Tiger Ragtime

I would like to thank everyone who helped me research this book and so generously gave of their time and expertise:

All the dedicated staff of the Butetown History and Arts Centre in Tiger Bay who are doing so much to preserve the spirit of the old Tiger Bay and chronicle the truly multicultural community that existed there before so many of its fine buildings were demolished in the 1960s. Rhondda Cynon Taff’s exceptional library service, especially Mrs Lindsay Morris, for her ongoing help and support. Hywel Matthews and Catherine Morgan, the archivists at Pontypridd, and Nick Kelland, the archivist at Treorchy library.

The staff of Pontypridd Museum, Brian Davies, David Gwyer, and Ann Cleary, for allowing me to dip into their extensive collection of old photographs and for doing such a wonderful job of preserving the history of Pontypridd. Emma Noble, my miracle-working publicist, and all the booksellers and readers who make writing such a privileged occupation.

And while I wish to acknowledge all the assistance I received, I wish to state that any errors in
Tiger Ragtime
are entirely mine.

Catrin Collier May 2006

Judy Hamilton gazed critically at her reflection in the mirror on her dressing table. Dressed in a borrowed, floor-length, gold satin frock, with every visible inch of skin on her face, hands and arms covered with gold greasepaint and her black hair hidden beneath a crocheted gold elastic cap threaded with glass beads, she positively shimmered. She turned sideways and checked her profile. The idea for the costume had been her friend and employer Edyth Slater’s. But they had expended so much time and effort in putting together her outfit, and those of all the other members of the Bute Street Blues Band, it would be a waste to wear them just this once. They would certainly turn a few heads if they played their next engagement in one of the dockland pubs dressed like this – even without the greasepaint.

‘Why is it you look like a glittering angel while I resemble a tarnished brass effigy on a cathedral tombstone?’

Judy turned her head. Edyth was standing in the open doorway. ‘You look nothing of the sort.’

‘Gold greasepaint highlights dark skin and makes it glow, but it’s rusted mine. I only hope there will be other people in the carnival who look just as peculiar.’ Edyth went to the hall table and picked up one of the wickerwork baskets she and Judy had painted gold and filled with paper cornets containing tiny macaroons and coconut biscuits.

‘You don’t look peculiar – well, no more peculiar than I do,’ Judy qualified. ‘I wonder what mess my uncles and the others in the band have made with the sticks of greasepaint. I told them how to apply it, but I don’t think any of them were listening.’ She left her bedroom and scooped up the second basket. ‘Ready?’

‘As I’ll ever be.’ Edyth opened the door that led down the stairs into her baker’s shop. ‘Does everyone feel as idiotic as this when they dress up for a carnival?’

‘You’ve never dressed up for a carnival before?’ Judy questioned in astonishment.

‘I’ve been to fancy-dress parties, but a carnival is different. It’s public for a start. And it doesn’t help that my brother Harry has threatened to bring his entire family down to watch the procession. Thank goodness my parents have taken the rest of the tribe to North Wales on holiday; if they hadn’t, I’d have the entire Evans clan laughing at me.’

‘Half the fun is being laughed at by your friends and relations. I don’t know about carnivals anywhere else, but they’re always special in Bute Street. When I was little I used to look forward to them as much as Christmas. Although sometimes I think we had more fun preparing for them, than taking part in the actual parade.’

‘I must admit I enjoyed helping to make the costumes and watching the children practise their marching in the park. And listening to you rehearse in the bath,’ Edyth teased.

‘I wasn’t that loud, was I?’

‘For the first time in my life I know all the words to more than one song.’ Edyth ran down the stairs. She would have tripped over her skirt when she reached the bottom if she hadn’t steadied herself on the newel post.

‘Careful,’ Judy cried.

‘I was born clumsy and clumsy I’ll always be.’

‘The carnival party after the procession is the best.’ Judy followed Edyth into the shop. ‘It starts as soon as the floats have been judged in Loudoun Square, and goes on until the early hours. Everyone stays until the end – even the priests, the nuns, the vicars, the children, the old people …’

‘Sounds like every Saturday night in the Bay since I moved here from Pontypridd.’ Edyth walked into the back storeroom. The door to the yard was wedged open and all seven members of the Bute Street Blues Band were loading a drum kit into Edyth’s baker’s cart, which was unrecognisable beneath layers of gold paper ornamented with all the glued-on gold and silver shiny tobacco and sweet wrappings they had managed to scavenge for the last three months.

‘Careful! Break that drum skin and I’ll break your neck,’ the band’s drummer shouted at Judy’s uncle, Tony King. ‘You just knocked it against the cart –’

‘He didn’t, it just looks like he did from where you’re standing,’ Micah Holsten, part-time saxophonist, fulltime pastor of the Norwegian Church and acknowledged leader of the band, interrupted in an effort to calm the situation.

