Winners and Losers (46 page)

‘I'm Sali ... Jones,' Sali only just remembered that the surname Evans would be instantly recognizable after all the appeals Megan had made to be allowed to marry Victor. ‘Mrs Sali Jones. This is my husband Lloyd. We are friends of Megan's.'

‘She's not here.' The woman looked nervously over her shoulder.

‘We were hoping that you could tell us where she is. As you can see,' Sali looked down at her swollen figure, ‘I am going to need a nursemaid soon and my husband and I were hoping that Megan would be free to take the position.'

‘She has a job.'

‘Perhaps we could tempt her with extra money,' Sali persisted.

‘My husband will be back from the fields any minute and he doesn't like strangers.'

‘But we're not strangers, Mrs Williams. I met your husband when he came to Tonypandy to see Megan.'

‘I told you she's not here.' Mrs Williams became quite agitated. ‘Now go, before he sees you.'

Lloyd glimpsed movement out of the corner of his eye. Sali turned to see Ianto Williams walking down the mountain towards the yard. His trousers were still held up by string and tied beneath the knees and he was wearing the same threadbare jacket that he had been the last time she had seen him. She went to the gate to meet him.

‘Mr Williams.' She extended her hand as he approached, ‘I don't know if you remember me.'

‘Mrs Jones, isn't it?' He looked pointedly at her swollen figure. ‘You said you were a widow.'

‘I was a widow, I remarried last Christmas.'

‘They came to offer Megan a job, Ianto,' his wife broke in.

‘She's got one,' he barked gruffly.

‘That's what I told them, Ianto.'

‘So good day to you.'

‘Just a moment.' Lloyd wrapped his arm around Sali's shoulders. ‘My wife and Miss Williams were good friends. She would like to write to her. If we could have her address -'

‘No point, she's not in a place where she's allowed to have letters.' Ianto whistled to his dogs. ‘Now get off my land before I set the dogs on you.'

Sali looked back at Daisy and Sam, as Lloyd helped her into the trap. He climbed into the driver's seat and turned the horse around. The last thing Sali saw was Daisy waving a handkerchief with a daisy embroidered on the corner. The small girl looked lost, forlorn and frightened, with Mr Williams and his dogs standing behind her.

‘Ay, I remember Megan Williams.' The potman set a tray of three lamb dinners and a half-sized plateful for Harry on their table in the dining room of the inn. ‘She was a pretty girl. But her father sent her away years back, to keep house for his brother-in-law in the Rhondda.'

‘Then you haven't seen her lately?' Victor took the jug of water and filled everyone's glass.

‘Not since we were in the same class in school. I missed her when she went. She was good too, not like the rest of us. Teacher said she could have gone far, perhaps even been a teacher herself. Nice girl as well as pretty. There was no one like Megan for smoothing over a quarrel before it got started. But then, that's Ianto Williams for you. He couldn't wait for his children to start earning so they could send money home. He took his two boys out of school to put them on a farm over Ammanford way. His girls are in Madame Patti's place.'

‘The opera singer?' Lloyd asked in surprise.

‘She owns the castle up the road towards Brecon, Craig y Nos. Mind you, after all the improvements she's made to the place it looks more like a mansion than a castle now. Money no object, or so people who've been in there say. The best of everything goes through her gates –food, furniture, carpets. Even her servants' uniforms are better than most people's best clothes. Her staff have their own cook and get three hot meals every day. I should be so lucky.' He dropped his voice when he saw the landlord glaring at him. He lifted the four plates from the tray and set them in front of them. ‘Can I get you anything else?'

‘No, thank you.' Sali reached for the pot of mint sauce on the table. ‘Are our coachmen all right?'

‘Eating mutton chops and drinking beer in the bar. They seemed happy enough with the room I showed them over the stables.'

‘Thank you, you've made us very welcome.' After the man left, Sali looked from Victor, who was crushed, to Lloyd. ‘So, what do we do now?'

‘What can we do, except eat this, stay here tonight and go home tomorrow?' Lloyd leaned over the table and cut the lamb on Harry's plate into bite-sized pieces.

