Broken Ghost

by Niall Griffiths

  Dig and bridge and wild. One of those words, I’ll make it mean something, I will. Watch me.

  HOLY SHOW

  Made beautiful, this morning, by the hills remaking themselves within the gauzy mist. The land itself reaching towards self-awareness and flicking out from itself the flecks of life that sing and that fly. Even the men, here, loosely circled on gravelly edgeland to the east of Carmarthen town, even they, in their focus and containment, tall shapes in the mist, have something about them of the tree and the monolith, supported by nothing but shared purpose. That there are forces abroad and at work that can with a pen make wobbly and unsure the common sap and muscle in this scene seems, at this moment, entirely laughable.

  Two of the men are without shirts and they are the circle’s bullseye. Eye to eye they are. The smaller man has a galaxy of pimples across his back between the prominent scapulae and the other has a red dragon rampant inked into his neck, the looped and pointed tail of it crawling into the armpit clotted with sweat-clumped hair. Were they hawks, these men, they would be in yarak – the lines of their world drawn spider-leg fine. And on the signpost for the town, just over the low hill to the left, beneath where it declares Carmarthen to be ‘WALES’S OLDEST TOWN’, someone has painted, in white, the words ‘AND SHITTEST’.

  —Clean, says a short man in a bowler hat and white shirt and braces. He circles too. Circles within circles is how these men operate. —Just keep it clean, boys. No biting. Ye gunner shake?

  Both men shake their heads.

  —Oh yes ye are. And I don’t mean yer fuckin heads.

  Fists are begrudgingly bumped.

  —Right so. Remember what ye are. Remember who ye are. Set to.

  The movement is instant; the hatted man scurries away in reverse and the fighters roll their fists at chest height and circle and the larger circle around them moves also, a carousel and there are noises now, the scrape of boots on dusty gravel and voices:

  —Up, Cow, sor. Block him. Block him.

  —Easy, Quinny boy.

  —Remember yer father, Quinn. He’s with ye now.

  —Yon’s glass-jawed, Cowley. That ye know.

  —Fuck ye, Aney Lavin, and double fuck that cunt of a Welshman ye’ve trained ferra dog.

  —Civil tongues now! yells the bowler-hatted man and with that is flung the first fist, scooping air as the targeted jaw is turned away and exposing for a blip the left eye that fist had been shielding. And so it works in nano-seconds; in that blip that eye is shut by bunched knuckles.

  —Follow on now Cowley!

  —Ye’ve got him! He’s fuckin yours now son!

  Gigantic arm movements follow the reel and stagger. Grunts and thuds in the thinning mist, sound waves that split that mist into scraps that drift away. A splat when the bad eye is hit again and bursts at the brow. And the slam as a back impacts with the planet.

  Faces leer and drool. Phone-faced figures lean in at the waist, and that’s the fight done – some quick movements and some blood. Before he is dragged off, the man with the dragon tattoo gets in three stamps on the fallen face, seeing in it as he does the remembered overbite of a certain Reverend Williams, a man of slimy threats and promises; stamp one breaks that overbite, stamp two hits only earth, and the third makes the nose flat and a colour known intimately to nature. There are protestations and then the dragon-man is dragged away and sat on a tree stump and a lit cigarette is slipped in his lips. The loser is put floppy and unresponsive into the back of a van where some crude doctoring will take place.

  —Knew this was a banker Cowley but I didn’t expect that, sure. A man squats and grins. —Fuck me, sor, what was that, two minutes, less? Bang. Fuck me.

  Cowley, barely out of breath but a bit adrenalin-trembly, applies his tongue to his bruised knuckles.

  —I’ll take the money now, Aney. Soon as yew like, mun.

  —Aye, aye. Just give yer man time to collect it up, now.

  Aney crumples into a cross-legged position on the scuffed ground. Signs of war in this bare earth; the stamped-flat discs of beer cans, the black pancakes of old fires. Buried bones beneath. Behind Aney is much human movement; some pushing and some shoving, arguing, the accompaniments to the collection of money. But here is a still centre – Cowley licking his knuckles on the tree stump, a join-the-dots puzzle of blood on one of his white pectorals. Aney importunate at his feet.

