Tiger Bay Blues

by Catrin Collier

  ‘I’ve been to Swansea on holiday lots of times so it’s hardly a strange town, and I’m not going alone. Two other girls from the sixth form will be first years as well. Although they weren’t special friends of mine and won’t be studying English, I’ve a feeling we’ll cling together until we find our feet. And it’s bound to be fun living in a dormitory full of girls my own age. Miss Jones – she’s my history teacher and only six years older than me – told me that her college days were the happiest of her life, which is hardly surprising as she cares for her elderly mother now, and the only time she leaves home is to go to school.’

  What she didn’t tell Peter was she’d called in on Miss Jones and her elderly mother because she’d wanted to talk over her doubts about going to college with someone. For the first time in her life, she felt that she couldn’t confide in either of her parents, although she had written to Bella, care of the hotel she and Toby were staying at in New York, to tell her about Peter’s courtship – and her reluctance to leave him for three long years.

  ‘Did Miss Jones say why her college days were so happy?’ He escorted her across the road and they began to climb the hill.

  ‘She said that she and her friends used to go for long walks around Swansea Bay in the evenings. And on summer weekends they used to bathe in the small bay behind Mumbles Head. And of course there are all sorts of cafés and ice-cream parlours in Mumbles as well as the town, and two really good theatres, not to mention the cinemas and the shops –’

  ‘You do realise you haven’t mentioned studying once,’ he teased.

  ‘The studying part is easy,’ she dismissed. ‘I had my book list last week. I’ve read most of them and I’ve always enjoyed writing essays. That probably comes from being one of a large family. With everyone talking at once, writing was often the only way I could express my thoughts.’

  ‘I enjoy writing as well. To my tutor’s astonishment I even liked writing sermons in college when I knew I would probably never get a chance to deliver them. It’s stood me in good stead. The more preparation I do before a service now, the more confident I feel about delivering it.’

  ‘Are you giving a sermon again on Sunday?’

  ‘Yes,’ he smiled. ‘And I have a small surprise for you.’

  ‘What?’ she asked eagerly.

  ‘It wouldn’t be a surprise if I told you. Reverend and Mrs Price asked me to invite you to dinner on Saturday evening, if you are free.’

  ‘That’s the surprise?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You know I keep my Saturday evenings free for you.’ She stopped to breathe in the scent of a rose bush in bloom. ‘Should I write Mrs Price an acceptance note?’

  ‘No need, I’ll tell them you’ll be delighted to be their guest. Although you won’t be, once you’re there.’

  ‘I like Reverend and Mrs Price. They’re lovely people and good company,’ she remonstrated.

  ‘I couldn’t agree with you more.’

  ‘Then why shouldn’t I be delighted to accept their invitation?’

  ‘I can see you haven’t dined with them.’ He looked over his shoulder to make sure no one was close enough to listen in on their conversation. The street was deserted but he still lowered his voice. ‘I will never admit I said this in public, but Mrs Price has one fault: the way she treats food is sinful.’

  Edyth burst out laughing. ‘She can’t cook?’ She took his arm again and they moved on.

  ‘I didn’t say any such thing.’

  ‘But you meant it. It also explains why you visit us so often around mealtimes.’ She stepped closer to him as a crowd of young men dressed in shorts and football boots ran past, their middle-aged trainer panting breathlessly behind them. ‘Do you want me to ask Mari to pack you a picnic of cake and sandwiches so you can have a midnight feast?’

  ‘Don’t joke. You have no idea how tempted I am to take you up on that offer. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve woken in the middle of the night suffering from stomach pains. I’m never quite sure whether they’re hunger or indigestion.’

  ‘You poor man,’ she sympathised.

  ‘I’d like to find my own accommodation. The problem is it suits the Church, and the Reverend and Mrs Price, to have me live at the vicarage, so I can be close at hand in case of an emergency.’

  ‘Will there be any other guests at the dinner?’

  ‘The Bishop, the Dean, and their wives.’

  Her eyes widened. ‘They want to meet me to see if I’ll make a suitable vicar’s wife, don’t they?’

  ‘They want to meet you, because I’ve told them about you and your father’s consent to our courtship. But there’s no need to be concerned. They’re people, the same as you and me.’

