Black Parade

by Jack Jones

  ‘Yes – qui’ ri’ – Harry. You – tell me.’

  ‘What is there to tell? God is waiting for us, you know that. Not waiting for bouncers, men with money, men as can play music grand and them as can stand up and talk a lot and make people clap ’em. Nor for women as rides in their carriage and pair or them as goes up the coke ovens with men. No, Steppwr bach, God is waiting for His children, and no matter whether we lie down to sleep in Cyfarthfa Castle or in the Cyfarthfa works’ coke ovens, it’s God’s little and wilful children we all are. Am I right, Steppwr? Steppwr. Steppwr. Oh, Saran, Saran. Come quick, Saran.’

  CHAPTER 12

  SARAN RENDERS FIRST AID TO A RIOTER

  ‘Well, let’s hope they’re satisfied now that they’ve got the soldiers there,’ said Glyn as he came in from the back kitchen wiping his hands, for he always washed his hands before sitting down to his supper, which was more than some of the boys did.

  ‘Soldiers?’ said Saran, placing his taters and meat on the table.

  ‘Ay, soldiers, regiments of ’em, so a chap in the Nelson just told me.’

  ‘Yes, but where?’

  ‘Down the Rhondda, woman, I tell you.’

  ‘You told me no such thing. Anywhere near where our Meurig is?’

  ‘Well, if he’s in the Rhondda…’

  ‘You know quite well he’s in the Rhondda.’

  ‘Then you should know quite well he’s where these soldiers now are.’

  ‘But what do they want soldiers in the Rhondda for?’

  Glyn stopped chewing and sighed. ‘Woman, don’t you know any damned thing? Don’t you know that the Combine strike’s on in the Rhondda, and that the men have been playing hell there? Bursting shops open and stealing things, and knocking policemen about…’

  ‘Yes, I heard somebody say something about it. I hope our Meurig keeps out of it.’

  ‘He’d better; for now that they’ve got soldiers on horseback as well as them on foot down there it’ll be God help anybody as tries to act the goat. Where are you off to?’

  ‘To the threeatre with Jane.’

  ‘Why don’t you go and live in the damned theatre?’

  ‘I would if they’d let me. Here’s your clean things; the water’s ready on the hob. I’ve shined your boots in case you’re going out…’

  ‘How can I go out without a penny in my pocket?’

  ‘You’ll find a shilling on the mantelpiece.’

  ‘What’s the good of a shilling?’

  ‘It’s sixpence more than I’ll pay to get into the gallery of the threeatre.’ And she was gone to laugh at the two brothers who were so funny in The Swiss Express.

  As usual, she was down in the kitchen lighting the fire and getting everything ready for them, before calling Glyn and the boys to go to work next morning, before the five o’clock hooters began their chorus. She was oiling the heavy and hard pit boots when she heard a tapping on the kitchen window which startled her a little, but she was soon herself again. Again the tapping, so she went into the back kitchen and opened the back door and fearlessly asked: ‘Who’s there?’

  Out of the dark into the light of the kitchen walked her Meurig, wearing a blood-soaked bandage under his cap and round his forehead.

  ‘What in the name of God’s happened to you?’ she gasped as he walked past her to seat himself in the armchair near the fire.

  ‘Nothing much; been in a bit of a row, that’s all. Give us a cup of tea, mam, for God’s sake.’ He drank the cup of tea she poured him in three almost scalding saucerfuls. ‘Another?’ she asked. ‘Yes.’ ‘A bit to eat?’ ‘Later.’ ‘Let’s have a look at that head of yours.’

  ‘H’m. What was it that hit you?’

  ‘Er, I don’t know quite. Something that was used in the row.’

  ‘And who was it put this rag and plaster on you?’

  ‘One of the chaps…’

  ‘Never mind; bend your head.’ She cleaned and dressed the wound. ‘Well, whoever hit, and whatever he hit you with, it’s a good job he didn’t hit a bit harder.’

  ‘He won’t hit anyone else for some time.’

  ‘Well, I’ll have to call your father and the boys soon…’

  ‘They mustn’t see me.’

