by Owen Sheers
We got out, yes,
and most of us have got on too.
But the shadow of that shale,
those tailings –
it’s long and deep, and cast inside.
How could it not be?
We were children,
going to school with our friends
then, minutes later,
climbing out again, without them.
DAVE, now in his seventies,
is in Megabytes, formally Emanuelli’s café.
As he makes himself a coffee –
DAVE
People came together after.
It was the only way.
A new magazine
did a lot of good work – Headway.
Community run, made sure
the same story, at the same time,
got out to everyone.
It’s all stood us in good stead, I’d say.
Over forty groups
came together in association.
It’s meant from then on,
we’ve spoken as one, more or less.
Vigilance – that became the watchword,
for the village’s wellbeing.
And we’ve had to be,
because make no doubt
there have been hard times since.
The strike, the mine closing,
drugs ravaging the young.
Then they tried to build a road,
the A470, right through Aberfan.
Well, no way that was going to happen.
Even this place – when the Emanuellis left,
it became a community caff.
Don’t get me wrong.
It’s not like there hasn’t been anger.
Of course there was. Still is.
I remember on the Monday after,
when it first made itself known,
when our silent grief became heard.
It was at an inquest at Zion chapel
into the deaths of thirty of the children.
The coroner, he was reading out the causes –
asphyxia, multiple injuries –
when from out of the crowd
a father, stood.
24 October, 1966 – DAI stands at the inquest.
DAI
No, sir. Buried alive
by the National Coal Board.
That’s what I want
on the official record.
DAVE
The coroner, Mr Hamilton,
he paused, and in that silence
a woman cried out –
BETTY at the inquest.
BETTY
They have killed our children!
DAVE
But we had to heal, and I’d say we have.
Whole place is greening back up.
Go up the canal bank, in July, August,
when the thistle heads are seeding,
catching the light, early berries budding,
chaffinches singing.
Well, beautiful it is.
I’ve always tried to do my bit,
set up a scheme for apprenticeships,
that kind of thing. Can’t say why,
because I was there, perhaps,
or because I’m still here.
Or maybe because I’ve always felt lucky.
My father, see, he was deputy,
at the school, but had a stroke
a few weeks before.
His replacement was Dai Beynon,
a lovely man. And his class,
they sent my father a card.
I found it again, just the other day
and, well, it brought it home again.
Every single child who’d signed,
they’d died, and Dai Beynon too.
Not one left alive.
So yeah, maybe that’s why.
WILL, now sixty-six, is entering the community centre gym.
WILL
I let the boxing slip, after.
Somehow didn’t seem right.
And well, Mam and Dad,
they needed me at home.
And I needed to be there too.
And I didn’t. I mean,
that’s where it was hardest I suppose.
Where the space left by Tomos
was most felt, most known.
I won’t lie, I went off the rails for a bit.
Lots of us did. And not just the kids.
Studies were done, proved what we knew.
That depression here was higher,
especially among the women, and drinking too.
Hardly a surprise. I mean,
I’ve had my own daughter since,
so I know. Is there anything more alive
than an eight-, nine-year-old child? No.
So imagine losing all that life at once,
all that talk and song and dance and fight.
Enough to put any place out for the count.
There’s one woman I know
still waiting for her girl to come home.
Sits there, every day, watching out the window.
But we got back up, didn’t we? That’s for sure.
As a village, and on our own.
Me? I took up at JJ’s, became a mechanic,
and married Barbara too.
I don’t know, we’d always been keen on each other
and even though my brother died
while her sister survived, well, we’d both still lost,
in a way. Maybe that drew us closer, I like to think so.
I still think of my friends every week.
The ones I was with when that slurry
came down the street. The ones who ran
the other way, and just because of that …
I think of my brother too, of course.
What type of man he’d have been.
If he’d had kids, in their faces,
how much of him or me we’d have seen.
But you’ve got to move on haven’t you?
Lots happened since then.
Barbara and I are grandparents now!
And our Rhian’s doing well.
She’s got the salon in here, see?
In the squash court. Had an outside wall –
could never get any speed on the ball,
so they offered it to her, and she went for it.
SIMONE is standing at the school entrance,
overseeing latecomers.
SIMONE
They’ve had some tough decades
these south Wales valleys.
Forty per cent unemployment
and lots of working poor.
So for me, it’s about opening the world
to these kids. And their eyes.
Letting them see what they could do,
who they could be.
Because you can only aspire
to what you can imagine, or see.
All that though, the teaching,
running a school,
that comes easily enough to me.
But then there’s other stuff
that’s harder to negotiate.
Each year, for example,
we mark the disaster’s date.
And we should too. But it’s difficult,
sometimes, to know exactly what to do.
Some want to talk, to remember,
others, stay quiet, forget.
And here, well, they’re just kids,
same age as those who died.
So yes, we teach it, but gently,
as part of the general history.
It’s still so close to home for them –
the communal grave in the cemetery,
the plaques on the walls in the centre,
and for some, still there, still alive
in their grandparents’ memories.
RHIAN is working in Serenity Salon.
MYFANWY, now eighty, is waiting for her treatment.
RHIAN
Aberfan, it’s known isn’t it?
and people are like ‘Oh’, nodding,
thinking of the disaster.
But that’s not the whole story.
I mean, if it was, they must think
we’re a miserable place,
sitting round crying, long in the face.
But that’s not true.
Take the Young Wives Club.
I know it grew from what happened,
but then it grew beyond it too – I’d say that’s fair?
Buses to London, theatre trips,
that’s mostly what they do,
from what the ladies tell me in this chair.
MYFANWY
And laughing. Might sound strange but it’s true,
and partly why the group was formed.
We felt guilty, see, whether your child
had survived or died,
to be seen laughing in the street or having fun.
