Beggars and Choosers

by Catrin Collier

  ‘You’re disgusting.’

  ‘Because unlike you and Victor I don’t live like a monk,’ Joey bit back. ‘At least Victor has his dogs and Megan next door to moon over. Sometimes I wonder if you have ice water in your veins instead of blood.’

  Lloyd fell silent. He and Connie had been careful to keep their relationship secret. He had loved her once, but now he had the uncomfortable feeling that he was using her and she him in exactly the same way that Joey was using the bored wives and Binnies of this world. And every time he thought of his parents’ loving marriage, he knew there had to be more. Much, much more if only he could break free from Connie long enough to look for it.

  When Lloyd and Joey walked into the house through the basement door, they paused, mesmerised by the sight that greeted them. The mountain of washing had been sorted into piles and all four baths and the washtub were full of clothes, bedding and linen, soaking in water and soda. The floor had been washed and the range cleaned.

  ‘Someone’s been busy.’ Joey stripped off his shirt and pushed it into a tub of whites.

  ‘There’s no need to make extra work,’ Lloyd admonished. ‘You’ve only had that on for a couple of hours.’

  ‘It stinks of cheap scent and lipstick, and I need to wash before the old man gets a whiff. You know what his nose is like.’ Joey picked up a bar of soap, went to the tap, turned it on and stood, legs on either side of the drain, so the water wouldn’t splash his trousers.

  Lloyd climbed the steps into the kitchen. His father was sitting, reading Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment in his chair by the fire.

  ‘Have you seen downstairs?’ Lloyd asked.

  ‘Yes. Where’s Joey?’

  ‘In the ty bach, he’ll be up now.’

  ‘Has he been behaving himself?’

  ‘So far as I know. I met him outside the Theatre Royal,’ Lloyd replied vaguely.

  ‘Tea’s brewed and there are cheese sandwiches under the plate on the table for both of you, and fruitcake, scones and cinnamon biscuits in the tins. She’s also cut the snap boxes and Victor came down after he went to bed to tell me that all the beds have been changed.’

  ‘She couldn’t have stopped except to eat her meal after she walked through the door.’

  ‘No, she couldn’t have.’ Billy Evans knocked his pipe against the range, scattering ashes over the newly cleaned hearth.

  ‘Connie asked if I thought she’d do.’

  ‘It’s early days,’ Billy commented evasively as he rose to his feet. ‘Let’s see how she is at the end of the month.’

  Sali left her bed the minute she heard the alarm clock ring in Mr Evans’s downstairs bedroom at four the next morning, and assumed she was the first up. But after she had laid the table and was turning bacon, black pudding, sausages and lava bread in the frying pans, Joey walked up the basement steps with two buckets.

  ‘It’s my job to see to the coal and wood for the fires,’ he said, as he filled the brass scuttles next to the range.

  ‘I could do that.’ She chipped salt from a block and sprinkled it over the eggs she’d beaten.

  ‘My father wouldn’t hear of it. In this house the men do the heavy work. I also fill the water jugs and empty the slop pails in our bedrooms before we go on shift, but I won’t be doing yours. My father won’t allow me to go into the housekeeper’s bedroom.’ He gave her a charming smile full of innuendo.

  Sali was relieved at only having to carry one pail and jug of water up and down two flights of stairs as opposed to the ten or twelve buckets she had hauled up and down the stairs in Mill Street every day. She poured the eggs she’d beaten into a pan and stirred them.

  Joey piled the empty buckets one inside the other and went to the sink to wash his hands. ‘Victor and my father see to the garden, and Victor cleans the hen and dog runs and collects the eggs every morning. He’s down there now. Lloyd empties and cleans the baths every night, chops the sticks and carries in the coal when it’s delivered, so don’t you dare do it. My father would be angry.’

  ‘I’ll remember.’ Sali trembled at the thought of igniting Mr Evans senior’s anger.

  ‘My father does the household accounts, paints and papers the house when it needs it, with our help, and we clean our own boots.’

  She glanced at the clock. It was almost half past four. ‘Breakfast is ready, shall I put yours on the table?’

  ‘Please.’

  She filled his plate and set it in front of him. ‘You’re not wearing your working clothes,’ she commented.

  ‘We keep them in the basement and dress and undress for the pit down there. My mother said it helped to keep the house clean.’

