Sinners and Shadows (30 page)

She swallowed hard and tensed herself as though she were preparing to jump into a pool of icy water. Stepping quickly inside the door, she closed it behind her. ‘I could try …' Colour flooded her cheeks as words failed her.

‘Try what, Mabel?' he grinned, amused by her embarrassment.

‘To do whatever it is that you want me to. I could … I could undress, if you like,' she stammered.

‘Now, here?'

Closing her eyes, she unfastened the buttons at the neck of her blouse. She pulled it free from her skirt. Shivering, but not from cold, she dropped it to the floor. She unbuttoned her skirt, allowed it to fall and stepped out of it. She kept her eyes closed as, one by one, she removed the rest of her garments.

As a child her father had always taken her into his study and stripped her before slapping her buttocks with his bare hands to punish her for her misdemeanours. She had felt totally mortified and humiliated, but not as much as when he had rubbed goose grease on to her skin to take the sting from his blows later. And there were things … other things that he had done to her, things that he had insisted she'd made him do, although she hated him touching her that way. And he had warned her not to tell a living soul about them on pain of far greater punishments from heaven than he could ever mete out.

Still keeping her eyes closed, she dropped her final garment, her drawers. She continued to stand, shamed and waiting. ‘I'm naked, Edward.'

‘So I see.'

She opened her eyes. He was staring at her. ‘This was what you wanted me to do, wasn't it?'

‘Maybe on our wedding night, Mabel.' He couldn't help comparing her to Rhian – his wife's body was plump and flabby, her breasts sagging – but he couldn't resist dropping the cases he was holding, reaching out and touching …

She turned aside and vomited over her clothes when his fingers brushed her bare skin. He took his winter robe from his wardrobe and handed it to her. ‘I think you've just proved that it's a bit late for you to be taking wife lessons, Mabel.' Retrieving his cases, he walked into his bedroom and left by the other door.

Owing to a summary rejection by the German Government of the request made by His Majesty's Government for assurances that the neutrality of Belgium will be respected, His Majesty's Government have declared to the German Government that a state of war exists between Great Britain and Germany as from 11.00 p.m. on 4 August 1914.

‘You reading about the war?' the plump young barmaid asked Joey.

‘I was.' Joey folded the two-day-old newspaper and pushed it back into the corner of the saloon bar where he had found it.

‘We'll show them bleeding Huns they can't order Britain about. Just you wait until our Welsh boys get over there. They'll give them what's what.' She pulled a second pint of beer and set it on the tray next to the shorts he'd ordered.

Joey almost reminded her that it was the Belgian Government that the Germans were ordering about, not the British, then he reflected that the last thing he wanted to do was start an argument about the war with a patriotic barmaid. In the three days since it had been declared, he'd heard enough people's opinions on the conflict to last him a lifetime. The sight of a uniform of any description was enough to set men, women and children cheering and waving the flags that had miraculously appeared overnight on every souvenir stall in Mumbles and Swansea. Military bands had taken to marching up and down the main thoroughfares as well as occupying the bandstands as part of a recruiting drive. And to his disgust, that morning, he'd even caught himself humming ‘Soldiers of the King' when he was shaving.

‘How much is that?' he asked the girl.

‘Two double whisky chasers and two double gins and peps, at sixpence each and two beers at sevenpence, that'll be three shillings and twopence, sir.' She held out her hand. He flicked through his change, and to her disappointment handed her the exact money. He knew she'd been hoping for a tip, but his holiday was proving expensive enough without treating barmaids.

However, he hadn't bargained on meeting Effie and Susie or Frank, although in all fairness to his new friend Frank, he paid his corner. He picked up the tray and pushed his way through the crowd to the table where a stocky young man with brown hair was sitting next to a couple of attractive brunettes.

