The Unbearable Lightness of Being in Aberystwyth

by Malcolm Pryce

  She put the toffee in her mouth and continued to turn the pages, but too quickly now in the manner of one not really reading the words.

  ‘There’s no reason to believe her illness had anything to do with that. These things happen sometimes, people get ill, no one knows why, if we did …’ My words petered out, stopped by the look on her face – that particular breed of sardonic disdain that specialists adopt when amateurs venture an opinion in their field.

  ‘I’m sure you’re right,’ she said, meaning no such thing.

  ‘And anyway, I spoke to the new doctor, he said—’

  ‘I know what he said,’ she snapped. ‘He said you ask for certainty but I cannot give it. We are like little children lost on the shore of a dark mysterious ocean called disease, paddling in the shallows and imagining we understand the profound mysteries that lie beyond the horizon.’

  ‘He said that to you, too?’

  ‘They all say it. It’s the latest fashion. In the old days they just said you’d got mumps.’

  I took out a handkerchief and dabbed the sweat on my neck. It was hot and stuffy in the cafeteria, or maybe it was just the knack Mrs Prestatyn had of making me squirm. From far away I could hear the dull click, thud and whirr of crockery being loaded into an automatic dishwasher. The air was hard to breathe, a fug filled with the faint smell of disinfectant, and industrial laundry soap, the stale scent of boiling cabbage and Mrs Prestatyn’s minty breath. Maybe it was just too warm. Hospitals were always like that, heated to keep sick people in pyjamas from shivering, like orchids in a hothouse. Mrs Prestatyn continued to feign reading. Finally she said, without looking up, ‘So now I suppose you’ve come to ask about Brainbocs.’

  ‘Meirion says he got sick.’

  ‘Royal Salop Infirmary. Top floor. Moved him off the cell block in February.’ She carried on reading her book, or pretending to. After a while she said, ‘You know my rates, Mr Knight. It’s not January so there’s no sale.’

  I unfolded a five-pound note and put it on the table and she put her book down on top of it and said the single word, ‘Glossolalia.’

  I waited for her to amplify but she didn’t even though she knew I hadn’t a clue what that was, so I said finally, ‘Do I get any more for my five pounds?’

  She looked up. ‘You’ve never heard of glossolalia?’

  ‘You’d be mortified if I had.’

  She grunted and said reluctantly, seemingly having already forgotten that I had paid for the information, ‘Glossolalia is the term used to describe people who create their own private language. Or, if you’re more of the Pentecostal persuasion, you might call it “speaking in tongues”. In Brainbocs’s case attended by intermittent dissociative auditory hallucinations.’

  ‘A private language?’

  ‘Won’t talk to anyone except in his new language. It shows clear signs of coherence and well-defined grammatical structures, possibly derived in part from the Finnish-Hungarian family. Dr Molyneux is transcribing it but progress is slow.’ She paused and added, ‘Also draws dinosaurs on the wall – makes his own ink from rennet and bird droppings.’

  I stood up to leave and Mrs Prestatyn lifted her book and shoved the five-pound note across the table. ‘There, take it.’

  I hesitated and she twitched. ‘Go on, take it before I change my mind. Or if you don’t want it there’s a box for the guide dogs by the door.’

  ‘What’s wrong?’

  She forced herself not to look at me, lifted the book and said from behind it, ‘Just find Myfanwy and we’ll say no more.’

  * * *

  By the water’s edge, rendered colourless by the mist, were some policemen on hands and knees searching the sand. Occasionally one of them would put something into something else that looked like a sandwich bag. If I hadn’t known better I would have said they were collecting shells.

  Drops of rain darkened the already damp sand like new stain on old wood. They fell on Calamity’s sou’wester with soft percussive thuds like someone learning to type. The outfit wasn’t new but I hadn’t seen it before.

  I said, ‘Not much chance of seeing Paddington Bear this afternoon.’

  ‘Which way?’ asked Calamity.

  I pointed in the direction of the marsh and the Waifery and we started walking away from the car with the same reluctance of people who have broken down in the desert and decide to abandon the vehicle.

