Winners and Losers (36 page)

‘You may have fooled my sister with your working-class hero act, but you haven't impressed me. Unlike you, Harry will be a gentleman, and I intend to see that he is brought up in this house, not a miner's slum. And if I have to go to the courts to ensure that he has the upbringing he deserves, I will.'

‘You don't even know Harry. You haven't seen him more than a couple of times in his life and even then you ignored him.' Lloyd was so angry he was unaware that he'd raised his voice.

‘There's little point in my seeing the boy when he's living with a bunch of criminals. You and your family would negate any influence I try to bring to bear. As it is, your brothers are on their way to gaol and you and your father will follow when this strike is broken ...'

‘What do you mean?'

‘This strike is criminal. Everyone realizes that except you monumentally stupid miners. You have broken the law by withdrawing your labour. You and your strike committee have crippled the mining industry and caused an economic disaster that has affected the whole of South Wales. And you can't see any further than your inflated wages claim and demands for feather-bedded working conditions that will cost a fortune to implement -'

‘All we want is a living wage and safe working conditions.'

‘Expensive conditions,' Geraint mocked.

‘This coming from a man whose father was killed in a colliery explosion.' Lloyd didn't even bother to conceal his contempt.

‘You leave my father out of this.'

‘He was the best employer I've had the privilege to work for and one of the best men I've ever met. It's a pity his sons aren't more like him. And that's why I intend to see that his grandson and namesake will be brought up the way he would have wanted'.

‘You dare to assume to know what my father would have wanted?'

‘What I do know is that your father would never have threatened to take Harry away from his mother at the tender age of four in an attempt to get his hands on his inheritance.'

‘He certainly wouldn't have left him to live in a collier's house surrounded by criminals. I will get the boy under this roof and away from you and my sister -'

‘And how do you propose to do that, Geraint?'

They both turned to see Sali and Mr Richards standing in front of the library door.

‘By making the trustees see common sense,' Geraint shouted at Sali. ‘Harry will be brought up in this house, by people qualified to care for him.'

‘Are you saying that Lloyd and I aren't qualified to bring up our own child?'

‘Dad!' Harry hurtled down the stairs towards Lloyd.

‘He's calling you Dad now?' Geraint's face contorted in disgust.

‘How long have you been there, Harry?' Lloyd stepped on the bottom stair and held out his arms. Catching Harry he lifted him up.

Harry didn't answer, but he clung so tightly to Lloyd that Lloyd guessed he'd heard most of the argument.

‘Wouldn't you like to live in this nice big house, Harry, and play in the nursery every day? You will have to live here when you're older -'

‘Geraint!' Sali said.

‘Your mother hasn't told you that you will inherit this house, Harry? Or that you will be a very rich man?'

‘Come on, Harry,' Lloyd set him down on the bottom stair and turned his back on Sali's brother, ‘we're going up to the nursery, so you, Mam and I can talk.'

Mrs Williams heard the crunch of footsteps on gravel, as the maids walked around Llan House to the kitchen entrance. She opened the door and looked out. ‘I thought I heard you girls ... Joey Evans! I warned you that you're not welcome around here.' She held up the lamp and peered at him.

‘It's all right, Mrs Williams, we made him behave,' Rhian said.

‘There were three of us, Mrs Williams, and one of him,' Bronwen added. ‘So if anyone's lost their reputation it's him. He may even be considered fit for decent company after we sat him at a table in the teashop next to the vicar's wife, and made him drink four cups of tea and eat a bun. He's promised to sign the temperance pledge next week, haven't you, Joey?'

Having promised no such thing, Joey gave Mrs Williams a weak smile and lifted his cap. ‘Good evening.'

‘Go inside, girls, supper's on the table in the servants' hall. Joey,' Mrs Williams stepped out and called after him as he walked away.

‘Mrs Williams?' He turned back.

‘I was sorry to hear about your father's accident. You will give him my best wishes for a speedy recovery when you next visit him in the Infirmary?'

‘Yes, Mrs Williams.'

‘And I was also sorry to hear about the sentences that you and your brother received today. Everyone in Tonypandy knows that your brother's wasn't warranted.'

