Ten minutes after Katie left the office John walked out on to the staircase that connected the warehouse floors. He looked down and saw her standing outside the changing cubicles with Lily and Judy. Lily was wearing one of the dresses from the new spring range. Smiling, she flicked through the dresses Judy had chosen to try on as she chatted to Katie who had her back turned to him. He didn’t need to see Katie’s face to know she was miserable. He could sense the depth of her distress from the way her shoulders were hunched and it devastated him to know that he had caused it, but he had to free her so she would be safe from Esme’s malicious tongue – and him. A beautiful young girl like her had no business being tied to an ugly cripple, twenty years older than her.
Katie believed she loved him, but common sense told him it was only because he’d been the first man to show her kindness, and he bitterly regretted allowing that kindness and her gratitude to lead to anything more. He should have remembered her vulnerability and the years between them. But there was no turning the clock back and undoing what had been done.
Katie might be unhappy now but she would soon forget him once she spent more time in the company of young, good-looking boys like Sam Davies. And Lily and Martin would see to it that she did. Better it should happen now, before she tied herself to him permanently. Because he wouldn’t be able to bear seeing the same contempt for him on her face that Esme had shown him earlier. It was simply his bad luck that he had fallen as deeply in love with her as he had.
‘I am not going in there.’ Adam stood his ground on the pavement outside the White Rose.
‘You’ll disappoint your lady love.’ Brian managed to keep a straight face, unlike Martin and Sam who both developed a sudden and avid interest in an office window across the road.
‘I could thump the lot of you.’
‘Why?’ Brian asked innocently. ‘We didn’t tell you to make a pass at Lifebuoy Lettie.’
‘You didn’t stop me, either.’
‘Come on, Adam, just one pint,’ Martin coaxed, deciding the joke had gone far enough and the sooner they all sat down in a quiet corner of the pub, the sooner they could tell him the truth.
Turning on his heel, Adam strode up the road.
‘Adam!’ Martin shouted loud enough for everyone in Walter Road to hear, but Adam kept walking. ‘We should go after him.’
‘We won’t manage a drink if we do,’ Sam advised. ‘It’ll be stop tap in a quarter of an hour.’
‘Let him stew until tonight, we’ll tell him then.’ Oiled by the four pints he had downed in the Mackworth, Brian beamed at them and the world in general.
‘We’ll tell him?’ Martin queried.
‘You two are chicken.’
‘We have to live with him afterwards. You, on the other hand, are leaving for London tomorrow,’ Sam opened the door of the pub.
‘It’ll cost you,’ Brian cautioned.
‘What?’
‘A round of drinks.’ Brian laid a hand on Sam’s shoulder. ‘And I’ll have a packet of crisps as well. All this beer has given me the munchies.’
‘You’re very quiet, Katie,’ Judy commented, as they walked home from the warehouse.
‘Just tired,’ Katie lied.
‘Hard work, seeing a brother married.’ Judy waved to Brian, Martin and Sam as they rounded the corner of Carlton Terrace.
‘Someone’s bought up half of Griffiths’ warehouse.’ Brian swayed as he noted the number of carrier bags emblazoned with the warehouse logo the girls were carrying.
‘Shopping’s more productive than propping up the bar of the Rose.’ Judy had noticed the high spots of colour in Brian’s cheeks and knew what they meant.
‘We had a quick one after the wedding.’
‘I’m surprised you had room for it after what you downed in the Mackworth.’ She looked around. ‘And you managed to lose Adam. Or is he collapsed in a drunken heap somewhere?’
‘He didn’t want join us,’ Brian prevaricated.
‘He looked like death warmed up at the reception. What did you do to him?’ Judy persisted.
‘Me, nothing.’ Brian turned an innocent face to hers.
‘Tea, everyone,’ Martin offered, hoping to stave off a full-blown argument between Judy and Brian.
‘Please,’ Lily accepted. ‘That way I’ll be able to sneak up the basement stairs and avoid Mrs Lannon. Whenever I bring a bag in through the front door she thinks it’s her duty to inspect the contents.’
‘Your uncle’s housekeeper is a dear old thing.’ Sam pulled his keys from his trouser pocket.
