‘If it’s none of my business, just say so.’
He chuckled again. ‘Of course it’s your business, son. It must come as a shock after all these years to discover your father was once a member of the Slaughterhouse Mob.’ He paused and looked at me with a mischievous glint in his eye. There was a playfulness in his manner at odds with the unsettling revelation. He continued to stare at me, grinning, making me feel uncomfortable. I shifted position. Finally he chuckled and spoke. ‘I was undercover. Got a job in the abattoir and joined the Slaughterhouse Mob. Used to hang around the Pier tea shop with them. We were trying to find out what they did to Gethsemane and Gomer Barnaby.’
‘Bit old to join a bunch of teenage hoodlums, weren’t you?’
‘I was a tough guy, they looked up to me.’
‘Why punch the cop?’
‘To establish my credentials in the gang. The cop was expecting it.’
‘Did it work?’
‘Not really. It backfired.’
‘The gang didn’t buy it?’
‘Oh they were impressed. It was your mum that objected. She was always asking me why I hung round with that crowd, kept saying I was better than they were and I was wasting my life. Once she told me how I reminded her of her father who had been a policeman before the war. She said, if only you were a policeman, Eeyore! Then I would love you even more. Of course, I was a policeman, but I could hardly tell her. My! How I ached to tell her, how I ached! When the newspaper ran that picture she was waiting for me in the café after her shift. As soon as I saw her face I knew I was in trouble. She wasn’t angry, just . . . unbelievably distraught, no, worse than that, disappointed, that was it, her face disfigured by a terrible bitter disappointment. It might not have been so bad if I could have explained things, but halfway through our conversation the mob turned up and so I had to act in character. So I said, “What’s the big deal about chinning a lousy pig?” She walked out of the café. Next day handed in her notice and left town. No forwarding address. After that, I was pulled off the case, they sent me up to Llandudno for a while. Then about Christmas time she turned up. Someone had tipped her the wink, so to speak, about me being an undercover cop. And would you believe it, she was with child, seven months gone. That was you, Louie. We got married the following day.’
Eeyore looked at me shyly, in fear and also joy as if telling me of his role in the Slaughterhouse Mob he had shed a great burden. ‘We were only together three months but there was more happiness in those months than a lot of folk see in a lifetime. I always try to be grateful for that.’ He took out a large white handkerchief and blew his nose. ‘It’s a shame you were too young to remember her, Louie.’
I smiled. ‘In a strange way, I think I do. This picture of you punching the cop, it’s quite a good likeness, why cut it out?’
‘I was ashamed.’
I took out my wallet and removed the scrap of paper I had torn off the envelope that had contained the séance tape. I waved it under Eeyore’s nose. A look of surprise and delight flashed across his face. ‘My, oh, my! That takes me back,’ he said. ‘Haven’t smelled that in years. You know what that is, don’t you?’
‘I’ve got an idea, but I’d prefer to hear it from you.’
‘We used to smell that a lot in the old days, very distinctive it is.’
‘Yes?’ I looked at him the way a dog watches his master reach for the tin opener.
He said simply, ‘Tram. That’s the smell of a tram.’
Sospan’s box was open again. When he saw me, he looked bashful and busied himself with unnecessary chores. ‘I went on a journey, you see,’ he explained. ‘On the train – I got a good deal off Mr Mooncalf. I was going to seek my fortune, but to tell you the truth, the further I travelled the less I found I really wanted to seek my fortune. I missed Aberystwyth terribly and it occurred to me that I already had a fortune, here on this beloved Promenade. I began to ask myself, why am I doing this? Why am I running away from a paternity suit? And then an incident occurred that changed my life.’ He paused and the skin of his neck became suffused with a pink tinge. ‘It’s a bit embarrassing, to be honest, but while on the train I met a lady in a stovepipe hat. A Russian girl. A thoroughly nice girl she was, and . . . well, I don’t want to delve into the intricate details of the business that we transacted, Mr Knight, but this lady was kind enough to initiate me into certain practices . . . ones that, it may be, I have wrongly neglected; timeless rites, I suppose you would call them, that pertain to the sacred communion between a man and a woman . . . ones that the Lord back in that first garden . . .’
‘It’s OK, Sospan, you don’t have to explain. I understand.’
He smiled with bashful relief. ‘In the early morning, as I lay in my berth watching the condensation running down the chill train compartment window, I reviewed my situation and experienced a passing and unfamiliar melancholy . . .’
‘Oh yes?’
‘It was a peculiar mood that I understand has been known since ancient times as post-coital tristesse.’
‘I’ve heard of it.’
‘In the cold light of that dawn it became clear to me that I had been the victim of a cruel hoax. I realised that the charge of siring a fish through the vehicle of ice cream, as laid at my door, didn’t hold water – if you will forgive the pun. I decided to return to the town I love.’
