The Coward’s Tale

by Vanessa Gebbie

  On over the footbridge, following the road through the houses on the other side of the river, on and out through the new estates to the hillside beyond, scrub, sheep-pitted grass, dips and scars of old drifts. The beggar stopping every now and again to catch his breath, ‘Oh, my old bones . . .’ before continuing. Past tumbledown walls. On to the track that runs up the hillside, following one such wall, where they meet the Woodwork Teacher Icarus Evans on his way down, an armful of rough wood, bark peeling, trails of lichen. Laddy Merridew stops this time.

  ‘Is that for the boat, Mr Evans?’

  Icarus Evans looks hard at Laddy. ‘What’s that got to do with anyone?’

  ‘Nothing, Mr Evans . . .’

  ‘Well, there you are then . . .’ and he goes on down the hill.

  Ianto has to stop more and more often to catch his breath. On up that track they go, beggar and boy, until at a turn of the wall they are at the old cemetery on the hillside, the low wall, the few stones lined up like they might get up and march back to the town. The memorial. And on the ridge that runs away to the right, old trees bent by the wind, tangled.

  Ianto Jenkins sits on the wall and after a while, pours himself a coffee from the flask. Laddy says nothing, but goes through the gate that hangs open on one hinge, held there by nettles. It is not a large cemetery. Laddy walks round the stones, peering at the names, taking off his glasses now and then to polish them. Reading the names aloud. ‘Edward Bartholomew . . . Thomas Edwards . . . William Little . . . Thaddeus Evans . . . Benjamin Lewis . . . Gareth Brightwell . . . Charlie Harris . . . George Harris . . . I know these names, Mr Jenkins. I know them. And there are others, Ernest Pritchard . . . Ernest Williams . . .’

  Ianto Jenkins does not turn round. ‘Families long gone. My neighbours, Mrs Pritchard, Mrs Williams. And more. Long gone. But look on the memorial, Laddy. Those who were never found.’

  Laddy crosses to the memorial. ‘Billy Price . . . Geraint Jones . . .’ And then he walks across to the far corner, where there is a stone fallen, fallen onto its face, pushed by the wind. No name visible. ‘Mr Jenkins, whose is this stone?’

  There is no reply, and the boy looks up, but the beggar is not listening. He has walked along the wall to the gate and is inside the graveyard, standing on the old flags, looking at the straggle of grass and weeds and nettles against the stones. Where the rabbits have dug and troubled the turf, and where sheep have come and lain against the wall for shelter, making smooth pits in the earth. There is the constant clank from the marshalling yards carried up on the wind, and the smaller more insistent sounds made by a few brown leaves tumbling along the path, coming to rest against the stones. And Ianto Passchendaele Jenkins starts talking,

  ‘There was trees, all over, then, Maggot. I still hear them. And a different sound, deeper. Do you hear it?’

  The boy listens. ‘I don’t think so, Mr Jenkins. All I can hear is the trains.’

  The beggar looks down the slope towards the town, down there in its valley, going about its business.

  ‘I came up here, when I could, after that day, Maggot. After Kindly Light. When I was well enough. I had some days in and out of sleep, I remember that. Just up by there on the ridge I came. But it was a strange thing indeed. I was the same Ianto Jenkins that had walked here a thousand times and maybe more, and it was also the same mountain. And yet where my feet joined the ground it was not the same at all. I stand here now with the sun behind me, and look at the ground, at my shadow. Take that away and how do I really know I am here at all?

  I was sent below to Kindly Light where it was all shadows, and perhaps I disappeared in those shadows? That is what it felt like, Maggot. But then, in the next breath, I was walking up here, on my mountain.

  But it was not easy to come up here that day. There was something made me wait until school had started and most people had gone to work. For the school bell to stop ringing, at least. For sounds like that, men going to work – they only served to let me know another place where I did not belong any more.

  The doctor who came – and I must thank the colliery bosses for that – said I must not do too much too soon. That I could walk as much as these legs wanted to and no more. He said the cough would be with me for some time yet, and he was right. It used to wake me in the night.

