Black Parade

by Jack Jones

  ‘Isn’t it grand out here?’ he murmured, reaching for her hand.

  ‘It is that.’

  For a time they sat holding hands, this hewer of coal and this handler of bricks, sat in silence for quite a time. Then Glyn said: ‘Damn, your hands are as rough as mine, if not rougher.’

  So they were, though they were not as dirty looking as his. For his hands were scratched and cut in scores of places from wrists to fingertips by the coal he handled daily. And out of the cuts, probably owing to the heat of the afternoon, there oozed a certain blue-black moisture; but her hands, though rougher and more cut about, by the particles of brick against which even leather-guards were not altogether effective, were not as badly discoloured as his, neither did they exude any moisture.

  ‘Yes, quite as rough as mine,’ he repeated.

  ‘Can I help my hands being rough?’ she cried angrily, pulling her hand out of his; then, as he started running his hand upwards along her leg: ‘Now, for God’s sake don’t start messing me about.’

  ‘Hell, can’t a chap touch you?’ he growled.

  ‘Humph. Touch, indeed.’

  He half turned to lie flat on his back and closed his eyes.

  ‘As if I didn’t know what would happen if I was foolish enough to let you start messing me about,’ she continued. ‘There’s more than one gel working in our brickyard who’ve been caught that way; and when the baby came they were left in the lurch, with everybody pointing their fingers at ’em.’ She stopped to listen, and afterwards murmured: ‘Now, who’d think we could hear the fairground organ from here? Why, we must be nearly two mile away from it.’ She looked down on his face, smiled. ‘Well, ain’t you a nice one,’ she lovingly chided in a murmur which became a lullaby as she continued. ‘You bring me out here to watch you sleeping, silly old boy that you are. Tired, is ’im, tired after working ’im trebler. Well, ’et ’im s’eep, den; and his Saran put ’im head in her lap and teep de old flies off ’im face. Dere ’im is….’

  He slept sweetly and soundly after his thirty-odd hours’ continuous labour in the pit, with his head pillowed in Saran’s lap, slept for a few hours, hours during which she enjoyed herself studying his peaceful features. She murmured lullabies from time to time, as though anxious that he should sleep on; she would afterwards sit silent while she played with the long silver chain which encircled his neck twice before attaching itself to the Swiss Lever in his left-hand waistcoat pocket. She touched his face, fondled his hands. The sun was nearing the west when he awoke, and sat up.

  ‘What time is it?’ He looked at his watch. ‘Damn, it’s gone seven o’clock.’ He rose to his feet. ‘Why didn’t you wake a chap? Come on, let’s go back down, I want a drink, my mouth’s like a limekiln.’ He started off, leaving her to bring up the rear.

  ‘So you’re going on the booze tonight again?’

  ‘I said I was going to have a drink.’

  ‘Yes, I know; same as last Saturday. Well, you can go for all I care. I expect you’ll be reeling drunk long before I’m out of the threeatre.’

  ‘Not I…. And how many more times must I tell you that it’s theatre, and not “threeatre”?’

  ‘I’ll call it what I like; it’s me that’s going there, isn’t it?’

  ‘I’m only telling you for…’

  ‘Yes, but you needn’t bother; you hurry off to get your share of the holiday beer.’

  ‘Now, Saran, don’t get nasty – I’ll tell you what.’ They were nearing the little wooden theatre. ‘If you wait here until I’ve had one, and only one, pint in the Black Cock, I’ll come with you. Not that I care to be seen going to the damned place, but as it’s holiday-time…. What’s the play tonight?’ he said, walking across to a crazy little hoarding to consult the playbill.

  ‘A gel in the brickyard told me it was Sweeney Todd,’ said Saran as she followed him across.

  ‘Well, it’s not, it’s The Dumb Man of Manchester.’ He pointed. ‘There you are. “Saturday, August 2nd. Mr Cavendish as The Dumb Man of Manchester.” See for yourself.’

  ‘Well, you know I can’t read; but it’s all the same to me whatever’s on; though the gel in our brickyard said…’

  ‘“Our be damned. People’d think you owned the place to hear you talk.’

