by Jack Jones
‘Come on, let’s go to the pitchers,’ said Saran, rising.
‘I’d like to hear the candidate,’ said Sam’s wife.
‘Anyway, it’s too late to get the full programme,’ said Jane, who was a woman who believed in getting her money’s worth.
‘Who’s paying?’ Saran wanted to know. ‘Come on, we’ll be in time for the big pitcher and p’raps the comic as well.’ And off they went to the pictures.
The theatre held out bravely until the pictures started talking, then it had to go over, and Saran was sorry, for she liked going to the theatre more than she liked going to the pictures.
‘It’s all pitchers now,’ Saran said to Lewis when she got home one night after seeing The Singing Fool in the place where she had for a generation sat and listened to flesh-and-blood performers. ‘It was all right,’ she went on, ‘but it didn’t seem right somehow in the threeatre, where… what’s the matter, Lewis?’
‘Nothing much.’
‘I heard tonight that the Dowlais works is closing down.’
‘What the hell odds if it does?’
‘What odds? You’ll soon find out what odds in your business, for you’ll find it’ll make a big difference to you.’
‘Not it; the less they’ve got, the more they’ll gamble in the hope of getting a bit.’
‘P’raps you’re right. Sit down and finish your supper.’
‘I’ve had enough. How much money had I better take to this speal?’ he asked nobody in particular as he rose and pulled a fat wad of one-pound notes out of the fob pocket of his trousers.
‘Is it likely to be a big speal?’ asked his mother in a way that would have surprised Uncle Harry had he been there to hear her, and would have surprised her fellow members of the Sisterhood even more had they been there to hear their most dominant Sister. For she spoke as one who was an authority on such matters.
‘Yes, there’ll be some dough there,’ said Lewis, as he counted off some of the notes. ‘Well, I think twenty nicker’ll be enough. Here, put this lot away,’ he said as he handed five times as many notes as he had decided to take to gamble with to his mother.
‘You’d better take this lot with what’s upstairs to the bank tomorrow,’ she advised.
‘I will if I’m up in time.’
‘If you’re not, then I’ll go and pay it in; don’t like having so much money about the house. Here, put this muffler on.’
‘Thanks. If you happen to see that Ossie before I see him in the morning you’d better tell him to lay off the bev’ until he finishes what he’s well paid to do every day. If he can’t, then I can get any God’s amount as’ll be glad to. That’s the way it is,’ he grumbled as he first buttoned up his well-cut light overcoat and then set his hat on his head at what he considered was the right angle, ‘you give your relations a chance to earn some easy money, and before you know where you are they’re taking liberties. Our Charlie…’
‘Charlie was all right until you…’
‘Until I caught him at the touch. Yes, and our Jim touched me for quite a bit before he went to join our Tom up Oxford way.’
‘Every penny Jim took you had back from me, so…’
‘Yes, but you’re not Jim, are you?’
‘Neither are you any better than him or Charlie because you’ve managed to get hold of a few pounds off the street where men are…’
Lewis laughed now that he had his mother going. ‘Oh, so you’ve got your hair off, have you? Because I’ve got hold of a few pounds, you say. And what about you, partner? If Uncle Harry…’
‘You’d better go before I…’
‘I’m off, partner, for unless I’m mistaken I can hear the old man and his little Ossie singing their way up the long, long trail. Wish me luck, mam.’
‘No, I’ll wish you no luck after the way you’ve gone on about Jim and Charlie, two boys that are every bit as good as you any day.’
‘All right, they are. Now wish me luck.’
She smiled and wished him luck, then he hurried out so as to avoid meeting his father and his blind brother-in-law, both of whom were singing as they drew near to the house in which Saran was waiting to show Ossie the door, and to send him away home to Jane and his children. But he wouldn’t be driven away that night, for he was the bearer of startling news, he thought, and he wouldn’t go until he had unloaded it on Saran.
‘What do you think?’ he cried no sooner was he in through the door. ‘We’ve got the tin hat put on us now with a vengeance. Haven’t we, old man?’
‘Ay, but not so much of the “old man”,’ growled Glyn.
