Beggars and Choosers (56 page)

They heard shouts coming from the main street when they turned right down the hill. Murmuring a prayer for her uncle who was manning the picket line around the Glamorgan Colliery, Megan quickened her pace.

A crowd of women marched in parade formation down the centre of the road between the tramlines. A horse-drawn cart swerved to avoid them and a load of boots destined for Oliver's Shoes ended up in the gutter. The women were carrying a dummy dressed in a collier's helmet, red flannel shirt, trousers and hobnailed boots, and were shouting loudly, if not melodically:

The colliers will work for three bob a day,

If colliers grumble, Leonard will say,

Pick up your tools and clear away.

‘Betty, Megan, join us and show Leonard Llewellyn and the rest of his colliery management toadies exactly what we women think of them,' Betty's sister Alice Hughes, who lived in Clydach, yelled from the front line of the marchers.

‘We're busy shopping, Alice.' As they turned to leave, Betty glimpsed a constable heading for the women and deliberately stepped in front of him. He elbowed her in the small of her back and she cried out. Falling awkwardly, she caught her knees painfully on the kerb.

‘Mrs Morgan, are you all right!' Megan crouched beside her. A police boot landed on her skirt, effectively pinning her to the ground.

The grinning constable stood over them. ‘Obstructing a police officer in the course of his duty is a serious offence ... ladies.' He spat out the last word.

‘I saw that, officer.' Father Kelly pushed his way towards them. ‘You hit that poor defenceless woman –'

‘She was causing an obstruction,' the officer refuted sullenly.

‘You are standing on this lady's skirt,' Father Kelly's companion pointed out coldly. It was the Anglican vicar, Reverend Williams of the mid-Rhondda Central Distress Committee.

‘I wasn't aware that I was, sir.' A crowd began to form around them and the officer retreated to the pavement.

‘Are you hurt, Mrs Morgan?' Reverend Williams helped Father Kelly and Megan raise Betty to her feet.

‘I'll live.' Betty glared at the constable before dusting down her skirt.

‘I was about to arrest those troublemakers, when this woman prevented me –'

‘Troublemakers now, is it?' Father Kelly interrupted the constable. ‘I see no troublemakers in this street. Do you, Reverend Williams?'

‘None, Father Kelly.'

‘What's the problem here, Shipton?' An officer in sergeant's uniform forced his way through the crowd.

Constable Shipton snapped to attention. ‘This woman prevented me from making a lawful arrest, Sergeant Martin.'

‘She did no such thing, sergeant,' Father Kelly contradicted. ‘She was standing peacefully watching the parade, as we all were. Absolutely no trouble to a soul around her.'

‘An illegal parade,' the sergeant stated tersely.

‘Illegal is it?' Father Kelly crossed his arms across his chest and squared up to the man. There was something ridiculous about the short, fat priest confronting a police officer a full head taller than himself, but no one laughed. ‘Tell me now, Sergeant Martin, when was the law passed that made it illegal for women to walk down the street of their home town in the middle of the day?'

‘There are special circumstances –'

‘I'll say there are.' Father Kelly refused to allow the sergeant to get a word in edgeways. ‘Circumstances your men believe give them the right to provoke and torment the inhabitants of this town, just as you English do the poor souls in Ireland. You won't be happy until you have another riot on your hands. Then you can go to the London papers and say, “Look at those savages in Tonypandy” all over again. And that will give your Home Secretary, Mr Churchill, an excuse to send even more regiments of soldiers here.'

‘The last thing we want is another riot, Father.'

Angry murmurs rippled through the crowd around them.

‘Really? You could have fooled me with the way your men have treated these ladies.'

‘Constable Shipton said they were obstructing him. And obstructing a police officer with the view to prevent him carrying out his duty is a criminal offence.'

‘Given the high-handed way some of your men behave, Sergeant, you have to forgive us poor natives a bit of obstructing now and then. You see, obstructing is the only way we have left to show our feelings,' Father Kelly said caustically.

Sergeant Martin beckoned to a group of constables across the road. A dozen marched in formation to join him.

