The Dreams of Max & Ronnie Read online

  Seren is the book imprint of

  Poetry Wales Press Ltd

  57 Nolton Street, Bridgend, Wales, CF31 3AE

  www.serenbooks.com

  © Niall Griffiths 2010

  ISBN 978-1-85411-613-0 (EPUB edition)

  The right of Niall Griffiths to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988. A CIP record for this title is available from the British Library.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted at any time or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the copyright holder.

  This book is a work of fiction. The characters and incidents portrayed are the work of the author’s imagination. Any other resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Cover design by Mathew Bevan

  Inner design and typesetting by [email protected]

  Ebook conversion by Caleb Woodbridge

  The publisher acknowledges the financial support of the Welsh Books Council.

  Contents

  Introduction

  Ronnie’s Dream

  The Dream of Max the Emperor

  The Mabinogion:

  Rhonabwy’s Dream synopsis

  The Dream of Maxen Wledig synopsis

  Afterword

  New Stories from the Mabinogion

  New Stories from the Mabinogion

  Introduction

  Some stories, it seems, just keep on going. Whatever you do to them, the words are still whispered abroad, a whistle in the reeds, a bird’s song in your ear.

  Every culture has its myths; many share ingredients with each other. Stir the pot, retell the tale and you draw out something new, a new flavour, a new meaning maybe. There’s no one right version. Perhaps it’s because myths were a way of describing our place in the world, of putting people and their search for meaning in a bigger picture that they linger in our imagination.

  The eleven stories of the Mabinogion (‘story of youth’) are diverse native Welsh tales taken from two medieval manuscripts. But their roots go back hundreds of years, through written fragments and the unwritten, storytelling tradition. They were first collected under this title, and translated into English, in the nineteenth century.

  The Mabinogion brings us Celtic mythology, Arthurian romance, and a history of the Island of Britain seen through the eyes of medieval Wales –but tells tales that stretch way beyond the boundaries of contemporary Wales, just as the ‘Welsh’ part of this island once did: Welsh was once spoken as far north as Edinburgh. In one tale, the gigantic Bendigeidfran wears the crown of London, and his severed head is buried there, facing France, to protect the land from invaders.

  There is enchantment and shape-shifting, conflict, peacemaking, love, betrayal. A wife conjured out of flowers is punished for unfaithfulness by being turned into an owl, Arthur and his knights chase a magical wild boar and its piglets from Ireland across south Wales to Cornwall, a prince changes places with the king of the underworld for a year…

  Many of these myths are familiar in Wales, and some have filtered through into the wider British tradition, but others are little known beyond the Welsh border. In this series of New Stories from the Mabinogion the old tales are at the heart of the new, to be enjoyed wherever they are read.

  Each author has chosen a story to reinvent and retell for their own reasons and in their own way: creating fresh, contemporary tales that speak to us as much of the world we know now as of times long gone.

  Penny Thomas, series editor

  Ronnie’s Dream

  In the first, infant years of the second millennium since the Saviour’s martyrdom there appeared two great warriors in two great lands, separated by a huge water.

  There appeared a third warrior, too, ruler of an ancient empire in the east, who had been brother to the two other warriors for some time but had now turned against them. So the warrior of the vast land across the big water was launching his armies at him, followed by his partner warrior, ruler of an ancient island whose colours were once bright and which flew over much of the world but were now fading and becoming dimmer, like the colours of a flag left to flap for too long in the bleaching sun and running rain and whipping wind.

  This man’s standing was a low one in the world and he was saddened and dismayed to see the power enjoyed by his partner over the big water, so he sought out his advisors and warriors of high rank who told him to not follow his partner’s armies into the east but he saw that if he listened to them his own standing would fall yet further. A mighty mur-mur rose amongst his people but he heeded them not and gave the orders for swords to be sharpened and armour buckled and steeds charged; he could not let his brother go alone, he thought, against the warlord in the east, who, the warrior of the ancient island knew, had many weapons in hiding. The brother warrior’s country had come to the aid of the island warriors in times past and blood-clogged and he told his people of the ‘blood debt’ they owed and they laughed at him but he believed his own words; not one of the thousand voices ranged against him could ever for one moment make him doubt his own words.

