Last Train to Gloryhole (29 page)

‘No? Do you mean - are you saying that, if I was a bird, you wouldn’t have come here tonight?’ the lanky boy asked him.

‘Eh?’ retorted Steffan. ‘Course I would have. ‘Course I would, dumb-ass. I’m not gay, I’ll have you know. Listen - you know what. I bet you I’d have probably shafted you at least twice by now, mate - condom, or no condom - if you had have been.’

‘Would you really?’ Jake enquired. ‘Eugh! I’m not sure I like the sound of that, if I’m honest. You know, Steffan, you’re already beginning to sound a lot gayer than you used to say I was.’

‘Hey! Who’s that!’ Steffan suddenly shrieked, scurrying away from his companion, and up the steep slope at a rate of knots. He soon arrived at the strange, hanging contraption under which Chris sat, concealed. Steffan studied him for a while, not really knowing what to make of it. ‘Say, mate - are you loitering within tent?’ he asked, pointing at the dripping canvas-sheet, and laughing so loud that the cowering Chris wasn’t sure whether to laugh along with him or stick his fingers in his ears.

‘I was just sheltering here out of the rain,’ Chris told him. ‘I - I thought it was you two, but I couldn’t be sure in the dark, you know, so I decided to stay shtumm for a while, just to be sure.’

‘Christ - it’s not that bleedin’ dark, mate. You got the gear?’ Steffan asked him.

‘It’s in the tree,’ replied Chris, pointing to the side.

Steffan removed a large polythene-bag from the branch of the dwarf-elm that stood nearby, pulled it open and peered inside. ‘That’s sweet, that is, Clicker. Look - we’ll pay you in two days, O.K.?

‘Eh? Why not now?’ enquired Chris, getting to his feet, and pulling the canvas-sheet down to the ground..

‘Because we don’t have the money right now, that’s why. Don’t get arse-y now,’ Steffan told him, looking fiercely into the eyes of the older, but less powerful boy, anticipating a problem, but not really expecting any. ‘You know very well you’ve got nobody else to sell it to, right?’

‘Well, I have, as a matter of fact,’ Chris announced, with the hint of a smirk on his face.

‘Really?’ Steffan snapped back. ‘And I suppose they buy in bulk, like we do, yeah?’

‘And pay top-dollar, like us, yeah?’ added Jake, who, having just climbed up the slope, had arrived at his friend’s side.

‘Well, I always charge the same price, as it goes,’ said Chris, rolling up the canvas, and pushing it under the tree.

‘Well, Clicker, that’s where your whole business-strategy falls flat on its face, you see,’ Steffan told him. ‘You should always charge the least amount for your best customers, and a damn sight more for everyone else. Didn’t you do Business Studies?’

‘What? No, I chose Music in that option-group,’ the older boy told him.

‘And a lot of good it did you, yeah?’ Steffan retorted sharply. ‘I mean I know you play bass and piano and that, but you’re never going to play with
The Stereophonics,
are you now?’ he told him, laughing.

‘Or
The Lost Prophets
,’ cut in Jake.

‘Or Carla Steel, even,’ Steffan added. ‘Are you now, Clicker? Old Carla wouldn’t give you the time of day, pal.’

‘Probably not,’ replied Chris, thinking fast, and taking care not to mention that, not only was the woman his new neighbour, but he actually knew her to speak to, and she was already his main customer for the skunk that she was totally unaware he grew in her own dad’s loft.

‘Probably not, he says,’ Steffan repeated, looking at Jake, and chuckling along with him.

‘Anyway,’ Chris countered, wiping the mud from his hands onto the back of his jeans, ‘I’m going to be forming my own band soon,’

‘Really?’ said Steffan. ‘And where are you planning to be playing, Clicker? Glastonbury!’

‘Well, you never know. That’s where Carla Steel is going to be head-lining the summer after next, I heard.’

‘Really? And how would you know that, Clicker?’ the older boy asked him in reply. ‘They haven’t even announced the line-up yet. And why are you going on about Carla Steel, anyway? Do you fancy the bird, or something? We two always thought you batti-ed for the other team, as it goes, didn’t we, Jake? Do you get it?’

Suddenly the raucous, unmistakable sound of a police-siren could be heard approaching down the steep road from the direction of the castle and Merthyr, and, without bye nor leave, the two younger boys dashed smartly back to where they had left their motor-cycle lying on its side near the cliff. Mounting it, and clutching onto each other for dear life, they then rode off down-river, along the course of the narrow path, that gradually climbed up the hill-side once more, then ran back down again steeply towards the shallow confluence with a narrower, tributary stream, which they sped across in a hail of spray, in their flight towards the distant village of Trefechan
.

