We Go Down Slowly Rising: December 2013

A Golden Age by John Gimblett a P.I. Wall story

Part One: Christmas Eve eve

Ye Olde Murenger was quiet, but then, it was still early. Christmas or not. Ed Wall, Rocket to his friends and enemies (and there was getting to be more of a blurred line between the two these days he often thought) was sitting with his old school pal D.S. Rob Jenkins. Facing the High Street window, Wall saw a procession of human shadows trudge past, boots treading a fine dusting of snow to a dull and razor-thin slush as they stomped the antique pavement.

Bursts of laughter accompanied the shadows, following them with an air of Time; enclosing them in clouds of Spentness. Was that even a word? Wall asked himself. All of Newport’s history was there: processions of shadows, moving through the city. Beginning at the port, at the railway- and bus station, and heading these days in the direction of the M4. Exiting east, through the tunnels as if they were a means to birth; a new life. Newer. Something experienced, finished, to be replaced. Spentness. Was it even a word..

‘Eh? what word?’ asked Rob Jenkins. Damn, this was always happening. More so lately. The inside of Wall’s head and the apparition that was 21^st Century Newport seemed to be slipping and sliding into each other; one was an ice block sloughing from an Arctic land mass and the other was a turgid black sea being entered. Almost delicately, raising the most gentle of waves.

Which made him think, Where is Rosa? She should be here by now.

‘Uh, sorry Rob, just head-stuff.’ Rob had also noticed this from his friend; the belief that he was thinking things whereas he was actually saying those things. It was the sort of thing that could one into all kinds of trouble. And what’s with all the things?

Wall checked his phone. No message from Rosa.

‘Dr. Karmal not joining us after all then?’

‘Said she was. What’s the time?’ Rob looked at his watch. Told him. ‘Only 15 minutes late – she said 5 o’clock.’

They chatted a while, just stuff. Football, politics, Wall’s nemesis – ‘the bloody Council’, the weather, his very recent short holiday with Rosa.. but no mention of the events that had struck everyone in Newport a few months ago.

Well, the calendar said it was a few months. To Wall, it felt as if it had all happened just yesterday. But at the same time, as if there was a distance that drew it back into the last century. Time has its own machinery and its own existence.

‘Sam ok?’ Rob asked. ‘George and the baby?’ This was dodgy ground, he knew. Sam – Samantha – was one of Wall’s assistants, as was George (he’d never ever heard her referred to as ‘Georgina’ and the subject had never come up. She was just George).

Wall was quiet for a long time, staring ahead, past his pal, lulled into a mesmeric cave where there was far too much blackness and possibly a few bears, by the rhythmic marching of the shoppers in the snow. Some months ago, a case he was working on with South Wales Police had ended up involving him personally.

Again.

Some lunatic with an agenda inspired by an ancient Roman religion had maimed and most cases killed several people, including one young lad – Nat Collins – a student at the university in Caerleon who was now rebuilding his life with significant psychiatric help somewhere in Cambridgeshire.

Which is bad enough, but the whole episode ended with this nutter snatching George’s newborn baby, Edward, and..

Well, and.

‘Sam’s away for Christmas, visiting family somewhere or other. England? Scotland? George is.. well, Rob, you probably know as much as I do.’ He looked at Jenkins, who shrugged then nodded. What the hell did that mean?

‘I had a text last weekend from her. She’s settling into her new place. Getting help.’

‘Still.’

Rosa shuffled through the door at 6 o’clock and apologised. ‘Sorry, Rocket. Sorry Rob. Time playing tricks, what with Russia and everything.

She and Wall had been to Moscow for a few days. Just got back, couple of days ago. Rosa had taken her boyfriend (ha!) to meet her mother and a veritable Red Army of relatives. It had been a good trip, cold and with less friendly snow than here. They’d done the tourist thing, as much as there is a Moscow tourist thing. Wall had had the chance to re-visit a few sights: that big bell in the Kremlin; St. Basil’s cathedral and the rest of Red Square; the GUM department store (Wall had once bought a bow tie there) and a load of new buildings and skyscrapers that simply hadn’t been there last time he’d visited.

