The Coward’s Tale Read online

  The boy Laddy Merridew, there on the cinema steps, chews at a nail, and Ianto Jenkins nods, and smiles at him.

  ‘So, for all those feathers, the lads at the school gave him the gift of the name “Icarus” a long time back, and the name has stuck, as names do. But flying anywhere is the last thing he will be doing, until this task is done. Impossible, he says. But he never quite gives up trying.’

  Here, the cinemagoers walk away with their heads together to see if they can do the thing that Icarus cannot. Making plans to go home and to find a knife from the drawer in the kitchen, and a sliver of wood from the basket by the front room fire.

  But the boy Laddy Merridew does not. After the story is done he does not go home to his gran on the Brychan even though it may be suppertime, but he walks up the track to the farm where there is a house with broken windows, a barn with a good roof still, and a caravan on bricks.

  There is no one about. There is not much light in the barn. It smells dusty. Against the wall there are tins of varnish, two ladders, a pile of wood, a workbench. And boxes, more boxes. Like the ones in the workshop at school but these must have been there years. The ones at the bottom collapsing under the weight of the ones above. The cardboard splitting, and spilling onto the floor of the barn curls of wood carved to look like feathers. Thousands of them. Must be every feather that Icarus Evans has ever made, since he was a boy.

  Laddy hides where he cannot be seen from the yard, and he watches and waits until the Woodwork Teacher comes down the track on his bike.

  Laddy watches Icarus Evans take a plate of something from his caravan to his bench. He watches him eat, and when he has eaten, sees him return to the caravan and come out holding a small cage. He watches as his Woodwork Teacher lets a bird out of the cage and onto the ground, a thin string round its leg, an injured bird that runs in starts and stops to find a berry, a crumb of bread on the earth. And he watches as the bird is put back in its cage, and the cage taken back into the caravan.

  Smoke from slow allotment fires drifts across the yard and the boy lifts his face to the scents as Icarus Evans comes out of his caravan with a few wood shavings and a blade. This blade is thin, sharp. He sits on the bench where the boy can see him, and sweeps the blade through the air, and it does not so much as part the smoke layers.

  He holds the blade light and flat against the back of his hand, where the veins stream under the skin. He does not move. He lets the pulse of his blood shiver the skin against the blade until the slightest wisp of skin is lifted away. A sliver, membrane-thin, light as a bee’s wing and as transparent, which slides off the blade, lifts into the air and disappears. The boy peers to see Icarus’s hand where the skin parted, to see if there is blood. And there is not one drop.

  Then Icarus holds a woodshaving in his fingers, the wood pale in the evening light. The blade presses itself against the wood, finding its small sinews, waiting for the wood’s pulse to work blade and wood together. Slight enough to shiver cross-filaments the thickness of those on a fleck of down from the breast of a wren.

  Laddy Merridew watches until Icarus has made a feather this way. Or maybe it is the blade that does it all. Beautiful. A curl of down, but made of wood. And Laddy watches as Icarus Evans inspects the carving, as he stands up, holding the feather between finger and thumb. Then Laddy ducks as Icarus turns to walk across the field, searching the rowans where sparrows roost by the spring, stretching up to find a real feather caught in the twigs.

  From where he hides, Laddy can see exactly, as right by the spring his teacher holds up the two feathers, one real, one not, one in each hand. He holds them high over his head, then throws them both into the air, there between the rowan trees.

  The newborn wooden cousin falls straight down and lands in the water. It floats for a moment and is carried to the edge of the spring, where the water begins its journey over the lip of the earth to the stream. But then the spring stops. The water goes still and dark. The wooden feather circles slowly towards the centre, and then, silently, it is taken, swallowed, deep into the earth. Icarus turns away, and the boy ducks again but not before he sees the real sparrow’s feather float gently and perfectly to the ground.

  And not before he in turn is seen by his teacher. ‘Who’s that? You come out right now.’

  Laddy comes out from behind the barn. ‘It’s me, Mr Evans. Ieuan – Laddy Merridew.’

  ‘Spying on me, are you?’

  ‘No, Mr Evans. Yes, Mr Evans.’

  Icarus Evans waves a hand at Laddy as he strides across the yard. ‘Go on with you. Get off home. Where are the others?’ He looks round. ‘Haven’t you lot got anything better to do?’

