Winners and Losers (25 page)

‘Yippee!'

‘You won't miss us, Harry?' Sali asked.

Harry shook his head and stared at a waitress who was carrying a cake into the room. A large, white-iced cake covered in sugar roses and green icing petals.

‘A wedding cake! Mr Richards you shouldn't have.'

‘Hardly a wedding cake, Mrs Evans, just one tier.'

‘I don't even have my razor.' Lloyd was still reluctant to accept Mr Richards's generous offer.

‘Why don't you men stay here and have another drink, while Megan and I walk over to Gwilym James and pick up what we'll need for tonight,' Sali suggested.

‘Is that what my life's going to be from now on?' Lloyd joked. ‘Abandoned to sit and drink with the men while my wife goes shopping?'

‘If that's an example of married life, I'm all for it.' Joey winked at the waitress who was cutting the cake.

‘You'll be lucky to find a girl who'll have you,' his father said acidly. ‘Right, what's everyone drinking. This round is on me.' He stood in front of Mr Richards, daring him to say otherwise.

Megan followed Sali in bewilderment as she went from department to department in Gwilym James. First the cosmetics, where she bought a cut-throat razor, shaving mug, soap, toothbrushes, tooth powder and soap, then they moved on to household linens where she bought flannels and a pair of towels. Finally they ended up in the ladieswear department where Sali asked to see a selection of lingerie.

‘Just look at this silk and lace!' Megan exclaimed. ‘It's beautiful.' She picked up a chemise only to drop it when she saw the price tag. ‘I don't mean to be rude, Sali,' she whispered, ‘but how on earth can you afford to buy anything here?'

‘As we're going to be sisters-in-law, I'll tell you, but not here.' Sali picked up the chemise and held it in front of Megan. ‘This looks your size, doesn't it?'

‘I couldn't possibly -'

‘It's traditional for the bride to buy the bridesmaid a present. Gold or silver jewellery usually, but if you'd prefer oyster satin and coffee-coloured lace, it's yours.'

‘I'd love it, but -'

‘Good, that's settled.' Sali turned to the assistant. ‘I'll take the chemise, nightdress, drawers and petticoat please, Miss Rowe. Would you please parcel up the chemise separately, charge everything to my account and arrange for them to be sent downstairs. I'll pick up everything in ten minutes or so.'

Sali led Megan out of the shop and across the road. She stopped in front of the toyshop and looked at a miniature brewery wagon complete with two horses and dozen metal barrels. Pushing open the door, she went inside.

‘Mrs Jones,' the manager abandoned the man and woman he was serving and went to Sali, ‘how can I help you?'

‘It's all right, Mr Thomas, I am sure that your assistant can see to me.' Sali smiled at a young and diffident boy. ‘I've come to buy the brewery wagon.'

‘The one Master Harry likes so much.'

‘And has been in here a dozen times to look at.'

‘He's going to have a happy Christmas, Mrs Jones.' The boy pushed aside the wooden door at the back of the window display and lifted it from the window.

‘Could I have that wagon as well?' Sali pointed to a smaller, one-horse coal wagon, complete with tiny lumps of coal.

‘My pleasure, Mrs Jones.'

A few minutes later, Sali took Megan into the tearooms in the arcade. Handing their coats and parcels to the girl who showed them to their table, they sat down and Sali ordered tea and cakes for two.

‘I owe you an explanation,' Sali said in response to the bemused expression on Megan's face.

‘You don't have to tell me anything you don't want to.'

‘I want to tell you. I was born Sali Watkin Jones, My father owned collieries.'

‘You're rich?'

‘Was.' Sali picked up the china teapot the waitress set on the table and poured out two cups of tea. ‘But not any more.'

‘But the clothes, this tea?' Megan asked in surprise.

‘You must promise me something, Megan, what I tell you now must remain a secret as far as anyone outside the family is concerned. Especially in Tonypandy.'

Megan looked at the serious expression on Sali's face. ‘I promise.'

