Disturbing Ground (22 page)

Daylight was fading. Colours were damped down for the night. Like a coal fire. They threaded their way silently down the hill following yet another of the sheep paths, emerging near the rugby pitch.

As they reached Barbara’s front door she spoke. “I hope … I wish …”

Megan knew exactly what she wished. That none of it had happened. That it really had been a figment of Bianca’s distorting mind. Maybe it was. It was what she wanted to believe too.

“Come in for a cup of tea,” Barbara said warmly. “And I’ve made a
Teisen
Lap.
It’ll save you cooking when you get home.”

It was this practical streak, Megan reflected, which had made Barbara such a good headmistress. Her practical housekeeping.

The atmosphere inside was homey, organised, still fragrant with lingering baking smells, clean and traditional. They sat and drank tea and skirted round the main issues. Neither of them mentioned Stefan Parker - or Bianca - or
anyone else who would have broken the spell. Megan felt lulled into a sense of well-being. All was right with the world. And Llancloudy in particular.

It was what she wanted to believe.

She kissed Barbara goodbye and climbed into her Calibra, still with that warmth pervading.

But
it
didn’t
last.

She bought a paper on the way home and read, on page four, that the body of a young boy found floating in the mouth of the Bristol Channel had been ruled out as being the body of the missing boy, Stefan Parker. A couple were understood to be travelling down from Yorkshire for purposes of identification.

She tore page four out, folded it up and tossed it in the back of the car.

Halfway home she was suddenly seized with curiosity. Barbara had sparked it off, colouring in the picture she had had of Bleddyn Hughes, breathing life into the man, making her feel as though she knew him - even if only for the reason that they both enjoyed the same poem. She had memorised the address at which he had once lived. And forty-five Bethesda Street was on her way home; an uncompromising row of dirty stone terraced houses probably built at a period just before the First World War, when piety was more important than sanitation and the men trooped home late from the pits to clean themselves in a tin bath in front of the fire. She turned in to the right of the enormous chapel. There was a parking space blocked off with a traffic cone right in front of number forty-five beneath a Neighbourhood Watch sign fixed to a lamp-posts. She shifted the cone and manoevered her car between a fourteen-year-old Fiesta and a blue Toyota Celica with a personalised numberplate.
Cariad,
darling. She locked her
car door, threaded round the front and read the numberplate again - only to feel cheated. It didn’t read
Cariad
at all. On closer inspection it was simply a trick. CAR14D. But it was a nice car.

She knocked on the door feeling a silly, vague disappointment at the mild deceit. And knocked again, wondering. Thirty years later would anyone in this street remember the disappearance of a nondescript school teacher? Even in the valleys where memories were so long that elephants appeared amnesiac in comparison.

Grubby net curtains twitched. An old man glared out at her with frank hostility. He was shouting something. Banging at the window. She recognised him straight away. It was the angry man at Bianca’s funeral … Caspian Driver’s visitor … Rumpelstilskin. He must have recognised her but he was scowling. She smiled at him. He glared back at her and shook his fist. She was taken aback.

She took a deep breath and banged on the front door. The face at the window vanished then reappeared as he pulled the door open.

“Mr Jones - ”

“That’s my bloody parkin’ spot you’re in. Tight they are in this street.”

She turned around to look. “Where is your car?”

“Not here at the moment. It’s being done at the garage. Some soddin’ vandals broke the windscreen. Now, what is it?”

“I wanted to ask you something, about someone who used to live here.”

He looked only vaguely curious, still angry. “Well, come in then, won’t you? No need to stand on the doorstep. I expect you’ll have some tea.”

Tea was a delaying tactic Megan usually avoided, but
in this case she accepted and waited while he shuffled around in the kitchen, boiling up a kettle and pouring milk painfully slowly into a jug, rattling cups and saucers before shuffling back into the sitting room and placing a tray on an oak dining table which stood at the back. It was a dark, old-fashioned room, stuffy with the musty scent of stale tobacco. The focal point was a beige-tiled fireplace at which burned slowly and without enthusiasm a few lumps of dusty coal.

“So what can I do for you? This isn’t one of those elderly health checks they keep offerin’ me, is it?” He gave a thin smile.

“No.”

“So?” He sucked a long, greedy sip of tea, his eyes not leaving her face. “Get to the point.”

“How long have you lived in this house, Mr Jones?”

“All of my life.”

“Do you remember the school teacher? The one who disappeared in the early seventies? Bleddyn Hughes.”

“I do. My wife and I took him in as a lodger when we was first married. It was slack down the pit and we were down to a three day week. My wife didn’t earn much doing people’s hair and we badly wanted to keep the house. His money helped, you see.”

