by Alys Conran
Dafydd looks over at us, his heavenly smile breaking briefly, flattening out.
“I’m not worrried about drugs with Iola,” says Efa through her teeth.
“FOCUS ON THE BREATH!” says Dafydd, his voice spiralling upwards.
Pam takes a deep snort of an in-breath through her nose. Then mutters, “That’s what they all say, honestly! No one thinks it of their own. Take my Henry. He was into all sorts, and look at him now.” She closes her eyes, like a satisfied cat.
“Breathe!” says Dafydd.
In, out, in, out, in, out, in.
Relaxation is just more time of thinking about Pigeon. Pigeon kissed me. Pigeon told me I killed a man.
36
There’s a knocking sound. A hollow knock. It’s a beckoning sound. It’s the door. Ceri.
She’s knocking at the door, so he has to go out. She’s not met his mam yet. It isn’t a good idea. He can tell. Ceri couldn’t handle it, talking to someone who didn’t understand and didn’t listen. So they go out. He holds her hand. It’s like clay, soft and real. They don’t have much to say.
Why does she come, he wonders. From her, he gets someone to touch. Someone to want. Someone soft, and like a mother, and like a girl. But she gets just him. He’s thin and tough. Like a bad meal. Why does she want him?
“My dad says your mam’s sick.”
She says it suddenly. They’re passing the railings by the park. They’ve stopped walking, because she said it. It’s darkish, so he can’t see her face. What does she want him to say? What does she want him to do? He’s managed to keep her away from the house up til now, away from his mam. How can he explain to Ceri what’s wrong with his mother? Where’s the beginning of the story? Pigeon looks for it, in his mind, like finding the beginning of a roll of cellotape. He looks, but there’s no sign of it. The beginning. None of the roughnesses of the story he knows promise openings or endings. And anyway, if he were to start unsticking all this by talking, who knows what story he’d tell Ceri? Who knows what he might turn his life into by telling her about himself.
So he says nothing. He can feel Ceri thinking. He can feel her thinking next to him as they walk together. She’s making stories of him, and he’s not having it. Pigeon won’t let her make this story hers. He holds his silence tight around him, and although she tries to ask him a couple of things, like “What’re you doing on Saturday?” he doesn’t answer. He guards his silence just as he was taught to in the Centre, and as he was taught to in the shed. They don’t hold hands anymore, just walk along the path, past the park, into the wood, along the river. Ceri doesn’t know what she’s done, not really. But she’ll know it’s broken. They say “Bye,” at the top of the path and they each go. Ceri’s face is as blank as a page. Her eyes are inky.
At home, he sits again with the book. He sits with the book not reading.
It’s dark now. He looks out of the window into the black garden. There’s the square shape of his shed against the coal sky. There are a few stars. That one’s Venus, and you can see Sirius, the brightest star, and the Dog Star, and that’s almost all.
Which side of the window is inside?
He thinks it suddenly. Which side is he on? It’s a strange thought to have. He’s disorientated for a second, doesn’t know where he is. It’s as if things have come apart, and what things mean has left them, detached. There’s just him. And what’s he? There are no words in his head that second, not even English ones. He’s drifting in space. Then he’s in the living room, sitting beside his mam with the book on his lap. He begins to read again.
“Many a night she would stand by the open window, looking up through the dark blue waters where the fishes swam. She could see the moon and the stars; they looked paler but larger down here under the sea.”
The room’s like cold water around him. The room is underwater, but you can still breathe. He takes a long breath, starts again. “Sometimes a great shadow passed by like a cloud and then she knew that it was either a whale or a ship, with its crew and passengers, that was sailing high above her.” Pigeon stops again, looks over at his mam, sitting in the dusky corner, rocking. “None on board could have imagined that she stood in the depths below them and stretched her little white hands up toward the keel of their ship.”
A word came into his head, a Welsh word. One for which there’s no translation.
It was followed by another word. He’d collected it years ago. Cut it out of one of Efa’s newspapers.
Dispossessed.
