Story, Volume I

by Dai Smith

  ‘But didn’t you tell him you needed gardening tools just as much as Elvira needs tonics or Maldwyn needs trousers to sing to the voters in London?’

  ‘Mine is a selfish wish. I want tools, a smallholding, and the feel of fertile earth for myself. But Cynlais wants the things he wants for others. He made me feel a bit ashamed.’

  ‘So what did you say you’d do for this crook?’

  ‘I told him I would show him all the secrets of victory. I spent two hours the night before last teaching him the special leg-twisting starting method which made such a mock of all those elements in the western counties who were tempted to take the road against me. Cynlais got himself into a five-ply knot to start with, he being such an amateur and having that smack on the leg, besides being very eager for a triumph. But after I had unwound him about six times and given him a lot of encouragement he got into the way of it, and now you can’t even stop to talk to the man without having him suddenly bend down and shoot off like a torpedo to show his mastery. For all his limp that Cynlais can move in a handy way.’

  ‘Of course he can. That Cynlais is a bigger crook than any of those boys we see in those serials down at the Dog scheming and burgling weekly and paying no rent. That limp is only something he puts on to fool people and flood tender-hearted elements like you with tears. I bet he hasn’t even got a wife called Elvira or a kid called Maldwyn.’

  ‘Oh yes, he has. I’ve seen them, and they’re in the exact condition described by Cynlais: Elvira pale as a ghost and scooping up Oxo direct from the pot every whipstitch, and Maldwyn very vocal in a high-pitched way and as bare-breeched for lack of cloth as a cat.’

  ‘What else did you teach him? Don’t tell me you let him into that ancient secret of Gito’s, of how to be supple though old and bent nearly double most of the time. You know what a great comfort having that secret has been to you through the years.’

  ‘At first I wasn’t going to tell him. But honest, Sylvanus, he looked so pathetic, and his legs and arms creaked so much when he moved I had to shout my directions at him. So I thought that if Gito lived only to silence the joints of this Cynlais he did not live in vain, so last night I granted him the use of the box and he slept in it.’

  ‘Well, I hope that’s the last thing you’ll do for him. You’ll never get on, Uncle Onllwyn. You’ve got no guile, no hardness at all. You chuck away your trumps, and to the last day of time you’ll be nothing but a mat for the voters, being taken in by elements like Cynlais Moore.’

  ‘I’m letting him have the grips as well.’

  ‘Oh no! The mouth grips? Why, they are the best thing you’ve got.’

  ‘He’ll have to have them if he’s going to win. If there’s one thing that makes a man sure of victory it’s those grips. They make a man feel he’s got the world itself in the palm of his hand and wondering where to throw it. It would have been heartless showing Cynlais the leg-twist, the secret of the dung, and then keep back the grips which are the very crown of all my paraphernalia.’

  They heard Hargreaves shouting on the entrants to come in and get dressed for the start. Hargreaves was the starter and was swinging a pistol in his hand. He looked full of drink and malice, and the friends approached him from behind. There were some very old men among the entrants, for the minimum age was forty. Some of them had already changed, and the ancient, withered look of their limbs and their obvious unfitness to stand up to anything much more than the sound of Hargreaves’ gun made Verdun and Sylvanus all the more bitter about the gesture of self-denial that Uncle Onllwyn had been talked into by Cynlais Moore. Several of the men were being served with beer by Mrs Hargreaves in the narrow passageway of The Little Ark.

  ‘Where’s Cynlais?’ asked Verdun.

  ‘Oh, he’ll be here shortly. You’ll be able to tell him by the easy springy way of walking he’ll have. After a night in the dung-box, Gito’s casket, you feel so springy you think all the time you’re on the point of floating, and when gladness comes into the heart to supplement the suppleness of your limbs, you have to press hard on your feet to keep on the earth at all. That Gito must have been the son of the wizard Merlin.’

  A man in his middle forties with very red thick hair and a face which in normal mood would have been smooth and cheerful came around the corner. But his face at that moment was neither cheerful nor smooth. There was an expression of settled wretchedness upon it, and he walked slowly, as if every motion of his body was undertaken only after an uneasy chat with pain.

  ‘Either this is Cynlais’ dying twin,’ said Onllwyn, ‘or he didn’t follow the directions as set forth by Gito and me.’

