Pontypridd 01 - Hearts of Gold Read online

  CATRIN COLLIER

  Hearts of Gold

  ISBN 9781909840560

  First published in Great Britain in 1992 by Century

  First published in paperback in Great Britain in 1993 by Arrow Books

  Paperback edition published in 2006 by Orion Books Ltd,

  This edition published by Accent Press 2013

  Copyright © Catrin Collier 1992

  The right of Catrin Collier to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the written permission of the publishers: Accent Press Ltd, The Old School, Upper High St, Bedlinog, Mid Glamorgan, CF46 6RY.

  www.accentpress.co.uk

  Catrin Collier was born and brought up in Pontypridd. She lives in Swansea with her husband, three cats and whichever of her children choose to visit. Hearts of Gold is the first novel in the highly acclaimed Hearts of Gold series.

  Works by Catrin Collier

  The Hearts of Gold series:

  Hearts of Gold

  One Blue Moon

  A Silver Lining

  All That Glitters

  Such Sweet Sorrow

  Past Remembering

  Broken Rainbows

  Spoils of War

  Other series:

  Swansea Girls

  Brothers and Lovers

  ( including Black-eyed Devils - QuickReads)

  Novels:

  One Last Summer

  Magda’s Daughter

  The Long Road To Baghdad

  As Katherine John:

  Without Trace

  Midnight Murders

  Murder of a Dead Man

  By Any Other Name

  The Amber Knight

  Black Daffodil

  A Well Deserved Murder

  Destruction of Evidence

  The Corpse’s Tale (QuickReads)

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  DEDICATION

  For the people who lived in Pontypridd and on the Graig during the depression. Especially my grandmother, Nurse Katherine (Kitty) Jones, nee Johns, who worked in the Graig Hospital during those difficult years, and my father Glyn Jones, who did so much to guide me back into her world.

  Acknowledgements

  I apologise in advance for the length of this acknowledgement, but I owe a great debt to those survivors of the depression in Pontypridd who gave me their time, and generously shared with me their most personal and precious possessions –their memories.

  My father Glyn Jones, who spent a year talking to everyone he knew in Pontypridd (and a few he didn’t) in an effort to track down those who lived and worked there during the thirties. Not to mention the days and weeks he drove around with me, noting and explaining all the changes that have taken place since the depression. (And not only in the pubs.)

  My mother Gerda Jones, for providing bed and board, and for listening patiently while my father and I tried to recreate a world that disappeared long before she came to Wales.

  My aunt & uncle, Grace and Evan Williams, who still live on the Graig, in the house where I grew up.

  My father’s oldest friends, Cyril and Nellie Mahoney, who helped me at the outset, when this book was no more than a single scribbled idea in a notebook. It was their rich fund of stories that inspired me to take the project further.

  All the staff, past and present of Pontypridd library, especially Mrs Penny Pugh who came in on her days off to help me with my research. They were working under incredible pressure and appalling conditions during the reorganisation of the library which took place when I was in the throes of trying to do my research. Without their heroic endeavours I would not have amassed anything like the material I now have to draw on.

  Mrs Pat Evans, the librarian at East Glamorgan Hospital, for her help and unfailing sense of humour and for putting me in touch with so many people.

  Councillor Des Wood, a former Administrator of the Central Homes on the Graig who drew up a detailed map and notes of the Homes as they were before they were rebuilt in the sixties (practicality a book in its own right) and without whose assistance I would never have finally tracked down the records of the old Graig Hospital.

  Mr Colin Davies, who used to work in the Homes and who was kind enough to send me a booklet on the closing of the old Homes and the opening of the new Dewi Sant Hospital that stands in its’ place.

  My family, old friends and neighbours from the Graig. Principally my cousin Marion who married into the fine Graig family of the Goodwin’s and others whom I have not seen for many years. I always was an inveterate listener, even when they didn’t know I was eavesdropping.

  Madge Davies, the cousin my father rediscovered after more than half a lifetime and who had so many stories to tell.

  Jennifer Price for her unstinting, unselfish friendship and incredible generosity of spirit, and Margaret Bloomfield for her help in so many practical ways.

  The best boss I’ve ever had, Jack Priestland, who doesn’t mind me writing at work during the quiet? times...

  My husband John and my children Ralph, Sophie and Ross, for their love, support and the time they gave me to write this book, and for not moaning, even when we drove around the Graig ‘Again.’

  And above all my editor Rosie Cheetham, who suggested that I write a book, set in my home town and steered it on course from the very beginning, and my agent Michael Thomas for his encouragement and many kindnesses.

  Thank you.

  I have taken the liberty of mixing real “characters” such as “Cast Iron Dean” who was well known in Pontypridd in the thirties with my fictional ones. The actual events involving the “Forty Thieves” happened, and some women were sentenced to terms of hard labour for their involvement with the gang. However I would like to stress that all the main characters in this book, including those involved with the thieves are fictitious, and creations of my imagination.

