From Aberystwyth with Love an-5

by Malcolm Pryce

  ‘But, of course, I’m not like them, if that’s what you are thinking. My father was ever so strict. All through my teens he wouldn’t let me out from under his eye.’

  ‘What did he say when you took this job?’

  ‘He locked me in my room, so I escaped.’

  ‘You see!’

  ‘Oh Louie, don’t worry about silly old papa, he’s so old-fashioned!’ She paused and her brow clouded. ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘Natasha, I want you to stop all this honey-trap silliness and go back to your father.’

  ‘Oh Louie!’

  ‘I’ve never had a daughter so I can’t pretend to know exactly what your father must be going through but I do have my partner Calamity. She is about the same age as you, and . . . look, don’t ask me to explain.’

  ‘I understand,’ she said softly, with a deflated air. She drew back across the table. She wrapped her arms around herself. ‘Brrr! how cold the night is!’

  I took off my jacket, walked round to her side of the table and put it across her shoulders.

  ‘I’ve been a complete idiot,’ she said. ‘I’ve really put my foot in it.’

  ‘Forget it, it’s nothing.’

  ‘You don’t understand. I’ve made a terrible mistake, the one mistake you must never make. The one they all warn you about. What a fool I am!’

  ‘What mistake?’

  ‘I’ve fallen in love with you.’

  Chapter 19

  A short hairy man called Igor with a walleye and saliva permanently dripping from the corner of his mouth picked us up in a buggy from the station at Sighisoara. We drove at great speed through the town as the setting sun festered like a crimson wound in the Transylvanian sky. Igor thrashed the backs of the horses mercilessly with his whip and flung curses at the nags in the ancient Bohemian tongue of his ancestors. Peasants leaped aside and crossed themselves as we passed. We thundered down the cobbled streets, through the main square and on towards a hill overlooking the town upon which stood a gloomy castle. It looked like a collection of organ pipes carved from the bones of a giant upon which had been placed in a variety of sizes some witches’ hats made of red tile. From time to time ravens swooped down off the battlements and rose again in lazy arcs to stain the face of the setting sun. A wind picked up and Calamity drew herself against me for warmth. The road twisted up the face of the crag and along the way we passed groups of peasants carrying torches who waved their fists at us in a strange greeting.

  Igor cast anxious looks at the progress of the torch-carriers and cracked the whip even more, hurling ever fiercer imprecations at the horses. We crested a rise and clattered over a wooden drawbridge as Igor sitting above us suddenly ducked. Even so, the ragged tooth of the lowering portcullis almost parted his hair.

  Our bags were carried away on the backs of two dwarfs in servant livery and we were shown into a hall the size of a modest cathedral. Igor assured us that the Count would be down shortly. The heads of animals hunted long ago watched us balefully through glass eyes that gleamed like the embers of a fire. Suits of armour receded into the gloom like Russian dolls, and torches pinned to the bare stone walls threw a dancing illumination that left much of the hall in shadow. Tapestries depicting ancient scenes of the chase through the forests of medieval Carpathia fluttered above our heads, and set against walls built from single blocks of stone the size of wardrobes were pieces of oaken furniture that seemed designed for the people of Brobdingnag.

  Calamity gazed at everything in wonder and said, ‘You know this letter we are delivering to the Count, is there any reason why Mooncalf couldn’t have posted it?’

  Two servants, formerly hidden behind stuffed bears, strode forth and opened two iron-studded doors. The Count stepped through to greet us. He had fine aquiline features, swept-back silver hair, and was dressed in a black Jesuitical frock that encased him from throat to floor.

  ‘Mr Louie and Miss Calamity!’ he said. ‘How good of you to come. Welcome to my humble abode.’ He gave a dismissive wave as if to apologise for the modesty of his living arrangements. I handed him the letter from Mooncalf and he took it to one side to read in the flickering light of a torch. He opened the empty envelope, paused for a second, and then cried out in theatrical delight. He threw the envelope with a flourish into the flames of a roaring fire. ‘Mooncalf is a great man,’ he said.

  A wolf howled.

