Beggars and Choosers

by Catrin Collier

  ‘I’m very pleased to see you again, Mrs Williams. I’ve never thanked you properly for getting me a job in Llan House.’ Rhian shook Mari’s hand.

  ‘You’ve done well for yourself. From kitchen maid to parlour maid, or so my sister tells me.’

  ‘Mrs Williams has been very kind.’

  ‘My brother Geraint.’ Sali crossed her fingers in the hope that Geraint would be polite.

  Geraint hesitated for the barest fraction of a second before shaking Rhian’s hand. ‘I’ll get us a cab.’

  ‘Now, darling,’ Sali crouched down to Harry’s level, ‘Mari is going to take you to a toy shop and afterwards you are going to have your dinner in a café, and Auntie Rhian, Uncle Geraint and I will meet you there. Be a good boy for Mari, and this,’ she produced a shilling, ‘is for you.’

  ‘Silver! For me?’ His eyes rounded. His Uncles Joey, Victor, Lloyd and Billy had slipped him coppers, halfpennies and farthings on pay days, but it was the first time he’d ever been given silver.

  ‘Do you want me to give it to Mari to look after for you?’ Sali asked.

  He shook his head, took the shilling and tucked it into his glove.

  She kissed him and rose to her feet. ‘Let him buy whatever he wants, Mari, within reason.’

  ‘I’ll remember the within reason,’ Mari replied. ‘You two girls take care of yourselves in that ungodly place.’

  ‘We will.’ Sali took Rhian’s arm.

  ‘Your cab, ladies.’ Geraint helped Rhian in. Sali took the seat opposite Rhian and Geraint sat beside her. Sali tried to give Rhian an encouraging smile but an image of Owen towering over her, leather belt in hand, came to mind and she froze. The last time she had seen her husband, he had tried to kill her. Throughout their marriage he had beaten, abused and humiliated her. He had stolen her dowry and everything she had owned of any value. She didn’t owe him a single thing, so why was she going to see him?

  Hardly Christian charity, because Owen and her Uncle Morgan had almost destroyed her faith. Curiosity, because he would be dead soon? Or was she simply seeking reassurance? Would she only finally believe herself free from Owen when she saw him caged in a cell like an animal, awaiting the hangman’s rope?

  The gates of Cardiff jail towered above them, massive, broad and made from oak thick enough to withstand a siege engine. Sali and Rhian moved instinctively closer to Geraint as he knocked. A smaller door set in one of the large doors opened and a warder emerged. Geraint gave their names and the warder ushered them inside.

  Sali found herself in a high-walled, narrow porch. Rain still spattered down on their hats and she realised there was no roof. The warder kept them waiting a few minutes until a second warder appeared. He escorted them across an inner yard, walled in by the same massive grey stone walls as the exterior of the prison, through a door and into the keep of the prison itself.

  The atmosphere was dank and musty, the air heavy and foul with the stench of urine, faeces and unwashed bodies. The stink intensified, as they followed the warder down a corridor that led deep into the centre of the building.

  Periodically they stopped before a locked door, the warder would speak to the officer manning it and they would be admitted, the clank of locks being turned and bolts pushed home behind them, accompanying their footsteps, as they marched up flights of stone stairs and down further dimly lit passageways.

  Finally the warder halted before an open door. Beyond it was an office furnished with a desk, chair and wooden bench. A warder rose from behind the desk and stepped out to meet them.

  ‘Mrs and Miss Bull, sir,’ their escort informed him.

  ‘Mrs Bull, Miss Bull, leave your coats, bags, hats and umbrellas here.’ The senior officer faced Geraint. ‘The request was for two visitors only to see the prisoner, sir. Mrs Owen Bull and Miss Rhian Bull.’

  ‘I am here to support my sister.’

  ‘I will have to ask you to wait here, sir.’ He indicated the bench. ‘The prisoner has indicated that he wishes to see you ladies separately. However, you can visit him together if you prefer.’

  Sali felt intimidated by the sombre surroundings and was terrified at the thought of seeing Owen, although as a prisoner he was in no position to hurt her, but when Rhian grabbed her hand, she sensed her sister-in-law’s fears were even greater than hers.

  ‘We’ll see him together, Officer.’ Sali spoke for both of them.

