The Sin Within Her Smile

by Jonathan Gash

  But you don’t set out a display of precious ornaments then remove them in the middle of the night, not even if you’ve let somebody - me - in to glimpse the one that mattered. Do you?

  I got underpants, trousers. Maybe Vana was supervising security arrangements?

  Or not?

  I opened the door, except it wouldn’t. It was locked. Me inside. The window? I must have still been moribund because my addled brain said reasonably that the door couldn’t be locked because there were no locks, mental patients needing help now and then.

  Some central locking device? More awake, I rushed at the bed, felt Vana’s side. Coldish. What did that tell me? That she’d been gone an hour, twenty minutes? How long did it take for a bed to cool when you stole away in silence while your thick-witted idiot bloke snored on? How had she wakened? She always wore a watch. Horror stole over me. Orchestra conductors have watches that tap you, don’t they? Prompter watches, giving a little needle stab, make sure you wake silently. House doctors have them on baby units.

  Were we all trapped? Boris, little Arthur, Rita, the rest? Or just me? I thought of the cameras in the snooker room. Window. I tried it. Sealed fast. Okay, you smash sealed windows to get out. I fumbled about for a chair, but there was no chair.

  So what? There was a small bedside locker. I felt my way to it, and lifted it. . .

  Except it wouldn’t lift. Its feet were metal, screwed to the floor. I tried hauling the foot of the bed upright. No go, its metal legs screwed ... I rushed into the bathroom, almost knocking myself senseless on something, but nothing in there was movable. I started whimpering. I tried looking out. The blinds were those roller things. I could raise it easily enough, but the sodding things never stay up. I wrenched it away in worsening fright, tried stabbing it at the window but those rotten swine in St. Helens glassworks make glass rock hard. The rod bent like cotton. I thought explosions, on dark hillsides.

  I could hear myself whining in terror. I beat on the wall, bawling, hoping to wake Arthur. The place was soundproofed. I should have worked that out, if only from the way Vana yelped before her love fire . . . Fire?

  On the ceiling. I remembered a fawn-coloured disc. Smoke alarm, yes. And hadn’t there been a red glass-covered thing above the door? I tried to reach up, feeling in the dark. I wasn’t tall enough.

  Distantly, I heard a smart crack. I froze. A rumble followed, only faint but the floor definitely quivering. Crazed, I leapt up, touched something cold. The red fire alarm? Gibbering, I leapt and smashed my fist at the cold something, missed and hit the bloody wall. Maddened by failure I jumped, jumped, kept jumping, smashing at the thing.

  Even when the bell sounded and the door I opened kept on jumping, smashing my fist into the sodding thing. It was only when I actually fell forward that I realized I was in the corridor. The door had slid back, central unlocking. I could faintly see the night sky’s glow, the end of the corridor.

  Another crack sounded, louder this time, then a louder gathering rumble. I was off like a bat, racing towards the fresh cold air. I skittered to a halt, yelled for little Arthur, tore back into the baby’s room, fell over the cot, felt about like a maniac, felt the bed, nobody, and hurtled out, crashing into the glass doors at the lounge entrance, past reception where the single red fire panel flicked on and off.

  Outside the ground shook. The approaching rumble was louder, steady but exacerbated by deafening cracks and sharp explosive retorts. Where did skiers go in an avalanche? Up? Down? Across? I blubbered, yelling out which way, which way. Then I ran like a hare on to the road and towards the patch of night that was more orangey, hoping to Christ they weren’t crazy enough to blast a great mountainside on to their own people like they were trying to do to me.

  Shrinks tell us that people who are rescued suffer less trauma than the shrinks who advise. It’s codswallop. I know. The nerk who gets out from under as the world caves in is the one. Never mind the others. Get marooned on some desert island, stuck on some iceberg, be lost in some arid desert, you know. Psychiatrists maybe miss the cheese and biscuits at their ten-course nosh, wring their hands - it’s a load of dross. The bloke who makes it to land, the oasis, Camp Safety, is the one. He knows.

  I only stopped running when a tree swayed out of the gloaming and sideswiped me. I lay retching, croaking like an old man. I couldn’t get up. Stars were soaring into the night sky, if that’s what the velvet black-blue stuff was up there. I closed my eyes, spread- eagled on rocky terrain.

  The roaring had stopped. I kept my eyes closed because it was less frightening. I hoped I was in hiding, so long as it wasn’t a hole in some mountain, because they’d suddenly become dangerously unstable.

