Story, Volume I

by Dai Smith

  As the bus went on up the valley, Shacki made a gloomy attempt to put in proper order what he had to tell Gwenny. The house was going on fine, he himself was feeling in the pink, there was a new baby at number five, he’d watered the fern – and he must tell her summut cheerful. Like what Jinkins said to the horse and this here conductor chap – proper devil-may-care this conductor, you could see that with half an eye. Near Pensarn he saw lime on the bulging fields, like salt on a fat woman’s lap. The grass under it looked the colour of a sick dog’s nose. He saw farming as a thin-lined circle. If you hadn’t the grass, you couldn’t feed the beasts; if you couldn’t feed the beasts, you didn’t get manure; if you didn’t get manure, you had to buy fertiliser – which brought you back to grass. All flesh is grass, he heard the preacher say, and all the goodliness thereof is as the flower of the field. The grass withereth, the flower fadeth – Duw Duw, what a thought! It made a fellow think, indeed now it did. Yesterday a kid, today a man of fifty, tomorrow they’re buying you eight pound ten’s worth of elm with brass handles. Oh, death, death, death, and in life pain and trouble – away, away, the wall of his belly trembled with the trembling of the bus, and the worm drove a roadway through his heart.

  At Pensarn a girl stood at the bus stop and said: ‘Did a young man leave a message for me at the Red Lion?’

  ‘Yes, my dear,’ said the conductor. ‘He told me special you was to let me give you a nice kiss.’

  ‘Cheeky flamer!’ said the hill farm-woman, but the girl looked down in the mouth, and Shacki felt sorry for her. He explained that a young man had run after the bus at the Red Lion. Ay, he did rather fancy he was a fairish sort of chap ’bout as big as the conductor, so— ‘It must a-been Harry,’ the girl concluded. ‘Thank you,’ said Shacki, as though she had done him a favour. Indeed, she had, for he could talk about this to Gwenny.

  Later a collier got on. ‘Where you been then?’ the conductor asked. ‘Why you so dirty, mun?’

  ‘I been picking you a bag of nuts.’ He took the conductor’s measurements, aggressively. ‘Monkey nuts,’ he added. He did not enter the bus and sit down, but stood on the step for his twopenny ride. ‘We got to draw the line somewhere,’ the conductor pointed out.

  Shacki was cheered by the undoubted circumstance that all the wit of the Goytre Valley was being poured out for his and Gwenny’s benefit. What Jinkins said about the horse now. And this about the nuts— And that gel at Pensarn! What funny chaps there was about if you only came to think of it. He began to think hard, hoping for a witticism of his own, a personal offering for Gwenny. She had heard the bandy-straight one before, just once or twice or fifty times or a hundred, or maybe oftener than that. Something new was wanted. A fellow like this conductor, of course, he could turn them off like lightning. Here he was, looking at the flowers. Shacki waited for his sally. They were his flowers, weren’t they? Diawl, anything said about um was as good as his, too.

  ‘I likes a nice lily, myself,’ said the conductor.

  ‘You look more you’d like a nice pansy,’ said the collier. He grinned, the slaver glistening on his red gums, and winked at the hill farm-woman. ‘Cheeky flamer!’ she called him.

  ‘You askin’ for a fight? ’Cos if you are—’

  ‘Sorry, can’t stop now.’ Still grinning, he narrowed his coaly eyes. ‘But any time you want me, butty, I’m Jack Powell, Mutton Tump. That’s me – Jack Powell.’ He prepared to drop off, and the conductor kept his finger on the bell, hoping to fetch him a cropper. ‘Oh no, you don’t, butty!’ They heard his nailed boots braking on the road and then through the back window saw him fall away behind them, his knees jerking very fast. ‘I’ll be up here Sunday,’ threatened the conductor, but Shacki didn’t believe him. He’d lay two-to-one Jack Powell any day, and was glad a collier could lick a bus conductor.

