Aled left the theatre feeling pleased with the world in general and himself in particular for the deals he had struck with Mandy and Lennie. The sun was a deep orange ball in a cloudless blue sky that promised a fine dawn in the morning. And, if the dry weather continued for just one more week, George Powell had told him that all the supports and alterations to the roof of the new dub would be finished.
A few more days to put the interior finishing touches and the Tiger Ragtime would be ready for the first customers to walk through the doors, provided Aiden had enough trained croupiers ready to run the tables. Hopefully the orchestra leader would be up to scratch and would take on a sufficient number of competent musicians – he thought of the chorus girls and Judy. They at least were ready to perform.
Deciding to walk back to the Windsor Hotel he continued down Bute Street, tipping his hat and exchanging pleasantries with acquaintances. He couldn’t help but contrast his present with his past. People will look with unseeing eyes when a ragged, barefoot boy crosses their path, but waiters, barmen, unemployed men and women hoping to find work will always be respectful to a man who might be in a position to offer them a job.
Halfway down Bute Street he saw Edyth walking towards the docks and quickened his pace to catch up with her. As he had told Harry, she was a good-looking woman, but certainly not in the conventional sense. Her mouth was too wide and her features too strong to be thought of as pretty. But he was attracted to her – and she was separated from her husband.
In his considerable experience separated, widowed, and divorced women were ridiculously easy to seduce. They missed the intimacy of sex. A few compliments and small presents were usually enough to gain admittance to their beds. And his seduction of Edyth Slater would serve another purpose: it would infuriate Harry Evans.
‘Mrs Slater.’ He lifted his panama from his head when he caught up with her.
‘Mr James.’
‘It’s a lovely evening.’
‘It is,’ she answered shortly.
‘Are you going for a walk?’
‘Just down to the sea.’
‘May I escort you?’
‘I’d hate to take you out of your way.’
It was obvious from the look she gave him that she didn’t want him to accompany her but they were in the middle of a street crowded with early-evening idlers and he knew that like most well-brought-up middle-class girls, she’d be loath to make a scene. ‘You wouldn’t be. I’m going to the Windsor.’ He offered her his arm. ‘I took Judy shopping this afternoon.’
‘She told me that you wanted to buy her fur coats and day clothes.’ She capitulated and took the arm he offered her.
‘As I told Judy, I will get more use out of them than her. Everywhere she goes she will be representing my club. And I intend to use her as a hostess at the formal and informal lunches I am planning for various organisations and charities as well as the council. I don’t just intend to open a nightclub here in Cardiff, I intend to become a part of the community.’
‘And do good works?’ Aled James’s use of ‘Judy’ as opposed to ‘Miss King’ wasn’t lost on Edyth.
‘Isn’t that what all businessmen – good businessmen – do? Take your brother, for instance.’
‘He called on me today. He mentioned that you two had met.’
‘Did he?’
She looked him coolly in the eye as they passed the Exchange and drew alongside the turn to Stuart Street. ‘You go that way, I believe, Mr James.’ She pointed in the direction of the Windsor.
‘I’ll walk you to the sea.’
‘There is no need, but thank you for the offer,’ she refused firmly.
‘Would you take pity on a lonely bachelor and have dinner with me one evening?’
‘No, Mr James, but thank you for asking.’ She broke into a broad smile and he smiled back, unaware that Micah Holsten was standing behind him.
‘I hope I haven’t kept you waiting, Micah.’ Edyth relinquished Aled’s arm and took Micah’s.
‘Not at all, Edyth, I was just chatting to Old Bill. His charabanc business is thriving.’ Micah raised his hat. ‘Mr James, if you’ll excuse us.’
Micah and Edyth walked away, leaving Aled standing on the pavement looking after them. It was then Aled realised that he’d never stood a chance with Edyth Slater, for the simple reason that she was already spoken for.
David’s back and thigh muscles were aching from crouching low over the floor of the Sea Breeze for most of his twelve-hour shift in the old hotel. And his hands were raw and bleeding from the skinning he had inadvertently given them while sawing and sanding lengths of skirting boards, in between taking more bets than he had anticipated from his fellow workers. He wondered if Aiden Collins would be pleased with the money he had bagged. It seemed a vast amount to him but he had no idea what a bookie’s runner was expected to take in a day.
