Last Train to Gloryhole (52 page)

For much of the time that Padraig stood pulling pints behind the bar he seemed to be delivering a virtual monologue, which normally comprised an ironic, barbed commentary, filled with inimitable, trade-mark interjections, that seemed to his customers very like a train that, if they chose to, they could hop on and ride for a while, then leap from once again, to continue conducting their business - their social interaction - on the bar-room platform that ran alongside.

This, you could say, was the Irish landlord’s trade-mark managerial style, and, by the evidence of the crowds, both young and old, who flocked to
The Railway
nightly, and throughout the afternoon, it was one of which the locals seemed to mightily approve. And yet, although respected for the quality of his beer and stout, his boisterous, self-effacing humour, and his passion for international rugby, boxing and football, the one thing about Padraig of which people didn’t approve was his over-use of the word
‘fucking’
in general conversations, as an intensifier.

‘Craig - you fucking eejit - what the fuck are you talking about?’ the short, stocky, thick-jowled, man bawled out from behind the beer-mat strewn bar-counter. ‘God’s own people indeed. The damned Scots were a fuckin’
Irish tribe
, remember,’ Padraig told the young Scotsman with an aggressive, somewhat sarcastic laugh.

‘And what the hell have you got to laugh at, Paddy?’ Craig retorted, a blue Rangers’ baseball-cap perched slightly askew on his dark, curly forehead. ‘It’s a known fact that St. Patrick came from Wales.’

‘Don’t fuck with me now!’ Padraig warned him, threatening to blast him in the face with a wet, scrunched-up dish-cloth.

‘But he’s absolutely right,’ I told them both, with a smile, but ducking as I did so, just in case, as did the wiry Scotsman to my left. ‘Whisked off the South Wales coast by a band of Irish pirates so the story goes, or so my wife tells me, anyway. Soon after that to become an eminent cleric in Ireland, of course, and later to be sent off to see the pope in Rome on behalf of the Irish people, and the rest, as they say, is history.’

‘History! Bull-crap! You’re fuckin’ wid me again, Dyl!’ Padraig rudely, but typically, retorted. ‘And I was considering getting you both a pint, as well you know. But you’ve gone and missed out there, I can tell you,’ he announced, turning away from us and shaking his over-large head about. ‘I’ll venture your missus is no more an authority on Celtic History than you are, damn you. Or me, for that matter. Yes, you’ve gone too far, now, boyo. And just you wait till the Rugby World Cup comes round in September, old man. We’re gonna bounce your red, spotty, Welsh arses out the whole fuckin’ competition, so we are.’

‘Fat chance of that, I’d say,’ I retorted, ‘what with all those talented youngsters we’ve got coming through.’ This didn’t please the Munster man one bit, and I felt I’d overdone it. ‘Look - I’ll get them in, Paddy,’ I said, waving my beer-mat in his direction. ‘It’s my turn, anyway, as I recall.’

‘I’d get a round in myself but I’m well nigh broke today,’ Craig countered. ‘Do you know that energy costs have shot up so high these days I can barely keep all my farms going!’

‘Farms, you say? Really, Craig? Sheep or cows?’ I asked him, chuckling.

‘Er, neither, as a matter of fact,’ he replied, smiling. ‘Small, sort of highly intensive,
interior
farms, is what I’m referring to, you know.’

‘Interior farms! What the hell are they?’ I enquired, thoroughly confused by what the Scotsman was telling me.

‘Weed.’ he said, winking oddly with his good eye.

‘Have you?’ I asked, stepping back. He grinned and shook his capped head from side to side in frustration. ‘Oh,
weed
,’ I continued. ‘I see. And what exactly do you feed that to? Seagulls?’

‘Well, people, generally,’ he replied, smiling, and giving me a somewhat quizzical look. ‘Dyl, do you know, you come across as incredibly naive sometimes, wouldn’t you say? You should try to get out of Pant more often, if you ask me. I reckon it’s a bit like a coffin that’s restraining your spirit of adventure. I had a similar feeling when I used to live in Swansea, you know. Though being stuck in the city’s jail for most of the time didn’t help, I admit.’

Yes, Craig was clearly right about me and Pant, and about getting out a bit more. Sadly, it dawned on me far too late what it was he was really talking about to start making any plans, but, either way, I thought it best to change the subject.

