Last Train to Gloryhole (28 page)

But about half-way along the track Chris suddenly recalled the two dreams he had had about Rhiannon, obviously because he was now passing close to the location in Vaynor Woods, where the events in the first of the dreams had taken place. He veered to his right, and, though finding it difficult in the gloom and the rain to stay upon it, followed a narrow path that soon took him down to the little wooden bridge which crossed over the Taff at one of its prettiest spots, and which soon brought him out onto the lovely grassy glade beyond it that had always been his favourite picnic-spot, whatever age or gender the person was he happened to be sharing it with.

Chris didn’t feel that he was able to cross over the bridge, since the dream’s image, that he recalled, still seemed so vivid and real to him. And so, leaning against a large oak-tree, ten feet or so above the river-bank, he stared across at the, now almost invisible, copse, and imagined that his dream was recurring right before his eyes, just as he continued to recall it.

It was the middle of the day, and Rhiannon was running away from him onto the wooden bridge that would take them both away from the river and up the steep hill towards Vaynor Church. Chris watched the lovely, flame-haired girl he adored turn lovingly towards him when she reached the other side. With her pale arm she motioned for him to follow her, and he did.

Everything, including Chris’s love-life with Rhiannon, felt tranquil and idyllic. Together the pair walked through a pasture where beautiful white lambs gambolled carelessly about, frequently suckling on their mothers’ teats, the small number of ewes being, quite naturally, far larger animals that possessed much shaggier coats of a darker, browner colour.

But out of the woods to his left strode a wild mammal that looked like a grey fox, but far more closely resembled a wolf: a creature that possessed dreadful, penetrating eyes, and flashing, gnashing teeth. The four-legged beast ran into the copse and quickly snatched up in its jaws a young, feeble lamb, and shook it about mercilessly, until its neck was utterly broken.

As the rest of the sheep scattered, Chris then clearly saw Rhiannon and himself, standing just apart from each other, gazing down from opposite sides of the path at the awful, bloody scenario that was taking place directly before them. Chris watched himself simply standing there, stunned, and powerless to prevent the innocent lamb’s demise. Yes, tearful and afraid, his eyes blazing, his mouth wide open in horror at the grisly event he was witnessing, the image of himself that Chris beheld on the far side of the river was one of cowardly impotence, and it filled him with shame.

Rhiannon, on the other hand, arms wide apart, the fingers of her hands twisting with obvious excitement, stood close up, and stared down at the scene of slaughter before her, plainly thrilled at being able to witness its reality, and its inevitable, bloody conclusion. At that moment Chris sensed that the sweet girl he had thought he loved had morphed into a boy, whose dark face, stubble, and side-burns were not unlike his own. He felt instant hatred for the Rhiannon that he now beheld, and, without even reflecting on it, knew he could never again go near her.

The second dream Chris had had on that night he found he was now unable to recall. Just as well, he told himself, as he clambered back up the path, and, in the dank, cold woods, hurried off once more along the wet, stony cycle-way that stretched away before him towards
Gloryhole
.

The wind that rose up all of a sudden disturbed the sleeping girl so greatly that she pulled back her duvet and sat herself up in bed, and listened attentively to its sheer ferocity and power. It was whistling noisily through the roof-top, and she could even feel its keenness on her bare arms, and this made her shiver. Carla had long wanted to compose a song that reflected the essence of her homeland, and, at that very moment, she decided that
the wind
would be the theme that ran through it. She then recalled that she had just been dreaming about a
‘Queen of the Bee-hive,’
and, after pondering the matter for a minute or so, she suddenly realised that she had simply been experiencing yet another dream about Amy Winehouse. She shook her head and laughed at the stark simplicity of the, much-lauded, wisdom of the
personal unconscious
. Yes, Jung had definitely got that right, she told herself.

The bedside-clock read four-thirty. Carla yawned, then breathed in deeply to replenish the expelled air. The smell that suddenly hit Carla’s nostrils was unmistakable. She leapt out of bed and opened up the drawer in which she had taken to storing her stash of
‘green.’
The odour from Chris’s bags seemed to be seeping out somehow, she mused, although why it was happening she couldn’t tell, and so she searched around for a tin that she could seal it all in.