‘What’s put the tin hat on you now again?’ Saran asked. ‘Here, don’t trouble to make yourself comfortable,’ she cried as Ossie beat his father-in-law to the armchair.
‘Wait a minute till I tell you,’ said Ossie. ‘It isn’t us two, but everybody’s had the tin hat put on ’em this time. You know Meth Hughes, him as is boss of the rail-bank in Dowlais works?’
‘I ought to,’ said Saran.
‘Well, we met him in Rose and Crown tonight, and the first thing he said was… what do you think?’
‘He said that the Dowlais works was closing down.’
Glyn looked at her hard and said: ‘But how the hell did you know?’
‘It’s stale news,’ she told them.
‘Not so stale,’ said Ossie, ‘for Meth – and he’d know as soon as anybody – hadn’t heard a word about closing down until today. And it’s a clean sweep they’re making, for all the bosses and the chaps in the offices are to have notices as well as the men. Finished for good and all, Meth thinks, and if that’s the case, then it’s domino on this district. The rates’ll go up, and then our rents’ll go up – yes, it’s the tin hat right enough.’
‘We’ll live then,’ said Saran. ‘Do you want any supper, Glyn?’
‘Of course I do, woman.’
‘Then come and have it. And you get on home to yours, Ossie.’
‘Leave the chap alone, woman.’
‘Did you hear what I said, Ossie?’
‘I’m going…. But isn’t it a bugger, though?’
‘What, now?’
‘The Dowlais works closing down.’
‘Oh…’
‘For there’ll be damn all left then, see – well, only them couple of pits down the bottom end of the district.’
‘Ay, we’ll have to eat bloody grass before the finish, Ossie,’ sighed Glyn wetly.
‘And drink water, and that’ll be terrible for you two,’ said Saran.
‘You’d better push off, Ossie, for this woman is trying to be funny again.’
‘I’m going. Did Lewis leave any instructions for the morning?’ he asked Saran.
‘No; he only said that if you haven’t got sense enough to keep off the booze until after you’ve finished what he pays you to do, that he’ll have to see about getting another man to do the job.’
‘Oh, I know who that is. Don’t I. Humph, it’s that bloody little Phil Griffiths again. Carrying tales to Lewis about me in the hope that Lewis’ll give me the peddler and take him on instead. And after I’ve been paying for beer for the little swine every day of the week. That’s what you get…’
‘Do you know what you’ll get if you don’t go home?’
‘I’m going.’ And go he did.
Glyn only had a shilling on him when he and Ossie turned into the Pelican shortly after five o’clock, so after they had had two half-pints apiece they were stumped, for Ossie seldom had any money, his Jane saw to that.
‘Well,’ said Glyn after he had looked into his empty half-pint for about a minute, ‘we must try and strap a few pints here, for we’ve got no money left to raise the latch elsewhere. But I’d rather try Ned than the missus.’
‘Then try him,’ said Ossie.
‘I would if he was behind the bar, but I haven’t seen anything of him since we came in.’
‘There isn’t many here, is there?’
Glyn looked the lengt
h of the semicircular bar. ‘There’s only old Dick the grinder besides ourselves, and he’s been nursing the same half-pint ever since we came in here. Seems like as if he’s waiting same as us for Ned to show himself behind the bar.’
‘I thought it was quiet here,’ said Ossie. ‘And this used to be such a good house, didn’t it?’
‘Well, here goes to try her for a couple of half-pints, anyway,’ said Glyn as he rose and went up to the bar behind which was the landlord’s wife. ‘Could you fill us these couple of half-pints until…’
‘Sorry, I can’t,’ sharply interrupted the woman. ‘The last thing Ned told me was that I wasn’t to pass another drop over the counter until the money for it was in sight.’
‘If Ned was here he’d strap us a few drinks in a minute.’
‘Then you’d better wait until he comes in to ask him.’
‘Will he be long?’
The woman looked at the clock. ‘No, I don’t think so.’
‘Where’s he gone – funeral or something?’
‘No; he’s down at the court for non-payment of rates.’
‘Don’t say lies.’
