Flame and Slag Read Online Free Page A

Gad ’e fod. Paid a gwneyd dim rhagor! ” — my lavender-doused grandmother hammering a stern bomp-bomp with her fist on the table. But Grancha croaked his judgement: “Oh, nice and lovely for you now, boy, but bad later. Very bad. Wait till later on when they don’t want our coal and the old pits close down. Oil, bachgen , oil tankers coming across the seas.”
    “Atomic power!” hailed John Vaughan, his curly white mane quivering like primped fleece.
    Ellen caught his arm. “Hush, dad, you haven’t worked underground for fifteen years.”
    “Coal is bound to lose in the long run, it’s plain for anyone with eyes to see!”
    “Shh, you’ll make yourself ill.” She grimaced, less chagrined than resolute: “Rees, I’m ready to leave now.”
    We went around the room, Ellen pacing our farewells, unflinching when she came to Tal Harding, poor Tal’s unsweated body stranded in a massive black-varnished armchair (this left-over piece from rustic times, when Daren folk were obedient to seasons and the weather), solitary at the far end of the long room.
    “Go home and sleep,” she said, patting his hand. “Rees and I are leaving now. Goodbye, Tal.”
    He appealed from his wet, helpless eyes. “Gaw-bless, Ell-en, Gaw-bless both… Reesy”, the light fading out from him, his jaw failing on gapes, all holds slipping, then Tal’s head gently, safely rolled him into unconsciousness.
    “He’s a loser,” I said. “I feel sorry for him.”
    “My mastermind husband, you’re a philosopher,” remarked Ellen like sealing dubious goods. “Right now, darling, we’ve been round them all.”

    Continuing philosophically crab-fisted, I reckon honeymoons are rendered to us by way of revelation, I mean in contrast to the wasteful commitments of nature. Meaning NATURE, natural selection’s slavery, whether it be nits breeding in Elizabeth the First’s wig, cow hippos in heat, rut-mad spiders, the deathless morality of grass, space-flight virus, anaconda dialogues, sturgeon idylls, more than all these multiplied to excelsior, whereas for people everywhere, it’s honeymoons. Wedlock fidelity. Our honeymoon edifice two thousand years old, via Deuteronomy 24:5. When a man hath taken a new wife, he shall not go out to war, neither shall he be charged with any business: but he shall be free at home one year, and shall cheer up his wife which he hath taken .
    Pressing on then, collier-fisted by heritage, we spent our seven days’ honeymoon caravanning in Horton on the Gower coast. Courtship habits prevailed that first afternoon, but thereafter we were proven. Proved each other, I mean, but still I failed to understand my brand-new wife, couldn’t possibly except in the sanctimonious way of bachelors blinkered by pseudo-Christian rearing, slippery books, Rinso-ed films and the buttoned dialectic of Daren. Wales is agog with Daren counterparts, none of them worse than Detroit, hinterland Africa or Llasa.
    Between love-knotting and living we strolled and swam, mister and missis blindly happy as nectar-drunk midges inside a hyacinth and all day long the blue sky curved above Horton bay to the sea horizon. What people do, they are. We were lovers.
    A dozen caravans were parked in this cow-patted field overlooking the bay, others by the organized drove spaced out below the headland and right around to Port Eynon. In Port Eynon we drank light beer in a pub where verboten notices hung everywhere. This old pub had dogs, big dogs, slavering as Nansen’s huskies. Sometimes we carried small flagons to the beach and waited until after dark for sea-mating, undertones snickering all around the summer-night bay, wails dissonant to the purring tide, twined couples stumbling or sculling away from other couples. A hidden world of twos, but during day-time you’d see the inevitable sand plodders, shabby roamers, often elderly, lonely men and women with dead mahogany complexions and the shifty glances of retreat, of inadequacy, of