  It’s difficult to take a look at yourself. I had a swollen eye, judging by my lopsided vision. My right hand was hurting like hell. It was a horrible mess.

  Firelight, sparks crackling up in swirls, red glims against the darkness. Several fires, in fact, one ten yards off. Oddly, people moved about, dogs snuffled. Music, a rhythmic chanting, heavy metal pounding, shouts, the New Age dawning in the candle hours. Most vehicles showed no lights. Batteries given out, maybe? Or the travvies’ metabolisms, spotting a diurnal clue or two, finally recognizing nightfall?

  When I could, I stood slowly, not wanting another mountain chucked my way. Behind and slightly across, a couple of vehicles stood: the fire services, with more red status lamps than the police’s lone blue.

  They were well back from the mound where the rehabilitation unit had been. Their headlights shone on to the landslide. No caravans, no people in there ... But then there wouldn’t be, would there? I’d not noticed cars, or anybody, when returning for Vana to show me that lovely gold under the recording eyes of those cameras.

  All those’d be gone too. I wondered what they’d told the patients. Move to a safe hotel, on account of threats from the travvies, I guessed. They didn’t need any body, literally, to be buried under that mountain. Only mine.

  Singularly few rescue workers about. Not much you can do when the world starts sliding about, except pick at the edges and shout. For a while I stayed put, just seeing what the police and the fire people were doing. Nothing, it seemed, except talk. I shook, realizing how close it had come. The centre of the slide was three hundred yards off. It had gone sideways, not down on to the travvies. Clever old mountain. I was freezing, went nearer a fire, sat with a couple smoking some cheroot. They inspected my blooded frame, bleeding feet, hands, swollen face, and brought me a blanket without a word. I dozed sitting upright, until some silly sod cracked the sky and let the light in.

  My new friends had gone during the night. Their dog woke me by wanting to play. Where was Tudor? Cleared off at the first sign of trouble. I lay down, smoke drifting over me. Children came out. A little girl asked me to hold her skipping rope while she skipped ‘Salt, mustard, vinegar, pepper’.

  ‘All right, love,’ I said. ‘Don’t expect me to skip, too.’

  ‘Why’re your feet like Bertie’s?’ she asked. ‘A fight?’

  ‘I fell.’ Poor old Bertie. I sat in my blanket, scratching because of arthropods sharing my shelter, and chanted with her, ‘One, two, three, Mother caught a flea.’ Funny how well you remember them, skipping ropes on pavement. ..

  Coming to, I perused the expanse of tilted vehicles. The scene was like a mediaeval battlefield, occasional creatures stirring about embers. One or two called. Dogs barked, not really caring. Music sounded, defining the ravers’ area over where the hillside started an ominously steep rise.

  The little girl let me go when her pal came, accusing me of singing the song wrong. We had a brisk argument. I lost when the little brat challenged me to do ‘Over the mountains, under the sea ...’ I squirmed out of that. They taunted me out of sight. I would have washed in somebody’s water butt, but goats wouldn’t let me near.

  A tall illuminated cross towered half a mile away. I’d been too giddy last night to recognize it. Sty’s Relevant Harmony place. Well, well. It stood tall amo
ng the higgledy-piggledy forest of TV masts and washing poles. A neon Canterbury cross, rounded ends and scalloped arms. The Temple of Relevant Harmony flourished everywhere. I remembered Sty’s litter of mobile homes. I went warily towards it through the wakening morning litter of folk and engines. Moment. Momenta.

  Maybe that was it, really. I’d let myself be duped. There’d seemed to be no connection between Mynydd Mai and East Anglia. Okay, a genealogy-hankering American wasn’t much. Not enough to draw in the county set. His daft hiraeth for Stonehenge’s great monoliths only made it barmier still.

  But throw in a traveller with his own religion, his own antiques auction meadow in East Anglia. Add to that scams in mid-Wales whereby richly endowed sports clubs milked antiques into his trailers on the way to the travvies’ fezzie, and it all became one. At the centre Sty, busily pretending to be a New Age traveller, religionist, guru. Add Gee Omen - diamond merchant in a collapsed world diamond market. Add Simon Doussy, posh resourceful Continental dealer. Add Twentyman, a crashed Lloyd’s underwriter. Add the rich Carl Arden, and the influential Valerie. Add Farahar’s wide acres - source of umpteen priceless finds, which said acres would be the sites of numerous future planted ‘finds’ of Welsh golds. Add syndicated lesser fry. And you had a glorious money engine, forever and ever.

