Tiger Bay Blues (3 page)

‘What kind of accident?’ Bella asked from behind her veil.

‘Your knickers could fall down, like when you used to snap the elastic to make a funny noise when you were little.’

‘Mari!’ Bella cried indignantly.

‘And no sentimental remembrances or you two will make your mother cry.’ Mari took a last look at Bella. ‘You do look lovely, Miss Bella, just the way an Evans bride should.’ She closed the door quickly, but not quickly enough. Edyth saw a tear in the elderly woman’s eye.

‘Mari’s right.’ Sali continued to stare, mesmerised, at her eldest daughter. ‘You do look just the way an Evans bride should.’ Her eyes clouded as she remembered the day she’d been dressed as a bride. Only her bridegroom hadn’t made it to the church. Harry’s father had been murdered before he could marry her, but it was a story she and Lloyd had kept from the girls. The tragedy had been hers and Harry’s – and today of all days was not the time to remember it.

‘You heard Mari: no sentiment and no tears, or we’ll spoil our frocks and redden our noses.’ Edyth lifted her sister’s veil and draped it away from her face. ‘I hid a bottle of sherry and some glasses in your wardrobe earlier. Shall I get them?’

‘How on earth did you manage to do that without Mari, me or your father seeing you?’ Sali asked in amazement.

‘Perhaps now’s the time to tell you some of Edyth’s little dodges.’ Bella arranged her dress carefully so as not to crease it before sitting on her dressing-table stool.

‘Not if you want me to keep
your
secrets, sister dear.’ Edyth produced the bottle and three glasses, and set them on the dressing table.

‘Please be careful, Edyth, Sherry will leave a horrible stain on satin,’ Sali warned when Edyth uncorked the sherry.

‘I haven’t had an accident in months,’ Edyth protested.

‘That’s why I’m worried. Whenever you’ve been quieter for longer than a week, it usually means you’re building up to something big. Like that time you fractured your skull.’

‘I’ve broken enough bones for one lifetime.’ Edyth filled the last glass and handed two to her mother and sister. ‘A toast: to Bella and Toby, and many years of happy married life.’

‘And Edyth,’ Bella added. ‘May she be the first to fulfil Dad’s dream of seeing a daughter go to college.’

‘If I’ve passed my matriculation.’ Edyth crossed her fingers again before sipping the sherry.

Joey Evans liked to boast that he was the least sentimental man in the family, but Edyth saw her uncle reach for his handkerchief when Lloyd escorted Bella up the aisle to the accompaniment of their mother’s favourite Bach concerto. She continued to walk slowly behind her father and sister while keeping a watchful eye on the three small children in front of her. Pageboys Glyn and Luke held Bella’s veil stiffly at arm’s length and Ruth marched proudly between them, more miniature soldier on parade than flower-girl.

Relieved when they reached the altar without any of the small children tripping up, or getting in the way of the bridesmaids, Edyth looked up to see Toby standing smiling, his arm outstretched to Bella.

She had never been jealous of Bella’s dark exotic beauty, but she did find herself envying the look of love and longing etched in Toby’s eyes. Not Toby himself, just the way he looked at her sister. And she found herself wishing that a man would look at her that way.

The Reverend Price faced Bella and Toby and the congregation. ‘Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today …’

To Edyth’s annoyance, a mist blurred her vision. She had sat dry-eyed, emotions intact, throughout the rehearsal. Why couldn’t she continue to do so now? When Bella handed over her bouquet she buried her nose in the roses, inhaled their scent and wondered if she were dreaming. Could Bella really be getting married and leaving home?

She hadn’t felt this way when Harry had married Mary. She adored her big brother, but he was six years older than her and had spent so much time away at school, and later university, that she had never been as close to him as she was to her sisters. And, as she and Bella were the eldest, their relationship had been a special one.

She imagined Bella’s bedroom, empty not just for a few hours but, like Harry’s, permanently, apart from the odd holiday, and probably not even then as Toby was having a house built for them around the corner from her parents. She would no longer be able to creep in late at night, sit on her sister’s bed and devour the picnics they’d sneaked from the pantry while discussing life, art, books and the future.

She and Bella had gone almost everywhere together, both before and after they had grown out of short frocks. School, music lessons, ballet classes, parties, concerts, dances and the theatre, and they had traded insults that everyone outside of the immediate family considered vicious. She hadn’t once told Bella that she loved her, or how much she meant to her, or even that she was going to miss her …

‘I do.’ Toby’s response rang, loud and clear, to the church rafters.

Bella’s ‘I do’ was softer, more subdued.

The Reverend Price looked expectantly at Harry, who fumbled in his pockets in search of the ring long enough to alarm the groom and send whispers of amusement rippling through the congregation.

