by Alys Conran
And then Iola. Throwing words her way is like making home-made rockets, shooting them up, watching them explode, crash, or disappear into next door’s garden. Half the time they go to waste, the words. She’ll be thinking of something else, not listening. But sometimes Iola’ll catch a word, wide-eyed. It’s like she can’t believe she’s caught it, by accident, the brightly-coloured ball of a word. Then, she never just holds it, or gives it back, straight, as it is, instead she’ll start fiddling with it, throw it in the air a couple of times, stamp on it, press it into a new shape. Half dreaming, she’ll pull it in two, make it something different. Sometimes she can make a word a lot worse, like “flourish” becoming “flour ish”, sometimes she can make a great word out of two bad ones, like “massakiller”, or “sicko-psycho”. She’ll say the new word slowly, badly, tastily.
But Iola, she doesn’t know what to do with a good word she’s made. She can’t make a good story all by herself, Iola. Or not yet! She’ll often just play around with the word, tickle it, play cat and mouse with it until the word almost curls up and.
And he’ll snatch it back, brush it off, put it in line, or under the bed with all the others, like a hamster making a nest, or a home.
But he likes her, Iola, as much as he likes anyone. Her games can make a story different, something for Pigeon to use. Iola and Pigeon, this is the way they are.
He turns off the torch and lies in the dark, listening to the muttering television filling the garden, watching the house shadows play around the shed. The house occasionally moves, as if standing in an untenable posture, as if the creases in its muscles have grown sore. The house is silent, there are no words here, only the muttering of the TV, only Cher, Mari, only Him.
Pigeon lies in the dark, and then drifts into an empty, white sleep, curled in the shadow of the house. Dream and nightmare stories about Gwyn and Him babble up around him as night slowly turns its page, until Gwyn and Him are one man, with one pair of hard, painful fists between them.
5
Efa got the idea about chapel last week, in the kitchen, after I told her about Gwyn again.
“Ma Gwyn hufen iâ’n murderer,” I’d said, the idea of it fizzing on my tongue. “Mae o’n lladd pobl efo’i bare hands.”
The words tingled and popped in my mouth, but Efa just leant against the worktop in the kitchen looking at me hard, her lips like a zip.
“P’rhaps you should go to chapel on Sundays from now on, Iola,” she said then.
“But you don’t.”
“I did go to chapel, back in the day, and everybody should go for a bit.”
I crinkled my forehead, huffed through my nose.
“Why are kids supposed to believe in God? Nobody else does.”
But Efa wasn’t up for a fight. She blanked the ‘God!’ question.
“Be better for you to be there at Sunday school than eating ice creams and playing stupid games with Pigeon,” she said, stirring whatever it was she was pickling on the stove.
The first few chapel Sundays, Efa comes with. Nasareth Chapel’s there, on the High Street, weighing the street down. The building scowls as Efa and me walk towards it. The chapel’s made of grey stone and it’s fat like a lord. It’s too big for the small, closed shops, and the square, grey council houses that make up down-town. I can feel ‘God!’ giving me a headache.
But inside it’s bright, and God! isn’t around yet, so we’re OK. There are lots of ladies who know Efa here. They smell nice and clean, and of scent that’s like flowers. They smile at me too. One of them gives me a sweet. That’s for coming to Sunday School she says. How old are you love?
I lie. “Deg,” I say.
“Iola!” says Efa.
So I have to tell them my real age.
But they aren’t angry about me lying, they say it’s a white lie. I wonder if ‘God!’ will agree when he shows up with the minister.
We all file in, and as we walk up the aisle I count how many feet I can see. I lose count at fifty.
“Sh,” Efa says. Because I was counting out loud.
We sit and we listen to the minister, and to the singing which fills your whole body up like a balloon so you want to take off up to heaven.
“How come you know all the songs?” I ask Efa.
The lady with the sweet turns round to me and smiles again.
“I like her,” I whisper to Efa.
She likes me too, and so I’ll be in her Sunday school class after the service says Efa.
