One Dragon's Dream

by Catrin Collier

  ‘Put all thoughts of Alice Perkins from your mind, Richard,’ Edward advised. ‘Not just now – for ever. For her sake as well as yours.’

  Richard had to ask. ‘Do you think her father has hurt her?’

  ‘No, because he is her father. But I wouldn’t like to speculate as to what he’d do to you if he caught the two of you together again.’ Sarah took the glass.

  ‘Because he hates the thought of her marrying a common collier?’ There was self-pity in Richard’s voice.

  ‘No, because both of you are too young to think about marriage.’ Sarah left the room.

  Edward, Glyn, and Peter had discussed the Parry family and made decisions about the children’s future that seemed eminently sensible – to them. But they still had to put them to Richard.

  Glyn opened the discussion. ‘My wife’s arranged for your brothers and sister to move into the Boot Inn after your mother’s funeral. You won’t have to worry about paying rent, Anna will be living where she’s working and other colliers are lodging there so the boys will have company when they walk back and fore to work. They’ll live “all found”, so Anna won’t have to buy food, make meals, or do the laundry as it’s all sent out. Even the lodgers.’

  ‘But they’ll return to our house when I’m fit? I know it won’t be easy without my mother and the money she made from taking in washing but we’ll manage with what the boys and I make in the mine and Anna brings in. Anna and I can take care of the boys. We’ve been doing it for years. Mam hasn’t been well since Dad died. It was Anna and me who kept the house going. Not that Mam didn’t do her best for us,’ Richard added loyally. ‘We couldn’t have asked for a better mother.’

  ‘We know that, boy, but given this trouble with the Paskeys it’s best you don’t return to the court.’

  ‘What do you mean, Mr Edwards?’ Richard challenged.

  Glyn decided the best way to suggest Richard join Mr Hughes’s Russian expedition was straight out. ‘My brother tells me you have the makings of a fine collier and repairman, Richard. How would you like to come with me, my wife, Dr and Mrs Edwards and travel to Russia with Mr Hughes to help set up his new enterprise?’

  ‘Me? Go to Russia? Go here!’ Richard picked up Glyn’s photographs and stared at the one of Alexei Beletsky kissing a Cossack girl. The laudanum was beginning to take effect and he wasn’t sure he’d heard Glyn correctly.

  ‘You, boy. You have to admit the girls there are as pretty as the ones here.’ Reluctant as he was to see his brothers leave, Edward realised Glyn had offered Richard a lifeline. ‘You’ve made a powerful enemy in Deputy Perkins.’

  ‘But my sister and brothers … they’ll never keep the house on without me and I won’t let them go into the workhouse.’

  ‘No one is going into the workhouse,’ Edward promised.

  ‘Mr Hughes has an agreement with his Welsh workers,’ Glyn interposed. ‘Up to half their wages can be paid direct to their families in Wales. Provided you agree, he will arrange for a share of your wages to go to your sister.’

  ‘Half my wages won’t be enough to pay for Anna and the boys to live in the Boot or pay the rent on the house without Mam’s washing money.’

  ‘We’ve worked out the expenses. Your brothers and sister will be able to live permanently in the Boot. Mrs Edwards won’t be there, as she’s going to Russia with me, but her father’s taking on a housekeeper. Anna’s job at the Inn is safe. In fact from what my wife tells me, they couldn’t manage in the kitchen without her. As she’ll be working full time in future her wages will double. The boys’ and Anna’s wages taken together will cover their board, lodge, and washing but there won’t be anything left. Their clothes and other expenses will have to be funded by you.’

  ‘But I won’t be there to look after them.’

  ‘I’ll be around and Mrs Edwards’ father will keep an eye on them.’ Edward added his persuasive voice to Glyn’s. ‘Russia’s the only option open to you, boy. If you stay here the Paskeys will kill you – and if you’re living with your brothers and sister, probably harm them as well.’

  ‘I’d be happy to give Anna and the boys half my wages, but will I be left with enough to live on?’

  ‘More than enough,’ Glyn said. ‘Because you’ll be lodging with me and Dr and Mrs Edwards. All Mr Hughes’s Welsh workers are guaranteed a minimum of eighty roubles a month, which is about £10.’

