Fall of Giants Page 2

  They had been promised running water soon, and some of the miners’ houses already had it. It seemed a miracle to Billy that people could get a cup of cold clear water just by turning the tap, and not have to carry a bucket to the standpipe out in the street. But indoor water had not yet come to Wellington Row, where the Williamses lived.

  He returned to the living room and sat at the table. Mam put a big cup of milky tea in front of him, already sugared. She cut two thick slices off a loaf of homemade bread and got a slab of dripping from the pantry under the stairs. Billy put his hands together, closed his eyes, and said: “Thank you Lord for this food amen.” Then he drank some tea and spread dripping on his bread.

  Da’s pale blue eyes looked over the top of the paper. “Put salt on your bread,” he said. “You’ll sweat underground.”

  Billy’s father was a miners’ agent, employed by the South Wales Miners’ Federation, which was the strongest trade union in Britain, as he said whenever he got the chance. He was known as Dai Union. A lot of men were called Dai, pronounced “die,” short for David, or Dafydd in Welsh. Billy had learned in school that David was popular in Wales because it was the name of the country’s patron saint, like Patrick in Ireland. All the Dais were distinguished one from another not by their surnames—almost everyone in town was Jones, Williams, Evans, or Morgan—but by a nickname. Real names were rarely used when there was a humorous alternative. Billy was William Williams, so they called him Billy Twice. Women were sometimes given their husband’s nickname, so that Mam was Mrs. Dai Union.

  Gramper came down while Billy was eating his second slice. Despite the warm weather he wore a jacket and waistcoat. When he had washed his hands he sat opposite Billy. “Don’t look so nervous,” he said. “I went down the pit when I was ten. And my father was carried to the pit on his father’s back at the age of five, and worked from six in the morning until seven in the evening. He never saw daylight from October to March.”

  “I’m not nervous,” Billy said. This was untrue. He was scared stiff.

  However, Gramper was kindly, and he did not press the point. Billy liked Gramper. Mam treated Billy like a baby, and Da was stern and sarcastic, but Gramper was tolerant and talked to Billy as to an adult.

  “Listen to this,” said Da. He would never buy the Mail, a right-wing rag, but he sometimes brought home someone else’s copy and read the paper aloud in a scornful voice, mocking the stupidity and dishonesty of the ruling class. “‘Lady Diana Manners has been criticized for wearing the same dress to two different balls. The younger 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 café 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 Cassell̛s 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 Tŷ 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 d
ifference 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.”

  “I hope they put me in the stables.” Tommy liked horses. About fifty ponies lived in the mine. They pulled the drams that the colliers filled, drawing them along railway tracks. “What sort of work do you want to do?”

  Billy hoped he would not be given a task too heavy for his childish physique, but he was not willing to admit that. “Greasing drams,” he said.

  “Why?”

  “It seems easy.”

  They passed the school where yesterday they had been pupils. It was a Victorian building with pointed windows like a church. It had been built by the Fitzherbert family, as the headmaster never tired of reminding the pupils. The earl still appointed the teachers and decided the curriculum. On the walls were paintings of heroic military victories, and the greatness of Britain was a constant theme. In the Scripture lesson with which every day began, strict Anglican doctrines were taught, even though nearly all the children were from Nonconformist families. There was a school management committee, of which Da was a member, but it had no power except to advise. Da said the earl treated the school as his personal property.

  In their final year Billy and Tommy had been taught the principles of mining, while the girls learned to sew and cook. Billy had been surprised to discover that the ground beneath him consisted of layers of different kinds of earth, like a stack of sandwiches. A coal seam—a phrase he had heard all his life without really understanding it—was one such layer. He had also been told that coal was made of dead leaves and other vegetable matter, accumulated over thousands of years and compressed by the weight of earth above it. Tommy, whose father was an atheist, said this proved the Bible was not true; but Billy’s da said that was only one interpretation.

  The school was empty at this hour, its playground deserted. Billy felt proud that he had left school behind, although part of him wished he could go back there instead of down the pit.

  As they approached the pithead, the streets began to fill with miners, each with his tin snap and bottle of tea. They all dressed the same, in old suits that they would take off once they reached their workplace. Some mines were cold but Aberowen was a hot pit, and the men worked in underwear and boots, or in the coarse linen shorts they called bannickers. Everyone wore a padded cap, all the time, because tunnel roofs were low and it was easy to bang your head.

