the candlestick on the dressing table.
‘Why tell me that you’ve spoken to Connie?’
‘Because I thought you’d like to know.’
‘Why didn’t you say you were lovers?’
‘Because you never asked.’
He didn’t question how she’d guessed that he and Connie were having an affair and she realised just how close they had become in a few days. Already, there was no need for superfluous words between them. ‘I told you about Mansel and Owen. I even told you about my uncle and I’ve never let anyone know what he did to me. I was too ashamed –’
‘The shame is all his, Sali. It wasn’t your fault,’ he interrupted, reaching for her hand.
‘But you didn’t tell me about your past.’
She looked very beautiful and dishevelled. Her dark hair, which was only just long enough to pin up, fell in a heavy mass of curls to her shoulders. Her silk and lace nightdress was rumpled, the top button at her throat had popped open and he had to fight an impulse to unbutton the row of pearls beneath it.
‘Surely you didn’t assume that because I hadn’t mentioned my past, I hadn’t had one? Sali, I am twenty-nine years old next birthday.’
‘But it wasn’t the past, was it?’ she broke in. ‘You visit Connie several times a week.’
‘Not any more. That night, the first time we made love when I told you we’d have to talk, didn’t it occur to you that there was someone I had to say goodbye to before I could make plans for a future with you?’ Her hand was frozen and he enclosed it in both of his.
‘You haven’t visited Connie since?’
‘I went to her house tonight because I was angry with her for the way she behaved towards you today. I’ve told her twice now that it is over between us. I promise you, sweetheart, I won’t be going back there and I won’t ever see Connie alone again.’
‘I don’t have the right to ask, but did you love her?’ She trembled from more than just the cold.
‘I thought I did when I was fifteen.’
‘Fifteen!’
He held his finger to his lips. ‘Ssh, we don’t want to wake Harry.’
‘You’ve been with her since you were fifteen?’ she repeated incredulously.
‘I started working for your father when I was twenty and I didn’t come back until two years ago, so it’s been more off than on and to be truthful I think the only reason it lasted as long as it did was force of habit. Both of us found it convenient.’
‘I don’t understand,’ she murmured. ‘How can you go to bed with someone because it’s convenient?’
‘It saved both of us the bother of looking around for someone else. Connie had been living apart from her husband for years when it started between us and, for a few years afterwards I was more concerned with building a career as an engineer than finding a wife. And, just so you understand, it was having sex, not making love. But it took you to make me realise that.’ He moved up the bed, pushed a pillow behind his back and pulled her head down on to his chest. ‘We’ve been together twice and both times, and for the only times in my life, I’ve felt that making love is exactly what happened. But,’ he hugged her closer, ‘it is also perfectly possible for a man, and I believe a woman, to enjoy the experience in the purely physical sense. You’ve made me realise that it is like eating a jam tart without the jam, but you have to forgive me, sweetheart, because until us, I had no idea what it could be like with the jam. You said yourself that you didn’t know lovemaking could be the way it is between us?’
‘I meant it, Lloyd.’
‘I know you did.’ Kissing her would have been the simplest way to end their discussion. But he also knew that it would take more than a few embraces to heal the wounds that had been inflicted on her by Owen and more especially Mansel. She had a right to be suspicious of men and there were things that needed to be said if they were going to build a marriage, in all but name. His mother had once told him that the only relationship worth having was one based on absolute trust and he sensed that he had yet to win Sali’s.
Sali lay against him in the freezing silence, listening to his heartbeat and trying to think past his ridiculous analogy of jam tarts. ‘There have been others besides Connie?’ she asked finally.
