The Coward’s Tale Read online

  Old Lillian Harris (no relation, so he says, to Matty Harris), all red-faced from the stove and her hair white as clouds, will smile at her son’s homecoming and she’ll take a cloth and squeeze a baked potato to check it is done, ‘Just in time now. Tea’s ready. Wash your hands then.’

  Half Harris will take the Pears soap from its tray, put his head on one side and watch the strings of soap saliva glistening into the sink. He’ll work up a lather between his palms and blow the bubbles onto the windowpane, where they cling and quiver like there was a beating heart in each. He’ll raise his hands to his face and breathe in and sigh. He’ll hold the wet soap to the light to see his mam Lillian Harris a golden angel through amber with her plate of ham and potato, butter and beetroot.

  Then, over tea at the kitchen table with its cracked oilcloth patterned in faded grapes, lemons, wine bottles and biro lines, they’ll talk about the day.

  ‘And how was the fishing, Half? How was the Taff?’

  Half Harris will lay down his knife and fork, finish chewing slowly, and swallow. He will lean back in his chair that creaks like a coffin and rock back and forth, back and forth, and in the creaks he tells her his day in the only way he can, while his mam smiles and nods, for this is her son born to be a poet, but he cannot speak.

  And the creaks may tell her this, ‘Oh Mam, the river was full of coaldust today. Black it was and deep. Like a black snake that’s forgotten something, rushing back to the sea in a panic. It’s always forgetting things, that river. But it rushed on by with a sigh and an “oh dear”, leaving things to be picked up later. I went fishing, Mam. I caught hold of the bending beeches and leaned out over the river, as it left its thoughts caught on low branches. Like this rope, Mam. Caught by the knot between two twigs, and this length of old skirt. What was that doing in the river, now? Tugging and tugging away, the water was, trying to take it all down to the sea as a thank you, I expect. But I leaned out and fished with my sticks, and caught the rope, Mam. It twisted and slipped like a live thing, mind, and oh it was the devil’s own job to persuade it onto the bank. But little by little, Mam, I did it. And the cotton too. The river gave them all up with a sigh as it always does, and it went on by without a word. And oh the shining of the road outside the cinema, like gold, Mam. The silk and satin of the water in the puddles, living gold in the lights. There’s beautiful.’

  And Lillian Harris may wipe her eyes for she is old. And she will echo to her boy born to be a poet, ‘There’s beautiful indeed.’

  Then together, after tea, they will take the day’s catch up to Half Harris’s room. The rope with its knot, the length of blue-flowered drowned cotton, the rolled newspaper tied with string dropped from a bridge over Taff Fechan, a mess of sheep’s wool and eight assorted lengths of farmer’s twine, they will be draped over curtain rods, tacked to picture rails, hung over the high bedstead. And the green glass from a broken bottle will lie on the windowsill to colour the dust green and gold as the streetlights sing through the shards.

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

  Back in the town, Ianto Passchendaele Jenkins will sigh, and he will look at his watch with no hands, for it must soon be time to stop begging. And his watch looks back at him with its face all blank and hopeful. If he has the time, and if he has the ears to tell it to, he will stop and tell the story of Half Harris to those who have followed with their eyes and their questions the man with his pram as he goes up the hill all mute and smiling at the road, ‘Listen with your ears, I have a story for them, see, about Half Harris who was not born once at all, but twice. It is a story about cold and ice and water more solid than a marriage vow. But I am cold, and I am hungry, and stories need fuel they do . . .’

  And they who will listen may give him a toffee to suck, and maybe a coffee with sugar in a cardboard cup, and they will pull their collars round their ears as they listen to the old story of Jimmy Half Harris. This story has been carried many times up to the window of the Savings Bank and into the ears of Matty Harris, no relation, and he has gone to the window and banged it shut but can’t ever quite manage to keep the words of Ianto Jenkins out of his office.

