Aberystwyth Mon Amour

by Malcolm Pryce

I drove slowly round the large expanse of lawn that fronted the Museum and blinked as the sun flashed off the plexiglass nose of the Lancaster. Acquired in 1961 from the famous 617 ‘Dambusters’ squadron, it had stood on Victory Square since the end of hostilities, its majesty never dimming despite the passage of time. Somewhere beneath the waters of the Rio Caeriog lay her sister plane. I pulled over and switched off the engine and watched a party of school children pair off and climb up the ladder, through the entrance under the dorsal turret and into the fuselage. All through school they told us how the people left Wales in the nineteenth century to settle in Patagonia, but no one ever told us why. A shilling from the end of the Pier to start a new life in a land of milk and honey. What they found wasn’t even a land of bread and jam, but a barren, desolate, ice-covered wilderness. I was too young to remember the war of independence, but like everybody else I was familiar with the Pathé news footage of the queues snaking down the street outside the recruitment offices. The initial euphoria. And then the disillusionment. The body bags and policy U-turns; the sobering discovery that the boys weren’t the men in white hats as everybody had supposed. Weren’t liberators at all. Opinion at home turned against the ill-advised military adventure, people changed their minds. But the troops – entrenched in a war from which it was now impossible to extricate them – were not allowed such a luxury. And then came the famous Rio Caeriog campaign; a turning point and famous victory, in the same way that Dunkirk was a victory.

  I found the Museum curator, Rhiannon Jones, in the Combinations and Corsetry section which ran the length of the top floor of a building that was more interesting than the exhibits it housed. The Devil’s Bridge Tin & Lead Steam Railway Co. had built it during the middle of the last century, a magnificent neo-Gothic pile filled with cherubs and gargoyles, turrets, archways and crenellations. The lingerie that now shimmered in the prismatic light from the stained glass windows was said to be the largest collection of its kind in Europe and when I was young they employed a man specially to chase away the schoolboys who tried to sneak in. A job that had now gone the same way as workhouses and beadles. Although deserted, it was a pleasant enough place to take a stroll on a summer’s day. I wandered through the shafts of late-afternoon sun that streamed in tenderly caressing the exhibits and making the dust dance. The tea-cosy section was at the far end under the Great South Window overlooking the Square. It was not a famous collection – a few shabby pieces in ancient cases that gave not the slightest hint at the infamous goings on of the harbour-side tea-cosy shops. It was easy to see where the Mayan piece had been stolen from. A newly replaced pane of glass and a tea cosy-shaped discolouration on the background paper in the display cabinet. A new card lay next to it bearing the fib: ‘On temporary loan to the Leipziger Staatsgalerie.’

  Rhiannon Jones walked over and stood next to me, admiring the cosies.

  ‘Prynhawn da, Mr Knight!’

  I turned and smiled. ‘Prynhawn da, Mrs Jones, lovely day!’ She put on an epiphanic expression. ‘Oh isn’t it!’ I needed to pump her for information but first I had to negotiate my way graciously through the introductory pleasantries. Too much haste here and she might stonewall me later.

  ‘Oh yes, turned out beautiful, it has,’ I said. ‘Let’s hope it stays like this for July.’

  The sun slid behind a cloud on Mrs Jones’s brow as some long-forgotten trauma from her childhood rose to the surface. ‘Ooh you wouldn’t say that if you’d seen it in ’32! Lovely June that was, then first day of July it rained and didn’t stop until August Bank Holiday.’ She shuddered. ‘I still haven’t got over it!’

  ‘Still,’ I said consolingly, ‘we can’t complain about today.’

  ‘Oh no,’ she smiled, ‘it’s turned out nice all right. But then …’

  She paused and slowly lifted her index finger to the bridge of her nose in a gesture that the women of Aberystwyth absorb at their grandmother’s knee. It was a gesture designed to add a courtroom emphasis to a certain caveat that was coming. Coming unavoidably, and with the predestined certainty of a piano falling on to the head of a cartoon cat. I watched mesmerised. Oh yes, it was indeed a lovely day, she conceded, her rib cage filling up with air. ‘But!’ She wagged her finger in front of my face. ‘But … but then it was nice yesterday, too, chwarae teg!’

