Black Parade

by Jack Jones

  ‘Like hell they will.’

  ‘Woman, if I happen to forget myself and swear once in a while, that’s no reason why you should.’

  ‘Now, get yourself washed, for I’m off out to the pitchers with Jane.’

  ‘Pitchers, pitchers, pitchers…’

  ‘Pints, pints, pints.’

  ‘Don’t try to be funny, woman.’

  ‘I’m a fool for losing sleep to argue with you,’ said Saran, as she rose from where she had been sitting arguing with Glyn for about half an hour after the rest of the household had retired to bed, well, been sent to bed. Arguing about the strike which Lloyd George had travelled to Cardiff to settle face to face with the miners. ‘And you three sheets in the wind. I should have had more sense. But I’ll still have it that your leaders were wrong to threaten a strike at a time…’

  ‘Here, what are you two arguing about?’ cried a voice from the passage.

  ‘Who in the name of God…’

  ‘It’s – it’s our Benny,’ cried Saran joyfully, as she ran to meet one wearing his military greatcoat cloak-fashion, buttoned at the neck, the empty sleeves hanging down at the sides. ‘Benny, Benny bach,’ said Saran, embracing him.

  ‘Mam.’ He bent his head to touch her hair with his lips.

  ‘Let – let my boy come and sit down, woman,’ tremulously cried the now quite sober Glyn, timidly placing a hand on his boy’s shoulder.

  ‘Yes, but let me take this big old coat off him first…. No, mam’ll do it. Oh, my God!’

  Glyn dropped back into the armchair and burst out crying. They were all crying. Benny it was who recovered himself first.

  ‘Now, let’s all stop snivelling,’ he said firmly. ‘An arm is nothing to what some of my pals have lost. What about a cup of tea, mam?’

  ‘Certainly, my boy – and there’s some bakestone cake I made this morning… Lord, Benny, you’re getting grey.’

  ‘Never mind his hair, give the boy some food, woman.’

  ‘I will. Empty the teapot, Glyn – there on the ashes for now. Put the small kettle on the gas while I lay the table, and get them eggs out of the pantry.’

  ‘No, no eggs, mam; they’ve been stuffing me in that hospital until I can hardly button my tunic. Just the bakestone bread and butter and a cup of tea, that’s all.’

  They sat and watched him, their firstborn, adoringly, as he went on eating, and telling them where he had ‘got it’ whilst on duty at an observation point.

  ‘But how is it that Annie and the children didn’t come up with you?’ his father asked, under the impression that he had been home before slipping up to see his parents.

  ‘Well, I’ll tell you…’

  ‘Eat a bellyful first, and tell us after,’ said Saran.

  ‘I’ve had plenty, thanks. Now, it’s this way, mam. Knowing that I wouldn’t get here from Brighton until late; and as Annie knows no more about me losing my arm than you did up to a few minutes ago, I decided to come to you first, so that you, mam…’

  ‘I know, my boy. You want me to go down to prepare her for – for that,’ she said, pointing to where his arm used to be.

  ‘You’ve got it first time.’

  ‘I’ll go straight down.’

  ‘And I’ll follow in about five minutes.’

  ‘You’ll do no such thing,’ said his father. ‘You’ll stay here with me until your mother brings Annie and the kids back up.’

  ‘But it’s so late, dad, and the children are all asleep…’

  ‘Late, be damned, what odds about time this night. I bet she’ll be glad to wake the kids and bring ’em up to see you. Off you go, woman.’

  Away Saran went. Benny lit a fag, and his father lit his pipe, and as he smoked he kept looking at Benny in a way that made Benny feel more tender towards his father than ever before.

  ‘I’m glad of this couple of minutes with you before anyone else comes between us,’ said Glyn.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Yes…’ And before he could say any more Glyn burst into tears, and before he recovered himself Annie rushed in half dressed, and she started to cry too; and then Saran came in with the children, and the children started yowping as well. Saran stood back and let them have their cry out. The noise they all made woke Saran’s three youngest boys, who came down to see what the row was about. Then Saran told them to dress, and after they had said how-do to their one-armed soldier brother she sent Jim up to fetch Jane and her children down, and she sent Tom down to fetch Sam’s wife and her children up. ‘There’s no one going to the pit from this house tomorrow,’ she said.

