Flame and Slag (21 page)

“We’re still building the council house estate,” I said. “New houses, new industry; it’s obvious, isn’t it?”

“Reesy, pack your traps and leave after Christmas, otherwise you won’t be able to forgive yourself in years to come.”

“I can’t go away, Mrs Cynon.”

“Forget about the back room for the time being,” she said. “I know you’ve been busy in there, but there’s such a thing as common sense. I myself would love to come with you and Ellen, only I’ve gone past it now.”

“Percy won’t leave Daren,” I said.

“Him? Duw, boy, you don’t realize. Go to bed, or you’ll be like a stick when Ellen comes home this afternoon. Remember, have a good heart-to-heart talk with her. She’ll do whatever you say, it’s up to you
then
, see, Rees?”

We hedged a few pros and cons on Christmas Eve while laying out the kiddies’ toys. Twenty quid’s worth of toys — if the working class cannot supply their children with riding ponies and four-course meals, they’ll infest hire-purchase systems to give them Christmas and birthday presents, humanising commerce, crime and silver-spooned womb-throwing. Expendable people versus dependables, all wobbling the brotherhood circle, with any Chancellor of the Exchequer doing a Simeon Stylites bowel and bladder act in the centre. Hail the brotherhood! The day of the square peg is at hand, he’s studying form in the betting shop and his help-mate is chewing Black Magic with a
Coronation Street
saga-piece unfolding in front of her. Meantime the round pegs are sapiently planning painless assassination, foraging into enlightenment, measuring alter-egos, double-crossing schizophrenia, brain-washing apprentice tycoons and cosmonauts, hurting without hating, working nights in Lyon’s Corner House and inventing disc shearers for the Gellideg seam in
Peyton Place
.

All hail, all blessings. Well-aye.

“That’s for Elizabeth, give it to me,” Ellen said, carefully snatching the walking, talking, make-water, five-guinea human-haired rosebud plastic doll. “Honestly, Rees, there’s no reason why we should be bothered. The NCB can’t promise you a job because of your disability, so where do we go?”

“It isn’t settled yet,” I said. “We’ll be allocated after they’ve fixed up the colliers, packers, craftsmen, officials, all the men they can’t afford to lose. When it comes to our turn they’ll work the seniority rule. Unfortunately I broke my contract when I refused to go to Talygarn. We paid for this old house instead. Christ, beaut, I wish I didn’t have to go to work tonight.”

“Are you sorry, Rees.”

“I don’t regret much, Ellen, not much.”

“Then neither do I. See this, from the girls in the factory. Like it?” She hung the nightdress in front of herself.

I said, “Have you told them about our two years, the time I dried up?”

“Reesy!”

“It’s almost invisible,” I said. “What’s the matter, are they short of men in your factory?”

“Women are always short of the right men; that’s why the chapels are empty and the pits are closing and we swop governments like cushion covers. Every time something goes wrong it’s due to women living with the wrong men.
Iesu
, six storybooks for Lydia, three from Selina Cynon. Our daughter’s going to be a scholar. Your pick-pick-picky old brains, Rees Stevens.”

“She’ll probably marry a collier if he’s the right man.”

“My God, it’s a long way off.”

“You can’t blame men, Ellen.”

She said, “The right loving must come from the right man. Please fetch Lydia’s tricycle. Percy hid it up in the attic. Mind you don’t fall, Rees-love. I shan’t wear my new nightie if you break your whatchewmaycallit.”

“Are we getting the right loving?” I said.

“Don’t you know?”

“Is it as perfect as it used to be, Ellen?”

“Now see what you’re doing! Separating it from everything else. Listen, matey, are you some kind of Welsh mountain pony, only good for eating, sleeping and huh-huhing?”

“You’re a pretty lush mare, beaut, especially since you’ve grown more curvy these last few months.”

Two piles of Christmas toys between us, carol singers rolling up the street from
Waun Arms
, duty calling by the minute — I had to be down Caib pit by eleven o’clock, just four safety men: two officials, electrician and pumps-man Stevens.

“I have always loved you, Rees,” she said, coolly absolute as faith, faith scoured of dross by the war and peace of day by day by day. The living welter.