‘Not when you have to live with her.’ Whichever part of the house Lily was in, even the basement the boys rented from her uncle, she suspected Mrs Lannon of crouching behind the door and eavesdropping on her conversations. Not only because the housekeeper was always hovering close by whenever she left a room, but also because the woman seemed to have an exhaustive knowledge of how she spent every minute of her free time.
‘I can’t stay.’ Judy took a bag from Katie that she’d carried for her. ‘I promised my mother I’d go through the clothes I left in my room when I went up to London.’
‘Do it tomorrow,’ Brian suggested.
‘When? I’d like a lie-in and we’re catching the two-thirty train. You’ll be round for tea at five.’
‘Not five minutes to.’
Accustomed to Brian’s sense of humour, Judy didn’t smile. ‘Arrive when you like but you’ll be on the doorstep until five.’
‘You know how to keep a man in his place,’ Sam quipped.
Ignoring Sam, Brian leaned forward and kissed Judy’s cheek before following the others down the steps and into the basement. Martin had already set the kettle on to boil and Sam produced a box of biscuits. Lily stacked her bags in the passage ready to take them upstairs and Katie, who liked to make herself useful every time she visited her brothers, pulled out the mending basket.
‘So, we all going to the Pier tonight?’ Helping himself to a biscuit, Brian sat next to Lily.
‘Where else?’ she asked.
‘Can I have a dance, or do you save them all for Martin now?’
Lily glanced at Martin, who averted his eyes. ‘Martin and I are just friends, Brian.’
‘So were Jack and Helen. It’s weird to think they’re married. I wonder who’ll be next.’
‘Not you and Judy if your arguments are anything to go by.’ Sam retrieved the biscuit box from Brian and passed it round.
‘That’s all you know. The best marriages are the lively ones,’ Brian pronounced decisively.
‘I’d say fierce was a more suitable word than lively to describe Judy’s attitude towards you.’
‘That’s because you don’t understand women. They only insult men they are crazy about.’ Brian looked at Katie. ‘You’re quiet.’
‘It’s been a long day.’ She kept her head down as she concentrated on weaving strands of wool over the mushroom she’d placed under a hole in the heel of one of Martin’s socks.
‘But you are going to the Pier tonight.’
‘I’m not sure.’
‘Come on, Katie,’ Lily cajoled. ‘We can have a lie-in tomorrow. You can catch up on your sleep then.’
‘Besides, I need someone to teach me to dance.’ Sam stretched his long legs in Katie’s direction and drummed his heels on the floor.
‘I don’t know how.’
‘You can’t fool me. I saw you jiving with Jack’s friend from the building site last Saturday night. Say you’ll come. Please, for me.’ Sam bent his head, peering up at her with such a peculiar, pleading expression that Katie smiled despite the pain that gnawed inside her.
‘I’ll think about it,’ she hedged.
‘You’ll feel more like going out after we’ve put our feet up for an hour.’ Lily kicked off her new shoes and wriggled her toes. She hadn’t realised how much they pinched until she’d taken them off.
‘All I’ve done today is keep Jack calm, hand over a ring and make a speech, but I feel as though I’ve climbed Mount Everest twice over.’ Martin poured the tea.
‘Weddings take it out of you.’
‘You sound as though you’ve had a dozen, Brian.’
‘My family’s pretty big. I’ve been to plenty and they’re all the same after the bride and groom leave for the honeymoon. Flat.’
‘Perhaps it’s envy.’ Lily blushed as Brian and Sam burst out laughing. ‘I mean Jack and Helen going to London,’ she amended hastily, as she realised how her comment could be misconstrued. ‘Seeing the sights, going to theatres, eating in restaurants …’
‘Lucky them, two whole weeks with nothing to do but have fun,’ Brian moaned.
‘You live in London.’ Martin pulled up a chair and joined them at the table.
‘I saw more sights on one weekend leave when I was doing National Service than in the month I’ve lived there.’
‘And whose fault is that?’ Martin asked.
‘You try working shifts and see how much time it leaves you during normal opening hours. And even when I get an afternoon or evening off, Judy’s usually working and it’s no fun seeing sights by yourself.’
