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‘She was a very sick person, she thought she was telling the truth, but it was all in her sick imagination. Nobody took her seriously enough. Nobody realised how dangerous she could be. And you, little love, had to suffer. But Mari Elen, it might do you a lot of good that you’ve let us know how much you went through. You should never bury things deep down inside you because they make trouble for you later. Now you’ve told us about what a frightening time you had, you may be able to begin to forget it. What a pity that it’s too cold to paddle, then you could begin to enjoy yourself and think of the sea as your friend. Your mother loved the sea. We went to live in a really awful little cottage but she was happy there because she could see the sea outside the front window. I loved her very, very much. One day I’ll tell you all about her. Her name was Miriam, but I can’t talk of her too much because it wouldn’t be fair to Lowri who is such a lovely little wife to me now. You understand that don’t you?’

‘Yes, I think so. It’s like Tom doesn’t want May to know that he was once in love with Sali.’

‘But he wasn’t ever in love with Sali, cariad. That again was her sick mind making up its own sad stories. He was kind to Sali because she was very young and a bit frightened when she started work at Hendre Ddu and she imagined that that kindness was love.’

‘I think I would like that ice cream now, Dada.’

‘But I think we ought to go back to the chapel now, my love. The wedding service will be over and there’ll be a lovely meal prepared for us and you’ll want to show your grandmother your new dress. Oh, what a pity, you’ve made the bodice quite wet. Never mind, if we walk back in this wind it will soon dry. And before we leave Tenby you shall have that ice cream, I promise.’

They were just in time to join the few guests and walk back to Arthur’s cottage which was small but very pretty, with white stones decorating the pathway to the front door. Mari Elen fell in love with a tortoiseshell cat nursing two pretty little ginger kittens. ‘Please can I have one? Oh, please. My little kitten left Cefn Hebog and went to live in Arwel with the carrier, so please can I have one of these?’

‘I think you can,’ Lowri’s mother said. ‘They must be about six weeks old now. Their eyes are turning green and when that happens you know they’re ready to leave their mother. Have a ham sandwich, cariad. You’re looking so pale. Try to eat something.’

Mari Elen couldn’t eat anything. She just looked about her and before long was sitting on Arthur’s knee. ‘I suppose I must be your Grandad now since I’m married to your step-Grandma. What sort of things does a Grandad get to do? Would you like a little trip out in the bay, just you and me?’

Josi watched her face. At first it expressed panic but then she put her hand into Arthur’s and said, ‘Yes I would please.’

She didn’t have her ice cream after all, but she cuddled her little kitten all the way home and seemed a very happy child, her suffering forgotten.

Chapter fourteen

Tom had a letter from the Front. It was from one of the men in his company, a man from South Wales who obviously found writing difficult and wasn’t prepared to waste words.

Hope you’re better now. Sorry you caught it. You said you were for Labour, Sir. My Dad is standing for Labour and would be glad of your help, you being a toff like. He has a very serious opponent who’s for communism, but I remember you saying you wouldn’t go that far, because human beings weren’t good enough for all-out communism or all-out Christianity. I thought you had it right, too, and I told my Dad about you. Here is his address. Please write to him and please go to support him since you stand for the same thing and I bet you thought the Russians had gone too far as well, all that bloodshed on top of all this.

Yours ever, Billy Jones.

He showed May the letter. ‘It makes me wish I’d kept my mouth shut,’ he said. ‘No it doesn’t. I will go to support him. After all, it’s what I believe in. My father can remain a Liberal like all his family before him. Oh yes, this is a Liberal stronghold, this is, all the people around here still have pictures of Ewart Gladstone and John Bright on their walls, but I think we must move on and become a great deal more radical, as John Bright was, to give him his due. Seeing the tremendous gap between the officer class and the men made me realise how wrong the whole system is. “The rank is but the guinea’s stamp, The man’s the gold for a’ that.” And I want to say so publicly because I may never get another chance. I’ll write to Billy’s dad and tell him to name the day.’

