Black Parade

by Jack Jones

  ‘Lewis bach…’

  ‘Here, what are you sitting in the dark for, Harry?’ cried Saran as she bustled in from the passage. ‘I put plenty of coppers in the meter before I went out, so let’s have some light. There… oh, you’re here, Lewis. I thought you’d have been gone out by now. How are you feeling now, anyway?’

  ‘Eighteen carat.’

  ‘Then what about taking a bit to eat? I won’t be a minute…’

  ‘I’ll just have a Bombay oyster.’

  ‘One or two eggs?’

  ‘Two.’

  ‘Right. Nothing but talk about this general strike that’s supposed to be coming off up at the Sisterhood tonight. What’s a general strike?’

  Lewis explained briefly.

  ‘Oh, so that’s it. Well, we don’t want general or any other strikes to knock us flat in this district, for we’ve been knocked flat enough already,’ she said as she broke two eggs into a tumbler.

  ‘This district will be knocked flatter yet,’ Lewis prophesied.

  ‘Can’t be knocked much flatter than it is, for there’s only a few pits going out of twenty pits and scores of levels and drifts that was going before the war. And only one of the steelworks going, and that’s not going half its time. And you say that this general strike is going to stop that, too. Here you are, Lewis,’ she said as she handed him the tumbler into which she had broken the two eggs. ‘Here’s the pepper and vinegar. During the strikes we had when all you children were small we used to depend mostly on the places where the steelworks was, for the steelworks kept on working, and I used to go to them places – didn’t I, Harry? To beg food to keep going…. Are you going out, Lewis?’

  ‘Yes, may as well,’ said Lewis wearily. ‘I ought to shave, but… no. I think I’ll wear that pinstripe suit.’

  ‘Suppose you finish that Bombay oyster you asked for,’ said Saran. ‘And suppose you come home in decent time for a change tonight. You know how your father…’

  ‘Oh, give it a rest, mam.’

  ‘It’s you wants rest, and at the proper time. And you want to put less of what you do put down that neck and into that belly of yours.’

  ‘Will you bloody well shut up and go and get me that suit I’ve asked for? You make me… I’m sorry, mam. I’m feeling all…’

  ‘I know, my boy. Sit down. But you’ve got to wash. Which shoes are you wearing?’

  ‘Black, of course, with the pinstripe.’

  ‘Of course. And your bowler hat?’

  ‘Of course.’

  The general strike started and was soon over, but the miners’ strike went on and on, and Tom got fed up and went to where a pal of his was working in a motorworks near Oxford, and he was lucky enough to get a job there, and there he is to this day, married now and the father of four children; and it costs ’em quite a bit to come back home every Christmas like they do to have the Christmas with Saran, who manages to push them in somehow for the few days they are with her. Tom’s wife is the only Englishwoman in the family up to now, but Saran says she’s none the worse for being English, judging by what little she has seen of her. She knows how to look after her children, anyway.

  And it was whilst the general strike was on that Saran saw and heard A. J. Cook, whose name was in everyone’s mouth, and whose photo was in all the papers. She had heard in her time of many miners’ leaders, but none of them had ever caused such a stir as this man was causing. So when she heard that he was coming to speak from the bandstand which stands in the hollow in the centre of the new Park – not the Cyfarthfa Park nor the Penydarren Park, but the one on the height above the town, the one where they fixed the first war memorial – she said to Jane and Sam’s wife: ‘I wonder whether there’ll be any women there?’

  Jane laughed at her and said: ‘Of course there will. One would think to hear you talk that we hadn’t had the vote. Didn’t you hear what the town crier said. Women specially invited was what he said.’

  ‘Then we’ll go,’ said Saran.

