Pontypridd 05 - Such Sweet Sorrow

by Catrin Collier

  ‘Dad!’

  He woke with a start to find Jenny shaking his shoulder. She was wearing a cotton nightgown that was too thin for the time of year. Then it came again, that loud sharp ring.

  ‘Do you want me to open up the shop?’

  Totally disorientated, he looked around and realised he’d slept in the living room. He glanced at the clock on the mantelpiece. Five-thirty. The shop should have been opened for the early-shift miners half an hour ago. He tried to move and realised he was still dressed. ‘No, you go back to bed, love, I’ll see to it.’

  ‘You sure, Dad?’

  He was already on his way down the stairs, the walls swaying precariously around him courtesy of the brandy that still flowed in his veins. His head hurt, his mouth felt as though he’d been eating sawdust laced with mould, and his body was ten times larger and clumsier than it had been the night before. ‘Coming!’ he shouted angrily, as he opened the door that led into the shop. Pulling up the blind, he thrust back the bolts on the shop door.

  ‘Heavy night?’ Mr Richards enquired sarcastically.

  ‘Late night,’ Harry bit back. ‘Usual?’

  ‘Five Woodbines, on the slate.’ The shop filled quickly. Men jostled in front of the counter complaining in loud voices at the shop being opened late. Harry served them as quickly as he could, but he was glad when Jenny appeared twenty minutes later, washed, dressed, her hair neatly arranged and looking one hundred per cent better than he felt. As the door closed behind the last of the early-shift customers, she stood back and studied her father.

  ‘If I were you I’d go upstairs, shave, wash and change. Mam will have forty fits if she sees you looking like that. And you’d better hide that suit in my room. I’ll sponge and press it before putting it back in your wardrobe. Pity I can’t do anything about the bloodshot eyes.’

  ‘I look that bad?’

  ‘Worse. When you come down I’ll go up and make breakfast.’

  ‘You’re a good daughter, Jenny.’

  ‘Flattering me won’t make you look human. Now go upstairs, before Mam gets up.’

  Harry tackled the living room first. Feeling very sorry for himself he eyed the pitiful remains in the brandy bottle. He had hit it hard last night. From half-full to barely registering a level. If his wife knew how much he’d drunk in one sitting there’d be hell to pay. He debated whether to top it up with water but decided there wasn’t enough left to colour another inch. It wasn’t until he pushed the bottle to the back of the cupboard and picked up the glass he’d used that he remembered his ultimatum to his wife. It said something for his state of mind last night that he hadn’t even thought of trying the door to her bedroom.

  He went into the kitchen and soaked the tumbler in cold water before lighting the gas and putting the kettle on to boil for tea and shaving water. The bleak routine of the domestic chores depressed him even more. It was as though the vengeful God of the chapels had sentenced him to interminable purgatory for his sins – life with a woman he loathed – without hope of remission or pardon.

  After all his grandiose plans of yesterday, nothing had changed. He couldn’t bear the idea of carrying on as he was, but seeing Megan had finally convinced him that too much had happened for them to plan a life together. What could he do? Join up like his son-in-law to escape his problems? Would they want a man of his age? He went into the cheerless box room and fetched his shaving tackle. Pouring warm water into a bowl he lathered his chin. It was so unfair. He only had one life, and he was doomed to spend it in grief and heartache without even the glimmer of a better horizon around the corner.

  ‘Where’s Annie?’

  ‘I gave her the afternoon off.’

  ‘Rachel?’

  ‘Down for her afternoon nap. We have at least an hour before she stirs.’ Bethan slid the coffee she had brought Andrew on to his bedside table and lay on the bed next to him. He reached out to her, his bare skin warm from sleep, his arms strong as they imprisoned her in a grip she knew from experience she had no chance of escaping until he chose to release her.

  ‘Then how about you undress and join me here?’

  ‘To make the most of every moment we’ve got left?’

  He looked in her eyes and saw that she knew. ‘I’m sorry, I should have told you when I came home this morning. But Rachel was crying, and –’

  ‘And you were tired and you wanted to put it off. It doesn’t matter.’

  ‘Yes it does. Who told you?’

