Beggars and Choosers (15 page)

‘I was pleased too,' Iestyn continued simply. ‘It will be nice for all of us to have someone else to talk to, but it will be especially nice for Rhian because she is the only girl. Me and Rhian are younger than Owen. Our dad was married twice, and Owen had a different mam to us. Dad made him promise to look after us when he died.'

Grateful to Iestyn for talking, so she didn't have to, Sali kept her head down in the hope that no one would recognise her as they walked past the turning to Market Street and Gwilym James.

‘I help Owen in the shop, as well as look after the burial ground. I work the sausage and mincing machines and boil the heads to make brawn. Rhian serves in the shop, but Owen is the one in charge. Will you be serving in the shop?'

Sali cringed at the thought of having to face people. Her hasty marriage was bound to set the town talking and when the baby arrived, everyone in Pontypridd would know that it wasn't her husband's. Owen Bull her husband! What kind of man would risk his reputation for three thousand pounds? She had no illusions that he had married her for any reason other than her dowry.

Sali smelled the river that ran behind Mill Street before they turned into it and her empty stomach heaved at the overpowering stench of rancid meat, rotting vegetation and excrement. She gazed with a sinking heart at the row of crumbling buildings her father had called a disgrace to the town. A sign, ‘Owen Bull – Butcher' hung over the doorway of a dingy shop set in the centre of the dilapidated terrace. Above it were two billboards, one advertising ‘Milkmaid – all-purpose milk,' the other ‘Oakey's Berlin Black' for grates.

The façade was blotched with green mould, the doors and windows too blackened by wet rot to hold any trace of the colour they may have once been painted. The front door, which served as both shop and house entrance, was wedged open with a piece of broken brick, the shop window beside it, patched by a sheet of board. Inside, the shop was on the right and a dark passage ran straight ahead through the building to a back door, which was propped open. Sali glimpsed the grey light of an enclosed yard.

‘The
ty bach,
coal house, dogs, pigs and pump are through there.' Iestyn pointed to the back. The shop was open and Sali looked in on a large square area floored with a layer of sawdust. A high wooden counter piled with tin plates of sweetbreads, tripe, sausages, brawn, pigs' trotters and minced offal, buzzed with flies. Behind it, breasts of lamb hung between pigs' and sheep heads, ox tails, and beef hearts. A young girl, about Llinos's age, stood behind the counter, wrapping a liver in newspaper for a woman carrying a baby.

‘Rhian, we're here.'

She barely glanced at them. ‘Go upstairs, Iestyn. I'll be with you when I can.' If she saw Sali she chose not to acknowledge her, and Sali wondered just how ‘ever so pleased' Rhian had been, when Owen had broken the news that he was about to be married.

‘Do you want to see the dogs and pigs before we go upstairs?'

‘I'll see them later, Iestyn.' Sali trailed behind him up a steep flight of creaking wooden stairs and down a passage into a ramshackle kitchen. A black leaded stove filled the back wall; beside it were two full-size, battered, open metal milk churns that contained water. A peeling, green painted table holding a tin bowl stood below a small window on their left. To the right, an open-shelved Welsh dresser held an assortment of odd bits of china, pots and pans, crumpled pieces of stained paper covered in scribbles, pencils and rubber bands. A pine table, its surface pitted and grooved by years of scrubbing, stood in the centre of the room. Around it were four unmatched chairs, scuffed and blackened by age.

The room was dark and gloomy, and Sali instinctively headed for the window. It overlooked the yard and beyond that the River Rhondda, its waters and banks blackened with coal dust and thick with scum and floating clumps of excrement.

‘I can show you the other rooms, if you like.'

The last thing Sali wanted to see was any more of this dirty, miserable hovel, but she followed Iestyn down the passage to the front of the house.

‘This is the parlour.' Swollen by damp, the door grated over the floorboards as Iestyn pushed it open. Sali looked in on a cheerless room that contained four upright chairs upholstered in rusty green set around a table covered with a red woollen cloth. In the centre lay a leatherbound Bible. A rag rug had been thrown before the empty hearth, the bare floorboards around it spattered with the tell-tale pinholes of woodworm. There were two framed photographs on the mantelpiece, both of the same man but with different women. On the wall above the fireplace was an embroidered tract – ‘Blessed are those that are undefiled in the way; and walk in the law of the Lord. Psalm 119'.

