Swansea Girls (21 page)

‘Beast!’ Angie pouted as Joe followed Robin out of the pool, the towel dripping round his waist.

‘Spoiled your fun?’ Joe didn’t even try to conceal his irritation.

‘Well, as the sights are under wraps’ – Angie gazed coolly at the wet towel that clung round Joe’s hips, bringing a flush to his cheeks – ‘I may as well get the sandwiches Mrs John left for supper. Not that you two deserve them.’

‘Out,’ Robin snapped sharply as he reached for a dry towel.

‘You’re shivering, Joe. How about a whisky to warm you up before I go?’ Angie held up the bottle.

‘You determined to give me pneumonia?’

‘Nursing you better could be fun – for both of us.’

‘Out!’ Robin repeated, exchanging his cushion for a dry towel and throwing the wet cushion at her.

‘I can take a hint.’ Angie followed Emily into the house.

Pulling the blinds that screened the sun lounge from the hall, Robin locked the door and briskly towelled himself. ‘You’ll have a drink?’ He reached for his father’s whisky.

‘No thanks, I’m working early tomorrow and it’s time I dusted off my books. I can’t believe it’s our last year in Uni.’

‘The telling one.’ Robin made a face as he poured himself a drink. ‘I don’t know why you’re worried. You’re bound to get a first, everyone’s blue-eyed boy.’

‘I wish.’ Drying himself quickly, Joe reached for his underpants. Even with a closed blind and a locked door between them he didn’t trust Angie. ‘I take it Emily’s not part of Larry’s disgrace.’

‘That would hardly be fair.’

‘I suppose it wouldn’t,’ Joe conceded grudgingly.

‘Emily’s a nice girl.’

Joe raised his eyebrows.

‘All right, I admit I fancy her.’

‘You want to take off more than her blouse?’

‘A fellow could do worse.’

‘You’re going out with her?’

‘Give me a chance, she’s only just got back from London.’

‘But you will?’

‘Probably. We could make it a foursome. Angie’s keen on you.’ Abandoning his glass on the coffee table, Robin pulled on his underpants and trousers.

‘She has a funny way of showing it.’

‘You decent?’ Angie called from the other side of the door.

‘Just about.’ Robin unlocked it, as Joe buttoned his shirt.

‘Sandwiches and coffee for those who don’t want to steal Pops’ whisky.’ Angie handed the heavy tray to Joe.

‘I take it the party wasn’t any good.’ Robin pulled Emily down on top of him as he fell into a chair. She sat on his lap, squealing as he tickled her.

‘It was boring. Everyone was talking about Larry’s disgrace.’

‘He wasn’t there?’ Joe set the tray on a side table.

‘He’s been exiled to great-uncle Charles’s house in Cardiff,’ Emily gasped between shrieks. ‘Stop it, Robin.’ She slapped his wrist. ‘I’m sorry, Joe. I heard it was your sister’s dress he ripped. I wish Larry hadn’t got stupid drunk. I’m not sticking up for him or trying to excuse what he did but he was well out of it at the party. He probably didn’t have a clue what he was doing by the time he got to Mumbles.’

‘Probably,’ Joe muttered noncommittally. Pulling on his sweater, he reached for the car keys in his pocket and held them up. ‘You sure about this, Robin.’

‘Yes, but don’t go yet.’

‘If I don’t, I’ll never get up in the morning.’

‘I’ll walk you to the car.’

‘There’s no need, Angie.’

‘I want to. Besides, I could do with some fresh air.’

‘Didn’t you walk back from the party?’ Robin asked.

‘We called a taxi.’

‘See you tomorrow around five, Joe.’ Robin poured himself another whisky.

‘I’ll be here.’

‘I’ll only be working for a couple of hours, if you hang around we could ...’

‘Sorry, Robin, I have plans tomorrow night. See you.’

Stepping through the French doors, Joe walked around the side of the house.

‘Plans that involve a girl?’ Angie queried, running to catch up with him.

‘Plans that involve my sister.’ Joe was surprised how easily the lie rolled off his tongue. ‘She is very upset.’

‘Give her my best wishes and tell her I’m sorry.’

‘She doesn’t know you.’

‘That doesn’t mean she won’t.’ As they reached a gap in the shrubbery she grabbed his hand. ‘Are you very cross with me for teasing you?’ she asked, pulling him back.

‘I’m not a great one for practical jokes.’

‘It was meant as a bit of fun.’

‘Like Larry with my sister.’

‘I didn’t jump on you or tear off your clothes.’

‘It wasn’t funny, Angie.’

