All That Glitters (36 page)

‘Not yet, but I’m working on it.’

‘Do you remember how it always used to rain on Sunday School outings when we were small, and never on club?’ Diana laughed.

The platform on the Barry Sub-station was crowded with men in short-sleeved shirts, women in cotton dresses, and boys and girls carrying buckets and spades. William and Haydn stood poised when the train came in, and by dint of judicious elbowing they managed to commandeer the door to a carriage. Standing one either side, they helped Phyllis and Brian in first, Evan with the pram, then Diana and Jane.

‘Perfect.’ Diana fell into a corner seat next to Evan and Phyllis.

‘Who said you can sit there?’ her brother demanded.

‘I did.’

He looked at the bench seat opposite. He hated sitting with his back to the engine; besides, Jane had commandeered one window seat, Haydn the other.

‘Sorry,’ Jane jumped-up when she saw him frowning. ‘You can have this seat if you like.’

‘He most certainly can not.’

‘Why not, if the lady insists?’

‘It’s supposed to be gentlemen who give up their seats to ladies,’ Diana informed him tartly as he took Jane up on her offer. ‘Sometimes I wonder if you’ll ever grow up.’

‘He hasn’t changed since he was six years old and pulled the communication cord because he wanted a wee.’ Haydn took the centre seat so Jane could take his.

‘I most certainly did not,’ William contradicted indignantly.

‘First I’ve heard of this.’ Evan looked from Haydn to William.

‘We were going to Creigiau. Auntie Megan took us there so we could pick primroses for Mothering Sunday.’

‘Brave woman.’

‘That’s what the guard said when he came down the train to collect the five-pound fine.’

‘Did Megan pay it?’

‘He took one look at us six children and her black dress and let her off, but it was touch and go for a while.’

‘Is that the train starting?’ Jane asked as the whistle blew and the engine gathered steam. She looked out of the window. ‘Where’s that?’ she asked excitedly as they chugged past the Maritime colliery alongside a row of houses.

‘Woodland Terrace,’ Haydn informed her. ‘That’s Maesycoed, and up there is the school we all went to.’

‘One day it will have a plaque on the wall to commemorate the fact,’ William teased. ‘Haydn Powell, Revue artist and singer sat and didn’t learn his lessons here.’

‘Sandwich, anyone?’ Phyllis opened the bag.

‘We haven’t left Ponty yet, woman,’ Evan said.

‘I thought if they had their mouths fun they’d stop bickering.’

Everything was new to Jane. The sound of the engine, the sensation of travelling at speed, the scenery. The only times she had ever gone anywhere with the orphanage they had walked, and the transfers between orphanages and workhouse had been via a tattered old charabancs. She exclaimed over everything, finding magic in the most mundane of landscapes. Excitement mounted as the minutes ticked closer to journey’s end where the sea beckoned. Just as she’s seen it on the posters on the wall of the station. Barry Island! Even the name conjured up images of
Robinson Crusoe
.

Jenny read the notice on the bedroom wall.

‘ALL ROOMS HAVE TO BE VACATED BY 10 A.M.’

‘We’d better pack before we go down for breakfast.’

‘Not much to pack.’ Eddie picked up the pyjamas Jenny had laid out for him which he hadn’t worn, as he hadn’t bothered to undress when he had come in drunk at two in the morning. Fortunately the crowd he had fallen in with hadn’t known that it was his wedding day, but they had known about his success in the exhibition bout, and luckily for him they’d been prepared to celebrate it.

‘I suppose not.’ It was strange they were married, man and wife. They had slept together in that bed, but because of their quarrel they had remained each in their own half. The bottle of champagne still stood on the table, untouched, the dinner Andrew and Bethan had paid for uneaten. After the lonely hours she had been shut in the room with nothing to do, Jenny almost looked upon the walls around her as a prison.

‘We’d better get breakfast while they’re still serving it.’

‘Yes, I suppose we’d better,’ she echoed dismally, following Eddie through the door.

As the hills gave way to softer, more rounded contours, William sniffed the air. ‘I can smell the sea.’

