Tiger Ragtime Read Free Page A

firm grip on both of them.
    ‘If what they say about it being lucky to have a sweep cross your path is true, we’ll have more than our fair share of good fortune today, Ruth,’ said Mary with a smile.
    A coal cart pulled by a pair of black shire horses had been transformed into a Victorian chimney sweeps’ tableau. Small boys in ragged, coal-blackened trousers and shirts, holding flat-topped brushes and wearing top hats fashioned from black crepe paper and cardboard were clustered around a chimney, which, judging from its cracked and sorry state, had been scavenged from a scrap yard. Two lines of adolescent girls in grass skirts and flower-decked blouses danced alongside the cart, shaking home-made maracas made from tins filled with stones.
    ‘That costume looks a bit draughty even for summer,’ Harry commented, when a gust of wind sent the strands dancing, revealing the bathing costumes the girls were wearing underneath.
    ‘Trust you to notice.’ There was no jealousy in Mary’s comment, only fond amusement. She glanced at her younger brothers and sister. All three were running after Edyth’s cart. ‘Where are they off to?’
    ‘Loudoun Square,’ Harry guessed. ‘First there gets the best spot in the park close to the bands and the pickings of anything that’s left in the way of treats that were thrown from the floats.’
    ‘Will they be all right?’
    ‘They will, Mary’, David said, ‘but I’ll go with them just to be sure. You stay here and watch the rest of the parade.’ He had an ulterior motive for volunteering to look out for the youngsters. As Harry had said, the first ones into the small park in the centre of Loudoun Square would get the best position. But it wasn’t the view David was interested in.
    He had fallen hopelessly in love with Edyth the first time he had met her. Drunk and devastated after she had married, he had jumped off a bridge into the river Taff. His attempt at suicide had left him with fractured bones, but they had pained him less than his broken heart. His physical injuries had healed, but it had taken the news that Edyth’s husband had deserted her and she was seeking to annul her marriage to heal his shattered spirits.
    His two younger brothers were already swallowed up by the throng flowing into Loudoun Square. Undeterred, David called out to his younger sister, Martha, and ran after her.
    The crowd heading into Loudoun Square from Christina Street forced the taxi driver to slam on his brakes.
    ‘Why have we stopped?’ Aled demanded from the back.
    ‘Because of these idiots.’ The driver slid his window open. ‘Don’t you dare put your hand on that bonnet, nipper,’ he shouted at a child about to steady himself on the cab.
    The child stuck his tongue out before running to his mother. Once his hand was firmly locked in hers, he turned and stuck it out a second time. The driver glanced into his rear-view mirror and eyed his passengers. All three were dressed in unseasonably thick black woollen sailors’ jackets and black peaked caps, but he knew they weren’t seamen. Their hands were too clean and soft and there was something menacing about them. Even if the two he’d marked as ‘bruisers’ hadn’t addressed the tall, slim, fair-haired man with piercing blue eyes as ‘Boss’ he would have guessed from their deference that he was in charge.
    The tallest and largest of the three had the height, build and battered facial features of a heavyweight boxer. But the slighter man who was perched on the drop-down seat facing his two companions had dead eyes, which he found even more disturbing.
    He glanced back out of the windscreen. Just as he was about to move off, the blond man opened the door. The driver cursed and thrust his foot on the brakes a second time.
    ‘You trying to kill yourself … sir?’ he added, only just stopping himself from calling the man something less polite.
    ‘I need fresh air.’ Aled stepped outside. ‘You remember the name of the