Swansea Summer (25 page)

‘Place an advertisement in the
Evening Post
in the morning. Run it by me before you submit the copy.’

‘Yes, Mr Griffiths.’ He was so close, all she had to do was reach out to touch his hand. As if he knew what she was thinking, he retreated.

‘You’ll work your notice.’

‘Yes, Mr Griffiths.’

‘You have holidays coming.’

‘I don’t mind losing them.’

‘I’ll pay you.’

‘I don’t want your money.’

‘It’s all I have to give you and it’s not as if you haven’t earned it. You’ll be hard to replace.’ He finally looked at her. ‘And I don’t just mean as a secretary.’

‘Then don’t let me go.’

‘I have to, Katie, for both our sakes.’

Showing more strength than he would have given her credit for a few months before, she picked up the notepad, returned to her desk and began to draft the advertisement.

Chapter Fourteen

‘So you’re Helen’s husband.’ The middle-aged woman looked Jack up and down, as though he were a foul-smelling specimen on a fishmonger’s slab.

Despite the fact that he was wearing a brand-new black suit, white cotton shirt and black tie John had insisted he buy, on the grounds that the Italian mohair suit he had worn for his wedding was unsuitable for a funeral, Jack felt distinctly second-class as he nodded an uncomfortable agreement.

‘A Welsh cake, Mr Clay.’

‘No, thank you.’ Jack politely refused the housekeeper’s offer. He was having enough problems trying to balance the teacup and plate of sandwiches she had pressed on him as soon as he had walked through the door of Helen’s grandmother’s house for the traditional post funeral ‘tea’. He glanced through the open drawing-room door into the dining room of the house that had assumed manor house proportions to his inexperienced eye. It was packed with people but he could see no sign of his father-in-law.

‘Joseph, darling, you poor, poor boy. We were simply devastated when we heard the sad news, weren’t we Robin, Angela?’

Jack watched as a middle-aged woman bore down on Joe. After embracing him she moved along, making room for her children to speak to him, and Jack recognised Joe’s friends, Robin and Angela Watkin Morgan, from Lily’s and Joe’s ill-fated engagement party.

‘Helen’s mother tells me John found a job for you at the warehouse.’

‘Yes.’ Jack glowered at the elderly man who’d accosted him, resenting the implication that he needed someone to ‘find’ him a job as if he were incapable of landing a job on his own merit.

‘We haven’t been formally introduced. I’m Richard Thomas, the family solicitor.’ As the man offered a handshake, Jack looked round for somewhere he could dump his cup and saucer. Seeing his predicament the man lowered his hand. ‘There’s no need to stand on ceremony. You will be at the reading.’

‘The reading?’ After a family service in the house, a second interminable one that seemed to last years in a cold, grey, damp church and a third mercifully short one at the graveside, Jack had hoped the formalities were over.

‘The will,’ Richard explained. ‘I asked John to gather the family in the library in one hour.’ He looked around the room. ‘By then everyone should have moved on. Funerals are rarely protracted affairs when the deceased are as elderly as Mrs Harris.’ Seeing Jack’s confusion he explained, ‘Most of her friends, if not all, have gone before.’ As he sauntered off, Jack spotted John standing alone in the doorway. In his eagerness to reach him he spilled most of his tea over the carpet. Embarrassed, he rubbed his foot over the stain, hoping no one had noticed.

‘So that’s your brother-in-law.’ Angela Watkin Morgan studied Jack from his shiny black shoes to the gleaming Brylcreemed tip of his styled quiff.

‘You’ve met Jack before,’ Joe reminded her.

‘I most certainly have not. I’d remember someone who looked like him.’

‘Why?’

‘He’s extremely good-looking. In a rough and ready, coarse, working-class sort of way,’ she qualified. ‘Bit Marlon Brando. The sort of man who’d sweep a girl off her feet and out of her knickers before she knows what’s hit her and’ – she smiled knowingly – ‘give her an alarmingly good time. But then your sister’s experience rather bears that out.’

‘Excuse Angie, she has a vivid imagination she overdoses with romantic potboilers.’

‘I do not read potboilers.’

‘What’s
Forever Amber
if it’s not a pot-boiler?’

‘A historical novel.’

‘The way you were dribbling at the mouth when you read it, I’d say history was the last thing on your mind.’ Robin by-passed the tea tray the housekeeper was carrying and liberated a couple of sherries from a tray on the sideboard behind him. Handing one to Joe, he murmured, ‘No disrespect to your grandmother, but why do they never have whisky at funerals?’