  —Got some notes coming your way, chavvy.

  —A know that.

  —Sure there could be a lot more, too.

  —Not at the moment, Aney. Gunner do some spending I yam.

  —Aye, course, but listen. What you’ve just earned now, you can make ten times it in one go. Ten times, sor. At least ten times.

  Cowley blows smoke out the side of his mouth and of course it looks, for a moment and if you fancy, as if the dragon on his neck has come alive and is doing what it’s supposed to do.

  —Gunner ask me how?

  —If yew like. Go on then. Tell me how.

  —It’s a secret thing.

  —Oh for fuck’s sakes Aney.

  —Kind of thing doesn’t happen too many times. Twice a year, if that. Never that many takers so there’s always a call for them that will.

  Cowley grinds his cigarette out under his heel.

  —Tell me, Aney.

  —Location’s always top fuckin secret till just before it goes off. Needs to be, see.

  —A’m running out of patience now, butt.

  Aney leans in. The grin has gone from him but it’s left traces in his face, in the lines at his eyes, like the echoes of old earthworks in the hills roundabout; the henge-scars on the land.

  —Death-fights, Cow.

  —Death-fights?

  —Aye, yeh. Topping-fights, sor. Fights to the death. Simple as that, chav; you kill some cunt.

  —Fuck off, Aney.

  —Swear down, sor. Not one word of a lie and that’s all there is to it. Anything goes. I mean no weapons like, but ye know. This one time, didn’t a throat get bitten out? Saw it for meself. Like a fuckin dog fight. Up by Bethesda, this was.

  The day will be warm again; the sun is rising high and fast. There is a widespread sense of dust.

  —Money enough for life, Cow. No lie. One fuckin fight, sor, an ye can fuckin retire. This is the truth. The stakes! Oh you wouldn’t believe. Knew this one feller, from Offaly, he was.

  —And he won, did he?

  —Well no, he lost, and they had to sink him in a lake. But he staked up everything he had, is what I’m saying, everything he owned; carra, acres of farmland. That’s sometimes how it works. You get the purse, the fuckin huge purse, and on top you get everything else. Set up for life, sor. No worries ever again.

  Over Aney’s shoulder is a noisy dispersal; vehicles moving away, a dust devil pursuing each one. Victoriously smiling men are approaching, one waving a fan of banknotes above his head.

  —So?

  —So what, Aney?

  —So what d’ye say?

  —A’ll think about it.

  —That means fuck all, sor. Need to know now. Get the ball rolling likes.

  —It means A’ll have a fuckin think about it is what it means.

  Cowley reaches for his shirt. He puts it on and Aney watches him do so. Watches him pat the breast pocket to check that the little machine is still safely in there.

  —But I’ve got to let the fellers know soon as. The big fellers, so’s they can start setting it up like. They’ve already got their man lined up, see.

  —Not my problem, boy, is it? Cowley stands up. Hitches his jeans up over his hips. —A’ve got fuckin money to spend. That’s my fuckin priority.

  The only target for Cowley’s eyes is the man approaching with his money. In this natural bowl, in a hanging whiff of exhaust, metallic and heavy and soon to disperse, even without a wind to waft it. Shadows shorten as the sun climbs the sky.

  HILL TOWNS DO their thing and in high summer they do it raw; their bamboozled inhabitants s
it on the sweaty stone balustrades of river bridges in the hope of receiving a lifted cool from the water below, even crawling as it now is, the eddies smudged under gnats and syrupy in their coilings like semen. And around this particular town burps the bog, fetid in its soupy sumps and abuzz with insects and the regular plips and hiccups of bursting bubbles. It gives off salt and steady throbs of sweetish stinks. And all around its rancid reservoirs the sundews reach for the midge, their little deadly pearls of such ugly honey. Dragonflies, joined tail to tail, create lovehearts on the canary grass. The heather, the moor grass, deep purple and maroon – shades familiar to the spirits of sex and death. Polecats skulk for the moist caves beneath the boardwalk, there to curl and gasp. Old energies heave in the peat.

