by Jack Jones
‘And so am I,’ said Jane.
‘Well,’ said Annie, ‘I don’t know how you can sit to see the same play for the fourth time.’
‘I could sit and watch Leonard Boyne in Raffles every night for the rest of my life,’ said Saran.
‘Oh, I wouldn’t go as far as to say that,’ said Jane.
‘It’s The Manxman I liked,’ said Marged.
‘All right go, and be damned to you,’ said Glyn, as Benny, Hugh and Sam walked out of the front room to, so they said, have a look to see how the women were getting on in the kitchen. ‘But me, Steppwr and Ossie are going to make ourselves comfortable where we are. Tell your mother to send one of them gels in with what’s left of that roast pork and a small loaf,’ he shouted after them. ‘Now, Steppwr, and you, Ossie, draw up to the fire. We’re all right where we are. Too true we are. Better than going off some place into lodgings like that damned fool of a Benny did when he got married, isn’t it, Ossie?’
‘It is that,’ said Ossie thickly. ‘Any more por’ wine left?’
‘Nearly a bottle full, and plenty of beer as well.’
‘Then less have some, and I’ll sing another…’
Steppwr never told Harry, and he made Saran promise never to tell him, that he was indirectly the cause of what resulted in Steppwr’s death. Before Harry lost his leg he and Steppwr went year after year to the great annual Neath Fair, Steppwr to pick up a few shillings playing his concertina in various pubs, and Harry to earn a pound or two putting up a show in one or other of the boxing booths against men introduced to the open-mouthed crowds as champions of this place and that. It was the spree of the year for Harry, and after he had earned a pound or two in the booths he used to let it fly in the pubs. It was one long glorious drunk for as long as the money lasted, and then more often than not the pair of them had to walk home, unless they happened to be fortunate enough to get a lift.
‘Come on, let’s get back to Merthyr,’ Steppwr each year had to plead when all their money was spent and their credit exhausted, a state of affairs which made Harry an awkward and dangerous chap to meet. And this was the position they found themselves in after the Fair of the year before Harry lost his leg. Penniless and reluctant to start on the long tramp home, Harry made a last round of the pubs with Steppwr in forced attendance, in the hope of begging, borrowing or stealing the money necessary to pay their train fare home to Merthyr. After many failures they at last found a landlord out of whom Harry was able to bounce two pints, and it was whilst they were making the two pints last out until the something Harry was hoping for turned up that the two young chaps from Resolven entered and called for drinks. Harry at once livened up when he saw the eldest and biggest of the two young men push a golden sovereign along the bar to the landlord when the latter came with the drinks ordered. Then Harry set to work, and when Harry laid himself out to be nice to anyone, he could be really nice. Without a penny in his pocket he suggested a game of dominoes for stakes of a half-crown a game, and a half-gallon of beer on each game as well so as to make things pleasant. The landlord, knowing that Harry was broke, was about to open his mouth to tell the young chaps from Resolven what he thought they were entitled to know, when Harry moved up to the bar like a tiger and shouted as he moved: ‘The dominoes, please, landlord.’ Then he whispered fiercely: ‘It’ll pay you to keep your bloody mouth shut.’
The landlord handed the box of dominoes over the bar with a trembling hand, and kept his mouth shut. Harry and the young man, with the change left out of the golden sovereign in his pocket, started to play for the stakes suggested, and the beer, to make things pleasant. Harry won three games in succession, and the young man paid up like a gentleman. Then he won a game. ‘Good play,’ complimented Harry. ‘You played damned well to win that. Go on, double or quits. Come on, bring that half-gallon across, landlord.’ Harry paid for the half-gallon of beer.
The young man from Resolven won the next game also, and Harry was even more complimentary than before. ‘I’m afraid you’re too good for me,’ said Harry. ‘You play better than Bat Hickey, and he’s the champion of Merthyr. What about the beer, landlord?’ shouted Harry as he went on shuffling the dominoes. ‘Yes, you play like a champion, and if I had any bloody sense I’d give you best… never mind, double or quits.’
