Beggars and Choosers (19 page)

Any faint hopes Sali had that the birth of her baby might change her life for the better were soon dashed. Much as she longed to leave the confines of Mill Street for an hour or two, she knew better than to ask Owen for permission to visit her Aunt Edyth. And she accepted that her uncle would not allow her to visit even the servants' quarters of Danygraig House. But a walk on one of the hills that surrounded the town where she could breathe in air free from the rancid taint of Mill Street would have been glorious. She even dreamed of green fields and woods, and began to wonder if the only way she would leave the house was in her coffin.

The endless routine of housework kept her chained to the rooms above the shop and the yard that bordered the filthy river. Iestyn continued to place the orders for the household goods, which were delivered by tradesmen and taken in by Rhian, so she never saw anyone to speak to other than Owen, Iestyn and Rhian. When the baby was a month old, she summoned the courage to ask Owen if she could take him for a walk on a Sunday morning or evening when he was in chapel. He flew into a rage, told her there was no way he'd allow her to flaunt her bastard around the town, especially on the Lord's Day, and warned her not to ask again. She didn't need the warning. No matter how little, or what time of the day she angered him, he always vented his rage on her back with his belt at night.

The hardest part of her life was keeping the baby away from Owen. Iestyn and Rhian adored the child and helped as much as they could, because Owen couldn't bear the sight of him. She returned to Owen's room to sleep on the floor when the child was six weeks old. After that, if he cried in the night, it was Rhian or Iestyn who tended him, because no matter how distressed he became, Owen would not allow her to leave his bedroom. If the baby was hungry, Rhian fed him scalded cow's milk, which he sucked from a boiled rag. At first he refused it, within a week he became accustomed to it, and by the time he was three months old, he was sleeping through the night.

When the baby was six months old, Owen insisted Sali wean him, and finally allowed her to sleep alongside him in his bed, but she slept no easier than she had done on the floor. She dreaded the nights he demanded ‘his rights'. And the baby's birth made no difference; he always took her the same way, with her kneeling, naked, facing away from him. She learned to endure his intimate assaults on her body, just as she endured his beatings, and, as the months passed, even began to believe his assertion, that considering the magnitude of her sin, he treated her more leniently than she deserved.

Owen never mentioned her return to chapel and after his reaction to her request that she be allowed to take the baby for a walk, she limited her conversation with him to domestic matters. No criminal had ever been incarcerated closer than she was in Mill Street and her son's imprisonment was as complete as her own. The only outlet she had for her emotions was Harry, as she privately called her son. And she lavished all the time and energy she could steal on him. He was not only her pride and her joy, but Rhian and Iestyn's too.

When the child was ten months old he began to walk and they could hold conversations with him. He recognised the pictures she drew on odd scraps of paper Iestyn scavenged. He played with wooden spoons and saucepans, the only toys she could give him, and he learned never to make a sound when Owen was around.

Until the Saturday night when he was two and half years old and Owen came home earlier and drunker than usual.

Worn out by the busiest day in the shop, Rhian had fallen asleep. She was sitting at the table, her head slumped forward, buried in her arms. The baby was feverish, hot and exhausted from a chill Sali had blamed the rats for bringing into the house. August had been insufferably hot and they had multiplied and grown bold, frequently invading the upstairs rooms in their search for food. The child had been fretful the whole day and even when Sali finally managed to lay him down in his cot, he whimpered and thrashed around in his sleep.

At nine o'clock Iestyn pleaded with her to read a passage from his latest library book. She had just opened it, when the front door slammed downstairs.

She shook Rhian awake and handed the book to Iestyn who hid it beneath a mound of papers on the dresser. They all looked anxiously to the child as Owen stumbled noisily up the stairs. The last time he had cried when Owen had come home drunk, Owen had threatened to put the cot in the dog kennel.

The door burst open and Owen stood, red-faced and red-eyed in the doorway. ‘Get them.'

‘What, Owen?' Sali asked nervously. Never logical when drunk, Owen expected her to understand him instantly.

‘The clothes I allowed you to keep. And I'll take this.' Grabbing her wrist he wrenched the wedding ring from her finger. She cried out as he sliced her skin and Iestyn was on his feet in an instant.

