Finders and Keepers (63 page)

‘Aren't I handsome in a morning suit, and isn't that the perfect piece of music to set the tone for the day?' He swept her up and quickstepped her down the hall.

‘If anyone is driving anyone crazy it's you men,' she countered, thinking of Charlie Moore. ‘None of you should be allowed near a wedding.'

‘Difficult to have one without us,' he observed philosophically.

‘I'll make an exception for the bridegroom and father of the bride, no one else.'

‘The bridegroom needs a best man and I have the ring all safe.' Harry released her and patted the breast pocket of his morning suit.

‘Until you lose it.'

‘It isn't like you to spit razor blades so early in the morning, sis. Who's annoyed you? Tell big brother all, and I'll flatten him for you.'

‘How do you know it's a him?'

‘Because you're only angry with men.' Harry picked up one of the rosebuds and tucked it into his buttonhole. It fell forward at an angle.

‘You really would flatten him for me if I asked you to, wouldn't you?' Edyth smiled at Harry's offer and realized that if she wasn't careful she would allow one trivial incident with Charlie Moore to ruin the day, not only for her but for the family.

‘Hand me the wooden sword from our old toy box and I will sally forth.'

She took the flower from him. ‘Like all men you're as helpless as a baby without the redeeming cuteness.' She winced as a crowd of boys, ranging in age from twelve to four, raced noisily past the front door, whooping and shouting.

‘Is that Pirate, or Red Indian language?' Harry asked.

‘How would I know?'

‘You see them more often than I do.'

The boys disappeared, scattering the chippings on the path in their wake. ‘See what I mean about the male sex? They're so excited some of them are bound to be sick. I only hope they ruin their own clothes and no one else's.'

‘Better they misbehave now, than later in church.'

‘It's difficult to know which are worse: Uncle Victor's boys, Uncle's Joey's, or your brothers-in-law. I've had to help Glyn change his shirt twice this morning because “someone” he wouldn't snitch on stole a plate of chocolate éclairs from the pantry and passed them around. Thank goodness Mam insisted he dress in ordinary clothes when he woke this morning. His pageboy outfit would have been filthy by now.' Edyth opened a drawer, took a pin from the cushion their mother kept there and secured the flower firmly to Harry's lapel.

‘I'm on Glyn's side. Weddings can be boring. Especially this waiting around while you girls preen and dress up in your glad rags.' Harry could always be counted on to defend his only brother, who was nineteen years younger than him.

‘Glyn is involved, he's a pageboy.'

Given what Harry had overhead Glyn and his youngest brother-in-law, Luke, say about their gold satin knickerbocker suits, he decided a change of subject might be tactful. ‘I saw Uncle Victor's twins and Uncle Joey's Eddie sneak into the laundry room earlier.'

‘Why would they go in there?'

‘They had bottles of beer up their sleeves and cigars sticking out of their top pockets.'

‘Honestly, they're sixteen going on six!' She took a small bottle from the drawer, unscrewed the gold top, pulled out the rubber stopper and dabbed perfume on to her fingertip.

Harry sniffed. ‘Nice scent, sis.' He couldn't resist adding, ‘It's better than your usual
eau de
tennis and stables.'

‘You have my permission to shout at him, Edyth.' Harry's wife, Mary, led their toddler daughter, Ruth, out of the drawing room.

‘Charming, my wife and my sister ganging up on me!' Harry looked down at his daughter. ‘Oh, my giddy aunt, Ruthie darling, you look pretty.'

Ruth held up the ballerina-length skirt of her gold satin flower-girl frock and did a twirl. ‘And a basket,' she lisped, waving a gold-painted wicker basket in the air.

‘Which we're going to fill with roses, aren't we, poppet?' Edyth slipped her overall back on to protect her dress, before picking Ruth up and kissing her.

‘My beautiful girl, or is it girls?' Harry kissed Mary's cheek and patted her six-month ‘bump'.

‘Please have another girl, Mary,' Edyth pleaded, as the boys ran screaming past the front door again.

‘Girls are more trouble, especially when they try to keep up with the boys. How many bones have you broken, sis?'

Edyth ignored Harry's question. ‘Why don't you do something useful and take all the boys next door so they can annoy Toby? But leave Dad here. He'll be needed to escort the bride.'