  If any reader mistakenly believes that they themselves or a member of their family is in any way depicted in this book, I can only say that I have tried to make my people representative of both the times and the place they lived in.

  And while I wish to fully acknowledge the help I have received, I would also like to state that any errors in Hearts of Gold are entirely mine. I have tried to get at the truth wherever possible, but unfortunately many records have disappeared from the face of the earth, and the gaps have been filled in as far as possible by using newspaper accounts, and people’s memories.

  My hope is that the readers of this book will enjoy this small glimpse of Pontypridd’s past, as much as I enjoyed writing and researching it.

  Catrin Collier. September 1991

  Chapter One

  ‘Bethan! Bethan!’ Elizabeth
Powell rapped hard on the door of the bedroom that her daughters’ shared.

  ‘Coming, Mam,’ Bethan murmured sleepily. She listened as her mother retreated back to her own bedroom then, keeping her eyes firmly closed, she reluctantly forced her hand out of the warm cocoon of sheets and blankets to test the air. It was icy after the warm snugness of the bed, and she quickly pulled her arm back beneath the bedclothes for a few seconds more of blissful warmth.

  Once again Elizabeth’s voice cut stridently through the frosty air.

  ‘I’m up, Mam,’ Bethan lied.

  ‘I hardly think so.’ Elizabeth opened the door and pushed the switch down on the round black box. Bethan screwed her eyes against the sudden glare of yellow light. It wasn’t enough. Eyelids burning, she burrowed into the bed and pulled the blanket over her head.

  ‘Breakfast in ten minutes, Bethan,’ her mother’s voice intruded into the darkness.

  ‘Yes, Mam.’

  She waited until she heard the fierce click of the iron latch falling on the bar. The third stair from the top creaked, then the seventh as her mother descended to the ground floor. Keeping her nose hidden beneath the blankets, she opened her eyes and peered sleepily at the room around her.

  Apart from a change of wallpaper, it hadn’t altered since her grandmother had left it fourteen years before. The thick red plush curtains that had been hers hung, faded but well-brushed and straight, at the windows. The old-fashioned Victorian mahogany bedroom furniture Caterina had inherited as a bride gleamed darkly against the heavily patterned red and gold walls. Her favourite Rossetti prints hung on the wall next to the wardrobe, and the pink glass ring holder, candlesticks’ and hair tidy that had been a present from her sons stood on the dressing table. The room might now belong to Bethan and her sister Maud, but it was also an encapsulation of Bethan’s earliest childhood memories.

  She had toddled in here when she was barely high enough to reach the washstand. Crouching behind the bed, she had watched her grandmother wash and dress and afterwards sit on the stool in front of the dressing-table mirror to brush out her hair. Rich, black, it was scarcely touched with grey on the day she’d died.

  Once Caterina had finished, she’d turn and smile. A warm, welcoming, special smile that Bethan knew she kept just for her. And then came the excitement of the tin. The old Huntley and Palmer biscuit tin in which Caterina kept her prized collection of foreign coins.

  Bethan had spent hours as a child, sitting on the cold, oilcloth-covered floor at Caterina’s feet; playing with them, grouping them into armies fighting strange and wondrous battles that she’d heard the grown-ups talking about. Mons – Amiens – the Somme …

  Not only Bethan’s but also her sister’s and brothers’ happiest childhood memories stemmed from the time when Mam Powell had lived with them.

  Evan Powell’s’ mother, Caterina, had been a large, warmhearted, old-fashioned Welsh widow who’d spent her life working, caring, cuddling (or cwtching as they say in Wales) her family. True happiness for her had ended along with her husband’s life; contentment vanished the day Evan, brought his bride into the family home. She tried valiantly to conceal her dislike of Elizabeth, but everyone who knew Caterina also knew that she’d never taken to her eldest son’s choice of wife.

  In her shrewd, common-sense way Caterina had summed Elizabeth Powell nee Bull up as a cold, arrogant, snobbish woman but, concerned only for Evan’s happiness she could have forgiven Evan’s love any failing other than hard-heartedness.

  Fearing for the emotional well-being of her unborn grandchildren it was she who persuaded Evan to set up home with Elizabeth in the parlour and front bedroom of the house that her collier husband had bought for less than two hundred pounds in the “good timesˮ before strikes and the depression hit Pontypridd and the Rhondda mining valleys. And she did it in full knowledge that Elizabeth would destroy the peace and harmony that reigned in the household.

  Elizabeth fought hard against Evan’s suggestion of setting up home with her mother-and brother-in-law, but Evan remained firm. Quite aside from his mother’s wishes finances dictated compromise. Not a man to shirk his responsibilities, he accepted that it was his duty as eldest son to support his mother and his wife, and the easiest way he could think of fulfilling both obligations was by installing them under the same roof. Besides, in his acknowledged biased opinion, his mother’s house was amongst the best on the Graig.

