by Dai Smith
Cynlais stopped, opened his eyes wide and raised his arm. ‘In that matador’s uniform, Gomer, I’ll be like a monk. Honest to God.’
The next night there was a big excited crowd in Tasso’s Coffee Tavern. They had come there straight from the practice ground where Cynlais and the boys had rehearsed for the last time, in full Andalusian rig. It had been an exultant occasion and the committee men had marched alongside the band, keeping step and humming the theme tune. Gomer Gough was breathless as he leaned over Tasso’s counter. He was in moderate funds after the sale of thirty bags of coal from his tiny unofficial outcrop mine near the top of Merlin’s Brow. He gave Tasso a complicated order of fruit drinks for about half the bandsmen. Then he said to the whole shopful of matadors and supporters: ‘Well, tomorrow’s the day, the Trecelyn Com petitive Inter-valley Festival.’
‘What are the prospects, Mr Gough?’ asked Tasso, leaning away from the urn, which was in top fettle.
‘Never better,’ said Gomer. ‘You should see Cynlais. Sideboards down to the chin, little moustache, a stiff, flattish black hat like Valentino but even flatter, I fancy, than that hat we saw Valentino wearing in that film down at The Cosy. And his every glance is a search for a bull. It took him a bit of time remember that he was no longer the Mad Mahdi and to stop looking demented, but he’s fine now.’
‘And the Signorina Hallam?’
‘You wouldn’t believe! Carmen in the flesh. Red shawl, and we’ve collected so many combs to stick in her tall black hair there isn’t a kempt head on our side of the Meadow. We’ve kept her dark so far because we don’t want Ephraim Humphries to see her and start accusing her of goading the poor to ruin. Ephraim paid for most of the costumes and on questions of decorum he’s touchier than a boil. Let’s hope it’s a very fine day tomorrow. Then Ephraim can put Moira down to a shimmer of heat.’
Tasso raised himself and spoke over the heads of the people who were standing in the shop.
‘And how, Mr Sewell, are the ladies, the Britannias?’
We hadn’t noticed Mathew Sewell sitting in the far corner and he advanced at our call from the corner and towards the counter with a cup of some dark, cold-looking liquid in his hand. He gave a deep groan. Just behind me Willie Silcox was whispering to Uncle Edwin that this groan we had just heard from Sewell was without question an echo of what Sewell had gone through in Moira Hallam’s front room when he was get ting her posture up to the mark.
‘It’s a fatal thing, Edwin, a fatal thing.’
‘What is, Willie?’ asked Uncle Edwin, who was exhausted by watching the final rehearsal and talking with Festus Phelps about the crass, anti-cultural attitude of Gough and Coleman. Uncle Edwin had not been listening at all attentively when Gomer had explained the day before about Sewell’s visits to the home of Moira Hallam to give her secret instruction in being a Carmen. So Willie Silcox had Edwin foxed. ‘What is, Willie?’ he asked again, hoping that the blankness on his face would send Willie whispering to someone else. ‘Playing “Abide with Me” on a small harmonium right on top of a mood of intense longing. I’ve known it bring down the whole mental scaffold ing of voters before this.’
Uncle Edwin asked Tasso to turn up the steam of the urn to a point where it would blot out Silcox. Then we resumed our study of Sewell.
‘Tasso,’ said Sewell, ‘slip another beef cube in this cup and warm the water up while I tell you about my troubles with those women, the Britannias. I’ve spent weeks trying to find out why they go so out of tune on “Rule, Britannia”. If they were all brazen and defiant like their leader, that heavy, fierce woman, Maudie Gordon, I don’t think they’d have any trouble. But there’s a core of very shy women there, I’m sure, who must have been in a mood of strange brief frenzy when they signed up in the Britannias in the first place, and who still feel horri fied when they find themselves out in the street with little more on than a single layer of thin Union Jack. They play out of tune to take the public’s mind off how much they’re showing. I’ve got five members of my madrigal group to march on each side of them, singing the melody loud and plain to keep them on the pitch, but I don’t know how the judges will take to that tactic. I’ve chosen madrigal singers who don’t open their mouths very wide and we’ll have them edging in towards the Britannias from time to time as if they were members of the public, not to make the thing too obvious.’
