Beggars and Choosers

by Catrin Collier

  ‘You must have the hide of a rhinoceros and the diplomacy of Solomon to put up with Billy and his boys.’ Jane shook Sali’s hand. ‘I’ll show you the cottage while the boys unload the wagon.’ She led the way inside. ‘This is the kitchen. I’ve stocked the larder and the boy will be down with the cart in the morning. He’ll have fresh milk, eggs, butter, cheese, fruit and vegetables. He sells round the village for us. The baker makes a fair loaf and I’ve stocked you up with dried goods. I bought you fish for tonight. Billy likes a bit of fish on his first night and it was brought in fresh this morning. But let Victor cook it.’

  ‘Victor?’ Sali asked in surprise.

  ‘The boys like to build bonfires on the beach. They roast potatoes in the embers and cook the fish on sticks. Sometimes I think they have never grown up. I’ve stoked the stove, there’s plenty of wood in the shed and the boys know where that is. The parlour’s through here.’ She walked into a tiny hall and opened the door on a small dark room. ‘Not that I’ve ever known Billy or the boys use it.’

  Sali could imagine why, but remained tactfully silent.

  Jane walked up the stairs and showed Sali a double bedroom and a small single. ‘There are half a dozen beds in the attic. The girl made them all up this morning. She thought we were having one of our fishing parties in, although I did remind her twice last week that Billy and the boys were coming. When Billy wrote and told me he was bringing his housekeeper, I thought you could sleep here. She opened a door in the back wall that Sali had assumed was a cupboard. ‘“Servants’ quarters”. Would you believe it in a house this size? But then, it is two hundred years old.’ She pointed to a narrow staircase that ran down the back of the house. ‘You might be all right walking down those; someone my size would get stuck. They lead to a scullery behind the kitchen. There’s a pump and sink in there. Here you are.’ She opened a door on the second landing and showed Sali a small room furnished utility style with a camping washstand and double bed. ‘I thought your boy could sleep with you.’

  ‘Thank you, it’s perfect.’ Sali looked out of the window. Joey was running round the garden with Harry on his shoulders, both of them whooping like Indians.

  ‘I’ve written to Billy every week since Isabella died, not that I’ve had many replies. Our Billy was born stubborn and independent, but I was worried about him. Isabella was his life. Then, when I heard from Victor that he was sacking housekeeper after housekeeper, I never thought he’d ever allow another woman in the house and he and the boys were doomed to a life of squalor. I’m grateful to you for sorting him out.’

  ‘I needed a job more than Mr Evans and the boys needed a housekeeper.’ Sali unpinned her hat and set it on the bed. ‘They have been very kind to me and Harry.’

  ‘No doubt we’ll see you up at the farm. Billy knows you’re all welcome any teatime. There are horses you can ride and a Shetland my youngest outgrew for your boy. Do you ride, Sali?’

  Sali recalled Lancelot, the blue riding habit she’d had made the year before her father died and the rides she had taken with Mansel in the fields around Ynysangharad House. They now seemed part of someone else’s life. ‘I used to, Mrs Howells.’

  ‘Tell Lloyd or Victor to bring you up. If you’ll excuse me, I have a dairy to run that I won’t be sorry to hand over to Sam’s wife next year. Have a good holiday.’

  Sali breathed in the salt sea air and smiled. ‘I will, Mrs Howells, and thank you for everything.’

  ‘I’m in Joey and Victor’s gang and I’m sleeping in the attic with them.’ Harry ran headlong down the attic stairs and barged into Sali as she walked out of the ‘servants’ quarters’ on to the upstairs landing.

  ‘You most certainly are not. You’ll pester the life out of them.’

  ‘No he won’t,’ Victor interposed quietly.

  ‘I can’t put him to bed up there all alone at seven o’clock.’

  ‘You won’t.’ Joey perched Harry on the banisters and held him as he slid down. ‘We all keep the same hours here. When we were kids, Mam and Dad let us stay up until they went to bed.’

  ‘Please can I sleep up there with Victor and Joey, Mam?’ Harry pleaded. ‘There’s a lookout post so we can watch for pirates. And if they come we’ll fight them off.’

  Suspecting that Mr Evans wasn’t the only one who knew about her and Lloyd, Sali conceded. ‘I suppose so, if you promise to be a good boy and don’t annoy Joey and Victor.’