It had been a good break, relaxing, with the initial stress of meeting Rosa’s family soon dissipating as soon as it became obvious they liked him.

Well, someone had to. Other than Rosa, of course.

She sat down now, and Wall went to the bar for more drinks: Guinness – extra cold – for Rob, a vodka gimlet for Rosa and a little something for himself to get his circulation going again. He chatted a while with the new barmaid, Maria, who was wearing a Santa hat and had asked him ‘Who’s your friend?’. Wall assumed she meant Rosa, but in fact she was referring to Rob.

They both looked at him, shaking their heads but smiling. ‘How’s that working out for you?’ Jenkins asked him, gesturing towards his glass. Several drinkers nearby were looking over at him, and not just because he was still almost-famous.

Wall’s mood lightened instantly.

‘It’s working out for me just fine, thanks.’ He sipped his sherry. ‘Cheers.’ They raised their glasses. The Landlord of the pub kept a bottle of decent Amontillado behind the bar just for Wall; this started after the last nutter-serial-killer case as a kind gesture. He was never charged more than cost price for a glass of it.

‘And by the way,’ he added, raising his eyebrows at Rob and smirking, ‘Maria wants you for Christmas.’ Jenkins looked over towards the bar. Maria jingled her bells at him.

They talked about the Moscow trip for awhile. It had gone well, Wall said, but how the place had changed since he was last there in the 80s when it was the capital of the USSR! The obvious difference was that there were adverts for everything, everywhere. Bright neon flashing things covering the entire sides of buildings rather than murals and very large writing. He’d liked all that, and was saddened that the city centre looked like Piccadilly Circus or Times Square. And the skycrapers! Towering office blocks of smoked glass, their tops buried in low snow clouds.

A massive Christmas tree resembling an inverted ice cream cone stood in Red Square near St. Basil’s, a massive triangle of flickering LED lights bouncing off the snow. Lenin’s tomb was mercifully lacking in festive decoration, and Wall had even been able to go inside this time. Way back when, a week before Chernobyl had gone postal, he’d been unable to get anywhere near the mausoleum for the sheer length of the queue, which they’d been told was several hours long.

His old ‘local’ there, the bar of the Metropol hotel, was unrecognisable now, but he made Rosa sit there for an hour, reminiscing whilst nursing their vastly overpriced drinks.

At least there were no prostitutes eyeing him up this time.

‘A penny for them?’

Wall came-to and was back in the bar of the Murenger, his dainty glass (Rob’s adjective) empty in front of him. Wall told them he was thinking about Moscow, and he and Rosa talked about that some more. Rob went to fetch him a ‘proper drink’ and took ages to do so. When he sat back down he was smiling. He put a pint of bitter down on the table and a packet of nuts.

Wall looked at the nuts, then at his pal. ‘They were free,’ he said, by way of explanation.

‘I’ll bet they were,’ Wall said.

‘No such thing as free nuts,’ Rosa added.

Wall raised his glass and made a toast: To free nuts!

It was Christmas Eve eve. By 7 o’clock the bar was full and noisy. This time tomorrow, Wall thought, it would be rowdy. In a good-mannered kind of way, he hoped. Rob saw several people he knew; friends, acquaintances and people he’d arrested at some point. Very few of the latter appeared to bear a grudge however and one of them even offered to buy the Detective Sergeant a pint. The Detective Sergeant declined, politely but firmly.

‘What’s with the Market?’ Wall asked him. Although he’d only been away less than a week, he’d been working on a case for a few weeks – nothing exciting – in Cwmbran and even though he’d had to go to the office now and again he’d managed to avoid the High Street area. Or maybe he just hadn’t taken any notice.

‘Well, it’s got a new front,’ Rob said.

‘I can see that, you pillock.’

‘What else do you need to know?’ Rob asked.

