Tiger Bay Blues Read Online Free PDF

length of my postings means that the Church is considering giving me my own parish in the not-too-distant future.’
    The Reverend Price was in his early fifties and had been entrenched in Pontypridd for as long as Edyth could remember, so she guessed that if Peter Slater was going to be given his own church soon, it wouldn’t be St Catherine’s. ‘Then you don’t expect to be here for long?’ She didn’t even try to hide her disappointment.
    ‘That depends on the Church. I’m not in a hurry to move until I am offered my own parish. The Reverend Price and my father were close friends and, as my godfather, he’s taken his duty towards me seriously. He kept in close touch with my mother after my father died and when he heard that I was looking for a position that would offer more of a challenge to an ambitious curate, he asked the Bishop to send me here. And that, Miss Evans,’ Peter gave her heart-melting smile, ‘is a brief outline of my short and uneventful life.’
    ‘You see your mother?’
    ‘As often as I can. Swansea is only two train journeys and an hour and a half away, but I get very little free time to travel even that far.’
    ‘And none on Sundays. It must be peculiar to have to work your longest hours on most people’s only free day in the week.’ Noticing that the waitresses were already collecting plates, Edyth finally cut into her salmon. ‘Do you have any brothers and sisters?’
    ‘None. As the saying goes, I’m only, lonely, and selfish.’ He smiled again and her heartbeat quickened.
    ‘I’ve never heard that, but then, with four sisters and two brothers, it hardly applies to me.’
    ‘You’re lucky to have a large family.’ He glanced around the table. ‘The only relatives I have in this world are my mother and aunt.’
    ‘There have been times when I would have disagreed with you, but not today. As you may have guessed, we’re not only wearing our best clothes but we’re all on our best behaviour.’
    ‘Your sister makes a beautiful bride.’
    ‘And Toby a handsome bridegroom. We tease him dreadfully. He’s not used to children or girls, and finds us overwhelming. ‘
    ‘He doesn’t seem to have much family,’ Peter observed. ‘His side of the church was half-empty.’
    ‘He doesn’t have any family. His parents died when he was young and his uncle a few years ago. He has no one else, so the only people in his pews were his friends.’ Edyth handed her plate of barely touched salmon to a waitress.
    ‘How did he meet your sister?’
    ‘Toby was a friend of Harry’s – my eldest brother and Bella and Toby’s best man,’ she explained. ‘When Harry married Mary and went to live with her and her brothers and sister on their farm, Harry asked Toby if he’d like to rent his house, which is next door to this one. You can see the roof over the trees.’
    ‘Very imposing.’
    Edyth suspected from the expression on Peter’s face that he was wondering how someone Harry’s age could afford a house that large, but drilled by her parents never to discuss finances, especially Harry’s inheritance from a long-dead great-aunt, she didn’t elaborate. ‘It is, and as Toby was already smitten with Bella although she was only sixteen at the time, he jumped at the chance. My parents weren’t too happy about the arrangement. They had hoped we’d all go to college. But Bella gave up on that idea when she and Toby became engaged on her eighteenth birthday.’
    ‘Your father wants to send all of you to college, even the girls?’ Peter asked in astonishment.
    ‘Especially the girls.’ Lloyd caught the tail end of their conversation. ‘All women should be educated, and not only so they can keep themselves if necessary,’ he said forcefully.
    ‘I agree, sir,’ Peter muttered diplomatically. ‘But not many men of your generation think that way. My father used to say that it was a waste of time and money to educate women when most of them only end up running a