The Unbearable Lightness of Being in Aberystwyth

by Malcolm Pryce

  ‘You do.’

  She shrugged.

  ‘But what really got me thinking was something Gabriel Bassett just told me. He said when I fell asleep halfway through his story it was like I’d been hypnotised. And of course the funny thing is, I have been hypnotised, haven’t I?’

  Calamity concentrated hard on her notes.

  ‘Have I been talking in my sleep?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘Not much.’

  ‘Calamity!’

  ‘Well, it’s not my fault if you fall asleep and start talking in the voice of the lamplighter. What am I supposed to do?’

  ‘Wake me up, that’s what. Not pump me.’

  ‘I didn’t pump you.’

  ‘What do you call it then?’

  ‘Overhearing.’

  ‘You did more than that. You asked questions didn’t you?’

  ‘Just a couple. The stuff he was giving me was so useful that—’

  ‘It’s not useful, it’s an end-of-the-pier party trick. You can’t use the people as a source of evidence. They’re dream figures.’

  ‘So why are you dreaming suddenly about Gwylym?’

  ‘Who’s Gwylym?’

  ‘The lamplighter?’

  ‘I thought his name was Pigmallow.’

  ‘It is. Gwylym Pigmallow.’

  ‘It’s got to stop. It’s not genuine evidence. He’s a Freudian figure, dredged up from my subconscious: he’s symbolic of illumination you see, a lamplighter, shedding light—’

  Calamity made a farting sound with her lips. ‘Who told you that?’

  ‘Meirion.’

  ‘What does he know?’

  ‘You’ve got to stop it, Calamity. Do some real detective work – forget about Pigmallow the footpad and Captain Poxbag the pirate and Whisky Williams the smuggler? OK?’

  ‘Hmmm.’

  ‘And another thing, where were you earlier before I took a walk?’

  ‘Out.’

  ‘Sure, but where?

  ‘Just out.’

  ‘You were supposed to be manning the phone. What if Myfanwy has been trying to ring?’

  ‘I only went out for a little while – I needed to get some more tacks.’

  ‘More tacks?’

  ‘I dug up a few things at the town library and … did you get anything?’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘Nothing, just asking.’

  ‘No, I don’t have anything to pin on my side of the wall if that’s what you are asking.’

  Calamity made as if to speak and then decided against it.

  ‘And another thing, don’t think I haven’t noticed what you’ve done to the line.’

  ‘What line?’

  ‘The dividing line on the incident board. You’ve moved it.’

  ‘No I haven’t!’

  ‘Originally it was straight down the middle. Now it’s more over to my side.’

  ‘But I only moved it an inch because my side was full.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter whether it’s an inch or a mile.’

  ‘An inch or a mile.’

  ‘It’s the principle. We share things down the middle in this office. You don’t like it, you know what you can do.’

  Calamity stood up and walked over to the incident board. She unpinned the black dividing line and moved it over two inches nearer to her side.

  ‘That makes me feel a lot better,’ I snarled.

  ‘Well, we probably don’t really need it any more because the case is solved.’

  ‘Solved.’

  ‘I was going to tell you but you didn’t give me chance.’

  I said nothing. Calamity went and sat down and stared at nothing.

  ‘Aren’t you even going to ask?’ she said finally.

  I sighed. ‘You solved the case, great. Tell me about it.’

  ‘Not if that’s your attitude.’

  ‘Just tell me, damn you!’

  Calamity jumped at the fierce tone in my voice. Her eyes misted – I don’t think I’d shouted at her before. Not like that, not in three years together.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I … I … you know …’

  Calamity nodded. ‘It’s OK. This thing about Myfanwy is doing you in. It would do anyone in.’

  ‘Tell me what you’ve turned up,’ I said gently, my heart still sick.

  ‘To tell you the truth it wasn’t me really, it was Iestyn. He phoned a while ago. He worked it out.’