‘In your imagination,’ Diana retorted.

‘Big Water!’ Brian cried, pointing out of the window.

Jane looked and saw mud flats and a dirty brown expanse of water, a little like a sluggish river, only wider.

‘That’s the sea?’ Dismay was evident in Jane’s voice.

‘It’s the sea, but it’s not the beach,’ Haydn reassured her. ‘That’s further on.’

Jane left her seat. Standing at the window she watched the water roll past. Little wicker gates painted brown and cream came into view, alongside a line of straggling fencing. Evan and Phyllis began collecting their things together. The train drew to a long, slow halt. Finally it jerked and juddered to a standstill. William heaved down the window, opened the door, and picked up the cricket bag. Clutching her bag of sweets Jane followed out on to the platform.

‘Beach first?’

The others walked on briskly. Jane didn’t even try to keep up with them. She wanted to stop and look. Everything was so different from the valleys: whiter, cleaner, even the air was crisper, tangy with a fizz not unlike that of bubbling lemonade.

‘You’ve never been to the seaside before, have you?’ Haydn enquired perceptively.

She shook her head, gazing at the length of the promenade and the expanse of yellow sand beyond, littered with thousands of picnicking families. And beyond them the sea, blue and brilliant twinkling with a myriad dancing sunbeams.

‘Or on a train?’

‘You must think I’m a real country bumpkin.’

‘No, just checking, so we can organise you a day worth remembering.’

‘I thought you’d be back for Sunday dinner.’ Mrs Griffiths opened the door to the flat on top of the shop. ‘One of your family dropped your case around yesterday, Edward.’

‘No one calls Eddie, Edward, Mam,’ Jenny protested.

‘Was it my cousin William?’ Eddie asked for the sake of something to say.

‘Probably, I didn’t see him. Mr Griffiths took it. He put it in your room, Jenny,’ she said abruptly with an air of disapproval. ‘And if the weight of the case is anything to go by, you’re going to have problems making room for your husband’s things in your wardrobe.’

‘We’ll manage, Mam.’

‘It will only be for a little while, Mrs Griffiths. A week or two at the most until we find a place of our own.’

‘Yes, well, that’s what you said when you started looking four weeks ago.’

‘We will find one, and soon, Mam,’ Jenny said insistently. ‘Come on, Eddie, I’ll show you my room.’

Eddie followed Jenny out of the passage into her bedroom. Set at the back of the house it looked down over the smoking chimneys of the coke works. Furnished with an enormous, old-fashioned bedroom suite and double bed which left as little room for manoeuvring as the living room, the atmosphere was every bit as stuffy and uninviting. Jenny opened the wardrobe door. Pushing her clothes to one side, she removed a couple of spare hangers.

‘You can have these. And I emptied the two bottom drawers in my chest for you on Friday night.’

‘Thanks.’

‘I’m sorry about last night, Eddie.’ She reached out to him. ‘Why don’t we go up Shoni’s as soon as we’ve eaten?’

‘Eddie, Jenny, the meal’s on the table. When you’ve got a place of your own you can do as you like, but while you’re living in my house I expect you to keep to my hours.’

‘Coming, Mam.’

‘Shoni’s?’

‘I have to go down the gym.’

‘Please, Eddie, I want to make it up to you.’

‘I work there every Sunday.’

‘Can’t you give it up now?’

‘We need all the money we can get. Besides, Joey’s generally there on Sunday afternoons, and I get in a bit of training.’

‘Can I come with you?’

‘No.’

‘Jenny!’

‘Don’t keep your mother waiting, Jenny,’ he said coldly.

‘Do you know this is the first time Jane’s been to Barry Island,’ Haydn said as they walked down the white concrete steps that led from the promenade on to the uncomfortably warm sand of the beach.

‘Then stick close to Uncle William, I’ll teach you everything you need to know.’

‘Like how to get sand in sandwiches, and soak your clothes in salt water?’ Diana suggested.