‘She said she was fed up,’ Lily concurred.
‘She did?’ The biscuit Brian had been dunking in his tea dissolved, bloating out on the surface like a mushroom.
Too late Lily remembered Judy’s warning that she hadn’t told Brian how she felt about living in London. ‘It was only something she mentioned in passing.’
‘Exactly what did she say?’ Brian’s voice was soft – ominously so.
‘What you just said, that she works long hours and most afternoons and evenings.’ The more Lily attempted to cover her embarrassment, the more she sensed she was arousing Brian’s suspicions but the words kept tumbling out. ‘That because she’s the most junior person in the make-up department she gets the blame for everything that goes wrong and none of the praise …’
‘She hasn’t said a word to me,’ Brian interrupted testily.
‘Perhaps she didn’t think it was important. You’ve only been there a month, hardly had time to settle in.’
‘That makes sense,’ Martin came to Lily’s rescue.
‘I suppose so.’
Something in Brian’s tone told Lily he wasn’t convinced. Looking for an excuse to leave, she finished her tea and carried her cup to the sink. ‘I’d better hang my new clothes away before they crease.’
‘Pick you up at half past seven.’ Martin helped her gather her bags.
‘I’ll be ready.’ Lily looked to Katie. ‘You coming?’
‘After I’ve finished the mending.’
‘You don’t have to do it today of all days,’ Martin chided.
‘I may as well. I’ve nothing better to do.’
Martin looked at Lily. They both knew something had upset Katie. But neither of them could think what.
Brian went up to the attic bedroom that Roy had generously insisted he occupy for the weekend because Sam had rented his old room in the basement. Taking a clean shirt, he washed and changed in the bathroom but no matter how he tried to concentrate on other things, he couldn’t stop thinking about what Lily had said. The more he considered it, the more he realised Judy had been distant the last couple of times he’d taken her out in London. She had also been sharper with him since they had travelled down together on Friday night but he’d made allowances for her apparent hostility, putting her edginess down to the strain of returning home for the first time since moving away.
After giving his shoes a quick brush, he ran down the stairs, out through the front door and along the street to Judy’s house. It was ten minutes to five, but she opened the door at his first knock.
‘I’m early.’
‘I’ll forgive you,’ She ushered him into the hall. ‘Tea’s ready.’
‘And in the parlour.’ He glanced round the door to see a white damask cloth on her mother’s best rosewood table and two plates of sandwiches and one of cakes. ‘To what do I owe the honour?’
‘You are a guest.’
‘I was hoping I was closer than that.’ He walked into the room and saw a pile of estate-agents’ brochures on one of the chairs.
‘Excuse the mess.’ Judy picked them up and was about to push them under a cushion when he took them from her.
He flicked through them – they all detailed commercial premises. ‘Your mother is moving the salon?’
‘Thinking of opening another one.’
‘Business must be good.’
‘It is,’ she answered abruptly, retrieving the brochures. ‘Sit down. I’ll make the tea. And in case you’re wondering, this isn’t all we’re having. I made a trifle specially last night.’
Unimpressed by the promise of trifle, he remained on his feet. ‘Who’s going to run the second business for her, Judy?’
Unable to meet his penetrating gaze, Judy picked up the teapot from the table. ‘She’ll oversee both salons.’
‘There’s no way one hairdresser can run two salons. Who is going to run the second business?’ The question hung unanswered between them for an eternity before he broke the silence. ‘You’re coming back to Swansea, aren’t you?’
‘Nothing’s been decided.’ She replaced the teapot on the table and sank down on a chair.
‘You appear to have discussed your plans with everyone except me.’
‘Just because there are a few estate agents’ brochures …’
‘It’s not just the brochures,’ he interrupted angrily. ‘Lily let slip that you weren’t happy in London.’
‘She had no right …’
‘She didn’t do it deliberately,’ he countered, refusing to get sidetracked into an argument about Lily. ‘She probably assumed that as I was your boyfriend you’d talked about it to me.’ He looked at her hard for a full minute. ‘For pity’s sake, Judy, I thought we had something going for us. When I asked you to marry me and you refused because you needed more time, I agreed. Going to London was your idea not mine. It was me who followed you up there, not the other way round. And now I discover that you couldn’t even bring yourself to tell me that you’re miserable up there and making plans to come back!’