Edyth turned in annoyance at a sharp poke in her back. Maggie pointed to the floor. Glyn, Luke and Ruth were sitting in a circle, legs wide apart, feet touching, rolling the basket of rosebuds to one another. She stooped down to take it from them and found herself staring into a pair of unfamiliar, deep-brown eyes.

She picked up the basket. The owner of the brown eyes gathered the rosebuds and handed them to her. When he straightened, she saw that he was wearing a cassock, surplice and dog collar. He smiled at her before moving discreetly behind the Reverend Price.

Disconcerted, the warning glare she sent in the direction of the errant pageboys and flower-girl wasn’t as stern as she’d intended. She’d heard that the Reverend Price had a new curate. If that was him, he was without a doubt the most attractive man she’d ever seen.

The Reverend Price boomed, ‘Those whom God hath joined together let no man put asunder.’

The service ended, the choir began to sing ‘Love Divine’. Bella and Toby laughed from sheer relief. The congregation started to whisper and Edyth caught snatches of conversation.

‘Such a moving ceremony …’

‘A beautiful bride …’

Edyth crouched down, helped the pageboys and Ruth to their feet, brushed their clothes with the back of her hand and turned to follow Bella, Toby and her parents into the vestry. The Reverend Price’s curate stood back to allow the bridal procession to precede him and, to her astonishment, gave her a broad and distinctly non-clerical wink.

Her mouth went dry and her knees weakened. For the first time in her life, she knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that, despite her aversion to all the Charlie Moores she’d encountered, and her assertion that she would remain a spinster, given the right man, just like Bella, she would happily forgo her ambition to attend college in exchange for marriage and – when she looked down at Ruth – children.

‘You conducted the service beautifully, Reverend Price. There wasn’t a dry eye in the church. Your new curate – I didn’t catch his name?’ Mrs Hopkins raised her voice above the sound of the jazz band playing ‘Will You Remember?’ in the background.

Edyth stepped out of the line of family that had formed to welcome the guests, and inched closer to the vicar in the hope of discovering more about the stranger. She wasn’t disappointed.

‘Reverend Peter Slater is not only my new curate, Mrs Hopkins; he’s also the son of an old college friend and my godson.’ The vicar offered the elderly lady his arm and walked her over to where Peter Slater was holding court in the centre of a group of young and adoring girls. ‘Mrs Hopkins, Reverend Peter Slater. Peter, I’d like to introduce you to one of our most dedicated parishioners and church benefactors, Mrs Hopkins.’

Peter excused himself from the girls and shook Mrs Hopkins’s hand. While they exchanged pleasantries, Edyth glanced at the queue of guests waiting to greet the wedding party and congratulate the bride and groom. It wasn’t diminishing rapidly enough for her liking. She noticed that her younger sisters had already left the line and were talking to their friends, and more alarmingly, that Maggie was eyeing the Reverend Slater, who looked as though he were about to move on from the vicar and Mrs Hopkins.

Edyth muttered an excuse aimed at no one in particular and went into the marquee. Under the pretext of re-arranging the flowers on the top table, she shuffled the place cards. It wasn’t difficult. By moving Maggie up one place and banishing her youngest sister Susie to the children’s table, she managed to secure adjoining seats for Peter Slater and herself. She left the tent and wandered back into the garden with the intention of waylaying him and introducing herself.

‘Edyth,’ David ran up to her, ‘can I have the first dance after the wedding breakfast? After the bridal dance, that is. Martha said something about you having dance cards  … ’

‘Bella decided not to have cards. They’re old-fashioned.’ Bella’s decision had nothing to do with fashion. She, like Edyth, had found the crowing of girls with full dance cards over those less fortunate distasteful. Especially when they had first begun to go to parties and found themselves planted firmly among the other gauche young wallflowers.

‘But you will save me a dance?’ he pleaded.

‘Of course,’ she murmured absently, her attention fixed on Peter Slater. Standing in sunlight he resembled a matinee idol even more than he had done in the gloomy interior of St Catherine’s church. His thick, wavy black hair, regular features and intense expression reminded her of the postcards of the actor Gary Cooper that Susie pinned to her bedroom walls and kissed every night before she climbed into bed.

‘I’ve been practising the steps you taught me,’ David added in a tone that might have invoked compassion if her attention hadn’t been entirely focused on Peter.

‘Edyth,’ Susie joined them with David’s sister, Martha, ‘I don’t have to sit at the children’s table in the marquee, do I? We’re both thirteen and Martha is on Uncle Victor’s table with the twins.’

‘It’s probably a mistake.’ Edyth was stricken by an attack of conscience. ‘Is there room for you on Uncle Victor’s table as well as Martha?’

‘Only if we move one of the younger boys to the children’s table. Ben’s six months younger than me.’