  ‘Nine eggs this morning.’ Victor walked in, set an enamel bowl on the cupboard next to the stone sink and picked up a bar of soap. ‘They’re laying well for the time of year. That looks good.’ He eyed Joey’s plate.

  Sali felt ridiculously pleased by Victor’s praise. She had fried the bacon and lava bread together, the way her father had liked it, scrambled the eggs and fried the sausages with a couple of soft tomatoes she had found in the pantry that morning.

  ‘You’d like the same, Victor?’

  ‘I’d like four sausages not three, please. I’m glad you found a use for the tomatoes; they seem to go from green to overripe overnight at this time of year. And before I forget, the dogs caught three rabbits last night. I put them in the basement larder. They taste better after they’ve been hung for a couple of days. When they’re ready, I’ll skin them for you.’

  ‘I could –’

  ‘That’s my job,’ he said firmly.

  Lloyd and his father came downstairs together. She managed to avoid looking directly at Lloyd while she served them breakfast and by five o’clock they were in the basement changing into their working clothes. She watched them leave by the garden gate as she washed the dishes at the sink. Fortunately for the clothes soaking in the baths, it looked as though it was going to be a fine day. By seven o’clock she had filled both washing lines in the garden with men’s shirts and small clothes and was looking round for somewhere to dry the sheets when a remarkably pretty girl with red-gold hair called to her from over the garden wall.

  ‘As it’s Tuesday I won’t be using our washing lines, so if you want to hand over those sheets I’ll peg them out for you here.’

  ‘That’s kind of you.’

  ‘No it isn’t,’ the girl contradicted. ‘Because if the pile had grown any higher, Victor would have asked me to do some of it, and I’ve enough to do with my own wash. And in case they haven’t told you, I’m Megan.’

  ‘I’m Mrs Jones, the Evanses’ new housekeeper.’ The girl looked so friendly Sali was tempted to ask her to call her by her name, but she was still unsure whether Lloyd had recognised her and if he hadn’t she didn’t want to risk jogging his memory by using her Christian name.

  ‘I hope you last longer than the others, for my sake as well as your own. Victor and Joey have been calling round our house twice as often as usual to forage in our cake and biscuit tins. I’ve doubled my usual baking quantities and still can’t keep up with them.’ Megan took the basket of sheets Sali heaved over the wall. ‘When you’ve finished your washing, come round and have a cup of tea.’

  ‘I’d like to but I have too much to do. The house is in a bit of a state.’

  ‘You can’t work all the time. I make myself a sandwich and a cup of tea about ten o’clock, join me then. You have to eat,’ she pressed when she saw Sali hesitate. ‘Besides, Victor ordered me to ask you.’

  ‘He did?’

  ‘Last night, when he came back from rabbiting with my uncle and his brothers.’ Megan filled one line and started on the second. ‘He said you’re a great cook but obviously not used to miners, as you didn’t know how to cut a snap box. He wants me to help you as much as I can, because he doesn’t want his father to send you packing the way he did the others. Not that they didn’t deserve it. Well, some of them,’ she qualified, pushing a dolly pe
g into the centre of a sheet.

  Taken aback by Megan’s candour, Sali murmured, ‘In that case, thank you.’

  ‘Don’t kill yourself with that washing,’ Megan advised as she gave Sali back the basket.

  By nine o’clock Sali had finished the laundry, although more than half of it was in baskets and the tub waiting for space on the line. She was standing in the larder staring at the empty meat safe when a sharp rap at the door was followed by a shout of, ‘Rodney’s delivery.’

  A young boy on a bicycle handed her a parcel when she opened the door. ‘Mrs Rodney sent up pork chops, Missus, and said I was to wait for you to give me tomorrow’s order.’

  ‘Thank you.’ Sali took the parcel. She went into the kitchen and picked up the list she had begun to make. Yeast was written at the top; below it she scribbled, four pounds of beef mince, two blocks of salt, and two dozen rubber preserving jar rings. If she bottled some of the surplus vegetables in the garden for winter, the way Mari had done, it would save money. Then she remembered she was only the hired housekeeper. It wasn’t her place to make plans. And even if Mr Evans kept her on, how many preserves could she make before she found her son and moved on?

