Story, Volume I

by Dai Smith

  ‘I don’t expect a whole house,’ said Emily laughing: ‘I like a room I can be alone in. And sit near the window.’

  ‘I shouldn’t like a country without trees, though,’ she went on vaguely; ‘you’d feel like a bee in a glass hive. Was your mother scientific?’

  ‘Good God – my mother!’

  ‘Well, I think Frenchwomen are.’

  ‘Well,’ he said, ‘perhaps you’re right. Perhaps she was scientific in her way. She liked growing flowers. White flowers – big white daisies – tall ones – I remember them all along our hedge, walking in the wind. Many a time coming home I’ve taken them for our white cat in the twilight. By jove, yes.’ And he pulled an oar out of the water as if it had a root, and looked at the end of it dripping.

  ‘Smell the fields,’ he muttered, turning.

  ‘My mother was a musician,’ said Emily slowly, ‘not one that anyone knew about – she just played beautifully and loved it. She wanted to be a singer, but her father wouldn’t let her. Some other girl had failed. Do you know,’ she was leaning forward, looking down at her feet and clasping her ankles with her cold wet fingers as she spoke – ‘do you know, sometimes I think of Mother all day, and what I’m sure was the happiest part of her life. It was when she was about my age. She had gone from the piano to the organ. Whenever she speaks of Bach she seems to remember herself then, when she was beginning to play his fugues. She used to pay a boy sixpence to blow for her. Just two of them on a weekday in an empty church… her eyes shine when she speaks of it. Oh dear, I think of her then. It’s unspeakably sad because one of those days she must have walked out full of ecstasy and never gone back. I seem to imagine her leaving her joy behind forever and then all the troubles and the hard work and the poverty falling on her. And then, I can’t help it, I look at her face and feel heartbroken. Isn’t it dreadful? I suppose it isn’t – not when you think of war.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘She got married?’

  ‘Yes. And had four children. We’re a poor substitute for Bach.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said again gravely, thinking: ‘Bach himself was probably a substitute for – I mean he took the place of – some woman’s single freedom. Don’t you think so?’

  ‘Yes. But we are nearly all bad,’ she said under her breath.

  He was working the oar loosely, turning the nose of the boat towards the old sheep dip where she was to be landed. Glancing back at her, he demanded what she was thinking.

  ‘I?’ she said: ‘I was thinking we shall never meet again. I don’t know how I know it, but I do.’

  ‘It’s queer you should feel that, because it’s very likely I shall be moved soon. Called up probably. I don’t really care much where I go.’

  ‘Don’t you feel anything?’

  ‘Yes, I feel something.’

  ‘What?’ she cried passionately.

  ‘What?’ he laughed, patting the water: ‘Why, lost!’

  The word seemed to sink down and down into the middle of the river. Her body felt light and chilly: she put her hand on the narrow edge of the boat and looked down at the shadow within the shadow of the reflected sky. A glow of yellowy green, precious light, the light of darkness as she saw it, lay on the level behind that they had left. On the top of the bank the enormous hemlocks spread distinctly, neither black nor green but a strange soft brown colour of darkness. This was the place. The current, with its go up or go down, would not let them think.

  ‘Goodnight,’ she said, as the grass-swept boat thrilled against the bank.

  ‘Goodnight,’ he said at the end of the swaying boat.

  ‘Goodnight and thank you.’

  She jumped ashore. She stood on a stone. Hesitatingly he seemed to hover. Then came the clear plunge of the oars. The boat made a bias curve. She stared it away. From the fields the river was all mist, and the slight moonlight was only another kind of invisibility. He had gone. But she heard no stroke. He must be drifting down. He had gone and it was over and they would never meet again.

  Emily bent and rubbed her feet which were as wet and cold as if they had been walking in the river. Neither of them had made the least individual acknowledgment of the other. It was from this point of view, the most inscrutable meeting in her life. And yet she understood what it might mean to each of them. Wasn’t it the farewell to something each was feeling through the other? Wasn’t that why neither he nor she could contradict her instinct that they would never talk together again? Was that too direct, too crude, an explanation? Wasn’t it truly what it amounted to tonight?

