Beggars and Choosers (40 page)

‘That is John Donne; the line below is mine.'

Her voice wavered as she read, ‘“Thank you for allowing me to say goodbye.'”

‘It appears I was premature in my gratitude. But it
is
goodbye, Connie. Make no mistake about it. I won't be coming back, not again.' He picked up his hat from the desk.

An icy claw of fear closed over her heart, constricting her lungs and making it impossible for her to breathe. She fell back on to the sofa, fighting for air, as the room swung giddily around her.

‘Do you want me to call Annie?'

‘You can't possibly mean it, Lloyd,' she said finally. ‘Not after everything we have been to one another.'

‘Goodbye, Connie.' He walked to the door.

‘She is married. As married as I am. She can't give you a settled home and family any more than I can. And she's running from her husband. I talked to people in Pontypridd when I went there to buy your present. Sali Watkin Jones is married to a butcher called Bull –'

‘You asked questions about Sali in Pontypridd!' He whirled around and faced her. She had seen him angry, but never like this. The savagery of his naked rage petrified her.

‘I wanted to find out if she'd told me the truth about herself, and she hadn't, Lloyd,' she babbled. ‘Her husband is a respectable man –'

‘A respectable man who beat her to a pulp.'

‘She was carrying a bastard when she married him. Did she tell you that?' she taunted.

‘Who exactly did you talk to?'

‘People.'

‘What people, Connie?'

She shrugged. ‘Just in the shops. I don't know who they were. They said her father had spoiled her. That she'd never had to lift a finger in her life. She was engaged to marry a rich man who ran off and left her for another woman on their wedding day. And Mr Bull had taken pity on her and married her, only for her to present him with a bastard six months later.' Lloyd was watching her intently but when he didn't interrupt, she continued out of sheer nervousness as much as in the hope that she might turn him against Sali.

‘They said she was too proud to serve in her husband's shop and after robbing him blind and pushing his idiot brother down the stairs and killing him when he tried to stop her from leaving with the money she had stolen, she ran off with her baby and her husband's sister. Her husband has lost everything, his shop, his business, and it's all her fault. He's been reduced to working for another butcher and renting a room in a pub.'

‘Did you tell anyone where Sali was?'

‘No one asked.'

‘Did you tell them, Connie?' For the first time since she had entered the office, he raised his voice loud enough for Antonia and Annie to hear upstairs.

‘No. I don't think so.'

‘No? Or you don't think so? Which is it?'

‘I don't think so. I had no reason to. I only wanted to find out what people thought of her, Lloyd,' she wheedled, making one last attempt to win him over. ‘Let's face it, what do we know about Sali Jones? Only what she told us. I know you admired her father, but you said yourself, you didn't move in the same circles as her. Why can't you see that she's no good?'

‘Read that last line on the watch again, Connie, and try to live up to it. And a word of warning, if you ever talk to anyone about Sali again, here or in Pontypridd or for that matter anywhere, or try to hurt her in any way, I'll make you sorry that you ever mentioned her name.'

‘Lloyd –'

‘I'm doing what I should have done years ago, Connie.' He opened the door.

‘You can't marry Sali until she gets a divorce. And I could divorce Albert. All you have to do is ask me.'

‘A boy begged you to do that years ago. You said then that it wouldn't work, and you were right. If there was ever anything between us, it's long since burnt out.'

‘We love one another, Lloyd,' she cried desperately.

‘No, we don't, Connie. We never did. We lusted but we never loved. Do you think love would have degenerated into this?'

‘I won't let you go.' She left the couch and threw herself between him and the door.

‘If you really loved me you would do just that. In a few short days Sali has taught me that much. Love is about sacrifice and wanting the best for your lover. Please, leave us both with a little dignity, and don't,' he gave her a fixed look, ‘ever demean Sali, or try to come between me and her again.' He saw himself out of the house.

Emotionally exhausted, Lloyd walked, oblivious to the families making their way home after visiting relatives, the drunks staggering between pubs, the gangs of boys gathered around the gas lamps playing cards and marbles and their lookouts keeping a watchful eye for policemen who prosecuted anyone caught gambling in the street.

He passed shop windows, stepping in and out of pools of light shed by the gas lamps, without even realising they were there. Connie's face, contorted, ugly in jealousy, filled his mind.

