She tied the strings of her bonnet. ‘I’m Mrs Dyslin.’
That wasn’t good enough. ‘And who’s she when she’s at table?’
‘Minnie.’
A pretty name. He had given his already, but didn’t want her to forget. ‘I’m Ernest Burton, blacksmith. My brother has a forge near Tredegar Junction.’
‘That’s close to my sister’s.’
‘So I might see you.’
She sat as if never wanting to leave. ‘I feel better than I did an hour ago.’
‘I’m glad. And I’m sorry for your loss, but you’ve got to go on living, whatever happens, that’s all I know.’ He was surprised at offering so many words of consolation. Well, he could talk when he wanted to.
‘You’re a young man.’
‘I’m twenty-one, and that’s not young. Not in my line it isn’t.’ She must be a few years older, but it wasn’t right to ask a woman’s age. Not that it mattered, as long as you gave her what she wanted.
‘I’m going to be the housekeeper at my sister’s, because she’s ailing much of the time. That’s all I can do with my life from now on, though there is a small annuity in my name. My sister has been married ten years, and has four children. Two are young, so I can teach them their letters, make myself useful in whatever way I can. Frank, he’s the minister, will be grateful if I arrange everything to do with the household, I know, which will help me forget my troubles.’
Maybe she’d have a child after what they had done, people thinking that the last act of a dutiful husband had been to lie with her, the timing more or less right. His smile brought one back, a rose opening under the warmth of summer, happiness that would need concealing once she got to where she was going.
The train squeaked alongside the platform at Pontypool Road station, and he reached for her bag, noting how much livelier and more attractive she was after what they had done, back in the world of the much desired where he hoped she would stay, because a woman can look beautiful at any age as long as loving spunk is pumped into her which goes straight to the eyes and makes them glitter with the come-on of a peahen everybody likes to see. There’s only one way to please a woman, and if another woman guesses what it is, I’ll please her as well. Minnie’s brother-in-law expects her to look sad in her black, so I hope he doesn’t wonder what she’s been up to.
He set their bags on the platform, held a hand for her to step down. George would twit him half to death if he could see him acting the cavalier.
‘The platform’s over there,’ she said on seeing him hesitate. ‘The notice says so.’
‘Ah, so it does.’ He kept a footstep behind, something against his habit, since a woman’s place was to walk after the man. When the train set off she was blawting again. Her husband had died three weeks ago, and she was crying because things would seem strange at her sister’s, till she got used to it. Women often cried for less, so he spared another handkerchief to mop the salty waters, feeling in some way responsible for her.
Two long pools flashed by, furnaces and collieries scattered over the valley. A train puffed and billied up a hillside among scarves of smoke. ‘At least you’ve got a sister to go to, and you’ll be all right once you get there. A family is all a person needs.’
She stopped crying. ‘It’s not that.’
He leaned forward to touch her warm cheek. ‘If her husband gets on to you, and makes your life miserable, I’ll have a word with him.’ He showed his fist, hard and worn with work. ‘I’ll look after you.’
She was shocked. Didn’t all women want protection from bullies? ‘It’s not that,’ she said. ‘It’s that I would like to see you again sometime.’
‘And so you shall.’ He was gratified, though not sure it would be possible because George would have him slaving all the hours God sent. ‘Write your address so that I shall know where to find you.’
She took a silver pencil and small pad of paper from her reticule.
‘And if you want to find me, send a note to the post office at Pontllanfraith,’ where George called for his letters. ‘That’ll find me.’
He slipped the note into his lapel pocket, looked at woods to either side of the track. ‘It’ll be the second stop after this,’ she said. ‘My brother-in-law told me in his letter that he would meet me with his pony and trap.’
The departure kiss was as if they were married, or at any rate as if he ought to marry her, though he scoffed at the notion. Her embrace was so passionate because of the loss of her husband, and maybe even of him. It could not be prolonged, though the look of tenderness pleased him. ‘I’ll put your bag on the platform.’
His tall figure leaned from the carriage window watching the brother-in-law greet her with uplifted hat, a slender middle-aged man whose smile was nowhere close to his face, a Stephen Meagrim in a Bible-black garb almost as deep as her own.
Glad to be by himself, he sat opposite a man and woman who fixed him as if knowing he couldn’t be of the area. The man was probably a farmer, and the bedraggled woman one you might see on a winter’s day trudging towards the workhouse. But they smiled, and wished him good afternoon.
Another cutting of green and shale, and the train stopped. The first thought as he stepped down was to slake the windpipe, but he must let George know he had arrived. He looked north, east, south and west and along the lane wondering where the forge could be, feeling more alone than he liked now that Minnie had gone. Seeing a ragged man covered in coal dust, as if he had just crawled out of the earth, he asked the way to the forge.
Teeth showed white when he smiled, Ernest barely understanding the singsong response, but waving hands gave the direction, and he walked towards houses on the main road.
The sky was cloudless, air sweet, a sun still high enough to warm the ripening hedges, a couple of larks arguing as if their wings were lips. It was good to be alive and on his own in a foreign country. Coal smoke tangled faintly at a change of wind as he put down his bags to light a cigarette. He would have plenty of work from now on, knowing George.
THREE
The forge was a small building of neat red brick and slate roof on its own at the end of a lane. A field behind sloped up to a line of trees that marked the track of a railway, lifting beyond to a skyline of villa-type houses.
George, leather-aproned and fire tongs in hand, stood at the door, looked more surprised than welcoming at his brother’s appearance. Willie, the bearded shortarsed striker holding a shoeing hammer, called in a squeaky voice: ‘I could tell it was you a mile off. Master Burton asked me to keep an eye open. You walk just like him, as if you owned the world!’
‘Shut up, you daft old bogger.’ No blacksmith suffered fools gladly.
‘You’ve come, then,’ George said.
Ernest didn’t suffer fools at all, so made no answer. None was needed. Everybody could see that here he was.
‘I’ll shut the place up in a bit,’ George said, ‘then we’ll wet our whistles at the Mason’s Arms. I expect you’re ready for one. I know I am.’
‘What about my tool bag?’
‘Keep it here. It’ll be safe.’
‘Let’s hope so.’
‘You don’t trust anybody, do you?’
No answer was needed to that, either. Not even his brother, if it came to that.
‘Anyway,’ George swung the big doors to, after Ernest had taken the bags inside, ‘there’s plenty of work for both of us. I’ll set you on straightaway in the morning. There’s a chain to make, and a few scythes to sharpen, for a start.’
The bar room was full, men at their pipes and pots before going home, such a gabble Ernest couldn’t pick out a word, a pint sliding down like an eggtimer with the bottom ripped out, which stayed his hunger. ‘You can sleep on the floor tonight,’ George bawled, ‘and tomorrow we’ll fix you up with Mrs Jones. She’ll lodge you for twelve-and-six a week. And her husband’s a miner, so don’t think you can get away with anything. They’re God-fearing people who go to chapel every Sunday.’