The Havards Part One

She saw her father straight away.  His bed was at the far end of the ward next to a window.  He was asleep, propped up by pillows.

'Excuse me, would you mind telling me who you are?'  She turned to face three women in nurses’ uniforms

'I am Sian Havard.  I have come to see my father.'

'We have nobody of that name here,' the nurse replied.

Sian pointed, 'That's my father there.'

The second woman spoke, 'I'll handle this sister.'  When the ward sister left she said, 'I am Matron Graham.'  She instructed the junior nurse to put a screen round Sian's father's bed then turned her gaze to the young woman before her.  Sian was aware that her worn coat and scuffed shoes were soaking wet as was her hair.  She held her dripping beret in her hand.  Matron Graham said, 'We were told your father's name was Edward Smith, a vagrant, by the men who brought him here.'  She produced a note book and pencil.  'Please write down for me, your father's full name and address,  his date of birth and his next of kin.  You may sit at that table.'  Sian did as instructed.  The matron read the information.

'You have travelled from Wales?'

'Yes matron.'

'Overnight? '

'Yes.'

The matron studied her then after a pause said, 'Your father is seriously ill.  You must prepare yourself for the worst I'm afraid.  He has pneumonia.  Was he in the war?'

'Yes,' Sian replied.

'Gassed?'

'Just a whiff he said Matron.'

The matron nodded, 'Go to him.'

Sian crossed to her father, drew a chair close to the bed, sat down and gently took his hand.  He was obviously dying.  He was emaciated.  His breath was laboured and his nose and lips were tinged with blue.  She looked about the ward.  It was sparsely furnished but clean and tidy.  On the bare wall a calender marked the day, 28^th of February 1933.  She turned her attention to her father's gaunt face and as she looked at him her thoughts turned to the events that had brought her to his bedside.

Sian was born in the Rhonda valley in 1915.  She had no memory of her father before he returned from the 1914/18 war in which he had served with a Welsh infantry regiment.  George Havard had been lucky, his only injury had been a whiff of gas as he called it.  He returned to his job as a miner.  He was a man of strong views.  The Havards' were a Methodist family and George combined his faith with militant trade unionism.

Many of the men returning from active service had grievances.  They had seen much incompetence as they saw it and waste of life.  George’s anger was directed against his ex commanding officer, Major Elwyn Gormley Bullen, a strict disciplinarian with a sense of snobbery bordering on contempt.  George held him responsible for the mistreatment and death of some of his colleagues.  When Major Gormley Bullen was made President of the British Legion, George complained bitterly.  George was thrown out of the British Legion.  When Major Gormley Bullen stood for parliament as a conservative candidate, George was his most persistent heckler.  Major Gormley Bullen used his influence with the mine owners and George was victimised.  His shifts were changed at a moments notice and when miners were laid off or put on short time, George was always amongst them.

At home things were tight.  Georges wife Gwen had born him three children, Melvin (known as Mel) born in 1910, Sian in 1915 and Alan born in 1919.  The relationship between Mel and his father was often strained.  'Why don't you just shut up and let somebody else do the talking for a change,' Mel argued, 'It's Mam and us that suffer.'  Sian said little, she was her fathers favourite and loved him dearly.  Alan was too young to have opinions and in any case he usually had his head in a library book.  Another strain on Mel's relationship with his father was his love of football.  'Why can't you play the man's game, rugby?'

'I like football,' Mel replied.  'Football will get me out of the Rhonda one day.'

In 1924 at the age of fourteen, Mel followed his father into mining.  The extra money he brought in made life a bit easier, especially for Gwen who was the one who went without when things were tight.  Her health deteriorated.  She lost weight and all her teeth.  Her hair thinned and her complexion sallowed but the men needed food and clothing to work and the children needed nourishment to thrive.  George took part in the ill fated miners strike of 1926.  They were beaten.  At the chapel the minister Glyn Davies urged the men to comply.  'You must go back lads, for the women and children.'

Reluctantly the men went back, cap in hand as instructed and asked for their jobs back.  George was turned away, blacklisted for life.  To make matters worse, Mel received the same treatment but for him things improved.  A local talent scout spotted him and he was signed as an apprentice for a second division football club in the north of England.  Sian missed him.  Despite his arguments with his Dad, Mel was young, strong and fun.

The family settled down to life on the dole.  George was forced by the labour exchange to go out looking for work every day and to furnish proof that he had done so.  This was difficult to do.  Tramping the streets looking for work in all weathers inadequately clothed took its toll. His solace was summer walks in the country with Sian and attendance at the Methodist chapel.  George was a fine baritone singer.

