Don’t Cry For Me Aberystwyth

by Malcolm Pryce

  I ran my hand down the mane. ‘Do they really miss Lebanon?’

  ‘Not in an obvious sense. Not like they’d miss their stable if we moved to a different part of town; but deep down in their souls they know, they remember a sunny land to which they’ll never return. It’s the darkness at this time of year, you see, the deadening of the spirit that accompanies the dying of the year.’

  ‘That’s what Christmas is all about,’ said Sospan. ‘It’s a winter festival to mourn the dying of the light, the sun slipping into the sea and leaving us in everlasting grey mournful twilight.’

  ‘That’s it,’ said Eeyore. ‘We have this awareness born into us, we don’t like it but we understand it, but they don’t. They come from a land of perennial sunshine.’

  ‘They look OK to me,’ said Calamity. ‘Did you get the thing?’ Eeyore looked puzzled for a second and then said, ‘Oh!’ as he remembered. He delved into his pocket and pulled out a brown envelope. In a bid to throw the old Jew off the scent we had given Eeyore the Pier hat-check voucher to redeem. He handed it to Calamity. It was unopened and she looked at me.

  ‘It was your hunch, kid.’

  She tore off the end of the envelope and took out a photograph. It was old and torn and faded, in sepiatone. It showed three people, two men and a woman, posing in what looked like Victorian Sunday best, or Edwardian – I was never too clear about those things. It could have been fancy dress but something about the attitude of those posing suggested it was real, that this was one of those special occasions which don’t come along often in a lifetime. It was inscribed in the elegant, flowing script that even the milkmaid used in the days before Biro. It said, ‘Mr & Mrs Harry Place and their dear companion Mr Robert LeRoy Parker. DeYoung’s Studio, Lower Broadway, New York City. 1901.’

  Calamity stared at it for a while and when it refused to surrender its meaning handed it to me. I turned it over. It was stamped ‘Ex Libris Mossad’

  I gave it to Eeyore.

  He chuckled and ran his thumb across the surface of the picture. ‘Didn’t think you were into this sort of thing,’ he said.

  We looked at him.

  ‘Wild West. Didn’t think it was your cup of tea. Least, I don’t remember you ever being interested. Even as a kid it was always cops and robbers rather than cowboys and stuff.’

  ‘What are you saying?’

  ‘The photo.’

  ‘It’s from the Wild West?’

  ‘Oh yes. Last of the great outlaws.’

  Calamity said, ‘Who?’

  He tapped the picture with his index finger. This is Butch Cassidy, and this is the Sundance Kid. The woman is Sundance’s girlfriend, Etta Place. She and Sundance were travelling under the names Mr and Mrs Harry Place. Robert LeRoy Parker is Butch Cassidy – that’s his real name, although he often used the alias Santiago Ryan. DeYoung’s Studio, Lower Broadway, New York City. 1901. This is a famous picture, the one they took before catching the ship to Patagonia.’

  Calamity tried to speak but her jaw was too far agape. I curled my index finger and held it gently under her chin, as if coaxing a bird to step on it, and slowly I closed her mouth.

  ‘Butch Cassidy!’ she gasped. ‘And Sundance!’

  ‘I thought they went to Bolivia. It was in the movie.’

  ‘That’s right,’ said Eeyore. ‘In the Hollywood version they go straight to Bolivia and within six months are dead in a blaze of gunfire. In real life they sailed to Buenos Aires on the SS Herminius. With the loot stolen from the Union Pacific Overland Flyer they bought a ranch out in Patagonia near the Welsh settlement of Chubut. Stayed there two years.’

  ‘It’s the Pinkertons’ greatest unsolved case,’ said Calamity.

  ‘What’s unsolved? They died in the marketplace in Bolivia.’

  ‘The Pinkertons have never accepted that,’ said Eeyore. ‘They think the outlaws faked their own deaths so they could return unmolested to the States. For the Pinkertons the case is still open. But the real mystery is what happened to the girl, Etta Place. She disappears from the historical record not long after this was taken. No one knows what happened to her. Although they say she was carrying Sundance’s child.’

  Calamity gulped the remains of her ice cream down in one. ‘I’ve got to go.’

  ‘Where to?’

  The post office. I’ve got to fax them.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The Pinkertons.’

