All That Glitters, page 33
‘Jenny and I went to see the vicar of St John’s this evening.’
‘Tony Pierce?’
‘St John’s is Jenny’s church. He’s calling the banns next week. We’re getting married next month.’
‘You know what you’re doing?’
‘You saying I don’t?’
‘I wouldn’t dare.’ Haydn swerved and fell into a chair.
‘Jenny …’
‘Jenny’s your girl, Eddie. You’re welcome to her.’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘Absolutely nothing. There’s nothing between Jenny and me. There was, but it’s over.’
‘You’re drunk.’
‘Guilty,’ Haydn agreed amiably.
‘Just as long as you continue to remember that it is over between you and Jenny.’
‘Why wouldn’t I, when I’ve got the pick of the chorus to choose from. Ripe, luscious pieces, just begging for it.’
‘You disgust me,’ Eddie said abruptly as he left his chair and walked out of the room.
‘That’s all right,’ Haydn called after him. ‘I disgust myself. So at least we’re agreed on one thing.’
The weeks before the wedding passed in a blur for Jenny. She felt as though she’d climbed aboard a runaway bus. Against all logic she still expected Haydn to step out in front of her at any and every turn, and carry her off to some quiet, peaceful paradise where they could make love all day long and not trouble themselves with the boring, mundane trappings of life like houses, furniture, clothes and food. Every night she went to bed and pictured the miracle that would save her, and every morning she woke only to be dragged into town, and occasionally Cardiff by her mother to purchase things for her ‘bottom drawer’, every item of which was designed to show the Powells that their Eddie was marrying way above his station into a very superior family indeed. And when she wasn’t in town with her mother, or having her wedding dress fitted in Gwilym Evans’, Eddie walked her to the woods behind Shoni’s and the place that had become special to them. Once there she closed her eyes, imagined the past year away and relived the time when the copse had been hers and Haydn’s.
Eddie made love with open eyes but she kept hers closed, fantasising that it was Haydn touching her, Haydn who whispered her name, Haydn who’d be waiting at the altar when she finally wore the long white satin frock that had become her mother’s one obsession. Day after day dawned, passed, and little that was real permeated her trance. She shopped, made love to Eddie, served behind the counter, all actions blurring into one. Nothing she did touched her, except late at night after Eddie brought her home. Then she hid in the shop and waited for Haydn to walk up the hill with Jane. It was only then, when she saw them together, that she felt something. An acute pain that wrought an almost unendurable anguish.
‘I pronounce that they be man and wife together.’
The Reverend Tony Pierce, resplendent in white surplice over black cassock had said the words. Jenny was wearing the frock and holding the flowers her mother had taken such pains over. Eddie’s plain gold band was on her finger – the band Haydn had handed him – the band Haydn had touched. Diana, her only bridesmaid, helped her with her veil. She turned to face the church full of people. Her family and Eddie’s in the front pews. Everyone except his mother, who had refused to come, paving the way for Phyllis to attend, leaving those few people who hadn’t suspected the relationship between Evan and Phyllis in no doubt of the state of adultery and sin they were living in. Jenny forced her lips into a smile, a spurious imitation that actually hurt the muscles in her face. The organ began to play, Eddie took her arm, led her down the steps and to the left into the vestry, Diana, Haydn, her parents and Evan and Phyllis trailing behind. People were smiling and nodding – her uncles and aunts, her cousins, the customers from the shop – but all she could see was the look on Haydn’s face as he had handed his brother the ring. It had been a look of pity. The same look she remembered him bestowing on William when his dog had died all those years ago. Haydn might have loved her once, but if he had, one thing was clear: he didn’t love her any more and now it was too late.
‘Even nervous brides have to sign the register.’ Someone pushed a pen into her hand and she signed because there was nothing else to do. Eddie, his father and hers had preceded her. A joke was made, everyone laughed. Diana kissed her, Evan kissed her, even Haydn brushed his lips briefly against her cheek, making her aware of Eddie’s grip tightening on her arm.