  ‘Born twice, Half Harris was, see? Born to young Lillian Harris, who lost her own mam to the consumption when she was small. Then as if that was not enough, she lost her da and her grandfather on a single day – both gone into the dark down Kindly Light pit and never came up alive again. Her da Georgie Harris, collier, and her grandfather Albert Harris, foreman, soon to be promoted, too. And she remembers that day, the bad air in the house. To do with money borrowed by Georgie and not repaid because of forgetting, not malice, but once words are said they can not be unsaid. And the men went to Kindly Light the day of the accident, not together, not speaking, father and son.

  And for all this sadness, Lillian lived alone with her grandmother up there in Maerdy Street, wife of Albert Harris who never was promoted after all. Her da’s mother, black-skirted Nan Harris. And they were looked down on by those long gone, from their ebony frames all over the walls of that house.

  But was this Nan always black? Old Nan Harris? Not at all. But after that day she carried the loss of both son and husband in her heart and she turned black-browed and black-mouthed as well. That day made her into no gentle soul, and perhaps she saw her husband, her son, every single time she looked at Lillian? Who is to say.

  You have to have balance, see? Have to bring life into where the dead rule and a little happiness into a dark house, isn’t that right? So Lillian, when she grew up, found a little life where she could, and when she could, ignored mostly by that black-skirted Nan. Lillian took a job typing letters in offices. Not good enough for that Nan, of course. And we all need to find a little love somewhere, don’t we? Oh yes. Lillian, she was no different.

  So then, the grown Lillian was expecting – but who was this child’s da? Who indeed? If Lillian Harris did not know, then who could say? But she did not tell that Nan, and hid her belly with strapping, away from her nan and the street, but when she was alone, she rejoiced, for this child was to be a poet. She fed him, unborn, with all the words she could find in books, all the music and the beauty of the valleys. She fed him with words she read to herself silent at night and aloud in the day to make those words as alive as songs. Until she could not hide him any longer, her son, and then oh, she lived in a cold house, and waited for him to be born.

  But he did not wait. He was born early and not breathing on a cold night with ice glassing the insides of the windows, the puddles on the pavements frozen, and the water in the cistern solid. A night when the wind shouted to itself under the eaves and covered his mam’s cries. Out he slid all glassy as a fish and as silent, into the hands of that Nan in her black skirt all ready to play funeral director, for there was to be no calling of the neighbours. And he was blue and dead, this boy child, and that Nan did not even let his young mam hold him. Instead, she took him away, and left Lillian Harris with her mouth full of tears and his name, “Oh my James, and he was to be a poet . . .”

  But then – while the old woman was gone from the room, and while the wind was still howling round the eaves and the thunder beginning to growl, there was born all sudden, there on the floor itself, a second child no one knew was coming at all. And this baby was pink, and healthy and shouting its arrival loud enough for two, which was the rightness of the thing, was it not?

  And the young mam, she dealt with this second child herself, and wrapped him in blankets for him to be safe and not seen that night, and held him tight to her breast back in her bed at last, warm and dark.

  Meanwhile, the first child who was born dead, he was taken away by that black-skirted black-hearted Nan, fast as she could down the stairs while the dead up on their walls in their ebony frames looked on and rubbed their hands to take him to their bony breasts. And it was a cold cold night with the air as sharp as blades when that Nan carried the child outside, wrapping him round in a torn half-sheet from the linen press, into the
dark of the garden.

  She dug that child into the soil among the frozen drills all ready for the spring planting when the earth would ring with the green of shallot spikes and the frills of parsley. But now the soil was black as the night. Black as a night scattered with stars, it was, both above and below – for the soil was pointed with ice and it was too cold for the living to stay out of doors long with no coat. And the soil too hard as well for the living to dig deep, and that was both the blessing and the salvation for this child. For look, that Nan dug him shallow for it, and laid him, wrapped only in his half-sheet, in the earth, and only half-covered him, for it was too cold even for foxes, and it would all be better done in the good light of early morning, before the neighbours woke. And then, she took herself back into the house, and to her bed, to worry later about the morning. Did not even look in on that young mam, Lillian Harris, and she left the girl to herself. For it is a dreadful thing to have a child with no ring on your finger and what would she be saying to the street if they knew?

