Eight Stories (New Directions Bibelot) Page 3

  ‘She jumped in the cold river, she jumped,’ he said, his mouth against my ear, ‘arse over tip and Diu, she was dead.’ He squeaked like a bat.

  The pigsties were at the far end of the yard. We walked towards them, Gwilym dressed in minister’s black, though it was a weekday morning, and me in a serge suit with a darned bottom, past three hens scrabbling the muddy cobbles and a collie with one eye, sleeping with it open. The ramshackle outhouses had tumbling, rotten roofs, jagged holes in their sides, broken shutters, and peeling whitewash; rusty screws ripped out from the dangling, crooked boards; the lean cat of the night before sat snugly between the splintered jaws of bottles, cleaning its face, on the tip of the rubbish pile that rose triangular and smelling sweet and strong to the level of the riddled cart-house roof. There was nowhere like that farm-yard in all the slapdash county, nowhere so poor and grand and dirty as that square of mud and rubbish and bad wood and falling stone, where a bucketful of old and bedraggled hens scratched and laid small eggs. A duck quacked out of the trough in one deserted sty. Now a young man and a curly boy stood staring and sniffing over a wall at a sow, with its tits on the mud, giving suck.

  ‘How many pigs are there?’

  ‘Five. The bitch ate one,’ said Gwilym.

  We counted them as they squirmed and wriggled, rolled on their backs and bellies, edged and pinched and pushed and squealed about their mother. There were four. We counted again. Four pigs, four naked pink tails curling up as their mouths guzzled down and the sow grunted with pain and joy.

  ‘She must have ate another,’ I said, and picked up a scratching stick and prodded the grunting sow and rubbed her crusted bristles backwards. ‘Or a fox jumped over the wall,’ I said.

  ‘It wasn’t the sow or the fox,’ said Gwilym. ‘It was father.’

  I could see uncle, tall and sly and red, holding the writhing pig in his two hairy hands, sinking his teeth in its thigh, crunching its trotters up: I could see him leaning over the wall of the sty with the pig’s legs sticking out of his mouth. ‘Did Uncle Jim eat the pig?’

  Now, at this minute, behind the rotting sheds, he was standing, knee-deep in feathers, chewing off the live heads of the poultry.

  ‘He sold it to go on the drink,’ said Gwilym in his deepest rebuking whisper, his eyes fixed on the sky. ‘Last Christmas he took a sheep over his shoulder, and he was pissed for ten days.’

  The sow rolled nearer the scratching stick, and the small pigs sucking at her, lost and squealing in the sudden darkness, struggled under her folds and pouches.

  ‘Come and see my chapel,’ said Gwilym. He forgot the lost pig at once and began to talk about the towns he had visited on a religious tour, Neath and Bridgend and Bristol and Newport, with their lakes and luxury gardens, their bright, coloured streets roaring with temptation. We walked away from the sty and the disappointed sow.

  ‘I met actress after actress,’ he said.

  Gwilym’s chapel was the last old barn before the field that led down to the river; it stood well above the farm-yard, on a mucky hill. There was one whole door with a heavy padlock, but you could get in easily through the holes on either side of it. He took out a ring of keys and shook them gently and tried each one in the lock. ‘Very posh,’ he said; ‘I bought them from the junk-shop in Carmarthen.’ We climbed into the chapel through a hole.

  A dusty wagon with the name painted out and a white-wash cross on its side stood in the middle. ‘My pulpit cart,’ he said, and walked solemnly into it up the broken shaft. ‘You sit on the hay; mind the mice,’ he said. Then he brought out his deepest voice again, and cried to the heavens and the bat-lined rafters and the hanging webs: ‘Bless us this holy day, O Lord, bless me and Dylan and this Thy little chapel for ever and ever, Amen. I’ve done a lot of improvements to this place.’

  I sat on the hay and stared at Gwilym preaching, and heard his voice rise and crack and sink to a whisper and break into singing and Welsh and ring triumphantly and be wild and meek. The sun through a hole, shone on his praying shoulders, and he said: ‘O God, Thou art everywhere all the time, in the dew of the morning, in the frost of the evening, in the field and the town, in the preacher and the sinner, in the sparrow and the big buzzard. Thou canst see everything, right down deep in our hearts; Thou canst see us when the sun is gone; Thou canst see us when there aren’t any stars, in the gravy blackness, in the deep, deep, deep, deep pit; Thou canst see and spy and watch us all the time, in the little black corners, in the big cowboys’ prairies, under the blankets when we’re snoring fast, in the terrible shadows; pitch black, pitch black; Thou canst see everything we do, in the night and day, in the day and the night, everything, everything; Thou canst see all the time. O God, mun, you’re like a bloody cat.’

