Story, Volume I

by Dai Smith

  And yet the moment ebbed. Mauling had begun again on the far touchline. The tickling seconds when he had been Gethin Du, calculating and heroic, had slipped away. Back and fore slopped his spirit now, in the sump of the game, and over the slug and beat and repeat he could see again the look that he had come here to forget – the look of Kathy’s head against the reddened edges of his anger. It was not, by this time, a tearful visitation. Neither was it a vision changeable or topic for argument. Kathy’s head, how well he knew it! – black and fit and curled as for a medallion, tidy and composed and short of conversation, yet tearing grouts in his composure day in, day out. Heaven knew he had tried to be dispassionate. Iorwerth was not a bad fellow, he supposed. There were points about him, that cool ability to dissect and analyse, for instance, which impelled both respect and dislike, that more charming Garro-ishness which left one tamping and without a cause. Not difficult to understand that Kathy’s ordered mind should prefer Iorwerth to his own moody evasions and wayward enthusiasms. Mind, ordered mind? What had that to do with it? He could have borne Iorwerth’s mental superiority and agreed that Kathy should admire it. But who knew that it stopped there? Mind, bah! There was no mind about it. Just a damned dirty intrigue, growing and growing ever since Iorwerth came to lodge with them. What a fool he had been to believe that such an arrangement could work! All in the cause of kindness. All towards the end of a world.

  Where were they now, while he worked out his stupid enthusiasms? God, wouldn’t it be something to die in a moment of complete, honest, spiny engagement, not knowing or caring for anything but the reach of arm and heart and the blessed cry of battle about the head? Wouldn’t it? Ceffyl was shouting. That was it. That was the nearness he had in the ears. Ceffyl was shouting, at full stretch, hoarse. Ceffyl was shouting. God, the noise! What about, for heaven’s sake? He looked. There was a heap near the lower touch. Something had just happened. Scurlock, perhaps, in a scrap again. Still shouting. No. Out came the ball. Gwendraeth, Gwendraeth. On to Evans, on to Roberts. And Roberts was away again, pushing off from Ogley’s chin and cutting left. Roberts with his red-gold Mercury-head and his long stride was beautiful, beautiful. And he kicked. This time he kicked. Short and neat over the full-back’s head. He’s in, he must be. No, no. What’s that? What is it? What’s happening? Gethin again! Doubling back on the far side and under the ball first after all. Down on one knee and Roberts flat out over the top! Up and away now, Gethin, running forward again and pointing the ball high and long towards the lower touch.

  No matter. It could not last. Wynford’s identification with the School had ebbed entirely. Something about Roberts obsessed him. The red-gold helmet of his head. The purity in the lines of his body. The determination, the severity, the will to conquer. The will to pierce clean through and wound, wound, wound. To strike here, there, anywhere. To ward off with arms like flails that little black figure, that composed little black figure, to upset his calculations and trample him and leap over him and go on, on. So far, oh yes, so far, those little tricks had held out. That composed manner, the black hair still in place. But it would not be so much longer. No, he would go through, and through, and through. Hit ’em again, boy. And again. Let there never be any answer, any comeback. Ever again.

  Roberts drew Wynford’s eyes magnetically all over the field. Monkton Cave and its flanking woods had thrown off their hieratic mist and the slate-smooth of the sea-reach was no more than a mirror for the nearer action. No outside portent now would sway the issue. The battle was here. The sun threatened presently from behind an aqueous pall, but for the moment withheld.

  Half-time came and went, with no more effect on Wynford’s trance of vengeance than the barest registration of a temporary stillness. It was a time for girding on, for red-gold preparation, for sharpening the shaft of righteousness. It was a time too that brought Ceffyl up from the lower touch. Ceffyl, a little hoarse and glassy with exhaustion. But Wynford cared nothing for him now. He might screech as he wished, sweat as he wished for school, for the dark ranks of obstinacy, for man and his puny endeavours, for the trickiness of sin. Bellow, boy, bellow! Much good may it do. Shout! The grace is departed and the glory with it. To your tents, O Israel. God shall smite you with his red-gold shaft and thereafter there shall be no truth that you can bear that cannot I. No meddling truth that can touch me. Not of Kathy or Iorwerth or Garro or any damned infidel among you. Go back, back. Because you must. Must.

