The Black Path (4 page)

After The Saints, the road veers up Litchard Hill where Helen used to walk to primary school. She’d loved school before her father died, before she was forced to face the terrifying anonymity of the comprehensive with its noisy classrooms ruled by hard-faced girls with purple nylon uniforms and their boyfriends’ names scratched into their forearms.

Soon the landscape changes and the main road gives way to narrow streets and rows of small shops, terraces with stone cladding and pebbledash fronts and modern semis with Welsh names and mock Tudor extensions. The valleys were once a symbol of industry in South Wales, but those days are long gone. There are no coal mines anymore, and few opportunities. Teenage pregnancies are common. Jobs are not.

It’s mainly from the valleys that the men come at the weekends, descending on Bridgend in packs, looking for a few pints and someone to vent their frustrations on and leaving the streets stained with blood and covered in broken glass. Every week the police riot vans line up next to the taxi rank in the centre of town, waiting for the first sign of trouble. And every week the trouble would arrive in the shape of the valley boys with their thick necks and bullet heads.

Helen remembers Owen telling her about the time he went on a training exercise in the Brecon Beacons and saw a sign that read: ‘Warning. This is a military zone. Do not touch anything as it may explode and kill you!’ Sometimes she wonders if they should erect a similar sign in the centre of Bridgend, one that reads: ‘Warning. This is a danger zone. Do not look at anyone as they may explode and kill you!’ She tries not to dwell on the violence. She doesn’t want to give Frank the satisfaction. But she’d heard about that lad who was kicked to death up by the railway bridge. He wasn’t the first, either. It wasn’t that long ago that a young woman had her face slashed in one of the pubs. Helen remembers the picture in the
Gazette
.

She’s approaching a T-junction when a sudden movement catches her eye. A figure appears from nowhere and runs out into the road. She slams on the brakes and the car screeches to a halt. The late afternoon sun glares off the windscreen, making it hard for her to tell if the figure is male or female. The figure turns to face her, slapping both hands hard on the bonnet.

‘Stupid cow!’

It’s a girl, probably no older than sixteen. Her face is pale and pinched, her eyes glazed. As she moves towards the driver’s door, Helen resists the urge to wind down the window and ask if she’s okay. Girls like this are never okay. She’s probably drunk, or on drugs – or both.

Instinctively, Helen locks the car doors.

The girl raps her bony knuckles on the driver’s window. ‘You could have killed me then. Stupid bitch!’

‘Sorry,’ Helen mouths.

The girl smirks, revealing discoloured teeth. ‘Call it twenty quid and we’re quits.’

Helen shrugs apologetically. She has no intention of opening the door to this girl or helping to feed her habit. But she can’t just sit here. What if the girl tries to break the window?

She glances in the rear-view mirror. Further along the pavement, two teenage boys ride their mountain bikes in wide, lazy circles. Apart from that, the streets are empty. Not even a passing car.

‘C’mon!’ the girl says, her voice rising dangerously. ‘Twenty quid. Or I’ll report you. My friends saw you. They’ve got your registration number.’

She points at the boys, who duck their heads and laugh.

‘Leave it!’ one of them shouts. ‘We’re late enough as it is.’

‘But she could have killed me.’ The girl raps on the driver’s window again. ‘Cough up, bitch!’

Helen puts her foot down on the accelerator and speeds off.

She’s still shaking when she arrives home. The house is in a row of small terraces arranged in an L-shape on a steep incline off the main road. In front of them is a large patch of grass where people come to walk their dogs during the day and teenagers congregate at night. She parks and pauses to catch her breath before getting out of the car and hurrying inside.

She shuts the front door behind her and looks around the familiar hall. On the wall facing the staircase is a framed photo of Owen at his passing-out parade, alongside a picture of them both together on their wedding day. That was the day plain old Helen Thomas became Helen McGrath, wife of Lance Corporal Owen McGrath. She’d worn her hair in a French pleat, and the make-up artist had given her a face she barely recognized. Her mother had sent a copy of the wedding photo to the local paper, where it appeared with a short article reminding readers of her father’s death. The headline read, ‘Tragic local girl finds happiness at last.’

