by Jack Jones
‘What did you come here for – to get some nuts and oranges?’
‘Well… ay, you can get some if you want; but I came here out of the way till them doors open and we can walk straight in.’
‘But we won’t get in if we don’t join the crowd and push.’
‘Then we won’t get in at all, for I’m not going to stand there, let alone push.’
‘There, the doors are opened; let’s go.’
As he walked slowly towards the entrance with Saran, Glyn watched the desperate struggle for admission. There were scores of women with children in arms and others clinging to their skirts, and these children, as though trained for it, howled in chorus when the doors were opened and the rush started, and gave the cue to their mothers.
‘Oh, my God, mind this child in my arms…. Stop your pushing there. If you… oh, my baby. No, that other little one of mine underfoot.’ Others were more abusive. ‘Blast your eyes, can’t you see that child underfoot, you cheeky young slut, you. P’raps if you had children of your own you’d have more thought for other people’s.’ And so on.
‘Nice damned place to bring babies,’ muttered Glyn, standing with Saran at the rear of the crowd.
‘What are they going to do? They’ve either got to bring them or stay at home to mind them.’
‘I’d like to see a woman as b’longed to me bringing a child of mine into a place like this. I’d show her…’
‘Yes, you’d show a lot. Now are you coming in or not?’
‘Not until that lot are in out of the way.’
‘And more coming along all the time. S’long.’
He grabbed her arm. ‘Wait. I’m coming.’
She shook herself free. ‘Then come,’ she said, throwing herself into the crowd around the entrance, and she breasted a road along which he followed to the pay-box.
‘I’ll get the tickets.’
‘I’ll get my own,’ she told him.
He pushed her out of his way and cried: ‘Let’s have two of your best seats.’
‘Two shillings, please,’ said the man in the pay-box.
‘No, no,’ protested Saran, who had never paid more than threepence.
‘Get in there,’ he told her, pushing her before him masterfully to where the two rows of shilling seats were situated.
‘Whatever did you want to bring me in here for?’ hissed Saran as she gingerly seated herself on one of the rickety chairs backed with patched red cloth. ‘This is where the tradespeople sit. I always sit back there in the three-pennies.’ She looked back to the benches on which those who paid only threepence had to sit. ‘Oh, lord,’ she murmured.
‘What’s the matter now?’
‘Some gels as works with me in the brickyard are back there, I’m sure they seen me, so I can look out. They’ll be saying as I’m stuck up and… can’t you change the tickets, Glyn?’
‘Not likely. Damn it all, what’s the matter with you? You’re not satisfied now that you have got me here, and being as I am here I’m damned if I’m going to sit back there in the middle of a swarm of crying babies. So shut up, for if I once get up from here I know the seat I’m going to be in for the rest of the night.’
‘Humph, so do I.’
‘Then shut up! Huh, look at these,’ he whispered, jerking his head in the direction of two drapers’ assistants and their sweethearts as they came forward from the entrance to the shilling seats. ‘We’re as good as they are, any day.’
In a whisper Saran agreed and went on cracking nuts between her strong teeth and spitting out the shells on to the floor. The two shop assistants produced and lit the two cigars they had won at an Aunt Sally outfit earlier in the evening.
‘Cigars,’ whispered Saran to Glyn, who was smoking his pipe.
‘Looks well, cigars,’ she whispered again.
‘Yes, them chaps look better than they’ll be feeling soon,’ Glyn said, ‘for they look to me like two of old Tom Duke’s cigars, fifty a shilling he buys ’em at. I’m damned sure it was one of them made me feel drunk before I came to fetch you, for I’d only had three pints of “special”, and…’
‘Hush,’ hissed Saran as a man came out from behind the canvas flap left of the proscenium and seated himself before the badly out-of-tune piano, on which he pounded until the old thing gave expression to sounds which might have been recognised as plantation melodies by a keen student of same. Anyway, nobody listened to the overture. Everyone, with the exception of Glyn, waited almost breathlessly for the faded drop-curtain to roll itself creakily out of the way so that they could get their first look at the old Kentucky home. The ‘Great Holiday Production’ commenced, and Uncle Tom wearily led the way from the plantation on to the stage followed by four supers, his fellow slaves. ‘Them’s the supers,’ said Saran. ‘That’s Dai Genteel, and the one behind him is Evan…’
‘I don’t want to know who they are.’