  ‘Hir,’ said Ben Thomas suddenly from near at hand. Gwendraeth were throwing in from touch. ‘Watch the long, boys,’ yelled Ceffyl in a translator’s ecstasy. ‘Watch the long! – O Connie, get your man, for God’s sake get your man.’ But Gwendraeth were boring through, punching holes with every moment of possession. Ben Thomas, angular and shaven, was talking away, first on one side, then on the other, working every trick he knew. Ogley went down to a rush and sagged over the shoulders of those who helped him up, his head fixed in one direction and eyes staring, unlidded, like those of a lizard caught in the open. Gethin picked up off Ben Thomas’ toes and aimed a neat punt at Ceffyl. But it was no good. The forces of Wynford’s vengeance were pressing on. Back, back went the School, back against the sea, and no wind stirred to their aid. Up in the air, down on the ground, Gwendraeth were the masters. Of all save Gethin. Gethin, unsmiling now and breaking his usual rule. ‘Cover, boys, cover,’ he shouted in the distance, crossing and crossing again like the pattern of darkness. Cover? Cover what? And with what? Wynford’s thoughts moved in eagerly. There is no cover for you, my boys. You’ll be pierced through and through and behind that line you’ll know what I’ve put up with and lived. No time so long as the time behind the line. You’ll know.

  Here it comes. Roberts, away again. Away on the left. Red-gold head moving against the grey of the sea, not quite distinct in the lower field corner, but moving in, practised as an arrow. Out to Devonald on the wing. Full back takes him. In to Roberts again. Oh this is it! He must be in, must be! Wynford screwed up his eyes in a haze of conviction. His red-gold, righteous victory…

  Suddenly Ceffyl, fifteen yards off, whinnied himself several hands higher than usual. ‘Weight, O Weight, well done boyo! Ruddy marvellous!’ From the lower touch there was a deeper roar. Through a momentary lane left by the fast-gathering forwards Wynford, not believing, saw Roberts, arms outstretched for the line, lying flat on his face, and nearer, lower, a black form leeching his ankles. It could not be. It could not. There was nothing they could say against his cause, was there?

  But it went on. Minute after minute and still no score. Gethin, the outhalf of darkness, was under every ball that Gwendraeth kicked and thudding into every man who came through. Back and across and back and kick and across. How dare he pit his rotten cause against the stride of vengeance? How dare he? Back and across and back and into touch. And Russ. Russ was backing him now. And Scurlock, there, catching Roberts in the open for the first time. Black hearts, how can you? Know you not justice and the meaning of wounds? Ben Thomas talking now, cursing under breath, trying every trick that forward dominance could manage. Evans and Roberts switching and scissoring. Devonald cutting inside. On, on. Time yet. On. No. Russ challenging. Taking Devonald high and hard. Ball loose. On, on. Roberts following. No, Gethin coming in with a swoop and picking off his feet and twisting, down – caught! Caught at last by Ben Thomas and two others. Caught in possession. Down on the ground. Now, now for it. On the line itself. No – no, godfathers no, Gethin up and playing the ball and twisting again. Back and fore, weaving, held by his jersey. Touch, screw kick to touch. And the whistle! The whistle!

  Wynford could not believe it. The rest of the morning passed bitterly through his mind. A drawn match. So much right and so much power on one side… All of the game, the very rules themselves, on one side. And a drawn match. Intricate the manner of darkness, and the effrontery, the effrontery of those that should be cast away… He stopped suddenly and looked.

  Gethin was passing, overhung with Ceffyl and the gamut of
words. ‘Boy O boy, didn’t the School play well?’ Ceffyl was stuttering. ‘Didn’t they just?’

  Gethin said nothing. His face, grimed with sweat, was composed. He looked at Wynford as though about to say something, and then neither smiled nor spoke. Presently he had passed on up to the gate.

  The world was turning, turned. The sun, where was it? Right overhead, and it was noon. High noon unrealised. Shafts everywhere. Among the trees, the grasses. Neither for nor against. Light upon the unshadowed, emptying field and the sky windless. Was it always a draw if one had enough courage?

