daughter of the Duke of Rutland won “best lady’s costume” at the Savoy Ball for her off-the-shoulder boned bodice with full hooped skirt, receiving a prize of two hundred and fifty guineas.’” He lowered the paper and said: “That’s at least five years’ wages for you, Billy boy.” He resumed: “‘But she drew the frowns of the cognoscenti by wearing the same dress to Lord Winterton and F. E. Smith’s party at Claridge’s Hotel. One can have too much of a good thing, people said.’” He looked up from the paper. “You’d better change that frock, Mam,” he said. “You don’t want to draw the frowns of the cognoscenti.”
Mam was not amused. She was wearing an old brown wool dress with patched elbows and stains under the armpits. “If I had two hundred and fifty guineas I’d look better than Lady Diana Muck,” she said, not without bitterness.
“It’s true,” Gramper said. “Cara was always the pretty one-just like her mother.” Mam’s name was Cara. Gramper turned to Billy. “Your grandmother was Italian. Her name was Maria Ferrone.” Billy knew this, but Gramper liked to retell familiar stories. “That’s where your mother gets her glossy black hair and lovely dark eyes-and your sister. Your gran was the most beautiful girl in Cardiff-and I got her!” Suddenly he looked sad. “Those were the days,” he said quietly.
Da frowned with disapproval-such talk suggested the lusts of the flesh-but Mam was cheered by her father’s compliments, and she smiled as she put his breakfast in front of him. “Oh, aye,” she said. “Me and my sisters were considered beauties. We’d show those dukes what a pretty girl is, if we had the money for silk and lace.”
Billy was surprised. He had never thought of his mother as beautiful or otherwise, though when she dressed for the chapel social on Saturday evening she did look striking, especially in a hat. He supposed she might once have been a pretty girl, but it was hard to imagine.
“Mind you,” said Gramper, “your gran’s family were clever, too. My brother-in-law was a miner, but he got out of the industry and opened a cafe in Tenby. Now there’s a life for you-sea breezes, and nothing to do all day but make coffee and count your money.”
Da read another item. “‘As part of the preparations for the coronation, Buckingham Palace has produced a book of instructions two hundred and twelve pages long.’” He looked over the paper. “Mention that down the pit today, Billy. The men will be relieved to know that nothing has been left to chance.”
Billy was not very interested in royalty. What he liked was the adventure stories the Mail often printed about tough rugby-playing public-school men catching sneaky German spies. According to the paper, such spies infested every town in Britain, although there did not seem to be any in Aberowen, disappointingly.
Billy stood up. “Going down the street,” he announced. He left the house by the front door. “Going down the street” was a family euphemism: it meant going to the toilets, which stood halfway down Wellington Row. A low brick hut with a corrugated iron roof was built over a deep hole in the earth. The hut was divided into two compartments, one for men and one for women. Each compartment had a double seat, so that people went to the toilet two by two. No one knew why the builders had chosen this arrangement, but everyone made the best of it. Men looked straight ahead and said nothing, but-as Billy could often hear-women chatted companionably. The smell was suffocating, even when you experienced it every day of your life. Billy always tried to breathe as little as possible while he was inside, and came out gasping for air. The hole was shoveled out periodically by a man called Dai Muck.
When Billy returned to the house he was delighted to see his sister Ethel sitting at the table. “Happy birthday, Billy!” she cried. “I had to come and give you a kiss before you go down the pit.”
Ethel was eighteen, and Billy had no trouble seeing her as beautiful. Her mahogany-colored hair was irrepressibly curly, and her dark eyes twinkled with mischief. Perhaps Mam had looked like this once. Ethel wore the plain black dress and white cotton cap of a housemaid, an outfit that flattered her.
Billy worshipped Ethel. As well as pretty, she was funny and clever and brave, sometimes even standing up to Da. She told Billy things no one else would explain, such as the monthly episode women called the curse, and what was the crime of public indecency that had caused the Anglican vicar to leave town in such a hurry. She had been top of the class all the way through school, and her essay “My Town or Village” had taken first prize in a contest run by the South Wales Echo. She had won a copy of Cassell?s Atlas of the World.
