Last Train to Gloryhole (5 page)

With the largest of the boxes in his arms, the old man forced the door open wide with a knee, and walked, with stumbling gait, into a hall-way that was still bestrewn with a multitude of junk advertising-bills and letters. Some minutes later, and noticeably wearied by the task-in-hand, he returned outside to collect the next box. It was clearly going to be a taxing day for the elderly gent, and it wasn’t long before he took out a large white handkerchief from his trousers-pocket in order to wipe away the beads of sweat that were already covering his wrinkled forehead. The old man’s keen blue eyes scanned once again the exterior scene around him, although there now seemed little for him to take in, apart from the surrounding hedges and his new, sparse front-garden, which at first sight seemed to comprise little more than two large mounds of dry, brown soil and an assortment of small, coarse-grained stones.

‘Old red sandstone,’ the old man mumbled to himself, dipping his head briefly to examine by sight and by trembling hand the debris scattered beneath him. ‘And limestone too, of course. In fact some
Lithostrotion
, if I’m not mistaken,’ he continued, his mouth falling open, his blue eyes flashing. ‘And
Lonsdaleia floriformis
in the coarser rocks. Mm, now that’s very interesting, that is.’

The elderly gent straightened up once again and folded the handkerchief he held into squares, then slipped it back into the pocket of his trousers, and approached, with due trepidation, a particularly large box of clothes and folded curtains that lay beside the door-step, its bundled contents now, at least partially, spilled out onto the footpath. He moved to the side, looked up, then rubbed his coarsely-veined hand across a stone tablet attached to the house-wall, around five or so feet off the ground, and that once had clearly displayed a house-name that was no longer there. ‘
Coral
, I think I shall call it,’ he announced proudly to himself. ‘
Coral,
yes. After the first dog we ever owned. Our family’s prize Springer Spaniel. Oh, there’s lovely you were, girl.’

Deep within the slate-grey shadows of the unlit, and relatively dingy, Art Room, Drew was sitting in his favourite, black swivel-chair, and with his black, leather shoes perched high before him on his paint-stained, brown, wooden desk. The finest examples of his students’ paintings adorned the three, otherwise bare, pastel-painted walls that enclosed him, along with several of the most vibrant and colourful fruits of his own imagination, so fashioning a working space which, but for the rows of tables that comprised its production-line, seemed to resemble some cavernous, neglected store-room, largely abandoned and rarely illumined, perhaps somewhere deep within the bowels of London’s
Tate Gallery
itself.

Sipping coffee from a large mug, and taking occasional mouthfuls from a buttered-bun which was filled to over-flowing with red salmon, the Head of Art at Pennant Comp. sat reading the day’s
Guardian
. Swaying back and forth, he happily sniggered away at the many stories he read reported in it, and which, to his mind, succeeded only in illustrating how futile were the efforts of politicians and salaried officials to pronounce their wisdom on behalf of the very people who had elected, and so chosen, to employ them, yet who only managed to convince everyone of the fact that they acted very largely out of gratuitous self-interest, if not from wanton arrogance.

‘
Coalition
, indeed,’ the seated man announced scornfully, ‘What coalition?’

Drew then laughed loudly at the thought that suddenly entered his clever, energetic brain. ‘All they are is a temporary, make-shift government, already Con-Dem-ned as much in aspiration as in name.’ He read on a little. ‘God! And
we
all thought Thatcher was bad!’ Shaking his head in disbelief, he folded the paper over, removed his new, round reading-glasses, then sat back and began singing a song out loud, ‘The first cut is the deepest - baby I know.’ He chuckled once again on hearing the odd pitch and tone of his lowest note, then continued, ‘The first cut is the -’

Suddenly his step-son Chris walked in to the room, and picked up off the desk and rudely donned Drew’s new glasses. Then taking a harmonica out of the man’s jacket-pocket, he began playing a piercing and rather raucous blues-riff that, in key and genre, failed utterly to match its original.

‘Do you mind, young man! Can’t you see I’m having my break,’ Drew told him firmly, dragging from a cigarette, then laying it back in its former, tilted position in a small, discoloured, white saucer on the corner of his desk.

‘Morning, Drew,’ Chris replied flippantly, then choosing to play two bars or so of ‘
Mercy
.’

‘Oh, I see. So
Dad
is defunct these days, then,’ his step-father replied dispassionately. ‘Well, if you wish, Chris – if you wish. Anything to minimise family discord, that’s what I say. What can I do for you, er…son? Cigarette?’

