Story, Volume I

by Dai Smith

  But where he fell the barge imprisoned him, weeds parcelled his nine-year-old body with the awful precision of accident, and the men dragged in shallow water through a whole day, and when they were meant to find him they did find him tangled in weeds. The canal is not like the sea, the powerful destroyer, returning its dead when the deed has been accomplished. The canal only gives them reluctantly after a struggle covered with the long green slime with which it brands the bodies of dead dogs. The girl was dappled in sunshine and hatred for his wilful destruction. And the hare came again.

  He was running now in no hurry, as children run to music when they expect it suddenly to stop. The afternoon had reached its turning. The sun was a blatant disc of light, from which the wind had snatched the warmth to give it to the fire. The fire burnt now on three sides of the hare. The child thought she would look at the sun through a flame. She ran into the middle of the hare’s circle to catch a sight of this miracle of miracles. She lay outstretched in the middle of light and the soft unburdened flame leaping and the tireless hare running in his sacrificial pleasure as far away from her as he could go. They all lay about her like gifts she did not deserve. She felt the angry swan straining again for her flesh. She saw the hare moving in now closer to her than he had dared. He was beyond caring now for her presence or she for his. Pleasure moved inside her mounting from the pit of her stomach to her throat in waves of exquisite agony. The wind changed on the turning of the afternoon tide. The fire was already a great bracelet all around her just open for the arm. She lay enchanted, and the circle closed.

  TIME SPENT

  Ron Berry

  Doctor Gammon dogs-eared the buff envelope. ‘This report confirms the X-rays. Set your mind on it, Lewis, you are finished in the pit. You’re one hundred per cent. Neglect, man, sheer neglect. I’ve sent scores of colliers to the NCB medical board.’

  Lewis Rimmer crossed his legs. He had wide, upward-tilting eyes, dark, vulpine above the bony ridge of his white-glazed nose, tight-skinned like his forehead. Forehead and anchor-boned jowl trapped him: a man estranged by passions. ‘I’m fifty-seven,’ he said. ‘They can’t expect a bloke to change his job at fifty-seven. All I’ve ever done is work on the coal, driving headings in Fawr pit, been driving headings for nigh on thirty years.’

  The Doctor tutted impatience. ‘Let’s be frank. If you don’t leave the coalface you won’t reach sixty.’

  ‘By the Jesus…’ .

  ‘Here’s my advice. Live outdoors as much as possible, cultivate an allotment, grow vegetables, flowers, then you’ll increase your chances of lasting to a good age.’

  Lewis jigged his foot. ‘My pigeons keep me occupied. Where’ll I find a job though, ah?’

  ‘Forget about employment. See your lodge secretary, see him today. He’ll put you in touch with the compo sec. You are entitled to full compensation.’

  From the doorway, Lewis said, ‘Crime in my opinion, shoving a man on the street. Goes against the grain with me.’

  Doctor Gammon aimed his forefinger. ‘Lewis, you are finished in the pits by law! The Coal Board dare not employ you after serving fourteen days’ notice.’

  ‘By the Jesus… so long, Doctor,’ he said.

  Head sunk, hands fisted in his jacket pockets, Lewis walked the wet pavements. Pen Arglwydd mountain towered behind shifting drizzle. He crossed the road to the chemist shop. Alert behind the counter, her lips stretched, the girl said, ‘Good morning,’ – glancing at his prescription – ‘Mr Rimmer.’

  ‘Bit of chest trouble,’ he said, staring at her, thinking, nice piece, aye, guaranteed banker for the old through-and-through stakes. She makes my Bessie look like a bag of slurry tied ’round the middle. ‘What’s the damage, gel?’

  A shivering spasm wriggled her shoulders. The rawness of his ugly face, his huge, black-nailed, gripping fingers. Ugh, stupid old miner. ‘Seventy pence, Mr Rimmer.’

  ‘Reckon Nye Bevan’s turning in his grave’, he said, grinning, slapping his sides.

  ‘Mmm, I don’t know what you mean.’ She heard the soft rustle of maple peas in his jacket pocket. ‘Please take a chair. I shan’t be a few minutes.’

  A talkative group of matronly women filed in, ranged themselves along the counter. Lewis fell away into himself, his foot jigging, sight and hearing emptying away. The girl reappeared, still smiling, lost for Lewis, vanquished. He left the shop without thanking her for his tablets.

