All That Glitters (8 page)

As Jane emerged into the clear, fresh air of Market Square, it was as much as she could do to stop herself from skipping down the street. She’d done it! She’d actually done it! All she had to do now was find herself a place to stay where they wouldn’t press her for her lodging money for two weeks. Twelve and six a week. Riches! She’d soon have savings. Enough to buy clothes, food, everything she needed to keep herself.

She turned left and ran out of the square to the fountain.

‘I’ve got the job,’ she shouted as she hurtled down the steps to Daisy. ‘I got it!’

Daisy beamed. ‘Knew you would. Now, you’ll be wanting these.’ She handed Jane her dresses and clogs. ‘Don’t forget to take them back and tell them what to do with them, love.’

Jane folded the clogs inside the dresses. ‘I couldn’t have done it without your help.’

‘Girl like you? Course you could have.’ Daisy picked up her mop and bucket. ‘Just watch the people you’ll be meeting in that theatre, that’s all. Especially the men. Don’t go lifting your skirts, leastways, not until you get a wedding ring on your finger.’

Chapter Five

‘Can you tell me where Graig Avenue is, please?’

The old man removed his cap, scratched his head and eyed Jane suspiciously. ‘You’re not from the Graig?’

‘No,’ Jane replied, wishing she’d asked someone else for directions.

‘Thought not. I’ve lived on the Graig all my life. Born and bred there.’

‘Then you know Graig Avenue?’

‘Oh ay.’

‘It’s up the hill, Miss.’ The man sitting next to him on Station Yard wall pointed under the railway bridge. ‘Stick to the main road out of High Street into Llantrisant Road. Carry on past the turn to Factory Lane, past the Morning Star on the right, the Graig Hotel on the left, turn left at the Vicarage and that’s Graig Avenue.’

Hoping he was right, Jane began her walk. The hill was steep and peppered with groups of children. Scruffy, barefoot boys, clustering around the High Street shops in the hope of picking up a paying errand. Girls playing with whipping tops and skipping ropes in the middle of the dusty road. She smiled as they stared curiously at her. Clearly not many strangers ventured up the Graig. She hesitated at the turning to Courthouse Street. Looking down at her bundle she walked up to the workhouse lodge. At the gate she dropped her parcel, rang the bell and ran away. Heart pounding, she kept on running, expecting a shout to echo behind her at any moment.

When none came, she slowed her pace, feeling clean and free. It was as though she’d put a lot more than the uniform behind her. She carried on, her step lightening despite the steepness of the hill. By the time she reached the vicarage she began to wonder if it had a summit. There was a dairy on the opposite corner ending a terrace of houses that were larger and grander than the ones lower down the hill. At the sight of these houses she began to panic. What if the man who had taken Phyllis out of the workhouse wouldn’t let her stay and share Phyllis’s bed? What if she had to make her one and sixpence last two weeks? Would the assistant manager let her sleep in the theatre?

A rag and bone cart creaked, groaned and rattled around the corner, drawn by an enormous, snorting piebald horse.

‘Mister!’ Jane shouted. The middle-aged man driving it pulled on the reins. Dark and well set up, Jane noticed, and there wasn’t an ounce of fat on his body – unlike some of the guardians who inspected the workhouse.

‘I’m looking for Phyllis, Phyllis Harry.’

‘Why?’

‘Because she’s a friend of mine.’

‘From where?’

She looked around. There was no one else in sight. ‘That’s her business and mine.’

‘This way.’ She followed the cart up a short rise to a second terrace further up the street. The man halted, secured the reins, leapt from the seat and slipped a nosebag over the horse’s mouth. The animal slumped in harness and chomped noisily. ‘This is where Phyllis lives.’

A short flight of steps and sloping path led to the front door where a key protruded from the lock. Jane had to stretch up to reach a highly polished brass knocker.

‘Come in.’

Not believing the summons was meant for her she knocked again.

‘If Phyllis is your friend, you should know her voice.’ The rag and bone man was standing behind her. Pulling the cap from his head he opened the door. ‘Phyllis, there’s someone here who says they know you,’ he called out as he hung his cap on one of the hooks screwed into the wall behind the door. ‘Come on then,’ he ordered, turning to Jane.

She followed him into a small hallway with a passage leading off. A private house was a strange, alien environment, one she’d never set foot in before. The first thing she noticed was the smell. Warm, cosy and inviting. A delicious soup and bread smell mixed together with floor polish, beeswax and soda, which for once didn’t seem harsh and antiseptic.