‘I’m sorry. Don’t be such a grumps. Give me a chance and I’ll show you just how sorry.’ Standing on tiptoe she kissed him, pushing her tongue into his mouth. Before he realised what was happening he found himself kissing her back. As she pulled him deeper into the gloom beneath the close-growing rhododendrons her fingers trailed over his fly.

‘Angie!’ He retreated quickly, hitting his head on an overhanging branch.

‘I’ve shocked you?’

‘Nice girls ...’

‘Don’t think about sex like nice boys?’

‘You weren’t like this before you went away.’

‘Only because I didn’t know what I wanted before I went away. It took London and France for me to realise how special you are. And eight weeks of missing you for me to want you this much.’

‘And an entire summer for me to get over you,’ he murmured warily.

‘We’re not over, Joe. We’re just beginning.’ She pushed him back against the boundary wall.

‘Robin ...’

‘Is besotted with Emily. Let’s go to the summerhouse. You can see the sea from there.’

‘I know,’ he murmured thickly as she touched him again.

‘Joe ...’

‘I really do have to go, Angie.’ Turning on his heel, he almost ran back through the bushes to the front of the house.

‘You don’t have to be kind, I know everyone thinks the worst of me.’ Helen lifted her chin defiantly, challenging Lily to say otherwise as they sat either end of the window seat in the kitchen that her father had categorically refused to allow her mother to rip out.

‘No, they don’t,’ Lily demurred.

‘But you don’t want to go round with me anymore. You’ve made that obvious; none of you called here yesterday and Joe said he saw you, Katie and Judy in Mumbles.’

‘It wouldn’t have made any difference if we had called. Your mother won’t allow you out.’

‘You still could have called,’ Helen persisted illogically as Katie walked into the kitchen. ‘Did my father give you a job?’

‘Yes, isn’t it wonderful, he ...’

‘Has done more for you than his own daughter.’ Helen knew she was being unfair but she couldn’t help herself. She didn’t want to be fair. She wanted to hurt and humiliate someone – anyone – the way her mother, the police and the police doctor had hurt and humiliated her.

‘Helen, you have a job in Thomas and Butler’s. Can’t you be pleased for Katie?’ Lily chided, as Katie’s eyes welled.

‘Why should I be pleased for her when none of you even called round to ask after me yesterday? All I did was stand outside the ballroom. Stand, mark you. I didn’t say a word or put a foot wrong. Just stood there. And after I get attacked by a maniac who tears my dress and bruises my arms I get punished by being locked up. And what do my friends do? Come and sympathise? Oh, no, not them. They go off down Mumbles for ice cream and a good time.’

‘Be reasonable, Helen, what else could we have done?’ Lily asked.

‘Sit here with me.’

‘Your mother wouldn’t have let us in.’

‘She was out so she wouldn’t have known.’

‘We didn’t know she was out.’

‘No one cares what happens to me.’

‘We do,’ Lily contradicted earnestly. ‘Your mother will soon calm down and then you’ll be able to come everywhere with us again.’

‘You don’t know my mother.’ Helen sat back and crossed her arms. Conscience pricked by the tears in Katie’s eyes, she muttered, ‘I suppose as my father has to have a secretary, it may as well be you.’

‘You don’t mind?’

‘It’s nothing to do with me who he employs.’

Lily checked the time. ‘Time we were going.’

‘Careful you don’t stay with the scarlet woman too long.’

‘Now you’re being silly. We promised Auntie Norah we’d be back in the house by ten thirty. I’ve work in the morning.’

‘I suppose I’ll see you the next time you feel like making a charitable visit to the outcast.’

‘We’ll come again as soon as we can,’ Lily replied diplomatically.

Helen stayed in her seat as Lily opened the door.

“Bye, Helen.’ Katie followed Lily down the passage.

“Bye, Katie, ‘bye Lily,’ Helen shouted after them. ‘I’m sorry ...’ She looked up to see the front door already closed. Clenching her hands into fists, she grabbed a cushion from the window seat and hurled it across the room. It hit the dresser, knocking over a black, white and red vase her mother had bought the week before.

‘What was that, Helen?’ her father called from the parlour, as she scooped up the pieces and wrapped them in newspaper.

‘A milk bottle, Dad.’

‘You all right?’

‘Going to bed,’ she snapped. ‘There’s no point in my staying up.’ Hiding the newspaper-wrapped fragments beneath a pile of potato peelings at the bottom of the bin, she ran up the stairs, slammed her bedroom door and threw herself on her bed.

