New Cardiff

by Charles Webb

  ‘You’re wrong, Doug,’ the salesman said.

  ‘Just look at it.’

  ‘Christ, Doug, no one wears their tie that way.’

  ‘But if they did they’d be arrested for indecent exposure.’

  ‘Mr Ware,’ the salesman said, ‘does the monument on that tie look to you like …’ He frowned a moment, then looked down at Doug. ‘What do they call them over there.’

  ‘How do I know. Ask him.’

  ‘You ask him.’

  ‘Colin,’ Doug said, looking up at him. ‘Do they call them pricks over there?’

  ‘That would translate.’

  ‘Be honest, Mr Ware—is that what our monument looks like to you?’

  Colin leaned forward slightly so he could see the design again on the tie hanging between his legs.

  ‘Be honest, sir.’

  ‘Actually it might have somewhat more of a flesh tone than the original.’

  ‘Jury’s spoken,’ Doug said, straightening up.

  ‘I’m telling you we can fix that.’

  Doug handed him back the tie. ‘You’ll have people wearing these things out of their pants for a gag,’ he said, guiding him through the door and out into the hall. ‘Tell you what. Why don’t you go back and have your people come up with one with a cannon on it.’ He started back into the office, but then turned a final time to the salesman. ‘But hold the cannon balls,’ he called down the hallway after him. ‘Those guys’ll turn you grey if you let them,’ he said, returning to the office. ‘Take a chair, friend.’

  Colin sat down, then reached into his pocket for a folded sheet of paper.

  ‘What’s this,’ Doug said, taking it from him.

  ‘The complaint.’

  ‘You came through for me,’ Doug said, seating himself at his desk.

  ‘I did what I could.’

  Doug unfolded the sheet of paper and sat quietly for a few moments reading it. He looked up at Colin when he was finished. ‘So thanks to that bastard my picture’s going to turn yellow.’

  ‘Over time,’ Colin said, pointing at the form, ‘but as I mention in there, there may be a spray I can get.’

  Doug swivelled in his chair slightly and tapped several keys on the keyboard of his computer. Colin glanced at the monitor on the desk as a list of telephone numbers appeared on the screen. Colin was about to say something but Doug raised his hand to silence him, then picked up the receiver of his telephone and pressed several numbers on the phone’s keypad.

  ‘What are you doing.’

  ‘Sit tight, Colin, you’re in good hands.’

  Doug cleared his throat. ‘Tom,’ he said. ‘Doug at the New Cardiff Chamber. Listen. I have another walking wounded down here from Petersons’. We’re looking for a spray you put on drawing paper to get the acid out.’ He listened a moment, then glanced at Colin and nodded. ‘Overnight me a can of the stuff, Tom. Put it on our account. I owe you one.’ He hung up the phone.

  ‘Thank you, Doug, I appreciate that.’

  ‘A classic work of art like the one you produced here the other day?’ he said, leaning back in his chair and shaking his head. ‘I’m sorry. Posterity and the progress of Western art aren’t going to be deprived of that experience by some retired heating-oil salesman with delusions of grandeur.’ ‘I’m happy you liked it.’

  ‘Oh much more than liked it. Friend, you captured my very essence.’ He looked out over Colin’s head. ‘Funny and serious all at once. Brash with just a hint of impishness. Pulsating with youthful energy while at the same time exuding a passionate sense of civic pride. God knows how, but you got it all in.’

  ‘I may have to look at it again.’

  ‘Now it’s your turn to ask a favour,’ he said, holding up Colin’s completed complaint form. ‘When I said you’d have the Key to the City in return for this, I meant nothing less.’

  Colin nodded. ‘Actually there is something.’

  ‘Name it, Colin. A five-course dinner at the New Cardiff Grand?’

  ‘No, there’s just a question I had about the original Welsh settlers of New Cardiff.’

  ‘That’s all?’

  ‘You were going to tell me about them last time, then we got side-tracked.’

  ‘You’re too easy.’ Doug stood and walked across the room to a filing cabinet. ‘Now this would be the original fourteen families we’re talking about?’

  ‘I learned a few things about them from Joanie at my motel.’