Chris found himself alone and abandoned, and, wetting himself with fear, and not knowing what else to do, ran off in the opposite direction to Steffan and Jake, towards the narrow stone-bridge, which the police-car was in the process of trying to negotiate at even less than the five miles-per-hour that the road-sign alongside it requested. He dashed out in front of the vehicle’s blazing head-lights, veered sharply to his left, then began scampering up the vast stone stair-case, known to many as ‘T
he Ninety-nine Steps,’
that rose almost vertically out of the river-gorge, and which would, providing his leg didn’t suddenly give up on him, take him back up again to
Gloryhole
and home.

Pounding his way up the steep climb, the jarring pain in Chris’s leg soon caused him to slow up alarmingly. He quickly realised that the squad-car might quite easily have rounded the hair-pin bend, and already be at the summit of the steps to greet him when he finally arrived there, but, despite his sore leg, and a burning throat, he pressed on regardless, and, in little more than a minute or two, he finally managed to reach his lofty destination.

When he got out onto the road Chris could see that the police-vehicle hadn’t yet arrived, although he was certainly able to hear its three-litre engine roaring like a tiger out of the darkness to his left, as it rounded the hair-pin bend before hurtling up the curved hill towards where he was now standing. He had just a few precious seconds to spare in which to dash up to his house, un-lock the front-door, and slip inside, and, though it was a close shave, he made it.

A few minutes later, staring at his flushed, perspiring face in the hall-mirror, Chris was ecstatic that he had actually managed to make it home at all. Yes, it had been a very close thing, he told himself, realising that he would need to be even more careful in the future, especially when Steffan and Jake were about. But at least he felt thrilled to have succeeded in selling well over of half his stock of newly-harvested skunk in just a solitary night. And, what with his brand- new market just over the garden-fence, where the customer had no qualms at all about paying top-dollar, Chris truly believed that he had embarked on a new and exciting career for himself.

The twin, dark, satanic call-centres stood side-by-side on the main road into town. It was time for my daughter Rhiannon to carry out her own fortnight’s work-experience, and, wearing the short skirt and heels that I had thrice warned her against wearing, she stepped out of my car and marched boldly into the lofty ‘
Silver Excalibur
’ building, directly beneath its massive, 3-D, blue mobile-phone insignia, pierced by its iconic silver sword, that sat perched above the entrance on its vast, coal-black, illuminated screen.

I waved my arms, then tooted my horn in vain, but Rhiannon appeared to take no notice whatsoever. Yet, within a minute or so, my sweet, but serenely absent-minded, young girl was outside on the road once again, and, with a shake of her pretty head in my direction that acknowledged her mistake, now began walking, more circumspectly this time, into the more rectangular, and slightly less offensive monstrosity that stood bang next-door to it, its red fish insignia appearing to be switched off to reduce costs.

I drove north in the pursuit of relaxation, and after a brisk walk through the glories of the woods and the flower-beds of Cyfarthfa Park, I decided to drive out of town completely, and within twenty minutes or so had reached the village of Pontsticill, that I normally ventured to only on Sunday evenings, and parked my car outside. ‘
The Butcher’s Arms,’
next to a large beer-lorry that seemed to be completing its weekly delivery.

‘Fill me up, buttercup,’ I urged the young bar-maid, who soon returned my smile with interest.

‘Bitter - Dyl?’ she asked.

‘Only with life,’ I told her, grinning.

‘Mug?’

I could easily have delivered her with yet another pointless wise-crack, but thought better of it this time. ‘Straight glass,’ I replied. ‘And give me a couple of packets of crisps too, would you? Any flavours you like.’

I sipped my pint and looked around for a suitable place to sit myself down. The two boys seated at the table in the corner looked familiar to me. On studying them for a while I recalled that I had encountered them not very long after my daughter’s parents’ evening at Pennant just before Christmas, and had had some sort of altercation with the pair them afterwards in the street, the cause of which I could not now recall. Although it wasn’t yet midday, the young pair seemed to me to be just as drunk and out of it as they had been back then.

‘How long have we been waiting now?’ the bigger one asked his companion. ‘Three days, is it?’

