Beggars and Choosers (13 page)

‘As does your mother,' he reminded heavily, ‘and your first duty is to your immediate family, not a distant relative.'

‘Aunt Edyth –'

‘Is a distant relative,' he reiterated. ‘Do I have to say it?' He moved from the fireplace and towered over her. ‘I can see that I do. You have been jilted, Sali. I had serious doubts about allowing you to live with Mansel James's legal guardian, but both you and Mrs James were so insistent that I allowed myself to be overruled. Unwisely as it transpires, now that events have proved those doubts to be well founded –'

‘Aunt Edyth was Father's aunt –'

‘How dare you interrupt when I am speaking! I can see that Edyth James has allowed you to run wild. You have been jilted,' he repeated forcefully. ‘And under the circumstances, it would be inappropriate for you to remain within these walls. Therefore, you will get your coat and hat, summon the maid, check that she has packed everything you need for tonight and leave this house with your brother and me as soon as he returns with the carriage.'

‘And if Mansel returns?' Tears burned at the back of Sali's eyes as she mentioned her fiancé's name, but unwilling to give her uncle the pleasure of seeing her break down, she fought to control her emotions.

‘As he has been living in the rooms above the store, why would he return here?' Morgan enquired coolly.

‘Because this was, and soon would have become his home again. And he'd expect to find me here.'

‘You are hysterical, Sali. Go and find the maid.'

‘I am of age. I can live where I please.'

‘At your own expense. And you have no money.'

‘There is my dowry,' she countered defiantly.

‘The dowry is payable on marriage.'

The impasse between them shattered as the door opened and the doctor entered with Mr Richards.

‘How is Aunt Edyth?' Sali asked.

‘That is difficult to say, Miss Watkin Jones. One side of her face and body appear to be paralysed and she has undoubtedly suffered a stroke. As to its severity, it is too early to make a prognosis. What I can tell you, however, is that any recovery Mrs James may make, is dependent on the care she receives. I prescribe total rest, peace and quiet. That means absolutely no noise or raised voices in the house.' He looked from Morgan to Sali.

‘I am about to take Sali home,' Morgan informed him.

‘I told Uncle Morgan that Aunt Edyth needs me.' Sali appealed to Mr Richards in the hope that he might persuade her uncle to allow her to remain.

‘I have sent for a qualified and experienced nurse.' The doctor gripped Sali's hand sympathetically. ‘I know how fond you are of your aunt, Miss Watkin Jones, but she needs very special care.'

‘The arrangements the doctor has made for Mrs James are for the best, Miss Watkin Jones,' Mr Richards added earnestly.

‘Sali?' Morgan looked to his niece.

Realising that there was no way she could fight all three of them, she went to the door. ‘I will find the maid.'

Sali meandered through the days and nights that followed in a trance. The only time she showed any sign of animation was when she roused herself from her torpor to search feverishly for Mansel. Then, obsessed and preoccupied, she ignored her uncle's edicts that she remain in the house and walked the length and breadth of the town until exhausted, and mindful of the sergeant's theory, she ended her hunt at the riverbank.

Geraint spent every minute he could with her, leaving her only when she retired to her bedroom for the night, but she was oblivious even to his gentle attempts to draw her back into a semblance of what had been her normal life.

As she counted the days, then the weeks, Morgan tried to bully her into concentrating on her domestic duties. When his shouts failed, he increased her workload. But she ignored everything that he, and everyone else in the house said to her. If Morgan bellowed specific instructions at her long and loud enough, she carried out her chores mechanically, pacing the passages of Danygraig House, cutting flowers in the garden for her mother's room, unaware that Mari and Geraint were dogging her steps and setting her mistakes to rights before her uncle discovered them.

The nights when she was alone were the worst – and the best. On the rare occasions she managed to snatch a fitful sleep, she dreamed of Mansel, She knew it was Mansel, because she recognised his black coat, narrow grey trousers and high-crowned, grey hat, but he was always walking away with his back turned to her. No matter how desperately she struggled to call out to him, she could never make a sound and although she strained to lessen the distance between them, she never quite managed to draw alongside him. But occasionally, just before she woke, he turned his head and smiled; that warm, private, loving smile she knew he kept just for her, before vanishing into a thick grey mist that blotted everything, even her own body, from sight.

