Meggie was my joy. We were so close and I made sure Mrs Mallow couldn’t influence her too much. I had to be careful, I didn’t want to alienate the two of them from each other, but Mrs Mallow and I came to an unspoken agreement about Meggie. She knew how I felt about her and understood it I think. I had to have something for myself: something to keep me alive and give me hope. We can’t live without hope. Meggie was my hope for the future. I couldn’t rely on Tom. He’d never supported me. He’d let his mother take over the upbringing of the boys, and in a way, if I look at it from her point of view, she did what she thought was right. I was weak physically as each pregnancy took any strength I had. I suppose she kept me alive by taking over the boys: alive to breed again. Our futures were in our children – boys especially. Well, whatever, I didn’t know how to stop her. My Tom, the one I married, got lost in the realities of life. Mrs Mallow was right, he was a weak man who would do anything for a peaceful life.
*
Our children grew up ‘on the parish’, but they were not alone as everyone we knew was in the same boat. The men created all sorts of things to keep themselves entertained. Marching bands, cricket matches, walks over the mountain, cards games played for matchsticks, teaching the kids football, all sorts of things to try and keep up moral. But Tom was not interested in any of them. He just sat and moped and I despaired for him. He had the melancholy that was obvious to me but he wouldn’t talk about it, got nasty if I mentioned it. There was no treatment anyway, not for a miner, and even if there had been he had too much pride to seek it.
I took in sewing to give us a little extra. As everyone was in the same financial situation I agreed with my customers that if they supplied the material then I would make whatever it was they wanted and they would pay me what they could afford, either in money or other necessary things like food. There was no other choice. It was that or nothing and I never reckoned my time was worth much. I cut up worn out clothes and made patchwork dresses and shirts from the salvageable pieces. Often, people came with old clothes of dead grandparents and I made modern clothing from them. Nothing was wasted.
I took a chance and bought a Singer treadle sewing machine on the never-never. It was a big machine that you worked with your feet so that your hands were free to control the work. This meant I could sew anything from delicate baby clothes to curtains. It was a heavy piece of furniture in its own right. Made of thick, polished oak, it had a flat top which, when you pulled it up, rolled over and rested horizontally on a pull-out arm giving you a work surface for the material you were working on. Underneath that top was the machine itself which you pulled up and clicked into place. It was ingenious and I loved that machine. The design, the usefulness, the way it could earn you a living and be an elegant piece of furniture too. I was in seventh heaven.
I had nowhere to put it except under the window of our kitchen. It took up valuable space but at least I got the light. So I sewed while the kids played on the floor behind me, Mrs Mallow cooked and Tom sulked, when he was there that is. He only seemed to be around when it was dinner time. What he did for the rest of his time, I really don’t know – and had learned not to ask him. My sewing made the difference between our children having enough in their bellies or very little. It was a hard time all right, especially when the spies from the council called unexpectedly. Word got round that ‘the socials’ were in our street and we all hid any work we were doing on the sly. What did they expect from us? We were starving. We couldn’t afford to be honourable. Honourable people died because if we were found to be doing any paid work our benefit was cut. And it was a mean benefit to start with.
*
Then, to my horror, I found out what Tom had been doing with some of his time. All I’d known was that he was out. That’s all he would ever say. ‘Where are you going, Tom?’ I’d ask, as he left the table after his dinner and put his jacket on.
‘Out,’ was all he ever replied. I did know that he always came back smelling of beer and I often wondered how he could eke out his money so far, but didn’t give it too much thought. If he could get more money for himself to spend on beer, then let him be was my philosophy. That was until one day, a neighbour told me that he was surprised to see Tom down the Greyhound pub. ‘What do you mean, surprised?’ I asked him.
‘Well, he was taking orders at the tables and getting beer in for the men, waiting on them, you know, with a tray. Then every so often, someone would say, “Have a half on me, Tom.” And Tom’s face would light up and he’d say, “Thanks, I will.” A couple of the lads who were desperate would do this kind of thing, but I never thought I would see Tom doing it. I always thought it was just the alcoholics who did that.’
