Children in Her Shadow (2 page)

But the children were by no means saints and would deliberately have their backs to their father when it was obvious he was about to make a demand of them. This would cause him to try to remember a name to call, which amused the children until they heard him rise from his creaking old chair when they would run giggling into the street. He relished the authority that such anger and aggression displayed.

On a particularly warm summer evening when Ruth was barely five years of age, her father, already drunk from a trip to the pub on his way home from the pit, demanded a flagon of beer. He had no money left and an argument ensued when Maeve told him that there was no money in the house until the Friday, which was payday. Darragh’s limited vocabulary became confined to vulgarity, blasphemy, threats and then violence. Though hardly able to stand, he repeatedly lunged at Maeve, occasionally hitting her but each time he fell to the floor. His anger was by now a rage and it was clear to the five year old Ruth that unless he had his flagon of beer soon, someone, probably her mother would get hurt again.

Ruth ran to the pub and in tears begged the landlord for a flagon. The landlord, known to all in the village as “Dai Feathers”, (he being one of many David’s in the village and the one running the Feathers Pub), was able to hear the commotion for himself. He gave Ruth the flagon but not before inviting several customers at the bar to step out to the back yard to
add flavour
to the beer. Ruth ran home to find her father blue with rage collapsed on the scullery floor. He snatched the bottle and, as usual, attempted to lunge at her, but her youth and his intoxication left this round to Ruth. He only stopped drinking when he eventually fell over and into a comatose sleep. It was year’s later that Ruth understood the nature of the
flavour
that was added to the bottle, and the natural justice of the pub regulars seen as being appropriate to the crime of wife beating.

As Ruth came of age for school she automatically became eligible for jobs around the house. Those passed to her by her mother were simple shopping or fetching and carrying tasks. Those that came from her father were personal and aimed at making his life easier at the expense of others. He would demand that Ruth removed his boots when he came home from the pit and any delay in doing this was greeted with an increasing level of irritated anger that progressed to physical violence.

By the age of seven, Ruth had seen the arrival of five more siblings, three boys and two girls. Life was by now very hard. Sleeping arrangements saw all the girls in one bed and the boys in another. Everyone, children and parents slept poorly, ate little and lived in each other’s space and arguments broke out regularly.

Personalities were shaped not from the blossoming of a child’s individuality but by the fight for survival. As each child came into the family so the older ones were left more to fend for themselves. Ruth a seven-year-old first girl was taking on the responsibilities of an adult, preparing food, cleaning and caring for the young ones whilst her mother took on more work to feed the family and her father’s drinking.

Ruth enjoyed caring for the little ones and was soon to show early signs that children would become an important aspect of her personality and her life. She was as happy nursing a baby as she was changing and bathing one. The young Ruth could often be found, sitting on a stool, feeding a toddler whilst at the same time rocking a small makeshift crib with her foot. She was adept at caring for two children whilst at the same time calming the older ones from getting under their mother’s feet.

There were no family members locally as most still lived in Ireland. There were of course local
aunties
and
uncles
, neighbours whose special relationship and familiarity with Maeve and Darragh required that the children call them auntie or uncle. All other older acquaintances were always referred to as Mr or Mrs, even by Ruth’s parents.

One such Auntie was Auntie Lott. Auntie Lott, (Charlotte) her name taken from the family bible was a large person who always seemed old but never tired of Ruth’s company. Lott’s husband Arthur, a small cheery man worked at a nearby children’s home as a gardener. He was a man of infinite energy and a heart the size of the valley.

Auntie Lott’s daily attire was always the same, an ankle length black dress, and a crisp white apron. She called her dress
six-day
to distinguish it from her Sunday dress and of course, you never wore an apron on a Sunday!

Auntie Lott loved Ruth as if she were her own. Rarely did a day pass by without Ruth popping in to see her and there was always a piece of homemade tart or a slice of bread and jam waiting for her and an opportunity to talk and listen. These special moments spent with Auntie Lott and Uncle Arthur became increasingly important to Ruth as her family grew and as time to herself became less possible. Lott and Arthur were what the preacher would call
God’s own
. They saw life through the eyes of Ruth and hung on her every word as she described the events of the day or shared the things that troubled her.

Lott and Arthur’s own son had long ago left home and to them, Ruth was a daughter, granddaughter and a much-loved friend. Occasionally, Dai Evans, their son would be at the house when Ruth called. He was to the young Ruth a fascinating character who seemed to go to exotic and interesting places like London and Brighton. Lott described him as ‘an honest soul who never seemed to settle to anything’. Dai loved horses and horse racing and would regale Ruth with his stories about horses and horse racing tracks throughout England.

Neither Dai’s parents nor Ruth knew exactly what he did but this simply added to the mystery of this lovable and gentle man who was some twenty years older than Ruth but who always had time for her as she grew up almost as a member of his family.

Dai was to become a lifelong friend to Ruth though at this early stage of her life he was simply Dai Evans the man of mystery.

