Beggars and Choosers (55 page)

Sali turned and saw Rhian and Harry standing behind her.

‘I really am going to be fine, Harry,' Joey reassured the little boy, who was struggling to contain his tears and shaking uncontrollably. ‘Look, your mam is going to bandage me up as good as new. Why don't you sit on my lap while she does it and you can tell me what you've been doing all the weeks you've been away.'

To Sali's amazement, Harry didn't need any more prompting. Rhian held the compress on Joey's head while she ran upstairs and brought down two of Mrs Evans's linen sheets. She set Rhian to work tearing the sheets into strips while she pinched the sides of Joey's wound together in an effort to stop the bleeding.

‘Does it need a stitch?' he asked.

‘I think so. We'll have to get you to one of the surgeries.'

‘Don't be daft, with all that's going on out there, they are going to be banked up until this time tomorrow. Mam used to sew our cuts herself.'

‘I couldn't possibly ...' Sali bit her lips in exasperation as she released the sides of the cut and blood began to flow again, if anything more vigorously than before.

‘Victor will do it when he comes back. He's used to sewing up the horses.'

Victor barged through the door with two more wounded men.

‘Why don't you take Harry up to bed and tell him a story, Rhian?' Victor suggested, seeing Harry blanch at the sight of the injured men.

‘The beds aren't made up.' Sali pumped another bowlful of water.

‘Take him into our room, Rhian, first left at the top of the stairs,' Joey said. ‘I'll be up as soon as Victor has seen to this cut and then you can come back down and help Sali.'

The next few hours passed in a hive of frantic activity. Sali brought down more of Mrs Evans's sheets and tore them into strips as Victor brought more and more casualties into the house. She pulled shards of glass from open wounds, swabbed blood with cloths soaked in vinegar, washed and irrigated dirty cuts, smeared goose grease on to the newly cleaned injuries and the gashes Victor stitched with needle and thread from his mother's sewing box. She wound strips of linen around heads, arms and hands, applied compresses of cold water on bruises, and all the while kept the kettle boiling, setting the men who had sustained minor injuries to make tea.

As soon as Joey could move, she helped him to bed. Harry was asleep. Rhian had undressed him down to his underclothes and Sali carried him into Lloyd's room and laid him in his bed until she had a chance to make up the bed in the box room.

‘When did you last see your father and Lloyd?' Sali asked Victor. There were only four men left in their kitchen. Megan's uncle, who had a bruised shoulder, two men with cuts in their scalps that Victor had stitched, and a young boy who had sprained his ankle.

He took a deep draught of the tea Megan's uncle had made. ‘This afternoon, before the police broke the picket in front of Glamorgan Colliery. They were standing with the other union leaders appealing for calm. A couple of the younger boys started stoning the police, someone ripped up the palings from around the colliery and the police charged and pushed us back into Pandy square.' He raised his face, and she saw that both his eyes had been blacked and his lower lip split. ‘Young fools; if only they'd kept their heads, none of this would have happened. But don't worry about Lloyd or my father; it's my guess that the police have kept them safe in the hope that they'll be able to control the mob when they quieten down enough to listen. I'll go back down in a minute to see if I can find them.'

‘I'm going with you.' She reached for her suit jacket.

‘You're needed here.'

‘Rhian can cope, can't you?' Sali didn't even wait for her to answer.

They left the house and walked down the hill. There were even more men and women in De Winton and Dunraven Street than when Sali had arrived, but fewer blue uniforms. The street looked as though a bomb had blasted it. Loot of every sort and description mixed with broken glass littered it from one end to the other. And men were still inside some of the shops, wrecking them.

‘Have you seen Connie?' Sali asked Victor.

‘She, Annie and Tonia have barricaded themselves into the rooms above the shop. She shouted down to me.'

A man walked past carrying a bale of cloth.

‘Sion, think about what you are doing, man,' Victor remonstrated.

‘Bastard had it coming to him. Charges top whack for his goods, takes the bloody rent off me every week ...'

‘Sion, you're not thinking straight. If they find that cloth in your house, you'll be going down for a good long stretch.'

‘Your family collects bloody rent on the houses you own.'

‘And we won't be collecting any more until this strike is settled, Sion. Think, man, there'll be no money coming into this valley for anyone – miners, shopkeepers or landlords – until this is settled.'

‘My God.' Sali stared in horror as a solid tide of blue uniformed men surged into the square from the direction of the station.

‘There has to be a thousand of them.' Victor leaned against the wall.

‘They said in Cardiff that the Metropolitan police were going to be sent here.'

‘Go back home, Sali.'

‘No.'

‘You can't help by staying here.'

