Mr Vogel

by Lloyd Jones

  He failed to get regular work at Liverpool so he went to London (which he hated) and then Dover where he was given breakfast, a chest to keep all his books and 2s 4d a day for working in the Royal Shipyard, where he learnt Greek.

  He returned to London but fell on hard times again, forcing him to sell his books. He returned to Wales and two Bangor clergymen attempted to make him into a printer but he failed at this also.

  Dic would have picked up a restraining order these days: because of problems at one set of digs he upset everyone by playing his ram’s horn loudly, and during another sojourn in Liverpool he went round blaspheming in every conceivable language when all his possessions, including his books, were taken from him in lieu of debt.

  In a letter to The Times, a Liverpool paper, a publisher and book-seller called Efan Llwyd from Mold claimed that Dic could speak 35 languages including Hebrew, Welsh, English, French, Spanish, Piedmontese, Ethiopian, Irish Gaelic, German, Syrian, Georgian, Russian of the North, Russian of the South, Armenian, Low German, Arabic, Coptic, Classical Greek, Modern Greek, Portuguese, Persian, Breton, Dutch Low German, Swedish, Manx, Scots Gaelic, Latin, Danish and Gaulish. Some of the other tongues he listed are untraceable, but Dic’s ability with languages was undeniable – he was frequently summoned to the Liverpool Corn Exchange to translate for the merchants. There is also evidence that an Oxford scholar, Doctor Parr, questioned him and came to the conclusion that he had a thorough knowledge of the Greek language but had little comprehension of what he read. He seemed to have no interest in literature, reading his many books with little appreciation for their contents. Dic died at St Asaph whilst returning home from Liverpool after a breakdown in his health, and is buried at the parish church. I went there once to visit his highly unconventional bones but failed miserably to find them. Without any doubt whatsoever I choose Dic Aberdaron, linguist and walker sans pareil, to first-foot our triskelion.

  Last night I dreamt I was walking through high lonely mountains, rising, like knees in a bath, from a perfectly still, emerald-green sea far away, in another universe, and I knew with great sadness that someone I loved had passed by only recently, and that I had missed my only chance in the whole of time to see her again. Was it Emmeline? Love comes to me only in dreams. She hasn’t replied. Perhaps that poisoned dwarf of a husband has intercepted my letters.

  I am scuttling around the land again. Next time you’re outside a shop buying postcards of Wales take a good look through the rack; somewhere in one of the postcards you’ll see a tiny black dot moving slowly on the landscape, like a paper mite. Take care! Don’t crush me with your clumsy thumbs – I have many more postcards to pass through before they drag the stand through the door and lock me inside the shop over winter.

  I am in Dyfed, in the magical realm of Pembrokeshire, which pokes out into the Atlantic like a pig snouting its trough; this is the only part of Wales with direct access to the Otherworld in Welsh mythology – it’s a portal to an ancient, dangerous fantasy game. This is where pigs, magical creatures, first arrived in Wales, gifts from a pantheon of gods living in a Celtic Valhalla, and linked to this part of my country by a time corridor. Teetering on a cliff, a stupendous incision cut into the rock – as if a slice has been taken from a Christmas cake and I am a little pearly decoration left right on the edge – I await the sonic boom of the great boar, the murderous man-devouring twrch trwyth, pursued from Ireland by Arthur and his hosts in their ship Prydwen. This bristling, enraged monster-pig carries a mirror, a comb, and shears between his ears (all these items are needed by a boy born in a pigpen who wants to marry a giant’s daughter). The boar arrives in a ravening whoosh of water below me in Porth Clais. I hide as his enraged porcine retinue disappears into the woods. For a long time, as I pass northwards, I hear warriors, bugles echoing in the trees, surges of sound – roars, screams.

  Back home, sleeping in my safe little piggy bed, my mobile phone trilled by my head on the pillow one morning. I’d no idea how it got there.

  It was Paddy, and he was already pissed.

  ‘Twas the rusty nail wot done it, with a demi-twist of lemon, me ole’ china. Better get your skates on rapido cos there’s another loony right behind you and he’s treading on your tail. Get my drift? It’s time to do the high fandango and hit the trail of the lonesome pines, si? Knot them seven league boots on your plates of meat and get goin’ or the hare will be past you whoosh, me little tortoise. Seen the papers?’

