Swansea Girls (34 page)

‘Thank you, Joe.’ Lily, looking lost and even smaller than usual in her plain black costume, was at his side.

He opened his arms and held her, then taking her hand, led her to the furthest point of the churchyard. ‘The view from here is fantastic. It’s one of my favourite places on Gower.’

‘You come here?’

‘As often as I can, particularly in winter. The entire history of old Oxwich is encapsulated in this churchyard. Look.’ He pointed to the remains of rough limestone stonework set between the rocks on their left. ‘Those are the foundations of eighteenth-century houses that were swept away by the sea. If you want tragedy, here it is.’ He showed her a grave that held four members of the same family who had all died before their eighteenth birthdays. ‘Parsimony.’ He indicated a grave marker that could have qualified as wartime utility if it hadn’t borne the date 1850. ‘Romance’, the inscription on an even earlier stone chronicled the details of a married couple who had died ten days apart.

‘They might have been killed by the same disease, perhaps cholera,’ Lily suggested. ‘From what I remember of Swansea history the dates are about right.’

‘I prefer to think broken heart.’ He leaned against the wall. ‘That situation we were talking about earlier, you, Katie and your uncle.’

‘There is no situation,’ she countered. ‘Uncle Roy is the nearest thing to a relative I have. He and Auntie Norah have always taken care of me and now we’ve lost Auntie Norah’ – she hated herself for saying the words, as if they somehow made her aunt even more dead – ‘we have to take care of one another.’

‘You have me as well.’ He removed a small box from his coat pocket. ‘I intended to do this during a perfect sunset on the cliff overlooking Pobbles, but I should know by now that every time I plan something it never happens the way I imagined. I hope you and your aunt will forgive my bad timing, but I think it’s important you know how I feel about you.’ He opened the box. Inside was the single glittering diamond solitaire she had admired in the jeweller’s shop just over ten days that seemed like a lifetime ago. ‘I love you, Lily. Will you marry me?’

Lost for words, she stared helplessly at the ring.

‘Please don’t say we’ve only been out a few times.’

‘Twice,’ she murmured, finally finding her voice.

‘We’ve known one another most of our lives and we won’t be able to marry until next June when I take my degree, so it will be a fairly long engagement. And if you’re thinking about money, don’t. I have a trust fund, enough to buy a house of our own when I start work. Say something,’ he pleaded, ‘anything, that is, except no.’

‘Joe, my aunt’s just died ... everything is so uncertain ...’

Taking her hand in his, he slipped the ring on to her finger. ‘That’s why I’m asking you to marry me, so you will have some certainty.’

‘It fits.’

‘Of course. We’re made for one another.’ Leaving the ring on her hand, he kissed the tips of her fingers. ‘Do you love me?’

‘Yes,’ she whispered.

‘Now I’ve established that, the rest will be simple. I’ll find the right moment to talk to your uncle, we’ll organise ourselves a wedding – a quiet one because of your aunt – and then I’ll try to ensure that you live as “happily ever after” as possible.’

Judy dumped a tray of dirty cups in the kitchen. She looked at the sink, half full with cold, grey, sudsy water, and balked at the idea of scrabbling around for the plug to empty it. Opening the back door, she walked out on to the top step of the flight of metal stairs that led down to the garden and sat.

‘On strike.’ Brian sank down beside her.

‘Hiding from my mother, Mrs Griffiths, Mrs Lannon and Mrs Jordan. I can’t face another dirty cup or plate. Or all those people talking twaddle.’

‘Well-meaning twaddle, Judy. You’re being oversensitive.’

He opened a packet of cigarettes and she helped herself to one. ‘I didn’t know you smoked.’

‘I’ve just started. And the twaddle isn’t well-meaning. If I hear one more woman whispering to another about the unsuitability of Roy looking after Katie and Lily I’ll scream. And who is that frightful old woman with false teeth that rattle when she talks?’

‘I think she’s a relative of Constable Williams.’

‘Judging by the way she’s been ordering me around she must be a duchess. “I like more milk in my tea than that, miss, and one level spoonful of sugar, not heaped. I can tell by the taste it’s been heaped.”’

He slipped his arm round her waist to steady himself as he lit her cigarette, leaving it there when she unexpectedly and rather gratifyingly leaned against him. ‘How are Katie and Lily bearing up under the strain?’

