Aberystwyth Mon Amour an-1

by Malcolm Pryce

  'Now we just sit here and wait for our turn in the sun again,' said Brother Bill.

  'I've never heard of your organisation.'

  'Not many people have,' hissed Gilbert excitedly, 'you can join if you like!'

  'Why would I want to join a bunch of losers like you?'

  The brotherhood looked at me sadly. Not with indignation, but with that infuriating understanding that holy men have for other people's human failings.

  'Ah, Brother Louie, you're still in denial.'

  'Don't give me your cheap armchair psychology,' I shouted.

  'Please don't get annoyed,' said Bill. 'For a long time I was just like you.'

  'Look, I'm not like you, OK? I'm a good friend of Myfanwy.' It sounded pathetic.

  They exchanged glances with a mute understanding but said nothing.

  'And don't look at me like that!' I had started to shout again, and to speak faster as if speed would somehow add the conviction that I now felt irresistibly seeping away. 'I'm not like you. This is all a mistake. I came late so there was no room at the front. That's why I'm sitting here; you watch, when she comes she'll come and talk to me!' I was staring around wildly now, almost challenging anyone in the brotherhood to contradict me. But all I met with was a bottomless well of compassion and understanding.

  'It's all right, Louie, we understand.'

  'No you don't.'

  'Oh yes. It's all a mistake. Don't worry, there's no need to get upset.'

  'I'm not upset!' And then aware of the passion in my voice I said again in a controlled tone, 'I'm not upset.'

  'Of course. But there is one thing you should know. Myfanwy won't come back here to talk to you, the girls don't come back here.'

  This time Brother Bill grabbed my arm with sudden urgency, 'But that doesn't mean you don't have a chance. Everyone has a chance.'

  'Oh really!' I sneered. 'Is that what you think? Everyone has a chance, do they? Even old Brother what's-his-face over there drooling into his pint?'

  They turned and looked sadly at an old man at the end of the table. He was trying desperately to follow the conversation but it was obvious his hearing wasn't good enough. Instead he sat there trembling and forcing himself to laugh when the others did.

  'That's Brother Tobias, and he has as good a chance as anyone.' The warmth had left Brother Gilbert's voice now.

  Brother Bill leaned across to me. 'You didn't ought to talk about the brothers like that. You didn't ought to disrespect them.'

  'Well wise up and see the truth. Brother Tobias doesn't stand a chance with Myfanwy and neither do any of you.'

  Brother Frank punched the table and squealed at my heresy. 'No! No! No! It's not true! Everyone has a chance!'

  'Because Myfanwy is so good and pure.'

  'Is that what you think, is it?' I sneered.

  'I can prove it!'

  'Yeah! How?' If only I hadn't asked.

  Brother Frank brought his face right up to mine, his eyes moist with anger.

  'Because . . . because she even went out with that crippled schoolboy!'

  'Could have had any man in Wales, as well,' added Gilbert.

  I sat there aware that my stomach had just dropped into my shoes. For seconds I couldn't speak, until finally I managed, 'Wh . . . what did you say?'

  'The crippled schoolboy — with the bad leg. The one that died. Lovers they were.'

  'You mean Dai Brainbocs?'

  'Yes!' Gilbert insisted. 'Him!'

  'Good God!' I said finally.

  I sat unable to speak or move. Twenty minutes later Bianca walked in and told me Myfanwy was up at the hospital. Evans the Boot was dead.

  Chapter 13

  IT WAS RAINING heavily outside and the streets, glassy and shiny, were largely deserted as I sped down Great Darkgate Street to the hospital. My heart was racing and my mouth dry with fear; the news that Evans the Boot was dead meant nothing, but the revelation that Myfanwy and Brainbocs had been lovers was a pile-driver to the heart. At the hospital I parked as close as I could get to the main door, stepped out and walked across through the driving rain to the garishly lit entrance. A policeman stepped out of the shadows and blocked my way.

  'Where you going?'

  'Is there a law against visiting the hospital?'

  'It's not visiting hours, come back in the morning.'

  Another figure stepped out of the shadows. It was Llunos. As usual he didn't look pleased to see me.

  'Your mum shag a vulture, or what?'