Evan and Phyllis were all for sitting where they were, but William insisted on walking until they found what he called ‘the ideal spot’ which, Jane discovered, wasn’t anywhere near other people. Given the packed nature of the beach, which was pitched somewhere between Ponty park on a Whitsun and Ponty market at Christmas time, the task seemed impossible. Eventually they found a patch of sand that met William’s exacting specifications. Not too close to the water to be damp, and not too close to the wall to be in the path of newcomers walking down from the promenade.

Diana and Evan spread the blankets. William and Haydn dug deep holes with Brian’s spade, much to his annoyance, and buried the bottles of lemonade and orangeade up to their necks so they’d stay cool. As soon as they’d finished Diana and William whipped off their clothes to reveal their bathers and ran down to the sea, while Phyllis and Evan lay back on the blankets and watched Brian play with his bucket and spade.

‘Come on you two,’ William shouted from the foreshore, ‘it’s swimming time.’

‘I don’t suppose you’ve swum before either?’ Haydn asked Jane.

‘You know what it’s like on a farm, Haydn,’ Phyllis broke in quickly. ‘Never any time for anything, and certainly not for trips down Ponty park to the pools, or the beach.’

‘Well she can paddle now.’ He grabbed her hand.

‘Let me get my dress off first.’ She removed it and, folding it carefully, laid it next to the towels.

He looked at her in amazement. He’d always thought of her as a skinny little thing, but he hadn’t realised just how undeveloped her figure was. Or was it that he was used to chorus girls? That must be it. He was so accustomed to seeing the shape of showgirls, he’d forgotten that females could come in different sizes. Realising he’d been staring, he looked down to see Phyllis watching him. Embarrassed, he seized Jane’s hand and pulled her behind him down to the sea.

She hung back as small, white-crested waves, brown and muddy with churned-up sand, crashed over her toes.

‘It feels peculiar. I think I’m sinking.’

‘If you keep walking you won’t sink.’ He raced ahead and threw himself into the water.

‘It’s Haydn Powell!’ Jane heard the cry taken up by half a dozen girls.

‘It looks like him, but it can’t be.’

‘It is, you know. I saw him last night.’

The boldest of the group walked up to Jane, who stood shivering uncertainly in the cool breeze that was blowing in from the sea. ‘It is Haydn Powell isn’t it?’

She looked helplessly to William and Diana who were wading towards her.

‘People are always mistaking him for Haydn Powell,’ William said, flexing his muscles. ‘His name’s Dai Evans. He’s a delivery boy from Treorchy. Now look at me, I’m actually Clark Gable’s younger brother.’

‘Eddie, please don’t go.’ Jenny begged as she watched him pack the strip he used for sparring into a holdall.

‘You want to stop me training?’

‘No, but …’

‘But? You don’t want me to bring home the boxing purses that’ll buy us a place of our own?’

‘I’m sorry, Eddie. I really thought I’d find us somewhere.’

‘Well you didn’t, and until we have somewhere, don’t expect me to sit around in this dismal bedroom listening to you shouting “not in daylight”.’

‘Eddie, I’ve said I’m sorry. We only married yesterday …’

‘As if I’m likely to forget it.’

‘What do you expect me to do all afternoon?’

‘Whatever you normally do on a Sunday.’

‘I can hardly go down the café on my own.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because we got married yesterday. If I go down there by myself people will talk. They’ll say there’s something wrong between us.’

‘Then they won’t be far wrong, will they?’ He picked up his bag and walked out.

Chapter Twenty-one

‘This is beautiful.’

‘There’s better seaside places.’

‘There can’t be.’ Jane, like Haydn, had left her shoes with Evan and Phyllis, but with the sun scorching down she’d followed his example and covered up. They were paddling side by side in the shallows, Haydn with his trousers rolled above his knees and his shirt flapping in the breeze; Jane with her frock unbuttoned over her damp swimsuit. He took her hand as they splashed past the last of the bathers, and picked their way over the carpet of gravel that marked the boundary between the popular stretch of sands and the deserted far end where black rocks cropped up, straggling jaggedly down to the sea.

