Black Parade

by Jack Jones

  ‘He’s only one, woman.’

  ‘Yes, and so am I only one. See what those children out in the back kitchen want, Jane. I miss old Marged to look after the children. Still, she’s where she can’t be worried with ’lections and strikes and pits closing…’

  ‘Here, if you’re going to talk about where old Marged…’

  ‘No, it’s all right, Lewis, my boy. It was just those children out in the back kitchen shouting for tendance that made me think of the poor old soul, for she was ever so good with the children. Why don’t you try and eat a bit of something, Lewis?’

  ‘Because I don’t feel like anything.’

  ‘Here, try this bit of white meat off the breast.’

  ‘I tell you I don’t want anything.’

  ‘Leave the chap alone, mam,’ cried Sam. ‘I’ll have the bit off the breast being as he don’t want it.’

  ‘Indeed you won’t after gutsing a leg that was nearly as big as your own. Will you have this bit of breast, Harry?’

  ‘If nobody else wants it…’

  It’s all the same if they do. Go on, eat it. Where are you going, Lewis?’

  ‘Up to have a lie down on the bed.’

  ‘But I haven’t made the beds today yet. Wait until…’

  ‘You stay and look after these people; the bed’s good enough for me. Have a good time, you people. Here, share this among the kids.’

  ‘Well,’ said Saran to the remainder of the family after Lewis had gone upstairs, ‘after all their operations, that boy’s inside is far from right. Terrible pains he gets, and he don’t eat enough to keep a robin alive. Only last night – and not only last night, either, I found him leaning out of the window groaning and gasping for breath. You could hear him a mile away…’

  ‘I never heard him,’ said Glyn.

  ‘You wouldn’t after all the Christmas beer you’d necked; but he was bad last night again all the same. And he won’t let anyone do anything for him – not even me. No, he just looks at me as though I’d – well, as if it was my fault. You haven’t finished, Benny?’

  ‘Yes, thanks, mam.’

  ‘And so have I, thank you,’ said Annie, rising. ‘And you’ll excuse us now, for we’ve got some friends coming to our place to spend the evening.’ Jane sniffed loudly. ‘I expect the boys are ready, too,’ she said as she walked to the door of the back kitchen, into which Saran had crowded all her grandchildren. ‘Come along, Ronald, dear. And you, Eric. Oh, dear me, look at that mess on your trousers.’

  ‘Yes, ma, but Cousin David threw a potato…’

  ‘Where the hell did you dig them names for ’em, Benny?’ his father wanted to know. ‘I don’t remember any Erics or Ronalds in our family.’

  ‘But there were in mine,’ Annie told him as she wiped her son’s trousers more or less clean of the greasy marks left by the potatoes his cousin, Jane’s boy, had bombarded him with. ‘Sorry to have to rush away,’ she said to Saran, ‘but our new maid is not as careful with the children as our old maid was…’

  ‘Then why didn’t you bring them up with you?’ said Saran.

  ‘Oh, I wouldn’t think of bringing the three little ones out in this weather. Are you ready, Ben?’

  ‘That woman makes me sick,’ exploded Jane as soon as they were over the door. ‘Ever since our Benny was made super’…’

  ‘Now, Jane, don’t start,’ said her mother.

  ‘Mam, that woman’s as false as Benny’s false arm. And did you hear the way she talked about her maids? Maids; and it isn’t so long ago…’

  ‘Don’t start, I tell you,’ said Saran. ‘Annie’s all right in her way…’

  ‘Humph, in her way.’

  ‘Yes; and she’ll see that Benny and the boys get every chance to get on. Her two eldest have both won scholarships to go to the higher-grade school…’

  ‘And Benny’s won himself a bad name chasing the agents under him off their legs so that she can play the la-di-da.’

  Glyn belched before he said angrily: ‘How is it, gel, that every time Benny and his wife come up here you’re talking about ’em as soon as their backs are turned? I think you must be jealous of ’em; but if you only had half as much brain as our Benny…’

  ‘And if you had quarter as much,’ interjected Saran, ‘you’d be…’

  ‘Come on, Tom, let’s go out for a stroll?’ said Jim.

  ‘Where are you two going in this rain?’ Saran wanted to know.

  ‘Ask no questions and you’ll be told no lies,’ replied Jim.

  ‘I can tell you where they’re going to, mam,’ said Charlie.

