You could tell you weren’t invited just by looking at the outside of the building, a fabulous white stone edifice like a big wedding cake, perched halfway up Penglais Hill. It managed that rare feat of combining monumental grandeur, the sort Albert Speer used to specialise in, with architectural good taste. They didn’t actually ban normal folk. That was too unsubtle and raised the spectre of elitism. Instead, they did it the subliminal way the smart hotels do – by the glitter and polish of the door and that smile on the face of the doorman that, while appearing to be a genuine smile and employing the same muscle groups of the face, is really a warning and a challenge, one that says: Go on, I dare you. And the tasteful grandeur of the National Library said in the easily apprehended Esperanto of bricks that here was a proper library. One where you don’t borrow books but come and read them and if you don’t know in advance what you want you might as well not turn up. And don’t even think of bringing grease-proof paper to trace the pictures.
Calamity sat on the steps outside and waited for me, safe in the knowledge that I wouldn’t be long.
I climbed up and pushed through the revolving door and walked up to the first counter I saw.
‘Can I help you?’ The woman at the desk gave me a hotel doorman smile. Behind her glasses her eyes were conducting rapid saccades, appraising my social standing or lack of it.
‘I was looking for the periodicals.’
Her eyes narrowed slightly. ‘Periodicals?’
It was clear that I had caught her off guard.
‘Yes, periodicals.’
‘Not tropical fish? You strike me as being the sort who comes in looking for books on keeping tropical fish.’
I breathed in deeply and said, ‘No, not tropical fish. Periodicals.’
She thought for a second. ‘Any particular ones?’
‘Yes, I didn’t come on a generic quest for periodicals, I had a specific set in mind: the Journals of the Proceedings of the Myfanwy Society. It’s a quarterly publication.’
The woman made a token adjustment of her spectacles and said, ‘Are you a reader?’
‘When I get the time.’
‘No, I meant do you have a reader’s card?’
‘I thought I would apply for one.’
Another attendant sidled over in case assistance might be needed. ‘Is there a problem, sir?’
‘This gentleman was inquiring about applying for readership privileges.’
The new man made a harsh chip-frying sound as he sucked on his teeth.
‘I thought seeing how you have so many books you might be willing to let someone read them.’
‘Are you by any chance from Aberystwyth, sir?’ the man asked.
‘Yes, I’ve spent most of my life here.’
‘We don’t generally extend readership privileges to people from the town. However, there is an excellent public lending library there—’
‘Look, mister, I’ve read all the books in the public one. Now I want to read the books in this one. Do you have a problem with that?’
‘No need to raise your voice, sir.’
‘It’s my voice, I’ll raise it if I want to!’
The man reached under the counter and pressed a button that was supposed to be hidden from view.
‘And don’t bother calling the muscle. I’m doing nothing wrong, just insisting on my rights to use the library.’
‘I’m afraid the rights you refer to don’t in fact exist. The right of access is discretionary and is not normally extended to riff-raff.’
‘Are you calling me riff-raff?’
‘No, I’m just outlining our policy.’
The two attendants exchanged smirks, and one of them made a slight but noticeable snorting sound.
I took out a piece of paper and a photo. ‘I’m applying whether you like it or not. This is my photo. And this is the affidavit of my referee. He’s a man of substance in this town who enjoys universal respect and he is happy to vouch for my good character.’
The man picked up the piece of paper and read it. This time the smirk was broader, the snort more pronounced.
‘Your referee would appear to be Mr Sospan.’
‘That’s right.’
‘Would this be the same Mr Sospan who has a stall vending ice cream on the Promenade?’
‘That’s the one.’
The man snorted again.
‘Do you need some decongestant?’
I could see the two uniformed security guards hurrying over.
‘Ooh!’ said the woman joining in the fun. ‘That should cause a ripple of interest among our readers.’
‘Yes,’ added the man. ‘I fear the grandeur of our portico has caused this gentleman to mistake us for an opera house!’
They both burst into laughter and the woman sang a bar of ‘Just one Cornetto’.
I smiled. ‘I never knew it was so much fun being a librarian.’
The man wiped away a tear and examined the form again.
‘Your address would appear to be a caravan in Ynyslas.’
‘That’s right.’
‘I’m afraid we don’t normally issue tickets to people whose houses can be towed away.’
‘And why would that be?’
‘It leads to insoluble paradox. Imagine if you became liable to the library for some damage to the books. We would issue a summons but it might not reach you since you always have the opportunity to move your house somewhere else. This is of course strictly against the terms and conditions of library membership and yet you could truthfully claim that you hadn’t moved, that you had been living in the same place for the past ten years. You see the difficulty?’
‘What if I take the wheels off my caravan?’
‘We’d still be left with the difficulty of your profession. It says here, private detective—’
‘Ooh!’ squealed the woman, ‘A gumshoe! Watch he doesn’t slug you on the beezer!’
‘Yeah, Mac, check if he’s carrying any iron.’
