‘Always have done. And the moment I saw a biplane I suddenly knew what the dream was. Then when I had the dream again I could see the plane clearly. Still have it from time to time.’
‘What does it mean?’
‘Never really thought about it. Dee has them, too.’
‘What? And you don’t think it a bit odd? That we all have the same dream?’
‘I suppose it is. Shall we go in? It’s getting a bit chilly. Welsh clothing’s not as intelligent as yours.’
The air inside the White Rose is dark and heavy, with minimal light admitted through the mean apertures of Lapsed Era architecture. A few quaint push-button machines flash in one corner; otherwise the room is lit by an arrangement of lamps on the wall, each inexplicably covered. A sweet, dull smell pervades, making Dusty wary even of where he places his feet. Behind a counter, a bearded man with that distinctive local quality to his voice greets Ricky with some exuberance. He pours two more glasses of lager.
Ricky leads Dusty into one of the darker corners of the room and introduces him to a figure whose face is turned away, obscured by shadow. Dusty comes round to take his outstretched hand, which is when he notices something is wrong. The man is diminished to the point of inhumanity, a bent, wrinkled humanoid without teeth or hair.
‘Tom’s ninety-seven years old,’ explains Ricky. ‘He was born and bred here. Lived through the last days of the Lapsed Era.’
At first, Dusty is afraid to look Tom in the eye, and not just because of his debilitation. Those eyes have seen a time before the Fence. To look into them, it seems to Dusty, is to conceive of the Past as something more than a discrete curiosity housed in the museum they call Wales.
All the more disconcerting is the ludicrous defiance of the old man, when his suspicions that Dusty is English are confirmed. ‘I was there!’ he rails. ‘The Millennium Match, January first 2066! What a game! Emyr Delaney! Ryan Pugh! You English couldn’t lay a finger on us! Fair battered you, we did! And you’ve never played us since!’
Ricky looks at Dusty and laughs uproariously, too uproariously. He wants Dusty to like Tom.
‘Tell him the whole story, Tom,’ says Ricky. ‘He’s English! He doesn’t know! Remember what I was like when I first came here. Give him the history lesson, Tom, like you gave me!’
There is a lustre in Tom’s stare, at odds with the degradation of the rest of him. The skin sags hideously beneath his eyes, as if trying to turn them out of his head, but the intensity is unanswerable. Dusty is in thrall.
‘The Welshman will always play what’s in front of him,’ says Tom. ‘That’s why we’re God’s people! You English! You never think on your feet! You were never going to beat us!’
‘Beat you?’ says Dusty, rubbing the top of his head, which seems to grow heavier by the moment.
‘They were all like you, before the Earth moved and the air thickened. When I was born, the world swarmed with folk. Too many of them, for sure! Humans thought they’d taken control of the game, what with all their burning and breathing and building. But the Earth, she plays what she sees too, she does, like a good fly-half, and a rolling maul, even of ten billion folk, was never going to pin her in her own twenty-two. Oh no! She broke out! Boom! Volcanoes! The Decade of Fire! And she got a rumble going with her earthquakes. She ripped up the turf and unleashed the foulest vapours into the air, methane, sulphur, carbon dioxide. The seas responded and pounded the shores of the Americas and Asia. Fires raged throughout the world. The air grew hot and thick to breathe.
‘And so came disease. The disease to end them all. The Sofa Bug we called it. Devastating it was, attacking the respiratory system, preying on those of inefficient breath, ripping through them like the fires. The old folk couldn’t take it. By the time I was a boy, my grandparents and their many brothers and sisters had died. So had my dear father, God rest his soul.
‘The fat folk were next. Even boys and girls my own age perished, if they weren’t athletically inclined. Humans had grown too much in every way, they had. In my prime I was a good 5 feet 9 inches and nigh on 12 stone, but I would have been small, so small, compared to the folk in those days. My size was what saved me and all the others like me. Because the big ones fell. Death was ever-present. The streets became lawless. Folk hallucinated and were nauseous. They threw themselves from high windows and fought each other over the slightest gesture or attitude. By the early 2060s, when I became a man, all but the physically fittest had died. The population of Wales used to be four million, you know! We lost almost half our number. And the English lost three-quarters, so they say.’