‘I spent the winter season in Brighton. You should see the pier there, it’s huge. It has its own theatre as well as penny arcades and tea rooms.’

‘I’ve seen pictures of piers. Aren’t they built right over the sea?’

‘Unfortunately yes. We opened this season on Weymouth pier. For the first week we had nothing but spring storms. We went out every night praying the orchestra would play loud enough to drown out the sound of the waves crashing beneath us.’

‘Wasn’t that scary?’

He rolled his eyes. ‘Frightfully!’

‘You look as though you’re auditioning for a toff’s part.’

‘Even a miner’s son can aspire to playing an Earl.’ He climbed on to the rocks. ‘There’s a natural seat here,’ he called down, extending his hand. She stepped up, sat beside him and looked back along the beach. It was like an illustration from a children’s book. Babies playing in the miniature, white-crested waves that broke on the fringes of the sea. Middle-aged men and women solemnly swishing their ankles in foot-deep water, licking at ice creams that dribbled over their hands and wrists; the women’s dresses tucked high into their knickers, the men sporting knotted handkerchiefs on their bald spots. Further up the beach, older children were busy with buckets and spades, digging deep holes and building elaborate sand castles decorated with seaweed and shells. Matrons dressed for church, sat stiffly on hired deckchairs, frowning disapprovingly on pairs of lovers entwined in one another’s arms on old army blankets. And in the distance the white concrete glare of the promenade, alive with diminutive figures clad in brilliant white and pastel summer outfits; towering above them, the ramshackle wooden buildings and rides of the funfair, its infectious music drifting in snatches on the breeze.

‘The rides have started early,’ Haydn commented as faint, high-pitched screams of delight carried towards them. ‘I don’t suppose you’ve been to a fair either?’

‘No.’ She looked out to sea, thinking that nothing could have prepared her for this. The clear, sparkling brilliance, the sound of the waves interspersed with the chatter of a thousand day trippers, and above all the smell: a salty, fishy, tangy fragrance mixed together with stewed tea, sickly sweet candy floss, sticky, sugary rock and frying onions from the sausage and chips stands.

‘Then you’re in for a treat.’

‘How expensive a treat?’ she asked, wondering if the half a crown she’d brought with her would be enough.

‘To you, nothing.’

‘I told you I pay my own way.’

‘I earn more than you.’

‘That doesn’t mean I’ll allow you to treat me.’

‘I thought you agreed to be my girl until the end of the season.’

‘Girl, not sponger.’

‘Accepting a couple of rides won’t compromise your independence.’

‘I prefer to use my own money.’

‘I refuse to argue on a day like this. Come on,’ he helped her down from the rock.

‘What’s over there?’ she asked, pointing to a row of small wooden cottages.

‘Chalets. You can rent them by the week.’

‘It would be heaven to spend a whole week in a place like this.’

‘I wouldn’t know, but I can imagine. No work, no stage, nothing to do except this all day long.’ He looked over his shoulder to check that no one was close. Twining his fingers gently in her hair, he pulled her head towards him and kissed her, more slowly and thoroughly than he had the last time. As the length of his body burned against hers, she felt as though she was melting, fusing into one with him, the sun, the sand, and the sea.

‘The others will be wondering where we are.’

‘Let them wonder.’

‘They’ll suspect.’

‘I can live with that if you can.’

‘I wish it could be always like this.’

‘You and me?’

‘Not you and me, silly,’ she replied quickly, mindful of his warning that he would soon be gone, and not wanting to spoil a moment of the time he was prepared to give her by being too demanding. ‘This! The day, the beach, the sun and those chalets. I’d like to live in that one over there. The pink one on the end, not just for now and the summer, but all the year around.’

‘Pretty bleak, cold and damp in winter.’

‘I wouldn’t care. They must have fireplaces. I could build a fire and …’

‘No chimneys.’ he pointed out logically.

‘This daydream is mine not yours. Don’t upset it; if I want to imagine a fireplace in that chalet I will.’

‘Am I allowed to visit and sit by this hearth of yours?’

‘For tea on Sunday, if you’re good.’

