‘But what, Maggot?’
Laddy pushes his fists into his pockets. ‘That tunnel up near Gran’s . . .’
‘What about it?’
‘I went in there. They said I wouldn’t, the others. Right to the middle where it is really dark.’
‘And why did you do that?’
‘They said if I did, they’d give me a cigarette to try.’
‘And did they?’
‘They waited for me to get right into the darkest bit, then they ran off.’ There is a pause. ‘They lied.’
‘Ah.’
‘They laughed as well.’
Ianto Passchendaele Jenkins nods. ‘Was that them this morning?’
Laddy nods.
‘Not nice, being lied to. Or laughed at.’
‘No.’ Laddy chews a nail. Then he seems to brighten. ‘But the scratches on the walls of the tunnel. I saw those, at least, I think I did. Is that story really how they got there?’
‘Scratches get on walls in all sorts of ways.’
‘My gran says there’s no such thing as ghosts. And if there were they wouldn’t live in bricks.’
‘I never said they did. Chimneys, now, that’s a different thing, oh yes. Ghosts need a way in and a way out, after all. Like tunnels . . .’
‘I’ll tell her you said that.’
‘I wouldn’t if I was you.’
The boy almost smiles, ‘I’m sorry about this morning.’
Ianto Jenkins shrugs.
‘But Mr Jenkins – your stories. How do I know they are really real?’
The beggar sighs.
‘So, how do I know . . .’
This time Ianto Jenkins frowns. ‘Maggot, you will listen now. Here . . .’ Ianto Jenkins points at the bench, ‘Sit here, or not. It doesn’t matter. And you tell me if this is real or not. I would have told this to my brother Maggot, afterwards. After – but I could not.’
Laddy goes to say something but Ianto Jenkins holds up a hand to stop him.
‘It was raining now for two whole days, and I was a collier down Kindly Light for those same two days. After the first day it was not only raining above the ground. Oh no. It was raining below sure as eggs. It drip dripped from the ceiling. First it was those single drips that are down there always . . . then it was more, and more until there were so many they could not be separated. On the second day, it rained down there until the tunnel floor was inches deep in water despite the engines and the pumps. The engines up top going full pelt all day and all night to work the pumps that sucked the rain out of the mountain, to make Kindly Light “fit for walking in, fit for working in”, so said my da’s friend, Thomas Edwards, who was helping me.
And on the day before, my second day, I could hear the sound of the engines all the time in my ears even though I was hundreds of feet below them, and knew I could not possibly be hearing them really. I think I heard them because I knew they were there, not because I have good ears at all. Believe me, I was going deaf already with the noise down there.
I am following the other colliers and Thomas Edwards down one of the roadways where there are great pillars left in the coal to hold up the mountain. I am careful not to trip on the rails, but it is hard to see where they are. It is then I am standing in water almost above dead Mr Ernest Ellis’s boots, in a dip between these two great pillars of coal. Then Thomas Edwards stops to look at something. “The pillars are to come down soon, and timbers will be there instead,” he says. I feel sorry for the pillars, then. I am looking up, and when his back is turned I take my penknife and scrape my initials quickly in the side of the pillar, for there is something about leaving your name under a mountain when only you and the mountain know it is there . . . but I am too slow, and Thomas Edwards sees and he roars with laughter, a great roar that echoes down the roadway, and he shakes his head and walks off and says, “Am I given a collier to work with, or is it philosophers and sculptors they are taking below now?” . . . and all the time I can hear the rain falling in the tunnel like someone saying hush, and I hear the great creaking and breathing in and out of the mountain over the noise of men and animals, and it hasn’t made me frightened before and now it does. Thomas Edwards has gone ahead of me into the darkness which has closed round him like someone has drawn a curtain between me and him, and I am left by the pillars – close to the one that has my name, and I am hearing all the sounds of the mountain and Mr Edwards shouting over the noise, “Come on, Ianto Jenkins, and stop your dreaming,” and there is still the engine in my head beating and beating and getting louder and louder until I can hardly breathe . . . and the coal pillar is massive like a great arm stretching through the floor and rising up above my head