So she shut up. The play was rapturously received by all but Glyn, who slipped out for a drink not only between the acts, but at the end of each scene as well. Saran was much too interested in the play to notice his exits and entrances. She was cheering Eliza across the ice, hissing Simon Legree, laughing at Topsy, crying over little Eva and Uncle Tom. ‘Oh, I cried my eyes out,’ said Jane Jones to Saran as they met on the way out. ‘And as for that old bugger – what’s ’is name, now?’
‘Simon Legree.’
‘That’s the bugger; I felt like going on to that stage and hitting him between the eyes…. Here, who’re you pushing?’
‘No’ so bad, was it?’ said Glyn thickly as he stumbled clear of the crowd with Saran at his side.
She caught him by the arm and steadied him. Now she was able to note the effect of the number of ‘quick uns’ he had taken whilst she was watching the play. ‘Here, I’d better take you home,’ she said.
‘I’m not drunk.’
‘Not far from it.’
He didn’t argue. ‘I feel bad,’ he said presently.
‘How bad?’
‘In my stomach.’
‘Then turn aside into the old works.’
‘Better now?’ she said when he returned to her.
‘Ay; would you like to go down the fairground?’
‘Not if you’re feeling bad.’
‘I’m feeling right as rain now. It’s a bit late, but the fair’ll be on till midnight, and as we shan’t have another day’s holiday till Christmas, we’d better make the most of this. Come on.’
It was long after midnight when they parted on Tom Hall’s corner, both very tired, and he quite sober by this time. When she got home she found her mother seated on the three-legged stool looking down on Harry, who was asleep on the floor.
‘Here he is tonight again,’ sighed the mother. ‘Your father was nearly as bad, but I managed to get him up to bed…. Here, where can you say you’ve been until this time of night?’
‘Morning, you mean. Well, after coming out of the threeatre I went down as far as the fairground with Glyn.’
‘Oh, as long as Glyn was with you. Did you see your brother Shoni anywhere?’
‘No; it’ll be a long time before Shoni shows his nose back here again. He’s far enough by this time. Come on, let’s go to bed.’
‘What about him?’ asked the mother, pointing down at Harry.
‘Let him alone; the dog’s here to see the rats don’t get at him. Come on, or it’ll be time for me to go to the brickyard before I know it.’
Sighing as though her heart were breaking, the old woman climbed the stairs; Saran waited until she got to the top of the stairs, then blew out the table lamp and followed her up.
Glyn was surprised to find Mary and her children still there when he got home. ‘Hasn’t Steppwr called then?’
‘Not him,’ answered Marged. ‘Here, you’d better help Mary home with these babies.’
‘Why couldn’t our Dai…’
‘Humph, Dai. Mary and I had to put him to bed. Come on, take two of these children.’
‘No, I’m damned if I will; let Mary and them shift here for tonight.’
‘No, I must go home to Twm, for you never know…’
‘Oh, come on then.’
He picked up two sleeping children off the couch and started off, followed by his sister with little Benny in the shawl. Oh, what a jaunt it was. Several times he had to sit down to ease his aching arms. And then to find the man whose children he had humped for miles through the night sleeping on the floor… oh, he could have kicked him. But his sister, softie that she was: ‘Oh, Twm bach,’ she cried, putting little Benny in the armchair and then turning to take the folded tablecloth off the table and put it under her husband’s head. ‘Thank God he’s home.’
‘Never mind that lazy swine,’ shouted Glyn, ‘but take these children off me before I drop ’em.’
‘Yes, Glyn, I will as soon as I’ve lit the candle. There, now give me them and I’ll take them straight upstairs.’
Relieved of his burden, Glyn sank exhausted into a chair, from where he looked down bitterly on the face, the peaceful face, of the concertina man. How could he sleep peacefully when…?
