Aberystwyth Mon Amour

by Malcolm Pryce

  ‘Tonight.’

  ‘And Aberystwyth gets destroyed?’

  ‘They’ll build another one. Don’t worry.’

  Chapter 23

  GETTING A MESSAGE to Llunos proved to be easier than I expected. He was lying on the floor of my cell when I got back, his face bruised and swollen. It looked like he’d finally fallen down his own police station stairs. I bathed his cuts and waited while he gradually recovered consciousness. When he did I explained the situation to him and he went to the door and banged on it to bring a guard. After ten minutes he gave up. No one came for the rest of the day. And so the hours passed. Every half hour or so, Llunos would look over and ask the time. I would tell him and he would bang his fist into his palm and say, ‘There must be some way.’ But neither of us could think of one. At the end of the day we went to the window to watch the sunset. And as the sky turned pink we heard the clatter of propeller engines starting up from the fields of the Ystwyth flood plain.

  Llunos looked at me. ‘That will be the Lancaster then?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Do you think it will work?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Their plan.’

  ‘Which part of it?

  The old policeman considered. ‘The bit about blowing up the dam.’

  ‘I don’t know. If they get the plane to take off, then they can probably do it. I mean with things like that Brainbocs is pretty good. Making the bombs would be a piece of cake for him and the rest, getting the right flight approach and trajectory and all that, is just mathematics.’

  ‘Do you think the water will come this way?’

  ‘Where else can it go?’

  He thought about that one and didn’t say anything more for a while.

  ‘I suppose there’s a lot of water behind that dam.’

  ‘Eight cubic kilometres.’

  ‘How much is that?’

  ‘It’s about the size of a small mountain.’

  He nodded as if I was confirming his own calculations. ‘That’s a lot of water to be released all at once isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, a lot.’

  ‘A fuck of a lot actually.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘A hell of a fuck of a lot.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What do you think it will do to Aberystwyth?’

  It wasn’t an easy question to answer. How do you describe something no one has ever seen before? Even Brainbocs would have struggled. I looked at Llunos. He was never a particularly jovial man but tonight he looked especially dejected. Maybe he was taking the whole thing as a personal failure. I struggled to find an analogy that he would understand.

  ‘Well?’

  Suddenly an image popped into my head.

  ‘Imagine Aberystwyth is your testicles and the water is a rugby boot.’

  The first street lights in town were starting to flicker into life when we heard a key in the lock. We both spun round, cursing ourselves that we hadn’t made a contingency plan to overpower the guards or something. Anything no matter how foolhardy would have been better than standing looking out of the window admiring the view. The keys jangled harshly in the lock and the door opened emitting a faint, familiar whiff of gin. It was Pickel and Calamity. Pickel was holding an elaborately bent coat hanger he’d used to pick the lock; he looked from me to Llunos and then back at me.

  ‘’Ere! This girl says Lovespoon is going to knock me fucking clock down with a tidal wave!’

  We drove to Plascrug recreation field on the back of Pickel’s pick-up truck, arriving just as the plane began to taxi. Calamity and Pickel sat in the cab. The runway had been marked out with oil drums and flashing amber lights stolen from council road works. Pickel drove at full speed into the car park and then straight over the kerb on to the grass. We could see the plane at the opposite end of the field lumbering towards us, and Pickel drove straight at it. Half a minute later and we would have been too late; the Lancaster bomber would have picked up enough speed to take off before we reached it. Instead we hurtled towards each other in a head-on face-off. The giant bomber lurched and bumped across the turf, gradually gaining speed, torn between two conflicting forces: the drag of gravity on its lumbering frame and an invisible force sucking it up into the night sky. The gap between us rapidly shrank until it was only a matter of yards, the plane jumped violently and the wheels left the ground for seconds at a time before crunching back on to the turf. There were three possibilities: the plane would leave the turf at the last moment, there would be a head-on collision, or one side would veer off at the last minute. It turned out that both sides veered off at the last minute.

