He nodded again but said nothing.
‘Fancy that!’ said the old man. ‘Tell me, I hear they have cappuccino in Aberystwyth now. Is it true?’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘It’s true.’
The man smiled and gave a slight shake of his head. ‘My, my. And an escalator? I hear there is an escalator there now?’
‘No, I don’t think so. I think the nearest one is still in Shrewsbury.’
He looked slightly crestfallen, as if a trip on an escalator was the one dream still left burning in the embers of his life.
‘Oh, yes, of course. Shrewsbury, not Aberystwyth.’
‘Have you been on one?’ asked the girl.
‘Yes, many times.’
‘We were wondering,’ said the old man. ‘Do you need special shoes to stand on them?’
‘No, not at all.’
‘And is it true that when the step reaches the top it re-appears moments later as if by magic back at the bottom?’
‘Yes, I suppose you could say that.’
He shook his head at the wonder of it. ‘Fancy that!’
‘We met a man in the village once,’ said the girl, ‘who came from Aberystwyth. He gave father a coconut. How about that!’
‘It was from the funfair,’ the old man added quickly, for fear I be misled into a misunderstanding about the climate of Aberystwyth. ‘He won it in a contest. Have you ever seen one?’
‘Yes, I’ve seen one or two.’
‘They say the coconut tree provides more materials for man than any other tree on earth. They eat the fruit, and cook with the milk. From the trunk they make ships, and the husk gives them matting; the leaves can be woven to provide shelter, and this is only the beginning of what that marvellous tree does. Burning the husk wards off insects—’
‘Oh, father, don’t start on your silly old tree stories.’ She turned to us and smiled. ‘Father used to be a rocking-chair maker. All he ever thinks about is wood.’
Ignoring his daughter, the man continued, ‘And do you know why a Stradivarius violin sounds better than all the others? It’s because of a mini ice age they had in the fourteenth century. The long cold winters made the spruce trees grow slower so the rings were more tightly packed and this extra density gives a Strad its unique sound.’
‘That’s very interesting,’ I said politely.
Peredur cut in impatiently. ‘I’m sorry if you have had a wasted journey but we have no aspirins here. There is a pharmacist in the village.’
It was time for the wild card.
‘Hey you’re not the girl in the papers, are you? The one who was going out with the dead Father Christmas?’
She flinched and looked down at her shoes.
‘My daughter gives her free time to play harp to the poor holiday-makers at the Kamp,’ said the old man. ‘And for this the papers print lies about her.’
‘I may have met him once or twice,’ said the girl with a slight stammer. ‘But that’s all. Nothing more. Peredur doesn’t . . . doesn’t like me talking to men.’
‘Why, is he jealous?’ I laughed.
Peredur flushed. ‘I regard that as impertinent!’
‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ I said, ‘I didn’t mean to cause offence.’ Even though that was exactly what I meant.
‘Perry, please!’ said the girl.
‘The imputation is abhorrent to me,’ said Peredur.
‘Oh, now! The man didn’t mean anything by it.’
Peredur spoke through gritted teeth. ‘Banon, I flattered you with the hope that your heart was not like the hearts of other women in this town – a toy, a sailing boat sent hither and thither by the storms of trivial passion and adolescent sentimentality. Perhaps I did you too great a compliment.’
‘Come on, folks!’ I chirruped. ‘It is Christmas!’
They all looked astonished by this remark; silence fell with the suddenness of a guillotine. The girl began to polish her silver buckles. The old man found something interesting to look at outside the window. Peredur fixed me with a cold stare. He spoke slowly and enunciated each syllable lest I miss one. ‘It is precisely this loathsome trivialisation of the sacred truth of the Christ Mass represented by the . . . the institution of the department-store Santa Claus that I abominate.’
‘Christ Mass is a time of grieving in this household, you see,’ said the girl. ‘We’re Church of the Sacred Insubordination.’
‘I don’t think I’ve heard of that one.’
‘We are an austere Church,’ said Peredur. ‘Our beliefs are considered too severe for many of the people round here. We believe that the truth about God is contained in the Old Testament and that the New Testament is a perversion of his message by His Son.’
