Story, Volume II

by Dai Smith

  Grace can see it. The old man caught in a hail of sharp stones. Tamar throwing her stones down hard on his upturned face. Tamar untouchable in the tree’s crook. Her sandals splattered with wee, her hair standing out in sweaty points. Tamar tells her that, when he was on the floor, she climbed down. She was going to run home. But when she saw him lying there with his head all bleeding she picked up a heavy stone and hit him with it to make sure he didn’t get up and catch her. She says, I hit him a lot. He was bleeding more. After a while he stopped making sounds. Grace feels far away, listening to the small voice. She looks at her sister sitting up in bed. She is acting out hitting the old man’s head with the big stone. Grace’s eyes are so wide she feels they will split at the corners. Her scalp is twitching. Then what did you do? she asks. Then I ran down the mountain, Tamar says, but I was lost, and I fell and cut myself.

  Grace gets out of bed and moves across to her sister. She pulls back the bedclothes. Tamar’s legs are heavily bruised. She has stitches in both knees. Her face is cut. Black suturing snakes away up into her blonde hair. Tamar holds Grace’s hands. There was blood on his lips, she says. Lots of blood on my big stone too. Then she pulls Grace towards her. Why are your clothes still on? she asks. I was waiting to see if you were coming back, Grace says. Tamar sits up and helps Grace take off her blouse and skirt. When they get down to her vest and pants, Grace says, that’s enough. Don’t your stitches hurt? she asks. Tamar is sucking her thumb again, and just shakes her head. Grace puts her feet up on the bed, and they each unbuckle a sandal, Tamar using her one free hand. Come in my bed, Tamar says, and lifts the covers. She smells of talcum powder and antiseptic.

  Grace gets in stiffly and lies with her eyes open. She listens as Tamar starts telling about her dream. She says that they have a little baby to look after, in their own big house. But we’re children, Grace says; we can’t have a baby to look after. But soon she’s sucked in; it seems so nice, and she’s tired. They lie in the narrow bed and tell each other what their baby looks like, what they have in their house, what they eat. Eventually they fall silent. Grace stares at the ceiling, while Tamar snuggles up and goes to sleep, sucking her thumb.

  NOVEMBER KILL

  Ron Berry

  As if talking to himself, ‘More guts than sense in this bitch,’ Miskin said. Hunkered over the belly-up bedlington, he caressed her ribs with his knuckles. Lady wheezed sighs, slaver glistening her teeth inside slack lips. Miskin had three hunting dogs, two rough-coated bridle lurchers, Fay and Mim, and the slaty-blue bedlington.

  Beynon’s terrior, Ianto, was a long-jawed black and white mongrel.

  Miskin’s small, clenched mouth accentuated the bumpy profile of his broken nose. He screwed two short vertical furrows up his forehead. ‘We’ll cover Dunraven Basin this morning.’

  ‘Good,’ said Beynon, who had the closed face of a weary spectator. Tall, lean, deliberate in style, he squatted beside Miskin. ‘Saw you coming out of the Club last night. Any luck?’

  ‘She’s solid as asbestos,’ said Miskin curtly.

  ‘Thought so.’

  ‘Come off it, how would you know?’

  ‘I’ve tried Glenys.’

  ‘Real kokum you are, Beynon.’

  ‘You were slewed,’ Beynon said.

  ‘Same as most Saturday nights,’ conceded Miskin.

  Beynon levered himself upright. ‘Set? Let’s go.’

  Miskin thwacked his trouser leg with a thin stick. ‘Come in, dogs, in.’ The lurchers fell to heel with the bedlington.

  Beynon clipped a lead on his terrier.

  ‘Train the bloody animal,’ jeered Miskin.

  Beynon winced mock alarm. ‘Ianto’s like me, he’s uncontrollable.’

  ‘You! There’s more temper in a dishrag.’

  ‘I’ll frighten the crap out of you one of these days,’ said Beynon.

  ‘I’m pooping already!’

  ‘Take it easy, Miskin.’

  They grinned, gently grinding shoulders, appreciating a bond without malice.

  Eight o’clock Sunday morning, quietness everywhere, two milkmen bypassing each other in whining electric floats, the Beynon held Mim’s scruff. ‘Good bitch, Mim. Stay now.’ He waited while Miskin climbed to a sheeptrack winding midway around the cirque. Then they kept parallel, rounding inside the vast bowl Dunraven Basin. The dogs hunted systematically, the lurchers higher, leaping ledges sure-footed as goats, Lady and Ianto nosing holes and crevices.

  Miskin came down at the far end.

  A buzzard hung like an emblem above the horizon, standing still in the updraught. Harsh kaark kaark calls from the two ravens, weaving low over the glacial bog.