‘Don't hurt Sali, Owen.' He stepped between her and his brother.

‘Don't hurt Sali, Owen,' Owen taunted.

The baby's whimper escalated to a cry and Sali backed towards the cot.

‘I told you to get those clothes.'

All Sali could think about was the ring hidden in the waistband of the skirt. Her last link to Mansel and the old life that had begun to seem like a dream. But she dared not disobey Owen. She looked to Iestyn. He understood her and moved protectively closer to the cot. When she returned with the brown paper parcel that held her suit, Iestyn was still standing between Owen and the cot. Rhian had retreated to the corner next to the window in the hope of remaining unnoticed.

Sali folded her arms across the parcel, clutching it to her chest. ‘It's my last good suit, Owen.' She knew she shouldn't have said the words as soon as they were out of her mouth, but all she could think of was the ring, and the loving expression on Mansel's face when he had slipped it on to her finger. She hadn't even seen it since she had sewn it into the skirt, but losing it was like losing Mansel a second time.

‘Hand it over.' The baby whimpered and Owen turned to the cot.

‘Take it.' She thrust the parcel at Owen.

‘Take it? It's not yours to give, whore! All you ever do is defy me.'

Sali watched mesmerised as Owen drew his arm back, but drunk as he was, she didn't believe he'd hit her. Not in the kitchen. Not in front of Rhian and Iestyn. He had always beaten her in private in their bedroom ...

A burst of crimson exploded in her head as Owen slammed his fist into the side of her face. Disorientated, she fell against the cot, striking her head on the iron bars. Dimly, as if the sound were travelling over a great distance, she was aware of her son crying. She had to reach him ... had to ... She struggled to her feet but another explosion sent her catapulting backwards away from the cot into the range. A deafening crack rent the air as the back of her head connected with the oven door. She could smell the acrid stench of her hair burning. Rhian screamed, Iestyn shouted and the baby's cries escalated.

She struggled to open her eyes but a thick curtain had fallen over her face, blinding her. She tried to wipe it away but her left hand refused to move. She lifted her right and clawed at whatever was obscuring her sight. Through a dense, red-black haze she glimpsed Owen leaning over the cot.

Iestyn grabbed his brother's waist and wrenched him away. She threw herself over the cot, shielding the child from Owen. The baby's sobs filled her ears and to her horror she saw blood dripping on to his blanket.

A pain shot through her neck as Owen's hands closed around her throat. He lifted her off her feet. She tried to beg for her baby's life, her lips moved, but the sound remained strangled in her larynx.

As Iestyn fought to prise Owen's hands from her neck, Owen tightened them. Dense waves of grey mist washed over her, blurring shapes and sounds. Weak, nauseous, she was aware of the kitchen floor hurtling towards her. Rhian shrieked and threw something at Owen. There was a splintered crash of a chair breaking and the sound of something heavy tumbling down the stairs.

Someone lifted the baby from the cot, as she lay on the floor unable to summon the strength to raise her head. Owen bellowed. Quick, light steps ran down the stairs. Rhian shouted from somewhere far away. She looked up. Owen was standing over her, his fists raised. It was the last thing she saw before she tumbled into absolute darkness.

‘We'll not interfere in a domestic,' Sergeant Davies declared unequivocally, looking from Rhian Bull, who was trying to soothe a hysterical child, to Mrs Hughes. The oldest Hughes boy, who'd been sent to fetch the police when Rhian had emerged screaming into the street with the child, peered around the open door of Owen Bull's shop. A constable left the group of officers gathered around a dark heap at the foot of the stairs, pushed the boy aside and joined the sergeant in the street.

‘One of them's dead, Sarge.'

‘You sure?'

‘I'm sure. Want me to fetch the doctor?'

The sergeant made a wry, lemon-sucking face as he nodded. Domestics could be ignored; dead bodies meant filling in forms, taking and writing statements, and coroner's inquests. Every officer on the Pontypridd force could recite a list of the men in the town who knocked their wives about. Some women, like Sali Bull who'd married carrying another man's bastard, deserved everything they got. Others developed slovenly ways that a tap or two occasionally sorted. He'd never thought any less of a man for trying to keep a difficult wife in order the old-fashioned way. Not that he'd ever had to resort to beating his own. She'd learned to toe his line after he'd given her a warning on their honeymoon.

