Yeah. Waking up when the fire had burned low. Hardly embers. But always sweet, that fire. Driftwood, see. Salt and weed. But sea of where?
Cortez.
Where the…
That’s what the old man said. I looked it up once. A fishing port in Mexico, with a ring of volcanoes. Then his story began to come back to me.
Volcanoes?
Seven. Yeah.
But volcanoes?
That’s it.
Sea of Cortez?
Well, his usual elaboration. You know. Making a meal.
So the coffee pot was silver?
What do you think? Never let the truth get in the way, did he? But that’s what he always said. At the end. He’d say, sorry, you lot, but it doesn’t matter if it happened or whether I dreamed it. Being a good story is all that counts. And for him it was a good story.
But look, I still think it was the Americans.
No, the Works built it.
The Americans, I say. Middle of that war. First or Second World War.
The Works built it. To move limestone. And Second World War, you idiot.
You got a thing about Americans. Just like the old man.
Yeah, well…
He told us about that event. Didn’t he? At The Works?
There were lots of events…
But some kind of ceremony. People with wine, standing round. It often happened. In those days.
You’re getting there…
I suppose in honour of that place. Of what they’d found. But what was there, then?
The old man called it a pentagram.
Arranged in old bricks. Had to look that up. Shape with five sides. In the middle they’d dug up a ball of iron, he said. Clinker and iron and soil mixed up.
So…
He said it was a salamander. The lizard that lives in fire. Or is born in fire, dunno. He’d seen them somewhere hot. Must have been an American word, he thought. Bear was the word he liked. That was local, he thought. So this ceremony was for the archaeologists who’d uncovered this salamander. This bear. Unborn iron, was how he described it. Said he’d told us about it and that’s what I’m trying to remember. But this was before anyone ever thought of building The Works. This was the first furnace. With a great lump of molten iron, cooled to stone. Waste, I suppose. The last thing left behind. The last trace. In the end, if the bear grew too fat it stopped the furnace working…
Means nothing to me.
Maybe I recall him talking about the wine. All those toasts they made? Why does iron wine strike a chord? He said they were drinking to the men who forged that iron, commemorating the price they paid. Those ironworkers usually lost the tips of their fingers. If not their hands. All that scalded skin, he said. Most of them were branded by their work. Scarred for life. No hair, no…
Yeah. Just another dangerous trade. That’s what he called it. He talked about it when we came over here to look at that flower. The orchid.
I remember that. But I still think it was the Americans. People said they camped out in the sand and on the beach. Could have slept right where we are now. Could have shat where we shat this morning.
Americans? Don’t be simple. The Works built it. To move the gear. It’s still here if you know where to look. Under the sand. Under the sinter. Still here despite the storms and all the changes…
Why did the old man call it the Dram Road?
Not sure.
What’s dram?
Like I said. Most people called it the Haul Road.
I used to love those fires he built. In the dunes between the road and the beach. If you look back, those were, those were…
Yeah. The best of times. With the light turning the sand purple.
Like that orchid, he used to say. The fire orchid. Colour of a red-hot poker.
That’s it.
But his coffee? That dented coffee pot he boiled up. Silver, he swore. Okay, he lied.
Nah, he told Mam he brought it back from the Middle East. Bought it in a bazaar. Just a petrol stop in the Sham desert and this Bedouin selling junk. Car-boot sale really, of course. Straight out of Stormy. All the stuff on the farm was car-boot.
So Mam would have got it.
’Course. Like everything else. But I used to watch him with that coffee pot. The routine of it. Five o’clock…
Yeah, everything comes down to routines in the end. Like the time to make coffee. Five in the morning. Christ, I used to hate five o’clock. Most times I’d dig deeper into the sleeping bag…
Boil fresh water, he would. Keep it boiling. But he’d have that water ready. Then, make the coffee as strong as he could stand it… Five, six heaped spoonfuls.
Nah. Half the time it was second-hand grains. And always by the end. Sludgy grey. All his talk about the difference between Java and Papua bloody New Guinea was just that. Sludge. Like his coffee.
Yeah, firelight on the sand. If I remember anything, it’s that. Picking up the driftwood.
That’s it. Piling up driftwood.
Hey, throw that spar on. The big one. And that one. That’s it. You know, I can hear his voice. Sorting out the driftwood under those tarpaulins we used. Guarding it in case the cormorants appeared.
Looking round for other fires. Working out who was burning what…
And picking it up in the dark. I pulled this branch out of the sand once. Dragged it on the fire. Bloody PVC soffit, wasn’t it? Get some jetsam, as he used to say. Too late by then. Stank the dune out.
I’ve done that too. As he did, often enough.
Had to happen. Sometimes it was more plastic than timber…
Especially after the storms, he used to say. But what did he know? Got twice as bad since. That Jude he used to tell us about. Hurricane Jude? I always remember the names he used. Jude and Josephine. Remember Katia? And Ruth? Well that was nothing compared to…
But be fair. He knew it was coming.
Like he predicted it, the old bastard. As if he knew something no one else did. Taking the credit. He was good at that. Well, it works out everybody knew. ’Course they did. But they didn’t behave like they knew, did they? They felt they could ignore it.
