Last Tango in Aberystwyth

by Malcolm Pryce

  The Philanthropist was sitting in an electric wheelchair just inside the half-open French windows observing my progress keenly. Even from fifty yards away I had no trouble in guessing who it was. There was only one person it could be. My old adversary, the locust-sized criminal genius Dai Brainbocs; or as he now preferred to call himself, Dr Faustus. When I arrived he reached out his hand to me excitedly. ‘I really am most thrilled to meet you again, dear Louie.’ He pumped my hand and I stared at him still groggy but the fog slowly clearing.

  The butler wheeled me in through the doors to a wood-panelled dining-room. Brainbocs drove alongside in his electric car. Last time we met he had been able to walk; maybe this was one of those degenerative things even his fancy Florida surgeons couldn’t help. We took our places at either end of the long table that was already set for lunch.

  ‘Before we proceed,’ said Brainbocs, ‘I hope you will understand if I quash any silly ideas that you will inevitably entertain about escape. Rhodri, if you would be so good.’

  The butler brought from the mantelpiece another belt identical to mine and laid it down on the tabletop. Then he brought a metal dish of what looked like liver. ‘These belts are quite popular with some of the police forces in South America, although this isn’t an original, I made it myself out of some electronic camera flashes. It works just the same, though. Do anything to upset me and it delivers an electric shock of ten thousand volts straight to the kidneys. This isn’t actually kidney on the plate, it’s liver, but I think you will get the idea.’ He picked up a remote-control device and pressed. There was a flash from the belt and a crackle and then the room filled with the acrid smell of burning meat.

  ‘Well I think you may start serving us lunch now, Rhodri.’

  *

  Brainbocs dabbed the thick starched white napkin to his mouth and threw it to the table. In his other hand he clutched a crystal goblet of dessert wine and gulped greedily from it. It was Chateau d’Yquem, the same stuff that God drinks at Christmas. He closed his eyes with delight at the exquisite nectar and then cried as if the word was even sweeter than the wine, ‘Love, Louie, Love. Love, love, love oh lovey love, love! That old-fashioned obsession of the poets and dreamers but so rarely the province of the white-coated research scientist.’

  ‘You’ve been researching love?’

  ‘I was exploring the furthermost frontiers of the human psyche. I was going to change the world.’

  ‘By conducting research into the neurological basis of love?’

  ‘Precisely!’

  I was about to ask the obvious question ‘why?’ But the sight of Rhodri replenishing Brainbocs’s glass took me back to that day he appeared in my office asking about the memorabilia and suddenly I knew the answer.

  ‘Myfanwy,’ I said.

  Brainbocs grinned and then the joy slowly seeped away and became replaced by a wistfulness as he recalled the events of the past three years. ‘You see, it never really worked out for us in Patagonia. Myfanwy was happy enough for a while, all that singing and being a star and that, but deep down she was never really content. Deep down, I realised, as things stood she never really could be.’ He put down the glass as if its contents were too sweet to accompany this particular memory.

  ‘I did everything for her, gave her whatever she desired. She was always talking about you, you see. Always going on about how she wished she had run away to Shrewsbury with you.’

  He paused and stared out of the window, the silence in the room broken only by the soft crackle of the fire in the grate. He said, ‘She really was so desperately in love with you, so girlish. She was always trying to write to you and things. Even though I arranged that her letters, which of course were never sent, were returned stamped “Not known at this address”. When the newspaper cuttings from the Cambrian Gazette arrived with news of your wedding and later the tragic accident that left you cruelly brain-damaged and imprisoned in an intensive-care unit for the rest of your life, it was still to no avail. The silly girl just blamed herself for driving you away and said it served her right. It was all terribly troublesome.’ He stopped and looked up. ‘Would you like a cigar? Or a brandy?’

  I shook my head. ‘The dessert wine is just fine. Tell me about Myfanwy.’