‘Well, this Sunday, it’s time to go and eat. Not tea and crumpets, but pop and sandwiches.’

‘And then we’ll have to go?’ There was such a crestfallen expression on her face he couldn’t resist hugging her again.

‘Not for a few hours. But if you want to look at the fair we’ll have to leave the beach fairly soon.’

He felt more content and at peace with himself than he had done for a long time as he walked Jane back to the others. She was so naive, trusting and inexperienced. It was almost as good as being in love and courting for the very first time.

‘Again!’

‘Absolutely not. You’re getting ruined.’ Phyllis lifted Brian from the roundabout that boasted a bright blue cockerel among its wonderfully weird bestiary. He’d taken a shine to it the moment he’d seen it. Evan had paid for his first ride, but his reluctance to leave his new-found wooden friend had prompted Haydn, William, Diana and Jane to pay for another four.

‘Please?’ Brian looked up at his mother with enormous eyes that looked all the larger for the touch of sunburn on his round cheeks.

‘No. My arm is tired from waving to you every time you go round.’

‘If you come with Dad and Mam now, I’ll buy you a stick of rock to eat on the train on the way home.’ Evan bribed him.

‘You really want to go?’ Haydn asked.

‘Brian’s worn out. If he doesn’t have a nap soon he’ll start whining, and if we go now we can be home when Charlie and Alma come up for tea.’

‘But don’t let us stop you from staying as long as you like,’ Phyllis urged them. ‘I’ll make a pie that can be eaten cold.’

‘Don’t cook.’ Haydn said. ‘We’ll stay until dark so Jane can see the fair lit up, and buy fish and chips to eat on the train.’

‘The fair won’t be lit up tonight, boy.’

‘Why not?’

‘We’re at war. Blackout, remember.’

‘I keep forgetting.’

‘If it never gets any worse than it is now, I won’t be sorry,’ Phyllis said softly.

‘I’ll take the bag.’

‘Leave it in the station, Uncle Evan. I’ll pick it up when we get in.’ William offered.

‘I intended to.’

Placated by the promise of rock, Brian waved goodbye and trotted off happily between his parents.

‘Right, ghost train first.’ William dropped a piece of seaweed he’d been carrying down Diana’s back.

‘And the shooting gallery.’

‘And the penny arcade.’

Diana and William knew the fair inside out. Every time there’d been a few shillings to spare, their mother, Megan, had taken them to either Barry or Porthcawl. Familiarity with the layout enabled them to race from amusement to amusement at breakneck speed. But Jane refused to be hurried. She lagged behind, content to be a bystander, to watch others enjoy the rides and try their hand at the roller-ball and shooting galleries. Haydn finally collared Will and Diana at the cakewalk and arranged to meet them outside the fish and chip bar at dusk. Free to wander at Jane’s pace he led her into an arcade where she fed a penny into the laughing policeman. When the grotesque clown-like figure had chortled his last, he rolled a penny into a miniature waxwork model of a barber’s shop encased in glass. A door opened to reveal the barber wielding an axe instead of a razor. A customer’s head was severed, rusty stains dripped down the smock of the victim, the door closed, but not quickly enough. Jane saw the figures sliding back into their opening pose so the drama could be re-enacted as soon as the next penny was dropped into the machine.

‘I prefer the laughing policeman’

‘Try, “What the Butler Saw”.’

‘Why?’

‘My grandmother thought it too risqué for us when we were kids, so it’s probably all a sweet young thing like you can take.’

‘You’re forgetting I’ve seen Revue.’

‘Two numbers. We kept the best ones for when the usherettes went out.’

He followed her from one machine to the next, and later from one sideshow to another, all the while watching the expression on her face change from delight to confusion at the peculiar mix of fantasy and tawdry illusion.

‘Where to next?’ he asked as they emerged from an exhibition that included a bearded lady and a mermaid. ‘Miniature world inhabited by dwarves? Or the boxing booth?’

‘I’d prefer to take one last look at the sea.’

‘If it’s money …’

‘I have lots.’ She held out her hand, showing him the three sixpences she had left from her half-crown. ‘I just want to see what the beach looks like now the sun’s setting.’

