The Coward’s Tale

by Vanessa Gebbie

  Seeing it all and learning it all – for he told me I must do that, not to be any more of a burden than the new lads are anyway – I wondered if there was really singing down there, because it all felt dark and looming, to me. He said there certainly was singing sometimes, especially early, and if the air down there was damped well and truly and throats were not yet dried over by the dust, and if it was a holiday the next day, and if the pay was to go up. And then too, at the end of the day there was also singing, and sometimes it was hymns like those on the map, and they echoed along the tunnels.

  But it was not always hymns they were singing. Da said there were songs that would get them thrown out of chapel for a month and that was a fact. And he said this with a laugh as if he had forgotten last night and what he had said. I asked him once if he could sing a little for he still had a voice on him despite the dust . . . but he would shake his head and say there was always time for singing later. He sang a lot before Mam died, Maggot. And after? I do not remember.

  But I do remember my brother the Maggot playing with an old wind-up train on the bottom stair, and holding his hand out asking to see that map, and me saying no, it was too important – and Da’s voice all sharp from upstairs, “Ianto, show your brother the map, will you?” then calling me back upstairs . . .

  “Yes Dada?”

  “You are not kind to your brother. He worships you, that boy does.”

  And me leaning in the doorway of Da’s bedroom, the smell of his bad leg in the air, “I never asked to be worshipped . . .”

  But I was very glad indeed to have that hymn sheet map, for now I knew where I was going. I was glad it had hymns on it as well, and I would be keeping it folded small in my pocket. And do you know something, Maggot?’

  The beggar stops, and Laddy Merridew looks at him. ‘What?’

  ‘That little piece of paper did one big thing. It changed where I was going from a bad dream into a real city underground. And I was almost looking forward to seeing it, just the once – but I did not tell myself that out loud.’

  ‘I don’t suppose you still have that map, do you, Mr Jenkins?’

  ‘To stick in that notebook of yours, is it? No, Maggot. It is lost down there.’ He is quiet for a while, and just as Laddy Merridew is about to ask another question, he says, ‘And now – what is that sound I hear?’

  The muffled bell of the chapel clock is sounding the half hour. The beggar gets up and stretches. ‘You need to go to school, and I have work to do.’

  Laddy Merridew pushes his notebook into his pocket, and walks off down the path.

  The Piano Tuner’s Tale i

  Sometimes the wind will lose its voice in the noises of the town. Then it finds it again in the alders that line the river where Half Harris catches his cloths and sticks, and in the rose bushes that straggle over the garden walls in Tredegar Terrace. It whistles down the dark alleyways between the houses. It hoooos low notes through the old railway tunnel near the Brychan, and it sings in the wires that carry men’s voices out of the valley. Then Ianto Passchendaele Jenkins will stop his begging on the steps of the cinema and raise a finger into the air, ‘Will you listen to that?’ and the cinemagoers will listen to the singing as each wire carries its note steady as a bell until the streets of the town are filled with music. ‘Oh there’s beautiful, listen . . .’

  And the wind tries to sing in the other wire that grows thick round the old Kindly Light buildings down the valley, rusty and barbed as brambles. But all the wind learns to say here is, ‘Keep Out. Danger.’

  At The Cat Public House on the corner of Maerdy Street the doors will be closed for the night now, and bolted. The publican is taking boxes of empty bottles down the cellar steps, and Maggie the publican’s wife has stopped leaning on the bar in her low dress and smiling. She has taken off her high heels and gone upstairs, barefoot. The last of the night’s drinkers left thirty minutes since, gone off to see if their homes are still there in Gwilym Terrace and Mary Street, Garibaldi Street and Highland View. Most will be. And most of the drinkers will have been let in by now and a few sent straight back out under the stars to sleep anywhere they like.

  ‘Mind you keep that old singing in your head, Caruso . . .’

  But The Cat is not quiet for all that it is almost empty. Sound is spilling into the street out of an open window and from under the door. A single broken note from the piano in the bar, an old iron upright that leaned against the wall for a rest a long time back and never moved again, too heavy to shift for new wallpaper or a lick of paint. Tuneless, the one note played over and over, flailing away from the wood and the wires, its echo breaking against the tobacco-stained walls while the player of the note reminds the piano how to sing.

