Flame and Slag (10 page)

7

Dirty, king-coal-grained old Daren, gulleyed and humped like an old whore-master’s carcass. We have about a dozen permissible semi-idiots and family skeletons by the breeding horde. Green skeletons. But Mrs Cynon’s secret pull with Superintendent Seymour Lloyd remained inviolate as the unreafforested glacial bog from which Daren river sprang following the Ice Age, the Government fence skirting its hollow acres of rushes, moss and shivery cotton sedge. A few days after the Superintendent bore witness against Vicky Wilson big Percy disappeared. He and absconder Vicky lodged in a Swansea Town Hill back street for two months. Every Thursday he drove home to collect his NCB compo. We bumped into them (as it’s said) in Swansea market, Vicky stiffly blonde as rafia, with Asiatic cheekbones and scatty blue eyes. Ellen steered Lydia in a collapsible two-wheeler pram. I carried some un-Daren buys (chrome coffee percolator, exotic samples of supermarket tinned foods) and Ellen’s shoes. Beautiful Ellen wore a new pair of Dolcis sandals. Our Lydia-child was swallowing purple grapes on top of crisps and a shilling Woolworth’s trifle, conditioning herself to vomit on the 6.30 p.m. bus.

Haggard Percy, like a man living on stale air.

Ellen said, “Your mother’s frantic.”

“You haven’t set eyes on us,” he recommended, lowering a slow, thick grin at Lydia.

“Why don’t you get married? Your father won’t object will he, Vicky? Why on earth should he? Apply to the court if necessary,” — Ellen warding off Percy, parrying her pregnant bulk between him and the girl. “What you’re doing now is very stupid,
and,
” — scoring direct at Percy — “what kind of man do you call yourself, eh?”

“We haven’t seen you, Perce,” I said, taking Lydia’s two-wheeler. “The Daren bus is due, so all the best for now. If you feel like it, call in our house next Thursday.”

“Vicky, shall I speak to your father?” Ellen said, enjoying her abnormal do-goodness in the undefiled way that magistrates benevolently send a broken man to prison for committing his fiftieth petty offence.

The girl snickered revulsion.

I said, “Step lively, wife; we’ll miss our bus.”

Percy rocked on his heels. “It’s all right, Ellen. Let it blow over first; that’s our intention. Don’t forget, you haven’t seen us. I’m having my compo transferred to …”

“Shut yer cake’ole,” snapped Vicky.

Percy’s breathing jerked soft snores in his throat, Vicky lurching him around a fruit stall, her blonde hair swishing like the docked tail of a fly-tormented horse.

I said, “Cheerio then!”

“How long is
that
going to last?” — Ellen musing, having to revolve her whole body to watch Percy and the girl.

“Madame Rees Stevens, marriage counsellor,” I said, “Problems dealt with in strictest confidence. Please enclose stamped addressed envelope.”

“I’m concerned about Selina Cynon, not those two,” — swooping the grapes off Lydia: “
Cariad
, your tummy!”

“And mummy’s tummy. Come on, beaut, you look sexy in that fur hat,” — sale price, thirty bob in C.&A.’s.

Ellen revolved again, showing off a slow pirouette in the weekend hubbub of Swansea market, even her pink toenails sensuous in those size 3½ sandals. Imagination must be a volcanic part of loving. To see, just witness and leave be — fearlessly, I mean.

Lydia stopped in the middle of
Clap hands, clap hands till daddy comes home
to throw up into a plastic bag.

“
He shall have music and mammy have none
,” prompted Ellen.

“
He shall have music and mammy have none
,” parroted our freckled toddler, perfectly eluding Ellen’s minor key. The men in the bus laughed and the women smirked approval.

Percy came home a couple of Saturdays later. I had the roof off Grancha’s pigeon loft, another two swings with his Waun Level sledgehammer (this indestructible tool wrought by Thomas Ivor Cynon’s grandfather, journeyman blacksmith in pastoral Daren, whose nickname patented forty years of steam coal-mining) and the door crashed inwards. I remember Granny Stevens screwing the birds in her soul-burst grief, Grancha’s daily devotion to them, and swung the sledgehammer like a nystagmatic miniature Thor until the four walls were knocked down. By God I wanted to weep, bleed tears, but Ellen came out from the house with a gallon can of paraffin.

