by Dai Smith
They spoke in whispers, though the place was almost entirely deserted, this being after all a grey Tuesday in October, and around the back, beneath some engravings by Peter Blake they kissed their first kiss. It did not feel like the world’s best kiss for either of them, but did well enough as an awkward, uncertain snatched preliminary to better things. Afterwards Claire had wanted to wipe her mouth with the back of her hand, not from disgust but just because the kiss was a little wet. His mouth had swallowed hers, had not measured out the size of her lips yet.
After the kiss they each felt like a conspirator in some deadly plot; what they would create that day felt as if it might be as deadly as Guy Fawkes’ gunpowder, as bloody as any revolution.
The second kiss came as they sat in a deserted bar of the Pump House. The barman, a student, they decided, was propped against the far end of the counter, his head bent over a book. They took turns to guess what the book might be. Terry said it was a handbook about computing, and she thought it was a script of something like Reservoir Dogs.
The clock above the bar, a faux-nautical affair, hung with nets and cork floats and plastic lobster and crab, read twelve-fifteen. They had the afternoon and the early evening to spend together. He was thinking about the Gower coast, a cliff walk, the lonely scream of wheeling gulls and the sea a grey squall bubbling under the wind. She was thinking about a hotel room, the luggage-less afternoon ascent in the lift to the en-suite room and the champagne, herself languishing on the sheets, feeling intolerably beautiful under his grateful gaze.
After that second kiss, which was prolonged, they wrenched themselves away and began to speak in a strange language of unfinished sentences and hesitant murmurings.
‘Oh.’
‘Gosh.’
‘You know we…’
‘I never…’
‘Oh my…’
‘We shouldn’t…’
‘I never thought…’
‘Nor me…’
‘I mean, I always thought that maybe…’
‘Me too…’
Then they kissed again and the barman, who wasn’t a student, raising his eyes briefly from his novel by Gorky, watched them with mild interest and thought they made an odd pair.
The odd pair finished their drinks: pints of real ale. She stubbed out her cigarette and they made their way towards the exit, his arm thrown protectively around her shoulders while his broad back wore her tiny arm, its fingers clutching the cloth, like a curious half-belt.
The sky looked by now greyer and darker than before. To the west a blue-black curtain advanced, promising heavy rain and a wind blew up from the east, sending her hair on a frantic aerial dance. They ran across the empty square as raindrops as big as shillings began marking the paving stones with dark circles.
Then she half stumbled and he caught her and in catching her, gathered her to him and they kissed a fourth time, this the best, with the rain splashing their heads and water pouring down their faces.
When they had done with this, this their unspoken moment of willingness and promise and wilfulness, their pact to indulge in what they knew was an unwise thing, he quickly kissed the tip of her nose and then hand in hand they began to run again.
Under the covered walkway, they slowed down and shaking off the worst of the rain from their hair and clothes, barely noticed a man standing close by. He was busy putting away a tripod and Terry muttered, ‘Afternoon’ and the man, grinning broadly replied, ‘Thanks’.
Naturally neither of them made much of this, assuming it to be yet another curious aspect of Welshness. A further example of the strange smiling politeness, the thanking of bus drivers and so on, the chatting to strangers which each of them had at first perceived as alien, but now despite their breeding, accepted and in part adopted.
Later that afternoon, in his car near a field in the north of Gower, with the day as dark as ever they almost made love. The next day, back in Aberystwyth, they did make love.
She had rung him from the payphone in the hall of her house when she was certain all the other students had gone out. His wife had answered the phone and she’d given her the prearranged message, which was that she’d ‘found the journal with the Lawrence article he’d wanted.’
What happened that Wednesday was perhaps rather sad, though not necessarily inevitable. It became clear to both of them that what they sought was a fugitive moment; that there could be no more than this, the furtive opening of the front door, the climbing of the stairs, the single bed dishevelled and cramped under the sloping roof, his glances at his watch, her ears constantly straining for any sounds from down below. Both of them too tense for pleasure, but going through its rigours, him professionally, she dramatically.
Afterwards, when they had dressed again, they sat side by side on the bed like strangers in a doctor’s waiting room, each thinking silently about how to end it, how to escape. She took his hand and held it on her lap, then began to speak.
‘Your wife…’
‘Catherine?’
‘She sounded…’
‘Yes.’