  Miskin rubbed mucus off his nose. ‘I thought we’d raise one this morning.’

  ‘We’ve seen some good chases this time of year,’ Beynon said.

  The lone buzzard drifted back over the skyline. A mallard squawked. Beynon spied through his glasses. He saw the drake shooting up from the narrow glittering stream emptying from the bog. The ravens planed and wheeled.

  ‘Something’s down there, Miskin.’

  ‘Great. You sorted that out all by yourself.’

  ‘Mouthy bastard,’ said Beynon equably. ‘Hey, reynard… left hand side of the brook, on that stretch of mud.’

  ‘Glasses!’ Miskin snatched, he hissed through his teeth, sighting the fox trotting its sidelong gait, front and rear legs inswinging, four pads straight-tracking in the peat-stained silt, then rippling tremors of rushes and tall, fawny grass blades snaked diagonally across the bog. Light-footed over cropped turf and up to the scree spillage below a gully, the fox climbed swiftly, skittering over stones like a squirrel.

  Miskin pushed the glasses at Beynon.

  Beynon said, ‘Ta.’ He sharpened the focus, thereafter he supplied a commentary: ‘Long in the leg, sure to be a dog fox. He’s in perfect nick, white tip on his brush, black on his ears, white on his breast. Man-o-man, he’s a beaut. What a pelt, aye, wrapped around the neck of a girl by the name of Glenys. Bet you a pint he’s heading for the same old bury.’

  Miskin gulped snickering. ‘Much too far away to send our dogs after him,’ he said.

  Beynon said ‘Four hundred yards.’

  ‘More like five.’ Staidly polite, Miskin accepted the glasses. ‘What’s he doing out and about in daylight, ah? There, you’re right enough, Beynon, he’s just gone to ground.’ The dogs milled around Miskin’s legs. He flipped neat backhanders.

  ‘Quiet!’

  Beynon put Ianto on a lead.

  Miskin leashed the bedlington with a choker. ‘OK, let’s bolt the bugger.’

  The foxhole angled down through raked stones. Lady whined, ceaseless shivers quivering her slingy body. They searched for another exit from the bury. Miskin looked worried. ‘There’s no place for him to bolt. This little bitch, she’s onto a pasting.’

  ‘Send Ianto in first,’ Beynon said.

  ‘He won’t go far, too big around the chest. Fox’ll chop his face to ribbons.’ Miskin stroked the bedlington. ‘Steady, gel, relax.’ Reluctantly, muttering concern, he slipped Lady into the hole.

  Ianto bayed like a hound. The brindle lurchers weaved to and fro on tiptoe, wetly black noses twitching, ears full-cocked from their sheepdog sire.

  They heard the bedlington barking, a rapid burst followed by growling. ‘Christ, she’s in deep,’ vowed Miskin. Kneeling, he poked his head into the hole. ‘Shake him, gel! Meat off him!’ He sat back on his heels. ‘She’s cornered him. It’s a block end.’

  ‘Put Ianto in,’ said Beynon.

  Ianto howled underground for fifteen minutes.

  ‘Call him out, Beynon.’

  ‘Right, he’s this side of the bitch, can’t get on, and he might make things worse for her.’ Beynon shouted at the hole, ‘Hee-yaar Ianto! Hee-yaar Ianto!’ The terrier came scuttling out, one of his front paws bleeding and a flesh graze on his shoulder. ‘Good dog, good dog,’ Beynon said.

  The November Sunday waned t
o lifeless evening. Miskin and Beynon shared cheese and ham sandwiches. Without animosity, they argued pros and cons. At dusk they left the basin, Miskin cursing, effortlessly cursing the bedlington bitch.

  ‘Take it easy, we’ll dig her out,’ promised Beynon. ‘Hard graft, but we’ll do it.’

  ‘She’s in deep, man.’

  ‘I know, I know.’

  ‘Listen, Beynon, tomorrow morning: mandrel, round nosed shovel, hatchet. We’ll need a hatchet to make the place safe.’

  Beynon said, ‘I’ll bring a crowbar and a bowsaw. Plenty of timber on top. Those bloody Christmas trees.’

  Miskin nodded grunts.

  Short-cutting on lower ground, returning to Nant Myrddin, they reached their home village as the first white frost of winter rimed roof slates.

  ‘Half seven, early start,’ said Miskin.

  ‘See you,’ agreed Beynon.

  They felled three sitka spruces, trimmed the six-inch boles and chuted them down grassed gullies to the fox bury. The lurchers punced, jostling around the hole, kneed and clouted by Miskin. He listened at the cavity. Very faintly, the snarly growling of the bedlington. ‘Beynon she’s in deeper than last night.’