  He let his clasped hands fall. The chapel in the barn was still, and shafted with sunlight. There was nobody to cry Hallelujah or God-bless; I was too small and enamoured in the silence. The one duck quacked outside.

  ‘Now I take a collection,’ Gwilym said.

  He stepped down from the cart and groped about in the hay beneath it and held out a battered tin to me.

  ‘I haven’t got a proper box,’ he said.

  I put two pennies in the tin.

  ‘It’s time for dinner,’ he said, and we went back to the house without a word.

  Annie said, when we had finished dinner: ‘Put on your nice suit for this afternoon. The one with stripes.’

  It was to be a special afternoon, for my best friend, Jack Williams, from Swansea, was coming down with his rich mother in a motor car, and Jack was to spend a fortnight’s holiday with me.

  ‘Where’s Uncle Jim?’

  ‘He’s gone to market,’ said Annie.

  Gwilym made a small pig’s noise. We knew where uncle was; he was sitting in a public house with a heifer over his shoulder and two pigs nosing out of his pockets, and his lips wet with bull’s blood.

  ‘Is Mrs. Williams very rich?’ asked Gwilym.

  I told him she had three motor cars and two houses, which was a lie. ‘She’s the richest woman in Wales, and once she was a mayoress,’ I said. ‘Are we going to have tea in the best room?’

  Annie nodded. ‘And a large tin of peaches,’ she said.

  ‘That old tin’s been in the cupboard since Christmas,’ said Gwilym, ‘mother’s been keeping it for a day like this.’

  ‘They’re lovely peaches,’ Annie said. She went upstairs to dress like Sunday.

  The best room smelt of moth balls and fur and damp and dead plants and stale, sour air. Two glass cases on wooden coffin-boxes lined the window wall. You looked at the weed-grown vegetable garden through a stuffed fox’s legs, over a partridge’s head, along the red-paint-stained breast of a stiff wild duck. A case of china and pewter, trinkets, teeth, family brooches, stood beyond the bandy table; there was a large oil lamp on the patchwork table-cloth, a Bible with a clasp, a tall vase with a draped woman about to bathe on it, and a framed photograph of Annie, Uncle Jim, and Gwilym smiling in front of a fern-pot. On the mantelpiece were two clocks, some dogs, brass candlesticks, a shepherdess, a man in a kilt, and a tinted photograph of Annie, with high hair and her breasts coming out. There were chairs around the table and in each corner, straight, curved, stained, padded, all with lace cloths hanging over their backs. A patched white sheet shrouded the harmonium. The fireplace was full of brass tongs, shovels, and pokers. The best room was rarely used. Annie dusted and brushed and polished there once a week, but the carpet still sent up a grey cloud when you trod on it, and dust lay evenly on the seats of the chairs, and balls of cotton and dirt and black stuffing and long black horse hairs were wedged in the cracks of the sofa. I blew on the glass to see the pictures. Gwilym and castles and cattle.

  ‘Change your suit now,’ said Gwilym.

  I wanted to wear my old suit, to look like a proper farm boy and have manure in my shoes and hear it squelch as I walked, to see a cow have calves and a bull on top of a cow, to run down in the dingle and wet my stockin
gs, to go out and shout, ‘Come on, you b——,’and pelt the hens and talk in a proper voice. But I went upstairs to put my striped suit on.

  From my bedroom I heard the noise of a motor car drawing up the yard. It was Jack Williams and his mother.

  Gwilym shouted, ‘They’re here, in a Daimler!’ from the foot of the stairs, and I ran down to meet them with my tie undone and my hair uncombed.

  Annie was saying at the door: ‘Good afternoon, Mrs. Williams, good afternoon. Come right in, it’s a lovely day, Mrs. Williams. Did you have a nice journey then? This way, Mrs. Williams, mind the step.’

  Annie wore a black, shining dress that smelt of moth balls, like the chair covers in the best room; she had forgotten to change her gym-shoes, which were caked with mud and all holes. She fussed on before Mrs. Williams down the stone passage, darting her head round, clucking, fidgeting, excusing the small house, anxiously tidying her hair with one rough, stubby hand.

