‘It is my intention to reach out a helping hand to everyone in my parish.’
‘How?’ Lloyd enquired sardonically. ‘By praying for their souls? Or by running a mission and doss house that you will expect my daughter to work in? One where she will be exposed to all kinds of vermin. And I don’t mean the human kind. A place where diseases brought in by sailors from every continent will thrive: tuberculosis, diphtheria, typhoid, plague –’
‘Dad, please!’ Edyth jumped to her feet.
‘I’m outlining the life of drudgery this man is offering you in the cause of furthering his career in the Church. I know his kind of religion –’
Peter finally retaliated. ‘I don’t think you do, sir.’
‘What did you say?’ Lloyd’s voice was soft. Ominously so.
‘You are a Communist, sir.’
‘A pagan who is going straight to hell, is that what you think?’ Lloyd’s eyes narrowed and Sali trembled, because the one thing guaranteed to incense Lloyd was someone lecturing him on religion. ‘I don’t need you to tell me what your Church stands for. Or what kind of people work for it. I have lived through too many miners’ strikes in the Rhondda Valleys to fall for your theological propaganda. I have seen the bodies of women and children who starved to death laid out in unfurnished rooms without even a blanket to cover them, because their families had pawned every possession they owned to buy food, and there wasn’t a farthing left to bury them. It was the pennies from the miners’ unions that bought their last resting place, not the coins from the churches’ poor boxes. I have seen pregnant women and babies with bellies and eyes swollen from malnutrition stand in line in soup kitchens set up by your Church in Wales – and other religious establishments – and watched while ministers made them sing hymns to God’s glory before they would hand over a bowl of watery soup. So, don’t lecture me on your Church – or your God, Slater. If he exists and sits watching us from a throne in heaven, he either spends a great deal of time sleeping or looking the other way.’
Edyth closed both her hands over Peter’s and tightened her grasp, willing him not to answer her father back. But if he understood her warning, he chose to ignore it.
‘Man is responsible for the misery in this world, Mr Evans, not God.’
‘Really?’ Lloyd questioned sceptically. ‘Then all I have to add is your God is very selective in the things he takes responsibility for. But I have no wish to argue doctrine with you. I believe in tolerance and free speech and gave my children the freedom to make up their own minds about religion and which, if any, church they wished to attend. But listen well, Edyth.’ He looked sternly at his daughter. ‘I will not sign a piece of paper that will put you at the mercy of this man so he can turn you into his and the Church’s drudge. You’re far too intelligent to waste your life. If you can’t see that it would be a waste, you’re not the girl I thought I’d raised. And I’ll be damned before I’ll give you permission to ruin yourself.’ Clenching his fists, Lloyd walked out of the room.
Silence closed in, warm, thick and suffocating. Edyth was the first to break it.
‘Mam?’ She looked to her mother.
‘I will talk to your father, Edyth. But don’t hold out any hope that I’ll try to change his mind. Peter,’ Sali turned to the curate, ‘I believe my husband is right. Edyth is too young to marry. She should go to college and when she has her teaching certificate she will have the means to support herself and be in a position to decide what she wants to do with her life then. In the meantime, for all our sakes, you should leave this house.’
‘Thank you for the courtesy of listening to me, Mrs Evans.’ Peter rose to his feet.
‘You can’t throw Peter out,’ Edyth cried, her anger surfacing now that Lloyd was no longer in the room.
‘I am not,’ Sali demurred.
‘But you’ve just told Peter to leave,’ Edyth argued. ‘And he’ll be going to Cardiff soon. I’ll never see him again –’
‘Don’t be melodramatic, Edyth,’ Sali rebuked. ‘Of course you will see him again. But we need to give your father time to calm down. And he’s not going to do that while Peter remains here.’
‘Would you have any objection to my writing to Edyth, Mrs Evans?’ Peter asked.
‘None whatsoever.’
‘You will allow her to receive letters?’
‘It’s not a question of “allowing”, Peter. We have always respected our children’s privacy and their right to lead their own lives.’ An icy note entered Sali’s voice at the inference that either she or Lloyd would keep Edyth’s mail from her. ‘You will be welcome to visit us another day. Edyth, show Peter out.’
