New Welsh Short Stories (27 page)
Told me he couldn't tell what's real and what a dream⦠That it didn't matter.
Who can? These days? It's all a nightmare. But Sea of where? You were saying?
Put those smaller bits on now.
Want it to turn colour? I'll put the weed on too.
He loved that, didn't he?
Put it out a few times when it was too wet. Seaweed smoke.
I woke up once with him before dawn. Height of summer. Only about three o' clock but there were the first signs of light. I was helping with that âUnfinished Sympathy' thing he was doing. But he must have already been awake and heaved an armful on just before. Tiny green flames running over the sand, there were. In those relays they race. Seemed as many as lights in the bay. When the bay was lit. I remember there was a light on top of the Meridian. That wasn't so long ago. Considering.
Yeah. Waking up when the fire had burned low. Hardly embers. But always sweet, that fire. Driftwood, see. Salt and weed. But sea of where?
Cortez.
Where theâ¦
That's what the old man said. I looked it up once. A fishing port in Mexico, with a ring of volcanoes. Then his story began to come back to me.
Volcanoes?
Seven.
Yeah.
But volcanoes?
That's it.
Sea of Cortez?
Well, his usual elaboration. You know. Making a meal.
So the coffee pot was silver?
What do you think? Never let the truth get in the way, did he? But that's what he always said. At the end. He'd say, sorry, you lot, but it doesn't matter if it happened or whether I dreamed it. Being a good story is all that counts. And for him it was a good story.
But look, I still think it was the Americans.
No, the Works built it.
The Americans, I say. Middle of that war. First or Second World War.
The Works built it. To move limestone. And Second World War, you idiot.
You got a thing about Americans. Just like the old man.
Yeah, well
â¦
He told us about that event. Didn't he? At The Works?
There were lots of eventsâ¦
But some kind of ceremony. People with wine, standing round. It often happened. In those days.
You're getting thereâ¦
I suppose in honour of that place. Of what they'd found. But what was there, then?
The old man called it a pentagram.
Arranged in old bricks. Had to look that up. Shape with five sides. In the middle they'd dug up a ball of iron, he said. Clinker and iron and soil mixed up.
Soâ¦
He said it was a salamander. The lizard that lives in fire. Or is born in fire, dunno. He'd seen them somewhere hot. Must have been an American word, he thought. Bear was the word he liked. That was local, he thought. So this ceremony was for the archaeologists who'd uncovered this salamander. This bear. Unborn iron, was how he described it. Said he'd told us about it and that's what I'm trying to remember. But this was before anyone ever thought of building The Works. This was the first furnace. With a great lump of molten iron, cooled to stone. Waste, I suppose. The last thing left behind. The last trace. In the end, if the bear grew too fat it stopped the furnace workingâ¦
Means nothing to me.
Maybe I recall him talking about the wine. All those toasts they made? Why does iron wine strike a chord? He said they were drinking to the men who forged that iron, commemorating the price they paid. Those ironworkers usually lost the tips of their fingers. If not their hands. All that scalded skin, he said. Most of them were branded by their work. Scarred for life. No hair, noâ¦
Yeah. Just another dangerous trade. That's what he called it. He talked about it when we came over here to look at that flower. The orchid.
I remember that. But I still think it was the Americans. People said they camped out in the sand and on the beach. Could have slept right where we are now. Could have shat where we shat this morning.
Americans? Don't be simple. The Works built it. To move the gear. It's still here if you know where to look. Under the sand. Under the sinter. Still here despite the storms and all the changesâ¦
Why did the old man call it the Dram Road?
Not sure.
What's dram?
Like I said. Most people called it the Haul Road.
I used to love those fires he built. In the dunes between the road and the beach. If you look back, those were, those wereâ¦
Yeah.
The best of times. With the light turning the sand purple.
Like that orchid, he used to say.
The fire orchid. Colour of a red
-
hot poker.
That's it.
But his coffee? That dented coffee pot he boiled up. Silver, he swore. Okay, he lied.
Nah, he told Mam he brought it back from the Middle East. Bought it in a bazaar. Just a petrol stop in the Sham desert and this Bedouin selling junk. Car
-
boot sale really, of course. Straight out of Stormy. All the stuff on the farm was car
-
boot.
So Mam would have got it.
'Course. Like everything else. But I used to watch him with that coffee pot. The routine of it. Five o'clockâ¦
Yeah, everything comes down to routines in the end. Like the time to make coffee. Five in the morning. Christ, I used to hate five o'clock. Most times I'd dig deeper into the sleeping bagâ¦
Boil fresh water, he would. Keep it boiling. But he'd have that water ready. Then, make the coffee as strong as he could stand it⦠Five, six heaped spoonfuls.
Nah. Half the time it was second
-
hand grains. And always by the end. Sludgy grey. All his talk about the difference between Java and Papua bloody New Guinea was just that. Sludge. Like his coffee.
Yeah, firelight on the sand. If I remember anything, it's that. Picking up the driftwood.
That's it. Piling up driftwood.
Hey, throw that spar on. The big one. And that one. That's it. You know, I can hear his voice. Sorting out the driftwood under those tarpaulins we used. Guarding it in case the cormorants appeared.
Looking round for other fires. Working out who was burning whatâ¦
And picking it up in the dark. I pulled this branch out of the sand once. Dragged it on the fire. Bloody PVC soffit, wasn't it? Get some jetsam, as he used to say.