  Mrs. Williams was tall and stout, with a jutting bosom and thick legs, her ankles swollen over her pointed shoes; she was fitted out like a mayoress or a ship, and she swayed after Annie into the best room.

  She said: ‘Please don’t put yourself out for me, Mrs. Jones, there’s a dear.’ She dusted the seat of a chair with a lace handkerchief from her bag before sitting down.

  ‘I can’t stop, you know,’ she said.

  ‘Oh, you must stay for a cup of tea,’ said Annie, shifting and scraping the chairs away from the table so that nobody could move and Mrs. Williams was hemmed in fast with her bosom and her rings and her bag, opening the china cupboard, upsetting the Bible on the floor, picking it up, dusting it hurriedly with her sleeve.

  ‘And peaches,’ Gwilym said. He was standing in the passage with his hat on.

  Annie said, ‘Take your hat off, Gwilym, make Mrs. Williams comfortable,’ and she put the lamp on the shrouded harmonium and spread out a white table-cloth that had a tea stain in the centre, and brought out the china and laid knives and cups for five.

  ‘Don’t bother about me, there’s a dear,’ said Mrs. Williams. ‘There’s a lovely fox!’ She flashed a finger of rings at the glass case.

  ‘It’s real blood,’ I told Jack, and we climbed over the sofa to the table.

  ‘No, it isn’t,’ he said, ‘it’s red ink.’

  ‘Oh, your shoes!’ said Annie.

  ‘Don’t tread on the sofa, Jack, there’s a dear.’

  ‘If it isn’t ink it’s paint then.’

  Gwilym said: ‘Shall I get you a bit of cake, Mrs. Williams?’

  Annie rattled the tea-cups. ‘There isn’t a single bit of cake in the house,’ she said; ‘we forgot to order it from the shop; not a single bit. Oh, Mrs. Williams!’

  Mrs. Williams said: ‘Just a cup of tea thanks.’ She was still sweating because she had walked all the way from the car. It spoiled her powder. She sparkled her rings and dabbed at her face.

  ‘Three lumps,’ she said. ‘And I’m sure Jack will be very happy here.’

  ‘Happy as sandboys.’ Gwilym sat down.

  ‘Now you must have some peaches, Mrs. Williams, they’re lovely.’

  ‘They should be, they’ve been here long enough,’ said Gwilym.

  Annie rattled the tea-cups at him again.

  ‘No peaches, thanks,’ Mrs. Williams said.

  ‘Oh, you must, Mrs. Williams, just one. With cream.’

  ‘No, no, Mrs. Jones, thanks the same,’ she said. ‘I don’t mind pears or chunks, but I can’t bear peaches.’

  Jack and I had stopped talking. Annie stared down at her gym-shoes. One of the clocks on the mantelpiece coughed, and struck. Mrs. Williams struggled from her chair.

  ‘There, time flies!’ she said.

  She pushed her way past the furniture, jostled against the sideboard, rattled the trinkets and brooches, and kissed Jack on the forehead.

  ‘You’ve got scent on,’ he said.

  She patted my head.

  ‘Now behave yourselves.’

  To Annie, she said in a whisper: ‘And remember, Mrs. Jones, just good plain food. No spoiling his appetite.’

  Annie followed her out of the room. She moved slowly now. ‘I’ll do my very best, Mrs. Williams.’

  We heard her say, ‘Good-bye then, Mrs. Williams,’ and go down the steps of the kitchen and close the door. The motor car roared in the yard, then the noise grew softer and died.

  Down the thick dingle Jack and I ran shouting, scalping the brambles with our thin stick-hatchets, dancing, hallooing. We skidded to a stop and prowled on the bushy banks of the stream. Up above, sat one-eyed, dead-eyed, sinister, slim, ten-notched Gwilym, loading his guns in Gallows Farm. We crawled and rat-tatted through the bushes, hid, at a whistled signal, in the deep grass, and crouched there, waiting for the crack of a twig or the secret breaking of boughs.

  On my haunches, eager and alone, casting an ebony shadow, with the Gorsehill jungle swarming, the violent, impossible birds and fishes leaping, hidden under four-stemmed flowers the height of horses, in the early evening in a dingle near Carmarthen, my friend Jack Williams invisibly near me, I felt all my young body like an excited animal surrounding me, the torn knees bent, the bumping heart, the long heat and depth between the legs, the sweat prickling in the hands, the tunnels down to the eardrums, the little balls of dirt between the toes, the eyes in the sockets, the tucked-up voice, the blood racing, the memory around and within flying, jumping, swimming, and waiting to pounce. There, playing Indians in the evening, I was aware of me myself in the exact middle of a living story, and my body was my adventure and my name. I sprang with excitement and scrambled up through the scratching brambles again.

