The gentle patter of dog’s claws on the path behind stops just as William registers it. He turns. Ears pricked, head to one side, the Jack Russell looks at him before trotting off, sniffing the road, lifting its leg. William wipes his sleeve across his face. Time to clamp his defences back down before the flotsam and jetsam of his own life is washed up by the tidal wave of Aberfan’s grief; his father’s death, the abrupt end to his chorister days, the rift with his mother, with Martin. And now, Gloria. The cold hardens around him and the weight of the white sky seems to push down on the hillside. He can tell by the rise and fall of their voices that the villagers are singing ‘Jesu, Lover of My Soul’。
Afterwards, they drift down the mountainside and along the pavements towards home. William watches, hands deep in his pockets, his thumbnail catching on the loose lining.
The vivid grass tufting down the middle of the lane is so bright it seems to be singing to him, its pointed blades distinct and intense. And the phone box, the reddest of reds, shouts out to him at the turn of the path. He pulls a threepenny bit from his pocket.
It’s colder inside the phone box than out; the air is dank and solid. The click-click-click-click of the dial grinding back into position, the distant purr of the dialling tone – all of it particular and sharp in the enclosed space. At the shrill pips, William pushes the coin into the slot.
‘William? Is that you? Are you all right?’
William tastes his stale breath bouncing back from the heavy Bakelite. ‘I’m fine.’
‘We’ve been out of our minds,’ Robert says, ‘where are you?’
‘Aberfan.’
There is a pause. ‘The funerals.’
‘Yep.’
‘You sure you’re all right?’
‘I think so.’ The silence, William knows, is his uncle’s wariness of giving advice, being overly parental. ‘I sang to them.’
‘What did you sing?’ The urgent pips cut in between them and William fumbles in his pocket to find another coin, shoving it in with numb fingers. ‘Hello?’ Robert says.
‘Hello.’
‘What did you sing to them?’
‘“Myfanwy”。’ The pause is so long William breaks it. ‘Uncle Robert?’
‘Lucky them,’ he says eventually, ‘I bet they thought it was beautiful.’
‘No one heard, but it doesn’t matter.’
Robert laughs softly. ‘Come on home, boy.’
‘Uncle Robert?’
‘Yes?’
‘Thank you.’
‘What for?’
‘Making me an embalmer.’
‘You’ve done that yourself, William.’
‘I won’t be back till late. I’m going to Swansea.’
‘Oh!’ Robert says, suddenly louder. ‘Good! We’ll be here. Waiting.’
? ? ?
William drives west, the crumpled paper with an address in Robert’s handwriting on the dashboard. When he reaches Mumbles, he stops to ask in a corner newsagent for directions to Plunch Lane. He’s close. The five-minute drive ends with him parking his car opposite a chalet-style house halfway up a steep hill.
He turns off his lights and stares at the illuminated face of his mother’s home, lights shining through the curtains of both downstairs windows. He can’t quite believe that her life is contained within the walls of this neat little house, with its beige gravel path and privet hedge, that he has not once visited. He imagines sitting down with her and telling her what he’s seen, what he’s done at Aberfan. He imagines that old feeling of being the centre of her world, the focus of her intense love and attention.
Bone-tired and hungry, he knows it was the raw displays of parental love in the mortuary that have bought him to her house. The dogged blame and judgement that have sustained him for so long started to lose their grip in Aberfan. With the engine off, and the car growing rapidly colder, force of habit takes over. She left him, after all, to come here. None of this was his doing. He taps his head on the steering wheel, the cold creeping into his muscles. He lets the familiar reel play again; her driving away, waving but not looking back at him, the impact just above his sternum, the desolation of watching her leave.
Robert had suggested he invite her to his graduation, telling William that he and Evelyn had exchanged letters over the past few months; friendly, open. ‘Maybe we can put all this behind us,’ he’d said. William flinches at the memory of the recent – the only – argument he’s ever had with Uncle Robert.