2003 - A Jarful of Angels

by Babs Horton

  “Ugh!”

  One dwarf. Two dwarves. Another rule, thought Fatty.

  Once Iffy and Bessie had seen a dwarf. He was coming out of the toilets in the park carrying a tin bucket.

  “Hello,” Bessie had called out in her best bit of posh.

  “Fuck off, dirt box!” the dwarf had said.

  And they had. Hell for leather, flying up through the park without looking back once.

  “They will give birth to monsters and cripples, demons and goblins…”

  Mrs Tudge stopped dead in her tracks. Beneath the stripey frock her body wobbled and shook dangerously.

  Jelly on the plate.

  Jelly on the plate.

  Wibble wobble, wibble wobble.

  Jelly on the plate.

  She turned around slowly and stared at Bridgie. Mrs Tudge was huge, the fattest woman in Wales and probably in the whole wide world.

  “You want sodding looking at!” said Mrs Tudge. “You dried-up barren old bitch! Come on, Lally. Stop dawdling and pick your bloody feet up.”

  And she pulled daft Lally roughly by the arm and they waddled off together, away past the Punch, scattering a cloud of drunken flies.

  “And the eyes of the keepers of secrets will drip out of their skulls and their lying tongues will frazzle…”

  The children grinned and giggled, except for Bessie who looked afraid.

  Bridgie stared at them long and hard with her boiled goosegog eyes. “Ay, you can laugh! But I know what you’ve been up to, Lawrence Bevan!”

  “I haven’t done nuthin!” Fatty called back.

  “Ay, I’ve seen you hanging about the Big House peeping into the garden, trying to look upon the statues of the filthy women.”

  “No harm in looking is there! The cat can look at the queen you know!”

  “Keep away from there! Mark my words. Evil deeds were done in that place!”

  “Let’s go,” said Bessie. She didn’t like trouble.

  “I’ve seen you talking to that heathen old woman with her cart full of mucky things. I’ve seen you up Dancing Duck Lane. Up to no good! Looking for trouble if you hang around with the likes of her, boy!”

  Bridgie turned her gaze on Iffy. “Ay, and you Iffy Meredith. Remember, my girl, there are no secrets from God!”

  “I’ve never been near the Big House!”

  “I’ve seen you under the bridge, my girl, up to no good…defiling the Lord’s name!”

  “What were you doing under the bridge, Iffy?” Bessie hissed.

  “Nuthin.”

  Iffy looked sideways at Fatty. He looked away quickly.

  “The guilty will be punished, mark my words, and that means you two.”

  But no one wanted to hear any more.

  Bridgie waved her fist and they closed their ears to her ranting and ran away up through the deserted town.

  Fatty looked over his shoulder and dived for the shadow of the bridge. He had an eerie feeling that someone was watching him. He peered out of the archway of the bridge. No, he was just imagining it. There was not a soul around. He was worried though. If Bridgie Thomas had seen him hanging about in Dancing Duck Lane then she must have followed him. But he’d been careful and was sure no one had followed him. Besides, he’d nearly always been to Carty Annie’s at night except for a couple of times. Bridgie would hardly be following him around in the middle of the night. He wasn’t worried about her telling Carty Annie that he’d been snooping around because they never spoke to each other. Carty Annie had nothing to do with the church and Bridgie was hardly ever out of it. But what if Bridgie had looked inside the house herself and seen what Carty Annie had hidden there? She couldn’t have though. If Bridgie knew what was inside that jar she’d have run for Father Flaherty and probably the Pope himself. He’d have to be careful now though, keep his eyes peeled next time he went. And he’d been loads of times since that first night when he’d hardly been able to believe his eyes.

  For a second, he thought he saw the glow of a cigarette in the darkness, a fleeting glimpse of a shadow crossing the far end of the bridge. He pressed himself back against the wall and waited.

  That night in the winter when he and Iffy had drunk the holy water, Iffy had said she thought someone was there. He’d better watch his step. He didn’t want anyone snooping on him and spoiling all his plans.

  He waited for a few minutes, clambered up over the river bank and went hot-foot through the gulleys and legged it over a garden wall.

