Tiger Bay Blues

by Catrin Collier

It seemed odd to hear Harry and Toby’s laughter join that of her father and uncles, and she realised that whereas marriage had elevated them to the world of male adulthood, there was no such marked distinction for women. Bella still sat with their mother, aunts, younger sisters and cousins just as she’d always done at family gatherings. She was still wondering why that should be, when she heard the front door open and Toby and Bella calling, ‘Goodnight.’

  Shortly afterwards the hubbub intensified, the door opened again and her Uncle Joey’s and Uncle Victor’s cars roared into life in the drive below her window. There were more shouts of ‘Goodnight’, they drove away and the family began to troop up the stairs in twos and threes. She heard Harry whisper in concern as he helped Mary; and David hush his younger brothers as they piled into Bella’s old room. Martha and Susie ran up giggling, and from the length of time that elapsed before they turned off the light in Susie’s room, she guessed they’d tried on their bridesmaids’ dresses before they went to bed.

  She turned on her side and watched the hands move round the radium dial of the travelling alarm clock her Uncle Joey and Aunt Rhian had bought her as a congratulatory present when she had passed her matriculation. One o’clock came and went. Shortly afterwards she recognised the light tread of her father on the stairs. He was always the last in the house to go to bed. She heard the click as he closed her parents’ bedroom door.

  Half past one … two o’clock … half-past two …

  She remembered Bella’s wedding, how tears had come to her eyes when Bella had taken her vows.

  … To have and to hold from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness, and in health, to love, cherish, and to obey, till death us do part …

  Till death us do part. Marriage was such a serious and important milestone in life. Were her parents right? Was she too young to be taking such a momentous step? Was she doing the right thing in marrying Peter? Did he really love her or was he just saying that to get a parish?

  She hated herself for even giving that thought consideration.

  Peter had fallen in love with her the first moment he’d looked at her. He’d told her so, time and again. It had to be the truth. It simply had to be.

  Unable to bear the doubts crowding in her mind a moment longer, she sat up, switched on her bedside lamp and looked at the framed photograph of Peter that he had given her the day after he’d asked her father if they could ‘court formally’. Of course he loved her. How could she even think otherwise? She was simply suffering from pre-wedding nerves, just as she’d done earlier when she had spoken to him on the telephone.

  Restless, she decided to go downstairs and make herself a cup of hot milk - and not just milk, she’d put chocolate in it. And she’d investigate Mari’s tins to see if any of the macaroons or jumble biscuits the housekeeper had baked for the visitors that morning were left.

  Glad to have a plan of action, she swung her legs out of bed and reached for her robe. She tied it around her waist, muffled the lock on her door with her fingers and stole out on the landing.

  Wary of switching on the lights lest she disturb anyone, she felt her way down the stairs and along the passage into the kitchen. She closed the door behind her before turning on the lamp. Blinking hard to adjust to the glare, she stumbled, light-headed from sheer weariness. She filled the milk saucepan from the churn on the marble slab in the pantry, set it on the stove and lit the gas. While it was heating, she blended chocolate powder, sugar and cold milk into a paste in a cup. When the milk began to simmer, she poured it on to the chocolate mixture and carried it into the conservatory.

  Even in the half-light that came from the kitchen she could see the trestle tables were groaning with gifts. Peter had been right to warn her to wait before buying anything for their home. Her parents had been generous with the wedding reception and bedroom suite. Her Uncle Victor and Auntie Megan had presented her with all the bed linen she and Peter were likely to need for the next twenty years, including two beautifully hand-crocheted double bedspreads and patchwork eiderdowns she recognised as her aunt’s handiwork.

  She fingered the delicate stitches before moving on to her Uncle Joey and Auntie Rhian’s present: ten embroidered Irish linen tablecloths, each with a dozen matching napkins. The family solicitor’s present was a mahogany-cased radio gramophone. Harry and Mary had given them sturdy, everyday sets of china tableware and pressed glassware, then added a delicate and, she suspected, horrendously expensive, twelve-place porcelain dinner and tea service complete with full sets of cut glasses, decanters, fruit bowls and sweet dishes for best, as well as a canteen of silver cutlery.

