Don’t Cry For Me Aberystwyth

by Malcolm Pryce

  ‘Never give a man what he wants until you’ve had all you want,’ she said wisely. ‘If I tell you now you might run off, mightn’t you?’

  ‘Of course I wouldn’t,’ I said and prayed no one I knew would pass by and see me with Tadpole. I cursed the slow progress of the queue.

  At the entrance to the cinema Tadpole pointed to the posters and said, ‘Oh, look at that.’

  It was a poster for the circus. The guy with the paste and broom still having had no luck with the horizontal crease in the strongman’s face.

  ‘Your old games teacher. I bet you never guessed he would end his days blowing up rubber gloves and wrestling tigers.’

  ‘No, strangely, the thought never crossed my mind.’

  We sat in the darkened auditorium, near the back, and waited. The excitement built up like static in the air before a thunderstorm. Tadpole held my hand. I leaned over and said, ‘So what was the name of that soldier you told me about?’

  ‘Oh, Louie, not so fast! Didn’t anyone ever tell you not to rush a girl?’ She giggled in a way that gave her words an alarming double meaning. Eventually the lights dimmed, music started up, and thunderous applause broke out as the title Bark of the Covenant appeared, rippling over the red velvet curtains, which slowly began to wind back.

  The movie began with an introductory spiel, superfluous to us but perhaps done with an eye to the jury at Cannes. Europe in the early years of the nineteenth century. Everywhere people are on the move, a great restlessness, a great yearning to be free from tyranny. Loud boos from the audience as we watch the appalling injustice of an absentee landlord turfing a peasant from his land, sending the family off to starve. Is it Wales or pre-revolutionary France or the vast steppes of Russia? It’s hard to tell because it is all three. The brave families set out in boats for the New World. A map appears with probing arrowheads pushing sailing ships west. Some head north: the huddled masses on Ellis Island, the lice inspections, and inoculations, grim-faced nurses examine scrofulous urchins from the European slums. Some go south to Uruguay and Argentina. From Wales they go Patagonia. Life is hard, but they struggle grimly and carve a toe-hold on the unforgiving land. They water it with their blood and their sweat and when the war of independence starts no one wants to leave; there are too many crosses on the hillside, and that counts for something. Cut to footage of the queues snaking down the street outside the recruitment office. The Legion embarking at Milford Haven, sweethearts in tears, tickertape, the feeling of a great adventure, they’ll be home by Whit. But things don’t turn out that way. Patagonia is a harsh country where people do not fight by the rules laid down by Clausewitz. Like all guerrilla fighters the enemy determines when and where to join battle; at other times he simply dissolves and evaporates into the countryside.

  A nation looks for a hero, the stentorian voiceover informs us. And who answers the call? Clip does. Cut to close-up of Clip the Sheepdog on a Welsh hillside. His ears prick up at some unheard summons, his head swivels. Comprehension lights up his bright intelligent eyes. He understands. He turns and runs home across the hillside; he reaches his master and barks a few words, and carries on running. We see him trotting down the road past the postman, ‘Hello, Clip, old boy, where are you off to in such a hurry?’ Soon he arrives at the recruitment office. ‘Hello, Clip, old boy,’ the men in the queue say. They pat and stroke him. He runs on into the office and by the magic of cinema runs out pulling a trolley bearing his army kit. To the people back home, says the voiceover, he was just good old Clip. Cut to Patagonia, where Clip is running between the lines: carrying messages, impervious to the shells exploding all around. But to the peasants of Patagonia, the voice continues, he was something else: a vision, an inspiration, a hero, the dog that saved the hour, he was – the voice pauses for dramatic effect – he was Pata Brillante, or . . . and before he can say it everybody in the cinema shouts, ‘Bright Paw!’ Everyone in the audience except me raises his or her hand, crooked at the wrist, in emulation of a dog offering his paw to shake. They sing the famous Bright Paw song to the tune that was later stolen by Champion the Wonderhorse. Tadpole nudges me and grabs my wrist and pulls it up into the correct shape. I, too, make the gesture of the Bright Paw salute. This is an unusual case.

