Digging Out (9 page)

I come down then and lean against the door. “I still don’t feel well. I can’t swallow and my head is hot. Please don’t make me go to school, Mam.”

Mam wipes her hands on her apron, comes over to me, feels my forehead with the back of her hand and then reaches down and kisses it. “You do feel a little warm, girl. Arthur…”

Da turns away, ignoring Mam’s pleas. He speaks into the air. “I felt her head a while ago, and she’s fine. She’s going to school.”

“You know, Da, sometimes I wonder about you,” Mam says. “There must have been another way to have handled Parry, like. He’s trying to help.”

Da turns his back on Mam and Gram and goes to the kitchen sink to wash his hands. “Alys, eat up. We’re going in five minutes.”

“Come on now, Arthur. ’Tis an absolutely miserable day out. Look there, the mist gathering so low in the valley. When I went out to fetch the milk bottles, I couldn’t see my own steps back, and it’s cold, like, too. Go on then. Have a look if you don’t believe me. You can’t make Alys go to school in this weather. She doesn’t feel right, Arthur. She’s still feverish.”

“She’s going, Rita. I’ve made up my mind.”

O
CTOBER 20, 1972

T
he door bangs shut behind us. The hard drizzle feels like pinpricks against my face. And the dark quiet is too cold and damp even for birds. I trail Da, slow, hoping he will change his mind and let me go home. It’s not fair.

“Come along then, Alys. Don’t dawdle now. You don’t want to be late.”

“Da …”

“Come now, it’s the last day before half term. You’ll have a whole week to get better in,” he says.

And then I’ll play with Hallie every day, I will. No one to stop me.

“Button up now, Alys. Your mam’s right. ‘Tis bitter. You don’t want to catch your death, like.”

At Hallie’s, Da lets me go knock and we wait on the steps. Mr. Ames, who lives just down the road, appears.

“Trouble today?” he asks.

“Expecting some. Hope not, but I’m prepared if there is,” Da says.

I want to turn home. Why is Da making me go? My head hurts. My neck hurts. I wish Parry was walking me to school. He’d let me go home. He’s a good brother like that.

Mr. Ames looks at his watch.

“It’s half past the hour, man. We’re late for the shift.”

“Know it. You go, Ames. I’ll be along,” Da says, giving him a slap on the back.

Hallie comes out then, her yellow hair in pigtails tied with red
ribbons Beti just gave her when she turned eight a few weeks ago. I am nine months older. I hug her and her lunch pail digs into my side. “What you got there, Hallie?”

“It’s a ham roll Mam made. Where’s yours, then?”

“I was staying home again, but Da made me come out and I forgot it.”

“I’ll share mine,” Hallie says, taking my hand.

Da reaches into his pocket and gives me a shilling for milk.

Here comes Evan.

“On my way to the mine,” he shouts, waving at Da, looking like a ghost walking toward us in the mist. “There’s my girl. Pretty as a picture.” I look up quickly and smile at Evan, Parry’s best friend. It doesn’t seem like he is mad at Da, like Parry is. They shake hands.

I ask to see Hallie’s ham roll, whispering in her ear, “Parry said yesterday Auntie Beryl was holding a sign telling people to take their children home.”

“I saw it. What’s it mean?”

I shrug.

“My da calls your auntie Beryl a ‘do-gooder.’ ” Hallie laughs. “Says she’s always getting into the middle of things, stirring things up, like.”

“Well, she’s not. She’s just, well, she’s Auntie Beryl, that’s all. Cram says she’s trying to make the world a safer place for us,” I argue.

No matter what Hallie’s da or anyone else says about her, I love Auntie Beryl, wild skirts, red hair and all.

But just now there is no one wild around or anyone we don’t know. No signs. Just mams and das dropping off. Billy and Bonnie Sykes, Peter Davies, Sarah Keane, Lola Finnian making their way through the school doors.

“It seems quiet enough,” Da says, pushing his cap back on his head, sounding pleased. I look up at him, a last try. He can tell I don’t want to go in. “Remember now, ‘tis the last day, today is, before break. And ‘tisn’t even a full day. You can do it. Off you go, now, Alys. Be a good girl, then.”

His soft lips and rough cheek against mine as he kisses it make me feel better.

“You and Hallie walk straight home from school, hear.”

In the playground everyone is talking about the fog. Mrs. Morgan rings the handbell, saying she thinks with all this fog it is as beautiful
as it gets in the valley. We queue up in class order and the girls go through the side entrance straight to Assembly, me marching behind Hallie. It’s Friday; we have Assembly Hall on Friday. We sing “All Things Bright and Beautiful,” and then we go back to our classes.

