Swansea Girls (42 page)

Although he’d had no lunch, John felt sick as she unbuttoned her lacy black cardigan to reveal a grubby, greyish slip and beneath it a black brassiere with thin, twisted straps. Tossing the cardigan on top of her hat, she unbuttoned her skirt. As it fell to the floor she pulled her slip over her head. He averted his eyes as she yanked down the straps on her brassiere and turned it round. Her breasts, wrinkled, flabby, flopped over the band as she unclipped it.

Left in red suspender belt and a pair of fishnet stockings that had more holes than they should, and nothing else, she climbed into bed. ‘Never wear panties,’ she grinned, revealing gaps in her large yellow teeth, ‘they get in the way in my line of work. And although that wasn’t strictly necessary I like to give value for money.’

Repulsed and revolted, he nodded dumbly.

‘Most of my regulars like me to keep on the suspenders and stockings but if you want me to take them off, or go for my special services it’ll be another tenner ...’

‘No.’ his voice was as hoarse as Helen’s had been that morning.

She patted the bed beside her. ‘Take off your shirt then, ducks. The others will be here any minute and that way there’ll be no mistaking your intentions in the photos.’

Turning his back, Jack removed his coat and looked around for somewhere to hang it. The wardrobe gave the impression that it would fall apart if he opened the door. Seeing a hook on the back of the door, he left it there and removed his jacket.

‘No need to take off more than your shirt,’ she said as he kept his back turned to her. ‘There’ll be no way of telling if we’re naked down below or not once the sheet is pulled to our waists. Course, if you want it afterwards, and I can see that a man who looks the way you do would, I wouldn’t mind. Tell you what, I’ll drop down to a fiver, seeing as how you were so good at paying upfront.’

John went home before returning to the office. Helen was in the dining room eating a late lunch Mrs Jones had made for her. After listening to her assurances that she felt much better and checking that her colour had returned, he went to the bathroom. Stripping off his clothes he bundled the whole lot, including his suit and overcoat into the linen bin. They could be sorted later. He couldn’t wait to scrub himself raw. He had never felt so soiled in his life, but as the second change of scalding bath water washed over him he realised the tainted feeling went deeper than his skin.

According to the detective, the photographer had been quick, but the five minutes it had taken him to set up the required shots had seemed to last an eternity, an eternity when the prostitute – he hadn’t even asked her name – had insisted on wrapping her arms around his chest and placing his hand on her naked breast.

Sickened and disgusted by a system that had forced him to degrade himself to break free from a loveless marriage, he left the house an hour later with his skin tingling, but feeling no cleaner, wearing a complete change of clothes and more after-shave than he had ever put on in his life before.

‘Judy, I don’t know what’s got into you,’ Joy admonished as they took an unexpected break, courtesy of a mid-afternoon cancellation. ‘You mixed Mrs Jordan’s perm solution double strength. You turned up the heat on Mrs Harris’s dryer instead of down, the poor woman was almost roasted ...’

‘Sorry.’

‘Sorry isn’t good enough when you hand my customers excuses enough to sue me. Something gone wrong between you and Brian?’

‘And wouldn’t you love it, if it had?’

‘No.’

‘I don’t believe you.’ Turning her back on her mother, Judy went into the kitchen and set the kettle on the stove.

Joy stroked the hair away from her daughter’s face. ‘All I want is for you to be happy. I’m sorry I behaved the way I did, but your father made me very miserable when we were together. I saw similarities between him and Brian and was afraid that if you allowed Brian to get close, he might do the same to you.’

‘Well, he won’t be making me unhappy now.’ Walking away, Judy spooned tea into the pot as the kettle began to boil.

‘Want to tell me what went wrong?’

‘Not particularly.’ Judy poured boiling water into the teapot, and set out two cups.

‘If it’s anything I can help with ...’

‘Why did Dad make you unhappy?’ Judy asked suddenly.

‘Because he wouldn’t leave other women alone.’

Judy poured the tea before looking at her mother, ‘I had no idea.’

‘I hoped you hadn’t. I wanted you to have a happy childhood and it’s not the sort of thing a child should be burdened with.’

‘But it must have been humiliating for you.’

‘It was, and,’ Joy took a deep breath, ‘it was why he never came back at the end of the war. He’s not dead, Judy. He moved in with another woman, in London.’