‘I’ll walk to the gate with him.’
‘As you wish.’ Sali followed Lloyd out of the room.
It was late afternoon but the heat hadn’t abated and the temperature was as unbearable as it had been at midday. Edyth was sweltering in her thin cotton frock and she wondered how Peter could stand wearing his black serge suit, grey shirt and dog collar. She leaned against the conifer next to the gate and stared down at a clump of lilies of the valley growing in its shade.
‘They didn’t even listen to you,’ she complained bitterly.
Peter looked around; there was no one in the street so he slid his arm around her shoulders. ‘Do you think that your father will change his mind in the next few weeks and give us permission to marry?’
She shook her head. ‘I’ve never seen him so angry as he was just now. It’s not just us – it’s the Church. After what he said, I don’t need to tell you what he thinks of organised religion.’
‘It’s not going to be easy having an atheist for a father-in-law.’
There was an inflection in his voice, but Edyth was too miserable to pick up on it. ‘That’s supposing he ever allows us to get married.’ She screwed her handkerchief into a tight ball.
He slipped his fingers beneath her chin and lifted her face to his. ‘We will marry one day, Edyth, I promise you.’
‘I only wish I could believe you.’ She gazed into his soft brown eyes.
‘Trust me, we will be man and wife.’ He gripped her hand, lifted it to his lips and kissed it. ‘You’ll write?’
‘I’ll go to my room and start a letter right away. Where shall I send it?’
‘St Catherine’s vicarage, care of Reverend Price. I expect the Church to move me to the docks in the next few days, but he will know where I am and forward my mail. It should only be delayed by a day or two at most. I’ll send you my new address as soon as I have it. I don’t know yet if I’ll be staying at the vicarage in Butetown or not.’
‘I’ll miss you.’ Tears pricked at the back of her eyes.
‘I love you.’
‘I love you, too, for all the good it does us.’
‘Put your trust in God, Edyth. He will watch over us.’
She waited at the gate while Peter walked away, but tears blurred her vision long before he turned the corner. She took a few minutes to compose herself then looked up at the house, feeling as though it was home no longer, but a prison that was keeping her from the man she loved.
Judy sat on a stool beside her grandmother’s bed in the stifling front parlour. She had come to dread the nights, which seemed to have doubled in length since Pearl’s stroke. In the day, neighbours, her uncles and their families were in and out of the house, bringing flowers from their gardens and homemade cakes, and brewing cups of tea she rarely had time to drink.
Their visitors were kind, well-meaning and anxious to help, but she realised and reluctantly accepted that there was nothing she nor anyone else could do, except to allow death to take its inevitable course.
She had made up a bed for herself on the floor, but as her gran was noticeably more agitated during the hours of darkness, if she had the energy, she preferred to sit up. As usual, she had lit a candle when dusk had fallen and it flickered on the mantelpiece, casting tentacle-shaped shadows on the walls. It wasn’t just that she didn’t have a shilling to sp
are for the electric meter – although she didn’t; her grandmother couldn’t bear the glare of the electric light shining down on her.
There had been little change in Pearl King’s condition since the afternoon she had collapsed. She lay, as comfortable as Judy could make her, in the vast double bed that almost filled the room, unable to make an intelligible sound, or do the smallest thing for herself. Asleep or awake, her left arm twitched continuously, her fingers plucking at the patchwork cover she had stitched from scraps of the family’s discarded clothes.
Judy had spent hours staring at that quilt. She not only found it comforting, but preferable to looking at the ravaged face of the woman who had brought her up and whom she loved so much. And every single piece of fabric reminded her of some small instance in her grandmother’s life, or her own.
There were plain serviceable grey patches from her three uncles’ school shorts interspersed with beautifully embroidered white cotton patches, double-stitched for strength, from her own baby dresses. The striped pieces of flannel from her West Indian grandfather’s nightshirts had to be more than a quarter of a century old, as it had been over twenty-five years since her grandmother had received the telegram to say that he’d died in a fire on-board his ship. There were pieces of aprons she could remember her grandmother wearing, and borders from old tablecloths and tea towels. Fabrics that had once been a part of their everyday life together, a life Judy knew was fast ebbing away.