  ‘Today, you mean,’ laughed Glyn, who had recovered himself by now.

  CHAPTER 14

  ’STREWTH, WHAT A BLOODY GAME THIS IS

  The one-armed Benny was knocking about in regimentals for about five months before he was finally discharged, and during those five months his four brothers and Ossie, his brother-in-law, had been home on leave, from which they returned to join drafts leaving for France.

  ‘Well, they’re all there now,’ said Saran one day to Benny.

  ‘Yes. Mam?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I want to talk to you.’

  ‘Well, here I am.’

  ‘I want to talk to you in private.’

  ‘Then wait until I get your father and these boys their things to go out. Shan’t be long.’

  ‘Well?’ she said about twenty minutes later, Glyn and the boys having gone out for the evening. ‘Quick about it, Benny, for Jane’ll be here soon to go to the pitchers with me.’

  ‘Right. There’s an insurance agent I know called up, and he’s trying to sell his book, and a good book it is. I’m not much good for underground work any more, supposing I could get any; but I could collect insurance all right.’

  ‘Certainly you could.’

  ‘Yes, but where’s the money coming from to buy a book?’

  ‘Oh, that’s it, is it? How much does that chap want for his book?’

  He told her.

  ‘H’m, that’s a lot of money, Benny. Still, it’ll be a living for you. And how much have you got towards it?’

  ‘I’ve got nothing. Annie and the children had to have…’

  ‘I know. All right, you can come over to the post office with me in the morning. But will they let me draw all that off at once?’

  ‘I don’t think they will, but you can get it through in a few days.’

  ‘Will it do then?’

  ‘Yes, as long as I get it by next Monday. And I’ll pay it back to you every penny, and before very long.’

  So she found him the money to buy the book, and she also helped him to get some new business before he’d been long at the game; and he himself picked up a lot of new business too, for few of his own friends or their people liked saying no to a man with an empty sleeve, so he soon had one of the best books in the district, and he paid back the money his mother had let him have to buy the book in the first place, and he gave her a pound extra for the lend of it; and before very long Annie, his wife, was turning her nose up at Jane and Sam’s wife, and Saran up and told her about it one day, it was the day before the old telegram came: Saran’s boy, Mervyn, who had looked so smart in his breeches, putties and spurs when on leave, ‘Killed in action’.

  Benny, calling in to report to his mother how what he called his ‘body-snatching business’ was getting on, found her sitting alone in the living room with the old telegram in her hand. Glyn and her own boys being in work, she had asked the boy who had brought the old thing to read it to her, and after the boy had read it she said: ‘All right, my boy, here’s a threepenny bit,’ and then she went into the house to sit down. And sitting down she was when Benny walked in. What could he say? What could anyone say?

  ‘Our Mervyn,’ she said, handing Benny the telegram to read.

  He placed the telegram on the mantelpiece after he had read it.

  ‘I thought he was the safest of the lot,’ she said with a sigh. ‘Try to be here toni
ght when your father gets home from the pit, Benny, will you?’

  ‘I’ll be here – I’ll hurry up and finish my round – I’ll send Annie up…’

  ‘No, don’t bother. I’d rather be alone for a bit; but if you happen to be passing where your uncle Harry lodges… do you go anywhere near there today?’

  ‘Well, I’ve got to call at two houses in Cambrian Street, which is not so far away from where he lodges.’

  ‘Then you can call in and tell the woman of the house to tell my brother about Mervyn when he gets in from his work. Go now, Benny.’

  ‘Are you sure…?’

  ‘Go, I tell you, Benny.’ Off he went.

  When he got back to his mother’s house in the evening he found that his uncle Harry was there before him; seated in the armchair near the fire, he was, from where he watched Saran moving about preparing a meal for Glyn and the boys.

  ‘And Keir Hardie is dead, Saran,’ said Harry.