  ‘How many more times are you going to pick me up about my…’

  ‘Then talk properly and… here’s a shilling. Get yourself some oranges and nuts and wait here for me until I’ve swallowed a pint in the Black Cock. Shan’t be a jiffy.’

  With her bags of oranges and nuts in her hands Saran waited about half an hour outside the little theatre, which by this time was crowded. ‘Only standing room at the back left now,’ the checker at the door, who knew Saran well, told her. On hearing that she walked down as far as the Black Cock and knowingly broke the unwritten law, the law forbidding women on pain of a terrible hiding to call a man out of his drinking place.

  ‘Is Glyn Morgan in there?’ she asked a man who was coming out.

  ‘Ay, I think he’s in the taproom.’

  ‘Will you ask him to come out to me a minute? Saran, tell him.’

  ‘Go and tell him your bloody self, you cheeky bitch you. By God, it’s coming to something when a man can’t have his pint without being bothered by flaming women. Lucky for you that you’re not a gel of mine….’

  Saran pushed past him and on to the entrance to the taproom, which was crowded. Through the smoke she could see her Glyn, forming one of a jolly group who were harmonising around a small table in the left-hand corner at the far end of the room.

  ‘Glyn,’ she cried aloud, and a deadly silence ensued. All present were shocked beyond description when they looked towards the door of the taproom and saw standing there one of the sex which should never be seen when men were devoting themselves to the serious, and almost sacred business of drinking. True, women might crowd with other women in the jug-and-bottle departments which were partitioned off from the temples sacred to Bacchus to get the liveners their husbands demanded when awakening with a fat head in the morning; and as a reward for going some husbands, though not many, went so far as to allow their wives to take a glass of something themselves, but only in the jug-and-bottle.

  But here was a young woman at the door of the taproom. All the men present, after having believed their eyes, looked to where Glyn was seated with some others in the corner in a way which said plainer than words: ‘Will you please attend to this matter, and deal with this female as she deserves to be dealt with. A pair of black eyes would do her the world of good, and the loss of a few of her front teeth might help to remind her of the danger of rushing in where women should never even lightly tread.’

  Glyn knew very well what all present expected him to do. He rose to his feet, and with fist clenched in readiness swaggered across to the door. ‘Well,’ he growled, ‘what the hell do you want?’

  Before he could say more she had thrown the bag of oranges and nuts into his face. ‘Just brought you your oranges and nuts,’ she said as she turned and walked out of the place, leaving Glyn to wilt under the contemptuous laughter of those in the taproom until it forced him to leave the place.

  Saran, having almost forgotten the incident, was, with two other girls who worked in the brickyard, standing at the back of the little wooden theatre enjoying Act Two of The Dumb Man of Manchester when her Glyn left the Black Cock, where he considered he had been made to ‘look simple’ by her, to walk off his temper.

  By this time the narrow main street was packed with people in holiday attire, and in holiday mood. Many men, and also a few women, were already drunk enough to require the combined efforts of relatives and weeping children to assist them homewards. The dead drunks, of whom there were quite a few, Glyn noted, were like Aunt Sallies, at which scores lined up before the stalls were throwing wooden balls; they were without friends or relations, so they were merely shunted from under people’s feet around some corner where they could sleep off the drink that had rendered them q
uite incapable. All shops and public houses overflowed with people, and there were crowds before the stalls which for over a quarter of a mile were lined up against the bank which buttressed the wall enclosing Penydarren Park. Glyn’s progress through the street tight-packed with people was so slow that he was able to take in and note the various attractions, swindles, caterers and so on, lined up under the wall of the Park.

  The boxing booths owned and managed by those friendly rivals, Prof Billy Samuels and Prof Patsy Perkins, around both of which were large crowds, didn’t interest Glyn much, for he was not ‘a lover of the noble art’; but he couldn’t help hearing what Billy Samuels and Patsy Perkins barked that evening from the raised platform before the entrance to their respective booths, on which they were supported by a quartet of battered bruisers, introduced to the crowd as ‘my troupe, and as fine a lot of fighters as ever were presented to Merthyr’s lovers of the noble art’.

