Beggars and Choosers (54 page)

All Sali could think was how seedy, grubby and pathetic he looked. She could scarcely believe she was looking at the same man who had made her life such a misery. For the first time, she wondered why she had been so afraid of him. She could have done so much more to fight back ... Then she remembered his belt, the beatings he had given her, but most of all the threats he had made about Harry. Had she come to gloat at his downfall? It was a horrifying thought that she had sunk so low.

One of the officers pulled a chair out from the table; the second pushed Owen on to it. When Owen was seated, facing them, Rhian jumped up.

‘I can't ... I'm sorry, Sali, I can't ...' She knocked over her chair and fled towards the exit. One of the officers followed her.

Sali raised her eyes and stared at Owen, willing him to raise his eyes to meet her gaze, but Owen sat with his eyes downcast. ‘You asked to see us,' she reminded, as the inevitable sounds of the unlocking and locking of the door filled the room.

‘The Devil led me into temptation and I succumbed. I beg for your forgiveness, Sali. I need your forgiveness...'

Sali explored her feelings as she listened to his pleas. This man had murdered her lover, an innocent coachman and his own brother. He had made her life a misery, first in Mill Street and later in Tonypandy, when she had never stopped looking over shoulder, fearful that he would discover where she was hiding. He had threatened to harm her son and her aunt ... and now ... to her astonishment, all she felt for him was pity. Logic dictated he didn't deserve it, but then he would never know a love like the one she shared with Lloyd, or experience the unquestioning, trusting devotion of a child like Harry. He had led a miserable, solitary, selfish and brutal life and now he was about to face a death equally savage and lonely.

‘I need you to forgive me,' he reiterated, drooling spittle on to the table. ‘Please, I am about to meet my maker.' His eyes glazed with fear at the prospect. ‘It is your Christian duty –' he said with a trace of his old arrogance.

‘You told me I was unfit to be a Christian,' she reminded him softly.

‘You had sinned. It was my duty as your husband to correct you and set you on the path to righteousness.'

‘By beating, humiliating and degrading me after you murdered Mansel?' she said calmly.

‘I didn't mean to hurt him. He had money ... I was about to lose the shop... Iestyn and Rhian's home... He fought back ...'

‘The doctor told me that Mansel died from a blow to the back of his head, Owen. It is difficult for a man to fight back when he's turned away from you.' Her compassion didn't extend to accepting his lies.

‘Please, Sali,' he stretched his hand over the table towards her, but she recoiled even before the warder stepped forward, ‘I need your forgiveness. You are my wife ... it is your duty to obey me, for I have truly repented. I have seen the light. I know that God will forgive me if you do, Sali. It is His will that I beg for your forgiveness and in begging, gain his everlasting mercy.'

He was actually enjoying grovelling to her. Sali couldn't bear his self-abasement a moment longer.

‘For what you did to me, I forgive you, Owen. For what you did to Harry to blight the first years of his life, I can't absolve you, because it wasn't just me you hurt,' she said simply. ‘As for murdering Mansel, Iestyn and the coachman, you will have to ask them for forgiveness when you reach your heaven. I hope for your sake that you do.'

‘Sali –'

‘Goodbye, Owen.' She rose to her feet and walked towards the door. The warder escorted her out as Owen was returned, still pleading, begging and demanding forgiveness, to his cell.

Chapter Twenty-eight

‘You said within reason,' Mari apologised to Sali, as Harry proudly set out his purchases on the café table.

‘Four penny bars of Five Boys chocolate, Harry, don't you think that's being greedy?' Geraint castigated.

‘They are for my uncles.' Harry moved one bar to one side of his glass of milk and piled the others on top. ‘Uncle Victor, Uncle Joey, Uncle Lloyd and Uncle Billy. And look, Mam.' Oblivious to Geraint's deflated expression, he opened a brown paper bag and removed a box of soldiers. ‘New soldiers for my fort on loan.'

