The Rocking Stone

by Jill Rutherford

  It was a few months after Meggie was born and one night as I got into bed with Tom he reached out for the first time since the birth to pull me into another loveless embrace. I knew where this was leading so took a deep breath. ‘Don’t you think it’s time we put this kind of thing behind us? It will only result in another child and we can’t feed the ones we’ve got properly. I can’t have another child, Tom,’ I pleaded. ‘I just can’t. It will kill me. I’m too weak.’

  He paused and then let me go, rolled over and went to sleep. And that was that for the rest of our marriage. We never talked of it of course, and I don’t know why he capitulated so easily. I convinced myself that he did it for me. That he did still have some feelings for me, somewhere deep down. It was his way of saying so.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Little Meggie was a year old and doing well even if she was on the small size. One warm day, when the sky was blue and clear and the wind was but a gentle caress, I took Meggie to the rocking stone. We sat there, me with my legs dangling, and Meggie sitting on my lap waving her arms around and laughing as we looked out over the town. I kissed the top of her thick hair and thought how much like Tom she looked. She was beautiful. I told her our story, Tom and mine’s. Of how this rocking stone was our special place. Of how it was witness to our hopes and ambitions, our love and desire and wished her as much happiness as Tom and I had during that precious time of innocence and love. And that, for her, it would not go wrong as it had for us. My hopes were in Little Meggie. If she could find the happiness I so craved, then everything would be worthwhile.

  I told her about our town and its history – how a remote farming community of immense beauty could turn into an industrial scar on the landscape. How people desperate for work, desperate to feed their families, desperate for a life, moved here from all over. And how the rich, selfish people turned those desperate and honourable folk into pawns for making money, and how that affected men like her daddy. I wanted her to know it all, so told her now just in case I lost my nerve when she was older and able to understand.

  And then, of course, he entered my mind – as he always did when I was happy and contented. Dudley! He flew around like a hornet in my mind. Stinging me and reminding me to expect him to reappear any time. Biting at my memories of the rape and bringing them to life again. But I did not tell Meggie any of this. This was not her problem and I would never discuss it with her. But the fear of him reappearing never left me.

  But eventually, people stopped talking about him. Pleased, I believe, like us, to forget about him. To push him out and excrete him like a poison from the body. And I for one was grateful for their silence. Whenever he flashed into my mind I pushed him out instantly. I couldn’t afford to let him take over my thoughts. Mrs Mallow and Tom probably had those moments too, but if they did, they kept it to themselves.

  Tom worked all the hours he could, bless him. That was the one thing he did for us. He worked hard. But it soured him. He was being worn out by the work and the attitude of the pit owners and their officials.

  After the war ended and the prosperity of the valleys plummeted, it became clear our coal was getting more difficult to extract and coal was cheaper to buy in other countries and import to Britain. Also, oil was taking over from coal, especially on ships and our coal was especially suited to ships. Miners were laid off by the hundreds of thousands and there was a lot of bad feeling between the owners and the men. In 1925 the owners tried to force the miners to take a cut in wages and to work an hour extra a day, but opposition was so strong, a Royal Commission was appointed to look into it. It concluded that the industry was in dire need of modernising and that some parts of the country, including South Wales, should accept the cuts. The owners took advantage and insisted on large cuts whilst the miners and the union fought on for a fair wage for a fair day’s work.

  And then, on the last day of April in 1926 – a date I will never forget – the miners who refused the cuts were locked out. Literally, locked out. The mines were closed to them and they were refused work.

  Tom was one of these. He took it bad and would sit in his chair looking defeated. He’d rage at me regularly, the same thing over and over as if he had a groove in his head he couldn’t get out of. He didn’t stop for breath, just stared straight ahead, his hand clutching the arms of his chair until they turned white while it all spewed out of him in a desperate utterance. I despaired for his sanity.

