Last Train to Gloryhole (10 page)

My elder brother Sam once told me that, if he should die before me, and had the good fortune to enter into
an after-life
, then he would be sure to send me back a message to tell me so! Needless to say this missive from above was still to arrive. ‘And what if there
is
no after-life?’ I had asked him. I well recall his queer response. ‘Then you will simply never get to hear from me again, will you, little brother? Nor, indeed, I you. But, not only that, you will also come to appreciate how it isn’t just dust that returns to dust, when all is said and done, but indeed all forms of matter, and every type of human progress, and, most perturbing of all, perhaps,
time itself.
’ I stared at him gob-smacked. ‘Picture
Big Ben
, Dyl, tumbling into a bottomless, black abyss.’ I did so. Soon after that he smiled at me, then turned and walked off to buy some more fags. He was a clever boy, by all accounts, my brother Sam, with a keen understanding of Physics, though for my part, I admit I didn’t understand any of it.

Although I was still in school when he made me this strange pledge in his study-bedroom at University College Swansea, it seemed to me to be something that a dead person might just be capable of carrying out, and so I looked forward to the possibility of participating in the exercise, never imagining that his passing would take place just the following autumn on the occasion of his twenty-first birthday, and but a week after he enrolled for the final year of his Physics degree. But, even though Sam is deceased, our mutual endeavour has now become more than a little complicated by the fact that, as his dead body has since had to be disinterred - as the police claimed ‘in the interests of scientific enquiry,’ (and, it is said, following a tip-off or two on
Twitter
) - then, irrespective of the truth or otherwise of the hypothesis we undertook to test, I
did
sort of get to see him again after all!

But, now that Sam was returned for good to his former resting-place in the hill-top cemetery that lay barely twenty yards from my family home, I still cherished a hope that the object of our joint experiment, bizzare though it obviously sounds, might still one day come to some satisfactory conclusion. By this I mean that I might get to find out ahead of times where I was going to spend the greater part of eternity, and whether or not I would get the opportunity to share that sojourn in the company of my beloved brother - the invaluable soulmate of my youth, as well as my ofttimes protector. You see, despite being lost to me when he was tragically killed near here at just twenty-one, I doubt to this day that there could ever have been anyone who so greatly impacted the lives of his family and friends as my big brother Sam had done.

In Merthyr town-centre Rhiannon was stood, standing and eating, at the curved corner of Church Street when Chris’s mother suddenly walked out of the library and instantly clocked her standing there with a hot-dog clutched in her hand. The girl spun round in the hope of disguising both her face and the greasy fast-food, as well as the rather risque outfit she had chosen to wear that morning, but sadly it was too late. Anne paused for a few seconds to tuck her books inside her bag, then slowly approached the corner and called out her name.

‘Hello, Rhiannon,’ she announced, with just a flicker of a smile. ‘How are you? Are you waitng for someone?’

‘Oh, hello,’ Rhiannon replied, turning and smiling broadly at Anne. ‘I was waiting for the library to open, actually.’ Behind her back she adeptly, and surreptitiously, tucked the wrapper containing the hot-dog into the belt of her jacket.

‘It’s already open, dear,’ Anne replied, holding up her bag, filled to the brim with fresh books. ‘That’s where I’ve just come from, see.’ Then catching sight of her son crossing the road from
Lloyds Bank,
she said, ‘Gosh! Here is my boy Chris! Why, he looks like he’s been in the bank to get some money. Not for more of those coffee-bags again, I hope. You know, Rhiannon, I never even knew he had any money.’ She giggled at her remark, then suddenly realised what the reason might be for Rhiannon’s waiting there, and said, ‘Oh, I see, you’re not on your own, after all, then? And fancy my son leaving you out here in the cold,
and
it’s starting to rain, too. Dearie me.’ Anne began to put up her brolly for shelter. ‘I’ve a good mind to have a word with him.’

‘Please don’t,’ pleaded Rhiannon, spinning round and forcing a half-smile at her illicit lover as he reached the pavement, then suddenly took in who it was that had run into her at the corner.

‘Mam, you - you know Rhiannon, don’t you?’ Chris sheepishly enquired of his mother.

‘Of course I do, love,’ Anne responded. ‘Well, as your school-friend, anyway. Although she’s in the year below you these days, right?’ Chris nodded. ‘Well, any more than that and I guess you’ll have to tell me about it, won’t you?’

