By, Deepti Balani
Chapter 1 – An Altruistic Start to a Relationship
His friendly face stood out in the crowd. It was difficult to fit this loving and fatherly person in the character of the one needing mental health care. He would be all smiles one moment and before you know it, he would be roughing a slump. He barely spoke, and whenever he did, he was mostly incoherent. As a volunteer, I was offered to provide some custodial care to Mr. Jones.
To volunteer as a caregiver for the mental health of the society was not merely a school assignment; I genuinely felt for the cause. Even after 17 years of the Pantglas Junior School tragedy, there were many who were still grappling with post-traumatic stress disorder in Aberfan, a village in the South of Wales, England.
Ever since the catastrophe, children have held a special place in the hearts of the people in this Welsh commune. I was born two years after those kindred souls were taken away from many in the community. The smile each rainbow child brought to their faces was a grace that I had been adorned with. I wanted this streak in me to last, by providing support and care in all possible ways to my community that had endured such pain.
According to the support centre, Mr. Jones was known to have lost his elder daughter in this accident. She was in the junior building of the school at the time of the infamous avalanche. She was 17 years old and studied in the adjacent secondary school building which was unaffected. But nobody knows what she was doing at the Pantglas Junior School at the time of the tip collapse. That’s all that was known of them.
“Mr. Jones, this is Lowri Evans, your new part-time care-giver. She will be here every day for a few hours to check on you for the next one month,” the primary care-giver explained, introducing me.
Previously impassive, Mr. Jones’ eyes lit up at the mention of my name, as though he had been expecting me all along. He seemed to have a cheerful disposition throughout the day. Each time I visited him, he would brighten up and this made me happy too. I believed he really liked my company.
I did not know in the beginning that meeting Mr. Jones on that cold February morning in 1983 would so resolutely shape my perspective and add a new meaning to my existence. It gave me a sense of inexplicable, yet profound purpose. Who knew, this relationship would have such a far-reaching impact that would remarkably alter history.
Chapter 2 – Playing Blind
One morning, I took Mr Jones to the facility’s garden for a walk. After a stroll, he slipped something inside my jacket pocket and gestured to me to check on it later. Upon reaching home, I fished a folded paper out of my pocket. It was old, tattered, and yellowed with age. I unfolded it and was aghast to see my handwritten note. This was the same mail that I had posted six months earlier to be printed in the tabloid Young Penpals.
The mail contained my address inviting like-minded penpals to write in. I remembered writing two of these because I had mistakenly posted the first one in a post-box behind the post-office, which had been out-of-order for over two decades. Upon being informed by the postmaster, I wrote the second one and posted it in the right post-box, to which I got a few responses too. Not a single one of these correspondences lasted for long. I was probably too starry-eyed about my idea of a pen-friend, which was never met in real life by anyone. I was sure that this note was the same that I had dropped in the abandoned post-box. Somehow, Mr. Jones had managed to get hold of it, and probably he wanted to return the same to me. The wear, tear, and yellowing of paper must have been from staying in the box all these months, I guessed. It wasn’t of any use to me anymore, so I refolded it and as I was about to toss it away. Some faint words written on the back caught my eye. It said, ‘Check the box.’ What box, I wondered?!
I wrecked my brain for an hour or so. Finally, I decided to go and check the abandoned post-box. I walked up to the rear of the post-office and screened the red, worn and rusted pillar post-box. It wasn’t locked the last time and there was no lock this time either. So, I decided to check inside and opened the collection box door. It creaked on its rusty hinges. Two letters were securely lying inside the cavity. I carefully picked those up to closely scan them. I was shocked to see that I was the addressee on both. I hid the mail in my pocket and rushed home, eager to see what they might contain. The mails were in two envelopes without any stamps, with only my name written intricately on each. The first letter read:
Dear Lowri,
Hope this mail finds you in the pink of your health. I received your letter with a request to invite pen-friends to write in. Although it was not addressed to me, since you had posted it in an abandoned post-box which is next to my house, nobody was coming to collect it, so I retrieved it.