Chapter Thirteen

‘We know that Lloyd and Sali planned a quiet wedding, but the neighbours wanted to do something for them so we organized a surprise party. I hope you don't mind, Uncle Billy.' Connie met her uncle at the kitchen door when he returned from Pontypridd.

Billy glanced into his kitchen. There were so many people crammed into the room; he couldn't have walked across it. ‘It's you who's had the surprise. Lloyd and Sali are staying in Pontypridd tonight.' A lump rose in his throat when he saw the table. Connie had covered it with her best tablecloth and, judging by the various patterns on the plates set on it, everyone had contributed something. Food had never been as scarce as it was at that moment in the valley, yet the table was groaning with more than Connie, Annie and Tonia could have possibly carried up from the shop. And everyone in the street was there, as well as some of his friends and Sali's young sister-in-law, Owen Bull's half-sister, Rhian, who had suffered as much from Owen's cruelty as Sali. Rhian had fled from her brother's house the same time as Sali and found herself a job in Tonypandy as a parlour maid in Llan House.

‘I'm sure Lloyd and Sali would have been delighted.' Joey realized that for once his father was lost for words. ‘But they've been given a night in the New Inn as a wedding present so you'll have to make do with us. These pasties look delicious.'

‘They'll keep until tomorrow, when we have a welcome home party.' Connie's assistant, Annie, knocked Joey's hand aside as he reached for one.

‘The sandwiches won't.' Connie picked up a plate and offered it to Megan and Victor, who came in carrying Harry.

‘Great idea, Annie.' Joey snaffled two sandwiches before Connie had a chance to pass the plate on to Betty Morgan. ‘Everyone can forget chapel and church for once and we'll have another party tomorrow night.'

‘I suppose we could go to morning service only,' Betty said doubtfully.

‘You're risking going to hell, Betty,' Billy taunted.

‘But only for a visit,' Ned chimed in. ‘Billy and I will be there for the duration.'

‘You two will choke on your blasphemy one day.' Betty took the sandwiches and joined a group of women who'd appointed themselves tea makers.

‘Hello, Mr Evans, Joey, Victor, Megan.' Rhian opened her arms to Harry, who was fighting his way through a forest of adult legs to get to her. ‘I'm sorry I couldn't go to the wedding but there was a lunch party up at Llan House and the mistress cancelled my day off.'

‘We heard that the officers from the Somersets had been invited to hobnob with the crache,' Ned commented sourly. ‘What did you serve them?'

‘You don't want to know, Ned.' Billy bit into a sandwich and discovered to his amazement that it was tinned ham. ‘Whatever it was, I bet it wasn't a patch on this feast.'

‘I brought a small present for Sali and Lloyd.' Rhian opened her bag, removed a box and set it on the mantelpiece.

‘As it seems that we're having another party tomorrow in chapel time, you're more than welcome to come back and give it to them then. That way you can see their faces when they open it.'

‘Thank you, Mr Evans, I'll do that.' Rhian opened her bag wide when Harry finally reached her. ‘If you put your hand in there, you'll find a paper bag and there might be something in it for you.'

‘A gingerbread man! Thank you, Auntie Rhian.' Harry climbed on to her lap, kissed her cheek and proceeded to pull the ‘eye' currants from the biscuit.

‘So, tell me what you've been doing with yourself, besides serving army officers posh lunches?' Joey perched on the arm of the easy chair Rhian was sitting in and beamed at her. Blonde, blue-eyed and extremely pretty, Rhian had just turned sixteen. She was also the kind of ‘nice' girl his father couldn't possibly object to him seeing.

‘Just work.' Rhian took a sandwich from the plate Megan handed her. ‘Thank you.'

‘Work as in, sit down and drink cups of tea in between answering the door to visitors and serving them cucumber sandwiches?' Joey suggested.

‘Joey obviously thinks that we domestics can get away with doing as little as he does when he works.' Megan countered Joey's mocking remark with one of her own. ‘I never get a minute to myself and the lodging house is nowhere near as big as Llan House.'

‘There's a lot more of us in Llan House to do the work,' Rhian said.

‘I bet you're still up at six and don't go to bed much before eleven.'