  And the weather was beautiful on the day when the great A. J. Cook came down from the north of England where he had been rallying the miners of an area in which there was danger of a breakaway, and being as it was such a lovely day Saran suggested to Harry that he too should go across as far as the new Park to hear the great A. J. Cook, but it happened to be Harry’s day for visiting the workhouse, and he said that nothing on earth would make him miss his weekly visit to the workhouse, where there were those who waited hopefully and not in vain for his coming. So Saran said: ‘All right, Harry,’ and off she went across to the new Park with Jane, who was carrying the third baby she had had by Ossie during his sightlessness; and as they walked across the top to the new Park Saran noted that her Jane was getting fatter than ever, and she also noted that Sam’s wife, who was on her left with a baby in her arms, too, was getting skinnier than ever.

  ‘A lovely day if ever there was one,’ said Saran. ‘I expect all the district will turn out to hear this Cook today…’

  ‘It said in the paper that he addressed a crowd of fifty thousand somewhere in England,’ Sam’s wife said.

  ‘I seen a picture of him speaking somewhere with his coat off, and there was a terrible lot of people there, too,’ said Jane.

  ‘And so there will be here today,’ said Saran, pointing to where people were pouring through the gateway into the new Park. ‘Look, there’s many going in there as are not miners or anything to do with miners. I expect it’s because there’s been so much talk about the man. That’s why I wanted your uncle Harry to come, but he wouldn’t miss his day at the workhouse for anything.’

  ‘No more than he misses us to beg something to take to the workhouse for them old…’

  ‘God help ’em,’ said Saran. ‘Them as are all right are let out a day or two a week to beg a bit of ’bacco and whatever else they can get, but there’s them as can’t be trusted out because they can’t walk, or because they’re a bit soft in the head or – or have got anything the matter that stops ’em coming out into the town. And it’s them that Harry begs for. He gets a halfcrown every week from Lewis alone, and then he gets money and things from others; and so he goes loaded up every Thursday to see his friends, as he calls them. Takes ’bacco for one, snuff for another, a stick of Spanish for another; poor old Charlie Rowlands would die if he didn’t have his stick of Spanish…’

  ‘And after he’s handed the things out I expect Uncle Harry makes ’em have some preaching and prayers.’

  ‘And what if he do? I could listen to your uncle Harry praying any day, that’s if I had time. Prays lovely, he do…. Oh, look at that crowd. We’d better go up there where those trees are.’

  ‘But shall we be able to hear there?’ asked Sam’s wife.

  ‘Yes, if the speakers’ve got any sort of voices. Oh, look, there’s our Lewis. Well, this is the first meeting I’ve known him attend since he’s home from the war.’

  ‘Humph, he’s got another new suit,’ said Sam’s wife enviously.

  ‘Yes, a bookie like him got to dress tidy, my gel,’ Saran told her. ‘When he’s dressed well he gets the bets of those that puts it on thick and heavy, for they think that a man with a good suit on is good for whatever they’re likely to win. But I’ll ask Lewis to let Sam have that old grey suit of his, though it’s not what you can call old, either. Here we are. Well, we’ll be able to see, but whether we’ll be able to hear or not is more’n I can say. Well, well, I’ve never in all my life seen so many people at one time in one place. There must be millions here.’

  ‘Don’t talk so soft, mam,’ said Jane. ‘Would you like to hold the baby for me a minute?’

  ‘Why, are you going somewhere?’ asked Saran, meaning by ‘somewhere’ one of the two ladies’ lavatories around which the park superintendent had made to grow a beautiful double screen of flowering trees.

  ‘No, I’m not going anywhere,’ replied Jane. ‘I only thought that you might like to nurse him a bit.’

  ‘No, I don’t want to
nurse him,’ said Saran. ‘I’ve nursed enough of you…. Who is that man they’re making way for? Is that Cook?’

  ‘No, that’s Willie Paul, the communist – fine speaker he is,’ said a man standing near to where Saran, Jane and Sam’s wife had seated themselves under the spreading tree. ‘You’ll soon know when Cook’s coming,’ the man went on. ‘You’ll hear such a cheer… here he comes. Yes, that’s him. Good old Cook,’ the man shouted as a roar of welcome went up from the crowd to frighten the birds out of all the trees in the Park.

