Rosie Thomas 4-Book Collection: The White Dove, The Potter’s House, Celebration, White

Mari couldn’t have cared less whether or not Nick Penry was fervent enough in his opposition to the hated pit owners, or in his support for the new Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald and his Labour government. She simply thought that Nick was the handsomest man she had ever seen. He was tall for a Welshman, black-haired, with dark and quick eyes that could flicker with laughter. He had stared straight at her so that Mari knew he was seeing her, but at the same time looking through her to something beyond. He was there, appraising her, amused and friendly, and yet not there at all.

But a week later he had called again, to ask her to go with him to the dance at the Miners’ Rest. They had been going together ever since.

Mari wobbled on the doorstep, her cheeks pink and her bobbed brown hair shining. Nick put out his arms to catch her. She fell against him willingly, laughing and smelling his holiday smell of strong soap and ironed flannel.

She put her cheek against her shoulder as he swung her down into the dusty entry behind the row of houses. ‘You could give me a kiss if you felt like it.’

‘There’ll be plenty of time for that later. Why d’you think I’m taking you all the way out to Barry, if it isn’t to get you behind a sand-dune?’ But he kissed her just the same, in full view of all the back kitchen windows in the row. His mouth was very warm, and Mari felt the curl of it because he was still smiling. She glowed with pride of possession as he drew her arm firmly through his and they turned to walk up the entry. Nick Penry was all she wanted.

‘Tara, Mam,’ she called up to the little back window. ‘We’re off now. You’ll see us when you see us.’

Out in the steeply cobbled street men in work clothes were straggling home up the hill, still black with pit dirt and with their tin snap boxes under their arms. The shift had changed, and the day men were already at work in Nantlas No. 1 and 2 pits.

Everyone knew Nick. There were friendly waves and greetings as each little group passed them. A big man stopped and grinned at them, tips and tongue and the rims of his eyes very pink in his dust-blackened face.

‘Where are you two off to then, all done up? Not Sunday, is it?’

‘We’re going down to Barry. Mari’s got a whole day off from up at the Lodge, and it’s a holiday for me as well.’

‘Lucky for some,’ the big man called cheerfully after them. Nick took Mari’s hand and began to run, pulling her after him so that her heels clattered on the stones. She was laughing and protesting, and then they heard the ring of heavier boots coming after them, running even faster. Nick looked back over his shoulder and then stopped, frowning.

Flying headlong down the hill was a young man, hardly more than a boy. He was white-faced, with bright, anxious eyes, and his torn shirt showed the hollow chest beneath. Nick caught his arm as the man scrambled by.

‘Late is it, Bryn?’

The runner spun round, trying to jerk his shirtsleeve away from Nick’s grasp. He was gasping for breath.

‘Again. Can’t afford it, neither, on the day money, not like you piece men. But I can’t sleep at nights, and then in the morning I can’t get my eyes open. But mebbe I’ll catch them yet, if I run.’ He was off, down the hill towards the huddle of buildings at the head of Nantlas No. 1.

‘Come and see me after,’ Nick shouted. ‘I’ll see your gang foreman.’

He wasn’t smiling any more, and he didn’t take Mari’s hand again. They began to walk on, soberly now.

‘He hasn’t a chance,’ Nick said. ‘They’ll have gone down long ago. He might as well have stopped in bed. That’s where he should be, anyway.’

Mari glanced sideways. ‘The dicai, is it?’

‘What do you think, looking at him?’

The dicai was the word they used, defiantly and almost lightly, for tuberculosis. The miners’ curse stalked the pits and the damp, crowded little houses down the hillsides.

‘He’s got to go down, Nick. There’s only him and that doolally sister, and his mam’s bad as well now.’

‘Do you think I don’t know? I’ll have to see if I can get something for them from the Fed. He needs to go down the coast, somewhere away from here. Curse it, Mari, and curse them.’

The Fed was the South Wales Miners’ Federation. Mari knew that them could only be the pit owners, and she knew too that there was no point in trying to talk about it now. She slipped her hand back into his and walked quietly beside him, waiting for him to stop glaring ahead at something she couldn’t see, and come back to her.

At last Nick shrugged. They had left Nantlas behind them, and their faces were turned away from the rows of houses lined above the pithead clutter of lifting gear and dust-black brick buildings. They were on the Maerdy road, and the high valley sides were suddenly summer green. The sun was already hot. It was a fine day for the seaside. The river splashed beside the road, and if he didn’t look at it Nick found that he could forget that the water was clogged with coal waste and the bankside grass was more black than green. Across the river the railway track ran up to the pithead, and rows of empty trucks were waiting to be shunted up for loading. Nick turned away from that too. He squeezed Mari’s hand, and then let it go so that he could put his arm around her shoulders. Her skin felt very warm through the crisp blue cotton, and her hair smelt of lilac. He kissed the top of her head and she drew closer under his arm, lengthening her stride comically so that they walked in step with her hip against his thigh.

