Hearts of Gold (42 page)

‘I’ve always been fond of you, Bethan,’ he said clumsily, rubbing himself against her. ‘You do know that don’t you? That’s why I agreed to marry you when your mother asked.’

She walked to the stove, ostensibly to warm herself, glad to be out of his reach. Then she looked at him, really looked at him for the first time in her life. Not that many years separated him from her father. And like her father he was broad-built, although a good deal shorter, only about the same height as herself. There was nothing obnoxious about him. In fact the worst she could have said about his looks was that they were nondescript, instantly forgettable.

His face was plump, circular, his skin pock-marked, his features regular, even. His round, dark brown eyes had the same appeal as those of her father’s lurcher. But despite his not unattractive appearance and his bungling attempts at kindness she could not bring herself to respond to his brutish attempts to caress her.

‘I need time, Alun,’ she emphasised, as he carried the jug towards her.

‘Not too long. After all, it’s not as if you’re not used to it.’ He lifted her skirt and she pulled it down.

‘Once more and I’m going home,’ she hissed.

‘This is your home, bach,’ he said flatly.

She backed towards the door. Catching it with her hip she inadvertently closed it. Exhausted and frightened, she fumbled with the handle. He slammed his free hand above her head, holding it shut behind her.

‘I’ll take the water before I go,’ she said bravely, holding out her hand.

‘Bethan …’ He tried to fondle her. Instinctively she lashed out, kicking his shin and pushing him away from her at the same time. He tipped the water, soaking the front of her skirt and blouse.

‘Serves you right,’ he said angrily, ‘for getting me going like that.’

‘Getting you going?’ she shouted frenziedly. ‘I told you I was tired. That I’d been up all night.’

He turned to put the empty jug on the table. Taking advantage of his movement away from her, she wrenched open the door, ran out into the passage and into the bedroom, slamming the door behind her. Fortunately it had a lock. Not a very strong one, but still a lock. She turned the key and walked to the far side of the bed. Heaving with all her might she pushed it against the door for extra security. Just as she’d finished, the doorbell rang. She heard the murmur of voices as Alun answered it.

He walked back down the passage, tried the doorknob, and when it wouldn’t give, called out to her.

‘That was the woman downstairs. Appears there’s a problem with water coming up through the basement floor. I have to go and look at it. I’ll see you later, but don’t worry I won’t try and touch you again. Not today,’ he said acidly. ‘I can wait until tomorrow morning. After all, we’ve our whole lives ahead of us.’

It was with that thought in mind that, still fully dressed in her soaking wet clothes, Bethan finally allowed herself to sleep between the freezing, damp sheets on the bed.

‘You’ve done
what
, woman?’ Evan thundered.

Elizabeth backed away trembling. She’d made Evan angry many times before. But she’d never seen this cold, savage temper burn in his eyes before.

‘I saw our Bethan married to Alun Jones this morning …’ She looked past his shoulder and fell silent. Evan turned and glimpsed Eddie and Haydn, white-faced and dumbstruck, standing behind him in the passage.

‘I want to speak to your mother, boys. Alone!’ he ordered.

Eddie retreated but Haydn stood firm.

‘I have as much right as you, Dad, to know why our Bethan married the lodger without saying a word to any of us about it.’ He folded his arms and stood his ground. ‘She left me no choice,’ Elizabeth said defensively. ‘I had to arrange it. She brought disgrace on all of us. Would you have rather she’d brought a bastard into this house?’ she asked belligerently.

‘She wouldn’t have been the first Powell to roll with a man before she was married,’ Evan countered aggressively.

‘At least I was able to marry the father of my bastard in chapel,’ she shouted. ‘Which is more than your precious Bethan could have done.’

It was the first time Elizabeth had raised her voice in anger. That, as much as what she’d said, sent Haydn and Eddie scuttling back down the hall and out on to the front doorstep.

‘That’s always been your problem, hasn’t it, Elizabeth?’ Evan ranted. ‘You never could truck our Bethan being more beautiful and clever than you ever were …’

‘What good’s beauty or brains to a woman,’ Elizabeth hissed, ‘when men use a woman for one thing and one thing only? You weren’t concerned with what I thought, or my looks, when you walked me home by Shoni’s that night after choir practice.’

‘You didn’t exactly fight me off. You damn well enjoyed it every bit as much as I did.’