Too late by then. Stank the dune out.
I've done that too. As he did, often enough.
Had to happen. Sometimes it was more plastic than timberâ¦
Especially after the storms, he used to say. But what did he know? Got twice as bad since. That Jude he used to tell us about. Hurricane Jude? I always remember the names he used. Jude and Josephine. Remember Katia? And Ruth? Well that was nothing compared toâ¦
But be fair. He knew it was coming.
Like he predicted it, the old bastard. As if he knew something no one else did.
Taking the credit. He was good at that. Well, it works out everybody knew. 'Course they did. But they didn't behave like they knew, did they? They felt they could ignore it.
But this last wind. It's cut the dune like a lathe. That tide, that wind. And the roots of the marram left hanging out like bales of barbed wire. Like a lathe, that wind.
That tideâ¦
Yeah. The sound of it. Reminded me ofâ¦
I was looking at that sheer wall. Thirty foot of sand on top of a bed of gravel. Exposed overnight. After the last storm. And you know what I found in it? Twenty foot down? A crisp packet. That's archaeology in the sand for you. Might have been a whale jaw. A pterodactyl bone. But this was a packet of crisps.
Plastic. Straight out of the sea.
And he always said his own father could taste The Works. Taste the furnaces when they were burning. The iron dice, he called the ovens. Rolled across the sandâ¦
All I can taste is sandâ¦
Making a home for the cormorants, The Works now. It's cormorant city these days, while weâ¦
Shit in the sand.
Born in sand, that's usâ¦
And we'll die in it ifâ¦
Gotta die somewhere.
But it gets in the camera. In my teeth⦠No matter how you hood the lens, itâ¦
Still works.
Butâ¦
So batteries, remember. Because I want to go to the Meridianâ¦
Impossible.
To film the whole bay. For an idea of the damage⦠To calculate the⦠situationâ¦
Mad. I mean it. They'll get us. Or the dogs will. Those packs of Siberians? Dune wolvesâ¦
It's necessary. This film is what we doâ¦
It's out of date already, it'sâ¦
Necessary.
As out of date as these cranes at The Works. Cranes tall as buildingsâ¦
Necessary.
Good only for the cormorants to hang their flags. And what does it mean this time? A red flag?
Whatever they want it to mean. Lookâ¦
Whatâ¦
Don't let them get to youâ¦
Get to me? They've already got to me. I dream about those fuckers. Nightmares? Don't tell me you're not the same. I hear you in the darkâ¦
What?
Talking in your sleep. Even crying⦠What's that word?
Word?
Whimpering. Even you.
Yeah, well, by the time you realise something, it's too late. Like, when was the last time you heard the quarry�
Quarry?
Detonations. Used to be Mondays regular. That big whoomp at three in the afternoon. The ground always shook. How many Mondays passed before I even noticed it wasn't there? Could have been two years till I thought about it.
I never thought about itâ¦
And look, what did the old man say? About Procession Street?
Jesus.
What did he say?
What the old man always said.
Listen for once. He said they had two separate punctures that day in the taxi. Then they walked out of the desert and came to the gate. Behind the gate was Procession Street, all deserted. Like the people had just cleared off. Packed up and scarpered. Women, kids, all of them gone. Bundles on their heads.
That's what he always saidâ¦
And he said he wandered down the street and looked at the carvingsâ¦
Yeah, yeah.
And they were like ⦠they were like creatures that have never existed. In this world. Dogs with lions' faces? Dragons, he thoughtâ¦
Yeah. Yeahâ¦
And he looked at those carvings on the walls, those carvings that had been there three thousand years, and he was sure, he was sureâ¦
Yeah, I know.
He was sure they were from another world. Another planetâ¦
Same oldâ¦
So all I'm saying is, the cormorants are nothing like that. Not at all. The old man had seen worse than that. On his own, looking into the temples. Those dark rooms where goats had shat. That's what he always told us. The billy goat with a bell round its neck, leading the flock through Babylon?
But the Meridianâ¦
Is the place. The best vantage point. Like it was built for us. As Procession Street was built for the old man. For him to discover and to pass on. What he knew.
And that's what we're doing. Passing it on, girl. As if the Meridian was built for usâ¦
Take us days to get thereâ¦
Yeah, I know. But the view has to be incredible. The whole bay, east and west. Even the farm. And think how far inland you can see. That radio station set up there has stopped, but no matterâ¦
There's sand in the lensâ¦
The camera works.
Look, I just don't want to end up on that crane.
Then do what I say. Stay close. Keep filming. This is history we'll be showing. Think what the old manâ¦
The old man was a big
-
headed bastard. All his stories? They're irrelevant now. And I mean hanging from the crane, that's what I mean⦠Not that there'll be anything left to hangâ¦
Yeah, okay, there's sand in the lens. But it worksâ¦
And lookâ¦
What?
Griffins. Not dragons.
Yeah?
I remember that much. What did he say? Pick up the driftwood, keep it under the tarpsâ¦
The sea's forest, he called itâ¦
Pollution I call it.
But what a view.
No, I'm seriously freaked by the idea. You got a death wishâ¦
The lens is okayâ¦
But the cormorants will be all over us. And remember, they're sending drones out now.