am the bastard William Williams, late of The Universal Pit, Senghennydd, then the pit at Abertridwr, and latterly the cellars of The Commercial Hotel, as pot man. Now that the dust have slowed me I am easy to find. I am still lived next door to the English Congregational Church, Commercial Road, Senghennydd. I venture from my place only for the English Cong, and in summer, if I am lucky, a visit from a relation.

Until the coaldust on my chest confined me to my front room I have been known as a hearty man. My years is matched exact to the century and for the most part it have been a good life, wholesome. I think though, with what have passed, I shall not like to be here when the clock strike two thousand.

I am fixed, I am settled; and I am Welch! And I am proud of it, even if the English woman, Thatcher have all but killed this valley, taken away the good black-fingered work of the men; made drug addicts of our young, the men unemployed, drunkard, or gone from the valley. So easily they have forgot Rorke's Drift, forgot the five hundred and twenty men of 1901 and 1913, forgot the Great War, forgot the South Wales Borderers, never mind that they have forgot good King Henry and his Welsh boys and the hiding we did give the frogs.

We are nothing, see, statistics is it, and a long way from London.

I am not one for writing, and never was much of a one for talking either. I would not tell you of this, I would just let it go, but Lord forgive me, I am writing it down. I have a good copperplate strapped into me at town school which has never left me; I have my retirement pen, my Quink, a pad to write this and enough hot in me to bore a new pit-shaft. I must record the visit of the man Allen Jones. If I am not to get this out of me, I will surely be bursted, so better or worse, it shall go down.

Allen Jones, with long red hair like a woman, a liking for his own voice and him on a fired-up mission to discover his past. A writer, he said he was, and without a by-your-leave or a telephone message did he turn up here, all mouth and trousers and flashing teeth to ask of me questions, one hundred miles an hour, and then to tell me about Senghennydd, to tell me about the boys. And I tell you, no warning, just one day, knock-knock on my door.

"Mr Williams?"

He do smile at me, condescending, like an English Member of Parliament or some social worker have come to see I am washed.

"I am William Williams, yes. The Council is it?"

He has the smile again. His teeth do remind me of Robert Jones, the Deacon of the English Cong who married my mother. His hand is out.

"My name is Allen Jones," says he. "I think we are slightly related."

"Do you now?" says I. I have not shook his hand for I feel him impolite.

"I was wondering," he says. "Do you think I could come in for a chat?"

A chat is it? "I am expecting a friend for tea," says I.

"Why even better!" says this Allen Jones. "You see I am researching my family tree and I've just found out that my great-grandfather and your mother were - "

"What is it?" I have said too quickly.

"Married," says he now, but surprised. "After my great-grandmother died."

"You have done a little reading," says I. I am turned and walking to my room and this Allen Jones, a relation is it, he have followed, but unsure of his self. I am slightly glad of this.

I have sat and Mister Allen Jones have sat and he have opened a fancy brief-case and took out a machine. I have asked Mr Jones, "What is this for?" and he have smiled again and said to me this is a machine that it is to record all the things we say.

"What are the commandments?" ask I. "What is Magna Carta? What is American Declaration of Independence?"

Allen Jones begins to misunderstand me. He knows these things. Am I wanting him to say the commandments?

"They were writ," says I, "without machines. Put your fangle away."

Mr Allen looks, but I look sterner, and he puts his recorder back.

Allen Jones then have shrugged his weak shoulders and have sat forward. "My father was Thomas Allen Jones," he have said, "Son of Allen Thomas Jones and Caroline, the daughter of Robert Jones, and Bessie, born Milton."

"You have the teeth of the deacon," says myself, "but your face is long and thin and the jaw is Bessie's. Caroline took the name Kitty. She was fair and fine, long of the face, and she sang like an angel."

"She did?" Mr Jones is excited and he scribbles something.

"Will you like tea?" says I. I am getting up.

"Yes, yes," Mr Jones says. He is light in the voice, sing-song like the mother of his father. He has the air of a man never married, as Oscar Wilde perhaps. I am thinking that his eyes are his finest feature, quite a blue, and his fingers are long and delicate. He lisps faintly.

"Then I will mash a pot," says I.

He writes down "mash". His script is sharp and large, Catholic school italic but fast and gestured as if his mark come out, as if he display himself as he scratches. But he is bold, I guess.

I take the caddy down and take out some Glengettie, and as the kettle come to popple I warm the pot on the gas. I hear Allen Jones enter. He is soft-spoke. "My father did that," says he, "and his father."

