Pontypridd 01 - Hearts of Gold

by Catrin Collier

  She cleared away the dishes quickly and glanced at the kitchen clock. It was nearly seven. Maud was expected home first and she wouldn’t be in the house until half-past eight at the earliest. Drying her hands on her overalls, she took them off and hung them on the back of the door. Straightening her blouse, she walked to Alun’s door, and knocked.

  ‘Mr Jones, may I have a word with you?’

  He opened the door. ‘If it’s about the rent, Mrs Powell, it’s not due until Saturday and I’m good for it.’

  ‘I don’t doubt that you are, Mr Jones. It’s not about the rent.’

  ‘Please come in. Sit down.’ He pointed to the only chair in his room. An old upright kitchen chair.

  She sat on it. ‘I wanted to ask you what you intend doing now?’

  ‘Now that the pit’s closed you mean?’

  She nodded.

  ‘I’ll be honest with you, Mrs Powell. I don’t know.’

  ‘When you first came here you said that you were trying to save enough money to open a lodging house?’

  ‘That’s right.’ It was a sore point with Alun. After a childhood and adolescence spent working fourteen hour days on the hill farms and in the slate quarries of North Wales he’d promised himself an easier life. The rumours that reached North Wales from the south said there was good money to be earned in the Rhondda pits. Five years hard graft was all that was needed for a man to earn enough to set himself up for life. But here he was, ten years later with only twenty pounds to his name, no job and still no sight of that good life ahead.

  ‘Have you managed to save enough money towards that lodging house of yours?’ Elizabeth prompted, breaking into his reverie.

  ‘No. I haven’t managed to save a penny since we were put on short time and now …’ he shrugged his shoulders, ‘I have twenty pounds put away. That’s not enough to secure a house and furnish it.’

  ‘How much more do you need?’

  His eyes gleamed hopefully. Could Mrs Powell be looking for an investment? He knew about her uncle the minister. And by all accounts her father had been a minister too. Chapel people were notorious misers. If she had her own money she could be looking to hide it from the parish relief investigating officers before Evan went on the dole …

  ‘I could probably go ahead if I had another fifty,’ he said carefully, watching her face for signs that he’d gone either too high, or too low. ‘If I had that much I’d be able to buy all the furniture I wanted and put a deposit down on one of the four-storeyed houses on Broadway. There’s one that I’ve had my eye on for months. The bank evicted the owners and foreclosed on the mortgage. They’re asking two hundred pounds, but now that the pits are closed they might drop to a hundred and eighty, perhaps even lower. But whatever the final figure they’ll still be looking for a deposit of fifty. It’s in a bit of a state, been empty for a while, but there’s nothing wrong there that I couldn’t put right.’

  ‘The mortgage would be a good ten to fifteen shillings a week,’ Elizabeth warned.

  ‘I’d have the rents to pay it with. There’s a three-roomed basement that could be let out as a separate flat. Two rooms and a kitchen above the basement, and six bedrooms and a box room above that on two floors. I intend to let out the flat for seven and six a week …’ He looked at her. ‘You don’t think that’s too much do you?’ he asked seriously. ‘It’s half a crown less than the houses in Leyshon Street.’

  ‘It would be worth about that if it’s got its own entrance,’ Elizabeth observed practically.

  ‘It’s got that all right, back and front. I thought I’d live in the two rooms on the same floor as the kitchen and let out the rest. Seven shillings and six pence a week for a single, and six and six each for those sharing a double. For that I’d have to give them breakfast and tea of course, but given enough beds – that’s why I need the extra money,’ he explained, ‘to buy beds. I could get at least ten men into those six rooms.

  With the rent from the basement that would make over three pounds ten shillings a week coming into the house. Even allowing for food and a woman to come in and do the cooking and cleaning, I reckon on clearing at least one pound ten shillings a week. If I paid that off the mortgage the house would be mine in no time.’ He smiled, happy that he’d found someone prepared to listen to his scheme.

  ‘I can see that you’ve got it all worked out, Mr Jones.’

