(Originally published in Mists and Megaliths.)
The old man in the Fair Isle sweater sits and stares at the view beyond the patio door. Decades of coal dust nestle in lungs that rattle like a percolator. “They’re coming. Soon,” he says, though no-one pays any heed. Veined hands, like a 3D road map, flex and release as he grips the wooden arms of the chair. “They’re coming. Soon.” His teeth sit patiently in a glass beside him. They’ve heard these words before. Sometimes they speak the words for him.
Through glassy eyes, he stares at the distant mountain, spellbound. A giant cloaked in rust-red bracken that disguises sixty-thousand tonnes of spoil, like a wolf in sheep’s clothing. Fossils. Fossils and ghosts, he thinks. He tilts his head back and listens. Knock, knock, knock. Faint, far distant. He waits, knowing they will come when they are ready.
•••
The old man wakes from a dream-filled sleep, one in which ruddy-faced goblins wield pick axes, singing all the while: Cwm Rhondda. He knows it well. A woman stands over him. He’s seen her face before, but can’t remember where. He hums the tune from his dream, avoiding her gaze.
“That’s not your sweater,” she says, frowning. He has no idea what she means. Her hand slips around the back of his neck, grabs the collar of his sweater and pulls. “David Jones,” she reads aloud. “That’s not you, is it Dad?” She huffs, stands hands on hips, as though he is to blame. The old man closes his eyes and pretends to sleep.
Another woman enters the day room. He recognizes the squeak of her shoes on the lino, but does not remember her name. Wearing a bottle-green tabard and a frown, she stoops and places a cup on the table in front of him.
“It’s not his sweater,” the first woman says. “For God’s sake, how many times do I have to tell you?”
“Then put his name inside his clothes,” the woman in the tabard says in a voice as brittle as bone.
“I have,” the first woman says. “I sewed the labels in by hand.”
Why won’t they let him sleep? “They’re coming. Soon,” he says, though neither woman takes any notice.
The woman with the squeaky shoes retreats, slamming the door behind her.
“How are you, Dad?” the first woman says. Heat resonates from her body, warming his icy knuckles. She takes his hand in hers, strokes paper-thin skin and miniature rivers of blue. “Fancy a cup of tea?” Her face floats in his vision, angled eyebrows drawn in pencil and a froth of hair the colour of lead. He recognizes his own eyes in hers, and smiles.
He sips tepid tea from a two-handled cup with a spout, snaps a custard cream and watches the crumbs tumble down his sweater like tiny boulders. He stares towards the mountain. “They’re coming. Soon.” The tumbling crumbs have reminded him.
•••
The old man in the Fair Isle sweater watches the mountain until he can no longer make out the line where ridge meets sky. Rust-red bracken fades to grey, and clouds switch mood every few seconds. He thinks he’s eaten supper, but can’t quite remember. He rests a hand on his stomach, hoping it might tell him.
“Ready for bed?” the woman asks, and he nods. It’s easier that way.
The wheelchair leaves skid marks on the lino, carbon trails which lead along a narrow corridor to his room. She removes his trousers and the Fair Isle sweater and dresses him in paisley print pyjamas.
“These belong to you, hey?” she says, a hint of sarcasm in her voice. Her hands are warm, not like his. “Need the toilet?” she asks, but he doesn’t know the answer. “Have a try,” she says, taking him by the elbow and helping him shuffle five steps into the tiny bathroom. He sits on the cold seat, shrivelled penis dangling, but nothing happens. Not a trickle. Perhaps it’s because she’s standing there, watching.
“Your daughter came to see you today,” she says, and he nods, because it’s easier that way.
“They’re coming. Soon,” he says, and she returns the gesture.
She helps him into bed, tucks the blankets beneath his chin, and he smiles.
•••
The old man in paisley pyjamas lies wide awake, face to the heavens. Neon light from the emergency pull-cord paints patterns on the ceiling tiles, and turns his pallor a sickly shade of green. He closes his eyes and listens for the knocking, certain it will come. And it does. Knock, knock, knock. Faint, distant.
The room closes in, temperature plummets. Walls glisten black with sweat, and the ground beneath his feet turns rough. Rheumy eyes adjust to the dimness, trace the tracks that disappear ahead. From all around the sound of rumbling: above, below, in front, behind. It echoes through the mine like a giant’s innards. The old man is surprised to discover he is no longer wearing pyjamas. Instead he is dressed in a carrot-coloured boiler suit, smudged black with coal dust. Pit boots on his feet and a hard hat, to which a headlamp is attached. It points the way.
The old man does not hesitate. With a sense of familiarity, he follows the tracks deep into the mine, guided by the echoing voices of his fellow men.
“Where you been, Jonesy?” a voice booms as he reaches the gathering. “Ain’t seen much of you lately.”
