Tiger Bay Blues Read online

  ‘As I said, ganging up on me. But I suppose it’s time I started on my best man duties.’

  Mary’s brother, David, emerged from the drawing room. Edyth handed him a buttonhole.

  ‘What do you want me to do with this?’ he asked blankly.

  ‘As I just said, boys have absolutely no idea.’ Edyth took another pin from the cushion and fastened the rose to David’s jacket. ‘Now, what do you say to the guests when they enter the church?’

  ‘Bride or groom’s side,’ he repeated parrot-fashion.

  ‘And which is which?’

  ‘Groom to the right of the altar?’ he asked hopefully.

  ‘As you are looking down towards it,’ she lectured.

  ‘My father and uncles still “tasting” the wine bought for the reception?’ Harry lifted his eyebrows.

  ‘They are.’ David’s broad smile suggested that the older generation weren’t the only ones who’d been sampling the alcohol.

  ‘Round up all the poor superfluous males inside and outside the house, and tell them they’ve been ordered next door, Davy.’ Harry glanced back at Edyth, and realised she had really made an effort. His tomboy kid sister had grown up. ‘Didn’t know you could clean up so well, sis.’

  ‘Charming!’ She stuck her tongue out at him.

  ‘You are to ignore that display of naughtiness from your Auntie Edie, Ruth.’ Harry took his daughter from Edyth and set her on the floor. ‘Beautiful as you temporarily are, sis, you know what they say: three times a bridesmaid -’

  ‘This is only the second,’ Edyth interrupted.

  Harry ticked off his fingers. ‘Uncle Joey’s and Auntie Rhian’s wedding, mine and Mary’s, and now Bella and Toby’s. You need to practise your sums.’

  ‘Belle and I were only flower-girls at Auntie Rhea and Uncle Joey’s wedding, so that doesn’t count.’

  ‘If you’re right, as you’re only eighteen months younger than Bella, I suppose you’ll soon be following her up the aisle, then,’ Harry baited.

  He had graduated from Oxford, and all five of his sisters and his brother had been educated with the expectation that they would also attend college. Their father, Lloyd, an ex-miner who had risen through trade union ranks to become an MP, was determined to push every one of his children, girls as well as boys, to the absolute limit of their ability. And although he and their mother Sali had finally given in to Bella and Toby’s pleadings that they be allowed to marry shortly after Bella’s twentieth birthday, Harry knew his parents saw Bella’s early marriage as a betrayal of that ideal.

  ‘I have absolutely no intention of getting married. No disrespect, Mary,’ Edyth apologised to her sister-in-law, ‘but you won’t catch me playing unpaid cook, bottle-washer, laundress, nurse, nanny, and housemaid to any man.’ She shuddered when she thought of Charlie Moore’s clammy hands.

  ‘So that’s what wives are supposed to do?’ Harry winked at his wife. ‘How come I drew the short straw, my angel?’

  ‘Davy, at least get the boys to sit down somewhere quiet before one of them breaks a leg or an arm,’ Edyth commanded as the noise from outside escalated.

  David obediently went to the door. He was the same age as Edyth and had fallen in love with her the first time they’d met. Harry frequently joked that his brother-in-law would cut off his right arm, and cheerfully, if Edyth asked him to.

  ‘Edyth, bring up a couple of pins from the hall table, will you?’ Maggie shouted down.

  ‘I’ll see to it.’ Mary took a dozen pins from the cushion and pushed Ruth gently up the stairs ahead of her. ‘Go on, darling; let’s see if we can help.’

  Edyth frowned. ‘I came downstairs to take the buttonholes from the pantry and to do something else …’

  ‘Shout at the men?’ Harry suggested.

  Edyth hesitated, then, as the jazz band Toby had hired for the reception swung into a rousing rendition of ‘Walking My Baby Back Home,’ she remembered. ‘I wanted to ask the band if they’d play “Falling in Love With You” when Bella and Toby return here from the church.’

  ‘“Ain’t He Sweet” would be better.’ Harry’s blue eyes glittered with mischief.

  ‘How about “Ever’thing Made for Love”?’ David chipped in from the porch where he was having no success in calming down the boys. Since Harry had installed a radio in the kitchen of the farmhouse he lived in with his wife and her orphaned brothers and sister, David listened to as many music programmes as he could fit into his working day.