The young man opened his mouth to point out that the stakes of the two games he had won had not been handed across the table by Harry, when Harry stopped his mouth with the drink he had poured out for him. ‘Yes, if you beat me this time for ten shilling or nothing, then I’ll give you best; and when I get back home to Merthyr I’ll back you to beat Bat Hickey, the champion, for as much money as they can find. Come on, pick for dap.’
Steppwr was shifting about uneasily in his seat as he sat watching the game. ‘Double or quits.’ He hoped, for the Resolven young man’s sake, that Harry would win, for he knew what was likely to happen if the young man won and demanded payment. And that’s how it turned out. Harry rose to his feet and accused the young man of cheating, and in less than a minute from the time the game finished the young man from Resolven was stretched unconscious in the sawdust, and his friend was kneeling over him, trying to bring him round.
‘That’ll teach him to cheat,’ said Harry, picking up the half-gallon measure and pouring himself some beer. ‘Come on, Steppwr, drink; no sense in leaving for others the beer I’ve paid for.’
‘I don’t want any more of it…’
‘We’ll have you – if it’s in ten years’ time, we’ll have you for this,’ screamed the young man who knelt over his bleeding, unconscious friend. ‘This haven’t finished today, you dirty blackguard, you.’
‘Get out of the bloody way,’ said Harry, giving him a backhander that knocked him into a sitting position as he went out. ‘Come on, Steppwr, let’s go and catch the puff-puff back to dear old Merthyr.’
Steppwr followed him out, the young man on his behind in the sawdust shouting after them: ‘We’ll have you; have you if we have to wait…’
Well, they had to wait a long time, and they’re still, that’s if they’re alive, waiting for Harry to show up at Neath Fair; for after Harry had lost his leg, and him being ‘saved’ afterwards – ‘Lost his leg and saved his soul’, was how Tommy Rees used to start ’em laughing in the Anchor taproom – Harry thought no more of the great annual Neath Fair, which at one time he reckoned he wouldn’t miss, no, not for a gold watch. But as for Steppwr: well, Steppwr didn’t go to the great Fair, either, for five years following the year Harry lost his leg. Then Jack Taylor, who was taking his Aunt Sally and ‘Three Rings a Penny’ outfits to the great Fair, offered Steppwr a lift over and back in return for a little help in fitting the outfits up and taking them down after the Fair.
‘And whilst the Fair is on you can be doing your eye good playing your concertina in the pubs, see, Steppwr,’ said Jack Taylor.
And that’s how it was. Leaving Jack Taylor barking before his ‘Three Rings a Penny’ outfit, and Jack’s wife doing her best in charge of the Aunt Sally outfit, Steppwr started off to work the pubs. It was close on stop-tap that night when he was spotted by the two young men from Resolven who had been waiting so long to get their own back on Harry. In the bar of the Salutation, it was.
‘There’s the chap that was with him,’ whispered one of the young chaps to the other, pointing to where Steppwr stood with his concertina under his arm and a drink on the bar before him.
‘So it is. Where’s the other swine, I wonder?’
‘We’ll soon find out… he’s off out. Come.’
But Steppwr was only going to the urinal at the back, and a stinking hole it was by this time. No water to flush the place; vomits and excrement and goodness knows what altogether. Steppwr was opening his trousers when he saw the two young men from Resolven standing menacingly near.
‘Pouf, isn’t this a hell of a place,’ said Steppwr pleasantly.
‘Where’s that swine that was with you that time?’ snarled the most powerfu
l of the two.
‘With me? Who do you mean?’
The young man roughly gripped him by the coat and jerked him inwards until Steppwr could see the two nasty scars the young man proceeded to direct his attention to. ‘The swine who left me these marks. Where is he? You’d better tell me before I…’
‘Oh, it’s you, is it?’ gasped Steppwr, recognising the young men.
‘Yes, it’s us,’ said the young man.
‘Well, please let me button up and I’ll tell you…’
‘Where is he?’
