Tiger Ragtime (6 page)

‘They finished breakfast half an hour ago. They’ve taken Ruth into the barn to look for eggs.’ Harry folded the copy of the
South Wales Echo
that he had bought at the station the day before and set it aside. ‘What was all that banging in your room earlier?’

‘Nothing.’ David spread butter on his bread.

‘Two eggs or three?’ Mary asked from the stove, where she was frying laver bread, bacon and sausages.

David decided that as he had a long journey ahead of him and an uncertain reception the other end he may as well start with a good meal inside him. ‘Four.’

‘All that dancing yesterday has given you an appetite.’ Harry left his chair when the baby started crying. ‘He can’t possibly be hungry after you’ve just fed him, Mary, so I’ll see to him.’ He lifted Will from his day cot in the corner next to the range, laid him against his shoulder and rubbed his tiny back. The baby responded with an enormous burp and a watery smile.

‘Well done, young man,’ Harry smiled. ‘I’m getting good at this fathering lark.’

‘If you’re not going to chapel, Davy, where are you going?’ Mary transferred four slices of bacon, three sausages, and a large portion of fried laver bread mixed with oatmeal on to a plate and carried it over to her brother.

‘Cardiff.’ David reached for the salt cellar.

‘It’s Sunday service on the trains. You may have trouble getting back tonight,’ Harry warned.

‘I’m not coming back. Can I have a lift to the station with you when you take the others to chapel, please, Harry?’

A dense silence fell over the kitchen. ‘What do you mean, you’re not coming back?’ Mary’s voice wavered with suppressed emotion as she carried the eggs, still in the pan, over to David.

‘I’m leaving the farm.’

Mary stared at her brother. When she saw the expression on his face she almost dropped the frying pan. ‘You can’t be thinking of living in Cardiff.’

‘Why not?’ David challenged.

‘We have some talking to do. You’d better sit down, Mary,’ Harry advised.

Mary lifted the eggs on to David’s plate and returned the frying pan to the range. After setting it on one of the covered hot plates she joined Harry and David at the table.

David sensed them both looking at him, but he began to eat his breakfast although it was sticking in his throat. Unable to bear the tension a moment longer, Harry braved the question uppermost in his mind. ‘What do you intend to do in Cardiff?’

‘Go to sea.’

‘You don’t know the first thing about sailing a ship,’ Mary pointed out harshly.

‘Neither did any sailor until he went to sea. All those ships in the docks must need crew.’

‘They do – qualified crew.’ Harry sensed the baby growing limp in his arms. He glanced at him, saw he was asleep and returned him to his day cot.

‘How hard can it be to sail a ship?’ David reached for the butter. ‘All right, sailing a ship is skilled work but there’s bound to be all sorts of menial jobs that I can do on board while I learn. Don’t sailors scrub decks –’

‘And peel potatoes, empty slop buckets, shovel coal into boilers –’

‘There you are then, Mary,’ David broke in triumphantly. ‘That doesn’t sound too different from farm work.’

‘Why Cardiff?’ Mary knew the answer but she had to ask the question because she wasn’t sure David would admit to wanting to be close to Edyth.

‘Because it’s a port. From there I can see the world.’

‘And the farm?’ Her voice cracked and both Harry and David knew she was close to tears. ‘Who do you think is going to run the farm while you are off seeing the world?’

‘You and Mr Jones manage the farm perfectly well now, whether I’m here or not.’

‘But Mr Jones works for us, David. He doesn’t own the Ellis Estate. His heart isn’t in the place.’

David finally gave up on his breakfast and pushed the uneaten food to the side of his plate. He dropped his knife and fork on top and left the table. ‘Neither is mine, Mary.’ He opened the door that led into the farmyard. ‘I’ll find the others and tell them that I’m leaving.’

Mary left her chair and went after him but Harry grabbed her skirt and held her fast until David had closed the outside door.

‘Let him go, darling.’

‘David can’t leave. The farm is his. The Ellises have fought for hundreds of years to keep it in the family. His name – David Ellis – is carved over the door …’

‘Your ancestor’s name is carved over the door,’ Harry reminded her. ‘The Ellis Estate was his dream, not David’s. David’s young, he’s not sure what he wants from life yet. Please don’t be angry with him for rejecting someone else’s dream.’