When Pearl was awake, her eyes came brightly, vividly alive, at odds with the wreck of her body, as she gazed keenly around the room. Her uncles had spent a day moving the furniture around the tiny terraced house, turning the front parlour into a bedroom, and Judy sensed her grandmother’s anger and frustration both at the desecration of her ‘best room’ and with the body she could no longer control.
But most of the time she was too busy – and tired – to spend much time thinking. Washing, dressing and feeding her grandmother, who was loath to eat or drink – as if she actually wanted to hasten her end – took up every minute of the day. Including the ones she should have spent sleeping. The money from the Evanses had dwindled to a few shillings after she paid for the medicine the doctor prescribed and met his bills. And both she and her uncles knew that if it hadn’t been for the bookings Micah Holsten negotiated for the band every weekend, she wouldn’t have been able to pay the rent.
Her uncles’ wives did what they could: taking it in turns to look after one another’s children, so Judy could practise and sing with the band; making soups and stews that they brought round at meal-times, not only because Judy couldn’t spare the time to cook, but also because they knew she had no money for food.
A knock at the door echoed down the passage, which Judy found strange. Her uncles’ families, the neighbours and even the doctor walked straight in. It was common practice in the Bay. She lifted the light quilt to her grandmother’s chin, concealing her twitching hand beneath it in case someone wanted to see her, then went to the door.
A middle-aged, fair-haired, balding man stood on the step. He looked her up and down, and she instinctively clutched at the neck of her blouse.
‘Are you Judy Hamilton?’
‘And if I am?’ she answered abruptly.
‘I’m Joshua Hamilton. Your father.’
‘This room is hotter than a bread oven.’ Lloyd set his knife and fork down on the remains of his cold ham and wilted salad. Sali and Edyth were sitting opposite him. At his insistence, they were in the upstairs dining room of the Mermaid Hotel in Mumbles, one of the most fashionable and expensive hotels in the small seaside village outside Swansea.
‘We are in the coolest spot next to the window.’ Sali smiled at him, but Edyth continued to study a painting of a sailing ship on the wall above his head.
Lloyd had watched Edyth during the meal and was convinced she’d only swallowed a forkful of her prawn salad. Aware that her father was looking at her, she pushed the food aside on her plate and set down her own knife and fork. Lloyd refrained from making a comment. The forlorn hope he’d nurtured, that she would break her silence of the last few weeks towards him, had dissipated. Not only had she picked at her meal, she’d ignored all the remarks he’d made to her, and answered her mother’s gentle enquiries in monosyllables.
‘Can I bring you anything else, sir, madam, miss?’ The waitress moved behind Edyth’s chair, took her pencil from her pocket and held it over her notepad.
‘Would either of you like dessert or coffee?’ Lloyd asked.
‘I couldn’t eat another thing, thank you, the salads were very good.’ Sali smiled at the girl.
‘Nor I.’ Edyth spoke to the waitress, not her father.
‘Then it will just be the bill, please,’ Lloyd said.
‘I’ll make it up and bring it over, sir.’ The waitress walked over to the cashier, who was sitting at a desk by the door.
‘Well, darling, your accommodation is comfortable and, from the look of the girls we met when we carried your things into the dormitory, you’ll soon make plenty of friends. Take things slowly. I’m sure you’ll find your feet and settle down in no time. The views are so beautiful from your bedroom you might find it difficult to concentrate on studying but after all the times we’ve holidayed here, I think you’ve picked the right place … you know Swansea and the Mumbles well enough to find your way around, but as you’ve only ever been here for a few weeks at a time it’s new enough to be interesting. You’ll have lots of fine walks …’ Sali was conscious she was saying anything and everything that came into her head to fill the crushing silence that had fallen between father and daughter.
The last month had been unbearable. Lloyd had prided himself on being close to all his children, constantly telling them that whatever their problems, they could count on him to do all he could to help without being critical. But Edyth had refused to look at him or answer a single question he had put to her since the afternoon he had turned his back on her and Peter Slater, and walked out of the sitting room.