‘Constable Shipton, officers, take the name of anyone who hasn't moved on from this unlawful assembly in the next sixty seconds.' Turning his back, he walked away. Too many strikers had been fined for offences ranging from disorderly conduct to affray and assault for anyone to ignore the threat. Fines meant prison, since no striker had the means to pay them.

‘Thank you, Father Kelly, Reverend Williams,' Betty said gratefully. She hooked her arm into Megan's.

‘Glad we could help, ladies.' Reverend Williams tipped his hat.

‘Go with God and go safely, ladies.' Father Kelly gave them a warm smile before continuing on his way.

Megan and Betty walked along the pavement until a group of uniformed Hussars blocked their path. When it was obvious that they weren't going to move, the women stepped into the gutter. Holding her skirt up to avoid the piles of horse manure and dog mess left by the strays turned out by the families of strikers who could no longer afford to feed them, Megan picked her way down the street, all the while sensing the officers watching them. When she saw a gap in the traffic, she crossed the road but there were even more police on the opposite pavement.

A queue snaked out of the door of Rodney's Provisions. Megan and Berry joined it. As the procession of women with their collier's dummy moved on out of earshot, an unnatural silence fell, thick and heavy, like a suffocating blanket over the town. When it was their turn finally to step inside the store, Megan started nervously. A sergeant and a constable flanked the door, their backs to the front wall, their hands clasped around the truncheons hanging from their belts as if they were expecting the customers to turn violent. Betty gripped Megan's hand briefly to give her courage, turned her back to them and looked to the counter.

Rodney's, along with every other shop in Tonypandy barring two, had been targeted by the incensed crowd on the night of the worst riot. The mob had only by-passed the chemist's owned by Willie Llewellyn, an ex-Welsh rugby international and local hero, and a pawnbroker who'd had the courage – or insanity – to fire a pistol in the air when they reached his door.

In comparison with some of the neighbouring businesses, the shop had suffered lightly. The mahogany counter that ran the full length of the back wall had been scarred by hobnailed boots, the glass cake case reduced to a metal frame, the marble cheese and butter slabs cracked, but most of the other shop fittings remained intact. And despite losing three-quarters of her goods to the looters and having to pay a carpenter to board her windows and doors until replacements could be made, Connie Rodney didn't bear a grudge against her customers. She couldn't afford to. Even if she put her business on the market, no one would buy it, leastways, not until the strike was settled and the miners started making wages again. So, like the other tradesmen in Dunraven and De Winter Streets, she'd ordered as much replacement stock as her suppliers would credit her with, which judging by her shelves, wasn't much, and opened for business.

‘Half your usual weekly staples, same as last week?' Connie asked Megan when it was her turn to be served. Connie had stopped selling luxuries like jam, cheese, butter, tinned goods, sugar and dried fruit during the first week of the strike. Now that it was heading into the third month, some housewives were even dropping margarine, flour and potatoes from their shopping lists. Fires were needed to boil potatoes and bake bread, and without the rations of coal that were part of a miner's wage, there was no fuel.

‘No, thank you, Mrs Rodney.' Megan lifted her empty basket on to the counter. ‘My uncle has asked me to buy what we need on a daily basis from now on.'

‘Well, we're open six days a week.' Connie gave her a rare smile.

With her long red-gold hair tied back from her scrubbed freckled face and her bright green eyes, nineteen-year-old Megan Williams was an exceptionally pretty girl and Victor Evans also happened to be Connie's favourite cousin.

Megan pulled a scrap of paper from her pocket and glanced at it. ‘I'll have your smallest scrag end of lamb, ten pounds of potatoes, a quarter of tea and three loaves of bread, please.'

‘Would that be strikers' loaves?' Annie O'Leary, Connie's tall, spare, Irish assistant asked drily. The atmosphere instantly lightened as the women waiting their turn to be served burst into laughter despite the police presence. When the miners had withdrawn their labour, a local baker had produced a half-size ‘strikers' loaf aimed at his newly impoverished customers, only to have his cart overturned and the contents vanish into the crowd, which dissipated as quickly as his bread. Even more mysteriously, his deliveryman failed to recognize a single person in the mob.

