Winners and Losers

by Catrin Collier

  Lloyd gripped Victor’s right arm to stop him from thumping the man, and they returned to their table and their meals.

  ‘We have to go back to Tonypandy tomorrow. With luck, the pits will reopen in the next few days and we’re not expecting more than twenty-four hours’ notice to start work,’ Lloyd reminded his brother.

  ‘I have to find Megan,’ Victor insisted stubbornly. ‘She hadn’t recovered from her injuries. If she’s not being looked after, anything could happen to her. And I can’t bear the thought ...’ He turned his head, but not before Sali and Lloyd saw the torment in his eyes.

  ‘You’ll get Sunday off next week,’ Lloyd sympathized. ‘The trains run to Brecon, so we’ll borrow more money from Sali and I’ll go up there with you. We’ll both ask around. Someone might remember seeing her.’

  ‘One young girl among hundreds,’ Victor whispered despondently.

  ‘I’ll ask Mr Richards to send someone to Brecon to look for her. We’ll get copies of her photograph so he can show them to people,’ Sali suggested. ‘If she was there, Victor, someone is bound to have seen her.’

  Victor left the table, his meal scarcely touched. Lloyd laid his hand on Sali’s shoulder to stop her from going after him. ‘He needs time to himself. I suggest we finish our meal and go to bed. We have to be away by six o’clock tomorrow.’

  The following morning, Lloyd, Sali and Harry waited for Victor for five minutes before Lloyd went to his room to look for him. He returned with a note that had been left on his bed.

  Gone to Brecon. Expect me when you see me, Victor.

  ‘It’s the noise the inmates make, they never stop, day or night, it makes no difference. Someone is always screaming at the top of their voice but then you’ve found that out. And we’re miles from anywhere, so if you don’t live in and learn to put up with the racket, there’s no way you can get here to work here,’ a fellow maid, Judith, confided to Megan as they knelt side-by-side scrubbing the kitchen floor. ‘Took me years to get used to the din, but now I don’t even think about it.’

  ‘How long have you been here?’ Megan wouldn’t have liked to hazard a guess as to Judith’s age. With her cropped mousy grey hair and blousy figure, she could have been anything between a careworn thirty and a young-looking sixty.

  ‘Twenty years next month. It is September now, isn’t it?’

  ‘Twenty years!’ Megan gasped.

  ‘I came here from the orphanage when I was twelve. They needed a kitchen maid and the matron said I might do. I got promoted to full maid a year later.’

  ‘And you’ve never left?’

  ‘Where would I go?’ the woman asked. ‘I don’t know a soul outside of this place and the orphanage, and I was too old to stay there. It’s not so bad here, apart from the noise. The food’s good, the work’s not too hard and as I get full keep and my uniform, I save every penny of my wages. I get thirty pounds a year now, and that’s on top of the nest egg in my chest.’

  ‘You keep your money in your chest with your clothes, not in the Post Office?’ On arrival Megan had been given two maids’ uniforms, two yellow winceyette nightgowns, two towels and flannels, and a key to a lock-up chest, which served as chest of drawers, washstand and wardrobe rolled into one, and stood alongside her bed in the dormitory that housed five other maids.

  ‘I haven’t seen a Post Office since I left the orphanage. We used to walk past one when we were taken to chapel on Sundays, but then, I haven’t been to chapel since I’ve been here. There isn’t one for miles.’ Judith dipped her scrubbing brush into her bucket of soda crystals and hot water.

  ‘You must leave here sometime. On your days off.’ Megan leaned back. Her head and the half-healed injuries on her thighs and stomach ached unbearably, but as her fellow maid said, apart from the floors, the work wasn’t too hard, and they were only on duty for eight hours a day. Four hours less than she had worked in Mrs Palmer’s lodging house on the lightest working day.

  ‘We spend our days off in the part of the walled garden the inmates can’t get into. There’s no point in going anywhere else because there’s nothing around here. Come on, once we’ve finished this we can break for dinner. It’s my favourite today, beef stew, dumplings and apple crumble and custard.’