  ‘Ten pounds …’

  ‘Five after your sister’s been paid,’ Glyn qualified. ‘Which will go a long way as Anna won’t have the expense of feeding you, or buying your clothes. Your board and lodge will amount to no more than two pounds, or at the most two pounds ten shillings a month, so you could send your sister even more money if you wanted to.’

  ‘I’d work as a fully-fledged collier?’ Richard’s eyes shone as he saw the possibilities.

  ‘To begin with. But a new pit brings greater opportunity.’ Glyn recognised Richard’s enthusiasm and pressed his advantage. ‘As soon as the pits are operational, Mr Hughes will need repairmen, foremen, managers, and engineers. You’ll be on site and have received on-the-job training so you’ll be first in line for promotion.’

  ‘A repairman or foreman …’

  ‘Aim as high as you like, Richard, there’ll be nothing to hold you back in Russia except the limit of your ambition. You’ll be part of a new venture in a country untouched by modern progress.’ Happy to be talking about his favourite subject there was no stopping Glyn. He handed Richard copies of the landscape photographs he’d taken. ‘These don’t do the country justice. Russia’s vast. When you stand on the plain where the furnaces will be built, all you can see in every direction is sky, and beneath it a thin purple line of horizon. The spot Mr Hughes has chosen has few trees and scrub grass. Perhaps the best way of putting it is that it’s an almost empty country; empty of people, and empty of buildings, apart from a few isolated villages of wooden houses and the odd grand mansion. A land that’s like a book of blank pages waiting to be written on. Since I’ve returned here I can’t help thinking that Wales seems to be over-full of people, especially Merthyr.’

  ‘I’ll agree with you there,’ Peter chimed in. ‘Most of the slum houses are so crowded I wonder where everyone sleeps at night.’

  Glyn took his pipe from his pocket but made no move to fill it. ‘Mr Hughes commissioned geological surveys for the area. There’s coal there, good anthracite and coking coal which is what’s needed for smelting iron, and I won’t just be managing the New Russia Company’s coal mines. I’ve raised enough money to sink a pit of my own and Mr Hughes has agreed to take every ton I produce. You’re just the sort of boy I want working for me. A few years from now you could be managing a coal face and shortly after that, who knows? A pit perhaps.’

  ‘A manager!’

  ‘If you’re prepared to work, I don’t see why not. Indications suggest there are huge seams underground. Wider, longer, and more accessible than any in Merthyr. They’ll make for an easier day’s work for all the colliers in the Edwards Brothers’ pit.’

  ‘“Edwards Brothers”?’ Edward raised his eyebrows.

  ‘Sarah and I have agreed to fund Glyn and Betty’s living expenses in exchange for shares in the colliery,’ Peter explained.

  ‘Two women in the same house, in the same kitchen! They’ll be at each other’s throats and have you and Peter wanting to kill one another inside a week.’

  ‘As matron of the hospital Sarah will be too busy helping to set up the medical facilities to interfere in Betty’s domestic arrangements,’ Glyn pointed out.

  ‘Don’t know what the world’s coming to. Married women shouldn’t be working but staying at home caring for their husbands.’

  ‘In Hughesovka it’s going to be all hands to the coal face, both literally and metaphorically for the first few years,’ Glyn predicted. ‘It’ll be different when everything’s established but until it is, everyone, women as well as men will have to do their bit.’

  Edward couldn’t
resist a final doom-laden pronouncement. ‘There’ll be a lot of empty pockets if Mr Hughes fails.’

  ‘John Hughes won’t fail himself or those who’ve put their trust in him,’ Glyn countered. ‘This will be the making of you, Richard, and the making of all our fortunes. Ten years from now you’ll be thanking the Paskey boys for the pasting.’

  ‘I doubt, I’ll ever do that, Mr Edwards, sir,’ Richard grimaced in pain.

  ‘Then you’ll go to Russia with my brothers, boy?’ Edward asked.

  ‘Seems I haven’t much choice, Mr Edwards, but from what Mr Edwards,’ he nodded to Glyn, ‘says, this could be the chance of a lifetime.’

  ‘It could at that, boy.’

  ‘If I go …’

  ‘When you go,’ Glyn corrected.

  ‘Will you really look after Anna, Morgan, and Owen for me, Mr Edwards?’

