Beggars and Choosers (31 page)

‘These are Victor's dogs, Harry. They are friendly; you can pat them.'

The child did as she suggested, but Sali sensed only because she had told him to and she wondered how long it would take for the shadow of the monstrous regime Owen Bull had imposed on them to lift from their lives.

‘You can't play football in the garden, Harry.' Lloyd opened the gate and joined them.

‘I wouldn't have allowed him to,' Sali protested defensively.

‘I didn't mean it that way.' Lloyd held his hand out to the boy. ‘Come into the street. There's a patch of ground next door that the council keep threatening to build a school on. It will be a pity if they do; it makes a great football pitch.'

Harry tightened his grip on her hand. ‘You come too, Mam.'

Sali followed Lloyd into the street. To her surprise it was deserted, then she realised it was Sunday. ‘You can't play football.'

‘You don't want Harry to play football?' Lloyd asked in surprise.

‘It's Sunday.'

‘And God will rain down a pestilence if you allow your son to play football on the Sabbath?'

‘No ... I ...'

‘We'll play quietly so no one will hear us, not even God.'

‘That's blasphemous.'

‘As Marxists are atheists, they can't commit blasphemy.'

She hesitated. Was Harry playing football on a Sunday so different to her reading library books instead of the Bible when Owen was in chapel? Or her father smoking and enjoying a glass of whisky with Mr Goodman in his study?

‘I didn't mean to mock your religion,' Lloyd apologised, wondering if he had offended her. ‘I didn't even realise you had one.'

‘I don't, not really.'

‘Do Harry and I play football, or not?'

‘Do you mind if I watch?'

‘No, Mrs Jones, I don't mind.'

‘Call me Sali.'

‘It is good to see that you can make a decision when you want to, Sali. We'll make a Marxist of you yet.'

‘My father always said Marx's views were too extreme.'

‘Your father owned a colliery among many other things. A workers' revolt would have cost him a great deal. But how about you, Sali? Do you think Marx's views too extreme?'

‘I don't know enough about him to have an opinion one way or the other.'

‘And you were doing so well at making decisions until now,' he derided. ‘You'll find his collected works on the bookshelves in the middle room. If you get tired of reading romances, you could give him a try.'

‘I do not read romances.'

‘I've seen you read Charles Dickens, Charlotte Brontë and Jane Austen.'

‘They are great writers,' she remonstrated.

‘I beg to differ. But if you'd like to convince me otherwise, we'll discuss the subject again, after you've read
Das Kapital.
And while you debate whether or not to read it, why don't you come down the library with me a couple of evenings a week? The miners' union are running evening classes and we are desperate for teachers.'

‘I never qualified.'

‘The colliers and their wives who didn't have a chance to go to school are so keen to learn to read and write, they won't care whether you qualified or not.'

‘I have to look after Harry.'

‘Bring him. You can teach him at the same time. Run out of excuses?' he taunted when she didn't answer.

‘How long are the lessons?'

‘One hour. You can spare a couple of hours a week, can't you? Starting at six o'clock on Tuesday.'

‘I've never actually taught an adult to read but I'll try.'

‘Excellent. Now, Harry, I am going to teach you to kick a ball. I'll kick it to you first, then you kick it back.' Lloyd set the ball on the ground and gently nudged it towards the child. When the boy kicked it back, he shouted, ‘Well done, you are a born footballer.'

Harry flushed with pride. ‘Did you see me, Mam?'

‘I saw you, darling.'

‘This goes even better with three, Harry. Shall we let your mother play, even if she is a girl?'

Harry slipped into life in the Evanses' house more easily than Sali had expected him to after their separation. Within days they had established a routine and by the end of the month he was sleeping on his own in the box room. He played happily by himself while she worked during the day and after a few days, even allowed her to go down to the basement and the garden without him, although every time she did so, she saw him watching her anxiously from the window.

