A Million Tears (2 page)

For a few seconds I sensed rather than saw the two figures coming along the street through the dusk. There was no mistaking his big frame and the way he walked. His heavy, determined tread distinguished him from the shuffling gait of his friends. His stubborn pride prevented him from showing how tired he was. I was told by most of my relations, Grandmother in particular, that I had inherited the same pride as my father. I rushed from the room into the short passageway and threw open the front door. He was only a few yards away when I ran out into the rain and threw my arms around him. He ruffled my hair as we stepped back into the house.

‘Mam will be angry with you, Dai,’ he smiled, his teeth gleaming white in his coal black face. ‘You’ve got dust all down your side.’

‘That’s okay Da, I put my old clothes on so it won’t matter. I knew you’d come and I wanted, eh . . .’ I trailed off, embarrassed at my show of affection.

He realised how I felt and said: ‘Well then, it won’t matter, will it? Come on, let’s go and see what’s for tea.’ He opened the door into the living room, off which was our small kitchen. This room was the same size as the room in front. It had a table and five chairs, an open fire with an oven on one side, Da’s easy chair and Mam’s dresser along one wall. It was warm and clean.

‘I’m home Meg,’ he called upstairs.

‘I realised that love, when I heard Dai rushing out. I’ll be down in a minute. Your water’s in the kitchen. I’ll come and scrub your back when you’re ready.’

The twins grinned at Da but did not rush to him; he was too dirty for them, covered as he was from head to foot in coal dust and white streaked where the rain had washed the black away. I followed him when he went out the back, into the small yard and stripped off, shaking as much dust from his clothes as possible before he came back, wet from the rain. I had lifted the bath from its hook on the wall in the yard and put it down in the kitchen. I poured hot water from the first of our large saucepans, heating over the fire. While I went for another saucepan, Da added cold water from the tap. He quickly washed, climbed out of the bath, carried it outside and poured the black water down the drain. He brought the bath back, ready for the next lot of water.

‘That’s better, eh Dai? I’m white after all. I was beginning to doubt it for a while back.’ Mam came in just then, bent over the bath and kissed him.

‘Dai, go and see what your brother and sister are up to.’ She turned back to Da. ‘Now where’s the soap?’ She put her hand in the water and Da grabbed her arm. ‘Stop it Evan, the children,’ I heard her say as I closed the door.

In the living room Sion was starting to build another kite from bits of sticks and paper while Sian played with her doll. I sat in Da’s chair and waited for him to come in. I heard my Mam squeal and say: ‘Evan, you’ve splashed me, look you. This is the last time I scrub your back, just you wait and see!’ She was always making the same threat.

The door to the room we were in opened and he came in, a towel wrapped around him. ‘I’ll go and dress Meg while you lay the table.’ He gave us a merry wink and went up the narrow stairs to the front bedroom.

I helped lay the table and Mam put a pot of stew in the middle. The smell made my mouth water. The twins were already at the table waiting for Da to come down, impatient to eat.

She knew what I was up to and poked her tongue out at me, a cheeky smile on her face. She had black hair like Mam’s and the same blue eyes. She was very pretty and one day she would be as beautiful as our mother. She was precocious, cheeky and adorable. We spoilt her even if there was little to spoil her with.

By the time the colliery had deducted the rent from Da’s pay and we paid for the food and other necessities, there was not much left over. Mam and Da were determined we should have an education and they wanted to send us to the big school down the valley. They saved every penny they could to pay for it. By the rules of life as far as they applied to our valley I should start in the colliery next year, at the old age of eleven. The thought filled me with dread. I’d seen the effects on other children . . . old men by the time they were twenty. Through Mam, Da had learnt the benefit of a good education and was as determined as she that we had one.

Mam had been a teacher in the local school until a few years earlier. Her best friend, Sian after whom our Sian was named, had given up teaching to have a baby. Six months after the baby was born Sian’s husband was killed in a pit accident. Knowing the dire straits she was in, Mam gave up her job to let Sian have it. This was Mam all over. Although we had needed the money at the time – when was there a time we did not need money? – Mam had not hesitated to help.