‘It’s our holiday,’ Nick said softly. ‘Come on, let’s catch that train.’

He was smiling again. The sun was shining, he had twelve shillings in his pocket, and Mari Powell beside him. He liked Mari. She was cheerful and straightforward, and she was also the prettiest girl in the two valleys. Nick was sure of that, because he had been a committed judge of Rhondda girls from the age of sixteen. No, now wasn’t the time to be thinking of the pit, or the South Wales Miners’ Federation, or of Bryn Jones’s torn chest and the bloody iniquities of the owners who had given it to him.

Mari was pointing down the road with her free hand. ‘Look. The train’s in. We’ll have to run for it, now.’

A frantic dash down to the station brought them out on the platform just as the guard was lifting his whistle to his mouth. Nick tore open the nearest door, swung Mari up so that her skirt billowed and he glimpsed the tops of her white cotton stockings, and leapt in beside her. They collapsed into the dusty seats with Mari tugging at her skirt hem and then putting her hands up to smooth her windblown bob. Nick looked at her pink cheeks and round, shining brown eyes.

‘I love you, Mari,’ he said, surprising himself.

Mari wasn’t surprised. ‘I know,’ she said simply. ‘I love you, too.’

Everyone went down to Barry when they had time and money to spend. In the good days before the War it was always bursting with miners and their wives and children, determined to enjoy themselves in the halls and bars and tea-rooms. On summer afternoons the sands were packed with picnicking families down for the day from the valleys.

It wasn’t quite the same in Barry any more, or anywhere across the South Wales coalfields.

Pits were closing because markets were shrinking, and the work wasn’t there any longer. The money wasn’t there either, even for the lucky ones who were in work, since the terrible days of the 1921 strike and the huge wage cuts that had followed it.

Looking round at the sea front, Nick saw how much it had changed from the times of his childhood outings. Everywhere had seemed freshly painted then, glittering with bright lights and tempting things to buy, or just to look at. Today, even though it was the middle of August, almost every other shopfront seemed to be closed up, some with forbidding boards over the windows. Those that were still open were trying hard, offering jugs of fresh pinky-brown shrimps and mounds of shiny blue-black winkles, green and red and gilt paper hats with ‘Barry Island’ printed on them, china mugs and brightly patterned souvenirs, sweets and tin spades and buckets and trays of teas for the beach. But the paint was peeling and the awnings were torn and faded, and there were only straggles of people passing in front of them in place of the old, cheerful crowds.

Beyond the pale green railings edging the front the sand was freshly uncovered, hard and brown and glittering in a thousand tiny points under the sun. The air smelt wonderfully clean and salty. That hadn’t changed, at least.

Mari ran to the railings and hung over them, calling to him. ‘Look at the sea, Nick. Come on, let’s run down to the water now.’

‘And get sand all over your shoes and those lovely white stockings?’ he teased her.

‘I’ll take them off,’ she said, mock-daringly, and then added, ‘Or no, later perhaps.’

They walked down to the water’s edge where the wavelets turned over themselves and the fringe of foam was swallowed up by the wet sand. There were two or three tiny flawless pink shells amongst the crushed white and grey fragments of larger ones at the tideline. Nick picked them up and closed them in the palm of Mari’s hand, seeing how the skin was rough and reddened from the washing and mending she did for Mrs Peris up at the Lodge.

‘Aren’t they pretty?’ Mari said. ‘Like little pink pearls.’

‘I’d give you real pearls, if I could,’ Nick said. There was something about today that put a rough edge in his voice. It was a happy day, a beautiful day, but it hurt him too.

‘That would be nice,’ Mari answered. ‘But I don’t need pearls, do I? I’m happy just as I am. Here, this minute.’

For a long, long moment they looked at each other.

In the end it was Nick who turned away, his back to the glitter of the sun on the sea, to look back at the rows of roofs and windows along the front. It looked better from here. The colours seemed no more than faded and softened by the salt wind, and the blank eyes of windows were less noticeable. In the centre was a red-brick public house, Victorian mock-Gothic with fantastic turrets and spires, topped by a gilded cockerel on a weather vane.

‘What would you like to do?’ he asked her formally. ‘Shall we have a drink at the Cock? Or are you hungry? We can have a fish dinner right away, if you want.’

‘Oh, a drink first, please. Then something to eat, and then we can go for a walk afterwards.’

They sat side by side on the hard, shiny red leather seats in the Cock, looking at the other holidaymakers. Nick drank two pints of beer, and Mari had two glasses of dark, sweet sherry. After the second her cheeks went even pinker and she found it doubly difficult to listen to what Nick was saying.

He was talking about the Miners’ Federation, and how important it was that every miner should be committed to it and its leaders, so that they could stand together and fight the bosses.

‘Nothing like 1921 must ever happen again,’ he said. ‘No more Black Fridays.’