Hosts of Rebecca

pottering. “Just farming for us now, no need to look for trouble.”
“That right, Uncle Jethro?”
I was giving a bit of thought to tollgates and Rebecca about this time, for big Trusts were being formed by the gentry who were investing money in them for the erection of tollgates which were supposed to earn money for the road repairs, and the gates were going up like mushrooms. Rebecca who burned gates once was now sending threatening letters to Trusts and tollgate keepers. Humble men and women, these keepers – the Welsh bleeding the Welsh, said Morfydd. The levying of the tolls was unjust, too, for some gentlemen’s carriages passed free, because they were gentlemen; the charge for a horse and cart with broad wheels was fourpence while a cart with narrow wheels cost sixpence, so the richer the farmer the cheaper the toll. Time was when the Kidwelly Turnpike Trust let lime through free, but new gates were springing up round the kilns now. Osian Hughes Bayleaves was a business man, though Morfydd gave him no credit for gumption. Thought nothing of a five mile detour, did Osian, to avoid a tollgate, sometimes ending in gentry fields. When building his new barn he brought in his bricks under a layer of manure, which passed through free. Aye, no fool was Osian till we all started trying it, and then he got caught and fined three pounds, enough to set him back weeks. Every night, lying in bed, I could hear the tollgate carpenters knocking them up, and the noise made me sweat with seven people to keep and a harvest to sell, for to try to get into Carmarthen or St Clears was like trying to enter a besieged city.
I could see us starving at the height of winter. Sweated blood at the thought of it.
“We will work it out,” said Mari.
The house was quiet that night for Morfydd, exhausted by a late Ponty day shift, had gone to bed with Richard and Jonathon. Grandfer was drowning his back teeth down at Black Boar tavern, but Mari and me were not alone, Mam saw to that. Sitting in Grandfer’s rocking-chair she was dozing and waking in snuffles. Keeping things decent, she said, you understand, you two, no offence meant, mind, she said.
“None taken,” replied Mari, but I saw the hurt in her eyes.
“Gone dark, see,” said Mam. “A young married woman ought to be escorted after nine o’clock at night, never know who might be looking through a window.”
“My sister-in-law,” I said.
“Never mind,” said Mam.
“Iestyn’s wife, then.”
Fingers up now. “Look,” said she. “I am not accusing anyone of capers. It is only the custom, and customs die hard. Old fashioned, perhaps, but I think it safer.”
“You are making too much of it, Mam,” I said.
“Jethro, I am only thinking of Iestyn. So hush!”
“I am doing that night and day,” said Mari, and I saw her eyes go bright.
“Fetch the accounts,” I said. “We will see how we stand. And enter a sixpence for Mam standing guard.”
Up with her then. “No cheek, Jethro, I will not stand for it. Still your mam, I am, and I will take a stick to you, big as you are. Now then.”
Gave her a sigh, fluttered an eye at Mari. So we had Mam’s company when we worked the accounts, adding up rent and church tithes, coal rates and toll payment, with Mam going soprano in snoring, keeping it decent. Full length on the mat and she wouldn’t have known it.
“Rent, rates and tithes,” said Mari. “Eighty pounds outlay, and wear and tear.”
“And with decent harvests like this last one, a hundred and thirty pounds income – fifty to live on and seven to keep.”
“Pretty shrimpy,” I said, thinking of the tolls.
“But that is not counting Morfydd, mind – ten shillings a week, remember. How much is that a year?”
“Take us all night to work it out,” I said. “And she will not earn it for ever. You noticed Morfydd lately?”
“Time she came from coal.”
“Long past,” I said. “Nothing for it. I will have to go back to Ponty and part-time farming.” Sick, I went to the door.
“Where you going, Jethro?”
“Black Boar tavern.”
“Got money?”
I rattled it, grinning. “Enough for a quart.”
“At this time of night?”
I shrugged. “Early for Betsi. She don’t close at all these days.”
I pulled on my coat and Tara, my terrier, came wriggling to my heels.
“Jethro.”
“Aye?”
Pale was her face. “We will manage, mind. A bit shrimpy it will be, but we will manage. You keep from Betsi’s place, boy.”
“Listen. If Grandfer can souse himself on his savings every night the least I am entitled to is a quart.”
After me now, her hand on mine. “It is not the old drinking, Jethro, it is where you drink that matters. Drink quarts, if you like, but at the Miner’s Arms, is it – somewhere decent.”
Over her shoulder I saw Mam’s eyes open, watching. Give her a broomstick just then and she’d have been round chimneys.
“Jethro,” said Mari, begging, “you keep from Rebecca. For me, boy? Wicked, it is, carrying poor men on the ceffyl pren and slaughtering salmon and burning ricks.”
“More wicked to build the gates that cripple us.”
“Then leave it to others – remember my Iestyn.”
This turned me. “I am doing that. There will be no Cae White for my brother to come back to unless the gates come down.”
“O, God,” she said, empty.
“Go to bed, Mari. Here, Tara!” and the terrier scrambled into my arms.
But Mari did not move. It was as if I had struck her. Motionless, she stood, shocked pale; always the same these days when her husband’s name was mentioned, and I pitied her. Helpless, I touched her hand. “Bed,” I said.
“What is happening out by there?” Mam now, peering, spectacles on the end of her nose.
“Me and Mari kissing,” I said, hot. “For God’s sake go back to your snoring.”
I heard Mam’s voice raised in protest as I slammed the door to show her my anger. Getting sick of