Beggars and Choosers (23 page)

Discarding the clothes Owen had given her, she wrapped her aunt's gifts in the brown paper, picked up the parcel and holding her breath, tentatively opened the door. The ward was in silence, the nurse still asleep. Walking on tiptoe and sticking close to the side of the corridor, she crept to the door that connected the ward to the rest of the hospital. Opening it just wide enough to slip out, she found herself on a landing. Gripping a wooden rail for support, she began the descent to ground level.

The sky was just beginning to lighten but not enough to dispel the shadows that shrouded the grim, grey stone buildings. After the overheated atmosphere of the ward the fresh autumn morning seemed bitter. Moving in the coal-black gloom that shrouded the foot of the high walls surrounding the infirmary, she stole to the side gate and found it locked. She continued to walk around, close to the wall, until she reached the Porter's Lodge at the front entrance. A light shone from the window and she heard voices. Two men were standing in the doorway engrossed in conversation, but a small gate set beside the main gates was open.

Her heart played a staccato drumbeat as she made a dash, but she didn't dare start breathing again until she left Courthouse Street and reached the white-tiled tunnel beneath the railway bridge. A train thundered overhead and she instinctively clapped her hands over her ears. A man stopped and stared at her. Acutely aware of her shorn head and lack of hat, coat and gloves, she put her head down and made her way into Taff Street. People were already walking around the town and, just as she remembered, there was a queue of women outside the pawnbroker's. A fat, middle-aged woman eyed her curiously as she joined them, and she tried to cover her bruised and scabbed face with her fingers.

‘You look cold, love.'

‘I am,' Sali acknowledged cautiously, too afraid not to answer lest she draw even more attention to herself.

‘Take this, I'm popping it anyway and you may as well make use of it before I do.' The woman handed her a shawl.

‘Thank you.' Sali took it, and draped it over her head, hiding most of her face.

‘Beat you about, did he?' The woman didn't wait for Sali to answer. ‘Brutes, that's what men are. All men,' she added. ‘Damned brutes. You take my Alf. He can't have a pint without knocking me about afterwards. Not that he ever sticks to a pint, mind.'

Sali crept between the woman and the shop window. The woman carried on talking regardless and Sali was grateful. By holding the interest of the others in the queue, she drew attention away from her.

The shop opened and the queue shuffled forward. She deliberately hung back, waiting until the shop was empty. It was going to be difficult enough to face Mr Goodman, who had been a friend of her father, without having an audience watching her pawn the only valuable she owned.

‘Can I help you, Miss ... Miss Watkin Jones ... Mrs Bull, is it you?' Mr Goodman peered uncertainly at her. When she nodded, he ran around the counter and pulled up a chair for her. ‘Please, sit down.'

‘I am fine, thank you, Mr Goodman.' Sali felt tears forming in her eyes. It was hateful to think that she was incapable of controlling her own emotions, especially when someone was showing her kindness.

‘You don't look fine, Mrs Bull. I heard you were in the infirmary. When did you get out? Does –'

She cut him short. ‘Could you advance me some money on this, please?' She handed him the ring she had clutched in her hand since she had left the hospital.

He held it to the light, before reaching for his jeweller's eyeglass. ‘This is a very valuable ring, but I couldn't give you anywhere near its worth. There is no call in Pontypridd for anything like this. If you didn't redeem it, I'd never sell it.'

‘I will redeem it the moment I can afford to. And I wouldn't want its full value. Could you advance me ...' She thought rapidly. She didn't even know what Rhian was paying the family who were looking after her son but she guessed it couldn't be less than five shillings a week and she'd have to reimburse her for what she had already paid out. And she might not find work straight away and she'd have to pay for respectable lodgings because she couldn't possibly take the child to a slum, and there was food and train fare and she'd have to buy a hat, coat, and clothes for Harry ... ‘Ten pounds?' she asked breathlessly.

‘That is a lot of money.'

‘I know, but you said yourself that the ring is worth more. And could you please hold it for me for six months?'

‘I think I could manage that. You know I charge two shillings in the pound a week interest?'

‘Two shillings ... but that would be a pound a week, Mr Goodman. I could never earn that much money to repay you.'

