by Kit Habianic
‘We’re fine,’ Helen said. ‘And to answer your other question, they’re solid behind the strike, my in-laws. And if it’s what you’re really asking, so am I.’
Shirley’s grey lips tightened. ‘I didn’t mean— I just wondered how Angela would manage without her business. What with the language problem—’
The doors burst open. Debbie and Sue staggered in, arms around bulging bin bags. Helen went to help, but Debbie dodged her, dumped her bags on a banquette.
‘There’s two dozen bags in the car,’ she announced.
‘Oh great,’ Mary said. ‘Bloody jumble day tomorrow. I clean forgot.’
‘Orright, Red,’ Sue said. ‘Got you slaving away, have they?’
Debbie’s smile glinted daggers. ‘Her ladyship’s honouring us with her company, is she?’
‘Lay off, Debs,’ Sue said.
***
In the time it took the women to unload Sue’s car, set chairs, plates and cutlery for a hundred people and deck the Stute with dusty bunting, Helen barely dented her mound of vegetables. Sue mixed oat crumble topping, scattered it over half a dozen trays of defrosted gooseberries and hefted the first batch into the oven, then grabbed a knife and sat down next to her.
‘A waste to peel carrots and potatoes,’ Sue grumped. ‘All the vitamins are under the skin. At Greenham, we scrubbed them and ate them whole.’
‘Well we’re not at Greenham now,’ Shirley picked up a strip of potato peel and held it to the light. ‘Can you please peel more thinly, Helen.’
She picked up the bucket of scraps and went to empty it.
Sue twitched an eyebrow. ‘Who put Amazing-bloody-Grace in charge?’
‘We’re not at Greenham now, Missy,’ Helen mocked. ‘We’ll have none of your fancy-pants ideas round here.’
Sue laughed. ‘D’you reckon you’ll leave Wales one day, go see the world?’
The question caught Helen by surprise. ‘Depends what happens, I suppose. Scrapper’s job and the bracchi are here.’
‘If you had the choice?’
Helen sighed. ‘I’d like to see the world. I’ve never even been to England. But—’
But where did choice come into it? Where else could she raise a child? There was no one to help if they left, but work was hard to find if they stayed, especially if jobs went at the pit. Could she trust Sue, confide in her? Sue would listen and consider, not scold her and wring her hands like her mam or tell her what to do like Angela. But Sue was up and off again, gathering vegetable peel, stirring the cawl, sharing a joke with Mary, and the moment was lost.
— 9 —
Another visit to Dr O’Connell brought Gwyn no better news.
‘The results are clear; there’s no point running any more tests,’ the doctor said.
He started on at Gwyn about why he should sign off work, why he needed to talk to Carol. The final straw, that. Why add to his wife’s worries, with Carol already in bits about the treachery of the girl. Gwyn made his excuses and left. Outside, the cold air brought on another dizzy turn. He leaned against the gate post to gather breath, continued up the hill on shaking legs. The weather had turned, air heavy with the scent of rain, the sky buckling under clouds as menacing as the x-ray shadows on his lungs.
The wind gathered force as he reached the High Street. It seized the For Sale hoardings and tugged at the plywood nailed over derelict shop fronts. The din made him think of marching footsteps. But there was no one buying at the bracchi or the butchers. No one upturning the odds in the bookies, or getting the hairdresser to gild where nature fell short. A deathly hush on the funeral parlour. Unisex fashion fallen out of style, Betty’s shop closed, the For Sale board hidden by fly posters’ Coal Not Dole defiance.
Light spilled from the bracchi onto the pavement. No customers supped coffee and cake and ice cream. The chairs were stacked on empty tables. Angela Two-Scoops sat alone in the corner, a ledger and a pile of papers in front of her. Her hair hung midnight loose, slim legs crossed at the ankle. One hell of a woman. A lucky bastard, Iwan Jones. Gwyn hefted himself up the steps, collapsed into the seat opposite her.
She looked up, startled. ‘What you after, Gwyn Pritchard?’
‘Can’t a fella pass time of day with a neighbour?’
‘Neighbour, is it?’ A smile served with a sliver of ice.
He opened his mouth to answer, but a fit of coughing bent him double. She fetched a glass of water, set it down, stood over him, hands on hips.