  ‘Pata Brillante! Pata Brillante! El Perro Maravilla!’

  I turn my head to look at Tadpole. She is singing her heart out. Her eyes are on fire, cheeks glistening with tears. The singing carries on for a while and then peters out. We watch enthralled as Bright Paw scampers across ridges, doggy-paddles through the foam of torrential rivers, runs headlong but miraculously unscathed into machine-gun fire. He dodges mines that explode a fraction of a second after he passes. He was a hell of a dog, that was for sure.

  The movie tells the famous story of the Mission House siege. The men of the 32nd Airborne are bivouacked at the Mission House, marooned in bandit country. Clip heroically passes messages between the Mission House and HQ a hundred miles away, by using the legendary secret passage of the Incas that only he knows about. The situation is desperate, and General Llanbadarn, returning from Buenos Aires, decides to stake all on a bold, audacious, and some would say suicidal reconnaissance patrol. The men are afraid. Very afraid. On the eve of battle there are whisperings of mutiny among the ranks. And then lo! in the light of the silvery moon an angel appears among the men, plucking the terror from their hearts, filling them with courage. An angel on a white horse holding a flaming sword aloft. Next day at dawn the men ride out and fight like lions. Losses are heavy, the battle desperate, but the day is won and the honour of the Legion saved. Clip, though he manages to limp back to camp, dies from his wounds and pays the ultimate price. Tadpole was inconsolable.

  Normally when the first bar of signature tune starts up there is a stampede for the door, but tonight the people of Aberystwyth, many openly weeping, remained seated in a mark of sombre respect. There was still the famous epilogue, a simple device of white type on a black screen. Most of the people there that night knew it by heart and whispered the words under their breath, like pilgrims reciting the Lord’s Prayer.

  Bright Paw’s death on the killing fields of Patagonia was not in vain. His brave spirit and noble example provided a rallying point for the growing disaffection at home. Confronted in the streets and lanes of Wales with the spectre of so many blind and amputee dogs, of hounds unable to return to the hayrick or pasture, in their gaunt and haunted eyes the look of a dog that has lost his youth by the age of four, the people rallied. There was a revulsion against the pitiless and mindless slaughter, an unstoppable groundswell of public anger. Within six months the decision had been taken to bring the dogs home.

  The men, of course, stayed on for another three winters.

  After the movie we went to the Indian restaurant in Eastgate Street and sat at a table in the window. Tadpole, cheeks still glistening with tears, examined the menu carefully, while I glanced nervously at my watch. We needed to be quick, because the pubs would be chucking out soon and the Indian restaurant would become a scene which made the battlefields of Patagonia seem a picnic.

  ‘Oh, Louie, I don’t know what to have. It all sounds so good.’

  ‘Don’t agonise. It’s not really good, it’s just well written.’

  ‘Oh, Louie, you’re such a cynic.’

  I tapped my fingers and stared out at the darkened street. Across the road a man in a fedora stood in an alley. He met my gaze and hurried off. I’d seen that hat before but I couldn’t remember where.

  ‘How about telling me the name of this guy.’

  ‘Which guy?’

  ‘Oh, come on, Tadpole, please. I took you to see Clip didn’t I?’

  ‘Yes, and it was so wonderful.’

  ‘So tell me about the soldier who was tortured and who used to cry out, “Hoffmann!”’

  ‘Oh, him.’

  ‘Yes, him. Tell me his name.’

  ‘I don’t know his name.’

  I flushed with anger and snatched the menu ou
t of her hand. ‘You said you’d tell me his name.’

  ‘No, I never. I never.’

  ‘Yes, you bloody well did. It was a deal.’

  ‘I didn’t say I’d tell you his name. I said I’d take you to see him.’

  I paused, slightly taken aback. ‘So when are we going to see him?’

  ‘We just did.’ She giggled.

  I looked at her in cold fury as the implication became clear.

  ‘He was there on the screen.’

  ‘It was a cast of five thousand!’

  ‘That’s not my fault.’

