by Dai Smith
Weeks passed, and I lost sight of him: his company had, somehow, been attached to another brigade. Cares multiplied, and I forgot his existence, until one day I saw him again – this time at a Battalion Aid Post – coming in on a stretcher. I can see him now, all clay-covered, with his head all battered and bleeding. There he lay, dead, the stretcher dripping with the sticky, brown blood of him.
I turned to one of the stretcher-bearers whom I recognised as having transferred from the Battalion at the same time as Morgan.
‘Shoni?’ I queried.
He nodded his head, and said, ‘Blown up in a mine, sir.’ The bearer assisted in carrying the body and returned to me. ‘How did it happen?’ I asked.
He answered my question with all a Welshman’s circumlocutions and irrelevancies, and this was his story:
‘Yes, sir, “Shoni” was one of the best minars in the Company – he was a better minar than soldiar, sir, and the Captun said he was one of the best men he ’ad, beggin’ your pardon, sir. “Shoni” was a good colliar, an’ I remember ’ow ’is stall in the Dyffryn pit was one of the tidiest in the place. Well, sir, it was like this. We was drivin’ a headin’ – I mean a gallery, sir – towards a German sap, and we ’ad got well under it, and there was three Engineers workin’ in the cross headin’ preparin’ for the mines and the connections. But the Germans ’ad countermined, an’ all at once part of our gallery fell into theirs, shuttin’ up the Engineers in the far end. Our top fell in, and there we was in the gallery not knowin’ what to do, and every minute we was expectin’ the Germans to blow up their mine. To stop in the gallery was dangerous, an’ to leave it was to leave them three to be buried alive. The ground was so loose, an’ the boys was afraid, and we was beginnin’ to make for the shaft when “Shoni” came up. “Where are you goin’,” he said, “you aren’t goin’ to leave them boys there. Come on, Twm,” he says to me, “We can get a hole through that fall in ten minutes. I’ve been lookin’ at it.” So we went back, an’ dug away at that fall like anythin’ – all the time expectin’ that German mine to go off. I was all nerves, but “Shoni” was as cool as anything – workin’ away as if he was in his own pit at ’ome, diggin’ an’ proppin’ with flats an’ other things at full speed. At last ’e shouted ’e was through, but we could see that the fall would be settlin’ again as the top was working like anything. “Twm,” he says to me, “me an’ you will get them out – we are used to it. You others get back now.” They didn’t want to go then, sir, but “Shoni” made them go, sayin’ they was only in the way. So we worked our way in, an’ we found them: two was very weak an’ exhausted, an’ the other like dead. We got them out to the top of the slant, and then “Shoni” said, “Twm, it’s no use you comin’ back again: I’m goin’ back for the dead one. We’ll try artificial respiration on him.” It was no use me arguin’ – he would go in himself. So I went back to the neck of the slant, an’ ’eard ’im creeping back an’ draggin’ the body along. He was just pullin’ ’im through the hole in the fall, when the mine went off. The wind of the explosion came up the gallery, an’ hit me against the trench, an’ left me gaspin’. They all rushed up, an’ by then I was all right, but a bit shaky. The Germans ’ad fired what is called a “camouflet”, which is a small charge which will blow up a gallery, but not make a big crater like a mine would do. They ’ad blown it up just as “Shoni” was clearing the fall, an’ ’e didn’t have a chance. It had exploded nearly under ’im, an’ had blown ’im yards towards the mouth of the gallery before the roof came down an’ buried him. We dug like devils an’ got ’im out: he was still conscious when we brought ’im out, but ’e was nearly gone. He couldn’t speak, an’ then ’e went unconscious. He wasn’t long, sir, before he died. He was back in the mine again, an’ ’e was in awful pain, an’ he was moanin’. “Tell the manager,” I heard ’im sayin’, “I nearly got ’im out. I done my best” – and he was dead.’
And the bearer’s voice broke, and the big teardrops coursed down his cheeks.
I went to his burial at the British Cemetery at Windy Corner, where those rows of simple wooden crosses mark the last resting place of many, whose heroic deeds no pen will record. As the Chaplain read those undying words of the Burial Service over the poor, shattered body in the bloodstained blanket, lying in the shallow grave, the snow fell steadily and wrapped it gently in a pure white coverlet: his winding sheet was of the purest white… And there I left him. Far from the Land of his Fathers he sleeps well among the brave.
