Aberystwyth Mon Amour an-1

by Malcolm Pryce

  Mrs Jones wiped her little finger along the rim of her prune-like mouth. Traces of cream still clung stubbornly to the grey moss-like growth on her upper lip.

  'You know,' I said, 'I used to come here a lot as a kid.'

  'Oh yes, we used to be very popular with the schools.'

  'My favourite part', I added with exaggerated casualness, 'was the Cantref-y-Gwaelod section.'

  Mrs Jones stopped chewing her doughnut and put it down on the plate. Her hand shook. 'I'm afraid', she said softly, 'that's not one of my specialities.'

  'Still over by the section on two-headed calves is it?'

  The trembling got worse. 'Y . . . Yes, I 'spect it is.'

  'Perhaps we can walk over there, later.'

  'I ... I ... I think it's closed'

  'Oh what a pity, I've been thinking of doing some research; a sort of twentieth-century reassessment —'

  Mrs Jones cut me off sharply. 'I'm sorry, I can't help you.'

  'It wouldn't be any bother. Mostly theory. I'd be approaching the subject from a modern oceanographical perspective. I'd need the tide tables for the Dark Ages, of course —'

  She put her hands to her ears and whined like a child.

  'No, no, please stop, I don't know anything about Cantref-y-Gwaelod, really I don't.'

  'What are you scared of?'

  'Nothing, nothing ... I ... please, I have to get back.'

  She stood up suddenly, the squeal of her stool making the whole room stop talking and look round. Then, lowering her voice to a harsh whisper, she hissed: 'Just fuck off, right?'

  I grabbed her arm before she could escape, the dirty white wool coarse under my hand. 'Not until you tell me what you're hiding.' I tightened my grip on her bony arm and she winced in pain. Everyone in the room was watching in astonishment.

  'Nothing!' she hissed. 'I'm not hiding anything. I know nothing about Cantref-y-Gwaelod.' Again she tried to struggle free, but I held on grimly.

  'Who killed Brainbocs?' It was wild card thrown in to see if it had any effect on her. It did.

  She gasped and cast an involuntary glance over to the fireplace by the door. I followed her gaze. There was a rectangle of bright paper above the mantelpiece where a picture which had been hanging a long time had recently been removed.

  'You want me to end up like him? Like Mr Davies? Is that it? Is that what you want?'

  'The old curator?'

  'Yes!'

  'Did he help Brainbocs with his essay?'

  She whined and struggled like a cat caught in a trap.

  'Where is he now? Mr Davies?'

  'Just fuck off!'

  My grip broke and Mrs Jones rushed through the tables, knocking drinks over as she went. Oblivious to the stares, I sat looking at the fireplace and the spot where Mr Davies's portrait used to hang.

  * * *

  The next day they re-opened the Ghost Train and Myfanwy rang to tell me she had two tickets. I met her outside the railway station, next to the sign saying 'What is the purpose of your journey to England?' There was something I wanted to ask her, but it was such a stupid question, I kept avoiding it. 'After Myfanwy's next scream,' I told myself. And then when she screamed, I put it off until the next. There was no shortage of screams; this was the only ghost train in the world with real ghosts. Before privatisation it had been the only ghost train operated by British Rail. It started life as an educational project by the Cardiganshire Heritage Foundation. A disused lead working had been turned into a theme ride depicting the history of lead mining in Cardiganshire. Narrow-gauge steam trains hauled holiday-makers and school-trippers up to the mine and then were exchanged for pit ponies which pulled the wagons through the galleries. It even won an award from UNESCO for responsible tourism, but then came the terrible accident. A wheel spun off and hit a pit prop bringing the roof down and killing a party of day-trippers from the Midlands. When the place re-opened two months later funny things started happening. The ponies whinnied eerily from their stables every night and in the morning they shied and refused to enter the mine. Strange sounds were heard and disembodied lights were seen floating inside the tunnels. Soon passenger numbers dwindled and it looked like the train had reached the end of the line. But then word began to spread and a new breed of passenger arrived: not people with an interest in industrial archaeology, but UFO-hunters, megalith lovers, spontaneous human combustion ghouls and lads on stag nights. And so was born the world's only genuine ghost train. In addition to the curtains of fluorescent sea weed, and plastic skeletons through which the electrically driven wagons now trundled, thrill-seekers could also look out for a woman carrying a head under her arm with peroxide blonde hair. Or a man asleep on a bench with a copy of the Daily Mirror over his face. And, in the cafeteria, an ectoplasmic woman breast-feeding her baby.