Sewell took a quick, painful sip at his now quite hot drink, and while he blew loudly to cool his lips everybody in the shop chatted about the Britannias and what could be done to keep these women in tune. But Sewell waved them to silence as if that issue had now ceased to be important.
‘But my biggest trouble now,’ he said, ‘is that drummer, Olga Rowe. I told Georgie Young from the start that he should have given Olga a much smaller drum. But he said it made a nice touch of pathos that made up to some extent for the many faults of the Britannias on the march. It’s fine, he said, that big drum advancing on you with hardly anything of Olga in sight except her arms.’
‘I’ve seen it,’ said Uncle Edwin. ‘It’s uncanny. What’s the matter with her?’
‘She’s been driven hysterical by the new pattern of vibrations set up in her by the drumming and now she gets a laugh ing fit every time she touches the pigskin. She keeps her husband out on the landing at nights because she’s so sensitive and so easily set off. Her husband is that complaisant, uncomplain ing little voter, Mogford Rowe. He says he doesn’t mind sleeping upright and alone if it means getting away from Olga’s tremors and being beaten black and blue to the rhythm of “Rule, Britannia”. Even in sleep this Olga is on duty in the back row of the band.’
‘A brisk tune, “Rule, Britannia”,’ said Gomer Gough, ‘and damaging to marriage when heard without warning in bed.’
‘Is Willie Silcox the Psyche here?’ asked Sewell. ‘Oh aye, there you are. Tell me, Silcox, what psychological approach would you recommend for a woman in such a fix as this Olga Rowe?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Willie. ‘I know this woman only from afar by the racket she makes banging on this instrument. And Freud, not often foxed, is silent about women being driven mad by their own drumming.’
‘Never mind, though,’ said Mathew. ‘Of one thing at least we can all be certain. Whatever happens to Georgie Young and Olga Rowe, tomorrow will be Cynlais Coleman’s day.’
But it was not to be. The prize was not to be ours. It was a day of oven heat and the wet hills under the unaccustomed shimmer seemed to be laughing with surprise. But the sun meant little to us for calamity trailed like a flag behind us all day long.
Georgie Young had been persuaded to let the Sons of Dixie have one last fling before hanging up their gazookas. Georgie had been hyper-tense for days and his daughter had alerted Peredur Parry the Pittance, the Public Assistance official who was charged with the task of keeping an eye on the twin field of destitution and dementia among the voters. Georgie had been watching with a yellow eye the proud strut of Cynlais Coleman and the matadors and he was heard muttering to himself as he wandered around the bookshelves of the Institute looking for books about his idol, Kitchener:
‘I’ll give them bull. I’ll give them toreador. I’ll show that bloody Coleman. I owe it to Kitchener.’
So between resentment and a touch of late summer madness Georgie decided on a bold stroke. He told the Sons of Dixie to shed their white suits and fitted them with a tip-to-toe covering of cork stain and a kind of thick straw sash made from a thoroughly looted little rick on the land of Nathan Wilkins, the farmer. This was to give the effect of African warriors of the Lobengula epoch. The straw sashes were not easy to fasten and had the hard, abrasive quality of Wilkins himself. Besides, Wilkins had turned up with a shotgun to stand guard over the rick as they were helping themselves to material for the last twenty sashes, and there was a big feeling of insecurity among the boys wearing this last batch of coverings. The bandsmen were in trouble after the first dozen steps and overtly scratching in ways that the judges were bound
to consider insanitary and ungracious. On top of that Georgie had decided that the Meadow Prospect Matabele, as he now called his followers, would march barefooted. He said it would be a tour de force to have them march with the same fury and dash as of old with nothing between their feet and the County Council highway, which could, in patches, be rough.