  Looking up to the gate, Wynford could just see Ceffyl’s mane hanging over the last incomers to the bus, jogging and demonstrating still. Against all his feelings of an hour he stared, and heard the blood run back to his heart. Ceffyl, voluble, idiotic enthusiast, beyond reason and beyond bitterness! The School play well, did he claim? Man alive, there had been no team but Gethin! And no fight but in that composed black courage. But the School played well. So said Ceffyl in his folly. Could it be that so many collective feeblenesses, so many miseries, so many downright sins of commission could be retrieved in part by playing on to the end with nothing but courage? And did not that courage speak to him now against the heat of blood, against conviction of right, against the very wounds dealt and not paid for? To play on to the end hiding regret and only learning the rules too late to win. But never too late to draw.

  With a shift of shoulder he settled his heart in place. So his medallion head might fight a draw against all odds and remain silent, the same but unrecognised. The sea’s reach was shorter now and the tide less full. Copper of beech and yellow of lesser trees ringed the field’s southern edge where the quarry lay. The hyena bones were at one remove in their cave. ‘Kathy!’ he cried for only himself to hear, and turned to face the hill.

  HESTER AND LOUISE

  Siân James

  When I was a girl, women looked their age, particularly if they were widows. My grandmother could only have been in her early sixties when I remember her, but she had settled comfortably into old age; wiry grey hair scraped back into a tight bun, round cheeks reddened by sun and broken veins, dark shapeless clothes, grey woollen stockings baggy round the ankles.

  She’d once been a district nurse. On the mantelpiece in the parlour, there was a photograph of her standing importantly at someone’s front door, large bag in hand, round hat pulled down to the eyebrows, but I found it difficult to believe in this starched image, could only see the untidy old woman she’d become; shooing the hens away from the back door with a dirty tea cloth, bending to cut a lettuce in the garden, her large bottom in the air, or her most typical pose, standing at the gate, squinting into the sun, her big heavy breasts supported on her folded arms.

  I stayed with her for five or six weeks every summer, not for her benefit or for mine, but because it eased the pressure on my parents who kept a dairy in St John’s Wood.

  I liked London far better than the Welsh countryside. I missed the Friday evening dancing class, the Saturday morning cinema, the big public library which was only two streets away and my friends, Jennifer and Mandy.

  There was no dancing class, cinema or library in Brynawel and the village children scorned me. The much praised fresh air always seemed to have an overlay of cows’ shit; I much preferred stale air with petrol fumes.

  I didn’t like Gran’s meals either; runny boiled eggs with orange yolks for breakfast, dirty looking potatoes, greens and grey meat for dinner, rough brown bread with cheese and salad for supper, with the occasional addition of caterpillar or little black flies.

  I didn’t like my bedroom although it had once been my father’s; the bed was hard, the pillows lumpy and the sheets coarse. But worst of all, my grandmother had no bathroom and expected me to strip-wash in the back-kitchen with carbolic soap and the same wet towel she’d used. The summer when I was twelve, she promised to keep out when I was washing, but twice she forgot and came barging in and once the coalman came to the door and saw me in vest and knickers. ‘Oh, the man will never be the same again,’ was all she said when I complained.

  When I was thirteen, I begged my parents to let me stay home; pleaded and cried, promising to serve in the shop, wash dishes, even peel potatoes. ‘I’ll do anything, anything, but please don’t send me away to Gran’s.’

  My father thought I was mad. He and his brother Bob had had an idyllic childhood, he said; all the freedom of the fields and woods, fishing, ratting, scrumping apples, helping the farmers with the harvest, earning sixpence a day. ‘This one’s a girl though, Isaac,’ my mother said. ‘She likes different sorts of things, girls’ things, going round Woolworths and Boots and the market, buying shampoo, trying on lipsticks, things like that. Try to understand.’

  ‘It’s not just those things,’ I said, since he was looking at me as though he’d never seen me before. ‘It’s just that Gran doesn’t have a bathroom, so I don’t have any privacy. And I’m not a child any more. I have my periods now and I have to wear a bra. And I’m not going to bath in a back-kitchen and you shouldn’t expect me to.’

  That shut him up. He could never tolerate any talk of bodily functions. And my mother promised to write a polite letter to Gran, explaining how I felt.

  We had a letter back by return of post.

