Beggars and Choosers

by Catrin Collier

  She shook Rhian awake and handed the book to Iestyn who hid it beneath a mound of papers on the dresser. They all looked anxiously to the child as Owen stumbled noisily up the stairs. The last time he had cried when Owen had come home drunk, Owen had threatened to put the cot in the dog kennel.

  The door burst open and Owen stood, red-faced and red-eyed in the doorway. ‘Get them.’

  ‘What, Owen?’ Sali asked nervously. Never logical when drunk, Owen expected her to understand him instantly.

  ‘The clothes I allowed you to keep. And I’ll take this.’ Grabbing her wrist he wrenched the wedding ring from her finger. She cried out as he sliced her skin and Iestyn was on his feet in an instant.

  ‘Don’t hurt Sali, Owen.’ He stepped between her and his brother.

  ‘Don’t hurt Sali, Owen,’ Owen taunted.

  The baby’s whimper escalated to a cry and Sali backed towards the cot.

  ‘I told you to get those clothes.’

  All Sali could think about was the ring hidden in the waistband of the skirt. Her last link to Mansel and the old life that had begun to seem like a dream. But she dared not disobey Owen. She looked to Iestyn. He understood her and moved protectively closer to the cot. When she returned with the brown paper parcel that held her suit, Iestyn was still standing between Owen and the cot. Rhian had retreated to the corner next to the window in the hope of remaining unnoticed.

  Sali folded her arms across the parcel, clutching it to her chest. ‘It’s my last good suit, Owen.’ She knew she shouldn’t have said the words as soon as they were out of her mouth, but all she could think of was the ring, and the loving expression on Mansel’s face when he had slipped it on to her finger. She hadn’t even seen it since she had sewn it into the skirt, but losing it was like losing Mansel a second time.

  ‘Hand it over.’ The baby whimpered and Owen turned to the cot.

  ‘Take it.’ She thrust the parcel at Owen.

  ‘Take it? It’s not yours to give, whore! All you ever do is defy me.’

  Sali watched mesmerised as Owen drew his arm back, but drunk as he was, she didn’t believe he’d hit her. Not in the kitchen. Not in front of Rhian and Iestyn. He had always beaten her in private in their bedroom ...

  A burst of crimson exploded in her head as Owen slammed his fist into the side of her face. Disorientated, she fell against the cot, striking her head on the iron bars. Dimly, as if the sound were travelling over a great distance, she was aware of her son crying. She had to reach him ... had to ... She struggled to her feet but another explosion sent her catapulting backwards away from the cot into the range. A deafening crack rent the air as the back of her head connected with the oven door. She could smell the acrid stench of her hair burning. Rhian screamed, Iestyn shouted and the baby’s cries escalated.

  She struggled to open her eyes but a thick curtain had fallen over her face, blinding her. She tried to wipe it away but her left hand refused to move. She lifted her right and clawed at whatever was obscuring her sight. Through a dense, red-black haze she glimpsed Owen leaning over the cot.

  Iestyn grabbed his brother’s waist and wrenched him away. She threw herself over the cot, shielding the child from Owen. The baby’s sobs filled her ears and to her horror she saw blood dripping on to his blanket.

  A pain shot through her neck as Owen’s hands closed around her throat. He lifted her off her feet. She tried to beg for her baby’s life, her lips moved, but the sound remained strangled in her larynx.

  As Iestyn fought to prise Owen’s hands from her neck, Owen tightened them. Dense waves of grey mist washed over her, blurring shapes and sounds. Weak, nauseous, she was aware of the kitchen floor hurtling towards her. Rhian shrieked and threw something at Owen. There was a splintered crash of a chair breaking and the sound of something heavy tumbling down the stairs.

  Someone lifted the baby from the cot, as she lay on the floor unable to summon the strength to raise her head. Owen bellowed. Quick, light steps ran down the stairs. Rhian shouted from somewhere far away. She looked up. Owen was standing over her, his fists raised. It was the last thing she saw before she tumbled into absolute darkness.

  ‘We’ll not interfere in a domestic,’ Sergeant Davies declared unequivocally, looking from Rhian Bull, who was trying to soothe a hysterical child, to Mrs Hughes. The oldest Hughes boy, who’d been sent to fetch the police when Rhian had emerged screaming into the street with the child, peered around the open door of Owen Bull’s shop. A constable left the group of officers gathered around a dark heap at the foot of the stairs, pushed the boy aside and joined the sergeant in the street.

