by Dai Smith
Inside The George the afternoon has been hidden behind musky floral curtains. Jack Tacsi and Doreen are sitting in the corner beside an empty fireplace fringed by brass ornaments that look dull and pallid, yearning for the absent flames to light them. They look up and see Robert at the bar, sloshing a pint of Stella with hands that are trembling; it has been a difficult day and he cannot shed the coldness of Evans’ parlour from his skin. ‘Rob lad,’ calls Jack, ‘wot the fokk are you doing back?’ Rumbled at last Robert walks nervously over to join them, steeling himself to hide his failure once more. But after a few pints it has retreated, receded into some distant corner that is another country, far away from here. Jack and Doreen are reminiscing about Rob’s old man and slowly, as the appropriate, comforting earnestness with which death introduces itself begins to fade into familiarity, they begin to laugh together. Jack is telling a story about how he and Rob’s father had collected a load of fish in his old van and stopped off at The Sailors Arms for a quick one, which became a quick eight or nine, after which they forgot about the van and staggered off leaving the fish to the mercy of the hottest August day anyone could remember. ‘…it wos fokkin stinkin like a bastard when we went back, I’m tellin ya, you could smell it in fokkin Llanfairfechan…’ Jack’s face is alive with laughing, though the years of drinking have puckered it inwards, like the vortex of water that is sucked finally down the plughole. He had once skippered a charter fishing boat that trolled tourists out past Puffin Island and into the ocean. Robert remembers its name, Starider, and imagines Jack at its helm plunging through a sea of stars. They are in his beer now, percolating silver orbs floating in a golden milky way, stellar, a beautiful space where time is stilled and softened, it binds them here – him, Jack, Doreen – they are watching the stars from the same place. ‘Did you hear about Tracy Roberts,’ Doreen asks, taking silence as an answer, ‘poor thing was killed in a car crash about three days ago.’ The heavens are shifting again, nothing will stop them.
Outside he knows where he is going. Down the street and around past the castle walls that stand in crumbling watchfulness, looking out into the surrounding woods that have receded over the centuries into long fields dotted with vestigial oaks; this ancient anglo-island put up to keep its eye upon the unruly natives that lurked beyond its perimeters, behind the trees, babbling in an alien tongue. He walks up the sloping fields towards the undiminished clusters of forest that still remain, passing beneath the shadows of the single, lonely, leftover oaks. They had hidden in these little cocoons of green once, Tracy and him, finding refuge here from the liver-coloured presence of the grandmother. They had lain on the gentle, leafy grass, her black hair falling about above his head, the slight chill of evening upon them, damp and dewy, and then the sudden hot wetness of her, almost stinging him, enclosing him in a moment of frantic, slippery warmth. Afterwards the slight sadness, the intimation of a small emptiness returning, the light fading under the cushioning branches. ‘Did you come in me?’ she had whispered here. ‘Yes,’ he had said, ‘I came.’ She has gone now. Somewhere, he thinks, her body lies crumpled and broken. Perhaps beside his father’s. He digs his fingers into the earth, gathering it in his hand and pressing it into his face, tasting its fecund decay, smelling its bountiful rotting. Twilight is descending now, covering him, and below the town is dissolving in an evening mist; the castle walls, the dreaming, delicious houses, the tranced water, the still and silent masts, the mountains insubstantial as clouds, all are dispersing into a vapoury darkness, hanging on the borders of night.
BREAKDOWN
THAT OLD BLACK PASTURE
Ron Berry
He dealt the clerk a fast, wristy backhander across the mouth. There were witnesses too, standing behind him in the queue.
The clerk yelped, anguished as a girl.
Inside the office, the tubby cashier strutted like an April bantam cock. ‘Lloyd, what an earth are you doing?’
Pushing his head through the hatch, ‘Gabe,’ he said. ‘Gabe Lloyd. None of your Lloyd to me. Shut up a minute, you crabby-minded bugger. This isn’t the first time I’ve been swindled. My water allowance, five bob a day, so dish it out or I’ll be right in there with you.’
The cashier exploded with authority. ‘You can’t treat my staff like this! If it’s trouble you want, rest assured you’ll get it, oh yes, I’ll warrant that!’
‘Not before I bust you one,’ he said.
‘Leave off, Gabe,’ warned a greyed old miner. ‘You’ll cop the worst end of it.’
