“These men,” said Mrs. Dai. “Once they get into a fight, all they care about is winning. They won’t give in, whatever the cost. They’re all the same. Not that I wouldn’t have my Dai back, if I could.”
“This is awful.” How could the company find enough blacklegs to keep the pit going? she wondered. If they closed the mine, the town would die. There would be no customers left for the shops, no children to go to the schools, no patients for the doctors… Her father, too, would have no work. No one had expected Perceval Jones to be so obstinate.
Mrs. Dai said: “I wonder what the king would say, if he knew.”
Ethel wondered, too. The king had seemed to show real compassion. But he probably did not know the widows had been evicted.
And then she was struck by a thought. “Perhaps you should tell him,” she said.
Mrs. Dai laughed. “I will, next time I sees him.”
“You could write him a letter.”
“Don’t talk daft, now, Eth.”
“I mean it. You should do it.” She looked around the group. “A letter signed by widows the king visited, telling him you are being thrown out of your homes and the town is on strike. He’d have to take notice, surely?”
Mrs. Dai looked scared. “I wouldn’t like to get into trouble.”
Mrs. Minnie Ponti, a thin blond woman of strong opinions, said to her: “You have no husband and no home and nowhere to go-how much more trouble could you be in?”
“That’s true enough. But I wouldn’t know what to say. Do you put ‘Dear King,’ or ‘Dear George the Fifth,’ or what?”
Ethel said: “You put: ‘Sir, with my humble duty.’ I know all that rubbish, from working here. Let’s do it now. Come into the servants’ hall.”
“Will it be all right?”
“I’m the housekeeper now, Mrs. Dai. I’m the one who says what’s all right.”
The women followed her up the drive and around the back of the house to the kitchen. They sat around the servants’ dining table, and the cook made a pot of tea. Ethel had a stock of plain writing paper that she used for correspondence with tradesmen.
“‘Sir, with our humble duty,’” she said, writing. “What next?”
Mrs. Dai Ponies said: “‘Forgive our cheek in writing to Your Majesty.’”
“No,” Ethel said decisively. “Don’t apologize. He’s our king, we’re entitled to petition him. Let’s say: ‘We are the widows Your Majesty visited in Aberowen after the pit explosion.’”
“Very good,” said Mrs. Ponti.
Ethel went on: “‘We were honored by your visit and comforted by your kind condolences, and the gracious sympathy of Her Majesty the queen.’”
Mrs. Dai said: “You’ve got the gift for this, like your father.”
Mrs. Ponti said: “That’s enough soft soap, though.”
“All right. Now then. ‘We are asking for your help as our king. Because our husbands are dead, we are being evicted from our homes.’”
“By Celtic Minerals,” put in Mrs. Ponti.
“‘By Celtic Minerals. The whole pit have gone on strike for us but now they are being evicted too.’”
“Don’t make it too long,” said Mrs. Dai. “He might be too busy to read it.”
“All right, then. Let’s finish with: ‘Is this the kind of thing that should be allowed in your kingdom?’”
Mrs. Ponti said: “It’s a bit tame.”
“No, it’s good,” said Mrs. Dai. “It appeals to his sense of right and wrong.”
Ethel said: “‘We have the honor to be, sir, Your Majesty’s most humble and obedient servants.’”
“Do we have to have that?” said Mrs. Ponti. “I’m not a servant. No offense, Ethel.”
“It’s the normal thing. The earl puts it when he writes a letter to The Times.”
“All right, then.”
Ethel passed the letter around the table. “Put your addresses next to your signatures.”
Mrs. Ponti said: “My writing’s awful, you sign my name.”
Ethel was about to protest, then it occurred to her that Mrs. Ponti might be illiterate, so she did not argue, but simply wrote: “Mrs. Minnie Ponti, 19 Wellington Row.”
She addressed the envelope:
His Majesty the King
Buckingham Palace
London
She sealed the letter and stuck on a stamp. “There we are, then,” she said. The women gave her a round of applause.
She posted the letter the same day.
No reply was ever received.
The last Saturday in March was a gray day in South Wales. Low clouds hid the mountaintops and a tireless drizzle fell on Aberowen. Ethel and most of the servants at Ty Gwyn left their posts-the earl and princess were away in London-and walked into town.
Policemen had been sent from London to enforce the evictions, and they stood on every street, their heavy raincoats dripping. The Widows’ Strike was national news, and reporters from Cardiff and London had come up on the first morning train, smoking cigarettes and writing in notebooks. There was even a big camera on a tripod.
Ethel stood with her family outside their house and watched. Da was employed by the union, not by Celtic Minerals, and he owned their house; but most of their neighbors were being thrown out. During the course of the morning, they brought their possessions out onto the streets: beds, tables and chairs, cooking pots and chamber pots, a framed picture, a clock, an orange box of crockery and cutlery, a few clothes wrapped in newspaper and tied with string. A small pile of near-worthless goods stood like a sacrificial offering outside each door.
Da’s face was a mask of suppressed rage. Billy looked as if he wanted to have a fight with someone. Gramper kept shaking his head and saying: “I never seen the like, not in all my seventy years.” Mam just looked grim.
Ethel cried and could not stop.
Some of the miners had got other jobs, but it was not easy: a miner could not adapt readily to the work of a shop assistant or a bus conductor, and employers knew this and turned them away when they saw the coal dust under their fingernails. Half a dozen had become merchant sailors, signing on as stokers and getting a pay advance to give to their wives before they left. A few were going to Cardiff or Swansea, hoping for jobs in the steelworks. Many were moving in with relatives in neighboring towns. The rest were simply crowding into another Aberowen house with a non-mining family until the strike was settled.
“The king never replied to the widows’ letter,” Ethel said to Da.
“You handled it wrong,” he said bluntly. “Look at your Mrs. Pankhurst. I don’t believe in votes for women, but she knows how to get noticed.”
“What should I have done, got myself arrested?”
“You don’t need to go that far. If I’d known what you were doing, I’d have told you to send a copy of the letter to the Western Mail.”
“I never thought of that.” Ethel was disheartened to think that she could have done something to prevent these evictions, and had failed.
“The newspaper would have asked the palace whether they had received the letter, and it would have been hard for the king to say he was just going to ignore it.”
“Oh, dammo, I wish I’d asked your advice.”
“Don’t swear,” her mother said.
“Sorry, Mam.”
The London policemen looked on in bewilderment, not understanding the foolish pride and stubbornness that had led to this. Perceval Jones was nowhere to be seen. A reporter from the Daily Mail asked Da for an interview, but the newspaper was hostile to workers, and Da refused.