  Bella and Toby had bought them silver trays, serving dishes, coffee pots and teapots, sugar bowls, and cream jugs in Tiffany’s. Even Maggie had chosen her gift with care, selecting a bound set of the complete works of the Brontës, knowing they were her favourite authors.

  Father Kelly, an old family friend, had given them towels, and Mari had thoughtfully bought them all the baking tins they could possibly need – or want.

  ‘Who’s a lucky girl, then?’

  Edyth whirled around, splashing chocolate on to her wrist. She cried out in pain.

  ‘I didn’t mean to startle you. Here, let me, sis.’ Harry ran into the kitchen, soaked a tea towel under the tap, brought it back and wrapped it around her arm. ‘I’ve never known anyone like you, Edie. If there was a single matchstick in the whole of the Sahara and you were lost there, I’d guarantee you’d trip over it. But,’ he studied the pink mark on her arm, ‘fortunately for you, considering what you have planned for tomorrow, that doesn’t look bad.’

  ‘It’s not.’ She took the towel from him. ‘Can’t you sleep?’

  ‘No more than you, by the look of it, and I have a better excuse for leaving my bed.’ He returned to the kitchen and filled the kettle.

  ‘What excuse?’ She followed him and sat at the table.

  ‘Sleeping next to Mary is like sleeping next to a bomb that’s about to explode. Every time she moves I expect her to go into labour.’

  His blond hair shone like a halo in the lamplight but there were dark circles beneath his blue eyes. ‘You look terrible,’ she said cheerfully.

  ‘So Mary keeps telling me.’

  ‘I don’t remember you being this nervous when Mary was having Ruth.’

  ‘I didn’t know what to expect then; I do now. I don’t know how women can go through it once, much less a second time. If it was up to us men, the human race would become extinct.’

  ‘But you did want this baby?’

  ‘Of course I want the baby. Or at least, I wanted it at the time, when I wasn’t thinking further than the moment and another gorgeous toddler like Ruth running around the house.’ He tipped some hot water from the kettle into the pot, swirled it around and warmed it.

  ‘Make it as strong as that and you won’t be sleeping for the rest of the night,’ she warned when he heaped four spoonfuls into the pot.

  ‘Don’t you want any?’

  She held up her cup. ‘I have chocolate.’

  ‘I need sustenance.’ He started opening cupboard doors. ‘Some of Mari’s Parkin biscuits or ginger snaps.’

  ‘There should be macaroons and jumbles. I meant to get some.’

  ‘They’ll do.’

  He foraged in the tins and set a selection on a plate before sitting opposite her. ‘It’s years since we had a midnight feast.’

  ‘Last time was in the old house. It was so big and draughty Mam used to buy us thick flannel dressing gowns, do you remember?’

  ‘I’ll never forget how they itched. The Romans had the right idea; central heating makes a big difference to a house. Look at us now – me in cotton, you in silk – and it’s autumn. Cigarette?’ He pulled a packet of Players and his lighter from his pocket, and looked around for an ashtray.

  ‘I shouldn’t. Peter doesn’t approve of women smoking.’

  ‘He stops you?’ He took an ashtray from beside
the sink and set it on the table in front of him.

  ‘No, just mentioned it in passing,’ she murmured, seeing indignation burning in Harry’s eye.

  ‘Typical vicar.’

  ‘Harry –’

  ‘I wasn’t going to say anything, but damn it all, Edie, someone has to,’ he cut in irritably. ‘Dad told me how you ran off from college.’

  ‘I tried to tell him and Mam that I didn’t want to go to Swansea. They wouldn’t listen.’

  ‘So I gathered. But that didn’t mean you had to rush off and marry the first man who asked you.’ He flicked his lighter and lit his cigarette, before pushing both packet and lighter across the table to her.

  ‘You make it sound as if I am still a child. I’m not, I’m a woman. Peter loves me and I love him.’ She spoke fiercely, daring him to contradict her.

  ‘He loves you?’ he asked softly. ‘Or the idea of having a wife that will get him a parish?’