  That day, I sat on the bed and reached for my boots. And my fingers and feet did not want the boots of dead Mr Ernest Ellis, standing there on the rug. They wanted the small boots I had shared with my brother the Maggot. The ones that pinched and raised blisters. I wanted those – and I could not find them. On my hands and knees, I was, searching under the bed, but they were not there. The Maggot was not there. Maybe he had gone out before I was awake? I could not think. His pillow was on the bed next to mine. The dent where his head was – I put my hand there, and it was cold. He must have gone out an hour since, and I could not remember if he shook me and said, “Shall we play, Ianto?” I dare say he could not sleep with me tossing around in the bed. I dare say my brother the Maggot who looked so like you – he may have gone to stay with neighbours for the moment – and I did not blame him, or them for taking him away. I would have done the same. I was not right, not for a long while. And could not look after myself properly let alone a Maggot. I put on dead Mr Ernest Ellis’s boots after a bit, and walked down to the end of our street with my feet heavy on the end of my legs. So it was me and Mr Ellis’s boots that walked out of the town, and I remember thinking I was closer to dead Mr Ellis than I was the day I won his boots in the drawing of the coal.’

  Laddy Merridew interrupts. ‘Sorry, Mr Jenkins. But couldn’t your da look after your brother?’

  There is a silence, broken only by the wind playing with the leaves on the path. And Ianto Jenkins sighs. ‘No, Maggot. He was too ill to look after himself, let alone his son. I said, his leg wouldn’t heal. I don’t know about these things, mind. And it wasn’t long after that . . .’

  Laddy says nothing, and after a pause, Ianto Jenkins continues, his voice heavier.

  ‘But that day, as I walked along our street the silence from behind the doors came out somehow, dark and swelling. And that same silence hung over the whole place. Not even Middy Pritchard from number five shouting to her children to come by here. No trucks and engines on the railway at the bottom of the town. No clanking and hissing, no rattling, shouts and whistles carried up here on the wind.

  The day was good and fine and it had no business being fine at all. I went down to the river, to the hollow where the robin’s old nest was perched in the rowans. I went to it, to see something whole. And it was gone, broken up, the place where it was perched all pulled about and smashed. There had not been a flood, and it must have been lads who did it. But for a moment I felt like it was me who took the nest away.

  And then I shook myself, “Now Ianto. Just like a girl you are. Snap out of it will you? You have taken no nests.”

  Dead Mr Ellis’s boots were so heavy on the end of these legs. I took them off and left them under the bank by the stream, and I walked on barefoot.

  And then I was walking on a different mountain than the one before. The grass was cold and wiry, still. The places where moss grew on the stones were soft as before, like walking on a bed on the ground, or a cloth. But no matter how wiry the grass, how soft that moss, below it the ground was harder than before, and I am sure it was telling me something, something I am not able to explain.’

  The beggar stops talking for a while, then he gets down from the wall and stands by the memorial. Then he looks down at the town in its valley. ‘See, Maggot, I did not feel I was a boy any more, that day, walking up by here. The fact of Ianto Jenkins the boy had been left below and there is no more to be said about that. But what was I then? Was I grown into a man in the space of a day or so in the dark? I do not think so.

  I was sitting here on the mountain without dead Mr Ellis’s boots on my feet and I pinched my toes one by one until they turned white, and the white remained long after my fingers had
left off the pressing. It is true that those toes looked the same as Ianto Jenkins’s toes from before and they felt the same . . . so it had to be something else of Ianto Jenkins that had changed and not the feet of Ianto Jenkins . . . And I was thinking then, Maggot, in which bit of my body did Ianto Jenkins live before the accident? And in which bit was he living now, then? Because it was not the same place at all.

  I had no wish to be going back down to home, not yet anyway. I had no wish to walk back past the houses and hear the voices coming after me like they had before, the voices that got into my head then, and have been there ever since . . . “No right to be here, he hasn’t . . .”

  “No right at all, quite right . . .”

  “Should be one of the men . . .”

  “His fault. His fault.”