  ‘I promise, boy.’ Edward opened his watch. ‘We’ll talk again later. It’s time we were going, Glyn?’

  ‘I’m coming with you.’ Peter picked up his jacket.

  Glyn lowered his voice after they’d left the room. ‘Aren’t you taking a risk in leaving Sarah and the boy alone in the house?’

  ‘No one knows the boy is here other than Alf, Tom Farmer, and our family.’ Peter straightened his black tie. ‘The servants are downstairs, it’s broad daylight, and the police station is a few minutes away.’

  ‘It would be suspicious if Peter wasn’t at the funeral after attending Mary and issuing her death certificate.’ Edward glanced back through the door at Richard. ‘Concentrate on getting better, boy. In a few days you’ll be on a train going to Russia.’

  ‘Can I see my sister and brothers before I go, Mr Edwards?’

  ‘I’ll bring them back with me this evening if you feel up to talking to them.’

  ‘I’d like that, sir.’ Richard’s voice dropped to a whisper. He closed his eyes but it was Alice he was thinking about, not Anna.

  If he gave his sister a note she should be able to find some way of smuggling it to Alice. Once he was in Russia, working and earning, he’d start saving. If the prospects were as good as Glyn Edwards promised he’d soon be in a position to send Alice tickets to join him.

  Basement house in a court off John Street, Georgetown, Merthyr, June 1870

  ‘It’s time, Anna.’ Edward Edwards leaned over her as she kneeled on the floor, hands clasped on the edge of her mother’s coffin. He slipped his arm around her shoulders.

  Anna kissed Mary’s cold grey forehead for the last time and stroked her hair. ‘I don’t understand why I can’t go to the cemetery, Mr Edwards. She was my mother. Morgan and Owen are only children.’

  ‘They’re boys, Anna. Women don’t go to funerals.’ Edward drew Anna away to give Tim room to screw down the coffin lid. Betty moved behind him, holding a wreath of white marguerites she and the other women had helped Anna make.

  ‘Here, Anna, you’re the one who has to arrange this.’ Edward took the wreath and handed it to the girl.

  Anna waited until Tim finished fastening the lid before setting the wreath on the pinewood box. She watched Mr Edwards, his brothers, Tim Two Suits; Iestyn Swine, and Dai Twp manhandle her mother’s coffin out of the narrow door and up the steps. Morgan and Owen walked behind it with Alf who hadn’t left them – or her – since the morning after her mother’s death.

  When the last of the men climbed the steps Anna followed. The mourners who’d crowded into the court and spilled out on to John Street stood silently, caps and hats in hand, waiting for the cortége to pass so they could walk behind.

  Anna watched the six bearers lift her mother’s coffin on to their shoulders. At Edward Edwards’ command they marched in step through the arch and out of view.

  Anna ran behind so she could watch the cortége’s progress. She pictured her mother inside the dark interior of the coffin; tried to absorb that she would never, ever, see her in life again.

  An old woman laid a hand on her shoulder. ‘They’ve gone, love,’ she said when the procession turned a corner. ‘Time you went home.’

  Anna didn’t recognise the woman. She retraced her steps. The thought came to mind that she had so much to tell her mother about the events of the last few days before the realisation hit anew. Fighting tears she leaned against the wall.

  Betty Edwards found her. ‘We need you to see to the food for the wake, Anna.’

  Anna straightened her back. ‘Sorry …’

  ‘Nothing to say sorry for, love. Come inside and help us uncover the plates. People have brought enough food to feed an army. You can take comfort that your mother was well thought of. Some old neighbours even travelled up from Treforest on the train, finding their fare and losing a day’s wages just so they could pay their respects.’

  ‘We need more plates and cups, Maggie. Can you bring what you’ve got from your house?’ Jenny shouted as Betty ushered Anna down the steps.

  ‘I’ve never seen such a crowd for a funeral,’ Maggie said. ‘I’m betting most will come back for a cuppa and a bite to eat. Particularly the ones from Treforest. We need to be prepared.’

  The room was crowded. Every female who lived in the court was there and a few more besides. Anna felt hemmed in and realised she hadn’t been alone for more than a few minutes since Mr Edwards had woken her to tell her that her mother had died and he was moving Richard out of the house – and out of harm and the Paskeys’ way.

  ‘You can arrange the sandwiches, Anna.’

