Gwennie Woodlas’s gown shop had its regular clientele and although it was usually busy, on occasions Gwennie would decide she needed a break and would close the shop and head by taxi to the Rose Tree Café near the lake.
When Gladys and her granddaughters arrived to choose dresses for the party, they had telephoned first to be sure they wouldn’t have a wasted journey, but when they tried the door it was locked. Giving a very ladylike snort of irritation, Gladys herded them to an hotel and ordered afternoon tea.
“Really, I don’t know why we patronise the woman,” Gladys complained as their teas were poured. “We could just as easily go into Cardiff and find what we want in one of the finer stores.”
Joan and Megan glanced at each other. They knew why. It was so everyone of any importance – and that meant most of Gwennie’s clients – would know they had been shopping and had bought expensive dresses.
When they left the hotel and made their way back to the gown shop, Gwennie was serving one of Gladys’s ex-friends. Gladys amused herself by make caustic comments on the unsuitability of the garments the woman selected to try on.
When the customer had gone, Gwennie locked the door and told them she was ‘theirs’ until they were satisfied. At fifty-eight, Gwennie Woodlas was a very wealthy widow. Her husband had given her the money to start a small shop and once she had flattered her way into the confidence of the wealthy women of the town, she hadn’t looked back. She did have a secret that she did not disclose: she was related to the Griffithses.
“Was it a little number in black for you, Gladys dear?” Gwennie asked.
“Good heavens, Gwennie, dear, it’s for a party not a wake!”
Gwennie pulled out three dresses, each one more expensive than the last and hurriedly pulled the price label and size off each one.
“Size thirty-six bust that one is. Get into that with ease you will,” she said, screwing up the label which clearly stated size thirty-eight.
The session went on, each of the Weston women being flattered and scolded and admired until Gladys had chosen a blue velvet and the girls in their usual way had decided on something more suitable for a summer fete than a winter dance. A diamanté hair ornament on Gladys was echoed with feathered hair ornaments on the twins chosen from the bridesmaids selection.
Gwennie gathered up forty pounds in crisp white fivers and handed them the change, sighing with contentment. She had shifted the blue velvet she thought would never go, and convinced Gladys she’d had a bargain. As for the twins, really they were just pig-headed, and easy to persuade to buy the blue and yellow dresses left over from summer by telling them they were model previews for the spring collection.
She sorted through and decided on the ones she might offer to Sian and Sally when they came. It might be worth going to the warehouse again. They sometimes chose to dress in identical clothes and if she found a pair in their favourite blue to match their mother she could give them some false psychic drivel about a united front in adversity and ‘seeing’ the colour was right. Sally usually fell for that although Sian was more sceptical.
Covering the railful of long dresses in the white wraps, she closed the shop and sat in the small back room to decide where she would eat. Perhaps the Ship Hotel, or that new French style restaurant on the main road. She sighed contentedly. Really, life was remarkably good compared with her expectations as a young woman. But no doubt she had earned it.
Rhiannon emptied the last few sweets from a jar of mixed boiled, and put the empty jar aside. Now the contents had been sold, in two ounce and four ounce portions, it meant another four shillings and twopence profit. The business was improving week by week.
Her decision to fill the small shop with as many varieties as she could fit on the shelves had paid off. Although it meant keeping a very close watch on the stock and more than the usual number of orders each month. Space was precious and without the support of her suppliers she wouldn’t have succeeded.
More and more people used Temptations for their weekly treats and the Christmas sales were unbelievably good. She had made a success of the shop after years of the limitations of rationing and she knew Nia was pleased with her. If only Barry were more demonstrative and showed her how proud he was of her, life would have been sweeter than the sweets she sold.
She looked up at a customer and smiled politely. It was that newcomer, Terry Jenkins again. He was looking at the larger boxes of chocolates and she stepped forward to help him.
“For a young lady?” she asked. “Or for a mother or aunt perhaps?”
