The Weston Girls Read online

  Before she went inside, she asked hesitantly and with a rosy hue revealing her embarrassment, “Did you, I mean, was it your idea? Was it you who suggested I went back to work for Mrs Weston? Like you said you would?”

  “You don’t need anyone to speak for you, Victoria,” he said. “My grandmother wanted someone hard-working and helpful, there was no one better than you and she was sensible to put the past behind her and ask.”

  “Thank you, Mr – thanks.”

  “What for?”

  “For—” Here words failed her and she went inside.

  Walking home Jack felt suddenly bereft. He found himself thinking up excuses for future calls both on his grandmother and on the neat little house on Goldings Street.

  * * *

  Jack’s father still wasn’t at home. His parents had had a row, and his father hadn’t been home the previous night, but he imagined he was back and once more slouched in his chair. He knew his mother had followed Islwyn when he had stormed out of the house, concerned more than angry. She had followed him around the streets, back to the house and saw him hesitate then leave again. Sian had only returned home when she had seen her husband installed in a small hotel on the road to the Pleasure Beach. She and Jack had telephoned the hotel when she got back home and they felt reassured enough to go to bed. A second call that morning had reassured her again, and now she was waiting for him to return.

  * * *

  Islwyn had mulled over his discussion with Ryan all through the night. Ryan had insisted they did nothing, just wait for Old Man Arfon to shake himself and sack Viv and offer them their jobs back. “Bound to happen,” he assured Islwyn but Islwyn had not been convinced.

  Going to Ryan for sympathy, their talk had had the opposite effect. He had left his brother-in-law feeling guilty of failing the man who had given him so much. Watching Ryan’s face as he said smugly that the old man would soon climb down and realise that family had to come first, he wanted to slap it. Ryan was wrong, he was wrong, and it was time to do something about it. The question was, what? The following morning the answer came to him.

  * * *

  Just before Jack came back from walking Victoria home, Islwyn had slipped in through the back door and gone straight up to the bedroom. Hearing her husband come in, Sian followed and she closed the door and stared at him with anger softening as she waited for him to speak. He looked so old, and abandoned somehow. The words she had prepared, about worrying her and being inconsiderate quickly faded, and instead she said, “Islwyn, you have to find something to do.”

  “Yes,” he surprised her by saying. “I agree. I’ve been to the Labour Exchange and they are sending me to see a Mr Brasen, at two-thirty.”

  “Mr Brasen? I don’t know the name. Who is he? What business is he in? There isn’t a wallpaper and paint business with that name, is there? I’ll ask Daddy if he knows him.”

  “Mr Brasen wants someone to cook chips in the Fortune chip shop. I’ll be working in his café over the beach in the summer.”

  “What? Islwyn, you can’t!”

  “I might not be suitable, I’ve never cooked anything since scout camp’s burnt sausages, but I dare say it won’t be difficult to learn.”

  All morning Sian pleaded, but Islwyn ignored her protests. At three o’clock he came back and told her he had the job. Jack was the second to be told and he thought it an excellent idea.

  “Something different, and with no headaches or hangovers, I mean there’ll be no worries to bring home. You finish your shift and forget it until the next day. Easy, relaxed and perfect.”

  “You are both completely mad!” Sian wailed.

  “And there’s something else,” Islwyn said. “All these months I’ve been hating Viv Lewis, blaming him for the mess I’ve got myself into. Well, I’ve sorted all that. And I’ve been looking to your parents to rescue me, when I know I should have been trying to rescue them.”

  “How can you help my father? We haven’t any money! Although,” she looked at her husband, a steely expression in her eyes, “we do have the means of raising some, if you’re serious about wanting to help.”

  “I am.”

  “Then I propose we sell this house – it’s too big for us anyway. We could find a rented one, smaller and more convenient, and give the proceeds to Daddy to help clear his debts.”

  “Sian! He’d never agree!”

  “Then we won’t tell him until it’s done.”

  Islwyn looked startled for a long moment then he relaxed and nodded. “All right, love, that’s what we’ll do.”

