I thought about the circumstances which had brought me to this pass, and when finally the conversation died slowly down and the only sound was the crackling of the fire and the distant sighing of the sea I turned to Cadwaladr.
‘Remember what you once told me about Rio Caeriog? About the version of events they never tell anyone?’
Cadwaladr threw a bone into the fire, sending bright sparks up into the night sky.
‘Yes, I remember.’
‘Would you tell me that story now? The true story of Rio Caeriog?’
There was a murmur around the fire. Cadwaladr laughed softly and said, ‘By rights there’s only one man who should tell that story.’ His words hung in the air and were followed by a rustling around the fire as the men shifted their positions and turned their gazes to a man sitting in the shadows next to the guitarist. He eased himself forward into the glow from the fire; an air of expectancy spread round the circle.
‘You ask about Rio Caeriog?’
‘Yes.’
‘Tell me what you know about it.’
‘I know what the history books say, that it was a great military victory –’
Scoffing sounds erupted from all sides of the circle.
‘Oh yes,’ the man laughed bitterly, ‘a great military victory. That’s why there’s no statue of General Prhys outside the museum, and why you never find him mentioned in any of the history books.’
There were more scoffing sounds.
‘And what else do you know?’
‘I know that they put a radio beacon inside a Rolex watch, that the watch was lost in a rigged card game to one of the bandits who then took it back to the rebel base and then the Legion sent in the Lancaster bomber to home in on the radio beacon.’
The man nodded. ‘In these history books you talk of, do they tell you where the card game took place?’
‘It was a place called San Isadora, in the foothills of the Sierra Machynlleth mountains.’
‘That was a hundred miles behind the lines in hostile territory. Do you know how we got there?’
‘Marched, I suppose.’
The man spat. ‘Marched.’ His voice rose in anger. ‘You think you can just walk a hundred miles in hostile territory and no one will notice?’
The guitarist placed a mollifying hand on his shoulder. ‘It’s OK, Johnny, take it easy. It’s not this man’s fault.’
Johnny turned sharply towards the man. ‘Were you there? Were you there, huh?’
‘No, Johnny, I wasn’t. I wasn’t there.’
‘Don’t you think I have the right to be angry?’
Cadwaladr answered. ‘Yes, Johnny, you have a right to be angry. We all know that. But this man is a guest. He isn’t the one responsible for your pain.’
‘Tell him the story, Johnny.’
‘And us too; tell us about Rio Caeriog.’
‘Yes tell it, Johnny!’
Johnny sat back and resumed his story in a calmer voice. ‘I’ll tell you how we got there; General Prhys made us march those hundred miles disguised as United Nations peace-keepers. He gave us all a tin of blue paint and made us paint our helmets. That’s how we did it.’
I whistled, not sure whether I was supposed to be impressed or shocked. Then there was a pause, and as the fire died down to a glow, and with the far-off lights of Aberdovey gleaming behind him, Johnny told the story of Rio Caeriog.
‘When we got to San Isadora we billeted and went to the cantina. A young private by the name of Pantycelyn was chosen to play the card game. There was nothing special about him. He was like most of the other kids there. Young and frightened and wishing he could go back to his parents’ farm in the shadow of Cader Idris. But he was chosen.’ Johhny paused. ‘Or maybe he was chosen because he was sober and reliable. The sort of person who could be trusted not to get the watches mixed up. Because everyone had Rolexes in those days, cheap from the PX store.’ He stopped again and sighed sadly. ‘Yes maybe that was why they chose him.’ Johnny stopped and took a sip from his can. ‘Do they tell you any of this in your books?’
‘Yes, this much I have heard.’
