Free Flame and Slag by Ron Berry Page B

diaphragm, the other patting my mouth to keep me quiet — “and Fred Fransceska marrying Morfed Owen. She’s having hers next September, by the way. She’s huge, Morfed, like a mountain. You can also put down what the men think about the pits, or Will Paynter holding his place on the T.U.C. Committee. He’s your union sec. And there’s the new manager, Ike Pomeroy. You miners, you usually exaggerate when you try to be witty. You don’t like the simple truth. Exaggerate on paper instead of telling me lies — you do, Rees! Lies, but I love you, although I’m not beautiful like you say. My figure used to be all right, passable, and I don’t want to grow old, I don’t want to stop enjoying … ninety per cent of the women around here won’t admit that.” She smiled reflectively. “At least not until they’re past feeling anything. Have you noticed?” — her mobile hand spider-running down my chest, down, flip-flip-flip, then she relaxed, fell deceptively calm, declaring cold as ice-lock, “Report it true about Caib tip-slide and all that wicked time.”
    By now it was evening gloom, every colour gone from the day.
    Lydia appealed from the foot of the stairs. “Mam-my, mam-my!”
    “What is it, cariad ?”
    “Mam-my!”
    Ellen carried her upstairs again, our sober little toddler scrupulously gnawing the apple stump, dandled on Ellen’s half-parted thighs in the grey-toned room.
    “Well, you, matey,” — switching on the bedside table lamp — “shall I go now? The loving’s over.”
    “I’ll stay here, read the Account. Trumpet when tea’s ready, my beaut.”
    She said, “Good-bye, darling.”

    Eventually they mastered the water problem & found the Four Feet seam, thus providing employment for well over 2,000 men in the days before mechanization except the war coming in 1939 deprived old Caib colliery in many ways, specially manpower when France collapsed & the pits were forced to work three on & three off because we could not export coal abroad. Skilled colliers packed in to join the armed forces & naturally many did not come back to Caib or Daren or Wales for that matter. Often-times with my wife Kate I have discussed the families come & gone from Daren, large families disappearing forever without leaving a solitary trace, myself & daughter included in 1943. But I shall do my utmost to return once I am convinced that certain personal problems & tribulations are finished & done with. Life must be settled. It was fair shares & solid principle in Daren before the struggles came, private & money struggles during the bad Thirties period. From a village we grew into a fair sized town, Lower Daren brickworks producing fine bricks with fireclay from the Watkin Main Level. The accidental air raid at 11.40 p.m. on September the 9th 1942 left craters all along the quarry above Lower Daren, therefore the old Watkin Main will never be found again. Girls crowding the brickworks & a few more Irish & English newcomers among them so that is where Kate worked instead of going away to service until we got married. By then I had my own stall in Caib, comrade Twmws Cynon heading man who never put a foot wrong disregarding fresh starters rushing to enjoy big money in our pit. The best for wages in Wales without a shadow of doubt, a stall in the Four Feet worth twice the money you would earn anywhere barring one or two exceptional collieries over in Rhondda of course. Imagine a collier & his butty in the Caib averaging eight peggy trams a shift, he would be on quite a respectable living. All peggy trams in the beginning as were used in the house coal levels. Soon came those huge bomby trams. One day Pryssor Harding hurried out shocked from his weighbridge office to look at a bomby with easily one foot six of RACING on top of the tram. RACING we called it in those days. Pryssor could not believe the one ton fourteen cwts measured on his weighbridge scales. He had to inspect the reality. Twmws Cynon RACED that bomby as an