  ‘One of them’s dead, Sarge.’

  ‘You sure?’

  ‘I’m sure. Want me to fetch the doctor?’

  The sergeant made a wry, lemon-sucking face as he nodded. Domestics could be ignored; dead bodies meant filling in forms, taking and writing statements, and coroner’s inquests. Every officer on the Pontypridd force could recite a list of the men in the town who knocked their wives about. Some women, like Sali Bull who’d married carrying another man’s bastard, deserved everything they got. Others developed slovenly ways that a tap or two occasionally sorted. He’d never thought any less of a man for trying to keep a difficult wife in order the old-fashioned way. Not that he’d ever had to resort to beating his own. She’d learned to toe his line after he’d given her a warning on their honeymoon.

  Rhian blocked the constable’s path. ‘Is it Sali?’ She clasped the baby so hard he stopped crying, swallowed hard and let out a harsh sob.

  ‘It’s your brother, Miss Bull. The half-wit.’

  She thrust the baby at Mrs Hughes and ran into the house. One of the constables had lit his lantern and was holding it above Iestyn, who lay sprawled on his back behind the door, staring up at the ceiling, exactly as he had been when she had run past him and out of the house. She knelt beside him and tried to lift his head.

  ‘Don’t touch him, Miss Bull.’ The sergeant moved in behind her.

  ‘Are you sure he’s dead?’ she pleaded. ‘He looks as if he’s been knocked out ...’

  The sergeant closed Iestyn’s eyes. ‘I am sure, Miss Bull. There is nothing you can do for him now.’

  ‘Sali is still upstairs with Owen.’ She looked up the staircase. Dark even in daylight, the top of the stairs was shrouded in shadows as black as coal.

  The sergeant listened for a moment. He could hear a faint noise, like a man grunting – or crying. ‘Griffiths, you stay here. Gurner, I’ll be right behind you.’

  Owen Bull was slumped in the easy chair in the kitchen, snoring in the profoundly deep sleep of the drunkard. His wife lay, sprawled unconscious on the floor beside a cot, her left arm twisted beneath her at an unnatural angle, her face a bloodied, jellied mass, her singed hair matted with clots of congealing blood.

  ‘Get downstairs and tell the doctor to come up here first. Iestyn Bull can wait, she can’t,’ the sergeant ordered.

  ‘And the girl?’ Constable Gurner noted the blood smeared over Owen Bull’s knuckles.

  ‘Bring her, so she can tell us what went on here. And send up another two officers. The biggest on duty.’ He jerked his head towards the chair where Owen snored. ‘Looking at the mess in this place, chapel deacon or not, I’m not giving the order to wake him until he’s handcuffed and outnumbered.’

  Rhian stood in the kitchen while two of the largest officers stationed in Pontypridd, half dragged, half carried Owen, who was ranting and raving at the top of his voice, out through the door and down the stairs.

  ‘I’m a patient man, Miss Bull,’ the sergeant said in a tone that suggested he was anything but. He waited until Owen’s shouts faded as he and his escort turned the corner of Mill Street and headed for Catherine Street and the police station. ‘Not only am I patient, I like to get things right. Tell me again, what went on in this house tonight?’

  ‘My brothers started arguing,’ she clutched the baby and choked back her tears.

  ‘O
ver what?’

  She shrugged.

  ‘Was it Mrs Bull?’ the sergeant suggested archly.

  ‘No!’ she exclaimed angrily. ‘Owen came home early. He was in one of his bad moods.’

  ‘He was drunk,’ the sergeant suggested.

  ‘I don’t know. Sali and I just call it Owen’s bad mood. The baby was crying ... Owen went to the cot ...’

  ‘So, Iestyn thought your brother was going to hurt the baby?’ he interrupted.

  ‘Yes ... no ...’ She contradicted herself. ‘I don’t know what Iestyn thought.’

  ‘Has Owen Bull ever hurt the child?’

  ‘No, but Owen doesn’t like him and, as I said, he was in one of his moods. Iestyn tried to pull him away from the cot, they struggled and Iestyn fell downstairs.’

  ‘You are quite sure Iestyn fell? That Owen didn’t push him?’ The sergeant questioned carefully.

  ‘I didn’t see. I can’t be sure. I don’t know,’ she cried out in confusion, shifting the weight of the baby who had finally fallen asleep, in her arms. ‘It happened so quickly ...’

