Chapter 6
Sitting at the kitchen table with his fists clenched, Cora’s father David Owen, known as Dio, was trying to explain to Cora and to Jane, his wife, why he wanted to send his son Owen away.
He was making a poor job of it too, which Cora found unsettling because he was known for being a man who was good with his words.
Cora couldn’t understand why he felt so strongly about it when Owen had never spent a single night away from home in his life. And she had the feeling that her father didn’t truly understand it himself.
But she could see in his black-rimmed eyes his burning sense of urgency, a compulsion to get the boy as far from the dangers of Bridgend as he could.
She glanced at her mother, expecting her to put her foot down at any moment, because Jane was well known for her common sense. She had a temper too, if you pushed her too far, and she never lost an argument because her temper was fuelled by the heat of self-righteousness.
Not this time, though.
Cora saw the way her mother was staring at her father, eyes sharp, looking deep into his soul where the future was laid bare. She saw her mother catching her father’s dread as if she could see it as clearly as he did.
Cora felt their fear touch her. Dio was a coal miner, see.
He was familiar with danger. He recognised it, smelled its presence; he came face to face with it every day he worked down pit.
Coal dust collected in the rims and corners of his eyes like make-up.
When he blew his nose, the handkerchief was black, and when he cried, his tears were black.
He was a tough man, a man that was made of coal.
Dio unclenched his fists and laid his hands palm upwards on the table helplessly. Protecting his son was an easy decision up here in his head, he told them, but in reality it would not be easy at all, he knew that.
He was frightened for the boy and, like them, he ached at the thought of the separation.
Yet the emotional pain was his sacrifice, which he would endure willingly if it meant keeping his son safe.
He never doubted it was the right thing to do and Cora was swept along in the current of his certainty.
Dio signed Owen up on the government scheme to send Sea Evacuees on a Children’s Ship to the security and safety of Canada. Canada was their ally, a country filled with people with warm hearts and open arms.
His absolute belief wasn’t even shaken when three weeks before Owen’s ship left, another children’s liner, the SS Volendam, was torpedoed en route.
Dio didn’t see this as a warning. If anything, he told them, it made him feel better about his decision.
In the case of SS Volendam, all the children had survived, none had been injured, and the only reported casualty was one child struck by seasickness.
According to the newspapers, the chairman of the Overseas Reception Board had declared on the record with heartfelt conviction: ‘There was a guardian angel watching over them.’
‘Amen,’ Dio said, and he held onto those words with fervent faith.
That proved to him that the boy would be safe on the SS Benares, safer than here in Bridgend at any rate.
The truth was, Cora knew that her father was frightened for Owen in the same dark and visceral way that Owen was frightened for himself.
But Dio kept his dread quiet and hidden, instead using all the eloquent power of his preacher’s tongue to influence Jane and Cora into agreeing with his way of thinking. In the face of his unwavering conviction, Cora and her mother’s doubts had little say in it.
As evidence of the danger of keeping Owen with them, Dio recited the latest news about the bombing of Hafod, Greenhill, Cradle Common (twelve people killed); no guardian angels for them, were there?
And then, adding power to his argument, on 1 September two hundred high-explosive bombs and a thousand incendiaries were dropped over Swansea.
As the rescue workers scurried to assist, the planes flew in low and machine-gunned them down, killing thirty-three people and injuring over a hundred.
‘When they bomb Bridgend,’ Dio said passionately, hammering the words into the kitchen table with his fist, looking into his wife’s eyes, ‘how are you going to feel, knowing that your own selfishness kept Owen here? How will he feel?’
Because Owen was a worrier. He had always been a fearful lad, scared of his own shadow. No wonder.
Owen’s shadow hadn’t been a normal one stretching like elastic on the ground around his feet but one that hovered over him, shading him from above, keeping him from the warmth of the sun.
It was impossible to console Owen with reassurances. He didn’t hear them. He made his own mind up about things. Except for once, when he’d come to Dio in the night.
Dio told them that Owen had woken him up by crawling under the bedclothes at the foot of the bed and lying curled up, cold and trembling.
