Shoes for Anthony (40 page)

A fast, steady beat of bullets thumped through the air. It was so loud, I wanted to cover my ears, but I couldn't. I don't think I blinked, my eyes fixed rigidly on the Mosquito bomber climbing, climbing. He was going; he was getting away. I looked back towards the guns, pounding back and forth, and a stab of panic surged through me. And I remembered looking up into his eyes. We saw each other. He was my friend.

‘Don't hurt him,' I heard myself muttering. ‘DON'T HURT HIM!'

I snapped my head back towards the climbing Mosquito. He had tied me up, he had punched me, he had betrayed us all, and yet … A sharp, explosive boom ripped across the sky, a bright blast of light, and the Mosquito faltered. The engine spluttered and, like a Christmas cracker, it snapped into two, spiralling towards the ground.

Someone yelled ‘GET DOWN!' and I turned, crouching to the ground, covering my head with my hands, sprawling in an instinctive act of self-preservation. Behind me, there was a loud blast, followed by a shower of small thuds around me, and as the noise settled, I opened my eyes and looked over my shoulder at the inferno burning.

I felt no joy.

Father died on a Sunday afternoon in June. It had been a beautiful day, warm, a pleasant breeze, the sort of day I could have spent wandering the mountain before coming home with burnt cheeks and a red nose. He had been unable to eat anything for the best part of a week, and we had watched him diminish a little more with every passing day. His fading was slow but relentless, and there was nothing we could do about it. It had been a long wait, since the accident down the pit. Death had lingered at our door, refusing to either come or go. We had closed in, staying near to Father at all times, Mam rarely, if ever, leaving his side. Neighbours brought round stews, the odd loaf of bread, and we scraped by, day by day, just waiting.

Father's last words, far from being weighty or historic, were, ‘Lemonade? Lovely.' He had whispered it on seeing Bethan carrying up a pitcher. She'd placed it down on my mother's dressing table and poured out glasses for me, Alwyn and Emrys. Father hadn't wanted any, but he smiled as Emrys gulped down a glass. It was a small, tiny moment that made us feel, if only for an instant, normal.

It was hot in Father's room that day, sticky and oppressive, and Bethan, Alwyn, Emrys and I had gone out to stand on the front step for some air, the events of the past two weeks still dominating our conversation. We'd stood there for a good while, watching the comings and goings of the street: women huddled in twos and threes, arms folded, moaning about rations or the weather or how their husbands, with no pit to go down, were driving them mad; kids playing, acting out the newsreels from France; unoccupied pitmen coming off the mountain, rabbits slung over their shoulders, a trout or two if they'd been lucky. Life, all around us, going on, and the four of us, draped around our front door, glasses of lemonade in hand.

Alwyn still had his arm in plaster. It was driving him mad with the itching, so he carried a broken-off length of beanpole that he could shove in to relieve the maddening prickles. Emrys' gunshot wound had turned out to be superficial. Bethan's quick-mindedness in stopping the bleeding had certainly saved him, a fact she intended to never let him forget, but the bullet had, in fact, gone straight through him, missing everything significant. It had been found a few days later, embedded into the side of a chair, whereupon it was tossed into a pint glass and put into the Labour Club's trophy cabinet, an object that would be revered for years to come.

Bethan was inconsolable after Gerhard's betrayal and had struggled. She felt ashamed and foolish, but Emrys took it upon himself to lift her from her doldrums, explaining that Gerhard had pulled the wool over all our eyes, and that nobody had seen it coming. All the same, she took it hard. We all did.

I'd been right about Gerhard sabotaging Hughes the Grocer's van. He'd yanked out the ignition motor wires so it couldn't be started. Captain Willis had run to it in his vest and pants, only to discover it was useless. Old Morris had offered up a pair of dilapidated bicycles instead, but was shouted down by just about everybody, whereupon Captain Willis had had the bright idea to spark up Gerhard's own radio and wire a message to RAF St Athan.

It was all we talked about in those days and weeks after it happened: how none of us had guessed, how completely hoodwinked we'd all been. We relived the scene in the Labour Club over and over, wondering what his target might have been. Alf reckoned Captain Willis was right, that he'd been sent to bomb the D-Day commanders, Mr Churchill and the American lot. He might have been right, but we'd never know for certain.