Tom believed that he would be asked to say a few words of support, to offer a vote of thanks or something of that order. It embarrassed him when he saw a poster in the station. ‘Hear Tom Evans MC, famous Welsh artist, talk about his socialist beliefs.’ He was to be the main speaker of the evening. For a few minutes he felt sick with apprehension.

He was still very nervous when he got up to address a full and very boisterous audience. ‘When I came home from war I started having nightmares. My doctor thought they might become less severe if I spoke about my experiences. But I didn’t feel I could. I painted my experiences instead and became an artist. I’m telling you that so that you can understand that I’m no speaker. I wish I could paint what I feel about the best way forward. I believe in a real brotherhood of man, equality, liberty for all from the grinding poverty of the pit; fair wages for the workers. That is no empty slogan but what the Labour Party is all about. Communism sounds wonderfully exciting but I believe it is a dangerous way forward and will lead to anarchy. The slogans are wonderful, I grant you that. “To all according to their needs, from all according to their ability.” (There was a great deal of clapping and shouting when he said this.) ‘But who will be fair and great enough to see that this is done? It’s asking too much of human nature to say that a lazy worker should have exactly the same as the willing industrious worker. It takes away initiative and drive. There can never be absolute equality because some people are more able and more hard-working than others. What Labour supporters insist on is that there should be equality of opportunity, everyone starting from the same place to make what they will of their lives. That’s all I have to say. The Sermon on the Mount is too idealistic. Who can live according to Jesus’ laws? Chapel-goers? We all know that paying lip-service to an ideal doesn’t ensure we live according to those ideals. Communism is another idealistic dogma that won’t work because men, as God said after the flood, “are evil in their hearts”. During the present war I witnessed acts of great heroism and bravery, men at their best, risking their lives to save a comrade, but the cause of the war was men at their worst, greedy and menacing. That’s all I have to say, brothers. As I said, I’m no speaker. I suggest that we now sing “The Red Flag” to be followed by contributions from the floor.’

His speech was greeted by a volley of applause, short speeches were obviously popular. He was popular. They’d heard he was a great artist and they liked great people, especially when they were Welsh and spoke with a Welsh accent not like some men who’d been to Oxford and spoke with clipped English accents that even their parents were ashamed of. There were lively contributions from the floor, especially from the communist contingent, which accused Tom of having no trust in the working man. Eventually the evening was over and Tom was taken to the lodgings that had been found for him with an elderly woman who declared herself a Labour supporter because neither Conservative nor Liberal had remembered to call for her in their official car during the last election. She gave him a tasty supper and then he was glad to go to bed, his first night of campaigning over. The next day when Billy’s father called on him to thank him and to escort him to the station, Tom gave him twenty pounds towards the fighting fund. It’s only a painting or two, he told himself when he thought May might think him too generous.

‘Now you’ll come again, won’t you,’ Billy’s father said. ‘It would be wonderful to have you here on election night. The sight of you with your missing leg will be a real vote-catcher.
You’re a handsome man and a bit of a toff and d’you know, the people round here they only pay lip-service to the idea that all men are equal. You’ll do us no harm at all.’

Tom managed to escape without making any definite promise. All the same, he hadn’t decided against a second visit. All in all, he’d enjoyed the experience and felt surprised that he had managed to talk as well as he had.

He was contacted again, but at the time he was in hospital. He had decided to have a false leg fitted. ‘I don’t mind not having a leg under my trousers but I hate not having a foot. They’ll fit a foot onto my false leg. It probably won’t look right, but it will do me good when I get used to it. I know I’ll have to practise hard.’

He never understood how the next episode came about. Out of the blue a man called at Hendre Ddu and asked whether he would stand as a Labour candidate in the next local election. ‘But everyone stands as independent in the local election,’ Josi said, ‘it’s what you’re prepared to do for the electorate which counts, not your political allegiance.’

