The Coward’s Tale Read online

  Ianto pauses. As if he is listening. ‘Her voice. It is in me, here, and now. She said this over and over, and her voice would change, “Never let a collier go home once he has left for the pit, Ianto. If something is forgotten, and he goes back to fetch it, lock the doors, do not let him out again . . .” And my da, a collier himself, “Hannah Jenkins, what does a boy want with old wives’ stories? I will be emptying this bucket over your head soon . . .” and he chased her round the back garden with the bucket that lived over the tap, and she caught her skirt on the rose bush. Da said, “I will be sending you to live with the old spinster-women Watkins if you aren’t careful,” and I can still hear Mam’s laugh. But I try, Maggot . . . and I cannot see her face.’

  There is the sound of a car making its way along Maerdy Street, gears crashing. The engine stopping, a door closing. Laddy says, ‘Dad used to make my mam laugh a lot, too. Not now though.’ He chews a nail. ‘Sometimes, I think if I wasn’t there, they’d be all right. Maybe that’s why I’ve got to stay with my gran? Just for a bit they said. It’s Gran who says I have to go to school. In case.’ He stops. Then, ‘My grandad had a heart attack. Why did your mam die?’

  The beggar does not reply for a moment. Then he sighs. ‘Who is to say? Who is to say why anyone dies? Who is to say why anyone lives?’

  There is a long pause before he continues.

  ‘My mam was having my brother the other Maggot, and she wasn’t well for a long time. I remember being taken up to see her just after he was born. Da said she was rambling, but I am not sure of that. She could not say much. But these words I do remember: “The earth speaks, Ianto.” Then she tried to sit up, and Da could not stop her. “Ianto. You must watch after your brother. You must.” I think of that now often. I did not know what she meant back then.’

  Laddy Merridew interrupts, ‘Is that all here, in this town? Did you live here?’ But Ianto Jenkins does not reply except to nod. He is silent for a while, then continues.

  ‘Voices get into your soul and they cannot escape at all even if they’d want to. I can still hear the voices of my da’s brother, Uncle Rhys, and Aunt Ann, the day my brother Maggot was born. Aunt Ann brought the Maggot down in a towel to give him a bath on the kitchen table, and all I could see was his hair, red as anything, an amazing sight – and I pulled up a chair to help and climbed up. “No, Ianto, you must not touch, my love, oh he wriggles.” I was wondering why I was her love, and watching my new brother the Maggot, his fists flying like he was apprentice to a fighter already. And that silence coming from upstairs, floorboards creaking, then low voices, and Uncle Rhys coming into the kitchen and lifting me down from that chair. That rankled, mind, I could get down myself.

  He opened the kitchen door and took me out the back in the morning just coming up, and me wanting to watch the Maggot’s first bath. But Uncle Rhys he squatted down on the path and he pushed a finger into the earth where the shallots were coming up in a line, and he asked me who planted them.

  “Dada, Uncle Rhys,” I said. “Mam helps.” And he nodded and took me right on the soil to the end of the row of shallots, where I was not allowed to go. And he held my shoulders and made me squint along the row to see the planting was good and straight. “Straight as a die, see?” he said. “When you help your dada, Ianto, you make sure there are pegs in the ground with string, stretched tight between, in case your da forgets. Will you?”

  I went to ask why my da should forget how to plant his own shallots, because Mam would remember all right, but Uncle Rhys kept his hands on my shoulders so I could not see his face. And the yells from the new Maggot in his bowl in the kitchen split the air, and then there was another voice, and I didn’t know whose it was, shouting and crying as well until my ears hurt, and then there was someone saying to hush, Ianto, and Da was there, standing on the path, his shirt not buttoned right . . .’

  Laddy Merridew coughs and pushes his glasses back up his nose. ‘So where was your house? And . . .’

  Ianto Jenkins does not let the second question come out. He waves a hand, ‘Away down there and across a little. All gone now, all gone.’

  ‘And your mam, she died?’