Back down the aisle, the organ still resounding to the rafters. Outside the church, standing in the porch while William took a photograph with a borrowed camera. Down the steps at the side of the church, into the hall below, where her mother had arranged for a wedding breakfast to be laid out.
‘Stop right there, both of you. Turn around. Perfect.’ Andrew John took a photograph. ‘If the rest of you stand behind Eddie and Jenny, I’ll take another.’
She continued to smile vacuously as Andrew used up all the film in his camera.
There was a gramophone. It played dance tunes after the meal of sandwiches, cake and salad had been eaten. She and Eddie danced, but not for long.
‘Bride and groom ready?’ Andrew John was there again, looking incredibly handsome in a tailored suit that fitted far better than Eddie’s off-the-peg ensemble bought for the occasion. It was the first he had owned that hadn’t belonged to someone else before him.
‘Dr Lewis said we could change in his house, remember?’
She looked blankly at Eddie.
‘You do want to go on honeymoon?’
Everyone laughed again.
She obediently followed Eddie through the door and over the road to Trevor and Laura Lewis’s house where Eddie changed in the spare bedroom. She was led into Laura and Trevor’s bedroom and fussed over by Laura and Diana, They squirted lavish applications of Evening in Paris and talcum powder over her, exclaiming with delight at the tailored pale grey costume her mother had sniffed at because the colour wouldn’t stand up to everyday wear. Then back over the road to stand in front of the church while relatives showered them with confetti.
More kisses for the bride. Evan, Trevor, her father, William – in a daze she went to Haydn. Eddie, no longer at her side, was kissing Bethan and Diana goodbye. Oblivious to William’s close proximity, she grasped Haydn and kissed him, pushing him around the corner of the porch, out of sight of most of the guests. She refused to release him, even when he tried to thrust her away.
‘Jenny?’ Eddie stepped past an embarrassed William, gripped her neck and yanked her away from Haydn with a force that stung. He frogmarched her to Andrew John’s car and pushed her unceremoniously into the back.
‘Sure you haven’t married the wrong Powell?’ he hissed in her ear.
She stared at him blankly, uncomprehendingly, as the car careered down the hill and drew up outside the New Inn.
‘Good luck, and enjoy your honeymoon.’ Unaware that anything was wrong, Andrew lifted the two small suitcases out of his boot and handed them to a porter who had walked down the steps to meet them.
‘Why don’t you come in and have a drink with us?’ Jenny pleaded, suddenly nervous at the thought of being alone with this strange, dark and glowering Eddie.
‘Thanks for the thought, but Bethan gets very tired in this heat. I’d like to take her home.’
‘Thank you.’ Eddie held out his hand.
‘For what?’ Andrew asked, taken aback by the gesture after all the antagonism Eddie had shown towards him.
‘For this.’ Eddie looked up at the New Inn. ‘And for driving us down in the car.’
‘Least I could do for a brother-in-law.’
They both stood and watched Andrew drive away, then, with a sinking heart, Jenny followed Eddie up the steps and into the hotel.
‘It’s eleven o’clock in the morning, I feel stuffed full and I haven’t got to be in work for a couple of hours.’
‘Lucky you,’ William and Diana grumbled as they passed Haydn on their way out of the church hall.
‘I assumed you both had the day off.’
‘Wyn’s sister is looking after the shop for me,’ Diana explained, ‘but I promised I’d be back as soon as I could. She hates leaving Wyn’s father for any length of time.’
‘And Charlie wants to get back from the stall to Alma. The shop’s busier than the stall now on a Saturday. Eddie certainly knows what day to get married on,’ William complained as he followed his sister down the hill.
‘Which leaves us.’ Haydn offered his arm to Jane. ‘Want to go for a walk before the matinée?’
‘I’d like that.’
‘Shoni’s?’
‘I’ve never been there.’
‘In that case it’s time you saw it.’
‘I will have time to go back to Graig Avenue and change out of this frock afterwards?’
‘Of course. I’ve got to change myself.’
‘But you don’t have to be in the Town Hall until half an hour after me.’