  ‘Christ Paddy, I was sleeping.’ My voice crackled. I was disorientated and grumpy.

  ‘It’s in the Western Mail me contumacious old codger, a celestial body wot is fleeter than you and younger and handsomer is flitting up the coast behind you. Says he’s walking round Wales, and he’s going to be the first person to do it. No chance, you’ve less chance than a Cadwalader’s ice cream in the burning pits of hell. What’s more, my jinja ninja, you know him. Have a guess! Never in a million years! You’re buggered now – might as well turn over and stay in bed for ever.’

  I gathered my wits as well as I could. People loomed in and out of the fog of my sleep chamber. Someone I knew? I groped about uselessly as Paddy talked nonsense on the other end of the line.

  ‘Go on, tell me!’ I urged him shrilly.

  Paddy, being a merciful and compassionate man, put me out of my misery.

  ‘It’s the giant who built a causeway and hopped over to another world. You know, Martin, the man who built those steps at the bottom of his garden and went looking for fairies.’

  I was dumbfounded. I sat in my bed looking at another strange being who was looking straight back at me from the dressing table mirror, a man with badly-cut red hair trying to make a frenzied escape, and a mouth as slack as a village idiot’s about to deliver a gallon of dribble. Initial shock gave way to blind panic. And anger. Who the bloody hell did he think he was? A bloody Englishman about to circumnavigate my own blessed country, when it was right and proper that I should be the demigod to accomplish the feat? Blood and bollocks, it had taken me over forty years to realise that walking around Wales was the only pathetic un-Olympian feat I had ever really wanted to accomplish, and here was an interloper with nary a midge’s cognisance of what he was doing or what holy ground he was treading, what famous company he was keeping, stealing my little bit of thunder, admittedly not much more of a noise than a child rattling a tray, but as close to making thunder as I would ever come. He had stolen the one glorious act I had set myself to perform in my whole life, a quest I had spent a lifetime preparing for; this bastard chasing me up the Welsh coast was about to embezzle my inheritance, whip away my own little Excalibur, which admittedly was closer to a plastic prong from a chip shop, but it was bloody well mine and, figuratively speaking, because the ceiling is quite low, I was prepared to brandish it above my head in the Blue Angel on the night of the party and declare myself a rightful successor to Llywelyn ap Gruffudd, Owain Glyndwr, Collwyn ap Tango or any other man, great or small, who had shed his blood over a patch of ground no bigger than God’s fireside rug, but which nonetheless bore the imprint of His immaculate feet.

  ‘Still there?’

  Paddy defibrillated me back to life and I gave the bedclothes an almighty kick, but succeeded only in winding the coverlet around my leg so completely that I was virtually unable to move.

  ‘A wee bit narked are we? Going to do the usual Welsh thing – throw all your toys out of the pram, quarrel with everyone, declare yourself a complete failure and offer to carry Martin’s rucksack?’

  ‘You fucking bastard! Destroyer of dreams! I hate you!’

  I cut him off and prepared myself in a whirl of action, pissing, dressing, finding my rucksack and maps, purple pullover (in the wash, never mind, grab it), sleeping bag (still smelly from the last jaunt), faded coat (only one button left now), medicine (is there enough?) cheque card and money, bits and bobs, and I’m ready in half an hour to claim back my kingdom, as quickly (I thought) or quicker than one-eyed Dafydd Gam when he girt his loins a
nd shouldered arms ready for Agincourt. I had to get to my own Agincourt on the west coast, Abersoch, as quickly as possible, so I phoned Waldo at the pub, where he did light duties in the morning (an excuse, more than anything, to gather news drifting in on the first tide).

  ‘Waldo?’

  ‘What d’ya want now, Amundsen?’

  ‘It’s like this, Waldo.’

  ‘It’s like what?’

  ‘There’s someone after me.’

  ‘After you? You been a naughty boy? You can trust me, won’t tell anyone about it.’

  Heavy irony.

  ‘No – he’s in Aberystwyth, and he’s trying to catch me. I’ve got to get to Abersoch as soon as possible or he’ll beat me. He’s English.’

  I told him the news.

  ‘What – he’s trying to walk round Wales too?’

  ‘Yes’.

  ‘Well bugger me. As if it wasn’t enough having one lunatic on my hands. Does he know about you? Cheeky English twat. I’ll sort him out for you. Plenty of cliffs around Aberystwyth.’

