Faces of Fear (18 page)

Ellis lifted his eyes when David came into the room. He was whiter, much whiter, as if all the blood had drained out of him, but he hadn't changed since the day that David had last seen him. Thin-faced, hollow-cheeked, with a hawklike nose and an angular chin. His eyes seemed to be paler, so pale that his irises had scarcely any colour at all, although David remembered that they had once been dark.

He smiled at David and his smile was welcoming but strangely detached.

“It's David!” said Mrs Morgan. “Look Ellis, it's David, look how much he's grown!”

David crossed the room and held out his hand. His heart was thumping like somebody beating a large cushion with a cricket-bat.

“Hallo, David,” said Ellis, taking hold of David's hand and briefly clasping it. “Long time no see.”

“You're dead,” said David. His whole body was over-whelmed with waves of chilly sickness. It was worse than being on a small boat, on a chilly morning, fishing for mackerel.

Ellis leaned back in his chair and looked up at David with an expression of sadness and regret. “You won't hold that against me, will you, being dead?”

“You're dead, you must be dead.”

David turned to Mrs Morgan, but Mrs Morgan quickly lowered her eyes, and so did everybody else. Mel Torme went on groaning but everybody stayed silent and frowned at their drinks.

“He's dead,” David appealed. He felt as if the tiny living-room were closing in on him. The cheap varnished sideboard; the 3-D pictures of Christ.

Denise said, “You must have known that. That's why you came, isn't it? So what are you shouting about?”

Ellis smiled. “Don't worry,” he said. His voice was oddly echoey, as if he were speaking in another room. “Glenys almost had kittens when I came to the door, didn't you love? It's your children that accept it. They think it's normal, children, when their father comes back, whether he's drunk or missed the bus or simply dead.”

“But you're
dead
,” David repeated. “For Christ's sake, Ellis, you're dead!”

“Oh, come on, mum, sit down and have a drink. I've only got the one night. Tomorrow it's the graveyard for
me. That's what he told us, anyway; and what can I do but believe him?”

Denise brought David a brimming glass of Tennent's Pils, and David tried to drink some, but it was warm, and he was already sweating. Billy Probert budged up and David sat next to him on the very end of the sofa.

“Denise, ask if anybody wants a sausage roll,” Mrs Morgan chided.

“Does anybody want a sausage roll?” asked Denise.

There was a universal shaking of heads, but Mrs Morgan said, “Go and get the sausage rolls, Denise, and offer them around. And don't forget the serviettes.”

David stared at Ellis and couldn't believe that he was really here. Ellis Morgan, dead all these years, but here to talk to!

“How'd you get out of the mine?” he asked. “We tried to dig you out, but the mountain kept slipping, and in the end they had to leave you underground for safety. No point in risking live men for dead. Not that they didn't try their best, mind.”

“Well, right,” Ellis shrugged. “But the truth is that I don't remember it very well, only isolated incidents. I heard somebody shouting ‘blower!', see; and then a bang, and then a rumble like all the thunder you ever heard in your life, all at once, and the roof come down. I knew I was crushed, David. I could feel it. I couldn't take even one breath. But then it seemed as if I slept, like, and when I opened my eyes there was daylight shining. Not bright daylight, mind, it was raining. But I could see my way out of the gallery, and so I climbed right out of it. I didn't have the time to inspect it close-to, but it looked to me like they'd been excavating down at the smallholdings, right, to do some more building, and they accidentally opened
up the gallery where we was trapped into the rain, and here I am.”

“But you'd been dead for years,” said David.

“I can't answer that one, mun. I feel like I've overslept, that's all.”

“Overslept? I can't believe it!”

Ellis nodded soberly. “I know that; and I'm grateful to be here.”

“You said you had only one night,” said David.

Ellis nodded, and raised his glass. “Better drink to it, hadn't we?”

“But how do you know it's only one night? Couldn't it be more? Couldn't you live out the rest of your life?”

Ellis said, “No. We were told that we had just the one night; one night only; but at least it would give us the chance to say a proper goodbye to the people we loved. You're one of those people, David, and that's why you came now, isn't it?”

