Miss Purdy's Class

by Annie Murray

  She had half expected this. ‘It’s all right.’ She knew she had barely managed to sound as if that was true.

  Daniel drew back and peered at her in the gloom.

  ‘It’s such a busy time. So much to do.’

  ‘I know.’ She hugged him tight. ‘And they need you.’

  ‘On Sunday we’ll have time – we’ll go out somewhere, start early.’

  Her spirits rose. ‘Promise?’

  He kissed her. ‘Course I promise!’

  He won her round. He always seemed to be able to.

  ‘Do you think Billy would like it if I took him out today?’ Gwen whispered the question to Shân in the kitchen, out of earshot of Billy.

  It was a brilliant, autumn morning. Daniel would be off and away. Why shouldn’t she and Billy enjoy the day?

  Shân looked doubtful for a moment, then smiled. ‘Have you got the strength in you, girl? That boyo’s heavier than he looks.’

  ‘Of course – I’m sure I could manage, if you think it’d be all right?’

  ‘Oh – he’d love you to, I know he would!’ Shân looked wistful. ‘He doesn’t get out enough. To the odd meeting, or when his father’s got the time. He’d be ever so pleased if you took him – for a little while, mind. Don’t you go overdoing it.’

  After breakfast, and when Gwen had kept tactfully out of the way while Shân saw to Billy’s physical needs and helped him dress, they eased his wheelchair out through the door, and Gwen and Billy set out into the golden morning.

  ‘Where would you like to go – up the hill?’ She leaned down to talk to him and was suddenly uncomfortably aware of a blush rising in his cheeks. It only then occurred to her how much of an effect her physical presence had on Billy.

  I must be careful, she thought, standing up again. She felt ashamed suddenly, realizing that it had never crossed her mind to think of Billy in that way, that he might be interested in her, because he was younger and because – it was an awful admission – he had been maimed, and seemed stripped of his manhood by his injuries. She had assumed somewhere in her mind that he was not whole as a man, that his body was numb, without a man’s feelings. Now she was not sure and felt suddenly confused.

  She leaned hard against the wheelchair, pushing Billy up the slope she had climbed with Daniel on that summer morning. There were a few crisp, brown leaves on the pavement, crackling underfoot. The air was full of the ripe smells of autumn: leaves and smoke and a hint of decay, sunlight pouring in at a low angle which seemed to make everything glow, the bracken a deep rust colour on the sides of the hills. Gwen pushed the chair on and on determinedly. The road curved round and, branching off it, she saw a steep track to the right. They had left the houses behind and were climbing steeply so that she had to lean all her weight into pushing the chair. The air was chill, but she was soon sweating with exertion.

  ‘Shall we go on up there a little way?’ she asked, trying not to let Billy hear how much she was beginning to pant.

  ‘No – it’s too much for you!’ He sounded anxious and she wondered if he felt safe in her hands.

  ‘I really think I could – just some of the way.’

  ‘You can see a long way from up there,’ he said and she could hear the longing in his voice.

  ‘Well, we’ll do it!’

  Bracing herself, her chest level with the back of the chair, she heaved against it and slowly inched Billy up and up the steep incline. Once her foot slipped on a little stone; she almost lost her balance and let out a cry of alarm.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ Billy tried to look round.

  ‘Nothing – it’s all right.’

  After a time, there was a level resting place off the track. To one side was a rock, flattened on top to serve as a seat, and she pushed the chair over to it so that she could sit down beside Billy. They sat in silence for a few moments, each drinking in the great expanse of the green valley, smudged in parts with black, the little town nestled in its palm. The sound of a train whistle rose from the town, made soft by the distance and the gentle wind.

  Gwen then became aware of Billy beside her, of the way his grey eyes were looking along the sweep of the valley with deep, almost meditative attention. She had been about to speak, but she sensed she might be interrupting his thought processes. His head was turned slightly away from her. Gradually, he looked back towards her again.

  ‘The hills are so close – they seem to have a personality of their own,’ she said.

  ‘They do. They’ve all got names.’ He pointed around the valley, telling her the names of the rusty peaks. Then he breathed in deeply, as if drinking the air. ‘I’ve never lived anywhere but here.’

