From Aberystwyth with Love

Chapter 24

The real question was, who put her in the cupboard? Who put the corned beef, the dandelion and burdock and the colouring book there? Why go to such trouble? Vanya had worked it out. He had guessed it all because he was smarter than me, worked it all out that day I saw him sitting on the beach with Clip the sheepdog. That’s when he decided there was no purpose carrying on. He found out that there never was a spirit possessing his daughter, no imaginary friend, he found out it was a real girl who had replaced the one he had loved. He worked it out on the same afternoon that he saved Gomer Barnaby’s life. Who did he see? Who told him? Sometimes it takes us a long time to see the obvious. Who would you go and see after saving the young Barnaby’s life? Who would give you a phial of Ampersandium in recognition of your brave deed? Who else but Old Barnaby?

The old lag at the rock foundry told me Ephraim Barnaby was expecting me. He showed me up the stone stairs to the first landing and then to a door in the corner. It led into a tower inside which was a spiral staircase. I climbed; the inside of the tower was dark and cold, almost damp. I wondered if it was like this for Sleeping Beauty. There was a door slightly ajar at the top. I hesitated on the threshold and a voice from inside bade me enter.

He sat in an armchair next to an electric bar fire, toasting muffins on a long brass fork. An arched window behind him looked out over the rooftops of the town and beyond to the deep blue sea. I sat in the other chair, next to the fire, flesh prickling with sweat.

‘Vanya told me everything,’ I said.

Barnaby skewered another muffin on the end of the fork. ‘You wouldn’t be here if he had.’ He held the muffin out to toast. I undid the button of my collar. ‘Sometimes at night I wander the streets dressed as a tramp, asking people for the price of a cup of tea,’ said Old Barnaby. ‘You gave me a fiver once outside the Spar.’

‘I don’t remember.’

‘I admire you.’

‘You know who put Gethsemane in the cupboard that ended up in Hughesovka, don’t you?’

‘I didn’t know where it had ended up until Vanya came to see me.’

‘How did he guess?’

‘He didn’t. He saved my boy from drowning, and so naturally I invited him up here for a drink. He told me his life story and what had been so baffling to him – the peculiar story of the imaginary friend, the diphtheria outbreak while he was in prison – it all seemed so obvious to me. So I told him. Your child died of diphtheria, and your wife, anxious not to break your heart while in that prison camp, adopted Gethsemane and made up the story of the imaginary friend.’

‘Who put her in the cupboard?’

‘Goldilocks’s sister. She came to see me after she had been to visit her brother in prison. While on death row Goldilocks had asked to see a priest; they sent the Witchfinder. Goldilocks told him the truth about what had happened; about how Gethsemane had stumbled on the Slaughterhouse Mob torturing my son, how he had never harmed so much as a hair of her head but had been reluctant to speak out for fear of getting his comrades in the gang into trouble. The Witchfinder promised he would do everything in his power to get the conviction quashed. But he did nothing, he was happy to let Goldilocks hang. That’s when the sister came to see me. She offered me a deal. If I agreed to help her brother escape she would tell me what happened to my son. So I agreed. I arranged the escape and helped them leave town, Goldilocks and the girl; they are still alive.’

‘What did the Slaughterhouse Mob do to your son?’

Barnaby stood up and walked over to a cupboard. He opened it and took out something that looked like a hedge clipper. He brought it over and placed it in my hands. The handles were insulated with thick rubber tubes, and at the ends instead of blades there were spikes with electrical contacts.

‘It’s an electric cattle-stunner,’ he explained.

‘From the slaughterhouse?’

‘Yes. The two prongs are applied to the temples and render the beast unconscious before it has its throat cut.’

‘It breaks your teeth?’

‘Convulsions. In the early days, when they gave patients electro-shock therapy in psychiatric hospitals they often made the voltage too high, it used to give the patients convulsions so strong they would break their own teeth. Goldilocks was familiar with electro-convulsive therapy because they administered it to his brother at the asylum. He must have told the mob about it and given them the idea. It’s called a slaughterman’s lobotomy.’

‘They did it to your son? Applied this to his head?’

‘Yes. All afternoon. He wouldn’t tell them what they wanted to know, and so they just carried on. Lost his teeth and his wits, made his hair stand on end.’

‘Is this how the Witchfinder killed the students?’

‘I have no information about that, but my guess is, yes. He probably wanted to make people think Goldilocks had come back, frighten them a bit.’

‘They tortured him for the secret formula of your rock?’

‘Yes.’

‘Why didn’t he just tell them?’

‘He did tell them, but they wouldn’t believe him. He told them and told them, he screamed and shouted, but they refused to believe him.’ He picked up an envelope and handed it to me. ‘This is the secret formula. If you take a look you will understand.’

I reached inside and pulled out a piece of paper. There was nothing written on it. ‘Nothing?’

‘Nothing. My great-grandfather discovered one of the most fundamental and strange proclivities of the human mind, and inadvertently stumbled upon the essence of branding. It was like the ampersand in the company name and the bogus partner name, Merlin. What do these things add? Nothing, except in the psyche, to which they bring an indefinable magic. The people heard about the secret formula and the ritual on top of Constitution Hill and convinced themselves they could taste the difference. For over a century we have made exactly the same rock as everyone else and the whole world has been willing to swear that ours tasted superior.’

‘Where does Gethsemane fit in?’