  ‘Don’t forget to stop at the hospital,’ he said by way of reminder, and the conductor, as though to recover face, told a tale about the patient who wouldn’t take a black draught unless the sister took one too. To please him, Shacki smiled grimly and wagged his head and said what chaps there was about, but he now thought less highly of the humorist, and as they came nearer the stopping place he could feel that same old disturbance, just as though he wanted to go out the back. Bump, bump, bump, the driver must be doing it deliberate, but try to forget, for he might be going to hear good news. She might even be coming home. He grovelled. Home, like Johnny James’ mother, hopeless case, cancer of the womb – not that for you, Gwenny fach, he prayed, and Ianto Evans, for speaking of it, he thrust into the devil’s baking oven. Bump, bump, bump, if he didn’t get off this bus soon he’d be all turned up, only too sure. He felt rotten in the belly, and the worm turned a new heading in his heart.

  He alighted.

  Inside the hall, he found from the clock that as usual he was five minutes too early for the women’s ward. ‘Would you like to see anyone in the men’s ward?’ He thought he would, if only to pass the time. So down the corridor he went, for it was a tiny hospital, run on the pennies of colliers like himself. The men’s ward had a wireless set, and the patients were a lively lot. Bill Williams the Cwm borrowed Shacki’s flowers. ‘Oi, Nurse,’ he shouted, ‘’ow’ll I look with a bunch of these on my chest?’

  It was the sporty probationer. ‘Like a big fat pig with a apple in his mouth,’ she suggested.

  ‘There’s a fine bloody thing to say, Nurse! Don’t I look better’n a pig, boys?’

  ‘Ay,’ said Shacki, thinking of the flowers of the field. ‘You looks like a lily in the mouth of ’ell.’

  Bill started to laugh, and the other men started to laugh, and, seeing this, Shacki became quite convulsed at his second witticism. The blue small coal pitting his face grew less noticeable as his scars grew redder. It was a laugh to do a man’s heart good, and it came down on that tunnelling worm like a hob-nailed boot. ‘You’ll have matron along,’ the probationer warned them.

  Then Shacki took his flowers from Bill, and grinning all over his face went back through the corridor to the entrance hall. He’d make his lovely gel laugh an’ all! He felt fine now, he did, and everything was going to be all right. He knew it. Tell her he’d cleaned the house, and about the baby at number five, and about Jinkins and the collier and the girl and the conductor and Bill Williams the Cwm and him – it’d be better than a circus for Gwenny.

  Into the women’s ward. Nod here, nod there, straight across to Gwenny with all the news between his teeth and his tongue. Then he swore under his breath. Matron was standing by Gwenny’s bed, looking like a change of pillow-cases. She was so clean and stiff and starched and grand that he felt small and mean and shabby before her, and frightened, and something of a fool. Respectfully, he greeted her even before he greeted his wife, and when she returned his good day, thanked her.

  ‘We’ve got good news for you, Mr Thomas. You’ll be able to have Mrs Thomas home very soon now.’

  ‘Oh’ he said. He was looking down at Gwenny’s white smile.

  A murderous hate and rage against all living things filled his heart, and he would have had no one free of suffering. ‘’Cos she’s better?’

  ‘Of course. Why else?’

  He put the eggs down carefully, and the flowers. Then he fell on his knees at the bedside. ‘My gel!’ he cried out hoarsely. ‘Oh, my lovely gel!’ With her right hand she touched his hair. ‘There, there little Shacki bach! Don’t take on, look!’

  ‘You are upsetting the patient,’ the pillowcase said severely, ‘and you are disturbing the ward. I shall have to ask you to go outside.’

  It was a quarter of a minute before he got to his feet, and then he was ashamed to look anyone in the face. He snuffled a bit and rubbed under his eyes. ‘All right, matron,’ he managed to say. ‘You can send for the pleece, if you like. I’m that happy, mun!’

  He saw his old Gwenny looking an absolute picture there in bed, and thought these would be her last tears, and such happy ones. And with the thought he looked proudly
around, and could tell that no one in the ward thought him an old softy. He didn’t hate anyone any longer. He was all love, and gave old Gwenny a kiss as bold as brass before he walked outside. He knew they’d let him in again soon.

  THE LOST LAND

  Geraint Goodwin

  She stood there, hands on hips, the red-rimmed eyes hard in malice. Then she stroked a hand backwards across a brow wet with heat, and shook up her tousled head in defiance.

  ‘You poor…’ she began, twisting her mouth.

  ‘Leave be – there’s a girl.’