  The Count explained that dinner would be served in an hour’s time and entrusted us in the meantime into the care of his housekeeper Frau Folterkammer, whom, he said, we must not pester with questions because she had no tongue. Frau Folterkammer led us to our chambers in the south wing carrying before her an iron candelabrum with seven tines. The corridor was a vortex of conflicting draughts and the flames of each candle twisted in agony as if each one was a virgin being consumed by the fire of the Inquisition. The floor was flooded with silver fire that was the moon cut into slices by the leaded lights. We passed an old dame sitting on a wooden settle and counting her rosary with rheumatic fingers. A door was open to our right and inside the dark chamber we caught the unmistakable outline of a spinning wheel. We paused and peered in; we saw no one but heard the sound of a girl weeping. Frau Folterkammer waved her hand angrily in front of my face and urged me to move on. I apologised for my indiscreet curiosity. It was a Semi-Saxon horizontal with the sheathed bobbin and slip-backed flyer. Old, but still good.

  Frau Folterkammer stopped outside a door and indicated it was Calamity’s room. She handed me the candelabrum. As she went to open the door our attention was drawn to a sound coming from the room opposite – children’s laughter, and a music box faintly playing ‘Für Elise’. Instinctively we turned towards the sound whereupon Frau Folterkammer waved her hand in a dumb show meant to indicate the room was out of bounds. She ushered Calamity into her room. The fire was made up in the grate and, the casements open, heavy velvet drapes wafted gently in the night wind. Frau Folterkammer went to close the windows. In the centre of the room was a four-poster and Calamity’s suitcase had already been laid at its foot. I agreed to meet Calamity later for dinner and followed Frau Folterkammer to my own chamber next door.

  Evening dress had been laid out for me and there was a small en suite bathroom attached to my room. I showered and dressed for dinner. There was a knock on the door. It was Calamity.

  ‘I just want to tell you that the eyes of the portrait above the mantelpiece follow me round the room.’ I grinned but a look of consternation furrowed Calamity’s features. ‘I’m not joking. And my wardrobe is full of bridal gowns in my size.’

  ‘How do you know they are bridal gowns?’

  ‘They look like it.’

  ‘They probably belong to someone else. It’s not your room, after all.’

  ‘My name is written inside the collar.’

  ‘It’s probably some sort of local national costume which you are expected to wear for dinner. You should be grateful to the Count for being so thoughtful. Look, I’ve got evening wear for dinner, isn’t that something?’

  ‘I’m just telling you, that’s all. Here, take one of these.’ She held out a tin containing garlic capsules. ‘Just in case.’

  ‘Now you’re being silly.’

  She took two from the tin and put them in the breast pocket of my jacket. ‘Maybe.’

  Calamity went back to her room and ten minutes later she knocked again. ‘There’s a mob carrying torches outside my window, across the moat.’

  I pulled a face and Calamity told me to go and have a look. I peered outside but couldn’t see anything unusual. ‘It was probably the gardeners,’ I suggested. ‘Stop worrying about that and change for dinner.’

  ‘You really think I should wear one of those dresses?’

  ‘I think it would be very rude not to.’

  She emitted a loud sigh and returned to her room.

  Ten minutes later there was another knock but this time it was not Calamity. An old woman stood in the doorway in great distress. S
he wore a long flowing nightdress and her grey hair fell in untidy skeins from beneath a traditional night cap. She had been weeping and carried a candle. ‘It’s the twins,’ she cried. ‘We must help them, I smelled burning . . . come . . . come . . .’ She grabbed my hand. At that moment, a man, similarly dressed, appeared at the other end of the corridor.

  ‘Anneliese,’ he cried. ‘No, no, no! Come back.’

  Anneliese pulled my hand and dragged me after her. ‘The twins, we must help them, oh the smoke, the smoke!’

  ‘No, Anneliese,’ shouted the man. ‘No! Stop!’

  ‘The smoke, oh the smoke! We have to help the poor twins!’

  ‘Sir, sir, stop her, I beseech you!’

  The man was old and ran towards us with a feeble gait. Anneliese dragged me to the door across the corridor from which earlier we had heard the sound of children’s laughter and the music box.

  ‘No, Anneliese, no!’ cried the man.

  ‘The twins, the twins . . . oh the burning . . .’

  The old man was almost upon us but arrived a half-second too late. Anneliese opened the door to the room and gasped. She stood trembling violently on the threshold and her hands flew to her face; she wept. The man caught her in his arms and comforted her. I looked into the room. It was a child’s bedroom but one that had evidently not been used for many years; white drapes were spread over the furniture and the air had a stale, musty smell. On the mantelpiece there was a photo of two children in Edwardian sailor suits. The room also had a faint smell of smoke. The man led the weeping woman away.

