Digging Out (20 page)

Turning off the main road onto a narrow one lined with hedgerows on both sides, I pull into a turnout to check the map and steel myself. The clock reads eleven forty-five a.m. Having bought a packet of cigarettes before leaving the hotel, I rummage in my bag for one, light it and breathe in deeply. The whole world goes dizzy.

I prop myself against the car, inhaling the cigarette as well as another smell—sweet, almost like dried blood, or decaying bracken—and then I recognize it: coal. Someone on the mountain is burning coal.

Beyond the hedge, the continuous rolling green hills are dotted everywhere with sheep, hundreds of them. Away in the distance behind a high stone fence is a small cottage. The sky is still intensely blue but the clouds are beginning to move in, and against the blue, their white is mesmerizing.

I think of the Santa Monica view: the summer smog hanging in front of our deck, the jammed four-lane freeways, the noise, the dirt and the crime.

Lawrence Durrell has written that each of us has a home landscape, the place we return to in our mind’s eye whenever we contemplate our own beginnings. It is Wales that appears in my dreams. This subtlety of color, the roll of these velvety green mountains one
into another, the soft cloud swirl of the sky—this is the scene of my young psyche. But on the other side of that youthful and innocent affection is the intensity of having had the earth move against me. My love and loyalty for this land will always be colored by how it betrayed me.

And here I am again, my whole emotional world turned upside down. All of what I thought I’d built in these last years and counted on as steady and secure has fallen away.

T
he road is narrow and it takes some concentration as I parallel park opposite Bethany Chapel. It’s not until I shut the door that I remember home is just a block away. A hearse pulls up in front of the chapel that long ago was the place we all returned to again and again, each anniversary of the disaster.

I know there are twenty-four steps leading into the chapel because every Sunday of my childhood I counted them. Standing next to the door are Mr. Mecca and Mr. Fowler. Memory is a wondrous thing. Mr. Mecca was my Sunday school teacher. In our youth he was very thin and wiry. Hallie and I called him “the thin man.” He’s put on weight and lost some hair. Mr. Fowler lived the next road over and had a boy about Parry’s age. His wife left him several years after the disaster. He and his son were living together when I went off to America. Like a child thinking nothing ever changes except my own world, I wonder if they are still living together. I nod at them as I pass but they don’t really look at me. I choose a seat in the back near the door.

Reverend Land stands behind the coffin, hands folded in front of his robe just as I remember, though of course he looks much older. Mrs. Land worked at the post office and they had three, maybe four, kids. Two of them died in the disaster: Bobby and Polly. Polly was in my class.

I am floating. My hands and feet are cold. I watch each person file in, hoping somehow that my mother won’t be one of them.

After a while the Reverend clears his throat. “We are gathered here today to honor the memory of Gavin Ames.”

As the reverend talks, I sense a presence behind me, and I am terrified it might be Mam.

“It’s me.” First there is her familiar voice, and then the sweet mint smell of her. Auntie Beryl folds me up in her arms like I am a small child, kissing my cheeks, and pushing the hair from my face. My chest feels like a bear is standing on it. The tears start falling and I don’t even try to brush them away.

“Your mother told me about Gavin. She was going to try to make it today,” she says, glancing around. “But I guess she thought better of it and stayed home with your father.” Beryl is so casual it’s as though it was only yesterday or a week ago we saw each other last. She carefully lowers herself, using my right leg as support, and sits down. Her hair is no longer red, but it is still untamed, escaping from her bright scarf, and she is still chewing her peppermint gum.

She settles back in her seat, taking my cold hand in her warm one and giving her full attention to the Reverend.

Holding tight to Auntie Beryl’s hand, I feel the same strength and security I felt from her as a six year old.

“Gavin will be buried up in the cemetery next to his son, Peter, and his devoted wife, Gladys. His sister wants those of you wishing to come round to the house afterward to know you are welcome.”

“Well, that’s that, I guess,” Auntie Beryl says. “I don’t think I’ll go up to the house. Will you?” she asks as she starts to get up. “Or will you be going straight to see your parents?”

“I don’t know,” I answer quietly, part of me feeling guilty as if after all this time I should go immediately, and the other part of me not yet ready to confront them. I seem to need more time to adjust, to walk around, get my sea legs or something before I enter again into their world.

