‘They didn’t say that,’ William says. Gloria is watching him.
‘Maybe I should go?’ says Uncle Robert.
‘Your back wouldn’t last,’ Howard says immediately. ‘No sleep, a long drive and then God knows what.’ Howard nods his head at William, but holds Uncle Robert’s eye. ‘The boy’s a wonderful embalmer, he’s stronger than you or I. Let him go.’
‘With respect,’ William hears himself say, ‘I don’t need permission. I’m going.’
Everyone at the table is looking at him – Uncle Robert, Howard, the Strouds, Gloria – but William doesn’t care.
‘Good on you, lad.’ Mr Stroud pats his hands on the table. ‘This says more about you than any exam results. You show ’em!’
Half an hour later, wrapped in his winter coat, William is on the pavement with his uncle. He’ll drive himself and two other embalmers back home to Birmingham, where they will get changed and load their cars with all the kit and coffins their hearses can hold.
‘You’re going to see things you’ll never forget.’ Uncle Robert glances sideways at William, concern all over his gentle face. He turns back and looks straight ahead. ‘You know, your mother’s not far from Aberfan.’ He slides a piece of paper into William’s pocket. ‘You could call in on her.’
‘I can’t. You know that.’
His uncle’s mouth turns down as it always does when they mention her. He breathes in and out slowly. ‘And you know I’ve never accepted that, and I never will.’
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.
? ? ?
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.
? ? ?
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.