‘I think I know what you mean.’
‘Even when they are happening, you know they’ll never come again. Do you get that?
‘I’ve had one or two.’
‘Yes. We all get one or two if we’re lucky. Doesn’t seem much, does it?’
‘Why did you steal his coat?’
‘I didn’t steal it, Mr Knight. When those secret agents came after me I told them the same thing, but they didn’t believe it. I borrowed his coat because it was raining, and the next day I took it round to his house to return it and that’s when I saw them bundling him into that car. I was so scared I didn’t know what to do so I sold the coat to Caleb Penpegws. I never looked in the pockets, I didn’t think. So I don’t know anything about this document they’re all asking about. And as for Hoffmann, I don’t know who he is, either. I sold it to that silly man and his stupid mouse.’
‘Caleb had a mouse? I thought it was Eifion, his buddy, who had the mouse?’
‘Oh no, Caleb was the one with the mouse. He’s still got one. You can see him every night at the Pier watching that laughing policeman machine. That’s what war does to you.’
I went out to fetch Joe Winckelmann and took him to meet the granddaughter of Etta Place and the Sundance Kid.
There was so much I had still to do, so much to undo, to set right, to fix; so many amends to make. Too much for any day, and today was the shortest day. I drove Joe back to his hotel and we arranged to meet later. I went round to Prospect Street. The light was still burning behind the curtain, and this time I rapped on the glass. The curtain was drawn back and Calamity stared out at me. It was one of those moments. The sort when you are not sure if there is any argument between you, even though you know things are not quite right. She closed the curtain and opened the front door. She invited me into her office.
‘Good to see you,’ she said.
‘And you. How’s it going?’
‘Oh, pretty good, you know. Slow, but pretty good. I think we’re making progress.’
‘That’s good.’
‘Yeah.’
I looked around the room. There was an incident board but nothing on it.
Calamity followed my gaze. ‘Actually,’ she said. ‘It’s crap. I’ve been a real dope. Would you like a cup of tea?’
‘No, I can’t stop. I have things to do. Lots of things. I’ve just come to say . . .’
‘Yes?’
‘I need you to come back.’
Something flashed in the depths of her young eyes. ‘Need me back?’
‘Please.’
‘Well . . .’
‘Something’s cropped up.’
‘Really?’
‘I can’t explain now, I have things to do. But something’s cropped up and I need you. I’ll catch you later, OK?’
‘Sure.’
‘I just wanted to let you know, that’s all.’
Chapter 21
I WASN’T SURE WHAT I was going to say to Caleb, but something would occur to me. It generally did. Whatever it was, his first answers would be a pack of lies. People never told the truth these days, it was a point of principle. But that didn’t matter. I would find some way to bring truth to birth; I just didn’t know what. Something told me Tiresias might help me. Maybe I would have to hurt him. I didn’t want to. I didn’t even want to be here on the last Tuesday before Christmas, walking along a near-deserted Prom, in the drizzling rain, the grisly cold wet collar scraping my chin and channelling clammy drops of rain into the precious hoard of warmth beneath. I didn’t want to be here, but here I was, aware without looking, without the heart to look, that I was being watched by the old people in the front windows of the seaside hotels.
They were happy: in a room filled with warmth, stomachs full of too much lunch, and the faint tizzy feeling that comes from an afternoon of sherry. A real fire crackles in a real grate and Christmas decorations festoon a room that boasts a real Christmas tree in the corner. They’re happy because they are here; on the other side of the glass; they have the money to stay in a decent hotel where the people will go to the necessary effort to make it Christmassy. They know a lot of other people their age are sitting at home with nothing because they don’t have the heart any more to put up a Christmas tree; and its absence, even though they have decreed it with pointless Spartan austerity, rankles in their soul more than anything.