  The manoeuvre worked in our favour. After the plane and truck had performed two unwieldy circles on the field Pickel managed to bring us alongside the fuselage and match the speed of the plane. We stood in the back of the pick-up opposite the entrance in the fuselage beneath the dorsal turret used by the Museum visitors. We could have clambered aboard but Hades had lent the aviators one of its gatekeepers. Herod Jenkins, dressed in his track suit and holding a cricket bat, stood in the entrance and grimaced with hate as he recognised us. A shudder ran through my loins; even after twenty years I was still scared of him. Slowly, as he realised the predicament we were in, that familiar horizontal crease spread across his face. Herod was smiling, just like he did the day Marty died; but this time, for once, he had miscalculated. The wheels hit a lump in the turf and the plane bounced violently. Herod flew backwards into the plane and didn’t reappear. Llunos and I jumped in just as the wheels left the turf and this time there was no bump back down to earth. We found ourselves rapidly rising; the pick-up truck getting smaller and smaller. The last I saw of it was Calamity Jane leaning out of the window waving.

  We stood up in the cramped tunnel of metal beams and girders and stumbled to get our balance like drunkards. Herod Jenkins lay slouched against the side of the plane, unconscious, a red smear on the fuselage wall indicating where he had hit the back of his head. The policeman gave me a brief glance, I nodded. He picked up the cricket bat and smashed the games teacher on the head. Then we turned our attention to the front of the plane. Through the hatch at the front we could see the shoulders of the crew, their two faces peering at us through the doorway. The pilot was Dai the Custard Pie and the bombardier, Mrs Llantrisant. There was a split-second of mutual recognition and then the thunder roared and we were hurled against the cold hard metal as the plane crashed into turbulence.

  It was the fairground ride to end them all. The plane leaped and jumped and plummeted as the ferocious summer storm pounded upon the aluminium skin with giant anvil bows of thunder. Forks of lightning danced on the wings and we were hurled from side to side inside our tin box. We hit our heads, our knees and our elbows on the sharp metal innards of the plane, but we didn’t stop. We had come too far and suffered too much. This was our moment. I stood up and moved forwards. Suddenly a huge hand grabbed me by the collar and pulled me backwards. It was Herod again. I wriggled free just as the plane hit another bank of turbulence and we all lost our footing and were rocketed into the ceiling. When I clambered to my feet, Llunos was behind me and Herod stood between us and the cockpit. The lightning flashed, filling the inside of the cabin with a ghostly incandescence. Herod, maddened by the blows to his head and looking for someone to blame, roared above the din like a space monster in a B-grade movie. He took a step towards me.

  There are many defining moments in a life. In all our lives. Like rivers and mountain ranges they stretch across the topography of growing up. There is the day we discover that our parents – those twin repositories of all our trust – lied about Father Christmas. Or the moment we realise our father didn’t really drive a tank in the war. Nor play for Manchester United. And later there is the time when a process that has been gathering force for many years quietly slips into focus like the image in a telescope and we realise that we have eclipsed our father. That stern, towering embodiment of manhood and authority, the unassailable protector,
who always knew everything there was to know, and whose inner resources were a match for any of the contingencies that life could throw, has fallen. Has become a frail and flawed old man.

  And then there is that other final oedipal Rubicon beyond which lies the territory of manhood: the day a boy faces down his games teacher. As the thunder roared and blinding blue-white flashes filled the sky, I squared my shoulders and looked into his eyes, that track-suited Minotaur who dwelled in the labyrinth of my heart.

  ‘Come on then, son, do you want some?’

  The plane disappeared. In its place was the swirling, murky vision of the games field from long ago: that patch of turf where all the rules we learned in school were overturned, where might was right and intellect a curse. A field where it was death to be clever and where the only cleverness lay in being invisible. The field where Marty fell on his sword for us, and then ran off into the clouds and never came back.

  ‘Come on then, son, want to rumble, do you?’

  I looked and sized him up. He was older, of course, but not frail. Not by a long chalk. He was maybe more squat, and fatter, and greyer, but he was still a formidable opponent and he knew it. And he still thought I was a poofter. Like the commando officer who makes it a point of principle to be harder than any of the younger men in his outfit, so the games teacher never relinquishes the belief that he can beat up any of his former pupils.

