Flame and Slag (9 page)

By now it was evening gloom, every colour gone from the day.

Lydia appealed from the foot of the stairs. “Mam-my, mam-my!”

“What is it,
cariad
?”

“Mam-my!”

Ellen carried her upstairs again, our sober little toddler scrupulously gnawing the apple stump, dandled on Ellen’s half-parted thighs in the grey-toned room.

“Well, you, matey,” — switching on the bedside table lamp — “shall I go now? The loving’s over.”

“I’ll stay here, read the Account. Trumpet when tea’s ready, my beaut.”

She said, “Good-bye, darling.”

Eventually they mastered the water problem & found the Four Feet seam, thus providing employment for well over 2,000 men in the days before mechanization except the war coming in 1939 deprived old Caib colliery in many ways, specially manpower when France collapsed & the pits were forced to work three on & three off because we could not export coal abroad.
Skilled colliers packed in to join the armed forces & naturally many did not come back to Caib or Daren or Wales for that matter. Often-times with my wife Kate I have discussed the families come & gone from Daren, large families disappearing forever without leaving a solitary trace, myself & daughter included in 1943. But I shall do my utmost to return once I am convinced that certain personal problems & tribulations are finished & done with. Life must be settled. It was fair shares & solid principle in Daren before the struggles came, private & money struggles during the bad Thirties period. From a village we grew into a fair sized town, Lower Daren brickworks producing fine bricks with fireclay from the Watkin Main Level. The accidental air raid at 11.40 p.m. on September the 9th 1942 left craters all along the quarry above Lower Daren, therefore the old Watkin Main will never be found again. Girls crowding the brickworks & a few more Irish & English newcomers among them so that is where Kate worked instead of going away to service until we got married. By then I had my own stall in Caib, comrade Twmws Cynon heading man who never put a foot wrong disregarding fresh starters rushing to enjoy big money in our pit. The best for wages in Wales without a shadow of doubt, a stall in the Four Feet worth twice the money you would earn anywhere barring one or two exceptional collieries over in Rhondda of course. Imagine a collier & his butty in the Caib averaging eight peggy trams a shift, he would be on quite a respectable living. All peggy trams in the beginning as were used in the house coal levels. Soon came those huge bomby trams. One day Pryssor Harding hurried out shocked from his weighbridge office to look at a bomby with easily one foot six of RACING on top of the tram. RACING we called it in those days. Pryssor could not believe the one ton fourteen cwts measured on his weighbridge scales. He had to inspect the reality. Twmws Cynon RACED that bomby as an experiment but it was common practice on account of slow traffic underground as compared to modern standards. The more coal you RACED on your tram the heavier your pay packet, this caused a certain amount of wastage on the journey down to the screens but who worried? God knows there was coal galore in the Four Feet, more than enough to make Mr Joseph Gibby very pleased with his prospects. When he came to open Caib institute Twmws Cynon was on the stage right next to Mrs Thelma Gibby & the whisper went around the hall that he & she were due to catch up on old times. Nobody had concrete proof. She danced with him & him alone after we cleared the tables off the floor. Mr Gibby gave a very short speech, blunt & straight to the point. Stands to reason he wanted back the money he spent sinking Caib pit. She was the sociable one, Twmws spinning yarns & her laughing down at him in a black velvet frock guaranteed to put any man off his guard. As for Charlotte Cynon she smiled daggers in her eyes, you could see. Very nearly ready to give birth to Hayden Percival their second child, it was obvious Charlotte could not keep up with Twmws & Thelma Gibby traipsing around the dance floor, Twmws introducing her to everybody as if it was himself owned Caib not Joseph Gibby. What a character that man, taking him all in all. When he died from rapid consumption we missed him like losing a relative. All over in six months as God is my judge, leaving Charlotte still feeding Hayden Percival & the little girl Martha who managed to survive the T.B. clinging to her skirts as well. We took the cap around & collected £72/9/0 for Charlotte in her distress. The very least we could do as he was a man in a million.

“And yourself, old Sioni sick-man rambler Vaughan,” I said, Ellen simultaneously inquiring from the stair landing, “What’s that, Rees?”

“Your old man, him and his personal relationships. Why did your mother leave him?”

She lit two cigarettes. “Finally you mean?”

“Finally — ta very much, love — or whatever. Why?”

