The Coward’s Tale

by Vanessa Gebbie

  Then the beggar shakes his head. ‘I can tell you about my boots though. About my boots and the getting of them from a real dead collier.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘. . . so listen, Maggot?’

  And the story of the getting of the boots begins.

  ‘Up until then I had shared boots often with my snoring brother Ifor, who I also called Maggot, and his toes were the ones that had room to dance down there, not mine! Oh shoes were easy. My brother the Maggot had my old ones, and I had different ones from the boys along the street usually. But boots were a different matter. Hard to come by. I had often asked why I didn’t have my own boots, and the answer from my da came always unchanging, “Ianto, it is still growing you are, and whatever is the point of your own boots when it is your young bones that will be piercing good leather full of holes? For that way your feet may as well be walking on the ground.” That was the trouble with my da, for there was no arguing with that.

  But those boots that were all mine in the end were very big, and there was no danger at all of my bones piercing these for years. For they had belonged on the feet of a grown man, a hewer called Ernest Ellis who lived just along the terrace. And Mr Ellis had no need of boots where he was gone, taking his coughing with him, for whoever heard of an angel with harp and hobnailed boots?

  “Ianto! Mr Ellis is gone, look, and has left his boots for a draw . . .”

  That was Mrs Jones from along the terrace, whose son Geraint Jones was already a collier and married and much older than me, nearly twenty, but who needed boots as well. I was sorry for him for his da died down the pit when he was a boy.

  And oh I did not want to go down, Maggot. Afraid of being under the ground, although I would never admit it to my da. Afraid of the weight of stone above, and of the darkness, and I could think of little else . . . “Ianto! Go and pick one piece of coal from Mrs Ellis’s hands, will you?”

  That was my da who told me over and over that I was too much of a thinker and it was colliers that were wanted now in this family, not thinkers. And he was in his bed with his leg which would not get better.

  Oh, but drawing lots for the boots of a hewer who would not be needing them any more was an uncomfortable thing and I said so to Da, and of course he told me I was thinking again and please would I stop or all this thinking would be causing it to rain. “Ianto! Did you hear me? Go with Geraint Jones and pick one piece of coal from Mrs Ellis, will you?” And there was me hoping I would not get the boots, for then, maybe I would not have to go down at all . . .

  See, it was getting dark when this Ianto Jenkins and the young collier Geraint Jones went and drew pieces of coal from Mrs Ellis’s hand, for those boots. One piece of the two would have a cross cut into it with a knife. And Mrs Ernest Ellis was saying Divine Intervention itself would be guiding the coal with the cross to the fingers of the one who was most deserving of the boots of dead Mr Ellis. There was no arguing with Divine Intervention either. Divine Intervention was worse than Da. And I had my fingers crossed behind my back that Divine Intervention would please please please give those boots to Geraint Jones so I would not have to go . . .

  But oh it was gloomy in that kitchen. It all smelled of embrocation and polish and dust, like Ebenezer Chapel on a Sunday when the minister has a chest. I kept thinking that the house was still ringing with the last air breathed out by Mr Ellis. That had me thinking about the world being full of the last air of everyone who has lived, and trying to work out where new air might come from, and whether . . .

  “Ianto! Get to by here will you?” I heard my da’s voice in my head then. But then Mrs Ellis came out of the shadows in the middle room carrying dead Mr Ellis’s boots, moving all slow like someone had tied a bag of potatoes to her skirts. And she set the boots on a piece of newspaper on the kitchen table where they stood together and looked at us. She patted them, “Here you are, boys, and they are good boots.”

  Oh and it was all dreadful still from upstairs too. So still and the quiet beating loud in my ears, and I could hear it, the silence. And I was thinking then, that maybe when someone stops breathing it leaves a bigger noise in the air than all the years when they were alive? I was thinking about my mam, and being under the ground, and that if I raised my eyes to the kitchen ceiling maybe dead Mr Ernest Ellis might push his ghostly hand through to fetch his boots from us. Weighed the place down, that did.