and oh, I cannot stop the thinking and the noise too, and the engine it beats and beats and I am right next to the pillar, and I go up close and put my hands on it and it is wet and cold, but beating too. I wonder if it is beating with the sound of the engine from above, and I have to hear for myself – to do that I must take off my cap for it is in the way and I need to get my ear right against the coal. I have my ear pressed against the coal and my eyes closed not to hear Mr Edwards’s shouts, and there is a sound in the pillar, Maggot. A noise I hear in my heart, not my ears, a deep swelling hum like a thousand swarms of bees saying “Get out . . .” And then there is a roar down the roadway, and for half a second I think it is a roar to Ianto Jenkins to get on with it – but it is not, it is a roar unlike any other. It is Thomas Edwards’s voice roaring and it is not anger in that roar, but it is fear, and I have not heard that before but I know it. And his is the last voice I hear for a while, oh but what a while. Then it is dreadful, Maggot. It is dreadful and noise. And it is dust and the rush of no air, and flying rocks, and it is the world and the whole mountain tipped about and I am thrown over when the ground tips and I am just a handful of stones thrown into Taff Fechan from the bridge, and I hear my brother Maggot laughing, and the shouts of men and the screaming and screaming of horses. I am the stones in the river, tumbling fast over rocks, I am tumbled about breathless and I can’t breathe. Then something cracks me on the head, and the river swirls under the bridge and my head splits and I see fountains of sparks in the water . . . and I want to stop and think how strange it is, but something loud stops my thinking. I have no memory of things or thinking for a while after that.
I do dream though, of a fire, and I do dream of men black by that fire, and one running down the roadway with the fire at his back like a monkey. I do dream that I close my eyes but the fire will not leave my eyes and is burned into them and comes back and back and the monkey screams. I do dream I am caught up by Thomas Edwards, who has his arms about me like my own da, and being bundled between men in the dark right into a space where I am thrown against a wall and the bodies of men cover me over and hide me from the dark. I can’t breathe easy, Maggot, my face all stuffed into Thomas Edwards’s jacket, but I try and he smells of tobacco. And I have lost my water bottle from my pocket. And I am so tired, Maggot. I cannot breathe deep for the weight of men, so I breathe shallow and slow. And I do dream about a sleep that falls after and heavy, and men yawning, although I cannot see them yawn.
And the tunnels, the little roadways of Kindly Light are not able to carry the weight of the stretching mountain, and it is collapsing in on itself . . . and how small we are. How small. Caught up in it all, and crushed. But it is not the fault of the mountain at all, neither the fall of stone, the fire gas, and the sleep. It is not the fault of my mountain at all that men are caught down there. But oh my Maggots both, I know whose fault it is that there are men below at all. Good men and boys.’
Ianto Passchendaele Jenkins stops. There is a quiet, broken only by the cooing of a pigeon up in the rafters. Laddy Merridew is silent.
‘Good men and boys. Gone. And I am brought up into the light again, much later, days later maybe – oh, but what light. A dark light that is in the faces of the women waiting silent, and in a second I had the knowledge that the waiting would not go away now at all but woul
d be under their nails whenever they looked at their hands. I heard the voice of a woman and I do not know which one, “It is only a boy.”
And then I don’t want to remember more after that. Not now.’
Ianto Jenkins is up from his bench, leaning his head against the wall, his back to the boy. Laddy Merridew starts to say something, but the beggar stops him.
‘Go home, Maggot. I am tired.’
The Gas Meter Emptier’s Tale i
When the town is asleep, the breeze steals in under the doors when the walls are not watching. It plays round the sleeping necks of Mrs Bennie Parrish and Nathan Bartholomew the Piano Tuner, and they will pull the covers up in their different rooms, different houses. Down the stairs it goes in Judah Jones’s house, to play round the wheels of his bicycle parked in the dark hallway and it blows the ash from the grates in the town’s front rooms and covers the trinkets on the mantelpieces in another layer of dust.
