All That Glitters (14 page)

‘I’ll whistle.’

He opened the shop door; the bell clanged overhead.

‘Oh, and Eddie?’

He turned, wondering what was coming next.

‘Thanks for the chocolates,’ she smiled.

Chapter Eight

‘Two please.’

‘We’ve only got back circle left.’ Mrs Arkwright who manned the ticket booth squinted through the glass, sizing up Eddie’s companion. Jenny had purloined the smallest of her father’s suits. It had been his wedding suit, and was hopelessly outdated even by Pontypridd standards where one suit frequently had to last a man a lifetime. Neither did it fit very well. With the belt hooked on a new hole she’d made, the trousers still hung ridiculously loose and would have fallen down around her ankles if it hadn’t been for the braces that pulled the waist half-way up her chest. The jacket was ludicrously wide-shouldered on her slender frame, and the cap she’d pulled down over the nape of her neck to conceal the bump of her long hair, and low at the front to cover her eyes, only succeeded in making her look bizarre and shifty.

‘Your friend there?’

‘My cousin,’ Eddie explained.

‘Whoever he is, aren’t his clothes a bit big for him?’

‘You know how it is in the old Town Hall, you buy the best you can get for your money. Particularly if you’re a bloke.’

‘Suppose you’re right.’ Mrs Arkwright continued to eye Jenny suspiciously as she took Eddie’s money. ‘How old is he?’

‘Twenty-one. Same as me.’

‘And I’m sweet sixteen.’ She didn’t say any more for a moment, then, just as Eddie was ready to take Jenny by the hand and run, she handed him his change and the tickets. ‘Go on, off with the pair of you, but close your friend’s eyes when it gets naughty. Next!’

Without thinking, Eddie took Jenny’s hand and led her up the stairs to the circle. A piercing wolf-whistle followed by the cry ‘Watch out, queers about!’ stopped him in his tracks. Jenny pulled her hand out of his. ‘You might be my cousin but you’re not my keeper,’ she complained in an astoundingly deep voice.

He continued to walk alongside her in silence. An usherette offered Eddie a programme. He shook his head, hoping she wasn’t the one Phyllis had taken in as a lodger and he hadn’t as yet met. This one looked older than the young girl Phyllis had described. With any luck, the lodger would be working safely out of his and Jenny’s way, downstairs. They were shown to their seats. They weren’t good: the top right-hand corner of the last row offered limited vision of the right-hand side of the stage, but on the plus side he and Jenny weren’t likely to attract any more attention.

‘At least we can put our seats up and sit on the edge without anyone behind us complaining,’ Jenny whispered.

‘Shh!’ He glanced around to see if anyone was watching them, hoping that none of the boys from the gym had seen him holding Jenny’s hand as they’d walked up the stairs. He knew exactly how much stick queers like Wyn Rees got and he could well do without it.

‘I’ll walk you home tonight, Jane. Wait for me by the kiosk if I’m late.’

‘Thank you, but there’s no need,’ Jane replied stiffly as she dumped her half-empty tray on the sweet counter.

‘No trouble at all seeing as how I’m going that way anyhow, besides, I don’t think any girl should walk up the Graig hill alone at that hour. You never know who’s about.’

‘I managed perfectly well last night.’

‘Last night I didn’t know you were going my way, and it would be foolish of us not to take the opportunity to get to know one another, since we’re living under the same roof.’ While Jane was searching for an excuse, he ended the conversation: ‘Here then, as soon as you’re through?’

‘Now that’s what I call quick work, Jane,’ Ann congratulated her as Haydn returned to the dressing-room corridor. ‘Tell me what it is you’ve got, and where I can get some of the same. I’d give three years of my life to have Haydn Powell walk me home. One night would be all I’d need to create enough passion-filled memories to warm my old age. God only knows I was too damned scared of the minister and the deacons to do anything when I was young that’s worth looking back on now.’

‘It’s not like that at all,’ Jane remonstrated, wishing she hadn’t allowed Haydn to bulldoze her. ‘I lodge in his father’s house, that’s all.’

‘You lodge in Haydn Powell’s house?’ Avril’s eyes gleamed as she unclipped her money bag from her belt. ‘Now I know who to go to when I want to hear the latest gossip.’

‘I hardly see him. He gets up after I leave the house.’

‘But I bet you eat supper together. No one I know outside of theatre people eat at the funny hours we do.’

‘Was everyone else in bed when he came in? Did you have him all to yourself? What did you talk about? Come on, Jane tell Auntie Avril and Auntie Ann all.’

