Mr Vogel

by Lloyd Jones

  ‘Or he could have been one of those kids who tried to joke their way out of trouble,’ I replied. ‘Sometimes abused children have a black sort of humour. You know the ones. There’s always one in the playground, joking and messing about, but you know he’s having a bad time at home.’

  ‘Could be you’re right.’

  ‘Thanks Waldo. Any news about Martin? Is he catching up?’

  ‘Nope. Don’t know where he is – I’ve been tied up here. Can you meet me tomorrow? I’m going to half-inch Esmie’s file and bring it to you. I think you need to see it yourself. Bit sad. Where will you be tomorrow morning?’

  ‘Reckon I’ll be near Tudweiliog. I’m stiffening up, I’m not fit enough. I’ll give you a ring.’

  ‘OK. Keep it up. Bye.’

  I sit on the little hump-backed bridge in the centre of Aberdaron, looking at the farmers’ wives roaring up to the Spar store in their mud-spattered cars. Their eyes flicker over me as their husbands’ eyes scan their flocks and herds, to see if there’s anything wrong with me... looking for those traditional signs of a sick animal – a crooking of the back, a lack of interest, a lowering of the head, a slow detachment from the rest of the herd, then the lying down. Sick animals are the ones on their own in a corner of the field. Perhaps this self-isolation is autonomic, to lessen the chance of spreading a disease; perhaps it is an attempt to find a sanctuary to wait for recovery or death.

  I have no time to dwell on Aberdaron’s tired pilgrims. Like them, I am anxious to reach my goal, but I am also aware that in reaching it I will burst the bubble and wake from my dream. If the Sleeping Beauty’s year-long sleep is an analogy for a journey to the otherworld, then the prince’s kiss, or the return to reality, is indeed bitter-sweet. With that fillip, or shake of the shoulder, utopia is dispelled.

  I hurry up the hill towards Uwchmynydd and pant up the little concrete ribbon road to the top so that I can sit by the coastguard station. Here I can see the giants’ sea-soup coming to the boil, threatening to lift and topple Bardsey Island like a saucepan lid. Below me, in Bardsey Sound, the water seethes. The island lies serene and mysterious, aloof in her divorce. A lazy giant toys with the sea like a broken mirror, a buccaneer’s bauble washed up on a drumbeat shore, catching slivers of spring sunshine between the cracks. All around me the hills slumber like huge and unkempt trolls sleeping off a pagan feast, their fading green and brown costumes bulging with ancient dog-eared manuscripts, their pockets stuffed with all my country’s records and histories. I hear a bell clang, and the island seems to make a subtle shift to starboard. I will land there one day, if I can.

  I lie in the springy scratchiness of the heather, a flea in a beard, and follow the seagulls, air-surfing, choirboys running with their arms stretched out, all clean and white in their gowns, looking for a puddle to dive into.

  I think about Edwin. We have something in common, though I’m not the jokey one in the playground, I’m the moody one. A little matter of childhood memories. There’s one thing I’ve felt during this walk, and it has taken me a thousand miles to feel it, and it’s a fine feeling, to match the blue of the sky and the outbursting, popping brilliance of the yellow on the gorse, a new feeling to go with the great rushing realisation of spring, the surging sap, the birds changing their song and the animals quickening in a dance of exultation and exuberance. I feel it now. I have realised something – that all those little secrets locked up in drawers and bolted inside the bulwarks down there in my creaking hull must join the rest of me. They are part of me and my making, they are bubbles in my seaside rock, inkstains on my school desk, holes in my shoes, shit in my clouts, semen on my sheets. They are among my components, and I have grown used to them, those internal birthmarks which stain me in lichen blotches, and since they have been with me for so long I will take them with me and discourse with them about our common ancestry, so that they can join the rest of my whirring molecules, where they belong.

  My mind clouds over and my judgement is impaired by Martin’s chase. I decide I have no time to hug the coastline, as I normally do. I head off straight for Llangwnnadl along the B road, which is quiet enough for me to enjoy the hedgerows. Wales appears and disappears on the other side of the hawthorn hedge, like a naughty child playing peekaboo. A bank of primroses gives me a sudden surprise; that sublime yellow – I stand stupefied by that yellow against the variegated greens of the backdrop.

