From Aberystwyth with Love

by Malcolm Pryce

  ‘I don’t know Mr Edgbaston.’

  ‘You’re looking at him now, or rather at the husk that once contained the impostor known as Edgbaston.’ He reached out a hand to shake. ‘Stanley. Stanley Edgbaston. I would give you one of my cards but I burned them all.’

  ‘Louie Knight.’

  ‘What do you do?’

  ‘I sell spinning wheels.’

  ‘I was in extruded aluminium. Hard to believe, isn’t it?’

  ‘What are you in now?’

  ‘Now? Now I inhabit a different world, one where a man scorns to have his soul bend to the crude arbitrage of such labels. The man who for thirty years submitted to that yoke is gone.’

  ‘Was he your brother?’

  ‘He was a Judas. He wore these clothes, he wore this face. For many years he drove a Vauxhall Cavalier with the same registration number as mine up the M69 every morning and ate my breakfast at the Heston Services. He slept with my wife every night and he dandled my little ones. But he is gone now and with him the falsehood he called a life. His wife and children beg for crusts, and his little one asks each morning, “Mummy, when is daddy coming back?” ’ He finished with the cuff, and grabbed the knot of his tie and rammed it into his Adam’s apple. ‘Spinning wheels you say? What sort?’

  ‘Oh you know, the usual: Sleeping Beauties, Cinderellas, full Saxons mostly and a few semi-automatics, nothing fancy.’

  He nodded. ‘You’ll have to tell me about it.’

  ‘Most of my work is secret: for the government.’

  He mouthed a silent ‘ah’ in acknowledgement as if this was just as he’d suspected.

  We dined with Edgbaston and the girl in Welsh national dress who was sharing the compartment with Calamity. Her name was Natasha and she was returning to Hughesovka from her finishing school in Caerphilly. When I arrived, Edgbaston was talking about the day he killed himself.

  ‘For twenty years we had been telling our customers that plastic was no good, that aluminium was the only suitable material for replacing a wooden door. We preached it every day, from morning to night, like Jehovah’s Witnesses. It was a mission. They used to come back at us and say, “Ah yes, but aluminium sweats doesn’t it? You get condensation, don’t you, which you don’t get with plastic?” And they were right, of course, but then we confounded them by thermally breaking our aluminium. You probably don’t know what that is but it means joining two sections with a seal of resin so that the heat can’t transfer. It was a masterstroke. Suddenly you get the strength and resilience and good looks of aluminium combined with the thermal properties of plastic. The bloke who thought of that should have got the Nobel Prize. That was in 1981. There was no stopping us then, or so we thought. And then one day we were all called in to a special sales meeting and the marketing director gave us the news that we would be selling plastic alongside aluminium from now on. He even had the gall to suggest that it would be a boon to us, an extra string to our bow. Not a nod to the fact that we had spent all our lives insisting it was no good. Our universe fell apart. We weren’t spivs, you see, we were honest guys. People think salesmen are all full of shit, but it’s not true. Most of them find it easy to do their job because they believe what they are saying. Selling doors might not be heroic like being a fireman or something, but we can’t all be firemen and there is a quiet satisfaction that comes from knowing that you’ve been persuading people to buy your product because it is genuinely in their best interests. You’ve been telling them the truth. And then you find that you’ve been talking a load of crap all your life like some cheap sit-com parody of a travelling salesman . . .’ He stopped and lowered his head as if once again reliving the pain. Natasha looked moved and squeezed his forearm as if to say that no matter how black things got he must not give up. When he spoke again it was in a distant voice, as if addressing someone from his burned up past.

  ‘When we raised this point in the meeting, the point about our shattered credibility, they said, “Oh, now we’ve addressed that. We’ve been working on this plastic system for three years in close partnership with the Swedish manufacturers and we’ve ironed out all the problems.” But you only had to take one look at the suite to know the truth: it was just a cheap off-the-shelf system hastily branded with our name and brought in from the continent to stem the haemorrhage of sales figures to plastic. And because it was a cheap off-the-peg system it had all the problems we had been descrying for years, in spades. Plus a few more we had never thought of.’