  It was the last night of July. Iffy lay in her big bed thinking of what Bridgie Thomas had said that afternoon about there being secrets in the town and that God would punish people.

  That afternoon, when Bridgie had stared at them with her green, mad eyes, Iffy had felt sure that Bridgie knew about what she and Fatty had done that night under the bridge.

  She heard the stealthy sound of footsteps crossing the parlour outside her door.

  Nan came into the room, her smiling face illuminated by the candle light.

  She kissed Iffy softly and Iffy felt deeply ashamed of what she and Fatty had done. She wanted to tell Nan, to say sorry about drinking the holy water which was all she had left of her son.

  “Nan…”

  “Yes, my angel?”

  She didn’t though. Nan would go mad if she knew what was in the bottle now.

  Iffy listened to the soft shuffle and scuff of Nan’s slippers as she went back through the back parlour, back past the sideboard where the bottle of Fatty’s cold pee stood beneath the withered palm crosses and the holy pictures of miserable-looking saints. She heard the latch lifting on the kitchen door.

  Whenever she had to go through the parlour she avoided Granny Gallivan’s eyes. She, like Bridgie Thomas, knew what they’d done. Iffy could tell from the way her sharp eyes followed her, scorching holes between her shoulder blades.

  Iffy tossed and turned, sticky with sweat and guilt. She heard the town clock strike midnight and then she slept. And while she slept July boiled over into August and things were never the same again.

  Will took the train to Cardiff, then boarded a bus and began the slow journey up the steep-sided valley and wondered whether he would live long enough to make the same journey back.

  He rubbed a clear patch in the steamy window and peered out into the already darkening day. The rain was torrential, hitting the tarmac of the road and bouncing back up. Rivulets of black water travelled down from the mountains, coursing across the road and on down the steep-sided valley to the river which was a turbulent stream of fast-moving foam.

  The dark mountains on either side of the road had blurred into forbidding clouds. The bus travelled long stretches of lonely winding roads where sheep huddled against stone walls. A sheep dog barked lethargically at the bus from the gateway of a tumbledown farm.

  It was a helter-skelter ride occasionally punctuated by their passing through small deserted towns with their streets of dark-grey terraced houses. The doors of the houses were closed against the driving rain, weak light filtering through faded curtains. Smoke curled up miserably from chimneys. A group of ponies stood forlornly in a silent square.

  Turning a steep bend, Will gasped at the sight of the house. Of course, he should have realised it would still be there. He supposed that it had for so long been a part of his dreams that he no longer thought of it as a real house of bricks and mortar.

  There it was, a lone house perched halfway up the mountain reached by a narrow stony track. A board proclaimed it to be a bed and breakfast. Sunny Views.

  Dear God! He couldn’t imagine a worse place to spend the night!

  He had visited it many times on his rounds as a young constable. It had been as desolate a place as he had ever been in. A dank and dismal house, the brown distempered walls running with condensation, a place of ill-lit corridors, the air redolent with the smell of drying nappies and cloying baby milk. From behind closed doors came the sounds of muffled sobs and anguished partings. It was a house awash with the reek o
f shame, a veritable hell-hole.

  He thought now of all those young girls and their babies. Babies crying. Babies soon to be separated from their young mothers. It should have been a house full of joy at the absolute miracle of birth. Instead it had been a house where you could almost taste the shame. He wondered if all those young girls, middle-aged women now, still thought about the last look they ever took of their babies. He sighed. Lost babies. Lost girls.

  Did those girls still dream of this house? Still wake in the night filled with terror? He had dreamed about it many times, it was the nightmare he dreaded above all others. He turned his eyes away, he didn’t want to dwell on memories that were too painful. Memories that racked him with guilt and blemished the love he had felt for his wife, Rhiannon. The house hadn’t had a board proclaiming its name in the old days, but everyone for miles around had called it the home for bad girls.

  August 1st

  Still boiling.

  The Merediths’ back door was open on to the bailey. It was always open even when it rained.

  At four o’clock it was as hot as ever.