  I walk now, steadily along the fringe of grass by the roadside, among the daisies and the pineapple weed, and other common wayfarers of my ilk. The pineapple weed, which is extremely common in Britain, is a pilgrim in its own right, having started its journey in Asia. It was introduced into Britain – via the state of Oregon – in Victorian times. Since then it has marched along our roads at a sprightly pace.

  Whilst we’re on the subject of plants, I’d like to tell you about common comfrey and greater stitchwort. Comfrey roots were dug up by medieval herbalists and boiled to a sludge which was used like Plaster of Paris around broken bones – its name comes from the Latin conferre, meaning to bring together. Turning to greater stitchwort, which has easily-snapped stems, this plant was also used as a medicine to heal broken bones; made into an infusion with acorns and wine, it was further used to cure a stitch in the side, hence its name.

  Have I chosen my next guest at the Blue Angel bash? It’s time I decided, isn’t it?

  For a long time I was tempted to take our Old English friend, The Wanderer, with his eye for detail:

  The friendless man awakens and sees

  Dark ways before him, sea birds

  Bathing and spreading their feathers,

  Hoar-frost and snow falling...

  But I decided he’d be too mournful for the company:

  Thus I, so often weary with sorrow,

  Deprived of my native land,

  And far from my kinsmen who are free,

  Have to fetter my heart’s secrets.

  No, that won’t do at all. I think we need an entertainer, a troubadour, a jongleur or a trouvere who will make us laugh and remind us not to take ourselves too seriously.

  If you’ve forgotten, I’ll remind you that troubadours and their troupes were itinerant entertainers who thrived mainly in Provence in the Middle Ages – they moved from town to town and made a parlous living by treating the peasants to impromptu dancing, conjuring, acrobatics, singing and storytelling – they were the ones who brought us courtly love, the gusto and bawdiness behind Carmina Burana, and some of the coarse comic tales which inspired Chaucer.

  I can just imagine the arrival of a jongleur at a fair or a market place – it must have been a stirring event. I would join the heaving, noisy, sweaty crowd to hear him sing, accompanying himself on a lute, or performing a chanson de geste, which was a song about great deeds of chivalry. His stock in trade would be comic stories about lustful priests, lascivious women, and young men who were quick-witted and adept at fooling rich merchants and bedding their gullible wives. I would join in, making rude noises and wanton gestures, like the rest of them!

  The troubadours first came to prominence in the eleventh century when they joined forces with wandering clerics to sing songs and tell tales which attracted pilgrims to shrines. Many were aristocrats, some were kings. They were also an important source of information about wars, politics and fashions. I once met a minstrel called Roland, who was a man in their mould. He performed in the public places of Wales, and I met him outside Harlech Castle on a fine day for putting money in a cap. He wore a Basque beret when it was fashionable to do so, and he had a fine head of curly auburn hair, and a laughing cavalier growth on his chin, a gold ring in his ear. He wore the garb of a hobo or road monkey. He knew the lampooning interludes of Twm o’r Nant and could perform them rudely and comically with puppets. With a fiddle he played jigs and reels, and he delivered short satirical poems about the company around him. His teeth gleamed like a pirate’s and his body was made to boast of amours. Like me, he was a great contrast to normality
, but in a much more interesting way. How I wish I was that man. Roland will join Dic Aberdaron and myself to represent the three walkers in the public bar of the Blue Angel. Dic can sing his Song of Moses in Hebrew, Roland can play his fiddle and I will pass the hat round.