  ‘Laura, she telephoned to invite us down on Friday night. She thought we’d want to keep the weekend for you to say goodbye to your family.’

  ‘Beth …’

  ‘It doesn’t matter, darling, really. It’s strange, this is the one thing I’ve been dreading since war broke out. Now it’s actually happened all I feel is relief that the waiting and uncertainty is over.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Let’s not talk about being sorry.’ She reached up and unclipped the hook at the neck of her dress. ‘Let’s pretend we’ve all the time in the world.’

  He pulled the pin from her long hair, burying his face in its scented depths as it cascaded over her shoulders. ‘I’d like to try. Do you think it’s possible to make one hour last a lifetime?’

  ‘Mam hasn’t stirred all day. She always has dinner on the table by now.’ Jenny looked to her father, who was weighing sugar into small bags for the weekly rations. The goods weren’t usually made up until Thursday night, ready for Friday delivery, but he was trying to keep himself busy. Anything rather than think.

  ‘I knocked on her door with tea this morning. She wouldn’t answer.’

  ‘Perhaps she’s ill.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ he answered in a tone that said he didn’t care.

  ‘I think I should check, don’t you?’

  ‘If you want,’ he answered, half hoping that his prayers had been answered and his wife had packed her bags and left.

  Jenny ran up the stairs. He heard her knocking at his wife’s bedroom door, just as Mrs Richards, the nosiest busybody on the Graig, walked in. Mrs Richards had the shortest weekly goods list of any of his customers, not that the Richards consumed less food than other families but because she made a point of running out of something essential practically every morning. It gave her an excuse to walk down to the shop and glean as much gossip as she could along the way. She had a better reputation than the Pontypridd Observer for accumulating and disseminating news.

  ‘Heard about Wyn the queer?’ she asked as she plonked her basket on the counter.

  ‘I saw Wyn Rees being taken to hospital after he’d been knocked down by a van in Taff Street last night, if that’s what you mean.’

  ‘You were there? Then you know Diana Powell was with him?’

  ‘She does work for him,’ Harry said firmly, hoping to discourage her. ‘Have you a list?’

  ‘A tin of blacklead. I saw Andrew John bring Diana home in his car this morning. By the look of her, she’d been out all night.’

  ‘Chances are if Dr John brought her home, she’d been in the Cottage Hospital all night.’

  ‘She looked all right to me.’

  ‘She didn’t when I saw her lying in the road.’

  ‘I just saw Dai Station’s wife by the post office. He was there when it happened. According to him Wyn Rees was a right mess. His legs were all mangled. He may never walk again …’

  ‘Dai should know.’ Harry slammed a tin of blacklead on the counter and reached for the red book where he recorded the credit purchases. ‘He was in the van that knocked Wyn down.’

  ‘Oooh, Dai’s wife didn’t tell me that.’

  ‘Will there be anything else?’ Jenny’s knocking upstairs was growing louder, more insistent, then he heard her try to open the door. It rattled, but there was no sound of hinges creaking.

  Mrs Richards consulted her list. ‘A quarter of a pound of suet, and half a pound of washing soda. Problems upstairs?’

  ‘Sticking door.’ As he spok
e the air was filled with the sound of wood splintering.

  ‘Shouldn’t you go and see to it?’

  ‘Jenny can cope. I’ll help her when I’ve finished serving you.’

  ‘It’s a long list.’ Mrs Richards smiled insincerely.

  ‘Shall we continue, then?’

  ‘Now let me see, blacklead, suet, washing soda –’

  ‘Dad!’

  ‘In a minute, Jenny.’

  ‘I think you should come right now.’

  ‘I can wait,’ Mrs Richards assured him. He didn’t hear her; he was already halfway up the stairs.

  *……*……*

  ‘Snap time.’

  Yesterday Alexander had been horrified at the thought of eating sandwiches with grimy unwashed hands. Today he was glad of the opportunity to sink on his haunches and rest his back against the coal face. Silence, blissful and edifying, lapped around him as picks and shovels were dropped to the ground.

  ‘How are your hands, Alexander?’ Evan asked.

  ‘Stiff and dead.’