‘And mine was?'

Mrs Williams ignored his question. ‘I gather Jane Edwards has left Tonypandy.'

‘Apparently so,' he answered evasively.

‘Not that you'd know anything about her reasons for leaving her house and her husband.'

‘I can't help you there, Mrs Williams.'

‘How you can stand there, looking as if butter wouldn't melt in your mouth ...' She shook her head. ‘Well, I suppose there's no harm in you walking my girls home again, Joey Evans, if they let you. But I warn you now; I'll get the carpet beater out if I ever see you alone with one of them. Understand?'

‘Perfectly, Mrs Williams.'

‘Now get off with you. And if you've any sense, you'll go straight home without stopping off to visit some married woman who's no better than she should be.'

‘This house is mine?' Harry looked at Lloyd in wonder.

‘Yes.'

‘And everything in it?'

‘And everything in it,' Lloyd reiterated seriously. ‘But other people have to look after it for you until you are grown up.'

‘Is that man downstairs one of the people who are looking after it for me?'

‘You know that man is your Uncle Geraint, Harry.' Sali picked up the soldiers Harry had scattered over the floor and returned them to their box.

‘I don't like him.'

Sali was about to make a protest, but Lloyd shook his head, warning her off.

‘I'm not leaving you and Mam –ever.' Harry crossed his arms and set his lips together.

‘I promise you now, Harry, that you won't have to leave us, until you want to.' Lloyd lifted Harry on to his lap and hugged him.

‘I won't ever want to.'

‘You will have to leave us to go to school, but that won't be for ages yet and we'll talk about it some more when the time comes.' Lloyd looked at Sali, who nodded agreement.

‘I take it you don't want to stay for dinner, Lloyd?' Sali set the box of soldiers on the shelf.

Harry's hair was damp from perspiration, his face unnaturally warm. Lloyd suspected it was as much from a surfeit of emotion as the heat of the fire.

‘Harry has school in the morning. The sooner we get home the sooner he can go to bed. How about it, young man?' Lloyd refrained from mentioning Geraint, although he doubted that after the scene downstairs he and Sali's eldest brother would ever be able to sit at the same table and make even semi-polite conversation again.

Harry climbed off Lloyd's lap, went to the shelf and picked up the box of soldiers. ‘If this is my house and everything in it is mine, can I take these home?'

Sali thought for a moment before answering him. ‘Just this once, darling, but our house isn't big enough to take all the toys and books that are here, you know that.'

‘I only want these. They have a different uniform to the ones at home and I can have better battles.'

Sali held out her hand. ‘Bring them with you and we'll go downstairs and get your coat.'

The brake the Federation had paid to bring Billy Evans on the last leg of his journey home from the Royal Infirmary in Cardiff, met him, Lloyd and Victor at Tonypandy Station on a wet and windy Saturday morning. Billy acknowledged the men who had come to wish him well, but he insisted on getting straight into the cab to prevent them from making any speeches. Victor and Lloyd helped him and they set off.

Harry was sitting just inside the open front door watching and waiting for the first sign of them, and the moment he spotted the brake turning the corner, he ran down the passage into the kitchen.

‘Uncle's Billy's here.'

Sali set down the jug of mint sauce she had been mixing to go with the shoulder of mutton Victor had earned up at the farm. She exchanged anxious glances with Joey, who was polishing the brass fire irons as part of his drive to prove to the family that he had turned into an altogether more helpful, considerate and responsible being after the fiasco of his relationship with Jane Edwards.

‘Remember what Lloyd said,' Sali warned.

‘I will.'

They were all worried. Mr Evans had continued to remain withdrawn and almost detached from life during the months he'd spent in the hospital, never showing the slightest emotion –anger or pleasure –on their Sunday visits, although the doctor had warned them that rage and irritability in a patient were common after an amputation. The ‘two visitors to a bed' rule the ward sister rigidly administered meant they hadn't been together as a family since the morning he and Lloyd had set off for Cardiff. But whenever they exchanged notes after their visits, they all agreed that he appeared to be indifferent to the happenings within the Union, had never once asked about the strike, or the family. Even the news of his forthcoming first grandchild had only resulted in a faint smile.