  ‘Why not, name of…’

  ‘I’ll tell you after they’ve left for work. Now, where can I go to until they’ve left?’

  ‘Go into the front room, nobody goes in there of a morning. Here, have this other cup of tea to take in with you.’

  After Glyn and the boys had left for work, Meurig returned to the kitchen from the front room. ‘Dad grouses as much as ever, I noticed.’

  ‘Never mind talking about your father. Now, sit down and have something to eat.’

  ‘Draw that blind.’

  ‘What are you afraid of?’

  ‘I’ll tell you after I’ve eaten.’ He ate hearty, and lit a cigarette. ‘This is a wallop a policeman gave me with his truncheon,’ he informed his mother, pointing to his head.

  ‘A policeman’s… but how did he come to hit you?’

  ‘Oh, they charged a gang of us and well – we stood up to the swines. They had their truncheons, so we let ’em have it with stones – and whatever else we could lay our hands on.’

  ‘Haven’t I always told you never to mess with p’licmen? Your uncle Harry paid dear for messing with…’

  ‘Yes, I know, but this wasn’t a public-house affair; and when hundreds of blasted policemen start ordering and pushing chaps about just because we were standing up for our rights. Yes, hundreds of ’em; from London, Bristol, and all over the shop. What did they want there, in the first place?’

  ‘It’s too late to ask that; you should have kept out of their way.’

  ‘Couldn’t, I tell you. They were chasing us all over the damned place. Chasing us off the street, off…’

  ‘Then why didn’t you come home?’

  ‘What do you think I am?’

  ‘A bit of a fool to stay long enough to get that.’

  ‘The one that gave it me got worse.’

  She looked at him without speaking for a minute or so. ‘So you had to run for it over the mountains, like your uncle Harry did years ago, before you was thought of. But it was into the Rhondda he had to run. Do you think the police know now that you were in the tussle in which you got that?’

  ‘I don’t think so, yet I’m not quite sure. That’s why I want to lie low here for a while, until it all blows over.’

  So he did lie low; he sneaked out for a stroll most nights after everyone was in bed, and the wound healed up. Though nobody came to the house to inquire about him, he didn’t risk returning to the Rhondda after the strike was settled for fear that he would be picked up and given a long term of imprisonment. Others, who had been far less troublesome than he, had been arrested and sentenced to heavy terms of imprisonment. So he decided to stay away from the Rhondda for good, and got himself a job at home again. ‘Old Merthyr’s going to be good enough for me from now on,’ he told Saran. ‘Too good for him, I think,’ she used to say as he went on making things hot for himself and other members of the family. ‘Mad Meurig he is,’ said Jane after she had paid the ten shillings and costs which her Ossie was fined for a prank he had been led into by Meurig. And now that he was home Benny and his wife would not come near the house to pay their respects occasionally to Saran.

  ‘No, not while he’s there,’ Benny told his mother one night when they met coming out of the theatre. ‘You’re always welcome to my home, mother, and if he were not…’

  ‘Yes, you told me before. What did you think of the singing tonight?’

  ‘Really fine, I thought, though, of course, not to be compared with the Carl Rosa production of the same opera.’

  ‘I don’t care much for op’ra. Good night, Benny.’

  She had to admit to herself as she walked home with her almost inseparable companion, Jane, that Meurig was most difficult to get on with – well, for his brothers to get on
with, for she could put up with him at his worst, for she was soft about him, yet not so soft, either. He gambled as long as he had a penny to gamble with, gambled at cards, at billiards in one or other of the many large billiard saloons a company claimed to have blessed the district with; at pitch-and-toss – gambled in any and every way possible. And he was always fighting somebody or other over something or other. He owed sums of money to all his brothers, with the exception of Benny, who kept him at a distance, and Hugh, who was too far away to ‘touch’. He worried his younger brother Idris for loans until Idris decided to leave home and go down to lodge and work with his brother Hugh at Senghenydd. ‘Sick of it’, he told Saran he was. ‘But why do you lend him money all the time?’ asked Saran.

