Dust

Dust

The old man slouched in the old man's bus shelter. The rain spittle
spattering on the corregated tin roof. His stick was sat on the bench
next to him and his clothes were dusty and dark, thick and woollen,
beating out the cold. It was Thursday, and on Thursday afternoon old
aged pensioners could get their hair cut cheaply in town. He picked the
cap off his head and ran his hand through his still reasonably thick
hair. 'Thirty-five pence for a seventy year old man. That's half a pee
for each year. Not a bad little cut at that. Good and trim.' He pulled
his cap back on tight, rubbed his swollen nose and waited for the bus.
He quite liked taking the bus on wet days. Anyway, it was too far for
his legs to walk up the hill now, but he liked the way the bus
shuddered and rumbled, struggled and pulled, straining as if the engine
were about to snap cleanly in two. And he liked the wet windows, wiping
the mist clear, peering through the hole that his cuff sleeve made. The
drivers were a good bunch too - not that he knew any of their names.
But as soon as they realised he was only going to the top of the hill,
they'd wink at him and push his change back into his palm. "Don't worry
about it, Grandad", one of the younger ones had said to him. "Save it
towards a bottle of whiskey for Christmas". Ever since he'd been making
use of the bus, he'd only ever had to pay his full fare twice.
The rain had set in for the day, and as he sat there waiting, he
watched the gutters. Water whooshing along the double yellows like
miniature Colorado Rivers, carrying rusty leaves which bobbed
dinghy-like down the grand rapids. Some of them came to a halt,
clogging up the drains. But others continued on their course, down the
hill, into the town.
"River'll probably flood tonight", he thought to himself. "Trouble in
town. Sandbags and soiled goods". He wondered whether it would be
raining in Adelaide. Adelaide Australia. Where his son Bryn and his
family now lived, having upped-sticks and skidaddled from this gloomy
valley, seeking a life of pleasure, leisure and untold riches. Not that
they'd found it yet, of course. Bryn was working in a fire station as
an 'incident manager'. His job, it seemed, was to keep an overall eye
on what fires were happening where and make sure that there were fire
crews available. Luckily, he'd never had to actually put out a fire
himself - there were trained men to do such things. But his father knew
that he would be good at his job, having been blessed with the right
sort of brain for order and control. "Practically a managerial
position", he smiled under his twisted old lips.
Bryn's wife Lucy also had a job - as a waitress in a cafeteria. It
didn't pay much apparently, but it occupied her mind now that the kids
were a bit older and both at school. They were, as Bryn so often put
it, managing to get by.
"Middle of the night there now". He rubbed his cold, blackened
fingers. "Won't be bloody raining either, I'll bet".
"What was that, Mister?"
He looked up. He hadn't noticed that somebody else had come into the
shelter - he'd been too busy thinking to himself. Thinking out loud as
it now appeared.
A young lad of about fourteen was standing near him. Looking at him.
Face quite impassive.
"Got a cigarette, Mister?"
"What? Oh&;#8230;" He was ever so slightly thrown, but quickly
regained his mental balance. "Cigarette? No, mun. Afraid I haven't.
Gave it up years ago."
The boy shrugged his shoulders and wiped his hand across his wet face,
blowing the drips of water off the tip of his nose. He was a
fair-haired young man with undeveloped features and wide questioning
eyes. Short and thin, many crueller and less sensitive individuals
might have called him 'a bit of a titch', 'stunted' or 'weedy'.
However, his Mam probably loved him and that was what mattered.
"You shouldn't be smoking either, bach. How old are you?"
"Fifteen nearly. Next year."
"Fifteen! Your lungs will be buggered before you know it. Filthy
habit."
The boy sat down on the bench next to the old man and rested his head
back on the slimy, stone wall.
"My Mam says I shouldn't smoke, an' all. Don't let me smoke in the
house, my Mam."
"No, she shouldn't," the old man chastised. "Terrible bloody smell it
makes in a house, smoke. You want to pack it in lad. It's no good for
you."
"That's what she says."
"I finished with all that smoking business years ago. Used to cough
enough with the pit, you see. Working down there, used to come up and
spit lumps of black. I could do without smoking, to be honest. I've
buggered up my lungs enough without the fags".
"My Dad works down the pit," the boy interjected. "Colliery-man, he
is."
"It's a tough life. They work you hard. Look at those hands," he
