“It will not be for ever, Morfydd,” I said.
“Damned right you are,” said she. “Remember it. But do not hurry, man, I am loving every minute.”
“Easy,” I said. “It is not my fault.”
“Perhaps not, but I am sick of it!”
I had been watching Morfydd lately. Touchy, to say the least of it; silent in our walks to Ponty, ready for the quarrel, eyebrows up, flushing over nothing. Change of life, said Mam. Treat her kindly, Jethro, or account for it to me.
“Be damned for a tale,” I said. “She’s only turned thirty.”
“You are discussing something you do not understand,” replied Mam. “Kindly cease this conversation directly.”
“Change of life, indeed – she is good for years yet. There is Mrs Evan ap Rees over at Llansaint carrying for her sixth and she is over fifty.”
“Mrs Evan ap Rees has not worked in the heat of iron,” replied Mam “Neither has she towed trams, neither has she starved half her life by the size of her. Now cease, it is most embarrassing.”
“She will have no more babies, is it?”
“If she does I will want to know why,” said Mam. “Leave it now, I am coming to a flush again myself. Just treat her gentle.”
“Just gently, Jethro,” said Mari, smiling up from her corner. “It will pass.”
Expect no kisses from the mouth of a vixen.
“How are you today now?” I asked, very pleasant.
“Go to the devil,” said Morfydd.
“Asking after your health, I am. Anything wrong with that?”
“Ask about Towey’s,” she replied, staring. “Towey can’t be bothered now.”
We were alone in the kitchen that night – Mam out delivering somewhere, Mari with flowers down at church, the boys up in bed.
This set me quiet. I did not see Towey catch it, being down with Muldooney in Number Two gallery at the time, but I had heard of it from him. Tripped on the top ladder rungs, had Towey, and fallen the whole hundred feet, clothes round her ears, head-diving, with her basket of coal coming down after her, collecting the other carriers. And they followed Towey down, all five of them, with their coal pouring on top of them, giving them a decent burial. Two Welsh women, a couple of Irish, and a Spanish boy aged ten. A long way for a soul to travel to Spain. “These bloody old ladders,” said Liam, the first time I had heard him swear in anger. “I will rig one on St Paul’s for the aristocracy of England, though long before that it will be worn out by Welsh squireens.”
“I am sorry about Towey,” I said to Morfydd now.
“Missus, to you,” said she, touchy.
“We will have you up from the pit directly.”
“And scrape on your eleven shillings a week? You see to your own business and leave me to mine, Jethro. I was born to coal and I will die in coal – you just go on burning gates, the farm can go to hell, isn’t it?”
“Morfydd, the farm will not pay. I tried it.” She did not pull away when I took her from the sink and held her. “O, fach,” I said. “What is wrong these days?”
And she bent her head, and wept.
“Old Mrs Towey, is it?”
“No, the boy. So little, he was. Got to love him. I saw his face when I lifted his chin, and thought of my Richard – could have been Richard, mind – only a few years older. O, God!” And she swung in my arms and gripped me. “Now, listen, Jethro, listen. I will kill someone if this farm goes flat and my boy goes into coal – I will hold you responsible.” She lowered her hands. “Nothing left for me, I am finished – I am coal outside and in now; corns on my knees that do credit to a horse. Dyed in coal, I am, in my mouth, my chest, my heart,” and she gripped her wrist making the veins stand out proud. “Look now, coal rivers I am, not normal flesh and blood, going to a prune with the towing, stinking of coal, coughing coal; dried of my womanhood and just over thirty. D’you hear me?” Her eyes were wide and strangely bright and I saw the lashes and brows still rimmed black after the washing.
“As a pillar of salt, I am,” she said, “useless to a bed, and I have longed for more children – ten if I’d had my way. Now too late.”
I turned to the window.
“Saw little Towey yesterday,” she said. “I helped pull them off her and cart her out of it. God, there’s a mess, and I am used to messes. It didn’t worry me much, seeing Towey. But, O, God, that boy!” She covered her face.
Just useless standing there. I went to the window. The fields were ablaze beyond, all over golden with buttercups. Quietly, behind me, she began to cry again, and I went to her and touched her.
“Keep away from me,” she said.
I longed for Mari to come in just then, for there are places in a woman not even a brother can invade.
“You are leaving the pit,” I said. “Today.”
“You starting farming again, then?” she asked. “Is Randy getting sick of it? Aye, I’ll take on. One pair of shafts is as good as another and at least I’d be towing in daylight.”
“That was cruel,” I said.
I turned to her. Strange it did not seem like Morfydd standing there, and strange, too, that she was smiling. Terrible is coal, reaching out its fingers for those who carve it; drawing their souls into its seams, making them one with it though hating it; taking over the brain.
“Jethro.”
I did not reply.
“I am
