The Coward’s Tale

by Vanessa Gebbie

  Stories of what it is to be a forest, tall and dark, dripping. What it is to have beasts foraging at your feet and birds building in your topmost branches. What it is to hear all the sounds of the forest, and to smell the damp smells rising at dawn, rising more at dusk. And what it is to die as a tree, to stand tall, held by your neighbours who will not let you fall.

  The boy Peter Edwards knew what it was to be alive back then. On that kerb, holding that coal, he was the drip of rain off leaves and the fall of trees onto damp earth. The growing of plants long dead and the ooze of mud, the flow of rock and of river and the rise of mountain. Only jolting back to Mary Street when a neighbour came by with a pram and said to get out of her way.

  So, did Peter Edwards ever learn to read words on pages? To make sense of black ink on white paper or signs in chalk on board? He did not. When his brother went off to the Castle School, Peter went to his own place, and skipped school more than he stayed – and when the brother left for the college in the city, to learn about cold offices, numbers on pages, and how to write words that people read because they must, Peter Edwards went to work among the stones he loves. Down the pit to be with his coal’s stories.

  But does he tell anyone this? He does not. And now all he has left are those pieces of coal in his pockets, for him to hear the story still.

  Of course he will not go into that old library, a place where there is nothing but words he cannot read, words for whom he was beaten, for whom he still has scars under his shirt. And of course he does not want to listen to stories. He has no need to – they are in his head and in his skin, with the black of the coal his fingers keep finding in his pockets.

  But look, look what has happened. His wife Bella has watched him every day, waiting for his hands to be clean. She was there when he came home at night, to watch him standing by the sink scrubbing at his hands with an old nailbrush, scrubbing his nails and knuckles. She asked him over and over when was he going to get a job of work to keep her in that house? And his answer was always, “When the coal is gone from my hands, then I will get a job – and it is not quite gone, see. Not yet.” Holding his hands out for her to see, like a child, turning them in the halflight, the black deep in his skin, and her watching them dripping soap onto the tiles. For Peter Edwards has spent months holding coal just to keep the black in his skin, leaving his words and intentions in the air of the kitchen.

  So now. Go up to Maerdy Street. The house at the end. Is Bella in the front room, waiting for Peter to move a chair or set the fire? Is she waiting by the front door to say it is warped in the rain and what will he do about that? She is not.

  Is she waiting for him to bluster onto the kitchen rug and stand there with his arms wide, in one hand an envelope? A letter of engagement from the factory down by the Taff, or the garage up on the Tredegar Road wanting a strong man for occasional duties, or a blotted note from a hill farm wanting help to rebuild a barn?

  She is not. Just left the back door open when she left, and did not look back to pull it to. Only the one suitcase, I am told. Picked up in a shiny black car by the insurance man, his hands as clean as new money – and a job that won’t run out at the end of a seam.

  Told nobody, Peter hasn’t. For to tell it means telling a story. And that would never do, would it now?’

  The cinemagoers will shake their heads and say that is a shame. They may say life is like that. And they may sigh and make plans to hold nuggets of coal themselves, when they can, to see what happens. And to wash their hands after of course, just in case. Just to see in those seconds whether it speaks to them too.

  The Collier’s Tale iii

  Later, Ianto Jenkins takes the packet of sandwiches left by Prinny Ellis and leaves the chapel porch. He makes his way slowly past the Savings Bank and up the High Street, stopping now and again to catch his breath, until he comes to the pavement outside the Public Library. On the Town Hall the hands on the clock are still stuck at ten past always because of a nail, or another accident. And the muffled bell on Ebenezer, its clapper wound with a rag, is trying to tell the town it is one of the hours but it doesn’t know which.

  Peter Edwards, his hands deep in his pockets, is alone and asleep on the steps of the Kindly Light statue, their faces almost mirrors the one of the other. Ianto Jenkins sits beside Peter and waits as the streetlights flicker on and chase the evening away up the hill.

  Peter stirs, finally, stretches, and fixes his frown on the beggar. ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘Fancied a walk, that’s all. I could ask the same.’

  ‘The bailiffs came today, took everything, the bed even.’