  “Said it himself. Done something, that boy did.”

  “He did, mark my words . . .”

  And the women turning their backs on me to go into their houses, and one, her hair all over, and a small boy all bewildered and dirty hanging on her skirts, her voice ringing, “Why are you still here? Where is my husband? What did you do? What will I do?”

  They had no need to say the words after that but those are the words I heard in my head and still do, “How come you are out at all?”

  Why was I here at all? Why am I here at all? That was and is something I can’t answer.

  When I got back to the house, I half expected it to be just as it was before, with Da handing out orders and my brother the Maggot at some mischief in the back. But it was quiet. There was no one. And it was hard to be alone. I wanted to see someone, and looked for a reason. Then there was a reason – there were still some eggs in the cupboard and I had no stomach for them, but perhaps someone else would. Maybe Mrs Thomas Edwards along the way. Whose husband was my butty. My da’s friend. Or her son, David.

  Oh Maggot. I went along and round the back of number eighteen as I always did before the accident. And like things always were, it was all quiet, and the kitchen door wide open.

  She was sitting by the empty grate. Mrs Edwards. Mrs Thomas Edwards, who was the wife of my butty. Mrs Thomas Edwards, who had looked after me when I was smaller, and the Maggot she was a mam to right enough. And wife of that Mr Thomas Edwards who pushed me behind him in the tunnel. Whose arm lay across my face. There she was, just sitting on a stool in the cold. There was no sign of her son, young David. And the funny thing was, that on the drying rack above the range there was a single white shirt, all stiff, the arms hanging down, the cuffs open, waiting to be buttoned. The arms were so white in the kitchen where it was so dark. And Mrs Edwards, she heard me come in, and she lifted her head and there was such a light in her eyes, a hand went up to her throat and her mouth opened.

  But when she saw it was only Ianto Jenkins, the light in her eyes went out straight away, and her hand fell back into her lap.

  I held up the bag of eggs, “I have brought you some eggs, Mrs Edwards?”

  But she said nothing at all, just turned her head away slowly, and no words at all came out of her mouth.

  So I just put the eggs down, careful, in an empty bowl on the windowsill and I left her by the range. And when I went back out I was thinking how white that shirt was, and how she must have worked so hard to get it white like that for Mr Thomas Edwards. And now she would not be doing that any more. And as I was going away down the alley it seemed to me that the sleeves of that shirt were reaching down to touch her cheek.

  And then their son came back, David Edwards, younger than me but strong for all that, pushing his way past me, banging me into a wall, “Where is my da? What did you do to my da?” and a voice inside me said that Kindly Light may have happened a short while since, but it would echo and echo for more years than I could think of in one thought, and that is a fact.

  And it was later, Maggot, a lot later, the names began. They called me all sorts, for Kindly Light was my fault. They gave me the name Passchendaele, later still, for being a coward. I can hear them, Maggot. “Wouldn’t have lasted five minutes at Passchendaele, that Ianto Jenkins.” ’

  Laddy interrupts, ‘But Mr Jenkins. It was an accident, wasn’t it? It wasn’t your fault, was it? You were a boy, that’s all.’

  Ianto Passchendaele Jenkins twists his hands, looks at his watch. ‘I was a boy indeed.’ He stops. Looks at Laddy. ‘I was a boy, like you, a little older. It’s been my fault now for so long . . .’

  Ianto Passchendaele Jenkins shivers and goes to the nearest gravestone. Thomas Edwards. ‘I was always afraid of the dark, Maggot. Afraid of going below the ground.’ He puts a hand on the stone and is quiet for a moment. ‘Now, what else do I have to look forward to?’

  Laddy Merridew does not reply, for sometimes, things are too much for words. But he holds the beggar’s arm as they start their walk in silence back down the track to the town, and that walk takes a long, long time.

  The Collier’s Tale i

  If it rains on the town when the sun is bright over Black Mountain, Batty Annie says it will be a fox’s wedding. Lillian Harris will set an enamel saucepan on the floor of the back bedroom at number eleven Maerdy Street to catch the drips from the ceiling, and Mrs Eunice Harris will push a rolled newspaper under the kitchen door not to let the rain interfere with her clean floor. Then she turns the key so that Matty Harris and his wet shoes will have to wheedle through the keyhole to be let in.