  The small town exists in this desiccated haze; it lives in a dome of scorched and seething need. Inside the Talbot pub, a hen night is happening; pink fairy wings and a lot of thigh and belly. The lone woman at the bar leans into one of the hens as she’s up ordering another round of Cheeky Vimtos.

  —What’s going on here, then? Don’t get many hen dos in Tregaron. Don’t get any.

  —It’s the bride. Her man’s from yur. Leanna her name is. Might as well have-a do up yur as in Treorci aye?

  This woman looks at the other woman’s face. The tips of her gauze wings bob in pink on either side of her neck.

  —You local then?

  —Not far. Aberystwyth. Born here tho.

  —There’s nice. And look at yew all tarted up. Look lush yew do. Meeting someone, is it?

  —Just having a drink. Dunno yet.

  —Yew don’t know?

  —See what happens.

  —Aye. Best way. Something nice might ah-pen if yew don’t go looking for it.

  The barman reaches over the pump handles to place glasses on the bar, each one filled with a deep purple goo.

  —Where’s-a tiny brollies, then? Cocktails, these are. Av a bit-a class, mun, ey?

  He drops little paper parasols into the drinks.

  —An-a sparklers. An some-a them cherry things. C’mon, mun, siap alan, hen night this is.

  The barman shakes his head. —Twenty-one pound.

  —Twenty-one pound! Bleedin half that in Treorci. Must be loaded up yur, yew.

  The money is handed over. The woman sips at a drink. —Lush.

  She takes her change. The barman asks her if she needs a tray.

  —No ta, love, I’ve got enough to carry as it is. She winks at the other woman then turns back to the barman. —Aye, go on, I’ll av a tray.

  A shout: —Lisa! Urry up! Gaggin over yur we are!

  —Giz a minute yew impatient cow! Going as fast’s I can!

  The drinks are placed on the tray. Scoops of deep space, and in each one a captured comet; trails shoot and quickly fade in the liquid thickness as they go from bartop, up briefly into the air, and onto the tray. The glasses touch, kind of shuffle closer together as if affrighted as the tray is raised aloft.

  —Hope something nice happens to yew, love. Av a good one.

  —You n all.

  The hen stilts away with the drinks into whooping. The woman on the stool touches with the tip of her finger the tattooed stars behind her ear as if to check that they’re still there. The barman looks at her and shakes his beardy head.

  —You’re gonner be busy tonight, the woman says.

  —Aye well. He shakes his head again. —Could do with the custom to be honest, Em. Another one is it?

  Em looks at her glass, the centimetre of vodka left in it. —Same again.

  The fan on the shelf behind the bar turns her way then turns away again as if in disinterest but in that few seconds of regard is an instant of relief before the clamminess creeps in again.

  —Been a bloody hot one this year. The barman gives Emma her drink. All cold, all the bergy beads running down. —Poeth poeth. Fire on the bog last week there was.

  —A fire on the bog?

  —Aye, yeh. Can’t remember that ever happening. Should’ve seen the birds. How’s your mam n dad?

  —Good.

  —This just a quick visit is it?

  —Tomos likes his nain and taid.

  —Always talking about him, they are, when they come in. Dote on him they do.

  There would be more talk of children and such but the barman is called through to the other bar and Emma is left alone to look around the pub known to her. Unchanged since her first. Them gone years. The small town around, baked and isolate, the scattered amassings of people on this Saturday night crowding the beer gardens. Cars coming in from the hill farms. Cold drinks and companionship and manners of basking. Inside the pub Emma scans for eyes that might be regarding her because usually there are eyes that regard her and because there is a furnace in a void like the sun itself and she sees these eyes, in the eating area through the arched gap in the dividing wall; eyes in a male face. So starts the throb. Put wattage in the smile. The man smiles back then is distracted as the woman he’s with draws his attention to the menu and his childen suck at straws and swing their small feet in their small shoes a foot above the floor.