At the Adam’s Acre allotments, opposite the row of new houses called Christopher Terrace after both the town planner and the owner of the big house now pulled down, everything is quiet, all the rows of onions and carrots are sleeping above ground and below. The wooden sheds will be padlocked against the night, and the spades and forks and trowels are lying ready for the morning, in their wheelbarrows.
All is dark, all the gardeners in their houses, sleeping, and planning in their dreams what potatoes they will dig up tomorrow, and what prize marrows they will grow next year.
The night conversations are done a long time ago,
‘Did you put out the cat, Evan?’
‘I did, Gwladys.’
‘And did you remember to put the porridge in the range for the morning, Evan?’
‘I did, Gwladys.’
‘And did you lock the front door, Evan?’
‘I did, Gwladys.’
‘Are you sure? For the paper is full of nothing but burglaries these days, Evan.’
‘Goodnight, Gwlad.’
All asleep, except for one. Over by the old wall, where the slope of the hill takes Adam’s Acre lower and lower towards the valley floor, a small light may be moving among the rows. The light of an oil lamp swinging as it is now held high, now low, the small shadow who holds the lamp lifting it to see if the last apples are ready for picking on the tree by that wall, then lowering it to check the snails are not taking his last shoots. Then the light stops moving as the night gardener puts the lamp down to run his fingers round the roots of his plants, loosening the earth, helping them to stretch up and out.
James Little, the man who for years collected the shillings from the town’s gas meters in their hallway cupboards or under the stairs, hidden away behind suitcases and jars of pickle, bottles of home brew and trays of apples. Coins that were saved for the gas in jamjars on mantelpieces in back kitchens, no money for sweets, or new shoes, ‘And it is tripe only for supper tonight, the shillings are all in the meter.’
Retired now, this James Little, given a clock with a painted face as a thank you and left someone else to collect the money from the houses where he called each week for years for the gas company. Years of cups of tea and slices of cake, while people asked if he really had to take all their coins away, ‘. . . for it is not payday until the end of the week and gas is only air . . .?’
Tea he would have, and said thank you for the cake but would never eat it there, wrapping it instead in a square of greaseproof paper put in his pocket by Edith, his wife. James Little would always shake his head at the pleas for money back, but sometimes, as he left, he would drop a shilling from his own pocket on the front step by mistake.
And when he got home at the end of the day, his bag heavy with coins and his pockets even heavier with cake, he would kiss his wife at the door, ‘No need to get cake from the bakery this week, Edith. Look, eighteen slices and two ginger biscuits . . .’
James Little will finish checking his winter cabbages are well, his carrots are fine in their earth and his parsnips can breathe. He stands, stretching his aching shoulders, lifts the lamp and looks at his watch. Half past one in the morning. ‘Almost time.’
Over to his shed with its two padlocks on the door, and the single window well blanketed with a square of old oilcloth cut by Edith when it was too big for their kitchen table. And he puts his gardening tools away, neat against the wall in their metal clips. He takes off his wellington boots and stands them by the same wall, and puts on instead a pair of plimsolls. He hangs his old coat on its peg, then takes down another jacket, dark, with deep pockets, left over from his job as a collector of gas meter coins. But there are no squares of greaseproof in the pocket now.
He finds his bag, an old school satchel from a son long since left home, checks the contents and sees it is securely buckled. Then he leaves his shed, making sure the window is covered, and both padlocks locked. He walks back up to the road, stepping over onion sets and rows of potatoes, round clumps of chrysanths smelling strange and green in the night air.
When he gets to the road, to Christopher Terrace, James Little will stop outside number eighteen, his own home, but he will not go in. He stands on the pavement looking up at the bedroom window where the curtains are drawn and Edith will be muttering in her sleep, her teeth in a glass. And he will blow her a kiss before walking in the direction of Maerdy Street.
It is dark crossing the old tip, with a few old ponies for company. He can smell them, hear their breath snuffing in the night, just shadows among greater shadows. Then the grass changes to tarmac under his shoes, and he is past the old sheds and out under the streetlights at the end of Maerdy Street, its houses shut up for the night. And he pauses, looking down the empty street, waiting for movement, but none comes.
