Story, Volume II

by Dai Smith

  Really? Gee, thanks!

  How’s your mother?

  As if you cared! I retorted sharply.

  Well, I sort of do, really, Joel, he replied. He’d moved from menace mode to vague benevolence with barely a facial distortion, only the subtle shifting of the balance of his body weight conveying his newfound mood of conviviality. How is she?

  If the mood had changed, the persistence hadn’t.

  You’re only here ’cos Darren what’s-his-name’s call reminded you that I’m still in town, I said. Equally calm. Equally polite. I put a jokey lilt in my voice to neutralise the tension. You knew I’d be up here at visiting time.

  So how is she?

  Coming out day after tomorrow, I replied. It was like giving in, really. Telling him that which I’d only just heard myself from Mam. But what could I do?

  So you have tomorrow to yourself then?

  Found myself agreeing that I did, without thinking through any implications.

  Come play a game of squash with me tomorrow afternoon, he says. At my club. I’ll sign you in.

  Played a little at college, but not really a game I ever got into. I’m built for bulk sports, not speed. Had to say yes though, didn’t I?

  The trouble is, these old routines of mine don’t work here. This view’s all wrong. This brandy doesn’t even work the same. Not like it does when I unwind in the early hours at home in Barcelona.

  Mam’s lean-to isn’t quite the same as our balcony. No warm night breeze. No sound of a city still throbbing somewhere in the distance. Just Welsh rain on the windows, so lacking in force or purpose, you can see how it leaves the bird-shit untouched.

  Beyond Mam’s ramshackle excuse for a garden, I can glimpse the dawn creeping its way up the mountain. Typical of life here – all routine and no passion.

  Except old Gavin’s left me knackered tonight. So I guess the passion’s always there, if you know where to look for it.

  He thrashed me at squash, of course. No surprises there. I could barely remember the rules. Not that that mattered much. When you play with Gavin there are no rules, it seems.

  Almost five when I got in. Coming out of his car, I could see some lights just going on in other houses. People getting up for work, I suppose. Routines.

  As we drove back from Cardiff, I told him all that heavy stuff he tried the other day in the hospital wouldn’t work with me.

  He laughed with condescending candour and said, No, I know, as though none of it mattered after all.

  God, his wife must be a tolerant woman, I told him.

  He didn’t say a word to that. Didn’t even smile. Just drove.

  You never said nothing.

  The police had apparently told him of my reluctance to testify against him. And that was the most he had to say to me. Almost all he had to say to me. An anticlimax in the end. It was bound to be.

  I knew it had to be today or never. Mam came home this afternoon. And no way am I going back to that place just to visit Dan Llywellyn… even a dying Dan Llywellyn.

  I don’t know why you don’t do the decent thing and go see him, Mam’s been nagging ever since I came home to see her. After all he did for you…

  Sat her down in that foyer place. The concourse they call it. Large waste of space designed to delude you into thinking you’re entering or leaving a grand hotel. Placed her bag by her side and told her I wouldn’t be long.

  The taxi was already late.

  The bus would have done me, of course, she proceeds to tell anyone within earshot daft enough to listen. But our Joel wouldn’t have it. He’s very good to me. Come all the way from Spain to look after me, he ’ave.

  I tell her to wait. Though God knows where I thought she was going to go without me.

  Such a sensitive boy. He loves poetry and all that stuff, you know. Won prizes for all sorts of things at school. Don’t be fooled by all that brawn… he’s a sensitive boy.

  Mercifully, her voice drifts to nothing as I disappear down the corridor. The relief I feel is short-lived, as I see Mrs Llywellyn coming towards me. On her way to sneak a fag, apparently. After years of chocolates and the telly, she’s succumbed to the joy of a new source of brain death, it seems. A packet of twenty and a gaudy-looking lighter were clutched in her fat hand.

  Oh! What a good boy you are! She oozed all over me. The sentence that followed the most she’s ever said to me. Your mam said you’d go to come see ’im before he goes. I know you’ll do him no end of good. In there, sixth door along.

