Honey's Farm (28 page)

‘I would want to marry you anyway, Gwyneth,' Will said gravely, ‘even if Eline never married the man. I know you need me, and our child needs me. There's no question of you being second choice.'

Nina Parks came back into the room. ‘Stop arguing with the man and just be glad he's come to you when you need him.'

She pushed the kettle on to the flames of the fire and then turned to Will. ‘I'll say this, you are a real gent, and what's more you got guts.' She folded her arms across her full breasts. ‘Some would have run a mile where there's a babbie concerned, and I know what I'm talking about.

‘Now, let's sit down and have a cup of tea and talk about practical things, shall we?' She smiled and rested her hand on Gwyneth's shoulder.

‘There's a lot to arrange for a wedding, mind, and not much time to do it in if your belly isn't going to go before you down the aisle of the church.'

They were married quietly three weeks later. The November rain had set in, and a mist hung over the parish of Oystermouth, but Gwyneth Parks was radiant as she walked up the aisle of All Saints, her head held high.

All around her were her family, proud and happy to see Gwyneth marrying William Davies, who when all was said and done was quite a toff.

Sal hung on to the arm of her husband, her round face smiling with pleasure, glancing down at her little Fon with Jamie big and handsome at her side.

Nina was dressed in her Sunday best, with a fine new hat perched on her greying hair, and she nodded encouragement to Gwyneth as she swept up the aisle on the arm of her new husband.

No-one noticed Eline Harries standing on the perimeter of the sightseers – no-one, that is, except the groom, who for an unguarded moment looked as though he was not celebrating his wedding but going to his own funeral.

‘I know you are going to be the happiest girl alive.' Fon embraced her sister warmly. Around them in the small back room of the Smith's Arms, the sound of voices rose and fell. Glasses were being emptied; the small celebration lunch was almost finished.

The bride looked tearful, and yet she was smiling. It was clear that Gwyneth was going through a mingling of emotions, which was exactly the way Fon herself had felt on the day she was married.

She released Gwyneth and glanced up lovingly at Jamie, who was talking to Will Davies, man to man, without the deferential air people usually adopted with Will. But, then, she knew her husband's views on life very well, any man might be as good but no man was better than Jamie O'Conner.

‘I can't help feeling I'm second best,' Gwyneth said softly, her eyes brimming with tears.

‘I know what you are going through,' Fon said quickly. ‘Wasn't I haunted by the ghost of Jamie's first wife?' She squeezed her sister's arm. ‘But love comes, when you lie with a man every night you become . . . close, so close.'

Gwyneth smiled suddenly. ‘
Duw
, who'd have thought my little sister would have been giving me advice about men?'

Fon's colour rose. ‘Don't tease, Gwyneth, girl; I'm an old married woman, and don't you forget it.'

Will had come to stand behind Gwyneth's shoulder. ‘I think it's time to go, Gwyneth.' He spoke quietly; there was no light in his eye, no upturning of his mouth. He looked like a man who was doing his duty and nothing more, and Fon felt a tingling of apprehension. She knew in that moment, she felt it in her bones, that no good was going to come from the union of Will Davies and her sister Gwyneth.

She forced herself to smile brightly as she hugged Gwyneth close. ‘Take care of her,' she said, looking over her sister's shoulder into the face of Gwyneth's new husband.

‘I will, don't you worry,' he said, and Fon believed him. Will Davies was an honourable man. He would keep his word, whatever happened. And what could happen? Surely her feelings of gloom were misplaced?

As Jamie drove Fon homeward, up the hill from Swansea towards the farm, she leaned against his shoulder, grateful for his nearness. It was only now and again, when he seemed preoccupied with the past, that she doubted his love. His desire for her was evident; he made love to her with joy and vigour, but he rarely put tongue to his feelings, he wasn't that sort of man.

‘Well, I think I've got a buyer for that piece of land, Fon,' he said, looking down at her. ‘I was hasty spending out for it in the first place.' He smiled ruefully. ‘The time wasn't right for expanding; you were wise enough to know that, colleen, and I wouldn't listen.'

‘But you will make a handsome profit now, when we most need it, so it turned out right for us after all,' Fon said reassuringly.