  ‘Of course! Of course …’ He smiled with benign understanding, and continued: ‘Galling though the situation was, I realised that my predicament was far from being unique in the annals of human woe, indeed my reading taught me that it was such a common affair as to be virtually the norm. But none of the ancient texts I consulted were able to offer a remedy. And so I set about creating my own remedy. I decided to make a love potion.’ He pointed an admonitory finger at me. ‘You think the idea absurd, I know, because the words conjure up the image of some simplistic old witch’s brew. But I am talking about a love potion with rock-solid scientific credentials, one drawing on the very latest neurophysiological and neuropsychological research. Could such a thing be possible? To the poets love is ineffable, but to the scientist emotions are just physical or chemical states of the brain. Could it be brought about by design?’ His voice took on a distant, dreamy quality as if he were not really here but far away in his ivory tower grappling with the philosophical ramifications of his genius. ‘I had to be careful, of course. I was only too well aware of the danger posed by the cold and analytical nature of scientific experimentation. My wide-ranging study of the literature on this subject made it clear to me that love was by its very nature a spontaneous thing, a wild horse that would not be caged. How then to balance the demands for scientific control and spontaneity? It was like manoeuvring a tornado, taming the tidal wave. Not just difficult but possibly impossible. For it is a paradox, is it not? By harnessing the maelstrom you exert a form of control that extinguishes precisely that which makes it a maelstrom?’ He looked at me and raised his hand. ‘I know what you’re thinking, Louie. You wish no doubt to object that the propensity to fall in love is predicated on ideals of beauty which we store in our soul since childhood; images which we derive from the earliest memory of the soft, cherished face of our sweet mother. Is that not so? And since these things are set in stone at the very dawn of consciousness, how, you ask, could I alter them? How could I possibly erase what time had written in the foundations of Myfanwy’s existence more than twenty-five years ago? It’s a good question, Louie, and I’m glad you raised it. I think you will be impressed by my solution.

  ‘I managed it by artificially stimulating that sensation commonly known as déjà vu. I created mental sensations, coated them with the texture of “pastness” and implanted them in the psyche by suggestion. Although bear in mind this early work was done with prairie voles; it would be quite a while before I was ready to work with Herod, let alone Myfanwy.’

  ‘You used Herod for your experiments?’

  ‘Of course! And prairie voles – charming creatures. Did you know they mate for life? Faithful until they die, never once straying. We could learn a lot from them.’

  ‘This is crazy.’

  Brainbocs ignored me. ‘I have to say the results were quite unnerving. Any policeman will tell you how unreliable our memories are. Show three people the same scene and they will remember it with wildly differing accounts. This is well-known; all the same, I was quite shocked – even frightened – by just what a cobweb our sense of identity is. Our little worlds are built on eggshell, Louie. Our deepest beliefs and convictions may be entirely false. I started to question the fundamentals of my own existence. Was my recollection of a childhood at my mother’s knee in Talybont remotely trustworthy? The squeak of the spinning-wheel on long winter evenings; the faint musk-like odour of her body; the crackle in the fireplace and the tap of wind-blown twigs against the window pane like the ghost hand of a dead child pleading to be let in? Were these really my memories or had some poetic madman implanted them in me along with the ersatz conviction that they were my childhood remembrance? What if someone had done to me what I was about to do to Myfanwy? I couldn’t k
now.

  ‘The rest was just a bit of O level biochemistry. A cocktail of three key hormones. Serotonin, phenylethylamine and oxytocin – which is the one responsible for the bonding between a mother and her baby. With their help I was able to effect the basic re-architecturalisation of the cortical superstructure.’

  ‘So where does Herod fit into all this?’

  ‘He was my experimental model, along with the prairie voles which are also most suitable. You see, in my research at the National Library I came into contact with some of the government scientists who were working on him trying to prevent him regaining his memory. It was just happenstance really that I was working on the neurobiological basis of love at the same time that they were dealing with the problem of Herod’s lost memory. Well, you know what scientists are like, we got to talking in the canteen and, realising how this could benefit me, I offered to help. Herod was moved to the sanatorium where he stayed for many weeks. He was perfect for research purposes, you see. A man who had no memory, a tabula rasa, so to speak. The result was a triumph in the annals of bio-engineering. I made him love. Do you understand the full implications of that? I gave him the power to love.’

