Last Train to Gloryhole (39 page)

My feelings of embarrassment were mixed with more than a tinge of pity for what seemed to be happening to the woman I had chosen to spend the remainder of my life with. I had already become seriously concerned with regard to the state of Gwen’s mental health, and if my wife went around calling herself
Hwyfar
all the time, I thought - whatever that strange Welsh word was supposed to mean - then she clearly ran the risk of being kept in hospital permanently, instead of receiving help as an out-patient, as was currently the case.

The balding man across from us soon leaned in to his bleach-blond wife and whispered something, and then, in reply, I could hear her tell him, ‘O.K., dear. If you think it’s best,’ and the two of them suddenly rose and carried their plastic trays over to a table close to the window, where they smartly turned their backs on the two of us, and carried on consuming their breakfast.

Who could blame them? I asked myself. Not me, for one. The couple clearly had the right to some peace and quiet, after all, as we ourselves did, in the precious minutes leading up to an appointment with a consultant, or a psychotherapist, or just a counsellor even, as was my Gwen’s case. Attending just her second weekly-sesssion was understandably quite a stressful time for my wife, I felt, and keeping her calm, and relaxed, and under control was, for me at least, of paramount importance. Sadly what happened next caused me to re-jig our day’s plans completely.

‘Didn’t we see her starring on
‘My Granny Was A Tranny?’
the woman with the bleach-blond bouffant loudly enquired of the bald man who was eating breakfast alongside her at the table that faced the window. ‘I can well believe it,’ I’m sure,’ I heard the balding man reply. What the woman had said might simply have been a relatively hilarious aside had my Gwen not heard the comment; but unfortunately for the pair of them, she certainly had.

Rising up from our table, Gwen immediately seemed to look round for something to grasp hold of - a weapon, I sensed, any weapon - with which to wreak revenge on the woman who had insulted her, and, just as likely it seemed, to inflict harm too on the man who accompanied her, and whom she appeared to know, for reasons that, at the time, I had little idea about. Spotting a long roll of French bread on a nearby table, Gwen quickly grasped hold of it, and approached the window-table at a rush, with the yard-long flute held out firmly in her two hands, and borne before her almost as a knight might bear a lance.

Then it really kicked off. Receiving the sudden, piercing blow to the back of his bald head, the man’s cup flew out before him across the table, spilling hot tea everywhere. Shocked, he turned, and then quickly ducked the second thrust, before a third, well-aimed blow from my better half connected with his bulky chest, and rendered him winded, and hopelessly draped across the cheap, plastic seat, and in dire need of medical assistance.

‘You bloody nutter!’ the bottle-blonde woman screamed. ‘You’ve probably gone and killed my husband. He might have testicular cancer, you know. Dick!’ she called out, leaning over him. ‘Speak to me, Dick!’

My wife suddenly spun round and held her weapon triumphantly above her head. I found I was so thoroughly embarrassed at that moment tnat I didn’t know where to look. ‘If he’s dead, then tell them he was killed by Ron!’ Gwen screamed back at her, readying her imperious flute for yet another attack.

‘Ron! Ron! But your old man is standing just over there, you old fool!’ the panic-stricken woman screamed at her, pointing across at me. ‘And you’re still carrying the bloody weapon in your hand, aren’t you? So how the hell can you suddenly blame it on him? Look - this is quite outrageous! Who the hell are you, anyway, for Christ’s sake? Some crazy, demented, New-Age, battle freak?’

‘My name is Gwen Hwyfar!’ Gwen replied in an unfamiliar, stentorian voice I had never heard her use before. ‘Gwen Hwyfar of Caerleon, is how my people know me.’ She peered in my direction. ‘And the old man you so rudely referred to is none other than Arthur himself,’ she told her, pointing the crusty, flaking flute back at me. ‘
My
Arthur,’ she went on. ‘And this in my stout, right hand is Ron,’ she added, holding the French-bread high, now clearly at least a couple of inches shorter than it had been before the battle commenced. ‘If Dick is slain,’ she told the woman, ‘then tell all the world that the mighty lance of Arthur wreaked revenge for Gwen Hwyfar, and rightly, and summarily, slayed him.’

Lying alone in his bed, sleep began to overtake him like a nerve-killing predator. Tom knew that he had to resist the impulse at the critical, final moment, and that only in this way would he be able to recall the main features of the dream that he had had - the numinous dream that he already knew was of significance, and so was therefore vital for him to recall. He kept his body as still as could be in the bed and allowed all traces of thought to simply drift away.

