Flame and Slag (25 page)

My face lifted unaware in the mirror above the kitchen sink: wooden mouth, inward eyes, greying hair. Mr Rees Stevens, house-man, scratched from the bread-and-butter stakes, scraping spuds for his wife and family.

What kind of a bastard life was I born for? I thought — the simplest curse, damnation against fate swaddling like a winding-sheet.

19

My longings are flowing to an end. Although our man & wife years are cut in my mind like a quarry, Kate remains silent in Portsmouth. Why ever did I come to Winchester in the first instance? Only because she sent Ellen a picture postcard of the cathedral. Jumping to the wrong conclusion I brought the child away from Daren but Kate had already flitted to her second home in Queen’s Street. For her Winchester was no more than a bit of a change. She created mysteries around herself. I arrived with hopes that have since become withered, longings that turned to dust. A man can stand so much before he steadies in his tracks. For this reason I feel the end is in sight & the end for me means the way I began under the peaceful ranges of Waunwen. Once more I shall have true friends & neighbours unlike in this cathedral city where I have never made a positive friend in 14 years. When a Welshman loses his
hiraeth
he is lost for life. The rest of him is a masquerade. Wife finally gone, hope disappeared like the one-way letters I posted off to her every Saturday. I consider myself a sham here in Winchester. Daren calls. Memories of summer evenings come racing full stretch as I walk down Water Lane. Summer evenings with ukelele & mouth organ music in the field by Caib dam where we used to swim. Happy gangs of all ages. Standing on the bridge below the old Mill I see Daren river not the weedy Itchen. I stare at English faces and remember great old Daren characters. All the
hiraeth
is coming back now. So I give in. Give in to losing Kate. Our daughter definitely does not need a mother any more. From now on the future is plain as an open book. At first Ellen was against the idea of going home. She has her own mind to please. It would not do for me to criticize. She has witnessed our poor example. Now last Monday she marched home from the office & into the flat with that white face of hers guaranteed to remind me of Kate. ‘Dad, we shall be ready to leave in a month’s time. Why don’t you write to some of your friends in Daren? We must find a house & I must find another position.’ No disputing Ellen is a girl blessed with a mind of her own but I ventured to ask, ‘Are you sure?’ ‘Why not, dad? I have nothing to lose. After you are settled in perhaps I will come back to Winchester.’ I said, ‘Daren is a lovely old place.’ She said, ‘Will you let my mother know we are leaving?’ I replied, ‘Yes, Ellen, just a few words to explain although frankly I have lost hope as Daren was too small to hold your mother years ago,’ & then this amazing daughter of ours placed a £1 note on the table & recommended something completely foreign to her nature & my own, ‘Dad, go out & get drunk until you can’t stand on your feet. At least have something to remember before leaving Winchester.’ I actually tried but after three & a half pints instead of feeling light hearted I went right down to bottom ebb unable to breathe & when some strangers brought me back to the flat they had to abandon me in the lavatory. It was my stomach & legs then. In the morning I read an appeal in the MIRROR asking miners to work on Saturdays due to the coal shortage. What a chance for the N.U.M. If every lodge in the country took advantage they had the industry over a barrel. Unfortunately as I know from experience the average collier like any other worker only turns to politics at the demand of necessity when his personal economic existence is all rags & tatters as a consequence of the major curse upon human nature, namely exploitation. Not one but two deadly curses working hand in glove, namely privilege & exploitation. As this last month of separation from home peters out I feel a sense of renewed purpose, good thoughts of joining in again with the salt of the earth. My own society back there in Daren. This Winchester city is riddled with class distinction brought down through the ages where as the discovery of coal delivered Daren into being out of a long blank of time with only weak signs of old agriculture above Daren woods & the tumbledown remains of three farmhouses left as symbols of civilization. Food & fuel. Fundamentals of Human Existence. A man has to get down to fundamentals & it seems to me the Account should wind up on this principle. So therefore I am content to state

THE END

signed

John Vaughan.

Ellen came in as I sealed the Peak Frean’s tin.

“Hullo, the new forestry officer is moving into Ike Pomeroy’s house. That’s definitely the end of the Coal Board in Daren.”

“It’s a take-over,” I said.

Mini-skirted like a teenager, she tapped the biscuit tin. “Have you done with these?”

“As good as. Say, what are you wearing under that imitation of a skirt?”

She tossed her rump like a can-can filly. “I’m a respectable married woman, matey.”

“Lovely, too. Lucky waster, whoever he is,” I said.

Her rump jigged calculated whimsy. “If you want to know, I’m his beaut.”

“Don’t trust him, missis. The bastard might be using you. Ulterior motive, see, missis, grafting from right inside, like a maggot.”

She froze, grinning like a catalogue doxy. “Hush your mouth.”

I said, “The last men came down from Caib this afternoon. As Selina said,
oes dim aros, dim aros
. Do you think we ought to move away from Daren?”

“Not unless you want to, Rees.”

“I don’t know what’s best. Wherever we go I’ll have to train for another job.”

“Well?”

“I’m unteachable, Ellen.”

“Once a miner, always a miner?”

“Aye, something like that.”

“Not counting your accident?”

“Only partly. All this crap about miners adapting themselves to other occupations, it’s compulsory bloody sales talk. These big leaders, our administrators, they’d put the same heart into selling ships, mutton, soap powder, anything from rubber goods to radishes. They’re like Jews. Jews remain Jews. Once a miner, always a miner. I mean a good, born and bred miner. The best ex-miners are disabled.”

“Like yourself?”

“In a way, aye.”

“You find some strange ideas, Reesy.”

“The man who doesn’t carry evidence of his work might as well have stayed inside his mother’s guts.”

