Later that day, Aunty spoke to Davy’s teacher and told us she thought him a weak man who just wanted a quiet life. Not one she would have chosen to teach Davy. But we were stuck with him. She said he was bad at discipline, she’d seen it before, she knew the signs.
‘Well, that settles it,’ dad said. ‘I’ll teach Davy to fight; that should sort things out.’
Davy was horrified. ‘I don’t want to fight. I hate fighting.’
‘But you can be happy at school if you can beat those other boys. They’ll leave you alone.’
But Davy ran out of the house saying he refused to fight.
The next day, he came home from school with a black eye and a split lip. He said he had ‘tripped’, but Aunty said that some of the boys from his class had seen her talking to the teacher, so they probably had a go at Davy.
‘Right, that’s it then. Come on lad,’ our father said, ‘out the back and let’s start our fighting lesson.’
Davy didn’t object this time, but still looked really miserable.
Aunty Annie and I thought Davy might be miserable because he didn’t do as well as the other boys in class. I knew his reading was as bad as mine had been so we decided to encourage him academically while my father concentrated on the physical side of it.
Every evening, I read little stories to him and when we came towards the ending, I’d put my arm around his shoulders and we’d read it between us. We’d puzzle over words we didn’t know and tried to guess their meaning. Later, as he grew more accustomed to it, he started to read bits to me. His eyes sparkled as he read out the words. He was beginning to enjoy himself.
It was after we’d finished reading Robin Hood that Davy said, ‘I want to read my own books, can I go to the library too?’ Aunty Annie and I kept our faces impassive. It was what we had been working for, but we didn’t want him to suspect.
‘Of course, my lovely,’ Aunty Annie said. ‘Let’s go together tomorrow after school and I’ll enrol you in the library. You can choose your own books then.’
Davy never looked back and his reading skills overtook those of his classmates. But that made him even more unpopular and they called him a swot. He kept on practising his fighting with our dad, and one day he came home with a black eye and a bloody nose, grinning from ear to ear. ‘You should see the other boy. I thrashed him good and proper.’
So although Davy never really fitted in, never became ‘one of the boys’, he gained respect. My father enrolled him in a boxing club and, much to Davy’s surprise, he enjoyed it. He got respect and attention so he worked hard at it and got stronger. His muscles grew and looked like buds spurting out from the thin sticks of his arms and legs. Some of the men at the club thought he had some talent and could make a career as a flyweight. Davy became even more enthusiastic with all the positive attention he was getting.
Our dad’s attitude to Davy changed with his fighting success and one day, he took it into his head to insist that Aunty Annie give Davy the best food, including meat – when we had meat that is – plus larger portions of everything.
‘He has to grow more, Annie love,’ he would say, ‘give him the best food.’
‘But, Matt, you need it. You can’t work down the pit without good food in your belly. You’ll get ill, and then where would we be – on the parish, that’s where!’ Aunty used to get so indignant it made me smile and I tried hiding it by looking down at the table, but Davy always looked crestfallen.
‘I can’t eat his food,’ he said to me one day as we walked to school, ‘it’s not right. I’m taking the food out of his belly. He needs it more than me. I don’t know what to do, Kate. How can I stop this happening? I feel so bad about it.’
‘He loves you, Davy. Be proud of that.’
‘Oh, I am. I’m very proud of it.’ He looked dejected.
‘What is it?’ I asked gently.
He was silent for a while and I didn’t force him. ‘I . . . I always feel . . .’ he kicked at a small stone and sent it flying in front of us, ‘I let him down.’ He kicked the stone again. ‘He’s such a strong man. I can’t be strong like him. I can’t make myself grow.’
‘That’s why he wants you to have the best food.’
‘I know,’ he said, kicking the stone really hard. ‘I know, Kate. But I feel like the food gets stuck in my throat as I watch him eat his vegetables while I eat vegetables and meat. His meat.’ He ran on ahead then, afraid his classmates would see him in deep discussion with his sister. You usually ignored your sisters in their world.