  Jack cried: ‘I see you! I see you!’ He scampered after me. ‘Bang! bang! you’re dead!’

  But I was young and loud and alive, though I lay down obediently.

  ‘Now you try and kill me,’ said Jack. ‘Count a hundred.’

  I closed one eye, saw him rush and stamp towards the upper field, then tiptoe back and begin to climb a tree, and I counted fifty and ran to the foot of the tree and killed him as he climbed. ‘You fall down,’ I said.

  He refused to fall, so I climbed too, and we clung to the top branches and stared down at the lavatory in the corner of the field. Gwilym was sitting on the seat with his trousers down. He looked small and black. He was reading a book and moving his hands.

  ‘We can see you!’ we shouted.

  He snatched his trousers up and put the book in his pocket.

  ‘We can see you, Gwilym!’

  He came out into the field. ‘Where are you, then?’

  We waved our caps at him.

  ‘In the sky!’ Jack shouted.

  ‘Flying!’ I shouted.

  We stretched our arms out like wings.

  ‘Fly down here.’

  We swung and laughed on the branches.

  ‘There’s birds!’ cried Gwilym.

  Our jackets were torn and our stockings were wet and our shoes were sticky; we had green moss and brown bark on our hands and faces when we went in for supper and a scolding. Annie was quiet that night, though she called me a ragamuffin and said she didn’t know what Mrs. Williams would think and told Gwilym he should know better. We made faces at Gwilym and put salt in his tea, but after supper he said: ‘You can come to the chapel if you like. Just before bed.’

  He lit a candle on the top of the pulpit cart. It was a small light in the big barn. The bats were gone. Shadows still clung upside down along the roof. Gwilym was no longer my cousin in a Sunday suit, but a tall stranger shaped like a spade in a cloak, and his voice grew too deep. The straw heaps were lively. I thought of the sermon on the cart: we were watched, Jack’s heart was watched, Gwilym’s tongue was marked down, my whisper, ‘Look at the little eyes,’ was remembered always.

  ‘Now I take confessions,’ said Gwilym from the cart.

  Jack and I stood bareheaded in the circle of the candle, and I could feel the trembling of Jack’s body.

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sp; ‘You first.’ Gwilym’s finger, as bright as though he had held it in the candle flame until it burned, pointed me out, and I took a step towards the pulpit cart, raising my head.

  ‘Now you confess,’ said Gwilym.

  ‘What have I got to confess?’

  ‘The worst thing you’ve done.’

  I let Edgar Reynolds be whipped because I had taken his homework; I stole from my mother’s bag; I stole from Gwyneth’s bag; I stole twelve books in three visits from the library, and threw them away in the park; I drank a cup of my water to see what it tasted like; I beat a dog with a stick so that it would roll over and lick my hand afterwards; I looked with Dan Jones through the keyhole while his maid had a bath; I cut my knee with a penknife, and put the blood on my handkerchief and said it had come out of my ears so that I could pretend I was ill and frighten my mother; I pulled my trousers down and showed Jack Williams; I saw Billy Jones beat a pigeon to death with a fire-shovel, and laughed and got sick; Cedric Williams and I broke into Mrs. Samuels’ house and poured ink over the bedclothes.

  I said: ‘I haven’t done anything bad.’

  ‘Go on, confess,’ said Gwilym. He was frowning down at me.

  ‘I can’t! I can’t!’ I said. ‘I haven’t done anything bad.’

  ‘Go on, confess!’

  ‘I won’t! I won’t!’

  Jack began to cry. ‘I want to go home,’ he said.

  Gwilym opened the chapel door and we followed him into the yard, down past the black, humped sheds, towards the house, and Jack sobbed all the way.

  In bed together, Jack and I confessed our sins.

  ‘I steal from my mother’s bag, too; there are pounds and pounds.’

  ‘How much do you steal?’

  ‘Threepence.’

  ‘I killed a man once.’

  ‘No you didn’t then.’

  ‘Honest to Christ, I shot him through the heart.’

  ‘What was his name?’

  ‘Williams.’

  ‘Did he bleed?’

  I thought the stream was lapping against the house.

  ‘Like a bloody pig,’ I said.