  Ianto’s voice is gentle. ‘She did, Maggot, she did. And the next time I did see her, it was just like you seeing your grandfather, I expect. Only I couldn’t see her at all at first, just the side of the coffin, I was too small. My da he could see her, mind. He said “Oh, my Hannah.” He lifted me up to see her. I remember breathing in to catch her smell and it had gone. Her mouth was open a little, as if she had just said something.’

  Laddy Merridew nods, sagely. ‘Did you go to the church?’

  ‘The chapel, yes. But I stayed behind at home after with Aunt Ann and the women, and oh I did something bad. I remember now – my brother the baby Maggot was asleep in the other room and I went in and pinched him hard to make him yell again.

  I had not thought about what would happen to Mam. I asked later where she was, and when I was told, it was my turn again to do the yelling, “No, my da, no – you cannot leave Mam in the ground . . .” And he told me years later how he had to stop me trying to go out to find her.’

  The beggar’s voice is fast, now. ‘Ever after that I had bad dreams about the dark. About being under the ground. About the ground falling in on me, where I could not see anything at all, and no air, so I could not breathe. I used to wake . . .’

  Laddy Merridew interrupts. ‘I don’t like the dark, either, Mr Jenkins. I leave a light on. My gran says I’m too old for that . . .’ and his voice trails away.

  ‘It’s never left me, Maggot. I sleep where there is light, always.’

  There is silence again. This time, Laddy Merridew says nothing. There is just a rustle in the grass, then the sound of a television turned up loud a few houses away, a voice, ‘Turn that thing down, will you?’ and the bang of a door somewhere along Maerdy Street. Ianto stretches and pulls his jacket round tighter.

  ‘And now, Maggot, it is time for your supper.’ Laddy Merridew says it must be, and he walks off towards the Brychan and his gran, and Ianto Jenkins makes for the track down the side of the old coal tip, to town, and the chapel porch.

  The Baker’s Tale i

  At the dark back of town there is a small side street that slopes to meet its own stream, a dead end where the houses hold fast to each other as if they might slip into the water. There is a handrail by the kerb, for this is Steep Street, and it is. At the bottom of the street is the stream, Taff Fechan, muttering to itself over stones and half-bricks. And the very last house has a sign above its front window, faded, a sign that can just be read: Bowen’s Bakery. Underneath, a smaller sign, almost white where the paint has crumbled into powder, blank when the light is good. But when the sun squints low at the end of the day the words will still rise out of the wood: Maker of Bread, Cakes and Pastries. And fixed behind the glass of the door, clear as anything in black and white:

  Mr Andrew Bowen. Appointments on the half hour, Monday to Wednesday, and Closed or Open, depending.

  One day a year, a September day, early in the morning, Steep Street will ring with voices as people arrive from all over the town. Children will be swinging on the handrail, the little ones hanging by their knees, shirts untucked, laughing as they slide towards the stream. On that day no one will open their front windows just a crack to grumble, ‘Be off with you, haven’t you got a home to go to, make your old noise somewhere else, will you?’

  Instead, out come the householders clutching their collars to their chins and they will make their way down the slope and gather on the path that runs above the stream.

  ‘Been raining up in the Beacons. There’s a good swell.’

  ‘Aww yes indeed. A good swell. Carry anything, this will.’

  And it will. The branch of a tree is wedged across the rock at the entrance to the tunnel that carries the stream beneath the town. Where there is a metal grille across, to stop branches of trees finding their way to where they might take root and send sh
oots up through the drains and that would never do.

  And when all are gathered on the path, and on the bridge over the stream, one of the children will be sent to knock on the door of that last house, Bowen’s Bakery, ‘We’re all ready, Baker Bowen, can you bring the tray?’

  Out Baker Bowen will come, his tie askew and half-tucked into a green knitted waistcoat. He will be carrying a dark and heavy metal tray taken from the back bakery. He will move through the crowd, holding the tray, while from their coat pockets, from paper bags, from school satchels, the townsfolk take bread in all its forms. Slices, rolls, baps and buns, whole loaves even, those who can afford them. There will be a sudden quiet as they reach forward to place their bread on the tray. And a deeper quiet as Baker Bowen, leaning back now under the weight of bread and metal, carries the tray to the bridge and balances it and its load on the parapet.

