Heartbreak in the Valleys

by Francesca Capaldi

  His wait was finally rewarded with the next song, ‘Dafydd Y Garreg Wen’, ‘David of the White Rock’. Anwen was singing a solo along to a low, rhythmic hum from the rest of the choir. Her pure voice rang out, pleasing his ear as much as her physical presence delighted his eye. Last night an angel called, Anwen sang in their native language. She’d been his angel for so long it was inconceivable she no longer was. Yet it had been his choice. For her. He’d done it for her.

  After three other songs, the choir sang ‘Hen Wlad fy Nhadau’, a song so popular that the congregation couldn’t help but join in. There was a rousing final chorus, their voices dimming only slightly for the last song of the evening, the national anthem, ‘God Bless the Prince of Wales’.

  Pastor Richards gave a final address, wishing all a good night. He’d barely finished when the congregation began rising, chatting with warmth and good humour. Despite Mr Henry’s talk, Idris’s heart had risen to the rafters during Anwen’s solo and had not yet come down to earth.

  ‘Well, there’s a rare treat,’ said Meg. ‘A smile on your face, Idris, bach.’

  ‘A good sing always lifts the soul, don’t you think, Mam?’

  ‘It does that. Wasn’t Anwen in fine voice this evening?’

  ‘Yes, she sang well.’ He struggled to keep all emotion from his voice, speaking as if she’d been referring to any other young woman in the village.

  ‘He doesn’t care, Mam, do you Idris?’ Jenkin said. ‘Anyway, I’ve seen her with that Tom Meredith, the manager’s son. Got money he has, so she’s better off with him anyway.’

  Meg gave him a light clip across the ear, making him duck and shout, ‘Ow! What was that for?’

  ‘For talking out of turn,’ Meg said. ‘Anwen’s long been a friend of this family and if I want to mention her I will. If others don’t see her worth that’s their lookout.’

  Idris’s soul deflated, sinking down from the ceiling and settling itself back in his chest, brooding. The carefree sensation had been good while it lasted. In the meantime, Anwen had disappeared from the gallery and emerged on the ground floor.

  ‘There she is,’ said Meg. ‘Let’s tell her how wonderful she was.’

  Meg pushed through the crowd in her direction. Before she reached her, Daniel Williams appeared in front of Anwen, telling her something that put a smile on her face. He was blushing, awkward, eyes sparkling. Jenkin had said she was admired by the men. She would never be short of a suitor.

  It would never again be him, thought Idris.

  * * *

  Anwen marvelled at the scene before her as she took her place on the front row of chairs in the small meeting room of the Institute. There were already around twenty women gathered there, with five minutes still to go until the meeting commenced. Elizabeth, placing some papers on the table, had a wide grin on her face.

  It had been a busy few days, putting up and handing out leaflets, going to visit Mr Lloyd, in between the other hectic aspects of her life. A visit to Mr James the greengrocer had not been an overwhelming success, but he was at least willing to consider their proposals. Mrs Brace the grocer had thought it a splendid idea. Prosser the Meat had intoned cheerfully, ‘Well, you’ve got to have some veggies to eat with my meat.’

  Elizabeth gestured Anwen over. ‘Come, you must sit at the table with me.’

  ‘Oh no, I couldn’t put myself forward like that.’

  ‘Nonsense. You have been instrumental in getting this whole project going. Farmer Lloyd reacted well to our proposals because you were there.’

  ‘But you came up with the idea, I’m only helping.’

  ‘Oh, my dear, it was you saying at chapel that we should grow our own vegetables that sparked the idea. It’s obvious really, but it’s amazing how we’ve all concentrated on what we can do to help our soldiers, forgetting that we need to keep healthy in order to do that.’

  ‘Look.’ Anwen pointed to a group of women coming in from the back. ‘There must be at least half a dozen there.’ At the rear of the group was Gwen. She sprinted down to the front.

  ‘I told you I’d get some of my fellow munitionettes interested, didn’t I? There are quite a few of us in the village now. Reckon a few more veggies wouldn’t hurt us.’

  ‘That is excellent,’ said Elizabeth. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘I’ll see you after,’ Gwen told Anwen. ‘Good luck!’