Steppwr was telling them about Harry’s conversion when one of the young men said to the other: ‘Well, he was with him, wasn’t he? And had share of your money, I expect. So take that – and that, you swine. And that,’ they kept saying as they went on using their feet on him after they had knocked him down into the filth. And after they had given him what one called ‘a double dose’ they both danced on his concertina. Then they left him to hurry back to the bar to get another drink before chucking-out time. ‘And that’s what we’ll give that other swine whenever he shows his face here next,’ said one as they went back into the pub. But Steppwr didn’t hear him, for he was out to the world, and he stayed out for two hours after chucking-out time, when he scrambled to his feet a broken man in more senses than one. But what hurt him more than the injuries to his face and body was the smashing of his concertina. He crawled about in the filth trying to pick up the pieces but was unable to retrieve more than the two hand-straps and a bit of wood that was still hanging to one of them. He cried soundlessly in the moonlight over the loss of his beloved instrument until his broken ribs compelled him to breathe as lightly as possible.
Through the silent street he painfully made his way to the fairground, where Jack Taylor, his outfits packed up, was on the point of starting for home. ‘You’re a nice feller,’ he cried, ‘leaving me and the missus to do the bloody lot after you promised… what’s the matter?’
Steppwr couldn’t tell him then, so Jack and his missus helped him into the back of the van and put him to lie down with the Aunt Sallies and other things. It was morning, and the children were on their way to school when Jack’s old horse pulled the van and its load across Pontmorlais Square, at the far end of which Jack pulled up to ask: ‘Where do you want me to drop you, Steppwr?’
‘I’d like… oh. I’d like if you’d drop me as passing Saran’s – you know, Glyn my brother-in-law’s wife. She’ll give me a drop of something as’ll…’ he groaned in pain.
Jack stopped the van in front of Saran’s house and shouted: ‘Here we are, Steppwr,’ but Steppwr couldn’t move from where he was lying, so Saran and Jack and Jack’s wife and a man who happened to be passing had to lift him out of the van and carry him in and up the stairs and into the bed that Harry had been carried into years before on the day when he refused to go to the hospital to have his leg taken off properly.
And now Steppwr is groaning in the bed as Saran washes him clean and puts one of Glyn’s clean shirts on him to make him look as tidy as possible by the time the doctor Jane has gone to fetch comes to have a look to see what is the matter with Steppwr altogether. After she had washed him and put the clean shirt on him she warmed him a drop of milk, and it was whilst he was supping as she held him up in a sitting position that he told her something of what had happened to him over Neath way the night previous. He also, in reply to her inquiries, told her how it was the two young men had set about him, after which he begged on her not, on any account, to say anything to Harry beyond what he himself intended saying when Harry called. ‘That’s if he calls at all before I’m able to get up and about. I expect I’ll be all right again tomorrow or the next day.’ ‘I expect you will,’ she said, but she knew different. Then the doctor came and said that the best thing she could do was to have Steppwr taken to the new infirmary, for they wouldn’t take him into the hospital, he said, for the reason that Steppwr was not a contributor to the hospital either privately or through the scheme which the workers of the district supported by allowing so much per week towards the hospital to be deducted from their pay.
‘No, I’ll let him stay on here,’ Saran said to the old doctor as he was packing up his things out on the landing in readiness to go.
‘Well, I don’t think he’ll stay long with you,’ said the old doctor. When Glyn arrived home from the pit later than usual, though he was sober enough that night for a wonder, Saran followed him into the back kitchen, where he had gone to wash his hands before sitting down to his supper, and said: ‘Steppwr’s upstairs.’
‘What’s he doing upstairs?’
‘Dying. But you needn’t tell him that.’
‘What in the name of God’s happened to him?’
She told him as much as she thought he ought to know as he sat eating his supper, of which he hadn’t eaten half when he pushed it away.
‘Don’t want any more. I’m glad you took him in, Saran, for, after all, he’s… he’s… Mary thought the world of him.’
‘Why shouldn’t she? There, come and get yourself washed, and when you go up to see him try to be a bit jollier than you’re looking now.’
‘Have you let Harry know?’
‘No, but I’m going to. He’s not home from his work yet, though I expect he will be by the time young Tom gets to where he lodges.’
Harry stumped up to Saran’s in his working clothes as soon as the message was delivered to him by his young nephew.
‘What about your supper?’ the woman at whose house he lodged cried after him. ‘Supper, indeed,’ muttered Harry more to himself than to young Tom, who was trotting along at his side, and the boy had to trot, for Harry was taking extremely long steps with his good leg, and then swinging the peg leg in half-moon sweeps outward and forward in the second or so he stood on his good leg; so they were at Saran’s in no time.
