Black Parade

by Jack Jones

  ‘Could you tell me how to get to Bethesda Street, please?’

  ‘Huh?’ grunted Glyn aggressively.

  The stranger repeated what he had said.

  Glyn looked him over suspiciously. Yes, he thought, another of these farm-joskins, hundreds of whom were weekly flocking into the coalfield lured by the prospect of what seemed to them extraordinarily high wages. Glyn, like most of the native-born miners and steelworkers whose grandfathers could remember when ponies and donkeys transported what little coal and iron-ore was mined in the district, felt the reverse of friendly to the farmhands who were flocking in from the agricultural areas. They were, in the first place, generally speaking, so much bigger and stronger than the natives. And so humble, cringingly so, when the boss was about, no backbone to stand up for the rights of the miner, afraid to join the miners’ and steelworkers’ unions which were in formation, wouldn’t… anyway, Glyn had no time for them, big yobs, timid tight-purses…

  ‘Where did you say you wanted to get to?’ he snapped.

  The stranger pulled out of his pocket a piece of paper on which an address had been written. ‘Here it is,’ he said, holding out the paper to Glyn after reading what was written thereon again. ‘Amos Davies, 46 Bethesda Street. That’s what Amos hisself wrote down for I when he were down home Christmas-time. Told I to mind and be sure to come to him as soon as I got here; and that he would most certain find I place to stay and a job of work.’

  ‘Humph. Where you from?’

  ‘From Hereford way, I be.’

  ‘Off a farm?’

  ‘That’s it, Edwards, The Croft… maybe you know it?’

  Glyn, now beginning to thaw, shook his head. ‘And been doing a bit of walking by the look of you?’

  ‘More’n a bit, I been movin’ since daybreak.’

  ‘Well, you haven’t much further to go before you get to Bethesda Street.’ Glyn pointed down at the town. ‘See that big building down there? No, there, man. That’s the Drill Hall. Now, when you get to that… but there, come along, I’m going part of the way, so you may as well…’

  Leaving whatever else he intended saying unsaid, Glyn started off with the big stranger at his side. For a time they walked in silence, then the stranger said: ‘Do you think as I’ll get me a job?’

  Glyn laughed shortly. ‘What’s to stop you? You’re big enough, God knows.’

  ‘Lord, I be glad to hear you say that. And where do you reckon’ll be the best place for I to start at?’

  ‘Take your choice, stranger, take your choice, for there’s plenty of places waiting for the likes o’ you.’ He stopped to point away to the right and went on wasting irony: ‘Up there to the seven Dowlais pits – but maybe they’ll be a bit far for you to travel to and fro night and morning, so p’raps you’d better start in one or other of those six pits across there. Them’s the Cyfarthfa collieries, owned by Crawshay Brothers….’

  ‘I think Amos said ’e works in one o’ they.’

  ‘Then down there to the left there’s another six pits belonging to the Hills Plymouth Company.’

  ‘My, plenty of pits.’

  ‘Any God’s amount. Of course, if you’ve anything against being shot down a pit in a cage every morning – which’ll make you feel as though your belly’s flying out of your mouth – then we’ve got scores of nice drifts, levels and slopes running from the surface into those mountains, where you can walk on your own two pins right from the surface into your work, right into the coalface.’

  ‘My, that’d be grand.’

  Glyn laughed. ‘Would it? No, not so bloody grand, stranger. Give me the pits any day, for in some of those slopes and levels you’re working up to your arse in water from morning to night. The pits are middling dry – and there’s the steelworks. Drier still, they are; so if you don’t like swallowing coal-dust you’d better get yourself a job in one of them. There’s the Dowlais works up there, that’s the biggest, though the Cyfarthfa works is nearly as big, and… but come on if you’re coming, for I’ve got somebody waiting for me.’

  They walked down the slope leading into the town. ‘Amos,’ the stranger began again, ‘told I that there’s plenty of overtime to be had. Said as ’ow a man as is willin’ can work double time all the time. But p’raps Amos was only jokin’.’

  ‘Not him; you can work every hour God sends, work till you drop if you want to. Why, I’ve only just finished working a trebler.’

  ‘A trebler?’