  ‘I’ve been here five years.’ Megan sliced tomatoes and laid the rings on the two rounds of bread and cheese she had cut. ‘My father has a farm in the Swansea Valley. The land’s not up to much, it’s forty acres of rough hillside grazing, but he keeps sheep, a couple of cows and a herd of goats. I have two sisters and two brothers younger than me, and the farm isn’t big enough to support us all. So when my mother’s sister died having her youngest, and my uncle asked if I could help out, she sent me here.’

  ‘So you’re a sort of housekeeper too.’ Without thinking what she was doing, Sali cut the cheese and tomato sandwich Megan had set in front of her into four neat triangles, then she saw that Megan had cut hers into squares and realised she was betraying her middle-class origins.

  ‘It feels more than “sort of”. My uncle’s three brothers lodge here, they’re miners as well, and there’s the children. Five of them, John’s twelve, Alun’s eleven, and they’ve just gone down the pit. Dai is ten and due to go down next year. Daisy is six and Sam five.’

  ‘A houseful.’

  ‘It is, even for a farm girl, but my uncle’s brothers help with the heavy work and although I’m family, my uncle pays me the going rate for a housekeeper. Fifteen shillings a week plus keep, which is more than some would in his place.’ Megan poured two cups of tea and pushed one together with the sugar bowl and milk jug towards Sali. ‘What do you think of the Evanses?’

  ‘I haven’t had time to get to know them,’ Sali answered cautiously.

  ‘I’m biased, but I think Victor is the nicest.’

  ‘He seems kind.’

  ‘He is. Mrs Evans’s death hit them hard. They were – are, a close family and it was awful for the boys to see her go the way she did. Wasting away until she was just skin and bones. Mr Evans hasn’t been the same since they buried her. He was such a happy-go-lucky man.’

  ‘Was he really?’ Sali had a problem imagining Mr Evans anything other than gruff.

  ‘Except when Joey did something he shouldn’t have, which has been more often than not, since he turned sixteen. My uncle’s a chapel deacon and he’s always telling me that gossiping is the eighth deadly sin, but it would take a saint not to gossip about Joey Evans.’

  ‘He is very good-looking.’ Sali bit into her sandwich.

  ‘And doesn’t he just know how to use those looks? We’re the same age. When I first came here I spent all my time mooning after him. He didn’t even go through the spotty, gangly phase most boys go through. But when I became better acquainted with the Evanses, I decided there was only one for me and, as you’ve probably guessed from what I’ve said, that’s Victor.’

  ‘You’re engaged?’

  Megan’s face fell. ‘Victor has asked me to marry him and I’d like nothing better, but my family and not just my uncle, my father and mother as well, are dead set against it. Not against Victor, everyone likes him. And my uncle and my father agree he will make a good husband, but he’s a Catholic and they regard that as one short step removed from Satan.’

  ‘But if you love one another ...’

  ‘I am only eighteen.’ Megan collected their empty plates and took them to the sink. ‘So, at best, we have another three years to wait before I can marry without my father’s permission. And in three years, Daisy will be only nine. You can hardly expect a nine-year-old girl to keep house for four grown men and four boys. ‘And my uncle says he doesn’t want a strange woman in his house.’

  Sali thought of a sad and lonely eight-year-old girl who had been taken out of school to keep house for her two older brothers. ‘You have problems.’

  ‘So, do you think you’ll be happy housekeeping for the Evanses?’

  ‘I think it’s more a question of whether they’ll be happy to have me housekeeping for them.’ Sali finished her tea. ‘Thank you for the sandwich.’

  ‘You must come again.’

  Encouraged by Megan’s smile, Sali blurted, ‘What do you think of Lloyd Evans?’

  ‘I don’t know him as well as Victor and Joey. He was working away when I first came here and he only returned about two years ago. Victor adores him, but he’s quieter and more serious than the other two, more of thinker like his father. My uncle says he is the only management lackey he has any faith in.’

  ‘He is a management lackey?’ Sali questioned, unsure what Megan meant by the term.

  ‘Lloyd’s in charge of the repairmen in the pit and one of the few men trusted by both workers and management, even though he is a Marxist.’

  ‘You don’t like Marxists?’