He worked it out though. He just stopped eating the meat. He ate all his vegetables and one piece of the meat and then he gave the rest to our dad. ‘Here, Dad, I’m full. You eat this for me, please.’ He’d empty his plate onto our dad’s and walk out of the house. Our dad had no choice but to eat it or waste it, so he ate it.
This went on for weeks and seeing that Davy would not relent, our father accepted the best food. Davy had that kind of a way with him. Soft and gentle, nothing direct, but he got his way more often than most by his subterfuge.
CHAPTER FOUR
Life was uneventful for a couple of years, calm, happy years. When I left school aged fourteen, Aunty Annie and my father were adamant that I wouldn’t go and work in the pits. Many girls and women worked as surface workers, sorting coal, oiling machinery, emptying trams and goodness knows what else. It was hard, physical work enough to spoil a body. Fortunately, Aunty Annie had an acquaintance at church who owned a dress shop in town. She was looking for an apprentice seamstress and Aunty suggested me. I loved sewing and had even designed a few of my clothes. I only had to see a dress on some fashionable lady to be able to draw it and make a pattern. I went to see Mrs Coombes and got the job. I would be apprenticed for four years.
I was frightened and unsure. It was a posh shop, the kind of place where people like my family didn’t go. It was a place for managers’ and solicitors’ wives and daughters – the people who lived on The Avenue and in the big houses on The Common. Those of us who lived in the two-ups and two-downs never went into such a shop; we went to the market stalls to buy our clothes. But I packed up my insecurities and did my best.
I made friends with another girl who was a seamstress there. Edie was the same age as me and lived in Maes-y-coed which was a little step up in social status from the Graig where we lived. She was fun and we hit it off straight away. Mrs Hanse, the seamstress was old and kind. She must have been at least fifty when I went to work there and Edie and I used to laugh at her old-fashioned ways, her wrinkles, of which there were plenty, her grey hair and her barrel-like middle. But she was a kindly soul and we hid our disrespect from her – or at least, I think we did.
Meanwhile, Davy was nagging our dad. Most children left school at twelve because their family needed them to work to earn extra money, but Davy and I were lucky and we were able to stay until we were fourteen. Dad had been promoted to fireman in the pit, and this gave him more wages and job security, which the ordinary miner never had. A fireman is in charge of safety in the pit and is a very responsible job.
From the age of twelve, Davy was always pestering dad to let him leave school and go down the pit. He wanted to give up his boxing too and concentrate on the pit. I couldn’t fathom it at all.
‘Davy, boy, listen to your dad now. The pits are hard and dangerous. You have to be very strong to work there.’
‘I am strong, Dad. I box every week and train hard. I’m strong now. I’ve got good muscles and can beat any boy my size and even bigger. I can start as a boy doing easy things on the surface, sorting coal, tram oiler, picker, winder, labourer and things like that. Women do these jobs, I’ve seen them, so I don’t see why I can’t too.’
‘No, you can’t and that’s the end of it. I’ve spoken and I don’t want to hear another word about it. You stay on and work hard. I’ll not have you in the pit.’
Davy sulked, but stayed on at school. He had no other choice.
*
Dad was in
his early thirties when the war started. One evening, when I had my head buried in a book and Davy was out, Aunty Annie said quietly to him, ‘What are you going to do, Matt? We’re at war now. You’re not going to join up are you?’
‘What makes you think that?’ he asked.
‘Well, so many men are going. Mrs Thomas from over the road, her husband joined up yesterday. Oh, Matt, I don’t want you to join up.’
‘Well, I’ve been thinking it through and reading the papers. They say miners are of more value working in the mines, getting the coal out for the navy, rather than going off to fight. The skill of the miner is valued at last, Annie. Those in charge are realising what a good job we do and how much they need us.’ He tapped his pipe on the grate and packed it with tobacco, taking his time. Aunty kept on with her sewing but I could see she was only pretending, and I kept my head down, pretending not to hear.
He lit his pipe with a quill made of newspaper and puffed a few puffs. ‘I love the mines, Annie, you know that.’ He paused and I sneaked a look. He was looking at her quizzically, and she was nodding, looking concerned. ‘Well, with your agreement, I don’t want to do anything you don’t agree with, I thought, well . . . I thought I’d stay in the pits.’