  ‘And what about Mrs Bligh-Jones?’

  ‘Oh that was simple. Mrs Bligh-Jones was well-known to have hot pants for the gentlemen, especially those of a rugby-playing persuasion. She was a useful means of control. It was their regular trysts here that kept him docile.’

  ‘You thought by teaching Herod to love you could do the same for Myfanwy? Make her love you? It’s insane.’

  ‘Not only that, but I also managed to make a few design modifications, to improve on the original. As you know there are a number of things seriously wrong with love. For a start it has a built-in statute of limitations, as evinced by Herod’s return to his former self. Any weeping schoolgirl will tell you true love never lasts. It’s really a problem with the instability of the oxytocin molecule. But there is a more fundamental flaw, one that is central to love’s very essence: fleeting, inconstant and hostage to that cruelly arbitrary quality popularly known as “handsomeness” – mere physical appearance that serves as an indicator of our reproductive potency. Which means, basically, that chaps who look like me never get a look in.’ He paused and then added, ‘And that’s where you come in.’

  He signalled to Rhodri to refill the wine glasses.

  ‘You know I haven’t a clue what you are talking about.’

  ‘Yes, yes, yes. I know you are impatient to rescue Calamity –’

  ‘You know where she is?’

  ‘Of course. And I’m going to make a deal with you and tell you. But first you have to hear me out, or you won’t understand.’

  I looked at him in the most profound disbelief.

  ‘When I transferred my research to Myfanwy, I encountered an unexpected obstacle – one most resistant to my attempts to overcome it. In lay terms, I found myself bumping against a brick wall … a psychical brick wall. It was as if I was tunnelling into her soul … tunnelling to the deep, dark, hidden cave where she keeps the most powerful, primal, tender feelings and I found the way blocked by some unsuspected edifice so large it scorned all my attempts to remove it or go round it.’

  ‘And what was it?’

  ‘Her love for you.’

  This was when I decided I’d heard enough. I jumped out of the chair and raced across the dining-room towards him. It was obvious he had been expecting this reaction at exactly this moment. He calmly raised and pressed the remote control. I jerked backwards, reached up to the heavens with my hands, fingers curled like claws, and screamed. And then vomited. And then fell into a writhing heap on the floor.

  Rhodri helped me back into my chair.

  ‘That was just a weeny one, by the way, just in case you get any more silly ideas.’

  I sat panting, desperately gasping for air, and staring hate at Brainbocs. He calmly flicked some lint off his blazer.

  ‘You’re agitated,’ he said, ‘that is perhaps understandable.’

  ‘What do you want with me?’

  ‘I told you, I want to make you a deal.’

  ‘A deal?’

  ‘You will help me, and I will tell you what you most want to know in all the world. The whereabouts of Calamity.’

  ‘What do I have to do in return?’

  ‘You will help me extinguish what remains of Myfanwy’s love for you.’

  ‘You’re mad.’

  ‘You say that only because you still do not believe. And of course I cannot blame you. You need to see with your own eyes. First you need a token of my earnest in this matter. First you need to meet Myfanwy.’

  This time I jerked backwards, but there was no electric shock, just the even more powerful stunning effect of Brainbocs’s words. ‘You mean she’s here!?’

  ‘Where did you think she was? Timbuktu?! Now that we have had a chance to talk we will go and see her. I know she has been dying to meet you.’ The butler put his hands on the back of my wheelchair, and was about to push when Brainbocs raised his hand. ‘One moment, Rhodri.’ He turned to me. ‘Before we go on there is a question I must ask you, a very important one. And it is this. Do you love Myfanwy like most suitors purely for her physical charms or do you love her like I do for her character … for who and what she is?’

  It was such a strange question but he looked at me with an expression that almost defied description. I remembered the time Myfanwy described the incident when Brainbocs took off his calliper and went down on one knee to propose. The look on his face that she had been unable to describe, but tonight I knew it was the same one. A look of grief and pain of such intensity it suggested nothing that had ever happened to him in his life was as important as my answer.