  I stood up and threw a tenner down on the table. ‘Here, enjoy your meal.’

  ‘But, Louie, you said you’d buy me dinner.’

  ‘That’s right, but I don’t have to sit and watch you eat it. No wonder no one liked you at school.’ I stormed out and as I passed by the window I saw in the corner of my eye Tadpole sitting grief-stricken, her fist pressed into her eye, her mouth disfigured into a figure-of-eight. It was a pose I was starting to get quite familiar with.

  I hurried down Eastgate Street towards the office and saw up ahead the man in fedora and black and white shoes. He turned into Stryd-y-Popty. I quickened my pace. He was waiting in the shadow of the door to my office and I grabbed his arm and dragged him into the light; but it was the wrong man. It was someone wearing a Jew’s broad-brimmed hat and sporting a long grey beard; a man in a coat full of holes. Elijah.

  ‘There’s been another death,’ he said and tut-tutted in a manner that suggested it wasn’t anyone close.

  ‘Is that a fact?’ I said.

  The man in the fedora slipped out of the doorway across the street and hurried towards Great Darkgate Street. We both watched him slink away.

  ‘You have a friend,’ said Elijah.

  ‘I thought maybe he belonged to you.’

  ‘He’s not my friend.’

  ‘Who is he?’

  ‘I really don’t know.’

  ‘Maybe if I bang your head against the wall it might help you recall.’

  ‘There is nothing to recall. It is you he is following. Such visitations are commonplace in cases involving Hoffmann.’

  ‘So who has died?’

  ‘A girl, an innocent girl. You’ll read about it in tomorrow’s paper.’

  ‘Why should I care?’

  ‘There will be more.’

  ‘More papers?’

  ‘More deaths.

  Chapter 8

  NEXT MORNING Calamity bought a copy of the newspaper and read it as we walked up the Prom.

  ‘It’s Emily Bishop,’ she said. ‘The girl who rang about the ad. The fan of Kierkegaard.’ She handed me the paper. ‘Do you think there’s a jinx on us?’

  ‘What makes you say that?’

  ‘She was from the college in Lampeter. The last student we had from there didn’t last long, either.’

  ‘At least we got to shake hands with that one. I’m not even sure if this one counts. All she did was ring.’

  ‘Still a bit spooky, though.’

  ‘Maybe they’re accident prone in Lampeter.’

  ‘Or maybe we are.’

  I crossed the road at the junction with Pier Street and Calamity followed.

  ‘Aren’t you going to tell me where we’re going?’

  ‘Can’t you guess?’

  ‘The Cabin isn’t open yet.’

  ‘We’re not going there, we’re going to the hobby shop.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘If you want to find out about a man’s secret weaknesses, those shameful vices he would rather conceal from the light of day, where do you go?’

  ‘Lots of places. Depends on the vices.’

  ‘Yes, but as a guiding principle you talk to the madam, the procuress, whoever it is who supplies his shameful lusts.’

  ‘OK. That’s good, that’s psychology. I approve of that.’

  ‘You see, there’s something puzzling me about Bark of the Covenant. It tells the story of the Mission House siege. Now, on the odd occasion when you actually turned up in school, you must have done the history of the Patagonian War, right?’

  ‘Yes, although my memory of it is a bit cloudy.’

  ‘What did they teach you about the Mission House siege?’

  ‘I don’t think we did it.’

  ‘That’s right, nor did we. No one did, because everyone knows it was a military disaster. None of the veterans from that war will talk about. it And yet in the movie it’s a famous victory. The murdered Father Christmas goes to see it and says his life has been fulfilled. You don’t normally say that after to seeing a film, do you?’

  ‘Not normally.’

  ‘As he lies dying he writes “Hoffmann” in his own blood. According to Tadpole, she used to nurse a soldier who fought in the Mission House siege and who cried out “Hoffmann” in his nightmares. Are you following me?’

  ‘I think so.’

  ‘So maybe we should try and find out what really happened at the Mission House siege. The version that didn’t make it to the big screen.’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘We’ll talk to the man in the hobby shop.’