I tried not to show my despair. ‘I think he likes the company and he’s a good husband, he gives all his money to me.’ That was true. Whatever the situation with our marriage, Tom always looked after us and gave me all his pay packet or dole money. He would ask for a shilling for himself, ‘If we can afford it, Kate, make sure you have enough for the kiddies.’ Often, he didn’t get his shilling, but he rarely complained. He was good like that. I had no idea that he was practically begging for beer in the pub. I felt a soaring pride in Tom’s selflessness, but at the same time, humiliation that my husband was doing such a thing: that we were reduced to this.
I had to do something about it. I had to help him keep his pride. So I decided to say nothing but to do something constructive. We ‘d grown apart but he was still my husband and I didn’t want his mother to know about it, so I made even more economies, went without more myself, to give Tom two shillings a week. His eyes lit up when I told him. He was like a little boy in some ways. Taking what was doled out to him and not questioning where it came from. ‘Oh, thanks. Thanks a lot,’ he said as he spat on the coins and put them in his pocket.
When he came home that night after everyone else had gone to bed, he was stinking of beer and drunk as a skunk. He’d spent it all – in one night. I was furious, but with an effort I kept hold of my temper. I could use this to my advantage if I played my cards right. No one had mentioned Dudley for years, for which I was grateful, but sometimes, usually at inopportune moments, he’d come flooding back into my mind and upsetting me all over again. I was still raw if I gave myself the time to think about it. Consequently, I pushed him out of my mind as soon as he entered it but the thought that Tom might have killed him was like a persistent worm wiggling around my mind, and now, Tom was so drunk and we were alone. I might just be able to catch him out as he sat in his armchair by the cold fire and started singing and giggling.
‘Tom, just sit there tidy now and drink this nice cup of tea, there’s a good ‘un.’ He took the cup and drank deeply. I brought my kitchen chair up to his armchair and sat facing him. ‘Do you remember when we got married and how happy we were on our honeymoon?’ (I’d always kept up the illusion that I was happy on our honeymoon.) ‘How we laughed and played in the sand and sea, you built me sandcastles, do you remember?’
‘Yesh, and you buried me in the shand,’ Tom slurred and swayed.
I laughed, ‘Well, you encouraged me I seem to remember.’
‘Never!’ Tom tried to look me straight in the eye, but he couldn’t focus properly. This is my moment I thought.
I made my voice soft and sweet. ‘Can you cast your mind back to just after that time? Can you remember? Tell me what happened to Dudley?’ He looked at me puzzled for a moment. And then swayed again, still trying to focus on me. I was unsure whether he’d understood my question. ‘You met Dudley didn’t you? Something happened between you because we never saw Dudley again. What happened? It’s all so long ago, you can tell me now. I won’t hold it against you, never that, in fact I’d be grateful to you. My life has been so much easier without him.’
By now he had focused on me and was looking at me with a cold and ferocious stare. I don’t think I had ever seen such a look on his face before. ‘Damn you,’ he shouted. ‘Damn you to hell.’
He swiped his arm
sideways, deliberately smashing his cup and saucer into the grate and got up with a struggle, swaying dangerously. ‘I’ve told you before, I don’t remember, can’t you just leave it at that? If you ask me again, I swear I’ll swipe you and not the tea cup.’ He staggered towards the stairs and shouted, ‘Just leave me alone, woman, give a man some peace.’
The next day, we didn’t speak of it. As usual, burying unsavoury things into our inner beings, to fester there and turn bad inside. I never stopped wondering what had happened to Dudley. Had Tom killed him? If so, how had he got rid of the body? Or did Dudley leave the country as he threatened all those years ago? No, I didn’t believe that, he would have come back by now, he was that sort, he couldn’t resist stirring up trouble, he would have come back all right.
So, nothing else was said except that I told Tom his money had to last him all week and if he came in drunk again I would stop the money altogether. I never saw him drunk after that, and I think he frightened himself into temperance, afraid of what he might say under such a barrel load of beer. However, I knew Tom had a secret from the very fact that he never got drunk again, although he still drank; but it was never enough to make him senseless.
