A Terrible Kindness(97)
‘You’ve probably got a lot to get off your chest,’ he finally says, as they drive through Pentrebach, two miles from Aberfan. ‘I understand, so feel free.’
Gloria continues to gaze out of the passenger window, across the valley, yellowed by the afternoon sunshine. ‘Let’s do this first.’
In William’s mind, Aberfan knows only the night-time; with the roof of Pantglas school forever crumpled, poking at weird angles out of the landslide like a broken umbrella. Aberfan’s streets are forever dark and tacky underfoot.
To arrive in broad daylight, with green trees vivid against a blue sky, disturbs him, as has passing the new school on the edge of the village, with children all over the playground.
Where the coal waste bulldozed through stands a community centre, behind which he parks Martin’s car. While Gloria goes to find a toilet, William walks a few paces to stare at an electric-blue climbing frame and roundabout, at some swings with cheerful red frames.
He hears Gloria approaching from behind. She stands by his side.
‘This is where the school was,’ he says. A small dog waits for its elderly owner to catch up, then sniffs at the roundabout.
How human imagination and will could contrive to transform the Aberfan he knew to what it is now utterly confounds him. He finds he doesn’t want to stare at a playground, a community centre. He’s come to see heroic men crawling over the carnage, with blackened skin, haunted eyes and shovels in perpetual, desperate motion. He’s come to feel the slurry underfoot, hear the lorries groaning in and out of the village.
‘I’m going to look at the memorial garden.’ Gloria walks on past the playground. She pushes the iron gate inscribed with the words, This is the site of the Pantglas School. William follows and they stroll amongst the neat rectangles of manicured lawn with small trees and plants bordering tidy, clear paths. ‘It’s the footprint of the school.’ Gloria points at the patches on their left and right. He wonders how much more she knows. How much time she’s spent finding out about this place that has such a hold on him.
He nods, momentarily transfixed by the marigold orbs in the borders between the path and the lawns. The calm order of the place offends him. For all she thinks she might know, Gloria has no idea. No visitors will have any idea of what happened here. He turns his back to the mountain and looks across at Moy Road. The old houses to the right look so normal, so intact, their windows edged with brick surrounds, like gappy white teeth. Who’d know that he peered through those windows and saw black piles of filth, with branches, bricks, toys, parts of broken piano sticking out of them? He remembers a stiletto shoe poking out from a black mound halfway up a staircase, white and bone-like.
The air smells of grass. A magpie lands on top of a small cherry tree. To the left, sloping down and away from them, are two rows of modern houses. This was where the original houses were completely destroyed. Is one of them Betty’s? Is she still alive? William looks to the right, the route from the school to the mortuary.
‘I want to go to the chapel. You don’t have to come.’ He’s starting to wish he was alone. He has nothing to say about this Aberfan to Gloria.
‘I’ll come.’ Gloria puts her hands in her pockets.
They walk along Moy Road for a few yards, then left down a short, steep side street that leads to the chapel. William doesn’t remember the gullies that run between the houses, grass poking up through the tarmac and washing hanging across them. He doesn’t remember anything beyond the chapel and the school, but this metal handrail that runs down the path he does, because he saw a woman hold on to it when her knees buckled.
Halfway down the incline he stops dead.
‘What?’ Gloria says. ‘What’s the matter?’
‘It’s gone.’
‘What’s gone?’
He rubs his temple to stop the buzzing and walks to the bottom of the path. He stares at the dark building with its modern brick tower that only now, he notices, has the shape of a cross embedded into the stone.
‘This isn’t it!’ He looks left and right to see if he’s got the wrong place.
‘They must have knocked it down and rebuilt,’ Gloria says softly. ‘You can understand why.’
Something moves across William’s scalp, like a twang of elastic. ‘Why? We didn’t do anything wrong in there!’ He hears how high and broken his voice sounds. ‘They shouldn’t have knocked it down!’
He steps closer to the bleak building and touches the metal railing. It all seems so empty and still without the mothers, headscarves tied under their chins, winter coats held across their chests, without the coal-dusted miners, exhausted and determined, the Salvation Army with their tea, Kit Kats, and the kindness of whisky and cigarettes.
It’s all so ordinary.
An explosion behind them makes them both jump. They turn to see an old Ford Cortina race down the narrow street, the driver’s window wound down.
‘This is where they had to wait,’ William says turning back, rubbing his hand along the railing. ‘The parents.’
‘Where you had to hold up the little boy’s shirt?’
He feels the slide of warmth and the pressure around the side of his palm as Gloria slips her hand into his.
‘But it wasn’t like this.’
‘That’s good, isn’t it?’ Gloria speaks quietly, not taking her eyes from the chapel. ‘You wouldn’t want it to stay the same forever, for all the people who have to go on living here? Would you?’