Wall pulled a face and shook his head. ‘And the new bus station?’

This time it was Rob who grimaced. ‘The words piss-up and brewery spring to mind,’ he said. ‘It’s taken forever to get to this point and it looks far from finished to me’ he added. ‘Doesn’t look like a year’s worth of work does it?’

Wall had to agree, having caught a glimpse of it earlier. ‘It was meant to open this summer, but there was a bit of a delay..’ Rob continued. ‘They’re still saying it’ll be ready for Christmas.’ The three of them chuckled, as did a couple of drinkers at the next table who’d obviously been eavesdropping on their conversation.

‘Christmas? That’s.. tomorrow night!’ Rosa said.

‘The thing is,’ Wall said, ‘when I was a kid the bus station was actually where they’re building this one! My dad was a driver for a while, used to give me the foreign coins that’d sneak their way past the conductor. I still have a tin of them somewhere in the attic.’

They sat there in relative silence for awhile, thinking back to Newport town centre’s Golden Age (from a town planning viewpoint) that lasted up to the late 60s. The Old Green was lovely, the old Post Office was grand in a civic way and not in a price of a First Class stamp kind of way (boom boom!). Bridge Street had that little traffic island with a toilet in it, outside the Queen’s. There were numerous cinemas and no empty shops. Joyce’s toy shop in Cambrian Road was the magnet that attracted all kids and their pocket money towards it.

Wall would go to the little Milk Bar opposite the Newport Arcade, near Fussells sports shop with his dad; the latter would have Horlicks and little Rocket would have a real, proper frothy milk shake. They’d sit on tall stools at a counter that ran around the inside wall. The Council office was next door, and if there was any money left after the drinks they’d go in there to pay the rent.

Priorities!

Rosa was beginning to look bored, and said she’d leave the ‘boys’ to it. She would get a taxi back to her place in Caerleon and start preparing a light supper for later, if Rocket wished to join her?

Rocket did wish to join her, though he shuddered, as always, at the word supper. Bettws Boys didn’t have supper back in the Golden Age; he’d had jam sandwiches at dinner-time and fry-up at teatime. Jelly, blancmange and Wagon Wheels Sunday afternoon, after a cooked dinner and before a school-next-day bath.

The boys stayed in the pub another half hour or so, another drink’s worth of many moments, Wall still watching the flickering of shadows breeze by the windows and fighting off the intrusion of chilled air every time someone opened the door to the High Street. He hadn’t noticed until now, but the bar was itself festooned with fairy lights that instructed shadows to perform their own Christmas dance across old framed photographs of the town. He still refused to refer to Newport as a city. No, it was a town through and through: his town. And with a sherry and three pints inside him he was on the defensive; woe betide anyone who chose to have a pop at the ‘Port this side of Christmas!

Rob took their empty glasses back to the bar, which was peculiar to say the least. Well, unusual.

When they left the warmth of the Murenger, Wall noticed now pretty (just the three pints and a sherry, was it?) the street looked when dusted with a modicum of the white stuff. Rob pointed out that any place would look cute with snow on the ground. They spent a while going through some gruesome places that might look OK after snow - Penrhiwceiber, for instance. Nah.

They did a circuit of the Market building, just being nosey. The Cross Keys in Market Street was bustling, its doorway crowded with smokers like bees around a honey-pot, but Rob said the punters (his word) were still seething over the removal of the free pool tables some time ago. The new bus station was a building site, albeit a pretty one with some snow on it. There was much to be critical of in Newport at the moment; time had its own pace as regards ‘development’. Private housing estates and office blocks seemed to go up like nobody’s business, but a simple row of bus shelters had taken what seemed like forever to get sorted.

Wall had been to peep through the galvanised John Frost Square barricade just before the Moscow trip, and it was a total mess. In fact, the whole business of the Square and the proposed development appeared to be an almighty cock-up. Same as it ever was. The whole business with the Council and the Chartist mural was a disgrace of epic proportions in Wall’s eyes. Cultural vandalism purely for the pursuit of profit. As he’d had mentioned to him by many people, on many occasions in the past couple of months, the fair citizens of Newport would not forget this.