‘When I saw them earlier they both looked like death warmed up. Mam said it’s not going to hit either of them for a few days but I’m not so sure it hasn’t hit them already.’

‘Adam’s cut up about it. He’s fond of Katie and doesn’t know how best to help her.’

‘He can join the club. Helen and I only agreed to play serving wenches to our mothers’ ladyships so Katie and Lily could escape. The kindest thing we could do for them was give them half an hour’s peace and quiet away from this pandemonium.’

‘Very generous of you.’

‘There’s no need to be sarky.’

‘I wasn’t, I meant it. You doing anything tonight?’

‘Lying prostrate, given the amount of clearing up my mother will expect me to do here after this little lot have gone home.’

‘If you have the strength to sit on my bike, we could go somewhere nice and I could lie prostrate with you.’

‘Given that twinkle in your eye, chance would be a fine thing, Brian Powell.’

‘So you won’t go out with me?’

‘I didn’t say that.’

‘Judy, what on earth do you think you’re doing?’ Joy shouted from the kitchen window.

Hastily dropping her cigarette, Judy ground it to dust beneath her shoe. ‘Talking to Brian, Mam.’

‘You call that talking?’ Joy stepped out of the kitchen.

Brian dropped his arm from Judy’s waist and rose to his feet. ‘I was just asking Judy if she could think of any way we could help Katie and Lily, Mrs Hunt.’

‘By we, I assume you mean you and the boys.’

‘Adam, Martin ...’

‘I think Katie and Lily are best left on their own, Constable Powell,’ Joy snapped icily.

Brian looked her in the eye. Her steely expression suggested there wasn’t going to be a better time. ‘I also asked Judy if she’d like to go out with me tonight.’

‘Judy will be busy tonight.’

‘No, I won’t.’

Joy gave her daughter a look that might have intimidated a girl with less spirit. ‘Do I have to remind you that you have college work to complete?’

‘I’m up to date with my homework.’

‘If you’re busy tonight, Judy, perhaps we could go out another time.’ Brian smiled at Joy, hoping his conciliatory gesture might result in a weakening of the opposition.

‘I’m really not doing anything tonight, so I’d like to go out with you, Brian.’

‘But your mother ...’

‘I’d rather not have said this in front of Brian, but frankly I’d rather you didn’t consort with policemen, Judy.’

‘What’s wrong with policemen? Daddy ...’

‘Need I say more?’ Joy interrupted. ‘Brian, Judy is grateful for your invitation but I cannot allow her to accept it.’ Turning, she walked back into the kitchen – and Roy Williams.

‘Do we have to talk about this now, in the middle of Norah’s funeral?’ Joy lit a cigarette as Judy and Brian disappeared down the steps into the garden.

‘Yes, we do. I came to look for you to tell you people are leaving and want to thank you for organising the food, and I find you screaming at Brian Powell just because the poor lad asked your daughter out. If you hate policemen so much, what have we been doing for the last ten years?’

‘Bill was a policeman.’

‘And a good one, as I remember, before he enlisted. Are you going to tell me he was a wife beater now, like Ernie Clay?’

‘Don’t be ridiculous.’

‘Constable Williams, Mr Griffiths and the funeral director ...’

‘I’m coming, Mrs Lannon. Mrs Hunt, I’ll call round later to pay you for the food.’

‘There’s no need ...’

‘Eight o’clock,’ he said in a voice that brooked no argument. ‘You will be in?’

‘I’ll be in,’ she conceded, sensing that in his present mood he was quite capable of making a scene if she said she wouldn’t.

‘I’d rather you kept it, even if you don’t want to wear it yet.’ Joe pressed the ring Lily had slipped from her finger into her palm and closed her hand over it.

‘No.’ She handed it to him carefully. ‘I’ll take it back when Uncle Roy gives us his permission and not a minute before.’

‘How soon can I ask him?’

‘When I tell you it’s all right.’

Taking the ring box from his jacket pocket, he opened it and replaced the ring on its velvet bed. ‘Do you think that will be in a day or two, a week, a ...’

‘What did your parents say when you told them you wanted to marry me?’ she interrupted.

‘My father was delighted.’

‘And your mother?’ His silence told her all she wanted to know. ‘You’ll need her permission, Joe.’

‘I have my father’s and my mother will come round to the idea of us, given time.’

‘I won’t marry you without her blessing.’