  ‘It’s the fault of those bastard owners. They’ve done this to us, mun. They cut our wages to slave labour rates and compromised on safety to get the coal out faster. But we miners wouldn’t have it – life-threatening conditions for a few shillings. What did they want from us: our lives? There were already accidents galore and I’ll tell you another thing, they weren’t accidents. Murder I say it was: murder by another name but murder just the same. The dirty tricks they pulled, compromising on safety while covering it up. Forcing men to use less and less props to hold up the tops as they dug. Telling lies when the roof collapsed, saying it was the dead men’s fault, accusing them of trying to cut corners to make more money. Bastards!’

  Telling the officials to close their eyes to gas underground and making them say there were plentiful roof props when it was the opposite. All to get more coal out as fast as possible. Bastards!’

  His eyes were bright and staring, unseeing. He was in his own world: a man’s world. One I couldn’t enter; or he wouldn’t let me enter. I’d learned to let him get on with it, to get it out of his system.

  ‘Over the years we had nothing but conflict when we should have been working together. We should have been modernising but that cost money and God forbid if you took any profit from their pockets. Call themselves bosses? They couldn’t boss a dandelion and make it grow. And now look where we are – other countries producing coal so cheap they can transport it around the world and still sell it cheaper than we can extract it for. It’s a tragedy, that’s what it is.’

  He paused for breath; still staring ahead as sweat appeared on his brow. ‘And that farce of a general strike! Solidarity they called it. Betrayal I call it. That bastard government called it revolution and brought out the army and sent a warship to Newcastle. Can you believe that? It’s not revolution, mun. It’s fighting for your right to live a decent life as a decent human being. Not to be exploited because you’re poor. Poor parents have poor children, rich parents have rich children. It’s quite simple and not our fault. We all do our best with what we’re given. And don’t talk to me of that bastard, Baldwin! And that bastard union turncoat – Thomas! I can barely say his name – betrayed us all he did. Called off the strike and left the miners high and dry. Why?’ He thumped the arm of the chair with his fist. ‘That’s what I want to know. The lily-livered, quivering coward. We didn’t want revolution, we wanted fair play.’

  He went silent for a few seconds, wiping the sweat away. ‘And look at me. What a poor specimen of a man. I’ve no money for baccie or beer. I’m fed up of bread and water to fill up my belly. My family is starving, and I can’t help them. I’m powerless. Do you hear me? Powerless!’

  Then he’d sit for hours, not saying a word. It was awful to watch and my heart went out to him. But I couldn’t help him because Mrs Mallow always pushed in to take his hand and talk to him. He never responded, but talk away she did. She did it so that I couldn’t. She took every opportunity to put her grains of sand into our relationship. Tom raved about the bosses and I wanted to rave about her, but of course, I kept silent. It would only have made everything worse.

  I started to realise something then. Years ago, before Tom and I married, Mrs Mallow told me that Tom always ignored Dudley as much as he could. That Tom’s nature was like his real mother’s, kind and gentle. Now I understood she meant that Tom was weak and didn’t like conflict. It was then I started to understand Tom more, but it didn’t really help any.

  Tom and the other miners had a one-track mind in my opinion because while they were fighting for their lives
so were their women. More women died than miners but they were overlooked. No one fought for our rights. I only had to look around my area and see the wives dying. The hard work, the constant children and sacrificing their food for their families finally wore them away with depressing regularity. I thought I would be one too, but for some reason I didn’t die. I always put it down to my Boadicea spirit. Oh yes, she was still with me, keeping my spirits up and driving me on.

  We had no other industry in our valleys, everything depended on the pits. If the miners didn’t work, everything else dried up too. Every other business depended on the miners getting their wages. It was a time of survival: nothing more and nothing less.

  Over the next four years we learned how to eat even less, stretch out our paltry dole money so that we could all eat. Mrs Mallow had her widows’ pension, of course, and she always spent it on us and the church. She’d put half aside for the church and half for us and she wouldn’t be moved on this. ‘The church is the backbone of our society,’ she said. ‘If that goes, we go too.’