  Doug pulled out a drawer of the cabinet. ‘There’s not that much to know,’ he said, removing a folder. ‘They came over and named the place. There wasn’t any coal so they went down to Pennsylvania. I’m afraid that’s as exciting as it gets.’ He carried the folder back to the desk and sat down with it.

  ‘There must be more known than that.’

  ‘There’s the journal,’ he said, going through the papers in the folder. ‘That’s what I’m looking for. But that’s about the best I can do for you.’ He removed several pages stapled together.

  ‘Journal?’

  ‘The founder of the town kept it,’ he said, handing it across the desk. ‘The original’s in the Statehouse up in Montpelier.’

  Colin looked down at the top page of the photocopied document. It was written in small and careful printing, the lettering done in old-fashioned script with large curling Ss and Fs beginning many of the sentences.

  ‘I had all the local merchants memorise a little spiel to rattle off when visitors show any interest,’ Doug said, ‘but I may put together a version of my own that has a little more sizzle than that one.’ He sat a moment as Colin looked down at the journal. ‘Wait a minute,’ he said. He pulled his chair up closer to the desk. ‘Colin. A brainstorm. Do something for me.’

  ‘What’s that.’

  ‘Read a little of that out loud.’

  Colin glanced up at him, then back down at the document.

  ‘Would you?’

  Colin shrugged. ‘If you’d like.’

  ‘Read it in an English accent.’

  ‘I was planning to.’

  ‘Go ahead. Take it from the top.’

  Colin cleared his throat.

  ‘Let me tell you what I have in mind first,’ he said, raising his hand to stop him. ‘We’ll record the thing in your voice on cassette tapes and sell them in all the motels and gift shops around town.’

  ‘Why would anyone buy that.’

  ‘I’ll tell you that part later,’ Doug said. ‘Just read it.’ He leaned back, placed the ends of his fingers together again and turned his eyes up to the ceiling, but when Colin still didn’t start reading he looked back down at him.

  ‘I’d sort of like to know that part now.’

  ‘I don’t want it to affect the way you read it.’

  ‘I’m sure it won’t.’

  ‘We’ll say it’s Winston Churchill.’ He gestured at the document. ‘Read.’

  ‘Doug.’

  ‘Bad idea,’ Doug said.

  ‘Very.’

  Doug nodded. ‘Scratch Winston then. But I do want to hear it in the accent.’

  Colin looked back down at the journal and cleared his throat. ‘“On this day of Five September, Our Lord Seventeen Hundred and Forty-Seven, commenceth the Journal of Godwyn Edwards, Protector and Spiritual Leader of Sixty-Two Souls arrived on this Sacred Ground, named by our Elders New Cardiff”.’

  Doug was leaning back in the chair again, the tips of his fingers together as he listened.

  Colin returned his eyes over the sentence he had just read. ‘Edwards,’ he said.

  ‘Godwyn Edwards. He was Mr Big. A little later you’ll be meeting Abigail, his wife. Don’t get your hopes up, though, it doesn’t get any steamier than it already is.’

  ‘Edwards,’ Colin said again, looking off at the wall.

  For several seconds it was quiet.

  Doug looked down at him.

  ‘That’s a very common Welsh name,’ Colin said.

  ‘I wouldn’t know.’
/>
  After a few more moments Colin handed the document across the desk to him.

  ‘That’s it? That’s all I get to hear?’

  ‘I’d like to talk about the Key to the City.’

  ‘It’s yours, friend.’

  ‘Anything I want.’

  Doug returned the journal to the folder. ‘Well. Within bounds.’

  ‘What bounds.’

  He closed the folder and looked back at Colin.

  ‘What bounds,’ Colin said again.

  Doug set the folder down on the desk, then placed his hands on top of it. ‘Shrewd judge of human nature that I am,’ he said, ‘I sense we’re about to have revealed here the dark side of Colin Ware.’

  Colin nodded. ‘We are,’ he said. ‘I’m just hoping the Key to the City has a dark side as well.’

  16

  It was just before eight o’clock when a knock came on the door of number twelve and Colin opened it to find Joanie outside. ‘Were you going to bed?’ she said.