  And the rain makes to glower all the stones of the town. Even the bricks in the old back yards transform themselves into something dark, the stormclouds stain the slates as black as ink, and the walls of the privvies, now used as coal sheds and places for the lads to play hide and seek, weep and remember the warmth and stink of distant piss.

  Outside the library the rain drips off the hair of the town statue, and onto his boots. He stands and looks at his hands, and the men sitting on the statue’s steps will pull their collars up against the rain and tug their caps over their ears. They will still be wearing their colliers’ boots, although the feet inside are no longer colliers’ feet. Those boots have been polished and tidy now for months since Deep Pit closed. Look, the raindrops collect on the toes like glass bubbles, then join and run off the leather in streams. For it may be raining still under the Black Mountain, but the pumps are not working any more and the water levels have risen as high as the kneecaps of six-foot men.

  Peter Edwards will be there, sitting on the wet step in his flat cap and letting the rain wash his boots. They are not polished, like the others, these boots. The rain splashes on the old leather and seeps into the cracks, trickles into the eyelets and soaks into his socks what black they can find on the way. There is coal caught like ants in the stitching, there is coal in the folds and creases that no water or rubbing will get rid, while both man and statue wait in the rain for something to happen.

  Peter Edwards may grumble, ‘It is raining inside my shirt . . .’ He will look down to button his jacket and his cap will be whipped off his head from behind. And in return he will swat the other, who falls sideways off the step into a puddle, then they are both up and grinning like cats on a wall, cap-fighting.

  Mrs Bennie Parrish may get off the bus with her basket and limps towards the library, ‘Great lumps of men, look. Have you nothing better to do?’ and their grins will fade and they will sit back down and look at their hands, while the rain wanders off down the High Street to play in the gutter and sit on the windowsills of the shops.

  The rain washes the windows better than Judah Jones ever does up his ladders. But it did not always do this. Not long back the rain was heavy with coaldust and left dirty fingerprints on the windows and doors, for the old women with their pinnies and buckets to complain over low brick walls: ‘Ych y fi . . . aww, what’s the point now in cleaning if the weather will be dirtying my house again?’

  Peter Edwards hears in his head the voice of Bella his wife following him out of his house every morning since the pit was closed, ‘When will you be getting new work then?�
�� and his reply to her every morning, ‘When the coal is gone from my hands I will get a job. And not before.’

  In a while the Public Library will open, and the men will get up to go –

  ‘Righto. We’re off then.’

  ‘Coming to the library, Peter Edwards?’

  ‘Nah. He ’on’t go into no libraries. Too many words . . .’

  ‘Go on, break the habit of a lifetime? Catch your death, mun, you will . . .’

  But they know it’s no good telling him where they are going for he will not come too, not into a library.

  Peter will shrug his shoulders against the rain and the turning of the world and look at his hands. He’ll spread them palm-up to see the skin between his fingers and turn them palm-down to see the nails. In every crack there is darkness, his skin holding coal dust deep in itself. Dark as the shadows where the coal seams run under the skin of mountains, it has seeped into his pores over time, taking the place of the sweat he paid for it with. Blue-black as a bruise in the scar tissue on his fingers and on the backs of his hands.

  The men who are no longer colliers will close the heavy library doors behind them. They will wipe their feet none too careful on Welcome to a Place of Silence while Mrs Bennie Parrish tuts at the reception desk for she wants to borrow The Collected Adventures of Sherlock Holmes and it is not to be found anywhere, and Laddy Merridew’s gran leans on her mop and sighs at the bootprints on her floor in the entrance hall.

  They will take off their caps and go through to the Reading Room with its polished benches and its newspapers wound all neat on their sticks. They will lay their caps on the tables for them to breathe a little damp on the polish and they will talk in whispers for there is a sign that says to be quiet although there is no one else to mind.