  ‘By rights you should be searched.’ The warder looked them both up and down. ‘Do I have your word that you won’t touch the prisoner or give him anything?’

  ‘You have my word,’ Sali agreed solemnly.

  ‘You, Miss Bull?’ he addressed Rhian.

  She nodded, too frightened to speak.

  ‘Follow me.’

  They were shown into a small room. A metal door was set into the thick stone wall directly ahead of them. The room was bare except for a plain wooden table and four chairs.

  ‘Sit at the table, ladies. Regulations require at least two officers be present at the interview. However, as you have given your word that you will not try to touch the prisoner, we will remain at a discreet distance.’ The warder waited until Sali and Rhian were seated before knocking on the door.

  The first thing that struck Sali when the door opened was the size of the cell beyond it. It was roughly the same length as Harry’s box room in Tonypandy and no more than four feet wide. The warder spoke to someone inside and a few seconds later Owen stepped out, flanked by two officers. He was dressed in a drab grey prison uniform. His hair had been cropped short and his face was drained of colour. He stumbled as he walked towards the table, and one of his escort gripped his arm above his elbow. He would have fallen if the warder hadn’t held on to him and when they drew closer, Sali could see that he was clutching a Bible between his handcuffed hands and was mumbling a barely decipherable prayer.

  All Sali could think was how seedy, grubby and pathetic he looked. She could scarcely believe she was looking at the same man who had made her life such a misery. For the first time, she wondered why she had been so afraid of him. She could have done so much more to fight back ... Then she remembered his belt, the beatings he had given her, but most of all the threats he had made about Harry. Had she come to gloat at his downfall? It was a horrifying thought that she had sunk so low.

  One of the officers pulled a chair out from the table; the second pushed Owen on to it. When Owen was seated, facing them, Rhian jumped up.

  ‘I can’t ... I’m sorry, Sali, I can’t ...’ She knocked over her chair and fled towards the exit. One of the officers followed her.

  Sali raised her eyes and stared at Owen, willing him to raise his eyes to meet her gaze, but Owen sat with his eyes downcast. ‘You asked to see us,’ she reminded, as the inevitable sounds of the unlocking and locking of the door filled the room.

  ‘The Devil led me into temptation and I succumbed. I beg for your forgiveness, Sali. I need your forgiveness...’

  Sali explored her feelings as she listened to his pleas. This man had murdered her lover, an innocent coachman and his own brother. He had made her life a misery, first in Mill Street and later in Tonypandy, when she had never stopped looking over shoulder, fearful that he would discover where she was hiding. He had threatened to harm her son and her aunt ... and now ... to her astonishment, all she felt for him was pity. Logic dictated he didn’t deserve it, but then he would never know a love like the one she shared with Lloyd, or experience the unquestioning, trusting devotion of a child like Harry. He had led a miserable, solitary, selfish and brutal life and now he was about to face a death equally savage and lonely.

  ‘I need you to forgive me,’ he reiterated, drooling spittle on to the table. ‘Please, I am about to meet my maker.’ His eyes glazed with fear at the prospect. ‘It is your Christian duty –’ he said with a trace of his old arrogance.

  ‘You told me I was unfit to be a Christian,’ she reminded him softly.

  ‘You had sinned. It was my duty as you
r husband to correct you and set you on the path to righteousness.’

  ‘By beating, humiliating and degrading me after you murdered Mansel?’ she said calmly.

  ‘I didn’t mean to hurt him. He had money ... I was about to lose the shop... Iestyn and Rhian’s home... He fought back ...’

  ‘The doctor told me that Mansel died from a blow to the back of his head, Owen. It is difficult for a man to fight back when he’s turned away from you.’ Her compassion didn’t extend to accepting his lies.

  ‘Please, Sali,’ he stretched his hand over the table towards her, but she recoiled even before the warder stepped forward, ‘I need your forgiveness. You are my wife ... it is your duty to obey me, for I have truly repented. I have seen the light. I know that God will forgive me if you do, Sali. It is His will that I beg for your forgiveness and in begging, gain his everlasting mercy.’

  He was actually enjoying grovelling to her. Sali couldn’t bear his self-abasement a moment longer.