  She strode off, fired with the conviction of youth. I made to follow her but Sospan called me back. He grabbed my forearm and leaned forward out of the box, looking up and down the Prom as if enemies were all around and the secret he was about to divulge was too precious to risk. ‘I know it’s probably not a good time, what with you worrying about Myfanwy and all that, but if you’re interested, I might be able to get a few tickets for Bark of the Covenant.’

  Chapter 5

  TINKER, TAILOR, whalebone-corset maker, rich man, poor man, beggar man, rock maker, druid. They all used to turn up at the Moulin, the nightclub where Myfanwy used to sing; formerly in a basement, now at the end of the Pier; a dark, neon-blue dingle filled with cigarette smoke, whisky fumes, louche trollops in stovepipe hats, and libido on draft. It didn’t really matter what state in life you occupied, as long as you didn’t sit in the druids’ seats. They all came, and Myfanwy sang to them. And because the songs she sang weren’t rude ones, but nice popular anthems detailing the eternally recurring cycle of hearts won and hearts lost, even the ladies from the Sweet Jesus League against Turpitude could come. Just as soon as they had finished protesting outside and excoriating Myfanwy as a harlot straight from Babylon.

  Tinker, tailor, seaside-rock maker, crazy golf pro, hobo, clock winder, beggar man, mayor. He came, too, and was humble enough to leave his chain at home. Flickering neon signs fizzed in the rain-drizzled streets: Eats, Whelks 24 hours, liquor and sadness.

  Tinker, tailor, mason, Rotarian, hotelier, donkey man and hotdog seller, shepherd, nightwatchmen, and people who are just nobodies. They stand in Peacock’s with their bitter spouses discussing socks. Nobodies who sit on the Prom watching nothing. Did they ever expect it to be like this?

  Tinker, gaoler, Soldier for Jesus, librarian, whelk catcher, beggar man, ex-con, bent cop. They all came. And while they danced, while the music played, they could forget for a while; take a trip to the washroom and wash their faces in a tributary of the Lethe. Tinker, tailor, mudlark, warlock, fisherman, stovepipe-hat stockist, effigy maker, gravedigger.

  And the people on my client’s chair.

  It was a private nursing home paid for by an anonymous benefactor. I didn’t know who; perhaps some high-ranking druid, an admirer from the days when she sang in the Moulin Club; or a member of the town council. For the first two months I had footed the bill but it wasn’t easy. No one ever got rich fighting crime, just ask Eeyore – a cop for thirty years before he became the donkey man; more collars than a Chinese laundry, and he ended up just as poor. Aberystwyth, queen among towns for irony; perhaps nothing was more so than this: that there was so little money to be made in law enforcement when there were so many villains, so many laws to be enforced.

  It had been built as a seminary some time earlier in the century. One large grey three-storey block to which a reluctant architect had seemingly had his arm twisted into adding some decoration. He’d probably read all the latest architectural journals and wanted the purity and elegance of Bauhaus, dreamed of winning a major prize somewhere far away and prestigious. But the Church fathers – perhaps fearful of the warlike reputation of the townspeople – insisted on turrets and battlements. So he’d scribbled on a pointless turret, some arched windows and an oaken door studded with iron. Then he quit and caught the train to Shrewsbury. Now it sits serenely in a nice park at the top of a hill overlooking the town. Slate quarries and gorse towards the back, and a paddock of horses. Gorse is not a great thing to have in your garden; it seldom lifts the jaded heart. But every spring it burns with buds of yellow flame
, and when you see the same fire reflected in the eyes of a mare aglow with pride for her foal you always wish you’d brought some sugar lumps along.

  It was a good place to recuperate. The wind could be bad in winter. It could knock you off your feet sometimes, and rattle the windows so violently it made you stop your darning and turn round to stare anxiously at the panes. Sometimes it howled in a way that was unsettlingly human, as if the wind collected all the voices of wanderers who had been lost in its storms, and replayed them. But it wasn’t always like that, and in all seasons the view was wonderful. It gave you perspective. Instead of being witness to a myriad trivial heartaches and sorrows, betrayals and acts of meanness, you looked down and surveyed the broader sweep: the heroic little town thrust out into the bay, the sea slowly gnawing away at the edges like a mouse with a piece of cheese. From up here you could see the long, straight line of the Prom and the characteristic zig-zag at Castle Point like a cartoon lightning bolt; or, depending on your mood, the valedictory blip on the heart monitor of a man who has just died.