But there was another side to Tom.
‘Here you are, Sam,’ he said one day, giving him the train engine he’d been whittling for days.
‘Oh, thanks, Dad, that’s smashing,’ he said as he took the engine and showed it to Frank in great excitement. Tom had made Frank a bus a few days before and Sam had been waiting for his toy.
‘Me, me too, Dad,’ Meggie shouted.
‘You next, Meggie, love. What would you like?’
‘A shop,’ she said instantly.
‘A shop?’ Tom echoed. ‘A real shop, with a counter and tins and eggs and things?’
‘Yes,’ Meggie shouted out, getting very excited.
‘Oh, Tom, don’t promise what you can’t deliver,’ I said gently. ‘Be careful you don’t cause her disappointment.’
‘Don’t worry,’ he said with a smile, ‘I’ll start on it straight away. She won’t be disappointed.’ He picked up a piece of the scrap wood he always kept by his chair. ‘Now this,’ he said bending towards Meggie, ‘is a counter I think. What do you think, Meggie? Can you see a counter in this piece of wood?’
‘Yes,’ Meggie shouted, ‘a counter, a counter. I want a counter.’
Tom winked at me and made me laugh.
‘Oh, go on, make your counter then.’
‘A nice cup of tea will make this counter an even better one I think.’ He winked again.
‘Oh, you and your tea,’ I said going off to the cwtch. ‘Tea all round, everyone?’
‘Yes,’ they all shouted, including Tom.
Those simple things made our life happy.
In the end, Tom made a complete shop for Meggie. The building he made out of cardboard he got from boxes from our local shop and he covered it with newspaper.
‘Lovely decoration,’ Tom told Meggie. ‘Look, old Mr Jenkins has died and Johnny Jones has won his swimming gala, and a lost horse has been found.’
‘Yes,’ Meggie jumped up and down in excitement. ‘My shop is a newspaper shop.’
We all laughed.
The counter fitted perfectly and Tom glued paper shelves to the walls with little drawings of tins and eggs and flour sacks and sweets placed on them. Mrs Mallow and I pretended to be customers and even the boys joined in. Meggie was a proper little shopkeeper and made sure we all paid for everything. Tom had made cardboard money. If I had any spare cloth over from my sewing, I would make a toy for them. Our children were happy in their simple ways. We made the best we could out of our circumstances and I did all I could to disguise my feeling about Mrs Mallow. The children loved her, she was strict with them, but fair and they respected that.
Besides us, Mrs Mallow’s life was her church. I went with her every Sunday, but I’d still not recovered the faith I had before Dudley took it from me. I’d tried hard, I wanted to believe, but just couldn’t. And I had to disguise the fact that I couldn’t believe as it would have involved too many explanations I didn’t want to give.
The saving grace of going to church was Edie. We met up every Sunday morning for service and left our husbands to look after the kids. They couldn’t argue with their wives going to church. Edie and I would sit apart from Mrs Mallow, she didn’t welcome us into her little circle and we most definitely didn’t want to be in it. Edie was a believer, even if it was a disparaging one. We had great fun as Edie sang out the hymns at the top of her voice, which wasn’t melodic, and I sang alongside, far more demure. All the old dears would give her bad looks as she belted out those hymns. And then she’d disarm them later by offering to help.
‘Can I do anything for you, Mrs Jenkins?’ she’d ask, full of concern as Mrs Jenkins struggled with her arthritic limbs to get up from the pews.
‘How about you, Mrs Thomas, do you need a steadying hand?’ As Mrs Thomas limped down the aisle with her stick.
‘Mr Rudd. Take my arm, please do. You’re poor leg is bad today I can see.’
And she meant it too. She hated to see suffering, but always made a joke of things. I understood Edie and saw beneath her light exterior into her caring soul.
‘Why do you stay friends with that . . . that person!’ Mrs Mallow said. ‘She’s a disgrace.’
‘She’s my friend, and I like her. She has a kind heart.’