‘Eh? What’s there to tell you about?’ Chris asked, clearly getting tetchy. ‘We just had to come down into town to get - to get -’

‘Brushes for Art,’ Rhiannon told his mother firmly, sensing her boyfriend’s considerable embarrassment, and deftly producing a small bag from her coat-pocket which she waved at his mother by way of explanation, but which actually contained make-up.

‘Brushes! But your Dad’s got thousands of brushes,’ Anne told Chris, narrowing her eyes. ‘He practically smokes the damn things.’

‘But they’re for me, Mrs. Cillick,’ said Rhiannon, with a smile. ‘Don’t you know that I do Art with Mr. Cillick these days? But I would never ask a school-friend for - for gifts, or such like.’

Placated somewhat, Anne smiled back at her. ‘No, you don’t want to go doing that, do you, love?’ she told her. ‘You could give a boy the wrong idea completely by doing that. But then why is he out getting things for you, Rhiannon?’ asked Anne with a carefully composed smile on her face. ‘Why, you’ve got legs yourself, haven’t you? Don’t take offence like. I mean, I know you have two, like everyone else - even me - and very nice legs they are, too, dear. I mean yours, of course, not mine. But why is that? That’s what I want to know. Tell me, Rhiannon, please.’

All the time Chris’s mother kept gabbling on so, Rhiannon kept her body turned sideways and just smiled in a fixed, wincing fashion at her secret lover. And then, seeing him starting to stare down at the ground, and sensing his reluctance, or inability, to assist her in any way, turned and looked back at his mother, and, biting into her lip, and realising she was starting to perspire profusely, searched her poor, demented brain for a suitable reply - any reply - that might settle everything, and perhaps pacify the insufferable woman. But Rhiannon couldn’t think of a single one, and then found she couldn’t even remember what the question was.

‘My Dad says they were a gift from Nanny Beryl,’ Rhiannon suddenly told her tormentor, yet instantly sensing that the explanation she came out with perhaps wasn’t at all satisfactory.

‘The brushes!’ exclaimed Anne, bewildered. ‘But how could she? I mean, hasn’t your Granny Beryl been dead since - well, since long before you were born, dear? Explain, would you, because I have to say I don’t understand.’

‘My legs, I mean,’ replied Rhiannon. ‘My legs are
hers
, my dad told me.’ She suddenly realised that she was now beginning to feel faint, and believed she might even topple over onto the pavement any second. In truth, Rhiannon so wanted to just reach out a hand to Chris for some comfort, or assistance, but, for his sake alone, she decided she wasn’t going to let him down whatever happened, and whatever nonsense his infernal mother came out with, or whatever stupid face she might choose to pull in doing so.

Legs, brushes – this was becoming all too much. Rhiannon’s thinking mind seemed now to be just about on the point of closing down, and her slim, cold legs, that she had got from her Nan, suddenly seemed to be as much use to her as they were to that old, dead dear who had bequeathed them. In a fast darkening corner of her visual perspective she watched
Lloyds Bank
begin to suffer a similar fate to what she recalled its company had suffered a few years earlier, except that in its current decline it appeared to be merging physically with both
Nat West
and
Cash Generators
in a bizarre, unsettling, cross-road amalgamation that made no sense to her.

What on earth was this? Rhiannon asked herself, as a strange buzzing noise began sounding inside her ears. Why, the whole financial world of Wales appeared to be toppling sideways like a deck-of-cards, just as the whole universe of Rhiannon Cook felt like it was spinning and sinking into oblivion. She blinked three or four times in an attempt to trigger some powers of apprehension, but she could swiftly tell that it didn’t seem to make things the tiniest bit clearer.

Then a single thought struck her like a jolt of electric current. Could this particular credit-crunch in Merthyr High Street be related to the, strangely painless, collision her head had made with the iron fence behind her? she wondered. As yet she couldn’t tell for sure, but she felt that if she chose to do A-level Economics next year instead of Music, then perhaps everything would make more sense to her. Rhiannon then rolled over onto her back, and her smart, new jacket fell wide open at the front.

Soon a greasy, curved length of brown sausage, liberally covered in, what appeared to be, bright-red blood, was all that filled Rhiannon’s immediate field-of-vision. Then the cold, slender hand that tugged at the neck of her blouse, scattering several silver buttons across the pavement, seemed to possess its own queer, amplified voice that was pleading loudly, ‘Lie on your side, girl, and for heaven’s sake try to cover your chest up!’

