From Aberystwyth with Love

Chapter 8

A donkey brayed maniacally. His eye sockets had been filled with glowing coals. The donkey stood in the bell tower of Notre Dame silhouetted against the blood-red sunset and febrile stormy sky, braying with malignant pleasure as the bell clanged and clanged and clanged . . . Each brazen clang was a demented hammer blow against the inside of my skull, like the nauseous pounding of blood in the ears of a man raving with fever. The clapper was fashioned from bone and carved into a form that filled me with an eerie and sickening sense of déjà vu. I had seen this bony clapper somewhere before, long ago, in a different life, perhaps on a different world. It clanged and clanged, the donkey laughed and then the realisation broke upon me in a deluge of sweat; suddenly I knew with the withering intensity of divine revelation where I had seen the bell-clapper before: it was my head. Gingerly I undid the stitches with which my eyelids had been sewn shut and gasped in pain at the searing incandescent blade of light that slipped through the curtains. The donkey’s laughter resolved into the squeaking milk sign outside the caravan site shop. A memory rose up of prisoners of war having pieces of dowel hammered into their ears; it was the ticking of my alarm clock, but louder and more exquisitely painful. The clanging of the bell was replaced by the rapping of knuckles on the tin side of my home.

I stood up and, fighting back waves of nausea, lurched as if across the pitching deck of a ship in a storm towards the place where I dimly remembered having left the door the night before. It was still there. I opened the door and saw Llunos. Despite the profusion of old wives’ tales about raw egg or oysters, nothing really works against severe hangovers apart from death. And maybe even death would not take away the pain of a man who had been so presumptuous the night before as to attempt to take a sounding of that bottomless cistern, the Russian heart. But of all the things that don’t work against hangovers, the one that doesn’t work the most is a visit from the cops. They always have conversation on the mind and seldom of a kind likely to knit up the ravelled sleeve of care.

I sat at the table holding my head in my hands. Llunos made tea: a symphony of discordant percussion and shrill violin notes that reminded me of the atonal music they sometimes had up at the Arts Centre.

‘You are a very unlucky man,’ said Llunos as he placed the teapot down. He had already observed from the way I flinched each time the clock stunned the day with its vicious ‘tock’ that normal sounds were amplified for me this morning; or maybe he had intuited it from the alcohol fumes in the room, which, he said, made his eyes water and his head a bit dizzy. Out of kindness he lowered the teapot on to the table with the gentle controlled descent of the lunar module approaching the surface of the moon; the cups like Harrier jump jets landing vertically on to the deck of an aircraft carrier.

‘One terribly unlucky man. Everyone you meet winds up dead. I need extra life insurance just to talk to you.’

I groaned.

‘You’re like that woman, Typhoid Mary. You should be in quarantine.’

I groaned again. He stuck a shovel into a pile of white rocks and threw them into the cauldron of tea. The god Thor lent him a spare hammer and he slammed it against the porcelain anvil.

‘Oh yes, you are a voodoo man. For ten or fifteen or I forget exactly how many years you and I have been working this town, every so often I find a dead man who is somehow connected to you. Don’t you find that strange?’

I groaned.

‘Oh yes, Louie Knight, the undertaker’s friend. It’s one of your best features. But the one I really like is the way you lie; particularly to that body of people whom good citizens are required to tell the truth to, the police. You remember the police?’

I groaned.

‘Course you do. Those suckers you can always ask if you want to know the time.’

He pulled out a quarter bottle of rum from his jacket pocket. My hand flew to my mouth as the urge to retch flooded over me. He laughed again and brought over two tumblers from the draining board. He filled them to the brim and slid one across to me. ‘Cheers!’ I looked at him in despair. ‘Drink it,’ he said. I picked up the glass, my hand trembling so violently the rum spilled over the rim. He took a drink, I took a drink. He took a drink, I took a drink. He took one more, I took one more. I felt better. Much better. I smiled at Llunos. He was my friend who had come to make me feel well. ‘Drink,’ he said. ‘It will wake you up; today is an important day; we are going to see some dead men.’

I sat up straight in my chair and said . . . my face hit the table and I passed out.

