Winners and Losers (28 page)

‘Jane told me she was pregnant.'

‘She's not trying to pull that one again, is she?'

‘What do you mean?'

‘That's how she got Emlyn to marry her, and more fool him. At his age he should have known better. Jane had a baby when she was thirteen, had it and lost it, if you take my meaning. The midwife warned her there'd be no more. Not for her. Now, if that's all, I'll go and see to this lot.'

Sali saw that the child in the passage had been joined by two more who were smaller and considerably dirtier. ‘We're sorry for bothering you, Mrs Jones.' She glanced up at Lloyd when the woman closed the door.

He pulled her closer to him under the umbrella they were sharing. ‘Not that he deserves it after the way he's behaved the last couple of years, but Joey'll be relieved. I can almost hear him saying, “I told you there was no baby.”'

‘I think we'll all be pleased,' Sali said sombrely.

‘I suppose if you think of the things Jane took as a payment to get out of our lives, it's cheap at the price. I wasn't looking forward to having lifelong dealings with her. And we would have had to, if she'd had Joey's baby.'

‘You couldn't have walked away from the child, could you?' Sali asked.

‘No more than you could have, sweetheart.' He changed the subject. ‘We'll go home via the station. Someone may have seen Jane buy a ticket.'

‘What's the point?'

‘Tracking down the pawnshop. Joey's suit was made to measure and despite what my father said, I know he would like the silver frames back.'

‘And if Jane left by tram?' Sali suggested.

‘We'll put Betty Morgan on to it. She's the best detective we have in the valley.' He slipped his arm around her shoulders and led her away.

‘I hope we never have another Christmas like this one.' Victor pushed up the sash window in the parlour and carefully manoeuvred out the skeletal remains of the Christmas tree he had been given in return for cutting down five dozen others at the farm. Dead needles cascaded around his feet, as he lowered it as far as he could reach and shouted down to his brother, ‘You got it, Joey?'

‘Let go,' came a muffled reply from the back yard below.

Sali packed the last straw star into the cardboard box of decorations they kept in the loft between Christmases, pushed the lid on and tied it with string. ‘This Christmas wasn't so bad.'

‘It was perfect,' he said sourly, ‘apart from Jane stripping the house of everything we had of any value and disappearing to sell it who knows where, the strike, lack of money, me and Joey waiting for our court case to come up, and the police watching us like hawks whenever we left the house.'

‘We had each other, we didn't go hungry and Father Christmas was able to bring Harry his toy cart from us, his coal cart from your father, you and Joey, and some sweets.' Sali brushed the pine needles on the lino into a neat pile, shovelled them into a dustpan and shook them into the ash bin.

‘I'm sorry,' he apologized. ‘None of that was directed at you. You worked hard to make the holiday perfect for us and, it was –in the house. But no one in the valley could really celebrate, and not just because they didn't have any money. Everywhere you look it's doom, gloom and hope died a death. No one dares plan any further than the next meal, or wants to think about a future for themselves or their families, unless they're emigrating. Most people are even worse off than us, and we're living hand to mouth.' Victor slammed down the window and brushed the needles off his hands and the arms of his sweater over the ashbin. He looked keenly at his sister-in-law. ‘You go down to Pontypridd, Sali. You talk to people, important people, at the trustees' meetings. You must hear things.'

‘Like what?' she asked guardedly.

‘Are the hardliners like Luke Thomas and his cronies right? Are the owners really prepared to see every man, woman and child starve to death in the valley?'

‘I refuse to believe that anyone wants to see children starve, Victor.'

‘The colliery companies haven't given an inch over the demands we made five months ago. And,' he confronted her head-on, ‘they're not going to, are they?'

Sali recalled the conversation she'd had with Mr Richards. ‘The authorities and the colliery companies have spent a lot of money bringing in the troops and police and housing them here.'

‘So, they'd lose face if they backed down now? Is that what you're saying?'

