The Coward’s Tale

by Vanessa Gebbie

  Her nightdress spreads over the piano keys, and when he touches the keys through the cotton the sounds still come to him. Notes come through his fingers with the warmth of her body, and her nightdress riding up over her thighs, and the scent of her rising into the scent of beer and smoke. And she smiles and watches his face, then closes her eyes, ‘I hear it still. Do you?’

  And this time it is Nathan who does not answer, who stands and holds her, his face in her hair, breathing in the smoke, her scalp smelling of sawn wood, her breasts heavy under his hands. Then he lifts her up against the piano. Lowers her slowly as he kisses her, as she laughs into his shoulder, her fingers playing down his spine, until she is sitting on the piano keys and pulling him between her thighs, the toes of one bare foot resting on the chair, and the other behind him, holding him.

  And the broken chords of the old piano in the bar of The Cat rise into the air as raw as bramble scratches, and they echo and echo against the walls.

  On the Old Footbridge over the Taff

  No one was walking on the path that passes by the old Kindly Light workings this morning, early, but if they had been, they might have heard Laddy Merridew’s drum beating again, beating deep in the ruined buildings and yards. They might have heard it echoing far below their feet, reaching north as far as the High Street where the echoes might have been heard in the chimneys if anyone was listening for them. But they weren’t. Only Ianto Passchendaele Jenkins heard the sounds beneath the flagstones of Ebenezer Chapel porch, and left his bench early as a result.

  Now, Laddy is making his way back along the path by the river, his drum under one arm, dragging the toes of his shoes one after the other on the ground. He doesn’t notice Ianto Passchendaele Jenkins leaning on the rail of the old footbridge over the Taff, watching the water, until the beggar says, ‘Leather against stone. No contest if you ask me.’

  The boy puts the drum down on the footbridge and takes half a bar of toffee from his pocket. ‘I’m not hungry.’

  The beggar smiles and reaches for the toffee, bends and re-bends the bar until a piece softens and pulls away, leaving a thread no bigger than a hair curling in the air. He grins. ‘Lovely.’ And for a while the beggar and the boy lean on the rail of the footbridge and say not a lot while they watch the water flowing grey as iron towards them from the town.

  Laddy Merridew clears his throat. ‘Mr Jenkins, can I ask a question?’

  ‘You just did.’

  ‘No. I mean, if you need to make your mind up about something, how do you do it?’

  ‘I don’t make many decisions these days, Maggot.’

  ‘It’s just that Gran keeps talking about me having to make decisions.’ He spits into the water, then crosses to the other rail and watches the bubbles disappear downriver. ‘Can’t do that only when the water’s flat.’ And he’s quiet for a while, leaning over the rail, the river curving away in the distance under the overhanging trees, and disappearing. ‘I can’t see what to do. It’s like the lights have all gone out and I can’t see.’

  Ianto Jenkins nods. ‘I understand that.’

  Laddy nods too. ‘Sometimes, I think the dark’s easier when there’s noise. Sometimes, just being in the quiet is scary, isn’t it?’

  Ianto Jenkins thinks for a moment. ‘Is that why you’ve been banging that drum at old Kindly Light?’

  Laddy looks at the beggar, maybe expecting him to say something about watching out for the old buildings, or dogs, or old shafts that might open up and they ought to do something about the place – but Ianto does not. Just says, quietly, ‘I haven’t been that way for a long time now.’

  ‘It’s great, Mr Jenkins.’ Laddy is not looking at the beggar any more, but down at the river, as though it might be listening, understanding. ‘Maybe it’s because there’s holes in the ground, so sounds are bigger?’ He pauses, then squares his shoulders. ‘I made one decision, anyway. I’m not going back to that school any more.’ He pushes his glasses up his nose. ‘I expect they will say something to my gran. But I’m not going back.’

  ‘And why’s that?’

  ‘No point. They still call me those old names. The teachers are hopeless. Apart from Mr Evans. He’s OK. History sometimes, I liked the coal mines stuff. Sometimes. But I won’t be here long, anyway.’

  ‘Going back home soon then?’

  There is no answer. Laddy just spits into the water again, and again. Then he picks up his drum, hugs it. ‘That’s the problem. I don’t know which home to go back to.’