‘Talking of feed,’ I said. ‘When I was driving down here from
‘The Butcher’s’
this evening I saw that stupid neighbour of yours - Mervyn, you know - nicking hay from a farm this side of Pontsticill. What a prat he is, wouldn’t you say? I guess I could get him arrested, couldn’t I?’

‘Well, yes you could, I suppose, but he’d be sure to get bail,’ Padraig shot back with a broad grin. ‘Bail. Do you get it, Dyl? Ha Ha. No - I don’t suppose you do.’

Yes, occasionally I still find that I can be the butt of other people’s jokes, but much more frequently at
The Railway,
I find, than at
The Butcher’s Arms
. Now I wonder why that is? I wondered, rubbing my eyes, and blinking, in an effort to stabilise my focus.

Appreciating how the ale had got to me, Craig took the opportunity to go for a leak. I was left with nobody to talk to, so I just allowed my thoughts to drift off to wherever they wanted to take me. I believe my son Chris - a son who has never known his real dad - me - sometimes goes off there too, I thought. But, in his case, I recently discovered he usually smokes cannabis to see it. Weed’s the key to
his
door. That’s the way his cat-flap gets opened up, even though he might not actually know it yet. But, in stark contrast with Chris, I find I don’t need to smoke or ingest a damn thing. No. In my case I just have to think it, to see it.
Think it, to see it, to be it,
in fact, is how the whole thing seems to work for me, I told my flushed face in the mirror behind the bar.

I looked down at my pint-glass which, though sitting perfectly still, was ever so slightly wobbling on the counter before me. Is this bitter starting to get a lot stronger, then? I pondered to myself. Or is this some sort of after-shock of a minor earthquake caused by the afternoon’s blasting at the limestone-quarry just down the road? Or could this even be my brother Sam, finally fulfilling his pledge to get back to me about the existence, or otherwise, of the after-life.

A thought suddenly hit me. Unlike the vast majority of my friends and family, including, of course, my wife Gwen, I had long felt convinced of the existence of
the supernatural world
. To me it seemed obvious that, rather like icebergs, all things material continued on down below the surface of our world, as much as nine-tenths of their reality concealed from the sight and senses of us plain, rudimentary folk.

I recalled how it had occurred to me one Sunday morning, much as an icicle occurs to a branch after a cold, hard night of constant dripping, that, in contrast to general opinion, our dead and departed are hardly departed very far from us at all, but instead, hover about us, almost entirely unobserved, in the high, shadowy corners of the rooms we inhabit, constantly open to oral, as well as wordless, thought-exchange, if not to direct consultation. ‘No, this isn’t just the ale talking this time,’ I explained to my long-dead brother Sam, who I felt I could sense shaking his head at me from the far, upper corner of the bar, a foot or so above the clock. ‘This is me telling you how it really is, Brawd. Though, being where you are, I guess I shouldn’t need to!’

Tom was feeling dreadfully weary once again, and so he carefully placed his copy of Kahlil Gibran’s ‘
The Prophet’
on the kitchen-table beside his rocking-chair and, folding up his glasses and placing them alongside it, gazed through tired eyes out across the verdant, tree-filled valley that was now thriving in its summer best, and then to his left at the great, stone viaduct that bestrode it, and which for many decades had carried the coal-powered steam-trains on a double-railway track right the way across it, and that he had had the pleasure of riding upon on a multitude of occasions in the days before he could afford a car, when he daily commuted to work in Merthyr from his boy-hood home in a village near Brecon to the north.

Tom took up the slim volume he dearly treasured once again and sought out the brief passage that had, just minutes before, moved him so much. He read it through one more time. Have I remembrances? Have I memories? he asked himself. Those glimmering arches that span the summit of my mind? He considered this and nodded. Yes. Yes, I truly believe I have, he answered, with a thoughtful smile. A great many wonderful memories, as a matter of fact, that are worth more to me now than any other thing in my life, except, of course, my Carla.’

Tom could still recall the first time he had leaned out through his carriage-window to gaze down into the Taff River, winding and carving its course through the deep cleft beneath him, and almost came to grief when the door suddenly slipped open, and he was forced to hang onto the leather window-belt for dear life. He was probably no more than twenty at the time, he mused, and, if his memory served him well, he was on his way to Merthyr to take his driving-test.

