Authors: Owen Sheers
‘Yes,’ he answered quietly. ‘It’s broken.’
‘Is it? Thought it might be,’ said the deep voice. ‘Never mind. Can you pass it up?’
Silence. For once he didn’t answer himself, but just kept on looking down at the path.
‘Son?’ he said in the deep voice, soft and low. ‘You going to pick it up?’
He looked up at the roof.
‘Do I have to?’ he asked.
‘Yes,’ he answered himself. ‘I’m afraid you do son. Pick up the slate now. Pick it up.’
Moving very slowly the Teacher bent down to the path, picked something up, something dark and jagged, then stood again and held it in the air.
‘Thank you, son,’ he said in the deep voice.
Moving just as slow again, he dropped his arm. There was nothing in his hand.
‘Well,’ I heard him say in that low voice. ‘I suspect you’ll be on your way is it?’
‘Yes.’
‘Going on a journey are you?’
‘Yes. I think so. Going on a journey.’
In the distance I could hear the grinding of a large
lorry, the lifting whine of a siren getting closer. The Teacher turned his head towards the street, towards the gathering sound.
‘Well,’ he said in the voice from the roof. ‘I hope you’ve got everything you need. It’s important to be ready, remember that son.’
‘Yes,’ he replied, his own voice sounding small in comparison, like the voice of a child. ‘Thanks, Dad.’
And then he walked away. Walked away towards his sleeping followers and the sound of that lorry, grinding, and the sound of that siren, whining, both of them getting closer.
What I didn’t know back then was that we all have different voices, just not all of us have found them yet. Because of what the Teacher did when he was here I’ve found one of mine, and I’m going to use it now to tell you what happened next. Why? Because to describe what happened that Sunday, to really describe it, would need a whole new language, let alone a whole new voice. But until we discover that language, this’ll have to do.
If I’d known what the Teacher was walking towards that night, if I’d known the terrors waiting for him, I’d have run up that close and tried to stop him. But none of us knew, not then. Except him of course, I’m sure of it. That’s why he wasn’t surprised when he
reached the end of the close and he saw Joanne standing on a wall, pointing at him.
‘Thank you,’ he said when she lowered her arm, sending a unit of Council police running over to him.
As they seized him, pulling his wrists behind him, gripping his shoulders, he managed to turn his head to look back. I followed his gaze to where it landed, right on the patch of grass where he’d danced with that beautiful woman of air; right where he’d danced with her, held her and lost her.
When he turned back again Sergeant Phillips was already reading him his rights, such as they were.
‘I’m arresting you under the Public Disorder Act and the Insurgency Act, Emergency Amendment 14.2, making you subject to immediate preliminary trial.’
It was Sergeant Phillips and his barking that woke the Teacher’s followers. When they saw the police holding him, the sergeant getting out his cuffs, they launched from that bus stop like a pack of dogs attacking a bear.
‘Leave him alone!’ the Teacher’s younger brother
screamed. ‘Get off him!’
‘Sergeant Phillips, Sergeant Phillips!’ Peter implored. ‘I can vouch for him, I can. Come on now, leave him is it?’
Alfie and the Twins were the worst to witness. I suppose the Teacher had been the first person to see them, to hear them, for years. He was the man who just that same day had opened a door back to life for them, and now here he was being taken away. Alfie squirmed and beat like a wild animal against the grip of a constable, while the Twins howled and tore at another.
‘Rest in peace!’ they cried. ‘Let him! Rest in Peace!’
‘Go! Go Now!’
That was all the Teacher said to them. ‘Alfie, Peter, boys. Go!’
And they did, ran for their lives into the night. And his mam and Rhys too. Only Peter stayed, still trying to negotiate with Sergeant Phillips.
But it was no good. The grinding lorry had already arrived, parking itself up in the social’s car park.
That’s where they took him, hoisting him up onto the flatbed, turning on the magnesium glare of two searchlights, making him squint and lower his head. A crowd had gathered now, drawn from the club and the houses in the close by the noise and the light. Which is, of course, just what they wanted. Nothing like an audience to get Old Growler going.
The Mayor opened proceedings, fumbling and mumbling over a set of prompt cards, a sharp-suited lawyer at his elbow. He said something about ‘worrying reports’, and rumours of a ‘planned disturb ance’. That ‘in the interests of safety’ and ‘in the light of yesterday’, the Council had been forced to take ‘extraordinary measures’, to prevent an imminent ‘act of insurgency’.
He was way out of his depth. And anyway, everyone knew who was really running this show, so it was no surprise when Old Growler finally spoke, his voice carrying over the heads of the crowd from out the dark.