‘Swap the place cards over, but don’t tell anyone I told you to do it. And if Ben objects, tell him Belle and Toby wanted him to sit with the little ones because he’s so good at keeping them in order.’

‘Edyth?’ Maggie waved to her from the middle of a group of fellow pupils from the grammar school.

‘David, be an angel?’ Edyth gave him a brilliant smile.

‘I’ll try.’

The Master of Ceremonies rang a bell. ‘Ladies and gentlemen, please take your seats. The wedding breakfast is about to be served.’

‘Tell Maggie I’ll talk to her after the meal.’ She darted over to Peter, leaving David feeling as though she’d slapped him in the face.

‘My father died suddenly of a heart attack when I was fourteen and, as the vicarage my parents had lived in all their married life was needed for the next incumbent, Mother and I had to move out of our home less than a week after his death.’ Peter Slater murmured ‘thank you’ to the waitress who set a plate of cold salmon in front of him.

‘How tragic, to lose your father at that age, and then your home. You must have been devastated.’ Edyth’s sympathy was heartfelt. She adored her father and couldn’t bear to think of him dying.

‘Losing our home was nothing in comparison to losing my father. I miss his guidance and advice even more since I was ordained. But I was born in that vicarage in Mumbles and had lived in the village all my life. However, God provides. People are kind. My mother’s eldest sister is also a widow. She offered us a home with her in the village of Sketty, which is only a few miles from Mumbles, so I was able to visit my friends in the holidays. Only in the holidays, because I changed schools after my father’s death. The Church offered to pay for my education and I went to boarding school. After I matriculated, they arranged a place for me at the theological college in Lampeter. I was grateful, but I confess, welcoming as the parishioners in Pontypridd have been, I miss the sea after growing up so close to it.’

‘I love the sea, too.’ Edyth gazed into his eyes and pictured them walking hand in hand along a deserted beach.

‘It’s never the same two days running. Even when the weather remains fine, the sea changes colour. I used to spend hours on the beach as a child, building sand castles, collecting shells, crabs and other fishy things. Although I’m not so sure Mother appreciated me cluttering my bedroom with them.’

‘I’m sure she didn’t really mind. If she had done she wouldn’t have allowed you to bring them into the house.’

‘You’re probably right. But then, aren’t most mothers tolerant of their children’s foibles?’

Edyth fought the urge to smooth away the lines that had appeared at the corners of his eyes when he revisited his childhood memories. ‘You left Lampeter at the end of last term?’ she fished, hoping he’d tell her how long he’d be staying in Pontypridd.

‘No, St Catherine’s is my fourth parish.’

‘Really?’ Edyth abandoned all pretence of eating, cupped her chin in her hand and stared unashamedly at him. ‘Where else have you been?’

‘Here, there and everywhere. It amuses the Bishop to move curates around at short notice. It saves him the trouble of setting up a chessboard,’ he joked. ‘I’ve just come from Llanelli. I was there for six months and before that I spent a year in Brecon, two in Merthyr, and almost three in Bridgend. I like to think the decreasing length of my postings means that the Church is considering giving me my own parish in the not-too-distant future.’

The Reverend Price was in his early fifties and had been entrenched in Pontypridd for as long as Edyth could remember, so she guessed that if Peter Slater was going to be given his own church soon, it wouldn’t be St Catherine’s. ‘Then you don’t expect to be here for long?’ She didn’t even try to hide her disappointment.

‘That depends on the Church. I’m not in a hurry to move until I am offered my own parish. The Reverend Price and my father were close friends and, as my godfather, he’s taken his duty towards me seriously. He kept in close touch with my mother after my father died and when he heard that I was looking for a position that would offer more of a challenge to an ambitious curate, he asked the Bishop to send me here. And that, Miss Evans,’ Peter gave her heart-melting smile, ‘is a brief outline of my short and uneventful life.’

‘You see your mother?’

‘As often as I can. Swansea is only two train journeys and an hour and a half away, but I get very little free time to travel even that far.’

‘And none on Sundays. It must be peculiar to have to work your longest hours on most people’s only free day in the week.’ Noticing that the waitresses were already collecting plates, Edyth finally cut into her salmon. ‘Do you have any brothers and sisters?’

‘None. As the saying goes, I’m only, lonely, and selfish.’ He smiled again and her heartbeat quickened.

‘I’ve never heard that, but then, with four sisters and two brothers, it hardly applies to me.’

‘You’re lucky to have a large family.’ He glanced around the table. ‘The only relatives I have in this world are my mother and aunt.’

‘There have been times when I would have disagreed with you, but not today. As you may have guessed, we’re not only wearing our best clothes but we’re all on our best behaviour.’

‘Your sister makes a beautiful bride.’

‘And Toby a handsome bridegroom. We tease him dreadfully. He’s not used to children or girls, and finds us overwhelming. ‘

‘He doesn’t seem to have much family,’ Peter observed. ‘His side of the church was half-empty.’