At the crossroads the German shrapnel was beginning to burst at the usual time; where the road bent sharply to the right passed a working party bound for the trenches; behind us a battery of 18-pounders suddenly opened fire, as if in honourable tribute to the poor clay that was Second Corporal John Morgan, RE, grouser, and man.
BE THIS HER MEMORIAL
Caradoc Evans
Mice and rats, as it is said, frequent neither churches nor poor men’s homes. The story I have to tell you about Nanni – the Nanni who was hustled on her way to prayer meeting by the Bad Man, who saw the phantom mourners bearing away Twm Tybach’s coffin, who saw the Spirit Hounds and heard their moanings two days before Isaac Penparc took wing – the story I have to tell you contradicts that theory.
Nanni was religious; and she was old. No one knew how old she was, for she said that she remembered the birth of each person that gathered in Capel Sion; she was so old that her age had ceased to concern.
She lived in the mud-walled, straw-thatched cottage on the steep road which goes up from the Garden of Eden, and ends at the tramping way that takes you into Cardigan town; if you happen to be travelling that way you may still see the roofless walls which were silent witnesses to Nanni’s great sacrifice – a sacrifice surely counted unto her for righteousness, though in her search for God she fell down and worshipped at the feet of a god.
Nanni’s income was three shillings and ninepence a week. That sum was allowed her by Abel Shones, the officer for Poor Relief, who each payday never forgot to remind the crooked, wrinkled, toothless old woman how much she owed to him and God.
‘If it was not for me, little Nanni,’ Abel was in the habit of telling her, ‘you would be in the House of the Poor long ago.’
At that remark Nanni would shiver and tremble.
‘Dear heart,’ she would say in the third person, for Abel was a mighty man and the holder of a proud office, ‘I pray for him night and day.’
Nanni spoke the truth, for she did remember Abel in her prayers. But the workhouse held for her none of the terrors it holds for her poverty-stricken sisters. Life was life anywhere, in cottage or in poorhouse, though with this difference: her liberty in the poorhouse would be so curtailed that no more would she be able to listen to the spirit-laden eloquence of the Respected Josiah Bryn-Bevan. She helped to bring Josiah into the world; she swaddled him in her own flannel petticoat; she watched him going to and coming from school; she knitted for him four pairs of strong stockings to mark his going out into the world as a farm servant; and when the boy, having obeyed the command of the Big Man was called to minister to the congregation of Capel Sion, even Josiah’s mother was not more vain than Old Nanni. Hence Nanni struggled on less than three shillings and ninepence a week, for did she not give a tenth of her income to the treasury of the Capel? Unconsciously she came to regard Josiah as greater than God: God was abstract; Josiah was real.
As Josiah played a part in Nanni’s life, so did a Seller of Bibles play a minor part in the last few days of her travail. The man came to Nanni’s cottage the evening of the day of the rumour that the Respected Josiah Bryn-Bevan had received a call from a wealthy sister church in Aberystwyth. Broken with grief, Nanni, the first time for many years, bent her stiffened limbs and addressed herself to the living God.
‘Dear little Big Man,’ she prayed, ‘let not your son bach religious depart.’
Then she recalled how good God had been to her, how He had permitted her to listen to His son’s voice; and anot
her fear struck her heart.
‘Dear little Big Man,’ she muttered between her blackened gums, ‘do you now let me live to hear the boy’s farewell words.’
At that moment the Seller of Bibles raised the latch of the door.
‘The Big Man be with this household,’ he said, placing his pack on Nanni’s bed. ‘Sit you down,’ said Nanni, ‘and rest yourself, for you must be weary.’
‘Man,’ replied the Seller of Bibles, ‘is never weary of well-doing.’
Nanni dusted for him a chair.
‘No, no; indeed now,’ he said; ‘I cannot tarry long, woman. Do you not know that I am the Big Man’s messenger? Am I not honoured to take His word into the highways and byways, and has He not sent me here?’
He unstrapped his pack, and showed Nanni a gaudy volume with a clasp of brass, and containing many coloured prints; the pictures he explained at hazard: here was a tall-hatted John baptising, here a Roman-featured Christ praying in the Garden of Gethsemane, here a frock-coated Moses and the Tablets.
