Flame and Slag

by Ron Berry

  Ellen laid Elizabeth in her cot. “Reesy, you mustn’t feel sorry for yourself,” she said.

  “I’m not! Take it easy, girl! All I’m doing is counting the odds.”

  She said, “I saw Eddie ’Lectric in the post office the other morning. He hasn’t worked since he lost his eye. Tal Harding slipped him five checks for Daren Social Club. Why don’t we go to the Social Club on Saturday nights? Charlie Page and his wife are there almost every night of the week.”

  “Charlie in the telly room and his wife playing bingo. You want to play bingo, Ellen?”

  “We could go to a dance. You haven’t taken me dancing since Lizzie was born. Selina will sit in for us.”

  “Old English or Pop?” I said.

  “Pop! C’mon, brute,” — lolloping into action before our transistor radio heated in to the BBC’s ‘Newly Pressed’.

  “Duw-Duw, you’re pretty good,” I said. “Sweet jungle hips, you haven’t lost your lovely rhythm.”

  “On your feet,” she said, “or I’ll lash out with the well-known Ellen Stevens’s karate where it hurts.”

  “Irish Ellen. How’re we doing, beaut?”

  “Nicely, boy.”

  “Psychological gravy, my love. Long time no gravy. Hey, what’s that for?”

  Airy-fairy as that Dame Fonteyn, she choreographed another moth-fluttery slap to my face. “Stop fantasying, Rees. You’ll spoil us.”

  “Right… comfort me with dumplings and carved sweetbreads, luncheon meat and lemon meringue pudd, trotters and mulled wine, sperm-whale cutlets and whipped cream. How we doin’, gel?”

  “Very nicely,” — by now indifferent, gone on her own, dancing lost, lost without hope, negligent.

  “Love me?” I said. “I know I’m awkward sometimes.”

  “You don’t knock me around, Rees, only that one time.”

  “I was drunk though, beaut.”

  “Forget about it, matey.”

  “You haven’t forgotten.”

  She said, “I suppose people can’t love without hating.”

  “That’s it, Ellen.”

  She laughed, dancing, laughed carelessly, unwinding to ecstasy, a wonderful total howl gurgling downwards, bending her over. “Reesy, Reesy, you stupid guilty fool! Guilty as sin. Look at you! Oh God, oh Jesus bless us, if we can’t talk about your parents they’ll never die, don’t you see?”

  “But I was drunk, Ellen.”

  “That’s the best time! I haven’t been drunk since Selina Cynon fed me gas and air on Elizabeth. My grandfather was a drunken navvy, my mother chased her fancy, my father…” She pealed joy, pagan, ringing: “But I feel perfect! I feel perfect. I’m your wife. Iesu mawr, isn’t that enough?”

  “We’ll burn up the town next week-end,” I said.

  “And start another baby before Lizzie’s off the breast! Steady, matey, take it steady, hm!”

  Someone next door jammed on the volume of their television, a neutered trio effetely ragtiming Heinz 57 varieties, and the baby whimpered awake. We cuddled over her cot. “There, there, cariad,” Ellen whispered.

  I said, “Ask Mrs Cynon to sit in for us tomorrow night.”

  “Are you taking a shift off?”

  “We can’t afford it, Ellen.”

  “Honestly, boy, some mornings you come downstairs dragging your feet like an old man.”

  “I’m all right, beaut. Faster work in the face, but I’ll get used to it.”

  “Please stay home tomorrow, Rees. It’s Friday, the last shift.”

  “We can’t afford…”

  “Afford!” She picked up the baby. “Reesy, do you think I enjoy seeing you become a work-horse? Night after night, too tired to lift your head off the pillow.”

  “Not too tired, Ellen.”

  “I don’t mean what you’re hinting at. We live for the weekends,” she said.

  “Since when, for Christ’s sake?”

  “All the time, matey. Here, hold this one. Lydia’s very quiet out in the backyard; she might be wandering off.”

  “I can’t afford to lose work,” I said. “We’re paying for the house, the furniture, the telly, every-bloody-thing’s on tick!”

  “What about me?” she snapped, leaving her lips spread, teeth showing.

  I said, “Ellen, love, don’t ask me to jib.”