  Sian gave a huge sigh of relief. She had been thinking of the idea for days and had expected more opposition. “Right then. Now, Jack, where do we start looking for a house?”

  * * *

  The sweet shop on the corner of Sophie Street was full to the door and when Barry came home to change ready for an evening appointment he saw Rhiannon trying to cope and stayed to help serve.

  “I can manage,” she told him, between helping customers to choose their sweets and chocolates, thinking how wonderful it was not to have to cut out the tiny pieces of paper that rationing had meant.

  “I know you can,” he whispered back, “but I want to talk to you and we have to get rid of this lot first.”

  In a lull, Rhiannon went upstairs to make some tea and when she came back down the shop was again full to the door with people wanting to buy sweets. Most of the customers were children, some with their mothers, some clutching coins in hot hands while their mothers chatted outside. Barry was curious. “What’s caused the rush?” he asked when once again the small shop had emptied.

  “There’s a new dance class opened in Gomer Hall. Children at four and five o’clock, and adults seven and nine. I thought we could join.”

  “No, I couldn’t manage a regular attendance, Rhiannon. I have appointments in the evening.”

  “Not all that many,” she protested.

  “Enough. Besides, I don’t think I’d enjoy learning to dance.”

  “They do all the usual ballroom dances including the rumba and tango,” she coaxed. “It sounds like fun.”

  “Can’t stop. I’ve been invited to tea at the Griffithses’. I’ve got some new photographs of little Joseph to show Caroline.”

  “Will you come to the dance class with me?”

  “You go if you want to,” Barry said generously, gathering his folders, which he had thrown behind the counter. “I won’t mind.”

  Something in this exchange irritated Rhiannon. “You don’t mind? How magnanimous! All right,” she said in a voice that reminded her of her mother’s. “All right. I will go. Better than sitting in night after night while you further your career and visit Caroline!”

  Her first thought was, who could she go with? No point going without a partner, there was always a surplus of girls at dances and dance classes probably weren’t any different. She asked Viv when she got home, but he said he’d go if he could persuade Joan Weston to go with him. She pleaded with Barry to reconsider when he called the next day, and, when she was about to give up the idea, Jimmy called.

  Jimmy Herbert was a rep, selling sweets for Bottomley’s, the same firm for which her father worked. He was handsome in a rather traditional way, tall and slim, curly fair hair and bright, cheeky blue eyes. He had a moustache. But unlike her father’s pencil-thin line, Jimmy’s seemed to take over his face and straggle rather wildly, refusing to accept the shape Jimmy chose.

  “Rhiannon, I want you to come out with me tonight and I want an order. Which shall we discuss first?” he said, words coming fast. “I thought the pictures and then some supper. Nothing flash, mind, fish and chips and a glass of pop?”

  “Give me a chance to speak!” she laughed.

  Theatrically he slapped a hand across his mouth and widened his eyes.

  “Um, no thanks, to the pictures. I went last night. And, yes to supper and what d’you think of joining the dance class at Gomer Hall?” She tried to speak as fast as he but
failed.

  “What about an order first?” he said then, and they both ended up laughing.

  Barry came down the stairs then, and stood looking at the two of them, obviously friends, and with a flirting look on their faces. Stiffly, he said, “I’m off then. See you tomorrow, Rhiannon.” He leaned forward to place a proprietary kiss on her cheek, she turned to say goodbye, and they bumped heads.

  This too seemed funny and the young couple stifled their laughter only for as long as it took Barry to leave the shop.

  Jimmy and she joined the dance class that evening, and they met once during the week, to walk around the town and have a coffee somewhere before walking some more. Although he had a reasonably good job, ten shillings a week was all he allowed himself for pocket money and his usual two trips to the pictures was reduced to one when he paid for Rhiannon.

  His liking for her was growing and the dance class was a way of getting her used to being with him rather than Barry Martin who was married, even though he was getting a divorce. He mentally upped his pocket money by another seven and sixpence. No point skimping if he wanted Rhiannon to take him seriously.