  If Emma reaches up and back to adjust her scrunchie, her vest top will be tugged taut across her torso, the ribcage and the tits. So draw back that gaze and pin it. Only here does a woman glow. Her skin. Her skin. And if she sliiides off the stool then her denim skirt will be pulled above her hold-ups and that skin will be shown for a second and then she can stand and kind of shimmy as she smooths the skirt back down over her thighs. Into the heart now, the blood that bumps and is bumped. Only in here does a woman glow. The route to the toilet – that gaze will be on her the entire way. Skewer the eyeballs. The hens have put One Direction on the fucking jukebox.

  Corked-wine sour but cool in the toilet. Some liquid somewhere going plink … plink. Two hens touching up their slap in the mirrors.

  —Yew avin a piss?

  —Yeh, Emma says, although she wasn’t planning to. All she wanted to do was move in her muscles.

  —Yur’s no bog roll. One of the women delves into her handbag and brings out a napkin. —Swhy I always come prepared. She looks Emma up and down then goes back into her bag. —I’d better give yew two in case you’ve got a big fah-nee.

  Emma thanks her and takes the napkins into a cubicle. She hears the women leave. There is gurgling in the cistern above her head. The coolness in here at a clash with the enkindling that has begun in many parts of what she is. All is wet and cool, trickling water, but the hot hills outside and the small dust devils on the crisped ridges, well, Emma is their avatar, she is all summer distilled. So far removed from both mirage and blood – lost, lost once more. And how to relocate but burst into bits – there is nothing known but that. Once there was something else but the sun has scorched that away, here in the cool toilet, quiet around cacophony. Dig and bridge and wild. Only one of those words rings off the dripping tiles. And bridge is not a noun. It is an instruction.

  Cross it, then. Feet-first. Fanny-first. Plunge.

  She flushes, leaves the cubicle and studies herself in the mirror above the sink, applies some tap water to her eyebrows and to a small curl of hair that has frizzed out over her ear like some kind of stinger. Outside the toilet the man, the gazer, is standing awkward with his hands clenching and unclenching at his hips. He’s shorter than he seemed when sitting but his eyes appear no less intense even if they seem incapable of settling for long on Emma’s face.

  —You with the hens then? he says, kind of blurts.

  Emma shakes her head. —Na. I’m just out for a drink on my own.

  —I’m, erm, I’m with the cocks. He winces at his own words.

  —Nah, listen, there’s no need for any of that. Just don’t bother with it. Can you get away from your family?

  —I’m not with my family.

  —The woman and the two kids.

  —Sister and nephews.

  —Aye right. What’ve I just said? There’s no need for any of that bollox.


  His eyes meet hers now and Emma can see that there’s not a lot of light in them. Not that she cares particularly, but the urge to get this done with as soon as possible becomes stronger. And his eyes aren’t looking at each other – there’s that, at least.

  —Where can we go?

  —I’m not married.

  Emma shakes her head, hard. —Don’t bother, alright? Where can we go?

  —I have a van outside.

  —What kind of van?

  —Well it’s a Land Rover. Blue one.

  —And where’s it parked?

  —Under the tree on the other side.

  —What’s the registration?

  —Starts with a J and a L. Don’t remember the rest. Got a 3 in it.

  —That’ll do. Meet me there.

  The eyes all askitter. But there are two of them, and there’s a nose, and the teeth aren’t too green or gapped. There’ll be sparks that spit.

  —Make some excuse to the woman you’re with, aye? Tell her you’ve forgotten your wallet or something. And you’ve got to nip home. Make something up, aye? And I’ll meet you by the van.

  —It’s a Land Rover.

  —The Land Rover, then. Alright? Be quick.

  He moves like a robot; his hand comes up and closes around her elbow. Emma bites back the laughter that wants to erupt and pulls her arm away.

  —No. Not here. Outside in the car park. Be quick, now.

  She thinks about grabbing his crotch but dismisses that idea and takes all the pieces of her out into the car park where ripples of heat do soft shudders and where the vehicles that have been parked there the longest will, when driven away, leave four indentations in the blacktop. Her nostrils flare at a faint whiff of burning and her lower lip sags a little in the jackboot stamp of heat on her skull, and she stands like that, a cat in flamen, scanning the cars, the entire sky weighty on her. Behind the tint of singe is the gamey taint of the outlying bog. Even the earthworms are panting in the soil.