Tiger Bay Blues (13 page)

It was one of the most romantic things he had ever said to her. But she had to ask the question uppermost in her mind: ‘What happens to your career if you don’t get married?’

‘I can take the curacy, but if I’m still single when Reverend Richards retires, as the Bishop expects him to do within six months, the Church will look for someone else to take over the parish.’

‘That’s unfair,’ she cried out. ‘It’s you who will be appointed, not the woman you marry.’

‘It may be unfair, but the Bishop’s decision is final. He couldn’t have made it clearer when he spoke to me before you arrived tonight. No wife – no parish.’

‘It’s that important for you to be married?’

‘Edyth, I know you’ve led a sheltered and privileged life, but you must have some of idea what Tiger Bay is like.’

‘I went to Moore’s shipping offices in Bute Street with Toby and Bella to see some of his paintings. The offices, Port Authority, banks, and Exchange buildings are magnificent. As for the streets behind them, I saw working-class homes, no different from the Rhondda. Presumably the people in them work on the docks or aboard ships instead of in the pits,’ she replied.

‘Not all the sailors live in your working-class homes. A fair number of foreigners disembark with money in their pockets which they are looking to spend before their next voyage.’

‘Which means lots of pubs, drunks, houses of ill-repute, and women who make a living in ways that aren’t discussed in polite society. I haven’t led that sheltered a life, Peter,’ she retorted testily.

‘The Bishop – wrongly in my opinion, although I would never dare say it to his face – is convinced that the temptation of living in close proximity to that particular kind of sin would be too much for any bachelor.’

‘He thinks you would become a drunk or –’

‘You don’t need to spell it out, Edyth,’ he interrupted prudishly.

‘All I can say is that he doesn’t know you,’ she muttered, furious with the Bishop for insisting that Peter’s advancement depended on him being married. ‘No one, not even a Bishop, should have the right to tell anyone when they should marry. It is a private and personal decision that should only be made by the people concerned. ‘

‘It might be better if we talked about this tomorrow. It’s been a long evening, and I can see you’re angry.’

‘With the Bishop, not you,’ she snapped. ‘How dare he pressurise us? We promised my father we wouldn’t even consider marrying for three years, yet tonight I had the distinct impression that the Bishop and the Dean were planning to conduct our wedding service without even consulting me.’

‘If they were, they were only thinking of me.’ He grasped her gloved hand. ‘Consider the situation from their point of view, Edyth. Their first duty is to the Church. It’s their responsibility to train, place and advise the clergy, and use the people at their disposal to the best advantage. They aren’t thinking of themselves but the parishioners in Butetown, my advancement and – you.’

‘The last person they are thinking about is me,’ she said dismissively.

‘They know I love you, because I told them.’

‘What exactly did you say?’

‘What I just said to you. That I knew you were the one for me the first moment I set eyes on you at your sister’s wedding. They realise that it will only be a matter of time before we are man and wife. And they also realise that our future, comfort and standard of living depends on my position within the church.’

‘You told them that you wouldn’t marry me until you had your own parish?’

‘I didn’t need to tell them that. It’s Church policy to discourage curates from marrying. For one thing we’re always being moved about and for another our stipends are too small to support a family.’

‘And they thought they’d hurry things along for you.’

‘We discussed it at some length, Edyth, I told them that you had matriculated with honours and had a place waiting for you at Swansea teacher training college. I also told them that your father wanted you to take up that place. But as the Bishop said, “what purpose would it serve to delay our marriage for three years?’”

‘I hope you told him that it will give me time to qualify as a teacher,’ she retorted caustically, her anger with the Bishop momentarily demolishing her own doubts about attending college. ‘I think that’s purpose enough, even for a Bishop.’

‘Yes, you would have your certificate,’ he agreed, without answering her question. ‘But we intended to marry after you qualified, and as a married woman you would not be allowed to teach. So in effect that would be a waste of the next three years, not only of your life, but also mine. Years that we could both put to good use working together for the people of Butetown.’

She considered for a moment. ‘I hadn’t thought of it that way,’ she conceded.