He said the word. Dispossessed. And again. Dispossessed. It was the shed. It was the gun. It was the Centre.
There were two parts of him. One part that had done it, and was proud, and could take the consequences. One part that was angry, had lost, was in mourning. There was a word for that part of him. Dispossessed.
It was not knowing the words anymore. It was gulping for the words, like a fish out of water, or like a bird submerged.
37
I need to talk, to sew myself back together with words. I leave Efa outside the chapel and go down the path by the river, along the road and through the wood, to meet Cher.
In the old barracks there’s Cher sitting. She’s sitting so still, Cher. She’d have waited forever.
“Hi, Iola,” she says. “What’s up?” looking at me like she’s trying to read a book.
“Nothing.”
“Shall we go up to the quarry then?” Cher asks.
We walk up the dusty road to the quarry, the quarry that’s still working, where there are still trucks loading and reversing and a few men who’ve kept their jobs there. There’s a big railing and a sign. DANGER it says, KEEP OUT. We hang over the railing and watch the trucks driving up the road that goes up the slate tips to the top of the mountain. From here you can see down to the lake that’s been made of one of the quarry holes. The water’s blue green. There’s something fluorescent in the water. There’s some dead trees sticking out of it, they’re bleached white as bone.
“Iola,” Cher says then. The way she says it makes me turn to look at her, and when I do, Cher’s ragged and empty like old clothes. Cher’s thinking about saying something again. Her mouth begins to say it over and over, that small breath in when she’s about to speak, and then she stops herself.
“What’s up, Cher?” I have a feeling again in my stomach, rising up into my throat. There’s something wrong with Cher. I know this feeling from the way things have been with Pigeon and with Efa. And then Cher says it.
“I’m going away,” she says.
There’s silence. A full stop. And it’s the full stop I hear. Just the end.
I look at her, I look at my friend.
“What d’you mean?” I say, although I know.
“I’m going away,” Cher says again.
“What’re you on about? Where?”
“My sister. She lives in Manchester. I’m going to Manchester. I’m going to live with her.”
“You don’t have a sister.”
Cher just stands there, nodding.
“What’s her name?”
“Martha.”
“Martha?”
“Yes.”
I sit down.
“You can’t go.”
But Cher just nods again.
“Where does she live?”
“Manchester.” Cher says it again, and she starts to smile.
I’m up then. “Cher, you can’t go.” It’s my voice, shouting. “You can’t Cher, you can’t.”
But Cher’s poking the ground with a stick, and nodding slowly.
Cher’s going. Inside everything’s closing up. Everything’s closed and aching. I’m like one of Pigeon’s mam’s dresses, with the hems all closed so that nothing can get out. Around me there’s the grey hill, empty and lonely, with the makebelieve shut away.
My insides hurt. My mind is trying to move in my head, and do something with the thought. Cher. Leaving. But all there is, is that long ache, the quarry, the lake below us, the dead trees.
I run. I run up the path through the wet leaves and dirt, Cher calling behind me. Cher running behind. Hot, suffocating tears are doing nothing to stop this, any of it.
It’s not until we get to the clearing in the wood that Cher and me slow. Cher gets to me then, breathing heavy and hard. We stop running. We both catch our breath, backs rounded to the clouds, hands on their knees, like when I used to run with Pigeon, for ice creams, back when I’d believe anything.
Cher puts her arms around me. Her arms are warm. They’re soft. Cher’s body’s gentle against me.
Cher pulls away and is looking straight at me.
“I’m glad he’s dead, Iola. Glad you did it.”
Do I push Cher off? I don’t know. I run.
Cher follows me home. She follows me at a distance. I can feel her, and hear her footsteps in the wood behind me.
It’s getting dark. The streetlights are on when we get to the road. When I turn there’s Cher, plodding along behind as always. We walk, one in front of the other, all the way up the road, lit orange. I’m angry. I don’t want to lose Cher, but I don’t want to wait for her either.
We walk up the next street, and the next, and to my door, which is a bit open, as always.