The old people, watching me through the windows of the seafront hotel, they know it will never be like it was all those years ago. How could it? Christmas is defined by the poignancy of loss. But all the same they are happy in the knowledge that it is still pretty good and the next salver of sherry is just a raised eyebrow away. Oh yes, I didn’t want to be here, walking along an empty Prom in the season when only the broken-hearted walk like this, but here I was, trying not to look, head bowed, ploughing into the icy rain.
A man put a hand on my arm. It was Eeyore.
‘Come,’ he said. ‘Have a pint with your father.’
We went to the Marine Hotel and sat in the bay window. The room glistened with gold foil, paper chains and crackers, balloons, Santas, silver stars. It was awful, cheap, tacky kitsch . . . it was glorious. I loved it. There was an angel above our heads and I asked Eeyore if he believed in the story from Patagonia.
‘Angel of Mons,’ he said. ‘That’s what it was, the Angel of Mons.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘It’s one of the great legends of the First World War. Mons is a place in Belgium, I think, or France or wherever it was all those poor blighters lost their lives. The story goes that an angel appeared to the troops on the eve of the battle there; an angel on a white horse, holding a flaming sword aloft.’
‘You mean you think it was the same angel?’
‘Of course not, son. Your dad’s not that daft. But it is possible, I think, to use the one to explain the other. You see, it’s a funny thing. Although the original story is a timeless myth, no one has ever been able to produce a soldier who claims to have seen the angel with his own eyes. Plenty of them knew someone who had been there but there was never a proper eye witness. In fact, the story seems to have originated not on the front but with a spiritualist in London, who claimed to have heard it from an officer on leave. Many people suspect this officer was involved in black propaganda. They made stories up, you see. There was one about a Canadian soldier crucified by German troops. And they planted a fake diary on a dead German soldier in which he described working in a factory that rendered the dead bodies of fallen soldiers for use as glycerine. You see what I’m saying? This Angel of Mons rumour appeared at a time when British fortunes were at a low ebb; morale on the home front was waning. There’d been a series of battlefield setbacks; poison gas and tanks had both been recently introduced. I reckon the story was concocted to boost morale.’
‘Trouble is, with the Patagonian angel there are people who claim to have seen her with their own eyes.’
‘That’s right, but just think of it. As a military man General Llanbadarn would have known the story of the Angel of Mons. Maybe he went one better. He wanted to send the men out on a dangerous mission; there were rumblings of mutiny. An angel might have been just what the doctor ordered. He knew, too, about the story in the local papers concerning the goatherd girl and her visions. Maybe it gave him the idea. Maybe he thought, why not treat the lads to a visit from a real angel?’
‘You mean, you think he actually had a girl ride a horse through the camp pretending to be an angel?’
Eeyore nodded. ‘Why not? Soldiers are notoriously superstitious. It wouldn’t be difficult to fool them. A bit of fancy dress, moonlight, a girl on a horse.’ He paused and said softly, ‘I’m glad you never had to go off to war, son.’
Caleb was asleep on a pile of empty liquor bottles. Tiresias was running in his wheel but stopped and stared when I walked in. It was his big day, but he didn’t know it yet. Caleb snored. I shoved him with my foot and he rolled off the bottles; he snored some more. I gla
nced around the room and my eyes alighted on a hammer and some nails left behind by the council workmen who had boarded the place up. I picked them up and began nailing Caleb to the floor. Not through the flesh, because I didn’t want to wake him, but through the fabric of his clothes. I’d seen this done before and knew that after a few nails it was impossible to get up without assistance. I put five nails into the sleeve of the right arm and moved over to the left.
He woke and blinked as he tried to work out what was happening. He tried to move but his right arm was pinned and I was sitting on his left, nailing it into the floor. He raised his legs and kicked but you need good abdominal muscles to keep that up and you don’t get them from a lifetime watching laughing policemen.
‘What on earth are you doing?’ he said.
‘I’m nailing you to the floor.’
‘I can see that. What I mean is, why are you nailing me to the floor?’
‘I always do this to people who lie to me.’
‘Have I lied to you?’
‘You told me your name was Eifion.’