Megan searched Jones’ wrinkled face for some knowledge, some emotion but she would have sworn there was nothing. He stared back at her, the only expression on his face irritation.

“He disappeared.” She hadn’t meant it to sound so much like an accusation.

“I know. The police. They came looking for him, turned the house over from top to bottom they did. Couldn’t find nothin’. He’d just gone.”

“Where?”

“London, they said.” For the first time she heard doubt in his voice.

“What do you think happened to him?”

“I wasn’t sure.”

“I said think, Mr Jones. Think.”

The aggression blazed back. “I don’t know what it’s got to do with you. It was years ago. You probably never even knew him. Whatever happened to him it’s all dead and forgotten. The papers said - ”

“I know what the papers said. What do you say, Mr Jones?”

“I say he was a bad influence. Better that he went. Though he owed us rent and never said he was going I was still glad we was rid of him.”

“Did he have,” Megan hesitated, “boyfriends?”

“Not here. We would not have tolerated that.”

“But - ”

“But nothin’. The man was a rotten apple. And he was busy convertin’ others to his ways. Not safe to leave near children. Better he went. He was gettin’ …”

Megan’s interest quickened. “He was getting what?”

“Noticed. Picked on, a couple of times.” She had a feeling this had not been what he had planned to say but she let Jones plough on. “Unnerved him something terrible. Came home one night shivering and his nose bleeding.”

“Did you tell the police all this?”

“They didn’t want to know,” Jones said simply. “They’d already made up their minds well before they came here. They knew, you see.”

“How do you explain the fact that Hughes has never been found?”

Jones shrugged. “Don’t know and I don’t care neither. And neither should you.”

There was a silence.

“Other people have gone missing,” Megan said quickly. “Children.”

He dismissed the vanishings. “They aren’t important. But now there’s this other little boy.”

Megan smiled. She wasn’t quite sure how Stefan Parker would have reacted to hearing himself described as, “This other little boy.”

But the phrase sobered her too. For all his illegal tattoos and piercings Stefan was or had been a child of ten years old. If he had been hurt or threatened, his reaction would soon have crumbled from Rambo bravado to a childish terror. Children were children. Only their veneers were different. Cheap copies of designer clothes, earrings, tattoos, foul language and the air of fake sophistication that streetwise kids of the valleys wore like a suit of armour. Put them against the little sweeties from the Howells School in Cardiff or the Llandaff choir school. Underneath they were the same. Children.

“You’re a mining engineer, Mr Jones. You must know the place. Could he be lost in the mines?”

“It’s possible.”

“And not found by the police?”

“Oh for goodness sake. Have you any idea what’s underfoot at Llancloudy? It’s a rabbit warren. There’s no way you’d be able to explore all that’s under the ground of this valley.”

“But the mines were deep. How would you …?”

“There’s access points all over the place. Holes for inspection. They have to make sure they aren’t flooding. The engineers, we have to go down to inspect. I did - until I retired.”

“But - ”

“But nothing.” He stared back at her, defiantly and she
was intrigued. He struck her as an intelligent man. Yet he had worked all his life underground. She wondered whether he had trod the path of many here, supporting his family, unable to afford the expensive and unearning luxury of higher education. She wondered what he thought about the vanishings, whether he might know something about Geraint Smithson. He had spent enough time at Triagwn.

“There have been a few accidents or disappearances lately. Bianca drowned.”

“Oh, Bianca,” Jones said contemptuously. “She was a nutcase. A nuisance. Well rid of her we are.”

A pair of hostile dark eyes stared into her own. “I can’t understand why you’re asking all these questions. You’re a doctor. What’s it got to do with you? Why are you pokin’ your nose in?”

She produced the lamest of excuses. “The well being of the town.”

Jones chortled. “Don’t make a fool of yourself. Leave all this to the police, why don’t you? It’s
their
job.
Yours
is the health of the citizens of this little place. You’ve got enough work keeping it healthy, doctor, while the police keep it safe and leave the locals to weed
out undesirables.”

Through
Neighbourhood
Watch.

She stared at him, sensing the misanthropy of a small town Welsh preacher.

She left soon after feeling chastened and reflective. He was right. It was not her place to investigate disappearances. But no one else was. First-hand she was watching the story of Stefan Parker’s disappearance trickle away to nothing. As she unlocked her car door she saw Jones watching her through the window. As soon as she had vacated the spot she replaced the traffic
cone. A police car slid past. She couldn’t see who was in it. It was too dark.