  I make good progress and I decide on a slight detour to visit the very beautiful church at Llangwnnadl, which has an atmosphere of sheer tranquillity. I rest awhile, a pagan in a Christian shrine, feeding like a mutant on other people’s peace. Nothing wrong with that. Get a fix while you can. I decide to end the day at Tudweiliog, and it’s dusk by the time I get there. I have enough bread and cheese to see me through the night. It’s going to be cold; the sky is clear and Venus is already beaming away like an interstellar lighthouse. I unfurl my sleeping bag in the porch and rest on one of the stone slabs on either side, having lifted the bristly doormat onto it. After a short nap I wake up. People are walking by, probably returning home from the pub. They chat boisterously and then their voices fade and I am left to the night. It is going to be a very long eight hours. As I have told you, I always carry two candles and a lighter in my top pocket, and I light one of them now, and try to warm myself, mentally, cupping its multi-layered flame with my hands. As I move my feet something rattles on the floor and I squat down, fumbling for the cause. It takes me ages to find it – a round disc, about the circumference of a coffee mug, with a raised edge. It is bluey-black and made of enamel or gunmetal. On it there is a dancing bear, painted in bright red paint. A little token from Little Bo Peep all those years ago, and it’s nearing its final destination. I had so nearly lost it, on the final lap of its journey.

  That night in the porch of Tudweiliog church seemed like the longest of my life, even if I did have an old bear to keep me company. I shivered for most of it. I was mighty glad to sense the dawn coming along, I can tell you. That’s one of the things about sleeping rough. You’re bloody glad to see another day, another sun.

  ESMIE’S STORY

  A PULSE went through me when I heard Waldo on the mobile.

  Dawn was still an hour away, and I was freezing.

  ‘You still alive there boy? Where are you?’

  ‘Yes – just about. Tudweiliog Church porch.’

  ‘I’m on my way down in the jalopy, should be there by first light. Got a guest, but you may not recognise him – he’s sober. Bye.’

  After that, every second of time made a personal appearance in the porch and gave me a long, lingering look of incredulity and pity. I packed my stuff and stamped about. The dancing bear jingled in my pocket.

  Waldo arrived after a couple of centuries. I huddled next to Paddy in the cab, warming myself, my teeth chattering and my fingers tingling.

  ‘Why do you do this to yourself?’ asked Paddy censoriously.

  ‘Just shut the fuck up, Paddy.’

  He looked like an extra in Night of the Living Dead.

  ‘Why are you sober, anyway?’

  ‘Shops are shut. Poor time management.’

  We all sat there like crash-test dummies, whilst I came back to life.

  That night was the coldest yet. A near death experience. Waldo fished out a battered Thermos from somewhere and put it in my hands.

  ‘Thanks Waldo. Thanks very, very much.’

  I drank his hot sugary coffee, thick and tangy. After a while he gave me another present – an envelope file in a sickly Love Hearts colour. Inside it was another file, which was much, much older. It may have been blue once; it was so faded and thumbed and frayed it needed a berth in a museum. Clipped onto the edge was a computer print-out.

  ‘I found that for you,’ said Paddy, as if he’d found the meaning of life.

  ‘Thanks Paddy. Thanks very much.’

  ‘On the internet. I thought it might be useful. Though I don’t see why I should help you when you don’t give us the slightest hint what’s going on. What about this Emmeline? Who is she? Sounds the emotional type – why does she want you to fly over to America as soon as you’ve finished your walk?’

  I was suddenly paralysed, as if a giant goblin had clamped a frozen hand on the back of my neck, as bullies do at school, until you nearly wet yourself, with that strange tingly feeling all over you.

  ‘Emmeline? She got in touch?’

  Paddy detected my excitement.

  ‘Ooo, I’ve hit a nerve, haven’t I?’

  I squirmed, and he knew it.

  ‘Tell me, Smurf-face, what’s going to happen now?’ asked Paddy. ‘Never left Wales in your life. Can you do it now? Don’t see it myself. Reading between the lines, troll-features, I reckon you cowered under a bridge somewhere nice and quiet until a hapless victim came by. But you’ll scarper back into your hidey-hole as soon as she says come and kiss me big boy’.

  I shivered, thinking about it all.

  ‘By the way,’ Paddy added, ‘your old friend from Tasmania and the Marek woman want a word. They think you’ve let them down rather badly.’

  I gazed guiltily at Paddy’s print-out, feeling like an alien. I’d forgotten about Williams and Marek, and the help they had given me. They seemed far away and irrelevant. I asked Paddy to e-mail them, telling them about the end of the walk. I’d get in touch afterwards, when I’d recovered.

