Black Parade

by Jack Jones

  ‘Drink up and have another.’

  ‘Thanks. Yes, same again. As I was saying, men come here and to such places elsewhere in the hope of finding something different in the way of sex…’

  ‘Come on, Glyn,’ said Shenk as he hurried across to where they were sitting, ‘I’ve settled everything with them two standing over by the door…’

  ‘… But they are disappointed,’ old Davies droned on with his eyes on his empty glass, ‘even as I was when I was seeking from the women for hire in the capitals of Europe that which I could have got from the wife I thought I had grown tired of. I sought Helen, Cleopatra, Baudelaire’s negress in scores of assemblies and hundreds of brothels, sought them vainly; yet my wife could have been all of them, and still have been my wife. One’s imagination…’

  ‘Come on, I tell you,’ impatiently cried Shenk, ‘and don’t sit there all night listening to that drunken old fool.’

  ‘… Sought and experimented until at last I got what I deserved, the disease which is slowly rotting me, and which…’

  ‘I’m not coming, Shenk,’ said Glyn.

  ‘… Fear of exposure drove me to quacks in distant places, and an even greater fear drove me from my wife and home…’

  ‘… After I’ve paid for drinks for ’em, and given them the money for both of us,’ Shenk was saying. ‘Do you think you’ve got me on a string giving them a shilling apiece?’

  ‘Then you’ve done them a good turn,’ said Davies, rising and forcing the angry Shenk into a chair. ‘Now do yourself a good turn by leaving them severely alone. If you value your health. Sit down, please. I know what I’m talking about, young man, for I’ve lived much too close to people of that sort this last few years. They are… but I can see that you have decided not to have anything more to do with them. Good. As for the shilling apiece that you gave them, well, that will pay for two nights – for on Saturday nights we who reside in the communal centres of this part of the town are called upon to pay two nights’ bed-rent in advance – and will leave them with fourpence each in hand for food and drink. Speaking of drinks…’

  ‘What are you having?’ said Shenk, no longer interested in the women.

  Davies had another whisky, with which and a shilling to pay his weekend bed-rent the two young men left him to return to the singing room of the Eagle a little – but not much – wiser than when leaving it.

  Steppwr hurried away from Glyn and old Davies to keep his appointment with Harry at the Owen Glyndwr, for Harry was a bad one to keep waiting. As soon as Steppwr entered Harry rose from where he was playing dominoes with a chap and took Steppwr aside.

  ‘How much money have you got?’ he whispered.

  ‘Not a cent. Why?’

  ‘I’ve lost two games at a shilling a game, and a quart on each as well. If I only had enough to call for the beer I could make him play on until I got quits even if I had to force him to play all night.’

  ‘Won’t the landlord strap you another couple of quarts?’

  ‘He’ll bloody well have to,’ said Harry as he moved towards the bar. ‘Fill us a couple of quarts, Jenkins,’ he said to the landlord.

  ‘When I see the colour of your money, I will.’

  Harry was desperate. ‘You’d better, Jenkins,’ he said menacingly.

  ‘Now, look here, Harry, you owe me…’

  ‘Will you fill me two quarts before I come behind that bar and fill them myself?’

  The landlord was pale, but still firm. ‘Now, don’t be foolish, Harry,’ he advised, ‘for you’ll only get yourself into trouble if you try that on. I’m not saying that I won’t fill you a pint,’ he hastened to say as Harry moved towards the counter-flap.

  ‘Pint be damned,’ roared Harry, and all present swallowed their drink and slunk out to avoid being mixed up in what looked like turning out to be a court case. ‘Are you filling me two quarts?’

  The landlord, with his bartender, and his wife who had hurried into the bar from the kitchen, were bunched together near the counter-flap. ‘Slip out the back way and fetch a policeman,’ said the landlord to his wife. And off she went.

