Flame and Slag

by Ron Berry

  “Shwmae,” I said.

  “Well, well, Rees Stevens!”

  “Hullo, Emily.”

  Amwell Cassam’s Thursday funeral, his dog put down by the RSPCA, last night’s ice glittering the fringes of Nant Melyn, pumpsman Ted Mayhew working a doubler (my double turn tomorrow), George Thorpe calmly vultured behind his desk in his sanctum and his wife blooming effulgent as one of her summer dahlias, white woollen dress stretched over her diaphragm by the reaches of her bosom.

  I said, “Smashed any good bottles lately?”

  “George found your naked monster. There was an awful scene, dreadful really. I had to tell him it was my handiwork. Wishful thinking, he said, afterwards. Do come into the house; it’s bitterly cold.”

  We were moving along the hallway, pleasantly inane like salesman and client with a satisfying deal behind them, when a tall grandfather clock gonged right close to my ear. One clean jump and I buffeted her shoulder, both of us spinning on the tiled floor, my secondary grab mistaken for something else, and we collapsed backwards, slid apart like a divided avalanche. The big clock gonged twice more, chains whirring rhythmically within its polished rosewood trunk, then omnipotently hammered on: tick-tock, tick-tock, as if intelligent life was yet to come, creak out from primeval hopelessness, the bastardized beginning. Time itself spelling out its own sacrosanct fatuity.

  Emily said, “Dear me, well, well… are you hurt?”

  She wore scarlet thigh-length long-johns with white lace trimmings. “Those are the fashion now,” I said.

  “What? Pardon, Rees?” bringing her legs together, sharply jerking upright on the tiled floor, guilt quaking her round blue eyes like a Before advert for scrambled nerves.

  I thought, try not to frighten her, at the same moment spontaneously hypnotized by the skin-tight winter knicks — but Ellen wore them. Ellen wearing them, my indomitable Ellen, prototype of all long-johnned women.

  Repeating, “Coffee, I’ll make some coffee, yes, coffee”, Emily somehow rose from the slippery floor with her knees pressed together.

  “Bit of a shambles,” I said. “But anyhow we’re whole, no cracked bones, nothing splintered.”

  We sat like low-grade Platonists in the warm bungalow, exchanging cruel inanities, cruel patter, Emily cross-ankled, demure as anaesthetized ecstasy, her neat little mouth taking the coffee like a divine nun habituated to elixir.

  I said, “Emily, let’s go out to the shed and break some bottles.”

  “Oh, I daren’t any more; no, you see, my husband interfered all the time. I had no privacy.”

  “Right, what’s the attraction these days?” I said.

  “I suppose I must tell you, Rees.”

  “Definitely.”

  The schoolgirl giggle overwhelmed her. She shook pent-up delight. “I’m painting the attic,” she whispered, “with silver paint. It’s ever so weird.”

  I said, “Silver paint?”

  “Silver! Next summer I shall start with a pair of Egyptian mouth-breeders and a few guppies in a small tank, not too large, about thirty inches by thirty-six inches by twenty-four inches. You see that power point? The lead comes down inside the wall. I’ve fixed another socket up there to warm the water. Mouth-breeders must, really must, have an average temperature of seventy-five degrees, eighty for breeding purposes.”

  I said, “Duw-Duw.”

  We climbed into the attic off a step-ladder, Emily leading, obliviously brisk, urging, “Hurry, please hurry; my husband will be home soon.”

  It was like standing inside the prism-shaped hulk of a frozen whale, daylight shimmering phosphorescently cold, scaly off the boarded rafters and ceiling joists, glittering Christmas tinsel silver, Emily herself glowing luminous as a London Palladium chanteuse in her white woollen dress. The casement-type dormer window overlooked the front garden. Beyond the bowling-green you could see the blue-pennant sandstone flank of Caib institute, with two uniform rows of green-painted Georgian windows along the billiards room and upstairs concert hall.

  “Your husband doesn’t know?” I said.

  She swirled her thick brown hair. “It’s a secret!”

  “Does he know about your scarlet bloomers?”

  “George will be home…”

  I said, “Show, love, don’t be shy.”

  Emily ducked, running for the trap-door.

  She’s frightened, I thought, still frightened. Can’t blame her either. Me in my cemetery black and this grey hair. Where in the name of Jesus God did I get this grey hair?