“A young lady. So tell me, Rhiannon, which of these boxes would you like to be given?”
“You know my name,” she said curiously.
“Oh, I haven’t been back long but I’ve sussed out the prettiest ladies in Pendragon Island,” he smiled. “You’re the sister of Viv Lewis and a close friend of Basil Griffiths’s wife Eleri. Right?”
“You have done your homework.”
He choose a two-pound box with a picture of kittens on the cover and winked as he gave her the money. “This should soften her up, don’t you think?”
As he left, Rhiannon’s smile slipped. He was charming, and handsome in a rather obvious way but she sensed in him an undercurrent of something akin to irritation and knew that she wouldn’t like to be the one receiving the chocolates. Barry was hardly the most attentive of men, but at least she trusted him and felt safe with him. She didn’t think she’d feel the same with Terry Jenkins.
Perhaps that was what Viv felt too. He made no secret of his dislike for Terry and he hated the idea of Megan seeing him. She shrugged impatiently. Viv was an idiot worrying, but he had always felt protective towards those silly Weston Girls.
She adjusted the display of Christmas cards which she had stocked for the first time this year. An addition to the selection of birthday cards, they had moved surprisingly well.
Christmas was fast approaching but before that there was the party which everyone except Gladys Weston referred to as the Westons’ Christmas Party. She had decided not to phone Jimmy and tell him she would go with Barry. Jimmy’s car would be better than getting her taffeta dress crunched up in Barry’s van. And he was sure to expect her to sit in the back amid the tripods!
Gladys crossed off ‘Buy Party Dresses’ from her list and turned to the next item. With less than a fortnight to go, she was at the stage of checking every arrangement in the hope of avoiding last minute disasters. Picking up the phone she rang to check a few things with the caterers. That was her first shock of the day. The caterers were very sorry but they had obviously made a mistake and they were already fully booked for that day.
Arguing and pleading had no effect. Nor did talking to the manager.
“I’m very sorry, madam. But you did cancel after making the booking and now it’s too late. This is a busy time for us, you know.”
“Cancelled? But I haven’t spoken to you since I first arranged the date and venue.” She began to feel angry. “Really, you should listen when people speak to you! I am Mrs Arfon Weston. I have arranged for you to cater for my party on December eighteenth.”
“And I’m sorry, Madam, but you cancelled over a week ago!” The phone was replaced and Gladys gasped as if it had hit her.
Someone must have made a mistake. Or deliberately tried to ruin her party. Hurt and angered by that possibility she thumbed through the telephone book desperately trying to find a firm to deal with the buffet. Everywhere was fully booked. There was only Montague Court left to try and she could hardly expect two of her guests to change into caterers. Besides, the food at Montague Court was too expensive and she had firmly booked the hall anyway. In a panic she rang to confirm that arrangement was safe.
Her second shock of the day was when she asked Terrence Jenkins to call and see her. When she put it to him in what she thought was a subtle way that it was time to declare his intentions, he broke down and looked close to tears.
“Mrs Weston, I an strongly attracted to your granddaughter. I think she’s beautiful and charming and—”
“And—?”
“Well, I don’t think she cares for me. Not in the same way. We get on well, we laugh at the same things, share opinions on most subjects, but she holds back from loving me. I think she’s waiting for your approval. She thinks a lot of you, Mrs Weston, it’s much more than a grandmother-granddaughter relationship. She’d never do anything you wouldn’t like. Perhaps I’d better get out of her life before I make a fool of myself.”
At once Gladys was filled with sympathy and promised to talk to Megan, try to discover what it was that was preventing her from accepting this personable and well connected young man.
Before he left, she asked, “What are your plans for the future, Terrence? You haven’t found employment yet?”
“No, I’ve been so wrapped up in your lovely Megan I can’t think straight. I’ve decided to continue with what I do best though, and look for a position in a jewellers. There are some excellent showrooms in Cardiff.”