  With the exception of that special September day, every Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday morning, at a quarter to nine, Baker Bowen will come through his house to the front shop, wiping his mouth of crumbs as he slides the sign to Open and unbolts the door to let in the air that rises from the stream. Maybe he will turn and call back into the house, his breath making a brief cloud as he speaks, ‘It is a fine day, my love, but cold.’

  And there may come a thin voice in reply, from a bedroom somewhere at the back, ‘If it is cold, you be careful. It is bad, the cold.’

  Baker Bowen will go back inside and straighten a chair in the front shop, still calling to his wife, ‘I will be careful, don’t you worry. Have you finished with your breakfast tray, my love?’

  ‘Not yet. I still have my egg. Thank you.’

  ‘I will fetch you the paper in a while. Don’t forget your tablets.’

  There is a small silence. ‘Perhaps I shall be better today?’

  Baker Bowen may not reply to this last, but he will go back to his front door to watch for his first customer. He will not have to wait long. They come without fail at five minutes to nine, dropped by the bus as it passes at the top of the street, although there is no regular stop up there. The passengers just ask for Baker Bowen’s and they sigh as they alight, holding on to the rail as they make their way down the steepest street in the town, complaining as they come, ‘Morning, Mr Bowen. There’s painful they are today, terrible. I must have done something dreadful to deserve these feet.’ The ladies will always say something like that, and the men will do nothing but scowl.

  Today it is the turn of Mrs Eunice Harris, come down on the bus after tidying away the silver from breakfast at Bethesda Mansions. Maybe Mrs Harris nodded goodbye to Matty Harris and reminded him to take the briefcase she gave him for Christmas for he may only be a deputy and there may be nothing in it except a packet of sandwiches he made himself, but it is a serious matter being a Deputy Bank Manager’s wife and he must not forget it.

  She comes limping down the hill and into the front shop, waiting inside the door until the polished counter and the shelves gather themselves towards her out of the gloom. There are no weighing scales in this shop, no baskets on the shelves ready for loaves, no paper bags on string loops waiting for rolls, buns, cakes.

  Instead there is a telephone, a pile of papers, a diary open at today. A pile of National Geographics on the counter, more on the chairs. Mrs Harris will sit, unbutton the collar of her good coat, and not take off her hat. And she will sigh with the pleasure of sitting as though it is a year since she did that and the seat on the bus is forgotten, ‘A blessing it is.’

  She picks up a National Geographic from the pile on the next chair while Baker Bowen brushes the last of the crumbs off his knitted waistcoat, takes a white jacket from a peg and goes through to the back, ‘I won’t be a moment.’

  And when that moment is passed – time enough for him to put his head round a far door and to smile and blow a kiss to his wife in her bed – he will call through that he is ready, and Mrs Eunice Harris will sigh and limp through to where Baker Bowen is waiting in the old bakery itself.

  Here are the bread ovens, dark things and heavy. Here are the wooden racks against the wall, the cooling racks, those metal trays, some wooden trays. And here also is the smell of antiseptic and of wool, not yeast. Here is a chair that tips, a high footstool attached. Here there is no bread on the racks and trays – or in the ovens. Instead, the oven doors are open, and shining dully from the shadows are trays of instruments: scissors and tweezers, files and pincers, blades and blade holders, picks and points. The surfaces of metal dishes catch what light comes in and sends it back, until Baker Bowen turns with a smile, ‘Righto. Those verrucas any better since last week, Mrs Harris?’

  And they will talk about her verrucas with the door ajar to the front shop, and for a while Mrs Harris does not worry about the implications, until Baker Bowen’s next customer lets himself in with a jangle from the bell still attached to the door and Mrs Harris asks for the adjoining door to be shut, forgetting to enquire after the health of Mrs Baker Bowen.

  The next customer may pick up the National Geographic Mrs Harris left open at a photograph of the whirling dervishes of Istanbul, and ponders until it is his turn to go through to the bakery how his left big toe is throbbing like the devil and how the toenails of a whirling dervish must never be ingrown or there would be no whirling done at all.