He had done exactly as Aiden had asked him to. Left the site at the end of the day and returned to Helga’s to wash and change into his suit. After barely eating half a dozen mouthfuls of the sausage and mash Helga had prepared for her lodgers’ tea, he had headed for James Street and the upstairs room of the White Hart.
He found Aiden sitting with his feet propped on a corner of a desk reading the evening edition of the South Wales Echo.
‘It’s just as you said, Mr Collins.’ David pulled the canvas cash bag from inside one of his best linen shirts. ‘I only had to tell one person I was taking bets and the men flocked round me like chickens at feeding time. Especially at break.’ He set the bag on the table in front of Aiden. ‘The books?’ Aiden held out his hand, David took them from his pocket and placed them on the desk. Aiden flicked through them before taking a small notebook from his own pocket. ‘Have you checked the cash against the entries you made?’
‘I didn’t have time in work. And I was in my lodgings only as long as it took me to eat and change.’
‘Pull up a chair. Count the money. I’ll tally the books.’ Aiden took a pencil from his pocket and began to add up the columns of figures David had entered.
David tipped the bag out on the opposite side of the table to the one Aiden was working on. He started piling pennies, halfpennies, threepences, and sixpences into shillings, and the shillings, half crowns, and florins into neat stacks of pounds. For ten minutes the only sounds that could be heard in the room were the clink of coins, the scratching of Aiden’s pencil and their breathing.
‘How much was in the bag?’ Aiden laid down his pencil and looked expectantly at David.
‘Seven pounds, thirteen shillings, and sixpence.’ David looked at Aiden in concern, worried that he had somehow lost money despite the care he had taken to look after it.
‘Which is exactly what I make it.’
David weakened in relief. ‘That’s good to hear.’
‘You’re not used to handling money?’ Aiden asked.
‘Only what we get when we sell the farm produce to the local shops in the Swansea Valley and then it was always simple and straightforward. More or less the same amount every week.’
‘Have you tallied the winnings?’
‘No.’ David shook his head.
‘I have. We’ll be paying out two pounds nine shillings, which leaves a clear profit of five pounds, four shillings, and sixpence, of which,’ he pushed a stack of shillings in David’s direction, ‘one pound, one shilling is your share, which is slightly more than the percentage due to the runner, but the boss believes in rounding up not down.’
‘This is mine?’ David stared at Aiden in astonishment.
‘Didn’t the boss tell you that the runner takes twenty per cent of the profit?’
‘He said I’d be well paid.’
‘I’d say that isn’t bad for a day’s work.’
‘No – no, isn’t, in fact it’s bloody great,’ David concurred.
‘So you’re pleased with how your first day went?’
‘Yes, but what happens if everyone backs a winner and I make a loss, not a profit?’
Aiden gave him the same pitying look Aled James had when he’d asked the self-same question. ‘Take it from me. Unless the runner is on the take, there is always a profit.’ He nodded to David’s cut. ‘Put it away before the punters come in to pick up their winnings. Do you owe anyone change?’
‘No. There was plenty around the site today.’
‘That will alter when the work dries up.’ He handed David a book. ‘The odds for tomorrow’s races.’
David pocketed it along with his winnings.
‘The boss will be pleased with this. He’ll probably want to see you about a regular job when the work on the club is finished. In the meantime, it might be as well if you concentrate on the book instead of the building.’ Aiden lifted a briefcase from the floor and, after separating the ‘winnings’ that had to be paid out, scooped the rest of the money into it. He closed the case, returned it to the floor and handed the empty canvas bag to David.
‘You think the boss will give me regular work, running a racing book?’ David asked.
‘The boss may have something else in mind for you, but you’ll have to talk to him.’
David’s hand closed over the guinea in his pocket. He had earned almost as much in a day as he had expected to earn on the site in a week.