But the day of the carnival was against him. The sun had started to melt the macadam on the road by eleven in the morning and the marchers behind Big Mog Malloy were leav ing a significantly deep spoor behind them. After the first mile the Matabele had a four-inch sole of asphalt, and those who were not actually keeling over were slowed down to a pathetic stumble and urging Mog Malloy to take his feather headdress off and use it and kill Young. To make things even cooler, council officials were up and down the flank of the warriors demanding their arrest for playing such hell with the road surface and making a rough assessment of the weight of macadam being carried by each bandsman. The Dixies were disqualified for holding up the carnival by sitting down on the roadside and using knives to chip off the macadam. They were disqualified under Rule 17 of the carnival code which stated that offensive weapons were not to be used on the march even to get back to bare feet. Sweat and anguish had streaked their cork stain into a dramatic leopard pattern.
The Britannia were early thrown into confusion by Olga Rowe tickling herself into the loudest laughing fit of this century. She had not been helped by having Sewell and the madrigal singers going up to her at short intervals arranged by Sewell and telling her: ‘Olga, what you feel inside you, Olga, is joy, just joy.’ And they would laugh in a way which for Olga was the cherry on the trifle. She was last seen drumming at forty miles an hour, down a side street, followed closely by a short old man with very fast legs. Some said this voter was the owner of the drum and off to get it back; others said he was a noted amorist out to take advantage of Olga Rowe’s confusion.
The day had started well for the matadors. We had formed in a crowd outside Moira Hallam’s house. Then Cynlais’ band, a moving wall of red, yellow and black, giving out ‘I’m One of the Nuts of Barcelona’ with tremendous brio on their gazookas, had marched into the street. They blew a sort of fanfare which was Moira’s cue. She came out of the front door like a sensa tional shout from a mouth. The crimson shawl set the whole street flaming and Moira’s management of her body did as much for our senses. Moira had had her hair bunched up in a way that made her stubby body look rather top-heavy, but no one looked at her hair for long. Moira took up her position in front of the band.
Gomer Gough and the committee men led a little burst of clapping and this was the cue for that well-known gardener, Naboth Jenks the Pinks, to step forward with a rose of deep, red and the biggest petals ever seen in Meadow. Jenks moved out of the crowd too abruptly and Moira stepped away from him thinking that Jenks was merely out to commit some act of sexual bravura. Then she saw the rose which Jenks had been holding behind his back and while she was marvelling at the size and perfume of it Gomer Gough, in his role of tireless chairman, was proposing a formal vote of thanks to Jenks for having evolved a rose with definite cauliflower overtones. Then Gomer told Moira to put the rose in her mouth and keep it there. At first Moira did not like this idea and Mrs Hallam went right up to Gomer and told him about some uncle of hers who had been driven mad by nibbling at flowers. But Moira was persuaded that no one had ever seen an authentic Carmen without the rose in her mouth and very gingerly she placed the bloom between her big, strong teeth. The sight of her had a great effect and even Teilo Dew the Doom said later that even he, upon whose love life a heavy ice cap had fallen in the autumn of 1922, found himself gulping with desire as the red of the rose and the white of the teeth made their first impact.
Then there was a whistle from Cynlais and a flourish from his drum major’s staff. The bandsmen raised their gazookas to the ready and on the down beat from Cynlais they began to play and moved off in the direction of Trecelyn. On the pavement the only professional gambler in Meadow, Kitchener Bowen the Book, was taking small bets favouring Cynlais to win against all comers and at that moment we all agreed with Bowen.
But the sun and all the baked ironies it propagates on this earth were already hard at work. By the time we reached Trecelyn the last petal had dropped from the red rose that Moira Hallam held in her mouth. Moira did her best. She was upset once or twice by Cynlais who in his excitement kept ramming his drum major’s staff into her back to remind her that she was not alone. One or two of his thrusts were wild and almost sent Moira hurling into the crowds on the side-walk. Gomer Gough and Uncle Edwin went on to the road and told Cynlais firmly to cut out this manoeuvre with the staff. Moira kept chewing at the bare stem of her rose and tried to make up for the lack of petals by mak ing more challenging the fine, fluent swing of her body beneath the lovely shawl. Jenks the Pinks had been on the point of making some remark about the lack of stamina of his petals but he just looked at Moira and said nothing. But it was a new band, not much older than our own Matadors, the Aberclydach Sheiks, that did for us in the end.