Time had to be ticking away, but Tom was determined that he wasn’t even going to acknowledge the fact. He knew full well that the re-filling process was beginning to take place, but he was adamant that he wasn’t going to terminate his present, perfectly relaxed state to even acknowledge that fact either. Instead he would focus on precisely nothing. That is on
no thing
. No, the very opposite of focusing was what was now going on, was already happening, he told himself, but he knew that it was best he shouldn’t even resort to thinking about that!

The thinking process ceasing, ‘emptying’ was now taking place, and Tom was sure that the blessed ‘re-filling’ was about to occur, however long that process might actually take. Yes, a solitary nerve somewhere in his being told him that the silent infusion had begun, but he decided he would wait until the very last second until he finally disturbed the process by even considering that it was occurring.

Just a while longer, he told himself; now just a while more. Soon he felt that he could hold on no more and would simply have to forgo his hard-won feeling of utter displacement, and surrender to the inevitable. There, he told himself with consummate relief, it was over. He inhaled deeply and slowly. It was now the moment of revelation. What on earth had this dream of his been about? After another few seconds Tom allowed himself to think once again. Yes, he told himself, it had worked, just as it had done so many times before. The dream he had earlier had was back in place, and now every bit as powerfully real as when he had first dreamt it.

The little girl with the pig-tails in her hair ran out of the building. She stood in the school-yard, staring up at the black mountain above her. She pulled the black mackintosh she wore tightly round her, and did up the top button to keep out the pouring rain. The sound of thunder suddenly rang out above her. Without any lightning-flash it sounded again, then a third time, but a great deal closer this time. She could see that this was much more than just a storm.

The mountain began sliding towards her. The little girl reached her hand into her coat-pocket and took out a card. She studied it, then hurried away towards the gate. Swinging it closed behind her, she trotted off down the hill in the direction of the railway-station. Behind her the school grounds quickly became flooded in a black lake, whose putrefied liquid poured out, lapped over the pavement, and ran down the middle of the road towards her. She knew that the school-buildings had been engulfed and laid waste by the sludge and slurry, the dislodged trees, and the rolling boulders, that, having poured down the mountain, surged silently past her.

The steam-train pulled in to the station, and the little girl clambered down onto the platform and showed her ticket to the man, who quickly opened up the carriage-door for her and helped her to climb inside. Suddenly the whirring sound of a helicopter caused the man to look up into the overhead sky, but, due to the thickening clouds, he found he was unable to see a thing.

As the train pulled away round the bend, and chugged its way up the broad river-valley, the man on the platform walked back to the ticket-office, and sat at his desk to examine the ticket that the little girl had just given him. He flattened it out with his fingers, and laid it on the table-surface before him. It was a beige card depicting two rows of printed boxes of almost equal length, and which for all the world resembled two parallel rows of square teeth. There were one or two inked slashes scrawled upon it, and it bore the name
‘Anne Morgan.’

Tom knew that it was over. He slowly nodded his head and pondered over the contents of his dream that he had just recalled for the umpteenth time in almost forty-five years. God! How long ago that first time now seems! Tom told himself. Almost like a bygone age. And as stark and colourless now as it had been when it first came to me on that fateful, wet October night.

‘Oh, not that pink stuff - please,’ she protested. The young girl in the check skirt, white blouse, and pig-tails pursed her lips so that the man in the white coat couldn’t possibly prise them apart and complete the torrid ritual. ‘I shall ‘appily go and have a filling or a ‘straction, mister, but please don’t feed me the poison.’

The man in white smiled at the little girl’s comment and her panic-stricken expression, and led her by the wrist over to the desk where he had carefully laid out all his cards and records. ‘What is your name, sweetheart?’ he asked, donning his reading-glasses so as to verify her details.

‘Anne Morgan,’ the little girl announced, leaning her slim body forward, and twisting her neck in a vain attempt to make sense of the black crosses and slashes that sadly now disfigured the pretty, beige-coloured card that the man now sat studying closely, and which she knew had to be her own. She looked over and asked, ‘Is that your daughter, Mister - Mister -’

‘Davies. No, Anne, it isn’t,’ the man replied without looking up. ‘It’s my wife if you want to know.’ He gazed into her little, pale face and smiled, and considered how sharp she was. ‘I see you’ve noticed she’s quite a bit younger than me, then.’ He looked up at her once again. ‘You’re a clever one, you are, aren’t you, Anne?’

