Swansea Summer by Catrin Collier Page B

high and hopefully take him some of the way with him. Which was why he was sitting drinking with him, instead of savouring the delights of a town-centre pub crawl with the rest of their group who had failed to persuade Joe to join them.
    ‘Consider what you’ve just said,’ he suggested patiently. ‘You know as well as I do what most people will think when you say “a girl like Lily”. And before you start on another of your tirades, remember I saw her mother – and in her working clothes. A Tiller girl wears more on stage and the woman who would be your mother-in-law if you persist in going after Lily didn’t have a body any man in his right mind would want to look at. Why can’t you see you’re well rid of the girl?’
    ‘Because I love her.’
    ‘How can you, when her mother trawls the docks every night offering herself to any man with a couple of shillings in his pocket and a stomach strong enough to face getting close to her for however long it takes.’
    ‘Lily didn’t even know she was related to the woman until she turned up at the party. You can’t hold her responsible for someone who abandoned her …’
    ‘Blood’s thicker than water. As my father says to his patients, it’s all in the genes. Hair colouring, eye colouring – character …’
    ‘Rubbish!’ Joe pronounced tersely, thinking of himself and his unknown father as much as Lily. If Robin was right, what had he inherited from the man who had walked away from his eighteen-year-old mother when she was carrying his bastard? A yellow streak of cowardice? His height? His dark hair? God forbid, his talent for writing. He wanted that to be his and his alone, not owed to some stranger who had abandoned him. He finished his pint and downed his whisky in one swallow. ‘Same again?’
    ‘Ever known me refuse?’ Robin followed Joe to the bar. ‘This fixation of yours for Lily Sullivan …’
    ‘I told you …’
    ‘You love her,’ Robin chanted sceptically. ‘I don’t buy this one woman/one man claptrap; that’s for poets and schoolgirls who’ve overdosed on Tennyson and Byron. There’s any number of women out there who’d suit you as well, if not better, if you’d give them a chance. I’ll grant you Lily’s not bad looking but I’ve seen prettier and she hasn’t one tenth of the class of Emily …’
    ‘If by class you mean the money to swan off to Paris to blow a year’s average wages on a shopping trip, you’re right.’ Joe referred to the holiday Robin’s girlfriend Emily and his sister Angela were taking with half a dozen of their wealthier girlfriends.
    ‘It’s not just money,’ Robin unconsciously reiterated his mother’s opinion. ‘It’s knowing how to say the right things. How to cultivate people who matter; how to dress, how to behave …’
    ‘Lily behaves a bloody sight better than Emily,’ Joe defended warmly. ‘She wouldn’t jump into bed with a man after two dates, as Emily did with you.’ Suddenly aware of people staring, he signalled to the barman. ‘Two pints and two whiskies,’ he ordered abruptly, resenting the grin on the man’s face.
    ‘Perhaps if you had taken her to bed, you’d have recovered from what happened at the party and got over her by now,’ Robin replied, refusing to get embarrassed or angry.
    ‘You make Lily sound like a disease.’
    ‘The way you’re carrying on about her I’m beginning to wonder. You know she’s seeing Martin Clay. She could be sleeping with him …’
    From the savage look Joe gave him, Robin wondered afterwards if he would have punched him if it hadn’t been for the barman’s interruption.
    ‘Two pints, two whiskies, sir, that will be five shillings and sixpence.’ The barman eyed Joe as he took his money. ‘You two gentlemen all right?’
    ‘Quite,’ Joe answered brusquely.
    ‘We don’t want any trouble.’
    ‘And there won’t be any.’ Taking his drinks, Joe returned to their table.
    Aware the barman was watching them, Robin