His train had pulled into Swansea station at ten o'clock at night eight days before. The hotels he'd tried in town had been full, so he'd caught the train to Mumbles. His determination to spend his two weeks holiday alone had crumbled in the face of the village's shortage of accommodation. Everywhere he went it was the same story; town and village were bursting at the seams with holidaymakers. Eventually a landlady had offered him a half-share in a double bed. The other half had been taken by Frank Badham, a miner from Ammanford, and at breakfast the next morning they had found themselves sharing a table with two sisters, Effie and Susie, housemaids from Llandaff, whose employers had gone to Torquay for a fortnight.

‘Ooh, you bought us large ones, you naughty boy, Joe.' Effie dug Joey in the ribs when he sat on the bench seat next to her. ‘Well, I'm telling you now, you'd be better off asking me for whatever it is you want, than trying to bribe me with gin. I can drink any girl and most men, under the table.' She batted her eyelashes, which she'd smudged with bootblack.

‘Perhaps that's exactly where I want both of us, Effie. Under the table.' Joey winked suggestively. It was the kind of flirtatious banter that had come easily to him before he had begun to go out with Rhian, and he was amazed at how quickly he had slipped back into his old, shallow ways.

‘Ooh, and I thought you were such a nice boy. I can read the wicked thoughts in your mind.' She turned to her sister. ‘You were right about Joe, Susie. He has designs on me.'

‘Is that designs or desires?' Frank interposed.

Effie gave a noisy, throaty giggle that sounded as though she were gargling with salt water. Susie whispered something in Frank's ear and they both burst out laughing.

Excluded from her sister's conversation, Effie grabbed Joey's arm and whispered breathlessly, ‘So why
did
you buy me a double gin and pep?'

‘To save going up to the bar twice before we go on to the People's Bioscope Palace, that's if you still want to go.' He took a long thirsty pull at his beer.

‘Want to go!' Susie shouted in Frank's ear, making him wince. ‘You heard those boys at the bar. They're showing pictures of what's going on in Belgium. We'll see guns and soldiers and fighting –'

‘It's too soon for fighting,' Frank curbed her enthusiasm.

‘But we'll see the boys marching in,' Effie enthused. ‘I so-o-o love a man in a uniform,' she sighed theatrically.

‘I'll warn all the tram conductors in the town then, shall I?' Joey said dryly.

‘Ooh you, I've never known a card like you, Joe.' She elbowed him again and he spilled his beer.

‘Steady on.' Joey pulled his handkerchief from his pocket and mopped his trousers.

‘You think any more about what I said?' Frank looked at Joey over Effie's head.

‘About what?' Joey made a grab for Effie's hand. She was scrabbling around the top of his thighs under cover of the table.

‘Enlisting, of course. I told you, my brother's in the South Wales Borderers. He could have a word with his sergeant and we'd be in before the big rush starts. If it's going to be over by Christmas, there won't be that much time for us to do our bit, let alone win any medals.'

‘I'm on holiday, Frank. It's the only two weeks I get off a year and I intend to enjoy both of them.' Joey succeeded in pinning Effie's hand to his knee.

‘A week can be a long time in a war that's only going to last a few months. I'm going to write to my brother tonight. Come on, it'll be fun to go with a mate.'

‘We've only known one another a week,' Joey protested.

‘But I feel as if I've known you all my life.' Frank downed his whisky chaser in one and made a face. It was obvious he didn't enjoy the taste.

‘So do I.' Effie slipped the buttons on Joey's flies with her free hand. He lifted the hand he was holding on to the table, and held it there. Grabbing her other hand, he pinned it together with her first, while he refastened his buttons.

He saw Frank wriggling. Judging by the colour in his cheeks, and Susie's look of studied innocence, he wasn't the only one to have his flies opened in the saloon bar of the Grand Hotel.

‘Spoilsport,' Effie whispered in his ear.

‘Drink up.' Joey lifted his whisky chaser. ‘If we're going to the Bioscope we'd better get a move on.'

‘I think we should go home.'

