Spinner's Wharf

by Spinner's Wharf (retail) (epub)

  ‘Morning, Peter Harries. Resting again, is it? Getting too old for the job you are, man.’

  ‘Aye and you are a young cock without a hen, strutting all over the place showing off that hairless chest of yours. Button up your shirt, boyo and hide your youth from me, for it’s jealous I am.’

  Morgan smiled and put his tea-can on the ground, the handle clanking against the chipped enamel sides.

  ‘’Bout ready for ladling now, Morgan.’ Peter was peering into the glowing mouth of the furnace where the heat was cruel to the skin, his eyes narrowed almost into slits.

  ‘What’s this lot of copper for?’ Morgan was rolling up the sleeves of his striped navy flannel shirt and Peter glanced over his shoulder.

  ‘Fire boxes for locomotives mainly, boyo.’ The furnaceman lowered his voice. ‘Though there’s talk that we’re rolling plates for shell bands. It’s supposed to be secret, mind. Hush now, the rest of the boys are here.’

  Morgan took his ladle and dipped it swiftly into the hissing stew of the metal, withdrawing it smoothly though his muscles strained at the weight of thirty pounds of molten copper and his sinews stood proud. He tipped the copper into the mould, falling into line with the other men of the gang, moving in the familiar round of activity.

  The dip of the spoon-like ladle into the copper, the endless walk over the few yards to the top-hat moulds and then the releasing of tension on muscle and sinew as the load was shed – all this was performed mindlessly. Was this any better than crouching in some dark watery pit wresting coal from the ground, Morgan wondered briefly.

  There was no time for talking now, no breath either; the moulds standing like sentinels around the mouth of the furnace were ravening hungry beasts, needing to be filled time and time again. Morgan worked as hard as any of his fellows, though when he had joined the gang some months ago he had been teased unmercifully because his sixteen-year-old body was then slim and unmuscled. He had developed strength soon enough, he thought ruefully, and now he had the power to fill his ladle to the brim like the best of them.

  The grub-break was a welcome rest from the back-breaking work and as Morgan rubbed the sweat from his eyes, he felt thirst gnaw at his throat and belly. He took up his can and drank deeply of the tea kept warm by the heat of the furnace.

  ‘What do you reckon on this war, then?’ Peter crouched on his haunches just as the miners did back home, Morgan thought. ‘Would you like to go off to fight the Hun boys?’

  ‘Duw, there’s a soft question, man!’ Frank was a lean man with a worried frown perpetually creasing his forehead. ‘I got a young wife and four children. Anyway, they don’t want men above thirty – says so in the Daily Post.’ Frank grinned at Morgan. ‘We’re both out of it, boy; you’re too young and me, well, I’m past my thirtieth birthday two year ago. Anyway, in a special occupation we are.’

  ‘Well, I think a lot of us will have to enlist before long. It’s early days yet and Lord Kitchener can be fussy but wait you – take the ruddy lot of us before the end he will.’ Peter spoke mournfully.

  ‘Jawl, stop being so cheerful, man,’ Frank said impatiently. ‘I hope that this little lot will be over and done with in a few months. Told us it would only last a year, that’s what all the bigwigs are saying.’

  ‘They’re talking about making Mr Lloyd George Minister of Munitions,’ Morgan said soberly. ‘So the government must think it’ll be quite a long job beating the Kaiser.’

  ‘Aye well, they would,’ Frank said laconically, disposing of the entire Cabinet with a sweep of his hand – a hand that was missing two fingers, the price sometimes paid for carelessness in the face of molten copper. ‘Money in it for them, see. And I can’t see Lloyd George giving up a cushy job as Chancellor – a sensible Welshman, isn’t he?’

  ‘Well, I wouldn’t mind going into the war,’ Morgan said, deftly sidestepping Frank’s question, for once started on politics he would talk tirelessly and endlessly on the subject.

  ‘You!’ Peter laughed out loud. ‘God, you’re still wet behind the ears, not even a bit of bumfluff on your chin – no danger of them mistaking you for an eighteen-year-old.’

  Morgan was not the least affronted. ‘Well, it would be something to see a bit of the world, wouldn’t it?’

