Last Train to Gloryhole (19 page)

‘Corporation Street,’ Zeta corrected her, smiling thinly. ‘And the surname isn’t Carini any more, is it? No, love. It’s Jones. Plain Jones. Though it was Carini back then, of course.’

‘Quite,’ retorted Gwen. ‘But you know, Zeta, your name may have changed love, but you’re still as thick and stupid now as you were back then. A total plank, in fact. And now I think about it, the only test I recall you ever passing in school was a pregnancy-test,’ Gwen continued, all the time eye-balling the shopkeeper aggressively. ‘And even that one I guess you expected to fail.’

A silence fell on the
Café Giotto,
broken only by the drone of the morning-traffic passing by on the High Street, then braking sharply on the wet surface before filing round the junction with Glebeland Street.

‘You’ll call again, won’t you. pet?’ remarked Zeta, turning completely away from her and washing out the cups in the sink. ‘I’m sure Martin and the kids will be pleased to know that you’re keeping well, at any rate.’ She continued to ignore Gwen, and, as she set the dried cups back on the shelf behind her, and turned away to lay the tea-towel back on the rail to dry, Gwen turned about, and, pausing only to put up her umbrella, slipped out of the shop, and sallied off into the morning crowd.

Seconds later Zeta’s husband Martin quietly walked in to the cafe, bearing two large bags of supplies in his burly arms. Oblivious to his arrival, Zeta carried on much as before. ‘Aye, and you can take the condiments home with you, as well, if you like, pet,’ she exclaimed. ‘After all you don’t want to go leaving King Arthur in the sugar, now, do you?’ Martin stood still, and, mouth agape, stared at his lanky wife from behind. ‘You know, if you like, I’ll try and get you a massive, great, round table for the next time you come in here,’ he heard her say with a snigger.

Martin shook his head about, then went round the counter and placed the heavy bags on the floor. He then turned and stared deeply into his wife’s eyes. ‘You know, I’m getting a bit worried about you, Zeta,’ he told her. ‘Say, you haven’t been at the
Babychams
again, have you?’

It was already past six o’clock, and Rhiannon climbed up onto the stage by the short, winding staircase, took the flute from her bag, and dragged a music-stand across to where she knew she would be sitting for the concert. Placing two sheets of music on top of it, she then licked her lips, pursed them, and began to play the harmony section of a jazz piece by Duke Ellington, entitled
‘Sophisticated Lady.’
By now Rhiannon knew it well, and she felt that she played it almost perfectly this time, and without a single mistake. Two boys from her year suddenly ran up to join her, and took out from their cases two very different looking saxophones, and began playing the song’s main melody, while Rhiannon stood to the side of them, watching them admiringly, and sipping water from the plastic bottle that she gripped tightly in her hand.

Rhiannon looked over and saw a group of girls approaching the stage, and quickly noticed how glamorously dressed they all were compared to the usual, grubby school-uniform which she was still wearing. She now wished that she had skipped revision-classes too, and had gone home and spent an hour alone in her bedroom, by way of preparation for the musical soiree that was soon to follow. Rhiannon decided to remove her tie and undo a couple of buttons, and then adjusted her skirt-band so that the blouse she wore now fell loosely around it. This was about as much as she could do under the circumstances, she told herself, and, anyway, Chris had seen her in far worse shape that this before, and had still wanted to share her company, and even do a darn sight more than that! Perhaps she really was a naturally pretty girl, after all, she mused, as so many of her friends and family were often kind enough to tell her.

Rhiannon turned to study the second piece which sat on her music-stand. It was a Carla Steel song, and the school-band were going to be playing the tune together, but without anyone singing the words. It was called
‘Heaven Scent,’
and was one of Rhiannon’s favourites. To her mind, it wasn’t like any of Carla’s other famous pop-songs - it had an unusual bossa-nova feel to it for a start, and there was clearly a deep meaning attached - and, as she began practising it, many of the other musicians took advantage of this welcome opportunity to join in and rehearse along with her.

Before very long the school-hall began filling up with teachers and a whole host of parents, including her mother Gwen, and also quite a few students from the upper-school, amongst them Chris, his fake-blonde friend Pippa Jenkins, and the school-hussy - Pippa’s friend, Suzie Amos - all of whom elected to sit together in seats just across the aisle from Rhiannon’s mother.