James Little walks back to the old tip and round to the alley behind the houses, walking carefully, not to squeak the cinders under his soles, into the shadows where the streetlights do not reach. Down the alley, tapping the wall with his fingers as he goes, the bricks, the small gates, the brambles. Counting the gates, some latched, some tied shut with string. Some gone, just gaps in the wall, taken for firewood maybe, or just gone back into the ground.
Then an old gate, rotten, held up by nettles, no latch at all, rusted away, and James Little’s fingers stop. A gate that opens into a small garden, through more nettles, and down a few crumbling steps to the back of the house, a yard, an outside toilet. A bucket hanging over the tap by the back door, an old cloth over the bucket. And the front door not closed. Open a few inches only, a shoe holding it open, forgotten perhaps when the owner went up to bed a few hours since. An old house, with old owners, deaf probably, and asleep. James Little simply pushes the door open and is inside, carrying his bag.
A short while later he is back on Maerdy Street, his bag back over his shoulder. He counts the houses under his breath as he goes, in case he can’t see the numbers on the front doors, ‘27, 25, 23 . . . 15, 13, 11. Here we are.’
James Little looks up and down Maerdy Street. All is quiet. But upstairs at number eleven there is one window open, no curtains, and the streetlights are playing on some glass thing on the sill, sending green and yellow reflections dancing up the walls. And over the curtain rail there is some old cloth hanging, a strip of flowered material only. No good being here in front if there is a window open.
He goes down the side alley to find the iron gate into the back yard of number eleven. They are not good at night, iron gates. And he reaches into a pocket and brings out a small tin of oil, and he oils both hinges just in case. He waits a few moments for the oil to talk to the rust in the joints, then he lifts the latch, wedges the gate open with a half-brick and he is swallowed into the shadows behind the houses.
His feet in their plimsolls make no sound on the back yard flagstones. And there is the back door, positioned where they all are, the kitchen window and the window of the middle room. This window is open a little at the top, the sash dropped an inch or two. And this is a good thing because the back door is locked when
he tries the handle.
James Little sighs, for he is not getting any younger, and he searches for something to stand on. And there is the wooden block used for chopping kindling, waiting patiently by the tap outside the back door, and if he is quiet . . .
He rolls the wooden block to beneath the middle room window from its circle of moss beneath the tap, stands on it and can just reach the top of the sash. A drop or two of oil each side, and the window opens. And James Little, giving thanks that he was not born to grow very tall, and also giving thanks that it was Edith who ate most of the cake slices that rode home in these pockets over the years, climbs into the middle room of number eleven Maerdy Street, where old Lillian Harris and her son Jimmy who they call Half Harris, are fast asleep.
It is not quite dark in there. There is a light left on, on the landing. The streetlights shine in through the stained glass transom, and the hallway over there is purple and yellow as an old bruise. James Little goes to the foot of the stairs and stands there, listening. There is a pram parked here, a newish one to replace another that was broken – its hood up, a few sticks in the body. It smells of damp already, and earth. He smiles, one hand on the pram handle, listening for sounds from upstairs, but there is nothing but a faint snoring.
Back in the middle room there is a dresser, two drawers and cupboard doors below, open shelves full of china above. Toby jugs, bowls, plates, a glass cakestand, and a pair of brass candlesticks. That might be hopeful. And out in the kitchen a mantelpiece with two brass plates polished almost flat, a figurine of a balloon-seller, one balloon missing, more candlesticks and a handleless mug. He fetches down the mug and it holds nothing but a pencil, a few pound notes rolled in a rubber band, some coins, a dead lipstick and a Kirby grip. There is a table laid for breakfast, a marmalade pot with an old teaspoon inserted through the gap in a cracked lid, two plates, a pile of used envelopes on an oilcloth decorated in lemons and biromarks, and the stub of a pencil sharpened roughly with a knife.
The Coward’s Tale Page 21