Ruth was bright but not academic at school. But like so many of her peers her life seen from the grime and poverty of the nineteen twenties and early thirties seemed predestined. Children went to school because parents were told to send them there. There was no real sense that anyone would leave the village for better things, though some did. School was to be completed and school years were not for enjoyment. School like home for Ruth was about male dominated discipline enforced with relish by Catholic priests and teachers who cited God as their authority.

A Catholic upbringing for Ruth in a Baptist mining valley brought education and prejudice in equal measure. But Ruth survived and as the years went by she became a model pupil and upon reaching the age of eleven was even considered for a diocesan scholarship examination.

We will never know if Ruth would have passed the examination. Like so many other valley children, the cost of a child going to a school away from the village was prohibitive and therefore their parents simply asked that their child not be entered for the scholarship. In later life, Ruth’s numeric skills suggest that she had a natural aptitude that was never recognised in childhood.

Tradition decreed that from a very early age boys went down the pit, worked on the railways or if you were exceptionally bright, you might work for the local Council. For girls there seemed no escaping the journey towards marriage and children and a repeat of their mother’s hard and often wasted life. Teenage years and the onset of womanhood brought more burden and responsibility upon the young shoulders of Ruth. Childhood had passed her by and her early teens were merging into a pre-destiny to follow her mother into a life of misery that she knew was not for her.

Ruth left school in the July of nineteen thirty eight one month away from her fifteenth birthday with no formal qualifications. She immediately fell into the fulltime role of assisting her mother with the daily chores and caring for the children. This brought her no independence, no income and no freedom. Whilst her friends were able to go to the cinema in Caerphilly once a week Ruth’s strict regime of family work and child care responsibilities continued.

Ruth often rebelled and her punishment when she was found out was severe. On one occasion having said she was spending her Sunday afternoon with an ex school friend, in itself not an untruth, she was seen by her father sitting on a bench holding hands with a boy.

On seeing her father the boy leapt up from the seat and was gone leaving Ruth to face the anger of her father alone. He took her by the arm and as though to demonstrate her sinfulness to all whom they passed he marched her slightly in front of him all the way home. Their journey took them passed the post office and shop, the recreation ground and the Methodist chapel, a deliberate act of planned and public humiliation on the part of her father.

With tears streaming down her face Ruth was paraded passed the village folk who were gathered in small groups in the street on this holiest of days and to further denigrate his daughter he accused her publicly of sinfulness and impropriety with the boy.

On reaching their home Ruth knew what awaited her. Ruth’s mother, brothers and sisters were gathered to witness the punishment and slowly he took the leather strap from his trousers bent her over the kitchen table and beat her until his own strength to beat her any more was exhausted. This was cruelty, depravity and humiliation in equal measures.

Within a few months of leaving school, Ruth was fortunate to be given a job in the local post office. She knew the owners, Mr and Mrs Thomas well and it was not long before Ruth took increasing responsibility within the shop and then within the post office itself. Whilst she left school without qualifications, Ruth had a good grasp of figures and was meticulous about balancing both the shop till and the books in the post office. Ruth enjoyed the work and the relative freedom it brought her and time passed quickly.

On the ninth of August nineteen thirty nine, Ruth reached the age of sixteen. She was a woman, though still five years away from the age of majority and still seen in the eyes of her father as a chattel. But Ruth was confident and capable and was increasingly seen by Mr and Mrs Thomas at the post office as dependable, honest and a very hard worker.

Ruth was already regarded as a beauty and turned many a head in the village which only added to her self awareness and inner confidence as she blossomed from young girl to womanhood. She was slim as were many young women of her generation but she also had a shapely hourglass figure and had learnt how to dress well and how to carry herself. She grasped any opportunity to look at the latest fashions and would tear designs from any magazine she laid her hand on. Ruth was a modest seamstress and could interpret the cut and shape of expensive clothing and transform a simple piece of material into a figure hugging fashionable dress.

Ruth had come of age, her childhood was behind her and her future and whatever that would bring beckoned her daily.

On the twenty sixth of August nineteen thirty nine, just days after Ruth’s sixteenth birthday, Britain and Poland signed a treaty of mutual assistance and war was by now seen as imminent and inevitable. Ruth seemed to take little interest in the growing mood of pessimism around her, but years later she would reflect that she was inwardly afraid mainly because she could not conceive of what was to come. She was aware that friends and family were increasingly speaking of the horrors of the Great War and speculating that a new modern day war would be even more horrific.

On September first nineteen thirty nine, Germany invaded Poland without warning. By the evening of September third, Britain and France were at war with Germany and within a week, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and South Africa had also joined the war. The world had been plunged into its second world war in twenty one years.

The impact of the war was slow to be felt in this small mining village but it was only on reflection that Ruth began to realise that one by one her school contemporaries and her friends and neighbours were leaving the village to join the war effort. The post office felt the impact of people leaving the village, trade was down and the mood in the shop was one of apprehension. Young men and women were leaving for the war or to join the war effort in the industrial cities of Britain and slowly, almost imperceptibly, this small valley village was again losing its men folk all over again.