The Coward’s Tale

by Vanessa Gebbie

  See, what looks like an empty kitchen, a back door flung wide and a chair knocked over. And mud on the floor. A good china cup in pieces, not picked up.

  But the kitchen was not empty. Oh no. Look – there in the corner, in the cupboard under the stairs, see? A cupboard used as a pantry, all dark and smelling of yeast and old apples . . . a small girl was hiding, watching her mam cry. A small girl called Rosie Brightwell, the girl who would be Tutt Bevan’s mam one day, watching and wondering what has happened, and sure indeed she must have done something wrong, worse than playing in the ash in the middle room grate. For her mam was crying so hard and not for cutting onions.

  Rosie came into the kitchen nowjust and there she was, her mam, with some ladies from the street, who didn’t usually come to this house – her mam holding on to someone’s hand with her knuckles all white. And the child slipped beneath the kitchen table with no one noticing, then to the pantry cupboard under the stairs and pulled the door almost shut so she could see out and no one could see her.

  And then she saw her mam taken away crying by old Mrs Watkins from up the road, that Mrs Watkins who wore slippers all day and had two spinster daughters and who now had her arm round Rosie’s mam, saying, “Come with me, Mrs Brightwell, my love?”

  And oh the child Rosie was there in the pantry surrounded by the smell of apples she did not dare eat in case that too was wrong. Hungry and sick at the same time, and wondering what it was she must have done, and she tutted to herself just as her mam tutted when things were not quite right, the good knives and forks not straight at the table, or a plate chipped.

  Rosie crouched in the shadows watching the kitchen door for a long time, knowing what it is like to be forgotten. Maybe she too cried a bit, but she did not cry easy, this child. Oh no. Went to sleep on the floor, waking only when there was the sound of boots on the sill. Only the boots. The man wearing them was silent.

  Her da, come home early from the ironworks, a da who usually came home noisy, flung his bag down on the table no matter how neat it may be laid – and called out, “My Margie, I am here! Is Gareth home yet and where’s that Rosie?”

  But today he did none of that. Her da just put his bag down on the floor like the bag weighed a hundredweight. He stood there as though he was counting to one hundred, then over he went to the table and picked up a plate. He lifted it to his nose and sniffed at it, then he sat down at the table and howled, holding that plate over his face as his little daughter watched from her cupboard. And the back door open for everyone to hear.

  “Oh Da!” But the child did not say this loud, only whispered it, “Oh Da,” for no, Gareth was not home yet, her big brother who worked down a pit with a pretty name, digging the coal, and who usually came home and pretended to be a lion, on all fours. Swept the girl off her feet, roaring like a lion roars, and carried her round the house on his back until their mam would shout to come and eat and leave the lass alone not to excite her before bedtime?

  A late child, Tutt’s mam Rosie Brightwell was, see? Her da old enough to stop working, and her big brother Gareth Brightwell not married yet but almost. Been courting Lily Rees up Dowlais, been saving up to get married and finally had just enough for Lily Rees up Dowlais’s mam and da not to complain. Not too much, anyway.

  The child watched her da from the shadows, her lovely da with a plate over his face, his shoulders heaving like he was laughing. But he was not.

  She watched him get up from the table and take the chair fallen to the floor, and he pushed it in all neat, like her mam said to. And then there was a shadow on the doorway and it was that Mrs Zacharia from next door with the white whiskers on her chin and no sweets in her pinny pocket today, no smiles, “Mr Brightwell? We have Mrs Brightwell with us now, see, and she is a little better. Up at number eighteen, she is, with the Watkins. Shall you come and fetch her? Your Rosie is gone somewhere, I think. Out playing?”

  Watching as her da waved Mrs Zacharia away, then sitting at the table, and picking his lunch box off the floor, opening it. Untouched, the lunch, Rosie could see that. And she watched her da take out some sandwiches made only that morning by her mam, at the counter over there, slicing the bread level, and singing, then putting the top slice for herself, the “dry slice” she called it, to be eaten after Gareth and her man had gone to work. Those sandwiches her mam made were still in the box, slices of bread spread with a little margarine, a little cold cut of lamb, a little beetroot. Almost nothing at all.

  And the child in the cupboard saw her da taking out a lamb sandwich and putting it on a plate, holding it in his hands still dirty from the tram ride home, the day at the ironworks done almost, and he patted the sandwich with two fingers, over and over.

  Somewhere inside the child knew that her da was crying because the slices of bread were not whole. That they were cut. And the other halves had gone this morning with Gareth to his work. Her own big brother’s lunch to be eaten under the ground. Watching through a gap in the cupboard door now, where the wood had split in the kitchen heat. She saw her da get up and cross to the window, where he held on to the kitchen sink as though he could not stand any longer by himself. And he took the sandwich, and bit into it, and began to chew. And at the same time, tears were running down his face and onto the sandwich, dampening the bread, and he was eating his own tears. But her da found it hard to swallow, and he coughed a little, and took a white cup from the draining board and filled it, took a mouthful, and chewed it all slowly, the bread and the water and the lamb.