  So his orders were passed and passed down through offices and via papers until they found footings in beating hearts and wheels began to roll and ships to sail and steeds to snort and the tips of lances caught the sun that, by his actions, the warrior hoped would cease to set on his ancient island and a great number of his troops were told to prepare themselves for war and this they did, some by nestling within their families, others by fulfilling desires, and others by abandoning themselves for what could be the last and final time to the joys of flesh and skin in celebrations that, this time, for them, were coloured more by desperation than previously. What will I see, each one wondered. What will I do? In a land of sand and searing sun what blood will I see spilled and when I bend to study its pools a-sizzling in the heat what face will I see redly reflected in the seething scarlet sheen. And, as they’d been taught to, they also thought: Christ I’m in the mood to kill some fucking ragheads. I can’t wait to slot some fucking ragheads.

  One retinue on this quest to forget what had yet to happen was made up of soldier Ronnie, soldier Robert, and soldier Rhys, all from the middle part of the ancient country that juts out like a belly from the bigger island to which it is joined. In five days or so they will be on a ship sailing to attack that land in the east and flush out the warlord’s weapons and destroy his armies, friend-that-was, and since receiving their date of departure they have been imbibing potions and powders of a kind which tease dreams out of the air and into their heads and which chirrup like birds and howl like wolves and clang like the meeting of shields. They have chased rainbows to slide down going whee and hunted bunkers in which to hide from their imminent mission in tavern and inn and flashing party and private house, their shoulders bowed under the great weight heaped on them; their country expects, they have been told, the millions of others of their blood and type are agog for them to prove that the heroic spirit of their ancient race is not dead and that their land can still spawn great emperors and kings and that the blood of knights and crusaders irrigates their limbs. They have not slept or eaten for some time and that is where they are now, hungry and tired, looking for food and somewhere to slumber in a small village familiar to them all. The time of the year is spring, typically wet and sodden. They are moving towards the house of Red Helen.

  – Why’s she called Red Helen?

  – Cos she’s got red hair, says Ronnie. – Bright red. Not joking, I mean she dyes it, like. Has done since she was a kid. Always bright red.
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  Neither Ronnie nor Robert nor Rhys look, at this moment, like the heroes they have been told that they are. The eyes of heroes are not sunk in haunted pits nor are their lips cracked like lake beds in drought nor do their limbs shake and spasm as if with a lethal fever. Nor do they bear pimples and cuts and bruises and nor do they whimper; especially nor do they whimper in unguarded moments, usually alone, at urinal or cashpoint or kebab counter or bar. No, heroes should never be heard to whimper. In the skin and eyes of heroes there shines a kind of tragic light; but here, in these three skins and six eyes, there crackles only the exhaustion that comes from excess and indulgence sought to stave off fear.

  The village they are in consists of one short main road and a loose grouping of houses scattered across the hillside above, just below the tree line. That main road is now shop-less: the butcher, the baker, the grocer, all now private dwellings. Pub-less, too; the Stag’s Head, which had been serving beer for five centuries but would never do so again since the conditions of selling, by the PubCo that has bought it, stipulate that it must never be re-opened as a hostelry, has boards on its windows like lifeless eyes, a For Sale sign in its empty car park and 2,000 fag butts trodden into the filth outside its padlocked and grilled front door beneath the ‘No Smoking’ sign. And chapel-less, too, the village; the building that once performed that office now gutted of pew and font and renovated into a second home for someone involved in televisual media in the big city to the south.

  Silent, the village, only the recent rain tinkling through the trees’ leaves. This Saturday afternoon in the infant years of the second millennium and no person moves through it. Seated they are behind draped windows. No noises from the pub, no chatter from the gardens. Sodden atomisation of this ancient island.

  The house of Red Helen stands in the middle of a stone terrace, over the road from the dead pub, its stone darkened by a century of passing traffic and acid erosion from the frequent rain. No smoke curls from its chimney but shapes, vaguely humanoid, can be discerned moving behind the grime of the windows. The door that Ronnie knocks on bears no number and has peeled down to the bare grey wood in parts and sports, in its lower left panel, a jagged indentation from a past kick.

  A woman made of dough and with hair the colour of a wound opens the door. The raisins of her eyes roll over the three trembling beseechers on her step.

  – Thought you were off to Afghanistan?

  – Iraq, Ronnie says. – Next week. Gunner let us in?

