Beggars and Choosers

by Catrin Collier

  ‘Given the high-handed way some of your men behave, Sergeant, you have to forgive us poor natives a bit of obstructing now and then. You see, obstructing is the only way we have left to show our feelings,’ Father Kelly said caustically.

  Sergeant Martin beckoned to a group of constables across the road. A dozen marched in formation to join him.

  ‘Constable Shipton, officers, take the name of anyone who hasn’t moved on from this unlawful assembly in the next sixty seconds.’ Turning his back, he walked away. Too many strikers had been fined for offences ranging from disorderly conduct to affray and assault for anyone to ignore the threat. Fines meant prison, since no striker had the means to pay them.

  ‘Thank you, Father Kelly, Reverend Williams,’ Betty said gratefully. She hooked her arm into Megan’s.

  ‘Glad we could help, ladies.’ Reverend Williams tipped his hat.

  ‘Go with God and go safely, ladies.’ Father Kelly gave them a warm smile before continuing on his way.

  Megan and Betty walked along the pavement until a group of uniformed Hussars blocked their path. When it was obvious that they weren’t going to move, the women stepped into the gutter. Holding her skirt up to avoid the piles of horse manure and dog mess left by the strays turned out by the families of strikers who could no longer afford to feed them, Megan picked her way down the street, all the while sensing the officers watching them. When she saw a gap in the traffic, she crossed the road but there were even more police on the opposite pavement.

  A queue snaked out of the door of Rodney’s Provisions. Megan and Berry joined it. As the procession of women with their collier’s dummy moved on out of earshot, an unnatural silence fell, thick and heavy, like a suffocating blanket over the town. When it was their turn finally to step inside the store, Megan started nervously. A sergeant and a constable flanked the door, their backs to the front wall, their hands clasped around the truncheons hanging from their belts as if they were expecting the customers to turn violent. Betty gripped Megan’s hand briefly to give her courage, turned her back to them and looked to the counter.

  Rodney’s, along with every other shop in Tonypandy barring two, had been targeted by the incensed crowd on the night of the worst riot. The mob had only by-passed the chemist’s owned by Willie Llewellyn, an ex-Welsh rugby international and local hero, and a pawnbroker who’d had the courage – or insanity – to fire a pistol in the air when they reached his door.

  In comparison with some of the neighbouring businesses, the shop had suffered lightly. The mahogany counter that ran the full length of the back wall had been scarred by hobnailed boots, the glass cake case reduced to a metal frame, the marble cheese and butter slabs cracked, but most of the other shop fittings remained intact. And despite losing three-quarters of her goods to the looters and having to pay a carpenter to board her windows and doors until replacements could be made, Connie Rodney didn’t bear a grudge against her customers. She couldn’t afford to. Even if she put her business on the market, no one would buy it, leastways, not until the strike was settled and the miners started making wages again. So, like the other tradesmen in Dunraven and De Winter Streets, she’d ordered as much replacement stock as her suppliers would credit her with, which judging by her shelves, wasn’t much, and opened for business.

  ‘Half your usual weekly staples, same as last week?’ Connie asked Megan when it was her turn to be served. Connie had stopped selling luxuries like jam, cheese, butter, tinned goods, sugar and dried fruit during the first week of the strike. Now that it was heading into the third month, some housewives were even dropping margarine, flour and potatoes from their shopping lists. Fires were needed to boil potatoes and bake bread, and without the rations of coal that were part of a miner’s wage, there was no fuel.

  ‘No, thank you, Mrs Rodney.’ Megan lifted her empty basket on to the counter. ‘My uncle has asked me to buy what we need on a daily basis from now on.’

  ‘Well, we’re open six days a week.’ Connie gave her a rare smile.

  With her long red-gold hair tied back from her scrubbed freckled face and her bright green eyes, nineteen-year-old Megan Williams was an exceptionally pretty girl and Victor Evans also happened to be Connie’s favourite cousin.

  Megan pulled a scrap of paper from her pocket and glanced at it. ‘I’ll have your smallest scrag end of lamb, ten pounds of potatoes, a quarter of tea and three loaves of bread, please.’