  Harry shouted: ‘You mingy swine,’ then kicked the counter-flap up. Steppwr rushed in from the street to shout: ‘She’s gone to fetch a policeman, Harry. Come on out of it, you damned fool.’ The landlord and the bartender closed with Harry and forced him out from behind the bar to the door leading to the street, overturning in the struggle benches, chairs, tables, and smashing several of the pints, quarts and glasses that were on the tables. After about half a minute’s swaying about, Harry managed to free his right arm, which he at once brought into play. A short hook to the chin poleaxed the unfortunate bartender. The landlord made for the door when he saw his man felled, but before he managed to get through it he had a terrific kick in the tail from Harry which landed him on all fours in the gutter outside. The field was clear, so Harry went behind the bar to get himself something to drink.

  ‘Come on away out of it,’ Steppwr poked his head through the door to say, but Harry went on drawing beer. ‘What do you think of me as a landlord, Steppwr?’ he asked with a smile as he came out from behind the bar with a quart measure filled with beer in one hand and a bottle of whisky in the other. Knocking the neck off the bottle against the bar he went on to pour the whisky into the beer until the mixture spilled over on to the floor. Then he took a long drink.

  ‘Ah, something like a drink,’ he cried. ‘Try this, Steppwr, it’ll warm the cockles of your heart, it will.’

  Before Steppwr could say yes or no a strapping young policeman came rushing in through the door, closely followed by the landlord and his wife. The policeman pluckily went for Harry, only to be met with a right and left that put him to sleep on the floor at the side of the bartender.

  ‘That’s for making me drop my drink,’ said Harry, picking up the partly full whisky bottle he had dropped to meet the policeman as he charged.

  ‘Well, you’ve gone and done it with a vengeance now, Harry,’ said Steppwr, looking down on Harry’s two victims.

  ‘I wish that bloody landlord had followed him in as far as here,’ said Harry after he had poured what whisky there was left in the bottle down his throat. ‘Where did the bugger go to?’

  ‘To look for more policemen, I expect, so it’s time we went.’

  ‘Just as well, I s’pose.’

  They were far enough away by the time the landlord returned with Sergeant Davies and two other policemen, who found the young policeman who had taken the count seated in the sawdust mopping the blood off his tunic and face.

  ‘H’m, gone, is he,’ said Sergeant Davies as he helped the young policeman up. ‘Well, come on, I know where he lives. You needn’t come, Morris; you shall have the pleasure of paying your respects to him when we bring him to the station.’

  ‘But I’d like to…’

  ‘Yes, I know you would, but it’ll keep, that which you’ve got in salt for him. Come on, lads. Hurry back to the station, Morris.’ And away to where Harry lived they went, and almost frightened Harry’s mother into her grave.

  ‘He’s not here, Sergeant bach,’ said the old woman tearfully. ‘What have he done now again?’ she asked.

  ‘Enough to get him six months. Tell him from me when he does come home that the sooner he surrenders himself the better it will be for him. Will you be sure to tell him that?’

  ‘Indeed I will, Sergeant bach.’

  ‘You’d better, for if we have to fetch him and he starts being funny… well, he’ll see. Come on, lads.’

  Saran found her mother crying piteously when she got home from the theatre. ‘What in the name of God’s the matter now again?’ she asked.

  The old woman told her what the sergeant had said, and begged on her to go out immediately to see if she could find Harry to warn him that the police were after him.

  ‘I expect he knows that,’ said Saran. ‘I think I know where to find him, so make up his pack for him in case I’ll manage to persuade him to
clear right away out of the district until this blows over a bit.’

  Saran drank a cup of tea, and then set off for the lodging house in the Iron Bridge district where Steppwr hung out. She avoided the main street so as not to give the police a chance to follow her, and she got to the lodging house as the town clock was striking midnight.

  ‘What in the name of God do you want down this quarter at this time, Saran?’ said Steppwr when he went to the door to see who it was that had asked to see ‘the little chap that plays the concertina’.

  ‘Where’s Harry?’ she asked.

  ‘Inside playing all-fours with three navvy chaps.’

  ‘Tell him I want to see him, and that I’ve got his pack for him to clear off from the place.’

  ‘I’m afraid he won’t come, for he’s winning, and I know how he is when he thinks something’ll break his luck…’

  Saran pushed by him into the common room of the lodging house where she found Harry seated at cards with three navvies, from whom he had won a fair sum of money. When he saw her he cried: ‘I knew damned well something or somebody would come and break my luck. What the hell do you want?’

