The Unbearable Lightness of Being in Aberystwyth

by Malcolm Pryce

  ‘Well it’s supposed to be the Holy Grail, isn’t it?’

  ‘You really thought drinking out of that would cure her?’

  ‘Oh no, not like that. She wasn’t going to drink out of it.’

  ‘What then?’

  He bit his lip and glanced up and down the street in a piece of acting even phonier than Sister Cunégonde’s.

  ‘I’ll whisper it.’

  I shrugged and he leant in close to my ear. And then he sank his teeth into the side of my neck and bit me like a dog.

  You can kill a man doing that if you get it right. They say it’s the best way to fend off a rapist. I wouldn’t know. But I know I was incapacitated by pain for a second and a half. And that was all he needed. He broke free of my grip, turned and ran up the steps into the hotel. I ran after. The entrance is a little porch of two doors and once inside the first he turned and let down the rimlatch on the outer door and then ran on. It gave him five more seconds’ grace as I banged on the door and demanded someone open it. But no one did. Instead, a group of old ladies in the bay windows dropped stitches and stared in astonishment.

  ‘Open the fucking door!’ I shouted and more stitches were dropped.

  I took out a handkerchief and wrapped it round my hand; smashed the glass with my elbow and then reached in and released the lock. I ran through the bar and into the dining room. It was mid-morning, breakfast had been cleared and the tables were being set for lunch in the endless ritual of seaside hotels. In the kitchen, the chefs would be standing in front of a bubbling vat into which had been thrown every conceivable type of vegetable leftover, and wondering what to call it. In the office, an old woman would be typing the lunch menu on a typewriter older even than her, the keys for c.o.n.s.o.m.m.é. so badly worn soon they would have to buy a new typewriter or change the soup. The manager’s son stood as an eternal sentinel, polishing a glass at the bar. From far away and up above, girls from distant grim cities would be hoovering their way through last night’s hangover in preparation for the next. It was a marionette show that never changed from day to day or season to season. Except for today when an old man ran through their midst chased by a younger man who was going to kill him. At the entrance to the dining room, Bassett made a split-second tactical decision guided by instinct, or just plain luck, and twisted to his right and ran down some stairs that a sign indicated led to the Grill. The steps down twisted and turned in near-darkness like the stairs to Fagin’s cellar. Every ten or so there was a sort of landing covered in some furry smear that might once have been carpet in a previous century and from there the steps led off at a different angle. It was like running through an Escher engraving. At the bottom I saw the tail of a Gabriel’s coat disappearing through a swing door. It led through to a dim, small dining room full of cheap furniture making a desperate attempt to look chic enough to justify the extra expense of dining in this subterranean vault. The room smelled of lavender polish and last week’s grease and the only light came from the skylights that led to the street. It was like the nave of a cathedral where they worshipped stale food. A girl in a waitress’s uniform had a cigarette in one hand and was laying out cutlery with the other, the box of spoons and forks balancing in the crook of the arm that held the cigarette. She looked up. ‘Sorry we’re not open yet.’

  ‘Where did he go?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The old man?’

  ‘The boss?’

  ‘No, not the fucking boss! The old fellah in the Gabriel’s coat.’

  ‘Look mate, we’re closed—’

  I ran past her towards the doors leading to the kitchen.

  ‘Oi!’ she shouted. ‘You can’t go through there!’

  But I had already gone. The doors swung open and swung closed and I found myself in a cabbage-coloured corridor, narrow, low-ceilinged and claustrophobic. Rooms so small they were really just alcoves off the main corridor. In the first, a man was bent over a sink of grey sud-less water rubbing with a piece of ragged abrasive plastic at the egg stain that had been fire-baked on by the washing-up machine. He glanced over his shoulder.

  ‘What’s the quickest way out of here?’

  ‘Food poisoning.’ He laughed.