  She nodded, understanding that the elevation of their position gave him a perspective on his home he rarely had, and of sensing the wider world beyond and all he might be missing.

  ‘It’s a good place,’ she told him.

  ‘It is.’ He nodded emphatically, then laughed. ‘Though I don’t know anywhere else to put against it. Good people here, they are.’

  ‘Daniel’s always talking about it.’

  ‘Is he?’ He didn’t follow this up, but just kept looking. ‘I only know about anywhere else from book reading. You can go anywhere in a book, the way you can in a dream.’

  ‘Billy, I’ve really enjoyed your letters.’ She hesitated, and he turned to her with a candid, vulnerable gaze, and she saw, to her discomfort, in that moment the power of his feelings for her. It made her feel sad, flattered and uncomfortable all at once. She looked down in confusion, trying to hold on to what she had been going to say. ‘It’s just – well, the way you write – you’ve got a talent, you know. Describing things, bringing them alive. I wondered if you’d thought about writing other things, not just letters.’

  ‘I do.’ He was the one blushing now, with shy pleasure. ‘Least, I’ve done a bit – a few stories and that. Don’t know why. Something to do, I s’pose. No one’d want to read them.’

  ‘I’d like to.’

  There was a pause.

  ‘I’ve never shown them to anyone – not even Mam.’

  ‘Well, only if you want to . . .’

  ‘Oh, I’d like to know if anyone – well, if they . . . If anyone else can read them and understand about them. D’you know what I mean?’

  ‘I think so.’

  ‘I keep them in a box. Under the bed.’

  ‘Doesn’t your mother ask what’s in there?’

  ‘Oh yes, but she’s not much of a reader. She just calls it my scribbling. She doesn’t want to read them.’

  Gwen looked out over the valley to the mountain beyond. Clouds were beginning to gather.

  ‘What about Daniel?’ she asked. ‘You’ve never thought of showing them to him?’

  ‘No. Daniel’s so clever with his book learning. I thought he’d laugh at me.’

  ‘Surely he wouldn’t.’

  There was a silence, then, in a different tone, casual but solemn, Billy said, ‘Daniel’s not always straight with everyone, you know.’

  A cold feeling gripped her. This warning that kept coming. She found she was angry. ‘What d’you mean?’ She heard the hostility in her own voice, but why was everyone trying to sow seeds of doubt in her mind about Daniel?

  Billy looked into his lap. She could see him trying to decide what to say. ‘I just mean I haven’t felt like showing him my stories.’

  Once she had pushed Billy back to the house, they had a bit of dinner with Shân and afterwards Shân went out to visit a neighbour at Gwen’s urging.

  ‘I’m so pleased Billy’s got a bit of company,’ she whispered to Gwen in the hall before she went.

  Once she’d gone, Billy pulled a rough wooden box out from under the bed and showed Gwen some of his stories.

  ‘You’ve done a lot!’ she exclaimed, seeing him pull out a thick collection of dog-eared papers.

  ‘You don’t have to read them all.’ He was excited. ‘Look, take a couple. Will you?’

  �
�Of course. I’d really like to.’

  He handed her a sheaf of paper. All the stories were written on small sheets of cheap lined paper which had yellowed, in a tiny copperplate hand, as if he was trying to fit the maximum possible number of words on a page. The top one was called ‘King of the Clouds’. As soon as she began reading, Gwen realized the story was about a boy who longed to fly aeroplanes. She looked up, smiling at him.

  ‘I’ve always wanted to fly an aeroplane. Like Amy Johnson.’

  Billy grinned, delighted. ‘Proper heroine she is.’ He sat looking through his other papers while Gwen sat by the fire and read, sometimes having to stop and ask him to decipher a word for her. The story was quite simple, about a boy who dreams of flying and becomes a pilot, with his own plane. Something about the way it was written, though, drew her on. There was an intensity in the story which moved her. As she finished it, she kept her eyes lowered while she thought what to say. She could feel Billy watching her and his powerful need to know what she thought. She looked up into his hungry face.

  ‘It’s lovely, Billy. You could be a writer.’ And she could see she had said something which meant the world to him.