  Beynon said, ‘Sounds like it.’

  Miskin organised the work, his authority from five years at the coal face. Taking turns, they hacked and shovelled surface debris, starting a vertical dig above the trapped fox – Miskin’s calculation. By late afternoon they were prising out big stones with the crowbar, from the jumbled bulk of the old rockfall. Interlocked layers of blue pennant sandstone governed the shape and the size of their hole. When they were a yard down – a massive, inclined slabstone. Miskin stamped on it. He flung curses.

  Mim, Fay and Ianto snoozed, curled on the trampled soil outside the fox bury.

  ‘We’ll be here tomorrow,’ said Beynon.

  ‘Maybe. Depends on the bastard gravestone.’

  ‘Work around it,’ Beynon said.

  ‘No option, man!’

  ‘Anyhow, she’s still all right down there.’

  ‘Sheer bloody guts.’

  ‘We’ll dig her out, Miskin.’

  Evening came, chilling the sweat of their bodies. Their ragged hole was like a shell crater. Props and stayers held the slab of rock. As they trudged home in darkness, Beynon heard Miskin groaning misery. ‘Take it easy, butty,’ he said quietly.

  By Tuesday night they were twelve feet down, hauling up rubble with a bucket and a rope. Less often now, Lady’s growling sounded hoarse. She responded instantly, feebly, when Miskin yelled at the mouth of the bury.

  On Wednesday morning they felled four more sitka spruces. They fixed horizontal timbers across the dig, with props and heavy wedges at each end. Beynon relied on Miskin. He felt safe doing his stints down below, leavering his weight on the five-foot crowbar, heaving stones up on the cross-timbers.

  Mim, Fay and Ianto were thirty yards away, tucked on a wind-trapped mattress of dead molinia at the base of a buttress.

  ‘Weather’s changing,’ Miskin said. ‘Time for some grub. Catch hold.’ Gripping wrists, he helped Beynon out of the hole.

  Beynon hated failure. And he felt troubled for his mate. ‘Miskin, what d’you say we sink a few pints in the Club tonight. Do us good, right?’

  ‘Nuh.’

  ‘We’re much closer to the bitch. She’s not far below us. Tomorrow she’ll be ours.’

  Miskin argued, ‘Listen to me! If it rains the sides of this bloody crib are likely to start slipping!’

  ‘So we shift the bastard muck again!’

  Miskin thrust his hand into the foxhole. ‘Lay-dee! Lay-dee! Hee-yaar bitch!’

  She barked for seconds, then silence.

  Miskin chewed a sandwich, ‘Weakness, Beynon, she’s weakening.’

  ‘But she’s safe. We’ll get her out.’

  ‘Too bloody true,’ said Miskin.

  ‘That’s settled then. Tonight we’ll have a few pints.’

  Hospital charity dance in the Social Club on Wednesday night. Beynon and Miskin sat in the snooker room. Very soon, as usual, they speculated about their runaway mothers.

  Miskin: ‘She never felt anything for me when I was a kid. As for my old man, he was on a loser from the start.’

  Beynon: ‘Before my old lady went off, she treated me and my sister and me as if we were nuisances in the house. What do they call it, maternal instinct? It’s a load of bull.’

  Miskin: ‘D’you think all women are the same, I mean selfish?’

  Beynon: ‘Christ knows. They go their own way like cats.’ On and on, the same unforgiving rancour, the same helpless groping for motive, a reason to shed guilt, absolve themselves and their mothers.

  Beynon said, ‘My old man’s a worrier, he’s a clock-watcher taking tablets. Duodenal ulcer according to the quack. Knock it back, Miskin. My turn.’ He crossed over to the serving hatch with their empties. Happening to glance above the hooded glare on a snooker table, he saw Miskin brooding, his powerful shoulders humped forward, chin pressed to his chest. Beynon thought, she’s been four days without food and water. It’ll break Miskin’s heart if Lady dies underground in Dunraven Basin. He’ll quit. Sell the dogs. No more weekend fox-hunting. By the Jesus, we’ll have to dig her out tomorrow.

  Miskin raised his full glass. ‘Cheers. Before stop tap we’ll manage a few more.’

  Beynon watched the beer glugging steadily down Miskin’s throat. ‘Bloody sump you are, comrade.’

  They were cheerfully drunk leaving the Club, moodily determined next morning, wading through sodden, crimping bracken. Drapes of mist scudded across towering Pen Arglwydd mountain.

  ‘Showers forecast, dry this afternoon,’ said Beynon.

  Miskin hooted disgust. ‘It’ll tamp down all day over in the Basin.’