‘Oh, Matt,’ Aunty said as she got up and kneeled in front of him, ‘I’m so happy. I don’t want you to go away.’
I looked up at them and they didn’t even notice me as Aunty hugged him and put her head on his chest. She started to cry. He looked up and saw me staring and winked at me. I smiled and we shared a secret moment of intimacy. I did love my dad so.
Aunty recovered herself and looked a little embarrassed. She stood up. ‘Well, that’s that then, thank goodness, I’ll make us a nice cup of tea.’
‘I’ll be of more use here than fighting,’ he said to her as she busied herself with the tea. ‘I’m not a trained solider but I do know my pits – and it takes a lot of knowing to mine a colliery.’
The pit was my father’s life, more than we were in a way. He loved us and provided for us, but his priority was always ‘his men’ and their welfare. We didn’t see much of him and he wasn’t prominent in my or Davy’s lives. I suppose he thought he didn’t need to invest any more in his family than food, shelter and education. Our emotional needs didn’t cross his mind. We were provided for and his men needed him and that was what mattered to him. He was always fighting for improved conditions and getting compensation for men injured or for their families if they had been killed. Everyone loved my dad, including us. I suppose there was not enough of him to go round. He did what he thought was best.
For us youngsters, the war seemed so glamorous at first, all those young men going off to war looking happy and dapper in their uniforms. But then we started seeing them return home without legs, or arms, until finally, almost nobody returned. Killed in action the local paper said. And I for one, started to wonder about war and why we were fighting. We also had food and fuel shortages. There wasn’t enough coal for us as it was all going to the navy. The coal that was brought up just a mile away from our house was transported hundreds of miles away while we shivered. But it was a sacrifice we were all prepared to make.
But it wasn’t long before we realised that the war was a godsend for us in the valleys because the government took over control of the mines from the owners and upped the wages to a living wage and shortened the hours. Something the miners had been fighting to get for years and never achieved.
‘Here you are, Annie love. Another big pay packet. Don’t spend it all at once, put some aside for a rainy day. Those sods, the owners, will lower our wages when the war is over and they get control back. You mark my words, the bastards.’
I knew my dad hated the owners; most of the men did. They were greedy and only interested in profit even at the cost of lives – as long as it wasn’t theirs. It was a them and us mentality on both sides.
I was doing well at the shop and the war increased our workload. Because of shortages, we started to make more clothes ourselves to sell in the shop. That’s where I learned to design clothes on a budget. Material was in short supply and fancy things almost impossible to get hold of. Everything went to winning the war. Manufacturing went to produce warm uniforms instead of making pretty clothes for women. Practicality was the fashion of the day. But the valleys prospered and so did our shop.
Once a week, after work, Edie and I would go to the theatre to watch the turns at the Clarence Music Hall. It was very glamorous with all the singers, dancers, jugglers and comedians. We enjoyed the sing-along to the songs which lifted our spirits. It was good, innocent fun.
*
At fourteen, Davy finally wore dad down and went to work in the pit and within three months had his first accident. He was grading coal above ground, sending the best coal one way and the rest graded into house coal and slag. It was a simple accident. He slipped on the wet ground at the end of his shift, overbalanced and fell over hitting himself against a moving tram. He broke his collarbone and right arm and was concussed. He was off work for two months and like a bear with a sore head until he got better. And then, to our father’s astonishment and anger, behind his back, Davy returned to the pit as a miner’s assistant. Boys often helped miners underground, passing them equipment and generally helping out.
‘The work’s too dangerous boyo,’ our dad said. ‘I don’t want my son working underground like me. I had no choice, but you – I’m giving you a choice and you throw it back at me.’
But Davy was adamant he wanted to go underground. I think he had some strange idea of mining, or maybe he was attracted to the camaraderie that existed between miners, I don’t really know, but he only lasted a few weeks before he was back home with a broken ankle, black eyes, and a ricked back.