‘You're sure that Ianto Williams told you Megan had a job?' Victor finally picked up his knife and fork but made no attempt to eat.

‘I'm sure, Victor,' Sali replied.

‘And you offered to pay Megan more money if she worked for you?'

‘We did,' Lloyd said.

Pushing his untouched plate aside, Victor went to the dresser where the man who had served them was polishing cutlery. Concerned that the potman might feel intimidated by Victor's size and attitude, Lloyd followed.

‘You have a problem, sir?' The potman looked warily at Victor.

‘Not with the food. Do you know if there's been a hiring fair in Brecon in the last couple of days?'

‘Yesterday, sir, so you've just missed it. There won't be another for six months.'

‘What happens at these fairs?' Lloyd asked.

‘Every worker who wants a job lines up in Ship Street, and the farmers come down and pick out the people they want –dairy maids, shepherds, cowmen, or whatever they're short of. They take them for six months or, if the workers are lucky, a full year. But there's not many farmers willing to pay people through the winter months when there's so little work for them to do.'

‘And the wages?' Victor questioned.

‘Are agreed and paid in advance.'

‘In advance? You're sure about that,' Victor said carefully.

‘There's many a small farmer around here who has managed to build up a flock of sheep or add to a herd of cows on what he's brought in by selling his son or daughter's labour for six months or more.'

‘Does anyone keep records of who goes where?' Lloyd glanced back at Sali and Harry. She pointed down to his and Victor's plates to remind him that their meals were getting cold.

‘Bless you, no, sir, it's all done quiet like, between the farmer and the people they hire.'

‘How big are these hiring fairs?' Victor had seen Sali signalling to them, but he ignored her and his meal.

‘Young Bill over there has just taken on a shepherd from Brecon. Bill?' The potman called, ‘Were there many people at the hiring in Brecon this week?'

‘Hundreds,' shouted back young Bill, who had to be at least forty.

Lloyd walked over to him. ‘Can we buy you a drink, Mr ...'

‘Hughes. Ay, I don't mind if I do have another pint.' He drained his glass and handed it over.

‘Did you see a girl at the hiring?' Victor opened his wallet and extracted a smaller version of the framed studio portrait of Megan that stood on his bedside table.

‘Hundreds.'

‘This one is special, pretty girl with long, red-gold hair.' Victor set the photograph on the table in front of the man. ‘Her name's Megan Williams, she's from around here.'

‘Place was teeming with girls, young man, but no pretty ones.' He picked up the photograph, studied it and shook his head. ‘But then they get snapped up early, so even if she was there, it could be that she was hired before I arrived. Some of the farmers round Brecon don't see a soul from one year to the next unless they make an effort to go into town on market day. Pretty girl like this,' he gave Victor a sly wink as he returned the picture, ‘is worth a lot, especially to the unmarried farmers and their farmhands. If you understand me.'

Lloyd gripped Victor's right arm to stop him from thumping the man, and they returned to their table and their meals.

‘We have to go back to Tonypandy tomorrow. With luck, the pits will reopen in the next few days and we're not expecting more than twenty-four hours' notice to start work,' Lloyd reminded his brother.

‘I have to find Megan,' Victor insisted stubbornly. ‘She hadn't recovered from her injuries. If she's not being looked after, anything could happen to her. And I can't bear the thought ...' He turned his head, but not before Sali and Lloyd saw the torment in his eyes.

‘You'll get Sunday off next week,' Lloyd sympathized. ‘The trains run to Brecon, so we'll borrow more money from Sali and I'll go up there with you. We'll both ask around. Someone might remember seeing her.'

‘One young girl among hundreds,' Victor whispered despondently.

‘I'll ask Mr Richards to send someone to Brecon to look for her. We'll get copies of her photograph so he can show them to people,' Sali suggested. ‘If she was there, Victor, someone is bound to have seen her.'

Victor left the table, his meal scarcely touched. Lloyd laid his hand on Sali's shoulder to stop her from going after him. ‘He needs time to himself. I suggest we finish our meal and go to bed. We have to be away by six o'clock tomorrow.'