  ‘And so you burned your business cards,’ said Natasha sadly.

  ‘What else was there to do?’

  ‘But what about your little children?’

  He looked up and now there were tears in his eyes. ‘Leaving them was the hardest decision I’ve ever had to make. But what sort of father would I have been to them if I had continued living that lie?’

  Silence engulfed us for a while. On the other side of the window a group of ghostly doppelgängers dined, served by transparent waiters. A tiny moon raced alongside, gently bobbing up and down like a stone skimming the surface of a lake; trees and copses swooped past like diving birds.

  I said to Natasha, ‘You must have loved Caerphilly, the pleasure pier is wonderful.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Natasha, ‘although I didn’t spend too much time there, the sea makes my tummy queasy.’

  ‘Don’t be daft,’ said Edgbaston, ‘Caerphilly is thirty miles from the sea.’

  Natasha gasped. ‘Oh!’

  ‘And there’s definitely no pier there, I know that because I’ve been.’

  ‘There’s a nice castle,’ I said. ‘It looks a little like a pier from a distance.’

  She thought for a second and then exhaled as if defeated. ‘I’m such an idiot. I told them I could never hope to fool a guy like you.’

  ‘Told who?’

  ‘Them.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘I can’t tell you.’

  Edgbaston and Calamity and I exchanged automatic glances, empty of meaning.

  ‘Please don’t ask me about it . . . Oh, this is all so . . . all so . . . so horrible!’ She flung her napkin down and threw her face into her hands and emitted the sounds of muffled weeping.

  ‘Steady on, miss,’ said Edgbaston.

  ‘No! Don’t! Please . . . please don’t say anything.’ She stood up and rushed away in the direction of the sleeping carriage. The waiter observed through half-closed eyes and gave out a studied yawn, expressing the deepest imaginable ennui.

  ‘Women!’ said Edgbaston. ‘Can’t live with them, can’t bury them beneath the patio . . . oops! What have I said!’ He gave me a bone-chilling wink.

  During the night, to the soothing background sound of clanking wheels and creaking wood, France turned into Germany. Periodically the hypnotic rocking of the train would subside, imperceptibly, until it had gone completely and a tingling silence remained. At such times I would crawl to the end of my bed and peer out through the gap between the edge of the blind and the window frame at an unknown station, bathed in yellow electric light. No one would be around except perhaps a station master somewhere cradling a cup of coffee, listening to the radio, his presence sensed rather than seen. Moths swarmed round the lights, and far away other lights flickered green and red. By dawn we had reached Munich. I ate breakfast alone, neither Stanley, Calamity nor Natasha turned out. I took out the photo of the invisible imaginary friend holding the levitated dog. What did it mean? Assuming the imaginary presence of Gethsemane Walters did not really have corporeal form, it meant somebody must have rigged this shot up. But to what purpose? And was it really possible that the spirit of Gethsemane could have travelled to Hughesovka?

  The next day dragged by, we skirted alpine foothills and entered Austria. Vienna arrived and four Austrian policemen boarded the train and took Edgbaston away. They saluted me and called me ‘sir’ but didn’t say why they were taking him away and I knew cops well enough not to waste time asking. Stanley avoided my gaze.

  Th
e sky filled with cloud, the light dimmed, the waiter was replaced by a plumper, less supercilious one with a moustache. Dumplings appeared on the menu and Budapest station slid past the window. It was nice being alone in the compartment. I examined the letter Sospan had given me to deliver to Mr Tepes. It seemed improbably light considering its contents were somehow of such moment that they were paying for our travel expenses to Hughesovka. I obtained a flask of boiling water from the dining car and back in the compartment I steamed open the letter. It was empty. I was a courier for an empty envelope.

  That evening, Natasha was late for dinner and missed the soup course. Calamity read through the itinerary. ‘We need to get the local train to Sighisoara and then look out for Igor. He’s got a walleye. We deliver the envelope . . .’

  ‘Which is empty.’

  ‘Which is empty. We deliver it to the Count and dine tonight as his guest. Tomorrow we get the milk train back to Brasov and pick up the Orient Express from there.’