‘She sounded…’
‘Nice?’
‘She is. I…’
‘I don’t…’
‘I can’t…’
‘I think that…’
‘Me too.’
He sighed. She understood his sigh to mean that he didn’t want to leave and she sighed back at the thought that he might cancel his three o’clock lecture in order to stay. He had sighed because he was wondering how long he ought to stay to make it seem at least remotely respectable. He rested his eyes on the small wooden bookcase next to her bed. She had all the required texts as well as a rather unhealthy number of books by and about the American poet Sylvia Plath. This made him sigh again. She was trying very hard to imagine him back in his study, with the coffee cups on the window ledge and the view of the National Library and the letter trays overflowing with student essays and she sighed again because now that she’d seen him in his underwear that ordinary idea seemed impossible.
He stood suddenly, ready to go, but somehow his watch had become entangled with her hair and she gave a yelp of pain as he unthinkingly yanked at it, ripping the hair from her head. They both looked aghast at the tangled clumps sprouting from the metal bracelet of his watch. He pulled at them but they cut into his fingers and stretched and curled and slipped and clung until finally they snapped, leaving short tufts poking out here and there.
Tears had come to her eyes with the sudden pain. He looked at her and seeing this, with ill-disguised irritation as much at himself as with her, said ‘I’m sorry,’ then bluntly, ‘Why don’t you get that cut?’
That would have been the end of the story, except that some moments, elusive as they may seem when lived, come back in other guises, unbidden. Theirs was a photograph, unfortunately a very good photograph of a young girl on tiptoes, her long wet hair lifted wildly in the wind and a black-coated man bent over her, his hands delicately cupping her upturned face as their lips met. Rain glistened on their faces and shone in silvery puddles on the paving stones at their feet and behind them the sky was a black brooding mass of cloud.
It was a timeless image, a classic to be reproduced over and over, whose currency was love, truth and beauty. The people who bought the poster and the stationery range and the postcard assumed that it must have been posed, that it was really too perfect.
BARBECUE
Catherine Merriman
It’s Saturday morning and we’re headed north out of Beaufort, out of the Valleys, up on to the mountain. Jaz on his Guzzi, Mitch on his Triumph chop, and me on the Z1000, on our way to Crickhowell for a drink. And to get away from our mate Dai, who’s panicking back at the field because the others haven’t returned from Glastonbury with the bus, and how the hell is he going to lay on a barbecue this evening without the cooking gear?
Not a soul on the mountain but we can’t open up the bikes for the hordes of sheep dawdling on the tarmac, bleating and giving us t
he idiot eye. They’ve got half a county of moorland to roam across, up here, but as usual they’re ignoring it. Mitch reckons it’s definite proof of over-civilisation, when even the sheep are scared of getting lost.
The other side of the mountain, and we’re into Tourist Information Wales. Money and horseboxes and hang-gliders and not a derelict factory in sight. The little town of Crickhowell, nestling snug and smug over the Usk.
We get to the pub and down a swift ale, and we’re just explaining to the landlord about the bruises on Jaz’s face when the door opens and who should fall through it but the bus crowd. That’s Wayne, Pete, and the two girls.
‘What you doing here?’ Mitch bellows across the room at them, making half the bar slop their pints. Short on manners, Mitch is, but the landlord’s easy-going. ‘Dai’s doing his nut, waiting for you.’
The girls duck down the corridor to the Ladies and Pete and Wayne push their way towards us. Pete has got his hair tied back in a dinky plait, instead of loose and ratsy. Wayne is in his He-Man rig, bandannaed blonde mane over acres of leather-strapped, tanned flesh. They stare at the purple lumps on Jaz’s face with awe. Sharp little face, Jaz had, when they last saw him. Looks like a plum pudding now. ‘Shit, man.’ Pete looks alarmed. ‘How’s the Guzzi?’
Jaz tells him, like he was just telling the landlord, that the Guzzi’s fine, but that he had a run-in with a couple of lads from Tredegar. Yesterday, it was. He sold them a Suzi, and it blew up before they reached Ebbw Vale. They wanted the Guzzi to make up for it, but he hid it in his mam’s back-kitchen and took a thumping on the doorstep instead.
Wayne claps him round the shoulders, making him flinch – thoughtful type, Wayne is – and says he’d have been safer at Glastonbury, where it was all peace and love and a soft landing on mud.
