The Unbearable Lightness of Being in Aberystwyth

by Malcolm Pryce

  I can’t bear it any longer, it’s torture.

  You think so? What do you know about torture? Have you ever been to a museum and seen an iron maiden? They used them for entertainment in the Middle Ages – a great time to be alive. A nice big metal sarcophagus that they stuck you in if they didn’t like you, with vicious inward-pointing spikes on the door. They made them shaped like a woman, too, which was a nice touch. And, when they closed the door, two spikes pierced your eyes and one went through your heart.

  Is it worse than that?

  Yes, it is.

  The knock on the door was so soft it barely rose above the hiss from the gas lamp. I stopped breathing and listened. It came again. It couldn’t be a twig brushing against the aluminium skin of the caravan because it wasn’t loud enough. Maybe a dandelion had been blown against the door. I stood up, walked slowly across and opened the door. Sister Cunégonde stood there and whispered, ‘Can I come in?’

  I nodded and stood aside and went to put the kettle on. I also unscrewed the top of the rum bottle.

  ‘Nothing stronger than plain old tea for me,’ she said.

  I took the tea cups over and put them down.

  ‘Seren’s gone,’ she said.

  ‘Gone?’

  ‘Run away.’

  ‘I haven’t seen her.’

  She nodded.

  ‘Tell me what happened to her the other night.’

  ‘Which other night?’

  I spluttered with the scorn that had been simmering near the surface for too long. ‘Oh let me see!’ I cried. ‘Which one could it be now? Oh, I know! What about the night when I came round and heard a girl screaming and saw Seren covered in blood fighting with two nuns and someone hit me over the head with a shovel?’

  ‘It wasn’t a shovel, it was a warming pan. And, anyway, I told you, she had a nosebleed – someone punched her on the nose.’

  ‘So why was she struggling?’

  ‘She was hysterical. She gets fits, you see.’

  ‘I don’t blame her.’

  She shot me a glance and then looked down and pretended to be coy. ‘It’s partly your fault too.’

  ‘That’s a good one!’

  Sister Cunégonde hesitated and looked down at the cup, then bit her lip.

  ‘I wouldn’t give you fifty cents for your acting.’

  ‘Sometime last year the girls played truant and went to Aberystwyth. They went to see that spot down at the harbour where the prostitute was killed. The stain in the tarmac that they can’t wash out. You know what adolescent girls are like.’

  ‘Not really, it’s been too long.’

  ‘Are you always so dark and bitter?’

  ‘Mostly.’

  ‘I’m sorry we hit you with the shovel.’

  ‘Don’t worry about it, being clouted with garden tools is my latest hobby. Tell me what adolescent girls are like.’

  ‘Highly impressionable. They think there is something romantic in such squalid stories.’

  ‘What stories?’

  ‘A lady of the night being murdered. Her lover, a handsome private detective – oh yes we read all about it in the newspapers. The girls knew instantly who you were that night you came round. They weren’t fooled for an instant by my story about you being from the gas board.’

  ‘If you’re talking about Bianca, I wasn’t her lover.’

  ‘It’s all one. The newspapers said you were. They said a lot else besides. Then when you started showing an interest in Seren the other girls were jealous.’

  ‘Since when have I taken an interest in her?’

  ‘She met you down at Meredith’s cottage, didn’t she? It’s OK, you don’t have to say anything, I know she probably asked you to keep it a secret and, like the gallant private eye that you are, you agreed. She thinks old Cunybongy is old and stupid and doesn’t know what’s going on. But I know she goes down there even though I’ve told her not to. The sand down there is a different colour, you see, and someone is traipsing it in to the Waifery two or three times a week …’

  ‘Maybe you should examine the bottoms of your shoes first.’

  She winced. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘You’re not averse to the odd midnight visit either, are you?’

  She stared at me in genuine surprise and then hissed, ‘I s’pose I should have expected something like that from a … a … snooper!’