‘Am I?’ she asked, a cheeky grin starting to form on her round, pale face. ‘Well, yes I am, Mister Davies, as a matter of fact. I came top in the Reading-Test that we had this morning, you know. I was the only one who could read
‘idiosyncrasy.’
It’s true, honest.’

‘Wow! And can you read this word, Anne?’ he asked. ‘No - ‘No -’ he helped her begin.

‘Extractions,’ Anne pronounced with ease, then smiled. ‘Say - what does it all mean, then, Mr. Davies? Can you tell me?’

‘It means you won’t have to go to the clinic a week Friday - that’s all,’ he replied.

‘Well, thank heavens for that,’ she exclaimed, blowing out a great puff of air. ‘Then I won’t have to swallow any more of that pink stuff, will I?’

‘The pink poison?’ he suggested, chuckling.

‘Yeah, that’s right. And I won’t have to miss the net-ball match, neither. You know, I picked up a niggle in the first leg.’

‘Really? And which one is your first leg?’ the man asked her, looking down.

‘The first leg. The first game of the tie, silly,’ she replied, smiling. We were practising for the second this morning, and I fell and hurt my knee bad after scoring. Ooh! Do you want to see it?’

‘Not really,’ replied Tom with a smile.

Anne’s jaw dropped. ‘But everybody else did!’ she told him sternly.

‘Oh, all right, then,’ Tom said, lifting his glasses, and peering over the end of the desk as she lifted her check skirt to disclose it. Tom winced. The round, red mark was truly a horrible sight.

‘Oh, sorry, Mr. Davies - that’s the wrong knee,’ said Anne. ‘I’m so stupid sometimes my Mam says. They both hurt really bad today, see.’

‘Wait! Is that a cigarette-burn there?’ Tom enquired. ‘It is, isn’t it?’ The little girl’s face flushed quickly and she turned to look at the wall. ‘Listen - you can tell me, you know, Anne,’ he told her.

The expression on Anne’s face had changed within an instant from one of joy to horror. ‘No, Mr. Davies! No, I can’t, I really can’t!’ she yelled at him. ‘If only he got to find out.’ She quickly pulled the hem of her skirt down, turned, and limped off towards the door.

Tom lay snugly and silently beside his wife Carys in their great double-bed and stared at the two cotton curtains that were drawn closed, ten feet or so before him. The light that was beginning to seep through told him that, since it was mid-October, and the Autumn Equinox was soon to occur, it had to be about 6 a.m. Since he was usually awoken by the wind-up clock’s shrill alarm each week-day at a-quarter-to-eight, he looked up and wondered what it was that had made him suddenly stir awake like this. He didn’t think it was a strange, ethereal dream this time; that had happened around a week before. But he knew that something had definitely been gnawing at his sleeping brain for much of the preceding night, urgently demanding to be allowed inside.

In an instant Tom realised what it was. He then leapt out of bed and ran into the spare-bedroom across the hall to get dressed. Forgoing his customary morning-shave, he dashed downstairs and, rubbing his eyes, hurried into the large, rambling kitchen, where he threw some cold water on his stubbly face, and scoffed the two jaffa-cakes that his wife had foolishly left out on the kitchen-table the evening before.

Closing the front-door as quietly as he could manage, Tom hurried round the circular path that led to the garage, outside which his racing-green Austin Wolseley sat parked. As he climbed inside it, he felt the first drops of rain in the air, and cursed the fact that he had emerged from the house without his rain-coat. But there was scarce time for turning back now, he told himself, so urgent was the task that he had just set himself. No, that wasn’t it, he mused. The task had really been set for him. Tom drove down the hill and accelerated through the sleeping village, where it appeared only the milk-man, and the Jersey cows that supplied him with his precious fare, looked to be up and moving around.

Tom began pondering over his bizarre new predicament. If He truly existed, as his brother frequently told him He did, then The Almighty had maybe set this agenda, he told himself. Tom realised that he would then be just a funnel.
‘A funnel of love,’
he thought, then laughed at the oddness of the expression he had just come up with, and which had always made him think of
Porthcawl Pleasure Park,
that sat in Sandy Bay
,
where he had first encountered his dear wife Carys. And it was in the back of her parents’ caravan in Trecco Bay, he recalled, smiling, that she had patiently taught him how to play on the guitar and sing
‘Wimoweh,’
and
‘Love Me Tender,’
the latter soon becoming their own personal song-of-love.