The taller, much thinner boy shook his head, and flipped the beer-mat up into the air and caught it. ‘I don’t know, but it seems like forever,’ he replied, ‘Say, Steffan, on which planet in the Solar System is a day longer than a year?

‘What! How on earth can a day be longer than a year, stupid?’ retorted his friend with a glare.

‘But I’m not talking about
on Earth,
though, am I?’ responded Jake, with a smile.

‘Aren’t you?’ asked Steffan, flummoxed.

‘No. I told you, didn’t I?’ Jake continued. ‘Go on - guess. On which planet is a day longer than a year?’

‘I don’t know - the Moon?’ his friend shot back. ‘Oh, no, you said that was a satellite, didn’t you? Er - Ur-anus. That one’s always good for a laugh, right?’ He sipped his beer and tittered at the name contentedly.

‘No, not Uranus, or your-anus’ Jake told him, chuckling along with him. ‘Try again.’

‘Look, Jake - do I look like I’m interested in knowing any of your crap about Space?’ asked Steffan. ‘How come you’re in bottom-set for almost every subject you do, and yet you know all this shit? You a secret nerd, or something?’

‘Hey - I think
I
know,’ I called to them from my stool beside the bar.

‘Which is it, then, Grandad?’ Steffan rudely enquired, with a sneer that suggested he had already recognised me too.

‘Work it out,’ I told him. ‘You probably think of
a
day as
twenty-hour hours
, right?’

‘Well, don’t
you?
’ shot back Steffan.

‘No. No, that’s just
our
day - a day on Earth, I mean,’ I explained.

‘Get to the point, will you?’ the boy commanded.

‘And I guess you probably think of
a year
as -’

‘Three-hundred-and-sixty-five of ‘em,’ he retorted. ‘Say - am I right? I am, aren’t I?’

‘When, actually,
a day
is the time it takes for us to -’ I got up, squared my two feet on the bar-room floor, and then turned once right around in a circle, and promptly sat down again.

‘Time it takes to what, Grandad?’ asked Steffan, mystified. ‘To act like a tit?’

‘Spin!’ Jake told him. ‘Spin once round. Do you get it? And a year is the time it takes for -’

The skinny lad suddenly placed his pint-glass in the middle of the table they were sat at, and, in a wide sweeping arc, and, facing inwards, walked all the way round it, circling his friend in the process, and ending up back where his seat was. He beamed a smile at his scowling companion, opened his hands to him, and asked, ‘Now does that make it any clearer?’

‘Does it hell as like!’ Steffan shot back. ‘I think the two of you are bonkers, if you ask me. Say, aren’t you Rhiannon Cook’s old man, squire?’

‘Well,
old
is debatable, as I’m sure you’ll agree, but I happen to be her dad, yes,’ I told him, half expecting what was soon to follow.

‘Christ! She’s a girl who gets about, don’t you think?’ he continued.

‘Well, she’s working in a call-centre in town this week, if that’s what you mean,’ I replied.

‘That’s not what I mean at all, and you know it, Grandad,’ he told me. ‘What I mean is, she isn’t exactly - er - particular about who she goes with, is she? At one time she used to go out with me.’

‘Well, I can’t think why, exactly, but oddly you’ve proved your point, I suppose,’ I responded with a chuckle. From behind I felt I heard the bar-maid join in with me. Just then I swear I glimpsed two white, cartoon-puffs of steam shooting out of the bigger lad’s weirdly-shaped ears.

‘Say, was that remark supposed to be smart, or something?’ asked Steffan, clearly beginning to get himself worked up.

‘No, not particularly,’ I retorted.

‘Well, I reckon you were trying to be clever,’ he continued, determined not to lose face in front of his friend and, I dare say, the pretty young girl behind the bar. ‘What do you reckon, Jake?’

‘Well, I was, as it goes,’ I told him. ‘Trying to be clever, I mean. Right up until the time I had to leave school, that is. It was then I suddenly realised I had better find myself a proper job, and knuckle down and earn some bread like everybody else, or I could badly lose out. Because it’s a lot tougher than you think out there in the real world, boys. It really is.’

‘Old man must think he’s a smart-ass, Jake,’ Steffan responded with a smirk. ‘Well, listen, old boy, I don’t see no point in feeling I need to work my balls off like some poxy slave for fifteen or twenty grand a year just so’s I can afford some poxy council-house and a couple of packets of fags. That’s forced labour, that is. I mean, what’s the point in that shit, eh? There’s a lot easier ways of making dosh, right? I mean, I may still be young, but I bet I already know most of them.’