  ‘I wasn’t spying on you. I saw you by accident. It’s none of my damn business and I don’t care tuppence where you go or what you do. As long as it remains not my business. Trouble is I’m starting to think there’s something funny about you that is my business. And before you start hatching any nasty little thoughts in your busybody mind, there’s nothing between me and Seren. Nothing that anyone has any call to hide from the light of day. I met her at Meredith’s, that’s all. It was a harmless meeting. I don’t know what she told the other girls but—’

  ‘Yes, yes, of course. I wasn’t suggesting anything like that. Not suggesting you did anything to encourage her or anything … it’s just that the story no doubt got embroidered a bit in the telling, and the other girls were jealous, that’s all. I mean I expect so. I don’t know. I’m just guessing but it’s not hard to guess sometimes how things are. I was her age once as well, despite what people think, and I wasn’t particularly different. I was just as good at climbing the wall, thinking no one knew. I wonder if there ever was a time when no one knew …’

  ‘So one of the girls thumped her.’

  ‘She was boasting that she was your … your friend and a fight broke out. As I’ve told you, she’s not particularly popular at the best of times. The fight caused her to have a fit. She has them sometimes. That’s all it was.’

  ‘All it was.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’m glad we cleared it up. Two girls fight over some petty squabble, one gets a nosebleed, and then a fit. So naturally the only thing to be done is hit me over the head with a shovel.’

  ‘We didn’t know what to do.’

  ‘You’re a lousy liar, Sister Cunégonde.’

  ‘You must think what you wish.’

  ‘And now she’s run away.’

  ‘Yes, it seems so.’

  ‘You don’t seem too bothered.’

  ‘It’s not the first time. She normally comes back after a few days.’

  ‘So where does Frankie Mephisto fit into all this?’

  ‘I’ve no idea what you mean.’

  ‘Stop trying to take me for a fool. Frankie Mephisto is a gangster serving time in Shrewsbury jail. He’s just your type actually – a good Samaritan. They say he’s got a little sideline helping people in trouble. But every time he does that he stores up a debt for them in a little bank account in the name of Faust. Folk say he’s about to be released. He did the crime, he did the time. Now he’s on his way to Aberystwyth. Some people say he’s already out. I wouldn’t know. They say he’s planning one last, final job. His swansong. I wouldn’t know about that either. And frankly I wouldn’t care. Except that the girl I love went missing from Ynyslas and, for some reason that no one has been able to explain to me, one of the girls at your Waifery planted a locket on the dunes meant to throw the search off the scent. And I might be able to not care a damn about that too, might be able to put it down to a silly adolescent prank, but then you come into the picture and every instinct I’ve got tells me you are one strange kettle of fish. And maybe I could manage not to care about that if it wasn’t for this awkward fact that Frankie Mephisto is calling in the favours, drawing cheques on that account marked Faust, and something tells me you are one scared old woman. Any of that mean anything to you? It doesn’t make much sense to me at the moment. Maybe you can help me work it out?’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  ‘So why is he sending you books from Shrewsbury library?’

  She looked shocked. ‘He isn’t!’

  I took the book out of my bag and threw it on the table. ‘He
is.’

  Her mouth opened and she popped her hand to it.

  ‘Pope Gregory, whoever he is.’

  ‘H … how did you get it?’

  ‘The postman asked me to deliver it. I forgot. Then it fell on the kettle. You know how easily that can happen.’

  ‘You had no right!’

  ‘Don’t give me any crap about rights. I had about as much right as you had to read Seren’s letter.’

  ‘It’s not the same. The girl is sixteen. I’m her guardian.’

  ‘So what’s so special about Pope Gregory?’

  ‘Why don’t you ask Frankie Mephisto?’

  ‘Oh that’s good!’ I laughed in scorn. ‘A minute ago you didn’t know who he was. Which is a bit surprising because I hear he also happens to be your brother, although I can understand why you would want to disown him.’

  ‘You think you have all the answers, don’t you?’

  ‘On the contrary, all I have are questions. You’re the one who knows the answers. Why would Frankie Mephisto send you a book on Pope Gregory?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Like hell you don’t!’

  ‘I don’t.’

  ‘What’s he got on you? What are you scared of?’

  ‘Nothing. I’m not scared of anything.’

