Story, Volume I

by Dai Smith

  Well it all went on fine, and after a week Flagons thought Annie knew enough to have a cut at the wild greyhound. So he and Banana took her up the Gilfach one evening just before dusk and hid with her behind the sheep-wall.

  After a bit the greyhound came down and Annie acted her part as cunning as a monkey. The wild one seemed proper tamed at the sight of her. He pranced around, rubbing his flank against her and raising his head, really friendly. Then Annie, quick as lightning, turned and did her act; did it to perfection. She got his collar all right; there was no mistake about that; but then – well, Annie herself didn’t know what happened just then. No sooner had the dog felt the pull on his collar after the quick turn of the bitch than he stiffened his neck, and with a sharp twist of his head and his shoulders he sent Annie and the collar flying, ten yards away, into the bracken; and before you could say Jawl the dog was a brown bullet streaking across the moorland. Annie, with tail between her legs, and looking like nobody’s bitch at all, brought the broken collar back and dropped it near Flagons’ feet. He found the name of a bloke – a bad number from the next valley – written plain upon the brass part of it.

  Well, if it had been anyone else bar Wil Flagons he’d have left the dog quiet on the mountain after this bit of business, but being Flagons you couldn’t expect him to put all his hopes in his Annie after he’d seen the wild one’s paces. One thing the wild life had done to the dog for sure; it had made him yards faster than any Mick of a milgi Flagons had ever seen come after a live hare or a rabbit skin.

  Anyhow, the greyhound was on the mountain for another month, with Flagons tickling his brains to think out another scheme to nab him; and when the winter was coming on and there was less chance of him picking anything up about, the women in Top-Row – the houses that have crawled halfway up the side of the mountain – were putting bones and scraps outside their back door in the evening. The greyhound would come down regular after dark to collect them.

  Now Flagons’ house was in the Top-Row, just handy; so it was natural he got the idea of putting bones and scraps of meat just inside of the gate at the top of the garden, and trying to nab the dog when he came inside to get them.

  For a week Flagons was lurking about the top of his garden after dark, with enough bones to start a factory. But he never got his hand near the wild greyhound. He saw him one night, though the dog was away before he could make one step towards him.

  But Flagons was a trier, and especially where he could smell out a bit of money; he’d as much patience as a blind spider then. So, although he had failed twice to get the dog, he made up his mind to have another shot at him; three tries for a Taffy, Annie fach, he said one afternoon as he brought the bitch down from a canter on the mountain: we’ll catch him this time. He had one more trick left in his bag; Tonypandy Annie herself; an old one, maybe, but the very last.

  About this time Annie was not saying no to a bit of courting, and he was sure that if he tied her up inside the shed, with the door open, she would bring the dog, if he was within five miles of Top-Row and had any blood in him at all.

  And, fair play to Annie, fetch him she did. On the second night, Flagons, keeping watch alongside a bottle of something, saw the wild dog slink into the shed. It was him right enough; he saw him plain in the bit of light he’d left shine on purpose through the back-kitchen window. Annie’s come-hither had brought him.

  Now, although he was aching to run up to the shed, Flagons had enough sense to keep to his hiding place for that night, because he knew he’d have to go slow and be middling cunning to shut the door on the right side of the greyhound. So he waited and saw him slide out silent like a shadow on the mountain.

  Next day he made a sort of contraption on the door of the shed, with a cord leading down to his hiding place, so that when he pulled the cord the door would shut with a bang, and stay shut. Proper handy with his wits was Wil Flagons when something pricked him enough to use them.

  Waiting that night for the dog to come down, he was as excited as the time his Annie won the hundred pounds and Silver Challenge Bowl. He’d made sure of him this time, and before the dog did actually come through the gate Flagons had spent at least a couple of hundred of the winnings.

  The dog came through the gate the same as the night before; very slow and wary; but as soon as he was through he slid into the shed, quick, without a glance to the side of him.