  ‘Never mind what Patsy’s saying; you listen to me,’ Prof Billy Samuels was shouting. ‘Patsy – he’s a Cardiff man, I believe – has got one man as can fight a bit, so I’m told, but I’m willing to back either of these four men of mine as are standing here. Here they are, take a look at ’em…’

  ‘… I’ll back this lad here, this black man, for fifty pounds to beat either of them four old faggots Bill’s shouting the odds about,’ roared Prof Patsy Perkins. ‘Fifty golden sovereigns…’

  ‘… Hasn’t got fifty pence,’ Prof Billy Samuels informed the crowd. ‘If he had, this lad of mine, this one here, would have eaten that six feet of black pudding Patsy’s got over there. Here, I’ll tell you what – I’m a sport, I am – and if Patsy’s agreeable I’ll match this lad of mine…’

  Glyn had managed to push through beyond the sound of challenge and counter-challenge when a couple of giggling girls squirted water out of ‘Ladies’ Teasers’ down his neck. He swore at them for silly fools. Buying water in leaden tubes to squirt at people. Softness, he thought. He walked past the Indian doctor’s painless-extraction stand, and past the stands of other wonder-working quack medicos; on past stalls that were rapidly being cleared of their stocks of oysters, mussels, cockles; past little portable cookhouses from which steaming-hot faggots and peas were being served to those who liked their food hot even in August. Then on past the stalls catering for those afflicted with a sweet tooth, hordes of whom were shouting for supplies of cheap boiled sweets, brandy-snaps and gingerbread.

  Glyn stopped to try his luck at the lucky-packet swindle that was being worked right in the open. The man running the swindle sold the packets at a shilling, ‘and when you open it you may have the surprise of your life, but nobody’s to open the packet until I give the word.’ Having disposed of more than a score at a shilling apiece, he again gave the word, and in each of the packets the buyers of same found about twopennyworth of goods. But there were two of the buyers who proudly displayed golden sovereigns which they said they had found in their packets. Unfortunately for them and for the man running the swindle someone in the crowd recognised the lucky one as the man who been just as lucky several times on a Saturday evening a few weeks previous. Over went the stand, and down underfoot went packets, the seller of same, and his now unlucky accomplices.

  The police were rushing up as Glyn moved off to where an old woman dressed in old Welsh costume was selling cockles. At the rear of her stall an ‘Under and Over’ gamble was being operated.

  ‘Now, gentlemen, why not try your luck. Evens under, evens over, and three to one the lucky old seven. Come on, the more you put down the more you pick up. One chap’s just walked away a couple of pound better off than he came. So slap it down, gents, and…’

  Glyn moved on to where old Davies, MA, was competing with hoarse barkers on his right and left. ‘Excerpts from the Classics’ was the line of the old man who had blown into the district from God only knows where. Some there were who said that he had been headmaster of a high school somewhere in England; and that he had lost that job and others through his addiction to drink…. But there were all sorts of rumours; yet all that was known for certain was that he stayed at one of the many common lodging houses situated in the Iron Bridge district of Merthyr, where he paid fourpence a night for a bed and certain other easements and that he was to be found most evenings, weather permitting, declaiming in the open on some pitch or other in order to obtain the money to pay for his bed, a little food and as much drink as he could buy after he had met his food and shelter obligations.

  He was a tall and physically upright old man, who wore when dressed to appear before his ‘public’ a threadbare frock coat. With his unkempt, reddish-grey beard and fiery eyes, he looked the reverse of appealing. Yet there was something which impressed a few of those who stood to listen to him. Glyn was always impressed though why or how was more than he could explain. Maybe it was the ‘I am captain of my soul’ air of the old chap. Whatever it was, there were a few who delighted in listening to him, openly contemptuous of his audiences though he was.

  Glyn arrived at the old man’s pitch just as he was concluding something from Doctor Faustus. He snorted as the faint applause with which his offering had been received died away, and with a downward motion of the hand strained his beard of some saliva he had discharged into it during his latest effort to educate the masses. Then he smacked his lips and started a gagging interlude.