Their embittered and prolonged quarrel had affected the entire household. Edyth had continued to speak to the rest of the family, but had restricted her conversation to the absolutely essential. And not even Mari had been able to coax her to acknowledge Lloyd’s presence.
Sali knew Edyth was in touch with Peter because letters arrived for her every day bearing Cardiff postmarks. But Edyth hadn’t volunteered any information about the contents and Sali felt too dispirited to enquire. Meals, once the highlight of family life, had become torture. Edyth poked at the food on her plate, barely eating a mouthful before making her excuses and leaving the room. And neither Sali nor Lloyd wanted to escalate the tension by forcing her to stay.
Using the excuse that she was studying in preparation for college, Edyth had become uncharacteristically solitary, shutting herself up for hours in her bedroom, all the while growing thinner and paler as the heat wave continued into late summer, browning the countryside, triggering a nationwide drought and draining the energy of everyone forced to venture out of doors.
Desperate, Sali had turned to Lloyd’s brothers and their wives for help. But although Victor and Megan and their four boys, and Joey and Rhian and their five children had visited them more often than usual, they had no more success than she, Mari, the girls and Glyn had in drawing Edyth out of the shell she had retreated into.
Joey hadn’t needed to warn her or Lloyd that even if they succeeded in getting Edyth to college, they wouldn’t be able to force her to stay there, much less study, and Sali suspected that Edyth might be planning to deliberately flunk her exams at the end of her first term.
Lloyd checked the bill the waitress presented to him, paid it and added a ten per cent tip. He left his seat, shrugged on the linen jacket he had hung on the back of his chair and glanced at his watch.
‘The Cardiff train will be leaving Swansea station in half an hour. I’ll go downstairs and ask the receptionist to order us a taxi.’
Sali nodded. Afte
r he left, she took Edyth’s handbag from the floor and handed it to her. ‘You have enough money, darling?’
‘I also have my bank book. If I need more, I will draw some out. There’s no need for you to send me any.’ Edyth picked up her straw hat from the empty chair next to her and jammed it on her head.
‘You will look after yourself?’
‘You don’t have to worry about me, Mam.’
‘Please, won’t you at least say goodbye to your father?’ Sali pleaded.
Tight-lipped, Edyth shook her head. ‘He knows how I feel. I have nothing more to say to him.’
‘You’re breaking his heart –’
‘If you’re going to catch your train, you should go.’ Edyth led the way out of the room and ran down the stairs. The taxi had arrived and Lloyd was outside, holding the door open. He made one final attempt to talk to Edyth.
‘We can catch a later train, if you’d like us to drive you up to Townhill and drop you outside the college, Edie.’
Edyth didn’t answer him. She hugged and kissed Sali and, ignoring Lloyd, walked swiftly across the road. Seconds later her slight figure was lost in the crowds walking beneath the shade of the trees opposite. Lloyd continued to stand and stare, as though he were searching for a glimpse of her.
Sali touched his arm. ‘The sooner we go, the earlier the train we’ll catch.’
Lloyd leaned forward and spoke to the driver through the cab window. ‘The railway station, please.’
‘Very good, sir.’
Sali stepped into the cab, Lloyd followed and Sali reached for his hand.
‘I didn’t think we’d succeed in getting her here. At least we achieved that much,’ she consoled.
‘The question is whether she will stay,’ he said disconsolately. ‘Sweetheart, I have a feeling we have a long three years ahead of us, and I am not at all sure that our Edyth will have a teaching certificate at the end of it.’
After checking there was no train in sight, Edyth crossed the tracks of the Mumbles railway that followed the curve of the bay and looked down at the beach. Small boys and girls were playing hide and seek amongst the rows of small boats and sailing dinghies that had been dragged above the tide-line. In the distance on the far left, she could see the silhouettes of the tall cranes and hoists of Swansea docks. To her right, Mumbles Head stretched out to sea. The lighthouse perched on the furthermost point reminded her of a long white finger, its glass nail pointing upwards to a cloudless, sun-baked sky.
Tiger Bay Blues Page 13
