Last Train to Gloryhole (14 page)

‘Oh, please don’t go crying, Nessa,’ Drew told her, moving closer. ‘Look, if it’s any consolation to you, young lady, I understand that my boy Chris isn’t seeing anyone at the moment. Apart from his usual boyfriends, of course.’ The class laughed again as one, and even Nessa seemed to jiggle her fallen head a little at the sheer stupidity of it. ‘There again, don’t go quoting me on that, now,
Nine Double-L
.’

‘But
he is
, Sir,’ Catherine and Nessa told him in unison.

‘What? My Chris! Is he?’ asked Drew, somewhat surprised.

‘Yes, Sir,’ Catherine told him. ‘He’s going out with that ginger girl in Year Eleven who stayed back a year. What’s her name, again?’ She spun round for enlightenment on the matter.

‘Rhiannon Cook!’ at least half the entire class responded helpfully.

‘Didn’t you even know, Sir?’ Nessa asked him, sensing his surprise and dismay.

‘Er - no. Actually I - I hadn’t noticed,’ came Drew’s hushed reply.

‘Sir hadn’t even noticed, you lot!’ Catherine turned and announced vociferously to the class, seemingly to elicit him some degree of sympathy. ‘Sorry. Mr. Cillick, Sir. I can understand how you might want better for your son than - than
that
.’

At this, a tall girl with long, straight blond hair and glasses in the corner decided to chip in her five-pennyworth. ‘But now that you know all about it, Mr. Cillick,’ she said, ‘don’t you think that they go really well together?’ Catherine’s mouth fell wide open as she spun round to watch her.

‘I - I don’t know, I really don’t. I never thought about it,’ Drew answered, looking up to check the clock, and realising that he still had almost fifty minutes left before he could even get himself to the staff-room, which is where he now so wanted to be. Yes, Drew suddenly felt a desperate need for a calming coffee and a cigarette, and a decent break from the busy, noisy classroom, so as to consider the impact of the news he had just discovered, totally by chance, in what was only his second lesson of the day. This wasn’t his worst, nightmare scenario, he kept telling himself, by way of encouragement, but there was no denying that it was pretty damn close.

‘I’m not being cruel to you, Vanessa,’ the girl in the corner continued, ‘but I think it’s the ideal combination, don’t you? Dark, with fair. Brown eyes with blue. I mean, isn’t that perfect?’ A few girls nodded. ‘Like me and - and Justin Bieber. The ideal marriage, even though I say so myself.’

‘Well, I just think you are trying to be cruel, Angharad,’ Catherine called out, raising her brows in a perfect v-shape and giving the bespectacled girl
the evils
. ‘Isn’t she, Sir? And she doesn’t even seem to care a fig about how my best friend feels. Now that’s just not right, is it Mr. Cillick? Mr. Cillick. Mr. Cillick! Sir - where are you going?’

Drew was in a total daze. He felt he needed to ring Anne right away, and so he collected his packet of cigarettes and his mobile-phone from the desk-drawer and spun round, and, opening the classroom-door with a deft, right-foot kick just below the handle, walked straight out. As he did so he almost collided with Marilyn Morgan, who happened to be standing outside the door.

‘Mr. Cillick, can you help me Sir?’ she said, a pleading look on her heavily mascarra-ed face.

‘What? Of course I can, Marilyn,’ he told her. ‘There’s a whole selection of them lying on my desk. Take what you like girl, yeah?’

Walking off into the room, Marilyn suddenly turned round to gaze at him again, and said, ‘Sir, you’re so kind, do you know that?’

‘Am I?’ Drew retorted, biting his top lip nervously, and inspecting closely the lettering on the fire-extinguisher on the wall, thereby feigning distraction.

‘Yes, Sir. Mr. Cillick - what’s wrong Sir?’ she enquired. ‘Because I can see that something is. I’m right, yeah? Let me help you, please. Just tell me what I can do for you, Sir, and I’ll do it.’

‘Oh, I don’t know,’ Drew replied, thinking fast. ‘Well, I suppose there is something you can do for me, as it happens, Marilyn. Though I don’t like to impose.’

‘Just say it, Sir,’ the pretty. diminutive girl replied, approaching him and staring into his face.

‘I need someone sensible to watch my class for a little while. Sit at the front, you know?’

‘Oh, I can do that!’ she told him, smiling. ‘Brill! What are they supposed to be getting on with?’

