by Owen Sheers
MANSEL is at the site of the school.
MANSEL
It sounds odd to say it now
but what it resembled, that scene,
was like something from the gold rush –
like one of those old photos
where every man has staked out his pitch,
to prospect for wealth.
Except these men
were digging for something else
and for something more precious too –
their little ones.
Their sons, daughters, nephews, nieces
still stuck in that school.
I walked on into it all,
the slurry like dark cement,
asked if I could help.
But there was no one to treat,
that’s what the local GP said.
At least, not yet, not from under the rubble.
Soon enough though, those diggers
were getting into trouble.
Most had never worked so hard in their life,
so began collapsing with pains in their chests.
I did my best to see them right,
treated sprains, cuts – but it wasn’t enough.
How could it be, in that landscape of pain?
With that great black tongue
lolling out of the mist,
and just there, nearby, the mothers
holding each other, knee-deep in the grit,
looking on at what that slipping tip had done.
Among the mothers are
MYFANWY, IRENE, BETTY, CATRIN
all waiting around the school gates.
DAVE
Soon enough, every able man was
working to clear it.
Some children had been pulled out alive,
but everyone knew, we didn’t have much time.
I heard lorries and turned to see
the miners, up from the colliery.
Hundreds of them, jumping off before
those lorries had stopped
and diving straight in to attack that slip,
that pile of waste they’d once dug from the pit.
A chant of miners’ names runs under the rest of his speech.
God did they work. And organised us too.
Had teams digging trenches,
others making corrugate chutes.
Every now and then a cry would go up
and to a man, we’d all still and listen.
Machines would stop –
breaths were held –
until the source of the sound was found
and then a fury of digging again.
Johnny Howler
Eddie Dixie
George Aberdare
Will Bumble
Dai Gold Watch
Jones Merthyr Vale
Cocker Nash
Dai Stonedust
Bill Bird’s Eye
Until around eleven.
When for the first time that day
hundreds of us listened,
leant on our shovels, straining every sense,
only to be met
with nothing but silence.
Billy Iron Boot
Freddie Greenfly
Dai Lamplight
Tommy Cocoa
Ianto Aye Aye
Cyril Silent Night
MANSEL
I’d taken over with a shovel
when a young man came over.
‘We’re into a classroom,’ he said.
‘You’d better come through, just in case …’
So I passed my tool to another
and followed him into the ruins of that place.
For years I’ve had dreams
because of what I saw –
The classroom, it was like it had been shaken.
Desks, chairs, a boulder,
a clock angled where it fell
and there, up against the wall,
no higher than your waist, twenty children,
their master in front of them,
his arms spread in protection,
trying to save them all.
He was a big man but what could he have done?
One teacher against a mountain.
I could see, behind him, their faces,
their mouths still open
as if they’d been caught mid-song.
Except you could tell,
it wasn’t a song
those mouths had been making,
all crammed as they were
with the same black note
of shale, slurry and grit.
And their eyes as well.
I’ve never seen a thing so wrong.
There was nothing to be done.
GWYNETH is gathering with others in the council chamber.
GWYNETH
Around eleven we assembled in the chamber
to be informed of the plans.
‘We’re setting up mortuaries,’ they said.
‘Wherever we can.’ We were stunned, numb.
But of course, had to carry on.
There was so much to be done.
At around four the women
as well as the men
were asked to go to Aberfan.
Once there we gathered in a hall,
unsure what would happen.
But then John Beale, Director of Education,
he came in, school registers under his arm.
He wanted to account for the children,
so began to read out their names,
but their sound on the air, what it conjured,
was too much for him. He broke down.
And anyway, nobody knew –
who had survived, and who had not.
So each of the women was given a street
and told to go down it from door to door,
asking each family a single question
against the grain of natural law –
I was twenty-two. Each time I knocked
I prayed the answer would be yes, he’s here,
or yes, she’s asleep upstairs.
But of course, all too often it wasn’t.
I’d write down the name, or the names,
the ages – seven, eight, nine.
We’d talk, if they wanted.
Then they’d close their door, softly,
the hand of a husband or wife on their shoulder,
and I’d carry on,
with my list of numbers, names and ages,
willing for it not to grow any longer.
DAVE
As the news filtered into the world
so the world filtered back to us.
Factories emptied across Wales,
steelworkers from Port Talbot,
Hoover down in Merthyr,
schoolboys from a valley over.
And individuals too, a farmer
from Brecon, an accountant from Cardiff,
and many others from further.
And of course the TV crews.
The journalists. First from Wales
then the UK, then France, Germany, all over.
They set up at the Mack,
filmed us working, the slide, the tips,
the chimneys, still smoking through the black.
I heard one reporter ask a miner,
REPORTER
They say you’ll dig into the night,
is that true?
DAI DAVIES turns to answer.
DAI
My boy’s in there somewhere,
I’ll dig all year if I have to.
DAVE
At some point the N.C.B. rescue teams came.
Like the cavalry they were,
in their yellow jackets and hats.
Then the army, digging trenches
clearing storm water – from all over the country
feather pumps and tenders.
No one else would be pulled out alive.
Not from the houses, nor the school.
But still, all you could
hear
was the sound of digging tools.
And, occasionally, quiet crying.
Because now there was other work to do –
supporting the parents at Bethania chapel,
small bodies under blankets on every pew
as they went in to identify their children,
sometimes by face but often
by just a piece of cloth, a pair of shoes.
Somehow, throughout it all,
the workers were fed, watered.
Soup and bread from the Salvation Army,
the Civil Defence. Even, at one point,
a plate of wedding cake.
But then, that’s what happens isn’t it?
The world ruptures and we offer what we can.
And that’s what happened that night,
to a woman and man,
people gave their strength, their sympathy –
offered up, for Aberfan.
