I
run. I run cause it doesn’t cost anything. Well, you might have to have a tidy
pair of daps but apart from that you don’t need nothing else. You don’t have to buy equipment. You don’t have to pay no cons. You just run.
Pavements, roads, gullies, fields, tracks, trails, mountains,
everywhere, anywhere. So long as you
know how to come back. If you carry on
running ‘till you don’t know how to come back, then you’re buggered. You’ll end up going nowhere, or worse, going
round and round in circles. You’ll just
end up wearing yourself out and then even if you do find your way back, you’ll
be too knackered to try.
I always run there and back. Run all the way there and then come all the
way back the same way. Same as the
trains. Then I pass all the same things
every day and I know exactly where I’m going.
If anything changes, I’d know about it cause I’d see it changing bit by
bit. I’d see it all as it was
happening. All the old things being
knocked down and the new stuff going up.
But I’d still remember what was there before. Like putting tracing paper over the top of
it. Like I used to do when I was little,
with the pictures in the newspaper. I’d
draw me with my arm around the players in the team photo so it looked like I
was there, or walking with all the other men on the way to work, or when they
were all standing in the streets. I used
to be a good drawer.
When I run, I never go round in a
circle. I don’t like going round without knowing what’ll be in front of
me. I couldn’t do that, carry on going
round until you ended up back where you started, without knowing how you got
there. When I go somewhere and come
back, I know exactly where I’ve been and how I’ve done it. Can’t get surprised then. Can’t get stopped by something in your
way. Like, if they closed a road or
knocked a bridge down. You’d have to
find your way around and it might take ages ‘till you did. Not that they’d knock a bridge down, unless
it was dangerous or unsafe or something.
They’d have to rebuild it. Can’t
just go knocking bridges down for no reason and then not put another one
up. People wouldn’t stand for that. There’d be no way over the river then would
there? You’d be stuck. You wouldn’t be able to cross without the
bridge being there. Especially if it was
rough, like when it rains.
There’s only one bridge around here though, up
to the colliery and that’s been closed now awhile. Hardly no-one goes up there now, I don’t see
them anyway, so I don’t know if it’d matter that much if the bridge went...
If
I do see people up there, they’re just wandering round. They're not going anywhere. Just waiting around, standing on corners,
waiting for something, or nothing, for anything. They just keep waiting for something to
happen.
I see the same ones in the queue. They
got the same expressions. Their waiting
faces. But at least when you’re in the
queue, there’s something at the end of it.
"Next." At least
there’s some sort of destination, a purpose to stand there like a lemon,
shuffling along. “Ok, sign here and
we’ll see what we can find.” There’s
some sort of bastardised hope in the queue.
“No.” There’s a collective
hope. "Still nothing, I’m
afraid." The bloke in front and the
bloke behind are all hoping for the same thing.
“Sorry, we’re not taking on.” The
pot of gold at the end of the monochrome rainbow. “Right, the van’ll pick you up at 6.” Not
even a pot really, a piece, a bloody penny would be worth it. “Just don’t get bloody caught.” So long as it was you who’d earned it.
But you can only stay in that queue so
long. One way or another, something
drives you out of it. Unless you’ve got
the patience of a saint, there’s only so much waiting a man can do before thoughts
of anything other than waiting creeps in.
Starts stirring in him. A
hunger. Stirring like a pot of cawl. Like a big simmering pot of a leg of lamb
with potatoes and carrots and swede and parsnips and onions. Only when you’re waiting that long and smelling
them lovely smells, you can feel it surging through you, warming you up. You lift that lid and find out the truth,
that there’s just a steaming pot of nothing underneath? Then that anger swells like a wave, the warm
glow of optimism boiling over into hot scalding rage. But it’s short lived, as is such hope when
you realise the situation and it ebbs away, pathetically...then you start
begging them. Begging breeds survival, of society and your own sanity. You won’t be long before begging turns to
borrowing and soon you're stealing. Not
pinching, but proper stealing. Either
that or you’ll go spare, off on one, doolally dap Not a funny turn but a full blown wobbly,
where you don't know your arse from your elbow and you start screaming in the
nights. It’s hard to come back from
that. Then you’re on the slippery slope
and when you live in a valley the slippery slopes are on both sides, and they
all end up in the same place: Down. Down
to the city.
The irony of it. We used to feed them and now we need them to
feed us. The industrial revolution made
us kings. Doing a job of worth, fueling
the world with our hands and trams and picks.
We fired up the world’s industries from the black belly of this
valley. Not just this valley, but the
whole of the South Wales coalfield, but we played our part. Up until that last tram was sent out, we
worked with spit and sinew for our worth...now look at us. Those trains were laden with our labours,
traveling down through the villages and towns, to the stations and ports and
sent out to the world!