‘Look you sons-of-bitches,’ I shouted. ‘This is my town, I went to school here, I spent my adolescence on the Prom and in the Pier; I kissed my first girl in Danycoed Wood, and had my first pint in the Castle. This is my town not yours and if you didn’t want me to read your crappy books why did you open a library here?’
Two security guards grabbed me by either arm and frog-marched me to the door.
It wasn’t the first time I’d been thrown out of somewhere by two tough guys. But it was the first time it had happened in a library. As I emerged into the sunlight I shouted back, ‘You should have some sharpened sticks outside the door with skulls on.’
Calamity, appearing not greatly surprised to see me leave in this fashion, picked up my hat, slapped it against her thigh a couple of times to remove the dust, and then walked over. She handed it to me as I sat on the ground, and then she left her hand there to help me up. ‘Plan B?’ she asked.
‘Plan B,’ I muttered.
Chapter 3
THE WOODEN CAR groaned to a halt and I clambered out on to the steeply inclined platform and followed the straggle of tourists who were about to have the Cliff Railway revealed to them as a metaphor for life. You sit expectantly, creaking up the hill, heart filled with anticipation of what’s at the top. You can’t help noticing the ride itself is pretty unimpressive, and then you get out at the top and wander around for a while looking for something the purpose of which might justify the building of such an elaborate contraption. You meet other souls wandering around with that look of puzzled expectancy, the expression that conveyed the question everyone wanted answered: ‘Have you found it yet?’ Since no one has, whatever it is, you stop off for a cup of tea in a musty wooden shed that smells like the place the head groundsman at the golf club keeps his tools. After that, spirits slightly raised by the mahogany-coloured tea, you go to check out the camera obscura. On the way in you read with mounting excitement about the piercing clarity of the image you are about to see in which every detail for miles around
will be laid before your eyes in supernatural splendour. And then you find yourself in another dark shed, on a raised wooden pathway walking round a grey glass dish in which can be faintly discerned, as if at the bottom of a very deep fish pond where the water has not been changed in years, an image that is Aberystwyth upside down. You stare for a while, as people whisper, ‘It’s clear, isn’t it?’ and then the realisation gradually dawns that the image outside, from the cliff top, is bigger, brighter, sharper and, best of all, the right way up.
* * *
Meirion was sitting at one of the picnic tables concreted into the summit and drinking from a styrofoam cup. I fetched one and joined him. He took out a stick of Llandudno rock, snipped the cellophane off the end with a cigar trimmer, and took a suck. He said how upset he had been to hear the news about Myfanwy and I said I knew it. He said no more for a while and we sat there drinking tea, staring out over Aberystwyth in the valley. Meirion was the crime reporter on the Gazette and had a lot of good contacts in the underworld, but so far, he said, no one had heard anything.
‘To tell you the truth, they’re all a bit taken aback. It doesn’t look like anyone local was involved.’
‘I thought Brainbocs might have something to do with it.’
‘He’s eating porridge in Shrewsbury.’
‘Do you know how he’s getting on?’
‘I hear things from time to time. There was some debate at first whether to put him in the cells with the adults. He gives his age as fourteen and has done for many years now. A bit like that chap Jimmy Clitheroe. There’s no birth certificate – his mother says she found him being cared for by wolves. He’s in the infirmary at the moment.’
‘So what’s wrong with him?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Whatever it is he’s probably faking it.’
‘Wouldn’t surprise me. Ask Mrs Prestatyn, she’ll know. I don’t suppose Myfanwy could have just wandered off?’
‘The ripple was drugged, Meirion.’
Meirion frowned. ‘Mmmm. The police will be looking for the gelati van?’
‘Of course. And I don’t doubt they’ll find it burned out in a field somewhere.’
‘Any mention of a ransom?’
‘But who would they send it to?’
‘I don’t know. I’ve heard nothing so far, but it’s early days. There was a bit of activity a while back on the stolen memorabilia front. An essay from her school days was stolen from a collector. It never made the news because often these sort of things don’t – the insurance guys like to keep a lid on it so they can come to a private arrangement with the thieves.’
‘What exactly was stolen?’
‘A spelling test she did when she was seven. Got four out of ten. Pretty rare, difficult to fence. There were a few other things.’
‘I’ll look into it.’
‘Talk to a fence. I’m not saying it’s connected, of course. But it could be a daft scheme to drive up the value – you know, get her name in the paper.’
‘Or kill her. That would drive up the value.’
‘I didn’t mean it like that.’
Meirion placed his arm on my shoulder and guided me back to the station. At the point where the ground falls away steeply we stopped and contemplated the town. The sea was pigeon-coloured today. I said, not really knowing why, ‘Do you know anything about a guy called Frankie Mephisto?’
The arm on my shoulder tightened slightly.
‘You heard the rumour then?’
‘No.’
‘They say he’s coming out this month. Should have done another five years. What makes you ask?’
‘I got a phone call from someone who mentioned his name.’
‘He was the mastermind behind the robbery here on the Cliff Railway in ’72. Ask your dad, he worked the case.’
‘Why Mephisto?’
