Black-eyed Devils Page 6

  ‘I’ll be ready, Mr Robinson.’ Anna took the key of the storeroom to Father Kelly. ‘Can you manage without me for the rest of the day, Father? Mr Robinson is going to Pontypridd, and I’ve some business there that I’ve been meaning to attend to for some time.’

  ‘If that business is begging your brother for donations for the kitchen, forget it, Anna. I’ve tried. The man would rather give his bones to dogs than a soup kitchen for all that most of his customers are miners.’

  Anna’s brother had inherited the family butchery business in Pontypridd. It was common knowledge he and Anna hadn’t spoken since she had moved to Tonypandy with the Watkins’s.’

  ‘With all respect, Father, you’re not his sister.’ She buttoned the cuffs on her blouse.

  ‘You’re wasting your time, Anna, and you’ll catch your death of cold on that open cart,’ he called after her. The only reply he had, was,

  ‘I’ll see you tomorrow morning, Father.’ Anna stopped to kiss Amy goodbye, before following the carter and his boys out of the door.

  ‘Is there anywhere special you want to go to in Pontypridd?’ Fred Robinson asked Anna when they reached the end of Mill Street. Ahead was Taff Street and the centre of town.

  ‘Here will be fine, Mr Robinson. I know Father Kelly will write to the farmers but thank them for their donation of vegetables from the colliers’ wives in Tonypandy will you, please.’

  ‘I’ve never been thanked so much for doing so little, Mrs Jenkins, but I’ll pass your message on.’ He pulled his scarf over his mouth to protect his face from the heavy rain that had soaked his cap and collar.

  Anna gripped the side of the cart and climbed down on to the pavement. Her legs and arms were numb, stiff with cold, her cloak soaked. When she moved she discovered that her skirt, petticoats and cardigan and blouse were also wet through.

  ‘Hope you get a ride back, Mrs Jenkins.’ Fred cracked the reins and his shire horses moved on.

  Anna looked at the people around her. She knew exactly where she wanted to go in the town but she didn’t want to risk anyone she knew, seeing her go there. She pulled her bonnet down low and her scarf high, covering the lower part of her face. She turned left out of Mill Street. Her brother’s butcher’s shop was in Broadway in the opposite direction. But she had no intention of seeing him. Instead she walked along Taff Street and turned left again into Market Square.

  The Colliery Company had their offices in the square. She knew Arnold Craggs worked there for an hour or two most mornings before going to the best hotel in town, the New Inn, for lunch. She reached the door and straightened her cloak. There were mud splashes on the left hand side where it had overhung the cart, but there was nothing she could do about it. Rubbing damp mud only drove it deeper into the cloth.

  She tucked her wet hair beneath her bonnet, wiped her face with her wet woollen gloves, pressed the bell on the door and waited.

  A young man dressed in a suit, winged collar and bow tie opened the door. He looked down at Anna from the height of the doorstep and the expression on his face Anna saw he missed nothing. Her wet clothes, the dirt on her cloak that meant she’d travelled by cart, not train or bus.

  ‘Can I help you?’

  Anna raised her eyes and looked at him. ‘Yes, please. I’d like to see Mr Arnold Craggs.’

  ‘Have you an appointment?’ He moved back. She sensed he was preparing to close the door in her face.

  ‘No, but he will see me, if you give him my name. Anna Lewis.’

  ‘Mr Craggs has left orders not to be disturbed.’

  ‘Give him this.’ Anna couldn’t bring herself to use the word please to the man. She opened her handbag and handed the clerk her red leather jewellery box. He opened it. ‘Is this Mr Craggs’ property.’

  ‘Just give it to him please.’

  ‘Are you returning it to him after it was stolen?’

  ‘Just give it to him, please,’ she repeated.

  ‘Your name again?’

  ‘Anna Lewis.’ Anna summoned her courage. ‘Mr Craggs won’t thank you for keeping me waiting.’

  ‘Wait here.’ The clerk opened the door wide enough to allow Anna inside. Anna stood, her clothes dripping water on to the tiled floor. A few minutes later he reappeared. ‘Mr Craggs will see you.’ He led the way up two flights of stairs and opened a door. Anna entered the room and the clerk closed the door behind her.