We climbed the frost-bound tump together, a bright round of moon knobbed above Waunwen, then she fled back to the house in case the children awoke.

Seward Tremain and the banksman were alone on top pit, the second fireman and electrician already down below, every other Caib miner at home for Christmas. We rode the windy cage in silence, a can of grease between my boots and Seward’s Davy oil-lamp hanging from his belt.

“I’ll be in West 12 gate road around grub-time,” he said. “See you, Rees.”

The shift wore out, passed like a broken promise. On Christmas morning three safety men and two electricians went down. After washing I collected my firewood block from outside the pit-head baths, a torch beam hitting me full in the face, the ex-wrestler watchman grunting, “Whassis, ah? Tisn’t block day, you know that?”

“Allowances in kind,” I said. “Read all about it on page so and so of the annual Coal Board report in Lower Daren central library.”

“I’m booking you, Rees.”

“Fuck off,” I said.

“Hey, watch it, careful now, careful…”

“You’re practically on the dole, butty, and you haven’t done a day’s honest graft in your life. Less than three months to go now, then you’ll be signing the dotted line every Friday. Caib smoke stack can’t fall down a second time either, and the Germans won’t be coming back to Daren. If I were you I’d make for home; your missis and Santa Claus might be working a flanker.”

“All right, all right, we’ll see how chopsy you are to Mr Pomeroy. What’s your lamp number?”

“Three ’o three, dum-dum special right between your bloody pimpers. Listen, butt, if you’d like to make Ike Pomeroy really happy, remind him about your customers in Daren Social Club. Sand, cement and chippings delivered right to their back doors when the Germans were building those underground bunkers for the Four Feet. And tell him you’d like to hear the story about Mrs Pomeroy, the time she gave a talk on local government to the Women’s Guild. That’s the idea, butty, put the torch away; it makes you look like a queer statue of liberty.”

“Righto, shut it, now shut it, you big-mouthed bastard.”

“Happy Christmas,” I said. “Stay frightened. You’re in the shit right up to your eyeballs.”

He skulked across to the lamproom where he slept most of the hours he should have been patrolling the sidings and around the pit-head. I came down the tump, expecting to see all the lights on in our house. They were, Ellen wearing my sportiest sweater over the gift nightdress, red Chunky four ply flopping to her thighs. She’d had about four hour’s sleep, her black hair pillow-coiled against her left ear — I sleep high-headed on my right side. We seldom breathe at each other, Saturday and Sunday nights. The kiddies had abandoned breakfast. Under licence derived from Calvary, they were glutting themselves with nuts and chocolates, sitting back to back surrounded by toys and monkey-nut shells.

“We shan’t be moving away from Daren,” I said.

“You’ve finally decided. Good.” She drooped over the table, blinking, the kiddies squealing liberties in the next room. I loved her like life.

“They’ll have to bring factories here, jobs for men,” I said.

“Hm. Are you working tonight, Rees?”

“Doubler tomorrow night, beaut. Ianto Pugh’s doing my turn tonight.”

“Good,” she sighed, lolling her head.

I remembered my grandfather snoozing over his breakfast, pink bacon-greased lips across his coal-black face, hands washed to his hairy wrists,
Daily Herald
propped against the loaf and the pot of strawberry jam, bucket of water simmering on the hob, my grandmother knuckling his nape, ordering him not to waste good food, bath himself, go to bed out of the way. He, too, finished up working night shift in the Four Feet, before his last seven years’ full-time devotion to racing pigeons. Ellen’s white nape, black whisps springing tight as an airedale’s curls, reminded me of my black-faced grandfather jarred awake by the old lady’s great ugly knuckles — the same strong hands that scrammed Andrew Booth’s face from eyebrows to jowls during the stay-in strike: Maggie May Stevens, one of a housewife gang who attacked Caib officials when they refused to allow food to be sent down the pit. You could hear the strikers singing
Calon lân
and
Bread of Heaven
from the mouth of the shaft. They held competitions, solos, monologues, played Tip-it, hunted rats and sent up the old men and the sickly ones… before my time.

John Vaughan’s time. His Account rides my head like a burr.