All her plans to do her work, bring up Harry and live a quiet life dissipated as the Evanses and their neighbours roped her into Tonypandy life. Megan called on her most days and Megan's youngest cousin, Sam, introduced Harry to his ‘gang' of boys who ranged from two to seven years old. To her surprise, she enjoyed teaching the colliers and their wives to read, and began to pick up the rudiments of Spanish and Italian from her students. Harry liked the library and sat quietly deciphering words in picture books while she tried to concentrate on teaching, as opposed to listening to Lloyd who lectured on philosophy, history, Marx and Engels at the opposite end of the library.

Victor and Joey insisted on looking after Harry while she went to the Pandy Parade, although she and Megan always made a point of returning by eight o'clock so they could go out for a drink with Lloyd. As winter set in, Sunday dinners became a tradition in the house and even Mr Evans stopped lecturing her about taking her one day off a week. Sunday afternoons she reserved for reading to Harry, who soon began to repeat word for word the stories in the children's books Joey, Victor and Lloyd ‘lent' him. When he turned the pages in the correct place, even she began to wonder how much he remembered and how much he could actually read.

Her life was very different from what she had once planned, but apart from concern for her brothers and sister, and her Aunt Edyth, she was content. She and Harry had a comfortable home with good people. She could keep both of them in necessities, and although she insisted that Mr Evans drop her wages to ten shillings a week to pay for Harry's food, she calculated that by Christmas she would have earned enough to redeem Mansel's ring.

She had truly believed herself in love with Mansel, and felt as though she had lost him twice. On what should have been their wedding day and a second time when she had listened to the revelations of Harry's foster mother in the filthy kitchen in Clydach Vale. But Harry was bright and she had aspirations for him beyond their present life. The ring was valuable and if sold in the right place, it might pay for him to go to university some day.

He was her greatest joy. He grew stronger and healthier every day and learned to laugh and play for the first time in his life with Sam and his newfound friends. Using kindness and a patience she hadn't suspected them of possessing, Joey, Victor, Lloyd and Mr Evans taught him that not all men were to be feared. And the very first time Harry left the house without her, he went to play football on the mountain with Joey and Victor.

There were times when she might have believed herself almost happy if it hadn't been for the nights when both she and Harry woke from the nightmare world of Mill Street crying and screaming. And then the spectre of Owen Bull and the pain and misery he had inflicted on them rose and returned in full force, and she wondered if they would ever feel truly safe.

‘What a cake! I've never seen anything like it in my life,' Joey gushed as he walked into the kitchen the Monday evening before Christmas, to find Sali standing at the table, struggling to mix icing in a bowl.

‘You, Joey Evans, are a flatterer and a liar,' Sali countered irritably. ‘And get your hands off that marzipan,' she ordered, as he broke a piece from the side of the cake. ‘It took me over an hour to cover that cake and there's a hole there now.'

‘I'll smooth it over.' He pinched the pieces either side until they met and popped the piece he'd stolen into his mouth.

‘Well?' She watched him anxiously.

He frowned. ‘I'm not quite sure. I think I should try a piece with cake.'

‘Oh no, you don't.' She picked up a wooden spoon and knocked his hand away. ‘If you want to taste the cake, I made a small one. It's in the blue tin in the pantry. I was going to put slices in your snap tins tomorrow.'

Joey went to the pantry and opened the tin. ‘There's no marzipan on it,' he complained mournfully.

‘And there won't be, given the price of ground almonds.'

He sniffed the tin theatrically. ‘It smells all right. Have you been feeding it with whisky?'

‘Brandy. Should I have used whisky?' she asked anxiously.

‘Brandy's better. It's what my mother used.'

‘I know. I followed a recipe I found in her notebook, but don't expect too much. This is the first Christmas cake I've ever made.'

‘How long ago did you make it?' He opened the drawer and took out a knife.

‘In October along with the puddings. Connie sent up the ingredients with a note telling me it was time to make them. She also warned me that if I didn't hide them from you and Victor I'd have only crumbs left by Christmas Day, and looking at the size of the slice you've just cut from that taster cake, you greedy boy, she was right.'

‘This is for Victor and me.' Stung by her criticism, he halved the slice. ‘So where did you hide the cakes?' he enquired innocently.