‘There’ll be no room for a mouse, let alone us on the back of that cart. The drum kit fills it,’ Tony grumbled when they finally managed to heave it into place.

‘We’ll have to perch on the sides and play our instruments over the edge.’ Micah gave Edyth an apologetic glance. ‘I know it’s your float, but if we are going to get all the band and our instruments on the back, you’ll have to sit up front.’

‘It’s the only place for the non-musical.’ Edyth handed her basket to her driver, Jamie. Sitting alongside him was her baker, Moody. Only sixteen, the West Indian had been trained to bake bread, cakes and biscuits by the Jew who had opened Goldman’s bakery and sold it to Edyth before returning to Poland. At Mordecai Goldman’s suggestion, Edyth had kept Moody on as chief baker and she hadn’t regretted the decision. Not only an expert baker, Moody had also shown a remarkable aptitude for passing on his skills, and was training two of Judy’s cousins as apprentices.

Jamie set Edyth’s basket on the bench seat next to him. He was keeping the horses on a tight rein although they looked more likely to fall asleep than bolt.

Micah glanced into Judy’s basket. ‘What’s in the cornets?’

‘Macaroons and coconut biscuits.’ Judy saw him frown and realised she’d said more than she should have.

‘After only six months in business you can afford to give away the stock?’ Micah looked keenly at Edyth.

‘It’s only a few biscuits and the Goldman name is on the paper cornets. It’s good advertising,’ Edyth replied defensively. ‘And don’t you all look handsome.’

‘Don’t change the subject.’

‘I’m not,’ Edyth countered. It didn’t help that Micah was right. She knew she couldn’t afford to give away stock.

‘The carnival is only once a year, Micah,’ Judy’s oldest uncle, Jed, reminded.

‘So is Easter, and Edyth gave away biscuits to all the Sunday Schools in the Bay then. Next it will be Christmas. No doubt you’ll want to give every resident a stocking filled with mince pies?’ he mocked.

‘Is that what Mr Goldman used to do before I bought the business?’ Edyth chose to deliberately misunderstand Micah.

‘You know perfectly well he didn’t.’

Micah sounded more like an angry husband than an irritated friend. Sensing Edyth’s embarrassment, Judy attempted a diversion. ‘Jamie, stop touching your face. You’re smearing greasepaint over the reins and your costume.’

‘It will wipe off the reins and my costume is gold, same as the paint,’ Jamie retorted truculently.

‘It is not the same at all, because your suit is cloth and stage make-up leaves a horrid stain.’

‘You should know,’ Jamie grumbled. ‘You’re used to dressing up like a clown, I’m not.’

‘Come on, Jamie, less of your moaning – grin and bear it,’ his father, Jed, broke in sternly.

‘You’re used to people laughing at you when you play in the band,’ Jamie snapped mutinously.

‘I trust they don’t laugh.’ Micah rubbed his fingertips together to check they were dry before picking up his saxophone case.

‘They will when they see you in that get-up.’ Jamie glared at Judy. Technically she was his cousin, but as he was fourteen, she nineteen, and they had been brought up in the same street, they were more like brother and sister. ‘That’s enough, Jamie.’ Jed didn’t raise his voice but Jamie fell silent. He knew when he had pushed his father’s tolerance to the limit.

‘All right if we leave our instrument cases in your storeroom, Edyth?’ Micah asked.

‘Of course.’

Jed pulled his pocket watch from his gold satin waistcoat and opened it. ‘It’s time we joined the other floats at the assembly point in Church Street.’

Micah watched Edyth close the storeroom door after they had all deposited their cases. ‘Lock it,’ he advised.

‘But I never lock the shop,’ she protested.

‘The carnival attracts all sorts from miles around,’ Jed warned, ‘including pickpockets and burglars. No one will be leaving the door to an empty house open on the Bay today.’

‘I don’t suppose you’ve locked the front door either.’ Micah opened the door again, looked behind it and shook his head disapprovingly. ‘You’ve left all your keys on the hook?’

‘It’s where they’re kept.’ Edyth knew she’d been foolish. Common sense should have told her that the carnival would attract an influx of strangers, including a criminal element.

‘I’ll make sure every outside door is locked and the front ones bolted. Leave a couple of inches for me on the cart, boys. I know I’m thin, but I need more room than you’ve allowed,’ Micah called back, before disappearing inside.

Edyth was handing up the last of the musical instruments to the band squashed on the cart, when Micah returned. He drew Edyth into the doorway.

‘Tuck these away safely.’ He closed her fingers around her keys. After glancing at the cart to make sure no one was watching them, Micah sneaked a kiss.