  “Make your choice,” Mrs Ellis said, holding two pieces of coal behind her back, and she said this as though there was something dark and swelling behind the walls. I shivered. Geraint Jones looked at me and he shivered too, and neither of us wanted to touch her fingers at all. And me, I was thinking about those fingers touching dead Mr Ellis last . . . And all the time there were those boots on the table set just like he was standing there looking down at us. We went forward and half-snatched our pieces of coal, and Mrs Ellis said, “Who has the one with the cross then?”

  And then I was saying nothing but feeling sick to my stomach and reaching over to pick up the boots. I was cursing Divine Intervention beneath my breath, and Geraint Jones he was looking crestfallen all right.

  I remember getting home with those boots and there was my brother the Maggot in the kitchen, and me showing off those boots when only a moment before I had been hoping Divine Intervention would give them to Geraint Jones. “You need to be a collier to have boots like these,” I said, and I put them on our own table to polish them a little, making sure to have them where he could see them. Make them truly mine and the Maggot my brother truly jealous. “Serious boots for serious men’s feet, Maggot. Not daft old things like your little boots . . .” and no Da downstairs to stop me taunting him, was there?’

  The beggar Ianto Passchendaele Jenkins stops, and looks at Laddy Merridew, who is looking at Ianto Jenkins’s old boots.

  Laddy frowns. ‘Are those the same boots?’

  The beggar smiles. ‘No, Maggot, they are not. There have been many pairs of boots on these feet since then.’ And he sighs, taps the face of his watch with no hands, and yawns.

  Laddy Merridew gets up from the bench. ‘I suppose it’s time I went back to Gran’s?’

  And as he wanders off up the High Street, Ianto Passchendaele Jenkins stretches out on his bench to have a rest before the cinemagoers start arriving for the evening showing.

  The Deputy Librarian’s Tale and the Undertaker’s Tale i

  In the night, the breeze finds a sheet of newspaper dropped when someone was taking fresh covers to Ianto Passchendaele Jenkins down at Ebenezer. It slides the newspaper along the pavement for it to come to rest against the kerb, by a drain. The breeze may stop too, to have a read, then it lifts the paper into the air and wraps it with care round the leg of the town statue.

  The first bus of the morning will stop outside the Public Library and the driver will nod to the only passenger to get off, ‘Nice morning, Phil,’ but there may be no reply.

  The same passenger will get off the first bus here every morning. Philip ‘Factual’ Philips, Deputy Librarian, a man in the same suit for weeks, his shirt collar curling. In his pocket a packet of ham and tomato on white made by his wife.

  ‘Sandwich again, Phil. That all right?’

  ‘Nancy? Do you know how old wheat is?’

  ‘Tell me.’

  ‘Eleven thousand years.’

  ‘Not this, Phil. This was grown more recent.’

  Factual Philips starts work early, well before Laddy Merridew’s gran arrives to clean, before she sweeps up the sweet papers and polishes the two red dragons at the foot of the library’s marble staircase. He will come down from the bus carrying a bag of books taken home the night before and pored over even while eating his steak and kidney pie.

  ‘Aww Phil, you and your books. Talk to me will you?’

  ‘Yes Nance, look, Euclid says here that a line is a straight curve, and straight lines are infinite, unless they stop, of course . . .’

  ‘Good for Euclid. Jelly and condensed for afters?’<
br />
  ‘Did you know Marco Polo used condensed milk?’

  ‘On his jelly?’

  Factual Philips will let himself into the library, pick up the papers and the post from the mat that says Welcome to a Place of Silence and take it all through to the Reading Room. He will leave it on one of the tables while he goes down the steps to his office in the basement and puts his jacket on the back of his chair. Then he will fetch a kettle out of a cupboard, and while it boils he may take a large book from the back of the kettle’s cupboard, and sit and read closely, making notes. The Collected Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. Then he will make his morning Instant, tuck Sherlock Holmes under his arm and go back up to the Reading Room, where one of the strip lights will be flickering and buzzing like a caught wasp.

  South Wales Echo, Western News, Guardian, Daily Mirror . . . he will thread them onto their wooden sticks, snapping the elastic into place, and leave them on the tables ready.

