Tiger Bay Blues (15 page)

She imagined the look on Peter’s face when he opened the door to the vicarage later that evening and saw her standing in front of him. Or would he open it? Perhaps the housekeeper would, and when she did, she’d call to Peter and he would come running from his study, the look of shock on his face turning to a smile when he saw her. He would sweep her off her feet but he wouldn’t kiss her. Not in front of the housekeeper. Perhaps later, when he showed her to the guest room that would hopefully be next door to his own bedroom, or just a few doors away on the landing.

She recalled what Bella had said. But Peter was a clergyman, not an artist like Toby, so she might have to wait until their wedding night to find out what it was like to make love to a man. Peter had been right. They would be man and wife, just as soon as her father realised how determined she was and the lengths she was prepared to go, simply to be with the man she loved.

Her father would have to give his consent to their marriage when he found out she had run away from college on the very day that he and her mother had taken her there. He would simply have to!

Edyth sat back on one of the upholstered benches in the empty first-class carriage the porter had found for her, and scanned the copy of the
Evening Post
she had bought from a vendor at Swansea station. There was no good news. Twenty-four people had died as a result of the heat wave, the temperature in London had reached 94 degrees that day and, according to the experts, there was no sign of the weather cooling. More than two million people had registered unemployed at the beginning of August and there was little hope of improvement. The only ray of hope was that the Morris factory was producing a new car, but with the entire country locked into economic depression, she wondered who was going to buy it and what with.

Then she realised that, angry as she was with her father, her reaction to the news was the direct result of the politics and sense of fair play he had instilled in her while she was growing up.

She drove all thoughts of him and her mother from her mind. She had told the bursar that her brother’s wife was ill and she was needed at his farm in the Swansea Valley to look after her, and that on no account was the college to contact her parents, as they wanted to spare her father any worry because he had urgent parliamentary business in London. Fortunately for the flimsiness of her story, the bursar either didn’t know, or didn’t realise, that Parliament was in its summer recess.

She folded the paper and looked out of the window. The sun was low on the horizon; a blood-red ball hovering above a copse of trees like an illustration in a child’s picture book. She picked up the paper and fanned herself. The guard had opened the narrow window, but the air in the carriage remained oppressive and uncomfortable.

The train slowed, they drew into a station. ‘Bridgend’ hung on the sign above the platform; they had only covered half the distance to Cardiff. She checked the time. Ten past nine. According to the timetable, she should arrive in Cardiff at a quarter to ten. Doors slammed along the length of the train, a whistle blew, the brakes hissed and they steamed forward.

Just at the point when she braced herself for the train to gather speed, it juddered to a halt and she was jerked forward. She sat back in her seat and waited. Carriage doors opened, and people ran up and down the train. After a quarter of an hour had passed, she slid back her door and looked out. A guard was standing further down the corridor engulfed by a mob of irate passengers.

‘I’m sorry,’ he shouted above their heads, ‘a freight train has broken down on the tracks ahead. I am afraid there is going to be a delay.’

‘For how long?’ one man demanded, before Edyth had plucked up courage to ask the same question.

‘I’m sorry, sir, ladies and gentlemen, but that is all I can tell you. Workmen and officials are doing all they can to free the line. I will keep you informed of progress. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to inform the passengers in the third-class carriages about the delay.’ The guard fought his way through the crowd and disappeared into the next carriage.

Disgruntled, muttering vague threats about letters to the press and Great Western Rail Company the passengers dispersed. A middle-aged man gave Edyth a lecherous smile. She returned to her carriage and slammed the door. The sun had sunk lower. It was bound to be dark by the time they reached Cardiff. Tiger Bay was supposed to be too rough an area for a young girl to visit alone, although it had seemed remarkably quiet on her one excursion to Bute Street. What if she couldn’t find a taxi to take her there? What if she couldn’t find a taxi at all?

Deciding the time to worry about that was when it happened, she pushed the thought from her mind. But no matter how she tried, the stories she had heard about Tiger Bay kept surfacing in her mind. And not the innocuous ones she had told her father and the members of the jazz band at her sister’s wedding, but stories of fights, knifings, and men attacking women.

She pulled out the address of the vicarage in Church Street that she had tucked into her handbag. No taxi driver would refuse to take a respectable-looking woman to a vicarage. Would they?

