Beggars and Choosers (42 page)

‘I hate the way things are between Sali and me,' Lloyd confided. ‘I want to be with her day and night.'

‘I thought you were.' His father had the grace to smile.

‘I mean openly.'

‘Then find a way to make that possible.'

‘Sali was brought up in the chapel. Even after everything her preacher uncle and husband did to her, she still refuses to live in what she calls sin.'

‘That's the chapel for you, founded on guilt and preaching denial, self-abuse and martyrdom as a way of life. There has to be a way out of your problem, boy. My advice to you is find it.'

‘Easier said than done,' Lloyd reflected gloomily, then he smiled. ‘You approve then?'

‘It took me a while to warm to her, but once she stopped shaking every time she was spoken to and the boy moved into the house, she blossomed. If you can get her to acknowledge you publicly as her husband, you'll have done well. Almost as well as I did with your mother.' He puffed his pipe, looked into the bowl and tapped it against the side of the fireplace to empty it. ‘Ask her to come to the farm with us on miner's fortnight next month. Two weeks is a long time, there's no saying what might happen. You know how magical the Gower can be.'

‘Let me speak to Sali first, she may have other plans.'

‘I doubt it. I'm off to the County Club. I'll be –'

‘In the library if you're wanted,' Lloyd said for him. ‘You always say that. Who or what, is likely to want you?'

Billy tapped his nose mysteriously. ‘You have no idea.'

‘I don't think you do either.'

‘Good luck with persuading her, boy, and if you think me putting my oar in will help, you only have to ask.'

Chapter Twenty-two

Lloyd was drying the last few dishes when Sali returned with a flushed, excited Harry.

‘Nice hat.' Lloyd tweaked the point of Harry's newspaper Admiral's hat.

‘Auntie Megan made it for me. I was at Sam's party. We had jelly, custard and sandwiches and –'

‘Far too much cake than is good for one small boy,' Sali chided. ‘It's time for bed. Downstairs to wash and use the
ty bach,
Harry.' She opened the door.

‘I can go on my own.'

‘Are you sure?'

‘Sam and the others go to the
ty bach
on their own.'

Sali was just about to tell him that Sam was two years older than him when she saw Lloyd watching her. ‘Slow and careful on the steps and don't forget to close all the doors behind you.'

‘I won't.'

‘You didn't have to do the dishes,' she reproached Lloyd.

‘I know I didn't
have
to, but I didn't have anything better to do.'

‘I'm sorry about earlier,' she apologised. ‘I should never have shouted at you the way I did, especially in front of your father and brothers.' She picked up a pile of dinner plates and carried them to the dresser.

‘You may be sorrier than you think.' He handed her the dessert bowls.

‘Why?'

‘Because my father knows about us.' He took the bowls from her just as she was about to drop them.

‘I won't live in sin with you, Lloyd.' It was nine o'clock in the evening. Harry had long since gone to bed and Sali was curled on Lloyd's lap in the kitchen. They had drawn the curtains, turned down the lamp and for once, spent more of the evening talking than making love, but they were no nearer a resolution.

‘If you regard us loving one another or making love every chance we get as sinful then we're living in sin now,' he argued persuasively. ‘All living openly would do is make our lives easier because we wouldn't have to go pussy-footing around in the middle of the night and my father wouldn't have to listen to floorboards creaking overhead as we tiptoe between bedrooms.'

‘He's heard us!'

‘There's no need to look embarrassed. He was young once and not too old to remember it. Besides he's a Marxist and we believe in free love.'

‘How free?' she enquired suspiciously.

‘The freedom to love the person we want.' He hugged her. ‘Please, sweetheart, live with me as my wife?'

‘I'll think about it.'

‘You said that months ago.'

‘I know,' she concurred miserably.

‘What are you doing for miner's fortnight? Annual holiday, last week of July and first week of August, the only two weeks of the year they allow miners to stay above ground.'

‘What are you doing?' It had never occurred to her that the Evanses might leave their house.

‘Megan's uncle takes care of Victor's menagerie and we rent a cottage on the Gower from my father's sister. You'll love the place, Sali. It's a short walk from the sea, and next door to a shop and a pub.'

‘With a pretty barmaid for Joey?'

‘I never noticed the barmaids,' he lied. ‘We can go swimming every day.'

‘In this?' She fell silent and he heard the rain hammering against the window.

‘This is June. It wouldn't dare rain during miner's fortnight. Come with us?'

‘I couldn't.'

‘You're our housekeeper. We'll need someone to cook for us. Last year when my mother was ill, my aunt hired a girl from the village. Frankly, my stomach wouldn't stand another two weeks of her burnt offerings.'

‘If I go, I'll insist on Harry and I paying our own way.'

