Edyth carried a tray up the stairs of Helga’s house, balanced it on her knee, and knocked on Moody’s bedroom door.
‘Come in.’ David’s mumbled reply sounded weak, even through the door. She opened it and peered inside. He was lying in bed, his face as white as the pillowcase beneath his head. He looked at her. ‘Micah said you’d call in to see me.’
‘When he told me you’d been ill I had to see you and, as Helga’s serving high tea, I volunteered to bring this up for you.’ She lifted a cup and plate from the tray and set them on the bedside table next to him.
‘I can’t keep anything down.’
‘Dry toast and Oxo, swallow both and you won’t see them again.’
‘Is that a promise?’ he enquired sceptically.
‘Having helped my mother nurse my three younger sisters and small brother through all their childhood ailments, I guarantee it.’ She pulled a chair up to the bed and sat down. ‘Bit of a let-down having to abandon your plans of a seafaring career because of sea-sickness.’
‘It’s put an end to any thoughts I had of following Francis Drake and Captain Cook’s voyages around the world,’ he agreed. ‘You and Harry have every right to say, “We told you so, Davy, now get back to the farm where you belong.”’
‘I won’t say it, and knowing Harry as I do, he won’t either.’
‘Why not? I’ve made a right piggy mess of everything.’
‘No, you haven’t,’ she contradicted. ‘You wanted to go to sea, you went and you found out that a sailor’s life isn’t for you. That sounds like progress to me. Now all you have to do is find out what you are good at.’
‘It wasn’t just the sea. I had hoped that with Peter gone we –’
‘I didn’t intend to fall in love with Micah, especially when I’m still legally married to Peter,’ she interrupted, ‘but I couldn’t help myself any more than Micah could.’
‘Or I could, the first time I looked at you,’ he said sadly.
She wanted to tell him that what he felt for her wasn’t love. She knew it wasn’t because he didn’t know her, any more than she had known Peter before she had married him. The day she realised she didn’t love Peter was the day she’d understood the meaning of the phrase ‘falling in love with love’. But at the time it had all seemed so perfect. She’d been eighteen, Peter had been handsome and she’d just been chief bridesmaid at her eldest sister Bella’s wedding. And she’d so wanted a man to love and adore her, the way Toby loved Bella. She suspected that when David had first met her, he was ready to fall in love just as she had been at Bella’s wedding. And David had fitted her into his image of what an ideal wife should be just as she had fitted Peter into her image of ideal husband.
‘When Peter left Cardiff I decided to concentrate on making a life for myself, which was why I bought the bakery. I certainly wasn’t looking for another man. But then Micah and I met, and after we got to know one another –’
‘He proposed and you accepted,’ he interrupted.
‘No, not yet, and possibly not ever. As I have no idea how long I’ll remain married to Peter, I’m in no position to make plans to marry again. I simply live each day as it comes.’
‘With Micah?’
‘We try to spend some of our free time together,’ she replied, reining in her irritation with David for pursuing the argument. ‘And I do love you, too, just not in the way you want me to.’
‘Like a brother.’
‘Like a brother,’ she echoed, refusing to rise to his bait. ‘And like a good sister, I’m on your side. I haven’t spent more than a few days on your farm but when I did it struck me as a lonely place. Even more so, now I’m living on the Bay surrounded by people.’
‘The farm’s all right.’ He felt he had to say something in defence of the place where he had spent the first twenty years of his life. ‘Provided you prefer sheep, cows, and chickens to people.’
‘And you do?’
‘I haven’t had time to find out yet. Up until now I felt that I haven’t had any choice about the way I’ve lived.’
‘Born on a farm and into farming you haven’t. But the world’s changing, people are no longer bound by what their fathers and mothers did.’
This time, he was the one who changed the subject. ‘That Oxo smells good.’
‘If I plump up your pillows you can sit up and drink it.’
He leaned forward while she arranged the pillows behind his back. ‘Micah told me there are building jobs going in Bute Street.’