There are three other girls in her class. Damn. I know them from school. I don’t like them and they don’t like me. At school last week Catrin had told the class that I stink. It’s because of all Efa’s incense. I keep telling Efa not to burn it, but she says it’s good for her soul. What about mine? A soul is the bit of grown ups that can get sick and keep them awake at night. Chapel is where you grow one. I’m not sure I want that.
But the teacher is really nice. And she tells Catrin off for not smiling and giving me a welcome when I join the class. Catrin just scowls. I can see the teacher, who’s called Anti Siwan, watching Catrin. She watches her, and you can tell that if it wasn’t for God! she’d have got angry. So I like her even more. Only Efa or Pigeon usually stick up for me.
All the ladies at chapel are called Anti. Although they aren’t really, worse luck. Mind you, I wouldn’t want Anti Gladys even if she was mine.
“Wel bore da, Efa Williams!” says Anti Gladys, as soon as we walk in through the heavy door of the chapel the second Sunday. “Ers talwm iawn,” long time no see, she says, licking her pink lipstick, sour-puss mouth. “We were here last week!” says Efa. But Anti Gladys can’t have noticed us last week, cos she looks like she doesn’t believe that.
Anti Gladys wears a posh coat and, although she’s old and creased, still has long boobs and green all round her eyes. Siwan’s behind her, and I see her frown, and meet Efa’s eye.
“Bore da, Gladys,” Efa says it quiet, stood there in the musty vestry in her long, glitter skirt and her gypsy headscarf, looking like she’s there by mistake. I’m stood next to her, itchy in my woolly tights, my blue raincoat, and my red velvet Sunday dress. The dress is too small now, pinches under the arms. I need the loo, stand on my right foot with my left foot.
The air in the chapel’s full of the smells of clean people again. Across the vestry I can hear them whispering. The girls. Rhiannon and Catrin. They giggle at me and shoot glares that mean watch out. I give them a heavy look, and, while Anti Gladys and Efa pretend to have a conversation, I stick out my blue, gobstopper-stained tongue. The girls gasp all dramatic at me so Anti turns and catches me in the act. “Un o’r teulu?” she asks Efa, syrup sweet. One of the family is she?
I look up at Anti Gladys. She smiles. But it’s not like Anti Siwan. It’s like the cover of a magazine. Not real.
“What are you dressed up for, dear?” Anti asks Efa in her snobby Welsh. “A Christmas pantomime?”
Efa stays away after that week, and Anti Gladys’ sharp tongue. Now she just takes me up to the steps in front of the serious building, looks up at the chapel doors like she dreads it, and backs off before Anti Siwan or any of the other Antis catch her and hoik her in. Anti Siwan goes out after her the first week, but even she can’t persuade Efa to come in again. For all her hippy clothes and colours, Efa’s like a closed door. She looks upset, but she just won’t budge.
I have to walk the steps to the wooden doors myself. Anti Siwan stretches her hand out for mine, but I don’t take it, I don’t want the girls to think I’m a baby. I walk into the chapel on my own, find a seat at the back where I can open my comic and read while the sermon and the songs fall blunt and hollow into the gallery. The songs are my favourite bit of chapel so far. I sit and listen to the hymns as they swell up like a kite and then go all the way to heaven through the sagging chapel roof.
After the service it’s Sunday school, and I look out of the classroom window at the mountains which are snowy like vienetta, I think about Pigeon and
while Anti Siwan talks about ‘Iesu!’ those shaky ice-cream tunes play in my head. I try for a while, to think about ‘Jesus!’ and his beard and his fish and his bread, but then I think about Gwyn’s Ice Creams instead. I line up the ice creams to choose my favourite. Which is chocolate. Always chocolate.
“Iola Williams stinks,” says Catrin, in her wasp’s voice. Siwan’s gone out the room. Sitting next to Catrin, Rhiannon giggles in her matching dress, her matching spite.
“Iola Williams stinks like silage. Iola Williams’ dress is too small for her. Iola Williams’ mam isn’t her real mam. Iola Williams’ mam’s dead. Have you seen her sister? She’s a proper freak.”
Chocolate was definitely the best, I can taste it. Anyway, thing is about Efa, she takes all these pills to keep her soul healthy, and everyone laughs at her because of the beads and the colours, but really she’s more alive than any of them, any of them who talk about her behind their snatchy dead hands and roll their eyes like marbles under their grey hair when she passes.