  ‘Yippee!’

  ‘And where did you hear that?’

  ‘Uncle Joey read it to me from a comic.’

  It was broad daylight when something hurtling on the bed woke Sali the first morning of the holidays. She opened her eyes to see Harry crouched beside her, covered in sand, dressed in his neck-to-knee damp swimming costume, an ear-to-ear grin on his face as he held a crab by the claw above her head.

  ‘Look what I caught in my net. Uncle Joey, Uncle Victor and me have been up for hours. Uncle Joey says you two are lazy bones.’

  There was movement in the bed the other side of her and Sali felt the weight of an arm around her waist. She turned, staring in horror at Lloyd lying beside her.

  ‘Look at my crab, Uncle Lloyd.’ Harry shoved it under Lloyd’s nose. ‘Uncle Victor says I can keep it in a bucket. Do you think crabs eat cockles? I’m going to call it Little Eyes. Uncle Victor says that sounds like an Indian name. Uncle Joey wanted to eat it but I told him it wasn’t big enough.’

  ‘It wouldn’t make much of a meal,’ Lloyd looked from Harry to Sali’s horrified face.

  ‘You won’t tell Uncle Joey and Uncle Victor that I woke you, will you? They said I wasn’t to disturb you if you were still in bed. Uncle Victor said you are going to be my daddy soon, but it’s a secret. But even if it is a secret, I thought you’d know, Mam.’ He gave Sali a sandy kiss. ‘Uncle Joey’s frying cockles and lava bread. Shall I tell him to bring some up for you?’

  ‘No, we’ll be down as soon as we’re dressed.’ Lloyd found it difficult to keep his voice steady, but unlike Sali he could at least speak.

  ‘You will tell me when I can call you Daddy, won’t you, Uncle Lloyd?’

  ‘That’s up to your Mam, Harry.’

  ‘Harry ...’ Sali began.

  ‘That’s Uncle Joey calling me. Shall I tell him to lay the table for you as well?’

  ‘Please, Harry.’ Lloyd fell back on the pillows and looked across at Sali, as Harry ran back down the stairs.

  ‘Can he start calling me Daddy?’ he asked.

  ‘Nothing’s changed. I can’t –’

  ‘Everything’s changed.’ He rolled over and kissed her. ‘Every single blessed thing. Please, can everyone finally stop pretending that we aren’t a couple?’

  ‘It’s strange, for the first few days I felt as though this holiday was endless and now it’s over, it has passed in an instant.’ Sali and Lloyd were walking hand in hand along the shore. Behind them, the village was a glimmer of distant oil lamps. Waves broke into a froth of gurgling surf over their bare feet. The sea, a vast, dark, glittering expanse, twinkled with the reflected light of the moon and the stars as it stretched to the horizon and beyond.

  ‘And when we get home, it will seem like a dream.’

  ‘That sounds like the voice of experience.’

  ‘It is.’ Lloyd kissed her. His lips were warm and tasted of salt. ‘I love you and you must admit it has been glorious. Can we go back and announce that we got married here?’

  ‘Give me just a little more time?’

  ‘Sali, can’t you see how perfect this is? We’ve been here two weeks –’

  ‘You need three to call the banns.’

  ‘We could have had a special licence. And now that Harry’s seen me in your bed, can’t you see how hypocritical this whole thing is?’

  ‘Just a few more weeks,’ she pleaded.

  ‘If I gave you all the time in the world it wouldn’t make any difference. The chapel has too strong a hold on you.’ He couldn’t keep the bitterness from
his voice.

  ‘It’s not the chapel.’

  ‘What then?’

  ‘It’s not easy to explain.’

  ‘Try.’

  ‘I’m not even sure I can explain it to myself, Lloyd. I love you more than I ever thought it was possible to love another human being. You and Harry mean everything to me. And being accepted as your wife by your family is a wonderful bonus, but it’s not just us, there’s my father. I’m not even sure whether I believe in an afterlife or not, but I can’t bear the thought of him looking down on me from somewhere and disapproving of what I’ve become. And there’s my brothers and sister. I don’t want them to be ashamed of me or think I’ve committed bigamy. But most of all, there’s Owen and Uncle Morgan.’