‘The boy could deliver the goods for you, Megan. We'll be sending the cart out in an hour.' Connie handed Megan's basket to one of her assistants and sent him to weigh the potatoes from the sacks ranged against the wall below the counter.

‘I'll take them with me. My uncle and his brothers will want their tea when they get home.' Megan took her purse from her pocket and lowered her voice. ‘My uncle also asked me to settle up with you, Mrs Rodney. He doesn't want to put our goods on the slate any more while he only draws strike pay from the union.'

Connie was surprised but relieved. The colliers who were members of the union, unfortunately only slightly more than half of her customers, drew strike pay of ten shillings a week plus a shilling for each child. Larger families, who hadn't found it easy to live on thirty-five shillings a week before the colliery companies had cut wages, were finding life during the strike desperate. And workers who weren't members of a union had been left destitute. No striker's family could afford to pay rent. At an average of ten shillings a week it would have left nothing for food. As it was, more and more of her customers were coming in every day asking for their credit to be extended until the strike was called off because they had come to the end of their savings.

An ardent Catholic, Connie had gone to mass and confession three times a week, but since the strike she had taken to walking the short distance to the Catholic Church every morning to pray for an end to the dispute before her own savings and credit with her suppliers ran out.

She pulled a massive leather-bound ledger towards her, checked the account and added Megan's purchases. ‘That will be seven shillings and sixpence three farthings.' Anxious not to offend Betty, who was being served by Annie, or any of her other customers who weren't in a position to settle their bill, Connie whispered. ‘Tell your uncle that I appreciate his paying cash for as long as he can.'

‘I'll do that, Mrs Rodney. And thank you.' Megan opened her purse, extracted three half crowns, a halfpenny and a farthing and handed them over. Taking her basket from the boy, she waited for Betty to finish placing her order, before making her way past the queue to the door. The police sergeant stepped in front of her. Megan glanced up, only to immediately look down again when he gazed coolly back at her. He was broad-shouldered, over six feet tall and there was a glint in his pale blue eyes that unnerved her. She was accustomed to living in a houseful of men but not one of them had ever made her feel as uneasy as this sergeant did. Struggling to lift her basket, she clutched her cloak around her, more to conceal than warm herself.

‘I've seen you before, haven't I?' The officer's voice sounded rough, harsh in comparison to the soft Welsh lilt.

‘I don't think so, sir,' Megan whispered timidly.

‘You sure?' he persisted.

‘Yes, sir.'

‘You weren't out with the men on the picket lines around the Glamorgan Colliery yesterday afternoon?'

‘No, sir.'

‘Miss Williams was with me all yesterday afternoon, officer,' Betty lied coolly. ‘We were at the women's knitting circle.'

‘And what was it that you were knitting, Mrs Morgan?' the sergeant enquired.

‘Blankets for poor unfortunates, Sergeant Lamb.'

‘Why is it that I can never believe a word you say, Mrs Morgan?' He turned his attention from Megan to Betty, just as the older woman had intended. Her husband, Ned Morgan, was a union official and Betty knew the authorities had marked her, along with all the members of the strike leaders' families, as a potential troublemaker.

The queue moved forward; Betty gave Megan a slight push. They sidestepped past the police and out of the door. A dozen officers had circled a crowd of collier boys on the pavement, three of Megan's cousins among them. A constable Megan recognized as Gwyn Jenkins, a local man, and before the strike a friend of her uncle's, was talking to them.

‘Come on now, boys, no one wants any trouble. I'm asking nicely. Leave here and go up the mountain. You never know, if you take your dogs you may even find a rabbit or two to take home to your mothers for the pot,' Gwyn coaxed persuasively.

‘Haven't you heard?' one of the wags answered back. ‘The bunnies are on strike too. They won't come out of their burrows.'

‘Then send the dogs down after them to draw blood.' Gwyn looked from the boy to the officers beside him. ‘Please, do as you've been asked, son, and you have my word no one will get hurt.'

The boys gazed impassively back. But just as Megan expected her eldest cousin to do something stupid, the boys turned and headed up the nearest hill.