The Coward’s Tale

by Vanessa Gebbie

  Until suddenly a small voice, ‘Mam? What are those men doing?’ and a stern-faced mam just mentioning, please, it is only for children this playground, not for great lumps like them. Two red-faced men climb off the see-saw and the child climbs on, his small battle won, while back there on his bench, Laddy Merridew takes out his notebook and biro and writes something down, not to forget.

  Tutt Bevan and Factual Philips continue on their way through the park, keeping to the tarmac drive except where it does a circle round the rhododendron bushes where the boys go to smoke cigarettes after school, straight to the gates the other side, crossing the road, and on down the alley between the wall of the launderette and the working men’s club, down the hill towards the High Street.

  The alley comes out at the car park behind the shopping precinct, there is the deliveries entrance to Woolworth’s straight ahead, and the train goes through that entrance to the storage area at the back of the shop.

  ‘What are you doing here, Mr Bevan?’ and it is the manager of Woolworth’s come to find a box of Imperial Leather and the last of the Pond’s Cold Cream for the toiletries counter, and finding instead the undertaker who buried the manager’s own uncle last week, a lovely funeral too, solid oak. There is a short conversation about train sets, and a holiday soon on discount, to Majorca as well, for the manager, before he shows them the way into the shop.

  Then Tutt and Factual are walking straight down the aisle between toiletries and children’s T-shirts, and out of the side door of the shop past the ladies leaning on their counters, ‘Where did those two come from, Gwlad?’

  But to some questions there come no answers and the side door closes.

  Outside, the journeyers are faced with a high red stone wall. Factual Philips sighs, ‘The Public Library is right in the way, I am sorry, nothing I can do about that . . .’ and Factual is right. There is the side wall of the library, its red stones rising over their heads, and not a single window this side for them to climb through even if they had a ladder.

  Tutt Bevan sighs as well, ‘Aww. Never mind, we’ve come a good distance.’

  But Factual Philips is not in the mood for giving up, and anyway their line will be waiting for them on the other side of the wall, won’t it? ‘We aren’t done yet, mun . . .’

  Then it is round the wall to the wide pavement right in front of the library, to find Peter Edwards sitting on the steps of the statue. ‘What is going on? You left here nowjust?’

  ‘Just going for a walk, nothing much,’ and the High Street is a gentle curve down to the square, with the wall of Ebenezer Chapel to stop them next in their line, but it is an easy thing to skirt the chapel, to cross the square and pass by the Savings Bank and the cinema, past the entrance to the school, then carry on down the High Street towards the river. Passing the station, over the railway line, and down to the river where the road bridge is not quite aligned but it is better than walking downriver to the footbridge. And then straight up the hill, taking it slowly, through one new estate and another, then some older houses, following the alders, then the road becomes a track that follows an old stone wall and only goes to the little cemetery at the top of the hill overlooking the town. Just below the ridge and the trees bent by the wind as though they would tip forwards and run back down to the valley floor.

  And later, the travellers stand, tired now, at the top of the hill by the graves in the little Kindly Light cemetery, at its centre a tall granite memorial stone. And they turn to look back. Factual Philips sits on the wall, gazing down at the town, ‘Look where we’ve come,’ and Tutt joins him.

  They see the river running at the lowest point, following the contours as the terraces do, each making its own way, dictated by the valley. They point, and seek out the way they have come through the town, and Tutt Bevan tries to see, or remember, the alleyways and streets, houses and parks on the other side of the valley. They see the chapel, the library, the school, where their path turned an angle, but where they continued like ants following some ancient walkway through a wood.

  Factual Philips smiles for it has been a good day with clues found and followed and paths walked, and he turns to Tutt Bevan, sitting there with his chin on his stick, looking back over the town, ‘Done well, I reckon.’