I regained consciousness briefly in Llunos’s car somewhere near Rhydypennau, and then once again as we drove down Penglais Hill. There was a bacon sandwich on my lap and a Styrofoam cup of tea wedged between the seat and the handbrake. It was the kindest thing Llunos had ever done for me. Probably the kindest thing anyone had ever done since I was a child. We drove along the Prom, and turned left after the castle to enter the bed & breakfast ghetto – a warren of crooked narrow streets where every second house was a Shangri-la. An ambulance and a cop car were parked outside one of the houses, with a few cops keeping the gawkers back. The cop on the door stood aside to let us through and the gawkers looked on enviously. Inside the front door it was the usual cheap seaside guest house arrangement: an occasional table with a phone and an assortment of framed photos; a vase of bulrushes stained lurid colours; framed views of Norman castles lining the corridor leading to the kitchen. Stairs led up to a landing, sheathed in russet, apricot and umber floral-pattern carpet.

At the top of the stairs, men in white paper suits were photographing and putting invisible things with tweezers into sandwich bags. A young man was sitting in a straight-backed chair next to the window, with a look of great surprise on his face, an expression enhanced by his hair which was standing up in comic-book fashion. The surprise on his face looked terminal.

‘Know this kid?’ asked Llunos.

‘I think it’s one of the students we saw painting watercolours the day we found Gethsemane.’

‘Funny, you didn’t tell me about the students.’

‘Didn’t I?’

‘Must have slipped your mind.’

‘Maybe I didn’t think it was important.’

He made a grunt that said he would be the judge of what was important. ‘His mate is in the next room looking pretty much the same. The third hasn’t returned home.’

‘He doesn’t look very alive.’

‘Died last night around midnight; the door downstairs at the back was forced. No one heard anything.’

‘What did he die of?’

‘Fright. Or something like it. That’s what the doctor thinks. His teeth are all broken.’

A woman in a housecoat, a head scarf, spectacles with blue translucent plastic frames, and a permanent expression of martyrdom appeared on the landing. A landlady straight from central casting.

‘They haven’t paid this month’s rent,’ she said.

‘It’s more serious than I thought,’ said Llunos. ‘I thought it was just a double murder.’

‘It would be different if it was your house.’

‘That’s right, the first thing I would think about would be the rent. You’re a saint, Mrs Crogau.’

‘I was banking on that money. Where will I get it from now?’

‘I’ll have a word with the coroner. Maybe we can let you have the pennies from their eyes.’

Mrs Crogau folded her arms under her bosom. ‘I was just observing that the rent was due. There’s no law against it.’

‘No, but there is one against going through the pockets of dead students and stealing.’

‘Who says I did that?’

‘Nobody yet.’

She sniffed and began to walk downstairs, adding, ‘I’d offer you a cup of tea if I didn’t think you’d plant some cocaine in the sugar bowl.’

Llunos turned his attention to me. ‘How come you forgot to mention the students?’

‘Old age. My memory’s not what it used to be.’

He scowled. It was a stupid thing to say, using sarcasm with Llunos invariably ends in tears and seldom his.

‘What were you doing out there, again?’

‘We just went to see the church spire.’

‘Are you concealing anything?’

‘No.’

‘Would you tell me if you were?’

‘No.’

‘I don’t know why I bothered, of course you are concealing something. It’s habitual. If I asked you the time you’d lie.’

‘What made you fetch me?’

He walked over to a chest of drawers and picked up a sandwich bag from the top. There was a Polaroid photo inside. ‘Looks like they were into photography as well as painting,’ he said. The photo showed me and Calamity dragging the girl from the lake. ‘What was the name of your client again?’

‘What client?’

He turned away. ‘All right, you can go now. Don’t leave town without telling me and don’t walk away with the idea that I believe you.’

Mrs Crogau was standing on the doorstep which fronted directly on to the road. Her arms were folded in a defiant air that suggested Fate sending her two corpses who hadn’t paid the rent was just the latest in a long series of trials. I stopped at the occasional table and looked at the photos. I picked up one that caught my eye. It was a wedding photo.

‘Like weddings, do you?’ she said.

‘This looks like Ffanci Llangollen’s sister, Mrs Mochdre.’

‘That’s right; married the Witchfinder. I was a bridesmaid.’

I considered the scene.

‘Bit of a strange do that was,’ she said.