  The office couldn’t have been more different from a miners’ cottage. It was as large as Anna’s parlour, hall, passage and kitchen combined. One wall had wide windows that overlooked Market Square. A fire had been banked up in an enormous marble fireplace, the walls were papered in gold, the elegant furniture mahogany. Arnold Craggs sat behind a massive, leather topped desk that almost filled the room.

  The years had been kind to him. He was still slim and his eyes as blue as Anna remembered. Only his hair had changed. There was more silver than blond in the strands that fell over his forehead. He rose to his feet when she entered and indicated an armchair next to the fire.

  ‘Hello, Anna. It’s good to see you. Please, sit down.’

  ‘I’m wet. I’d ruin your chair.’

  ‘I don’t mind.’

  ‘I would. I didn’t come here to spoil your furniture.’

  ‘I’ve been hoping that you come to see me for years. Why now, after all this time?’

  ‘Because a young Irishman called Thomas Kelly needs help. You were the only person I could think of who might be able to do something for him.’

  CHAPTER NINE

  ‘I wouldn’t go out there, if I were you, boy,’ Constable Davies advised Tom Kelly. Tom had left the cell where he had slept for most of the morning and was walking towards the front door of the police station.

  ‘I’m a free man, aren’t I?’ Tom asked.

  ‘You haven’t been arrested. But you’re only as free as the colliery company lets you be. Or do you need reminding that you’ve signed on with them?’ Huw Davies asked.

  ‘After what happened last night, I don’t need reminding.’

  ‘I’ve no doubt they’ll send someone to pick you up as soon as the streets are safe.’ Huw sat behind the incident desk.

  ‘I overheard Sergeant Martin tell one of the officers that most of the colliers have gone back to the picket lines.’ Tom buttoned his ill-fitting tweed jacket and turned up his collar.

  ‘Most, not all,’ Huw qualified. ‘You’re a known blackleg. If a collier recognizes you, you’re likely to get the same treatment the others had last night. We heard this morning that none of them will be fit for work for at least a week.’

  ‘The colliery company got more than it bargained for when it took them on,’ Gwyn Jenkins, another local constable laughed. ‘Medically unfit blacklegs and expensive hospital bills. I wouldn’t like to be in Shipton’s shoes. Where was he and the other duty officer hiding when the colliers took the blacklegs out of the stables?’

  ‘He’s explaining that to the Arnold Craggs’ agent and the sergeant now.’ Huw Davies turned to Tom. ‘Why don’t you forget about going to see your uncle for a day or two? If you return to your cell you can have a lie down. I’ll bring you a nice cup of tea.’

  ‘I’ve had enough of lying down.’

  ‘Better that than getting beaten up.’

  Tom grinned. ‘I’ve proved I can run fast.’

  Huw Davies refused to be amused. ‘It might not be fast enough next time, boy.’

  ‘Ten minutes. That’s all it’ll take for me to walk around the corner, talk to my uncle and tell him I’m all right.’

  ‘Sergeant Martin told him that this morning.’

  ‘I have a letter to give him. A personal letter.’ Tom clutched the folded paper in his pocket. He’d begged a sheet of paper and a pencil from one of the constables that morning and written a note to Amy. He had no envelope to seal it in, but he trusted his uncle to deliver it unread. ‘You can’t stop me going, can you?’

  ‘No, I can’t.’ Huw Davies saw that
Tom was determined to leave. ‘But if you have to go, at least let me look outside to make sure there are no colliers watching the entrance.’ He went to the door.

  ‘Is the street clear?’ Tom asked.

  ‘It is at the moment, but don’t take your time. Someone from the colliery company could come to fetch you at any minute.’

  ‘That’s not likely,’ Gwyn Jenkins said. ‘They need more than one lucky blackleg who escaped a hanging and a beating if they’re going to keep the colliery going without the workers.’

  ‘Tom, be careful.’ Huw Davies found himself talking to a closed door. Tom Kelly had gone.

  Mark Watkins had spent all morning standing across the road from the soup kitchen. He was cold, wet, hungry and bored but he forgot his troubles when he saw Tom Kelly round the corner and run up the hill towards him.

  Mark waved his arm. Half a dozen colliers armed with planks of wood they’d torn from the colliery railings left the shelter of the lane behind him. They joined Mark, but were careful to stand back out of sight of someone climbing the hill. All they had to do was wait.

  Arnold Craggs picked up the jewellery box Anna had given the clerk. He opened it and turned it around on the desk so it faced her.