  Her husband, frail as a willow, turned up his wide eyes, edged with sorrow, in a mute appeal for peace. He was a little man, thin and haggard, dark, uncut hair making a frame around a face lean and pale, with on it that incommunicable sense of the mountain-bred – a Welshman from up the valley who, in the brief flowering of youth, had ventured out like a chill half-fledged bird. He had got as far as this little flannel town which lay like a smudge across the still, narrow Severn Valley, and there he had stayed. He bent over his littered breakfast as though communing with it, saying no word.

  She stood there, her breasts out, a stub red hand raised to the door, a woman in her early twenties, overwhelming, by her very presence, the little man before her. The face was flat and coarsened, a hard, bitter sheen transfiguring the ribald lust that rose like a cloud from her.

  ‘Get out!’ she screamed.

  She reached up for his cap and flung it at him.

  ‘…an’ stay out!’

  ‘Have a heart,’ he begged.

  ‘Let me ketch sight o’ you – that’s all!’

  She nodded in her viciousness.

  ‘That’s all! Dunna you dare set fut in this house afore the Mail’s out. An’ if you canna set your hand to summat all the day long – Fair Day, an’ all – then you’m past all hope an’ prayin’ for.’

  She worked off her fury and bent down over the cluttered table, jerking the things off with a sullen anger.

  He stood there forlornly on the step, peering into his home. The sight of him provoked her to a fresh outburst.

  ‘An’ our Mam’s had about enough,’ she nodded in a threat.

  He bowed his head, letting it all go over him.

  She swept her hand to the few sticks of furniture the bums had left.

  ‘Inna it a nice come down!’

  She stood and watched him in a red glare of contempt.

  ‘Inna as good as you? As though I canna do better for myself, an’ without the askin’.’

  ‘Sally!’ he implored, his hands out, his mouth dropped open.

  ‘Sally theeself!’ she shouted back at him. ‘An’ dunna say I anna told you – that’s all!’

  He wandered out into the foulness of the ‘court’ with the vague threat tumbling in him. He never dare let it get hold, kept fending it off like some awful dream that lay beyond the mind. And he dared not think. Things were going from bad to worse. They would go on and on until… he did not know – he did not want to know.

  He put a hand up to his head wearily. The hard white light hurt his eyes after the squalid half-light of the room. He reached up his head like a setter and took in a long breath, freeing his lungs.

  ‘Damn me! Watch theeself!’

  He reached back to the kerb and gave the other man the right of way, a big man with a florid, blue-red face and a nose like a snout.

  ‘Why! Ishmael! Me auld cock robin!’

  It was his brother-in-law from up in the country, in for the Fair. He had his bowler hat set at a tilt, and a crop stuck out arrogantly from under his arm. A big Border farmer, he had gone farther west for his wife – Ishmael’s youngest sister, with her mild, blue, uncomprehending eyes that looked out on life with a child’s stare of innocence. Ishmael, who was nearest her of all, had been hurt at this match: hurt and bewildered as at some sort of outrage, something that had happened that had no right to happen, and he did not want to think about it.

  ‘Goin’ to have one?’ the big man asked with the grudging, dry familiarity of the family, giving his crop a jerk towards the inn door.

  ‘Just one, like.’

  ‘Aye! Thee and thee one!’

  They took their places on the settle, and Ishmael dipped his thin blue nose into the pint mug.

  ‘Nemma God – thee’t half clemmed by the look o’ thee!’

  Ishmael passed a hand over his chin and swept it over his gaunt cheekbones. Then he brought it backwards across his nose with a sniff.

  ‘An’ I dunna suppose her’ll change her ways for thy askin’.’

  Ishmael winced as under a blow.

  ‘Ways…?’ he got out.

  ‘Aye – ways I said. An’ I seen summat of her, as well as thee. Oh no – young blood dunna lie quiet, never did, never will.’

  The big man sat there, hands on knees, nodding dumbly on his chest, his heavy flesh face set in judgment.

  ‘Thee’t a lot to learn – so help me God thee hast,’ he went on with contempt. Ishmael raised his head and tried to bring his eyes down on the loud cloth before him.

  ‘One of the best,’ he got out fiercely.

  ‘Well, aye! O’course! An’ who said her inna?’

  The big man pulled at the red wen of nose wryly as Ishmael shouted: ‘Out with it!’

