A Silver Lining (16 page)

Graig Avenue was still peaceful and deserted. Charlie walked swiftly and quietly close to the high wall that enclosed the back gardens of Phillips Street. Pausing outside the door of the house opposite the Powells’ he listened. A dog barked in the distance. Boots rang over the paved area around the corner in Llantrisant Road. Even if whoever was making the noise was turning into Graig Avenue, he still had a few minutes. Pressing down the latch he stepped down into the back garden of the first house in Phillips Street and closed the door quickly behind him.

He walked down the well-trodden centre path that bisected the tiny area, negotiated a narrow flight of steps and lowered himself into a small enclosed yard.

To his left, fine threads of light peeped between the folds of a pair of unusually thick curtains. In front of him the greyish white paint of the washhouse door glimmered in the darkness. He knocked before opening it.

‘Mrs Pugh, Miss Harry,’ he called so they wouldn’t be alarmed. ‘It’s Charlie.’

The kitchen door opened and a cloud of warmth gusted out to greet him. Phyllis Harry, middle height, thin faced, appeared in the doorway. She smiled as she ran her fingers through her greying, mousy hair.

‘Come in, Charlie. It’s good to see you. Can I get you a cup of tea?’

‘No thank you, Miss Harry.’ He followed her into Rhiannon Pugh’s kitchen, ducking his head below the low lintel of the washhouse door. The room was bright and cosy, a hard-working poor woman’s room, glowing with multi-coloured rag rugs, hand-knitted cushion covers and patchwork curtains. A cardboard box of home-made rag dolls and knitted animals stood in the corner.

‘Charlie.’ Rhiannon Pugh, well into her seventies and crippled by arthritis and bronchitis, nodded to him. Charlie looked from her to Phyllis and saw they already knew what he had come to tell them.

‘Mr Roberts from next door called in this morning. He told us that Evan has been sentenced to six months’ hard labour.’

‘I saw Evan before they took him away. He told me to tell you he’s fine, and six months will soon pass.’

‘Typical Evan,’ Phyllis smiled as she shook her head fondly.

‘It will be hard on Elizabeth,’ Rhiannon wheezed. Much as she loved Phyllis, who was more like a daughter than a lodger, she couldn’t resist reminding her that the love of her life and father of her child also had a wife.

‘She has taken it hard,’ Charlie agreed shortly without elaborating.

‘Will you be walking through?’ Phyllis asked. Rhiannon had lived all her life in Phillips Street, and to spare her neighbours the long walk around Vicarage Corner allowed her house to be used as a thoroughfare between Graig Avenue and the streets below her own. It was a shortcut that had served Phyllis well. It was impossible to watch the front and back doors of the house at the same time, and even the most determined gossip had been unable to hazard a guess as to the identity of the father of her child.

‘If that’s all right with you, Mrs Pugh,’ Charlie said, thinking that a beer with a whisky chaser drunk in the warm, masculine atmosphere of the bar of the Graig Hotel would go down extremely well.

‘I’ll see you out.’ Phyllis closed the kitchen door behind her as she led the way to the front of the house.

‘Miss Harry ...’

‘Phyllis.’ She had told Charlie to call her by her Christian name at least a dozen times, but he never did.

‘If you and the boy need anything, you will ask me?’ Phyllis looked at him proudly. ’We’re fine Charlie, but thank you for the offer.’

Charlie’d had enough of stubborn Welsh pride in one day to last him a lifetime. He put his hand in his pocket and pulled out a ten-pound note. It was one of five he’d taken out of the bank to buy essential building materials and stock for his shop, and represented a tenth of his capital. ‘Evan asked me to give you this.’

Phyllis stared at it in disbelief. ‘Where did Evan get ten pounds from?’ she demanded suspiciously.

‘He’s been saving. He wanted you to have it.’

‘Not his wife?’ Phyllis asked wryly.

‘Eddie can keep the business going and the bills paid until Evan gets out.’

‘I suppose he can.’ Phyllis didn’t want to take the money, but she had little choice. The savings she’d put by in the Post Office during twenty years of work as a cinema usherette in the White Palace were almost at an end. Now that Evan was out of reach he wouldn’t be able to pay her the five shillings he had slipped her every week without fail since their son’s birth. And although Rhiannon was very generous, her widow’s pension didn’t go far.

Charlie thrust the note into her hand.

‘Will you be seeing him?’

