All That Glitters (17 page)

‘You’re working late tonight, Jenny.’

Glan Richards, a porter in the workhouse who lived next door to the Powells, had joined the group. Before she had a chance to answer him, the girl who was with Haydn took one look at Glan and ran off up the road. Jenny thought it strange, particularly when Haydn called after her and she kept on running.

‘Thought you might want a packet of cigarettes, Glan,’ she shouted, still hoping Haydn would turn and acknowledge her. He didn’t. Instead he followed the girl. A dry, burning sensation choked her throat as she slammed the door and thrust the bolts home. Tomorrow! Haydn would be in Ronconi’s with everyone else. He had to be. After all, where else could he go in Pontypridd on a Sunday evening?

The bells on St Catherine’s church were calling the faithful to morning service when Haydn turned up on the doorstep of Babs Bradley’s digs. She’d been looking out for him for half an hour although she would sooner have forgone the outing than admitted it.

‘Where we going, then?’ she asked, keeping him waiting as she pinned on her hat and pulled on her gloves.

‘The park?’ Haydn suggested. ‘We have an exceptionally good park here in Pontypridd.’

‘Really?’

‘Don’t let the slag heaps fool you. There’s some beautiful countryside around here. When you’re in a more amenable mood I’ll show you a lake where you can swim.’

‘What’s to say that I’ll ever be in a more amenable mood with you than I am now?’

‘No girl can resist my charm for long.’

‘Really?’

‘Really.’ Irked by her theatrical airs and graces, he mimicked her Cockney accent. ‘But then, even if by some miracle you were in a loving and adoring mood, today wouldn’t be a good day to go. Every child on the Graig congregates around Shoni’s pond on a Sunday afternoon at this time of year to catch young frogs and baby minnows.’

She wrinkled her nose as she closed the door behind them.

‘What do they do with them?’

‘Fry them in dripping.’

‘You’re teasing me.’

‘Would I do that?’

‘Yes.’

‘On my word of honour,’ he said with a straight face as they walked along Broadway towards Taff Street and the park.

‘You’re pulling my leg.’

‘If you come to the theatre early next Wednesday, I’ll take you to the food market before we start rehearsing. Show you our laver bread. It’s black and sticky, and made from the most delicious seaweed. Goes down a treat fried with bacon and cockles.’

‘Now I know you’re lying.’

‘I’m trying to give you a lesson in Welsh delicacies, woman. And if there’s a better topping for bacon, cockles and laver bread than fried leggy tadpoles, I haven’t found it.’ Taking her arm he led her down the side of Woolworth’s, past the Park Cinema and over the bridge into the park.

‘This is lovely. All this greenery, you’d never guess we were in the middle of town.’

‘What did I tell you?’

They turned right, past a covered seating area and flowerbeds, brilliant with roses and geraniums, past a lido and through a children’s playground.

‘You used to play here when you were little?’

‘When I wasn’t kidnapping little girls and having my evil way with them. Come on, I’ll show you some of my secret places.’

‘I want to go over to that wall. Look, there’s someone walking down behind it.’

‘Oh that. That’s nothing.’

‘It has to be something.’

‘Just a sunken garden.’

‘Oh do let’s look. Do …’

She clattered off, tottering on her ridiculously high heels and leaving him no other option but to follow. When he caught up with her she was standing on a crazy-paved stone platform which had steps leading down either side. It looked over a heart-shaped sunken garden set with raised flowerbeds that bloomed in dazzling blazes of colour several feet below ground level. Benches were set in recesses built into the walls at intervals, most of them occupied by middle-aged women dressed in black.

‘Why are they sitting there?’ Babs demanded in a shrill voice.

‘This park is a Memorial Park to the dead of the last war,’ he said flatly hoping to shame her into leaving.

‘The war to end all wars?’

‘So they said until the newspapers started telling us that another’s going to start any day now.’

‘Three of my dad’s brothers never came back from France,’ she spoke in the strained, reverential tone her father had always adopted when talking of his dead kin and comrades.

‘Neither did my father’s brother or half the young men from Ponty. This park was bought and planted with money raised by public subscription. Just about everyone gave something.’

‘And this garden?’

‘Is somewhere where people can sit in silence and mourn the ones who never came home, not even in a coffin.’

