Last Train to Gloryhole (30 page)

‘Yeah? So why are you sitting here, then?’ I asked him, my arms stretched wide.

Steffan lifted his mobile-phone off the table and waved it round so as to illustrate his point. ‘Because this happens to be my office, mate, you know what I mean?’ he retorted. ‘This is where all my best deals go down. Yesterday
The Red Cow
, today
The Butcher’s Arms
.’

‘Tomorrow
Pennant High,
yeah? Then the junior schools, I wouldn’t wonder. You know you must be so proud of yourselves.’ I said, shaking my head about. ‘Say - shouldn’t you two be at school right now? Oh, of course, it’s work-experience week, isn’t it?’

‘No, that was last month for us two,’ cut in Jake. It was then I remembered that he was Griff Haines’ son from Dowlais.

‘Listen, mate, it’s work-experience all year round for us two,’ continued Steffan. ‘And what better experience is there than sitting up here with a pint of ale and a packet of crisps, and -’ Steffan’s phone suddenly began screamng out -
‘Stop lookin’ at my mom, my mom, my mom! Stop lookin’ at my mom!’
He picked it up and answered it, then immediately gazed back in my direction. ‘Sorry about this, old boy - it’s my secretary,’ he told me, grinning.

‘Or it could be his broker,’ Jake suggested, sniggering.

I decided to have it out with him. ‘Jake, you used to be top of the class back in junior school, do you remember?’ I said. ‘I can recall how you and my Rhiannon once made a power-point together about The Solar System, and you both showed it to us all in a parents’ assembly. Superb, it was. And you taught us oldies so much that day that we didn’t know. You know, you seemed to have such a flair for science and astronomy back then. So can I ask you something?’

‘Sure, fire away,’ Jake retorted.

‘What the hell happened, mate? Did your rocket-boosters run out of fuel, or something?

‘Now that’s funny,’ the scrawny lad answered with a smile.

‘Listen, Jake, I feel the need to speak up because I can see that this rubbish isn’t you, really, is it? It just isn’t you, pal. You used to have so much going for you at one time, you really did.’

Jake’s head dipped, and he drank up the last dregs from his pint-glass that I thought already looked empty. ‘I still do, you know,’ he told me.

‘Do you really?’ I asked him, truly wishing I could place an arm round his shoulder, as I recalled I had once done at a junior-school football tournament where he had once scored the winning goal. ‘You know, I’d like to think so. I really would, mate.’

Jake suddenly turned his head away, then looked all around the room, I guess pretending that the tear obscuring his right eye wasn’t really there.

‘Jake, mate, I know you daren’t say in front of your pal there, but do you know what I think?’ I asked him.

‘What do you think, Grandad?’ said Steffan, breaking off his phone-conversation for a moment. ‘Think it’s going to rain later?’

‘Well, Jake, what I believe is - it’s never too late to change your mind about something,’ I continued. ‘And thereby change your life round, do you get me?’

‘You know, I reckon Jake’s happy with the mind he’s already got,’ said Steffan, closing his phone and gazing up venomously in my direction. Steffan had clearly decided it was his turn to boss the conversation. ‘You know you’re a lot like your grand-daughter, if you ask me, old man,’ he quipped back. ‘Do you want to know why?’

‘Not particularly,’ I told him. ‘And she’s not my grand-child. Rhiannon’s my daughter. My only daughter, as it goes. If you like, she’s the child of my old age, and I’m right proud of it. And I can tell you, young man, that that is one bond that can never be broken.’

‘No?’ Steffan countered. ‘Well, dig this, Grandad. Her last boyfriend - Chris - is a well-known drug-dealer, and her latest one is a two-bit fraudster, who collects credit-cards for a living, and spends most of his spare time scamming old people out of their pensions and their life-savings. Tell me now, grandad - which of the two do you think she should settle for?’

‘And what are you?’ the barmaid suddenly called out, glowering at him. ‘We’ve seen you - don’t think we haven’t - round the back, lighting up your damn spliffs, and leaving the stinking butts all over the ground for my kids to find.’

‘And in the Gents, sniffing up your future prospects through a ten-pound note,’ the thin old man in the corner suddenly chipped in, before dropping his cane walking-stick from his trembling hands to the floor with an almighty crash. ‘My sister told me how you scared the living daylights out of most of the old women in
‘The Willows’
in less than a week, what with your loud, raucous rap-crap, and your wacky-baccy, and your dirty web-cam in the ladies’ loos. You should be right ashamed of yourselves, the pair of you. You know, if you was in school in my day they’d have whipped your arse for you, and no mistake.’