  Myfanwy lay in bed, propped up on pillows, asleep. The watery winter sunlight made her cheeks glow like amber. She looked well. Someone had disfigured her chestnut tresses with two childish yellow ribbons. The sort they tie to oak trees when someone comes out of prison. They sat knotted on either side of her head in some strange insult. I knew she would have hated them. They were redundant: it was not possible for her hair to be a mess any more than a lion’s mane can be dishevelled. It was the same colour as the chestnuts in Elm Tree avenue.

  Gently, I undid the ribbons and put them on the side table. She had been like this almost four months now. The doctors said there was nothing physically wrong as far as they could see. She just seemed happier asleep. In the moments when she woke up, she was often sullen, and withdrawn, cold almost, like a kid who ate a piece of pie baked by the Snow Queen. I wondered if she blamed me for what had happened in the summer; or resented me for bringing her back from the dream world. Or maybe it was the loss of her voice, her very essence, that had hit her hard. But she looked well today.

  I listened to her breathe, watched the gentle rise and fall of the sheets. I smoothed them out and then ruffled them again. Listened to her breathe: like the sea on a windless day, slow and soft and pitched precisely on the threshold of audibility. I pressed the back of my hand to her cheek, like a mother checking the temperature of a pale child, like a boy stealing an apple. And then I leaned forward to kiss her cheek. Strange, the mild sensation of guilt that the motion evoked. As if standing over the sleeping form of one’s girlfriend was a forbidden pleasure. Myfanwy would not have begrudged a kiss, I knew. But all the same . . . Maybe it is the vulnerability that is revealed in a sleeping form. It makes you feel like a peeping Tom, his eye to the keyhole, watching two lovers at play in a walled garden. And you know the slightest noise, such as the crack of a twig underfoot, will reveal your presence and destroy their joy; sully it with the pall of having been observed.

  I leaned forward to kiss her cheek below the ear.

  ‘Hello, Louie.’ A voice crashed through the serenity like a felled tree. ‘She looks lovely, don’t you think?’

  I jerked round to face the intruder. It was a nurse, with a fat boyish face, standing stiffly and shapelessly in a white pinafore dress. The dress was too tight; the buttons strained and divided her torso into segments like a giant millipede. Damp patches of sweat darkened the fabric of her blouse under her arms. Her hair was straw-coloured and cropped in a way that suggested a pair of kitchen scissors and a head bent over a bowl on a kitchen table, a bowl which on other occasions would be used to soak feet.

  ‘I made her look nice. I knew you would come today.’

  I smiled uncertainly.

  ‘You don’t remember me, do you?’

  ‘Er . . .’

  ‘It’s OK, you don’t have to pretend. My name’s Glenys. We were in the same class in school.’

  ‘Oh . . . I . . .’

  ‘You don’t remember, I can see it in your face. Please don’t pretend.’

  ‘It was so long ago.’

  ‘Yes. It doesn’t matter. You needn’t worry about me. Why should you? You’ve come to see Myfanwy. She’s much better. Would you like me to wake her?’

  ‘No, please. Don’t wake her.’

  She needlessly plumped up the pillow. ‘The ribbons are mine, I wore them for my second baptism. I knew you would like them. Are you sure you don’t want me to wake her?’

  ‘Yes. I’m quite happy sitting here.’

  ‘It’s ever so easy. You just put your hand over her mouth and hold her nose. She wakes up in a jiffy. I do it with all the patients. You’re looking well.’

  ‘Thanks. You too.’

  ‘I’ve put on weight, specially round the knees.’ She looked down and my gaze followed of its own accord. She was wearing tan woollen tights on legs without shape, the tights wrinkled at the fat ankles. Below them were black sensible shoes with scuff marks on the toes. ‘It’s all this running around after the invalids, you see. They treat me like a bloody servant. My legs were my best feature in school.’ She began to smooth down the bed and apply herself to tidying chores. I wished she would leave.

  ‘Five years I sat behind you and you never turned round once.’

  ‘As I say—’

  ‘I sent you a Valentine card and you thought it was from the girl from the estate. You asked her out and she said no.’