‘It’s ‘Life-drawing,’ as it goes,’ he replied. ‘The materials are all laid out at the front. Just hand them out and get the class to draw whoever is sitting opposite them, would you?’

‘You just to leave it to me, Sir,’ Marilyn told him, beaming in anticipation, and noticing the cigarettes in his hand. ‘Look, you just go and have a ciggy and put your feet up and relax for a bit,’ she added. ‘Because, you know, Mr. Cillick Sir, I also plan to be a teacher one day.’

‘You’re very kind, Marilyn,’ Drew retorted, smiling back at her. ‘And don’t worry, I’ll pop in and see Mr. Collins-Maths and tell him you’re presently helping me in my room, O.K.?’

‘Thank you, Sir,’ answered Marilyn. ‘Though I imagine he’ll have already guessed I won’t be back for a while. You see I always do a bit of a tour of the school about this time of the morning.’

‘Oh, and Marilyn,’ Drew said, now already half-way down the corridor, but turning back.

‘Yes Sir?’

‘You can always let Ashley Rees draw
you
, if you like.’ Drew winked at her once, then turned and walked away as the girl from Year Ten punched the air with pure joy.

Tom Davies lay in his single-bed beside a cold hot-water bottle and with a fresh pair of pants in his right hand, wondering if the daughter he adored, but had not seen for almost ten years now, had arrived from London as planned, and would decide to visit him in the next day or so. But the old man need not have worried his grey head about it, since, unbeknown to him, the thirty-one year old Carla was already on her way, in a ‘
Royston’s
’ mini-cab, travelling less than incognito - apart from the obligatory ‘shades,’ of course, and the trade-mark, large, black, furry hat she had recently taken to wearing - dressed in a simple skirt and jumper beneath her brand-new, long, grey, cashmere overcoat.

Suddenly hearing the sound of a car-door slam, Tom arose, and, pulling on a threadbare dressing-gown to shield him from the Spring chill, he edged his way over towards the window to try to see out. From this vantage-point he soon caught sight of his only daughter dismissing her cab back down the hill, pushing open his squeaky iron-gate, and, in her short, but languorous, stride, making her way up towards his new front-door. Realising that he wasn’t going to be able to make it downstairs in time to greet her when she knocked, Tom quickly raised his front-window as high as it would go, and leaning out, and with a mixture of love and anticipation, peered down upon his daughter’s sweet, covered head, and the black, flowing tresses of the scarf which, from above, seemed to circle freely around it.

Hearing the horrible, grating noise that the window made above her, Carla looked up, and addressed the man in tones which, sadly, he could no longer recognise. God, it had been that long, Tom told himself. He nevertheless concluded that the voice of the girl he could barely see without his glasses on was indeed the lovely daughter that he and his dear, departed, ex-wife had borne and raised in love, and christened Carla.

Tom suddenly had a brain-wave. He picked up his spare door-keys from the dresser, and then leaned out once more and threw them down onto the lawn beside his daughter’s feet. ‘There you go Carla! Come in out of the cold, won’t you!’ he called down to her, and he smiled nervously to himself as she swiftly responded by unlocking the front-door and shuffling inside.

Wiping her feet on the door-mat, Carla looked about her. Yes, it was a lot smaller inside the house than she had expected, she mused, and, for a moment or two, as she surveyed the cold, bare lounge, she felt that perhaps her unexpected gift to him had proved to be a less than generous one. After all, she pondered, she was now an A-list celebrity, a high earner, and a very rich woman, and could easily have housed her father in far greater luxury than this rather humble, three-bedroom, terraced property that he himself had chosen to settle for.

Carla laid her fur-hat on the old oak-table in the middle of the living-room and went looking for the kitchen, which she soon discovered was at the rear of the house. She checked in each of the wall-cupboards for a hint of a snack of some kind, but, sadly, discovered none. Then, peeking inside the fridge at the seemingly perspiring, cling-filmed plate of pink salmon that sat sadly in its state of solitary confinement on the top-shelf, she concluded that there was little doubt that an elderly, single man lived alone there, and one who clearly didn’t eat a great deal, and probably had to scrimp and save just to make ends meet. Then suddenly sensing the odour that betrayed the fact it needed a good cleaning out, she swiftly slammed shut the door of the fridge, then turned towards the high-pitched, squeaking sound she took to be the kitchen-door opening. It was then that she saw Tom walk in

‘Oh, Dad!’ exclaimed Carla, biting sharply into her bottom-lip, and staring at his thin, drawn, bespectacled face, and the grey-fringed, balding pate that sat above it, trying her utmost to recall it. Beneath his dressing-gown his grey sweater hung from him in great hanging folds and bulges. ‘It’s been such a long time, Dad,’ she announced, trembling all over, and not at all sure what else to say to him.