‘I told you I don’t like the job, I hardly ever see you …’
‘There’s a world of difference between saying you’re unhappy at work and making full-blown plans to return to your mother’s apron strings.’
‘That’s unfair.’ Unable to meet his penetrating gaze, she stared down at the carpet.
‘Is it?’
‘I told you, nothing’s been decided.’
‘Of course not.’ He hit the brochures in her hand. ‘That’s why your mother went to all the trouble of getting these.’
‘She’s only looking.’
‘I’ve been a complete fool. I didn’t even see what was under my nose. I asked if you were carrying bricks when I lifted your case on and off the train. It weighed ten times as much as mine and I still didn’t get it. When you packed to come back this weekend, did you leave anything in your room in the hostel? Did you?’ he repeated furiously, when she refused to look at him.
‘My room in the hostel isn’t secure,’ she murmured in a small voice.
‘So you’re not returning with me tomorrow.’
‘I told you, nothing’s been decided.’
‘Seems to me you’ve decided too damn much.’
‘Where are you going?’ she asked, alarmed as he opened the door to the porch.
‘Back to London tomorrow.’
‘Brian, please.’ She slipped between him and the door, kicking it shut with the heel of her shoe. For the first time since he had taken the brochures from her, she looked him straight in the eye. ‘We need to talk about this.’
‘Too bloody right. I’d say a couple of weeks ago would have been a good time.’ Lifting her by the shoulders, he moved her aside.
She laid a hand on his elbow, hoping to waylay him. ‘I care for you.’
‘Funny way you have of showing it.’
‘But coming back here this weekend, seeing my mother and the girls, made me realise how much I miss them. It’s different for you …’
‘How?’ he enquired frostily.
‘You love your job. You’ve made friends in the Met. Outside of you I have no one and I hardly ever see you …’ Incensed by her own weakness she fought back tears. She had always despised women who resorted to crying to gain sympathy.
‘You should have told me.’
‘I didn’t want to spoil things for you. You seemed so happy, so full of work plans and talk of promotion …’ As her tears finally fell, Brian handed her his handkerchief.
She blew her nose and looked up at him. ‘Please, Brian …’ Choking on her sobs, she buried her face in her hands.
Opening his arms he held her tight, pulling her head down on to his chest.
‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered. ‘I should have talked to you about how I felt and now I’ve got mascara all over your shirt.’
‘You can wash it.’
‘I will,’ she replied seriously, looking through the door to the tea table. ‘I wanted this to be special, just the two of us. I thought we’d have time to talk this weekend but the train was so crowded we couldn’t even sit together on the way down and since then you’ve spent all your time with Martin and the boys …’
‘Just as you’ve spent yours with Lily and the girls.’
‘That wasn’t a criticism, just a statement of fact.’
‘So now what?’ His mind raced as he stood back and looked at her. He’d had many girlfriends but none had made him feel the way Judy did and he didn’t even want to think about how much he’d miss her if she left London – and him – for good.
‘I’ll talk to my mother and go back with you tomorrow.’
‘Don’t go for my sake,’ he snapped, allowing his damaged pride to show.
‘Lily’s right, I haven’t given London a chance,’ she conceded, in an attempt to diffuse his anger. ‘A month’s no time and perhaps if I made more of an effort I’d make friends. Then I wouldn’t be so reliant on you.’
‘And that would make a difference?’
‘No couple can depend solely on one another for company. Not when they work the hours we do.’ She looked up at him. ‘I will try harder, Brian.’
‘And if it doesn’t work out?’
‘You’ll be the first to know if I do decide to come back.’
He gripped her hand. ‘Promise.’
‘I promise,’ she reiterated solemnly. ‘Shall we eat now?’
He hesitated for a fraction of a second. ‘It would be a pity to waste all that food.’
‘Then I’ll make some tea.’