“Well then, if you’ve a motorcar I’d love a ride home, if you wouldn’t mind terribly. Save this old body from having to trudge on the coach.”

Following her out, I glance down and notice she’s lost her ankles—the shape of them, I mean. Everything seems to have slipped a bit. Gram used to say Auntie Beryl had the prettiest ankles in the Rhondda Valley. At parties we’d all watch her pull her skirts way up
high to show them off when she danced. She seemed so ageless with her red hair, dramatic clothes and flamboyant ways.

Just before we pass through the door a voice behind me announces, “Come Home Again to Thee.” And when the singing starts, I stop to listen as the choir’s voices blend and rise together. And then, so clearly, as if he is standing next to me singing in my ear, I recognize Evan’s.

“Oh my,” I say under my breath, but loud enough for Auntie Beryl to catch. I am stunned by how much he looks like Dafydd. He is standing on the raised platform in front of the choir, conducting, heads taller than everyone else, his thick head of dark hair gone gray around the edges, and even more handsome than I remember in his black suit as he throws his own head back in song.

Auntie Beryl smiles, touching the back of my neck gently. “I thought Gram might have told you. Evan started the choir a few years after you’d gone,” she says quietly. “It’s saved us, really. All of us. Brought us back to our own spirit, he did. And him to his, I suspect.” She pats my arm and looks at me sadly. “He was a bit of a wreck after you left.”

So many years ago, and now still when I see him, it is the same. It can’t possibly be love after all this time, can it?

“Do you want to stay?” Beryl says in my ear.

I shake my head, trying to get clear, wondering if I will be able to move from the spot. I feel frozen, glued to him even from a distance.

“Come along then. We best get out of here before the crush. Plenty of time to hear the boys later. Evan calls a practice twice a week down the rugby clubhouse.”

I am grateful that Beryl takes charge. She guides me out of the chapel and down the stairs as if I am the old woman.

As we walk down the road, she explains how when she saw me in the chapel she deciphered either I’d seen my parents and already had a row, or just arrived.

In the car, she says quietly, “You’re still in love with him, loved him all along, then?”

I’m off my guard, but I know my feelings are more complicated than a simple yes or no. “Don’t be silly, Auntie Beryl. How could I possibly know? It’s been a million years.”

“Well,” she says simply, “I don’t notice that any number of years
changes the way I continue to feel about William—dead or alive, that is.”

“William?”

“Don’t tell me your grandmother didn’t speak about my William? Can’t believe that. But then perhaps I’m the big mouth. Your gram was always so bloody discreet and perfect.” She laughs.

“I didn’t know.” But in the back of my mind I do remember Gram telling me Auntie Beryl’s heart had been broken long, long ago.

“It’s been over fifty years now, and I can still remember the moment I laid eyes on him. No question for me about it being love at first sight—none at all.” She puts her arm around my shoulder. “And I saw it in your eyes today, Alys. A million years or not, everything about your expression changed. Perhaps you’re not even aware of it?”

My face gets hot. “I think there are different kinds of love, Beryl, don’t you?”

She shrugs. “Different kinds of love? Don’t know about that. I’ve only had one.”

I feel light-headed as I drive out of Aberfan and up the same roads I had so often taken on the coach with Gram to Beryl’s.

And then Beryl is off Evan and on about all the other people she’d seen in chapel, like Mrs. Bramfitt, who owns the grocery shop, and how Mrs. Bramfitt and her husband have managed to save enough money so they can retire next year. “They’ll be moving to Jersey. Been trying to get out for years, they have.

“And Mr. Delvin—you remember, don’t you? He’s the school janitor. Did you see him, Allie? Don’t have a clue how he managed to get there today.” She shakes her head. “He loved all you children, he did, the first to help with the rescue work after the disaster. Must have been that, because he never drank before and now he’s become an old drunken sod. Spends most of his time in the pub doing it up, or down by the chapel, repenting. And what about Max Riley, then? He’s on his fifth wife—I think he is. Fourth or fifth, anyway. They keep throwing him out because he’s so unlovable, always got to have his own way, never lets on to any of them that he loves them. ‘No heart,’ the last one said straight out.” In between Beryl’s observations and small talk, she directs me from one narrow road to another until we are on a straightaway up through the mountains.

