Family Pride Read online

  The sisters were alike in appearance, both small and neat like their father but Fanny was dark as her mother had been, the colour helped a little by a bottle of improver from the chemists. Bessie was fair with hair that was now almost white. Both in their early forties, Bessie was the oldest by less than a year.

  Bessie had never married and at forty-four seemed unlikely to do so. She was surprised that after marrying Edward Collins and having a daughter to show for the three years of their marriage, Fanny was now walking out with Gerry Daniels from the bank. Surely once was enough? What would she want to marry again for? And at her age, too. Bessie wasn’t jealous, she argued against inviting Gerry to help them simply because she disliked the suave, handsome and vain man who seemed to have taken the sense out of her usually down to earth sister. Bessie didn’t really think they would ever marry. Gerry Daniels was too wily a bird for that, unless there was something in it for him, she thought unkindly.

  “Besides,” she had consoled herself and an anxious Gilly days before, “even if Gerry does get his feet under the table for Sunday dinner now and again, and keeps a spare umbrella in the hall-stand, there hasn’t been any hint of a wedding date as yet.”

  “I know you don’t like Gerry,” said Fanny. Bessie jerked herself out of a reverie, sipped her tea and turned to continue the argument. “Oh, you can look at me like that,” her sister went on, “I know you can’t bear him coming here, but he’s my friend and this is my home as well as yours and don’t you forget it.”

  “Perhaps Sticky Vic knows someone to help, just until Dadda’s better.” Bessie’s voice was quiet, she never looked for an argument with her sharp-voiced sister.

  “Sticky Vic is seventy like Dad for heaven’s sake. And where in this town would we find an able-bodied man to help in the bake-house? All the men have been called up. I sometimes think you’re half asleep, Bessie, you don’t seem aware of what’s going on! Gerry has a weakness of the chest that kept him out of the army, remember. He shouldn’t be doing heavy work but he’ll help if I ask him.”

  “Perhaps we can get our poor simple brother to do more. It isn’t as if he’s weak in the body, only in the head, and you don’t need much brain for the clearing up.”

  “You know Ivor can’t be relied on, Bessie. And stop calling him simple. He’s slow, that’s all, a bit slow.”

  “All right.” Bessie dropped her hands into her lap accepting defeat. “You’d best send Gilly to the bank and ask Gerry to call on his way home this afternoon.” Bessie tried to say the words calmly. “Gilly?” she called. “Gilly, love, your mam wants you to go on an errand.”

  “I’m here,” Gilly answered. “Sitting on the stairs wondering what’s up with everyone today. There’s nothing but arguing and shouting and there’s Granfer ill up stairs.”

  “That’s enough cheek from you my girl.” Fanny aimed a flip of a hand towards her daughter. “And shouldn’t you be starting on the fireplace? It won’t get black-leaded on its own you know!”

  “What errand d’you want me to do, Mam?”

  “I want you to take a note to the bank asking Uncle Gerry to call on his way home.”

  “Do that first, shall I?” She felt the need to escape from the house. First the uncles upsetting Granfer and making him ill, then Mam and Auntie Bessie at it like a pair of cats.

  Putting on her navy blue school coat that Mam kept promising to replace, and stuffing the matching hat out of sight before Mam insisted she wore it, she groaned at the sight of her skeletal wrists sticking out of the sleeves. The awful outfit had done her for Sundays and outings for more than two years, since she left school. Surely Mam would get her a new coat for this winter? She was growing so fast and she just knew everyone was staring at her and laughing. When would Mam realise she was sixteen, almost seventeen, and no longer a schoolgirl? Pulling a face at herself in the mirror she went into the bakery shop, where her mother and aunt were stacking the shelves with warm, deliciously aromatic bread before opening. She stood in the doorway and stretched her arms so her wrists shot out of the sleeves and said;

  “Mam, if I can’t have a new coat that fits me, can I have some longer gloves to stop me freezing to death?”