  All those visits to her house! Out the back with Dan. Upstairs with Dan. Picking up some piece of kit I’d left there. Dropping off some piece of sports equipment I’d borrowed to work on at home. He and me in our man’s world. Her, silent and redundant.

  She shuffled down the corridor towards the smokers’ yard.

  Won’t be here long, are the first words I say to him. Could have kicked myself, of course. But take comfort in the fact that he never has had much sense of humour. (‘Getting to be perfect is no laughing matter,’ he’d say to me as a boy whenever I started messing around during any sort of training.) So the irony, like so much else, is lost.

  He didn’t really seem to be suffering. I felt a little cheated. But he’s gone to nothing. That much is true. Just a sad shadow staring at me from the pillow.

  You didn’t squeal. He made his voice as loud as he could muster. You never told ’em any of our little secrets.

  It’s a long time ago now, butt! I said.

  He struggled to move his right hand from where it lay on top of the bed, finally lunging for what he thought would be the safety of my forearm. When I pulled my arm away in rejection, it fell back on the blanket again without a murmur.

  His face remained unmoved. No sign of disappointment touched those dark sunken eyes. He’d managed to sense my meaning without as much as a lilt of the head. All shows of remorse were held in reserve, ready for the big one.

  You moved far away, didn’t you? Spain, is it? They told me you were far away… and wouldn’t talk…

  Each little verbal outburst came shrouded in a silence with which he seemed ill at ease. Like memories of a life once fully lived. Once vibrant and clandestine. Now, dribbled onto pale pillows. Like small deaths.

  They kept me there. Transfixed by curiosity. Those little words of nothing.

  A gargle from his throat made me lower my gaze for a moment from his hollow eyes to his dead man’s lips. The two thin lines quivered slightly, but remained perfectly dry. And I remembered the time he’d tried to kiss me. The only time.

  I’d flinched in repulsion and lashed out with my fists.

  Kisses were for girls and proper poofs, I’d thought.

  Today, I know differently. My stomach muscles tightened, squirming at my adolescent reasoning. I drew in breath. The way I would before a lift.

  There was no one there to see me. He has a room to himself. The dying do, it seems. It’s a private affair.

  When the taxi finally drops us off, it turns out Joanne’s long since let herself in. What you call a surprise party, apparently.

  The kids ran around like idiots and shouted, Welcome home, Nanna! when prompted.

  To crown it all, when Dean arrived from work at the end of the afternoon, a dirty big cake appears. It’s candles. And streamers. And most of all, it’s a load of bollocks.

  She’s in cancer remission, not joined the circus, I shouted.

  Mam didn’t want that crap. I could tell.

  But she’s laughing as I went upstairs to change into my jogging suit.

  Four hours later, it’s her and me again. The remnants of a cake and a pile of dirty dishes in the kitchen.

  She’s gone to bed, exhausted. And I’m lying here in the bath.

  It rained solid for the two hours I was out. And Gavin had his mobile phone switched off, it seems.

  He caught me unawares. I’ll give him that.

  That first punch to my belly stopped me in my tracks. And I never saw the second coming
, either. His fist colliding with my face with such clarity its terrifying thunder still throbs from the pit of my jaw to the top of my skull.

  Floored in one fell sweep, he towered over me, asking repeatedly. You were abused, weren’t you? His voice intense and calm. The emphasis placed on a different word with almost every repetition. It isn’t a passion on his behalf; it’s a technique put into practice.

  In intent, my Yes was a defiant shout, but gasping as I was for breath, I know that the reality of my utterance was nothing more that a whisper in the autumn air.

  Barely a mile down the hillside from the scene of my humiliation, Dan Llywellyn’s remains were burning in the municipally-approved manner. Even as I lay there, stunned into neo-silence, I remember noting that I was thinking that thought.

  Conspicuous contempt had been the motivation for our run. Or so I thought. His idea, of course. Let’s run while old Dan burns? I’ll pick you up!

  Our fun run through the Pencwm woods high above the crematorium was planned to coincide with the very hour of his funeral. A show of disrespect. A symbol of indifference.

  In reality, it was nothing of the sort, of course. It was his planned revenge. Now that it’s too late for me to add a gold star to his CV. Now he’s been humiliated by a high-profile investigation that’s come to nothing. Now that promotion is that much more difficult to achieve.

