The Coward’s Tale

by Vanessa Gebbie

  One of the men gestures with a thumb out of the door, for Mrs Cadwalladr the Chief Librarian’s office is shut, and there is a notice to say she is out today on a conference.

  Down past the reception desk there are the stairs to the basement and the small office of Factual Philips.There will be mugs all ready and waiting, regulation library mugs with the town crest important in black and I cannot live without books underneath, and there will be Instant from the cupboard, and a jamjar of sugar. Soon the men will go down the stairs, leaving their flat caps to read the newspapers all by themselves.

  ‘Duw. Kettle’s on . . .’

  ‘There’s a surprise.’

  ‘Morning, lads! Come a little in?’

  And they go into the office and take a mug and make plans to go back up and read the Situations Vacant. Sometime soon.

  Factual Philips will take another mug from a drawer in his desk, a mug with no writing on at all, and he makes another coffee and takes it outside to Peter Edwards still sitting in the rain on the steps of the statue.

  ‘Come inside, mun, in the warm?’

  But Peter shakes his head, and when the Deputy Librarian is gone he turns his back on the library and warms his hands round the mug. The rain finds its way down under the frayed collar of his shirt and meets itself coming through the buttonholes on his jacket.

  Maybe he hears his wife Bella’s voice again, as she watched him from by the gas stove to make sure he used hot water and soap and a brush to scrub at his hands, ‘When will you be getting work then?’ and his reply, ‘When the coal is gone from my hands I will get a job. Not until.’ And he looks at those hands round the mug of coffee, smiling a little at the skin still black as black in the creases.

  When he has finished his coffee he leaves the mug by the library doors, and he walks back to the statue, his hands in his pockets. And are his hands alone in those pockets, with just an old bus ticket or a sweet paper? Indeed they are not. For in each pocket Peter Edwards keeps nuggets of coal, taken from the pit on his last day down. As he walks he turns the nuggets against each other for their dust to be taken into his skin to replace the coal washed away each morning while Bella his wife watched, wringing her hands, knowing the insurance man was coming later in his car, to collect their money.

  If it stops raining later, the men will come back to the steps of the statue for a change. And maybe Laddy Merridew will pass by, kicking a stone in the gutter, and he will stop to watch the men doing nothing. He may have just come up from the cinema where the beggar Ianto Passchendaele Jenkins is tapping his watch with no hands, and wheeling his arms, telling his stories. Maybe Laddy stopped to hear the beggar, ‘Tommo Price, it was, Tommo Price,’ or, ‘Listen to the story of little Meggie Jones,’ or, ‘A story of dark and diamonds, it is, and a half-born man that was born twice . . .’

  Laddy may pause and say to no one in particular, ‘He’s off telling stories again, that Ianto Jenkins . . .’ The men will look at one another, ‘Well, that’s better than sitting here waiting for the world to turn,’ and they start down the High Street towards the cinema.

  ‘Peter Edwards, you coming then?’

  Peter will shake his head, ‘No indeed. Stories is bubbles,’ and he just sits there and goes on searching the maps on his hands for coal seams. His face will cloud over, and he will not shift from the step, as if he is his own coalface and cannot be moved. He’ll just hold his bits of coal and watch the men go round the corner of the High Street and he’ll listen to the talk as they disappear,

  ‘I like stories, me.’

  ‘Me too. Nothing like a good story to pass the time . . .’

  And then they are gone.

  Peter Edwards will lean back against the statue and close his eyes. He will forget about the steps, the High Street, the library. And in the darkness of the coal in his pockets a deeper darkness will be growing. A darkness that speaks of damp and fertile ground beneath tall trees. Warmth. Peter breathes the darkness, the scents from an earth long gone, vapours from strange flowers high in the canopy. He hears the cracking of fallen branches trodden by creatures past, their footprints left in mulch. He hears the buzz of insects and the drip of rain off leaves a thousand years dead.