  ‘Ay, three shifts down the pit without coming up for a break. That’s the trebler we work to get some extra beer-money.’

  ‘Oh, overtime?’

  ‘You can call it what you like, overtime or beertime; but whatever you call it all I can tell you is that I was down the pit from six o’clock yesterday morning until half past two this afternoon. And I wasn’t the only one by a long shot, most of the chaps do it, for the ships in Cardiff are waiting all the time for our coal…. Oh, here we are. I’ve got to meet somebody on this corner. You can’t miss Bethesda Street now, keep to your right until you reach the Drill Hall, and then straight on. S’long, and good luck.’

  ‘And I’m sure I be thankful to ’ee,’ said the stranger gravely as he walked on alone through the crowded street, leaving Glyn standing on the corner where he had promised to meet his Saran.

  Hugging the corner in the hope of avoiding pit-mates who might tempt him to slip in and have just one whilst waiting, Glyn looked down the narrow and crowded street along which the stranger was slowly making progress towards Bethesda Street. Never before had Glyn known the street so crowded with people, most of whom were strangers to him. There had been a time when he could place at least nine out of every ten persons to be met with on the street, but now he couldn’t for the life of him place half of them. He stood and wondered where they all were able to live and sleep, these strangers who had flocked in from God only knew where to crowd the cottages of the neighbourhood, the beds of which had to work double shifts in order to provide rest for men more blest with work than with sleeping accommodation. Not that Glyn saw anything in the least wrong with men on the night shift waiting for the day shift to get up so as they could go to bed; neither was he aware of the wretched housing conditions of the district, conditions which were daily growing worse, and especially so in the neighbourhoods near the steelworks, those neighbourhoods upon which armies of Irish immigrants had descended; for it was the steelworks that the Irish workers favoured, very few of them ventured down the pits. But there were plenty of others coming in to feed the pits with labour power; from the north and west of Wales – and even from the west of England – there was a constant flow of men into the district, as alluring to them as Klondyke goldfields were to the penniless hordes who rushed off there.

  The newcomers to the district, with the exception of the happy-go-lucky Irish, were far more sober and thrifty than the natives. Seldom did a North Walian waste his substance on riotous living; and ‘the Cardies’, those who came to the district from the hardbitten, agricultural Cardigan County, were even more thrifty and saving than their countrymen from the north. Those who came in from Carmarthen County were also careful in the extreme with their expenditure, with the result that after a few years’ hard work in the mines and hard saving in the homes, the immigrants from the agricultural counties of the Principality became grocers, clothiers – everything bar publicans – and left the hard work of the mines and steelworks to the natives again. These same careful ones were the backbone of Welsh Nonconformity, which was daily increasing its power for the attack on the Established Church in Wales.

  Yes, they were a careful set of people. Glyn noted them that day picking their way through the main street, on which there were numerous drunken and rowdy natives, as though they were avoiding dogs’ messes. Glyn despised them, and grunted contemptuously as he watched them shepherd their too-damned-particular wives through the crowded street. Even carrying shopping baskets for the women, and who ever heard of a man carrying a basket for a
woman before these namby-pamby water-drinkers came into the district?

  Glyn looked at his Swiss Lever, of which he was very proud. Humph. She was ten minutes late. Trying to pay him out for last Saturday, was she? Well, he hadn’t intended to let her down – he tried to tell her that, but she wouldn’t listen – when he turned into his favourite pub to pay his weekly score and have the usual one on the house, which was the reward for prompt payment. But that pub was referred to as ‘the glue-pot’, anyway. So Saran had waited in vain for her Glyn. Now Glyn waited for a change, and wasn’t he growing impatient. Time after time he consulted the Swiss Lever, until at last he decided to toss up to decide whether he would go and have one, or walk across to where she lived to see what was keeping her.

  ‘Heads to get a drink, tails to fetch Saran,’ he muttered, tossing a penny into the air and catching it. ‘Tails.’ Disappointed, he was starting across to where Saran lived when he saw her brother Shoni hurrying towards him with a bundle under his arm.

  ‘I don’t want to meet this flamer,’ he muttered, bolting back to where the coal-trucks were standing at the rear of the Nelson Tavern, where he remained hidden until Shoni had passed by and down the main street. Then he went back to the corner again to wait. If he went across to the house he might run into Harry, and Harry was as bad as Shoni, if not worse. Yes, he thought, that’s the trouble with me and Saran, those blasted brothers of hers.