  ‘Yes, I can tell him from the photo of him I seen,’ said Saran. ‘Seems to be a tidy little man,’ she added as those already gathered on the bandstand rushed to shake hands with the man who was front-page stuff all the time.

  Before he was introduced the chairman called upon the noted Willie Paul to say a few words, but not before he had assured the crowd that he, the chairman, was not a communist. Then he went on to say that he agreed with the united front of all sections of the Labour Movement for achieving victory for the miners. Then he stepped back and the noted communist let go at the General Council of the TUC for all he was worth, and said that but for Cook the miners of the country would have been left at the mercy of the bosses, and that the miners could go on fighting knowing that their Russian comrades were behind them to a man. ‘Great speaker, isn’t he?’ admiringly murmured the man standing behind Saran to no one in particular.

  Then after the noted communist had finished and stepped backwards, people crowded together on the bandstand around Cook. The chairman, to show the working of the united front, called first on an ILP’er to speak, and after him on the chairman of the Trades and Labour Council, an official Labour man was he, and lastly on the great Cook himself. And what a welcome he had as he took off his coat to speak. The press-men stood with pencils at the ready, and the two policemen who had learnt shorthand and had been told off to ‘take him down’ that day also stood with pencils at the ready. And the police who stood off some little distance cocked their ears. And the runner stood ready near the PA man to rush away to the post office with the telegram which might or might not be flashed over the wires and under the seas to all parts of the world. ‘Order. Keep quiet.’

  And what a welcome Harry had from those hopefully waiting him when he stumped out into the backyard of the workhouse, the yard where all the wood was sawn and afterwards chopped and tied into bundles by the fittest of the inmates.

  ‘Here’s Hally, here’s Hally, here’s Hally,’ old Charlie Rowlands, who wasn’t half there, kept shouting as he danced around Harry. ‘My Spanish, my Spanish,’ he kept on demanding, driveling spittle all down the front of his clothes. He had been let out to do his own begging for ’bacco and black Spanish until the day when he forgot himself and started to piss on the pavement right in front of St David’s School just as the girls of standards four and five were coming out of school. So the schoolmistress complained and Charlie was not allowed out after that. And there were many others like him who had offended in some way the people of the district, and were stopped from coming out into the town. Some of them were not even allowed to pull the firewood trolly through our town. Then there were others who shook too bad, smelt too bad, looked too bad to be allowed out in the town; and it was little they were able to get in the way of tobacco, snuff, cakes, sweets and so on until Harry started visiting the workhouse some time before old Davies, MA, died there. From that time on Harry took it upon himself to collect, for those who could not collect for themselves, the little luxuries which the workhouse authorities left it to others to provide or not to provide.

  They all danced around Harry until he sat down in their midst with his peg leg pointing north and the bundle of good things on his lap.

  ‘Quiet, my brothers,’ he said, and there was quiet, for, daft though some of them were, they knew that the share-out would not begin until they were all silent and ready to take part in the little ceremony for which the handing out of each little gift was the occasion. Nothing much, though. Each recipient kneeled in front of Harry on one knee only, and as he took his gift said: ‘Thank God for sending Harry with my bit of ’bacco’ – or whatever it was that they received. And after they had all received their gifts they would all, in the summer when fine, seat themselves in a circle on the floor around Harry, smoking, snuffing or eating sweets, and listen to a report from him of what he had observed out in the world during the week that had elapsed since his previous visit. In the winter he submitted his report to them in the small mess room, the cleaning of which Harry superintended at the close of the gathering. And he also, as Jane suspected, prayed and said a few words which might be described as a short sermon.