I became a local celebrity for a while, my picture on the front page of some papers, arms folded, expression a little strained, standing proudly in my wellingtons. Captain Willis had arranged for me to get a medal for bravery. I didn't know if I deserved it. I hadn't felt brave at the time – I'd felt anything but, in fact – but Mam said bravery is an instinct some people have and others don't. If you do anything, she said, it's still better than doing nothing.

Eventually, as with all things, life returned to a normality of sorts, even if we weren't where we always had been.

‘Gwennie Morgan's had a letter from her GI beau,' said Bethan on that hot Sunday afternoon in June, taking a sip of lemonade from her glass. ‘So he's still alive.'

Emrys raised an eyebrow. ‘Oh, that's good to know, innit?
Diawl
, they took a pounding, by the sounds of it. Does she know where he is?'

Bethan shook her head. ‘Nah, he's not allowed to say, is he?'

‘Quiet round here without 'em, innit?' Emrys scuffed the toe of his shoe against the base of the flagstone step. ‘Never thought I'd say it, but I miss 'em. They might have been loud, but they was all right, wannit? Bet you miss the gum, Anthony?'

I shrugged. The Americans had left two days after Gerhard had been killed. We'd watched the
Pathé News
newsreels. The Allied troops had landed on beaches in Normandy. Turns out the Germans were expecting them to land at Calais so, catching them unawares, our lot were able to get stuck into France. I wondered if the Germans' mistake was down to Gerhard telling Captain Willis to do just that. Part of me hoped it was, and that he'd been secretly on our side all along, but deep down, I knew he wasn't. I hated myself for it, but I missed him.

It was something we all felt but didn't dare speak of. We missed him, his sense of adventure, the spark in his eyes, his kindness, his generosity. I had to force myself to remember that even if he had taught me how to shave, he'd still put a bullet in my brother, and my brother's my brother, however annoying he is. Blood comes first.

‘Christ, it's itching bad today,' moaned Alwyn, grinding his broken beanpole into the gap between his arm and his cast. ‘It's murderous. There's a bit b'there I can't bloody reach. It's driving me mad, it is.'

‘Must be bad,' said Emrys, sticking his hands in his pockets. ‘You didn't even flinch when Bethan mentioned Gwennie Morgan.'

‘She's not the only girl in the valley,' said Alwyn, trying to reach in further with his makeshift scratcher. ‘Besides, now my brother's been shot by a German, I can have whatever girl I fancy. I'm practically famous, innit?'

‘Not as famous as our Anthony,' said Bethan, ruffling my hair.

‘Yeah, well,' said Alwyn, ‘he's too young for girlfriends. So bad luck on him.'

I drained my lemonade, the sharp citrus twang buzzing off my tongue. There was a game of doggy and catty playing out further up the street, the cries of the young lads echoing off the terraced walls. I wondered if Gwyn Williams was among them, still picking on kids smaller than himself; or if his own father's poor health had changed him for the better. I was sitting on the flagstone, elbow on one knee, wondering when I would be back at it with them, when the life I knew would return. I wondered if it ever would, whether it was even possible.

‘Hey!' said Emrys, giving me a thump. ‘Look at that! By God. I've never seen that before.'

I followed his finger, pointing up towards the rooftop opposite. It was the red kite, sitting on the high ridge. I'd never seen it this close, and I cupped my hands over my eyes so the sun bouncing off the bricks wouldn't blind me. Emrys was right; I'd never seen a bird of prey off the mountain or so low into the village.

‘Perhaps she's had babies,' I said. ‘Needs all the food she can get.' She looked magnificent, her white head atop dark-flecked russet wings, the yellow beak hooked between pale eyes lined with black.

‘She's beautiful,' said Bethan, staring upwards.

Alwyn whistled, and the kite, for a fleeting moment, looked down towards us. I fought the urge to wave, as if somehow we might see each other and she might know me, but the noise had unsettled her, and, unfurling her wings, she beat them upwards into the air, two great white flashes burning on their undersides.

‘What a bird,' said Emrys. ‘They can have lambs, you know. Swoop down and take 'em.'

‘Pity she can't swoop down and take you,' said Bethan. ‘Here, pass me your glass. Let's go back up.'