I ask Efa about them when I get home.
“Why aren’t they all nice with you, Efa?”
“Lots of them are lovely.”
“Yes but…”
“Anti Gladys is just old and old fashioned,” says Efa.
I wait. Efa will tell me if I wait.
“She was one of the ones who told tales about our family, back in the day. She told all the old people here that Nain was a tart.”
“Why?”
“Because Dad had no Dad and Nain hadn’t got married.”
“So?”
“So it used to matter.”
“Getting married?”
“Getting married before you had kids.”
“But it doesn’t anymore?”
“Not so much.”
“Not to Anti Siwan?”
Efa laughs. “Anti Siwan doesn’t give a toss either way,” she says “She’s nice.”
I smile. Anti Siwan is lovely.
I like it at chapel. I like the being part of it. And how my voice with all of theirs singing makes one big proud voice, and from what they tell me about him, I even like Jesus. Sharing and all that. And all the little things being important. Like me.
But even Jesus and the singing, and Anti Siwan and the other ones who smell of flowers and smile, and even the being a part of it, this huge thing, even that doesn’t cancel out missing Pigeon. Compared to chapel, compared to anything, Sundays with Pigeon are one big ride. He’s making it up as he goes along and you just want to make sure you’re in on it. Well in. Compared to that, chapel is all polish smells, pretty, uncomfortable dresses, girls pinching, and boys getting the credit for everything.
“Why do I have to go if you don’t?” I ask her.
Efa looks at me.
“You need to learn how to live in society,” she says like a robot.
“You mean be good?”
“Yes.”
“Like you?” I don’t mean it like a joke but she laughs. She gives me a hug, but she still makes me go.
What Efa didn’t reckon on, what no one reckoned on ever, was on Pigeon, and Pigeon deciding to come to Sunday school too, after being bored without me for a couple of pretend-schoolday-Sundays and not being able to go home in case of his mam.
Anti Gladys looks at Pigeon’s grey school trousers in that way. She turns her nose when she sees me and Pigeon, and steps away from us, like a spider steps sideways when you poke its web. Anti Gladys only smiles at Mr Lewis the minister, standing beside God! up on the pulpit.
Rhiannon and Catrin stay away from us too. That’s good. Sitting on a pew all of our own, Pigeon and me pretend to whisper to each other about the girls. Pigeon’ll just make noises, or sing things in my ear. The laugh’ll come right up from my belly and out my nose then. And some of the people will turn round and look cross. Even though Siwan smiles when she turns, she puts her finger on her lips to say be quiet. But Pigeon doesn’t listen.
Sometimes Pigeon says whole jokes in my ear, when he can think of them.
“Catrin has a fanny made of slugs,” Pigeon says into my ear one time. I don’t like him saying it. Fanny. I don’t like Pigeon saying that word.
Pigeon tells me how much more fun we’re having at chapel now than I was having when I came on my own. It must be true. It’s much better after Pigeon starts coming, and his ideas drawing moustaches and willies on Jesus and the disciples in the picture-bible in the vestry. He draws the willies in, long and dangly, with thick black felt-tip. Even Mr Lewis looks like he wants to laugh then cause, reading something about “God!” and stuff at me and Pigeon, he’s shaking all over, looking down and pointing a wobble finger at us while we’re stood in front of the pulpit with everyone else watching from all the benches that go back and back with the nice young Antis and the old Antis on them, until they reach the door of the chapel where I want to be running out.
But when I turn round I can see that Anti Siwan and some of the other young women are crying because they’re trying so hard not to laugh. I think it’s because of them that Mr Lewis decides we should take a week off Sunday school, and just go home and tell Efa what we’ve done, fat chance. Anti Gladys offers to walk us out of chapel. She’s loving it.
She walks us out onto the empty street, and then looks down at us with her painted face. Then she says it. She leans down, so her face is at the level of Pigeon’s and she says, very quietly, so that none of the others can hear: “F off”.
Pigeon and me run off down the street. Pigeon’s laughing and whooping, and I’m copying him, although I’m a bit shocked.