She rose to her feet and peered anxiously in the sliver of mirror above the seat opposite. Her hair was damp with perspiration and bedraggled beneath her straw hat. Her silk dress was creased and clung clammily to her body. She glanced at her trunk, suitcase and overnight bag on the rack above the seats, and resolved to leave everything except her overnight bag in left luggage at Cardiff station.

Peter had written that the Reverend Richards had a housekeeper. She pictured a respectable spinster or widow who lived in, and would chaperone her while she slept at the vicarage. Peter would help her collect her luggage in the morning – and then? Then what? At that moment it dawned on her that she had thought no further than reaching Peter. They still wouldn’t be able to marry without her father’s written consent.

She would ask Peter to telephone her father in the morning. Her parents would finally see sense and allow them to marry. If they didn’t, she would have made all this effort for nothing. No, not for nothing – her mouth curled into a smile. After the lies she had told the bursar, one thing was certain: the principal would not allow her back into the college.

Chapter Eight

‘You’ve got to be joking. There’s no way I’m taking a young girl down Tiger Bay at this time of night,’ the taxi driver said vehemently. ‘The last thing I need is a copper flagging me down and asking questions about my involvement in the white slave trade.’

‘Come on, Stan,’ the porter coaxed. ‘The lady’s asking to taken to the vicarage, not a pub or one of the houses.’

‘She’s asking to be taken to Tiger Bay – and that’s enough for me. The coppers will take one look at her sitting in the back of my cab in Bute Street and pull me over. I can’t afford to lose time on the busiest night of the week.’

‘She’s a young girl. You’ve daughters of your own.’

‘Who look as though butter wouldn’t melt in their mouths, just like Little Miss Muffet here, but I know what they’re like under those innocent expressions. Who’s to say where she’ll go after I drop her off in Church Street? The Glamorgan, The Peel, The Cardigan or Anna Hughes’s. Well, I’ll not be held responsible.’ The driver pointed to the row of taxis lined up behind his. ‘Ask one of the other boys if they fancy taking a young girl down the docks at this time of night.’

‘Please?’ Edyth added her plea to that of the porter. The driver was in his forties, looked trustworthy and reminded her of the miners who visited her father in their house.

‘Sorry, miss, you might be respectable and then again you might not. I like to sleep nights and I won’t if I drop you off in Tiger Bay after midnight on a Saturday night.’

Edyth was hot, grubby, exhausted and exasperated. The train had been delayed outside Bridgend for over two hours and, as if that hadn’t been enough, they had been held up outside Cardiff station for another half an hour so the scheduled trains could keep to their timetables. All she wanted was to see Peter and soak in a cold bath before sleeping in a clean bed, and she was convinced all three waited for her at the vicarage. But that was little use if she couldn’t find anyone to take her there.

The porter, who had miraculously found the key to the left luggage room so she could stow her trunk and suitcase there after it had officially closed for the night, had given up on Stan and was talking to the other drivers. Edyth watched him work his way down the line of cabs. He waved her forward when he reached the seventh in the queue.

‘Best I can do for you, miss. But Tom will charge double the usual fare. He can after midnight,’ he warned.

‘Thank you.’ Edyth was too grateful to argue.

‘Here you go then, miss.’ The porter opened the back door, lifted in her overnight case and looked expectantly at Edyth.

‘You have been very kind.’ She opened her handbag and pulled out her purse, Unable to see in the darkness, she moved closer to a gas lamp and extracted a shilling.

She thought she was being generous but the porter merely pocketed the coin, touched his hat and walked off. She stepped into the taxi and closed the door. The driver opened the glass panel that separated him from the passengers.

‘The people at the vicarage in Church Street are expecting you, miss?’ he checked.

‘I know Reverend Slater,’ she replied cautiously.

‘The new curate?’

‘You know him, too?’ she asked in excitement.

‘My daughter goes to the church school. New curate’s already been there taking religious assembly. He’s keen by all accounts and full of new ideas. But he has the good sense to tread carefully and ask the locals what they want. The people in the Bay don’t like charity unless they’re the ones dishing it out. That’s where the Reverend Richards and his missus fell short. Still, mustn’t speak ill of the dead.’

‘Reverend Richards is dead?’ Edyth was shocked to think that the man Peter had written about only the day before had passed away.

‘No, his missus. She was too hoity-toity for the Bay by half. But there you are. Do-gooders are always poking around the docks, trying to “improve” the residents. Those who live there don’t like outsiders coming in and looking down their noses at them, but from what I’ve been told, they’ve taken to this new bloke. You been held up on the train coming in from Swansea?’