‘Yes,’ he admitted frankly. ‘Why do you think I’m so hard on Joey? I know from my own experience that he’s on a merry-go-round to nowhere. I wasn’t anywhere near the womaniser he is at his age, but then at his age I had Connie. Later, when I worked for your father, it was different. Before then I used to look at rich people in the same way a penniless boy stands with his nose pressed against a sweet shop window. As a qualified bachelor engineer I found myself invited into houses where my father and brothers would have been kept waiting at the kitchen door. And I wasn’t only invited for the sake of the eligible daughters. Some middle-aged, middle-class women have strange ideas about working-class men.’
‘So, you’ve had many lovers?’
‘Women,’ he corrected.
‘How many?’ She questioned, dreading his answer.
‘Where have you put the block of paper I bought Harry?’
‘In his room. Why?’
‘Because I’ll need at least that much if you want me to make a comprehensive list.’
Suddenly, she realised how ridiculous she was being in questioning his past, especially as he had accepted hers. ‘It doesn’t matter, does it?’
‘No.’ He kissed her lips. ‘Nothing that happened before we met matters. What’s important is what we make of our love and our lives from now on.’ He left the bed, unbuttoned his jacket, peeled his pullover over his head, threw off the rest of his clothes and climbed in beside her.
She knew he was right.
‘I love you, Lloyd,’ Sali murmured sleepily when he woke her hours later by slipping from her bed.
‘And I love you. I’ll do everything I can to be with you always. And I’ll never, never hurt you, Sali. I promise you that much.’
‘I hate block days.’ Joey tossed the logs he was carrying on top of the ones his brothers had dumped next to the basement door. Every Tuesday and Thursday, colliery workers were entitled to take home two logs. Painted with numbers to prove they hadn’t been stolen and set aside by the workers themselves, they were invariably heavy, but it wasn’t their weight that Joey was carping about.
‘You’ve only hated them since Victor started to teach you how to chop kindling.’ Lloyd leaned over the bath and dunked his head under water. When he’d thoroughly soaked his face and hair, he lathered a bar of soap and spread it over his hair, neck and face.
‘I don’t like the way Victor gives lessons,’ Joey griped.
‘Stop moaning. Bring a block over here and hold it.’ Victor pulled out the slice of tree trunk he used as a chopping block.
Joey lifted one of the logs on to the block, gripped the sides and closed his eyes.
‘Why close your eyes?’ Lloyd rinsed his hair, leaned over the tin bath ag
ain and scrubbed the coal dust from his arms and chest.
‘One day, Victor is going to miss and chop my hands off, and I hate the sight of blood.’
‘I wouldn’t risk soaking a log in blood; it wouldn’t burn.’ Victor brought his axe down sharply and sliced the log neatly in two.
Joey dumped the two halves next to the block ready to be split into kindling and carried over another log.
‘I didn’t know you hated the sight of blood.’ Lloyd rinsed the top half of his body.
‘I do, especially my own.’
‘You’re risking seeing an awful lot of it, considering where you’ve been courting lately.’ Victor split the second log.
‘Where?’ Lloyd demanded.
‘Nowhere,’ Joey broke in irritably, forgetting to close his eyes as Victor brought his axe down a third time.
‘That’s not what a little bird told me,’ Victor muttered knowingly.
‘Then you can bloody well tell the bird to stop chirping,’ Joey snapped. ‘It comes to something when a man can’t take a walk around his own valley from time to time.’
‘Strange how your walks always lead you up to Llan House.’ Victor leaned on his axe and waited for Joey to carry over another log.
‘If you walk in that direction, the housekeeper will give you a bloody nose. She likes to keep her housemaids close and pure,’ Lloyd warned.
‘How would you know?’ Joey challenged.
‘Like Victor, I listen to birds.’ Lloyd unbuckled his dust-encrusted trousers, unbuttoned his flies and stepped out of them. He hung them on the nail that held the rest of his coal-blackened working clothes. Stripping off his underpants, he stepped into the bath and lowered himself into the water as much as anyone his size could lower themselves into a four-foot tin bath. ‘When you’ve finished with that, wash my back, Joey?’