‘Where is he?’
‘In the same room that you were in,’ Saran told him. ‘Wait. Now, remember, no preaching or any of your hellfire talk, for that’s the one thing he don’t want. You’ll find Glyn up there with him.’
Glyn rose to give his seat to Harry when the latter entered the bedroom where Steppwr was. ‘I’ll slip down for a smoke now,’ said Glyn, who had been warned not on any account to smoke whilst with Steppwr, for the doctor had told her that Steppwr had all he could do to get his breath in and out his broken ribs without having more difficulty in doing so when coughing from tobacco smoke being where it could go down his throat. So Glyn went down to the kitchen to smoke and Harry sat in the chair at the bedside, where he smiled like an angel down on his old boozing pal.
‘Well, you’re a nice chap. What can you say you’ve been up to now?’
‘Oh, the drop of drink…’ Pain twisted his features as a bout of coughing tortured his broken body.
‘You mustn’t talk any more,’ Harry told him. ‘Now, lie still, and I won’t say another word.’
‘No, no – no dumb band,’ gasped Steppwr. ‘You talk. And I will, too. As I was saying – the drop of drink. Fell under a cart… wish it didn’t smash my con – concertina. Look…’ He lifted his hand up a little off the counterpane and showed Harry the hand-strap with the little piece of polished wood hanging from it. ‘All – that’s left – of it.’
‘Never mind, I’ll soon get you another.’
‘Not ’nother like – like him.’ Tears welled up and ran down his face. ‘Not ’nother like him, Harry.’
‘Yes, and better,’ insisted Harry. ‘So don’t worry your head any more about it. Why, now that I’m working reg’lar and saving like I’ve been, I can buy you one better than any of them that chap they said was playing on the stage of the theatre had. I will, so don’t worry. Besides, it’s wrong to worry over things that God in his wisdom takes from us, Steppwr,’ he said, forgetting what Saran at the foot of the stairs had said to him about preaching; but there was that plainly written on Steppwr’s face which impelled Harry to speak as he then went on to speak. ‘God takes things
from us for our good. If He hadn’t taken this leg of mine where would I have been, and what would I have been today? I used to be proud of the way I used to stand up on my two legs in front of chaps to batter ’em, then God took a leg away from me and made me a laughing stock for a while before taking me back into the fold. And now He’s gone and took away from you the thing you thought most of in this world, and He’s brought you down same as He brought me down, Steppwr, for everybody must be brought down in some way or other before they shall see God. He used a cart to bring you down…’
‘And He had – had to use an – an engine to – bring you down, Harry….’ Another bout of coughing twisted him into knots.
‘You shouldn’t make fun, Steppwr bach, for I’m trying to make you see how God works to get us all back after we’ve been straying here, there and everywhere. Big bouncers like me, big men of money like old Crawshay in his big stone castle, men who plays music like you, and them as knows more’n is good for ’em like old Davies, MA. And poor women like Gypsy Nell,’ he added, closing his eyes for a moment as though in prayer. ‘We’re all His children, Steppwr, and stray – where we will, we’ve got to come back to Him like children. But p’raps you want to sleep a bit?’
‘No – it’s the candle – my eyes. You – you tell me Harry.’
‘There’s not much to tell, Steppwr bach. Just that we’re all God’s children, that’s all. Oh, it’s wonderful when you come to think of it, Steppwr. First, we’re little children, looking up to our earthly fathers. Then we grow up, and some of us bring our fathers’ heads down in sorrow, same as I did mine. Boozing, fighting, gambling, whoring. Yes, I was the big bouncer who could hold my own with anyone, the big bouncer who could fight his way through life without help from anyone. Oh, what fools we are. How we cling to the things of this world long after we should have let go of ’em. Even after I lost my leg I wanted to show the world what a bouncer I was, and we’re nearly all the same. Them as makes money burden themselves with it right to the end, and them as have learnt a lot won’t forget it and get back like little children to God, Who only gives money and knowledge and power to be used for a short time here on earth, not to… am I right, Steppwr?’