‘What was the point of all that work, all that sacrifice? My parents and grandparents worked day and night to build the farm so David could inherit it and now,’ she choked back a sob, ‘it’s all been for nothing.’

He pulled her down on to his lap. ‘It’s not been for nothing. The farm belongs to you and your brothers and sister. And in four years’ time, when I reach thirty and my trust is dissolved, you will own it outright. And if David doesn’t want it then, perhaps Luke or Matthew will when they’re old enough.’

‘But it’s always been the eldest son who inherits. I must make David understand …’

Harry locked his hands around her waist when she tried to climb off him. ‘You can’t tell him anything that he doesn’t already know.’

‘But …’

He wiped the tears from her eyes with his handkerchief. ‘If you want David to remain part of this family, let him go, Mary.’

‘It’s hard.’

‘My mother always said that letting go is the worst thing about having children. She didn’t want me to go to boarding school, neither did I come to that, but the decision was made for us by the trustees of my estate. And if she hadn’t gone along with it, she and I might have lost what little influence we have with the board. And there’s Edyth. My father and mother predicted that her marriage to Peter would end in disaster but if they hadn’t given her permission to marry him, there’s no saying what Edyth might have done. Run away to Gretna Green or done something even more stupid. Let David go with good grace, darling,’ he reiterated, ‘and he might – just might – come back to us and the farm.’

She looked up at him through tear-filled eyes. ‘Do you think he will?’ she asked tremulously, needing reassurance.

‘I don’t know. But what I do know is that if we try to keep him here against his will, he’ll end up hating us and the farm, so we may as well let him go with our blessing.’

‘You know he’s only leaving because of Edyth?’

‘Yes.’

‘I don’t think she loves him.’

Harry had watched Edyth and David at the carnival and as Edyth had treated David no differently from him or anyone else in the family, he was forced to agree with his wife. ‘I don’t think she does either.’

‘Then where will that leave David? He’ll be stuck in Cardiff, trying to get a job on board ship when he knows nothing about them. And all three of Judy’s uncles were complaining yesterday that they couldn’t get berths out of Tiger Bay and they’re registered as able seamen. David hasn’t even got ship’s papers. He won’t be an ordinary seaman; he’ll be nothing – a dogsbody.’

‘Judy’s uncles have families to support. They’ll want higher wages than David.’

‘You know Tiger Bay’s reputation. David could get beaten up there – murdered even.’

‘Darling, Edyth’s surviving there and she hasn’t been beaten up or murdered.’ Harry pulled her head down on his shoulder. ‘Edyth may not love David but he’s family. She has friends there, good friends. If we ask them, they’ll look out for David and see that he doesn’t come to any harm.’

‘You think so?’ She sat up and looked at him.

‘I know so.’ He spoke with more conviction than he felt. ‘After David’s left, I’ll telephone Edyth and ask her to talk to Micah Holsten and Judy’s uncles. They have steady heads and influence in the community. And I’d better make sure that David has enough money to keep himself for a few weeks until he finds work. He’ll also need to take his bank book with him. But for now we’ll go outside and tell David that we wish him well and we’ll drive him to the station. And no matter what, he’ll always have a home here with us, whenever he wants one.’

Aled James stood before the cheval mirror in the luxuriously furnished bedroom of his Windsor Hotel suite and adjusted his shirt cuff to the recommended half inch that should be worn below a suit jacket to show off his solid gold, diamond-studded cuff links. He might have sailed into Tiger Bay as a sailor but he had no intention of being mistaken for one now he had arrived. He had given his seaman’s clothes to Freddie that morning and told him to dispose of them.

Clothes were Important to him, as were his shoes. All handmade, and not just in London. It was possible to buy anything in New York provided you had the money to pay for it, and the last suit he’d had tailored had come from the workshops of a renowned Jewish gentlemen’s outfitters in Warsaw. Three pairs of his shoes bore the label of a Berlin cobbler who’d made the Kaiser’s footwear until he’d abdicated. His shirts and underwear came from Bond Street, his silk ties from Paris.

He opened his cigar case and removed one he’d already cut. He lit it with his solid gold cigarette lighter. Like the case, the lighter was Dunhill, his watch, Patek Philippe and Co., Geneva. Only the best for him. He might have felt pleased with himself and what he’d accomplished in America – if thoughts of Harry Evans hadn’t kept intruding into his mind.