‘Your auntie said you were on honeymoon, so I thought you’d like some privacy.’ The manageress of the small hotel Dot had recommended led Jack and Helen up the stairs to the third floor. ‘There’s only two rooms on this floor and one bathroom, but no one has booked into the other room for the next two weeks and we’re not expecting anyone. It’s a small single, so it tends to be the last to go, and it is very early in the season. I hope you’ll be comfortable.’ She opened the door on a double bedroom furnished with two easy and two upright chairs, a table, dressing table, wardrobe, bedside cabinets and the largest double bed Jack had ever seen.
‘It’s lovely.’ Helen looked around. ‘Wine and fruit and flowers, are they for us?’
‘The fruit and wine are from Mrs Green, the flowers are on the house.’
‘Thank you.’ Helen smiled.
‘It’s nice to have some young people around. Most of our guests are commercial travellers. Breakfast is from seven until nine. We don’t do any other meals, but there are several restaurants in the area. There’s a very reasonable Italian on the corner that opens every lunchtime and from six to ten o’clock at night.’
‘Thank you.’ Jack dropped the suitcases in front of the wardrobe. ‘You’ve been very kind.’
‘If you want anything, extra soap, towels, just ring.’
‘We will.’
‘Enjoy your stay.’ The housekeeper suppressed a smile as she closed the door on them. Jack waited until he heard her step on the stairs before sweeping Helen into his arms and pulling her down on the bed.
‘Comfortable enough for you?’ she asked.
‘I’ll tell you in five minutes.’ He pulled off his tie and tossed his jacket on to one of the chairs.
‘You’re insatiable.’
‘Yes.’ He kissed her.
‘What about food?’ she asked as she came up for air.
‘You hungry?’
‘I will be afterwards.’
He glanced at his watch. ‘Then let’s hope that Italian place is as good as the manageress says it is.’ He pulled his shirt over his head, slipped off his trousers and underpants, and climbed between the sheets.
Opening the suitcase she removed a long flowing white nylon negligee set. ‘I won’t be a minute.’ When she came back he was sitting up in bed reading.
‘Very nice.’ He watched as she twirled around and slipped the negligee from her shoulders to reveal a white silk nightdress with plunging back and neckline.
‘You brought a book on your honeymoon,’ she complained. ‘That’s not very flattering.’
‘It’s a book the doctor recommended.’ Closing it, he put it on the bedside table.
‘You’re ill.’
‘I asked him about us, if we could hurt the baby, by making love.’
‘He’s too well protected.’
‘You know?’
‘I asked him when I went to get the results of the pregnancy test.’ She picked up the book and thumbed through the pages. ‘Jack, this is …’ Her voice tailed off as she flicked from one image to another.
‘Well illustrated. The doctor said it was a sort of handbook on how married couples can make one another happy.’
Shocked, she closed the book and returned it to his bedside table. ‘You already do that.’
He turned back the bedclothes. ‘I’ll do a whole lot more if you take that off and climb in here beside me.’
‘Wow! Scarlet woman!’ Brian exclaimed, coming up from the basement, as Lily walked down the stairs in her new frock.
‘Thank you, kind sir.’ When Lily had checked in her bedroom mirror earlier she could scarcely believe she was looking at herself. The crimson dress complemented her black hair, emphasised her slender waist and lent a glow to her cheeks and lips that made her feel positively glamorous for the first time in her life.
‘Not a word for us.’ Judy left the lounge and twirled in front of Brian in the brown satin polka dot dress she had finally settled on in the warehouse. With short, elasticised sleeves that could be pushed off the shoulder, it was the most daring evening frock she had ever owned.
‘Me first. Note, clean shirt.’ He flipped back his jacket and showed off a mascara-free shirt-front. ‘And triple wow. Both you and Katie look stunning,’ he told them sincerely, as Katie followed Judy in a short-sleeved, plain white cotton blouse and tightly belted, wide, pale-blue cotton skirt. Compared with Lily and Judy, she was ‘dressed down’ but somehow the plain clothes added attraction to her sweet features and enormous brown eyes. He caught himself giving her a second glance and quickly smiled at Judy lest she notice and get the wrong idea.
‘Thank you.’