He nodded. ‘Everything went well at first. Losing the watch was easy – the only hard part was not making it look too obvious. As soon as they won the Rolex, the bandits rode out of town, shooting their pistols in the air as they went. A Rolex watch was worth ten years’ salary in those parts. Then after the game Pantycelyn went to join the rest of the platoon. They were listening to the radio in the front bar. It was the semi-final of the Copa Americana and Brazil were playing Argentina. The entire town was there. When the kid walked in, something funny happened. The radio reception went haywire. The peasants hooted and threw enchiladas at him. And the kid starts to get scared. He realises that he must have got the watches mixed up. The bandits had got the genuine Rolex and he was wearing a radio beacon on his wrist with a Lancaster bomber heading directly for him. So he tries to get the thing off, but he’s so clumsy in his terror that he breaks the catch. Well, as you know, a Rolex is made to last: try as he might he can’t get the damned watch off. So his mates take him outside to work out what to do. There’s about an hour to go and everyone is getting jumpy. Someone suggests to the kid he does the noble thing and get on a mule and ride out of town for five miles. And, of course, he’s getting really jittery now and says, “Fuck off, why don’t you all ride out of town on a mule?” And they say, “So we can save all these innocent people here,” and he says, “Do I give a fuck? I’m dead anyway.” So then the medic pipes up and says, “Why don’t we amputate his arm?” This strikes everybody as a good idea, except Pantycelyn who’s now only too pleased to ride out of town for five miles, in fact, he’s begging to do it. But no one trusts him. So he makes a break for it, and they chase after him. All around the town he runs, with the platoon on his trail. Eventually they catch him. They hold him down, give him a shot of morphine, and amputate the arm – just below the elbow. Then they strap the arm to a mule and fire a gun behind it. Wham! The mule covers the first mile in less than a minute. Leaving Pantycelyn to sleep off his anaesthetic they go back into the cantina. Soon they hear the far-off drone of the bomber approaching above the clouds. By now it’s the last five minutes of the game and Argentina are one-nil up. The peasants are on the edge of their seats. They’re all betting like crazy on the outcome and the tables are all piled high with money. Well, what do you know! As soon as the soldiers walk in, the radio goes haywire again. Turns out it’s just something to do with the radio waves reflecting off the helmets. It means they cut the kid’s arm off for nothing. Of course, they’re pretty upset, but they agree among themselves not to tell the kid when he wakes up. After all, if there was nothing wrong with the watch on the arm they amputated, then the bandits must have taken the one with the radio transmitter all along. So as the sound of the plane gets louder, everyone goes outside to watch the fireworks. And from the roof of the cantina they watch as the bomber drops 14,000lbs of high explosive and phosphorus on to the orphanage. It seems the bandit had donated the watch to the one of the holy sisters. Twenty-seven children killed. Within hours every hoe, axe, hammer and shovel for two hundred square miles was raised against us. As we started our retreat, the rain came and washed the blue paint off our helmets.’
After he finished, I didn’t know what to say. No one did. There was silence for a long while and then one by one people stood up and drifted away. I thanked the veterans for their hospitality and rose to my feet. As I left, Johnny the storyteller gave me a sort of salute of farewell. At the same time, a branch on the fire cracked in the heat sending a flare up that illuminated the whole of one side of his body. And then I knew why of all the assembled people that night, only he could have told me the true story of Rio Caeriog. His left arm was missing below the elbow.
When I got back to the caravan, the one that had been welded together from two crash write-offs and couldn’t be traced, the one that couldn’t be seen from the road and about which not even the caretaker knew
anything, I found a police car parked outside.
Chapter 18
‘YOU THINK I didn’t know about this crappy caravan? I could have picked you up any time I wanted.’
I put a plastic mug filled with instant soup down in front of Llunos. It seemed like years since I had done the same for Myfanwy. But it was just over a week. The ludo set was still out on the table.
‘So why didn’t you?’
He ran a pudgy hand through his hair. He looked as if he hadn’t slept for a week; and there was something else about him: the air of weary self-assurance was gone. Now he just seemed weary. He looked at me as if appealing for help. ‘I don’t think I’ll have a job by the end of the week.’
I blinked.
‘There’s a new commissioner of police.’
‘Anyone I know?’
‘Herod Jenkins.’
‘The games teacher?’
‘Yes.’
‘Fuck.’
‘Soon you won’t be able to sneeze in this town without a note from your Mam.’
I topped up the mugs of soup with rum.