‘The Bishop made me see that we have a choice, Edyth. Either I spend the next three years as a curate, and you as a student being supported by your father. Or we could both be doing useful work, earning our living and making a home together. Just think of the difference you and I could make in an area like Cardiff docks. There are children there in even more desperate need to have their energies channelled into useful occupations than there are in Pontypridd. And if this Depression lasts or gets worse, as your father seems to think it will, more and more people will be turning to the Church: the poor for the basics they need to live, the unemployed for societies and voluntary work to keep themselves occupied until they can find work again, and the wealthy in the expectation that we will distribute their charitable donations where they are most needed.’

‘You really think we should get married right away?’ She tried to decipher his expression in the thickening twilight.

‘I think our future is more important than you acquiring a teaching certificate you will never use,’ he said resolutely. ‘And your father has already said that he has no objections to our marrying when you are of age. But if you don’t want to marry me just yet –’

‘I do,’ she broke in earnestly. ‘But I resent the Bishop ordering us to marry.’

‘He didn’t, Edyth. All he did was offer me the opportunity to run my own parish, which is the reason I joined the church. Butetown parish could be the realisation of all my ambitions.’

‘My father was dreadfully upset when Bella gave up her academic plans to marry Toby,’ she murmured, more to herself than Peter.

‘What is more important, Edyth,’ he asked baldly, ‘your father’s disappointment or our future?’

‘It’s not as simple as that.’

‘Yes, it is. This is the golden opportunity that I have been waiting for all my life. If we aren’t married, the Bishop will appoint someone else vicar of Butetown. And then it’s anyone guess as to how many more years I’ll remain a curate, doing someone else’s bidding. The Reverend Smith in Burry Port didn’t get his own parish until he was forty-five. I don’t want to wait that long, Edyth, because it would mean delaying our marriage as well as putting my career on hold. Please, I’m not asking you to disobey your father; all I’m asking you to do is think about it before I visit you tomorrow. Will you do that much for me?’ His eyes glittered in the moonlight.

‘I will.’

They reached her drive. He drew her back beneath the trees. ‘I’ll be here tomorrow at teatime after I have seen Mrs Hopkins. We’ll talk some more then?’

‘Yes.’

He kissed her, and that time she was left in no doubt that it was a real kiss and their first. ‘You know that I love you, Edyth?’

‘As I do you.’

‘Then trust me.’

Suddenly he was gone. She walked up to her front door, her mind a kaleidoscope of rotating images. The Dean smirking at her, gloating in his superior knowledge of Peter’s appointment to Butetown. The Bishop cutting ever larger pieces of cheese. Mrs Price finally speaking in her timid, tired voice.

‘I don’t think Miss Evans understands the situation. The Reverend Slater will only be appointed vicar of Butetown if he is a married man.’

Peter looking at her in the moonlight.

‘You know that
I love you, Edyth?’

‘As
I do you.’

He was right. She hadn’t really wanted to go to college anyway. It was her father’s ambition for her, not her own. Maggie, Beth and Susie were bright. They would go to college in her and Bella’s place. Her father would soon recover from any disappointment. Especially when he saw the work that she and Peter would be doing in Tiger Bay.

Chapter Seven

‘No! No! No! Absolutely not.’ Lloyd paced from the hearth to the bay window, turned on his heel and glared at Edyth and Peter, who were sitting side by side on the sofa. Edyth’s hand was beneath Peter’s and the sight infuriated him. It was as though she had already adopted the role of submissive, subservient wife. ‘I agreed that you two could “court formally” – not that I had the faintest idea what that meant. I did not agree that you,’ he pointed at Edyth, ‘could marry before you came of age. Or that you could give up your place at college.’

‘Sir, please, if you would listen, just for a moment –’

‘Not for one second!’ Lloyd rounded on Peter. ‘You give your word lightly, Slater. Even for a clergyman.’