  Myfanwy screamed and buried her head on my chest as we swept round a corner and through a curtain of fluorescent sea weed. I wanted to see if she knew any reason why her cousin Evans should have a piece of tea cosy with a Mayan pattern on it. The train crashed out through the final gate and into the warm sunshine.

  'Myfawny?'

  'Mmmm?'

  'I know this sounds silly, but did your cousin Evans have any interest in the Incas?'

  'The who?'

  'Or the Aztecs; or anything like that?'

  She leaned her head against my chest and looked up, smiling. 'I'm so disappointed, we never saw the woman breast-feeding.'

  'You screamed enough, anyway.'

  'I know but that was at the fake ghosts.'

  'If they were fake, why did you scream?'

  The train ground slowly to a halt and the rest of the passengers started taking off the hard hats.

  'They were fake screams.' She sat up and started unbuckling the safety belt. 'Next time you can take Pandy.'

  I sighed. 'Look, will you stop trying to pair me up with your friends!'

  'I'm not, but she wants to go, and she's too frightened as well.'

  'What about the knife in her sock?'

  She put her arm round my neck and pulled herself on to me. Hair pressed warmly against my face cutting off all the light and filling me with an overwhelming urge to sleep; I pushed her gently back and asked her again.

  'Was he into the Aztecs?'

  She pursed her lips in a pretence of thinking and then said: 'To tell the truth I don't think he listened to groups much.'

  I dropped Myfanwy off at her flat overlooking Tan-y-Bwlch and drove uphill to Southgate and then turned left into the mountainous hinterland beyond. The sun was shining in Aberystwyth but as I climbed it clouded over until soon I was driving through a chilly fog, in a world of drystone walls and cattle grids. Frightened sheep clung to the banks on either side of the road, wondering desperately how they were going to get back into the fields from which they had somehow escaped. As the mist thickened, I drove through sad unenchanted forests of conifers planted in uniform rows by the Forestry Commission, occasionally passing sticks set in the fence, with rubber shovels to beat out fires. From time to time glimpses of Nant-y-moch reservoir glinted in staccato bursts through the trees. And then the trees stopped and I found myself at a crumbling, weed-filled church yard on the slopes overlooking the reservoir. The church where Marty lies buried. I parked and made my way through the crooked slate teeth of the graves.

  It was never officially established that he had been consumptive. And so many well-meaning friends have since tried to assure me that he wasn't. But how would they know? Were they there that day in primary school when we had our BCG jabs? When Marty was so terrified of the needle that I took his place in return for a month's supply of Mars bars? Perhaps if he had lived in town things might have been different. But he lived here on this sunless northern hillside overlooking the reservoir. I looked down at the simple headstone and then let my eyes wander across to the placid gunmetal waters pent up behind Nant-y-moch dam. Marty once told me that there was a village lying at the bottom of the lake; he said that it had been flood
ed when they built the dam and the man who printed the leaflets telling the people to quit their homes had got the dates mixed up and they all drowned. Marty said he never got any wedding invitations to do after that. It still makes me laugh.

  The blizzard that took Marty had held Aberystwyth in its grip for three days and for once we had made the tragic mistake of allowing the candle of hope to flicker in our hearts. Experience had taught us, years before we were to go out into the real world to find the lesson confirmed, that the best policy is always to expect the worst. But this time as we watched the TV footage of helicopters air-lifting bales of hay to stranded livestock we thought that this Friday, at least, games would be called off. But Herod Jenkins was not one to be so easily cheated of his sport. In his book the only meteorological conditions severe enough to cancel games were to be found on Saturn. Marty hated rugby. For him it was a pagan game, a modern embodiment of the ritual rape-fest of the Beltane feasts. The goal posts represented the vulva of the fertility goddess Wicca and the ball was a symbolic sperm. It was a compelling thesis but didn't save him from being sacrificed on the altar of Herod's madness.