  There is no reply but the usual and a shake of the head, from Tutt Bevan. He does not see their path as straight. He sees only the places where the path was wrong, the corners they had to turn round solid walls too high for men to climb. He remembers the library and the chapel standing square across their path, the blank walls of the cinema and the school building. Locked gates. Then the road bridge at an angle over the river, resting on stone stanchions built into the banks, the foundation of rocks beneath the surface not quite in line with the road, so the road was moved to fit. He sees the walls he could not cross and the misaligned bridge rising into the air, becoming insurmountable, his own mistakes, dreadful. For a long time he sits there, unspeaking, grim. And he tuts. And he stands up to point out to Factual the places they could not go.

  But even as he stretches out his arm to point the sun warms their backs and throws their shadows along the grass and down the slope of the hill. Shadows which are joined by another, tall and regular. The granite memorial, carved with the names of the Kindly Light lost. And the three shadows grow longer and darker as the sun sinks behind them, until they merge into a single shaft as straight as a compass needle, running down the hillside and over the river at no crossing point at all, due east. Not stopped by tree, earth, water or stone. The Undertaker and the Librarian watch as the shadow flows on over the town, straight and strong, until it touches the top of the opposite hill and disappears on its own infinite and unplanned trajectory into the evening sky.

  In the Park, on the Bench Dedicated to Miss Gwynneth Watkins

  Laddy Merridew has invented a dentist’s appointment as that is preferable to mathematics, and he is spending his appointment in the park, as he was before, writing in his notebook. He’s half-listening for the bell on Ebenezer Chapel to sound a muffled half past something calling him back to school for geography, which is not so bad. But he is concentrating so hard on the words coming out of his biro that he does not hear the boots of Ianto Passchendaele Jenkins coming towards him on the path. Nor does he hear a hello as Ianto Jenkins sits next to him on the bench. Or a cough. ‘Morning, Maggot.’ It is only after a while that the boy looks up, and jumps.

  Ianto Jenkins smiles, ‘Sorry, did I wake you?’

  The boy smiles, closes his notebook and hands Ianto a piece of chewing gum. The beggar hands it back. ‘Never got on with chewing gum, myself. You don’t have any toffee, do you?’

  Laddy shakes his head.

  ‘What you are writing?’

  Laddy reddens. ‘Nothing much,’ then he changes his mind. ‘Your stories. Is that all right?’ He puts one hand over the words. ‘There’s nothing else to do at Gran’s. She doesn’t like me playing my drum.’

  Ianto Passchendaele Jenkins thinks for a moment. ‘No school today?’

  ‘No. I mean yes. But I’m not going this morning.’

  The beggar says nothing, just raises an eyebrow.

  ‘I don’t like maths, I’m no good at it. I get it all wrong, and they laugh. Anyway I’m not there for long, so there’s no point.’ He is quiet for a while, bites his thumbnail. ‘Mam rang last night. You know when people are too nice, and you know there’s something else, but they aren’t saying?’

  Ianto Jenkins nods, slowly, as if he doesn’t really.

  ‘It was nice to talk to her. But the thing is, I don’t know if she’s telling me the truth, do I? Not now I know she’s lied to me sometimes.’

  Ianto nods again, as if this time, he does know.

  Laddy Merridew clicks his biro on off on off. ‘Dad’s ringing tonight.’

  The two sit in silence for a while. A silence that is broken by the arrival of a yellow dog who stands and barks at nothing and a shout from across the grass for the dog to get back ther
e, and fast. So it does. Laddy watches it go. ‘My dad is too nice.’ He thinks for a moment, then asks, ‘What was your dad like?’

  Ianto Passchendaele Jenkins takes a deep breath before answering.

  ‘My da? He was nice too. For years until pain stopped that. And he was deaf, mostly, although his ears seemed to get better just when my brother the Maggot and I did not want him to be hearing and that was nothing short of amazing. Mind, some of the noise Maggot made was hard not to hear – beating the pans in the kitchen with wooden spoons until the walls shuddered – “I am being a band, listen!” Oh yes, a band all right. But Da was deaf enough for normal things, like most of the other colliers I knew, and that was due to the noise down below, he said.