Aiden heard the clink of coins in David’s pocket. ‘If you want to earn more you could go round the pubs in the evenings, and spread the word. Just as you did on the building site. But be careful. Not all the law wear uniforms and those that don’t hang round pubs to see what they can pick up. Don’t approach any strangers, especially those who are well-built and over six feet tall.’ He looked up as Tony King walked in. ‘Is this our first customer?’ he asked David.
‘Green Spirit. Five to two in the second race today at Aintree. Tony laid down his ticket.
‘Pay the man, David.’
David counted out seven shillings and handed them to Tony.
‘Pleasure doing business with you, David.’ Tony grinned.
‘It’s a pleasure to do business with you, Mr King. If you’re looking to put some of that on a dead cert tomorrow, rumour has it Dark Oak running in the two thirty is a good bet,’ Aiden said.
‘I’ll bear that in mind, Mr Collins. Bye, David.’ Tony left.
David picked up the next betting slip. ‘I didn’t know that you knew the Kings, Mr Collins.’
‘I made it my business to get acquainted with most of the people on the Bay.’ Aiden looked up as two more men came up the stairs. ‘Let’s see you do another pay-out, boy. The sooner I get you working on your own, the more time I’ll have to concentrate on gearing the casino up for business.’
Edyth was leaving her shop by the back door when Micah walked into the yard.
‘Am I that late?’ she adjusted the silk scarf she’d draped round her neck and fastened it with a pin.
‘No.’ He frowned absently. ‘I’m looking for David. Is he here?’
‘I haven’t seen him since I visited him in Helga’s the night he came back from Norway.’ Micah’s sombre expression concerned her. ‘Is he in trouble?’
‘Not yet, but the fool soon will be. Tony King called into the mission as pleased as punch because he won five bob on the horses.’
‘That’s nice for Tony.’ Tony was the wildest of Judy’s three uncles and Edyth knew that his wife, May, would be furious if she suspected that her husband had risked his wages gambling after being unemployed for months. ‘And guess what? The bookie’s runner who took his bet was David. He’s working for Aiden Collins, one of Aled James’s henchmen.’
‘Oh, Vladivostok!’ Edyth’s blood ran cold when she recalled the conversation she’d had with Harry the day before.
‘You knew about this?’
‘Not about David being a bookie’s runner. But Harry came to see me yesterday. Aled James is his half-brother.’
‘His half-brother …’
‘Not my father’s son.’ Edyth had denied the obvious and now that she’d said that much, she felt she had to explain further. ‘Harry’s father was murdered before he could marry my mother.’
‘So he’s illegitimate?’
Recalling what Micah had said about wanting his children to bear his name, she snapped, ‘You have a problem with that?’
‘I thought you knew me better, Edyth. It’s what people are, not how they’re born, that’s important.’
Mollified, she continued. ‘When my father married my mother he adopted Harry and when my sisters and I, and my younger brother, came along he treated all of us the same. We really are one family. No one ever considered Harry to be any different from the rest of us. My parents told us about Harry’s real father when we were old enough to understand, because they didn’t want any secrets in the family. And also because they wanted us to know why Harry was going to inherit a fortune and we weren’t. Harry doesn’t just work for Gwilym James. When he reaches thirty in four years’ time his trust will be dissolved and he’ll inherit the company along with some property and other businesses.’
Micah whistled. ‘A wealthy man indeed.’
‘You want to know the worst thing about having a wealthy brother?’ she asked seriously.
‘Tell me?’
‘He tries to help everyone. Me – David – he won’t let any of us stand on our own two feet.’
‘Isn’t that only natural? He obviously cares for all of you and doesn’t want to see you struggle. What’s so awful about that?’
‘A lot, when you want to make your own way in life,’ she said in exasperation. ‘Anyway, to get back to the point, from what Harry told me yesterday, his real father was something of a ladies’ man. Harry has quite a few half-brothers and probably sisters. Aled James is one of them and he blames Harry and our family for his mother’s early death. Apparently he and his mother didn’t get any of his father’s money. Harry said that Aled is bitter and he threatened to hurt Harry by getting at me and David. Employing David as a bookie’s runner would be one way to do it. If David gets caught taking bets by the police he could go to gaol, couldn’t he?’ she asked.