“Who told you that you had just the one night?” asked David. He was bewildered, and frightened, but strangely excited, too. It was wonderful to see Ellis Morgan alive again like this, to be able to talk to him, to see him sitting in the middle of his family.

Ellis said, “I saw it when the gallery opened up. It was like a darkness, that's the only way I can describe it. Of course it was dark enough down the pit, but this was even darker. Black as coal. Black as your hat. But it spoke to me, in a way, like somebody speaking very close against my ear. Very old-fashioned sounding, with Cymraeg all mixed up in it.”

“
Owen Glyn Dwr
,” David whispered.

“What did you say?” asked Glenys, sharply.

“Owen Glyn Dwr. I read about him in my history book. To his dying day he promised that all Welshmen who were
killed at the hands of the English would be able to go back to say goodbye to their families.”

Glenys looked at him, wide-eyed, but said nothing at all. Ellis didn't say anything, either, but from the expression on his face David could see that he had struck some kind of chord.

David said, “What about Roger Jones? And Billy Evans? What about John Snape, down at the Butchers? They could come up to say goodbye to you, too, couldn't they? I could call them, they could bring some more beer.”

Ellis smiled and nodded. “I'd like that, just for a while. What do you think, Glenys?”

Glenys' eyes suddenly glittered with tears.

“Don't cry, girl,” Ellis chided her. “What on earth are you crying for?”

She sniffed and wiped her eyes. “That's the first time you've ever asked me what I thought about anything,” she said.

“Bloody chauvinist,” laughed David.

So it was that Ellis Morgan's family and Ellis Morgan's friends spent the warmest and strangest of nights together, drinking and talking and clasping hands, too, in the longest farewell that the hours would allow them. They told Ellis all the latest gossip, and all about the new bypass that came up the valley, and which couples had split up, and which shops had closed, even the corner shop in Blackwood where Ellis used to buy his anoraks.

But at five past five the light began to wash weakly through the net curtains, and Ellis looked toward the window with a look on his face of fear and exhaustion and regret.

The eyes that had appeared so animated by artificial
light now seemed dull and haunted. The cheeks were sunken, and the lips were drawn tight across the teeth.

Glenys said, “Better if everybody left now, Ellis,” and Ellis said nothing, but nodded in agreement.

“David can stay,” he said, huskily. “You'll need a man, when everything's over.”

Ellis's friends embraced him and wept openly, without any shame. Then one by one they left the house and walked off into the dawn, their footsteps echoing sharply against the terrace walls.

“Well?” said Ellis, turning to David and smiling. “That was the grandest of nights, wasn't it?”

David said, “Best ever, Ellis. Very best ever.”

As the minutes were noisily ticked away by the Westclox on the mantelpiece, and the daylight grew brighter, Ellis grew paler, and his skin began to shrivel, as if it were the finest of silver-leaf, beaten thin and crumpled by the most parsimonious of silversmiths. He clutched the arms of his chair, and David saw that his hands had shrunk into fleshless claws, with stick-like fingerbones and his wriggling veins.

Glenys looked at David in alarm, but David raised one finger to his lips, telling her to shush, and not to be worried.

The front room filled with sunlight, one of the brightest days for weeks. Ellis's chin fell onto his chest, and then his chest collapsed inside his vest, like a rotten bamboo birdcage, and his trouser-legs seemed to empty as if there were nothing inside them but bones.

Right in front of their eyes, Ellis Morgan literally crumbled and fell apart. His face for one moment was beatific, the face of a Celtic saint, smooth and perfect and martyred.

David said, “God bless you and remember you, Ellis,”
and then the face was gone, breaking apart like dry clay, and sliding softly into the collar of his shirt. As the sun finally illuminated his chair, there was nothing in it at all but old folded clothes and dust.

Glenys was standing by the door with her hand clasped over her mouth, her eyes sparkling with grief. David went over and put his arm around her.

“We saw him,” he said, “he was really here. And I bet all the rest of the lads were home last night, too, every one of them.”

Glenys nodded but couldn't speak. The clock on the mantelpiece struck seven.

