Don’t Cry For Me Aberystwyth

Chapter 14

I SPENT THE NEXT few days in my caravan, immersed in a cocoon of camping-gas warmth, swimming in the amniotic fluid of tea laced with rum. The weather had warmed up slightly and turned to sheets of rain that approached from across the Irish Sea in thin bands like interference on TV. I stared out at a sodden world: through smeared and scratched Perspex windows onto a bleary grey watercolour wash of wet dunes and beach and, beyond, the deeper grey of the sea. On the fourth day, in the fading light of late afternoon I saw a figure walking through falling rain which whipped against the window with tiny drumbeats. I watched for a while until I became aware that the figure was moving towards the caravan. The form took more distinct shape and I realised it was Myfanwy.

She came in, wiped her feet on the mat and said, ‘Surprise, surprise!’ She was holding a brown paper bag from the Chinese takeaway and the smell of hot food, sweet and sour and soy sauce and pineapples, filled my nostrils.

‘It’s a bit cold but it won’t take long to warm up.’

‘Shouldn’t you be in the nursing home?’

‘What sort of greeting is that? Aren’t you pleased to see me?’

‘Of course I am, I’m just worried.’

‘I discharged myself.’

I stood behind her and rested my face on the back of her hair, feeling the warmth of her pressed against me.

‘I was listening to them talk about how brave you were, how you risked your life for me and I felt so bad. I thought—’

‘Myfanwy, please don’t say anything about that.’

‘But I—’

‘You don’t have to. I don’t want you to say anything.’

‘OK.’

She turned from the stove and looked up into my face. She put a hand on my cheek.

‘You look a mess.’

‘I am.’

‘Everything smells of rum.’

‘Must be the mince pies – I like them strong.’

She started to grin but stopped halfway as she saw the mirthless look on my face. ‘I heard Calamity left.’

‘Yes, she’s going to try some sort of associate partnership with the Pinkertons.’

‘Why did you let her go?’

‘I couldn’t find a pair of small enough handcuffs.’

‘Louie, don’t!’

‘Because I love her.’

‘But you two were such a great team.’

‘It was good, but nothing good ever lasts.’

‘How can you be so cold about it?’

‘I’m not being cold. Calamity leaving me is a car wreck, but it’s one I knew was coming. Everyone has to leave the nest.’

‘No, they don’t, that’s crap. Kids and stuff, of course, but she was your business partner.’

‘She has to make her own way. I would never stand in her way.’

‘But, Louie—’

‘Look, stop it! Why say all this to me? I’m not the one who left. I’m still in the same old office staring at the same old boring ceiling.’

She kicked a bottle on the floor. ‘This won’t help, you know.’

‘I’m not trying to help. Are you going to stay here?’

‘I thought I would for a couple of days, if that’s all right.’

‘Then what?’

She avoided my eyes and began to stir the food that was heating on the stove.

‘Then what?’

‘I . . . I might go to my auntie.’

‘Which one? The one in Llanrhystud?’

‘The one in Shrewsbury.’

‘Oh. When?

‘After the carol concert.’

‘I thought you couldn’t sing.’

‘I can now. My voice has come back.’

‘That’s good. I told you it would.’

‘Of course, if you say I can’t go—’

‘You know I’d never do that. I just want what’s best for you.’

She nodded sadly, stirred the food. And then brightened. ‘We’ll have our Christmas now. Have you got anything other than rum?’

‘I haven’t even got that. It’s all gone.’

‘I want wine.’

‘I’ll get some.’

‘No—’

‘I’ll drive down to the village and get some.’

‘Don’t be long.’

The rain had gathered strength and I drove with extra care, terrified of ending up in the verge on this night of all nights. The ones you never planned always turn out to be the special ones. Cars overtook and hooted their horns in derision. It’s strange how angry you can get about someone driving slowly. Move over, Granddad. I usually did it myself. When Eeyore was driving I cringed with embarrassment. But tonight I was the slowest of them all.

When I got back she was sitting on the sofa looking glum; someone else was stirring the food. It was Tadpole.

‘What are you doing here?’

‘Oh, hi, Louie. You’re back. We were starting to wonder where you’d got to. Sweet and sour, my favourite. Must have known I was coming, huh?’ She started rummaging around in the kitchen looking for something, as if she’d been here many times before. ‘Honestly, Louie, this place is a mess. You need someone to look after you. I guess this will have to do.’ She pulled out a bucket and filled it with water. She put flowers in and arranged them.

‘You’ll be in trouble when the doctor finds out you’re here,’ she said over her shoulder to Myfanwy.

I looked at her sitting on the sofa, her face a picture of desolation.