‘He could,’ Micah concurred.
‘The stupid fool!’ she exclaimed angrily. ‘Mary told me that David’s always been headstrong. But something like this could destroy him – he’s used to wide open spaces, not prison cells, and the shame would devastate Mary.’
‘Someone needs to talk sense into David before word gets out that he’s a runner, because once it does, the police will mark him for arrest. Have you any idea where he could be?’ Micah asked Edyth urgently.
She shook her head. ‘The only place I can think of is Helga’s.’
‘He wasn’t there a few minutes ago. Helga said he came in from work, washed and changed into his best suit, barely touched his tea, and ran back out again. Tony said that David had paid him his winnings in the White Hart. I called in there on my way to Helga’s but David and Aiden Collins had already left.’
‘Then we’ll just have to wait for David in Helga’s,’ Edyth said determinedly. ‘As he’s lodging there, he’s bound to return there sooner or later.’
‘Do you think he’ll listen to us?’
‘No, but that’s not going to stop me from trying to talk sense into him,’ Edyth said forcefully.
‘Close-knit clan you Evanses, aren’t you?’ Micah smiled.
‘Absolutely,’ she agreed firmly, ‘and whether David likes it or not, as Harry’s brother-in-law he’s a full family member, even if his surname is Ellis.’
‘Have you got to go right this minute?’ Gertie complained when David left her bed.
He sat up and rummaged on the floor for his clothes. They were tangled up with Gertie’s but he managed to free his vest, underpants and shirt. ‘It’s after nine o’clock and I have to be up early in the morning to go to work.’ What he didn’t tell her was the reek of her scent on top of the fish and chip supper and beer he’d bought them was making him nauseous. He was also intent on taking Aiden Collins’s advice and calling in on one or two pubs on the way back to Helga’s to spread the news that he was available to take bets.
‘Come and see me tomorrow.’ She sat up, linked her arms around his waist and pressed her cheek against his bare back.
‘If I have time.’ He was suddenly and, in view of the way he had felt about Gertie an hour ago, inexplicably irritated with her. He felt that she wasn’t in the least bit interested in him, only in the contents of his wallet.
‘What do you mean?’ she cried indignantly. ‘“If I have time.” What kind of an answer is that for a regular to give a girl?’
‘Just what it says. I’m holding down two jobs –’
‘Goody.’ She locked her arms even tighter around his waist. ‘All the more money for me.’
She couldn’t have said anything worse in his present mood. ‘I have to keep myself too, you know.’
‘Why so cross, Dai?’ She watched him pick up his suit trousers from the floor and step into them.
‘Because all you ever talk about and all you ever ask for is money. And there’s pink face powder all over my jacket and my trousers.’ He tried to brush it off but it became ingrained in the suiting. He looked down at the floor. ‘Don’t you ever clean this place?’
‘I work all the hours God sends –’
‘I wouldn’t call what you do work,’ he said acidly.
‘Then what would you call it?’ When he didn’t answer her, she said, ‘I provide a service the same as the doctor and the dentist.’
‘They have set fees that don’t go up every five minutes.’
‘First rule of Anna’s house: every girl has to look to her own future.’
‘By fleecing her customers?’
‘That’s a vile thing to say.’ Her bottom lip trembled. ‘I gave you your money’s worth, didn’t I?’
‘You did when you charged me two bob. Tonight it was half a crown for the same, and supper and drinks. What will it be tomorrow?’
‘You’re in a bad mood. I’m not talking to you.’ She flounced back on to the bed and pulled the bedclothes over her head.
David found his shoes beneath Gertie’s frock and laced them on. He checked his pockets – and his wallet to make sure that no more of his money than he had intended had ‘accidentally’ fallen in the direction of Gertie and her piggy bank. When he was sure it was all there he opened the door. As he did so, Gertie pulled the sheet down, uncovering her face.
‘See you tomorrow?’ she pleaded.
He remembered how he had felt when he had walked into the room and softened a little. ‘Perhaps, I’ve told you I have two jobs.’
‘And they keep you so busy, you can’t make time for little me?’ she whined.
‘I can’t make firm plans.’