  ‘Now the post.’

  Factual will open the envelopes addressed to himself and puts the ones for Mrs Z. Cadwalladr, Chief Librarian to one side. He may unfold a couple of posters for pinning up on the library noticeboard, please. Save Our Playgrounds. Public Meeting on Friday, and Interested in Starting a Toy Library? Phone Shirley at the following . . . and will take them nowhere near a noticeboard, but tear them up instead and throw them in the wastepaper basket. Then, with half an hour at least before opening – Factual Philips, Deputy Librarian, will go back to The Collected Adventures and his coffee.

  In his office down below ground, there are no windows, for views out of windows are distractions. The walls are covered with maps, diagrams, lists. On one wall a map of the world with flags in all the capital cities, lists of mountains and their heights, the names of rivers. On another wall all numbers. Tables and formulae, equations and graphs, geometric shapes, angles and circles, diameters and radii. On another, lists of dates, battles, kings and queens, inventions, countries conquered and lost. And pinned on the back of the door in the form of complicated diagrams, each spidering across unused pieces of bedroom wallpaper from home all sellotaped together, reaching right to the floor, every mystery ever solved by Sherlock Holmes, read twenty times over, at least, and new things discovered each visit. Every clue, every red herring and solution, an ever-growing list of minute detective detail. And a hole cut strategically, for the doorknob.

  Before anyone else arrives, Factual Philips will finally leave Sherlock in the basement and check the library’s shelves, running his fingers along the spines. He may be upstairs this morning in the Reference Room, in an alcove by the window. Local History, where he will take down one or two books and read the back covers, ‘I read you three years back. And you.’

  And he moves on to the next alcove, where he tries to shut the window, but it will not close. A book is still open on the table from yesterday. Factual Philips taps his nose. ‘I deduce . . .’ and he goes to close it to put it back on the shelf. But then he looks to see what it is, stops and replaces it on the table, open, exactly as he found it. ‘I deduce indeed. Waiting for Tutt Bevan, you are . . .’

  While the newspaper is still wrapped round the leg of the statue, and Factual Philips is looking at local history, the breeze may make its way under the back door of 1, Owain Terrace, a little way behind the High Street, and into the house of the Undertaker Simon ‘Tutt’ Bevan, who will be tutting to himself even as he washes a plate in the sink. There will always be a few unpaid bills for wood and brass-headed screws next to some pencils, forks, knives, lined up neat as matchsticks on the kitchen table. Tutt Bevan will dry his hands on a striped tea towel, hunch his shoulders and tut again as he feels the draught round his neck, then he may turn to see the breeze sliding one of the bills off the table and onto the tiles. He catches hold of the table to bend down, then he places the bill exactly right, weighing it down with a fork. He will fetch his cap and his jacket, his keys from their hooks, and he almost shuts the door, then remembers he has forgotten something. For the third time that morning he tuts, louder this time, and fetches a walking stick from its place behind the door. Then Tutt Bevan the Undertaker will leave the house to go out into the early morning.

  Outside his door he turns to face along the terrace, pointing his stick in front, and he squints along it as though it was a rifle.

  Back at the Public Library Reference Room, Factual Philips may have finished trying to shut a window that never will shut, and gone back to his office to read. Outside, up the red stone walls the breeze climbs, searching for the gaps, teasing away the things that cling. A single grey hair caught on a small roughness. Small flecks of down from the breasts of the pigeons that preen themselves on the slates. On up the wall it goes, past the foundation stone, the plaques and their important names, all forgotten now. Past the secret initials of stonemasons hidden in the window niches. It inspects the windows all carefully shut, their metal blinds down in case someone may wish to peer in and worry the sleeping books. And finally, it finds one where the blind has been raised already, one with a gap where window meets frame, and the breeze may slip through the gap in the window the Deputy Librarian could not shut, and into the Reference Room.