  Yes. I desperately tried to articulate a second time as I felt his trainers thundering into my ribs.

  And he buggered you? Go on! Say it! Tell me what I already know, you piece of shit.

  At that point, my hands tried to stabilise the floor. And failed.

  I flinched as I saw his right foot raised again and aiming for my face this time.

  Once again, Yes formed submissively in my brain. The trees above me swayed. The sky-blue faded. Pain was all around. Rolling over on the earth, my capacity for thought was consumed by it.

  Then why the fuck wouldn’t you tell me? This time, his voice doesn’t come from far away. He’s in my ear. I smell him close. Feel him grab me by my vest, dragging me to my feet… You stubborn Welsh bastard!

  Instinctively, I aimed a fist to ward him off. But one arm was already planted round his neck for balance and, staggering backwards, I dragged us both down. Drops of blood spraying both his face and the leaves beneath.

  It’s a long time later that I laughed. His outstretched arm ignored as I fumbled on the ground for a wristwatch that somehow managed to get dislodged in the assault.

  He only allowed himself a smile.

  Finding the watch, I stagger to my feet of my own accord and follow him to the car. We’re both mute.

  My senses remain disconnected. Even now, hours later, the pervading pain is the only message any of them will carry to my brain with any conviction. All else is fluff. Pain stands alone. Still throbbing, black and sore. Thorough and unrelenting. Worse than anything my memories of a bruising youth can bring to mind.

  Mirrors have always been my friends. Until tonight. The wardrobe door’s been left unlocked, allowing the reflective façade to swing away from the sight of me.

  I can bear no light. I can bear no blanket. Tonight, I lick wounds. And curse.

  Just leave it there… and… and go away, I said, straining to be civil to her.

  If I’ve said I tripped and fell while out on my run then that is what she will accept as truth. That is what she’ll tell the world. After all, that’s what she told Mike. I know how Mam works.

  What exactly happened? he asked in that tone of voice he reserves for cynicism.

  Oh! Mam exaggerated as usual, I said when I eventually decided to ring him back. You know what she’s like. It’s just a scratch.

  It was two days ago that he spoke to my mother. He just happened to ring almost as soon as I’d come into the house. Bad timing. I’d hardly had time to hobble to the bathroom to clean up before Mam could take a proper look when I heard the ringing.

  Made the effort to take myself downstairs last night to ring him back. My mobile won’t stretch as far as Spain. But I’m struggling for normality.

  That’s what you get when you hide yourself away in a darkened room. Self-absorption becomes self-destroying. Self-pity dulling your ability to deal with the world.

  The telephone rings. Not often. Just once or twice a day. Joanne. Some of Mam’s cronies. Mike. A social worker. The front door bell goes too. But that’s an even rarer event. No symbolic roses have arrived to put my bruises in the shade. No perfumed bloom has been forthcoming to make tender my unsated nose.

  A good bottle of brandy might have been the manly gesture. But, no. Nothing has been forthcoming from him. All I get are trays. Left on the landing by my mother as instructed. A knock on my bedroom door heralding each arrival. Mere supplies for a self-imposed prisoner.

  I’m OK. Honestly. Just leave me alone. Had to shout at her several times before I heard her footsteps retracting that last time.

  To all the world, I’m here to look after her. But the will to nurse anything except my own ego has left me. I just lay here on this bed, thinking that after this fiasco’s over, I never want to come back to Wales again.

  OK! I’ll go back for Mam’s funeral, I conceded. But that’s all.

  Mike just smiled over his cup of tea. I smiled back.

  He doesn’t believe me regarding almost anything I’ve told him since my return. But it’s all true.

  We were both up early this morning, Mike and I.

  He had some faculty meeting at the university. Wanted to know if I’d met Gavin back in Wales. You know, your gay detective friend, he said, pretending not to remember his name. The one who came here that time with his fat colleague with a taste for fine art.

  Oh him! I replied. We collided once or twice in the corridor. But he never got what he wanted from me.