The old man cannot answer, for he does not know where he has been. Instead he laughs, thumps the man on the back, and sets to work. Elated. His legs do as they’re told, his back shows no sign of protest despite the fact that he spends the next few hours shovelling.
They break for snap: cheese and pickle sandwiches that nestle in a tin attached to his belt, banter and leg-pulling rife as they eat. When the men aren’t looking, he whips out a small sandwich from the tin and tucks it between two wooden supports forthe Coblynau.
Tradition. His father and grandfather before him fed the Coblynau and, in return, were granted safety. The men traipse back to work and he follows at the rear, listening for the sound of knocking.
Knock, knock. Twice this time, in quick succession, then footsteps.
The old man in paisley pyjamas hears a swishing sound and daylight filters through translucent eyelids. He ignores it. Someone whips back the sheets, exposing him to the air.
“He’s had an accident again,” a sighing voice says.
“Not again,” says another. “We’ll have to catheterize him. Can’t be dealing with this all the time.”
•••
The old man in the Fair Isle sweater sits and stares at the view beyond the patio door. “They’re coming. Soon,” he says, though no-one pays any heed. Through glassy eyes, he stares towards the distant mountain.
A woman wearing squeaky shoes approaches, carrying a two-handled cup with a spout. “Tea,” she says, placing it on the table in front of him. “Your daughter isn’t coming today, is she?”
He nods, because it’s easier that way. His penis stings and his back aches around the kidneys. He balls his fists and rubs the sore spot. Rain pelts the glass on the patio doors, runs down in teary streaks. A shy dunnock peeps from beneath the hedgerow, beady eyes fix on him for the briefest of moments, then it turns and hides in the gloom.
“They’re coming. Soon,” he says, to nothing and no-one. The steam from the spouted cup holds its breath and turns cold, knowing it will not be touched.
It rains and rains, and he can’t remember a time when it didn’t rain. He studies the mountain of spoil in the distance, waiting for the crack in its armour. He knows it will come. Soon. Like it did back then. His eyes burn, lids grow heavy, so he gives them what they want.
Hands. Hands and feet and shovels and shouts. An all-round sense of desperation. He digs and digs until his fingers bleed and he cannot breathe. He straightens his back, looks towards the place where the school once stood, but all he sees is a broken roof from which six chimneys jut towards the sky like tubes on a snorkel, desperate for air. Crowds of people line the street, hands to mouths to stifle their cries. He looks away and continues to dig.
Every few minutes comes the call to stop and listen. A crying child has been heard, they say. But it is just the cry of hope.
One by one they bring out the dead. Noses and mouths filled with slurry, lungs crushed beneath the giant’s weight. Cosseted in blankets, the giant’s victims are ferried to the chapel in white ambulances, tainted grey. Everywhere, as far as the eye can see—grey. People think he’s lost his memory, but this event is sharp as a tack within the grey.
He opens his eyes and once more gazes out the window. Today, the giant wears a grey mink cloak, its reddish hue stolen by the clouds. Still, the mink should keep it warm, he thinks, shivering in the draughty air. No-one comes to check on him, and the full bag of urine tugs at his urethra, making him wince.
•••
At night he lies in bed, listening to the incessant sound of rain on glass. Bare branches claw at roof tiles and the wind howls like the diafol. He’s certain the pyjamas he wears belong to him, because he remembers the stain on the front. The other woman—the one with angled eyebrows and hair the colour of lead—complains if he wears the wrong clothes, but it’s not his fault. In the dim light from the pull cord he makes out a photograph. It sits in a frame on the bedside cabinet. The woman with angled eyebrows looks back at him, her arm tucked into his. At least he thinks it’s him, but isn’t certain because they both look younger. Much younger. The woman in the photograph smiles, then her lips move and she mouths the word, Mary. He must remember to ask her next time she comes.
He thinks about Mary, sure it was her who made the tiny sandwiches for the Coblynau. If he thinks hard he can hear her voice: I’m not having you injured down there for the sake of a bit of bread and cheese. Those were her words, he’s certain, and he smiles, remembering how she smelled of vanilla and apple pie. He moves his face from side to side, nestles into her neck, breathing her in. Mary, Mary, Mary, he thinks over and over again, because he doesn’t want to forget her name.
•••
The following day it rains again, and the giant wears a Dai cap of grey mist.
All day he watches, waiting for the crack in its armour. It hasn’t forgiven him for abandoning the Coblynau, see. He’s certain. It will send them to collect him when it’s good and ready.
Towards evening, the woman with sharp eyebrows appears. She sits beside him and takes his cold hand in hers. “How are you, Dad?” she says.
“Mary?” He is overjoyed because he has remembered the name, but she frowns, her smile stamped on by the dot at the bottom of the question mark.
