Authors: Katherine Leiner
“I think thou dost protest too much. …”
And before I say another word, Beryl changes the subject. “Stay the night, Alys. It might be better to see your parents first thing tomorrow? I ‘spect your father might be stronger in the mornings. A good night’s rest will put everything in a cheerier light.”
Too tired even to feel guilty, I get in the hot steamy bath Auntie Beryl draws me in her old clawfoot tub. But first I call the Angel Hotel, knowing full well there will be no messages from Hannah, but just in case, just to be on the safe side.
When I get out of the tub, the sheets and blanket on the guest bed are folded back and on the pillow is a small black box in which there is a wedding band and a note:
For you, Alys darling. With all my love, Gram
.
Before Beryl tucks me up and turns the light off as she often did when I was little, I look at my own left hand, the marriage finger empty of Marc’s ring. I took it off at home before the driver fetched me for the airport, before I’d left Santa Monica. As I study my hand and the deep indentation the ring has left, I wonder if I ever felt about Marc the way Gram felt about Granda.
Left alone in the darkness, I slide over the day. In retrospect, perhaps I should have forced myself to go directly to Mam and Da’s. Though being with Beryl has made me feel more secure and grounded than I did earlier.
I know I have only scratched the surface of my deeper feelings about home. The anger is still all there. Still blaming Mam after all these years. Why? She suffered as much as any of us, perhaps more. Leaving Aberfan, I was as glad to get away from her as Da. Not writing them protected me. Sending them money each month, same as Evan sent me for Dafydd, took care of some of my guilt about not being in contact. After the first check, Da had written me back to thank me, a nice note, but I had answered only by continuing to send a monthly check.
After Hannah was born, Mam wrote to congratulate me. Her never having acknowledged Dafydd’s birth made this acknowledgment seem like another of her judgments, and I was angry all over again.
The next morning Beryl cooks a feast: rashers of thick bacon, sausage, fried eggs and grilled tomatoes. Even fried bread. “I remember how you loved it when you were small. I ‘spect you’ll be doing some visiting today, so you can take the Welsh cakes to eat on the road. I’ll pack them up after they’ve cooled.” She adds casually, “How long will your visit be?”
I’ve taken a long sip of the hot, rich coffee from the beautiful china cup. “Another week or so.”
She notices I’ve put Gram’s ring on the index finger of my left hand. “It looks pretty, if not a bit strange on that finger. Why don’t you try it on your right ring finger? Is it too big?” Not waiting for an answer, she says, “Your grandmother would be pleased that you like it. You know, it surprised me how she never worried over you. But she didn’t. She just seemed to know you’d be all right. When I asked her how she knew that, she said it was because of the way, after the disaster, you instinctively knew what the Joneses needed, and the courage you showed in the face of all you were feeling.”
I look at Beryl quizzically. Did I feel all right? Had I ever really been all right?
Suddenly, out of nowhere I remember Dafydd’s sixth grade graduation. As Dafydd’s friends were crowding around, congratulating each other, talking about what they were going to do for the summer and about what middle school might be like. I started to cry. But it wasn’t about how proud I was of Dafydd—though of course I was—it was about his crowd of friends. About how they were all there
together, growing up together. I felt so sorry for myself at that moment, that I’d never had a sixth form graduation or that there were only seven of us left in the class. And then I was instantly so ashamed at feeling sorry for myself and not being able to enjoy Dafydd’s moment. Marc sweetly put his arms around me and asked, “What’s going on, Alys darling? Can I help?” And I couldn’t answer. It felt too dark and the loneliness was so overwhelming that I couldn’t speak. I waved him away. He’d looked at me sadly and left.
“Perhaps I don’t mean all right,” Beryl says as if reading my mind. “But rather that you’ve survived your past. Perhaps that’s closer to it. Yes, that’s probably what your gram really meant.”
If that was what Gram meant, is it enough to just survive one’s past? It hardly seems like living.
“Turns out I’m the worrier, Alys. I’m the one who always worried there’d been so much pain in our lives, so much loss. But your gram argued, ‘Out of loss grow the very things that give us strength and joy. Just on the other side of loss,’ she’d say, ‘is joy.’ “
Marc had certainly given me joy. But perhaps I’d not been able to show him the kind of lighthearted joy that he deserved in return. Without my even being aware of it, maybe my pain and sorrow had seeped into our lives on every level.