  ‘I’ve had nothing else to think about. It’s been pretty obvious which way the pits have been going for a long time. Things would be a lot different if I had that fifty pounds I can tell you, Mrs Powell,’ he added craftily. ‘First one house, then who knows, another maybe. Perhaps even a third if I could find the right people to run them for me,’ he said unsubtly. ‘Lack of money has never stopped me from dreaming.’

  ‘If I gave you fifty pounds. Gave …’ Elizabeth repeated. She saw the greed in his eyes and knew she’d marked the North Walian right.

  ‘What could I do for you that’s worth that much, Mrs Powell?’ he asked cautiously.

  ‘A favour,’ she said carefully. ‘And before I tell you what it is you have to promise never to repeat what I’m about to say to anyone. Not now or in the future. If you say no to my proposition we’ll both just forget I asked. If you say yes, that will be a very different matter. What do you say, Mr Jones?’

  ‘That I agree to your conditions, Mrs Powell. What exactly is this favour?’

  ‘Marry my daughter, Mr Jones. And quickly.’

  Elizabeth led the way upstairs. She knocked on the girls’ bedroom door and opened it. Bethan was lying in semi-darkness staring at the vista of rooftops and sky line framed within the narrow confine of the sash window.

  ‘Mr Jones wants a word with you, Bethan.’ She switched on the lamp, killing the soft, pleasant, twilight glow with a cruel blast of yellow light. ‘I’ll be in my bedroom if you need me. All you have to do is call out.’

  ‘Yes, Mam.’

  Alun Jones hovered uneasily in the open doorway of the room. He waited until Elizabeth had closed her bedroom door before speaking.

  ‘Won’t you sit down?’ Bethan asked, indicating the dressing table stool. She felt calm, flat, the tears and emotion of earlier completely spent.

  ‘I’ll just say what I’ve come to say, then go if you don’t mind.’ Intimidated by Elizabeth’s presence in the room next door and seeing Bethan in the intimacy of her bedroom, he shifted his weight uneasily from one foot to the other.

  ‘Suit yourself,’ Bethan said ungraciously, steeling herself.

  ‘I’ve saved some money, Nurse Powell, it’s not much but it’s enough to put a down payment on a house and there’s one going on Broadway. It’s got six bedrooms and a basement flat. I intend to take in lodgers. With the pit finishing I have to think of other ways of making a living. If you’d be kind enough to marry me we could build up a tidy business between us. I’m not saying it will be easy. There’ll be a lot of cooking, cleaning, washing and so on, but as I wouldn’t be working I could help out.’

  ‘Thank you for the offer.’ The inane phrase was all Bethan could manage. She might have lived under the same roof as Alun Jones for three years, but she knew absolutely nothing about the man. Nor had she ever felt the urge to find out anything. Given her indifference she felt that his proposal was ludicrous. Totally and utterly ludicrous.

  ‘I know about – about – your condition,’ he stammered, pulling his ear lobe and biting his lower lip in confusion. ‘And …’ He took the bull by the horns and blurted out what he’d really come to say. ‘And I’m prepared to accept the child in return for your help in my business. Of course it will take me a week or two to sort out a mortgage for the house, perhaps longer. But if you’re agreeable I could make arrangements for us to get married in the Registry Office in Courthouse Street. It wouldn’t be the same as a chapel wedding of course. But I hope you’ll agree that it’s what comes after the ceremony that’s important. And, I already know of one married couple and four men who are looking for decen
t lodgings.’

  Bethan turned away from him and stared disconsolately at one of the Rossetti prints on the walls. It had been a favourite since childhood. The Wedding of St George and Princess Sabra. She couldn’t even begin to count the hours she’d stared at it as a child dreaming of the day when she’d grow up and fall in love with her very own knight. Imagining the beauty and romance of the wedding that would follow.

  ‘May I go to the Registry Office tomorrow, Nurse Powell?’

  The question intruded into her lifelong daydream, shattering it utterly. Completely and forever. She put all thoughts of romance aside and remembered her shame, her family, and her duty in that order.

  ‘You may.’

  She couldn’t even bring herself to ask him to call her Bethan.