  Stepping out of the cage, I joined the queue behind the mine-car barrier, Jesse Morgans in command like a neurotic sergeant-major. Jesse hated his job, resented bullying youngsters who made a carnival act of riding in on the mine-cars. Purring along at twelve miles an hour, Jesse’s brother Islwyn told us about Lewsin Whistler in hospital. He demanded a jam-jar; his wife took one in for him. Where else could he spit ’bacco juice?

  “Dirty old habit on the man,” — this censorial grunt from Seward Tremain — cousin to nystagmatic Ned Tremain, long since dead from cerebral meningitis. Seward was lay preacher in a Baptist shanty chapel scheduled for demolition under a road-widening project behind Daren Council offices.

  “I bet you’ve got a few dirty habits,” Islwyn said.

  “None at all against the ten commandments, lslwyn bach.”

  “Don’t you fuckin’ bach me, Seward. I was filling coal when you was still on the pot,” lslwyn said.

  Seward sat hunched, implacable over his cap lamp dangling from its flex between his knees. “Foul language won’t get you anywhere, butty, except in trouble on the judgement day. “

  “Up your twti pipe” — Islwyn drawling like a tele-screen ponce.

  Dicko Harding shouted, “Ah-one, ah-two, ah-three! Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord; He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored; He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword. His truth is marching on,”

  “Glory, glory hallelujah,” sang Islwyn, young Dicko standing crouched, beating the time, a dozen tribal throats bawling, “Glory, glory what a helluva way to go, Glory, glory what a helluva way to go” — John Brown’s body shanghaid to close the chorus: “And his soul goes marching on!” with Seward Tremain’s sluggish basso hooting like pentecost descended upon spiritual stasis. Alone then, faithful Seward continued: “He hath sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call retreat,” but Dicko Harding (old tight-fist Dicko’s illegitimate grand-nephew) began and broke off When the roll is called up yonder for lack of support, our entirely sanguine travelling mood ending on friendly insults and bickering as we dismounted at the gate road.

  Islwyn flashed his cap lamp. “Hey, men, look at this. You’d never see the likes over in the old Caib Four Feet.”

  It was a set of repairer’s tools locked on a toolbar, the shovel blade chalked with capital letters: KEEP YOUR HANDS OFF THESE, YOU BASTARD.

  Borrowing chalk off Seward Tremain, Dicko spelt out: SMILE WHEN YOU SAY THAT, STRANGER.

  Islwyn said, “By the Jesus, there’s been big changes since I started working underground as a boy.”

  “More to come,” Seward Tremain said. “More to come for sure.”

  We stripped off in the gate road before going up into the face. It was quiet, the Meco cutter loader in the stable at the end of the run, two men changing the picks. The ventilation blew steady as Atlantic wind, wisping curls of dust right up the length of the face. The night-shift fireman came down under the white prop line chalked on the roof. “Boys, be careful about fifty yards up the face,” he said cordially. “There’s a break running on to the coal from where we crashed the gob last night. Shove a couple of flats across it. Righto, lads, straight face, ah! Don’t hold up the Meco when she’s ready to come down. What’s the weather like up top this morning?”

  I said, “Friday weather over in Daren. Christ knows what it’s like this side of the mountain. Some of your Brynywawr blokes don’t know the days of the week; they’d live underground if the NCB brought down a few old bags and a fish and chips shop at pit-bottom.”

  “Rees,” he said, “you’re making good money on this Meco team. Iesu, when I
was a kid we’d be holing over the stank all day to fill two trams.”

  “Aye, we’ve heard all about hand-cut coal,” I said. “Do you see any old colliers working on the coal these days? The poor buggers can’t take it. Another few years and you’ll be downgraded; they’ll put you in charge of whitewashing manholes or some bloody thing.”

  “Mechanization,” he said. “You can’t expect old men to operate these modern machines.”

  “Is there a war on?” I said. “Shove us youngsters up in the front line, is that the idea? You and the bastards who invented Meco loaders, you’ll kill us off yet.”

  He couldn’t understand, and I don’t blame him.

  “Rees, what the fuckin’ hell’s the matter with you? Anyhow, I got no time to fuckin’ argue. My shift’s finished. Do your best.”