‘You've wasted your money, Harry,' Geraint reproached. ‘The nursery fort isn't on loan and it has plenty of soldiers.'

‘He's talking about the fort the Evanses loaned him because I wouldn't allow him to take it as a gift.' Sali smiled at Harry in an attempt to take the sting from her brother's criticism. ‘And it was a wonderful idea of yours to get more soldiers, Harry. Now what would you like for lunch?'

‘Harry was hungry so we ate early.' Mari pushed her teacup into the centre of the table.

‘Sausage and mash and I cleaned my plate.'

‘Good boy. Shall we eat?' Sali asked Rhian and Geraint.

Still pale and shaky after her bout of nausea in the prison, Rhian murmured, ‘I'm not hungry.'

‘I'll have something when we get back to Ynysangharad House.' Geraint picked up his coat and hat from the stand where he had hung them.

‘Then we'll go to the station,' Sali said decisively.

‘I'll carry your parcels for you if you like, Harry?' Geraint offered, in an attempt to appease his nephew.

Harry shook his head and clung to them.

‘Give him time, Geraint.' Emotionally drained by the scene in the prison, Sali had an overwhelming longing for peace and quiet. To her surprise she found herself picturing, not the drawing room of Ynysangharad House, but the kitchen in Tonypandy. Harry was playing in ‘his' corner with the fort and soldiers, Lloyd and his father were sitting, reading the newspapers and discussing politics at the table, and Joey and Victor were whistling in the basement as they mixed the chicken feed and dog food. The scene was so real, so tangible, she was astonished when the sound of breaking glass shattered it and she saw a waitress bend down to pick up a broken vinegar bottle.

Geraint gave her a penetrating look and shrugged on his coat. ‘I'll ask them to send someone to fetch a cab. Rhian's in no state to walk anywhere.'

Paperboys outside and inside the station were shouting the headlines on the newspaper placards.

‘War Between Police and Miners in Tonypandy.'

‘Strikers Stone Police.'

‘Massive Police Casualties.'

‘Coal Owners' Association Ask Government to Send in the Troops.'

‘A Thousand Metropolitan Police on their Way to the Coalfields. ‘

‘Looks like you left Tonypandy just in time, Sali.' Geraint saw them all into a first-class carriage and slammed the door.

‘You're forgetting Rhian still lives there, Geraint.'

‘But you're working in a decent house, aren't you, Rhian?' Geraint asked the girl.

‘Llan House,' Mari answered for Rhian, who was still white and shaky. ‘My sister is housekeeper there.'

Sali bristled in indignation when Geraint said ‘decent house'. The inference being that he considered Lloyd Evans's house something other than decent, then she realised that even if she reproached him, he wouldn't understand why. His opinions and outlook on life had been shaped by his boarding school upbringing, just as hers had been by the past few years of her life.

‘More police,' Geraint commented, as squad after squad passed their carriage and piled on to the third-class carriages lower down the train. ‘They must be expecting more trouble.'

‘I've just realised I can't sit with you,' Rhian protested. ‘I only have a third-class ticket.'

‘I'll pay the difference.' Sali stared at the tall, well-built, helmeted policemen, armed with four-foot cudgels, and thought of Lloyd and all the other miners. And she continued to think, as the train wound its way along the twelve miles of track between Cardiff and Pontypridd. For more than five weeks she had held back from contacting Lloyd because she had too many other pressing things to do – arrange the funerals, re-allocate the duties of the servants, place her aunt's jewellery in a bank box, settle everything with the trustees, organise a position in Gwilym James for Geraint that wouldn't injure her brother's pride, wait for her mother's health to improve ...

So many demands on her time to make decisions she had thought only she could settle. Now she realised she had simply allowed them to take precedence. The only choice she had to make was easy, so easy she couldn't understand why she hadn't made it weeks ago. And she didn't even have the excuse of acting in Harry's interest. He had told her what he wanted to do the first day he had spent at Ynysangharad House. Her son wanted to go home and she wanted to be with the man she loved.

