MARK
I’d say of the names
who come through the door
I know about 80 per cent.
And behind the names too.
Most call it a leisure centre
but for me, well, I’d rather
see it as a talking one.
It counts for a lot, doesn’t it?
That bouncing off each other.
RHIAN, a beautician,
turns on lights in the Serenity Beauty Salon.
RHIAN
I’ll be honest, at first I wasn’t sure,
I mean, how a salon would go down in Aberfan?
How wrong was I?
Within a week of opening
I’d done half the nails in town.
Mothers and toddlers arrive at Trinity daycare.
MOTHER
My two, they love it here.
It’s just the best in the area.
Get loads of mums from elsewhere too –
Merthyr, Aberdare, Troedyrhiw.
A postman walks along Moy Road.
POSTMAN
It’s how a place gets known, isn’t it?
In all seasons.
I mean, however fine, you only ever see it true
if you’ve known it in other weathers too,
under rain, mist.
I mean, that’s when a place shows isn’t it?
In the lifting, the burning through.
MEGAN, nine years old,
is in her room getting ready for school.
MEGAN
Now dancing’s more my thing –
Cha-cha, Jive, Latin.
I play football too,
in a mixed team run by the Social.
Unless it’s tipping,
then I’ll stay inside,
listen to One Direction.
MRS MANN is pulling up the shutters at the village shop.
MRS MANN
It just looked so beautiful,
when we first drove in.
We thought it would be
a good place for the kids.
And we were right.
It’s scenic, quiet.
They feel safe, even at night.
SIMONE, headmistress at Ynysowen school,
arrives at her office.
SIMONE
When it comes to aspiration,
there’s just so much to be done.
I mean, education – for most
it’s the one shot they’ve got,
so yeah, we’ve got to get it right.
TOM arrives at the house of his grandmother, ANNE.
When she opens the door a photograph can be seen in the hallway.
It is of her as a schoolgirl with her friends BETHAN and SUZY.
TOM and ANNE leave for his school,
TOM on his scooter, ANNE walking behind.
TOM
When Mam and Dad start early,
Mam Gu takes me in.
Dad’s on the new builds, see?
Up Merthyr.
And Mam’s up there too,
at the call centre.
At the school SIMONE is watching the children arrive.
RHIAN waves to MEGAN as she enters the gates.
ANNE kisses TOM goodbye, then turns to walk
back into the village.
ANNE
I didn’t go to school for about a year after.
None of us did, who’d survived.
They put some caravans
down at the site where the Welsh school is now.
Back then it was a tip –
coal and slag at the sides.
Toys had been donated, books for us to read.
We could stay, leave,
come and go as we pleased.
I didn’t live at home, either, for a while.
Went to live with an older sister.
In the street, see, every child
except me, was dead.
So I was difficult
for the other parents to see.
‘They took all the roses,’
that’s what one woman said to me.
‘And left us the thorns.’
So yeah, I went away for a bit.
When I came back my mother
was completely bald.
She’d been on the ambulances,
taking the bodies.
Weeks later her hair fell out.
‘You’re the lucky one,’
she’d say when I asked after my friends,
‘that’s all you need to know about.’
In the end they sent us
to Mount Pleasant,
but we were too disruptive,
that’s what they say –
the Pantglas kids, and the teachers too.
Every time a train went by
we’d scream, hide under desks and bins.
So then they moved us
to some portakabins,
down by where Trinity is now.
But still, if there was thunder, lightning,
the teachers would shout, tell us to hide.
They were only young themselves
and like us, still traumatised.
So yeah, wouldn’t be right
to say those who’d survived
entirely escaped that tip’s landslide.
We got out, yes,
and most of us have got on too.
But the shadow of that shale,
those tailings –
it’s long and deep, and cast inside.
How could it not be?
We were children,
going to school with our friends
then, minutes later,
climbing out again, without them.
DAVE, now in his seventies,
is in Megabytes, formally Emanuelli’s café.
As he makes himself a coffee –
DAVE
People came together after.
It was the only way.
A new magazine
did a lot of good work – Headway.
Community run, made sure
the same story, at the same time,
got out to everyone.
It’s all stood us in good stead, I’d say.
Over forty groups
came together in association.
It’s meant from then on,
we’ve spoken as one, more or less.
Vigilance – that became the watchword,
for the village’s wellbeing.
And we’ve had to be,
because make no doubt
there have been hard times since.
The strike, the mine closing,
drugs ravaging the young.
Then they tried to build a road,
the A470, right through Aberfan.
Well, no way that was going to happen.
Even this place – when the Emanuellis left,
it became a community caff.
Don’t get me wrong.
It’s not like there hasn’t been anger.
Of course there was. Still is.
I remember on the Monday after,
when it first made itself known,
when our silent grief became heard.
It was at an inquest at Zion chapel
into the deaths of thirty of the children.
The coroner, he was reading out the causes –
asphyxia, multiple injuries –
when from out of the crowd
a father, stood.
24 October, 1966 – DAI stands at the inquest.
DAI
No, sir. Buried alive
by the National Coal Board.
That’s what I want
on the official record.
DAVE
The coroner, Mr Hamilton,
he paused, and in that silence
a woman cried out –
BETTY at the inquest.
BETTY
They have killed our children!
DAVE
But we had to heal, and I’d say we have.
Whole place is greening back up.
Go up the canal bank, in July, August,
when the thistle heads are seeding,
catching the light, early berries budding,
chaffinches singing.
Well, beautiful it is.
I’ve always tried to do my bit,
set up a scheme for apprenticeships,
that kind of thing. Can’t say why,
because I was there, perhaps,
or because I’m still here.
Or maybe because I’ve always felt lucky.
My father, see, he was deputy,
at the school, but had a stroke
a few weeks before.
His replacement was Dai Beynon,
a lovely man. And his class,
they sent my father a card.
I found it again, just the other day
and, well, it brought it home again.
Every single child who’d signed,
they’d died, and Dai Beynon too.
Not one left alive.
So yeah, maybe that’s why.
WILL, now sixty-six, is entering the community centre gym.
WILL
I let the boxing slip, after.
Somehow didn’t seem right.
And well, Mam and Dad,
they needed me at home.
And I needed to be