Gladys smiled approval. A jewellery showroom sounded so much better than a shop. She was smiling contentedly when Victoria came to remove the tea tray but the smile dropped away as she remembered the problem of finding caterers.
Victoria was not averse to eavesdropping so Jack knew about his grandmother’s difficulty with caterers before Gladys had told anyone. At The Railwayman’s that evening he mentioned it to Viv, who in turn told his mother. Dora at once decided she would offer to help.
“It can’t be difficult,” she said to Eleri the morning after Gladys’s devastating blow. “You and I could make a hundred pasties easy. They’d be mostly potato mind, with oxo and a bit of onion for flavour. And plates of sandwiches shouldn’t be difficult to fill. Cakes will be a problem, mind. We’ll have to buy them from a cake shop because of rationing, but we could make a few sponges if Gladys will hand over some of the butter she denies getting from the local farm. I bet them Griffithses of yours would find us something illegal. What d’you say, Eleri, give it a try? Dab hand I am at pastry.”
They discussed it for a while and Eleri was pleased at the prospect of earning some extra money before Christmas. Then Dora went home and phoned Gladys, who asked them to call and see her on the following day.
“No tomatoes,” Gladys said firmly before they had opened their mouths. “And definitely no beetroot, they are death to party frocks and everyone will be in their best.”
They assured her there would be no tomatoes and not a beetroot in sight.
“It won’t look – er – shoddy, will it?” she asked, when they had decided what they could supply; “You not having done anything like this before, I mean.”
“I don’t put anything but the best in front of my family! Eleri will tell you that. We both have the highest standards.”
Eleri hurriedly agreed, afraid that Dora’s quick temper would lose them the chance of earning some extra money.
So Gladys rather doubtfully put her faith in another of the Lewises. “Who,” she complained to Arfon later, “seem determined to force their way into our lives one way and another. Where will it end?”
“If you’re thinking of Viv marrying Joan, forget it,” Arfon said. “Even Viv knows just how far he can go with me.”
“Oh, no, I’m not worried about Joan, I have plans for her.” Gladys smiled as she thought of the mannerly and unmarried Edward.
Joan and Viv were in a huddle, measuring out how much of the present shop area they could allot to carpets. Joan was crawling on the floor with a measuring tape in her mouth and a long length of 2" x 2" wood in her hand. “This is crazy,” she muttered. “How can we imagine what it would look like with a length of wood and a few chalk marks?”
“Don’t talk with your mouth full,” Viv said. “And keep that bit of wood straight or I can’t get a proper line.”
They struggled on for a while, then Viv reached down to haul Joan to her feet. She resisted and instead she lay on the floor and he knelt beside her. The shop lights were on but they were hidden from sight by the partitions erected to represent rooms. “Tired?” Viv asked solicitously.
“D’you think Grandfather really will allow this expansion, Viv?”
“I’ll keep on at him until he does. I always get what I want in the end.”
“You do, do you?” she looked up at him provocatively. “Always?”
He pinned her arms at her side and lowered his head until their lips were less than an inch apart. “Sometimes I bully, sometimes I plead, and then there are times when I just wait,” he said. Her eyes looked huge and he wanted to let go and submit to the temptation they offered, but he didn’t. “Come on, love, let’s get you home before your mam and dad send out a search party.”
“They don’t worry about us all that much,” Joan said as she shrugged on her coat. “Too busy looking after the lodgers.”
“Then they should. Lovely you are, Joan Weston. Lovely, desirable and terribly, terribly tempting and they shouldn’t let you out of their sight.”
“I’m safe enough with you,” she said. “They should look after Megan, though.”
“She’s with the handsome and well-connected Terry I suppose?”
“Yes.”
“And they think he’d be some catch, him being a Jenkins?”
“Background but no money! I can’t bear the man.”
“I always knew you were the clever one,” Viv said. “Smarmy sod is what he is.”
