by Dylan Thomas
The Blue Bull, the Dragon, the Star of Wales, the Twll in the Wall, the Sour Grapes, the Shepherd’s Arms, the Bells of Aberdovey: I had nothing to do in the whole, wild August world but remember the names where the outing stopped and keep an eye on the charabanc. And whenever it passed a public-house, Mr Weazley would cough like a billygoat and cry: ‘Stop the bus, I’m dying of breath!’ And back we would all have to go.
Closing time meant nothing to the members of that outing. Behind locked doors, they hymned and rumpused all the beautiful afternoon. And, when a policeman entered the Druid’s Tap by the back door, and found them all choral with beer, ‘Sssh!’ said Noah Bowen, ‘the pub is shut.’
‘Where do you come from?’ he said in his buttoned, blue voice.
They told him.
‘I got a auntie there,’ the policeman said. And very soon he was singing ‘Asleep in the Deep.’
Off we drove again at last, the charabanc bouncing with tenors and flagons, and came to a river that rushed along among willows.
‘Water!’ they shouted.
‘Porthcawl!’ sang my uncle.
‘Where’s the donkeys?’ said Mr Weazley.
And out they lurched, to paddle and whoop in the cool, white, winding water. Mr Franklyn, trying to polka on the slippery stones, fell in twice. ‘Nothing is simple,’ he said with dignity as he oozed up the bank.
‘It’s cold!’ they cried.
‘It’s lovely!’
‘It’s smooth as a moth’s nose!’
‘It’s better than Porthcawl!’
And dusk came down warm and gentle on thirty wild, wet, pickled, splashing men without a care in the world at the end of the world in the west of Wales. And, ‘Who goes there?’ called Will Sentry to a wild duck flying.
They stopped at the Hermit’s Nest for a rum to keep out the cold. ‘I played for Aberavon in 1898,’ said a stranger to Enoch Davies.
‘Liar,’ said Enoch Davies.
‘I can show you photos,’ said the stranger.
‘Forged,’ said Enoch Davies.
‘And I’ll show you my cap at home.’
‘Stolen.’
‘I got friends to prove it,’ the stranger said in a fury.
‘Bribed,’ said Enoch Davies.
On the way home, through the simmering moon-splashed dark, old O. Jones began to cook his supper on a primus stove in the middle of the charabanc. Mr Weazley coughed himself blue in the smoke. ‘Stop the bus,’ he cried, ‘I’m dying of breath!’ We all climbed down into the moonlight. There was not a public-house in sight. So they carried out the remaining cases, and the primus stove, and old O. Jones himself, and took them into a field, and sat down in a circle in the field and drank and sang while old O. Jones cooked sausage and mash and the moon flew above us. And there I drifted to sleep against my uncle’s mountainous waistcoat, and, as I slept, ‘Who goes there?’ called out Will Sentry to the flying moon.
Appendix
Early Stories
Brember
From the stairs, the shadows slid gently down into the hall. He could see the dark outline of the banisters reflected across the mirror, and the arc of the chandelier throwing its light. But that was all. Towards the door, the shadows became larger. Then they were lost in the darkness of the floor and ceiling. He fumbled in his pocket for a match, and lit the taper in his hand. Holding the tiny flame above his head, he turned the handle and stepped into the room. There was a smell of dust and old wood. It was curious how sensitive he was to it, how it quickened his imagination. Old ladies making lace by the light of the moon, their thin, pale fingers stealing along the brocade, their ageless cheeks tinted like a little child’s. That was what the room always reminded him of, since the days when he had first tiptoed in, and gazed with terror at the windows opening on to the grey lawn, and the trees beyond. Or when, still a little boy, he had sat at the harpsichord, touching the dusty keys so lightly no one could hear their sound, afraid, and yet entranced as the music rose faintly into the air. It was always sad. He could detect the desolate sadness beneath the lightest fugue; as his hand touched the notes, there were tears in his eyes, a great longing for something he had known and had forgotten, loved but had lost.
