All That Glitters, page 23
‘Where do you want to stop?’
Shoni’s pond lay in front of them, its dark, tree-fringed expanse shimmering with the sparkling crimson and gold beams of the slowly dying sun. Willow boughs bent low, fingering the surface, sending ripples over the undulating surface to break against the bank. The flat rock known to all the Graig children as the diving rock lay on their right, half lost in undergrowth that would be trodden flat before school reopened for the autumn term. On the left bank a narrow meandering path led deeper into the valley, past secret copses and groves where lovers had held trysts since houses had been built on the Graig.
‘How about we walk a little further?’
‘If we go much further we’ll be walking back in the dark.’
‘Five minutes,’ she pleaded.
He picked up the shopping bag and shouldered it again. It was heavy. He’d asked her what was in it, but she’d refused to tell him. Ten silent minutes later she was still leading the way, following the bed of the stream deeper into the woods. ‘That’s it, absolutely it.’ He left the path and walked into a clearing. Jenny studied their position, trying to recall, from her outings with Haydn last year, where they were in relation to a sheltered, thickly wooded spot that couldn’t be overlooked from either the path or the hill above.
‘Here.’ She ran a little way ahead on the opposite side to where he was standing. ‘There’s more wood violets. I can pick a posy for my room.’
‘Bloody women and their flowers,’ Eddie cursed under his breath as he followed. ‘Jenny? Jenny?’ He looked around. It was as though she had stepped off the face of the earth.
‘Here.’
He heard her voice, but still couldn’t see her. Two close-growing bushes parted, and her tousled blonde head emerged wreathed in leaves.
‘There’s a lovely sheltered hollow here. There’s a blanket in the bottom of the bag. If we lay it down we’ll be as snug as two birds in a nest.’
‘No wonder the bag’s so heavy.’ He pushed his way through the bushes and dumped it at her feet. She opened it and took out not one, but two rugs. Spreading them side by side, she sat on one.
‘There’s room for two here.’
‘Then why did you make me carry two rugs?’
‘In case the ground was damp.’
‘It hasn’t rained in days.’ He sat next to her. Resting his arms on his knees he unbuttoned his shirt pocket and pulled out the packet of Woodbines he had bought from her father, and a box of matches. He smoked while she busied herself with the rest of the contents of the bag. Extracting a tablecloth she laid it alongside the rug. On it she arranged a tin box of sandwiches, a shop-bought apple pie on a tin plate, a bottle of Thomas’s orangeade, and two packets of biscuits, one plain, one chocolate.
‘Your father got anything left to sell in the shop?’
‘One or two things. The sandwiches are ham and mustard this side, cheese and pickle the other, and roast pork in the middle. Go on, try one.’
Helping himself, he began to eat. ‘This isn’t so bad. At least the midges don’t seem to be out looking for human blood, and it’s warm enough to sit without freezing your -’
‘Thank you, Eddie.’
‘Thank you what?’
‘I know what you were going to say.’
‘No you don’t.’ He took another sandwich and demolished it in two bites. The bread was cut thin, the butter spread thick, and he couldn’t fault the quality of the meat. It was Charlie’s best. ‘I was going to say your posterior,’ he grinned.
‘If you were, it would have been the first time.’
‘You accusing me of being crude?’
‘Yes.’ She poured out two enamel beakers of orangeade.
‘You’re probably right.’ He took a beaker and held it up. ‘Nice glass.’
‘My father got them free for buying in Beecham pills.’ She took a sandwich and curled up close to him, her head on her hand, her face inches away from his.
‘It’s dark in here, but the light will soon begin to fade outside too. We’d better not stay too long,’ he warned, thinking about the fight tomorrow, and the temper Joey Rees would soon be nursing because he hadn’t showed up for training.
‘We could wait until the moon and stars come out to guide us back.’
‘You thinking of setting up home here?’ He took the last sandwich from the box, oblivious to the fact that he’d eaten nine to her one.
