by Owen Sheers
When he got to them he was broken. Bleeding from every limb, blinded by his own blood. His mam was there, and she led the women in the washing of his body. My girl was there too, and it was her who told me this. How they kneeled in a circle, passing the white towels from the bucket of water to his mam, then back to the bucket.
How that water turned from clear to pink to red.
How his mam couldn’t remove the crown of brambles, so she wove it instead; wove it with red flowers to hide his blood.
How the sound of the water running from the towels into the buckets was like bells, and how he never asked his mam, ‘Who are you?’ again, because he knew now, not from memory, but from what she was doing for him.
How she dressed him in that blue hoodie again and how when she bent low to listen to his whisper all he’d said was, ‘Look how I make the world new.’
And how that was enough.
By the time he reached the roundabout the light was already dying from the day. A crowd had gathered again, but was so quiet I could hear the fall of the waves down on the beach and the creaking of the ICU dignitaries’ chairs up on the balcony of the Four Winds.
They’d built a platform for his cross. Made out of doors it was, all the doors that they’d taken in the last few days.
When they laid him on it I couldn’t see him any more. But I heard the nails being hammered in. Tap. Tap, tap. Tap. Tap, tap.
ONE.
TWO.
THREE.
He screamed. And when he did, it carried to the mountain I swear.
Then suddenly, there he was again, rising over the heads of the crowd. They’d stripped him so I could see his chest working quick and shallow, trying to keep the breath in his lungs. For a moment that was the only new sound; his breathing, falling between the turning of the waves. But then he began screaming again; long cries of pain, alone up there, screaming and screaming.
And then a voice started singing. A male voice, strong and proud. And as it sang, so his screams subsided, until he was screaming no more.
It was his younger brother. The sad one from the slip who’d joined him. He was standing at the foot of the cross, looking up at the Teacher, not singing him to sleep, but to death.
‘Cariwch’, medd Dafydd, ‘fy nhelyn i mi,
Ceisiaf cyn marw roi tôn arni hi.
Codwch fy nwylo i gyraedd y tant;
Duw a’ch bendithio fy ngweddw a’m plant.’
And then the Teacher spoke. At first I couldn’t hear what he said, but then he said it again. And again.
‘I remember. I remember.’
And then it happened. Still no one you talk to here will tell you how, or even exactly what. But what they will say is that was the moment, that was when we were saved.
It began with a low rumble. Like thunder several valleys away. Then the rumble became a sensation, a shiver under our feet. And all the time the Teacher up there saying, ‘I remember, I remember.’
The rumble got louder and as it did the first few planks of the platform broke off and fell to the ground. And it was then, too, that he raised his voice, and told us.
‘I remember,’ he cried, ‘Beech Hill! The Trafalgar Ball! The beach wreck! Tump number 9! The Majestic! The Regent! The Palace! Egan’s! Players! Bernies! The Forge Road Baths! The Starlight Club! Harvey’s Lake!’
And he went on. Like a torrent it was, a flow of the gone town pouring from his mouth. Everything that had been taken, back. And as he spoke, so they came out of the ground from under him. What, you ask? Well, good question. How to tell you? I suppose the most simple way to put it is us. Us, we came out of the ground. Our memories, our parents’ memories, their parents’ memories. And with them our stories. Everything that made us, everything that made the town more than just bricks and glass and concrete.
It was like my bampa said, wasn’t it? Cleverest thing the Company ever did, to make us forget where we came from so as to make us blind to where we were going. Well, right then, as the sun sank over Swansea, as the wet sand on the beach turned the colours of an oyster shell, he made us remember. And in doing so, made us see.
But he could only hold on for so long. Soon the words were slowing, his voice getting quieter. And with it all those images and sounds coming out of the ground began to die down too. Until eventually they were gone.
And so was he.
In the silence that followed I don’t think anyone even breathed. We’d all, as one, been taken somewhere, and then suddenly we were back. Back, but different.
I looked up to the balcony of the Four Winds to where the Company Man had been watching with his lackeys from the Council. Then others turned to look at him too, until the whole crowd was staring at him, daring him to speak.
When he did, it was with the voice of a beaten man. He knew he’d done this to himself. In killing the Teacher he’d showed everyone what the wealth under this town was.