‘Yes.’ Elated by the driver’s verdict on Peter’s work, Edyth sat back in her seat and looked out of the window, eager to absorb every aspect of the place that she hoped would soon become her home.

They drove out of station yard and along the main street before turning under a railway bridge and on to a wide road. Back streets that looked reassuringly familiar opened from it on both sides, reminding her of the terraced houses of Pontypridd and the Rhondda.

The sky was a deep, dark navy above lamps that shed pools of light on to pavements, and beneath them, even at this hour, people were sitting on kitchen chairs that had been carried outside, presumably in search of cooler and fresher air. Elderly and middle-aged women were nursing small children and babies on their laps. Older children who still had the energy to run around were skipping with ropes or playing tag. She wondered why they weren’t in bed then remembered it was a Saturday night. Even so, her parents had always insisted on regular bedtimes, including the height of summer.

Men had gathered in groups outside pubs that should have closed at ten o’clock, yet many were holding full glasses in their hands. A group was crouched low over playing cards spread on the ground. Gambling was illegal and so was drinking in public after hours, but if she closed her eyes she wouldn’t see it happening, then she wouldn’t be able to tell anyone about it.

She leaned back and did just that … for a moment …

‘You wanted the vicarage, miss?’

The taxi driver’s announcement, accompanied by the slam of brakes, catapulted Edyth into startled consciousness. She opened her eyes. He had parked alongside a church set behind railings in a wide, straight, lamp-lit street that stretched ahead as far as she could see. The man left his cab, walked to the back of the car, opened the door and lifted her overnight bag from the floor. ‘I’ll carry this to the porch for you, miss.’

‘How much do I owe you?’ She opened her handbag and felt for her purse.

‘It’s double after midnight.’

‘The porter warned me.’

‘That’ll be five bob.’

‘Five shillings!’ She squinted at her watch, holding it up to the window so she could read the face. ‘It’s less than a quarter of an hour since we left the station.’

‘It’s the going rate, miss.’

Careful not to open her purse too wide lest she lose any money, she felt gingerly among the coins, extracted two florins and a shilling and handed them over.

The driver went down a lane alongside the church and was swiftly swallowed by the darkness. Disorientated and half asleep, Edyth stepped cautiously on to the pavement. Jazz music wafted faintly in the hot, close air, along with ghostly, disembodied shouts and laughter. She was so relieved when the driver reappeared without her bag she had to stop herself from embracing him.

‘The vicarage is down there?’ she asked.

‘Behind the church, miss. I thought you said you knew the curate,’ he commented suspiciously.

‘I do, but I haven’t been here before.’

‘He
is
expecting you?’

She realised what the situation must look like to someone who didn’t know her or Peter. She imagined the driver relating the tale to his friends in a pub:
‘This young girl insisted I drive her to that new, good-looking young curate’s house after midnight. And she’d never even been there before.’

‘I should have been here hours ago. The train was delayed.’ She took comfort in the thought that it wasn’t exactly a lie.

‘Well, I’ve taken you to where you asked to go; you’re someone else’s problem now.’ The driver climbed back into his cab and drove off, leaving her standing on the pavement.

She looked up at the church. It was massive and imposing, with huge double doors set in a wide arch, and a peaked roof flanked by twin pyramid-capped towers. She had to step back into the road to see the whole building silhouetted against the moonlit sky. Peter’s parish was certainly impressive if the church was anything to go by.

A lamp burned on the pavement in front of the railings that separated the church grounds from the street, but the lane the driver had walked down was in darkness. Ignoring a group of women clustered around the lamps on the opposite side of the road, she steeled herself and braved the shadows. The high walls of the church on one side and the alleyway on the other blotted out the moon and for a moment she couldn’t see even a glimmer of light. Forced to feel her way along the wall, she suddenly regretted the impulse that had led her to set off for Cardiff as soon as her parents had left Swansea. It would have been more sensible to have waited a day and written to Peter to tell him she was coming. He could have met her train and helped with her luggage, and she wouldn’t have had to go to all the expense of tipping porters and paying a taxi driver double the rate.

It was only then that she realised why she hadn’t told Peter what she’d intended to do. The Church insisted on respectability above all else, and after seeing the reaction of the porter and the taxi driver, she knew a young girl who travelled to Butetown alone in the early hours of the morning would most certainly not be considered respectable by the Bishop or the Dean.