Now we fill those trains like cattle,
equally laden. To work away. Paid to leave and paying to come home. Only some know they’ll keep returning, while
others come back up like that last tram, knowing they won’t be going back
down. Redundant. Unnecessary. Useless to you. You’ve got to be callous to tell a man that
to his face. To render him redundant is
to throw a shovel into his chest and dig out his heart. A man’s being is his work. Take that away and there’s not much left but
blood and bone.
We’re born for work. We’re built for it. Our muscles made for building and digging and
burning our own energy to serve our own purpose. The dirt beneath our nails, proof of our
existence. Many a man down the pit had
superstitions of not washing his back for it would wash away his strength, like
a river would wear down the rocks. But I
had superstitions about the dirt beneath my nails. To see them scrubbed clean was to scour the
past from my very hands. I didn't want
to dirty my future by washing away the past.
A man who does not know his history is doomed to repeat it.
If my arms ache, it’s because I know
I’d worked hard the day before. A sign
of a good days work. An echo for the day
to come. A smile would find it’s way to
my lips like a pocket of air to the surface of a lake, rippling with the pain
and pride of a thousand men. I haven’t
heard that echo since that final day. The pride has drained away. The pain remains.
I run and I run and I run to burn my
lungs and find the fire that once fueled me.
But I can’t bloody find it. It’s
not the same fire that burns. It hurts
like hell but it’s not the same. That
aching sensation, the satisfaction in my arms and my back and my legs. Knowing that everything I did, I deserved to
do. Every scrap of food I ate and every
pint I drank, I had earned in sweat down with the rest of them. I had a place in the world. I was a part of the great machinery of
men. I belonged in that hole. Not in this one. This is far blacker and darker than any
shaft. At least down there I knew where
to go to get out, where to turn for light, to come up for air, to find the sun
on my face, for the wind to blow away the dust.
But here, where I am now, this is closer to hell than any depth I ever
worked.
* * * *
My
mother’s begun to notice. “You
alright? Small you’ve gone. What’s the matter with you? You eating tidy?”
“I'm
just running, mam”
“But
there’s nothing to you”
“Running
he is, mun,” shouted my father from the other room.
“I’m
just running more than usual, that’s all, mam,” I said.
“It’s
not normal to run like that. People will
think you’re running from something,” she said, narrowing her eyes at me. “A man needs to eat too,” she said placing a plate
of enough before me.
“I
am eating, mam,” I said staring at the plate.
“He
is eating, gel, stop fussing,” said dad.
“Even if he wasn’t, you’d make sure of it anyhow. Look at the size of that plate! More than my last two meals!”
My
mother furrowed her brow and eyed me up and down again before returning to the
kitchen.
“Have
half of this with me now, dad,” I said, gesturing quietly so my mother wouldn’t
hear.
“Don’t
be so soft...,” he said before breaking into a violent coughing fit. Bad enough to make my mother stop briefly, to
listen, to make sure.
“You
keep running,” he said once he’d caught his breath again, wiping his mouth with
his hanky. “No need to be daft like
this, you know what she’s like.” His
eyes looking down at his hanky, checking.
Slowly being beaten up from the inside.
“Where
d’you run to last?” He asked.
“Same
place,” I said. “Up top”
He
shook his head. “You shouldn’t,
mun. What good’s that doing?” He asked, engaging the same old argument.
“Round
here, dad,” I sighed. “Ain’t that many
places I can go without ending up there.
The town was built around it. All
road’s lead to Rome.”
“Rome
was sacked.”
“So
were we,” I said, trying not to take the bait.
“It’s just the way I go, dad.”
“Is
it hell! Stop obsessing over it. No need for it, mun. It’s not sleeping. Dead it is.
It’s gone! They won’t start it
back up!” He said adamantly.
“I
know that. I’m not stupid” I yelled.
“Leave
it be, then.”
My
mother brought in my father’s plate and placed her own down on the wicker placemat. She had cut up his food into small pieces
again. I caught the look he gave her.
“It’s
not doing no-one no harm is it? What am
I doing if not learning from the mistakes?” I asked.
“What
bloody mistakes?”
“You
know what I’m on about”
“Do
we have to do this again?” My mother
pleaded.
“Ush
now!” My father told her. “There were no mistakes. Hundreds had closed before all that nonsense
with her and the strikes. Things pack
in. You can’t go digging the hell out of
something forever. You end up leaving it
hollow.”
“Like
a tomb.” My mother almost whispered, but still the emphasis rang out around the
table, “Men only ever dig holes that deep for greed and graves.”
“They
would have cut their loses and built a bloody iron cross on the pit head as a
parting shot!” Catching myself, I
immediately regretted my words.
“Now
you watch your mouth!” My father
thundered quietly, pointing his enormous misshapen finger at me from the chair,
his eyes ablaze.
“Sorry,
dad.”
“Ceri’d
be more than glad they closed it. He’d
have closed every one if he could have but he ended up having no choice but to
work down there and what bloody good did that do him?” He asked, slamming the table.
My
mother picked up her plate and left the table for the front room.
"Mam..."
