Border Country by Raymond Williams

Author:Raymond Williams
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: epub, ebook, QuarkXPress
ISBN: 111-1-11-111111-1
Publisher: Parthian Books
Published: 2013-08-02T00:00:00+00:00

4

From the window of the box Harry saw Morgan’s van cross the bridge and draw up. As Morgan came down to the plat­form, he moved away from the window, whistling nervously under his breath. He heard Morgan calling across to Will Addis, and then his heavy steps up to the box. He picked up a paper, keeping his back to the door.

‘Well, all right, Signalman?’

‘You, is it?’

‘Aye. Thought I’d come to relieve you.’

Harry smiled and moved away to the far end of the box.

‘What’s the matter with you, Harry? Every time I see you now, you’re closed tight like you used to be.’

‘No, I don’t think so.’

‘Your new neighbour getting on your nerves?’

‘Watkins? No.’

‘Look, be straight, Harry. Loosen up, mun. It’s got that you don’t ever say what you really think.’

‘How do you know what I think?’

‘Aye, go on. Stare me out. I’m used to it.’

Harry looked away.

‘You’ve been here too long, Harry. You’re getting, I can see you, like all these people.’

‘Am I?’

‘Look, if I thought you’d hit back I’d punch your nose for you. Anything to get some reaction.’

‘There’s nothing to fight about.’

‘No? Well, all right then. You’ve heard, I suppose, these rumours going about?’

‘What rumours?’

‘About me.’

‘All sorts of things get said.’

‘Aye. And you’re one of the few men I’d trust to judge for himself. Still, I wanted to tell you.’

‘About what?’

‘It’s no use denying there have been difficulties,’ Morgan said and settled himself on the hard chair by the grate. ‘Only I want you to know, you, Harry, particularly, that I’m doing all right and can see what I’m at. Business is a new thing to us. It’s not a set job, but making your own job. You’ve got to keep pushing on or get pushed back.’

‘Nothing new about that.’

‘I had to spend capital, Harry, and it wasn’t mine to spend, not in the ordinary way. It come through my wife, and it’s that the rumours are playing at. These people don’t like what just had to happen. Here was land turned into money, but then turned back not into land but into some­thing else. Land they value, but not anything else.’

‘I suppose so,’ Harry said. He was looking up to where a cloud-shadow was moving over the rockfall of the Holy Mountain.

‘Which is why, among other things, they’re so backward. It’s always been so in Wales. There’s never been the capital, Harry. Our coal and iron had to be got out with English money. The English, see, always understood money better.’

Harry was listening now, but still warily. He was waiting for terms he could feel.

‘They’re strong enough, Harry, in their own little patch, their own fields. But what they don’t realize is there’s far stronger things, not like people at all, breaking in from out­side. If a man digs hard enough he’ll eat: that’s all they see of it. But a miner digs, just as hard, and it isn’t the same. The coal has to go out and come back as meat, and a lot can go wrong with that.

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