Under The Desks

• Claire Williams, Grade 12
• Short Story
• 2008

Looking back, I shouldn’t have made him go to school that day- that day 41 years ago now. I still remember the tears in his eyes as I shoved him out the door, calling after his big sister, my eldest daughter Pat to watch out for the other two. It was a cold, wet October morning. A cold wet October morning that altered my life forever.

I stood on the doorstep watching as Pat grabbed a hold of Tommy, telling him not to be such a big baby. “It’s only one more day until the Holidays. Stop whinging or we’ll all be late for school.” I couldn’t help smiling as I watched bossy-boots Pat grab his hand and haul him to his feet, dragging him toward the school over the way. I called after them “Now don’t any of you loose your jackets…” It was just after I watched them disappear through the mist over the slight rise in the road that I realised that my husband Jack was rather late getting home from his shift.

It was nearly eight when my husband should have walked in- dropping muck off of his clothes from the night shift at the colliery all through the house, as he explained about the water drainage problem in the seventh slag heap up in the tip, or something as equally uninteresting. It was well past nine-thirty when I was hanging out my first load of washing for the day that I heard the knock on the door. The knock that would change our lives forever.

***

‘Pat,” he cried, “You’re hurting me!”
“Hurry UP!” I panted as I tugged at his hand, half dragging half carrying him up the steep grassy slope to the school. “Mr Williams won’t like it if you’re late again- you’re not in first juniors anymore.”
“Don’t Care,” whimpered Tommy, “I don’ wanna go to school today. Wanna stay home.”
“Tough.” I almost screamed. “Now hurry up, there’s the bell,” I said, as I stalked off up the dewy hill through the misty morning, leaving my brother behind. Staring up at the usual landscape of slag heaps enclosing our valley, I couldn’t help but wonder why my father was so late home that morning. One of the shafts must have collapsed I decided, and Dad had to help dig the men out.
“Sorry I’m late,” I apologised to Mr Jenkins as I hurriedly sat down beside my second best friend at the back of the third grade classroom.

***

I remember that day like it was yesterday. That day changed my life forever. I don’t know why, but that morning lessons were especially boring. It was two days away from my tenth birthday at the time and it was Friday, and only one day until the holidays so perhaps that had something to do with it. The entire class was talking non-stop about what fun they were going to have over the holidays- talking over Mr Jenkins as he tried to make us calm down and get out our history books. It was almost time for assembly and he wanted us to get at least some work done that morning.

Mr Jenkins began with Aberfan’s collieries as he asked us to stand up and to look out of the windows into the dismal black mountains past the farm cottages beyond. He asked us to listen to the sounds of the cranes dumping drams of powdered coal waste onto the already towering peaks- the peaks that were well worn into the background, a part of the landscape we’d grown up in. He asked us what we knew about the mines, and what had recently been in the papers about their safety. He asked us to think about what we could see. But I could only think about my father.

“All of you. Back to your desks. Write down as much as you can remember about what we just talked about. In ten minutes we’ll read some of them out.”
Why wasn’t my father at home that morning?

***

I was teaching that morning. I don’t exactly remember what subject but it was about the collieries, but it was my third year class. I remember sitting at my desk, looking out through the absolute silence at my students as they had their heads down, concentrating on the task at hand. I remember there was one girl- Pat I think her name was- that just didn’t seem to be able to concentrate, always looking across the room and out the window to the colliery on the hillside.

As I sat at my desk I remember thinking about the potential of that class. They were the future’s doctors, lawyers… colliery workers. There were so many accidents in the mines that there was always room for new employees. As I watched the sea of uniforms concentrating on their work, a worried little voice suddenly interrupted the silent class.
“Mr Jenkins, there’s a cloud of smoke outside in the schoolyard. I think the schools on fire,” and like a flash every one of those twenty-three eager little faces was pressed against the glass to have a look. It must have been ten minutes later when I’d gotten the children settled and working again that I realised something just wasn’t right.

***

I remember a little boy at the back of our class- just next to the window shouting out that the school was on fire, and as you could imagine the whole lot of us were up and at the window trying for a glimpse. It wasn’t a fire- and we had to go back to work. Mr Jenkins picked on some of the class to share their work, but I could only think of my Dad. In fact, I don’t really remember much at all- just wondering what could have happened to make my Dad so late coming home that morning. May-be he’d been abducted by aliens I remember thinking- just so I didn’t have to think about Mr Thomas who died last week.

I was so absorbed in thinking about the countless possibilities, everything a child could come up with to avoid the possible truth, I’m not even sure that I felt the tremors or heard the rumbling like thunder or saw the black wall, as tall as a house and as wide as a three-lane expressway, coming directly toward the school, plundering down the hill from the colliery and deafening us all. I was sure I was imagining it all.

***

“UNDER THE DESKS,” I screamed at my class. “Get down, NOW, under your desks.”

It wasn’t until later that I learned that the day shift miners had been sent home that morning from the colliery. And that smoke Brian pointed out in the schoolyard was in fact water spray from some broken pipes. There was to be no further work that day at the colliery. It was too unsafe.

***

I heard the quiet tapping on the door, just as I pegged out the last sock. It was so quiet, barely inaudible. I remember being immediately sure that it couldn’t possibly be my husband- all I could do was hope for anything other than bad news. I couldn’t loose my husband- even though my mind told me that my children had lost their father.

I rushed to the door, flinging open the net door to see a little girl standing right there at the bottom of the stairs. Only about ten, dressed in only her slip and blouse, she was covered head to toe in wet dirt. With one solitary tear rolling down the side of her left cheek she whispered: “I’m so sorry Mummy. I left my coat in school. I don’t know where Sam is, and I don’t know where Tommy is. Mr Jenkins sent me home.”

***

I was one of the two people to leave my third grade classroom alive that morning. A little girl, Pat Williams was the other; luckily for her she’d been pushed up into the rafters.

I don’t know of a family in the village who didn’t loose at least one child, in fact I don’t know of any family at all. But through the sadness and the grief, it seemed as though the village was stronger…united as one… all working together to rebuild their lives…

***

“…And viewers, thank you for tuning in tonight to watch these touching real life accounts of that fateful morning of Friday the twenty-first of October 1966 at Aberfan where, in a small Welsh valley, 116 students of at Pantglas Junior School lost their lives. I hope you’ll tune in tomorrow night for the sequel of tonight’s program, Aberfan: The Aftermath- a Mosaic of Broken, Gleaming Fragments.”