She wanted to be home, alone. She felt shaky and uncertain as she drove towards the top of the valley. She backed her car into the one available space left outside her own front door. Barely large enough for the Calibra. A sense of relief flooded through her as she closed the door behind her, drew the curtains, switched the lamp on, tossed her shoes in the corner and settled in the chair. Her eyes closed but she could see people.

Bianca as she had looked when she had last met her. Heavily powdered, whitened skin, thickly smeared lipstick, an uncomprehending expression on her face. Megan recalled the way she had submitted to the fortnightly injection given without ceremony into her bottom as Bianca held her knickers down. As Megan’s trance deepened, Bianca transformed into the woman in the Gericault.
Madwoman
inflicted
with
envy.
In the painting the woman was clearly envious. But it was not normal envy; it was a distortion of the emotion. She did not know what it was she coveted. Megan breathed deeper. Sane people recognise, understand, analyse their emotions. Mad people, according to Gericault, do not. Cannot. Their emotions merely add to their confusion. They are
inflicted.

Dreadfully
staring…

Thro’ muddy
impurity

As
When
with
the
daring

Last
look
of
despairing

Fix’
d
on
futurity

What had Bianca seen when she had “fix’d on futurity”? What had she heard?

Megan breathed deeply and heard other words.

“A
rabbit
warren.”

Caspian Driver had been a mining engineer.

Bianca’s urgent words.

“Such
a
sweet
little
girl.
Always
chattering.
”

“You’re
not
so
smart
as
some
that
are
labelled
mad.
”

“The
little
girl
was
going
to
buy
some
chips
she
was.”
Smithson who had babbled indiscriminately.

Rumpelstiltskin dancing his dance of fury.

Her mind flicked from Bianca, Smithson and Jones to Arwel Smithson. He would have been nineteen years old when Bleddyn Hughes had vanished. She could picture him, swaggering, bullying, swearing, a drinker even at that age. And a womaniser too. The very antithesis of Hughes, the English teacher. Cultured, gentle, sensitive.

And what had Geraint Smithson been like thirty years ago?

Back to Bianca and the Hood poem,
One
more
unfortu
nate.
Or to shift the emphasis, One
more
unfortunate.

Alun with his wife, soon to be doting on the new born baby? She squeezed her eyes shut in sudden pain, struggling to blot out the image of pride, achievement, love.

Barbara’s words,
“I
hate
ignorance.
”

Megan sat up, her eyes wide open. How much had the teacher hated ignorance? Enough to destroy those who refused to learn?

What was the makeup of Llancloudy?

She posed the question the following day to her two partners and, as she had expected, each had their own perspective. As a rank outsider, Andy viewed Llancloudy in a very objective way. “I think the people here are friendly but quick to make judgements. Old-fashioned.” His dark eyes fixed on hers with a hint of sadness. “And they can be very unforgiving.”

“What made you choose here?” she asked curiously.

“I had an uncle in Cardiff,” Andy said. “He told me the valleys people would make me welcome,” he said. “He told me they would not even notice my colour.” He gave a great, belly laugh, “because they were blacker than me - from coal dust.”

She chuckled. “And is that true?”

He looked serious. “About the coal dust no,” he said, “but about them not even noticing what colour I am.” He hesitated. “Yes,” he said finally. “That is true. They are not prejudiced.”

Phil looked up from the pile of prescriptions he was signing. “Except against the English,” he said and they laughed.

“So what do you think? How do you find this little place?”

Phil too thought for a moment. “I think it’s hard to be private here. People don’t have a lot of space. And that causes problems.” He grinned. “Sometimes I’m reminded of rats in a cage. If they’re denied enough room they start to bite each other’s heads off. It’s the same here. Didn’t Robert Frost make the comment, Good Fences Make Good Neighbours? Here there aren’t enough fences.”

“There
aren’t
enough
fences,”
Megan said slowly.

As she left the surgery she pondered over her partners’ words. They seemed to have great significance. Somewhere, buried in them, was the answer to it all. She could find it if she searched with her eyes wide open, her consciousness attuned.

She drove to Triagwn. And met Sandra in the hallway. who looked startled to see her. “We didn’t expect you today,” she said. “Still. It’s nice to see you. Who have you come to see?”

“You,” Megan answered steadily. “I wanted to see you.”

“Oh?” It was not welcome.

“Can we go into your office?”

Sandra led the way silently, shooting swift glances from side to side. When they reached the office door Megan closed it behind them, crossed to the window and picked up the photograph that stood on the coffee table.

“Can I ask you something?”

“Go ahead.” Sandra looked nervous.

“You didn’t like Geraint Smithson, did you?”

