with Bryntaf and Aberfan Mawr
still to go.
ANNE closes the door and looks in the mirror.
ANNE
Jack.
No father should witness what he saw.
Can’t help but ask why, can you?
Why his girl, not me?
Why at that moment,
when so many couldn’t,
he had to see?
JACK-THE-MILK, out on the street, waves to a neighbour.
DAI is on the colliery bus.
DAI
Like the valley’s still asleep
when the mist’s down this deep.
But it isn’t – never really quiet this village.
One shift coming up, another going down.
Farmers on the hill out for their stock,
mothers stoking the grates,
kids getting ready, trying not to be late.
MYFANWY DAVIES is lighting her fire.
MYFANWY
Then shop deliveries soon.
Busy place, see?
Which is good, of course.
God knows, others have got it worse.
We’ve still got the mine for one.
And the factories:
ICM, Lines Toys, GKN,
Hoover of course –
So yeah, plenty going round to pay the rent.
DAI gets off the colliery bus.
DAI
Boys from here, I tell you,
they got it better than their fathers,
walking straight out of school into steady employment.
EDNA, a farmer, is out on the hill above the village.
EDNA
Wasn’t always like this, of course.
Summer grazing, that’s what
brought the first people here.
Good land, sheltered spot,
fed by six streams at least.
It’s all still here, in a way,
in the names, the streets.
Hafod Tanglwys –
the summer place of Tanglwys.
Bryn Golau – hill of light.
Pantglas – the green hollow,
and still is I suppose,
though with kids now not grass.
And Aberfan, of course –
the mouth of the Fan,
the biggest of those streams
feeding the Taff.
MYFANWY prepares breakfast,
the sound of her boys dressing above her.
MYFANWY
Was the steam coal what changed all that.
And John Nixon.
He’s still here too, other side of the Taff.
Nixonville it’s called,
though far as I can see whole place is that man’s.
I mean, was him who started the pit,
and the pit what made Aberfan.
DAI approaches his home.
DAI
From up north he was. Newcastle way.
Saw Merthyr coal burned on the Thames one day,
and couldn’t believe it.
No smoke in the coal – never seen that before.
So he came down here looking for more.
Went to Mrs Thomas he did, up at the Graig.
There she was, sitting in her hut
at the mouth of the shaft,
a basket by her head for the cash,
girls sorting by hand outside.
150 tonnes a day she was selling.
But no more.
That’s what she told Nixon.
Reckoned she’d taken too much already
out from under the valley’s floor.
MYFANWY
But Nixon? Well, he was modern,
didn’t understand the words ‘Too much’.
JOHN PHILLIPS, a crane driver, stands on the summit of
tip number seven, high and isolated in the morning mist.
JOHN
So he sunk his own – the deepest so far –
then worked his way south, from Navigation
to Deep Duffryn, to here, Merthyr Vale.
He’d proved it, see?
That 10 hours of fire from Aberdare
was worth 12 at least from the Tyne.
DAI
By the time I left school
there seemed no question. The war was over
and my father, well, he was suffering from dust.
So I went down – twenty years next month.
Mrs Thomas would turn, I bet,
to think we’re still digging it out.
DAI reaches his home.
Above him, TOMOS waves from his window.
DAI
Generations down that pit.
Not my boys though.
I’m working down there, so they won’t.
Will’s heading for an apprentice at JJ’s garage
and well, according to some he’s got a chance in the ring.
And Tomos bach, he’s good with his hands too,
in a different way. Only nine,
but plays piano with both of them.
DAI enters his house. MYFANWY takes his coat.
MYFANWY
And now look at us.
Shops, if you could see them in this mist,
from one end of the village to the other.
Shopkeepers begin opening their stores, putting out stock.
You watch, any minute now
those awnings’ll start coming down,
like a high street flotilla.
With each shop mentioned a chorus of voices grows.
MYFANWY & CHORUS
Post office,
tailor’s,
the Aberfan,
the Mack.
The co-op,
Maypoles,
Barbara’s Boutique.
Shoe shop,
the jeweller’s,
A man turns in his bed.
MYFANWY
Georgie the barber’s.
ANNE comes back into her bedroom.
ANNE
One of the dinner ladies knew my mam!
I mean, when she was little and in Pantglas too.
They’re not like the teachers, see,
They’re softer, will hold a hand.
And they know everyone, not just the child,
but their Tad Cu, their Nan, the whole family.
IRENE is preparing breakfast downstairs.
IRENE
She’s right, they do.
Which is good, isn’t it?
I mean, to know your daughter’s in a place
where they know more than just her face.
Not like down Cardiff
where you’re just one in a queue.
On your own. No belongings,
no names behind you.
She looks out the kitchen window to the back garden
where her husband, GWYN JONES is pruning his roses.
IRENE
Take my Gwyn. ‘Gwyn the rose’
they call him round here.
Famous for his flowers.
Someone knocks at least once a week,
thumb in their button hole
after a five-leaf.
Gives him a pride, to be known like that.
Had an accident, see? Down the pit.
Works in Hoover’s now.
He’s had his fair share, fair play –
so those roses, well,
they add to him don’t they?
GWYN looks up from his rose bushes.
When he speaks his voice is that of a man in his nineties.
GWYN
I stopped growing them after.
Or least, let them go wild,
stopped cutting them back.
Didn’t seem right.
And flowers, well,
they changed for me too.
Whenever I saw them,
in a window, a vase,
I’d see the cemetery slope again,
spread like a quilt.
A quilt of flowers for our village dead.
IRENE calls upstairs again.
IRENE
Anne! You getting dressed up there?
Never mind half day, you know the rules –
school’s still school.
She’s a dreamer that one.
Youngest of six and youngest by far.
Gets them yearning too soon.
I mean, when their brothers and sisters
are all in their teens.
But I say to her – ‘Anne, you cherish these days,
cos believe me, cariad,
one blink, and the world’ll make you old
in a hundred ways.’
Upstairs, ANNE is plaiting her hair in a mirror.
ANNE
One blink, and the world’ll make you old
in a hundred ways.
IRENE
Anne! Come on!
BARBARA pushes ANNE from the mirror.
Taking her place, BARBARA puts on her make-up.
BARBARA
Last day for me too,
so I’ll be out tonight.
The Bystanders playing down Troedyrhiw.
I saw them in the Social last month,
like the Beatles and Moody Blues, all in one.
Bit of soul,