‘You are supposed to be a teacher, you know,’ Chris told him, tossing the ill-fitting spectacles back onto the desk.

‘I’ll have you know I’ve been a teacher for thirty-six long years, young man,’ Drew told him. ‘Ten alone within this particular hub of learning - and I can honestly say that not once have I let rules interfere with my practices, or with any of my personal pleasures, however frowned upon they might be by those who, ever so lightly, grasp onto, and barely retain the reins of power.’

‘Well, not by me,’ his step-son told him. Chris took the burning cigarette from the saucer and inhaled deeply from it. The scrunched-up face he made betrayed his distaste.

‘You! No, not by
you
, obviously,’ Drew announced, snatching back the cigarette. ‘Don’t think I don’t know about all that weed you used to horde up in our loft, young man. But don’t concern yourself on that score. I wouldn’t dream of ever telling your mum. Sorry -
Mammy,
I mean.’ Chris watched as Drew calmly replaced the cigarette on the saucer. ‘By the way, is there something I can do for you? I’m surprised you aren’t outside searching for
Solaris
or
The Great Bear.
’

‘In the daytime!’ said Chris disdainfully. ‘No. You should know - an old man has moved in next-door.’

‘And?’ Drew replied sharply. ‘That would be er….Gerald Philips - History. Started Monday morning. New term - new teacher. Same ol’ same ol’.’

Chris walked around and picked up a colourful poster that was lying on a table. ‘
Idle talk costs lives
,’ he read out. ‘No, I mean, at home. You know, on the other side of ours.’

‘Really? Say - are you being serious?’ Drew pursed his lips tightly. ‘Oh, dear. Now I suppose I shall have to start keeping the music down.’

‘Hey, isn’t that funny?’ exclaimed Chris, turning, his nut-brown eyes flashing at the seated man.

‘What’s funny?’ asked Drew.

‘I somehow feel that
I
should be the one to be saying that. About keeping the music down.’

‘Mm. How droll,’ his step-father replied. ‘But that’s not music you play, remember, Chris,’ ‘That’s - that’s battle-flack.’

‘Oh, really? And your stuff is -’

‘Cultural history, dear friend. Our musical heritage. World-spinning sounds. The music of the spheres.’

‘Balls!’ Chris responded, picking up and hurling a snapped crayon straight into the dust-bin.

‘Balls. Spheres. Well, I suppose that’s more or less the same thing, wouldn’t you say?’ Drew told him. ‘You do possess
some
musical talent, at least, young man. But do you really think that without Miles there’d ever have been an Eminem or a Jay-Z or a - a Tinie Tempah, even?

‘But what exactly is world-spinning about that trumpeter guy?’ asked Chris. ‘Was he Welsh?

‘Who?’ Drew asked.

‘Miles Davis. He’s not Carla Davies’ dad, is he? Now there’s a girl with awesome talent.
And
she’s Welsh.
And
she attended this school for her last two years, I heard.’

‘Well, that last part is true, at least. Her dad is a semi-local man, who, many years ago, sent her here from their home in
The Beacons
. Yes, she developed her talent in this valley, it’s true, but the difference between her and Miles is colossal. Our Carla may have won herself a Brit, dear boy, but Miles Davis is international.’ He spun round on his chair as if to emphasise the point, and depressed the switch on a tape-machine which stood, unevenly, on the shelf behind his desk.

‘And dead,’ Chris informed him bluntly.

‘Well, yes. There is that, of course,’ said Drew. ‘But such is the way of the world, my boy. He’s been gone for over twenty years now, but the music he made has a quality that will most likely last an eternity. You young chaps can learn a lot from this sort of music, you know. Take time out and listen. Hark!’ Eyes closed and biting into his lower lip, Drew sat, clearly absorbed in listening attentively to the introduction to track-one. ‘It’s ‘
Kind Of Blue
,’ ’ he told his son.

‘Is it? Where on earth are you looking?’ Chris asked him. ‘Because I can’t see anything.’

‘The album,’ said Drew. ‘ ‘
So What?’
That’s the name of the tune you can hear, by the way.
‘So What?
’ ’ He half-closed his brown eyes so that they vanished into the shadows of the lashes.