  We were shown to a modest hall and seated at a long table beneath shields emblazoned with lions and stars and griffins, and cross-hatched in red and white chevrons like military sentry boxes. Calamity looked ill at ease in a dress that did appear to be very much like a Western bridal gown. The Count arrived accompanied by his three daughters and Monsieur Souterain, their lute tutor. The children were nine, ten and eleven years old and wore richly brocaded and pearl-studded gowns in white taffeta. They were skinny and gaunt, with dark intense gazes that stared out from the violet shadows of their cheeks. They introduced themselves with slow languorous curtsies. Salome, Porphyria and Medea. The lute tutor bowed politely and the Count glanced at Calamity with a look of mild surprise that seemed to be directed at the dress. ‘In our country we normally wait until the big day,’ he said. And then, mindful of having committed a minor offence against etiquette, hurriedly changed the subject. ‘You must tell us all about Aberystwyth.’

  We talked for a while of the Pier and the bandstand and Clip the stuffed sheepdog in the museum, but although the Count interjected now and again with polite enthusiasm it was clear our efforts failed to ignite a fire of interest in his dark eyes.

  ‘The camera obscura is the biggest in Europe,’ said Calamity.

  ‘How interesting,’ said the man whose family had invented an entire Hollywood movie genre.

  ‘Yes, and on a clear day you can see Snowdon. And we’ve got a nice castle . . .’ She looked up at the stone eagles and griffins and escutcheons and swords, the chain mail, the old masters and tapestries depicting hawks and riders galloping the flower-embroidered plains of medieval Europe and said, ‘It’s not quite like this, though.’

  ‘I’m sure it’s delightful,’ said the Count.

  ‘Do you know the people in the town crossed themselves when they saw us?’ I said.

  The Count scoffed. ‘It’s just a joke, they do it because of our family’s history. They find it funny. I suppose it is in a way but one does get tired of it.’

  ‘Are they still unhappy about the impaling?’ said Calamity.

  The Count shrugged. ‘The impaling thing is rather overdone if you ask me. It was just a normal part of keeping order in those days. There have to be laws otherwise there is anarchy.’

  ‘We heard your ancestor once impaled a donkey,’ she said with a regrettable lack of tact.

  The children emitted gasps and the atmosphere froze. The Count threw his napkin down in disgust, causing the knife to rattle against his plate. ‘You know, that, if you will permit me the observation, is such a tiresomely British thing to say. My ancestor impaled an estimated ninety thousand people in the early fifteenth century, not to speak of countless other atrocities, and yet the one crime we are never allowed to forget is the damned donkey. I know you have a reputation as a nation of animal lovers but this is absurdly sentimental.’

  I felt the cold moist swab of a lizard’s tongue on the back of my hand. I looked down with a slight shudder. Porphyria was rubbing my skin with her fingers in the same way that a buyer in an Arab bazaar checks the quality of cloth. She made a soft gurgling sound. I jerked my hand away. She stared deep into my eyes, her gaze filled with a mocking glint of corruption, and incanted a ditty:

  . . . and all her hair

  In one long yellow string I wound

  Three times her little throat around,

  And strangled her. No pain felt she;

  I am quite sure she felt no pain.

  As a shut bud that holds a bee,

  I warily oped her lids: again

  Laughed the blue eyes without a stain.

  Conversation around the table died as she spoke and the last words were said to a hushed audience. There was a pause and then Monsieur Souterain raised his hands artificially high, to the level of his nose, and clapped in counterfeited enthusiasm. ‘Bravo! Bravo!’ he cried. It seemed to me, in the absurd exaggeration of his applause, that he lived in daily fear of some terrible fate that fell in the gift of the children to visit upon him. Porphyria twisted her head up and around, throwing the tutor for the briefest fraction of a second a sniff-encased look of withering contempt. The clapping stopped, the final cycle arrested in mid-air by that heart-piercing look. Robbed of their purpose, his fingers fluttered like those of a concert pianist playing Paganini and then retracted into the palms of his hands. He lowered them and stared with a chastised air at his cutlery.

  Porphyria eyed him briefly and said to her vanquished tutor, ‘Phwee!’

  There was a pause.

  ‘I need to go to the little girl’s room,’ said Calamity.

  The Count flashed in anger. ‘Who told you about that? There isn’t one. It’s a lie!’

  ‘I mean, the you know . . .’

  ‘Papa!’ said Salome. ‘She means the water closet.’

  The Count smiled. ‘Oh yes, of course. Forgive me. It’s at the top of the stairs, next to the nursery.’

