Last Train to Gloryhole (40 page)

‘And if He’s there, and if He cares for me, then one day He will bless us with the child we so desperately want,’ Tom announced to the sheep he drove past, as he rounded the bend that took him towards Talybont
.
Then it would be His will, not mine, after all,’ he told the dappled, Shetland pony that stood in his usual field at the foot of the steep, winding climb that would take him through The Beacons and into the upper Taff Valley. The creature blew clouds of steam from his nostrils in the direction he was aiming his speeding motor-car, on which the speedometer had once or twice read a staggering ‘fifty.’ ‘His Will,’ he repeated, smiling.

‘I still have time,’ Tom told himself, as he sped south, past the highest of the station halts called Torpantau
,
and then powered the car down past the stream, and onto the main road that ran past the two vast, linked, sinuous reservoirs, and on towards Pontsticill. ‘Just as long as the letter gets there before she goes off to school, that’s all,’ he told himself with a forced smile.

The little girl’s house was located quite high upon the hillside, well above the mining-village of Merthyr Vale, upon which it looked down through three square eyes and a door painted green, just like all the others alongside it. It was the lowest of a line of half-a-dozen identical cottages, quite plainly built to house the colliers, who dug and drilled for their bread daily, or nightly even, at the valley’s coal-mine, which stood darkly, but stolidly, like a huge, latticed, capital-A, alongside the railway-line and its little station, and close to the road that ran away into Aberfan.

As Tom powered his saloon-car up the, now silent, street, he imagined how busy it would get in just a few hours time, when the local children hurried down the hill in the direction of the junior-school he knew so well, many of them hand-in-hand with their mothers, and others, like little Anne, he told himself, who went off to school alone, as he himself recalled he had once had to do in years now almost too far gone to remember. Yes, like Anne, he too had been brought up by just his mother, his cruel, alcoholic father having one day decided that he needed the love of a second wife to make up for the disapppointment and frustration he felt had been caused him by the first. Until the day he died, he had loved him dearly, Tom told himself, but things had never been the same, and his mother’s lovely face, that he knew and loved, soon grew to be so lined and care-worn that his new friends took the dear woman to be his grand-mother.

Scaling the steep path to the little girl’s front-door, and with the unsealed envelope in his hand, Tom noticed that there was already a scrap of paper folded up and gripped in the metal, spring-loaded flap of the green, wooden door’s letter-box. Careful not to dislodge it, Tom held on to the paper while he deposited his own envelope inside the sleeping house.

But overcome with curiosity, Tom decided that little harm could be done by him peeking at its contents, and so he unfolded the grubby missive and began to read it.
‘It’s not true what the evil little witch told you, Bet. I never laid a hand on her, let alone burned her,’
was the sum of what was scribbled upon it. Tom straightaway felt he didn’t need any confirmation that it had been written by none other than the little girl’s father, although it was very doubtful she would get to read it once her mother had got to the door to collect up the morning’s post. But sensing that there was nothing he could do, and that it wasn’t really any of his business, Tom re-folded the dreadfully hand-written note, and placed it back precisely where he had found it, being extra careful now not to let the metal flap spring back vengefully with a house-wakening clack.

A whirring sound suddenly pierced the morning silence. Turning about and spying an orange helicopter retreating up the valley, Tom climbed into his car and drove off in the same direction.

Anne dangled her bare legs over the front of the stool and waited for her turn to go in to see the dentist. God, it was packed solid in there this morning, she thought, and all the best seats were already taken, so that only the high stool remained. She was confused as to why she was there at all, if truth be told, but glad that at least the bad weather had caused the netball-match she was due to play in to be postponed. Anne scratched her knees and wondered whether it was at last time for her to be able to safely scrape off the dark brown scab, and see fresh, white skin in its place underneath. Anne thought about the mess this might make and so instead pulled the hem of her skirt down once again.

