Mr Cassini

by Lloyd Jones

  They married, eventually. She was gifted and funny, poetic and sad. They were happy for quite some time and made children together. But there was an underlying tension. The farmer knew, as he looked into the lake’s blackness, that his wife had some unfinished business. She was exceptionally firm on domestic violence.

  ‘You can hit me once by accident and once in the heat of the moment, but hit me three times and I’ll be gone for ever,’ she told him. He believed her.

  Once he struck her by accident, when he flung a spoon towards the kitchen sink and it rebounded, glancing against her face. Once he struck her in anger, when he slammed a car door on her and trapped her fingers. And once too many, he struck her again: he kicked the ironing board in a rage because she wouldn’t iron a shirt for him to go out; the smoothing iron, still hot, toppled onto her foot and hurt her badly.

  The next day she was gone. The cattle had gone too.

  He went looking for her. He was found drowned in the lake.

  PC 66 dusted and rearranged some of the shells he’d collected with Mr Cassini, now on show in the police station; then, stretching himself to his full height, he put on his regulation gabardine coat and strode out of the police station, into the teeth of the gale.

  And so ended Olly’s story. At the foot of the last page she left a simple message:

  Duxie – I give up. He’s hanging on in there. Even his ghost won’t go away. So it’s me that’s going. I’m getting out of the story. I can’t take it any more. I can make a fresh start somewhere else, in another bloody story. Please try to understand. It’s the only way I can cope. Can you tell everyone else? Can you look after Gelert? I’ll get in touch when I’ve sorted it all out. Also, there’s another problem. I couldn’t tell you earlier for obvious reasons – but I’m not sure about the marriage, and I’ve got too close to you recently – seems like that anyway. Don’t flatter yourself, I’m not in love with you. But I need time to sort things out. I think you’ve put two and two together about my father. There’s a lot else I can’t tell you about. I need to sort it out in my head. See you on the ice… or by a well somewhere (any of your wishes come true yet? I don’t think so, and they never will. Mine never did.) Do you like my dream story? It’s better than yours!

  Love, Olly.

  Part 2

  Daydreams

  7

  THE TIDE GOES OUT

  The search for Olly:

  I turn detective

  WHAT do you do when a friend goes missing? When the police have gone, when kith and kin have been comforted? When countless mugs of coffee have been drunk, shoulders shrugged, eyes wiped, hands held, blanks drawn?

  Wait? Hope? Despair? All three of those emotions, in varying degrees?

  Yes, we did all of those things, and more. But as I’ve told you already, Olly left a note for me at the end of her dream story (which I told no one about). She also left letters for her mother and Fit Boy.

  I decided to do some detective work of my own. It was just something to do; I couldn’t sit around waiting for something to happen. I read psychology books, tried to find the cause of Olly’s marasmus. I remember that time very well: it was a cold period; we felt as though a huge finger had pulled down the Arctic Circle like a rubber band and snapped it over us, trapping us in an igloo of ice. The wind combed the trees too hard, and snowy furrows in the fields spilled onto the hedgerows as if they were slices of frozen bread. The trees were stark and bare, coathangers waiting for damp leaf-green pullovers to be draped over them in the spring.

  Time collected in puddles.

  Lost in a colourless, painting-by-numbers landscape, waiting for paint, I stood at my sea-facing window and kept watch for rainbows. I was waiting for a moment like Paul Klee’s moment in Tunisia, when he said, exultantly: Colour has taken hold of me; no longer do I have to chase after it. I know that it has hold of me for ever. That is the significance of the blessed moment…

  And there’s a blue boat down there in the harbour, bobbing slowly on the ripples as its crewmen uncoil their ropes. I am ready to go with them under the wheeling gulls, under a parting plume of smoke. This leaving is inside me, perfectly formed, waiting for me to take it to the water’s edge.

  I had no experience of detection work. Sure, we watched videos of the opposition before most of the big games, and I got pretty good at working out their patterns of play, set pieces, offside tactics and penalty preferences (left or right of the keeper). Call me naïve if you like, but at least I tried. What was I meant to do? Go to a psychiatrist and say: One of my friends has lost the plot and she’s done a runner. What do you think has happened to her? Where is she likely to be now? Yeah, sure.