“No, love, I’ll chop it up for firewood,” I said.

“Rees, what’s the matter?”

“Nothing. Look, we can see Melyn brook our side of the tump now.”

“There is
some
thing.”

“Memories, Ellen, silly bloody memories.”

“Write them down, boy.”

“I’m not crippled,” I said, Percy shouting from the backyard gate, “Crippled! Whass-this then, whass-this then ?” — rollicking refreshed as a freed dobbin horse up the slope.

Vicky Wilson had shot off to London with his wallet. He didn’t have a penny. Neither was he worried, his mother being less dependent upon straight cash than any widow in Daren.

That night a young constable booked him in Daren Social Club car park. Later, under orders, he delivered Percy safely home, still dead drunk. Mrs Cynon advised the young copper regarding her personal friend, Mrs Seymour Lloyd, one-time eisteddfod contralto, chrysanthemum-grower, producer to Daren Dramatic Society, the full catalogue of blacks and whites, Mrs Lloyd’s whims and fancies. Worth knowing beforehand to make life easier, especially on station duty, Mrs Lloyd’s kitchen only two doors away from the charge room.

Next morning Ellen won with the paraffin, starting a bonfire that glowed all night. Best-man Percy allocated himself three Spartan afternoon shoeing the wood ash into the sloping yard. I raked it smooth, Ellen strewed the grass seed and the sparrows daily glutted themselves from dawn until I opened the back door. So we sowed again under the supervision of another Mrs Cynon connection, Llew Hopkins, ex-town crier, descendant of a line of butchers (his grandfather’s the black bull ditched and shot-gunned when they sank Caib pit), slaughterers and butchers until Daren Health Department forbade the former. Llew maintained the gardens fronting Caib institute, again supervisory, caretaker of Caib institute his principal occupation, his word taken as law, irrefutable, free from chicanery and deceit because the crippling of his hip in the Four Feet seam designated Llew’s avocation, clarified his authority as if ordained by the Almighty. From maimed, still unhealed young lamproom attendant he went directly to the institute when Joseph Gibby fleetingly came back to Daren, and thereafter Llew served the entire life of the hall, hobbling the long billiards room with his hooting vowels and black ebony walking-stick. He frightened collier boys until they learned to respect him. Few men admired him, none attempted to redeem his dreadful oral ignorance. Llew couldn’t long-hand Llewellyn, simply LLEW HOPKINS ESQ CARETAKER CAIB INST. From Llew himself ’stute broke into Daren parlance. He had no friends, only primal connections, e.g. Mrs Selina Cynon.

“White cotton from that Welsh Embr’ideries shop. Milk-bottle tops,” ordered Llew many days before he came to supervise the sowing. And, “
Diolch yn fawr
, Selina”, gravely accepting one of Mrs Cynon’s Gold Flake cigarettes, herself sole smoker of this time-past brand in Daren, obtainable only in Regent Street, next door to the Con Club where five generations of tobacconists (the Einons: Abe, Joshua, Victor, Seaton, Reuben) had catered to four generations of Cynons, Percy’s standing order one hundred and twenty Players a week, plus a screw of Plover chewing twist every shift until he lost his leg in Caib.

“Pavings?” inquired Llew, spavined like a Middle Ages grotesque over his black stick. “For why, Selina?”

“Ellen’s pram, Llew. She won’t have to bring it through the house every time, and with the second one coming soon, do you see, Llew, more convenient, isn’t it?”

Alienated from prams, Llew hecked away a couple of paces, the threaded milk-bottle tops spinning, softly thrumming on the taut white cotton criss-crossed over short sticks pegged into the ground all the way up the yard. He reminded me of my grandmother, the same blind self-commitment. “
Dere ’ma
, Selina,” he said gruffly, leaving us now, tracking out to the gate with the same bristling purpose as Granny Stevens. Syndrome of the indefatigable Celt, his intransigent attitude:
Watch out, I am on my way,
informing Mrs Cynon without raising his head, then standing like a withered tree for her to open the gate and limping away, his duty done.

Mrs Cynon repeated Llew’s advice, saying, “He will speak to the Council foreman. It’s up to us to pay transport from the Council yard. Lovely flagstones for you, from the pavements in Thelma Street.”

Ellen said, “No, thanks, I don’t want them, not from Thelma Street.”