‘My mother sewed that,' Iestyn informed Sali proudly.

Undefiled in the way.
Sali didn't doubt that Owen Bull regarded her as defiled. She walked to the window and looked down on the street.

‘Rhian's room is here.' Iestyn closed the parlour door, turned down another passage and opened the door on a tiny room, just big enough to hold a truckle bed, chair and chest of drawers that did double service as a washstand. ‘Mine is here.' He opened another door and showed Sali an identical room and she realised that one room had been divided to make the two sleeping cubicles. ‘You'll share with Owen,' he informed her artlessly, ‘married people do, and Owen sleeps down here.' He ambled back down the passage, turned a corner just before the kitchen and walked along another shorter passage. He opened the door but remained outside.

An old-fashioned double brass bedstead covered with a patchwork quilt blocked a window that overlooked the yard.

‘It was Mam and Dad's bedroom when they were alive. In those days, Owen and I shared a bed.' His face brightened as he closed the door. ‘Would you like a cup of tea? Rhian showed me how to make it and now she says I make a better pot of tea than her.'

Exhausted by his incessant chatter, Sali said, ‘Yes, please.'

‘You sit next to the fire. It's warm there.' He pointed to the only easy chair in the kitchen as they returned to the room. ‘That used to be my mother's chair.' He gave her another of his broad, childlike smiles as he lifted the kettle from the stove. ‘It is good to have someone else to talk to.'

At one o'clock Rhian raced up the stairs and into the kitchen. Physically and emotionally drained, Sali was still sitting in the easy chair and Iestyn was standing in front of the green painted table. He had heated water from one of the milk churns on the stove, and poured it into the tin bowl so he could wash their cups.

‘Have you put the stew on for Owen's dinner?' Rhian asked.

‘I'm sorry, I didn't know I had to.' Sali sat up in the chair.

Rhian opened one of the hot plates with a pair of iron tongs and heaved a heavy pan from the back of the stove to the front, setting it to boil. ‘I don't know what you're used to, but we've no maids here to wait on us and Owen expects everyone to pull their weight. He dismissed a woman who helped in the shop yesterday because he wants you to take over the housework so I can work in the shop full-time.'

‘You have no help in the house?' Sali quailed at the thought of keeping house, not only without help, but also none of the conveniences she had taken for granted in Danygraig House, like running water and a sink in the kitchen.

‘None.' Rhian took a wooden spoon from a jar on the dresser, lifted the cover from the pan and stirred the contents. ‘Haven't you run a house before?'

‘We had a housekeeper.'

‘So you're not used to housework.'

‘No.'

‘I could help you get organised,' Rhian offered, relenting at the stunned expression on Sali's face. ‘It's not that hard once you get into a routine. Here, Iestyn, you lay the table the way I taught you, for four mind, and soup not dinner plates, while I talk to Sali. You don't mind me calling you Sali?' she asked. ‘Mrs Bull sounds odd when you're my sister-in-law, even though you are years older than me.'

‘How old are you?' Sali asked, disconcerted by hearing her new name a second time.

‘Twelve, but I've been running the house and helping in the shop since Dad and Mam died of scarlet fever four years ago.'

‘That must have been hard,' Sali sympathised.

‘At first,' Rhian agreed, ‘especially when Owen used to get cross when I forgot to do something important like clean his shoes or iron his Sunday shirt in time for chapel. But I got used to it. It helped when I wrote down everything that needed doing.' She opened a drawer in the dresser and pulled out a schoolbook and pencil. ‘You can look at it, if you like. I hated having to leave school,' she confided when she saw Sali reading her name on the cover of the book, ‘but Owen couldn't run everything by himself ...'

‘I helped,' Iestyn broke in from the table where he was setting out spoons.

‘Yes, you did. If you've finished laying the table you can go down and feed the dogs, Iestyn. I've chopped up their scraps. They are all ready in their bowls.'

‘Iestyn told me that you have dogs and pigs.'