He stood in the square and gazed through the windows of the Pandy watching the men drinking at the bar. Joey was standing with Megan's uncle and brothers at the end nearest the till, pint in hand, chatting to the barmaid.

He remained there motionless for what might have been five minutes or an hour. Only when he was completely calm and in control did he turn towards home – and Sali.

Chapter Twenty-one

Lloyd lifted the latch on Sali's bedroom door and peered into the darkness. ‘Are you asleep?'

‘Yes.'

‘You talk in your sleep?' Lloyd stole into the room, closed the door behind him, felt his way to her bed and sat on it.

Sali sat up, panic stricken. ‘You can't stay here. Your father and brothers will be in any minute.'

‘There's no work tomorrow, so my father won't leave Father Kelly until the whisky bottle is dry and that won't be for hours yet. The Pandy is open until midnight, and as there's no chance that the barmaid Joey is chasing will be free until then, he won't be home until one or two in the morning. And Megan's uncle and his brothers are with Joey, so Victor won't return until they come home and disturb him and Megan.' He struck a match and lit the candle he had carried in from his own room. She was leaning against the brass headboard. Her eyes, dark and enigmatic, reflected the flickering flame, betraying none of her thoughts. ‘I've spoken to Connie.' He set the candlestick on the dressing table.

‘Why tell me that you've spoken to Connie?'

‘Because I thought you'd like to know.'

‘Why didn't you say you were lovers?'

‘Because you never asked.'

He didn't question how she'd guessed that he and Connie were having an affair and she realised just how close they had become in a few days. Already, there was no need for superfluous words between them. ‘I told you about Mansel and Owen. I even told you about my uncle and I've never let anyone know what he did to me. I was too ashamed –'

‘The shame is all his, Sali. It wasn't your fault,' he interrupted, reaching for her hand.

‘But you didn't tell me about
your
past.'

She looked very beautiful and dishevelled. Her dark hair, which was only just long enough to pin up, fell in a heavy mass of curls to her shoulders. Her silk and lace nightdress was rumpled, the top button at her throat had popped open and he had to fight an impulse to unbutton the row of pearls beneath it.

‘Surely you didn't assume that because I hadn't mentioned my past, I hadn't had one? Sali, I am twenty-nine years old next birthday.'

‘But it wasn't the past, was it?' she broke in. ‘You visit Connie several times a week.'

‘Not any more. That night, the first time we made love when I told you we'd have to talk, didn't it occur to you that there was someone I had to say goodbye to before I could make plans for a future with you?' Her hand was frozen and he enclosed it in both of his.

‘You haven't visited Connie since?'

‘I went to her house tonight because I was angry with her for the way she behaved towards you today. I've told her twice now that it is over between us. I promise you, sweetheart, I won't be going back there and I won't ever see Connie alone again.'

‘I don't have the right to ask, but did you love her?' She trembled from more than just the cold.

‘I thought I did when I was fifteen.'

‘Fifteen!'

He held his finger to his lips. ‘Ssh, we don't want to wake Harry.'

‘You've been with her since you were fifteen?' she repeated incredulously.

‘I started working for your father when I was twenty and I didn't come back until two years ago, so it's been more off than on and to be truthful I think the only reason it lasted as long as it did was force of habit. Both of us found it convenient.'

‘I don't understand,' she murmured. ‘How can you go to bed with someone because it's convenient?'

‘It saved both of us the bother of looking around for someone else. Connie had been living apart from her husband for years when it started between us and, for a few years afterwards I was more concerned with building a career as an engineer than finding a wife. And, just so you understand, it was having sex, not making love. But it took you to make me realise that.' He moved up the bed, pushed a pillow behind his back and pulled her head down on to his chest. ‘We've been together twice and both times, and for the only times in my life, I've felt that making love is exactly what happened. But,' he hugged her closer, ‘it is also perfectly possible for a man, and I believe a woman, to enjoy the experience in the purely physical sense. You've made me realise that it is like eating a jam tart without the jam, but you have to forgive me, sweetheart, because until us, I had no idea what it could be like with the jam. You said yourself that you didn't know lovemaking could be the way it is between us?'

‘I meant it, Lloyd.'