  The marquee seemed dowdy now. Bunting flapped, each piece bearing occult symbols. A couple of panels gaped. A cat shot out as a small dog tore in pursuit. Vomit stained some canvas swathes. A stench arose from a trampled area by the entrance. The fastenings were latched. The cross rotated, glowing feebly.

  A mess. Near a crescent of trailers an astonishingly grand saloon motor glistening in dew and wealth. Presumably Momenta was about, girding up her Staff of Relevant Life. It all looked derelict. I entered through one of the rips. The aroma was soporific.

  Folk were scattered about in groups, twos, threes, one exotic plurality I couldn’t disentangle. A raised altar stood in the centre. One couple moved, as if recalling a dream dance of some previous incarnation. Momenta was lying naked near them, a naked bloke snoring under one of her luscious legs, lucky swine.

  ‘Momenta?’ I shook her. Blearily she tried to focus.

  ‘Lovejoy? Is it time?’ Her boyfriend struggled up.

  ‘No. Three hours to go.’ I grabbed a caftan.

  He was fuddled. ‘I’m the master’s servant in the morning . . .’

  ‘It’s barely four o’clock yet.’ I spoke softly to Momenta. ‘Where’s Sty?’ I didn’t want this kipping horde to wake.

  ‘Are you already dead, Lovejoy?’ She did well to see through those pupils. Her voice was dreamily syllabic.

  ‘No, love. There’s been a mistake.’ What would seem logical to Momenta in space. ‘I must see Sty, tell him. It’s a matter of life or death.’ I didn’t say whose.

  God, she tried. I almost saw her mind like a submerged creature trying to surface. It failed, tried once more. ‘The master prays with the lake lords ...’

  ‘Ta, love.’ I let her head fall. I’d been helping her to remember by yanking her hair.

  Only one road touched the lake. Near the dam. It was marked by a star, scenery vantage point, on the map.

  The caftan thing I nicked engulfed me. It was covered in alchemical symbols stitched by Temple Vestals in lax hours. I passed through the camp, now stirring. Several bands played. Fires were on the go. A few pans made a fitful clank. Some folk called out exotic greetings. I returned them, making signs, giving blessings.

  Very little of the camp was recognizable. It went on beyond eyesight. I got offered a hard-boiled egg by a lass at a cauldron. I took it with gratitude, did a chant of appreciation, trudged on.

  Glimpses of the landslip showed in the distance. I skirted round, heading for the lake. I didn’t want to be discovered alive until there was some advantage. They’d wanted me dead underneath all that minced granite. While they harboured the delusion, I’d be safe. I’d had enough. No amount of Vana could make up for being eliminated. Better an incognito acolyte until things cleared.

  Somebody called my name. I looked, but smoke intervened. I broke into a shuffle. My feet hurt like hell. I kept my eye out for shoes, but saw none.

  The slope up from the camp was steep. The vehicles petered out to rubbish and latrines, nettles everywhere. Then there was only heather and a loose scree, stuff that gave under you. One part was almost vertical, like a small cliff. I found myself near the dam’s incline, didn’t like the thought of being underneath that. I tackled the slipping scree, holding on, scrabbling footholds. Wise not to use the road. Even the Old Bill might notice a blood-besmirched bloke in a magician’s cloak.

  There were voices. I scrambled along the upper limit of the scree. The police could be in two places. Down by the engulfed rehab centre, or where they thought the explosion had started the landfall. Here, there was only the road curving to the dam. If Farahar had wanted the travvies flooded out, he could have blown the dam. But

  he hadn’t. He’d exploded the charge above the mental unit. If anywhere, they were where the dam and road met.

  The scree was interesting. It’s in these places, virtually untrodden, that people find ancient artefacts. It was from such an ancient place in Palestine that the Bedouin carried some sacks into Mr. Kando’s antique shop in Bethlehem in the 1940s, and offered the Dead Sea Scrolls for sale.

  Those voices. Familiar, with one megaphonic. God Almighty, I thought, weary. Not Calvin Jones’s dulcet tones? I was close to the rim, lurking. I remembered - wasn’t this the place near the lake where we’d put the caravans? I’m good at cowardice. I was silence and invisibility, as I crept to peer through the thin hawthorns. And gave a muffled yelp as somebody clutched my ankle.