  ‘All you’d see, lad, is the mud of a battlefield.’ Peter was determined to fulfil his role of pessimist. ‘If the Germans didn’t kill you, the foreign muck they call grub would. No, you stay by here, boy, where you’re safe.’

  Peter rose from his hunkering position and stretched his arms. ‘Well, back to the job in hand now is it, boys, or it’ll be the order of the boot for all of us. Then we’d have to join Kitchener’s Army whether we liked it or not.’

  Later, as Morgan made his way from the works towards Green Hill, he felt weariness drag at him as though he was carrying a physical burden on his shoulders. His arms ached with the pain of a rotting tooth and his legs were trembling with fatigue.

  The roadway was shiny with rain and children playing in the street splashed murky water over thin legs. Morgan felt pity gripe at his stomach – little babbas needed fresh air and sunshine, not smoke and dust and grime.

  Six months ago, when he had searched Sweyn’s Eye for a home to rent for himself and his dad, the only people who offered him a roof over his head were the O’Connors in Emerald Court.

  The houses were small and crumbling, the roads unmade and unlit. The Irish were the descendants of those come over as ballast on the coal ships to settle in a land that seemed free of famine and blight. But they had been forced to accept lower wages and a poorer standard of living than the Welsh. And so they had clung together, making their own communities around the churches of St David and St Joseph, and to Morgan and his sick father they had been kindness itself.

  He moved indoors past the youngest of the O’Connor girls, all of them drawn from the same mould with light ginger hair and a sprinkling of freckles over snub noses – and not a boy to carry on the name, which was a great trial to Brendan O’Connor who kept trying to rectify nature’s mistake.

  ‘Your daddy’s been bad today.’ Mrs O’Connor rubbed her hands on her apron and stared up at him sympathetically. ‘I’ve tried giving him a bite of stew, but sure he won’t be eating anything.’

  Morgan rested his hand for a moment on Stella O’Connor’s shoulder. She was a beautiful woman, robust and healthy in spite of being constantly full with child. ‘I know you’re doing your best and all I can do is say thank you.’

  ‘Oh, stop your blarney, your dinner’s ready, hot rabbit pie and tatties. I’m sure you’re good and hungry, so come down to the kitchen when you’ve seen your daddy.’

  In the room up the stairs and at the back of the house, John Lloyd lay asleep. His thin frame made hardly any impression as he lay huddled beneath the blankets.

  ‘Dad, how are you feeling?’ Morgan sat on the bed and took his father’s thin hand between his own strong fingers.

  ‘Oh, it’s you, Morgan. I’m fine, boyo, there’s good it is to see you home!’ He struggled to sit up against the pillows and the effort made him cough, the harsh dry racking sound filling the room.

  ‘Can I get you a good strong cup of tea, Dad? Hot as hell and sweet as sin, just as you like it,’ Morgan said brightly.

  ‘That would be a treat, boy, a right treat, but don’t be long.’

  Morgan hurried down the stairs, pain gnawing at him. It was lonely for his father in that one room with only a view of the house next door, but once he had enough money saved Morgan meant to find a nice airy house to rent, preferably with a garden so that Dad could sit outside on sunny days.

  ‘Dad would like a cup of tea.’ Morgan smiled, catching the glance of Honey O’Connor, fifteen and beautiful with hair so golden and thick that a man knew at once why she had been so named.

  ‘You go and wash, boy,’ Mrs O’Connor said quickly. ‘Get all that copper dust off you and I’ll make the tea, so I will.’

  The pump was in the yard and
Morgan stripped off his shirt and rubbed at his body with the bar of home-made soap that smelled of carbolic. The abrasive copper dust stung like a hundred wasps, clinging to the skin as though in rebellion against the coldness of the water. But it was good to feel clean again. Morgan glanced up at the sky where grey clouds lay low like a roof over the buildings, and the green of the copper smoke spiralled upwards insidiously, pretending innocence. He sighed; it must be good to live away from the stink and fumes of the town, to walk in soft country meadows and smell wild flowers instead of sulphur.

  He took his dinner upstairs. Dad was alone long enough and found pleasure in talking to Morgan about the old days when Mam had been alive and when he himself had worked, strong and young, down the blackness of the pits.