‘I promise to give you plenty of time.’
They walked slowly up the hill, Jane carrying her straw hat. Her hair had finally begun to grow, and although to her chagrin it was as straight as rats’ tails and much the same colour, Diana had succeeded in coaxing it into fairly respectable waves in honour of the occasion.
‘It’s odd to think of Eddie living in Griffiths’ shop.’ Haydn said half to himself as they passed the corner of Factory Lane. ‘When we were kids, we used to dream of living in a shop. All the sweets you could eat, biting off the corners of the bread, cutting slices of cheese whenever you wanted to. We used to think Jenny was the luckiest girl in school.’
‘I think she’s lucky now. Your brother obviously cares for her very much.’
It was on the tip of Haydn’s tongue to ask if Jane thought Jenny cared for Eddie, but he didn’t. Only he, William and Eddie knew what had happened, and it was best left that way. Besides, the last thing he wanted was to destroy Jane’s romantic illusions.
‘I doubt he would have married her quite so quickly if he’d known there was a shortage of places to rent. I’ve a feeling Jenny’s mother doesn’t relish the idea of him moving into her house.’
‘They’ll soon find somewhere. Jenny told me she’s put their name down with every landlord in Pontypridd, and with the war on, men are going away, and some wives back to their mothers.’
‘I suppose you’re right. Although it still doesn’t feel very much like war to me. If it wasn’t for the newspaper headlines, and the evacuees coming into town, I wouldn’t believe it.’
They left Llantrisant Road and walked up the lane.
‘It’s pretty here. You’d never guess you were so near houses. It’s like real countryside.’
‘Like Church Village?’
‘A bit. Although the fields there are more orderly, if you know what I mean.’
‘Regimented?’
‘Was that a scream?’
‘It’s coming from the direction of the pond. Kids are probably swimming there. Pity I didn’t think. We could have gone home and brought our bathers.’
‘It’s the girls.’ Jane put her hand over her mouth as she glimpsed three of the Variety chorus diving into the water from the bank, stark naked.
Haydn burst out laughing. ‘There’s no need to run away. I’m sure none of them has got anything you haven’t.’
‘All the same, I’d rather not view what they’ve got in your company.’
‘Come on, you’ve been working in the Town Hall for a while. You should have learned by now that chorus girls aren’t normal. They’re used to men looking at their bodies, and they think nothing of flaunting them.’
‘But those aren’t Revue girls, they’re Variety girls.’
‘It doesn’t make much difference; today’s Variety girl is only a poorer version of tomorrow’s Revue girl,’ he murmured, quoting one of Rusty’s favourite maxims.
‘Isn’t that the mouse of an usherette with Haydn?’
‘If you ask me she’s not all that mousy,’ Babs said angrily, eyeing the new green frock and waves set in Jane’s glossy brown hair.
‘They’re always together these days.’
‘His brother was getting married today. She lives with the family, so they probably invited her.’
‘Then why aren’t they both in church?’ Babs demanded.
‘There’s nothing between them,’ Helen said kindly. ‘Haydn told me Jane has no one. He sees himself as an older brother.’
‘That’s how he might see himself, but I’m not so sure about her.’ Babs looked at Jane’s flat chest and scrawny figure and climbed out of the water. Pushing out her breasts, she posed on the diving rock and shouted. ‘Haydn, coo-ee, over here! Come and join us.’
‘Not today thanks, Babs.’ He led the way on to the opposite bank and round the lake. ‘Cigarette?’ he asked Jane, reaching for the packet in his pocket.
‘I’ve never tried.’
‘Do you want to?’
‘I don’t think so. If I liked it I’d want to buy some.’
‘And you’re saving?’
She nodded, grateful that the girls were now behind them.
‘What for?’
‘Nothing, really. Just putting money by in case I lose my job.’
‘I don’t think the Town Hall’s going to let you go in a hurry.’
‘You never know. Anything could happen.’
