At nearly 5 a.m. there is a purple tint in the sky; a tired light, as if it’s reluctant to break open the third day of Aberfan’s suffering. The drone of lorries taking the slag from the village is constant and William feels the air move as one of them moans past.
The waiting parents, mostly women, stand to attention at his appearance. He fights the instinct to crumple the shirt in one fist behind his back. He doesn’t like being watched. And never, not even as a soloist in Cambridge, has he felt so scrutinised. But in that second something happens; a peculiar emptying sensation, as if everything that has mattered this far drains away through the soles of his shoes into the slurry-slick pavement. Everything he must do this day is about these people standing before him now; that woman in the tweed coat and torn stockings, that man with the ragged shirt and terrified eyes, and that little boy on the table with smashed legs. William is here now because he has a skill that nobody wants to need. But they do, and he will provide it.
His breath catches as he inhales, his throat suddenly too big. He lifts the shirt aloft and calls on every bit of voice control he’s ever learned.
‘Whose little boy went to school—’
‘Owen!?’
There is a low thump and crack as the woman’s knees hit the pavement. Others gather around her, take her elbows, pull her up. A speck of rain taps William’s cheek. One woman turns away from the chapel and shouts, ‘Get Evan Thomas!’ A series of male voices call out, a vocal chain leading back to the mountain with a school roof poking out of it.
The mother emerges from the throng of parents, like someone coming through a drawn curtain. She approaches William with her arms out and it takes him a moment to realise she is reaching not for him, but the shirt. Long seconds pass as she holds it to her face. A man appears, the whites of his eyes startling against his skin, shirtsleeves rolled up, breathing heavily. He rests his filthy, strong arm across the woman’s shoulders. She’s stoic now. Blank-faced. Blood on her knee. They both look beyond William to the chapel, not at each other. They want to see their boy.
‘Come with me,’ William says softly once they are close enough, and opens the door.
It’s him. It’s their son.
‘Owen Elgar Thomas,’ the father says in response to Harry’s question. The mother is silent and dry-eyed as she gently touches the hand, the head, the chest, of the little boy. Harry tells them they will see their son again once he’s been embalmed and put in a coffin.
‘Maybe you should try and rest now,’ William says, walking them out of the vestry and through the chapel, past the remaining blanketed bodies. He holds the door open for them. ‘I promise you, we’ll look after Owen.’
‘Nicely done, William,’ says Harry quietly, when he returns to the table.
? ? ?
As the hours pass, the condition of the bodies worsens. At least the fire services have got them electricity in time for the diminishing light. Sometimes, all William has to take outside is a scrap of fabric, a hair bobble, a shoe. Yet it doesn’t take much to send a mother’s body lurching towards him, saved and destroyed in the same second. These eagle-eyed, hungry-hearted mothers could identify their children by a single fingernail.
When William has to walk onto the street and ask whose little girl has blonde hair, three sets of parents come forward. And possibly, these are the worst moments, when they approach the body with dread and fear that William can taste, and then realise it isn’t their daughter after all. He understands, after the last seven hours, the relief and comfort of knowing at last where their child is and that no further harm can come to them. What an appalling world he’s in, where the lucky ones are those able to identify their child’s dead body.
It’s raining again. The road hisses at squelching lorry tyres. Pellets of rain seem flung down on the chapel roof. Nineteen years old, freshly graduated from the Thames College of Embalming, with top marks for every piece of practical and written work, William looks at what’s left of the little girl who he’s just found out is called Valerie, and realises none of it counts for anything, not a thing, unless here and now he can do his job and prepare this child’s broken body for her parents, who are right now standing on the wet pavement outside.
In ordinary times, the room he stands in is a chapel vestry, but this is no ordinary time and William is blind to its details; the sloping pile of black bibles in the corner, the tatty kneelers stacked by the door, the deep smell of the dark wood wrestling with the cool whiff of formaldehyde, or the piles of small coffins against the back wall. Oblivious to it all, William finds himself transfixed by an unbidden memory, sharp as the scalpel in his hand.
Woken from his afternoon nap by the buttery fug of baking thickening the air in their flat, William drags his blanket into the kitchen to snuggle into the old armchair and watch his mother. Warmth washes over his legs as she reaches into the oven, pulling out the wonky old baking tray and laying it on the melamine table. She slides the palette knife under the largest biscuit, puts it on a china saucer and cuts it in half. Together they watch the rising coil of steam. ‘For his Lordship.’ She gives a deep curtsy, holding the saucer in both hands. The gold leaf on its border glints at him, and his sleep-soft face lifts into a smile as he reaches out to take it. ‘Don’t burn your mouth,’ she whispers.