Last Train to Gloryhole (20 page)

Drew read on. The headline he made out just below the last one reported that possessing a pot-belly significantly raises a man’s risk of blindness later in life. He thought for a moment, then held the newspaper as far away from his eyes as he could manage and tried to read the small-print. Spilling water all over the carpeted floor, Drew slowly turned his twisted, dripping torso towards the wall, in an effort to regard himself in the full-length mirror that clung to it, but was now edged with broad corners of condensation that barely allowed him to see. Mm. He could remember being younger and looking a damn sight worse, he told himself. Yes, he looked quite fine for his age, he concluded, and if he could just maintain his weekly jog, and his twice-daily walk to the Spar-shop near school for the likes of gum, chocolate, lighter-fuel and cigarettes, then he saw no reason why he shouldn’t be able to see his way to seventy, at the very least, even if, by that time, most of his egg-shaped head’s flowing locks had fallen out, and what hair still remained hanging there might leave him looking a little like Father Christmas.

Three loud bangs suddenly sounded high above Drew’s head, the stumbling footfall in the empty loft disturbing his weekend peace and tranquility. What on earth was the foolish boy up to now? he wondered. Was Chris ‘trippin’ again, he asked himself with a chuckle. Drew contemplated how his son was by now beginning to tax his powers in so many areas, and he already felt that the nefarious activities by which he attempted to acquire some extra cash for himself, as well as his all too secretive love-life, left him wide-open to falling foul of the same mistakes that he himself had made at that vulnerable age. And now that a bog-standard, university education at practically every red-brick institution throughout the land was soon to cost a fortune under the crazy plans of the, already discredited, ‘Con-Dem’ Coalition Government, (despite their ministers’ initial promises to the contrary that had swindled them their seats in the recent general election,) Drew thought that he might now struggle to even get Chris out of the house at all in eighteen months time, when the boy finally finished school, and, as he had told Anne many times, ought to be aiming to stand on his own two feet and seek pastures new.

Drew threw down the newspaper he was holding, lay back in the tub, and listened even more attentively. Yes, he could still hear sounds of human movement overhead, and he decided that, when he was next a tad grubby, and on the point of taking a bath, he would venture up into the dusty loft minutes beforehand, and find out what it was that Chris was actually getting up to.

Shaking his head, Drew recalled the time, just a few years before, when he had found a half- finished joint up there, and lit up and smoked a good portion of it himself, before climbing down again and joyfully berating his step-son about the perils of dabbling in drugs! Drew turned again and smiled into the wall-mirror, and chuckled sadistically at the memory. On account of the struggle and outrageous self-sacrifice that was involved in child-rearing, he believed that parents and teachers alike were, at least at times, entitled to be hypocritical, and so he therefore felt not an iota of guilt about what he had done, just a profound sense of self-satisfaction. Perhaps he would find some more of the stuff up there the next time too, Drew pondered, although he seriously hoped that Chris was becoming more discerning these days, and that anything he did stumble upon would be of a far higher grade, and not as bitter and mouldy as the last one was.

In the loft Chris forced opened the panel in the wall, and again crept inside his neighbour’s attic. He could already clearly hear that someone was on the phone in the room below, and the only female it could possibly be, he told himself, was Carla Steel. He was of course correct. Peeling off the tape, and staring down through the hole in the floor-board, he could clearly see the singer, dressed in a fetching, blue, silk dressing-gown, and with a blue towel-turban heaped over her head, sitting on the side of the bath-tub and addressing someone in Welsh.

It was at times like this that Chris wished that he had paid far more attention during his Welsh language lessons he had had at school, because the only thing disclosed in her conversation that he could truly fathom was a mobile-phone number, which Carla repeated on two separate occasions, enabling Chris to memorise it. He quickly made up his mind to ring it some time in the near future, and hopefully find out a lot more about who Carla’s acquaintance might be. After all, he told himself, it could turn out to be another famous celebrity, or, even better than that perhaps, the singer’s personal dealer.

Chris smiled broadly at this thought, and spun round to check out the present height of the different varieties of skunk that were growing, tall and green, in a myriad of separate pots and trays laid out behind him. He then reached down and grasped a plastic-bottle off the floor, and began squeezing some of the fluid into a few of the pots whose plant-cultures looked like they were most in need of it. Yes, he told himself with a chuckle, squeezing repeatedly, and turning over several of the broader leaves which sprang out impressively from their main stalks, an appreciation of ‘cultural differences’ was something that he felt certain he was developing fast, and this fact his liberal leaning step-father would surely be proud of, if only he knew!