Dusty shakes his head, trying to rid it of the fantastical vision, which seeps in to cloud the very corridors of his mind. ‘This happened in England?’ he murmurs, but his voice feels far away and someone else’s. Ricky wears a faint frown as he studies him.
‘It happened the world over! Earth lay open now, like a boulder of clay, ready for visionaries to shape.’ Tom’s eyes close, and when they reopen, a glaze has spread across them, a weariness at the passing years that Dusty can never hope to encompass. ‘That was when we broke away. The poor nations were also the least bloated, and we in Wales came out of the trouble OK, compared to everyone else. But the rest of the world had become so sickened by what they had seen – and yet so fit – that peace and physical exercise became the ideals, their only ideals. There was disgust at the lazy ways of the past. They turned their back on history. As for love, for mystery, spirituality… Ha! Gone, they were. Like those poor folk too big for their own good. The games became everything. Play was dead. Soon they were settling international disputes through sport. Oh, I know how it is on your side of the Fence! Life for you is nothing but a competition, a sick, global competition. Prosperity for the victors! Hardship for the losers! Where’s the compassion? Where’s the soul? We weren’t for that in Wales! When the English put up their energy temples across the land, they wanted to take us with them. We refused. Our way of life was at stake.’
Dusty tries to speak, to gainsay the demolishment of his universe, but the words will not form, the tongue will not move.
Tom’s mouth is bent in what could be a smile, could be a sneer. ‘We chose rugby as the sport to settle the dispute, of course we did! Our prerogative as defendants. And so came to pass the greatest match in Welsh history. January first, 2066. The Millennium Stadium was packed with one in thirty of every person in the land, each with a passion for their homeland that I swear had beaten the dull-eyed Englishmen before a ball had been kicked! No Welshman there ever forgot that day! We won! But not just the match. We won the right to continue in the old ways. We returned to the ancient mines and lived on in love and laughter, while the rest of the world worked their pedals.’
Tears have gathered in Tom’s eyes. He is still, but he does not talk any more.
‘That was the year of the Great British Partition,’ says Ricky quietly. ‘The year the Fence went up and perpetuation infrastructure was rolled out across England and Scotland. Dusty, are you all right?’
It is all Dusty can do to nod in acknowledgement. An invasion of his very person is being worked, physical and emotional, by what he does not know. Never has he spent so long sitting for no purpose; never has he stood so squarely in front of the Past and entertained it not just as a hypothetical place and way of life but as a living continuum, running all the way through to the present from what has gone before, that dirty, twisted parody of existence, the Lapsed Era, now being presented to him as progenitor of everything he has known. Not without reason does Perpetual society shield its citizens from exposure to the idea, for, truly, it works a palsy on him now. His body and perception feel as if they are bending. The voices of the others seem loud yet from another place, or dimension; the room, indeed the entire sweep of his vision, lists alarmingly; there is an uprising in his stomach. He panics and rises to his feet, clutching at chairs and tables for the feeling that the earth is swaying.
And then the air is rushing past him again. He feels disengaged, a
s he does in his dreams. He is in the flying machine. He can see it clearly now: the steel-grey wings, held together by black struts and wires that rattle ridiculously against the air, the furious propeller on the nose of the plane, the angelic dials in front of him, the control stick, which moves as if guided by the hand of another. He is flying low to the ground, close to six stanchions, each bearing a flat, featureless face cocked forwards to the ground, between which the plane dips, before soaring up into a clear sky. The sun is strong above him, and in the distance lies the rich blue sea. He is exhilarated, he is free. The control stick moves again, and with it the plane. He becomes aware of a pilot in the cockpit in front. Through goggles, Dusty can make out blond locks, which flutter in the turbulence. The pilot turns to him and smiles. Dusty recognises him immediately.
It is Ivon.
Consciousness descends on Dusty slowly. There is a terrible pain in his head, his brain seeming to pulse against the inside of it. He opens his eyes to find himself in an unfamiliar room, lying on something soft and yielding, which has cultivated an ache in his neck. Time and some painful effort reveal it to be an item of Lapsed Era furniture, long, like a couch but with backing on three sides.