Katie spoke so quietly that Brian couldn’t be sure he’d heard her. He looked enquiringly at Judy. She shook her head, warning him off, as the doorbell rang.
Lily opened the door.
Martin stood on the step in the new suit he had bought for the wedding wearing a clean white shirt and a blue tie she had given him. ‘You look fantastic. That is a smashing dress.’
‘That deserves a kiss.’
‘Not in broad daylight.’ Aware of Joe Griffiths watching them from his doorstep, Martin tried to avoid her.
‘You’re a prude.’ Oblivious to Joe’s presence, Lily grabbed the lapels of Martin’s suit and planted a kiss on his cheek.
‘Hello, Lily … Martin,’ Joe called out in a deadpan tone.
Martin nodded a reply but to his annoyance Lily gave Joe a broad smile.
‘Hello, Joe. Sorry, didn’t see you there. It was a lovely wedding, wasn’t it.’
‘Considering it was Helen’s, everything went relatively smoothly.’ Joe locked his front door and went to his father’s car, which was parked in front of the house.
‘You coming in?’ Lily asked Martin.
‘Not if we’re catching the eight-o’clock train.’
‘I only have to get my coat and handbag.’
‘Sam and Adam coming?’ Brian offered Martin a cigarette as he walked into the porch.
‘Sam’s giving Adam a shout now.’
‘He’s recovered?’ Judy asked.
‘From what?’ Martin enquired, puzzled by Judy’s question.
‘Whatever Brian fed him last night.’
‘There were five of us last night and you have to blame me.’ Brian helped Judy on with her coat.
‘Only because I know what you’re like.’ Judy tempered her sharp words with a smile.
‘Charming. My girlfriend doesn’t trust me.’
‘If we’re going to catch the eight-o’clock train, we ought to be going.’ Katie lifted her coat from the stand and walked on ahead.
‘What’s up with Katie?’ Martin whispered to Lily as she stopped to lock the door.
‘I have no idea. She seemed fine this morning and all through the wedding. I tried to talk to her when we were getting ready, but you know Katie. It’s impossible to get anything out of her unless she’s ready to tell you.’
‘I’ll give it a go.’
‘If I were you, I’d wait until she comes to you.’
‘Knowing her, she’ll just let whatever it is fester.’ As they stopped at the corner and waited for Sam and Adam to catch up with them, Martin glanced at his sister who was standing silently next to Judy and Brian. Katie couldn’t have chipped a word in edgewise between those two, even if she’d wanted to. But she showed no inclination to join him and Lily.
‘You can’t push people into talking when they don’t want to, Marty,’ Lily murmured.
‘If I’d pushed Jack at times I might have stopped him from thieving and going to Borstal and, maybe, having to get married at eighteen.’
‘You wouldn’t have stopped him from seeing Helen,’ she said lightly. ‘Wild horses wouldn’t have kept those two apart.’
‘Perhaps not,’ he granted, ‘but if I’d given him a good talking-to when I came back from the army …’
‘He wouldn’t have listened. Not then. And you’re forgetting Helen is every bit as wild as Jack and just as crazy about him as he is about her. Besides, all things considered it’s turned out well. He’s calmed down since you came back and that has to be down to you. And look where he is now, on honeymoon in London with a wife who adores him and a lovely home and a job with prospects to come back to.’
He offered her his arm, closing his hand round her gloved fingers as she hooked her hand into the crook of his elbow. ‘You’re brilliant at making people feel good about themselves.’
‘You’re so hard on yourself it only takes a couple of compliments – no, that’s not the right word – home truths to make you realise you can’t hold yourself responsible for the ills of the entire world.’
‘You’re quite something, Lily Sullivan.’ He wondered, yet again, why she was with him, not someone with more education, money and better prospects, like Joe Griffiths.
‘You two going to stand there spooning all night, or make a move towards the Mumbles train?’ Adam demanded.
Martin looked up. While he and Lily had been talking, the others had walked on ahead and were standing on the corner of Verandah and Mansel Streets. ‘We’re with you.’ Taking Lily’s hand, he raced down to join them.
