Tiger Ragtime Read online

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  She moved back towards the door. ‘They did you out of your wages.’

  ‘No, I knew before I went that I wasn’t going to get any.’

  ‘Then why did you go?’

  ‘To get experience,’ he explained.

  She rammed the door with her hip, and opened it. ‘I don’t give out free samples.’

  ‘I have savings.’

  She brightened. ‘Five bob?’

  ‘It was two last time,’ he reminded her.

  ‘For five bob you can have me all afternoon. Until seven o’clock,’ she added cautiously.

  ‘I have to be back at my lodgings for supper at half past six.’

  She checked her watch. ‘Four bob until six?’

  ‘Two shillings and sixpence until five,’ he offered.

  ‘You drive a hard bargain, David …’

  ‘Ellis,’ he finished for her. ‘What’s your second name?’

  ‘What do you want to know for?’ she demanded suspiciously.

  ‘Just wondering.’

  A man walked through the front door and stood behind David.

  ‘You’re holding up the traffic, David. You know your way up.’ She held up her cup. ‘I’ll dump this in the kitchen and I’ll be with you.’

  David nodded to the man who looked right through him as if he wasn’t there. It was then David realised that they were in the house for the same purpose, something most men, especially if they were married, wouldn’t be eager to advertise. He walked up the stairs and looked at the doors at the top. Although there had been only two windows at the front of the house there were four doors.

  ‘Why are you waiting?’ Gertie was beside him.

  ‘I wasn’t sure which was your room.’

  ‘That’s not very flattering. How many girls have you visited since you were last here?’

  ‘None,’ he protested.

  Gertie opened a door to her left and walked inside.

  ‘Close the door behind you,’ she ordered when he didn’t make a move. ‘I don’t want to give the other girls’ clients a free eyeful.’ She stood at the side of the bed, kicked off her slippers and held out her hand. ‘Half a crown.’

  He took two shillings and a sixpence from his pocket and handed them over. She untied the belt on her robe and dropped it at her feet. He barely had time to register that she was naked beneath it before she pulled him down on to the bed.

  ‘Gertie … I can undress myself,’ he remonstrated when she started unbuttoning his flies.

  ‘All part of the service, lover boy.’ She licked her lips, moistening them. ‘Two of my regulars have left the area, and I’m out to replace them. For six bob a week you can have both their slots.’

  ‘That’s the one,’ Aled said decisively as Judy stood before him in a floor-length sable coat. ‘We’ll take it and the mink cape and the fox fur for day wear.’

  ‘You know quality when you see it, Mr James.’ Alice Johns transferred the three furs to the rack that held the day wear Judy had chosen – or rather Aled had chosen for her.

  ‘How long will the fittings take, Miss Johns?’ Aled rose to his feet.

  ‘At least an hour, Mr James. Miss King has a very slim waist and most of the gowns will need to be taken in. Would you like me to send word to you in the conference room when we have finished?’ She picked up a box of pins.

  ‘I should be back before then, Miss Johns, but if I’m not, I’d appreciate it.’

  ‘Show Mr James to the conference room,’ Alice ordered one of the assistants.

  Aled picked up his hat and followed the girl into the corridor and through a door marked STAFF ONLY. She led him to the conference door, knocked and announced him before leaving.

  Harry had deliberately sat at the side of the long table because he hadn’t wanted to put Aled at a disadvantage. But Aled had no compunction in taking the chair at the head of the table. He sat and looked at Harry sitting four chairs below him.

  Harry rose to his feet. ‘Would you like some coffee?’

  He lifted the pot from the tray. ‘It’s fresh. One of the waitresses brought it up a few minutes ago.’

  ‘I’ll just have an ashtray.’ Aled reached out and dragged one of the large onyx ashtrays towards him. He looked around. The floor was wood block, the walls papered in a pale green and cream abstract pattern. A map of Cardiff dated 1854 hung on the wall. Next to it was an old print of the Castle, but in pride of place facing the head of the table was an oil portrait of the man who had founded the company, Gwilym James. It had been painted half a century before when he had been middle aged. He looked Victorian, benign, and comfortable with his advancing years. Next to it was a photograph, a black-and-white studio portrait that could have been taken of either one of them. A young, fair-haired man sat behind a desk, pen in hand, inkpot and papers in front of him.

