Story, Volume I

by Dai Smith

  He went into the marquee and dragged a chair across the yellow, trodden grass, and began to drink. The whisky went down into his stomach in a scorch, and then the cloud rose up to his head, taking the edge off him. He could still hear the high tremulous baaing of the sheep: the sound, the smell of them, was the old life made real again. Then he bowed his head on his hands. Once he staggered up and went to the tent flap and looked up the valley to his home and the lighted, flying white-ash face of the sky over the mountains.

  He took his place again, only getting up to push his glass over the counter and reach for it with a swing.

  He went on drinking, fumbling in his pocket for the Labour Exchange money, his shoulders hunched up about him and his eyes set staring on the ground.

  Now he could no longer remember how it had all happened – it was like the sky fading and the old remembered things dropping down into the darkness. But it had to be – he knew that it had to be. And he did not care. He had gone down and down and down, and he did not care. And he would go all the way to hell itself if he was within the reach of her.

  ‘Aye,’ he said again in his drunken haze, ‘one of the best.’

  Their life together passed up before him like a picture blurred and run – the life in the ‘court’, in the squalid little house, the smell of it, the rising stench, the table in a litter and the faggots and the chips, and the bin forever full with tins, and her curling irons all about, and the blue print dress with the smell of cheap scent on it.

  They had gone down and down, and all his little capital – his share of the farm – had dwindled and gone, and the little shop with its window of dead flies and its row of sweet bottles went down with him until it was shuttered up for good and the last bit of stock sold off.

  If he had been a man they could have made things go, could have moved off to a better part of the town and she would have been able to go to the Emporium and order what she liked. And she could have taken her place with them all, for she had a way with her.

  He saw her first – that Fair Day, how long ago? – going in a clatter through the Market Hall, her shawl about her. There were five or six of them, come with a whiff of grease from the mills, and ‘minching’ damsons from the old women’s baskets and shooting back the stones; then the policeman came and they picked up their skirts and made a run for it, laughing and screaming up the benches.

  ‘A bad ’un,’ said the old Sergeant, wagging his head.

  And then he saw her again at the Workers’ Union dance. It was his first winter in the town and he was learning to dance. And he was learning to drink. The few port and lemons had gone to his head and he stood there on the fringe of the floor, preened up like a young bird, in his navy blue best and wagging his head across his butterfly. Then he saw her, with the same insolent tilt of the head, the ripe full breasts and a solemn swagger in the heavy hips, her snub nose turned up, mocking.

  She stared him back straight and insolent and he moved to go across.

  ‘Leave it alone.’ His friend had caught him by the sleeve.

  But he went across.

  That was the beginning of it – he could remember that first night, for it stood out clear with the edge to it – but he could not remember the rest. And he did not want to remember.

  Now he had gone past memory. Only in the dark, edgeless nightmare, when past and present ran to meet – this dream without beginning and without end – he knew that somewhere she was, and where she was he had to be.

  He got up in a stagger and lurched out of the tent. The pens were emptying and the mouchers had descended, like a flock of drear, half-plucked crows – the ne’er-do-wells who had come to pick up what they could. They went running and jumping over the hurdles, like boys let loose from school. All her family were mouchers, the worst mouchers in the town, but he did not care.

  ‘Ach-y-fi’ his old grandmother had said, with her head atremble and her old white hands held hard on the chair rails.

  It was dusk and what light there was lay like a wiped smudge at the valley’s end. The old mountains up there, lying up against the sky, were always the last to go: the sun went down behind them, leaving that pale gleam of light in darkness around them.

  He saw them as they always were, the lost land that was and would for ever be.

  On he went into the little town, all tumbled and desolate with its close, smoke-ridden streets, the ‘taverns’, and the wet, steaming fish shops, and the rancid, grease-laden gusts: the gasworks and the reach of clinkers: the sullen humid life of it. It was his home now, and he did not complain. He had become a part of it and there was no way out – never and never and never.

  ‘Never: no – never!’ he said, shaking his fist up to the sky. Then he broke out into blasphemies, his head up in a gibber. As the fit left him he began to sob, his body shaking, and the hot, scalding tears going down in drops to the ground.

