Flame and Slag Read Online Free

tip-flanked and village-wriggled miles back to Upper Daren.
    We rented the long smoke room in Waun Arms, fifty guests eating off vestally draped trestle tables, Percy Cynon’s mother in charge (her tablecloths, too), Percy reading a speech we’d manufactured together — the least bonhomie infectious best man, fifteen stone of covenanted bachelor, almost compulsorily elected best man due to Mrs Selina Cynon’s guaranteed worth as catering organizer, as queen of protocol at weddings, funerals, socially promising births, anything intrinsic to female morale, emancipatory or of precedent in Daren. Percy and I worked neighbour stents in Caib colliery. His grandfather, Thomas Ivor Cynon, threw the first sod, beginning forty years of steam-coal production, his photograph also hanging in Caib institute. A bearded man, diminutive Viking with rolled-out lips and swollen eyes: original chairman of the Federation lodge.
    “Speech,” whispered Ellen. “My love, it’s your turn.”
    A group from the pit were singing, “ Sixteen tons and what do you get, another day older and deeper in debt ”— they’d hogged the bar since before Gran blanco-ed my shirt collar. It’s a man’s world, underground, virtuous history having driven out women and children.
    I said, “Ladies and gentlemen…”
    “Luvhah!” they bawled. “The great luvhah!”
    “… I want to thank you all for making our wedding day such a wonderful success. In particular I want to thank Mrs Cynon and her helpers. If any of you blokes happen to mention this occasion in twenty years time, you’ll remember more about this good feed than anything else. I now call upon my wife, Mrs Ellen Stevens, to say a few words.”
    Mrs Cynon led the ‘Hear-hears’, the rowdies from Caib yelling, “Mrs Stevens Stamps!”
    She didn’t blush, John Vaughan sitting beside her, crying like a peeler of onions, poor sick man. “Friends,” she said, and you could hear the colliery screens clanking far enough away to sound like toy hurdy-gurdy music, “this is the happiest day of my life. I never, never expected to wear a wedding ring six weeks after returning home to Daren, which only goes to show”— flashing white teeth at the girls —“that where there’s faith there’s hope.”
    Safe on his boozy freedom road, Tal Harding rocked to his feet, whisky slopping over his snazzy waistcoat. “Three cheers for the bride! Hip-pipp!”
    The smoke room windows pinged, Tal huzza-ing up the roar like a bacchanalian Nazi.
    Ellen sat down, smiling, murmuring cruelly dry as sand, “Fool, the man’s a fool.”
    I said, “Tal lost. He’s suffering.”
    She stood up again, saying, “Thank you, thank you everybody,” calmly beckoning forward some Caib mates carrying another firkin of beer.
    Private in the happy hubbub, I leaned to her ear. “You’re a wicked one, Ellen, marrying me for my income.”
    “For love, my love. In sickness and health, for better or worse, to honour and cherish for as long as we both shall live,” promising serenely, her square hand coming down on mine. “I’ll be a good wife, Rees.”
    “God, you make it sound like penal servitude,” I said “Don’t dout the flame, girl.”
    “We’re mates for always.”
    Thirsty strays were coming in from the closed public bar, my half-canned, breathless grandfather haranguing a Caib packer whose young face shone from rich food and beer. “Your nationalization,” contended the old man, “is bound to create more pneumoconiosis. I’m telling you, bachgen . Look, all those machines throwing out dust, mun, see! Not the stone-dust like I got, pneumo ! Mark my words.”
    “We must keep up with the times, Mr Stevens”—the packer smirking like a cream-fed cat.
    “Aye, boy, and suffer young!”
    Struggling under his sickly halo, Ellen’s father cried, “The finest steam coal in the world. Us miners put the great into Great Britain, that’s a fact. Carry on, Glyndwr, I’m listening.”
    “ Gwaith, gwaith.