Longing (7 page)

A
NGHARAD
Lewis lived with her coal-miner father. She had lost her husband in the same cave-in as had killed Gwyn Jones. Unlike her friend Siân Jones, she had not gone back to work in the mine afterward. She wanted something better. She yearned for something better, for a grander home and for pretty clothes and money for some luxuries. She dreamed of a rich husband. She had found a job cleaning house for the Reverend Llewellyn and for Owen Parry. She had begun stepping out with Emrys Rhys two years after her husband's death, and there had been a growing fondness on both sides. But then she had got a job at Josiah Barnes's house to add to the other two, and finally her dreams had seemed within her grasp. She had stopped seeing Emrys.

Angharad was lifting a small tray of cakes from the oven when Josiah Barnes returned to his house from showing the marquess around the mine. She set it down and smiled at him.

“Good afternoon, Mr. Barnes,” she said. “I have made you some little currant cakes for your tea. Your favorites.”

He grunted. “I think you forgot to tell me something, Angharad,” he said.

She tried to look blank, but her eyes slipped from his. She knew instantly what he was talking about. “Oh?” she said.

He took her by one wrist and squeezed hard so that her fingers splayed wide. “What were Scotch Cattle doing out last night?” he asked.

“It was to warn the Chartists, Mr. Barnes,” she said. “Or rather, those who will not join them.”

“Oh, aye,” he said. “And when were they asked to join, pray?”

She looked flustered and tried in vain to flex her fingers. “There was a meeting on the mountain the night before last, Mr. Barnes,” she said, not looking at him. “I didn't know anything about it. Honest, I didn't.” The lie would make her afraid to go to chapel on Sunday.

“Angharad,” he said sternly, “I don't like having things kept from me. I don't like being made a fool of. I thought you understood that.”

“I didn't know about it until today,” she said. “Honest.”

He grunted and released her wrist. “Upstairs,” he said, patting her on the bottom. “And out of those clothes.”

She smiled at him. “Yes, Mr. Barnes,” she said.

She pleased him, she knew—always keeping his house clean and tidy, cooking for him although it was not part of her original duties. And giving him his pleasure in bed. He was a single man and a lonely man, Angharad believed. And she had begun to believe in dreams. She would do anything to make her dream come true—including giving him information that she judged would not harm anyone in particular.

He did not undress when he followed her up a few minutes later. He merely loosened his trousers and lay heavily on top of her on the bed. She opened her legs for him, and he thrust himself inside her and rode her with vigor while his hands took hold of her naked breasts and squeezed them hard. He grunted and relaxed his full weight on her when he was finished before rolling to one side of her. He kept hold of one of her breasts.

“You are wonderful, Mr. Barnes,” she said, gazing worshipfully at him. “I do like a masterful man.”

“You must just remember, Angharad,” he said, “that a good woman does not keep secrets from her man. You must trust me. If I am your master, you must tell me everything you know. I have everyone's interests at heart, after all. You know that. I would be displeased with you if I thought you did not trust me and deliberately kept things from me.”

“I trust you, Mr. Barnes,” she said earnestly. “I think you are
wonderful. It is just that I did not know this time. I'll tell you next time. I would do anything for you.”

“I will expect better next time, then,” he said. “Lie still now while I rest. I'll have you again before you go.”

“Yes, Mr. Barnes,” she said. She closed her eyes and dreamed of life in the stone lodge cottage. Her own spacious home to do with as she liked and money to buy ornaments for it and clothes for herself. The man who lived there with her in her dreams had Emrys Rhys's face.

*   *   *

The
workers were paid in the Three Lions Inn, as they always were. It was owned by the company and many of the men never did make it out the doors before their pay pack was seriously depleted. Many a wife waited at home for her man to come, angry at his weakness, anxious about how much or how little money there would be left to stretch over the week's needs. Many thought with a sinking heart of the already impossibly high advance taken up at the truck shop and the resulting smallness of this week's pay, now being drunk up. Tomorrow or the next day they would be asking at the shop for an advance on next week's wages.

This evening many of the men drank deeper than usual—not with the once-a-week pleasure of having some money in their pockets, but with the impotent anger of their reaction to the news that wages were to drop ten percent during the coming week. Take it or leave it, the paymaster had said with a shrug when some of the more vocal men had protested. Profits were down. It was either a reduction in everyone's wages or layoffs. There were always more workers ready to move into the valley and work for even less if all they wanted to do was grumble. The Irish were always willing to work.

Siân waited at the end of a long line. The coal miners were always paid last, the women after the men. She thought of the long, hard hours spent underground each day and the almost inhuman conditions. And all for so little pay that it would scarcely buy sufficient food for the coming week. What would happen with a ten percent reduction? Yet she was one of the fortunate ones. Grandad and
Uncle Emrys worked at the furnaces and were higher paid than most men. There were three wages going into their house and only four mouths to feed. There were no children. She tried not to listen to the complaints of some of the men with large families.

There were the usual murmurs about a union. Not loud murmurs with the paymaster still present, but quite unmistakable nevertheless. Owen was sitting with a large group of men at the far side of the room, Emrys among them. Her grandfather was sitting with a group of older men.

It was all they would need, she thought with an inward sigh of despair. As if they did not have enough troubles without that. There had been a curious silence at work during the day about the activities of the Scotch Cattle last night. And yet there had been a very definite awareness of the one topic that dominated all their minds. Siân had walked home from work with Iestyn, as she often did, and had asked him directly.

He had smiled at her. “Don't worry your head about it, Siân,” he had said. “You are tired after a day's work.”