He left, wishing he’d never brought Babs to the park, or at least that he’d walked off in the opposite direction when she’d spotted the sunken garden. She looked as inappropriate in that sacred spot, with her bright red suit, blue blouse, painted face and nails, as a tart in a convent.

‘You cross with me?’ she asked breathlessly when she finally caught up with him.

‘No. Over there, as you can see, are the tennis courts where the sons and daughters of the idle crache play, but if we go down here to the left, we end up in a wild, wooded area that leads down to the river. Not many people walk this way.’

‘Is that why you want to walk here? Because you’re ashamed to be seen with me?’

‘Hardly, when I’ve booked a table in the New Inn for lunch. You can’t get any more public in this town than that. It’s just that after half a season spent apart I thought we should take time to get to know one another again. Preferably in private.’

She’d made him angry. She looked and acted like she didn’t have a brain in her head, but she exuded a blatant, arousing sexuality he found irresistible after a week of sleeping alone. One brief session with her, and others with Rusty in his dressing room between shows, were no substitute for the shared bed and sex on tap he’d enjoyed with Babs in Brighton, and Rusty in Finchley.

‘Supposing I don’t want to get to know you again?’ she goaded him.

‘Oh, but you do.’ He kissed her lips.

‘Now you’ve got lipstick all over you. Here.’ She dabbed ineffectually at his mouth with a scrap of lace.

‘What say you, we retreat into those bushes and put some more on.’

‘Haydn, you’re always so …’

‘Wonderful?’ He fought his way through the undergrowth and gained access to the secluded copse he’d had his eye on.

‘No … so like nothing ever matters to you. Especially me.’

He took off his mackintosh, and spread it on the ground. ‘I assure you, madam, after a good time, you’re the most important thing in the world to me.’ He picked a daisy and solemnly presented it to her.

‘Really?’

He was finding it hard to keep up the jocular style he habitually adopted in the theatre, after looking down on the sunken garden. He should never have led her anywhere near the place. It had been special to him since the day his father had taken him there and explained why it had been built, and how it was the only grave his Auntie Megan had for her husband. And that whenever any of the grown-ups in the family wanted to mourn his brother William, that was where they went.

‘Ooh, you looked quite nasty then. What were you thinking about?’

‘You,’ he lied, suppressing his mood. ‘Come here woman.’

‘Why, so you can have your wicked way with me?’ She batted her eyelashes. He was left with the uncomfortable feeling that they were playing out the leading roles in a Victorian melodrama. He was growing tired of women who never stopped acting, on and off stage. For an instant, a brief instant, he almost walked away, then he noticed the swell of her breasts beneath her thin jacket, and the fullness of her legs clearly outlined beneath her tight skirt. Grabbing her hand he pulled her down beside him.

‘Ow!’ she shrieked rubbing her bottom.

‘I’ll give you a lot more to complain about in a minute.’ Pushing her down on the ground he kissed her firmly, and thoroughly.

‘Is this the sort of rehearsing you’ve been doing with Helen?’

‘Who’s Helen?’

‘You know.’

‘Not when I’m with you.’

‘Haydn, when are we going to eat?’

‘When we’ve worked up an appetite.’ He slid his hand up her skirt.

‘Just be careful you don’t tear the lace on my knickers when you pull them off. They’re my best ones.’

Sunday was William and Eddie’s lie-in day, the one day a week they didn’t have to get up, and generally didn’t until dinner was on the table. Diana usually rose earlier, not as early as she did during the week, but soon enough to prepare the vegetables for Phyllis, who liked to adhere to the strict Welsh tradition of a good Sunday dinner.

Jane was up before Diana. She’d brought back another pile of mending from the Town Hall, and intended to do it in daylight. Surprised to find herself the only person up, she settled herself comfortably in Evan’s easy chair and set to work.

‘Hello Jane,’ Diana said as she walked into the kitchen. ‘Funny to think you’ve been living here a week and we’ve hardly said more to each other than “pass the butter” at breakfast.’

‘Sorry,’ Jane apologised, ‘early mornings have never been my strong point.’

‘Mine neither. You’re busy,’ Diana commented looking at the mountain of mending.

‘You can sit here if you like,’ Jane offered, jumping to her feet, embarrassed because she’d taken the best seat in the room, next to the range and in front of the window.