  She was going to need it. She offered up a short prayer for strength.

  Another couple of women entered the room. Anwen counted them. Nearly thirty! She was wallowing in the satisfaction when a further group entered. Her insides shrank. It was Esther Williams and her band. They took seats at the back, unusually for Mrs Williams, who always managed to make herself the centre of attention.

  Anwen tapped Elizabeth’s arm. ‘I don’t suppose they’re here to help.’

  ‘Ah. The illustrious Esther Williams. She’ll have an opinion on this as she does everything else.’

  ‘It doesn’t help that she was recently appointed a Guardian. It’s given an official stamp to her interference.’

  ‘A Guardian? Really?’ Elizabeth screwed up her eyes as she regarded Mrs Williams. ‘I’d heard some had been appointed in the area, though I wasn’t aware Mrs Williams was one of them.’

  At eight o’clock precisely, Elizabeth coughed and said in a loud, authoritative voice, ‘Good evening, everybody, and thank you for attending this meeting.’

  The audience took a few seconds to settle, not noticing Mr Lloyd coming through the door. He remained at the back.

  When the room was quiet, Elizabeth continued. ‘I would like to start with a prayer, for all those killed and injured in the Zeppelin raid on the northeast coast of England last night.’

  Several declarations of horror were heard from the audience. One woman lamented, ‘And those poor babbies too.’

  After the prayer, Elizabeth remained standing. ‘As you are all aware, we are facing shortages of all kinds of food. The German ships are preventing supplies coming from abroad. Much of our food is provided by other countries, eighty percent of our wheat and forty percent of our meat, for example. There has also been a large increase in the price of food.’

  Anwen was impressed by Elizabeth’s composure, her clear speech and the fact that she had done some research. She had the attention of the listeners.

  ‘Food production has fallen. Farm workers have left to enlist or go to the factories. Much of our livestock is sent to the Front. It could be that eventually our government will have to implement rationing, limiting the amount of food any one person can buy.’ There were a couple of gasps. ‘But it seems to me – to many of us – that in an unofficial way, there already is rationing.’

  As Anwen considered her fellow villagers, she wondered whether Elizabeth was in fact the best person to talk about food shortages or rationing. The Merediths might have less food than they usually did, but they certainly were not short of it.

  In the pause Elizabeth left, maybe to let what she’d said sink in, Anwen stood before the sensible bit of her brain told her not to. ‘We’ve all experienced the lack of food first hand. The queue at the butcher’s is down the street now, and you can’t be guaranteed to get anything, even a scrawny pigeon.’ She glanced at Elizabeth, hoping she wasn’t too cross at the interruption, but her grin said the opposite.

  Anwen was on the verge of losing her nerve, so plunged on before that could happen. ‘The greengrocer’s isn’t much better. We’re often palmed off with vegetables more than past their best. The grocer’s shelves have half of what they used to have on them while the baker runs out of bread by ten o’clock. We’ve been in conversation with Mr Lloyd, who you all know as the owner of Dyffryn Gwyrdd Farm.’

  The farmer leaned up from his position against the wall, taking Anwen’s announcement as his cue to come forward. Soon he was standing by Anwen and Elizabeth’s table. ‘Yes, I’ve spoken to Miss Rhys and Miss Meredith here, and I think we have come to an arrangement that will suit us
all.’

  ‘Farmer Lloyd is short of workers,’ said Elizabeth. ‘If we could provide say, maybe four or more to work on a rota, he said that, in return, he’ll provide us with some tools and seeds to plant our own vegetables, on the common land round about.’

  ‘Aye, I will that. We grow our own, and I’m sure some of you do too, but not enough. If we could harness some of the unused land you could grow more, make up for the shortfall in the village.’

  ‘With all due respect,’ came a voice from the back. Esther Williams rose from her seat. ‘Won’t that put Mr James, a greengrocer here for many years, out of business?’

  ‘The prices I’ve heard he’s charging for inferior stock, he deserves to go out of business,’ the farmer said. ‘Keeping the best stuff to sell on at inflated prices, I’m told.’