  ‘Watching The Godfather.’

  ‘We’re watching the special on killer bees.’

  ‘It was a hard choice.’

  ‘They’ve migrated up to Maryland already,’ she said, ‘and they’re expected here next summer. But you’ll be gone by then.’ She rested her hand on Colin’s wrist. ‘Mandy just called.’

  ‘Mandy?’

  ‘I memorised her message,’ Joanie said, frowning down at the walkway at her feet. ‘Let’s see, “Everything’s been sent off. It will be back in seven business days”.’ She looked up at him again.

  ‘“Everything’s been sent off. It will be back in seven business days”,’ Colin repeated.

  ‘That’s word-for-word.’

  Colin felt his shoulders sag slightly as they relaxed. ‘Thank you, Joanie. Thank you very, very much.’

  ‘And Colin,’ she said, ‘this is none of my business, I’m not trying to butt in—I didn’t say anything to Mandy about this—but I was quite surprised at someone as up-to-date as she is about these things going about it in this way.’

  ‘Going about what.’

  ‘Maybe back when I was a teenager we did it like this, Colin. But now you just go down to the drugstore, bring something home to dip into your pee, it turns this or that colour and you know in five minutes.’

  ‘If you have a passport?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Oh, oh, if you’re pregnant.’

  ‘I mean I don’t know about England,’ Joanie said, ‘but Mandy of all people is someone I would expect to be aware of the latest methods. Anyway, Fisher was trying to figure out how many days you’ve been here.’ She removed her hand from his wrist so she could count on her fingers. ‘I don’t think you’ve been here long enough for her to start worrying just yet, Colin.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Although I don’t know if having a little Colin or Mandy running around the place would be all that bad either.’ Joanie opened her arms. ‘Let me give you a great big New Cardiff hug.’ Colin stepped out the door and she put her arms around him. ‘Oh we’re so happy to have you here,’ she said, rocking back and forth slightly as she embraced him. ‘I can’t tell you how delighted we all are to have you here.’

  ‘No more than I am, Joanie, to be here.’

  ‘You’re such a nice person.’ She held him a few moments longer, then stepped away. ‘Is this the original Godfather you’re watching?’

  ‘I didn’t come in at the beginning.’

  “See you tomorrow, Colin.’ She turned around and hurried back toward the sliding door leading into their living quarters. Colin stepped into his room again, closed his door and returned to the bed. He fluffed the pillows that were piled against the headboard, rearranging them more comfortably, then got on the bed and settled back and read the final credits of The Godfather.

  Colin had just washed out the one pair of socks he’d brought to America and was draping them over the shade of a bedside lamp to dry more quickly when the phone rang. It was Vera. ‘I have to see you,’ she said, ‘but I don’t want to come to your room this time.’

  ‘How about the Deep Cup,’ Colin said.

  ‘What’s that.’

  ‘It’s across the street.’

  Colin was already seated in a booth when Vera arrived at the diner ten minutes later. ‘No socks either?’ she said, looking at his bare ankles as she approached the table.

  ‘What’s on your mind, Vera.’

  She slid in on to the seat across from his. ‘Colin, you are not going to believe what happened this afternoon.’ She looked over at the waitress behind the counter. ‘Miss?’ She raised her hand. ‘A tea please?’ She turned back to Colin.

  ‘I’ve ordered.’

  ‘Colin, you are not going to believe what I’m about to tell you.’ She opened her bag and removed an envelope. ‘I don’t even know how to start. Let me start with Doug.’

  ‘Doug.’

  ‘You did his picture.’

  ‘Oh that Doug.’

  ‘Reed?’ she said, opening the envelope. ‘Something like that. Anyway, he called me up this afternoon and asked me to come over to the Chamber of Commerce.’

  ‘I think I mentioned you in passing.’

  ‘Well it was more than in passing, Colin. He seemed to know quite a bit about me. That I’m half Welsh, among other things.’ The waitress came to the table and set down a cup of water and a tea bag in front of Vera, and a piece of pie at Colin’s place.