Joe recalled the look on his mother’s face when she discovered that he had asked Lily out instead of one of her beloved debs and changed the subject. ‘Would you have preferred a trip to the jeweller’s to look at the rest of their stock to me choosing for you?’

‘No, I loved our ring the moment I saw it, but I never in a million years thought you’d buy it, or want to give it to me.’

‘I’ve earned a lot of money this summer. It was just sitting in my bank account, gathering dust.’

‘But an engagement ...’ Lily was suddenly overwhelmed by the responsibility and implication of accepting Joe’s proposal.

Sensing her wavering, he kissed her. ‘You said you loved me.’

‘I do.’

‘Then there’s no problem we can’t face together.’

‘Except you. You’re a writer, you’ve published poems, you’re studying in university. You’ve been out with smart, sophisticated girls; you go to parties full of clever, wealthy people. I’m not part of your world ...’

‘You’re all the world I want.’ He stilled her protests by kissing her again.

‘But I hardly know you,’ she murmured when he released her.

‘That is easily remedied. We’ll both make an effort to become better acquainted with one another’s foibles and faults before we walk up the aisle and I’ll make a start right now. Are you listening?’ He smiled, waiting until she nodded. ‘I like my eggs scrambled on toast in the morning. My favourite meal is steak, chips and salad. I hate tinned peaches, apricots and pilchards. I take milk and three sugars in my tea. I love animals but my mother would never let me have pets, so be warned, I’m likely to fill our house with cats and dogs. My favourite colour schemes are blue and cream, gold and green and black and white, which aren’t fashionable but as I’ve been almost blinded by my mother’s walls, which look as though Mickey Mouse has been sick over them, I’m likely to be firm on the question of how our house should be decorated. My father is Labour, my mother Conservative, which is why I tend to avoid talking about politics and when the time comes I’d like to have four children.’

‘Four!’

‘Not all at once. And I don’t believe in working wives, so when we’re married you’ll stay at home, which I’m hoping will be a cottage in the country but as I intend to buy a car and teach you to drive ...’

‘Me? Drive a car?’

‘Why not?’

‘Cars are expensive.’

‘I have news for you, soon-to-be, Mrs Joseph Griffiths. We are going to be quite comfortably off. I have enough money set aside in my trust fund to buy a house and two cars without resorting to paying on the never-never and my job has a good starting salary.’

‘You already have a job?’

‘I didn’t intend for that to slip out, but yes, I do and please don’t say a word about it as only my father knows at the moment. My mother isn’t going to be happy. She always assumed I’d become a teacher and eventually a headmaster like my grandfather but I’ve accepted a post at the BBC.’

‘In Swansea.’

‘Cardiff.’

‘Uncle Roy ...’

‘You’ll be able to see him whenever you want. Cardiff is only an hour and a bit away by train and more or less the same by car,’ he added, stretching the truth.

‘We’ll have to live there.’

‘Near my work, yes.’

‘You’ll be on the radio.’

‘Probably working more behind the scenes than behind a microphone but who knows, in a year or two I may be switched to television. Even my father thinks that every family in the country will buy a set in the next few years.’

‘Uncle Roy wanted to get one for the Coronation but Auntie Norah wouldn’t hear of it – he thinks that was because watching a screen would have interfered with her sewing.’

‘You won’t tell anyone?’

‘Only Uncle Roy, and you asked me to.’

‘I mean about the job.’ He looked into her eyes, tawny gold, sparkling in the sunlight. ‘I’d like to shout that you’re going to marry me from the rooftops, Lily.’

‘Lily can put the crockery and cutlery away as she knows where everything goes.’ Esme untied her apron and folded it into her handbag. ‘It’s the least she can do, considering she and Katie disappeared when we most needed their help.’

Joy Hunt glanced around the kitchen and dining room. Apart from the crockery and cutlery piled high on the kitchen table, the rooms were relatively tidy.

‘I could push the Hoover over the floor,’ Doris suggested.

‘Lily has the rest of the week off, Roy told me. She won’t have anything to do besides housework and she’ll want to be kept busy to take her mind off Norah. I, however, have a home to go to and a meal to prepare for my family.’

‘If they come back in time for it, Esme.’ Doris smiled knowingly. ‘I saw your Joe sneak off with Lily. It’s obvious which way the wind’s blowing there. I couldn’t be more pleased for them. They make a nice young couple.’

‘There’s nothing going on between Joseph and Lily Sullivan,’ Esme contradicted abruptly.