  She stood up, hooking both arms like wings, fists pressed against her, she fled down the tingling, tangled path, the pale yellow moon leaping about in the sky as she ran, the fragrance rising behind her from bruised clover, docks and nettles. In the home meadow each cow was lying still as a rock on the seashore. Her heart seemed to be vaulting in and out of a hole in her breast. A flock of ewes and lambs in the corner by the yard gate trembled on to their feet, shuddering like the echo of thunder in the ground as they shook themselves. The scent of honeysuckle was everywhere in the air as an intenser stillness. And now, the grit of the yard sticking to her wet feet like sand, she bounded up the steps – she was at the house. Weak, dazed, she leant against the porch. There came a pounding vision of machinery, of voices unbroken by silence, into her ears and her closed eyes. The future…

  She looked through the window into the room with its parasol of lamplight. Aunt Fran was asleep in her chair over her knitting, a candle in a brass candlestick burning beside her. The dim gold shone through the tangled room and out on to the lawn.

  Emily thought, ‘With that candle end I shall go to bed.’

  THE PITS ARE ON THE TOP

  Rhys Davies

  Snow whirled prettily about the bus in the bright noon light. Through a hatch in his glass cabin the driver gossiped with a policeman so enormously majestic that the flakes seemed nervous of fluttering on his blue cape; they just melted away in the fiery red of his face. The bus, a single-decker, was slowly filling up; in a few minutes it would begin its steep journey up the vale, right to the top where the pits were.

  A girl entered with her young man. They sat near the front. Something of the bright, chill shine of the morning was in her oval face: he was dark, sturdy-looking and brisk, though his face had that azure pallor of the underground worker. As the couple entered and found seats together a little interested silence fell over the other passengers, who, except for the district nurse, were all married-looking women. Everybody, of course, knew that Bryn Jones was courting Dilys Morgan: perhaps they had come down to the shops that morning to buy the engagement ring.

  The couple settled, interest was withdrawn from them and conversation resumed to more important matters. There was a youngish, serious-looking woman with a wreath on her knees. It was composed of red tulips, white chrysanthemums and two long-tongued orchids which were the colour of speckled toads. She eyed the wreath with uncertainty and went on with her complaint:

  ‘Fifteen shillings, and in the summer a bigger wreath than this you can get for seven-and-six. The price of flowers! And soon as I’ve taken this up I’ve got to come down again and be fitted for my black. Potching about!’ She spoke as if she wanted to administer reproof to someone or something.

  ‘It’s bronchitis weather,’ sighed a fat woman with a large basket on her knees. Top of the bulgy basket was a loaf of bread, a bag of cakes and a tin of peaches. ‘Did he—’ she asked the woman with the wreath, hesitant, ‘did he think he was going?’

  ‘No. A hearty dinner enough he ate and spoke as if it was no different a Sunday to any other. Then he went to lie down on the couch in the front room. Middle of the afternoon my sister heard him coughing but didn’t take no notice and went on making the cake for tea. About five o’clock she went to call him – and there he was!’ A frown knitted her brow and she touched the closed mouth of a tulip with an uncertain finger. She was wondering if the flowers were quite fresh.


  ‘It’s a wonder,’ said the fat woman, ‘that they didn’t open him up.’

  ‘But the plates,’ said the district nurse, who had her black maternity bag on her knees. ‘He had the X-ray plates took not long ago and they didn’t show anything.’

  The fat woman did not like to dispute with the district nurse, but, pushing the loaf more firmly into the basket, she said judiciously: ‘Oh aye, the plates! Funny though for him to go off so sudden: a young chap too. I wonder,’ she turned again to the woman with the wreath, ‘your sister didn’t ask for him to be opened up, like Joe Evans and Dai Richards in my street was, when they went. It’s worth it for the compensation. The pits got to pay for silicosis, haven’t they!’ Indignation had begun to seep into her voice, before it subsided into doubt: ‘Of course there is a lot of bronchitis about.’

  Another woman, who was nursing a baby voluminously wrapped in a thick, stained shawl, said: ‘There’s two men got it in our street. You can hear them coughing across the road. Jinny James’ ’usband one of them, and she do say it’s the silicosis.’

  ‘What d’you expect,’ said another, ‘with their lungs getting full of the coal dust and rotting with it.’