The living room is dominated by a brown leather sofa so big they’d had to winch it in through the front window. She sees the light on the ansaphone blinking and thinks for a moment that Owen has called the landline instead of her mobile. But it’s just someone trying to sell her car insurance. Disappointed, she turns on the laptop and checks her emails. Nothing.

Sundays are the hardest. Sundays were always the hardest, even when she was still at school. Back then it was the empty space left by her father that made the day stretch on forever. Now it’s the empty space left by her husband. At least tomorrow another working week will begin. She takes pride in her work and comfort in the small administrative tasks she performs with such efficiency. The attention to detail helps take her mind off the bigger picture.

She closes the laptop and walks briskly into the kitchen. There are no dirty dishes in the sink. Everything has been washed, dried and put back in its place. She takes out the ironing board and plugs in the steam iron before unloading the clothes from the tumble dryer and arranging them in a neat pile on the table.

Why hasn’t he written?

When Owen was first stationed in Iraq, he used to write to her all the time. She’d arrive home to find the familiar blue envelopes on the doormat and her heart would skip. The separation still hurt, but at least she knew he was missing her as much as she missed him. More importantly, she knew he was safe. Is he safe now? Is he missing her? Or has something happened to him?

She unplugs the iron and goes upstairs. The letters are in a shoe box under the bed, the envelopes tied together in bundles. She takes out one of the older letters, written shortly after he arrived in Basra.

‘
Remember that holiday in Snowdonia?
’ she reads. ‘
Well, it’s a bit like that, only with less rain. In fact, it’s hot as hell. I can’t work out if I’m tanned or just toasted! But mostly I’m bored. Every day is the same out here. You lose track of time. I’ve been thinking of things to do when I get home. We should get away more, go to Amsterdam or maybe Paris. Somewhere they serve cold beer! Miss you loads. Better sign off now. This pen is drying up. See, I told you it was hot!
’

His earlier letters were always so thoughtful. Sometimes he’d illustrate them with stick figures and cartoon faces. ‘
Me today
,’ he’d written in one, next to a stick figure of a man lounging in a chair with a rifle by his side, staring up at a clock. Then ‘
me tomorrow
’ with a similar man in the same position. A good joke would be followed by a smiley face, a bad one with a figure clasping their hands to their head, mouth wide open, like the man in
The Scream
. ‘
Excuse me while I explode with laughter
,’ he’d write. Then, ‘
PS: this letter will self-destruct in three seconds
.’

It wasn’t the jokes that brought a smile to her face. It was the way he made light of his situation. But it didn’t last. Two months after he’d arrived in Iraq, the letters became less frequent. Days would pass, and there’d be no word from him. Then one would arrive, apologizing for the lack of correspondence and assuring her that everything was fine. But she knew him better than that. The tone had changed. There were fewer jokes and no silly cartoons. The letters were shorter, some no longer than postcards. ‘
Not much to report
,’ he’d written in one. ‘
Days hot. Nights cold. Missing you. Love, Owen
.’ After that, there’d been nothing for a whole week. She’d feared the worst until another letter arrived, informing her that he was coming home.

She’d been so excited at the prospect of seeing him again. But the thrill of being reunited and the pleasure they took in each other’s bodies couldn’t hide the fact there was something different about him. It had taken five days before he finally opened up and told her what had happened. He’d shot and killed a young boy. ‘It’s part of what I was trained to do,’ he said. ‘But that doesn’t mean I have to feel good about it.’ She’d suggested that he talk to someone, but he’d refused.

‘And tell them what? That I feel bad about doing my job? I’m sure they’d love that!’

Still, it hadn’t prevented him from going to Afghanistan.

‘But why do you have to go?’ she’d asked when he told her the news.

‘You know why,’ was his reply.

‘You could leave the army, get a job here.’

‘Doing what?’ He looked almost angry with her. ‘This is what I do, Helen. This is who I am.’