‘The Welsh Mephistopheles. It was because of that play by Marlowe, Doctor Faustus. Frankie had been taken to see it as a kid and it made a great impression on him. Apparently, he came to see in Faust’s fate the expression of a universal human truth, namely, there is no such thing as a free lunch.’ Meirion took a long suck on his Llandudno. His face remained straight but there was the hint of a twinkle in his eye. I wondered if his little joke was from some piece written for the Gazette now lying gathering dust in his drawer, never printed because although the newspaper liked to maintain the fiction of a crime reporter on the staff, they didn’t like to impugn the image of the town by reporting any crime.
‘In fact,’ said Meirion, ‘Frankie had taken this human truth and made it central to his own operation. You see, he had a lot of contacts in the old days, and very often people approached him for help. And he was happy to oblige but he always warned them that, one day, he would come and call on them and ask them to return the favour. In fact he was very meticulous about this, pointing out that these were more than empty words and would ask them if they were familiar with the legend of Faust. And they would say, Faust, yeah, of course, nice bloke. Or something. And Frankie would tell them one day he would return just as assuredly as Mephistopheles. Hence over time they got to calling him Frankie Mephisto.’
Meirion finished his rock and screwed up the cellophane and threw it in the bin. Then slapped his hands to wipe away the stickiness.
‘He used to tell people “no” wasn’t a word in his dictionary and when he needed a favour he would send his boys round with a dictionary from which it had been cut out.’
There are two types of people who visit hospitals. Those who know someone there who is sick. And those who just pretend. Mrs Prestatyn belonged to the second group: the pros. She did a sweep of Bronglais once a week. No stethoscope or clipboard, just a hat and coat and a brazen attitude. The hospital administration knows all about such people but legally it is a grey area. You generally need a patient to make a complaint, but most people are too dumbfounded. Being in hospital is a confusing and disorientating experience. It’s not something you generally get much practice at and you tend to err on the side of being too trusting and defer to anyone in a uniform, even a porter. So if a smartly dressed woman whom you’ve never seen before breezes in, takes a look at your clipboard and says, ‘I see they’ve put you on the doxo-demaloline. That should loosen the phlegm’, what do you say? Most folk find themselves pouring forth all the details of their ailment. And in doing so they contribute to our collective understanding of the mystery of disease – or at least the understanding shared by those of us who go to bingo.
I walked up Penglais and through the car park to Bronglais and into the cafeteria. She was sitting at a table sipping a tea and peering over the rim of the olive-green hospital china at a paperback novel. It was a ‘Doctor and Nurses’ romance. I watched her for a while before approaching: she read with a frown of concentration and ran her finger under the words to make sure she didn’t miss one. At two pound a book they were expensive. Her head had a slight bobbing motion as if nodding in rhythmic agreement with the text and every so often she would stop in mid-nod and her frown would deepen. Then she would put the tea down, take out a pen and scribble notes in the book, in her throat a soft strangled squeak of triumph. Perhaps one of the few people in the world who read this genre and wrote marginalia. The rim of the cup was imprinted with lipstick.
I pulled the chair opposite out from under the table and sat down. Mrs Prestatyn raised her eyes briefly from the page in a quick darting movement before returning to her reading. She winced slightly and scribbled something, saying with a tut-tut, ‘She’s put him on twenty ccs of tripanazetramol, previous nurse gave him sulphadextranaphase – he’ll lose his leg if they keep that up.’ She paused and added, ‘Come to empty some bedpans have you?’
‘I was thinking about it, why do you ask?’
‘Well, you’re not here for your health now are you, if you’ll pardon the pun.’
‘Anyone can visit a hospital.’
She snorted. ‘Try telling that to the security guard.’
She carried on reading and I said nothing more for a while. If I was ill in hospital I might resent the intrusion of someone like Mrs Prestatyn. But, as editor-in-chief of that loose-knit confederacy of gossips and tittle-tattlers known as the Orthopaedia Britannica, she was an indispensable source of information for me. As such, a professional relationship existed between us that was complicated and difficult to define, like that between the copper and his nark. And it was hard to despise a woman whose obsession derived from a time, long ago, when she had served with the St John’s Ambulance Brigade. Her recurring visits now were as pitiful as the dog who returns to the house of a dead man who years ago had given him a bone.
‘To tell the truth,’ she said, seemingly addressing the page, ‘I’m surprised you’ve got the nerve to show your face.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘Muriel at the nursing home is beside herself. I told her Myfanwy wasn’t safe with you.’
‘What did I do?’
‘Not much by the sound of it.’
‘I took her for an ice cream. If it hadn’t been for me she would never have got out at all, would have been stuck in that nursing home, staring at the wall all day.’
‘At least we’d know where she was.’
I winced.
‘Of course,’ she added, taking a mint toffee from her bag, ‘if it wasn’t for you she might never have ended up there in the first place.’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘If you and that Brainbocs boy hadn’t been squabbling over her. Making a love potion – never heard anything so ridiculous …’
‘He made it, not me. I was the one who saved her.’
‘In my day we gave a girl roses.’
‘She was fine afterwards.’
‘I seem to remember she was fine before, not after.’
The Unbearable Lightness of Being in Aberystwyth Page 3