“Megan thinks he’s wonderful but – I know this sounds stupid but I think she’s a little afraid of him.”
“Want me to have a word?”
She shook her head before fixing a scarf around her hair. “I’ll try and get Megan to talk to me. That’s part of the worry. We’ve always talked to each other, there’s never been any secrets, but since Terry’s been on the scene she clams up.”
Later that evening, Megan was leaving the house in Glebe Lane with Terry. The house was empty apart from Joan, and she was dressing ready to meet Viv at her grandparents to discuss further the plans for the extended showroom. Megan and Terry intended going to the pictures but at the end of the road he pulled her to face him. “Megan love, d’you really want to go to the pictures?”
“Well, Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis are on at The Plaza. And the second film is Sidney Taffler in The Saint’s Return. It’s a good programme.”
“I think we need to talk.”
Excitement struck in the depths of her. She knew he meant finding somewhere private and indulging in some petting. She wanted to say yes, but she held back. She knew she wanted it too much. Would she stop him when he led her too far? Each time it was harder to resist.
“Come on, Megan my darling. I don’t want to spend the evening trying to steal the occasional kiss when the film is exciting enough to keep people’s eyes on the screen.”
He took her hand and without allowing further argument, led her back to her parents’ house.
Megan was remembering Gladys’s flustered attempt to tell her there was a time to be strong and a time to allow the defences to ease. “Never submit to what is wrong, my dear,” the old lady had said, trying desperately to warn her granddaughter not to send Terrence away by her coldness yet to hang on to her virginity until after the wedding.
With desire making Terry’s presence a blissful danger, Megan’s barriers slipped in a way her grandmother would not have approved. She loosened her grip on his hand and leaned against him, her head against his shoulder, so his arms came around her and held her tightly. At the gate she hesitated, aware that from this point, there might not be any turning back. Her father was out with friends and her mother was visiting her Auntie Sian, in Trellis Street. They would be alone and without fear of interruption for a couple of hours. Two hours that might change her life.
“Come on, love,” Terry pleaded. “We have the place to ourselves. Why waste an opportunity like this?” They stood in the garden and watched as Joan left the house, and then they let themselves inside.
Terry’s hand stopped her as she reached for the light switch. “No, darling, wait, in case Joan has forgotten something.”
“Terry, you’re so clever, you must have done this sort of thing before.”
“Only in my dreams, darling.”
Standing in the darkened room, silent, listening for the returning footsteps was making the very air sizzle. She was bewitched by the closeness of Terry, the way his body moved and touched hers. Slowly his hands began to caress her and her emotions went haywire and she was filled with an urgent and desperate struggle to achieve something her body demanded.
The romantic dream was shattered the moment she relaxed against him and he had coaxed her to the floor. He began to hold her firmly and for a moment she panicked. Desire left her in brief panic, only to return with greater intensity. Instead of the gentle loving of which she had so often dreamed, her body was demanding and selfish. Terry’s hands were rough and impatient and as she struggled to ease her own aching desire she forgot all warnings and struggled to achieve release.
As they lay relaxed and confused by the urgency and the suddenness of its ending, fear returned. What had she done? Frightened now, she fought against him trying to free herself from his powerful arms. His voice whispered soothingly, telling her it was what they both wanted, and that she was a woman now, a wonderful fulfilled woman. All she could think of was that the last few minutes had probably ruined her life. She no longer found Terry charming, his face close to hers had been distorted and ugly, and she hated him almost as much as she hated herself.
Forcing back tears she pushed him away and climbed the stairs to the bathroom. Locking herself in, she began to wash her body.
In the darkened living room, Terry sat for a while utterly ashamed and angry with himself. All the weeks of waiting for his patience and control to snap like that. He was nothing more than an animal. Tears seeped through his lashes and he made no effort to brush them away.
After half an hour he went up and knocked on the bathroom door, but a whispered, “Go away,” was all the response he had. Promising to see her in the morning, he crept out of the house feeling like a criminal.