‘Not home, but it’s cosy enough for one night.’
‘Your father might have something to say about that.’
‘What? I’m a grown woman, I know my own mind.’
‘Do you, now?’
‘Yes,’ she affirmed, hoping she wouldn’t have to spell her intentions out. It would be less obvious if he took the lead. ‘Can I cut you a slice of apple pie?’
‘My mouth is still full of sandwich.’
‘I was just wondering if you had the pie or something else in mind for afters?’
He tried to read the expression on her face. It was difficult to see her features in the green and gold twilight of the copse. ‘The other night, you said you wanted no more funny business. That we should “get to know one another better” before we went any further.’
‘The other night we were in the storeroom. My father walks in that way from the Morning Star.’
‘And I thought it was me you were backing away from. Why didn’t you say something?’
‘Because I wanted to wait until we were completely alone, with no danger of anyone disturbing us.’ She picked up the tablecloth by the corners and moved it to the head of the blanket they were lying on. Stretching out on her back, she rested her head in the crook of her elbow. Lifting her other arm she caught the hem of her skirt, raising it half-way up her thigh, exposing her stocking top. She gazed into his eyes, seeing her own reflection mirrored in their depths. ‘Like now, for instance.’
Eddie stared at her. She shuddered as though she’d been hit by a jet of cold water. If he’d told her at that moment that he had the power to see past the coquetry and teasing to the scheming and subterfuge that had induced her to arrange this picnic, she would have believed him.
Unable to bear his look a moment longer, she closed her eyes. A vivid image of Haydn intruded into her mind. Once again she heard the bitter, angry words they had flung at one another. What was she doing? In love with one brother and about to make love to another? She’d made the same mistake once before and paid dearly for it. Now she was compounding the whole disastrous mess.
Eddie rolled on top of her and closed his lips over hers. His tongue, warm, probing, darted between her teeth; his hands set to work on the buttons of her dress.
‘Eddie I …’ the feeble protest died as he bent his head to her throat.
‘I like your idea of a picnic place.’ He lifted her with one hand, pushing her dress down over her shoulders with the other.
She shivered, the cool air raising goose pimples on her skin as he tore off her underclothes. When she was naked, he straightened his arms, rose above her and looked at her. She waited, willing him to say he loved her, but he remained silent as he stripped off his own clothes.
‘The other blanket is behind you,’ She regretted the words almost before they were out of her mouth. Eddie was no fool. He would realise she’d planned this from the outset. Trying to rectify matters, she slipped her hand between his thighs.
‘That’s man’s work.’ Pushing her legs apart with his knee he drove relentlessly into her, paying no heed as she uttered a cry of pain. Making no allowances for her feelings or her needs, he made love to her the only way he knew how. Savagely, ruthlessly, fondling her breasts and thighs with rough embraces that bruised her delicate skin. His was a wild, uncaring act that had more in common with blows than caresses, born in primitive barbarism and driven by an appetite knew nothing of foreplay or finesse.
She arched her body, and dug her fingernails into his back, tearing his skin, wanting him to stop. But as the blood flowed, warm and sticky beneath her hands, it roused him all the more. Pain dissolved, first into excitement then into a pleasure bordering on anguish as she finally countered his brutality with a fierceness born of her own sudden, unexpected and overpowering lust.
‘Jenny … Oh Jenny!’ They were the only words he spoke as his passion peaked and died, but she treasured them. He had called her by name: that had to mean something. He’d realised he was with her, not some other girl he’d picked up. A few weeks of this and he’d be pleading with her to marry him. She’d see to it that he would.
‘Watch carefully. This is where you’re going wrong.’ Haydn executed three small steps. ‘Don’t you see, all my movements are downwards, all of yours upwards.’
