The Coward’s Tale

by Vanessa Gebbie

  The next patient is up the Brychan, Laddy Merridew’s gran, who has come back from the library early, special. There is a budgie in a cage and her piano is speckled with husks of birdseed, and feathers. ‘Sorry, Mr Bartholomew. Should have swept this lot,’ and she lifts the cage and places it on the floor where last week when he called by to see what was what, there was a drum. The Piano Tuner smiles, ‘Your drum gone, now, has it?’ for when he asked if she played the drum last week, she said no she most certainly did not play the drum, and it belonged to Laddy her grandson who was living with her for the moment, and it drove her to distraction it did with all its noise and gave her a dreadful headache. And last week, it was waiting for the ladies from the Women’s Institute to come by and fetch it with the rest of the jumble, for the sale next week.

  Laddy Merridew’s gran shakes her head. ‘There’s a naughty boy he is. Hid that drum, and when the ladies from the Institute came to fetch it, there it wasn’t. And they came in a car as well. There’s embarrassing. Won’t tell me where he’s put it, neither. Boys need boundaries, they do.’ And she echoes the words used by Factual Philips, Deputy Librarian, so often, but come to think of it she hasn’t heard him say these for a while.

  Nathan Bartholomew mumbles, ‘And drums. Boys need drums, as well . . .’

  And when she asks him to repeat that for she is a little deaf, the Piano Tuner smiles, and says he said thumbs. All fingers and thumbs today. And then she leaves him to the tuning, and the budgie, and the birdseed husks.

  A little later, when Nathan Bartholomew leaves the house, there is Laddy Merridew sitting on the step.

  ‘It is a good thing to do, looking after pianos, Mr Bartholomew?’

  The Piano Tuner says it is.

  ‘And I looked after my drum, Mr Bartholomew, as well.’

  The Piano Tuner says he is sure he did. And that was a good thing too.

  The boy looks at the front path for a bit, concrete slabs, a dandelion. ‘How do you mend pianos?’

  The Piano Tuner takes a breath to talk for a while about keys and hammers and strings and sounding boards, and the boy listens. ‘And what happens if a drum is broken?’

  The boy is looking up at the Piano Tuner now. Nathan stops his talk of keys and hammers. ‘Does your drum need mending then?’

  Laddy Merridew nods. ‘The top got broken, by mistake.’

  ‘The skin?’

  ‘Oh it’s not real skin, Mr Bartholomew. Only plastic. It’s cracked.’

  The Piano Tuner thinks for a while. ‘How big is this drum?’

  And the boy holds his hands apart the space that fits his drum. Not much more than the span of his two hands held out together. ‘My best one it was too.’

  Nathan Bartholomew, who knows it was the boy’s only one, asks, ‘And where do you play your drum now? Not at your gran’s any more with her headaches?’

  The boy squints up at him. ‘It’s a secret.’

  The Piano Tuner smiles, and picks up his bag. ‘A secret, is it? Well, maybe I will think and find something to mend your drum.’ And he walks away through the Brychan leaving the boy sitting on the step.

  And then there will be telephone calls made from the dark hallway of The Cat Public House, with Maggie the publican’s wife on the landing, unseen and listening. Telephone calls on a telephone that needs feeding with money, and between the fall of coins there is the voice of a Piano Tuner asking for the number of a sheep farmer up near the Beacons, then a second call, and more coins, and a farmer in for his tea, and a request made for the skin of a sheep, or even a goat for that would be better. Yes, a goat. And the farmer coughing and saying no that is not possible, not at all – ‘but what about the abbatoy down in the town then? Down Brecon, the abbatoy with that old lorry that comes on Wednesdays to collect – and takes the devil’s own time to get up the track too and demands payment to the driver?’

  And it is another call then in that dark hall, and the fall of more coins, and the securing of the skin of a goat who lived its life on a hillside above Brecon, for the drum of a boy.

  Coming down the stairs in her bare feet is the publican’s wife, who has heard every word, who asks, ‘Why do you need the skin of a goat, Nathan?’