16

Success comes to those who refuse to be overcome. Therefore when reading about improvements as affecting coal mining I am inclined to take the view that we fought the good fight. Like the Salvation Army song namely Fight The Good Fight With All Your Might. After fourteen year here in Winchester where these sloppy college boys are not one jot better civilized than we were in Daren, as I say after fourteen years any item of news re coal mining is guaranteed to pluck a chord from those olden days when the miner was considered the lowest of the low. To some ignorant minds he is still Taffy Jones dressed in a muffler & cap with a couple of whippets behind his heels. As if this man Jones would never breed horses for the St Leger or Grand National or Derby if he could afford anything other than those dainty little whippets. Smart young men fishing in the Itchen with keepers behind their backs are no different from collier lads groping for trout in Daren river. Sunday mornings you would see youngsters setting out with lurchers & terriers, the sporting instinct used to run in families from father to son. Foxing, fishing, hares. You had to walk miles from Daren for rabbits. The vital thing is to have an interest in life instead of stagnating body & soul as you would witness all ages of men on our street corners during bad times & good times. Nothing on their minds. No interests except backing horses, football, women, coal & the Great War. We brought some of the finest political brains in Wales to Caib institute, these educated men from all walks of life including Quakers who came for the sake of conscience but it was like feeding pearls to swine apart from a handful who appreciated that there was more to this life than six shifts ending with a booze-up. In my opinion the Sunday foxers & fishermen were superior to those street corner loungers. In all fairness you have to respect a man’s interest even if he does not respect yours. Many of us gave years to Federation business expecting nothing but decent respect for our endeavours which is as it must be because no committee in the world can function without goodwill. When goodwill relapses other committees are elected. Lodge Number One both suffered & triumphed in 1936. Firstly there was friction, two viewpoints clashing when 43 day shift colliers threatened stay-in strike. God alone knows we had plenty of wages grievances to bring us all out on 14 days notice. The man who invented stay-in strikes was definitely a genius. He opened up public ignorance like a surgeon, I mean the way we won sympathy for stay-in strikes although these strikes were trifles compared to slow starvation. When Ross Butler came as under manager he tried too many new broom tactics. As if good & bad do not exist. But he was neither big enough nor strong minded enough. Better men than Ross Butler have fallen by the wayside when it comes to fighting for principles. Sometimes they look to be winning but in the end they either bend with the wind or fade out altogether. Our case was open & shut. Unfortunately men on the off-shifts failed to rally round, causing friction amongst ourselves up until the actual moment of action. Ross Butler victimized Cled Howard, accusing Cled of filling out dirty coal & failing to keep his face posted according to mining regulations, whereas the crux of the matter was that Cled spoke his mind & had no regard for the consequences. When the management put Cled sponging by afternoon it was then his day shift butties instigated the stay-in. 43 men under for seven days, 32 men for thirteen days & we won hands down. I personally disagreed with certain elements who smashed windows in Ross Butler’s house as it brought out the police against us. Butler had a bad name. It was bound to stick as circumstances built up against the man. In, robbing many, many colliers on yardage he saved pounds for Joseph Gibby & sowed bad feeling for himself, ending in the kick in the privates from Cled’s cousin Mervyn Howard. Our Lodge arranged for Mervyn’s solicitor. The plea self-defence. Actually Mervyn’s wife Dilys gave him the black eye to prove his case but someone unknown carried the word across Daren to Ross Butler. At the trial in Swansea Assizes Butler brought in false witnesses who swore on oath that they had seen Mervyn kicking him on the pavement outside Vic Einon’s tobacconist shop. Mervyn served his six months & went away to Dagenham. Ross Butler was transferred to another colliery. A deputation pressed Cled’s case to Joseph Gibby’s agent & Cled Howard won his place back on the coal. Fight, fight, it was always a fight for the strict necessities of life. Up to a point we could rely upon support from the chapels. How pathetic to see the way they were torn between fighting for a living wage & religious teaching such as loving your neighbours & the meek shall inherit the earth. Joseph Gibby & his father before him owned