  Red Helen stands aside and they enter and she closes the door after them and shuts out the street and the village and the country and the world and the stink in the house is of cat piss and baby sick and cheap fried food gone rancid and fag smoke and sherry and sweat. The carpet in the front room is holed and uneven, swollen by damp and subsidence and hides in its nap some crude mould sprouted from vile spillage unknown and the houseplants on the windowsill and on top of the TV have long since perished to grey twigs. The TV shows some programme on which four middle-aged women cackle and parts of the carpet are clogged with cat shit and Red Helen squats to hold a match to a scorched gas fire. Our three heroes in this home fit for them watch Red Helen, see her t-shirt ride up over the elasticated waist of her grey jogging bottoms, see the yellow ‘M’ of her thong bisect the antler-like tattoo in the small of her back before the threads lose themselves in the white ripples of fat at the hips.

  – Jesus, Hel. What’s that stink? And there’s shite everywhere.

  – Cats. My one’s on heat so they’re all coming in for a sniff.

  – Can’t you get her done? You’re gunner be over-run with kittens.

  – Can’t be arsed. D’you know where the nearest vet’s is? Can’t afford it neither. Seen how much it costs?

  – Well, Rhys says, rubbing his nose. – Can’t you at least clean up a bit?

  Helen looks at Ronnie. – Who’s this, Ron? Who’s this tosser you’ve brought in tells me to clean up me own house when I’ve just fucking invited him in?

  – He doesn’t mean anything by it, Ronnie says. – He’s pissed. Keep yer gob shut, Rhys.

  Rhys and Robert flop down onto the sofa which releases spores of dust under their weight like a puff-ball mushroom in rain. Helen looks at them then gets the fire going and sits cross-legged on the floor in front of it and Ronnie collapses onto a fleecy baby blanket in the corner to the right of the blaring TV, a blanket yellow in colour and decorated with images of smiling moo-cows.

  – Where’s the baby, Hel?

  – At her granny’s. What d’you want?

  – Something to knock us out. Temazzies or something. Been on one for days and we’re fucking wired.

  Ronnie’s teeth grind. Rhys inhales and swallows snot and Robert scratches his jaw with hands that thrash like dying sparrows.

  – We’re off to war in a few days, Rhys says, although he doesn’t know why, and Red Helen takes down a bag from her mantelpiece and rummages through it and withdraws a small brown bottle.

  – Tenner each.

  – Tenner? Rhys splutters. – For one fucking knockout drop?

  – Not yer usual sleeping pills, these. Special, see. And anyway, d’yer want to go asleep, or sit there shaking like yer being electrocuted for the next couple of days?

  Pockets are dug in and money is produced. Pills are passed around; big, white, coin-sized pills like Trebor mints, bisected by a fracture line.

  Robert examines his with a close and pink-rimmed eye. – What is it?

  – Powerful, Red Helen says.

  – Yeh, but what is it, exactly?

  – Best not to ask. Just neck it and drift off for a while. Wake up feeling better.

  Ronnie works saliva up in his mouth, pops the pill in it, gulps. Wants the shaking to go away; can’t wait for the shaking to go away. The fried eyes, the itching skin, the hurricane in the head, wants it all gone. Waits for it all to go.

  – It’s a lucky blanket, that, Helen says, nodding at the moo-cow fleece under Ronnie’s arse. – Tanya Lewis? She crashed on that one night and found a tenner the next day. And that feller with the bad eye slept on it and won fifty quid on the lottery.

  – Nice one, Ronnie says. – Maybe on me first day I’ll drill ten ragheads, then.

  – I’m gunner sleep on it next Tuesday night, Red Helen says. – Before I do the midweek lottery on the Wednesday.

  Rhys and Robert snort and Helen glares at them then gets up to answer the door because it’s been rapped on. Ronnie asks his friends if they’ve taken their pills and they shake their heads and tell him that they don’t trust Red Helen and that they’re waiting to see what happens to him first.

  – Don’t trust Helen? She’s a nurse, mun.

  – Is she?

  – Well, was. For a bit like. Few months. Till they caught her raiding the pharmaceutical cabinet. Which was probably why she applied for the job in the first place if you ask me.

  And Helen, the not-nurse, the thief and purveyor of outlawed chemicals, returns to the room, now become stifling with the dry heat of the gas fire, with two more visitors; a man, prematurely bald, with a ruff of red fluff above each ear, and a skinny woman prematurely grey. Both are carrying plastic Tesco bags filled with short and thin sticks.