  ‘For what you did to me, I forgive you, Owen. For what you did to Harry to blight the first years of his life, I can’t absolve you, because it wasn’t just me you hurt,’ she said simply. ‘As for murdering Mansel, Iestyn and the coachman, you will have to ask them for forgiveness when you reach your heaven. I hope for your sake that you do.’

  ‘Sali –’

  ‘Goodbye, Owen.’ She rose to her feet and walked towards the door. The warder escorted her out as Owen was returned, still pleading, begging and demanding forgiveness, to his cell.

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  ‘You said within reason,’ Mari apologised to Sali, as Harry proudly set out his purchases on the café table.

  ‘Four penny bars of Five Boys chocolate, Harry, don’t you think that’s being greedy?’ Geraint castigated.

  ‘They are for my uncles.’ Harry moved one bar to one side of his glass of milk and piled the others on top. ‘Uncle Victor, Uncle Joey, Uncle Lloyd and Uncle Billy. And look, Mam.’ Oblivious to Geraint’s deflated expression, he opened a brown paper bag and removed a box of soldiers. ‘New soldiers for my fort on loan.’

  ‘You’ve wasted your money, Harry,’ Geraint reproached. ‘The nursery fort isn’t on loan and it has plenty of soldiers.’

  ‘He’s talking about the fort the Evanses loaned him because I wouldn’t allow him to take it as a gift.’ Sali smiled at Harry in an attempt to take the sting from her brother’s criticism. ‘And it was a wonderful idea of yours to get more soldiers, Harry. Now what would you like for lunch?’

  ‘Harry was hungry so we ate early.’ Mari pushed her teacup into the centre of the table.

  ‘Sausage and mash and I cleaned my plate.’

  ‘Good boy. Shall we eat?’ Sali asked Rhian and Geraint.

  Still pale and shaky after her bout of nausea in the prison, Rhian murmured, ‘I’m not hungry.’

  ‘I’ll have something when we get back to Ynysangharad House.’ Geraint picked up his coat and hat from the stand where he had hung them.

  ‘Then we’ll go to the station,’ Sali said decisively.

  ‘I’ll carry your parcels for you if you like, Harry?’ Geraint offered, in an attempt to appease his nephew.

  Harry shook his head and clung to them.

  ‘Give him time, Geraint.’ Emotionally drained by the scene in the prison, Sali had an overwhelming longing for peace and quiet. To her surprise she found herself picturing, not the drawing room of Ynysangharad House, but the kitchen in Tonypandy. Harry was playing in ‘his’ corner with the fort and soldiers, Lloyd and his father were sitting, reading the newspapers and discussing politics at the table, and Joey and Victor were whistling in the basement as they mixed the chicken feed and dog food. The scene was so real, so tangible, she was astonished when the sound of breaking glass shattered it and she saw a waitress bend down to pick up a broken vinegar bottle.

  Geraint gave her a penetrating look and shrugged on his coat. ‘I’ll ask them to send someone to fetch a cab. Rhian’s in no state to walk anywhere.’

  Paperboys outside and inside the station were shouting the headlines on the newspaper placards.

  ‘War Between Police and Miners in Tonypandy.’

  ‘Strikers Stone Police.’

  ‘Massive Police Casualties.’

  ‘Coal Owners’ Association Ask Government to Send in the Troops.’

  ‘A Thousand Metropolitan Police on their Way to the Coalfields. ‘

  ‘Looks like you left Tonypandy just in time, Sali.’ Geraint saw them all into a first-class carriage and slammed the door.

  ‘You’re forgetting Rhian still lives there, Geraint.’

  ‘But you’re working in a decent house, aren’t you, Rhian?’ Geraint asked the girl.

  ‘Llan House,’ Mari answered for Rhian, who was still white and shaky. ‘My sister is housekeeper there.’

  Sali bristled in indignation when Geraint said ‘decent house’. The inference being that he considered Lloyd Evans’s house something other than decent, then she realised that even if she reproached him, he wouldn’t understand why. His opinions and outlook on life had been shaped by his boarding school upbringing, just as hers had been by the past few years of her life.

  ‘More police,’ Geraint commented, as squad after squad passed their carriage and piled on to the third-class carriages lower down the train. ‘They must be expecting more trouble.’

  ‘I’ve just realised I can’t sit with you,’ Rhian protested. ‘I only have a third-class ticket.’