  ‘If you don’t go to Toby’s now, the best man and bridegroom are going to arrive late at the church, Harry,’ Mary cautioned from the landing.

  ‘You see to the flowers, I’ll talk to the band, Edyth.’ Harry joined David at the door.

  ‘Can I trust you?’

  ‘Wait and see,’ Harry answered maddeningly.

  Edyth spent a few minutes checking the buttonholes again for sign of wilting. When she was as sure as she could be that all of them would last the day, she went to the door. Harry and David had finally succeeded in collecting the boys but they had gathered in front of the gazebo where the jazz band was playing. Charlie Moore was with them and, to her annoyance, Bella’s fiancée, Toby.

  ‘The idiot,’ she muttered crossly. ‘Doesn’t he know it’s unlucky for the bridegroom to see the bride before the wedding? All the curtains are open on that side of the house.’

  ‘Talking to yourself is the first sign, Edyth.’ Maggie ran down the stairs behind her.

  ‘It’s the only way to get a sensible conversation in this house. Do me a favour, Mags - remind Mari to take out the posies and bouquets from their buckets in the outside pantry.’ Edyth turned on her heel and charged back up the stairs.

  ‘Harry Evans, brother of the bride and my best man.’ Toby introduced Harry to the musicians. ‘The King brothers – Tony, Jed and Ron.’ He glanced at the crowd of young men and boys standing around them. ‘I would introduce everyone to everyone, but as no one would remember all the names, there isn’t much point.’

  ‘Pleased to meet you. That was some music you were belting out there.’ Harry shook the hands of the three tall Negroes.

  ‘Abdul Akbar on trumpet,’ Toby continued, ‘Steve Chan on drums, and the Bute Street Blues Band’s talented and beautiful singer, soon to be discovered and swept off to the West End, Judy Hamilton.’

  ‘What Toby means is that I’m auditioning on Monday for a tiny part in the chorus of a tour of The Vagabond King. Not that I have a hope of getting it,’ Judy explained.

  ‘And when Ziegfeld sees you –’

  ‘The show’s touring Aberdare and the Rhondda, Toby, not opening in New York.’

  ‘If you won’t dream for yourself, Judy, then I’ll dream for you,’ Toby said blithely. ‘And last but not least, on saxophone, Micah Holsten.’

  Harry shook the hand of the only white member of the band. He was very tall and thin, with startlingly white-blond hair. A pair of wire-framed spectacles was perched in front of his deep-blue eyes but even without them he had a keen, intellectual look. Harry found it difficult to gauge his age. At first glance he’d assumed the white hair was a sign of age; close up he recognised it as an indication of Scandinavian ancestry. Micah Holsten could be anywhere between a careworn twenty or a youngish thirty.

  ‘Pleased to meet you, Mr Evans.’ Micah had the slightest of accents; his English was clear and almost too perfect, as if he’d practised the pronunciation of every single word.

  ‘Please, call me Harry. There’s a buffet laid out in the kitchen for the waitresses and kitchen staff. My parents asked me to invite you all to help yourselves while we’re in the church.’

  ‘As long as you’re back out here to play for us when we return,’ Toby reminded.

  ‘Thank you. Not many people think of the musicians.’ Micah turned when a casement slammed noisily against the wall of the house. Edyth, in her long bridesmaids’ frock and high-heeled slippers, stood balanced precariously on the sill of the open high window set along
side the staircase. She was reaching above her head to the curtain pole.

  ‘Idiot! You’ll fall and break your neck, if not your skull again,’ Harry yelled.

  ‘Toby’s the idiot, coming here before the wedding. Everyone knows it’s unlucky for the bridegroom to see the bride before the ceremony.’ She tugged the curtains across the open window, closing them. Seconds later, two loud bangs and a scream echoed from the house.

  Harry started running. Aware of someone following him, he turned and saw Toby charging in his wake. ‘Edyth won’t be the only one screaming if Bella sees you,’ he yelled, then darted inside. Edyth was standing on the top step of the long, curving staircase, holding a crossbar gold satin slipper in each hand.

  ‘You threw them on the stairs and screamed to frighten me?’ Harry grabbed the newel post to steady himself while he caught his breath.

  ‘I did.’ Her eyes glittered triumphantly.

  Micah Holsten drew alongside Harry. ‘I’m sorry, Harry,’ he gasped. ‘I would never have entered the house uninvited if Toby hadn’t thought you’d need help.’

