Story, Volume I

by Dai Smith

His voice faltered in defeat. ‘I’ve been trying to make the attempt. But the air I breathe is full of poison.’

  She let him talk, pretending to listen. Clients sometimes talked to her oddly and, if there was time, it was professional tact to allow them their airings.

  ‘Harry, up there,’ he went on dejectedly, ‘carries the world on his shoulders. But he’ll rob his mother and starve his wife and pick his neighbour’s pocket.’ He took up the trumpet off the bed, turned it over regretfully, and let it drop back. ‘I can’t even play my trumpet like him,’ he reiterated obsessively. ‘Would I make a better criminal?’

  ‘Now, look here,’ she said, her attention arrested, ‘don’t you go starting down that street! Boys like you alone in London can soon go to the bad. I’ve seen some of it. It won’t pay, I’m telling you.’

  ‘But crime as a protest,’ he said earnestly. ‘As a relief. And don’t you see there’s nothing but crime now, at the heart of things?’

  Professionally comforting, she laid her hand on his, which began to tremble again. Yet his small crystal eyes remained impervious, with their single-purposed rigidity. She stroked his hand. ‘Don’t tremble, don’t tremble… Do you ever cry?’ she asked, gazing into his face in the last light.

  He shook his head. ‘I can’t.’ But something was flickering into his eyes. He had leaned towards her slowly.

  ‘If you could,’ she said, but still with a half-vague inattentiveness – ‘I’m sure you ought to break down. You’re too shut in on yourself.’

  He breathed her odour of flesh. It seemed to him like the scent of milky flowers, living and benign, scattered in a pure air. As if it would escape him, he began to breathe it hungrily. His hands had stopped trembling. But the rigid calm of his appearance, had she noticed it in the dusky light, was more disquieting.

  ‘There!’ she said, still a little crouched away from him; ‘you see, a little personal talk is good for you. You’re too lonely, that’s what it is.’

  ‘Will you let me—’

  ‘What?’ she asked, more alert. The light was finishing; her face was dim.

  ‘Put my mouth to your breast?’

  ‘No,’ she said at once. She shook her head. ‘It wouldn’t be any use, anyhow.’

  But, now that the words were out, he fell on her in anguish. ‘Stay with me! Don’t go away. Sleep with me tonight.’ He pressed his face into her, shuddering, and weeping at last. ‘Stay!’

  She heaved herself free, jumping off the bed with a squirm, like anger. ‘Didn’t I tell you that I hated men!’ She raised her voice, very offended. ‘I could spit on them all – and you, too, now.’ She opened the door. ‘But I will say this’ – her voice relented a degree – ‘I wouldn’t sleep with you if you offered me ten pounds! I know what I am, and I don’t want any of your fancy stuff.’ She flounced out with scandalised decision.

  He rolled over and over on the bed. Shuddering, he pressed his face into the pillow. When the paroxysm had passed he half rose and sat looking out of the window. In his movement the trumpet crashed to the floor, but he did not pick it up. He sat gazing out into the still world as if he would never penetrate it again. He saw grey dead light falling over smashed cities, over broken precipices and jagged torn chasms of the world. Acrid smoke from abandoned ruins mingled with the smell of blood. He saw himself the inhabitant of a wilderness where withered hands could lift in guidance no more. There were no more voices and all the paps of earth were dry.

  AUTHOR BIOGRAPHIES

  Arthur Machen

  Arthur Machen was born in 1863 in Caerleon, Gwent. Unable to complete his education due to his family’s poor finances, he moved to London with hopes of a literary career in 1881. After a number of writing commissions, which included translating The Memoirs of Jacques Casanova, he published his first book, The Anatomy of Tobacco, in 1884. However, it was in the 1890s that Machen achieved literary success and a reputation as a leading author of gothic texts with the publication of works such as The Great God Pan (1890), ‘The Shining Pyramid’ (1895) and The Three Impostors (1895), many of which bear the imprint of the Welsh border country of his upbringing. He died in 1947.

