Tiger Bay Blues Read Free

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