All That Glitters (21 page)

Phyllis and Evan were sitting in the kitchen either side of the fire, Phyllis busy knitting the better parts of a worn sweater into a smaller one for Brian, Evan engrossed in a library book.

‘You have a good time?’ Phyllis asked.

‘Terrible,’ William complained. ‘Eddie won twopence off me at cards, and as if that wasn’t enough, Glan Richards burnt a hole in my jacket with his cigarette.’ He held up the offending garment.

‘It’s on the seam,’ Jane remarked, ‘and it’s not too bad. A couple of threads pulled out of an inside hem and sewn over the worst, and no one will notice it.’

‘I’ll put it in the mending basket so dear sister can spend the next twelve months ignoring it.’

‘If you give it to me now, I’ll do it.’

‘See and take notice,’ William addressed Diana. ‘This woman actually wants to take care of me. I think I’ll adopt her; she makes a better sister than you.’

‘I’ve got first claim on Jane,’ Phyllis smiled. ‘Anyone who can empty the mending basket when I take a walk is an honorary member of my family.’

‘I like sewing, really,’ Jane protested, unused to compliments, even when they were given in William’s jocular fashion. She took Phyllis’s work box and lifted it next to the chair she’d pulled out from under the table.

‘Keep up the good work, young lady, and we won’t be willing to let you go when you get your wages,’ Evan murmured half seriously from behind
Ten Days that Shook the World
.

‘Here we are: cheese, bread and cocoa. William, when you’ve finished telling everyone what a dreadful sister I am, fill the kettle. Eddie, get a jar of pickles out of the pantry, I couldn’t carry everything.’

‘You should go into the army, sis,’ William said, picking up the kettle. ‘I hear they’re looking for sergeant-majors.’

‘Tony Ronconi reckons they’re looking for soldiers because war’s coming in the next week or so.’

‘They’ve been saying that all year,’ William scoffed. ‘If you ask me it’s just something for politicians to shout and the papers to write about.’

‘Not this time,’ Evan cautioned. ‘It’s coming, and it’s not far off.’

‘Will it be like the last one?’ The death of the father she’d never known, and her mother’s grief at his loss, had cast the only shadow over Diana’s childhood.

‘If this fellow Hitler keeps trying to take over all the countries around Germany, I can’t see what else the Allies can do except dig themselves in around his borders.’

‘Build a sort of Allied Hindenburg line?’

‘Something like that.’

‘Then we’ll all have to go and fight. How do you fancy your brother in uniform, Di?’

‘I don’t,’ she snapped. ‘I think you’d look an utter fool.’

It was then that Evan wondered if Diana knew that her father had died in an offensive on the Hindenburg line.

‘Well, now I’m here, what’s so important you have to stop me in the street?’

Jenny had led Haydn through the shop into the storeroom. She had hoped the surroundings would evoke memories of the nights they had spent here when they’d lacked the money to go out. Sitting, and later lying on the sacks and boxes, wrapped in each other’s arms, making plans for a future they had intended to live out together.

‘I just wanted to see you, to ask how you’ve been keeping.’

‘As you can see.’ He held out his arms and revolved slowly in front of her.

‘Haydn, it was my fault that it went wrong between us. I had to tell you to your face how sorry I am.’

He breathed a sigh of relief. Was that really all she wanted to say? Sorry? He’d been dreading a scene: at best a raking over of the circumstances that had led to their argument, at worst angry, emotional recriminations. ‘It’s water long gone under the bridge, Jenny. I don’t think about it any more, and I hope you don’t.’

‘I can’t help thinking about it. In fact I think of nothing else. Haydn, I should never have let Eddie do what he did …’

‘Jenny, don’t you understand? I don’t want to know. The truth of the matter is, I don’t care. Not any more.’

‘But I hurt you.’

‘I got over it.’ He turned to leave.

‘Haydn!’ Terrified of losing him, she threw all caution to the wind. Flinging her arms around his neck she kissed his lips, and as she did so she moved her body close to his, caressing his thighs with her own, thrusting her breasts against his chest, running her fingers through the hair at the nape of his neck. She summoned and utilised every trick, every artifice she had seen portrayed on the cinema screen, as well as the erotic responses Eddie’s rough, abrasive style of lovemaking had taught her.

‘No!’ Haydn grabbed her hands. Disentangling them from the back of his neck he pushed her away. ‘No, Jenny, it won’t work. Not any more.’

‘Haydn …’

‘Goodbye, Jenny.’ He walked purposefully towards the door that led into the shop and opened it.