the best earth in Daren. We had three deacons on the Lodge committee, our guilty three from Calvaria & Bethany because none other than Joseph Gibby himself held the deeds on their places of worship. No wonder Karl Marx said religion was the opium of the masses. No wonder it takes ages & ages for justice to come about. Justice indeed! For instance Mr Gibby’s agent looking down the mouth of Caib pit, our men singing hymns for his benefit to show they were in high morale & he said with a sneer “They won’t be singing by the end of the week.” The truth is he was a lucky man. Once the news spread that neither food nor jugs of tea would be sent down to our comrades hundreds of women came screaming up from Daren, Andrew Booth & his day shift firemen taking the brunt while clever Mr Agent & Ross Butler stayed locked inside the colliery office until the police arrived. There would have been court cases for assault only Joseph Gibby sent a telegram stopping all legal action. Wise man. The woman would never have forgiven him. Mrs Glyndwr Stevens left marks on Andrew Booth which he carried to his grave although Glyndwr himself was at that time hard heading man up in Waun Level, out in sympathy strike of course because we had learned the principle of unity: UNITED WE STAND, DIVIDED WE FALL. My own wife Kate brought sheer luxury foodstuffs up to top Pit, where from God alone knows. The stay-in offered her free rein to get anything she could from any source whatsoever. Sometimes we have to admit that women like Kate make a mockery out of authority & law & order. Big lumps of ham, full jars of Lovell’s toffees, tins of salmon, slabs of loaf cake, best butter, chocolate truffles, bottles of pop, there was no end. The Lodge refused to send down beer, best Houghton dark stout she had to bring home but I was too ashamed to take a sup of it. I did not like the way she was enjoying herself. Anyone who came to the door had a bottle of stout slipped into his pocket. I said to Kate, “Have you & that girl Miskin been whoring among the Daren shoppies for all those goods you are taking up to the pit?” She said, “You are not the only one on a committee in this house.” This hint referred to Caib Collection Committee. She said, “If they refuse their names go down in the black book.” I said, “What for?” She said, “The future of course.” I said, “That’s known as blackmail.” Kate laughed, “Business is business!” I said, “How do you mean?” She said, “To put it bluntly the shoppies are afraid their wives might find a fancy woman on the doorstep.” I said, “But you are in the Pentecostals.” Her answer was, “Don’t forget the Lord is on the side of charity. I would walk the streets in my bare skin for those poor men down below.” “Never Kate,” I said, “you would do it for your own satisfaction.” She said, “Hark who’s talking! Going with you is like going with a fish.” “Then why did you marry me?” I said. “I was fed up, wanted to leave home. Now you know,” she said. I asked her, “Any names in the black book yet?” She said, “Victor Einon refused chewing twist but Edna Miskin was in the shop with his son Seaton last night so she will be fetching a boxful up to Caib this afternoon. Teach old Vic a lesson in charity.” I said, “God help us, there’s no scruples left.” Kate replied, “Blame yourself, John Vaughan, if you must blame anybody. All I can say is it’s up to us to make sure the men down there get the best of everything. If you were on stay-in strike I would come down the pit to you.” “Why, Kate?” “Not for you to go short. Excuse me, we are collecting from Daren Arcade this morning. See you on top pit at two o’clock.” I said, “Dewi Benjamin’s wife owns the Arcade, you cannot put her name in your black book.” She said, “We can find plenty of volunteers, the Howard boys, the Miskin boys, but in Phoebe Benjamin’s case it is Dewi Ben who has made arrangements for us to collect bacon, brawn, eggs, mutton chops & cockles if the cockle woman brought supplies on the eleven o’clock train yesterday, if not cockles whatever Phoebe can spare in the way of bara lawr or sweetbreads.” Try to imagine Kate on Lodge Number One. By her ruling every collier in the pit would be negotiating his own Price List. Confusion for Joseph Gibby & everyone else. Kate delighted in messiness, chaos in other words. Her & the Miskin girl were back & fore, back & fore to Caib every day like two flags. While we organized from the institute they badgered the banksman to send down food & clothes gathered by the Collection Committee. Women, there they were all hours of the day hanging around the pit head. Wives, fiances, mothers, all demanding to send down messages & so on but the banksman’s hands were tied. He had orders agreed upon by the Lodge & the management. After seven days 11 men were raised to the surface, 2 stretcher cases with suspected pneumonia, the other 9 brought up walking sticks cut from Norway posts. What