  Two of them, twin brothers – there had been one other brother, but he died fighting Zulus with the South Wales Borderers – and Glyn often wished that Shoni and Harry would join the regulars and go abroad to some place where they would die like heroes or live without worrying him. But Harry and Shoni were too cute to do anything of that sort; the nearest they were to going was when they joined the Brecon Militia, but that was nothing more than an annual spree for them, for they were in and out of the guardroom during the period of the annual training. Yes, two rough handfuls, no doubt about that, who took advantage of Glyn because he was walking out with their sister. Continually asking for the loan of money, and ordering him to buy them beer whenever he was unfortunate enough to run up against them in a pub, and it was by no means easy to refuse them what they demanded. They’d fight just for the fun of fighting – well, Harry would, but when it came to working – no, thank you. Only horses and fools worked, they were always ready to maintain in argument or bare-knuckle fight.

  So they seldom worked, and when they did they contributed but little towards the upkeep of the home, of which Saran was the main support. She earned very good money, being one of the leading hands at the brickyard where she had been employed from the age of ten; and many a time she had to use the poker to defend her earnings when her brothers went to the point of physical violence in an attempt to take by force what they had failed to borrow. The only time when there was anything like peace in the home was when they were away doing their annual training with the Militia. Yet, with all their faults, Saran wouldn’t allow anyone to say anything against her brothers in her presence; though at home she always shielded her wages and her parents from their attacks, outside the home she defended her brothers when people spoke against them.

  Yes, a bright pair, Glyn was thinking as he saw Saran coming across the little bridge underneath which oozed along – it only ran or rushed after heavy rain – the most stinking brook in Britain. Glyn consulted the Swiss Lever again and frowned theatrically as Saran approached. She walked in the same challenging manner as her brothers, though in her case it was not swaggering. She was more than good looking. Her figure, though generously inclined, had been kept within bounds by the hard tasks imposed upon it daily in the brickyard, and her clear skin was fair, fairer even than the skin of Shoni, her brother. Open features, with two eyes, large and unwinking, set like two blue pools in her noble-looking head, which was crowned with an abundance of dark brown hair. Her feet, small and shapely, were encased in squeaky elastic-sided boots; but her hands – oh, what hands. Like a navvy’s through years of brick-handling.

  Glyn tingled with pleasure as she drew near to him. ‘She gets to look smarter every day,’ he murmured, then assumed a frown. ‘And where do you reckon you’ve been till now?’ he growled as she came up to him smiling. ‘I’ve been waiting here since…’

  ‘Yes, and so did I wait last Saturday, more fool me, for you. And you needn’t look nasty at me, for I couldn’t leave the house till one of the two had gone. First Shoni took Harry’s black coat and waistcoat out of the drawer to take to pawn, and by trying to stop him I woke Harry, who was sleeping his beer off in the armchair. Then there was ructions, and mam and me had all our work cut out to stop them fighting again. So now you know.’

  ‘Ay, I just seen Shoni rushing by with a bundle under his arm.’

  ‘Yes, the shirt off his back, the only one he’s got. Took it to pawn so as to get enough to lift the latch.’

  ‘Well, if I had two brothers of that sort I’d…’

  ‘Yes, I know, you’ve told me before; but they happen to be my brothers, see. Well, where are we going?’

  ‘Down the fairground?’

  ‘Not much fun down there yet; tonight’s the time to go there.’

  ‘There’s nowhere else – unless we go to the Penydarren Park to see the foot-racing.’

  ‘No, I’d rather wait till Monday to see the bicycle races.’

  ‘Then what’ll we do?’

  ‘We can go for a bit of a walk, can’t we?’

  ‘I don’t feel like a lot of walking after working a trebler.’

  ‘That’s nothing; I could do it on my head.’

  ‘Yes, you gels can do a hell of a lot – with your mouths. Where do you want to go for a walk?’

  ‘What if we walk to Pontsarn and back?’

  ‘As you like. Come on.’