I am thinking maybe this is not impolite, that Allen Thomas has just little in the way of rules. The hand he writes in is him perhaps. It is an eagerness not a rudeness in him but seen often the wrong way.

"Twice a half of two-and-a-half," I fire quickly at him.

Allen Jones laughs. "Two-and-a-half!"

"Quick in school?" ask I.

"And always one eye through the window," he says.

And Kitty too, I am thinking. She have needed room for her voice and her little poems. Tables and alphabet cluttered her. My mother was not like that.

Allen do not take sugar in his tea and only a little milk please. He have said to me he have not tasted tea like this for a long time and I have said this is just ordinary valley tea mashed proper and served in decent china. He have nodded and I see his eyes are like a butterfly around my room. He have seen the picture rail, the dado, the sepia pictures of outings, strong men with fine moustaches, their caps straight for the visit of the photographer. One picture is of Ernest Jones a relation, boy sudden made a man in 1913, old by 1920. I have worked out that Ernest is great uncle to Allen Jones, uncle to his father. He sees the picture, and have stood, too excitable. A little tea is spilled into his saucer.

"I have seen this picture somewhere," he have told me.

"Seven men," say I. "Well four men and three boys. You know what it is?"

Allen does not know so I stand up.

"This boy is George Moore, here is his brother Evan James Moore, here is George Moore the father, and this is Ben David. This is Archibald Dean, here is Wilf Vizard, and here..."

"Ernest Jones?"

"It is," says I. "Seven men from the eighteen saved. Underground four hundred and thirty-seven more, dead all. On top, John Moggridge, his head blowed away, dead faster than a wink."

"How?"

"The lift cage, three tons, she do come out like a cannonball on the second explosion and John Moggridge still looking in at the noise of the first."

"At least it was quick."

"Quicker than for the four hundred trapped," I have said.

"Brave men," says Allen Jones.

"Rats," says I, "trapped and put to sleep, those not burned or skinned."

Allen Jones is not hearing me.

He says, "They are dressed smarter than I imagined, and cleaner."

"Scratch!" says I. "This is boys and men in their Whit Sunday best. This have been weeks later after they do start to convalesce at the Porthcawl Miner's Rest and made some recovery. But see, the eyes are dead, men and boys they are empty."

My words have skipped though, Mister Allen Jones water and them a boy's skip-stone. I think again of impolite as he steps round the room.

"This?" says he.

"The men of the Bottanic District, their huts down by the pit-head. The wives waiting for news."

"This?"

"Alfred Milton, Bessie's brother."

"The younger man?"

"Ernest Jones, the boy from the pit."

"This soldier, the child?"

"Look more carefully man. This is your grand-father. See the letters on his epaulette, the cross on his arm?"

"A medic?"

"Royal Army Medical Corps. He was not a fighting man, but brave enough in his way. The child is your father's brother. They lived at 169."

"And this, who is this?"

"The fine upstanding deacon of the English Cong, Mister Robert Jones, your grandfather who married my mother."

"He is in bed."

"You are university educated, I have no doubt now. His leg twice broke and to be broke again at the charity hospital. After, he was not the same."

"They are all so wonderful," says Allen Jones. "Such a rich history. And the stories, what stories there must be! I must go up to the mine to see it for myself, and go up over the mountain and see the terraces glistening in the morning sun. These pictures, I can almost smell the men at the face!"

"If I do not sit down and rest," says I to this, "I may faint for I feel queer."

"Are you all right, Mr Williams?" my visitor have asked me. "Is it your emphysema?"

I have coughed a little for effect and I am happy that I have not been rude, though my visitor deserve it. I have lied. "A little. It is passed."

And Mr Allen Jones, like a wind on the mountain top, he is on to other things again, his voice pit-boy soprano and he is excited like a girl might be.

"I have read Gruffydd Evans, W. H. Davies and Elias Evans, and just this morning, in Cardiff, I bought Michael Lieven's Senghennydd. But to be here, Mister Williams, to taste the valley, see the good people..."

That is enough. I rise, a bit too quick for Mrs Jones I am thinking.

"I will take you walking!" I have said as quickly. I have thought, "For just one more minute of English blather and I will take a fit."

"But Mister Williams, your chest..."

"You will have a car, then?"

"It is just outside."

"There's fine for us both, then. I will get my cap."

Mr Allen Jones has a shiny car, red I fancy and the seats are like chamois and pale. It is a Jaguar and I have thought that to be a writer pays well.

"Are you sure you are all right, William?"

William now, is it?

"I am fine, Mister Jones."