  ‘They’re anything but the same as you and me,’ she contradicted. ‘The Bishop can make or break your career.’

  ‘That’s for me to worry about, not you, Edyth. All you have to do is be yourself and they’ll love you.’

  ‘Most of my parents’ friends are union people and politicians. I’ve never met a bishop or a dean, not outside of church anyway. What on earth do I talk to them about?’ she demanded in panic.

  ‘Knowing the Bishop and the Dean, they’ll monopolise the conversation. All you’ll have to do is follow it and be ready to contribute if they ask your opinion. And if I were a betting man, which I’m not, I’d stake money on them spending the greater part of the evening on a post-mortem of the last test match at Headingley. Your father is well-known for his left-wing sympathies so I don’t think they’ll be insensitive enough to bring up the subject of the Soviet persecution of the churches.’

  Mentally she ran through her wardrobe. One or two of her evening dresses were too elaborate for dinner at a vicarage, but she had a plain navy silk that Peter hadn’t seen; only it had a low neck. Would the Bishop be offended?

  ‘What should I wear?’ she asked, but before he had time to answer, she realised clothes and conversation weren’t her only problems. ‘Should I bring anything?’

  ‘Gifts aren’t necessary, although Mrs Price may appreciate a bunch of flowers from your garden.’

  ‘Roses,’ she said decisively. ‘A dozen long-stemmed cream buds. And for Reverend Price?’

  ‘As I said, please don’t feel that you need to bring anything, but one of your apple flans or a lemon cake might go down well. He has a sweet tooth, and the only cakes Mrs Price bakes that deserve the name are rock cakes. And, if you give him a cake, he’ll feel duty bound to share it with me so you’ll make two people happy.’

  ‘You haven’t said what I should wear?’

  ‘You always dress beautifully but …’

  ‘But?’ she repeated uneasily. It was the closest he’d come to criticising her and she was instantly on the defensive.

  ‘How about the brown suit and cream blouse you wore the other evening?’ he suggested.

  ‘The linen Mam bought me for college that Maggie calls my dowdy schoolmarm outfit?’ Edyth tried not to sound disappointed. She adored pretty clothes and loved wearing silk in the evening.

  ‘The Bishop and the Dean’s wives dress plainly and I’ve never seen Mrs Price in anything other than black.’

  ‘According to Mari, not since her brother was killed in the Great War. He was in the same regiment-as my Uncle Joey.’

  ‘I didn’t know.’

  ‘You’re right, there’s nothing worse than being overdressed,’ she agreed, reminding herself that it was Peter’s career not her clothes that was important. And, as everything in her wardrobe had been bought at cost price because her mother worked in the department store Harry had inherited, her wardrobe was bound to be more extensive than that of Mrs Price and possibly even the Dean’s wife. ‘I’ll make sure my brown suit is clean and pressed.’ They reached the end of her road. ‘Are you coming in for supper?’

  ‘I can’t tonight – unfortunately.’

  ‘Mari was making Cornish pasties and sausage rolls when I left,’ she tempted.


  ‘That remark, Edyth Evans, is torture to a starving man. But the answer still has to be no.’

  ‘Shall I ask her to save some for your tea tomorrow?’

  ‘Please.’ He smiled. ‘The surprise is that Reverend Price has asked me to give the sermon again on Sunday, but not in the morning. At Evensong.’

  ‘That’s wonderful. People must have told him how good your morning sermons have been.’ A frightening thought occurred to her. ‘Is the Bishop coming to dinner because he’s considering moving you from Pontypridd?’

  ‘I told you when we first met that the Bishop’s hobby is moving curates around the chequer board of parishes.’

  She quelled a rising tide of panic. ‘Where’s the furthest parish from here and Swansea?’

  ‘I prefer not to think about it.’

  ‘Have you no idea where you might be going?’ she persisted.

  ‘Absolutely none. And, there’s no point in my asking Reverend Price to find out. The Bishop is notoriously tight-lipped about the movement of clergy. No one will know anything until he gives me my marching orders, or not, as the case may be. If he has made a decision about my future, the one thing I am certain of is that it’s known only to him, and God.’

  ‘Do you think that he might be considering giving you your own parish?’