Was this latest silence an omen? Of the fifty or so letters in the bundle, there are only a few from Afghanistan, written in the weeks after he arrived. The most recent is dated June 3 – almost three weeks ago. There have been a couple of emails since then, and one short phone call. She could tell by the tone of his voice that something was troubling him, that the distance between them wasn’t just physical.

She takes a deep breath and places the letters to one side. Also in the box are mementos of the only other man she’s ever loved.

Helen grew up with so few physical reminders of her father. Her mother had seen to that. A week after his funeral, Helen arrived home from school to find a white builders’ van parked outside the house. A workman came up the driveway carrying a broken doorframe above his head. She recognized it instantly. Running round to the back garden, she found her mother watching silently as another man took a sledgehammer to the remains of her father’s shed.

‘You’re early,’ her mother said. Her voice was distant, as if the destruction of the shed meant nothing to her.

‘How could you?’ Helen screamed.

‘It’s for the best,’ her mother replied.

The man took another swing with the sledgehammer. There was a terrible groaning sound and what remained of the shed scattered across the lawn. Helen fell to her knees and scrambled through the debris, searching frantically for anything she could find of her father’s – broken hinges, bottle tops and a handful of his old coins. When she looked up again, her mother had gone. All these years later, Helen still hasn’t quite forgiven her.

She stares down at the contents of the shoe box. Not much, really – just a handful of faded photographs, a yellowing newspaper cutting, a couple of leather bookmarks and a blue pocket dictionary inscribed with his spidery handwriting – ‘
To my darling daughter, hoping you find it useful for many years to come
.’ And there, glinting in the half-light, are some of his old coins. They aren’t worth anything, or so her mother says. She had them valued shortly after he died and seemed pleased to report that these things he’d treasured weren’t worth keeping. But to Helen they’re more precious than gold. Her father once held these coins.

She takes one out and places it in the palm of her hand. The surface is tarnished and the edges are worn. On one side there’s a profile of a young-looking Elizabeth II, and on the other a picture of Britannia and the date – 1970. She remembers her father telling her that this was the year before these old pennies became obsolete, and for some strange reason the thought saddens her. She replaces the coin, slides the box back under the bed and heads downstairs.

Later, when the clothes are all ironed and a feeling of order has been restored, she allows herself a large glass of wine. She’s never been much of a drinker. She fears the loss of control, worries that she might make a fool of herself. But tonight, in the safety of her own home, with nobody to bear witness to her drinking, she sits on the sofa and lets the wine do its work, soothing her anxieties away. It doesn’t take much. Owen always said she was a cheap date and sometimes teases her about the fact that her tolerance for alcohol is no greater now than when they first met. She tries not to think about him, tries to focus her mind on the week ahead.

Finally, when the first glass has given way to a second, and her head is cloudy with wine, she climbs the stairs and prepares herself for bed.

Things will look better in the morning, she tells herself. They always do.

CHAPTER FOUR

The dream always begins in the same way. It’s dark, and she’s walking up the Black Path. Hiding among the twisted trees are the boys her parents warned her about. She sees the glow of their cigarettes and hears the murmur of their voices, punctuated with bursts of vicious laughter. In the distance, there’s the crackle of a bonfire and the crying of animals. Horrified, she realizes that the path is littered with the bodies of baby rabbits, pink and hairless, like the ones she found mashed together under the straw when she was ten.

Then her father appears at her shoulder. He’s walking beside her, telling her not to be afraid. She’s not a child anymore and if she just keeps moving forward then everything will be alright. The Black Path isn’t so scary after all. The ground is black because of the coal and iron ore deposits in the soil. The trees are just trees, and the boys with bonfires are just kids messing about. The rabbits aren’t real and those cries are the sound of foxes. It’s just a path, and if she can make it to the top, she’ll see that it’s perfectly safe.

Soon the path opens into a clearing. There’s a large tree covered in scars where people have carved their names into the bark. In the middle of the clearing is a gravestone, bleached white against the black soil.

Nervously, she turns to her father. ‘I can’t go on.’

‘You must,’ he replies.

‘But there’s a grave. Somebody died.’

Her father smiles. ‘Everyone dies. It’s nothing to be afraid of.’