Oscar the manager smiled and walked across.
‘I hear you’re serving dog here,’ said Llunos.
The manager looked hurt, and whispered, ‘Keep your voice down, you’re giving trade secrets away.’
‘I’m not joking, pal.’
‘Llunos, please, you know those stories are just urban legends. Do you think I would serve dog to the good folk of Aberystwyth? Of course not, it’s just soya with dog flavour.’
I laughed and said, ‘No law against that.’
‘Whose side are you on?’ said Llunos.
At the Pier we walked down the tunnel of wood along the side towards the Moulin. Twin black velvet curtains marked the door to the famous club. There was no doorman at this hour and not even the hat-check girl, so we walked through unchallenged. It still smelled faintly of last night’s drink and cigarettes and on some tables the detritus of the previous night had still not been cleared. Silver disco balls hung from the roof, motionless like the innards of a stopped clock; nearby were the swings which in better days had been manned by satyrs. In these leaner times even Pan had to lay off staff. There are few places in the world more forlorn than a night club in daylight. We walked across the dance floor and headed towards the door marked ‘Private’. Our metal-tipped shoes clacked harshly on a floor that was seasoned, like the floor in the saloon at Dodge City, with the varnish of human woe. Over the years it had borne witness to every transaction that could pass between two human hearts. The last time I had been here was the famous night Mrs Bligh-Jones danced the last tango in Aberystwyth and then went off for a rendezvous with her lover. The bullet that passed through her head can still be seen embedded in the brickwork outside Woolies.
And it was in an earlier incarnation of this club, in another part of town, that Myfanwy used to hold us in thrall to her voice; a place where lesser mortals went upon the eternal errand of mankind, to sip the wine of bewilderment and exchange their hearts. Later, some of them would turn up in my office tormented by the suspicion that their sweetheart’s heart had grown cold. They squirmed on the client’s chair, impaled by the need to know the truth.
So I would tell them the truth about love.
The story of two people who found each other after a lifetime’s searching. Two lovers so perfectly attuned it was uncanny. God must have fashioned them from the same clay; Destiny with a big D bought the tickets for the bus on which they met. They were made for each other. It was spooky.
And they would look at me in wonder, faces lit up with amazement, b … b … but how did you know?
I said I’d heard the same story four times already that week.
No, the truth about love is this: if they’d missed the bus they would now be saying the same things about a person they met five minutes later on the Prom; their love was an accident; their lover just a nobody, gift-wrapped by their own imagination. There was nothing uncanny about it. They should have kept the drawbridge to their hearts closed; kept the moat free from weed. That’s what I did. And then one day Myfanwy swam across. It was as if we were made for each other. It was spooky.
The door at the back opened on to a narrow corridor with a faded maroon carpet. Along one side were windows looking out on to the sea and along the other a series of doors. A woman in a low-cut cocktail frock barred our way. She must have been getting on for fifty, hair bundled high and sculpted with spray, dull with the intense purple-black colour that comes from a cheap dye bottle. A mama-san straight from central casting.
‘We’re on business,’ said Llunos.
‘There’s no one down there,’ said the mama-san.
‘No need for you to look so worried then.’
He stopped at a door with the air of one who knows exactly what he is looking for and raised his knee. He nodded to the photographer who hoisted his camera. Llunos kicked the door open and the cameraman leaped in and filled the room with a blinding flash. A man sat up in a double bed astonished. On either side of him were two girls, naked except for their stovepipe hats. They pulled the bedclothes up over their breasts and stared doe-eyed in wonder. A small boy dressed as a cherub stood in the corner playing electric harp. He wore a curly blond wig, a nappy and had gold paint on his face. It was Poxcrop.
‘I can’t believe it,’ said Llunos in fake amazement. ‘It’s the Mayor!’
‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’ demanded the Mayor.
‘Cleaning up the town. I thought you’d approve.’
‘I’ll have your badge for this!’