  ‘I remember that.’

  ‘She’s dead now, so they tell me. Brain haemorrhage.’ She picked up a litter bin and walked out.

  Myfanwy sighed and shifted position. There was something deeply calming about that sigh. A sign that wherever it was she was wandering, whichever somnambulant world closed to us, it was nice there and bathed in warm sunshine. Perhaps she was walking through the marram grass at Ynyslas in summer. The day we had our first picnic. A hot blue sizzling day when you had to squint to look at the sea; a day of champagne and strawberries and whispered words; a day I keep locked away in a vault and seldom take out, for fear that exposure to the sun will fade it, and the joy it brings will seep away, like a perfume slowly loses its scent with time.

  I walked to the window and looked out at the town. A woman wandered in and sat on the chair I had vacated. She was in a dressing gown, and wore her grey hair in pigtails like a Red Indian squaw. Her features were finely drawn and hinted at lost beauty. There were bandages on both her hands. She took Myfanwy’s hand and spoke.

  ‘I do envy you being able to sleep like this. I haven’t slept a wink for thirty years—’ She made a tiny startled movement, like a gazelle which picks up the scent of a predator on the breeze. ‘Who’s that?’ she whispered. ‘There’s someone here. Someone by the window . . . I can smell liquor.’ She sniffed the air. ‘Captain Morgan rum, if I’m not mistaken.’

  ‘I’m sorry, I was . . .’

  ‘A man! Oh, you must be Louie.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’m blind, you see. Myfanwy always talks about you.’

  ‘That’s kind of you to say.’

  ‘How old do you think I am?’

  ‘Oh, I . . .’

  ‘Don’t say it, you’ll upset me. I’m only forty-six. That shocked you, didn’t it?’

  ‘No.’ She looked twice that.

  ‘I can tell from your voice that it did. I’ve had a hard life. I’m the oldest resident. Did you know that? That’s what fooled you, you see. I haven’t got my stick. That wretched nurse keeps hiding it.’

  ‘Is Myfanwy your friend?’

  ‘Yes. My name’s Evangeline . . . Miss not Mrs. I was never married. Who would want me? Oh, but there was a time, oh yes, a time when I was desired.’ She stood up. ‘Well, I must be going. I know better than to play gooseberry to two young sweethearts.’

  ‘You’re very welcome to stay.’

  ‘This place used to be a seminary, did you know that? “Seminarium” means nursery garden, from the Latin for seed, like semen
. A place where they grow priests; you need to spread a lot of dung to do that. I knew a priest once, many years ago; he used me as a seed bed but they didn’t believe me. He was a beastly priest, or was it the other way round? Heigh-ho, there is a willy grows aslant a brook . . .’ She paused as if trying to recover a lost train of thought. ‘I was desired once, too. But that was long ago.’

  She stepped slowly to the door and I said, ‘Does Myfanwy really talk about me?’

  ‘All the time.’

  She reached the door and added, ‘Myfanwy says you drink too much rum. I think she was right.’

  ‘It’s my aftershave.’

  ‘Well, then, you drink too much aftershave.’

  Before leaving, I dropped in on the doctor. He was sitting at his desk showing a series of cards to a small mongrel dog who sat on a chair. The cards showed pictures of various objects that might interest a dog.

  ‘The vet says he needs worming,’ the doctor explained without looking up. ‘Please take a seat.’

  I pulled up another chair to the desk.

  ‘That’s their answer to everything: worm tablets. But what’s the point of removing the parasites if you don’t address the fundamental psychosomatic causes?’

  He held out a card with a picture of a cat and the dog growled. The next card had a bone on it and the dog licked his nose.

  ‘You see!’ said the doctor as if this proved something.

  ‘Dogs have psychological problems, too?’

  ‘Of course. They have two eyes like us, a heart like us, two lungs like us, a brain like us. Why do people suppose they don’t also have the same neuroses?’

  ‘I’ve just been to see Myfanwy.’

  ‘Yes, she’s looking better.’

  ‘She seems to sleep a lot.’

  The doctor paused and put on his concerned face. ‘She seems a bit – how should I say it – a bit reluctant to join the party. It’s as if she’s happier in dreamland or wherever it is she goes.’

  ‘I can understand that.’