  ‘That’s good,’ Luke congratulated him chirpily.

  ‘How are you doing?’ Evan smiled at the boy.

  ‘Working underground has its advantages.’

  ‘I can’t think of any,’ Alexander countered.

  ‘You’re not bothered by the weather. It gets pretty cold and wet in the fields at this time of year.’

  ‘As opposed to dusty, dark and damp.’

  ‘There’s no wind.’

  ‘Just the sound of scurrying rats whenever the work stops.’

  ‘You get them everywhere. I always think of their scampering as a friendly sound. At least you know you’re not alone.’

  ‘I believe that if you were put in jail you’d find something good to say about the place,’ Alexander grumbled.

  ‘You’d probably get three square meals a day.’

  ‘See what I mean?’ Alexander leaned back and opened his snap tin.

  ‘Seems to me we could all do with a little of his contentment.’ Evan bit down on a beef-heart sandwich, grimacing as his teeth crunched on coal that had fallen on the bread from his helmet.

  ‘That’s not contentment, that’s love.’

  ‘Love? You’ve left a girl behind?’ Evan asked.

  ‘No, he’s found one here.’

  ‘But you two boys only went out in Pontypridd for the first time last night.’

  ‘That’s all it took.’

  Evan looked at Luke in a new light. ‘Do I know her?’

  ‘It’s nothing really, just one of the girls who works in the café, she was being friendly …’

  ‘The Ronconi girls?’

  ‘They were on the scene of the accident minutes after it happened. As it really upset them Luke and I helped to lock up the café and walked them up the hill afterwards. And that’s when Luke did his very best to make the younger one feel better.’

  ‘Gina,’ Evan breathed in relief. The last thing he wanted was gossip some busybody felt they had to write to William about.

  ‘I think the lad’s really smitten.’ Alexander rose to his feet and brushed the crumbs off his filthy trousers, before reaching for his bottle of cold tea. ‘I almost heard the violins playing in the background.’

  Harry could hear Jenny talking to him, could see her lips moving, but his brain failed to grasp the significance of a single word she said. Through the chink between the door and the jamb he could see his wife’s feet clad in the silk stockings and high heels she insisted on wearing, even around the house.

  Whatever else, he had never been able to accuse her of ‘letting herself go’. Twenty-two years of marriage and he had never seen his wife without make-up, or with her hair in curlers or her stockings rolled down around her ankles like some of the other women on the Graig. But neither had he seen her with her skirt hitched up as high as it was now.

  ‘Dad!’

  He continued to stare vacantly at Jenny.

  ‘She must have fallen behind the door. Shall I get help?’

  He nodded dumbly. He could push the door open, it wouldn’t be difficult, but he didn’t want Jenny there to witness it. He wasn’t sure what his wife had done, but he had a feeling that whatever it was, she’d intended it to be a punishment for his eyes only.

  ‘Mr Griffiths. Coo-ee, Mr Griffiths, is everything all right up there?’

  ‘It’s Mrs Richards, keep her in the shop,’ he ordered Jenny, thinking clearly for the first time since he’d climbed the stairs. ‘Then go next door …’

  ‘The pub?’ Jenny asked, horrified at the thought of her father actually telling her to go into a public house when no decent woman would dream of stepping over the doorstep of one.

  ‘Ask to borrow their telephone. Get the doctor. Quick as you can now, girl.’

  When she was halfway down the stairs he gave the door an almighty push. The key clattered noisily to the floor. He pushed again. There was a crash of falling furniture and a scraping of wooden feet over lino, but he succeeded in creating a gap wide enough for him to squeeze his way into the room.

  His wife was lying on the floor in a pool of congealing blood. He bent down and picked up her wrist. It was limp but warm, and he could feel a pulse: weak, but definitely there. He stepped over her body and crouched between her and the bed. There was blood around her head but he couldn’t see where it was coming from. Gently, very gently he lifted her head. Then he saw it – a jagged piece of crystal stuck in the side of her neck. Forgetting everything he’d been taught in the St John’s basic first-aid class, he closed his fingers over it and tugged. A warm tide of blood gushed out over his hands. He panicked, pressing on the wound, desperately trying to stem the flow. He must have cried out without being aware of it, because Jenny came running back up the stairs, Mrs Richards hot on her heels.