  ‘No Waldo, I want to beat him fair and square.’

  ‘Don’t be a fucking idiot – he’s English. He’ll walk through the night singing psalms with God by his side if he thinks there’s a garden shed he can overrun by the morning. He’ll have partitioned Anglesey by breakfast and set up a Zionist state on Holy Island by noon. You don’t understand these people. It’s in their genes. You don’t get to conquer half the world by saying after you in the nursery milk queue. You’re talking about the race which invented double yellow lines.’

  ‘Listen Waldo, there’s a bus at ten. Are you going to carry on all day?’

  The phone slammed down and I knew he’d be climbing my stairs in a matter of minutes.

  He was.

  ‘Ready then?’

  ‘Yes. Thanks.’

  ‘Don’t mention it. I’ve got a cousin in Llanengan and I’d like to see her anyway. Ideal. By the way, Paddy’s coming along for the ride. He’s abnormally pissed.’

  Waldo’s truck was outside. It’s a coal truck which he bought for next to nothing and did up, though you can still see the company logo beneath a coat of green household gloss, which Waldo found in a skip. He’s handy with mechanical things and he’s cleaned it up nicely, though the wipers judder and grind terribly, sometimes giving up the ghost altogether.

  The cab is full of odd mementoes from his travels; he’s tied a large plastic gorilla to the rear-view mirror and various other plastic animals dangle from the ceiling. They’re from all sorts of places – cereal packets, fairs, burger joints. Things he has found on his travels – marbles, coins, a dried-up toad, owl pellets, a broken toy – are scattered on the dashboard. The windows are covered in stickers: RNLI, Save the Whale.

  We headed off across North Wales, with Paddy between us, towards the peninsula, and settled into our routine motoring conversation, which because of Waldo’s concentration and Paddy’s inebriation was a disjointed and sporadic affair.

  Today the fields stretching out on both sides looked like a huge jigsaw puzzle newly completed by a giant, who had promptly spilled his drink all over it. Wetly, we followed the configurations of the puzzle, towards a large blue bit on the edge of the fractured picture – the sea.

  By the time we reached the end of the Pentir road Waldo had debriefed me about yesterday’s visit to the hospital at Gobowen and his latest delvings.

  ‘Incidentally,’ he said with an earnest sideways look, ‘I think I need some more anecdotes to drop into my conversations. I don’t want them to become suspicious. Have you got a few more tales I can tell them?’

  I thought for a few minutes as the fields passed by and the road asked its usual metaphysical questions.

  ‘You got any scars on your hands?’

  ‘Course I’ve got bloody scars on my hands. Everyone’s got scars on their hands.’

  ‘Got any on your fingers?’

  He thrust his left paw in my face, forcing Paddy to take evasive action, and wiggled it. He had a handful of scars.

  ‘You don’t build walls and fiddle about with cars for fifty years without getting a few scars,’ he said.

  ‘OK. Pick out a thin, long weal, you know, a white one which looks like an old knife cut. Say you were pushing a glass urine bottle down your bed one day and the lip shattered, cutting your finger. Waggle your hand about just like that and describe gallons of blood, they’ll believe you.’

  ‘Fine. Anything else?’

  ‘Say you have a picture of yourself with two famous stars of the day who were visiting the hospital. I’ll give it to you when I get back. You’re in your hospital bed, as usual, and you have a tatty little case containing all your toys and books by your feet. One of the celebrities visiting you is Winifred Atwell, who was a very well known blues and honky-tonk pianist. She is quite plump and black and has a knockout West Indian smile. She’s wearing furs and one of those dinky little black hats perched miraculously on the side of her head. The woman with her is statuesque, drop dead gorgeous in a blonde way, and she is also all mouth and teeth. She’s Betty Driver, once a well-known star of Coronation Street (as if I needed to tell him). She was behind the bar of the Rovers for years, can’t remember her screen name.’

  ‘Betty, she was called Betty on the telly too,’ said Waldo immediately, Waldo the man who would never in a month of Sundays admit to watching soaps.

  ‘Ask them if they can find out when Atwell and Driver were there, because you’re sure the picture I’ve just described appeared in the Liverpool Daily Post and you’d like to see it.’