Rhian blocked the constable's path. ‘Is it Sali?' She clasped the baby so hard he stopped crying, swallowed hard and let out a harsh sob.

‘It's your brother, Miss Bull. The half-wit.'

She thrust the baby at Mrs Hughes and ran into the house. One of the constables had lit his lantern and was holding it above Iestyn, who lay sprawled on his back behind the door, staring up at the ceiling, exactly as he had been when she had run past him and out of the house. She knelt beside him and tried to lift his head.

‘Don't touch him, Miss Bull.' The sergeant moved in behind her.

‘Are you sure he's dead?' she pleaded. ‘He looks as if he's been knocked out ...'

The sergeant closed Iestyn's eyes. ‘I am sure, Miss Bull. There is nothing you can do for him now.'

‘Sali is still upstairs with Owen.' She looked up the staircase. Dark even in daylight, the top of the stairs was shrouded in shadows as black as coal.

The sergeant listened for a moment. He could hear a faint noise, like a man grunting – or crying. ‘Griffiths, you stay here. Gurner, I'll be right behind you.'

Owen Bull was slumped in the easy chair in the kitchen, snoring in the profoundly deep sleep of the drunkard. His wife lay, sprawled unconscious on the floor beside a cot, her left arm twisted beneath her at an unnatural angle, her face a bloodied, jellied mass, her singed hair matted with clots of congealing blood.

‘Get downstairs and tell the doctor to come up here first. Iestyn Bull can wait, she can't,' the sergeant ordered.

‘And the girl?' Constable Gurner noted the blood smeared over Owen Bull's knuckles.

‘Bring her, so she can tell us what went on here. And send up another two officers. The biggest on duty.' He jerked his head towards the chair where Owen snored. ‘Looking at the mess in this place, chapel deacon or not, I'm not giving the order to wake him until he's handcuffed and outnumbered.'

Rhian stood in the kitchen while two of the largest officers stationed in Pontypridd, half dragged, half carried Owen, who was ranting and raving at the top of his voice, out through the door and down the stairs.

‘I'm a patient man, Miss Bull,' the sergeant said in a tone that suggested he was anything but. He waited until Owen's shouts faded as he and his escort turned the corner of Mill Street and headed for Catherine Street and the police station. ‘Not only am I patient, I like to get things right. Tell me again, what went on in this house tonight?'

‘My brothers started arguing,' she clutched the baby and choked back her tears.

‘Over what?'

She shrugged.

‘Was it Mrs Bull?' the sergeant suggested archly.

‘No!' she exclaimed angrily. ‘Owen came home early. He was in one of his bad moods.'

‘He was drunk,' the sergeant suggested.

‘I don't know. Sali and I just call it Owen's bad mood. The baby was crying ... Owen went to the cot ...'

‘So, Iestyn thought your brother was going to hurt the baby?' he interrupted.

‘Yes ... no ...' She contradicted herself. ‘I don't know what Iestyn thought.'

‘Has Owen Bull ever hurt the child?'

‘No, but Owen doesn't like him and, as I said, he was in one of his moods. Iestyn tried to pull him away from the cot, they struggled and Iestyn fell downstairs.'

‘You are quite sure Iestyn fell? That Owen didn't push him?' The sergeant questioned carefully.

‘I didn't see. I can't be sure. I don't know,' she cried out in confusion, shifting the weight of the baby who had finally fallen asleep, in her arms. ‘It happened so quickly ...'

‘Stay still, Mrs Bull.'

As the doctor's order cut through Rhian's protestations, Rhian and the sergeant turned to the corner of the room where the doctor was crouching beside Sali.

Sali could hear the soft murmur of voices and was conscious of people around her. She struggled to open her eyes but her eyelids were heavy and unresponsive.

‘Don't move, Mrs Bull.'

She recognised the calm, authoritative voice of the doctor. His face blurred above her, unfocused and unrecognisable.

‘My baby ...'

‘Your baby is fine, your sister-in-law is here with him.'

‘He's fine, Sali. He is sleeping.' Rhian's voice was clotted with tears. ‘Don't worry, I'll look after him. I promise.'