  She went over to the kitchen and brought back two glasses and some ginger beer. She filled the glasses and explained.

  ‘Remember I was saying the ghost was a phoney? Whoever wrote the ghostly words comes stabuli was just trying to make it look like a ghost to point the finger at the stable boy.’

  ‘I remember. The only problem was, you couldn’t work out who had it in for the kid, but thought it might be the physician because he spoke Latin.’

  ‘Yeah, well it looks like I was wrong and right at the same time. I still think the ghost was a phoney, I still think it was the doctor who wrote the words, the bit I got wrong was the “keeper of the stables” bit. According to Iestyn, comes stabuli comes from Roman times, and means the guy who took charge of the emperor’s horses. But the point is, he did a lot more than that. He had to look after all sorts of things, he was a sort of Roman cop. And that’s where we get the modern word constable from. Comes stabuli, y’see? Comes stab- comes stab- comes stab-ul. Constable. Whoever wrote the words was not pointing the finger at the stable boy, but at the policeman. The peeler. You see, the fire was an accident but they suspected it was murder so the peeler planted the evidence to help get a conviction. Dr Weevil must have guessed what had happened.’

  I said nothing, just screwed up my brow as the impact of what she was saying sank in.

  ‘Anyway, I’ll just finish writing up my report, get Llunos to sign it, and I’ll be sending it down to Swansea to get my badge.’ She raised her glass for a toast. ‘Cheers!’

  I didn’t move.

  ‘Cheers,’ she repeated.

  I still didn’t move.

  ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  Calamity put the glass down very slowly. ‘There’s something wrong.’

  ‘Everything’s fine.’

  ‘Now I know you’re lying.’

  I let out a long deep breath and said, as gently and with as little accusation as I could muster, ‘You’re not serious?’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘You’re going to ask Llunos to sign that?’

  ‘I have to, otherwise I can’t submit it to the Board in Swansea.’

  ‘I know that but—’

  ‘But?’

  ‘Llunos?’

  She didn’t answer, just stared silently with that inner rage that starts to build up when you start to defend a course of action you weren’t really sure about in the first place.

  ‘It was his great-grandfather, Calamity.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘He worships his memory.’

  ‘I know that too.’

  I made a dismissive gesture as if washing my hands of it. ‘Fine.’

  ‘You expect me to do what?’

  ‘Whatever you like.’

  ‘Don’t try and get out of it. You don’t think I should tell him what we found out?’

  ‘As I said, it’s up to you, but personally I wouldn’t tell him that we found out his great-grandfather, whose memory he venerates as the inventor of the principles of policing that have served Cardiganshire for 150 years, was bent. That the paradigm of model policing he established includes falsifying witness testimony, lying on oath, planting evidence and that he probably connived at the hanging of an innoce
nt boy. No, I don’t think I would tell him that. Perhaps I’m too sentimental for this job.’

  ‘And why wouldn’t you tell him that?’

  ‘What good would it do? Think what it would do to his reputation.’

  Calamity screwed her face up in disbelief. ‘Reputation!? What sort of crap is that? We’re detectives, aren’t we? It’s our solemn duty to bring truth to light no matter whose reputation it hurts.’

  ‘Where did you get that from? A dime novel you picked up in Devil’s Bridge?’

  ‘I got it from you.’

  ‘Oh … Yeah?

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Well, sometimes I say things that don’t always apply in all circumstances equally.’

  ‘And you get to choose where they do and where they don’t.’

  ‘If I did say that, I’m sorry. I should have qualified it. We were talking about a different sort of case. In this situation nothing useful will come of publishing what you found. You won’t help the stable boy. He’s been dead 150 years and if he isn’t happy now then he’ll never be. All you’ll achieve … all you’ll do, is crush Llunos. I know you want to publish your first case, I want you to, I really do. But I just want you to think about the consequences, it’s the first rule—’

  ‘Yeah, I know, of being a private eye. How many first rules are there going to be?’