‘Because it would be bad form to get pie-eyed in the middle of the afternoon.’ Angie snatched Robin’s sherry from him and downed it in one. ‘So, you going to introduce me?’ she demanded of Joe.

‘To Jack?’

‘No, the King of Siam.’

‘After what you just said about him, no.’

‘Because you don’t trust him.’

‘You.’

‘Spoilsport. I lo-ove married men. They are so vulnerable, especially when their wives are away – or in hospital.’

‘That’s my sister’s husband you’re talking about.’

‘Dear Joe.’ She brushed the tip of her fingers over his cheek. ‘Always the prehistoric prude. Never mind, I can introduce myself.’

To Joe’s annoyance she strolled over to Jack and took the plate and teacup from his hands.

‘Take no notice. Angie’s making a habit of trying to shock people.’ Robin reached for the sherry tray again.

‘Looks like she’s succeeding,’ Joe observed, as he watched her take Jack’s arm and lead him into the next room.

‘You going drinking with the boys in the Vivs tonight?’

‘That would be bad form on the day of my grandmother’s funeral.’

‘As Angie says, you’re prehistoric.’ Robin leaned against the wall. ‘Tomorrow?’

‘I have work to do.’

‘Saturday?’

‘Perhaps,’ Joe answered, his mind clearly elsewhere.

‘You’re not thinking of going down to the Pier again.’

‘I like it there,’ Joe retorted, instantly on the defensive.

‘The gorgeous Lily might not dance with you again.’

‘She will.’

Robin drank his sherry and took two more from the tray. ‘These are both for me,’ he said, as Joe held out his hand. ‘With you for a friend I need them.’

‘Helen’s a lucky girl.’

‘You think so?’ Jack wondered how he could get rid of Angela without appearing downright rude.

‘Not for being in hospital, silly.’ She giggled, leading him out through the French doors towards the shrubbery. ‘For having you for a husband.’

‘I’m lucky to have her for a wife.’

‘How sweet, a couple who are not cynical about marriage. And they say love is going out of fashion. Do you think it is?’

Jack looked down at her. ‘I think you’re talking a lot of nonsense.’

‘But, darling, nonsense is the only thing worth discussing these days.’ Leading him behind a large oak tree, she pouted her lips in a fair imitation of Doris Day and waited expectantly for a kiss.

‘Only for people who have nothing better to do.’ Removing her hand from his arm he returned to the house.

Richard Thomas sat behind the desk that had been Esme’s father’s and studied the people assembled on the rows of chairs before him. He pretended to rearrange the piles of papers in front of him, although his secretary had set out everything to his exact instructions earlier. Almost fifty years of being a solicitor hadn’t diminished the buzz of excitement he derived from will readings – when there was a sizeable estate at stake.

The beneficiaries invariably attempted to look solemn, grief-stricken and disinterested, as befitting people mourning the loss of a beloved relative, but few managed to achieve it. He had even begun to recognise the types. The stalwart, sacrificial servants who had given the best years of their lives to caring for a cantankerous elderly employer, were usually at pains to point out they expected nothing, although he sensed that they generally had expectations of a valuable something. Few managed to look gleeful at modest bequests and he doubted whether Mrs Harris’s housekeeper would be delighted with her lot in a few minutes.

Then there was the immediate family. If the deceased was a widow or widower and there was more than one child, the ensuing arguments over who got what had been known to result in civil suits, which decimated the estate and benefited his firm. There were no siblings here, but he could sniff a potential suit. The question was, did he want to take it?

‘Are you sure you want me here, Richard?’

John Griffiths’ question concentrated Richard’s mind. This was his moment and he would allow no one else to take control. ‘If you’ll bear with me, John. Shall we begin.’ As no one spoke, he indicated a pile of envelopes set out on a table to the side of the desk. ‘These are copies that have been made for the beneficiaries of Mrs Harris’s estate. After the reading, you may take the envelope bearing your name and study the document at your leisure. My office will be pleased to answer any questions you may have. But I think you will find everything quite straightforward. Mrs Harris took pains to keep everything simple and legally watertight.’

Wondering what he was doing there, Jack gazed out of the window as the solicitor droned on in a tedious monotone. Helen had told him about her grandmother’s house, of Sunday visits, teas on the lawn, picnics she and Joe had taken down to the beach that stretched, vast and inviting, below the garden, but he had never imagined anything as grand as this. It emphasised the social divide between them even more than the rented basement flats in Carlton Terrace that he had lived in all his life and her ‘upstairs existence’ as the daughter of a family that actually owned a house. A sharp intake of breath drew his attention to what Richard was saying.