The lady carrying the list of names came out of the room every few minutes to announce one and summon the next patient. Anne guessed that her name had to be near the very bottom of it, and, sadly, this turned out to be an optimistic guess, at best. After over two-and-a-half hours of patient waiting Anne made a decision, and climbed down off the stool, and, massaging her aching bottom, went and sat on the sofa in the waiting-room, that was by now deserted and silent. She studied the magazine on the long table before her and read about
‘The Beatles’
and
‘The ‘Rolling Stones,’
and her personal favourites -
‘The Searchers’
- who had just released their latest record. She turned to the page which featured the
Pop Chart. Jim Reeves
was at number-one again, she noticed. God! How she hoped he would be overtaken by a much more exciting song the following week.

A second door suddenly opened and the sound of Jim Reeves singing
‘Distant Drums’
filled the room. The little girl winced. To Anne, this song had a mournful, scary feel to it, and so she walked over to close the door of the room from which the music was emanating. But before shutting it, Anne happened to look inside, and she noticed that there was a man in there, sitting silently at a desk, writing. Even from behind, she found that she recognised him immediately.

Anne tapped on the door and beamed her cheeriest smile at the man whom, by now, she felt she knew quite well. ‘Mr. Davies!’ she called out. ‘Do you work
here
, then?’

‘Oh, hello there,’ the man replied. ‘Yes, this is my office - my humble abode,’ he told her, without looking up. For almost a minute the man continued with his work and ignored all of the girl’s quizzical glances. To Anne’s mind, he seemed curiously dismissive of her, and this made her feel quite uncomfortable, but she was determined that she wasn’t going to show it. Just then though the man looked up and spoke.

‘You had good news, then, young lady,’ said Tom.

‘I don’t know. I haven’t been in yet,’ she replied, electing to sit down on the seat before him. ‘How long do you think they’ll be?’ She and Tom sat and stared at each other. ‘You know, Mr. Davies, I thought they might even be finished already, and had somehow forgotten all about me.’

‘Yes, they do seem to have finished up, I’m afraid,’ said Tom. ‘But, you know, I can check your mouth myself, if you like.’

‘But what if I need a filling or something?’ she enquired.

‘Oh, I’m sure you won’t,’ he told her. ‘Do you remember a fortnight ago, when I checked your teeth in school? They were in excellent shape then, weren’t they?’

‘Yes, I guess.’ replied Anne. She reached down and rubbed her knee. ‘So why am I here, then?’ Anne asked him. ‘Didn’t they trust you, Mr. Davies? Your boss never believed you, did he?’ She giggled at the notion. ‘And so I suppose that’s why I’m here.’

Tom smiled at the little girl’s unintended bluntness. ‘Er - evidently they didn’t,’ he replied. ‘I’m not a bona fide, fully qualified dentist, you see, Anne. But, you know, since everyone working here seems to be finished for the morning, why don’t I take a little look, and tell you what I’m pretty sure
they
would have said if they’d examined you.’ Anne considered this for a moment, then nodded. Tom stood up, walked towards her, and gently turned her shoulders round so that she now faced him. ‘O.K. Open wide now then, and let me see, there’s a good girl,’ he told her.

Anne sat deeper in the chair, head tilted back, teeth bared, and listened as Mr. Davies counted that all her teeth were still there. She never realised that dentists did that, but, since one of the last of her milk-teeth had fallen out onto her pillow one night a few years before, perhaps it was understandable that a tooth-count was a vital element of the dental check-up.

Tom soon ceased his examination and turned her round to face him. ‘The good news is that you have a very fine set of teeth, Anne,’ he told her.

‘And the bad news?’ asked Anne.

Tom stared at her. ‘What do you mean? There isn’t any,’ he replied. ‘I think you should be very proud of yourself, all told, and very soon now you’ll be able to make your way home again.’

Anne wasn’t at all happy with this, and the glum look on her face plainly showed it. ‘But I shall have to wait almost an hour now for the next train,’ she said. ‘And I’m sure I won’t get back to school again until well into lunch-time at the earliest, and I just know I’ll miss my turn for dinner.’

‘Oh, so you’re not going to be going straight home then,’ said a concerned Tom. Anne shook her head. He sat thinking for a few moments, then said, ‘Listen - I bet it’s fish on Fridays, isn’t it?’ Anne nodded. ‘Then let me take you to the fish-and-chip shop up the High Street here. I’m rather peckish myself, as it happens. Tell me - what’s your favourite, Anne? Cod or hake?’