  Four weeks later Trevor pronounced Bethan fit enough to return to work. They’d argued dreadfully during her convalescence. He’d wanted to write to Andrew about her condition. By dint of lies and a fair amount of acting she’d managed to convince him that the baby was the main reason why Andrew had left Pontypridd for London. Eventually, after a great deal of soul-searching during which she’d continually reminded him that she had the full and knowing support of her mother he’d finally agreed not to interfere.

  Armed with Trevor’s medical certificate and terrified of receiving a refusal she requested that she be returned to night duty. To her amazement Matron agreed. She failed to find out whether she’d been given the shift because the hospital was short of night staff, or because Trevor had balked at carrying out his threat to ask that she be transferred to days.

  But once she knew she was being returned to her old shift she didn’t care about the reason. She was simply grateful that she was being allowed to work with a skeleton staff, away from Laura’s concerned and prying eyes.

  All she could think of was holding out. Keeping the child within her a secret from everyone except her mother, Alun Jones and Trevor, the only people acquainted with her shame. And maintaining her distance from Laura, her father, brothers, Maud … everyone who was likely to ask questions she didn’t want to answer.

  It was easier to do that when she worked nights and slept during the day. The evenings were the only dangerous times, and she even managed to cut down on those by staying in bed until an hour before she was due on the ward.

  At the end of Bethan’s first week in work, Elizabeth made breakfast, saw Evan and the boys off down the hill, but, instead of settling down to do the housework she broke with her normal routine and went straight back upstairs to wash and change.

  When she came down a letter was lying on the doormat, just inside the door. She picked it up and turned it over in her hand.

  It was addressed to Bethan and bore a London postmark. The third to come in as many weeks. Why couldn’t the man leave Bethan alone?

  She clutched it tightly, wanting to destroy it or open it, but lacked the courage. She’d sorted Bethan’s problems out beautifully without help from anyone, except perhaps poor dead Hetty. She didn’t need this. A few hours from now Bethan would be Mrs Alun Jones, a respectable married housewife with a lodging house and a husband to take care of and a nice steady income flowing in to keep the wolf from the door. That is unless … unless …

  Elizabeth stuffed the envelope into her pocket, consoling herself with the thought that she might be reading more into the letters than they contained. Perhaps the man merely wanted Bethan to return something he’d given her. Perhaps he was warning her not to press a paternity suit.

  Yes, that was it! His parents had heard rumours, perhaps from Trevor Lewis and he wanted to make sure that Bethan didn’t implicate him in any way. After all, he hadn’t ever really cared for Bethan. If he had, he’d have stayed in Pontypridd to look after her.

  ‘Mam, I didn’t see you, did I knock you?’ Bethan asked as she walked in from work, drenched to the skin by the early morning autumn rains.

  ‘No. No you didn’t,’ Elizabeth hastily laid her hand over her pocket, crunching the paper. ‘Letter from the bank manager,’ she explained. ‘No doubt he’s wondering, like I am, how exactly your father intends to pay the mortgage. You look soaked,’ she said to Bethan, sounding positively garrulous for once.

  ‘It’s filthy out there.’ Bethan went into the kitchen, hung her dripping cloak and uniform dress on the airing rack and tied the dressing gown that her mother had ready around herself.

  ‘No one’s home except Alun,’ Elizabeth volunteered as she laid bread and jam out on the table. Bethan knew that Maud would be in school. She didn’t ask where her father and brothers were. If they hadn’t planned anything, her mother would have found some pretext to send them out. And then again they never needed much persuasion to leave the house. Her mother hadn’t created much of a home to linger in, she thought miserably, closing her eyes to the dingy kitchen.

  ‘And there’s no time for sleeping either,’ Elizabeth said abruptly. ‘The ceremony’s set for ten sharp.’

  ‘I know’ Bethan agreed wearily. ‘I’ll go up and change now.’

  ‘I’ll bring your washing water up.’

  ‘Thank you.’ Bethan knew why her mother was being nice and resented her for it. Nevertheless she dragged her feet and went upstairs.