‘You can't possibly go down there.'

‘There's too many boys down there like Joey. They're not bad but they are kids. Stupid hot heads who act before they think. And there are women there. Do you think the police are going to care where their truncheons land? Look after Joey and, whatever you do, keep him in the house.'

Sali returned to find Megan's uncle and the others had left. Rhian had fallen asleep in one of the easy chairs and she covered her with a blanket. She looked in on Joey, he was pale but breathing steadily, and Harry was sleeping peacefully.

In an effort to keep her mind off what was happening, she went into her bedroom. By the look of all the upstairs rooms, they hadn't been cleaned since she had left.

She made up her own and Harry's bed in the box room and carried him into it before stripping and remaking Lloyd's bed. Joey's and Victor's would have to wait until the morning. She dusted and swept the rooms and carried the bundle of linen from Lloyd's bed downstairs.

She changed Mr Evans's bed and gave his room, the kitchen and the parlour a thorough cleaning. She boiled a scrag end of lamb she found in the meat safe, and peeled, cleaned and chopped all the vegetables in the pantry and added them to the broth. Rhian didn't stir. She went down to the basement with the bed linen and found it stacked as high with dirty washing as the first day she had worked there. She set to work, boiling water in buckets and soaking the linen in the baths with soda.

She worked slowly and steadily until the sky lightened and she realised dawn could not be far off. She returned upstairs to see Victor slumped in the easy chair opposite Rhian. She looked at the clock. Six and there was still no sign of Mr Evans or Lloyd, She shook Victor gently, but his eyes remained closed. Exhausted, she uttered a silent prayer for Lloyd and his father, and sat at the table.

‘Sali!' She woke with a start and realised Victor was calling her. She rubbed her eyes and looked at the clock. It was eleven.

‘Why didn't you wake me earlier?' she mumbled, her mouth dry with sleep.

‘Joey's only just woken me. He's taken Harry into the garden to see if there are any eggs. I'm walking Rhian back to Llan House.'

‘Mrs Williams will kill me.' Rhian was combing her hair.

‘No, she won't,' Sali contradicted her. ‘Not if I write you a note.' She took notepaper, pen and ink from the drawer and scribbled a few lines. She folded the note and gave it to Rhian. ‘See you on your next day off?'

‘If Mrs Williams ever lets me out again.'

‘If we go the back way, you can say goodbye to Harry,' Victor said. ‘I'll call in the police station and see if Dad and Lloyd are there, Sali. But wherever they are, I'm sure they're fine,' he reassured her.

Sali filled a jug with cold water, went upstairs and washed herself. Realising she and Harry didn't have even a change of clothes, she made a note to ask Victor to call in at the station to see if her trunk had arrived.

She was back in the kitchen, making porridge when Joey came up from the basement with Harry. ‘You two must be hungry.'

‘I'd prefer a headache powder to food,' Joey answered.

‘It won't do much good for a crack on the skull.'

‘I suppose not.' Joey sat at the table and Harry climbed on to the chair next to him.

Despite her concern for Lloyd and Mr Evans, Sali smiled when she saw that Harry had set out the four chocolate bars he had bought in front of each of the men's chairs. ‘I see you have your presents.'

‘Harry's promised to help me eat mine later.' Joey ruffled Harry's hair. ‘You back for good?'

‘Mam said we were coming home.'

‘Did she now?' Joey looked at Sali, who was untying her apron. ‘Where are you off to?'

‘To look for Lloyd.'

‘Victor said he would.'

‘I can't sit still a minute longer.'

‘Let me come with you.'

‘You look after Harry and give him his breakfast, I'll be back as soon as I can.'

Sali walked down to Dunraven Street. A few of the shopkeepers were in the street sweeping up the damage. An enterprising carpenter pushed a handcart down the road heaped high with planks of wood ready to nail across the empty window frames. The police were standing around, confining pedestrians to the pavements, as if they needed to prove that they were finally in possession of the town.

‘Please God, don't let Lloyd be dead. Please God don't let Lloyd be dead,' she muttered over and over again under her breath.

Then she heard the steady tread of marching feet. She stood, mesmerised, as a full squadron of armed soldiers advanced up the main street towards her.

The people on the pavements stood in silence facing the road and the troops. She walked behind them, looking at every man tall and broad enough to be Lloyd or his father.

She saw them standing on the pavement in front of the Police Station. She fought her way through the dense crowd until she was close enough to rest her hand on Lloyd's shoulder. He whipped around, the anger in his eyes fading to disbelief when he saw her. His face was grey with exhaustion and there were dark circles beneath his eyes, but when she opened her arms, he swung her off her feet, holding her as though he never intended to release her.