‘I hope to.’

‘Thank him for me, and explain why I won’t visit.’

‘I will.’

‘I’d write, only it might cause complications. They do open letters addressed to prisoners, don’t they?’

‘Probably.’

‘You’ll call in again?’ she pressed, reluctant to let him go. He was a link, albeit a tenuous one, with Evan. And she was dreading the next six months without Evan Powell’s nightly visits.

‘Yes. You may see Bethan walking through,’ he added, remembering that Bethan had often stopped to talk to Phyllis even when others had passed by.

‘Bethan’s home?’ Phyllis smiled broadly. ‘Tell her to call in when she has time.’

‘I will. Goodnight.’

Charlie walked down the front steps and along the road towards the Graig hotel. He wondered why life in the Welsh valleys always had to be so complicated.

It had been a great deal simpler in his home village in Russia. When Igor the boot maker had left his attractive, shrewish wife for a plain, but gentle and kind widow, no one had blamed him. The gossips had targeted the shrew, not the widow, and he was sure if Evan made a similar move he would receive the same absolution from his neighbours.

Elizabeth Powell’s character was well known on the Graig, and Graig people were more inclined to sympathise with a man’s ungodly mistress than a hard, unforgiving saint of a wife.

If he’d been offered the choice of living with Elizabeth or Phyllis he knew which he’d prefer.

It was strange: physically the two women weren’t dissimilar. Poverty had drawn the same angles and thin, spare features into Phyllis’s frame as Elizabeth’s, but their characters couldn’t have been more unalike. Phyllis Harry’s wasted cheeks and tired eyes radiated a warmth and compassion that Elizabeth was incapable of feeling. A warmth all the Powells could benefit from, especially Bethan.

Head down, a woollen scarf wrapped high around her neck and a cotton one tied cornerwise over her hair to protect it from the rain, Alma walked quickly down the dark street. The road gleamed like polished pewter and the fine drizzle haloed the lamplights, but Alma was too nervous to appreciate the beauty of the scene. She had never liked walking through the town late at night, but now that the gossips were shredding her reputation she hated it even more.

What if someone should recognise her? Say something to her face? Or start denouncing her as Freda and Mary had done? A scene late at night in town was bound to be heard by the people who lived above their shops.

She slowed her steps as she heard the ringing of a pair of heels on the pavement and looked nervously over her shoulder. Blank panes of glass gleamed from the darkened shop windows. All she could hear was the pulsating drumbeat of blood in her veins, and the sound of her own laboured breath.

She fought to subdue panic, straining her eyes as she peered into a cluster of shadows in the doorway of Heath’s piano shop.

Were they really shadows? Or a tall man wearing a trilby? She stepped up her pace, the throbbing of her heartbeat vying with the tapping of her steps on the pavement.

If Tony had mastered driving the Trojan she would have swallowed her pride and asked him to give her a lift home, as Ronnie had done every night she had worked late. It was barely five minutes’ drive in the slow, lumbering van, but a good fifteen minutes on foot. She had a sudden, very real picture of herself sitting in the van next to Ronnie, his left hand resting on her knee, a cigarette dangling carelessly from his lips.

It conjured up memories of sweet, loving intimacy. But even if Tony had mastered driving the van, he might not want to take her home. Particularly if his parents were aware of the gossip. What she hated most about Ronnie’s desertion was that she’d been left with no real friend to turn to. Ronnie had been everything to her: lover, friend, holder of her deepest and most private secrets. Now there was only her mother, who had been more burden than help to her for the last few years.

She pulled herself up sharply; how could she ever consider her mother a burden? If she was in trouble, it was her own stupid fault. If she had no friends, it was because she had relied on Ronnie too much –for everything. Even now she had him to thank for her job, the food on her table and the roof over her head.

Laura would never have helped her when she’d been in hospital if it hadn’t been for Ronnie. If only she didn’t miss him so much! His physical presence, his caustic wit, sarcastic repartee, but most of all the close, loving, physical relationship they had shared. It was hard for her to remember, even now when he was in Italy married to Maud, that she had loved him so much more than he had loved her.

The clock on St Catherine’s struck twelve as she reached the corner by the YMCA building. She had to stop thinking about Ronnie. The past was past. She had more immediate problems to solve, like how to keep the worst of the gossip from her mother, and how to pay the bills on half a wage.