  Fanny and Bessie both laughed. “All right, we’ll go on Saturday week and look for your new coat. I know it’ll be my turn for the shop but you’ll do my turn for me, won’t you, Bessie? I did promise,” Fanny chuckled.

  “If the alternative is seeing Gilly looking like a cross between a spider and a pair of braces, I better had!”

  Gilly raced up the stairs to tell Granfer of her good fortune, then ran out of the shop into Bread Street. Bread Street was the home of two bakeries. Once the long, steep road had been lined with well-kept large houses that brought a daily influx of servants to polish windows and wash the steps and pavements. Now it was almost completely taken over by businesses. The grand façade of the Conservative Club stood on one corner and opposite two other clubs attracted members of different persuasions. The rest of the buildings were shops and a bank.

  Victor Jenkins’ and Sons was situated near the top of the road. Derek Green’s bakery was halfway down and at the bottom, now boarded and abandoned, was what had once been Nevilles’. Gilly didn’t glance at the shops. She hardly saw the people who waved and called to her. She was free, and she might see Paul Green.

  The bank wasn’t open so she pushed the note through the huge oak door that seemed to her like the entrance to a fortress. On the way back to the house she saw Uncle Sam in the distance, returning with the empty cart. She began to run, intending to climb on for a ride home. But when she turned to check the traffic before crossing the road she saw, approaching her from behind, the carrier bike belonging to their rivals, Derek Green and Son. She looked at the bike hoping that Paul would be driving.

  Between the pedestrians crowding the pavements and the traffic she caught a glimpse of him now and again, amused to see that, like her, his sleeves rode up above his thin wrists. Paul was at college learning the bakery trade, but helped out now and then with his father’s business. According to his mother, who Gilly called Auntie Shirley, Paul was not destined for better things than the bakery business in spite of his present studies. Derek Green firmly believed that Paul would join the family business as soon as he had finished his three years at the Cardiff Bakery and Catering School.

  Like her Uncle Sam, Paul Green was returning to collect the second delivery but he was going in the opposite direction, the carrier still held bread for him to deliver. His eventual destination was the smaller bake-house at the bottom of Bread Street, closer to the docks entrance that was owned by Granfer and rented from him by Derek Green.

  There was rivalry between the two firms but the families were friends, of a sort. They visited on occasions and spent a part of each Christmas together. Between times Gilly heard the frequently repeated critisisms of the family who lived a very different life from their own. Derek was inclined to be surly, and Shirley Green was disapproved of by Bessie and Fanny, considered too over-dressed to be really respectable. Gilly thought Auntie Shirley was beautiful and utterly charming, although she felt a little in awe of the attractive and out-going young woman. She wondered if the air of disapproval was genuine or whether in their hearts her mam and Auntie Bessie wished they were more like Shirley themselves.

  She walked on the edge of the kerb where Paul couldn’t fail to see her and tried not to glance back too often to see how close he was. The whistled version of one of the soldiers’ favorite tunes reached her ears. She felt herself begin to sing in with him; “We’re going to hang out the washing on the Siegfried Line—” Paul was always whistling. The piercing melody gradually came closer, heard above the babble of early morning shoppers, the rumble of buses and the tinkling of impatient bicycle bells taking people to work.

  “Hi, Gilly,” he called.

  She stopped and waited for him to reach her, toes tilting over the edge of the kerb, expecting, hoping, that he would stop, but he only
waved a casual hand and rode on, whistling cheerfully, showing none of the pleasure that the encounter had brought to her. Not a very good day so far, she thought gloomily. Granfer ill, everyone quarrelling and Paul looking at her as if she were less important than the remains of a sick cat’s dinner.

  When she reached home again, chilled by the early September morning, Auntie Bessie had cleaned the grate for her and had breakfast on the table, which helped a little to ease her disappointment. Porridge, ladled in dripping spoonfuls from the big iron saucepan and patterned with golden syrup warmed her, a fried egg, a couple of pieces of bacon and fried bread oozing with fat took away the disappointment of Paul’s lack of interest.

  “Best you make the most of that, Gilly, bacon is rationed from today and there won’t be enough for every breakfast, mind.”