  ‘Now, brothers,’ he was telling them, ‘there’s another day after today, remember, and I can’t get here until next Thursday.’ Charlie Rowlands pocketed what remained of his stick of Spanish and went on licking the black, sticky and sweet spittle which he had allowed to drivel into the bristles on his chin. The others pocketed pipes and packets of snuff and settled themselves to listen to their newsman. ‘The world outside is upside down, my brothers,’ he went on to tell them. ‘Masters and men and the Government are at sixes and sevens more than ever they’ve been, and little heed is being paid to the will of God the Father, or to the message of Christ our Saviour. Men out there in the world are being made even more useless than we who are finishing our days here together. The men back from the big war are growing more bitter, and their children are growing up with none of the things everybody thought their fathers fought for, to look forward to. Men are no longer looking to God for guidance, but to this man and that man. Today, up there in the new Park…’

  ‘… men are now solid again in the areas that looked liked letting us down. After a solidarity campaign in which I am pleased to say that I have been supported by all the Labour MPs with the exception of a reactionary handful – and we shall deal with them when the time comes – I am now in a position to report that our men everywhere are as solid as ever they were. And I am also pleased to be able to inform you that we are winning the sympathy of the British public. Men of standing; dignitaries of the Church; ay, and some of the most fair-minded of the owners, are now prepared to admit…’

  ‘… a man who was selling needles and cotton. I seen him, brothers, going from door to door in the rain as I was sheltering with my sister in the doorway of the Royal Stores. Wet through he must have been, and still the people who answered the knock slammed the doors in his face. As one door opened to him the music of the wireless or a gramophone came out loud, and the woman who opened the door shouted loud enough for me to hear her: “No,” and slammed the door. It’s a terrible thing, brothers, to have to go from door to door, trying to sell needles and cotton when it’s raining hard. And do you know what I thought, brothers? What if Jesus came selling needles and cotton to our doors, and none of us knew Him, and we slammed the door in His face? Wouldn’t we be sorry when we got to know Who it was we had turned away without as much as a kind word? Then, next day – but it wasn’t raining that day – I seen men singing as they walked along in the gutter. Singing lovely they was, but people passed by without as much as looking at ’em. And that’s how it is. The world is gone hard, brothers. No man should have to go from door to door selling needles and cotton in the rain, or sing in the gutter, either. But when they’re forced to do it, don’t you think, brothers, that people should be kinder to ’em? Of course they should, for we never know…’

  ‘… stand by this resolution in which you’ve pledged yourselves to remain firm and loyal. Whilst doing all in our power to effect a settlement, we shall…’

  ‘Come on, let’s go,’ said Saran.

  ‘Wait until Cook finishes,’ said Jane.

  ‘I’ve heard all I want to hear,’ said Saran, moving off.

  ‘So have I,’ said Sam’s wife, following her.

  So Jane followed her mother through the crowd and out of the Park to where she stopped for a minute to look at the War Memo
rial outside the gates.

  ‘Our Meurig’s name – and our Mervyn’s name – is on there,’ she said before moving on. ‘They’re…’

  ‘What?’ said Jane. ‘Oh, nothing,’ said Saran.

  CHAPTER 16

  ALL THE WORLD’S A STAGE

  ‘Who do you think’s coming to the theatre shortly, mam?’ said Benny one day when he stopped his car outside his mother’s house and ran in to see her for a minute.

  ‘Hullo, stranger,’ she said, for his visits were few and far between since he had gone to live up The Walk and had bought a secondhand car in which to drive about after his agents, and also to take his stuck-up Annie – who was more stuck-up than ever since she had moved to The Walk, and since her two eldest boys had won entrance exams into the University College at Cardiff – and her youngest children for a run on Sundays. Fair play to him, Benny had more than once offered to take his mother for a run, but she said: ‘No, thank you.’

  ‘Stranger?’ he repeated. ‘Why, I called in to see you last week, didn’t I, Uncle Harry?’

  ‘Yes, and I forgot to tell your mother, my boy.’

  ‘Never mind,’ said Saran. ‘You’re getting grey, Benny, but that’s better than going bald like our Lewis. How is Annie and the children?’

  ‘Fine; when are you coming up to see us in our new house?’

  ‘Some day… who did you say was coming to the threeatre?’

  ‘Louis Calvert.’

  ‘Well, well, he must be an old man. He was a fine actor; when did you say he was coming?’