‘It is.’
‘That’s not what I hear. I hear your name is Caleb Penpegws.’
‘Whoever told you that is a liar.’
‘Well, that’s possible. Everyone is a liar in this town; it gets on my nerves sometimes.’
‘Why are you here?’
‘To wish you a happy Christmas.’
‘Sod off.’
‘Yes, I’d like to. I really would. There’s nothing I’d like more than to walk out of your sty and back down the Prom to my partner, Calamity, who I love dearly and who I have missed terribly. And then to take her and maybe that Joe guy, because I like him too, even though we’ve only just met, take them both down to the harbour to my father’s house and eat some mince pies and, you know, generally wassail among friends. While Eeyore poured the drinks I would phone Myfanwy and tell her to come and join us because there’s no one in all the world I would rather be with right now than her. But alas! Here I am standing wet and cold in your filthy room and really not happy at all.’
I finished the left arm and moved on to the feet. After five minutes he was pinned down like Gulliver in Lilliput.
‘Why don’t you go and join them all, then? Leave me in peace?’
‘Because of all the people who will be spending miserable Christmases this year on account of me. A nice family I met out near Talybont, for example. The guy there made rocking chairs for a living and now he’s dead. Why is he dead? No reason that I can see apart from the fact that his name went up on my board. And there was this Absalom guy, lying dead, brutally mutilated, the Chinese meal still undigested in his stomach. Why is he dead? Someone knows, but I’m damned if I do. And there was a girl who answered an ad in the paper, a girl called Emily, a fan of Kierkegaard. I never met her because she’s dead, too. I never met her, but she was probably a good kid. Studious and sober. I mean, when was the last time you met a trouble-maker who read Kierkegaard? Then there was poor Miss Evangeline. And so it goes on. The reason I am here and not enjoying the company of friends is all these dead people are dead because of something to do with me and a guy called Hoffmann; and something terrible that happened out in Patagonia, something so awful it made the chaplain lose his wits.’
‘I don’t know anything about nothing.’
‘You mean you don’t know nothing about anything. If that’s true the next half-hour is going to be very painful for you.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘The best way to find out if someone’s telling the truth is to hurt them very badly and see if they stick to their story. Never fails.’
‘What are you going to do?’
‘Don’t be so impatient. you’ll find out soon enough.’
‘Go and fuck yourself.’
I laughed. ‘You know, for a man nailed to the floor you’ve got a lot of chutzpah.’
There was a Pyrex salad bowl lying in the corner of the room. I’d seen it the first time I came and now as I looked at it a plan took shape in my mind. I ripped open Caleb’s shirt and exposed a belly of quivering lard. Then I picked up the salad bowl and up-ended it, placing it firmly on his belly. The fat pressed upwards and sealed the bowl. I fetched some firelighters. Caleb followed me with his eyes.
‘Watch closely, now, you’re going to enjoy this.’ I opened the door to Tiresias’s cage and picked him up by the tail.
‘What are you doing? You leave Tiresias alone.’
I lifted the salad bowl and popped the mouse under it then remade the seal. The mouse ran round in frantic circles in his new glass prison, occasionally jumping up and testing the glass walls with his paws.
‘What are you doing?’
‘You’re a Classics scholar, you should know this one. I think the Romans invented it.’
I lit the firelighter and held it aloft, a waxy brick of greasy white chemicals which burned with a fierce but almost invisible flame. I put it on top of the dish. I took another firelighter and added it to the pyre. I rolled up my sleeve and placed my elbow on the Pyrex dish to test the temperature. It was starting to get hot in there for poor old Tiresias.
‘I read about it somewhere so I can’t absolutely guarantee it will work, but theoretically what is supposed to happen is this: the mouse starts to get hot and goes a bit nuts and then he starts to get very hot and tries to escape. And the only way out he can see is to burrow through the floor. Normally that’s not too great a problem, but, as you will be aware, the floor in this case is your stomach.’
