Last Train to Gloryhole (54 page)

Again today, Rhiannon’s thoughts seemed to be all about Chris. She hadn’t seen him for a couple of weeks now, and when she glimpsed him he always seemed to be in the company of Carla Steel, of all people, either with a guitar apiece in the same woods that they had once tenderly explored together, or walking around over the lightly wooded limestone foothills of The Beacons that ranged to the north and west of the boy’s home.

“
Cat hunting caver washed away
,” she suddenly called out.

‘What the hell!’ ejaculated Carmen. ‘Er - five words. Not bad.’

‘Drowned!’ shrieked Rhiannon, her mouth agape, her body trembling. ‘Drowned! ‘
Cat hunting caver drowned
.’ Four words must be the winner, surely.’

‘Do you think? But I bet I could match that,’ said Carmen, gritting her teeth. She pointed at Rhiannon’s wrist-watch, and said, ‘Ready?’

‘Ready, steady, go!’ said Rhiannon, biting her lip tensely. The flame-haired girl watched her friend’s brown eyes sparkle, as she gazed out of the front parlour-window, and endeavoured to conjour up a brief, record-busting tale of her own. ‘Ten seconds left!’ she announced excitedly.

“
Cemetery killing taken no further
”, Carmen told her. ‘Do you get it? They’re already there, see!’

‘Yes, but where’s the story?’ enquired Rhiannon. ‘Carmen - look yours is more like a dumb newspaper headline in
The Sun
, or even some morbid sort of joke, don’t you think?’

‘O.K., then. ‘
Cemetery killer buried at work,’ ’

‘Mmm, I don’t know. ‘Smothered with work’ is cleverer, in my opinion,’ chipped in Rhiannon. ‘How about ‘
Cemetery killer smothered with work.’
There. That’s almost perfect, don’t you think? Humorous, too. Or better again, I think
- ‘Grave-digging killer smothered with work.’

‘Yes, all right. I think I could settle for that,’ said Carmen.
‘Grave-digging killer smothered with work.’
You win. Six, no five. And every bit as good as the Hemingway, I believe. It was a joint venture, too, so it kind of feels right.’ Hey, Rhiannon. Do you hope he gets drowned, then?’

‘Who?’ asked Rhiannon.

‘
You
know who,’ Carmen replied, carefully avoiding her best friend’s gaze. ‘The two of them, perhaps, if they continue hanging round together all the time. And are you sure you’re not sort of
willing their demise
? You know, like - like Abigail Williams.’

‘Abigail in Year Ten?’ enquired Rhiannon, puzzled. ‘Why on earth -’

‘No, Abigail Williams in ‘
The Crucible,’
silly,’ said Carmen. ‘You must remember her, surely?. You know, the play we studied in English before Christmas.’

‘Oh, that,’ her red-haired companion replied. Rhiannon deliberated for a moment, trying to visualize clearly the particular female her friend was referring to. ‘So are you calling me a witch now, then, Carmen?’ she asked pointedly. Carmen quickly shook her head. ‘No,’ continued Rhiannon, ‘as a matter of fact I am actually very glad that Chris is seeing –’

‘Seeing!’ ejaculated Carmen, covering her mouth to indicate her friend’s faux-pas.

‘ - I mean, spending - spending quality time…with Carla Steel. You see, Carmen, it is bound to help him in the long run, isn’t it?’

‘Is it?’ asked Carmen, puzzled by her comment.

‘Well, there’s no doubt she has been playing a lot longer than he has, right?’

‘I don’t doubt it for a moment,’ retorted Carmen, her mind busy steaming up a different track.

‘So I guess his finger-work has to be improving every day, don’t you think?’

‘I - I’d rather not think about it, actually, if you don’t mind,’ Carmen answered, this time her hand fully across her mouth.

‘Carmen - what on earth are you trying to say?’ asked Rhiannon, suddenly springing to her feet. ‘I think - I think I know what you’re trying to suggest, you know, and you are being truly disgusting, as usual, so you are. Ooh!’

‘I am not!’ protested Carmen.

‘Remember she’s a lot older than he is, right? Almost twice Chris’s age. And you’re supposed to be my best friend, too. How could you! Look - I demand you take it back.’

‘But what have I said, Rhiannon?’ pleaded Carmen. ‘I’ve said nothing. I mean,
you’ve
done almost all the talking.’

‘What you’ve been thinking, I mean,’ said Rhiannon. ‘Take it back, Carmen. Right now.’

‘What I’ve been thinking!’

‘Take it back, I command you,’ insisted Rhiannon, her shoulders thrust back, and quivering.