‘His …’ Jane hesitated for a moment, wondering how to describe Phyllis. ‘His stepmother was with us,’ she said finally.

‘Bad luck.’

‘Good luck, I call it.’ Avril opened the office door and tipped the contents of her leather bag on to the desk. ‘Otherwise Jane might have been in dire danger of becoming one more nick on Haydn Powell’s pole of conquests. And I can’t see any girl with a brain in her head wishing that on herself.’

Squirming with embarrassment, Eddie sank lower and lower in his seat, looking neither left nor right, rarely at the stage and never at Jenny. She, on the other hand, sat perched on the edge of her seat, her eyes focused on the static nudes. She studied their curves, comparing them to what she saw reflected in her dressing table mirror when she undressed for bed. She tried to read the expression in Haydn’s eyes, listen to the inflection he put into the lyrics as he serenaded each girl in turn. He seemed so sophisticated, so debonair, and so very different from the Pontypridd Haydn she had gone out with. She no longer knew him well enough to draw any conclusions from his stage performance, other than it was totally and utterly professional and – to her eyes and ears – mesmerising.

There were so many questions she would have liked to ask Haydn. Was he going out with one of the girls on stage? Had he fallen in love since he’d left Pontypridd – seriously enough to talk about marriage, the way he had once done with her? Had he forgotten her and what they’d meant to one another? Was he still angry because she’d allowed Eddie to take her home after they’d had that final, bitter, stupid quarrel? And above all, the one obsessive preoccupation that haunted her day and night dreams, was there a chance – any chance at all – that he might take her back? Would he ever walk into the shop again with that old, loving smile on his lips, the smile he’d kept just for her, only eight short months ago?

Eddie bought Jenny an orange juice and ice cream in the interval. A small pang of guilt beset her as he handed them over. A sixpenny box of chocolates and now these, as well as the tickets. He was spending a fortune on her. She’d try to make a point of making it up to him with a ham supper – but just a supper, nothing else.

While she waited for the lights to dim and the orchestra to start playing again, she stole a glance at him. He was very good-looking, there was no denying it, but to her eyes he could never be as good-looking as Haydn. How could he, with a nose pushed slightly out of shape as the result of too many sparring marches? There was also a dark bruise high on his cheekbone that had nothing to do with the shadows in the darkened theatre. She’d noticed it in the shop.

Boxing, always boxing, that was Eddie; all the old, retired fighters who bought their tobacco in her father’s shop prophesied a real future for Eddie Powell. The next Jimmy Wilde they called him. She remembered Peg-Leg Dean’s words:

‘I knew the minute I saw him in that booth, he’d go all the way to the top. Mark my words, he’ll be hanging a Lonsdale belt on his wall. You’ll see if I’m not right. He’ll have everything money can buy, just like my brother did. The cars, the best hotels, the best food, women queuing up to do a bit more than just shake his hand, the best of everything.’

Eddie, as dark as Haydn was fair. Quieter, more sullen, but, as she’d found out in a single fleeting moment of passionate ecstasy that had led to bitter feelings of guilt, remorse and misery, a savage and unrestrained lover in private. Eddie – her Eddie. If she wanted him, and couldn’t get Haydn, he could be hers.

The thought lingered, worming away like a maggot in an apple. Of course she was going to get Haydn back, but it wouldn’t hurt to hold Eddie in reserve. Someone she could turn to as a last resort. That way if she couldn’t have Haydn as a husband, she could have him as the next best thing, a brother-in-law. Then he’d never be able to get away from her, not completely. After all, a man could leave a wife, but someone like Haydn would never leave a brother – and if that brother was besotted with a beloved wife …

‘You haven’t said a word to me for the last two hours.’

‘You want me to say something?’

‘Thank you for coming out with me, Jenny. It was a lovely evening. I enjoyed it.’

‘I didn’t,’ he contradicted her sullenly, preoccupied by the wolf whistles that had followed them when he had caught hold of her hand.

‘Well I had a good time. So thank you very much, Eddie.’ She looked at his face, dark and angry in the lamplight.

They’d walked up the Graig hill side by side, both of them keeping their hands in their trouser pockets, a foot of empty space between them that Eddie had been careful to maintain. Every time she’d tried to narrow the gap he had moved away, even when it meant he had to walk in the gutter.

They reached the corner of Llantrisant Road and Factory Lane.

‘Home,’ she murmured.

‘And before eleven.’

‘We could have gone for a cup of tea.’

‘With you looking like that?’

