Beggars and Choosers (57 page)

Betty took Megan's arm. Daring to breathe again, they walked on. It was a freezing, damp, grey November day, but that hadn't deterred a crowd of young men from playing football with a tin can on the only flattened area of mountainside high above the rows of terraced houses. Their whoops and shouts carried down towards them on the wind.

‘I'm glad someone can forget the strike, if only for a few hours,' Betty said philosophically, as they crossed the road to avoid yet another group of police officers.

‘I wish I could.'

‘It must be hard on you, with your uncle not being able to pay your wages,' Betty commiserated.

‘If it was up to me I'd be happy to carry on doing the housework and taking care of the family for my keep.'

‘Your what?' Betty laughed.

‘What passes for keep these days,' Megan amended. ‘But ever since I started working for him I've sent ten shillings a week home to my father.'

‘Your uncle pays you fifteen shillings a week, right?'

‘He did until the strike started. It's the going rate for a housekeeper.'

‘It was,' Betty nodded sagely, ‘but it seems to me that your father's been getting a lot more than the going rate from a daughter. I used to count myself lucky to get ten shillings a month from my Annie when she was in service before she married.'

‘Things aren't easy at home. It's hard trying to make ends meet on a hill farm and aside from Mam and Dad I've two younger sisters and brothers. I don't like to think of them suffering on my account. I know I should look for a paying job, but –'

‘They're harder to find than gold in the valleys these days, especially for women,' Betty observed.

‘And I'd hate to leave my uncle. Who'd look after his house and family if I didn't?'

‘Now there's a job.' Betty pointed to a sign in the window of a large, square four-storey house on the corner of the street. They stopped and read the card propped inside the window:

GIRL WANTED TO HELP WITH DOMESTIC WORK.

MUST BE EXPERIENCED COOK, ABLE TO WASH,

IRON AND DO GENERAL CLEANING WITHOUT

SUPERVISION. ABOVE AVERAGE WAGES OFFERED TO AN EFFICIENT PERSON. APPLY WITHIN.

‘I've heard that Joyce Palmer is prepared to pay as much as a pound a week to the right girl.'

‘Really?' Megan's eyes rounded in wonder.

‘Not that I've spoken to Joyce myself,' Betty added. ‘Well, not since the colliery company gave notice to all the miners in the lodging houses they owned and made them over to policemen. No decent woman would have stayed on to wait on them.'

‘Mrs Palmer had nowhere else to go.' Megan repeated an observation Victor had made.

‘She could have found somewhere if she'd tried,' Betty dismissed. ‘Mrs Payne in the Post Office told me that Joyce has taken one girl out of the workhouse to help her, but she's found her a bit slow, and she'd rather not take on another. I can't see any man in the town who sympathizes with the colliers' grievances, let alone the colliers themselves, allowing any member of their family to wait on police or soldiers.' Two officers headed towards them. ‘Come on, time we were on our way.'

Megan gripped her basket and trudged on up the hill after Betty. Turning left, they greeted their neighbours again. Megan said goodbye to Betty and turned the key that was kept in the lock of her uncle's house and opened the door. Goose pimples rose on her skin when she stopped in the hall to take off her cloak and hat, but she was afraid of staining her cloak if she tried to do housework wearing it.

She carried her basket through to the kitchen, tied on her apron and filled the tin bowl in the sink ready to wash and peel the potatoes. The strike had made life cold, hungry and uncomfortable, but it had done little to change her routine. Her uncle and his brothers still rose at half past four in the morning, although they no longer had to be at the colliery gates before six in time to go down in the cage. But they didn't linger in the house. In an effort to eke out the last coal ration they had received from the pit, she lit the kitchen stove for an hour in the morning so she could heat water for washing and tea and raked it out until three in the afternoon when it was time to cook the evening meal. She found it hard to do housework in the icy temperature but she didn't doubt that her uncle and his brothers found it just as cold on the picket line.