“I don’t need to
like
my patients, Megan. I simply have to
nurse
them. But since you ask, no, I didn’t like him.”

“Why not?”

“Look - what’s this got to do with anything?”

“Please - answer the question.”

Sandra stared back at her, vaguely hostile.

“All right,” Megan said, “I’ll answer it for you. Your grandfather. He worked down the mine?”

Sandra took the photograph from her, held it and stared down. “And it cost him his life. He was barely sixty when he died. And he’d been on oxygen for the last four years of his life. While Smithson lives to be ninety-four.
My grandfather had no choices in life. There weren’t any other jobs. It was the mine or education in South Wales. Most families couldn’t afford to educate more than one youngster. And everyone had to contribute towards their education. In my grandfather’s time he went down the pit at fourteen. No. I didn’t like Smithson. I couldn’t separate him from what he’d done - exploited the people of the Welsh Valleys and got rich.”

Megan eyed her defiantly. “And what did you think he died of?”

Sandra’s answer was guarded. “I don’t know what they’ve put on the death certificate. Heart failure?”

“The pathologist rang. He …” Megan was aware she must tread very carefully. There was no proof Smithson had died of anything other than natural causes. “The post mortem was inconclusive,” she said finally.

Sandra let out a short breath. “Well,” she said calmly, “that’s often the way with old people. Difficult to tell what they’ve died of. Multiple pathology.”

Megan nodded. She could say no more. An accusation without proof would land her up in the courts. And she knew it.

She returned to her evening surgery, her mind tussling furiously with the ever growing questions.

Gwen Owen had decided to drag her long suffering husband along to her Friday evening’s consultation. And as usual she had a stream of complaints. Her arthritis, her pain, her headaches, her depression, her tiredness. She couldn’t sleep and her stomach was playing her up - again. Her husband sat back, his eyes half closed and Megan wondered how on earth he could put up with her.

Surprisingly, Carole Symmonds had been pushed in as an extra, apparently demanding to see her. Megan was
prepared for another long list - depression, anxiety - but here she was in for a surprise. Carole winked at her and asked for the “morning after pill”. Obviously her grief had faded. Her life had picked up again. Megan wrote out the prescription, gave her some further advice and then was struck by another question.

“Who cut your mother’s hair?”

Carole looked astonished.

“Mam’s hair,” she said. “I don’t know. Years ago it used to be Muriel Jones. But she died two - three years ago. Since then I don’t know. But it always looked tidy, didn’t it? Apart from the colour. I think she did that herself.”

She grinned and sallied out of the surgery clutching her prescription like a trophy. And now Megan had finished for the weekend. It stretched ahead of her with promise.

She drove home passed Bethesda Street and noticed an aged yellow VW Golf pulled up outside Mervyn Jones’ house, parked next to the blue Celica, with the
Cariad
numberplate.

She was forced to pull in to let another car thread through as the street had been reduced to one lane by the close parking. A woman came out of a door, descended the steps and unlocked the Toyota.

She was a young woman in her late twenties with long, brown hair and she was heavily pregnant. She turned and waved to someone in the house before climbing into the car and turning over the engine. Megan drove off.

There
must
be
plenty
of
pregnant
women
in
Llancloudy.
The
woman
who
drove
the
Cariad
car
was
not
necessarily
Alun’s
wife.

She’d had plans to go to a concert in Cardiff that night; the
Manic Street Preachers were playing in the Millennium Stadium. But there was a message on her answering machine that her friend had the ‘flu and she didn’t want to go alone. It was a bit late to ring round other friends. She tried two or three, got no answer and gave up. She glanced through the paper but there was nothing she wanted to watch on the TV.

She felt fidgety. She would walk down to the video shop and rent a film.

Ryan and Mark were hanging around outside, both of them dragging away at cigarettes. They eyed her warily.

“Hi,” she said. “How are you?”

She ignored their fags. This wasn’t the time for Health Education. They wouldn’t have taken any notice anyway.

“We’re all right.”

“No news then, about Stefan?”

Both of them looked at the floor and she knew their friend’s disappearance had cut very deep. She also knew that it had frightened them, unnerved them.

“Heard anything from the police?”

They shook their heads in unison. Mark chucked his cigarette away. It fizzed in a puddle.

Megan jerked her head towards the lurid posters in the video shop window. “Recommend any good films?”

“Hannibal.
”

“Texas
Chain
Saw
-
”

“Not my cup of tea. Too gory.”

“But you’re dealing with blood all day.”

She laughed. “Not in the quantities Hollywood use.”

They laughed too. Mark mumbling, “Anyway, it’s just fake.” Ryan gave him a swift glance.