  – Been out in the woods getting kindling, the woman is saying. – But it’s a bit wet. Have to dry it by the Aga.

  – Nature provides, says the man, then stops and stands still and stares at the three heroes, the two jan-gling on the couch, the third nodding on the moo-cow blanket.

  – Ronnie and his two mates, Helen says. – They’re off to Iraq in a few days.

  – What for?

  – To kill ragheads, says Robert, and Rhys laughs loudly.

  – Soldiers, is it? the man asks.

  – Aye.

  – Or should I say robots? Lackeys of Bush and Blair’s imperialist agenda?

  The grey-haired woman raises her voice. – Be more accurate to say scum. Child-murdering scum.

  – Oh Christ.
Rhys’ eyes roll like fruit-machine reels. – Hippies.

  – No, just human beings, that’s all.

  – Well, you look like fucking hippies to me.

  – Sound like ’em too, says Robert, and Ronnie coughs and gurgles and hears wind blow at the windows and chuck hail at the panes and wonders whether he dares go out into the back garden for a pee before he nods off but there is a dark wave of fog rolling towards him anyway. He sees that fog and he welcomes it, wants the blissful no-time that it contains. He’s aware of his fellow heroes arguing with the two skinny newcomers, Neil Kinnock and Germaine Greer he thinks are who they look like, and he’s vaguely aware of Helen exchanging bags of herbs for money with them as they shout at Robert and Rhys who shout back and he feels himself slipping under the real world amongst all the noise, the yelling and the weather, the TV’s babble, the roar and thunder of cannon shot that awaits him and which has started to sound in his head, and the creeping heat from the sputtering fire crawling on the skin of his arms and the last thing he sees before sleep’s narcotic pulls him under is a smiling moo-cow between his knees, looking up at him, a black-and-white moo-cow on a yellow field. Lucky blanket, he thinks. Bring me luck. And there he sleeps.

  And there he dreams, on that blanket that shines with dirt, in the mouldy hovel in the sinking village. There he is allowed a vision. And in this vision he and his two companions, this triune of gallantry, are traversing the central upland moor of the country where once heroes fought for identity and nation-hood and self-governance with the ferocity of those who had nothing left to lose but life. Across the green desert of these central uplands they go, into valley bottom and up and out again, across saw-toothed peaks and around lakes bearded with sedge and under crashing cataracts that halo their heads with rainbow spume. On the ridge overlooking Hyddgen Ronnie is assailed by a terrible noise, such as he’s never heard before, a clamorous commotion from behind him which he spins to regard and sees a man who might be young behind his wild red beard and beneath a tangled yellow mop of hair, riding a horse (a horse? thinks the dream-Ronnie; a bloody horse?) stained yellow up to the haunches by marsh mud and war paint and green on the head and hindquarters from rubbed moss and lake weed. The rider is wearing a tunic of a shiny-looking material with the letters FCUK embroidered on it in green thread and a gold-hilted sword (a sword? thinks the dream-Ronnie; a bloody sword?) scabbarded, bounces on his thigh in a sheath of black Gore-Tex which seems to gleam blue in its weave and is attached to the rider by a strip of canvas with a white plastic clasp. A green cloak (a bloody cloak?) is draped over the rider’s lap with its fringes in laced yellow and what was yellow of the rider and the horse was as yellow as the lettering on the For Sale signs outside most of the buildings in the villages of this distant upland and what was green was as green as the green of the Range Rover four by fours parked outside those few buildings with Sold signs outside them, or with no signs at all, vehicles which gleam in their bodies and are called ‘Warrior’ or ‘Crusader’ and which snort smoke and roar with a forever unslake-able thirst. And he is angry of aspect, this rider, his eyes burning and nostrils widening and lips set bloodlessly between the matted yellow mop and wrestling red beard, so fierce-looking that Ronnie and his companions, unarmed as they are, turn again and begin to run, stumbling over the stones and tussocks, but the rider pursues them and Ronnie can hear the Darth Vader breathing of the horse at his back and feel the terrible heat of it on his nape and searing the tips of his horripilated hair. Terrified, he and his cohorts sink to their knees in the boggy ground, hands raised.