  ‘Are you sure he is a Count?’ I asked.

  Calamity looked mildly irritated. ‘Of course he is! He’s directly descended from Vlad the Impaler. That makes him a count or something like it.’

  ‘It just says Mr on the envelope.’

  ‘He probably doesn’t like to give himself airs.’ She considered for a second and then said, ‘So, how much of the fare does this side-trip pay for?’

  ‘All of it. Our entire trip to Hughesovka is being paid for by the Count.’

  ‘That’s a bit strange, isn’t it?’

  ‘Considering the envelope we are delivering seems to be empty, that’s very strange.’

  ‘Maybe he likes Welsh envelopes.’

  ‘That’s possible but for a man of such means there must be easier ways of satisfying his craving.’

  ‘Maybe he likes visitors from Wales.’ Calamity scraped her soup spoon in random circles across the base of her dish, her brow furrowed by the intrusion of a new thought. ‘So who do you think killed Arianwen?’

  ‘The Witchfinder.’

  ‘Why do you think that?’

  ‘Well, who do you think did it?’

  ‘The Witchfinder,’ said Calamity. ‘But I don’t know why. Just because I think he’s insane. Do you think he killed the students?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I don’t know. I just do. He’s mixed up in all this, but I’m not sure what all this is. The bit where he goes to see Goldilocks on death row is the giveaway.’

  ‘Only if Goldilocks was innocent.’

  ‘He was innocent. No one kills a girl and buries her shoes in his own garden. Or at least, some people might but not someone from a criminal gang.’

  ‘We haven’t got much to go on, have we?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Are we doing this to try and nail the Witchfinder for killing Arianwen, or to find out what happened to Gethsemane or because we really liked Uncle Vanya?’

  ‘All of them, I guess. But really because we owe it to Vanya. We have to try and if it doesn’t cost us anything . . . we have to try.’

  The waiter cleared the soup dishes and asked if Mademoiselle Natasha would be joining us. Calamity explained that she had a slight headache but would be along shortly. After he went, she said, ‘I think you need to watch out for Natasha.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Honey-trapper. I’ve got a hunch.’

  ‘What do you know about such things?’

  ‘I’ve been reading the book. It’s all to do with the psychology. First thing they do is tell the guy he is different. Every man secretly thinks he is different.’

  ‘Haven’t you got better things to do than read such nonsense?’

  ‘It’s not nonsense. We can adapt some of the techniques in our own investigations.’

  ‘Somehow I doubt it.’

  ‘Then comes the saviour routine. All men dream of saving a damsel in distress. So the girl pretends to be in some kind of trouble and doesn’t know what to do. It sounds corny but men can’t resist it. Then there is some mushy stuff about the poor little sisters and brothers starving by the empty hearth at home.’

  ‘What happens if the guy guesses it’s a honey-trap?’

  ‘The girl just admits it and burst into tears. She tells him she has broken the cardinal rule of honey-trapping and fallen in love with the John. Works every time.’

  A moment later Calamity kicked me under the table to warn of the arrival of Natasha. ‘Hi,’ she said looking up and speaking in that artificial tone of voice that indicates you have just been talking about the person arriving. ‘Hope your headache is better.’

  Later, as Hungary faded unseen and Romania fused with it somewhere, Calamity made the excuse of tiredness and returned to her compartment to read more of her book. Natasha grabbed my hand and begged forgiveness for the performance of the previous night.

  ‘I’m so ashamed,’ she said, although I was not sure why. ‘Dragging you into all this.’

  ‘Into all what?’

  ‘No, no, no don’t! It’s my problem.’

  ‘Are you in trouble?’

  ‘Please don’t make me say! Let’s get drunk and forget all our pain and woe. The night is still young – waiter! Waiter! Another bottle of wine, please!’ She emptied the one already on the table into our glasses, filling them to the brim and spilling the dark ruby wine on to the tablecloth. She gulped back half a glass and forced me to do the same. She did it again and again and soon we were drunk. I asked about Hughesovka and she told me about the mausoleum in which they kept the embalmed body of John Hughes. I said it sounded wonderful. I talked about the challenges facing someone in the spinning-wheel trade. Midway into the third bottle of wine the conversation dropped and she looked sad. There was silence.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ I said. I grasped her hand across the table.

