‘Starve to death, then,’ Mari said, ‘For all the good any of you are doing.’
Nick’s arm shot out and he pulled her around so quickly that her head jerked backwards. ‘Never say that. Never, do you hear?’ Then he saw the tracks of tears on her cheeks, and remembered how rosy her cheeks had been when they were first married. Instead of shaking her, as he had almost done, he pulled her roughly to him. Her head fitted gratefully into the hollow of his shoulder and he kissed her hair. ‘I’m sorry,’ he whispered. ‘I told you what it was going to be like, that first day down at Barry Island, didn’t I? Perhaps you shouldn’t have said yes. You could have married anyone you wanted. Kept your job up at the Lodge, instead of losing it because of me.’
‘I never wanted anyone else,’ Mari said. She rubbed her face against him, solacing herself with his familiarity. She knew all of him, the grim willpower and the stubborn pride just as well as his face and the set of his shoulders under the old coat, and she still loved him.
‘Mari,’ Nick whispered, ‘let’s go upstairs for half an hour. Dickon will be all right down here in the warm.’
She hesitated for a second, thinking longingly, and then she shook her head. ‘It’s too risky this time of the month. Next week, Nick, it’ll be all right then.’
‘I’ll be careful.’ He kissed her mouth, tracing the shape of it with his own.
She clung to him, his warmth warming her, but she said ‘No, Nick. It isn’t safe.’
I couldn’t go through Dickon again, she wanted to cry to him. Not the day he was born, nor the time after when we were finding out what was wrong. Not another baby. And if one did come, even if it wasn’t like Dickon, how could we care for it, on what we’ve got? There were too many families in Nantlas with hungry children. No more babies in this family. Not while the world was like this.
But Mari didn’t say any more. It was old, well-trodden ground between Nick and herself and she knew from experience that it was less hurtful to let the silence grow between them than to go round in the old, painful circles yet again. Nick let his arms drop to his sides.
‘Well. Put the kettle on, will you, my love? Let’s pretend that a nice pot of tea will do just as much good. And how could a pot of tea make you pregnant?’
Towards the end of the afternoon, when it was already dark in the valley bottom, the Penrys carefully damped down their fire and set off up the hill to the Miners’ Welfare. Dickon could walk almost as well as other children now, although it had taken him years of effort to learn, but he began to whimper with cold halfway up the street and Nick swung him up into his arms without breaking his stride. There were bright lights in the Welfare Hall and groups of people were coming towards it from all directions. Nick and Mari walked in silence, staring straight ahead of them. They quarrelled too often now, and it was growing harder to make up their differences as they would once have done, impulsively.
The Welfare was the heart of Nantlas now that the congregation could no longer afford a minister for the chapel. It was funded by the Federation, and people came to it for company, for books and classes, support and sympathy, and for the occasional celebration like Nannon Jones’s wedding that still managed to happen, somehow. The long, dingy green-painted hall was hung from side to side with paper streamers, salvaged from Christmas decoration boxes and forgotten Gala days. On the stage at the far end were the music stands and instrument cases of the choir and silver band, waiting for the climax of the evening when the singing would start. Beneath the stage on a trestle table covered with a white cloth, the wedding cake was given pride of place. Nannon Jones had baked it herself, and put hours of work into the carefully piped white icing. Down the length of the hall were more trestles decorated with red and green crepe paper, laden with neat plates of sandwiches, pies and cakes. The Welfare tea urns stood ready, and there were barrels of beer as well, and even bottles of sherry bought with the money Bethan had sent.
The bride and groom stood at the hall door with their parents, welcoming the guests. Gwyn Jones was almost forty, shortsighted and weak-chested, but he was a popular manager of the Co-op. You could always get a bit of help from Gwyn when you were short, the Nantlas women said. Local opinion approved of the match, even though Nannon Jones was hardly into her twenties.
‘Well done, well done,’ the older guests murmured to each set of parents as they shuffled past. ‘And a fine spread, too. Well done to you.’
There was much admiration of the feast set out on the tables. Everyone understood the scheming and saving that must have gone into providing it, and appreciated the generosity of offering it to share. There were no whispers about trying to go one better, or making a show. Hardship had drawn the valley communities closer together.
Myfanwy Jones, the village midwife, stood at the door beside her husband. She was beaming with happiness. At least her youngest had found a good, solid man who would look after her and not ask her to live with the fear that he would walk out of the door one morning in his pit clothes and with his snap-box under his arm and never come back.
She greeted the Penrys with extra warmth as they came in. She never forgot any of the babies she delivered, but she was not likely to forget the night of Dickon’s birth.
There had been nothing unusual to start with. Mari’s pains had been coming steadily all evening and into the night, and Myfanwy had been reassuring her that the baby would be born soon. Then she had bent over to listen to the baby’s heartbeat, and it had gone. Mari’s face was suddenly grey against the pillows. The midwife ran to the top of the stairs and shouted to Nick, sitting by the kitchen range. ‘Run! Run up for Dr Owen, ask him if he’ll come down. She needs forceps.’ There had been a flutter from the baby’s heart as she listened again, faint and irregular, and then nothing.
The minutes dragged past.
Into the silence came the stumbling crash of Nick running back up the stairs. ‘He can’t come. His wife says he’s gone up to one of the children at the Lodge. Oh God, look at her. Save her. I don’t care about the baby, if you can save Mari.’
‘I’ll save them both,’ Myfanwy Jones said grimly. It wasn’t the first time that Dr Owen had been unable to come to a house that was unlikely to be able to provide him with his fee. ‘You’ll have to help me. Hold her, will you?’
Myfanwy knew what to do, although only doctors were supposed to practise it. She even had the right instruments ready in her bag, but only when there was no other alternative could she resort to her own skills.
She took the things out, not looking at Nick Penry’s dead white face. ‘Hold her properly,’ she ordered him harshly.
When Dickon was dragged out into the world his face and hands and feet were blue, and he was completely still.
‘She’ll do,’ Myfanwy said after a brief glance at Mari, and she bent over the huddled baby. She cleared the tiny air passages, and then tried everything she knew to make him breathe.
‘Come on, my darling,’ she whispered to him like a lover. ‘Breathe for me.’
At last, after eternities of time, there was a tiny, thin wail. Mari’s eyes opened and fixed on the baby. The blueness began to ebb from Dickon’s face and Myfanwy breathed again herself. Only when Mari was comfortable and the baby was wrapped up in his father’s arms did she say as gently as she could, ‘I think he will be all right for now. But I can’t say for … later. He went a long time without breathing. Do you understand?’
Mari was too weak to take anything in, and she didn’t know whether Nick had even heard her. He sat quite still, with the baby hugged to his chest, staring right through her, right through the wall and out into the street.
Six