‘Is that so bad?’ Jane queried, weariness making her peevish. When she’d asked Haydn to teach her to dance she had no idea he’d take her request so seriously or devote so much time to it. She had a bag of mending which had to be done tonight as she’d have to be up first thing in the morning to be on Wilf Horton’s stall by six.
‘In tap all the movements are downwards, in ballet upwards. I’m trying to teach you tap.’ Haydn retorted testily.
‘Can’t we carry on tomorrow?’
He looked into the full-length rehearsal mirror. They were standing side by side. Her small, slight figure alongside his. Her face white, pinched with exhaustion and strain. He glanced at his wristwatch. It was half-past eleven.
‘Sorry,’ he apologised, realising that in his eagerness to avoid Rusty and Mandy he’d lost all track of time. ‘I had no idea it was so late.’
‘It’s just that I have to be up early tomorrow. Market day.’
She walked across the room and picked up a carrier bag.
‘But you’re still doing the girls’ mending.’
‘I told you, I have to make a living.’
‘Until you get a stage booking?’
‘I’m an optimist, but not that much of one.’
He followed her out of the room, switching off the lights as they walked along the corridor. ‘We’ll leave by the stage door.’ He fumbled in his pockets for the key.
‘Have you had a lot of singing and dancing lessons?’ she asked as they walked down the stone steps and out of the building.
‘None.’
‘But you’re brilliant. All the girls say so.’
‘When I went to Brighton last Christmas to do pantomime, I had two left feet. This time last year I was working here as a callboy, and when they gave me a chance to go on stage I knocked everyone over. Just like a skittle ball.’
‘You’re pulling my leg.’
‘I most certainly am not.’
‘Then how come you’re on stage now?’
‘A week or so before my disastrous debut, the lead comic of a show took the entire cast and Town Hall hands out for a drink.’ He locked the door and tested it with his weight before walking on. ‘I tagged along and someone persuaded me to sing. A rather wonderful head girl remembered my voice and wrote a couple of weeks later offering me a booking in Brighton. It was my first break, but it was my voice, not my feet, that got it. If she’d seen me dancing she wouldn’t have picked up her pen.’
‘But you can dance now.’
‘Only because the choreographer in Brighton was a martinet who drilled me until I mastered the routines. Afterwards I got the girls to show me a few steps in between shows and rehearsals. I’ve never had a proper lesson.’
‘What about singing lessons?’
‘School and chapel choir, that’s all.’
‘I’d give anything to be able to sing like you, or Rusty.’
‘How you know that you can’t?’
‘No one’s ever told me I can.’
‘But you must have been in the school choir?’
‘I was never able to stay behind for practice.’
They walked through Market Square, past the brightly lit windows of Rivelin’s, through the deserted Tumble, under the railway bridge and up the Graig hill.
‘What do your parents say about your ambition to go on stage?’ Every righteous, God-fearing chapel woman Haydn knew in Pontypridd would move heaven and earth to keep her daughter away from the evil influences of the theatre.
‘I’m an orphan.’
‘I thought Phyllis said you’d lived on a farm in Church Village?’
‘I did,’ she said hastily, caught in a trap of her and Phyllis’s making. ‘But the people there took me from the orphanage.’
‘You’ve no idea who your parents are?’
‘I never knew them.’
He fell silent. Her admission explained some of the things that had puzzled him. Her lack of clothes, her quick readiness to do whatever people asked of her – for a price. Her eagerness to please, which he had never felt was entirely sincere, and the inner reserve he had never quite broken through.
‘So they were right.’
‘Who was right?’
‘My housemother. I had dozens of them, but when I was fourteen one came into the home who was nicer than the rest. She used to allow us older girls to sit up with her and do the mending after the little ones had been put to bed. She told us,’ she glanced defiantly at Haydn from under her hat, ‘that people would never think we were as good as them, because none of us knew where we came from, or what kind of blood was flowing in our veins. That it could be bad blood, criminal’s blood, even a murderer’s.’
‘And you believed her?’