  ‘My da used to put his hand up to his bad ear when he wanted to hear. He would cup his hand behind it like he was tending a bird. But I noticed that, for all he used to tell me to listen in chapel, he did not always help his ear to hear the sermons, and that was a strange thing. The hand he brought up to his ear in chapel was his right hand, another strange thing, for when he was not in chapel it was his left he used.

  ‘But he did not write with his left hand. He did not write much at all, for there was no call for it he said, but when he did have to write, it was with his right and done very slowly. He told me that when he was at school he was not given permission to write with his left hand, which is how he would have written, if he’d been allowed to. For if he did it would be the Devil himself doing the writing, they said at school, and there was no telling what might come out onto the slate. So all those who had the inclination to write like that had their left hands tied behind their backs for them to learn to write the other way. My da said that was the reason for his stuttering a little bit now and again.’

  Laddy, holding his biro in his left hand, frowns, ‘I don’t stutter,’ and the beggar says something about things moving on, as things must, right-handed, left-handed, it makes no difference, now.

  Laddy shakes his head. ‘I wish you’d tell the teachers down the school that. They say they can’t read my writing.’

  ‘In that case their eyes must try harder,’ Ianto Jenkins says. ‘But hands . . . Da’s hands were black under the skin and it did not matter how much he scrubbed it was always there, like it was part of the body itself. And he had a cough. Mind you, Maggot, I did not know any collier who did not. My da took peppermints down for his throat, and it made the cough a bit better. Not like dead Mr Ernest Ellis whose boots I had, mind, who was now gone and his cough with him . . . his cough was so bad the neighbours could not sleep next door.’

  Laddy Merridew smiles. ‘We’re meant to be doing coal mines in history.’

  ‘History, now, is it?’

  ‘They make it boring though. Not like your stories. You make it like it is still happening, in your head anyway.’

  And the beggar shakes that head, ‘It is. And sometimes, Maggot, I wish it wasn’t.’ He pauses. Then asks, ‘Will you write about Ianto Jenkins in your notebook?’

  Laddy thinks for a while. ‘I think so . . .’

  ‘And why is that? Only “think so”?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ He points to the path. ‘Did you see Mr Bevan and Mr Philips from the library walking everywhere in straight lines yesterday? I tried this morning, from Gran’s to here. I reckon it’s impossible.’

  ‘Maybe it is.’

  ‘So why did they try then?’

  ‘Because they had to.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Seems to me they had to, anyway. That journey started a long time back, when they were boys, maybe even further.’

  Laddy Merridew sits and thinks for a moment, clicking his biro.

  ‘Am I on a journey then?’

  ‘You are, indeed.’

  ‘I might try again.’

  ‘Did you look at a map? Would you look at a map next time?’

  ‘No – I just followed my nose.’

  ‘And did your nose know where to go?’

  The boy shakes his head.

  ‘Ah well. Maybe it is all to do with where you start and where you finish. Sometimes, all maps do is stop us finding new places. And sometimes . . .’ he stops.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Sometimes, maps make places different to how they are in our heads.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘Questions . . . well, Maggot. I had a map once, drawn special. It made me less frightened of going down the pit, but it came after something bad . . .’ and he taps the face of his watch with no hands just to check if there is time before the chapel bell calls Laddy back down to the school. And there is, so Ianto Passchendaele Jenkins begins his own story again.

  ‘It was a few nights before I was to go down Kindly Light and I could not sleep for being frightened. I must have woken my brother the Maggot as well with my tossing and turning, for he was up and walking about the place in the dark wearing dead Mr Ernest Ellis’s boots, looking such a charlie – “I shall come and be a collier with you, Ianto . . .”

  “You will not, my Maggot,” I said, “You are too small. Have to be big and strong, to go down there. In a hundred years, little brother . . .” and I told him none too gently to take them off for they were mine, and to shut up and get back into bed, or we would be waking Da and that was a bad thing for he was not well.

  And he was not well. My da’s leg that was crushed down the pit was not healing right at all, and the wrappings had to be changed every day, and that leg smelled something bad. Some days he was staying in bed for hours, just sleeping, and that was not like my da at all.