  ‘Great – that’ll do fine,’ he grunted, and huddled over the wheel. He drove us into Pwllheli where we stopped just long enough for me to grab my usual two bottles of Coke and something to eat on the trek. We started off again, having located Paddy and lugged him out of a pub called the Mitre. Didn’t take much guessing where he was.

  ‘Well shiver me timbers, we’re in Polski land,’ said Paddy a few miles out of town.

  He was beginning to slur. ‘See the double-headed eagle?’ He pointed to a small sign by the road as we passed. ‘There’s a big Polish settlement up that road, hundreds of them, all talking Polish and meeting for meals in a big canteen in the middle of the camp. Went there once for dinner with an ex-pilot I met. By Christ, had he seen a few things. Anyway, there I was with him in his cabin and a bell started tolling, and before you could say Jack Robinski hundreds of us were filing down concrete paths to the canteen. It was like one of those films about people being taken over by an alien power. It was dinner time, and we all sat around huge tables with gleaming white tablecloths. It was incredible – like being whipped over to Poland suddenly. Gave me a hell of a welcome. They had a lot of sadness about, what with their war memories and a miners’ strike going on in Poland – they all had Polish newspapers.’

  Paddy’s face wobbled towards mine. He was beginning to flush, and he was getting more lucid, which usually happened in the last few minutes before he started falling over things and breaking them.

  ‘You’re into minorities, people of the bloody fringe, whatever [wipes his mouth and burps, I can smell the whisky], well look at that lot – they’re a minority within a minority within a minority within ad bloody infinitum. Like those ever decreasing bloody needles in The Third Policeman, you can’t see the smallest, only feel it. You might as well call yourself a minority of one, declare yourself an independent nation and have done with it man. I need a piss.’

  Soon we were in Abersoch, one of a collection of Welsh resorts which have grown from fishing villages into fun havens for a fairly limited number of well-off English families who bought second homes and boats there a couple of generations back. They’re mostly from the Liverpool-Cheshire-Manchester belt with a sprinkling of Brummies; they make good money from hard-nosed business ventures at home so they can frolic in the Welsh surf. These jetski colonialists are quiet Gold Card-bearers with pretty, spoilt daughters and lanky, grungy sons who have expen
sive guitars and surfboards. In olden days it would have been pink gin territory; now it’s lager-and-car talk at the local bar. Welsh affairs are strictly interdict – a lesson learnt from pioneering parents – so as not to agitate the dwindling band of locals. There are more ways of killing a cat than with cream.

  I sit watching the girls with Waldo – they look like seals in their wetsuits and are strangely sexless. But Waldo looks so long and hard at one blonde-streaked Venus gyrating behind a boat that he drops his ice cream on his trousers, which has unfortunate visual connotations, so I get him another one whilst he calms down. Paddy has gone to a pub behind us, but has been turned away and is now shambling towards us with a Spar bag and more supplies.

  ‘That bloke’s on a mission,’ said Waldo. ‘His last liver function test was either appalling or they mixed him up with George Best. Can’t you have a word with him? Perhaps he’ll listen to you.’

  Both of us knew he’d listen to nobody. He had the Celtic curse.

  ‘Whilst we’re talking about hopeless cases,’ said Waldo, ‘I’ve found out a bit more for you. Yesterday I managed to get hold of Luther’s file. Not very happy reading, I’m afraid. His father died from tertiary syphilis and passed on the disease to Luther. That’s why his mother was so depressed in the Vogel Papers – she was under a sentence. Those freckles on Luther’s face aren’t freckles at all – they’re a rash which is common in kids born with inherited syphilis. Other things too, quite horrible. Fissures around the lips and somewhere else I don’t want to think about.’

  ‘That’s strange,’ I interrupted, ‘there was a programme on TV last week about Hitler. Apparently his own Howitzer was a bit abnormal and he was convinced it was caused by genetically inherited syphilis.’

  ‘You don’t say,’ said Waldo. ‘Anyway, one of the early symptoms is a constant snuffle, often accompanied by blood, which explains Luther’s ‘cold’ when they set off on the quest to Anglesey. The terrible thing is that babies appear perfectly normal at birth, but the disease is eating away at their liver and their brains. The list of effects is endless according to his notes – exfoliation of nails, loss of hair and eyebrows, irritability, eye disease, notches on the teeth, it’s all too horrible. Sins of the father – it’s all there. And there’s worse to come.’