  ‘If he is, he hasn’t discussed it with me, or Reverend Price.’

  ‘But it’s your career,’ she protested.

  ‘Which hopefully God is directing.’ He fell serious. ‘When I was ordained, I put my trust in Him. And He hasn’t let me down. He has brought us one another.’

  ‘What if they move you miles away? I may not see you for weeks on end. Months possibly … Peter, I couldn’t bear it …’

  They reached her drive. He looked up and down the road; there was no one in sight when he led her inside the gate. Gripping her by the shoulders, he looked into her eyes. ‘One step at a time, Edyth. There’s no point in panicking until we know the situation.’

  ‘It’s bad enough having to wait three years to marry you without being separated as well.’

  ‘We haven’t been – yet. And who knows, if I go back to the vicarage and write a brilliant sermon of publishable standard and you bake extra-delicious cakes for the Bishop and Dean as well as Reverend Price, not to mention dazzling them with your charm, wit, conversation and eminent suitability to become a vicar’s wife, they may consider placing me closer to Swansea.’

  She refused to be mollified. ‘You have an over-inflated opinion of me and my cooking.’

  ‘No, I don’t.’ Secure in the knowledge that the trees prevented them from being seen from the house or the road, he brushed his lips against hers, so lightly that afterwards she couldn’t be sure whether he’d actually kissed her for the first time or not.

  The doctor rose from the chair Jed had carried in from the kitchen and set next to the parlour sofa. Pearl King was lying, stretched out and twitching uncontrollably on her ‘best’ sofa where Jed had tenderly laid her after lifting her from the kitchen floor. He’d considered the parlour to be the closest and most obvious place for his mother to await the arrival of the doctor, but Judy knew that if her gran could speak, she would have given her son a telling off for entering the most hallowed room in the house.

  The doctor snapped his bag shut. ‘It’s a stroke, a severe one,’ he added superfluously. Judy and Jed had determined before he’d answered their call that Pearl had lost her speech, the use of both legs and become incontinent.

  ‘Can you do anything for her?’ Jed asked.

  ‘Very little. It’s a question of waiting to see if the body recovers. She should be kept quiet and given plenty of water and liquids. Solid food could choke her. Don’t move her more than you have to. It might be an idea to bring her bed down here and shift some of this furniture out. She’s going to need round-the-clock nursing and it’ll be easier if she’s downstairs.’

  ‘I’ll look after her,’ Judy volunteered. She thought of the money she had left. It wouldn’t be anywhere near enough to cover the cost of medicine and the doctor’s future visits. ‘Can we have your bill?’ she asked, needing to work out the weekly cost.

  ‘I’ll give it to you later, Judy. In the meantime,’ he scribbled a note on a pad, and tore off a sheet of paper, ‘get this tonic made up in the chemist’s. Feed her two spoonfuls three times a day.’

  ‘Is that the red or the green tonic?’ Jed asked. In his experience the doctor only prescribed two and neither worked. They certainly hadn’t helped his eldest son who’d succumbed to meningitis, or his sister who died of diphtheria shortly after she’d given birth to Judy.

  ‘The green. I wish there was more I could do, Jed. You could try the Chinaman. I don’t know what’s in half his medicines but some of them seem to work.’

  ‘For a stroke?’ Jed looked the doctor in the eye. After checking that Judy’s attention was fixed on Pearl, the doctor shook his head.

  ‘I’ll walk you to the door, Doctor.’ Jed waited until they were out of Judy’s earshot before saying, ‘My mother’s dying, isn’t she?’

  Knowing Jed wouldn’t thank him for any platitudes or meaningless reassurances, the doctor said, ‘She is.’

  ‘How long does she have?’ Jed asked bluntly.

  ‘Considering she’s probably aware of the state she’s in, for her own and all your sakes, I hope the end will be soon. It’s what I’d want for my own mother if it had happened to her.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Jed said simply. ‘Don’t forget to give us your bill.’

  ‘I won’t. I’ll call again tomorrow. If you need me sooner, send for me.’

  ‘We will.’

  The doctor held out his hand, Jed shook it and watched him walk to his car.

  ‘Reverend Price tells me your father is the Labour MP Lloyd Evans, Miss Evans.’ The Bishop leaned across the Prices’ table, cut into the cheese and helped himself to a sizeable portion.