  The thunder rolled down from the Beacons that night fit to unearth the dead and to split the river from its frozen banks. A crashing to keep sinners inside for fear of demons pouring from the deep cracks in the mountain. And all the while the boy born second and well slept tight and warm against his mother in the darkness of her bed, as that young mam who could not sleep at all whispered, “I will call you Matthew. Matty Harris, a good name.” And her first son slept in the black earth. And that earth did not fill his mouth that night but instead it clasped him round and held him in its arms. So, you see, the first arms to hold him were the cold soil rills, and the first voice to sing to him was the ice creaking round his womb-warm skin.

  And the new mam Lillian Harris, half-sleeping from a medicine she found in a drawer, took the thunder into her heart like it was her own alarm. She held her second son Matty, who was born well, and she waited in the warmth of her bed for the other half of sleep to cover the house. And then, putting a finger to her lips to tell the sleeping child he must not waken that woman through the wall, she got out of her bed to find her first son. For she had not held him. Not at all. And all she wanted to do was hold him the once, to speak his name – James, Jimmy Harris – into his mouth as is right.

  From room to room she went in that house, quiet as anything, searching in all the small places he might have been left, upstairs and down. But he was nowhere to be found. Nowhere. Until all that was left to be searched were the coalhouse outside and the outside lavvy, and maybe, poor love, he was out there?

  Out she went in her nightclothes into the throat of the darkness, and the thunder. And her child was not wrapped in the coalhouse, and on the floor of the lavvy was nothing but sand. But there was a moon that night, shining on the soil in that back garden, and she saw where the soil was freshly dug. She could not shout out, although her breast was bursting with calling for her son. She dug with her bare fingers where the soil was disturbed, and found her first child there, the torn half-sheet over his face.

  She took him up out of the earth and held him blue and cold to her breast on that night full of thunder. Is it not a dreadful thing to find your first-born blue, and cold, and alone? So for one night she would take this son, the son she called James, Jimmy Harris, to her bed to be with her, his mother, and his brother for a few hours only. And she did, Lillian Harris carried her child back into the house and to her bed. And there, with the other child quiet and looking after itself and no trouble to anyone, she lay in the warm with her first, breathing his name into his blue mouth, and telling him all the words she could – for he was, after all, her son born to be a poet. But then she was spent, and she went to sleep for the rest of the night, like that.

  And in the morning then, oh, the glowering and black-skirted Nan with her dented bucket half-full of water for scrubbing the back door step . . . for the Devil will not cross a scrubbed step. Indeed he won’t, for if he lives inside there is no need to cross it, is there? And she found her own black soil on the step, and she shivered to think that soil had come from her own funeral boots in the night – that it was soil from the digging of a child’s grave, brought by the Devil, trailing darkness. She got down on her knees and scrubbed that step and prayed all the while, until the step was as white as a new gravestone, and her soul was the same colour as the night before.’

  At this very point those listening with their ears and their hearts will go still as glass, and make quiet promises they may not keep. And Ianto Jenkins watches them, nodding, before he continues the story.

  ‘She stood in her kitchen, that black-skirted Nan, and shivered again and again, each time she saw the black soil here, and here, and there on the cracked tiles and the prints of bare toes. She clutched at her old heart to keep it going and she prayed hard as she lifted her feet up the creaking stair, to find what she would find.

  And what did she find then, but Lillian, her own granddaughter, the new young mam, asleep and warm in her bed, and the bedding all scattered with black earth stars like confetti. Curled up and asleep she found her, curled round a new son wrapped in a dirty old half-sheet. A son who was not dead at all that morning, but stretching and yawning instead, telling the world stories with his fists and searching like a kitten with his blind, pink mouth, not making a sound. Then there was a cry from that Nan to see the child she had buried only the night before, alive and mouthing against his mam. Then a second cry, smaller, and one that woke the young mam, finally. A cry from another boy, wound in a blanket and bundled against his mam’s back. A second son calling for his first meal.