‘You remember what happened the last time we went to the Pier Ballroom,’ Robin Watkin Morgan reminded Joe, as they sat drinking beer with whisky chasers in the saloon bar of the Mermaid Hotel in Mumbles.
‘Larry Murton Davies made an idiot of himself.’
‘And made us look like idiots because we were with him.’
‘Seeing as how he’s in Italy now, he can’t make either himself or us look like fools tonight.’
‘Which makes you all the more determined to carry on where he left off.’
‘You’re being ridiculous,’ Joe retorted irritably.
‘You’ve done nothing but talk about Lily Sullivan since she gave you back your engagement ring.’
‘She couldn’t give it back to me because I didn’t give it to her in the first place.’
‘No need to be so bloody pedantic.’
‘You were at the engagement party, you saw …’
‘Your intended fiancée’s real mother crawl out of the gutter she touts in, gatecrash the party and put an end to the proceedings,’ Robin interrupted, hoping to avoid yet another exhaustive post-mortem on the event from Joe. ‘You had a narrow escape, the only problem is you can’t see it.’
‘I refuse to stand by and watch a girl like Lily throw herself away on a lout.’
‘Martin Clay is your brother-in-law, as of this afternoon.’
‘The brother of my brother-in-law and that doesn’t make him any less of a lout.’
Robin reined in his exasperation. He and Joe had met as freshers at Swansea University almost three years before. And apart from an overdeveloped sense of romanticism and a puritanical bourgeois attitude to sex, Joe had proved a good and loyal friend. It was Joe’s coaching that had enabled him to pass examinations with grades beyond his own capabilities and Joe had already been offered a position at the BBC on graduation, an organisation he burned to work for. Given Joe’s extraordinary talents, he had no doubt his friend would rise high and hopefully take him some of the way with him. Which was why he was sitting drinking with him, instead of savouring the delights of a town-centre pub crawl with the rest of their group who had failed to persuade Joe to join them.
‘Consider what you’ve just said,’ he suggested patiently. ‘You know as well as I do what most people will think when you say “a girl like Lily”. And before you start on another of your tirades, remember I saw her mother – and in her working clothes. A Tiller girl wears more on stage and the woman who would be your mother-in-law if you persist in going after Lily didn’t have a body any man in his right mind would want to look at. Why can’t you see you’re well rid of the girl?’
‘Because I love her.’
‘How can you, when her mother trawls the docks every night offering herself to any man with a couple of shillings in his pocket and a stomach strong enough to face getting close to her for however long it takes.’
‘Lily didn’t even know she was related to the woman until she turned up at the party. You can’t hold her responsible for someone who abandoned her …’
‘Blood’s thicker than water. As my father says to his patients, it’s all in the genes. Hair colouring, eye colouring – character …’
‘Rubbish!’ Joe pronounced tersely, thinking of himself and his unknown father as much as Lily. If Robin was right, what had he inherited from the man who had walked away from his eighteen-year-old mother when she was carrying his bastard? A yellow streak of cowardice? His height? His dark hair? God forbid, his talent for writing. He wanted that to be his and his alone, not owed to some stranger who had abandoned him. He finished his pint and downed his whisky in one swallow. ‘Same again?’
‘Ever known me refuse?’ Robin followed Joe to the bar. ‘This fixation of yours for Lily Sullivan …’
‘I told you …’
‘You love her,’ Robin chanted sceptically. ‘I don’t buy this one woman/one man claptrap; that’s for poets and schoolgirls who’ve overdosed on Tennyson and Byron. There’s any number of women out there who’d suit you as well, if not better, if you’d give them a chance. I’ll grant you Lily’s not bad looking but I’ve seen prettier and she hasn’t one tenth of the class of Emily …’
‘If by class you mean the money to swan off to Paris to blow a year’s average wages on a shopping trip, you’re right.’ Joe referred to the holiday Robin’s girlfriend Emily and his sister Angela were taking with half a dozen of their wealthier girlfriends.