  Aled raised his eyebrows. ‘That, I take it, is Daddy?’

  ‘You only have to look at the photograph to realise he fathered both of us,’ Harry agreed.

  ‘I wonder what he’d make of us sitting here together looking at his picture.’

  ‘I have no idea. I didn’t know him any more than you did.’

  ‘Of course, he died before you were born.’

  ‘Did you ever see him?’ Harry asked curiously.

  ‘No. And I wish my mother had never set eyes on him. She was stupid enough to work in Gwilym James in Pontypridd. She even thought she was lucky to get the job.’ Aled looked coolly into Harry’s eyes. ‘He seduced her, along with God only knows how many other women.’

  ‘My solicitor told me when I started working for the company that after Mansel James’s death, fourteen women claimed he had fathered their children. Annuities of a hundred and four pounds a year were paid out to all of them until their children reached the age of sixteen.’

  ‘And that makes it right?’ Aled questioned angrily.

  ‘No, it doesn’t, and I didn’t say that it did.’

  ‘You were the only one of Mansel James’s children to inherit any of his wealth.’

  ‘All I inherited from my father was his personal possessions. His watch, cuff links and tiepins.’

  ‘His fortune, the companies –’

  ‘Mansel James had no fortune. If he’d lived, his aunt, Gwilym James’s wife, would have left him hers, but he was murdered before she died. His personal fortune was small and left to her. She passed his jewellery on to me.’

  ‘Very convenient,’ Aled sneered.

  ‘After Mansel James’s death, Mrs James left the companies and her money to me in trust. She was our father’s aunt by marriage and my mother’s great aunt. Having no children of her own she loved my mother like a daughter. She wanted to provide for her and she thought the best way of doing that was to set up the trust in my name. And that is exactly what she did.’

  ‘And you think that because you were related to this aunt twice over you had the better claim?’

  ‘I claimed nothing. She simply set up the trust in my name. I won’t inherit a thing until I’m thirty.’

  ‘Then you’ve a few more years to go.’

  ‘And in the meantime, I’ll work for the company.’

  ‘But hardly on the same terms as every other employee. I dare say you can cajole the trustees into paying you as much money as you want.’

  ‘There’s only so much money a man can spend on living, Aled.’

  ‘Very true.’ Aled set his lighter down next to the ashtray. ‘And I’m Mr James, not Aled. I changed my name to our father’s.’

  ‘So my mother told me.’

  Aled flicked open his cigar case and removed one without offering it to Harry. ‘I decided that I couldn’t possibly bring any more shame to it than our father already had.’

  ‘If you feel that way about him, why use his name?’

  ‘Because I needed to change it from Cooper. It became too well known in the wrong circles in America.’

  ‘Judging by your acc
ent you’ve obviously spent a lot of time there.’

  ‘Enough to make a great deal of money.’

  ‘Miss Johns mentioned that you’re building a club in Bute Street and Judy King is going to be the resident singer.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘She’s very talented.’

  ‘So we do agree about something.’ Aled exhaled twin rows of smoke. ‘Miss King also lives with your sister, Edyth Slater. She’s pretty, your sister, not conventionally so, but I find her attractive. Pity about her broken marriage.’

  ‘You’ve met my sister?’ Harry pulled out the chair to Aled’s right and sat down.

  ‘I took her out to dinner. Didn’t she tell you?’

  ‘Edyth and I have both been busy lately.’ Harry resolved that no matter what happened in the store that afternoon he would make time to see Edyth.

  ‘I’ve also met your brother-in-law, David. In fact, he’s working for me – indirectly.’

  ‘David doesn’t know the first thing about running a nightclub,’ Harry said quickly.

  ‘No, he doesn’t – yet. But he knew enough about carpentry to impress my builder who hired him. As for running a nightclub, I didn’t know anything about running one when I started.’