The following morning, Lloyd, Sali and Harry waited for Victor for five minutes before Lloyd went to his room to look for him. He returned with a note that had been left on his bed.

Gone to Brecon. Expect me when you see me, Victor.

‘It's the noise the inmates make, they never stop, day or night, it makes no difference. Someone is always screaming at the top of their voice but then you've found that out. And we're miles from anywhere, so if you don't live in and learn to put up with the racket, there's no way you can get here to work here,' a fellow maid, Judith, confided to Megan as they knelt side-by-side scrubbing the kitchen floor. ‘Took me years to get used to the din, but now I don't even think about it.'

‘How long have you been here?' Megan wouldn't have liked to hazard a guess as to Judith's age. With her cropped mousy grey hair and blousy figure, she could have been anything between a careworn thirty and a young-looking sixty.

‘Twenty years next month. It is September now, isn't it?'

‘Twenty years!' Megan gasped.

‘I came here from the orphanage when I was twelve. They needed a kitchen maid and the matron said I might do. I got promoted to full maid a year later.'

‘And you've never left?'

‘Where would I go?' the woman asked. ‘I don't know a soul outside of this place and the orphanage, and I was too old to stay there. It's not so bad here, apart from the noise. The food's good, the work's not too hard and as I get full keep and my uniform, I save every penny of my wages. I get thirty pounds a year now, and that's on top of the nest egg in my chest.'

‘You keep your money in your chest with your clothes, not in the Post Office?' On arrival Megan had been given two maids' uniforms, two yellow winceyette nightgowns, two towels and flannels, and a key to a lock-up chest, which served as chest of drawers, washstand and wardrobe rolled into one, and stood alongside her bed in the dormitory that housed five other maids.

‘I haven't seen a Post Office since I left the orphanage. We used to walk past one when we were taken to chapel on Sundays, but then, I haven't been to chapel since I've been here. There isn't one for miles.' Judith dipped her scrubbing brush into her bucket of soda crystals and hot water.

‘You must leave here sometime. On your days off.' Megan leaned back. Her head and the half-healed injuries on her thighs and stomach ached unbearably, but as her fellow maid said, apart from the floors, the work wasn't too hard, and they were only on duty for eight hours a day. Four hours less than she had worked in Mrs Palmer's lodging house on the lightest working day.

‘We spend our days off in the part of the walled garden the inmates can't get into. There's no point in going anywhere else because there's nothing around here. Come on, once we've finished this we can break for dinner. It's my favourite today, beef stew, dumplings and apple crumble and custard.'

Megan's mouth went dry and her heart beat erratically. Would she be allowed outside the asylum on her day off? Even if they were in the middle of nowhere, if she walked for long enough, she'd surely see some sign of habitation and meet someone who could get a letter to Victor –that's if she could find paper and pen to write one, and borrow enough money for a stamp to send it.

Recalling her father disappearing into the waiting room on Cardiff station with one of the men who had brought her here, she had absolutely no doubt that her wages had already been paid in advance and she would never see a penny of it.

‘I thought I heard someone come in.' Billy Evans limped into the kitchen to see Victor lighting the lamp Sali had bought to replace the one Jane had taken.

‘Sorry if I woke you.' Victor turned up the wick and his father saw that his face was grey with exhaustion, his clothes filthy.

‘You didn't,' Billy lowered himself carefully into his chair. ‘I don't sleep so well these days.'

‘Your leg?'

‘The part they took off hurts like hell. The doctor calls it ghost pain but it feels anything but ghostly to me.' He glanced at the clock; it was two in the morning. ‘You came back with no time to spare. First shift back goes down the cage in four hours.'

‘I'll be ready.' Victor sat on the easy chair, pulled a chair out from under the table and propped his feet on it.

‘You must be starving.'

‘I've eaten today.'

‘Not much by the look of you.' Even in six days Mr Evans could see a change in his son. Victor's cheeks had sunk and his clothes were hanging on him. He doubted if he'd eaten a decent meal since they'd returned from the funeral to find Megan gone. ‘There's no need to ask if you had any luck. I can see it in your face.'

‘No one I spoke to had seen anyone who looked like Megan.'