  ‘He looks rough,’ said Sylvanus delightedly. ‘Looks to me as if you’re going to have those gardening tools whether you want them or not, Uncle Onllwyn. It doesn’t seem that Cynlais could beat a hearse in his present shape. He looks as if he’s been sleeping under and not in the box.’

  ‘He’ll be a new man when he gets the grips in,’ said Onllwyn obstinately.

  Cynlais had seated himself on a low stone stile that had been let into the garden wall of The Little Ark. When he saw Onllwyn he raised his right arm stiffly and was obviously on the point of some bad-tempered accusation, but he thought better of it, and did no more than sigh in a loud, hopeless way. Cynlais’ face had no cunning and these changes of mental front were conveyed in the shift of his eyes and mouth. ‘You know, Onllwyn,’ he said quietly, ‘that my wife Elvira has many troubles. Among those troubles is nerves.’

  ‘I know that, Cynlais. I’ve seen Elvira shake when Maldwyn has come singing at her from behind. It was I who got you that extra-large box of the herb skullcap from that nature-healer, Mathew Caney the Cure, to see if it would steady her trembles. But what have Elvira’s nerves got to do with the feeble and limping way in which you are walking?’

  ‘It was that box, the casket of Gito, or whatever you call it,’ said Cynlais bitterly, again making a clear effort to keep his bad temper in the basement of his mood. ‘You told me to lie in it, so that its healing properties could go healing and refreshing into every joint. When you first told me that, I thought that you were out of your head, made jingles by your years in the solitude dreaming of land and sheep of your own. But I took your word for it even though my first inclination was to turn you over to Naboth Jenks the Pinks and those other boys in the Allotment Holders’ Union for wasting a boxful of prime stuff. But you have a wise, pitying look and I listened. I didn’t like the coffin shape you had managed to work on to that box either, but I carried it home, and until Elvira and the kids had gone to bed I kept it in the shed behind the house. When everything was quiet I carried it down to the kitchen, thinking to myself all the time what a sinister shape this box has, and wondering why you hadn’t picked a homelier and less haunting pattern. Between the dung and thoughts of doom I was not happy as I laid that article down in front of the kitchen fire, for it was there I put it, determined to be cosy, if foul. Now, as I said, Elvira has nerves, the longest in all Meadow Prospect. These nerves make her twitch and they also make her dream, and she often thinks her dreams show up the future, and it’s no joke when listening to Elvira after a night when her dreams have been full of wise bright eyes to see her next week winking away at last week as they thrust freezing fingers up today. It seems a couple of days ago she had a whole belt of dreams about me being kicked by a horse and killed. She had seen me there in her dreams, dead, and apart from me leaving her unprovided for, having been kicked by a horse even poorer than I was and in no way able to make payment for the use of me, she said I had looked quite nice and she had enjoyed the spectacle of me lying there in dreams, stiff as a board and pale as winter. About an hour after I had settled myself in the box, wriggling about and feeling uncomfortable and cursing you and that silly old fool Gito, I doze off. Then Elvira upstairs notices I am not at her side. This worries her, for with all my other failings I am a whale of a man for sleeping in my own bed, so that the boys from the Government will know exactly where to come wh
en they wish to tell me that my days of doubt and trouble are at an end. So I am never far from Elvira’s side at night. She catches a slight smell in the air, which, while a common enough smell, is not often to be smelled in our house. The smell of horse. This makes her twitch, with all her nerves working up to a real loud climax of hallelujahs like the boys in the chapels, because she remembers the dream with me catching it from a hoof and being laid flat. She lights a candle, terrified. She comes cautiously down the stairs. She opens the kitchen door. Now, I ask you, Onllwyn Evans, if you were less keen on getting back to the land and were in the way of seeing the dead lying about in your dreams, what would you do if you saw what Elvira saw then, me stretched out in what looks like a coffin but which is worse than a coffin because I am resting on a layer of pure waste?’

  ‘I’d blow out the candle for a start,’ said Uncle Onllwyn, trying to see the problem as best he could from the viewpoint of Cynlais Moore, and sounding very helpful. I’d do that so that I would see as little of you as possible.’

