Last Train to Gloryhole (47 page)

But now that Carla’s uncle was so frequently there at the house in
Gloryhole
, and despite the fact that she now had an extra pair of hands to help her in the domestic situation, the girl was starting to feel more than a little uneasy about his presence. It didn’t take her long, for example, to discover that her Uncle Gary was most unlike her dear father. To Carla’s mind, the strange, round, rosy-hued, bespectacled reverend seemed to be a tad too occupied with trying to create a personality around his pipe for her liking. Since her father had, by then, more or less given up smoking - some time during the Spring - tobacco was a substance, and an odour, that she had never come to associate with him, and now it seemed very strange, and incredibly infuriating, to see its grey, billowing coils transfuse his whole house so completely, and so toxically.

‘This stuff is a lot worse than weed, as I’m sure you know,’ Carla was brazen enough to remark to the man, with a cheeky grin that she turned away from him just in time. She sat a little away from her uncle with the back-door open, the pair of them watching the sparrows frantically flitting down to scoff the bread-crumbs she had, minutes before, scattered outside for their breakfast. By this time Carla had fed the household, and was flicking through a magazine and some Sunday newspapers, searching for items in them that related to her musical career, and which she could cut out and add to the large, flat scrap-book which, quite unbeknown to her, her father had diligently been keeping of her.

‘What’s the point of feeding the birds in your garden if you’re feeding them to the cat?’ the flush-faced, old man suddenly turned and asked her.

Carla glared across at him. ‘I guess you must mean the neighbours’ cat, then,’ she told him. ‘because we don’t own one ourselves. But sadly I gather Emily’s gone missing lately. I just hope she gets found soon, that’s all.’ Fearing the Cillicks might be able to hear her, Carla got up and closed the back-door. She sat herself down again and quickly changed the subject. ‘Uncle Gary - what was my father like when you two were growing up?’ she asked him.

‘When we were boys?’ he replied. Carla nodded. ‘Well, Tom was always very different to the rest of us,’ he told her. ‘Intrinsically good, you know. Your Aunt Charlotte is dead now, of course.’

Carla stared at the white, plastic collar that encircled her strange uncle’s throat. ‘God fearing?’ she enquired. She suddenly found a newspaper photograph that depicted herself playing at a festival the previous year at Leeds, and, mentally measuring it against the space she found on the next page of the scrap-book, decided that it would fit perfectly, and so went and searched in the table-drawer for a pair of scissors with which to trim it.

‘God fearing? No, not at all,’ her grey-eyed uncle retorted. ‘Tom certainly wasn’t pious, or weighed-down with any sense of religious duty, as I felt I most assuredly was, even as a child. And yet you know, Carla, it was always impossible for me to believe that my brother’s ambition was for this life alone. And, although I haven’t been here with him for very long as yet, I already happen to know that it isn’t, praise God.’ The holy man sucked at his pipe in a succession of quick spurts, and so let the infernal smoke-screen between them reform.

Carla’s long scissors cut the paper, and with it the silence that had suddenly fallen. ‘Really?’ she asked, fully detaching the picture, while wondering how on earth the man had judged this to be the case, since she certainly hadn’t noticed any discernible change in him herself. ‘Well, that’s good to know, anyway,’ she told her uncle, smiling, despite herself.

‘Carla dear, I dare say there must come a time in everyone’s life when your ultimate destination, and the - the act of getting there, gradually begins to take precedence over everything else,’ Gary told her. ‘Do you understand, dear? So then you quite naturally start thinking about purchasing a ticket -
the ticket
- that you believe will hopefully take you there.’

Carla looked up at him. ‘You make it sound almost like getting on a train,’ she said. ‘When in fact it’s simply expiring, dying, wasting away, that you’re talking about.’

‘But, you know, when one is able to see the big picture for the first time, I happen to believe that it is very like that,’ Gary told her. At these words Carla’s eyes narrowed and her brows contorted strangely. ‘And I believe that my brother is just beginning to do this, after decades when, despite his numerous talents, and his wisdom, and his love for his fellow man, he didn’t ever want to acknowledge that any of these things either came from God, or had anything to do with a religious faith. Yes, it has always been that way with my brother, you see Carla. Unlike myself, Tom always appeared to feel that everything he achieved in his life was attained as a result of his own hard efforts, you know, so it’s hardly surprising that he worked himself to the bone for virtually all of it, and agonised so fiercely over the times when he felt he failed.’