Way back in the queue they were yelling, ‘What we waiting for?’
‘Keep moving boys!’
And, ‘Same every bloody Friday! Dried-up gravy on my dinner!’
The clerk dabbed blood off his lip. He had overlooked the water allowance. Simple matter to put right. Next Friday, two water allowance payments. The cashier tutted confirmation, having survived twenty years of payday tantrums before nationalisation. Precedence, truth, ironed his brow as he paraded, quick white fingers tap-tapping his waistcoat buttons.
Gabe lunged through the hatch, grunting as he missed the clerk. Colliers hauled him away, sympathising, pacifying him at the same time. He shook free, glaring at the cashier. They made a triangle. Cashier, clerk and Gabe, his cheekbones shining baby pink beneath coal dust, tight grey eyes menacing above the meaty splodge of his nose. He snorted, coughed abruptly, alerting his wits, then held out his hand. ‘My money, I want it,’ blunt chin outslung, oddly offset by the puffy innocence of his mouth.
The cashier saying, ‘I shall rectify the error,’ plucking out his fountain pen, bottle-rounded figure leaning over the red-spined ledger. ‘Petty cash.’ The clerk sniffed, sorted twenty-five shillings in half-crowns and slid the money across the hatch counter, and from the cashier, ‘You haven’t heard the last of this matter, Lloyd.’
‘Very good of you. Big laugh. You pair, you couldn’t fill enough coal to boil a bloody egg.’ He was cocky now, grinning triumph. ‘Perhaps it’ll teach him a lesson. He isn’t the first been slapped in the teeth. You sods fiddling in this office, you’d raise the bile in any man. What d’you know about what it’s like down under? Bloody experts you are, on the Consultative Committee an’ all!’ He jigged on the balls of his feet, haranguing the queue, ‘Harmony between workers and management? Load of ballox! Only management can afford to renege. Don’t take my word for it though, just remember my old man.’ He shook his fist. ‘Mansel Lloyd did more than his whack to improve conditions in Black Rand! What for? I’ll tell you. Bloody wreath from the NUM when we put him in Tymawr cemetery.’ Gabe punched the stack of half-crowns into the palm of his other hand. ‘These slashers in the office, they never cleared a top hole, never filled a dram, couldn’t pack a gob wall, never cut up a rib face, they’d be smothered in yellow working a low seam with the top pouncing like bloody Guy Fawkes’ night. How can they think like us, ah? They don’t feel like underground men. Same things, thinking and feeling.’ He let the half-crowns fall in a clacking, flashing current before dropping them into his pocket. ‘Never trust ’em,’ he said.
They bantered, ‘You like stirring it up.’
‘Lloydie know-all.’
‘Not a patch on his old man.’
‘Amateur,’ they said. ‘Three-rounder.’
He walked away. I’m different from my father and grandfather. They believed in rank and file. I say, bugger the rank and file. It’s all mouth, always was, always will be. This life is for Gabe Lloyd, to do as I want with it, mine from the beginning. Some men are born slaves. Not this kid. Never. It’ll take more than religion or politics to alter things too, for definite. All I’ve heard is jaw-jaw. Bosses and workers, jaw-jaw. Good people, bad people, all yapping like costive poodles. I’m different from my old man and my grandfather. They broke Mansel’s spirit, but he kicked the bucket sitting up in bed not flat on his back like those who spend a lifetime squashing their arses in offices. As for Grancha Tommy, he worked on sinking Black Rand in the first place. They repaid him
by breaking his leg in the ’21 strike. Lovely people, great, these stupid sons of workers coming here to Golau Nos, bashing hell out of the strikers. Marvellous, the rank and file, wonderful they are. Shove them into uniform, give them orders, then they’ll make Holy Christ out of some government creep. Next minute they’ll hammer him to pieces. Following orders. That clerk I flipped across the puss, by tomorrow he’ll have two shiners and teeth missing. There’ll be more rumours floating ’round than bum paper. His name’s lousy in Black Rand. They all detest the stingy bastard. Rumours and a bit of glory for Mansel Lloyd’s son. Course you know him. Fists up before you can say boo. He’s like a match. Aye, working a stent off Lower North heading. Decent enough if you catch him in a good mood, except you rarely find him in a good mood. Gabe Lloyd, he isn’t just a mug either. There’s that chip on his shoulder all the time. Got it from Mansel. Give the boy another ten years, let him settle down with a wife and kids, that’ll tutor him. Sure to, aye, always does. Women, they cure rebels.