  Three doors away, the Tranters’ door was shut tight. It was always shut even when it was hot. The Tranters only pulled back the bolts when someone wanted to leave or get back into the house.

  Iffy crossed the bailey, ducking and diving between the washing on the lines. She knocked hard on Bessie’s door until her knuckles hurt. The Tranters’ door was painted with thick green paint, the colour of shiny cucumbers.

  She hoped Bessie would answer and not her mam or dad. She never knew what to say to them. Bessie’s mam and dad were really old, nearly as old as her nan and grancha.

  Mrs Tranter cleaned the doctor’s surgery and the doctor’s house. She made felt toys and crocheted and knitted patchwork blankets for black babies. She never smiled.

  The Tranters were chapel. Carmel.

  The Merediths were Catholic.

  Mrs Tranter played the organ and the harmonium.

  In the infants, Fatty had made up a dirty song about organ players.

  Fanny Morgan plays the organ and she plays it very well

  But her sisters all have blisters in the middle of their

  Fanny Morgan plays the organ and she plays it very well…

  Bessie had got mad, had her hair off as they said. She had sobbed and stamped her shiny patent shoes up and down on the playground floor.

  Chapel people were different to Catholics. They didn’t drink or bet on the horses but they ate meat on Fridays and God didn’t give them so many babies.

  Bessie grunted noisily as she pulled back the bolts. Bessie was famous for her grunting. The door was dragged open and the smell of polish and disinfectant came over the step in a rush that brought tears to Iffy’s eyes.

  Bessie blinked her small eyes in the bright sunlight.

  Iffy thought that Bessie had eyes like a pig but not so intelligent.

  Her cheeks had been scrubbed until they shone, and below her hemline her bony pink knees were polished to shining. Her fat, glossy ringlets dripped down onto her shoulders. She smelled of talcum powder and the cod liver oil that she took for her chest. Bessie had a chest that rattled like an abacus when she wasn’t rattling from all the pills she took. Her mam gave her medicine for everything.

  Medicine to make her pwp regular.

  To get the wax out of her ears.

  And the badness from her blood.

  The worms from her bum.

  But she never looked healthy.

  “Hello, Iffy,” Bessie said, in a voice that sounded as though it had been washed in vinegar and put through the mangle twice.

  “Hiya, Bessie.”

  Bessie closed the door carefully behind her and the bolts were drawn back across from the inside. They walked across the bailey of Inkerman towards the broken steps at the end of the row that led up to the rutted road. Bessie walked carefully so as not to stand on any cracked stones and get mud all up her socks, even though it hadn’t rained for weeks. She hated having dirty socks.

  Bessie was Iffy’s best friend but only because she couldn’t find a better one. Bessie was spoilt rotten. She was the youngest. She had two brothers who were in the army. Derek and Brian. There were framed photographs of them on the harmonium in the parlour. Mrs Tranter polished them every day, twice. They had heads the shape of swedes and were dead ugly. When they came home on leave they brought Bessie dolls in foreign costumes: Dutch, French, Spanish, Irish. Iffy liked the French one the best. It had red lipstick and no knickers. Just like Bessie’s sister. Dolores.

  Dolores had white hair and two babies who ran about half naked, but no husband. Bessie’s mam had no truck with Dolores.

  Iffy liked the name Dolores, just saying it made her shiver.

  Dolores’s real name was Hilary and they called her Lurry for short. She changed it when she ran away from home.

  D O L O R E Z.

  Bessie said her hair was really ginger but she put peroxide and toilet cleaner on it. One day it would all fall out, or, if she was lucky, it would just turn green.

  Mrs Meredith told Mrs Bunting that Hilary Lurry Dolores was hot in the knickers, but Iffy couldn’t ask what she meant because she was hiding under the kitchen table and shouldn’t have been.

  Fatty was waiting for them down by the Dentist’s Stone at the bottom of the hill.

  Fatty sat cross-legged, busily shaving a lolly stick into an arrowhead with a penknife. He was dead lucky! Gladys Baker who kept the gown shop in town had given it to him as a present. Iffy was dying for a penknife. She wasn’t allowed one in case she had her bloody fingers off.