‘There,’ said Mary as she came downstairs. ‘Now, you must let me make you a cup of tea, Glyn; but before I do p’raps you’ll help me to get Twm up to bed. Oh, look at the old silly,’ she fondly exclaimed. ‘His concertina safe as usual, and something for the children same as always,’ she went on to say as she bent down to pick up the concertina and some bags containing fruit, sweets, and a larger bag than the others containing a pint of cockles, off the floor. ‘Cockles, he’s fond of cockles fried in bacon-fat. Now, Glyn, you take his feet, will you?’
‘I’ll see him in hell first,’ Glyn exploded. ‘Look out, you softie. I’ll wake him.’
He took the kettle from the hob and emptied it over the sleeping man’s head, almost wishing that it was boiling-hot water instead of cold. Then he violently shook him awake, and having done so rushed out of the house as Twm Steppwr was demanding to know what was the matter.
CHAPTER 4
CHRISTMAS IS HERE AGAIN – AND AGAIN
Yes, a lot can happen in five short months, in five short minutes for that matter, Glyn was thinking on the Saturday evening which that year also happened to be Christmas Eve, as he stood, pipe in mouth and his second pint of beer before him on the counter of the bar of the Star, a pub he rarely patronised; but as a pit-mate had sold him a couple of tickets for the big Christmas draw to be held there he had turned in just about the time when the draw was due to take place. What started him thinking of all that had happened during the five months previous is more than he would have been able to explain had anyone chanced to ask him to.
They had been months of hard work, and months without daylight other than the little on Sundays from October onward to Christmas. Work-drunk returning from the pit night after night; turning into pubs on the way home for body-builders of the good beer that was food and drink to an exhausted man. Then a few extra hours of drinking on Saturday nights, but no longer any open drinking on Sundays, for Sunday closing was at last an established fact, was law. The doubtful pleasure of meeting Saran for a few hours each weekend was often spoilt by the intrusion of Harry between the young people.
Then the typhoid epidemic which came about corn harvest time and wiped out thousands who thought they were going to live for ever. But old Death mowed along the banks of the stinking Morlais Brook and along the banks of the polluted River Taff. No sooner had he reaped his harvest there than he started work in the mean streets until shrieking headlines in the London papers, ‘Whole Families Wiped Out’, appeared and seemed to satisfy him for the time; for soon after those headlines appeared the number of deaths fell back to normal. But not before all the graveyards in the district were filled and the huge new cemetery, which the council with great foresight laid out in a beautiful valley bought from the county authority of the next county, was started off well with a few hundred victims of the epidemic whose bodies were laid to rest in Breconshire after a life spent in Glamorganshire. Yes, and it was a terrible long way to have to carry a body, and most of them had to be carried.
Glyn’s sister Mary and her children had been taken, but old Death, for reasons best known to himself, spared Twm Steppwr, who had since been as free as the air to go playing and singing and dancing around the pubs, but his freedom from responsibilities didn’t seem to increase happiness, for, in his fashion, he had truly loved Mary and the children. He cried a lot at the funerals which Glyn and Dai had to pay for, and he afterwards went to lodge in the same common lodging house as Davies, MA, down in the notorious Iron Bridge district. He still went about the pubs, his constant companion and protector being Saran’s blackguardish brother, Harry.
Saran’s father, the old, unwanted puddler, was also taken after he had died to the new cemetery. There was hardly a family in the district left untouched, but the district seemed more crowded than ever for all that. There were many sad hearts after old Death had passed by, none sadder than Glyn’s father, who didn’t seem to care whether he lived or died after Mary and her children were taken.
And of these and other happenings Glyn was sadly thinking on Christmas Eve as he smoked his pipe and drank his beer in the bar of the Star; when who should walk in but Harry and Twm Steppwr.
‘Ah, now we’re right for a drink, Steppwr,’ cried Harry as soon as he spotted Glyn. ‘Come on, Harris, fill us a quart, my future brother-in-law’ll pay for it.’
‘Don’t you draw that beer, Mr Harris,’ said Glyn, ‘for I’m not paying for it. If I’d been asked tidy I might have, but…’
‘If you’d been asked tidy,’ growled Harry as he advanced towards him. ‘If I’d have gone down on my bloody knees, is that what you mean?’