The curate’s colour heightened, but Sali was too busy watching Lloyd to be concerned with Peter Slater’s feelings. She had seldom seen Lloyd angry and then only when he had been fighting the blind stubbornness that had affected men on both sides of the miners’ strikes. He had never lost his temper with her or one of their children. She knew he was thinking of Edyth and wanted the best for her. But she also realised that his exasperation would only serve to exacerbate the situation and make Edyth even more determined to follow her heart.

‘Lloyd, please sit down so we can discuss this properly,’ she begged, when he continued to stalk restlessly around the room.

‘There is absolutely nothing to discuss,’ he said flatly. ‘Edyth gave me her word that she would go to college if she matriculated. She has matriculated – with honours – and she
will
go.’

‘But, Dad, don’t you see that even if I go to college, I will never use the qualifications I gain.’ Edyth spoke softly, in the hope of defusing the tension that hung, tangibly in the air. ‘As soon as I am of age, I will marry Peter.’

‘Even if you are halfway through your final year?’ Lloyd challenged. When she didn’t answer his question, he said, ‘So, you won’t complete your course in college, no matter what. Is that what you are saying?’

‘No, Dad. But as a married woman, I wouldn’t be allowed to teach, so my going to college would be a complete waste of the next three years. Better that Peter and I spend that time working together for the people who live in Tiger Bay.’ She unconsciously reiterated Peter’s argument.

‘You are only eighteen,’ Lloyd reminded testily. ‘The law recognises that no one of that age knows their own mind.’

‘But I do,’ Edyth insisted earnestly. ‘Making Peter and I wait won’t change the way we feel about one another. But it will lose him this parish. Please, Dad, I love Peter and he loves me. It’s not as if we’re asking for anything besides your and Mam’s blessing. The Church will give us a house once Reverend Richards retires, and then we’ll have Peter’s salary as a vicar to live on. We’ll be able to work together –’

‘We?’ Lloyd interrupted her. ‘You’ve been ordained now?’

‘Being a vicar’s wife is a vocation just as much as teaching. And now that I’ve met the man I love, it’s what I want to do with my life.’ She lifted her chin defiantly.

‘I may not be able to support Edyth in luxury, sir, but I will be able to provide her with a reasonable standard of living.’ Peter found the courage to meet Lloyd’s disapproving eye.

‘But will you be able to give her a teaching certificate?’ Lloyd mocked.

‘You know I can’t do that, sir.’

Lloyd returned to the fireplace, leaned against the mantelpiece and gazed at Edyth. When he finally spoke, all trace of anger had left his voice. But Sali knew him too well. Lloyd’s temper was quick to flare and just as quick to cool. He appeared calm and detached but she realised from the ice in his eyes that this time he had gone from fiery rage to iron frost. And there would be no thawing or talking him round. Not now.

‘Have you considered what kind of life Edyth will lead in Tiger Bay?’ Lloyd enquired conversationally of Peter.

‘As the wife of the vicar, she will be looked up to and respected by everyone in the community. She will help with the church groups, chair the Young Wives, act as secretary to the Mothers’ Union, run the Sunday school, Bible classes, temperance society, youth club and drama group –’

‘Temperance society?’ Lloyd ran his fingers through his greying hair. ‘Have you the slightest idea what kind of people live down the docks? Have you met the men and women she will be mixing with?’

‘We are all God’s people, sir.’

Knowing the effect the phrase would have on her father, Edyth winced.

‘God’s people?’ Lloyd raised his eyebrows questioningly. ‘Office workers, port officials, dockers, seamen, and their families aside, have you considered the flotsam and jetsam that wash up in every port? The homeless, the drunks, the gamblers, the gangsters, the prostitutes –’

‘With all due respect, sir,’ Peter turned crimson at Lloyd’s mention of prostitutes, ‘I have heard the stories about Tiger Bay but I also know people exaggerate. Many decent families live in Butetown.’

‘I said office workers, officials and working classes aside. But I don’t believe they will need the services of a vicar as much as the unemployed and destitute. Do you intend to ignore them?’

‘It is my intention to reach out a helping hand to everyone in my parish.’