‘You’re mad. Tiresias would never do that.’
‘You know him better than I do, but I wouldn’t be too sure of his loyalty. Rodents can be very fickle. Rats, especially, who are but distant cousins to the mouse, are notorious turncoats when their life is threatened. They sail with you in the hold all the way from Byzantium; eat your grain and drink your water; and then the first sniff of smoke they’re off down the gangplank.’
Caleb leaned forward and watched in horrified fascination. ‘He’ll never do it.’
‘I’ve got ten quid that says he does.’
‘He loves me.’
‘Each mouse kills the thing he loves.’
Caleb glared.
‘Anyway,’ I continued, ‘you mustn’t take it personally. Instinct drives him to it. It shouldn’t be interpreted as a waning of his love.’
We watched the mouse scurrying around frantically, trying to get away from the heat. Then he turned his attention to Caleb’s belly. Caleb screamed. Who wouldn’t? Mice have got sharp claws and sharp little teeth and Tiresios was gnawing Caleb’s belly, his tiny muzzle already frothing pink with blood.
‘Apparently they can gnaw through steel.’
Caleb yelled again.
It turned my stomach just watching, but I forced myself to appear unconcerned. A picture of nonchalance.
‘What do you want to know?’ he cried.
‘What’s the terrible thing that drove the priest mad?’
‘I can’t say.’
‘You mean you won’t.’
‘All right, I won’t. My lips are sealed . . . Oh!’ he groaned at the pain.
‘Who’s killing all these people?’
‘The Pieman. Please make it stop.’
‘Who is the Pieman?’
‘He’s dead.’
‘I know he’s dead, you fool; this is not a good time to split hairs. Who was the Pieman?’
‘Make it stop,’ he screamed, ‘and I’ll tell you.’
I considered.
‘Please!’ he screamed.
I continued to consider. The mouse was tearing up strands of human tissue now, like a heroin addict whose stash has fallen between the floor boards. Caleb screamed again. I lifted the bowl and took out the mouse. I put him back in his cage. Caleb panted heavily as he tried to capture his breath.
‘The Pieman,’ he said, ‘was one of us. There were five of us who survived the Mission House siege, me, Erw Watcyns, the Pieman and tw
o others who have since died. We did something terrible – I can’t tell you what it was – and we swore a vow of silence. We swore that so long as we all lived we wouldn’t speak about the shameful thing we did. But because of this Hoffmann guy we keep getting people every now and again who turn up asking about what happened. Sometimes they’re spooks or spies, sometimes Wild West nuts – you know the type: looking for the lost grandchild of the Sundance Kid. Erw and the Pieman were the assassins. Anyone who turned up and got too nosey, they took care of it.’
‘You mean killed them?’
‘Yes.’
‘What was this terrible thing you did, the reason so many harmless innocent people had to die?’
‘I can’t tell you.’
‘You will.’
‘I can’t.’
‘Don’t make me put the mouse back.’
‘I can’t tell you. I’ve sworn an oath to my buddies, my brothers in arms. There’s no finer fellowship to be found on God’s lousy earth, no bond of love more unbreakable than that. Compared to that, a man’s love for a woman is nothing. It can grow cold with time, even with the best intentions it can, but the love forged in the crucible of battle never dies and never wanes. I would happily die rather than betray those beautiful comrades.’
I took the mouse out of its cage and popped it under the Pyrex dish. ‘Beautiful speech, Caleb. I’m touched. It’s not often a man gets to express such noble sentiments on his deathbed. For most of us in this mundane quotidian fallen world, the best we get to say is, “Please find a good home for the cat.” But you! You, my friend, are different. You have transmogrified this bleak grey December afternoon with the beauty of your requiem. You have transfigured this filthy evil-smelling room you inhabit, and turned it into a palace. On this day, though you are about to die unpleasantly, you should scorn to change your state with kings.’ I relit the firelighters.
Don’t Cry For Me Aberystwyth an-4 Page 22