  ‘Hullo, mouthy,’ said Tom.

  ‘Going to play solo again in the same place as they were at last night,’ said Charlie.

  ‘And now you know,’ said Jim as he went out with Tom.

  ‘Not a bad Christmas,’ said Saran. ‘We’ve all had a bellyful, and there’s still a bit of enjoyment to come.’ She sighed. ‘But I’m worried about our Lewis, about his inside. And he won’t have the doctor up to see him. Had enough of doctors, he says when I want to fetch the doctor to have a look at him.’

  ‘He drinks too much, that’s what it is,’ said Jane.

  ‘Bookies must drink some,’ said Saran.

  ‘And some bookies drinks a lot,’ said Jane, ‘and our Lewis is one of them as drinks a lot. Spends more on drink each week than Ossie gets pension, so no wonder his inside is troubling him. And he does more than drink, too. He’s out till the early hours of the morning with that…’

  ‘Hush, your uncle Harry’ll hear you. Jane.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’m going to make your uncle Harry come to live here with us.’

  ‘But he won’t, for him and dad…’

  ‘Your dad had better not open his mouth. I can’t bear to think of your uncle Harry trying to live in lodgings on what little the parish allows him. Whilst he had that little job…’

  ‘How did he come to lose that job?’ asked Sam’s wife.

  ‘He didn’t lose it, it was took off him and given to a young feller back from the war with only one leg…’

  ‘Oh,’ cried Jane as she dropped and smashed one of her mother’s best dinner plates.

  ‘Oh, you careless article, you. It would have paid me to wash the things up myself.’

  ‘Then why didn’t you?’ snapped Jane.

  ‘Because I didn’t, butterfingers. There, there, I didn’t mean it, fathead. When is Ossie going to bring me that shopping basket he promised to make me?’

  ‘He finished it on Saturday, but he forgot to bring it home from the institution. I’ll remind him about it. When are you having Uncle Harry here?’

  ‘He is here, isn’t he?’ replied Saran in a whisper. ‘And when he rises from that chair he’s sitting in and thinks about going, then I’m going to tell him that he is home. Charlie shall go down for his things as soon as he gets back from the pitchers. Now, you two see if you can put those plates and dishes away without breaking any, for I’m going to make a nice cup of tea.’ Into the living room she went from the back kitchen. ‘Hullo, Harry. Did you think we’d all gone out?’

  ‘No, my gel; but I was thinking about going.’

  ‘Going where?’

  ‘Back down home, of course.’

  ‘You are home, Harry. Now, listen a minute. There’s a spare bed here – well, there will be, for I can put Charlie in with Lewis, he won’t mind Charlie. So the four boys’ll be in that double-bedded room, then the little back room will be free for you.’

  ‘But I’ve told you before, Saran…’

  ‘Yes, and I’ve told you before, Harry, that you needn’t think that Glyn’ll be against you coming to live with us; and as for the boys, the boys’ll be glad to have you here,’ she lied. ‘And if ever they object to you living here, then they can go and look for a place elsewhere. You needn’t bother with any of them though, Harry. I want you to come to me. You’ll be a comfort to me now that that…’

  ‘Will I indeed, S
aran?’

  ‘Of course you will, Uncle Harry,’ said Jane. ‘I thought you were going to make us all a cup of tea, mam.’

  ‘So I will. You’ll have a cup, Harry?’

  ‘Please, Saran.’

  ‘And you’re staying here with me?’

  ‘I’ll let you know before the night’s out, after I’ve had a talk to you alone.’

  ‘Then that’ll be as soon as we’ve had this cup of tea,’ Jane assured him. ‘S’long, mam.’

  ‘S’long – it was a lovely dinner,’ said Sam’s wife.

  ‘Now, Saran,’ Harry began as soon as they were alone.

  ‘Now what?’

  ‘What you said about me stopping here always with you.’

  ‘There’s no need to bother any more about that.’

  ‘But there is, Saran; better now than after I’ve caused an old bother by coming here.’

