Tracy A. Williams

A series of short stories about death, women and love is in progress for page and audio… if you enjoy the samples in this tab, please consider donating to the continued production of such pieces… any donation – no matter the sum – is sincerely appreciated… you may make a donation here:

Beware This, Lovely Town
Written and Narrated by Tracy Williams

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Beware This; Lovely Town

I would rather be anywhere than this godforsaken town. I am walking toward Costa for a badly needed fix. It is too early to be alive. Just before I reach the doorway a voice shouts out.

‘Look at that! Look! Nurses walking past! What the hell is wrong with this world!’

He screamed other expletives too, which I shall not print here. Sometimes it is better not to narrate the explicit truth. The accent in this town is often hard, his was harder. He is a Pit Bull terrier with a skinhead on a lead. The one on the lead is shrieking, or so it seems to me. Morning people rush by, they are off to work, the lucky ones who still have work to do. I wish I were big enough to kick his head in. He is terrorizing all of us but I am simultaneously intrigued to know at what he points. If it’s dangerous the dog could probably be unleashed… So let curiosity kill my inner cat… after all, I’m not really living anymore… I have become one with the walking dead of this terrifying town.

On the wall outside Marks & Spencer is a figure something like a man. It is slumped forward, either drunk or dead. It is not the fifth of November, but it could easily be a Guy Fawkes replica, ready for another public burning. It holds a walking stick and, though silent, compels me to move closer. I am probably putting my finger into yet another metaphorical fire. From this town, I got third degree burns at the age of innocence and have been told they may never heal now. In short, nothing can hurt me anymore. I am impenetrable, a product of my environment. If the skinhead were truly impenetrable, he would not need a Pit Bull. Ponder this. And so, I am within my rights to approach this terrifying figure in his farmer’s cap…

The head is sliding down his chest, so sunken that we cannot see his face. The voices in my own head are saying ‘whatever happens do not shout.’ I sink to my knees.

‘Excuse me, sir, are you okay?’

I sound like Oliver Twist to my own ears. Guy Fawkes says something I do not understand. His chin is stained with food. His eyes are blue. I smell only the brutal stench of winter even though it is May. Weather in this town: eternal damp and grey. I introduce myself in a formal manner, feeling pathetic, like an urchin out of Dickensian Britain, but some alien entity has miraculously taken hold of me and I have absolutely no choice as to what my body might do in this moment.

His name is Leyton and he dribbles as he speaks. His nose drips, tears fall, but not from sadness – tears caused by the cruel wind.

‘It’s nice to meet you, Leyton. Do you need some help?’

My knees hurt, my head hurts but still the voice prevails: don’t you dare cry, don’t you dare cry…

‘My bus, my bus…’

Ah! He wants to get a bus!

‘Leyton, I’m gonna have to get off my knees, okay? Do you mind if I sit next to you?’

I search the street for the skinhead, preparing to request assistance, but the terrain has completely altered, as is the way in every town these days. Everything turns like a kaleidoscope, creating fragmented patterns of constant change. Nobody stops for too long, we have no time to stand and stare. The bus stop is a four minute walk from here.

‘I can take you to Victoria Gardens. Will you let me carry your bag?’

I reach for the Marks & Spencer carrier bag, feeling like I am stealing. Suddenly a voice overhead  says, ‘do you need any help?’

In a cream-coloured dress there stood an angel, silver-haired with flawless skin. She smiles so gently, and looks so pristine that I feel a flash of shame at my boyish attire and general attempt to appear as a delinquent teenager, which I always do when forced to visit the front line of this town.

‘Oh, yes please,’ I say, ‘this is Leyton and he needs to get his bus…’

We hoist him up with a strength I am shocked to find in myself.

And off we go – slower than slow. Leyton’s walking stick hooked onto my forearm, so that it cracks against my shin. He should be taller than me – I am 5 foot three, but his curved spine makes him shorter. I rarely get to look down upon adults.

The fine drizzle is becoming heavy rain. In my head a harsh refrain plays on.