‘Jesus lied you see,’ said the girl.
‘Like a lot of children he disobeyed his father,’ added the girl’s father, giving her a meaningful stare.
‘But . . . but . . .’ I struggled for a response. ‘What about the bit, you know, “A new commandment I give unto thee, that ye love one another”?’
‘He made it up,’ said Peredur.
‘He was very naughty,’ added the girl.
‘And for two thousand years mankind has been deceived.’
‘Are you sure about this?’ I asked.
‘The evidence is there in the gospels but people just don’t have the eyes to see it. Has it never struck you? The startling difference in the personality of God between the Old and New Testaments? How do you account for such a thing? Do you suppose God, the divine and immutable, underwent a personality change? Or that He is somehow schizophrenic? That He perhaps drank a potion like Dr Jekyll to transform His character? It is absurd. The true God, as revealed by His prophets, is stern and vengeful, quick to anger, jealous and terrible to behold. And yet He is fair and loves us after His fashion, but demands obedience. He is, in fact, like most fathers. He wants only what is best for His children but He is wise enough to know that the route to their felicity does not lie through the fields of softness and indulgence. “Spare the rod and spoil the child” was never more truly written than about God’s children. What He categorically is not is sentimental. And yet the New Testament, the outpourings of Jesus, is a febrile, toffee-coated chocolate box of vile and corrupt sentimentality. Love thy neighbour? How can a man in Aberystwyth follow such a precept? Oh, yes, I know they will say it is not literally true but we are not shilly-shallyers here, sir. For us a gospel is precisely that: gospel. The true and undiluted, literal word of God. If it says we must turn the other cheek, we suppose it to mean that. And yet who could take such a precept seriously? Is it not obvious, when you consider it, that Jesus was taking the piss when He said that? Love, forgiveness, charity . . . it is all the grossest sentimentality, foisted on a credulous world by a disobedient son. He was a terrible disappointment to His father.’
Calamity sneezed. ‘’Scuse me.’
‘Oh dear!’ cried the girl, seemingly grateful for the opportunity to divert the conversation from Peredur’s gloomy liturgy.
‘You poor little thing, all the time we’ve been prattling away and you there still suffering. Wait a moment.’ She put her face into her hands and started to groan. She groaned for a whole minute and then looked up.
‘I’ve spoken to the spirits and they recommend a little salve of wormwood, betony, lupin, vervain, henbane, dittander, viper’s bugloss, bilberry, cropleek and madder. That should do the trick.’
‘All I want is a goddam aspirin,’ said Calamity.
‘Don’t use bad words, Mary-Lou!’ I said with the sternest voice I could muster.
‘One of my salves is much better than a silly aspirin,’ said the girl. ‘You just boil it up in sheep’s grease, place under an altar, sing five masses, strain through a cloth and use it to anoint your face after meals.’
‘It works best at five-night-old moon,’ said the old man.
‘Oh, Dad!’ laughed the girl. ‘You are so old-fashioned!’ She smiled at us conspiratorially, adding, ‘If you repl
ace the viper’s bugloss with blackthorn bark and boil it in ewe’s milk it’s good against goblins, too.’
‘And if you say, “Wizen and waste shrew till thy tongue is smaller than a handworm’s hipbone,”’ said the old man, ‘it’s effective against a chattering woman.’
The girl flushed. ‘Oh, Dad, really! You always go too far. You know I don’t like to hear such talk.’
The old man winked at us and said, ‘See what happens? I send my daughter to the school in Talybont and they send me back a feminist.’
We stood up and I said, ‘Maybe we’ll try a chemist.’
The girl showed us out to the car. I slid into the driver’s seat and she bent forward and whispered with a nervous backward glance at the cottage in case Peredur was in the window, ‘I’m sorry about Peredur. He’s frightened, you see. They say the man was killed by gangsters and it is better not to get involved.’
‘Is it true what the papers say, about you and . . . the dead man?’
‘You mean Absalom? Most of it is lies, of course.’
‘You knew him?’
‘You mustn’t tell Perry.’
‘Oh we won’t.’
