Last Tango in Aberystwyth an-2

by Malcolm Pryce

  I grabbed his coat collar and dragged him upwards from his chair offering him the choice of leaving under his own steam or under mine. He chose his own, but I gave him some help from my foot anyway.

  Ten minutes later Bill and Ben turned up. It was a busy afternoon. All I needed now was a new client and I'd have full house. They'd brought me a Quietus witness form to sign.

  'OK,' I said, 'you know what the deal is. Tell me about the Dean.'

  The two old men swapped glances and then Bill spoke, 'If we tell you, you sign the form, right?'

  'If I like what you tell me.'

  They looked confused. 'But you saw it, you saw the Quietus!'

  'Some days I think I saw it, some days I think it was just the wind whistling, amigo. Which day it is today is up to you, but get on with it, I'm bored of talking to you.' They both drew themselves up and said defiantly, 'He went to join the Johnnys.'

  'He did what?'

  'He went to be a Johnny — a Clown's Johnny,' explained Ben.

  'He wanted to join the circus, you see.'

  'Just like them all. They all want to do that. We see them, don't we?'

  Bill nodded. 'All the time. Everyone wants to be a lion tamer.'

  'Or walk a tightrope.'

  'Or eat fire.'

  'Or even just balance balls on the sea-lion's nose.'

  'But all they get to do is be the lousy Johnny.'

  'But of course, what they don't realise is, there's only one way into the circus

  'Oh yeah, and what's that?'

  They hesitated. Some strange force was holding them back.

  'Go on! What is it?'

  'We can't say.'

  'You want the prize for reporting the Quietus, don't you?'

  'Of course we do, but we can't say, it's rude!'

  ' OK, suit yourselves. I've got three other ventriloquists coming round later on. I'll sign their Quietus forms instead.'

  Bill leaped up and shouted, 'No! You big swine! We got there first!'

  'So what's the only way of getting into the circus?'

  'OK then, you asked for it,' said Bill. 'It's ... it's ... it's through a lady's thingummy!'

  'A lady's thingummy?'

  'We don't know the proper name,' said Ben. 'It's Latin.'

  I took out my pen and signed the form.

  Chapter 7

  Meici Moondust laughed. 'Basically,' he said, 'the only route into the circus is through the birth canal. You have to be born into it, you see, born to a family of maniacs. A family so fucked-up they have you on the tightrope as soon as you can crawl. People who buy you sequins for your birthday and a safety net for Christmas.' He lifted the cornet above his head and adroitly licked the globules of melted vanilla as they ran down before they reached his knuckles. 'If you can't do the act, whatever it is, absolutely perfectly by the time you are four you'll never be good enough for the circus. But you'll always be good enough to be Mr Johnny. He's the stooge, you see. All he does is have pies put in his face or ladders swung round at him, or he gets slapsticked on his arse all season. The only reason the job even exists is because after years of taking it themselves the clowns decided they'd had enough and created the post of Mr Johnny. And people queue up for it.' Meici Moondust turned aside and spat. 'When I was a compere out at the Kamp I saw five or six get off the train from Shrewsbury every month. Accountants and clerks and insurance salesmen ... you name it.' He spat again. 'Clown's Johnny. If you see one look the other way.'

  *

  Calamity and I stepped over the remains of the demolished wall and on to the field of cleared debris that had once been Woolie's. A thriving market had grown up in the rubble.

  'I just can't believe it's gone,' said a confused old lady.

  'Neither can any of us,' said the woman from the Saint John's Ambulance Brigade.

  'It's been a terrible blow for everyone.'

  'We used to come to Woolie's every year. Used to drive all the way from Walsall.'

  'A lot of people did.'

  'They said I was daft because I work in Woolie's in Walsall. But it's nice to have a change, isn't it? And now it's been washed away.'

  'Drink your Bovril love, drink your Bovril — you'll be all right.'

  We ordered some tea from a stall and Calamity took out her list. 'Bucket, spade, mess-tin ...'

  'We need a mess-tin?'

  'That's what it says in the brochure.'

