Winners and Losers (33 page)

‘And if Lloyd and Uncle Billy are already on their way back here?' Connie asked.

Sali opened the front door to find the neighbours congregated in the street. Two police officers were pushing their way through the crowd.

‘Constable Davies,' Sali shouted, recognizing Huw Davies from the time she had needed help in the Hardy's house and the numerous occasions he had slipped her money for the soup kitchen since. And, unlike most people, he insisted on his donations remaining anonymous. ‘Do you know anything about the train crash in Hopkinstown?'

‘Do you?' Mrs Hopkins from the end of the street buttonholed him, preventing him from reaching Sali.

‘Please, ladies, let us get through to Mrs Evans,' Huw pleaded, as the women swarmed around him and his colleague.

‘Two coppers, that means someone's dead for sure.' Mrs Robinson folded her arms and rocked back on her heels. ‘They always send out two to tell a woman she's a widow. One to do the talking and one to catch her when she falls. When our John was knocked down and trampled to death by the brewery cart's shire horses outside the White Hart, two coppers came to the house five minutes later. They hadn't finished scraping him up off the road before they told my sister ...'

‘Please, ladies, this isn't helping,' Huw pleaded strongly.

The one word that stuck in Sali's head was ‘Dead'. It reverberated repeatedly through her mind like a mantra.
Dead. Dead. Dead.

‘Mrs Evans.' Constable Davies was holding her arm but he was looking over her head at Connie who was still standing in the passage. ‘Someone told me Mrs Morgan is here.'

‘That's right. Please, won't you come in, Constable?' Remembering her manners, Connie stepped back and opened the kitchen door.

Somehow, Sali found herself sitting across the hearth from Betty in an easy chair. Betty was leaning back, white-faced, dry-eyed, staring at Huw Davies. Connie held her hand.

‘Your husband's head injuries were severe, Mrs Morgan. The message we received at the station said his death was instantaneous. I know it is no consolation, but you have our very deepest sympathy.' Huw Davies turned to Sali. ‘Your husband and father-in-law were recognized by a reporter from the
Pontypridd Observer,
Mrs Evans. He was absolutely certain it was them. They were both injured and sent on by train to Cardiff Royal Infirmary.'

‘How badly injured?' Sali felt strange, disembodied, as if she were watching a scene on stage at the Empire Theatre.

‘I'm afraid I don't have any further information, Mrs Evans.'

‘I have to go to them.' Sali left her chair.

‘I'll go with you,' Connie offered.

‘No, Connie, you stay with Betty,' Sali said quickly. ‘But will you do me a favour? Pick Harry up from school, or if you can't go yourself, send someone he knows like Annie or Tonia to fetch him.'

‘Of course I will, but you can't go to Cardiff by yourself,' Connie protested, as Sali buttoned her coat and straightened her hat.

‘The trains aren't running between here and Pontypridd because of the crash, Mrs Evans,' Constable Davies warned.

‘But the trams are?'

‘Yes.'

‘Then I'll get a tram to Pontypridd and a train from there to Cardiff.'

‘Sali, please, let me send for Annie,' Connie begged. ‘She can stay with Mrs Morgan. You can't go on to Cardiff alone.'

‘She won't be going alone, Connie.' Father Kelly appeared in the doorway. ‘I'll be travelling with her.'

Chapter Seventeen

Sali looked at her watch when the cab Father Kelly had hired at Cardiff station drew up outside the Infirmary. She read the time but it didn't register. If anyone had told her that a century had passed since they had left Tonypandy, she would have believed them. Minutes had crawled by like hours, especially on the tram that had taken forever to reach the market town at the head of the valleys, and afterwards, when they had been forced to wait for half an hour on Pontypridd station for a train.

‘Let me pay the driver.' Father Kelly slipped his hand into his cassock pocket.

