Last Train to Gloryhole (45 page)

Carla knew from that afternoon that she and Sarah would soon be getting together: there were some very clear signals she could see. The woman was Welsh, for a start. In fact she hailed from Merthyr, which, though Carla came from a village over a dozen miles to the north of the town, was the place where her dad had worked, and also where, heeding her father’s wise advice during a fractious period, both at her school in Brecon, and domestically, she had gone, to study for her A-levels. The taller, stouter Sarah was a much older woman, and far more self-confident than Carla, and that happened to suit the singer’s needs quite perfectly at the time.

So nobody was more surprised than young Jackie when Carla suggested that all three women might consider moving in to a flat together. But far from being upset when the colossal change in domestic arrangements eventually took place, Jackie accepted the offer gladly, and, perhaps becoming more and more dazzled by the singer’s growing status, and quite possibly by the burgeoning cash-flow, which would now be coming in regularly, and which would no doubt keep all three women well fed and watered, asked if she could move in with the three of them her young daughter Leila. After meeting the child, Sarah swiftly agreed, and so, from that moment on, she and Carla slept in a pair of single beds in the largest of the bedrooms, while Jackie took residence in the second largest, with young Leila sleeping in the adjoining box-room.

The arrangement seemed to work very well for a couple of years. Carla’s repute as ‘a talented musician with something to say,’ (as more than one musical publication described her) began to soar. Sarah found herself a new job in the Civil Service, and even Jackie was able to accumulate sufficient income, both to enable her to care for her three-year old child, and to pay her share of the rent. Little Leila seemed to be thriving, and so all four females were very happy.

Then one morning around 6 a.m. the Fulham flat they lived in was raided, and Jackie was arrested for drug-dealing. Not long after that she was sent to Holloway Prison for five years, this having been the second time that she had been convicted of the offence. This was the watershed moment that, for some considerable time, Carla had feared might one day happen, and, once she and Sarah were made fully aware of the situation, they wasted no time at all in stepping in, and, after first ensuring that she wasn’t going to be taken into care, henceforth reared little Leila themselves, much as if she had been their very own sweet daughter.

Carrying a green rucksack on her back, Rhiannon had run most of the way from her parents’ home over the
Bryniau
moorland, through the castle ruins, and down the secret path which her father had shown her in the steep, grey, shelved cliff, when, as a child, they had explored daily, throughout the school-holidays and at weekends,
‘the green and pleasant land’
of her native homeland.

Almost getting hit by a speeding cyclist with no bell, who was tightly, and bizarrely, dressed in lurex clothing, far too bright and colourful for even her to contemplate wearing to a dance-class, Rhiannon jogged across the broad viaduct, and discovered that her handsome lover was already awaiting her arrival by the side of the wide track, where the old station-halt had once stood in times gone by, in
‘the days of steam.’

Chris kissed his lover on the mouth, and she quickly handed him, almost as a reward, a small chocolate-bar that she had kept for him in a polythene-bag, rolled up inside her coat-pocket.

‘What else have you got in there?’ he enquired, licking his lips in anticipation. ‘You know I can’t stand
Snickers
.’

‘I didn’t know that,’ she told him, pouting a little, and putting it back. ‘What is it you want?’

‘I’m holding out for an aero!’ he told her, smiling.

‘Well, I don’t have one,’ she replied, searching through the bag, then, seeing his cheeky grin, eventually comprehending the witty remark he had made to tease her.

‘Crème Egg?’ asked Chris.

‘Sorry. They all went at Easter.’

‘Frere Rochet?’

‘Fat chance.’

‘Oh, give me the
Snickers
, then,’ he told her, ‘and I’ll share your fruit-juice with you as well.’

‘That’s nice of you,’ quipped Rhiannon, feigning disgust, but not quite succeeding. ‘Don’t your parents feed you, then, young man?’

‘Well, not like you do, sweet,’ Chris retorted.

‘No, I can see that,’ said Rhiannon, unscrewing the top off her bottle and handing it to him to drink from. ‘Where exactly is this cave you mentioned, anyway?
Merlin’s Cave!
How come you never told me about it before?’

‘I never really discovered it before, that’s why,’ he told her, handing her back the bottle, his thirst suitably quenched. ‘But you know I must have heard about it forever.’

‘Chris - what’s that you’re listening to on your i-pod?’ asked Rhiannon.

‘Er - It’s
‘I don’t know where we’re going’
by
The Sat-Navs
,’ he replied, biting his top lip and turning away.