‘We'll have to start campaigning for the eight-hour day for shop workers and domestic workers next,' Billy said seriously.

‘Hello, Rhian, Joey.' Connie's dark-haired daughter, Antonia, pulled up a kitchen chair and joined them.

‘And hello, Cousin Tonia. You two do know one another?' Joey admired Antonia's perfect classical features and dark, Latin looks before glancing back at Rhian. He found it impossible to decide which girl was the prettiest.

‘Of course we do.' At her mother's prompting, Antonia took a plate of sardine sandwiches and offered them around.

‘So when is your next day off, Rhian?' Joey asked, taking advantage of Antonia's absence.

‘Monday.'

‘I'm not doing anything. Fancy a walk on the mountain?' His face fell when Antonia turned around and she, Rhian and Megan all burst out laughing. ‘Did I say something funny?' he demanded indignantly.

‘Go for a walk on the mountain, in broad daylight, with you, Joey Evans?' Rhian chortled.

‘And what's wrong with that!'

‘Mrs Williams would stop my days off and lock me up in Llan House for a year if she knew that I was talking to you in a room crowded with respectable people.'

‘Old bat!'

‘Sensible lady,' Rhian contradicted. ‘She includes a warning about you in her “Welcome to Llan House” talk that she gives every new maid. As she says, a girl would have to be eager to lose her reputation to go anywhere alone with you.'

‘Or insane,' Tonia added.

‘Thank you very much.' Joey picked up another sandwich and walked over to where his father and Victor were talking to Ned Morgan.

‘I heard the girls,' Billy smiled.

‘You think they're funny,' Joey snapped, not amused by the joke at his expense.

‘You can't say I didn't warn you, son.'

Joey ducked behind Ned when Jane Edwards walked in. She looked around, saw him and stared. He turned his back to her, hoping she'd ignore him. ‘Perhaps you should have warned me sooner.'

‘And perhaps you should have listened to me sooner,' Billy commented, seeing Jane looking in their direction.

Lloyd and Sali were curled together on a sofa set in front of the window of their hotel room. Lloyd had opened the curtains but although their room overlooked Taff Street and the thoroughfare was crowded with late-night shoppers hoping to pick up a bargain before the market closed at half past ten, neither of them were looking down at the street. Instead, they were gazing over the roof of the Park Hotel opposite and up at the clear dark night sky scattered with stars and a sliver of bright new moon.

‘Happy?' Lloyd wrapped his arm around Sali's shoulders and pulled her even closer.

‘Yes,' she answered. ‘You?'

He picked up the bottle of claret that had arrived with the dinner –they had eaten in their room –and refilled both their glasses. ‘I have the moon and the stars to look at, and a beautiful wife dressed in a robe that I sincerely hope she'll never wear when there are other men around.'

‘You think it's too revealing.'

‘Not for me, but that silk is too thin to keep out the cold back home. Anywhere other than our bedroom that is.' He slipped his hand inside her negligée and fondled her naked breast.

She kissed him.

‘And now a kiss! What more could a man ask for?'

‘I don't know,' she whispered seductively. ‘What more could a man ask for?'

He reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out a tobacco tin. Knowing it was where he kept the French letters they used, she closed her fingers over it, took it from him and dropped it into the wastepaper basket beside the sofa.

‘I was hoping I was going to need that.'

‘You won't, Lloyd. Not now, and not any more.'

‘We can't possibly consider having a child. Not in the middle of a strike.'

‘Are you suggesting that we should wait until the colliery owners meet every one of your demands?'

‘They'd only do that in an ideal world and unfortunately the world we live in is anything but.'

‘Precisely,' she said firmly. ‘We could wait until the end of our lives and never see an end to the trouble between the miners and the owners.'

‘But even so, this is not a good time to bring a child into the world, Sali,' he warned.

‘Then when?'

‘I don't know, when the strike is settled, when we've won better wages, better conditions, better housing ...'

‘Lloyd, I have a feeling that if we wait for the right time, it will never come. Harry will be five next year and five years is a big gap between brothers -'

‘Brother and sister,' he broke in.