  Caradoc Evans

  David Caradoc Evans was born in 1878 in Llandysul, Cardiganshire and brought up in the nearby village of Rhydlewis. While he did write solely in English, his vocabulary and syntax was heavily influenced by the Welsh fluency of the community in which he lived. He released eleven books throughout his lifetime, but it is his first, the short-story collection My People (1915), which is most remembered. A highly controversial release at the time due to its invective directed towards, among others, the Welsh religious system, the book has since been re-evaluated, and is now considered one of the most significant examples of the new Anglo-Welsh literature. He died in 1945.

  Rhys Davies

  Rhys Davies was born in 1901 in Blaenclydach in the Rhondda Valley. Leaving school at the age of 14, he managed to live by his pen for fifty years. He was among the most dedicated, prolific and accomplished of Welsh prose authors, writing over a hundred short stories, eighteen novels, including The Withered Root (1927) and The Black Venus (1944), the autobiography Print of a Hare’s Foot (1969), and the play No Escape (1954). He died in 1978. Following his death, the Rhys Davies Trust was established in 1990 with the intention of promoting Welsh authors writing in English.

  Frank Richards

  Frank Richards was born in 1883 in Monmouthshire. Orphaned at nine years old, he was brought up by his aunt and uncle in the industrial Blaina area, and went on to work as a coal miner throughout the 1890s before joining the Royal Welch Fusiliers in 1901. A veteran soldier who served in British India and many areas of the Western Front, he wrote his seminal account of the Great War from the standpoint of the common soldier, Old Soldiers Never Die, in 1933. This was followed by Old Soldier Sahib, a memoir of his time serving in British India, in 1936. He died in 1961.

  Fred Ambrose

  Fred Ambrose contributed ‘The Grouser’, which was taken from his 1917 collection With the Welsh as it appeared in The Western Mail, to this volume. Unfortunately, details about him remain elusive, other than he was a Welsh soldier in the new conscript Army, and that ‘Fred Ambrose’ was a pseudonym.

  Dorothy Edwards

  Dorothy Edwards was born in 1903 in Ogmore Vale, a small mining community in Mid Glamorgan. She took a degree at Cardiff University in Greek and philosophy, but literature was her passion and soon after graduating her short stories began to appear in magazines and journals. These were collected in Rhapsody (1927), along with several previously unpublished stories written during the nine months Edwards spent in Vienna and Florence. Her novel Winter Sonata (1928) followed shortly afterwards. She spent the following years trying to supplement her mother’s meagre pension by writing stories and articles for magazines and newspapers, and doing some extra-mural teaching at Cardiff University, but she never undertook full-time employment. She died in 1934.

  James Hanley

  James Hanley was born in Dublin in 1901 and grew up in Liverpool. He saw active service in the Navy during the First World War and was briefly in the Canadian Army. His literary career began with the publication of Drift in 1930, which was also the year he moved to Wales, and was followed by Boy in 1931 and later a sequence of five novels set in working-class Liverpool. He lived first in Merionethshire and later at Llanfechain in Montgomeryshire, where he developed a friendship with the poet R. S. Thomas, who dedicated a book to him. He wrote prolifically throughout a long career and his output includes novels, short stories and plays. He moved to London in 1964 but continued to regard Wales as his home. He died in 1985.

  Glyn Jones

  Glyn Jones was born in 1905 in Merthyr Tydfil and worked for many years as a schoolteacher in South Wales. He began publishing poetry and short stories in the Thirties, and his first novel The Valley, the City, the Village followed two decades later in 1956. Two other novels were published in the following ten years, The Learning Lark (1960)
and The Island of Apples (1965), as well as poetry, short-story collections, translations and works of criticism. In 1972, he received the Welsh Arts Council’s premier award for his services to literature in Wales. He was elected the first Chairman, and later President of the English section of Yr Academi Gymreig. He died in 1995.

  Gwyn Jones

  Gwyn Jones was born in 1907 in Blackwood, Gwent. As a writer, scholar and translator, he made huge contributions to Welsh, Anglo-Welsh and Nordic literature. He translated a number of Icelandic works, the first scholarly English translation of The Mabinogion (1948), and also wrote two Nordic histories which brought him widespread acclaim. As a fiction author, he wrote a number of novels and short-story collections, including Richard Savage (1935), The Flowers beneath the Scythe (1952) and The Walk Home (1962). He also founded The Welsh Review in 1939, which he edited until 1948, chaired both the Welsh Committee of the Arts Council of Great Britain and the first editorial board of The Oxford Companion to the Literature of Wales, and published three sets of lectures on Anglo-Welsh literature. He died in 1999.