‘Haydn, what is it? Is it another girl? I know you’ve been seen around town with a blonde. Please, I don’t mind being one of a crowd,’ she begged, casting off her final remnants of self-respect. All she could think of was that if she inveigled him into remaining with her this once, he would stay with her forever. One more kiss, that’s all it would take. He had always wanted to sleep with her. One more kiss: she would give him everything he could possibly want in a woman, show him how much she loved him. And after that he wouldn’t be able to leave her – not ever again.

‘It’s no use, Jenny. I’ve changed.’ He stressed the final word, wanting to make her realise that he’d made his decision, and it was irrevocable.

‘So have I Haydn. But there’s one part of me that will never change. I still love you. I will always love you.’ Unbuttoning her dress she stepped back away from him. He heard the swish of fabric as her clothes settled at her feet. He turned and looked at her. After the professional poses of the showgirls, her nakedness made little impression. She looked gauche, clumsy. He suddenly found it strange to think that he’d been angry with her. There had been nights when he’d lain awake, dreaming of a situation like this – what he’d do and say if he ever had the upper hand. He’d been obsessed with revenge, with hurting her every bit as much as she had hurt him. Then he would have given every penny of his wages to see her wretched and heartbroken just as he’d been, night after lonely night when he had first gone to Brighton, too wounded and too wrapped up in his own misery to even try to make friends among the cast of the pantomime he’d played in. But now, when he was actually faced with her baring herself, pleading for forgiveness, all he wanted was to put as much distance between her and himself as possible. He laid his hand on the doorknob and turned it, only to find she’d rammed the bolt home.

‘If you walk out on me now, I’ll marry Eddie.’ She stepped out of the storeroom towards him, not caring that her nudity could be seen by anyone who looked in through the window. ‘I’ll marry him, Haydn,’ she threatened. ‘And I’ll marry him loving you.’

He stared contemptuously at her. ‘Eddie deserves better. And if you go near him again after tonight, you’ll have me to reckon with.’

‘There’s nothing you can do to me that you haven’t already. Eddie loves me. You couldn’t stop him from marrying me.’

‘The last thing he’ll have on his mind is marriage after I’ve told him about this little episode.’

‘And who do you think he’ll believe? You, or me when I cry on his shoulder and tell him how you came around tonight and tried to force yourself on me? How you wouldn’t take no for an answer when I refused to sleep with you. Perhaps I should get some witnesses down here right now. Show them just how brutal you can be.’ She picked up the knife her father used to cut the cooked meats and held it poised above her arm. He knocked it out of her hand. It fell with a clatter on to the flagstoned floor.

‘You really don’t give a damn about anyone other than yourself, do you, Jenny?’

‘I love you,’ she cried out passionately. ‘I’d do anything for you. You have to believe me.’ She clawed at his arms, raising bloody welts on his wrists. ‘Anything at all.’

‘Even make a mockery of my brother’s life.’ He heaved the bolt back on the door, and strode out without a backward glance.

‘You all right Haydn?’

‘Fine.’ Haydn sat in the easy chair opposite his father’s. ‘Everyone in bed?’

‘Yes. Sure you’re all right? You look just like you used to when you were a boy and had a fight.’

‘I told you, I’m fine.’

‘That’s a good suit,’ Evan tactfully changed the subject. ‘Good quality cloth. Made to measure, by the look of it.’

‘It is. I had it made in Brighton.’

‘Going up in the world.’ Evan was proud that his son was doing so well. He only hoped Haydn would hang on to his position at the top of the provincial bills. He didn’t know much about Variety except that the acts that topped the bill one year in Pontypridd sometimes returned half-way down the next, that’s if they returned at all. ‘Thought I’d wait up and share a cuppa with you.’ He left his chair and poured two teas out of the pot he’d kept warm on the stove. ‘I don’t think we’ve exchanged more than half a dozen words since you’ve come home.’

‘I’m sorry about that. I feel as though I’m living in the theatre. Comes of rehearsing for the Summer Variety all day and performing in the Revue all night, but it will ease up at the end of next week when the Revue moves on.’

‘Done much of this Revue work, have you?’ Evan’s face was impassive as he puffed on his pipe, but Haydn knew his father.

‘When the pantomime ended in Brighton it was a question of taking whatever I could get to see me through the quiet time until Summer Variety started. I worked in a concert party in Torquay for a while, then I did six weeks around the outskirts of London with this show, before going into Variety. When both tours were extended to cover Wales and I was offered roles and contracts in both, I thought, why not? It’s hard work, but good money.’