  ‘If I’ve got it I can’t refuse him,’ said Idris. ‘So if I’m not here he can’t ask me, can he? Anyway, work around here’s none too good nowadays, and Hugh told me he’d find me a job down there with him when he was up home last Bank Holiday.’ So off to Senghenydd went Idris. Saran didn’t mind, for she knew he’d be all right with Hugh, and she had plenty left to look after without him – and all working at last. Lord, there was something to do with them all. Glyn and six boys to get off to work every morning, and with this eight-hours business they were back home again before a woman could look around. Then there was the nightly rush for the use of the bath, the quarrels as to who owned this tie and that shirt. Meurig, who seldom bought himself a tie or a cap, made no bones about taking and wearing anything belonging to the others that he fancied, and so caused endless rows, which Saran had to patch up somehow or the other. By pleasing one she was sure to offend another; and there was Glyn always sneering to the effect that there should never be more than one fully grown man in any home, and that, as she insisted on having a houseful of sons, now men, around her, she must put up with their squabbling and fighting. But he’d go to hell before he’d put up with it much longer. She could do as she liked, but his mind was made up. If a man worked as hard as he did, then he wanted a little peace in his home. Yet what did he get? Yes, what? A lot of cheek, that’s what he got from blasted boys who didn’t know what hard work was. And what was more, he had to be damned careful to avoid getting a dab in the eye every now and again from one or other of the three oldest, and he had no doubt – not the slightest – that the three youngest would talk and act just as big when the time came. Now, when he ought to be taking things easy – as he had a right to after having slaved to rear ’em all – what did he find? Found that he had to work harder than ever.

  ‘Give me my things, woman, so as I can get out of it.’

  And out he’d go to where everybody smiled at a man and deferred to his opinion for as long as he had the price of a pint left.

  And the boys would in their turn shout: ‘Give me my things, mam, so as I can get out’ – but not to the pub like their dad. Dances, to look the girls over. Billiard saloons, to play black pool and snooker. The theatre, music hall, Eisteddfod to hear the champion solo competition only, the new swimming baths on long summer evenings and Sunday afternoons as well, and occasionally chapel to listen in a rather critical mood to the cream of visiting preachers. Yes, a lively lot, Saran thought. Too lively, thought others.

  ‘Work, work, work and be contented’ evidently was not the song which appealed to Glyn and the boys and the rest of the miners of South Wales during the period the Liberal Government was in office, for the Minimum Wage Stoppage overtook Saran before she was quite aware of its coming, and before she had made any preparations to meet it.

  ‘And what is it over now?’ she asked Glyn.

  ‘Well, of all the damned women… if your head wasn’t so full of that theatre…’

  ‘Of work, more like.’

  ‘And the theatre. Didn’t I tell you what was likely to happen that night after me and Ossie had been to hear that Frank Hodges speaking?’

  ‘Who is Frank Hodges?’

  ‘I suppose you know who Louis Calvert is?’

  ‘What’s to stop me? But who is this Frank Hodges?’

  ‘He’s one of the best,’ Meurig informed her. ‘He’s the boy that’s making the pace for the old leaders in our fight for the minimum wage.’

  ‘Minimum?’

  ‘Well, of all the blasted women I ever heard…’

  ‘Shut up, wise man,’ Meurig told his father. ‘This is it, mam. We’re demanding that if we’re working in a place where we can’t earn a decent wage when we work honest, then the bosses must make up our money to a certain figure, and that certain figure is the minimum.’

  ‘Well, I don’t see that that’s asking too much. But can’t it be got without a strike?’

  ‘Don’t seem like it,’ said Meurig. ‘Never get much out of the bosses without a strike.’

  ‘Well, it isn’t much that we get out of them or anybody by striking, either,’ said Saran. ‘I remember the first long strike when you lot was small, and it was little we got out of that.’

  ‘This won’t be as bad as ’98,’ Mervyn assured her. ‘We’ll all have strike pay from the Federation this time.’

  ‘A fat lot that’ll be,’ she sighed.

  She smiled and paid her way through a stoppage which lasted six weeks, a stoppage which resulted in the miners being granted the minimum wage, and which made the reputation of a young miners’ leader named Frank Hodges, who had been but little heard of before the stoppage.