‘… My housekeeper, in recognition of years of devoted care and service, five hundred pounds.’

Five hundred pounds! The most he had ever saved in his life was five. Five hundred pounds would buy a decent house, yet the woman didn’t look pleased. As she pulled a handkerchief from her skirt pocket and blotted her eyes, he wondered if she was too grief-stricken to realise her good fortune.

‘To my niece, Dorothy Green, the sum of two thousand pounds in recognition of her frequent visits and sincere enquiries after my health.’ Jack smiled as he looked at Helen’s Aunt Dot. She at least looked pleased and surprised. He was glad. He and Helen owed her a lot for recommending their honeymoon hotel and paying their first week’s bill. ‘To my son-in-law, John Griffiths, I bequeath a life-time interest in my investment properties in the Sandfields area of Swansea, in recognition of the care he has taken of my grandchildren.’

John evinced all the astonishment Jack had expected to see on the housekeeper’s face.

‘To my granddaughter, Helen, the house, land and full estate I inherited from my sister, Julie, to do with as she wishes and, after her father’s death, my investment properties in the Sandfields.’ Jack noticed that Richard Thomas paused and peered at him over the top of his spectacles but as Helen had never mentioned an ‘Aunt Julie’ and he had no idea what ‘investment properties’ were, the bequest meant absolutely nothing to him.

‘To my daughter, Esme, my fur coats, the painting of Three Cliffs Bay executed by my late husband, her father, all the jewellery in my rosewood casket and no other pieces.’

Everyone in the room turned to Esme. She was sitting bolt upright, her attention fixed on Richard. Only her hands, twitching nervously in her lap, betrayed her emotion.

‘To my grandson, Joseph Griffiths, I leave the entire residue of my estate. This includes all my personal possessions and jewellery in the hope that he will find a woman worthy of wearing pieces I treasured for their family not monetary value.’

The room was silent but the inference was obvious. No one could be certain what Mrs Harris’s definition of a worthy woman had been. But they were all left in absolutely no doubt that she did not regard her daughter as such.

‘Your bequest will be forwarded to you in cheque form, within twenty-eight days.’

‘Thank you, Mr Thomas.’ The housekeeper gave the solicitor and Joe a venomous look before rising to her feet, picking up her handbag and stalking as majestically as her insignificant stature would allow to the door.

As she closed it behind her Richard looked expectantly at the others gathered in the room. Dorothy Green was still looking stunned by her genuinely unexpected good fortune, John was wearing a distinctly suspicious expression – as well he might. Jack Clay succeeded in appearing dangerous, bored and bemused all at once. Forewarned by his grandmother, Joseph had received sufficient hints of his forthcoming inheritance to remain, outwardly at least, composed. And then there was Esme.

Tight-lipped, unnaturally pale, a stranger might have been forgiven for believing she was putting on a brave face to conceal her grief but he knew her well enough to realise she was having difficulty in keeping her temper in check.

‘Are there any questions?’ After a moment’s silence he said, ‘Then all that remains is for me to thank you for your patience.’ Shuffling the papers on the desk in front of him into a neat pile, he pushed them into a file and returned it to his briefcase.

‘Richard, if I might have a word in private.’

‘Yes, John. Joseph, you will wait until I have spoken to your father.’ Taking his briefcase, Richard opened the door behind him and led the way into the morning room that overlooked the garden and the beach. The lightest and arguably the most beautiful room in the house, Esme’s mother had claimed it as her own, furnishing it in blond wood art deco furniture and pastel-shaded William Morris fabrics. Placing his case on a side table, Richard settled into a fan-back cushioned sofa with the proprietary air of a man perfectly at home. ‘Cigar?’ He opened an engraved gold case and offered it.

‘No, thank you.’

‘You are surprised that Mrs Harris remembered you in her will.’

‘Astounded.’ John lowered himself into a chair opposite Richard. ‘Could it be an oversight? A clause left in by mistake dating from the time of my marriage to Esme?’

‘That will was signed two weeks ago. The witnesses were her doctor and the local vicar. She chose them because she was concerned that someone’ – Richard gave John a significant look – ‘might attempt to challenge the document on the grounds that she was failing in health and faculties.’

‘Was she?’ John asked shrewdly.

‘I drew up every clause of that document according to her specific instructions.’ Flicking an elaborate and expensive gold lighter that matched his cigar case, Richard lit his cigar. ‘At no time did I, the vicar who called every day to give her spiritual guidance, or the doctor who attended her during her last illness doubt that she was of sound mind.’

‘As sound as the investment properties she left me and Helen?’ John enquired cynically.