Don’t you dare cry, don’t you dare cry.

Don’t stop walking.

Don’t stop talking.

‘What a lovely day!’ I say. My pathetic attempt to incite laughter fails.

We are passing the Royal British Legion canteen. Inside, pensioners are eating toast, bacon, eggs and baked beans. The aroma of British breakfast mixes with damp air and cut grass. Some of the men seem to be dressed in the same clothes they wore when war created communities and communities knew each other inside out. It was for us they fought, was it not? I suspect that this man now leaning on my arm is from that time. Perhaps his community is dead. Perhaps he is the last one left.

I want distraction from this tragic scene. I aspire only to apathy. Why are people staring? Are we doing something wrong? And why do I feel like I am stuck on a page of Dickensian Britain? Were we not warned by Charles, so many years ago… 

‘Beware of want, beware of ignorance, but most of all beware this boy…’

I want to scream at everyone that the man on my arm is also the boy. He is weighing me down when all I want is a quick fix of caffeine to numb a heart which has no place in this vacuous, over-priced coffee culture to which I am heir. This man might be, for me, the spirit of Christmas future, if I do not pay attention to things soon.

Those men in the wheelchairs, outside the Royal British Legion canteen, smoking one more cigarette in spite of the rain, their tea and toast and rituals  – they are the ones who laid the foundation upon which I have been pretty much totally free to walk like an artful dodger and talk in whichever way I please. What was it for? I have never been to war, except inside myself.

Across the road are the pristine trees of Victoria Gardens. The bandstand is empty, as it has been many years. That’s where the bus stop awaits. And this pavement from which I have stepped literally thousands of times is now akin to an abyss because we are going to have to step down into the road and if he falls, my back may break.

Don’t you dare cry…

‘Okay, Leyton, we’re gonna cross here, are you ready?’

I am holding all of his weight, or so it feels. His head turns, his eyes catch mine; they are sharp, cold, blue.

As we step down, he says, ‘thank God there’s still kindness in the world.’

The comment crushes all my self-consciousness and suddenly I am waving his walking stick at oncoming cars in order to safely cross. A bright red Audi skids to a halt, but no cars beep the horn. It’s is as if the entire town is waiting with baited breath to ensure Leyton is safely delivered to the other side.

Thank God there’s still kindness in the world, he said. 

The old bus shelter has not yet been properly demolished. It still gives good shelter from the rain and a proper bench upon which Leyton can sit, unlike the new waiting bay with its plastic swivelling seats. I sit beside him, remembering how I used to scrawl my name on these walls as a terrible teenager when I should have been at school.

A greenline single-decker slides into bay twenty one.

‘My bus…’ says Leyton.

‘Are you sure he can get on the bus?’ asks the angel in cream.

I shrug my confusion. She smiles once more.

We are being watched by everyone at the stop. I can feel them all staring at this old man who looks set to die in public.

Death: the most offensive inconvenience which must be kept hidden, lest we are shaken from this vague somnambulism that we believe to be life.

‘He can’t get on that bus,’ declares a loud female voice with an indigenous accent and great authority.

Beneath two black umbrellas are three tall women, rigidly dressed in Sunday best. It is Tuesday. They look like a trinity of witches.

‘Is he alright?’

‘Does he want a cup of tea?’

‘What’s wrong with him?’

One of them heads across the road to buy a cup of tea.

‘Go and make sure that’s my bus,’ Leyton says.

I do as I am told and, as I walk away, I can hear him shouting, ‘no ambulance… just a bad back… bad back, that’s all!’’

The driver is reading the Daily Mirror. How should I make this strange request?

‘Hiyah, I’m sorry to have to ask you this, but there’s an old man in the bus shelter who wants to get on this bus and he says…’

‘I know who he is,’ says the driver, ‘he lives up on top of the hill…’

‘I just found him outside Marks and Spencer…’

‘I can’t take the responsibility, lovely. He parks his car in Ridgewood Gardens, see. He nearly drove over the bank this morning. If I let him on he’ll drive and I can’t take responsibility for that. Sorry, lovely.’