‘How?’ Lloyd enquired sardonically. ‘By praying for their souls? Or by running a mission and doss house that you will expect my daughter to work in? One where she will be exposed to all kinds of vermin. And I don’t mean the human kind. A place where diseases brought in by sailors from every continent will thrive: tuberculosis, diphtheria, typhoid, plague –’

‘Dad, please!’ Edyth jumped to her feet.

‘I’m outlining the life of drudgery this man is offering you in the cause of furthering his career in the Church. I know his kind of religion –’

Peter finally retaliated. ‘I don’t think you do, sir.’

‘What did you say?’ Lloyd’s voice was soft. Ominously so.

‘You are a Communist, sir.’

‘A pagan who is going straight to hell, is that what you think?’ Lloyd’s eyes narrowed and Sali trembled, because the one thing guaranteed to incense Lloyd was someone lecturing him on religion. ‘I don’t need you to tell me what your Church stands for. Or what kind of people work for it. I have lived through too many miners’ strikes in the Rhondda Valleys to fall for your theological propaganda. I have seen the bodies of women and children who starved to death laid out in unfurnished rooms without even a blanket to cover them, because their families had pawned every possession they owned to buy food, and there wasn’t a farthing left to bury them. It was the pennies from the miners’ unions that bought their last resting place, not the coins from the churches’ poor boxes. I have seen pregnant women and babies with bellies and eyes swollen from malnutrition stand in line in soup kitchens set up by your Church in Wales – and other religious establishments – and watched while ministers made them sing hymns to God’s glory before they would hand over a bowl of watery soup. So, don’t lecture me on your Church – or your God, Slater. If he exists and sits watching us from a throne in heaven, he either spends a great deal of time sleeping or looking the other way.’

Edyth closed both her hands over Peter’s and tightened her grasp, willing him not to answer her father back. But if he understood her warning, he chose to ignore it.

‘Man is responsible for the misery in this world, Mr Evans, not God.’

‘Really?’ Lloyd questioned sceptically. ‘Then all I have to add is your God is very selective in the things he takes responsibility for. But I have no wish to argue doctrine with you. I believe in tolerance and free speech and gave my children the freedom to make up their own minds about religion and which, if any, church they wished to attend. But listen well, Edyth.’ He looked sternly at his daughter. ‘I will not sign a piece of paper that will put you at the mercy of this man so he can turn you into his and the Church’s drudge. You’re far too intelligent to waste your life. If you can’t see that it would be a waste, you’re not the girl I thought I’d raised. And I’ll be damned before I’ll give you permission to ruin yourself.’ Clenching his fists, Lloyd walked out of the room.

Silence closed in, warm, thick and suffocating. Edyth was the first to break it.

‘Mam?’ She looked to her mother.

‘I will talk to your father, Edyth. But don’t hold out any hope that I’ll try to change his mind. Peter,’ Sali turned to the curate, ‘I believe my husband is right. Edyth is too young to marry. She should go to college and when she has her teaching certificate she will have the means to support herself and be in a position to decide what she wants to do with her life then. In the meantime, for all our sakes, you should leave this house.’

‘Thank you for the courtesy of listening to me, Mrs Evans.’ Peter rose to his feet.

‘You can’t throw Peter out,’ Edyth cried, her anger surfacing now that Lloyd was no longer in the room.

‘I am not,’ Sali demurred.

‘But you’ve just told Peter to leave,’ Edyth argued. ‘And he’ll be going to Cardiff soon. I’ll never see him again –’

‘Don’t be melodramatic, Edyth,’ Sali rebuked. ‘Of course you will see him again. But we need to give your father time to calm down. And he’s not going to do that while Peter remains here.’

‘Would you have any objection to my writing to Edyth, Mrs Evans?’ Peter asked.

‘None whatsoever.’

‘You will allow her to receive letters?’

‘It’s not a question of “allowing”, Peter. We have always respected our children’s privacy and their right to lead their own lives.’ An icy note entered Sali’s voice at the inference that either she or Lloyd would keep Edyth’s mail from her. ‘You will be welcome to visit us another day. Edyth, show Peter out.’

‘I’ll walk to the gate with him.’

‘As you wish.’ Sali followed Lloyd out of the room.