  Her eyes sparkled with the fire of victory. It was nice yesterday too. Of course it was. Or was it? To be honest I couldn’t remember, but it didn’t really matter. We were dealing here with that linguistic get-out-of-jail-free card ‘chwarae teg’. It translated as ‘fair-play’ and if you put one in your sentence there was nothing, no solecism, platitude or canyon-bridging leap of logic you couldn’t get away with.

  Having verbally checkmated me, Mrs Jones returned her attention to the tea cosies, becoming a model of magnanimity towards her vanquished foe.

  ‘Oh yes, beauties these are,’ she said. ‘This set was knitted by the Sisters of Deiniol at the Hospice in ’61. It was part of the war effort to buy the Lancaster.’ She gave a slight nod towards the window that looked out on to Victory Square.

  ‘It was because we didn’t have any air cover, you see.’

  ‘Must have taken a lot of knitting to buy a bomber.’

  ‘Oh yes, but those Sisters of Deiniol are nothing if not disciplined. Ever so strict they are. You know Mrs Beynon from the lighthouse? They wouldn’t let her work in the gift shop when her monthly courses were on her!’

  *

  The cream in the cakes was mashed up from margarine and sugar. The tables and chairs came from a school assembly hall. And the high, church-like ceiling was filled with an echoey din, softened by the fug of steam and accumulated minto-flavoured breath that resides in places like this even in the depths of summer. It was the Museum café. Red plastic tomato-shaped ketchup dispenser on the table. Polished tea urn on the counter along from the display where canoe-shaped doughnuts bore scars of fake jam. In the corner there was a one-armed bandit for which you had to change money into old pennies at the till.

  Mrs Jones wiped her little finger along the rim of her prune-like mouth. Traces of cream still clung stubbornly to the grey moss-like growth on her upper lip.

  ‘You know,’ I said, ‘I used to come here a lot as a kid.’

  ‘Oh yes, we used to be very popular with the schools.’

  ‘My favourite part’, I added with exaggerated casualness, ‘was the Cantref-y-Gwaelod section.’

  Mrs Jones stopped chewing her doughnut and put it down on the plate. Her hand shook. ‘I’m afraid’, she said softly, ‘that’s not one of my specialities.’

  ‘Still over by the section on two-headed calves is it?’

  The trembling got worse. ‘Y … Yes, I ’spect it is.’

  ‘Perhaps we can walk over there, later.’

  ‘I … I … I think it’s closed’

  ‘Oh what a pity, I’ve been thinking of doing some research; a sort of twentieth-century reassessment –’

  Mrs Jones cut me off sharply. ‘I’m sorry, I can’t help you.’

  ‘It wouldn’t be any bother. Mostly theory. I’d be approaching the subject from a modern oceanographical perspective. I’d need the tide tables for the Dark Ages, of course –’

  She put her hands to her ears and whined like a child.

  ‘No, no, please stop, I don’t know anything about Cantref-y-Gwaelod, really I don’t.’

  ‘What are you scared of?’

  ‘Nothing, nothing … I … please, I have to get back.’

  She stood up suddenly, the squeal of her stool making the whole room stop talking and look round. Then, lowering her voice to a harsh whisper, she hissed: ‘Just fuck off, right?’

  I grabbed her arm before she could escape, the dirty white wool coarse under my hand. ‘Not until you tell me what you’re hiding.’ I tightened my grip on her bony arm and she winced in pain. Everyone in the room was watching in astonishment.

  ‘Nothing!’ she hissed. ‘I’m not hiding anything. I know no
thing about Cantref-y-Gwaelod.’ Again she tried to struggle free, but I held on grimly.

  ‘Who killed Brainbocs?’ It was wild card thrown in to see if it had any effect on her. It did.

  She gasped and cast an involuntary glance over to the fireplace by the door. I followed her gaze. There was a rectangle of bright paper above the mantelpiece where a picture which had been hanging a long time had recently been removed.

  ‘You want me to end up like him? Like Mr Davies? Is that it? Is that what you want?’

  ‘The old curator?’

  ‘Yes!’

  ‘Did he help Brainbocs with his essay?’

  She whined and struggled like a cat caught in a trap.

  ‘Where is he now? Mr Davies?’

  ‘Just fuck off!’