I despise being called ‘lovely.’ It has been put on me thousands of times. Is it really necessary to label me that way? I am not lovely. But these are irrelevant details now and although I want to snap, I am etiquette incarnate.

‘Of course, I completely understand. Thank you anyway.’

In the bus shelter Leyton has spilled the cup of tea. The witch with authority shoves her mobile phone under my nose and says, ‘you speak to them, it’s the ambulance.’

‘Hello?’

‘Yes, this is the ambulance service. Can you explain the situation, please?’

I give the operator my number. I give out details as best I can. It will be at least an hour of waiting. Incredulity is expressed via the exchange of complaints. We are victims of the gradual disintegration of our beloved N.H.S. The coven tutors me further in the fact that he must not be allowed to get on that bus, while casting austere glances in his direction.

I am wondering whether to thank them for their instant, unflinching reaction to this crisis but am prevented from doing so by their announcement that they cannot wait with us as they have an important appointment at St Mary’s Church.

He is their father, of course. He is the generation who fought so that their generation might have the freedom to preach. I watch them walk away. The rain is pouring down.  When I turn back to the shelter, Leyton is gone… He is climbing onto the bus at bay twenty one.

‘Catch him!’ one of the crones is shouting, from a distance as she nears the church.

I run. Leyton is seating himself in the disabled chair. He is oblivious to us all. Mutterings drift from the back passengers to where I stand looking helplessly at the driver.

‘I’m so sorry…’

‘I can’t take responsibility for this, lovely. I’ll have to radio my supervisor…’

The silver-haired woman is standing behind me. She looks perfectly serene, despite the rain. I can feel everyone waiting. Five seconds of inward deliberation prompts me to say, ‘what if I come with him?’

The driver nods, ‘if you come with him I can get you back into town.’

From behind I hear my silver-haired assistant say, ‘do you want me to come with you?’

‘Yes please.’

We sit on the high seats behind the driver and the bus pulls out of the bay. I keep a sharp eye on Leyton. If he falls I will dive across this bus. No one else will move, of this I am pretty sure.

What is wrong with me? My place in space-time has taught that to follow someone equates to stalking. Stalking is a crime. I need help. Shall I give myself up when the bus brings me back into town later? The Police Station is a Wetherspoon’s pub now…

‘So what’s your name?’ I ask the woman sitting beside me.

‘Elizabeth.’

‘It’s nice to meet you, Elizabeth.’

‘Are you a nurse?’ she asks.

‘Me? Oh no no no no.’

This cracks me up.

‘I don’t know what I’m doing, Elizabeth. I saw him and I couldn’t walk away.’

She smiles. In her eyes there is a stunning sadness. It’s an honour to be in her presence, I have no idea why. Outside, the sky is turning blue. A predictable modulation, considering the schizophrenia from which our climate suffers day in, day out.

My phone rings.

‘This is the ambulance service, am I speaking with…’

‘Yes, thank you for ringing me back, I’m sorry but we need to change your destination, we are on a bus now, heading up the hill to the last stop…’

I have not taken this route for twenty one years, but my memory of it is miraculously intact. This increases the time we will have to wait for an ambulance. What can I say other than ‘thank you?’

Aneurin Bevan, a countryman of ours, did surely not envisage this welfare state of affairs when his most beautiful idea was only a vision.

At every stop, as passengers are dropped off, all the way up Cimla Hill, the smell of summer enters the bus, an aroma pulsating with nostalgia for that year I spent exploring the Vale of Neath. At the summit, every lawn is perfect, exactly the same as when I left in 1994. This last stop is Ridgewood Gardens and only we three travellers remain. The driver comes out of his cabin to lower the disabled ramp.

‘There’s his car,’ he says to me. ‘Don’t let him drive it, whatever you do…’

‘I won’t, I promise…’

Don’t break promises.

Elizabeth helps Leyton off the bus.

‘Does he live on his own?’ I ask the driver.

‘I don’t know, lovely.’