  Megan’s mouth went dry and her heart beat erratically. Would she be allowed outside the asylum on her day off? Even if they were in the middle of nowhere, if she walked for long enough, she’d surely see some sign of habitation and meet someone who could get a letter to Victor –that’s if she could find paper and pen to write one, and borrow enough money for a stamp to send it.

  Recalling her father disappearing into the waiting room on Cardiff station with one of the men who had brought her here, she had absolutely no doubt that her wages had already been paid in advance and she would never see a penny of it.

  ‘I thought I heard someone come in.’ Billy Evans limped into the kitchen to see Victor lighting the lamp Sali had bought to replace the one Jane had taken.

  ‘Sorry if I woke you.’ Victor turned up the wick and his father saw that his face was grey with exhaustion, his clothes filthy.

  ‘You didn’t,’ Billy lowered himself carefully into his chair. ‘I don’t sleep so well these days.’

  ‘Your leg?’

  ‘The part they took off hurts like hell. The doctor calls it ghost pain but it feels anything but ghostly to me.’ He glanced at the clock; it was two in the morning. ‘You came back with no time to spare. First shift back goes down the cage in four hours.’

  ‘I’ll be ready.’ Victor sat on the easy chair, pulled a chair out from under the table and propped his feet on it.

  ‘You must be starving.’

  ‘I’ve eaten today.’

  ‘Not much by the look of you.’ Even in six days Mr Evans could see a change in his son. Victor’s cheeks had sunk and his clothes were hanging on him. He doubted if he’d eaten a decent meal since they’d returned from the funeral to find Megan gone. ‘There’s no need to ask if you had any luck. I can see it in your face.’

  ‘No one I spoke to had seen anyone who looked like Megan.’

  ‘It took you five days to find out that?’

  ‘Brecon’s a fair-sized town and the county is enormous I’ve never seen so many bare, empty hills, or so few people and houses.’ Victor rested his head on the back of his chair and closed his eyes.

  ‘You couldn’t have gone everywhere.’

  ‘All I know is that I didn’t find her in Brecon town. But there are hundreds of remote farms in the county. She could be on anyone of them, miles from the nearest village and Post Office, with no means of contacting me. I walked around to a few near the town, but it was hopeless. There are places out there that people know about only because someone who works there walked into town to visit the market ten years ago.’

  ‘Lloyd and Sali were worried sick when you left the inn without a penny in your pocket.’ Billy pulled his pipe from his dressing-gown pocket and stared thoughtfully at it. ‘Sali wanted to go after you, but Lloyd pointed out that if you’d got a ride to the town you could have gone from there to almost any farm in the area. They could have spent a week looking for you without any success. How did you manage without money?’

  ‘I left the inn on a brewery wagon and paid my way by helping the drayman unload his barrels at the inns. When I reached the town I helped a blacksmith for a couple of mornings and chopped a load of logs for a farmer I made enough for food and managed to get rides on a couple of carts. I doubt I walked more than fifty miles in the five days I was there.’

  ‘Well, you’re home now.’ Billy left his chair. ‘But a word of warning, boy, you’re going to drive yourself and everyone around you crazy if you don’t calm down.’

  ‘I have to find Megan.’

  ‘And we’ll do all we can to help you find her. But there are better ways and means than charging round the countryside, living like a tramp.’ Billy went to the door. ‘You’ll get an hour’s sleep if you go up now.
’

  ‘I haven’t washed in days. I’d only dirty the bedclothes. I’ll stay here for half an hour then have a quick bath.’ Victor stretched back on the two chairs.

  ‘In cold water?’

  ‘If I’m working at six it will wake me up.’

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Sali and Lloyd rose at a quarter to four. Leaving the washstand in the bedroom for Sali, Lloyd picked up his clothes and, tiptoeing so as not to wake Harry, crept down the stairs. It was odd to resume a daily routine that had been disrupted by the onset of the strike almost a full year before. He went through the kitchen to the basement to discover that both stoves had already been lit in preparation to heat water for their baths after they finished their shifts.

  ‘Good God, when did you get back?’ Lloyd asked, when he walked into the basement to see Victor rising naked from a tin bath.