  Gilly smiled. Fats had been rationed since January but there was still a scraping to fry her morning slice of bread. Rationing didn’t worry her, the catering was left to Mam and Auntie Bessie, she just knew that they wouldn’t starve. She guessed they probably sneaked a little fat from the bake-house supplies, but she thought it politic not to ask. When she asked Mam a question she couldn’t answer she usually got a slap.

  * * *

  Gilly’s first report to Granfer on what was happening downstairs was mostly about her promised new coat and seeing Paul Green. He teased her gently about her word-for-word description of that meeting.

  “We could buy that lot out tomorrow if we wanted,” he boasted to make her feel better. “Or kick ’em out of the bake-house we rent them. But what would we want with a tin-pot old place like that, eh? Damn me, even their horse used to fall down when they took it out of the shafts! Got a van they have now but with petrol getting short they’ll regret it. Old Ianto is the best horse power. The best we are, Gilly, and never you forget it.”

  She tried for a while to persuade him to talk about the Green family, hoping to glean some information about Paul, but seeing the glitter of amusement in his blue eyes she abandoned the idea and talked instead about the new coat.

  * * *

  Fanny was escorted to church by Gerry Daniels again the following Sunday. She was still waiting for a response to the request for help she had put in the note on the previous Monday. Gilly watched them, seeing in her mother’s made-up face the pride of being partnered by the attractive and charming man, knowing she was the envy of many. She guessed her mother’s vulnerability, too, the fear of losing him was already a pressure on her. The threat of him leaving her and finding someone else would give Gerry a hold over her that was greater than love. Gilly was mature enough to be aware that at her age, Fanny would feel humiliation if she lost him after this display of togetherness. Her friends would show sympathy but behind hands would laugh and make unkind jokes.

  Behind them, Gerry’s mother sat with his aunt, Mrs Moxon. Both were thin and angular, both wearing extravagantly decorated hats, Mrs Moxon’s only slightly askew. The old lady had hiccoughs again, a sure sign that she had escaped the control of Mrs Daniels on the previous evening and consoled herself at the pubs. Mrs Moxon enjoyed an evening of singing and drinking and, on Saturdays, so she would be reasonably sober for church, Mrs Daniels tried to lock her in. This time she had obviously failed.

  * * *

  Gerry Daniels was handsome and he knew it. At the age of forty-two he had never married and had never felt the need to. Girls flocked towards him at the dances and when he went to the club for a drink he was at once surrounded by men anxious to hear of his latest conquests. At home he had a doting mother ready to pander to his every need, with food cooked just the way he liked it, clothes always ready and warmed for his comfort.

  His job at the bank gave him prestige, and good clothes, paid for by his doting mother, and made him noticed where ever he went. He was extremely generous with himself, less so with his friends, but he comforted himself with the belief that, as he added to their dull lives by sharing his exploits over a drink and an occasional meal, he was paying them plenteously. But presently, things were not as good as they appeared on the surface.

  He walked past the door of the bakers shop without a glance, hoping that Fanny wouldn’t see him. He had received her note, delivered to his home by an errand boy sent by the bank manager. His job at the bank had ended ignominiously a few weeks before, though he had told no one yet.

  The amount he had stolen hadn’t been great, just enough to buy the plus fours he had wanted for when he took the manager’s daughter, Marigold, to lunch at the country pub down the Vale of Glamorgan. He felt hurt more than guilty. He’d succeeded in stealing at least fifteen times in the past and had never been suspected, and he thought it unfair of the young Harold Harper to have been so vigilant.

  He had never been greedy, always taking a small amount, a pound or two at most, from people who he thought would never check that one of their transactions hadn’t been entered, or had been reduced a little, old fools like Smoky Vic’s wife Edna, who came with pitiable amounts to add to her savings. People like her shouldn’t use a bank anyway, post office savings stamps were more in her line. Or a box under the mattress.