SAM
When the day started fading
they brought in arc lights
powered by canisters of gas.
Towers were erected from which they shone
across that whole expanse
of ruin and slurry and black.
Everyone was covered in muck,
me included. I’d worn my best suit
to go and see John Beale
but now you’d have thought
I’d spent the day down the pit.
But we hadn’t. It had come to us.
Everyone knew that now.
And when it did, like some heartless pied piper
it harvested the best of that town.
It was time for me to go.
Dusk was giving to night.
I wanted to see my wife.
The Merthyr to Cardiff line had been cut
so I caught a bus.
I was the only one on it, and like that,
held in the brightness of its upper deck,
I travelled home alone, through the darkness,
being sick at my feet as it went.
From what I can’t say.
Exhaustion, sadness, who knows.
The body has its ways
of telling when we’ve had too much.
But as the bus sailed on
down that dark valley
with me, a dirty grain in its light,
even with my eyes closed, being sick,
I couldn’t help seeing
one specific sight –
The curtains of a house in a short terraced street
I’d passed earlier that day.
They were closed, which in Wales
not at night, means only one thing –
a house where the seeds of death
have been sown.
I walked on, but as I did
I looked down the rest of that row,
which is when I saw –
the curtains, they were drawn
in every window.
Behind drawn curtains, 116 children’s beds lie empty.
PART III
Survivors
And some of that darkness, light
Aberfan, early morning, 2016.
The sound of rumbling wheels gets louder, faster.
TOM, nine years old,
is hurtling down a pavement on his scooter.
Above the valley’s ridge turbine blades rise and fall.
In the community centre pool an elderly man swims front crawl.
As TOM rides his scooter through the streets
voices from across the village are heard.
TOM
It’s amazing our school.
Got iPads, astro turf
and loads of clubs too.
Science is my favourite.
We’ve been learning about Tim Peake
all this week.
Six months he was up there!
Mr Davies says tomorrow
we’ll see it from here –
the space station. A manmade star,
that’s what’ll be like,
passing just above the ridge,
slow, but faster than a satellite.
MARK, the community centre manager,
walks barefoot beside the pool.
MARK
I’d say of the names
who come through the door
I know about 80 per cent.
And behind the names too.
Most call it a leisure centre
but for me, well, I’d rather
see it as a talking one.
It counts for a lot, doesn’t it?
That bouncing off each other.
RHIAN, a beautician,
turns on lights in the Serenity Beauty Salon.
RHIAN
I’ll be honest, at first I wasn’t sure,
I mean, how a salon would go down in Aberfan?
How wrong was I?
Within a week of opening
I’d done half the nails in town.
Mothers and toddlers arrive at Trinity daycare.
MOTHER
My two, they love it here.
It’s just the best in the area.
Get loads of mums from elsewhere too –
Merthyr, Aberdare, Troedyrhiw.
A postman walks along Moy Road.
POSTMAN
It’s how a place gets known, isn’t it?
In all seasons.
I mean, however fine, you only ever see it true
if you’ve known it in other weathers too,
under rain, mist.
I mean, that’s when a place shows isn’t it?
In the lifting, the burning through.
MEGAN, nine years old,
is in her room getting ready for school.
MEGAN
Now dancing’s more my thing –
Cha-cha, Jive, Latin.
I play football too,
in a mixed team run by the Social.
Unless it’s tipping,
then I’ll stay inside,
listen to One Direction.
MRS MANN is pulling up the shutters at the village shop.
MRS MANN
It just looked so beautiful,
when we first drove in.
We thought it would be
a good place for the kids.
And we were right.
It’s scenic, quiet.
They feel safe, even at night.
SIMONE, headmistress at Ynysowen school,
arrives at her office.
SIMONE
When it comes to aspiration,
there’s just so much to be done.
I mean, education – for most
it’s the one shot they’ve got,
so yeah, we’ve got to get it right.
TOM arrives at the house of his grandmother, ANNE.
When she opens the door a photograph can be seen in the hallway.
It is of her as a schoolgirl with her friends BETHAN and SUZY.
TOM and ANNE leave for his school,
TOM on his scooter, ANNE walking behind.
TOM
When Mam and Dad start early,
Mam Gu takes me in.
Dad’s on the new builds, see?
Up Merthyr.
And Mam’s up there too,
at the call centre.
At the school SIMONE is watching the children arrive.
RHIAN waves to MEGAN as she enters the gates.
ANNE kisses TOM goodbye, then turns to walk
back into the village.
ANNE
I didn’t go to school for about a year after.
None of us did, who’d survived.
They put some caravans
down at the site where the Welsh school is now.
Back then it was a tip –
coal and slag at the sides.
Toys had been donated, books for us to read.
We could stay, leave,
come and go as we pleased.
&nbs
p; I didn’t live at home, either, for a while.
Went to live with an older sister.
In the street, see, every child
except me, was dead.
So I was difficult
for the other parents to see.
‘They took all the roses,’
that’s what one woman said to me.
‘And left us the thorns.’
So yeah, I went away for a bit.
When I came back my mother
was completely bald.
She’d been on the ambulances,
taking the bodies.
Weeks later her hair fell out.
‘You’re the lucky one,’
she’d say when I asked after my friends,
‘that’s all you need to know about.’
In the end they sent us
to Mount Pleasant,
but we were too disruptive,
that’s what they say –
the Pantglas kids, and the teachers too.
Every time a train went by
we’d scream, hide under desks and bins.
So then they moved us
to some portakabins,
down by where Trinity is now.
But still, if there was thunder, lightning,
the teachers would shout, tell us to hide.
They were only young themselves
and like us, still traumatised.
So yeah, wouldn’t be right
to say those who’d survived
entirely escaped that tip’s landslide.