  ‘Surrey! What’s up?’ Somebody caught him by the arm and reached him straight.

  ‘Why! Ishmael!’

  Ishmael looked at the man, unseeing, and swept his arms about.

  ‘Ishmael! Nemma God! Thee’t squit.’

  ‘One of the best,’ said Ishmael, rocking, his teeth come to, his wild eyes wandering in a hopeless search.

  ‘Aye, aye,’ said the other reassuringly. ‘Hup! Watch theeself!’ He straightened him again and saved him from falling. ‘An’ thee’t not half had a skinful.’

  He was one of the little toadies of the town, and Fair Day was a day of days. He led him down a back street to a tavern, and they went round through the yard into the parlour.

  ‘Pink gin,’ whispered the little man, letting his charge fall into a chair. ‘An’ dunna put on the light.’ He gave Ishmael a nudge. ‘Got summat to show?’

  Ishmael fumbled in his fob and dropped a handful of coins on to the table.

  ‘Money!’ he said, with a toss of his hand, scattering it, and then he raised his eyes, bleary and wandering. ‘And I said to my soul – this night eat, drink, and be merry…’

  ‘Shut thee eye!’ broke in the other, cutting him short. ‘An’ a double brandy for me, like.’ He gave the barmaid a meaning wink.

  ‘In’t he bad?’ the girl said, dabbing her big red hands in her apron.

  ‘Go thee on,’ he exhorted. ‘Thee leave him to me.’

  Ishmael took his drink without looking at it. The little man leaned across and loosened his collar for him.

  ‘And I said to my soul…’ Ishmael began again, his voice going up in ecstasy.

  ‘Now! Now! No preachin’. Thee’t have us out in a minnit.’

  Ishmael looked towards him, unseeing.

  ‘I got a soul,’ he shouted, waving his fist in a wild despair, his dry mouth clamped sourly to.

  ‘Aye, aye. O’ course!’

  Ishmael’s head dropped down on his chest and he began to mutter incoherently.

  ‘What’s say? Better get thee home?’

  ‘The Mail… gone?’

  ‘Mail be damned! Why, it anna left Aber yet.’

  Ishmael shook him free and lolloped back into his seat, but the other, hoisting him out of the chair, slipped an arm round him and led him to the door.

  ‘One of the best.’

  Ishmael smashed a fist down until the little beer-soaked table before him rocked. ‘Shut thee eye! Nemma God – an’ we’m be run in in a minnit.’

  At the end of the court the little moucher let go of his arm.

  ‘Thee’t all right now?’

  Ishmael waved him away and lurched up towards his home. He could not open the door and he began to fumble about with the latch.

  ‘You!’

  His wife stood on the step. She stood across the doorway barring his way, a red cotton dressing gown pulled across her breasts, her hair down.

  ‘Hey!’ she shouted playfully. ‘Who you pushin’?’

  ‘Let me in – there’s a girl,’ he begged.

  He put his hands up to his head.

  ‘That bad!
’

  ‘Bad! You an’ your bad!’

  She began to laugh again in a silly high-pitched way, and Ishmael tried to bring his eyes to see her, to search her out in the haze, but he only saw a red, tousled head reach and heave before him.

  He lurched into the passage way and fell against the cane stand.

  ‘Hi!’ he began to mumble drunkenly. ‘What in the name o’ God… is this?’

  ‘What?’

  Her head jerked round as though on a swivel, her blown, watered eyes harsh and knowing.

  ‘This!’

  He clawed up at the little bamboo hat stand and got his fingers on the rim of a bowler hat, and then fell back in a stagger, taking it with him.

  ‘Oh – say so!’

  She loosened his fingers off the rim and stuck it jauntily on his head. It came down over his ears and tipped over on his eyes. He shook his head and it rattled down his ears. She began to laugh in the same high-pitched, nervous way.

  ‘There now! An’ it dunna fit.’

  She stood back and surveyed it dolefully.

  Ishmael opened a bleary eye, un-understanding.

  ‘Whose… whose is it?’ he got out.

  ‘Whose – well, thine o’ course! An’ dunna say I never give thee any thin’. I inna in the Rummage but five minnits an’…’

  ‘Well – I never.’