  ‘Poor man.’

  ‘That means a by-election,’ said Benny.

  ‘A fine man,’ said Harry.

  ‘Here’s the boys, but their father isn’t with them,’ said Saran, as she heard footsteps.

  ‘How do you know he’s not?’ asked Benny.

  ‘I know. Where’s your father?’ she asked the first of the three boys to enter the house.

  ‘He turned into the Morlais Castle.’

  ‘Go and fetch him home, Benny, but leave me to tell him about Mervyn…’

  ‘What about Mervyn?’ cried Jim.

  ‘Yes, what about him?’ cried the other two boys.

  ‘Go and fetch your father, Benny. He’s killed, Mervyn is, my boys.’

  Benny ran off down to the Morlais Castle to fetch his dad, who was halfway down his third pint of war beer when his eldest son went in to him and told him that he was wanted at once at home.

  ‘What’s up, Benny?’

  ‘Mam wants you at once about something.’

  It was a miserable business altogether, but there were a lot of people who were having to go through it about that time, and so had little time in which to sympathise with others. And the food regulations made people suspicious one of the other, and the jollity of the first year of the war changed into a sour stoicism. Instead of the boisterous and smartly dressed crowds of soldiers who had made the streets of the town ring with laughter and song there were only quiet groups of soldiers who looked as though they realised what they were in for when they went ‘over there’, and there were a few couples in muddy uniforms home on leave from the front who from twisted mouths sneeringly gave utterance to jokes about the first five years being the worst, and so on. And the number of wounded on the streets increased as the days went by, and conscientious objectors increased also. Saran saw two being taken from the police station to the railway station under escort to entrain for Wormwood Scrubs. Then there was all the standing about in queues to get a bit of food. Saran and Jane were standing in the queue outside the Home and Colonial shop on the very day when the two conscientious objectors were marched by under escort. The people standing about jeered at them, and there were some boys running after them who kept on shouting: ‘They’ve got no guts, they’ve got no guts,’ and one of the boys shouted a dirty name as well. Saran felt rather embarrassed as the objectors under escort marched past where she stood with Jane in the queue, for she was as good as related to one of the objectors. Not quite, but as good as, for one of the objectors was a teacher, and he was Annie’s brother, and as Annie was married to her Benny, Saran felt that she was as good as related to Annie’s too conscientious brother. But nobody else seemed to notice her connection with him.

  ‘Well,’ said a man who was standing in the queue because his wife was bad in bed and couldn’t stand there in the rain for the bit of food, ‘they’ll get their bit of food reg’lar where they’re going to, anyway – and they won’t have to stand about hours to get it, same as we have to, either.’

  ‘Where do you reckon they’re being taken to?’ a woman asked.

  ‘Wormwood Scrubs is where most of ’em goes, I’m told.’

  ‘But surely they can’t all get into Wormwood Scrubs.’

  ‘What the hell odds where they go to?’ snapped the man, who was getting to feel fed up with long standing on the pavement in the midst of a lot of cackling women.

  ‘All right, keep your hair on,’ the woman told him; and as the man went on grumbling she up and told him that he should thank his lucky stars that he wasn’t a German, for in Germany the people – and serve ’em right, too – had to wait longer for much less than he was going to have.

  ‘Then God help the Germans,’ muttered the man.

  ‘May God blast ’em, I say,’ said the woman.

  Saran, with her food-cards in her hand, listened and watched her chance to get ahead of her turn, as she had done more than once before. But the other women were marking her too closely now, so she had to wait her turn, and it was night before she got what bit she did get, and by the time she got home and made the most of what she had got for supper for Glyn and the boys it was too late to go to the pictures with Jane.

  The family was a proud one that day, the day when, after he had read the letter to Saran and the boys in the home, Glyn had sent the boys flying off to fetch Benny and his Annie and their children, Jane and her children, and Sam’s wife and her children.

  ‘And, whatever you do, don’t forget to let your uncle Harry know that I want him up, Jim,’ Saran shouted after the boy as he ran out.