  ‘No, Auntie Betty. Please, it’s boiling hot in here. I’ll fill the water buckets.’ She tried to push past.

  ‘No, you don’t, young lady, you’re shocked and upset. You need to sit quietly with us, and drink a nice cup of hot sweet tea.’ Jenny picked up a stool and dropped it in front of Anna.

  ‘Please, I need air.’ Anna struggled to the door and reached for the buckets.

  ‘Anna …’

  ‘What?’ Anna glared at Maggie.

  An embarrassed silence fell over the room.

  ‘We – Jenny, all of us, we only want to help,’ Maggie explained. ‘When something like this happens we know nothing and no one can take away the pain but we feel we have to try. We do what we think is best. Sometimes, like now, we get it wrong and only make it worse.’

  Ashamed of her outburst, Anna apologised. ‘I’m sorry. None of you have made me feel worse, Auntie Maggie. It’s just that …’ choked she couldn’t say another word.

  ‘Get some fresh air, Anna. Take as long as you like,’ Betty advised. ‘We’ll manage until you come back.’

  Anna walked up the steps and stood in the deserted court.

  All the children except the smallest had trailed behind the cortége in the hope of seeing something of the mysterious rituals of death adults tried to hide from those “too young to understand”.

  Anna knew little about funerals but even she’d realised the minister’s suggestion that the ceremony begin so late in the day was unusual. He’d argued the timing was necessary because it meant friends could travel up from Pontypridd to join those who’d finished their day shifts. Mr Edwards reminded him that the Paskeys would have also finished their shifts and might be tempted to join the cortége to cause trouble. The minister won his point after reminding Mr Edwards the Parrys were popular and half the men in Merthyr would want to pay their respects to Tom Edwards’ and Richard Parry’s widow. He’d insisted that not even the Paskeys would be foolish enough to start anything in front of so many witnesses. Especially, as every decent person in the town had been horrified by their treatment of Richard.

  Anna hoped the minister was right. Because after seeing what the Paskeys had done to Richard she never wanted them near any of her brothers again. She shivered and not from cold. Black smuts fell thickly, carried by the smog belching out of the ironworks. Her mother had christened the flakes ‘the devil’s snow’ when she was in one of her dark moods.

  Ignoring a peculiar, skin-crawling feeling of apprehension, she carried the buckets to th
e pump. She placed a bucket beneath it but instead of pumping, leaned against the iron stand and looked up at the overcast sky. Rain began to fall; a light, misty drizzle that coated the court with a film of damp, sealing in the pollution, and sliming the yard and the walls and roofs of the houses.

  She closed her eyes and pictured her mother as she’d been in life, her thin face pinched by sadness and hunger as she sat, shoulders hunched on the step outside their home, nursing a cup of tea. She wished she could remember her mother smiling but she hadn’t seen her happy since the day her father’s workmates had carried his body through the door of their cottage in Treforest. Sometimes it seemed as though the sun had stopped shining that day. Had any of her family been truly happy since?

  When her mother had moved them to Merthyr, Richard confided he’d felt they were leaving the green hills of Treforest for a black hole. That had been bad enough. But when cholera had raged through the town, taking her two sisters and three of her brothers …

  She wrapped her arms tightly around herself, digging her nails into her shoulders, longing for Richard’s presence with a pain that was almost physical. She wanted to see her brother, for him to put his arms around her and tell her they’d stay together out of the workhouse and be able to look after Owen and Morgan. But she couldn’t blot an image of Richard as he’d been when she’d last seen him. Battered unconscious, his face torn and bruised, his hair plastered with clotted blood. Would he ever be strong enough to work or care for them again?

  She opened her eyes. The rain was falling thicker and faster. Her face and hair were wet. She had a sudden very real image of her mother waiting at the door with a towel to dry her. So real she turned to her house. Tears started in her eyes, yet again. A heavy lump rose in her chest and suffocated her. Mary Parry was no more. She would never again sit out on the step, never walk to the pump, never reprimand the boys, or look for her as she came home from the pub …

  She took a handkerchief from her pocket.

  It had been her mother’s. A treasured gift trimmed with real lace her father had bought her mother before they’d married. She opened it and touched the lock of faded, grey-brown hair she’d secreted in its folds before returning it to her pocket.