  Nathan Bartholomew the Piano Tuner, who says not much to other people but gazes into their faces as if he is searching for something. Who speaks softly to his pianos as he tunes them, reciting whole poems, verses of hymns, resting on the sounds and inflections. The ‘m’s, ‘n’s and ‘l’s drawn out as he holds them steady while the notes of the piano waver among them and settle. He perches on stools that are far too small, his legs bent, knees almost touching the keys, his long narrow feet in thin-soled shoes planted flat on the floorboards. Or if the floorboards are hidden by a carpet, those shoes will be placed together at the side of the stool, socks rolled neatly inside and the feet pressed to the floor, the bones showing pale under skin as thin as sheets.

  Nathan Bartholomew has no home in this town but a rented room at The Cat. He arrived a few weeks back with a single suitcase, ordered half a cider and sat at the old piano with his back to the room, and did not lift the lid.

  Matty Harris, Deputy Bank Manager, standing at the bar, finishing his third half pint, his eyes never leaving Maggie the publican’s wife, ‘No good trying to play that one, mun.’ And Philip Factual Philips, Deputy Librarian, drawing a map of the river on the bar with one finger in a drop of spilled beer, ‘Sounds like someone’s strangling a cat, that thing . . .’

  Then the newcomer reached down and put his glass on the carpet. He sat for a while saying nothing, running his fingers over the scratches and stains on the piano lid, playing scales on the wood, turned to no one in particular and said he’d heard there was a room. ‘For a month or two? I tune pianos. Are there any need seeing in the town?’

  And the Librarian turned from his artwork, and Matty Harris had a think. And others as well.

  ‘Aww Duw, yes. That thing in the school hall calls itself a piano.’

  ‘And there’s the one at Penuel Chapel. Mind, I think they keep it bad so you have to sing over?’

  ‘And Mrs Bennie Parrish, she’s still got Mr Bennie Parrish’s old piano. She was telling me only nowjust it is all silent now he’s dead and gone.’

  And Maggie, the publican’s wife, watching Nathan Bartholomew from behind the bar, ‘Then there is ours. That thing. Past repairing though, isn’t it? Good for nothing, really? Too late.’

  Nathan looked up, his hand stroking the piano lid, ‘It is never too late.’

  And there were pianos in the town. The old walnut grand in the corner of the school assembly hall, the ivory picked off, one leg pinned with metal, its lid stacked with books and old exam papers with the names of scholars who left last year, the year before. Its notes, hoarse and short, echoing against the floorboards and the walls then stopping at the hall doors as though they had not the strength to run along the corridors. And upstairs, in their airless and tiny rooms, the pianos for lessons, for practice, with graffiti in the veneer: Barry hates Mozart.

  There were ebony uprights in the chapels, polished once, now dull as shadows. Penuel and Bethel’s pianos – their chords rising into the tight air on Sundays to drop down the cracks between the flagstones. Pianos in the houses, many, used as sideboards in the middle rooms, lamps and doilies on the lids, photographs and more photographs. Ashtrays. Budgies.

  ‘They’ve forgotten why they are here at all . . .’

  Maybe Nathan Barth
olomew started work a day or two after, at the house of Mrs Bennie Parrish, whose piano is never played now Mr Bennie has gone, but she likes it right all the same. Sometimes her leg plays up so badly the neighbour’s twin boys who are saving for roller skates call to take her books back to the library for a coin or two, and they did when Nathan was at her house. They stopped to peer into the front room and whisper, ‘Look – he’s taken off his shoes!’

  And there was the Piano Tuner sitting on the stool, his feet bare on her carpet. He knelt slowly as if he would ask the piano to marry him, his ear to the wood, tapping a key over and over again. Then reaching up a hand in a cotton glove, stroking the strings. All the while talking to the piano about music being the food of love, and looking at the photos of a smiling Mr Bennie Parrish in his silver frames on the wall just by. And the boys didn’t quite stifle their laughter and Nathan Bartholomew stopped in his talking and listening and looked up.