  When he tells her, she smiles at him and lays her hand on his sleeve, ‘There’s nice you are.’

  And it is not long before there is the skin of a goat delivered to The Cat and stretched over a biscuit tin on the table in the back kitchen for it to be scraped until there is nothing left to scrape. Then Nathan is laying it flat on the table and the knife is whetted until it is razor-sharp, and thongs cut from the edges, straight, ribbons, as long as he can. And a rough circle cut from the best of it. And when he is discovered, not such polite requests to take that thing out of here from the publican, and then there is the sight of the Piano Tuner taking a parcel under his arm and leaving The Cat, followed by Maggie the publican’s wife, pulling a cardigan round her shoulders, ‘I will come too, for the walk, just?’

  Then it is the two of them walking up to the Brychan to wait on the corner by the turning to the farm now owned by Icarus Evans the Woodwork Teacher, for a boy on his way home from the school. Nathan Bartholomew hands him the parcel. ‘To mend your drum.’

  And as Maggie listens, the Piano Tuner tells Laddy Merridew about the skin, and the ties, and how to stretch and tie the skin over the drum. ‘And do it quickly. And let it all dry somewhere safe. And when it dries, it will tighten, and the sound will be good. Better than plastic.’ Then, leaving the boy round-eyed with his parcel, they walk back down the hill. And as they do so, the publican’s wife tucks her hand under the Piano Tuner’s arm.

  The Piano Tuner’s Tale ii

  Piano tuners who talk to pianos, who search people’s faces as if there is something hidden there, do not come to this town every day. Later, much later, down in the chapel porch the beggar on his stone bench will smile in his sleep and wonder if tomorrow will come questions.

  And they do come, the questions, ‘Who is Nathan Bartholomew, then? What is he here for? What is he looking for? And why . . .’

  And when the questions reach the ears of Ianto Passchendaele Jenkins, he will sigh and tap his watch with no hands, and he will say he does not have much time for stories today, mind . . .

  ‘It is not an easy story, this one, not at all. It is dark, and to do with how a child can be hurt even before he is born. And how the hurting is done unwittingly for all that.’

  Here Ianto Passchendaele Jenkins sighs, and shuts his eyes and he wheels his arms again, pulling the story down from the air. And it is only Peter Edwards, the Collier who is no longer that, who may cross to the other side of the street not to hear this or any of Ianto Jenkins’s stories, and instead will shove his hands deep in his pockets and move his feet a little faster to the statue outside the library where he waits and waits for something and nothing.

  ‘This is the story of Eve, Nathan Bartholomew’s grandmother, and her son Edward Bartholomew who will be father to Nathan. But stories need fuel as they always do and it is a long time before my dinner.’

  The cinemagoers will laugh and someone will go to the ticket office and get a coffee with two sugars from Prinny Ellis, who is at her knitting, and someone may have a bag of bullseyes ready and Ianto Jenkins will wrap one in a scrap of newspaper taken from his bed and kept in a pocket for the purpose. He will look over to the chapel porch, and he will sigh, ‘Lovely weddings there have been in that chapel . . .’ and the listeners may wonder why he is talking about weddings when this is a story about darkness, but he waves their questions away and begins.

  ‘This story of Eve Bartholomew and her son begins almost but not quite on a wedding day. Oh yes. Eve’s own wedding.’ He stops and taps the wall behind him, ‘She lived up Mary Street, once, with her mam, all on their own, for her da had left them a while back. He still sent money once a week for the rent, mind, delivered by the coalman like clockwork, but that money would stop, he said, when Eve was twenty-one. Went
to work on the ships, and never came home again, but some said he was living with a black-haired singer in Swansea called Bessie. Eve’s mam, a strange one, was not working at all, but spending more and more time in her room, in front of her mirror and talking to herself, saying over and over, “I am not ready yet, how is my hair?”