‘No, what I meant…’
‘What you meant, you mingy swine…’
‘Now, Harry, don’t be a damned scamp,’ cried Steppwr.
But it was too late, for Harry had let go viciously with his left, which travelled with deadly speed to a point between Glyn’s two eyes and blackened and nearly closed them. As Steppwr afterwards said: ‘Harry had the skin of his arse on his face that day, no doubt about it; and before we could say knife he let poor Glyn have it between the eyes. Bash. It was the dirtiest thing I’ve seen Harry do, and I’ve seen him do a few dirty tricks – and I up and told him it was a dirty trick. But what Harry gave him was nothing compared to the blow poor old Glyn had when he reached home and found his father dead. Thought a lot of his father, Glyn did. Oh, and when Saran heard about what Harry’d done to Glyn she said she was going down to the Star to brain Harry, but when she got there and tried to do it he gave her a backhander that knocked her flat. Man or woman, Harry’s not particular…’
Frank, the mason, was buried in the new cemetery on the day after Boxing Day, and everyone said it was a grand funeral, though the feeling between the two sections that followed his body was none too good, but it was a grand funeral all the same. Glyn and Dai had scraped every penny they could to hire the only hearse in the district with glass windows, through which everyone could see the coffin with brass fittings and the two wreaths. They wouldn’t have been able to get that hearse with the glass windows if they’d had to pay for a new grave, but as they only had to pay for the opening-up of Mary’s grave they were able to pay the extra for the hearse with the glass windows.
All the chapel people and two choirs, the chapel choir and the Sunday-school choir – for Frank, the mason, had been a Sunday-school teacher for fifteen years before he took to his bed – turned out to show their respect for him, as did the three preachers dressed in tailcoats and top hats. Two of them prayed lovely over the body in the house until Mr Williams, the undertaker, coughed meaningly several times and afterwards said ‘Right-o’ to the men waiting to carry the body out of the house and into the hearse with the glass windows. But it was Frank’s own preacher that did the praying and preaching over him at the graveside, and never has anyone preached better t
han he did over Frank that day.
First the Sunday-school choir sang in front of the house, and the chapel choir joined in as the body was carried out, but everybody combined to make Cwm Rhondda most thrilling at the graveside, even the three publicans sang, for there were publicans and sinners who turned out to the funeral partly out of respect for Frank, the mason, but chiefly because they knew Glyn and Dai as good customers. Anyway, the publicans felt they were entitled to a day out after the busy time they had had over the Christmas-time, and Boxing Day in particular. And, fair play to them, the three publicans were dressed up to the nines in finer tailcoats and more shiny top hats than those worn by the three preachers.
As soon as the body was deposited in the hearse, Mr Williams, as was his duty, began to marshal the following, but as soon as ‘the family’, Glyn and Dai, were in their places behind the hearse, the chapel people and the two choirs rushed to get all together so as not to be mixed up with ‘those other old things’, meaning the three publicans and the ragtag and bobtail who only attended funerals in the hope of getting soaked in drink on the way back. The chapel people wouldn’t be seen walking with the likes of them, they had enough to put up with as it was. Just fancy having to walk behind one of ‘the family’ whose two eyes were nearly as black as his bowler hat. He had applied several beefsteaks and had bathed his eyes with vinegar several times, and still Glyn’s eyes were black – well, as good as. He had wanted to wear a black cap which he could have pulled down over his eyes, but old Marged wouldn’t hear of it. ‘Who ever heard of a man wearing a cap at his father’s funeral?’ she indignantly asked. So he had to wear his bowler hat, and didn’t he feel ill at ease.
Yet not more so than the three publicans who had been pushed to the rear of the procession by the chapel people, right to the rear where they had to walk side by side with such nobodies as Twm Steppwr, who had turned out in a borrowed black suit miles too big for him. But on the way back from the cemetery the three publicans showed them chapel people who was who, for they invited all and sundry into the hotel that had been erected for the convenience and solace of sorrowing ones and their friends just outside the gates of the cemetery. For the publicans, mean though they might be when behind their own bars, were as good as gold when on the way home from funerals. Thought nothing of throwing a gold sovereign on the counter and saying: ‘Go on, lads, drink that between you.’