  My grip broke and Mrs Jones rushed through the tables, knocking drinks over as she went. Oblivious to the stares, I sat looking at the fireplace and the spot where Mr Davies’s portrait used to hang.

  * * *

  The next day they re-opened the Ghost Train and Myfanwy rang to tell me she had two tickets. I met her outside the railway station, next to the sign saying ‘What is the purpose of your journey to England?’ There was something I wanted to ask her, but it was such a stupid question, I kept avoiding it. ‘After Myfanwy’s next scream,’ I told myself. And then when she screamed, I put it off until the next. There was no shortage of screams; this was the only ghost train in the world with real ghosts. Before privatisation it had been the only ghost train operated by British Rail. It started life as an educational project by the Cardiganshire Heritage Foundation. A disused lead working had been turned into a theme ride depicting the history of lead mining in Cardiganshire. Narrow-gauge steam trains hauled holiday-makers and school-trippers up to the mine and then were exchanged for pit ponies which pulled the wagons through the galleries. It even won an award from UNESCO for responsible tourism, but then came the terrible accident. A wheel spun off and hit a pit prop bringing the roof down and killing a party of day-trippers from the Midlands. When the place re-opened two months later funny things started happening. The ponies whinnied eerily from their stables every night and in the morning they shied and refused to enter the mine. Strange sounds were heard and disembodied lights were seen floating inside the tunnels. Soon passenger numbers dwindled and it looked like the train had reached the end of the line. But then word began to spread and a new breed of passenger arrived: not people with an interest in industrial archaeology, but UFO-hunters, megalith lovers, spontaneous human combustion ghouls and lads on stag nights. And so was born the world’s only genuine ghost train. In addition to the curtains of fluorescent sea weed, and plastic skeletons through which the electrically driven wagons now trundled, thrill-seekers could also look out for a woman carrying a head under her arm with peroxide blonde hair. Or a man asleep on a bench with a copy of the Daily Mirror over his face. And, in the cafeteria, an ectoplasmic woman breast-feeding her baby.

  Myfanwy screamed and buried her head on my chest as we swept round a corner and through a curtain of fluorescent sea weed. I wanted to see if she knew any reason why her cousin Evans should have a piece of tea cosy with a Mayan pattern on it. The train crashed out through the final gate and into the warm sunshine.

  ‘Myfawny?’

  ‘Mmmm?’

  ‘I know this sounds silly, but did your cousin Evans have any interest in the Incas?’

  ‘The who?’

  ‘Or the Aztecs; or anything like that?’

  She leaned her head against my chest and looked up, smiling. ‘I’m so disappointed, we never saw the woman breast-feeding.’

  ‘You screamed enough, anyway.’

  ‘I know but that was at the fake ghosts.’

  ‘If they were fake, why did you scream?’

  The train ground slowly to a halt and the rest of the passengers started taking off the hard hats.

  ‘They were fake screams.’ She sat up and started unbuckling the safety belt. ‘Next time you can take Pandy.’

  I sighed. ‘Look, will you stop trying to pair me up with your friends!’

  ‘I’m not, but she wants to go, and she’s too frightened as well.’

  ‘What about the knife in her sock?’

  She put her arm round my neck and pulled herself on to me. Hair pressed warmly against my face cutting off all the light and filling me with an overwhelming urge to sleep; I pushed her gently back and asked her again.

  ‘Was he into the Aztecs?’

  She pursed her lips in a pretence of thinking and then said: ‘To tell the truth I don’t think he listened to groups much.’

  I dropped Myfanwy off at her flat overlooking Tan-y-Bwlch and drove uphill to Southgate and then turned left into the mountainous hinterland beyond. The sun was shining in Aberystwyth but as I climbed it clouded over until soon I was driving through a chilly fog, in a world of drystone walls and cattle grids. Frightened sheep clung to the banks on either side of the road, wondering desperately how they were going to get back into the fields from which they had somehow escaped. As the mist thickened, I drove through sad unenchanted forests of conifers planted in uniform rows by the Forestry Commission, occasionally passing sticks set in the fence, with rubber shovels to beat out fires. From time to time glimpses of Nant-y-moch reservoir glinted in staccato bursts through the trees. And then the trees stopped and I found myself at a crumbling, weed-filled church yard on the slopes overlooking the reservoir. The church where Marty lies buried. I parked and made my way through the crooked slate teeth of the graves.