  With his hands in the deep pockets of his flap-fronted, bell-bottomed trousers, and his head down as though ashamed to be seen in public with a girl at his side, he plunged into the crowd and pushed along, keeping about a neck ahead of Saran, who followed, not with a doglike air, but with the air of one driving a pig to market. As the horse-drawn bus on its way to Dowlais slowly came up Glyn suggested boarding it for a ride as far as the new Hospital.

  ‘Don’t be silly, boy,’ Saran told him. ‘What’s the matter with your legs; you must have plenty of money and want to waste some on bus-rides.’

  ‘I tell you that I was working yesterday, last night…’

  ‘… and today. Well, nobody forced you to.’

  ‘That’s all you know, fly-me; but what you don’t know is that if a man don’t put in a few shifts overtime the bosses damned soon let him know he’s not wanted.’

  ‘Well, you can go somewhere else, can’t you. Plenty of work about.’

  ‘I know there is, but a man don’t want to be hopping from one pit to another all the time with his tools on his back.’

  ‘Then don’t keep on about being tired.’ ‘I s’pose you’ll have the last word.’

  ‘Why shouldn’t I?’

  He let her have it, and they pushed along in silence through the street crowded with people hurrying to get their shopping done so as to settle down to the drinking, fairing, fighting and various other diversions which made their rare holidays memorable, usually painfully so. As they pushed along they were hailed by friends, relations and acquaintances, many of whom extended invitations to drink with them or to accompany them to the foot-races, the fairground and other places. Glyn was more than once inclined to respond, and particularly when he was pressed to join one of the many wedding parties met with to drink some healths, for the August holiday was the favourite time for weddings in the district. Hundreds of young couples were joined together on the Saturday morning, and enjoyed what was a lengthy honeymoon for the likes of them before the man started work again on the following Tuesday morning. But Saran kept pushing him on past all invitations and temptations. When they were passing the new Hospital Glyn snorted loudly.

  ‘W
hat’s the matter, Glyn?’

  ‘That blasted place.’

  ‘Well, what’s the matter with it?’

  ‘Plenty, butcher’s shop, that’s all it is.’

  ‘Don’t talk so daft.’

  ‘Talking daft, am I? Well, I’d as well go to hell any day as go to that place, and so would all I’ve ever worked with in the pits. Anything the matter – off it comes, that’s why there’s so many on crutches everywhere. A week last Tuesday I helped to carry Tom Roderick from the pit into that accident ward, and the next I heard was that they had taken his leg off. Phew, smell the damned place. Well, if ever anything happens to me down the pit I hope to God I either dies…’

  ‘Oh, shut up about dying.’

  ‘But indeed to God, Saran, them doctors are too fond of the knife for our good. We pay ’em twopence in the pound whether we’re bad or not, and then we’ve got to pay for the building of places like that, in which they practise on us with their knives. Humph, hospitals.’

  ‘Well, I think it’s a good job we’ve got one at last, and it’s a shame to think that there’s only that one for all this district. If anything happened to me…’

  ‘What, in a brickyard?’ Glyn laughed at the idea.

  ‘Lord, I didn’t know you had a laugh in you. Yes, in a brickyard; I’m as liable to get hurt there as you are in the pit, ain’t I?’

  Glyn walked on in silence, looking back over his right shoulder every ten yards or so at the Hospital with distrust in his eyes, and five minutes away from the Hospital was the country, leafy, shady lanes, from the cool of which no sign of industrialisation could be seen. Woods and fields ready for the harvest. Birds singing, and rabbits hopping about. Glyn led the way into the depths of Goitre Woods.

  ‘Quiet out here, isn’t it?’ said Saran from the rear.

  ‘Ay; everybody’s in town.’ Glyn lowered himself to the ground. ‘Let’s sit here.’

  Saran turned up her ‘bit of best’ skirt preparatory to seating herself. Couldn’t risk the soiling of her ‘bit of best’; the flannel petticoat was a different matter. Nobody saw that – well, nobody other than Glyn, to whom she was going to be married. So with her skirt turned up to her waist she sat in her petticoat at Glyn’s side. As she sat with her knees drawn up, her legs, encased in thick woollen stockings, came under Glyn’s notice. She blushed and drew down the bottom of the petticoat until it covered even the toes of her elastic-sided boots.