‘A Book,’ said he, ‘which ought to be on the table of every Christian home.’
‘Truth you speak, little man,’ remarked Nanni. ‘What shall I say to you you are asking for it?’
‘It has a price far above rubies,’ answered the Seller of Bibles. He turned over the leaves and read: ‘“The labourer is worthy of his hire.” Thus is it written. I will let you have one copy – one copy only – at cost price.’
‘How good you are, dear me!’ exclaimed Nanni.
‘This I can do,’ said the Seller of Bibles, ‘because my Master is the Big Man.’
‘Speak you now what the cost price is.’
‘A little sovereign, that is all.’
‘Dear, dear; the Word of the little Big Man for a sovereign!’
‘Keep you the Book on your parlour table for a week. Maybe others who are thirsty will see it.’
Then the Seller of Bibles sang a prayer; and he departed.
Before the week was over the Respected Josia Bryn-Bevan announced from his pulpit that in the call he had discerned the voice of God bidding him go forth into the vineyard.
Nanni went home and prayed to the merciful God:
‘Dear little Big Man, spare me to listen to the farewell sermon of your saint.’
Nanni informed the Seller of Bibles that she would buy the Book, and she asked him to take it away with him and have written inside it an inscription to the effect that it was a gift from the least worthy of his flock to the Respected Josiah Bryn-Bevan, DD, and she requested him to bring it back to her on the eve of the minister’s farewell sermon.
She then hammered hobnails into the soles of her boots, so as to render them more durable for tramping to such capels as Bryn-Bevan happened to be preaching in. Her absences from home became a byword, occurring as they did in the haymaking season. Her labour was wanted in the fields. It was the property of the community, the community which paid her three shillings and ninepence a week.
One night Sadrach Danyrefail called at her cottage to commandeer her services for the next day. His crop had been on the ground for a fortnight, and now that there was a prospect of fair weather he was anxious to gather it in. Sadrach was going to say hard things to Nanni, but the appearance of the gleaming-eyed creature that drew back the bolts of the door frightened him and tied his tongue. He was glad that the old woman did not invite him inside, for from within there issued an abominable smell such as might have come from the boiler of the witch who one time lived on the moor. In the morning he saw Nanni trudging towards a distant capel where the Respected Josiah Bryn-Bevan was delivering a sermon in the evening. She looked less bent and not so shrivelled up as she did the night before. Clearly, sleep had given her fresh vitality.
Two Sabbaths before the farewell sermon was to be preached Nanni came to Capel Sion with an ugly sore at the side of her mouth; repulsive matter oozed slowly from it, forming into a head, and then coursing thickly down her chin on to the shoulder of her black cape, where it glistened among the beads. On occasions her lips tightened, and she swished a hand angrily across her face.
‘Old Nanni,’ folk remarked while discussing her over their dinner tables, ‘is getting as dirty as an old sow.’
During the week two more sores appeared; the next Sabbath Nanni had a strip of calico drawn over her face.
Early on the eve of the farewell Sabbath the Seller of Bibles arrived with the Book, and Nanni gave him a sovereign in small money. She packed it up reverently, and betook herself to Sadrach Danyrefail to ask him to make the presentation.
At the end of his sermon the Respected Josiah Bryn-Bevan made reference to the giver of the Bible, and grieved that she was not in the Capel. He dwelt on her sacrifice. Here was a Book to be treasured, and he could think of no one who would treasure it better than Sadrach Danyrefail, to whom he would hand it in recognition of his work in the School of the Sabbath.
In the morning the Respected Josiah Bryn-Bevan, making a tour of his congregation, bethought himself of Nanni. The thought came to him on leaving Danyrefail, the distance betwixt which and Nanni’ s cottage is two fields. He opened the door and called out:
‘Nanni.’
None answered.
He entered the room. Nanni was on the floor.
‘Nanni, Nanni!’ he said. ‘Why for you do not reply to me? Am I not your shepherd?’
There was no movement from Nanni. Mishtir Bryn-Bevan went on his knees and peered at her. Her hands were clasped tightly together, as though guarding some great treasure. The minister raised himself and prised them apart with the ferrule of his walking stick. A roasted rat revealed itself. Mishtir Bryn-Bevan stood for several moments spellbound and silent; and in the stillness the rats crept boldly out of their hiding places and resumed their attack on Nanni’s face. The minister, startled and horrified, fled from the house of sacrifice.