Suddenly Rhiannon saw Mrs. Roberts approach the lectern, stick-in-hand, which told her that Mr. Conway, their music teacher and regular conductor, wasn’t going to be joining them tonight after all. Rhiannon was a little concerned at this, but understood that Mrs. Roberts would do her very best to keep them all together, and deliver the evening’s musical programme as intended.

The evening wasn’t really so much a concert as yet another welcome opportunity for the talented students of Pennant to show what they had been learning throughout the year in a wide range of school-subjects, including music - Rhiannon’s personal favourite. When the initial introductions were done, and a boy from Rhiannon’s year - Year Eleven - had recited, by heart, a strange poem about clocks and other related stuff, the band got the opportunity to play the first song of the night, which was so familiar to them all that no music-score was really required.

‘And did those feet in ancient times,’
sang the audience -
‘walk upon England’s rugby team,’
sang the boys on stage, and quite a few in the audience. The adults present recognised this break with tradition and many of them giggled a little, having sung it that way themselves at school, as did Rhiannon one time, even though she now usually tried to sing the original words. Bows and arrows, swords and spears, and Jesus Christ himself walking around England for heaven’s sake! To her mind, this was every bit as ludicrous as the tales of Paddington Bear and Peter Pan. But she had actually seen a
‘mental fight’
one time, she recollected. It was in
Asda,
late one Saturday evening just before Christmas, and it certainly wasn’t a pretty sight to behold. It happened to be the day when treble points were awarded for just the one day only, and she could clearly recall the two mental-looking women involved being unceremoniously hand-cuffed by police-officers on account of the fracas, and getting taken away in their large, white van.

The would-be anthem’s final verse rang out.
‘Til we have built Jerusalem - in England’s green and pleasant land,’
the rows of singers sang
.
As the audience members closed their hymn-books and sat down again, Rhiannon pondered over where this pleasant, green region they had just sung about might actually be, and, given the times when the song was written, whether it could, in fact, refer to Wales. Although, she pondered, the Lake District is very nice in summer, and there are parts of Yorkshire to the west and north of Leeds that are very like some of the finest Welsh Valleys, and every bit as beautiful, she felt, as the one that she was happy to be living in. It was undoubtedly a lovely hymn nevertheless, she mused, and would seem a far more appropriate song for English rugby fans to be singing than some quirky, old, Negro spiritual about chariots and the River Jordan, and angels chasing around after you, of all things.

The Duke Ellington went well, even though Mrs. Roberts forgot to let them repeat the last chorus at a decreasing tempo, as had originally been planned. After this the Drama Club’s
‘Scenes from Under Milk Wood’
was completed, to loud applause and considerable wolf-whistling, aimed, she imagined, at the brazen Polly Garter, played by Pippa Jenkins’ sister Britney, who, in a ripped, seemingly see-through, white blouse, daubed with red, lipstick circles for nipples, easily succeeded in shaming her family-name even further than it had been already by her shameful elder sister.

Then, at last, it was the time for Rhiannon and the school-band to play the audience the well- known Carla Steel song, and hopefully restore normality once again. Rhiannon stood up and began playing the song’s lengthy intro, but a few sudden screams of excitement from the side of the stage told her that something unexpected was happening. Then, to loud applause and widespread cat-calls, her music teacher Bob Conway entered the auditorium, and walked onto the stage hand-in-hand with none other than Carla Steel herself!

The buzz in the hall was unlike anything she had heard before, but, though shaking with understandable trepidation, Rhiannon decided that she dare not pause the music even for a second, and risk ruining the intended effect, and so she carried on regardless, and, with her busy fingers trembling uncontrollably, she played the last few bars up to the point where the lyrics normally began. Just then, and only a few feet away from her swaying, tilted shoulder, she heard the great Carla Steel herself begin strumming her electric-guitar, and singing in her unique, powerful voice the words of her song
‘Heaven Scent.’
For a duration of close to four minutes thereafter you could literally have heard a pin drop in the crowded, excited auditorium.

Down in the audience Chris’s eyes were standing out on stalks. An under-dressed Britney Jenkins had done nothing to rouse his libido, nor indeed did the proximity of her sister Pippa, who was, after all, an ex-lover and his present consort, but the exquisite sight and sound of this mature, glamorous, international singing-star literally popped the boy’s cork for him. Chris already knew how to play five or six different major-chords on both piano and guitar, and had written a couple of tunes that made him feel like it was time he formed his own thrash-band, and yet this majestic female standing before him, her dark, curly head bent slightly over her
Fender Stratocaster
, could clearly play any chord imaginable to the human ear, while, quite stupendously, singing all of the song’s lyrics at the same time!