‘My take, exactly. So what?’ Chris sniggered, nevertheless imitating Drew’s odd far-away look. ‘You know, I think I’ll stick to my own sounds, thanks anyway. But I guess you could always give your Miles a blast later tonight, if you like. To welcome our new neighbour to
Gloryhole
, I mean.’

‘You know, I might just do that,’ said Drew, smiling broadly. ‘It’s good to share, right?’

‘That’s what I always say,’ the boy retorted smartly. Chris took two cigarettes from his step-dad’s packet and walked off towards the door with them. From outside it Drew could hear the high voices of young children approaching down the corridor, and so quickly stubbed out the cigarette-end in the saucer alongside about four or five others that already lay there, curled-up, shrivelled and decaying. He picked up an open diary, and scanned it to ascertain which class it was that he was about to teach an Art lesson to, and walked over to the window and opened it as wide as it would go, then swishing the fetid air fiercely in a roughly horizontal plane with both of his arms.

Spinning round suddenly to face front, and inhaling deeply, Drew called out to the empty room. ‘O.K., Seven-GD! Line up quietly!’ He lifted from a table and wafted, with great, giant swoops, an enormous, closed drawing-pad, and then, somewhat languorously, approached the door. ‘And I don’t want anyone complaining about the window either. I have a feeling that that boy who just walked out may have been smoking a crafty fag, if I’m not mistaken. What do you think, Megan?’

The small, round, spotty, sweat-glistened faces of young girls and boys began to appear like unfolding, pink flowers in the doorway, awaiting now only the teacher’s command to enter. The shrewd smirks and facial contortions, and the general boisterous laughter that ensued left none among them in any doubt as to who was, in fact, the true source of the still swirling cigarette-smoke and its abiding stench.

For Drew this was yet another daily occurrence of the ironical kind, which, as always, caused him to smile broadly with the inner satisfaction it supplied him. No. Rules or not, he would never have wanted it any other way. There were very few things in his life that he was ashamed of, after all, except perhaps the scratched, tin-banger which his wife drove, and which barely passed for a motor car, and the patched black jeans and jacket that his son wore; although, had he still been a sixth-former himself, Drew knew only too well that he would most probably have attired himself in much the same way, except that he would most probably have worn extended side-burns, as Bradley Wiggins now did, and donned a garish, pastel cravat, as was his custom back in the day.

As the slim, blue-blazered children finally entered the classroom, pushing and shoving each other playfully as they did so, and without fear of sanction, Drew smiled to himself, turned, and picked up two paint-brushes from a shelf and began beating out the time to the jazz music that still so joyfully filled his room. Yes, he still adored his job, he mused, and, despite its very many faults and failings, he even loved his present school. But strangest of all, and most probably since around the time that his wife had told him that their former college-friend Sam had been reburied the previous day in Pant Cemetery, Drew discovered that he was suddenly in love with life all over again.

A divine, exquisite vision-in-blue to so many of its guests, Anne walked slowly into the lounge of
‘The Willows Nursing Home’
holding tightly, and with an acutely angled grip, the tremulous hand of a gentleman whose age was as deeply bewildering as his lop-sided hair-cut, his frayed, grey cotton-shirt, and the purple, round-necked jumper that hung loosely about his hips. Turning her body right round, Anne leaned down and fluffed for the aged man the cream, padded seat-cushion that lay there, then eased him back, gently and lovingly, into, what was for him, the deepest and most comfortable of easy-chairs.

‘There you are, bach,’ Anne told him tenderly. ‘All fed and watered now, aren’t we?’

‘And by your almighty hand, isn’t it, Annie love?’ the old man replied swiftly, a wicked smile suddenly beaming across his rosy, glowing, but heavily wrinkled face. Anne shook her head with genuine pity, then picked up and held out a piece of cherry-cake for him to bite into. The man duly obliged, and, with the few teeth he still retained, carefully and methodically chewed every morsel of cherry, and every single crumb, until the cake was thoroughly devoured.

‘Oh, you’re such a flirt, Mervyn John,’ Anne told him. ‘Nobody would ever know you were ninety-six.’

‘He’s rude, he is,’ the cardigan-clad dear sitting next to him suddenly announced through a stern and unforgiving expression that Anne recalled her own mother had worn for at least the last eight years of her fraught and beleaguered life. ‘Isn’t he, girls?’ the old lady proceeded to ask her seated, similarly attired companions, many of whom were barely able to hear a single word of what the woman was saying, let alone comprehend it.