‘Did he?’ She had taken such a dislike to Aled James she didn’t want David going anywhere near the man. She didn’t like the thought of Judy working for him either, although she had been forced to admit that it was a good entry into show business for her.
‘I hope I get one of them.’ He sat back and she handed him the cup.
‘If you do, you won’t be working there long. The conversion should be finished next month.’
‘All the more reason for me to get on my feet tomorrow.’ He sipped the Oxo.
‘I suppose it will be a stop gap, that’s if you do get a job there,’ she qualified. ‘Have you given any thought to what you want to do long term?’
‘I thought about nothing else all the time I was on that damned ship …sorry,’ he apologised. Harry had tried to curb his cursing, especially around women, but he hadn’t managed to stop it completely.
‘Living on Bute Street has taught me to put up with the odd “damn”. Moody’s training two of Judy’s cousins as apprentices. I couldn’t afford to employ you for more than a few weeks or pay you very much while you trained …’
‘Come on, Edyth,’ he stretched out his hands, roughened by years of farm work, ‘can you honestly see me baking bread and making cakes?’
‘No,’ she replied truthfully, ‘but there’s delivery work.’
‘You have a driver.’
‘At present, but Jamie wants to go to sea eventually like his father.’
‘By which time I hope to have long since found a job. No family handouts, Edyth,’ he refused firmly. ‘Not from Harry and certainly not from you.’
‘Unlike Harry, I haven’t much to hand out.’ She gave him the plate of toast. ‘Try a bite.’
He obediently nibbled the crust. ‘It must be great to be rich and never have to worry about money.’
‘If you’re thinking about Harry, he might not have money worries but he has plenty of the other kind to occupy himself with. Like business and family. I remember what he was like before Will was born. He couldn’t eat or sleep because he was convinced that either Mary or the baby was going to be taken ill during the birth.’
‘I suppose you’re right.’ He took a larger bite of toast.
‘I know you’re happy living here with Helga but if ever you need somewhere to live I have four bedrooms and only two are being used at the moment.’
He eyed her over the edge of the toast. ‘Can you see us living under the same roof?’
‘If it’s gossip you’re worried about, Bute Street isn’t like Pontypridd. In fact, it’s not much like anywhere I’ve ever been to or heard of. The people who live here are broadminded. Given the number of nationalities and the differences in their customs they have to be. They think no more of an Imam calling the Muslims to prayer in the early hours than they do of the Catholic boys clattering round the street in their hobnail boots at six o’clock on a Sunday morning on their way to early mass.’
‘And they wouldn’t say a word about two young people who weren’t married living together?’
‘It wouldn’t be two, it would be three. Judy might not be working for me any more, but she’s still living with me. Besides, you’re my brother’s brother-in-law. We’re practically related.’
‘I have enough money to last me for a while and I want to do things on my own terms, and that includes living here.’
‘I understand.’ What Edyth understood was that David wanted to be independent and, after all the arguments she’d had with her parents in order to gain her own freedom, she sympathised with him.
They were both relieved when there was a knock at the door and Micah walked in. ‘I heard you two talking, I hoped it would be a good sign but you really do look better than you did this morning, David.’
‘I feel better.’ David waved the toast in the air. ‘Eating and drinking.’
‘I have some good news for you. I spoke to George Powell and told him about you.’
‘Who’s George Powell?’ David asked.
‘The builder I mentioned who’s converting the Sea Breeze Hotel into a club. He’s desperate for carpenters and he said he’ll start you as soon as you can drag yourself over to Bute Street. If you’re reasonably proficient he’ll pay you five shillings for a twelve-hour shift, if you’re only fit for labouring he’ll drop it to three.’
‘Bute Street – I could walk there in the morning.’
‘Give yourself a day or two to get your strength back.’
Edyth left the chair and returned it to the corner of the room.