  * * *

  Viv Lewis had no illusions about Joan Weston and a future with her. Arfon Weston might have forgiven his disloyalty and had even made him a partner, but he would never allow Joan to marry him. He also knew that for Joan, their occasional secret meetings were simply fun, a way of having an adventure without risk. And for himself he knew he would never be able to afford the sort of life Joan would expect. No, he wasn’t involved. Their secret meetings were nothing more than a way of getting one over his employer.

  He had tried to kiss her on more than one occasion and each attempt had resulted in having his face slapped. Yet Joan acted as if they were more than friends when they were in the company of her twin, or some of their friends who had been told in confidence of their ‘secret love’. It was all nothing more than a joke, and a joke that was beginning to pall.

  He wasn’t tired of meeting her after dark and occasionally slipping into the back row of the cinema, and leaving just before the film ended to avoid being seen. But Joan was. She had never been warm towards him, but even in her icy manner there was a cooling off.

  It saddened him, no matter how he told himself it was what he expected. In his heart there was a perverse spark of hope that one day they might openly start courting, although Joan had given him no encouragement in this.

  He wondered idly and without much dismay, if he would be passed back to Megan.

  “Why don’t you come to the dance class?” Rhiannon asked when Jimmy called for her a week later.

  “No partner,” Viv replied.

  “Plenty of girls looking for one,” Jimmy told him. But Viv shook his head. He had arranged to meet Joan.

  At eight o’clock he was still waiting for Joan to appear. Rain began to fall and quickly increased to a heavy downpour. He tilted his trilby and pulled up the collar of his mac, but the rain seeped in and he had the uncomfortable feeling of wetness around his neck. Still he waited.

  He found himself singing the George Formby song, ‘Leaning on the lamp post, at the corner of the street’. At half-past he began to fidget changing from one foot to the other in squelching shoes. Then he began walking up and down, and stretching to look along the street, and idly counting the remaining houses in Goldings Street.

  “‘I hope that she will get away, she doesn’t always get away and anyhow I know that she’ll try’,” he sang, wiping around his neck with a handkerchief. At nine-thirty, wet and dispirited, he headed back to Sophie Street.

  The music coming from Gomer Hall was that of a tinny piano played badly. He chuckled, went to see what was happening and saw his sister and Jimmy standing with one foot raised, being taught the quarter turn of the quickstep. In the corner, as if part of the same tableau, the elderly pianist sat with her arms raised, waiting for the signal to thump the keys.

  Standing by the desk at which someone waited for the entrance fees, he watched, with the intention of teasing them later and hardly noticed the rest of the couples, until a voice called, “Come on in, the water’s fine!”

  “Jack Weston! I never thought I’d see the day!”

  Leaving the rest still struggling with the quarter turn, this time to a record of Roy Fox’s Orchestra, Jack joined Viv with his partner, Joan. So that’s why she couldn’t come, he thought to himself.

  Another couple came over once the music stopped, Joan’s twin, Megan, and a man Viv recognised as Jack’s friend from his army days, Terry Jenkins.

  Viv nodded in an unfriendly manner, his second impression the same as the first: he wasn’t going to like this man. He glanced at him, taking in the smart suit and neat evening shirt and bow tie. He was even wearing proper dance pumps. Terry was hard-eyed and over-confident, looking around him in a manner that suggested he was used to mixing with people far superior. He’s worse than Gladys Weston, Viv thought. He doesn’t have her soft centre. His hands were soft, though, feminine almost, and small, like his neatly-clad feet. Dislike spread from the man’s face through his elegantly clothed body to his small feline feet and hands. The man was a bit of a pansy, never soiling his hands with honest work for sure. And as for dressing like that for a dance class in an old hall, God ’elp. A pansy for sure, but one with an eye for the girls, judging by the way he was admiring Megan.

  The five of them left the dance hall at eleven o’clock and stood in a huddle outside the entrance with several others. Viv hoped for a word with Joan, guessing she had been put on the spot by her family. Although he couldn’t imagine why the Weston Girls would go to such a shabby dance class when they’d had lessons at their private school and were excellent dancers.