‘That’s as maybe, but she’s disrespectful.’
‘Oh, she’s just full of fun. She does no harm. Don’t be so hard on her, Mrs Mallow.’
‘Well, she’s not my idea of a church goer. She’s far too . . .’ she hesitated, unsure what it was that Edie was, ‘well, disrespectful, like I said,’ she bristled.
Edie was a bone of contention with Mrs Mallow, and I loved Edie all the more for it.
The church was my life too. It was free and that was a huge consideration. My friends were also there, and my social life was built around it. We went on trips to the seaside with our families once a year, had tea parties for the kids, reading groups for the more backward children, all sorts of things that gave me enjoyment.
*
Whatever happens in life, it goes on regardless. At fourteen, Jimmy left school. Of course, he couldn’t find work. The next year, Frank joined him on the dole and then Sam the following year. They were good boys, steady and ambitious and it broke my heart to see them unable to work. But I, and if I’m honest, both Tom and Mrs Mallow in their own ways, had instilled in them the desire to work and improve themselves. We encouraged them to go to the market every week, looking for casual work humping boxes around, maybe working on a stall if they were short staffed. It taught them a bit about life even if it wasn’t the bit I wanted for them.
Then, it was Meggie’s turn to leave school. She’d proved to be good at sewing like me, and she helped me in my sewing business, starting with hems and cuffs and buttons. Meggie made my life worth living. Oh, I know I shouldn’t say that, I had three lovely sons, but it was Meggie who lighted up my day, who gave me the impetus to carry on struggling.
Nothing lasts forever, people always say, and they had said it for years in the valleys but nothing changed. Then, in 1937 something miraculous happened. And it changed all our lives totally.
Out of the blue, well, for me anyway, the powers that be had got together and decided to build an industrial estate to create jobs for the valleys. By some fluke of good fortune, they chose Treforest to build it. Treforest was so close to Ponty, it was almost in Ponty. At first, it was just a few factories which opened up and started recruiting. There was almost pandemonium at the Labour Exchange but it soon became clear that only young men were wanted. They could be trained far more easily than hardened, belligerent miners. Therefore, Jimmy, Frank and Sam found themselves the proud owners of jobs. Menial jobs, but none the less, jobs with prospects for improvement. For the first time in years, we had steady incomes coming into the house.
All except for Tom: he wasn’t given a job and my heart went out to him. But what could I do, except say, ‘Don’t give up, Tom. Please don’t give up.’
He took my hand. ‘No, you’re right, I must start to hope now. Things are changing, that’s clear. I won’t give up.’ His eyes shone and I could see the hope behind them. I so dreaded him being disappointed again. But he still had the power to surprise me. Shortly after this, one market day, just before the boys were to start their new jobs, he went out early in the morning and came back around mid-day. Wrapped up in proper little bags were three ties. He gave one to each of the boys and told them they were to wear them to their new jobs. ‘Nice, good ties for nice, good jobs,’ he said. ‘It’s important to look nice.’
We all wiped a tear away as the boys unwrapped them. They were tasteful and of good quality: a dark green one for Jimmy, a dark blue one for Frank and a maroon one for Sam. They put them on and we all cheered. They looked a picture and so proud that their dad had bought them. It was the first time he’d ever done such a thing and it touched us all deeply. Goodness knows where he got the money from. None of us asked but I suspected he gave up his beer money.
Then a few months later, Tom got a job. Just like that. It came up at the Labour Exchange and he applied, like he’d done hundreds of times before, and they gave him the job. He was to be the new odd-job man at a works in Nantgarw. It was a bit further away than the new estate, but Tom didn’t mind. It was a job.
I laughed when he told me. ‘You! An odd-job man! You’re useless at odd jobs.’
He laughed too. ‘Can’t deny it, but it’s mostly cleaning, sweeping up, bit of painting. Nothing complicated. I’ll manage. Oh, Kate, it’s a job! A job! Someone’s given me a job after eleven years on the dole. I can’t believe it.’
The Rocking Stone Page 20