But we were human. And hurting terribly,
all of us, which is why it was so vital
to have somewhere we could go
to laugh, cry, have a recital
or just talk, get on a bus and go out,
to forget and remember, together.
It became a way we could offer too,
contribute I mean, in the community.
Meals on wheels, we started those.
Donkey derbies for charity,
entertained the old people,
held keep fit classes – very popular, those –
twenty, thirty of us, all in leotards
doing aerobics in the hall.
And from early on we organised speakers –
on literature, history – and trips as well,
to London on the train,
coming back at three in the morning,
Stratford upon Avon for the R.S.C.
Oh we’ve been getting some great deals lately!
Went to the opera recently, in Cardiff,
saw Madam Butterfly, and Falstaff!
DAN, now sixty, is sitting in his home.
DAN
How to talk about it.
That’s been a struggle from the very start.
When something like that happens
a village, a person, they’re bound to go dark.
They did their best, they really did.
Psychologists offered to the community,
educational and clinical.
But all that, those processes,
they were still in their infancy.
And sometimes, well, right then, straight after,
isn’t when you need them.
I remember, for example,
the one appointed to me, he’d say
don’t think about bad things,
like what happened,
but happy things, like your birthday.
My birthday! How could he have known?
There was no worse thing.
I’d been looking forward to mine,
Twenty, thirty friends at a party.
But then when the date came
there were only three, four of us about,
and that’s when it really sunk in.
My friends, they’d been wiped out.
When the hospital sent me home
playing outside was frowned upon.
I suffered from guilt, bed wetting,
lack of concentration.
So yes, how do you talk about that?
Can you blame anyone
for wanting to shut the world out
and just carry on?
There was, at least, a public conversation.
The funerals first, of course,
a kind of communal speech of grief –
the grave like a trench,
the hearses, the crowds, the flowers.
Even the coffins, allowed home again
the evening before,
so mothers and fathers across Aberfan
might say goodnight, blow a kiss,
close the door on sleep once more.
Then there were the inquests, the tribunal.
Another public conversation
and necessary, I’m sure,
though many found it hard
to settle with its conclusion.
No one prosecuted, no one sacked
nor forced to resign – and with the N.C.B.
claiming no knowledge or sign
of a spring under the tip.
After generations had swum in it.
Corporate manslaughter,
that’s what it amounted to.
‘Not wickedness but ignorance, ineptitude
and a failure of communication’
that’s what the final report claimed,
and that the N.C.B. carried the blame
for a lack of regulation.
But perhaps if good were to come
it was always going to come
from another direction.
From inside, not out.
Here, that meant the forming of groups,
how we’ve always, in every generation,
had our best conversation –
Not alone, but as one.
DAI, now eighty-five, is setting up the rehearsal room
for the Ynysowen Male Voice Choir.
DAI
I was on the tip removal committee.
Had to be really. Like everyone else
I wanted them gone.
Not surprising, when you think what they’d done.
But after the tribunal they were inspected
and the N.C.B. declared them safe.
No reason to go, that’s what they said.
Well, we wouldn’t take no.
Because that wasn’t the point, was it?
Safe or not (and we’d heard that before)
we didn’t want to see them each day
when we opened our doors.
Piles of the stuff on the mountain side,
dug out, for many of us,
by our very own hands.
It took my boy away –
that was reason enough for me.
So we formed the committee.
Towards the end things got a bit militant,
sacks of slurry on the Welsh Secretary’s steps,
that kind of thing, but eventually,
they went.
Which is when we were left asking,
what next?
Removing those tips, see? It brought us together,
and in a way, no denying, it helped
and we didn’t want that helping to end.
So, we had a meeting and someone said, why not a choir?
Well, I’d always enjoyed singing,
so I was up for it and so were the others,
twelve in total. We chose our name that night too –
Ynysowen, from the phone exchange area,
and set out what we’d do.
Sing only for charity and only for free.
We wanted to say thank you, see?
To all those people and countries
who’d sent donations, who’d let us know
that they were there.
And we’ve stuck to that plan.
The choir’s changed of course, lots of new men,
but that spirit hasn’t, still the same.
We’ve sung the Albert Hall, Hyde Park
on V. E. Day and toured, well,
more than I can say.
Ireland, Scotland, Germany, France,
but England mostly,
the north and the east,
that’s where we like to return to the most.
It can be a struggle, of course,
to keep numbers up, and to keep the right mix.
Always been strong in the bass we have,
but tenors, altos, thinner on the ground.
But we’re still here, and still singing,
that’s the main thing.
And each time we do, well,
I think of it as a tribute of sorts.
To my boy, and his playing with both hands
and, of course, to everyone else who died.
But not just to them.
Also, in a way, to us, the village,
to those who’ve survived.
ANNE is having a coffee in the community centre café.
ANNE
It was years later, when we were adults,
that we all finally talked about it.
Not just those who’d been pupils in the school,
but the teachers too. Looking back
they were so young as well, just N.Q.T.s,
twenty-two, twenty-three.
We got in touch, said right, let’s do this.
Asked each other questions, shared our stories
and got really drunk as we did,
as if it was the only way
we could let everything out.
Since then, I’d say it’s been better.
All of us still carry the scars, of course,
and I couldn’t help notice,
that none of us, when we met, had held down
relationships – either never married
or had, then divorced.
We’d mostly been successful, though.
A barrister, a writer, an accountant, a mayor –
as if having survived that collapsing pile
we’d made a pact with ourselves
to make the living we’d been given worthwhile.
DAN arrives at the Ynysowen Male Voice Choir rehearsals.
Other members are also filtering through the door, rolling the
piano into position.
DAN
I studied hard, in the end. Went to university
then worked for years in the City.
I felt in a way like I had a duty,
to succeed not just for me, but for my friends as well,