‘If I enjoyed it, I’ve paid for it every day of my life since. Putting up with your groping night after night. Bearing your children. Living among common worthless people who insult me every time I show my face in the street. Hearing whispers about you or your low, criminal family behind my back every time I walk into a shop. One slip. Just one slip …’

‘I wouldn’t have touched you that night if you hadn’t led me on and if I hadn’t quarrelled with …’

‘Go on, say it,’ Elizabeth taunted. ‘If you hadn’t quarrelled with the great love of your life.’

‘You knew damn well then and you know now that I wouldn’t have touched you if I hadn’t been drunk. All you had to do was push me away. Tell me to stop. But not you … you …’

‘Don’t go trying to blame me for that night, Evan Powell. If it hadn’t been me it would have been some other girl. Any other girl. You were like a dog looking for a bitch and any bitch would have done.’

‘I found my bitch,’ he thundered violently. ‘A bitch on heat. On the one and only night in your life you behaved like a female of any species. I wish to God I had gone with someone else,’ he uttered fervently. ‘Almost anyone would have done, because I don’t think any other woman would have brought as much misery to this house, my children, or me as you have.’

‘How dare you! You … you …’ lost for words Elizabeth lashed out with her fists. Evan caught her arm before she had a chance to hit him. Instinctively, without thinking of the consequences, he slammed her full in the face with his open hand. The blow sent her reeling to the hearthrug, bleeding from a cut on her mouth. Too stunned even to cry.

*      *      *

‘Swine!’ Eddie exclaimed feelingly as he sat on the doorstep.

‘Who?’ Haydn asked blankly, too stunned to think coherently.

‘That smarmy bloody doctor, who else?’ Eddie demanded viciously. ‘Well if this is what I think it is, he can look out,’ he threatened. ‘If he ever sets foot in Pontypridd again, he can look out.’

Evan walked out of the house just after four. He’d left Elizabeth nursing a swollen face, split lip and black eye. The knowledge that he’d hit a woman for the first time in his life left a sour, rancid taste in his mouth, but it didn’t stop him from hating Elizabeth with every fibre in his body. This time she’d gone too far. He’d never forgive her for what she’d done to Bethan. He’d worked with Alun Jones for ten years. Long enough to know that the man didn’t do any favours for anyone unless money was involved.

He couldn’t begin to imagine how Elizabeth had paid him. She of course had hotly denied that she had, speaking only of Alun’s regard for Bethan. Regard! Pah! He spat in the gutter. He had to see Bethan so he could hear the truth for himself. But he didn’t know her address. Elizabeth had said that Alun Jones had bought a house on Broadway. She hadn’t even bothered to find out the number. That was another thing. Alun Jones had talked about opening a lodging house for years. But he was too fond of the drink to save anything like the kind of money needed to put a down payment on a house the size of the ones on Broadway. There were far too many unanswered questions in this “marriage” for his liking.

He clenched his fists tightly at the thought of Bethan being handed over to the man like a parcel of unwanted goods. As a lodger and fellow miner Alun Jones was one of the boys. But the idea of him as a son-in-law, sleeping every night in the same bed as Bethan, incensed him.

Elizabeth had said she thought he’d make a good husband. What the hell did Elizabeth know about the dark side of a man’s nature? The bloody woman had never taken her nightdress off once in all the time they’d been married, and more fool him, he’d never made her. When Bethan had been conceived … he thrust the image swiftly from his mind and concentrated on the bitter, frigid years that they’d shared a bedroom.

The years when she’d used every excuse she could think of to repulse his advances. And he’d never pushed her, or forced her once, no matter how much he’d burned and ached for a sensual touch.

He tried to recall all the rumours he’d heard about Alun. There’d been a widow in Zoar Street who’d sported a black eye that gossip attributed to Alun’s doing. And he’d seen the man himself going off with tarts in the pubs in town. Drink and women – that’s where Alun Jones’s wages had gone. Some life in store for his favourite daughter.

Inwardly seething, he slowed down when he reached the foot of the Graig hill. He strolled over to the group of idlers standing on the Tumble, and watched the traffic. People trudged past with shopping bags full of windfall apples and potatoes. Children carried newspaper cones that the bakers had filled with a shilling’s worth of stale ends. Some of the toddlers already had the white pinched look of hunger about their faces that he remembered from the strikes of the twenties.

