Miss Purdy's Class (51 page)

Once she’d gone, Billy pulled a rough wooden box out from under the bed and showed Gwen some of his stories.

‘You’ve done a lot!’ she exclaimed, seeing him pull out a thick collection of dog-eared papers.

‘You don’t have to read them all.’ He was excited. ‘Look, take a couple. Will you?’

‘Of course. I’d really like to.’

He handed her a sheaf of paper. All the stories were written on small sheets of cheap lined paper which had yellowed, in a tiny copperplate hand, as if he was trying to fit the maximum possible number of words on a page. The top one was called ‘King of the Clouds’. As soon as she began reading, Gwen realized the story was about a boy who longed to fly aeroplanes. She looked up, smiling at him.

‘I’ve always wanted to fly an aeroplane. Like Amy Johnson.’

Billy grinned, delighted. ‘Proper heroine she is.’ He sat looking through his other papers while Gwen sat by the fire and read, sometimes having to stop and ask him to decipher a word for her. The story was quite simple, about a boy who dreams of flying and becomes a pilot, with his own plane. Something about the way it was written, though, drew her on. There was an intensity in the story which moved her. As she finished it, she kept her eyes lowered while she thought what to say. She could feel Billy watching her and his powerful need to know what she thought. She looked up into his hungry face.

‘It’s lovely, Billy. You could be a writer.’ And she could see she had said something which meant the world to him.

Forty-Seven

The next morning Gwen went with the family to early Mass in Aberglyn’s small Catholic church. Anthony pushed Billy down the hill, well wrapped up as the morning was cold and wet. It all seemed very foreign to Gwen, the women’s heads covered with lace or scarves and everything in Latin. When they came out into the narrow, grey street, amid the little knot of people, it was into bright, stormy sunlight which made them screw up their eyes.

‘Still want to go walking?’ Daniel teased. They had talked about going out after he got back the evening before.

‘I’ve got my coat and hat – and my boots.’

‘Welsh rain is wetter than English rain, you know,’ Anthony teased.

Gwen laughed. ‘I suppose I’ll just have to get wet then!’

‘You going over the mountain?’ Shân asked. Her thin face was framed by a flowery scarf.

‘We’ll go to Tredegar,’ Daniel said. ‘It’s a good walk.’

‘You don’t want to go tiring her out – she’s got all that way to go back.’

‘I don’t mind,’ Gwen said eagerly. ‘I love walking.’

Daniel had, for once, put his greatcoat on and they set off for the head of the valley, then branched off on one of the steep paths over the mountain. To begin with, there was brilliant sunshine, but very soon, in the distance, clouds gathered like thick smoke over the mountains and moved towards them.

‘Oh dear,’ Gwen panted. ‘We’re in for it in a minute.’

‘No doubt about that.’

Daniel seemed oblivious to the weather. When the rain started to come down, it was as if they were wrapped in water. Gwen laughed, as rivulets poured from her hat and down her neck.

‘We’re going to be soaked!’ she shouted. Her lungs were straining. They were climbing steeply, barely able to see anything beyond a few yards all around.

‘Never mind. The sun’ll be back soon,’ Daniel called to her. Suddenly he stopped and took her in his arms, kissing her fiercely, and the rain fell on her upturned face and ran down her neck. She broke away, gasping for breath and laughing.

‘It’s gone right inside my clothes – I’m soaked!’

By the time they reached the highest point, the rain was easing off. Gwen felt all-over warm and damp, clothes heavy and chafing, but there was a glory in reaching the top with the sun breaking through and everything wet and gleaming.

‘Look now.’ Daniel came and put an arm round her shoulders. ‘There’s Tredegar. Back there.’ He pointed down at Aberglyn, from where they had just climbed. ‘I was forever walking up and down across here at one time.’ He stood, looking for a moment across the Sirhowy Valley. ‘First deep pit in Wales was sunk here.’

The two towns below them looked small and defenceless with their straight little rows of houses. She felt a great rush of affection for them, of belonging. With the sunlight and the mountain breeze on her face, the valleys spread out on either side, she was filled with certainty that she had been brought here for a reason. She saw her life spread in front of her: she would marry Daniel and he would come back to his home where he belonged and she would come to belong too. She would be part of this place, and have Daniel’s children, even learn Welsh. It felt so right and meant for her. She turned and held him close.