‘Is terrible you look.’
‘I been better.’
‘You sick?’
‘Course not. I’m right as rubies.’
‘You here to see Helen?’
How tempting to say yes. Could it really be that simple? Six little words: I want to see my daughter. Could it really be that hard? Say it, and get to see her, give the girl a chance to right her wrongs. Time was running out for the girl to apologise.
‘What if I did?’
‘Try the Stute. Is where you’ll find her most evenings. With that lot from Women Against Pit Closures.’
‘Not a fan?’
Her face told him the answer. Interesting. It wasn’t all happy families, then. Comeuppance for the Jones boys, for poisoning the girl’s mind and dragging her into this sorry mess. And now the cracks were showing.
‘Is none of your business.’
Angela picked up her papers, stuffed them into the ledger. Official-looking, the papers. Several printed in red ink. ‘Had it tough these last months, eh, Angie?’
‘Not as tough as some.’
‘Aye, but you never signed up for this, did you? One thing to have your menfolk on strike. A whole other to have your business hit the skids.’
‘Sooner they win, sooner we get back in shape.’
She’d told herself that for months, he reckoned. She might even have fooled her son and her husband. But Angela was a businesswoman from her eyelashes to those dainty ankles. A tough woman and loyal, but not stupid. No more likely to trail the pack than he was.
‘We’re not like the rest, you and me. We see the bigger picture, don’t we? Got the kids to think of. They’re married now. Soon enough, they’ll start a family. Then what? Bring a babby into this world to starve?’
‘No one starves under my roof.’
‘And if the bracchi goes bust?’
Angela strode to the door, yanked it open. ‘Is time you left, Gwyn Pritchard.’
He tried to stand but his legs defied his orders. Angela yanked the door a second time. Spots of colour marked her cheeks, black eyes sparked fury.
‘You think I don’t love the girl an’ you’re wrong,’ he told her. ‘I loved that girl like you love your son. If she’d let me, I’d have stopped at nothing to look out for her.’
Angela looked away. ‘Sell the rest of us down the river?’
His legs recovered power of movement. He stumbled to the door. Leaned in close to answer. Her hair had the coconut smell of summer gorse.
‘Cut from the same cloth, you and me,’ he said. ‘We both do what we do to look out for our own.’
He staggered outside, breath coming ragged. He’d said more to Angela than he ever said, to Carol or to the girl. So now what? He decided to wait. Angela would tell the girl what he said, that he’d swallowed his pride to come see her. She’d meet him half way, help him set things straight before he went. He’d forgive her, for her mam’s sake, once the girl admitted to her errors. Wipe clean the slate before he went.
— 10 —
The shorter the days became, the more Helen yearned to see her mam. It wasn’t help she wanted; more another point of view. She and Scrapper could not agree about the baby. More than two months gone and she was desperate for a third opinion. Couldn’t her mam, against the odds, rise to the occasion for once? She worried about her mam, too. Chrissie Hobnob had pulled her aside at the Stute, said she hadn’t seen Carol in weeks. That clinched it. Helen vowed to catch her mam alone at home.
The house looke
d sad, squalid. Someone had sprayed SCAB in red letters across the garden wall. Someone else – her dad, no doubt – tried to paint over it. But the whitewash was smeared pink, the letters visible underneath it. Her dad’s beloved lawn was threaded with moss and dock leaves. The gutters above the windows were bowed with dead leaves.
Scrapper had phoned from outside the pit to report that her dad had gone in. That gave her until lunchtime. She hitched her satchel onto her shoulder, knocked warily on the door. No answer. Inside, she heard the ticking of the grandfather clock. Her mam had to be home. Where else would she be? She knocked a second time, but nothing moved inside the house.
She fumbled in her pocket for the key. It turned, but the door didn’t budge. That was when she noticed the second, larger lock. She slumped on the doorstep, defeated. After some time, she heard a rattle of chains and a scrape of metal. The door swung open. Her mam stood in the doorway, hair unbrushed, the whites of her eyes matching the pink of her dressing gown.
‘What d’you want?’