‘Aye,' Jamie said, ‘and I won't have to sell the Black Devil; that's one consolation.'

‘Who is buying the land?' Fon asked, moving even closer to Jamie, feeling the heat coming from his skin with a sense of pleasurable belonging.

‘It's a consortium,' Jamie said. ‘It seems that the project is so big that several of the Swansea businessmen have got together over the deal, which makes sense.'

Fon sighed. ‘What if there's a roadway running past the farm; will that do us any harm?'

‘I can't see it doing anything but good,' Jamie replied. ‘We will be able to shift the crop by road so much more easily, not to mention the bringing in of new machinery.'

‘So we'll be all right now, will we?' She looked up at her husband and saw the smile curving his mouth. On an impulse, she pulled his head down to hers and kissed him.

‘Hey, that's no way for an old married woman to behave! Sure it's a brazen hussy I've got for my wife.'

‘I'll give you brazen hussy!' Fon said. ‘Wait till I get you home, and then I'll show you how brazen I really am.'

In the farmhouse, Eddie was just ladling out a bowl of
cawl
for Patrick; thick slices of bread were piled up on a plate, and Eddie looked flushed from the heat of the fire.

‘Thank goodness you're back.' His tone was heartfelt. ‘Give me farm work to looking after children any day of the week; it's easier. Where's Jamie?'

‘Washing at the pump,' Fon replied, turning her attention to Patrick. ‘Been naughty, have you?' she asked lightly.

Patrick shook his head. ‘No, not naughty, I been a good boy. Eddie said I been good.' Patrick beamed.

‘He's been good all right,' Eddie agreed. ‘No tantrums, nothing like that; it's just that he's so curious that he's into everything.'

Fon smiled. ‘Don't I know it!'

She sat next to Patrick and helped him to some of the soup. ‘Come on, love, it's nice dinner,' she encouraged, but Patrick turned his head away.

‘I think he's eaten enough,' Eddie said sheepishly. ‘I took him out for a picnic, and we had bread and cheese and some of the cakes that you left in the pantry.'

Fon looked at him with a smile curving her lips. ‘You didn't happen to meet up with Arian Smale, did you?'

Eddie actually blushed. ‘Well, yes, I did,' he said. ‘By accidental design, I suppose you could call it.'

‘More design than accident, if I know you, Eddie.' She patted Patrick's shoulder. ‘Right then!' Fon put down the spoon she had been holding to Patrick's lips. ‘Off you go then, boy; you can leave the table if you've finished your meal.'

Patrick climbed down from his chair with alacrity and went out of the open door into the garden.

‘Getting keen on Arian, are you?' Fon asked quietly. ‘She's a lovely-looking girl, but be careful, mind.'

‘No good telling me that, Fon,' he said. ‘I've fallen for her, hook, line and sinker. I'd marry her tomorrow if I had prospects and if she'd have me.'

He grimaced at Fon. ‘Her father has other ideas, of course; my back is still smarting from the whipping he gave me.'

‘Awful man!' Fon said feelingly. ‘He doesn't deserve a daughter like Arian.'

Eddie leant forward, his elbows on the table. ‘If only I could make my fortune, I could persuade her to marry me, I'm sure.'

Jamie came into the kitchen. He was stripped to the waist, his hair glistening with water from the pump outside. ‘What's this talk of marriage, my man?' he asked, sitting at the table and taking the bowl of soup that Fon offered him.

‘Just dreaming,' Eddie said ruefully. ‘I'm not in any position to take a wife, but I wish I was.'

‘It'll come soon enough.' Jamie assumed an air of sheepish submission. ‘Then you'll be sorry! Bowed down with care you'll be, with a woman's sharp tongue giving you hell night and day.'

Fon made a face at him. ‘And all the wife gets is washing and cooking and hard work from morning till night,' she retorted.

Jamie leant forward and pulled at her hair. ‘Ah, but when night comes, think of the rewards of being married to a lusty man, and you, my lady, have got yourself a real man of vigour.'

Fon blushed. ‘Hush, don't talk like that in front of Eddie,' she said, half-smiling.

‘Why not?' Jamie said. ‘Wasn't the man all set to be a doctor? Him knowing more than me, I dare say.'