  'This is scarier than I thought.' As a sleuth in Aberystwyth I generally went undercover a lot less than people imagined. And when I did it was usually to dress as someone come to read the meter or something. Not as a means to go and stay at Kousin Kevin's Krazy Komedy Kamp in Borth. The brochure was specific on this point: Children and pets welcome. No private investigators.

  'Why can't we just go and talk to the Johnnys down at the pub in the village?' asked Calamity glumly, even though she knew the answer.

  'They don't allow them out. You know that.'

  The first spots of rain fell from the dim, grey sky.

  She tutted with resignation. 'I suppose we'd better learn our catchphrases then. The first one's "Bore da! How's your pa!"'

  I winced. Calamity dug me in the ribs. 'Go on, say it.'

  ' OK, then, here goes,' I said as if about to swallow medicine. 'Bore da! How's your pa!'

  'Yeah not bad,' said Calamity, 'but try and sound more as if you mean it.'

  The windscreen wipers made a gloomy whine and our spirits sank lower and lower as Aberystwyth receded in the rear-view mirror. We drove over Penglais Hill and down through Bow Street, turning left at the garage for Borth. Calamity skimmed through the brochure.

  'Do you believe the stories about this place?'

  'Which ones?'

  'The one about the zoo?'

  'I've heard a few about the zoo.'

  'They say an animal charity donated some toys and the monkeys gave them to the holidaymakers out of pity.'

  'I heard last winter all the animals got eaten.'

  'What about the one about the birds not singing?'

  Before I could answer we rounded the bend and saw the outline of the Kamp up ahead. Suddenly, unaccountably, we stopped talking, as if we had just walked into the room in a haunted house where once, long ago, someone had been walled up alive.

  'Gulp!' said Calamity.

  A guard checked our reservation at the first checkpoint and then raised the red-and-white painted bar and waved us on. A quarter of a mile further on we were at the main Kamp perimeter. We parked and, as thousands of holidaymakers before us must have done, looked up at the grim wrought-iron gates and above them, written in the same black iron, the words, 'Welcome to Kevin's'.

  After we'd checked in and spread the straw out in our room we went for a walk round. The place was quiet, maybe because it was low season or because most of the inmates were off on a work party. The enamel hot dog sign squeaking in the wind, the doors banging and the newspapers gusting across the cheap concrete crazy paving lent a strange unsettling air to the place. Like a ghost town, or ... or ... Calamity put her finger on it: 'Everyone's been abducted aboard a UFO.' We walked into a store selling milk and newspapers to ask directions. It was open but empty, no customers and no one behind the counter. We moved across to the amusement arcade. It seemed even emptier, the bingo section shrouded in a gloom that suggested it had been many years since the lights flashed and a river of prizes fell into the excited laps of chip-guzzling families from the Midlands.

  In the centre of the Kamp we found a darkened entertainment complex. Rows of seats set in clusters round tables in arrangements intended to disguise the fact that the seats had been bought wholesale from a cinema. There was also a stage with the curtain down. Finally in an adjoining saloon we found some human beings. A clown sat hunched over the bar guzzling glasses of vodka. The barman in a tatty magenta blazer filled it up each time without asking. We sat at the bar, a couple of stools down. They both looked at us with a glare of hostility before returning to their d
rinks.

  'Can I get you men a drink?' I asked cheerily.

  The clown halted his glass midway to his mouth and looked inquiringly at the barman. The barman gave a tiny almost imperceptible shrug. The clown slowly turned to me. He wore a filthy lime-green jacket with orange patches crudely stitched on. Underneath there was no shirt, just a grubby vest, with food stains on it. His face had a U-bend of a laughing mouth painted on in bright red, but his real mouth was set in a bitter sneer that went in the opposite direction, as if one of the mouths was a reflection in water of the other.

  I gestured to the barman to give the clown a drink. 'And one for yourself — that's if you drink while you're on duty.'

  Wordlessly the barman poured the clown a drink, then himself one, knocked it back and washed the glass.

  Finally the clown spoke. 'Just because I take your drink doesn't make you my friend.'

  I shrugged.

  'It doesn't mean I like you.'

  'Of course! it means you like to drink.'

  'Exactly. If I said no, I would be cutting off my nose to spite my face. You wouldn't want me to do that, would you?'