  Forty-Seven

  The next morning Gwen went with the family to early Mass in Aberglyn’s small Catholic church. Anthony pushed Billy down the hill, well wrapped up as the morning was cold and wet. It all seemed very foreign to Gwen, the women’s heads covered with lace or scarves and everything in Latin. When they came out into the narrow, grey street, amid the little knot of people, it was into bright, stormy sunlight which made them screw up their eyes.

  ‘Still want to go walking?’ Daniel teased. They had talked about going out after he got back the evening before.

  ‘I’ve got my coat and hat – and my boots.’

  ‘Welsh rain is wetter than English rain, you know,’ Anthony teased.

  Gwen laughed. ‘I suppose I’ll just have to get wet then!’

  ‘You going over the mountain?’ Shân asked. Her thin face was framed by a flowery scarf.

  ‘We’ll go to Tredegar,’ Daniel said. ‘It’s a good walk.’

  ‘You don’t want to go tiring her out – she’s got all that way to go back.’

  ‘I don’t mind,’ Gwen said eagerly. ‘I love walking.’

  Daniel had, for once, put his greatcoat on and they set off for the head of the valley, then branched off on one of the steep paths over the mountain. To begin with, there was brilliant sunshine, but very soon, in the distance, clouds gathered like thick smoke over the mountains and moved towards them.

  ‘Oh dear,’ Gwen panted. ‘We’re in for it in a minute.’

  ‘No doubt about that.’

  Daniel seemed oblivious to the weather. When the rain started to come down, it was as if they were wrapped in water. Gwen laughed, as rivulets poured from her hat and down her neck.

  ‘We’re going to be soaked!’ she shouted. Her lungs were straining. They were climbing steeply, barely able to see anything beyond a few yards all around.

  ‘Never mind. The sun’ll be back soon,’ Daniel called to her. Suddenly he stopped and took her in his arms, kissing her fiercely, and the rain fell on her upturned face and ran down her neck. She broke away, gasping for breath and laughing.

  ‘It’s gone right inside my clothes – I’m soaked!’

  By the time they reached the highest point, the rain was easing off. Gwen felt all-over warm and damp, clothes heavy and chafing, but there was a glory in reaching the top with the sun breaking through and everything wet and gleaming.

  ‘Look now.’ Daniel came and put an arm round her shoulders. ‘There’s Tredegar. Back there.’ He pointed down at Aberglyn, from where they had just climbed. ‘I was forever walking up and down across here at one time.’ He stood, looking for a moment across the Sirhowy Valley. ‘First deep pit in Wales was sunk here.’

  The two towns below them looked small and defenceless with their straight little rows of houses. She felt a great rush of affection for them, of belonging. With the sunlight and the mountain breeze on her face, the valleys spread out on either side, she was filled with certainty that she had been brought here for a reason. She saw her life spread in front of her: she would marry Daniel and he would come back to his home where he belonged and she would come to belong too. She would be part of this place, and have Daniel’s children, even learn Welsh. It felt so right and meant for her. She turned and held him close.

  ‘I love it here, Daniel. I love you.’

  ‘Love you too, girl.’

  She hoped he might say something more, that perhaps his thoughts had been the same as hers, that he might even make some promise for the future, but he was silent, just held her close.

  After a time, Daniel said, ‘All these valleys – there’ll be men coming on the march . . .’

  Gwen broke from him, stung, and walked a few paces away. She had imagined his thoughts might be running on similar lines to hers, but, as so often, she was wrong. Daniel was thinking about politics, as usual! Can’t you think about anything else, just for a moment? she wanted to shout at him. What about me? Don’t you ever think about me and our future? But then she thought of his tears over his mother and the lockouts, the poor pinched faces of the valleys, and she was ashamed. How selfish she was being again, when Daniel was always thinking about other people.

  She went back to him and took his arm. ‘They’ve got to make the government listen,’ she said. ‘And you will, all of you.’

  ‘Everyone should listen.’ His voice was low, passionate. ‘The whole world.’

  She watched his face as he looked out across the landscape and for a moment she felt afraid for him. Would the world listen to the message of Communism? Were they even listening now?

  ‘Shall we go on?’ she said.

  It was easier to talk on the way down since they were not so short of breath and the sun stayed with them. Daniel told her how he used to be back and forth over here to the library in Tredegar.