Mr Richards called every afternoon to give her progress reports on her aunt's condition, which remained unchanged. And every day she pressed him to repeat his and Sergeant Davies's theories on Mansel's disappearance. But he never had anything new to report. Worn down by her uncle's constant assertion that she had been jilted, she eventually began to believe that Mansel really had vanished into that thick, all-enveloping mist of her nightmare world.

At her uncle's insistence, she followed the routine of the house he had set after her father's death. Punctual to the minute, she joined him, Geraint, Gareth and Llinos for meals in the dining room. She poked at the food Mari set before her with her knife and fork, pretending to, but never actually eating. She replied in monosyllables to attempts to draw her into conversation. She visited her mother's room at the times appointed by her uncle, to plump her pillows, dispense her medicines and read to her, although the words she gleaned from the pages of her mother's favourite books were meaningless.

Even her uncle's reprimands and his vigilant imposition of petty rules and regulations, failed to break through the shell she had spun around herself. As she withdrew from the outside world, she became increasingly obsessed by thoughts of Mansel. She constantly picked over the events of the last hours and days she had spent with him. But even when she was certain that she could recall, word for word, everything Mansel had said to her, and every expression on his face when he had spoken those words, she was no nearer to unearthing a clue as to what might have happened to him.

I forgot to tell you, I picked up your wedding ring today. And I have a surprise for you.

What?

You'll have to wait until tomorrow night to find out. Time to dress and
go downstairs. Don't keep me waiting in the chapel tomorrow.

I won't.

Promise.

I promise.

Keep your word and there'll be a second surprise. I'm going to enjoy having a wife to spoil.

It was the not knowing that was the worse. She read the obituaries in the
Pontypridd Observer
of young colliers killed in pit accidents and envied their widows because they had a body to bury. Mari, who was as devastated by Mansel's disappearance as the rest of the family, but who was also addicted to the lurid Gothic romances she borrowed from Pontypridd Lending Library, firmly believed that he had been kidnapped. When two months passed without anyone receiving a ransom note, she dropped her kidnapping theory in favour of Mansel losing his memory, and began to weave elaborate tales for Llinos and Gareth, of Mansel wandering Cardiff Docks in rags with no way of knowing who he was, or where he had come from.

At the end of the first month after Mansel's disappearance, Sali was depressed enough to believe Uncle Morgan's assertion that Mansel had run off to start a new life without her. But although Morgan constantly and cruelly reminded her that she had been jilted, by the end of the second month she no longer cared about her own pain. Only that Mansel was safe and alive somewhere – anywhere. She couldn't bear the thought that he no longer existed. That he lay as dead and beyond her reach as her father.

The doctor insisted that Edyth James remain in complete seclusion for the first month after her stroke and placed a ban on all visitors. As soon as he lifted it, Sali ignored her uncle's edict to stay away from Ynysangharad House and went to see her. But her stolen visits proved pointless when her aunt remained resolutely locked in the coma she had sunk into on the night of Mansel's disappearance.

Gradually, even her bouts of frenzied searching through the town ceased. She sank deeper and deeper into a lethargic state where nothing registered, not Mari and Tomas's kindness, her brothers' and sister's concern, her uncle's spite, her mother's carping, food, sleep, drink – nothing mattered, until the morning two days after Geraint, Gareth and Llinos returned to school when she was too weak even to get out of bed.

‘Leave us, Mrs Williams,' Morgan ordered the housekeeper as he and the doctor walked into Sali's bedroom.

Mari squeezed Sali's hand. The girl lying still and white in the bed was barely recognisable as the happy, vivacious bride-to-be, who had been making wedding preparations only two months before. Skeletally thin, Sali lay on pillows as blanched as her skin. The only colour was in her smoky grey-green eyes and the blue-black shadows beneath them.

‘Miss Sali?' Mari whispered earnestly.

Sali continued to stare upwards at the ceiling, immobile, unblinking.

‘Miss Sali,' Mari repeated.

‘Mari,' Morgan reprimanded sternly.

