The beggar got to his feet and pulled the chapel door a little wider. It was not exactly musty inside. More old. Ianto Jenkins understood that. But there was something different. A scent.
It was too dim to see exactly, what light there was from the streetlights came in only slowly through the painted windows, their figures and inscriptions fighting in the gloom to be understood. But Ebenezer was no longer empty. There on the flags where the box pews once stood, there was a rowing boat. A boat made of a hundred woods, smooth as skin, varnished. Perfect.
Then, maybe, the shadows were full of echoes. ‘Is that you dreaming again, Ianto?’ ‘Ah, let him dream. The world is full of men who do not.’
And in the echoes, after a little while, the beggar may have heard another voice, small, hesitant, hopeful. ‘Shall we play, after, Ianto?’
Ianto Jenkins went to the boat and laid his hand on the gunwale. He looked up. Maybe it was a trick of the light, but he could see no roof, just dust, rising and rising without end.
Tomorrow comes, and there is no breeze at all. There is a frost over the town, mist hangs like smoke in the back yards and a sheet forgotten on a washing line in Bethesda Mansions hangs flat as a leaf in a book. Mrs Eunice Harris, up early with her bladder, looks out of the window and shakes her head when she sees the sheet, ‘What is the world coming to?’
It is cold in the kitchen of number eleven Maerdy Street where Half Harris will be dipping his bread into a mug of milk, then dipping his finger as well and holding it to the keyhole to feel how cold the air is. He may lick his finger clean before taking a stub of pencil from a jar and drawing a wavy line for the Taff on the back of an old envelope. Then he creeps back up to his bedroom and pulls a blanket from his bed. In the narrow hallway he tucks the blanket into his pram and he leaves the house, closing the front door quiet as anything. His breath makes brief clouds in the air as he pushes his pram along Maerdy Street and he grins, walks a little faster and snaps them between what teeth he has left in his head.
Up the Brychan, Laddy Merridew’s gran has left already for the Public Library, telling Laddy he must pack his suitcase soon as his dad is coming to fetch him the day after tomorrow. ‘I can’t understand it. A boy’s place is with his mam . . .’ and Laddy did not say that his mam lied to him and his dad didn’t, and that was as good a reason as any. He will go down and tell Ianto Jenkins, when he has had his breakfast, and they may make plans for when he comes to stay next time.
But when Laddy does leave the house, there is the Woodwork Teacher stamping up the road waving a fist, his hair wild, ‘Think that’s clever, do you?’
‘Sorry, Mr Evans?’
‘You know what I mean. Stealing my boat . . .’
‘No, Mr Evans.’
‘Varnish hardly dry. Gone.’
‘Gone?’
‘You bloody lads . . .’
‘I haven’t seen it, honestly.’
The Woodwork Teacher runs a hand through his hair, ‘I was going to sell the thing too . . . pay for a bit of a holiday . . . You keep an eye out, will you?’ and he looks hard at Laddy before retreating.
So it is Half Harris who reaches Ebenezer first, and it is Half Harris who parks his pram and takes the blanket and climbs the steps to where Ianto Passchendaele Jenkins is lying still on his bench in the morning.
He sees the beggar, frost in his eyebrows and his mouth just open. His hands clasping his newspaper coverlet under his chin and his cap on his chest. Half lays the blanket gently over, and turns to go. But there is the flutter beneath his ribs of something not quite right, and he turns back to see what it might be. Something not there that should be – no small breath-clouds from the half-open mouth, and something there that should not be – eyes open a little but dull as the eyes of a fish caught yesterday. And Half Harris sits on the flagstones by the bench and flaps his hands.
And that is how Laddy Merridew finds them both when he arrives a little later. Half Harris rocking and grunting, and on his bench, Ianto Passchendaele Jenkins the beggar, frost silvering his face and hands.
And when Matty Harris and Tommo Price arrive to open up the Savings Bank, they look across at the chapel porch and see Half Harris with one arm round the boy.
Matty Harris jangles his keys, ‘What’s the matter?’ and it is the boy who answers in a small voice, ‘It is Mr Jenkins. Can you help?’ and Matty Harris comes over to see, then takes a corner of the blanket and begins to pull it over the beggar’s face. But the boy stops him, ‘No, please . . .’