  ‘He’s got something on you. I can see it in your eyes. Guy like him doesn’t send people bedside reading. He sends them an Aberystwyth overcoat. You know what that is? It’s made of pine. He’s got something on you, I can smell it.’

  There was a stand-off. Sister Cunégonde stared at her lap. And then looked up at me and said quietly, ‘Can I have a rum?’

  I walked over to the kitchenette to fetch the bottle and a glass for her and poured us two generous measures. She lifted the glass and looked at me over the rim, her tongue making a slight dart along the dry pale lips.

  ‘Chin, chin,’ she said and knocked it back.

  At that moment she just looked like a sad and broken woman. She hiccupped on the scalding rum and said, ‘I can’t tell you what he has on me. I can’t. It’s too … too terrible. Please don’t ask. I’ll never say.’

  ‘So what does he want from you? Normally blackmailers want money, but it can’t be that.’

  ‘No, he doesn’t want money.’

  ‘What then?’

  ‘He wants me to do something. Something for him. Something soon.’

  ‘Something like what? A favour?’

  She turned the glass round in her hands. ‘Yes, a favour. But I don’t know what. He hasn’t told me.’

  My eyes narrowed slightly as I took that one in. I hadn’t been expecting it.

  ‘But he will. Oh, he will. And the only thing I know,’ she added, her voice quivering on the threshold of tears, ‘is that, knowing Frankie Mephisto, it will be something terrible. Something really, really awful. Horrible. And … and … worst of all …’ She looked up at me and the tears were curving down in snail trails either side of her sharp red nose. ‘Worst of all, I know that, whatever it is, I’ll do it.’

  Chapter 14

  THE INCIDENT BOARD was in the bin next morning. Nothing was said about it, and nothing was said about the dossier on Nanteos that had found its way to the top of the cupboard in the kitchen.

  I spent the rest of the week walking up and down the Prom. Two or three times a day I would run into Eeyore and ask how the search for Miss Muffet was going. He’d say it was going well and ask about Myfanwy. I’d say the signs were hopeful and I had plenty of leads to chase. But he knew that couldn’t be true because if I did, why wasn’t I chasing them? And I knew things weren’t looking good for Miss Muffet either. Normally when they ran away they turned up again after a few days, dusty and hungry and in need of a good brush. Usually, too, they had a sort of chastened air about them that said the big wide world was not such a great place after all. But when a few days passed without news you tended to fear the worst. You normally didn’t hear anything for a few months and then a friend would tell you how he’d been browsing in a bookshop in the red light district in Amsterdam and saw a donkey on the cover of a magazine that looked like her.

  In all that time we didn’t see anything of Gabriel Bassett either but I was glad in a way. On the Monday evening before he was due round I ran into a Cub Scout as I was leaving the office.

  ‘Bob-a-job, mate?’

  Green jumper, green and yellow cap, neckerchief, freshly scrubbed face glowing with youthful idealism. ‘Is it bob-a-job week already?’

  ‘If you’ve got a bob and a job it is.’

  ‘Sorry, son, the last Cub Scout I invited in stole the umbrella stand.’

  ‘You need an umbrella stand? Why didn’t you say, I can supply.’

  ‘Poxcrop! Is that you?’

  ‘Doing my duty for God and the Queen. Not necessarily in that order.’

  ‘How did you get the glow of youthful idealism?’

  ‘Saddle soap.’

  ‘Even your own mother wouldn’t recognise you.’

  ‘That’s truer than you think, Mac, I just washed her dishes for fifty pence.’

  ‘You did a bob-a-job for your own mum?’

  ‘I admit she wasn’t wearing her glasses. All the same. Didn’t even know me – her own flesh and blood. She said I should come back later and meet her son, we’d get on well together. Imagine that! As if I were the type to make friends with a lousy Cub Scout. After all these years, that’s how much she knows me.’

  ‘Bit of a mean trick to play on your own mum.’

  ‘What about the one she was going to play on me? Me, the little guy who suckled at her breast, she makes wash up for nothing. Some kid in a green and yellow cap turns up and she gives him fifty pence. She doesn’t know him from Adam. Where’s the justice in that? And then she says if only the Lord had sent her a little boy like him. I said, “Woman, behold your son.”’

