Digging Out (21 page)

Beryl puts the teapot, a creamer, two cups and a plate of biscuits on a small table near the fire.

“So you’ve come to see your old da now, have you?” She tilts her head curiously in that way she has of asking a question when she really wants to tell you something. “You shouldn’t be too hard on him, you know.” She gives me a look I can’t quite fathom, remembering how she felt about Da back in the bad old days. “It wasn’t his fault, really, the disaster, like. I’m sure you remember those terrible conversations between your Da and me, Allie. The ones in the kitchen?”

“I do.” I remember like it was yesterday.

“I wish I could take them back. I was so angry. Beside myself, really. I blamed your da for everything. Don’t misunderstand me. We all needed to blame someone. It was all just too terrible. But I let the villagers put all the blame on him, too.”

Auntie Beryl lowers her head and pours out the milk into each cup, and then the tea, passing me my cup and the sugar.

“You see, there was no one person to blame. Your da actually did his duty by calling in the NCB. And the NCB sent all kinds of experts, who said there was no stream running under that tip. Even though your da didn’t really believe them, he had no choice but to continue to follow their orders and haul the slag out onto that tip. There was no other way for him. After your gram got me to settle down and look at things, I was finally able to see this. That was one of the wonderful things about her. She helped me see things differently just by getting me to settle down.”

I was confused. “I know I was only little, Beryl. But I had big ears. I heard you.” Why was Beryl trying to sell me this new bill of goods?

“Now, now, Alys.” She shakes her head. “You go relying on only the facts and you’re going to get half the story, and half the truth. But there are other things that figure into the whole story and I’ve learned they are even more important than the facts. They fill in where the facts fail us.” She pauses and looks at me. “Oh, Allie. You look like you could use a little air,” Beryl says brightly.

I don’t want to admit how tired I am. I feel like I need to have a lie-down for, say, about a month. In fact, my shoes feel like they are full of lead.

“Come on, I’ve something to show you that might explain part of the story—at least my part.”

Beryl pulls herself up and grabs a shawl from a rocker by the fire. She wraps herself in it. “Do you need one? We’ve only a little walk up in the back.”

I shake my head. The fire has warmed me. I follow Auntie Beryl out the back into the small overgrown garden. The air is cooler than it was an hour ago and it actually picks me up a bit.

“My poor rhododendrons are in need of some TLC and some training, cutting back and discipline,” Beryl points out. “But I seem to have lost the touch, or maybe in my old age I’ve become disenchanted with sharp corners, discipline. I don’t want to cut anything back anymore. I seem to want more wildness around me rather than less.”

At the back of the garden is a small wooden gate that closes Beryl’s property off from the acres of farmland behind it. She tells me she built the gate to keep the neighboring farmer’s sheep from getting into her garden. One summer two small lambs found their way in and ate all the newly sprouted greens Beryl had carefully planted in the early spring.

I breathe deeply, the smell a familiar combination of sweet moldering bread mixed with wet coal. Its sharpness rubs up against my memory of childhood.

“Do you remember when you and Hallie spent the day here that long-ago time? I knew she’d snuck out.” Beryl laughs.

Through the gate, to the left a few hundred yards up, is the pond, and next to its edge, a white heron, sitting tall and elegant. Several dogs bark and a bull stares us down. There is a farmer pitchforking fodder.

“Don’t mind them,” Beryl tells me, waving to the farmer. “The bull’s actually friendly. We’re going just up here, not too far now.”

She waves me over to where there is a clearing and a breathtaking view out toward the whole mountain range of the Brecon Beacons. And there, under a stand of beech trees, looking over all of it, is a small weather-worn gravestone. Beryl motions me over and when I am closer up, I see that the engraving on it is:

W
ILLIAM
R
OGER
N
OLAN
1924-1964
IN LOVING MEMORY

As if on cue, the wind begins to blow and Auntie Beryl’s skirt flies up. She pushes it down and draws her shawl tighter around her shoulders. Quietly she bends to her knees in front of the stone and bows slightly, then closes her eyes.

I don’t know exactly what to do, so I follow Beryl’s example, staying slightly off to her right. After a moment she opens her eyes and smiles at me.

“If you haven’t already guessed, this is my William.”

Amazed that she’s got him in her own back field, I don’t know what to say, so I nod.

“He was an extraordinary man through and through, he was. Half his family came from the Gower Peninsula—in the Welshry—and the other half from these parts and farther north. All of them were farmers.

“William used to tell a story ‘bout how as a child he was always
fascinated by a faraway light in the sky. It was the mine’s fire. And in the winter, when the dark fell early, he said it seemed like the whole sky was ablaze with it. When the winter wind rushed across here and his da’s fields heaped full of rotting swedes as it always did in the fall, that smell of decay carried into the farmhouse. And William’s mother would start a small fire from damp logs. He’d tell me how after they’d cut enough chaff for the next day, he would sit by that small fire, longing for the heat and brightness of the fires he could see out the window, in the distant valley of coal mines.

“ ‘Want to be in the works, like,’ he told his mam, meaning the coal mines, of course. At the time it was the Bessemer Works in Dowlais that was lighting up his sky.

“And so when he was nearing his sixteenth birthday, he left home loaded into the back of a neighbor’s cart pulled by two horses, taking him to Treclewyd. I can still see him in my mind’s eye—that lovely boy he must have been—so keen to start out on his own.

“And that’s where it began underground for William, and like most miners he moved from one mine to another. And despite the dirt, the dust, the gas, the dark, damp, belching black of its insides—he was thinking he’d found his true love. Until me.” She laughed.