‘Uncle Billy!'

Sali held Harry back, as the cab drew to a halt outside the door. Lloyd opened the door, jumped out and unfolded the steps. Victor followed and they leaned back inside.

Pale-faced, watery-eyed, Billy grabbed the sides of the open door of the cab and levered himself out of his seat. Victor reached for his father's crutches. Billy leaned forward as if he were about to protest, but seeing there was no way that he could step down from the cab holding them, he allowed Victor to keep them. Lloyd gripped his father's arms, and lifted him to the pavement. Balancing on his remaining leg, Billy retrieved his crutches and shook off Lloyd's hands.

‘I can manage,' he said gruffly.

‘We're all ready for you, Uncle Billy.' Harry ran out to meet him. ‘Mam has cooked us a dinner, Dad has bought you tobacco and I put the newspaper on your chair -'

‘Later, Harry.' Billy tucked his crutches under his arms, leaning heavily as he swung forward. ‘I'm tired. I'm going to my room.'

‘We have to light a fire in Dad's bedroom. It's freezing in there, but he insists he doesn't want to join us, even for dinner.' Victor returned, grim-faced, to the kitchen from the front room.

‘Even if we had enough coals, he'll see it as fussing and won't stand for it,' Joey warned.

‘Perhaps Harry -'

Lloyd shook his head. ‘No, Sali, it's not fair to use Harry; you saw how abrupt he was. Did he say anything, Victor?'

‘Only that he wanted peace and quiet. When I told him we'd be quiet in the kitchen, he said he hadn't had a minute to himself since the accident five months ago.'

‘That's true enough.' Joey grasped at the idea. ‘How would you like to lie on a bed in an open ward for almost five months, surrounded by twenty nosy sick people who have nothing better to do than watch you being washed and humiliated day and night by bossy nurses?'

‘Dad was in a side ward,' Victor reminded.

‘Only for the first month,' Joey countered.

‘You sound as if you were there, Joey.' To Sali's annoyance, Lloyd lifted the plates down from the dresser. Since the day she'd told him she was pregnant he'd begun treating her as if she were at death's door.

‘When Victor and I swapped over halfway through visiting a couple of Sundays ago, I talked to one of the patients who was allowed out of bed to use the bathroom. He was miserable as sin and he'd only been in there for three weeks. He said he couldn't wait to be discharged.'

‘Let's hope it is just the adjustment of coming home after months in hospital.' Lloyd suspected his father regretted the loss of his independence more than his leg; it was a loss any man would find hard to live with, and a collier, whose job depended on his physical strength and agility, more than most. The doctor's assurances that his father would be able to live a full life once his wound healed and he was fitted with an artificial leg hadn't elicited the slightest response from the patient. Lloyd had even begun to doubt the doctor's prognosis and wonder if anything would ever lift the depression his father had sunk into.

‘Shall I take him in a tray?' Sali inserted a skewer into the meat to check it was cooked. When the juices ran clear she lifted it out of the oven.

‘I will,' Lloyd said.

‘Can I come with you, Dad? I can give him this.' Harry held up a picture he'd spent all morning drawing of himself with the entire family on the mountain. Lloyd smiled when he saw that Harry had pictured his father standing behind the dogs so you couldn't see his legs.

‘Yes, Tiger.' Lloyd ruffled his hair. ‘As long as you realize that Uncle Billy is tired and that might make him a bit grumpy.'

‘It's taken me longer than I thought it would to make it, but this is the last of the ten pounds that I borrowed from Megan to pay Joey's and my fine. If you put it in the tin, Sali, I'll give it to her next Saturday.' Victor set five pounds on the kitchen table.

‘It's cost you dear in pain to earn it.' She set a chair in front of the sink. ‘Sit down and I'll clean up your face.'

Victor didn't argue with her. The champion the police had found to replace Wainwright was even quicker on his feet. He also packed a harder punch and his ribs felt as though one of the pit ponies had trampled on them.

‘You will give up now, won't you?' Sali smeared grease on the smaller cuts after she'd cleaned them.