  Calamity turned to offer her thanks but the girl poked her tongue out, quickly, while the Count was looking elsewhere. Monsieur Souterain caught the gesture but, instead of offering admonishment, made a forlorn attempt to ingratiate himself in Salome’s favour by offering complicit glances and feigning mild shock at her naughtiness. Salome disdained the offer of an alliance and in a move of exquisite cruelty gave the tutor a long-drawn-out quizzical look that directed everyone’s attention to the odd face he was pulling. His spirit crushed, Monsieur Souterain returned his attention to his turbot and for the next few minutes the silence in the room was broken only by a tinny Morse code as the fish knife in his trembling hand rattled against bone china.

  We ate in silence. Porphyria started rubbing my flesh again. I took out one of the garlic capsules and put it in my mouth. I bit and breathed at her. The result was dramatic. She jumped back and began coughing violently. Her hand flew to her mouth as if she was about to be sick and the other hand sought furiously in the folds of her heavy dress; she found her purse and snapped it open, taking out an asthma puffer. She drew deep and long breaths on the inhaler, interspersed with agonising groans.

  ‘It’s nothing, do not be alarmed,’ shouted the Count trying to restore calm. The tutor took the girl to the window and opened the casement. She continued to cough and gasp.

  ‘Just a little childhood asthma,’ announced the Count.

  Calamity returned and whispered into my ear. ‘There’s a rocking-goat in the nursery.’

>   I inclined my head and hissed, ‘A what?’

  ‘Rocking-goat.’

  ‘Is everything OK?’ asked the Count seeing us confer.

  ‘Absolutely wonderful,’ I said. ‘Calamity was just complimenting you on the . . . porcelain of your bathroom.’

  He smiled and in that diplomatic smile could be seen generations of breeding that had perfected the art over the years of concealing disbelief, of smiling while plotting to stab. Calamity smiled back, equally false, but without the advantage of generations of breeding. She said, ‘Actually, I was just telling Louie that there appears to be a mob carrying torches outside my window.’

  The Count dismissed her remark with a slight wave of his hand. ‘If you are concerned about them keeping you awake, I really shouldn’t worry. They soak their brands in tar, you see, which means they usually go out after about forty minutes. Once that happens the men tend to lose motivation and retire to the inn.’

  ‘Are they angry about something?’ I asked.

  The Count gave a weary sigh. ‘Angry? Of course they are angry, they are serfs, they live in a permanent state of choler.’ He raised a goblet of wine and then thrust it back down on the table, causing the wine to spill. ‘I mean, it really is too much sometimes. They are an ungrateful lot in the village, they really are. They moan incessantly about the excesses of my ancestors and yet half of them have turned their hovels into boutique hotels to accommodate a tourist trade that wouldn’t exist were it not for the excesses they so loudly condemn. If it wasn’t for us they would still be eating turnips and swedes. You see them carrying medieval torches above their heads but half of them drive Volvos. But they forget, you see; that’s the trouble with serfs, they have very selective memories.’ He turned to his manservant who was standing at the fireplace. ‘Igor, what are they moaning about this time?’

  ‘Easter 1393, my lord.’

  The Count made a choking sound in the back of his throat that signified exasperation and said, ‘Oh, for Pete’s sake!’

  ‘What happened at Easter 1393?’ asked Calamity.

  ‘Oh just a bit of harmless tomfoolery,’ said the Count. ‘One of my ancestors needed a new castle in a hurry, you see, so he organised an Easter party for the villagers. They all turned up in their Sunday best and there spread out before them were tables heaving under a feast the like of which they had never seen before in their sweaty lives. There was roasted ox and venison, chickens and partridges and all manner of dainty fowl, milk-fed veal and suckling pig, hedgehog pie and rabbit pâté, squirrel soufflé and pan-roasted field mouse, carp from their lord’s ponds, and real blancmanger made with lamb and almonds and for afters there was Turkish delight made with the tears of a virgin. All day they filled their red pox-scarred faces with my ancestor’s finest Burgundy; they danced and sang and partied and burped until sundown at which point they all learned a rather painful truth about there being no such thing as a free lunch. At an order from the Count they were all surrounded by soldiers while the blacksmith went from each to each putting fetters upon wrist and ankle. Then, still wearing their party clothes, the entire village was force-marched fifty miles north to a desolate windswept rocky promontory where they were told to start building a castle. As I say, it really is a rather droll tale. They worked from before dawn till late into the night, and were given just enough food to keep daily funerals in the single figures and ensure that work was not interrupted by excesses of weeping. Travellers who passed through the region nine months later related wonderful tales of seeing these workers slaving away almost naked because their clothes had rotted to rags and fallen quite away.’