Limestone Man by Robert Minhinnick Page A

is good money. Everybody says so.
    See. It’s started already.
    What has?
    Indoctrination. Mind control. Hallucination. I’m not joking.
    I’ll be earning almost as much as you, Dad.
    Probably more, the way my sales are going.
    Well then?
    What if it was twice as much money? asked Jack Parry. Or, or … what about ten times as much? You’ll see. You’ll see.
    You’re a really poor role model, Dad. In fact, I believe you’re a bad influence all round.
    Thanks. So now it’s only me. Only me who’s holding out.
    Holding out?
    Only me not working. In that place.
    You’re pathetic, Dad, said the younger Parry, laughing too. You know that?
    VII
    Severin also told Parry about The Works.
    My brother surfs up there. Round the outfall.
    Why up there?
    He surfs everywhere. But some good sets, he says. Like today. I’m going in now.
    Sets?
    Series of waves.
    Dangerous, isn’t it?
    Nah. Well, depends. He’s got conjunctivitis.
    What’s that?
    Going blind, isn’t he?
    What?
    Says he doesn’t care. Says he’ll be the only blind surfer.
    Blind?
    Kind of. All the surfers get it.
    Dirty water?
    Yeah. You don’t surf but you swim. You could get the rash.
    What rash?
    What the surfers get.
    Dai as well?
    Dai and Fflinty. All the boys. Maybe Branwen. She surfs. She’s good. Rashes and runs. My brother’s got it on his legs.
    He goes round the outfall?
    Yeah. Says it’s incredible, what comes out of the pipe. After dark, mostly. But my father tells him. When to go. When not.
    Your father works there?
    Yeah. Says when the best times are. The times to avoid.
    Blind?
    Fucking crazy, my brother. I’m going with him.
    Parry paused.
    I’ve seen you with that thing on your leg, he said.
    You what?
    That rope.
    You mean the leash?
    Suppose.
    You attach the leash to the board.
    Why?
    So the board doesn’t drift off. You are thick. Look, got to go.
    Yes, hot, isn’t it?
    High pressure. Forecast all week.
    And Severin continued down Cato Street in his American shorts. Parry remembered seeing surfers like him on TV. Sev’s freckles were prominent and there were darker blotches on his shoulders. His hair was blonder than Parry had ever seen it. On his feet ruined canvas shoes. The boy was already deeply tanned. Even his toes.
    Parry was left gazing at Sev’s slender back. He realised it tapered like a candleflame. The image came to him like a thunderflash.

SIX
    I
    Six in the morning, Richard Parry caught a bus in Cato Street. He felt ill. Maybe that was how everyone felt at The Works.
    But the swifts were screaming through the town, twenty, fifty, two hundred swifts. Black boomerangs over the terraces and gwlis of The Caib.
    Here ragwort already stood in braziers. Bindweed hung its mattresses over walls and hedges.
    After thirty minutes, the bus dropped its passengers at one of the canteens.
    Hundred and Seventeen duty?
    Think so, said Parry. But…
    Fucking know so, said an older man in blue overalls.
    Ignore him, said a young voice. You’re with me, butt. Stick close.
    Parry attached himself to this young man in ragged jeans. Whose enormous boots were bleached the colour of driftwood.
    With others, they piled into a minibus. Familiar as he thought The Works was, this would be the first time he had travelled into its remoter fastnesses.
    He already knew the plant was seven miles in extent. That was part of its legend. Also legendary was that it constituted a bigger town than The Caib.
    The minibus sped off, crossing loco tracks. Somehow it missed what Parry thought certain collision with a small train, hauling fiery slag.
    II
    When his mother asked him that night what he had done to get so dirty, Parry said simply, ‘carbon paper’.
    This he discovered, was what constituted duty One Hundred and Seventeen. But he never again heard his job referred to like that.
    One Hundred and Seventeen, he gradually learned, was part of The