Jerking awake, ‘Bed! Now!’ Dio said in swift anger because he had an early shift and he needed his sleep.
The boy crept out of bed again and cowered by the door, round-shouldered with fear.
Dio closed his eyes. When he opened them again and lifted his heavy head, the boy was still there. His heart softened. ‘What is it, Owen?’
‘One day you and Mam are going to die,’ his son said in a small voice, struck for the first time by the tragedy of the knowledge.
Dio sighed at his sorrow, pushed away the warm bedclothes and swung his legs out of bed. ‘Oh, come here, lad.’
The boy shuffled over in his pyjamas, too miserable to look at him, staring down at his bare feet. He pressed his hands on his father’s knees, giving him his burden to bear. ‘It’s true, isn’t it,’ he muttered.
‘Aye.’ Dio’s head was muddled with sleep. ‘Don’t you worry about that yet,’ he said.
Now the boy looked at him, his eyes large and bottomless. ‘But I am worried.’
Dio put his large, coal-ingrained hands over his son’s small, clean ones.
He reached into his memory for the words that he himself found comforting, brought them out in a whisper.
Deliberately and softly, to save disturbing his wife, he said, ‘Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.’
His son was staring at him silently, his eyes a gleam in the dark.
Dio carried on hoarsely, because the words moved him with their promise.
‘In my Father’s house there are many mansions.
If it were not so, I would have told you.
’ He nodded, reassured by the bare honesty of it.
‘I go to prepare a place for you, and if I go and prepare a place for you I will come again and receive you unto myself, that where I am, there you will be also. See? Do you hear that, Owen?’ That was enough, it said it all, no need to say any more.
‘It’s a promise,’ he told his son. ‘And when I go, I’ll be going to prepare a place for you. Get it ready, like.’
His boy was quiet for a long, thoughtful moment, sucking his cheeks into hollows. And then he nodded and said, ‘Will you write it down for me?’
‘Yes. Tell you what, better than that, when I get home tomorrow I’ll show you where it is in the Bible. It’s about time you had a Bible for yourself.’
Just the New Testament, he thought. There were all sorts of dubious shenanigans going on in the Old Testament one way or another, of a sexual nature.
Thrilling, it was, in Sunday school, passing the Bible to Temperance and Idwal in gleeful astonishment.
It was why he became a preacher, now he came to think of it. ‘Come on, let’s get you back to bed.’
The two of them made their cautious way in the dark, arms outstretched against obstacles, back to Owen’s tidy room.
His son got into bed and lay on his back, arms stiff by his side, and Dio tucked the bedclothes around him, making a show of it until his son lay there wrapped up tight like an Egyptian mummy, staring up at him. ‘Sleep well, my boy.’
‘Good night, Dad.’
Cora helped her mother to pack Owen’s suitcase for him, wrapping at the last minute a loving note in his pyjamas.
Jane laid the Bible on top in tight-lipped silence.
She took Owen to Liverpool on the train to see he got away all right, not being able to bear a second longer of time apart from him than she needed, making the most of her last few hours with him.
And Owen, triangular face and thin features, was exhausted from excitement and fell asleep, warm and solid, heavy against her arm.
She came back alone and quiet and got on with pounding the laundry with the washing dolly.
Four days later, the Canon David John Thomas visited the house with the bad news. No tears, but a stoical aridness came over them that left them cracked and hard.
The confirmation letter was delivered on the morning of Friday, 20 September 1940, blunt and matter of fact:
I am very distressed to inform you that in spite of all the precautions taken, the ship carrying your children to Canada was torpedoed on Tuesday night, 17 September.
I am afraid your children are not those reported as rescued and I am informed that there is no chance of there being any further lists of survivors from the torpedoed vessel.
It was the bleakest letter you could imagine, no promises, no hope. Cora’s mother’s reproach burned off her like a fever.
Cora bore it solidly, her life depended on it, keeping the feel of Owen hugging her legs as if she was solid, a pillar. She wished she hadn’t smiled at him as she’d said goodbye. It was the betrayal behind the kiss.