She poured the packet of tea she had bought into the empty caddy and fetched a swede, half a dozen turnips and a bunch of carrots that her uncle had brought down from his allotment the day before and put in the pantry. She wouldn't have had to buy potatoes if theirs hadn't been struck by blight. She unwrapped the lamb from the newspaper. It was a very small portion of meat for so many people but the first her uncle had allowed her to buy in two months. At least they would eat tonight. There were plenty in the town who wouldn't.

She'd put the lamb in a pan of cold water to soak and picked up a knife to start peeling the potatoes when she heard someone walk up the stone steps that led from the basement to the kitchen. There was a tap on the door, then it opened.

Victor's massive frame filled the doorway. He smiled and his teeth gleamed startlingly white against his blackened face and filthy clothes. He held up a bucketful of coal. ‘You can light the stove early. There's plenty more where this came from, I've just emptied a couple of sacks into your coalhouse.'

‘You've been working in the drifts the strikers have opened up on the mountain!'

His soft grey eyes sparkled in vivid contrast to his dirty face. His grin widened as he held his finger to his lips.

‘The police will arrest you –'

‘They have to catch me first, and even if they do, I'll only get a fine. It's worth risking that to warm a few houses. Mrs Richards in the colliery cottages off the square didn't have scrap of coal and she has four under three years old.'

‘If you are fined, no one will be able to pay it and then you'll be put in prison.'

‘I wasn't caught, Megs.' He called her by the nickname he had invented for her and no one else used.

‘This time,' Megan murmured fearfully.

‘Love you.'

‘You always say that whenever I'm cross with you.'

‘Because it's the only thing that calms you down, Megs. Seeing as how I'm covered in coal dust I may as well light the stove for you. And if you lay newspaper on the floor I won't dirty your nice clean flagstones.'

Megan opened the cupboard in the alcove next to the stove where she kept old newspapers and sticks for the fire. She picked up a copy of the
Rhondda Leader
from the top of the pile and spread its pages in layers from the basement door to the hearth.

‘You didn't go down to Porth to wait for the verdict on the inquest with your father?'

‘I had more important things to do.' Victor raked out the remains of the small fire she had doused that morning, laid balls of newspaper over the iron fire basket, balanced sticks on them and arranged the half-burnt coals together with lumps of fresh coal on top.

‘Like supply half of Tonypandy with coal?' she suggested.

‘I only wish I could.' He brushed his light brown hair from his eyes, griming it even more. ‘Your family and mine are lucky, Megs. Strike pay may not be enough to live on but at least we're getting some money. The men with the most children and the lowest wages couldn't afford to pay union dues, and now the pits are closed they can't work either. I can't sit back and watch them freeze and starve to death.'

‘You and the others who are risking prosecution won't get enough coal out of the drifts to keep every kitchen stove burning in Pandy, no more than you can feed everyone in the town from what you grow in your garden.'

‘No, but I can do my bit.' He struck a match, lit a newspaper spill the children had made and blew on it before touching the balls of paper at the bottom of the fire. They caught immediately, sending spirals of grey smoke curling up the chimney. ‘There, you can start cooking that cawl you're making.'

She folded the rest of the newspapers she was holding back into the cupboard and closed the door. ‘If you weren't so dirty I would hug you.'

‘If there's no one else in the house you could give me a kiss.' His smile broadened in anticipation.

She stooped over him and when their lips met he couldn't resist cupping her face in his hands. As always, she warmed to his touch, instinctively leaning against him. The front door banged and they sprang apart.

Footsteps echoed in the hall, then the kitchen door opened and a short, wiry, middle-aged man glowered at them through piercing blue eyes. His cap was so grimy it was impossible to determine what colour it had originally been, his grubby brown moleskin trousers were tied with twine in place of a belt at his waist and again just below his knees, his red flannel shirt was collarless and his tweed jacket more hole than cloth.

Megan stared at him. He was smaller, more wrinkled and older than she remembered. ‘Dad?' she murmured tentatively.

‘So you do remember me, girl,' he lisped through yellow, broken teeth.

She felt that she should have hugged him, but the moment was over. ‘What are you doing here?'