‘What do you want?’
His voice was cold and clear. He knew he didn’t
have to shout, at least not yet. He knew what scared us more than shouting; this voice like iced water, sharp and fluid, the accent of a bank manager from the mouth of a psychopath.
‘Power? Respect? Is that it?’
He was standing on the cab of the lorry, his feet planted firmly on its roof, looking down at the Teacher. One of the searchlights swung up to catch him.
‘Or are you doing this because everything else failed? Your job. Your marriage.’
He paused, waiting to see those words land in the Teacher. But they didn’t. I’d come into the car park now, so I could see his face clearly. And there wasn’t a flicker. He could have been standing down by that bus stop waiting for a bus, not on this flatbed being tried for his life. I saw that get Old Growler, and if there’s one thing that bastard hated, it was being got.
‘Oh, I know you,’ he continued, pacing now, his steel-capped boots metallic on the lorry’s cab. ‘I know everything about you. Couldn’t cope could you? So thought you’d pull that little stunt on the
beach. Get yourself a band of merry men. Set yourself up as their “leader”. I understand that. We’re not so different you know.’
Again the Teacher didn’t rise to it. Just stared at the ground below. In response to his silence Old Growler got louder.
‘Because that’s what they’re saying, you know that? That you’re going to lead them. You’re going to make everything better. Is that what you told them? Is it?’
His voice echoed against the plastic and brick of the social, slid along the roofs of the houses.
‘But what I want to know,’ he carried on, getting all thoughtful. ‘What I’d really love to know is on whose authority?’
He stopped pacing, looked down at the Teacher.
‘Eh?’ he said. ‘Can you tell me that “Teacher”? Who elected you? Who voted for you? I’ll tell you. Nobody!’
The crowd had grown. We were starting to sense it. This was bigger than ICU dealing with some troublemaker. This was bigger than Old Growler. This
was bigger than all of us. And it didn’t feel good, I can tell you. Like there was a chasm splitting through the town, cracking through the streets and gardens, heading straight for us and any minute now we were all going to fall right into it, right into the darkness.
I felt another light at the corner of my eye. When I turned I saw it was a camera’s pack light. The TV crews were already here, getting their fill, sniffing through the audience for a bite. I heard the reporter approach someone behind me.
‘Excuse me, sir,’ he said. ‘Can I have a word? For the camera. Are you an acquaintance of the accused?’
Another voice answered, low and quick.
‘No. No I’m not.’
Up on the flatbed Old Growler was still at it.
‘Or are you above Democracy? Some kind of a king are you? Is that it? Are you king of this town?’
He was shouting now. But sort of laughing too, like a hyena about to howl.
‘Why so quiet? If that’s what you’ve been saying in private, don’t they deserve to hear it in public?
Come on, no need to be shy. Admit it! Or haven’t you got the guts?’
The reporter was still at it behind me too.
‘I’m sorry, but we saw you in the club. You were with the Teacher, weren’t you?’
‘I told you,’ the other voice said. ‘I don’t know the man. Leave me alone.’
I knew that voice. I’d heard it tonight, just a few minutes ago. I turned round and there he was, staring up at the flatbed, his face tense with pain. Peter. Peter of the club, Peter the big friend of everyone, the go-to guy. There he was, denying all knowledge of ever having known the Teacher. He must have sensed it too; must have sensed where this was all heading. That if what the Teacher had been doing was threatening to get in the way of ICU and their plans, then the last place on earth you wanted to be was between them and him. And now I guess he wasn’t. A few simple words, that’s all it had taken. That’s all betrayal is. A few letters put out on the air, as dangerous as the blade of a knife or a bullet in the chamber.
Back on the flatbed Old Growler was really going for it now. There was something he needed, obviously. Something the Teacher would have to say before he could pounce. But the Teacher still wasn’t giving it to him.
‘Say it!’ Growler was yelling down at him. ‘You’re the voice of these people! Their leader! Aren’t you? Aren’t you? Say it!’
But the Teacher wasn’t saying anything. After all that talking with himself in the garden he’d gone mute. He just stood there in the glare of those lights, not looking down any more but up, up at the roof he’d been talking to before. Like he was listening, like someone else, someone more important than Old Growler, was also asking him a question.
And then suddenly, everything happened at once.
Growler was screaming now, all composure gone, while behind me the reporter was still pushing Peter, asking him again and again if he was a follower of the Teacher.
‘Are you? Are you?’ the reporter pressed.
‘Are you? Say it! Are you?’ Old Growler screamed.
‘Are you?’ they asked together.