  ‘My sister, Edyth. Micah Holsten, saxophonist and member of the Bute Street Blues Band. And Toby was right, Micah. Given my sister’s history of breaking her bones, I do need help to cope with her idea of a joke.’

  ‘Pleased to meet you, Mr Holsten.’ Assuming from the intense way he was staring at her that he thought her a fool for playing such a childish trick, Edyth stepped back into the shadows. ‘Be a good best man and keep Toby away from the house, Harry.’

  ‘I’ll try. See you in church, sis.’ Harry turned to Micah. ‘As you’re here, I may as well show you to the kitchen.’

  The women and girls who had crowded into Bella’s bedroom fell silent when Sali draped the veil over her eldest daughter’s head. Sali stepped back and Bella stood for a moment, gazing at her image in the cheval mirror through a mist of Bruges lace. She finally turned and faced her sisters, aunts and cousins.

  ‘Well?’ she questioned nervously. ‘Someone say something, even if it’s only, “you look as though you’ve been dipped in icing sugar, Bella.”’

  A lump rose in Edyth’s throat. Her sister had chosen a plain, white satin, bias-cut frock that clung flatteringly to her bust and slim waist before flaring out below the hips. But her veil and the silver tiara that held it in place were family heirlooms. Lloyd’s Spanish mother had worn them when she’d married his father over half a century before, and although the pattern on the lace was ornate, its simple outline complemented the gown perfectly.

  ‘Someone? Anyone?’ Bella pleaded.

  ‘You make the most beautiful bride, darling. Toby is a very lucky man.’ Sali reached for her handkerchief.

  ‘Auntie Megan? Auntie Rhian?’

  ‘I agree with your mother, the most beautiful bride I’ve ever seen.’ Rhian struggled to keep her voice steady. Her wartime wedding to Lloyd’s youngest brother Joey had been a small registry office affair, and for the first time in her life she found herself regretting the sensible ‘walking out’ suit she’d worn. She’d consoled herself at the time with the thought that it was the marriage not the clothes that mattered. Although she didn’t doubt for one moment that Bella would be happy. Toby’s besotted devotion to her niece had been a constant source of amusement to the entire extended family for the last four years.

  ‘I can’t wait until I’m old enough to get married,’ Susie, the youngest of Sali and Lloyd’s daughters sighed theatrically.

  ‘And me,’ fifteen-year-old Beth and seventeen-year-old Maggie cried in unison.

  ‘One at a time, girls.’ Sali attempted to conceal her emotion beneath a veneer of brisk efficiency as she tidied Bella’s dressing table, but she deceived no one. ‘It’s taken four years for your father to get used to the idea of Harry being a husband and father.’ She gave Mary, who was sitting on the bed with Ruth on her lap, one of her ‘special’ smiles. ‘It will take him another four to accept that Bella’s grown up enough to be a wife.’

  ‘Don’t worry, Mam, you’ll always have one spinster daughter.’ Edyth picked up the gold basket she’d filled with yellow rosebuds and handed it to Ruth.

  ‘Hardly forever when you go to college in two months,’ Maggie reminded.

  ‘Only if I matriculate.’ Edyth crossed her fingers superstitiously under cover of her skirt, as she always did when any reference was made to the future that was planned for her. ‘And, if I’m lucky enough to pass all my exams, it will only be for three years. I’ll come back here to teach and look after Mam and Dad in their old age.’

  ‘That’s a comforting thought for you and Lloyd, Sali,’ laughed Megan, the wife of Lloyd’s other brother, Victor.

  ‘We’re not quite in our dotage yet, no matter what you girls think.’ Sali tweaked the hem of Bella’s dress.

  Mari knocked at the door, bustled in with an armful of posies and Bella’s bouquet, took one look at the bride and stopped in her tracks. ‘Oh, Miss Bella, you look like an angel that’s just stepped out of heaven.’

  ‘Doesn’t she just, Mari?’ Sali agreed proudly.

  ‘And you look just as lovely in that grey silk, Mari.’ Edyth was so accustomed to their housekeeper wearing black, it was a revelation to see her in a colour.

  ‘Hardly “just as lovely”, Miss Edyth.’ Mari gave her a suspicious look. ‘What you after?’

  ‘Nothing,’ Edyth protested.

  ‘No baskets of food or “old” clothes or books to take down to the Unemployed Institute?’ Mari fished.