Ianto Williams removed his cap to reveal a shock of grey curls. ‘I would have thought that was obvious.'

‘How did you get here?' She was too taken aback to attempt to make sense of his answer.

‘I left the farm at two this morning and rode into Swansea Market on Jones' cheese and cream cart. Then I got a ride on the fresh fish and cockle donkey cart that travels up here from Penclawdd. It'll be leaving before dawn in the morning.' He settled a hostile glare on Victor. ‘Your uncle or his brothers in?'

‘He and the other men have gone down to Porth,' Megan stammered.

‘The children?'

‘The younger two are in school, the older boys out playing.' Colour rose in her cheeks as her father continued to stare at Victor. ‘This is Mr Victor Evans, Dad. He lives next door. He brought us some coal and laid the fire for me.'

‘I remember the name. You've laid just the one fire?' He eyed Victor's blackened face and filthy clothes.

‘I've been working a drift on the mountain, Mr Williams,' Victor explained.

‘Isn't that illegal?'

‘That depends on your point of view,' Victor replied easily. ‘It is good to meet you after all this time, Mr Williams. Megan talks a lot about her family.'

‘To you?' Ianto Williams enquired sternly.

‘Sometimes.' Victor refused to be intimidated. ‘Our families are close and Megan and I are friends.'

‘Friendly enough to persuade her to write to me and ask my permission to get engaged to you. And friendly enough for you to be left alone with her in the house after I wrote to her at Christmas expressly forbidding her to see you or talk to you.'

‘Victor lives next door, Dad ...'

‘So you said, girl.'

Ignoring Mr Williams' outburst in the rapidly diminishing hope of winning him round, Victor said, ‘I would offer to shake your hand but, as you can see, I'm covered in coal dust.'

‘I wouldn't shake the hand of a Papist if it was disinfected. 

‘I have to cook the dinner, Victor.'

Victor saw the pleading look in Megan's eyes and realized he was making a bad situation worse. Careful to step on the newspaper he retraced his steps to the basement door. ‘I've a few more bags of coal to deliver, so I'll be off.'

‘Thank you for the coal, Victor,' Megan called after him when he closed the door behind him.

‘So that's the Catholic you've been making a fool of yourself with.' Ianto moved in front of the fire to warm himself.

‘I haven't been making a fool of myself with anyone, Dad.' Megan gathered the dust-stained sheets of newspaper from the floor.

‘No?' Ianto said. ‘I suggest you look at yourself in the mirror, girl, before you say another word.'

Megan dropped the coal-smudged papers on top of the coal bucket, went to the sink and picked up the men's shaving mirror. Black imprints of Victor's hands covered both her cheeks and there were coal smuts on her lips. Dampening the corner of a tea towel under the tap, she scrubbed at her face.

‘Have you anything to say for yourself?'

‘As you said, I did write to ask you if I could get engaged to Victor at Christmas. And it's not as if it's sudden. We've known one another for over five years.'

‘And I wrote back telling you that I'd prefer to see you dead than married to a Catholic. And I forbid you to see or talk to him again.'

‘Victor's a good man –'

‘I'll have no more said about him.' Ianto scraped a wooden chair over the flagstones and plonked it in front of the fire. ‘You can make me a cup of tea and give me some bread and cheese to keep me going until tea's on the table.'

‘I can make you tea and give you bread, Dad. But there's no cheese. With so little money coming into the house we've had to cut back.' Megan filled the blackened tin kettle, opened up a hob and put it on to boil. ‘You still haven't said what you're doing here.'

‘As I said when I came in, it's obvious. Your uncle's emigrating and I've come to take you home, not that we can afford to keep you there. You'll have to find another job – and quick.'

‘Emigrating ...' Her voice died to a whisper.

‘To Canada. With no job or home to go to, your uncle won't risk taking his two youngest and he's asked your mother and me to take them in. We've room now that your brothers and sisters have left home. Tea, girl,' he reminded, as she stood, pale and trembling, beside his chair.

The
Brothers &Lovers
series
by
Catrin Collier

 
 

 
 

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