He have hesitated and then he have started the car and the engine is less noise than a clock ticking, a bee hums somewhere in the ferns.

"Go down yur," I have said, making my Welsh more Welsh, a parody is it, like the English took Park Hamlet, Aber Valley and called it Sengennith and when that was not pretty enough for them, have Welshified it to Sengennydd, two n's, and two d's, to be the new Rhondda. Why-for there was never any sense, for the valleys were ordinary and lovely before they came, and black and dead when they were gone.

"If you're sure you're all right?"

I am thinking that if Mister Allen Jones have a Welsh core it is well hid, but I have bit my cheek to try and made my voice flat and slack. "I will take you to the pit, now Mr Jones. Down yur. It is a mile or so."

The car is a luxury, no question and very smooth, and there is a button I do press and the windows make a whush as they slide down. It have been wet, valley's wet, long and cold and drizzling and the high street is sticky-black and the tyres feel it. We are near the valley's dead end.

"It looks sad, Mr Williams."

"Sadder," I have said. "And sad upon sad, dirty sad."

There is nowhere further we can travel.

"Turn here," I have told Allen, "here, the little school-yard."

"But the pit?"

"We are here."

"Oh," Allen have said and I am thinking, "There is romantic, is it?"

"It looks like rain," he now have said but I am already from the car and walking to the bronze memorial. My chest is angry with me but I must be out of the luxury and back with the boys. Then Allen is behind me and I am staring down. He sighs. It is raining now, I think fitting, and down in the playground I hear the children of the village squeal and hop-scotch under a shelter. I am reading but silent. Then Allen is reading. He whispers ghosts.

"This memorial commemorates. . ."

I am thinking "English guilt."

"...the 439 men who died at Universal Colliery, Senghennydd..."

I am thinking, "Were killed."

"14 October 1913, the 81 men who died in the earlier accident in 1901."

"Not a house without grief," I am saying. "Fathers, sons, cousins, two thousand orphans and me without a brother."

"I didn't..." Allen says but I have already said my prayer and am going to the Jaguar car.

I have taken off my cap and am glad of the rain that runs on my face and when Allen speaks now, it is a little slower for he is thinking too. Then he have asked me can we drive up the mountain and look down on the houses for still he have said, he needs to feel for the village. And now the rain is falling stair rods and we are sombre.

There are the old half-grassed slag heaps and the place where the Western Welsh coach must swing round to go back down the valley, but in between there is a track, up past an old ventilation shaft, a small-holding and a timber yard. It is narrow, but a red Jaguar car will squeeze where coal-carts went. I have explained this and shortly we are on the top of Aber Valley and the dead town is below, higgle-piggled terraces along the valley side, their slate roofs glistened and a rainbow far-off.

Allen has stopped the car and he have switched off the engine. In his neck and shoulders there is a heaviness, a slackness, and then he steps out into the rain to look proper. He have closed the car-door but then he turns to me and says, "Oh, I am sorry, Mr Williams, excuse me. I did not think you would want - the rain is very heavy."

I am pleased that he is polite, but I am not ready to say so. But my mouth is sudden wicked to me and slips a smile on my face before I can stop him. Allen nods to me and goes back to look at our valley. I think of my father.

When we are back at 172, Allen is now quiet and when I have changed and he have brought in a suitcase and changed upstairs, he comes to me more slow now, to ask what I know, and what can I explain to him. He have asked about Ernest Jones and how he have survived the explosion and he have asked about his great-grandfather and what is a deacon. But now he is not bizz-buzz like a grasshopper but patient. I have asked him, has the memorial quieted you? and he have said, no, but perhaps the drive there, the old houses, and then the look down on the village in the rain. He have said how there is grey and black and no other colours.

"And the children," he have said.

The rain have stopped and some sun is out and I have just thought to say would Allen walk with me to the Commercial Hotel? We might together have a pint or two and a pie rich with gravy. But then there is a rap at the door and surprised, I have made a face.

"Are you expecting someone, William?"

I am not. "It is perhaps someone for the Cong. I have a key."

 But I am worried before I lift the latch. There have been delinquents to my door, always with excuses, but I have known of them as burglars and rotten. And I am right, for when the door have opened we have the boy Ryan Pugh, and the boy Clint Thomas, both left school and trouble.

I have been formal but my guard up.

"Any odd jobs?" Thomas have said. "We are looking for work." He is perhaps not yet eighteen but a terror already. Fists like hams he have, his head shaved off and cheap gold in his nose and his ear. He have looked past me and I am thinking he is looking to burgle me first chance.