‘It’s true, isn’t it? You haven’t said a word to me since I told you I’m an orphan’
‘It wouldn’t make a shred of difference to me if you were King Kong’s daughter.’
‘Yes it would. You know who your mother and father are. You have a brother and sisters, uncles and aunts. You know exactly who they are, and what they’ve done. The only thing I know about my mother is that she was unmarried, and registered in the workhouse three months before I was born as May Jones. When I was six weeks old she was found a job as a domestic outside the workhouse, but she ran away the first night she was there, and disappeared. Not that I blame her after …’ she fell silent, remembering Phyllis’s counsel.
‘After what?’
‘After seeing the way people look down on workhouse girls, especially unmarried mothers.’
‘Were you in the workhouse with Phyllis?’ he asked shrewdly. ‘Is that where you met her?’
‘It’s none of your business where I met Phyllis.’
‘Were you?’ He gripped her arm.
‘What I am, and where I’ve come from is no concern of yours.’
‘If you’ve been lying to my family …’
‘Your father and Phyllis know the truth. And as its their house I’m living in, they’re the only ones who need to.’ She tried to pull away from him, but he tightened his grasp.
‘You’re an unmarried mother, aren’t you?’
‘No!’
‘Then why won’t you tell me the truth?
‘Because it’s none of your concern.’ She finally managed to wriggle out of his hold and ran on ahead. He followed at a slower pace, resolving to ask his father just what he thought he was doing, taking in a workhouse girl with a past she felt she needed to lie about.
Chapter Fourteen
Haydn glanced up at the windows before climbing the steps that led to the front door. The only light burning was the one in the centre of the three bedroom windows – the box room. What Jane did with her free time was no concern of his, yet an irrational anger boiled up in him as he visualised her sitting up in the tiny room until heaven only knew what hour, forgoing rest and weakening her eyes just to do the chorus girls’ mending. Despite her evasiveness and his suspicions, he couldn’t help feeling that she was worth ten of them, yet she was the one earning a pittance while they made enough to buy whatever they wanted – including her time.
He turned the key and stole inside. Jane might not be sleeping, but the rest of the house probably was. A thin line of light shone beneath the kitchen door at the end of the passage. He hung his coat and hat in the hall before opening the door. The room was deserted. Two saucepans of water were on the warming rack on the stove, topped by plates covered by saucepan lids. He lifted one. Phyllis had left dinners for Jane and him – mashed potatoes, sausages, cabbage and onion gravy. His stomach, still knotted after the strenuous dancing lesson, heaved at the sight of the food. He looked around. There was no sign that Jane had been in the room, but he could hardly go upstairs, knock on her door and plead with her to come down and eat, not without risking waking the entire household.
He shouldn’t have pressed her so hard. Before he’d asked her about the workhouse, he’d felt as though she was beginning to trust him. He hadn’t realised until now how much that meant. In the competitive theatrical world, trust and friendship were luxuries in short supply. He regretted the impulse that had driven him to question Jane about her past – but then what if he hadn’t? The secret she was trying so desperately to conceal could conceivably surface at any time, causing heaven only knew what damage, not only to her, but possibly to his father and the rest of the family – even Phyllis and Brian. No matter what he thought, his father had made it plain last night that they were now as much part of the family as he was. Probably more so, since he no longer lived at home. He had to find out what it was that Jane was hiding, warn his father …
The front door opened and closed. Hobnailed boots grated over the flagstones of the passage, as Eddie tramped towards the kitchen door, totally oblivious to the din he was making.
‘Big brother still up?’ Eddie went to the range and lifted the lids on the pans. ‘Supper, and you’re not eating it. Where’s Jane?’
‘Gone to bed, I think.’
Haydn’s uncertainty warranted a second glance from Eddie. ‘You think? Didn’t you walk up the hill with her?’
‘I started to, but I wasn’t walking quick enough for her.’