  'What's that mean?'

  'Every time I find a corpse, you turn up.'

  'I could say the same for you.'

  'You could but you'd need to visit the dentist after. What do you want?'

  I realised there was no way Llunos was going to let me in, so I decided on a long shot — the truth. 'I need to see Myfanwy.'

  I could see he was unused to dealing with it.

  'What makes you think she's here?'

  'Someone told me they found Evans and she's down at the morgue. I don't need to go in, my business is with her, not Evans the Boot. If you could get a message to her, to tell her I was here, I could wait over there in my car.'

  The uniformed policeman started to laugh, 'Oh isn't that sweet! If we could just get a message —'

  Llunos shut him up by waving an impatient hand at him. Then he looked at me, 'In your car?'

  I nodded.

  'OK we can do that. I'll let her know.'

  I waited in the car for about half an hour, listening to the rhythmic droning of the windscreen wipers. Eventually I saw Myfanwy walking through the parked cars towards me. I flashed the lights. When she got in we were both in near-prefect darkness but even though I couldn't see, I could tell she'd been crying.

  'Myfanwy -'

  'Don't.'

  Silence filled the car and amplified the sounds as we shifted in our seats.

  'Can we just drive somewhere?'

  'Where?'

  'Anywhere, it doesn't matter. Please.'

  I turned on the engine.

  'Anywhere as long as it's away from Aberystwyth.'

  The rain was driving hard, sweeping in from the sea. Outside the hospital car park I turned right, up over Penglais Hill, and on into the darkened landscape beyond. Myfanwy told me about Evans. He'd been found earlier in the day by a man walking his dog. The dog had run off to fetch a stick and returned with a finger. The body had been crudely buried under gorse bushes but little attempt had been made to conceal it. Someone had disfigured it and removed the fingerprints in the time-honoured way of immersion in a mixture of battery acid and local cheese. Police were still hopeful of a positive identification when the pathologists were finished.

  We drove to the caravan. I shouldn't have revealed its location to Myfanwy but I didn't care. The park was quieter than a cemetery when we arrived, the only sound the squeaking of the Fresh Milk sign from the general store and the far-off hum of the ocean beyond the dunes. The rain had stopped. It was cold and damp inside the caravan, but the camping-gas heater soon filled the interior with a cosy yellow warmth. The lamps sighed as they burned. Myfanwy sat at the horse-shoe arrangement of seats at the end, rested her elbows on the Formica table-top and buried her head wearily in her hands. I made two cups of packet soup in the kitchenette, poured a shot of rum into each, and took them over to the table. Myfanwy had found the ludo and was setting out the counters.

  'Suppose you tell me about Brainbocs.'

  She rolled the dice. Four and a five; you needed a six to start.

  'What do you mean?'

  I rolled a six and a one, and set off on my journey around the board. How many other people, honeymooners and young families, had made the same journey as the rain swept in from the sea and pounded on the plywood roof of their shoebox on wheels? Families who had driven for two or three hours, stopping occasionally for puking children, to this world of gorse and marram grass, dunes and bingo and fish and chips.

  'Your cousin's dead, Myfanwy. Don't yo
u think it's time to stop playing games?'

  She picked up the dice and shook. They made a hollow clip-clopping sound inside the cup.

  'I'm not playing games.'

  'You haven't been straight with me.' Clip-clop, four and three.

  'I've told you everything I know.' Double six. 'Oooh!'

  I put my hand palm down on the counters before she could move them.

  'You didn't tell me you and Brainbocs were lovers.'

  It caught her by surprise and she bit her lip. 'We weren't.'

  'That's not what I hear.'

  'Well whoever told you that was a liar. We weren't lovers. I mean we didn't you know ... do it.'

  'What did you do?'

  'Nothing. Honest.'

  'Why don't you tell me about it?'

  'It's not like you think.'

  'You don't know what I think.'

  'We weren't lovers, he just had this thing about me. All through school he'd had a thing about me; a lot of boys did. It's not a crime.'

  'No,' I said gently, 'but a crime has been committed, and now you have to be straight with me.'