But this last wind. It’s cut the dune like a lathe. That tide, that wind. And the roots of the marram left hanging out like bales of barbed wire. Like a lathe, that wind. That tide…
Yeah. The sound of it. Reminded me of…
I was looking at that sheer wall. Thirty foot of sand on top of a bed of gravel. Exposed overnight. After the last storm. And you know what I found in it? Twenty foot down? A crisp packet. That’s archaeology in the sand for you. Might have been a whale jaw. A pterodactyl bone. But this was a packet of crisps.
Plastic. Straight out of the sea.
And he always said his own father could taste The Works. Taste the furnaces when they were burning. The iron dice, he called the ovens. Rolled across the sand…
All I can taste is sand…
Making a home for the cormorants, The Works now. It’s cormorant city these days, while we…
Shit in the sand.
Born in sand, that’s us…
And we’ll die in it if…
Gotta die somewhere.
But it gets in the camera. In my teeth… No matter how you hood the lens, it…
Still works.
But…
So batteries, remember. Because I want to go to the Meridian…
Impossible.
To film the whole bay. For an idea of the damage… To calculate the… situation…
Mad. I mean it. They’ll get us. Or the dogs will. Those packs of Siberians? Dune wolves…
It’s necessary. This film is what we do…
It’s out of date already, it’s…
Necessary.
As out of date as these cranes at The Works. Cranes tall as buildings…
Necessary.
Good only for the cormorants to hang their flags. And what does it mean this time? A red flag?
Whatever they want it
to mean. Look…
What…
Don’t let them get to you…
Get to me? They’ve already got to me. I dream about those fuckers. Nightmares? Don’t tell me you’re not the same. I hear you in the dark…
What?
Talking in your sleep. Even crying… What’s that word?
Word?
Whimpering. Even you.
Yeah, well, by the time you realise something, it’s too late. Like, when was the last time you heard the quarry…?
Quarry?
Detonations. Used to be Mondays regular. That big whoomp at three in the afternoon. The ground always shook. How many Mondays passed before I even noticed it wasn’t there? Could have been two years till I thought about it.
I never thought about it…
And look, what did the old man say? About Procession Street?
Jesus.
What did he say?
What the old man always said.
Listen for once. He said they had two separate punctures that day in the taxi. Then they walked out of the desert and came to the gate. Behind the gate was Procession Street, all deserted. Like the people had just cleared off. Packed up and scarpered. Women, kids, all of them gone. Bundles on their heads.
That’s what he always said…
And he said he wandered down the street and looked at the carvings…
Yeah, yeah.
And they were like … they were like creatures that have never existed. In this world. Dogs with lions’ faces? Dragons, he thought…
Yeah. Yeah…
And he looked at those carvings on the walls, those carvings that had been there three thousand years, and he was sure, he was sure…
Yeah, I know.
He was sure they were from another world. Another planet…
Same old…
So all I’m saying is, the cormorants are nothing like that. Not at all. The old man had seen worse than that. On his own, looking into the temples. Those dark rooms where goats had shat. That’s what he always told us. The billy goat with a bell round its neck, leading the flock through Babylon?
But the Meridian…
Is the place. The best vantage point. Like it was built for us. As Procession Street was built for the old man. For him to discover and to pass on. What he knew. And that’s what we’re doing. Passing it on, girl. As if the Meridian was built for us…
Take us days to get there…
Yeah, I know. But the view has to be incredible. The whole bay, east and west. Even the farm. And think how far inland you can see. That radio station set up there has stopped, but no matter…
There’s sand in the lens…
The camera works.
Look, I just don’t want to end up on that crane.
Then do what I say. Stay close. Keep filming. This is history we’ll be showing. Think what the old man…
The old man was a big-headed bastard. All his stories? They’re irrelevant now. And I mean hanging from the crane, that’s what I mean… Not that there’ll be anything left to hang…
Yeah, okay, there’s sand in the lens. But it works…
And look…
What?
Griffins. Not dragons.
Yeah?
I remember that much. What did he say? Pick up the driftwood, keep it under the tarps…
The sea’s forest, he called it…
Pollution I call it.
But what a view.
No, I’m seriously freaked by the idea. You got a death wish…
The lens is okay…
But the cormorants will be all over us. And remember, they’re sending drones out now.
Tell me something I don’t know.
Some of them only big as dragonflies. But black. One came down on the beach, last week. Soon there’ll be nothing they don’t see…
We got to try. With the film. Because that’s our story…
Funny. Isn’t it?
What?
The old man had been all over. Okay, a lot of it was made up. Lifted it out of books, didn’t he? Off the net. But he’d been about. And I’ve been nowhere.
Took it all, didn’t they? Used it up.
Well…
And there used to be enough. Wasn’t there?
For us as well, I mean? More than enough. And what do we have?
Not much, no. Well, I got an oyster shell for crushed herbs. So maybe I can look like a woman.
Good luck with that. Time to get back in the sleeping bags.
’Nother hour?
Look at those clouds massing.