  Then her da went back over to the table all laid neat for four, and he pulled the chair out, the chair he just tucked away. He carried the chair out of the kitchen to the middle room, where the child could not see him any more. But she heard him right enough, moving another chair, to fit this one by the dresser. And something that sounded like a cough coming again. Then she heard the creak of the staircase over her head, his feet going up, and turning to her own room, and she felt her da placing the chair in her own room, and that was not a good thing. The child pushed herself out of the cupboard then, ran through to the stairs, and stood in the shadows of the hallway to talk to her da, but she did not know which voice to use – a loud voice was wrong, a soft voice was wrong, “Oh my Da, I do not want the chair.”

  And her da listened, see, and sure enough, after a pause, back down the stairs he came carrying the chair, and said nothing to the child, but went out to the yard where he found the axe for firewood from the back of the privvy, and he set about that good chair with the axe. Bending over it, his arm rising and falling and the sound like a hand beating at a locked door. Until the chair came to splinters, her da silent, the birds taking fright, and the child, Rosie, who would be Tutt Bevan’s mam, flat against the garden wall as though she would be swallowed by the bricks, making one sound only for she would not cry.

  “Tut, Dada. Tut.” ’

  The cinemagoers will sigh. ‘Aww, waste of a good chair,’ one will say, and another will tell him to be quiet for it was never about the chair at all. Then Matty Harris, still leaning against the cinema wall, listening, and not quite satisfied with the stories, not yet, for they have not answered all his questions, frowns, ‘But what is this to do with walking in a straight line then?’

  The beggar pauses. ‘Ah. Loss takes people in strange ways, it does. Look. For a while all was almost the same in that house, except for only three chairs round the table, now. And the child’s mam no longer making everything neat and tidy, but instead forgetting to lay the table at all, and it is the small child Rosie who did it, tutting to herself, trying to make it right. She dropped things sometimes, and her mam did not even notice, but the child did, for she wanted things nice and straight. And the meals were always as neat as she could make them. But silent.

  Then there came the day that her da did not come home from work himself. And there had been no accidents, oh no. And when they asked they found he had not been to work at all, and he was nowhere to be found in the town. A mystery. Rosie’s da di
sappeared for more than a week. Then he was found, and where? In the town? In another? Not at all. He was found miles away, not anywhere near a town.’

  Ianto Jenkins stops again, and asks for a drink of water. He waits for a while, then he clears his throat and continues.

  ‘There is a place to the north, on very edge of this country, where a river runs into the sea, spreading its skirts over the valley until the water is hardly deep enough to carry a single fish. There are beaches in the river, shingle banks, stones brought down all the way from the mountains. Stones that were once rocks, tossed about in the water, falling and sliding against themselves for years until they became pebbles, small, rounded. On their journey to the sea, to become sand, then dust. They found him there, in the middle of the river. On that shingle bank they found him, just standing at the end of the day, looking out to sea. A grey end of day when mist knits the sea and the sky together and there is no horizon. No shadows. Standing facing the sea, staring west in his shirtsleeves, his trousers wet all where the water had climbed up the cloth. And no boots. His feet white on the stones like they were stone themselves. His hands hanging by his sides, empty.

  “Where are your boots?” they called across the river – the men who came to find him. He did not reply at first, then came his voice, soft, carried over the water’s noise, “Left them, must have.”

  And it seems this is the last thing he said to anyone. A strange journey indeed. It was pieced together finally from snippets told in pubs a long way from this town. Something like this but the actual is never known. Near enough.

  First, there were two tickets bought on two buses, going north, where he sat hunched in his seat twisting his hands, not speaking to anyone, except one young lad who asked if he was going somewhere nice.

  “Going for a bit of a walk.”

  And then a ride in a Welsh Hills lorry from the Rhondda to a place on the border of two countries. A side road where the Welsh Hills driver stopped for his sandwiches near a field where on the maps, the border runs through, dividing grass from the same seed, in the same small patch of mud, into two nations. Seen here, he was, later, by the side of the road, just standing by a gate. Looking at his watch, someone said, and thought he was waiting for a lift. But he must have waited until it was past noon, someone said, for the sun to drop in front. Kept watching the sky, looking at the light, and keeping his shadow behind him. That was the first day.

  On the second day he was seen again, some miles away, after lunchtime, walking through a hamlet, away from his shadow again. And as hamlets are, grown round a crossing point on a stream, or a crossroads, maybe a place where animals were driven? And so the road curved, as roads will – and he did not go with the road but stopped.

  He stopped because in front of him rose a wall, right across his path. And what did he do, go round the wall to find another path? Oh no. He was seen climbing that wall, and dropping into a garden. Someone who saw him went to peer over the wall, to see what he was doing, in case he was up to no good. But he was doing nothing more than walking away between the flower beds, under two old apple trees where he bent and picked up some apples from the grass.

  The householder took up the tale when asked, because further on in that garden is a small pond, a natural thing where the groundwater wells up, and there are reeds, kingcups growing. And indeed, his wife, watching from her kitchen window, was about to shout, to come out with a wooden spoon raised as though it was a stick, when her husband stopped her, “Watch . . .”