  ‘Stay still, Mrs Bull.’

  As the doctor’s order cut through Rhian’s protestations, Rhian and the sergeant turned to the corner of the room where the doctor was crouching beside Sali.

  Sali could hear the soft murmur of voices and was conscious of people around her. She struggled to open her eyes but her eyelids were heavy and unresponsive.

  ‘Don’t move, Mrs Bull.’

  She recognised the calm, authoritative voice of the doctor. His face blurred above her, unfocused and unrecognisable.

  ‘My baby ...’

  ‘Your baby is fine, your sister-in-law is here with him.’

  ‘He’s fine, Sali. He is sleeping.’ Rhian’s voice was clotted with tears. ‘Don’t worry, I’ll look after him. I promise.’

  ‘I want to hold him.’

  ‘I wouldn’t advise that, Mrs Bull.’

  The sergeant squatted beside Sali. ‘Can you remember what happened, Mrs Bull?’

  ‘Mrs Bull isn’t in a fit state to answer any questions, Sergeant Davies,’ the doctor said firmly. ‘If you check with me in a day or two, you might be able to send someone to the Graig Infirmary to question her.’

  ‘The workhouse ... you can’t send me to the workhouse,’ Sali pleaded. ‘Who will look after my baby?’

  ‘I will, Sali,’ Rhian reassured. ‘Don’t worry, I will take care of him.’

  ‘Owen ...’

  ‘Owen is not here, Sali. The baby is safe.’

  The sergeant gave Rhian a hard look. In his book, there was a world of difference between a man hitting his wife to keep her in order and a man venting his drunken rage on a defenceless child. But he couldn’t see a mark on the boy.

  ‘Please, let me stay with my baby,’ Sali begged. ‘Don’t send me to the workhouse.’

  ‘You are going to the infirmary, not the workhouse,’ the doctor said calmly.

  ‘The infirmary costs money.’

  ‘That is nothing for you to worry about.’ He grimaced as he studied the extensive injuries to her face. When the police had woken him in the early hours, he had been furious, but as the constable had outlined the events in Mill Street, he recalled Edyth James asking him to do whatever he could to help her niece if he was ever given the opportunity.

  He would never have recognised Sali Watkin Jones if the police hadn’t told him who she was. Her face was battered beyond recognition, her eyes sunk into black bruises, her eyelids and lips split, bleeding, and the whites of her eyes crimson with burst blood vessels. She was so painfully thin he could count her ribs. Her hair, which had always been immaculately styled, had burned away on the back and crown of her head, leaving singed, broken stubble, the rest was matted, unkempt and clotted with blood. She looked like an old woman of sixty. Whatever the girl had done, she had undoubtedly suffered for it, and he felt sorry for her and her child.

  ‘Don’t worry, Mrs Bull, a few weeks of rest and care, and you will be fine, And you’ll be in a private room,’ he promised, knowing Edyth James would pay any amount of money to ensure Sali’s comfort.

  ‘What’s the damage to Mrs Bull?’ the sergeant enquired, holding his notebook.

  ‘She has a dislocated arm, severe bruising and cuts to the head and face, a cracked cheekbone, and a fractured skull. She’ll need at least six weeks rest and I don’t want her interviewed until I give you permission to do so.’

  ‘I have a dead man out there and another man in custody. A girl,’ he gave Rhian a scathing look, ‘who doesn’t seem to be at all sure what happened, other than her brothers were fighting, possibly over the baby. Mrs Bull’s evidence could be crucial.’

  ‘She is in no condition to give it.’

  ‘Could you examine the child to see if he has any marks or bruising?’

  ‘As soon as Mrs Bull is on her way to the infirmary.’

  As if on cue, a constable entered the kitchen and announced, ‘The ambulance is here, Sarge.’

  ‘Send the driver and his mate up with a stretcher, Constable.’ The doctor stretched his legs as he rose to his feet. ‘Would you order your officers to clear the street so we can put Mrs Bull in the ambulance, Sergeant Davies?’

  ‘You promise to look after the baby?’ Sali reached out to Rhian as they loaded her on to the stretcher, but all she could see was her shadow.

  ‘I promise.’ Rhian stooped to the floor and picked up the parcel Sali had thrust at Owen. She laid it on the stretcher beside Sali. ‘You’ll need your best clothes.’