She shakes her head. “It’s Carol,” she says. “Your daughter. Don’t you remember me?”
His bottom lip quivers. “Mary?” He tries again, in case she is mistaken.
“Mam’s gone, Dad,” she says, removing her hand from his grasp. “Seven years.”
And the smell of vanilla and apple pie, which he clung on to since the previous night, dissipates, only to be replaced by the smell of over-boiled cabbage and piss.
She leaves, and the woman with squeaky shoes wheels him back to his room, following the rubber tram lines on the floor. He listens to the rain and waits for the sound of knocking, but this time it doesn’t come. Soon, he thinks, soon.
•••
Dawn arrives with the swooshing of curtains, though the light it offers is miserly. The woman with squeaky shoes has a new companion today. Both wear green tabards, but the new woman is younger. Much younger. She should be in school, he thinks. They wash and dress him, and although the new woman is but a child in his eyes, he feels no embarrassment. His dignity disappeared soon after he came here.
The woman with squeaky shoes holds a pair of dove-grey joggers in the air, studying the label through glasses worn on her nose. “Ted Baker,” she says. “Bit o’ posh.” Both women laugh, but he doesn’t find it funny. In fact it worries him, because if the woman with the sharp eyebrows comes today and finds him wearing joggers belonging to Ted she will get cross. “No!” He tries to tell them, but he can’t remember the name that’s supposed to be on the label. His hands tremble as they dress him, and he has to take deep breaths.
The woman who should be in school wheels him into the breakfast room. On a plate sits an egg cup in the shape of a toy soldier, and he wonders if it belongs to her. There’s a hole in its helmet from which an egg protrudes. The old man picks up a teaspoon and taps, knock, knock, knock. The shell cracks, and he tries to remove the top with the teaspoon, but fails. He sips tepid tea through a two-handled cup with a spout and waits.
Minutes later, the woman who should be in school reappears. “Don’t fancy your egg then?” she says, whipping it away. He would like to explain that he can’t get the top off, but the words have gone missing. She wheels him out of the breakfast room and into the day room. To his dismay, his favourite chair in front of the patio door is occupied, and for a moment he thinks he might cry.
The old woman who has stolen his chair turns and looks at him. She dips a hand into the pocket of her Arran cardigan and produces a white paper bag. “Pear drop?” she says, shaking the bag, and the sickly-sweet smell of her breath wafts towards him.
“Chair,” he says, pointing.
The woman who should be in school says, “Why don’t you watch a bit of telly?” and before he can answer she wheels him to the other side of the room and plonks him in front of it, engaging the brakes on his wheelchair so that he cannot move.
On the screen, a man in a dark suit and open-necked shirt, sits on a sofa, shouting at a second man who wears dirty trainers and sits on the sofa opposite. The man shouts back, and the audience boos and laughs. A woman appears on-stage and slaps the man wearing dirty trainers across the head. The audience boos, and a big man, who looks as though he might be the world’s strongest man, holds her arms by her sides before leading her back off-stage. The old man isn’t listening to the telly. Instead, he keeps twisting around to see if the woman with the sweets has moved from his chair.
After a while, he rests his chin on his chest and puts his hands over his ears until the woman who should be in school comes and wheels him back to his room, following the rubber tracks along the lino.
The old man is alone in his room, facing the window. The window is too high to see anything of interest, so the only view he has is of grey sky. One mass of grey. Rain hits the glass, obscuring the grey. Some raindrops cling tight, retaining their spherical shape until they can hold on no longer, whereupon they transform into silver streaks. Others don’t bother trying. They head for ground as quick as they can. He listens for the knocking, but all he hears is the continual hiss of water on glass and the gush from an overflowing downpipe. He closes his eyes and drifts back through time to the day the mine closed.
•••
Too heartsick to eat his snap, he tosses the contents of his tin on the ground, hoping it might sustain the Coblynau for a few days. His is the last mine to close, and he is the last miner to exit the shaft. They shuffle towards the cage that will deliver them to pit top one last time, heads bowed low and hearts yawning. He worries for himself, for his family, his comrades, but he also worries for the Coblynau, for now they have nowhere to go. A golden thread of light from his headlamp dances a trail behind him, a wisp of hope in the blackness.
As he steps into daylight, a mountain of rubble awaits, urgent, impatient to accomplish the task it has been chosen to do. Within days it will fill in the shaft, suffocating those left behind. They’re already ghosts, he tries to tell himself, but he remembers his grandfather telling him how in years gone by, when a mine closed, they would take the Coblynauwith them when they moved to the next mine.
“What do they look like?” he’d asked, eyes wide as saucers.
But his grandfather had laughed. “Never seen one. Secretive little things they are, though not shy. You hear them, but never see them.”
“Then how do you know they moved with you?”