I found it rather strange why you would post any mails in a box that’s out-of-order, but probably that is how we were destined to come across each other. My name is Beca, and I would love to be your penpal. You mentioned that you are fifteen years old, while I am 15 too myself.
The address mentioned in your mail is rather strange because I do not know of any such locality in Aberfan. I guess you were only experimenting if your mail attracts someone’s attention. Well, now that I have found it, I would love to extend my friendship. We can keep posting and collecting from the same letter-box until we are ready to share our real acquaintances.
Love, Beca
This letter sounded intriguing, and I could feel in my gut that this was the beginning of an adventure. Excitedly, I opened the second envelope; the letter read:
Dear Lowri,
I waited for two weeks before drafting the second letter. I keep going back to the post-box to check if you have collected my first one. It rests there, untouched. When I first saw your mail in the old letter-box, I had an extraordinary feeling of the start of an exciting journey of some sort. I hope I was right in my hunch.
I have this very dreamy notion of a pen-pal with whom I can share my opinions and confess all I can. Somehow, I feel our friendship will prove worthy.
I hope you will write to me soon.
Love, Beca
I was awed to know that we shared the same feelings about the start of this friendship. I was chuffed to bits! Honestly, such a great response to my request and such eagerness to start a pen-palship made me all excited. These letters from Beca must have been lying in the box for months. I didn’t know how my letter had reached Mr. Jones or how he knew Beca. Regardless, I did not want to delay my response, so I sat down to write to her.
Dear Beca,
Thankfully, I checked the box and found your mail today. Unintentionally but fortunately, I had dropped the letter in the abandoned post-box. I honestly did not expect anyone to write in response to that one. I am happy it found you. I am an introvert and a shy person who fancies communicating more through writing than in dialogue. This is the reason why I have always yearned for a friend who has the capability to touch my soul via his or her written words.
I believe penpals are truly special. They don’t meet you, yet they never judge you. They believe the unseen and unheard. Hope our friendship will bloom and grow deeper with our correspondence. I fancy to know more about you and your perspective on life. I hope you will write back soon.
Love, Lowri
On my way back from the grocers every evening, I would take a detour to check the post-box. Finally, after a week or so, I saw that my mail was replaced by another envelope addressed to me. The letter read:
Dear Lowri,
It was indeed a pleasant surprise to receive your letter after a long wait. Better late than never. I agree with your ideology of a penpal. I believe what liberates you in this relationship is that there’s no set mould that one is expected to fit in here. Penpals can be completely honest and vulnerable with each other without the fear of losing anything.
It is so exciting that we share a passion for reading and writing. Currently, I am enjoying reading ‘Anne of Green Gables.’ Anne’s nonchalant and bold attitude towards life thoroughly amuses me. She is quite an inspiration. Her character is very close to mine because there are times when I worry myself sick thinking how peculiar I might be in others’ opinions. I find it really difficult to overcome the sentiment of self-pity. Next time, I refuse to wallow in such menial emotions that lead me to despair.
Tell me Lowri, do you also assess yourself, based on others’ perception? Or are you the kind of person who would throw caution to the wind? Tell me all about yourself. I would love to hear.
Love, Beca
For months, my letters were replaced with the ones from Beca. We shared our views of the world. We confided in each other our deepest feelings. Having grown a certain fondness for each other, we decided to meet by the post-box that evening. The intent, date and time were communicated through our letters.
At 5 pm, I waited by the abandoned post-box for an hour, but Beca was nowhere to be seen. I thought of leaving her a note.
Dear Beca,
I arrived beside the letter-box at 5:00 pm, 2nd June 1983. Post an hour-long-wait when you still haven’t shown up, I am leaving for home. Hope you are fine, and something urgent must be keeping you from meeting.
Love, Lowri
I deposited the letter in the box and walked up home into the setting sun. The next day after school, I decided to check the box for an explanation from Beca.
Dear Lowri,
We have always trusted each other blindly, so I firmly believe that you are being honest with me. I was by the abandoned post-box sharp at 5’ O’clock and stayed until quarter to six before leaving to run an important errand.
It is difficult to comprehend how we could have missed each other despite being in the same place at the same time. Moreover, you have mentioned the date to be 2nd June 1983, which seems incredulous, given that today I would date my letter as 2nd June 1963. Probably it was an unintentional error on your part. Otherwise, this is too preposterous to be true.
