A Family Affair. Nancy Carson
seem to have quite a few admirers, Ramona,’ Clover commented ungrudgingly.
Ramona grinned. ‘Well, they’ll all be disappointed when Sammy comes.’
‘Sammy?’ she queried, thinking of Tom and how it might affect him. ‘Is he coming?’
‘I ain’t seen him for ages. But I had a letter from him yesterday. He says he wants to see me again, so I wrote back and asked him to come tonight.’
Clover was tempted to ask her about Tom Doubleday. She felt inclined to comment that it seemed hardly fair on him, especially if she intended resuming her shenanigans with this Sammy. But she thought better of it. It was none of her business. It was best to keep well out of it.
‘When he comes, Clover, would you mind covering for me while I go out with him, seeing as you’re down here?’
‘I don’t mind,’ Clover replied. ‘Just as long as Pop doesn’t mind you going out.’
‘Oh, he won’t mind.’
‘Is Tom coming tonight?’
‘He’s already been and gone, Clover.’
A group of young men on one table called Ramona’s attention. They wanted their glasses replenished. She made a show of provocatively swinging her narrow hips as she approached them and it seemed to Clover that her stepsister was deliberately flaunting herself. She seemed to enjoy it when they gawped at her. She revelled in their looking her up and down wantonly, making lewd signs to each other. She played up to them, laughing at their ribald comments while she collected their glasses ready for refilling.
‘You seem to enjoy egging those men on,’ Clover remarked with disapproval, helping her fill a couple of the glasses from another beer pump. ‘Do you think that’s wise?’
‘Wise?’ Ramona queried, as if such wisdom was irrelevant. ‘It’s good for business, Clover.’
‘You mean…?’
‘I mean, I couldn’t give a sod for any of them, but as long as they think they’ve got a chance with me they’ll keep coming in here and spending money.’
Clover laughed as the realisation struck her. ‘Yes, I suppose…’
‘You could help the cause as well, you know, Clover. You can fetch the ducks off the water. I’ve seen how men look at you.’
‘Do you think so?’
‘I know so. You’re different to me but that don’t mean they like you any less. What one bloke likes, another won’t. What one bloke don’t like, another will. One man’s meat, Clover.’
Clover smiled to herself. They were different, she and Ramona. Ramona was so much more worldly than her years suggested. But then, she had always had the freedom to do as she pleased. She was canny and uninhibited. Clover was neither. Ramona understood love, life and how to manipulate. Clover did not. Ramona’s big brown eyes, her curly, flaxen hair and her dimpled grin she could use to gain ascendancy over anybody she wished and she was not reticent about doing it. A couple of inches taller, with dark hair and blue eyes, and with an innocence Ramona lacked, Clover certainly was different. But she was no less appealing. Each had something the other did not possess.
Clover oozed innocence. Although she was two years older, compared to Ramona she was a novice, never allowed to go out alone at night before Jake and Ramona came along. She had led a sheltered life and she was beginning to realise just how sheltered it had been. Clover had never been loved by a man – not truly loved. How could she be a complete woman when she was lacking such experience? How could she truly know what men appreciated in a woman when she had never been allowed to mix freely with attractive, eligible young men who might teach her? She had obediently succumbed to her mother’s will in all things, seldom challenging; not that Mary Ann had been tyrannical – indeed, she had not, but she brooked no opinion contrary to her own. Sometimes Clover wondered whether Mary Ann’s decisions were derived for Mary Ann’s own benefit and the daughter’s considerations were secondary. Well, times were changing. Things were going to be different.
The front door latch clattered and a youth walked in with an expectant look on his fresh face. He was about nineteen, Clover estimated, with short-cropped dark hair and a cheeky grin. He had a pretty face for a boy, features that many a young girl would have been glad of. With an indisputable cockiness he stepped up to Ramona, who had her back towards him.
‘Ramona?’
At once she turned around, a grin of anticipation on her face. ‘Sammy. You came. How are you?’
‘All the better for seeing your lovely face, Ramona,’ he replied. ‘Can I have a pint?’
‘Have it on me,’ she said and immediately pulled him a pint of mild. ‘When you’ve drunk it we’ll go out if you like. Clover here will cover for me, won’t you Clover?’
‘I said I would. So this is Sammy.’ She smiled politely.
‘Clover. My new stepsister,’ Ramona explained.
Sammy shook her hand and smiled broadly. ‘I bet you fetch the ducks off the water,’ he commented.
The two girls broke into a fit of giggling.
Dorcas Downing and Elijah Tandy appeared in all their finery at the Jolly Collier on the Saturday night. They drank in the snug with Jacob, Mary Ann and Ramona by turns, when customers in the taproom would allow them a few minutes from serving.
Elijah Tandy was celebrating his thirty-second birthday that very day and he bought everybody in the pub a drink. He oozed confidence and had a way with women. He was not excessively handsome, but he was fit and solid and his pleasant and polite manner, his easy way with a compliment, won him the admiration of many a girl.
Dorcas Downing, his woman, was twenty-five, dark and strikingly beautiful with enormous brown eyes. Her father, who owned a hollow-ware factory at Eve Hill in the parish of St James, was also a magistrate and highly respected. His affluence ensured Dorcas could indulge herself in expensive clothes. They lived in a fine house in Ednam Road on the rural north-west side of the town. Whether Mr Downing approved of his prospective son-in-law, nobody knew.
‘Can I interest anybody in a cheese sandwich?’ Clover was carrying a tray into the snug. She looked a picture of fresh-faced femininity with her dark hair shining, done up in loose curls on top of her head. She wore a crisp white blouse with a high neck and a long black skirt that emphasised the youthfulness of her hips and gave her bottom some attractive contours. ‘There’s some Spanish onion as well, look, if anybody wants some.’
‘Yes please, Clover, my babby,’ Elijah said amiably. He put down his pint and took a couple of sandwiches.
‘Dorcas?’
Dorcas sighed heavily as if the world and all its problems had suddenly come to roost on her shoulders. ‘Well if Elijah’s having cheese and onion, I suppose I’d better.’
‘I should,’ Clover urged with a friendly wink.
‘You’d better,’ Elijah agreed and there was a twinkle in his eye, ‘else you won’t want to kiss me after.’
‘Who would not want to kiss you, Elijah?’ Clover said flippantly. ‘Onion or no onion.’ At once she realised she had been tactless. She was not that familiar with Elijah, yet his easy-going nature had allowed her to believe she could get away with such innocent innuendo.
Elijah chuckled but Dorcas’s face was like cold marble. She was evidently not so easy-going. ‘Does that mean that when my back’s turned others will be trying to usurp me?’ she asked Clover, her eyebrows raised in pique.
‘Not at all,’ Clover apologised earnestly. ‘I was just being frivolous, Dorcas. I didn’t mean anything by it. You shouldn’t read anything into it.’
‘It’s all right, Clover,’ Elijah said, and others had cottoned on to the chill atmosphere