  They saw their visitor get as far as the edge of the pond and stop when it barred his way. He did not skirt the pond, but removed his boots, then waded in. He pressed on, knee deep through the flowers, stepped out the other side and sat on the lawn to put his boots back on. A dog barked and the man looked up, puzzled, as though he was waking from a sleep, and made straight for the wall on the other side of the plot. Stepped carefully onto the border among the shrubs, until he was facing an old climbing rose. And he seemed to ignore the thorns, but grasped the stems, climbed it and was gone over the wall.

  Then a stranger was seen near sundown on the next day, further on by a half-finished stone wall dividing a field. Seen standing alongside the wall, not moving, as though he was waiting for something or someone. Eating apples from his pockets, facing to the west. Seen by the man making the wall, who thought he was going to take some of the stones away, he was so close. But in the end all he did was lift a few new stones to the top, place them carefully and correctly, then he continued on his way, walking alongside, one hand on the top, until he disappeared into the trees at the edge of the field. And that was the third day.

  He was not seen the next. But after, when the word had spread, there were found places he had slept. A woodshed, a barn, alongside another garden wall. He had always left something as a thank you, mind. A clean and folded handkerchief by a place where the leaves were flattened, the stub of a pencil wrapped in a note written on a scrap of paper bag, “For my place of sleep, thank you.”

  On the fifth day, he must have gone right through a great estate, where there is a house bigger than this chapel, this cinema, this Savings Bank, all built together, the land greater than half this town itself. Must have walked right through the woodland where they breed birds to be shot. And maybe there was no need for him to wait for his shadow to fall behind him at midday, for there are no shadows like that beneath the trees.

  A gamekeeper caught the noise of his pheasants and fetched his gun for it was probably the fox again. And for all the searching that gamekeeper did, all he heard were a few twigs snapping in the distance, and all he saw move were the starlings that peck at the pheasant’s corn rising dark and singing above the wood. And he knew there must have been an intruder, but no one was seen, and nothing was taken save maybe a handful of the corn. But perhaps someone slept beside the pheasants’ hut, for the warmth?

  When the traveller crossed the boundary of that great estate he had almost crossed a whole country then, hardly shifting from his line.

  And a woman said she found him the next day standing in her kitchen without his boots. Barefoot on her cold floor, she said. The last house before the edge of the country, not far from the river that runs straight down to the sea, wide and shallow. Come straight in through the open back door. Standing there, he was, by the kitchen table, his hand on the back of a chair, smiling down at the single place laid for tea as though there was someone sitting there. And that smile chased away whatever fear she may have had, she said. He looked up and smiled at the woman who thought maybe he had come to find food. “Will you need something to eat?”

  But he shook his head, and left her kitchen by the inner door, and went into the house. Then to the hallway and made to leave by the front door. But it was locked, she said. He was just standing in his bare feet with one hand on the door, and never said a word, did not turn round. The woman said she went into her front room and fetched the key from the bowl on the table, and she unlocked and unbolted the door for him.

  Not without a worry, oh no – for isn’t the front door of a house only opened twice – first to let in a bride and groom, and then again to let them out, but for their last journeys? And she stood on the step, pushing a bramble aside with one hand to watch him walk away from her house across the lawn, then through a gate into the field where there were ewes. She saw him cross the field in the direction of the river in front, only stopping to take some wool from a wire fence. She thought he may have played with it in his hands as he walked away.

  And the last day he was found, in the cold of the evening, standing on his island at the mouth of the river, on pebbles and shingle brought down from the mountains. Standing there in his shirtsleeves, his trousers rolled up to his knees like it was the start of a holiday, an outing from the ironworks. Staring straight out to sea, he was, straight at the horizon. His feet white on the stones like they were stone themselves. His hands hanging by his sides, empty.

  “Where are your boots?” they called across
to him.

  “Left them, must have.”

  And they went to him, calling, “Come away in now, it is cold. They will all be waiting . . .”

  But he did not turn his head, or speak. And it was not until someone said the only thing to do was to go to him if he would not come to them, that anyone moved. And this man waded through the current, calling to him all the while, “Come on, mun, we are cold enough . . .”

  But when he reached him, and stood next to him, and put a hand on his arm, he felt how cold that arm was, how cold the shoulder. How solid and stiff his body was, standing there in the water, the eyes fixed and clouding. And they knew then he could not have spoken to anyone about his boots . . .’

  Here the cinemagoers will shake their heads. ‘Walked for seven days? But he went nowhere at all.’

  Ianto Passchendaele Jenkins shakes his head in return. ‘Nowhere? They saw where he walked. In a perfect straight line, from one side of the country to the other. Walking in the afternoons only, his shadow only ever behind him, walking towards the sea.

  And sometimes, we can ask why and there is no answer, but it is right all the same. His journey was finished.

  And who is to say, but his grandson Simon Tutt Bevan, decides to help people sort out the loss of the people they love. He does it well, and gently. And he tuts, for things are never straight as he would like. Tuts when there is something adrift. Like his mother did, and her mother before her.