That was a number of years ago, and now the same sensation of unreality and of longing came over him as he lit the harpsichord’s long candles with his taper, and saw in their spreading light, the walls crowd closer round him, and the heavy chairs hem him in. The keys were as dusty as ever. He brushed them lightly with his sleeve, then let his fingers wander for a moment over them. How frail their sound was. What curious little melodies they made, so sad and yet so perfect. For a moment he thought he heard the sound of childish footsteps outside the door, running down the corridor into the darkness. But then they were gone, and he could but suppose that they had never been. Now there was a hint of laughter sounding in his ears; now it was gone again. As he played, he seemed to hear the soft, rustling noise of a silk skirt dragged along the ground. Then his music grew louder, and, when it was soft again, there was nothing.
Try as he would, he could not analyse his reasons for coming to the house. It terrified him, and yet he could not draw away from it. Out on the road he had suddenly felt the desire to throw apart the veil of the years, to bring back to him all that old house had meant, the dusk, the soft voices in the corridors, the harpsichord, the stairs that wound interminably up into the dark, the thousand details of the rooms, the soft, insinuating fear that looked out of corners, and never went away. He had walked up the drive to the front door. The lion’s head on the door-knocker grinned down at him. He lifted it, and struck the wood. No one answered. Again and again he knocked, but the house was quiet. He put his shoulder to the door. It swung open. He had tip-toed along the passages, looked into the rooms, touched the familiar objects. Nothing had changed. And then, when the night had crept out of the leaded windows, he had closed the door of the music-room softly behind him. He was filled with a great relief. The longing always at the back of his mind was realized, the lost thing found, and the forgotten thing remembered. This was the end of the journey.
Momentarily, the candles became brighter. He was able to see further into the room. Rising, he walked across, and picked up a dusty book laid on the table. ‘The House of Brember.’ He brought it over to the light. Each page was familiar to him, the family, generation by generation, men of thought rather than of action, all visionaries who saw the world from the cloud of their own dreaming. He turned over the pages, until he came to the last: George Henry Brember, last of the line, died ….
He looked down on his name, and then closed the book.
Jarley’s
On the day that the travelling waxworks came to town the attendant vanished. Next morning the proprietor called at the employment agency and asked for a smart lad who could talk English. But the smart lads talked Welsh, and the boy from Bristol had a harelip. So the proprietor returned to his lodgings and, passing the canal, saw Eleazar reading on the bank.
‘Any luck?’ he enquired.
‘I’m not fishing,’ replied Eleazar.
He was immediately engaged.
• • • •
It was late in the evening, and the last curious visitor had left the tent. The proprietor counted the day’s takings and went away leaving Eleazar alone in the dark, wax world. Eleazar removed the last cigarette-end from the ground, and brought out a duster from his pocket. Tremblingly he dusted over the lean, brown body of Hiawatha; tremblingly he patted the pale cheeks of Charlie Peace; tremblingly he dusted over the wax neck of Circe.
‘You forgot my left calf,’ said Hiawatha.
‘You forgot my top lip,’ said Charlie Peace.
‘You forgot my right shoulder,’ said the temptress.
Eleazar looked at the wax figures in amazement.
‘You heard me,’ said Hiawatha.
‘You heard me,’ said Charlie Peace.
‘You heard me,’ said the temptress.
; Eleazar stared around him. The entrance to the tent was a long way off. There was no escape.
‘Calf,’ said Hiawatha.
‘Lip,’ said Charlie Peace.
‘Shoulder,’ said Circe.
Tremblingly Eleazar dusted over the strong-muscled calf; tremblingly he patted the snarling lip; tremblingly he dusted over the wax shoulder.
‘That is certainly better,’ said Hiawatha. ‘You see,’ he continued in apology, ‘I used to run a lot; and you want your calves dusted then, don’t you?’
‘I do a lot of snarling,’ said Charlie Peace.
‘I do a lot of tempting,’ said the temptress; ‘though, really, I should be losing my fascination by this time; and my shoulder is not all that it was. I had it bitten in Aberdare once.’
‘I remember the night well,’ said Hiawatha. ‘Somebody put an old hat on me.’