  Jenny halted in the doorway, staring at her mother lying, red-lipped and blue-faced, in her father’s lap.

  ‘I killed her, Jenny,’ Harry whispered. ‘I didn’t mean to, but so help me God, I killed her.’

  Mrs Richards didn’t wait another moment. Charging back down the stairs she ran through the shop and into the street. She saw Huw Griffiths just starting on his afternoon changeover shift from nights to mornings. It was the best and biggest piece of gossip she had ever been privilege to, and she made the most of her moment. Waving her hands in the air, she shouted ‘Murder!’ at the top of her voice and didn’t stop until Huw crossed the road to meet her.

  As the telephone rang in the hall, Bethan burrowed her head down on to Andrew’s shoulder.

  ‘I should answer it.’

  ‘Your father promised us a few days.’

  ‘It could be important.’

  ‘What could be more important than this?’

  ‘Laura’s baby getting colic, Diana suffering from delayed shock, a mining accident …’

  ‘You win.’ She reluctantly disentangled her arm from around his waist, allowing him to reach for his silk dressing gown. He left the bed and went downstairs. As he picked up the telephone receiver and silenced the bell she heard another sound, barely audible to anyone not attuned to it, but one she instantly recognised. A series of quiet whimpers that preceded Rachel’s wakeup cry by a few minutes. Leaving the warmth of the bed she went to the bathroom. She was sitting on the bed rolling on her stockings when Andrew dashed upstairs.

  ‘Harry Griffiths’ wife is seriously injured. Some kind of accident in the shop. They tried and failed to reach my father or Dr Evans, so I’m it.’

  ‘Could you take Rachel and me down the hill with you as far as Graig Avenue?’

  ‘If you don’t delay me.’ He pulled on his socks and reached for his shirt.

  ‘We’re ready.’ Bethan picked up Rachel, and the bag of clean nappies and other necessities she left packed at all times in preparation for her next trip to her father’s house.

  ‘Better warn your father when he comes home. Jenny might need help. Perhaps Megan could stay with her.’

  �
��I’m her sister-in-law.’

  ‘You have Rachel to look after, and this might be an overnight job, or even longer. I spoke to Huw Davies. Apparently Harry is rambling about killing her.’

  ‘Killing her!’

  ‘Wouldn’t you kill a wife like Harry’s if you had one?’ He kissed her on the cheek. ‘Come on, let’s go.’

  A young constable was standing guard outside the door to Griffiths’ shop when Andrew pulled up. He was doing his best to keep the crowd pressing around the window at bay, although there was little point in the exercise. Even if he’d allowed them to draw closer there was nothing for them to see because the blackout blinds had been pulled down over every window. The constable looked at the car and the bag Andrew lifted out.

  ‘You the doctor, sir?’

  Andrew was tempted to make a witty observation on the young officer’s powers of detection but thought better of it. ‘I am. I take it the patient’s inside?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’ He opened the door to the shop, closing it again as soon as Andrew stepped through it.

  A light shone beyond the doorway that separated shop from living quarters. Andrew could hear voices upstairs. He followed the sound and found himself in a room crammed with heavy, old-fashioned furniture. Jenny was sitting on a sofa with the landlady of the Morning Star, a bottle of brandy and a glass on the table beside them.

  The landlady glanced up at Andrew. ‘In the bedroom,’ she mouthed, nodding to the back of the house. Andrew walked down the landing, finding it peculiar to be in rooms lit by electricity in the middle of the afternoon. The door to the bedroom facing him was hanging off its hinges. He walked around it.

  Harry Griffiths was sitting slumped forward on a double bed. Huw Davies stood next to him, the sergeant, notebook in hand, was sitting in a Lloyd Loom chair on the other side of the room, and lying on the floor at their feet was the body of Harry’s wife.

  Andrew didn’t need to feel for a pulse to pronounce her dead, but he crouched down and went through the motions all the same.

  ‘She been dead long, Dr John?’ the sergeant asked.

  ‘Difficult to say. Her temperature’s higher than the room, but not by much.’