If Jack really cared for her he would have left his skiffle group practice early and met her in the garden. He should have realised she’d wait for him from nine o’clock on. Did he love her or didn’t he? Or was he just playing stupid games? The ex-Borstal boy putting one over on the respectable girl next door – only now she wasn’t quite so respectable. Had he only asked her to be his girl so he could treat her like that horrid Larry Murton Davies? Like a ... a common tart, as her mother had said. She fingered her lips, remembering Jack’s kisses – warm, tender – and the way they had made her feel. He had to love her after kissing her like that – didn’t he?

Had he turned up after she’d left? Or hadn’t he any intention of coming at all? Surely he realised she couldn’t hang around the garden all night waiting for him – not after Brian had seen her.

Lying face down on the bed, she pulled at the fringes on her candlewick bedspread. He loved her – loved her not – loved her – loved her not ... She was still holding the fringes when she woke the next morning, fully dressed and lying on top of her bedclothes. Loved her – loved her not –

‘You look ridiculous,’ Esme commented as Helen appeared at the breakfast table in one of Joe’s old rugby shirts and a torn pair of pedal pushers.

‘As I’m not allowed to leave the house until I start work next Monday I thought I’d put my prison sentence to good use and clean the basement.’

‘Sounds like an excellent idea to me, young lady.’ John helped himself to a piece of toast. ‘But you don’t touch any of the furniture down there.’

‘Only to clean it, Dad, I promise.’

‘Don’t go thinking that once you’ve sorted the rooms you can have your friends round there,’ Esme warned. ‘You’ve been locked in for a reason.’

‘You don’t have to go over it again,’ Helen muttered.

‘Just as long as you realise you’ve done wrong.’

‘I’m not likely to forget it seeing as how you remind me every five minutes.’

‘How dare you ...’

‘I don’t want to hear you speaking to your mother like that again, Helen. Helen ...’ John shouted after her as she flounced out of the room and stamped up the stairs.

‘Aren’t you being a bit hard on her?’ Joe remonstrated as he reached for the butter. ‘After all, she didn’t do anything ...’

‘No, Joseph?’ Esme broke in quietly. ‘Only stole one of the most expensive dresses from the warehouse, a totally unsuitable dress that incited a boy to treat her like a streetwalker, incidentally ruining her reputation and holding the entire family up to ridicule.’

‘Esme ...’

‘And we all know whose fault that is, don’t we, John?’ Esme’s voice remained soft, modulated, as she turned on her husband. ‘You’ve spoiled her since the day she was born. Let her get away with whatever she wanted to do, without sparing a thought for the consequences of her actions. If it wasn’t for me I dare say you would allow her to forget even this. Don’t you see, what happened on Saturday night is a direct result of your indulgence. If she is ever to learn how to behave or have any kind of a respectable life ...’

‘I’ve got to go.’ Pushing his toast into his mouth, Joe reached for the jacket he’d hung on the back of his chair.

‘You sit down and eat your breakfast properly.’

Joe hesitated long enough to make his mother wonder if she was losing her influence over him.

‘I forgot to ask, Joe, how did it go last night?’ John asked, changing the subject in the hope that it might lighten the atmosphere.

‘Fine,’ Joe replied tersely.

‘I listened to the play, it was excellent.’ Esme poured herself a second cup of coffee and reached for her cigarettes.

Joe bit into a piece of toast as though he were punishing it.

‘I saw Roy Williams last night. He mentioned you’d asked Lily out.’

‘Lily from next door?’ Esme narrowed her eyes.

‘She’s a nice girl, Esme.’

‘No one has any idea where she came from or who her people were.’ Esme frowned at her son. ‘Joseph, we’ve given you opportunities I could only dream of. You mix with the finest Swansea has to offer, you meet clever, well-educated, attractive girls from the best families and yet you ask an abandoned evacuee – a nobody – to go out with you. It simply doesn’t make sense.’

Pushing his plate aside, Joe left the table.

‘Please.’ Esme laid her hand on Joe’s arm. ‘I’d like an explanation. ‘

‘There is none to give other than that I enjoy Lily’s company and would like to get to know her better.’

‘Better than Robin’s sister?’ Esme queried archly.

‘I’d prefer to spend my free time with Lily. There’s nothing wrong with that, is there?’ he demanded, daring his mother to say otherwise.

Esme drew heavily on her cigarette. ‘As long as you remember it is just “spending time”’.

‘What more can I offer any girl at the moment than my time?’

‘I don’t like the way you said “at the moment”. Get serious about a girl like Lily and she could drag you down. You need the right wife where you are going in life, Joseph. Someone from a family with contacts that will help you in your career; a girl who has been brought up to be socially competent, who knows how to dress and talk, a good hostess ...’