New Welsh Short Stories (22 page)

A lustre came into the saleswoman's eyes. ‘Well, this is one of the more exclusive establishments in the Neath Port Talbot area.' She nodded at the window overlooking the beach.

‘She's got the money,' said Geraint's daughter.

And she was right, I did. I hadn't touched my savings since I'd sold Thornbush to the O'Briens. They'd been after it for the duration. ‘Why the hell not?' I said eyeing the two strange women in turn. ‘I know where I'm not wanted. And where my money is.'
In truth I liked the view. The daughter didn't know it but many a Sunday her father and I spent sat on the giant concrete whale at the end of the promenade. Rum and raisins from Franco's. The common room smelled like three different kinds of piss but here was as good as anywhere. The house meant nothing without Geraint in it.

I dream of fire. Mad, crazy fire. Volcanoes erupting, spitting scorching orange magma. Matchstick Vesuvians running for their lives. The Britannia Bridge, flames licking the gangplank stretching all the way to Anglesey, reflecting gold in the iron water below. New Cross Road, charred red brick. Thirteen dead and nothing said.
Windsor Castle, fat turrets lit canary yellow, smoke billowing across a milk grey sky. The images sway, overlap, superimpose, and then fade. There was another fire, a happy fire, in the old potato trench. Geraint helping me with the woodrush. It'd been weakening the soil in the green plot for years. ‘You'll have to burn the roots,' he said. ‘It's the only way.' He'd come to insulate the attic a few months after my parents had died, one after the other. I'd given up on the possibility of a life of my own. I was forty
-
six, a spinster. But there he was, a divorcee, as unexpected as internal combustion, leant against the Occidental drinking instant coffee. We had to wait for bonfire night or else the O'Briens would complain. I stood back, marking him, my heart in my throat as he poured the petrol, rockets cracking overhead, taraxacums of pink light detonating all around. The fire started with a woof, the glyphosate in the weed killer turning the flames emerald green. The white gloss cleaving to the chopped wood bubbling. When it settled Geraint held me, his chest pressed to my spine. My face was hot, piping hot. I stayed where I was. ‘You should sell up,' he said. ‘It's too much for you here on your own.' I had to twist my head to see his face, his skin bathed in the honeyed light of the fire. ‘And go where?'

‘Wherever you want. Move in with me.'

I squeezed his hands, my fingernails neat, painted ballet
-
slipper pink. Skin soft and firm.

I hear laughter echoing down the corridor. Female laughter from the staffroom. I realise I need to pee. I reach out in the dark for the emergency pull cord, the red light surfacing dimly. Earlier than I thought, five past midnight by the old Napoleon. An hour has lapsed while I'd lived decades in my head. It's the work experience girl who comes, red lipstick worn off. She turns away from me in the toilet cubicle, facing the door. ‘You like to knit?' she says, raising her voice over the stream of urine, loud in the sleepy building. ‘It's popular now, knitting. Girl on the bus this afternoon was making a shawl.' Everything comes back to haunt.

I scurry along the dormitory, my speed surprising the girl. I'm eager to plunge into my bed, to recapture the dream, to see Geraint's face again. His big arms holding me. His voice, lazy and placid. I'd forgotten his voice but in the dream it was there, clear as a bell.

The fire alarm wakes me, going through me like a screwdriver, pinning my shoulders to the mattress. I don't know how long I've been asleep. Below the piercing noise another commotion, the automatic door closures banging like shotguns. My door opens, the work experience girl's face floating in the cleft. Eggshell complexion withered to sallow white. ‘Georgia?' she says, voice low and tense. ‘Georgia, there's a fire.'

‘It's my fault,' I tell her. ‘Kismet.'

‘Can you get yourself out of bed and come to the corridor?' she says. ‘I need to wake the others.' She watches me push the eiderdown away.
‘There we are. Out of bed. Up we get.'
The alarm's still blaring, marauding, round and round like the dial plate on an old rotary phone.