‘Strange? In what way?’

She pursed her lips. ‘It’s all so long ago now, of course . . . my memory, you see. Very strange it was.’

I took out a pound coin and made it appear and disappear between my fingers the way magicians do. ‘Tough break, that,’ I said. ‘Two kids dying on you just before the rent is due. Guess it will be hard making the bingo payments this month.’

‘I won’t be shooting craps in Las Vegas, that’s for sure,’ said Mrs Crogau.

‘Maybe I can help.’

She looked greedily at the coin. ‘We all need help from time to time.’

‘That’s right. You scratch my back, I give you a shilling for the meter.’ I let the sun’s reflection catch the coin and play over her face.

‘Where exactly is the itch?’

‘I love strange stories, tell me about the wedding.’

‘That coin looks awful lonely.’

‘Not really, he has three brothers right in my pocket.’ I put the coin on the window ledge. ‘Tell me about the wedding.’

‘I do seem to remember how surprised everyone was about the announcement; it was less than a week after Gethsemane Walters went missing. It seemed a bit improper really, what with her mum beside herself and that. And then there was the other thing . . . Three brothers you say?’

‘That’s right, three big strapping brothers who work for the bank.’ I took another coin out and put it on the ledge next to the first.

‘Not a very big family, is it? Are there any cousins?’

I took out a third coin and held it poised over the other two. ‘What was the other thing?’

She licked her lips. ‘We were all a bit surprised her marrying the Witchfinder because she couldn’t stand the chap. Mrs Mochdre had always had a candle for Gethsemane’s father, the balloon-folder. The funny thing was, he’d been courting them both: Ffanci and Mrs Mochdre. He couldn’t make up his mind. Then Ffanci Llangollen got pregnant with Gethsemane and it sort of made up his mind for him. Some people think it was a bit convenient Mrs Walters falling pregnant like that, almost as if she trapped him on purpose, but I wouldn’t know.’

‘So Mrs Mochdre married the Witchfinder on the rebound?’

‘Not really, it was nine years later, just after Gethsemane went missing. That was why it was so strange. He had always been sweet on her, but she would never have anything to do with him. Then all of a sudden we hear they are getting married.’

‘Was she expecting?’ I put the third coin down.

‘That’s what we all thought, but they’ve never had children.’ She took the coins and dropped them in her pocket. ‘Well, she’s had plenty of time to repent her haste, hasn’t she?’

‘They’re not happy?’

‘Who could be happy married to him? That wedding bed is a torture rack, so they say.’

‘In what way?’

‘The usual way, only worse. He has “tastes”, you see.’ She gave a swift glance up and down the street and said softly, ‘Conjugal beastliness. She’s been a martyr to it. I won’t say any more but there are those who say he only joined the ecclesiastical cops for the handcuffs.’

I wandered down through the castle grounds, past the Crazy Golf which isn’t any more crazy than the way most of us spend our lives. Instinct drew me towards the ocean. The hangover had sharpened in the fierce sun and in my head a goblin beat a putting-green-sized gong with the insistent regularity of a metronome. The sun overhead pulsed in time with the rhythm. I hoped that there might be a cooling movement of air at the seafront but the water just shimmered and sighed with exhaustion. The Pier drooped.

Every case is different on the surface but underneath it every case is the same. Whatever problems bring the people of Aberystwyth to my client’s chair they are all driven by the same deeply held conviction that when things go wrong they have a right of redress. Those for whom life has been a long series of misfortunes know this childish belief to be false. But others are puzzled and shocked when Life eventually knocks on the door with a bill. Carefree days have to be paid for. They are indignant, as if Life has no right to do this to them, although all the evidence suggests it is what Life does best.

Feeling unaccountably glum, I walked towards the bandstand in search of Eeyore. Was this the spiritual crisis Llunos mentioned? Did the lake really represent the collective unconscious of Aberystwyth into which, over the years, we have thrown our repressed memories along with old prams and shopping trolleys? Or maybe there is a more humdrum explanation: the reappearing spire of the church reminds the townspeople of the years of modest achievement that have passed since the last time they saw it; reminds them with sharp poignancy of the desolation that is their fate.