  Over the houses Billy could see the winding gear, a tower topped by two great wheels rotating in opposite directions, drawing the cables that raised and lowered the cage. Similar pithead structures loomed over most towns in the South Wales valleys, the way church spires dominated farming villages.

  Other buildings were scattered around the pithead as if dropped by accident: the lamp room, the colliery office, the smithy, the stores. Railway lines snaked between the buildings. On the waste ground were broken drams, old cracked timbers, feed sacks, and piles of rusty disused machinery, all covered with a layer of coal dust. Da always said there would be fewer accidents if miners kept things tidy.

  Billy and Tommy went to the colliery office. In the front room was Arthur “Spotty” Llewellyn, a clerk not much older than they were. His white shirt had a dirty collar and cuffs. They were expected—their fathers had previously arranged for them to start work today. Spotty wrote their names in a ledger, then took them into the colliery manager’s office. “Young Tommy Griffiths and young Billy Williams, Mr. Morgan,” he said.

  Maldwyn Morgan was a tall man in a black suit. There was no coal dust on his cuffs. His pink cheeks were free of stubble, which meant he must shave every day. His engineering diploma hung in a frame on the wall, and his bowler hat—the other badge of his status—was displayed on the coat stand by the door.

  To Billy’s surprise, he was not alone. Next to him stood an even more formidable figure: Perceval Jones, chairman of Celtic Minerals, the company that owned and operated the Aberowen coal mine and several others. A small, aggressive man, he was called Napoleon by the miners. He wore morning dress, a black tailcoat and striped gray trousers, and he had not taken off his tall black top hat.

  Jones looked at the boys with distaste. “Griffiths,” he said. “Your father’s a revolutionary socialist.”

  “Yes, Mr. Jones,” said Tommy.

  “And an atheist.”

  “Yes, Mr. Jones.”

  He turned his gaze on Billy. “And your father’s an official of the South Wales Miners’ Federation.”

  “Yes, Mr. Jones.”

  “I don’t like socialists. Atheists are doomed to eternal damnation. And trade unionists are the worst of the lot.”

  He glared at them, but he had not asked a question, so Billy said nothing.

&nb
sp; “I don’t want troublemakers,” Jones went on. “In the Rhondda Valley they’ve been on strike for forty-three weeks because of people like your fathers stirring them up.”

  Billy knew that the strike in the Rhondda had not been caused by troublemakers, but by the owners of the Ely Pit at Penygraig, who had locked out their miners. But he kept his mouth shut.

  “Are you troublemakers?” Jones pointed a bony finger at Billy, making Billy shake. “Did your father tell you to stand up for your rights when you’re working for me?”

  Billy tried to think, though it was difficult when Jones looked so threatening. Da had not said much this morning, but last night he had given some advice. “Please, sir, he told me: ‘Don’t cheek the bosses, that’s my job.’”

  Behind him, Spotty Llewellyn sniggered.

  Perceval Jones was not amused. “Insolent savage,” he said. “But if I turn you away, I’ll have the whole of this valley on strike.”

  Billy had not thought of that. Was he so important? No—but the miners might strike for the principle that the children of their officials must not suffer. He had been at work less than five minutes, and already the union was protecting him.

  “Get them out of here,” said Jones.

  Morgan nodded. “Take them outside, Llewellyn,” he said to Spotty. “Rhys Price can look after them.”

  Billy groaned inwardly. Rhys Price was one of the more unpopular deputy managers. He had set his cap at Ethel, a year ago, and she had turned him down flat. She had done the same to half the single men in Aberowen, but Price had taken it hard.

  Spotty jerked his head. “Out,” he said, and he followed them. “Wait outside for Mr. Price.”

  Billy and Tommy left the building and leaned on the wall by the door. “I’d like to punch Napoleon’s fat belly,” said Tommy. “Talk about a capitalist bastard.”

  “Yeah,” said Billy, though he had had no such thought.

  Rhys Price showed up a minute later. Like all the deputies, he wore a low round-crowned hat called a billycock, more expensive than a miner’s cap but cheaper than a bowler. In the pockets of his waistcoat he had a notebook and a pencil, and he carried a yardstick. Price had dark stubble on his cheeks and a gap in his front teeth. Billy knew him to be clever but sly.