Read Online Winners and Losers by Catrin Collier - Free Book Online Page B

front of Victor.
    â€˜I wish she hadn’t agreed to work for Joyce Palmer.’ Victor sat hunched over the table.
    Sali replaced the teapot on the metal stand and covered it with a knitted cosy. ‘You’d rather Megan left Tonypandy?’
    â€˜No!’
    â€˜Megan’s only doing what the rest of us are,’ she reminded him mildly. ‘Trying to survive until better times. She won’t be nineteen for ever, Victor.’
    â€˜From where I’m sitting it feels like it,’ he complained miserably.
    â€˜I’m sorry.’ Sali wished she could think of something more comforting to say, but with her own marriage plans in hand, she felt anything else would sound sanctimonious.
    He glanced at the clock. ‘Dad, Lloyd and Joey are late. As soon as I’ve drunk this I’ll go and look for them.’
    â€˜Give them another half hour. The boys next door told me that the police have been blocking Dunraven Street again. If your father and Lloyd did make it to the railway station along with the other union officials, they might not be able to get back.’ Sali had become adept at concealing her fears for Lloyd and Mr Evans’ safety. As strike leaders they were expected to act as mediators by the police, a position that put them in the firing line of both sides. Every time they left the house, she was terrified that she might never see either of them again.
    â€˜And Joey?’ Victor asked. ‘He went out a good half hour after them.’
    Sali didn’t answer. From the first week of the strike she had suspected that Joey was actually enjoying the excitement generated by the conflict. It gave him an excuse to disappear for hours at a time, and there were plenty of women in Tonypandy who were prepared to hide Joey Evans under their beds while swearing all shades of innocence to the police. And it took absolutely no imagination on her part to picture what Joey got up to with his saviours after the police moved on their search.
    â€˜I’m fine, love.’ Lloyd pulled his blood-stained handkerchief away from his cheekbone, and examined his face in the dressing-table mirror.
    Ignoring his protestations, Sali left the bed, flung a woollen shawl over her flannel nightgown and poured cold water from the china pitcher into the bowl on the washstand. She tossed in a flannel and wrung it out. ‘Sit down.’
    â€˜I’m fine.’
    â€˜So you keep saying.’
    â€˜You don’t believe me?’
    â€˜Sit down before you fall down.’
    â€˜You know something, you’ve turned out bossy, Sali Jones.’ Lloyd finally sat on the bed.
    She pressed the flannel against a cut that had sliced his cheek. ‘You need someone to keep you in order. Was it a truncheon?’ She fingered the wound to check its depth.
    He took the flannel from her. ‘The police had every right to wade in given what they were facing. Someone started a rumour that management were bringing in blacklegs on the train, so the boys armed themselves with sticks and bucketfuls of stones.’
    â€˜And the blacklegs?’
    â€˜Never materialized, which makes me think management started the rumour, so everyone would go to the station and leave the side roads clear. It didn’t help that some bright officer refused to allow us to see for ourselves when we tried to picket the station. And before you say anything, I wasn’t the intended target for this.’ He held the flannel over the cut. ‘Just the stupid bystander, fool enough to get between two angry people.’
    â€˜Why do you always have to see both sides of every argument?’ She helped him out of his jacket.
    â€˜Because if I didn’t, I’d be throwing stones along with the rest of the mob and then we’d not only lose the fight but deserve to. Sometimes I think the blockheads on both sides are more in control than the so-called leaders, and we’ll remain, horns locked, in this strike