Mrs. Morgan gives paints out to each of us. Bobby and Dai go out for the rain gauge. That’s my favorite job. I did it Monday, before I took ill, when there had been three inches of rain. This morning, the gauge registers one and a half.

A call comes for “dinner children.” These are the children who are getting milk. So I stand to give my shilling to the dinner lady, asking Hallie for hers.

“I’ll do my own,” she says.

“No, I’ll do it for you, I will. You’re sharing your ham roll.”

“But I want to do my own,” Hallie says. “I want to queue up. I’ll do yours. You’re the one’s ill, like.”

I try to grab Hallie’s shilling from her. I want to fetch her milk to show how much I love her. I hold on to the edge of the coin, pulling hard as Mrs. Morgan calls out our names, marking the register.

“Come along now. One of you’s enough,” the dinner lady says, putting her arm around my shoulder. “No need for your squabbling, then.”

In the hallway, everyone is talking. When Hallie looks away, I pull her shilling so hard it falls to the ground.

“Look what you’ve done, now, Alys!”

Hallie is down on her knees searching when a terrible roar starts, screaming low over us, the roar swooping low to swallow me. Windows crash in, rush of black water, mud, a tidal wave. It comes and comes higher, higher, till I lose sight of Hallie.

I hear screaming. Then all around is black and still.

Dark.

Hallie. Hallie.

“Sir, help me!” A voice. Far away, underground, not Hallie. I try to call out —but no sound comes. No sound. Something tight, up against me. Pushing into me. Thick, cold. In my mouth, my nose. I blow, cough. Nothing happens. Thick stuff. No air. Can’t breathe. Pinned tight. Arms can’t move. Legs hurt. Blurry. Cold, wet. Someone screaming … “Help me! Help me!”

* * *

I wake up in a strange bed, hooked up to wires and tubes. A dim light in the corner of the room. Seconds pass and Gram is there, hanging over me, patting me. “Ssssssh,” she says. I smell her talc.

“It’s all right. You’re safe, Alys. You are safe.”

“Where’s Hallie? Where’s Hallie?”

Gram pats me still and whispers, “Ssssssh.” But I can’t stay still. Finally, she gets into the bed with me and pulls me into her arms, rocking me. “Don’t move now, Alys. Ssssssh.”

“Where’s Mam!”

“It’s all right, dearie. Your mam is with your da. It’s all right. She needs to be there now.”

I cry, my whole body shaking so hard my bones feel like they’ve come loose. I cannot stop. I am wet and so cold. Someone comes in and turns on another light, brighter. She has on a small white cap. I am rolling my head from side to side.

She bends over me. “I’m Nurse Banwell,” she says.

My chest hurts, my stomach. I am still crying and she is so close, her hot, sour breath on me and she is smiling down at me as if everything is okay. She has large yellow teeth and bright red lipstick. I might throw up.

“I’m going to give you a little jab in your bum. Don’t you move now and it won’t hurt a bit.” She wipes me, my mouth, my hands. “Soon you’ll go off to sleep again. Your gram will be right here. She’ll be right next to you all through the night. You sleep well now, and don’t worry about a thing. You’re fine,” she says. “You’re safe now.”

Don’t want to sleep. Need to find Hallie. I just want Hallie, that’s all. just Hallie.

Before I can say stop, I feel the sharp jab.

I can’t say it out loud, but I’m thinking that I might swallow my tongue and choke. I need my hand so I can hold my tongue, keep it from going down my throat. “Gram …” I try to raise my body so I can see the other children. My eyes are blurry. My head, so heavy. There are voices, whispering, fading into each other….

“Gram, where’s Hallie, please?” My own voice sounds funny.

“Don’t talk anymore, Alys dear. Just close your eyes and have a little rest now.”

I am trying to remember… the small sound of Hallie’s shilling hitting the floor. A ping, and then, “Look what you’ve done, Alys!” So
angry at me. Hallie’s shilling. Dropped it. Don’t have it. No, don’t have it now. But I have my own. Hallie’s mad. The wave coming toward me … the thick, black wave covering … “Hallie … don’t be mad at me!”

When they take me home from the hospital two weeks later, Mam and Gram make my bed up in the parlor so I will be near the telly and the electric fire, and close to the kitchen. Everyone trying to get my mind off… It is still really hard to sit by myself. Mam makes me chicken soup, but she doesn’t have time to sit with me. She tells me she is sorry but she’s trying to help out in the village. Each time she leaves the house I am afraid she will never come back. I make do, staring as the light changes through the stained glass window, the colors a prism of comfort.

