Winners and Losers

by Catrin Collier

  ‘The soldiers,’ Ben admitted. ‘The police don’t dare do it in case word gets back to the authorities and we haven’t the money to set it up.’

  ‘Then the soldiers will be the only ones to make any real money,’ Victor declared.

  ‘I’ve seen you fight. You’ll win, and the police and soldiers have seen to it that the victors –your father gave you the right name,’ Ben grinned at the unintentional pun, ‘aren’t paid in guineas but fivers. Crisp, white five-pound notes for an afternoon’s work if you’re the lucky winner. That’s more than most men make grafting for three weeks underground.’

  ‘If you’ll excuse me, I didn’t get much sleep last night, and I’d like to get home.’ Victor touched his cap and eyed the men blocking his path. They moved aside. He walked into Dunraven Street and turned up the hill.

  ‘Mam?’ Harry wriggled out from under the bedclothes, leaned over her shoulder and close to her ear. ‘Can I get up now?’

  Sali turned over and opened her eyes. Harry was sitting on Lloyd’s pillow, his nightshirt pulled up around his knees, his eyes sparkling.

  ‘There’s no need to ask if you’re still tired.’

  ‘I’m hungry.’

  The smile on his face turned to a look of fear when the door opened and Victor and Joey helped Lloyd into the room. Lloyd’s head was heavily bandaged, the little skin that could be seen between the strips of linen was bruised black, and it was evident that if it hadn’t been for the support Victor was giving him, he wouldn’t have been able to stand upright. Sali blanched and covered her mouth with her hands.

  ‘I’m all right, sweetheart,’ Lloyd mumbled unconvincingly.

  Seeing Harry’s eyes round in fear, Joey forced a smile. ‘No need to look as if you’ve seen a monster, young man, Uncle Lloyd will soon mend.’

  ‘That’s right,’ Lloyd added, his speech slowed by concussion.

  ‘We heard you chattering downstairs, Harry. If you get your clothes from your room and go down, I’ll boil you an egg,’ Victor promised.

  Harry looked uncertainly at Sali. She patted his hand. ‘Uncle Lloyd and I are both fine, Harry, just tired. You run along.’

  Lloyd sank down on the bed beside her after Harry, Joey and Victor left. ‘I could swing for whoever put that bruise on your face.’

  ‘I honestly think I did it to myself. I don’t recall anyone touching me. But you.’ She reached up and stroked his face, and he winced even at her light touch.

  ‘It would appear that a certain Constable John Lamb is in the Royal Infirmary in Cardiff. He was hit with a brick that was thrown in Dunraven Street the night before last. He has a fractured skull and hasn’t yet regained consciousness. Someone, I have no idea who, told his brother, Sergeant Lamb, that I threw it. His mates were happy to get their own back by putting the boot in. My face didn’t get the worst of the kicking,’ he slurred, preparing her for the sight of the bandages that swathed his chest and stomach. ‘They were probably congratulating themselves on a job well done until Gwyn Jenkins stepped in and told them I wasn’t even in Dunraven Street the night before last. They might have argued with him if he hadn’t been backed by a young copper from Pontypridd called Huw Davies.’

  ‘Constable Huw Davies?’

  ‘You know him?’

  ‘I’ve met him.’ She recalled standing at the door of the Hardy’s hut looking for someone to help her. ‘What’s going to happen, Lloyd?’

  ‘To me –nothing. But Joey, Victor and Luke Thomas are going to trial sometime in the New Year. The police had no choice but to drop the case against me but they insist that I wasn’t beaten. According to the sergeant who was on duty in the station last night, I tripped and fell down some stone steps. It’s my word against that of police officers. And we all know what that means these days.’

  ‘What did the doctor say?’

  ‘That I’ll live. Move over. And do me a favour. Help me undress.’ He pulled at his jersey.

  ‘You’re coming to bed?’

  ‘Yes, and for once, my love, just to sleep.’

  Megan laid the fires and served the breakfasts in a trance on Saturday morning. All she could think about were the hours she was about to spend with Victor. But the rooms that slept eight were as bad as Lena had predicted and it took them hours to clear the mess.