Maybe the word spreads as words will, and the others will arrive at the chapel porch. Peter Edwards, his cap in his hand, ‘We should have come down last night . . .’ and Nathan Bartholomew, ‘I’m sorry,’ and Judah Jones and James Little, ‘It was cold last night, ice on the windows . . .’ ‘It was indeed,’ and Andrew Baker Bowen, ‘I’m sorry too, I was going to say thank you this morning . . .’ and no one sees Half Harris slipping into the chapel, just to be alone.
And even though Ianto Jenkins has been taken away by Tutt Bevan as is proper, the others plan his departing sitting there on the steps, the boy Laddy Merridew in the porch, listening.
Peter Edwards is first, ‘Ought to give him a good send off.’
Factual Philips next, ‘Right enough. Mind, funerals are expensive, there’s oak, and brass nails, and handles, and hearses, and expenses . . .’ and Matty Harris waves a hand, ‘I will contribute. And my wife will. Oh yes.’ James Little nods, ‘I’ve got those candlesticks in the shed. Matching pair. Georgian. I can sell those. Too big to put in my bag . . .’ and he reddens.
‘The wake, at The Cat?’ Nathan Bartholomew says. ‘A good spread, I can sort that,’ Baker Bowen says. Peter Edwards agrees. And Judah Jones says nothing more.
There is talk of dusting off Tutt Bevan’s old horse-drawn hearse, and getting the horses from Mr Wigley up Pant. The boy Laddy Merridew interrupts, ‘Then what?’ and they don’t answer him, too deep in their plans, ‘Granite headstone. Have to think about the inscription – “Ianto Jenkins” or “Ianto Jenkins, called Passchendaele”? And a nice plot up there in the Kindly Light cemetery maybe, with the others . . . ?’
‘No!’ and they turn to see Laddy Merridew standing over them, glasses in his hand. ‘No. You can’t do that to Mr Jenkins.’ He searches in his pockets for a handkerchief, and there isn’t one, and he is remembering an old man who handed him something like a handkerchief when he fell by a bus stop only a few weeks ago and that just makes things worse . . .
Factual Philips coughs, ‘Someone fetch his gran? She’s up the library,’ but Laddy doesn’t move and his voice is shaking, ‘You can’t bury him. You can’t put him in a coffin. I won’t let you.’ He tries again, ‘It’s dark. He’s afraid of the dark. He’s afraid of being under the ground and stones falling . . .’ and in the silence that follows all anyone hears in their heads is the thud of earth on wood, earth on wood.
Laddy pulls at the great grey door of Ebenezer and disappears into the chapel. But not for long. He is gone only the space of a few heartbeats and he is out again, his voice lifting, excited, ‘Come in here. Come and see.’
‘What?’
But they do go, and they do see.
They see a chapel empty but for dust, and they see a boat. Each rib of the boat a different wood, each plank for the sides. Mahogany, birch, hornbeam, ash, and all their cousins, their colours deepened under coats of varnish, a boat that glows and glows in what light filters through the chapel’s windows. And it is not empty. For asleep in the bottom of the boat, curled on his own blanket, his mouth open, is Half Harris.
At the Top of the Last Hill
There is always another way, especially after discussion, always things to do.
There was a boat that had to be bought from its maker: ‘Leave that to me,’ Matty Harris said, and he was off to talk to the Woodwork Teacher about finding his boat in a chapel, and about money. And Tutt Bevan, come back now, was making decisions and taking charge as was proper, calling to
Matty as he rounded the corner to the High Street, ‘See if he has any of my old offcuts left up there. Tell him I need them back.’
Another tomorrow comes, as they always will. Ianto Passchendaele Jenkins’s hair is neat, ready for this day as like as any other and as different. He is lying on his bench for the last time, wearing his khaki jacket and trousers, and the watch with no hands is on his wrist. The rowing boat of a hundred woods, made by a Woodwork Teacher, stolen by lads, found by Half Harris, and bought by a Deputy Bank Manager, his Clerk, a Piano Tuner, a Window Cleaner, an Undertaker, a retired Collector of Gas Meter Coins, a Deputy Librarian, a Chiropodist called ‘Baker’ and a man who was a Collier, was carried out into the chapel porch earlier. The oars, collected from the boat’s maker, have been placed across the ribs at the bottom of the boat, one each side, and in the centre between the oars is Half Harris’s blanket, neatly folded and waiting.