Gram tells me Mam is working with some of the other mothers. Helping them clean house and cook because they are so broken after all they have lost. Gram tells me to be patient with her.

When she’s not working down at Hoover, Beti reads to me. She is reading me
Love Is a Many Splendored Thing.
Beti wears short skirts and sleeveless low white blouses just like the girl in the book. And sometimes you can see her bra strap. She is so pretty, Beti is. I love the way she smells, too. Lemons. She tells me not to read ahead. Mostly, I don’t. She and Colin bring me a stuffed cat to cuddle and boiled sweets to suck on. Colin massages my feet.

The house is so quiet without Parry. He’s taken to staying at a girl’s house, name of Gillian. Mam doesn’t like her at all. Calls her a scrubber. I want to ask Mam what that is, but I don’t.

Finally, a few mornings, Parry sneaks in when Da’s gone, bringing me coloring books and Smarties from the shop. He says over and over again how sorry he is about Hallie. He sets up his easel and lays out his paints. It is almost like the old days when I was little and he was always around, sketching me, sketching Mam, telling jokes. But in the end, he crumples up his sketch papers and tears his canvas from the easel.

Evan comes too. He brings me stacks and stacks of library books. Sitting close, his dark hair longer now and his blue eyes so bright. He reads me poems by Idris Davies, who he says was a great poet and lived just round by Rhymney. They are beautiful, and I remember the lines “Let rapture conquer sadness, / For life is but a day; / Let there be
love and laughter / Oh hearts, be glad, be gay.” One thing is for sure: I won’t ever be happy again. I can’t imagine it. No. I can’t imagine what I will ever do without Hallie.

It’s been three weeks since the tip slid. One evening Colin stops by to pick up Beti and I hear him say that tomorrow there will be a service for all the children —a mass funeral, he calls it.

Cram makes our supper. “It’s nothing fancy, a pot of soup. Really just potatoes, carrots and onions boiled up with lamb bones, but you’re welcome to stay, Colin.”

Mam sits, not like her, letting Gram serve us at the table.

It tastes like dishwater to me. I don’t dare complain. But I can’t swallow proper, like.

He stands at the door. Da, towering over us with his hands in the pockets of his wooly gray cardigan. His hair gone long and wild. His beard, scruffy.

“I can’t go,” Da says quietly to all of us. “Besides, someone needs to stay with Alys.”

I wait. I am waiting for some nice word from Mam. But she doesn’t even look up.

But Gram does. She says, “Arthur, you must. I’ll stay with Alys. It won’t do for you to stay behind.”

“What about you, Beti? Why don’t you stay with Alys? I’ll go with Da. He’ll need me,” Mam says. “I’d appreciate that, Beti, I would.”

Beti looks at Da, and then she looks at me. She puts her hand on top of Colin’s and says quietly, “I need to go. Colin’s little cousin Peter was among them…. I want to go, pay my respects, like. Sorry, Mam.” She takes Colin’s hand, and biting her lip, she starts to cry and quickly looks away.

I start to cry, too. I can’t help it. I’ve only been home from hospital a short time, still with nightmares: the sirens, the wet, cold muck, the sight of parents digging wildly for their children and no Hallie. I am still mostly in a wheelchair and the arms of it get in the way of the table, so I have to reach way over to my soup bowl.

Da comes full into the room then and stands next to me. He pats me lightly on the head and leans over, picking up the spoon, feeding me the soup. I swallow hard and look up at him. His eyes are full of tears.

“It won’t always hurt this bad, Alys,” he says, looking me straight
in the face. “It won’t always feel this hard.” He pats my head again and his hand falls to his side, limp and useless. He turns away and starts to sob. Long, heaving sobs that make his whole huge body shake, lifting his hands to cover his face.

Mam starts to cry. She is so small, like a bird. It is the only time since everything has come apart that I’ve seen her cry.

And Da doesn’t go to chapel. He stays home with me, sitting in the parlor, me propped with pillows on the settee, him with his hands ‘tween his knees and his head down, the low mist and fog outside settled once again just like it had on the day of the disaster. And it is so cold, the draft coming in under the doors and through the cracks of the windows. I pull a blanket round me tight as I can. I wonder if I will feel this cold in my bones, in my heart, everywhere, for the rest of my life.