Please let me know what you have to say in response to this confusion. Hope, no one is trying to joke around with us by tampering with our letters. In utter shock!
Love, Beca
I was tongue-tied and my hands froze. I still could not make any sense of it. It hit me like a punch in my gut. Did this mean that we existed in two linear timelines? It also implied the abandoned post-box was the time traversing medium for our communication. It took us a lot of convincing and communication before the impossible could sink in and seem possible to us. Deep down, we both were affirmative that this was not merely a coincidence. We knew that we had met for a higher purpose. This made us all the more resolute in our friendship.
Chapter 3 – Looping the Time Loop
It occurred to me that Beca was still a few years away from the Aberfan disaster. There was still enough time to alert her and in turn the community about this, through her. I had this one chance to change the events which now are a big black blot in history. I read all about it at the community public library, before writing about the turn of events to Beca. I knew it would be hard to describe the magnitude of the avalanche that was to happen in 1966.
Dear Beca,
We know no rationale can explain our friendship, but just as we exist beyond these rationales, so does the fate that brought us together. There’s no denying that.
I am glad we have been able to develop an unflinching trust in each other’s words. What I am about to tell you, is something that might challenge your faith in me. As time unfolds, you will have to rely on the credence that we have developed over time.
As you are aware, Aberfan is still a coal mining town in your time and the seven colliery spoil heaps are an unwanted and lamentable by-product of the mining efforts in this area. With these heaps of loose coal dust, sitting high atop the steep slopes, they loom an imminent danger to the village. You might also have some knowledge of mud-slides in the past, both substantial and small.
According to the history books in my time, the concern was brought up with the National Coal Board to invoke a remedial action. And if we go by these books, NCB didn’t come up with any solution.
The village of Aberfan and surrounding areas would experience incessant rains in October 1966. On 21st October, when tip 7 would get saturated with rainwater, it would then turn into a thick slurry on the hill. Unable to hold the massive amount of coal sludge, the tip will start cascading down the steep slope.
Around 9.13 am a massive avalanche will hit Pantglas Junior School. Tonnes of this black slurry will inundate the school completely and everything inside it will be destroyed forever. The village will lose all its children. It would be a loss so great that Aberfan will never overcome this grief.
I know by sharing such atrocious news about your future I am overwhelming you, but you are Aberfan’s only hope now. We both have this narrow window of opportunity where you can make everyone aware of the impending disaster.
Fate has placed us in an influential position which is hard to comprehend, yet it will have a far-reaching effect. Many lives would depend on our appropriate action and inaction. We have to live through this time paradox, and you can bend the way things will transpire. Success or not, you can make a difference in the way the events are destined to come to pass. Please remember we are together in this.
Much love, Lowri
A certain sadness engulfed me upon posting the letter. I went around to the front of the post office and flopped on the bench, watching the shadows stretch in the valley as evening drew closer. My heart bled for the people of Aberfan. For the rest of my contemporaries, it was a thing that could not be remedied. They had learned to live with it. Yet for me, the present was at odds with the past. At my end of time, I was alone in this life-altering mission as I hung by a fine thread, called hope. And hope was all I had.
Having hardly caught any sleep that night, I arrived early at the post-box expecting Beca’s reply. But there was nothing in the box’s letter aperture. My letter was gone, but there was no reply from Beca. I checked again that evening, but still nothing. I checked the box intermittently for two months, only to be met each time by the hollowness and blackness of the cavity of the rusting letter-box. It stood silently on its pillar like it had frozen in time. I wished, if only Beca had not gone incommunicado; if only she had read my last letter; if only she had decided to act; if only she was real…
Doubt started setting in. I realized my far-fetched attempt to outplay the quantum of time was only a pipe-dream. Time paradox was after all a contradiction in itself. I pacified myself with the belief that the letters were a practical joke played on me by an inconsiderate being in my time. In that case, it was a rather cruel prank, an unforgivable misdeed.