‘Edyth!' Maggie, the next sister down from Edyth, called from the top of the stairs. ‘Bella's asking where you put her bouquet and the bridesmaids' posies.'

‘In the outside pantry. I saw them when I picked up the buttonholes. They're perfect. Mari promised to take them out and dry the stems. Do you want me to check to see if she's remembered?'

‘Please.' Maggie returned to Bella's bedroom.

‘I agree with Edyth; you and the boys would be better out of the way next door at Toby's until it's time to go to the church,' Mary suggested diplomatically to Harry.

‘As I said, ganging up on me. But I suppose it's time I started on my best man duties.'

Mary's brother, David, emerged from the drawing room. Edyth handed him a buttonhole.

‘What do you want me to do with this?' he asked blankly.

‘As I just said, boys have absolutely no idea.' Edyth took another pin from the cushion and fastened the rose to David's jacket. ‘Now, what do you say to the guests when they enter the church?'

‘Bride or groom's side,' he repeated parrot-fashion.

‘And which is which?'

‘Groom to the right of the altar?' he asked hopefully.

‘As you are looking down towards it,' she lectured.

‘My father and uncles still “tasting” the wine bought for the reception?' Harry lifted his eyebrows.

‘They are.' David's broad smile suggested that the older generation weren't the only ones who'd been sampling the alcohol.

‘Round up all the poor superfluous males inside and outside the house, and tell them they've been ordered next door, Davy.' Harry glanced back at Edyth, and realized she had really made an effort. His tomboy kid sister had grown up. ‘Didn't know you could clean up so well, sis.'

‘Charming!' She stuck her tongue out at him.

‘You are to ignore that display of naughtiness from your Auntie Edie, Ruth.' Harry took his daughter from Edyth and set her on the floor. ‘Beautiful as you temporarily are, sis, you know what they say: three times a bridesmaid -'

‘This is only the second,' Edyth interrupted.

Harry ticked off his fingers. ‘Uncle Joey's and Auntie Rhian's wedding, mine and Mary's, and now Bella and Toby's. You need to practise your sums.'

‘Belle and I were only flower-girls at Auntie Rhian and Uncle Joey's wedding, so that doesn't count.'

‘If you're right, as you're only eighteen months younger than Bella, I suppose you'll soon be following her up the aisle, then,' Harry baited.

He had graduated from Oxford, and all five of his sisters and his brother had been educated with the expectation that they would also attend college. Their father, Lloyd, an ex-miner who had risen through trade union ranks to become an MP, was determined to push every one of his children, girls as well as boys, to the absolute limit of their ability. And although he and their mother Sali had finally given in to Bella and Toby's pleadings that they be allowed to marry shortly after Bella's twentieth birthday, Harry knew his parents saw Bella's early marriage as a betrayal of that ideal.

‘I have absolutely no intention of getting married. No disrespect, Mary,' Edyth apologized to her sister-in-law, ‘but you won't catch me playing unpaid cook, bottlewasher, laundress, nurse, nanny and housemaid to any man.' She shuddered when she thought of Charlie Moore's clammy hands.

‘So
that's
what wives are supposed to do?' Harry winked at his wife. ‘How come I drew the short straw, my angel?'

‘Davy, at least get the boys to sit down somewhere quiet before one of them breaks a leg or an arm,' Edyth commanded as the noise from outside escalated.

David obediently went to the door. He was the same age as Edyth and had fallen in love with her the first time they'd met. Harry frequently joked that his brother-in-law would cut off his right arm, and cheerfully, if Edyth asked him to.

‘Edyth, bring up a couple of pins from the hall table, will you?' Maggie shouted down.

‘I'll see to it.' Mary took a dozen pins from the cushion and pushed Ruth gently up the stairs ahead of her. ‘Go on, darling; let's see if we can help.'

Edyth frowned. ‘I came downstairs to take the buttonholes from the pantry and to do something else …'

‘Shout at the men?' Harry suggested.

Edyth hesitated, then, as the jazz band Toby had hired for the reception swung into a rousing rendition of ‘Walking My Baby Back Home,' she remembered. ‘I wanted to ask the band if they'd play “Falling in Love With You” when Bella and Toby return here from the church.'