Judy sat down suddenly, slopping the tea she was holding over her skirt. ‘Dad’s alive.’

‘He asked me to divorce him; I wouldn’t, or let him see you, because I didn’t want people to know he’d abandoned us – me,’ she corrected quickly. ‘I felt it reflected badly on me. You know how people talk “There goes Joy Hunt, she couldn’t even hold on to her man.” If we could have arranged it quietly I would have agreed, but we couldn’t have finalised a divorce without a notice in the
Evening Post
and then everyone in Swansea would have known about it. Not only the neighbours and my customers but your school friends. But, please, don’t think I was considering you, I wasn’t. I did what I thought best at the time and it was mainly for my own benefit.’

‘Did he want to keep in contact with me?’

‘Yes.’ Joy was taken aback by Judy’s composure. After the arguments of the past few weeks, she’d expected her daughter to show her anger. But no matter what it cost in terms of their relationship, now she had started on the truth she felt it would be a betrayal to tell Judy anything less. ‘I see now that I had no right to keep you apart by telling you he was dead.’

‘Did he write?’

‘To ask for a divorce, to tell me he had other children. You have two half-brothers. The letters are in the house, you can read them for yourself.’

‘Who else knows he isn’t dead?’

‘Roy Williams.’

‘You told ...’

‘Not until the night Norah Evans was buried. Remember, he came round and we were quarrelling because you wanted to go out with Brian and I didn’t want you to. He ...’ Joy brushed her hand over her cheek and was surprised to find it wet. Since Bill had left she’d prided herself on always keeping her emotions firmly under control. ‘... He was angry because I was trying to stop you seeing Brian. I tried to explain why. That part was easy, I didn’t have to tell him about your father’s other women, Roy worked with him before the war and if anything, he knew more than me. He understood that I was afraid for you because Brian is tall, dark, handsome, and a policeman like your father and it would be just as easy for him to be unfaithful, but he wouldn’t leave it there. Roy’s been asking me to marry him for years and he thought I felt the same about him, that being a policeman he was just as likely to stray. He gave me an ultimatum, so I finally explained I couldn’t marry him because I was still married to your father.’

‘What did he say?’

‘That I thought more about what people would say and gossip than I thought of you or him. That we could have married years ago and been a family ... I’ve made a mess of all our lives. Yours – Roy’s – your father’s and mine ...’ Unable to bear the bewilderment – and pain – in Judy’s eyes, Joy went into the salon and opened her handbag. Rummaging for her cigarettes, she found them and lit one. Judy followed her. Summoning her courage, Joy turned and looked her daughter in the eye. ‘You have every right to be angry with me.’

‘I know I do.’

‘Are you?’

‘Not now you’ve explained, and after what Brian put me through; I thought he knew me, what I wanted, that I loved him and ...’

‘He found someone else?’

‘No, he wanted me to marry him and forget about the job in the BBC in London.’

‘You haven’t got it yet.’

‘If I don’t, there’ll be others I can try for. And in the meantime I think you should apply for that divorce and marry Constable Williams before he finds someone else and marries on the rebound.’

‘Judy ...’ As Joy hugged her daughter she realised Judy was crying as much as her. ‘Thank you.’

‘It was always us against the world, Mam, remember. And Brian – all you had to do was explain.’

‘You still would have gone out with him.’

‘Yes, but at least I would have realised why you were so set against him.’

The bell rang as the salon door opened. Releasing Judy, Joy reached for a towel and blotted the tears from her face.

‘We’ll talk more later.’

‘After you’ve seen Constable Williams, and sorted everything out with him.’ Judy reached along the shelves. ‘You’ll need perming solution.’

‘The right strength this time,’ Joy warned.

‘Nice flowers, Katie,’ John observed as he returned to the office.

‘For Mam’s grave. It’s her birthday. I thought I’d go up there after work.’

‘The cemetery closes at six in winter.’

‘I didn’t know.’ Katie bit her bottom lip to stop it from trembling.

Confident that Katie was courting Adam Jordan, unsettled by the events of that afternoon and stung by compassion, he succumbed to impulse. ‘I don’t feel much like working, so why don’t I drive you there now.’

‘But, Mr Griffiths ...’