Chapter 4 – The Entangled Vines of Destiny
There was a sense of heaviness abound, as the people of Aberfan gathered at the Memorial Garden for the 20th anniversary of the Pantglas tragedy. This park was built on the same site, in the memory of the departed, where once stood the Pantglas Junior School and the houses on Moy Road that met the doom, trapping within their walls many innocent souls.
Time may heal many wounds yonder, but this one is beyond its healing prowess. This was evident in the deafening silence that engulfed the place after each rendition narrated in the memory of their lost loved ones.
Being a part of the Memorial Service Organising Committee, I was helping with the seamless movement of the specially abled individuals in and out of the park. As destiny would have it, I happened to run into Mr. Jones after three long years. Aberfan is a small commune and you end up knowing most of the people. But Mr. Jones left for home from the mental health care centre and mostly preferred to stay indoors, so I had lost touch with him.
Despite being in a wheelchair, he seemed to be more in control of his senses. As I bent over to greet him, he pulled me into an embrace, addressing me as Beca. The attendant, a striking young woman in her late twenties, introduced herself as Jenny Jones. She apologized to him and mentioned that Mr. Jones was her father and Beca was her elder sister. She was one among the various children who lost their lives in the waste slide disaster.
I was struck dumb on the disclosure of this unexpected association. This implied that Beca Jones was truly a part of the history of Aberfan! I explained to Jenny that I had known Mr. Jones from the Mental Health Support Centre as I had volunteered for his care briefly. I expressed my desire to know a little more about Beca as Mr. Jones had also mentioned her at the centre back then.
I walked Jenny and Mr. Jones to their house on Cottrell Street. On the way, Jenny explained that Mr. Jones was temporarily sent to the Mental Health Support Centre because treatment at home was not showing much progress, but now he was doing better.
Jenny warmly welcomed me inside her house. I settled myself into a cosy couch in the living room, while she was away helping Mr. Jones to his bed. I noticed some pictures in ornate frames on a mantel-shelf. I rose to admire them closely. One picture in monochrome stood out. A teenaged blonde was smiling enigmatically in the frame. Her eyes looked dreamy and full of promise, like she was ready to conquer the world. Jenny called up from behind, telling me that this was Beca, her late sister. She stated Beca was fond of writing and she used to write to many of her pen-pals around the world.
Jenny told me that she was at Pantglas Junior School on the day the avalanche took place. What still remains a mystery to her is how Beca had a premonition about the impending disaster. Jenny explained further that had it not been for Beca, Jenny would not have survived the massive landslide. She divulged that Beca ran into the school corridor raising an alarm for the students to evacuate the school, minutes before the tip-slide hit.
Jenny had heard her sister and rushed out of the class on the pretext of seeing her. Beca had vigorously motioned Jenny towards the exit from a distance before she ran to other classrooms to alert them of the imminent danger. As a result of the commotion, a few other children had come out to check on what was going on in the school corridor. Beca was pleading with them to vacate the building.
Jenny and some twenty other children had only made it out of the school when they heard a thunderous roar approaching them. Jenny said she was too terrified to stop and kept running away from the school gates before halting to turn back and look. Overcome by the recollection of the images from the dreaded past, she frowned and said she would never forget that gut-wrenching sight. The Pantglas Junior school was nothing like she knew it. It was a colossal mass of debris.
She informed that Mr. Jones, her father, who used to work as a tailor in the town, arrived at the site soon after. According to Jenny, he was relieved to see her safe. But when the dumbfounded girl had told him that Beca was inside, he scrambled deliriously towards the massive wreckage. Their father and many more fathers and mothers, regardless of whether their children were buried under the rubble, dug relentlessly in unison with the hope to find them alive and breathing. It was the most heartbreaking sight for each one who survived to tell the tale.
Ever since then, Mr. Jones had become a recluse, gradually slipping into clinical depression. She said he still had Beca’s entire collection of letters from her penpals. He reads and re-reads them. Jane recounted that she herself was not able to overcome the trauma, and she had dealt with the survivor’s guilt for years. Beca was found under the debris on the second day, clutching a letter tightly in her fist. Jenny revealed it was a strange coincidence that the letter was addressed to her penpal, Lowri Evans, which happened to be my name too.