  Mrs Bennie Parrish limped through from the middle room, ‘Leave the poor man alone, will you and fetch my books . . .’

  She listened for the stamp of their feet going up the stairs and gave them a coin when they came down carrying four books, two each. And when they had gone, she went back to the middle room and settled herself in the deep chair by the fire to listen to the sound of the Piano Tuner’s voice and the notes of her late husband’s piano playing through it.

  Later, she made a pot of tea and knocked on the front room door to take it through with a slice of lardy cake. ‘How is my piano?’

  He poured his tea into the saucer and blew on it, and she watched an Adam’s apple in a thin neck rise and fall as he swallowed her cake before he said, ‘Almost right now. Almost . . . .’ and he played a final arpeggio, humming with the piano as it played, tapping his foot. And what he meant was, ‘Almost right. As good as I can get it.’

  But it sounded fine to Mrs Bennie Parrish, and that was all that mattered.

  So now, he will spend a little time each evening in the bar of The Cat with the old iron upright when the drinkers have gone off home and The Cat is getting ready for the night. He sits on a wooden chair for the piano stool is lost a long time ago, ridden on its three wheels for a bet down the hill once, late at night. He sits on the edge of that chair as though he may stand up and leave, but the sounds keep bringing him back as he taps at a key as yellow and pitted as a last tooth. Tapping the same key with the forefinger of his right hand over and over again, feeling it stick against the next where there have been pints and half pints spilled into the dust over the years. His left hand in its cotton glove resting on his knee. The front panel of the piano is against the wall, propped on a carpet the colour of cigarettes. And behind a coat of cobwebs, strings that are as rusted as the barbed wire round Kindly Light pit shudder as he touches the keys. And he hums the note as it should be, and talks low, poetry, hymns. Then he puts a gloved finger up to the strings and holds them, feeling them trembling almost against his skin.

  ‘Give us a tune, mun?’ The muffled voice of the publican calling from the cellar, where he has found an old chair pushed underneath an open window and a broken grille to mend. ‘Lads. Did anyone see lads down here?’

  But Nathan Bartholomew saw no lads at all, and shakes his head as though the publican can see him, still tapping at the same note over and over again. And he replies, but quietly, ‘Tune? When did this play tunes, last, then?’

  He feels the sounds running from the wires through the wood to his fingerbones, then feels them leave, carried on the stale air to the window. Sounds that are as raw as scratches from brambles. And the dust rises and flakes of rust tremble off the wires into the body of the old piano. Plays his note again, and hums, brushing his gloved finger up and down the wires, dislodging more dust, and rust, until the publican shouts to him to stop because the piano is past worrying about. ‘Use it to sit on they do, not play the thing. Give it a rest then? I’m going up to bed nowjust.’ And he ducks behind the bar, grumbling.

  Nathan Bartholomew gets up from the piano and stretches. He takes off his glove and shakes it, then pushes it deep into a pocket, replaces the piano’s front panel with its half-gone inlay harp and drum in the veneer, its graffiti.

  ‘Right, out it is. Constitutional. Don’t you be locking me out, now?’

  There is no answer at first from down in the cellar as the Piano Tuner unbolts the door, but then the publican’s voice behind him, ‘Lock up when you get back then. Except Wednesdays. Out playing cards for money, Wednesdays.’

  Nathan crosses the road to take a walk down Garibaldi Street. Past Matty Harris, Deputy Manager of the Savings Bank he goes, kneeling to do up a shoelace on the pavement opposite The Cat. Matty says to no one in particular but especially Nathan Bartholomew, ‘. . . just off home . . .’

  Nathan says nothing and with hands firmly in pockets he disappears down Garibaldi Street. He walks right to the end and into the little roads beyond, meeting no one, hearing nothing at all except the rush of the town on the night air and the barking of a dog. And after a while he turns to go back to The Cat. But when he gets to the end of the street he stops, for there on the pavement, kneeling still, but not for a shoelace, is Matty Harris the Deputy Manager of the Savings Bank, gazing at The Cat as though it held the answer to every question in the world.