‘We had a great time the other night, didn’t we, Louie? That’s one of the best dates I’ve ever been on. And I’ve been on a few, I can tell you.’

She took the pan off the stove and started scraping the rice out onto three plates. We both watched with mesmerised helplessness. She brought them over and put them on the table, then fetched cutlery. She sat down and looked at us invitingly, saying ‘Aren’t you going to open the wine?’

I didn’t move.

Tadpole lowered her head and intoned, ‘Oh Lord, all we ask for is a stale crust and a few cobwebs and yet You give us Chinese. Truly we are not worthy of the bounty. Amen.’ She paused as if to give the Lord chance to deny the compliment. He said nothing and Tadpole began eating.

‘What are you doing here?’

I asked. ‘I was in the neighbourhood.’

‘Carrying flowers?’

‘Honestly, Louie! Give a girl a break. You want me to stand on a box and shout that I brought the flowers specially?’

Myfanwy was avoiding my gaze, looking away into the middle distance. Rain pattered on the window and the wind began to pick up, acquiring an eerie quality like a woman softly weeping. I tapped Myfanwy gently with my foot under the table. She looked at me and I made an exaggerated frown at the top of Tadpole’s head. She sniffed and turned away.

‘So,’ said Myfanwy, injecting an artificial warmth into her voice, ‘you two had a date.’

‘We went to see Clip.’

‘How nice.’

‘You should try and see it.’

‘It wasn’t really a date,’ I said lamely.

Tadpole shot me a look of angry consternation and said, ‘Don’t you hate it when they do that? We’ve been seeing each other for a while now.’

‘That’s nice,’ said Myfanwy. ‘I didn’t know.’

‘Have we?’ I said.

‘He really knows how to charm a girl. Trip to the cinema – tickets to see Clip, of all things. Champagne and roses; holding my hand; whispering sweet nothings. Oh, my head’s still swimming.’

Myfanwy stared down at her food. After a while she swung her arm out, brought her wrist up to her nose, and peered at her watch in the familiar dumbshow of someone who is going to announce a pressing need to leave. ‘My goodness! Is that the time?’

‘Do you have to go?’ asked Tadpole.

‘No she doesn’t.’

‘Yes, I think I do. It’s getting late.’

‘No it isn’t,’ I said. ‘It’s not even seven o’clock.’

Tadpole had finished her plate of sweet and sour and was looking hungrily at Myfanwy’s. ‘Aren’t you going to eat your food?’

‘No, I’ve lost my appetite.’

‘Pity to let it go to waste.’ She picked up Myfanwy’s plate and held it above hers. She was about to scrape it onto hers, but I stopped her. I took Myfanwy’s plate off her and put it back down in front of Myfanwy.

I said, ‘What are you doing here? Myfanwy and I are supposed to be having dinner together.’

‘I’m not stopping you, am I?’

‘Yes. Now, why have you come?’

‘Oh God, Louie. Don’t be so dense, will you?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘You know why I’m here. Don’t make me say it in front of Myfanwy. I’ll die of embarrassment.’

‘Say what?’

‘You know. About our little secret. Spare a girl some blushes, please.’

‘I have no secrets from Myfanwy. State your business and go.’

‘Oh, Louie, please don’t make me say it, please don’t. I’ll go red. I hate it when that happens.’

‘Just say what you have to say.’

‘I’ve come to collect . . . you know . . .’

‘What?’

‘Them.’

‘Them what?’

‘Oh, Louie.’

‘Stop saying, “Oh, Louie.” It’s driving me nuts.’

‘All right, you asked for it. I’ve come for my pants.’

What?

‘I think I left them here the other night.’ She stood up surprisingly quickly. ‘No, don’t you two move, I’ll get them. You just enjoy your dinner.’

She rushed up to the other end of the caravan and whipped back the bedclothes. There lying on the sheets on one side of the bed, just below the pillow and about as wide, neatly laid out, was a pair of pants.

‘Oh, here they are. How embarrassing.’ Tadpole scooped them up and stuffed them into her pocket.

I looked at Myfanwy. ‘You’re not buying any of this nonsense, I hope.’

Myfanwy glared at her food and refused to look at me.

I stood up and walked over to Tadpole and took her by the wrist. ‘Come over here. I want to tell you something in secret.’

I took her coat off the hook, thrust it into her hands and pushed her to the door.

‘What are you doing?’

‘Throwing you out.’

I opened the door and pushed Tadpole onto the step. ‘Now push off,’ I said.

‘But, Louie—’

‘Get lost!’ I closed the door. I walked back to Myfanwy and sat down.