  She quite understood the position. I was going through a little phase, that was all, and they were not to worry. She’d spoken to Hester and Louise, the Arwel sisters, though, and I was most welcome to use their bathroom any time I wanted to, twice a day if I’d a mind. And they, as I probably remembered, had an all-pink bathroom the size of a small ballroom with bottles of this and that and loofahs and sponges and a special brush for scrubbing your back, pale grey carpet on the floor and a little fluffy cover on the WC

  ‘The Arwel sisters,’ my father said, casting his eyes to the ceiling.

  ‘I’ll go,’ I said. ‘I love Miss Hester and Miss Louise. The Sundays they invite me to their house after church are the only days I enjoy.’

  ‘She’s a girl, Isaac,’ my mother said again. ‘Try to understand.’

  Miss Hester and Miss Louise didn’t seem to belong in Brynawel, but to a world I knew only from the cinema. I’d often try to describe them to my friends, Jennifer and Mandy. ‘No, they’re not really young, perhaps thirty-five or so, even forty, and they’re like ladies in old-fashioned films with tiny waists and delicate faces like flowers. Well, I think they may have had sweethearts once, but perhaps they were killed in the war. No, they’re definitely not spinsters, spinsters are altogether different. No, they don’t have jobs, they just have money, plenty of money, so they can do whatever they want to. Sometimes they hire a car to take them out shopping or to the seaside or to church on Sunday. Otherwise they stay at home doing tapestry, reading magazines and changing their clothes. Oh, they’re very gentle and kind. Just think of me going there each day! And I know they’ll give me home-made lemonade and iced biscuits every time. I’m really looking forward to staying with Gran this year.’

  The sisters called on the very afternoon I arrived, to remind me of their promise. ‘Isn’t she pretty,’ one said, smoothing down my rough curly hair. ‘Isn’t she pretty,’ the other replied. They always repeated each other’s pronouncements. ‘Hasn’t she grown tall and slender.’

  ‘Hasn’t she grown tall and slender.’

  ‘Don’t turn her head,’ Gran said. ‘She’s foolish enough already.’

  ‘We’ve heard different. We’ve heard that she had an excellent end of term report and that she’s a marvellous little pianist.’

  ‘A marvellous little pianist, as well.’

  ‘We want her to play for us. We’ve had our piano tuned.’

  ‘We’ve had our old piano tuned specially.’

  I’d forgotten the way they so often stood with their arms clasped tightly round each other’s waists, as though they wanted to be one person instead of two.

  They were dressed that day in cream high-necked blouses, ful
l, dark-green skirts, black belts pulled tight and cream high-heeled shoes. They always dressed identically, though they weren’t twins. Hester was a year and a half older and she was also a little taller and perhaps a little more elegant. Louise’s eyes were a brighter blue, though, and her lips were fuller. I could never decide which was the more beautiful.

  ‘Well, I must ask you to go now,’ Gran said, ‘because I always listen to my serial at four o’clock. I’ll send the girl round after supper.’

  I could never understand how Gran had the nerve to treat them so casually, even rudely, when she was ugly and poor and they were so beautiful and so rich.

  ‘Who told them about my report?’ I asked her when they’d left.

  ‘I did, of course. I told them you were going to college to be a teacher. In case they have any ideas of turning you into a lady’s maid.’

  ‘Are they so rich?’

  ‘Oh yes. Their father had the best farm in the county, but when he knew he was dying and with no son and heir, he had to sell it all, land and livestock, to buy an annuity for those two. Their mother had died, you see, when they were toddlers; soon after Louise was born, and he spoiled them, of course, and everybody spoiled them. Even when they were schoolgirls, they never had to do a hand’s turn for themselves, let alone anything in the house or the farm. It was hard on him in the end. But what could he expect? He’d brought them up to be butterflies.’

  ‘Why didn’t they get married?’

  ‘No one from round here was stupid enough to ask them, I suppose. To tell you the truth, your Uncle Bob seemed to be thick with them at one time, but he never seemed to know which one of them he liked best and then he was called up and met your Auntie Dilys, so he lost them both.

  ‘He was a born farmer, Bob was, ready to do a day and a half’s work every day. Their father would have been proud to have him as a son-in-law, and he would have been the making of those girls, but which one of them?’