  ‘All right for you to be so wise. Elvira nearly went off her head. She goes off into the loudest laughing fit heard in Meadow Prospect, even counting the beaut we had from that burning fanatic Ogley Floyd the Flame when he saw the whole truth about mankind five seconds after having a truncheon broken in three over his pate in the Minimum Wage troubles of 1910. I am standing up in the box now bawling at Elvira that I am simply becoming supple, to read no more into it than that, and telling her to shut up her screeching for God’s sake, or she will be bringing down on us a visit from Parry the Pittance, that official who calls on behalf of the County Council to take away the demented. At that moment in rushes Teifion Farr from two doors down, an interfering toad, a busybody, a man who has tufts of coconut matting lodged in his ear from keeping it so often to the ground listening to the approaching hoof-beat of calamity. Teifion sees the scene in the kitchen and he thinks this is what he has been waiting to see all these years. He thinks I am up to some devilry with Elvira, because he doesn’t often see voters standing up naked in the kitchen without even a soapsud to take the strain, and Teifion is a Calvinist with a low, malicious view of man. He takes hold of me and beats me around that kitchen in a way I hope I will never know again. If I had been a drum he would certainly have got the message across to Calvin. The sound of me being made into pulp brought Elvira to her senses, and for a whole minute she stood there admiring the quick, nimble shakes of Farr as he half butchered me. Then she remembers about the box as she sees me and Farr running around it for the tenth time. She calls the kids, drags it outside and they burn it, and the back fills up with voters who think from the glow we are celebrating some brand of jubilee or armistice. So that’s the end of your box.’

  ‘Poor old Gito!’

  ‘Why sympathise with that old goat? He’s dead and as used to slowness as the rest of us. Fix your mind on the problems of the quick and the still-vexed, Onllwyn.’

  ‘It was better for Gito than for me.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘He didn’t have to deal with bunglers and menaces like you.’

  ‘Who are you calling a menace? It was your damned coffin that started it all. And I’m still aching from Teifion Farr’s treatment. That’s why I feel like one half-raised from the dead. I reckon you ought to feel keener than ever to let me have this prize, although I don’t know how I’m going to beat anybody now with this present feeling upon me. How would you like to win and hand me the money, Onllwyn?’

  ‘No, that wouldn’t be honest. I like to see the people do the thing for which they get the pay or the reward. I’m not an all-out Marxist, but I’ll go as far as that with those boys in the discussion group at the Library and Institute.’

  ‘Don’t forget Elvira’ll be worse after the shock she got from that box. And when Maldwyn catches the ears of those voters in London he’ll pay you the money back five times over.’

  ‘Oh, leave him alone,’ said Verdun to Onllwyn. ‘This Cynlais is making a fool out of you.’

  ‘Now you file off, Harris,’ said Cynlais. ‘You’ve got too much mouth for a small one.’

  ‘You can win, Cynlais,’ said Onllwyn. ‘Look at all those blokes who’ve entered. Life has snarled at them all, judging by their look, and they’ll have to be carrying each other if they want to advance after the first minute. And you forget that you’ll be using my grips. Once you get your teeth in those, boy, you’ll forget all about your bruises and failures. They’ll give you the fierceness and will to win we elements seem most to lack. They make you feel supple and fleet as if you had made a proper use of Gito’s box.’

  ‘I bet he put it on the fire himself to save coal,’ said Elwyn, his eyes settled unblinking and hostile on Cynlais.

  ‘Of course he did,’ said Verdun. ‘And I bet that Teifion Farr was never heard of on this earth until a few minutes ago. Whenever Cynlais Moore talks, truth orders a truss.’

  ‘Now you three wise young rodneys, file off,’ said Cynlais. Cynlais and Onllwyn went off into the back room of the Ark, Onllwyn was out again in two minutes wearing his singlet and his curiously long white drawers which caught the eye of his three young friends who had been brought up to think of these articles as either very short or not there at all. He wore a look of solemn responsibility which, taken together with the length of his drawers, made Elwyn laugh out loud. Verdun dug his arm into Elwyn’s side.

  ‘Sorry, boy,’ said Elwyn. ‘You look fine, Uncle Onllwyn; a treat, honest.’