I go through the door and Cher follows me in. She doesn’t say anything, just walks in behind me, sits down on the sofa next to Dafydd and begins to watch TV. I ignore her. Dafydd ignores Cher too, as if she’s a louse not a girl.
I hate her. Hate her for going. Without Cher there’ll be just Pigeon, and I’ll be like an apple that’s wormed rotten, so that there’s nothing, nothing left inside. And it’s all of that, those pushing and pulling feelings, hurting and turning it all ugly, that make me get up from the armchair, walk over to the sofa, and do what’ll really make Cher hurt.
I give Dafydd a proper woman’s kiss on the lips.
Cher’s already up and storming for the door, breathing funny as she goes. It’s like I’ve taken all the breath from Cher in that kiss.
Dafydd’s standing with his hands gripping my wrists now, like Pigeon did before. He has an expression on his face I’ve not seen. Almost angry. Almost a smile. Something I don’t recognise. And then I know it. Know that he won’t stop, not Dafydd, he won’t stop for anything.
But he does. It’s just that sudden burn of my wrists held tight. His breath. Sour. And the filthy sound of him as we struggle that moment. I kick him in the stomach, and perhaps it’s that, cos he gets up and he leaves the room. The room is still full of his breath even when he’s gone. And then that’s it. Just a kiss. Just a kiss that breaks it all.
On the floor in the living room, a couple of cushions from the sofa, strewn. There’s the smell of Efa’s breadmaker, making cinnamon loaves. The homey smell. Cinnamon is all wrong. Cinnamon is all wrong. And Cher was right about Dafydd; Pigeon was right again, Pigeon was right.
I walk outside. The street’s empty, and it’s dark, and on the street, it’s bright with stars, like in pictures of heaven. Just the sound of cars in the distance, like a Welsh R. And it was a kiss. Just a kiss.
I’m outside the shed.
“Cher.”
I’m stood outside the shed in the dark.
“Cher.”
“Cher.”
I’m calling her, and I’m crying. And she won’t come out.
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry. Cher. Cher, help me.”
“Why did you do that, Iola?” Cher’s asking from inside.
“I don’t know, I don’t know why. Cher, it was me. I did it. I did it,” and Cher’s looking at me, standing in the door now, and all I can say is, “Cher it was me. I killed Him. Cher it was me.”
But Cher just shakes her head. She shakes her head slowly, in that way Cher does when something is too much for her, when she just can’t put all the pieces together again, and closes the door.
Later I know Efa’s home because I hear the door and hear Dafydd’s voice saying, “Hello, Darling. Hello,” and Efa and him going quiet. I know they’re kissing, and I don’t know how Efa bear to.
I could tell Efa. “Dafydd kissed me,” I should say. But I can’t. Because it was me. It was me all along. Later Efa calls me down for supper, and I don’t go.
“Dwi’m yn teimlo’n ry dda,” I say. And I don’t. It’s true. I’m not feeling well, and I get into bed, and then Efa comes up, comes into the room, sits on my bed, and strokes my hair. She touches me for the first time in a long while, strokes my hair, my forehead, and she says to get some rest.
Instead I lie and listen to them talking and laughing in my house, downstairs. I can’t sleep. I look out the window, at the town below our house. The town looks small and big at the same time. Small and big, like the inside of a balloon, which, when you’re in it, is all you can see from horizon to horizon, but when you look at it from the outside, looks like nothing at all.
And I’m angry in a dark, stewing way, angry like a coiled-up spring with it all, but most of all with Efa.
We’ve told lies, Pigeon and me. I wasn’t there, we said, not at Gwyn’s house when it was burnt, not at Pigeon’s house that night. Pigeon did it all on his own. And me? I did nothing. Nothing. And here I am carrying on like there’s nothing wrong. Here I am, when deep down inside there’s a black pit, where I’m bad, bad like an apple wormed rotten until there’s nothing inside.
It comes over me, like an opening sky. I’ve got to get away.