  ‘Early hours, and before you start the cross-examination, no one I spoke to had seen or heard of Megan in Brecon and I’ve already had a dressing down from Dad for leaving you and Sali at the inn and going off without any money.’ Victor grabbed a towel and began to rub himself dry.

  Lloyd stepped outside, used the ty bach and returned to the basement. Stripping off his robe, he hung it on a hook, went to the tap, turned it on, picked up the soap and started washing under the stream of icy water. ‘Was it you who lit the fires?’

  ‘Yes, but only ten minutes ago, which is why I didn’t bother to try to heat any water for my bath; by the time it’s hot we’ll have to be on our way.’ Victor draped his towel over the rail in front of the stove and padded over to the row of pegs where Sali had hung their working clothes. All were clean and neatly pressed. ‘Do you think Sali will mind me eating breakfast in these?’

  ‘As they’re a damn sight cleaner than what you wore to Brecon, no.’ Lloyd watched Victor bundle his discarded clothes together and toss them on top of the linen bin. ‘They look as though they need fumigating.’

  ‘I slept rough.’

  ‘So I see.’ Lloyd rinsed off and dried himself before joining Victor in front of the clothes’ pegs. ‘Just as long as you remember to put on your tidy clothes tomorrow morning when these will be filthy. I don’t want Sali doing any more housework than absolutely necessary.’

  ‘Is she all right after that journey?’ Victor asked, concerned that Sali might be ill on his account.

  ‘She doesn’t look well, but you know Sali. She insists she’s just tired.’

  ‘Not long to go now.’ Victor pulled his moleskin trousers over his drawers and buttoned his flies.

  ‘Five weeks, if all goes to plan.’

  ‘And the father-to-be is getting nervous.’ Joey ran lightly down the stone steps and hung his evening clothes on a peg. His robe flapped open as he dived out of the back door to the ty bach.

  ‘Any woman looking over her garden wall will get an eyeful.’ Lloyd fastened his trousers and pulled his flannel vest over his head.

  ‘She’ll only be interested if she hasn’t seen it before.’ Victor went to the mirror and brushed his wet hair straight back from his forehead. ‘It feels strange to be dressing for the pit again.’

  ‘Strange but good.’ Joey banged the door shut behind him. ‘I’ve had enough of being broke and getting arrested.’

  Lloyd sniffed the air. ‘I don’t believe it. I smell bacon.’

  ‘With eggs, sausages, lava bread, tomatoes ...’ Victor tied a kerchief around his neck. ‘There should be plenty of tomatoes. I hope you’ve been picking them, Joey, and not letting them rot on the allotment.’

  ‘I went up yesterday, and not only picked tomatoes, but also the last of your beans. I lifted a row of potatoes and cut a couple of cabbages and when I came back here I collected the eggs and cleaned out the chicken coop and dog run.’ Joey finished splashing under the tap and turned it off.

  ‘And he only needed four hours of continual nagging from Sali to make him do it,’ Lloyd teased, hoping to make Victor smile.

  ‘Rubbish!’ Joey went to the clothes’ pegs. ‘If you two are dressing in your working clothes, so will I. Has Dad been down yet?’

  ‘He came down and went back up half an hour ago.’ Victor went to the stairs.

  ‘If there is bacon, don’t eat it all before I get there.’ Joey managed to put his trousers on back to front in his hurry to get dressed.

  ‘As if Sali would let him.’ Lloyd fastened the last button on his shirt and followed Victor. His father was already sitting at the table eating, Sali was turning food in the frying pans on the stove.

  ‘I didn’t think we could afford a breakfast like this.’ Lloyd looked suspiciously at Sali when she set plates piled high with food in front of him and Victor.

  ‘I couldn’t let you go down the pit with nothing in your stomachs so I opened a slate in Connie’s on Saturday.’ Sali lied to conceal the fact that she had used the leftover money Lloyd had borrowed from Mr Richards. ‘We’ll pay her back at the end of the week when you get your wages.’

  ‘I’ve missed these breakfasts.’ Joey breathed in theatrically, savouring the scent of the bacon. Sali set a full plate at his place at the table. He picked up his knife and fork and started eating before he even sat down.