  And all that old black-skirted Nan had to say was, “Aww, my good sheets,” for a first and final welcome to them both.’

  Ianto Passchendaele Jenkins pauses. And the listeners will forget about the film and their toffees and will shake their heads, ‘Aww bless him, bach, bless him, the love.’

  ‘Bless him indeed. Bless them both, then?’

  ‘And he is a poet now, the one?’

  And Ianto Jenkins will sigh, and will tap his watch with no hands, and shake his head.

  ‘He is a poet indeed. But he has no voice and no writing either, for he was born twice, wasn’t he? Born the once at night with the neighbours sleeping, out of a young mam who filled him unborn with all the words she could find for him to be a poet, and once again out of the earth as black as black and shining with ice and stars.

  And the name that chose him out of his mother’s mouth when he was dead was James Harris. But later, when they saw his voice was left behind in the earth, they called him Half Harris because before he had lived at all he was dead. And now, before he dies again, look, he is only half-alive, so some say, and it can only be a half-dying he does when his time is ready, after all his living and fishing is done.

  But his brother, he is alive as can be. And brought up by that black-skirted Nan herself after all, who left the poet who couldn’t speak to his own mother. For who wants a boy who cannot speak? Who cannot walk sometimes? The boy Matty Harris got all the promotions that her husband Albert Harris never had. And she was old, that Nan, and she died, leaving nothing at all to the poet. She left the shell of her house, up there in Maerdy Street, to Lillian. And everything else, she left to Matty, for him to learn his sums, and more sums, and how to wear a suit.’

  And Ianto Jenkins will look up at the window of the Savings Bank, where a shadow is crossing the room. ‘He does well enough, Matty Harris does, look at him with his suits and his mahogany display case up by there. Deputy Manager of the Savings Bank. And he takes no notice of his older brother by minutes, a poet with no voice, who cannot write neither. Takes no notice, and says he is no relation.’

  And the listeners will wipe their eyes and say, ‘Aww, bach, bless him, no voice? There’s a shame.’

  ‘No voice?’ Ianto Passchendaele Jenkins will say. ‘No voice? And that is why he wanders with his pram, is it, looking for his voice on the ground? Finding his words on the tips, and in the river water? His mam tells me his wor
ds are beautiful – and who am I to give her the lie?’

  He will look at his watch with no hands and tap it and sigh, for it looks back at him and tells him just what he wants to hear, that it is time to stop begging and go to sleep. But before he does, he needs to finish the story.

  ‘If Half’s words unspoken are beautiful, then the words of his brother who has a voice are not. That brother is “no relation” so he says, and he will have nothing to do with draping rope and string on bedposts, and nothing to do with half-beings who push prams through towns in the halflight.

  Works only for money, he does, and married it too, years ago. Eunice, daughter of a solicitor from Swansea who wants nothing to do with her half-brother-in-law either and will not have him spoken about in her house. Matty Harris has not been up to Maerdy Street for years. Ignores them both, his brother and his mam now. Dreadful. There is no love lost in that house in Bethesda Mansions, oh no. Not at all. There was little enough to lose in the first place.’

  He looks up at the window of the Savings Bank, to see Matty Harris watching and shutting his ears to words that rise into the evening air and work their way in despite him, like termites burrowing into ebony.

  ‘Always up early, Half is. Pours himself a glass of milk then leaves his old mam one of his notes. Takes an old pencil stub and licks it, and kicks the table-leg with his boot, I shouldn’t wonder, to help the writing come out of the pencil where it lives in a black stringball as far as Half is concerned. Sticks his tongue right out to write a single wavy line for the Taff on the back of an old envelope, props it up against a milk bottle for his mam, and he goes out with his pram.