  Certainly the bay windowed, double-fronted house in Graig Avenue had more than enough room for all the Powell’s – three good-sized bedrooms, a box room, two front parlours and a comfortable back kitchen complete with a range that held bread and baking ovens as well as a hinge-topped water boiler with a brass tap from which hot water could be drawn. Doors from the kitchen led into a walk-in, stone-slabbed pantry and a lean-to washhouse.

  The washhouse opened into the yard that housed the coal house and outside WC (all its own, not shared). It was a palace compared to the back-to-back, two-up one-downs at the foot of the Graig hill.

  What Evan didn’t discuss with Elizabeth or his mother, was the full extent of the mortgage on the house. He’d been fourteen and his brother William twelve when their father had collapsed and fallen in front of a tram at the Maritime pit.

  Jim Owen, the pit manager, sent Caterina Powell ten pounds to cover the funeral expenses. It was good of him. She knew full well that as the accident was her husband’s fault she was entitled to nothing. The Maritime’s Colliers organised a whip round amongst themselves and raised another fifteen pounds.

  It was the largest sum ever collected after a pit death, and a fine testimonial to Evan Powell senior’s popularity, but it wasn’t enough to buy his widow, or his sons, security.

  Evan and William left school the day of the funeral, and Jim Owen took them on as boy colliers out of respect for their father.

  So they began their working lives where Evan Powell senior had ended his and without giving the matter a thought, also assumed his obligations, paying his bills, his mortgage and providing their mother with housekeeping, the only money she ever handled.

  And she, too grief-stricken to realise what was happening, allowed her eldest son to assume the responsibilities of the man of the house, responsibilities he shouldered with a maturity far beyond his years.

  Time passed, Caterina’s grief healed after a fashion – and then came Elizabeth.

  The major alterations to the domestic life of the Graig Avenue household after Evan and Elizabeth’s marriage came in the shape of the additions they were blessed with. Bethan was born seven months after their wedding day. Haydn less than a year later, Eddie on their fourth anniversary and Maud on Bethan’s sixth birthday.

  Caterina and Elizabeth were soon too busy to quarrel, and the initial resentment Elizabeth felt towards her mother-in-law for keeping hold of the domestic reins of the household faded with the birth of Haydn.

  The babies generated enough work to keep a dozen pairs of hands occupied, let alone two. And although neither woman learned to like, let alone love the other, seven years under the same roof did teach them a wary kind of tolerance.

  The thunder of Haydn and Eddie’s feet hammering down the stairs shook Bethan out of her reverie. It would be wonderful to lie here for another two or three hours, staring at the walls, thinking of nothing in particular, but duty and her mother called.

  Maud stirred next to her in the bed. Pulling the blankets close about her ears, her sister burrowed deeper into the feather mattress, making small, self-satisfied grunting noises as she curled complacently back into her dreams.

  Bethan looked enviously at the mop of blonde curls; all that could be seen of Maud above the blankets. What it was to be thirteen years old and still at school. If Maud got up two hours from now she’d still make it to her class in Maesycoed Seniors by nine, but there was little point in wishing herself any younger.

  Grabbing the ugly grey woollen dressing gown that her mother had cut and sewn from a surplus army blankets three Chri
stmases ago, she sat up and swung her legs out of the tangle of flannelette sheets and blankets. Five o’clock on any morning was a disgusting hour to leave a warm, comfortable bed. On a cold, dismal January morning it was worse than disgusting. It was brutal.

  For all of her five feet eight inches, her feet dangled several inches above the floor. Mam Powell’s bed was higher than any hospital bed. Easy to make, but painful to climb out of when there was ice in the air.

  Sliding forward she perched precariously on the edge of the mattress and ran the tips of her toes over the freezing floor in search of her pressed felt slippers. She found one, then standing on her left leg, the other. As she shuffled across the room she thought wistfully of the last film she’d seen in the White Palace.

  Claudette Colbert had floated elegantly around a vast, dazzlingly pale, beautifully furnished bedroom in a creamy lace and satin gown that she’d casually referred to as a “negligee”. The actress would probably sooner have died than don a grey woollen dressing gown and flat tartan slippers with red pom-poms. But then, Claudette Colbert looked as though she’d never had to trek out to a back yard first thing in the morning either.

  If the newsreels and Hollywood stories in the Sunday papers were to be believed, film stars had luxurious bathrooms with bubble-filled baths the size of the paddling pool in Ponty Park. And they could afford to keep fires burning in their bedrooms all night without giving a thought to the twenty-two shillings a load of coal cost a miner on short time and rations.

  She twitched aside the curtains and tried to peer through the coating of frost on the window pane. Breathing on the glass, she rubbed hard with the edge of her hand and made a peephole.

  The street lamps burned alongside the houses in the Avenue in a straight line, golden beacons radiating a glow that dispelled the navy-blue darkness and lit up the high garden wall of Danygraig House opposite.

  Dawn was still hours away. She studied the unmade ground of the street beneath her. It was covered with a fine layer of white, but there were dark shadows alongside the stones. Too thin to be snow.