  ‘One of the best socialist libraries anywhere. I was in the Socialist League here before I joined the party. Aneurin Bevan’s family are all here – he was elected MP for Ebbw Vale in twenty-nine. Marvellous, it was. Talks on Marxism, philosophers – as good as any university, I’d say. Plato, Hegel, Kant – we had a genius of a man called Oliver Jones, gave us classes. It all started to make sense, fit together – all the injustices, what they’d done to us . . .’ He held his hand out to help Gwen down from a rocky step in the path. ‘Nothing was ever the same again. It’s genius. And yet even here not everyone could see – wanted to appease the colliery owners, keep their jobs at any cost . . .’

  ‘Like Hywel Jones?’

  Daniel shook his head. ‘Men like Hywel will never change anything,’ he said bitterly.

  The descent went quickly and soon they were walking through the narrow streets of Tredegar. The streets were quiet, except for a few people sitting outside their houses in the sun who nodded a greeting. The bright warmth stayed and Gwen was filled with a great sense of wellbeing after the exercise. Daniel lit a cigarette and showed her round: the library where he had spent so many hours, the NUWM offices, the square with its tall clock tower, which said that it was almost eleven o’clock. As they walked on, arm in arm, people started to come out of one of the chapels along the street in front of them.

  ‘It’s such a shame we don’t have longer,’ Gwen said. She had to catch a train in the afternoon and it felt like a pressure.

  ‘Quick run up and down the mountain for you again,’ Daniel teased, throwing down the butt of his cigarette. ‘Good for you, that is.’

  ‘I wish I could stay. It’s gone far too quickly!’

  ‘I’m no company. I’ll be at meetings all the week, with the committee and that.’

  ‘I know. And there’s a class waiting for me.’

  They crossed the street so as not to get tangled in the knot of people outside the chapel. Someone called, ‘Morning, Daniel mun!’

  ‘He
llo, Albert – see you tomorrow!’ Daniel raised a hand in reply as they walked on along the street. He exchanged greetings with a few other people, and was just saying, ‘He’s a good bloke,’ about someone he had spoken to, when another voice called him from behind.

  ‘Daniel? Daniel Fernandez?’

  The voice was shrill and furiously challenging. They both spun round to see a dark-haired young woman, slim and in a pretty though shabby pink dress. On her hip she carried a little boy.

  ‘So – deigned to come back here again, have you?’ she demanded. Gwen could see she was quivering with such emotions that she could barely contain them.

  ‘Couldn’t come back when you were needed could you? Not to fulfil your responsibilities? You’re a rotten, wicked man, Daniel – making your own son into a bastard. Going off without a hint of care for me – for us . . .’

  Gwen was struggling to take in what the young woman was saying. She could see that her taut demeanor was giving way to tears, however much she didn’t want it to. There was obviously a great reservoir of pent-up emotion waiting to be released in her, even though she didn’t want to lose her dignity. She didn’t seem to care who heard her.

  ‘Megan . . .’ Daniel breathed.

  ‘That’s right – just stand there, nothing to say!’ The woman turned to Gwen in a combination of fury and apparently looking for an ally. ‘Are you the latest one, then? Well, all I can say is, I pity you, lovey. Don’t believe a word he says – he’s a cheat and a liar. Left me to bring up his son all alone without a word, ever. This is Evan, Daniel. He’s nearly two years old now, and he’s your son, remember?’ She went as if to thrust the child into Daniel’s arms, but then snatched him back, hugging him protectively to her. ‘Not that you care . . .’

  ‘I didn’t know—’ Daniel started to say. A couple of people had stopped to listen, tutting loudly.

  ‘You didn’t know? Course you knew! I came to Aberglyn looking for you, but no, you were never there, were you – always off somewhere else with your politics and your superior ways. You make me sick, Daniel. What about my letters? Didn’t you get those either? What did you expect – for me to come to Birmingham chasing after you to make you see what you’d left behind? I didn’t have any money, remember! Nothing but my drunken da and Auntie Beth. And not once – not one answer, or word, not one penny to . . .’ She was weeping now, angry with herself, Gwen could see, but unable to help it.