‘I don’t doubt it. Double wages?’

‘Rehearsal wages are less than performing wages, but I’m not complaining. You getting any stick from the neighbours about the show?’ he asked bluntly, wondering if that was what his father had been building up to.

Evan smiled as he tapped his pipe against the iron door of the stove to loosen the ashes. ‘The women I meet are generally too embarrassed to mention it, and the men ask if I can get them free tickets.’

‘As long as you’re not upset by it.’

‘Why should I be? It’s your life. You’re doing what you want with it, aren’t you?’

‘Yes and no. I want to be a singer. Revue isn’t exactly my idea of a perfect engagement, but at least it’s getting my name known.’

‘Aye, it is that.’

‘I know Mam would have a fit.’

‘Well as she’s not around we won’t bring her into it.’

‘Have you seen her?’

‘Not since Bethan’s baby was buried. But don’t let the disagreement between your mother and me stop you from going up the Rhondda. Our differences aren’t yours.’

‘She never was very keen on me going on stage, and if she knows what kind of a show I’m in she’ll show me the door. Always providing she lets me over the doorstep in the first place. If she doesn’t know, I’d sooner drink a pint of Taff water than tell her.’

‘Don’t be too hard on her, Haydn. When all’s said and done, she’s still your mother.’

It was an odd sentiment for his father to express after the loveless married life he had led for over twenty years. And he had obviously thought little enough of Elizabeth to ‘carry on’ with Phyllis during that time. Brian was testimony to that. Two years old, and Phyllis had only moved in since his mother had moved out, last winter.

‘Do Eddie and Bethan visit Mam?’

‘You’ll have to ask them that. If they do, they haven’t mentioned it to me. But it’s you, not your mother, who concerns me. You are all right aren’t you, son?’

Haydn would have liked to tell him about Jenny and her threat to marry Eddie, but he didn’t know where to begin. Whichever way he phrased it, the story would sound like sour grapes: as if he regretted losing Jenny, and was jealous of Eddie’s success with her. ‘All right enough. What about everyone else?’

‘I’m happy with Phyllis.’ Phyllis hadn’t said anything to him about Haydn’s coolness towards her, but then she hadn’t had to. Evan was especially sensitive when it came to Phyllis. ‘There was a time not that long ago, when your mother and I were still together and you were all growing up and moving away, when I thought I’d never be content, let alone happy again. I don’t mind telling you, boy, I made a pig’s ear out of what should have been the best years of my life. Trying to please your mother when I knew deep down that nothing I could ever do would satisfy her. Hitting policemen out of sheer frustration and ending up in gaol. But then, no experience is ever all bad. It was those couple of months behind bars that gave me time to think what I was doing with my life. Somewhere within those walls I found the courage to live openly with the woman I love.’

‘You going to divorce Mam?’

‘She’ll never wash our dirty linen in public by divorcing me; and as I’m the guilty party, that puts me in the dock with nothing to shout about. Elizabeth was a good wife and mother in her way, and I can’t hurt her any more than I already have by demanding she divorces me. But I would like to marry Phyllis for both her own and the boy’s sake. I worry that if anything ever happens to me …’

‘You don’t have to worry about that, Dad, I’ll see Phyllis and Brian all right.’

‘Bethan and Eddie have said the same thing, and seeing as how the house is in my name and I’ve left it in equal shares between all my children, including Brian, I was hoping you wouldn’t put Phyllis out on the street. But for all that, it’s good to know that none of you bear a grudge against me, Phyllis or Brian.’

‘Why would we?’

‘Because I brought another woman into the house to take your mother’s place. Not to mention a half-brother, and a bastard to boot.’

Haydn shifted forward in his chair, drawing it closer to his father.

‘It wasn’t just a fling between me and Phyllis, I want you to know that. We were engaged to be married when I was about Eddie’s age.’

‘You and Phyllis?’

‘Your grandmother adored her. Phyllis was lodging with Rhiannon Pugh across the road even then. Her own people had died. She practically lived with us. Two months before the date we’d set for the wedding, her and Mam Powell were spending every spare minute sewing her bottom drawer, my brother William and I were decorating the front room, the room you’re sleeping in now, as a room Phyllis and I could live in, and then we quarrelled. The stupid thing is I can’t remember what it was about. Phyllis says it was over a lino pattern. That doesn’t sound right to me but as I really can’t remember I have to take her word for it. Then right in the middle of it all I went out to drown my sorrows, got drunk before going to a chapel social and ended up with your mother. Before I knew where I was, we were married.’