  Ishmael’s bloodshot eyes drew taut in focus, then his face widened in a beam. He lolloped over and tried to kiss her, his arms clutching involuntarily around her warm, wide waist.

  ‘Saucy thing!’ she minced, giving him a playful slap.

  And then, getting hold of the banisters, he began to mount the stairs, flushed with a new hope.

  ‘Ladies first,’ she giggled, pushing by him in a flurry.

  Ishmael put a foot in the air like a horse pawing, and fell down the bottom steps.

  ‘Oh, damn,’ he said despairingly, ‘too far.’

  She began to giggle again, in the same silly, uncertain way, looking at the desolate heap before her. At last she got him into the little front room, his feet working, like a stepping marionette, before him. He dropped down on the little couch, and she slipped a cushion under his head.

  ‘Stay a bit,’ he pleaded, his face wide with bliss.

  He made to catch at her skirt, unable to let go of her.

  ‘Ssh!’

  She put her fingers to her mouth as though chiding a fractious child.

  ‘One of the best,’ he said, wagging his head drowsily.

  Then his mouth fell open in a snore.

  It was only then, with one quick glance around her, that she hurried up the stairs.

  WAT PANTATHRO

  Glyn Jones

  I got the crockery and the bloater out of the cupboard for my father before going to bed. He would often cook a fish when he came in at night, using the kitchen poker to balance it on because we didn’t have a gridiron. Then I lit my candle in the tin stick, and when I had blown out the oil lamp I went upstairs to bed. My father was a horse trainer, and on the handrail at the top of the stairs he kept three riding saddles, one of them very old, with leather handles in front curved upwards like the horns of a cow. We slept in the same bedroom, which was low and large, containing a big bed made of black iron tubes with brass knobs on the corner posts. Behind our thin plank door we had a cow’s-horn coat hook on which hung a trainer’s bridle, one with a massive bit and a heavy cluster of metal fingers like a bunch of keys, to daunt the young horses. There were no pictures or ornaments in our bedroom, only a green glass walking stick over the fireplace and my father’s gun licence pinned into the bladdery wallpaper. When I had undressed I said my prayers against the patchwork quilt which my mother had finished the winter she died. Then I climbed up into the high bed and blew the candle out.

  But I couldn’t sleep at first, thinking of my father taking me down to the autumn horse fair the next day. I lay awake in the rough blankets hearing the squeak of a nightbird, and Flower uneasy in her stall, and the hollow dribble of the dry plaster trickling down behind the wallpaper on to the wooden floor of the bedroom. I dozed, and when I awoke in the pitch darkness I could see narrow slits of light like scattered straws shining up through the floorboards from the oil lamp in the kitchen beneath me, and by that I knew my father was home. And soon I was glad to see the light go out and to hear him groping his way up the bare stairs, muttering his prayers to himself and at last lifting the latch of our bedroom door. I didn’t want him to think he had wakened me because that would worry him, so I pretended to be asleep. He came in softly, lit the candle at the bedside and then finished the undressing and praying he had started on his way upstairs.

  My father was very tall and slender, his hard, bony body was straight and pole-like. At home he always wore a long check riding jacket, fawn breeches and buttoned corduroy gaiters. He had an upright rubber collar which he used to wash with his red pocket handkerchief under the pump, but because he had not been to town there was no necktie round it. His face was long and bony, dull red or rather purplish all over, the same colour as the underside of your tongue, and covered with a mass of tiny little wormy veins. He had thick grey hair and rich brown eyebrows that were curved upwards and as bushy as a pair of silkworms. And when he pushed back his brick-coloured lips, baring his gums to get rid of the bits of food, his long brown teeth with the wide spaces between them showed in his mouth like a row of flat and upright bars.

  He stood beside the bed for a moment wiping the greasy marks off his face with his scarlet handkerchief. He did this because when he balanced his fish over the fire it often tumbled off into the flames and became, by the time it was cooked, as black and burnt as a cinder. Then when he had done he blessed me with tobacco-smelling hands and laid down his warm body with care in the bed beside me. I listened, but I knew he had not been drinking because I could not smell him or hear the argument of the beer rolling round in his belly.