‘But if you come here and I’m busy – you’ll wait?’
Her begging made him wonder if Anna’s other girls were charging less for the same service Gertie was providing. ‘I’ll see how it goes.’
‘Please …’
‘Night, Gertie.’ He closed the door behind him and ran down the stairs. The red-haired woman he’d seen earlier, and, from her age, had presumed was Gertie’s ‘Anna’, opened the kitchen door and looked out into the passageway.
‘You just left Gertie?’
‘Yes,’ he confirmed.
‘I’ve seen you before, haven’t I? Are you one of her regulars?’
‘I don’t know,’ David answered uneasily, anxious to leave the house.
‘If you’ve visited her more than once, you must be.’
‘I have to go.’ David went to open the door but she joined him and leaned against it, preventing him.
‘What’s your name?’
David wasn’t sure why she was asking, so he used the nickname Gertie had bestowed on him. ‘Dai.’
‘You can’t be a sailor in that suit.’
‘I’m not. I’m working on the old Sea Breeze.’
Anna then repeated what Gertie had said when he’d told her the same thing. ‘You and every other man on the Bay. God help the lot of us when it’s built.’
‘Goodnight, Miss … Mrs …’ David faltered, it seemed disrespectful to call a women so much older than himself by her Christian name.
‘It’s all right; you can call me Anna without any other handle. Everyone else does on the Bay.’
‘Good night, Anna.’
‘I heard you and Gertie having words. She’s not trying to bilk you, is she?’
That word again – bilk. ‘I’m not sure what you mean, Anna.’
‘Charge you too much?’
‘I gave her half a crown.’
‘That’s top whack, Dai; I hope she gave good service.’
‘She did.’
He must have sounded grudging because she said, ‘Any problems, come to me. The last thing I want is for this house to get a bad name. And you don’t have to tell me. I know Gertie can be greedy.’
David stepped outside, breathed in several lungfuls of warm, sea-scented air and headed purposefully for the lights of Bute Street. One of the open-air ‘casinos’ was operating in full swing beneath a street lamp and a circle of twenty or more onlookers were watching half a dozen men crouched at the foot of the lamp playing poker. When David drew closer, he saw that one of the players was Tony King.
‘David, my lucky mascot. Thanks to you I’m in the game.’
‘You winning?’ David asked, interested.
Tony pointed to the small heap of coins on the pavement in front of him. ‘See for yourself.’
‘Carry on at the rate you have done today, Tony, and it’ll be Rockefeller move over,’ Abdul, who was playing next to Tony, joked.
‘It might be, by midnight.’ Tony fished a watch from the top of his neighbour’s pile of winnings and checked the time. ‘Do me a favour, Davy boy.’
‘That depends what it is,’ David replied warily, expecting Tony to ask him for a loan.
‘Pick up Judy for me. It’s my turn to walk her home from the theatre and I don’t want to interrupt the game. These beggars will only mess with my cards if I do.’
‘As if we would,’ Abdul protested indignantly.
‘You would,’ Tony said calmly.
Steve Chan shrugged his shoulders. ‘We would.’ The others nodded good-natured agreement.
‘I was going to call in a few pubs on my way back to Mrs Brown’s.’ The last thing David felt like doing was arguing with Judy after quarrelling with Gertie. And if past experience was anything to go by, argue was all he and Judy ever did.
‘To do some advertising for your new venture?’ Tony guessed.
‘How did you know?’
‘I could see that you’d had a successful day when I picked up my winnings. Being a bookie’s runner can make you a lot of dough, as long as you remember to wear running shoes at all times.’ He glanced at a boy standing on the corner. ‘No sign of any men in blue?’
‘No, Tony,’ the boy yelled back.
‘Good lad. Tell you what, Davy boy: me and the boys will do your advertising for you, if you go to the New Theatre and meet Judy. A walk on dry land will do you good if half of what I heard about your voyage to the North Sea is right.’
David made a face. ‘All right, but you won’t forget about the advertising?’
‘We won’t.’ Abdul threw down one card and drew another.