  Serge wouldn’t believe me either at first, when I said I wouldn’t work the darkroom for him any more. But wasn’t too concerned.

  Don’t worry. I find someone else.

  Maybe I wasn’t that sensational after all. But maybe it’s just that there are always others. Others who’ll come do what we do after we’ve long since given up. Moved away. Moved on.

  I figure darkrooms are like Wales. I won’t go there again. Well! Only in my memories.

  RUNNING OUT

  Siân Preece

  My mother once told me of a village that drowned.

  ‘The people were all right,’ she said quickly; I was small then, and it was important to me that people be all right. ‘They moved away.’

  ‘Where did they go?’

  ‘Scattered far and wide.’

  She looked towards the window as if they would be out there, walking down the street with their suitcases. It sounded like a story, but she said it was true.

  ‘Did the people want to go?’

  ‘No, they didn’t want to go.’

  ‘Why did they, then?’

  ‘They had to. The valley was needed for a reservoir. A big lake,’ she explained. ‘To keep water in, for people to use.’

  ‘The people in the village?’

  ‘No, English people,’ and she frowned.

  ‘But what happened to the houses?’

  ‘The houses are still there, under the water.’

  I tried to imagine it; a house like my Nan’s, with the china dogs still fierce on the mantelpiece, and seaweed curtains waving in the green water. Tea cosies like jellyfish, rugs like rays swimming over coral-bed sofas. There would be no point in closing the doors; you could just float out of the window and look down on the map of your garden, at the whole village underwater like a present from the seaside. Tryweryn. Cwm Atlantis. A tap turns in Liverpool, and a church steeple breaks the surface of a Welsh lake.

  I hear a chime like a church bell under water… it’s the chain of the bath plug, dancing under the hot tumble at my feet. I turn off the tap and lean back, relax. At the other end of the bath, my toes bob up, white in the red water; ten little croutons in
a bowl of tomato soup. I feel hot and weak. I feel as if I will be in this water forever.

  At first I felt like a pervert, walking the streets of Cardiff at dusk with a Welsh costume concealed under my mac. Red skirt, checked shawl and apron. A scaled-up version of my St David’s Day outfit at school; but no pungent, dusty daffodil pinned to my chest, just a flattened yellow fake. I kept my tall black hat in a carrier bag, swinging it like a bucket, until I got to work. Our boss had no shame, making us dress like that.

  In the alley behind the restaurant, I told Jackie: ‘The Welsh costume’s all made up anyway.’

  ‘Oh aye?’ She picked a wad of chewing gum from her mouth and held it in her fingers while she dragged on her fag. Her face was pointed and modern over the white pussycat bow at her chin.

  ‘Aye, it was all invented by this English woman. We used to wear little round bonnets like everyone else. I remember it from history.’

  ‘Well, don’t tell Alwyn.’ Alwyn was the restaurant owner. ‘He’ve only just found one to fit your big head.’

  ‘Well, that’s ’cause I’ve got big brains. Your hat must be titchy.’ I pretended to read a label at the back. ‘Look! “Age five!”’

  ‘Ha bloody ha.’

  In the kitchen window, froggy, pink fingers appeared and rubbed a squeaky hole in the steam. It was Fat Benny, the bald, wordless washer-up, spying on us. Fat Benny was in love with girls.

  ‘Hiya darlin’!’ Jackie tinkled piano fingers at him. ‘Meet you behind the bins after for a snog!’

  Fat Benny’s eye winked shyly in the peephole he had made. He pressed soft, round kisses on the window; wrinkled Os.

  ‘Aw, Jackie, don’t tease him.’

  ‘Why not? He’s a creepy git.’

  I shushed her with my hands. ‘He’s not creepy. He’s just sad.’

  Fat Benny bobbed around in the kitchen window, looking quite happy to be sad.

  Alwyn pounced out of the kitchen door.

  ‘Have you laid them tables yet? Come on girls, chop chop.’

  We had laid the tables when we got in, but Alwyn hated to see us doing nothing. In the kitchen he tried to arrange the two of us into a line, then stood before us with his tiny feet, in their tasselled shoes, at a perfect ten-to-two.