‘You command me! Just listen to yourself, Rhiannon,’ said Carmen, smarting.

Carmen watched, alarmed, as Rhiannon spun round and ran to the door, and then listened, open-mouthed, as her feet pounded their way up the stairs. Forlornly Carmen picked up her magazine and her school-books, and, stuffing them inside her bag, made her way to the front-door, opened it, and slipped quietly outside.

As Carmen walked across the yard towards the gate in the late-evening twilight she turned and saw Rhiannon’s mother standing at the side-door of the house, dressed in what looked like a flowing, sky-blue, silken shift, a pointed, cream-coloured hat, and with tight, well-worn, and desperately patchy, cream ballet-shoes squeezed onto her bunnion-ed feet. She was throwing half a dozen or so full, knotted, polythene-bags into the trash-bin, but acting, for all the world. as if the strange garb she was attired in were her usual, everyday house-clothes.

‘My God! It’s the Lady of Shallot,’ said Carmen under her breath. ‘Mrs. Cook! I’m leaving now!’ she cried, as she closed the wide, iron gate behind her.

‘All right, love,’ Gwen replied, turning. ‘I suppose it’s warm enough for you to walk home tonight, yeah? Mind you go safely now. You don’t know what strange people are out at this time of night, do you love?’

‘O.K., bye,’ the school-girl replied. ‘You, for a start, you crazy old bat,’ whispered Carmen to herself, fixing the heavy school-bag onto her slim shoulders and setting off along the pavement. As she walked along, she watched with a sideward glance as Rhiannon’s mother went inside the house again and pulled the side-door tightly closed behind her.

Walking up the road past the field that contained the two boxes where Rhiannon’s horses were kept, Carmen could still just about make out the tarnished, rain-washed words that Rhiannon had told her her mother had daubed on them with red paint some time back in the Spring. Intrigued, she climbed through the wire-fence, and, carefully stepping by the two standing horses, who were busy chewing what little grass there was left there, approached the pair of makeshift stables that stood side by side in the middle of the field.

‘Llamrai,
and
Hengroen,
’ Carmen read aloud in her finest Welsh accent. ‘
The Bounder
, and
The Old Skin
. The supposed names of King Arthur’s two horses. But why on earth would the old bat have done such a crazy thing?’ she asked herself. ‘And why the weird clothes? Does she - does she think she was alive and living her life back then, or something? Back in the days before the Angles and the Saxons had arrived on this island, or at least before they had united, and inter-bred, and began taking over most of the British mainland. Does she - surely she can’t think she was some lady, or some queen even, in a former life, back in the deep and distant Dark Ages? Well, you know, maybe she actually does. Some past-life regression perhaps!’ Carmen suddenly let out a raucous laugh, and then spun round nervously to happily discover that only the horses had heard her.

‘Oh, my God! The poor woman,’ she went on. ‘No. Poor Rhiannon, I should say. Yes, poor Rhiannon. Because, if it’s really true, then she’s the one who is really going to need my help right now. Yes, I’ll be sure to ring her and make up with her the minute I get back home,’ she told herself. ‘And to think that
I
feel embarrassed because my mother works as a school-dinner lady.’

Carmen smiled at her rather comical observation, patted the mare, then the stallion, on the side of the head, then climbed back through the fence, and set off along the main road again. She hooked her bag behind her over both her shoulders, gritted her teeth, and made her way up the hill and across
The Bryniau,
but this time at a much faster speed, and in a far more determined frame of mind than was the case just four or five minutes before.

The sound of the toilet flushing in the bathroom across the hall woke the old man from his slumber. Deep within the dark room Tom looked up and spoke. ‘He is a man who stands in the sunlight, but with his back to the sun,’ he called out hoarsely. After the pause that followed, his deep, but brittle, voice called out once again. ‘He sees only his shadows, and these shadows are his only laws.’

‘Who, Dada?’ asked the rudely awoken Carla, pushing the open door further ajar, and stepping lightly into her father’s bedroom.

Sitting up, but leaning towards his daughter on one elbow, Tom repeated exactly what he had said before, but this time more slowly and much louder. ‘He is a man who stands in the sunlight, but with his back to the sun. He sees only his shadows, and these shadows are his only laws.’

Knowing full well that the vision her father had just seen, or the inspiration he had received, had to be of crucial significance, Carla walked over and sat on the bed, and grasped her father’s arm with her hand, and cradled his soft-bearded face with the other. ‘Is he evil, then, Dada?’ she asked him, biting painfully into her lip. ‘The man you’ve seen - that you’re describing. Is he?’

