Miss Purdy's Class (36 page)

‘Oh, you know.’ His aunt’s tone was flat. ‘Going along. Come and see him. He’s been in a lather waiting for you.’

They all piled in, seeming to fill the place right up. In one of the two threadbare old chairs facing the empty grate, Gwen saw a young man with brown hair and a thin, shadowy face. At the sight of Daniel, a grin broke across it. ‘Danny boy!’

‘Billy!’ Daniel rumpled the young man’s hair playfully. ‘You’re a sight for sore eyes.’ He looked round. ‘Brought some of my comrades to visit. This is Gwen . . .’

Gwen said hello and shook Billy’s clammy hand.

‘Nice to meet you,’ he said shyly. She felt desperate for him. He was her age, Daniel had told her, and had been felled by an accident down the pit when he was fifteen. He’d got in the way of a loaded dram, the trucks pulling coal through the pits, and was paralysed from the waist down. His two brothers and sister had left home for London to find work, but Billy had no choice but to stay at home. He was a Communist, but he couldn’t even move out of his chair without assistance, let alone get to meetings.

‘Nice to meet you, comrade,’ Herbert was saying. Gwen heard Esther and Ernest greet him as well. She looked around her.

The small front room bore all the signs of poverty. The floorboards were bare and scrubbed, there was a wooden chair as well two old armchairs and a china jug and a candlestick set on the mantelpiece, along with a few other knick-knacks. On such a balmy night there was no call for a fire in the grate, but it would have cheered the room. She caught sight of a china po pushed under Billy’s seat – somehow that was the saddest sight of all.

‘Anthony, go and get that stool from out back!’ Shân said. ‘Now, you ladies come and sit down.’

Gwen and Esther were united, for once, in protesting that they couldn’t possibly sit and deprive the woman of the house of a chair. Gwen was allotted a stool to sit on, and Esther the wooden chair. Herbert and Ernest settled on the floor on each side of the hearth.

Shân reluctantly took the softer chair, pulling her shawl round her thin shoulders. She managed a rueful smile, and Gwen saw that beneath the veil of tiredness and care her heart-shaped face was rather pretty.

‘There’s hardly a crumb I’ve in the house to feed you on,’ she said ashamedly. ‘We’ve put the kettle on, that’s all.’

‘Here, Auntie.’ Daniel presented her with the bundle. ‘Ma put this together for you.’

‘
Duw!
Oh, my, what a lot! My lap can’t hold it all!’ She was so eager, almost like a child, and laid the bundle, tied in part of an old sheet, on the floor and unknotted the ends. ‘Oh, God bless Theresa – she always did have a heart of gold. What’d we do without her? Oh, Billy, look at this now!’

Gwen felt a lump come into her throat at the woman’s excitement in the face of the simple things in the bundle. Theresa had included a loaf of bread, a few ounces of butter, some tea, a jar of jam, a large knuckle of ham, some soft buns she’d baked, a cake and a bag of carrots. There were also oddments like a bar of washing soap and a little bundle of candles held together with a rubber band.

‘Well, we’ve buns to have with our tea now!’ she cried, delighted.

They all tried to protest that the buns were meant for the family, but Shân wouldn’t hear of it.

‘I haven’t even got enough cups to go round!’ she laughed, getting up to make the tea. ‘Mrs Evans next door has lent us a couple!’

Daniel’s Uncle Anthony perched on the arm of Billy’s chair and immediately the talk turned to politics. At first the Birmingham group sat listening, riveted. Here they were in South Wales, in the heartland of the party – the place Daniel described to them as the beacon of hope, where there was strong leadership and growing unity! They wanted to hear all about it, to drink it in. Gwen was filled with pride and excitement.

The talk turned first to the latest unemployment regulations, in force for eighteen months now, which were the focus of the next day’s protest in Tonypandy. The government’s Unemployment Assistance Board had introduced national rates of benefit which in many cases were lower than the previous ones. They heard stories of distress from all over the valleys.

Billy’s face lit up with passion. ‘I’ve lost my legs, my livelihood and now I’m sat rotting here, and there’s no use I am except to cause my family hunger and worry. It’s all wrong. No, Mam –’ he flung her arm off as she tried to protest at his harshness – ‘that’s the truth and you know it. It isn’t your fault or mine – it’s capitalism does it. Capitalist oppression!’

Gwen realized that Billy did not often allow himself to voice these thoughts. He looked heated, overexcited by all the company and she felt deep sorrow for him. She saw the impact of his words on his mother as well, in the way she clenched her jaw, tightening her lips.