I found him sitting on a bench near the children’s paddling pool, staring out to sea. I joined him. He pointed to the junction with Terrace Road. ‘There used to be a stop over there, the number one tram. From Constitution Hill to the railway station. That’s where it turned. Your mother used to be the conductress.’

‘Did you ride for free?’

Eeyore looked aghast. ‘Of course not! Your mum was brought up respectable.’ He looked genuinely indignant for a while and then smiled and looked thoughtful. ‘There would have been terrible consequences for the town if I had done that.’

‘Really? What sort?’

‘There would have been no Louie Knight.’

‘That sounds pretty bad.’

‘Her father was a policeman, you see, before the war I mean. He fell at Dunkirk. Well, if I’d taken to travelling without paying I don’t think she would have thought much of me. You might never have become a twinkle in my eye.’ He shook his head in mock horror at the very idea. ‘Oh no, I couldn’t go riding without a ticket.’

‘What made you go up north to Llandudno?’

‘Oh things. Can’t remember now, to tell the truth.’

‘That was the same summer that Gethsemane Walters went missing.’

Eeyore hesitated. ‘Er . . . yes, we went the month before. As I said, I wasn’t here when that fuss was happening.’

As far as I knew, Eeyore never lied to me except for the little white lies that all parents tell, about Father Christmas and the tooth fairy and all the other little hints that behind everything there is a benevolent and all-powerful hand directing the events of our lives. But last time we spoke about this I was sure he said he went up north after the affair.

‘How come you never talk about mum, Dad?’

He shifted position awkwardly. ‘Never know what to say. And, besides, thought it might unsettle you.’

‘I don’t think it would.’

‘Oh.’

‘But it might have once.’

‘I was born when she kissed me. I died when she left me. I lived a few weeks while she loved me.’

‘That’s nice.’

‘Bogart: In a Lonely Place. We went to see it together.’

Mrs Mochdre walked past and moved towards the railings, pretending not to see us. I waved and, forced to acknowledge us, she gave a curt grimace in response.

‘Ffanci Llangollen’s sister,’ I said. ‘Last to see Gethsemane alive.’

We watched her walk briskly down the Prom, hugging the railings as if they would spare her the obligation to be sociable.

‘You wouldn’t think so now,’ said Eeyore. ‘But I arrested that woman once.’

‘What for? Gossiping without due care and attention?’

He laughed. ‘Some daft incident at the Pier. She took a hammer to the mechanical gypsy fortune-teller.’

‘Didn’t she like her future?’

‘You couldn’t blame her if she didn’t. She said the Devil had spoken to her out of its mouth. She was always hearing voices in those days; Satan, she said. Although why he spent so much time talking to her I’ve no idea.’ He pressed the back of his hand gently against my shoulder. ‘Anything wrong? You seem mellow.’

‘Hangover.’

‘Yes, I could smell the booze even before I saw you, but there’s more.’

I sat for a while, contemplating the gong ringing in my head.

‘You don’t have to say if you don’t want,’ said Eeyore.

‘I think I might be spooked by the lake. Either that or Calamity going away at Christmas. It was only for a week or so but it made me think about things. Now I keep getting this dream, I’m sitting at the bottom of a well looking up at the world. There’s a steam train and some elm trees. And a woman.’

Eeyore nodded. ‘Is it Myfanwy?’

‘I don’t think so.’

‘Do you hear from her?’

‘Not for a while.’

‘She’s probably busy,’ said Eeyore.

‘Sometimes I think I’m a physician treating the symptoms of an incurable disease.’

‘I used to feel like that when I was a cop. It’s natural. You still have to do it though.’

‘Make the patient feel comfortable?’

‘As best you can. Call it pain management.’

‘It’s always fatal eventually.’

‘Of course.’

‘Where does the witch doctor go when he gets sick?’

‘That’s why it is hard being a witch doctor, son.’ Eeyore looked thoughtful. ‘What you are feeling, it’s not new. It’s as old as the hills. It’s like monks in the old days who went out into the wilderness to commune with God. Sometimes it happened that being alone there all that time they became afflicted with a disease of the soul; a terrible malaise that filled their hearts with blackness, with bleak despair. They called it the noonday demon or sometimes it goes by the name acedia. The private detective can get a similar sort of malaise, called Client’s Chair Acedia. I’ve seen it before.’