  Something had burst inside her. Those pipes linking us to the past can never be disconnected; washers can be changed and taps tightened, but when the burst comes it brings water from deep underground, from a long time ago.

  I nearly wrote to Dear Deirdre in The Sun, honest to God. While I puzzled out what to do I worked on my fitness because I was getting plump. I also took a look at some famous detectives, to pick up some ideas. The Sherlock Holmes style was a possibility, I thought, until a few problems cropped up: I didn’t like the deerstalker image, I sure as hell couldn’t play the violin, and although I wasn’t averse to taking cocaine in a seven and a half per cent solution, like the great man, I eventually chickened out because I’m terrified of needles. There was another thing: Holmes was famous for his razor-sharp intelligence and his super-analytical brain. Regrettably, I am not. So I took a look at Raymond Chandler, and I liked him a lot, right away. When I was writing up my notes about Olly I could come up with some classic lines: The girl gave him a look which ought to have stuck at least four inches out of his back…

  Doing it the Chandler way would give me an opportunity to come up with stuff like this bit in The Long Good-Bye:

  A girl in a white sharkskin suit and a luscious figure was climbing the ladder to the high board. I watched the band of white that showed between the tan of her thighs and the suit. I watched it carnally. Then she was out of sight, cut off by the deep overhang of the roof. A moment later I saw her flash down in a one and a half. Spray came high enough to catch the sun and make rainbows that were almost as pretty as the girl.

  But there was one big problem – Chandler’s hero. Initially, I could compare myself favourably with Philip Marlowe; just like him I was about forty and tall with grey eyes and a hard jaw. I too was a man of honour, a modern day knight in shining armour with a college education (almost). At this point, however, Marlowe and I diverged. He listened to classical music and played solo, imaginary chess games against the grand masters of history. Me, I hate classical music, and although I could give you a good game of draughts, I wouldn’t last long in a game of chess. I simply don’t have the concentration. Besides, Marlowe seemed to take regular physical beatings (from the good guys as well as the bad guys) and his hair was parted by a bullet nearly every day. I wasn’t into that at all. No, I wasn’t up to that Marlowe malarkey. So I cast my net into the waters again and this time I came up with an ideal role model. If I was going to be a detective, I was going to be just like Precious Ramotswe. We had many things in common. Both of us were sensible and down-to-earth but very cunning underneath our veneer of normality. Both of us lived in former British colonies – she in Botswana, me in Wales. I read all about her No 1 Ladies Detective Agency. She was dignified. She was humorous. And she got results every time. So I followed her example whenever I could and stuck to the tenets of her professional bible, The Principles of Private Detection. I thanked God that my enquiry was fresh, because this is what it has to say about stale enquiries:

  A stale enquiry is unrewarding to all concerned. The client is given false hopes because a detective is working on the case, and the agent himself feels committed to coming up with something because of the client’s expectations. This means that the agent will probably spend more time on the case than the circumstances should warrant. At the end of the day, noth
ing is likely to be achieved and one is left wondering whether there is not a case for allowing the past to be buried with decency. Let the past alone is sometimes the best advice that can be given.

  Precious Ramotswe concluded that there was far too much interest in the past, and people were forever digging up events which had happened long ago. What was the point in doing this if the effect was merely to poison the present? she asked.

  But the past is inextricably connected to the present, as surely as ap Llwyd’s wells are linked in Water-Divining in the Foothills of Paradise. Everything that has gone before is fibre-optically linked with events happening around us now. Look at Olly. There were elements of her story which were eternal. Pretty girl meets pretty boy but her father puts all sorts of obstacles in the way; the boy must prove himself before the two can wed… they call on a hero to help them. Every story ever told seems to stretch way back into the past: nothing much changes, except that every age adds its own impressions and changes the fable slightly. So how do we construct a new story for ourselves from those seven basic strands mentioned at the start of our story? You tell me. Another thing: did Olly run away – or did she escape from something? Here’s Adam Phillips:

  If you want to escape from someone, they have become very important to you… we map our lives – our gestures, our ambitions, our loves, the minutest movements of our bodies – according to our aversions… as though our lives depend, above all, on accurate knowledge of what we are endangered by…

  Yesterday I was on a train. The girl opposite me – early twenties, mixed race – bought a bottle of water from the trolleyman for close on £1.50. The water was in a well-presented bottle and she sipped on it during our short journey. You’ll have to pardon me; I’m old-fashioned and I was born in the country, so I’m slightly perplexed when people buy water at exorbitant prices, especially when there’s good clean water on tap, free; after all, a huge chunk of the world has almost no water at all. But there’s something else, more important. I’m pretty sure that the girl on the train, typically urban, had never seen a well or a spring, never seen water bubbling to the surface; never witnessed its magic. To her it was a commodity, not a life-giving force; for a child born in the Kingdom of Advertising it was a liquid in a bottle, not a thing of beauty. To her, the bottle was more important that the contents. The age we live in is about euphemisms and avoidances, because few want to face reality – as if we were all living in a fairy tale without fairies.

  I know, I’m going on a bit. But this fin-de-siecle feel to Britain at the moment – am I imagining it? A country in which 99 per cent of the population watches the least talented one per cent in a bread-and-circuses parable called Big Brother, or some such dull opiate? Over the pond many Americans, in a deliberate annulment of the brain, have abrogated any sense of intellect and returned to a dark age of religion and war.

  Nothing changes. I was reading a book called The Age of Arthur last night and I came across these statements:

  …for nations, like people, tend to form habits in infancy that their adult years harden and modify…

  …as men began to lose respect for the state, they transferred their hopes to religion; and for the rest of the century, religious conflict mattered more and more in the political life of the Roman world…

  …the core of the story has always been melancholy regret for a strong and just ruler who protects his people against barbarism…

  No, nothing much changes. But man is never in stasis; he mutates constantly to fill the vacuums he creates in his never-ceasing motion. Like a plane’s aerofoil in flight, the force of his existence keeps him in perpetual motion – feeding, fighting, fleeing and fucking. I know, it’s time I had a lie-down. Binge thinking is bad for you.

  I searched for Olly. The next thing I did was to comb our dreams for clues. I noticed that the rainbow messengers came from some of the old Welsh romances, such as The Dream of Macsen Wledig. Macsen was a Roman Emperor, handsome and wise, who dreamt he went on a great journey through many regions and across many seas, to a wonderful castle where a beautiful maiden lived. But as he was about to embrace her he awoke. Having fallen in love with his dream woman, Macsen sent messengers far and wide to find her, and they located her, eventually, in Wales.

  I though about this story, long and hard. I wondered if Rome might have a part to play in my search for Olly: if I reversed the story, starting with a beautiful young woman living in Wales, I would end up in Rome. With this in mind I telephoned an old friend of mine, Dafydd Apolloni. Dafydd is a Llanrwst boy with an Italian father and, as a fanatical Roma fan, he certainly knows his football. When I phoned him he was cooling off on the balcony of his flat in the Testaccio district of Rome. Fresh in from teaching English to a businessman, and with a cool bottle of Peroni in his hand, Dafydd was in good form: Roma were on line to win the scudetto. After the initial greetings, our conversation went something like this (in Welsh, of course):

  ‘Dafydd, I need your help.’

  ‘OK – fire away.’

  ‘One of my friends has gone missing, and I’m trying to find her. We’re fairly sure she’s alive but she’s been very down recently – something bothering her – and she’s done a runner. Her passport’s gone too so I’m exploring every possibility. Something she said made me think of Rome.’

  ‘And you want me to find her? Do the words needle and haystack mean anything to you?’

  ‘No, I’ve got something in mind. We’ve been visiting some wells recently and I’ve been tossing a coin into each of them, making a wish and all that.’

  ‘That sounds like you, Duxie. Still playing games, eh?’

  ‘Don’t be cheeky Dafydd, or I’ll put a bottle of spumante in the fridge and support Lazio next time you play them…’

  ‘You wouldn’t do that to me Duxie, never!’

  ‘Are you listening to me, Dafydd?’

  ‘OK – carry on.’