  ‘To be honest I don’t know much about them, other than they think the pits should be owned by the men who work them. And even my uncle who hasn’t any time for Marxists, because they don’t believe in God, says that that is a good idea. ‘Don’t misunderstand me,’ Megan walked ahead of Sali into the passage, ‘Lloyd’s polite and nice enough, but difficult to get to know. Victor says most of the time he’s at home his head is buried in a book. Why do you ask about him?’

  ‘No reason,’ Sali lied. ‘Thank you for the sandwich. If Mr Evans keeps me on, I’ll ask him if you can have tea with me next time.’

  ‘Do want me to check if your sheets are dry?’ Megan asked.

  ‘Please, if you wouldn’t mind.’

  ‘I’ll see you in the garden in a few minutes.’

  Sali sensed she’d aroused Megan’s curiosity by asking about Lloyd. She only wished she could be certain that he hadn’t recognised her, or if he had, that he would continue to keep her identity a secret.

  It was dinnertime on Saturday afternoon before Sali had cleaned the house to her satisfaction. She had caught up with the washing and ironing and had also managed to preserve two dozen jars of green beans and two dozen jars of carrots as well as make fifteen pots of jam from the raspberries, blackberries and gooseberries Victor had brought in from his allotment. She was working as hard as she had ever done in Mill Street, but she felt safe for the first time since she had left Danygraig House.

  At the sound of footsteps on the basement stairs she lifted the leg of lamb she had roasted from the oven and set it before Mr Evans’s chair.

  ‘Pandy Parade tonight, Mrs Jones. You looking forward to going?’ Joey followed his father into the kitchen and lifted the lids on the pans on the stove. ‘Mashed and roast potatoes, Yorkshire pudding, sage and onion stuffing balls, and boiled peas and carrots. You really do know how to please a man, Mrs Jones.’

  ‘No picking at the meat.’ His father slapped Joey’s hand away as he broke off a piece of crisply roasted skin.

  Victor smiled at the bemused expression on Sali’s face as he joined them. ‘Mrs Jones has probably never heard of the Pandy Parade, Joey.’

  ‘I haven’t.’ Sali set the last of the vegetable dishes and the gravy boat on the table
and took her place next to Lloyd, taking care to avert her face from his.

  ‘It’s pay night in the pits and the big shopping night in Tonypandy,’ Joey explained. ‘The whole town turns out and the shops stay open until eleven o’clock.’

  ‘I don’t need anything.’ Sali took the plate of lamb Lloyd handed her.

  ‘Whether you do or you don’t, you should see it,’ Victor coaxed. ‘As Joey said, everyone turns out.’

  ‘Everyone?’ she repeated, thinking that if she went, she might see Rhian, Mari’s sister or even, her heartbeat escalated to twice its normal rate, her son.

  ‘Come with Megan and me,’ Victor offered.

  ‘I couldn’t possibly,’ Sali protested, appalled at the prospect of playing gooseberry.

  ‘If you keep Megan company when she looks around the shops, I’ll be able to sneak off and have a pint with Joey and Lloyd.’ The suggestion was that she would be doing him a favour.

  ‘Only if you are sure that Megan won’t mind,’ she qualified.

  ‘She won’t, so that’s settled.’

  ‘Tomorrow is your day off, Mrs Jones,’ Mr Evans announced flatly.

  ‘There is a chicken in the meat safe. I was going to cook it for Sunday dinner.’

  ‘The chicken can keep. I told you on Monday that I don’t expect you to work any more hours or days than we do in the pit. And this week you have put in a month’s hours.’

  ‘I really don’t mind making the breakfast.’

  ‘Lloyd and I sleep late on a Sunday. Victor and Joey will be up early for mass but as they can’t eat before church and Joey will probably take all day to make his confession,’ he gave his youngest son a stern look, ‘it’s anyone’s guess what time they will be back. There’s enough bread, cheese and cold meat in the larder for everyone to fend for themselves. All I ask is that you return before ten o’clock.’

  ‘I won’t be that late, Mr Evans, thank you.’ If she didn’t see Rhian, Mrs Williams or her son that evening, there was a chance that she might find one of them tomorrow. There couldn’t be many big houses in Tonypandy and with luck, Megan would know them all. But she had to be more careful in phrasing her questions than she had been when she had asked about Lloyd, so Megan wouldn’t get suspicious.