  ‘A perfect straight line,’ Tutt Bevan the Undertaker may say, and he will follow his stick past the cracked tarmac of an old car park where the only things parked are nettles and broken bottles and old tin cans. Skirting the brick wall and the bins behind the laundry, the wooden walls of sheds whose keys cannot be found, and into the alleyway that leads to the High Street. He may lift his stick into the air now and then, and point it towards the light at the end of the alley. And he follows it until he comes out of the shadows onto the High Street. Opposite the Public Library, on the pavement, his head on one side, listening.

  ‘Morning, Tutt.’ The voice of Peter Edwards, deep. He will not wait for a hello, but will run in his old collier’s boots across the High Street, dodging the cars, running to where the pavement widens in front of the library. He unwraps the newspaper from the statue’s leg, screws it into a ball and pushes it into his pocket then sits down on the steps.

  Tutt Bevan will wait to cross, tutting at the traffic. Then there may come another voice, smaller, ‘Want to cross over?’ And a hand on his sleeve, Laddy Merridew on his way to school.

  Tutt Bevan tuts and nods, and Laddy Merridew waits, holding the frayed sleeve of a jacket bound with leather as Tutt points his stick straight at the Public Library.

  ‘Ready?’ and Laddy Merridew walks across with Tutt, waiting for him to step up on to the pavement the other side. The exact spot Tutt crosses every day.

  Then the boy squeezes the man’s arm by way of goodbye and off he goes towards the school. Tutt Bevan will not move from his place on the pavement and he will watch the shape of Laddy Merridew growing smaller and fainter then disappearing down the High Street. And in his mind’s eye the boy carries on down the hill, one foot on the kerb and one foot in the gutter, following the curves of the High Street as it rides down the hill on its way to the river. Past the chapel and its beggar dozing in the porch he goes, past the cinema, and the Savings Bank to the school, where he turns off the road. But the road goes on without him down past the factories on the edge of town, then to the river, where it becomes a bridge leading to the other side and to the hills.

  Tutt Bevan sighs, and points his stick at the library doors. And he follows it towards the statue and Peter Edwards sitting there on the step, where he stops. ‘Morning. It is a good one?’

  ‘As good as they may be.’

  ‘Still no work then?’

  Peter Edwards squints up at Tutt Bevan and shrugs. ‘Don’t you start. The wife’s bad enough . . .’

  Then without shifting from his line, Tutt will go straight to the library steps, where he rings the bell for the place is not open yet.

  It doesn’t matter who opens the door. Maybe Laddy Merridew’s gran who has arrived to clean, wearing her blue wrap-around pinny with its rickrack braid coming adrift ove
r her slippers. Or Factual Philips, on his way to the basement to fill the kettle again. Tutt Bevan will raise his cap, and salute whoever it is. He will take his stick, and when the door is wide, raise it and look along it, the stick pointing straight at the marble staircase. There are the two dragons guarding the way, one with a cigarette butt deep in its throat where the lads stick them for a laugh; Laddy’s gran finds ash on the steps, and butts left in the sand bucket where the dragons stub the things out.

  Up the stairs he goes, to the first landing, to the Reference Room, and an alcove by a window, its sign saying ‘Maps’ next to the one saying ‘Local History’. And on a table beneath the window is an open book, a few of its pages in the air, undecided whether to fall this way or that. The book Factual Philips did not put away, for he knew Tutt Bevan would want it first thing. A book the breeze is playing with as he watches, playing tricks on the Undertaker, hiding his maps.

  Maps of the town, earliest to latest. The pages rising and falling as the breeze plays with them; the town changing as the pages move. A new street here, a terrace there. More houses here, less houses there, a row of shops appears, then a hall, a building that becomes a warehouse, a tenement, a warehouse again. A chapel. Two chapels, three, four, then three again. This decade, that decade. A bridge over the river marked, then gone. No bridges at all. Then three. No railway then a spider’s web of tracks at the valley floor, marshalling yards. They appear and disappear as the pages flicker. Streets built and unbuilt hanging in the air over a pale oak library table marked with ink blots, scratches. A name or two, shadowy. And, where only fingers can read the words, Simon Bevan loves Blodwen carved neat under the lip.