  ‘Have you been deliberately seeking out my family?’ Harry asked bluntly.

  ‘What if I say yes?’ Aled rejoined coolly.

  ‘Why did you come back here?’

  ‘To Britain or Wales?’

  ‘Cardiff.’

  ‘I didn’t know that you would be here, but given that I knew you’d inherited the family fortune I guessed you wouldn’t be too far away. And, as I said, things were getting too hot for me in America.’ He looked back at Mansel’s photograph. ‘My roots are here. Did you know that Americans set great store by their roots? Some are so busy looking back at the “old country”, wherever it might be, they haven’t the time to make a new life for themselves. That didn’t apply to me. But I admit, it’s good to be living in a country where I feel completely at home.’

  ‘Given the life we led in Bush Houses, I didn’t think you’d be the nostalgic type.’

  ‘I’m not, but I capitalised on other people’s homesickness. I made it my business to find out what they missed from their old lives, got hold of it and made a fortune selling it.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘You don’t expect me to give away my trade secrets, do you?’ Aled said smoothly.

  ‘Did your mother go to America with you?’

  ‘She died years ago.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Where were you, when you were twelve years old?’ Aled enquired conversationally.

  ‘At school.’

  ‘Lucky you. Sitting in a nice cosy classroom all day, going home every night to Mam in the mansion our father grew up in.’

  ‘I was in boarding school,’ Harry said flatly.

  Aled laughed mirthlessly. ‘Of course, you would have been put into a posh kids’ school. Don’t try telling me that it was tough on you.’

  ‘No more for me than any other boy.’ Harry was determined to remain calm in the face of Aled’s taunting.

  ‘When I was twelve, I was unloading potato barges on the docks for pennies. And when I wasn’t doing that, I was watching my mother die slowly in a stinking room at the back of a whorehouse. She was too weak from disease and starvation to turn over on the mattress I scavenged from a tip for her, let alone stand on her own two feet.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Are you?’

  ‘Yes.’ Harry met Aled’s steely gaze.

  ‘So, if you had been in a position to help us, you would have?’

  ‘If you’d allowed me to.’

  ‘Oh, I would have allowed you to all right, for my mother’s sake. I don’t have to tell you what she was, but a dog wouldn’t have been allowed to die the way she did.’ Aled flicked the ash from his cigar into the ashtray. ‘But the manager of Gwilym James in Pontypridd wouldn’t lift a finger to help her. One of my mother’s friends wrote to him. She told him that my mother was destitute and dying but he wouldn’t give her a single penny.’

  ‘If your mother made a claim she would have received an annuity.ʼ

  ‘My mother never received a brass farthing from Mansel James or anyone connected to him,’ Aled said frostily. ‘The only money we ever had was what she earned looking after other people’s brats – like you. But when the miners came out on strike in the Rhondda, no one could afford to pay her to look after their kids. It was then she found herself with a choice: starve or sell herself to put food on the table. Have you any idea how that made her feel? Or me?’

  ‘I’ve already said I would have done something if I could have. But I wasn’t in a position to then.’

  ‘But your mother was. Your mother didn’t have to get dolled up every night to trawl the pubs to pick up men and do whatever they wanted of her just to keep out of the workhouse. Your mother was already working for Gwilym James when my mother was dying, living in the mansion in Pontypridd that had been our father’s with your stepfather and sisters –’

  ‘You know a lot about my family,’ Harry broke in suspiciously.

  ‘I made it my business to find out.’

  ‘Before or after you went to America?’

  ‘I left Cardiff for America the day I buried my mother,’

  Aled continued without answering Harry’s question. ‘It seemed a good idea at the time to get out of this place. It didn’t seem so good when I was horsewhipped by the drunken second mate before we were even out of the Bay.’

  ‘If it’s money you want –’

  ‘That’s all you can think about, isn’t it? Our father’s money.’ Aled squashed his cigar in the ashtray. ‘I don’t want a penny of it.’

  Uncertain how to respond to Aled’s bitterness, Harry remained silent.