‘Let the boy speak for himself,’ the man said. ‘No one really knows what Labour means around here. It would be a good way to introduce a new party to a country electorate and it might help when it comes to a parliamentary election.’

‘All right, I’ll do it,’ Tom decided suddenly. ‘I don’t mind a few meetings in local schools to tell anyone who turns up what I believe in. I won’t expect any votes, because people round here are all Liberals to the bone, but I might be able to convince one or two of them that Labour is not a revolutionary party and that they have nothing to fear from us.’

‘Oh, it’s us now is it?’ Josi asked. ‘Are you a member of this new party by any chance?’

‘Yes I am. May and I joined the party as soon as I came back from Ton-y-Bont. She is as zealous as I am.’

‘And why didn’t you ask me to join the ranks?’

‘Because I knew you were born a Liberal and will die one.’

‘Quite right,’ Josi said quietly.

‘Tell me about the Labour Party,’ Maudie said a few evenings later when she was with him and May in the dining room. ‘My father said you were going to speak on their behalf and I’d like to help you if I believe in it.’

‘I think you would, Maudie. We stand for equality and fair wages for the workers. We are against the class system and believe that any man, rich or poor, is as good as another.’

‘So how have the rich become rich, then? Doesn’t the fact that some are rich mean that they deserve it? That they’ve worked extra hard and been extra clever?’

‘We don’t mind that. What we are against is inherited wealth. That one man is better than another because his family is wealthy and can send him to a private school where the education is better. Equality is what we believe in. We think everyone should have the same chance in life, whatever his father was, the same schools for all, the same medical care for everyone: rich or poor. I don’t pretend it will happen overnight, but that is what we believe in.’

‘I’m with you then. You can count on me to take round pamphlets and to try to explain to people what you’ve explained to me. It sounds like good sense.’

‘You’re my first convert then, Maudie. Thank you.’

‘What about me?’ May asked. ‘I wasn’t at all sure until you talked me into it. My father is dead against the Socialists as you know.’

‘English people are afraid of anything new; Tory and Whig is all they understand. They think Labour means that everyone with wealth is going to be robbed.’

‘I hope they are,’ Maudie said. ‘Why should some people have everything and others nothing.’

‘Now you’re speaking like a Red,’
Tom said. ‘We’d tax the rich but we wouldn’t steal their money. Many people are frightened of Labour, thinking they’re Bolsheviks, but they’re different. When we get into power there won’t be revolution.’

‘Pity,’ Maudie said.

‘Maudie, you’re too extreme,’ May said.

‘She’s young,’ Tom said. ‘Let her be.’

‘I’ve tried to tell my father that you have extreme left-wing views,’ May told him later, ‘but I don’t know how he’s going to react when he hears that you are actually standing as a Labour candidate.’

‘Don’t tell him then,’ Tom said. ‘Look, it’s only a local election and I’ll get beaten to a pulp, but I’ll get some people thinking and that’s all I’m hoping for. Don’t tell him. It’s not important to anyone but us.’

‘And will I have to come with you when you make your speeches?’

‘I’d like you to, but it might be a bit embarrassing. I daresay I’ll have audiences of two or three in some villages.’

Tom was wrong. There was plenty of interest in the meetings, plenty of people wanting to hear about the new party and wanting to see the man who’d become a local hero. They wouldn’t go so far as to promise him their vote, but the meetings were all good-natured.

‘Now tell us a bit about your part in the war, Mr Ifans,’ one of them was sure to say, but he wouldn’t be drawn on that subject. All he would say was that the high-ranking officers didn’t seem to have much sympathy with the rank and file. All men were equal in his opinion. That’s as far as he’d go.

May only went with him once, to the election meeting in the largest village, Brynhir, but Josi would occasionally go with him, ‘For the ride, man’ he’d say. He would heckle sometimes when he thought things were too quiet, once going as far as to say ‘damn-fool nonsense’, but Tom knew that Josi’s presence would add to his votes; Josi was still an immensely popular figure in the locality.