“You’ve seen my mother, Mike Minty’s only child. She’s a selfish woman. She can’t help being what she is either; her childhood was probably worse than yours.”

“Sometimes I feel sorry for your father, other times he’s really spewy. Do you believe Thomas Cynon and Thelma Gibby knocked it off a bit?”

“They might well have, Reesy. It seems to me Daren people often do things out of desperation, a kind of bravado to make themselves feel important. I’m sure it doesn’t apply to Thelma Gibby. There’s something else about her — she’s like a bitch that belongs anywhere; but Twmws would take the challenge if only to prove what others expected of him.”

“You’ve got a bitchy streak, Ellen my love.”

“Phu, matey, you don’t know anything yet. Get dressed; tea’s on the table.”

I climbed out of bed and back in with her.

“Randy!” — kicking and heaving the way we gambolled in that yellow-tinted Horton caravan. “You ought to be a harem-keeper! Desist, boy!”

“Gu-url,” I said.

She panted excessively into my ear. “What a husband. Dog, dog, dog. Doggy without a leash. I thought you were a philosopher,
cariad
.”

“Not all the time, my lovely.”

“I love you, too.”

Worship the basic, mutual as Alpha and Omega, annihilating both.

At nine o’clock I called a pint and ten fags in
Waun Arms
. Five minutes later Percy Cynon arrived with a moon-faced bloke, bald as a cathode tube above shiny grey eyes, his false teeth slotted inside lips crimped from trying to please too many masters.

“Meet Rees Stevens,” Percy said. “Rees, this is my cousin Howell Cynon. Pride of the family; he’s a Coal Board draughtsman, aye, dropped some ballocks in his time, too, I dare say. How’s the old Caib working?”

I said, “They’re driving three shifts on that new main to the Seven Feet. Madmen — they make us Welsh colliers look like potchers. Sixty yards some weeks, and they’re not short of a thing. Supplies? Perce, you wouldn’t believe the half of it. What are you having, Howell?”

“Whisky, just a tickle of soda,” he said.

“I meant, Howell, do you want bottled beer or a pint of four ex? This isn’t Christmas-time.” He carried his number plain, not so much cupidity as stupidity. No insight, no foresight. Hindsight scavenged bare.

“Two pints of Houghton’s,” Percy said, big Perce risen to eighteen stone since leaving Talygarn, strained veins webbing purply across his cheekbone flesh. He boozed every night, standing gigantic as a milk-stout advert against the bar counter, the straight handle of his alloy walking-stick jammed between the taut buttons of his waistcoat. My best man, the makings of a slyly shy, comfortable invert beginning to show.

Midway through his pint Howell said, “Oops, pardon me, gents,” edging himself sideways through the bar crowd towards his call of nature.

I said, “Nice manners on your cousin, Perce. Say,
brawd
, what’s she like, this kid Vicky Wilson?”

Percy’s meaty face puffed injured righteousness, staggers hitting his breathing, chopping hyphens into his self-defence. “I doh-n’t want to hear slah-nder from nobody, ’specially yuh-ew, Rh-eesy. I nev-her touched that girl, on my muh-other’s life I didn’t … didn’t, didn’t!”

“Smart girl is she, Perce?”

He steadied himself, grinding his teeth, poor crippled sod, whining like a typically hounded Silurian raper. “Wasn’t my fault at all. Her fault, Rees, hers.”

“Who mentioned fault?” I said. “It’s your own business, strictly private. Why not bring Vicky to our house for tea next Sunday? Don’t broadcast the news, just bring her along round about seven o’clock. We’ll be expecting you both. You know my Ellen; she makes friends dead easy. True now, Perce. Stop worrying, man, there’s damn all to worry about.”

His grinding molars squeaked like honing a razor blade inside a wet tumbler. Howell Cynon came back to our table. The chat meandered, Percy drumming ratt-ta-ta-tatt on his artificial shinbone, cursing his job in a Remploy factory where they made cheap furniture for small wages. Defenceless as the sky, he harked back to that last shift when he rode the chain conveyor, his cousin Howell’s mouth plucking distaste; then clean off his own bat Howell said, “Of course it’s a Class C colliery now,” — whipping a fine Sheaffer pen from his inside pocket, opening out an envelope, his pudgy fist effortlessly sketching lines, crosses, arrows, and there it was: Waunwen mountain neatly hatched across the paper, X marking Caib pit-shaft, arrowed lines tracing the Four Feet seam northward under the course of Daren river, and Thyssen’s new main roadway to the Seven Feet aimed due west, slanting beneath Waunwen.