a memento for their self imprisonment. They all had them, 43 walking sticks cut with hatchets & pocket knives. High-ups in our Federation came to thrash out principles & law but thirteen whole days & nights went by before Joseph Gibby gave way. Of course as usual we never spoke to him although we all had his name on our tongues, his photograph there for anyone to see in Caib institute committee room, the full committee facing the camera on May Day 1927 when we officially opened the institute. Eventually Cled Howard was reinstated & Caib returned to normal procedures for wage claims, pennies, threepenny bits, shillings dribbling out of our pockets into Joseph Gibby’s bank account. Try as we may the Price List differentials never worked fairly for men cutting coal, on traffic, on day-wages, repairing, labouring or on the surface. Never a Friday without representations to Caib cashier. You had to admire him & Andrew Booth. The light of development in our Scientific Age makes a man realize they were as much victims of circumstances as we were only they did not have to worry about keeping body & soul together. It was a bad time. Bad time. Extremely bad in the thirties. All you have to do is examine the whole development of Society to appreciate that we workers of Daren were just emerging from being little better than clods of the earth. “Six days shalt thou labour” the ministers used to preach from Horeb, Bethany, Salem, Libanus, Calvaria, Siloh, Nebo, St Mark’s, Ebenezer, Tabernacle, Rama. “In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread” was another favourite for condemning the working class & very few atheists & so-called free-thinkers in Daren ready to disagree. Ignorance ruins worse, much worse than anything in this world. Ignorance is terrible. Like carrying sin once we REALIZE how ignorant we are. Born completely ignorant, living in ignorance, the struggle for existence going on & on until we perish. Possibly we should thank God for the privilege of struggling towards wisdom. Thank God for wisdom even though I do not believe in God as such. Through Science we shall put an end to man’s cruelty to man with time on our side for all the millions & millions of failures in the past. Discovery upon discovery until the working classes become extinct. Once we were animals snarling over bones, now we fly faster than the birds, travel the oceans faster than fishes, speak to each other across continents. Now education is advancing North, South, East & West. But very often patience comes hard besides wearing thin. The patience of having to go back to the colliery office after a week’s toil & plead for the minimum wage. The patience of coping with a wife when you cannot fathom her reckless ways. She rose from her bed two days after the birth of our daughter Ellen on June 9th 1938 when everyone in Daren was dumb-founded, horrified by the explosion in Alf Gilbert’s conveyor face on June 7th. Sheer tragedy. 16 colliers & boys killed, wiped out without a chance of survival. Again nobody in Daren set eyes on Joseph Gibby. I said, “Kate, for God’s sake stay in bed till the midwife gives permission.” She said, “We’ll be having visitors after the funeral. I must clean up the place, it isn’t as if I’m bad or anything.” Will-power, nothing but will-power the way it functions in the wilds. Our visitors were Morgan & Idris Miskin with their loose flag of a sister. Edna & Herbert Prothero & later came Dewi Benjamin & his wife Phoebe & last of all Selina Cynon with a child in arms herself, old Twmws Ivor’s grandson by his son Hayden Percival who was killed in the explosion. Proud Selina Cynon in black mourning coming on this visit to see our new baby, desperation written all over her. In Selina’s own house the biggest congregation of mourners gathered after the funeral, her husband Hayden Percival being so popular. Selina’s baby was named Percival after his father. All the time that poor mite cried & cried. A wild burial morning, cloudburst over Waunwen sending floods down the tip & rushing into Chapel Street where the culvert over-flowed along Lower Terrace & down Thelma Street one side & then on down the main road to Daren river. More thunder & lightning while we were up in the cemetery then sunshine followed & you could smell mud everywhere in Upper Daren. As expected Joseph Gibby sent 16 12/6 penny wreaths. What price a 12/6 penny wreath for a man or a boy’s life? Where is the sense in preaching, “The Lord giveth & the Lord taketh away?” The explosion in Alf Gilbert’s conveyor face gave every minister in Daren a ready-made sermon. Easy for them. Their great Lord. How can the Lord above have anything to do with those who have never even heard of Him? If He was in Alf Gilbert’s face there is not much hope for those who believe in the Lord. As for miners & coal-owners, where does He come into the picture? A man is lucky if he is religious in this day & age.