by Owen Sheers
MR BEYNON
They’ve been good to me, the kids.
I mean, I must be quite an imposition.
One minute Mr Evans is their master,
their deputy head,
then suddenly it’s me instead.
That must be hard.
A stroke. A couple of weeks ago.
He’s on the mend though, from what I can tell.
The children sent him a card.
People forget, I think, when they grow older,
just how fond a class can get of their teacher.
Can’t say I’m quite there yet.
But then it always takes time, doesn’t it?
The children arrive at the school gates.
JACK-THE-MILK is delivering in the street behind them.
He waves to his daughter.
ANNE
We had assembly that day.
The whole school, sitting cross-legged
on the parquet floor.
DAN
The whole school, ages five to ten,
singing ‘All Things Bright and Beautiful’.
ANNE
No. ‘There Is a Green Hill Far Away’.
That’s what we sang.
I think. I can’t be sure.
DAN
Then we went to our classes,
that I do know.
Each age through a different door.
ANNE
I sat by a window. I remember that.
Mr Davies up front, writing the date.
MR DAVIES
October the …?
Come on, who can tell me?
TOMOS is at his desk.
TOMOS
Sir?
MR DAVIES
Yes, Tomos?
TOMOS
20th August, 1963.
Dear Sir,
RE:
Anne joins in.
ANNE & TOMOS
Danger from coal slurry being tipped at the rear of Pantglas school, Aberfan.
Two more children join in the recitation.
In connection with the above
my public works Superintendent
has been in touch with Mr Wynne,
Four more children join.
Manager at the Merthyr Vale Colliery
in connection with the deposit of slurry
Eight more children join.
on the existing tip at the rear
of the Pantglas school.
Sixteen more children join.
The whole class is now reciting the letter.
I am very apprehensive about this matter
as are the councillors and the residents in this area
as they have previously experienced,
during periods of rain,
movement of the slurry
to the danger and detriment
of people and property
adjoining the site of the tips.
Thirty-two villagers join the voices of the children.
13th December, 1963.
Dear Sir,
RE: Danger from coal slurry being tipped at the rear of Pantglas school, Aberfan.
As a matter of emergency …
Sixty-four more voices from the village join.
I feel it is necessary
that the N.C.B. be made to commit …
without any delay …
in the event of the tips …
EDNA, still on the hill, adds her voice.
31st January, 1964
Dear Sir,
RE:
EDNA’S young child joins with her.
In spite of what the Area Engineer
says in his letter of 28th January …
EDNA’S husband also joins.
… I am not of the opinion that further material is unlikely to be washed
down the waterway
A gang of nine workers at the summit
of tip number seven join in.
… on the 22nd January I stated that the pipes
Another two tip workers add their voices.
under the Aberfan road were half full of silt
Another two workers join,
bringing the total voices speaking to 144.
and that conditions were ripe …
One of the workers, JOHN, a crane driver, speaks.
JOHN
When we arrived that morning,
it was still quite dark, but we could all still see,
the point of the tip, it had sunk.
The track for my crane had fallen in,
slipped from where it should be.
I asked Dave, one of the slingers,
to run on down,
let Les our charge-hand know.
Which he did.
There used to be a telephone,
but the wires, they kept getting stolen.
So Dave went down instead.
I watched him fade and go.
The mist, you see, it was cloud-cover thick.
We couldn’t see the village below.
The recitation of the letters continues,
without the voices of the workers.
So far as the council are concerned
there has been a deterioration
in the position
EDNA’S husband drops out.
As I have said …
the silt washed down …
EDNA’S child drops out.
will now build up …
EDNA speaks alone.
EDNA
I’d been out in that mist,
so thick I could only see
a couple of the poles down below,
the ones that carry the wires into town.
One, two, maybe three, no more.
Then suddenly, those wires,
they started swinging around,
started jumping.
Like some giant hand
was playing at skipping.
In the village 128 voices continue.
I respectfully suggest that you require the submission …
in order to safeguard the future position …
Sixty-four voices leave.
I have not yet had
a satisfactory reply
to the questions raised.
… sliding in the manner
that I have envisaged.
Thirty-two voices in the school fade away.
I understand …
… that the slurry is de-watered
before being tipped
but… this would not be a solution
to movement in winter time due
Sixteen more children drop out.
to the absorption of storm water.
Eight more children fall silent.
You are no doubt aware
of the tips
above Pantglas
Four more children leave.
and if they were to move
Two more children stop speaking,
leaving just TOMOS and ANNE.
TOMOS & ANNE
a very serious position
ANNE drops out.
TOMOS
would accrue.
MR DAVIES
Yes, Tomos?
TOMOS
October 21st, 1966. Sir.
MR DAVIES writes the date on the blackboard
ANNE raises her hand.
There is a faint rumbling sound.
ANNE
Sir?
MR DAVIES
Yes?
ANNE
Is that thunder?
MR DAVIES
Maybe, Anne.
ANNE speaks in an older voice
ANNE
But then it got louder than thunder ever can.
And faster.
I looked out the window, saw Jack-the-Milk,
then – and I still don’t know why,
I had no time to think –
I put the book I was reading over my head.
Seconds later, the darkness came in,
as
if all the eyes in all the world,
had chosen then to blink.
A single milk bottle falls, breaks.
The rumble becomes a roar,
increasing in volume.
PART II
Rescuers
In every window
The roaring becomes the sound of tyres on tarmac.
Car headlights on an empty motorway.
A young medical student, MANSEL, is at the wheel.
MANSEL
I’m a scientist, so I don’t
believe in spirits and such.