‘Megan's uncle said you were here. I thought he was hallucinating after being hit on the head.'

She looked over Lloyd's shoulder at Mr Evans, who was standing beside him. ‘From the state of the house, you could still do with a housekeeper.'

‘We're strikers, Sali. We can't pay you a penny. I've invested all our savings in houses and I can't ask anyone to pay me rent when they haven't a farthing coming in. God only knows how any of us are going to put food on our tables next week.' His eyes were moist as he stared at the troops.

‘We'll manage,' she said optimistically.

‘Will we? I never thought I'd see the day Tonypandy garrisoned by soldiers.' Mr Evans turned wearily towards home. ‘Talk some sense into the girl, Lloyd, and send her packing.'

‘You can't really want to come back here when you have Ynysangharad House,' Lloyd said.

‘The house isn't mine, it's Harry's.'

‘And he'll need to be brought up a proper gentleman.'

‘That's what my brother said. I'd prefer him to be brought up with people who will love and guide him.'

‘Sali, my father's right. You have no idea what's coming. The government and the Coal Owners will try to starve the miners into submission. The next few months are going to be hell.'

‘Not if we're together.'

‘Like my father said, I should send you back to Pontypridd.'

‘I won't go, not even if you throw stones.' And there, amongst the wreckage of the main street of Tonypandy, in front of the whole town and a regiment of soldiers, she kissed him.

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An excerpt from

WINNERS AND LOSERS

Book Two in the
Brothers & Lovers
series
by

CATRIN COLLIER

Chapter One

Joey Evans turned the key that was left permanently in the lock of his family's front door, stepped inside and started whistling,
‘A Little of What You Fancy Does You Good'.

‘Quiet! You'll wake Harry.' His eldest brother Lloyd walked in behind him and hung his trilby on the rack in the passage.

‘Someone has to warn the lovebirds. You don't want to see anything that will make you blush, now do you?' Joey hung his cap and overcoat next to Lloyd's.

‘Unlike you, Victor behaves himself around the ladies.' Lloyd opened the kitchen door. Their middle brother Victor was sitting at the table playing chess with his girlfriend of two years, nineteen-year-old Megan Williams. She was wrapped up in her cloak, Victor in his overcoat and both of them were wearing mufflers and woollen gloves. ‘Disappointed, Joey?' Lloyd raised his eyebrows.

‘With what?' Victor glanced up at his brothers.

‘Joey was hoping that you and Megan would be doing something that would embarrass us.' Lloyd winked at Megan as he sat next to her.

Megan smiled at Lloyd but scowled at Joey. At the age of thirteen she had been sent to housekeep for her uncle, who lived next door to the Evans, after her aunt had died in childbirth. Back then she had become besotted with Victor's younger brother, who was the same age as her. Joey had been, and still was in most of the local girls' opinion, the handsomest boy in Tonypandy, if not the whole of Wales. It had taken her three years to realize that he was as infatuated with his good looks as his admirers and capable of remaining faithful to a girl only for as long as it took him to catch the eye of another. It was then that she had discovered that Joey's older colliery blacksmith brother, whose height and breadth she had always found intimidating, had a gentle side.

It had been difficult to determine who was the more surprised, her or Victor, when they found themselves in love after a year of outings based on ‘friendship'. But it was a love fraught with difficulties, which they tried to put from their minds whenever they were together.

‘It's cold enough in here to freeze the cockles of a man's heart without you giving me one of your frigid looks, Megan.' Joey dived out and retrieved his overcoat.

‘We raked out the fire after Dad and Sali left for the meeting,' Victor explained.

‘You would have been warmer playing chess on the picket line. At least we have a brazier going down there.' Joey pulled on his gloves and joined them at the table.

‘But we wouldn't have been able to see to Harry if he woke up.' Megan moved her rook and took Victor's bishop.

‘Poor kid's probably frozen to his bed.' Joey studied the board.

‘Sali wrapped a couple of hot bricks in flannel and put them at his feet when she tucked him in. She also left a couple of egg sandwiches for you two in the pantry.'

Victor moved his queen.

‘You suicidal?' Joey demanded.

‘Victor's conceding the game because he knows my uncle and his brothers probably walked up from the picket line with you and they'll be wanting something to eat.' Megan wrinkled her nose. ‘Not that I've much to give them.'

‘Can't a man make a bad chess move?' Victor protested.

‘Not when he doesn't usually.' Megan took Victor's queen and put his king into checkmate. ‘But then you don't always let me win. It was a draw until this one.' She left the table and blew Victor a kiss from the door. ‘Night, all.'

