Tiger Ragtime (5 page)

Chapter Three

‘I wasn’t sure what to expect from the carnival but it was fun. I enjoyed it – and so did Harry, Mary, and the children. It was good to see them, if only for a few hours.’ Edyth picked up the last of the plates on the scrub-down table she had covered with a sheet because she didn’t have a large enough tablecloth, and carried them to the sink. Having invited all the members of the Bute Street Blues Band and their families, as well as her own, to supper, she had laid it out in the enormous kitchen of her shop.

‘You miss your family?’ Micah took the sheet from the table, folded it and hung it on the back of a chair.

‘Of course, but not enough to give up the bakery and go back to Pontypridd.’ She smiled when she saw Judy standing over the sink with her eyes closed.

Micah touched Judy’s arm. ‘Bed, miss, now. You’re falling asleep on your feet like a horse.’

‘I was just blinking,’ she mumbled.

‘So I saw.’ He took her by the shoulders and propelled her out of the kitchen, through the shop to the foot of the stairs. ‘It’s quite simple. You hold on to the hand rail, lift one leg, then the other and walk straight ahead. Don’t forget to wash off that greasepaint or you’ll be scrubbing your sheets for a week.’

Too tired to respond to Micah’s sarcasm, Judy did as he ordered.

He returned to the kitchen. Edyth had lifted the last of the plates from the washing-up water and left them to drain on the zinc draining board.

‘I’ve put the leftover food in the pantry. Everything else can wait until morning. Drink?’ she asked.

‘I’ve consumed more tea today than there’s water in the West and East docks combined.’

‘I said drink, not tea.’ She took the last flagon of beer from a cupboard and set it on the table next to him before pouring herself a small sherry from the bottle she’d opened for her guests. ‘This is cosy.’ She sat next to him at the table.

‘It could be cosy every night if you allowed me to talk to your father,’ he reproached.

‘To tell him what?’

‘That I love you and intend to marry you as soon as you’re free.’

‘I’m a married woman and my own person. You don’t need my father’s permission, only mine.’

‘Aside from courtesy, you may be married but you’re not twenty-one and, in Peter’s absence, that makes your father your guardian.’

‘I suppose it does, but as my present marriage isn’t annulled, and won’t be until Peter signs and returns those papers, which, given that he’s on the other side of the world, could take months, any talk of remarrying is premature.’

‘But Peter will be returning them any day now and when he does –’

‘Micah, I’ve been thinking,’ she interrupted.

He flicked opened the beer, poured some into a glass, replaced the rubber-ringed top and closed it again. ‘I don’t like the sound of that.’

‘What, me thinking? My brain doesn’t make a noise.’

‘Don’t joke, not now, Edyth, please.’ He removed his glasses and stared at her.

She knew he was acutely short-sighted, but even unfocused his deep blue eyes seemed to bore into hers, reading her thoughts as they formed. ‘If we married, you’d expect me to move into the Norwegian mission with you, wouldn’t you?’

‘Married people do generally live together,’ he agreed.

‘Now who’s not being serious?’ A note of irritation crept into her voice.

‘What point are you trying to make?’

‘My bakery …’

‘If that’s all you’re worried about, you could still run it,’ he said with relief. ‘Judy will be only too happy to carry on living here.’

‘It’s not Judy’s bakery, it’s mine. I’m up every morning at four –’ she glanced at the clock on the wall. The hands pointed to ten minutes to four and music was still echoing from the direction of Loudoun Square, ‘– every weekday morning, that is,’ she qualified. ‘That means I go to bed most nights at nine.’

‘I know,’ he murmured pointedly.

Not wanting to get sidetracked into a discussion as to what happened on the nights Micah stayed over when Judy was babysitting for one of her uncles, or away for an audition, she said, ‘How much sleep do you think I would get in the mission with the sailors whose ships are only in for a couple of days sitting up all night, talking, singing, drinking coffee, and eating waffles?’

‘Lots if you put cotton wool in your ears. But it’s not sleep you’re worried about, is it?’