‘If I told you, I wouldn't be able to use the same place again. Oh ... sugar!' she cried in exasperation as the icing she had been trying to beat stuck in an unwieldy lumpy mass around the spoon.

Joey took a teaspoon from the drawer, scooped up a blob of icing and dropped it on to his slice of cake. ‘I take it you've never made icing before either?'

‘Does it taste that bad?' she asked apprehensively.

He made a face. ‘It's not mixed properly. I just tasted something sour and it's dry and powdery.'

‘The ingredients cost the earth. There's fresh lemon juice and egg whites in that bowl as well as sugar.'

‘Have you been sitting here filling your face instead of going to the meeting?' Lloyd demanded of Joey as he walked in from the passage.

‘I've only just got in,' Joey protested.

‘From where?' Victor closed the door, rubbed his hands together and held them out to the stove.

‘The Bridgend. I called in for a quick drink.'

‘You promised you'd go to the meeting. Management are trying to cut our wages by seven and half per cent.'

‘And they'll do it with or without our agreement,' Joey interrupted testily, raising his voice to the level of Lloyd's.

‘If we don't show a united front –'

‘I am united. Right behind the rest of you,' Joey retorted.

‘Wrapped around the new barmaid in the Bridgend?' Lloyd enquired caustically.

‘She's right behind us as well.'

‘This isn't one of your crazy jokes, Joey. The way management are eating away at our wages, we won't be able to afford bread and scrape soon, let alone beer, meat and cake. And we're better-off than most families. When you go down in that cage tomorrow, take a long, hard look at the men who are trying to keep a wife and children on less than you earn.'

‘You know you can count on me.'

‘No, I don't,' Lloyd snapped. ‘And neither do the other men. All you ever think about is chasing skirt and boozing down the pub.'

‘I do more than my fair share when I'm in work.'

‘Only because there's no beer or women underground.' Lloyd glowered at Joey, who retreated into sullen silence.

Sali still found the arguments between the brothers disquieting, but she had come to realise that they never bore a grudge. Summoning her courage, she broke the silence. ‘Would anyone like tea and cake?'

‘Tea would be great,' Victor said, as Joey handed him half of the slice of cake he'd cut.

‘Please,' Lloyd relented.

Joey winked at Sali and muttered, ‘Thank you,' behind Lloyd's back. Pretending she hadn't seen him, she cut another slice of the ‘taster' cake and handed it to Lloyd before setting the kettle on the hob.

‘Was anything decided at the meeting?' Joey ventured.

‘The union is going to offer the Coal Owners' Association a five per cent cut in wages. We have to be realistic,' Lloyd protested defensively, in reply to the angry look on Joey's face. ‘And frankly, I think we'll be lucky to get away with five per cent. The owners were complaining about the soaring costs of production before the new Coal Mine Regulations were introduced this year to improve safety.'

‘Why the hell should we pay to improve safety?'

‘Language! There's a lady present,' Victor reprimanded through a mouthful of cake.

‘You want a repeat of what happened four years ago?' Lloyd enquired tartly.

Sali recalled her father's devastation in March 1905 when thirty-three miners had been killed in an explosion in the Cambrian Colliery in Clydach Vale. And the death of another 119 men in a similar explosion in the National Colliery in Wattstown four months later had driven him to install every safety measure designed to improve conditions in the pits in the Watkin Jones Colliery.

Silence again fell over the kitchen. She poured out four cups of tea and handed them around. While Lloyd was sugaring his, he peered into the bowl in which she had been trying to mix the icing.

‘You trying to put this on the cake?' He lifted his eyebrows.

‘Sali was thinking of serving it separately as a sauce,' Joey joked.

‘Do that, and we'll be chipping it out of the bowl with pickaxes on Christmas Day. Royal icing sets as solid as cement. It is Royal Icing?' Lloyd said.

‘I tried to follow the recipe in your mother's book, but I made a real mess of it,' she confessed. ‘It's such a waste of expensive ingredients.'