‘And if you feel strong enough at the end of the week you could come with us to see Judy in Peter Pan on Saturday,’ Micah suggested. ‘Helga was so taken with the play the first time she saw it, she wants to see it again. She’s booked a box and we’re going with her and Moody but we could easily squeeze in an extra chair.’
‘Please don’t feel that you have to mollycoddle or entertain me,’ David said guiltily, realising just how much trouble he’d caused Edyth and her friends.
‘We’re not. We want to see Judy perform again and there aren’t that many tickets left. Judy said the last two weeks of the run are fully booked.’
‘It wouldn’t hurt you to say, “Thank you, Micah, I’d love to come and see Peter Pan with you,”’ Edyth teased gently.
David looked up at Edyth and she braced herself for one of his caustic retorts. Instead he smiled, and said, ‘Thank you, Micah, I’d love to come and see Peter Pan with you.’
‘I don’t like the idea of David working for Aled James,’ Edyth said when Micah walked her home from Helga’s. They passed the old Sea Breeze, and although it was after ten o’clock, the sound of hammering and sawing echoed from inside the building.
‘If he gets a job – and that’s a big if – David wouldn’t be working for Aled James, he’d be working for George Powell,’ Micah pointed out. ‘And it’s a big if because much as George is under pressure from Aled James to finish the conversion, there’s only so many semi-skilled labourers he can take on. Word’s got around. While I was talking to George this afternoon, half a dozen unemployed miners turned up. They’d walked down from Maerdy and Tonypandy and were prepared to take a shilling a day. They thought they’d landed in heaven when George said he’d pay them three. George warned them he wouldn’t be able to keep them on after the conversion is finished but that didn’t stop them from signing up. He told me that other than the Sea Breeze he has nothing lined up except his annual painting and maintenance contracts with the banks. And that will mean going back to his usual half-a-dozen tradesmen. It will be a big drop from the two hundred who are working for him now. That’s bad news for the docks.’
‘And the bakery. It’s not just the loss of the workmen’s trade from the Sea Breeze I’m worried about, but the cutbacks families will make when the men are thrown out of work.’
‘We’ll survive. Not just us – everyone,’ Micah said optimistically. ‘It’s what people do in hard times.’
‘You sound like a Dickens happy ending. I thought Scandinavians were supposed to be miserable.’
‘Not this Scandinavian. Although, as I can’t even remember Norway I’m not sure I qualify as one.’
‘I’m not only worried about David,’ Edyth blurted uneasily. ‘He may be working for George Powell, but Judy will be working directly for Aled James and –’
‘You can’t stand the man.’
‘How do you know?’ She stopped walking.
‘Because it’s written all over your face every time you look at him.’
‘It’s really that obvious?’
‘Perhaps not to someone who doesn’t know you,’ Micah said. ‘But it is to me.’
She shivered. ‘I know I’m probably being ridiculous, but I think he’s evil.’
Micah took her arm, tucked it into his elbow and they carried on walking. ‘That’s a bit strong. I know Aled looks like Harry and acts as though he owns the world, but he’s never been anything other than polite to Judy, or, come to that, you, me, and the Kings.’ A sudden thought occurred to him. ‘Judy hasn’t complained to you about him, has she?’
‘No. He’s taken her to the Windsor for lunch a few times, and sorted out some song scores for her, but that’s all. When I asked, she said that he’s always behaved like a perfect gentleman towards her.’
‘But you had to ask?’
‘Yes, because I have a funny feeling about him.’
‘I’m not saying you should ignore your funny feelings. If you did, I’d suffer, because one of your funniest feelings is towards me.’
‘I love you …’ she began absently, still thinking about Aled James.
‘And you love Aled James?’ he broke in.
‘Don’t joke, Micah, he really frightens me.’
‘He’s just a poor boy made good who likes to throw his money around and exercise the power it’s given him,’ he dismissed. ‘As for you loving me, I sometimes have difficulty believing it, especially when you tell me that you won’t marry me.’ He walked her down the side of the shop and through the yard to the back door.
‘Not that again, Micah,’ she pleaded.