  ‘Well, gentlemen,’ he commenced in a tone in which the note of sarcasm was scarcely veiled, ‘I propose rendering one more of my famous masterpieces of elocution, after which, providing you have not melted before then, I will allow you to show your appreciation in the generous manner you usually do. I hardly know what next to favour you with. Perhaps it would be better if I left the selection to you, students of the Classics…’ He broke off to chuckle into his beard. ‘So, I await your commands, gentlemen, but, I implore you, do not ask me to deliver “Horatius” again, for that thing is beginning to repeat with me. Come along, please,’ he cried impatiently. ‘What is it to be? You should know my repertoire by this time. Now.’

  He looked out on the crowd expectantly; they regarded him woodenly.

  ‘What, are you in a hurry to go across to the Nelson for a drink, Davies?’ shouted one who had the reputation of a wag.

  ‘Frankly, I am, sir,’ replied Davies.

  ‘Then give us the death of little Eva and then bugger off for your drink,’ shouted the same man, who got a laugh from the crowd.

  ‘Sorry, sir,’ said Davies, ‘but that lachrymatory masterpiece is reserved for female audiences.’

  ‘What about that piece you recites about the man and his dagger?’ Glyn shouted from his place in the crowd.

  ‘The dagger speech from Macbeth. With pleasure, sir.’

  After straining his beard once more, he cleared his throat and started to declaim, and went on until he was interrupted by a drunken fat man who staggered up to him to ask: ‘Wha’ you sellin’?’

  “O, that this too, too solid flesh would melt,” Davies murmured.

  ‘Wha’ the hell you mumbling about?’ oozed the fat man.

  ‘Sir,’ cried Davies, ‘I’ve a few more pearls to cast, so with your kind permission…’

  ‘Oh, is tha’ wha’ you sellin’? I don’ wan’ any bloody pearls. I thought you was sellin’ some o’ them – some – you know wha’. Some – some – but being as you haven’t – don’ matter a damn, anyway.’

  He staggered off towards the nearest portable cookhouse for some peas and faggots, leaving Davies to complete the interrupted soliloquy. Before the faint applause which his offering evoked had subsided Davies was pushing his old bowler hat into the faces of those who had stood their ground long enough to enable him to get to them. Most of the crowd dropped coppers into the hat, Glyn dropped a sixpenny piece, and surprised old Davies, who, after a long look at the sixpenny piece shining brightly from the midst of its humbler fellows in the hat, stared fixedly for a few moments into Glyn’s face. ‘And you are sober,’ he quietly said.<
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  ‘Well, what about it?’ said Glyn in the tone of one admitting guilt.

  ‘And you tossed a sixpence into the old man’s hat. Do you know what Carlyle said about a man with sixpence in his possession?’

  ‘No, not I. Who’s Carlyle?’

  ‘He is, well, he is not little Willie’s father. He is the man who preached…. Would you be interested to hear what he thought of this place, this up-and-coming town of yours?’

  ‘I don’t care a damn what he or anybody said about it.’

  Davies took a huge pinch of snuff, then held the box out to Glyn, who shook his head and said: ‘I’ve got my pipe.’

  ‘So did Carlyle have his, but he was never much the happier for it. He must have looked down on this town of yours on one of his bad days, for what he said about it was: “A place never to be forgotten when once seen. The bleakest spot above ground… a non plus ultra of industrialism, wholly Mammonish, given up to the shopkeeper, supply and demand; presided over by sooty darkness, physical and spiritual, by beer, Methodism, and the devil, to a lamentable and supreme extent.” Yes, and this is the place in which I look like having to end my days,’ cried Davies as though in pain.

  ‘Well, whoever that man was,’ said Glyn stolidly, ‘he might have said our town was hell and saved all them long words. But he couldn’t have known what he was talking about, for this place is the most coming place in Wales, and in years to come it’ll be a rich city. And how can that man talk about the devil being here when we got more chapels than any other place in Wales – yes, more than Cardiff.’