  ‘That’s the sort of leader to have,’ cried Meurig in the house on the evening when the news of the settlement came through. ‘Different to Mabon and the old gang, the old gang would never have got this for us.’

  ‘Here, you’ve no call to run Mabon and the other old leaders down,’ Glyn told the boys that night in the home. ‘Mabon got us many things before Hodges was born.’

  ‘A fat lot he got you,’ sneered Lewis. ‘Got you the Mabon’s Monday holiday, and that’s about all.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’ cried Glyn, as he glared from one to the other of his six sons still at home. ‘Who was it fought for us to get you your eight-hour day? If it wasn’t for Mabon and his sort you’d be working twelve hours a day like I had to… I’m not saying anything against Hodges or Cook or any of the other young fellers our Federation has paid to keep for years in a college – which was more than Mabon ever had, remember. They got us things without any college training to do it with, so don’t be too ready to run ’em down. Where could you get a better man than Tom Richards?’

  ‘Who is Tom Richards?’ Saran asked.

  ‘Well, of all the women…’

  Bang – and what a bang it was. It shook Wales, shook Britain, so the newspapers said, and shocked the civilised world, so the papers also said, on the very same day on which Jane’s second baby was born – and a fine boy it was. Saran was as proud as proud could be, and she wondered why it was that Ossie looked at her so sadly when she went down to the kitchen to tell him that he could go up to the bedroom to have a look at Jane and his fine new boy.

  ‘Well, ain’t you going up?’ she asked him as he stood looking at her with a face as long as a fiddle.

  ‘Ay, just now. But there’s something… now, don’t, for God’s sake, go up and tell Jane yet.’

  ‘Tell her what? What are you trying to say?’

  ‘There’s been an explosion – down in – Senghenydd.’

  ‘Seng – hen – ydd,’ she slowly repeated syllable after syllable. Then she sank slowly into a chair and began to age before Ossie’s very eyes. ‘Seng – hen – ydd,’ she again whispered. ‘Oh, my lovely boys. But p’raps…’

  She jumped up out of the chair and ran out of the house and on to her own house, hoping. Hoping, as others were, in vain. Hugh and Idris were two of close on five hundred of the explosion’s victims. She went with Glyn to what the papers called ‘the scene of the greatest disaster in mining history’, and spent most of the time she was there trying to comfort Hugh’s young widow, who was inconsolable then, though she was married again, to a North Welshman
this time, in less than twelve months from the date of the disaster. But, as Saran said when she heard of her approaching marriage to the North Welshman, she was only a young woman, after all, and it wasn’t to be expected that she would wear black and mourn Hugh all her life. Besides, there were the children to think of, and if only she was lucky enough to find a good man, then it would be a godsend to the children as well. But that was later; she cried in a way that would move the hardest-hearted person in the world throughout the day Saran and Glyn spent with her.

  When Saran got back home she found her brother Harry, looking old enough to be her father with those whiskers of his, waiting to comfort her. Brushing Glyn aside he led his sister into the front room and sat silent holding her hand during the time she was crying the bitter tears. Then, after she had recovered a little, all he said was: ‘They are with God, Saran bach,’ but that didn’t seem to comfort her much. So the next thing he said was: ‘Come into the kitchen to Glyn, for he must be feeling it, too.’ So into the kitchen they went, where all her boys, married and unmarried, stood silent looking on their father, who was sitting in a heap in the armchair near the fire, looking ever so much older than he had looked a week before. Ossie was there as well, and when she saw him Saran asked: ‘And how is Jane up there?’

  ‘Fine,’ he said.

  ‘And the baby?’

  ‘A 1.’

  ‘I’ll come up with you to see her as soon as I’ve put a bit of food for… Glyn bach, don’t cry. Tell him not to cry, Harry,’ she begged for fear of breaking down in front of them all there in the kitchen, and the way Glyn sat hunched up made her feel as weak as water. Harry stumped quietly across the kitchen and placed his hand over Glyn’s and said: ‘You go on putting the bit of food, Saran. Glyn will be all right in a minute.’