  ‘Come on then, darling, show us what you’re made of.’ He grinned through that sour crease in the face.

  I looked over my shoulder to Llunos who watched transfixed. He could have intervened, could have rushed forward to take my place. But some primordial instinct held him back. Some knowledge that this was my battle, felt rather than understood, which perhaps men have possessed throughout history, from the streets of Troy to the streets of Dodge City and Aberystwyth. Even though he was only a few yards away, the core truth of the scene excluded Llunos. Wordlessly, he handed me the bat. I took it with one hand and Herod laughed. He took a step towards me, still grinning. Lightning flashed again.

  ‘Move out of the way, Mr Jenkins.’

  ‘Why don’t you make me?’

  ‘If I have to, I will.’

  He took another, careful step forward.

  I cried, ‘Out of the way now!’

  ‘You won’t do it.’

  ‘By God I will.’

  Herod paused, just outside the range of the bat and the universe held its breath. He looked at me, and I at him, and we stared into each other’s eyes. Probably the only time he had looked at a pupil that way. Unfamiliar emotions skimmed across the waters of his eyes and when he spoke it was in a soft, hoarse tone that I had never heard him use before. ‘You never forgave me, did you? All these years, you and the rest of them.’

  I tightened my grip and Herod reached out a hand towards me.

  ‘How do you think I felt? Did you ever stop to consider that?’

  ‘It was your fault.’

  ‘The Inquiry didn’t think so – that note from his Ma was a fake. He forged it. He always did. You know that.’

  ‘What does that prove?’

  ‘He was fit to run.’

  ‘Because of a piece of crappy paper? Is that it? Is that what you think?’

  ‘There have to be rules, boy!’

  ‘Fuck you, Herod!’ I cried and lifted the bat. Herod dropped the placatory pose and darted forwards and as he did another scene from long ago swam into my mind. A vision of a small frightened boy in cricket pads being harangued by a man ten times his size. ‘Not like that, like this, you stupid little boy! Hold it like this. No! Higher up! Now swing! Not like that, like this!’ The words like the lyrics of a hymn sung every morning in assembly came to me across the years. And I thought of Marty and Bianca, and also of Noel Bartholomew, the man who took a picture of a tuppenny whore all the way to Borneo in the back of his camera. Suddenly, I knew he must have died laughing and the rogue gene he had passed on to me wasn’t for madness or failure but balls. Herod took a final irrevocable step towards me and, using his own medicine against him, I did as he had commanded all those years ago. I strengthened my grip, spread out my feet and swung. Swung, swung with all the synchronised and focused strength in my body. And the slab of willow, anointed with linseed oil, slammed into the side of the games teacher’s head. Astonishment flashed across his face as he found himself knocked for six. I watched in shock and with a creeping sense of pride at my late-developed athletic prowess as he cartwheeled sideways out of the door and the last words I heard him say before he disappeared into the void were: ‘Good shot, boy!’ I ran to the door and looked out as, still smiling, he spiralled down through the misty shreds of cloud, getting fainter and fainter, wispier and wispier until the tendrils of steam like the waters of the ocean covered that horizontal crease in his face they once called a smile.

  For an instant I stood transfixed by the enormity of what I had done, then Llunos gave me a thumbs-up sign and the spell broke; we rushed forward. A sheet of lightning lit up the valley and for a second the vast, metallic sheen of Nant-y-moch reservoir lay illuminated below us in such awesome majesty that we were all struck dumb. Then the flickering electric discharge from the clouds went out and darkness consumed the vista again. A darkness broken only by two spotlights slung beneath the Plexiglas nose of the plane which were trained on the surface of the water. I knew without needing to ask that Brainbocs had rigged them up after watching The Dambusters. They were to indicate the correct altitude for dropping the bomb. When the two lights merged on the surface of the water, the plane would be at the correct height and they could release the payload. They were now only yards apart, skimming across the surface of the reservoir, getting closer and closer, as Custard Pie levelled the plane for the final approach. The vast concrete wall of the dam loomed up ahead and Bombardier Llantrisant – her eyes buried in the bombsight – screamed out above the din.

  ‘Six seconds! Five seconds! Four seconds!’