  ‘That is a horrible thing to say, Harry.’ She was so furious with him for voicing her own doubts that she took a cigarette from the packet and lit it without thinking.

  ‘Can’t you see it’s what we’re all thinking, Edie? I’ve never known everyone in this house be so overly polite as to keep their thoughts to themselves before.’

  ‘Peter fell in love with me the moment he saw me –’

  ‘At Bella’s wedding. I watched the pair of you at the reception.’ He leaned back in his chair and shook his head. ‘I should have warned you then.’

  ‘Warned me? About what?’ She drew heavily and inexpertly on the cigarette then flicked it into the ashtray although it hadn’t burned down enough to create ash.

  ‘That some men aren’t the marrying kind.’

  ‘What do you mean? Peter’s good, kind –’

  ‘I have no doubt he is all of those things, sis,’ he interrupted her again. ‘But some men don’t make good husbands and I have a feeling Peter Slater may be one of them. Don’t ask me to explain, Edie, because I can’t.’

  ‘Of course you can’t, because you’re just being ridiculous!’ she cut in acidly.

  ‘The last thing I want to do is quarrel with you or make you angry, Edie, especially tonight of all nights. I’ve loved you since the day you were born, through all the frights, scares and grey hairs you gave us when you broke your bones and fractured your skull falling down the stairs in the old house. What I’m trying to say, and badly, is that it’s not too late to change your mind and call off the wedding.’

  ‘Have you gone mad? The church and choir are booked. The Bishop, the Dean, and Reverend Price are conducting the service. The reception is organised in the New Inn. We’ve had acceptances from all the guests –’

  ‘Who can still enjoy a party in the New Inn if you call it off. But if you go ahead and marry Peter, it will be for the rest of your life, Edie.’

  She had barely smoked a quarter of the cigarette but she ground it to dust in the ashtray. ‘Did Dad ask you to talk to me?’

  ‘No, but I can tell how upset he is with your choice of husband.’

  ‘He’s only upset because Peter’s a vicar.’

  ‘You marrying Peter has nothing to do with Dad’s attitude to organised religion and everything to do with Peter himself.’

  ‘That’s nonsense,’ she said dismissively. ‘You know how he hates churches and all preachers, vicars and ministers.’

  ‘Believe me, Edie, that’s not the case with Peter. You know as well as I do that if Dad liked him he’d rag him about his job, just as he’s always ragging Toby about making his living from painting. He’s concerned because, like me, he doesn’t think that Peter Slater can make you happy.’ He offered her the plate of biscuits.

  Suddenly nauseous she shook her head. ‘Peter is the only man who can make me happy.’

  ‘I hope you’re right for your sake.’ He stared at a jumble before biting into it. ‘I wasn’t going to say anything until I saw you in the conservatory looking at your presents just now. There was the oddest look on your face, Edie, and before you ask, I don’t know what it was, but I can tell you what it wasn’t. It wasn’t the happy bride look, because I’ve seen that many times. On Auntie Rhian and Auntie’s Megan’s faces on their wedding days, and on Bella’s and Mary’s. I’m too fond of you to let you make what I think will be the biggest mistake of your life and not say a word to try to stop you.’

  ‘Peter’s not like you or Dad, or the uncles or cousins, he’s quieter.’

  ‘Come on, Edyth, you can’t get anyone quieter than Uncle Victor.’

  ‘Peter’s a vicar,’ she persisted. ‘No one in this family understands him.’

  ‘We understand Father Kelly,’ he pointed out mildly. The Catholic priest had been their grandfather’s best friend, and had remained close to their father and uncles in the years that followed Billy Evans’s death.

  ‘That’s because we grew up knowing Father Kelly, and he’s known Dad and the uncles since they were boys.’

  Harry left the table. ‘I can see that I’m not going to change your mind, Edie. Just two more things before I shut up for good. If ever you need me, you know where to find me. And I wish you well, I really do. And now, I’m for bed.’

  She watched him empty the ashtray and teapot, clear his cup and saucer into the sink, and replace the uneaten biscuits in the tins.

  ‘You’ll switch off the light?’

  ‘I will, Harry.’