‘I love it here, Daniel. I love you.’

‘Love you too, girl.’

She hoped he might say something more, that perhaps his thoughts had been the same as hers, that he might even make some promise for the future, but he was silent, just held her close.

After a time, Daniel said, ‘All these valleys – there’ll be men coming on the march . . .’

Gwen broke from him, stung, and walked a few paces away. She had imagined his thoughts might be running on similar lines to hers, but, as so often, she was wrong. Daniel was thinking about politics, as usual!
Can’t you think about anything else, just for a moment?
she wanted to shout at him.
What about me? Don’t you ever think about me and our future?
But then she thought of his tears over his mother and the lockouts, the poor pinched faces of the valleys, and she was ashamed. How selfish she was being again, when Daniel was always thinking about other people.

She went back to him and took his arm. ‘They’ve got to make the government listen,’ she said. ‘And you
will
, all of you.’

‘Everyone should listen.’ His voice was low, passionate. ‘The whole world.’

She watched his face as he looked out across the landscape and for a moment she felt afraid for him. Would the world listen to the message of Communism? Were they even listening now?

‘Shall we go on?’ she said.

It was easier to talk on the way down since they were not so short of breath and the sun stayed with them. Daniel told her how he used to be back and forth over here to the library in Tredegar.

‘One of the best socialist libraries anywhere. I was in the Socialist League here before I joined the party. Aneurin Bevan’s family are all here – he was elected MP for Ebbw Vale in twenty-nine. Marvellous, it was. Talks on Marxism, philosophers – as good as any university, I’d say. Plato, Hegel, Kant – we had a genius of a man called Oliver Jones, gave us classes. It all started to make sense, fit together – all the injustices, what they’d done to us . . .’ He held his hand out to help Gwen down from a rocky step in the path. ‘Nothing was ever the same again. It’s genius. And yet even here not everyone could see – wanted to appease the colliery owners, keep their jobs at any cost . . .’

‘Like Hywel Jones?’

Daniel shook his head. ‘Men like Hywel will never change anything,’ he said bitterly.

The descent went quickly and soon they were walking through the narrow streets of Tredegar. The streets were quiet, except for a few people sitting outside their houses in the sun who nodded a greeting. The bright warmth stayed and Gwen was filled with a great sense of wellbeing after the exercise. Daniel lit a cigarette and showed her round: the library where he had spent so many hours, the NUWM offices, the square with its tall clock tower, which said that it was almost eleven o’clock. As they walked on, arm in arm, people started to come out of one of the chapels along the street in front of them.

‘It’s such a shame we don’t have longer,’ Gwen said. She had to catch a train in the afternoon and it felt like a pressure.

‘Quick run up and down the mountain for you again,’ Daniel teased, throwing down the butt of his cigarette. ‘Good for you, that is.’

‘I wish I could stay. It’s gone far too quickly!’

‘I’m no company. I’ll be at meetings all the week, with the committee and that.’

‘I know. And there’s a class waiting for me.’

They crossed the street so as not to get tangled in the knot of people outside the chapel. Someone called, ‘Morning, Daniel mun!’

‘Hello, Albert – see you tomorrow!’ Daniel raised a hand in reply as they walked on along the street. He exchanged greetings with a few other people, and was just saying, ‘He’s a good bloke,’ about someone he had spoken to, when another voice called him from behind.

‘Daniel? Daniel Fernandez?’

The voice was shrill and furiously challenging. They both spun round to see a dark-haired young woman, slim and in a pretty though shabby pink dress. On her hip she carried a little boy.

‘So – deigned to come back here again, have you?’ she demanded. Gwen could see she was quivering with such emotions that she could barely contain them.

‘Couldn’t come back when you were needed could you? Not to fulfil your responsibilities? You’re a rotten, wicked man, Daniel – making your own son into a bastard. Going off without a hint of care for me – for us . . .’

Gwen was struggling to take in what the young woman was saying. She could see that her taut demeanor was giving way to tears, however much she didn’t want it to. There was obviously a great reservoir of pent-up emotion waiting to be released in her, even though she didn’t want to lose her dignity. She didn’t seem to care who heard her.

‘Megan . . .’ Daniel breathed.