  ‘There’ll be no bother, I tell you.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Of course I am; that is if you won’t bother the boys about – well, you know, Harry. They’re not bad boys, but they don’t like anyone to bother ’em about their souls, or about their way of carryin’ on. So if you’ll only leave them to me, Harry…. As for Glyn – but there, you know Glyn. Grouse, grouse, yet as harmless as a child. He’ll be all right…’

  ‘But haven’t you got all you can do to keep your own without having me to keep again? All I get from the parish is…’

  ‘Who wants to know what you get from the parish? To hell with the parish, say I. And keep my own, did you say? Who is more my own than you are? Ain’t you the only one I’ve got left of our side of the family? And don’t you worry about how I’m going to keep you. I’ll tell you, Harry – though I wouldn’t tell anyone else, and you mustn’t tell anybody, either. I’ve got a tidy bit put by, for I’ve never touched a penny of my Meurig’s ’lotment, nor what I used to put to it. Then Lewis is very good, and me an’ him… but never mind that. All you need know is that I’ll be able to manage without troubling the parish or anyone else for as long as we’ll… and you’ve got to come to us, Harry, for you’re getting on, you know.’

  ‘Well, if you think…’

  ‘I know everything will be all right.’

  And that’s how it was.

  When Glyn, all merry and bright he was, landed home from the Full Moon with his son, Sam, and his blind and merry son-in-law, Ossie, the first thing Saran told him was: ‘Our Harry’s going to stay here with us from now on.’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘You heard.’

  ‘Well, you needn’t bite a bloody man’s head off.’

  ‘Where is Uncle Harry, then?’ Sam wanted to know.

  ‘Upstairs in his room having a lie down. And you look as if you could do with a lie down, too, Sam.’

  ‘I’m all right.’

  ‘Of course he’s all right,’ said Glyn. ‘Sit down, Sam.’

  ‘Yes, but not here,’ said Saran. ‘Off home you go, and you, Ossie. Home to your wives, the pair of you.’

  ‘Driven from home, are we?’ laughed Ossie, his sightless eyes alone without laughter.

  ‘I’ll meet the pair of you in the Full Moon about opening-time,’ Glyn called after them.

  ‘Yes, and mind that you’re there sharp at opening-time to meet your father, Sam.’

  ‘Don’t try to be funny, woman,’ growled Glyn. ‘If me and the boys do any harm by taking a drink or two together once a year…’

  ‘Once a year? Now you’re trying to be funny.’

  It was to please Harry that Saran first went to the Sisterhood, but she afterwards kept on going twice each week because she liked going, and because she felt she could be of service to the underpaid and overworked young minister as a sort of compulsory arbitrator in the continual disputes which made the Sisterhood meetings so real and entertaining to her, she being one who believed, rightly or wrongly, that a row to clear the air every once in a while was most necessary. She took Jane and Sam’s wife along to the Sisterhood with her to see how she was ‘managing ’em’ one night, and that one night was enough for Sam’s wife and Jane, who were of the generation following that to which nearly all the Sisters of the Sisterhood belonged. So from that night onwards Saran went on ‘managing’ the Sisterhood without whatever support the presence of members of her own family might lend her.

  So her week was now full right up. Two evenings to the Sisterhood, two evenings with Jane and Sam’s wife and their children to the ‘pitchers’ – admission to which she invariably paid for all, as she also did on the one evening of the week they almost filled the front row of the gallery of the ‘threeatre’. Then she spared one evening of the week to sit with Harry, for he was getting on – ‘and I mightn’t have him for long’. Sundays, of course, there was always plenty to do. Getting dinner ready, and seeing to this, that and the other; and it was on Sundays that her grandchildren mostly were running in to pay their respects, in return for which they hoped she would hand out some coppers; failing her, there was always the dry-spoken Uncle Lewis with the twisted smile, who was a street-bookie to whom a sixpence was nothing at the end of a good week. So when ‘Granny’ failed them they could always hopefully turn to Uncle Lewis, though their other three uncles, Jim, Tom and Charlie, hardly ever forked out. But where were they to get it, for they weren’t street-bookies. No, Jim was on the dole, Tom was working half-time and talking about going away up to some place near Oxford where a pal of his had got a job at a motorworks. Charlie was luckier than Tom, for there were some weeks when the pit worked as many as five shifts.