  We were driving the gate-road stable on, cutting in, shovelling the coal back, posting and flatting the roof ready for the Meco after she made her first cut down the 180-yard face. When she started roaring Dicko Harding and Reg Page (one of Charlie Page’s four Brynywawr brothers) went up to the break. Dicko soon came back to the gate-road stable.

  “Give us a hand, Rees,” he said. “Dowty post out of line, tight against the bloody coal. We’ll have to double up on the back row, shove a few more bars on before we can extract. Won’t be safe otherwise.”

  “He kept his mouth shut about that Dowty,” I said.

  The oldest man in our team raised his goggles to his forehead and landed another of his morning phlegms on the conveyor chains. “Officials, I’ve shit better,” he said.

  Star-bright far away up the face, cap lamps were shining and we could hear the Meco above the racket of the chains.

  “First things first,” I suggested. “We’ll have to make it safe. They’ll be down here ready to turn the machine by half-past nine, fresh picks an’ all.”

  We went up to the break in the roof, our forty-nine-year-old stable-man collier steadily effing the night-shift fireman. The Dowty post was inside the conveyor, eighteen inches from the coal. Rushing the job, we doubled up on the last line of posts, sending steel flats across the roof break and free-end bars forward to the coal.

  “Ent safe yet,” said the old bloke, “not if you was to ask me.”

  We were squatting like aborigines stuck in ritual, the Meco growling fifty yeards away up the face.

  “What else can we do?” asked Dicko.

  I said, “We’ll tell the fireman. The Meco boys can stand clear and let the machine plough through. Any muck that comes down she’ll load it on the chains. Shouldn’t be too much.”

  “Me, I’ll be down in the gate-road stable,” said the old bloke.

  So the Meco came through the bad spot, all clean coal swimming along the conveyor and while they were turning the machine in the lower stable we fixed a new line of Dowtys and bars up the face.

  “That ent bloody safe at all,” warned the old bloke.

  It wasn’t either. The fall came before the second cut reached the break in the roof, soft coal mostly, trapping the electrician for a couple of minutes, but we dragged him clear. He had bruises on his left thigh, that’s all. Shock, too. His jaw shivered and he couldn’t talk much.

  It wasn’t a big fall, but the Meco cable and water pipe were under it. Careful work, mole scrabbling. We threw the muck back over the chains. The overman came, him and our old bloke chatting mining principles polite as two Q.C.s in chambers. Once we had the conveyor running again the electrician rode out to the gate road and went home. Cup of tea and a fag, that’s what he wanted, just like any temporarily beaten infantry man. We were down ninety minutes on cutting, so the overman stayed in the face, him and the fireman helping out with the Meco loader. No doubt for morale as much as anything. They weren’t like us, on tonnage.

  We were posting the top-end stable when the big fall came, behind the Meco. Nobody there to cop it, thank God. The chains stopped running.

  “There now, like I said,” pointed out the old bloke, old merely because at forty-nine he was the eldest.

  “Right, men, let’s have you,” the overman said. “I want this face ready for cutting by the time the afternoon shift comes in.”

  At two o’clock I changed places with Reg Page, working the coal inside the fall, soft coal, mashed soft, like a bag. We spragged as we cut in, but not enough. Not enough sprags. Neither was it the coal that did the damage. I rolled, elbowing inside the fallen coal — soft coal — rolled over on to my back for another squirm to get away, safe, clear, with nothing worse than shaken breath. Like the electrician. So when the stone came down off the inner lip of broken ground, I was flat on my back.

  Thank the Jesus Christ for morphia.

  Up in the ambulance centre I saw Ellen surrounded by black fog, standing naked, smiling, the blackness blotting over her silent as the shape of a scream.

  10

  Daren Cottage Hospital overlooks the park where it skimps out to a clay lane. Directly below the park, Upper Daren secondary modern school, built on two levels in 1913, stone Gothic arches carrying the second storey. The playground was asphalted in 1949. Stretched mummy-flat on boards, I used to listen to the eleven and three-o’clock playtimes: yells, squeals, skipping chants and twin sounds of a football booted and smacking against the playground wall. Late October kept the park quiet. It was merely a patch of grass, some copper beeches, one raggle-taggle flower-bed, and the clay lane a dumping-site for builders’ rubble. Rough nights the leaves rattled in a row of orange-blossom trees riding parallel with the ward windows.