She tells me about the last weeks of Gram’s life. How she hadn’t
wanted to go to the hospital and Mam hadn’t the strength to look after her and so, being of course her dearest and best friend, Beryl took her in and nursed her till the end.

“Which was exactly what the old girl wanted anyway. She was always so afraid of hurting your mother’s feelings. ‘Specially near the end. She wanted to be the perfect mother-in-law. She would have come to me sooner if she’d figured a way. She knew my cooking and she liked my fire. So in the end it all worked out for her best.” Beryl had an ambulance bring her round less than a fortnight before she died, and tucked her up in a bed she’d put in front of the fire. She fed her and read to her and helped her die.

“Your gram ate a small dinner at noon. Let’s see, I think I made her chicken soup with braised leeks. And after I read a few Blake poems to her, she went down for her afternoon sleep and she never awakened. That’s how I’d like to go. Of course I ‘spect that’s how we’d all like to go.” She pauses, taking a breath in, and puts out her hand and pats my knee.

“I wish I’d stayed in touch, Auntie Beryl. But somehow I just couldn’t. I always felt like we spoke through Gram. And sometimes it was hard even to keep in touch with her. I think after she died, it was just easier not to stay in touch. I know that sounds awful—it
is
awful.”

“Oh, don’t you worry yourself, Allie,” she says, looking up at me with her bright eyes. “I won’t say I haven’t missed news of you, but I should have written you. When your gram was alive, she shared all your letters with me, and we talked endlessly about your having left here. We both agreed you knew yourself and how much you could take, and we were both proud in a sort of lonely way you’d had the courage to leave. Now there seems so much to talk about.

“Do stay for dinner, Allie. Or … will you be going now to see your parents?”

“I s’pose I should. But I’m suddenly so tired. Jet lag, I guess.”

“Stay, then. It’s already close to four.”

I thought about the large bathtub back at the hotel, and the soft, clean sheets. A queasy scared feeling sits in the middle of my abdomen and is the stall that keeps me from my parents. Perhaps my nerves will be better in the morning, probably a more appropriate time to descend on them.

I follow Auntie Beryl up the familiar pathway, overgrown with huge pink rhododendrons and red rosebushes in full bloom, the overwhelming smell of feverfew and pennyroyal as I crush their leaves under my shoes.

In the cottage, I am immediately comforted by how nothing much has changed. Beryl stokes the fire to a full roar and starts the teakettle. The day is not chilly, but I remember Beryl always has a fire going, which I appreciate.

The open kitchen stretches into the parlor and the fireplace is the focal point. There are glass bottles filled with rice, beans, pasta and spices on every shelf near the sink. Everything is just as I remember: every surface covered with small bric-a-brac, and along the win-dowsill a collection of miners’ lamps and other mining tools. There are small colorful throw rugs on the wood planked floors, an overstuffed settee and several rockers close by the huge stone fireplace.

“Take your shoes off, dear, and pull that chair up in front of the fire. It won’t be a moment till the kettle’s boiled.”

“Let me help you,” I offer.

“I’m not so old I can’t still make a cup of tea. Dusting and mopping is another story. Not enough time left in my old life to do that anymore.”

“Auntie Beryl,” I say, “please don’t talk like that.”

“Well, it’s true, dear. There are better ways to spend whatever time is left me.”

I walk around the room, looking at everything, touching it all. Near the dining room table, under a window, is a small bureau, on top of which is a framed photo of me when I was about six, wearing a pair of plaid overalls I remember well. I am waving at Mam, who was taking the photo. Next to it is another one of me with Dafydd when he was about six. I remember when Marc took the photo in Paris. We’d just eaten the most delicious breakfast. “Croissant!” he had said to Dafydd—instead of “cheese”—to get him to smile. Dafydd could never get enough of the buttery treat. Next to us is a portrait of Parry in his mining gear, a grin so wide and angelic that for a moment I can’t believe he’d ever been so angry.

Beryl catches me looking at them. “I have all your gram’s photos and most of her things. Shawls, tapestries—they’re strewn everywhere round the place.” She motions with her hand. “Your mother
felt I should have them and your father agreed. I’ve got some packed away for you whenever you’re ready for them.”