Lloyd heard Megan talking to Sali and his father in the passage as he set up the board again. ‘Thanks for babysitting Harry, Victor.'

‘Megan and I didn't have anything else to do.' Victor left the table and went to the pantry. He was surprisingly light-footed for a man of his size. Six feet six in his stockinged feet, broad-shouldered, finely muscled and well built, he towered above most men in the valleys.

‘You would have had plenty if it was summer and warm enough to sit on the mountain,' Joey suggested archly.

‘That's my girlfriend, not one of your tarts you're talking about.' Victor spoke softly as he always did when he was angry.

‘I didn't mean anything. You've been courting Megan for two years –'

‘And while her father withholds his consent, that's all I can do.' Victor set the sandwiches in front of his brothers and lifted a couple of plates from the dresser.

‘Good meeting?' Lloyd asked his father when he came in.

‘That depends on what you mean by “good”. Just about every Bible-thumping church and chapel minister in the Rhondda has managed to wangle themselves a place on the Distress Committee. There's so many on it, I doubt they'll agree long enough to make a single decision. Still, the amount of time they'll waste arguing amongst themselves shouldn't leave them with much spare time to bother any poor soul intent on committing a few harmless sins.' Billy Evans fished his empty pipe out of his pocket before he sat down. ‘We would have been home half an hour ago if the Methodists and Baptists hadn't tabled a formal complaint about Father Kelly's soup kitchen.'

‘They object to him feeding people in the Catholic Hall?' Lloyd asked in surprise.

‘No, but they think he gets more donations than they do.'

‘Of food or money?' Lloyd enquired.

‘Both,' Billy Evans said drily.

‘Now I wonder why people are happier to give to Father Kelly than the chapels.' Lloyd grabbed Sali's hand and pulled her on to his lap as she walked through the door.

‘Because he feeds everyone who walks through the door without asking what denomination they are and because his volunteers work hard to bring in as many donations as they can?' Sali suggested.

‘None of them works as hard as you, sweetheart. You look tired. You've been overdoing it in your kitchen lately.'

‘I have not, and it's not my kitchen, it's Father Kelly's.' Sali had been the Evans' housekeeper for over a year and Lloyd's lover for eight months. It was a relationship that had been welcomed by his father and brothers, who already treated her as if she were one of the family, which she very soon would be as they had booked Pontypridd register office for their wedding. Lloyd insisted their marriage go ahead the Saturday before Christmas, despite his workload as one of the strike organizers. It was the earliest date possible due to circumstances they had kept secret from all but a very few people in Tonypandy.

‘Without the food and money you persuade people to donate, Sali, all Father Kelly would have to serve is bread and water without the bread.' Mr Evans set his empty tobacco pouch on the table out of habit. He hadn't bought any tobacco since the onset of the strike. ‘Is Harry asleep?'

‘And before you say you don't know, we heard you creep up the stairs after Megan left,' Lloyd teased Sali.

Sali didn't rise to his bait. ‘Harry's sleeping like an angel. He didn't give you and Megan any trouble, did he, Victor?'

‘Unfortunately he didn't wake once. If he had, it would have given me an excuse to relight the fire.' Victor filled a glass with water.

Unable to resist a second gibe, Joey said, ‘You and Megan could have kept one another warm.'

Knowing how sensitive Victor was about Megan, Billy Evans broke in sharply, ‘Joey! Enough! Has Megan heard from her father lately, Victor?'

‘Not that she's told me. But then she's hardly mentioned him since he refused to allow us to get engaged at Christmas.' Victor sat at the table and moved a white pawn on the board Lloyd had set up.

‘Megan won't be under age for ever, Victor.' Sali moved to her own chair and watched Lloyd move out a black pawn to meet Victor's.

‘I've some papers to go through for the committee, so I'll call it a night. Aren't you on early picket tomorrow, Joey?' Billy asked.

‘Yes.' Joey made a face.

‘Then go to bed and get some sleep,' Billy ordered. ‘If I leave you down here, you'll only plague the life out of Victor.'

‘What's a brother for, if not to annoy?' Joey answered smartly.

‘Joey!' Billy said sternly.

‘I'm going.'

‘You two coming down to Porth magistrates court with me tomorrow?' Billy asked. Everyone in the town, collier and tradesman, was eagerly awaiting the outcome of an inquest on a miner who had died from injuries he'd received during the worse night of the recent riots.

‘I'll walk down there with you,' Lloyd answered.

‘Victor?'

‘I have one or two things to do first,' Victor murmured evasively, concentrating on the game.

‘If those one or two things involve working in the illegal drift mines the boys have opened up on the mountain, forget it,' Billy warned. ‘A man your size is easily recognized, even by some of the idiots in the police. Try it and you'll end up in court facing a fine we won't be able to pay. Did you hear me?' Billy questioned when Victor didn't answer.