  ‘This girl is very beautiful. She’s even more beautiful than your Italian girls (sound of raucous laughter on the other end of the phone). Anyway, if I wanted to toss a coin into a well in Rome where would I go?’

  ‘Duxie, there are dozens of wells in Rome. But you’re being a bit slow, aren’t you?’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘Just think about it, you plonker. Where do people go in Rome to make a wish? It’s probably the most famous place in Rome.’

  [he sings a snatch of song – Three coins in a fountain… ]

  ‘Shit! Of course Dafydd – the Trevi Fountain!’

  ‘Bloody right. Took you long enough.’

  [sound of swigging from a bottle]

  ‘How often do you go anywhere near it?’ I asked.

  ‘The Trevi? Now and then, not very often. It’s snowed under with tourists all the time.’

  ‘Snowed under?’

  ‘OK, bad choice of words.’

  ‘If I send you a photo of the girl, will you go and check out the place now and again?’

  ‘Sure Duxie, I’ll keep an eye open. Just how beautiful is this girl? I think you’ve fallen for her yourself, Duxie. Am I right?’

  ‘No way.’

  ‘And she’s run away from you, like they all… [pause]’

  ‘Thanks for reminding me, Dafydd.’

  ‘Sorry, Duxie. Wasn’t thinking. Anyway, you send the photo, I’ll do the business this end, though I can’t promise anything. I’ll try to go there as often as possible, and I’ll tell my mates… on second thoughts, you’ll never get her back if they get to her first.’

  ‘Thanks Dafydd.’

  We made smalltalk about Serie A soccer, then he hung up on me. He’d probably seen a bit of skirt going into the bar below him. I blame the hot Latino blood in him, only partially diluted by Llanrwst water (and there’s plenty of that, as we all know).

  Let’s have a look at the scenario again.

  As I’ve already told you, I’m trying to discover what happened to the first ten years of my life. My past is intangible. Someho
w I must rig up an internal modem to Google my childhood – but it’s ciphered in a lost language. At the moment my past is a black hole. Deep Space, Deep Time, Deep Nothingness. Astronomers in Cardiff have discovered an invisible galaxy which is almost completely made of dark matter. With no stars to illuminate it, the galaxy was found using radio waves. Meanwhile, in Geneva, a 17-mile underground tunnel, nearing completion, will recreate the moment when the universe was about the size of Dr John Dee’s obsidian stone. In effect, scientists have built the world’s biggest microscope to find the most elusive fragment in the universe. And there’s a new breed of detectives called forensic astronomers who have identified the time and place in which van Gogh painted two of his most famous paintings, by analysing his notes and details in the pictures. Can you believe that? It’s so advanced – and there are people in this town who are still complaining about the Window Tax.

  For a long time now I’ve been walking along an endless circular corridor, looking for my past. This corridor is made of glass: it’s like a neon halo, but on a much bigger scale – it could stretch all the way around the world, perhaps. It’s clear, but tinted a very light green. As I walk in my glass corridor I am surrounded on three sides – above me, below me and to my right – by deep space: planets and moons and stars twinkling in a vast bluey-black void. But I’m not scared. To my left is a black hole, and my circular glass corridor is bent around it. I’m walking along my own event horizon. Somewhere to my left, in the void, is my own singularity. If I move out of the corridor, to my right, I will be sucked into deep space. If I move to my left I will be sucked into my own singularity, triggering another big bang in my own history. But I’m safe as long as I keep on walking in the glass corridor. So I walk all day in the green-tinted corridor, and along the lefthand side, from beginning to end (I have never completed a circuit) there are millions of orange Post-it notes stuck to the glass. Sometimes I stop and read these notes. Some of them are from my past and some are from my future. None of them make any sense on their own, but I’ve a sneaky feeling that if I managed to get them in the right sequence they would tell me all about those lost years. Pulling them off the wall and trying to rearrange them, however, smacks of madness so I’ll carry on walking for now at least, until I’m impelled to tear down some notes and stick them in random order on the floor. People reading orange Post-it notes on the floor tend to attract attention. Self-absorbed? Yes, but we all are, aren’t we. Some want to hide it, some don’t.