  ‘If you feel like telling me why we won’t be seeing him, that’s fine, but I’m not going to ask.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Paddington Bear.’

  ‘He never goes out without his coat and hat, specially on a day like this. And now someone’s stolen it from him, poor guy.’

  ‘If you must know, my mum made me wear it. Why this way anyway?’

  ‘My instinct about these things says this way.’

  ‘You tossed a coin more like.’

  ‘Seventh rule of being a private eye: when faced with only two possibilities, both of which are hopeless, it doesn’t make a lot of sense to agonise over the decision.’

  ‘Rule number seven.’

  ‘I hope you’re writing these down.’

  ‘I’m sure rule number seven was something else.’

  ‘If you wrote them down you’d know.’

  ‘So this is Sospan’s brilliant idea.’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘Are you sure you heard him right?’

  ‘I made him repeat it three times. He said to look for a sleeping gull.’

  ‘You could have misheard.’

  ‘If you can think of something that sounds like that we’ll start looking. But it has to be something you’d be likely to find at the seaside.’

  ‘Seeping hull.’

  ‘That’s good but I don’t think he said that.’

  ‘But you’re not sure.’

  ‘He said sea gulls always eat ice cream that’s melted on the pavement, it’s part of the evolution of their foraging habits, like foxes coming to the edge of towns to scavenge from litter bins.’

  ‘Polar bears do that too. In some parts of the world.’

  ‘Well, there you are, you see. They also scavenge from the bin next to an ice-cream van. Sure as eggs, he said, if the gelati man was using drugged ripple you’d get snoozing birds everywhere.’

  ‘Well, I don’t see any. In fact I don’t think I’ve ever seen a sea gull asleep, have you?’

  ‘No, but then I’ve never looked. And they must do it, I can’t believe they never go to sleep.’

  ‘Albatrosses can stay out at sea for seven years without ever touching dry land.’

  ‘They sleep on ships.’

  The ground was spongy like a mattress, pools of water formed around our shoes wherever we stepped. We continued to walk, without heart or belief in our quest. After half an hour of aimlessly squelching about, Calamity spotted a gull. It was sitting in the gutter of the peat cutter’s cottage. And after a couple of minutes squabbling during which I was forced to pull rank, I gave Calamity a ‘bunk up’ and she peered at the fat grey bird that gave all the signs of being asleep in the gutter. Then she poked it and it produced a beak that was vaguely s-shaped from within its feathers, made an angry sound and snapped at Calamity. She squealed and fell backwards and I took a step back to counterbalance her fall and she stood on me like a trapeze artist and we stood there wavering like Laurel and Hardy at the circus. And then the sun found a hole in the clouds and drenched the wet landscape with liquid silver. The roof of the peat cutter’s cottage flashed like a heliograph, sequins littered the grass, and beyond the hills of Aberdovey the crescent of a rainbow appeared, sharply outlined against the still brooding clouds.

  ‘Looking for eggs?’ said a voice from behind me.

  I tried to turn but the jittery movement above my head as Calamity struggled to maintain her balance made me stop. The owner of the voice walked round and stood in front of me and I squinted down at a girl of about fifteen or sixteen. She was wearing wellingtons and a nav
y blue gaberdine mac buttoned at the throat. On her head she wore the distinctive chimney hat with the yellow ‘W’ insignia of the Waifery. Bright blond hair fell from beneath the brim down to her shoulders smearing the wetness of her coat like a dusting of pollen on a bee’s wing.

  ‘We’re looking for a sleeping gull,’ I said.

  ‘That’s a funny thing to be doing in the rain.’

  ‘Pretty funny in the dry as well.’

  ‘Rain’s worse. Although I like it really, but it’s hopeless for looking for things.’

  ‘We’re doing it for a bet.’

  ‘Oh I see. I don’t think I’ve ever seen one asleep.’

  ‘We were saying the same thing.’

  She reached out her hand to shake, and then realising that I couldn’t take the hand stopped the motion halfway. ‘My name’s Seren.’

  I crouched slowly and allowed Calamity to jump down.

  ‘I’m Louie and this is my partner, Calamity.’