They line us up in the reception, strip lights jammering. The Cilygofid motto is printed on a banner stretched across the front of the counter: Active Body, Active Mind. Posters on the walls of middle
-
aged models tending shrubs, playing chess, singing karaoke. The sulphuric reek of smoke is thick in our nostrils. Vessie's out of her head, squawking like a wraith. Kylie hands her a whole tin of shortbread. She only hurls it across the room. ‘Today of all days,' Ruth says with a pulmonary whistle, her cracked lips working.
‘My son's due tomorrow. They'll cancel visitors now because of this.'

Bron's nightdress can only be described as ugly, sage
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green polyester exposing the outline of her huge spatchcock chest. The alarm stops abruptly, the ghost of it resonating momentarily in the back of my throat. The shutter on the front door comes up with a stinging squeal. I blush at the sight of a small party of firemen. They enter cautiously, wiping their bovver boots on the horsehair mat. They're not as smart as they used to be, bandaged up in beige Kevlar suits. The man at the front lifts the visor on his yellow helmet as I grab at the tails of my pyjama top, the fleecy material wadded up in my arthritic hands. ‘Everyone alright?' he says, smiling without looking at us. Cement
-
grey eyes. He makes a beeline for Kylie at the counter, pulling his gloves off as he goes, yanking at them, one finger at a time. ‘It's obviously deliberate,' he tells her. ‘But minimal, no significant damage.' He casts his eyes down her legs, sleek in transparent tights. ‘A bit of smoke damage.' Through the door I can see the blue lid of the rubbish vat melted to a thick formless plastic, the scorch marks, like arrows, pointing up the yellow
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brick wall. It's four in the morning, the sky a dark purple colour, the tide muttering mildly. The lack of fire is a disappointment, an anti
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climax. I can't live with this omen hanging over me. If they're going to kill me I'd rather they do it.

‘What if they come back?' Ruth says as if sensing my thoughts.

‘We've got them on CCTV,' the work
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experience girl tells her. ‘The police'll be here any minute.'

‘I'm starving hungry, me,' says Bron. She looks at the work
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experience girl. ‘Do us a boiled egg, gul.'

‘The cook isn't in yet,' Kylie says, without breaking eye contact with the fireman.

Bronwen jeers. ‘Let me in then, I can do a soft
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boiled egg for myself. Did the buffets in the Molloy's for years. Think I don't know how to boil an egg?'

‘Was that when the environmental health shut it down for poor hygiene?' Clare asks her. ‘Cockroaches. I heard it was riddled.'

‘We've secured the site for the police,' the fireman says to Kylie. He puts a scrap of paper down on the counter in front of her, tapping it once with his thumb.

I let go of my pyjama top and look down at my own hands, dry as parchment, freckled and veined. I'm old now, I know. I'll never hold a man in my arms again, much less a young strapping engineman. But I know too that the fire wasn't my fault, not really. Being here at the end of my life with these loud disparate women is karma enough. The obsession with the boy from the fire brigade was its own punishment. Had I gone to the beach with Dolores I'd have found a husband, I'd have had my own children. But I liked the danger, that feverish sliver of decadence. And I got Geraint, unlooked for, his companionship sweetened by its sheer randomness. You needn't go out searching for anything. Sit at your own kitchen table long enough. Life will come to you.

A ROMANCE

Sarah Coles

I

‘Nimrod'. Sweeping views of the rolling Marches. Sweep … roll along the ancient Mercian kingdom to the edge of the Forest of Dean. Such vastness… A lone figure – distant. Elgar's strings dip and soar (accentuating the figure's remoteness). Closer: the figure is a man, and even at this distance, we recognise his gait as that of a hero. He is accompanied by a large, black dog. (He is a troubled hero, perhaps.) Ah, yes, closer now, we see his face is set against the world, his jaw clenched, his eyes fixed on the horizon: he is a man alone.
Alone with his troubles. What are his troubles? Doesn't matter. All that matters is that his hair is tousled against his forehead by an uncaring wind; that his jawline is square, strong, and that he is alone.
As ‘Nimrod' swells to its climax, our hero stands on the edge of the promontory and we see, through his eyes, the majestic view from Symond's Yat Rock. The ponderous meander of the timeless Wye; our hero's profile against the turbulent sky, his loyal dog (Saturn or Pilot, maybe) sitting at his feet. As he gazes, (stoic, flawed) we can only guess at the turmoil that is raging within that (brilliant, conflicted) mind…