Dusty heaves himself into an upright position, and the musty softness of the couch shifts as if to swallow him. There is protest in his stomach. It begins to dawn on him that he is in somebody else’s home. He gasps and leans forward. Somebody else’s home?! How could he have transgressed so heinously? He has no memory of it, yet here he is. Somebody else’s home. The shame tortures him. But is it just the shame? There is pain too. He doubles up, holding his head, muttering to his restless stomach.
‘Ah! He’s awake!’ says a voice behind him, which he recognises as Ricky’s. ‘How you feeling, butt?’
Dusty hauls himself round to see Ricky standing in a kitchen the other side of a counter behind him.
Ricky’s voice is jocular. ‘You made quite a spectacle of yourself!’ he says, as if it had been a good thing. ‘Here, have some of this. It’s basically a caffeine supplement dissolved in water. We call it coffee.’
Dusty takes the cup and stares into a liquid of impenetrable darkness.
‘I did wonder whether I should have bought you those lagers,’ Ricky went on. ‘But sometimes you see an old friend and you can’t help yourself, can you? It turns out you’re what we would call a complete fucking lightweight!’ He roars with laughter, the same way he did the night before. ‘Still, I don’t blame you. I was the same when I first came here. It’s something you need to get used to, Alcohol. All the same. Two pints?! Ha, ha, ha!’
‘Ricky,’ whispers Dusty, bewildered. ‘Ricky. I’m so sorry. What am I doing here?’
‘What do you think? You were paralytic. I brought you home, you silly twat!’
‘But, Ricky, it’s, it’s. Ricky, this is…your home.’
Ricky laughs again, coming round to join him. ‘Oh, we don’t worry about that in this country! In Wales, your home is something you throw open to people.’
Dusty stares at him, bewildered. ‘“A home of your own and for you alone”.’ He recites the mantra without thinking.
‘Oh, please! That “home of your own” shit. It’s fucking sad, don’t you think? Totally different mindset over here. This place has heart. No conditioning from birth to love a commune. In Wales, you love people, individuals – and you do it because you want to. Welcoming them into your home is just one way of showing that.’ He flops down on the adjacent couch. ‘And you’ll always be welcome in mine, butt!’
Dusty has known Ricky all his life, even if he has been missing for more than half of it. He remembers the upturned nose, a picture of impudence in the young boy, but now a broader, duller feature, its pores accentuated, each a tiny indentation. Wispy little purple lines grow out across his cheeks. The hair is as blond as ever, but it is long and unkempt. He has become overgrown with the weeds of age. Yet Dusty can make out the young lad he once knew, and a curious melancholy tugs at him.
He is broken from it by the sound of footsteps approaching, light and assured.
‘Here he is!’ Ricky cries with evident delight at the coming of someone else into the room.
It’s as if Dusty knows who it is before he turns round. He knows, too, the significance of this moment to his life before he girds himself to embrace it.
‘All right, Dad!’ says a rich Welsh voice that already feels familiar to him. He keeps his eyes on Ricky instead of turning to face the newcomer.
Ricky smiles at Dusty. ‘I’d like you to meet an old friend of mine! This is Dusty! Dusty, this is my son. Ivon.’
Only then does Dusty force himself to look away from Ricky towards his progeny, from the reflection to the man himself. And there, standing tall and impressive before him, is the blond fly-half from yesterday’s match.
‘Pleased to meet you,’ Ivon says cheerily, offering his hand.
Dusty blushes inexplicably. He finds himself unable to speak, but takes Ivon’s hand in the Lapsed Era way, so as to do something.
‘How’s yer head?!’ Ivon laughs. ‘Looks like you two had a good night!’
‘It was going brilliantly, until Dusty passed out,’ says Ricky. ‘Can’t take his grog. He’s from England.’
‘Yeah. I noticed your kit. What you doing over here?’
‘He’s on holiday. Chose Wales of all places!’
‘Sweet! Anyone want a coffee?’
‘We’re all right, thanks.’
Ivon heads into the kitchen.
‘Is Ivon a rugby athlete?’ Dusty asks Ricky.