“But that’s another long tale I wish had been years and years longer. The reason I’m telling you all this is to try to explain why I was so angry at your da. You see, I’d been through the bureaucratic stubbornness of the National Coal Board with William. It was all happening just like it had ten years before. Oh, not the same accident, but the same stupid pattern of blaming everyone, pointing fingers and not really doing anything to stop an imminent disaster.”

“But if Da knew there was a spring …”

“He couldn’t really do anything—don’t you see, Allie? It was out of his hands for two reasons. One, because he didn’t have the power. And two, he wouldn’t go against the NCB because of who he was. Your brother would have and tried to—but your father is a proletariat Welshman through and through. And despite whether or not he questioned the possibility of a spring, at his core he believed what the powers told him to believe. He assumed that his superiors were superior because they knew more. William did the same, and I was as angry at him back then as I was at your da.”

The wind was blowing hard now. I had to strain to hear her.

“But 116 children, Beryl.”

“I know, Allie. With William it was twenty men and half the mine caved in on them, all of them leaving families and lovely lives to be lived. The NCB had told them just the day before that the mine shaft was as safe as being in bed. Almost forty years ago I lost my William and all the possibilities of life with him because of the carelessness of the NCB. I railed at your da and anyone else who would listen because I’d seen it before and knew it could happen again.”

I remember that Gram’s husband had also died in a mining accident. So many did, I guess.

“And what about Parry?” I ask. “You said he would have done something and actually tried to?”

“About mine issues, Parry was fearless. In a way, he had nothing to lose. I’ve thought a lot about Parry and his anger. I think initially he went down the mine because he was not yet certain that his artistic talent could support him. Someone had probably warned him about having a real job. Since your da was his idol, he thought he’d give the mine a try. It was natural for Parry to follow in his footsteps even though the mine was not in Parry’s heart as it was in your father’s.

“And then when all the business with the creekbed started and your da wouldn’t take a stand against the NCB, I think Parry was so disappointed in his position and that he couldn’t convince your da to do ‘the right thing,’ Parry’s anger took over and he put his art on the back burner. And then after the disaster, he just couldn’t get back to it.”

“So time passed,” I said. “And he became more and more depressed and angry, and then the drinking, and he must have felt there was just no way out.”

“Exactly.” Auntie Beryl nodded.

“He must have felt he had failed in every way.”

Auntie Beryl was quiet. A light drizzle, mist really, began to fall. Before long my face was wet. I was remembering what a good artist Parry had been.

“I used Parry’s anger to try and rally the other boys to go against your da and strike the mine. I pushed Parry to try and sway your da to go against the NCB. It’s a terrible thing I did. It was like throwing petrol on a fire.”

“Is it true that Da didn’t believe in Parry’s painting?” I asked.

Beryl shrugs. “I’m not really sure. I suspect that being an artist wasn’t something your da thought about as a serious career. Maybe the mere fact that he didn’t push Parry to accept the art scholarship he’d won was proof to Parry that he didn’t take his ability seriously.

“Or maybe it’s as your gram said: at the core, Parry didn’t believe in himself.”

I think about how hard it has always been for me with my poetry, and how despite all the rejections I’ve had, I continue to write, convincing myself that it matters and that someone is listening, but also because I seem to have no choice. I have to write. The pencil makes it into my hand despite me.

It is really raining now and it’s hard to tell if my face is wet from the rain or tears.

I watch Beryl close her eyes again, and then, placing her hands prayerlike, at her chest, she bows slightly toward William’s gravestone for the final time.

“It’s getting late. I’ve worn you out, Alys. Forgive me. I do go on. Your gram used to say I could talk anything to death.”

I laugh.

“Shall we go back in and have some supper before we drown out here? I’ve a nice lamb stew simmering since morning.”

A
untie Beryl sets the table up in front of the fire. The bowl of lamb stew is succulent and comforting. She tells me that it is local lamb, and the spicy flavor and green olives were Gram’s recipe. I don’t say so, but I know it well and I smile, thinking how I thought I’d invented it. She always had a flair for cooking, which must have come from somewhere beside her Welsh roots. And then Auntie Beryl changes the subject.

“So did you know that Evan bought a little cottage just outside of the village? Perhaps you even know it? Up on the ridge, it is. Large piece of land behind it that looks out over all of Aberfan and the valleys east of it. He’s done it all up, I’m told. Teaches at the new school. Oh, you know the new school, ‘spect you went to it, after. It’s not so new anymore but we all still call it that.

“I heard he had a woman in his life, for quite some time, in fact.” She looks at me after she’s delivered this news, but I manage not to show anything.

In fact, Gram mentioned it years ago in a letter. I was surprised at the time how disappointed and jealous I’d felt. But like anything else I’d heard about in Aberfan, I put it immediately out of mind. Hearing it now, I am embarrassed that I still feel jealous.

“So it’s not just only your da you’ve come to see?” Beryl has somehow caught me but I ignore it.

“Well, of course Mam, too. And you. I’m needing to make some
peace with all of this. It’s too long I haven’t been willing to face everything here.”

Beryl smiles.

“What?”

Beryl pulls her chin in, making a funny face of disbelief.

“Oh no, you’re meaning Evan?” I laugh out loud. “Don’t go on about Evan again. You are wicked, a troublemaker if ever there was one, Auntie Beryl. Even when I was a child, Gram warned me against your shenanigans.”

“Shenanigans? I saw your face today, Allie, clear as the noon-bright sun it was.”

“What you saw, Auntie Beryl, was surprise. Oh, maybe a bit of shock—I’ll admit to that. I hadn’t been prepared to see him at that moment, that’s all.”