  ‘Lovejoy’

  I stifled the silly cow before she could shriek. They were all listening to Calvin Jones on the sloping layby, thank God. Dimity looked rapturous in spite of my hand over her mouth.

  ‘Shhhh.’ I touched her hand to her temple in the age-old gesture signifying police. I nodded, slowly let her go.

  She beckoned, whispered, ‘Is this the drop?’

  The drugs place. I nodded. She lay beside me below the rim of the road. I peered out. Calvin Jones, interviewing Vana Farahar - startling in a red suit with a smart hat, lovely legs - and Sty, even more astonishing in a sharp double-breasted suit. They were standing before the end caravan. Its wheel was inches from my face. Olwen was moving, directional mike, camera churning. Calvin was perched on his motor, signalling Olwen to avoid his plastered leg. It hung obscenely down, a pleasing sight. The caravans were still ranged in the layby, shafts to the road. Nobody else, just the interview. No Colonel Farahar, either.

  ‘Mrs. Vana Farahar.’ Calvin, doing the lead-in. ‘You will surrender to the anarchy that cruelly despoiled your dream of mental health for all?’

  Vana said fervently, ‘No, Calvin. Certainly not. I shall fight on, with Mr. Stivanovitch, and my gallant generous husband. We believe in a Wales free from these wreckers. Those.’ She flung out an arm dramatically. I ducked.

  ‘Cut.’ Calvin shouted at Olwen. ‘Pan the valley, okay? Filth, druggies, injections, spaced out, rolling in the fire, okay?’ ‘Yes, Calvin.’

  He donned his telly voice. ‘How do you feel about the explosion?’ ‘It is clear,’ Vana said, a catch in her voice, ‘that the forces of evil had sabotaged our dreams. Reprobates who make explosives are here among his filthy mob. They must be removed once and for all.’ ‘And does Mr. Stivano ... Mr. Stivan feel the same?’

  ‘Indeed he does.’ Vana sniffed, emotional. ‘Through his translator he has expressed his determination to rebuild the centre down in that valley, providing jobs and health care for Wales.’

  There was more twaddle. Translator? Sty’s from Wolverhampton, for God’s sake. He’s only ever been on a day trip to Dieppe. He’s called Sty because he tells pig jokes.

  ‘When’s the greed?’ Dimity whispered. Greed’s talk for drugs. ‘Any minute now, love,’ I whispered
back.

  ‘We want teens, okay?’ Teens mean an unlimited amount. Mercury’s sachet must have been dynamite.

  ‘Done,’ I promised, furious with her.

  ‘Final shot,’ Calvin shouted. ‘Both inside waving. Where the fuck are the horses?’

  ‘They’ve been taken to graze. The farrier - ’

  Calvin swore at Olwen. ‘One at each window, like the caravan’s rolling. Go, go, go!’

  I shushed Dimity and slid up to peer. I saw Vana’s lovely legs ascend. Sty followed. Through the wheel spokes I saw Olwen’s feet splay for stability on the opposite side. The waggon was almost end on. Calvin was bawling instructions. I heard the clump, clump of feet inside the caravan. I looked down.

  The drop was sheer. A couple of yards to my right, the scree ended. The cliff fell almost vertical down to the lake. I saw Olwen’s feet appear further away, the caravan between us.

  Vana and Sty were inside, obeying Calvin’s instruction to wave, dammit. I crawled, thinking possibly to stand up, maybe confront them with the attempt to murder me, right into the camera.

  It was there, me slowly standing up, not wanting to interrupt Olwen’s filming, that I felt something catch. My caftan maybe, but definitely something. I gave an impatient tug. I crouched, maybe changing my mind, get the police, I don’t know.

  The caravan moved, only a fraction, but moved. I heard Calvin say, angry, ‘Olwen, fix that effing waggon, okay?’ And Olwen scurrying, saying ‘Right, Calvin!’ and then exclaiming, things beyond her redemption.

  The caravan rolled. I heard Vana say, ‘Is this ... ?’

  Trouble. I sensed it, slid over into the scree on to Dimity, suddenly clutching at her because the lake surface was a gillion miles below. I clung to Dimity, then scrabbled sideways. The caravan above rumbled, its iron tyres chewing the tarmac like I’d heard so often.

  Somebody screamed - Olwen, I think. The caravan rolled a few yards, left the layby’s camber.