  ‘I’m on my own, Mr Evans.’ Laddy’s voice is small. ‘There aren’t any others. I wanted to see . . .’

  ‘See? See what?’

  ‘You, making a feather. Like you said.’

  ‘Can’t be done. Impossible. Get off home.’

  Laddy pushes his glasses up his nose. ‘Sorry. Sorry.’ And he makes for the track. But Icarus Evans hasn’t finished.

  ‘Come back here.’

  ‘Mr Evans?’

  ‘Wait there . . .’ Icarus Evans ducks into the caravan, and comes back out holding the rowan cage.

  ‘Here. Penance for snooping. You can look after this.’

  Laddy Merridew’s eyes are as bright as the bird’s, ‘Really?’

  Icarus Evans just grunts, ‘It’s almost mended . . . should be better soon,’ and the boy pushes the rowan cage under his jumper and runs off down the track before his teacher can change his mind.

  In the Porch of Ebenezer Chapel

  There are pigeons roosting in the rafters of the chapel porch. And sometimes, a few feathers will land on the beggar Ianto Passchendaele Jenkins, smiling in his sleep on the stone bench under his newspapers.

  Laddy Merridew arrives next morning on his way to school, the bird in its rowan cage held firmly under his jumper and some of his gran’s budgie’s food in his pocket. He finds Ianto Jenkins still asleep, a pigeon feather caught in his hair. The boy takes something from his other pocket and reaches out to place it inside one of the beggar’s boots, but Ianto Jenkins stirs and opens one eye. When he sees Laddy he moves and the newspapers slip to the flagstones with a sigh.

  ‘Sorry, Mr Jenkins. Did I wake you?’

  ‘Only a little.’ He speaks quietly, looking up at Laddy’s face, as though he sees other questions there.

  Laddy hands the something to the beggar. ‘Here, your handkerchief. Thank you.’

  Ianto Jenkins takes the handkerchief, and something else falls out of the folds. He sits up and examines it. A liquorish Catherine wheel. He raises an eyebrow. Laddy Merridew pushes his glasses back up his nose. ‘Breakfast,’ he says.

  Ianto Jenkins grins. ‘Spanish. My favourite . . .’

  The boy grins in return. ‘Mine too. I like the middles.’

  Laddy watches Ianto Jenkins wrapping the Catherine wheel back in his handkerchief, then folding the newspapers that were last night’s blankets. He looks round the chapel porch, at the kit bag pushed under the bench, the boots and the watch waiting on the flagstones, old and uneven. At the rafters where two pigeons are grumbling to themselves. And finally, at the double doors of the chapel, their grey paint flaking away from another layer of grey paint, one door wedged open, the wood swollen.

  Laddy touches the door, pushes. ‘Can I go in?’

  ‘You can indeed, but there’s nothing in there,’ Ianto Jenkins says, pulling on his boots.

  The boy takes the rowan cage from under his jumper, puts it on the flagstones. ‘Can I leave this here a minute?’ and he disappears into Ebenezer.

  Ianto waits, unwrapping the liquorish again, listening. There is not much to hear, but enough. The boy’s shoes on the floorboards echoing against the peeling plaster of the walls, stopping now and then as he peers up at the six painted windows each side. He is a while. Finally, he emerges, blinking, ‘Nice in there.’

  The beggar nods.


  ‘I like the windows.’

  ‘Nice windows indeed.’

  Laddy Merridew looks back into the chapel. ‘Are they special?’

  ‘I expect.’ Ianto Jenkins pulls off a piece of liquorish and puts it in his mouth, ‘I keep an eye.’ His hair, thin, wispy, is standing up round his head like a dusty halo as he chews his breakfast behind a slow smile, ‘Haven’t had Spanish since I don’t know when . . .’

  ‘The windows. I thought they were meant to be the Twelve Apostles, but they aren’t, not properly.’

  ‘No. Not properly. Just twelve ordinary men.’

  There is a cough then from one ordinary man standing on the steps of the Savings Bank, Matthew ‘Matty’ Harris, Deputy Manager, fishing in his pockets for the key. The boy squares his shoulders, sighs. ‘I suppose I ought to be off. School.’ And he picks up the bird in its rowan cage, slips it back under his jumper and turns to go.