Tadpole appeared at the window. Her fist was in her eye and her mouth contorted into that familiar figure-of-eight on its side; she wailed. I mouthed my parting words through the Perspex and she wailed even more. I drew the curtain across. There was silence for a second and then the sound of a pudgy fist beating on the side of the caravan and a voice crying, ‘Let me in!’

I put my arm round Myfanwy.

‘Louie it’s so awful. Why won’t she leave us alone?’

‘Don’t worry, she’ll soon get tired of banging on the wall. Eat your dinner.’

There were tears in her eyes; she sneezed them back and picked up her fork. She started moving the food around the plate. After a while the banging ceased. Myfanwy stopped playing with her food and we sat there waiting, holding our breath, silently praying that Tadpole had finally given up and gone home. We sat still as statues, listening. All we could hear was the thin tap of rain on the metal skin above our heads; and distant creak of the Lyons Maid sign outside the newsagent’s. And then beyond that a soft roar as the wind picked up. I wondered what made caravans so cosy. Maybe it was the very thinness of the membrane protecting us from the wilderness. Out there beyond that line, the little crooked rectangle of white pebbles taken from the beach, you could die. You could wander onto the sands, oblivious in the night, and never return. You last memory would be the sea; the dark salty glugging liquid forcing its way into your mouth and nose and ears.

Myfanwy sank into my side; I nestled my chin on her head and rested my gaze on her hair, the colour of conkers. Some girls try to buy it in a bottle, but all they buy is a colour, and colours on their own are nothing: flat expanses of undifferentiated hue, like a song with only one note. In truth the colour we call chestnut is really a swirling sea of many different hues: of mahogany and umber and sienna; faint swirls of black; and lighter russets like the flecks in a tawny owl’s eyes. . . . As a child in autumn I knew the secret; when I prised open the lime-green thorny shell and popped from the moist sucking socket an egg of wood, it’s shine so deep I saw my own puzzled tiny face staring back against the backdrop of the wide unfathomable sky. You can’t buy it. It is a gift from your ancestors. You have to be born in these parts and inherit the green-grey eyes and the fair skin, lightly speckled with pale freckles like eggshell. Or you have to imprison it in the bars of a song. They used to specialise in it: those bards and ovates with their long oaken tables, clanking jugs of ale and rustling chain mail. Bring on the minstrel! the poet! bring on Taliesin and sing to us of this girl’s hair while the wolf howls and we quaff. They’ve all gone now; the bards, the warriors and, saddest of all, the wolf. What was it the poet said? Driven from their halls by brambles. But the beauty they sang of, the ancient beauty of the hills and feral sky, you can still see it in Myfanwy’s face.

There was a loud clunk against the side of the caravan. We froze. There was a pause; and then the rhythmic scraping sound of boots on the rungs of a ladder. Seconds later the noise was above our heads, as if the caravan was at the bottom of the ocean and a deep-sea diver in lead-soled boots was clumping across the roof.

‘Oh, my God, she’s on the roof.’

‘Louie!’

‘Just sit there. Don’t do anything.’

I stood up and from the air vent at the other end of the caravan came Tadpole’s voice, slightly warbled and distorted as if she too were under water.

‘Loooooouie!’

‘Look here, you!’ I shouted up at the vent.

‘You shouldn’t have done that. I’m angry now. You shouldn’t have made me angry, Louie.’

‘Get off my roof.’

‘Or you’ll do what?’

‘I’ll come out and drag you off.’

‘I’d like to see you try.’

‘If I come out there I’ll break your goddamned neck.’

‘I’d soon sort you out. I’ve been trained by the Soldiers for Jesus.’

‘We’ll see about that.’

‘Send Myfanwy home and I promise to forget what you did.’

‘Are you nuts?’

‘Don’t upset me any more. I’m plenty mad now, Louie. Send her home and I promise no one will get hurt.’

‘You can spend the whole night on the roof, for all I care.’

Don’t make me do it.’

‘Do what?’

‘Don’t make me use my Soldiers for Jesus techniques.’

I paused and looked around. Lying on top of the cupboard above the stove was a spray can of oven cleaner. I picked it up, aimed at the vent and squirted. There was a squeal, followed by a backward clumping sound on the roof towards the edge. Then a second or so’s silence, because even Tadpole doesn’t make much sound when falling through the air. There was a thud and more silence. Myfanwy watched me wide-eyed with terror.

‘It’s OK,’ I said, trying to sound like I thought it was.

I walked to the door, gingerly opened it, and peered outside. Tadpole was slumped on the ground at the other end of the caravan. I walked over to check. Her head was wedged awkwardly against a concrete gatepost. It was slicked with her blood but she was still breathing. I went to the kiosk on the main road to call an ambulance.