‘It’s time you stopped looking over your shoulder. Dad and Phyllis will never put you out, not while they’ve got a roof over their heads. Diana’s fond of you. Brian adores you.’ He sat on the bank that overlooked the stream at the top end of the lake. Jane would have preferred to walk on, out of earshot of the cries of the chorus girls.
‘How much longer has the Variety got to run?’ she asked, eyeing the bank next to him.
‘Another three weeks. Here,’ he took off his jacket and spread it out on the grass.
‘I can’t sit on that, it’s too good.’
‘Of course you can. Pity I haven’t got my coat. The weather’s been so warm lately I’m not even sure where I’ve left it.’
‘What are you going to do when the Variety finishes?’
‘I’ve signed up for a run Chuckles has managed to get an angel to underwrite.’
‘An angel?’
‘A fairy godfather who has more money than sense, and fortunately for us, enough of it to back a show. If we’re lucky it will survive in the provinces and go to the West End. I hope it does. I’d like to do things the right way round for a change, instead of taking up the provincial runs from the West End stars.’
‘I hope it works out the way you want,’ she said, not quite understanding all the ins and outs of Variety.
‘Thank you, kind lady.’ He pushed his hat to the crown of his head and leaned back on his hands. ‘Here,’ he took the carnation Harry Griffiths had clipped to his buttonhole and handed it to her. ‘Sweets to the sweet, as they say,’ he murmured as she took it from him. Their fingers touched. He looked into her eyes and saw something that had eluded him for a long time. A loving intimacy born out of innocence. The kind he had once enjoyed with Jenny before chorus girls with their sophisticated, maneating ways had entered his life. Putting his fingers beneath Jane’s chin he lifted her face to his, and kissed her.
Chapter Twenty
‘I didn’t mean that to happen.’
‘I’m glad it did.’
‘I’m not. You deserve better than a rat like me who can make love to three girls in one week.’
‘Four?’ she looked up at him, mischief glowing in brown eyes streaked gold by the sunlight.
‘Listen Jane, you can’t rely on me, I’m here today, gone tomorrow. Different town, different theatre, different girl every week. I’m not even fit to be around someone decent like you. In a couple of weeks I’ll be moving on, we may never see one another again.’
‘You’ll be here long enough to make some memories.’
‘Memories aren’t what you need, Jane. You need someone steady, who’ll always be there to care for you.’
‘I don’t want caring from someone steady.’ She slipped her hand into his. ‘Just another kiss from you.’
‘Don’t you understand …’
‘I understand. You’re trying to tell me that you’re sorry you kissed me because you won’t be in Pontypridd much longer. Well, I’m not sorry. I liked being kissed by you. If I didn’t I would have thumped you right where it hurts, just as I did the first boy who tried to take liberties with me.’
‘Were there any others who dared to try to “take liberties” after him?’ he asked, smiling at the old-fashioned expression.
‘No.’
He started to laugh.
‘What’s so funny?’
‘You are. The thought of a girl as pint-sized as you thumping anyone is hysterical.’ He glanced at his wristwatch. ‘Come on, if we’re going to change before the first performance it’s time to make a move.’ He rose to his feet and offered his hand to help her up. She took it, and held on to it as they walked away.
‘Then it’s all right?’
‘What’s all right?’
‘You’ll consider kissing me again before you leave?’
‘I mean it, you deserve better.’
‘And if I don’t want better?’
‘It can’t possibly go anywhere.’
‘Who wants it to go any further than this?’ She stopped. Lifting her head and standing on tiptoe she raised her face to his. Wrapping his arms around her, he bent his head and kissed her again. She tasted of spring, of youth laced with the bitter tang of foreboding. He sensed this was one impulse he was going to regret. But none of the presentiments of impending disaster stopped him from doing what they both wanted until the sun beating down reminded him that they had jobs to go to.
Eddie followed the porter who carried their bags upstairs, into the bedroom Andrew John had booked for them. Pushing aside the net at the window, he looked out over Market Square. It was teeming with Saturday shoppers. It felt most peculiar to be here in the middle of the day with no work to go to, and nothing to do until it was time to eat later.