‘Oh yeah! And a footballer, a cricketer. You name it. Quite the superstar round these parts. Chip off the old block, I tell ya! He was on fire yesterday against Neath. Practically beat them on his own.’
‘Ricky, I was there. Never seen anything like it.’
‘You were there! What, at St Helen’s?’
‘I was driving past. Heard the noise and stopped to take a look. I think it’s changed my life. I’ve never known such, such emotion.’
‘That’s Welsh rugby for you. It’s what they call here the paradox of sport. When it doesn’t matter, it matters so much more. I remember what it was like in England. Oh, we wanted to win! Of course we did! It meant everything. It could be the difference between comfort and hardship for everyone. But it was mundane, wasn’t it? The people wished for our success, but it wasn’t emotional. Like here – we all want unemployment to come down, and we feel more confident and secure when it does. We recognise it as more “important” than beating Neath. But does it move us like beating Neath? Does it fuck! That’s what blew me away when I first came here. The sheer passion for sport and its lack of importance.’
Ivon sits down next to his father, blowing into his coffee. The steam rises up in front of his boyish face and into an unruly thicket of the brightest hair. ‘What you drivelling on about now, Dad?’
‘Dusty was at the game yesterday!’
‘Oh yeah? Enjoy it?’
‘Course he did. He says he’s never seen anything like it in his life! And I know for a fact he hasn’t!’
‘You should come down this afternoon,’ says Ivon.
Dusty feels his cheeks warm again at the mere invitation. He is finding it hard to be normal, conscious of a strong desire to get to know Ivon, to be his friend, to impress him. And yet this impulse is neutered by a kind of fear of the boy.
‘Of course!’ cries Ricky. ‘Ivon’s playing cricket at St Helen’s this afternoon! Come along!’
‘Cricket?!’ Dusty replies, very specifically to Ricky. ‘But he’s a rugby athlete!’
‘He’s a sportsman! You can play as many sports as you like here. Welcome to paradise! Welcome to Wales!’
‘He’s contesting cricket today at the very same place he contested rugby yesterday?’
Ricky nods, grinning. Dusty shakes his head in disbelief.
‘And tell me, Ricky. How old is Ivon?’
‘Twenty-four, aren’t you?’<
br />
Ivon nods.
‘And you came here with Dee how long ago?’
‘I see what you’re getting at. And, yes, you’re right. Ivon was conceived as soon as we got here. He’s the child the English denied us.’
‘So, Dad tells me you used to bat with him in England.’
A nervousness, light and airy, flares up in Dusty’s stomach. Ivon has stepped out of the whirligig of well-wishers in the clubhouse bar at St Helen’s to initiate conversation with him. The room is noisy and busy, under the warm gaze of teams gone by, enshrined in murky photographs on the walls, some of them centuries old. Hundreds of people laugh and talk about the tour de force they have watched that afternoon from the man standing before Dusty now. In Wales, a cricketer has the opportunity to bat, bowl and field. Ivon was the best at all three today. Dusty could see, for the first time, echoes of Ricky, as he rattled up boundaries with a cleanness of shot uncorrupted by his natural bravado.
‘I did,’ replies Dusty. ‘We came up through the academies together. He was productive.’
‘Productive?’ Ivon laughs. ‘You make it sound as if he worked!’
‘Well, he did. We all did. Still do.’
‘No wonder he left! He says you were pretty good, as well.’
‘I did my bit.’
Ivon looks away for a second and then back, intently, at Dusty. The eyebrows are light and insubstantial, but they arch into a striking pose of mischief and urgency. ‘Take me back with you!’ he says. ‘I want to show them what they missed.’
His eyes appear blue, but Dusty sees now that it is an indigo corona around each that gives that impression. The iris within is a lucent turmoil of light and dark, falling, as if through space, into the pupil.
Take him back? Dusty wants to laugh at the idea. A Welshman in England! It could never be!
But what audaciousness even to think of it! Typical of the boy! And – Dusty’s mind is racing – why shouldn’t it happen? It never has, to his knowledge, but that’s not the same. These days London would try anything to improve their situation. Take him back? Already, Dusty is wondering how Ivon would fare in England, how England would handle Ivon.
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