  ‘Started as a boy, I did,’ he said as Morgan settled himself beside the bed. John Lloyd’s eyes were distant, as though seeing other things beyond the faded peeling wallpaper of the little room. ‘Didn’t know where to go to piss I didn’t, so asked where the lavvie was and everybody laughed. Right here, boyo, I was told. Never did like that, a man wants his private moments after all.’

  Morgan was only half-listening. The story was a familiar one and he had heard it many times before. And the rabbit pie was good and hot, covered with mouth-watering gravy.

  ‘Don’t you want anything to eat, Dad?’ he asked as he put down his plate at last. ‘You know that there’s always plenty to go round in this house.’

  John shook his head. ‘Not now, son, this cup of tea is all I want, lovely it is.’ He smiled, a wicked light appearing in his eyes. ‘I wouldn’t say no to a drop of whisky if you’re going to the public, though.’

  Morgan groaned inwardly, for he had been looking forward to getting his feet up and perhaps sitting outside enjoying the impromptu concert that usually took place at weekends. Mrs O’Connor would play on the battered piano that stood in the corner of her front parlour and folks would gather round the open windows and doors and sing of the Emerald Isles whence they came, so different from the dusty roadway in the shadow of the copper works as to be another world.

  ‘How can you bear it here?’ Morgan had asked once and Mrs O’Connor had shaken her head. ‘Oh, Ireland is lovely sure enough, but there’s children with empty bellies and hunger in their eyes and I wouldn’t go back to that for anything.’

  Morgan moved to the window. The light was fading, the sky mottled like the underbelly of a fish – green, grey and with a smoky blackness that dragged at the spirit of a man. Perhaps war would not be such a bad thing if it took him away from the poverty and stink of Green Hill.

  John began to cough again, spilling some of the tea on the thick calico of his nightshirt. Morgan took the cup from his father’s shaking hand and set it on the table. How could he think of leaving when he was all his dad had in the world?

  ‘Never mind about an old cup of tea,’ he said, smiling down into John’s drawn face. ‘I’ll go to the Dublin and get you a real drink!’ He took a clean shirt from the drawer, silently giving thanks for Mrs O’Connor’s immaculate housewifery. For the ten shillings he paid her she was washerwoman and cook, aye and sometimes nurse, and Morgan thanked providence for leading him to her door.

  Honey O’Connor was leaving the house just as Morgan hurried down the stairs. She smiled up at him, shy and sweet, and blood pounded in his ears.

  ‘Where are you going?’ he asked and the question fell flat and hard into the coldness of the misty evening.

  ‘To see my friend.’ She lifted her head and the soft honey hair washed in waves over her shoulders. Morgan felt a constriction in his throat – why was he so tongue-tied now, when usually he could talk with the best of them? A trickling of unease made him stumble on.

  ‘What friend is this, then?’ He waited breathlessly for her reply, his shoulders tense, his fingers curled into fists in the darkness of his pockets.

  ‘Maureen, you know her for sure, the girl with the beautiful black hair.’ There was a note of wistfulness in her voice and along with the rush of relief that she was not walking out with some man, Morgan felt a strong sense of protectiveness rise up within him.

  ‘Can’t be as beautiful as yours, Honey.’ He lifted a curling strand and watched as the evening light turned it into spun silver. Honey blushed hotly and Morgan pushed his hand back into his pocket, wondering if he had offended her.

  The silence lengthened as both of them stood on the corner of Green Hill. Below them in the docks, a ship was moored; it rose and fell on the tide, high masts pointed like fingers towards the sky. To the west, the towering Kilvey Hill rose dark and somehow threatening against the stormy sky and in the silence Honey sighed softly.

  ‘Can I walk with you to Maureen’s house?’ Morgan asked quickly, fearing she might fade away into the darkness.

  ‘You can if you want.’ Her reply was not exactly full of enthusiasm, but at least she had not flatly refused him.

  ‘Going to get your daddy a jar, is it?’ Honey spoke slowly as though having difficulty with the words and Morgan searched her expression, but her golden lashes were lowered and her mouth was small, a rosebud ready for plucking. He pushed the thought aside as irreverent.

  ‘Aye, a drop of whisky sends him off to sleep like a babba.’ He thought with a pang of guilt that he should be hurrying down to the public bar at the Dublin, not fecklessly walking the streets with Honey O’Connor whose mam would not approve of him because he was a Protestant.