  “We only went in to get out of the rain,” Megan said. “It was fun, though.”

  “Rhiannon’s been trying to persuade me to join,” Viv said. He turned to Jimmy and asked, “You will see her safe home, won’t you? No leaving her at the stop where you get your bus, mind.”

  “I’ve got a car,” Jimmy reminded him, “and I wouldn’t leave her to walk home alone, would I? Not after the fright she had last week.”

  Leaving Rhiannon and Jimmy to stroll back to the house, Viv stayed and talked to Jack, the twins and Jack’s friend, Terry Jenkins. Always outspoken to the point of rudeness, he waited for an opportunity and whispered to Jack, “What the ’ell’s he doing round here then? Which slimy hole did he crawl out of?”

  “Grandmother found him for me,” Jack hissed back. “She went to visit the Jenkinses and I think she saw him as an extra eligible bachelor for this party she’s planning. Don’t you like him?”

  “Not staying long, is he?”

  “Looking for a job and somewhere to settle I understand.”

  “Don’t encourage him, Jack.”

  “Looks as if Megan will though.” He nodded to where Terry and Megan stood talking, Megan looking up at him in a way that even the low light from the lamp couldn’t disguise. “It looks as if she’s smitten.”

  “Lock her up ’til she’s come to her senses!”

  For a few days Viv heard nothing from Joan. When she arrived for work on Saturday she offered no explanation about not meeting him on the Monday evening, and there was no invitation for them to meet. He wasn’t surprised. He had felt she was getting bored, but he hoped she wasn’t getting mixed up with that Terry Jenkins.

  Jack had brought Terry to The Railwayman’s twice and each time the others had made an excuse to leave. With his casually spoken boasting and the way he had of belittling them, he dispersed the normally easy-going group in a few minutes.

  “Don’t know what it is with that bloke,” Basil mused, “but there’s something I don’t quite like about him. He’s always acting like he’s a cut above the rest of us – like Pendragon Island is beneath him. I’d really love to knock a bit of sense into him!”

  “I’d sign agreement to that,” Viv said gloomily. “But how can I convince Joan and Megan that he�
��s no good?”

  With Eleri’s baby due in a matter of days, Basil rarely stayed long with his friends, he contented himself with a half-pint on the way to work. On his night off, he and Eleri would go for a walk.

  She was self-conscious about being so obviously due to give birth, and avoided the town. Even the pictures, where she had once worked as an usherette, no longer appealed. She preferred to walk through the dark lanes, listening to Basil telling her about the birds he had seen, showing her the den where the vixen had brought up her two cubs that year, and to sit with him patiently waiting for a sight of the beautiful barn owl as it set out on its twilight search for food.

  “Basil, love,” she whispered on his evening off as they sat and watched a family of badgers trotting off on their nightly foraging. “I don’t think I could ever be happier than now.”

  “I’m glad. I was so afraid I’d let you down. I’m not as smart or as handsome as your Lewis-boy was.”

  “I wouldn’t change anything about you. I feel so safe with you.”

  He didn’t reply and she asked if there was anything worrying him.

  “No, love, but I wish you hadn’t said all that just now.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I was going to ask if you’d mind if I went to see Viv and Jack.”

  Eleri laughed. “Of course I don’t mind! Your Mam and Dad will be there if anything starts to happen with our baby. Although he isn’t likely to arrive for a week yet. Go on you, and enjoy an hour with your mates. Which way will you walk home? I might come and meet you.”

  “No, don’t do that. Stay back and I won’t be long.”

  It was a rare occasion for Janet and Hywel Griffiths to be out, but they had gone with Caroline and Barry and the baby to see Nia. Uneasy in the isolated house on her own, Eleri began to think about the man who attacked Rhiannon.

  The doors and windows of the cottage were always wide open and if she closed them the Griffithses would probably tease her. She wondered idly which was the strongest emotion, fear itself or the fear of being made to look silly. She decided on the latter and left the windows open.