  'You never know, it might be an improvement.'

  Calamity nudged me and pointed at a woman passing the window. She walked, almost marched, with military stiffness and wore a Prussian-blue tunic and matching skirt set off by a well-polished Sam Browne belt. The left sleeve of her tunic swung emptily. I said to the barman, 'Isn't that Mrs Bligh-Jones from the Meals on Wheels?'

  He pretended to glance over his shoulder and without even looking said, 'No that's Mrs Parker from Mansfield.'

  I screwed up my eyes. 'No I'm sure it's Mrs Bligh-Jones. You can tell because she's only got one arm.'

  'No you're wrong, mate.'

  'But you didn't look.'

  'Yes I did.'

  She walked up to a chalet and the door opened. A man stood in the doorway in a dressing-gown. It was Jubal.

  'Doesn't half look like Mrs Bligh-Jones to me; and that's Jubal isn't it?'

  The barman leaned across and grabbed my chin in the vice of his index finger and thumb, jerked my face towards his and said in a cold, bitter voice, 'Are you calling me a liar?'

  I snatched my face free and signalled with my eyes to Calamity that it was time to try somewhere else. We walked out and carried on walking into the centre of the dreary Kamp.

  We passed a small collection of fairground rides, the horses and miniature spaceships covered with dusty tarpaulins. There was a flash of movement from behind the centre of the carousel. It was a little girl, grubby and bedraggled, her hair long and wild and matted; she must have been one of the feral children said to live on the fringes of the Kamp. On seeing us she darted behind one of the cars. We stopped and I crouched down and called to her. Slowly she moved forward and peered at us from behind a prancing pony.

  'Are your mummy and daddy around?' I asked.

  She shook her head.

  'Are you on your own?'

  She nodded.

  'We're looking for the clown's Johnny. Do you know what that is?'

  She nodded.

  'Will you take us to him?'

  She considered.

  'I'll give you some money to buy a hot dog.'

  She nodded and scampered off, assuming without even bothering to check that we would follow. We did.

  The colony of Johnnys was located towards the back of the Kamp, in the cages that had formerly housed the animals. There were four of them, sitting idly about on upturned boxes and staring boredly into space. None of them wanted to talk to us, but eventually a man who said I could call him Bert came to the bars. I showed him the picture of the Dean and he confirmed that he had been a Johnny for a while.

  'But he had no interest in learning the art,' said Bert morosely. 'He was just a dilettante. Kept going on about the fact that he was a professor and deserved better. I mean, big deal! I used to be an actuary but I don't ram it down your throat —' The man stopped suddenly, his attention distracted. I heard the sound of feet scraping deliberately on the pavement behind me and the miasma of cheap aftershave enveloped me. I turned and found myself face to face with a thin bony man in a black tie and dinner jacket. Next to him stood two Kamp security guards twirling their nightsticks. One of them went up to the bars and ran the truncheon along like a child rattling a stick along some railings. Bert leaped back and joined his friends.

  The man in the dinner jacket spoke. 'I'm awfully sorry to interrupt your fun, sir, but it appears your holiday has come to an abrupt end.'

  'Really? It's a bit sudden isn't it?'

  'That's often the way of it on holiday; it seems like you've only just arrived and already it's time to go home.'

  'We have only just arrived.'

  'As I say it can often seem like that. It's a trick the mind plays.'

  'And we were having such a nice time. I can't believe it's over.'

  'You're not the first, sir, to remark on the fleeting nature of human happiness. If I may be permitted the observation.'

  I looked at Calamity and she responded by dramatically stretching her eyebrows and chin in opposite directions. I turned back to the manager. 'Nice aftershave.'

  'Thank you, sir, I mix it myself. Nothing fancy, just a few things I find in the garden.'

  'Next time go easy on the slugs.'

  He winced slightly. 'Most comedic, sir. Now if you would care to make your way to the carpark.'

  'Couldn't we just extend our stay by half a day?'

  He shook his head in bogus melancholy. 'Sadly not, we're fully booked. No room for any more guests and alas, although you would be highly suitable for the role, we are already supplied with a clown.'

