MAGGIE’S BOY
Beryl Kingston
To Victims Everywhere
Contents
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
A Note on the Author
Prologue
June 1984
Morgan Griffiths was the first to hear the explosion. He was half way along the tunnel, with his two cousins just ahead of him, trudging back from the coal face, stooping to protect his head and shoulders against the low roof. The sudden, sharp crack stopped him in mid-stride. Duw! Quick! The pit props!
Sweating faces gleamed out of the darkness. Then he saw the roof bulge.
‘Run!’ he yelled. ‘Run boys!’
Dai was already on the move, hurtling forward, but Hywell was frozen with fear and shock.
No time for thought. Nothing but terror, instinct, action. Morgan punched his cousin in the small of his back before he knew what he was doing. Hywell was running, his body filling the space between tunnel side and falling earth. The entire roof was caving in. No way forward. Duwydd mawr! No way forward! Back! Back! Weight stunned his arm and shoulder, one hand stinging as he struggled to extricate himself. The roar of the fall grew louder and louder. Dust filled his mouth and pushed into his eyes. He had no sense of what he was doing as he stumbled backwards, fell into puddles on the tunnel floor, scrambled up even before he stopped falling, ran and ran, back along the tunnel.
It was over in seconds. The roof was down, the last piece of debris rattled to a halt, the last echo gone. There was only dust and silence and darkness.
Morgan lay where he’d fallen and struggled for breath. He knew he was injured – because he could feel blood running down his arm – and he knew he was trapped and on his own, but there was nothing he could do for the moment. Not until he stopped shaking. This is shock, he thought, recognising the symptoms. I must keep calm or I shall make it worse.
He was surprised at the absence of pain, except for a dull ache in his chest. But the darkness pressed in upon him in a terrifying way. He could feel the weight of it bearing down from all sides, closing him in as if he was in a tomb. A tomb! Duwydd mawr!
No, he told himself. Don’t think of that. Be practical. Take it step by step. Think of what Granddad would say, ‘Go with it, boy. Don’t force it. Nothin’ ever comes of forcin’ things. Go with it and wait for the moment. There’s always a right moment. That’s the art of livin’, boy, findin’ the right moment.’
Wait. That was it. Wait for a bit of strength to come back. There’s no rush. I could be here for quite a time. There was no way of knowing how long. It all depended on the state of the roof further along the tunnel. There was no sign of collapse when we made our inspection, but that was a couple of hours ago, and a fall like this could have weakened the pit props further along the tunnel in either direction. The mine had been out of action for nearly twelve weeks because of the strike, and mines deteriorate quickly when they aren’t being worked. There was already too much water in this one, and the air was none too good.
Time passed and Morgan stopped shaking. The dust had cleared enough for him to inspect the roof. He got up and walked carefully back to the fall. There were new cracks in the props but nothing was moving. Lots of rubble, no way through the fallen pile, no hope of digging himself out. Still, Dai and Hywell should have got to the surface by now. The rescue teams would be on their way. All he had to do was be patient.
At the pit head, the crowds were gathering, anxious for news. A television crew had arrived, dispatched to pick up a human interest story, glad to leave their vigil at the gate of the steelworks where they’d been filming the picket line for far too long.
Its reporter had already gleaned most of the necessary details. Morgan Griffiths, aged twenty four, born in Port Talbot, six years in the pit at Blaenhydyglyn, working alongside his two cousins, one of a family of seven, mother, three sisters (two married), one brother (still at school), father a steel worker. Grandson of a man who’d been a legend in the pit.
‘That’s the one you want to talk to,’ a woman told him. ‘Over there, see. Woman in the green cardigan, next to the three girls with red hair. She’s his mam. Grace Griffiths.’
‘Who are the redheads?’
‘His sisters.’
The reporter, who had learned not to be sensitive about other people’s distress, took the crew across at once.
‘I believe you’re his mother.’
Grace Griffiths’ face was strained with worry but she answered him politely. ‘Yes. That’s right.’
‘Would you mind telling me something about him, Mrs Griffiths?’
‘What sort a’ things?’
‘Well. What he’s like.’
‘He’s a good man,’ Grace said. ‘A very good man. Kind. Quiet. He was always quiet, even as a little boy. Quiet and thoughtful.’
‘Strong silent type,’ another woman confirmed. ‘He don’t say much.’
‘One of the best,’ a young miner said. ‘Do anything for you he would. You can depend on him. You only got to look at him to see that.’
‘What does he look like?’
How can I answer that? Grace thought, when I’ve seen him in so many different ways and I don’t know whether I’m ever going to see him alive again. That young feller’s right. He looks dependable. Solid and dependable, as if he’s been carved from a rock, or hacked from the coal seam. Apart from that what else could she say? Walking out of the pit – oh please God let him walk out of the pit – blackened and depersonalised by coal dust, he looks like any other miner. Out in the village, when he’s clean and clothed, he’s a man to notice. She closed her eyes in the anguish of waiting and being pestered by questions, and saw him clearly: five foot nine tall, broad shoulders, square, scarred hands, big feet, strong craggy face smiling at her under that untidy thatch of thick red-gold hair. Dear Morgan.