‘Absolutely not – until the day Peter sends those papers and then I’ll nag you until you capitulate.’
‘Are you coming in?’ she asked.
He shook his head. ‘I have to get back to the mission. The crew of the Vidda were there when I left, opening bottles of aquavit, ordering waffles and settling in for the night. I can’t expect Moody to stay up until the early hours cooking for them.’ He slipped his fingers beneath her chin and lifted her face to his. ‘Sleep tight, my love, see you tomorrow.’
She stood on tiptoe and kissed him. He wrapped his arms around her and she rested her head against his chest.
‘I hate saying goodnight to you, Edyth,’ he murmured, reluctant to tear himself away.
‘I don’t like it any more than you do.’
‘Then …’
She summoned all her will power. ‘I won’t move into the mission, Micah, and that’s my final word on the subject.’
‘Goodnight, my love.’ He dropped a kiss on top of her head. ‘And sweet dreams.’
‘The same to you, and I hope yours are all about me.’ She watched him walk away, opened the door and stepped into her kitchen. She had her hard-won independence, but sometimes – and always late in the evening since Judy had started working in the New Theatre – she found it very lonely.
Two days later, David stood back and watched George Powell inspect the skirting board he had fixed to the newly plastered wall on the ground floor of the old Sea Breeze.
‘You haven’t done a bad job of these joints.’ George ran his fingers over the corners. ‘Not bad at all.’
David frowned, despite Jed King’s encouraging smile, he took George’s ‘haven’t done a bad job’ as an insult. ‘You can start first thing tomorrow morning.’ George Powell rose stiffly to his feet and straightened his back. ‘I could start right away,’ David offered eagerly, angry with himself for sleeping away most of the first full day he’d spent ashore.
‘All the jobs have been allocated for the day. Tomorrow you can begin work on the skirting boards on the second floor, cutting and fixing. If you do a good job on those, I’ll move you on to the banisters. There are enough of those to keep you and every other carpenter here busy until the day we complete.’ George looked up at the ceiling. The centre had been torn out of the building to the roof and all the rooms on the ground floor, except the lavatories and offices, had been knocked into one large space. The three floors on all four sides rose in tiers around the perimeter, supported by scaffolding. To their right, the scaffolding had been replaced by columns, and workmen were tearing down the supporting walls that were no longer needed.
‘Fifty per cent of the floor area on the first, second and third floors has gone to create that high ceiling. Mr James has ordered four electric chandeliers from Waterford. They’ll be the largest I’ve ever seen and bright enough to illuminate the ground floor and the mezzanine areas on the floors above. They’re coming in next week from Ireland. This is going to be some building when it’s finished,’ George said proudly.
‘It looks like a big chapel to me,’ David commented with more honesty than tact.
George laughed. ‘I’ll have to tell Mr James that one. If it’s a chapel he’s creating, it’ll be a temple to gambling and drinking.’
‘What time do you want me here in the morning?’ David asked.
‘Six o’clock, Micah did say you weren’t a time-served apprentice.’
‘I’m experienced but I haven’t completed an apprenticeship.’ David would have liked to have given him a different answer but he knew his age was against him.
‘I pay my carpenters five shillings a day, my labourers three. I’ll pay you whatever I think you’re worth – somewhere between the two – after you’ve put in a full day’s work, all right?’
Needing the job, David nodded agreement. ‘Yes.’
‘Twelve-hour shift, six in the morning until six at night, half an hour for dinner at twelve and two ten-minute tea breaks at ten and three. If you don’t bring your own food, we can put in an order with Goldman’s the baker’s for you and dock it from your wages at the end of the week. Pay day is Friday. You’ll get whatever you’re owed then. If you haven’t any tools, book them in and out with your foreman, any losses have to be paid for and I’ll take those out of your wages too.’
‘Thank you, Mr Powell.’ David shook hands with the man.
A shout of ‘Watch out!’ preceded a wall crashing down from the first floor.