  ‘Would that be strikers’ loaves?’ Annie O’Leary, Connie’s tall, spare, Irish assistant asked drily. The atmosphere instantly lightened as the women waiting their turn to be served burst into laughter despite the police presence. When the miners had withdrawn their labour, a local baker had produced a half-size ‘strikers’ loaf aimed at his newly impoverished customers, only to have his cart overturned and the contents vanish into the crowd, which dissipated as quickly as his bread. Even more mysteriously, his deliveryman failed to recognize a single person in the mob.

  ‘The boy could deliver the goods for you, Megan. We’ll be sending the cart out in an hour.’ Connie handed Megan’s basket to one of her assistants and sent him to weigh the potatoes from the sacks ranged against the wall below the counter.

  ‘I’ll take them with me. My uncle and his brothers will want their tea when they get home.’ Megan took her purse from her pocket and lowered her voice. ‘My uncle also asked me to settle up with you, Mrs Rodney. He doesn’t want to put our goods on the slate any more while he only draws strike pay from the union.’

  Connie was surprised but relieved. The colliers who were members of the union, unfortunately only slightly more than half of her customers, drew strike pay of ten shillings a week plus a shilling for each child. Larger families, who hadn’t found it easy to live on thirty-five shillings a week before the colliery companies had cut wages, were finding life during the strike desperate. And workers who weren’t members of a union had been left destitute. No striker’s family could afford to pay rent. At an average of ten shillings a week it would have left nothing for food. As it was, more and more of her customers were coming in every day asking for their credit to be extended until the strike was called off because they had come to the end of their savings.

  An ardent Catholic, Connie had gone to mass and confession three times a week, but since the strike she had taken to walking the short distance to the Catholic Church every morning to pray for an end to the dispute before her own savings and credit with her suppliers ran out.

  She pulled a massive leather-bound ledger towards her, checked the account and added Megan’s purchases. ‘That will be seven shillings and sixpence three farthings.’ Anxious not to offend Betty, who was being served by Annie, or any of her other customers who weren’t in a position to settle their bill, Connie whispered. ‘Tell your uncle that I appreciate his paying cash for as long as he can.’

  ‘I’ll do that, Mrs Rodney. And thank you.’ Megan opened her purse, extracted three half crowns, a halfpenny and a farthing and handed them over. Taking her basket from the boy, she waited for Betty to finish placing her order, before making her way past the queue to the door. The police sergeant stepped in front of her. Megan glanced up, only to immediately look down again when he gazed coolly back at her. He was broad-shouldered, over six feet tall and there was a glint in his pale blue eyes that unnerved her. She was accustomed to living in a houseful of men but not one of them had ever made her feel as uneasy as this sergeant did. Struggling to lift her basket, she clutched her cloak around her, more to conceal than warm herself.

  ‘I’ve seen you before, haven’t I?’ The officer’s voice sounded rough, harsh in comparison to the soft Welsh lilt.

  ‘I don’t think so, sir,’ Megan whispered timidly.

  ‘You sure?’ he persisted.

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘You weren’t out with the men on the picket lines around the Glamorgan Colliery yesterday afternoon?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘Miss Williams was with me all yesterday aft
ernoon, officer,’ Betty lied coolly. ‘We were at the women’s knitting circle.’

  ‘And what was it that you were knitting, Mrs Morgan?’ the sergeant enquired.

  ‘Blankets for poor unfortunates, Sergeant Lamb.’

  ‘Why is it that I can never believe a word you say, Mrs Morgan?’ He turned his attention from Megan to Betty, just as the older woman had intended. Her husband, Ned Morgan, was a union official and Betty knew the authorities had marked her, along with all the members of the strike leaders’ families, as a potential troublemaker.

  The queue moved forward; Betty gave Megan a slight push. They sidestepped past the police and out of the door. A dozen officers had circled a crowd of collier boys on the pavement, three of Megan’s cousins among them. A constable Megan recognized as Gwyn Jenkins, a local man, and before the strike a friend of her uncle’s, was talking to them.

  ‘Come on now, boys, no one wants any trouble. I’m asking nicely. Leave here and go up the mountain. You never know, if you take your dogs you may even find a rabbit or two to take home to your mothers for the pot,’ Gwyn coaxed persuasively.