  “Rees,” she appealed from the step-ladder, “please come down.”

  “What time does he leave the bank?” I said.

  “Soon, in half an hour. Scandal would ruin us, ruin us all!”

  Forgetting about Jonah, I hauled her back into the silvered attic. “There won’t be any scandal, Emily. I promise, love, truly.”

  “My own home, Rees, it’s terrible, really,” — a burst of panic rushing her across to the dormer window and then she spun round, instant erotica, spluttering, “Very well, but you’ll have to hurry, be quick, quick! “ — stone-killing everything, almost everything, I mean the mutuality, concord, the tenderness.

  Hurry, I thought, all right, all right, hurry and return from never-never, and that’s how I felt taking a roundabout route through lanes and across waste ground until I came out opposite Waun Arms. Old colliers, some railwaymen, two bus conductors in the bar and Mrs Freda Rowland-Parry fat as a mother-squid behind the counter.

  “Pint of Houghton’s, please,” I said.

  “Gone time, Rees. Look, five to four.”

  “Time for a glass?” I said.

  She pulled once, thirty years computering her judgement, the beer climbing to standstill at the brim of the half-pint glass.

  “Where you been, wedding?” she said. “Hey, I’m talking to you, Rees.”

  “Amwell Cassam’s funeral.”

  “Blessing in disguise,” she said, genuinely righteous, her pouched eyes glittering humane vengeance. “Never had a fair chance, Amwell didn’t, not from the very first day he was born. Many’s the time he slept rough, those chapel buggahs coming in here, telling us to report him. Ach, mochyns safe inside their own front doors. Me and Wyndham, we know who’s who, all the years we’ve served the public.”

  Wyndham Rowland-Parry swept floors in the radio and television factory, his right arm permanently kinked by a colliery accident. Their three sons won college places from Lower Daren Grammar School, dour long-headed boys, non-smilers who became civil engineers as if predestined.

  “Still losing trade, Freda?” I said.

  She growled like a man in a scrum.

  I said, “Few more weeks and Ellen will be keeping me.”

  Her shrug shivered her drop earrings. “Come on, boys, haven’t you got homes to go to? Time, gents, tuh-hime, pur-lease!”

  Frost tingled the darkening afternoon. My bowels felt trustless as sopping-wet tissue-paper. I thought, if death means Amwell Cassam, if it means Dai Stevens flattened beyond identity, if death means fleecy-haired John Vaughan floating out from Number 9 Thelma Street, or Granny Stevens taking it without hardly feeling it, if death means Daren cemetery with some utility gink mouthing lunacy… ah, by the Jesus, I shouldn’t have dragged Emily up into that attic. Shouldn’t have, not now, today, not after she’s been so good in the past. Always the past, the mortifying past. John Vaughan’s past, past time out of mind, all Daren’s earthbound past putrefying from uncountable sweats, worshipful feasts, January nights, dried lungs, broken backs, burnt blood, lucifered Christs, ghetto dreams, shanty chapels, tombstone chapels, the first shovelful of muck multiplying into Caib tip-slide, and farther away still those deft Hunter and Fisher Folk (our first ever) chipping flint arrow-heads with the surety, precision of monocled watch repairers. The Folk curled like badgers in mountainside holes, sniffing dawns millions of years after the last pterodactyls sparred fanged mating bouts in humid glades beside hydrolytic swamps, the Coal Board’s propert
y virginally seamed down beneath Waunwen, awaiting royal protocol, £164,000,000 to the coal-owners and His Majesty’s sanction on 12th July 1946, exactly seven months before Caib killed my innocent, sandy-haired father, at the same time releasing my mother from love, from duty.

  “Love first,” I mumbled, aching bones carrying my hang-dog guts, immediately forgetting my mother, gathering another private injuction, another palliative: “Rees, as if it matters either that you could, that you could not until Emily lay down in Daren woods and now you can, but today you shouldn’t have, because it’s made you sick. As if it matters, man, man alive, as if it matters to anyone, except yourself.” Tal Harding purring alongside in a brand-new Volvo, calling out like St Christopher reduced to spieling, “Lift, Rees? I’m passing your house. No work this afternoon? Don’t blame you, brother, not if you feel the way you look.”

  The warmed interior trapped perfume and the taint of heated oil.