One day he came home and collapsed.  They got him to hospital semi conscious.  He was diagnosed with pleurisy and put to bed.  When George came to and looked around he roared with anger, pointing at a brass plaque at the foot of the bed.  It read, Donated by Major Elwyn Gormley Bullen. Despite protestations from his family he insisted on leaving.  Back home he stayed in his chair by the fire, even sleeping there, for a month.  His recovery was only partial.

In the summer of 1930, Mel, now twenty years old, came home for a brief holiday.  At that time footballers received no wages during the close season but Mel had another string to his bow. He was a very fast runner and he was running professionally for a Manchester bookmaker.  Then he dropped his bombshell.  He had been sacked. For  having an affair with the wife of Amos Dixon one of the directors of the football club.  To a Methodist family this was scandalous and George took his son to task.

Sian and Mel went for a walk and she asked, 'Why?'  Mel shrugged, 'She's  beautiful, she used to be a dancer.  She is thirty years old.  He's a lot older.'

'But there must have been something about her, for you to risk your whole career,' Sian persisted.

Mel said,  'She was always tipsy and funny and she told me that she never drank anything but champagne.  I was fascinated.'

'For no other reason that that?' Sian asked in exasperation.

Mel shrugged, 'We were at a party and she kept giving me champagne and then she, well she pressed up against me so I kissed her and it went on from there.  She kept laughing and saying, 'What are you doing?'  And I kept Laughing and saying, 'I don't know,' and then it happened.'  He went on lamely, 'We were stood behind a piano at the time.'

'Behind a piano!'  Mel you are the absolute limit,' Sian flushed with embarrassment.  Eventually she asked, 'Well go on how did her husband find out?'

'Well Daphne, that's her name, kept sending me notes to come and see her when her husband was away.  They live in a massive house with its own grounds and trout stream.  They have a cook, maid, chauffeur and a gardener but she has nothing, no kids, she can't see her friends.  The only thing she has is a wire  haired fox terrier.  She's crazy about it.  Anyhow I got a note, He's away,  she has given the staff the afternoon off, come over.  It was a hot day so we took a picnic and some bottles of champagne and we went and sat on the banks of the stream.  We made love and drank all the champagne.  Then her husband and the chauffeur arrived; back early for some reason.  I haven't seen her since.'

'Why? You can't just abandon her,' Sian said indignantly.

'She's being punished,' Mel explained.

'Punished!  My god how?'

'She's been sent to  Biarritz  indefinitely.'

'Biarritz!'  Sian laughed, 'That's punishment?'

Mel was suddenly serious. 'It's not funny Sian.  Daphne's father is a wealthy factory owner.  He made her have an abortion when she was sixteen.  They tied her down.  That's why she cannot have children.  Her maid told me she has never stopped drinking since that day with me, that she will never be allowed to come home.'

They walked home in silence.

 

To add to the Havards problems, the Labour government they had voted for with such high hopes, collapsed and the resultant Government of  National  Unity, introduced the means test .

The  Means Test was administered by public assistance committees with discretionary powers.  Some were more ruthless than others.

In their area, the Havards found themselves under a committee heavily influenced by Major Elwyn Gormley Bullen and suffered from the attentions of an official called Mr Spiby.  Spiby bore down hard on the Havards. Unnecessary furniture and carpets had to be sold.  Their coal supply was monitored.  The eight shillings a week Sian earned working in the pit canteen led to their benefit being cut by that amount and the twelve pounds they had in the Co Op bank also had to be spent and benefit reduced as a consequence until it was.  Spiby could enter their home at any time and could and did have claimants spied on and followed in the street.  Mel was living outside the system, earning a precarious living as a professional runner and gambling at local greyhound tracks around Manchester.  His income was haphazard to put it mildly and he lived often supported by his long suffering landlady.

Georges quest for work went on.  He was now so bitter and frustrated that he could not stay in the house for long and the endless tramping around looking for non existent Jobs was almost a therapy.  Gwen worried about her husband's anger levels.

One cold wet day, George had a bout of coughing.  He stepped into a doorway to shelter from the rain and support himself.  He heard a woman scream and looked up.  A young woman was being dragged from a terraced house by a nurse and a police constable.  'Help me please,' she shouted.  'They are taking me to the magistrate to be certified and then I'm being taken to the asylum.  George crossed the street.  Why are they certifying you?'

The policeman struggling with the girl said, 'Get on your way mate.  This is none of your business.'