  ‘Everything, everything, it’s all so . . . so . . . horrible.’

  ‘Tell me about it.’

  ‘I can’t, oh God! I should never have dragged you into it. You’re such a good, decent, kind man . . .’

  ‘Tell me about the trouble you are in. Maybe I can help.’

  She stroked my hand and smiled through tears welling up. ‘It’s kind of you but what can a . . . a guy who sells little wheels do against . . . against them?’

  ‘But—’

  ‘Oh Louie, you are so sweet! A sweet old, dear old, salesman who spends his days looking at treadles and yarn and never even dreams of the sort of problems girls like me get into.’

  ‘Girls like you?’

  ‘You see! Two days and you still haven’t guessed. You’re such a sweetie.’

  ‘What are you saying?’

  ‘Oh Louie, don’t look like that, it’s not a criticism. I like you being innocent. It’s so funny. That other gentleman knew straight away.’

  ‘What other gentleman?’

  ‘The one who murdered his wife and kids. Mr Edgbaston.’

  ‘Who told you he did that?’

  ‘The guard.’ She looked away bashfully. ‘He knew my game too.’

  ‘Are you saying you are a prostitute?’

  She gasped in horror. ‘Louie, how dare you! Of all the . . . well . . . I . . .’

  ‘I’m sorry, I’m confused, it’s the wine. I didn’t mean it . . .’

  She smiled. ‘Yes, now it’s me being silly. After all, there’s not a lot of difference, really, is there?’

  ‘Between what?’

  ‘You know, a girl like what you said, and what I do for a living.’

  ‘What do you do?’

  ‘I’m a honey-trapper, silly!’

  ‘You are?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Who you trying to trap?’

  ‘Why, you of course!’

  I blinked in astonishment.

  ‘Oh, you look so funny. Your face!’

  ‘But why?’

  ‘To pass my exams, why else? You see, I haven’t qualified yet, I’m still learning.’
/>
  ‘But why on earth are you dressed in Welsh national dress?’

  ‘Because you’re from Wales. They told me it would turn you on.’ Her face fell. ‘But of course if you don’t think I’m pretty it doesn’t matter really how I dress, does it?’

  ‘But you are pretty.’

  ‘That’s exactly the sort of sweetheart thing I would expect you to say. That’s what I like about you, Louie, you’re different.’

  ‘No I’m not.’

  ‘You see! Every other man I’ve said that to has been secretly flattered.’

  ‘So you’ve said it to lots of men, have you?’

  ‘Only in class. This is my first . . . practical.’

  ‘I’m touched.’

  ‘As I say, it’s my first time, so don’t expect the earth to move . . . except outside the window, ha ha!’ She gave a shrill drunken laugh at her feeble joke.

  ‘But we’re . . . we’re not going to . . . you know. Are we?’

  ‘You don’t want me?’

  ‘Of course I want you, but it feels all wrong. You just offering it to me like a butcher giving me a steak. A man needs to . . . to . . .’

  ‘You need to woo me, don’t you? I should have known. It’s my inexperience, you see. I’ve blown it. Now I’ll never get the job . . .’ Her face twisted in anguish. ‘Oh Louie!’ She squealed and grasped my hand with fervour. ‘Can’t we just do it and forget about the world and everything in it? Just one night, that’s all. Oh please, Louie, please make love to me. Think of my little sisters starving in Hughesovka, don’t you want them to have a life too? Do you want to condemn them to spending the rest of their lives travelling on the Orient Express dressed in stovepipe hats? Is that what you want? Don’t they deserve to have a life too? Don’t they deserve to see the beautiful trees and flowers and walk under the stars just like you?’

  ‘This is just crazy.’

  ‘Think of little Lizaveta and Tanya, Louie. Think of their little hungry tummies and the pain in their uncomprehending eyes as they sit next to the cold fireplace.’