‘That’s right – just stand there, nothing to say!’ The woman turned to Gwen in a combination of fury and apparently looking for an ally. ‘Are you the latest one, then? Well, all I can say is, I pity you, lovey. Don’t believe a word he says – he’s a cheat and a liar. Left me to bring up his son all alone without a word, ever. This is Evan, Daniel. He’s nearly two years old now, and he’s your son, remember?’ She went as if to thrust the child into Daniel’s arms, but then snatched him back, hugging him protectively to her. ‘Not that you care . . .’

‘I didn’t know—’ Daniel started to say. A couple of people had stopped to listen, tutting loudly.

‘You didn’t
know
? Course you knew! I came to Aberglyn looking for you, but no, you were never there, were you – always off somewhere else with your politics and your superior ways. You make me sick, Daniel. What about my letters? Didn’t you get those either? What did you expect – for me to come to Birmingham chasing after you to make you see what you’d left behind? I didn’t have any money, remember! Nothing but my drunken da and Auntie Beth. And not
once
– not one answer, or word, not one penny to . . .’ She was weeping now, angry with herself, Gwen could see, but unable to help it.

‘You could have written back! What did you say those things to me for, Daniel? That’s what I can’t forgive you for. Why did you say you loved me and then treat me like that? Always politics, never people, that’s you, Daniel. You’re a cold, cruel man.’

A great chill went through Gwen. She was stunned, barely able to take in what was happening in front of her: the harsh words which, deep down, when she admitted it to herself, rang so true, the beautiful, brown-eyed boy who was so obviously related to Daniel. She stood paralysed, wishing with every fibre in herself that this was not happening, that she was dreaming.

‘I couldn’t,’ Daniel was saying. His voice was neither apologetic nor defiant, just flat, as if his nature was an inevitability which he could only accept but not defeat. ‘I couldn’t just come back here and marry you, settle down in the valleys, Megan.’

The woman shook her head, more tears coming. The little boy was beginning to be upset too by his mother’s emotion.

‘I hate you, Daniel,’ she wept. ‘I love Evan, but I hate you. You’ve ruined my life. I was going to get away from here too – you know I was. And now I’ll never be anything but the shame of Treherbert with the bastard child. D’you know why I’m here? With Auntie Beth again now she’s had yet another baby, that’s why. Good old Megan – she’ll stay at home and be the skivvy. She’ll come and nurse her auntie when no one else’ll be bothered. That’s why I was here in Tredegar, remember? Looking after auntie. Politics was my only way out. And
you
. . .’ She looked up at him, wet cheeked, eyes searching his face as if trying to find hope, to understand. ‘I loved you. And now I hate you more than anyone else alive. It’s the only way I can get through.’ She pulled her son close so that their cheeks were touching. ‘That’s your father, Evan. Take a good look at him – he’s everything a man shouldn’t be.’

‘I could send you some money,’ Daniel said desperately.

‘Oho – talk about better late than never! I don’t want your money, Daniel.’ She almost spat at him. ‘It’ll be cursed, like everything else that comes from you. I just want you to know what you are – what you’ve done. I hope you rot for it.’

She turned away then and walked off, quickly, head down to shield herself from the staring bystanders, and in a few moments they saw her, in her pink frock, disappear past the chapel and round the corner.

Forty-Eight

‘I can see something’s upsetting you, Gwen
fach
. Is it anything you want to tell your Auntie Shân?’

Gwen could barely remember the walk back over the mountain, the having to be polite back with the family in Aberglyn, trying to eat thin stew and potatoes with them round the table. She could see, though, that the fact that she could barely swallow, or meet anyone’s eyes for fear of bursting into tears, and the silence between herself and Daniel were not lost on Shân. After dinner, when they had moved from the kitchen to the front room to sit by the fire, and Shân was boiling the kettle for a cup of tea, she put her head round the door. ‘There’s a little bit of help I’m needing, Gwen. Can you come in here a minute?’

Once she was in the kitchen, Shân closed the door firmly behind them and spoke very softly. ‘You haven’t been yourself since you came back today.’

Touched by the woman’s kindness, Gwen felt her eyes fill with tears again. She had cried on the walk home, trying to get Daniel to talk to her, to explain. All he seemed able to say was that he couldn’t help it, hadn’t meant to hurt her. But staying in the valleys, marriage and children – it seemed like a living death to him.