‘We have two guard dogs for the shop and fatten pigs on the waste from the carcasses. They are penned in the yard but Owen lets the dogs loose after he locks the meat away for the night.' Rhian opened a cupboard door set in the lower part of the dresser and lifted out a loaf of bread, a board and a bread knife. Setting them on the table, she cut thin, even slices. ‘Iestyn tries to help but he can't always be trusted,' she warned. ‘He is like a child.'

‘He has been very kind to me this morning.'

‘I think he was hoping you'd be a bit like Mam. He misses her a lot.' Her face fell as the front door opened and closed. ‘That will be Owen. You'd better get up,' she hissed. ‘He doesn't allow anyone to sit in his chair when he is at home.'

The stew was greasy, more gristle and bone than meat, and the vegetables mushy. It was eaten in silence. If anyone noticed that Sali barely tasted it and only nibbled at a corner of the coarse-grained bread Rhian had cut, they didn't say anything. When Owen's plate was empty, Rhian cleared the bowls and spoons to the green table and set them next to the tin bowl ready for washing.

Iestyn made tea and with a sly look at Sali, added an extra spoonful of sugar to her cup. As soon as it was drunk, Owen left the table, sat in his chair and ordered Rhian to open the shop and Iestyn to sweep the chapel steps and tidy the burial ground. Only when he and Sali were alone, did he finally acknowledge her presence.

‘Rhian has told you that you will be running the house?'

‘Yes, but I've never run a house without help before.'

‘If you don't know how to do anything, ask Rhian. She's been doing it since she was eight years old.'

Feeling chastised and useless, Sali murmured, ‘I'll do my best.'

‘Your cases arrived, they are downstairs. When Iestyn comes back, ask him to carry them upstairs. Did he show you around?'

‘Yes.'

‘There are a few things that need to be said, and now is as good a time as any . Your uncle told me that you are carrying a bastard,' he informed her coldly. ‘In return for giving you and the bastard my name, I expect you to be a dutiful and obedient wife. Everyone in this house works for a living. I'll make no concession to your condition, which I consider normal for a woman. There are no maids, airs, graces or pampering here. I won't tolerate it. You won't leave this house or enter the shop until after the bastard is born. There'll be enough gossip without you adding to it by flaunting yourself in public. Iestyn is simple-minded but willing. He will fetch whatever you need from town; he knows the shops we deal with. All you have to do is write a note to the shopkeeper. Your uncle told me your father gave you a personal allowance. I believe personal allowances encourage profligacy and squandering. I am the only one to handle money in this house, and I warn you, I check the accounts. If you want anything besides the necessities you will have to clear it with me first, or you may find yourself in the embarrassing position of having to ask Iestyn to return whatever it is to the shop. Do you understand?'

‘Yes.'

‘Your uncle asked me to inform you that you will not be welcome in Danygraig House and should you try to visit anyone there you will find the door closed in your face. It has been decided that you will not be allowed to attend chapel. The Minister and deacons will discuss your case again after the bastard is born, and your return to the congregation will depend entirely on the sincerity of your repentance and the Minister's and deacons' charity. No decent woman, or man, will want to mix with you while you are in that condition. Until the birth you will restrict your conversation with my sister and brother to essential domestic matters. I will not have you corrupting their minds. Is that understood?'

‘Yes.'

‘I believe I detect a note of defiance.' He glared at her through small, brown eyes, sunk deep in the fleshy folds of his round face.

‘It wasn't intentional.'

‘Your uncle told me that you have a devil in you. But I warn you there's no point in trying to exercise your wiles here. We have been warned and are on the alert. Is there anything you want to ask me?'

‘Yes.' She steeled herself to look at him. ‘Why did you marry me?'

‘Out of respect for your uncle and Christian charity. You have fallen, and are carrying the fruit of your sin, but our Lord Jesus Christ believed no one to be beyond redemption. However, I will not tolerate a second moral lapse. You have sinned once, should you sin again, I will turn you out naked into the street. Is there anything else you would like to say?'

‘No,' she whispered.

‘Not even gratitude for marrying you?'

‘Thank you,' she repeated dismally, looking down at the worn wedding band he had placed on her hand in the chapel.