  Ianto Jenkins calls him back. ‘I don’t think I’d take the bird to school? Leave him with me, fetch him after. If you like.’

  Laddy Merridew does like, so the bird is handed over and put under the bench. Ianto Jenkins says nothing for a moment or two, unravelling what’s left of the Catherine wheel then sticking it together again. Then he nods, ‘You remind me very much of my little brother Ifor who I called The Maggot. Look just like him. He had red hair too. Spitting image, you are. If I do call you Maggot by mistake, will that matter?’

  Laddy Merridew shakes his head. ‘I’m the only one with this colour hair in our house. Dad says I’m a throwback. I’d like to be Maggot . . .’ and he’s off down the chapel steps, smiling a small smile, off to the High Street and school, where the names they call him are not as kind.

  The Halfwit’s Tale and the Deputy Bank Manager’s Tale i

  At sundown, after rain, the streetlights spread gold over the tarmac in the High Street until the puddles fizz like a kid’s spilt drink. And Jimmy ‘Half’ Harris, on his way back from the river, will stop outside the cinema in his jumblesale trousers held up with string, and park his old pram filled with pieces of rope, cloth and sticks. He will grin with what teeth he has left in his head, and look up at Ianto Passchendaele Jenkins in khaki, begging on the steps of the cinema, sucking on a toffee. Half Harris will grin and he’ll grunt, for he cannot speak, and he may wave one hand in the air as if he’s calling down the stars from heaven. Ianto Passchendaele Jenkins will catch the grin like it’s been thrown through the air. ‘Hiya, Half. Been fishing again?’

  Half Harris will catch hold of the pram and rock it like it holds a sleeping child. Then Ianto Jenkins will look up at the windows of the Savings Bank where the Deputy Manager, Matthew ‘Matty’ Harris, no relation of Half’s, may not yet have left for home – instead, he will be standing at the window as his Clerk Tommo Price puts on his coat and says, ‘That’s it for today then.’

  Matty Harris, no relation, will have straightened and straightened his papers that need no straightening at all. He’ll have opened and closed the drawers of his desk to hear the small sounds of their importance. Then another sound may join them. The telephone on Matty Harris’s desk may ring, and he’ll blush and blink and he’ll cough and say, ‘Best not leave it,’ as his hand hovers over the phone like it’s a quivering breast all ready and waiting. Tommo Price the Bank Clerk will check his watch and smile, ‘New customer, could be,’ and his smile will go out of the door and into the street.

  Matty Harris will wait, and breathe in deep to lift the phone, then click his tongue when it is only a wrong number. He’ll sigh and go to the window and rest his forehead against the glass.

  Matty Harris watches the steps of the cinema where Jimmy ‘Half’ Harris is stopped with his grin and his pram, and sees Tommo Price and Ianto Passchendaele Jenkins stop their walking and their thinking and come to the pram. ‘Show us your catch then, Half?’

  Half Harris may stand in his jumblesale trousers and bend over his pram to lift his catch into the light. His catch will let fall diamonds onto the road: a rope with its knot still dripping, a length of blue-flowered drowned cotton, a rolled newspaper tied with string dropped from a bridge over Taff Fechan, a mess of sheep’s wool, eight assorted lengths of farmer’s twine and a broken green bottle.

  ‘Well, there’s a grand fisherman you are, Half,’ Tommo Price says, and Half Harris, as though he has been given a bright new medal, will grin with tombstone teeth and turn his head to his bony shoulder as Tommo Price walks off up the hill, hands in pockets.

  Ianto Passchendaele Jenkins may pat Half on the same bony shoulder as Half lays his catch back to sleep in the pram, neat as anything, pulling the cracked hood up to keep off the drizzle. And Ianto Jenkins will nod to no one in particular as Half Harris goes off pushing his pram, walking round the puddles in the High Street like they were sleeping things not to be disturbed.

  A knot of schoolboys will be smoking in the deep doorway of Tutt Bevan the Undertaker’s, their backs to his window with its urns and stone doves, and they may wave to Half Harris as he goes by and chorus, ‘Hiya, Half,’ all except for one who says, ‘Who’s that then, friend of yours?’ and that boy will not be given a second cigarette.