Tom approached his daughter with a sudden, flapping shuffle of rubber-soled slippers over linoleum, and embraced her slim body tightly in his firm, but bony grasp. Tears of pure joy began to well out from his creased, mole-speckled eyes very like a mountain-spring. Her body felt to him very much as it did when he had embraced her the last time at Cardiff Airport, ten or so years before, except that, now that she was finally back, he was determined that he would do all in his power not to ever let her get away from him again. No, never again, he told himself firmly.

Carla folded her shorter form into her father’s breast, and allowed his tears to dampen freely the high collar of the purple, woollen jumper that she wore. A long, protracted embrace of this kind was the very least she could do for her own father, she mused, as, ever so gradually, she began to loosen her hold, and endeavoured to ease his aged form, gently and lovingly, back into the large, wooden rocking-chair that sat invitingly alongside the kitchen-table. When she saw that Tom was comfortably settled, and staring up at her through tearful eyes, Carla pulled up a stool and sat herself down facing him, took out a large white handkerchief from her pocket, placed his spectacles carefully on the table-top, and gently dried her father’s face. She couldn’t tell him just then, but this was something she had dreamed of doing for him ever since she was a young girl, and so she savoured the sweet moment to the max, and finally, gently cleaning his concave lenses in a paper-tissue, she began to feel that soon she might start crying too.

‘Oh, Dad,’ Carla said again. ‘How old you have got, love.’

‘I know. And how lovely
you’ve
got,’ he responded, now smiling serenely into her bright, blue eyes that he had always felt much resembled his own.

‘Tell me - have you managed to settle in to your new home yet?’ Carla asked him. ‘I see you need to stock up a little in the provisions department. Is that all you’ve got - cold meats and lard and pink salmon? There was a time, I remember, when you insisted on red.’

‘How many years is it, Carla?’ Tom asked his daughter, feeling that whatever answer she gave him would be just the right one.

‘I don’t know for sure,’ she replied. ‘Ten, maybe? Eleven? I’m thirty-one now. But let’s not think about it, shall we?’

‘And Carys is gone since -’

‘Last May,’ she told him. Now she finally
was
going to cry, she thought. Mention of her dead mother always seemed to do this to her. Carla stood up and turned, as if to look out of the window, and her damp, but lustrous eyes suddenly took in the staggering sight of the vast, limestone viaduct, standing imperiously behind the little house in all its late-morning glory. ‘Oh, Dad!’ she shrieked. ‘What a lovely view you have here. Is it - is it really the -’

‘Yes,
The Seven Arches
,’ he replied, getting up from his chair and joining her, and placing his arm around her shoulder, as he remembered he had often done when she was a sad young girl who needed comforting, or reassuring, or just a lift up in the air and a spin round. ‘You know these days you can easily ramble away from it for miles in either direction, if you want, girl, except I feel that down that way - eastwards – I’ve discovered is by far the best.’

Gripping her father’s thin, veined hand in hers, Carla asked, ‘And is that
Morlais Castle
I can see up there?’

‘It is,’ he responded. ‘See - that’s where that cave is that’s shaped just like a key-hole, do you remember? And up-river,’ he told her, pointing down to the left of it, ‘where the fiery kingfishers fly, and the trout we searched for always seemed to need a good tickling now and again, is that rickety old bridge that takes you back up the steep path to old Vaynor Church.’

‘Oh, I remember now,’ his daughter told him, smiling. ‘And isn’t that where that old iron-master is buried, under the biggest chunk of rock I’ve ever seen in my life?’ she asked him, the sudden flash of the memory’s image now causing her blue eyes to sparkle, as Tom recalled they often did when he took her on long walks through the wild and windy Brecon Beacons as a child.

‘Yes. Just in case the miserable, old devil ever decided to try climbing back out again, I bet,’ he told her, smiling.

His daughter smiled too at the sudden recollection of this old wives’ tale about the long-gone, wicked iron-master. ‘And I remember, too,’ she went on, ‘that bizarre inscription on the outside-wall of the church, that tells of the local woman who lived through the reigns of eight different monarchs.’ She gazed into his eyes again. ‘I’m right, aren’t I, Dad?’ she pleaded. ‘It was eight wasn’t it?’ Tom nodded. ‘Well, can you just imagine that?’