  Joyce Palmer joined them when Lena was bundling the linen for the laundry and Megan was carrying the brushes on to the landing.

  ‘After you’ve taken those things downstairs, come into my private sitting room and I’ll pay you your wages, Megan, so you can get a postal order off to your father. I’ve made Cornish pasties for our lunch. You can eat in the kitchen before you go.’

  Megan had been about to say that she would eat with Victor and his family, then remembered the strike. Just one week of living in a house where there was no shortage of food had been enough for her to start taking both quality and quantity of meals for granted. ‘I will, thank you, Mrs Palmer.’

  ‘Lena, go upstairs, wash, change your overall for your apron and make yourself presentable to wait on the lodgers’ table.’

  Megan carried the pails and brushes downstairs, washed her hands in the scullery and ate her pasty standing at the kitchen window.

  It was one of those rare winter days in the valley, crisp, clear and sunny, but when she stepped outside she’d felt the effects of a cold wind, even in the comparatively sheltered back yard. Would Victor want to go for a walk in town or over the mountain? She’d be happy just to sit with him in his kitchen but she couldn’t expect him to light the fire just for her.

  She ran up the stairs to fetch the soft, green wool dress she kept for ‘best’ and her glacé kid, grey shoes. Taking coals from the kitchen fire with tongs, she dropped them into Joyce’s smoothing irons and pressed the dress on a blanket she laid over the scullery table. She polished her shoes and draping her dress carefully over her arm so as not to touch the shoes, raced back up the stairs, debating whether to wear her winter underclothes or her favourite set of summer-weight, Swiss-embroidered Nainsook drawers and petticoat. She would freeze, but it would be worth it to feel beautiful from her skin out.

  She washed and changed in the bedroom she shared with Lena using a sixpenny cake of deluxe rose-scented soap that Daisy and Sam had bought her last Christmas. Her powder bowl was almost empty and her scent bottle only held a few drops. Thinking of the five extra shillings a week she would have at the end of the month all being well, she dusted her chest and dabbed scent behind her ears before dressing in her summer-weight underclothes, dress and only pair of real silk stockings. She removed her engagement ring from the chain around her neck and slipped it on to her finger, stopping every few seconds to admire it. She laced on her shoes, combed out her hair and twisted it into a knot that she pinned on the crown of her head. Fastening on her hat with a jet-headed pin that had belonged to her aunt, she fluffed her curls out beneath it, picked up the cape that Mrs Palmer had dried for her in front of the kitchen fire and took one last look at herself in the mirror, before running back down the stairs.

  ‘Miss Williams.’ Sergeant Martin met her on the first landing. ‘You look very pretty. Going somewhere nice?’

  Not daring to ignore him, she uttered a brief, ‘Yes, sir.’

  He continued to stand at the top of the staircase, effectively blocking her path. ‘I’ve been meaning to have a word with you about my room.’

  ‘Sir.’ She stared down at her feet as she always did whenever he looked at her.

  ‘The standards in this house have improved so much since you started working here, I wanted to give you a token of my appreciation.’ He thrust a box of chocolates at her.

  She gazed wide-eyed at the white box with its Heraldic decoration. ‘Taylor’s Chocolat D’Elite. I couldn’t possibly accept this, sir. They are two shillings a box.’

  ‘You’ve earned them. And you could have more -’

  ‘No!’

  ‘Go on, take them.’ He drew closer to her.

&
nbsp; ‘My fiancé wouldn’t like it.’ She held up her hand to show him her ring in case he hadn’t noticed it when she’d waited at the table. ‘Mrs Palmer is expecting me. I’m late.’ Grabbing the banister to steady herself, she pushed past, fled down the stairs and collided with Constable Shipton. ‘Sorry.’ She sidestepped, but he moved quicker than her and continued to block her path.

  ‘What’s your hurry?’ he grinned.

  ‘I have to see Mrs Palmer ...’ She gasped as he pinched her bottom through her dress. Furious with him and Sergeant Martin, she kicked his ankle and ran across the hall.

  ‘There’s no need to charge around at top speed, Megan. I am sure that Mr Evans will wait for you,’ Joyce said calmly when Megan rushed into her private sitting room. ‘Here you are.’ She handed her two ten-shilling notes.

