by Dylan Thomas
The ducks were still swimming under the steps.
Grandpa was not in the cottage. I went into the garden, but grandpa was not staring at the fruit-trees. I called across to a man who leant on a spade in the field beyond the garden hedge: ‘Have you seen my grandpa this morning?’
He did not stop digging, and answered over his shoulder: ‘I seen him in his fancy waistcoat.’
Griff, the barber, lived in the next cottage. I called to him through the open door: ‘Mr. Griff, have you seen my grandpa?’
The barber came out in his shirtsleeves.
I said: ‘He’s wearing his best waistcoat.’ I did not know if it was important, but grandpa wore his waistcoat only in the night.
‘Has grandpa been to Llanstephan?’ asked Mr. Griff anxiously.
‘He went there yesterday in a little trap,’ I said.
He hurried indoors and I heard him talking in Welsh, and he came out again with his white coat on, and he carried a striped and coloured walking-stick. He strode down the village street and I ran by his side.
When we stopped at the tailor’s shop, he cried out, ‘Dan!’ and Dan Tailor stepped from his window where he sat like an Indian priest but wearing a derby hat. ‘Dai Thomas has got his waistcoat on,’ said Mr. Griff, ‘and he’s been to Llanstephan.’
As Dan Tailor searched for his overcoat, Mr. Griff was striding on. ‘Will Evans,’ he called outside the carpenter’s shop, ‘Dai Thomas has been to Llanstephan, and he’s got his waistcoat on.’
‘I’ll tell Morgan now,’ said the carpenter’s wife out of the hammering, sawing darkness of the shop.
We called at the butcher’s shop and Mr. Price’s house, and Mr. Griff repeated his message like a town crier.
We gathered together in Johnstown square. Dan Tailor had his bicycle, Mr. Price his pony trap. Mr. Griff, the butcher, Morgan carpenter, and I climbed into the shaking trap, and we trotted off towards Carmarthen town. The tailor led the way, ringing his bell as though there were a fire or a robbery, and an old woman by the gate of a cottage at the end of the street ran inside like a pelted hen. Another woman waved a bright handkerchief.
‘Where are we going?’ I asked.
Grandpa’s neighbours were as solemn as old men with black hats and jackets on the outskirts of a fair. Mr. Griff shook his head and mourned: ‘I didn’t expect this again from Dai Thomas.’
‘Not after last time,’ said Mr. Price sadly.
We trotted on, we crept up Constitution Hill, we rattled down into Lammas Street, and the tailor still rang his bell and a dog ran, squealing, in front of his wheels. As we clip-clopped over the cobbles that led down to the Towy bridge, I remembered grandpa’s nightly noisy journeys that rocked the bed and shook the walls, and I saw his gay waistcoat in a vision and his patchwork head tufted and smiling in the candlelight. The tailor before us turned round on his saddle, his bicycle wobbled and skidded. ‘I see Dai Thomas!’ he cried.
The trap rattled on to the bridge, and I saw grandpa there: the buttons of his waistcoat shone in the sun, he wore his tight, black Sunday trousers and a tall, dusty hat I had seen in a cupboard in the attic, and he carried an ancient bag. He bowed to us. ‘Good morning, Mr. Price,’ he said, ‘and Mr. Griff and Mr. Morgan and Mr. Evans.’ To me he said: ‘Good morning, boy.’
Mr. Griff pointed his coloured stick at him.
‘And what do you think you are doing on Carmarthen bridge in the middle of the afternoon,’ he said sternly, ‘with your best waistcoat and your old hat?’
Grandpa did not answer, but inclined his face to the river wind, so that his beard was set dancing and wagging as though he talked, and watched the coracle men move, like turtles, on the shore.
Mr. Griff raised his stunted barber’s pole. ‘And where do you think you are going,’ he said, ‘with your old black bag?’
Grandpa said: ‘I am going to Llangadock to be buried.’ And he watched the coracle shells slip into the water lightly, and the gulls complain over the fish-filled water as bitterly as Mr. Price complained:
‘But you aren’t dead yet, Dai Thomas.’
For a moment grandpa reflected, then: ‘There’s no sense in lying dead in Llanstephan,’ he said. ‘The ground is comfy in Llangadock; you can twitch your legs without putting them in the sea.’