  ‘All right it’s the golden rule. Think of the consequences. You know what consequences are? They are the things you can’t put back into the bottle once you release them.’

  ‘I still don’t get it. What’s the point of doing all this if at the end we keep schtum? We might as well not have started in the first place. I thought we were the guys in the white hats.’

  ‘In Aberystwyth there are no white hats, Calamity. Grey is as good as it gets. Just a dirty old grey hat that gets kicked about the floor a bit and has a footprint on the brim. That’s all we’ve got. We’re not saints, and we’re not knights like it says in the stupid sign on the frosted glass. We’re not engaged on some noble quest to uncover truth for its own sake, we just try to make things better than they were when we started. Sometimes that’s damned hard. But we try and sometimes we get it right. But that’s all it is. If you want to walk around with two shoe boxes marked “good” and “evil”, join the Church. I’m not trying to interfere in your decision, whatever you decide I’ll support you. Just think about it that’s all.’

  ‘My hat doesn’t have a footprint on it.’

  Ten minutes later Llunos walked in. I held up the rum bottle but he shook his head, he was just dropping by. He walked over and put a hand on Calamity’s shoulder.

  ‘How’s the case coming along, sleuth?’

  She looked up. ‘Solved.’

  Llunos did a pantomime of a man stepping back in amazement. ‘Solved!’

  She shot me a glance that was so swift it almost never happened. ‘Yeah, I reckon the boy was innocent all right. It’s pretty certain.’

  ‘Innocent, was he?’ The voice was pure frost.

  ‘Pretty sure. He was fitted up. They changed witness statements, planted evidence, lied under oath. A real can of worms.’

  Llunos took his hand off Calamity’s shoulder and said very quietly. ‘Who did?’

  The pause lasted the length of a long breath. No more. ‘Syracuse did.’

  He looked down at Calamity but she avoided his gaze. She avoided my gaze and busied herself instead with tidying the papers on the desk. They didn’t need tidying. Llunos walked slowly to the centre of the room and stopped. He rocked back on his heels and seemed to be lost in thought. Then he said to no one in particular, ‘You’re going to send a report to the Bureau in Swansea saying my great-grandfather was a bent cop?’

  Calamity shrugged weakly, the blood draining from her face. ‘Yep.’

  ‘I see,’ said Llunos. He nodded to himself and said again, softly, ‘I see.’

  ‘She has to, Llunos,’ I said.

  He jerked round to face me, ‘She has to?’

  ‘What’s she supposed to do?’

  ‘She could try minding her own bloody business for a start!’

  ‘Oh sure!’ I cried. ‘Mind her own bloody business. What sort of thing is that to teach her? She’s trying to be detective, she’s not supposed to mind her bloody business. She’s supposed to dig and probe and snout about and make a bloody nuisance of herself until she brings the truth to light.’

  ‘Truth to light!’

  ‘And if it upsets people that’s just tough.’

  ‘She’s got a lot to learn if that’s what she thinks.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Llunos!’ I shouted. ‘Round here you either wear a white hat or you don’t. There’s no grey, no in-between, you either play it straight or … or … or …’ I hadn’t a clue what to say next.

  Llunos walked to the door and stopped and turned. ‘You and me aren’t supposed to get on, you know that? We’re supposed to be adversaries because there’s a stupid book somewhere that says snoopers are jerks who need to be kicked out of town. But I threw that book away a long time ago. For a long time now I’ve loved you like a brother, you know that? I never say it because blokes like me don’t. That’s the way I was brought up and it’s too late to change now. But I did … and now … I can’t believe what I’ve heard here today, I really can’t. After working this festering moral sewer together for fifteen years, you throw the white fucking hat crap at me?!’ He turned in disgust and walked down the stairs shouting as he went, ‘White fucking hat!’

  I ran to the door and shouted down the stairwell, ‘It was a miscarriage of justice, Llunos!’

  ‘So?!’ he shouted back.