Other voices were offering information. ‘He’s a big bloke, sort a’ chunky.’ ‘Always helpin’ people.’ ‘Patient.’ ‘A good worker.’
‘Is there anything else you can tell me, Mrs Griffiths?’ the reporter prompted.
‘Yes,’ Grace said, bitterly. ‘He don’t deserve to be buried alive.’
Down in the pit, there was no sound yet beyond the roof fall. The ache in Morgan’s shoulder was deepening into pain. He checked his watch and realised that he had been squatting in the darkness for more than an hour. They’re taking a long time, he thought. The fall must be worse on the other side. Or Dai and Hywell didn’t get through.
He tried to stand up, conscious that he ought to make his second inspection. But the pain in his back and shoulder was so much worse when he moved that he gave up the effort and rema
ined where he was. He tried to ease his spine into a more comfortable position, but it didn’t help and, as he was shifting, his lamp went out.
It was a horrible moment. The darkness was total. Fear clutched at him with rough fingers, making him imagine all the wrong things – that he could be here too long, that all his air could be used up, that there could be fire-damp in the tunnel, that he might never get out.
Think of something else, quick, he told himself. Something pleasant. But what? What? And he thought about Bubbles.
He could see her face evolving against the darkness, heart-shaped and surrounded by blonde curls, watching itself in a mirror. Then the rest of her appeared, sitting at the dressing table in her bra and pants, applying the second layer of mascara to her eyelashes. Bubbles, the girl he’d lived with for the last eighteen months, the girl he loved.
But before the image faded, Morgan knew it was a false one. I don’t love her, he thought. I’ve never loved her really. Not the way Dad loves Mam. Not the way it ought to be. I just wanted to go to bed with her. That’s all. It was shaming to have to face such a truth, but it was possible, down here, in the darkness, on his own. Bubbles is gorgeous but we won’t be getting married. She’s not really interested in me any more than I’m interested in her. Apart from sex, we’re not giving anything to one another. We’re not involved and I want to be involved.
Dear God, he prayed, let me get out of here. Don’t let me die. Not yet. I got too much living to do. I want to be married like Dad, to bring up a family, to see more of the world than just the inside of a pit.
It was growing very hot in the tunnel and Morgan was finding it hard to stay conscious. Mustn’t fall asleep, he thought drowsily. Better sit up. What if I…? But the pain pulled him down and down, from one nightmare into another.
He was in a car with Dai and Hywell, driving to the coking plant at Orgreave, and he’d been stopped by a police sergeant.
‘Where’re you from?’ the sergeant said, filling the window with his red face and bulky shoulders.
He answered, giving the Welsh name the full dignity of its lyrical pronunciation. ‘Blaenhydyglyn.’
‘Where the hell’s that?’
‘Near Port Talbot.’
‘Bloody South Wales.’
‘South Wales, yes.’
‘Well you can just fuck off out of it,’ the sergeant said. ‘We don’t want any Wogs or Gippoes or South Wales miners on our patch.’
He felt assaulted and full of anger, but he knew he couldn’t fight back. Because of the road blocks? Or the roof falling? Or was it the horses?
Another wave of pain swept him away from thought, holding him in a vice. When it eased, the police were marching towards him, like a great blue army, standing in line in their bulky riot gear, truncheons in hand, bright blue helmets glinting in the sunshine, long plastic shields held together in a glittering wall. And the wall was parting to let the horses through. There was something practised and deliberate about it, but his mind wouldn’t function efficiently enough to tell him what it was. The horses reminded him of something else too – charging into the pickets, chestnut rumps steaming and straining, with their riders brandishing truncheons. Something from the cinema. The seventh cavalry charging the Indians. That was it. Only he was one of the Indians. He was one of the Indians and he was going to get hurt.
The pain returned, wrenching his bones. ‘Myn uffern!’ he groaned. I can’t stand much more of this. ‘Somebody make it stop!’
Voices called his name. ‘Morgan! Where are you, man?’
He tried to rouse himself but he was disorientated – by foul air, bad dreams, heat and the blaze of lights bobbing towards him out of the darkness. A familiar face was approaching. Or was that a dream too? ‘Granddad?’ he called. It couldn’t be Granddad, not down the pit. He’d been retired for years. But it was him. Thank God. Thank God. ‘Granddad! By y’ere.’
‘We’re here boy,’ Granddad Griffiths called back. ‘We got you. You’re all right. Lie still. We got the doctor to see you.’
They carried him out of the pit on a stretcher. Out to the good clean air, the beautiful colours of the mountainside and the sky.
He was puzzled by the size of the crowd waiting at the pit head. What were they all doing there? Then he saw Mam and his sisters, running towards him and held out his good hand towards them. No sign of Bubbles, but that wasn’t a surprise. A reporter was at his elbow, buzzing with questions, but the morphine he’d been given was making him so drowsy he wasn’t sure he could answer.
‘I been talking to Dai Griffiths,’ the reporter said. ‘He says you’re a hero. Risked your life to save his brother. Is that true?’