“They weren’t daft, son,” he’d said, tousling his hair. “Knew where their bread was buttered. They came with us, you mark my words.”
But as he exits the colliery gates today, the only place he’s going is home. Cannot even face the pub where the other men have gone to drown their sorrows.
Certain the mountain will never forgive him for deserting those who kept him safe, and his father and grandfather before him, he’s watched it ever since, waiting for a sign.
They’ll come for him when they are good and ready, he’s certain.
•••
The old man rubs his eyes and yawns. His stomach rumbles and the catheter tugs at his urethra, begging to be emptied. The woman with squeaky shoes stands in front of him, smiling. “What you doing here in the middle of the day?” she asks, and he wants to tell her about the old woman in the Arran cardigan—the one who stole his chair and offered him a pear drop as compensation—but he cannot find the words. They form in his head but cannot follow the tracks to his lips.
“Come on,” she says. “Let’s get you sorted for dinner.”
He points towards the bag of urine, twists his mouth to the side to show his discomfort, and she leads him by the elbow to the tiny bathroom.
He’s eaten shepherd’s pie, and the old woman in the Arran cardigan has vacated his chair. But daylight has almost gone too, so he can no longer make out the mountain. No definition between ridge and sky, and the rain continues to hammer against the glass, blurring what little view he has.
Before long, the woman with squeaky shoes wheels him back to his room and helps him into his pyjamas. “Bloody Storm Dennis,” she says, shaking out his sock as though it is to blame. “I’ll be glad when he’s buggered off.”
The old man used to work with Dennis. He thinks that after the mine closed, Dennis took a job on the bin lorries. Perhaps the woman with squeaky shoes knows him too. She tucks him in bed, pulls the blankets right up to his chin, and he smiles.
That night, the Coblynau knock hard at the window. He peers into the dim green light from the emergency pull cord and imagines their fists at the glass. Skin the colour of maize, misshapen knuckles, riddled with arthritis. He listens hard through the rain, certain he hears them giggle. Like naughty children. Playing knock, knock, ginger.He is too tired to feel afraid.
•••
The old man sits at the breakfast table, spooning porridge into his mouth and sometimes missing. His teeth lie wrapped in a paper napkin in his trouser pocket, but he has forgotten they’re there. He has also forgotten about the boiled egg and about the old woman with the Arran cardigan who stole his chair, so he is not worried.
The woman who should be in school helps him move from his wheelchair into his favourite chair in front of the patio door. No rain today, just the sound of the wind and the shrill peep of the dunnock, which, like the Coblynau, stays hidden from view.
Today, the giant has found his rust-red coat and wears it with pride. The old man wonders if the giant’s name is stitched inside so that it doesn’t get mixed up with someone else’s. He stares at the giant, and the giant stares back, unblinking. They sit like this for some time, eye to eye, daring each other to look away.
And then it happens. With a whoosh of temper, the giant erupts. Its coat splits as though torn at the seams and a river of spoil, charcoal grey and streaked with ash, snakes down its torso. It happens so quickly that the old man barely has time to take a breath. As the river of slurry reaches the bottom, it splits, forking into the tongue of a giant serpent. It froths and gurgles, licks its lips, watching him all the while.
Suddenly his view is blocked by two women, both wearing green tabards. He hears them gasp as they watch from the window, but he cannot see their faces because their backs are turned. He tries to peer around them, but is no longer able to make out the forked tongue. Within moments they are joined by others wearing green tabards, until his view is completely obscured.
“They’re coming. Soon,” he says, though no-one pays any heed. His knuckles are white, they grip the wooden arms of the chair like an eagle’s talons.
•••
The woman with squeaky shoes dresses him in paisley pyjamas and tucks him in bed. She pulls the blankets under his chin, and smiles.
The wind howls at the window, bare branches claw at the roof, but he will not let them in. Only the Coblynau are welcome. No sooner has he closed his eyes than he hears them.
Knock, knock, knock. Loud and clear.
The door to his room creaks open, and in the dim green light he sees them. Six little men, ugly as sin, stand on the threshold, grinning. No malice in their eyes, though. They seem happy to see him. Each one carries a shovel or a pick, threaded through a loop on his belt. Miniature versions of the real thing.
“You ready?” one of them asks, in a guttural voice that reminds him of his grandfather.
He nods, and all six take up position: three on his right and three on his left. They count to three before lifting him off the bed.
Light as a feather he drifts in their arms, out of the room and into the long corridor. They follow the tracks that lead the way, out through the door and into the night. Cold air nips at his fingers and pinches his toes, but the twinkling stars wink at him, and the moon offers a lopsided grin.
They bear his body through dark, familiar streets and on towards the mountain, singing old Welsh songs: Cwm Rhondda, Suo Gân, Myfanwy.
And the old man joins in the chorus, rejoicing.