‘I wish I were saying lies.’ She sighed. ‘Yes, he’s there right enough; so are about a score more of the publicans… Oh, here he is.’
‘Hullo, Ned,’ said Glyn.
‘Hullo, Ned,’ said old Dick the grinder as he moved forward to the bar with his empty half-pint measure in his hand.
‘What do you want?’ the landlord asked suspiciously.
‘I was – we was just asking the missus if she’d fill us a couple of half-pints until – until Saturday,’ said Glyn.
‘I never goes anywhere else when I’ve got money, you know that, Ned,’ said Dick the grinder. ‘So if you’ll let me…’
‘The missus told you, didn’t she?’ growled the landlord.
‘She – she said that you’d left orders not to serve anybody without the money,’ admitted Glyn, ‘but I didn’t think that that applied to old customers like me and Ossie.’
‘Or me, either,’ said Dick the grinder. ‘For you know, Ned…’
The landlord laughed loudly and sardonically. ‘Old customers, ha, ha, ha. Money, ha, ha, ha. For the love of Mike! Do you know where I’ve come from?’
‘The missus was saying something about you having to go to court about the rates, but we knew she was only joking,’ said Glyn.
Again the landlord laughed offensively. ‘Certainly she was only joking. I haven’t been to court… it’s only a bloody rumour. No more have another score or two of the licensed victuallers of this borough. No, it’s only a rumour, chaps. We’ve got tons of dough, we have. And being as the rates are only twenty-seven and a tanner in the pound, we find no difficulty in… of course I’ve been to the bloody court…’
‘All right, keep your hair on,’ snapped Glyn, annoyed by the landlord’s ironic barking. ‘All I asked for was two lousy half-pints but you can keep ’em now. Come on, Ossie; we’ll know where to take our money from now on.’
‘Yes, and so will I,’ said Dick the grinder.
And the three of them were on the point of leaving when the landlord shouted after them from behind the bar: ‘Here, half a minute. Come on back here and sit down.’ Then to his wife: ‘Fill ’em a pint apiece.’
‘You know what you said, Ned,’ she reminded him.
‘Yes, and I know also that I shall go bloody potty here if I have to stay and look at an empty bar much longer. So fill ’em a pint apiece, I tell you.’
‘Fill ’em yourself; and if I’m not mistaken someone’s filled you quite a few somewhere this day. You haven’t been all day in the court, that’s certain.’
‘What if I haven’t?’ said the landlord as he took hold of the handle and started filling a pint. ‘Now, suppose you get into the kitchen and fry me a bit of something to eat. Go on.’
She went grumbling off to the kitchen.
‘These bloody women… here you are, chaps,’ said the landlord as he pushed the three pints of Harrap’s fresh he had just filled across the counter to Glyn and Dick the grinder. After he had carried a pint to where Ossie sat alone in the corner, Glyn returned to lean against the bar, from behind which the landlord, having as good as bought an audience, had already begun telling his troubles to Dick the grinder. ‘Rates twenty-seven and a tanner in the pound, and they expect me to pay ’em out of the lousy two barrels a week I’m getting rid of – well, three barrels a week at most. And nearly half of that on strap. Do you know what, I’m owed bloody pounds. Pounds – what am I talking about? I’m owed hundreds of bloody pounds, but what’s been chalked behind that door won’t pay rates at twenty-seven and a tanner in the pound. As I told ’em in court today; none of the other publicans had the guts to say a word. But I told ’em, I did – even though a fat swine of a policeman tried to shut me up. This borough, I told ’em, is made up as follows. Ten out of every hundred are ratepayers and ninety out of every hundred are rate-receivers. Do I get the bloody dole? I asked ’em. No fear I don’t, I told ’em. Yes, and I told ’em a few more things. I proved to them that they’ve bled us publicans white, but they can’t get blood out of a stone…’
‘Give us a pipeful of ’bacco, Ned,’ said Dick the grinder.
The landlord took a brass tobacco-box out of one of his pockets and handed it to Dick, who said: ‘That’s a fine tobacco-box, if you like. Look at it, Glyn. It isn’t often you see such work on brass. Look at the scroll and…’
‘It was my father-in-law’s,’ said the landlord. ‘And what do you think he used to draw when he kept this house?’