She’d started back to work; that was the first positive step. Laura had said something about more money but she hadn’t said how much more, and like a fool Alma hadn’t thought to ask. She had to start saving as well to pay Laura what she owed, but how could she? Her mother’s pension of five shillings a week didn’t even cover the rent. And now she was down to eight shillings –maybe nine if Tony was generous –a week.

Where could they cut back? A cheaper house? They didn’t come much cheaper than Morgan Street. Coals? Her mother usually only lit the range three days a week and they needed it to cook on. Clothes? They only bought them now as presents on birthdays and at Christmas. Food? It had to be food, but it was difficult to see where...

‘Walk you round the corner, Alma?’

She whirled round. Bobby Thomas was standing behind her.

‘You been following me, Bobby?’ she demanded.

‘Would I do a thing like that?’

‘Yes.’

‘You were going my way so I thought I’d just check to make sure you get home all right.’

‘I’m fine thank you,’ she said icily, walking on.

‘Proper Miss Hoity-Toity, aren’t you?’ He took hold of her arm. She struggled to free herself from his grip but he propelled her across the road.

‘If you don’t let go of me, now, this minute, I’ll scream,’ she threatened.

‘What and wake up all the good people who are asleep in their beds? You don’t want to do that, Alma. It would only give them something else to say about you.’

‘I don’t know what you mean.’

‘Don’t play the wide-eyed innocent with me.’ He kept a firm grasp on her arm above her elbow as they walked up the hill towards Morgan Street. ‘Mary and Freda have been telling everyone in town about you.’

‘Telling them what?’

‘As if you didn’t know! How about it, Alma? I might not have a café, but I do have a lot of other things to offer.’

‘How about you let go of me?’ she said coldly, still trying to shrug off his grip.

‘I’m Fred Jones’s right-hand man,’ he whispered. ‘I can always put a word in if you can’t make your rent.’

‘My rent is paid up to date.’

‘Only because your old boyfriend’s sister has been paying it. Sooner or later she’s going to get tired of forking out for someone else’s bills. Take my word for it.’

His hand travelled up to her chin as he pulled down the scarf she had wound around her throat. ‘What you need, Alma, is a bit of security.’ He caressed the nape of her neck with his thumb and forefinger. ‘I’d be only too happy to look after you.’

‘I can look after myself.’

‘Not that well from what I’ve heard. Come on Alma,’ he wheedled. ‘You’ve put a smile on a few fellows’ faces, what’s one more? You’ll not find me ungrateful, I promise.’

‘And what would your wife say if she could hear you now, Bobby Thomas?’ Unequal to struggling against his strength she finally stopped walking and faced him, hoping to shame him into leaving her alone.

‘What the eye don’t see, the heart don’t grieve. Now how about you invite me in for a quick cup of tea. Your mam’s gone to bed.’ He nodded towards the dark windows in her house lower down the street.

‘There’s no point in lighting lamps for the blind.’

‘She’s always in bed by nine. I know. I collect the rent, remember.’

‘I wouldn’t invite you over our front doorstep if you were the last man on earth.’

‘That’s because you don’t know me yet the way I’d like you to.’ He inched his hand inside the top of her coat.

‘Let go of me, or I swear to God I’ll scream loud enough to bring the police running.’

‘Well if you’re prepared to risk it.’ He heaved her towards him, tearing the buttons from her coat. He bent his head to kiss her but she turned aside, and his lips brushed wetly against her hair. ’A few liberties are nothing to a girl like you.’ He thrust his hand inside her open coat and squeezed her breast. ‘After all it’s not as if I’m going to get you in the family way, you’re already there. Come on, ten minutes with me will clear your rent for a week.’

She thrust her hand into his thinning hair, gripped and yanked hard.

‘Ow!’ he yelped. ‘You little bitch ...’

She kicked his shin, turned and ran towards her front door. For the first time in her life she bolted it behind her, but she could still hear him calling after her.

‘You turn your rent in just one hour late, and you’ll find out what’s what, Alma Moore. Just one hour late and you’ll wish you’d come crawling to me when you had the chance.’

‘Alma,’ her mother’s querulous voice floated down the stairs.

‘Coming, Mam.’ She straightened her coat, too flustered to remember that her mother couldn’t see it, and climbed the stairs, feeling her way in the darkness. ‘Can I get you anything?’ She pushed open the door to her mother’s bedroom.