  Mrs Williams sniffed. ‘I’m sure he’ll be pleased to hear you’ve said that behind his back.’

  ‘I’d be quite happy to say it to his face, though I daresay you’ll tell him before I get a chance.’

  ‘Well! This whole scheme sounds unworkable. I’m sorry, Miss Meredith, but I shall be speaking to your parents about this.’

  ‘Please do, Mrs Williams. I have talked to them about it extensively. They are fully in support of it. As is the coal company, who’ve given permission to use the land.’

  ‘As for Mr James,’ said Anwen, ‘we have talked with him already, and will do so again. We intend to include him in our plans. We will be negotiating a rate at which he can sell the vegetables, so neither he, nor we, lose out.’

  Esther blinked rapidly, pursing and unpursing her lips. ‘I shall be informing my husband when he gets in from his very important meeting, how women are being spirited away from attending the needs of their menfolk, who need support so they can get on with producing the coal to power our ships. In my capacity as… that is, in my opinion, I say it’s not proper for these women to be neglecting their duties.’

  Gwen, sitting in the middle of the throng, faced the back to say, ‘First you tell us we should be doing our bit for the war, then apparently we’ll be neglecting our duties if we do. I work at the munitions and I’m still willing to do a bit more.’ There was a murmur of hear hear. ‘You should help out: you’d be able to keep an eye on us poor, vulnerable women then.’

  There was laughter from young and old alike.

  Esther’s face reddened. ‘You have not heard the last of this! Come along, ladies. We’re leaving.’

  The group with her, six women of various ages, looked at each other. The one furthest from Esther stood, waiting for the others to do the same. One by one, they gradually complied.

  ‘Come on, chop chop,’ Mrs Williams demanded.

  Only the person next to her remained seated, a petite young woman with sun-browned skin. ‘If it’s all the same to you, Esther, I’d like to stay. I’m sick of spongy carrots and limp cabbage.’

  ‘Oh do get up, Mary Jones.’

  ‘No. I’m staying.’

  ‘Please yourself. Come along, the rest of you.’

  Mary pressed her knees to one side, allowing the other women to shuffle past her. They followed their leader like ducklings swimming after the mother duck. Mrs Williams threw the door open with a clatter and exited. The last of the group shut it quietly after her.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Anwen to the remaining woman. ‘So, you’re Mary Jones?’

  ‘That’s right. Number thirty-three James Street.’

  ‘Thank you for staying Mary.’

  Elizabeth lifted a sheet from the table. ‘Right, let us continue.’

  * * *

  Anwen removed her hat and coat, placing them on the stand in the hall. She wondered if Edgar Williams had returned from his ‘very important meeting’ and whether his wife had tattled on the poor wives and daughters of Dorcalon. What could the silly woman do? Maybe raise the men against their own womenfolk, if she told a twisted enough tale, and she wasn’t beyond doing that.

  All those remaining at the hall were eager to help. Elizabeth had taken their names, plus details of the times they could spare. Tomorrow they were going to draw up a rota and a more detailed plan.

  Right now, she needed to see if Mam was still awake and needing a cup of tea. She’d want to hear how the meeting had gone. About to ascend the stairs, she was stopped by the opening of the kitchen door.

  ‘There you bloody are.’ Her father had a face on him like a wet Monday, as Mamgu often said. ‘Come in here. Where have you been? Your mother said you were at the chapel doing a choir rehearsal, but I went there an hour ago and it were all closed up.’

  No sooner had she asked herself why Mam had lied than the answer became obvious. Imagine if he’d come to the Institute, making a fuss! She didn’t want him knowing yet what she was up to.

  ‘It finished early so I went to see Uncle Hywel at Violet’s.’

  ‘The washing up wants doing and the kitchen floor needs a scrub where I spilt my supper. Helped myself to more of that cawl.’

  ‘Oh Da, that was tomorrow’s lunch too.’

  ‘Lunch! Bloody lunch now, is it? Dinner not a good enough word, or is that what you call supper now? You’re talking like the manager’s daughter. I’ll give you la-di-da, ideas above your bloody station.’