‘Home?' Julia repeated in bewilderment. She and Geraint were dining in the conservatory of a country hotel two miles outside York. He had insisted on making what he referred to as a ‘wedding trip', not honeymoon, and they had left Gretna Green for Dumfries, followed by Edinburgh, Glasgow, Berwick, Newcastle and Scarborough, where they had stayed an entire week before travelling on to York. But she had come down to breakfast that morning to find Geraint studying a railway map of Britain, and as the first question he had asked her before she'd even sat down was ‘Would you like to see Leeds before we go on to Manchester?' the last thing she'd expected him to say was, ‘I think we should go home.'

‘Yes, home – Pontypridd,' he clarified, realizing how odd it was to say ‘home' when they didn't have a house to call their own. ‘I've been reading the papers and I think the editorials are right, this war is changing everything. If Great Britain as we know it is to survive, every man must do what he can, volunteers as well as professionals.'

‘And you are thinking of volunteering?'

‘They are already shipping soldiers out to France. The army needs a hundred thousand men. I'm guessing that Kitchener intends to deploy them on garrison duties in Ireland and the colonies to free the professionals for the fighting. They are especially short of officers. I received some military training at school and university so I'm guaranteed a commission.'

‘I see,' she murmured, not quite sure what else to say.

‘If I didn't go, I don't think I'd be able to hold my head up in years to come.'

‘If you feel that way, then you should certainly enlist.' She drained her wine glass. They had been married for over three weeks, shared meals, trips, travelling, spent almost every waking hour except late in the evening together, slept in the best hotel suites their current town or city had to offer – Geraint always insisted on a suite with a sitting room and two bedrooms – and he had never once shown her any more affection than he would have his sister.

Attributing his disinclination to touch her to her lack of looks, she hadn't brought up the subject of the intimate side of marriage and, as a result, developed a more formal version of the relationship that she had with her brother.

‘It would mean leaving you to do everything on your own.'

‘What everything?' she enquired.

‘Finding, buying and furnishing a house.'

‘Even if you volunteered your services, it wouldn't necessarily mean that you'd have to leave immediately.'

‘I don't think we could count on my being around for long.'

The waiter removed their plates. The wine waiter replenished their glasses and held up the empty bottle.

‘Yes, please, we'll have another,' Geraint said, ‘and Champagne with the
entrée.
And could you ask the receptionist to check the times of the trains and details of the connections we'd have to make to reach Cardiff tomorrow?'

‘Of course, sir.'

Geraint smiled at Julia. ‘Thank you for making it easy for me to go.'

‘As we have a long journey ahead of us, perhaps we could pass the time by discussing what kind of house you would like and how you would like me to furnish it.'

‘The house would have to be detached and in its own grounds with two master suites of bed and dressing rooms. An indoor, plumbed bathroom is essential and at least six guest bedrooms. I'd prefer completely separate servants' quarters and staircase. In addition to drawing, morning, breakfast and dining rooms, I think we should have two studies and a library …'

As Julia continued to listen to Geraint's very definite ideas on furniture and decor, she felt as though he were describing an actual house not an ideal. But she had no idea that he
was.
Apart from the addition of a modern bathroom, he was describing Danygraig House, the family home his grandfather had built, where he had grown up, which had been sold by his uncle and demolished by the purchaser to make way for the YMCA building in Pontypridd.

‘I find it odd to think that we are at war.' Rhian clung to Edward's arm as they walked the length of Brighton pier. Night had fallen, the lamps had been lit and the warm breeze carried snatches of music from the concert party playing in the theatre.

‘“Land of Hope and Glory”,' Edward remarked. ‘Now that the first shots are about to be fired I believe we're in for a severe dose of patriotism.'

‘You don't approve of the war?'

‘I don't approve of any war. Neither did my father. His brother thought it would be a lark to enlist when we were fighting the Crimean War. He was killed two days before his twenty-first birthday. As my grandfather said at the time, and excuse the language, “It was a bloody awful waste of a promising young life.”

‘It must have been dreadful for your grandmother.'

‘She died shortly afterwards. My father said of a broken heart.'

‘You won't enlist, will you?' She was alarmed by the thought of losing the one person left in her life.

‘They don't want old men. Only young healthy ones who can run fast enough to dodge bullets.'