  ‘So? I suppose she should have kept it to herself and hoped no one noticed!’

  ‘Why not?’ he shouted now from the street level. ‘That’s what I did when I found out!’

  For a while I stayed there staring down at the empty stairwell and then walked back inside.

  ‘Sometimes it’s hard to do the right thing,’ said Calamity.

  ‘Well, you sure failed today.’

  I walked to the window and stared out at Llunos turning at the junction with Great Darkgate Street. After a while the distant hum of the traffic outside faded and I became aware of a soft squeaking sound, the noise of stifled weeping. I turned and walked over to Calamity and knelt down. She looked at me, eyelashes heavy with tears like raindrops on a branch. ‘Oh Louie, what have I done?’

  Chapter 13

  MOMENTS WHEN I felt no fear:

  At night, in the gaps between dreams, where time is extinguished.

  Emerging from sleep – that instant of awareness before opening the eyes. I have learned you can prolong this instant in the same way yogis can lower their body’s metabolism.

  Two occasions when people knocked me unconscious with a shovel. I must remember to write and thank them.

  And, sometimes, under the ocean.

  The caravan was warmer than blood when I got back. There was a parcel on the caravan step. It was from Siop-y-Pethe – a translation of Brainbocs’s ‘invented language’. I left it untouched on the table, put on my swimming trunks, and left the doors and windows open to clear the air. The sand was hot under foot and the wind warm and blustery, heavy with grains of salt. The tide was out, and the high-water mark demarcated by a wavy line of wet sticks tangled with blue nylon netting, plastic bags, and shampoo bottles from which all the writing had been washed away. I dropped my towel on the hot stones and walked through avenues of evaporating jelly fish. My feet hissed on the sand like a snare on drumskin, and then I reached the silver film of water, waded in and lay back. The water dancing next to my ears tinkled like a xylophone. And then I went under and the world was removed, sounding far away like the thumping of someone moving boxes in a cellar.

  After my swim I returned to the caravan and began to read. The accompanying note explained that it appeared to be the beginning of an epic poem about Myfanwy and, although it was always difficult rendering poetry in a
different language, they had done their best to capture the mood.

  Cider with Myfanwy

  Like to the dog hit by the truck whose leg is withered

  I scavenged at the bins of her love …

  Note: this part has been crossed out, with the words, Damn! Damn! Damn!

  Neither ask me about the colour of her hair,

  Demand instead the conker—

  This part is also crossed out

  As the unclaimed coat left hanging on the pegs

  Half an hour after the 4 o’clock bell

  Does she esteem me …

  The attempted poem is abandoned here and turns into a letter

  Mama,

  I watched from the Prom, once, as she wrestled in the sea with a boy. She was fifteen. Her bikini top came off and she brought her forearms forward and huddled inside them, and the boy tried to prise them apart. They both laughed so much. They did not know it at the time, and perhaps it would take a lifetime for them to grasp the truth of that hour. But it was available to me in its entirety as the gift of the outcast. I knew then that this was a moment that comes but once in a lifetime; this was the day they drank their cider with Rosie. And there would never be such a moment for me. Never anything sweeter than Lucozade.

  I gathered the sheaves of paper together, lifted them and banged them on the table to align the edges. Myfanwy had sat at a table like this a few summers ago. We had played ludo and she told me between interminable waits for her first double six how Brainbocs had haunted her steps, smitten beyond the power of words to describe. Smitten with a depth of suffering that carefree Myfanwy whose life had been anointed with the love of others freely given couldn’t even begin to imagine; his torment a country she had never visited and which I had occasionally glimpsed in the eyes of the people who sat on my client’s chair. The seekers after benediction who, when the priests failed them, came to haunt my door and begged me to damn them with the truth about their cheating spouse. They would take out the sixpences collected in coronation mugs and spread them on my table and say, ‘Take it all,’ as if the silver mined from twenty years of Christmas puddings was a fortune too great for mortal men to count. Take it, and find out.