‘Then, Gary, I dare say you must be pleased that my father is perhaps, at last, beginning to see what you call ‘the big picture’ for what it is,’ said Carla, wishing to shake her head at its abject futility, but desisting until she had at least heard her uncle’s response.

‘I am, I really am,’ the old man told her. ‘Except that, if I am honest, there is still a very small part of me that, in some strange way, resents this change he is making. Carla, before I say any more, I think it’s only fair that I tell you that I have possessed feelings of jealousy towards my brother ever since we were teenagers, or even earlier than that, if I’m being completely honest.’

‘I never realised,’ said Carla, pressing the paper-cutting into place, and then smiling at the effect she hoped, and anticipated, that this new addition to her dad’s book would have for him.

‘Oh, yes,’ Gary told her, pouting a little. ‘You know, despite my faith back then, and my unblemished church attendance, and my earnest, diligent service, etcetera, etcetera, I nevertheless always saw myself as the black sheep in our little family - still do, I guess. Tom is a few years younger than me, you see, and so I sort of took him under my wing from a very early age, and for a long time I suppose he must have taken all my kindness and solicitude awfully for granted.’ He nodded, then sighed aloud. ‘Yes, I dare say I begrudged him this,’ he declared. ‘Indeed, it wasn’t until this very recent conversion of faith that has happened to him, and with which I am very glad I was able to help, that I have at last begun to see Tom for what he was.’

‘Don’t you mean -
for what he is
?’ said Carla sharply, looking up at him.

‘Quite,’ her uncle concurred, grinning at her. ‘Is. Well, both, as a matter of fact. Is, was. Your father is a truly wonderful man, Carla dear. He has a heart of gold that, in my opinion, he never accepted, or even recognised, that he possessed. And I put this down to the family breakdown that accompanied his divorce, and the self-blame that he has since daily scourged himself with.’

‘Well, thank you for saying it,’ Carla told her uncle, smiling. ‘Because it seems to me that the longer I stay here with him, and, of course, the longer he stays with us, the more perfect that this - this final setting of his actually seems. I mean, the more this old place feels like a - like a blessed retreat of some kind, a hospice of sorts, somehow pefectly created just for him.’

‘Yes, I think I know what you mean,’ said Gary, looking about him. ‘The house has the atmosphere, the sanctity, almost, of a - of a hospice,’ he told her. ‘And can I tell you, though I could quite easily forgive you for laughing at me for it, that I believe this house feels much more like a body - softer, more organic, more human, you know - than it does any building created in stone. Tell me - do you feel that at all, Carla?’

‘Yes, I think I know what you mean,’ Carla replied, smiling at him. She had herself already experienced a feeling very akin to this, and was glad to find that someone else sensed it too. ‘Gary, did you know that it was Dad who was the one who found the house?’ Carla asked him.

‘Found it?’ the man repeated, his brows raised somewhat comically.

‘Well no, chose it, I mean,’ said Carla. ‘It wasn’t anything to do with me at all. He has never told me why, though. Why he chose this house, I mean. Say - do you have any idea why?’

The country pastor chugged again at his curved, black pipe, and sat back and seemed to consider his niece’s query for a while. ‘Well, I think I might,’ the man finally told her. ‘And, to be frank, I’m rather surprised he hasn’t told you himself. But I have no desire to shock you Carla, so I’ll leave it lie, if you don’t mind, dear.’

Carla sat up. ‘What! But I’m more intrigued than ever now,’ she remarked, smiling. But her uncle was loath to explain himself to her and so she left it hanging. Instead Carla quickly picked out something new to discuss with him. ‘That car you’ve got outside looks rather nice,’ she said.

‘You’d think so, wouldn’t you?’ he retorted. ‘But I had the distinct feeling that I had made a bad bargain when I noticed that the clock on the dash-board read seventy-five thousand while the milometer read quarter-past-two!’ He sucked his, now un-lit, pipe between his pale, cracked lips, then stood up and banged it clean on the rim of the waste-paper bin in the corner of the room. ‘It’s an old Lada,’ he informed her.

‘Yes,’ Carla replied looking past him. ‘It’s very handy having it, but Dad understandably keeps most stuff in his fridge these days.’

‘The car,’ said her uncle, smiling, then breaking out into a merry little laugh.

‘Oh, I see,’ said Carla, blushing. ‘I thought you meant -’

‘Well, I suppose it’s a silly name for a car, really, isn’t it?’ he told her. ‘Lada. I call it Trigger.’

‘O.K.,’ she replied, puzzled, but not sufficiently to ask the man why that was. She knew he would tell her the reason anyway.