A BED OF FEATHERS
Rhys Davies
I
One year Jacob Jenkins, having amassed a little fortune by steady labour in the pit, went for a long holiday amid the rich meadows and stony villages of Cardiganshire. And he brought back to the valley a wife.
To the valley people the union was scandalous and unnatural. For though Jacob was sixty and become arid in a respectable celibacy, the woman he brought triumphantly to the valley was a rose-red blooming young creature of twenty-five, with wanton masses of goldish hair and a suggestion of proud abandonment about her: a farmhand, as everyone knew not long after her arrival. Ach-y-fi. Why couldn’t the man marry one of the many local widows near his own age? Jacob Jenkins, a deacon for fifteen years, taking to himself a jaunty-looking slut like that!
But Jacob brought her proudly into the home, presented her to his gaping sister Ann, who for minutes was shocked into silence, and then to his half-brother Emlyn, who accepted her with amused indifference.
‘Come to mother us orphans, have you?’ Emlyn said with a grin.
‘Indeed now, have I been useless, then?’ Ann, forty-five and shrewish, demanded at last. She turned to Jacob’s wife. ‘An awful business you’ll find it, looking after colliers,’ she said with an unpleasant grimace.
‘With two of you not so hard the work will be,’ Jacob said.
But Ann announced, drawing off her shawl and folding it calmly: ‘Oh, now that you have married like this, so late and cunning, no need is there for me here. Go as a housekeeper I will, somewhere in the country.’ Her lips were bloodless, her big body taut with scorn. She loathed the wife at first sight.
Jacob said indifferently, ‘Your own way you must go, Ann fach.’ He had eyes only for Rebecca now.
‘No disturbance do I want to make in this house,’ Rebecca said, tapping her foot nervously.
But Ann ignored her and went out. Emlyn, child of their father’s second wife, spat into the fire and sat down in satisfied acceptance of the new menage. And he said to Jacob, when the young wife had gone upstairs to take off her new clothes:
‘Jacob, Ja
cob, a sly taste for women you hid in you. And a juicy taste too!’
Jacob lifted his lizard eyelids.
‘Easy capture she was,’ he said. ‘A lot of silly bumpkins were after her, with nothing in their pockets, and a liking for dear things she has. Think you she is worth a brooch that was fifty shillings and a bracelet that cost the wages of ten days’ work?’ His grey old collier’s face shone exultingly.
Emlyn laughed. ‘Worth every penny she is, no doubt!’
Jacob looked at him in senile rhapsody.
‘Ah, every penny. A fool I was to stay single for so many years. Take advice from me. Don’t you be a frog and remain unmarried for so long. A rare bed of feathers is a woman.’
Emlyn stretched his length in yawning indifference. He was not yet thirty, tall and easy with supple strength, and no stranger to the comforting ways of women.
‘Don’t hurry me now,’ he laughed. ‘Satisfied I am as things are.’ He looked at Jacob. ‘But you want me to go? Ann says she is going, and you want to be alone?’
But Jacob shook his head. ‘No, stay you as a lodger, Emlyn bach. An expensive woman Rebecca is going to be I am thinking, and not for ever do I want to work in the dirty old pit. Take some of the expense off you will if you will pay us so and so.’ Rebecca came back into the room just then, and he said to her: ‘Willing you are that Emlyn shall stay as a lodger? Asking he was if we would rather be alone.’
Rebecca’s dark watching eyes suddenly became filled with tears. ‘Oh,’ she said again, faltering a little, her tearful glance upon the young man, ‘no disturbance do I want to make here. Emlyn, stay you will, won’t you?’
Her thick hand played with the blood-red stone of her bracelet; and her eyes looked a little weary in the shining fruit-like freshness of her face.
II
Rebecca did not become a collier’s wife easily. She would not boil enough water for the baths, she neglected to dry the sweat-damp garments that Jacob and Emlyn threw into a corner of the kitchen as they undressed to wash in the tub before the fire, she couldn’t patch moleskin trousers, she couldn’t make broth as a Welsh collier likes it – thick and heavy with carrots, onions and leeks. This last fault was hard to overlook, though both Emlyn and Jacob were strangely forbearing with the young woman.