The Square had never, since its inception forty-plus years ago, lived up to expectations; there had been plans shown to the townsfolk at regular intervals promising a space where urbanity met nature. Fountains, trees, flowers and cleanliness. Instead, all we’d ever got, he told Rob Jenkins (and anyone else who’d listen) was.. inadequacy.

Under-performing, disappointing, delusional inadequacy.

Wall blamed concrete. Not to mention the bloody Council.

After gazing with despair at the building site, with the bright red Wave sculpture just across the way next to the river, Wall’s good mood dissipated somewhat and he was ready to go home. Home? He meant Rosa’s place, where he had been living almost exclusively for a month or two now. If he’d known it would turn out like this he would have suggested to George that she stay longer in his own house near the Civic Centre. But considering how little Edward had been snatched from there, then maybe not. No, it was better she’d found her own flat outside the centre. Near the park.

‘Thanks for taking my glass back to the bar, by the way,’ Wall said as they walked to the taxi rank outside the railway station. Rob knew what he was getting at.

‘Maria wants an interview,’ he said. ‘She’s a journalism student. Christmas break.’

Wall sucked in a cloud of cold air and it hit his cells like an ice cube plunging into a cheap cocktail. ‘Tell her I’m busy,’ he said, exasperated.

Rob shook his head dismissingly. ‘Not you. Me.’

‘You?’

‘Indeed.’

‘Wonders never cease.’

‘They don’t, do they.’

At the top of Cambrian Road, near where the Milk Bar used to be, a small group of young men dressed as Santa were leading a reindeer out of Wetherspoons.

A real one.

No-one, but no-one, took the slightest notice of this.

‘Ah, the ‘Port,’ Wall thought, wistfully.

‘Indeed,’ Rob replied.

Part Two: Christmas Eve

Ed Wall, Newport’s ‘best and only’ Private Investigator, was soaking up the atmosphere that is Christmas Eve afternoon on the mean streets of Newport. Except they weren’t at all mean today. He’d come into town early; Rosa had some last fragments of work she wanted to complete while it was still before Christmas as she’d said she had no intention of doing anything else work-wise until after New Year. Wall was looking forward to spending this time together. He had no family here and neither did she. Sam was away and wouldn’t be back in Newport for a few days yet – possibly the day after Boxing Day – and George seemed to have withdrawn into her own life. Her mum lived in Baneswell (‘The well of death’) not too far from Sam’s mother in fact and Wall despaired at the woman; she had pretty much deserted George while she was pregnant, continually blew hot and cold over her and her sister and was generally, Wall considered, the bane of George’s existence.

He decided to take a short stroll in and around the town. Not too far, just a circuit of the centre perhaps. Heading up Stow Hill just after midday, he popped into the cathedral to see what it was doing this Christmas – very little, it turned out – then continued on his way towards the Handpost. It hadn’t escaped him that he’d already walked past the locations of murders he’d been involved in investigating. Another traumatic chain of events had led to his then-girlfriend, Monica, being held at knife-point near the Wave by a serial killer he and the Police had christened the Wren Boy due to his upbringing and folkloric pursuits in Ireland.

It had been an eventful and draining, utterly exhausting, year or so what with one thing and another. Wall felt like he’d aged significantly in that time. He sighed as he walked into the pub and ordered half a Guinness. It was quiet there, any drinkers having already gone into town to soak up an atmosphere of their own making. He left soon after, the weak sun behind him shaving a thin layer of white dust from the trodden snow coating the pavements. It was snowing again now, very lightly. As soon as that sun went down, Wall knew, there would be more of the stuff.

Maybe a White Christmas! He’d like that, if only for Rosa’s sake. Well, for both of them; he needed more romance in his life, not less.