  ‘For pity’s sake, surely you don’t give a damn what they think after what they did to you?’

  ‘I would hate for them to be able to say that they were right about me being a whore.’

  ‘I’ll give you a month. One month, no more,’ he said sternly.

  ‘And then what?’

  ‘I’ll announce to the world that we’re married and you’ll just damn well have to go along with it.’

  ‘Or leave Tonypandy.’

  For the first time in two weeks Lloyd and Sali went to bed in separate bedrooms, but Sali couldn’t sleep. She tossed and turned to the accompaniment of Joey and Victor whispering in the attic above her. Long after they fell silent, she heard Mr Evans walk upstairs from the kitchen where they had left him reading. When she couldn’t lie still a moment longer, she reached for the candle and box of matches on her bedside table. Slipping out from between the sheets she went to the door that connected the back of the house with the front, opened it as quietly as she could and lifted the latch on the single bedroom. She crept in and stole over to the narrow bed.

  ‘Sali?’

  ‘I couldn’t sleep.’

  Lloyd folded back the bedclothes so she could climb in. ‘Neither could I.’

  She lay alongside him. ‘What are we going to do?’

  ‘We’ll think of something.’

  As he pulled her close to him, he didn’t tell her that he had already decided on a course of action. He knew if he did, she would only worry and try to dissuade him from carrying it out. But now that he had made up his mind, he was determined to find Owen Bull and demand he divorce Sali. Because if that was the only way Sali would live openly with him as his wife, then that was the way it was going to have to be.

  ‘No one can keep a family on one shilling and ninepence a ton for mined lump coal. Not when a miner’s gang can spend half a week shifting muck just to get at the coal in the first place,’ Billy Evans said angrily. ‘It’s scandalous. The Ely miners have every right to strike and Nantgwyn and Pandy are entitled to come out in sympathy with them.’

  ‘I still think they should have given management notice that they were about to strike, if only for the sake of the horses,’ Victor interposed.

  ‘And that is why we are holding a strike ballot. You can vote whichever way you want,’ Billy eyed all three of his sons, ‘but you know what I think.’

  ‘I never thought I’d see the day when we’d go against Mabon.’ Joey spooned an extra helping of potato on to his plate.

  ‘He’s lost his nerve and forgotten where he’s come from,’ his father said. ‘We have no choice but to back the Ely miners to the hilt. You can bet your last penny that if their management succeed in cutting their wages below the breadline now, our management will be doing it to us tomorrow.’

  ‘Of course they will,’ Lloyd said quietly. ‘That’s why it’s so important we show a united front.’ He pushed his plate aside. ‘I’m late.’

  ‘You’ve a union meeting again, tonight?’ Sali questioned, wondering why he hadn’t mentioned it until he’d bolted his dinner and was heading out through the door.

  She knew the situation in the pit was serious and she admired him and his father for the stance they were taking, but even so, he had been unusually quiet and abstracted during the weeks since their return. He had spent every Friday and Saturday night in ‘special’ union meetings his father didn’t attend. He hadn’t brought up the subject of them living openly together as man and wife once and she found his silence on the subject even more worrying than his constant arguments.

  ‘Can’t be helped.’ Lloyd hated lying to Sali. ‘If I’m going to get the quarter to four train, I’d best be off.’

  Joey counted the jam-filled French pancakes on the plate Sali had set in front of his father. ‘Twelve,’ he announced, ‘and as Sali and Harry only ever eat one each and Dad two, that leaves four each for us, Victor.’

  ‘Three.’ Sali scooped two of the pancakes on to another plate. ‘I’ll keep them in the pantry for Lloyd.’ She gave Joey and Victor her most severe look. ‘And don’t either of you two dare touch them.’

  ‘As if we would,’ Joey smiled innocently.

  Billy closed the kitchen door behind him and followed Lloyd into the hall. ‘Would you like me to go to this meeting with you?’

  ‘No. And there’s no guarantee it’s going to be any more successful than the last few.’

  ‘If it is, be careful,’ Billy warned earnestly, ‘and not just for your own sake.’

  ‘I will.’ Lloyd slipped on his coat, set his trilby on his head, wound his muffler around his neck and picked up his leather gloves.

  ‘If you call into the County Club on the way back, I’ll buy you a pint.’ His father opened the front door for him.