“We made Anti Gladys say ‘fuck’,” says Pigeon. “Well, almost.” And we’re pretty pleased.
But as we’re running away I can hear all the singing coming from inside the big bear chapel, and a bit of me wishes I was in there with Siwan and Jesus and the flower scents, and even with the pretty mean girls in their Sunday dresses, and the old people sagging and singing all together like wolves. I was part of it, and now we’re out, and it’s just Pigeon and me.
6
He needed her. Without Iola, all his thoughts just made a black inky mess. It was telling her that put it all in order. So when he went round to hers, and Efa was there on her own, saying Iola was out at chapel, he thought why not?
He scuffed his feet up the road, pulled open the heavy door, and just walked in, right in the middle of the sermon. Everyone turned round as he walked down the aisle, looking for Iola.
She grabbed him from behind and dragged him after her to the back row. He sat down. Some of the people looked at each other, raising eyebrows, but he just sat down, and it was like he could just stay. Maybe he could?
But it was too much, really to try to put yourself in the middle of it, the town. To go to chapel, and have your voice rise with the others in the long, swelling songs that made you ache from the inside out. It was too much, when all you’d ever done was stand outside of it. And especially when that woman, the teacher, treated you as if you belonged. It was too much. Pigeon could feel that he wanted to tell her. About Him. He could feel that she was the kind of person that might care. The words were dangerous, crowding to the tip of his tongue. If you said them, they might smash it all up, the pictures and stories you had to have to hold your own world together. The words that were almost on Pigeon’s tongue, almost working their way out, to be whispered in Siwan’s ear, almost, those words had the power to undo it all. And Pigeon couldn’t. He couldn’t say them.
So he’d just smash all this up instead: Iola’s Sundays without him, the chapel. Those people who cared and the others who didn’t. He’d smash it into so many bits with his words, that Iola wouldn’t want any of it any more. She’d just want him. And he didn’t care about God! either. God! was just another version of Him. Watching everyone all the time, and making them do and behave the way He wanted, threatening them, and throwing some of them out to live in the shed. Pigeon hated Him. So he wasn’t about to listen to God’s songs and their strange ac
hey chorus. He wasn’t about to let Iola enjoy any of it. He’d have to drag her away. He’d have to cut the cord that linked her, by the belly button, to the town.
The best way was to mess up their story. And their story was the bible. So he’d get in there with his felt tip, and he’d turn it all inside out. Pigeon could undo any story he wanted. He’d done that all his life. Breaking up words and gluing them back together. Mr Lewis felt it. Pigeon knew he did. Mr Lewis knew exactly what Pigeon was trying to do. That was why he was so angry. He knew it wasn’t about being funny. It wasn’t just willies and boobs on the bible, like the ladies who were laughing thought. This was a fight. And it was deadly serious.
Pigeon wanted her back. Everyone needs someone to listen to them when they tell their story. Everyone needs that. Iola was essential. She was, like it said in Efa’s newspaper ‘utterly ir-re-place-a-ble’. He needed to get them to show they didn’t care about her as much as he did.
“F off,” said that woman. And so he’d won.
He’d got her back. He’d pushed all of that ache away. He’d not told a soul. And now they could get on with it, him and Iola. The Gwyn story. They could tell it along together.
7
Sitting in Pigeon’s attic is way, way better than chapel anyway, and now Pigeon’s smoking “which,” like he says, “you can’t do in Sunday school and that’s why it’s crap.”
In Pigeon’s house He’sout, and taken Pigeon’s mam off somewhere on the bus, and Cher too, but not Pigeon, so Pigeon and me can sit in the triangle attic, hiding from Efa, and He’snot here to care. For once there’s no Cher even, being a pain and asking difficult questions. From the attic window I can see the houses piling up and up the hill, and just hear the tapered ends of all the noises in the valley – the quarry bangs, the cars growling like dogs, the beep and grind of quarry trucks loading and reversing, loading and reversing across the layered slate tips, even on a Sunday. Up here where Pigeon’s house pushes into the sky, with windows turned to the clouds, Pigeon and me are making our plan.