‘I didn’t realise you were ashamed of being seen with me,’ she mocked. She crossed the road and he followed, still careful to maintain his distance. She put her hand on the latch. Eddie looked around. The hill was deserted.

‘I made some sandwiches. You coming in to eat them?’

‘Just for a minute.’

She disappeared through the high door set in the eight-foot wall. After one more quick check to reassure himself that no one was watching, he followed, closing the yard door behind him. Jenny faced him, her back against the storeroom door, the cap pulled from her head, her long plait hanging over her shoulder.

‘Now that I’m not a boy any more, you could kiss me.’ He’d earned a kiss, but this time she was determined to keep control, and make sure it was just one kiss.

Eddie needed no second bidding, with the images of the girls he’d seen on stage fresh in his mind. Setting his hands on her shoulders he pressed his body against hers. She crashed backwards, hitting her spine painfully on the knob of the door. Her cry was smothered as his mouth closed over hers. He seemed to be drawing breath from her body. She fought an onset of giddiness that threatened to engulf her senses, but everything – the yard, the star-strewn night sky, Eddie- faded. A cat screeched in the street behind them. She registered the noise, and as she did so she realised that Eddie had unfastened the buttons on her jacket and was plundering her body with his hands. Weak and lightheaded, she wrapped her arms around his neck and clung to him, immobilising his caresses with the weight of her body.

‘I remember being here once before,’ he mumbled hoarsely.

‘So do I, and it’s not going to end the same way. You can eat your sandwich and go.’ She reached behind her and opened the stockroom door. They tumbled into the small, stuffy room that smelled of dust and stale vegetables. He pushed her down on to the sacks of swedes, potatoes and turnips.

‘No,’ she thrust him away, trying to conjure an image of Haydn to mind. She was using Eddie to get to Haydn. That was all. Using him …’I’m not that kind of girl,’ she pronounced vehemently as he drew close to her again.

‘What kind of girl?’ He bent over her.

‘The kind I was once before, when you turned my head.’

‘Jenny,’ he nuzzled the nape of her neck. ‘I like you. You know I do.’

‘We have to take things more slowly.’

‘Why?’

‘Because …’ she tried to think, but his lovemaking had destroyed her capability for coherent reasoning. She almost blurted out that she needed time to make Haydn fall in love with her all over again, before another, more trite phrase came to mind: ‘Because I think we should get to know each other better before we repeat what happened last time.’

‘You enjoyed it as much as I did.’

‘The one thing a girl wants from a boy is respect. You’re treating me like you would a girl you picked up in Station Yard.’

‘What do you know about Station Yard?’

‘I’ve got eyes in my head like everyone else.’

‘As long as you haven’t worked there,’ he baited.

‘Eddie Powell, I’ve told you I’m not that kind of a girl. I never was until I met you.’

‘I know,’ he answered in a gentler tone. He kissed her again, tenderly and less urgently than before, then moved away. When she opened her eyes, the latch was closed. He had gone. Locking both the door that led into the yard and the door into the shop she turned on the light and retrieved her dress from behind a box of tinned sardines. Hoping her father hadn’t missed his suit, shirt or tie, she took off the jacket. Shivering, she looked down. If Eddie Powell had been there, boxer or no boxer, she would have punched him. Every button on the front of the shirt and trousers had been unfastened. Her breasts were bare, the restraining band of crepe bandage she had wound around them pulled down to her waist, and he’d succeeded in doing all of it without her feeling a thing. What was it about Eddie Powell? She didn’t love him. Yet every time she allowed him near her, she was no more capable of resisting his lovemaking than she would have been Haydn’s.

‘Want chips?’

‘No.’

‘I’ll pay.’

‘It’s still no. Phyllis will have a meal ready, and if we stuff ourselves with chips we won’t be able to eat it.’

‘Yes we will. I’m hungry enough to eat an ox, and I bet you are too. These hours are real killers when it comes to eating. Come on, truth now, when was your last meal?’

‘Dinner time.’ She tried not to think of the cucumber sandwiches. She’d only allowed herself one: it had been tiny and a very long time ago.

‘Come on, a couple of pennyworth of chips,’ Haydn coaxed. ‘Can’t you smell them?’

She could. She’d never eaten chips from a fish shop, but she’d often joined the other children from the orphanage when they’d pressed their noses against the window of the fish and chip shop in Church Village. The smell had always warmed her and never failed to make her mouth water. Just the thought of piping hot chips liberally sprinkled with salt and vinegar, the way she’d seen, decided the matter.