  It was never officially established that he had been consumptive. And so many well-meaning friends have since tried to assure me that he wasn’t. But how would they know? Were they there that day in primary school when we had our BCG jabs? When Marty was so terrified of the needle that I took his place in return for a month’s supply of Mars bars? Perhaps if he had lived in town things might have been different. But he lived here on this sunless northern hillside overlooking the reservoir. I looked down at the simple headstone and then let my eyes wander across to the placid gunmetal waters pent up behind Nant-y-moch dam. Marty once told me that there was a village lying at the bottom of the lake; he said that it had been flooded when they built the dam and the man who printed the leaflets telling the people to quit their homes had got the dates mixed up and they all drowned. Marty said he never got any wedding invitations to do after that. It still makes me laugh.

  The blizzard that took Marty had held Aberystwyth in its grip for three days and for once we had made the tragic mistake of allowing the candle of hope to flicker in our hearts. Experience had taught us, years before we were to go out into the real world to find the lesson confirmed, that the best policy is always to expect the worst. But this time as we watched the TV footage of helicopters air-lifting bales of hay to stranded livestock we thought that this Friday, at least, games would be called off. But Herod Jenkins was not one to be so easily cheated of his sport. In his book the only meteorological conditions severe enough to cancel games were to be found on Saturn. Marty hated rugby. For him it was a pagan game, a modern embodiment of the ritual rape-fest of the Beltane feasts. The goal posts represented the vulva of the fertility goddess Wicca and the ball was a symbolic sperm. It was a compelling thesis but didn’t save him from being sacrificed on the altar of Herod’s madness.

  Nothing could ever have prepared us for the shock of that day. We were used to the fact that the normal laws of the land didn’t operate on the games field, but this time the physical laws seemed suspended as well. It was as if we woke up in the morning on the ceiling to find that gravity had been reversed overnight. Marty stood there holding the one talisman known to grant immunity from persecution – the note from your Ma – and Herod rejected it. A bit of running around would be good for a cold he said in words which have gone down in medical history. And so saying he went inside to don his arctic parka. Marty stood there whiter than a ghost and shaking. The inquiry would later find that the n
ote had been forged which meant that Herod was morally absolved. But Marty wasn’t fit, even if the note was false. He looked at me, his one friend, for help and I said, ‘Marty, we won’t go.’ Four words that would shape my thoughts and deeds for the rest of my life. ‘Marty, we won’t go.’ What could be simpler? It was plainly madness to go out on the field that day and if we all refused, what could he do? If we all stuck together our will could prevail. We would simply refuse to move. Marty embraced the plan with enthusiasm and managed to unite the whole class behind his mutiny. Herod came back outside with his whistle and Marty stepped forward and said, ‘Sir, we’re not going.’ Herod blinked in astonishment and turned his full attention on the boy: fragile and shivering, awkward and scholastic – all crimes in a games teacher’s eyes – and then he smiled and turned to the rest of us. ‘Oh really?’ he said. ‘And who else is too cold to go for a little run?’ There followed a split-second’s silence and then everyone jeered; it was plain that Marty had been tricked and no one else had had the slightest intention of refusing to play. Not one of them stepped forward. Finally, drunk on the glee of victory, Herod turned his gaze to me, whom he knew to be Marty’s confederate, and said, ‘Well darling?’ And I cringed like a beaten dog and said nothing. We all played rugby that day and Marty was sent on a cross-country run, alone. He looked at me just before he left and in his eye was that unforgettable heart-breaking look. Not of reproach, which would be so much more easy to live with, but of understanding. And also something else: that searing farewell of the prisoner as they apply the blindfold, and his eyes take their last drink of this beautiful world.

  Chapter 9

  DORIS PUGH SAT in her official tourist information blazer and spat the word across the desk like a cherry stone: ‘Semen!’

  I gasped.

  ‘On an apricot satin camisole.’

  ‘Old?’

  ‘Flapper years. Of course he said it wasn’t his, but then they all say that don’t they? Thirty years he’d been there. Two more years and he would have retired on full pension with a gold clock.’