“Over
here
,” Howell Cynon said (off the envelope), confident as a priest in his vocational prime, the Sheaffer wiggling up on end like a de-ionized Shakespearian prickstand, “we have Brynywawr colliery.” He smiled, nibbling the tip of his tongue. “Class A, do you see?”

“Aye, they’re in the Seven Feet, been working it for years,” Percy said.

“Exactly. And Brynywawr will rise the coal from Caib Seven Feet,” — slitting open another envelope, butting them together, hatching the limit of Waunwen, fixing Brynywawr with the same strong black X and a circled Class A, the compact skilful fist sliding back to the first envelope, ringing Class C for Caib’s X, then (skidding destiny) Howell Cynon streaked Thyssen’s roadway beneath Waunwen to Brynywawr colliery. “Nineteen-sixty-three, Percy,” he explained, cocking his bald head.

Percy brought in three more pints.

I asked him, “
By
nineteen-sixty-three, Howell?”

He gave the kind of down-up mouth to nasally hummed answer tendered as incontrovertible from expert to layman, and drew a meticulous arch near Brynywawr’s circled Class A. “Drift outfall, do you see? The Cardiff mineral line here,” — mapping British Railways from Brynywawr right off the second envelope. “Much shorter, much cheaper. And here,” — careless now, his Sheaffer slashing haphazard, boxing an oblong around Brynywawr — “coke ovens, NCB labs, offices, car park. We shall be making a start on the Brynywawr development next spring.”

“Howell,” I said, “where do you work? I mean where’s your office?”

“Cardiff, naturally, but I’m not really on Planning.” He nudged Percy. “We have quite a pleasant flat in Cathedral Road, isn’t that so?”

“Aye, nice place,” guaranteed Percy. “Mind if I speak frank for a minute?” — his cousin’s expression a tortured balm of obligatory kinship and amusement. “Burn those bloody scraps of paper and don’t breathe a word about raising Caib coal in Brynywawr. There’re lodge committee men in this bar.”

“Birth, maturity and decay,” almost chanted Howell Cynon, unconsciously signalling Infinity with his envelopes. “Well, gents, you’ll have to excuse me. Long drive home tonight and my wife’s a back-seat driver!” Balling the envelopes, he jig-laughed his brilliant teeth.

Percy wagged his alloy walking-stick. “So long then, Howell. You ought to pay us a visit more often.”

“Keep up the good work,” I said.

There was a bloke giving a slow, obsessed version of
Rock around the clock
out in the urinal, and a boxing match on the telly down the lower end of the bar. After the fight Tommy Farr ingratiated a few comments, knuckling his hambone hands, tentatively miming a punch or two, setting memories churning everywhere in the Principality. Memories travelling all the way from Clydach Vale, from Judge’s Hall, Trealaw, to America, and back to Porth Skating Rink — Farr’s beginning and end according to Granch Stevens. Old Granch did some sparring before the dust settled him for loving homers.

“My cousin’s a bit of a tom pep,” confided Percy. “You know how they are on the Coal Board, planning this, planning that. I wouldn’t take Howell’s word all the way, Rees.”

“He had it off pat,” I said. “He’s
seen
the bloody drawings somewhere, but the point is the Germans are in on the development scheme and we haven’t heard a word from the NUM. Our side doesn’t know anything about it.”

“You’ll be all right if it comes off, Rees. Riding in on bogies instead of walking. They won’t expect Caib men to walk through to Brynywawr.”

“But all the money they’ve spent on Caib. Screens, bunkers at pit-bottom, washery, sidings, flocculation plant, new creeper for picking up the trams on top pit. Where’s the logic?”

Percy said, “What the hell, mun, you’ll still be rising coal from the Four Feet. Talk sense, Rees.”

Walking home, I thought: Percy might make a steady go of it with that youngster. She’s big-hearted, must be, taking him on with his one leg
—
innocently hoping for him, unaware that Vicky Wilson was lined up for approved school, in need of care and attention as they say. Who isn’t, though — who bloody-well isn’t? The job’s too heavy for Jesus of Nazareth.