His neighbours moved close to him. They said: ‘You aren’t dead, Mr. Thomas.’
‘How can you be buried, then?’
‘Nobody’s going to bury you in Llanstephan.’
‘Come on home, Mr. Thomas.’
‘There’s strong beer for tea.’
‘And cake.’
But grandpa stood firmly on the bridge, and clutched his bag to his side, and stared at the flowing river and the sky, like a prophet who has no doubt.
Patricia, Edith, and Arnold
The small boy in his invisible engine, the Cwmdonkin Special, its wheels, polished to dazzle, crunching on the small back garden scattered with breadcrumbs for the birds and white, with yesterday’s snow, its smoke rising thin and pale as breath in the cold afternoon, hooted under the wash-line, kicked the dog’s plate at the washhouse stop, and puffed and pistoned slower and slower while the servant girl lowered the pole, unpegged the swinging vests, showed the brown stains under her arms, and called over the wall; ‘Edith, Edith, come here, I want you.’
Edith climbed on two tubs on the other side of the wall and called back: ‘I’m here, Patricia.’ Her head bobbed up above the broken glass.
He backed the Flying Welshman from the washhouse to the open door of the coal-hole and pulled hard on the brake that was a hammer in his pocket: assistants in uniform ran out with fuel; he spoke to a saluting fireman, and the engine shuffled off, round the barbed walls of China that kept the cats away, by the frozen rivers in the sink, in and out of the coal-hole tunnel. But he was listening carefully all the time, through the squeals and whistles, to Patricia and the next-door servant, who belonged to Mrs. Lewis, talking when they should have been working, calling his mother Mrs. T., being rude about Mrs. L.
He heard Patricia say: ‘Mrs. T. won’t be back till six.’
And Edith next door replied: ‘Old Mrs. L. has gone to Neath to look for Mr. Robert.’
‘He’s on the randy again,’ Patricia whispered.
‘Randy, sandy, bandy!’ cried the boy out of the coal-hole.
‘You get your face dirty, I’ll kill you,’ Patricia said absent-mindedly.
She did not try to stop him when he climbed up the coal-heap. He stood quietly on the top, King of the Coal Castle, his head touching the roof, and listened to the worried voices of the girls. Patricia was almost in tears, Edith was sobbing and rocking on the unsteady tubs. ‘I’m standing on top of the coal,’ he said, and waited for Patricia’s anger.
She said: ‘I don’t want to see him, you go alone.’
‘We must, we must go together,’ said Edith. ‘I’ve got to know.’
‘I don’t want to know.’
‘I can’t stand it, Patricia, you must go with me.’
‘You go alone, he’s waiting for you.’
‘Please, Patricia!’
‘I’m lying on my face in the coal,’ said the boy.
‘No, it’s your day with him. I don’t want to know. I just want to think he loves me.’
‘Oh, talk sense, Patricia, please! Will you come or no? I’ve got to hear what he says.’
‘All right then, in half an hour. I’ll shout over the wall.’
‘You’d better come soon,’ the boy said, ‘I’m dirty as Christ knows what.’
Patricia ran to the coal-hole. ‘The language! Come out of there at once!’ she said.
The tubs began to slide and Edith vanished.
‘Don’t you dare use language like that again. Oh! your suit!’ Patricia took him indoors.
She made him change his suit in front of her. ‘Otherwise there’s no telling.’ He took off his trousers and danced around her, crying: ‘Look at me, Patricia!’
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p; ‘You be decent,’ she said, ‘or I won’t take you to the park.’
‘Am I going to the park, then?’
‘Yes, we’re all going to the park; you and me and Edith next door.’
He dressed himself neatly, not to annoy her, and spat on his hands before parting his hair. She appeared not to notice his silence and neatness. Her large hands were clasped together; she stared down at the white brooch on her chest. She was a tall, thick girl with awkward hands, her fingers were like toes, her shoulders were wide as a man’s.
‘Am I satisfactory?’ he asked.
‘There’s a long word,’ she said, and looked at him lovingly. She lifted him up and seated him on the top of the chest of drawers. ‘Now you’re as tall as I am.’
‘But I’m not so old,’ he said.