David ducked out through the door and walked past the scaffolding and tarpaulins that shrouded the front of the building. He looked at the watch that Mary and Harry had given him, thought of home, then remembered it was no longer ‘home’. He had walked away from the farm. And the last thing he could do was return there and admit to Mary and Harry that he was a failure who was a useless sailor.
Feeling very alone, he debated what to do. He could go and see Edyth but judging by the length of the queue outside her baker’s shop she was busy. He could return to Helga Brown’s house, but when he had left, she and Ruth had been cleaning the house from top to bottom and he’d have nowhere to sit. Judy wouldn’t be working in the bakery, but he suspected that she’d probably be sleeping after performing in the theatre. That left Gertie.
He smiled, it wasn’t Monday morning, but it was early on a Thursday. She shouldn’t have that many other callers at this time of day. He felt in his inside pocket for his wallet. He’d taken one of the pound notes from his locked suitcase. He hoped it would buy him all the time he wanted for the week. But much as he liked Gertie and wanted to see her again, he sensed it would be prudent to change the note into silver before he went looking for her.
‘The young man who thought I was Harry Evans, I believe.’ David looked up to see Aled James. Dressed in a starched white shirt and collar, beige tie, cream linen suit and panama hat, he was better turned out than the bankers heading down into Mount Stuart Square. ‘Do you remember talking to me on the day of the carnival?’ he asked when David didn’t answer.
David was intimidated by Aled’s air of authority but he would never have admitted it to Aled or anyone else. ‘Yes, I do and in those clothes you look even more like Harry Evans.’
‘And how do you know Harry Evans?’
‘Why do you want to know?’ David asked warily with a countryman’s innate distrust of strangers.
‘Because I know him too. We used to be friends when we were boys,’ Aled said, straying into the realms of fantasy.
‘Harry is married to my sister.’
Aled looked at the tarpaulin-shrouded doorway behind David. ‘You’ve been in the old Sea Breeze?’
‘How do you know?’
‘I’m no Sherlock Holmes, but you have dust on the shoulders of your suit.’
David glanced at his jacket and tried to brush it off with the flat of his hand but it clung stubbornly to the cloth and all he succeeded in doing was smudging it. ‘I was looking for a job.’
‘Did you find one?’
‘I start work tomorrow.’
‘I’m surprised that you don’t work for Harry in one of his shops.’
‘I don’t want to work for Harry,’ David answered quickly, too quickly he realised when he saw the expression on Aled’s face.
‘So, you want to be independent, Mr Harry Evans’s brother-in-law.’ Aled offered David his hand. ‘I’m Aled James. George Powell is converting the Sea Breeze for me.’
‘I didn’t know.’ Impressed, David shook Aled’s hand.
‘What do you intend to do once the conversion is finished?’
‘I’ll find something.’ David hoped he sounded more confident than he felt.
‘I’m looking for likely young men to work in the Ragtime.’
‘What’s a ragtime?’
‘It’s what I’m calling this club when it’s finished, the Tiger Ragtime.’
‘Doing what?’ David asked.
‘I have a few different jobs going.’ Aled glanced at his watch. ‘I’ve an appointment shortly, but if you’re interested I can spare half an hour now. We could have a drink in the Packet and talk about it.’
Trying to look as though it wasn’t the first time he’d been asked to have a drink in the middle of the day, David said, ‘I don’t mind if I do.’
‘Judy, this is a surprise, and a timely one. I’ve been wrestling with the mission’s accounts and they don’t look good. Too many waffles being eaten and not enough contributions coming in to pay for the eggs and flour.’ Micah left his desk and walked out in the hallway of the mission to meet her. ‘But I don’t doubt there’s enough eggs and flour here now for me to offer you a waffle lunch.’
‘No thank you, Pastor Holsten, I’m having lunch with Mr James in the Windsor at one.’
‘Coffee, then?’
‘That would be nice.’ A burst of laughter echoed down the stairs and she said, ‘Could we drink it in your office?’