But I’ve always kept a diary,
a page of A4, every night,
so it’s there, in black and white.
We couldn’t sleep. Me or my wife.
We were living, back then,
in East London. Us and our baby boy,
but that wasn’t where we were from.
No, that was Merthyr and Aberfan.
And that’s where we were going
in the early dark that morning.
A christening, later that day.
Like I said, we couldn’t sleep.
No point lying in bed, awake,
that’s what we thought.
So we packed up the Ford,
and went.
DAVE EVANS is in his home in Aberfan.
As he speaks he answers the door to a NEIGHBOUR.
DAVE
I was getting ready for work,
up at the bank.
Hadn’t long put on my suit and tie
when a neighbour came over,
asked if he could use our phone.
He seemed upset.
‘Of course,’ I said. ‘Why?’
NEIGHBOUR
There’s something wrong.
A house has collapsed, up at Moy Road.
DAVE EVANS
Collapsed? How?
NEIGHBOUR
That’s all I was told.
But it’s happened, just now.
DAVE EVANS
So I dialled, 999.
Got through to the fire service
and let them know.
While I was on the line
I heard a woman scream. I looked up.
Men were running past my window.
(on the phone)
I think it’s something major.
How long til you arrive?
OPERATOR
As soon as we can.
Your call’s been logged at 09.25.
SAM KNIGHT, a young journalist,
is sitting on the train.
SAM
I’d just got back from honeymoon.
A week near Burnham Beeches.
I was still living in Cardiff
with my wife and her parents.
I was young, ambitious,
been at the Express for a year and a half.
I wanted to go places, travel.
And I did.
But that morning, it was just Merthyr again,
on the train –
an early interview with the council’s John Beale,
Director of Education.
After, as I was coming down the steps
of his offices,
a car pulled up at the kerb –
one of the paper’s photographers,
Mel Parry, only eighteen back then,
been to the station for the morning call.
MEL winds down his window.
MEL
There’s been a couple of incidents –
a domestic fire in Dowlais,
or an outhouse collapsed at the school in Aberfan.
Which do you think?
SAM
Fires are common enough,
let’s try the school.
Sounds a bit different.
So I got in, and Mel drove on.
MEL
We were approaching Merthyr Vale
when we saw the cars in the mist.
A chain of headlights,
blue and red stitched
with police, an ambulance.
All coming towards us,
away from Aberfan.
I watched them pass,
become a river of red in our mirror.
SAM
‘Something serious has happened,’
I said to Mel.
He gave a nod, no more,
and like that, against the headlight flow
and our own tyres’ hiss, we drove on,
in silence, into that mist.
GWYNETH LEWIS is in the Mayor’s office.
GWYNETH
I’d been Mayor’s secretary
since March of ’66.
I’d got in early that morning.
We’d lit the fire
and the switchboard girl
had been in to turn her handle.
All was normal.
Then, suddenly, the men were leaving.
They’d been told, you see, to go to Aberfan.
The offices emptied, to a man.
Just the women left.
No one could tell us why.
We didn’t know what to do.
But then the ambulances
started streaking through town,
and we knew.
Within the hour
we’d gone from staffing the office
to a crisis HQ.
MANSEL
It must have been around 9.30,
as we reached Dowlais Top,
when out of the mist
we saw a road block.
I pulled up.
A POLICE OFFICER approaches the car.
OFFICER
Which way you going?
MANSEL
Brecon Road, in Merthyr.
Which is when he said.
A disaster.
That’s what he called it, even then.
Of course, we thought it was the pit.
All my father’s side is from Aberfan,
and always been miners too.
And my wife’s family,
they ran a shop in the village.
The officer was about to signal us on,
when he saw the sticker
above my bumper – B.M.S.A.
OFFICER
Are you a doctor?
MANSEL
A student. Final year.
OFFICER
But you’re medical?
We could use your help if so.
All the other doctors, see? They’re up
at St Tydfil’s for the casualties,
or in Merthyr Central.
MANSEL
Of course. Anything I can do.
And that was it. They waved us through.
DAVE is out on the street, crowds running past him.
DAVE
I followed the crowd running down my street,
turned at the Mack and couldn’t believe it.
They’re making a film – that’s all I could think.
The apex of the roofs, you see,
they were, well, all sitting on rubble.
Everything else had gone.
And then, as I looked, that rubble wept.
The Cardiff to Merthyr main,
burst by the slipping tip.
It just kept on coming,
turning windows to waterfalls
but thick and black, not like water at all.
Most of the crowd carried on to Pantglas,
but I and some others, we stayed where we were.
There was a boy, see? Who we’d found,
an older lad, been walking to school
when the debris came down.
We didn’t have tools,
but we still got to him just in time.
Seconds later and the place he’d been caught
was boiling with slurry and grime.
The boy pulled out is WILL DAVIES.
SAM is faced with the full horror of the landslide.
SAM
It looked like the Somme.
&n
bsp; That’s what I thought
when we came round the corner.
A mountain of slurry with men all over,
like ants, and all of them digging
with their fingers, their hands.
I had my notebook, my pen,
but I couldn’t take them out.
So instead, I climbed up on to it,
that mass of underground waste,
and joined a chain
passing back buckets of slurry.
It was only after a bit that I noticed –
it was still moving.
The whole dark body of it,
a slow buckle and seep
like a small coal muscle
hard but supple, flexing under our feet.
More people were coming all the time,
with shovels, picks, spades.
I saw firemen further up
pulling out a man in pyjamas.
In one of the classrooms
a dram was stuck,
that’s what someone said,
and animals too, from the farm on the hill –
sheep, a cow, all dead.