  As soon as she was alone Elizabeth pulled the letter out of her pocket again. She looked at it one last time then she opened the dresser drawer, and thrust it next to the others, beneath a pile of tea towels. Only then did she fill the jug and take it up to Bethan.

  Bethan washed and dressed mechanically putting on her blue serge skirt and a white blouse. She packed her spare underclothes, uniform, slippers and dressing gown into the cardboard suitcase her mother had left lying on the bed. She’d already slept her last night, or rather day, in Graig Avenue.

  She took one final wistful look at the double bed she’d shared with Maud for so many years and went downstairs.

  Half an hour later Bethan walked back down the hill in company with her mother and Alun. He carried her suitcase. He’d taken his own to the house on Broadway the night before. She wore her old, shabby black coat which soaked up the rain like a sponge despite the umbrella Elizabeth held over both their heads.

  They sat in the damp ante-room to the Registry Office and waited. There were puddles of dirty water on the mock mosaic floor and the brown paint on the woodwork was cracked and peeling.

  Bethan felt strange, remote. As if she wasn’t really in the room at all, but watching from the outside. She started to weave a pretence that she was in the White Palace seeing a film about someone sitting in a doctor’s waiting room waiting for news of their loved one.

  Then Alun offered to help her off with her coat, and she returned bleakly to the world of reality.

  She noticed that he was wearing a black suit, shiny with age and frayed at the cuffs. Not wanting to meet his eyes she looked away and saw a huge patch of damp that had spread across the whole of one corner, staining both walls and ceiling.

  She began to weave another fantasy, imagining it was a map, and when she was in the middle of populating it with towns and villages the registrar called their names.

  They left their uncomfortable seats and walked into a second room smaller than the first. There were two rows of schoolroom chairs, a large wooden desk that held a book that had already been opened out and a vase of dusty wax flowers.

  The registrar murmured something to Alun. He left the room for a few moments returning with a woman Bethan had never seen before.

  ‘We need a second witness,’ Alun explained.

  The ceremony, such as it was, began.

  Afterwards Bethan remembered little of it. Mainly the absence of what should have been. There were no flowers, no music, no choir, no relatives, no friends, no laughter, no joy and no good wishes. Only the cold, damp brown and cream room, the rain beating on the window, the long silences whenever the registrar ceased speaking and the strange woman and her mother standing behind her, blocking her only exit.

  She must hav
e said “yes” when the important question was asked, because Alun pushed a ring on to her finger. She recognised it. A heavy gold band, dark with age and engraved in the centre with a single cross. It had been her mother’s mother’s. As a child she’d never been allowed to touch it. It had lain in pride of place in Elizabeth’s half empty jewellery box. She found it peculiar that a ring she hadn’t been allowed to touch then, now bound her to a man she didn’t know – or love.

  ‘You may kiss the bride.’

  She stared at the registrar then at Alun and panicked. She stepped back, stumbling over her own feet. Alun put out his hand and caught her before she fell. The registrar laughed.

  ‘All brides are shy in company, Mr Jones,’ he joked. ‘But don’t worry, you’ll soon be alone with Mrs Jones.’

  “Mrs Jones.”

  She looked around, confused for a moment. Then the enormity of what she’d done hit home. She was Mrs Jones.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  After the ceremony Elizabeth led the way back into the waiting room. The registrar and the witness said goodbye, and the communicating door between the office and ante-room closed behind them.

  ‘Well!’ Elizabeth looked at Bethan and Alun and gave them a tight little smile, which neither returned. She debated whether or not to break into a pound of the twenty she had left of Hetty’s money and offer to buy them a meal in Ronconis’ I, but on reflection she thought better of the idea. After all, it was Alun who was sitting on the lion’s share of the money, not her.

  ‘We’d better be going,’ Alun said, picking up his and Bethan’s coats. ‘I think the house is ready to sleep in but Bethan may have other ideas.’

  ‘I’ll see you soon,’ Elizabeth walked over to Bethan, pecked her cheek and left the building. She paused in the doorway for a moment to put up her umbrella, then began the long, lonely walk back up the hill.

  She’d done it! She’d bought Bethan respectability, but her elation was tempered by the knowledge that the worst was to come.