  ‘This is what you’ve got to see.’ Vera removed a sheet of paper from the envelope as the waitress walked away. ‘This is what you won’t believe.’ She set it on the table between them. ‘My family tree.’

  ‘Really.’

  ‘Going back three hundred years. Doug went to the website of that place in Salt Lake City that has everybody’s genealogy in the world.’ She moved his plate slightly so she could put the piece of paper directly in front of him. ‘You can just type in a credit card number and get your family tree. So he got mine.’

  ‘Amazing,’ Colin said, looking down at it.

  ‘And I know I keep saying you won’t believe this, but I guarantee you it’s the most incredible thing that’s ever happened.’

  He picked up her tea bag and dropped it in her water. ‘Vera, I’m already getting tired of this subject and I don’t even know what it is yet.’

  She put her finger on the bottom of the page. ‘Okay. Here I am. You see my name.’

  ‘Vera Edwards.’

  She moved her finger over slightly. ‘And here’s Alicia.’

  He nodded.

  ‘Here’s Dad,’ she said, pointing to her father’s name, ‘and the person he married.’

  ‘Your mother.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘I knew who he married.’

  ‘It’s set up with these lines linking up all the marriages and children. It’s a little confusing.’

  ‘I still knew who he married.’

  She moved her finger up a little higher on the page. ‘And here’s Grandma Edwards. This is her maiden name in brackets. Which is spelled wrong.’

  ‘That’s not how you spell it?’ Colin said, turning his head so he could read it.

  ‘It’s Kendal,’ she said, ‘with just one “I”. Then you go up here.’ Vera moved her hand over the names in the middle of the page. ‘I’ve never heard of most of these people. Just various ancestors. But you wind up here.’ Her finger had come to rest on one of the names at the top of the page.

  Colin looked at the name. ‘Godwyn,’ he said.

  ‘Godwyn Edwards.’

  ‘Don’t know that many Godwyns.’

  ‘This is the part you won’t believe.’ She moved her finger to the name next to Godwyn’s. ‘And this is Abigail, his wife. Try to guess who these two people are.’

  ‘I can’t.’

  ‘Try.’

  He shook his head.

  ‘Try, Colin.’

  ‘Adam and Eve? I give up.’

  Her finger re
mained between the two names at the top of the page. ‘Godwyn and Abigail Edwards are the people who founded New Cardiff.’

  Colin sat quietly looking down at her family tree.

  ‘Don’t you get it?’

  ‘I guess I don’t.’

  ‘Colin, the people who founded this town are my ancestors.’

  Colin looked at her a few moments without speaking. ‘Come on,’ he said finally.

  ‘I swear to God.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I know. I can’t believe it either.’

  He looked down at the names, then at her again.

  ‘It’s true, Colin.’

  ‘You’re related to the people who started this place?’

  ‘There’s even a journal written by this person Godwyn,’ she said, picking up the sheet of paper. ‘I have a copy of it back at the motel. It’s a good thing I don’t believe in fate or I’d think the whole reason everything has worked out the way it has was just so I’d come over here and find this out.’ She put the paper down on the table again. ‘But that’s just the beginning.’

  ‘No more revelations, Vera, I couldn’t handle them.’

  ‘Doug wants me to promote the town.’

  ‘New Cardiff?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How would you do that.’

  ‘He has a whole strategy worked out for me, Colin. And get ready for this promotional gimmick. He wants me to be queen.’

  ‘Queen?’

  ‘Of New Cardiff.’

  Colin sat silently a few moments looking across the table at her. ‘Queen of here.’

  She nodded.

  ‘Queen Vera of here.’

  ‘You should have heard him go on about it. “You’re a living legacy. You’re the human embodiment of the hopes and dreams of all New Cardiffians, past, present and future.” Well I don’t have to tell you how he talks.’

  ‘It’s known as jabbering.’

  She lifted her tea bag out of the cup by its string and set it down on her saucer. ‘But I mean really—this is too absurd. Even for me.’ She took a sip of the tea. ‘This is lukewarm.’

  ‘Even for you,’ he said.

  ‘I do tend toward bizarre behaviour, as you know,’ she said, ‘but this is over the top. I mean don’t you think?’ She set her teacup back down.