Fall of Giants

He shook hands, even though it seemed odd for two people who had made passionate love. “I will,” he said.

“Please leave now, quickly,” she said, and she turned aside.

He hesitated a moment longer, then left the room.

As he walked away, he was surprised and ashamed to feel unmanly tears come to his eyes. “Good-bye, Ethel,” he whispered to the empty corridor. “May God bless and keep you.”

{IV}

She went to the luggage store in the attic and stole a small suitcase, old and battered. No one would ever miss it. It had belonged to Fitz’s father, and had his crest stamped in the leather: the gilding had worn off long ago, but the impression could still be made out. She packed stockings and underwear and some of the princess’s scented soap.

Lying in bed that night, she decided she did not want to go to London after all. She was too frightened to go through this alone. She wanted to be with her family. She needed to ask her mother questions about pregnancy. She should be in a familiar place when the baby came. Her child would need its grandparents and its uncle Billy.

In the morning she put on her own clothing, left her housekeeper’s dress hanging from its nail, and crept out of Tŷ Gwyn early. At the end of the drive she looked back at the house, its stones black with coal dust, its long rows of windows reflecting the rising sun, and she thought how much she had learned since she first came here to work as a thirteen-year-old fresh from school. Now she knew how the elite lived. They had strange food, prepared in complicated ways, and they wasted more than they ate. They all spoke with the same strangled accent, even some of the foreigners. She had handled rich women’s beautiful underwear, fine cotton and slippery silk, hand-sewn and embroidered and trimmed with lace, twelve of everything piled in their chests of drawers. She could look at a sideboard and tell at a glance in what century it had been made. Most of all, she thought bitterly, she had learned that love is not to be trusted.

She walked down the mountainside into Aberowen and made her way to Wellington Row. The door of her parents’ house was unlocked, as always. She went inside. The main room, the kitchen, was smaller than the Vase Room at Tŷ Gwyn, used only for arranging flowers.

Mam was kneading dough for bread, but when she saw the suitcase she stopped and said: “What’s gone wrong?”

“I’ve come home,” Ethel said. She put down the case and sat at the square kitchen table. She felt too ashamed to say what had happened.

However, Mam guessed. “You’ve been sacked!”

Ethel could not look at her mother. “Aye. I’m sorry, Mam.”

Mam wiped her hands on a rag. “What have you done?” she said angrily. “Out with it, now!”

Ethel sighed. Why was she holding back? “I fell for a baby,” she said.

“Oh, no-you wicked girl!”

Ethel fought back tears. She had hoped for sympathy, not condemnation. “I am a wicked girl,” she said. She took off her hat, trying to keep her composure.

“It have all gone to your head-working at the big house, and meeting the king and queen. It have made you forget how you were raised.”

“I expect you’re right.”

“It will kill your father.”

“He doesn’t have to give birth,” Ethel said sarcastically. “I expect he’ll be all right.”

“Don’t be cheeky. It’s going to break his heart.”

“Where is he?”

“Gone to another strike meeting. Think of his position in the town: elder of the chapel, miners’ agent, secretary of the Independent Labour Party-how will he hold up his head at meetings, with everyone thinking his daughter’s a slut?”

Ethel’s control failed. “I’m very sorry to cause him shame,” she said, and she began to cry.

Mam’s expression changed. “Oh, well,” she said. “It’s the oldest story in the world.” She came around the table and pressed Ethel’s head to her breast. “Never mind, never mind,” she said, just as she had when Ethel was a child and grazed her knees.

After a while, Ethel’s sobs eased.

Mam released her and said: “We’d better have a cup of tea.” There was a kettle kept permanently on the hob. She put tea leaves into a pot and poured boiling water in, then stirred the mixture with a wooden spoon. “When’s the baby due?”

“February.”

“Oh, my goodness.” Mam turned from the fire to look at Ethel. “I’m going to be a grandmother!”

They both laughed. Mam set out cups and poured the tea. Ethel drank some and felt better. “Did you have easy births, or difficult?” she asked.

“There are no easy births, but mine were better than most, my mother said. I’ve had a bad back ever since Billy, all the same.”

Billy came downstairs, saying: “Who’s talking about me?” He could sleep late, Ethel realized, because he was on strike. Every time she saw him he seemed taller and broader. “Hello, Eth,” he said, and kissed her with a bristly mustache. “Why the suitcase?” He sat down, and Mam poured him tea.

“I’ve done something stupid, Billy,” said Ethel. “I’m having a baby.”