There’s that name again. It’s an adjective, not a noun. I studied literature to escape this town and now I am sentenced to walk Neath in literary limbo, being called ‘Lovely’ wherever I go.

‘Thank you so much for all your help.’

I proffer my hand and we shake. The driver’s name is Mark.

‘I’ll be back at this stop in one hour,’ he says, ‘I’ll take you back to town then, alright?’

‘Thank you, driver!’ Leyton shouts.

Mark smiles and reverses out of Ridgewood Gardens. A winter morning has morphed into a stunningly beautiful summer afternoon. Should I move back here and quietly grow old? A shout from behind me silences this thought…

Elizabeth is running across the road. Leyton is suspended at the open car door, about to fall. I lurch forward and become trapped between him and the door, one knee on the ground, asphalt cutting into my skin.

‘She’s stolen my property,’ he’s shouting, ‘she has no right to steal from me!’

Crushed into this position, it was only then, thanks to the sun, that I saw how disintegrated he really was –  the food all over his shirt, his trouser’s zip undone, the chaotic bristle of an unshaven skin, the false teeth too big for his mouth, fingernails black and overgrown, and the scent of decaying humanity and casserole. Inside the car –Marks & Spencer carrier bags containing microwave meals for one. And Elizabeth – the thief – had stolen his keys.

‘She has no right to steal from me!’

From behind the car, Elizabeth held up the keys and winked.

‘She’s your friend! Tell her she should not steal from me!’

‘She’s not my friend, Leyton, I don’t even know her…’

‘Well, she’s a thief…’

‘Leyton, I think you need an ambulance…’

‘No!’

Jammed in that position, in physical and emotional despair, I finally started to cry.

‘Please, Leyton, please, if you drive this car the police will arrest me, please can we just sit and talk?’

He looked at me with an intense blue glare and said, ‘stop getting emotional!’

‘Leyton I don’t know what to do…’

‘There’s no need to be emotional.’

And so I stopped crying. I helped him into the driver’s seat and pretended to go and get his keys from the thief. I met Elizabeth at the boot, where we whispered.

‘Sorry,’ she said, ‘I had to take them off him…’

When I got into the passenger seat I was killing time. I tried to reason with him about seeing a doctor. He was having none of it.

‘If an ambulance comes they’ll take me to hospital’ he said, ‘and if they take me to hospital they’ll do tests and find things wrong with me that are not there. I’ve just got a bad back, that’s all.’

‘Leyton, I’m really struggling here to know what to do…’

‘As long as you don’t get emotional it will all be okay.’

As I looked in the rear view mirror, my heart expanded with relief: an ambulance was approaching us…

‘Leyton, I’ll be back in a minute.’

The blue sky formed the backdrop for two giant men in uniform to walk directly toward the car. I felt tiny, miniscule, an insignificant dot in comparison to them. There were no introductions, no salutations.

‘Who has the keys?’ one of them asked.

I hand over the keys.

‘His name is Leyton,’ I say, not sure if they hear me, and I instinctively back away.

Leyton looks like a criminal who has been caught before the crime. If I were him, I would hurl abuse in my direction. A foreboding silence has come over me. I must not get emotional.

‘Alright, Leyt’…’ says a giant, leaning on the driver’s door as if having a casual chat, ‘what’s going on then?’

‘Just a bad back, that’s all…’ says Leyton, but his voice is tiny, timid, lost.

‘Where do you live, Leyt’?’

He mumbles something.

‘Alright, Leyt’, we gotta do a few tests, alright? How many fingers am I holding up?’

He does not reply. He is staring, expressionless, at me. I feel like Judas Iscariot.

‘What’s your address, Leyton?’

‘She’s got my keys, give me my keys! She stole my keys!’

‘I’ve got your keys, Leyton,’ says ambulance man number one, ‘I tell you what….  I’ll give you the keys if you can tell me what year it is…’

Leyton opens his mouth wide, his teeth make him look like an angry horse. He points a finger at the men, then grinning, declares ‘two thousand and fifteen… ah haaaa!’