‘If the doctor is to examine Miss Sali, sir, shouldn't I remain?' she ventured, risking a reprimand for the sake of her young mistress.

The doctor muttered something to Morgan but spoke too low for Mari to hear. Morgan moved behind Sali's dressing screen, folded his arms across his chest and stood, staring straight ahead. Mari knew that anyone behind the screen could look through the gaps between the hinges into the room, but as her presence was dependent on Morgan's permission, she dared not make a protest.

She stepped back as the doctor approached the bed and watched anxiously as the doctor took Sali's pulse and laid his hand on her forehead. When the doctor folded back the sheets and unbuttoned Sali's nightdress she expected Morgan to leave, but the minister remained behind the screen, his eyes focused on the cracks between the hinges, as the doctor applied his stethoscope to Sali's chest. Mari blushed in indignation as the doctor opened Sali's nightdress and exposed her breasts but Morgan continued to observe the examination.

The doctor pinched Sali's nipples between his finger and thumb several times. Sali's eyes widened and she looked from the doctor to the screen seeing her uncle's silhouette outlined behind the Japanese paper. Colour flooded into her cheeks and she cried out as she tried to cover herself. Ignoring her embarrassment, the doctor folded the bedclothes to the foot of the bed and slid his hand beneath the hem of her muslin nightdress.

‘Bend your knees and open your legs, Miss Watkin Jones.'

‘Must I? I ...'

‘Do as the doctor says, Sali.'

Mari bristled when she saw a peculiar glint of excitement in Morgan's eyes.

‘Uncle Morgan, I ...' Sali bent over quickly, grabbed the sheet and pulled it to her chin.

‘It might be as well if you leave, Minister,' the doctor suggested.

‘I am behind a screen, I am Sali's guardian and given her mother's frail condition, her only active parent. As I am legally responsible for her moral well-being, I have a right to know the facts behind her ill-health.'

‘Propriety –'

‘The housekeeper is present,' Morgan reminded curtly.

‘Mrs Williams.' The doctor glanced over his shoulder at Mari. ‘Will you hold Miss Watkin Jones's hand while I carry out an intimate examination?'

Mari's first instinct was to scream at Morgan Davies to leave the room but she remained silent out of concern for Sali. Since her master had died, she and the remaining staff had discovered that Morgan never forgave any servant for answering back. He had no hesitation in dismissing anyone who had not obeyed one of his edicts to the letter, no matter how long they had worked in Danygraig House.

The doctor folded the sheet Sali had pulled over herself, from the bottom of the bed together with her nightdress, and bunched them over her chest. Sali whimpered as the doctor pushed her legs apart and inserted his fingers into her. Mari glanced sideways and saw Morgan's breathing quicken.

‘Take a deep breath, Miss Watkin Jones,' the doctor ordered. She squirmed in discomfort and embarrassment. ‘There is no doubt about it, Mr Davies, she is with child,' he informed Morgan baldly.

Mari turned back to Sali. She had closed her eyes tightly, but not tightly enough to prevent tears from squeezing out from beneath her eyelids. The doctor left the bed and went to the washstand. Mari immediately pulled down Sali's nightgown and the bedclothes. Morgan moved out from behind the screen and stood at the foot of the bed.

‘My niece is carrying a bastard?'

The doctor remained silent.

‘When will she deliver?' Morgan's face contorted in disgust and anger.

‘Seven ... perhaps six and a half months.' The doctor poured water from the jug into the bowl, immersed his hands, took soap from the dish and worked it into lather.

‘I presume Mansel is the father?' Morgan said to Sali.

Curling into a ball, she turned on her side and sobbed.

‘Was that why he disappeared?' Morgan demanded. ‘Because you told him you were with child?'

‘I doubt it,' the doctor rinsed his hands and shook them over the bowl. ‘The wedding was to have taken place ... seven ... eight weeks ago?' He looked to Morgan for confirmation.

‘Eight weeks.'

‘Not even Miss Watkin Jones could have had a suspicion that she was carrying a child at that time.' He removed the towel hanging on a rail at the side of the washstand, dried his hands and dropped it to the floor. ‘Needless to say, you can count on my discretion, Mr Davies.'