MORNING SERIAL

THE future offered nothing – nothing but pain and grief.

Here in the quarry he would kill himself. Life was not worth living. Just one step, and then eternity. It was so simple. And yet… In the far distance a railway engine puffed. A yellow trail of sparks spat from the funnel. The engine gathered speed and chugged into the nowhere of darkness. Beyond, the waves in the estuary roared shorewards. The sea moaned and tossed like an awakened conscience.

A furnace door in the steelworks on the bank of the estuary was raised. The glow cut a red hole in the night.

Ieuan watched it all, his mind assailed with conflict. He stared down into the black depths once more. He knew this spot of earth so well. Here in the deep quarry he had played with the eagerness and abandon of childhood.

It was a place of happy memories. Here he had galloped on the proud white stallion his imagination had given him, when he and his companions, in those carefree days of sunshine, were heroes all.

Sliding down “Hill 6o” on toboggans of zinc sheets; climbing the rock face; fishing in the green pool; exploring the dark caves; singing, laughing, shouting with the zest that lived only in childhood.

Remembrances of yellow noons in yellow days of childhood when all was fair and lovely. The air shimmered and danced, and the little houses in the winding streets laughed to the sun. In those days, when he was but a tiny spot on the surface of his native earth, his heart leapt into his throat with the joy of living. He loved, then, the earth, the trees, the grass, the flowers, the sky, the sun, the rain and the wind, and every living bird and beast and man and woman that walked with him in the fair days of the summer world.

The world smiled around him in the sunlight and in the warm shadows. And in that smile he had basked, a child living and breathing the breath of innocence and love. Malice, greed, envy and bitterness were unborn to his soul, and all the living people were his friends as he laughed and danced on his journey through the untroubled days.

“Man that is born of a woman is of few days, and full of trouble ….” He moved closer to the edge. He felt the wet clay move under his feet.