  The print-out was headed And They Shall Walk Again. It said something like this:

  For twenty years Eleanor Roosevelt had been the most admired woman in America. But in a 1952 poll she was edged out by an Australian nurse, Sister Elizabeth Kenny.

  Sister Kenny had fought an amazing personal crusade against the crippling disease poliomyelitis, with a unique treatment scorned by the medical world.

  America suffered its worst epidemic in the history of polio during 1952, and hospitals were full of infected children.

  Born on a farm, Elizabeth Kenny was educated at home. As a typical Australian girl she enjoyed helping out on the land, tending the animals, and playing in the great outdoors.

  In 1907, when she was 27, Elizabeth decided to become a nurse, and after getting herself a uniform she tended to the people on her home patch. She had no formal qualifications. She dealt with all the usual ailments and farm injuries, but in 1911 she came across her first case of polio.

  Called out to a small cabin in the hinterland she encountered a little girl of two whose limbs were ‘painfully deformed’. Shocked, Sister Kenny jumped on her horse and rode to a place where she could send a telegram asking for advice.

  The response she got, apparently, was: Infantile paralysis. No known treatment. Do the best you can.

  Sister Kenny had nothing to fall back on except her own intuition.

  The little girl recovered completely.

  Elizabeth Kenny became an army nurse during the Great War but returned to treating polio victims in the early thirties, when polio became a worldwide epidemic.

  By 1950 polio had taken a grip on the world and there were a number of devastating epidemics in Europe and America. The disease was associated with summer and autumn, and as panic grew more and more children were deformed, swimming pools were closed and people shunned public places and events.

  Sister Kenny had great success and people took their children from all over the world to her clinic in Australia.

  Her methods were dismissed by the medical establishment, but her supporters arranged for her to visit America, home of the world’s most famous polio victim, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

  ‘Didn’t know Roosevelt was a polio victim,’ I mumbled in the cab.

  ‘Christ yes, and many more besides,’ said Paddy, as if he knew everything about polio. ‘You want some famous names? The film world’s full of them – Mia Farrow, Donald Sutherland, Francis Ford Coppola, Alan Alda... singers, now let’s see – Ian Dury, Joni Mitchell, Neil Young. Sportsmen – Jack Nicklaus and Chandrasekhar. Authors – Sir Walter Scott and Arthur C Clarke. Emperors – Claudius. Royalty – Lord Snowdon. They’re all over the damn place.’

  ‘OK, OK Paddy, that’s fine. Just let me finish thi
s.’

  By the early forties immobilisation was on the way out and the Kenny system was on the way in. As the polio toll rose, many hundreds of doctors and nurses were trained in her ways, and splints became obsolete – in 1947 a stockpile of more than 10,000 of them was sold for scrap.

  Sister Kenny became a mega-star, with crowds flocking to see her. Hollywood made a film about her, starring Rosalind Russell.

  With hindsight it was difficult to know what part Sister Kenny played in the war on polio, since her methods were obscure, and were disputed by many. But like Florence Nightingale and Agnes Hunt she became a beacon for those wishing to rid the world of a nasty disease which attacked perfectly normal children. It left a small percentage of them badly crippled, usually in the legs, and a small minority dead. So, before I even opened the file on little Esmie Falkirk, who was commemorated on that pagoda in Doctor Robert’s lavish garden, I knew we were dealing with a polio victim. But I had no idea that her condition was so tragic. Darkest Fate had found a malign and obscure curse to change Esmie’s life for ever.

  The light was gaining strength, so Waldo extinguished the cab light and I finished off the coffee. It was time to go. Reading my thoughts, Waldo confirmed the bad news I was expecting: ‘He’s at Pwllheli. You’ve got to have a good day today.’

  ‘Have you finished at the hospital?’ I asked him.

  ‘Not quite.’

  ‘There’s one last thing.’

  ‘There’s always one last thing with you. Go on then.’

  ‘That photograph of all the children in the hospital. Try to find out more about it. I think there’s more to it than Christmas. There are some presents on Esme’s bed but none on any of the others. And that teddy bear on Vogel’s bed. Dr Robert Jones looks as though he’s presenting it to him, as if it were a prize. Will you try?’