Suddenly Carla heard her father’s plaintive cry coming from his room next-door, and so she left her task and dashed in to see to him. She could see that his head was lolling half-way out of the bed, and could straightaway sense from his contorted face the agonising pain that he had to be experiencing just then. Carla found she could only cry to look at him, but she nevertheless approached his single-bed, and eased his thin torso back into place, under the covers again.

‘How bad is it, Dad?’ she asked him, tearfully, seeking for his hand to hold.

‘Pass me my water, sweet, would you,’ he replied hoarsely, licking his lips for soothing sake.

Carla reached across and fed him a mouthful of water from the glass, and saw how his grey, marbled eyes suddenly lit up for a second.

‘You know, I don’t reckon I’m long for this world, now, Carla,’ he told her slowly. ‘Every day - every night, now - the pain just gets worse and worse.’

On hearing those pitiable words, which she felt were almost cracking up her heart, there was just one thought on Carla’s mind. She turned and ran back into her room, took one of the little bags from her drawer, opened it with her teeth, and, with the aid of a rizla paper, began to roll up a cannabis-joint. Once done, she lit it, and brought it, lovingly, to her father’s bed.

‘Inhale this, Dad,’ she told him gently. ‘It’s a - it’s a special pain-killer I went and got for you. Just breathe it in, would you, Dada, and soon, I guarantee, you’ll be feeling a whole lot better.’ Carla held the tip of the spliff firmly between her father’s pale, cracked lips and bid him take a draw. The wind howled like a banshee round the stairs beyond the open door, but, no longer hearing it, Carla leaned over and bade him take another puff, then yet another again.

‘Yes, I can see that it’s already working,’ Carla told him with a sweet, beaming smile. She gripped his thin, quivering hand in hers, and convinced herself that she could feel its growing warmth. Soon Carla could see him begin to smile his elation back at her, and so she realised that this was indeed the sort of pain-relief that her aged father’s broken body now badly needed.

Was this then ‘
the breath of life,’
she asked herself with a smile, that she had often heard folk speak about as a young girl in the little chapel in
Talybont
, where her mother Carys had taken her to learn about God and Jesus in much happier times? ‘
The wind’
that swept in through the bolted door at Pentecost - was this it? mused Carla. Not the actual smoke, of course - not the drug - she told herself, but the swift, miraculous, surely heaven-sent, heaven-scented, respite that it plainly managed to bring to one in such desperate need. She leaned closer to her father’s frail form, eager to know the answer, and to Carla, just then, it most certainly appeared to be so.

‘Good. Now take a final draw, Dada,’ she beckoned him. ‘And inhale more deeply this time. Ye-es, that’s it, my love. You’re doing just great. Now pass it to me and just lie back and rest.’

‘Stop bumpin’ your gums and listen, will you!’ Steffan ordered his partner-in-crime. ‘I know it’s starting to get dark already, and that bloody waterfall is a hell of a lot scarier than it was the last time we came here, but we can’t just leave the bike out on the road, can we? It needs to go where we go, in case - well, in case the filth are planning to light us up and jump us. Our exit strategy - do you get it?’ He watched as his friend nodded. ‘Right. Come on, then. Push!’

Jake and Steffan stood either side of the silent, blue scrambling-bike. Together they guided it, with every fibre each possessed, up the steep, muddy incline, and along the narrow, winding path that, in the gloom, they could barely make out, right up to the point where it sloped down again, but even more steeply this time, towards the river-torrent, and its whirlpool of white, gushing water, that rotated beneath it like a giant turbine in the midst of its vast pool.

A little further up the hill, hidden from sight, and sheltered from the drizzling rain beneath the cover of a sheet of black canvas slung over a bush, Chris sat silently watching them. Hearing mention of the police, and seeing how the two boys were now acting, convinced him that he had best remain where he was for the time being, and listen further to their crazy conversation. .

‘Clean!’ stammered Jake. ‘Of course he’s clean! He’s the guy at the top, right? So he’s bound to be as clean as a whistle, mate. He’s just got the one conviction for speed trafficking, I heard.’

‘What! Then he’s not clean, then, is he, dumb-ass?’ Steffan told him. ‘Trafficking
Speed
! I mean, that’s some serious shit right there, wouldn’t you say?’

‘Do you think?’ asked Jake. ‘But he said he was just doing forty in a thirty zone. Why, that’s no big deal, surely. I mean,
you
do that all the time.’

‘Oh, you mean he was speeding!’ said Steffan, laughing.