I chased her with my words. My father
watched her leave.
“He’s
still up there! In there somewhere and
he never even wanted to go in! He had no
bastard choice and here you are, after getting out of there in one piece and
you want to go back down!” My father clasped
his forehead, and leaned over onto the table, shaking his head at memories he
wanted gone.
I sat, silently repeating in the same
argument with myself. My father knew too well the cost it had on us locally
when it closed but his history with mining was stained heavily with death. His father, two brothers and his
firstborn. I was a casualty of
circumstance but to my father, I was a living casualty, at least.
My brother hated it, to the point of
fighting to keep me from there, beating up friends who jostled me for staying
on at school and not joining them. He
always thought I wanted to be like him, but that wasn’t it. It wasn't that I wanted to follow him, as he
did my father, and his father before him.
There was no need for me to go but I chose to. It was the way he was received when he was
walking home. The way people looked at
him and the way that he would look back.
It was a mutual respect that I would only see in that walk home, black
faced and determined. No briefcase or posh car ever got those same looks. Dad wasn’t as he was now but he was done with
the pit by then and I could see the pride in his face when Ceri came home. I was too naive to understand it, even after
Ceri. It was the returning home that my
father waited for, not the coming back from work. I never saw that. I went for me, not for dad.
But the looks weren't the same with
me. It had changed after the
accident. Lots change after accidents,
especially ones in small towns like this one.
When I decided to go, It wasn’t pride I saw on their faces as I walked
home that day, but relief. I didn’t want
bloody relief! I wanted them to look and
see me walking home and give me the same nods and we’d have the same silent
exchanges of “Well done, but. You’re
doing it”. But they didn’t. They heard my father's rants and my mothers
tears at the choice I made.
They saw me leave for work but it was
Ceri they saw walking home and would give a regretful shake of the head at the
memory. The ones that did see me, gave
me the “never mind” wink, as if I had no choice but to continue the work like
some familiar production line. But I had
the choice and I chose to go in. It’s
what I wanted to do. It wasn’t a mantle
handed down to me, that I was obliged to carry on the work. I did it for me. Then they went and bloody took it away! They took it all away. The striving and the pride and the worth that
came with it, they took that and all.
The hope of seeing those looks left when they shut those gates.
There was no nostalgia for it, no
longing, only anger. Those “never mind”
winks were constant from then on. And
they were crushing. They were sympathetic at first when we passed. But when we continued to pass, in clean
clothes, in the middle of the day, without that familiar gait of toil and
triumph, but of misery and an unfulfilled day, then came pity. That’s what was
crushing me. The brutal irony of Ceri’s
life, crushed in the darkness. Those
constant looks of pity in the daylight was what was slowly crushing me. Like my father, I was battling with a raging
illness that was killing me from the inside.
“I
just want to go back to work, dad,” I tried.
“It’s all I know.”
“Your
brother should have been a lesson learned and you still went,” he said, slowly
lifting his gaze. “I’m sitting here
coughing my bastard guts up and you still wen...”
As
if for effect, he erupted into a coughing fit, wheezing red faced, like he was
continuing the argument in a language I didn’t understand. A language of consequence and sacrifice. A language my father was fluent in.
I
put my hand out to steady him in his chair.
Exhausted, he slouched back and tilted his head to look at me, his eyes
wet.
“Leave
it be, now,” he said. “Leave it be”
* * * *
I
have this dream where I’m running up the top end of the valley. I usually run early in the morning when it’s
coldest and your breath is white and puffing like an engine. But in this dream it’s too dark for me to see
anything tidy and I keep going the wrong way, finding myself up in dead ends. It’s hot, muggy, like the bowels of the earth
and I’m pouring with sweat but my breath is still swirling until it’s all
around me. I can’t see anything, but I’m
still running. Then I can hear the
flap-flap of someone else running behind me.
I turn around to look but I can’t see anyone, so I keep running. It feels like a clock in an empty room. The second hand catching up with the minutes,
moving closer all the time. It gets
nearer and nearer, getting louder and louder like the pistons of a train, until
I can see who it is. It’s me.
It’s me, coming out of my own swirling
breath. But it’s not me. I’m so thin that it looks like I shouldn’t be
able to run. My skin is pale and grey,
almost see-through, like a newborn fish.
My eyes are bulging out of my head, glazed, not looking at anything,
just staring ahead. He - it - is running
right behind me. It doesn’t try to go
around me. It doesn’t want to go around
me. It’s trying to get into me, so it can be me. So I run harder but
it doesn’t make any difference. It just
keeps running and running and running and getting closer and closer. I’m gasping for air and it’s so hot that I
start struggling to keep my pace and I know that when it gets to me I’m going
to stop running and it’s going to stop running.
Then we’ll both just stop. I’ll
just stop dead. Then there won’t be a me
anymore. It’ll just be this pale,
skinny, dead me, not running, just standing, doing nothing, and when that
happens, I might as well be dead. When
that happens I will be dead.