‘You want a daughter?'

‘Most definitely, after having two brothers. I even have a name picked out for her, Isabella Maria Evans after my mother. She never said, but I knew she always wanted a daughter.'

‘That's a lovely name. I wish I'd known your mother.'

‘So do I.' He swept her into his arms, carried her over to the bed, folded back the bedclothes and dropped her gently on the sheet. Untying the belt on her robe, he opened it. She lay naked, watching him undress.

‘Just think,' she said, ‘nine months from today there could be four of us.'

‘I'm not at all sure about this, Sali.' Peeling off the last of his clothes, he lay beside her.

‘Don't you remember what you said the second time we made love. We were in your bedroom.' She took his hand and laid it on her left breast. ‘You told me that you wanted my heart, my body, my mind –but most of all you wanted to watch me grow big with your child, because he or she would carry our love into the future.' She moved both his hands to the flat of her stomach and held them there.

‘You remember?'

‘I remember everything you say to me.'

‘Everything?' He caressed her breasts with the back of his fingers.

‘The first time you told me that you loved me, you also said that you wanted to live with me day in, year out, until we grew old and grey together.'

‘To me, you'll always look the same as you do now.'

‘I love you, Lloyd, and I want to have sons just like you. Tall, intelligent, bold men with your vision and spirit.'

‘And their mother's kindness.'

When he entered her, he knew she was right. There would never be a more perfect time for them to have a child. Maybe they wouldn't be able to give him or her much in the way of material possessions, or even security, but they would be able to give love. He only hoped it would prove riches enough.

‘It's bl-' Ned looked at his wife and realized she was listening in on his conversation, ‘blasted disgraceful. Tom and Dai Hayward were up in court yesterday and both of them were fined fifteen pounds. The judge said if they couldn't pay, as if he didn't know that money's rarer than unicorns in this valley, they'd have to go to prison for three months. And that was just for trying to protect women and children when the police charged a crowd with batons.'

‘They called it assault,' Victor said evenly. ‘And Dai and Tom both admitted that their pockets were full of stones.'

‘Assault as opposed to intimidation,' Billy said thoughtfully.

‘The sentences they're handing out to strikers are disgraceful,' Ned reiterated. ‘You, Joey and Luke could be fined twenty pounds or more and if you can't pay, you could be sent down for as much as three or four months with hard labour.'

‘We don't know anything for sure yet, Ned, and we won't until the boys' case comes up.' Billy handed his empty cup to Connie who was collecting them. ‘Now, how about changing the subject. This is supposed to be a happy occasion.'

Victor looked across the kitchen to where Megan was talking to a group of women, Betty Morgan among them. He caught her eye and raised his eyebrows. Excusing herself she walked over to him.

‘I have to go down the garden to feed the dogs and lock up the chickens. Do you and Harry want to come?'

‘I'd like to. I'll ask Harry.'

‘Get your coats. It's going to be cold down there. I'll wait for you in the basement.' He picked up the candle he'd lit with a newspaper spill, opened the door to the basement and slipped out.

‘Harry, Uncle Victor's feeding the dogs. Do you want to come?'

Harry looked up sleepily at Megan from Rhian's arms and shook his head.

‘He's fine with me, Megan,' Rhian assured her. ‘I don't see much of him so I'm making the most of this cuddle.'

Megan fetched her cloak from the passage and followed Victor out through the door. The steps were shrouded in darkness, but she could see a candle flickering below her. Victor was standing at the old kitchen table surrounded by tins and bowls.

‘Harry didn't want to come?'

‘He was too comfortable on Rhian's lap. Another five minutes and I think he'll be fast asleep. Do you think anyone noticed us sneaking off?'

‘What if they did? We're engaged and as such, allowed to do some courting in peace. Did Mrs Morgan say anything to you?' He opened the tin in which he kept the stale bread Sali baked hard for the dogs.

‘Nothing horrible.'

‘But nothing nice either,' he guessed.

‘She didn't cut me.'

‘She wouldn't dare in this house.' Victor pounded the bread with a hammer and broke it into small pieces.