‘The man’s a nutcase.’
Llunos gave me a ‘tell me about it’ look. He pulled out a bag from under his chair and slid it across the table to me. It was a child’s school satchel.
‘We took this from Brainbocs’s house just after he disappeared.’
I looked at the policeman and he shifted uncomfortably in his seat as if he couldn’t believe what he was doing. He was helping me.
‘It’s no fucking use so don’t get all excited.’
I undid the buckles and opened the satchel. There were four objects inside and I laid them side by side next to the ludo set: a field guide to edible mushrooms; Job Gorseinon’s Roses of Charon; an invoice from Dai the Custard Pie’s fancy-dress basement; and, perhaps most curiously of all, a nineteenth-century nautical primer: Corruption of the Deep: The Captain’s Guide to Last Rites and Burials at Sea.
I picked each one up in turn, examined it briefly and then put it down in its original place.
No one spoke.
Llunos stood up to leave. ‘I told you it wouldn’t help.’
I followed him to the door and for a while we stood there facing each other awkwardly on the step. It was as if the components of our universe had shifted like fragments in a kaleidoscope and we now found ourselves fighting on the same side. He stuck out his hand and we shook.
‘If I was you,’ he said, ‘I’d leave town.’ And then, through the wound-down window of his car, ‘Did you hear about Ma Brainbocs?’
‘No, what?’
‘She was spotted at Cardiff airport yesterday boarding an Aerolineas Argentina flight.’
When I awoke late next morning, one thing was clear to me: it was time to get out of town. If Llunos had known all about my hiding hole plenty of other people probably did as well. And I’d had enough of skulking around disguised as a War veteran. With the games teacher running the police force we were all in the shit. I threw a few things into a zip-up hold-all and put the veteran’s disguise on for what I hoped was the last time. Maybe Myfanwy and I could get the train to Shrewsbury.
At Myfanwy’s flat the door was ajar and the place deserted. Not empty with the atmosphere of a room from which the tenant has nipped out to buy milk, but with air of a nest in which the eggs are cold and the parent birds have been frightened away. There was nothing concrete to suggest it, but sometimes you know these things without needing evidence. Bras and panties were left drying on cold radiators. T-shirts and inside-out jeans were strewn across the floor. Mugs of instant coffee covered in green fur cluttered every surface next to wine bottles and beer cans filled with cigarette ends all glued down with sticky rings of stale beer. There were half-eaten take-away meals and tins of tuna stuck to the carpet, with forks sticking out of the jaggedly opened tops. Clothes draped on hangers hooked over door handles, Schwarzenegger and Stallone videos, Lady Di souvenirs, posters of Bon Jovi, shiny vinyl cases from which make-up bottles spilled out on to the floor. Birth-control pills and tampons. And everywhere the air was rank with the smell of old beer, candles and stale farts. It was as if a butterfly had emerged from a chrysalis on a dung heap. But the butterfly had flown.
I almost didn’t care. Like a regularly beaten dog I was too tired to yelp. The fall of the stick had become routine. Myfanwy had pleaded with me to take her away and I had been too stubborn and now it was too late. What did I expect? Everyone knew you don’t get two bites at a cherry like that. With her gone I no longer had any desire to leave, or to stay, or in fact to do anything. Maybe, I thought, I should just go back to my old flat and wait for Herod’s men to arrive. I wandered down to the harbour and then on down past the castle and stood for an hour on the Prom leaning on the sugar-white railings and staring emptily out to sea. The waters were a chill unwelcoming gunmetal colour and the breeze stiff and salty. Above my head the Noddy illumination swayed and creaked eerily and I thought grimly of the likely consequences if a man turned up in this town wearing a red hat with bells. Eventually I headed for the only suitable place for a man whose world has collapsed: the Whelk Stall.
The boy was reading the newspaper on the counter when I arrived and gave no sign of stopping. I stood pointedly in front of him for a while but still he ignored me. This was not a wise policy. I slammed my hand down on the page he was reading.
He looked up with hatred in his eyes. ‘Sorry, Smelly, we don’t serve tramps.’