proffered them up to the young boy, "See those scars? Those black
scars? Coal dust. Never come out they won't. Got 'em for life. A life
sentence of dirty fingers for the crime of working hard."
"Aye. My Dad's got some scars on his forehead. Took his hat off once
and a load of coal fell on top of him. Knocked him out cold, it did. He
was alright though, shook him up a bit. My Mam says that I'll end up
following Dad down the pit if I don't start working harder at my
lessons. Wants me to be a school teacher, she does."
"Good job being a school teacher. Decent wage. My Mam wanted me to be
a school teacher too. I always let her down though, poor old
Mam."
"I'd rather bunk off school and play rugby and cricket with some of
the other boys up on the Darran. I don't like sums and reading and all
that stuff. I'd rather run about and chase girls. Have a bit of a
laugh."
The old man went quiet and shut his eyes. Ghosts of the past, wisps of
memories and aches of unfinished and unstarted things filled his head
and heart.
"What's your name, boy?"
"Billy. Billy Williams."
The old man chuckled under his age ole breath.
"Puffing Billy, I'll call you. After the train."
The boy looked confused. It was obvious from his face that he'd been
out chasing girls and playing rugby the day that locomotive history had
been covered in class. He scratched his head and stared at his
feet.
"It must be funny to be old," he said innocently. "To have seen so
much stuff."
"It is funny," replied the old man, his voice sadder and quieter than
before. "It is funny, and it's not funny, if you see what I mean. This
old town has changed so much since I was your age. In those days, life
revolved around the pit. Everything you ever did had something to do
with it. You'd go drinking with your butties and talk about the pit.
You'd go to corporation dances and try to kiss the daughters of the
corporation bosses. The food you ate and the beer you drunk was all
bought with money from the pit. And when you went home at night and
washed in the bath, it was the pit you was washing off your skin. Then
the war came and you had to go off and think about something else for a
bit."
"Did you fight in the war, Mister?" the young man urgently chirped
in.
"Yes. Yes I did, bach. France."
"Did you ever kill anyone?" even more urgently.
The old man shut his eyes again, tight and still as marble. After a
short while they sprung open and he turned to face the boy. He could
see just how young he was now, how na?ve. Little more than a baby. A
little baby boy-bach with bright blue bauble eyes, much like his own
used to be.
"I hope you never have to fight in a war, boy. Fighting's not like it
is in the pictures. It's not all black hats and white hats and three
cheers for the hero. It's murky and it's muddy and it's messy and I
hope you never have to do it. I hope no-one has to do it. Never
again."
The boy looked the old man up and down, a sad expression on his face.
The old man recognised it as the face of a young lad who, looking for
excitement and adventure, is smacked on the back of his legs by his Mam
and told not to be so silly and to go to bed at once.
"It's a tough life, boy," was all he could think of to console him
with. "Tougher than you might think it is right now. Whether you become
a teacher or a miner - and if Mr. Heath has his way you probably won't
become one of those - if you are a teacher or a miner or a doctor or a
factory worker, you find it's a tough life alright. No question. And
it's probably going to get tougher. A lot tougher. I mean, things have
got cleaner and easier these days, but there's something not quite
right. Not like it used to be. Everything's more&;#8230;..plastic.
Less real. Less honest. People are less honest. Fake."
He turned to look at the boy. But he had gone, as suddenly as he had
appeared. The old man craned his neck to try and see him walking away
from the shelter, but he saw nothing. No sign that the boy had ever
even been there. He sighed and muttered to himself. The rain was coming
down even harder now, banging like a hammer on the roof, and the bus
was late. He pulled his coat tightly across his shoulders and shivered.
He was beginning to feel the cold.

It was the bus driver who found him. Old Puffing Billy Williams' body
was still sat on the bench, his cap perched on top of his head, walking
stick next to him. He'd been gone for some time. Sat there, waiting for
the bus after getting a rare haircut in town and slipping away while it
rained. Billy Williams, forty-two years underground, married to Enid
who died last May, one son in Australia was taken away to the mortuary
by an ambulance with no blue lights flashing nor siren screaming.

mlock@bridgend.ac.uk