It was late afternoon but the heat hadn’t abated and the temperature was as unbearable as it had been at midday. Edyth was sweltering in her thin cotton frock and she wondered how Peter could stand wearing his black serge suit, grey shirt and dog collar. She leaned against the conifer next to the gate and stared down at a clump of lilies of the valley growing in its shade.

‘They didn’t even listen to you,’ she complained bitterly.

Peter looked around; there was no one in the street so he slid his arm around her shoulders. ‘Do you think that your father will change his mind in the next few weeks and give us permission to marry?’

She shook her head. ‘I’ve never seen him so angry as he was just now. It’s not just us – it’s the Church. After what he said, I don’t need to tell you what he thinks of organised religion.’

‘It’s not going to be easy having an atheist for a father-in-law.’

There was an inflection in his voice, but Edyth was too miserable to pick up on it. ‘That’s supposing he ever allows us to get married.’ She screwed her handkerchief into a tight ball.

He slipped his fingers beneath her chin and lifted her face to his. ‘We will marry one day, Edyth, I promise you.’

‘I only wish I could believe you.’ She gazed into his soft brown eyes.

‘Trust me, we will be man and wife.’ He gripped her hand, lifted it to his lips and kissed it. ‘You’ll write?’

‘I’ll go to my room and start a letter right away. Where shall I send it?’

‘St Catherine’s vicarage, care of Reverend Price. I expect the Church to move me to the docks in the next few days, but he will know where I am and forward my mail. It should only be delayed by a day or two at most. I’ll send you my new address as soon as I have it. I don’t know yet if I’ll be staying at the vicarage in Butetown or not.’

‘I’ll miss you.’ Tears pricked at the back of her eyes.

‘I love you.’

‘I love you, too, for all the good it does us.’

‘Put your trust in God, Edyth. He will watch over us.’

She waited at the gate while Peter walked away, but tears blurred her vision long before he turned the corner. She took a few minutes to compose herself then looked up at the house, feeling as though it was home no longer, but a prison that was keeping her from the man she loved.

Judy sat on a stool beside her grandmother’s bed in the stifling front parlour. She had come to dread the nights, which seemed to have doubled in length since Pearl’s stroke. In the day, neighbours, her uncles and their families were in and out of the house, bringing flowers from their gardens and homemade cakes, and brewing cups of tea she rarely had time to drink.

Their visitors were kind, well-meaning and anxious to help, but she realised and reluctantly accepted that there was nothing she nor anyone else could do, except to allow death to take its inevitable course.

She had made up a bed for herself on the floor, but as her gran was noticeably more agitated during the hours of darkness, if she had the energy, she preferred to sit up. As usual, she had lit a candle when dusk had fallen and it flickered on the mantelpiece, casting tentacle-shaped shadows on the walls. It wasn’t just that she didn’t have a shilling to spare for the electric meter – although she didn’t; her grandmother couldn’t bear the glare of the electric light shining down on her.

There had been little change in Pearl King’s condition since the afternoon she had collapsed. She lay, as comfortable as Judy could make her, in the vast double bed that almost filled the room, unable to make an intelligible sound, or do the smallest thing for herself. Asleep or awake, her left arm twitched continuously, her fingers plucking at the patchwork cover she had stitched from scraps of the family’s discarded clothes.

Judy had spent hours staring at that quilt. She not only found it comforting, but preferable to looking at the ravaged face of the woman who had brought her up and whom she loved so much. And every single piece of fabric reminded her of some small instance in her grandmother’s life, or her own.

There were plain serviceable grey patches from her three uncles’ school shorts interspersed with beautifully embroidered white cotton patches, double-stitched for strength, from her own baby dresses. The striped pieces of flannel from her West Indian grandfather’s nightshirts had to be more than a quarter of a century old, as it had been over twenty-five years since her grandmother had received the telegram to say that he’d died in a fire on-board his ship. There were pieces of aprons she could remember her grandmother wearing, and borders from old tablecloths and tea towels. Fabrics that had once been a part of their everyday life together, a life Judy knew was fast ebbing away.