  Flagons held his breath and Annie stopped short in her whimpering. The dog was inside. He waited for a few moments to make sure, then he pulled the cord, and the door of the shed shut with a bang. Then there was a snarl and a loud barking.

  As he ran up the path, lighting his torch as he went, Flagons could see his picture in the papers, holding the dog. The Year’s Champion: Beat All Comers… He slipped inside the shed. There was Annie in one corner, real frightened, wishing, no doubt, she was somebody else; opposite was the wild greyhound, staring at Flagons enough to burn him. But he made no move to get the dog; he just knelt down and started talking.

  Now they say that Wil Flagons had such a way with dogs that he could put his hand out to the fiercest after a bit of talking; and he’d won a few bets over this and never once been bitten. But the more he talked this time the more the wild dog blazed hate and his soft words snarling back at him. And when at last he did stretch his hand out, very gentle, the dog sprang, and with a savage snap at his hand jumped clean over his shoulder. Bang went the dog against the door, and down came the contraption, and he was clear away on to the mountain.

  It all came out down in the surgery the next morning, when Wil had three stitches in the back of his hand, and a bit of strong advice from the old doctor.

  Well, weighing everything up, it wasn’t surprising that Wil went bitter against the wild greyhound; it was only natural. He swore something horrible when anyone mentioned him after that. The dog, he said, was a wrong ’un, with no more worth in him than his looks.

  But one morning a few weeks later he rolled into the bar of the Ffynon; proper up in the air with excitement; Annie was going to have pups; he knew it all along; it didn’t matter a button that he hadn’t caught the wild greyhound; it didn’t matter he had gone to all that trouble; had a gammy hand and lost three weeks’ work in the bargain; Annie was going to have pups and the wild dog was the father of them; and if the pups didn’t turn out to be the fastest things on four legs he’d swear he’d go in for rabbit breeding.

  Proper elated was Wil before the bitch had her pups. He had a good few names, like Brown Streak and Treharris Trailer, stored up ready, and even started to build a place to keep them. But one morning he woke up to find the famous Annie mothering the queerest set of mongrels that had ever been together in a sugar box. There was a bit of Dai Banana’s terrier in just every one of them.

  Only one man ever mentioned the wild greyhound to Wil Flagons after that; and he was a johnny from away, and since nobody had ever told him, he couldn’t know any better.

  TWENTY TONS OF COAL

  B. L. Coombes

  It happened three days ago. Three days have gone – yet my inside trembles now as it did when this thing occurred. Three days during which I have scarcely touched food and two nights when I have been afraid to close my eyes because of the memory that darkness brings and the fear which forces me to open them swiftly so that I shall be assured I am safe at home. Even in that home I cannot be at ease because I know that they notice the twitching of my features and the trembling of my hands.

  That was why I forced myself to go along the street the first day after the accident. I wanted to go on with life as it had been before, and I needed the comfort and sympathy of friends. The first I saw was a shopkeeper whom I had known as an intimate for years. He was dressing the window so I went inside to watch him, as I had done many times.

  I expect my replies to his talk about poor sales and fine weather were not satisfactory for he turned suddenly and looked at me before he said:

  ‘Mighty quiet, aren’t you? Looking rough, t
oo. What’s the matter, eh? Got a touch of flu?’

  ‘No! I wish it was the flu,’ I answered, ‘I could get over that. I’ve had my mate smashed – right by my elbow.’

  ‘Good Lord!’ He is astounded for an instant, then remembers. ‘Oh, yes. I heard something about it, up at that Restcwm colliery, wasn’t it? That’s the way it is, you know. Things are getting pretty bad everywhere. The toll of the road f’rinstance – makes you think, don’t it?’

  ‘The roads,’ I answer slowly, ‘yes, we all use the roads. Can’t you realise that this is something different? He was under tons of rock, and everything was pitch dark. No chance to get away; no way of seeing what was coming; no – oh, what’s the use? If you’ve never been there you’ll never understand.’