  ‘You might not like everything that Mam, Dad and the rest of us have said, Edie, but don’t forget, we only said it because we love you.’

  She grasped the hand he’d laid on her shoulder. ‘I know that, Harry.’

  He closed the door behind him. She continued to sit in the lamplight, wishing that she could dismiss Harry’s warnings and concerns. But how could she, when they were also hers?

  After all the noise, bustle and excitement of dressing with her sisters in her bedroom, Edyth felt positively abandoned when they left with their mother to wait for her at the church. She couldn’t recall the last time the house had been so quiet. She was also very aware of her father waiting for her downstairs. But she continued to linger in her room, scarcely daring to breathe, let alone move, lest she disturb the veil that Bella had so carefully arranged over her face, head and shoulders.

  Just as Bella had done on her wedding morning, she gazed at her reflection in her mirror. She found it difficult to believe that she was looking at herself and not one of the illustrations in the books of fairy tales that she and Bella had so eagerly poured over when they had been children.

  She could have been the bride in a ‘Happily Ever After’ picture of Cinderella or Snow White. And the veil added to the sensation of fantasy. It was as though a thick mist had fallen over the world, intensifying the peculiar, dreamlike sensation that had beset her since her alarm clock had roused her at seven. A feeling she attributed to lack of sleep.

  She had lain in bed watching the hands move around the face of the clock until half past four, and when she had finally slept, it had been fitful and nightmare-ridden. She had dreamed that she’d been running through the town to St Catherine’s church dressed in her wedding finery, all the while knowing she was late, and terrified that Peter and all the guests would think that she wasn’t coming and leave before she reached there.

  She had still been running when the alarm had sounded. The result was dark shadows beneath her eyes which Bella had shaken her head at before concealing with layers of foundation cream. But now, as she stared into the mirror, she was as perfect as artifice and Bella could make her.

  The moment that she had been waiting for and planning for weeks had actually arrived. She was about to marry Peter Slater. She repeated the name that would shortly be hers: ‘Mrs Peter Slater … The Reverend and Mrs Slater … Mrs Peter Slater …’

  It was about to happen and she still couldn’t believe it. A silver-topped perfume atomiser stood on her dressing table. She picked it up and, walking slowly and carefully so as not to disa
rrange her veil, carried it over to the bed and dropped it into the open suitcase she was taking on her honeymoon. For the first time in over two weeks the floor was clear. Harry had carried all her packing cases into the box room after breakfast to make room for her and her bridesmaids to dress. Her wardrobe door was open. The only garments hanging in it were her going away outfit of a pleated purple silk coat and bronze-green silk dress.

  Matching green crossbar shoes were neatly laid out beneath it, and her new green handbag and silk beret lay on her chest of drawers.

  Otherwise the room was bare. Stripped of her clutter it had taken on an impersonal air, as if the walls knew that she would never sleep within them again.

  Her blood ran cold at the thought.

  A huge part of her life was over and the next was about to begin. What would it bring?

  She glanced at her wrist before remembering that she had decided not to wear her watch. Her travelling clock was in her suitcase and she was loath to dig down to find it. Her mother had told her to go downstairs in ten minutes. Had ten minutes elapsed since then?

  She heard footsteps on the landing and tensed herself. Would her father tell her, as Harry had done, that it wasn’t too late to call off the wedding? And if he did, how would she answer? She started at his knock although she had been expecting it. ‘Edyth, can I come in?’

  ‘Yes, Dad.’

  He opened the door and they gazed at one another wordlessly for a moment. Her father had been handsome as a young man, and although he was now in his early fifties, his figure was still slim and upright. His black hair was heavily streaked with grey and the lines around his eyes and mouth had deepened. But somehow the signs of aging only made him look more distinguished, especially when dressed in his morning suit.

  ‘You look very beautiful, my sweet.’

  ‘Thank you, Dad.’ A lump rose in her throat. ‘You look very handsome.’

  ‘So your mother told me but it’s always nice to hear it from someone else.’ He walked into the room. ‘I’m sorry about all the arguments. But whatever was said was the result of your mother and me wanting the very best for you. We love you very much, Edie.’