  ‘He is,’ Edyth answered cautiously, wary of elaborating.

  So far the conversation at dinner that had included the ladies had been general and innocuous. As Peter had predicted, the Bishop and the Dean had discussed cricket, apparently oblivious to the boredom of their wives and, she suspected, Peter and the Reverend Price, neither of whom had made a single observation on the match or its outcome.

  Peter had finally managed to steer the discussion away from sport by describing their work with the church drama group and the children’s attempts to make a Goliath head. He had also praised her efforts to teach the local girls grooming and dress sense, and encouraged her to talk about the forays that she and Miss Williams had made into the local countryside with the Sunday school pupils in an effort to keep them occupied during the long summer holidays.

  Superficially, the evening had been pleasant enough, but Edyth couldn’t help feeling there was an undercurrent beneath the small talk that she wasn’t privy to. She had turned her head more than once to see the Bishop studying her intently. His wife, a large, florid woman who favoured floral pastels, had spoken to her as if she and Peter were engaged and about to set the date. It was only consideration for Peter’s career that prevented her from correcting the woman. The Dean, however, stared openly at her for so long that he made her nervous, and she ended up dropping her knife and hitting her wine glass against her plate. Whenever her childhood clumsiness returned, it did so with a vengeance.

  The meal had been as dreadful as Peter had predicted. Reverend Price reminded them frequently throughout the evening that his wife had only the assistance of a ‘tweenie’ – a rough maid of all work – and no cook, which was evident from the dishes the poorly trained girl brought to the table.

  The first course of leek and potato soup was lumpy and principally flavoured with flour. The saddle of mutton was burned on the outside, raw and bloody on the inside, the roast potatoes were pale, soggy and greasy, the stuffing had come from a packet, the Yorkshire puddings would have been better served as pancakes, the gravy was as full
of solids as the soup had been, and the cauliflower and string beans boiled for so long they had turned to mush.

  Fortunately, Mrs Price had chosen to serve fresh strawberries and raspberries with clotted cream for dessert, but delicious as they were, they weren’t filling. Edyth wished she had the Bishop’s courage when he reached out a second time and helped himself to another quarter of a pound of cheese and fistful of crackers.

  She laid the thin slice of Caerphilly cheese she had cut for herself on a digestive biscuit and bit into it.

  ‘So what do you think of our Reverend Slater’s new post, Miss Evans?’ the Dean enquired the moment her mouth was full. His voice had grown heartier over the course of the evening, which Edyth attributed to the liberal quantity of wine the Reverend Price had poured into his and the Bishop’s glasses.

  ‘I didn’t know that Peter – Reverend Slater – had been given a new post.’ Edyth looked apprehensively at Peter who was sitting opposite her.

  ‘Of course you wouldn’t.’ The Dean laughed loudly. ‘He only found out about it himself half an hour before dinner.’ He nodded sagely at Peter. ‘As His Grace said, it will be a challenge, my boy. A real challenge,’ he repeated. ‘But one I hope you will rise to. Do your duty, serve your flock as well as you have served the ministers and parishioners in all your postings, and I’ll lay a pound to a penny that you will be vicar of your own parish within six months.’

  ‘I hope you haven’t taken up gambling, Dean.’

  Even Edyth could see that the Bishop was joking, but the Dean thought it necessary to reply.

  ‘Just an expression, Your Grace, just an expression.’

  ‘May I ask where the parish is?’ Edyth asked.

  ‘Certainly, my dear. After all, you will have as much interest in the place as Peter.’ The Bishop beamed at her, obviously extremely pleased with himself, and she had a feeling that it wasn’t only Peter they had been discussing earlier, which explained the looks he had been giving her throughout the evening. ‘Our Reverend Slater is such a dedicated clergyman we have decided to send him to a parish that has been sorely neglected of late by the failing health of the present incumbent, Reverend Richards. The place is ripe for Peter’s brand of enthusiasm. The present vicar will retire within six months, an interim period perfect for a curate to take over the onerous duties, while being eased into a position of complete responsibility. Show the same dedication to duty that you have over the past few years, my boy, and as the Dean said, six months from now you will be leading your own flock.’