  ‘I’ll try to get back before ten, but don’t worry if I’m late. I can take care of myself.’

  ‘I sincerely hope you’re right,’ Billy muttered under his breath as he watched him walk away.

  Lloyd made his way directly to Connie’s. He was about to break his promise to Sali that he would never see Connie alone again, but he’d had an idea earlier that day. One he hoped would finally put an end to his weekend ‘meetings’. Uncertain of the reception he’d receive, he pushed open the shop door and went to the counter where Annie and three young boys were serving a small queue of customers.

  Annie muttered, ‘Excuse me, for just a moment,’ to the woman she was serving and called out, ‘Can I help you, Lloyd?’

  Lloyd had expected hostility, but was taken aback by the venom in Annie’s voice. ‘I need to see Connie on family business. It’s urgent.’

  ‘Privately?’ she barked.

  ‘It would be best,’ he replied, conscious that everyone in the shop had fallen silent.

  Annie opened the door that led to the office and stockrooms and returned almost immediately. She opened the counter. ‘Mrs Rodney will see you.’ When they were alone in the passage, she pushed her face very close to his. ‘If you’re thinking of asking Connie to go back to you, don’t,’ she advised sharply. ‘She doesn’t need you. She’s happier without you than she ever was with you. And I intend to see it remains that way. All you’ve ever brought her is misery.’

  ‘I only want information, Annie. One minute of Connie’s time, that’s all.’

  ‘You expect me to believe you?’

  ‘It’s the truth,’ he assured her.

  She hesitated and then moved aside. He went to the office door and knocked.

  ‘Come in.’ Connie was sitting in the chair behind the desk, cool, composed and fashionably and elegantly dressed as usual, in an embroidered russet, lambswool gown. ‘Lloyd, this is a surprise.’ She saw Annie hovering in the open doorway. ‘Is there anything else, Annie?’

  ‘No,’ Annie conceded mutinously.

  ‘Then would you mind returning to the shop? The boys’ service tends to be sloppy if they know no one is watching them.’

  Lloyd removed his hat and closed the door.

  ‘What can I do for you?’ Connie appeared indifferent to his presence but Lloyd knew better. She was toying nervously with a pencil, running her fingers along the length of it, from one end to the other.

  ‘Do you remember the last night we talk
ed?’

  ‘I doubt I could forget it,’ she answered dryly.

  ‘You said you’d spoken to people in Pontypridd about Sali and her husband. You mentioned he was living in a pub. Can you remember the name of the place?’

  She stared at him. ‘You are going to look for him?’

  ‘Can you remember the name of the pub?’ he reiterated.

  ‘The Horse and Groom. It’s at the bottom of the Graig Hill. Handy for the railway station but I wouldn’t venture far up the hill if I were you. The miners who live on the Graig are rumoured to be a particularly rough breed.’

  ‘Thank you, Connie.’ He replaced his hat.

  ‘You aren’t going to kill him, are you, Lloyd?’

  ‘That’s not my intention,’ he replied evenly.

  ‘You really love her, don’t you?’

  He turned back from the door to face her. ‘With all my heart and soul.’

  ‘In that case, for what it’s worth, I wish you – and her – well.’

  ‘After the way we parted, that’s worth a great deal, Connie. Thank you.’

  ‘Send Annie in on your way out.’ She set the pencil on the desk and picked up a pen.

  Lloyd checked his pocket watch as he left the shop. If he was going to make the train to Pontypridd he was going to have to run to the station.

  ‘What did he want?’ Annie’s voice was full of contempt.

  ‘Just the name of a pub in Pontypridd.’ Connie took a deep breath and faced Annie. ‘Seeing him again didn’t hurt at all.’

  ‘Do you mean that?’ Annie walked around the desk and crouched beside Connie’s chair.

  Connie struggled to formulate her thoughts. ‘But it does feel strange to know that I was deluding myself all those years. I really believed I loved him and now all of a sudden I discover I didn’t. In a way that’s even worse than losing him. It’s having to face all that waste – of evenings, energy, passion – of realising that all the time I was clinging to something completely worthless, we could have been together.’ She framed Annie’s face with her hands and looked deep into her green eyes. ‘I love you.’

  ‘And I love you,’ Annie cried in relief. ‘More than I can ever prove.’