  ‘Don’t think about it,’ he suggests, ‘you’ll get over it in time. Best to forget about it.’

  Forget! The fool – to think that I can ever forget. I know that I never shall and no man who has been through the same experience ever can.

  I went back home; soon afterwards one of my friends called. When he saw me he exclaimed:

  ‘Holy Moses! What the dickens has happened to you?’

  He had been with me the evening before that accident but that night had written such a story of fright and fear on my face that he could hardly recognise me.

  So I stayed indoors, hoping that time would ease my feelings but jumping with alarm at every sudden word or slam of the door, and dreading the coming of each evening when the darkness of night would remind me of that black tomb which had held my mate but allowed me to escape.

  Then again, this morning, after I had heard the clock striking all through the night, I must have surrendered to my exhaustion and slept, for I did not remember anything clearly after four o’clock struck. At five o’clock someone hammered on our front door. In an instant I was wide awake; the bed shook with my trembling. That crash on the door was the roar of falling rock; the darkness of the room was the solid blackness of the mine; and the bedclothes were the stones that held me down. When the knocking was repeated I had discovered that I was safe in bed. In bed – and safe; how can I describe what I felt.

  Then I pondered what that knocking could mean. It was obvious that another morning was almost dawning. Griff, that was my mate’s name, used to knock me up if he saw no light with us when he was passing to work. Could it be that he was passing: that all else had been a nightmare that this sudden wakening had dispelled? No, I realised it had been no nightmare for I had helped to wash his body – what parts it had been possible to wash without them falling apart.

  Then came another thought; could it be that he was still knocking although his body was crushed? I dreaded to look, yet I could not refuse that appeal. I stumbled across the room, lifted the window, then peered down into the darkened street. A workmate was there. He lived some distance away but was on his way to the pit. He had a message for me. He shouted it out so that there should be no doubt of my hearing:

  ‘Clean forgot to tell you last night, so I did. They told me at the office as you was to be sure to be at the Hall before four o’clock today. The inquest, you know. Don’t forget, will you?’

  Will I – can I – ever forget? Yet so indifferent are we to the sufferings of others that this caller, who is old enough to know better, who is in the same industry and runs the same risks, and who may be in exactly the same position as I am some day, does not realise how he has terrified me by hammering at my door to give that needless message.

  Forget it! Is that likely when a policeman called yesterday and, after looking in my face and away again, told me gently that I was asked to be at Restcwm before four o’clock tomorrow – he had to say tomorrow then, of course. Not more than an hour later the sergeant of police clattered up to our door and – very pompously – informed me that I was instructed to present myself at the Workman’s Hall, Restcwm, not later than four o’clock on the afternoon of Friday the, etc., etc.

  After the caller has gone to his work I get back into bed. I have been careful to put the light on because it will be a while before there is sufficient daylight to defeat my dread of the lonely darkness.

  Be there by four – so I must start from here about two o’clock. Restcwm is a considerable distance away and I have other things to attend to before the inquest. I have to draw the wages for last week’s work and I shall have to take Griff’s to his house as I have been doing for years. Next week I shall be short of the days I have lost since the accident. I wonder if they will pay us for a full shift on the day that he was killed. I have been at collieries where one sixteenth of a shift was cropped from the men who took an injured man home just before the completion of the working day. I think our firm will not be so drastic as that; they are more humane in many ways than most of the coal owners.

  I lie abed, and think. The inquest will be this afternoon and I shall be the only witness except the fireman. This is the first time I have been a witness or had any connection with legal things and the police. I dread it all. I shall have to tell what happened in pitch darkness about two miles inside the mountain. They will listen to me in the brightness of the daylight and in the safety of ordinary life; and they will think that they understand. They may put their questions in a way that is strange to all my experience and so may muddle me.

  I shall have to swear to tell the truth, and nothing but the truth. Nothing but the truth, it sounds so simple. I will try to recall what happened and whisper it to myself in such a way that I shall be question-proof when the time comes.