‘We need another march like in ’34,’ Anthony said. He was a dignified man, whose deep, powerful voice held a quiet authority. ‘Action – that’s the thing. Unified action. We can’t sit back and let them starve our people into submission like trapped animals.’

Like Daniel’s father, Arturo, Anthony had first been employed at the steel works at Dowlais. The two of them had met there and later moved to work down the pit at Aberglyn. Anthony had been out of work now for over a year and had become a member both of the NUWM and the party.

‘Our poverty is what brings us together.’ Gwen heard Billy’s passionate voice across the room. ‘God, I wish I could come to Tonypandy with you tomorrow, Daniel, and hear Lewis Jones. Be there with everyone!’

‘I wish we could get you there too, Billy boy.’ Daniel frowned, as if he was thinking of a way in which it could be managed. ‘Are you coming, Uncle Anthony?’

‘We could certainly fit another one in the car, couldn’t we?’ Esther spoke up.

Anthony Sullivan nodded in a dignified way, as if to say, car or no car he’d get there somehow.

It grew later and later as they moved on to talk about the uprising in Spain, and the limited news reaching them from there, for the need for the party to mobilize in favour of the government, and Gwen, who had heard a lot of this before, found her eyelids beginning to droop. After a time, Shân noticed.

‘It’s exhausted your pretty friend here is, Daniel!’ she reproached him. ‘You all talking her to pieces. Let’s be getting some sleep now. Boys, you can sleep down with Billy. There’s a bed up at the back, if you girls don’t mind sharing.’

Gwen’s eyes met Esther’s. She knew they were both thinking the same thing:
I don’t want to share with you!
But neither of them would have dreamt of protesting.

‘That would be perfectly all right,’ Gwen said, getting to her feet. Esther did the same. She seemed humbled by Shân Sullivan and was quieter than usual. Daniel was sitting beside Billy, catching up on news of old pals. Gwen went to him and gave him a peck on the cheek.

‘Night then. Goodnight, Billy.’

‘Sleep tight.’ Daniel smiled up at her.

‘Night!’ Billy said. As she went to the door, Gwen heard him say to Daniel, ‘She’s lovely, isn’t she?’

‘Watch the third step.’ Shân turned, holding a candlestick, to warn Gwen and Esther, as they followed carrying the few things they’d brought for the night. The third tread of the bare staircase creaked ominously.

‘It’s not much, I’m afraid,’ Shân said, showing them the tiny back room. Between its whitewashed walls was a three-quarter sized bed, a small chest of drawers and a chair. There wasn’t room for anything else.

‘It’s
perfect
,’ Esther said, just a little too enthusiastically.

‘Thank you for putting us all up,’ Gwen said quietly. She felt a kinship with Shân, could sense all the burden of her life. ‘We’re an invasion.’

‘Oh no – it’s nice to have some life about the place. Our young ones slept in here once – all in a row.’ Her wan expression lit with a smile for a moment. ‘But it’s grown up and gone they are now. Except Billy, of course.’

‘God, it’s so
tragic
,’ Esther said once Shân had gone, wishing them goodnight. ‘What life will he ever have now?’

‘Umm, I know.’ Gwen pulled her nightdress out of her bag. Esther grated on her so much that she felt her usual urge to disagree with her on principle, but there was nothing she could say to contradict her. Billy’s situation
was
tragic.

Gwen felt deeply uncomfortable at such close quarters with Esther, whose personality seemed to take up the whole room. Added to that, she gave off a ripe, musky smell. She stripped off with no sign of inhibition, pulling her blouse over her head to reveal dark tufts of hair under her arms and heavy breasts encased in a stout bra, which she then proceeded to unfasten as well. Gwen turned away, though not without wondering, in spite of herself, whether Daniel would find the sight of Esther attractive. She slipped her own pale blue nightdress on and went to get into bed, seeing Esther in a voluminous white garment. Esther unwrapped her hair from the bandanna and brushed it out. It hung on her shoulders, thick and slightly frizzy. Gwen hadn’t thought to brush her hair. She was too anxious to lie down and sleep. Neither of them spoke.

At last, Esther climbed in beside her and lumped about, getting comfortable.

‘Blow the candle out, do,’ she said, as the chest of drawers was on Gwen’s side of the bed.

Gwen closed her eyes in the darkness. After a moment she heard Esther’s deep voice.

‘You’re really in love with our Daniel, aren’t you?’