  She had been a cook in her youth and she’d brought up four children on a miner’s wage, so she knew how to make things last, but even she had to invent new ways of stretching things. We never ate any fruit without it being in a pie with pastry thick enough to fill us up. The fruit would be bulked out with stale breadcrumbs. We bought mouldy lentils and dried beans cheaper, ‘a bit of mould nor dirt never hurt anyone’, was Mrs Mallow’s mantra. Every Saturday morning, she’d go down to Lipton’s store on the Tumble with a bowl. She’d buy as many cracked eggs as she could for six-pence. Sometimes we got more than other times as it depended on how many eggs had been damaged. Every delivery, the assistants would check all the eggs and take out any damaged ones which they’d crack open into a huge bowl and crush the shells into a box. The raw eggs they sold by the ladleful and the shells they sold to gardeners for improving the soil and keeping off slugs and snails. Nothing was wasted.

  We lived on gristle and fat which Mrs Mallow put in the meat grinder with the bit of meat we could afford, and we didn’t dare spit out a bit of gristle without having Mrs Mallow giving us what for. ‘That animal died for you,’ she’d say, ‘so eat its lovely meat and it’s horrible gristle, it all goes to make the animal. No gristle, no animal, so eat it up. Acknowledge the sacrifice that animal made for you.’ It always made me think when she said that to the kids. I hadn’t thought about animals like that before. She had a tender heart sometimes and I could almost be fond of her.

  Jimmy was five and about to start school. We had a special relationship Jimmy and I. He was a mammy’s boy and I loved him just as much as I did my little Meggie. The other two boys, Sam and Frank, were typical boys who love rough and tumble. Tom would play with them and take them up the mountain from time to time when he was feeling up to it. I used to teach them to read and encourage them to act out the stories of King Arthur and they’d fight over who’d be the dragon. We had great fun, especially when we all visited Edie.

  I’d take the kids over to her house once a week. She had four of her own too and they were of similar ages. We’d let them run riot in the kitchen as we drank tea and chat. Little Meggie was starting to take notice and wanting to join in with the boys. It was comical to watch her. She was rejected of course as she was still too little – and a girl – so Edie and I would find baby things to do with her.

  ‘I know,’ Edie said one day, ‘let’s make balls out of newspaper and she can throw them up in the air. Come on, boys, who can make the best ball of all – the roundest and firmest. Betcha I can,’ she’d yell as she made a dive for the pile of old newspapers in the corner.

  ‘You’d better make sure you have enough paper left for the toilet,’ I laughed as they all dived in. The boys followed Edie’s example and rolled up the paper layer after layer trying to make the best one.

  ‘You know, Kate,’ she said leaving the boys to it, ‘my big lug surprises me sometimes. He’s only gone and joined a brass band. He’s got enough wind for a trumpet that’s for sure the way he shouts around the house, but to make that same breath into something beautiful, well, we’ll see.’ She laughed her infectious laugh and as always, it set me off.

  ‘You’re lucky, it gets him out of the house, but Tom won’t join anything. He just sits around the house and mopes or goes to the pub with his mates. He tells me he makes a glass of beer last all night. But, well, I’m not so sure. He comes home a bit tight sometimes.’

  ‘Oh, Kate, let the man be. He’s a different sort to my big lug, he’s simple, but Tom thinks more, that’s his trouble. If he finds someone to buy him a drink, so what? He leaves you alone, doesn’t he?’

  I nodded. ‘Yes, thank goodness. I can’t afford any more kids.’

  ‘I know what you mean.’ She laughed again and winked.

  ‘What?’ I said, laughing.

  ‘Devious means, that’s what we women need to keep the baby at bay.’

  ‘Oh, you and your devious ways,’ I joked. I looked at the boys who were still intent on making the perfect paper ball. ‘Be careful what you say in front of the boys, they’re starting to pick up on things.’ I laughed again. ‘I don’t want them telling the things you tell me to Tom or even worse, to Mrs Mallow.’