  But I must have gone back to sleep after that and oh, I had some bad dreams again that night, I remember. I have never forgotten them. I dreamed that men with white faces were lowered into the darkness at the beginning of a day, then men with darkness on their faces came up at the end of the day. And in my dream they were changed under the ground but exactly how I didn’t know and neither did they. I knew then that I would be changed myself when I went below ground, whether I wanted it or not. It was terrible. I woke again, wet with sweat, and cold, for my brother the Maggot had rolled right away and was as far from me as possible. And I was suddenly so lonely, and I missed my mam, and it was as if for all those years I had not been missing her properly and now I was and there was not room in my heart for all the missing. There was a weight on my heart as though the ground had fallen on me, and I could not breathe. And I rolled out of bed and went along to my da’s room and I went in and shook him awake. He was facing the wall.

  “Who is it?”

  “Me, Ianto, Dada.”

  “What?”

  “I am frightened, Dada.”

  My da did not turn over. “And I am tired, and my leg hurts like the devil and now thanks to you I shall not get back to sleep . . .”

  Then the words came out too fast, “Dada, I am frightened of going below. I am frightened of the dark, and of the ground and the stones falling – Dada, I am frightened . . . please don’t make me go?”

  He turned over then to look at me and the bedclothes moved, and his leg hurt him and he breathed in sharp through his teeth and the smell was bad again, “Get back to your bed.”

  And I had not heard my da speak in that voice before, and I had been lonely when I came in and the floorboards were cold and I was lonelier than before and I must have started to cry, even though I was twelve, and big, and nearly grown, and he just lay back on his pillow and did not look at me any more. And then his voice was shaking, he kept it low not to wake the Maggot, “I will not have a coward for a son. Go away.”

  I did go away. I went back to bed, but I did not sleep.’

  Laddy Merridew stops him. ‘But being frightened of something, really frightened, isn’t the same, is it?’ Ianto Jenkins shakes his head and there is a pause before he continues.

  ‘My da made me the map that next day, sitting up in bed. Maybe he knew he had said something hard. He did not say it again, but what he said could not be unsaid, could it? Perhaps t
o make things easier, he drew me a map of Kindly Light pit as I watched, and it was an extraordinary thing to see. It was drawn on a hymn sheet brought away from Ebenezer Chapel without thinking, and that name was written at the top. My da added the words “Kindly Light”. I had to bring a book for him to lean on, and I brought the Bible for it was the right size. He smiled and said that was appropriate.

  The pencil was so small in his hand. His tongue licked at his moustache now and again like he was just a small boy concentrating on his sums. I remember thinking he was a boy once and that was something new to consider later.

  My da’s map started with a few little squares signifying the village houses near the pit, right up by the first lines of “O Iesu Mawr”, which is still not my best hymn for it is such a slow one and a dirge. Then it grew to show all the roads below, all the tunnels, the pit head and pit bottom, all labelled neat. It covered the whole hymn sheet in the end and even turned onto the back for the furthest places and the ventilation shaft.

  And it did look very strange, Maggot, with the words of those chapel hymns appearing in the tunnels like angels or devils were to read them below, and instructions for singing light or soft – for the minister he liked his singing to be well – in the down-draught. My head found itself doing two things now. First of all it found the map a funny thing, and I was smiling to myself to see this small city appearing over the hymns. And then it became a frightening thing, for although Da had told me about Kindly Light in words many times, and drawn it for me in my head . . . now that I could see it spidering all over Ebenezer’s words I saw how big it all was. I could not quite keep it all in my head.

  In a few places he put directions next to the tunnels that said how long it would take to walk from pit bottom to coal face: “26 minutes or 39 minutes”, he wrote along one of the roads, “42 minutes or 60 minutes” along another. The smaller is the time it would take to walk at the beginning of the day with a good sleep and a good breakfast inside. The longer number was the same walk at shift end with your legs aching and your stomach howling, and your poor tongue stuck to the roof of your mouth with dust, for you finished your water hours ago.