A Terrible Kindness(3)
3
It’s half past midnight when William leaves Nottingham with his two passengers, heading home along largely deserted roads. Roy Perry, an embalmer from Erdington, reads out reports from the armful of newspapers that the hotel receptionist gave them on their way out.
Just after 9.15 yesterday morning, waste tip number seven on the upper flank of Merthyr Vale colliery, loosened by two days of heavy rain, had slipped and descended the mountainside. Half a million tonnes of coal waste gathered trees, boulders and bricks on its way. It had been sunny on the mountaintop, but foggy down in the small village of Aberfan. So while the tippers had seen the slag start to move, the villagers had no warning that the 40-foot wall of debris was coming their way at over 50 miles an hour. Having laid waste sections of the railway line, a disused canal and a farm, its finale was to rip through Pantglas primary school and two rows of houses.
Frantic parents dug through the rubble with their bare hands. Miraculously, some children were pulled out alive in the first two hours, but since 11.00 that morning, there had been no more cause for celebration. Over 140 bodies needed rescuing.
With water and mud still flowing down the mountain, miners came straight from their shifts armed with shovels. Volunteers flooded the village, clambering over the slurry. Police voiced concern that well-meaning, untrained volunteers were hampering the work of the rescue teams now on site.
The recovered bodies of children were wrapped in blankets and taken to Bethania Chapel, the nearest communal space to the school. The police set about trying to clear off the viscous slurry so the children could be identified, but with no electricity, water or experience, they struggled.
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Once Roy finishes reading, the three men continue their journey in silence, and soon William’s passengers have settled deep in their seats to doze while they have the chance. He is wide awake, the blood romping through his veins. The treacly black coffee has done its job. Well, the coffee and Gloria.
Each time he remembers what happened, his body responds afresh, as if it were happening to him right there at the steering wheel. Once it was decided that William was going to Aberfan, Gloria stood up and led him by the hand, out of the ballroom and into the lush hotel gardens where she planted a kiss on his surprised mouth. He wonders now if, after the last year, when his reticence has scuppered so many possible moments of intimacy with Gloria, it was his sudden resolution to volunteer that made her want to kiss him.
‘Thank you,’ he said, as the liquefying sensation swept his body, and her hands sat in his without him knowing how they’d got there.
‘You’re welcome.’ She laughed, her eyes so glittery and alive, so hopeful. ‘You daft bugger.’
‘Can we do that again?’ he said, already leaning down towards her magnificent lips, his whole body alive to the thrill of a future filled with Gloria.
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He reaches Merthyr Vale at 3.35 in the morning, the Lavery and Sons hearse loaded with 30 gallons of formaldehyde, embalming instruments and four child-sized coffins. He’s already passed through two police blocks with the password, ‘Summers’, the largest undertakers in Cardiff. Though his journey has been in the dark, the thick belching chimneys sitting close to the countryside and the narrow lanes tell him he’s in a different country.
There’s no denying the excitement, even though for the last hour each blink has scratched his tired eyes. He feels noble, heroic even, driving through the night on his own, armed with all the skills he’s learned this year. Perhaps disaster embalming is his future. Perhaps the next twenty-four hours will shape his life. When stray thoughts of his mother, physically nearer to him now than for five years, flash through his mind, he bats them away.
For the last half-mile into Aberfan, he’s opened his window to stay awake. The spindly paths are periodically washed with yellow light and he has to pull over to let open lorries pass, humpbacked with glistening heaps. A harsher halo of white light shines above the village like a foreboding star. Now, yet another policeman stands shrouded in a rain cloak, waving him down.
‘Embalmer?’ He glances through the hearse window. Despite himself, William wants to laugh; he sounds exactly like Tom Jones.
‘Yes. Password Summers.’
‘You’ll be needed in Bethania Chapel’ – the policeman leans in closer – ‘where the bodies are being put.’ With a dart of surprise, William realises the police officer is crying. Suddenly backlit by the lights of an oncoming truck, his slick mac turns silver-white. ‘Pull over a minute.’ William edges the hearse onto the verge and the officer waves the lorry on. ‘You’ll see it on your right.’
‘Thank you.’ William engages the clutch, starting to feel the urgency, the need to get on with what he’s come to do.
Aberfan is floodlit and teeming. Men swarm over a colossal, ungainly mound, some in lines, passing bucket after bucket to man after man, until the last one empties it into the waiting lorry. Others are bending and straightening, plunging shovels into the dark mountain they stand on, faces like blackened granite. When William spots the school roof jutting out of the slurry at unnatural angles, he swears softly.
Driving slowly because of all the people, he sees a flat-faced, dreary-looking building with a line of women standing outside, a few sitting on metal chairs. Another policeman is at his window immediately.
‘I’ve got embalming fluid and equipment to unload,’ he says quickly. The policeman stands back and gestures at the piece of pavement directly in front of the chapel and the waiting women. William jumps out of the car, latent energy strong in his limbs. The women stare at him with heavy, dark eyes, and with a flash of heat through his body he realises they are mothers of dead children. He opens the back of the hearse and starts to pull out the formaldehyde, standing the containers side by side. The policeman helps, and a man materialises at his side and does the same. No one speaks.