‘You see, I find it only runs when it’s had a decent rest.’ He took up his seat again. ‘I’m very much the same myself as it goes, girl. In fact, that’s probably why I bought it, I guess. Rule number-one - old people usually buy old cars. Now why do you suppose that is?’ he asked her.

‘Well, I’ve never given it much thought, to be honest,’ Carla replied. ‘Although I might one day I suppose. Give it some thought, I mean. Not buy an old car. I don’t drive, you see,’ she told him.

‘Ah. I suppose other people do that sort of thing for you, dear. Correct?’ he asked.

‘Well, yes,’ she answered. ‘More often than not, anyway.’

‘Chauffeurs?’

‘No - cabbies.’

‘Oh, I see,’ the old man replied. ‘I did that during the sixties, you know. Drove a big black cab, I did. London style, do you understand?’

‘In London?’

‘No, no - in Merthyr, and in Ebbw Vale, mainly. I did the bingo, and the working-men’s clubs normally, and also most of the rugby games. Not much money involved, of course, but lots of free tickets, you know. ‘Bloody tickets! We can’t eat tickets!’ my dear wife used to tell me. Bertha - your Aunt Bertha - used to say. ‘Well, they’re currency of sorts,’ I’d tell her. ‘I bet they’d accept them down the Co-op.’ And bugger me, do you know they usually did.’ Reverend Gary returned to his seat and blew his nose in a great crumpled handkerchief that he dragged from his trouser-pocket. ‘I used always to dress smart in my job back then, you know,’ he continued. ‘Never once went out to work without a tie. How about that? Yes, those were the days, eh? I can even remember how the robbers used to wear suits in court back then.’

‘They still do, Uncle Gary,’ Carla told him. ‘Only now we call them lawyers, don’t we?’

‘Touch-e, young lady, touch-e,’ said Gary, chuckling. He inclined his head strangely. ‘He’s sleeping well up there by the sound of it - your dad,’ he told her. ‘Very like a pig in shit, I’d say. Oh, I’m sorry, dear. I wasn’t thinking.’ He turned to face her and resumed his discourse. ‘You know I suppose I’d better be going soon, my dear. I have a few parishioners to visit, you see. Do you know, Carla, a deaf woman I visit up in the village has just had this implant put in the side of her head that has enabled her to hear for the first time in her life.’

‘How wonderful,’ said Carla, smiling.

‘Yes, it’s a miracle - it really is,’ he continued. ‘She told me she must have been the only woman in Wales actually looking forward to hearing her husband snore.’ The man stood up again and crossed the room to the back-door. ‘You don’t mind if I go outside again, do you?’

‘Not at all,’ Carla told him, clearing from the linen-covered table the cups and plates that they had been using.

The Reverend Gary Davies walked out into the garden and lit up his pipe once more. Then he strolled calmly around the perimeter of the property, much as if he owned the land himself, then, leaning upon the garden-fence, he gazed out at the viaduct that so majestically bestrode the verdant gorge before him, and which ran away from his viewpoint towards the eerie-looking, mammalian shape that was the familiar sight of
Morlais Hill
in the middle distance.

Gary straightened his spectacles and, with keen eyes, followed the course of the river’s valley upstream to his left, to where it disappeared from view behind the hill, which his home -
‘The Manse’
- stood upon. He started thinking about where all of the river’s water came from, not its origin in the clouds so much, but its basins and storage facilities on Earth. ‘He - he drowned in the reservoir up there, didn’t he, Carla?’ her uncle asked Carla, without turning to meet her gaze.

‘Yes,’ she replied, stepping onto the door-step, and looking over in the same direction. ‘That was an awful business that was.’

‘Awful, yes,’ he concurred, shaking his head from side to side, the silver reels of smoke rising.

Carla felt a sudden tightness in her throat, and looked side-long into the ice-blue eyes that were the facsimile of her father’s, and told him, ‘And, to this day, I still wholly blame myself for it.’

Her uncle turned and looked deep into Carla’s own eyes, as if to challenge this assessment.

‘I always have done, and I guess I always will,’ continued Carla. ‘If only I’d learned how to swim back then, I tell myself, then things might have turned out very differently. You know, I’m surprised our Mam coped with it as well as she did at the time, since I was the only sibling who survived. Although I suppose it was inevitable it would finally bring about the termination of my parents’ marriage in the end. I mean, something had to give.’ Carla suddenly remembered that she wanted to ask her uncle a question. ‘Uncle, are you aware of my father’s gift?’ she asked.