‘He doesn’t have any family. His parents died when he was young and his uncle a few years ago. He has no one else, so the only people in his pews were his friends.’ Edyth handed her plate of barely touched salmon to a waitress.

‘How did he meet your sister?’

‘Toby was a friend of Harry’s – my eldest brother and Bella and Toby’s best man,’ she explained. ‘When Harry married Mary and went to live with her and her brothers and sister on their farm, Harry asked Toby if he’d like to rent his house, which is next door to this one. You can see the roof over the trees.’

‘Very imposing.’

Edyth suspected from the expression on Peter’s face that he was wondering how someone Harry’s age could afford a house that large, but drilled by her parents never to discuss finances, especially Harry’s inheritance from a long-dead great-aunt, she didn’t elaborate. ‘It is, and as Toby was already smitten with Bella although she was only sixteen at the time, he jumped at the chance. My parents weren’t too happy about the arrangement. They had hoped we’d all go to college. But Bella gave up on that idea when she and Toby became engaged on her eighteenth birthday.’

‘Your father wants to send all of you to college, even the girls?’ Peter asked in astonishment.

‘Especially
the girls.’ Lloyd caught the tail end of their conversation. ‘All women should be educated, and not only so they can keep themselves if necessary,’ he said forcefully.

‘I agree, sir,’ Peter muttered diplomatically. ‘But not many men of your generation think that way. My father used to say that it was a waste of time and money to educate women when most of them only end up running a house.’

‘Do you have any sisters, Reverend Slater?’ Lloyd asked.

‘No, sir.’

‘That’s probably just as well. Tell me, do you think that the education of most children begins at home?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Then a woman’s education cannot possibly be wasted if she passes it on to her children.’

‘Your father has very definite ideas,’ Peter whispered to Edyth when Lloyd turned his back on them to continue his conversation with Toby and Bella.

‘Particularly on social justice and the emancipation of women. That’s why he became an MP.’

‘But women have the vote.’

‘Only after a long struggle. And we’re still a long way from achieving equal pay and equal rights in all professions.’

‘I take it you’re a feminist?’

‘You’re not?’ she challenged.

‘Of course,’ he agreed hastily. ‘So, what will you study in college, Miss Evans?’

‘English Literature.’

‘And then you’ll teach?’

‘I am going to a training college. Hopefully Swansea, if I matriculate.’ Edyth always gave the same answer to any enquiry that touched on her future, although the prospect of teaching had appealed more to Bella than to her. The problem was, other than teaching, nursing or office work, all of which she suspected would bore her witless after a while, there were few interesting occupations open to respectable women.

She looked across the lawn towards the gazebo where the jazz band was softly playing. She would have loved to have become a professional singer or actress, but as her contributions to school concerts had proved that she had absolutely no theatrical talent and even less musical ability, her ambitions in that direction were woefully hampered.

‘Did you always want to go into the church, Reverend Slater?’

‘Please, call me Peter.’

‘I will, if you call me Edyth.’

‘I’d be delighted to, Edyth. And, in answer to your question, my parents always assumed that I’d follow my father’s choice of career when the time came. To be perfectly honest, after he died, I couldn’t think of anything else that I wanted to do. But when I was studying at Lampeter, I did truly feel that I’d found my vocation in life.’

‘This is a very serious conversation for a wedding.’ She glanced at the jazz band, and the pretty singer. She had skin the colour of milk chocolate, but her black hair, waved in the latest ‘loose’ style, bore no trace of Afro curls. She wondered about her ancestry.

Peter noticed she was watching the band. ‘That girl can really sing.’

‘Do you like jazz?’ Edyth asked.

‘I prefer orchestral and chamber music. Although I occasionally listen to lighter music on the radio and I have been to a few Ivor Novello and Jerome Kern evenings.’

Edyth hid her disappointment. She might not to be able to play a musical instrument but she loved listening and dancing to modern music. ‘What about books?’

‘I enjoy revisiting the classics. The Brontës, Jane Austen, Dickens and, to go further back, Homer’s
Iliad,
but one of the drawbacks of being a curate is lack of time. Not that I’m complaining. In fact, I’m looking forward to taking over the youth club and drama group. I’m recruiting volunteers to assist me. Do you have any time to spare, Edyth?’

‘I do, and I would be delighted to help in any way that I can.’ Edyth smiled up at the waitress, who was now serving them roast chicken.

‘As would I, Reverend Slater.’ Maggie leaned across the table, ignored her sister and beamed at Peter. ‘Edyth will be going to college at the end of the summer, while I, on the other hand, have another full year of school – and Pontypridd – to go.’

‘The final year,’ Edyth reminded. ‘And the most important one. You’ll be busy, Maggie.’