Next afternoon David and Old Glyn Bachelor walked down through the allotments where it smelled strongly of Brussels sprouts and coal-dust. The clouds hung low like women's washing. Nye ran panting along the rows of overgrown potatoes, and barked at a river rat.

The Rhymney gurgled to itself as it ran over the rocks. It was Nye who found the place where the men of Maes-y-Dderwen had come back to light. It was a soggy, half-collapsed hole by the riverbank, overgrown with dock-leaves and nettles.

“That's your man,” said Old Glyn Bachelor.

David peered inside. “Can't see nothing.”

“You wouldn't think of going inside?”

“Not me,” said David. “I've had enough of going underground, me.”

Old Glyn Bachelor shrugged. “Perhaps we all have, when it comes down to it.”

David saw something glinting amber-coloured in the weeds. He picked it up and frowned at it. It was a fragment of metal, in a fleur-de-lys shape, pitted with age and deeply discoloured.

He passed it to old Glyn Bachelor without a word. Old Glyn Bachelor examined it closely and then shook his head. “Could be anything. Part of a lamp. Part of a crown.”

“Owen Glyn Dwr wore a crown,” said David. “There was a picture of it in my history book.”

Old Glyn Bachelor clapped him reassuringly on the shoulder. “You can't believe everything you read in history books, boy. Specially the drawings. Artistic licence, see.”

They climbed back up through the allotments, just as a fine rain started to fall. Deep in the hole in the riverbank, something dark and shadowy stirred, and a soft noise blew into the mine-workings, a noise that could have been the wind, or the sound of the gentlest of voices.

The rain glistened bright on the slate-roofed terraces, and on the streets of Hengoed and Bargoed and Aberbergoed and Ystrad Mynach.

All across the Rhymney Valley that day there was a huge sense of sadness, and it hung low like the clouds, like women's washing. But as the day faded into evening again, and the sharp tang of coal-fires filled the air, there was a palpable sense of relief, a sense that wives and children and loved ones had at last been allowed to mourn, because the dark proud heart of Wales had at last freed the men of Maes to say goodbye.

County Kerry, Ireland

The Kerry peninsula is one of my favourite parts of Ireland. The scenery is stunning, with dramatic changes of light and shade that can take place in the blinking of an eye. Kerry is dramatically mountainous, and boasts the highest range in the Republic of Ireland, Mcgillycuddy's Reeks (1041 m).

The rivers in Kerry are short but they boast some very fine fishing. The towns are picturesque; and the villages boast some of the friendliest pubs in the country. My idea of a perfect afternoon is to sit with a pint of Guinness and a fresh-caught lobster salad overlooking Kerry's islands and inlets; and not worrying whether it rains or shines.

But this story isn't concerned with the magic of Kerry's scenery, or the enchantment of its people. It's concerned instead with a different kind of magic, with which nothing is quite what it seems to be. The face of fear in this story is the face of deception.

It was raining hard by the time Raymond left the hotel and hurried over to his rental car. He was already half an hour late, and it would be touch-and-go if he could get to Cork in time to catch the last flight to London. He shook out his umbrella, tossed it onto the back seat, climbed in the car and started up the engine. He shouldn't have stayed so long talking to Dermot Brien; but Dermot knew of some eighteenth-century landscapes that Raymond was very keen to get his hands on, as well as some rare etchings by Conor O'Reilly.

He drove out of the hotel and onto the narrow road that led to Kenmare. The rain was coming down so heavily now that it was almost like being at sea. Raymond's windshield kept steaming up, and he had to keep wiping it with his handkerchief. Mostly, the road was unlit, except for reflective road signs, and the gleaming eyes of startled hares.

He glanced at the clock. He would probably make it to Cork with twenty minutes to spare, but he would have to return his car and check in his suitcase. He put his foot down harder, and the Volvo jolted over the roughly-metalled road and blurted through puddles. He nearly miscalculated a tight left-hand bend, and by the time he had steered his way out of it his heart was beating at twice its normal rate.

He hadn't been driving for more than ten minutes when he saw something light flickering in front of him. He wiped his windshield again, and peered at it hard. At first it looked like a sheet, flapping in the wind; but then he saw that it was a woman, dressed in white, running along by the side of the road. A large dog was running along beside her.