Helen pushed past her into the house. They were not doing this in front of the neighbours. A sharp, sour smell filled her nostrils. That threw her, too. The house she remembered smelled of burned food and Dettol and furniture polish. The stench seemed to come from the living room. She stopped in the doorway. The sideboard and coffee table were piled with papers and food wrappers and unwashed dishes. A full ashtray spilled onto the hearth. The fireplace was coated with coal dust and ash. It was all too much. She wanted to gag. Wanted to hurl open the windows, to let in light and air. Her dad’s iron control had cracked, at last. Outside, their troubles painted over; inside, raw chaos.
‘What’s wrong with you, Mam?’
Her mam fussed with her dressing gown, tucked the folds around herself with unsteady hands. ‘Nothing.’
‘Nothing? C’mon, Mam. Look at yourself. Look at this bloody place.’
‘Mind your language.’ The only force to her words was force of habit.
‘Are you sick?’
No answer.
‘It’s the pills, then?’
Her mam’s pallid face darkened.
‘How many you been taking?’
‘Enough to take the edge off things. Make things fuzzy, get a full night’s sleep.’
She sank into her armchair, gazed up at Helen as though struggling to focus. Helen swallowed a sigh, went to the kitchen. She brewed her mam a strong cup of tea, then set to work with bin bags and dustpan. She worked from living room to kitchen, gathered papers and wrappers and fag ends, swept out the hearth and vacuumed front to back. Filled the sink with suds and put the dishes to soak.
***
Her mam had not moved. Her tea had cooled, untouched.
‘Listen, Mam: I’m pregnant.’
Her mam blinked, said nothing.
‘D’you understand what I said, Mam?’
No reaction. It floored Helen, this blankness. She’d expected her mam to slam the door in her face. To cry or yell or order her to leave. She’d considered all those possible reactions. She’d not considered— indifference.
‘I’m expecting Scrapper’s baby. What d’you think about that?’
Her mam sighed, closed her eyes.
The clock ticked down the minutes. It would soon be lunchtime. Helen’s fury collapsed into defeat. It was a mistake to have come here. Her mam was closed off to everything but her pills. She shrugged on her parka, fumbled with the zipper. It snagged, stiff with damp. She’d been too busy to notice that the house was heart-stoppingly cold, the fire long dead in the hearth.
How could she leave her mam like this?
‘Mam, you got to lay off the pills. Talk to the bloody doctor. Promise me?’
She knelt at the grate, tipped coal from the scuttle and fumbled with the matchbox. Her hands were shaking. She tossed match after spent match at the fireplace. Nothing took. Finally, down to the last match, she struck a light, tucked the matchbox into the pile of coal, held the spark to the cardboard and breathed relief as it caught.
‘Don’t—’ her mam’s voice was as feeble as the flame in the grate.
‘What?’
‘Don’t do it.’
Helen waited for her to continue. But her mam shut her eyes as though the subject was closed.
‘What d’you mean?’ Helen repeated.
There was a long pause.
‘Don’t do it,’ her mam whispered. ‘You want to end up like me? Get rid of it.’
‘But Mam, I—’
‘You got a chance to break free. Take it. If you got half a brain, girl, you take it. Leave, get away from here. Go and don’t ever look back.’
— 11 —
Dai and Debbie had stacks of furniture and belongings to shift, for newlyweds. It took Scrapper and the boys three trips to empty the little house, working through the night to clear it before the bailiffs showed next morning. It was dawn by the time he and Iwan lugged the last case out of the minibus. They hefted it through Dewi and Mary’s hall and up the narrow staircase to the tiny attic bedroom at the top of the house. Debbie and Dai perched on the narrow bed, as though clinging to a life-raft. Dai nodded his thanks, dark eyes glittering pain and anger and shame.
He slung a heavy arm across Debbie’s neck. ‘That’s our lot, then, love.’
‘Well, best get ourselves straight.’
To Scrapper’s ears, the chirpy note in Debbie’s voice rang false.
Dai tightened his grip on Debbie’s shoulders. ‘I’m sorry, Debs, alright.’
She shrugged off his arm, leaped off the bed and began stuffing tops and undies into the scuffed chest of drawers.
Iwan set off down the stairs. ‘C’mon, lad. Let these two get themselves sorted.’
‘You stay right there, Scrap,’ Debbie ordered. ‘Dai needs a hand stacking that lot.’