‘You see . . . I went to Aberystwyth. To see Bark of the Covenant. Perry would go mad if he found out. He thinks Clip is a graven image. He hates idolatry.’
‘Of course we won’t breathe a word.’
‘I met him in the queue for the movie. He was a Jew, you see, and I was wearing my stovepipe hat because they told me I would get a concession on the ticket if I did. And Absalom saw my hat and thought I must be a Jew and started talking to me. He asked me what tribe I was from.’ She giggled.
We forced polite smiles.
The girl looked over her shoulder again and leaned further into the car window. ‘I had dinner with him afterwards. But you mustn’t tell Peredur.’
‘We won’t.’
‘We talked, you know, about things. Mostly about hats and stuff and the best way to re-black the brim. He had some good tips.’
‘Did he say anything unusual?’
‘Well, the funny thing is, he did say something rather odd. He said, “After seeing this movie tonight my life is fulfilled.” And I said, “Yes, it was a jolly good film, wasn’t it?” And he said, “No, I don’t mean that. I mean tonight at the cinema I saw a man, a man whom I have sought all my life. My quest is ended.”’ She smiled. ‘He was ever so posh!’
I pressed a card into her hand.
‘If you think of anything that might help us, feel free to drop in to our office.’
She stuck the card up the sleeve of her blouse along with her handkerchief.
‘It’s in Aberystwyth,’ added Calamity.
The mention of the town lit a small fire in her eyes. ‘Ooh!’
‘And merry Chr . . . er . . . Christ Mass.’
‘No, you mustn’t say that – it’s like saying merry funeral or something.’
‘Happy New Year, then.’
‘No, you mustn’t say that, either; God doesn’t like it because it implies there was something wrong with the old one.’
‘What about “Oh, the baby’s knuckle or the baby’s knee, Where will the baby’s dimple be?”’ said Calamity. ‘Can we say that?’
‘I’ve never heard that one.’
‘It’s traditional.’
‘Well, then, I think it would be suitable.’
I dropped Calamity at her bus stop and drove back to the office. The sky was overcast and, though it was still only midafternoon, the cloud had snuffed the last dregs of light from the day. Occasional flakes of snow fell. There was a small crowd gathered in the street outside the office. But, for once, they hadn’t come to complain. They were watching a crane winch a fat man into a garret across the road.
The woman from the all-night sweetshop said, ‘You’ve just missed the reinforced bed. You’d think he’d find somewhere on the ground floor, wouldn’t you?’
‘Who is he?’
A man leaning against a lamppost spoke from under the brim of a fedora hat pulled down low. ‘Nobody knows.’ He had a slight American accent and was impeccably dressed: two-tone black and white brogues, sharply creased, generously cut trousers. A silk handkerchief peeped out of the breast pocket of a coat of midnight blue. The discretion of the handkerchief was good: just enough to see it. Most people get that bit wrong. The man walked off.
I stared up, along with the other good burghers of Aberystwyth. Flakes of snow, invisible in the gathering dusk, smarted coldly for the briefest of moments on my eyeballs. The man was a round shadow slung beneath the crane, with short arms and legs sticking out and giving the outline of an inflated rubber glove. He turned slowly, swivelling on the end of the chain as, down below, workmen in hard hats shouted instructions to the crane operator. As he turned he came to face us for the briefest of seconds and then the momentum swept him on to more orbits. Round and round. And then, a kid turned up dressed in a red tunic and red pillbox hat like a bellboy from one of the fancier hotels. He was holding an insulated food box, and said, ‘Who ordered the pies?’ There was no answer but fifteen bystanders turned to look at him and then with synchronised movements pointed at the fat man hanging from the crane. The kid walked over and handed the pies to the foreman. I stared up at the man for whom the pies were intended, and as he swivelled and turned again to face us my gaze was caught and locked for a second by two sharp bright points of light that were his eyes, set deep in the dark, shadowy pumpkin of his face.
Chapter 4
THE PROM gleamed in watery golden sunlight like a newly washed doorstep. A thin dusting of crystalline snow speckled the pavement, glittered in the sun, and turned at the edges to water. Breath was fog and cheeks smarted.