They brought a sharp unpalatable reminder of the filthy, barefoot urchin he’d been. His skin marked by ringworm and bruises, his body crawling with fleas and lice, as he and Harry had played in the sea of colliery waste around Bush Houses in Clydach Vale. It hadn’t been much of a place, but then his mother had never been much of a housekeeper – or, come to that, much of a mother. He’d loved her but he had never been blind to her faults, and hindsight had thrown every one of them into sharp relief.

He buttoned his beige silk waistcoat, adjusted the knot on his paisley silk tie and checked his cream linen suit for creases. The maid had done an excellent job of pressing it and he made a mental note to tip her more generously next time he asked her to look after his clothes. He had lived in hotel suites since the day he had begun to make serious money. It saved him the bother of having to buy a place and staff it, and it was easy to entertain business associates at short notice. Provided the hotel was high class, he had learned that money could buy him whatever he wanted – at any time of the day or night.

There was a knock at the outside door and he shouted, ‘It’s open.’

Freddie showed a thin man with a pencil moustache into the sitting room. Aled left the bedroom and joined them.

‘Mr Arnold, the estate agent, to see you, boss.’

‘Mr Arnold.’ Aled gave the man a broad, empty smile. ‘Would you like a drink?’

‘Coffee, please,’ Geoff Arnold replied cautiously.

‘Freddie, telephone down for coffee for two. You have brought your portfolio of properties for sale and rent, Mr Arnold?’

‘I have, Mr James.’

‘Sit down. We may be able to do business.’

Edyth hadn’t attended church since she’d bought the bakery. When the Reverend Spicer had visited her to reproach her on her absence, she’d used the excuse of lack of time due to the pressing needs of her business. But lack of time hadn’t stopped her from taking Sunday afternoon walks. Micah’s boat, the Escape, was berthed among a flotilla of other small boats in a secluded dock, well away from the large vessels that towered over the quaysides.

Micah had inherited the boat from a friend. It hadn’t sailed in years and since Micah had sold the engine and sails, it was no longer even capable of moving. But it made an ideal retreat from the crowded and noisy Norwegian mission. He went there whenever he wanted to read or compose music and practise his saxophone. And, in the last few months, it had become Edyth’s sanctuary from the world too.

Not quite knowing what to expect after the words they had exchanged the night before, Edyth’s steps slowed as she approached the plank walkway that stretched across the dock to allow access to the boats. She could hear Micah playing ‘Ain’t Misbehavin’, recognising the tune from a record her eldest sister Bella and her husband Toby had brought back from their honeymoon in New York. She waited until he finished before tapping on the cabin door.

Micah opened it and looked at her in surprise. ‘Why the knock?’

‘Because I wasn’t sure you wanted to see me after what you said last night.’

‘I was angry, wasn’t I?’ He stood back to allow her to walk in.

‘Does the past tense mean that you aren’t any more?’

‘I’ve decided to postpone the argument until you are free. Then I’ll start it up again.’

‘I warn you now, Micah, I won’t become an appendage to your mission.’

He set his saxophone down carefully in its velvetbedded case. ‘I said I’ll postpone the argument.’ He took off his glasses. Folding them, he set them beside the case before wrapping his arms around her and kissing her.

Relieved, she leaned against him. ‘I do love you.’

‘I know.’ He glanced down at the table separating the two bench seats that could be converted into a bed. ‘Tired?’

‘Exhausted.’

‘Judy?’

‘I left her eating a late breakfast. She intends to spend the rest of the day with her uncles and their families. What about the mission?’

‘A visiting ship’s chaplain asked if he could take evening service. I told him that I’d sacrifice the pleasure of conducting it just this once.’

She smiled. ‘A whole afternoon and evening.’

‘I would say, “Let’s see if we can stay awake because that way, we’ll make it last longer”, but I’ve a feeling we’ll be asleep five minutes after we stretch out on the bed.’

‘Five minutes?’ She lifted her eyebrows. ‘Maybe ten.’ He folded the table away.

‘Ten minutes can be a long time. I can barely keep my eyes open now, let alone after you’ve had your wicked way with me.’ She watched him bolt the door. ‘We’re all right, aren’t we, Micah?’ she asked seriously.

‘For the time being.’

Trying not to think further than that afternoon, she pulled the cushions from the bench seat and tossed them on to the floor.