  And Llunos and I stood in the entrance to the cockpit and exchanged glances of disbelief.

  ‘Three seconds!’

  Mrs Llantrisant’s hand, oblivious to us and everything else except those twin pools of light on the surface of the lake which were now less than a second or two apart, moved forward to the lever which would release the bomb. The hour had come. We only needed to retard the moment of release by a second or so and the angle would be wrong, the bomb would drop harmlessly and sink.

  ‘Two seconds!’ Ma Llantrisant screeched. Custard Pie held the joystick steady in a grip of iron, just as he must have done so many times all those years ago in Patagonia; just as he must have done, in fact, on that infamous approach over the clouds above San Isadora when they dropped the bombs on to the orphanage. The twin pools of light converged and became one, the hand hovered over the lever, waiting to deal the final blow to Aberystwyth, that once-lovely town by the sea.

  ‘One second’ shouted Mrs Llantrisant and then in an orgasm of triumph, ‘Go! Go! Go!’ as Llunos and I shot our hands forward to hold the release lever and stop the bomb.

  Chapter 24

  THE POLICE HORSE stamps and whinnies as the wind driving in from the sea makes the windcheaters crackle like fireworks. Dogs howl and babies cry as the townspeople mill around the Cliff Railway base station, pushing in confusion and shoving to board the trains. ‘Keep back, at the barrier!’ the policeman shouts. ‘Women and children first! Able-bodied men take the footpath! No season tickets!’ Then a mighty lamentation goes up as the outriders rushing in from the outskirts bring their tales of the advancing wall of water. Tales of tree trunks being tossed about on the surface of the raging foam like matchsticks; of caravans shaken along like dice in a ludo cup; of trains being catapulted down the main street of Borth; of the apocalypse at Talybont, where the waters hit the mill wheel with such fury that the mill building itself had started to spin. Panic spreads and the police horses rear up, neighing in terror and foaming at the bridle as the funicular trains creak and gro
an under the strain. Each carriage is weighed down with a cargo that spills out of the windows like bunches of human grapes. Never in the entire history of funicular railways has there been such an imbalance between the up and down cars. The hawser joining the two counterbalancing carriages stretches thinner than piano wire and the rails glow so hot in the night that the people down the coast in Aberaeron think Jacob’s Ladder has returned to Earth above Aberystwyth.

  As the credits began to roll I followed Calamity out of the cinema, blinking into the bright afternoon sunshine.

  ‘I don’t know why we keep going to see it,’ I laughed.

  ‘It’s rubbish!’ Calamity agreed. We exchanged guilty glances – we both knew why we went: we loved it. The warm July wind blew a curtain of blonde hair across her face. The spiky hair was gone now, and the tomboy had given way to a burgeoning air of sophistication and self-possession. She punched me on the arm.

  ‘I’d better get moving, don’t want to keep him waiting.’

  I nodded and she strode off, adding, ‘See you at the harbour!’

  I looked at my watch; there was still just enough time for a coffee at Sospan’s before the meeting at the harbour with the Vatican envoy. I ordered a cappuccino and carried it over to one of the new tables set before the kiosk. Above my head a seagull wheeled in a lazy arc before floating down to land on the railings. He was a big bird, old and fat, almost as big as a cat, and probably remembered the days when Sospan’s was a little wooden booth that sold ice cream. I proffered a piece of almond biscotti but he seemed unimpressed. ‘Yes, old bird,’ I said, ‘we all remember those days. But these plastic tables with the central parasols are an improvement, aren’t they? Progress isn’t always a bad thing.’ In the old days, of course, there was no room for such frippery; there was just the ice-cream booth, a few yards of pavement and then the railings. But that was the old days. I wasn’t sure whether they had moved the road back or extended the sea wall but the new Prom – or ‘Esplanade’, as we would have to learn to call it, was much wider and airier. Noddy had gone, too, but he wouldn’t be missed. Cartoon characters had no place illuminating the espressos and ristrettos of Sospan’s terrace café. Nor indeed at the 24-hour Moules Marinière booth which had replaced the Whelk Stall at the foot of Constitution Hill.