‘We're almost there.' Geraint left his seat and lifted down their umbrellas and Harry's packages from the luggage rack.

‘I'm not getting out in Pontypridd, Geraint. Harry and I are going on to Tonypandy.'

Geraint whirled round. ‘Have you taken leave of your senses?'

‘On the contrary, I believe I've just found them.'

‘You can't possibly be thinking of going on to Tonypandy. Now of all times. You saw the police get on the train. Heard the newspaper headlines. And don't for one minute think they are an exaggeration. Colliers are a rough breed. You have no idea what they are capable of.'

‘Yes, I do. I've been living with four of them for the past year.'

‘Did you say that to deliberately annoy me, Sali?' he demanded furiously.

‘I told you, Geraint. The Evanses have accepted me into their family.'

‘And that's why you think you have to go back there now? Out of some kind of misguided loyalty to them? For God's sake, Sali, you were their skivvy. Paid help like Rhian here.'

‘And Mari, Geraint,' Sali pointed out mildly.

‘You owe the Evanses nothing,' he railed, refusing to be sidetracked. ‘And you have absolutely no conception of what is going on in the Valleys.'

‘I have, Geraint, because I know the miners, and Lloyd and his father have told me about their grievances.'

‘But Ynysangharad House, the Trustees, the shop, Harry's inheritance ... he needs to be brought up a gentleman if he is to take his proper place in society.'

‘The trustees will look after Harry's inheritance and I can go to the monthly meetings just as easily from Tonypandy as Ynysangharad House. The staff, you and Mari can look after Ynysangharad House perfectly well. In fact, probably better than I can. And don't pretend that you, Gareth and Llinos won't be relieved. I know I have become something of a liability. And despite Harry's inheritance, so is he.'

‘People need time to adjust, Sali.' Geraint had the grace to look shamefaced. ‘In a few years, your marriage to Owen Bull and the circumstances of Harry's birth will be forgotten.'

‘And what am I supposed to do while people are forgetting, Geraint? Hide with Harry in the nursery at Ynysangharad House until I am considered “acceptable” by polite society again? Why should I? I am what I am, and if people don't like it they can ignore me as I can them.'

‘If you won't consider your own future, consider Harry's. He will be a wealthy and important man.'

‘All the more reason for him to be brought up by people who love him and will keep his feet firmly on the ground.' She glanced out of the window. ‘There isn't much time, so listen carefully please, Mari. Pack Harry's things and mine and don't forget the toys he brought with him. There's no need to pack anything from the nursery. Ask Robert to send a trunk up by train. This is the address.' She opened her handbag, tore a piece of paper from the back of her diary and scribbled it down.

‘Sali –'

‘I won't reconsider, Geraint. When things have calmed down in Tonypandy, I will return for a visit. But there is no need to ask the housekeeper to prepare rooms for us, Mari. Harry and I won't be sleeping in Ynysangharad House again.'

‘I can't let you behave so foolishly.'

‘You have no choice, Geraint.' Sali met her brother's steady gaze. The train drew to a halt. Geraint opened the door, stepped down and offered his hand to Mari. He looked at Sali until the whistle blew, then he closed the door. She went to the window and pushed it down.

‘I'm sorry I couldn't be the sister you wanted,' she called after him, as the train drew out of the station.

‘We're going home, to the uncles?' Harry scrutinised his box of soldiers as the train crawled up the valley towards Tonypandy.

‘Yes, Harry.' Sali glanced impatiently out of the window. Every stop at every station along the way had been five times longer than usual. Ten minutes at Trehafod. Half an hour at Porth. Finally the train drew to a halt in sidings.

‘Good.'

Sali glanced impatiently at her watch.

‘I told Mrs Williams I would be back at six o'clock,' Rhian said. ‘What's the time now?'

‘Almost seven, but I'll go to Llan House with you and explain that the delay wasn't your fault.' Sali lifted Harry on to her knee. Doors slammed lower down the train and Rhian stuck her head out of the window.