‘You read the papers the same as the rest of us. The owners say they can't afford to meet your demands because it would push the price of coal higher than the market value and it would no longer be economically viable to run the pits.'

‘And the union says that the owners can meet our demands if they cut their profits to a reasonable level.'

‘And therein lies the question. What's a reasonable profit?'

‘You're even beginning to sound like Lloyd.' He gave her a grim smile. ‘They haven't broken us –yet. But they're prepared to let the strike go on until we are starved into submission, aren't they?'

Sali took a posy of dried and shrivelled holly from the bare mantelpiece and dropped it on top of the pine needles in the bin. ‘There are people in Pontypridd who believe that they will.'

‘People in the know?'

‘It's what Mr Richards thinks.'

‘I'm sick of the strike,' he burst out angrily. ‘Of having no money, of not being able to look forward ...'

Sali wasn't fooled by his uncharacteristic eruption. He was undoubtedly sick of the strike –they all were – but something else was troubling him more. ‘I'm sorry Megan couldn't spend more time with us over the holiday,' she commiserated. The Christmas meals Mrs Palmer had laid on in the lodging house had generated extra work and the longest Megan had been able to get away had been an hour and a half on Christmas afternoon.

Victor watched Sali empty the last of the pine needles into the bin, picked it up and carried it to the basement door in the kitchen. He glanced at the clock. ‘Are Lloyd and Harry going straight from the children's free show in the Empire to the soup kitchen?'

‘I said I'd meet them there.' Sali had cleaned the kitchen while Victor had swept the hearth and laid the fire they'd light that evening. She'd prepared a vegetable soup, made the beds and sorted the laundry. There was nothing else she could do until the fire was lit.

‘Joey and I'll walk you to the Catholic Hall.'

‘There's no need. I want to call in on a couple of families on the way.'

‘Distributing distress relief funds?'

‘While the donations are still coming in.' She went into the passage to fetch her coat.

‘Charity!' he exploded resentfully. ‘When all we're asking for is a living wage and the chance to earn it.'

‘I'm sorry, Victor.'

‘So am I.' He gave her a sheepish smile. ‘None of us can be easy to live with at the moment.'

‘You're not.' She pinned on her hat. ‘But there's no other family I'd rather be with. Are you and Joey going rabbiting?'

‘We'll try, but I don't think there's a rabbit or hare left alive between here and the coast.' He helped her on with her coat.

‘Do me a favour?'

‘If I can.'

‘Don't forget to take the dogs with you this time, and be extra careful with those bunnies. They've become particularly vicious lately.'

He gazed at her. ‘You know, don't you?'

‘That you've taken up bare-knuckle boxing? We all do, Victor. You're not fooling anyone. If it's just a question of money,' she began diffidently, ‘I could ask the trustees for a loan ...'

‘To pay court fines?' he said sceptically.

‘For emergency expenses,' she amended.

‘We have our pride, Sali.'

‘So Lloyd keeps telling me. Just remember it's not only Megan who loves you. We all do, even if your father and brothers don't say it.' She kissed his cheek.

He walked her to the front door and watched her leave, then returned to the kitchen, picked up the ashbin and carried it down to the basement. Joey had chopped the tree into kindling and they heaped the pieces on top of the needles.

‘That'll keep us going for a day or two. I'll go up the farm tomorrow afternoon when you're with Megan and see if I can pick up some more wood there.' Joey left the bin at the foot of the steps ready to be carried back up to the kitchen. He watched Victor flex his hands. ‘You don't have to keep doing this, you know.'

‘Another two afternoons will bring in another ten pounds.'

‘Only if you win.'

‘You don't think I will.'

‘I can pay my own fine.' Joey ignored Victor's question.

‘With what?'

‘All right, I have no money, but I can do time as well as the next man.' Joey lifted his coat and cap from the peg.

‘And what will that prove other than you're prepared to let them cage you like an animal? If you've time to spare, you'd be better off trying to find out where Jane sold our things.'

‘And what do you suggest I do if I find them?' Joey enquired acidly. ‘Say, “Could you hang on to them, sir, until the strike ends and I can make enough to buy them back?”'