  There is a conversation then, with only the river listening in, the boy and the beggar leaning on the rail, watching the water flowing as quiet as the air – about arguments heard through floorboards when boys are thought to be asleep. About the boy lying there, worrying the arguments were his fault. And if he wasn’t here then maybe they wouldn’t have anything to argue about. About coming to stay for a while with his gran and packing his own case, and getting that wrong like everything else. About phone calls from his mam and dad to his gran late at night when he is upstairs. About that teacher at home, the one Laddy knows but doesn’t like at all moving in with his mam. His dad moving out. About talking with his mam the other night. And Dad phoning last night, and saying he’s trying to find another house but it isn’t easy, and Laddy having to decide who he wants to live with most of the time. And Gran saying of course he will be with his mam, that’s where he belongs, but Laddy doesn’t know any more, ‘That’s what I mean – they keep talking about decisions, Mr Jenkins.’

  The beggar shakes his head. ‘I wish I could help, Maggot. I’m not much good at those.’

  ‘I wish home could just be like it was before.’

  ‘Before?’

  ‘When they didn’t fight.’

  ‘I suppose everything has to change, some time.’

  ‘That’s what Dad said. He said it will be like starting again, but that’s scary.’

  ‘It is. Maybe new things are?’

  Laddy sighs. ‘That’s like all the lights have gone out as well. Does everyone find new things scary? Or is it just me?’

  ‘Oh no, Maggot. It is not just you, believe me. Whether they say so, or not. Ebenezer won’t be there for ever, and what will I do then? Whatever it is, I can’t see it and that’s a worry. And I can tell you, being dropped into the dark down Kindly Light that first time was very scary. My stomach still jumps when I think about it.’

  Laddy almost smiles, ‘What was it like?’ and the beggar taps the rail of the footbridge as both he and his stomach remember.

  ‘New lads were fair game, that’s what everyone said. When there was a new lad, the banksmen let the gear run so fast you left your guts up top while you dropped – the men laughing when the cage rattled like the devil passing the other coming up, and the sound of the hawsers singing. Fast and singing into blackness, apart from the lights at pit bottom to welcome boys who heaved their breakfast bread and jam onto the ground and had to go hungry then. That’s what they said. I was so worried about that. Didn’t want to look stupid, not in front of Da’s friends . . .’

  Ianto Passchendaele Jenkins gazes away down the valley. ‘Sometimes, they’d slam on the brakes when the cage was halfway down the shaft, just for a laugh. I tell you – I was so scared about that first ride it kept me awake the night before. Then when I did get to sleep, the worrying woke me, early.

  The boots that were once Mr Ernest Ellis’s were beside the bed that morning, dropped any old how by Maggot. Like great boats they were. So I would have some of Da’s old wool socks over my own and some rag to wrap round so my feet did not slip about. All laid out on the floor ready. My da had a word with Mr Thomas Edwards from along the way, a friend, and a hewer as well, and Mr Thomas Edwards was to watch out for me, Da said. Be my butty while I was learning. I was hoping to goodness Da hadn’t told him I was frightened.

  Lying there, I was, Maggot still asleep and snoring, listening to the old robin scolding to himself in the early hours. Must have been the one from over the
way, telling off the other birds who came close. And the sound was like a beam of light. I don’t remember much of my mam, Maggot, she seemed so very far away. But when I heard that bird I remembered her telling me about birds and their signs, and my da laughing at her. But this sound of his singing, it was sharp, breaking the darkness.

  I could hear a stream. I could always hear that stream in the night if the wind was in the east and the babies not crying in the houses up the street. And if the wind is in the east – even now the railway tunnel up by the Brychan sounds loud and ghostly, calling out to the town that’s its time to get up even when it isn’t.’

  The beggar stops talking, and the boy smiles. ‘Kept me awake when I was smaller, staying with Gran, that tunnel. Not now. I’m used to it.’ He hugs his drum. ‘I used to be afraid of the old lady up there – Batty Annie – but I’m not now. I wonder what time it is?’

  Ianto Passchendaele Jenkins taps his watch with no hands, ‘It doesn’t matter what the time is, if you’ve nowhere to go. It is a beautiful thing, that is.’ And he continues the story.