At the end of breakfast we clear the dishes away and Beryl sends me off with a bag of Welsh cakes and a thermos of milky tea.
“The thermos is so you’ll have to see me again before you leave,” she says, leaning her compact body into the car and kissing me on the cheek. “I love my thermos.” She winks. “Don’t run off to the States with it. Oh, and don’t wait too long dear to grab on to love. It doesn’t come around that often. I can tell you that for sure.”
Once in the car, I find myself wishing I had asked Beryl not to tell Mam I’d gone to see her first. I am feeling uncomfortable now about being here for a full day and not contacting them. But of course Beryl will do precisely what she wants regardless of what anyone asks her. Hallie might have grown up to be a bit like Beryl.
“If you should see Evan, tell him he owes me tea!” she calls out after the car.
The mountains are a dappled mustard color in the muted sunlight as I retrace Beryl and my tracks back to Aberfan. In an unearthly sort of way, the motorcar seems almost to be driving itself. But I am still
not ready to go home, and so pass right by our road and continue up and around until I can see the whole of the valley below me like some Tinkertoy setup. On Bryntaf Road, just above the cemetery, I park, but it takes me a while to move my hand, to open the door.
Finally I push the dead weight of the door and step out. And there they are in full view, the rows of familiar white arches joined like outstretched arms. The strange, comforting curve of each one—Hallie, Peter, Suzanne, Polly, all of them there together, their memory filling me up with the deep ache, and loneliness of being here without them. Thirty years and six thousand miles have shielded me from the daily emotions of living next to this loss. But standing here now, it all but bowls me over. And it is not just the loss of Hallie or Peter or Parry, or even the other 116 children who lie in front of me, but of all we might have been.
I fall onto a weather-beaten bench that affords me a full view of the cemetery and the mining works below, closed down and quiet now. In the opposite direction is where the tip once towered and, below it, the spot where our school used to be. The place is peaceful, really, if you don’t know the history or where you are or what you are looking at. All the trees have grown, filled in, and the bushes are fuller.
The graves seem endless, row upon row. Once I spent the entire day looking for Mam’s mam. Mam had always said that they made a mistake and buried her in the wrong family plot and none of her children, including Mam, had had the strength to have her dug up and reburied. Now I don’t remember where she is. Or for that matter, where Parry lies. The tree where he’d hanged himself had been cut down before I left. Evan had seen to that. He warned me so that I could come and watch if I wanted. Mam watched. For her it must have been like watching a murderer being executed. I couldn’t. It had been one of my favorite trees: an old sycamore, its branches high and sturdy. Parry and I used to jump and try to touch its lowest branch as we passed. Once we’d even had a rope swing in it. After Parry’s death, in some strange way it was a comfort to me.
But I don’t remember this bench. If it is new, who would have put it so close to where the tree had stood? Evan had seen to so many things for all us, even arranging Parry’s burial. Had he for some inexplicable reason put the bench here?
Like everything connected to Parry and his death, I’ve gone over the what-ifs so many times. The recent conversation with Beryl has given me more information. It’s true that he was young and smart with great possibility. How did he get himself so trapped that he couldn’t see any other way out? With so much already lost in all our lives, how could Parry pile more on us? Maybe the answer really is as simple as Parry looking at his life and only being able to see everything he would never get right.
Down walking among them, I can see and feel Peter, Donald, Matt, Priscilla, Daniel, Johnny. Those arched white gravesides like closed doors. This is where they live now, their neighborhood; these graves are their homes.
I kneel at the side of Hallie’s grave, wondering what it would have been like for us to grow old together as Gram and Beryl had. There is a fresh yellow rose on Hallie’s grave—her favorite flower, I remember. Maybe her mam comes each morning. How does she bear it?
I think of Hannah, who has already been through so much herself. I cannot imagine life without her. I think of Mrs. Jones and how she had probably envisioned Hallie’s future. Hallie wanted to be a ballet dancer. How many lessons had she missed in the last thirty years? How many recitals? Perhaps Hallie might have changed her mind a million times about what she wanted to be when she grew up.
And unbidden, Isabel sneaks in.