  The doctor took time to examine Isaac after the ambulance left. The child looked up solemnly and silently from his cot as he was poked and prodded. ‘He has a temperature.’

  ‘Sali thought it was a summer chill,’ Rhian murmured.

  ‘It could be.’ The doctor folded his stethoscope and placed it in his bag. ‘The child is malnourished, but there’s no sign of violence.’

  ‘So, your brother Owen never touched the child, Miss Bull?’

  ‘I never said he did,’ she remonstrated.

  ‘No? You weren’t sure, were you?’

  Constable Griffiths tapped the door. ‘The second ambulance is here, Sergeant Davies. The men want to know if they can move the body.’

  ‘Not until the doctor has seen it.’

  The doctor picked up his jacket from the back of one of the kitchen chairs and followed the sergeant out of the room. Rhian crept on to the landing but not down the stairs. She watched from above while the doctor examined Iestyn.

  ‘No doubt about it,’ he declared flatly after a few minutes. ‘His neck is broken.’

  ‘What I want to know is, was he pushed or did he fall?’

  ‘Could have been either from the way he is lying,’ the doctor answered.

  ‘There’s no way of knowing?’ the sergeant pressed.

  ‘Not for certain. All I can say is he fell backwards down the stairs, landed on his head and broke his neck. How he came to fall is for you to decide.’

  ‘There was blood on his brother’s knuckles.’

  ‘There’s none on him.’

  ‘The men are anxious to get on, Sarge. Can we move it,’ the constable glanced up at Rhian, ‘Mr Bull to the mortuary in the Graig Hospital?’ he amended.

  ‘Yes, Griffiths. And while you’re at it, clear the street of nosy parkers. Tell them there’s nothing more for them to see tonight.’

  ‘If you don’t want me for anything else, I’ll be on my way.’ The doctor snapped his bag shut.

  ‘Nothing else. Thank you for coming out, Doctor.’ The sergeant closed his notebook and walked up the stairs.

  ‘You’d best lock the door behind us, Miss Bull.’

  ‘What about Owen?’

  ‘The way things stand, once he’s sober, we’ll let your brother out first thing in the morning. If as you say, Iestyn fell downstairs, the only charge we can make against him is drunk and disorderly. I don’t know what the chapel or the town council are g
oing to say about it, but that is their problem, not mine. You sure you want to take care of the nipper? I could arrange to have him taken to the workhouse.’

  ‘I’ll take care of him,’ Rhian said firmly.

  ‘Are you sure you can’t tell me any more, Miss Bull?’ Sergeant Davies looked Rhian in the eye.

  ‘I am sure.’ She watched him walk back downstairs.

  ‘Miss Bull?’

  ‘Yes, Sergeant?’

  ‘Lock the door,’ he said again as he closed it behind him.

  Chapter Eleven

  Thoughts whirled without reason or coherence in Rhian’s mind when she returned to the kitchen. The sergeant had said he’d release Owen when he was sober. That meant he’d return, and there was only her and the baby. She couldn’t face living with him alone. She simply couldn’t! Not without Iestyn to help and protect her.

  What if Owen attacked her the way he had Sali? And he hated the baby. She was no match for Owen but she had no money, nowhere to go, no friends ... She looked at the clock. It was half past five. How long would it take Owen to sober up?

  She took a sheet from the baby’s cot and spread it on the floor. Removing the child’s clothes and blankets from the outgrown baby carriage where Sali kept them, she bundled as many as she could on to the centre of the sheet. Tying it in a knot, she left Isaac in his cot and went to her room. Setting a sheet from her bed on the floor, she wrapped her spare clothes in it. Taking both bundles she lifted the baby from his cot, wrapped both of them in his shawl, Welsh fashion, crept down the stairs and slipped out of the house.

  A misty dawn had broken, portending a fine day. Trying not to think about the enormity of what she was doing, she turned right towards Taff Street.

  ‘Rhian, where you off to at this time in the morning?’ Mrs Hughes shook an eiderdown out of an upstairs window.

  ‘Nowhere, Mrs Hughes.’

  ‘Funny nowhere, carrying the baby and two bundles that size. Wait.’

  Uneasy, lest Mrs Hughes try to persuade her to stay, Rhian reached the corner of the street before her neighbour caught up with her. Heaving for breath, Mrs Hughes pressed something into Rhian’s hand. ‘It’s not much, but it may help.’