Last Tango in Aberystwyth an-2

by Malcolm Pryce

  She smiled, the faint smile of someone who expects to be disappointed and is at least pleased to be right.

  'I almost made it. One more step and I would have been there. I'm glad it's you, though, and not a real cop. You know cops ...'

  'They either lock you up or fuck you up.'

  'Is she dead?'

  I nodded.

  Judy shrugged sadly. 'I suppose I should pretend to be sorry, but I'm not.'

  'The Dean says he did it.'

  'He always was a fool.'

  The guard walked up the platform slamming the doors, holding a flag at the ready. I picked up the suitcase and put it inside the train.

  'He must have thought you were worth it.'

  'I said he was a fool.'

  'I can understand him feeling like that.'

  She grinned. 'You're sweet! Where were you when I was getting thrown out of college?'

  'Thanks for warning Calamity.'

  'Did she tell you that?'

  'No, she didn't know who it was.'

  'Forget it, it was nothing.'

  'It was everything.'

  She reached up and stroked the side of my face. 'Nice kid, you take care of her.'

  I took the crook of her arm and helped her up and closed the door. She slid the window down and leaned out.

  'You're really going to let me go? I did it, you know. I killed her.'

  'I know. You had to.'

  'Does that make a difference?'

  'She took my gun, took it and wrote a note. That was no heat of the moment thing. Then she went round to your trailer with it. She would have killed you. If it hadn't jammed you would be dead.'

  'You're going to let the Dean take the punishment?'

  'As far as I'm concerned, only three people really know what happened in that caravan, and one of them is dead. I wasn't there.'

  'Will they believe you?'

  'No.'

  'You think they'll find me in Shrewsbury?'

  'Probably. But why stop there? The tracks go much further than that.'

  'Yeah, all the way to China so I've heard.'

  The whistle blew and the train clunked as the engine took up the slack.

  'They'll know you let me go — the people at the station have seen you.'

  'And a taxi driver.'

  'What will they do to you?'

  I sighed. 'They could do lots of things. If I'm lucky they will throw every book in the library at me. If that doesn't satisfy them they'll take away my licence. It won't be the first time.'

  'You're doing all this for me? Why?'

  I grabbed her hand on the window-edge and squeezed it gently. 'Let's say it's an old trick I learned from Ben Guggenheim.'

  She leaned forward and kissed me and said, 'He sounds like a nice guy, I'll look out for him.'

  The train jolted once more and then pulled out, gliding slowly, and then rapidly picking up speed. I stood there on the empty platform and thought of stories from long ago: of comets appearing in the skies when strange children were born; children with tails or covered in fur. And I thought a similar celestial marvel must have been seen once above Pumlumon, when Mrs Bligh-Jones lay down in a cow byre and a girl stranger than a changeling issued from her loins. No conjuror ever pulled anything more remarkable from a hat than that. The Bad Girl who saved Calamity's life and said it was nothing. But I knew how far from being nothing it was; knew the cruel price she must have paid. Because only one person could have told her the location of the rendezvous with Calamity: a man she despised; who serenaded her mother and then slew her; and who finally must have enjoyed that night the only girl in Aberystwyth they said he could never have.

  A fine mist began to form making the lamps along the track fizz like sparklers and in the distance, somewhere around Llanbadarn, the tail-lights of the train finally winked out. From the street outside came the sound of a car door slamming, followed by the staccato clatter of high heels on concrete. The urgent footfall of someone running for a train that has already gone. I turned and saw a lone girl racing towards me, like someone I once saw running across the dunes at Ynyslas. And then I caught a glimpse of the anguished look on her face and knew she had not come to catch a train but to stop one. 'Oh Louie!' she gasped, throwing her arms around me. 'Louie! Please don't go!' I buried my face in the tangled skeins of Myfanwy's hair and drank the scented darkness as the horn sounded from the distant hills and the night train to Shrewsbury raced eastwards, up that bright, silver ladder of hope.

  A NOTE ON THE AUTHOR

  Malcolm Pryce was born in the UK and has lived and worked abroad since the early nineties. He has held down a variety of jobs including BMW assembly-line worker, hotel washer-up, aluminium salesman, deck hand on a yacht travelling through Polynesia, and advertising copywriter. He currently lives in Bangkok. Last Tango in Aberystwyth is his second novel. His first, Aberystwyth Mon Amour, is also published by Bloomsbury.

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  Document creation date: 24.6.2012

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  Malcolm Pryce

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