Beggars and Choosers

by Catrin Collier

  ‘I’m sorry I couldn’t be the sister you wanted,’ she called after him, as the train drew out of the station.

  ‘We’re going home, to the uncles?’ Harry scrutinised his box of soldiers as the train crawled up the valley towards Tonypandy.

  ‘Yes, Harry.’ Sali glanced impatiently out of the window. Every stop at every station along the way had been five times longer than usual. Ten minutes at Trehafod. Half an hour at Porth. Finally the train drew to a halt in sidings.

  ‘Good.’

  Sali glanced impatiently at her watch.

  ‘I told Mrs Williams I would be back at six o’clock,’ Rhian said. ‘What’s the time now?’

  ‘Almost seven, but I’ll go to Llan House with you and explain that the delay wasn’t your fault.’ Sali lifted Harry on to her knee. Doors slammed lower down the train and Rhian stuck her head out of the window.

  ‘The police are getting off.’

  ‘There’s nothing we can do until we reach the station.’ Sali tried to remain calm, but she found it increasingly difficult. ‘As soon as we leave the train, grab a brake. I’ll pay the extra on the tickets.’

  Paying the extra money on their tickets was easily done but there were no brakes or carriages waiting in the rank before the station. The street outside was eerily deserted and silent. Sali and Rhian set out to walk to Dunraven Street.

  They had only taken a few steps when they heard the roaring. The swell of thousands of voices raised in anger, accompanied by cries, screams, shouts and the whinny of horses. They turned the corner, stopped and looked on in horror at the scene being played out under the lights of the gas lamps in Tonypandy’s main shopping street.

  A mass of men and women occupied the street, surrounded on all sides by a thin line of uniformed police wielding batons. Sali stood transfixed.

  Whistles were blown and mounted police surged forward, just like their colleagues on foot, swinging their truncheons indiscriminately into the crowd. As their cudgels flailed, the miners fought back, throwing sticks, stones and anything else that came to hand.

  Sali saw one of the stones hit a plate-glass shop window. It shattered in an instant. Shards crashed downwards, smashing on the pavement and breaking over the heads of the people in the street. Men piled through the broken glass, grabbing overcoats, hats and shirts from the shop display, tossing them back to others behind them before battering through into the shop itself.

  A woman standing beside Sali fell to her knees and began praying. More stones were thrown and more shop windows shattered. Sali felt as though a house of cards was falling, one card at a time, as shop after shop succumbed. First one, then two, then finally all six of Connie’s shop windows were destroyed. People swarmed en masse and Sali saw tins, bottles, jars and packages being handed from one man to another. Some were thrown full pelt at the police and their horses. One man was running up the road with an armful of overcoats, another was carrying dozens of umbrellas.

  Mr Willie Llewellyn stood in front of his chemist shop and Sali closed her eyes, waiting for his window to receive the same treatment as the others, but the mob flooded past the ex-rugby international’s shop in the direction of De Winton Street, bypassing him. Mr Isaac the jeweller stood in front of his shop and fired a pistol in the air, and he too proved lucky.

  Feeling she should do something but not knowing what, Sali took a step towards Connie’s shop. But even as she did so, she saw there was no way that she would be able to fight her way through the throng to reach it.

  ‘Sali ...’

  ‘You can’t faint, not now, Rhian.’ Sali looked down and saw that Harry had wrapped his arms around her legs and buried his face in the skirt of her coat. She picked him up and holding his face against her shoulder, shielded him from the sight of the battle. Mounted policemen charged towards them and she yelled at Rhian.

  ‘Run!’

  They charged as fast as they could back the way they had come.

  ‘We’ll walk around the back streets,’ Sali gasped, as soon as she could draw breath again.

  ‘Mrs Williams –’ Rhian began.

  ‘Will have heard what’s going on here.’

  The side and back streets were full of injured men and women being helped to their houses. As Sali and Rhian turned towards the Evanses house she saw Victor carrying Joey in through the door. Blood was pouring from his head.

  Handing Harry and his precious parcels to Rhian, she ran into the house and down the passage after them. Victor didn’t ask her what she was doing there.

