Free Flame and Slag by Ron Berry

memories. Perishable memories, doomed, vanishing.
    “Whassamatter?” Charlie said. “Talkin’ to yourself? Thass a bad sign, br awd . ”
    I said, “We’re short of Dowty posts and bars.”
    “Unless they come in through the supply road this morning, Reesy.”
    Fred Fransceska and a Ukrainian supervisor (the Germans brought their own nomenclature to Caib) turned off into the new Seven Feet roadway, Fred calling, “Shimai-ha, boys!” He’d quickly acquired a working store of idioms, catchpenny phrases direly harvested for peace of mind.
    “How’s Morfed then?” Charlie said.
    “Lovely, mun!” Fred’s eyes grinning inside the blue scarred anvils of his cheekbones.
    “She ought to be an’ all,” groaned Charlie under his Mintoe-ed breath. “Been in practice a long time.” Then, returning to banter, bawling over his shoulder, “Aye, she’s one of the best, Freddie-boy,” — low-groaning again, “Duw, she’ll spend money faster than that Aga Khan bloke. The man isn’t born who’ll keep up with Morfed Owen.”
    I said, “Charlie, share out the sweets.”
    “These bloody loshins are rationed, don’t forget. Butties only, unless it’s case of colic. Good Christ, I used to suffer colic when I started on the coal. Hey, Rees, whassis I hear about big Percy Cynon? Caught fiddlin’ with some little girl over in Garden Terrace. School-kid she was, under age. Course he’s got to manage it somehow, poor sod.” Charlie gagged suddenly, dribbling Mintoe juice. “Just thought, Reesy, remember the time we queued up outside the hollow acorn tree in Daren woods? Big Percy last in the gwt , an’ when his turn came Margie Miskin stopped shop like, remember? Old Percy, by the lovin’ Christ, whatta state on him.”
    “Who was this girl from Garden Terrace?” I said.
    “Not from the Terrace’s far as I can make out. Why then, butty? Fancy somethin’ in ankle socks now that your Ellen’s in the club agen?”
    “I’ll belt you across the ear one day, Charlie,” I said.
    “Aye? You and whose army? For Christ’s sake watch those nerves of yours, Reesy; anybody’d swear you’d been stuffed by a one-armed bandit. Where do you think you are, boy, chapel? Christ, there’s no point in living if you can’t take a joke. Look a’me last New Year’s Eve. See, I goes home from work on afternoon shift, an’ there’s a bunch of kids playin’ Strip Jack fuckin’ Naked in our front room. Honest! That boy Hopkins from the butcher shop, he didn’t have a rag on him. Kids these days, hair down their backs like bloody golliwogs. My missus reckons the sexes are changin’ over. When some little fruit-cake comes down here in the old Caib an’ clears my stent, that’ll be the day for Charlie-boy to hang his tools on the bar.” He spat out and fly-kicked his Mintoe, warbling happily, “Def’nitely, aye!”

6
    Wrapped in herself, the strange glow not for sharing, Ellen bundled away the dinner dishes.
    “Hiya, my love,” I said.
    “Selina Cynon came here this morning, after she’d been to the police station. They soon dropped the case. The girl was lying her head off.”
    “But who was she, Ellen?”
    “Some new family moved into Lower Daren. Key man in the radio factory — um, Mr Wilson — they’re living in one of the Board of Trade prefabs. Four children, according to Mrs Cynon. Vicky Wilson, she’s their eldest, sixteen next month.” Ellen slowly turned her head, jerkily like a pre-dawn song-bird: “Apple tart or” — gazing upward, bemused — “cake, shop cake with a cup of tea?”
    “Vicky Wilson?” I said.
    “Yes,” — paused like a woman surrounded by, repudiating chaos.
    “Did he — Percy, I mean?”
    “Yes.”
    “I’ll have a slice of each,” I said.
    She bent down. “No wonder you married me.”
    “Come again, love?”
    “For sweetness!” — nose-rubbing like an Eskimo wife. “I’m putting words into your mouth,” she said.
    Serenely to and from the pantry, filling the