  I ran down the tiny corridor towards the kitchen, past shelves laden with battered silver pots and Cona jugs sooty with years of stewed coffee. Two chefs were at work in a kitchen so small it could have been on a submarine. They turned to look at me as the waitress from the Grill appeared in the doors behind me and shouted ‘Oi’ again. The chefs barred my way. ‘You can’t come through here mate. It’s private.’

  ‘I’m looking for my dad.’

  ‘Diddums.’ He pointed with a knife. ‘The way out’s down there, the way you came in.’

  ‘Don’t fuck with me,’ I said.

  The two chefs were slightly taken aback, but only for half a second. They exchanged interested glances. Two young men in their mid-twenties. From somewhere in northern England judging by the accents. Sous-chefs wandering the country, migrating to the coast for the summer season because that’s where the fun is and the girls are. A long summer of beer and chasing women, punctuated by occasional fights in night-club car parks. This was un unusual development, but one they would enjoy. Normally they were required to defer to a guest no matter what the provocation but being told to fuck off by one was clearly an exceptional circumstance. The first one stepped forward and grabbed me by the throat and I shoved him back against the eye-level grill and then the fight erupted and we careened wildly about the place as if the submarine galley was now under assault from depth charges outside. We ricocheted from side to side into pots and pans and fridge doors like the ball in a pinball machine. Alerted by the noise, two more chefs and the washer-up appeared out of nowhere and I fell beneath the onslaught of their fists and the pans that they were banging on my head. The mêlée surged under its own momentum along the corridors like water through pipes, up some steps and we emerged blinking and still fighting in the car park behind the hotel. More blows were landed on me for good measure until it was clear that for the time being there was no more fight left in me. They stopped and stood back as I sat in a pile of cardboard boxes left out next to the reeking bins. They watched me cautiously, calculating whether this was a situation that required the intervention of the police and when it was clear that I was no longer in the mood for trouble they grabbed me and threw me through the gate. I picked myself up off the pavement, brushed myself down, and made for the rear entrance to the public shelter.

  I walked back to the car, climbed in and checked my appearance in the rear-view mirror. My face was bruised and cut and flecked with blood. I’d seen worse. I turned the ignition and the engine made that coughing sound it makes when it has no intention of going anywhere today. I tried a few more times and then gave up. I climbed out and started to trek up the Prom to the harbour. Far off, from somewhere in the direction of the railway station, came the sound of an ambulance.

  It was heading to an address on Harbour Row.

  Chapter 19

  THEY WERE LOADING Bassett into the back when I arrived. He was staring up at the sky wide-eyed with shock, panting like a dog.

  ‘Just came straight out at me,’ the driver of a car explained. ‘Ran straight out of the house, like a madman, didn’t look nor anything.’

  Mrs Gittins was standing in the doorway drying her hand on her pinny. She looked at me, her face white with shock.

  ‘How was I to know?’ she wailed. ‘I just signed for it and told them to take it up. How was I supposed to know?’

  I followed the direction of her gaze to the upstairs bedroom window and then ran into the house. The door to Bassett’s room at the top was ajar. Inside, the floor was littered with packing materials – brown paper and polystyrene and bubblewrap. You can’t be too careful when transporting a museum case. It was standing in the middle of the room; a stuffed monkey, a glass case. The brass plaque read, ‘Mr Bojangles, died of heart failure.’ And next to it amid the t
orn paper was a card that said, ‘Compliments of Mr Mephisto’.

  Mrs Gittins stood behind me in the bedroom doorway, continuing to wail, ‘How was I supposed to know? I just signed for it and told them to take it up.’

  ‘Where’s Cleopatra?’

  She didn’t answer but stared at the bathroom door and I walked across and pushed it open. It banged against something, something heavy and inert. I squeezed round the door.

  ‘How was I supposed to know?’ came the refrain.

  The bathroom was small and there was only room to get my body half in but it was enough to see what was blocking the door. It was swinging from the light fixture, hanging by an old Ardwyn school tie that was knotted into the fur under the left ear. A monkey, with fur turning white around the muzzle and deep sad dark eyes, like two wishing wells that hadn’t seen a penny in years.