The man was waiting for her, holding the door open at the end of the dark passage. She preceded him into a back kitchen fitted with an enormous black stove that belched out heat. She looked around: the room was furnished with heavy, dark wood pieces, and the only light came from a small side window that overlooked a walled-in yard, but the room wasn’t gloomy. It glowed, bright with multi-coloured fabrics. Red and blue crocheted cushion covers on the easy chairs that stood either side of the range, a summery, yellow and green check cloth thrown over the table, jewel-bright patchwork of curtains framing the window. The dresser was loaded with gleaming blue and white china, the black range glistened like freshly hewn coal, its brasswork rail and knobs shone dull gold, and standing in front of it, a small boy playing at her feet, was Phyllis. She looked expectantly towards the doorway, the ladle she’d been using to stir the soup in her hand.

‘Jane, what on earth are you doing here?’

‘You do know her, then.’ The man hung his muffler and jacket on the back of a chair before going into the washhouse. Jane heard water running as he washed his hands.

‘My, but you look smart.’ Phyllis stood back to admire her.

‘You must be doing well. Sit down. Take your hat off. Have some soup with us. Who took you out of the workhouse? What are you doing now? Come on, pull that chair out, that’s it.’ Phyllis bustled over to the dresser and lifted down another bowl. Opening a drawer, she took out a spoon and laid it on the table. ‘Evan,’ she smiled at the man as he returned, ‘this is Jane, we met in the workhouse.’

‘Pleased to meet you.’ He held out his hand and Jane took it, struggling to match the firmness of his handshake.

‘Well, woman, you going to dish up that soup or we going to wait all day?’

‘Sorry, Evan.’ Phyllis took his bowl and filled it. Jane’s was next. Lifting her son from the floor, she filled his and finally her own. ‘I don’t know what I’m thinking of. I’ve cut the bread and I haven’t even put it on the table.’ She reached for the breadboard on the dresser. ‘Doesn’t Jane look smart, Evan? But then I expect everyone does after workhouse clothes. Jane was really kind to me when I was in the workhouse. We used to scrub the kitchen yard together …’

‘Looks to me as though the pair of you are best off out of it,’ he interrupted brusquely. Both women fell silent. Jane because she wasn’t at all sure of the relationship between Evan and Phyllis, and Phyllis because she’d mentioned the workhouse, one of the few topics Evan refused to discuss because it reminded him of his failure to look after her and Brian when they’d been evicted from their lodgings. Phyllis could never understand why he was so sensitive about it, as he’d been in prison and in no position to help them at the time.

‘When did you leave?’ Evan asked Jane, feeling the need to break the silence.

‘Yesterday.’

‘And you’ve come to see me today? How kind.’

‘It’s not really.’ Jane looked from Phyllis to Evan and decided that this was one occasion when only the truth would do. She began hesitantly and ended up pouring out everything. The Bletchetts taking her out of the workhouse, the way they’d treated her. The man in her room. Her trade with Wilf Horton, the job in the Town Hall, the white lies she’d told to get it, and the use she’d made of Phyllis’s name.

‘How old are you?’ Evan asked when she finished.

‘Eighteen,’ she countered defensively.

‘I don’t know what the workhouse guardians would say to an under-age girl working in the Town Hall with the show they’ve got running there for the next two weeks.’

‘They’d rather she was working in a dosshouse wearing no knickers with a man’s hand up her skirt?’ The ignominy of not being allowed underclothes still mortified Phyllis every time she thought about it.

‘I’m just trying to see things the way they would, love. You know as well as I do that the situation in this house is far from ideal, from the parish point of view.’

‘Love?’ Was Phyllis married now? Jane dropped her spoon into her untasted soup. ‘Could I use your toilet, please?’ she asked, sensing that Evan wanted to speak to Phyllis alone.

‘In the yard.’ Phyllis indicated the washhouse door. Jane stepped outside and breathed in a great gulp of bracing mountain air.

She’d schemed, planned and, if not entirely told lies, coloured the truth in an effort to make a life for herself outside of the institutions. And now, when that life was almost within reach, the shadow of the workhouse walls still stretched over her, grey and forbidding. Perhaps she ought to go out and break a window, steal something, hit a policeman. If she was put in gaol she’d be given a finite date to mark the end of her sentence. And afterwards, if she was lucky, they might allow her to walk free. The way things were, she felt as though she’d never escape the clutches of the parish guardians.

‘She needs help Evan.’

‘I’m not disputing that. But we’re not the right ones to give it to her. You know as well as I do how the authorities will see the situation. A couple living in sin …’

‘She was in the workhouse, Evan. You’ve no idea what that’s like for a woman.’