‘Do you have a problem?’ Mandy asked when she walked to the stage door and found Judy, who’d left the dressing room ten minutes before her, standing in the entrance looking up and down the road.
‘It’s my Uncle Tony’s turn to walk me home and he hasn’t turned up.’
‘Want me and the girls to go with you?’
‘You’re all going the other way,’ Judy reminded her.
‘I owe you a favour for getting me that job in the Tiger Ragtime. Besides, we don’t mind, do we, girls?’ She turned to the rest of the chorus behind her. ‘A breath of fresh sea air will do us all good after that stuffy theatre,’ she coaxed.
The silence said more about the girls’ lack of enthusiasm than a list of excuses would have.
‘It’s all right,’ Judy insisted. ‘I’m perfectly happy to walk home by myself. It’s just that my uncles insist on meeting me. In fact, it would be nice to break the pattern. Once I do it by myself, they may allow me to walk home alone every night. It’s barely half an hour to my lodgings.’
‘If you’re sure that you’re happy about it. I’ve heard stories about Tiger Bay,’ Mandy said doubtfully.
‘So have I,’ Judy smiled confidently, ‘I was born there and I’ve lived there all my life. It’s nowhere near as bad as people try to paint it.’ Not wanting to delay any longer, or make Mandy feel any guiltier than she already did, Judy walked past the front entrance of the theatre towards Queen Street.
‘Judy?’
She turned and saw David standing outside the main entrance of the theatre. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘Waiting for you. Your uncle was busy so he asked me to pick you up.’
‘Busy?’ Judy reiterated. ‘You mean he was playing cards in one of the open-air casinos.’
‘That’s right.’
‘Auntie May will go wild if she finds out he’s been gambling. She’ll throw him out and then he’ll have to sleep in either Uncle Jed’s or Uncle Ron’s shed because their wives won’t have him in their houses when he’s quarrelled with May.’
‘Why not? He didn’t look drunk when I saw him.’
‘Uncle Tony drinks, but he hardly ever gets drunk. Gambling is his problem. A couple of years ago, Uncle Jed allowed Uncle Tony to sleep in his kitchen after he lost his entire week’s wages on a horse. Auntie May heard about it from the neighbours and came looking for Uncle Tony the next morning. When she found him snoring in Uncle Jed’s easy chairs in his kitchen, she lost her temper and threw all of Uncle Jed’s and Auntie Bessie’s china at Uncle Tony’s head. It took Uncle Jed two voyages to the Caribbean to earn enough to replace everything and two weeks for Uncle Tony’s cuts to heal.’
‘Vicious lot, your family.’ David had difficulty imagining someone breaking the entire china of a house over another person’s head.
‘Only to one another, and they love each other underneath it all.’ She caught hold of his arm, although he hadn’t offered it to her. ‘I can’t believe Uncle Tony sent you to walk me home. I wish my uncles realised I’ve grown up. If I can hold down a job in the theatre, I’m perfectly capable of walking myself home.’
‘Tiger Bay’s a dangerous place.’
‘To outsiders maybe. Not to people who grew up there. I’d only have to cry out for half the residents to come and see what was the matter.’
‘Look,’ he said in exasperation, ‘I didn’t have to come to get you.’
‘I know.’
‘So, are you going to complain about your uncles all the way back to Edyth’s?’
‘I’m sorry, that was unfair of me.’ She had given him an apology but she couldn’t resist adding a gibe. ‘Almost as unfair as you were to me when I met you at the station and I told you that I had found you lodgings. But if it’s any consolation, I’m cross with my uncle, not you.’
‘I did rather bite your head off when you met me at the station,’ he said grudgingly.
‘Is that a “sorry” for the way you behaved?’
‘Yes.’
‘Are you getting paid daily on the site? Because if you’re not, I can’t see how my uncle can afford to play poker. Since the last incident, Auntie May makes a point of taking everything except sandwich money off him when he works.’
‘Any food we order is taken out of our pay at the end of the week before we get it.’
‘So that’s how he got his stake. The crafty devil.’
‘He also bet a couple of shillings on the horses today and won.’
‘He told you?’
‘I took his bet,’ David said, proud of his new job.