Was it true? Was he a hero? He couldn’t remember. Everything had happened too quickly and instinctively to be heroic. ‘I gave him a shove, like,’ he said.
The answer delighted the reporter. And so did the picture Morgan was making, his blackened face silhouetted against the summer green of the mountainside, lying on the stretcher, bloodstained and weary, in his pit boots and filthy overalls, grimed by coal dust. The only things about him that were clean were his eyes and they were clear, sky blue and honest. He was the very image of the struggling miner – noble, invincible, suffering. It was just the sort of picture his producer would love.
But although nobody knew it then, except the doctor, Morgan would never work in the pit again.
Other people were being filmed too on that sunny, summer weekend in 1984.
In Hampton-on-Sea, on the South coast, Alison and Rigby Toan were facing the television camera. They were the two hundred and fiftieth couple to hold their wedding reception at the Royal Maritime Hotel and the local television station thought their wedding would make a nice fill-in for the regional news.
The Maritime was a splendid-looking place, built in Georgian times and always painted a dazzling white. It was set at an angle to the beach and stood well back from the promenade with a wide lawn to protect it from trippers and a long carriage drive to impress visitors and provide parking space for their cars. It was the perfect setting for a television feature on a wedding.
‘Give her a kiss!’ the camera man called to the groom.
Rigby Toan needed no encouragement. He already had his arm round his bride’s waist. He pulled her towards him at once and kissed her passionately for a long time, enjoying the sensations he was rousing – her mouth soft and warm, her nipples hardening. My luscious Ali!
As they kissed the sun flooded through the clouds and shone straight down on to their heads so that they were shimmering with gold. It was the most romantic thing Elsie Wareham had ever seen.
‘Don’t they look a picture!’ she breathed.
She was so proud of her daughter, especially today. Dear Alison! She was like a vision from another world in her beautiful fairy-tale dress, all pretty curves and charming blushes, her long dark hair curled over her shoulders and her green eyes clear and loving. Rigby was handsome too, dapper in a cream tuxedo, with a white shirt to set off his tan, a red rose in his button hole to match his bride’s red and white bouquet, his moustache neady trimmed for the occasion and his fair hair bushed like a lion’s mane around his face. They were going to look really gorgeous on the local news.
‘Can we have you walking into the hotel,’ the producer said.
The guests eddied forward, Rigg’s, mother prominent among them in a mink stole and splendid pearls. She was well over fifty – fifty seven, to be exact, because she’d been thirty when Rigg was born – but she didn’t look it. She looked like royalty and she was the first to greet the newly married pair.
I’ll bet those are kid gloves, Alison thought, as the cream-encased hands patted Rigg’s cheek. The picture hat’s from Harrods, she decided, looking at her mother-in-law’s silvery fair hair, and so are the pearls. They shriek money. Then she was ashamed of herself for feeling envious. There was no need for that, not now she and Rigg were married, for in a few years’ time they would be millionaires too. Rigg was
quite sure about it. The trouble was, Margaret Toan’s wealthy elegance always made her daughter-in-law feel gauche. Even today, dressed in all her wedding finery, Alison was conscious that she was too tall and too plump, that her teeth were crooked – that she wasn’t a patch on either of the good-looking Toans.
But then her brother Mark stepped forward to kiss the bride and balance was restored.
‘You look a treat, kid,’ he said.
He’s such a lovely brother, Alison thought, kissing him back, and so like Dad. Except that Dad had been stocky and stolid and dependable and Mark was tall and rangy and impulsive. But he had the same air about him, the same smile and the same quick, protective temper, and he made her feel loved and cherished exactly as Dad had done. Dear Mark.
‘Have you seen your friend Brad?’ Mark said, his voice full of laughter. ‘She’s pulled out all the stops today. What does she look like?’
‘Your-friend-Brad’ was standing by the bar; a Technicolour vision in a black mini skirt, spangled purple jacket and every piece of gold jewellery she possessed. There was a hat like an inverted flower pot wedged into her butter-yellow hair, decorated with an assortment of bright pink and blue flowers and trailing net, and she was smiling hugely, her lips a splendid vermilion and her eyelids sea green. In short, she looked exactly the way Alison expected her to – except that she wasn’t smoking. They grinned at one another across the room and Brad mimed a kiss. Good old Brad.
‘Say “cheese”,’ the camera man instructed. ‘One last shot.’
It was easy for Alison to smile, for Mum was coming up to kiss her, and after Mum, her older brother Greg and his wife Susan, and her younger brother Andy and his wife Clare.
The foyer was crowded now. Alison and Rigg shook hands and kissed cheeks, as trays full of glasses clinked by and muzak meandered from the plush red walls and the ‘last shot’ went on and on. There were people everywhere, kissing the air alongside one another’s cheeks, slapping backs and booming bonhomie. Now and then, Alison caught snippets of passing conversations; somebody admiring the ‘dear little bridesmaids’, Brad advising a friend to ‘thump him in the kisser’, a woman’s voice saying, ‘not actually the sort of wife I imagined for Maggie’s boy’, in such a disparaging tone that Alison was momentarily hurt – until the next guest strode towards her, arms outstretched.
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