  I ran out and down the stairs and jumped into the back of the ambulance as they closed the doors.

  ‘He’s my brother,’ I said.

  ‘He’s not my brother,’ said Bassett weakly.

  I put on a pained expression and looked at the medic. ‘Even after forty years he still won’t forgive me.’

  ‘It’s OK, mate, don’t upset yourself. It’s the shock, it makes them say things they don’t mean.’

  ‘I do mean it,’ said Bassett. ‘He’s not my brother. I haven’t got a brother.’

  ‘That’s it, Sebastien!’ I snarled. ‘Even now deny the people whose only crime was to love you!’

  I covered my face with my hands. The ambulance raced along the Prom, siren wailing. The medic patted me on the back. ‘Sit down, mate. I’ll see if I can find you a little sedative.’

  ‘Is he going to be all right?’

  ‘He should be. I don’t think the guy was driving very fast, lucky for him. He’s broken some ribs, and maybe a hip, we’ll need to see.’

  ‘The hip?’

  ‘Easily done with a man of his age. A fall off a stepladder will do it.’

  ‘Is it painful?’

  He looked uncomfortable. ‘We’re doing the best we can.’

  The ambulance turned into North Road.

  ‘He’s not my brother,’ said Bassett.

  ‘Which is most painful, a broken hip or broken rib?’

  ‘About the same I think.’

  ‘Hmmm. I think he needs more air, it’s stuffy in here.’ I shuffled to the back and opened the door. ‘That’s better.’

  The medic shouted, ‘Hey, don’t do that, you could fall out.’

  He tried to close the door. I said, ‘I want you to know I have the greatest admiration for people like you and I’m really sorry about this.’

  ‘About wh—’

  The end of his sentence was lost as he bounced down the road.

  I walked over to my brother and looked into the terror-filled waters of his eyes.

  ‘Hip or rib?’ I said.

  ‘Huh?’

  I punched my fist down into the fractured ribs above the heart. I could feel them give. At the same time I shoved the palm of my hand down on his mouth to stifle the scream and all the force that should have emerged from his throat was diverted and made his eyes bulge out like a frog’s. For a second, the pain forced him up, off the bed and he pressed with all his weight against my hand. And then he collapsed back on to the cot.

  I kept my hand in place and said, ‘Want another?’

  I punched him again and the same power levitated him but this time it was weaker and I could see that the next one would take away his consciousness or even his life.

  ‘OK,’ I said taking away my hand. ‘What was the point of stealing the cup?’

  He looked straight into my eyes and said, ‘He got the idea from that movie about the dinosaurs.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘It was for the girl, Seren.’

  ‘What about her?’

  ‘She was going to have a son, one who could save Myfanwy.’

  ‘You mean a doctor?’

  ‘Sort of, a healer. A saviour.’

  ‘But how?’

  ‘You know the legend of the Holy Grail? It was used by Joseph of Arimathea to collect the blood of Christ on the cross. Think about it. Blood in a wooden cup. With a bit of luck you could extract DNA from that.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And …’

  ‘And!?’

  I raised my fist above his rib cage once more. ‘And do what?’

  He paused for another quarter beat and then sort of collapsed with a puff of air and said, ‘Have you ever seen the movie, Jurassic Park?’

  At the end of North Road, the ambulance slowed down and a car pulled alongside. The driver told him something had fallen out of the back. Something like a man. I jumped out and ran through the bowling green to Stryd-y-Popty.

  Seren was sitting on the client’s chair, drinking tea. ‘Hi!’ she said and smiled. I slumped into the chair opposite.

  ‘I’ve run away.’

  ‘If you’re thinking of seeking your fortune in Aberystwyth, I wouldn’t advise it.’

  ‘I’ll probably go to Africa or something.’

  ‘That’s a good idea.’

  ‘I can’t go back anyway, Frankie Mephisto is looking for me. He offered some of the other girls money to tell him where I was. But they wouldn’t. There was a bloke in a wheelchair with him.’