‘It was dark. Honest, Dad, I couldn’t see a thing and I was so keen to do everything well that when my collier asked me to pass him his mandrel quickly, I rushed in the dark and fell over the tram rails. I’m so angry with myself. But I want to work in the pit, Dad. Really I do.’ His little face was all puckered up and earnest. It must have been hell for him to be trapped into his small body, because although he was now stronger physically, he was still small. He never grew more than five foot and had the same slim build I me. He was like a delicate bird. We both were, but it was harder for him, being a boy.
‘The work is too dangerous for you, son,’ Dad said. ‘You’ve had two accidents already and if you have another one you’ll be looked on as bad luck. No miner will want to work with you. It happens sometimes, this bad luck with one person.’
‘I know I’m little, and believe me, I wish I wasn’t, but it doesn’t stop me working. I can work, I want to work.’
Dad sighed. ‘I’ll talk to the manager about you. Maybe he can suggest something safer for you. But there’s no more going underground, son. I’ll not have it.’
Soon, Davy was sent to look after the slag tips. It was a solitary job. When the coal had been sorted, what couldn’t be used was graded slag and no good for anything. It had to be got rid of and the easiest way was to dump it in any open space near the pit. It was dumped on until it resembled a small mountain – a black, soggy, depressing monument to coal. They got so tall they strung up wire ropes on pylons high in the air, leading from the pit face to the tip. Every few yards, buckets were hung from the wires, filled with slag at the pit, and transported to the top of the tip where men like Davy were waiting, standing alone to make sure the buckets emptied all the slag and in the right place.
It was a monotonous, boring job, but Davy loved it. He loved the isolation, he told me. And the views down the valleys. Even in the wet and cold of snowy winters, Davy would be there up on top of the latest tip he was looking after. He earned a lot of respect by doing this job, so maybe that had something to do with his liking it too. It was generally believed that there were ghosts up there and many a big solid man working in the twilight thought they saw a ghost. Some would run down to the safety of the ground as if the dev
il himself was after him and refuse to go back. But Davy never did. He stayed put and walked slowly up and down the tips in the dark, working away with his torch and if he was ever scared, he never told me.
I was so pleased for Davy. He had finally found something he could do and I was getting on very well at the shop. I had been promoted and was now a fully qualified seamstress and was in charge of Edie and a junior and I loved every day. No two days were the same with alterations and new designs to make patterns for. We made wedding dresses, bridesmaids dresses and lovely clothes for the guests too. The shop prospered and the staff got a modest wage increase.
Edie had a boyfriend called Reg. He was strong on pubs, beer and fags. After a date with Edie he used to drop her off at home early so that he could go to the pub, ‘for a quick one’.
‘You should find yourself another beau, Edie,’ I said. ‘He doesn’t treat you well.’
‘I know, but there’s something about him other boys don’t have.’ She laughed and winked at me, poking me with her elbow.
‘Oh, you! You’re hopeless. Well, on your head be it,’ I said laughing.
‘Come on, Kate, don’t be so po-faced. It’s about time you found a nice boy. You’re nineteen now, you’ll be over the hill before too long and no boy will want you.’
It was a sore point with me. ‘I have boyfriends. They are, well, they’re just not the right ones for me.’
‘You’re too fussy. No boy will ever live up to your ideals. Come on, Kate. You can’t be an old maid. What will I do when I marry my big lug and my best friend is an old spinster?’
I tried to laugh it off, but she was right. I was fussy. I was popular with the boys, they thought me pretty, but I didn’t reciprocate the feeling. I couldn’t get enthusiastic about them and it was starting to worry me. Was there something wrong with me? Would I ever find my Mr Right? I wasn’t sure I ever would.
CHAPTER FIVE
Aunty Annie and Davy had not been getting on as well as usual over the past year or so. The war had ended and when Davy became eighteen, he thought he was grown up and resented her interference. She wanted to know where he was going, what he was doing, and it rankled with him. It all blew up unexpectedly, but then, in my experience, major ordeals always blow up unexpectedly.
The Rocking Stone Page 4