  Clip-clop, double five. She paused. 'It started just after I took the job at the Moulin - when he found out about it he was really upset. He came down one night but they wouldn't let him in. So he waited outside. I left that night with a gentleman and I saw Brainbocs just as I got into the car. He was standing in the doorway of Army Surplice and staring like he'd seen a ghost. The next night he was there again. And the next. It came to be a pattern: he'd come down and try to get in, they wouldn't let him, and then he'd spend the rest of the evening standing outside. At first the bouncers tried to frighten him away. But he didn't seem to care. I think he knew there wasn't much they could do to a poor lame boy. When it rained he stood there in the rain, soaked and not even shivering. Eventually the boss asked me to go and speak to him. So I did.'

  'When did all this happen?'

  The Legendary Welsh Chanteuse stuck her tongue into one cheek like a schoolgirl doing a hard sum.

  'It started last autumn. At Christmas be stopped coming. Then at Easter he ... he died.'

  I nodded and wondered at the casual precision with which she recited the dates. Wasn't it all a bit late in the day for a revelation such as this?

  'So what happened when they sent you out to speak to him?'

  'He said, "Myfanwy, please don't do this." I said, "Do what?" (like I didn't know); and he said, "Work in this establishment." Just like that, "Work in this establishment", like he was straight out of Oliver Twist.'

  'And then what?'

  She sighed and lowered her eyes back to the board. 'So I said, "What do you want?" And he didn't really say anything for a long time. He just kept looking at me like he wanted me to know but didn't want to say it. So I said it again, "What do you want? I've got to go back to work." And then it started to rain and I told him again I really had to go back inside. And then he put his hand on my arm. A hand like a girl's and he said, "Myfanwy, I love you." Just like that, and I laughed. And then when I saw the look on his face, I sort of stopped laughing. He looked like . . .' The words trailed off. Myfanwy's jaw moved silently as she struggled to find an expression appropriate for the abyss of misery to which her careless laugh had condemned the lame, unworldly scholar. But she couldn't. There was no experience in her carefree life to match his despair. How did I know? I, who had never met Brainbocs, and had never observed the scene in the rain outside the Moulin Goch? Oh, I knew. I just knew.

  'Anyway,' she said finally, 'he looked really hurt.'

  Clip-clop, one and five.

  'And he asked me if he could buy me an ice cream the next day after he finished school. At first I said no. And then he pleaded and still I said no. It wasn't that I didn't want to, I just knew that if I said yes, that look in his eyes, I just knew it would come to no good. Then Mr Jenkins appeared in the doorway across the road and tapped his watch. I said again that I had to go. And again he begged me to have an ice cream with him. And then something awful happened.'

  She looked up from the board and straight at me.

  'Yes?'

  'He started unbuckling that metal thing he has on his leg. The what's-it-called?'

  'Calliper?'

  'And I said, 'Dai what are you doing?' And he said he was going on his knees!'

  I shook my head in sympathy at the sad scene.

  'So of course I agreed to have an ice cream. But only on condition, I said, that he never came waiting outside the Club like this again and that he didn't go round telling everyone he was my boyfriend, just because I had an ice cream with him.'

  'Did he agree?'

  'Yes. Next day I met him at Sospan's, but it was a cold day and so we went to the Seaside Rock Cafe and over a plate of humbug rock he proposed. He asked me to marry him. I told him not to be so stupid. And he said, "It's my leg isn't it?" I said, "No, of course not." And then he said something strange. He said, "Myfanwy, what is the one thing you want more than anything in this world?" And I said "Nothing." But he wouldn't listen. He said there must be something I wanted. He said I must have a dream. I said no. And he said everybody, even a beggar, has a dream. But again I said no. And he went all quiet. Paid for the rock and left. That was in November, and weeks went by and I never saw him. Then as I left the Club on Christmas Eve, there he was again standing in the doorway as the snow fell. And do you know what?'

  I raised my eyebrows.