‘I know only too well what prison’s like for a man. Please, love, don’t cry.’ He felt in his shirt pocket, found a handkerchief and handed it to her. He couldn’t stand to see her in tears, and she knew it.

‘She was kind to me when I needed kindness. She has no family, nowhere else to go, no one else to turn to. You’re lucky. You’ve always had your family.’

‘Kids to support.’

‘Not any more. You’ve given them independence and the will to succeed. All that girl is trying to do is stand on her own two feet like Diana and Bethan. She’s spent her whole life in institutions. She told me she was born in the workhouse, shunted to Maesycoed Homes when she was three, Church Village Homes when she was eleven. No one’s ever loved her or cared a fig what happened to her. And she’s already found work so it’s not as if she’s going to be a burden on us.’

‘You heard her, same as me. The Bletchetts took her out. They signed for her to work in their dosshouse. They’re responsible for what happens to her.’

‘And if she returns to them she’ll end up back in the workhouse in a couple of months, abandoned and pregnant like the last two they took out.’ Phyllis’s tears gave way to anger.

‘Look, love, she’s taken a job in the Town Hall at a time when no decent woman will cross the threshold.’

‘In case they come face to face with one of the nudes
your
Haydn goes on stage with twice nightly.’

‘Haydn’s a man.’

‘And that makes it right? What are you saying, Evan? That it’s fine for a young man to sing on stage surrounded by naked women, but it’s not all right for a young girl desperate enough to take on any job, to earn her living showing people to their seats and selling ice creams in the same theatre in case she catches a glimpse of what the men in this town are queuing up to see? You among them,’ she added warmly. ‘I saw Haydn slip Will four tickets. You and Charlie might have women warming your beds every night but you’re still not above a bit of titillation when the opportunity’s put your way.’

‘If you don’t want me to go to the show, I won’t.’

‘That’s not the point, Evan Powell, and you know it.’

‘The point is we’re not in a position to take her in,’ he explained patiently, ‘Not when we’re living together without a wedding ring in sight, and she’s about to start work in a theatre that every preacher has banned his congregation from setting foot in. You know as well as I do what people in this town are going to say.’

‘Better than you, it seems,’ Phyllis’s voice rose precariously. ‘And I’d have thought that after some of the things this family has been through in the last couple of years, you wouldn’t give a damn what anyone says about you, or any other Powell.’

‘It’s not just us. There’s Diana to consider, and the girl herself.’

‘Diana’s got a lot more common sense than you when it comes to something like this. And as for Jane, if she’s found the courage to take a job in the Town Hall now, when the Revue’s playing, I hardly think she’s going to worry about a few gossips.’

‘I don’t think she has a clue what she’s got herself into. If she’s found and charged with being a recalcitrant pauper, she could end up in prison …’

‘All the more reason for us to take her in before she is found. Couldn’t we say that she’s my cousin from Church Village?’ Phyllis wheedled. ‘Let her stay, just until she gets her first week’s wages? Please?’

‘And if the workhouse finds out?’

‘How will they? They’re looking for a girl in a workhouse dress and clogs. Not an usherette. I hardly recognised her myself when she walked in. And you heard her, she told the man who hired her that we took her out of the workhouse.’

‘And if the Town Hall checks?’

‘They won’t. Not now they’ve taken her on. From what she said they’re only too glad to have someone who’s prepared to work at short notice.’

‘Phyllis …’

‘Please, Evan. It’s not that long ago I was in her shoes, wearing a workhouse dress with no one to turn to. I doubt she’s got a penny in her pocket now, but with two jobs lined up she’ll soon be able to pay her way, and with Charlie gone, we could do with the money.’

‘We’re managing fine with what I bring in and the three boys and Diana paying their way.’

‘Haydn will be leaving when the Summer Variety ends.’

‘And we’ll survive, just like we did after Charlie left.’

‘Extra always comes in handy.’

‘I’ll not argue with that, but even if I did say yes, where’s the girl going to sleep? With Haydn downstairs, all the bedrooms full and Brian in the box room, there’s no room.’

‘The old cot Bethan used is big enough for Brian. He can come in with us for a week or two, and Jane can have the box room.’

Evan fell silent. Money and a place for Jane to sleep were minor considerations. Although the rag and bone round had never done as well as he would have liked, with his nephew and niece’s lodging money and his son Eddie in steady work they managed; not as well as some, but better than most. Haydn returning home had been an unexpected bonus. For the first time since the pits had closed he could look forward to setting a little aside against emergencies. Another lodger wouldn’t make much difference to the household, but another scandal would. He couldn’t bear the thought of people gossiping and prying into his private life just as he and Phyllis were quietly, and happily settled. But there was no denying the girl needed help.