  He made his way through the busy streets where people carried empty shopping baskets, looking for a queue to join to add something to their diminished food-cupboards. A queue could mean anything from some coconut matting to a few late cucumbers and he looked disparagingly at the gossiping women dragging their complaining children around the streets in search of a treat. Thank heaven he didn’t have to involve himself in all that. Seeing his mother in one of the queues he darted swiftly out of sight down an alleyway between houses, his long elegantly dressed figure moving fast, and came up further along the main road.

  He was heading for the home of the bank manager’s daughter, where Marigold would be waiting for him. He straightened his tie unnecessarily and patted down his sleek hair. A touch to his moustache, modelled on that of the actor Ronald Coleman, was a sign of excitement at the prospect of a few hours with Marigold, a long awaited reunion. He smiled, he knew he was looking his best. And he knew his best was very, very good: dark hair flattened into immaculate precision with scented gel; eyes that were almost black with a frame of thick lashes that many girls envied; eyebrows secretly improved with the aid of his mother’s tweezers into perfect arches that he raised in such a way as to make many a heart flutter. He took infinite care with his appearance and never stepped out of the door without making certain that he was as neat and as attractive as he could possibly be. His suit had cost the earth and he had told his mother the price was less than half of the true price. And even then she had allowed him to live without paying her any board for a month to help him pay for it. He smiled and showed perfect teeth, patting his pocket where the latest loan filled his fine leather wallet. He took advantage of her but that was what God made mothers for, wasn’t it?

  He approached the house with casual caution, waiting for Marigold to see him coming and open the back door. The garden was screened with tall privet and the path was soft grass. He checked to make sure the grass wasn’t damp. He was wearing his best leather shoes and his mother had spent half an hour the previous evening polishing them for him. He opened the back door and then stood with his hands closing the latch, leaning langorously, waiting for Marigold to run and greet him with her wonderful generous kisses. But in this he was disappointed. He looked towards the door leading to the living room and frowned. Then alarm filled him. What if Marigold wasn’t there? What if her father had found out and…

  Raising himself to his full height, a lean six feet three, he pushed open the door and looked into the room. Marigold was sitting near the fire, her face red with the heat.

  “Marigold? What is it?” He put on his silly voice that girls loved and added, “Isn’t my kitten glad to see me?”

  “Yes, of course I am, darling.” But her tone denied the words.

  “It isn’t bad news is it? You husband isn’t – he’s all right, isn’t he?”

 
“Still shooting Messerschmitts, Dorniers and Heinkels out of the skies, while I’ve been easing my comfortable boredom with you.”

  “Don’t be like that. We all have a right to happiness. I doubt if he spends his spare time alone. It’s war and we have to live for the moment.” He tried to take her in his arms but for the first time she refused.

  “Gerry, I’m pregnant.”

  “No. You can’t be.”

  “There’s no mistake, mam has already suspected. What am I going to do?”

  He eased away from her, instinctively separating himself from her dilemma. She wasn’t in a state, he saw with relief, in fact she was remarkably calm.

  “You’ll be glad to have a child, won’t you? And Cyril, he’ll be that proud to have a son to come home to.”

  “He hasn’t been home for over a year. How will I explain a pregnancy lasting almost two years?”

  “You won’t tell him, about us I mean?” Self preservation lifted his voice although he tried to stay as calm as Marigold. “He’d think less of you if he knows we’ve had an affair. If you admitted to a weakness after a party or something like that he’s sure to forgive you. After all, I doubt he’s got nothing to hide. All that tension and danger, you couldn’t expect him not to seek comfort, now could you?”

  “The flyers don’t have any spare time, Gerry. It’s flying and sleep, surely even you must read the papers and hear the news!”

  “I hear it and I’m ashamed of not being able to help.”

  “I’m sure.” There was bitterness and censure in her voice. She turned to look at him and he saw tears had swollen her eyes and ravaged her face. Unconsciously he stepped further away.

  “I’d better go,” he said. “I’ll come again when we’ve digested this and we can talk less emotionally about the consequences.”

  “There aren’t any consequences for you, Gerry. You’ll just walk away. I’m left to face it.”