‘I'll tell you what, Mrs Bull, out of respect for your father, I will advance you ten pounds and charge you two pounds interest for the six months. If you redeem it before, it will still be two pounds, but I think that is fair, don't you?'

‘More than fair, Mr Goodman, I'll take it, and thank you.'

He opened the safe, removed a velvet-lined box and laid the ring inside. After locking the safe he went to a clothes rack. ‘As a bonus I can let you have a coat and,' he lifted down a valise, ‘this.' He handed her the case and a black coat. A broad-brimmed black hat was pinned to the front of it, and a black muffler and gloves hung from the pockets. He added a black shawl that was folded on a shelf. She recognised them. They were all her possessions. ‘Mr Bull brought them in a few years ago. It was a straight sale. A bad investment on my part.' He shrugged. ‘My customers prefer more showy clothes.'

‘I can't possible take all this,' she protested.

Ignoring her assertion, he lifted a tray of wedding rings on the counter. ‘You'll also need one of these.'

She glanced down at her bare hand. Owen hadn't returned her ring, which he had torn from her finger the night Iestyn died. ‘How much are they, Mr Goodman?'

‘Call it an extra bonus for the business I have transacted with your husband over the years.'

‘I couldn't possibly –'

‘I don't offer all my customers a bonus.' He wrote out a ticket, counted ten, one-pound notes and laid the wedding ring on top of the pile. He pushed it towards her, walked around the counter and held out the coat. She slipped her arms into the sleeves, took the ring, ticket and money and secreted the notes in one of her gloves. ‘There's a mirror behind you,' he said, as she picked up the hat.

Sali pulled the brim low over her face, wound the muffler around her mouth and pushed the shawl into the valise. It was then that she realised there were clothes already in the case.

‘I couldn't sell those either,' he lied.

‘Thank you very much, Mr Goodman. You have been very kind.'

‘Good luck, Mrs Bull.' He opened the door for her.

Sali hesitated. ‘If Mr Bull or anyone else should come in asking for me ...'

‘I never saw you. And if you want to redeem your ring by post, just send me the ticket and I'll forward it to wherever you are, by registered post.'

‘Thank you again, Mr Goodman.' She held out her hand and he shook it.

He stood back watching her as she crossed the road. When she disappeared from sight he opened the safe again. Taking an envelope he pushed the ring box into it and wrote the ticket number he had given Sali on the outside followed by
‘Property of Sali Watkin Jones
–
to be returned to claimant without charge.'

Sali Watkin Jones, as was, might be too proud to take charity but if anything should happen to him he didn't want his heirs profiting from the daughter of the only man in Pontypridd who had extended a hand of friendship and offered help to a penniless Russian Jewish refugee when he had come to the town in search of work and a new life.

Sali left the pawnbroker's and walked towards the imposing red-brick facade of Pontypridd Railway Station. Keeping her head down, she entered the ticket office. There was a short queue in front of the circular counter and as she waited her turn she saw two of her uncle's chapel congregation. Turning her back, she pretended she hadn't seen them.

‘Where to?' Tomas's brother asked through the cubbyhole window without recognising her.

‘Cardiff, please.'

‘Return?'

‘One way.' She opened her purse. ‘Third class, please.'

Taking her ticket and her change, she thrust both into her pocket and ran up the steps to the platform. After showing her ticket to the official manning the gate at the top, she walked through. The Cardiff train was standing alongside the platform. She walked to the end of the train, deliberately holding back until the guard moved forward with his flag. As he lifted his whistle to his lips, she stepped into the last carriage. It was empty. Heart pounding, she sat in a corner seat opposite the window and next to the corridor clutching her valise. Pulling the brim of her hat down low, she glanced towards the window when they drew into the first station after Pontypridd, Treforest. She shrank back as bowler-hatted men in suits walked past her carriage towards the first-class cars. Two workmen joined her and she stared down at her bag, not daring to raise her eyes again until they drew into Cardiff.