  The little man’s head had gone up, a wild frightened glint in his eye. The black hair dropped like a lank wet hand across his moist brow. Then he slid back in a heap, huddled and disconsolate. He put his hands up to his head, clawing at it hopelessly, and then ran them back through his hair.

  ‘Ah – shut thee eye, man! I canna as much as pass the time o’ day without thee’t halfway down me throat…’

  He looked at the little man before him, the thin white hands for ever working, the lean pallor of his face and the tremble of the mouth – looked at him from out of his own world with a dull-edged contempt.

  ‘Thee and thee poetry an’ all that fal-da-la. An’ a lot o’ good it’s done thee. There’s summat else in life beside poetry, me boy – as thee’t find out soon enough.’

  He got up to go at last.

  ‘You anna any message for ’em up there?’

  He jerked his crop towards the window and the mountains.

  Ishmael shook his head wearily. ‘No – nothing to say!’

  The little man’s lips shut in a line, struck mute: he raised his eyes towards the half-open window and shook his head in a hopeless shake.

  ‘Well… s’long.’

  The big man reached out his hand with brief familiarity.

  ‘Some day thee’t see sense… I shouldna wonder.’

  He pulled his nose again, looking down contemptuously at the unkempt, haggard little figure before him. Then he took a final gulp at his glass, as though to destroy any uneasy thought, and heaved his way towards the door.

  ‘I’ll tell them I’ve seen thee.’

  ‘Aye – do.’

  The two men looked at one another in farewell, and Ishmael dropped his eyes to the floor again.

  ‘And not to worry,’ he called out, as a final word, shuffling his feet over the flags.

  He stayed there, toying with his pint, tipping it up meditatively as though plumbing the depths. Once or twice he sighed heavily and then shook himself, as though trying to wake out of a reverie. He was half drunk and he did not know why. He did not know how he had become drunk, and he did not care. And then a sense of terror like a cold douche would go down his back.

  He was out in the streets again, moving along with a furtive, aimless shuffle. He went on, letting the Fair crowd buffet him, making his way to the Labour Exchange to draw his money. It was down in the High Street, and he went on in a daze, now on the street, now on the kerb, his head raised to the far-distant fringe of mountains round his home, his mouth working, and a thin dribble trickling down over his blue-chapped chin.

  The loafers and mouchers stood around, chewing plug and spitting. At sight of him they put their heads together and fell into
a smirk.

  ‘Serve him right!’

  ‘Poor chap.’

  ‘Ach – he canna see for looking.’

  At the Smithfield he wandered about from pen to pen. He went peering over at the beasts, the heavy Herefords and Cross Breds with their coats agleam, and then the Kerry Hill sheep, and then, over at the far end, the little nimble mountain sheep from near his home. He stood there, with the reek of the fleeces coming to him, and began to think of his boyhood up in the mountains. It was all gone and he would never go back. He did not know how it was, but he would never go back. Something had gone out of him since, but it still hung about – this sense of his own home and the sour-green, cropped mountain and the stone-clumped farm, and the windblown pines twisted across it, and the whine of the old wind and the dogs barking.

  He ought not to have come down into the town but he came and there he met his wife, and since then everything had gone wrong, and would go on going wrong, and he could not help it. And he did not know how it was at all.

  ‘Aye,’ he said, giving his head a wag reassuringly. ‘One of the best!’

  If they could only understand her, make a place for her. Then there would not have been the one way – or the other way. He could have gone back from the town to his home and if he did not go back the home would always be there. He would not have gone down and down like a man in a whirlpool, with the sullen insistent drag on him – unable to lift a hand to save himself.

  He could see them all now – that Sunday night when he went home to tell them – sitting round the old hearth, the white, mute lips set hard in a line, and the dropping silence, more awful than speech. And then the old grandmother, stuck upright like a stick, shawl around her, and her dried gums working.

  ‘Ach-y-fi,’ she said in disgust, and the old head began to tremble.

  But it was too late: it was too late – and there was no way back. The sense of his wife, the slow, heavy animal sense of her, possessed him. He had lost his home and the sight of his home, like a light in the sky that was and is gone in the darkness, groping and bewildered; there was no other sound or sense in all the world but the slow-blooded, lusty strength of her, bound up within her body.