‘If that’s what matters to you,’ he finally called out, trying to muster some pride, ‘then there’s nothing of value here for us. We won’t be back.’
With a sweep of his arm he took them all off that balcony with him, disappearing out the back and into their cars. Old Growler didn’t need any other order. Calling his men to him he left too, quick marching them down the slip and out into the darkness of the beach and their waiting boats.
And then we were alone.
No one said anything. They just came forward and did what they had to. Both his brothers, Sergeant Phillips, Alfie, the Legion Twins. Hoisting two white sails up and over the cross they wound them round his chest as Sergeant Phillips and Rhys hammered out the nails from his hands and feet. Then they lowered him, lowered him like a flag, his body loose and heavy, into the lap of his mother.
For a moment she held him there, her son who’d forgotten her, then known her better than ever. As Joanne and Simon brought a shroud to cover him she sang, just as if she was singing him to sleep as a baby.
‘So sleep on now, come take your rest
The hour is soon to come.
Behold us now, for it is night
We’ll rise again at dawn.
And sleep.
And sleep.
And sleep.’
As she came to the end of her song Joanne began to pull back the shroud. She was right, we all wanted to see him one last time. His mam nodded, lifting her hand to stroke his hair. But when the shroud dropped away, he wasn’t there.
He’d gone. And in his place were flowers. Like someone had planted a spring meadow inside him and now, with his death, it had taken bloom. Joanne kept pulling back the shroud, and they kept falling out, a waterfall of flowers, as fresh as if just picked.
We all must have been staring at those flowers because the first I knew of Uncle Bryn standing up on the platform was when he hit his staff against it.
‘Bang,’ it went, and we all looked up to see him standing there, his big puppet-master’s hood half over his face.
He hit the platform twice more, quick and sharp.
‘Bang, bang.’ And then he spoke, loud and booming, as if calling to someone on the mountain.
‘It is finished!’
Ever the showman he followed his voice with a big sweeping bow, so when he stood up again that hood came falling off his head onto his shoulders.
And there he was, I swear. The Teacher. Bold as brass.
He looked over us all staring up at him, and then he spoke to us.
‘It has begun!’ he said.
And then he was gone.
So that’s what happened. And that’s how it happened. Here, to us. Someone else will probably tell you different but like I said, I know what I saw and I know what I remember. And I know he was here and then he wasn’t. And I know how we are now, well, it’s different to how we were before. And if it wasn’t for the Teacher then that wouldn’t be the case.
Believe me.
Acknowledgements
The Gospel of Us was first commissioned and published as a limited
edition of 1000 by NTW as part of its thirteenth production: The Passion, April 2011, Port Talbot. Many thanks to Lucy for speed-reading the first draft, Adele Thomas for all her work on the ground, Weird Naked Indian for providing the anthem for the performance Home is Where the Heart is, Taibach Rugby Club, the Naval Social Club, the cast and crew of The Passion and all the people of Port Talbot.
Weird Naked Indian, Home is Where the Heart is http://nationaltheatrewales.org/sites/default/files/HomeIsWhereTheHeartIs.m4a
www.port-talbot.com
By the Same Author:
Poetry
The Blue Book
Skirrid Hill
A Poet’s Guide to Britain (Ed.)
Fiction
Resistance
White Ravens
Non-fiction
The Dust Diaries
Screenplay
Resistance (with Amit Gupta)
Plays
The Passion
The Two Worlds of Charlie F.
Copyright
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© Owen Sheers 2012
www.owensheers.co.uk
ISBN 978–1–85411–645–1
The right of Owen Sheers to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.
A CIP record for this title is available from the British Library.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted at any time or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the copyright holder.
This book is a work of fiction. The characters and incidents portrayed are the work of the author’s imagination. Any other resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Front cover design: Dave McKean www.mckean-art.co.uk
Back cover photograph: Owen Sheers www.owensheers.co.uk
Inner design and typesetting by [email protected]
The Gospel of Us was first commissioned and published by National Theatre Wales as part of its production of The Passion, produced with Wildworks in Port Talbot in April 2011.
The publisher acknowledges the financial support of the Welsh Books Council.
