with nothing but silence.
Billy Iron Boot
Freddie Greenfly
Dai Lamplight
Tommy Cocoa
Ianto Aye Aye
Cyril Silent Night
MANSEL
I’d taken over with a shovel
when a young man came over.
‘We’re into a classroom,’ he said.
‘You’d better come through, just in case …’
So I passed my tool to another
and followed him into the ruins of that place.
For years I’ve had dreams
because of what I saw –
The classroom, it was like it had been shaken.
Desks, chairs, a boulder,
a clock angled where it fell
and there, up against the wall,
no higher than your waist, twenty children,
their master in front of them,
his arms spread in protection,
trying to save them all.
He was a big man but what could he have done?
One teacher against a mountain.
I could see, behind him, their faces,
their mouths still open
as if they’d been caught mid-song.
Except you could tell,
it wasn’t a song
those mouths had been making,
all crammed as they were
with the same black note
of shale, slurry and grit.
And their eyes as well.
I’ve never seen a thing so wrong.
There was nothing to be done.
GWYNETH is gathering with others in the council chamber.
GWYNETH
Around eleven we assembled in the chamber
to be informed of the plans.
‘We’re setting up mortuaries,’ they said.
‘Wherever we can.’ We were stunned, numb.
But of course, had to carry on.
There was so much to be done.
At around four the women
as well as the men
were asked to go to Aberfan.
Once there we gathered in a hall,
unsure what would happen.
But then John Beale, Director of Education,
he came in, school registers under his arm.
He wanted to account for the children,
so began to read out their names,
but their sound on the air, what it conjured,
was too much for him. He broke down.
And anyway, nobody knew –
who had survived, and who had not.
So each of the women was given a street
and told to go down it from door to door,
asking each family a single question
against the grain of natural law –
I was twenty-two. Each time I knocked
I prayed the answer would be yes, he’s here,
or yes, she’s asleep upstairs.
But of course, all too often it wasn’t.
I’d write down the name, or the names,
the ages – seven, eight, nine.
We’d talk, if they wanted.
Then they’d close their door, softly,
the hand of a husband or wife on their shoulder,
and I’d carry on,
with my list of numbers, names and ages,
willing for it not to grow any longer.
DAVE
As the news filtered into the world
so the world filtered back to us.
Factories emptied across Wales,
steelworkers from Port Talbot,
Hoover down in Merthyr,
schoolboys from a valley over.
And individuals too, a farmer
from Brecon, an accountant from Cardiff,
and many others from further.
And of course the TV crews.
The journalists. First from Wales
then the UK, then France, Germany, all over.
They set up at the Mack,
filmed us working, the slide, the tips,
the chimneys, still smoking through the black.
I heard one reporter ask a miner,
REPORTER
They say you’ll dig into the night,
is that true?
DAI DAVIES turns to answer.
DAI
My boy’s in there somewhere,
I’ll dig all year if I have to.
DAVE
At some point the N.C.B. rescue teams came.
Like the cavalry they were,
in their yellow jackets and hats.
Then the army, digging trenches
clearing storm water – from all over the country
feather pumps and tenders.
No one else would be pulled out alive.
Not from the houses, nor the school.
But still, all you could hear
was the sound of digging tools.
And, occasionally, quiet crying.
Because now there was other work to do –
supporting the parents at Bethania chapel,
small bodies under blankets on every pew
as they went in to identify their children,
sometimes by face but often
by just a piece of cloth, a pair of shoes.
Somehow, throughout it all,
the workers were fed, watered.
Soup and bread from the Salvation Army,
the Civil Defence. Even, at one point,
a plate of wedding cake.
But then, that’s what happens isn’t it?
The world ruptures and we offer what we can.
And that’s what happened that night,
to a woman and man,
people gave their strength, their sympathy –
offered up, for Aberfan.
SAM
When the day started fading
they brought in arc lights
powered by canisters of gas.
Towers were erected from which they shone
across that whole expanse
of ruin and slurry and black.
Everyone was covered in muck,
me included. I’d worn my best suit
to go and see John Beale
but now you’d have thought
I’d spent the day down the pit.
But we hadn’t. It had come to us.
Everyone knew that now.
And when it did, like some heartless pied piper
it harvested the best of that town.
It was time for me to go.
Dusk was giving to night.
I wanted to see my wife.
The Merthyr to Cardiff line had been cut
so I caught a bus.
I was the only one on it, and like that,
held in the brightness of its upper deck,
I travelled home alone, through the darkness,
being sick at my feet as it went.
From what I can’t say.
Exhaustion, sadness, who knows.
The body has its ways
of telling when we’ve had too much.
But as the bus sailed on
down that dark valley
with me, a dirty grain in its light,
even with my eyes closed, being sick,
I couldn’t help seeing
one specific sight –
The curtains of a house in a short terraced street
I’d passed earlier that day.
They were closed, which in Wales
not at night, means only one thing –
a house where the seeds of death
have been sown.
I walked on, but as I did
I looked down the rest of that row,
which is when I saw –
the curtains, they were drawn
in every window.
Behind drawn curtains, 116 children’s beds lie empty.
PART IIISurvivors
And some of that darkness, light
Aberfan, early morning, 2016.
The sound of rumbling wheels gets louder, faster.
TOM, nine years old,
is hurtling down a pavement on his scooter.
Above the valley’s ridge turbine blades rise and fall.
In the community centre pool an elderly man swims front crawl.
As TOM rides his scooter through the streets
voices from across the village are heard.
TOM
It’s amazing our school.
Got iPads, astro turf
and loads of clubs too.
Science is my favourite.
We’ve been learning about Tim Peake
all this week.
Six months he was up there!
Mr Davies says tomorrow
we’ll see it from here –
the space station. A manmade star,
that’s what’ll be like,
passing just above the ridge,
slow, but faster than a satellite.
MARK, the community centre manager,
walks barefoot beside the pool.