“I’ll tell Llew, let him know the position,” I said, running the unseeded pathway curve out to the gate. But he’d gone.

“Leave this to me,” promised Mrs Cynon. “Vernon Price -Plasterer, he’ll know what’s best. I’ll have a quiet little chat with him.”

So we had a poured concrete path, the pale seedlings half an inch high, tightly sown, green for always when our Elizabeth was born.

The message came down the pit at 10 a.m., another sandy-haired baby girl, weight seven pounds. Mother and child doing well.

“On the piss tonight — celebrate,” Charlie Page said, bending his elbow, taking the blade of his shovel up to his mouth. “Wait till you’ve knocked out eight like me; gets a bit abnoxious by then. I shan’t forget the time my old gel dropped a miscarriage in the Gaiety — let’s see, ten years come next September. Honest, my main thought was, thank the lovin’ Jesus. I was playing cork pool over in the ’stute, six of us in the game an’ I won the bloody pool.

She had our last baby the day those Russians sent up their first Sputnik, October the fourth it was, nineteen-fifty-seven. Now she can’t have any more since they op’rated on her. Bad year that was for us, seven bob rise for wagemen and the following year the bastards asked us to work six shifts a week. Christ, our fathers must’a turned over up there in Daren cemetery. Us silly buggers, we fought an’ fought for the five-day week.”

I said, “What about if you had your time all over again, Charlie?”

“Nothing wrong with a man trying to dig his grave with his weapon,” he said. “Nature, ent it?”

We didn’t ease off throwing coal on the chains, welcome face slips from the front of the cut.

“Reesy, you heard the talk about the Germans drivin’ through to Brynywawr?”

“Rumour?” I said.

“Aye, they were arguing in the Earl Haig last night. Morfed’s big Pole reckons it’s def’nite. He’s a boy, he is; the guts of him taking on a piece like Morfed Owen.”

I said, “Don’t be a bloody
clec
all your life, Charlie.”

“No but she’s like one of those American maniacs you see in films who can’t leave it there. Look, Christ, it isn’t as if I begrudge Fred Fransceska or Morfed herself for that matter. S’life, ent it, natural, mun, natch-ur-al. My old lady had sixteen of us, seven boys an’ nine girls. I got four brothers working over in Brynywawr, doin’ as much for the country as Lord Alf in his little white aeroplane.”

“We’ll be in Brynywawr this time next year,” I said.

“No doubt. Double bon cages over there an’ all.”

“Drift, Charlie,” I said. “All the Seven Feet coal carried out on a main belt to this drift above Brynywawr washery.”

Calculating his distance, he stepped back from a heaving spill of top coal, warning, “Watch it, Rees, it’s workin’ up towards you,” reaching the bigger lumps first, throwing them on the chains. “Christ, mun,” he said, “by the time a man shoves his feet under the table his fuckin’ stent’ll be down in Cardiff docks, way things are goin’ on.”

I said, “Progress, butty.”

“My ring. See that new creeper machinery up on top pit? Five men workin’ the bloody thing. Before now,
before
, old Sid Davies and his horse kept the whole pit goin’ as regards full ’uns and empties. And lissen! The fuckin’ nag was older than Sid hisself! As you know! Ask me, s’load of ballux. Those Germans’ll work in the raw, the daft buggers. They’ll be on sticks when me an’ my old girl’ll be watching concerts in Daren Social. I’ve seen plenty of slashers takin’ the short-cut road up to Daren cemetery.”

“My father was a slasher,” I said, ending Charlie’s talk.

“Too bloody true,” he agreed.

We punched and shovelled coal until eleven o’clock, then from twenty past eleven until finishing time.

Outside the baths on top pit Tal Harding had his car ready to drive me home. There were two neighbour women in the house, Mrs Cynon in charge. Upstairs, the midwife was paying her second visit, offering the baby who looked inhuman, puggy, a reminder that I’d entirely forgotten Lydia as new-born.

“Sorry, Rees-love, we missed a boy again,” Ellen said. She looked lovely, blanched pure.

“Are you feeling all right, beaut?” — small shucking squirms coming from the infant in my arms.

I heard the midwife sniggering discreetly, her and Mrs Cynon out on the stairs landing.

“I wasn’t afraid this time, Rees. Shall we name her Elizabeth? It’s a good name, Eliz-a-beth.”