  ‘There’s a shame. Where will you go?’

  Peter Edwards rests his head against the statue again. ‘I don’t want to talk about that.’

  But the beggar will not stop. He takes out the lamb sandwiches, ‘You will share my supper?’

  Peter does not reply, watching the streetlight outside the library, the crack in its glass cover, the flicker of the loose bulb, and the dance of light on library wall. The beggar watches for a while then smiles, ‘That reminds me . . .’

  ‘Got a story about that and all?’ Peter’s voice is hard.

  ‘Maybe.’ Then Ianto says, quickly, ‘Catch hold?’ and as he says ‘catch hold’ he tosses something else to Peter, something from his pocket. Peter Edwards catches it, and turns it in his fingers. A small lump of coal.

  The light flickers and flickers on the library wall. Peter frowns and he mutters, ‘That reminds me as well, I suppose. There’s kids still play up on the ridge above the cemetery with bits of broken mirror, flashing the sun.’ He pauses. ‘Doesn’t seem that long ago I was up there myself, skipping school. Always hated school.’

  Then he stops and waits for the beggar to say something, but he does not. Just listens, and nods. So Peter goes on, still playing with the lump of coal, speaking slowly, as if the words are weighty, ‘Used to find bits of broken bottle, stole my mam’s old compact mirror once, to make the light dance on the graves up the main graveyard. Anything to get out of the house. My da was a terror.’

  He checks his hands, the black of the coaldust on his fingers. His voice lifts, the words come faster, ‘Or, we’d be the Welsh against the Romans, sending the sun flashing down from our fort, on to their shields below. Dustbin lids. Marvellous sight, whole Roman legions – the Ellis boys from Plymouth Street, Prinny’s boys, all three of them. Marvellous.’

  The beggar nods again. ‘Good game, that one. We played at making ghosts, being ghosts, my brother the Maggot and me. Best when the sun is low, isn’t it? Catches the glass just right.’

  Peter Edwards is standing now, one hand raised towards the streetlight and the wall, ‘The soil was that colour – there, the colour of rust. I remember there was an old ousel that came searching for grubs in the grass. I wonder if it’s still there, or its children? I wonder if that ousel is one of the Roman legions, now, those Ellis boys who took their dustbin lids for shields? They dropped slugs down the girls’ necks. Got called all the names under the sun by the girls. Hated them then, mind – went and married them later.’

  Then he stops. The lads from the Brychan have arrived and they are sniggering, leaning against the library wall to listen. One shakes his head. ‘I won’t be marrying no girls.’

  Another nods. ‘Nor me. That’s a good game, though . . .’

  Peter says no more, waves them away, waits for them to be gone, but they stay, just go on leaning against that wall as though it might fall down if they stopped. There is more low talking, and sniggering, as if they know something no one else does.

  Peter shrugs and goes back to the statue, puts the coal down on the step and sits, hands pushed deep in his pockets again. Ianto Jenkins hands Peter a sandwich, and the two take their supper together in silence, cold lamb and beetroot on white made by Mrs Prinny Ellis.

  When they have finished, Ianto Passchendaele Jenkins looks at his boots. Then he pushes the lump of coal back towards Peter Ed
wards. ‘Here. There will be more . . .’

  Peter shakes his head, ‘Got plenty of my own . . .’ and Ianto Jenkins says nothing, just leaves the small black stone alone on the step. After a while Peter takes it and turns it over in fingers still greasy from the lamb and the butter.

  For a few minutes they sit there together, not speaking, then Peter shakes his head. Shakes it hard as though a bee has entered his ear. Shakes it as though that bee is buzzing against the drum, filling his head with sound – the hooter at Kindly Light echoing on the wind, as it used to, calling the colliers to work. But different, deeper. The sound of boots on a road. Voices.

  The double beat of boots that are too big for the wearer, loose over the feet inside them. Walking fast. The feet of a boy, perhaps, little more. A heart beating, not Peter’s, but another, smaller, younger, faster. A voice, a boy’s voice not broken yet, breathless, talking low, as if to be heard only by the speaker, ‘Today I go down Kindly Light by myself.’