There is the sound of an engine idling then stopping, and at a signal from Tutt Bevan the beggar is lifted with gentle hands into the boat, as a dray borrowed from the brewery and driven down from Dowlais by Factual Philips waits as close as it can. And then help is summoned from the growing crowd of townsfolk and the rowing boat and its cargo are carried slowly down the chapel steps and lifted onto the dray. Ropes are thrown over and secured while those who readied Ianto Jenkins for this last journey stand round to watch, and Laddy Merridew is the last to come down and take his place, holding Ianto Jenkins’s kit bag.
They move off up the High Street at a walking pace. There is no sound except wheels and feet on the road, damp now, for a drizzle has begun to fall, as Ianto Jenkins begins his last journey through the town, up every street and down the next, never stopping, showing those places that do not shift that the journey is all, the arrival just the stuff of a moment.
They leave the cinema and the Savings Bank behind. Past Tutt Bevan the Undertaker’s they go. Past the Public Library, the Town Hall, the bus stop where Laddy Merridew fell, and the Kindly Light statue, head bowed, a tumble of coal round his boots. Past the dressmaker’s with its deep doorway, a scatter of cigarette butts on the ground. Past the General Stores, and the ladies putting the sign on the door to ‘closed’ and joining the procession. Past the turning to Steep Street, where Baker Bowen will be closing his door, ready, and the neighbours as well.
And on up the hill, the lorry sighing past The Cat on the corner of Maerdy Street. There is the still-curtained window of the bedroom above the bar, where Maggie is resting while Nathan Bartholomew, acting publican as well as Piano Tuner now, lugs barrels up the cellar steps, for the other publican is gone, some say, to a fancy piece in Abergavenny, but who knows? And he will leave the barrels and come out to join them with a group of drinkers, and walk beside the old Window Cleaner, Judah Jones, and will help him with his bike. Past Maerdy Street, where Lillian Harris is waiting on the corner to join her two sons. And there they are, Matty and Half, both pushing the pram up the hill behind the dray, and Eunice Harris, Sarah Price and Mrs Bennie Parrish in their best black coats and hats walking in the crowd behind, Eunice Harris still refusing to have anything to do with that pram at all.
Past the turning to Icarus Evans’s farm but there is no sign of the Woodwork Teacher, last seen collecting brochures from the travel shop in the High Street – and on to the Brychan, where doors open as the procession passes and the lads come out to watch, then go to fetch their jackets and join in. And Laddy Merridew’s gran as well, bringing with her Laddy’s old raincoat, several sizes too small but better than nothing.
Right out of town, the procession long now, past a drunk in the last doorway, on and up the road, to the top of the hill, and they do not stop there. On towards the next hill they go, the breeze sharpening, the townsfolk following the beggar’s body pulling their collars round their chins. A few with umbrellas. But not a word is said. Even the lads. Not a sound. Leaving what sounds there are for the dray to make: the flat hiss of tyres on the damp road, the low grumble of the engine, a cough from the driver Factual Philips and the creaking of the ropes holding the boat steady.
The procession passes between plantations of dark fir trees. Then it turns off the road as the light is falling, onto a track between the firs, until they come out at the very top of this last hill, before the hills become mountains. A high place, a clearing where the land falls away in all directions. North to the Beacons where the breeze comes from, east to another country, west to more hills, more valleys, and there in front, with the mountain at their backs, they look over the lights of the town and down to the coast where the big cities glow across the low sky to the south.
The dray and its boat creak slowly over the grass. Slowly and slowly the people come, until in a while it seems as though the whole town is gathered. They talk in low voices and stamp their feet in an evening drizzle as light as mist and as chilly. There are the shopkeepers, the ladies from the Stores, the grocers and the butchers, the stationers and the sellers of clothes and shoes and hats. There are the fruiterers and the fishmongers, the confectioners, the chemists and the second-hand bookshop owners. There are the steelmen and the colliers who are colliers no longer. There are the craftsmen and there are the wonderers.