She broke the taboo.

“Did Stefan have a row with anyone?”

Mark looked at her. “What do you mean?”

“Did someone threaten him? Did he make anyone angry?”

Ryan stared at her with pity. “We’re always annoyin’ someone,” he said. “Someone’s always shoutin’ at us.” And they scuffed away, down the street, hands deep into their pockets. She watched them go with a feeling of frustration.

Megan selected a film, a Merchant Ivory classic but something was niggling at her all the way home. However good the film she would find it hard to concentrate. She was far too agitated. A night’s clubbing would be more appropriate than a polite film to blot up all this excess energy. Maybe she should have gone to the concert alone.

The police car had stopped a little way up the road but she knew it was Alun even before she put her key in the door and felt his hand behind her. “Meggie,” he said.

He followed her inside. She threw the video on the sofa. “Good to see you, Alun.”

“You too.”

“I - I  - ”

“I don’t know what I’m doing here,” he said awkwardly. “I should be at home, really.”

She nodded.

“Well - as you’re here you may as well sit down.”

He sat opposite her and they smiled awkwardly. “I worry about you, Meggie.”

She moved then, knelt on the floor and looked up at him. “I’m all right, Alun. I’ll be OK now. It’s been a bad year. But now I’m fine.”

“I wish,” he began but she shushed him with a finger on his lips.

“We move on,” she said. “It’s the best way - to move on. Put the past behind us, change. There was a point in
time when we were - could have been. But we moved on.”

“Did you love me?”

She nodded and touched the thick, wiry hair. “I did,” she said. “Of course I did. Don’t you know,” she teased, “that your first love imprints on your mind so anyone you meet after that is compared to them?”

He
had
beautiful
eyes,
dark
green-brown,
fringed
with
thick
black
eyelashes.
She
still
loved
those
eyes.

“Is that true?”

“Oh yes.”

His arms were around her. “Then …”

She pulled away. “But you can’t lose what you have - a wife, practically two children.”

“But it isn’t perfect, Meggie.”

She felt suddenly weary. “Nothing ever is. If it seems so then we are deceived.”

He drew her hair into a pony-tail, tilted her face up to his. An age-old, well-remembered gesture.

“Do you really think if you dumped your own family what we’d have could be anywhere near perfect?”

He nuzzled her neck and didn’t answer.

“Do really think you could live with your conscience?”

Again he didn’t answer.

“Look around you, Alun. How many families stay together in this area? Not so many. Keep yours.”

He was staring at her woodenly, his breath coming in short gasps.

“I mean it,” she said. “You’re walking down Memory Lane. It’s too late.”

He tried to pull her back to him but she felt disheartened. The image of the woman in the blue Celica depressed her. She whispered,
“Cariad.”

“The sun always shines down Memory Lane,” she said
bitterly. “The birds never stop singing, the flowers are brightly coloured and always in bloom. Nothing ever dies down Memory Lane.”

He came to, let go of her hair, sat back in his chair. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I couldn’t help it. I’ll always carry a torch for you, Meggie.”

And
I
for
you.

“But you’re right. I have responsibilities. And you did leave me. Besides, I am happy with Sandra.”

She
rejected
the
last
part
of
his
statement.

“Anyway I didn’t only come to talk to you on a personal basis,” he said. “I’ve got a bit of news for you. I don’t think any of this is going to be relevant but it’s come up on the PNC and I thought you’d want to know.”

She moved away farther. “What?”

“There had been complaints,” he said, “about all of them, logged on at some time. Hughes, the teacher, George and Neil and Marie Walker too.”

“What sort of complaints?”

“Oh - general nuisance. Hughes - you know about. A few parents had said they were uncomfortable with the way he dealt with their children. Nothing specific, you understand, otherwise we’d have acted.”

“And what about George and Neil?”

“Vandalism. They’d smashed up a couple of phone boxes, nicked money, and a couple of weeks later they’d broken the glass in the bus shelters. That sort of thing. They’d been cautioned more than once.”

“And Stefan?”

“Him too.”

“The same sort of thing?”

“Yes. You know, shop windows broken, incivilities. Underage drinkin’ on the street.”

“Alun,” she said, “what are you saying?”

“That they weren’t wanted here. Llancloudy didn’t want them.”

She turned around then with a smile touching her face. “So are you telling me that Llancloudy disposed of them?”

He laughed, uncomfortably. “Don’t be silly.”

She reached up then and touched his face, remembering the first, awkward, embarrassed time they had made love. The memory was strong, particularly when she searched his eyes. It had stayed with her, vivid enough to make her want him again.

This time it was she who blushed.