  The Collier’s Tale ii

  In his chapel porch, the beggar Ianto Passchendaele Jenkins is waiting for someone to bring him a nice warm coffee, with two sugars. Or for Mrs Prinny Ellis to find him a sandwich with beetroot from her greaseproof packet. Mrs Ellis came down with her basket a while since, opened the ticket office of the cinema, and is knitting a red jersey while she waits to sell tickets for the two-thirty showing.

  The cinemagoers will see the men who once were colliers coming down from the library, all together, ready for a story. But no Peter Edwards.

  ‘Why isn’t Peter here then?’

  ‘Poor man. Why leave him out there on his own?’

  And the men will try to say that they ask him to come too. But it is not easy.

  ‘Has a mind of his own, he has.’

  Someone will have watched Peter Edwards sitting by the statue. Seen him holding his hands up and turning them this way and that, then pushing them deep in the pockets of his jacket, sitting there, scowling. Then looking at those hands again and the funny thing is, they were blacker than when they went in –

  ‘Why?’

  And Ianto Jenkins may say, ‘I am old, today. Maybe I can’t remember now. Ask him, will you?’

  But the miners know not to ask that Peter Edwards. ‘Not interested in stories, listening or telling. Why is that?’

  Then Ianto Passchendaele Jenkins will look up the High Street as if he can see past the slow bend in the road, past the shops and see the library, the statue, the man sitting there on his own, and he will sigh. Then he will stand and stretch himself and yawn a deep yawn – and tap the face of his watch that has no hands and he will shrug his shoulders and begin.

  ‘Listen with your ears, I have a story for them, see, about a small boy called Peter Edwards, the very same Peter who sits up there, and will not go into the library to keep warm.

  ‘But you go and find me the plaque that used to belong on that old statue, will you? Go and find it in the lake where the lads threw it years back, and if it is not too far gone you will still see the names engraved there. And if not see them, you will be able to feel them with your fingers. All the names of the men killed down Kindly Light one September day a long time back. Among them, one man called Thomas Edwards, hewer. A good man, he was. A good butty.’

  Ianto Jenkins will stop for a moment, then shake his head as if he is waking after a sleep.

  ‘Thomas Edwards, hewer. A good man. Grandfather of Peter Edwards. I tell you, look again at the face of Peter Edwards, and at the face of the statue. There is something the same, a kindness about the eyes or the frown, maybe – like both of them are asking the other questions.

  But yes, Thomas Edwards was killed down Kindly Light, that September day. On that last morning before leaving for the pit, he opened the door of the room where his son David was sleeping, and kissed him goodbye. He had never done that before, not that his lad could remember, and David pretended to be asleep not to spoil the pleasure of it – the rasp of his da’s cheek against his own, his smell, his work clothes smelling all of dust and darkness, and the smell of his mam’s soap on his da’s hands. David felt his da Thomas Edwards pull the covers up and tuck them round, then he was gone – just the back door closing, a cough from the back yard and the rattle of a bicycle chain against the mudguard his da was always going to fix.

  You just imagine that son when his da did not come back. And how he would not listen when they tried to tell him, gently, but slapped his hands over his ears, and shouted anything that came, words and no words. Noise to cover the words he did not want to let in. Stayed for days by the window, watching, it seems, until finally he heard the sound of that bike again. The unmistakable rattle of that chain against the mudguard. Listen! Coming down the street, clear as anything.
And it must all have been a mistake, mustn’t it? The son David ran out of the house and into the street to fling his arms round his da . . . but the smell was wrong, the jacket . . . and he looked up to see the face of the man and it was just a neighbour bringing the bike back down home from the pit. Smiling, “Hello young man . . .”

  His da was dead. Killed by Kindly Light. And David swore he would never work in that place.

  But here’s the worst. When he grew, what jobs could he do? That boy could do nothing else but work in the place that killed his own father, because there was nothing else – unless you had book learning, and he did not. Worked as hard as he could, though, to earn for his own two boys, when they came along, enough to pay for a good schooling. One of those boys was Peter. David Edwards swore they would not have to go down the pit, like he did. No they wouldn’t. He would see to that. They would work at their books and get to the good school. To Cyfarthfa.