“And you are not?” she had said. “What am I not to worry my head about? Did they give you a warning? Did they, Iestyn?”

“It is not right to give in to threats,” he had said. “It is only right to go with one's conscience, Siân. I am not afraid of them.”

“You will not join the Association, then?” She had been whispering.

He had shaken his head. “You are not to worry about it.” He had smiled again, but she had been able to see from the paleness of his face behind the coal dust that he was afraid. His face had reminded her for a moment of Gwyn's when he had been carried up from the pit, dead.

She was terrified for Iestyn. He was going to ignore a warning from the Scotch Cattle! As she waited in line for her wages, she thought for a moment that she was not going to be able to get her breathing under control but would collapse, gasping, on the floor.

Oh, Iestyn,
she thought, as he passed her and smiled, his pay pack in his hand.
Foolish, brave boy.
She would have a word with Owen. Maybe Owen could do something about it. Maybe he knew someone
who belonged to the Scotch Cattle, though she had never known anyone who was willing to admit as much. But if anyone knew, Owen would. She would have a word with him, plead with him. He knew that she was fond of Iestyn. She felt marginally better.

And yet now the men were reacting to the news of the wage cut with anger and the murmurings of a strike. Where would it all end? And what sort of a waiting game was the Marquess of Craille playing? But she dared not think of that. Oh, she dared not, she thought as her heart started to palpitate again.

“Well, Siân Jones,” Ceridwen Hughes said, digging her in the ribs with one bony elbow and grinning to reveal crooked teeth. Unlike Siân, Ceridwen had not bathed before coming to the Three Lions for her pay. She had merely scrubbed her cheeks and the palms of her hands. “What did you think of him, then?”

Him
today could mean only the Marquess of Craille, who had appeared underground during the morning to inspect the mine without any of the warnings they usually had if Josiah Barnes was expected. Siân had been trying not to think of that visit and the terror it had occasioned her. Life had been so full of terror in the past few days. She was mortally tired of it.

“I think he found it unpleasant,” she said. “His nose was wrinkled.” She remembered how she had stopped just in time before butting into him headfirst and how she had looked up and almost gaped at his immaculate splendor, so out of place in the mine. And at her realization that now it was beyond all doubt. The man on the mountain and the Marquess of Craille were one and the same man. And then she remembered the fear, almost amounting to nausea, as she had waited to be recognized.

“I saw him close-up,” Ceridwen said. “He looked right at me.” She lowered her voice. “I wouldn't mind stepping up the mountain with that one for a good go. What do you say?”

“I don't think he would go with either of us, Ceridwen,” Siân said with a smile. She tried to feel real amusement at the thought. She was tired of feeling afraid. “Ah, at last. It is almost our turn.” Her back ached with the long wait following upon a day of work.

She raised a hand in farewell to Owen as she turned to leave a few minutes later. He and the men with him were deep into their beer and animated talk. She shut her mind to what they were undoubtedly saying. She would not think of it anymore.

She sighed as she let herself into the house a few minutes later and smelled the dinner her grandmother was cooking. It was good to be home and to close the door behind her. If only all her troubles and fears could be shut outside and left there. She smiled wearily at her grandmother and kissed her cheek.

“The line seemed to move even more slowly than usual,” she said. “I am sorry to be late, Gran.”

“There is no point in waiting for the men, at any rate,” Gwynneth said, her voice curt as it usually was on payday. “Sit down,
fach,
and eat.” She spooned generous ladlefuls of stew onto Siân's plate at the table. “They can eat it cold later. There is wicked it is of the owners to pay the men in the pub. And clever too. They get their money back almost before it leaves their pockets. And women and children go hungry.”

“Wages are going down next week,” Siân said quietly. “Ten percent, Gran.”

Her grandmother sank onto the chair at the other side of the table. “Oh,
Duw, Duw,
” she said. “How can we live on less, then? Are we supposed to eat grass?”

Siân slid her pay package across the table. “We will manage, Gran, as we always do,” she said. “I just worry about Gwyn's folk.” Gwyn's father had the coughing sickness that so many miners ended up with after spending years working underground. He was not able to work any longer. Only Gwyn's older brother Huw and his youngest brother, Iestyn, were working in that house and yet there were eight mouths to feed, counting Huw's three young children. “Perhaps . . .”

Her grandmother spread the money before her on the table and divided it in half. She pushed the one half back toward Siân. “Yes, take it to them,
fach,
” she said. “For the little ones, is it?”

“But Huw is so proud,” Siân said with a sigh. “I will have to slip it to Mari on the sly.”

“Men!” Gwynneth Rhys said. “I suppose they are all drowning their sorrows down at the pub and whispering about a strike—Grandad and Emrys among them.”

“And Owen,” Siân said. “I can't really blame them, Gran. For some it is a matter of life and death. Really and truly. But we do not need that kind of trouble on top of what we already have with all this business over the Charter—and Scotch Cattle last night.” She swallowed. “They called on Iestyn. He has been given three days to join the Chartist Association. But he says he will not.”

“Oh,
Duw
.” Her grandmother was about to say more, but she was stopped by a knock on the door. Owen? Had he left the pub early, then? But the door was not opened as it usually was if it were Owen or one of their neighbors. Siân got up to open it.

“Mrs. Siân Jones?”

She did not recognize the man, though he was well dressed.

“Yes,” she said.

“You are wanted at the castle,” he said in English. “By his lordship. You had better be quick about it. He does not like to be kept waiting.”