She kissed Billy’s cheek. “I told Mrs. Jevons the housekeeper that we were running out of boot polish and I’d better get some more from the town.” Ethel lived and worked at Ty Gwyn, the vast home of Earl Fitzherbert, a mile away up the mountain. She handed Billy something wrapped in a clean rag. “I stole a piece of cake for you.”
“Oh, thanks, Eth!” said Billy. He loved cake.
Mam said: “Shall I put it in your snap?”
“Aye, please.”
Mam got a tin box from the cupboard and put the cake inside. She cut two more slabs of bread, spread them with dripping, sprinkled salt, and put them in the tin. All the miners had a tin “snap.” If they took food underground wrapped in a rag, the mice would eat it before the midmorning break. Mam said: “When you bring me home your wages, you can have a slice of boiled bacon in your snap.”
Billy’s earnings would not be much, at first, but all the same they would make a difference to the family. He wondered how much Mam would allow him for pocket money and whether he would ever be able to save enough for a bicycle, which he wanted more than anything else in the world.
Ethel sat at the table. Da said to her: “How are things at the big house?”
“Nice and quiet,” she said. “The earl and princess are in London for the coronation.” She looked at the clock on the mantelpiece. “They’ll be getting up soon-they need to be at the abbey early. She won’t like it-she’s not used to early hours-but she can’t be late for the king.” The earl’s wife, Bea, was a Russian princess, and very grand.
Da said: “They’ll want to get seats near the front, so they can see the show.”
“Oh, no, you can’t sit anywhere you like,” Ethel said. “They’ve had six thousand mahogany chairs made special, with the names of the guests on the back in gold writing.”
Gramper said: “Well, there’s a waste! What will they do with them after?”
“I don’t know. Perhaps everyone will take them home as souvenirs.”
Da said dryly: “Tell them to send a spare one to us. There’s only five of us here, and already your mam’s got to stand.”
When Da was being facetious there might be real anger underneath. Ethel leaped to her feet. “Oh, sorry, Mam, I didn’t think.”
“Stay where you are, I’m too busy to sit down,” said Mam.
The clock struck five. Da said: “Best get there early, Billy boy. Start as you mean to go on.”
Billy got to his feet reluctantly and picked up his snap.
Ethel kissed him again, and Gramper shook his hand. Da gave him two six-inch nails, rusty and a bit bent. “Put those in your trousers pocket.”
“What for?” said Billy.
“You’ll see,” Da said with a smile.
Mam handed Billy a quart bottle with a screw top, full of cold tea with milk and sugar. She said: “Now, Billy, remember that Jesus is always with you, even down the pit.”
“Aye, Mam.”
He could see a tear in her eye, and he turned away quickly, because it made him feel weepy too. He took his cap from the peg. “Bye, then,” he said, as if he was only going to school; and he stepped out of the front door.
The summer had been hot and sunny so far, but today was overcast, and it even looked as if it might rain. Tommy was leaning against the wall of the house, waiting. “Aye, aye, Billy,” he said.
“Aye, aye, Tommy.”
They walked down the street side by side.
Aberowen had once been a small market town, serving hill farmers round about, Billy had learned in school. From the top of Wellington Row you could see the old commercial center, with the open pens of the cattle market, the wool exchange building, and the Anglican church, all on one side of the Owen River, which was little more than a stream. Now a railway line cut through the town like a wound, terminating at the pithead. The miners’ houses had spread up the slopes of the valley, hundreds of gray stone homes with roofs of darker-gray Welsh slate. They were built in long serpentine rows that followed the contours of the mountainsides, the rows crossed by shorter streets that plunged headlong to the valley bottom.
“Who do you think you’ll be working with?” said Tommy.
Billy shrugged. New boys were assigned to one of the colliery manager’s deputies. “No way to know.”