In the Westons’ large house overlooking the docks, Viv and Joan were making plans for the changes to the Wallpaper and Paint Store.
“The samples are already available and I’ve sent for them,” Viv told Old Man Arfon. “Six plain colours and two patterned, and there’ll be more later. We thought we’d open the new department some time in January 1954, ready for the spring cleaning craze a couple of months later. But we can start accepting orders straight away.”
“Before the new store gets the same idea. It’s important to be the first if we want the new business to continue, people are surprisingly loyal,” Joan said.
Old Man Arfon was cautious. “Best we wait, get Christmas and the sales over first. Plenty of time to decide on this move in the spring. Around Easter perhaps, we’ll have a better idea of how things are going by then. The debts will be down and the banks will look more kindly on the project.”
“Damn the banks! I’ve negotiated a good deal here! We’ll be getting the money before we have to pay for the goods. Taking orders we’ll be, not filling the place with stock we have to pay for. There’ll be no money standing idle with these carpets. Not like the paint and wallpaper. Can’t you see?” Viv’s temper made further persuasion impossible.
“You’ve been thinking this out for weeks,” Old Man Arfon said pompously. “Please allow me an extra hour or two at least.”
“We ought to do this, Grandfather,” Joan said. “And now, not next Easter. By then others will have taken the best of the business and we’ll be left behind.”
“What d’you know about business?” her grandfather said grumpily.
Viv stretched forward to retort but was held back by Joan.
“I’ll think about it and tell you my decision next week,” Arfon said and stood to indicate the interview was over.
“Tomorrow. I want to know tomorrow,” Viv said firmly. “We can’t let this chance go.”
“All right, tomorrow, you ill-mannered tyrant!” Arfon said with a tight smile. “I’ll look over your ideas and tell you tomorrow. Now go away before I thump some manners into that red head of yours!”
With their discussions complete, Viv walked Joan home, arm in arm, strolling casually, like the good friends they were. The house was empty and Viv waited with her, until first Sally, then Ryan returned. They talked for a while about the expansion to the family business.
Although Ryan contributed nothing to the conversation, he listened carefully to all that was said. Bitterness filled his heart. This young upstart running the business that had been his. Carpets indeed. What a stupid idea for a paint and wallpaper shop. Arfon should never have re-employed him. He hoped every day that the boy would fail. Yet here he was, sitting in his living room and talking about his plans for expanding the business, comfortable and relaxed as if he were a family friend, and walking his daughter home like her equal. And he and Sally had to take in lodgers. It wasn’t right.
Megan came in later, having waited until Terry had gone then walked around the town to ease her distress. She had held back tears of self-pity by the expedient of remembering how impossible it was to hide their effect.
She told her sister she was tired and escaped to bed. When Joan came up an hour later she pretended to be asleep but her thoughts were racing. She might have a baby. She might be forced to marry Terry and she wasn’t sure she loved him. He wasn’t open about his life before he’d returned to Pendragon Island. There was a secrecy about him that she didn’t like. If he didn’t trust her with his past she didn’t think they could have a future.
She was sure about one thing, she didn’t want to marry him – or anyone else at the moment. By morning she hadn’t slept but her plans were made. She would not be able to prevent a baby, but she could avoid marrying Terry Jenkins.
Over breakfast, she told her parents that she and Terry wouldn’t be seeing each other any more.
“Oh, Megan, I’m sorry,” her mother said. “What went wrong?”
“We just don’t want to go on with something that won’t work.”
“I’m glad. I didn’t like him,” Joan said, “and Viv calls him a smarmy sod – sorry Mam,” Joan grinned.
Sally began to berate her for copying someone like Viv Lewis, her father joined in, and Megan was glad her sister had taken the focus away from her.
“What happened?” Joan asked her sister when they were alone but Megan shook her head.
“Nothing. We just decided we wouldn’t see each other any more.”