A few furlongs outside Trecelyn one of our scouts, Onllwyn Meeker, came tearing along the road to give a report on what he had found to Gomer Gough. Onllwyn Meeker had been running hard and he had to be held up and dosed from one of the lemonade bottles that had been brought along for the harder-pressed marchers before he could make a reasonable statement. Meeker was an alarmist and Gomer had been cau tioned against making him a scout, and it seemed from the way he shook his forefinger and rolled his eyes that he might well go off the hinge before he managed to tell us what he had seen in Trecelyn.
‘Gomer, Gomer,’ he said. ‘This is a wonderful band you’ve got here. The Matadors are a credit to Meadow Prospect, but I’ve just seen the Sheiks of Aberclydach and you’ve got a sur prise coming to you.’
‘What’s up, Onllwyn?’
‘I’ve just seen them. They’re wearing grey veils and dressed like they think Arabs dress in Aberclydach. They’re playing some slow, dreamy tune about Araby and swaying from side to side with the music, looking and acting as warm and slinky as you please and promoting a mood of sensuous excitement among the voters.’
‘Come on, boys,’ said Gomer. ‘Let’s run ahead and see these Sheiks. I don’t like the sound of this. Ephraim Humphries is one of the judges today and by all the rules of nature he should be in favour of the band whose uniforms he helped to buy. But he might well operate against the Matadors on the grounds of discouraging self-pride. And did you hear what Onllwyn said about these Sheiks wearing veils?’
‘To keep the sand out of their mouths,’ said Onllwyn. ‘I was puzzled about these veils and I asked their secretary why sheiks should be wearing veils and he said that about the sand.’
‘Ephraim Humphries is going to like the idea of those veils. In everything except his doctrine of damnation for the great majority, he is against the overt. A wholly concealed humanity, beginning with these Aberclydach sheiks, would be quite wel come to Humphries.’
‘No doubt indeed,’ said Onllwyn Meeker.
‘And when he takes a look at Moira Hallam, with that stem in her mouth and the shapes she’s making, he’ll think she swallowed the petals of that rose herself to keep fresh for some new round of sinning.’
The word ‘fresh’ seemed to remind Gomer of something and he told Cynlais to break ranks for a few minutes and take a rest on the grass bank that flanked the road.
‘They can sit down if they like, but carefully and primly so that there won’t be any creases in the uniform. They’ve got that old Colonel Mathews the Moloch, the coal owner, on the panel of judges, and they say he’s a hell of a man for spotting creases.’
Cynlais passed this warning on to his followers as they were taking their places on the grass bank, and there were a lot of interesting postures.
‘There’s another thing,’ said Uncle Edwin, sucking at two blades of some healthful type of grass that had just been passed to him by Caney the Cure, who was with
us as a supporter and because there was never much doing in the herb line during the summer. ‘There’s another thing. Don’t forget Merfyn Matlock.’
‘Explain about Matlock,’ said Gomer.
Uncle Edwin explained. Merfyn Matlock owned the depart ment store in Birchtown and by the standards of the zone he was a kind of Silurian Woolworth. Merfyn had served in the Middle East with Lawrence of Arabia, dressed as a Bedouin and blowing things up, and he had been flat and sad and bitter ever since he had come back to Birchtown, blue serge and verbal negotiations.
‘Remember what he said in 1923.’
Everybody had forgotten what Merfyn Matlock had said in 1923 and Uncle Edwin was asked to remind us.
‘We had been having a chat about Matlock and the eager, wolfish way he had of stalking about Birchtown showing contempt for the voters. When he was in the Middle East he believed in explosions in a way that had little to do with the Turks. He made the Bedouin twice as nomadic as they had been before, largely to get out of Matlock’s way. So we debated a motion in the Discussion Group that “The shadow of the Boy Scout, with all the attendant ambiguities of his pole, lies too heavily on British society and politics.” Many references to Matlock were made in the debate and there was not a single vote against. Matlock commented on this. He said that given a supply of dynamite and a few helpers to keep the matches alight he would deal with the dialecticians of Meadow Pro spect in under five minutes.’