  ‘So what have you got for me?’

  He pulled out a box of papers from under his arm and held it out. The sheet on the top said, Llanbadarn Parish Bugle.

  ‘I think you must have got your orders crossed.’ He lifted the top paper to reveal a periodical beneath. Journal of the Proceedings of the Myfanwy Society.

  ‘Complete set, pristine condition, all sixty issues including the special commemorative edition to mark the monkeys in space.’ He put the box down and added, before walking off, ‘I’ve also heard a whisper about the singer.’

  ‘Myfanwy?’

  ‘Just a whisper.’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘They say a special nurse has been engaged to look after her – Frankie Mephisto’s old consigliere.’

  ‘And who’s that?’

  ‘No one knows, Mac.’

  I left the box with Calamity and arrived at the office next day to find her asleep with her head down on the desk. A flask of coffee was next to her and the periodicals were scattered over the desktop and littering the floor. She flinched when she heard me walk in, jumped slightly and made a soft groan. I nudged her awake.

  ‘Hi!’ she said, peering at me through eyes gummed up with sleep. ‘I’ve been manning the phone.’

  I smiled and gave her shoulder a soft squeeze. ‘That’s good, but you don’t need to do it all night.’

  ‘You never know. If Myfanwy was trying to ring she might have to wait until a strange hour.’

  ‘I see you started on the periodicals.’

  ‘Uh-huh.’

  ‘Found anything?’

  ‘Uh-huh.’ She nodded towards the wall. One of the journals was pinned open. ‘Remember you telling me Frankie Mephisto had a … a … whatchamacallit in prison, that made him go all religious?’

  ‘An epiphany. The day he walked with Jesus and saw the wonder of his works.’ I walked over to the wall. ‘Maybe we should clear some of this mess up before Bassett comes. Today’s the big day.’

  ‘He’s not coming.’

  ‘No? What makes you say that?’

  ‘Just a hunch.’ She
nodded again at the wall.

  The periodical was opened to a black and white photo of Myfanwy aged seven or eight, maybe nine, sitting on a man’s knee. She was wearing a party frock and hair in cutey-pie pigtails. The man was wearing prison uniform. He smiled the beatific smile of one who is undergoing an unexpected epiphany. The caption read, ‘Even notorious gangster Frankie Mephisto is not immune to the charms of Myfanwy’s “Good Ship Lollipop”.’ Calamity came over and stood next to me.

  ‘It’s a Sunday school trip to sing to the prisoners, about fifteen years ago.’

  I looked at the face of Frankie Mephisto smiling into the camera and the hairs on my neck prickled as I experienced my own epiphany. I remembered where I had seen him before, why he had struck me as vaguely familiar when I went to visit him at Shrewsbury. He was the granddad parked next to us the day Myfanwy and I ate our last ice creams together at Ynyslas. The man whose beatific smile had misled me and caused me to reflect that the lustre of his forehead was the glow of avuncular philanthropy when in fact it was nothing more than the patina that comes from a lifetime of hitting noses.

  ‘Look at the guy standing behind him,’ said Calamity.

  It was Gabriel Bassett.

  Gabriel Bassett was due round at noon but we decided in the light of this new discovery that we couldn’t wait. Instead, we put on our coats and walked down to Harbour Row to pay him a call. The sign in the window said ‘No Vacancies’. I stood on the step and rang the bell. Like all the B&Bs along Harbour Row, the house fronted almost directly on to the street, separated from it by a stretch of yard about a foot wide which meant that I was almost brushing up against the bay window and could clearly see Mrs Gittins sitting in her front parlour, wearing a housecoat. She was warming herself in front of a gas fire, even though it wasn’t cold out. But, though I could see her, and she could see me, some strange protocol demanded that I pretend not to be able to see her and she pretended not to see me. She was knitting. After we got bored of the charade, I tapped on the window and pointed at the door. Mrs Gittins looked up with an expression of fake surprise, then stood up gingerly as if her joints had grit in them. She padded to the door in fluffy slippers. She opened the door a few inches and said, ‘No vacancies.’