Gwen hesitated, wondering whether to pretend to be asleep. What was Esther’s tone? Curious? Mocking?
Our Daniel
. After a few seconds, she said matter of factly, ‘Yes, I am.’

‘Ah. Well, you wouldn’t be the first.’ This time the voice held a knowing sense of regret. ‘Poor old you, darling.’

Thirty-Two

Gwen woke to the sound of a train chugging slowly in the distance. There was a high squeal from the engine, releasing steam. The pit train, she thought. Otherwise the house was quiet.

Opening her eyes, she saw daylight on either side of the thin curtain. Beside her, Esther’s curvaceous shape lay turned away, and she could hear her breathing heavily. She didn’t like lying so close to Esther. That comment she had made last night came stinging back. Gwen had lain awake, furious. The cheek of the woman! What the hell did Esther think she knew about Daniel?

Pleased to be awake before Esther, to get away from her, she slipped off the lumpy mattress, dressed quietly in the gloom and crept down the stairs, wincing as they creaked. But she was not the first up. Shân was already moving about in the kitchen at the back, and Daniel was just rousing himself. Round him the others slept, Billy on his mattress, the others on blankets on the floor beside him. Daniel sat up and waved in greeting.

‘Did you sleep?’

‘Yes thanks,’ she whispered.

He got up and came to her, taking her in his arms. His cheek felt rough against hers and he was warm and soft, somehow, from sleep.

‘Big day today.’

‘Yes.’ She smiled.

They greeted Shân, who was once again wrapped in her shawl though the morning was mild.

‘I’ll brew us a cup of tea,’ she said.

‘Just thought I’d take Gwen out for a minute, along the road,’ Daniel said. ‘Show her the valley.’

‘Oh you must show her, Daniel
bach
.’ Gwen saw Daniel’s aunt looking at her with a new curiosity. ‘There’s beautiful it is up there for those with the strength to walk. The tea’ll still be here when you get back.’

‘Here – come and see.’ Daniel took her arm and they went out into the sunny morning.

There was no view at first, except for the worn, grey cottages opposite. They were in a little sloping street, and Dr Lane’s Daimler looked absurdly large and out of place parked at the kerb.

‘Come and have a look this way,’ Daniel said, following the upward slope of the road.

The cottages clung along the contour of the incline. They were a poor, unkempt line of dwellings and the sufferings of their occupants seemed to be etched into their facades. The street was quiet except for a woman scrubbing at her step and a man with a stooped, wiry body, walking with a stick, who peered up from under his cap at them.

‘Daniel Fernandez? Is that you?’ His tone was commanding, and, Gwen thought, not especially friendly.

‘Yes, it’s me, Hywel.’ Daniel sounded tense.

The man squinted at him. ‘What’re you back here for, mun? Making trouble again, is it?’ He shook the stick. ‘They ought to round up the whole bloody lot of you and send you to Russia!’ He started off up the road again with renewed energy, but Daniel swivelled on one foot and called after him, ‘The Labour Movement’s dead, Hywel – all over the world. They’ve given in to capitalism and fascism! When’re you going to face reality?’

The man turned, banging his stick on the ground. ‘We could have kept our men working! Now there’s nothing in the valleys but empty bellies and empty Bolshevik principles to go with them. No one gains any fat from principles!’

‘What – keep them working by joining the bosses’ Federation, and the blacklegs? That’s slavery, Hywel, and you know it. The slavery of ownership and capital. The workers are making the revolution – here today, whether they’re in work or not. They’ll show their strength in Tonypandy . . .’ Gwen could hear a particular desperation in Daniel’s voice as he tried to impress his views on the old man. His fists were clenched, body tensed with emotion. She could see that this was a division which went back a long way and went deep. ‘There
will
be a new dawn, Hywel, if you’d only put your faith in it.’

‘The only place I put my faith is in almighty God, Daniel, and there was a time when you did the same. You’ve betrayed yourself by putting it anywhere else. Now don’t speak to me any more . . .’ He waved Daniel away with violent exasperation and continued on down the road.

‘God didn’t stop them throwing my ma into gaol, did he?’

Gwen was shocked to the core.
Theresa
in gaol? Whatever was Daniel talking about?

The old man strode furiously along the road. Gwen waited behind Daniel and saw he was quivering with emotion. After a moment, he shook his head and let out a sharp sigh, turning to her. ‘Hywel Jones and my da were in the Labour Party together. He never forgave Da for becoming a Communist.’ He gave Gwen a look, revealing a vulnerability which touched her. ‘Why can’t he see? Why can’t they all see?’