  When he raised his hand she thought he was going to hit her, but instead he slammed his fist on the table. ‘Fortunate for you I’m in a good mood. Been my lucky day, see. I’m going to bed now. I expect to see this tidy when I come down in the morning.’ He staggered towards the door, something sticking out of the back pocket of his trousers. Money.

  Though she’d seen few of them, she recognised the unmistakeable brown and pink of the new one pound and ten shilling notes, issued only since 1914. Where had he got them? It was tempting to creep up and remove one. It would be so easy. There were things she could buy, for Mam, for the project. But people would question how she’d got hold of paper money.

  He closed the door after him, leaving her to scrub the table and floor where he’d spilt food. What a mess. His lucky day? He must have had a win on something. The horses, most likely. That people were still allowed to waste their money on such things while there was a war on appalled her.

  She set to work. The sooner she cleaned this lot up, the sooner she could fall into bed.

  Chapter Fifteen

  The cloudless sky shone an intense azure as Anwen knelt to dig multiple holes with a trowel on the piece of land between Alexandra Street and Islwyn Street. There’d been a frost when she’d first ventured out this morning, and still the cold bit at her fingers.

  Today, some of the women were spreading out the seedlings they’d sown last month. Gwen and Violet were sowing the next lot of seeds, for runner beans and marrows. Other women were digging trenches to plant a second round of seed potatoes.

  Elizabeth arrived with a spade, slamming its blade into the ground. She was wearing trousers with a baggy shirt, a far more sensible idea than a skirt and blouse. Anwen wondered if she’d borrowed them from Tom. She had rather hoped he would come and join them in their digging, but so far he hadn’t turned up, despite his sister’s appeals.

  ‘How are you doing, Anwen?’

  ‘The soil’s a bit harder here, but I’m making some progress.’

  ‘I’ll take over. Perhaps you’d like to organise the group thinning out the plants. Then you can pick a couple of them to transport the leftover seedlings to here.’

  ‘Are you sure? I can carry on here if you want to organise the women.’

  ‘No no. They respond well to you.’

  Anwen pushed herself up, being careful not to stand on her skirt. ‘Thank you again for the camellias you gave me for Mam. She was very touched. She really felt Sara’s loss today. My sister always used to pick the columbines and wild pansies to make an arrangement in a jam jar for her on Mothering Sunday. I didn’t have the heart to do it in her place.’

  ‘I’m glad she liked them. Such simple things often bring the most pleasure
to people.’

  Like strolling hand in hand with the man you love, thought Anwen, spying a young couple on the pavement, going past Idris’s house. Idris. She sighed long and deep, attempting to rid herself of the anguish that flowed around her bloodstream like a poison.

  ‘I’m sorry, have you found it too much, the digging?’ Elizabeth must have misinterpreted the sigh.

  ‘No, I’m enjoying it. Just getting my breath.’

  ‘We’ve made some progress,’ Violet called out to Anwen as she approached the other group, working near the edge of the village.

  ‘Wonderful. If two of you could take the seedlings to where Elizabeth is digging, you can start re-planting them.’

  One of the volunteers was Esther Williams’s former follower, Mary Jones, along with another of her cronies who had since abandoned her. They each picked up a wooden crate in which the seedlings had been carefully placed, carrying them across to where Elizabeth was now on her knees, digging.

  A girl ran over from the potato planters, her hands and blouse muddy from her exertions. ‘Anwen, is there anyone can come and help us? I’m not sure we’ll get it finished today with just the two of us.’

  Gwen straightened her back. ‘I’ll go. There’s enough here to get this done.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Anwen said. ‘I’ll help here anyway, now Elizabeth’s taken over from me.’

  She stooped to begin digging up alternate seedlings, working along the row next to Violet. Clarice and Benjamin were running around in circles chasing each other. Clarice lifted the toddler up each time he tumbled onto the earth, as he did frequently, giggling at his soft landing. It was a joyful sound, making Anwen smile.

  She’d been working a good half-hour when Violet coughed in a pointed way and indicated something with her head. Gwilym Owen and Idris were dawdling down Alexandra Street, hands in pockets, craning their necks to see what was going on.

  Close by now, Gwilym called, ‘Hello Anwen, Violet. You helping out with this allotment lark too?’