  ‘Is he the madam?’

  ‘Yes, sort of. He supplies people who come in for stuff to make models of battles and stuff. He’s bound to know.’

  ‘Uh-huh. Maybe we should try one of the techniques from my Pinkerton book to get him to talk.’

  ‘Yes. We could buy some rubber hose off him for our submarine model, and then hit him with it.’

  ‘They don’t do that. They use psychology. It’s called Interrogative Misdirection.’

  ‘How does that work?’

  ‘Tell me how you were going to handle the interview.’

  ‘I was going to walk in and ask him if he’s seen the Clip movie.’

  ‘That’s your first mistake. You shouldn’t let him know what you’re after. You’ve got to use subtlety, like the Pinkertons. You start by asking him about something you’re not interested in. It’s like a conjuror, you see, you have to use misdirection. You divert his attention to this something else and then casually slip in the real thing. We’ll share it. You ask about something you’re not interested in, and I’ll use one of the techniques to steer the conversation round to Patagonia. Agreed?’

  I considered for a second and then laughed. ‘OK, we’ll let the Pinkertons handle this interview.’

  We walked up Pier Street and Calamity, having chalked up a small victory for the Pinkertons, became expansive. ‘Yes, there’s definitely room in this game for a more systematic and scientific approach in line with the precepts and methodology established by the Pinkertons.’

  ‘Did you read that in the preface?’

  ‘It’s empirical.’

  ‘I bet you read that, too.’

  ‘What if I did? It’s true, isn’t it? We rely too much on outdated methods.’

  ‘Is that so?’

  ‘Take the Butch Cassidy case, for instance.’

  ‘There is no Butch Cassidy case.’

  ‘How do you know? There might be. If we just contacted the Pinkertons—’

  ‘Calamity!’ I said sharply as we reached the doorway to the shop. ‘There is no Butch Cassidy case. It may be the most celebrated case of the Pinkerton organisation but it’s not our case. Ours is the celebrated Hoffmann case.’

  ‘But they’re linked.’

  ‘No, they’re not.

  I opened the door and we walked in, entering a world in which the real one had been miniaturised and rendered claustrophobic and obsessive. There were flocks of miniature sheep on papiermâché hillsides arrayed alongside armies of footsoldiers from Lilliput; kits to build Aberystwyth Castle scaled down to fit on the dining-room table; kits to make fishing boats and the brigs that took the settlers to the New World in the last century; replica spinning wheels . . . Pride of place went to a scale model of Aberystwyth Pier as it was in the days before the sea chopped off the end and left a vestibule leading to nowher
e – although that was a popular destination in the town. The detail was impressive: it even had a miniature fibreglass boy with a calliper on his leg, standing at the entrance, for ever soliciting charity from the stony hearts of the townspeople.

  ‘Can I help you?’ The voice belonged to a man behind the counter; a small greasy man with an obsequious air, a shiny bald pate, a pair of tortoiseshell-framed glasses that had been repaired with sticky tape, and that cloying look of deep understanding which is shared by the ice man and the brothel keeper. He smiled, an invitation to me to unburden myself and a reassurance that, whatever it was I was after, he would probably have it and in such quantities that I need not worry that I was alone in my obsession.

  ‘I’m looking for a gift . . . for a friend.’

  The man nodded and smiled but made little attempt to conceal the fact that he didn’t believe me. No one ever came into this shop and admitted he was shopping for himself.

  ‘He’s a trainspotter.’

  The man nodded again and said, ‘And you’d like to buy him a little something?’

  ‘He’s not a close friend.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘Really an acquaintance.’

  ‘Mmmmm.’

  ‘I met him at the railway station.’

  ‘Where else?’

  ‘We just talked a bit, you know.’

  ‘It’s not a crime in this shop, sir, as you see. Are you sure it was a friend?’

  I ignored the insinuation and carried on, feeling strangely ill at ease. I wished Calamity would hurry up and subtly misdirect him.

  ‘Nothing extravagant, maybe an 0–0 gauge sheep for his layout or something.’

  ‘The mockery is never far away, is it?’