‘I remember the night,’ remarked the murderer, ‘when as a child I stuck a needle into my nurse: it was a darning needle.’
‘I remember chasing Minnehaha all over the rapids,’ said Hiawatha. ‘She used to be terribly annoyed when I called her Laughing Water.’
‘I remember the sea-green eyes of Jason,’ said Circe.
Eleazar could remember nothing. His first fears had vanished to be replaced by a sense of friendly curiosity. He inquired politely if all was well in the state of wax.
‘Indeed,’ said Hiawatha, ‘I have little to complain of. There is a great deal to be said for being wax. One has few troubles. It is difficult to receive injury. The sharpest arrow could do little to me: a momentary impression soon to be filled in with a farthing’s worth of wax from the local stores. It is a perpetual source of wonder to me that more people do not realise the advantages of a wax life.’
‘How is it with you, ma’am?’ asked Eleazar.
‘There is still the desire to tempt,’ replied the temptress, ‘that I cannot conquer. And I still remember those confounded sea-green eyes.’
‘Murder as a profession,’ began Charlie Peace …
‘Henry Wadsworth,’ began Hiawatha …
‘The history of temptation,’ began the temptress …
And suddenly the three wax figures were still.
Eleazar shuffled further along the tent.
‘Eleazar,’ said an ape.
‘Sir?’ said Eleazar.
‘Life,’ said the ape, ‘is a never-ending mystery. We are born. Why are we born? We die. The reason is obvious. The life of the body is short, and the veins are incapable of holding an eternal supply of blood.’
Eleazar would have continued on his way, but the ape held up its hand. ‘Stop,’ said the ape. ‘Consider the man of flesh and the man of wax. Everything is done for the wax man; he is made painlessly and skilfully; he is found a house in a nice waterproof tent or in the interior of a large and hygienic building; he is clothed, brushed and dusted; he is the cynosure of all eyes. Think of the opportunities he enjoys to study the mentality of his near neighbour-man. Day after day, the faces of men are pressed close to mine; I see into men’s eyes; I listen to their conversations. The man of wax is an unchanging, unprejudiced and unemotional observer of the human comedy.’
‘Sir,’ said Eleazar, ‘you talk very well for an ape.’
‘Eleazar,’ said the ape, ‘I have known this frame of wax for two days only. I was the late attendant.’
‘Tell me,’ said Eleazar, ‘do you feel the cold?’
‘Neither cold nor warmth.’
‘Do you feel hunger?’
‘Neither hunger nor thirst. I feel nothing. I want nothing. I am perpetually happy.’
Eleazar removed his jacket and trousers.
‘Make room—move up,’ said Eleazar.
• • • •
Next morning the proprietor called at the employment agency, and asked for a smart lad.
‘He must be careful, too,’ he explained, ‘for my waxworks has just been presented with an expensive new figure.’
‘An historical figure?’
‘No, no,’ said the proprietor; ‘the figure of a Welsh Druid in a long white shirt.’
In the Garden
The boy was more afraid of the dark garden than of anything else in the world. It was frightening enough in the twilight, but when there was blackness above and below and the trees spoke among themselves, the garden was too terrible to think about.
He tried to convince himself that behind the red curtains there lay nothing at all, and that there was nothing at all anywhere, only the bright room, his mother, and himself. In the morning, the garden was full of delight; the grass was long and unkempt; there were sunflowers that nobody had planted there. Against the further wall was a summerhouse, the home of beetles, where he kept his collection of strange pebbles and his picture-postcards. There he would sit for as long as the sunlight lasted, with his back against the wood box on the seat, and his feet on an old and mysterious trunk. The trunk was all the more fascinating because there was nothing in it at all. Once he had prised up the rusty padlock with his pocket knife and very fearfully opened the lid, to find only emptiness and the smell of rot. He felt sure that it must have a secret drawer somewhere that held precious stones as bright as the sun, and he planned, when he should discover them, to sell the treasure to a rich merchant, in return for a journey to the parrot-haunted islands.