  ‘I haven’t any money to give you change, Mrs Palmer.’

  ‘You’ve earned your pound this week.’ Joyce gave her a tight smile. ‘And I suggest that if Mr Evans walks you home, he brings you to the kitchen door. You’re less likely to meet a lodger in the back lane.’

  Megan bought notepaper and envelopes in the stationers before joining the queue at the Post Office. She handed over her pound and when she received four shillings and fivepence change she was irritated, as she always was, by the loss of a precious sixpence in purchasing the order and a penny for the stamp.

  She carried the order over to the shelf that held pens and inkpots. The nib on the pen was bent, and no matter how carefully she shook it after she dipped it in the ink, it left small blots around her carefully formed letters. She wrote the address of the farm, made the order payable to her father and scribbled:

  Dear Dad and Mam,

  Am very busy in my new job. Everything is going well. Will write a longer letter next week. Give Daisy, Sam and everyone else my love. This is Daisy’s handkerchief.

  Lots of love,

  Your Megan

  She slipped the note, handkerchief and order into the envelope, sealed it, stuck on the stamp and posted it on her way out. A police officer was standing in front of the door and she stepped into the gutter to avoid him.

  ‘And you could have more ... ’

  She wished she could talk to someone about Sergeant Martin and Constable Shipton. But her uncle was on his way to the other side of the world. Mrs Palmer employed her, but she didn’t own the lodging house and her own position depended on making her lodgers happy. Victor ... he was the last person she could confide in. The sergeant had arrested him and Joey. Victor was even more at his mercy ...

  ‘There’s the bitch!’

  ‘Get her!’ Beryl Richards broke away from a group of women gossiping on the corner of the street and ran towards Megan.

  ‘Traitor!’

  ‘Turncoat!’

  ‘Coppers’ whore!’

  ‘I hope you’re comfortable living in the lap of luxury while children starve to death!’ Beryl’s face was contorted.

  ‘You’re not fit to walk the same streets as decent women.’

  ‘Get in the gutter where you belong!’ One of the younger women pushed her shoulder.

  Megan turned and fled up the hill, clenching her fists and biting her lips in an effort to hold back her tears. She didn’t cry. Not until she reached the lane that ran behind the shops. Then she hid between two sheds until she felt she could face Victor with a smile on her face.

  ‘Megan, I hoped you’d come early.’ Victor set aside theRhondda Leader he’d been reading when she entered the kitchen. He left the table, kissed her and took her cape.

  She set down her handbag and pulled off her kid gloves, before catching sight of the front page: MINERS SENT TO TRIAL FOR INTIMIDATION AND HARASSMENT. ‘You’ve been reading about yourself?’

  ‘It’s not the way I’d choose to make headlines.’ He flicked the paper over to a page of advertisements for the Roath Furnishing Company.

  ‘You want to be in the paper?’ She pulled the pin from her hat.

  ‘Only in a wedding announcement.’ He took her hat from her and placed it together with her cape on the rack in the hall.

  ‘Where is everyone?’

  ‘My father’s at a committee meeting in the County Club and Joey’s working backstage in the Empire. He told my father that he’s helping Marsh Phillips with the scenery in return for free tickets to tonight’s show, but I think it’s more likely he’s entertaining the chorus girls. There’s a small, dark beauty called Peggy he walked out with a couple of times when she was here in Driving a Girl to Destruction. Remember that?’

  ‘It’s still the best play I’ve ever seen.’ Megan recalled the evening she had persuaded Joey to look after her uncle’s children and she and Victor had gone to the theatre. Looking back now, that magical, carefree time of their early courtship, before the strike had begun, seemed part of another world.

  He closed the door when he returned to the kitchen. ‘Sali had to go to Pontypridd for a meeting and after hearing that she’d been injured, Mr Richards arranged for a carriage to pick her up here. Lloyd and Harry went along too. I think Sali only agreed they could keep her company on the journey down in the hope that a change of scenery might do Lloyd good. He keeps insisting he’s fine but he hasn’t been right since he took that beating in the police station.’

  ‘He’s seen the doctor?’

  ‘Several times.’