The noise of the funfair grew fainter as they walked down the promenade towards the steps that led to the sands. Men, women, and even a few children, sat huddled under blankets in the shelter of the sea wall below them.

‘Better to be down and out in a seaside resort where there’s a chance of earning a few bob cleaning up around a stall or passing out a few deckchairs, than in a workhouse back home,’ Haydn said as they descended to the beach.

‘I had no idea so many people didn’t have a home to go to.’ She looked at them and wondered why she hadn’t found the courage to run away from the workhouse sooner.

‘Not all of them are homeless. Some are just here for one or two nights. Especially the families with children. If you can’t afford a chalet, camping out on the beach is the next best thing. The railway return for two or three days isn’t that much more than a day trip.’

‘And the others?’

‘I hope for their sake they find somewhere better to go before winter.’ He looked back at the fair. ‘I haven’t seen this place so crowded in years, but then I suppose people want all the good times they can get before the war begins to bite. I only wish you could have seen it all lit up. Now that is a sight worth seeing.’

‘It will be lit up again when the war finishes.’

‘Strange to think we’re at war. In a few weeks when it all gets organised, probably no one will be allowed to walk along here.’

‘Why?’

‘Beaches will be out of bounds, lest the Germans try to land spies on them. Though pity help the spy who tries to creep in on this coast. The Welsh are a suspicious lot, even of people they’ve lived next door to for years.’

Dusk rose from the ground, thickening the twilight and turning the sand a cold, silver grey. The sun was sinking low on the horizon, its dying rays smudging the line between sea and sky tinting it a subtle, velvety shade of red-gold.

‘The water looks like the powdered ink we used to mix in school.’ Jane stepped on to a peninsula of sand that a few short hours ago had been a magnificent castle, complete with driftwood drawbridge and pebbled battlements. The sea washed around her, lapping over her feet on its inexorable journey over the sands.

‘You’re going to get your shoes wet.’

‘They’re old ones.’ Wilf had been right. The oilcloth hadn’t worn well.

‘That’s the last turret gone.’ Haydn observed as a wave surged into the moat and undermined the remaining hillock of sand.

‘But there’ll be more tomorrow.’

‘Not as many as today. There’ll only be the local children and those lucky enough to be staying in the chalets to build them. But if the sun shines we’ll come again. And next time we won’t give our costumes to my father to take home early. There’s nothing like moonlight bathing.’

‘You’ve done it?’

‘Not here. In Torquay, and over in Shoni’s when we were kids. My mother used to put us to bed, then go to chapel meetings, and in summer we’d creep down the stairs and sneak out through the front door. My father never missed us. He was always in the kitchen with his nose stuck in a book.’

‘The water must have been freezing.’

‘No. It’s warmer at night than in the day. I’ll bring you back here next week and prove it to you, or better still, take your bathers to work tomorrow and well call in Shoni’s on the way home.’

‘As long as you go into the water first.’

‘Coward.’ He led her away from the sea. Holding her close he pulled her to the ground. They knelt facing one another, the sand cool beneath their legs, their lips warm as they kissed.

‘You were right earlier; it would be wonderful if this could last.’ He looked towards the end of the beach. ‘There’s a light on in your chalet.’

‘It’s not mine yet.’

‘When it is, can I live there with you?’

‘For as long as you like.’

‘I think I’m falling in love with you, Jane Jones,’ He hadn’t intended to say the words, but he meant them. For the first time since Jenny.

‘I fell in love with you the moment I saw you.’

‘Are you serious?’

‘You were on stage, singing …’

‘Then you fell in love with the stage me?’

‘Only for a little while, before I got to know the real you.’

‘And now?’

‘Only the real you. The one who’s with me now.’

When he looked around again, the outlines of the stragglers on the beach had darkened to black silhouettes against a rich, deep, navy blue sky. ‘I told Will and Diana we’d meet them at dusk. We should go.’ He dusted the sand from her legs as they rose to their feet. ‘Hungry?’