  ‘I’ve learned two lessons in life. The first is money is only important when you haven’t any. And, as you said earlier, there’s only so much a man can spend in one lifetime. The second is that once you have more money than you need you can use the surplus to buy anything or anyone you want. And I intend to use my wealth to do just that.’

  ‘To buy people?’

  ‘Influential people, who can give me what I want,’ he reiterated.

  ‘Like your club?’

  ‘I have my gambling, alcohol, and live entertainment licences, so there’s no point in you trying to pull any political strings to stop me.’

  ‘I didn’t intend to.’

  ‘No?’ Aled asked sceptically.

  ‘No,’ Harry replied firmly.

  ‘I’ve also bought your brother-in-law. I think David Ellis might prove to be quite an asset.’

  Harry broke into a cold sweat. ‘You hurt David or any member of my family –’

  ‘Did I say I was going to hurt him – or Edyth Slater?’ Aled pushed his chair back from the table and rose slowly to his feet. ‘She’s your sister, Harry, not mine. And, with her husband gone, “footloose and fancy free” as the saying goes.’

  ‘Aled, please –’

  ‘Watch your back, Harry Evans,’ Aled cut in ruthlessly. ‘Watch it everywhere you go, David Ellis and Edyth Slater are just the beginning.’

  ‘We’re brothers …’

  ‘That, Harry Evans, is something I will never forget.’ Aled returned his gold cigar case and lighter to his pocket and left the room.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Gertie opened her eyes to see David watching her in the gloom of the curtained bedroom.

  ‘Enjoy that?’ she smiled lazily.

  ‘What do you think?’ He wrapped his arm around her naked body and cupped her breast.

  ‘I like to leave a man satisfied.’

  David deliberately pushed all thoughts of Edyth from his mind. He loved her – had loved her before he had seen her kissing Micah – but the last person he wanted to talk about Edyth to was Gertie. His feelings for Edyth had been and still were sacred to
him. The way he felt about Gertie was anything but. And now he knew how it felt to make love to a woman, he didn’t want to think about Edyth making love to Micah or Peter –that’s if she ever had.

  He’d overheard Harry explaining to Mary why Edyth had applied to have her marriage annulled instead of simply divorcing Peter. Harry had said that Peter had never wanted to sleep with Edyth, something he found unbelievable after making love with Gertie.

  ‘What you thinking about?’

  Sensing that Gertie was waiting for a compliment he said, ‘I never in a million years thought that it could be this good between a man and a woman.’

  ‘That’s because you probably never saw any women besides your sisters on your farm,’ she teased.

  ‘I saw plenty on Sundays when we went down the valley to chapel.’

  ‘Sour old matrons in black that smelled of mothballs and lavender water, wearing their Sunday, pickled-onion­sucking, disapproving face.’

  He laughed. ‘You have a funny way of putting things.’

  ‘It’s true though, isn’t it?’ she challenged.

  ‘Some of the older women were like that,’ he conceded.

  ‘And the younger ones?’

  ‘There was never much time to talk to them after chapel, although there was a little cracker working in the grocer’s shop in Pontardawe, with come-to-bed eyes. I used to look forward to delivering eggs and butter there every Wednesday.’ He lay back on the pillows, smiling at the memory.

  ‘And?’ She dug him in the ribs.

  ‘And nothing. I just used to look at her.’

  ‘Her come-to-bed eyes, you mean.’

  ‘One of the delivery boys christened them that. I never had the courage to find out if his description was accurate.’

  ‘So, all you did was worship her from a distance,’ she snorted in amusement.

  ‘There wasn’t much else I could do given that the farm was miles from the village. It used to take me an hour and a half to drive down there in the horse and cart in daylight to make the deliveries. It would have been an all­night effort if I’d invited her out for the evening. Not that there was anywhere I could have taken her other than the chapel social.’

  ‘We lived in the Rhondda and there were lots of places to go, besides the chapel socials: picture palaces, dance halls, roller-skating rinks, concert halls, Italian cafes, and walking on the mountains, which we did more often than anything else because it didn’t cost anything.’