  ‘I’ll pay the difference.’ Sali stared at the tall, well-built, helmeted policemen, armed with four-foot cudgels, and thought of Lloyd and all the other miners. And she continued to think, as the train wound its way along the twelve miles of track between Cardiff and Pontypridd. For more than five weeks she had held back from contacting Lloyd because she had too many other pressing things to do – arrange the funerals, re-allocate the duties of the servants, place her aunt’s jewellery in a bank box, settle everything with the trustees, organise a position in Gwilym James for Geraint that wouldn’t injure her brother’s pride, wait for her mother’s health to improve ...

  So many demands on her time to make decisions she had thought only she could settle. Now she realised she had simply allowed them to take precedence. The only choice she had to make was easy, so easy she couldn’t understand why she hadn’t made it weeks ago. And she didn’t even have the excuse of acting in Harry’s interest. He had told her what he wanted to do the first day he had spent at Ynysangharad House. Her son wanted to go home and she wanted to be with the man she loved.

  ‘We’re almost there.’ Geraint left his seat and lifted down their umbrellas and Harry’s packages from the luggage rack.

  ‘I’m not getting out in Pontypridd, Geraint. Harry and I are going on to Tonypandy.’

  Geraint whirled round. ‘Have you taken leave of your senses?’

  ‘On the contrary, I believe I’ve just found them.’

  ‘You can’t possibly be thinking of going on to Tonypandy. Now of all times. You saw the police get on the train. Heard the newspaper headlines. And don’t for one minute think they are an exaggeration. Colliers are a rough breed. You have no idea what they are capable of.’

  ‘Yes, I do. I’ve been living with four of them for the past year.’

  ‘Did you say that to deliberately annoy me, Sali?’ he demanded furiously.

  ‘I told you, Geraint. The Evanses have accepted me into their family.’

  ‘And that’s why you think you have to go back there now? Out of some kind of misguided loyalty to them? For God’s sake, Sali, you were their skivvy. Paid help like Rhian here.’

  ‘And Mari, Geraint,’ Sali pointed out mildly.

  ‘You owe the Evanses nothing,’ he railed, refusing to be sidetracked. ‘And you have absolutely no conception of what is going on in the Valleys.’

  ‘I have, Geraint, because I know the miners, and Lloyd and his father have told me about their grievances.’

 
‘But Ynysangharad House, the Trustees, the shop, Harry’s inheritance ... he needs to be brought up a gentleman if he is to take his proper place in society.’

  ‘The trustees will look after Harry’s inheritance and I can go to the monthly meetings just as easily from Tonypandy as Ynysangharad House. The staff, you and Mari can look after Ynysangharad House perfectly well. In fact, probably better than I can. And don’t pretend that you, Gareth and Llinos won’t be relieved. I know I have become something of a liability. And despite Harry’s inheritance, so is he.’

  ‘People need time to adjust, Sali.’ Geraint had the grace to look shamefaced. ‘In a few years, your marriage to Owen Bull and the circumstances of Harry’s birth will be forgotten.’

  ‘And what am I supposed to do while people are forgetting, Geraint? Hide with Harry in the nursery at Ynysangharad House until I am considered “acceptable” by polite society again? Why should I? I am what I am, and if people don’t like it they can ignore me as I can them.’

  ‘If you won’t consider your own future, consider Harry’s. He will be a wealthy and important man.’

  ‘All the more reason for him to be brought up by people who love him and will keep his feet firmly on the ground.’ She glanced out of the window. ‘There isn’t much time, so listen carefully please, Mari. Pack Harry’s things and mine and don’t forget the toys he brought with him. There’s no need to pack anything from the nursery. Ask Robert to send a trunk up by train. This is the address.’ She opened her handbag, tore a piece of paper from the back of her diary and scribbled it down.

  ‘Sali –’

  ‘I won’t reconsider, Geraint. When things have calmed down in Tonypandy, I will return for a visit. But there is no need to ask the housekeeper to prepare rooms for us, Mari. Harry and I won’t be sleeping in Ynysangharad House again.’

  ‘I can’t let you behave so foolishly.’

  ‘You have no choice, Geraint.’ Sali met her brother’s steady gaze. The train drew to a halt. Geraint opened the door, stepped down and offered his hand to Mari. He looked at Sali until the whistle blew, then he closed the door. She went to the window and pushed it down.