Anne happened to be walking around in town one afternoon when Zeta Jones - nee Carini - suddenly stepped out of her family’s café, gripped her hand, and pulled her forcibly inside. Anne smiled at her old friend’s impertinence, but put it down, as she had in the past, to the woman’s Latin temperament, coupled with the fact that, in her opinion, Zita had never been the sharpest knife in the drawer, even in the evening cookery-classes they had attended together at the local college, where knives in drawers were expected to be sharp, or else were of precious little use.

There was just the one table vacant, and that at the rear of the steam-filled room, and so, making her husband aware that she would be busy with a customer for a while, the female proprietor led Anne over towards it, and bade her sit down in the seat just across from her.

‘What will you have, pet?’ Zeta asked her, holding up the brown-smeared plastic card that sat on the table, headed ‘
Menu
.’

‘Oh, that’s O.K., Zet,’ Anne replied. ‘It’s only an hour or so since I had my lunch. What is it, love? I dare say it must be important or I’m sure you wouldn’t have abducted me like this.’

‘Well, I’m not sure it’s earth-shattering, pet,’ Zeta told her, ‘but I’ll wager you’ll still thank me anyway for telling you.’

‘Fire away, girl!’ said Anne.

‘Gwen Cook,’ said Zeta. ‘Havard, as was.’

‘What about her?’

‘She’s not exactly on your Christmas card list, right?’

‘It’s still only April, Zeta,’ shot back Anne, grinning.

‘Oh, you know what I mean,’ continued Zeta. ‘Didn’t you and Gwen’s husband have a thing going one time? Although this was long before you and your Drew got together, naturally.’

‘Well, of course it was,’ Anne told her, slightly offended that her lanky friend would even consider that she might have behaved in such a way since she got married. ‘I think it was about eighteen years ago, for heaven’s sake. And Dyl is a good man, Zeta. I wasn’t really myself around that time. I was on a course of prozac, for a start. And my Bethan’s dad had walked out on us, do you remember?’

‘Of course I do,’ her friend replied. ‘And, if you recall, we were all there for you at the time, right? But I didn’t really want to talk about that time in your life, love. No, no. This was something else completely. Something that happened just three or four years ago, as it goes.’

‘Go on,’ said Anne, now totally intrigued.

‘I believe it was in 2007, on my birthday if I’m not mistaken. Do you remember how we girls all went out for the night?’

‘That wasn’t
The Dream Boys
, was it?’ asked Anne, smiling, then shaking her head.

‘Do you mind!’ stammered Zeta, colouring, ‘If you did see those lot back around that time then I’m sure it wasn’t me who went with you. No, no, it was the night when we went to
The Ex.Club. The Ex-Servicemen’s Club,
I mean. Say, Anne - can you remember what it was we all went there to see?’ Zeta suddenly jumped to her feet and pulled up her tights, a leg at a time

‘Gosh! How would I know?’ replied Anne. ‘I bet we must have gone out on the booze on a fair few occasions around that time.’

‘Well, let me give you a clue, shall I?’ said Zeta. ‘It was the night that Gwen went with us. Gwen Cook. Now do you remember?’

‘Well, yes, I think I do,’ said Anne, biting her lip, and making a strange, wheezing noise.

‘It wasn’t for bingo, was it?’ Zeta asked her.

‘Zeta, I never went to bingo in my whole life!’ Anne told her. ‘No, I think it was a special show of some kind.’

‘Cerys Matthews?’ asked Zeta.

‘Who? No, that was much later. It was some kind of show with, er - what do you call it now?’

‘What? Live music?’ asked Zeta. Anne shook her head. ‘Karaoke? Nudity?’

‘Definitely not,’ Anne told her. ‘None of those, I’m sure.’

‘Well, what then?’ enquired Zeta. ‘Can you remember? Try and remember, pet, will you?’ Zeta lifted a long leg in the air and pulled up one side of her hose again, but Anne was too engrossed in thought to notice, less comment on it, although an elderly gent at the next table spilled some of his tea all over the table.

‘I’m not sure what the show was that was on that night, Zeta, but I certainly recall that there was…er, what’s it called now?’