After Victor had split the last block, Joey held out his hand. ‘Flannel and soap, and move over so I can soak the flannel.’
‘Do you think Dad and the others will get anywhere with management?’ Victor laid one of the split blocks, cut side down on the chopping block. Swinging his axe in quick, practised movements, he sliced it into two-inch wide sticks.
‘I doubt it.’ Lloyd answered pessimistically. ‘But it’s worth a try if it saves us two and half per cent of our wages.’
‘Back done.’ Joey returned the soap and flannel to Lloyd.
‘Take these sticks out to the woodshed, Joey.’ Victor pointed to the pile he’d cut. ‘I’ll carry the rest up and put them in the wood bucket.’
‘What did your last slave die of?’ Joey complained.
‘The pain I inflicted on him when he wouldn’t do what I wanted.’
‘When I come back in my next life, I’m going to be the oldest.’ Despite his grumbling, Joey piled the sticks in his arms and opened the door.
‘Shut it. Now!’ Lloyd commanded as needles of rain gusted in on an Arctic breeze, hailing on to his back.
‘Joey, go out,’ Joey chanted, ‘Joey, shut it. I wish you two would make up your bloody minds about what you want me to do.’
‘That’s your second “bloody” since you came home,’ Victor reprimanded.
‘There’s only us here,’ Joey protested.
‘The more you swear, the more you’re likely to forget yourself in mixed company.’ Victor set about the last log.
Lloyd stood up in the bath, wrapped himself in a towel and retreated behind the door. ‘You can go now.’
‘Kind of you to give me permission to freeze and soak myself, big brother.’ Setting his head down against the weather, Joey ran out.
Lloyd tiptoed across the chilly flagstones to the ‘clean’ side of the basement where they hung their evening clothes. Standing on a rag rug he towelled himself dry, and lifted his underclothes from his peg.
Victor sniffed the air before chopping the last sticks. ‘I smell one of Sali’s meat and potato pies.’
‘I don’t know how you do it.’ Lloyd pulled on his clean vest and drawers, and heaved his shirt over his head.
‘It’s just a matter of putting the scents together.’
‘Bloody Welsh summers, it couldn’t be colder at the North Pole than it is out there.’ Joey ran in, rubbing his arms, and slammed the door.
‘See what I mean. You’re swearing and you don’t even realise you’re doing it,’ Victor lectured.
‘Did you close the woodshed?’ Lloyd pushed a stud through his collar and fastened it to the neck of his shirt.
‘No, I left it open so the rain could give the wood a good soaking.’
‘Did you?’ Lloyd repeated sternly.
‘I shut it and put the latch down,’ Joey bit back.
‘If you didn’t, the rain will drive in –’
‘I said I did it.’ Joey undressed and hung his pit clothes on the nail next to Lloyd’s.
‘You’re in a hurry,’ Victor remarked as Lloyd stepped into his suit trousers, buttoned his flies and buckled the belt.
‘It’s too bloody cold to hang about down here with Joey opening the door every five minutes.’ He pushed his stockinged feet into his clean boots and bent down to lace them.
‘Language.’
‘Unlike you, Joey, I remember to be polite in company.’ Lloyd ran up the stone steps to the kitchen.
Forewarned by Mr Evans that he would be late home from work, Sali had held back the dinner and was checking the pie in the oven when Lloyd walked into the kitchen. He looked around.
‘Where’s Harry?’
‘Next door with Sam. It’s his birthday and Megan told him that he could invite four friends to tea. I thought Harry would burst with pride at being one of the chosen.’ She closed the oven door.
He grabbed her by the waist, pulled her close and kissed her, a long, loving kiss that left her wanting a whole lot more. Closing his hand over her breast, he carried her down with him as he sank on to his father’s chair.
‘Your brothers,’ she mouthed in alarm.
‘Weren’t even in their baths when I left the basement.’ He slipped his hand beneath her skirt and on to her naked thigh above her stocking top. ‘Come upstairs?’ His smile broadened, but she knew he wasn’t joking.