‘Perhaps it’s still not too late to have a son by the conventional method,’ I said.
For answer he gave a thin smile that said more clearly than words that, in this respect, the die had been cast long ago and he had become reconciled to it. ‘What can I get you?’ he asked.
‘Any of the autumn specials left?’
His face brightened. ‘I might just have one or two tubs still.’
‘What was the tree that survived the atom bomb blast in Hiroshima?’
‘Ginkgo.’
‘I’ll have one of those.’
I took the cornet and wandered the Prom. It was late afternoon and September had arrived. That soft month poised between the edge of summer and the rim of autumn, when quite often we are given a taste of summer that frequently eluded us earlier in the season. There were fewer people on the Prom. The beginning of the school term had drained the town of visitors; the paddling pool was an empty rink, but all this afforded the necessary quiet for contemplation. The sun was still warm, though the slight wan tinge to its shining made clear that it had passed its acme, not just in the technical sense, for this, so the druids tell us, took place in June, but in a spiritual sense. I had an appointment with Calamity at the railway station. She had spent the past few days out at Abercuawg. The water there was so low now, they said, you could walk down the main street. For some reason that I could not name I had a disinclination to go myself so I had sent her on a special errand with a pair of wellington boots in search of something that would bring a degree of closure to this strange and unsettling case.
Llunos had let Mrs Mochdre walk. She wouldn’t sign the confession and the word of a mechanical gypsy wasn’t enough to take before a judge. But that didn’t mean Llunos had given up. He was a patient man and happy to bide his time. He just needed to build a case. Obligingly, the Witchfinder saved him the trouble by dying of a heart attack while leaving town suddenly. For a man in his seventies that’s a tough decision to come to: leaving everything behind, everyone you know, everything you’ve worked for. But he had compelling reasons. It must have been something to do with that look in his wife’s eye, a look he had never seen before, when he came home one day and found the cattle stunner missing from the secret hiding place. And then when for the first time in thirty years of wedded misery she volunteered to tie him to the bed with his own handcuffs . . . In that moment, he must have heard the soft insistent whirring that signifies the final curtain being wound down. They call it the slaughterman’s lobotomy but there are other options besides lobotomies. Yes, it’s tough leaving town at any age and his heart registered a violent and final protest in the b
ack of the bus to Aberaeron. The following week, when news leaked out about her role in the disappearance of Gethsemane Walters, Mrs Mochdre put her head in the gas oven and left it there. Llunos was angry about the leak and worked hard to find out who was responsible. His anger puzzled me for a while until I remembered our conversation outside the interview room when he said he was going back to the old ways. That’s when I knew: it was Llunos who leaked the information.
I turned into Terrace Road at the point where Eeyore said the trams once turned. At the far end of the street the railway station sat blocky and angular, as if built from giant sugar lumps. It had a lemon tinge in the afternoon sun. Everyone travelled by tram in those days and there is no great mystery about how an envelope could acquire that distinctive scent. And yet, my inexplicable contention that it reminded me of the mother I never met is not undermined by this.
There were still a few children playing in the paddling pool. They ran back and forth in the limited confines of the blue-tiled rink, like dogs in a wood, insane with a joy invisible to the rest of us; an ecstasy that seemed to express nothing more than the uncontemplated joy of existing.
Light, scent and music are the keys to the hidden chambers of our hearts. A musical phrase, a few bars of a song that played every day on the radio unnoticed during a forgotten period of our lives. The scent of ointment from the back of a drawer, or sunlight on the afternoon sea, late in the season as today. Sometimes the water scintillates like a shattered mirror; sometimes the light dances like moonlight on a pelt; at other times, when there is no breeze, the surface of the sea appears vitrified, a syrupy sea of molten glass with that same pale green translucence to be found in bottles of Victorian lemonade.
He said it was His human condition that let Him down, but where would I be without it? Sitting in an empty office staring at a client chair that was covered in cobwebs. It’s the engine that drives everything. Though every case is different, really every one is a symptom for the same underlying malaise. In a world where the churches are locked people go to the doctor but all she does is give them bottles of pills and after a while, when the joy begins to pall, they can’t help noticing the void in their heart has not been filled. At such times, they go to the witch doctor; his name is Louie Knight. It can be a risky policy sometimes. He’s careless with his clients – the Chief of Police called him the undertaker’s friend – but he knows a secret that is not vouchsafed to a great many people; it’s a secret revealed to him in a story he once heard about the convicts from a penal colony in Siberia surviving twenty years’ hard labour and dying of a cold two weeks after their release. The secret is this: don’t look down. It’s like those animals in cartoons that run off the edge of a cliff and carry on running. They are fine until the moment they look down. Vanya had always known the quest was futile but he also kept that knowledge secret from himself. That is a marvellous trick. Maybe, too, this was what God was trying to tell me about Sadako and her origami cranes; it wasn’t about whether it worked or not, the mere act transcended such considerations. This is the medicine they buy from Witch Doctor Louie. It’s called Ampersandium. It’s not perfect, but it works as well as anything can. The alternative is to be like Mrs Mochdre and spend the rest of your life pickled in sourness and your own bile.