  An old competitor, with knicks as long as Onllwyn’s, but with limbs much less fitted for racing, came out of the Ark’s passageway, led by a friend. They were both staggering a little, but the man in the drawers was crying as well. They sat down on the stone bench near the door. The boys noticed that the weeping man had a long, plain scar running across his brow.

  ‘That’s Enoch Vizard,’ said Onllwyn. ‘The man with the scar is Enoch. And his friend is Luther Mitchell. I didn’t know that Enoch was interested in such events as races. Hullo, Luther. What’s wrong with Enoch? He seems to be in trouble.’

  ‘He’d be all right if he wasn’t so stubborn,’ said Luther. ‘He makes up his mind to be in this race and there we are. A mule. Just being a mule is bad enough, but a mule within two breaths of the pension is a pitiful sight to see. You know what a fine strong chap Enoch was before he got that smack on his forehead?’

  ‘I remember,’ said Onllwyn. ‘He was the pride of Meadow Prospect with his great strength. One never knew what he was going to lift next. He was one of the few men who kept things moving during the great slump.’

  ‘We got here soon for the changing, and when Enoch took off his trousers to get into his running drawers he became very sad at the thin look of his legs. He said he had seen them before, of course, going to bed and so on, but he had never noticed before how much they had dwindled. The back room of the Ark is a lighter place than any bedroom in Meadow Prospect and full of truth. So I said what the hell, of course we shrink. I even hummed him that well-known hymn which deals with shrinkage and decline in a very clear way. I added that after that bump he got on the boko when the roof came down he ought to be glad he’s not bloody well dead. And I said let’s have a drink, boy, and to hell with all such antics as dwindling and age and taking off your trousers when the light is too good. So we started to drink. And there we are. When Hargreaves fires off that great gun we’ll have to give Enoch a strong shove in the right direction or he’ll be landing up in the wrong town, honest to God.’

  The boys closed around watching Enoch Vizard pulling at the legs of his drawers and sobbing hard as he stroked the thin, blotched, emaciated skin of his arms and legs.

  Cynlais came out. He was wearing tight white drawers that had an elegant cut alongside such baggy articles as those worn by Vizard and Onllwyn, but his vest was a crimson, shapeless effect that looked as if it had been cut down from a dress with the wearer still wearing it and fighting to keep it intact. He appeared self-conscious and furtive, and ga
ve Onllwyn a sly dig as if to say he was now ready for final instructions. Onllwyn paid no attention to him at all. He was staring at Enoch Vizard.

  ‘It would be a good thing,’ said Onllwyn, ‘if I could arrange a little victory for Enoch. That poor bloke is half eaten away by despair. I’ve had a slow and grinding trip through the mill, it’s true, but I haven’t yet had my head under a ton of rock like this voter, nor does my skin look as if it has just been knitted on by a poor hand with the needles. It would set him up no end if he could turn out to be the best walker in Meadow Prospect.’

  ‘No chance,’ said Luther Mitchell. ‘No chance. Very nice of you to offer, Onllwyn. But as soon as Enoch walks a bit too fast that crack across his brow gives him a terrible headache and giddiness, and when he is in that state, I’ve seen falling stars that were nearer to the earth and easier to manage.’

  ‘Very nice of you to offer,’ said Cynlais ironically, pushing his head fiercely between Luther and Onllwyn. ‘It’s a pity everybody couldn’t win. Then you’d be very happy, Onllwyn. A proper mixture of Carnegie and Claus, that’s what you are out to become, boy. Come on, for God’s sake, and show me the magic of those grips.’ Cynlais, Onllwyn, and the three boys moved off conspiratorially around the corner of The Little Ark. Onllwyn brought the grips, large rough-hewn objects, out of his case. Cynlais looked at them astonished. ‘Where in God’s name am I supposed to wear those?’

  ‘Don’t be backward, Cyn. In the mouth.’

  ‘What kind of a jack will I need to get my head around those? Is this some kind of sombre buffoonery, Onllwyn?’

  ‘No, no. With these in, you’ll be breathing deep and easy when all the rest will be gasping their guts out and dreaming of the iron lung.’

  ‘But just look at the size of them. Just one half of one of those would fill me. Thinking through the years of that Gito has driven you off the hinge, boy. And I didn’t tell you this before, but I’ve got a very small mouth for a grown man. All the Moores have dainty lips.’