With this thought in his head Wall listened to the gentle crunch under his shoes and imagined all the other feet that had marched over this space. He smiled to himself.

Maybe, on that early winter’s day in 1839, the cracked black boots of Chartists trod the ground he trod now, unaware that they were about to be mown down by armed troops positioned outside the Westgate Hotel. John Frost – who had been married at the church in Bettws not far from where Wall had grown up – led more than 3000 men into Newport that day; at least 20 of them were shot and killed outside the Westgate Hotel, with dozens more wounded.

And what does the Council do in their memory? Bulldoze the commemorative mural, that’s what. Wall’s mood blackened and the low sun sank into a cloud.

Back in the town centre, he decided to check on the office, close to the old bus station which now seemed to have been razed to the ground. Good riddance, he thought.

There was a small stack of mail behind the door, which he dealt with quickly. Nothing important, a couple of cheques and a couple of bills. A letter from the Council advising him of something or other he really couldn’t be bothered with. A handful of Christmas cards, which was a pleasant surprise. He read them quickly; not one of them was abusive. Result! While he went through the mail he sat in his chair, listening to Radio 4. He liked to waste whole days there listening to the cricket with endless mugs of tea. Often Sam and George would be around, chatting and moaning, browsing magazines and doing something on the computer. Wall and computers were sworn enemies.

Outside the window it was already getting dark, and Christmas lights flickered across the front of the Windsor Castle pub. A trickling of snowflakes fell slowly as if parachuting down. Swaying side to side, yellow – almost golden – in the soft glow of the street lamps and the spotlights of car headlamps turning from Corn Street.

It wasn’t often he could bring himself to say it, but sometimes Newport was the most beautiful place on Earth. Other times of course it was the most foul, the most infuriating and arguably the ugliest place on God’s green Earth.

Now, as the snow fell onto already white pavements, and with Christmas lights pricking the fabric of the city – there, he’d said it – like kitten-claws raking soft cloth, Newport looked beautiful.

And its beautiful people ambled by, usually on the pavement but sometimes in the gutter, giggling and celebrating. Toasting the Now. While he stood at the 3^rd floor window clutching a mug of cold tea looking down at streets and their buildings with a longing for Then: the Golden Age.

Past? Future?

He found himself by the Market again, stood awhile by the railings alongside the building site. Upper Dock Street. It was dark now and the snow was falling faster.

When he was a child, there was a cobbler there, hammering nails and leather in a dark cave of a shop Wall could remember the essence of even now. And the smell: leather and glue.

A group of young women walked past, bedecked with tinsel and dressed for summer, not the snow.

They were merry after what had probably already been a few hours of drinking. Wall checked his watch: 4.15pm. He hadn’t eaten since an early breakfast with Rosa.

His café of choice in the centre of the town was Nesta’s in the Market, and that’s where he headed now. Took a short detour to the newsagent shop in the new main entrance hall and grabbed a copy of the Argus to read while he ate and drank. As he walked through the hordes of late shoppers he glanced at the front page headline of the ‘paper: someone had ‘borrowed’ a reindeer from the community farm in Cwmbran.

Wall sat in the café with an inch-thick slice of toast dripping with butter and a mug of milky coffee, the mere scent of which took him to places and times that could write their own history of Newport.

While he sat there, Rosa rang him. It was only then he fully realised it was Christmas Eve. And despite being in a relationship he was very settled and happy in, he was indeed sat there on his own.

And in quiet, lonely moments such as this Wall sometimes still thought about Monica and about what they went through together. What she went through, with that knife held to her throat by a killer. The thoughts, the memories.. gave him pain. Did he miss her? Yes. Did he want to be with Rosa? Yes.

Occasionally he thought he was losing his mind. ‘The blood does not reach my brain. It hurts every day.’

He thought back to a week ago. He and Rosa stood at a table in a café a block from the Bolshoi with coffee and pastries. Laughing and holding hands, people-watching before heading back out into the snow. Proper snow. And he remembered being there, gazing out into the street at Muscovites who looked uncannily like Newportonians.