Chapter 5 – A Closure
The next day, I visited Mr. Jones and requested him to see the letter that Beca had written to the said Lowri. Without any scepticism, he smiled and reached for a box on a table by his bedpost. The pretty vintage tin-box was intricately decorated with vines of English roses in pink. He opened it carefully and retrieved the letter right on top of the stack and handed it over to me.
Akin to the first letter, this one too was yellowing with age. I felt like I was holding someone’s piece of heart. I took special care, as I opened it. My heart sank as I recognized the same handwriting.
Dear Lowri,
If you are reading this then it is nothing short of a miracle. You must also know that you have saved many-a-life. Else, destiny must have had its way.
There’s no way to tell if you are real and the letters that I was receiving were coming from an actual person in a different time. It was always too unreal to be true, but I, being a romantic, still wanted to take my chances. I put all my trust in the mystical way of life. I can assure you that each word I wrote to you reflected my unvarnished emotions towards our true friendship. But your last letter changed the entire course. Honestly, it made me pretty miffed!
There’s a certain purpose for which nature shrouds our future from us. Because when the unknown is known to us, then we doubt it, deny it, and may even try to change it. I doubted your existence by attributing the exchange of letters to someone trying to jest with me. So, I stopped writing to you. After reading that fateful letter, I prayed you’d better be a figment of someone’s imagination.
I still see a grain of truth in the fact that the waste tip-slide is a disaster-in-waiting at Aberfan. I have raised my voice along with many others and tried to bring this to the community’s notice many times. This has led to further investigation, and the engineers and authorities at Pantglas have written to the National Coal Board repeatedly. They are requesting NCB to clear away the waste before an avalanche hits the village. So far, nothing has really been done except for an exchange of words and passing the buck.
As you had mentioned in your letter, it has been raining continuously for the past many days here. I am afraid the prediction has held true to the word so far. Tomorrow, being the day that you had hinted to be the doomsday in Aberfan, it distresses me gravely.
I have stayed up late writing this letter to you because I want to believe in you. It gives me a reason to influence the turn of events in some way and avert this tragedy. Though, I still don’t know how. I am worried sick, my friend.
I shall deposit this letter in our old post-box after I am successful in this mission of saving my Aberfan people. I do not know if you still go back checking the box anymore. If the landslide does not take place tomorrow, then I need not post this letter at all for an evident reason.
I want you to know that in my imagination, my Lowri is just perfect with her flaws and her insecurities, the ones that she shared with me. The brave one who lives in parallel space and time. The one who rose up to salvage the lives of the people of Aberfan, despite the odds. If you do exist in the future, my friend, then I am happy to see that humanity and hope are not lost. The goodness of the heart in the coming times is rather more earnest. I believe you would keep the light of hope alive in the hearts of the people of Aberfan in case the tragedy does strike.
At my end, I wish to mirror your courage by trying to forewarn people of this calamity tomorrow. I will try everything in my power to get as many out of the way of harm as possible. Even if it means risking my authenticity and sanity in public. I promise to continue to write to you if I live through this avalanche. Else, consider this my swan song. Farewell, my friend!
Love, Beca
The time had come to a standstill for me. It was a confluence of the past and the present. In reality, Beca was gone for twenty long years, but to me, the pain to lose her was fresh and new.
My mind was awash with grief and remorse. Things would have been different had I not warned Beca about the future. Contrary to her belief, it was she who had truly manifested courage in her heroic act, saving lives. Nobody knew how many such gallant deeds went away unnoticed in the enormity of the destruction that day.
I shared Beca’s letters with Mr. Jones, who read them intently and intelligibly. We cried inconsolably, freeing away all the locked sadness inside us. He finally managed to utter a few words in his shaky voice, “Thank you for saving my Jenny.”
It dawned upon me that cosmos had set us up, and everything had come to pass exactly as it was predestined. We both were only a medium to save these lives.
Deep down in my heart, I knew I was able to reprieve a father from the sadness of losing his daughter. I had given him an imperfect yet conclusive closure.
XXXX
The Green Shoe Sanctuary 
This was so beautiful! Thank you for such a wonderful and powerful piece!
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