  Drizzle thinned to creeping mist across the massive frontal nub of Pen Arglwydd. As he came out of the corn chandler’s store Lewis saw his bus leaving the curb. He decided to walk home. Take it steady. Nothing spoiling in the house. His pigeons were fed and watered. Bessie’s morning job. Least she could do, by the Christ, after living off his back since she clicked for William. Just gave birth once. Barren ever since. Therefore waste. Swill chucked down the drain.

  Single paced, unamazed, Lewis paused at a street corner, shuffled a narrow half-circle, muttering, ‘Well-aye, shortcut.’ He climbed the up-and-over footbridge, sulphur-tasting smoke flooding above the full trucks. Lewis crouched, held onto the handrail, coughed, coughed, his heart hammering. Down on the pavement again, he cursed his weakness. Then he cursed having to walk home. He came to a road bridge, Melyn brook flowing below, black as enamel. Leaning on the parapet, Lewis cleared his chest, ‘Chhhhachhh,’ and he spat into the brook. He examined the tablets, swallowed one, and dropped the plastic bottle into the water.

  Resting for a while, he wondered if he should bring his tools out from Fawr pit. If a man can’t use his tools best forget about them. Never do a bad turn when you can offer some bugger a good turn. Let one of the night-shift repairers have them, buckshee, some poor sod on bare wages.

  Lewis coughed again, down to hissy grunts. Hundred per cent, he thought. By Jesus. Men are pegging out with fifty per cent. I’m miles from that state. Rough chest first thing in the morning, short of breath until the circulation starts moving. Good Christ almighty, fifty-seven, packing it in at my age. Doesn’t make sense. Bloody hell. There’re colliers in Fawr close on pension time, old plodders clearing their yardage every shift. Me, bloody scrapheap. Doctor Gammon, his mouth about gardening, he’s never done a day’s graft in all his natural. Him sat there on his arse, telling me what to do.

  Before leaving the bridge, Lewis spat a gobbet of coal streaked phlegm into Melyn brook. Fretting about his age and the pneumoconiosis, he raised his head, breathed deeply, held himself firm, striding, but ache fired his shoulder blades, his ribs, so he relaxed, hands in pockets, chin out-thrust, sight fixed on the coming and going of his toecaps. A six-foot man in his prime, the curvature of his spine lowered him six inches, the curve prominent, hard packed under the shiny serge of his long, double-breasted jacket. His shoulders and sleeves were stained with wiped-off pigeon droppings.

  There were three glossy caravans propped in a line behind the roofless smithy of derelict Number 2 pit. Outsiders, he thought. Bloody NCB, they bring in these outsiders to dismantle while our own men are signing the dole. On impulse he walked past stacks of pit props, thrown higgledy-piggledy, rotting reminders of pit closure. ‘Shwmae,’ he said formally, repeating, ‘Shwmae,’ the three young wives nodding, smiled posed together, smoothing frocks and pinafores. He strode clump-footed through the colliery office, a square, echoing building. Looters had stripped doors and windows. Long slits of daylight glimmered beneath the eaves. Everywhere the smell of urine and sheep droppings. From the office he walked to the top pit stables. Mildewed horse collars hung on spikes driven into the walls. Ruination, he thought, nothing but ruination. He followed railway tracks to the end of the colliery siding. Red-rusted truck buffers were bolted to mossy baulks of timber. Turning left, he picked his route between ancient greening slag heaps back to the main road.

  Bessie Rimmer had her hands in chicken meal, a heavyweight woman, grossly slack-bodied like a primordial Venus.

  ‘What’d he say, Lew?’

  ‘I got it al’right. The full dose, hundre
d per cent.’

  She said, ‘Lord above.’ Her fingers ploughed through the meal. ‘Want me to write to our William, tell him about you?’

  Lewis sat near the fire. He rested his heels on the hob, his long, dark specked hands dangling from the arms of the chair. ‘Leave it be. The boy’s minding his own affairs.’

  ‘Duw, hopeless you are, Lew Rimmer. Should have gone for a board ages ago. No, stubborn, think you know everything better than anybody else, go your own way regardless. Now see what it’s come to! D’you ask Doctor Gammon about a fortnight in that convalescent place on Gower? Don’t suppose you did. Couple of weeks rest is what you need, for def’nite!’

