'Because Lovespoon was going to kill me.'
He walked over to the window and looked out. 'You should get a good view of his Ark from here, that's one of the reasons I chose this place.'
There was something in his tone that made my skin crawl. A sort of wheedling, taunting, smugness that suggested he had planned everything right down to what shirt I wore this morning.
'Eight cubic kilometres of water. I calculate it will take about twenty minutes to reach Aberystwyth. A very respectable effort for one's first deluge, don't you think?'
'It'll destroy everything.'
'No great loss to architecture.'
'Why are you here?' I said bluntly.
He paused. I knew the answer already: he was here to boast.
He looked at me and tapped the top of his cane.
'I wanted to thank you.'
'What for?'
'For saving my life.'
'I thought you were already dead.'
'Ah! But for how much longer would I have been allowed to rest in peace?'
I shook my head. 'I thought Lovespoon adored you.'
He began talking to the air, as if rehearsing his defence in case St Peter ever asked.
'Herod Jenkins, Custard Pie, Zachariah Lovespoon and Arthur Frobisher. One dead; the other three respectable members of Aberystwyth society. Each one well known. Each one in the phone book. But where was the fifth member of the crew, where was Gwenno?' He turned to face me and wagged his finger. 'If only I hadn't asked that question. If only.'
I said nothing but watched him intently. Impressed despite my disgust that this tiny fragment of humanity, a boy with the physical presence of a grasshopper, could have created such a whirlwind in the affairs of men through brain power alone. I was conscious of despising him, not for the evil that he wrought, but for his pale, sickly decrepitude. I who had automatically taken the side of such people against the steamroller insensitivity of Herod. Was this how Herod felt about me?
Brainbocs continued. The wistful tone in his voice suggesting that he was already addressing posterity rather than me.
'When I found out it was Mrs Llantrisant, I couldn't believe it. It was impossible. That daft, weather-obsessed, step-swabbing moron? The leader of the ESSJAT? How could it be? That's why I devised the poisoned apples and the deathbed confession: I needed to be certain. All I wanted was her to say yes or no. But the silly old bag had other ideas. She was convinced she was going to die and said she had this terrible secret on her conscience which she didn't want to take to the grave. I tried to shut her up but she wouldn't listen. I suppose she saw it as her big moment and wasn't going to be cheated of it.'
'And you found out that Rio Caeriog wasn't a military triumph after all?'
Brainbocs shook his head sadly. 'Oh no, far worse than that. I already knew it was a military disaster. That much I could have come to terms with. No, I found out something far worse. Something that spelled death for the whole project. The land reclamation, the beautiful boat, the whole Exodus — kaput!'
It was as if the air was slowly drained out of him. He leaned forward, put an elbow on the table and placed his chin softly into his cupped hand. The messianic fervour was gone and he looked at me; almost as if he was appealing for help.
'Lovespoon is English.'
I gasped. Brainbocs nodded his head slowly and closed his eyes.
'Imagine how I felt? The man to whom I had devoted my life, for whose glory I had created my masterpiece, the Cantref-y-Gwaelod reclamation scheme, was an impostor. From Slough.'
For a while neither of us spoke. A quiet so absolute filled the room that I could hear the sound of each of us breathing. Gradually Brainbocs gathered himself together again.
'There were five of them in the bomber. Mrs Llantrisant, Dai the Custard Pie, Herod Jenkins, Lovespoon and Frobisher. Lovespoon is actually Frobisher.'
'The English volunteer?'
'Yes. The real Lovespoon died when the Lancaster ditched in the Rio Caeriog after the mission. Or rather, he died soon after it. Apparently he wasn't going to make it anyway, so they all helped him along a bit. They were all in it. They hit on the plan to finish him off and Frobisher would take his identity. Then after the war they would share the money. The real Lovespoon was rich, you see. As the icing on the cake, they cut off his John Thomas and stuffed it in his mouth to make it look like the work of Indians.'
'Don't tell me, it was Herod who did that.'
'Gwenno ... er ... Mrs Llantrisant actually.'
I nodded gently as I slowly absorbed the enormity of what he was telling me.
'This is what Mrs Llantrisant told me during her deathbed confession. It might still have been OK. But I was so staggered by what I heard that right in the middle of the confession I cried out "fucking hell!"' He smiled sadly. 'I'll say one thing for Mrs Llantrisant: she's a smart woman. She knew instantly what was up. That was when I made my first mistake: my only one, in fact. I should have killed her right there in the bedroom.' He looked at me. 'I could, you know. I know how.'
I nodded and Brainbocs continued.
'But instead I ran away. From that moment on it was only a matter of time before Lovespoon came to hear about it.'
'So what was all this stuff about the tea cosy?' '
Despite his gloom, Brainbocs chuckled. 'The tea cosy depicted Mhexuataacahuatcxl, the Mayan shape-shifter. He was supposed to represent Frobisher because he had taken the form of a man who had had his John Thomas cut off. It wasn't a serious blackmail attempt. But you get the idea. I needed to find out how Lovespoon would react to his secret being out. So I led him to think Evans and his cronies had copied my essay and were trying to blackmail him — test the waters sort of thing. When he killed all four of them I knew the water was pretty hot. So what was I supposed to do? You can imagine my problem. The police couldn't be trusted - I was sure they would hand me straight over to the Druids. That's why I thought of you. And now I just wanted to thank you.'
'But I haven't done anything — I failed. Didn't I?'
He smiled, stood up and walked over to the door. 'Actually, you're playing your part very well. Even if you don't know what it is.'
As the guard let him out, I called out:
'So when does the plane take off?'
'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 wate
r 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 y
ards 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.
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