Mam devoted her time to teaching the twins and me. She had shown me pictures of other countries, firing my imagination with tales of America, South Africa and Australia.

Now every spare penny went into a little box hidden in their bedroom, ready for when I was old enough to go “down the valley”. Next year, instead of crawling down the smaller, stinking, rat infested wet holes of the colliery I would be going to school; normally this was limited to the rich. To get there, I needed excellent marks in the entrance examination. If I did not get them I would lose my place to someone whose father was rich and influential. When I protested, Da had shrugged and said it was the way of the world. Thanks to Mam, though, I was a long way ahead of my classmates and because I worked hard I stayed ahead. I didn’t enjoy it and would have preferred to be out with my friends but my fear of going down the mines and my dreams not coming true stopped me.

Mam often said that education produced dreams, but it was hard work that would bring them to reality.

Da came down and sat at his usual place. We bent our heads and he said a quick grace in Welsh. Mam lifted the top off the pot and the rich aroma filled the room. Sian pounced on the serving spoon, had her fingers gently rapped by Da, pouted and let Mam serve.

After the dishes were washed we sat around the table with our slates and chalk. Even the games we played were educational. For instance, we were each given a letter and then had to write down the names of places, birds, flowers, rivers, kings, historic battles and so on. We had played this game so often even the twins, though only eight, did well. Somehow Da always came last.

The next morning I was up at six thirty. By that time Da had been in work an hour and Mam, after seeing him off, was back in bed. I stoked the fire and got some coal from the back shed. I put on half a bucket, emptied the remainder in the polished coalscuttle alongside the grate, grabbed the other tin bucket and let myself out the front door.

It had stopped raining though the sky was overcast, the threat of rain still heavy in the air. I hurried along the street in the direction of the colliery. At the corner shop I turned left and ran down the steep hill towards the river. I exchanged ‘Good mornings’ with the people I met, speaking Welsh. Welsh was our natural language, English was foreign to us. At home we spoke English and like some others we were bilingual; most spoke only Welsh and refused to learn English, in spite of the fact that thousands of immigrants from England came into the valley looking for work. Some of the older Welsh families even moved further west, where the English seldom came. The immigrants were not wanted in our valleys; the men said, ‘they are stealing our jobs, yes Bach, and the very food from our mouths!’

I hurried along the bank of the river, the filthy water swirling only a foot below my feet. There had been a lot of rain recently and the river was swollen to nearly twice its usual depth. Granddad said that when he was a boy the water had been clean enough to swim in and the fish caught in half a day could feed a family for a week. But nowadays, the only things living in the water were the rats, as big as kittens. For many years the water had been used to wash the coal from the colliery. As a consequence it was as black as night with a peculiar, horrible smell.

What it gave us though was as much coal as we needed . . . free.

I reached the part of the river where the bank had collapsed and the water had spread over a larger area. With the rain more coal than ever would be washed down. It would reach this spot and the widening of the river would deposit coal near the sides of the banks. I slipped off my socks and shoes and stepped into the cold water.

Twenty minutes later, my feet numb and black, I had both buckets full. Rather than dirty my socks and get my shoes wet, I walked back bare footed. I was so used to this that I did not feel the stones and cinders underfoot. I stopped every few hundred yards to rest and threw stones at any rats I saw. I arrived home as the rain started again. I was annoyed because I had hoped for another load before breakfast. Instead, I washed my feet and sat drying them in front of the fire, Mam’s old school atlas on my knees.

I opened it to the map of America and as I followed the rivers and towns my dreams took over once more – New York, Pittsburgh, and west to Denver and San Francisco. One day I promised myself, one day. Unlike my parents and the twins, my friends laughed at my daydreams. What they were not aware of was that Mam and Da shared a similar dream. Why didn’t we go? Why didn’t we pack up and go? – the family, that was why. The Welsh older generations had a tight grip on the children, which was why we wandered less than other nationalities.