His own children along with many others from the Graig had been fed then in the soup kitchens set up by the Salvation Army. And the
Observer
had reported that the Salvationists – ever ready to help in any crisis, were re-opening the Jubilee Hall kitchens on the Graig again for the children of the unemployed. Charity stuck in his craw but at least in the twenties the miners had the option of going back to work, albeit for less money.
They
had taken that option away this time, and he trembled not only for the bleak, hungry future of his own family, but for that of every other miner in the town.

He damned the government and a system that had brought a whole class of workers to this misery.

Slowly, gradually, the stream of pedestrians and carts dwindled to a trickle. The painted ladies of the town began to leave the two foot nine and join him on the station square.

‘Out of work, love?’ asked one small, improbable blonde who lisped badly because her front teeth were missing.

He nodded, not wanting to get into conversation.

‘Come on then, sunshine, I’ll give you one for free. For luck.’

He shook his head. There was something familiar about the woman. Something … ‘Dottie?’ he asked tentatively. ‘Dottie Miles?’

She looked into his face. ‘Evan Powell?’

‘It’s a long way from Graig Infants’ school, Dottie.’

‘That it is.’

‘I thought you married Bill Moss.’

‘I did. He died four years ago. Pit accident. Got to feed the kids somehow so I’m here,’ she said, clearly ashamed that he’d recognised her.

‘Do you remember when me and Richie Richards fought over you in the playground and Mr Lewis caught us and gave us ten whacks each?’ he laughed.

‘That I do,’ she smiled holding her hand in front of her mouth so he couldn’t see the full extent of the damage to her teeth.

‘Here, Dottie, take this.’ Evan fumbled in his pocket.

‘I’ll not take hand-outs, Evan Powell. From you or anyone. I earn my corner. Now if you should want to take a walk with me, it’d be a different thing.’

‘I would if I could,’ Evan refused gently. ‘But I’m waiting for my daughter.’

‘Didn’t know you had one.’

‘I have two and two sons. The one I’m waiting for is a nurse.’

‘That must be nice. Well, can’t stay around here all night talking to you. See you, Evan.’

‘Bye, Dottie.’

She walked off down the station yard. The Cardiff train had just come in and she hovered at the foot of the steps eyeing the men as they ran down them.

At last Evan saw a tall slim figure dressed in a nurse’s uniform striding across the road from the slaughterhouse.

‘Bethan, love?’ He intercepted her as she stepped on to the pavement in front of the station.

‘Dad, I …’ she faltered. The nerves that had been blissfully numbed and deadened since Elizabeth had begun to make all her decisions for her jangled agonisingly back to life when she saw the pain in her father’s eyes.

‘Look, can you spare a minute? I have to talk to you,’ he pleaded.

She opened her cloak and glanced at her watch. It was no more than a formality. She’d left the house a whole hour and a half before she needed to, simply to get away from Alun.

She’d woken up, forgone any thought of washing, rubbed herself over with cologne and dressed in the bedroom, stuck her head around the kitchen door and said goodbye. She wouldn’t even eat tea with him, telling him that she always ate in the hospital.

‘We could go to Ronconis’ cafe,’ Evan said persuasively.

‘All right, Dad,’ she agreed reluctantly.

He went to the counter and ordered two teas while she found a table.

‘You look a bit peaky, love. Do you want anything to eat?’ he asked solicitously.

‘The pies are good today. Fresh in,’ Tina shouted from behind the counter.

‘Then I’ll have one please.’ She wasn’t hungry but she suddenly realised that she hadn’t eaten all day. Still refusing to think about the baby’s needs, only her own, she decided that if she was to survive the night shift she ought to put something in her stomach.

‘Take the teas, Mr Powell, and go and sit down, I’ll bring the pie over when it’s ready,’ Tina said as she pushed one into the steamer.

‘Mam told you?’ Bethan asked as her father sat across the table from her.

‘She did.’ His mouth set in a grim line. ‘Beth, why didn’t you come to me?’ he rebuked.

‘You had enough on your plate. Losing your job and everything. Mam said –’

‘I don’t want to hear a bloody word that your mam said,’ he cursed savagely, slamming his fist into the table. Heads turned as the other customers gawped in their direction.