  ‘Here’s Maureen’s house, isn’t it fine an’ big?’ Honey sounded so impressed that Morgan longed to give her a house just like that of her friend Maureen.

  ‘In summer she has roses over the door, isn’t that lovely? ’Tis only a short walk away from Green Hill, yet here ’tis like the country.’

  They stood for a moment, staring at each other in silence, and Morgan searched his mind for a polite way of taking his leave. It was Honey who moved away.

  ‘Well, good night to you then, Morgan Lloyd. Give my regards to your auld fella when you go home.’

  He watched the swish of her skirts as she crossed the lane and a soft feeling that he did not understand lay in the pit of his belly. Long after the house had swallowed Honey into its depths, Morgan stood staring at the lighted windows and the door which was closed firmly against him.

  The Dublin was crowded as usual, men scuffing the sawdust on the floor with heavy boots, sporting fresh white silk scarves as a disguise for coats grown shabby. The sound of a tenor singing ‘The Mountains of Mourne’ with sadness and longing lifted the hairs on the back of his neck as Morgan pressed himself towards the long glass-lined bar.

  He caught fragments of conversation and a mingling of Welsh and Irish accents.

  ‘How can this be Irish stew, boyo, when there’s so much Welsh beef in it?’ The voice was strong and filled with laughter and Morgan, recognising it, glanced over his shoulder. Crouched at a table in the corner of the bar was Peter Harries. For a moment, Morgan was tempted to join the furnaceman over a jug of frothy ale, then he thought of his father sitting alone.

  ‘Bottle of whisky by here,’ he said loudly and the barman rubbed his hand on his apron and turned to reach up to the shelf behind him. The liquor gleamed gold in the lamplight just like Honey O’Connor’s hair.

  Morgan sighed as he left the smoke-filled bar and turned to make his way back up to Green Hill. His father would be glad of a good slug of whisky to take away the pain. God forgive him, Morgan thought unhappily, but sometimes he wished he was free. He heard the hum of an automobile engine and saw an Austin Ascot being driven along the roadway at a spanking pace. The driver he recognised as Mr Sterling Richardson, his boss and owner of the copper works, and for a moment envied him. But only for a moment… turning, he stepped into the dark courts and dusty roads of Green Hill, content now to be going home.

  * * *

  Mali Richardson was seated in the pale blue of the drawing room, sewing rosebuds on the petticoat she was making for her baby daughter. She glanced
up at the clock a little anxiously, wishing that Sterling would not work so hard. She knew that he needed to spend time over his books, yet recently she sensed that something was troubling him.

  Now she put down her sewing and moved towards the window as if the strength of her thoughts could reach out and bring him to her. She was an old married woman now, with a son and a daughter, yet she still longed for her husband’s touch and for the reassurance of his presence.

  She could never forget that she was once Mali Llewelyn, copperman’s daughter, born and bred in the ugly sprawling streets that gathered around the works like a gaggle of chicks around a mother hen. Her marriage to Sterling Richardson, copper boss, had shaken Sweyn’s Eye to its foundations, and even now she knew that she was not entirely accepted by some of the older people of the town. None of that mattered to her just so long as she and Sterling were happy together, and they were.

  Her heart lightened as she heard the sound of the Austin’s tyres crunching on the gravelled driveway. She smiled softly, touching her hair into place and smoothing down the skirt of her gown, her heart beating swiftly like that of a young untried girl.

  He stood in the doorway for a moment just looking at her, then he held out his arms and she went into them, clinging to him and breathing in the scent that was all his own. How she loved this man!

  ‘Give your husband a kiss and tell me what sort of day you’ve had.’ He tipped up her chin and his mouth was strong and tender, reaching into her soul.

  ‘I’ve been busy as usual; your son has been a naughty boy, refusing to eat his greens; the baby’s teething, so you see there’s nothing new to tell. What about you, aren’t you a little later than usual, bach? Getting anxious, I was.’

  He sat in the chair near the fire, for the evening air was growing chill. ‘My men are enlisting in droves,’ he said softly, his head back, his eyes closed. ‘Being in a reserved occupation, they don’t have to join the Army, but how can anyone blame them for wanting to fight for their country? I certainly don’t.’