  If it should be a Thursday or a Friday, Baker Bowen will take his instruments out of the ovens, roll them in a canvas wrap and put them in a carpet bag with some bottles of antiseptic and some white linen cloths. He will look in on his wife, ‘I am off now, my love. Do you have everything you need?’

  ‘I think I will sleep while you are out.’

  He turns the sign on the door to Closed, and off he goes, walking up Steep Street then down to the town to make his home visits.

  First today is Mr James Little up in Christopher Terrace. Baker Bowen smiles as he rings at the Littles’ house, for the appointment will always be made for Mr James Little, but it will be Mrs Edith Little who has her feet tended. The appointment will be conducted in whispers and gestures, ‘Not to wake poor James, Mr Bowen, asleep again, I’m sorry . . .’ and it will transpire that Mr James Little has been working on his allotment into the night again. ‘Mind, the beans this year were marvellous. Not to mention the marrows . . .’

  So Baker Bowen does not mention the marrows, as requested, and when Edith Little pays his bill she may add a bag of late tomatoes, autumn raspberries, or the last of the potatoes, ‘For your wife, bless her?’

  Then, to the Brychan, to see to the corns of Laddy Merridew’s gran.

  ‘Corns are trial enough, Mr Bowen. Boys are a trial as well.’

  ‘Are they?’

  ‘They are indeed. They do nothing but get up to things.’

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘Walking about, Mr Bowen, and talking to people. Playing drums, and talking to strangers, and questions, always asking questions . . .’

  Baker Bowen can’t comment, so he doesn’t. Laddy Merridew’s gran adds a few questions of her own as he shaves her corns, ‘And how is your wife, Mr Bowen? Still poorly? No better?’

  Next, perhaps, he is off down the hill to Garibaldi Street, to Mrs Bennie Parrish. Her usual bad leg seems to have slipped downwards from a bad knee to a bad ankle, then it became the bad toes, and the neighbours will smile when she forgets which leg to limp on . . . but Mr Baker Bowen was called, justifiably.

  When he arrives he will meet Nathan Bartholomew the Piano Tuner on the doorstep, for it is out with the piano tuner and in with Baker Bowen as nice and easy as the single opening of a well-painted front door, with Mrs Bennie Parrish conducting their going out and their coming in.

  ‘Goodbye, Mr Bartholomew and thank you for looking at the piano.’

  ‘I could find nothing awry, Mrs Parrish.’

  ‘Oh yes, I can hear the difference. An acute ear, my husband called it, when he was with us, bless him. And my toes, there’s terrible, Mr Bowen.’

  ‘Ah, toes is it, plural?
It was just the one, last week?’

  ‘I wish it was just the one, Mr Bowen, I really do, but there are nine more where that one came from and it seems they don’t want to be left out of your ministrations.’

  And then it is into the middle room they will go, leaving the newly tuned piano in the front room with the nets pulled back for the neighbours to be sure to see Mrs Bennie Parrish’s iron upright with the integral candlesticks and a bunch of poppies all inlaid nicely on the front.

  ‘Is it too cold in here, Mr Bowen?’

  He says no it is not, and she disappears into the back kitchen to take off her stockings watched only by a smiling photograph of the late Mr Bennie Parrish on the table next to the gas stove. And she goes right up to the photograph waving the stockings rolled in her hand, ‘What do you have to smile about, I wonder?’

  In the middle room there will be a fire in the grate and a deep chair pulled up just by for Baker Bowen, its antimacassar freshly ironed. He will have taken a white linen cloth from his bag, and spread it on his lap like it was a picnic table, or an altar. Mrs Bennie sits on a cushion placed on a low side table more used to cups of tea and plates of cake than cushions. And indeed it is at just the right height for her to raise a stockingless foot to the lap of Baker Bowen, deep in the big chair that was her husband’s.

  ‘Can you see how bad they are, my toes?’

  Then Baker Bowen will take his second pair of glasses from his pocket and peer and peer at the foot of Mrs Bennie Parrish, in his lap, ‘Show me where it hurts, I can see nothing.’