And wishing he was back in Newport, where he’d heard it was also snowing.

He paid, left a tip and wandered around the market. It was emptier than the last time he was there. Some traders had been there forever it seemed. The pet food shop and some greengrocers in particular. Upstairs was a disgrace; in his teens it had been crowded with shoppers at the end of the week. There had been numerous stalls selling all manner of things and he’d built up his nascent record collection through regular visits to the used book and record traders there. Well, the market and the second hand shops opposite ‘Gilligan’s Island’ downtown.

The flower shop outside Nesta’s was closing. Wall made them an offer they couldn’t refuse for stock that wouldn’t last until Boxing Day and dragged the hugest bouquet imaginable back past the Murenger again to a taxi. The driver gasped when he saw Wall. Well, not Wall exactly; more a bouquet with feet and a head.

Rosa was impressed. Very.

Part Three: Christmas Day

The snow had come down in the night like a bleached sheet, a gossamer-fine web that enveloped Newport in a clean whiteness. An attempt at imposing purity upon the town, city.

As soon as Wall and Rosa had eaten the night before she told him she wanted to wake up in his house Christmas morning, not her own flat annexed to the Halls of Residence in Caerleon. A nice set of rooms, yes, befitting a university Professor. But impersonal enough for her, let alone Ed Wall, barely-national man of mystery and arbiter of good taste and all things classy. Bettws does that to you.

So with the clock edging towards 10.30pm he rang for a taxi. Actually, he rang Rob Jenkins first to enquire about cadging a lift from any police car that might be going from Caerleon to Newport anytime soon. The D.S. wasn’t impressed and told him to ring a cab. Hence the second phone call.

The taxi arrived soon after, and Wall had to sit down as soon as he entered his house on account of the fare, which was considerable. Very.

‘Should have chartered a helicopter and saved some money,’ he told Rosa. She raised her eyebrows and shook her head. She and her family had chartered very many helicopters in almost as many different countries - back in Afghanistan, Russia, Ukraine and Kazakhstan to name but four such places.

The house was freezing; he hadn’t spent a night there for almost three weeks. He put the heating on and while they waited for the air to lose its chill they sat at the kitchen table wearing their coats scarves and gloves warming their hands on mugs of steaming tea. In half an hour or so it would be midnight..

Christmas morning, bright and early. Wall had got out of bed early to make a pot of tea; had looked out of the window at the white street, before sun-up. Light emanated from the ground, pushing out a flood of brightness that drowned every atom of air in false dawn.

The house looked bleak; he hadn’t put any decorations up, or a tree. How was he to know he’d be waking up there rather than in Caerleon?

He knew Rosa wouldn’t mind; she’d already told him that for her, Christmas wasn’t happening until January 7^th, the date it’s celebrated in the Orthodox church and tradition; as a Russian, atheist or not these days, it was the culture she grew up in and it sort of kept its hold on her and her extended family back in the Mother country.

If she wanted to spend Orthodox Christmas there at his place they could decorate the house together.

Not only were there no decorations, there was no food either. Even the tea which he carried back upstairs was black. Perhaps they should have thought this thing through a little more.

‘Black?’ she asked.

‘No milk. No food.’

‘Was there none in the box we brought from mine?’ While they’d waited for the taxi to arrive, she had put together an impromptu hamper of random things from her fridge and food cupboards. He’d forgotten about this – must have been the shock of the cab fare.

They decided to go for a walk after breakfast and wrapped themselves up in several layers against the cold. Despite the snow – a few inches thick on the pavements – they were already overheating by the time they reached the bottom of Bridge Street. The Christmas tree stood there outside the banks, in front of Sir Charles Morgan, whose bronze head wore what Wall imagined was a Phrygian cap, made of snow.

No tinsel, no frippery but for numerous drips of white lights, its branches heavy with last night’s downfall. Although it had stopped falling before dawn, the sky, though bright, was a consistent grey, each cloud merged and leaden with unique pattern.