She smiled empty as a yawn. “This back room hasn’t left many tell-tale signs on you, matey. Bit greyer, slower, but exactly the same man. My tough guy full of worries.”

“It was like dying in the beginning,” I said. “But these are early days, early days yet.”

She said, “Is that why virgins are valuable?”

“Any sort of virgin. I was bent into mining. I loved and hated it. Who’s going to bend me towards something else? Who, ah? The kind of mindlessly productive twats who…”

“Your Caib mouth! Selina and the kiddies are in the kitchen.”

“…pitch their rehabilitation centres in depressed areas? The same kind of mindless ass’oles who make us believe we’re only suitable for clocking in and out of heavy-industry factories when we finish in the pits?”

“Don’t nag at me,” she said.

“Nag, by the Jesus. Where are all the Bevin Boys gone? The way of all flesh, like Bevan and Bevin. Ernest Bevin filched the fascist patent to fight a war against it.”

She said, “Reesy, for God’s sake…”

I said, “Our NUM leaders complain about men thrown on the scrap-heap. We’ve been fighting losing battles since the Industrial Revolution. Will Paynter took on a scrapheap when he became sec of the NUM. And listen, some years ago — I had this piece of news from Charlie Page — some years ago Arthur Horner gave his signature to a bloody Coal Board advert begging men with a low percentage of dust to go back underground because they’d beaten the dust problem with modern techniques. Aye, beaten the dust problem. Your father thought Horner was the grand daddy of social justice, but he was just a big quarreller. Miners have always quarrelled, against dictatorial bastards sitting in offices and amongst themselves. We’ve had to quarrel or live like yobs. Now the NUM’s beaten by facts and figures, profit and loss statements flowing like bum fodder from Hobart House. We’re almost on their side now, competing against gas and oil and nuclear power.

Aye…”

“For God’s sake,” she said.

I said, “Give any man doing a shitty job enough to live on for working two days a week, and he’ll spend the other five days enjoying himself and worrying how he can lose the job altogether. The state of the country has bugger all to do with his problem, nor the industry itself. He’s out on his bloody tod…”

“You’re ranting,” she said.

“I was bent to a shitty job when I left school. Thousands of miners like myself, and we stuck our lot. Right then, Daren’s a scrap-heap and I’m on it. Most of the disabled men left behind from Caib aren’t disabled enough to go to Remploy. Bloody quaint, ah? They’re fit for nothing by any bloody arrangement. Whatever the Board of Trade, the Ministry of Fuel and Power or the Ministry of Labour does will come too late. We should have fought against pit closures from the very beginning, landed ourselves on the scrap-heap of our own accord. Now they’ve organized us on to the scrap-heap. We’re viable waste. Three cheers for economic feudalism.”

She said, “Finished?”

“What do you mean?” I said.

“Reesy, you enjoy destruction. Come on, we’ll feed the youngsters and take them across to Daren woods.”

“I haven’t destroyed you, Ellen.”

“Certainly not, we’re a couple of beauts together. Come on, let’s go.”

“Away to the woods,” I said.

“That’s right, away from the coal and muck on your mind. No more
ach y fi
.”

“Don’t forget I love you, Ellen.”

“I love you, too. Come on.”

Glossary

B
eth sydd yn bod arnoch chwi nawr, cariad?
– What is the matter with you now, darling?

D
oes dim yn aros, mae wedi cwpla.
– There is nothing left, it is finished.

B
rawd
– brother

C
wtch
– shed, hiding-place

D
abbo
(Da bo’ chi)
– All go well with you

D
ere ’ma
– Come here

D
ere mâs o fyna!
– Come out from in there

D
ere nawr
– come now

D
iolch yn fawr
– Thank you very much

G
waith, gwaith. Gad ’e fod. Paid a gwneyd dim rhagor!
– Work, work. Leave it there. Don’t do any more.

G
wenwynllyd
– jealous

G
wt
– queue

H
iraeth
– nostalgia for home

H
wyl
– fervour

I
esu
– Jesus

I
esu mawr
– big Jesus

M
ae wedi cwpla
– it is finished

M
erch
– girl

M
ochyn
– pig

M
um-glo
– inferior coal

M
yfi sy'n fachgen ieuanc ffôl
– I am a young foolish boy

N
efoedd
– heaven

N
os da
– goodnight

P
ais
– petticoat

T
wti
– excessively small

Foreword by Leighton Andrews

Leighton
Andrews is Labour Assembly Member for the Rhondda, and Minister for Education and Skills in the Welsh Government. He was elected to the National Assembly for Wales in 2003. He had previously worked for the BBC in London as Head of Public Affairs. He is an Honorary Professor in the School of Journalism, Media and Cultural Studies at Cardiff University.

Cover photograph by I C Rapoport, Aberfan 1966

I C Rapoport was born in the Bronx, New York. He studied photography at Ohio University, Athens Ohio and began his career as a freelance photo-journalist in 1959.

His photographs have appeared in major publications across the world including the
New York Times, National Geographic
,
Newsweek
 and
Time
. He presented his complete Aberfan 1966 assignment for
Life
magazine to the National Library of Wales in 2005 and the work was published as
Aberfan The Days After: Y Dyddiau Du A Journey in Pictures Taith Trwy Luniau
. He lives in Pacific Palisades, California.

Library of Wales

The Library of Wales is a Welsh Government project designed to ensure that all of the rich and extensive literature of Wales which has been written in English will now be made available to readers in and beyond Wales. Sustaining this wider literary heritage is understood by the Welsh Government to be a key component in creating and disseminating an ongoing sense of modern Welsh culture and history for the future Wales which is now emerging from contemporary society. Through these texts, until now unavailable or out-of-print or merely forgotten, the Library of Wales will bring back into play the voices and actions of the human experience that has made us, in all our complexity, a Welsh people
.