  ‘They can always have plates taken,’ said the district nurse officially, and looking down her nose. She leaned across to the woman with the baby. ‘How’s Henry shaping?’ she asked, peering at the pink blob of face visible in the shawl’s folds. She had brought Henry into the world.

  ‘I just been taking him to the clinic,’ said the mother and whispered something in the ear of the nurse, who nodded sagaciously.

  A woman, thin and cold as an icicle, climbed hastily into the bus. A crystal drop hung on the end of her nose. She wiped it away with the back of her hand and, having settled into her seat and nodded to the others, she exclaimed rancorously: ‘Not a bit of tidy meat in the butcher’s! Only them offals, as they call ’em. And my man do like a bit of steak when he comes from the pit. I rushed down to Roberts’s soon as I heard he ’ad steak. “Steak”, he said to me, “someone’s been telling you fairy-tales—”’ Something mournful in the air of the bus arrested her, and her roving eye then saw the wreath. Ears pricked, she asked sharply: ‘Who’s dead?’

  ‘’Usband of my sister Gwen Lewis,’ said the woman with the wreath.

  ‘Gwen Lewis… let me see…’

  ‘That stoutish piece,’ helped the woman with the baby, ‘up in Noddfa Street. ’Usband worked in Number One pit. He went sudden Sunday afternoon, lying on the front-room couch. Been coughing and had trouble with his lungs. A young fellow too.’

  ‘Not the silicosis,’ exclaimed the thin woman, ‘again!’

  ‘Well—’ said the woman with the wreath, ‘we don’t know.’

  ‘He ought to have been opened up,’ repeated the fat woman. ‘Gwen Lewis could get her compensation from the pits if they found the coal dust had rotted his lungs.’

  ‘He had plates taken,’ said the district nurse, ‘months ago and there was no sign.’

  ‘He’s in his coffin now,’ said the woman with the wreath. ‘The doctor said it was bronchitis. My sister don’t want to go out or anything.’ Something of the finality of death seemed to oppress her too, hold her locked. ‘I had to buy this wreath for her. Fifteen shillings it cost.’ She examined a chrysanthemum; the petal tips were slightly darkening. ‘I do hope it’s fresh,’ she went on worriedly. ‘And I’ve got to come down again this afternoon; my black isn’t ready.’

  Taking out a red and white spotted handkerchief, the young man with the girl covered his mouth and coughed hard. His girl had sat still as a rabbit; she seemed to look round at the others without looking round. Her ears were flushed.

  ‘It’s bronchitis weather,’ sighed the woman and pursed her mouth as Bryn Jones coughed again.

  The baby suddenly let out a bawl, ferocious and astonishing from such a small leaf of a face.

  ‘He wants his titty,’ nodded the thin woman, smiling bleakly.

  ‘Oh, a hungry one he is,’ said the mother in a disconsolate way, as if she were complaining.

  ‘What does he weigh now?’ benignly asked the district nurse.

  Two men jumped on the bus, followed by the conductor, who clipped the bell. The driver put away his pipe. Solid and red-faced among the whirling snowflakes, the policeman stepped back. The thin woman gazed out at him with a kind of disagreeable respect. ‘He don’t look as if he’s got a crave for steaks,’ she nodded, speaking to her neighbour as the bus moved safely off.

  ‘And I don’t blame him, out in all weathers like they are.’

  The bus began its whining climb up the steep slope. The hard, prune-coloured hills each side of the vale were beginning to hold the snow in their wrinkles. Sitting in the recessed back seat, one of the men who had jumped on last thing plucked the conductor’s sleeve and said: ‘Hey, Emlyn, heard what happened in the cemetery on Saturday night – you know, when them incendiary bombs fell?’

  ‘What?’ said Emlyn vaguely, examining his row of tickets.

  ‘Well, you know old Matt Hughes, the cemetery keeper? Well, after them incendiaries fell he went all round the cemetery at midnight to see that everything was OK. And who should be coming down one of the paths in the dark but two funny-looking chaps, and each of ’em carrying a tombstone under his arm. “Hey,” said Matt, “what you’re doing walking out of ‘ere?” The chaps was hurrying, but they stopped and said: “Hell, it’s getting too hot for us us ‘ere with them incendiaries falling.” “Oh aye,” said Matt, “they is a bit dangerous. But what you’re doing carrying them tombstones under your arms?” “Well,” said one of the chaps, “there’s the Home Guard at the gate, and we heard that people got to have identity cards nowadays, haven’t they?”’