  ‘It’s been years since we last spoke, Anna. I’m surprised you kept the locket I gave you.’

  ‘You put a picture of yourself in it. It was the only one I had.’

  He pressed the catch. The front flew open to reveal a head and shoulders portrait that had been taken of him when he’d been a young man. On the other side was a photograph of a baby. ‘I wanted to help you.’

  ‘You did.’

  ‘Not enough.’

  ‘I wouldn’t let you do more. You had a wife. I was young, foolish and wanted to believe in the fairy tale “Happily ever after”. We had an affair that resulted in a baby. It’s an old story, Arnold. All that needed to be said about it, was said years ago.’ She picked up the locket, returned it to the jewellery box and closed the lid.

  ‘I’ve seen Amy,’ he murmured. ‘She’s beautiful. Just as you were at her age.’

  ‘You always knew how to flatter a woman, Arnold. But I’ve never been beautiful. Not even twenty years ago.’

  ‘You were to me, Anna. I never stopped loving you. Or regretting what might have been.’

  Despite her earlier refusal of a chair, Anna found herself in one of the guest chairs next to the fireplace. Arnold sat on opposite her. Close but not close enough to touch her.

  ‘You live close to Mary and Jim Watkins. You must have seen a lot of Amy when she growing up.’ Arnold sounded envious.

  ‘I did. Mary and Jim Watkins have done a good job of bringing Amy up, Arnold. They wouldn’t have been able to look after her as well as they have done without the money you gave them to buy a house in Tonypandy. And the job you organized for Jim in the Glamorgan Colliery.’

  ‘You married.’

  ‘A good man who believes Amy is Mary and Jim’s child. He wouldn’t have married me if he’d suspected the truth.’

  ‘Who would have thought that you could have silenced so many gossips by moving a few miles away from Pontypridd?’

  ‘People in Pontypridd lost interest in me when I moved to Tonypandy with Mary and Jim. I was careful never to leave Mary and Jim’s house without my cloak until after Amy was born. So, people in Tonypandy never doubted Mary when she said Amy was her child.’

  ‘Gwilym Jenkins isn’t that good a man, Anna. He’s a strike leader,’ Arnold said.

  ‘You know the name of the man I married?’ She looked at him surprise.

  ‘Do you think that I could forget about you and Amy? She is my only child, Anna.’

  ‘You have no children, Arnold.’

  He clenched his fists. ‘Does Amy know who her parents are?’

  ‘Yes, she does, Arnold. Mary and Jim Watkins are Amy’s parents. They nursed her when she was a baby. Looked after her when she caught measles, mumps and chicken-pox. They fed her, cared for her and gave her all the love and attention she could ever want.’

  ‘If you’d given me the chance I would have loved her, Anna.’

  ‘As your bastard child?’

  ‘I would have bought you a house, given you money and all the clothes and jewellery you wanted. Paid for Amy to go to private school.’

  ‘Where she would have been called a bastard and I would have been called your mistress by people who wanted to be kind. The unkind ones would have called me whore. And rightly so.’

  ‘You were never a whore, Anna.’

  ‘It’s what the world would have called me if they had found out about Amy. But thanks to Mary and Jim Watkins, and your money, Amy’s and my life turned out differently. And, none of it matters. Not now.’

  ‘Can’t we at least be friends, Anna?’

  ‘No, Arnold. We can never be friends. I told you that twenty years ago and it’s truer now than it was then. I asked you about Thomas Kelly. Do you know him?’

  ‘One of our agents told me he’d signed up Father Kelly’s nephew in Ireland.’

  ‘Tear up the papers Tom signed, Arnold. Your agents tricked him. He’s no blackleg.

  ‘What’s Thomas Kelly to you?’ He thought for a moment. ‘Of course, you work in Father Kelly’s kitchen. He sent you here to beg for his nephew, didn’t he?’

  ‘Father Kelly doesn’t know I’m here. No one does, except you and the clerk who showed me in.’

  Arnold smiled. ‘Alun’s a snob but he’s good at his job.’

  ‘The colliers see the strike as a war. We’re on different sides, Arnold. And Amy Watkins and Tom Kelly are caught in the middle.’ Anna glanced at the clock above Arnold’s desk. It was already twelve o’clock. She didn’t have much time to find a ride back to Tonypandy and get there before Gwilym left the picket line.