‘We might be able to swap our watches for Mam's silver photograph frames. They are the only things Dad regrets losing. You haven't heard anything?'

‘Like what?'

‘Where Jane's gone.'

‘If anyone around here knows, they're not talking.'

‘You've asked around?'

‘Only Betty Morgan, but she knows everything there is to know about everyone in this valley. Rumour has it she spends her nights flying around outside bedroom windows on a broomstick.'

‘Just don't let her catch you saying it,' Victor warned. ‘Got the rags, goose grease, blanket and water bottles?'

Joey held up the haversack he used to carry his snap tin and water bottles underground. ‘I had a few words with Connie yesterday.' He followed his brother into the yard. ‘Her delivery boy has joined the army. He's off next week and she said I could take over until the strike ends.'

‘Will you?'

‘She's only paying him seven bob a week, but since Dad emptied the bank account when Lloyd and Sali married, we can do with every penny. I know there's no way that I'll earn enough to buy back everything Jane took, even if we track it down. And the fine will be even more impossible to meet, but money's money and if I do my stint on the picket lines at night the boys won't be able to complain.'

‘As it's the least popular time, they'll love you for it.'

‘God, but it's cold up here. Better watch out that bits of you don't drop off when you strip off.' Joey turned up his collar and wound his muffler around his mouth as they headed up the mountain. He glanced across at his brother.

Lost in thought, Victor was striding directly into the raw, cutting wind. He had fought three double bouts in the last month and, although the police and army champions were good, he had won all six fights and remained comparatively and outwardly unscathed. The blows he had taken had landed on his chest, shoulders and arms. The resultant bruises had been large and colourful, but they had remained hidden by his clothes except when he undressed for bed. And because he and Joey shared a room and a bed, invisible to everyone except his younger brother.

‘Know who you're up against?' Joey asked, more to make conversation than curiosity.

‘The police have put up a man called Fred Wainwright, the Somersets a private, Reg Wilde.'

‘Are they good?'

‘Reg Wilde is the one who beat Dai Price to a pulp, but then, Dai's no boxer.'

‘And Wainwright?'

‘I know him by sight. He looks fit.'

Victor halted when they reached the summit. He turned and looked back down the mountain towards their house.

‘It's still there.'

‘Let's hope it always will be.'

‘You worried?' Joey asked, concerned by Victor's taciturnity.

‘No more than I am before any fight.'

‘It's not too late to back out.'

‘With all the strike pay the boys have riding on me?' Victor turned his face back into the wind. ‘Come on, if we don't get moving I'll be forfeiting the match as a no show.'

‘You can punch harder than that, Evans!' Luke Thomas yelled so loudly that Joey picked up his brother's clothes and his haversack and moved away. He continued to stare intently at the two figures circling one another on the tump. The police champion wasn't as quick on his feet as Victor, but for all of that, when his punches hit home they connected solidly.

Victor dodged a left hook aimed at his jaw, only to have a right land below his ribs, winding him. Before he could recover, another left split the soft skin below his eye.

‘I've a week's strike pay riding on your brother. There'll be hell to pay from my missus if he loses,' Alun Richards complained.

‘You've a bloody nerve backing him after what you did to Megan Williams,' Joey said angrily.

‘Victor clobbered me afterwards so I'd say that makes us quits. I was even thinking of charging him for using me as a punchbag.'

‘I wouldn't try it if I were you,' Joey advised.

‘Get him, Evans! Don't go soft on us!' Luke screamed.

Wainwright drew his fist back. Victor feinted and floored him with a single punch to the jaw that split his lip. Wainwright stood for a moment before crumpling slowly, first to his knees, then sideways on to his right arm. As his eyes closed, his seconds ran up and dragged him to the edge of the tump.

Joey went to his brother and draped the blanket over his shoulders. Blood had seeped from the cut below his eye down the left side of his face.

‘You OK?' Joey asked, as Victor gulped in air.