  “What do you think of her?” he said. “She’ll run in nicely by the time we get some decent weather.”

  He enjoyed himself with the gears.

  I said, “Remember Amwell Cassam?”

  “Of course, poor Amwell. Was Percy there, at his funeral, I mean?”

  “Nuh, nobody came,” I said.

  “You’re looking rough, Rees. Anything the matter?”

  “Nothing that time won’t mend. Your car stinks, Tal-boy, stinks like a bloody whore-shop.”

  He said, “One of the girls brought this spray bottle to the post office yesterday morning. Her father uses it in his Dormobile. I agree, Rees, it’s foul. Open the window your side.”

  “Seen Percy lately?” I said.

  “He’s letting himself drift badly, old Perce. What’s he going to do after Mrs Cynon dies?”

  “What did you do after Dicko Harding died? He’ll carry on, find some chopsy old cow to look after him. You though, Tal, you ought to get married again. Build another bungalow behind the ’stute, next to the one you sold to Mr and Mrs Thorpe. Good company, Thorpy neighbours while the rest of Daren rots on its feet.”

  “Emily Thorpe, she’s a bit puddled. George is all right, dry old stick but he’s quite reasonable, solid business type and all that.”

  “Buy the bloody ’stute,” I said, “It’ll be empty in a couple of weeks.”

  “You’re in one of your awkward moods, Rees.”

  “Life’s awkward,” I said. “Here we are, home sweet womb. Can I interest you in a piece of local history written by Ellen’s father?”

  “The Account. Ah’m, yes, Ellen mentioned it one time. No, actually I’m meeting someone — girl from Lower Daren post office as a matter of fact. We generally take a spin on our half-day.”

  “Invite us to the wedding, Tal.”

  “Maybe, Rees, maybe.”

  I went into the cold house, just in time to light the fire for Mrs Cynon bringing home the two kiddies.

  18

  My water-bowelled sickness persisted into next day, a double shift spent hiking between Caib and Brynywawr. The mine-cars were gone, like the best of the coal-face workers. I ate a cooked meal in Brynywawr canteen as the afternoon shift went down, elderly blokes mostly, old-timers and part compo cases riding the cages on both sides of Waunwen mountain. Hard frost from daybreak and brazier fires glowed around the black zone, away from the cleaner administration buildings. I saw Ike Pomeroy entering the canteen. He bought cigarettes, tall, sprightly lean, flat-backed at the counter, then he drove off towards the drift outfall.

  “It isn’t for the coal coming out on the belt these days,” said a Brynywawr surface workman. “Ike’s only potching, showing busy like the rest of the officials.”

  I asked him, “Serving your notice?”

  “Aye, two more weeks to go. Twenty-seven bloody years behind the tumblers before they modernized, and before that I worked on the coal. My boy and his young missis, they’ve gone across to Bedwas. Lovely new house, central heating. Ideal all round. Wouldn’t mind goin’ myself only the wife’s dead set agenst it. She’s member of Brynywawr Players, see, been with ’em since leaving school very nigh. Jesus Christ, what do they expect? Mind you, I’ll have a fair lump of redundancy out of the buggers.”

  “Much work here in Brynywawr?” I said.

  “There’s the old arsenal estate turned into factories since the war. They’ll take you on if you’re under the forty mark.”

  “I can picture you working in a factory,” I said.

  He chuckled, the fantasy echoing around inside his tea-cup.

  I rode down in an empty cage, watching my cap lamp brightening fast. Fifteen shifts left. Thirty times around the pumps, I thought, unless my name comes out of the hat in Caib institute tomorrow night. I might draw lucky for a couple of months on demolition. Fitter’s labourer on dismantling. Yesterday afternoon I wasn’t fit for Emily Thorpe. I’ve addled a few thousand brain cells, besides liquefying my bottom gut.

  But the luck rose to Ted Mayhew.