I missed Vanya. Of all the clients who had sat across the desk from me, he was one of the very few I actually liked. I grieved for him, but I didn’t kid myself I could have saved him and because of that I know the pain will fade. I grieved for Arianwen too and with her I am not so sure. Despite all the comforting words people give me I know in my heart her death was my fault. I should have foreseen it. That’s what I get paid for.
I don’t know whether Old Barnaby killed Goldilocks and his sister, and really I don’t care. As a witch doctor it’s not my job to tie up all loose ends, that’s what cops are for, and even they understand that sometimes ends are best left untied. If Goldilocks and his sister really are in the foundation of the dam they are probably better off. Life didn’t deal them much of a hand; sometimes life doesn’t and there is nothing in all the world you can do about it except play with what you’ve got or quit the game. Now they are at peace. And they have a concrete headstone provided by the Corporation, which is more than most people get; the biggest ever, too; not even Barnaby will get a bigger one than that.
Calamity was waiting on the platform holding a small package wrapped in newspaper. She grinned at me and I did not need to ask how she had got on with her errand, the glee burning fiercely in her eyes already told me. I reached out and tousled her hair, aware of an upsurge of love in my heart. I made a mental note that if she ever wanted to start out on her own again I would definitely stand in her way. Calamity’s place was in my office, because sometimes even witch doctors get sick.
We walked down the platform to where an old lady stood waiting with a small suitcase at her feet. It was Ffanci Llangollen, the singer who once made a trademark of singing about how it would be a lovely day tomorrow. When a great tragedy struck she went on the road and continued to sing, travelling on nothing but the fuel of hope. We greeted each other. Clasped under her arm was a folder from Mooncalf Travel, covered in the stickers of the grand hotels and the railway companies and shipping lines. We told Ffanci we were sorry about the loss of her sister and she thanked us graciously.
‘No shopping trolley,’ I said with the deliberate banality that sometimes helps us through the difficult moments.
‘They don’t allow them on the Orient Express, so Mr Mooncalf was kind enough to give me this nice suitcase. I feel just the part now, like a dowager. He’s been ever so helpful, gave me the tickets gratis on account of my recent . . . misfortune. He wished me luck on my quest. He mentioned you: said you seemed to have got a wild fancy into your head about the tickets he gave you last time. He seemed quite put out about it. A simple oversight, he said, which you have misinterpreted out of all proportion. You will go and make your peace with him, won’t you?’
‘We’ll go directly after seeing you off.’
She smiled and waved something which she was clutching in her hand. It was a talisman.
‘A ticket to Hughesovka,’ I said.
‘Not just there but all the way to Vladivostok if need be.’
‘It’s a big continent.’
‘I know. I once met a man who surveyed it and told me it was as wide as the human heart. I have never given up hope. And I never will as long as my heart beats. This isn’t just a ticket to Hughesovka, Mr Knight, it’s a return – for two.’
Calamity unwrapped the newspaper package and revealed a little girl’s sandal. It had once been bright red but time and mud had now reduced it to the colour of burned umber. The guard blew his whistle. Calamity gave her the shoe.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank my former editor Mike and my current editor Helen, and my agent Rachel. In addition, a substantial part of this manuscript was written while struggling with illness. I would therefore like to express my sincere thanks to all those whose help and support helped me get through this difficult period, particularly my family in Aberystwyth, David and Anwen, Andy and Lynda, Mitchy, Martin, Richard and Betsy, Nick Topley, Karen Penry, Boot and Rachey.
Malcolm Pryce was born in the UK and has spent much of his life working and travelling abroad. He has been, at various times, a BMW assembly-line worker, a hotel washer-up, a deck hand on a yacht sailing the South Seas, an advertising copywriter and the world’s worst aluminium salesman. In 1998 he gave up his day job and booked a passage on a banana boat bound for South America in order to write Aberystwyth Mon Amour. He spent the next seven years living in Bangkok, where he wrote three more novels in the series, Last Tango in Aberystwyth, The Unbearable Lightness of Being in Aberystwyth and Don’t Cry for Me Aberystwyth. In 2007 he moved back to the UK and now lives in Oxford.
THE LOUIE KNIGHT SERIES:
Aberystwyth Mon Amour
Last Tango in Aberystwyth
The Unbea
rable Lightness of Being in Aberystwyth
Don’t Cry for Me Aberystwyth
First published in Great Britain 2009
Copyright © 2009 by Malcolm Pryce
The moral right of the author has been asserted
All rights reserved
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From Aberystwyth with Love an-5 Page 25