She stopped dead in her tracks. ‘You’re not working as bookie’s runner for Charlie Moore?’
‘No.’
‘Thank goodness.’ She breathed a sigh of relief for Edyth’s sake. ‘That’s a mug’s game if ever there was one. Uncle Tony worked for him for a couple of weeks and ended up in court. He was fined twice as much as he’d earned.’
‘He didn’t go to gaol?’ David asked.
‘No, it was his first offence.’ She looked up at him sideways. ‘What do you want to know for?’
‘Because I’m working as a runner for Aiden Collins.’
‘The Aiden Collins who works for Aled James?’
‘The Mr James who’s building the nightclub, I don’t know of another one, do you?’ He led her across the road and down into Bute Street.
‘Don’t you know it’s illegal to take bets, you stupid boy?’
‘I am not stupid,’ he said fiercely.
She lowered her voice as they passed a crowd leaving the Salvation Army Citadel. ‘If the police catch you they’ll throw the book at you, lock you up, and toss the key in the dock.’
‘They won’t catch me,’ he said confidently. ‘And even if they do,’ he added somewhat illogically given his assertion, ‘Mr James promised me that no runner of his has ever gone to gaol.’
Judy was torn between loyalty to Aled James for giving her a job and loyalty to Edyth without whose help, friendship, and love she wouldn’t have been able to stay in Tiger Bay. And I, irritating, and maddening as David was, he was still a member of Edyth’s family. ‘That’s easy for Mr James to promise. He’s just come from America and hasn’t had any runners working on Tiger Bay before now that I know about.’
Sensing the logic in what Judy said, David fell silent.
‘You are an idiot,’ Judy continued to scold him. ‘Edyth said you had a job on the building site. Why didn’t you stick to that?’
‘I’m doing the two at the moment. Mr James said I could earn extra running a book for Mr Collins and if I did well, there might be a permanent job at the end of it working for him in his nightclub. Everyone knows that the building work will be finished in a couple of weeks, and then Mr James will need people to run the gaming tables. I can do it if I’m shown how, Judy, I know I can. I made a guinea out of the money I took in bets today and that’s without the money I made working on the site –’
‘Keep your voice down,’ Judy hissed when she saw heads turn in their direction. ‘Don’t you know that there are people down here desperate enough to beat a man up for the price of a cup of tea and a bun? Honestly, David, you’re a real baby,’ she lectured him as if she was middle-aged and he was a wayward child.
‘I am not, I … I …’ He almost boasted about his exploits with Gertie before realising that it wasn’t something he could tell a girl. Or Harry, or Micah, or Judy’s uncles. He had a feeling that even Tony would repeat Harry’s warnings about loose women if he tried.
‘I suppose I should make allowances for you. Edyth told me that you grew up on an isolated farm.’
‘There’s no need for you to feel sorry for me just because I grew up on a farm,’ he snapped testily.
‘I don’t. The truth is, I’m envious. I’ve never stayed in the country but I’ve been on day trips to Leckwith Fields and Creigiau. They seemed so green, peaceful, and beautiful after the docks. The only flowers you see down here are in people’s back yards – and between the coal sheds, dog kennels, and the ty bachs there’s not much room left. The last time I went to Creigiau, I was twelve. I picked masses of primroses. I even dug up a few roots, although I knew I shouldn’t have,’ she confessed. ‘My grandmother planted them in her garden and every spring after that they reminded me of the trip.’
‘The country might be nice for a townie to visit but it’s a lot different when you’re born on a farm. From the day I could walk I was expected to work, and work bloody hard,’ he swore. He saw her shocked expression and said, ‘Sorry, bad habit. Harry has tried to stop me swearing but all I’ve heard on site today is cursing and I’ve started doing it again without thinking.’
‘It’s hard not to swear when that’s all you hear around you,’ she conceded. ‘I never used to swear when I lived with my grandmother but everyone swears all the time in the theatre. The actors, the director, the producer, the musicians, even the chorus girls. They don’t bat an eyelid. Show-business people seem to think no more of swearing than they do of breathing. They do it more than anyone else I’ve ever met, even seamen. But my uncles always watched their language around my grandmother. Towards the end of her life she was very frail but they were still terrified of her.’