  Calamity shook her hand and said, ‘Pleased to make your acquaintance, ma’am.’

  A shovel tingled on the silver air like a tuning fork and we all turned at the same time towards the cottage. The peat cutter was standing in the doorway. He was wearing brown corduroy trousers tucked into wellington boots, a tweed jacket and had a tough dark face surrounded by thickly curled blue-black hair, lightened here and there with tufts of silver like a badger. He might have been forty-five or fifty-five. He spoke to Seren in Welsh and walked off, carrying a spade.

  Seren invited us into the cottage and we sat at a wooden kitchen table and waited for her to brew a pot of tea. I could see the peat cutter though the window walking off across the marsh. There was a book on the table: a scholarly tome about soil geology. I flicked through the pages, it was mostly tables and formulae and diagrams representing the various shapes of the ponds in the marsh and how they came to be formed by the wind and rain and tidal action.

  ‘Is the peat cutter interested in all this?’

  ‘He wrote it.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Well, he did the pictures – I mean he dug them. Some bloke from the university wrote the book and sent it to him.’

  ‘Is Mr Meredith your dad?’

  ‘No, I’m from the Waifery. I don’t have a dad, I was a foundling. But I come here quite a lot and Meredith lets me do what I like. I saw you the other night.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘I was the one who found the locket. I’m sorry about your girlfriend.’

  ‘That’s nice of you.’

  ‘You won’t tell Sister Cunégonde you saw me here, will you? She’d be furious.’

  ‘Do holy sisters get furious?’

  Seren looked at me in astonishment. ‘Are you kidding! They never do anything else. Specially old Cunybongy. It’s because I’m a category A Waif. They’re the worst, you see. I need special attention to stop me straying from the path. That’s why I’m not allowed to come here. She says I don’t understand how easy it is for a young girl to stray from the path and be lost. But that’s silly, I could find my way around here with my eyes shut.’

  ‘Maybe she means it in a different way.’

  ‘Don’t be daft, what other way could there be?’

  Later, as we trudged back to the car and were about to get in, I heard a cry and the sound of someone running.

  ‘Louie! I’ve got one!’ It was Seren and she was carrying a shoebox. Inside was a sleeping gull.

  There was a barrel organ leaning against the wall when we got back and upstairs in the office was a man, a suitcase and a monkey.

  ‘Just came to see how you were getting on with the investigation,’ said Gabriel Bassett.

  Cleopatra was sitting on the desk; she gesticulated and Gabriel added, ‘She says good afternoon.’

  We smiled at her and she made an impatient ‘reminder type’ of gesture.

  ‘And also,’ said Gabriel sheepishly, ‘she asked whether you’ve seen Mr Bojangles.’

  ‘Tell her, no, but we’re keeping our eyes peeled.’

  ‘That’s good, she’ll like that.’ He translated and she did, indeed, look pleased.

  ‘We’ve been working flat out on the case,’ lied Calamity. ‘And we’ve made a lot of progress.’

  ‘Anything you’d like to share with me?’

  We both struggled not to follow his gaze which was directed at the wall bearing nothing but a pinned up tea towel with the words comes stabuli. It was fairly clear that we had not been flat out or making a great deal of progress. I made a mental note to move the incident board into the kitchen.

  ‘I see you bought the tea towel,’ he said.

  Neither of us could think of a suitable response to that and he said, ‘You do understand, don’t you, it is very important to me that you solve this case by the deadline I gave. There can be no question of further payment if you don’t.’

  ‘We understand.’

  He stood up and Cleopatra leaped across from the desk and climbed on to his shoulders. They walked to the door. When he picked up the case I said, ‘Do you really carry that around with you all the time?’

  He stopped and looked down as if checking that I meant the case and not the monkey.

  ‘Oh yes.’

  ‘What’s in it?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  Chapter 4

  THE NEXT MORNING at nine Sospan gave us the result of his forensic analysis of the gull’s gizzard. Nothing. Not a drop of drugged ripple, from which he deduced that the bird had not been anaesthetised but was just taking a lie-in, possibly, although we didn’t particularly need to know this, due to exertion caused by flying around during the storm in the Irish Sea recently.