He knew that this was an afternoon on which anything might happen; it might snow enough for sliding on a tray; uncles from America, where he had no uncles, might arrive with revolvers and St. Bernards; Ferguson’s shop might catch on fire and all the piece-packets fall on the pavements; and he was not surprised when she put her black, straight-haired heavy head on his shoulder and whispered into his collar: ‘Arnold, Arnold Matthews.’
‘There, there,’ he said, and rubbed her parting with his finger and winked at himself in the mirror behind her and looked down her dress at the back.
‘Are you crying?’
‘No.’
‘Yes you are, I can feel the wet.’
She dried her eyes on her sleeve. ‘Don’t you let on that I was crying.’
‘I’ll tell everybody, I’ll tell Mrs. T. and Mrs. L., I’ll tell the policeman and Edith and my dad and Mr. Chapman, Patricia was crying on my shoulder like a nanny goat, she cried for two hours, she cried enough to fill a kettle. I won’t really,’ he said.
As soon as he and Patricia and Edith set off for the park, it began to snow. Big flakes unexpectedly fell on the rocky hill, and the sky grew dark as dusk though it was only three in the afternoon. Another boy, somewhere in the allotments behind the houses, shouted as the first flakes fell. Mrs. Ocky Evans opened the top bay-windows of Springmead and thrust her head and hands out, as though to catch the snow. He waited, without revolt, for Patricia to say, ‘Quick! hurry back, it’s snowing!’ and to pack him in out of the day before his feet were wet. Patricia can’t have seen the snow, he thought at the top of the hill, though it was falling heavily, sweeping against her face, covering her black hat. He dared not speak for fear of waking her, as they turned the corner into the road that led down to the park. He lagged behind to take his cap off and catch the snow in his mouth.
‘Put on your cap,’ said Patricia, turning, ‘Do you want to catch your death of cold?’
She tucked his muffler inside his coat, and said to Edith: ‘Will he be there in the snow, do you think? He’s bound to be there, isn’t he? He was always there on my Wednesdays, wet or fine.’ The tip of her nose was red, her cheeks glowed like coals, she looked handsomer in the snow than in the summer, when her hair would lie limp on her wet forehead and a warm patch spread on her back.
‘He’ll be there,’ Edith said. ‘One Friday it was pelting down and he was there. He hasn’t got anywhere else to go, he’s always there. Poor Arnold!’ She looked white and tidy in a coat with a furpiece, and twice as small as Patricia; she stepped through the thick snow as though she were going shopping.
‘Wonders will never cease,’ he said aloud to himself. This was Patricia letting him walk in the snow, this was striding along in a storm with two big girls. He sat down in the road. ‘I’m on a sledge,’ he said, ‘pull me, Patricia, pull me like an Eskimo.’
‘Up you get, you moochin, or I’ll take you home.’
He saw that she did not mean it. ‘Lovely Patricia, beautiful Patricia,’ he said, ‘pull me along on my bottom.’
‘Any more dirty words, and you know who I’ll tell.’
‘Arnold Matthews,’ he said.
Patricia and Edith drew closer together.
‘He notices everything,’ Patricia whispered.
Edith said: ‘I’m glad I haven’t got your job.’
‘Oh,’ said Patricia, catching him by the hand and pressing it on her arm, ‘I wouldn’t change him for the world!’
He ran down the gravel path on to the upper walk of the park. ‘I’m spoilt!’ he shouted, ‘I’m spoilt! Patricia spoils me!’
Soon the park would be white all over; already the trees were blurred round the reservoir and fountain, and the training college on the gorse hill was hidden in a cloud. Patricia and Edith took the steep path down to the shelter. Following on the forbidden grass, he slid past them straight into a bare bush, but the bump and the pricks left him shouting and unhurt. The girls gossiped sadly now. They shook their coats in the deserted shelter, scattering snow on the seats, and sat down, close together still, outside the bowling-club window.
‘We’re only just on time,’ said Edith. ‘It’s hard to be punctual in the snow.’
‘Can I play by here?’
Patricia nodded. ‘Play quietly then; don’t be rough with the snow.’
‘Snow! snow! snow!’ he said, and scooped it out of the gutter and made a small ball.
‘Perhaps he’s found a job,’ Patricia said.
‘Not Arnold.’
‘What if he doesn’t come at all?’