  'And if he goes sick you could always recite your aftershave recipe, couldn't you?'

  He winced again.

  'I want to see the manager.'

  The security guard answered. 'You're looking at him, pal, this is Kousin Kevin, he owns the Kamp.'

  'Don't sound so impressed, he can't even spell!'

  Kousin Kevin took hold of my cuff. 'If you wouldn't mind, sir.'

  'What if I do?'

  The security guard waved his nightstick. 'Actually, bigmouth, we'd prefer it if you did. We don't like snoopers in our camp.'

  We filed our way back in the direction of the car, guards on either side marching in step. No one spoke and the silence was lightened only by the soft strains of a dance tune from the swing era drifting over the eaves. As we cleared the last of the chalets we stopped involuntarily and stared before the guards urged us on. In the auditorium — deserted only a few minutes before — the ellipse of a single spotlight could now be seen bobbing across the darkened dance-floor like a drunken moon. And stepping jauntily through it, as if their shoes were glued to the light, were Jubal and Mrs Bligh-Jones, dancing to the 'Chattanooga Choo-Choo'.

  On the drive back to town I pondered the significance of what I had just seen. Mrs Bligh-Jones was the Commander-in-Chief of the Meals on Wheels, which made her a pretty powerful person in town. But it hadn't always been so. Two years ago she was just another bit player ladling anaemic gravy over sprouts that had been boiled to death.

  Her rise to prominence neatly illustrated one of the many ironies of the flood: so often the chief casualty had not been bricks and mortar, but things more intangible, like reputation. In this case the credibility of the druids. For as long as anyone could remember, they had been the town's official gangsters: running the girls, the gambling, the protection, and sending so many of their enemies to 'sleep with the fishes' it made the sea snore. But it all came to an end with Lovespoon's vainglorious Exodus aboard his ark. They lost a lot of good men on that boat and the ones left behind, their credibility shot, were never quite able to compete. This was when the carpetbagger gangsters moved in and no one had a bigger carpet-bag than Bligh-Jones. She alone had been the one to recognise the simple truth: in the moonscape of rubble and potato soup kitchens that followed the receding waters there was a new weapo
n abroad. Hunger. And the casually issued threat of a withheld bowl of gruel could be far more effective than any blow from a druid's blackjack.

  We might never have heard of her, either, if it wasn't for the tragedy on Pumlumon mountain. A story that has since become one of the defining legends of the rubble years. It started out as just a routine sweep in the Meals on Wheels van, the sort they often made into the foothills, looking for wayfarers to succour. But then a storm blew up and they received a mayday from high up on the mountain. Common sense told them to turn back, but they pressed on and before long they had passed the Bickerstaff line, that imaginary line that demarcates the point beyond which a safe return is no longer possible. Morale soon snapped in the sub-zero temperatures and the leader, Mrs Cefnmabws, lost her grip completely and ran off ranting into the storm. Then as the women argued in the fierce blizzard with icicles hanging off their eyebrow ridges it was the ruthless will of Mrs Bligh-Jones that forced them on, forced their rebelling sinews and surrendering flesh to scorn the pain. They were stranded for three months on that cruel mountain. Two of them died from pneumonia and Mrs Cefnmabws turned up the following spring preserved in a block of ice like a mammoth. The only ones to make it down were Mrs Tolpuddle, who refused to talk about it; and Bligh-Jones, who lost an arm to frostbite. It didn't hold her back, though. She returned to town a heroine and promptly began carving it up into mini-fiefdoms for her lieutenants.

  The only things she didn't contest were the girls and the drinking-clubs. Either out of an inherent puritanical streak or maybe out of a respect for tradition: because everyone knew that getting drunk was essentially a pagan activity and thus the birthright of the druids. And, no matter what else had changed, Bacchus was still the most popular god in town.

  We drove slowly up towards Waunfawr in a slow file of traffic stuck behind a caravan. The windscreen wipers droned hypnotically, the rain sluiced down, and the sky above Aberystwyth turned the colour of bluebottles. Perfect weather for a day at Kousin Kevin's. I thought again of what I had seen. Jubal, the man with a finger in all the pies in town, dancing with the woman who baked them.