‘You there all this time?’ I ask. ‘Been more than a week.’
‘Na,’ says Wayne. ‘Trouble in Bristol coming back.’ He grins wide. ‘This publican, he won’t serve us ’cos he says we’re a coach party. So I backed over his fence, accidental-like, on the way out. The cops had us for criminal damage. Got a conditional discharge.’
Jaz wonders how many hospital visits it takes to cure a conditional discharge, and I tell Wayne how Dai’s got it into his head about this barbecue and wants the bus back pronto. The bus is mobile HQ – as well as the cooking gear, everyone’s got equipment and spares stashed in it.
‘Be back this afternoon,’ Wayne promises. ‘It’s down the lay-by now. Just got to pick up stuff for the girls.’
They disappear after a quick pint. We don’t stay long either, because Jaz’s getting anxious about leaving the Guzzi in the car park up the road. It’s day-tripping weather and the High Street’s already jumping with Valleys’ lads.
Nobody near the bikes though, except a couple of kiddies admiring the puddle of oil under Mitch’s chop. Brit bikes need to sweat, Mitch says, he’s a patriot. We decide we’ll head back and give Dai the good news. We set off and I’m in front, revelling in the way the Z1000 powers up the gradients, when I see a dead sheep, lying at the side of the road. Fair-sized corpse, but definitely a lamb, not one of the scrawny ewes.
I flag the others down. There’s no one else on the road.
‘This fella weren’t here when we came across,’ I say. ‘Did you see him?’
‘He weren’t here,’ says Mitch. ‘We’d have noticed.’
Jaz props the Guzzi and squats down to take a dekko. Barbecue, I’m beginning to think.
‘How long do you reckon he’s been dead?’ I say.
‘How long you been dead?’ Jaz asks the lamb, but it stays stum.
‘Stick your finger up its arse,’ I say. ‘See if it’s warm.’
‘I’m not sticking my finger up any tup’s bum,’ Jaz says. But Mitch dismounts and says he’ll do it, so he can tell his grandchildren about it when he’s old, and they refuse to believe he had a wild childhood.
He pokes his finger into the lamb and says it’s warm. He looks up and grins. Jaz and I grin back. We’re all thinking barbecue now.
We ponder what to do next. We can’t cruise into town with a dead tup behind us – even with a jacket on it won’t fool anyone.
We decide to dump it in a shallow ditch a few yards from the road and go back to Jaz’s place for equipment. His mam’s got a smallholding this side of town. They don’t keep stock now, but there’s any tool you want in the sheds.
When we get there we find Lizzie all a twitter because the two Tredegar lads have been back. Jaz’s mam is Lizzie to everyone except Jaz. She says the boys didn’t come to the house, but she saw them with another lad in a white van, parked down the track. Jaz takes her into the front room to calm her down, and so she doesn’t see us rummaging in the back shed for the axe and knives and a couple of plastic feed bags.
‘She all right?’ Mitch asks, as Jaz joins us in the hallway on the way out. It’s not just politeness, we all got time for Lizzie. ’Cos she’s always got time for us, I suppose. Jaz says she’s OK now, no need to worry.
We drive like vicars on mopeds out of town with the gear stuffed down our jackets, and pootle out to where we’ve hid the lamb.
There’s a few cars on the road now. Mitch’s the largest and ugliest of us so we leave him by the bikes to glare at anyone who looks like stopping, and Jaz and I scramble over the heather to the ditch.
We don’t bother to skin the lamb, because Pete used to work in a slaughterhouse and can do it blindfold, we just chop off the head and feet and gut it. I’d have left the gore there for the foxes, but Jaz’s fretting about an old ewe bleating at the edge of the ditch and says it’s the tup’s mam and we can’t leave bits of her baby lying around. I say fine – you can’t argue with Jaz about mother love – just so long as he deals with dumping it later. We stuff the carcass into one bag and the head and feet and as much of the guts as we can scrape up into the other. The carcass bag straps across the tank of the Z1000, and Jaz ties the other to the grab bar of the Guzzi. Then we drive, nice and sedate, the three miles through town to Dai’s.