  ‘Can you look after him?’ He lowered Joey into an easy chair. ‘I’ve others to see to.’

  Victor was gone before she could answer. She ran to the sink, pumped a bowlful of water and grabbed a teacloth. Kneeling in front of Joey, she bathed his face.

  ‘I’m all right,’ Joey mumbled, clearly in a daze.

  ‘Not by the look of you.’

  It took her ten minutes to mop the blood from his face and head. To her relief she discovered the cut that was bleeding so profusely was neither as deep nor as long as she had feared. She soaked the cloth in cold water and pressed it to his scalp in an effort to staunch the flow. ‘You’re going to have a scar on your forehead that will spoil your pretty looks.’

  ‘Women like a man to look like a man, don’t they, Rhian?’ Joey tried to grin and failed miserably.

  Sali turned and saw Rhian and Harry standing behind her.

  ‘I really am going to be fine, Harry,’ Joey reassured the little boy, who was struggling to contain his tears and shaking uncontrollably. ‘Look, your mam is going to bandage me up as good as new. Why don’t you sit on my lap while she does it and you can tell me what you’ve been doing all the weeks you’ve been away.’

  To Sali’s amazement, Harry didn’t need any more prompting. Rhian held the compress on Joey’s head while she ran upstairs and brought down two of Mrs Evans’s linen sheets. She set Rhian to work tearing the sheets into strips while she pinched the sides of Joey’s wound together in an effort to stop the bleeding.

  ‘Does it need a stitch?’ he asked.

  ‘I think so. We’ll have to get you to one of the surgeries.’

  ‘Don’t be daft, with all that’s going on out there, they are going to be banked up until this time tomorrow. Mam used to sew our cuts herself.’

  ‘I couldn’t possibly ...’ Sali bit her lips in exasperation as she released the sides of the cut and blood began to flow again, if anything more vigorously than before.

  ‘Victor will do it when he comes back. He’s used to sewing up the horses.’

  Victor barged through the door with two more wounded men.

  ‘Why don’t you take Harry up to bed and tell him a story, Rhian?’ Victor suggested, seeing Harry blanch at the sight of the injured men.

  ‘The beds aren’t made up.’ Sali pumped another bowlful of water.

  ‘Take him into our room, Rhian, first left at the top of the stairs,’ Joey said. ‘I’ll be up as soon as Victor has seen to this cut and then you can come back down and help Sali.’

  The next few hours passed in a hive of frantic activity. Sali brought down more of Mrs Evans’s sheets and tore them into strips as Victor brought more and more casualties into the house. She pulled shards of glass from open wounds, swabbed blood with cloths soaked in vinegar, washed and irrigated dirty cuts, smeared goose grease on to the newly cleaned injuries and the gashes Victor stitched with needle and thread from his mother’s sewing box. She wound strips of linen around heads, arms and hands, applied compresses of cold water on bruises, and all the while kept the kettle boiling, setting the men who had sustained minor injuries to make tea.

  As soon as Joey could move, she helped him to bed. Harry was asleep. Rhian had undressed him down to his underclothes and Sali carried him into Lloyd’s room and laid him in his bed until she had a chance to make up the bed in the box room.

  ‘When did you last see your father and Lloyd?’ Sali asked Victor. There were only four men left in t
heir kitchen. Megan’s uncle, who had a bruised shoulder, two men with cuts in their scalps that Victor had stitched, and a young boy who had sprained his ankle.

  He took a deep draught of the tea Megan’s uncle had made. ‘This afternoon, before the police broke the picket in front of Glamorgan Colliery. They were standing with the other union leaders appealing for calm. A couple of the younger boys started stoning the police, someone ripped up the palings from around the colliery and the police charged and pushed us back into Pandy square.’ He raised his face, and she saw that both his eyes had been blacked and his lower lip split. ‘Young fools; if only they’d kept their heads, none of this would have happened. But don’t worry about Lloyd or my father; it’s my guess that the police have kept them safe in the hope that they’ll be able to control the mob when they quieten down enough to listen. I’ll go back down in a minute to see if I can find them.’

  ‘I’m going with you.’ She reached for her suit jacket.