  ‘I want to see you about…’

  ‘I’ll see you up home in the morning; now, bugger off.’

  ‘You’d better come out to hear what I’ve got to tell you.’

  ‘Ay, come on, Harry,’ appealed Steppwr. ‘She won’t keep you a minute.’

  Harry gathered up the money he had on the table before him. ‘I’ll be back in a minute,’ he told the navvies.

  ‘He won’t,’ Saran told them as she followed Harry out. ‘Now, listen, Mr fly-me,’ she started as soon as she, Harry and Steppwr were outside the door. ‘Oh, don’t rise your fist, for I’m not afraid of that. The police, three of ’em, have been to the house after you, and the old woman is nearly off her head. I don’t know what you’ve done, but Sergeant Davies told mam that you’ve done enough to get yourself at least six months; so she wants you to sling your hook to somewhere where they can’t find you. And you’re going. Now. Tonight.’

  ‘I am like hell…’

  ‘Here’s your pack…’

  ‘You will if you’re wise, Harry,’ said Steppwr.

  ‘Do you think that I’m afraid of the bloody bobbies?’

  ‘No more is Sergeant Davies afraid of you,’ Saran told him. ‘You’ve had to pay salty before now for the pleasure of knocking one of ’em about, haven’t you?’

  ‘She’s right, Harry,’ said Steppwr. ‘They gave you a hell of a lacing when they got you into the cell after you’d… but there, you know all about that without me telling you. Now, take my tip and clear out as Saran says; go over the mountains and into the Rhondda Valley and stay there until this dies down a bit, and perhaps it’ll be forgotten.’

  ‘It will like hell; they’ll have me if it’s in ten years’ time.’

  ‘How do you know? The old woman knows Sergeant Davies since he was that high. But please yourself. All I know is that if they get you into that cell whilst they’re feeling bitter they’ll knock hell’s bells of buggery out of you…’

  ‘And give you six months on top of it, which will kill mam as sure as you’re standing there,’ Saran added.

  Harry stared into the oily, dirty water of the River Taff on which the high-riding moon conferred a sheen, trying to make his mind up one way or the other. It hurt him to think at all times. ‘I don’t want to make things hard for mam,’ he muttered. ‘If she thinks it best for me to sling my hook…’

  ‘Didn’t she send me to tell you to at this hour of the morning?’

  ‘All right, I’m going,’ growled Harry. ‘Give us that bloody pack.’

  ‘I’ll carry it for you as far as the top of the mountain.’

  ‘You will like hell. ’Fraid I’ll double back, are you?’

  ‘Don’t be silly, Harry,’ said Steppwr. ‘Humph, it’s come to something if we can’t send you and carry your pack as far as the top of the mountain, from where you’ll have a bellyful of carrying before morning. Now, I’ll walk ahead of you and Saran a hundred yards or so until we get out of town, and if I do happen to run into a bobby… but I don’t suppose I will at this time of the morning. Wait until you see me over the bridge before you start from here.’

  With Steppwr as advance guard, Saran and Harry trod lightly along moonlit streets until all three were clear of the town and climbing the steep mountain road towards Aberdare. Once clear of the town Steppwr waited for them and walked at Harry’s side; Saran, knowing her place, fell back, and afterwards followed the two men up the mountain, keeping a half-dozen paces to their rear, from where she could hear Steppwr explaining to Harry the kind of place the Rhondda was, and where he was to go when he got there.

  Right on top of the mountain they stopped, Steppwr and Saran looking ahead at the strange and silent valley below, Harry looking back down the valley from which they had just climbed. Impartially the moon shared its light between the two valleys and scornfully looked down to where the steelworks of a half-dozen townships threw patches of reddish light up into the night sky.

  ‘No, I’m damned if I will,’ groaned Harry, starting back the way he had come.

  Saran planted herself in his way and Steppwr caught him by the arm and said: ‘Now, don’t be damned fool, Harry.’

  ‘Here, take this pack,’ said Saran.