The answer, so perfectly delivered, makes everyone laugh out loud.

As their questions continue, I move closer to Elizabeth and we chat, naturally, about the weather.

When I turned back Leyton was being deftly and respectfully chair-lifted into the back of the ambulance. I took one long look at him before the ambulance door enclosed him in the safe, dark space. No words that I recall passed between me and the ambulance men. They drove away and that was that. Long live the N.H.S.

Then a man came toward us.

‘Alright,’ he said, in a cockney accent, ‘I saw the blue lights, I thought he’d killed someone…’

‘You know him?’ I asked.

‘Yeah, he’s our neighbour.’

‘How old is he?’

‘I think he’s eighty six or eighty seven.’

‘Does he live on his own?’

‘Yeah, he’s got a sister somewhere in England I think, but he’s always on his own… he’s bloody stubborn, a real character… left his handbrake off yesterday… he coulda killed someone by now… if it hadn’t been an ambulance it woulda been the police. Thank God no one was hurt…’

Then the neighbour went back up the hill.

From our glorious point on high, Elizabeth and I went over Leyton’s words.

I said, ‘I thought I was gonna die when he told me not to get emotional!’

‘He’s one of the war generation,’ Elizabeth said, ‘they had no time for emotion – he’s one of a dying breed.’

‘I hope he’ll be okay…’

‘He reminded me of my father,’ she said, ‘he even looked a bit like my father, he was war generation too…’

It emerges, as I look at her with obvious affection, that Elizabeth is going to cry.

‘My father was eighty five when he died,’ she says, ‘I nursed him for ten years. He was stubborn too…’

‘When did your father die?’

‘Three years ago,’ she says, ‘and I miss him every day. Looking after him was really hard but I wouldn’t change it for the world…’

‘Oh Elizabeth, I don’t know what to say… What a day!’

We talked like old friends for about ten minutes and then a white Mercedes pulled up at the kerb.

‘This is my husband…’ Elizabeth says, ‘can we give you a lift? We’re going back to Swansea but we can drop you anywhere…’

‘Oh thank you, but I feel the need to walk…’

‘You did a lovely thing today,’ she said, ‘it’s been very nice to meet you. Good luck with your writing. I hope to see one of your books in the shops one day…’

I was seized by the desire to do a most un-British thing: I put my arms around Elizabeth and hugged her. I will never see her again.

I walked all the way back down to town. The bus passed me by. Mark, the driver, was wearing sunglasses. He didn’t see me. I forgot all my plans for the day. I didn’t even telephone the psychiatrist to explain why I had missed my session. I bought ten cigarettes, smoked one and went home.

A month later I saw the same bus with the same driver, on a glorious afternoon in June. I had purposefully passed by the British Legion canteen every subsequent week, secretly hoping to see Leyton hunched over bacon and eggs. Curiosity, yet again, pushed me onto the bus in June of two thousand and fifteen.

‘Hello, Mark. I don’t know if you remember me…’

‘Hiyah, lovely. Yes, I remember you…’

‘How is…’

‘Sorry, lovely, he died the following night.’

‘Oh… ’

‘He wasn’t on his own. You did the right thing.’

‘Oh…’

‘They wouldn’t have let him die on his own, not in hospital. You did the right thing, lovely. There was nothing else anyone could have done. Don’t worry now.’

We became friends on Facebook.

I sat in the old bus shelter, shaded from the sun and allowed the chaos of Neath to pass away as questions traversed the mind. Did I send Leyton to his death? Who was with him when he left? An angel of the N.H.S? He would have been too young fight in the war… who told him to not get emotional when he was a lovely boy?

When one is called ‘lovely’ in the vernacular of Neath, the term is intended affectionately from stranger to so-called stranger, as our paths criss-cross at seemingly random intersections. I never liked the word until today. Despite this tendency I have to cry in public, and no matter how many psychiatrists try to help me stop, I shall persevere under the tutelage of Mr. Dickens: hearing such great voices renders me bold enough to assert that in this town or anywhere else, I am likely, above all, to beware.

—THE END—