  No place for a girl, not at all. And Eve was only nineteen, and learning the sewing trade at the dressmaker’s in the High Street. She was to be given a proper position when she learned enough to be a good seamstress – and that was almost. Eve was about to get married and be a Missis, and the dressmaker liked that for it would look well on the card in the window. Here, she lived after, too, just here, after the rent money stopped coming . . .’

  Ianto Passchendaele Jenkins will tap the wall and point at the steps where the cinemagoers are sitting. At the cinema doors, the posters, the red carpet where Laddy Merridew and his gran are talking, come down as a treat to see Where Eagles Dare because his gran likes eagles . . .

  The cinemagoers shake their heads, ‘Here? They lived here?’

  And the beggar nods. ‘Just here. There was a row of old houses here once, all forgotten and rotten, and maybe there still are – under these stones, to be found one day when all this is gone.’

  He nods at Laddy and his gran by way of a hello.

  ‘But the wedding. I am forgetting, getting old, see. Terrible thing. The girl Eve was making her own dress. Not living here, back then, oh no. That nice house up Mary Street, it was, where she sewed her dress at night looking out at the hill called Black Mountain across the roofs of the town and the glow of the ironworks. Sewed at night, then hid the dress in an old box under her bed. No one could see that wedding dress before she walked down the hill to the chapel wearing it, and if they did it would bring bad luck.’

  There is a laugh, then, and Ianto Jenkins raises a hand. ‘Bad luck is real enough, believe me. There will be no laughing at bad luck here, or there will be no more of the story . . .’ and the miscreant will cough and be silent, so the beggar just frowns and continues.

  ‘And who was she marrying, this girl, Eve? One of the Bartholomew brothers, Edward, the youngest, and it was three years they had been together. A lovely couple, everyone said, a real lady and a gentleman walking out. And so much of a gentleman he would not touch Eve before their wedding night. But his voice was no gentleman, oh no. Best shut your ears.’

  The cinemagoers smile and shift in their shoes, and there is Laddy Merridew’s gran telling her grandson to go and fetch some chips, for he must be hungry mustn’t he and here is the money and get plenty of vinegar if he is bringing some back for her as well. But to take his time.

  ‘Aww, Gran?’ but Ianto Passchendaele Jenkins has stopped talking, and it seems he is inspecting the old wall for cracks, so Laddy shuffles off up the High Street, dragging his feet and the beggar does not speak again until the boy is quite gone round the corner.

  ‘So, Edward Bartholomew told the girl, Eve, everything they would do on their wedding night. Whispered it close under her hair as they walked home in the dark, pressing his fingers against her dress.

  “I will touch you, my Evie, here, light as anything, and here. And here. Touch you and stroke you until you are crying with it all. Soft my fingers will be, so you can hardly feel them, and you will reach out for them with your skin. Like this . . .”

  And he would kiss her against the wall of the old schoolhouse, then pull away so she had to reach for his lips in the shadows. He leaned his cheek against hers, “My face against yours, my Evie,” and he pulled at her hand, laughing, “Feel me, Evie?” and she turned her head away, red as fire.

  He kissed her with his tongue by that wall and pressed his length against her until she was weak, feeling him through her dress, afraid to touch him, but wanting to touch him, so weak with wanting she might have melted into the stones. It would be soon now, their wedding night . . .

  And she made her wedding dress sitting up at night in her room. For each button she sewed she felt him loosening them slowly, the dress slipping off her shoulders. For each ribbon she felt the dress falling to the floor. And as she fixed a lace edge taken from a borrowed handkerchief to the hem of the veil she felt his eyes on her as they would be, for sure.

  But it never happened quite as she imagined, bless the girl, oh no.

  It was a September day, only a few days before the wedding and the streets of this town were filled with dreadful things, the alarm sounding, the cries of women, the shouts of men, bringing what they may to help where no help could be given.

  Only a few little days and Kindly Light pit took Edward Bartholomew’s fingers, and hands, and hair and mouth. And all her mother said when Eve went crying to her for comfort was, “Tell me, how is my hair?”