‘I hear you, Dad.' Victor moved his knight and took Lloyd's pawn.

‘Try to remember what I said, will you?' Billy shook his head as he closed the kitchen door behind him.

At half past eleven the following morning Megan tossed the stone she'd used to whiten the flagstone floor into a bucket of freezing water. The kitchen might be ice cold and gloomy, but it was clean. Not as clean as it would have been if she'd had hot water but it was too early to waste precious coals and paraffin by lighting the stove and lamp. She sat back on her heels and checked she hadn't missed any bits. Satisfied she'd done the job as well as she could, given what she had to work with, she climbed to her feet. Heaving the bucket into the sink, she tipped the dirty water down the drain.

The front door opened and footsteps echoed down the passage.

‘Megan, you going to the shops?' Megan's neighbour, Betty Morgan saw the freshly scrubbed floor and stopped in her tracks. The slightest speck of dirt carried on to a wet floor made it twice as hard to clean the next time.

‘Yes, Mrs Morgan, as soon as I've washed my hands and face,' Megan answered.

Betty Morgan was a grandmother six times over and, although she'd frequently asked Megan to call her by her Christian name, Megan had never plucked up courage to do so, despite the informality that was the rule rather than the exception between neighbours in the Rhondda.

‘Then I'll wait for you.' Betty didn't need to explain her reluctance to walk into town alone. Most housewives had enjoyed visiting the shops in Tonypandy, regarding their outings as a welcome break from the drudgery of housework, but that had been before over a thousand police officers had been imported from all over Britain to control the striking miners who had brought the collieries in the valley to a standstill. The picket lines the colliers had set up around the pits had become battlegrounds. And now that the strike had entered its third month and two regiments of soldiers had been drafted in to support the police, fights between colliers, their supporters and the police frequently spilled over into the town.

Megan rinsed the bucket, placed it below the sink and washed her hands, arms and face under the running tap with a sliver of green household soap. She dried herself on the kitchen towel, rolled down her sleeves, untied her calico apron, draped it over a chair and tiptoed over the wet floor into the passage. Betty was leaning against the open front door, chatting to Jane Edwards who lived next door but one to her and on the opposite side of the street to the Evans.

Megan lifted her black serge cloak and hat from the row of pegs and paused to stare at her reflection in the mirror. She was pale, her eyes unnaturally large. Weeks on a near starvation diet were beginning to take their toll on her just as they were on everyone else in her uncle's family. She pulled the brim of her hat low, fastened the button at the neck of her cloak, picked up her basket, and joined Betty.

‘Cold enough for you today, Megan?' Jane asked.

‘Freezing, Jane.' Megan had no compunction about calling Jane by her Christian name. A head-turningly attractive brunette, at seventeen Jane was two years younger than her. Gossips had labelled Jane as ‘one for the boys' before she'd reached her fourteenth birthday, and she'd set every tongue in Tonypandy wagging when she had married Emlyn Edwards, a fifty-year-old collier, the day after her sixteenth birthday. The old wives in the town had watched her waistline ever since, and they continued to watch and wait. Because the baby everyone had assumed Jane was carrying had never materialized.

‘I was just asking Jane if she'd seen Emlyn lately,' Betty commented.

‘You of all people should know strike pay doesn't allow for luxuries like train tickets down to Cardiff, Betty,' Jane scoffed. ‘I write to Emlyn once a week and he writes back. But he's not expecting to be let out early.'

‘It's scandalous to jail men for withdrawing their labour in an effort to get a living wage.' Betty conveniently forgot that Emlyn had been given a year's hard labour for assaulting a police officer who'd been trying to escort blacklegs into the Cambrian Colliery.

‘You two going to the shops?' Jane dropped the rag she was half-heartedly using to wash her windows into her bucket.

‘Only to Rodney's,' Megan said, referring to the largest provision store in Tonypandy. ‘Can we get you anything?'

‘Plenty, but seeing as I haven't a brass farthing to my name and won't have until the strike money is doled out on Friday, I can only take what they're giving away.'

‘I can guarantee fresh air and insults from the police but not much else. See you, Jane.' Betty led the way and Megan followed, leaving Jane to her window-washing, although she was smearing not shifting the dirt with her torn piece of old petticoat and cold water.

It took ten minutes for Megan and Betty to walk the short distance to the end of the street. No family had enough coal to keep the fires lit during the day, so the housewives were out in force, scrubbing doorsteps and the pavements in front of their houses because it was warmer, and more companionable outside, than inside stone walls.