‘I know you did.' Kissing her would have been the simplest way to end their discussion. But he also knew that it would take more than a few embraces to heal the wounds that had been inflicted on her by Owen and more especially Mansel. She had a right to be suspicious of men and there were things that needed to be said if they were going to build a marriage, in all but name. His mother had once told him that the only relationship worth having was one based on absolute trust and he sensed that he had yet to win Sali's.

Sali lay against him in the freezing silence, listening to his heartbeat and trying to think past his ridiculous analogy of jam tarts. ‘There have been others besides Connie?' she asked finally.

‘Yes,' he admitted frankly. ‘Why do you think I'm so hard on Joey? I know from my own experience that he's on a merry-go-round to nowhere. I wasn't anywhere near the womaniser he is at his age, but then at his age I had Connie. Later, when I worked for your father, it was different. Before then I used to look at rich people in the same way a penniless boy stands with his nose pressed against a sweet shop window. As a qualified bachelor engineer I found myself invited into houses where my father and brothers would have been kept waiting at the kitchen door. And I wasn't only invited for the sake of the eligible daughters. Some middle-aged, middle-class women have strange ideas about working-class men.'

‘So, you've had many lovers?'

‘Women,' he corrected.

‘How many?' She questioned, dreading his answer.

‘Where have you put the block of paper I bought Harry?'

‘In his room. Why?'

‘Because I'll need at least that much if you want me to make a comprehensive list.'

Suddenly, she realised how ridiculous she was being in questioning his past, especially as he had accepted hers. ‘It doesn't matter, does it?'

‘No.' He kissed her lips. ‘Nothing that happened before we met matters. What's important is what we make of our love and our lives from now on.' He left the bed, unbuttoned his jacket, peeled his pullover over his head, threw off the rest of his clothes and climbed in beside her.

She knew he was right.

‘I love you, Lloyd,' Sali murmured sleepily when he woke her hours later by slipping from her bed.

‘And I love you. I'll do everything I can to be with you always. And I'll never, never hurt you, Sali. I promise you that much.'

‘I hate block days.' Joey tossed the logs he was carrying on top of the ones his brothers had dumped next to the basement door. Every Tuesday and Thursday, colliery workers were entitled to take home two logs. Painted with numbers to prove they hadn't been stolen and set aside by the workers themselves, they were invariably heavy, but it wasn't their weight that Joey was carping about.

‘You've only hated them since Victor started to teach you how to chop kindling.' Lloyd leaned over the bath and dunked his head under water. When he'd thoroughly soaked his face and hair, he lathered a bar of soap and spread it over his hair, neck and face.

‘I don't like the way Victor gives lessons,' Joey griped.

‘Stop moaning. Bring a block over here and hold it.' Victor pulled out the slice of tree trunk he used as a chopping block.

Joey lifted one of the logs on to the block, gripped the sides and closed his eyes.

‘Why close your eyes?' Lloyd rinsed his hair, leaned over the tin bath again and scrubbed the coal dust from his arms and chest.

‘One day, Victor is going to miss and chop my hands off, and I hate the sight of blood.'

‘I wouldn't risk soaking a log in blood; it wouldn't burn.' Victor brought his axe down sharply and sliced the log neatly in two.

Joey dumped the two halves next to the block ready to be split into kindling and carried over another log.

‘I didn't know you hated the sight of blood.' Lloyd rinsed the top half of his body.

‘I do, especially my own.'

‘You're risking seeing an awful lot of it, considering where you've been courting lately.' Victor split the second log.

‘Where?' Lloyd demanded.

‘Nowhere,' Joey broke in irritably, forgetting to close his eyes as Victor brought his axe down a third time.

‘That's not what a little bird told me,' Victor muttered knowingly.

‘Then you can bloody well tell the bird to stop chirping,' Joey snapped. ‘It comes to something when a man can't take a walk around his own valley from time to time.'

‘Strange how your walks always lead you up to Llan House.' Victor leaned on his axe and waited for Joey to carry over another log.

‘If you walk in that direction, the housekeeper will give you a bloody nose. She likes to keep her housemaids close and pure,' Lloyd warned.

‘How would you know?' Joey challenged.