  But even though there was little or no prospect of copper or silver, the grandchildren – even Benny’s stuck-up boys, though Annie was a lot more to blame for their being stuck up than Benny was – thought it well worth while going up to Granny’s, if only to see old Uncle Harry, whose face was covered with whiskers, but whose eyes were bright and twinkling, sitting in the low armchair near the fire. All the grandchildren liked him, for he used to tell them stories about the days when people thought it wonderful to ride from Merthyr to Dowlais on top of the bus, the days when never a word of English was spoken by anyone – ‘except the old Irish that came over to work in the works, of course’. And the children laughed to think that people in those days thought it grand to have a ride on top of a bus.

  ‘And didn’t you use to fight bare-fist, Uncle Harry?’ the eldest of the grandchildren, who had heard their fathers talk about Uncle Harry’s fighting days, would sometimes ask.

  Then Uncle Harry would look at them with sadness dimming the twinkling eyes that looked out on them from the matted whiskers, and Granny would cut in with: ‘Now, off you go to play, all of you. What do you want to know about fights for?’ But Jane and Ossie’s eldest boy, who was pretty smart with the gloves for a boy of thirteen, was always pestering old Uncle Harry to talk about his fights. And their uncle Lewis, the generous street-bookie, was every bit as bad in that respect. On his bad evenings, evenings when his inside that had been cut about so was giving him gyp, he’d sit opposite old Uncle Harry and start talking about boxing to him. And sometimes when he felt more evil still he would start talking about the angels of Mons and religion and God in a way, to say the least of it, that wasn’t to his old Uncle Harry’s liking. One night – Lewis was sitting on the low three-legged stool all hunched up with pain, and old Uncle Harry was seated in the low armchair which stood at that side of the fireplace where the oven which Saran said was not much good for cooking in was – it was after Saran had left for the Sisterhood, it was, and Glyn and Jim and Tom and Charlie had gone off somewhere, and there was only them two, Lewis and his uncle Harry, left in the house. Lewis lit another cigarette after he had finished poking the fire and said: ‘Great fight at the Drill Hall last night, Uncle Harry.’

  ‘Indeed.’

  ‘Yes; for the Welsh middleweight championship. Went all the way, it did, and every round full of thrills. I backed the winner for a tenner. Wouldn’t you like to see a
real good scrap once again, Uncle Harry?’

  ‘No, my boy.’

  ‘Say you don’t know. If you saw one… our Sam’s kid’s pretty useful, you know, Uncle Harry. You know that eldest boy of Sam’s?’

  ‘But he hasn’t left school.’

  ‘Soon will, though; and now’s the time he should be taken in hand. I think I’ll send him to Danny Jones’ stable as soon as I can get him out of school.’

  ‘You talk about the boy just as if he was a colt; and as if you was his father,’ said old Uncle Harry with more heat than usual.

  ‘Sam’ll be damned glad to let me start the boy in Danny’s stable, for it’s different to the time when you used to scrap with the raw ’uns, Uncle Harry; for if a boy’s class these days he can make big dough. Anyway, what would he get down the pit with Sam? – that’s if Sam did manage to get him a job there. Shice, that’s what he’d get in the pit. But after Danny’s worked on him for a couple of years, and we get him matched the way that’ll bring him on, he’ll be in the running for a championship, which’ll mean thousands – yes, thousands – when he gets there. And there’s no reason why he shouldn’t if only he’s handled the right way. Look at the dough little Jimmy Wilde made; and our Sam’s boy’s more useful than Jimmy was at his age and got a bigger wallop.’

  ‘Wallop – dough – championship,’ muttered old Uncle Harry. ‘And with them all he’s got nothing. Them things don’t count with God, my boy.’

  ‘Oh, I forgot, you believe in God and His angels, don’t you, Uncle Harry?’

  ‘Of course I do, my boy.’

  ‘Perhaps you believe that there was angels at Mons that time?’

  ‘Why shouldn’t I? We know for sure that the devils was there, so why not angels to help those the devils was making kill each other?’

  Lewis laughed. ‘Well, our Benny was at Mons, and the only angels he saw had bombs under their wings, which they dropped on the wounded on their way to hos…’

  ‘Please, Lewis.’

  ‘Some angels they were. And God – I never saw God out there either.’

  ‘Did you ever look for Him, my boy?’

  Lewis waited until the pain which was twisting him up had subsided, then he said: ‘I did like hell. Had all I could do to look out for them – devils did you say they were? – that poked their bayonets into my guts.’ He groaned, then cried aloud: ‘And if there is a God, and Him there to stop ’em, I hope He now gets the same bloody pains in His guts as I’m getting.’