  Geraint Goodwin

  Geraint Goodwin was born in 1903 in Newtown. He started writing at an early age, and as a young man he made his living as a journalist with the Montgomeryshire Express before moving to London, where he wrote his first book, Conversations with George Moore (1929). He was diagnosed with a tubercular condition in 1929 and, after treatment at a sanatorium, travelled abroad to convalesce. He used his travel experiences in his next book, Call Back Yesterday (1935). It was followed by his first work of fiction, The Heyday in the Blood (1936), which enjoyed immediate critical acclaim. Three more books, The White Farm (1937), Watch for the Morning (1938) and Come Michaelmas (1939) followed, the last of which was written during an increasing struggle with ill health. He died in 1942.

  George Ewart Evans

  George Ewart Evans was born in 1909 in Abercynon. He was one of a family of eleven children whose parents ran a grocer’s shop, the setting of his semi-autobiographical novel The Voices of the Children (1947). After education at Mountain Ash County School and University College Cardiff, where he read classics and trained as a teacher, he had ambitions of being a writer. He published verse and short stories, many with a Welsh background, in various literary journals. He taught from 1934 until 1948, when he gave up teaching and turned from writing fiction to oral history, and his series of works beginning with Ask the Fellows Who Cut the Hay (1956) established his reputation as a pioneer in this field. He died in 1988.

  B. L. Coombes

  Bert Lewis Coombes was born in 1893 in Wolverhampton and raised in Herefordshire, but moved to Resolven to work in the Neath Valley before the outbreak of World War I. He turned to writing when he was in his forties, and became a protégé of English writer John Lehmann. A miner for many years, he used his writing to dissect the industry and its corrupt underbelly, and his autobiography, These Poor Hands (1939), is considered one of the most authentic accounts of mining life ever published. He also published two other works – Those Clouded Hills (1944) and Miners Day (1945). He died in 1974.

  Leslie Norris

  Leslie Norris was born in 1921 in Merthyr Tydfil. In 1948, he enrolled in teacher training, and by 1958 had risen to the position of college lecturer. From 1974 onwards, he earned his living by combining full-time writing with residencies at academic institutions on both sides of the Atlantic. Aside from a dozen books of poems, his prose works include two volumes of short stories, Sliding (1978), which won the David Higham Award, and The Girl from Cardigan (1988), as well as a compilation, Collected Stories, released in 1996. He died in 2006.

  Dylan Thomas

  Dylan Thomas was born in 1914 in Swansea. Arguably the most famous Welsh writer of all time, he achieved lasting recognition predominantly for his poetry, although he published works across a number of forms. Indeed, aside from a number of poetry collections, he wrote radio and film scripts and took part in radio programmes broadcast by the BBC, published a book of autobiographical short stories, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog, in 1940, and managed to complete a ‘play for voices’, Under Milk Wood. Infamous throughout his career for his predilection for drink and the riotous lifestyle, he struggled with poor finances and ill health. He died in1953.

  Gwyn Thomas

  Gwyn Thomas was born in 1913 in the Rhondda Valley. He studied Spanish at Oxford and spent time in Spain during the early 1930s. He obtained part-time lecturing jobs across England before deciding to become a schoolteacher in Wales. He retired from that profession in 1962 to work full-time as a writer and broadcaster. He wrote extensively across several genres including essays, short stories, novels and plays, and was widely translated. His fictional works include The Dark Philosophers (1946) and All Things Betray Thee (1949), the drama The Keep (1962) and an autobiography, A Few Selected Exits (1968). Gwyn Thomas was given the Honour for Lifetime Achievement by Arts Council Wales in 1976. He died in 1981.

  Alun Lewis

  Alun Lewis was born in 1915 in Cwmaman in Cynon Valley. He read history at the University of Aberystwyth, where he began to write poetry. A failed period as a journalist gave way to a career in supply teaching, before he joined the British Army in 1940. A pacifist at heart, his experiences during World War II depressed him, and he died in 1944 by his own hand when on active service in Burma. During his lifetime, he published only two collections: one of poetry – Raiders’ Dawn (1942) – and one of short stories – The Last Inspection (1942). However, these were followed posthumously by several further compilations of poetry, prose and letters.