‘No.’ She poured more sherry into her glass, not because she wanted to fill it but because she couldn’t bring herself to look at him. ‘I was never sure what I wanted to do with my life, and, truth be told, I still don’t know. But I enjoy running the bakery. It’s mine, I own it. Granted, by the grace of my bank manager, and the interest I pay on my business account, but I employ people who rely on me to pay them wages at the end of the week. I don’t want to give that up to run a house or a mission and look after a husband.’

‘Marriage doesn’t have to be like that,’ he countered.

‘It was with Peter and maybe it wouldn’t be like that with you at first. But in time it would.’

‘I’m looking after myself perfectly well now.’

‘No, you’re not. And please, let me finish,’ she begged before he had a chance to say another word. ‘Your sister does your laundry and mending; the ladies on the mission committee clean your room when they sweep out and dust the church and the public areas. Whoever’s manning the waffle iron makes your breakfast, the ladies’ committee your lunch, and Moody cooks supper for you most nights when he leaves here.’

‘That’s hardly surprising. He lives with my sister and he is her brother-in-law.’

‘Micah, all I’m trying to say is that your sister and the other women like looking after you and the seamen who call into the mission. It’s only natural. Most of them have husbands or fathers who are sailors and they miss them. You told me the first time you took me to your church that they like to help out because it pleases them to think that someone is doing the same for their men in whichever port in the world their ships are berthed. But it doesn’t alter the fact that I have a business to run. How could I manage the bakery if I was always worrying about whether or not you had clean underclothes and socks and what I was going to cook you for tea?’

‘My sister –’

‘And all the other ladies would stop doing your cleaning, cooking, and washing if we were married,’ she declared. ‘They would expect me to take over – and quite rightly so.’

He looked her in the eye. ‘So you don’t want to marry me, not now, or ever. Is that what you’re saying?’

‘No.’ The long day had finally caught up with her and she felt exhausted. Too drained to think, let alone argue.

‘Then when will you marry me?’

‘You know I can’t answer that until Peter sends me the annulment papers.’

‘And if you receive them tomorrow?’ he pressed.

‘That’s not likely to happen,’ she said irritably.

‘But if you do?’

‘I don’t know, Micah,’ she snapped. ‘Do we have to talk about this now?’

‘This is one subject you never want to discuss.’

‘You know I love you,’ she pleaded earnestly. ‘Isn’t that enough?’

‘It’s a lot, Edyth, but it would be a whole lot more if I could live openly with you.’

‘Why can’t you be happy with things the way they are?’

‘How can I be, when we have to sneak around and pretend that we are just friends? Don’t you know how terrified I am every time we make love in case I make you pregnant?’

‘What if you did? I’m married,’ she retorted unthinkingly.

‘Peter left you months ago.’

‘The people who matter most – my friends and family wouldn’t care.’

‘I think your parents would. And so would I. And so might some of your customers. Is it so unreasonable of me to want my child to bear my name and not Peter’s? I also happen to believe that every child has a right to be brought up in a loving secure home by a mother and a father who live together. As you were,’ he reminded her strongly.

‘So do I, Micah, but it’s my life we’re talking about.’ She was furious with him for even thinking that she would consider otherwise. ‘As for the people around here, where else would they buy their bread? There isn’t another decent baker in the Bay.’

‘You’re changing the subject again, Edyth, as you always do when I try to talk to you about us.’ Micah finished his beer, rose from his chair and pushed it back under the table.

Edyth had known Micah less than a year but she could tell when he was angry. Unlike most people he became quieter, more softly spoken, something she found difficult to adjust to after the emotional explosions of her four sisters while they were growing up together in Pontypridd.

‘Shall I see you tomorrow, on the Escape?’ she asked in an effort to appease him. They had met every Sunday afternoon on his boat since they had begun their affair. They also frequently stole a few hours during the late afternoons and early evenings in the week.

‘It’s where I practise my saxophone after services every Sunday,’ he said shortly. ‘We’ll talk then.’

He picked up his saxophone case. ‘Micah …’

‘There could still be strangers lurking around the Bay. Best lock up behind me.’ He stepped outside and closed the door behind him without giving her his customary goodnight kiss.

She thrust the bolt home and leaned against the wall. She really was too tired to think. But as she climbed the stairs she wondered why it was so difficult for a married woman to run a business or work outside the home. Her mother had managed it. But then she had worked in Harry’s business and she’d had their dedicated and loving housekeeper to run the house and look after the family in her absence.