The girl wrenched one arm free of the nurse and said, 'I'm Janet Melling.  Our family are all dead.  There's just me and my brother Harry but he had his dole stopped and he's hanged himself.  I hear voices telling me to hang myself but I can't tie the knots.'  She was being dragged to a waiting car.  She went on, 'I'm so frightened, when I'm in the asylum nobody will no of my existence.'  For some reason she added, 'I passed for the grammar school.'

George said, 'I will remember you Janet My name is George Havard.  'I'll write to you.'

The girl tried to thank him but she was bundled unceremoniously into the car.  The policeman and the nurse turned to confront him.  George said, 'That kids not mad, She's in some kind of shock.  You people are too quick to lock people up.  She will be labelled mad for the rest of her life.'

'Oh you are some sort of an expert are you,' replied the nurse angrily.  'Well you listen to me.  I work on a ward designed for thirty.  There are ninety patients on it at the moment and more coming all the time.  What with the war and now the slump, we don't have to go looking for patient's.  I am just doing my job.'  She turned and climbed into the car.

George spoke to the constable, 'The magistrate isn't that swine Gormley Bullen is it?'

'It very well might be,' the constable conceded.  'He is very sympathetic to the mentally ill.'

'You wouldn't think so if you had seen the poor shell shocked lads he had shot for cowardice or desertion,' George retorted angrily.

Wearily the constable said, 'Look, you've had enough for one day.  Go home before you get yourself into trouble.'  He turned and climbed into the car.  As it spread away, the girl turned, white faced, to look at him.  George waved until the car was out of sight.

 George arrived home cold and angry.  Spiby was in the house with his assistant a young man called Pointon..

Gwen met George at the door, 'Don't antagonise them,' she whispered.  George nodded as he watched the two men stroll round the house.  'That mirror,' Spiby pointed to the last adornment hanging over the fireplace.  'That can go.'

Alan who was sat at the table reading a book said, 'Why don't you rip the sink out and take that.  I have some happy memories of that sink.  I had my tonsils torn out over it last year.'

The young man Pointon glanced at the boy.  'Is that a library book you're reading by any chance?' he asked.

'It is,' Alan replied

Pointon turned to Spiby, 'I never touch library books.  They should be fumigated when these people have had them.'

Spiby nodded, then went on, 'Get the mirror sold and get a receipt.'

'Please let us keep that,' George asked quietly.

Spiby looked up from his clip board questioningly.

George went on, 'It's just that women like to glance in the mirror before they go out.  Just to make sure they are looking their best you know.'

Pointon looked at Gwen, her toothless mouth tight with tension, her thin lank hair pinned in place and her battered glasses repaired with tape, and turning, tried to suppress a snort of laughter.  Spiby smiled indulgently at his young assistant.  It was too much for George.  Snarling with anger he grabbed Spiby by the crotch of his pants and his throat, lifted him off balance and dashed him to the stone floor.  Spiby fell heavily, striking his head against the fender.  He lay prone.  Everybody stood in silence then Pointon dashed from the room.  They heard the door slam.  Sian and Alan ran to their father, he put his arms around them.

Gwen said, 'Run for it George, if you've killed him they will hang you.  If he lives you will rot in prison'.  George did not answer so she went on, 'I'll pack some things in your old army kit bag.'  She left the room and returned a few minutes later.  George was still standing with his arms round the children.

'Go now,' She said.  'The public phone box is out off order, that man will have to run to the post office to ring up.  Go to the chapel and wait.  Sian can run to Gil Merrick, he will help.'  Gil Merrick was the miners’ union leader at the pit, a communist.  She shoved the kit bag into her husband's hands and led him into the back yard.  Sian and Alan watched through the kitchen window as their father took their mother by the shoulders.  He kissed her on the forehead.  They stared intensely at each other for a few moments then George took up his kitbag and left.

When George arrived at the chapel, Glyn Davies was there, 'Hello minister.'

Glyn was taken aback, 'George! What has happened?'

'I've attacked the means test inspector.'

'Why?'

'I don't know, he insulted Gwen.  It was his attitude, I just lost control.'

'Is the man badly hurt?'

'He might be. I threw him to the ground and he struck his head.'

'After a pause the minister said, 'You should give yourself up George.'

At that moment the chapel door opened and they turned to see a man standing in the doorway.  He was wearing a trilby hat pulled low over his eyes.  His coat collar was turned up and the lower part of his face was hidden by a black scarf.  The man beckoned to George.

George said, 'Goodbye Minister.'

'Goodbye George.'  The two men shook hands and George left.

In the silence of the chapel Glyn Davies sat head bowed.

 

When Sian arrived home, Spiby had been taken to hospital.  Pointon