‘How come you were brought up by your grandmother?’ he asked.
‘My mother died when I was a baby and my father was at sea.’
‘Is he still at sea?’
‘I don’t know and I don’t care.’
David knew from the tone of her voice not to trespass further. ‘My mother and father died young.’
‘Who brought you up?’
‘My sister as much as anyone, although, looking back, I suppose we brought one another up although she’s older than me by four years. My mother died less than a year after my father, and she made Mary promise to do everything she could to keep the farm going and the family together. As we have two younger brothers and a sister it was tough going until Mary married Harry.’
‘He’s nice, but then Edyth and all her family are.’ She blushed when she thought of Edyth’s confession to Micah that David had fallen in love with her and hoped that David didn’t think she meant anything by the throwaway remark.
‘Yes, they are,’ he agreed.
‘So, are you coming to see me in Peter Pan now you are back from your adventures on the high seas?’ she asked.
‘Some adventures,’ he sneered. ‘And I’m coming next Saturday. Mrs Brown has booked a box and she’s invited me, Moody, Micah, and Edyth to join her, although they’ve all seen you before. What’s it like to be on-stage?’ he asked curiously.
‘Everything and more that I ever dreamed, when the audience are applauding, and cheering me at the end of my big number. And the clothes and the make-up are as glamorous as I thought they would be. But the fighting, backbiting, and bitching between the cast backstage has to be heard and seen to be believed. So it’s not all glitz and glitter. And some of the people are so nasty they make you look like a soft pussycat.’
‘What do you mean?’ he said angrily.
‘You’ve just proved my point. Look at you now, spitting and hissing like a cornered tomcat.’
‘I am not,’ he said indignantly.
‘I’m sorry; I didn’t realise that this is how you normally behave.’ She looked at him and a shaft of light fell on his face from a streetlamp. He glared at her for a moment. She smiled and slowly he smiled back.
‘My mother always used to say that I was too hottempered for my own good. And I know I became even worse after she died. We didn’t have it easy. Just because Mary and I were young, people – cattle dealers and people like that,’ he explained not wanting to go into details, ‘thought they could cheat us.’
Judy knew that was the closest she would get to an apology from him for his bad temper. ‘So you played,’ she deepened her voice, mimicking Jeremy’s Mr Darling, ‘the angry hard man.’
‘Sort of.’ He looked down the wide street of two-, three-, and four-storey buildings. ‘And I’m not used to living among all these people. But that’s not to say I won’t get used to it.’
‘Snarling at people because you’re not sure of yourself isn’t going to make you any friends. And before you jump down my throat again, I know exactly how you feel.’
‘No, you don’t,’ he contradicted her.
‘At the risk of sounding like a pantomime chorus, oh yes I do. You’re in a strange place, surrounded by people you don’t understand because you’re not used to their ways and you’re not at all sure what you should do next.’
‘Clever, aren’t you?’
‘I know because it’s exactly how I feel in the theatre. I’m not used to actors and their ways. And now that I’m one of them …’
‘You’re not sure you want to be?’ he guessed.
‘Oh no. After fighting so hard to get a part on stage, I want to be one of them all right. It’s just that sometimes … it feels so strange.’
‘Like me being here in Bute Street instead of the farm or on the Brecon Beacons.’
‘Home sweet home.’ Judy stopped outside the bakery yard and looked up at the windows. ‘The lights are out. That means Edyth’s in bed.’
‘Where I should be, if I’m going to get up early tomorrow to work on the site.’
‘I don’t have to be up until midday,’ Judy said.
‘Lucky you.’
‘I wasn’t boasting. But I can never go to sleep straight after coming back from the theatre. Too wound up by all the applause and excitement of knowing we’ve pulled off another successful performance against all the odds. You don’t fancy a cup of tea, do you? I’ll make it in the bakery kitchen so we don’t disturb Edyth.’
David hesitated for a split second. ‘That would be nice, thank you.’
‘If we’re lucky there may even be a doughnut left,’ she whispered as she opened the door, stole inside, and switched on the light.