Tom found that many similar, but contrasting, experiences could be summoned up just as easily in his mind if he so chose to do, a number of them esconced in torrential rain, others, as today, bathed in warm, bright sunshine. The old man believed he could even remember being aboard the very last steam-train that passed through the halt that had stood alongside
Gloryhole’s
only road, and which had traversed the
Seven Arches
at a much slower speed than was usual, perhaps because the train-driver and his fire-man were as conscious, as was Tom himself, of the significance of the sad, but momentous occasion. Quite soon Tom fell asleep, his bald head sunk back onto the chair’s wooden back, and dreamed of those happier, sunnier days, probably the happiest of his life, a long time before his debilitating sickness took root.

Carla had been pottering about in her room, and decided to go downstairs to the kitchen to check on how her father was, and to see if he had finished any of his breakfast. To her eyes he thankfully now seemed comfortable and thoroughly fed, serene even, while taking nis customary nap. Suddenly, seeing the bright morning sunshine outside the window, Carla opened the back- door and stepped out onto the stone patio. ‘Wow! What a crazy door-mat,’ she exclaimed, stepping off it once again so as to study it closely. ‘ ‘
God Is Love
!’ What’s this Dada?’ she whispered, bending low, then turning and holding it up before her, so that her father, if still awake, might see from the kitchen-table.

Blinking, Tom smiled at the sight, and answered, ‘Oh, the mat,’ he said. ‘Well, if you must know, when you went down to Cardiff the other day I ordered it especially for you. Jack Belt brought it up in his van this morning, along with the cheese and the box of fuses.’

‘Well, I’m not going to quibble about the message,’ said Carla, shaking off the dirt that had already gathered upon it, and laying it back in place. ‘I’m thrilled that you’ve seen the light at last. But on a door-mat, Dada! I mean, isn’t that a bit silly?’ She entered again and shut the door.

‘Call me silly if you want,’ he said, ‘but I got it so you’d always have a scripture to stand on.’

Carla smiled at his comment, and surveyed the small, prickly, white beard that by now had begun to adorn her father’s thin face since he had finally refrained from shaving daily, as had always been his custom as a younger, healthier man. Isn’t it strange, Carla mused, how, as a middle-aged father, the beard he had worn back then had made him look twenty years older, and her mother had eventually made him shave it off, but now, as he neared the end of his days, the exact same beard, though much greyer, naturally, now made him look a good deal younger.

To the good folk of Gloryhole, Vaynor and Pontsticill, and of all the farms, inns, cottages and parsonages scattered around, about and in between, Jack Belt was much, much more than just a milkman. Old Jack was a travelling grocer, greengrocer, florist, pharmacist and tobacconist, who also operated an informal, though very highly valued, postal service, the continued operation of which was dependent on tips, gifts, gratuities, in other words on the anticipated, grateful benevolence of the receiver. On occasions, bottles of wine, bottled, home-made beers, home-made pies and pasties, and even cooked breakfasts were gratefully accepted by Jack, and frequently consumed in his van. Yes, in his daily travels around the northern, rural fringes of the Merthyr Valley, Jack Belt constantly felt like he led the sort of fulfilled and happy life that he had long hoped to. And, what is more, from his consistently happy, smiling disposition, the people of the quiet, green valley could quite easily see and tell as much.

Since the sliding-door on Jack’s green Volkswagen ‘
Camper-Van’
would never shut properly, and the wind coming off the Beacons was invariably strong and fierce, more often than not Jack Belt could clearly be heard approaching his intended destination from as far as a mile away. On apprehending the strange, unique sound, local children would often hide behind walls and trees, and much older people would run back indoors, telling each other excitedly that ‘
Jack’s banshee-van’
was coming; while well-travelled pensioners even reported how his eccentric, whistling vehicle sounded far more like a ‘ghost-train’ than the real thing in
Porthcawl Pleasure Park
had ever managed to, even in its hey-day in the nineteen-sixties.

Life-long bachelor Jack was an inveterate story-teller, who seemed to have very little trouble in detaining on her door-step any single, widowed, or divorced home-owner for anything up to an hour or more. He may have been small, bald, and ever so slightly bowed in carriage, but Jack Belt was as busy and urgent as a stoat, or a grey squirrel, or an upland badger even, and with the help of his natural vigour, his large, calloused hands, his over-tanned, nut-brown face, his single, silver ear-ring, and his broad, but gapped, smile, he certainly succeeded in capturing many a female’s custom without even trying, and very often within the fluttering of a heart-string.