‘Audience participation?’

‘Aye, that’s it.’

‘Really? You know,
I
thought there was, too,’ Zeta told her, licking her lips and becoming more animated. ‘So tell me - how did we participate exactly?’

‘
We
didn’t,’ replied Anne. ‘You and me, I mean.’

‘Who, then?’ asked Zeta, lowering her eye-brows.

‘If I remember rightly, it was Gwen,’ Anne told her.

‘But not
just
Gwen?’

‘No, not
just
Gwen,’ Anne continued. ‘But I can remember she was definitely one of the people who went up onto the stage that night. Loose Linda was another one, and Maggie Scratch, so I’m guessing it must have been something pretty disgusting, don’t you think?’ Eyes wide, her friend nodded in agreement. ‘But tell me, Zeta - why on earth would you want to know about that night at
The Ex Club
, all these years later?’

Carla studied her father. So gaunt had he now become that his grey sweater hung from him in great, rolling folds and bulges, much as if he were an up-ended log, or an old, wooden chair.

‘Who invented electricity, Dad?’ enquired his daughter, who was sitting comfortably on the sofa just across from him, with her feet curled under her, and clutching a pencil and a crossword-puzzle book on her lap.

Tom glared back at his daughter, clearly disgruntled at her question. ‘Why, God did, I guess, dear,’ he replied, shaking his head with disappointment. He suddenly sat forward so as to address her, his narrow shoulders hunched, his hands visibly trembling. ‘Carla, dear - I am shocked that you don’t seem to have learned anything in all those early years when your dear mother used to take you to chapel each Sunday back in the village.’

‘Oh, really? Except how to play the piano, the organ, the bass,
and
the guitar,’ she replied, grinning, ‘and even the drums after a fashion. It didn’t exactly disadvantage me a great deal, now did it, Dad?’ Carla closed the magazine and placed it on the seat beside her. ‘If you want to know, I believe the chapel was the basis of all my musical ability,’ she told him. ‘And where do you think I learned how to write poetry, and even develop the lyrics to some of my very first songs. All in all, I reckon you and Mam couldn’t have done any better for me, Dad, had you been some music-mogul, or a multi-millionaire even, instead of a - instead of a -’

‘A frustrated, failed dentist, who - who had to settle for being an underpaid medical assistant,’ he replied with feeling. ‘And had to simply
make do
all my life since, instead of developing a proper career and prospering, as your dear mother must have expected I would do, and indeed as you yourself have managed to do wonderfully.’

‘Money-wise, I may have prospered,’ Carla responded. ‘But there have been very many dark days along the way as well, if you want to know the truth.’

‘Sweetheart, do you mind if I ask you something?’ Tom enquired of his daughter tenderly, leaning forward again, his orange mug of coffee, wobbling a little, in his bent, veined hand.

‘Of course you can, Dad,’ Carla replied, moving to sit closer to him, and stroking his speckly, wrinkled forehead with her fingers. She feared his question, and so subtly changed the subject. ‘Do you really believe coffee tastes better in a mug that’s orange, Dad?’ she asked him, smiling.

‘Did you ever take drugs?’ Tom enquired earnestly. ‘Did you, love? Because if you did, you can tell me now you know. It’s O.K. You can, Carla. Honestly.’

Finally the moment had arrived that Carla had been dreading all her adult life. And, now that it had, she certainly didn’t intend to lie to her Dad about the facts, although she realised how the truth might just finish him off, or at least sadly malign their newly re-kindled relationship. ‘Oh, Dad,’ she mumbled softly, rather like a loving, forgiving parent, and exactly as her mother had done to her many times before. ‘You really don’t have to worry on that score, you know.’

‘Well, I’m glad,’ Tom told her with a smile, then turned away, and gazed out of the window at the tall trees that stood across the road. But the old man could tell that it had slipped his daughter’s mind that her father possessed a special gift that his daughter didn’t appear to have inherited. Tom turned back and looked deep into Carla’s beautiful blue eyes, and very soon gleaned all the knowledge from her that he felt he needed to learn, of the pain that her life in the spot-light had involved, and of the terrible pain caused by the men who had lived with her, and used her, and hurt her, and of all the substances she had consumed, and abused, in her frantic attempts simply to cope with the sequence of disapointments that befell her, and, in the end, perhaps helped get her through them.