  ‘It was before five in the morning that first day, and I was up and dressed, those boots on my feet, standing there in the bedroom with the Maggot lying in the bed, half-awake, “Bring me something back, Ianto?” and I said something like, “Bring you something back? What do you expect there is down there? Diamonds?” and he shifted over to my place in the bed nearest the wall, and he curled up in the warm spot, and pulled the covers round his ears.

  I was going to the stairs and my da called from his room, “You do everything they tell you, mind, and don’t you be a nuisance to anyone.” And I knew what he was thinking, that I would make a fool of him, and I would not be a good collier, but there was nothing I could do about what he was thinking.

  Downstairs, I drank some water from the kitchen tap, and I washed my face. There was a mirror just there, on a nail, an old mirror all speckled and dark, my da’s shaving mirror. I looked at myself. The marks in the glass made my face dim as anything and I was no longer a boy in that mirror but an old man, shadows creeping down his face. I filled Da’s water bottle, and cut two slices of bread, spread them with some jam, and I wrapped them in a handkerchief like Da had told me – in case the men played games with the cage . . .

  And then there was Mr Thomas Edwards outside the back door, stamping his feet, “Ready, young man?” and I looked round the kitchen in case it would disappear if I didn’t, and I took Da’s cap from its nail and put it on my head, and went out into the morning.

  I remember too, as soon as I was outside, my bootlace came undone, or the sock inside slipped, so I put my water bottle on the wall to fix my boot. And I was just about to walk down the alley when Mr Thomas Edwards coughed, and I turned, and there he was grinning and holding my bottle out, “You’ll need this . . .” ’

  Laddy Merridew bites a nail. ‘He sounds nice. Did they make the cage do things?’

  ‘He was, and no, they didn’t. Maybe because I was my da’s boy, who knows?’

  ‘And what was it like down there? Was it dark like you thought? Were there horses?’

  ‘Questions . . . just like my brother the Maggot, you are, and not just the way you look, either. I will tell you, but not today. Got work to do, remember?’ Ianto Jenkins taps his watch with no hands. ‘Time you were off, I’d say.’ He taps the rail again as well. ‘I could take a walk down to Kindly Light. Haven’t been there in a long while.’

  Laddy steps off the footbridge. ‘Thanks, Mr Jenkins.’ He walks a short way, then turns back, holds out the drum.

  ‘Can I leave this at Ebenezer? Maybe I could play it there sometimes? It’s a long way down to the pit every time.’

  The beggar changes his mind about going to Kindly Light for his legs are tired, and he and the boy walk back to the town together, up to Ebenezer Chapel, to find a somewhere, an old cupboard perhaps, or a place the floorboards are loose, to hide a drum.

  The Window Cleaner’s Tale i

  When the wind is in the north it lifts the sweet wrappers from the gutters and whisks them through the rusted gates of the park, over grass that is not kept off despite the signs but is pitted and mud-puddled now under the old conker trees. Judah Jones will be cleaning windows up his ladder and the wind will send cold fingers round his anklebones. Then it may leave Judah Jones’s ankles to themselves, as if calling by at all was a mistake. It will set the last geraniums nodding and dropping red petals in their beds, and test the leaves of a tree by the park gate. And wherever he is in the town, the Window Cleaner will pause and raise a licked finger into the wind, ‘Leaves for Judah Jones, is it?’

  These leaves are not the burned leaves of autumn, no, not at all. They are pale and bloodless leaves, silvered. They are hanging by thread-stalks, twisting like milk-teeth on their last rootlets . . . until they drop and chatter over the grass. Off they go, dancing with the sweet wrappers, to pile in late confetti against the twin metal benches of Gwendolyn and Gwynneth Watkins, spinsters both.

  Judah Jones may appear in his flat cap and his fingerless gloves pushing his bicycle through the park, his window-cleaning ladder tied against the spine of the bike. He will rest the bike gentle against one of the Miss Watkins and he’ll pat her cold bones. He will take his bucket from the handlebars and bend to pick up the leaves by the handful, all pale and crisping. He will pull out the sweet wrappers, the silver paper and the bright red of a Kit Kat’s coat. And he will drop the leaves into the bucket.