‘I've just asked you to carry on working.'

‘I have to pay for our train fare and food and any other expenses.'

‘Argue that one out with my father. You'll come?'

‘I'll come.'

‘Look, Harry.' Sali lifted her son from the back of the wagon that had picked them up at Swansea station and held him in her arms. ‘That blue is the sea.'

‘We'll teach you to swim.' Victor turned round from the box where he was sitting next to the driver.

‘And I can wear the costume Mam bought me?'

‘You can.' Sali eyed the women watching them from the doorways of their cottages and hoped they wouldn't think the knee-length swimming costume she had bought for herself too daring. She couldn't imagine any of them stripping off to swim in the sea.

The driver slowed the wagon to walking pace and Joey jumped from the back. He ran to a long, low, pinkwashed cottage, opened the garden gate and walked up a short path bordered by clumps of cornflowers and poppies. The door was open. A plump, middle-aged woman appeared in the doorway.

‘Auntie Jane, as beautiful as ever.' Joey planted a kiss on her cheek before waltzing her down the path.

‘I see you haven't changed, you monster.' She returned Joey's kiss before pushing him away. ‘Hello, Billy, boys. Did you have a good journey down?'

‘It was long, as usual, Jane.' Mr Evans climbed down from the wagon and kissed her cheek. ‘You look well.'

‘I have a few more grey hairs, but I can't complain.'

‘The cottage looks good.'

‘We've done some work on it. Our Sam is getting married next spring so John and I will be moving out of the big house into here.'

‘We won't be able to rent from you next year?' Victor was crestfallen.

‘Not from me but John's sister has a little house free. Her mother-in-law died last month, God rest her soul.'

‘Most of the farms around here have a small and a big house,' Lloyd explained as he helped Sali and Harry down from the wagon. ‘When the eldest son is ready to take over the farm he marries, brings his bride to the big house and the parents move into the little house so they can semi-retire.'

‘Mrs Sali Jones, her son Harry, Jane Howells, my sister.' Mr Evans introduced them. ‘Sali is our housekeeper.'

‘You must have the hide of a rhinoceros and the diplomacy of Solomon to put up with Billy and his boys.' Jane shook Sali's hand. ‘I'll show you the cottage while the boys unload the wagon.' She led the way inside. ‘This is the kitchen. I've stocked the larder and the boy will be down with the cart in the morning. He'll have fresh milk, eggs, butter, cheese, fruit and vegetables. He sells round the village for us. The baker makes a fair loaf and I've stocked you up with dried goods. I bought you fish for tonight. Billy likes a bit of fish on his first night and it was brought in fresh this morning. But let Victor cook it.'

‘Victor?' Sali asked in surprise.

‘The boys like to build bonfires on the beach. They roast potatoes in the embers and cook the fish on sticks. Sometimes I think they have never grown up. I've stoked the stove, there's plenty of wood in the shed and the boys know where that is. The parlour's through here.' She walked into a tiny hall and opened the door on a small dark room. ‘Not that I've ever known Billy or the boys use it.'

Sali could imagine why, but remained tactfully silent.

Jane walked up the stairs and showed Sali a double bedroom and a small single. ‘There are half a dozen beds in the attic. The girl made them all up this morning. She thought we were having one of our fishing parties in, although I did remind her twice last week that Billy and the boys were coming. When Billy wrote and told me he was bringing his housekeeper, I thought you could sleep here. She opened a door in the back wall that Sali had assumed was a cupboard. ‘“Servants' quarters”. Would you believe it in a house this size? But then, it is two hundred years old.' She pointed to a narrow staircase that ran down the back of the house. ‘You might be all right walking down those; someone my size would get stuck. They lead to a scullery behind the kitchen. There's a pump and sink in there. Here you are.' She opened a door on the second landing and showed Sali a small room furnished utility style with a camping washstand and double bed. ‘I thought your boy could sleep with you.'

‘Thank you, it's perfect.' Sali looked out of the window. Joey was running round the garden with Harry on his shoulders, both of them whooping like Indians.

‘I've written to Billy every week since Isabella died, not that I've had many replies. Our Billy was born stubborn and independent, but I was worried about him. Isabella was his life. Then, when I heard from Victor that he was sacking housekeeper after housekeeper, I never thought he'd ever allow another woman in the house and he and the boys were doomed to a life of squalor. I'm grateful to you for sorting him out.'

‘I needed a job more than Mr Evans and the boys needed a housekeeper.' Sali unpinned her hat and set it on the bed. ‘They have been very kind to me and Harry.'

‘No doubt we'll see you up at the farm. Billy knows you're all welcome any teatime. There are horses you can ride and a Shetland my youngest outgrew for your boy. Do you ride, Sali?'