Yes, this definitely had to be done, Rhiannon told herself, but, try as she might, she quickly realised that she wasn’t able to move a solitary muscle, and the only reply she found she was able to give was, ‘Yes, I already know I’m a slut, Mrs. Cillick, and - and you’re right to think I deserve to go straight to hell!’

Science on a wet afternoon, he thought. How on earth am I supposed to put up with it? A pensive, unusually depressed, Chris sat staring out of the first-floor window at the classroom directly across the grass in the Maths Block, where Rhiannon usually sat watching him like a feeding hawk at this exact time every week while studying GCSE Maths, but where, at present, her chair now stood empty, and was being used as a temporary receptacle for what appeared to be two drying anoraks and a boot-bag.

Chris’s teacher, Mrs. Hussain, was standing close at hand, waving her purple-nailed hands about, and talking to his table-group in her usual, unnecessarily harrying fashion. But Chris wasn’t at all interested in anatomy - not on paper, at any rate - and bemoaned the fact that the year-group had moved on from the science-units on astronomy, light and sound that they had touched on in the early Spring Term, having the previous Autumn exhausted fuel and power completely, ironically, perhaps, without having tackled ‘green issues.’

What’s the matter, Chris?’ the teacher suddenly asked him, leaning forward and emitting the most annoying and fakest of smiles, that each time, quite literally, set his teeth on edge. The word going round the Sixth-Form Common Room had been that Mrs. Hussain was now divorced from her husband, and that Chris’s dad was the new object of her affections. So, out of familial loyalty, if nothing else, Chris was determined he wasn’t going to be smiling back at her under any circumstances. Instead he decided, for now at least, that honesty would be the best policy, and replied abruptly that he simply couldn’t understand what the group were expected to do.

‘Tell him, April,’ the teacher retorted, gripping the shoulder of a bespectacled student sat just across from him, and whose eyes lit up like a startled rabbit.

‘Well, it’s just a starter-task for the new unit, right Miss?’ the studious girl replied. ‘And, so as to provide a bench-mark for future learning, I think it’s called, you have to - we each have to - link up with arrows the different parts of both the male and female bodies with the written term in the margin which relates to, or describes them. Do you get it now, Chris? It’s hardly rocket-science,’ the cocky girl added with a smile.

‘God, I wish it was though,’ he replied cryptically. ‘After all, that’s precisely what I chose the subject for. And light, and sound.’

‘It may not exactly be your cup of tea. Chris,’ Mrs. Hussain told him with that insufferable smile again. ‘But you see I can’t possibly be certain about what I need to be teaching you for the remainder of this term if you don’t first inform me what it is you already know and can do.’

But why not? Chris asked himself. Teachers had schemes-of-work that they were obliged to stick to, didn’t they? His dad certainly did, because he had shown him them. Yes, sadly this had the distinct feel of a lesson that was unnecessary, or just a pathetic excuse for the lazy, rotund woman, with the dodgy fashion sense and the questionable oral hygiene, to take it easy, and coast through the dreary afternoon until the final bell. Yes, two hours of pure torture this would clearly prove to be, Chris told himself, so he would naturally need to find a way of escape. Chris realised it wasn’t going to prove to be easy but he was determined to try. Yes, this would be his own personal lesson-objective for today, he mused, grinning, not some silly anatomy labelling.

‘Let me see what you’ve completed already, can I, Chris?’ the teacher continued. Female faces, full of supposedly banned mascara and lip-gloss, stared up at him. There was plainly no time to say no. Mrs. Hussain dragged Chris’s paper towards her and spun it round so that now the whole group could see his hapless efforts too. From the extent of April’s and Daisy’s sniggers alone Chris just knew that the denouement of all denouements was about to arrive.

‘Oh, dear,’ the teacher began, in a tone almost as ironical as her knee-length black cardigan and trainers. ‘So you think that females have testes, then, Chris! Mm. Now I’d say that would make life interesting, don’t you think, ladies?’ The group of girls laughed sadistically, yet harmonically, at the teacher’s curt, yet risque, remark. Yes, it seemed that the dreaded woman in black had won them all over in a trice, and plainly at his expense. And now, he thought, it might well prove an arduous task for him to win them back again.