This was, without doubt, by far the most incredible feeling Chris had experienced in his seventeen long years of life, and, at that moment, all he really knew was that he desperately wanted to experience it further and far more intensely. This truly captivating female deity, who seemed often to be looking over in his direction, was, for Chris, the epitome of grace and beauty. Her glorious voice alone seemed to transport him to regions he felt Columbus and Magellan had never dreamed of reaching, and her wondrous form to heights that Hilary and Tensing had never attained. And the sheer economy of Carla’s song, which was quite clearly the story of her own life experience, was such that every single line she delivered was, for him, at any rate, a unique thought divinely expressed, every single sound produced, a matchless statement of love.

Yes, this surely had to be the music of love that the duke in Shakespeare’s ‘
Twelfth Night’
had raved poetically about, Chris told himself, as the audience finally rose to its feet to applaud the finest musical talent that the school, the town, and indeed its valley had ever produced. And the feelings he felt he had already developed for Carla were, for Chris, from the heart and of the heart. Indeed, with the sheer power of the emotions he was presently experiencing, Chris believed he could quite easily write the woman a heartfelt love-song to match the one he felt she had just sung to him, and that he would gladly leap up on stage beside her that very instant, clothed or naked, and, on bended knees even, sing it, with genuine meaning, to her very soul.

To Chris’s eyes, Carla Steel stood perfectly alone on stage that evening, and young, neglected Rhiannon Cook, poor girl, was relegated to a place somewhere far behind her, as well as to some time-period in his deep and distant past. Solo, or indeed accompanied, Carla Steel, this sublime, dusky, honey-toned, angel now seemed as real as roses to him, a shining star, and most truly heaven sent. And, as Chris stood alone in the centre of the, still applauding, audience, and watched the players on the stage flock franticallly around her - the happy, giggling girls over-joyed simply to hug her slight, busty frame, the flush-faced boys, wired-up like light-bulbs, and as frenetic as meerkats, safely sated by simply stroking her gleaming guitar - Chris felt very much as if the woman had now supplanted the girl, and as though the budding, divine love that he now felt coursing thickly through his veins was already transforming the adolescent boy, he had hitherto unquestionably been, into the man.

Every day that Anne got up early she seemed to leave most of her hormones in bed. And this Sunday morning was no exception. Within hours of the day beginning she had already fallen out with her husband because her son Chris desperately wanted to use the bathroom. But his step-father felt he had waited long enough for the privilege, thank you very much, (following Anne’s lengthy preparations for her over-time shift at the care-home,) and was now locked away inside, and determined to repel all intruders, especially Chris, so as to repeat, if he could manage it, his feat of the previous Sunday, and languish in the warm, soapy balm of his long, pastel-green bath-tub for an hour at the very least.

Drew eased himself back and raised the Welsh tabloid-newspaper just above the level of the suds that covered his slim, but hairy chest, and began to read; and to Drew, the local news that week seemed to be unusually hilarious. There was the semi-detached house in Swansea that, from the front, bore a striking resemblance to Adolf Hitler; the five-legged lamb on a farm in nearby Penderyn with an extra spring in his step; and the pensioner from somewhere down the valley who, having sadly died alone, had apparently got gradually eaten up by her mass of rescued strays. Well, well, Drew thought, with a smile, even the most loyal, best-behaved dogs must get sick of over-cooked, meaty chunks after a while. Yes, surely all God’s creatures valued a change, and even he got tired of curries some weeks.

Drew turned next to the British national papers in the anticipation of more serious comment, sipped his coffee, inhaled the smoke from his Rothmans, and read on. ‘Man escapes prison when wife sends fax ordering his release,’
The Mirror
informed him. He chuckled raucously at that one, and reached over again to the toilet seat-cover for a second publication.
The Mail
reported how oral sex was now a bigger cause of throat cancer than tobacco. Drew pondered this. But surely that had to apply just as equally to men as to women, he mused. Mm, there again, perhaps not. Drew laid his head agaist the rim of the tub, closed his eyes, and let his mind drift back in time, but, however hard he tried, he couldn’t even recall the last time that his loving, long-term co-habitee had felt impelled to cross the nut-bush city-limits in an effort to please him!