  ‘But you’re worried about him?’

  ‘He took a kicking as well as a beating and a boot in the ribs can do a lot of damage. What makes me mad is the police are going to get away with it. Not only what they did to Lloyd, but to Sali and this house. They smashed most of my mother’s china and wrecked the place. Every day we discover something else that they broke or damaged.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Victor.’

  ‘I’m sorrier still that you are working for them,’ he added feelingly.

  ‘If I had a choice ...’ She thought of the women who had attacked her in the street and tears pricked at the back of her eyes.

  ‘Please, Megs, don’t upset yourself. You’re only doing what you have to, and there’s no point in us spoiling our afternoon by talking about it.’ He swept her into his arms and set her on his lap as he sat on one of the easy chairs. ‘I lit a fire because we have the house to ourselves. But you look as though you’re dressed to go out.’

  ‘I dressed to go visiting –you. And I’m wearing my engagement ring.’ She held out her hand to show him.

  ‘So you don’t mind staying in?’ He locked his arms around her waist and kissed her full on the lips.

  ‘No. Especially if there are going to be more kisses like that one.’

  ‘We won’t starve. I killed one of the chickens, and although Sali’s not a hundred per cent better, she made soup and a pie. All they need is heating up in the oven.’

  She glanced at the fire. ‘You haven’t been working in the drift mine again, have you?’

  ‘I’m not crazy enough to stand in the dock one day and break the law the next. I used some of the coal your uncle left. Would you like to eat now?’

  ‘I had a Cornish pasty just before I came out.’

  ‘I hoped we could eat dinner together,’ he complained.

  ‘Mrs Palmer made the pasties specially for me, Lena and herself. It would have been rude of me not to eat mine.’

  ‘Then we’ll eat later.’

  ‘I don’t want you to starve on my account. I could heat up the soup for you ...’

  He tightened his grip on her waist to prevent her from escaping his lap. ‘I can think of better things to do than eat for a while.’

  He kissed her again. Her head swam when she felt the warmth of his fingers cupping her breast through her dress and bodice. In the year that had elapsed since he had first told her he loved her, they had rarely enjoyed the luxury of privacy. Christmas night last year had been memorable because she had managed to send the younger children to bed early and her uncle, his brothers and the older boys had gone out. But it had been one o
f only four occasions that she could recall being alone with Victor inside a house. And the last time Victor had been filthy with coal and her father had interrupted them, so she felt that didn’t count. But even on Christmas night, he hadn’t gone any further than he had now, touching her breast through her clothes.

  She nestled close to his chest. ‘Now we’re engaged, you could do more than that.’ Her cheeks burned at her own temerity.

  ‘I’m not sure I could trust myself to stop.’

  She looked up at him. ‘I wouldn’t want you to.’

  ‘And if you have a baby?’

  ‘My father would have to let us get married then, wouldn’t he?’

  ‘And if he didn’t?’

  ‘I hadn’t thought of that.’

  ‘Until you are twenty-one your father has the right to do whatever he wants with you. Forbid us to marry, put you and the child in the workhouse or separate you from the child and send you to work miles from here.’ He tightened his hold on her. ‘I couldn’t bear for anything like that to happen to us, Megs.’

  She unlocked his hands from her waist, left him and went to the fire. Leaning on the mantelpiece, she looked down into the flames. ‘I know my father. He couldn’t live with the-disgrace of a daughter who’d had a bastard. He would let us marry.’

  ‘I’m not prepared to take that risk.’

  ‘And if I am?’

  He fell silent for a moment and when he answered her, she had never seen him look so grave. ‘You know I want to marry you more than anything else in the world. But not that way. Not with your father and the rest of your family thinking the worst of you –and me.’

  ‘I don’t care what anyone thinks of me –except you.’

  ‘Yes, you do, Megs.’ He rose to his feet and wrapped his arms around her again.

  It had taken so much courage to broach the subject of lovemaking with him; she had difficulty believing that he had rejected her. ‘Is this something to do with your religion? Don’t you Catholics think that ... that ... sleeping with someone you’re not married to is a sin?’

  ‘“You Catholics?” he repeated wonderingly. ‘You think we’re that different from Protestants.’