She left the train, walked into St Mary's Street and stopped at the first draper's she came to. She bought two pairs of stockings and almost bought an identical khaki canvas overall to the one Owen had given her. Then she realised she didn't have to wear Owen's choice of clothes – not any more. Feeling defiant and immoral, she bought a pretty navy-blue cotton overall patterned with white daisies. Before she left the shop, she removed her hat and draped her shawl over her head, covering as much of her face as she could.

She found a stationer's and bought a packet of envelopes, a cheap writing pad, a bottle of ink and a pen. She picked up a stamp at the Post Office, and went into a temperance café. After ordering a cup of tea and a plain bun, she opened the writing pad, unscrewed the ink bottle, dipped the nib of the pen into it and began to write quickly, without allow herself time to think about what she was saying.

Dear, dear Aunt Edyth,

I can't thank you enough for all your kindnesses. I hope you understand why I can't live with you and why I had to leave without saying goodbye. I will try to write to you to let you know how I am.

Please don't look for me and please try to do something for Mari. Uncle Morgan told me that he sacked her for visiting me in hospital.

I am
so sorry to hurt you in the same way that Mansel did.

Your own Sali

She folded the paper into the envelope, sealed it, stuck on the stamp, and addressed it to her aunt. She posted it as she walked back to the station. When the ticket office was empty, she bought a third-class, one-way ticket to Tonypandy. All she could think about was her son. And before the end of the day she might be with him, if she could find the house where Mari's sister worked.

Sali left the train at the newly built Tonypandy and Trealaw Station and followed her fellow passengers into Dunraven Street. She had never visited Tonypandy and had expected to find a village with a few small shops, not a busy, bustling, small town. Wares from a furniture shop and ironmonger's spilled out on to the pavement. A haberdasher had hung coats from hooks suspended above his window. The appetising smell of roasting coffee beans vied with the pungent odours of cheese and the acidic tangs of fruit in the entrance to a provision shop as large as anything that Pontypridd had to offer. Hungry, she was tempted to go in and see if they sold bread rolls. As she stepped up to the door she saw a notice in the window.

Housekeeper wanted. Keep plus fifteen shillings a week. Apply within.

The paper was yellow from exposure to sunlight. The post might be already filled, but if it wasn't? The one thing she did know about after running Owen Bull's house for over three years was housekeeping. She opened the shop door and with the bell clanging overhead walked inside.

‘Can I help you, madam?'

The woman who addressed Sali in a lilting Irish brogue could have been anything between thirty and forty-five years of age. Tall, thin, angular, she had green eyes and red hair. No one could have called her beautiful, or even pretty, but she was striking.

‘I'd like to apply for the housekeeper's position, please, if it's not taken.'

‘It's not taken,' the woman answered, ‘and even when it is, it's not for long. Look after things here for me, Dewi.'

A young boy with a spotty face took her place at the counter and gazed curiously at Sali while the assistant disappeared through a door set in the back wall of the shop. She returned a few minutes later.

‘Mrs Rodney will see you now.' She lifted the counter and opened a half-door set beneath it. ‘If you'd come this way, Miss ...'

‘Mrs Jones, Mrs Sali Jones.' Sali crossed her fingers in her coat pocket in the hope that Mrs Rodney wouldn't object to employing a housekeeper with a child.

‘I'm Annie O'Leary.'

‘Pleased to meet you, Miss O'Leary.' Encouraged by the woman's smile, Sali ventured, ‘What did you mean just now, Miss O'Leary, when you said the job is never taken for long?'

‘Mrs Rodney is best placed to answer that.' She led Sali down a short corridor and opened a door marked ‘Office'. ‘This is the applicant for the position of housekeeper, Mrs Rodney.' She showed Sali into a large, square room lit by a high window and carpeted with a red and blue Persian rug. A functional desk, fitted with drawers both sides, stood in front of the window. On it were arranged a typewriter, an enamel tray of four ink bottles with blue, black, green and red labels, a pen set with a rack of spare nibs of various sizes, a large blotter, and a wooden rack containing sheets of paper, billheads, pencils, rulers and rubbers. The iron grate was stoked with a blazing fire, the tiled hearth held a set of fire irons and brass coal and wood buckets. A bureau bookcase was shelved with neat rows of ledgers. Two comfortable armchairs and an enormous sofa that could have easily doubled as a bed completed the furniture.