But as the last rags of the sunset withered away behind the tallest chimney stack, he would hear the warning voices telling him that it was time for him to go, and he knew that somewhere in the approaching shadows were the ugly night-tenants of the garden. Then he would close the door of the summer house very slowly and carefully, and walk up the garden path until he reached the three stone steps that led down to the scullery. These he would take at one leap, and run quickly into the house with all the devils of darkness at his heels.
It was a very hot night. The windows were open, and the spinning jinnies whirled into the house to shake their long legs in the glare of the gas. The boy liked to watch them for as long as they kept to the ceiling, but he hated them when they fell dizzily on to the table cloth or flew blindly into his face, and worst of all he hated the great grey moths that blundered round the room, for he knew they were in league with the things in the garden outside.
‘It’s hot in here,’ his mother said suddenly, ‘put out the chairs on the lawn.’
She left him alone in the kitchen. He picked up a chair, then set it down again and went out into the scullery. He opened the garden door, and a great moth flew into his face. Then he stepped out into the garden and faced the enemies.
Hooded and gloved in black, they lined the paths and stood across the grass. He squared his shoulders and mounted bravely to the top of the steps. He could not see the face of the shadows, but they could see his face, for he was framed in the light from the open door. He thought of the summerhouse in the morning, friendly, dusted with light, and of the trunk where the treasure lay. He went out on to the edge of the grass, and he could not hear the warning of the trees for the drumming of his heart. As he advanced, the shadows curtsied and fell back a little, leaving his path clear to the darkness that was most dreadful of all.
Then he stopped, for he was more afraid than he thought he could ever be. The garden writhed about him, and the walls and the trees shot upward so that he could not see the sky. The pointed roof of the summerhouse shot up the dark like a steeple hat. The boy dared not look behind him, for he knew that he was surrounded by his foes, and that their arms were linked behind his back. Very, very soon, they would close in upon him, as though they were playing an innocent game of Poor Jenny Lies A-Weeping, and one of them would throw a hood over his head. He waited and waited and still nothing happened, only the gradual mounting of the trees, the walls, and the wrongly shaped tower to the sky. He could not see them, for now his hands were over his eyes. The ring closed in upon him. He could hear their feet in the ragged grass and the slipping of their robes over the damp soil.
He threw b
ack his head and stared straight into the eyes of the tallest shadow. For a long while he stared. Then he smiled at his friend the shadow, and held out his arms. The door of the summerhouse swung back in the wind, and he saw that the trunk, lying open on its side, was full of fire. The precious stones poured from it in streams of silver, of gold and of blue. The garden was bright with their colour.
He opened his arms a little wider, and the stones leapt upward to his breast. He smiled at the silent watchers and they dared not meet his eyes. Slowly they melted away, and the trees melted with them. He gathered up the jewels, and, slipping on to his knees, he laid them in the lap of his friend. The door of the summerhouse closed softly with the falling of the latch, the wind dropped, and still the boy smiled and did not move.
His mother called to him. She called to him again, and still he did not answer, so she ran into the garden with his name on her lips. There, in the middle of the grass, she found the boy kneeling, his face in his hands, in the blinding light of the moon.
Gaspar, Melchior, Balthasar*
A flying fleet came out of the shadow, [the hangar of shadows,] and the arsenal of the iron mist, hovered over the island and, hidden in the smoke of the exhausts, dropped death upon the cities. The men in the cities raced for shelter, fixing their leather masks [upon their masks of flesh], their trousers unbuttoned as they scampered out of the urinals, their hair uncombed as they climbed out of a purchased sleep, [their typists unfingered as they] puffed out of tenement offices, cupping their hands for the exploding manna. Two lovers, struck by the same shell, fell into bliss. Down thumped a ripper of women, a [lady] woman with rings on her fingers in the [common blood, a starver of babies, a thief of money, a thief of leisure, and a thief of love in the] levelling gutter. Bullets broke up the hungry ranks. Crow food sliced about them [and the flesh of their slave-masters raw in the streets, they starved in the heart of plenty, starved for the food of the heart the galvanic wheat that death beat back into the bone. Death flew over the island cities, and then flew back into the hangar of the shadow of death.]