Even if she found the money to employ a housekeeper to carry out her domestic and family chores – and at the moment she hadn’t a halfpenny to spare – where, in this modern day and age, would she find a woman willing to sacrifice her own life to that of an employer’s?

David Ellis had never slept in a room with the curtains drawn. Not even when he had shared a bedroom with his younger brother. Since birth he had followed the farmers’ dictate of rising with the sun and if not exactly going to bed when it set, sitting up no more than an hour or two after dark, especially during the long winter nights. More would have been considered a waste of coal and candles and although his family no longer had to practise the stringent economies they had been forced to adhere to before his sister had married Harry, old habits died hard. Despite his late night after the carnival, David left his bed the moment the first cold grey fingers of light highlighted the summits of the eastern hills that towered over the reservoir below the farmhouse. He stood at the window in his pyjama trousers, staring at the view that was so familiar to him he had long since taken it for granted. The Ellis Estate’s eighteenth-century farmhouse and outbuildings had been built in a square that enclosed the farmyard. Situated just below the crest of a hill so the top could shelter it from the worst of the winter snowstorms that swept the Brecon Beacons, the house was as large and substantial as any manor in Wales.

For six months of the year it was a cold, bleak, and cruel place. But in spring and summer it was easy to forget the deep snowdrifts and heavy frosts that blocked the road and killed the weaker animals. Below him, sheep he had watched grow from frisky gambolling lambs to stolid maturity cropped the grassy slopes that tumbled down to the valley floor. Rabbits popped in and out of burrows and half a dozen wild ducks swam peacefully among the reeds at the water’s edge of the reservoir that flooded the valley floor. A pair of kites circled lazily on the same level as his window. It was a quiet, peaceful scene – too peaceful for a man who loved a woman who lived more than sixty miles away.

He strode purposefully from the window and lifted the suitcase Harry and Mary had bought him last Christmas from the cupboard next to the fireplace. Opening it out on the bed, he emptied a drawer in his chest and packed his cotton summer underclothes. Then he stood back and surveyed his wardrobe. He’d need his three good linen shirts, spare collars, ties, socks, sock suspenders, braces, sports coat, and thick cotton and woollen trousers, but he wouldn’t need the overalls he wore around the farm. Sweaters – would it be hot or cold on board ship? Deciding it could be either, depending on the destination, he folded three of the thickest ones Mary had knitted him on top of his shirts then threw in the wooden box that contained his bone collar studs, silver tiepins and cuff links.

Boots? He packed his newest pair before dressing in the only suit that fitted him. A grey pinstripe he’d had tailored to replace the navy blue one he’d bought for Harry and Mary’s wedding and outgrown less than a year later.

He pushed his ‘best’ gold cuff links that Harry’s parents and sisters had given him for his last birthday into his shirt cuffs, fastened his tie with the matching pin and took a last look around his bedroom. Books? He flicked through the selection on top of the cupboard. He hadn’t learned to read and write until he was fifteen and since then he’d developed a taste for adventure stories. But he’d read his small library three times over.

There would be bookshops and libraries in Cardiff. He smiled at the thought. He’d never wanted to dot ornaments around his bedroom like his sister Martha. But there were a few things he couldn’t leave behind. One was his fountain pen, which he’d bought with the first money Harry had insisted he receive as ‘wages’ for running the farm, another was a framed photograph taken at Harry and Mary’s wedding.

He had carved the frame himself and Harry had bought the glass for it. It was a formal, posed group photograph. Harry and Mary stood centre stage flanked by groomsmen, bridesmaids and all of Harry’s immediate family. And, to Harry’s right, he stood frozen in time next to Edyth.

‘You look smart,’ Mary commented when David joined her and Harry in the kitchen for breakfast. ‘You’ve decided to go to chapel with us this morning?’

‘No.’ David took his customary chair at the table and helped himself to two slices of bread.

‘There’s a girl in the valley you’re out to impress?’ Even as Harry said it, he knew it was a forlorn hope.

‘No.’ David looked around. ‘Where are the others?’