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"Don't make it too long," said Mrs. Dai. "He might be too busy to read it. "
"All right, then. Let's finish with: 'Is this the kind of thing that should be allowed in your kingdom?'"
Mrs. Ponti said: "It's a bit tame. "
"No, it's good," said Mrs. Dai. "It appeals to his sense of right and wrong. "
Ethel said: "'We have the honor to be, sir, Your Majesty's most humble and obedient servants. '"
"Do we have to have that?" said Mrs. Ponti. "I'm not a servant. No offense, Ethel. "
"It's the normal thing. The earl puts it when he writes a letter to The Times. "
"All right, then. "
Ethel p
assed the letter around the table. "Put your addresses next to your signatures. "
Mrs. Ponti said: "My writing's awful, you sign my name. "
Ethel was about to protest, then it occurred to her that Mrs. Ponti might be illiterate, so she did not argue, but simply wrote: "Mrs. Minnie Ponti, 19 Wellington Row. "
She addressed the envelope:
His Majesty the King
Buckingham Palace
London
She sealed the letter and stuck on a stamp. "There we are, then," she said. The women gave her a round of applause.
She posted the letter the same day.
No reply was ever received.
{VI}
The last Saturday in March was a gray day in South Wales. Low clouds hid the mountaintops and a tireless drizzle fell on Aberowen. Ethel and most of the servants at Ty Gwyn left their posts-the earl and princess were away in London-and walked into town.
Policemen had been sent from London to enforce the evictions, and they stood on every street, their heavy raincoats dripping. The Widows' Strike was national news, and reporters from Cardiff and London had come up on the first morning train, smoking cigarettes and writing in notebooks. There was even a big camera on a tripod.
Ethel stood with her family outside their house and watched. Da was employed by the union, not by Celtic Minerals, and he owned their house; but most of their neighbors were being thrown out. During the course of the morning, they brought their possessions out onto the streets: beds, tables and chairs, cooking pots and chamber pots, a framed picture, a clock, an orange box of crockery and cutlery, a few clothes wrapped in newspaper and tied with string. A small pile of near-worthless goods stood like a sacrificial offering outside each door.
Da's face was a mask of suppressed rage. Billy looked as if he wanted to have a fight with someone. Gramper kept shaking his head and saying: "I never seen the like, not in all my seventy years. " Mam just looked grim.
Ethel cried and could not stop.
Some of the miners had got other jobs, but it was not easy: a miner could not adapt readily to the work of a shop assistant or a bus conductor, and employers knew this and turned them away when they saw the coal dust under their fingernails. Half a dozen had become merchant sailors, signing on as stokers and getting a pay advance to give to their wives before they left. A few were going to Cardiff or Swansea, hoping for jobs in the steelworks. Many were moving in with relatives in neighboring towns. The rest were simply crowding into another Aberowen house with a non-mining family until the strike was settled.
"The king never replied to the widows' letter," Ethel said to Da.
"You handled it wrong," he said bluntly. "Look at your Mrs. Pankhurst. I don't believe in votes for women, but she knows how to get noticed. "
"What should I have done, got myself arrested?"
"You don't need to go that far. If I'd known what you were doing, I'd have told you to send a copy of the letter to the Western Mail. "