Sali didn't argue. She opened the door, jumped down from the carriage without waiting for the cabman to lower the steps and ran as fast as she could to the main entrance. The entrance hall was crowded with people, most apparently milling about aimlessly.

A doctor was talking to a group of men scribbling on notepads. Two porters wheeled a trolley out of a side corridor towards them. Sali stepped forward and studied the occupant. A red blanket was pulled to the chin ... Was it true hospital blankets were red because they didn't show the blood?

She took a deep breath to steady herself then she saw that the person lying on the trolley had long hair. A woman, it was a woman, not Lloyd. She looked frantically around.

‘Can I help you?' A nurse approached her.

Father Kelly joined her. ‘A Mr Lloyd Evans and a Mr William Evans were brought here after the train crash in Hopkinstown. Where can we find them?' He laid his arm around Sali's waist to support her.

‘If you go to the desk and give your details to the gentleman there, he may be able to help you.' The nurse disappeared through a set of double doors.

Father Kelly led Sali to the desk and repeated his question. As the receptionist thumbed through a leatherbound ledger, Sali heard someone call her name. She turned. Her hand flew to her mouth. Lifting her skirts, she raced blindly down the corridor.

‘You're hurt, your head –you're bandaged, you're ...'

‘Alive, sweetheart. Just cut and bruised and only slightly at that.' Lloyd held her close and buried his face in her hair. ‘I'm alive,' he repeated as if he couldn't quite believe it himself.

‘Your father?' She looked up at him but tears blurred her vision.

‘Dad's in surgery.' Victor stood behind Lloyd. Joey joined them and she could see from the stricken look on both their faces that something was seriously wrong.

‘He's broken both his legs, sweetheart,' Lloyd said softly. ‘One of them badly. They're operating on him now. The doctor told us he has no choice but to amputate it to save Dad's life.'

Mrs Palmer met Megan at the kitchen door as she carried in the last tray of dirty dishes from the final sitting of supper. She took the tray from her.

‘Your young man is in my sitting room. You can join him.'

‘Is he -'

‘I'll see that you're not disturbed, Megan.'

Megan instinctively ran her hands over her hair and smoothed her apron and skirt as she crossed the hall.

‘Miss Williams, I would like to speak to you about last night.' Sergeant Martin appeared in front of her.

‘Excuse me, Sergeant Martin, but I can't talk to you now. I have a visitor.' Megan opened the door, stepped inside, closed it behind her and leaned against it. Victor was sitting in an easy chair beside the fire, an untouched tray of tea and biscuits set on the sofa table at his elbow. He saw her and left the chair.

‘I'm sorry I couldn't come any earlier,' he apologized.

‘I've been so worried about you and your father and Lloyd.'

‘Connie said you'd been up to the house.' He hugged her.

She wrapped her arms around his neck and returned his embrace. ‘Is there any news?'

‘They were both taken to Cardiff Infirmary. But Lloyd's home now. He cut his head and face but his injuries aren't serious. My father broke both his legs, the right one so badly they had to amputate it.'

‘I'm sorry, Victor.' She led him to the sofa and sank down beside him.

‘They're lucky to be alive. I don't know what you've heard, but eleven people were killed. Ned Morgan, three councillors and two children among them. Betty Morgan's in a terrible state. Sali asked her to stay with us tonight, but she insisted on having Ned's body brought back to her house so she could sit up with him. Her sons, daughter and their families have come down from Ferndale to be with her.'

‘And you, Joey, Lloyd and Sali?' she asked solicitously. ‘How are you?'

‘We waited in the Royal Infirmary until they finished operating on my father. The doctor said it was successful, a clean amputation below the knee, so when the wound heals, they should be able to fit Dad with an artificial leg. But we weren't allowed to see him afterwards. And we won't be able to visit until Sunday. He's a strong man, but ...' Victor faltered.

‘You're not sure how he's going to cope.'

‘No.'

She gripped his hand tightly. ‘I wish there was something I could do for all of you.'