  ‘You no doubt feel it is none of my business, and you are right – it isn’t. All the same I need you to answer.’

  ‘You’re asking me whether I love her for her body or her mind?’

  ‘Yes I suppose, crudely put, I am.’

  I didn’t even bother considering it. ‘Her mind.’

  ‘Excellent!’ He signalled to the butler and we were wheeled through. The butler opened two double doors at the end of the library and pushed me towards them. Towards Myfanwy whom I hadn’t seen for three years, years during which there hadn’t been a single day which didn’t start and end with me thinking about her. As we passed through the doors Brainbocs grabbed the sleeve of my arm, taking care to keep the remote control beyond my reach and said, ‘Please, prepare yourself. The past three years have been very hard for her. She is not like she used to be. Not the way you remember her.’

  Chapter 22

  THE ADJOINING ROOM was smaller than the dining-room but had the same high ceiling with dusty cornicing. The same oak panels round the walls. There was no furniture. At one end a set of French doors opened on to a rose garden. And at the opposite end was a console of electronic instruments. There were gauges that hummed and lights that flashed different colours, and in the centre, straight out of a second-rate science-fiction movie, there was a large Perspex cylinder containing a pale amber fluid and inside that, with wires attached, a human brain. Behind it on the wall was an enlarged photo of Myfanwy. I stood before it all and gasped. A sequence of lights, which I could only suppose connoted excitement, flashed up and down rods around the photo and a thin metallic voice said, ‘Hello Louie!’

  I spun round and jumped out of the chair but Brainbocs was expecting this. He was holding the remote control pointed at my chest like a gun and I stopped frozen in my tracks. The memory of the lightning bolt he had sent through my body last time was fresh and filled me with an animal terror that glued my limbs. I sat back in the chair.

  ‘How you doing, Louie!’ said the electronic voice.

  Nausea overwhelmed me and I looked in utter disbelief at Brainbocs. ‘What have you done?’

  He shrugged in what appeared to be embarrassment as if his wonderful new scheme had not met with the rapture he was expecting. ‘I would have
thought that was fairly obvious.’

  ‘But you … you … I …’ There were no words.

  Brainbocs made an uncomfortable fidgeting movement and said, ‘I see it is useless to try and hide the fact from you, I fucked up.’

  ‘You haven’t changed a bit, Louie!’ warbled the robotic voice of … of … what? Myfanwy? ‘How do I look?’

  ‘Answer her!’ hissed Brainbocs. ‘She’s been so looking forward to this. Don’t upset her!’

  ‘Oh … well … you know …’ I forced my mutinying tongue to speak. ‘Same old Myfanwy!’

  ‘Very good!’ whispered Brainbocs.

  ‘You little liar!’ warbled Myfanwy.

  ‘Would you like her to sing for you?

  ‘No.’

  ‘Yes, yes, I’m sure you would. You doubt that she can, eh? I haven’t given her full colour vision yet, but she can sing.’ He clapped his hands. ‘Myfanwy, sing for our guest.’

  ‘What shall I sing?’

  ‘Anything.’

  There began a thin warbling rendition of ‘Una Paloma Blanca’ from the speakers. It was hideous but Brainbocs didn’t think so. He rested his head in the crook of his thumb and index finger and half-closed his eyes dreamily while his other hand tapped the remote control in time to the music. When she got to the ‘I’m just a bird in the sky’ bit, I could take it no longer. ‘Stop it! I shouted. ‘Stop this … this … obscenity!’

  The music petered out. ‘Not so good, huh?’ said Myfanwy. ‘I know I’m still a bit rusty. I need to be able to move to the beat really.’

  Brainbocs looked at me with eyes narrowed to slits and the water between them glittering with fury. ‘You shouldn’t have done that, Louie. You’re a rude bastard, that’s what you are.’

  ‘And you’re the filthiest, vilest piece of vermin –’