  'He had one of my school essays with him. From long ago. I hadn't a clue where he got it. It was about how it had been my dream to sing in the opera in Patagonia, and how I would give my hand in marriage to the man who made my dream come true. I'd forgotten I'd written it. And he held it under my nose and said, "See, you have a dream!" And I laughed sarcastically and said, "No, David, I had a dream. I don't have a dream any more. Now I'm just a Moulin girl with no time for dreams." Then he said, "One day I will make your dream come true, and then you will marry me." I was going to laugh but the look in his eyes . . . well I knew I shouldn't. So I just stared at him. And then he walked away. That was the last I saw of him. Limping off into the snow on Christmas Eve. Then a few weeks later a package arrived for me. There was no letter, just the essay. All about Cantref-y-Gwaelod; I didn't even bother reading it. Then one day I read that he'd been killed.'

  'And what did you do with the essay?'

  'I gave it to Evans the Boot.'

  *

  It was sometime between two and three when I pulled up outside the Orthopaedic Boot store on Canticle Street. I was dog-tired and made only the vaguest attempt at parking straight before climbing the sad wooden stairs to my office. It was like climbing Everest. I didn't bother changing, just collapsed on to the bed. As soon as my head hit the pillow I was asleep and as soon as that happened the phone rang.

  'Yes?'

  'Where on earth have you been?'

  'Uh?'

  'You've got to come quick.' It was Bianca.

  'Bianca? What's up?'

  'I'm in trouble. I haven't got much time. Can you come here now?'

  'Why what's happened?'

  'I've got the essay.'

  The hair on my head would have stood on end if it hadn't been too tired.

  'You've what?'

  'The essay. I've stolen it, when Pickel catches me he'll —' There was a scream, and the line went dead.

  When I arrived at her flat in Tan-y-Bwlch her front door was ajar. Furniture and fixtures were thrown across the floor, crockery was smashed, papers littered the carpet. There were bloody handprints on the wall and smeared down the gloss white of the door. I looked at the phone and knew I should call Llunos. Things had gone far enough. And for all I knew, the police could be on the way here right now. I looked at the phone. I really should call the police, but I didn't.

  Chapter 14

  I FOUND HIM sitting next to the cauldron in a belfry that smelled faintly of gin. Alerted by the sound of stair-climbing he was already looking at the entrance when I walk
ed in.

  'What do you want? This is private property."

  There was no wind, no sensation at all except the steady whirr of the clockwork, and the faint smell of gin.

  'Where is she? And don't say "who?"'

  'Fuck off.'

  The floor was a series of boards suspended high up in the tower. In the middle there was a gaping chasm and beneath it the fabulous iron and brass monster of the clockwork mechanism. It was from here that Mr Dombey had fallen or been pushed into the shark's jaw of the cogs. And at the moment it separated me from Pickel. I started to walk round towards the other side.

  Pickel picked up a brass rod from the floor. 'You stay where you are.'

  'The deal is very simple, Pickel. Tell me where she is, or I throw you into the clock.'

  He waved the rod uncertainly and took a step back. 'That's close enough.'

  I continued walking and ducked under the horizontal spindle that turned the hands.

  'I'm warning you!'

  I took another step. 'There was blood on the walls.'

  He stepped back again and shook his head. 'Not me.'

  'If you've harmed her, I'll kill you.'

  'You've got the wrong man.'

  'Why don't you tell me who the right man is?'

  I looked down at the precipice. Lying on the floor a few feet from the edge was an old blacksmith's anvil. Covered in dust and cobwebs now, but probably used at some point in the past to repair a piece of the machinery. Pickel's gaze landed on it at the same time and the same thought went through both our heads.

  'No!' howled Pickel.

  I smiled.

  'Don't you dare!'

  He made a jump towards me but stopped like a fly hitting a window pane the moment I rested my foot on top of the anvil.

  'Don't what?'

  He was standing on one foot, poised like a relay racer waiting for the baton. Immobilised by the terror that any movement of his might induce me to slide the lump of iron over the edge and into the teeth of his beloved clock.

  'Don't do it,' he cried in a softer voice. 'Please!'

  'Where is she?'

  He held his hands out in supplication. 'I don't know.' It was a simple statement delivered in the beseeching, wheedling tone of a mother begging for her baby back.

  I pushed the anvil a bit further until it was lying at the very edge of the precipice. The clock was well built, but still extremely delicate. An anvil crashing through it would do a lot more damage than the emaciated frame of Mr Dombey.