‘Don’t tell me what needs doing, Katie, or I’ll have a guilty conscience.’ He fastened his raincoat. ‘Come on, you could do with some fresh air by the look of you.’

Ten minutes later they were driving through the Hafod in the direction of Morriston. Hands clasped around her knees, Katie stared straight ahead out of the window, embarrassed by thoughts of her behaviour the last time she had been alone in the car with her boss. Whenever she glanced across at him, he seemed stern, remote, and she wondered if he was deliberately being aloof because he was wary of her making a fool of herself again.

John drove into the cemetery and parked close to the crematorium. Pulling a newspaper from his pocket, he switched on the interior light. ‘Take as long as you like, but remember where the car is, it’s going to be dark in another ten minutes or so. And,’ he peered out at the drizzle that was getting heavier by the minute, ‘take my umbrella, it’s bigger than yours.’

‘Yes, Mr Griffiths, thank you.’

Sitting back, he watched her struggle to put up the man-sized umbrella. Seconds later, her slight figure bobbed along the path through the neat rows of headstones to the mounds of newer graves beyond. She looked thin, small and fragile, in total contrast to the cheerful bunch of yellow chrysanthemums she was carrying. His heart went out to her. For the first time in her life she should be free from fear, but given Ernie’s treatment of his family over the years he wondered if it were possible for anyone to give her the safety and security she craved and had so far eluded her in life. Particularly when he considered the warning Roy had given him, that Ernie was due for release in the next few days. She must be concerned that her father would come looking for her and what guarantee could he, Roy, her brothers or anyone else give that he wouldn’t?

He was halfway through an article on an earthquake in Algeria when Katie returned. ‘You weren’t long.’ He turned up the collar on his raincoat. It was thinner and not as warm as his overcoat.

‘I remember you telling me that you go to your family graves to talk to your parents and grandparents, Mr Griffiths, and after Mam was buried and I first saw her grave I thought I’d feel the same way. But I don’t. Mam isn’t really there, she is with me all the time and I don’t have to go to one special place to talk to her. It’s not that I’m ungrateful,’ she added quickly, lest he think her unappreciative. ‘And I really wanted to put the chrysanthemums on her grave to brighten it up.’

‘I’m sure they will, Katie.’ He turned on the windscreen wipers as hailstones began to hurtle earthwards.

‘Not for long in this.’

‘Your Mam will be grateful that you thought of her, Katie.’

‘You understand everything, don’t you, Mr Griffiths?’

John was glad of the thickening darkness so she couldn’t see the expression on his face.

‘I saw a five in your window and, as I’m never home until six, I thought it might mean you’re missing me more than usual.’ Still in his working clothes of plaster and paint-spattered jeans and sweater that was more hole than wool, Jack fell on to the sofa alongside Helen.

‘I didn’t go to work today.’

‘Lucky you, I wish I could skive off on full pay. But in my business, no work no money.’ And he viewed the empty table. ‘No sandwiches.’

‘Is that all you come here for,’ she snapped. ‘The sandwiches.’

‘You know it isn’t.’

‘I don’t know anything.’

‘You trying to pick a fight?’

‘No, to find out whether you love me or not.’

‘You know I do.’ He put a grubby hand around her shoulders and hugged her.

‘You never say it.’

‘But I show it,’ he grinned, his teeth whiter than white against his grimy face.

‘How much?’

‘What?’

‘How much do you love me?’

‘This much.’ Putting his thumb and forefinger about two inches apart he waved them in front of her eyes.

‘Is that a lot?’

‘Why you asking?’

‘Because I’m having your baby.’

‘You can’t be.’

‘I think it happened that first time, the day your mother died.’

‘You’re serious ...’

‘Of course, I’m serious. You think I’d joke about something like this? What are we going to do, Jack?’ she asked in a small voice, terrified of his answer.

Releasing her, he sat forward on the edge of the sofa. ‘We could go to Gretna Green; you don’t need your parents’ permission to get married there if you’re under twenty-one. I have some money saved; it might be enough for petrol for my bike to get us there ... why are you looking at me like that?’

‘I thought you’d leave me.’

‘When you’re having my baby. No way.’ He pulled her close. ‘You’re my girl, Helen, I told you I’d never let you go and I meant it.’

‘And you want it?’