‘Listen - I could kick yours for you, right now, if you want, old man,’ Steffan told him fiercely.

‘What do you want to lick my arse for, you fairy?’ the old man replied, mis-hearing his comment quite spectacularly. He pointed a trembling finger in my direction, ‘See that black-and-white photo above the bar there? The small one. Yeah? That’s me just after the war, that is. I nearly won a British title back then, I did. And, as a boy your age, I fought in the Libyan Desert in the Second-Wold War too. And, you know, I may be eighty-four now, but I’m damn sure I could still tip the pair of you on your spotty arses as soon as look at you.’

‘Hey, Alf - you know we don’t use language like that in here,’ the barmaid told him, pulling up the hatch, and rushing round to collect all the empty glasses from the tables in the room.

‘Come on, let’s get out of here, Jake,’ Steffan told his friend, rising, and walking briskly to the door, and holding it open for him. He waved his mobile-phone back at us. ‘After all, we’ve got a living to make,’ he shouted.

Through the large, latticed window I watched as the pair of sixteen-year olds marched off towards their parked, blue motor-cycle. Seconds later, as they rolled out of the pub car-park, and then raced off up the steep hill towards Vaynor, their turbo-charged roar of defiance could be heard right throughout the village, and even across the broad Taff Valley that lay beyond them.

‘You’ve been to London, yeah?’ Carla asked him, the cool breeze blowing her black curls away from her temples. ‘Then can you remember that raucous, bare, windswept atmosphere left behind on the underground platform the second a tube-train has just gone?’ She swept her arm across her body, and made a loud, whooshing noise. ‘Very like a vacuum-cleaner that has just flushed out and sucked dry a small basement room or cellar, and has now moved off into the hall. Or, in the underground scenario, down the tube-tunnel a way. Well, I am trying to capture that, if anything,’ she told him. ‘But I’m kind of struggling to get it, you know.’

‘Oh, I see. And is that why you chose a minor-key?’ Chris asked her, watching her intently as Carla sat balancing her favourite, old, brown acoustic-guitar on her right knee, and strumming it just once with all five fingers, creating a stark, stinging chord, the like of which he had never heard before. The boy looked down and attempted to imitate the same sound on the guitar that he carried, trying four or five times without success, but eventually, after several more demonstrations by Carla, managing to get it right. ‘Hey - I think that’s it,’ he told her proudly.

Tom lay on the sofa in the kitchen, listening to the pair of young musicians who were presently sitting together out in his back-garden, and wishing he could get his old saxophone out of its box and go out and join in with them. But those days were long gone now, he told himsef sadly, and so would never again return, however much he pined for them.

‘Play it again, sweetheart,’ Tom called out to his daughter. She did. ‘Wow! You know, Chris, I bought her that guitar when she was twelve,’ he announced proudly, and smiled at the sudden thought he had of the pretty young girl sitting in their little Breconshire chapel at Christmas and playing
‘All Through The Night’
for the small congregation. There’s lovely she had looked back then, he thought, laughing quietly to himself. Tom thought to mention it, but the two young people were having far too much fun for him to want to bother them with the same, and so he adjusted his fat pillow, lay back on the couch, and tried to snooze off once again.

‘What’s the song about, by the way?’ Chris asked Carla, smoothing down the green t-shirt he now wore, and which pronounced for the world, first on its front, and then its back - ‘I’M SO BROKE - I CAN’T EVEN PAY ATTENTION.’

‘The song? Oh, it’s about a young couple who have nowhere to live but a bench deep inside a tube-station,’ Carla told him, strumming out a second chord that well complemented the first.

Chris tried to imitate that one too. ‘And when it’s finished, what are planning to call it?’ he enquired, as he tried again.

‘The Sleepers,’
Carla told him. ‘Yes,
‘The Sleepers,’
or something close to that, anyway. You see, they live their lives quite apart above ground during the day-time, but each night their love is once again rekindled and shared together, deep, deep down below the sleeping city.’ She played the two chords consecutively for the very first time, and the boy instantly recognised the true genius of the lovely, modest, hugely talented woman who sat, head bent, before him.