  Oh children are like water in the Taff, flowing along nice and solid enough, until it meets a rock in the bed of the stream, see. At the rock, the water in the stream divides. Some flows this side, all deep and smooth and steady, and the rest flows where the bed is stony and the water is shallow and rough. You look next time you walk down by the river up near that Baker Bowen’s, will you? Look to see if the water flows together again on the downstream side of a rock? It does not. Where water divides itself it never meets properly again, but instead is kept apart by itself, invisible.

  The two Edwards boys were like that. One son did his bookwork just right. And the other son, Peter, his head was as full of as many questions as any boy. But books?

  Oh, his mam and da tried. Indeed, yes, they tried to get him to learn his letters, and his numbers . . . but they would not go into his head and stay there. Instead, the young Peter Edwards was more interested in picking up stones. He would turn over stones, fill his pockets with them, bring them into the house, lay them in lines on the lino, put them on the windowsills, marvel at them. But black letters, numbers on inked pages? They would never stay still on the paper. They slid and slipped about when Peter looked at them, just like they wanted to be somewhere else.

  Then one day, David Edwards came home from the pit and found Peter at his book in the kitchen, not trying to write and to copy the shapes on the paper as he was told, but dreaming instead, clicking stones in his pockets.

  David Edwards undid his belt. “I’ll give you learning your letters!” The book fell to the floor, Peter scrambled to hide beneath the table, but it was no good. His own da laid about him with that belt, hitting under the table as he cried, “No, my Dada!” until the boy’s good woollen jersey was torn on the shoulder.

  “You will learn your letters, my boy, or it will be the belt, every time. We will start with ‘A’.”

  Twenty-six times, Peter was beaten with that belt. Twenty-six times, once for each letter. But they still would not roost between his ears.

  And his brother, did he help? Oh he tried to. “Look, Peter,” he said, at night, when they were supposed to be asleep. “Learn your letters and there will be stories . . . learn your letters and here, in this book, and that book, journeys with pirate ships, and camel trains over sand, read them with me? And cowboys, and Indians and planets . . .” But Peter, for all the trying and all the beating never found his way into words. Never found his way into books. Or stories.’

  Here, the cinemagoers will shake their heads and pass round a bag of fruit drops, and maybe remember the lad down their street who still can’t read and he is ten next Monday. Or the man who sells newspapers down by the bridge from a stand – he can’t read the papers either, just reads the photos – and still seems to know what’s going on so what’s the problem?

  Ianto Passchendaele Jenkins says he is thirsty, and could do with a little something, and someone finds him a coffee, with two sugars, and someone else opens a bag of toffees wrapped in gold paper, and he tucks one in his pocket, ‘No teeth, but never mind.’ And the story continues.

  ‘Now. Peter never learned to read for all the hurt his father did him with that belt. And one day, when he was a little older, seven maybe, or eight, he walked out of the house after a beating and did not stop. All the way to the edge of town with no one asking where he was going. On, out up to the hills to let the hills smooth his bruises. And he thought maybe to dip his hands in a stream, for it to wash away the blood he was licking from a cut done by that belt.

  He knew a place where there was a good stream, steep-sided and deep where it cut into the earth. Near where he found sheep’s bones, once. The chalky bones of a ewe caught in the wire – close by it the small skull of a lamb, its own bones now nothing but pale fragments scattered over the banks. Their skulls touching, and violets growing between the yellowed teeth of the old ewe, her bones picked clean by foxes and crows.

  And this boy Peter he tumbled and slipped down the slope to the stream, bringing with him small cascades of earth and stones. He thought to look for more lamb’s bones in the grass, or the pitted grey shanks of dead sheep in the stream, hanks of damp wool on the overhanging branches.

  He thought to kick off his boots and dip his feet into the water then to lie on the mud with his hands in the stream, feeling the cold tumble over his fingers. So that is what the lad did. And when the hurt was gone, more or less, taken downstream by the cold, he just lay there watching the sky being the sky and a branch over his head being a branch. To watch the grass on the bank being grass and to hear the bubble of the water by his ear being just that.