  ‘Amy knows Tom?’

  ‘She loves him.’

  ‘And Jim Watkins approves.’

  ‘No he doesn’t. And, he’ll disown Amy if he finds out about them. I’ve seen Tom and Amy together, Arnold. It’s hopeless to try and separate them. They’re in love. Just as.’ She fell silent.

  ‘We once were,’ he finished for her.

  ‘You’ll tear up Tom Kelly’s contract?’ she pleaded.

  ‘I won’t make promises I can’t keep, Anna. I did that once before when I told a young girl I’d leave my wife and take care of her. All I succeeded in doing was hurting the only woman I have ever loved.’

  Anna looked at him for a moment, imprinting his face on her memory. ‘I know you’ll try. Arnold. I’ve done what I came here to do. I have to go to the market and look for a cart that’s going back to Tonypandy.’

  ‘I’ll hire a cab for you.’

  ‘Can you see the wife of a striking miner, riding back into Tonypandy in style? I’d never live it down. Gwilym wouldn’t understand the waste of money. And I certainly couldn’t tell him where it came from.’

  ‘At least let me give you the train fare.’

  ‘No, for the same reason. I’d have to explain to Gwilym where I got it.’

  Arnold took his wallet from his pocket and opened it. He removed two ten pound notes. ‘Give these to Father Kelly for his soup kitchen.’

  ‘Father Kelly wouldn’t take them from you.’

  ‘You wouldn’t have to tell him where they came from.’

  ‘I couldn’t lie. You want to donate, Arnold, do it anonymously through your bank.’

  ‘I already do.’ He left his desk and went to the door.

  ‘If you have any feelings for Amy, Arnold, help her and Tom. But promise me, one thing. Don’t tell her who you are.’

  ‘And that’s all you’ll take from me, Anna. A promise?’

  She kissed his cheek. ‘Goodbye, Arnold.’

  CHAPTER TEN

  Tom lay on his back on the pavement. He hadn’t seen the blow that had felled him but it had been too hard to have come from a fist. There was a loud ringing in his ears, but it wasn’t too loud to drown out Ma
rk’s voice.

  ‘You bastard, blackleg. This will teach you to stay away from decent girls. You say one more word to my sister and I’ll kill you.’

  Tom saw Mark’s boot. A crack resounded in the cold air. Agonising pains burned through his left arm and into his chest. Boots and wooden staves rained down on him. He curled into a tight ball and lifted his right arm in an attempt to protect his head.

  Screams tore through the air. He only recognized them as his when the pain was so great he could no longer even cry out.

  A familiar Irish voice rose above the curses of the men who were beating him.

  ‘Dear God, boys. What’s going on here? Stop it. Stop it.’

  Tom tried to focus on his uncle. He saw his black cassock. His face as he crouched on the ground beside him.

  ‘Tom, lad. Oh Tom.’

  Tom heard Amy scream his name. He heard the sound of running feet, light, dainty feet. The voice drew closer.

  ‘Mark, what have you done? You brute.’

  ‘Amy.’ He tried to say her name, but the noise he made didn’t make any sense. He tried again. ‘Amy.’ Then he plunged into merciful, pain numbing darkness.

  ‘Amy, love, you have to let the men take Tom to Hospital. Father Kelly will go with him.’ Realizing that Amy hadn’t heard a word she’d said, Betty Morgan looked for help. ‘Where’s Anna Jenkins. She and Amy are close.’

  ‘She went to Pontypridd.’ Father Kelly cradled Tom’s bloody head in his lap.

  ‘All Tom did was talk to me, Mark,’ Amy shouted. ‘Do you hear? All he did was talk to me.’

  Betty and two of the other ladies held Amy back as she closed her fists.

  ‘At last, the ambulance,’ Father Kelly said in relief as the horse raced up the hill.

  ‘And the police,’ Mark said. ‘Scarper boys.’

  The strikers ran off. Three of them headed for the mountain, Mark and two others disappeared down a side street.

  Amy watched as the driver of the ambulance and his mate loaded Tom on to a stretcher.

  ‘It’s just as well he’s out of it,’ the driver said to Father Kelly. ‘He wouldn’t be able to stand the pain otherwise.’

  ‘He will be all right, won’t he?’ Amy pleaded.