  ‘You’re needed here.’

  ‘Rhian can cope, can’t you?’ Sali didn’t even wait for her to answer.

  They left the house and walked down the hill. There were even more men and women in De Winton and Dunraven Street than when Sali had arrived, but fewer blue uniforms. The street looked as though a bomb had blasted it. Loot of every sort and description mixed with broken glass littered it from one end to the other. And men were still inside some of the shops, wrecking them.

  ‘Have you seen Connie?’ Sali asked Victor.

  ‘She, Annie and Tonia have barricaded themselves into the rooms above the shop. She shouted down to me.’

  A man walked past carrying a bale of cloth.

  ‘Sion, think about what you are doing, man,’ Victor remonstrated.

  ‘Bastard had it coming to him. Charges top whack for his goods, takes the bloody rent off me every week ...’

  ‘Sion, you’re not thinking straight. If they find that cloth in your house, you’ll be going down for a good long stretch.’

  ‘Your family collects bloody rent on the houses you own.’

  ‘And we won’t be collecting any more until this strike is settled, Sion. Think, man, there’ll be no money coming into this valley for anyone – miners, shopkeepers or landlords – until this is settled.’

  ‘My God.’ Sali stared in horror as a solid tide of blue uniformed men surged into the square from the direction of the station.

  ‘There has to be a thousand of them.’ Victor leaned against the wall.

  ‘They said in Cardiff that the Metropolitan police were going to be sent here.’

  ‘Go back home, Sali.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You can’t help by staying here.’

  ‘You can’t possibly go down there.’

  ‘There’s too many boys down there like Joey. They’re not bad but they are kids. Stupid hot heads who act before they think. And there are women there. Do you think the police are going to care where their truncheons land? Look after Joey and, whatever you do, keep him in the house.’

  Sali returned to find Megan’s uncle and the others had left. Rhian had fallen asleep in one of the easy chairs and she covered her with a blanket. She looked in on Joey, he was pale but breathing steadily, and Harry was sleeping peacefully.

  In an effort to keep her mind off what was happening, she went into her bedroom. By the look of all the upstairs rooms, they hadn’t been cleaned since she had left.

  She made up her own and Harry’s bed in the box room and carried him into it before stripping and remaking Lloyd’s bed. Joey’s and Victor’s would have to wait until the morning. She dusted and swept the rooms and carried the bundle of linen from Lloyd’s bed downstairs.

  She changed Mr Evans’s bed and gave his room, the kitchen and the parlour a thorough cleaning. She boiled a scrag end of lamb she found in the meat safe, and peeled, cleaned and chopped all the vegetables in the pantry and added them to the broth. Rhian didn’t stir. She went down to the basement with the bed linen and found it stacked as high with dirty washing as the first day she had worked there. She set to work, boiling water in buckets and soaking the linen in the baths with soda.

  She worked slowly and steadily until the sky lightened and she realised dawn could not be far off. She returned upstairs to see Victor slumped in the easy chair opposite Rhian. She looked at the clock. Six and there was still no sign of Mr Evans or Lloyd, She shook Victor gently, but his eyes remained closed. Exhausted, she uttered a silent prayer for Lloyd and his father, and sat at the table.

  ‘Sali!’ She woke with a start and realised Victor was calling her. She rubbed her eyes and looked at the clock. It was eleven.

  ‘Why didn’t you wake me earlier?’ she mumbled, her mouth dry with sleep.

  ‘Joey’s only just woken me. He’s taken Harry into the garden to see if there are any eggs. I’m walking Rhian back to Llan House.’

  ‘Mrs Williams will kill me.’ Rhian was combing her hair.

  ‘No, she won’t,’ Sali contradicted her. ‘Not if I write you a note.’ She took notepaper, pen and ink from the drawer and scribbled a few lines. She folded the note and gave it to Rhian. ‘See you on your next day off?’

  ‘If Mrs Williams ever lets me out again.’

  ‘If we go the back way, you can say goodbye to Harry,’ Victor said. ‘I’ll call in the police station and see if Dad and Lloyd are there, Sali. But wherever they are, I’m sure they’re fine,’ he reassured her.