  ‘Ay, take it, Harry. Man, it isn’t hell you’re going to, but to the rich, roaring Rhondda valleys, where it’s livelier than ever it was here, and where there’s good beer to be had in a dozen towns for twopence a pint, and work. Ay, and plenty of easy jobs…’

  ‘Work, who the hell wants…? Can’t I get all the work I want here?’

  ‘But it’ll be work without pay this side for at least six months,’ Saran reminded him.

  After a last long look down into his home town Harry grabbed the pack from Saran, and with his head down started running down into the strange valley, into the unknown. Saran and Steppwr stood watching him go.

  ‘Don’t forget to go to them people I told you about,’ Steppwr called after him. ‘They’ll put you up – tell ’em I sent you.’

  Harry was by this time a blurred figure in a sheeny mist.

  ‘Come on, Saran,’ said Steppwr. ‘We may as well go back home now.’

  CHAPTER 5

  A MARRIAGE HAS BEEN ARRANGED

  On the Saturday evening following Harry’s flight to the Rhondda, Saran had the surprise of her life when Glyn accosted her as she was on her way to the theatre.

  ‘Hullo, Saran,’ he said.

  ‘Hullo,’ was all she said in reply.

  ‘Er… well, to cut it short… er… I’ve been thinking that it would be all right if us two got married.’

  ‘Married?’

  ‘Ay; what do you say?’

  ‘Why, this is the first time you’ve up and spoke to me since a twelvemonth last Christmas.’

  ‘Oh, all right, if that’s how you’re going to talk…’

  ‘But I’m not saying I won’t. Let’s get off the middle of the road, we don’t want everybody to hear our business.’ She led the way round the corner of Tom Hall’s shop. ‘Now,’ she began as she stopped and turned to face him, ‘I’m ready to get married whenever you are; though to tell you the truth, I thought you’d finished with me for good.’

  ‘Ay, but that was your Harry’s fault. P’raps you don’t know that he gave me two black eyes the night my father died?’

  ‘Oh, yes I do. But let’s not bother about him. Where are you off to tonight?’

  ‘I was going to meet Shenk down the Eagle singing room, but if you want to I’ll go for a walk with you instead,’ he condescendingly said.

  ‘I’m going to the threeatre. It’s The Octoroon tonight, and I wouldn’t miss that for… why not come with me?’

  ‘You know that I’d as well go to hell as go there.’

  ‘Ah, but wait till you’ve seen The Octoroon. And you can slip out for a drink between the
acts if you want to.’

  He allowed himself to be persuaded and feigned interest in the play in order to please her. There were four intervals which he spent in the nearest pub, so he was most talkative as he walked as far as the bridge with her after they had left the theatre.

  They stood on the bridge and she let him talk for a long time about this, that and the other before she up and asked him: ‘And where do you reckon we’re going to live after we’re married?’

  ‘At our house, of course.’

  She looked across to where she lived with her mother and thought for a minute: ‘And my mother as well?’ she asked.

  ‘Oh, I don’t know about your mother. Old Marged’s with us, been with us ever since mother died. And there’s only the two beds, Saran, and old Marged’s been sleeping in the one dad used to sleep in. She’ll have to start sleeping on the couch downstairs again when we’re married, for Dai’s bound to have a bed to sleep in after working hard the way he do. So I don’t see how your mother…’

  ‘Why can’t we live with her instead of going to live in your house?’

  ‘And have your Shoni and Harry bouncing me from morning to night? Humph, what do you think I am?’

  ‘Now, listen, Glyn. Shoni’s gone far enough, and we’re not likely to see him ever again; and it’ll be a long time before we see Harry, if at all. Anyway, we can be looking for a house of our own, and be in it long before either of ’em are likely to show their faces around these parts again. Harry…’

  ‘I heard about the way he carried on in the Owen Glyndwr; and a chap told me that the police are after him.’

  ‘Well, it’s no odds to him, is it?’

  ‘To who?’

  ‘To the chap that told you; for it’s Harry’ll have to pay for what was done, not him, or you, or anyone else.’

  ‘Oh, you drive me mad when you talk about Harry as though…’

  ‘As though he was as good as you? He is, and p’raps better than many as talks about him.’

  ‘He is like hell. Look here; did you ask me to walk across with you to have a row?’