‘It’s not just money,’ Robin unconsciously reiterated his mother’s opinion. ‘It’s knowing how to say the right things. How to cultivate people who matter; how to dress, how to behave …’
‘Lily behaves a bloody sight better than Emily,’ Joe defended warmly. ‘She wouldn’t jump into bed with a man after two dates, as Emily did with you.’ Suddenly aware of people staring, he signalled to the barman. ‘Two pints and two whiskies,’ he ordered abruptly, resenting the grin on the man’s face.
‘Perhaps if you had taken her to bed, you’d have recovered from what happened at the party and got over her by now,’ Robin replied, refusing to get embarrassed or angry.
‘You make Lily sound like a disease.’
‘The way you’re carrying on about her I’m beginning to wonder. You know she’s seeing Martin Clay. She could be sleeping with him …’
From the savage look Joe gave him, Robin wondered afterwards if he would have punched him if it hadn’t been for the barman’s interruption.
‘Two pints, two whiskies, sir, that will be five shillings and sixpence.’ The barman eyed Joe as he took his money. ‘You two gentlemen all right?’
‘Quite,’ Joe answered brusquely.
‘We don’t want any trouble.’
‘And there won’t be any.’ Taking his drinks, Joe returned to their table.
Aware the barman was watching them, Robin smiled. ‘What are your pickled eggs like?’
‘We don’t serve bar snacks, sir. If you are hungry, may I recommend our upstairs restaurant?’
‘Thank you for reminding me.’ Taking his drinks, Robin carried them over to the table where Joe was sitting.
‘Lily’s only going out with Martin Clay to make me jealous,’ Joe snapped pre-emptively as Robin pulled out a chair.
‘She told you?’
‘All through the wedding reception she watched me while she flirted with him. And it was the same tonight when Martin went to pick her up to take her to the Pier. She knew I was getting into the car, so she kept him on the doorstep to make sure I saw her kissing him. But she only kissed him on the cheek.’
‘But you haven’t spoken to her.’
‘I don’t have to speak to her to know what she’s thinking. We were – are -’ he corrected, ‘that close. There’s no need for words between us. I only have to look into her eyes to feel what she feels …’
‘She is your “ever fixed mark – the star to every wand’ring bark.”’
‘Mock all you like. I deserve it for expecting a Beano-and-Dandy-reading moron who is incapable of seeing further than the physical, to understand true emotion – or the poetry of the soul.’
‘It is just as well some of us live in the real world.’ Robin sipped his beer. ‘Man cannot live by romance alone.’
‘Your idea of romance is a tumble between the sheets so Emily can scratch your itch, as you down a decanter of your father’s whisky.’
‘Pity you haven’t allowed a girl to scratch your itch. You’re proof of the theory that if you don’t get enough you go mad. And there’s my sister pining …’
‘I don’t love Angela.’
‘You don’t have to love a girl to go to bed with her.’ Robin suddenly felt as though he were talking to a small child, not a contemporary.
‘I do.’
‘There is such a thing as sex for sex’s sake. It’s good healthy exercise and more fun than a cross-country run.’ Robin looked closely at Joe and realised that in the last couple of months his friend had lost weight. His face was leaner, his dark eyes sunk in purplish-black shadows that gave him a slightly crazed appearance. Perhaps he’d hit closer to the truth than he’d realised when he’d mentioned madness.
‘I’m not like you, Robin.’ As the passion that had sustained Joe during their argument subsided, his voice softened.
‘I never thought you were.’
‘Don’t you see, if I don’t go to the Pier, Lily may think I’ve lost interest in her. She knows I overheard her and the others making plans to go there tonight. And she’s with Martin; if he’s anything like his brother Jack …’
‘He’ll have the knickers off the gorgeous Lily before you manage to get your leg over.’ Waiting for Joe to bite back, Robin drank half his whisky.
‘Why do you always have to bring everything down to a crude level?’
‘Because life is crude.’
‘I’ll go to the Pier on my own.’
‘No you won’t. In your state of mind you need someone with you to stop you from making a complete ass of yourself. And who knows, another couple of these’ – Robin finished the other half of his whisky – ‘might mellow you enough to see sense. God knows why, but my sister’s still keen on you. She’ll be back from Paris on Thursday and although she is my sister, I still say Angela’s a better prospect for you than Lily.’