From behind me, shouting at the top of his voice, Peter.
‘I AM NOT!’
And then as if in answer, in distorted echo, the Teacher, breaking his silence like a whale breaking the surface of the sea.
‘I AM!’
For a second the echoes of their cries were all that filled the night, the Teacher’s eyes bright in the searchlights. But those words were what Growler had been waiting for. I saw a smile crack his face as he inhaled them before standing to his full height and jumping down onto the flatbed.
He landed with a two-booted thud.
‘Thank you,’ he said, striding up to the Teacher. ‘Thank you. Now you’re mine.’
Within minutes that car park was empty. The Teacher was swept down from the flatbed and into a Security van. The lorry’s engine started, shaking its frame along the length of its chassis. The police and
ICU teams cleared the crowd.
Ducking under a uniformed arm, I ran back into my girlfriend’s close, looking for Peter as I went. But there was no sign of him, no sign anywhere. Just as later, when I went for a piss in the middle of the night and I opened the bathroom window again, there was no sign of any of it. The Teacher on the grass, the bike boys, the woman and the girl made of air, the lorry, Growler’s shouts, Peter’s cry. All gone. The close was quiet, the car park empty and everything, everything in darkness.
In the morning I went running on the beach. I hadn’t been running for years but I needed light and to feel my heart working, my lungs straining. More than anything though, I needed perspective and the morning air to clear my head.
When I got down to the front a sea mist was all the way in, so thick I couldn’t see the water, Mumbles, the works. Everything was gone under white. But still I ran into it, and in a way it was perfect. Running blind into light. I found the wash of the
waves then turned and ran with them on my left, running up towards the Naval to where this all began.
Flocks of knot waders were feeding in the shallows, scattered groups of them quick-stepping away from the waves. The seagulls above called like lasers from a sci-fi film and every now and then an early fisherman would ghost up out of the whiteness; a statue beside the tense question of his sea-tethered fishing rod.
It had all happened so quickly last night, too quickly. Suddenly I felt we’d all woken into a day we’d never asked for, a day when something was going to be spoiled forever. The Teacher had done nothing really, other than listen and be different. But it seems that was enough. Enough of a threat, and that such listening wasn’t going to be allowed. Not when there were interests in the world whose currency depended on silence.
At the end of the dunes I turned round. What I saw looked like another beach. The sea mist had gone, blown off shore by a wind from the land. So I
ran back into clarity, the hill above the town yellow-shot with gorse, the works ahead of me growing a plume of smoke like an
Ich Dien
feather on the Welsh rugby shirt. As I neared the town I saw a man sweeping his metal detector over the sands. Left, then right, left, then right, as regular as a metronome. In his other hand he trailed a spade. Someone else digging for riches. Well, if the stories doing the rounds the night before were anything to go by, he’d need something more powerful than that. From what I could tell ICU were definitely interested in some kind of valuable deposits under the town. Only thing was, they couldn’t tell what they were; whether it was coal, minerals, gold. ‘Geological interference’ was the excuse their experts gave. But still they were sure it was valuable; apparently nothing could be that dense, that present, and not be. That’s what the rumours said anyway.
As I ran the last bit of the beach up towards Franko’s and Remo’s I found myself thinking of a boy I’d once known. There was something in the look of the Teacher the night before, as he stood on
the flatbed, that made me think of him. His name was Danny. I’d met him when I did a stint up at Hillside in Briton Ferry. A secure centre it is, for kids who get into trouble beyond the usual stuff. In my case, way beyond. It was a good place, run by good people. Sorted me out. But Danny had a hand in that, and that’s why I found myself remembering him as I slowed to a walk and went to catch my breath down by the sea.
The whole time he was inside Danny worked every day on building a doll’s house. He built it with quiet determination in the wood workshop, two hours every afternoon. We used to give him stick for it. As you can imagine, not the easiest place to throw yourself into building a doll’s house, a secure centre for hard kids. But he did. Never broke his stride, however much he got teased or bullied over it.
He was following a book of instructions. Sometimes I’d catch him flicking through it, jumping ahead from where he was on the walls and roofs, to weeks down the line when he’d finally be building the beds, the window frames and maybe, if he did it
in time, the people too.
Danny finished his doll’s house a day before his release. When he went he didn’t take it with him though but left it on the table in that workshop, perfectly painted, one half open to show the miniature world inside. We found it the next morning and when we did none of us said a thing. Suddenly it made sense, him building it like that. Him building what he didn’t have but wanted, using his hunger to see him through. And then he’d left it behind, to show us what we didn’t have, but what we could have, if we aspired to it.