The bus is down the field already, next to Dai’s collection of rotting mechanicals. But it’s changed colour since last week. Instead of blue it’s sickly green, with what look like white ticks round the windows. Down the field a bit the ticks turn out to be peace doves. We bounce the bikes over the grass to where Dai, Pete, and Pete’s girlfriend Karin are standing by one of Dai’s decomposing JCBs.
‘What you done to the bus?’ demands Mitch, as we prop the bikes. ‘Bleeding hell.’
‘You know anyone works in a chippie?’ Dai asks, not listening. He still looks fraught, despite the return of the bus. He’s tugging at clumps of his beard like he’s plucking it. ‘Need a sack of taters.’
‘We got something better than taters,’ Jaz says, beckoning him over to the bikes.
‘Who painted the bus?’ Mitch roars. ‘Looks like a fucking playbus.’
‘It was to get in,’ Pete says soothingly. ‘They said we could park it by the Green Field if we let the kids paint it.’ He tilts his head and nods at it. ‘Looks OK, I think.’
Behind his back Karin pulls a face and twists her finger into her temple. Dai’s standing over the Z1000. ‘Jeez,’ he whistles, as Jaz opens the bag. ‘Where’d you get that?’
‘What is it?’ asks Pete, coming over to look. He peers inside. ‘Shit,’ he says, stepping back.
‘You got to skin it,’ says Jaz. ‘We done the rest.’
Pete shakes his head and says no way, he’d become a vegetarian. But Karin rips into him and says she’s fed up with him flirting with the hippies at the festival and if he wants to become a fairy that’s up to him, but he’s not sodding well laying it on us.
‘OK, OK,’ says Pete, with a look that suggests this isn’t the first bollocking he’s had over this, and agrees to skin the lamb as his last carnivorous act. Mitch gives him the axe and knives and he humps the bag up the field towards the outhouses. Karin follows him still giving him mouth.
‘Where’s Wayne?’ I ask.
‘In the bus with Josie,’ says Dai. ‘Better knock first.’
‘My face hurts,’ Jaz says, touching his cheek gingerly. ‘I need a kip.’
‘You got to dump that bag,’ I remind him.
‘Later,’ he says.
I don’t push it. He’s suddenly looking very weary. He’s holding his shoulders funny, and where the side of his helmet’s been pressed against his cheekbone it’s made a dent in one of the purple bruises. We walk over to the bus and Mitch kicks the side. Josie sticks her head out of a window, pulling a T-shirt on over her long straggly hair.
‘Oi,’ says Mitch. ‘Jaz needs to kip.’
Josie says, ‘Oh, right,’ and there’s some scuffling and groaning inside. She opens the back door tucking her T-shirt into her jeans. She looks at Jaz’s face and winces. ‘Better come inside,’ she says. ‘I got some aspirin.’
As they climb in Wayne hops out pulling on his boots. We start to move back to the bikes.
‘You know the boys who did that?’ Wayne gives a last hop and jerks his head back at the bus. He means Jaz’s face. ‘Any of you there?’
‘Nope,’ says Mitch. ‘Just Jaz and Lizzie.’
‘Uhuh,’ says Wayne. I know what he’s thinking. I’m beginning to think it too. It didn’t sound so bad, the way Jaz told it, but who likes to tell it bad? And seeing how stiff the boy is, and mess they made of his face… it’s out of order to thump a lad, and want his bike off him as well.
‘They been round to his place again this morning,’ I say, with my eyes on Wayne. ‘They’re after the Guzzi. Maybe they’ll be back.’
Wayne picks up Jazz’s helmet and climbs on to the pillion of the Z1000. He grins, patting the seat in front of him. ‘Let’s go see,’ he says.
Lizzie’s pleased to see the three of us, especially when we tell her Jaz’s fine, resting in the bus. She says she hasn’t seen the Tredegar boys again, and doesn’t want to, and would we like some chips? Ta, we say, great; it’ll be hours before Dai’s cooked the tup, if he ever stops bellyaching and gets on with it. We eat the chips in the front room where we can keep an eye on the track outside. Lizzie guesses why we’re watching out and says what we do is our own business, but she doesn’t want Jaz getting into no more fights. She looks fierce when she says it, and I think it can’t be much fun watching your son get beat up on your own doorstep. Wayne says we’re maybe saving Jaz a fight, if the boys are still after the Guzzi, and Lizzie mutters that no bike’s worth getting hurt for and she wishes Jaz had just given it to them. She doesn’t mean it though.