  He let the mud ooze between his fingers like they were the roots of trees. And like roots, his fingers met small stones in the mud. Peter wheedled those stones out of the mud, played with them then threw them, sent them spinning from where he lay, unthinking. Spinning them to reach the other bank.

  Stone after stone, his fingers reaching beside him and he not looking at what they were finding. Feeling them hardly at all, just sending them spinning into rowans misshapen by wind and water, on the other side. Stone after stone. Until something changed – maybe a cloud ran across the sun, and he turned his head? Peter lifted the next little stone, and went to throw it, but it felt different. Hardly at all, but perhaps there was something in the feel of it that spoke to his skin, still bruised but not hurting? Just alive and feeling?

  Something in a shape, a surface, a ridge instead of smoothness, an edge, a ledge where his finger rested? A dip in the stone where the ball of his thumb was pillowed?’

  Ianto Jenkins will raise his arms and looks up at his hands, and he stands there a moment while the people watch . . .

  ‘Peter Edwards lay on that bank and lifted his hand into the air to see this stone, this misshapen thing that came out of the mud by his head. He looked. He sat up and looked again. This was no pebble. He dipped what he had found into the water to wash away its coat of silt.

  It was no stone at all, but a bone-fossil, black and solid, brought down from deep in the mountains. A bone now resting in the hand of a living boy as sure as it was in the spine of a beast before boys walked these valleys.

  Peter knelt by the stream with that bone in his hand. And something happened . . . he felt not just the hardness of a stone in his palm, but instead, he felt inside himself the snouting of a beast deep in the years, foraging among tree roots long gone. The bone told him all that in the wink of the boy’s eye, and he tucked it in his pocket, found another stone and held that too, did not throw it across the stream. And this stone told his fingers what it was to be a mountain. And another, what it was to be made a valley by wind and water.

  Later, he walked home, his pockets full of stones, his special bone-stone deepest, where his fingers turned it over and over for it to tell them its story. He found his mam alone in the kitchen, spreading bread with margarine for their supper and setting it on the table with boiled potatoes and ham. “So where’ve you been then all day?”

  Peter smiled and told her about the stream and the black bone-stone and its stories, and
he held it out for her to see, just as his da David Edwards came in, slamming the door back on its hinges. Been up The Cat and drunk half his Friday wage, “Learned his letters, the boy, has he? Going to read to his old da finally then?”

  He pulled out a wage packet, torn, and held it out to Peter to read what was written on the brown envelope. And his mam stood between them both, “Leave him, will you?”

  But the drink pushed her aside and the boy Peter held out the bone-stone to his father, “This. I found this, and Mam says . . .”

  “Mam says, does she?” that David Edwards wheedled. “Mam says, does she? What does Mam say then?” looking at his wife, who said nothing at all, white round the lips. And the boy was frightened for his mam then, and it was his turn to stand between them,

  “No Da – listen – I’ve been up on the hills and I’ve found this, and there are stories inside it . . .”

  He held out the black bone, hearing it speak, things about snouting animals and the climbing of spidery limbs up tall trees, but his da had the drink noising in his ears. “Get you and your stones to the devil!” and he lunged at his son and swept the bone from his hand – and with the boy grabbing and grabbing at his jacket, “No, Da!” out he went to the front step, pulled back his arm and threw as hard as he could, sending the little bone sailing away and over the houses in Mary Street.

  And then, with Peter pushing himself between the kitchen chair and the wall, and his mam out in the yard not daring to speak, that da David Edwards and his drink came back in, unbuckling that old belt. “To the devil, I say. This will learn you your stories.”

  Later, limping down Mary Street, Peter Edwards saw pieces of coal in the gutter, fallen off the coalman’s lorry when its wheel ran into a drain. All he did was bend and pick up a little piece, and he sat on the kerbstone turning it in his fingers – and the stories came.