  ‘So we wasted our time.’

  ‘I’m sorry Mr Knight, the technique usually works very well but I think you left it too late. You should have called me in sooner.’

  ‘There’s a girl’s life at stake here, Sospan.’

  ‘No one knows that better than me, you know that. I’ve got all Myfanwy’s records just like you. Did you make a list like I told you?’

  ‘List of what?’

  ‘Of everything you could remember about the gelati man.’

  ‘But I told you, I was drugged, I couldn’t remember anything.’

  Sospan tutted. ‘You’ve drunk from the waters of the Lethe is what you’ve done, Mr Knight. I would recommend you went and saw Mr Evans the Hypnotist at Kousin Kevin’s.’

  ‘And what good would that do?’

  ‘Forensic hypnotism is a very powerful weapon in the modern detective’s arsenal. I’m surprised you don’t know that.’

  ‘I’m not going to see any hypnotist. The weapons in this detective’s arsenal include gumption and shoe leather, not end-of-the-pier chicanery.’

  ‘It’s not chicanery. It’s a tried-and-trusted technique with a formidable capacity for unlocking the gates of remembrance.’ He put a leaflet on the counter top. ‘I can get you a ticket if you like.’

  ‘I think it’s a good idea,’ said Calamity.

  ‘You would.’

  ‘Well, why not?’

  ‘Because it’s hocus-pocus.’

  ‘No it isn’t.’

  Sospan tapped a finger on the leaflet for emphasis. ‘Mr Evans does a lot of work for the police, ask Llunos.’

  ‘Well he’s not doing a lot of work for me.’

  The argument was interrupted by the arrival of a straw-scented cloud containing Eeyore. It was the first patrol of the day and none of the donkeys had riders. I think Eeyore preferred it that way. Sospan offered him an ice but he declined with a troubled look on his face.

  ‘What’s up, Dad?’ I asked.

  He nodded towards a donkey in the middle of the line. ‘It’s the Duchess, she’s playing up. She isn’t happy.’

  I looked over to the Duchess who had wandered up to the seaside railing and put her head over as if it were a stable door. She was staring out across the sea with a wistful air. Maybe she dimly remembered her
home being in Ireland and was wondering if she might see it again before she died.

  ‘Maybe it’s just old age.’

  ‘Of course it’s old age. I know that. We’ve been together twelve years. That’s a lot for a donkey.’

  I picked a piece of straw off his lapel. ‘Why don’t you rest her for a while?’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘I can’t. She’s the matriarch of the troop. She’s the one who keeps discipline, keeps the young ones in line and teaches them things.’

  ‘Teaches them what?’

  ‘The craft. Things like not to fart when carrying children. Things like that. It’s like the alpha dog on a husky team. Without him those dogs just won’t make a move. Just sit there in the snow and starve to death. People don’t understand. They think you just tie them in a line and pull them along. But I tell you, you won’t get very far doing that. The donkeys have to want to make the trip. That’s where the matriarch comes in. She passes on the old knowledge that the herd has acquired over the years, about the ancient foraging patterns.’

  ‘I thought you just gave them a bucket of oats.’

  ‘I do, but they still have the “call” inside them, don’t they? It’s like dogs chasing sticks. Sticks are symbolic prey. Most people feed them from a tin but the dog still has the hunting instinct that needs to be satisfied. With the donkeys, the walk up the Prom is an echo of the old foraging patterns. They start off at the harbour and head towards Constitution Hill seeking better pasture. But of course they don’t have very good memories so by the time they’ve arrived at one end they’ve forgotten what it was like where they started out, so they look around and think, hmmm, not much here is there? And then the matriarch says, I know, why don’t we go and try down the other end of the Prom by the harbour? And off they go. Once you set the pattern in motion you can pretty much let it run itself.’

  ‘Herd dynamics they call it,’ said Sospan. ‘Every Prom built over the last hundred years has a minimum length determined by the attention span of a donkey.’

  ‘OK. So what happens if you get a really brainy one, like a donkey Mozart, who can remember further back and tells them what it’s like up the other end?’