  ‘Haven’t you heard?’ one of the wags answered back. ‘The bunnies are on strike too. They won’t come out of their burrows.’

  ‘Then send the dogs down after them to draw blood.’ Gwyn looked from the boy to the officers beside him. ‘Please, do as you’ve been asked, son, and you have my word no one will get hurt.’

  The boys gazed impassively back. But just as Megan expected her eldest cousin to do something stupid, the boys turned and headed up the nearest hill.

  Betty took Megan’s arm. Daring to breathe again, they walked on. It was a freezing, damp, grey November day, but that hadn’t deterred a crowd of young men from playing football with a tin can on the only flattened area of mountainside high above the rows of terraced houses. Their whoops and shouts carried down towards them on the wind.

  ‘I’m glad someone can forget the strike, if only for a few hours,’ Betty said philosophically, as they crossed the road to avoid yet another group of police officers.

  ‘I wish I could.’

  ‘It must be hard on you, with your uncle not being able to pay your wages,’ Betty commiserated.

  ‘If it was up to me I’d be happy to carry on doing the housework and taking care of the family for my keep.’

  ‘Your what?’ Betty laughed.

  ‘What passes for keep these days,’ Megan amended. ‘But ever since I started working for him I’ve sent ten shillings a week home to my father.’

  ‘Your uncle pays you fifteen shillings a week, right?’

  ‘He did until the strike started. It’s the going rate for a housekeeper.’

  ‘It was,’ Betty nodded sagely, ‘but it seems to me that your father’s been getting a lot more than the going rate from a daughter. I used to count myself lucky to get ten shillings a month from my Annie when she was in service before she married.’

  ‘Things aren’t easy at home. It’s hard trying to make ends meet on a hill farm and aside from Mam and Dad I’ve two younger sisters and brothers. I don’t like to think of them suffering on my account. I know I should look for a paying job, but –’

  ‘They’re harder to find than gold in the valleys these days, especially for women,’ Betty observed.

  ‘And I’d hate to leave my uncle. Who’d look after his house and family if I didn’t?’

  ‘Now there’s a job.’ Betty pointed to a sign in the window of a large, square four-storey house on the corner of the street. They stopped and read the card propped inside the window:

  GIRL WANTED TO HELP WITH DOMESTIC WORK.

  MUST BE EXPERIENCED COOK, ABLE TO WASH,

  IRON AND DO GENERAL CLEANING WITHOUT

  SUPERVISION. ABOVE AVERAGE WAGES OFFERED TO AN EFFICIENT PERSON. APPLY WITHIN.

  ‘I’ve heard that Joyce Palmer is prepared to pay as much as a pound a week to the right girl.’

  ‘Really?’ Megan’s eyes rounded in wonder.

  ‘Not that I’ve spoken to Joyce myself,’ Betty added. ‘Well, not since the colliery company gave notice to all the miners in the lodging houses they owned and made them over to policemen. No decent woman would have stayed on to wait on them.’

  ‘Mrs Palmer had nowhere else to go.’ Megan repeated an observation Victor had made.

  ‘She could have found somewhere if she’d tried,’ Betty dismissed. ‘Mrs Payne in the Post Office told me that Joyce has taken one girl out of the workhouse to help her, but she’s found her a bit slow, and she’d rather not take on another. I can’t see any man in the town who sympathizes with the colliers’ grievances, let alone the colliers themselves, allowing any member of their family to wait on police or soldiers.’ Two officers headed towards them. ‘Come on, time we were on our way.’

  Megan gripped her basket and trudged on up the hill after Betty. Turning left, they greeted their neighbours again. Megan said goodbye to Betty and turned the key that was kept in the lock of her uncle’s house and opened the door. Goose pimples rose on her skin when she stopped in the hall to take off her cloak and hat, but she was afraid of staining her cloak if she tried to do housework wearing it.