‘He’s bound to come, Patricia; don’t say things like that.’
‘Have you brought your letters?’
‘They’re in my bag. How many have you got?’
‘No, how many have you got, Edith?’
‘I haven’t counted.’
‘Show me one of yours,’ Patricia said.
He was used to their talk by this time; they were old and cuckoo, sitting in the empty shelter sobbing over nothing. Patricia was reading a letter and moving her lips.
‘He told me that, too,’ she said, ‘that I was his star.’
‘Did he begin: “Dear Heart?’”
‘Always: “Dear Heart.’”
Edith broke into real loud tears. With a snowball in his hand, he watched her sway on the seat and hide her face in Patricia’s snowy coat.
Patricia said, patting and calming Edith, rocking her head: ‘I’ll give him a piece of my mind when he comes!’
When who comes? He threw the snowball high into the silently driving fall. Edith’s crying in the deadened park was clear and thin as a whistle, and, disowning the soft girls and standing away from them in case a stranger passed, a man with boots to his thighs, or a sneering, bigger boy from the Uplands, he piled the snow against the wire of the tennis court and thrust his hands into the snow like a baker making bread. As he delved and moulded the snow into loaves, saying under his breath, ‘This is the way it is done, ladies and gentlemen,’ Edith raised her head and said: ‘Patricia, promise me, don’t be cross with him. Let’s all be quiet and friendly.’
‘Writing, “Dear Heart” to us both,’ said Patricia angrily. ‘Did he ever take off your shoes and pull your toes and—’
‘No, no, you mustn’t, don’t go on, you mustn’t speak like that!’ Edith put her fingers to her cheeks. ‘Yes, he did,’ she said.
‘Somebody has been pulling Edith’s toes,’ he said to himself, and ran round the other side of the shelter, chuckling. ‘Edith went to market,’ he laughed aloud, and stopped at the sight of a young man without an overcoat sitting in the corner seat and cupping his hands and blowing into them. The young man wore a white muffler and a check cap. When he saw the boy, he pulled his cap down over his eyes. His hands were pale blue and the ends of his fingers yellow.
The boy ran back to Patricia. ‘Patricia, there’s a man!’ he cried.
‘Where’s a man?’
‘On the other side of the shelter; he hasn’t got an overcoat and he’s blowing in his hands like this.’
Edith jumped up. ‘It’s Arnold!’
‘Arnold Matthews, Arnold Matthews, we know you’re there!’ Patricia called round t
he shelter, and, after a long minute, the young man, raising his cap and smiling, appeared at the corner and leant against a wooden pillar.
The trousers of his sleek blue suit were wide at the bottoms; the shoulders were high and hard, and sharp at the ends; his pointed patent shoes were shining; a red handkerchief stuck from his breast pocket; he had not been out in the snow.
‘Fancy you two knowing each other,’ he said loudly, facing the red-eyed girls and the motionless, open-mouthed boy who stood at Patricia’s side with his pockets full of snowballs.
Patricia tossed her head and her hat fell over one eye. As she straightened her hat, ‘You come and sit down here, Arnold Matthews, you’ve got some questions to answer!’ she said in her washing-day voice.
Edith clutched at her arm: ‘Oh! Patricia you promised.’ She picked at the edge of her handkerchief. A tear rolled down her cheek.
Arnold said softly then: ‘Tell the little boy to run away and play.’
The boy ran round the shelter once and returned to hear Edith saying: ‘There’s a hole in your elbow, Arnold,’ and to see the young man kicking the snow at his feet and staring at the names and hearts cut on the wall behind the girls’ heads.
‘Who did you walk out with on Wednesdays?’ Patricia asked. Her clumsy hands held Edith’s letter close to the sprinkled folds of her chest.
‘You, Patricia.’
‘Who did you walk out with on Fridays?’
‘With Edith, Patricia.’
He said to the boy: ‘Here, son, can you roll a snowball as big as a football?’
‘Yes, as big as two footballs.’
Arnold turned back to Edith, and said: ‘How did you come to know Patricia Davies? You work in Brynmill.’
‘I just started work in Cwmdonkin,’ she said. ‘I haven’t seen you since, to tell you. I was going to tell you to-day, but I found out. How could you Arnold? Me on my afternoon off, and Patricia on Wednesdays.’