38
It’d taken a while before Pigeon knew Cher had left. After a few days of not seeing her he went down the garden to the shed, and her bedcovers and clothes were gone. Pigeon’d thought of running away from that shed himself enough times, so he knew. He went in, sat down on the bare bed, lay back and looked up at the ceiling, that old mobile, no clouds left on it now, only the propeller of the aeroplane and a few bits of string. It was heavier now, the air. This place was emptier, colder. You wouldn’t have thought she had mattered. But she did.
After Cher, his mam was quiet and sad, lonely. She sat, looking out of the window, hummed to herself, or just shook her head, silently. Perhaps she’d loved Cher, his mam?
He’d got to the end of it, the story in the blue book, and it was useless. It didn’t make sense. There was a bit in the middle where they cut off the mermaid’s tongue so she could go to dry land, and that made sense, he could relate to that. But the ending, it was all full of the idea of being good, and believing in God, and so it wasn’t for him. It wasn’t for him. It was for a little boy with a proper Mam and a Dad who existed for real, a boy who had someone reading him the story in a velvet voice, kissing him goodnight, and leaving him to sleep. It was an old-fashioned story, for a nice little boy. At the end of the story there it was. The lesson. Children like that had to be good for their parents said the story. It wasn’t for Pigeon. It wasn’t for him.
He’d liked it, the thought of being under the sea, here in his house, with the ghostly world moving above him at the surface. But the story that came afterwards, of princes and princesses and marriage and heaven and angels, and parents tucking you in. He hated that. He hated it.
That was the trouble, a story had to have an ending, and Pigeon didn’t do that, endings. Or not then. Pigeon never did them. He was all twists and getting out of it and never coming to the end.
Mam was the same. That was one thing you could say for sure they shared. She never got to the end either, just went round the same cycle, rocking, singing, sewing, rocking, singing, sewing. Pigeon didn’t speak to her anymore about his life. He’d read her the story, from the book, but it was like she didn’t like it either, because after the first bit, she began to cough, and the cough got worse and worse as it went on, until at the end, he had to stop, get her a glass of water. There was a word for that. Distressed. It was a horrible word. It was a word they used in stories for pretty girls called maidens. But when he thought it about his mam it became an ugly, cruel word. Distressed. Distressed.
And that’s how Pigeon felt now too. He felt like that.
Pigeon wasn’t going to school or college, Pigeon had no work.
“He can’t be left at home doing nothing,” the probation man said. So they made him go on this course. It was a taster day they said. If he enjoyed it he might go on a longer course. They’d finally listened to him. The course was about walls. Stone walls. It was for those walls that made seams all over the mountains, and between all the fields. They told him he’d to be there at nine on the Monday. Pigeon had “Nine on the Monday” in his head; it felt right.
The first day, the teacher was late. Pigeon and the other lads on the course were standing in the yard outside the community centre waiting.
“Fuck this shite,” said one of the guys and kicked at the floor. He had an earring, thought he was tough, but Pigeon thought different. Nobody here scared him now, not after Neil at the centre and all that.
“Di o’m yn ffwcin dwad,” said the guy again.
But then an old landrover came up the road, and into the yard, and a man started getting out with his dog. The man’s hair was white. He walked with a limp across the car park. He wore blue overalls and big boots. The dog was a sheepdog. Black and white and shining. The dog ran straight up to the lads. It ran to the one with the earring, but then, since he pushed it away, it ran to Pigeon.
“Hey,” said Pigeon gently. “Hey,” he said then. “Hey,” and stroked the dog behind the ears.
The man got out of the landrover, came over to them. He looked at Pigeon.
“Elfyn,” he said. That was his name. “Nel ’di hi,” he said, motioning to the dog.
Nel was sat at Pigeon’s feet now. Her body leant against his legs, and she was looking up at him. Pigeon grinned down at her. She was alright, Nel.
“Be di d’enw di ’ta machgen i?” the man asked him then. Why did he ask just Pigeon? Why was he speaking to Pigeon directly and not to the others?
“I’m Pigeon,” Pigeon answered. He looked up at the man. Elfyn’s eyes were grey. They were small. There were wrinkles in waves around them. His eyes were half-smiling. There was a look in his eyes that knew things.