‘You've done enough in promising to marry me. And my father has good friends. The union men have rallied round. There's even been talk of offering him a full-time union position. It's flattering, but as Lloyd said, he's worked underground all his life. I doubt that management will want to employ a one-legged repairman. Anyone with a disability is a liability in a colliery.'

‘Perhaps they'll find him a job on the surface.' She desperately tried to find something positive to say.

‘Perhaps,' he echoed despondently.

‘Lloyd really is all right?'

‘He seems to be.' He rose to his feet. ‘I'd better be getting back.'

‘You don't want any tea.' She went to the tray.

‘Lloyd, Joey and I drank more tea than there's water in the Rhondda in the Infirmary today. And most of it was about as appetizing,' he added. ‘See you next Saturday?'

‘Of course. But I'm not sure about the week after. I was going to ask Mrs Palmer if I could work some of my afternoons off to build up enough time to take a day off when your court case comes up next month.'

‘Please don't, Megs.'

‘I want to be there with you, Victor.'

‘And I don't want you to see me standing in the dock.'

‘It's not as if you've done anything wrong,' she argued. ‘The only thing you're guilty of is fighting for your rights.'

‘But there's no telling what lies they'll say about me in court,' he said wearily. ‘And I don't want you there to hear them. I promise you, as soon as it's over, I'll come back here and tell you how it went. Mrs Palmer has never refused to let me see you.'

She summoned enough courage to voice her thoughts. ‘And if you can't call in because they've sent you to prison?'

‘I'll send Lloyd in my place.'

The weeks after the train crash passed in a blur of mixed emotions for Sali and the Evanses. Their normal routine was disrupted to the point where none of them could think further than what had to be done in the next few hours: Harry's trips to school; buying the groceries; and for Sali, doing the necessary cleaning, cooking and washing to keep the household functioning.

Victor and Joey completed their shifts on the picket lines, but Lloyd stayed home, ostensibly to recuperate from his injuries, but they all knew that he was half expecting a message from the Royal Infirmary to say their father's condition had worsened. Despite the doctors' assurances that Mr William Evans was making a good physical recovery from his injuries, they were all concerned about the acute depression he had sunk into since he had been told of the loss of his leg. Visiting times were torture, because he rarely said more than ‘yes' or ‘no' in answer to any question, and evinced little interest in the family, the progress of the strike or union affairs.

Victor took to calling into the lodging house late at night, when he knew Megan would be washing the supper dishes, and despite Joyce's initial attitude to ‘gentleman callers', far from disapproving, she began to put the kettle on around that time to make tea for him.

Betty Morgan insisted on making Ned's funeral in Trealaw cemetery as grand an affair as possible given the financial restraints imposed by the strike. Victor, Joey, Lloyd and three of Ned's closest friends carried the union official out of his home for the last time and into the horse-drawn hearse the undertaker had donated free of charge.

It was a freezing, wet and windy day, but practically the entire mining community turned out to walk behind the hearse and the two carriages containing the chief mourners. Deaf to her sons' and daughter's entreaties, Betty spent every penny of Ned's insurance money on a plot and headstone, and the funeral tea she and the Federation organized was augmented by the contents of most of the precious hoarded tins in the town.

Sali felt the entire event was surreal, like a celebration gone mad, because so many people turned up with food and flowers they couldn't possibly afford. Betty remained obdurately brisk and practical throughout the days of planning and condolence visits, only to collapse when it was over. But she refused to leave her house, even when her sons begged her to move in with their families.

Sali and the other neighbours set up an informal rota, which meant the widow was never left alone for more than an hour, and if Betty noticed that the frequency of her neighbours' visits had increased, she was too sunk in the indifference that had set in after Ned's death to comment on it.