  ‘Now, are we all here?’ asked Glyn as he fixed his glasses on. Yes, they were all there, Harry as well. ‘Then listen.’ Then he slowly read aloud the letter from Meurig, by this time a company sergeant major. Oh, great news it was. He had been awarded the DCM, for capturing a German bombing and sniping post, and in doing so had killed a number of Germans, and, what was more, he had rescued under heavy fire a wounded Scottish officer. All he said in his letter was that he had been awarded the DCM, what he had done to get it the family learnt later when the certificate signed by a general arrived long after. ‘But that’s not all,’ cried Glyn. ‘He’s on his way home for a course of something at the Guards’ Barracks, Chelsea, and he’ll be with us for a couple of days before the course starts, and we’ll have him with us for another ten days after the course is finished….’

  ‘And where’s he going after?’ asked young Charlie.

  ‘Where do you think? Back to France, of course. I’ll see that chap tonight.’

  ‘What chap are you talking about?’ Saran asked Glyn.

  ‘The chap that put all that in the paper about us before. He’s busy now with this damned old by-election, but when I show him this letter…’

  ‘You’re not taking Meurig’s letter round the pubs to lose it.’

  ‘Woman, before he puts about Meurig in the paper this chap’ll want to see for himself…’

  ‘Then let him come up here and see it,’ said Saran, taking the letter from him.

  ‘Well, of all the women… here, that letter’s addressed to me.’

  ‘Yes, but it’s meant for me. The boys only addresses ’em to you because they know I can’t read.’

  ‘Then what the hell good is the letter to you? You can’t eat it.’

  ‘How do you know I can’t?’

  ‘Well, you should be thankful to know that he’s still alive and well, Saran bach,’ was all Harry said, but nobody took much notice of him sitting back there in the corner with them old whiskers of his almost hiding his features. What Saran wanted to bother sending down for him was more than Glyn could understand.

  Meurig came in on the seven o’clock train in the evening of the day that both the candidates appeared in the open air on the rising ground near the Public Offices, the borough’s civic centre. Glyn, Benny and his three underage brothers met him at the station, but all the women of the family waited with Uncle Harry, old Marged and the children at home for him.

  ‘But where’s the medal, where’s
the DCM?’ young Charlie wanted to know.

  Meurig smiled down on him and quietly said: ‘Haven’t had it yet.’

  ‘Have you killed any Germans?’ young Tom wanted to know.

  ‘What’s up here?’ Meurig asked as he and his admiring escort drew near the crowd assembled on the rising ground near the Public Offices.

  ‘Oh, an election meeting,’ supplied Benny.

  ‘That Keir Hardie died whilst you were in France,’ his father said, ‘and now they’ve got to ’lect a man in his place – and there’ll be hell to pay before it’s over.’

  ‘How’s mam?’ Meurig asked.

  ‘Up to the mark,’ said his father. ‘How about a drink before we go on up to the house, Meurig?’ pausing outside the door of the Anchor.

  ‘No thanks,’ shortly returned Meurig, continuing on his way.

  ‘As you like,’ said his father, hurrying to catch up with him again.

  A few minutes later they were in the home, where Meurig did not, as was expected by all present, play the part of the hero he was. After he had had a bit to eat he asked his mother to get him a suit of civvies to knock about in.

  ‘But I’m taking you out to meet a chap as’ll put a piece in the paper about you,’ said his father.

  ‘You are not. You’ve still got that old suit of mine, mam?’

  ‘Of course I have, my boy. Did you think I’d pawned it?’

  Then he laughed for the first time since his arrival. ‘I wouldn’t be surprised,’ he said. ‘Is it too late for you and I – just you and I, that’s all – to go to the pictures? Some place where they’re showing…’

  ‘Pictures,’ sneered his father. ‘Boy, what…?’

  ‘Bit late for the said Saran. ‘But we could manage to catch the second house at the threeatre, for it’s v’riety there this week. But I’d like for us all to go, if you don’t mind, Meurig.’

  ‘You’re right, mam. Come on, then, fall in, and be ready to march off from here right into the grand circle of the theatre by the time I get into civvies.’