‘The police are getting off.'

‘There's nothing we can do until we reach the station.' Sali tried to remain calm, but she found it increasingly difficult. ‘As soon as we leave the train, grab a brake. I'll pay the extra on the tickets.'

Paying the extra money on their tickets was easily done but there were no brakes or carriages waiting in the rank before the station. The street outside was eerily deserted and silent. Sali and Rhian set out to walk to Dunraven Street.

They had only taken a few steps when they heard the roaring. The swell of thousands of voices raised in anger, accompanied by cries, screams, shouts and the whinny of horses. They turned the corner, stopped and looked on in horror at the scene being played out under the lights of the gas lamps in Tonypandy's main shopping street.

A mass of men and women occupied the street, surrounded on all sides by a thin line of uniformed police wielding batons. Sali stood transfixed.

Whistles were blown and mounted police surged forward, just like their colleagues on foot, swinging their truncheons indiscriminately into the crowd. As their cudgels flailed, the miners fought back, throwing sticks, stones and anything else that came to hand.

Sali saw one of the stones hit a plate-glass shop window. It shattered in an instant. Shards crashed downwards, smashing on the pavement and breaking over the heads of the people in the street. Men piled through the broken glass, grabbing overcoats, hats and shirts from the shop display, tossing them back to others behind them before battering through into the shop itself.

A woman standing beside Sali fell to her knees and began praying. More stones were thrown and more shop windows shattered. Sali felt as though a house of cards was falling, one card at a time, as shop after shop succumbed. First one, then two, then finally all six of Connie's shop windows were destroyed. People swarmed en masse and Sali saw tins, bottles, jars and packages being handed from one man to another. Some were thrown full pelt at the police and their horses. One man was running up the road with an armful of overcoats, another was carrying dozens of umbrellas.

Mr Willie Llewellyn stood in front of his chemist shop and Sali closed her eyes, waiting for his window to receive the same treatment as the others, but the mob flooded past the ex-rugby international's shop in the direction of De Winton Street, bypassing him. Mr Isaac the jeweller stood in front of his shop and fired a pistol in the air, and he too proved lucky.

Feeling she should do something but not knowing what, Sali took a step towards Connie's shop. But even as she did so, she saw there was no way that she would be able to fight her way through the throng to reach it.

‘Sali ...'

‘You can't faint, not now, Rhian.' Sali looked down and saw that Harry had wrapped his arms around her legs and buried his face in the skirt of her coat. She picked him up and holding his face against her shoulder, shielded him from the sight of the battle. Mounted policemen charged towards them and she yelled at Rhian.

‘Run!'

They charged as fast as they could back the way they had come.

‘We'll walk around the back streets,' Sali gasped, as soon as she could draw breath again.

‘Mrs Williams –' Rhian began.

‘Will have heard what's going on here.'

The side and back streets were full of injured men and women being helped to their houses. As Sali and Rhian turned towards the Evanses house she saw Victor carrying Joey in through the door. Blood was pouring from his head.

Handing Harry and his precious parcels to Rhian, she ran into the house and down the passage after them. Victor didn't ask her what she was doing there.

‘Can you look after him?' He lowered Joey into an easy chair. ‘I've others to see to.'

Victor was gone before she could answer. She ran to the sink, pumped a bowlful of water and grabbed a teacloth. Kneeling in front of Joey, she bathed his face.

‘I'm all right,' Joey mumbled, clearly in a daze.

‘Not by the look of you.'

It took her ten minutes to mop the blood from his face and head. To her relief she discovered the cut that was bleeding so profusely was neither as deep nor as long as she had feared. She soaked the cloth in cold water and pressed it to his scalp in an effort to staunch the flow. ‘You're going to have a scar on your forehead that will spoil your pretty looks.'

‘Women like a man to look like a man, don't they, Rhian?' Joey tried to grin and failed miserably.