  Tutt Bevan the Undertaker and his stick short-cutting through the park, maybe retracing his steps from the other day, may wave, ‘Evening, Judah, chill in the air today?’ but Judah Jones will be so caught up with the collecting of the leaves that all Tutt Bevan hears in reply is, ‘Perfect.’

  As he goes home via a few last windows in Maerdy Street, Judah Jones imagines all the windows of the town mosaiced with autumn leaves. Leaves that still rustle when the wind blows. And the people in the street no longer able to peer into the houses, and the people in their front rooms in Bethesda Mansions, Plymouth Street and Maerdy Street able to get away with anything and no one would have to know. But it is not like that.

  As he pushes his bike towards The Cat on the corner of Mary Street he thinks of the rooms in the houses, the rooms he sees when he is cleaning windows, fires warm in their front-room grates and budgies dozing in cages, dining tables with velveteen skirts, and cups of tea with plates to match, on trays with slices of lardy cake and butter. Dusty bedrooms with working trousers over bedside chairs, thrown with a petticoat, one stocking, the other curled on the carpet. And lumpen pillows on unmade beds, their dips and valleys as familiar as songs.

  He will round the corner by The Cat all ready to go down the hill home to Plymouth Terrace. And he will find Peter Edwards and the men waiting outside The Cat for the door to open and let them in, colliers who are not colliers now for there is no longer any call for them to do what they do . . . and they have left their sitting and scowling on the steps of the statue outside the Library, and instead here they are and they have not seen Judah and his bike.

  Judah Jones will stop all sudden. He will creep back unseen, back round the corner where his bike and himself will be leaned against the brick wall, and where he listens to the voices of the men, colliers from Deep Pit up the valley, once. Among them there is one that rings in his ears like bells wheedling him to prayer. The voice of Peter Edwards rippling and deep as dreams. But not talking to him, oh no indeed.

  ‘Here you are boys, money in my cap, if you please.’

  There is a laugh. ‘I w-w-will be shot, m-mun.’

  ‘That’s right is it, Twp Two Two Shoes? And who will be doing the shooting of a great lump like Twp then? Not that slip of a wife?’

  ‘This is one coin only for a p-p-p-pint of milk to f-f-fetch home,’

  ‘Shut up, Twp. In the cap. Drop it in by here,’

  And there is a small sound, a coin dropping into a cap, onto another, another . . . and Peter Edwards’s
voice again: ‘You can tell her now . . . tell her you dropped your money . . . and you have, see, without a word of a lie. Grand. That will do us two pints between five . . .’

  Judah Jones has to stay where he is, and he turns and presses his forehead against the bricks. In his head he sees a man. In the dark, skin gleaming like he’s still deep underground, black gold in the shadows, the muscles moving under his skin, alive and swelling. Judah smells the living sweat of that skin, and the coaldust, and salt, and tobacco, and he sees his own hand reaching out in the dark, his washed white fingers reaching for the man’s arm, all solid and warm and glistening . . . he spreads his fingers to brush the skin, the hair, and his fingers meet nothing but a wall of bricks.

  He’s lucky perhaps, because the door of The Cat opens, he hears it open, and he hears that voice, ‘About time, waiting until Doomsday we’ll be soon enough . . .’ and then those voices fading, ‘Two pints, Maggie, there’s a love . . .’

  Then the voices fade completely, to let Judah Jones collect himself together, and peer round the corner, then carry on pushing his bike past The Cat with its closed door, and on down the hill to Plymouth Terrace.

  And in Plymouth Terrace is there a fire waiting in the grate? Is there washing left on the line to be collected in with the evening and a kiss by the back door? There is not. The grate is empty and as cold as his bed, and the back door is put on a chain once he is inside. There are no petticoats over bedside chairs, nor stockings curled like mice on the carpet, and there never have been. And nor has there ever been the beauty of black streaks from under the nails of a collier called Peter Edwards on the pale soap in the dish by the kitchen sink.

  He has been seen, Judah Jones has, in the park in the early morning collecting his buckets of leaves. Seen by those who are up while the mist still lies on the grass like a shroud. The mist parting and gathering round Judah’s boots as he walks, his footsteps leaving small whirlpools that eddy and waver then close up slow behind him when he’s not looking. And by the gate, a small boy pulled along by the hand may look back and ask, ‘Mam? What is he doing then? Mam? Can we go on the swings?’