Photoplay (Jan-Jun 1963)

~d) /ft ru lffl[ 15) r\ ~d) U U lb li . Ln\ . JU L _d) passionate Welsh: a man who loved his drink and his fun and his family. The head of his family, too. Around Old Dick that night sat his children, the multitude of them. There was Tom, the oldest, nineteen back then. Then Cecelia, or Sis, next in line and just turned seventeen. And — down the line — Ivor and David, Hilda, Catherine, Edie and William and Verdun. And finally, Richard, the youngest, who sat on Sis’ lap now and next to Sis’ husband, Elfed James, a miner, whom Sis had married five months ago. They were a fun-loving family, usually, the Jenkinses were. They were a singing family, most times. It’s been said of them that even in a land of song, their voices stood out exceptional; a true cut above the average; that every tooth in their mouths had a bell, for song. But this night they were quiet, solemn quiet, as they sat in that tiny living room of that tiny house waiting for the doctor, upstairs, to come down and give them the news they knew already would be bad. For Mum Jenkins — wife of old Old Dick, mother of the brood — had been in childbearing labor, hard and painful, for more than six hours now. It was not easy for a woman of forty-five to be giving birth to her thirteenth babe (two of whom had died in infancy). This all of them in the room old enough to know about such things knew. And there was something in the air that night — Mum’s moaning, her crying, her heavy breathing, heard all the way from upstairs — that caused them to realize she was near her end. It seemed hopeful there that moment, for one good moment, near midnight, when they heard the newborn cry. The babe, at least, had been bom safe — thanks to Godalmighty. Tom Jenkins’ young wife, in fact, smiled a broad smile that moment and jumped up from her chair and rushed upstairs to see what was happening. The others remained seated — hoping hut uncertain. And sure enough, after a little while, the doctor appeared at the head of the stairs and he said, shaking his head, “It is sorry I am, but though the child is living, the mother is dead.” For a while after that, they all remained in the living room downstairs, too stunned, too sad to move. But then, one by one, they climbed the stairs and went to the little bedroom to say the first of their goodbyes. Sis was the last to enter the room — Sis and young Richard that is, whom she held in her arms. .“Richie,” she whispered, looking away from the lad and down at Mum, “take a long good glance at this good woman. And try to remember her. For your mother she was. A very beautiful woman she was. Remember that. There was no woman on earth that could cook like her. And miraculously clean she was. And good. The most wonderful woman on this earth. And if you do gtow up to be like her, in the heart, with just a bit of her goodness — God will smile indeed.” Sis looked away from the bed then, to the boy. He was fast asleep by now. She smiled at him a bit. And then she looked over at her brother Tom’s wife. “Dear,” she said, “you will take the newborn, yes? And Elfed and I will take Richard with us. And we’ll raise them as our own, yes?” Tom’s wife nodded. “Come,” Sis said then to her husband, “my little brother is our son now. Let’s us get home with him now and get him to bed. He’s so tired, he is. He has no idea of what is going on this terrible night.” Again she looked at the sleeping boy in her arms. The house’ on Inkerman Lane in Taibach, where Richard grew up, was no larger than the house over the hills and eight miles away, in Pontrhydyfen, where he’d been born and where he’d lived those first eighteen months of his life. It stood at the top of a hill named Constant. It contained four rooms — two upstairs, two down. In the back of the house there was, of course, a garden with a patch for flowers and a tree and a shed for bathing in the summer (bathing in the winter took place in the kitchen, for those who dared). And from the front windows, since the house was situated high, one could see — straight below — the entire town and the Margam Steel Works with its heavy cluster of high chimneys and the choppy waters of the Bristol Channel. And, to the right, a few miles away, the town of Swansea-^or rather, as the local joke went, and goes: “When you can see Swansea, it’s a sign of rain. When you can’t, it’s pouring down!” The house in Taibach was a happy place. And though Sis now lives in a sweller place, down on posh Baglan Road, with ten large rooms — “my lovely present from Richard”— she remembers the little house on Inkerman as being a heaven of sorts because her little brother was there with her and Elfed, and there was such an angel he was, that boy. She remembers, for instance, that Richard was wonderful funny: “He was just a chubby little thing,” she’ll tell you. “And he’d sit by the wireless. And there wasn’t a voice came over — from Cardiff, or London, or anywhere — that he wouldn’t imitate it to perfection. Neighbors would come over to hear him. Just imitating away. And laugh and laugh they would.” She remembers that he was wonderful strong: “His idol was Tommy Farr, the boxer. And, of course, all the rugby football players. Time was when we were sure that’s what Rich ( Continued on page 56) 46