‘Like Victor, I listen to birds.' Lloyd unbuckled his dust-encrusted trousers, unbuttoned his flies and stepped out of them. He hung them on the nail that held the rest of his coal-blackened working clothes. Stripping off his underpants, he stepped into the bath and lowered himself into the water as much as anyone his size could lower themselves into a four-foot tin bath. ‘When you've finished with that, wash my back, Joey?'

After Victor had split the last block, Joey held out his hand. ‘Flannel and soap, and move over so I can soak the flannel.'

‘Do you think Dad and the others will get anywhere with management?' Victor laid one of the split blocks, cut side down on the chopping block. Swinging his axe in quick, practised movements, he sliced it into two-inch wide sticks.

‘I doubt it.' Lloyd answered pessimistically. ‘But it's worth a try if it saves us two and half per cent of our wages.'

‘Back done.' Joey returned the soap and flannel to Lloyd.

‘Take these sticks out to the woodshed, Joey.' Victor pointed to the pile he'd cut. ‘I'll carry the rest up and put them in the wood bucket.'

‘What did your last slave die of?' Joey complained.

‘The pain I inflicted on him when he wouldn't do what I wanted.'

‘When I come back in my next life, I'm going to be the oldest.' Despite his grumbling, Joey piled the sticks in his arms and opened the door.

‘Shut it. Now!' Lloyd commanded as needles of rain gusted in on an Arctic breeze, hailing on to his back.

‘Joey, go out,' Joey chanted, ‘Joey, shut it. I wish you two would make up your bloody minds about what you want me to do.'

‘That's your second “bloody” since you came home,' Victor reprimanded.

‘There's only us here,' Joey protested.

‘The more you swear, the more you're likely to forget yourself in mixed company.' Victor set about the last log.

Lloyd stood up in the bath, wrapped himself in a towel and retreated behind the door. ‘You can go now.'

‘Kind of you to give me permission to freeze and soak myself, big brother.' Setting his head down against the weather, Joey ran out.

Lloyd tiptoed across the chilly flagstones to the ‘clean' side of the basement where they hung their evening clothes. Standing on a rag rug he towelled himself dry, and lifted his underclothes from his peg.

Victor sniffed the air before chopping the last sticks. ‘I smell one of Sali's meat and potato pies.'

‘I don't know how you do it.' Lloyd pulled on his clean vest and drawers, and heaved his shirt over his head.

‘It's just a matter of putting the scents together.'

‘Bloody Welsh summers, it couldn't be colder at the North Pole than it is out there.' Joey ran in, rubbing his arms, and slammed the door.

‘See what I mean. You're swearing and you don't even realise you're doing it,' Victor lectured.

‘Did you close the woodshed?' Lloyd pushed a stud through his collar and fastened it to the neck of his shirt.

‘No, I left it open so the rain could give the wood a good soaking.'

‘Did you?' Lloyd repeated sternly.

‘I shut it and put the latch down,' Joey bit back.

‘If you didn't, the rain will drive in –'

‘I said I did it.' Joey undressed and hung his pit clothes on the nail next to Lloyd's.

‘You're in a hurry,' Victor remarked as Lloyd stepped into his suit trousers, buttoned his flies and buckled the belt.

‘It's too bloody cold to hang about down here with Joey opening the door every five minutes.' He pushed his stockinged feet into his clean boots and bent down to lace them.

‘Language.'

‘Unlike you, Joey, I remember to be polite in company.' Lloyd ran up the stone steps to the kitchen.

Forewarned by Mr Evans that he would be late home from work, Sali had held back the dinner and was checking the pie in the oven when Lloyd walked into the kitchen. He looked around.

‘Where's Harry?'

‘Next door with Sam. It's his birthday and Megan told him that he could invite four friends to tea. I thought Harry would burst with pride at being one of the chosen.' She closed the oven door.

He grabbed her by the waist, pulled her close and kissed her, a long, loving kiss that left her wanting a whole lot more. Closing his hand over her breast, he carried her down with him as he sank on to his father's chair.

‘Your brothers,' she mouthed in alarm.

‘Weren't even in their baths when I left the basement.' He slipped his hand beneath her skirt and on to her naked thigh above her stocking top. ‘Come upstairs?' His smile broadened, but she knew he wasn't joking.