  Edie exploded with glee. ‘Oh, my God, Kate, can you imagine Mrs—’

  ‘Stop it, Edie,’ I said trying to control myself.

  The boys looked up wondering what we were getting hysterical about.

  We all loved our afternoons with Edie. She helped me cope and kept me sane. The simplest things in life can make all the difference.

  *

  And then, as if we didn’t have enough to put up with, the depression hit us. And for South Wales it was catastrophic. Tom’s small unemployment benefit had long run out and he was now ‘on the parish’. It was means tested and so humiliating. It was the thing that broke Tom of his last vestiges of respect. The way they treated those men was shameful. Being ‘on the parish’ seemed to be a code word for the officials at the Labour Exchange to be superior, impatient and downright disrespectful. There was no privacy and everyone could hear what everyone else said, every plea, every cry of despair.

  It crushed Tom. ‘It’s the lack of respect, mun,’ he’d say. ‘Why should I be treated worse than a dog? What did I do wrong? What did any of us do wrong? Nothing I tell you. Nothing, except to try and live a decent life and look after our families. Is that wrong?’

  It was the beginning of the thirties and the newspapers said Wales was among the most depressed countries in the world. I could believe that because we didn’t know a miner who was still in work. We had to rent a cheaper house, although there were not many cheaper than the one we had, but one came up at the end of Graig Street. It was the last house in the street and abutted the mountain. It was an unusual house because although it looked like a terraced house it was semi-detached. This was because of the lie of the land and these two houses had been squashed tightly on a knoll sitting above the street by several feet. As the knoll was narrow and long, the two houses were double fronted and only one room deep. So we had two small rooms side by side downstairs and two side by side upstairs divided up by the steepest staircase I’d ever seen. When someone stood at the top anyone standing at the bottom, looking up, could only see the person’s feet up to their knees, and the reverse looking down. Mrs Mallow refused to go up them.

  Also, they had something no one else on the Graig had. Both houses had a long front garden. I loved that. But in reality, it was only mountain scrub and you couldn’t grow anything as it was too stony. They were there because it was the only way to reach the houses from the street so the builders made a feature of them. From the street you opened the gate – yes each house had a gate! – and mounted five steep steps which led to a rising pathway through the centre of the garden, and then up six extra high steps which defeated many a small child or old person. Access would be a problem so that’s why the two houses were cheaper. Also, the mountain impinged ve
ry close to them at the rear. It was held back only by a high stone wall which had been turned black by the wetness seeping down from the mountain. The side wall of our house abutted the mountain and people walked up and down the pathway there where the tufty grass and gritty stones rubbed against the wall. The house was part of the street, but apart from it too and I thought of that bit of the mountain surrounding us as being mine. It was an untidy mountain, windblown and uncared for, like a tramp with his trousers tied up with string and holes in his clothes, needing his hair brushed and a shave as it undulated in a scruffy overcoat. But I loved it. And, best of all, from our front garden, whenever I looked up, I could see the rocking stone where Tom and I had lain and first declared our love for each other. Our innocence lay there. A memory embedded in the rock.

  Now, living in sight of it, I resolved to visit it whenever I needed to get away, to get some time for myself, for however short a time I could spare. It had been mine and Tom’s special place and I was going to keep that magic close.

  Mrs Mallow had taken the left-hand downstairs room as her bedroom and said, ‘I’ll share this room with Meggie. It will enable you and Tom to sleep well. I’m so old now, I don’t need to sleep,’ she smiled. But I wasn’t having that. She wasn’t going to steal Meggie, my Meggie, away from me. I put my foot down and stormed upstairs with her cot and nearly fell down those damned stairs and broke my neck. But I had succeeded in making my point and Meggie slept with Tom and me. The boys shared the other upstairs room.

  The remaining downstairs room was where we lived, cooked and ate. And small as it was, it had, unfortunately, three doors and a window in it. The first door opened onto the tiny area between the front door and the stairs. The window overlooked the front garden. The back door was opposite the window and the third door led to the cupboard under the stairs.