‘“Ain't He Sweet” would be better.' Harry's blue eyes glittered with mischief.

‘How about “Ever'thing Made for Love”?' David chipped in from the porch where he was having no success in calming down the boys. Since Harry had installed a radio in the kitchen of the farmhouse he lived in with his wife and her orphaned brothers and sister, David listened to as many music programmes as he could fit into his working day.

‘If you don't go to Toby's now, the best man and bridegroom are going to arrive late at the church, Harry,' Mary cautioned from the landing.

‘You see to the flowers, I'll talk to the band, Edyth.' Harry joined David at the door.

‘Can I trust you?'

‘Wait and see,' Harry answered maddeningly.

Edyth spent a few minutes checking the buttonholes again for sign of wilting. When she was as sure as she could be that all of them would last the day, she went to the door. Harry and David had finally succeeded in collecting the boys but they had gathered in front of the gazebo where the jazz band was playing. Charlie Moore was with them and, to her annoyance, Bella's fiancé, Toby.

‘The idiot,' she muttered crossly. ‘Doesn't he know it's unlucky for the bridegroom to see the bride before the wedding? All the curtains are open on that side of the house.'

‘Talking to yourself is the first sign, Edyth.' Maggie ran down the stairs behind her.

‘It's the only way to get a sensible conversation in this house. Do me a favour, Mags – remind Mari to take out the posies and bouquets from their buckets in the outside pantry.' Edyth turned on her heel and charged back up the stairs.

‘Harry Evans, brother of the bride and my best man.' Toby introduced Harry to the musicians. ‘The King brothers – Tony, Jed and Ron.' He glanced at the crowd of young men and boys standing around them. ‘I would introduce everyone to everyone, but as no one would remember all the names, there isn't much point.'

‘Pleased to meet you. That was some music you were belting out there.' Harry shook the hands of the three tall Negroes.

‘Abdul Akbar on trumpet,' Toby continued, ‘Steve Chan on drums, and the Bute Street Blues Band's talented and beautiful singer, soon to be discovered and swept off to the West End, Judy Hamilton.'

‘What Toby means is that I'm auditioning on Monday for a tiny part in the chorus of a tour of
The Vagabond King.
Not that I have a hope of getting it,' Judy explained.

‘And when Ziegfeld sees you -'

‘The show's touring Aberdare and the Rhondda, Toby, not opening in New York.'

‘If you won't dream for yourself, Judy, then I'll dream for you,' Toby said blithely. ‘And last but not least, on saxophone, Micah Holsten.'

Harry shook the hand of the only white member of the band. He was very tall and thin, with startlingly white-blond hair. A pair of wire-framed spectacles was perched in front of his deep-blue eyes but even without them he had a keen, intellectual look. Harry found it difficult to gauge his age. At first glance he'd assumed the white hair was a sign of age; close up he recognized it as an indication of Scandinavian ancestry. Micah Holsten could be anywhere between a careworn twenty or a youngish thirty.

‘Pleased to meet you, Mr Evans.' Micah had the slightest of accents; his English was clear and almost too perfect, as if he'd practised the pronunciation of every single word.

‘Please, call me Harry. There's a buffet laid out in the kitchen for the waitresses and kitchen staff. My parents asked me to invite you all to help yourselves while we're in the church.'

‘As long as you're back out here to play for us when we return,' Toby reminded.

‘Thank you. Not many people think of the musicians.' Micah turned when a casement slammed noisily against the wall of the house. Edyth, in her long bridesmaids' frock and high-heeled slippers, stood balanced precariously on the sill of the open high window set alongside the staircase. She was reaching above her head to the curtain pole.

‘Idiot! You'll fall and break your neck if not your skull again,' Harry yelled.

‘Toby's the idiot, coming here before the wedding. Everyone knows it's unlucky for the bridegroom to see the bride before the ceremony.' She tugged the curtains across the open window, closing them. Seconds later, two loud bangs and a scream echoed from the house.

Harry started running. Aware of someone following him, he turned and saw Toby charging in his wake. ‘Edyth won't be the only one screaming if Bella sees you,' he yelled, then darted inside. Edyth was standing on the top step of the long, curving staircase, holding a crossbar gold satin slipper in each hand.