Granddad had now turned to God, trying hard to save his soul before the dust in his lungs killed him. Ours was a typical close knit Welsh family, with our grandparents and uncles living within a mile of our house.

‘Dreaming again, Dai?’ Mam interrupted my thoughts.

I closed the atlas guiltily. ‘Only a bit Mam. I was thinking about us – all the family I mean.’ I paused, uncertain how much I could say. ‘I mean, why don’t we just go? You want to, Da wants to, and I want to. You keep saying there’s a whole world out there. Couldn’t we go and find it? Find a better life. Not’ I added hastily, ‘that life isn’t good here. It’s just . . .’ I hesitated, not knowing how to go on.

‘I know, Dai,’ she knelt beside my chair. ‘I know what you mean. But just think. There’s all the family, our friends. Grandmother especially has only got Aunt Olive and me.’ She paused. ‘And there’s Grandma and Granddad. What will they do without us?’

‘Mam, Mam, Mam, you know they’ll do very well. They’ve got four others besides Da and look how many grandchildren they’ve got. No Mam, we’ll rot and die here, strangled by our family.’

There was a sadness in her eyes as she laid her hand on my arm. ‘You’re too wise for your age and your own good,’ she said softly. ‘You may be right,’ she sighed and then smiled sadly. ‘Who would have thought such insight in a child of ten?’

‘I’m not a child Mam. If it wasn’t for you and Da I’d be going down the mine in a year’s time. Instead I’ll be staying in school, costing you both more than you can afford, with Da killing himself working doubles to make enough money.’ I could not help the bitterness in my voice. I loved my parents and wanted them to have a better life before it was too late.

‘You may be right, Dai,’ she repeated, ‘but for now there’s nothing we can do. We have your schooling to think about and then there’s the twins. Until that’s all finished we can’t think of going anywhere. So let’s have no more talk about it.’ She stood up.

‘Mam, use the money you’ve saved for our education. It’s enough to get us out of here, and before the dust gets Da, like it gets everybody eventually.’

Without a word she went into the kitchen and a few moments later returned with half a loaf and some dripping. She placed them on the table and looked at me thoughtfully. ‘Did you mean what you said? About the money I mean.’

‘Yes, Mam.’ I nodded and lowered my eyes to the atlas. Did I mean it? All my dreams about school, getting on in life, revolved around the money and my education. If we spent it emigrating what would happen to my schooling then? I was annoyed at my selfish thoughts. Why think about it? Nothing would ever happen.

We were doomed to stay here for the rest of our lives, living our dreams in our heads and not striving for the reality, at least, not until I was grown up. Then, no matter how much I loved my parents I was going to move on in the world. I would make my fortune and return to take them away to live in a fine house with servants and everything. Sion and Sian would come as well. I wandered into my dream world once more, the atlas still showing the continent of America.

After breakfast I helped the twins with their schoolwork. Neither of them appreciated it. They only wanted to go out and play even though it was still raining. Not so long ago I felt the same way, until one of my friends, three years older than me, started in the mine. He drowned six days later when one of the smaller shafts had been flooded after heavy rain and a pump had failed. After that I spent weeks dreading the thought of my eleventh birthday. Finally, I realised the only way out was as Mam kept saying; I had to work harder than anyone else and continue my education.

The rain stopped about midday and I repeated my earlier trip to the river, returning with another two buckets of coal. Sion and Sian were in the street playing with their friends, a gang of ragamuffins together and always up to mischief. As I staggered around the corner I was in time to see Sian knocking on the door of old Mr Price and then running pell-mell past me. I grinned as I walked towards the old man’s house knowing the explosion that was to follow. Sure enough his door slammed open and there he stood, angrily shaking a stick at no one in particular.

This was the first time I had been nearby when his door had been knocked. As he stood there shaking his stick and yelling after the kids I saw there was something wrong but could not work out what for a few seconds.

‘You rascals,’ he called in Welsh, hopping from foot to foot, looking up and down the road, not knowing which way they had gone. ‘Just you wait. I’ll catch you and when I do I’ll give you all the leathering of your lives, look you. Just you wait and see if I don’t.’