‘Hake,’ replied Anne. ‘Ooh, it’s fab, don’t you think, Mr. Davies? I’ll have hake-and-chips I will. And please can I have some of those mushy peas with it, too? Or is that too dear?’

‘You can have anything you want,’ Tom told her, smiling. ‘You know, they’ve even got tomato-ketchup if you sit at a table. And would you like to do that? Eat at a table?’ Anne nodded excitedly. ‘Come on, then,’ he told her. ‘Let’s go up the fish-and-chip shop now, shall we?’

The music from the transistor-radio in the corner suddenly stopped mid-track, and a BBC voice announced -
‘We interrupt this broadcast to bring you a very important news-flash.’
Tom suddenly stared at Anne. He had listened to this stern announcement with horror three times already that morning, each time the death-toll figures doubling as the scale of the horrible event just down the valley developed from accident to tragedy. He switched it off and, open-mouthed, walked over to the hat-stand to collect his flat-cap and his, damp but drying, macintosh.

As Tom left the clinic and crossed the street, hand-in-hand with the little girl from Aberfan, he lowered his open umbrella a foot or two so that Anne and he could shelter together from the incessant rain that was falling on Merthyr, and that had been falling non-stop for almost a week now - the devilish downpour that he already realised had played an enormous role in the loosening of the stream-infused foundations of the twin, gigantic coal-tips that overlooked the mining-village the little girl came from, and that he knew full well had brought utter destruction upon the junior school that she attended, and clearly loved, but, sadly, would attend no more.

When Tom’s foot haplessly landed four-square in the middle of a deep puddle, he stood stock-still, and winced with discomfort, and no small amount of embarrassment. Anne giggled loudly at the nice man’s sorry predicament, and called across to him from the further pavement that she had run to, ‘You know, you saved me from a drowning then, Mr. Davies. My Mam will be ever so pleased you did that.’

As the older people of the town gathered in tight-knit groups on street-corners to engage in mass head-shaking, and frenetic, but sombre conversation, Anne took no notice, and began laughing and singing to herself the fantastic new song about
Eleanor Rigby
that she loved so much, and proceeded to skip up Methyr High Street with consummate delight. ‘My Mam says she keeps her face in a jar, too,’ she announced to the rain-drenched world rushing past her.

Tom smiled and shook his head with amazement at Anne’s innocent comments, her sweetly-sung song, and her comical antics. Yes, he was clearly right after all, he thought, to drag her into town that morning under wholly false pretences. He felt fully justified because he knew he had developed a strong paternal empathy for her ever since he had discovered, by chance, how she was suffering badly at home at the hands of her tyrranical and abusive father, who seemed to take out on his sweet, innocent young daughter the frustrations that he felt for his estranged wife. And, with bitter recollection, Tom still remembered clearly the effect that this same treatment had had on him when he was more or less the same age that Anne was now, and every bit as vulnerable; and especially how he had been forced to suffer the dreadful physical abuse of an alcoholic father, as well as the shameful neglect of a dangerously deranged mother.

Tom stood and watched Anne as she used both of her thumbs, as well as her impudent, pink tongue to create a monstrously funny face, then instantly smiled back at him from the doorway of the bustling fish-and-chip shop they were heading for. What was it that his religious wife Carys had recently told him Jesus had said about this? Tom asked himself, as he halted and took off his sopping shoe, and tapped it against the lamp-post, so as to shake out all the rain-water and the mud and grit that had silently worked its way deep inside. Standing on one leg, and leaning uncomfortably against the post, while gradually fitting the leather shoe back into place on his badly drenched foot, Tom suddenly recalled the precise text his mind was searching for, and said aloud to the wet, hunched-up folk of Merthyr Tydfil, who strode purposefully past him,
‘In as much as you have done it for one of the least of these, you have done it for Me.’

‘Stephen Hawking says that heaven is a fairy story for people afraid of the dark,’ Drew announced with a blissful smile on his face, reading aloud from an article he had found on page-two of the newspaper. He turned and stared across at his wife who was sitting comfortably on the sofa watching ‘
The BBC News
.’ ‘So what do you think of that, babe?’ he asked. She clearly wasn’t listening, so he tried another tack. ‘Do you sometimes feel scared some nights, Anne?’