  This is what he hears. Peter puts that piece of coal back down on the step fast and the sounds are gone, as though the wind has blown them away. He shakes his head again, says nothing. And there is the boy Laddy Merridew coming up the High Street, an old shopping basket by his side, ‘Hello . . .’

  The lads leaning against the wall of the library laugh, ‘Hello, Stinker, shopping for soap at last, was it?’

  Then a few of the colliers that are no longer colliers arrive to waste some time before going home,

  ‘Good grief. Will you look at that?’

  ‘Is that Peter Edwards, telling stories?’

  But that piece of coal is in Peter Edwards’s fingers again, and it is as though he is in another place, and his voice rises, fills that place, becomes stronger. ‘Listen . . . I hear this. Third day at work down the pit for a boy. A boy who has stuffed rags in the toes of his boots for the boots are too big.’ He pauses. ‘Not any boy. This boy is Ianto Jenkins . . .’

  Peter looks at the beggar leaning back against the statue, at the beggar’s face pale in the streetlight. The lads have stopped their sniggering when one of them hissed, ‘Shh, will you?’ and there is Laddy putting his basket down, ‘Mr Jenkins?’ but the beggar does not reply.

  Then there is Eunice Harris come to find the bus, and Judah Jones pushing his old bike on his way down to Plymouth Street, stopping to listen when he hears Peter Edwards’s voice. There is Maggie come down to find a box of crisps for The Cat on the corner of Maerdy Street, and Tommo Price coming up from the Savings Bank, ‘A story about Ianto Jenkins? Well, there’s a first . . .’ and Matty Harris, standing close to Maggie and saying nothing at all. But Peter Edwards does not seem to notice, and goes on playing with the piece of coal. ‘Listen,’ he says. ‘Listen . . .’ as if he is telling himself to listen harder.

  ‘Listen. Those boots on the road, again. Now they stop. The boy Ianto has stopped to pat his pocket. He has brought his breakfast with him, in case he is sick from the drop of the cage. And he pats the other pocket, where his water bottle should be. It is not there. The boy has left his water bottle on the wall outside the back door where he knelt to do up a bootlace.

  He’s thinking fast. It’s raining too. Can he go a day without water down below? One little day. Can he go to one of the men, Mr Thomas Edwards, maybe, and ask if he can be sharing his water for he has gone and left his bottle on an old wall back home? But this is only Ianto Jenkins’s third day, he is a man now, a man of twelve, almost thirteen, mind, and he will soon be riding down to Kindly Light in the cage on his own and what man takes water from another collier?

  But Ianto remembers his mam’s voice, “Never let a collier go home once he has left for the pit . . .” He knows that is bad luck. So it is a choice between a little bad luck and going thirsty all day and coughing so much the men will be laughing and telling him he is making a dreadful fuss? “Here, bachgennyn, should have brought a baby’s bottle down after all?” And what will the bad luck be? His da being cross with him like he seems to be these days? Ianto can cope with that.

  He runs back home. He creeps up the alley as much as those boots can creep, and he takes the tin bottle from where it is waiting on the wall, stuffs it in his jacket pocket.’

  As he says this Peter Edwards looks across at Ianto Passchendaele Jenkins, all shrunken and grey now on the steps of the statue, his eyes great in his head.

  Peter frowns, ‘Bad luck that was.’

  There are echoes from the colliers who are no longer colliers. ‘Terrible bad luck, that.’

  ‘Yes. Terrible . . .’

  Ianto Jenkins looks away, pushes his hands deeper into his pockets. The lump of coal turns faster and faster in Peter’s fingers.

  ‘But Ianto Jenkins does not creep back quietly enough, does he? I hear a window opening upstairs, see the head of a younger boy at the window, a little lad with red hair all in his eyes, sleepy, saying, “Ianto? Shall we play after?” but his big brother is not looking up. Not answering. Just walking away.