Eddie laughed easily. ‘In theory, perhaps, but in practice you'd have me beaten hands down.' He rose from his chair and glanced affectionately at Fon. ‘I know a fulfilled and loving wife when I see one. You are a lucky man, boss.'

‘If you say so.' Jamie's voice was casual, but his hand touched Fon's cheek lightly in a gesture of great tenderness.

The small house nestling in the folds of Kilvey Hill was washed silver by the moonlight. From one window came the dull gleam of an oil lamp casting a soft glow on to the grass outside, outlining the tall figure of a man.

Will Davies, hands thrust into his pockets, was staring out across the valley below, at the silver water of the docklands and the haphazard building of the town beyond. He felt trapped, closed into a world of domesticity from which there was no escape.

Within the house, his new wife waited for him. He felt her uncertainty with a tightness of pity in his gut, and yet he needed these few moments alone to come to terms with himself.

He needed to reconcile himself now to a life with a wife and to the fact that he must forget the woman he loved.

He smiled sadly into the darkness; he had never possessed Eline Harries, though he had loved her for ever, or so it seemed. Now he would never possess her. His life and hers would take separate paths, never to join together in union.

Sighing, he turned and went indoors, closing the latch against the world. He squared his shoulders and made his way upstairs; and there, in the dimness of the lamplight, Gwyneth was waiting.

Her hair spilled around her shoulders; the white of her gown covered, with a touching display of modesty, the fullness of her breasts. Her eyes searched his face, and Will saw with a feeling of pain that her condition had given her an ethereal quality, a paleness of skin that was almost transparent, and a shadowing of her eyes that made them appear huge.

‘Will!' She held out her arms in a gesture of supplication, and he went to her and held her close, his head resting on her hair. She should never know what it cost him to put Eline out of his life, he vowed. His wife would bear his child, and he would do his utmost to make them both secure and happy.

‘Come into bed with me,
cariad
,' Gwyneth said softly. ‘Love me, just a little.'

He undressed swiftly, pulling his shirt over his head and unfastening his belt with an air of unreality. Where was the passion that had brought him to this? Why did he feel cold as ice as he entered his marriage bed?

Gwyneth's arms closed around him; she buried her face in his neck. ‘I love you, Will,', she said softly, ‘and I know I can make you want me, even perhaps love me, in time.'

Her hands stroked and caressed him intimately, and in spite of his pain, Will knew that he was becoming roused. He would be less than a man if he remained unmoved as Gwyneth slipped off her chaste nightgown and leant close to him, her full breasts, milky in the moonlight, tipped with pink.

They were close to his face, an invitation that he could not resist. He leant towards her and as her hands grasped him he moaned with pleasure. He knew that he needed some kind of peace, that his body, so long denied, cried out for release.

‘That's it, my love,' Gwyneth whispered, her mouth against his neck. ‘Make me spin with love and happiness, as only you ever could.'

Her words were a balm, as, in his heart, he knew they were meant to be. Gwyneth was not a stupid woman; she was sensual and quick-witted, and she knew how to please. She flattered him with soft words and all the time her body arched towards him, waiting for his passion.

Will held back until he could no longer contain himself, and then he took her, feeling with each movement of his body that he was betraying Eline.

‘My love, that's so wonderful,' Gwyneth gasped. ‘That's right, come on, take your fill of me, for now you have the right; you are my lawful wedded husband.'

The words rang hollowly in Will's mind, and for a moment he almost withdrew himself from her. But Gwyneth, sensitive as ever, closed her milky thighs, trapping him in a sensation so erotic that he felt the life force flow through him.

Even as he reached the heights of his passion, one part of his mind looked down objectively at the man labouring on the bed and thought him a fool.

It was some weeks later that Will was approached in the street by a man he scarcely knew.

‘Bob Smale.' The man held out a hand and, with surprise, Will took it.

‘I am joint owner of the
Cambrian
.' Bob Smale was smartly dressed, his linen clean, his coat well cut and expensive. He smelled a little of claret, but then most of the better-off families took an after-lunch drink.

‘And you are, I believe,' he continued, in a pleasant voice, ‘Will Davies, businessman.'