Judy glimpsed them embracing and turned her back. Edyth and Micah’s affair was the worst-kept secret on the Bay. But Edyth had married a man who had deserted her less than two months after their wedding.

For the last six months Edyth had worked almost every hour in the day and most of those in the night to make her bakery a success, and in Judy’s opinion her friend was entitled to all the happiness she could get. Even if a few – a very few – straight-laced people said that it was scandalous for the pastor of the Norwegian Church to carry on with a woman who was still, on paper at least, married.

Aled James climbed on deck of the merchant ship heading into Cardiff Docks, leaned against the bulkhead, and gazed at his approaching homeland. The red-brick, French Gothic façade of the Pier Head building that dominated the shoreline loomed inexorably closer and he closed his eyes and breathed in half-forgotten scents. The July air was warm and balmy, perfumed with the tang of salt, fish, and smoke from the funnels of the surrounding vessels and laced with half-forgotten sounds.

The thud of coal barges knocking into one another as they were hauled down the canal to the waiting ships; the metallic slam of coal trams being fastened on to hoists followed by an avalanche clatter as their loads were tipped into holds; the sharp cries of gulls almost but not quite drowned out by the incessant sound of the ships’ hooters. But most evocative of all was the Welsh lilt in the warning shouts and cries of the dockers loading and unloading cargoes. It was music to his ears after fifteen years in America.

‘Glad to be home, boss?’

Aled opened his eyes and continued to stare ahead as Freddie Leary stood beside him. ‘Yes,’ he answered briefly.

‘Family coming to meet you, boss?’

Aled turned to the six-feet-four, red-headed, square built Irishman he had ‘employed’ for the past five years. ‘I have no family left who would want to own me, Freddie.’

‘That’s sad, boss. I know what it is to be an orphan. Not that I’ve any shortage of family with nine brothers and eight sisters.’

‘With eighteen of you fighting for food and space it’s little wonder you left Ireland,’ Aled observed dryly.

‘I would never have left, if the Catholic Brothers who took me and my brothers into the institution hadn’t pushed me out of the old country. They sent my older brothers to farms but put me on a ship bound for Australia. I was nine years old but they said I was big and fit enough to earn my own bread. They even told me that I was the lucky Leary, off to see the world instead of a field in County Cork. Not that I saw much of the world until I jumped ship two years later in New York, and then America wasn’t what I thought it was going to be.’

‘What did you think it was going to be, Freddie?’ Aled asked curiously. Freddie’s heavily muscled bulk was enough to inspire fear in the most hardened thug, which was why he’d paid him, and paid him well, for the last few years. But he doubted that Freddie’d had an original thought in his life.

‘Land of opportunity where every man is equal,’ Freddie recited as if he were a child repeating a lesson he had learned by rote but failed to understand.

‘That’s just a story the Yanks tell children before they’re old enough to see through fairy tales, Freddie.’ Aled resumed his study of the docks.

‘I’ve seen the captain, boss.’ Aled’s second ‘employee’, Aiden Collins, a Cuban-Irish Negro from Havana who was shorter and slighter than Freddie Leary, but somehow managed to look even more menacing, joined them. ‘He’s arranged for one of the boats to be lowered at the stern of the ship before we dock. He said our papers might not pass muster with immigration.’

‘They bloody well should, the money the boss paid for them and our passage,’ Freddie swore. ‘We could have crossed the Atlantic in style on a cruise ship ten times over for what that captain charged. You want me to sort him for you, boss?’

‘No, Freddie. I paid the going rate. A cruise ship would have wanted to see our passports and put our real names on the passenger list.’ Aled pulled his seaman’s cap down low over his face. He was dressed in a dark sweater and slacks like the other sailors on board, although he, Freddie and Aiden hadn’t done a stroke of work on the voyage. ‘You told them to send our luggage on to the Windsor Hotel?’ Aled checked with Aiden.

‘Yes, boss.’

Aled watched dockers, women as well as men, unload potatoes from a low-lying, Irish-registered vessel on the quayside. They slung the sacks they’d filled on to their backs, staggered down the gang plank and dumped them on wooden pallets on the dockside. It brought back memories of the days he’d fought older and heavier boys for a few hours’ paid casual work after his mother had succumbed to her fatal illness.

He could still recall the pain of the rope burns on his shoulders, knew how impossible it was to stand upright at the end of ten hours of back-breaking work – how it felt to be too tired to eat or even sleep.

He’d believed the offer of a job on board ship with regular meals to be heaven-sent after his mother had died. Disillusionment had set in when he’d received his first whipping before the ship had even left Welsh waters. He’d come a long way in fifteen years but he had never forgotten the skinny, ragged urchin he’d been. Or the people who had turned their backs on him and his mother and allowed them both to starve, and her to die in squalor.