“Poor Grandmother. I think she was hoping for an engagement to announce at this party of hers.”
“Well it won’t be mine! I don’t think I’ll ever marry. But we needn’t tell her just yet. I don’t want an inquest on what happened.”
Joan looked at her sister’s sorrowful expression and asked again, “Tell me, Megan. What happened? I know something upset you, that was why I tried to take the heat off you at breakfast.”
But Megan refused to discuss it, she was too distressed. She had committed the ultimate shame. Giving in to a man before they were wed was something she had never imagined herself doing. She could be expecting a baby. How could she tell her sister that?
Viv was walking to work on Friday morning a week before Gladys’s party. He was in a bad mood. Arfon had still not given him permission to go ahead with the carpets. He and Joan had spent hours mapping out their displays but Arfon was still insisting they waited until Easter. On impulse, Viv changed his route and walked past the new wallpaper shop down a side road near the Church. He sometimes looked in their windows to see if there were any new ideas which he could emulate, although, he thought smugly, they usually copied him.
He glanced in as he strolled past but was shocked into stopping and staring. Apart from the back wall of the window, there were no rolls of wallpaper or tins of paint on display. It was filled with carpet samples.
Squares of several colours formed a pattern and in the centre was a sign stating that it was the introduction of the newest do-it-yourself carpets.
“Damnation!” he said aloud. “How could they have got on to it so quick? And why has Old Man Arfon dragged his heels and allowed it to happen?”
He ran to the shop and telephoned Arfon and told him to go and look at the new wallpaper shop. “You and your waiting for the right time,” he moaned. “Lost your nerve you have. And now they’ve made us second best.”
“Never, boy. First we are. I’ll have a look at their prices. If we’re careful and keep our prices down we can beat them yet.”
“But we haven’t even got the window display yet and it’s Christmas in two weeks! Head start they’ll have and I know I had the idea first. They copy us with window displays and even copied my idea about setting out areas as rooms right down to the bedside lamps! There’s no way he’d have thought about it first. No way.”
“She, not he. It’s a Miss Franklin who runs the shop and I think she’s a friend of Sally and Ryan’s.”
“Now there’s a thought! I bet your precious Ryan had something to do with this!” Furiously, Viv rang the carpet suppliers and demanded that the samples were delivered that day.
To appease what was likely to be a good outlet, the samples arrived and they were more than Viv had anticipated. Rolls in the various widths and every colour in the two designs. Joan was there when they arrived and Viv said to her, “We’ll spend the weekend getting the display in place and show that tinpot firm round the corner how it should be done.”
“Are you asking or telling me?” Joan glared at him dangerously.
“Sorry, but I’m so flaming mad. We tried to persuade Old Man Arfon to do something before Christmas, didn’t we? And he was too cautious.” He calmed down and said quietly, “Will you help me, Joan? I can’t do it on my own and besides, I need your flair. This one has got to be good. We don’t have to stock it, just take orders and post them on to the manufacturers. But we do have to make it look tempting.”
“I wanted to spend the weekend with Megan. I think she’s upset, Viv.”
“That smarmy sod Terry has upset her, hasn’t he? I’ll sort him if he has, mind.”
“They aren’t seeing each other any more.”
“Hoo-bloody-ray! Best news I’ve had all week. Saw sense, did she?”
“I don’t know what happened but I do know she was upset and what’s worse, she won’t talk about it.”
“Ask her to come and help us. She might open out if she’s away from home.”
“That’s an idea. But you won’t press her, will you? And don’t call Terry a smarmy sod. It might have been he who decided to end it and she could still be wanting them to get back together.”
“You’re right. This is a time for saying as little as possible. But if he’s harmed her—”
“All right, we know you and your gang would love to sort him out,” she smiled.
“Me and the Griffithses strike fear into the hearts of the ungodly!” He looked at the samples again and added, “And who ever told Miss Franklin about the carpets had better look out too!”