‘Really?’ said Rhiannon, instantly falling for it. ‘Well, that’s appropriate, anyway, considering what our plans are. Give me one ear-piece so I can listen, would you?’ Chris obliged, smiling wickedly. ‘But surely - but surely that’s Carla! That’s Carla Steel, isn’t it?’ she told him. ‘You know you’re such a liar sometimes, Chris Cillick. You’ll go to hell, you will.’

‘Yeah, I know,’ he replied, winking.

‘Say, Chris - was your new neighbour ever on ‘
The X-Factor?
’ she enquired.

‘Carla!
X-Factor!
You most be joking. Can you ever see them uncovering a genuine star on that show?’

‘Mm, not really,’ she said. ‘Though two of their girls have done pretty well for themselves.’

‘I mean, can you imagine, Rhi? ‘And the act I’ve decided to put through tonight, Dermot, is……… Bob Dylan!’ Just imagine that, eh?’ Chris chuckled at the thought.

Rhiannon giggled too and decided to have a go herself. ‘And the act I’ve decided to put through tonight, Dermot, is ……Amy Winehouse!’

A smiling Chris continued the game. ‘And the act I’m putting through tonight is John Lennon!’

‘Is……..Elton John!’ announced Rhiannon.

‘Jimi Hendrix!’ shouted Chris, dancing about and playing air-guitar, left-handed.

The pair laughed away, holding on to each other’s waists so as to stop them from falling over. Chris suddenly thought of another angle to it. ‘And, sadly, folks, in the bottom two tonight, are……..Paul Weller, and……..wait for it……..The Arctic Monkeys!’

‘And in the bottom two tonight are……… Adele……..and Coldplay!’ chimed in Rhiannon. ‘And sadly, one of these two will be going home.’

‘Simon……..and Garfunkel!’ yelled Chris, dancing about with a microphone at his lips.

‘Or when they come to Cardiff, maybe,’ Rhiannon told him, ‘Duffy, and The Manic Street Preachers.’

‘Hang on. You’re going overboard now, Rhiannon,’ Chris told her. ‘And the live-shows are never in Cardiff, are they?’

‘I know. Sorry,’ she retorted, writhing about strangely.

‘What’s up?’ Chris asked.

‘I’ve got a wedgy,’ Rhiannon told him, wincing with pain and wriggling a bit more.

‘Oh, so you went and wore that thong again, then?’ he suggested, his brown eyes flashing.

‘Well, you did tell me you liked it,’ said Rhiannon, getting up and feeling around in places that even her mother had shunned venturing into.

‘I know I did. I do.’ said Chris. He gazed at her. ‘I think I love you, you know, Rhi.’ he told her.

‘I love you too, Chris,’ said Rhiannon, gathering his lithe, strong body in her arms and kissing him moistly on the lips, her pearly-white teeth quickly encirclng his tongue.

The besotted, young couple turned and walked on down the dusty track, then, curving off it right, to the north, the sun beating down on them, they wandered across the wide, green fields that ran away towards the mountains. Before very long the pair reached their destination.

For Chris the entrance to the limestone cave had a different atmosphere completely this morning. With the day’s early, glaring sunshine, it now lay much more in shadow than it had done when he had ventured there two days earlier, and eventually conducted his drugs sale successfully with the two boys from Pant and Dowlais. The strange writing on the wall was now barely visible from the rock-ledge in the middle of the stream where they were standing, but, knowing that it was there, Chris easily managed to locate it, and, soon called Rhiannon across to join him, so that he could show it to her.

‘Let me get my wellies on first,’ Rhiannon told him, suddenly springing to her feet, and kicking twice - once for each foot - at the front of a gigantic boulder lying beside her, so as to get her curled toes as close as she could manage to the rounded, rubber ends. Then arms outstretched, and wading right into the heart of the stream, Rhiannon approached as close as she could to the grey, limestone wall, studied closely the neatly written, scarlet inscription, and announced excitedly,’ Christ alive! My mother
ha
s been up here! How on earth did she manage that? And
why
, for heaven’s sake? She’s not really into walking these days, you know.’

‘Then perhaps she came here a long while ago,’ Chris told her. ‘I say that only because the black writing in brackets beneath it is fading badly, and yet it had to have been written later than your Mam’s writing, since it sort of explains it. Do you get me?’

‘Yes, you’re right,’ said Rhiannon. ‘The words ‘
BEDD ARTHUR’ -
meaning Arthur’s grave - was clearly written there by
Gwen Hwyfar
- who is unquestionably my dotty old Mam. Why, though? God only knows. Say - do you have any idea yourself, Chris?’ She turned and looked at him askance. Chris - what the hell are you doing?’ she asked.