  Nothing could ever have prepared us for the shock of that day. We were used to the fact that the normal laws of the land didn't operate on the games field, but this time the physical laws seemed suspended as well. It was as if we woke up in the morning on the ceiling to find that gravity had been reversed overnight. Marty stood there holding the one talisman known to grant immunity from persecution — the note from your Ma - and Herod rejected it. A bit of running around would be good for a cold he said in words which have gone down in medical history. And so saying he went inside to don his arctic parka. Marty stood there whiter than a ghost and shaking. The inquiry would later find that the note had been forged which meant that Herod was morally absolved. But Marty wasn't fit, even if the note was false. He looked at me, his one friend, for help and I said, 'Marty, we won't go.' Four words that would shape my thoughts and deeds for the rest of my life. 'Marty, we won't go.' What could be simpler? It was plainly madness to go out on the field that day and if we all refused, what could he do? If we all stuck together our will could prevail. We would simply refuse to move. Marty embraced the plan with enthusiasm and managed to unite the whole class behind his mutiny. Herod came back outside with his whistle and Marty stepped forward and said, 'Sir, we're not going.' Herod blinked in astonishment and turned his full attention on the boy: fragile and shivering, awkward and scholastic - all crimes in a games teacher's eyes — and then he smiled and turned to the rest of us. 'Oh really?' he said. 'And who else is too cold to go for a little run?' There followed a split-second's silence and then everyone jeered; it was plain that Marty had been tricked and no one else had had the slightest intention of refusing to play. Not one of them stepped forward. Finally, drunk on the glee of victory, Herod turned his gaze to me, whom he knew to be Marty's confederate, and said, 'Well darling?' And I cringed like a beaten dog and said nothing. We all played rugby that day and Marty was sent on a cross-country run, alone. He looked at me just before he left and in his eye was that unforgettable heart-breaking look. Not of reproach, which would be so much more easy to live with, but of understanding. And also something else: that searing farewell of the prisoner as they apply the blindfold, and his eyes take their last drink of this beautiful world.

  Chapter 9

  DORIS PUGH SAT in her official tourist information blazer and spat the word across the desk like a cherry stone: 'Semen!'

  I gasped.

  'On an apricot satin camisole.'

  'Old?'

  'Flapper years. Of course he said it wasn't his, but then they all say that don't they? Thirty years he'd been there. Two more years and he would have retired on full pension with a gold clock.'

  The job of a private detective in Aberystwyth was full of ironies. If you asked people politely for information they would normally clam up and begrudge you even the time of day. But if you stood on the other side of a garden hedge to them you couldn't shut them up. And sometimes the simplest way to find out what you wanted was to ask the lady at the tourist information kiosk.

  'Well you can't be too careful,' she continued, 'can you? What with all these overseas students we get now? I mean, look at those girls we get from Brunei, wearing those things over the face that's like looking through a letterbox. Imagine it!'

  I thanked her and wandered off down the Prom shaking my head sadly at the cruelty of Lovespoon. All his life Iolo Davies had served at that Museum, with never a blemish on his record. But he helped Brainbocs with his school essay and so he had to be punished. The method chosen was breathtakingly effective: a rogue semen stain found on one of the exhibits in the Combinations and Corsetry section. I didn't need to know the exact details to know how it was done. All very hush-hush, but not quite. Nothing crudely dramatic. Just a minor detail that would do far more damage than any gross slander. Plant the seed — ha! the cruelty of the phrase - and allow the gentle winds of scandal to blow. Everything would follow with a bleak inevitability: allegations of impropriety, rumours of extra-curricular loans of the exhibits . . . and in no time they would be removing the portrait that had hung in the Museum cafe for a generation. And what struck me with the most force was this: the sheer artistry of Lovespoon's evil. Because the truth was, Iolo probably had been involved in something pornographic with the combinations. Such things were commonplace. A select group of trusted high-ranking townsfolk. Envelopes of money passed discreetly under restaurant tables. He'd probably been doing it for years and they probably knew all about it and let him do it. But when they moved against him the allegations would have been impossible to refute.