  My bladder and bowels were fibrous, layered dormant as winter moss.

  Ellen said, “Reesy, have patience; it isn’t for always,” — coming with her pale face and burdened eyes every evening. Books, cigarettes and Ellen’s terrifying stoicism. Mrs Cynon would dangle Lydia and Elizabeth over the bed. They all visited in turn, young Dicko witlessly bringing sexy magazines, pulch girls throwing it at you on every page, and Reg Page came from Brynywawr, our old bloke, too, and Fred Fransceska brought Welsh cakes baked by Morfed. Charlie Page gave me a small tin of toffees, presenting his gift like a courtier. “Put the tin by for me, Rees. It will come in handy, see?” Percy Cynon came twice a week, unpleasantly morbid, inarticulate, aligning his crippling to mine. At Christmas, Tal Harding loaned Ellen fifty pounds to clear debts and affirm the Christmas spirit without feeling Scrooge-minded about spending money. When Tal sat beside the bed we had little to say to each other. “If you’re short of anything, Rees, let me know.” He only meant money.

  “I’m short of balls at the moment. They’re gone dead,” I said.

  He smirked respectfully, fatly boyish.

  “Tal, you’re looking at the thirty-eighth case of busted pelvis since the Number One lodge paid for this hospital. I’m useless right across the groins.”

  “Give the bones chance to mend, Rees.”

  I said, “Time will tell, aye, sure.”

  “Can I bring you anything?”

  “I’ve got to wait for what I want, Tal.”

  They brought Yuletide into the ward, struggled it in beyond earshot of a youngster dying from peritonitis in a bed hidden behind screens. He died between the turkey dinner and tea-time, screeching like an hysterical schoolgirl, cursing words he’d learned secretively, his elderly mother hooped like a rag doll, alone on a chair outside the screens.

  Next day the boy’s father shook hands with every man in the ward. Guilt. He wanted to share out his guilt.

  True to Daren, heavy snow disrupted everything for a few days in January. The road up to the hospital was impassable. At the bitter end of the month an ambulance brought in a ninety-three-year-old skeleton-man. He’d spent ten years in some old folk’s hospital. They laid him in a bed opposite mine and overnight he curled up under the sheets, dying without a whimper.

  I wanted to go home. I could use the lavatory, but there was scant control in the business. No vibrations either. Just nullity.

  “Of course you will,” Elle
n said. “I know how you feel, Reesy.”

  “You don’t,” I said

  In February I stood outside my own front door, looking at the siding below Caib screens. Five men like black imps were dismantling the lattice girder-work of the pylons carrying the aerial ropeway. Two small rivulets were frozen white in the unnaturally fresh-tinted, huge shallow scooped hollow where Caib old tip once lifted its black pyramids up the breast of Waunwen. “No more muck-buckets,” I said. “The new tip will be green in about seventy years.”

  Ellen called, “What?” coming out from the kitchen. “Matey, you’ll perish. I’ll bring your overcoat.”

  “It’s quieter these days,” I said. “Screens idle, washery idle, only a few trucks fetching up pit supplies.”

  She rode my left arm around her shoulders, snuggling in close and I winced at the warmth of her, warm as prayer made physical. “Cleaner as well, Rees. Did you mention seventy years? In seventy years time Caib tip-slide will be forgotten. Those silver birch trees will mark the edge of the forestry. They’re going to plant trees right around Daren. My father says there were trees here before, long before he was born. They were cut down during the First World War, and much earlier, the time of the Corn Laws. France and Britain were at war, remember? See across there, the hillside above Daren woods — that was cultivated long, long ago. On sunny evenings you can see the shadows of the plough marks. Tal showed me how to look for them, from this side, off the mountain road when the sun is setting.”

  I felt colder than the day.

  “Have you seen them, Ellen?”

  She hooked my weight over her shoulders. “Hm?”

  “Those bloody plough ridges?”

  “Darling, I’m not interested. It’s in the Account. We were talking about my father one morning in the post office. Tal said his great-grandfather kept a shebeen where they brewed beer illegally for the navvies who were building the railway.”

  “I’m cold,” I said.

  “And jealous! Oh, marvellous, marvellous, you stupid man!”