‘You’re insane.’
He looked to the stove. ‘Nothing needs doing here for five minutes, does it?’
‘No, but you know it’s never five minutes and how would we explain –’
‘I went upstairs to get a book and you were making the beds.’
‘They know I make the beds first thing in the morning.’ Despite her protest he had already lifted her out of the chair.
He offered her his hand and she took it. Lloyd had taught her many things since the night they had first made love, principally that she couldn’t deny him anything he asked of her and she didn’t possess the willpower to fight her own need for him, physically or emotionally.
Less than a minute after entering Lloyd’s bedroom and locking the door they were making hasty but nonetheless satisfying love. They had both become adept at making the most of their snatched moments, and not even the presence of his brothers in the house could diminish their hunger for one another.
If anything, their lovemaking had become more urgent and more passionate as time passed. It was as though every encounter fuelled the obsession they had for one another. And they had begun to run risks that both of them would have considered insane only a few months before.
Sali only had to think of Lloyd during the day to crave his presence with a longing that drove every other consideration from her mind. No matter how hard she tried to concentrate on housework, she increasingly found herself daydreaming about him, sometimes for minutes, sometimes for an hour or more. She only had to walk into his bedroom or touch his clothes, to start imagining what they would do to one another the next time they were alone. She had begun to wonder if she were going mad, until he confessed that he was finding it just as difficult to keep his mind on his work in the pit.
‘I lov
e you.’ He kissed her, before gripping the French letter he had used and withdrawing from her.
‘Not as much as I love you,’ she whispered.
‘You might find yourself with an argument there, sweetheart.’ He went to the washstand.
‘That’s the basement door opening in the kitchen.’ She leapt from the bed and picked up her drawers.
‘You go down first. I’ll say I was looking for a book.’
She ran into her bedroom, hurriedly washed, slipped on her underclothes, changed her apron for an overall and carried her apron down the stairs.
Joey and Victor were sitting at the table, glasses of milk in front of them.
‘My apron was dirty,’ she lied, pushing the blameless garment deep into the basket she kept for the household linen, and ‘upstairs’ washing.
‘Is it pie?’
‘Is what pie?’ Sali stared blankly at Victor.
‘Are we having one of your fantastic meat and potato pies tonight, Sali?’ Joey elaborated.
‘Are you feeling all right?’ Victor questioned, perturbed by her vacant expression. ‘You look flushed. You’re not coming down with something, are you?’
‘It’s the shock of tipping hot water over my apron.’ As colour flooded into her cheeks, she turned to the stove and lifted the lid on the vegetable pan.
‘So are we?’ Joey refilled his and Victor’s glasses from the pitcher he’d carried out of the pantry.
‘Are we what?’
‘Having pie,’ Joey repeated impatiently.
‘Yes ... yes,’ she stammered.
‘Beef pie, cabbage, mashed potatoes, gravy,’ Victor sniffed the air theatrically, ‘apple fritters and custard.’
‘Apple turnovers and custard,’ she corrected absently.
‘Almost right.’ Victor grinned at Joey.
‘Where’s Lloyd?’ Joey looked around the room as if he expected him to pop up from behind the furniture.
‘I think he went out,’ she said quickly.
‘He’s been a bit odd lately,’ Joey mused. ‘That’s the back door. One of us had better go down and wash Dad’s back.’
‘I’ll go.’ Victor left his chair. ‘I want to bring the dogs into the basement after he’s finished bathing. There’s a leak in the kennel roof that I’ve been meaning to fix, and it’s soaking inside. They’ll catch their death if I leave them out there in this downpour.’ He glanced across to where Sali was stirring the gravy. ‘You don’t mind do you, Sali? I’ll put down newspaper and clear up any mess they make before I put them back in the run in the morning.’
Beggars and Choosers Page 37