‘I thought you’d say that. That’s why I brought along Lord Snowdon. Anything happens to me and Mrs Mayor gets the holiday snaps.’
‘This is outrageous!’
‘Save it, I’m not listening.’ He turned to the naked girls. ‘OK, Councillors, get your wraps you’re going to the station.’
I walked over to Poxcrop. He said, ‘It’s not like how it looks, Jack.’
‘Sure. No law against playing the harp. I’m musical myself.’
Llunos came over, as the Mayor hopped from leg to leg trying to get into his trousers.
‘The kid’s all right,’ I said. ‘He’s a friend of mine.’
‘Funny taste in friends.’
‘It’s not like how it seems,’ said the kid.
‘No,’ said Llunos. ‘It never is.’
‘You want juicy photos,’ said Poxcrop, ‘You should have called me – I got plenty.’
I laughed and pulled off his wig. Llunos grabbed him gently by the wrist and said, ‘It’s all right kid, you’re not in trouble here. Maybe you can do me a favour, would you like that?’
Poxcrop nodded.
‘You saw what happened here tonight,’ said Llunos. ‘I want you to tell people about it. Spread it around. Tell them Aberystwyth has closed for business by order of the Mayor and the Chief of Police. And we don’t re-open until someone gives me the name of the scumbag who took Myfanwy.’
From the Pier we carried on to the harbour, to the point where the pavement ends and continues for another hundred yards in an artificial limb of wood. Lorelei, the ancient streetwalker, stood leaning against the railings, perched above the rocks of the beach. Lorelei the sailor’s doom; standing and waiting; just waiting. Even here at the harbour mouth there was no breeze to bring relief from the sultry night, but unmindful of the seasons Lorelei stood huddled in a jumble-sale coat. The fabric was mottled and blotched in a pattern suggestive of a leopard – the cat seemingly put on this earth just so that night clubs would have sofas and harlots coats to wear.
Llunos sidled up to her and stood at the railings with the air of someone who had something to say but has thought better of it. She glanced at the policeman briefly, then returned her gaze to the ocean and her thoughts, whatever they consisted of: she who had seen everything there was to see inside a man’s heart and had not been impressed by it. After a second or two Llunos touched her gently on the elbow and said, ‘Take care.’ Then turned away. For some, the news that Aberystwyth was closing down came too late.
I picked up the car and drove home to Borth, and stopped off at the Friendship for a pint. The air was now pregnant with static and you could read the message of what the night held in store in the eyes of the dogs in the pub – fear reflecting in the wetness for the terror they knew was coming but for which they had no name. I drank slowly, without pleasure, and thought of my own terror.
Those fools, the poets, compare a girl in the bloom of youth to a flower. But that’s not right; flowers are too tough. A soap bubble would be better. A thing of wonder, too fragile to exist. Myfanwy didn’t understand this. She was in her early twenties and considered herself immortal. But her invulnerability was a chimera, nothing more than the involuntary trick of a girl sleepwalking along the edge of a cliff, who manages it only because she doesn’t open her eyes. Watching her walk down the street to buy a copy of Just Seventeen and return in one piece was to behold a miracle of deliverance.
She didn’t understand it because she was y
oung and it takes a long time to acquire an understanding of the basic truths of life. Such as mortality. And the ease with which flesh can be damaged beyond repair. And of the things you find locked away in the little-used rooms in that mansion called the human heart. Llunos showed me an article once in National Geographic about a girl in Nepal sold to a brothel at the age of seven. I looked at it and had to wonder what could be worse. And then he told me the woman who sold her was her mother, and I had to wonder what could be worse. Then he described how the girl had escaped and found her way home. And how her mother beat her and sent her back. And I had to wonder …
Every policeman knows the truth: there is no limit to the things that people will do to other people. And every torturer knows the way to make a man betray himself. It doesn’t matter how tough he is, how many torments he can endure on his own body, he can’t endure even the whisper of evil being done to his darling. The thought reduces him to a gibbering fool. Torquemada knew it. So did Vlad the Impaler.