There too is Tutt Bevan the Undertaker supervising the untying of ropes, Factual Philips and Peter Edwards organising the lifting of the boat and its cargo to the grass, the boy Laddy Merridew there with Half Harris, and Matty Harris and Tommo Price standing close, and the others arriving out of the crowd. Nathan Bartholomew helping Judah Jones still with his bike.
It is Tommo Price who speaks first. ‘Never liked hearing that Ianto Jenkins and his old stories.’
And Matty Harris nodding. ‘Nor me.’
And Peter Edwards, ‘Could never stop him, mind.’
And Nathan Bartholomew, ‘Not easy to hear . . .’
And James Little, ‘It is good to have it said.’
And Factual Philips, ‘Right enough.’
And Baker Bowen just nods, Judah Jones as well, and Half Harris grunts. And the boy Laddy Merridew hugs Ianto Jenkins’s kit bag and says nothing.
There is a pyre waiting, branches from the plantation firs heaped high by Tommo Price and Peter Edwards and the colliers who are no longer colliers, who came up to help and are standing in the drizzle, pulling their collars up round their ears. The pyre sits there, ready, and close by is the Woodwork Teacher’s trailer with its load of offcuts collected by Matty Harris keeping dry under its cover.
After a long while, finally, the boat is lifted up onto the pyre and the pyre settles and shifts. The first burning rags are pushed between the branches, the crowd falls silent and they all stand back in the gathering darkness, not wanting to watch the fire, and unable not to. Not wanting to see the branches catching, smell the resin, and see the glow in the night sky from the city lights in the distance eclipsed by the growing fire.
Night falls completely and the fire is still catching hold for the branches are damp. Tommo Price and the lads from the Brychan fetch the dry wood from the Woodwork Teacher’s trailer, to add it all to the fire, help it burn. Armfuls of wood, and the fire eating them, hotter and hotter, and the pine branches crackling and flaring. But the boat has still not caught alight.
And then from the bottom of the trailer, it is not wood the lads are taking but boxes, the Woodwork Teacher’s own boxes, collected by mistake from his barn, boxes full of wooden feathers carved ever since he was a boy.
Laddy Merridew shouts, ‘Stop! Not those!’ but the lads aren’t listening, and it is too late. The lads throw the boxes onto the edge of the pyre, where the flames are upright one moment, and wavering the next, but strong for all that. All the boxes save one they dropped on the grass.
And the boy Laddy Merridew lets go of Ianto Jenkins’s kit bag, picks up the box while the boys laugh, ‘Stinker, there’s brave . . .’ and he thinks fast. Should he take it back to the Woodwork Teacher and try to explain – ‘Mr Evans, I’m sorry, your wooden feathers . . .’? But h
e remembers how angry Mr Evans was yesterday, shaking his fist, his hair wild as anything. Maybe it’s best to leave the explaining to Matty Harris, so Laddy takes that last box and throws it onto the pyre himself.
Then the boat, which until now has sat dark and flickering, its varnished sides glowing, catches. First, a single rib catches, maybe a rib of wood born easier to burn than the rest, or where the varnish is thicker perhaps. But one rib catches. And the gunwale. Until the boy, the men and the whole crowd are watching the boat all burning. Every rib catching and flaring, beautiful and final.
And at the same time, the flames find the boxes. They catch the cardboard lids, lift the corners, curl them back to find what is inside. Box after box catches light. Sparks and bright drifts of drizzle talk to each other above the pyre as the flames and the smoke and points of rain work together in the night. And Peter Edwards keeps an eye on Laddy Merridew, tells him not to stand too close, but Laddy is gazing at the boxes and doesn’t hear, just pushes his glasses up his nose . . .
Then the fire finds the dry curls of carved wood, the piles of worked shavings that cascade from the burned boxes, to be seen for just an instant before the flames catch them. The shape of the boat is black against the fire, burning now so fast it is night itself come down, and the air above the pyre is a blizzard of sparks whipped by the breeze.
The sparks fountain against the sky, filling it with more stars than there is room for. Laddy Merridew and Peter Edwards stand together now, watching. And as they watch, the breeze catches a single burning feather. Another and another float upwards, caught up in their burning, then a hundred, a thousand, until the sky is alight with bright curls of flame that rise on the air and disappear into the darkness.
The Coward’s Tale Page 28