  Griff was there before me that night, as usual, sitting near the lamp-room. He gave me the usual grin at our meeting, then when he had finished the last of that pipeful and had hidden his pipe very carefully under that old coal tram near the boilers, he took a last look at the moon, then we stepped into the cage and were dropped down.

  I remember him saying as he looked upwards before we got under the pit wheels:

  ‘Nice night for a walk ain’t it, or a ride through the country. Nice night for anything, like, except going down into this blasted hole.’

  Griff is many years older than I am; I expect he is about fifty. We have worked together for many years. He is well built but quite inoffensive. He has a couple of drinks every Saturday night and chews a lot of tobacco at work because smoking is impossible. He is aware that things are rotten at our job and is convinced that someone could make them a great deal better if they wished to; but who should do it or how it should be done are problems too difficult for Griff to solve. Soon he is going to have one of his rare outings; he is one of a club that has been saving to see Wales play England at rugby football.

  We were two of the earliest at the manhole where the fireman tests our lamps and tells us what work we are to do that night, for we are repairers and our place of work is changed frequently. The fireman is impatient and curt, as always.

  ‘Pile of muck down ready for you,’ he snaps each word and his teeth clack through the quid of tobacco as he talks, ‘there’s a fall near the face of the new Deep. Get it clear quick. ’Bout eight trams down now, and you’d best take the hatchet and measuring stick with you because I s’pose as it’s squeezing now.’

  ‘Eight trams,’ Griff comments as we move away, ‘I’ll bet it’s nearer ten if it’s like his usual counting.’

  We hurry along the roadway, crouch against the side whilst four horses pass us with their backs scraping against the low roof, then move on after them. As we near the coal workings the sides and roof are not so settled as they were back on the mains. We hear the creak of breaking timber or an occasional snap when the roof above us weakens. The heat increases and our feet disturb the thick flooring of dust.

  Where the height is less than six feet timber is placed to hold the roof but where falls have brought greater height steel arches are placed in position. They are like curbed rails, nine feet high to the limit and about the same width. Where they are standing we can walk upright but we must be wary to bend low enough when we r
each the roof that is not so high. We have been passing engine houses as we moved inwards. These are set about four hundred yards apart and become smaller in size as we near the workings. Finally we pass the last one where the driver is crouching under the edge of the arching rock.

  The new Deep is the last right-hand turn before we reach the Straight Main. Our tools are handy to our work and we are glad to strip off to our singlets for they are sticking to our backs. We see at once that the official was too optimistic for the fall blocks the roadway and it is difficult to climb to the top of the stones.

  ‘Huh,’ Griff is disgusted, ‘more like twelve it is. Eight trams indeed. I guessed as much.’

  It is squeezing, indeed. Stones that have been walled on the sides are crumbling from the pressure and there sounds a continual crack-crack as timber breaks or stones rip apart. As we stand by, a thick post starts to split down the middle and the splitting goes on while we watch, as if an invisible giant was tearing it in half. Alongside us another post that is quite two foot in diameter snaps in the middle and pieces of the bark fly into our faces. The posts seem no better than matchsticks under the pressure and we feel as if we were standing in a forest – so close together are the posts – and that a solid sky was dropping slowly to crush everything under it.

  ‘Let’s stick a couple more posts up,’ I suggest, ‘because most of these are busted up. Perhaps it’ll settle a bit by then.’

  We drag some posts along the roadway, measure the height, then cut the extra off with a hatchet that must not be lifted very high or it will touch the roof. When we carry the timber forward we listen after every step, with our head on one side and our senses alert for the least increase in that crackling. We have measured the posts so that they should be six inches lower than the roof, then the lid can go easily between, but when we have the timber in position we notice that the top has dropped another inch. When we are tightening the lid we are careful not to hold on top for fear that a sudden increase in the pressure may tighten it suddenly and fasten our hands there. Ten minutes after the posts are in position turpentine is running from them – squeezed out by the weight.