I put the half-finished pint down on the table and said goodbye to the only decent soul in the pub. The dog. I drove slowly down to Ynyslas. The sky in the west above the bay was sparking repeatedly now, like broken neon. And each time the sea and horizon would be revealed and then fade into darkness again when the sluggardly thunder caught up and rumbled. Midway between Borth and Ynyslas the flash in the sky picked out a girl walking uncertainly down the edge of the lane. I stopped and offered a lift and she climbed in, smelling of ale and cigarette smoke. It was Seren, the girl Sister Cunégonde had accused of planting the locket.
We drove in silence for a while and then, just to say something, I said, ‘Been to the pub?’
‘Uh-huh.’
She was wearing a Levi’s jacket over what looked like an old wedding dress from a charity shop or church bazaar. It had deep gashes in the fabric, through which the white lace of her underwear peeped, cuts that could only have been done deliberately unless the bride had been savagely murdered. It was gathered at the waist in a thick, studded leather belt that looked like the collar of Spike the cartoon dog, and the hem of the dress, also made by slashing, stopped a few inches below the belt. The rest was flesh – pretty bare tanned legs and Doc Martens boots. Her hands lay in her lap, covered up to the fingers by the denim of sleeves that were too long.
‘Did you have a nice time?’
‘Not bad.’
‘Was Sister Cunégonde there too?’
‘Ha ha. She hates me.’
‘I’m sure she doesn’t.’
‘Shows you how much you know. She’d kill me if she could get away with it. The only thing that stops her is they’d send her to prison.’
‘I expect she likes you but finds you a bit difficult sometimes.’
‘Bollocks! She wants to kill me. I caught her once trying to suffocate me with a pillow when I was sleeping. I said, “What the fuck are you doing?” And she told me not to swear. Like you’re not allowed to say “fuck” when someone is trying to murder you.’
‘How much have you had to drink tonight?’
‘Nothing much. Six gin and tonics and two Babychams, three halves of cider and a rum and coke. I know why she hates me, too. Do you want to know?’
‘OK. Why?’
‘Because she thinks Meredith’s my dad. See! That’s another thing you didn’t know. She’s jealous, you see.’
‘Why would she think that?’
‘Because everyone in the village thinks it. Because he went away, you see. Then he came back for a summer before I was born and then went away again. And, bingo, nine months later I turn up on the church steps.’
‘I thought you were brought by the social services.’
‘I was speaking figuratively.’
‘Oh, I see.’
‘Like the Bible. It sounds like rubbish but it’s a special way of telling the truth.’ She giggled. ‘Meredith’s not my dad. Anyone can see that.’
‘Why would Sister Cunégonde care anyway?’
‘Because she and Meredith were lovers once. When they were kids. He got her up the duff. I bet you thought I didn’t know that either.’
‘So she’s jealous?’
‘Right. That’s why she’s always staring at me, you see. When she thinks I’m not looking. And why she pulls a face like she’s swallowed a toad. She’s trying to figure out who my mum was, trying to guess which of the girls from Borth lay in the hay with her darling Meredith going, “Oh, oh, oh, no, no, Meredith, no, no, yes, yes, yes—”’
‘All right, I know what it sounds like.’
‘You watch, one day she’ll murder me for sure, stuff a pillow on my face while I’m asleep and everyone will think it was an accident.’
We reached the Waifery and I pulled up at a safe distance so the sound of the car would not alert anyone to the return of a missing waif.
‘Does she beat you?’
‘No. Never. Just makes me eat bread and water.’
‘Bread and water?’
‘Well … bread and tea.’
‘Anything on the bread?’
‘Only ham. Or cheese. Sometimes chicken. Are you going to tell about tonight?’
‘Probably not.’
‘You’re a private eye, aren’t you?’