  ‘This bloke in a wheelchair, was he a little skinny runty sort of boy, a real egghead clever clogs by the name of Brainbocs?’

  ‘I don’t know. He was just a boy in a wheelchair. I don’t have to go back, do I?’

  ‘Not for the time being.’

  ‘Cunybongy is going to kill me.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘She’s found out I’m up the duff.’

  ‘So where have you been this past week?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Half the county has been looking for you.’

  ‘I had a blackout. I get them sometimes.’

  ‘So, where did you go?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  She brought out from her lap a scrap of newspaper. It looked a few days old. She pushed it across the desk and I read the headline. It was about the hunt for Rimbaud. ‘I found this on the floor of the bus shelter. I wanted you to know they’re looking for the wrong man.’

  ‘I don’t think you need to worry about that.’

  ‘But I do, don’t you see? He’s innocent, and they’re hunting him like a dog. It’s not fair.’

  ‘Seren—’

  ‘I won’t stand for it.’

  ‘What makes you so sure he’s innocent?’

  ‘I’m just sure that’s all. People are saying he kidnapped your girlfriend, but he had nothing to do with it.’

  ‘If he gave himself up he could put himself in the clear.’

  ‘Don’t be silly! He’d be stupid to do that.’

  ‘We just want to ask him some questions.’

  ‘Why? What makes him so important?’

  ‘He was the last person to see Myfanwy before she disappeared.’

  ‘You don’t know that, you’re just guessing.’

  ‘We’ve got a photo that shows him next to the car.’

  ‘Rimbaud would never do a thing like they’re saying he did.’

  ‘Tell me what makes you so sure.’

  ‘I just am, that’s all.’

  ‘You know where he is, don’t you?’

  I looked her in the eye and she looked quickly away.

  ‘No! I’ve no idea. How should I know?’

  ‘You know where he is.’

  ‘Don’t.’

  ‘I tell you what. If you take me to where he is so I can talk to him I promise not to give him away.’

  ‘Yes you will, you’ll tell the police and they’ll all come …’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘He’s hiding somewhere down by the estuary, isn’t he?’

  ‘How would I know?’


  ‘Do you want to know how I know?’

  ‘No, it’s not of the slightest interest to me.’

  ‘OK.’

  I didn’t say anything more. Seren tapped her fingers on the desk. Then reached out and took the scrap of newspaper and then thought better of it.

  Then I said, ‘You wrote to the French teacher, didn’t you?’

  She was pretending to be interested in the top of the desk but her face shot up when I said that.

  ‘Who told you I wrote to her?’

  ‘Don’t kid me any more, Seren.’

  ‘I’m not kidding you, I didn’t write to anyone, I’ve no idea who you’re referring to.’

  ‘And you’ve never met Rimbaud.’

  ‘No, never.’

  ‘So, why do you care?’

  ‘I … I … I just hate to see the innocent persecuted that’s all.’

  I picked up the phone and dialled directory inquiries. ‘The number of Sister Cunégonde’s Waifery please. Thank you.’ I wrote it down and replaced the handset.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘I’m turning you in.’

  ‘Why? I came here because I thought I could trust you.’

  ‘You can, but I can’t trust you, you’re lying. You know where Rimbaud is—’

  ‘But you really mustn’t worry about Myfanwy. She’s all right, I saw her in my dream. She’s fine. I saw her in a house and there was a dog in the garden, and a chocolate tree …’

  I nodded seriously. ‘OK.’

  ‘Yes, I know, it sounds daft. But my dreams are special. They come true. She’ll be fine.’

  ‘Thanks, it’s a comfort.’

  ‘I know you don’t believe me.’

  ‘What happened when I was at the Waifery last time, the blood?’

  ‘My stigmata. It happened after Cunybongy cut my hair.’

  ‘Are you serious?’

  ‘Yes. I get it now and again. It started when I went to see the place where that girl died by the harbour – Bianca. I dream about her now and again, too. Cunybongy thinks I’m faking it to get attention, but I’m not. Really I’m not.’