‘Of course, I’ll bring it down, make yourself at home.’ When Micah returned a few minutes later Judy had hung the jacket of her beige linen suit on the back of the visitor’s chair and was sitting, beating time with her finger as she read a song score.
‘Do you ever stop working?’ He set the tray on the desk.
‘Mr James and I have been planning out my act for when the club opens. This is “Just a Crazy Song”. It’s brand new, I think he must have either brought the score over with him from America or bought it from one of the seamen here.’
‘Did he tell you that he’s invited me, along with your uncles, aunts, and Edyth to the opening night of the Tiger Ragtime?’
‘Yes, you will come?’
‘Unless I’m shanghaied.’ He poured two cups of coffee and handed her one before returning to his chair behind his desk. ‘Help yourself to milk and sugar.’
‘Thank you.’
She took her time, sugaring her coffee, pouring milk into it and stirring it but he didn’t try to hurry her. It was obvious something was bothering her and after what Edyth had said about the way Aled James made her feel, he wondered if Judy was also afraid of the man.
‘It’s about the contract I signed with Mr James,’ she said finally.
‘You’re sorry you signed it?’ Micah asked in concern. He recalled the solicitor warning him that although the contract was a good one it was watertight. If Judy didn’t perform for any reason other than illness Aled could sue her for every penny she had. Tony had raised a laugh by pointing out that the only pennies Judy was likely to have when Peter Pan finished in the New Theatre, were the ones Aled James paid her.
‘No, of course not,’ Judy said quickly. ‘It’s about the clothes.’
‘Clothes?’ Micah looked at her blankly. ‘The stage costumes.’
‘Oh yes, I remember, Aled James has to pay for them. And that’s a problem?’
‘We went to Gwilym James the day before yesterday and he bought me twenty evening gowns. They were so expensive they didn’t even have price tags.’
‘It’s his club, Judy. He wants his singer to look her best. Did he choose them?’
‘With Edyth’s mother and the supervisor’s help.’
‘You don’t like them?’
‘Any girl in her right mind would like them.’
‘They’re too revealing?’ he asked, remembering Jed King’s reservations.
‘Not at all, although one is fairly low cut.’
Micah waited, there was obviously more, but he was a patient man, and he wanted Judy to tell him in her own words without prompting. After he’d watched two minutes tick by on his wristwatch, he ventured, ‘You don’t want the clothes?’
‘I don’t mind the evening gowns. Mr James explained that I have to look well groomed because I’ll be representing his club.’
‘A glamorous club does need a glamorous star. But if it’s not the frocks, Judy, what is it?’
‘He wants to buy me a whole new wardrobe, not just evening gowns, but day frocks, suits, accessories – and fur coats. I’m meeting him for lunch now because he’s arranged for us to go back to Gwilym James. He even told the supervisor to select some fur coats for me to choose from. He insists I need three –’
‘Three!’ Micah interrupted her mid-flow.
‘A short one for day wear, a long one for evening wear and an elbow-length cape for summer.’ She picked up her coffee cup and saucer. Micah could see she was nervous from the way her hand shook.
‘Most girls would jump through hoops for three fur coats.’
‘I don’t want Mr James buying me one, let alone three. Evening gowns I can understand, but not day clothes. He even asked the supervisor to open an account for me so I can go in and chose new underwear.’
‘Have you talked to Edyth about this?’
‘No, she’s been so busy in the bakery since the workmen started converting the club that she has hardly any free time. Besides, nine times out of ten when I come home from the theatre, she’s in bed and she gets up hours before me.’
‘What about your uncles?’
‘They’re working such long hours in the Sea Breeze, I don’t like bothering them.’
‘As I said, most girls would love the idea of having a whole new wardrobe bought for them,’ he pointed out mildly.
‘Girls like Anna Hughes, you mean.’
‘So, that’s it. You feel like a kept woman.’
Her green eyes flashed angrily. ‘Yes, I do.’