‘No thanks. I’m just about to clean the vegetables.’

‘I can do that.’

‘I think you’d better get on with your mending. Looks like there’s enough there to keep you going all week.’

‘It’s for the girls in the Town Hall.’

‘I trust they’re paying you.’

‘They are. I hope to make enough to buy a change of clothes.’

‘Judging by the pile you’ve got there, you should have enough to buy a whole new wardrobe.’

‘I took Phyllis’s mending basket, too.’ Jane snapped a thread with her teeth before tossing a stocking on to the repaired pile.

‘You charging Phyllis too?’

‘Of course not. It’s just a small thank-you for letting me stay here until I’ve worked my week in hand.’

‘Phyllis will be pleased.’ Diana hadn’t quite made up her mind about Jane yet. She’d gleaned a little of her history from Phyllis and her Uncle Evan, but not a great deal. Just that Jane Jones had lived in Church Village and got herself a job in the Town Hall, in itself a rather daring thing to do when a Revue was playing there. Jane invariably came home after she was in bed, left on market days before she was up, and on the other days came down so late there’d been little time to exchange anything other than the barest of pleasantries. But even so, Diana had noticed that there were a few things about Jane that didn’t quite ring true. Her lack of clothes for a start. Diana knew she occasionally borrowed Phyllis’s coat because she didn’t have one of her own. She seemed to have arrived on the doorstep with only the clothes she stood up in. And when Diana had checked the box room one night in a search for Brian’s lost teddy, she couldn’t help but observe that it was clean, neat, and completely barren. No photographs, no ribbons, no stockings, not even a hairbrush on the chest of drawers, and when she’d looked further, even the nightdress folded beneath the pillow had turned out to be one Phyllis had inherited from her landlady. Diana had never come across a girl before who owned nothing at all. Even the poorest of the skivvies in the Royal Infirmary in Cardiff, where she had once worked, had owned a change of clothes.

‘If you’ve any mending, I’ll do it for you if you’re quite sure I can’t help with the vegetable,’ Jane offered.

‘I couldn’t let you do that.’

‘It’s no trouble, not now I’ve everything to hand.’

‘Tell you what, I’ll give you my mending, and in return I’ll cook breakfast for both of us.’

‘That sounds good. I’m a terrible cook.’

‘I thought that was the one skill every mother tried to instil in her daughter,’ Diana probed. ‘My mother used to get me to repeat my disasters over and over again. The lodgers and my brother had to put up with some pretty indigestible meals before I finally got it right.’

‘I never got that far,’ Jane said uncomfortably, mindful of Phyllis’s fears that her origins might come out.

‘Right, breakfast it is. Porridge do you?’

‘Yes, please.’

‘What are you going to do today?’ Diana asked as she fetched oatmeal from the pantry, tipped it into a pan, added water and salt and stirred it.

‘I hadn’t thought. Perhaps, if Phyllis lends me some clothes, my washing.’

‘Washing?’ Diana laughed. ‘The neighbours regard this house as ungodly enough without you hanging out washing on a Sunday.’

‘Ungodly?’

‘I take it you’ve no intention of going to chapel? If you had you’d be there by now.’

‘I’m church,’ Jane answered without thinking. She’d been in St John’s church once to be confirmed by the Bishop. It had been a special ceremony for workhouse inmates, just as occasionally they held special christenings for abandoned babies and converts. Otherwise the vicar held services in the dining room of the Homes. ‘Out of sight and out of mind’ applied to workhouse inmates even where Christians and church were concerned.

‘Well, are you going to church then?’

‘No,’ Jane replied hastily.

‘Can’t say I blame you on a day like this. So what you going to do?’

‘The mending.’

‘That’s not going to take you all day. Look, the boys and I will probably go for a walk down the park, or over Shoni’s after dinner and we always end up in Ronconi’s …’

‘Ronconi’s?’

‘The café on the Tumble. You don’t know much about Ponty, do you?’

Jane shook her head.

‘Well, it’s about time you learned.’

‘I don’t know.’ It was bad enough making the trips she had to. Even with the added protection of her black dress and hat pulled low over her head, she was terrified of meeting someone from the workhouse, like the porter she’d seen the other night. If he’d recognised her and said something she wouldn’t be sitting here, but scrubbing out yards again.