They stood looking at the tree awhile, the entire city centre their own. No other living soul about at this time on Christmas morning. They decided to walk to the river.

Half way down Skinner Street (once there were tanneries here alongside the pill that reached up to where the Christmas tree stood now) they stepped over a meandering trail of reindeer tracks. Their owner appeared to have been heading towards the new bus station.

The tide was in.

Near Austin Friars Wall’s phone rang and he answered it. Sam wished them both a Happy Christmas and they arranged to meet for a drink at lunchtime on Boxing Day. George rang moments later and he invited her along. She said she’d try, but he had very little expectation she’d actually turn up. Still, he’d asked.

While the phone was in his hands he texted Rob Jenkins. Did he want to come along for a drink tomorrow?

Well, the more the merrier.

It was mid-morning by the time they’d walked up to the cathedral, discovered it was empty of cheer, and strolled down through a slippery Baneswell back to the railway bridge by the Engineers. Five minutes later they were back in the house. Wall felt guilty about there being no decorations, no tree, but Rosa said again that she didn’t mind if he didn’t as for her it wasn’t even Christmas for another 2 weeks. They agreed that if they decided to spend January 7^th at his place they would definitely decorate the house together. They’d already – a few weeks ago – decided that presents would also wait until January. But for now, their lungs still full of cold air and their toes in need of warming, mulled wine was in order.

The sun went down early, not that they or anyone else in Newport saw it happen, and with the drawing in of the night just after 4pm. it was dark soon after. Light snow fell gently again, drowning footprints and giving streetlights something beautiful to do.

At the tail end of 1962, and for the first seven weeks of 1963, Newport was frozen solid; a blizzard brought the worst snowfall since 1947. It all but shut down the town and supplies of everything, from food to coal, ceased. Wall was a young child with no memories of that winter other than what a few family photographs gave him later.

Just five months later, June 11^th was the hottest day in Wales for 45 years. A Golden Age began that day: with hindsight, Wall saw that punch of summer as the real start of the 1960s; a decade that was good to the people of Newport, indeed to the people of Britain. Sure, bad things happened that year: JFK was a shock, though not for Wall as a toddler.

In the house, Christmas afternoon, sat with a drink, a woman he loved and an old film on TV, he’d drifted off into this reverie of nostalgia.

He remembered that day in June, 1968 at his uncle’s house in Eveswell when the television News came on as he sat playing in the living room there. Bobby Kennedy’s assassination. Remembered that. But 1963.. no.

The sixties: Harold Wilson with his proper Labour government; England winning the World Cup; the Prince of Wales Investiture street parties across Newport; the moon landings. And the building of Bettws.

To Wall, now, the sixties began that hottest day in June 1963, and ended at the General Election in June 1970 when Edward Heath became Prime Minister.

It was about that time in history that Newport began its slide towards decay; it seems everything from the Old Green, the top of High Street and Cambrian Road, down to Austin Friars and beyond was demolished and remodelled with concrete. Kingsway was constructed and the promise that was John Frost Square never lived up to expectations; the endless architects’ – and developers’ – idealistic plans never quite reaching fruition.

June 1963 to June 1970: a Golden Age. A decade of hope, expectation and optimism. A decade when the working class of Newport mattered.

And what was there now? Well, for now there was Christmas, a drink and a woman he loved. Who knows what next year would bring? Maybe some work, more happiness, less worry..

Maybe a Golden Age starting over.

* * *

This story is dedicated with great Christmas cheer to those people who have bought, read, enjoyed and promoted the P.I. Wall novels – thankyou! In particular I would like to thank:

Allan Mills, John D. Leonard, Graham Price, and Maria Williams

P.I. Wall will return in a third novel, Walking The Edge

We Go Down Slowly Rising

Sunday 15 December 2013

P.I. Wall

Friday 13 December 2013

A Golden Age (the Christmas 2013 P.I. Wall short story)

Monday 9 December 2013

A Christmas Rocket