Chinking the half-crowns in his pocket, he vowed, Gabe Lloyd comes first, second and last.
July sunshine from naked blue sky glittered the compact saucer-cambered town. Slanted windowpanes dazzled, denied staring at, and slate rooftops on the far slope shone like the flanks of battleships, TV aerials sprouting from every chimney stack. He passed two punters faithfully posed outside a betting shop, heads lowered, the shabby street invaded by the hard suavity of a Peter O’Sullivan commentary. Everywhere the same 3.30 race from Goodwood, accurate, factual as Gospel, the hullabaloo crowding down to a laconic summary. And Gabe was thinking; another week wrapped up, shan’t see coal till Monday morning. Too warm for fires this weekend. Short week of short shifts. Man’s job so the adverts reckon. You’d think all the bints and pansies in the world had dabbled in the face and cried off. But it’s worth sticking for the short week. Anyhow, blokes down under are better men, better for me. True, there’s a fair quota of trychs in Black Rand. Where won’t you find a trych here and there along the faces? Some bladder-brain who’d graft the heart out his young butty. They tried that on me, the fascist bastards. If you can’t check your wages, too bad. You’ll get robbed, diddled, up, down and sideways. NCB ’ll never pay us enough, but the job’s worth sticking for the short week. You won’t dodge a wet shirt anywhere off Lower North, water cold as lollipops melting down the back of your neck. Some shifts you’re wetter than others. Sheer luck. Useless making a song and dance. By grubtime you’re sweating from eyebrows to ankles. But it’s a good pit, no doubt at all. Decent pit, decent blokes… as he entered the house of his only sister.
She placed his dinner on the table. Arms folded, she looked down at him.
‘What’s up, girl?’
‘Silly bugger you, Gabe. Why’d you go and bump that chap in the office? Her from next door came on the run to tell me.’
‘Sharp of the mark, Sue.’
‘Her two sons are in Black Rand Colliery premises, you couldn’t have picked a worse place to lose your head. Time you used some brains for a change.’
Sue Preece served lamb chop and vegetables for herself, clipping the oven door shut with her knee. She was thirty-four, severe from adjustment, her straight black hair cut for utility, the same principle affecting her clothes. She refused to primp herself as female. Her husband lived with another woman in a caravan site with a dozen others behind Golau Nos cricket pavilion. Sue despised him. She always had, reconciled deep in her insular spirit. She practised loyalty by deed towards Gabe or anyone who sought it from her.
‘Makes no odds,’ he said. ‘They won’t do anything, not for a little smack across the mouth. I was twenty-five bob down on my money.’
‘There’s the Lodge, you pay dues every week. Let them sort it out instead of taking the law into your own hands, specially with your record.’
‘Our committee’s a right shower,’ he said.
‘Point is, boy, you can’t go ’round hitting people. You’re not a snobby-nosed crwtyn any more.’
He glanced at the travelling clock tilted up in its plush lined leather case on the middle shelf of the dresser.
Below the clock, framed photographs of their parents, each quarter-turned inwards to a larger photograph of Sue and himself. Twice his size then, she had one arm around his shoulders, his hair boy-rough while hers surrounded her head in a stiff aura of permed waves. He wore a willing grin. Sue and their mother showed the same expression, humourless.
‘Fetching that clock home don’t give you the right to take a poke at the least one who upsets you.’
‘I must have been pretty handy, Sue, couple of years ago.’
She jeered bleakly, ‘Bullheaded, and you wanted to turn professional. By now you wouldn’t know if you was coming or going.’
‘I can still do a bundle.’
‘Ach, act your age.’
‘I beat everyone in the area for that clock.’
‘Novices. Be quiet and eat your dinner.’
‘I’m going out for a swim afterwards,’ he said. ‘Listen, lots of girls come out to the Lake, all you do is mooch around indoors as if there’s nothing left till cowing doomsday.’
Passively regarding him, ‘Never you mind about me.’