Sundays continued to be swallowed up by their journeys to Cardiff where Billy lay, white-faced and dark-eyed, fighting pain in an overcrowded ward in the Infirmary. And although the doctors and nurses continued to remain optimistic, Lloyd, Victor, Joey and Sali weren't so easily reassured. And all the while, Joey and Victor's impending court cases loomed closer. Sali and Megan weren't certain whether they wanted the day to arrive swiftly or not.

‘Constable Davies, isn't it?' Megan was carrying a pile of freshly delivered laundry through the hall of the lodging house the week before Victor and Joey's cases were due to be heard by Porth magistrates, when Huw Davies walked through the door with a suitcase in his hand.

‘Yes, Miss Williams.' He removed his helmet, revealing the mop of bright ginger curls that, to his eternal embarrassment, no amount of pomade could tame. ‘I'm moving into Constable Wainwright's bed. He's been sent back to London for personal reasons. His wife is ill.' He stepped back to allow Megan to walk up the stairs ahead of him.

‘I thought you were a local man, Constable Davies.' Megan said the first thing that came into her head, in an attempt to conceal her shock. She hadn't trusted Fred Wainwright's courtship of Lena, but it hadn't occurred to her that he might be married.

‘I'm from Pontypridd, but,' he gave her a shy smile, ‘they offered me extra split shift money and my board and lodge if I moved in here so I could be available for duty at five minutes' notice.'

‘Are they expecting more trouble when the miners' trials come up?'

‘I wouldn't know,' he answered evasively. ‘Constable Wainwright told me his bed was in one of the rooms on the second floor.'

‘It's in one of the eight-bedded rooms. I hope you're tidier than your room mates.'

‘My sister trained me and she's a hard taskmaster. She's had to be; I've six brothers at home as well as my father.' He parried her questioning look. ‘My mother died some years back.'

‘I'm sorry.' She stopped outside a door on the second floor. ‘This is yours, Constable Davies. You're sharing the double bed beneath the window with Constable Shipton.'

‘Thank you, Miss Williams. Miss ...' He acknowledged Lena, who was taking the stairs two at a time as she ran down from the top floor.

‘Constable Huw Davies, Miss Lena Jones.' As Megan effected the introduction she intercepted the look of admiration Huw Davies was giving Lena. Although Huw looked absurdly young to be a policeman and Lena more like a schoolgirl than maid, the thought occurred to her that they would make a handsome couple. But Lena had to be told about Fred Wainwright's betrayal and she suspected that would hit her hard and make her highly suspicious of any man who tried to pay her attention for quite a while. ‘If you'll excuse me, I must put this laundry away. Have you left the key in the cupboard door, Lena?'

‘Yes,' Lena answered. ‘I heard you on the stairs and I thought you'd need help to carry up the rest.'

‘As I don't have to be on duty for an hour, I could help you carry the laundry to the cupboard, Miss Jones,' Huw offered.

‘The lodgers aren't allowed on the top floor.'

‘But there's no reason why Constable Davies couldn't help you to carry the things to this floor, Lena,' Megan said. ‘I'll make a start on putting these sheets away. See you in a few minutes.'

‘I know we've only just been introduced, Miss Jones,' Huw began shyly as he climbed the stairs behind Lena with his arms full of laundry, ‘but would you like to go out with me one evening? To the theatre perhaps, or a chapel social?'

‘Out with a policeman?' Lena questioned in astonishment. ‘But you aren't allowed to mix with the locals.'

‘That would be a bit difficult for me, seeing as my family live in Trallwn in Pontypridd and I am local to Glamorgan if not Tonypandy. My father and brothers are policemen, not miners, but this job hasn't exactly been easy for me. Police or not, we all sympathize with the colliers.'

‘I can't go out with you, Constable Davies,' Lena said finally.

‘You have a gentleman friend?' Huw's disappointment was evident in his voice.

‘Our Lena here is footloose and fancy free, Huw. But as you've probably guessed, shy.' Constable Shipton walked out of their communal bedroom. ‘Constable Davies is replacing Constable Wainwright, Miss Jones.'