Father's breathing had changed: long gaps when it was almost as if he was holding his breath followed by thick, rasping exhales, his lower jaw slack, bottom lip drooped and wet with drool. It made him look ugly, these final hours, something I would come to resent. Perhaps the greatest hardship in watching someone die is having those last days burned into your memory. The man in the bed wasn't my father. He was the shadow of him, a person I didn't want to remember.

We had gathered round, Mam sitting on a stool at his side, holding his hand, the rest of us sprawled about the room, tightening in as the gaps in the breathing became ever wider. I pulled myself up onto the bed and sat next to him, my eyes never leaving his face.

‘Look,' said Mam, her voice low and hushed, ‘look at his fingers.'

She held up his hand. The tips of Father's fingers were turning blue. She rubbed them gently between her own as if her warmth could somehow stop the inevitable. I looked back towards Father's face: the frown that had carved itself into his forehead began to relax; the breathing, that had been so heavy and pained, lightened. Nobody spoke but everyone leant in to lay hands on him.

‘We're here, Davey,' said Mam. ‘We're all here.'

Two short, shallow breaths, then a long gap. I glanced down towards Father's arm, a long trail of blue snaking its way up towards his elbow. I looked back at his face, the pain ebbing, one last sip of air, as if tasting a long favourite drink, and he was gone.

The tears came freely. Mam's head was buried into his side, her shoulders heaving. Bethan was sprawled over his lower legs, her face etched with the weight of sadness. Alwyn, standing at the end of the bed, crumpled downwards, his hand holding on to Father's ankle, as if somehow, wherever Father was going, he could follow. Emrys, cheeks wet with sorrow, draped an arm about Mam, and I slid myself down onto the bedspread and nestled into Father's body, laying my arm across him so I could catch those last whispers of warmth. I had never held him while he was alive. It would be my only regret.

He was buried a week later. The undertaker had come the night Father had died and taken him, his body leaking all the way to the front door. It was a final indignity, an unnecessary cruelty, and to spare Mam the upset, I had taken a rag and cleaned the mess myself. He had been brought back to us two days later, tidied into a suit, his face strangely pink as if he'd been for a bracing walk in a stiff breeze. We'd all stared at him and wondered if he was actually dead.

The coffin was laid out in the parlour, top off, and we had taken it in turns to sit with him as the steady stream of neighbours came in to pay their respects. Many brought cakes, or small cuts of meat. Some of the men, my Father's workmates, brought a few shillings. Mam would get no money from the colliery owners, but, as a pit widow, she would receive a lifetime supply of coal. She may have been hungry but at least she'd be warm.

The atmosphere in the house was muted and reverential. Mam seemed in a daze as if, after a period of round-the-clock caring, she didn't quite know what to do with herself. I'd catch her looking at me, puzzled, as if she couldn't place who I was or why I was in the house, and then she'd remember and hurry to the larder to find some scraps to feed me with. It was a strange time, a different sort of waiting. Father was there, but he wasn't. It felt like we were holding on to him before we had to give him back.

On the day of the funeral, people from the pit and the street had gathered, pressed into our parlour and kitchen, spilling out onto the pavement outside. Alwyn and Emrys stood either side of Mam, and I cleaved into Bethan, straining to catch a last glimpse of Father before the lid was put back on and I would never see him again. Jones the Bible had stood in front of the hearth and given a suitably sombre eulogy. A few women dotted about the room wept quietly; men stood, caps in hand, heads bowed. I thought about Gerhard. I didn't know what had become of his body or if he'd even been buried: the life of a man, unmarked and forgotten, the sum total of his parts never to be celebrated.

As we sang ‘Abide with Me', the lid to Father's coffin was gently slotted back into place. As the wood slid over him, I felt a dark melancholy descend. There was no return. He now belonged to the mountain, and it was our burden to return him.

Coffins went in and out from a house through the parlour windows. It was a valley tradition brought on through necessity. Pit houses were all so small and narrow that it was impossible to turn a coffin from the hallway into the parlour, so in and out the window they had to come. If anything, it added to the drama of the occasion, made it more solemn, somehow, and I stood, silently, watching as my brothers joined the undertakers to take Father out, feet first.