‘Judy, no one who knows you would ever mention you and Anna Hughes in the same breath,’ he said swiftly.
‘What’s the difference? Aled James is spending a fortune on me and showering me with expensive things that I could never afford to buy in exactly the same way that Anna Hughes’s customers pay her and buy her things to …’
‘Has Aled James ever tried to kiss you?’
‘No?’
‘Has he ever suggested anything inappropriate?’
‘No.’
‘So all he’s done so far is give you twenty evening gowns and the promise of a new wardrobe.’
‘He hasn’t given me anything yet. He asked the supervisor to hold on to everything until my dressing room in the club is finished. Then he wants everything sent there.’
‘And there you have your answer,’ he said in relief. ‘He’s not giving you anything that you won’t wear either in the club or outside when you’re travelling to and from the club or out on club business. All you have to do is keep everything he gives you in your dressing room, except for the outfit you wear back and forth to work. That way, all the clothes remain his property. When you’re not working you can wear your own clothes. Just regard this wardrobe he’s buying you as your uniform.’
‘A uniform is what I’d be wearing if I was a waitress or a chambermaid.’
‘There’s no difference, Judy. You’re working for the man and he’s telling you what you can and can’t wear. That’s a uniform. And if, at end of the contract, you want to walk away from him and the club, leave all the clothes there and no one can possibly think of you as a kept woman.’
She thought about what he’d said for a moment. ‘That sounds like common sense, Pastor Holsten.’
‘That’s because it is, and don’t you think it’s time you started calling me Micah? You’re not thirteen any more.’
‘All right, Micah. It sounds like common sense apart from the expense. Fur coats and evening gowns cost a fortune.’
‘Which Aled James is spending for the benefit of his club.’
‘That’s what he said when I told him that I didn’t want fur coats.’
‘Then he and I are in agreement. Think about it, Judy, if you don’t get to keep the clothes in your home then you can hardly count them as yours.’
‘And you really believe that everyone will see it that way?’
‘What other way can they possibly see it?’ He looked out of the window. ‘It’s a fine day; I’ll walk you to Stuart Street and the Windsor for your lunch date.’
‘You don’t have to.’
He reached for his hat. ‘I was thinking of calling in on my sister anyway.’
‘She’s been complaining that you visit her far more often than you used to.’
‘If she expects me to ignore the fact that I’m about to become an uncle she can forget it.’ He offered her his arm. ‘Let’s go, you don’t want to be late.’
‘No, I don’t.’
‘Are you sure that you’re happy with the idea of working in Mr James’s club?’ He wasn’t sure why he’d asked the question and he had absolutely no idea what he’d do if she said she wasn’t.
‘It’s a great opportunity.’
‘Yes it is, but it’ll be hard work and long hours.’
‘And more money than I’ve ever made before Micah. Money my family can use.’
‘One thing I’ve discovered since I’ve been in the Bay is that one member of a family can’t keep a whole tribe and the Kings are a tribe. Besides, your uncles wouldn’t be very pleased if they knew that they and their children were one of the reasons you took the job in the club.’
‘I’m far more selfish than that. I took it for me.’
‘You always were more ambitious than the rest of us in the band put together.’
‘And you think that is wrong?’
‘Absolutely not. Especially in someone with your talent,’ he said quickly.
‘Did you know that Mr James has plans to open clubs in London?’ Now that Micah had set her mind at rest about the wardrobe Aled James was buying her, she couldn’t wait to tell him about the future Aled was planning for his club – and for her.
‘No, I didn’t.’
‘He said he’d want to me to headline in all of them, eventually.’
‘And incidentally make him a lot of money. I always knew you were destined for great things, Judy.’ He waved to a group of seamen across the road. ‘Just don’t forget where you came from.’
‘As if I could.’ She looked at half a dozen small girls who were playing hopscotch on the pavement. ‘It only seems like the other day I was doing that.’
‘It only seems like the other day I was watching you,’ he said.