I gasped in disbelief. Didn’t he know what I had been through recently? Didn’t he know that I was an outcast, wanted for murder? That this filthy coat was just a disguise? Didn’t he know I had lost Myfanwy? Didn’t he know how dangerous that made me? Didn’t he know any of this? Of course he didn’t but that was just tough. There comes a time when someone has to pay and it doesn’t matter whether it’s the wrong bill or not. Someone has to pay.
‘What did you say, Sonny Jim?’
‘I said, fuck off, granddad, and stop stinking up my stall.’
I nodded slowly and thoughtfully. And then I hit him. He flew backwards more from surprise than from the force of the punch and fell heavily into a pile of saucepans. Before he could recover, I jumped over the counter, paused for a second while I recovered my balance, took aim, and kicked him in the stomach. He grunted and struggled desperately to escape on all fours, unable to get to his feet. I picked up a frying pan and swung it against the side of his head. I could feel the cartilage in his ear cracking and vibrating through the handle of the pan. ‘No, please, no mister, please,’ he cried. But it was too late. Two weeks too late; the invoice was in his in-tray and he was going to pay it. He scuttled away still on all fours and the sight of his desperation served only to increase my fury. I ran forwards and grabbed the scruff of his neck, pulled him backwards and slammed the frying pan full into his face. Blood from his nose spattered on his dirty white chef’s tunic. ‘Please, mister!’ he cried, and I pushed him into a pile of cardboard boxes and waste bins. Trapped, with nowhere left to go, he turned to face me, cowering and pulling back at the same time. I picked up a knife with a long blade from the counter and advanced another step. This time he was too frightened even to speak. I could smell urine as his hands clutched at his groin.
‘Right then,’ I hissed. ‘Are you going to serve me some fucking whelks or not?’ The knife pointed at the end of his nose and he stared at it in cross-eyed fascination. He nodded.
‘Yes sir,’ he whispered. ‘It’ll be a pleasure.’
While he prepared the evening special which we had agreed would be on the house I read the newspaper. Back page first. Then I turned to the front; the main story was Herod’s appointment, complete with a photo of the games teacher smiling through that familiar horizontal crease in his face. The same teacher who had sent a consumptive schoolboy out on a run in the worst blizzard to hit Cardiganshire in more than seventy years. The only other story was a small one-column piece on the right under the headline VICE GIRL GRAVE DESECRATED. I
turned the page angrily. Then stopped like a cartoon animal that has just run over the edge of a cliff. I turned the page back and re-read the headline, my eyes wide open with shock. It was about Bianca’s grave. Feverishly I skimmed the article. Two nights ago someone had dug the coffin up at Llanbadarn Cemetery and broken open the lid in what the paper described as a sick and motiveless crime. The attackers had used a power saw to open up a rectangle eighteen inches long and ten wide in the lid covering Bianca’s face. Nothing had been taken, and the corpse hadn’t, as they put it, been interfered with. I pushed the paper away and sat there stunned. Aberystwyth was shocked and baffled by the crime. No one could imagine who could do such a thing. But I could. It was the same person that killed the Punch and Judy man.
Chapter 19
TO THINK OF all the millions of useless, pointless, empty, cruel, vain, proud, mean, obscene and utterly valueless words we spit out during our lives; to think of all those words and all those syllables, more syllables than grains of sand on Borth Beach. Oh Bianca, all you needed was just one more. What evil jinni stood on your shoulder and robbed you of that last, crucial puff of air? To think of all the nonsense you talked. All the lies and flatteries you spent your nights pouring into the ears of pink-faced Druids! All those empty, wasted words. If only you could have bitten your tongue just once: withheld a word and kept it on credit for that rainy day when an extra syllable could have changed the world. One syllable, perhaps the only one in your whole life, that could have made anything better. The essay is in the stove, you gasped. Oh no! You didn’t put it in the stove. You who cocked a final snook at society by wearing your night-club costume in the coffin. You put it in your stovepipe hat!
Aberystwyth Mon Amour Page 17