‘In his Audi, yeah,’ added Jake. ‘What’s so funny? Eh? Say - why are you laughing at me?’ Jake watched as his burly pal rolled about. ‘Steffan, can I ask you something?’ he asked. ‘Why on earth are we meeting Clicker all the way up here? We can’t even sit straight, it’s so bumpy.’

‘Why, here? Why not?’ said Steffan. ‘Look, mate, this might seem just a patch of shitty, rat-infested ground on some lonely Welsh hill-side to you and me, mate, but, this is Heaven-on-Earth to an Afghan immigrant and his two wives and extended family. Remember there’s two ways of looking at everything, you know. Take what we are doing right now, for example. I mean you probably see it all as just - as just buying and selling drugs, don’t you?’

‘But isn’t that what it is?’ enquired Jake, bemused. ‘Well, that’s what I think I signed up for, any road.’

‘No, not at all,’ responded Steffan. ‘You see, mate, I’m more inclined to view it as ‘care in the community’ - a kind of general practice, if you like. The Big Society at work. Do you get me?’

‘Do you mean us two are like - like doctors, then?’ quipped his friend, not a great deal clearer about it than before.

‘Yeah, you got it,’ Steffan told him, picking up and lobbing a slab of fallen rock at a couple of crows that had hopped onto a fallen tree nearby, then, once they had flown off, flingng another into the cavernous, revolving pool thirty feet or so vertically below the soles of their feet. ‘People take cannabis for all sorts of reasons, and for all sorts of illnesses, you see, including the extreme effects of motor-neurone disease. MS, asthma, adenoidal cavities, and a whole shit-load more. I’ve been researching it all, see.’

‘How about cancer?’ enquired Jake.

‘Yeah, cancer, too,’ replied Steffan. ‘And all the different kinds of cancers you can get, too.’

‘You know, I think I can see your point now,’ Jake told him, nodding. ‘By the way, I know what you mean about there being two ways of looking at everything. I remember how everyone in my Primary School was shocked when they heard how I stuck photos of single breasts of different women on my bedroom-wall. ‘Single breasts!’ they’d say. ‘What’s up with you, Jake? What’s wrong with
two tits
? Are you weird or something? Are you gay?’ they used to ask me. ‘No, I’m not gay,’ I’d tell ‘em, only I couldn’t tell if they believed me or not. But what they didn’t realise was that what I’d actually pasted up weren’t tits at all, but colour close-ups of all the moons of all the planets in our Solar System, as viewed from the spacecrafts Voyager and - and Cassini.

‘Christ!’ shot back Steffan. ‘Do you mean - do you mean the Italians have been up there?’

‘I guess so,’ said Jake. ‘And you see the biggest and the darkest of the craters on them -’

‘They took for nipples!’ said Steffan, chuckling loudly, and slapping his skinnier friend across the back of the head.

‘That’s right,’ said Jake, rubbing his skull and stifling a wail. He was genuinely glad that his companion seemed impressed with his tale. ‘Say, Steffan - see that strange blob of yellow sitting up between those two clouds. You probably think that’s the Moon, yeah? But it’s not, you know.’

‘It’s not!’ stammered Steffan. ‘It’s not the Moon? Listen, Jake, I’m not at all sure you’re not a bigger tit than they all said you were.’

‘No, I’m not,’ countered Jake. ‘No, that big yellow sphere up there is just
our
moon.’ Jake told him with obvious passion. ‘That there above us right now is our very own special satellite. And we only have one satellite.’

‘You mean like you’re mine,’ said Steffan, his right hand high-fiving his partner’s left.

‘Yeah, that’s it,’ Jake told him smiling. ‘Yeah. No. Well, not exactly. I’d say we were more
a pair
of satellites, really. Like - like Mars has two moons, you see. Different sizes, of course, yet equal, of equal value, if you get what I’m trying to say. Like - I don’t know - like two crows sitting on a log,’ he said, smiling, and pointing at where the two birds had sat together before being driven off by his friend’s mad missile attack.

‘Except them two were a mating pair, stupid,’ Steffan corrected him, angrily. ‘I mean, I know you often talk like a girl, Jane - I mean Jake - and - and you told me you like
‘American Idol,’
and ‘
Dancing On Ice,’
but you’re really a dude, you know, dumb-ass. Otherwise I wouldn’t have got myself stuck up here with you on some bleedin’ hillside under the moonlight, now would I?’