  And what happened then? Did Eve put away that dress, never to look at it again? Did she sell it to be worn by someone luckier than herself? She did not. Instead, she sat up that very night and the next, to finish the dress, the curtains closed and only a small lamp to work by.’

  ‘Poor thing, the love,’

  ‘What was the dress for now, then?’

  ‘Shhh, don’t ask questions. Listen to the story . . .’

  The storyteller continues. ‘It was evening, a day or so later. And next day was to be the funerals of those men killed down Kindly Light. Remember? But it was also going to have been Eve’s wedding day . . .

  That evening, there was Mrs Fairlight next door bringing in her washing and she saw Eve coming out into the little garden behind the house, wearing her nightdress even though it was not yet night. The nightdress was dirty, and looked as though it had been worn all day and maybe the day before as well. Down Eve went to the end of the garden where there was a rose planted years ago by her father, when all was well. A tangle of thorns that never gave more than a few old white roses on the thinnest of stems. Mrs Fairlight next door saw Eve pick two ragged late roses, and she asked, “Eve? It is all right then?” but there was no reply from the girl who smiled as though there was nothing but sweet things in the air.

  Mrs Fairlight stood on a brick in her slippers to look over the wall better and she saw Eve, barefoot on damp ground, scissors in her hand. She saw Eve taking the flowers back into the house, and Mrs Fairlight said later she thought Eve was picking them for the funeral. For her Edward.

  The next day should have been her wedding day, the house full of laughter and friends and good food, even if there was a mother upstairs looking at her hair in the mirror when by now there was no hair to see at all.

  Maybe Eve rubbed her hands with a little salt and oil to make them smooth. Maybe she tied the flowers together with some pale ribbon left over from the dress upstairs, hanging now behind a door . . . maybe she put a little scent behind her ears. Maybe she did her hair, pinned it up as best she could, but the pins fell out, some. And maybe she asked her mother for help with her hair, “Mam? I don’t know how . . .”

  But all her Mam did was ask if her own was lovely.

  Eve went to her room, then, all quiet, and put on her wedding dress, and the veil, covering her face so when she looked in the mirror she only saw a white shape, like a ghost come in the night to herself.

  She fetched the flowers from the kitchen, and went out into the street, looking from side to side, all shy. And down the pavement she walked, head high, holding her roses, and a few children called out to her, “Can we play too?” until their mams called them inside for this was no time for children to be out. And one of the mams might have gone to her, caught her by the arm, and said, “Eve? There’s lovely you look . . . let’s go in by here, shall we, and wait a bit?”

  But Eve would not wait. This was her wedding day, and for the first time she heard laughter in her head, and singing, voices of friends, and there were the neighbours wishing her well as she walked by. When all the doors were closed for the end of the day.

  Past the dressmaker’s she went, past the window with the ribbons and the fastenings, and the white canv
as body waiting for a new dress to cover itself with. And she caught sight of herself in window after window as she went down the High Street, and she was beautiful, her veil waving about her head in the breeze like weed in water.

  She looked at herself in all the windows. A ghost on her way down the High Street, carrying her roses. All the way down to the chapel. This chapel. Ebenezer. Just by there.’

  And here Ianto Jenkins will point to his own porch and shake his head. His bench. The cinemagoers look, and say nothing. Laddy Merridew’s gran is busy shaking her head too, and she misses her grandson coming back from the chip shop, standing at the back to listen.

  ‘Eve paused outside these very doors, her veil catching on the flagstones in the porch, just there, see, as if to say, “Do not go in.”

  She stood with her head on one side, listening – and she heard what she wanted to hear. The hum of voices inside the chapel. A clearing of throats ready for the singing. The scrape of chairs as Mrs Fairlight, who must have come down another way, pushed into her place. Then the notes of the bellows organ making music for her, playing the hymns they chose, she and Edward Bartholomew only two weeks since, him stroking the back of her hand under the table in the minister’s dark office. And she put her fingers on the handle of the door, her veil still caught on the flagstones, pulling her back, Do not go in.