What did you say it was called? Those branches where we sleep? The bushes?
I used to know. But it’s just another thing the old man told us… Another answer on the tip of my tongue…
Maybe Slowboat would have known…
Old Slowbo? Well…
Come on. He wasn’t that slow…
No, Slowboat was great. I’ll give him that. Especially towards the end. Remember he came up with that jerrycan of diesel? Christ, the Range Rover is going up that dune and he says to the old man, you positive this is in four-wheel? And the old man says, sure is… But it turns out no, it wasn’t. The old man didn’t even know how to put it in gear. He’d been driving round in the wrong gear all that time. So Slowboat says, shift over then, and the old man has to oblige. Slowboat didn’t even have a licence. Old school. He had that engine running for years after it should have died.
Yeah, Slowboat was good. Kept us going at the end, filling all the bags of jerusalems we were living off.
True. Slowboat made a difference.
Yes, he could hammer a nail in straight. Repair the roof. It was Slowboat who kept the farm going when you know who was too busy with another bloody project.
Think he’s…
Alive? Slowboat? Dunno. If he’s anywhere he’s in The Works. Brought up there, wasn’t he? A million places to hide. Those tunnels in the sinter? Remember that kid who bricked himself up in the hearth? Crept out at night through the false walls. It’s possible. No one knows who the hell’s in there. Could be hundreds, easy.
That’s why the cormorants do so well…
The farm was Slowboat’s home. ’Course it was.
And that’s right about nails. Slowboat always talked about nails. He loved them, didn’t he? Slowbo’s bloody nails.
There was dog spike…
Square shank…
Rosbud…
No, rosehead he called it.
Know what a bear is? he asked me once. And I had to say, no. So what’s a bear, then, Slowboat?
Another bear?
Fair enough, he said. I’ll tell you. With that lopsided grin of his. Always that grin.
Happy, wasn’t he?
Happy? Suppose so. Didn’t seem to care about what was happening. Just accepted it. He loved Mam, though.
Oh yes. He loved Mam. It was her farm. The old man scared him sometimes. Especially when he was on the homebrew. Not that Slowboat was averse. It was him who said make it with scurvygrass. Slowbo’s bloody scurvy ale. Christ. Yeah, lore, that’s what Slowboat had. Bit of a doctor, too. Knew what to do with us when the old man was baffled… And firelighting? Slowboat was brilliant at that. The old skills…
Yes, Slowbo would have died for Mam. Fair enough, like he always said. Fair enough.
But remember Mam’s last fire? The old man lit it. Or was it Slowbo? We were there together. Was that the last time?
One match, he said, and that’s all it took. I held the box, one long match from Bryant and May’s ‘Summer Collection’. Ideal for barbecues and chimineas. I’ll never forget that. We’d collected branches and pallets. But first it was the right kindling. Crumbling the drift bamboo over the other wood. Sucked dry by the sea, that wood. Salt-soaked in its tides.
That was Mam’s last fire?
Might have been. By then she was just an effigy of herself. I remember the paper tickled into flame, the crackle of the kindling, then the flames catching. Her
skin was like that paper we used. You know, like some of the old man’s manuscripts? Dry and white, ripped out of a ringbinder. I ask you!
The attic was packed with that stuff. What happened to it?
We built the fire first with spokes and spills. Some splinters of spars. Then the spars themselves. The flames sounded like a swan going over in the dark, the fire whoompering on the beach … sucking and drawing…
Yes, I can hear it…
That fire moaning as Mam spoke… But quietly, by then. Barely a breath… The old man was on his knees blowing into the heart of it. Making himself useful. I know he was crying…
Yeah. As he should have been.
The sticks were thinner than her wrist, that wrist I always urged her to use. Grip, I’d say, grip my hand. And she tried, she tried with those incredible blue veins, the bruises her stroke had caused.
She wanted to be outside… But it was difficult. By then. Sometimes I think we just tossed her aside. Like all mothers are tossed aside…
I saw her own parents dead, you know. Nana and Dada, laid out.
Can’t remember that…
Made of wax, they seemed. Melting into their stiff clothes…
No. I can’t remember that…
Look, they all understood what was coming. But in their different ways. Even Slowbo. And there was Mam at the end, dry as driftwood. Queen of the moraine…
I remember the sun..
The beach shone in firelight… Even the rock pools were on fire. And the sky in the north was full of sunset. Like something had exploded. There was ash on Mam’s cheek…
Yes, well..
Then not long afterwards that beach was stripped to the bedrock. To the blue clay. Remember those bronze cannons? Been buried two hundred years. Not a grain of sand, you’d think, left after that blow. But the next storm brought it back. Conjured the sand out of the sea so it’s lying in quilts. Over and over again, that sand disappearing, that sand coming back. Yeah, sand. Every grain a siege engine. Devious, like the old man claimed. Nothing slyer than sand. We can trust him on that at least. And no, I don’t understand it… Only that it’s going to get worse…
So…?
So get ready.
Now?
Pack up. We can’t stay here…
But…
Need to go… there’ll be other places like this. Bound to be…
New Welsh Short Stories Page 19