"Boys! Boys!" I have said. "My place is like a new sixpence and shiny as a virgin's eye. I cannot afford to pay for odd jobs, but if it is a pint you are needing, I will be in the Comm just now."

Here the other boy, Pugh, has profaned himself and he have gived me a look sufficient to win him a good slap, we were equal old and I did not suffer with the dust. I have thought it anyway and the boy looks daggers before him and his crony have gone.

Allen Jones have stood at the parlour door. His face is full of worry so quick I have said. "Shall we go now? I feel a thirst and we will talk more comfortable in the Hotel snug."

Allen smiles. I have thought he wants to ask me about my callers but I pick up my cap and turn to go out. He nods and I have thought how quick he has learned. We leave into after-rain.

In the Commercial Hotel, Allen have asked for red wine and Mister Iestyn Griffiths have laughed though I know he do have sweet white wine for some ladies. We have Ansells Bitter and it is fine. Allen have said it is not unlike Budweiser and when I have asked what is Budweiser he smiles and shakes his head. It is now I catch his eye.

"You never married," he have said.

"Nor you?" I have answered. "I am ninety-six. Are you forty?"

Allen have told me he is thirty eight and then he have said very soft,

"Mister Williams - "

"William," I have offered and he have smiled.

"William, we, I - "

He have lost himself and I am thinking about my father but he have tried again, "William, your father - "

"Yes?" I have said.

"It has never been acknowledged, all these years."

"There is the Chapel's reputation," I have said. "More important than the wish of some boy to be called son."

"Then you know?" Allen have said.

"I know, and you know," I have said firmly. "I know we both know."

Allen is holding out his hand. I look to his face and the eyes smile with the mouth and I am pleased. I take the hand, much firmer than I expected. Allen is grinning. "But," he have said, "I am not sure what kind of relations we are."

I have worked it out a hundred thousand times. "I am like Kitty's brother, and your father's uncle. I am only half-related, a different mother, but I am all Robert, and his curse have lasted strong. Philanderer or disinterested is the Jones germ and I am no philanderer."

"So you will be my half-great Uncle William?"

"That is close enough, though I have not been convinced that germs divide equal but leap about in packs."

"I am pleased, then," Allen says, as Welsh as me.

And I am pleased too, for to be acknowledged, no matter how old, is to be acknowledged. We have settled who we are and to be related is enough. We have found a meeting-place of minds and we have shook hands, but it is trivia now, best made ordinary and Allen have known this, and asked, to change the subject,

"Those boys..?"

"Bad blood," I have explained, "but bad environment too for neither father have found work and the boys know nothing except their wits, their quick fingers and no future."

"They're thieves?"

"Surely," I have said. "There is so little for them in the valley. They have so much time and there are people from Cardiff and Newport come up the valley and peddle chemicals, that make the boys happy, or so they have thought."

Allen have seemed surprised. "Here, William?"

"Here, of course. So they rob. Here we have families broken, husbands exiles for extra assistance money, boys with no hope, the dole insufficient and eager men from all parts ready to help them pass the time."

"I can't imagine Sengennydd and drugs," Allen have said.

"Then you imagine," I have said. "They have took our green valleys and first raped them, and left them to grow black and blacker. Then there have been the sliding scale wages, but always sliding down, then strikes and starvation and lower wages still, and babies dying, and then when the unions were strong enough, the she-devil Thatcher have come along to kill the pits with a pen-stroke, policemen on overtime, and then buy coal from Poland. The choirs are going, all but gone, the rugby is going, the red life blood is going; and for those who are left it is drugs and stealing or fear and staying indoors. I am glad I am so old."

I have seen that Allen is sad to hear this. Then Allen have told me of his dreams and of his writing. He have made some fame and his little fortune but always it have been his dream to come back to his roots and immortalise his Sengennydd. But then he have said he have become empty now and he have said there is a place in his house for me for the rest of my days. I have laughed and said that things have not got so bad as have been painted.

"No, William," Allen have said, "the colour is gone from the houses, the faces, even the sky." Then he have said, "And a couple of druggies should not be able to frighten you."

"But they do not frighten me, Allen," I have explained.

"Just the same," Allen have said. "My place is open to you."

And I have smiled and nodded that I am grateful. I have said, yes, my valley is cruelly killed, it's children damned, it's old men bitter, but I have had my wholesome life and a little fraying at the edges does not make a good suit a bad suit, just frayed. And I have said too, that I am lucky for I did not have too many Sundays to concern me. And we did finish our drinks in some peculiar peace, not satisfied, but understanding our lot.

© Alex Keegan