‘That man is the devil,’ her father told her, his wrinkled eyes still tightly shut. ‘He is surely Satan himself.’

Carla’s brain was racing. ‘If he’s the devil - if he
is
Satan - then what is his name, Dada?’ she asked him, her bright eyes sparkling. ‘How will people know him?’

‘I keep doing what I do,’ Tom replied.

‘What? No, Dada, not you,’ said Carla. ‘What is this wicked man called, so that we’ll know him, should we meet him?’

‘ ‘
I keep doing what I do
,’ they call him,’ her father replied.

‘His name, Dada. Just say his name,’ she said once more.

‘I just told you, didn’t I?’ Tom told her, breathing heavily now. ‘His name is - his name means ‘
I continue in my wicked ways.
’ Because, you see, that man cannot help himself, and what’s more he doesn’t
care
to. Even though - even though for many years he grew up with Him,’

‘The man grew up with who, Dada?’ asked Carla.

There followed a minute or so of silence while Tom stretched his bent body back on the bed. By now warm tears were pouring from his eyes, and, at the sight of them, and of the terrifying way his twisted, bony frame shuddered, as if with a mysterious power, Carla grew afraid that her dear father was about to die. Then suddenly the old man’s eyes opened wide again, and he spoke, but much quieter, and far more controlled, this time. ‘He chooses to continue in his wicked ways, Carla, my love, even though - even though the man was born to a God-fearing family, and was raised - yes even raised -’

‘Raised where, Dada?’ asked Carla, by now recognising precisely who the evil man was that her father was describing.

‘And raised, in great fear and trembling, in the House of God.’

Now that she had finished her first joint of the morning, and had carefully washed her face and hands, Carla let go of the soft, blue, woollen towel she had used to dry herself, and, leaning her head to within just a few steamy inches of its surface moisture, stared intently at the pallid, pillow-creased face that now looked back at her forlornly from the oblong mirror that hung over the wash-basin. She moved her chin into a variety of positions, and in this way did her utmost to properly assess the sorry situation.

‘Well, thank God I’m not touring these days, at least,’ she told herself, clenching her pearly-white teeth into a painful, but somewhat comical, grimace, and, with her small, delicate fingers placed on either side of her skull, stretching her taut, pulsing scalp back as far as it would go. She maintained the same position until she was confident she could now sum up matters to her satisfaction, then let go. Yes, for the first time in her exciting, but turbulent, young life Carla now felt like tearing her hair out, and, the more she inspected her forehead and hair-line, the more she felt convinced that she might quite easily have already begun.

Suddenly hearing a deep, tremulous, but familiar voice barely calling out her name from the next room, Carla bit tightly into her bottom lip, then felt a single tear spring onto her cheek. She reached out and swiftly wiped it away with the hand-towel, and, dipping her head so as to listen more intently, turned round and sat on the rim of the bath. She fully realised that she couldn’t bare to see her dear father as sick and wasted as he had now plainly become. These days even the action of getting him to his feet again, after a prolonged period of time seated, or lying abed, often now took as long as a minute or more, and the experience often shocked her immensely, rendering her incredulous and weak. But her reaction was more than she felt she was prepared to let her father see, especially at a time like this, when what she believed he truly needed was measured, if banal, consistency, an appropriare degree of empathy, and, above all, pure love.

But what was to be done? she asked herself, letting her head loll before her. Her father was the master of his own destiny, his own mortality, and, as long as she could remember, he always had been. And if, as he had suggested some time during the previous fortnight, the time had come for him to finally act, and act decisively, and set about the dreadfully calculated, fraudulent process of taking his own life, then
so be it
. Carla looked round and, recognising the sound, turned off the tap behind her right hip that was emitting but the merest of drips. She sensed that she could feel the washer within it scream silently as she repeated the same action on the cold-tap, subconsciously, perhaps, seeking a closure that was, at least relatively, eternal.

Carla recalled how, only days before, she had discovered the strange words
‘AS EASY AS AS’
roughly scribbled in capitals in the top-left corner of the frontispiece page of her dad’s favourite bible - an orange-covered, King James’ authorized-version, which he had once been awarded as a prize for scholastic achievement. And the writing she had found she recognised as being unquestionably his own. After first believing that he might simply have omitted the word
PIE
from the tail of it, Carla had decided to give his queer statement a little more thought. Then, after puzzling over it at length, she finally managed to decipher what the last two capitals in the cryptic line almost certainlly referred to. She had then shook her head from side to side and smiled thinly at the strange irony that appeared to be involved in it.