  The suddenly it all came to a stop, ended, men off every shift shouldering loaded toolbars down to Harding’s Square on the final day. The last NCB workmen’s buses. No more hobnail boots clacking the pavements — some of our modest miner democrats washed at home, they refused to use the pit-head showers. No hooters any more from Caib winding-house. Sunday peace over Daren. A dozen or so familiar faces arrived daily, men whose names were picked out of the hat for dismantling down below and around top pit. Men on bare day-wages, so absenteeism slowly increased, hung high and steady — they were better off financially as sick or injured citizens, despite accusations and economic jug-tooting from Coal Board leaders puffing safe behind the lines. Economics, aye. Power economics, as if miners were fated servile simmured to endless servility, not simply individuals of all sorts, loving, loathing or negligent towards everything under the sun, from women to television comedians, everything from onion-growing to Das Kapital. But the NCB élite merely issue data and directives. They are the Napoleons of coal-killing, their family lives chimerical. Do they have black-sheep sons, queer Brontë daughters, Electra-bleeding mistresses, nostalgias, cultural afflictions, spites, paradisial moments, depressions? What’s their antidote to the disinfected breath of the Holy Ghost? Any oglers among them? Do they have sweaty feet, Pentagon morale, morality, or the yen to grow sideburns, or itches, earache, or lint in their navel-holes? Does Saturn emulsify their zodiacs? Of course, they’ll fall to oblivious dust, humanly anarchic like us all. Surely so.

  Left-behind day-wage blokes, though, powerless, dismantling pits where they’ve spent working years, are on to nothing from the NCB, nothing promising, no reversal of ends and means. At best they could hope for a win on Littlewoods, while their OMS records gathered dust in Brynywawr offices and in Hobart House, SW1.

  Daren allegiances were stretching before breaking, pride found its price in clubs, pubs, chapels, football teams, among dog fanciers, cricketers, pigeon fanciers, gardeners, motorists, social pride, competitive pride, pride of place. The Women’s Guild shrank, dwindled to pensioners and the size of its committee. Old age throve, flourishing isolated from Daren’s diminishing youth population. Both cinemas closed in March, resorting to bingo one night a week. Our MP opened a plastic bag in the House of Commons to show the members a lump of steam coal. He evoked bumblings worse than cat-calls. Daren’s advance factories remained a mirage bubbling comically off the lips of councillors. Two young doctors emigrated; they were replaced by poker-faced Indian doctors. Daren Miner’s Cottage Hospital became an old folk’s convalescent home. In April old Watt Howard had the sack from the housing site. Afraid of losing their jobs, craftsmen and labourers accepted tighter bonus targets.

  Stormy April, Rollo & Sons’ filter beds overspilling, the river flooding black for days on end while rumour hardened to reality and one morning the firm’s lorries ceased running through Daren. Mr Rollo’s crew moved away to more profitable tips.

  Meanwhile the Minister of Labour lowered his eyes, entwined his fingers and pre
ached mobility of labour for the sake of Britain, our production, our balance of payments — that modern myth strewn with the fangs and gore of Democracy, Communism, Capitalism, Socialism, Science, Theology, Utopia. But Ministers do not collect their cap lamps at six-thirty a.m. five days a week, fill shuttering with concrete, or bolt up steel girders on power stations, and neither do their wives de-gut cod in Grimsby nor disembowel capons in a chicken-packing station.

  The purgatorial kiss upon civilization: They and Us, since the first man trod over his father. Whatsoever any ministerial pundit was isn’t what he is. They and Us remain inescapably the proof of whatever one happens to be.

  Very nice of course. Nice balance between destiny and dearth.

  Long lines of tiny fir trees sprouted uphill, crosswise to the ancient plough-marks above Daren woods. We came through the gnarled, towering old hardwood trees this warm May morning, Mrs Cynon sauntering ahead with the youngsters, Ellen glancing at the cow-parsley spot where we greened the drought of two barren years.

  “Emily Thorpe ran into the bungalow,” she said. “Did you see her?”

  It was better to say, “She seems to be very handy in the garden.”

  “Rees, why don’t we move to Lower Daren? There are plenty of empty houses and it’s much nearer the factory.”

  I said, “Three hundred and seventy-four empty houses according to the D and D Clarion.”

  “Shall we move?”

  “I can’t imagine anyone wanting to buy our house, Ellen.”

  “Tal Harding might. I’ll ask him.”

  “When old Dicko bought houses people were still moving into Daren. The market’s turned arse-about. Tal won’t buy unless he can sell or rent at a profit.”

  “Let me ask him, Reesy? We’ll find a larger house in Lower Daren, away from Caib. It’s depressing since all the life has gone. Our street alone — why, it’s full of old people. You can hear them coughing at night. Grey, mean old men; they remind me of my father.”