Sali recalled Lancelot, the blue riding habit she'd had made the year before her father died and the rides she had taken with Mansel in the fields around Ynysangharad House. They now seemed part of someone else's life. ‘I used to, Mrs Howells.'

‘Tell Lloyd or Victor to bring you up. If you'll excuse me, I have a dairy to run that I won't be sorry to hand over to Sam's wife next year. Have a good holiday.'

Sali breathed in the salt sea air and smiled. ‘I will, Mrs Howells, and thank you for everything.'

‘I'm in Joey and Victor's gang and I'm sleeping in the attic with them.' Harry ran headlong down the attic stairs and barged into Sali as she walked out of the ‘servants' quarters' on to the upstairs landing.

‘You most certainly are not. You'll pester the life out of them.'

‘No he won't,' Victor interposed quietly.

‘I can't put him to bed up there all alone at seven o'clock.'

‘You won't.' Joey perched Harry on the banisters and held him as he slid down. ‘We all keep the same hours here. When we were kids, Mam and Dad let us stay up until they went to bed.'

‘Please can I sleep up there with Victor and Joey, Mam?' Harry pleaded. ‘There's a lookout post so we can watch for pirates. And if they come we'll fight them off.'

Suspecting that Mr Evans wasn't the only one who knew about her and Lloyd, Sali conceded. ‘I suppose so, if you promise to be a good boy and don't annoy Joey and Victor.'

‘Yippee!'

‘And where did you hear that?'

‘Uncle Joey read it to me from a comic.'

It was broad daylight when something hurtling on the bed woke Sali the first morning of the holidays. She opened her eyes to see Harry crouched beside her, covered in sand, dressed in his neck-to-knee damp swimming costume, an ear-to-ear grin on his face as he held a crab by the claw above her head.

‘Look what I caught in my net. Uncle Joey, Uncle Victor and me have been up for hours. Uncle Joey says you two are lazy bones.'

There was movement in the bed the other side of her and Sali felt the weight of an arm around her waist. She turned, staring in horror at Lloyd lying beside her.

‘Look at my crab, Uncle Lloyd.' Harry shoved it under Lloyd's nose. ‘Uncle Victor says I can keep it in a bucket. Do you think crabs eat cockles? I'm going to call it Little Eyes. Uncle Victor says that sounds like an Indian name. Uncle Joey wanted to eat it but I told him it wasn't big enough.'

‘It wouldn't make much of a meal,' Lloyd looked from Harry to Sali's horrified face.

‘You won't tell Uncle Joey and Uncle Victor that I woke you, will you? They said I wasn't to disturb you if you were still in bed. Uncle Victor said you are going to be my daddy soon, but it's a secret. But even if it is a secret, I thought you'd know, Mam.' He gave Sali a sandy kiss. ‘Uncle Joey's frying cockles and lava bread. Shall I tell him to bring some up for you?'

‘No, we'll be down as soon as we're dressed.' Lloyd found it difficult to keep his voice steady, but unlike Sali he could at least speak.

‘You will tell me when I can call you Daddy, won't you, Uncle Lloyd?'

‘That's up to your Mam, Harry.'

‘Harry ...' Sali began.

‘That's Uncle Joey calling me. Shall I tell him to lay the table for you as well?'

‘Please, Harry.' Lloyd fell back on the pillows and looked across at Sali, as Harry ran back down the stairs.

‘Can he start calling me Daddy?' he asked.

‘Nothing's changed. I can't –'

‘Everything's changed.' He rolled over and kissed her. ‘Every single blessed thing. Please, can everyone finally stop pretending that we aren't a couple?'

‘It's strange, for the first few days I felt as though this holiday was endless and now it's over, it has passed in an instant.' Sali and Lloyd were walking hand in hand along the shore. Behind them, the village was a glimmer of distant oil lamps. Waves broke into a froth of gurgling surf over their bare feet. The sea, a vast, dark, glittering expanse, twinkled with the reflected light of the moon and the stars as it stretched to the horizon and beyond.

‘And when we get home, it will seem like a dream.'

‘That sounds like the voice of experience.'

‘It is.' Lloyd kissed her. His lips were warm and tasted of salt. ‘I love you and you must admit it has been glorious. Can we go back and announce that we got married here?'

‘Give me just a little more time?'

‘Sali, can't you see how perfect this is? We've been here two weeks –'

‘You need three to call the banns.'

‘We could have had a special licence. And now that Harry's seen me in your bed, can't you see how hypocritical this whole thing is?'

‘Just a few more weeks,' she pleaded.

‘If I gave you all the time in the world it wouldn't make any difference. The chapel has too strong a hold on you.' He couldn't keep the bitterness from his voice.