  He said, ‘Your fowls are waiting for that mash. Come straight back and lay some grub on the table.’

  Bessie went out and through the kitchen door. She met her neighbour in the dirt lane, Esther Rees, spinster, the school cleaner.

  ‘Hundred per cent he is,’ Bessie said.

  ‘Oh, shame,’ sympathised Esther.

  ‘Should have known it himself, yes he should have.’ Bessie hugged the pan of steaming chicken meal. Her mouth pouted resentment. ‘My Lewis won’t be told. Always out to prove himself diff’rent, nothing at all like anybody else God ever put breath into. From now on he’ll have to knuckle down, stands to reason with hundred per cent dust.’

  Esther sloped her head, sighing resignation. She was forty-nine, tall, lean as a distance runner. Bessie marched down the lane, pale grey whiffs of steam rising from the chicken meal. Esther rotated from the waist, her head perched, watchful, blue eyes watery, lips puckering, ageing within the defensive wedge of her cheekbones and chin. She lifted her empty ash bucket off the backyard wall, ‘Tch-tch-tch,’ and hurried indoors to inform her son – Lewis Rimmer’s son, Bernard. Of course Bessie knew about Bernard Rees, but all that happened a long time ago. Not worth bothering about any more. Bernard was thirty-two, a bachelor, two years younger than Bessie’s son, William.

  Lewis rested, unaware of resting himself. He sat without thinking. The sideboard clock chirruped, stroked twelve pinging chimes. Roused, Lewis jabbed the firegrate with the sole of his shoe, sparks and dead ash spluttering into the hearth. He huffed while climbing upstairs. From the landing window he looked to see if Bessie was in the lane, before entering the small bedroom, William’s bedroom until he left home to join the Army. Lewis used his fingernails to lift out a length of floor board. His secret place. Counting the money, mumbling, each note was passed from hand to hand. Seven hundred and eighty-four pounds. My sweat, he thought, carelessly piling the notes on the plaster lathes between two joists. He felt no excitement.

  The back door rattled. Lewis clumsily tiptoed out of the bedroom to the lavatory, pulled the chain and fiercely slammed the door.

  ‘Use some bloody elbow grease on the bowl of the lav,’ he said.

  ‘Fancy anything special to eat?’ asked Bessie.

  Lewis grunted, slumped in his fireside chair. ‘I’m off my food, gel.’

  ‘Obvious an’ all, after what Doctor Gammon said to you this morning. I’ll be down his surg’ry later on, find out regarding that place on Gower coast. Years an’ years you’ve paid the NUM without so much as a pint of beer off of ’em. There’s facilities for compo cases, Lew, laid on for the likes of you’self.’

  ‘Aye,’ he said, ‘and leave you to look after my pigeons.’

  ‘Pigeons! Health comes before pigeons!’

  ‘You mind your own business, Bessie.’

  ‘Suit you’self, if that’s how you want it.’

  ‘Right, that’s al’right,’ he said calmly.

  Bessie persisted. ‘You drove our William away as if he was a total stranger. My own son! Seems to me you haven’t got any feelings left at all, only for them blasted pigeons. Fat lot of good they’ll be after…’

  ‘Shurrup!’

  ‘You can’t frighten me no more.’

  ‘Shut it. Just lay some food on the table, and shut it.’

  Bessie waddled to and from the pantry with cheese, pickles, cold ham, tomato sauce, bread and butter. Elbows on the table, Lewis began eating while she brewed the tea. By the time she sat down, Bessie felt uncomfortably flustered. And her toes were itching. Slipping off her shoes, she rubbed her toes with her heels, hard, rubbing and rubbing. The torment and ecstasy of her itching feet.

  ‘You wash your hands after mixing the mash?’ he demanded quietly.

  ‘Course not, ’tisn’t as if I’ve been messing with filth.’

  ‘Sit still then, you’re fidgeting like a woman with the piles.’

  ‘My toes are burning hot!’

  ‘Guh, you’re the bloody limit.’

  ‘As if you cared about anybody ’cept you’self,’ she grumbled.

  Lewis chewed methodically, false dignified as an old captive lion.