A row was brewing; the little room hummed with tension. Scrapper decided that the sooner he got them straight, the quicker he’d get out. He set to work, helped Dai to pile the boxes against the two longer walls, cleared a path from door to bed that opened space enough for two people to sit on the floor.
Debbie watched them, kept up a barbed silence.
‘You know I done my best,’ Dai spoke to her as though Scrapper wasn’t there.
‘Sure,’ Debbie’s voice was bone dry and brittle. ‘Done the right things, said the right things. All the while, believing in none of it.’
‘What in hell d’you mean by that?’
‘You’re not man enough – not for any of this, are you?’
Dai raised a shaking hand to his face. She meant to hurt him. And she had.
‘That’s not fair, Debbie,’ Scrapper said. ‘Dai’s solid. He’s been a rock. To all of us.’
For a pretty girl, Debbie could look properly ugly when riled. ‘Solid?’ she snarled. ‘He wanted us to take the Christmas bribe.’
‘I got desperate—’
‘You think I’m not desperate, and all? I’d still sooner starve than board the scab bus.’
‘That’s—’
Debbie turned to Scrapper. ‘It’s true,’ she said. ‘I said I’d rather sleep naked under a bridge than stay with a man who’d betray his butties.’
Dai leapt up. A pile of boxes teetered, crashed down onto the floor. ‘It’s not about you, this,’ he yelled. ‘Not about me, neither. It’s about the child you’re carrying in your belly. About givin’ some kind o’ future to our babby.’
‘What bloody future?’ Debbie said.
Dai’s strength seemed to fail him then. He backed out of the little attic, staggered blindly down the stairs. The front door opened and closed behind him.
Debbie was hell-bent on having the last word, even then. She yanked open the window, leaned out over the sill ‘Some things matter more, Dai Dumbells. Principles and loyalty, for starters.’
Scrapper kept his head down and his hands busy. He sorted out the spilled boxes, stacked them as neatly as he could. Debbie watched him, arms folded, all the while
.
‘You reckon I’m a bitch too, don’t you, Scrap.’
‘That’s an ugly word.’
She sighed. ‘So what would you do? In my position?’
But they were in that position, him and Red.
‘Fucked if I know, Debs. Shouldn’t the pair of you sort it out together?’
— 12 —
Days and weeks passed. Gwyn waited for the girl to come to him, but in vain. A hard-hearted creature she’d become. All the more reason not to tell his wife about his x-ray results. Pointless getting her upset, when she’d tried so hard to rally herself lately. She’d eased off the pills, these last weeks, cleaned the house at last, even made a couple of trips into town. Christmas loomed; thoughts of family hung heavy on him. He considered a second trip to the bracchi then batted the thought away. A man had his pride. It fell to the girl to meet him half way.
He opened the front gate, wrestled the fir tree up the garden, needles dropping as he dragged it up the path. A deep green scent filled his nostrils. He breathed in. Cold air and exertion were a lethal mix for his clapped-out lungs. He doubled up coughing at the door. After taking a moment to clear his dizzy brain and calm his racing pulse, he dragged the tree indoors.
The house was silent, the hallway damp and cold. ‘Carol?’
No answer. He hauled the Christmas tree into the living room. No sign of her. He propped the tree against door frame, popped his head round the kitchen door. The kitchen clock showed half past six. Nothing for his tea on the stove, nothing ready for him in the fridge. Maybe she was heading back from the shops. Best to start without her. Make it a surprise and maybe put a smile on that sad face of hers.
He crunched across the frosted lawn to his shed. All his tools and equipment were lined up neat and proper, every piece in its place, as Alf Manifesto taught him all those years back. Work smart, live smart, Alf used to say. True at home and true below ground. Gwyn had no trouble laying his hands on the pail filled with sand. He gathered half a dozen stones from the rockery and hefted the lot inside.
Musty and dank, the living room. But the grate was stacked with coal, at least. He set to work with matches and firelighters, got the embers going, set the pail of sand below the window and sank the tree into it. He took his penknife to the lower branches, piled stones into the pail to position the tree, pulled it this way and that to set it straight. He stood back, admired his work. All it needed now was lights and tinsel, a signal to that rabble from the lodge that it was Christmas as usual in Gwyn Pritchard’s house and to hell with the rest.