  Fatty looked up as the girls approached. “Wotcha, girls!”

  Bessie checked over her shoulder in case her mam or dad were anywhere about. She’d have a lambasting if she got seen with Fatty, but she never did because her mam and dad hardly ever came out, only to shop or go to chapel.

  Bessie’s mam had said that the last time Fatty had had a wash was off the midwife. Iffy didn’t like her for saying that.

  Fatty’s mam used to be a midwife but she got drunk and dropped a baby head first into a bucket. Probably Bessie, thought Iffy. Midwifes caught babies in buckets when they shot out of women’s bums. They washed the pwp off and wrapped them in shawls. If they didn’t breathe they smacked their arses, or their faces by mistake if they were ugly. Midwifes made tea and sent someone to get the dads from the pub.

  “Where’s Billy?” Iffy asked Fatty.

  “Down under the bridge. I’ll call him in a minute. There’s hardly any river left.”

  “P’raps it’s a sign from God like Bridgie said,” said Bessie.

  “Bridgie Thomas is bloody twp,” said Fatty.

  Bessie sniffed and looked down at her feet.

  The three of them walked down towards the humpbacked bridge. A pile of horse manure steamed in the middle of the road. Bessie wrinkled up her nose and looked the other way in disgust. They clambered up onto the bridge and sat dangling their feet over the edge.

  Billy came scrabbling over the bank.

  “Hiya, Billy.”

  Fatty gave Billy a leg up onto the bridge. Billy was the same age as the rest of them but he was little for his age. Too short to cut cabbage, Fatty said.

  Billy never said a word. Not a peep. Not even when Mervyn Prosser got him behind the sheds and jabbed him in the dicky with a cocktail stick.

  His mam had taken him to see doctors up near England and a woman in Cardiff who heard voices from under her armpit, but still he never said a word.

  No one ever talked about what had happened to Billy’s brother in case they had nightmares and peed the bed leaking. It had happened in another valley before Billy moved to their town. Over the hills and far away in a place they had never been to and couldn’t yet spell the name of.

  And Billy never spoke after. Not once. Not a boo, bah, kiss your arse or nothing.

  “What’s he been doing under the bridge?” Bessie said.

  “He
’s been looking for fairies,” said Fatty.

  Bessie rolled her eyes up towards the sky.

  “Speaking of fairies,” hissed Fatty, “look who’s coming.”

  Dai Full Pelt came towards them on his way home from the Mechanics. He was a lunatic. A dangerous one.

  “Let’s go,” Bessie whimpered.

  “Stay put,” Fatty said. “Don’t run away from the likes of him. Don’t let him see you’re afraid.”

  Dai staggered up the lane towards them.

  They got down off the bridge in case he pushed one of them over the edge and into the river. Lunatics did things like that for no reason.

  Bessie kept her head well down. She was terrified of Dai.

  They all were, even Fatty a bit, only he wouldn’t show it.

  Dai Full Pelt was really Dai Gittins. He was called Dai Full Pelt because he worked on the buses and drove them too fast – full pelt, hell for leather, breaking the bones and teeth of his passengers as he went. Dai was horrible. He was a monster of a man, with the ugliest mug on him you ever saw.

  He had a huge head as big as a pumpkin. His hair was like the tumbleweed that blew down the streets in cowboy films: Roy Rogers, Tonto, the Lone Ranger. He had ears big as saucers and pale-blue bulgy eyes the colour of sucked gobstoppers. A nose, red and swollen and pitted with blackheads. Black bristly hairs stuck out of his nostrils, nostrils as wide as arches. His mouth was the very worst bit of him. It was a great black dirty hole where one yellow fang hung by a sticky thread.

  He was married to Ruby Gittins who had been married before. And before that. She was as rough as a badger’s arse. The children weren’t allowed to go near the Gittins’s house. Except Fatty. Fatty could go where he liked.

  Ruby Gittins only changed her knickers when the moon was full. They weren’t the sensible type of knickers that mams and nans wore. Not cotton double gusset, white aertex and room to breathe. They were red and black with frills on. Some had no gusset at all and needed darning.