I walk back down the line of children into the middle of the cemetery, past the huge old mausoleum that towers over all the graves and marks the cemetery from a distance.
A quiet rain begins to fall. One thing I know for sure is rain, its steam rising off the cement walkway, the cold gray smell and the wet-tear feel. Of course it hardly rains in Los Angeles, but Marc loved the rain. He worked better on rainy days, the white noise making things quiet.
Hannah loves rain, too. As a child, she’d pull out her blocks and build bridges for hours.
Dafydd loves to nap on rainy afternoons.
For me, the rain is the primary memory of my childhood. Hallie once said, “I think rain must be God’s tears.”
And I replied, “Then in Aberfan, He sure cries a lot.”
The trees now tower above me. Their presence makes the place
seem friendlier. Near the cemetery entrance is the small stone office. I touch the shilling around my neck. The door is shut, but I knock and an old man in bibbed dungarees peers out at me.
“Good morning. Sorry to disturb you.” I wipe the tears from my eyes and pull my hair back. “I’m wondering if you could tell me where Parry Davies is buried? I can’t seem to find him.”
He looks me straight in the eyes as if trying to place me. I’m sure he’s seen these tears and others like them day in and day out in his job. He points up to the left of where we stand, then pushes the door open. “Let me show you.”
He leads me back up one of the paths and around till we are standing in front of a small headstone.
“Thanks,” I tell him.
“No problem.”
Alone again, I read:
P
ARRY
D
AVIES
1956-1978
There’s not a word of who he was in the world. Nothing about Parry’s battle or his gift as an artist.
After I’m gone, and Evan, and all our respective families—the “disaster generation,” as we are sometimes referred to—who will ever know Parry?
Then I see Gram’s place next to him. Her headstone is larger than his and a small rosebush is planted next to it. Carved in the stone is
R
OSEMARY
L
YNN
D
AVIES
1904-1994
And under that,
LET THE RIVER RUN THROUGH US
AND EMPTY IN OUR HEARTS.
It was a line from one of my earliest poems.
Gram seemed to know Parry best and to perceive his true nature. Gram was always there for me, too. Always.
Perhaps Beryl is right: Parry hadn’t consciously made the choice not to paint, but had just gotten caught by the swift movement of bad luck.
I walk down Moy Road and over the footbridge into the village proper, with its shops and narrow walkways. Past the Welsh Church and the Catholic Church, then turn on Aberfan Terrace Road.
Coming near the new school, I hear the children first. Then I see them, bright colors whirling. Evan is standing at the far corner of the blacktop, surrounded by them. His back is to me but I would know it anywhere. He must feel my eyes on him because he turns and looks out over the children’s heads directly at me. The longer I stare at him the more I let myself remember. I think of my brother and imagine what I have never allowed myself to imagine before—Parry hanging, feet so close to the ground he almost doesn’t die. Almost. And of all the emotions I might feel, rage dominates. No matter what Gram tried to teach me, and even after all the years of living away from here, part of me still blames Evan. Parry was living with him. Somehow he should have found a way to help him. I remember after the funeral I wanted to shout at him, “It’s your fault he died. You should have saved him!” But instead of dealing with my feelings, I ran.
Evan touches the top of one of the boys’ heads, saying something to him, and starts to move around two of the other children who stand between us. I can feel myself begin to back up inside, and I actually take a step backward, two steps, then turn and walk quickly away. I can’t stop. I break into a jog, then a full-out run.
Fear.
Would Parry have come to his end if he hadn’t been afraid to live his own life? Perhaps his fear had slammed up against him like a closed door and left him with no place to turn. Had fear kept Da from acting against the NCB? Certainly fear had led me away from my own sadness and grief, as well as from Da, Mam, Gram and Evan. It led me to California and Marc and another life while I was still smack in the middle of this one.
Beti and I always felt we had no other choice but to leave. The truth was, each in our way, Parry, Beti and I had all deserted. Only Evan chose to stay. Evan had been here every minute of every day. He’d held Da’s hand, comforted Mam and visited Gram. His work with the choir had helped the town to resurrect itself. In the end,
Parry had broken his own heart, and then certainly all of ours, Evan’s included. In this way, I guess all of us had been betrayed by him.