Hosts of Rebecca

think we need nursing?”
“But you must have some breakfast,” she replied.
“God alive, woman, can’t we get that ourselves? Back and try to sleep, there’s a good girl. Mam says she will have Jonathon and Richard.”
Haggard in the eyes, Mari turned without a word.
Slower now, thoughtful, I went down to the kitchen. Morfydd was already boiling the oatmeal broth. Nearly retched. Sick of the name of it, the smell of it, stomach-heaving at the taste of it, for things were coming shrimpy with us now our savings were gone. And though Grandfer gave us house room he couldn’t be expected to feed us, though most of what Cae White brought in was put against the walls of the taverns. Rye bread, oatmeal broth, potato soup, a bit of fried bread, no meat, a cabbage or two and buttermilk when we could get it. Reckon I could have eaten a mattress of fat bacon. In the Monmouthshire iron they laboured us to death, but at least we fed except in strike times. I joined Morfydd at the hob in the kitchen.
“That girl’s going under,” said she.
Haggard in the eyes and sleepless, was Mari, since Tomos Traherne had visited three months back. Pleased enough to see him, true, but God knows what he had brought with him that Christmas, for Mari was a different girl since. No tears, no sadness one could see; just sleepless and wandering as if dazed.
“Happy enough until Tomos came,” I said. “You noticed?”
She shook her head. “I wondered that, but I doubt it. Only just occurred to her, I think, that she’ll wait years for Iestyn. You be gentle to her, Jethro, you could not have a better relation, and she needs a boy like you – you being his brother.”
“Now what have I done wrong now, for God’s sake?”
This turned her, spoon up. “Nothing, or you’d never hear the end of it. Just be gentle, that’s all. Poor little Mari.”
Nothing angered me more than this sister-in-law stuff that Morfydd was always turning out. Indecent to have a relative nigh a head shorter but only four years older than you. Facing Morfydd I got the bread down somehow and spooned up the dirty old oatmeal.
“We will try Ponty,” said she.
I just sighed.
“Well, don’t look so ghostly – something’s got to be done. We will work the only way we know – in coal.”
“It is spring, damned near. I could try my hand at farming, for the place is going to the dogs under Grandfer.”
“Grandfer’s privilege – his farm. Best stick to what you know.” She sighed herself then. “Queer, isn’t it – just as Mam says – we run from iron for a bit of peace and land in dirty old coal. Diawch!”
I had worked coal in Nanty, like Morfydd, the rest of my family being in iron, except Mari, who had taken her share of hauling trams one time. I hated coal – sixteen hour shifts six days a week, a shilling a day if the seam held out, nothing if it ceased. Black trash were colliers, these days. I had seen the battered heads of the Top Town colliers, the smashed hands of the hewing poor. Furnace work I do like if you can keep clear of the scald, but coal is a trap with no back door out. I cannot stand the galleries and the creak of the splintering prop. Drop the pick, go sideways, watch the slow lengthening of the wane of the pole. Upward it spreads to the pitch, widening: ten million tons of mountain moving, perched on the tip of a four inch prop, and you hold your breath in the seconds of eternity while the county yawns and stretches in sunlight. For you, the microbe, work in the belly, raking at entrails, tunnelling in bowels, and the mountain groans as a child with an ache and its guts rumble thunder. It howls then as the wind breaks and seeks relief by changing position, then bucks to a bright explosion of pain, seeking the balm of its underground rivers. A hit in the stomach as its floor comes up; you squirm for protection as the roof comes down; grip, wait, ready for the crush. Dai Skewen caught it in Number Five, two others walled up.
“What is wrong with you, now?” asked Morfydd.
“Nothing, but I would like iron.”
“Who wouldn’t. Is this Ponty pit a winder?”
“Ladder. And the foreman Job Gower is blessed double with bastards, I heard say, but he is dying for labour.”
“Hush your bad language,” said she. “But I will give him, bastards if he proves a thumper. We go on Top Town rates mind.” Rising, she swung off the kettle and screamed the teapot. “Skilled rates or nothing, or I will tell him what he does with his Ponty – ladders and all.”
I sipped the tea, blowing steam. “We look like staying, then, for he don’t like barristers.”
“Skilled labour,” said she. “Different.” She chewed at the window.
“Skilled or unskilled, all the same rate. Sixpence a pound for a dead pig – shilling a week for a live serving-maid.”
“There is a dainty expression – where did you learn it?”
“Tramping Boy Joey – he had it off his mam. Two-pounds ten a year she drew as a scrubbing-girl, all in, keep included.”
“O, aye,” said she. “Everything counts.”
“But happy enough was Cassie Scarlet, mind, while she was scrubbing.”
“Pity,” said Morfydd. “If the two-pounds-ten includes being bedded you might as well enjoy it.”
Bitter, she was, and I chanced a look at her. Grey streaks at the temples now, the high bones of her face flinging shadow into her cheeks. Black-eyed, gipsy-slanted; and beautiful was her mouth so full and red when not twisted as now. Dress her in lace and she’d rock the county.
“Morfydd.”
She didn’t hear three feet away.
“Morfydd, listen,” I said.
She sighed, eyes closed, her lashes spread wide on her cheeks.
“No lectures, Jethro.”
“Just this, then,” and I took her hand. “Treat Ponty respectful and bring home money, is it? Just for a little