‘Stripping off to my trunks, of course,’ he told her. ‘It’s eighty degrees celsius today, you know. Apparently this is the hottest Spring we’ve had in Britain since records began.’

‘In that case I think I might join you,’ she told him. ‘My one-piece costume is in my bag. I’ll just pop behind the tree and change, O.K.?’ Rhiannon smiled at the shake of the head he gave her.

While Rhiannon changed into her swim-suit, Chris slowly waded into the cave, grasping onto any, and every, projecting portion of the cream-coloured walls on both sides, so as to help him stay upright, as the pure, spring-water gushed up exquisitely against his advancing legs, and surged between and around them. This was an experience that was entirely new to Chris, and quite a taxing one too, and so, after a dozen or so long, tiresome strides he halted and turned, and, motionong with his hand, encouraged Rhiannon to try to wade up alongside him.

‘Give me your arm, Chris!’ the pale, slim-hipped girl cried above the growing symphony of the cavern’s tinkling, water-music. ‘And turn your torch on, for God’s sake, or we’ll probably get lost.’

‘How the hell are we going to get lost?’ he asked her, holding out the torch anyway, and lighting up the narrow route ahead of them. ‘There’s only the one way in.’

‘I can’t hear you,’ Rhiannon shouted. ‘What did you say, love?’

‘I said your Mam is your Dad, and Harry, your dad’s goldfish, is your twin-sister,’ Chris announced, turning and smiling serenely at her as if butter wouldn’t melt.

‘You don’t get goldfish in here, do you?’ Rhiannon enquired, catching just that single word from his mischievous statement.

Bare arm in bare arm, the young pair ploughed on into the grotto’s deepening gloom. The coolness of the air caught them unawares, but they convinced themselves that this was a very welcome blessing after the stifling heat that they had had to contend with in the hot, humid cleft of the wooded valley that now lay somewhere far behind them, and which, to their young, perceptive minds, already seemed a different, forgotten world completely.

In the rising arc of the torch’s light the stalactites hung down like skinny pillars on either side of them, gleaming pink and cream, lime-green and gold. Had there been cob-webs suspended around them too, then Rhiannon felt she might have been venturing on foot through the ghost-train she had always adored in
‘Dreamland.’
Chris, on the other hand, pondered on a lap-dancing club he had once inadvertently wandered into in Swansea, and promptly banged his right knee into a large rock.

Rhiannon turned so as to share with Chris her feelings, but, noticing his shocking, pudenda-pink lips, and his satanic black throat, she instantly fell silent, and, head down, clung to his waist instead, as if in dread, or desperation. Rhiannon squeezed his ice-cold hand within her own. She so loved to hold his lissome body next to hers, partly because he always felt to her so much like a greater portion of herself. Soon she could feel her heart beating faster. No, she thought, she still wasn’t able to say no to the drug that was Chris: she found that, even now, or more especially now, she wanted his hands on her, and at her, and around her, and even inside her, and the cavern’s rich, intoxicating atmosphere now only made her more aware of this fact.

The semi-naked pair waded on as one, and, minutes later, when they glimpsed the great, round pool, that lay bathed in shadow just ahead of them, they simply stood and stared, in awe of its serene, magical beauty. Here, beyond the initial tunnel they had traversed, in the very womb of the tubular grotto, the vast cavern’s ribbed roof, which they peered at high above their heads, arched like that of a mosque, or the heart of some medieval cathedral. Tiny bats circled silently above them, and spun and swooped hypnotically, and seemed endlessly to inter-weave and fold over themselves, in the coal-black, velvet space that now gaped, and throbbed silently with tiny pistules of light above them.

Averting their upward gaze momentarily, and instead turning and staring into each other’s eyes, the young pair held on to each other even more tightly and kissed. This was without question the world each one longed for, their firm embrace conveyed. Yes, this, for both Chris and Rhiannon, was life without care; pure bliss; their private, and, perhaps, future Eden.

Switching off the torch’s light, and untying, or at least slipping aside, what little covered their willing torsos, the couple bent down and reclined their slim, young bodies alongside each other, and began to make urgent love on the grey, shingly beach which skirted the grotto’s black, gleaming pool. At first a few sudden cries of pain alone were all that echoed through the hollow darkness, but before very long the familiar sounds of the delicious, excited love they made soon filled the sweet, cool air, penetrated every rising joint, every vertical crevice, each dark and hidden, rocky recess, and infused and enlivened thrillingly what seemed to each of them to be the recently vacated hall of some mysterious mountain-king.