  Sali filled a jug with cold water, went upstairs and washed herself. Realising she and Harry didn’t have even a change of clothes, she made a note to ask Victor to call in at the station to see if her trunk had arrived.

  She was back in the kitchen, making porridge when Joey came up from the basement with Harry. ‘You two must be hungry.’

  ‘I’d prefer a headache powder to food,’ Joey answered.

  ‘It won’t do much good for a crack on the skull.’

  ‘I suppose not.’ Joey sat at the table and Harry climbed on to the chair next to him.

  Despite her concern for Lloyd and Mr Evans, Sali smiled when she saw that Harry had set out the four chocolate bars he had bought in front of each of the men’s chairs. ‘I see you have your presents.’

  ‘Harry’s promised to help me eat mine later.’ Joey ruffled Harry’s hair. ‘You back for good?’

  ‘Mam said we were coming home.’

  ‘Did she now?’ Joey looked at Sali, who was untying her apron. ‘Where are you off to?’

  ‘To look for Lloyd.’

  ‘Victor said he would.’

  ‘I can’t sit still a minute longer.’

  ‘Let me come with you.’

  ‘You look after Harry and give him his breakfast, I’ll be back as soon as I can.’

  Sali walked down to Dunraven Street. A few of the shopkeepers were in the street sweeping up the damage. An enterprising carpenter pushed a handcart down the road heaped high with planks of wood ready to nail across the empty window frames. The police were standing around, confining pedestrians to the pavements, as if they needed to prove that they were finally in possession of the town.

  ‘Please God, don’t let Lloyd be dead. Please God don’t let Lloyd be dead,’ she muttered over and over again under her breath.

  Then she heard the steady tread of marching feet. She stood, mesmerised, as a full squadron of armed soldiers advanced up the main street towards her.

  The people on the pavements stood in silence facing the road and the troops. She walked behind them, looking at every man tall and broad enough to be Lloyd or his father.

  She saw them standing on the pavement in front of the Police Station. She fought her way through the dense crowd until she was close enough to rest her hand on Lloyd’s shoulder. He whipped around, the anger in his eyes fading to disbelief when he saw her. His face was grey with exhaustion and there were dark circles beneath his eyes, but when she opened her arms, he swung her off her feet, holding her as though he never intended to release he
r.

  ‘Megan’s uncle said you were here. I thought he was hallucinating after being hit on the head.’

  She looked over Lloyd’s shoulder at Mr Evans, who was standing beside him. ‘From the state of the house, you could still do with a housekeeper.’

  ‘We’re strikers, Sali. We can’t pay you a penny. I’ve invested all our savings in houses and I can’t ask anyone to pay me rent when they haven’t a farthing coming in. God only knows how any of us are going to put food on our tables next week.’ His eyes were moist as he stared at the troops.

  ‘We’ll manage,’ she said optimistically.

  ‘Will we? I never thought I’d see the day Tonypandy garrisoned by soldiers.’ Mr Evans turned wearily towards home. ‘Talk some sense into the girl, Lloyd, and send her packing.’

  ‘You can’t really want to come back here when you have Ynysangharad House,’ Lloyd said.

  ‘The house isn’t mine, it’s Harry’s.’

  ‘And he’ll need to be brought up a proper gentleman.’

  ‘That’s what my brother said. I’d prefer him to be brought up with people who will love and guide him.’

  ‘Sali, my father’s right. You have no idea what’s coming. The government and the Coal Owners will try to starve the miners into submission. The next few months are going to be hell.’

  ‘Not if we’re together.’

  ‘Like my father said, I should send you back to Pontypridd.’

  ‘I won’t go, not even if you throw stones.’ And there, amongst the wreckage of the main street of Tonypandy, in front of the whole town and a regiment of soldiers, she kissed him.

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  An excerpt from

  WINNERS AND LOSERS

  Book Two in the Brothers & Lovers series

  by

  CATRIN COLLIER

  Chapter One

  Joey Evans turned the key that was left permanently in the lock of his family’s front door, stepped inside and started whistling, ‘A Little of What You Fancy Does You Good’.