From left, there appears, in the background, a plump American tourist wearing a baseball cap, bright yellow T
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shirt and shorts and eating an ice
-
cream cone.

Cut

Our hero deflates (
fuckssake
) as the director ushers the American (
stereotype
) away, off camera. We notice, with some disappointment, that our hero's jawline is not quite as square and heroic as we'd thought; in fact, his chin slopes backwards a little. A young woman with a ring in her lip approaches and powders his face. He frowns and complains, and as he does, we can't help overhearing a slight lisp. He flattens his hair and pretends to check his phone, to avoid the inconvenience and discomfort of conversation with the general public.
He is a man alone
.

Action

‘Nimrod' … Promontory … Climax … Majestic … Gaze…

Cut

Wonderful, darling.

The dog (tail wagging) runs to its owner, standing nearby – a solid, grey
-
haired woman in a stained, quilted jacket – who rewards it with a dried pig's ear she's been keeping in her handbag. The dog's name is Bingo.

II

We haven't quite decided about our heroine yet. Can't get to grips with her face. She's no great beauty – pleasant, certainly – attractive, in a fair, English Rose kind of way. Nothing to write home about. That's what we want though, isn't it? We don't want anything showy – can't have her upstaging our hero. But here she is, walking along a country lane. (Something lighter, this time – Vaughan Williams – ‘The Lark Ascending'? ‘English Folk Songs'?) Nice, slim figure. Is she carrying a basket? No. She looks as though she could carry a basket admirably though. Her hair is haloed with sunlight. In fact, give her a basket. She comes to a ford. She'll need to take off her boots. Her clumpy, brown boots, when she removes them, will accentuate the delicateness of her ankles. Oh dear. Can we get the foot
-
double out here, please? These tall girls have such unsightly, large feet. What's she doing now? She's sitting off
camera while the foot
-
double is preparing to cross the ford for her. She's lighting a cigarette and looking across to where our hero is going over some lines. (He has taken his top off in the sunshine and we find that he is unexpectedly muscular.) She's no Keira Knightley but the more we look at her, the more we warm to her. ‘One to watch' the director called her. He'd read that about her somewhere. Budget wouldn't stretch to Keira anyway, even if she had been available. Our hero hasn't given her a second glance.

The foot
-
double is worried about the algae on the bottom of the ford. It's very slippery. She calls it ‘algy'. This weakens her argument ever so slightly. Her name is Brenda and she wants to get off by 3pm because she has to pick up the kids from school. There is a discussion about insurance. Our heroine is having her hair brushed. She's still looking at our hero whose girlfriend has just turned up on set. His girlfriend is a singer in the band, GyrlzDubz. Our heroine hasn't heard the song they sing but apparently it's distractingly rhythmical and popular amongst the tweens. The girlfriend is quite demonstrative with her affections. She is wearing a very revealing top and tight jeans. Our heroine is wearing a long, brown skirt that skims the ground and a white blouse that buttons up to her neck, fastened with a cameo brooch. Her hair is like spun gold. She is about to light another cigarette when she's called back to finish the scene.

III

The first meeting between our hero and heroine occurred on a dull, Tuesday morning, in a grey office in Cardiff
.

Our heroine is walking along a country lane. Soft, early summer light gilds her hair.

They'd been introduced to one another by the director – she as ‘one to watch' and he as ‘he who needs no introduction'. They'd shaken hands.

She takes off her boots to cross the ford. We see her delicate feet, greened by the rippling water.