They didn’t know, neither would they venture a guess.
‘Well, I’ll tell you. Never less than twenty-two barrels a week.’
They registered astonishment.
‘Yes, and when I took the place on after he died I was drawing as much as twenty barrels up to the time Dowlais works closed down. It was then I started to go bad, but even then I used to manage to make a go of it by making up for a rotten week on the Saturday when Merthyr Town was playing home, for there used to be a few thousand passing my door going to and coming away from the match, as you know, and as I told ’em in the court today. Then Merthyr Town went under and that was the last straw as far as this house is concerned…’
‘But you’ve got the dogs going in the Park instead,’ Glyn pointed out.
‘Dogs, be damned. Don’t talk to me about the dogs. The dogs are no damned good to us. They go up there, the unemployed in their thousands to the twopenny bank, and the few that’s working – teachers and so on – to the shilling enclosure; and most of ’em comes away skint. Don’t talk to me about the dogs. And what do you think? I seen a poster as I was on my way to the court this morning that was appealing to people to come to a meeting which is to start a campaign against the brewers and drink. Would you bloody well believe it?’
‘Some of ’em wants prohibition,’ said Dick the grinder.
‘Well, they’ve practically got it in this borough, haven’t they?’
‘Will you…? You’ll be paid before another day’s over my head. A half-pint apiece’ll do if you don’t feel like letting us have another pint apiece,’ said Glyn. ‘Ossie’s got a few shilling to draw, haven’t you, Ossie?’
‘I’ve got four an’ six to draw in the morning,’ said Ossie. ‘If I see Lewis I’ll get it tonight, I expect. I had a tanner on Bracket, copped at eight to one, it did…’
‘So you’ll have it tomorrow at the latest, see, Ned,’ Glyn assured the landlord, who filled them another pint apiece, but Dick the grinder only managed to get a half-pint out of him before he continued his tale of misfortune.
‘And they’re threatening to sell us up. Well, let ’em; then I can draw the bloody dole, have a bit of my own back, become a rate-receiver for a change, and be able to sleep again when I goes to my bed at night. I haven’t slept as I ought to for bloody years, indeed to my God I haven’t.’
‘Then what about me?’ said Dick t
he grinder. ‘I’m damned lucky if I get a couple of butcher’s knives and a scissors to grind a day – about a bob all told. And out of that I’ve got to pay for my kip…’
‘Your food’s ready when you are,’ said the landlord’s wife sourly as she came back into the bar from the kitchen.
‘Right, I’ll be there now…’
‘You couldn’t…?’
‘No, he couldn’t,’ snapped the landlord’s wife.
‘I wasn’t talking to you,’ Glyn told her.
‘No, but I’m talking to you,’ she told him.
‘You may as well fill ’em another,’ said the landlord as he went into the kitchen.
‘There you are, you heard what Ned said,’ said Glyn after he had gulped down what remained in his pint.
‘Never mind what Ned said,’ she told him as she snatched at the empty pint and rinsed it clean and wiped it and put it away with the other empties.
‘Then we may as well push off, Ossie,’ said Glyn.
‘May as well,’ said Ossie.
And off out they went, leaving Dick the grinder sitting with just a drop at the bottom of his half-pint, and the landlord’s wife glaring at him from behind the bar.
CHAPTER 17
HOME, SWEET, SWEET HOME
‘You’ll have to eat dinner in your own homes this Christmas again,’ Saran told Jane and Sam’s wife as they were all three returning home loaded from a shopping and begging expedition about teatime Christmas Eve. Saran had not begged for herself, but as certain newspapers had collected funds to buy parcels for their deserving and distressed readers, she thought she might as well have one of the parcels as not. So she had told white lies to get out of the newspaper fund and from the Quakers’ relief organisation what she afterwards shared between her Jane and her Sam’s wife, and they both could do with all they could get, goodness only knows. But, thank God, Saran said to herself, they’re both all right this Christmas again, for they’ve both had a bit of help from the Legion as well. Yes, they’re all right, all mine are all right – thank God.