  The conductor gave a subdued guffaw and called: ‘Fares.’ Down the bus, where the man’s tale had carried, there were smiles. The fat woman tittered. Bryn Jones’ neck reddened and swelled with interior mirth, though his young lady did not seem amused… out in the rushing snowflakes a woman had hailed the bus, but it stopped much further up the road and she was obliged to pant through the windy flakes. ‘What,’ she shrilly scolded, climbing in, ‘is the matter with the damn buses? Why can’t they stop when they’re asst to?’ Her snow-wetted eyes glared at Emlyn the conductor; she wore a man’s cap skewered to a bun of hair by an ancient hatpin. Sitting down, her gaze pounced on the wreath and she asked, breathless: ‘Who’s dead?’

  ‘My sister Gwen Lewis’ ’usband,’ said the woman with the wreath and gazed down heavily at the expensive cluster on her knees. The fat woman added for her:

  ‘Last Sunday. The young fellow went into the front room after dinner and—’ She gave the history. And the woman in the man’s cap was sure it was the silicosis: a man in her street had gone off just the same and he wasn’t thirty. She agreed he ought to have been opened up, even though the district nurse said the X-ray plates had been negative and the woman with the wreath said the doctor said it was bronchitis.

  ‘It’s proof,’ added the woman in the cap, ‘if you open ’em up.’

  ‘Of course,’ assented the fat woman vigorously, and shoved the slipping tin of peaches further into her basket. ‘I wonder she didn’t think of the compensation.’

  ‘I’ve got to go back this afternoon,’ lamented the woman with the wreath, but fluffing herself out a little, ‘to see about my black. What a potch it is, and snowing like this. My sister, she can’t do a thing but sits there by the fire all day, poor ’ooman.’

  ‘The New Inn!’ shouted the conductor, roused to his duties by the scolding, though everybody knew every stone and post of the place.

  The girl and her young man rose and passed down the silenced bus. He strutted a little, chest before him. She, rather skimped, went looking and not looking, her ears pink. As they stepped out of the door the married women nodded to each other knowingly, with a little grimace of the mouth and lowering of the eyelids. The bus swung on.

  Bryn spat as soon as h
e was out of the bus, then coughed again, in the bright, sharp air. Dilys opened her small fancy umbrella and held it against the snowing wind. She shivered. She was slight, unlike the dumpy older women in the bus. But there was a tenacity in her body and in the way she put her face into the wintry air. ‘Goodness me,’ she said with a worried kind of irritation, ‘I wish you’d do something about that cough.’

  ‘Hell, it’s nothing,’ he barked. He wore no hat. His shoulders were broad, his limbs and hand thick and hard. The snowflakes turned into a grey liquor in the warm grease on his brisk black hair. The faint bluish pallor of his face was a little more evident. This week he was working on the night shift.

  They went down a side turning. They lived in the same street. But before they reached it he put his hand in hers and stopped her against an old building where there was shelter from the whirling flakes and wind. It was a bakehouse, and the oven was inside the wall: they could feel the heat coming out. He would not be seeing her again until Sunday. ‘What’s the matter?’ he said.

  ‘It’s those women in the bus!’ she exclaimed in a little burst of half-curbed hysteria.

  ‘What’s the matter with ’em?’ he asked, mystified.

  She frowned, trying to concentrate. She did not quite know. But she struggled to know. He tried to help. ‘Talking about opening that bloke up?’ he suggested.

  ‘No,’ she almost wailed. ‘It’s… it’s their way. Sitting there and… and talking, and—’ No, she couldn’t express it. But she went on: ‘And looking at me when we came out, looking at me like as if I’d soon be one of them… even,’ she added, the hysteria getting a hold, ‘carrying a wreath in my lap!’

  He was a bit shocked. ‘Dilys,’ he said, ‘they’re not bad; they’re not bad women.’