  Where was he now? There was one man in Aberystwyth who would know: Archie Smalls. But of course he wouldn't tell me. Not unless he was forced to. I sighed. To make him squeal I would need to find someone else; someone most people went out of their way to avoid. Her name was Siani-y-Blojob, probably the most unpleasant girl in the whole of Wales. But first I would need to get drunk.

  *

  It was one of those occasions which strike you as a mistake the moment you walk in. You just don't have the strength to listen to the voice in your heart and turn round and walk away. But I needed to talk to Siani and to do that I needed to go to the Indian, and to do either of those two things I needed to get drunk. So I went to the Moulin.

  * * *

  Myfanwy was sitting and laughing with the Druids and looked up when I entered and quickly looked away. I was shown to a table further back than previously, squashed up against a pillar with a bad view. I ordered a drink and told the waiter to tell Myfanwy I was here. He gave me a look of scarcely concealed derision. Bianca came and joined me instead.

  'Hi, handsome.'

  I nodded.

  'Don't I even get a little smile?'

  I turned to her and smiled weakly.

  'Can I have a drink?'

  I shrugged.

  She stopped a waiter and ordered a drink.

  'I bet I know why you're sad. It's Myfanwy. You're angry because she's talking to the Druids.'

  'No I'm not.'

  'You have to understand, Louie, she really likes you but this is a job.'

  'I do understand.'

  'I know how you feel. Believe me she'd much rather be here with you.'

  'You couldn't even imagine how I feel.'

  Bianca shrugged and we both sat in silence for a while. Then she stood up without a word and left. As soon as she went I started to wish she hadn't. I picked up her glass and sniffed it. Genuine rum — no coloured water. In the Moulin that passed as a real compliment.

  I ordered more drinks and thought unhappily about Siani-y-Blojob. Every town has its hard cases just as every town has its whore and its bore. They come and go like the bluebells. And if, as some people suggest, there are good and bad years, like wines, then Siani represented one of the finest vintages in the history of the chateaux. A girl about whom people would tell fireside tales to their c
hildren in years to come, vainly trying to convey the essence in the same way some fathers try to give their children an appreciation of the glories of Tom Finney and Stanley Matthews.

  After a while, Myfanwy came over. I'd been watching her out of the corner of my eye the whole time.

  'Hi, Louie!'

  'Hi.'

  'Sorry, I'm busy with clients.'

  I took a drink.

  'You don't mind do you?'

  'No.'

  She looked uncertainly and then offered brightly: 'I tell you what, why don't you take Bianca home with you tonight?'

  It was as if she were suggesting I stop off for a takeaway.

  'It's on the house.'

  I looked up into her face. She was smiling happily.

  'How can you say that?'

  Her jaw dropped and the happy grin seeped away. 'I mean, I thought. . .' She sat down and interlinked her arm with mine. 'Oh Louie, don't get like all the others.'

  'All what others?'

  'You'll be calling me a tart next.'

  The word hit like a meat hook.

  'How can you accuse me of that and in the same breath tell me to go home with Bianca?'

  A look of exasperation crossed her face.

  'No one's forcing you.'

  I've thought about that night many times in the years since. Wondering whether, had I altered certain details of it, certain phrases or order of words, or even if I'd been in a better mood, it might have changed the course of subsequent events. It's an easy trap to fall into — the habit of parcelling up the past into a series of neat turning points; to load incidents with a power to alter the course of events which they never possessed. Not seeing that a moment which appears pivotal in the context of an evening is really only reflecting a process which has been unfolding unseen for many months. Like a heart seizure is just the sudden outward manifestation of a lifestyle. Sometimes I ask myself if I really believe that and I realise I have no choice. The alternative scenario: that my actions that night might have made a difference, is too painful to examine in view of how that evening ended. I took Bianca home.