  Sali lifted the empty frying pans into the sink and went to the pantry to get the snap boxes she had packed the night before. She made tea and filled their tea bottles before filling their larger water bottles with fresh water from the tap.

  She filled the kettle again and set it on to boil water for the dishes. Then she went into the pantry and lifted out the potato box and a cabbage, desperately doing anything she could think of not to look at the men. Everyone was relieved that the strike was finally over but nothing had really been resolved and she knew that Lloyd, his father, the strike committee and most of the colliers regarded the return to work as a shattering climb-down for them and an unqualified victory for the owners.

  Lloyd finished his breakfast, left the table and carried his plate over to her. ‘We’ll walk out through the basement, sweetheart. Don’t go overdoing it today. Father Kelly has more than enough volunteers to run the kitchens until the first wage packets start coming in, so please, put your feet up and rest after you’ve taken Harry to school.’

  ‘I will.’

  ‘Promise.’ He stood in front of her and she smiled at him. ‘I know that smile, it says, “Yes, I’ve listened to you, Lloyd, but now I’m going to ignore every word you’ve said.”’

  ‘There’s not much to be done today,’ she insisted.

  ‘I mean it, take it easy, for Isabella’s sake.’ He kissed her before following Joey, Victor and his father down the stairs. Knowing that it would take the men a few moments to lace on their boots, Sali dried her hands in her apron, went to the front door and opened it. For the first time in almost a year the colliery siren was wailing, signalling the first shift of men to head for the pit and the cage.

  Dawn had broken half an hour before and although it was the tail end of a warm summer, the light was cold and grey. All the men on the six o’clock shift were leaving their houses and the only sound that could be heard above the din of the siren was the steady tramp of their boots as they made their way down the road and the hill at the end of the street.

  Joey walked around from the back of the house, his cap pulled low over his face, his haversack hanging at his side. Victor and Lloyd followed, walking either side of their father, whose limp seemed more pronounced than ever. Sali knew her father-in-law was concerned that management might not give him his job back, but it didn’t seem appropriate to shout good luck. They all saw her at the door, but only Lloyd touched his cap to her as they passed.

  No one spoke, no one uttered a sound, although women were standing in every doorway in the street. Hearing a noise behind her, Sali turned and saw Harry on the stairs. She held out her arms, and he went to her. Lifting him up, she continued to watch the men until the last one rounded the corner and disappeared from sight. Then she set Harry down and took
him into the kitchen.

  ‘Can you imagine the mess down there after nearly a year of neglect?’ the management’s representative shouted over the heads of the colliers who had gathered at the pithead in the hope of getting their jobs back right away. Billy, Victor, Joey and Lloyd pushed their way through the mass of workers and headed towards him.

  ‘That’s all the more reason to get as many colliers down there as quickly you can, Mr Stephens,’ Billy said when he reached the official.

  ‘Six hundred today -’

  ‘Six hundred? There has to be four thousand men here,’ Billy protested, looking around.

  ‘Management has issued a statement. Within a month we hope to have seventy-five per cent of the twelve thousand strikers back in employment.’

  ‘And the others?’ Lloyd enquired.

  ‘There are problems.’ John Stephens couldn’t meet Lloyd’s eye. ‘The strike ended so suddenly, Mr Thomas didn’t have time to buy enough pit wood to effect all the repairs that are needed. Some of the faces aren’t safe.’

  ‘If they are not safe, then you need to get every repairman down there now, Mr Stephens, and, as I’m in charge of them, I should be the first down. Joey here is an assistant, and if the props need repairing, chances are the tram tracks need sorting by a blacksmith, so you’ll need Victor.’

  ‘We have falls that need clearing before anything else can be done.’ John Stephens ran his finger nervously around the inside of his collar.

  ‘Then I should be down there with my team clearing them.’

  ‘Billy, a word.’ John Stephens’ immediate superior, Mr Thomas beckoned to him from his office door. Lloyd, Victor and Joey followed. Mr Thomas pushed the door to when they joined him inside.

  ‘A man with one leg is a liability down a pit, Billy,’ Mr Thomas began.