  ‘How much is full compo these days?’ she inquired, friendly now, leaning towards him.

  ‘No idea, gel.’

  ‘Be enough for us two I expect, Lew. We’ll manage.’

  ‘I daresay.’

  ‘There’s our William, he’ll send us a few pounds if ever we run short.’

  ‘I shan’t take a penny off the boy. He’s got a houseful of kids.’

  ‘William’s earning big money,’ protested Bessie. ‘Any case, he’s our son. It’s his duty.’

  Lewis levered himself away from the table. ‘Duty, no such thing,’ he said indifferently. He opened the back door, pleased to see bright sunshine drying out the damp morning. ‘I’m off up to the loft. Lissen, gel, fetch me a couple of cartridges from the drawer.’

  His shotgun hung in the cupboard beneath the stairs. He greased the action with smears of lard, cleaned both barrels and slotted in the cartridges.

  ‘Lew, how long will you be?’

  He hefted the gun at point of balance. ‘Be back at three o’clock.’

  ‘Can’t I write a letter to our William?’

  ‘No.’ He shook his head. ‘Scrub the lav, Bessie, don’t forget.’

  His pigeon loft stood on a green mound sheltered by willows. The school playground fence ran below, some fifteen yards of clay-blotched turf between school and fence. There was a turnstile gate, hub of half a dozen footpaths winding the lower hillside. Lewis climbed the shallowest gradient. He released his pigeons, forty birds, reds, blues, dark and light chequers, mealies, grizzles, a bunched swarm, primaries whirring. They swept out free, wider, higher, turned, plumed and twisted headlong over the village, climbed, hurtled towards the mountain, their colours winking like shell fragments against the green background. Lewis watched them, his private delight, his own expert joy. They were a part of himself. Closer to his heart than Bessie or Esther. His birds, and driving headings in Fawr pit.

  He scraped the loft, sprinkled nest boxes and perches with anti-lice powder, then he carried fresh water from a cask at the back of the lean-to roof. The pigeons were roving in unison under ragged white clouds. Lewis sat beneath a pollarded willow with the shotgun across his knees. He gazed along the distant horizon of the hills. ‘Stay away from my birds, Johnny-hawk,’ he said, lowering his bent shoulders against the tree. He watched his flock performing. The shotgun symbolised his youth, when falcons stooped from the sun, downing his beloved homers. Years gone by. Now peregrines very seldom wheeled above the valley.

  The flock drifted overhead, swung upwind, disappeared over the mountain. Lewis closed his eyes. Thoughtlessly he went, ‘Ssss-huhssss-ssss-ssss,’ through his teeth, a cold sound, tuneless, like wind pressing itself through a cracked windowpane. He was resting himself.

  The pigeons returned, swishing a tight trajectory around the willows, V-winged, legless, knobbled beaks and glinty, popping eyes. They plunged upward, flight line broadening, heading for the shadowed face of the old quarry. They flew yet higher, seeming mechanically driven, speeding like flecks of hail over the mountain top. Lewis laid aside the shotgun. He coughed, cleared his chest, ending on throaty sibilance until he spat phlegm.

&n
bsp; Esther called, ‘Lew!’

  He moved gawkily stiff-legged to the edge of the mound. She beckoned from the turnstile gate. ‘Come on up,’ he said.

  ‘Can’t, not now. Busy in the school. Lew, your Bessie told me about the report from Doctor Gammon. Won’t they give you a light job?’

  ‘Not down the pit.’

  ‘Well, what have you got in mind, Lew?’

  ‘Don’t know yet.’

  ‘I’ve told my Bernard. That’s only fair, isn’t it?’

  ‘Why not… aye.’

  They were linked by silence, her thin elbows held horizontal, clutched by her fingertips, forearms pressing her skimpy bosom. ‘Pity too,’ she said. ‘Bye-bye for now, Lew.’ She gave him a subdued little wave and hastened into the school building.

  Lewis propped his shotgun in the loft. There were slatted flight runs each side of the aisle, the aisle itself littered with scrapers, a hammer, skewed handsaw, tins of nails, stunted cane brush without a handle, and a small sack of maple peas. Above the shotgun were two shelves of medicine, powders, artificial eggs, earthenware nesting bowls, broken rings and a Flit gun.