From a crystal stream Melyn Lake ballooned to smooth, straight sausage shape. Vandalised trees and brambles wound in and out by pickers’ footpaths covered the far bank. He approached aslant down a steeply turfed hillock, moving up the shoreline to level ground where sunbathers gossiped among romping kiddies. He stripped off, taking his time, the comfort of the dinner heavy on his stomach. Gabe’s toenails were black, and dull blue scars hung like tattoo streaks behind his left shoulder, ending in a pink crinkled indent over his floating ribs. He wiped his armpits draped his towel and looked around for company. Nearest were boys and girls, all gush and giggles. He returned a straight-armed salute to some young colliers entering the water, pushing and tugging at each other.
‘See you later.’
Then he sat down, elbows on widespread knees. Flat as glass Melyn Lake, ripples catching his eye in fits and starts, dwindling to flatness again. He dreamed himself behind the wheel of a brand new Standard Eleven car, Sue sitting beside him. Nearby ripples – a frog sculling close to the bank before circling back to cover. Gabe’s tongue tipped out his lower lip while he groped for a pebble to lob at the spot where it disappeared. Spiky turf on bare clay, so he flipped his cigarette butt, heedless now, then laid back on his towel. He felt supreme, prepared to luxuriate while the weight of his meal subsided.
Twenty minutes later he walked slightly knock-kneed into the water and plunged his mountain stroke (half trudgen, half breast stroke) to join the gang of young colliers.
‘Here he is, best clouter in Black Rand,’ they said.
‘Gabe’s al’right.’
‘How’s it going, Gabe-boy?’
‘I had my money,’ he said. ‘Anybody been across to the other side yet?’
‘Let’s all have a go!’
‘For a pint!’ shouted the fastest man, foaming into crawl-stroke.
But forty yards winded them. They milled around, treading water, saying, ‘Nob it.’
‘Too much like graft.’
‘Leave it there.’
Hard-muscled face workers, they gleamed white skinned from daily scrubbing under the pithead showers.
‘Hey, know what, Gabe, they might give you your cards on account of this afternoon.’
‘Aye, and I might bang a one-two on Monte Leyshon for a so-long present,’ he said.
‘Only once you’ll do that, brawd. They’ll rush you inside, your feet won’t touch the ground.’
He relished foolish bragging, saying, ‘Fair enough, once will do me.’
‘They’ll shove you down Cox’s for months, man!’
The crawl swimmer said, ‘I heard they called a doctor to the office. What you bash him with, your bloody water jack?’
‘Up your jacksie!’ he said.
‘You’ll hea
r more about it. They’ll get a certificate off the fucken doctor, see!’
Grunting, he rolled over for a relaxed float back to his clothes. The sun was hot, the water mellow. He floated. Forget about Black Rand. Why worry? Ruination of a man, worry.
Rumours ceased, verified by reality two weeks later when a police sergeant came to the house with a summons.
He said, ‘Seems like I got to attend the ceremony then.’
‘Plead guilty, say you’re sorry,’ advised the sergeant. ‘Understand this, fella, you’ve assaulted a person while he was under the protection of his employer, namely the National Coal Board. It’s worse than pub fighting in the eyes of the law. Not that I blame you personally; worked in the pits myself years ago. Say you’re sorry, lost your temper, won’t happen again, and hope for the best.’
‘What about the times I been booked in the past?’
Grave, furrow-faced, the sergeant hooked his thumb in his breast pocket. ‘They’ll go down against you. How many times, fella?’
‘Once for scrapping outside the Workmen’s, one for foul language, once for pissing in a gwlli, once for obstruction as they called it, and there was the time you blokes locked me up.’
‘Drunk?’
‘More or less, aye, suppose I was.’
The sergeant offered, ‘Good luck, fella.’
‘Same to you, Sarg.’
Due to appear in Dove Street Court at 10 a.m. on a thundery morning. Sue was harshly critical while they were having breakfast, softening at the last moment, fussily adjusting his tie and smoothing his hair. She sent him off with a stroke of her palm on his chest, tenderly, like a blessing.
After Black Rand’s cashier’s evidence, judgement came within five minutes. Gabe was fascinated by the magistrate. Monkey Lips whispering to colleagues on the bench. They nodded together, at each other, dumb as marionettes.
‘Lloyd, stand upright.’ The flat, dead-sure God Almighty legal voice.
He slid his elbow off the ledge of the dock, removed his other hand from his pocket and held his fists to his thighs.