  And the boy Ianto, he is a collier walking down to Kindly Light then. And someone is speaking to him. Thomas Edwards – he pats his shoulder, this boy who is to be a man today, and says, “You’ll get used to it soon enough, young man,” and Ianto Jenkins is ducking angry away from that hand, and scowling, muttering under his breath, “I am not a baby.” ’

  Peter stops then. ‘My own grandfather, that Thomas Edwards was. Must be. But listen. There is a thorn tree by the side of the road to Kindly Light, in a hollow. The boy Ianto knows there was a robin’s nest in that tree in the spring, where the lads couldn’t get at it. But he also knows this. For a collier to see a robin at the mine is worse luck than a collier going home to fetch something forgot.

  Ianto keeps his eyes on the road, the gutter, on the end of a cigarette in that gutter, on a place where a man has spat, all black and glistening in the damp. Keeps his eyes down, on the toes of his own boots, on the heels of the man in front. Tries to walk faster. He pushes past some colliers, friends of his da’s, and Mr Thomas Edwards again, who laughs, “How many days is it now, young Ianto?”

  “Two and then three today, Mr Edwards.”

  “That much is it? Well don’t be overdoing it now, will you? Be growing out of those boots nowjust . . .”

  And is it because they are his da’s friends, who have helped him on his first days, especially Thomas Edwards, or is it because he is being a man today, that when he sees a flash of red in the rowans on the other side of the road, he says nothing. Nothing at all. And then, it might not be the robin – it is September after all, and maybe it is just the light on the rowan berries? It might just be an old wren with the light catching it just right, the russet on its wings? Sometimes, they can look red in the light?’

  The beggar speaks then, and just says one word. ‘Sometimes.’ And some of the listeners shake their heads, ‘What’s wrong with that?’ and no one answers. Peter’s voice rises again.

  ‘But the bird must be flying alongside, dipping between the huts, the walls, because the boy Ianto sees it again, up and over the roof of the building on the corner where Kindly Light watchman waits at the window with his china mug – a flash flying low across the path. And he hears that sound, the same one he hears at night, or in the early morning, tick tick tick like his brother the Maggot winding up that toy train of his. And the boy Ianto looks about him to see if the men have heard it, through the noise and the clatter of doors and boots, and shouts and machines, and knockings and bangings, and rattlings. But there is no other collier, no real man, stopping to say, “Wait. A robin . . .” and the bird is up there clear as anything, there for everyone to see.’

  Peter stops yet again. Laddy Merridew is sitting close by Ianto Passchendaele Jenkins, the lads from the Brychan are still leaning against the library wall and they are not laughing any more. And the small group of townsfolk has grown. There is Nathan Bartholomew standing next to Maggie the publican’s wife. Baker Bowen on his way back from General Stores with a bag of strong flour.
Icarus Evans and his bike and trailer of offcuts from Tutt Bevan the Undertaker, Tutt Bevan himself on his way home via the library, off to meet Factual Philips after work. James and Edith Little on their way back from a visit. All gathered now to listen. And Peter, frowning at his hands, at the coal, real enough, tests it on the step where it leaves a mark as black as black, but on his fingers, precious little.

  Laddy asks then in a small voice . . . ‘Was that the day of the accident, Mr Jenkins?’

  And there is another silence for the question is not asked for an answer at all. But the boy does not stop. ‘Mr Jenkins?’

  The beggar is quiet. And in the hush a voice from the small crowd says, ‘Bad luck, to see a robin by a pit. I know that. Everyone knows that, don’t they?’

  And another says no they didn’t and who says and there is a small argument, who knows more about these things than others – and the argument brings Philip Factual Philips out from the Public Library. ‘What’s the fuss?’ and when he is asked about red-breasted birds seen near pits, and colliers who return home to fetch something forgotten . . . his facts are there for all to hear. ‘Bad luck the both. Always were at any pit. Why?’

  But the voice of Peter Edwards comes again, ‘It is not any pit, is it? It is Kindly Light.’ And it is a moment before he continues.

  ‘Listen now, will you? It is three days later. Three days after the accident, it is – and they have brought up those who are burned from the ventilation shaft end. They have cleared enough of the mid-section to find the men who died there. They have brought up several caught by the afterdamp . . . and the message comes, “A boy, alive . . .” A boy beneath the bodies of colliers, behind the body of Mr Thomas Edwards. As if they are sleeping. But it is only the boy who wakes as he is moved, and when he hears the sound of a voice that says, “It is only a boy.”