  Beynon said, ‘Sure to, butty.’

  9 a.m. at the fox bury, Miskin ducking his head into the hole. Silence. ‘Lay-dee! Lay-dee!’ Far-off husky whining from the bedlington. Silence again. The lurchers and Ianto cringed away, sensing viciousness. Miskin raged despair.

  ‘Hey man, take it easy,’ warned Beynon.

  Sheltering from the rain, the lurchers and the long-jawed terrier clumped themselves together on accumulated sheep droppings below a cavernous overhang at the foot of a buttress.

  Using the head of his mandrel, Miskin tapped protruding boulders in the sides of the fifteen-foot crater. ‘Sounds OK so far. Nothing loose.’

  Sweating inside oilskin coats and leggings, they continued hacking out stones, rubble and clay. Rising wind lulled the downpour to sheeting drizzle driving around the bowl of Dunraven Basin. It was one o’clock. They fed the dogs and themselves. Miskin kept three faggot sandwiches in a canvas bag.

  Beynon cooled a pint of tea in his big flask. He said ‘I’ll dig for a spell,’ clambering down on the cross-timbers. He listened, his eyes tightly shut. ‘Lady! Hee-yaar bitch!’ Then suddenly, he punched up his arms, shouting, ‘She’s below us! We’re right on top of her!’

  Miskin swung down like an ape. He elbowed him away. Beynon spreadeagled himself against the sides of the pit. Balanced on one knee, Miskin placed his ear close to the clay-slimed rubble. Low snoring, like someone sleeping in another room.

  ‘Lay-dee!’

  She yapped briefly. The snoring seemed to come in fading spasms.

  ‘Careful, Miskin!’

  ‘Goddam, Beynon, shurrup! I know what I’m doing!’

  ‘All right, all right,’ Beynon said.

  The wet rubble concealed another tilted stone flat as a table. Scrabbling with his fingers, Miskin clawed down, searching for the edge of the stone. It was a foot thick, lodged in the sides, immovable.

  Beynon climbed up across the cross-timbers. Miskin filled the bucket, Beynon hauled the rope, flung the debris, lowered the bucket. They worked for less than an hour, until Miskin saw clay-water whirlpooling down a cranny below the underside of the big stone. Delicately, slowly, Miskin corkscrewed the crossbar at a shallow ang
le into the fissure. The water swilling away. Like jigsaw trickery, the bedlington’s snuffling, mud-smeared nose appeared. Miskin’s yell screamed to castrato.

  ‘She’s safe!’

  ‘Thank Christ,’ muttered Beynon.

  ‘Those sandwiches!’ cried Miskin.

  The lurchers and terriers came bounding down from the overhang. Ianto threw his echoing hound baying. Miskin clubbed when she sprawled into the pit, her hind legs flailing in sliding rubble. ‘Get away! Out, gerrout!’

  The brindle escaped, curvetting zig-zag leaps on the timbers.

  But Lady was still trapped under a crack between two stones bedded like concrete lintels. Beynon squeezed the width of four fingers in the slot. He strained a grin at Miskin, ‘Three inches, mate.’

  Miskin spoke to the bedlington while dropping her pieces of faggot sandwich. ‘Good bitch then, good bitch. You’re in the way, Lady. I can’t bash these stones if you stay there. Use some sense now, gel, back off a bit, back off the way you came in.’ Frustrated after several minutes, he stood up, ranting, ‘It’s like talking to that bastard shovel!’

  ‘Take it easy,’ Beynon said.

  ‘For fuck’s sake you’ve been saying take-it-easy take-it-easy since last bloody Sunday!’

  ‘Shh’t, leave it,’ Beynon said, head bowed, not looking at Miskin. ‘You’re blowing wind and piss, you’re hysterical, like my old woman, like yours an’ all.’

  They laughed at each other.

  Miskin slid his hand edgewise into the crack. He fingered Lady’s head while Beynon wrenched on the crowbar, creeping the stones another inch apart. Exhaustion slumped Beynon on his backside. Miskin had pulled her out. She wriggled. She snorted ecstasy. Her floppy ears were scagged with cuts, tooth-holes through her upper lip, clotted blood on her feet, clay matted in her fur. Miskin mumbled, cradling the bedlington in his arms, ‘You daft bloody thing you, bloody daft, daft…’

  Beynon let the shakes drain from his limbs. ‘She’s stinking of fox,’ he said, probing the cavity with the crowbar. ‘Aye, he’s in there. Lady killed him.’ He picked shreds of fox fur off the chisel tip of the crowbar. ‘Definitely, she finished him.’ He slumped down again. ‘I’m knackered.’