  Back at the Savings Bank, Matty Harris, framed in the window, will not nod or smile. He will shake his head, for this is no relation of his with his grunts and his pram and sticks, and he turns away from the window and the High Street to face his wall. On the wall is a white-squared paper calendar on which every day, tomorrow, next week, next month is bare as bones. He will take a thick black pen from his drawer and cross out today with a line as thick as a frown, a nice thick black line to show the day done and complete.

  Then he’ll take a boiled handkerchief from his pocket and wind it like a grey shroud round his pointing finger, and he’ll point and polish his own real treasure . . . the new conker-shining mahogany display case on the wall, as empty and yawning as a waiting grave. A display case made special only this week by the Woodwork Teacher Icarus Evans from a few of Tutt Bevan’s offcuts. A display case the exact size of a proud and exhausted fish to be caught by a real fisherman in the Taff before too long. And with his shrouded finger he’ll buff and buff the already buffed wood, and he’ll breathe on the glass to cloud it, and shine it and shine it until he can see his face in it again, and behind him the squinting High Street with its golden river.

  And a shiver will run over his hand and he’ll stuff the handkerchief deep into his pocket, click his tongue and pull a thread from his sleeve, for he has not brought a change of shoes and must tread the damp and street grime into the hallway of number two Bethesda Mansions where Mrs Eunice Harris – most definitely related, by marriage, to Mr Matty Harris – will be waiting in the dining room, all dark and smelling of onion sauce, tripe and lavender polish, both. She may be reading her own reflection in the top of the dining table with its silver knives glinting like duelling swords, all the while nodded at by the Harris dead high on their brown walls. And she will be readying her tongue to drive cold slivers into Matty Harris’s ears, about half-beings and prams and shame.

  Matty Harris will feel dry-throated at the very thought and he pulls his coat on, rattles his keys, and is off by the back way to The Cat on the corner of Maerdy Street.

  And there, in The Cat, perhaps there will be talk of real fishing in the Taff. Matty Harris may pull at the thread from his sleeve as he watches Maggie the publican’s wife in her low dress and her low smile and her low eyes. And he may murmur about eddies and deeps as she leans forward to pull him a half pint.

  Philip ‘Factual’ Philips, Deputy in charge up the Public Library, will dip a finger in a drip of ale on the shining bar top, and he will draw a map, a slow map of a bend in the river where it pauses under the alders before gathering speed to the weir where there is a fish lazing in the shallows. A fish that swims upstream, its scales like mirrors, a fish the size of a yawning new mahogany display case made just this week by Icarus Evans.

  And outside The Cat, on the
damp pavement, Jimmy ‘Half’ Harris will park his pram after its journey up the hill with one wheel wobbling for want of a tightened bolt. The door of The Cat will be ajar, the round dark smell of ale and cigarette smoke trickling out down the step, as Half Harris puts his smile round the door and listens for the talk of fishing in the Taff.

  ‘Come in, Half, mun. Don’t let the air in, now.’

  Half Harris will sidle in, all smiles and no money. Factual Philips may buy him a small glass of lemonade, and Half Harris will stand at the bar holding the lemonade to the light to see the drink send pins of fire into the air. He’ll watch the librarian drawing his map on the bar and listen to the talk of the fishing.

  ‘The size of a terrier that fish.’

  ‘A fish and three quarters, look.’

  ‘What I wouldn’t give for that fish . . .’

  ‘Indeed, and on my wall at the Savings Bank with a little neat metal label . . .’

  ‘Duw, yes. A little stamped metal label right enough. Caught after a two-year honourable campaign by Philip Philips, Deputy Librarian.’

  ‘That’s right, yes. Assiduous fight is better though. And Matthew Harris, Bank Manager.’

  ‘Can’t both be catching it though, now?’

  ‘Indeed. Caught by a Harris that fish will be.’

  And Half Harris will have half-drunk his lemonade and be listening with his mouth catching flies, and drawing his own map on the bar in lemonade until the publican’s wife lifts her eyes and her voice, ‘Will you be off now, Half?’

  Matty Harris will say nothing, as there is nothing to say, but Factual Philips smiles and looks at the bar, ‘Drawing your own fishing map then, Half?’

  And Half Harris will blush and turn his cheek to his bony shoulder and he’ll flap his hands all dirty from the river. Off he goes down the steps into the damp and the dusk, followed out of the doors by laughter and the smell of ale, to push his pram home to number eleven Maerdy Street then down the alley to the back.