  Up in a window with only a net drawn across, a woman is moving against the light like a shadow caught in a box. Her skin is smooth, her hair dark, catching the light then losing it. Dancing to no music they can hear in the street, naked as a baby. Graceful, twisting her fingers in her hair, lifting it and letting it fall back to her shoulders. She sways and turns, her skin heavy and glowing in the streetlights, then she pauses, shadows playing on her dark places.

  Two men watching from the street, one kneeling, the other not. The one seeing her every move, wondering what it would be like to put his hand just there, for his wife has never danced like that in all the years . . . and the other hearing sounds in his head. The cry of a violin when she raises her arms and the moan of an oboe when she sways and turns her face away. And when she lifts her breasts, both men hear different drumbeats tapping against the night.

  Then, there is the square shadow of the publican crossing the stage, and recrossing it, raising his fists to pull the curtains. The dancer is gone, and the window is just a window after all.

  Matty Harris gets up and leans for a while against the wall before he walks off down the hill towards Bethesda Mansions, where there is precious little dancing to be had. The Piano Tuner waits for him to be gone, crosses the road to The Cat, and bolts the door for it is not a Wednesday. Then he pauses, listening, before sitting at the old iron piano, putting his hand on the lid. Hums a note, and fancies he hears an answer, but the two sounds are not the same. Not at all.

  And, because sometimes it is important not to make sounds, he takes off his shoes and stands on the carpet at the foot of the stairs in the half-dark, feeling the years of smoke and laughter and shouts beneath his feet. Up the stairs he goes, carrying his shoes, and forgets the third step after all that, and it creaks under his weight.

  He pauses on the landing with its single bulb, outside the publican’s bedroom where fingers of light escape under the door and reach for his toes. He hears nothing except the slow tick of the clock on the shelf at the bottom of the stairs.

  In his room, he readies himself for bed, then slides open the sash. He lies and watches the yellow of the streetlights striping the ceiling through the curtain rings. And when he closes his eyes the sounds begin, as they always do, the light singing like the strings of a harp brushed by a passing cat, the air vibrating. The pillow and its scents of wood shavings and saliva brings dryness to his mouth, and Nathan cannot move, for every movement is sound. Every breath is sound, every heartbeat. The smallest echo of a drum played in another house, in another street. Another town.

  As he listens to the knocking of his heart there comes the dead march of a bedhead banging against the wall. No voices in the dark
, no laughter. And as quick as it begins it stops. The silence it leaves is the colour of the walls in a room that has not been painted for years, and the Piano Tuner turns away in his own bed, his hands over his ears, to keep in his own sounds.

  Maybe it is the movement of the earth beneath a house in Garibaldi Street that untunes the piano belonging to Mrs Bennie Parrish, and maybe again it is her knotty fingers removing the front panel, lifting it down to the carpet. Those fingers then working at the nuts that hold the piano strings and turning them, just a little, but enough for Nathan Bartholomew to be called again and for another loaf of lardy cake to be baked, ready.

  The Piano Tuner plays a few scales and the piano laughs back at him. Then he takes off the front panel and sees scratches on the wood that may not have been there before. He peers at the strings and raises an eyebrow. Mrs Bennie Parrish stands in the doorway hearing the question he has not made yet into words, ‘Perhaps. It does not sound quite right to me. And would you like your tea and cake?’

  Nathan Bartholomew runs his fingers over the strings and says he does not understand it but he will try again. Then he waves a hand for her to shut the door, and as she does so, she finds something to look at on the wallpaper, and says, ‘You can call me Lavender . . .’ but he is not listening, and when she glances back she sees him slipping off his shoes and socks and placing his feet, bare, on the rug.

  Mrs Bennie Parrish goes through to the middle room and rearranges slices of cake on a plate, and clatters two cups together on a tray, and when the tuning is done, she carries the tray through to the front room and sits on an upright chair in the corner to take the weight off her bad leg. ‘It must be the weather . . .’ she says, not knowing whether she means her leg, her heart or the piano, and she watches the Piano Tuner pouring his tea into his saucer and sipping it, his lips making the small sounds of a cat lapping milk. And for some reason it does not cross her mind that she used to stop Mr Bennie Parrish from doing the very same thing in case the neighbours minded.