Peter would have done everything he could to dissuade her from coming to see him. He would have also pointed out that there was no guarantee that her parents would allow them to marry even if she left college. She’d risked her reputation by being out alone at night in an unsavoury area and – as another burst of raucous laughter resounded from the streets behind the walls – possibly worse.

A light shone ahead of her and the lane opened into a small yard. The high walls of an imposing three-storey house rose on her left; the light came from an outside lamp above the door. She walked towards it and saw her overnight case on the step. She reached up and pulled the bell. She had to tug on it twice more before footsteps resounded behind the door.

‘Who’s there?’ a woman shouted in a thick Scottish brogue.

‘My name is Edyth Evans. I am a friend of the Reverend Slater. I would like to see him.’

‘At this hour of the night?’ the woman shouted back suspiciously. ‘Is someone ill in your house?’

‘My train was delayed. If it hadn’t been, I would have been here hours ago.’

‘No decent woman would come calling at this time of night. Go away!’ The footsteps retreated.

Edyth opened the letterbox and shouted, ‘Please, I must see the Reverend Slater. If you tell him Edyth Evans is here, he will want to see me.’

‘I can’t tell Reverend Slater anything. He’s out at a sick bed. And even if he wasn’t, I wouldn’t disturb his sleep for a mad woman.’

‘Out?’ Edyth repeated in bewilderment. That was one eventuality she hadn’t prepared for. ‘Please, will you tell me where he is?’

‘I will not. Sick people need peace and quiet in the middle of the night, not callers. And don’t touch that bell or shout through the letterbox again. The Reverend Richards is very ill.’

‘At least let me wait in the hall or the kitchen until Reverend Slater comes back,’ Edyth pleaded.

‘As if I’d let a stranger in the house in the middle of the night. The minute I’d drop off you’d steal us out of house and home, or burn the place down over our heads. Go away.’

‘Please, I don’t know anyone else around here.’

‘That is your problem,’ the merciless voice snapped.

‘At least tell me where I might find a hotel?’

‘There are plenty around here and in Cardiff, but no decent place will take someone in this time of night, let alone a young girl who’s up to no good.’

‘Please,’ Edyth begged.

‘Go away, or I’ll call the police. And I have a telephone here to do it.’

Edyth heard the ping of a telephone receiver being lifted off a cradle. She hesitated despite the threat.

‘If you don’t go away, the police will come and arrest you for disturbing the peace.’

Edyth picked up her overnight case and walked back down the lane to the church and Bute Street. She hadn’t thought the case heavy when she’d left home that morning, but now it seemed to weigh as much as her trunk. She stopped outside the church and looked up and down the street. Lamps pooled the darkness at intervals, but the areas in between were black and sinister.

The heat of the day still hung heavily in the air, and nothing moved, but she could hear a party of drunks belting out an unmelodic version of the sentimental Irish ballad, ‘I’ll Take You Home Again, Kathleen’. Live music was being played in the distance, the vibrant, toe-tapping tones of ‘Putting on the Ritz’.

She stood beneath the lamp in front of the church and dropped her case. The buildings around her were large and imposing, some with three and more storeys. A few of the windows on the upper floors had lace curtains and the drapes behind them were closed.

She imagined families sleeping in peaceful, orderly rooms, and wished she knew someone besides Peter in Tiger Bay. She could hardly go knocking on doors at this time of night to ask householders if they took in lodgers.

The music seemed to be coming from a large building opposite but the doors were closed and she wasn’t sure if her ears were playing tricks. Desperately hoping that a taxi would pass – and pick her up – she continued to stand, looking up and down the street, all the while willing Peter to appear. He had said in his letters that he had assumed all of Reverend Richards’s duties and the woman in the vicarage had told her he was at a sick bed.

How sick? Could he be at a deathbed? A deathbed vigil could last until dawn, and if there were relatives to comfort, Peter wouldn’t leave until his services were no longer required.

She glanced over her shoulder at the church. Surely, like all churches, it would be open and if it was, she could sit in a pew. Glad to have made a decision that required action she stooped to pick up her case.

‘What you doing on our patch?’ A thickset woman with improbably-dyed red hair loomed over her.

‘I …’ Edyth looked around. While she’d been debating what to do, the group of women she’d seen earlier had crossed the road and surrounded her. ‘I don’t understand.’ Intimidated, terrified, she retreated to the wall, only to have someone poke her painfully in the back.