  Everyone laughed. Lloyd and Sali were generous when it came to helping those less fortunate than them, but, to her sisters’ annoyance, Edyth was liberal to the extreme. She frequently gave away their precious possessions before they had finished with them.

  ‘Well, ladies,’ Mari addressed the room in general, ‘there’s an impatient crowd of smartly dressed gentlemen and a fleet of cars downstairs waiting to take the guests to the church. The chauffeur of the bridesmaids and mother of the bride has asked me to give a twenty-minute warning. And, as the bride’s mother’s sons are both involved in the wedding, the twins have offered their services as escort until the father of the bride has given the bride away.’

  ‘Do the twins do everything together?’ Edyth asked Megan.

  ‘Sixteen and no sign of them changing their ways.’ She shook her head fondly. ‘Victor is already pitying the poor girl they’ll both start courting.’

  Mari saw Sali glance wistfully at Bella. Suspecting there wouldn’t be much time for mother and daughter to have a quiet moment together after the ceremony, she took charge. ‘Right, bridesmaids, pick up your posies, but keep the tea towels wrapped around the stems until the last minute or they’ll leave watermarks on your frocks. Those who haven’t yet picked up their buttonholes from the hall, do so. I’ll carry that downstairs for you so you can hold up your skirt, pet.’ She took Ruth’s basket from her, and was so insistent she soon cleared the room of everyone except Sali, Bella and Edyth, who was drying the stems of Bella’s bouquet in a towel. ‘Perhaps the chief bridesmaid should stay with the bride in case of accident,’ Mari declared as an afterthought.

  ‘What kind of accident?’ Bella asked from behind her veil.

  ‘Your knickers could fall down, like when you used to snap the elastic to make a funny noise when you were little.’

  ‘Mari!’ Bella cried indignantly.

  ‘And no sentimental remembrances or you two will make your mother cry.’ Mari took a last look at Bella. ‘You do look lovely, Miss Bella, just the way an Evans bride should.’ She closed the door quickly, but not quickly enough. Edyth saw a tear in the elderly woman’s eye.

  ‘Mari’s right.’ Sali continued to stare, mesmerised, at her eldest daughter. ‘You do look just the way an Evans bride should.’ Her eyes clouded as she remembered the day she’d been dressed as a bride. Only her bridegroom hadn’t made it to the church. Harry’s father had been murdered before he could marry her, but it was a story she and Lloyd h
ad kept from the girls. The tragedy had been hers and Harry’s – and today of all days was not the time to remember it.

  ‘You heard Mari: no sentiment and no tears, or we’ll spoil our frocks and redden our noses.’ Edyth lifted her sister’s veil and draped it away from her face. ‘I hid a bottle of sherry and some glasses in your wardrobe earlier. Shall I get them?’

  ‘How on earth did you manage to do that without Mari, me or your father seeing you?’ Sali asked in amazement.

  ‘Perhaps now’s the time to tell you some of Edyth’s little dodges.’ Bella arranged her dress carefully so as not to crease it before sitting on her dressing-table stool.

  ‘Not if you want me to keep your secrets, sister dear.’ Edyth produced the bottle and three glasses, and set them on the dressing table.

  ‘Please be careful, Edyth, Sherry will leave a horrible stain on satin,’ Sali warned when Edyth uncorked the sherry.

  ‘I haven’t had an accident in months,’ Edyth protested.

  ‘That’s why I’m worried. Whenever you’ve been quieter for longer than a week, it usually means you’re building up to something big. Like that time you fractured your skull.’

  ‘I’ve broken enough bones for one lifetime.’ Edyth filled the last glass and handed two to her mother and sister. ‘A toast: to Bella and Toby, and many years of happy married life.’

  ‘And Edyth,’ Bella added. ‘May she be the first to fulfil Dad’s dream of seeing a daughter go to college.’

  ‘If I’ve passed my matriculation.’ Edyth crossed her fingers again before sipping the sherry.

  Joey Evans liked to boast that he was the least sentimental man in the family, but Edyth saw her uncle reach for his handkerchief when Lloyd escorted Bella up the aisle to the accompaniment of their mother’s favourite Bach concerto. She continued to walk slowly behind her father and sister while keeping a watchful eye on the three small children in front of her. Pageboys Glyn and Luke held Bella’s veil stiffly at arm’s length and Ruth marched proudly between them, more miniature soldier on parade than flower-girl.