‘Yes.’
‘Will you do me a favour?’
‘Depends what it is.’
‘If I die and they say it was an accident, will you investigate my death?’
‘Seren, you’re not going to die.’
‘But, if I do, will you?’
‘But—’
‘Please Louie! Please. All you have to do is ask what happened and see if there was anything fishy about it.’
‘OK. I’ll do that. Now will you do me a favour?’
‘Of course. Ask anything in the whole wide world.’
‘Tell me why you planted the locket on the dunes.’
‘Who says I did?’
‘You know damn well who. Why did you do it?’
‘Are you angry?’
‘No.’
‘Did you love Myfanwy?’
‘Yes.’
‘I’m so sorry. I wish I hadn’t done it.’
‘But why did you?’
‘I don’t know.’ She opened the car door and put one leg outside and said in a voice that mimicked Sister Cunégonde, ‘I suppose, because I’m impossible.’
Seren climbed the gate with the ease of someone who has had plenty of practice and I sat in the car for a while watching the darkened school. Then I got out and started to wander aimlessly along the sands by the water’s edge, with no particular direction in mind, just away from the caravan that I had made my home. The thunder rumbled, getting closer. The only other sound was the occasional bark of a dog. I smelt the rain before I felt it. A hot, bright, sharp summer wetness that suddenly filled the air. And then a fat drop of water on my face. And then a patter of them and soon a continuous curtain. I ran towards the shack at the bottom of the peat cutter’s garden.
It was a stable, built of stone with exposed low beams of wood and a slate roof. Some of the tiles were missing and through the gaps I could see the luminescence of a rainy night sky. A horse, unseen in the darkness, whinnied and stamped and bumped about in a stall. The drum beat of thunder and the presence of a stranger filling him with a fear that was palpable to me. The reek of straw and the hot meaty smell of horse combined with the tang of warm rain hitting parched soil.
The light was on in the peat cutter’s kitchen and I could see him at the table, sitting motionless, perhaps studying the soil geologist’s book. Perhaps doing nothing at all except staring at the grain of the wood and searching for meaning. Gradually, the rumble of thunder grew fainter and the flashes briefer and almost as suddenly as it started the rain eased off. I was about to leave when the approach of a storm lamp weaving across the marsh stopped me. I waited. I could make out the outline of a figure in the night carrying the lamp, heading towards the cottage. The figure knocked on the door. The pe
at cutter got up and walked out of the rectangle of light that was the kitchen window. A few seconds later the back door opened; there was little light from inside. I could intuit rather than see him on the threshold interrogating his visitor. He seemed reluctant to let the visitor in but the visitor remonstrated and he stepped aside and the visitor stepped in. Seconds later they both appeared in the tableau of the kitchen window. They stood awkwardly on either side of the wooden table, neither of them sitting down, talking, not angrily nor cheerfully but as if agitated by some long past grievance, as if two ghosts had met by coincidence on a lonely road in the middle of the marsh. The visitor was a woman, perhaps fiftyish, about the same as the peat cutter and though they struck formal poses it seemed to be the stiff formality of people who have once known each other well. The conversation became more intense. The woman seemed to be imprecating the man and he responded repeatedly by shaking his head. And then he raised an index finger and shook that at her in accusation. And then seeing this she pointed to herself in an exaggerated pantomime as if to say, ‘Me? Me?’ ‘Yes, you!’ the man seemed to be saying and the woman threw her hands out as if that really took the biscuit. She became more impassioned and the man turned away and grabbed the sides of his head with his hands as if he didn’t want to hear any more and then alerted by what must have been a noise he spun round and rushed over to the woman, who appeared now to be crying. And Meredith the peat cutter seemed to melt at the sight of this and held out his arms as if the woman was on the verge of falling to the floor. He took one final step forward and Sister Cunégonde collapsed into his arms and wept.
The Unbearable Lightness of Being in Aberystwyth Page 9