  The next morning we went down to the fair in the spring body. This was a high black bouncy cart with very tall thin wheels painted a glittering daffodil yellow. It had a seat with a back to it across the middle and a tiger rug for our knees. Flower, my father’s beautiful black riding mare, was between the shafts in her new brown harness, her glossy coat shining in the sun with grooming until she looked as though she had been polished all over with hair oil. As I sat high above her in the springy cart, I could see her carrying her small head in its brown bridle a little on one side as she trotted sweetly along. I loved her, she was quiet and pretty, and I could manage her, but I was afraid my father would sell her in the fair and buy a younger horse for training.

  The hedges that morning were full of birds and berries. The autumn sun was strong after the rain and the long tree shadows in the fields were so dark that the grass seemed burnt black with fire. The wheels of the light cart gritted loudly on the road and the steel tyre came turning up under my elbow as it rested on the narrow leather mudguard. We sat with the tiger-skin rug over us, my father beside me holding the brown reins loosely and resting the whip across them, his hands yellow with nicotine almost to his wrists. He looked fresh and handsome in the bright morning, wearing his new black riding coat and his best whipcord breeches, and his soft black hat with the little blue jay’s feather in it tilted on the side of his head. And round his upright collar he had a thick scarlet scarf-tie smelling of camphor, with small white horseshoes sprinkled all over it.

  I said to him, ‘We are not going to sell Flower are we, my father?’

  ‘No, little one,’ he answered, teasing me, ‘not unless we get a bargain, a biter or a kicker, something light in the behind that no one can manage.’ And then, with his tusky grin on his face, he asked me to take the reins while he struck a match on the palm of his hand and lit another cigarette.

  It was six miles down to town and all the way my father waved his whip to people or drew rein to talk to them. Harri Parcglas, taking his snow-white nanny for a walk on the end of a thirty-foot chain, stopped
to ask my father a cure for the warts spreading on the belly of his entire; the vicar under his black sunshade put his hand from which two fingers were missing on Flower’s new collar of plaited straw and reminded my father he was due to toll the funeral bell the next day; and Lewsin Penylan the poacher, coming from his shed, brought a ferret whose mouth he had sewn up out of his inside pocket and offered us a rabbit that night if my father would throw him a coin for the shot. It was on the hill outside Lewsin’s shed a month or two ago that I had been sheltering from the pelting storm after school when I had seen my father, soaking wet from head to foot, passing on his way home to Pantathro. He was riding a brisk little bay pony up from town, his long legs hanging straight down and nearly touching the road. He had no overcoat on and the heavy summer rain was sheeting over him from the cloudburst and running off his clothes as though from little spouts and gutters on to the streaming road. But although he was drenched to the skin and there wasn’t a dry hair on the little brown pony, he was singing a hymn about the blood of Jesus Christ loudly to himself as the rain deluged over him. When he saw me he didn’t stop the pony, he only grinned and shouted that it looked devilish like a shower. The boys who were with me laughed and pointed at him and I blushed with shame because they knew he was drunk again.

  We came down into the town at a sharp trot and I could see the long narrow street before us crowded with people and animals. There were horses of every size and colour packed there, most of them unharnessed and with tar shining in the sun on their black hoofs, and yellow, red and blue braids plaited into their manes and tails. And there was a lot of noise there too, men shouting and horses neighing and clattering about. The horses were all over the roads of the town and over the pavements as well, standing about in bunches or being led by rope halters up and down the street, or disappearing through the front doors of the public houses behind their masters. I hardly ever came to town and I loved it. From the high position in the cart where we sat, the crowd of bare backs before us seemed packed together as close as cobblestones, so that I thought we should never be able to get through. But my father governed our mare with his clever hands. He kept her going, waving his whip gaily to people he knew, even sometimes urging her into a little trot, easily steering his zigzag way among the mixed crowds of men and horses around us. And as we passed along he had often to shout ‘No’, with a grin on his face to a dealer who asked him if Flower was for sale or called out naming a price for her. Because our mare was pretty and as black as jet and many people wanted her.