  She carried her basket through to the kitchen, tied on her apron and filled the tin bowl in the sink ready to wash and peel the potatoes. The strike had made life cold, hungry and uncomfortable, but it had done little to change her routine. Her uncle and his brothers still rose at half past four in the morning, although they no longer had to be at the colliery gates before six in time to go down in the cage. But they didn’t linger in the house. In an effort to eke out the last coal ration they had received from the pit, she lit the kitchen stove for an hour in the morning so she could heat water for washing and tea and raked it out until three in the afternoon when it was time to cook the evening meal. She found it hard to do housework in the icy temperature but she didn’t doubt that her uncle and his brothers found it just as cold on the picket line.

  She poured the packet of tea she had bought into the empty caddy and fetched a swede, half a dozen turnips and a bunch of carrots that her uncle had brought down from his allotment the day before and put in the pantry. She wouldn’t have had to buy potatoes if theirs hadn’t been struck by blight. She unwrapped the lamb from the newspaper. It was a very small portion of meat for so many people but the first her uncle had allowed her to buy in two months. At least they would eat tonight. There were plenty in the town who wouldn’t.

  She’d put the lamb in a pan of cold water to soak and picked up a knife to start peeling the potatoes when she heard someone walk up the stone steps that led from the basement to the kitchen. There was a tap on the door, then it opened.

  Victor’s massive frame filled the doorway. He smiled and his teeth gleamed startlingly white against his blackened face and filthy clothes. He held up a bucketful of coal. ‘You can light the stove early. There’s plenty more where this came from, I’ve just emptied a couple of sacks into your coalhouse.’

  ‘You’ve been working in the drifts the strikers have opened up on the mountain!’

  His soft grey eyes sparkled in vivid contrast to his dirty face. His grin widened as he held his finger to his lips.

  ‘The police will arrest you –’

  ‘They have to catch me first, and even if they do, I’ll only get a fine. It’s worth risking that to warm a few houses. Mrs Richards in the colliery cottages off the square didn’t have scrap of coal and she has four under three years old.’

  ‘If you are fined, no one will be able to pay it and then you’ll be put in prison.’

  ‘I wasn’t caught, Megs.’ He called her by the nickname he had invented for her and no one else used.

  ‘This time,’ Megan murmured fearfully.

  ‘Love you.’

  ‘You always say that whenever I’m cross with you.’

  ‘Because it’s the only thing that calms you down, Megs. Seeing as how I’m covered in coal dust I may as well light the stove for you.
And if you lay newspaper on the floor I won’t dirty your nice clean flagstones.’

  Megan opened the cupboard in the alcove next to the stove where she kept old newspapers and sticks for the fire. She picked up a copy of the Rhondda Leader from the top of the pile and spread its pages in layers from the basement door to the hearth.

  ‘You didn’t go down to Porth to wait for the verdict on the inquest with your father?’

  ‘I had more important things to do.’ Victor raked out the remains of the small fire she had doused that morning, laid balls of newspaper over the iron fire basket, balanced sticks on them and arranged the half-burnt coals together with lumps of fresh coal on top.

  ‘Like supply half of Tonypandy with coal?’ she suggested.

  ‘I only wish I could.’ He brushed his light brown hair from his eyes, griming it even more. ‘Your family and mine are lucky, Megs. Strike pay may not be enough to live on but at least we’re getting some money. The men with the most children and the lowest wages couldn’t afford to pay union dues, and now the pits are closed they can’t work either. I can’t sit back and watch them freeze and starve to death.’

  ‘You and the others who are risking prosecution won’t get enough coal out of the drifts to keep every kitchen stove burning in Pandy, no more than you can feed everyone in the town from what you grow in your garden.’

  ‘No, but I can do my bit.’ He struck a match, lit a newspaper spill the children had made and blew on it before touching the balls of paper at the bottom of the fire. They caught immediately, sending spirals of grey smoke curling up the chimney. ‘There, you can start cooking that cawl you’re making.’

  She folded the rest of the newspapers she was holding back into the cupboard and closed the door. ‘If you weren’t so dirty I would hug you.’

  ‘If there’s no one else in the house you could give me a kiss.’ His smile broadened in anticipation.

  She stooped over him and when their lips met he couldn’t resist cupping her face in his hands. As always, she warmed to his touch, instinctively leaning against him. The front door banged and they sprang apart.