  Margiad Evans

  Margiad Evans – the pseudonym of Peggy Whistler – was born in 1909 in London. Her family moved to Ross-on-Wye, Herefordshire, in 1920 and it was with the Border counties that she chose to identify as a writer. She is best known and widely admired as a prose writer. Her novels are Country Dance (1932), The Wooden Doctor (1933), Turf or Stone (1934) and Creed (1936), while The Old and the Young (1948) is a volume of short stories; her journal and a selection of her essays are to be found in Autobiography (1943) and A Ray of Darkness (1952). Her two books of verse are Poems from Obscurity (1947) and A Candle Ahead (1956). Having suffered from epilepsy from about 1950, she died of a brain tumour in hospital in 1958.

  George Brinley Evans

  George Brinley Evans was born in 1925 in Dyffryn Cellwen. He began work in Banwen Colliery, aged 14, in 1939. He joined the army at 18 and served in Burma with the 856 Motor Boats, first with the 15th India Corps then the 12th Army. He returned to Banwen Colliery after the war, married and raised a family before losing an eye in an accident in the Cornish Drift. He began to produce work as a sculptor in addition to his painting after his accident and also wrote scripts for independent television and the BBC. He returned to industry and finally to opencast mining in 1977. His fiction, painting and sculptures have been widely published and exhibited. His short-story collection Boys of Gold was published to critical acclaim in 2000. He still lives and works in Banwen.

  Emyr Humphreys

  Emyr Humphreys was born in 1919 in Prestatyn. A former theatre and television director, drama producer and lecturer, in a long and illustrious career he has written and released twenty novels, several short-story and poetry compilations, and a history volume, as well as produced a number of screenplays. He has won several literary prizes during his career – the 1958 Somerset Maugham Prize for Hear and Forgive (1952), the 1958 Hawthornden Prize for A Toy Epic (1958), and the Welsh Book of the Year Award twice, for Bonds of Attachment (1992) and The Gift of a Daughter (1999). He lives in Llanfairpwll on Anglesey.

  Alun Richards

  Alun Richards was born in 1929 in Pontypridd. After spells as a schoolteacher, probation officer and as an instructor in the Royal Navy, from the 1960s he was, and successfully so, a full-time writer. He lived near the Mumbles, close to the sea which, coupled with the hills of the South Wales Valleys, was the landscape of his fiction. Alongside plays for stage and radio, screenplays and
adaptations for television, a biography and a memoir, he wrote six novels and two collections of short stories, Dai Country (1973) and The Former Miss Merthyr Tydfil (1976). As editor, he produced bestselling editions of Welsh short stories and tales of the sea for Penguin. He died in 2004.

  Brenda Chamberlain

  Brenda Chamberlain was born in Bangor in 1912. In 1931 she went to train as a painter at the Royal Academy Schools in London and five years later settled in Caenarfonshire. During World War II, she temporarily gave up painting in favour of poetry and worked, with her husband, on the production of the Caseg Broadsheets, a series of six which included poems by Dylan Thomas, among others. In 1947, she went to live on the Welsh island of Bardsey, where she remained until 1961. After six years on the Greek island of Ydra, she returned to Bangor. Despite her predilection for poetry and painting, Chamberlain also produced prose works, including a novel, The Water-castle (1964), and A Rope of Vines (1965), a memoir of life on Ydra. She died in 1971.

  Nigel Heseltine

  Nigel Heseltine was born in 1916 in London: the true identity of his mother remains unknown, but his father was believed to be the famed composer Peter Warlock. As an adult he travelled around Europe and Africa, was married at least five times, including to an aristocrat in Budapest, and worked as a playwright for the Olympia Theatre company in Dublin. He published a number of books in his lifetime spanning several literary forms and genres, including travel writing in Scarred Background (a Journey Through Albania) (1938), poetry in The Four-Walled Dream (1941), fictional prose in The Mysterious Pregnancy (1953), and memoir in Capriol for Mother (1992). He died in 1995.