Sospan stirred a steaming pan of mulled-wine-flavoured ripple. The vapour of cinnamon, cloves and rum made my eyes water and mingled with the sharp, sweet scent from the Christmas tree in the corner of his kiosk; on the roof the fibreglass cone had been squirted with snow from a can, smelling of pine. He lifted the wooden spoon and tested the mixture with the air of a chef, nodded approval and turned down the gas.
‘I love Christmas,’ he said. ‘Although it won’t be the same this year. Not with . . . without . . . you know.’ He looked away, avoiding eye contact, with a sheepish air. For once his unerring instinct had led him astray and he had brought up a subject which might be a breach of decorum. He had meant to say, ‘without Myfanwy singing at the Pier carol concert’.
Myfanwy was my girlfriend, a former nightclub singer from the Moulin. It was a cherished tradition in Aberystwyth that she sang every year at the carol concert, but this year it did not look like it would be honoured. In the summer she had been kidnapped by gangsters and I rescued her. When I found her she was very sick, but she could have been a lot worse – she could have been dead. For a while after, she had hovered on the edge of consciousness, in a way that suggested rejoining Aberystwyth life was a plunge into a deep pool for which you needed to summon up the courage. The light inside her flickered on and off like a faulty fluorescent light. And then one day she woke up and smiled and started eating and everything seemed fine except for one thing. She couldn’t sing. It was as if the town hall clock had lost its tick.
‘I was talking to the chap at the home,’ said Sospan, ‘and he says there’s nothing physically wrong – nothing wrong with her voice. It’s a mental thing. Blocked, she is.’
I nodded politely but said nothing and wished he would choose another subject. Mercifully he moved to the ice dispenser and started to polish it. Calamity stamped her feet to keep out the fresh cold. A man appeared from the direction of the Pier, ambling slowly, and leading a train of mules like a gold prospector arriving at the foot of the mountain. It was Eeyore, my father. I watched his gait for signs of the slowing that must inevitably come for a man now over seventy but he seemed unchanged, no more soporific than the donkeys who were sixty-five years his junior. There were only five this morning: Antigone, Erlkönig, Firkin, Sugarpie an
d Gretchen. A slimmed-down troupe to reflect the fact that no one ever bought a ride between late October and March. It was partly a bid to conserve feed and not unnecessarily wear out hoof metal, but also a statement by my father that maintenance of the ritual had a value beyond the money that accrued from the rides. A value which he might have found difficult to put into words but which he felt in his bones just as he would have felt something amiss, a sense of letting the side down, if he had let bad weather serve as an excuse for staying at home. Or perhaps it was a more deeply personal fear: the recognition that the day he first stayed at home would be the beginning of a pattern in which those days would gradually outnumber the days he worked. Until one day the time came when he didn’t go out at all, and we stood at his bedside and discussed in whispers what we would do with the donkeys once he was gone.
Calamity kissed him on the whiskery cheek and Sospan poured out another ice.
I put a hand on Antigone’s head and nodded a greeting. ‘Everything OK?’
‘I’m doing fine,’ said Eeyore. ‘The donkeys are a bit sad – it always happens.’
‘They don’t like Christmas?’
‘It’s the pain of exile. They feel it keenly, especially when the cold gets into their hooves.’
‘What are they exiled from?’
‘Originally donkeys are from Palestine, aren’t they? And Lebanon. Lands of heat and dust and shady cypresses and cedars. Olive groves and orange trees. Life, a long, pleasant travail along a series of oases like green and blue beads on a chain of sand; tinkling fountains, the glitter of the pure clean water drawn from the well in the hot sun, and laughing virgin girls bearing sherbet and feeding them figs from the palm of their unsullied hands.’
Sospan looked up at the mention of laughing virgins and said gloomily, ‘And now here they are in Aberystwyth.’
‘Not all donkeys come from Palestine,’ said Calamity. ‘Some come from Mongolia.’
‘Sure,’ said Eeyore. ‘But the ones that give the rides to the kids on the beach are from the Holy Land. The ones from the steppes are too bad-tempered – they bite and kick. You wouldn’t have caught Jesus riding one of those on Palm Sunday.’
Don’t Cry For Me Aberystwyth Page 4