‘And the noisy, squeaky trains that screech and stop, and soon after leave -’ he began.

‘And that shake the sleeping couple, and buffet them with their sheer power,’ she told him, ‘but rarely ever wake them out of their dreams - out of the pure, unfettered love that the couple know and share.’

‘I see now. You know, Carla, that’s the part of the train I always like best,’ announced Chris, trying to blend together as well as she had done the two new chords he had just learned. ‘The first place I always go to.’

‘What part is that?’ asked Carla, observing his futile efforts, but smiling at his patience.

‘The buff-et,’ retorted Chris, laughing. ‘I could eat a sandwich or something right now, as it goes. Listen, Carla, I think I’m going to just pop over the fence and see if my Mum is in, O.K.? Yeah?’

‘You mean you’re goimg to make like a tree and leave?’ she asked, grinning up at him.

Chris smiled at her clever reply. ‘I like it,’ he told her. ‘Yeah - listen. I promise I’ll be back in a tick. Well, not exactly inside a tick, but I’m sure you know what I mean.’

Half opening his eyes once more, Tom heard the clever play-on-words that the two young people toyed with, but only partially understood, since strange, deep thoughts of his own, solitary, long-dead, son - Carla’s much older brother Will - drifted through his waning consciousness. And all he really knew just then was that a green-tinted sleep was beginning to overtake his tired, but no longer aching, bones, and was about to send him into his afternoon ‘Dreamland’ on board the long, silent subway-train of his own creation.

Occasionally peering round the door to check on him, Carla played on, creating, then replaying, whatever chords her nimble fingers chanced upon, until her bullion-vault memory finally closed up its flap, and she could at last move on to trying out some more. She felt content that she could be with her father in his home at this incredibly difficult time for him, well aware that he was trying his best to channel all his desires into the numbered days - the mayfly lifetime - that he believed he still had allotted him. Her dad had always been so very different to the rest of their family, mused Carla - intrinsically good, dependable, and with a heart as big as a cathedral. And the more time she got to spend with him now, and the more closely she got to observe him, the more certain she was becoming that his ambition was not for this life alone.

Having reunited with him once again after far too many years apart, Carla was now determined to make up for lost time. The period that her father had remaining with her - however brief that might turn out to be - she had already decided she would endeavour to make a time of loving creation, during which, perhaps, with Chris’s help, she might hopefully get to write some of the finest music of her lifetime. Well, at least I’m determined to try to, she told herself, scribbling some notation down on the sheet that lay on the iron-table beside her, perhaps as much for my dear father’s sake as for my own.

Carla leaned forward and peered again at Tom’s crumpled, sleeping form, which lay inside, perched, somewhat precariously, upon the front edge of the small kitchen-sofa. Yes, I shall use this precious down-time to compose some special music if I can, she pondered, smiling at her good fortune in this respect, yet fearing, and somehow knowing, deep within her very soul, that her father’s sudden crash, when it eventually came, would, for her, most likely resemble the last bar - the tragic final chord, perhaps - of the most bitter of life’s symphonies.

‘However friendly they were, he wasn’t going to let anyone near his stash of green, I can tell you,’ the tall, hirsute man with the deep brown eyes and the carefully cut, black beard told them, bending at the waist and tossing several sealed bags onto the ground beneath their feet. ‘He’d have speared his own mother through the heart without thinking twice about it.’

‘What was his problem, do you think, Volver?’ Steffan asked the man.

‘Anal retentive, wasn’t he?’ the tall, large-framed man told him in an accent Steffan knew was South African, but sounded, to many of the folk he dealt with, somewhere between Dutch and German. The denim-clad man used his thumbs to adroitly push his very long, black hair back behind his ears, from where, every few seconds, it seemed to come loose and fall like a curtain across his tanned, but heavily blotched and acne-scarred, face.

‘Do you mean he stashed them up his bum, then?’ asked Jake, a tad confused, to say the least.

‘Big blocks of hash!’ shrieked Volver. ‘What’s your mate talking about, Steffan? Is he all right?’

‘I think I can see where he got mixed up, Volver,’ Steffan told him. ‘There are times when he can’t seem to tell his arse from his elbow.’

‘The elbow is the one in the middle of your arm, Jakie boy,’ the lanky Afrikaner explained, grinning. ‘The one you bend when you’re sipping a pint, or having a tommy.’