‘She stumbled on them in the barn when they were torturing my son. She escaped from the sty and wandered into the barn. She saw them at work, saw too much. While they were deliberating what to do with her, Goldilocks’s sister stole her away and hid her in the cupboard. She gave her some food and drink. She had no idea the cupboard was due to be collected by Mooncalf. She told me all this, sitting in that chair many years ago.’

I stood up and thanked him for his time. I had one final question. ‘What did you do with the bodies?’

He hesitated, his smile shrank a fraction. ‘What bodies?’

‘The bodies of Goldilocks and his sister. You wouldn’t have done all this and let them get away.’

‘Oh, but I did! We had a deal. I told you: they started a new life somewhere safe and far away.’

‘Maybe. Over the years every member of the Slaughterhouse Mob, except the typographer downstairs, has been murdered or died violently in obscure circumstances. Most people reckon you had a hand in their deaths and I tend to agree. My guess is, if your intention was to hunt them all down, there was no way you would have allowed Goldilocks and his sister to live. Maybe they are safe, but probably not far away. Maybe they’re asleep in the dam.’

‘Well if they are you will have a devil of a job finding them, won’t you?’ He reached out a hand to shake. I ignored it and turned to leave. As I reached the door he stopped me in my tracks. ‘Of course, you know what Vanya’s real purpose was in coming to Aberystwyth, don’t you?’

I paused in the doorway, teetering on the threshold of leaving.

‘Murder,’ said Ephraim Barnaby.

I half turned, unable to restrain myself.

‘He came to find Gethsemane’s murderer and kill him. During those long years in the gulag after he killed his wife he reflected deeply on the litany of pain that had comprised his life. And, as any man would, he brooded intensely on the short period of happiness he had once enjoyed with his wife and little daughter. A happiness that was destroyed when, he supposed, the wandering spirit of a murdered girl took up residence in the soul of his own little Ninotchka. In those dark bitter winters he came to the conclusion that the man who had murdered Gethsemane was the cause, albeit indirectly, of all his woe. The murderer had shattered the only episode of bliss Vanya had known in this world and for that had to be punished. This thought alone, this burning desire for revenge, was what sustained him during those prison years. But, as we know, there was no murder, no wandering spirit. No one was responsible for the tragedy, apart from Vanya’s wife. When he learned this bitter truth sitting here in that chair there was nothing left to sustain him. His spirit was extinguished like a snuffed candle. The rest you know.’

I nodded slowly, stared bleakly at Ephraim Barnaby for a second or two and walked out.

Eeyore was sitting on a deckchair overlooking the harbour. There was a spare folding chair and a cool-box full of beer. He looked up and smiled. ‘Good to see you back, son.’ He reached down and drew out a beer and pulled back the ring. I took the can and we knocked them together and drank. We stayed that way for a long while, watching the golden light fill the sky in the west. I took out the copy of the Cambrian News from Hughesovka and unfolded it. I handed it to Eeyore. He chuckled. ‘I thought I’d cut out all these pictures.’

‘If it’s none of my business, just say so.’

He chuckled again. ‘Of course it’s your business, son. It must come as a shock after all these years to discover your father was once a member of the Slaughterhouse Mob.’ He paused and looked at me with a mischievous glint in his eye. There was a playfulness in his manner at odds with the unsettling revelation. He continued to stare at me, grinning, making me feel uncomfortable. I shifted position. Finally he chuckled and spoke. ‘I was undercover. Got a job in the abattoir and joined the Slaughterhouse Mob. Used to hang around the Pier tea shop with them. We were trying to find out what they did to Gethsemane and Gomer Barnaby.’

‘Bit old to join a bunch of teenage hoodlums, weren’t you?’

‘I was a tough guy, they looked up to me.’

‘Why punch the cop?’

‘To establish my credentials in the gang. The cop was expecting it.’

‘Did it work?’

‘Not really. It backfired.’

‘The gang didn’t buy it?’

‘Oh they were impressed. It was your mum that objected. She was always asking me why I hung round with that crowd, kept saying I was better than they were and I was wasting my life. Once she told me how I reminded her of her father who had been a policeman before the war. She said, if only you were a policeman, Eeyore! Then I would love you even more. Of course, I was a policeman, but I could hardly tell her. My! How I ached to tell her, how I ached! When the newspaper ran that picture she was waiting for me in the café after her shift. As soon as I saw her face I knew I was in trouble. She wasn’t angry, just . . . unbelievably distraught, no, worse than that, disappointed, that was it, her face disfigured by a terrible bitter disappointment. It might not have been so bad if I could have explained things, but halfway through our conversation the mob turned up and so I had to act in character. So I said, “What’s the big deal about chinning a lousy pig?” She walked out of the café. Next day handed in her notice and left town. No forwarding address. After that, I was pulled off the case, they sent me up to Llandudno for a while. Then about Christmas time she turned up. Someone had tipped her the wink, so to speak, about me being an undercover cop. And would you believe it, she was with child, seven months gone. That was you, Louie. We got married the following day.’

Eeyore looked at me shyly, in fear and also joy as if telling me of his role in the Slaughterhouse Mob he had shed a great burden. ‘We were only together three months but there was more happiness in those months than a lot of folk see in a lifetime. I always try to be grateful for that.’ He took out a large white handkerchief and blew his nose. ‘It’s a shame you were too young to remember her, Louie.’

I smiled. ‘In a strange way, I think I do. This picture of you punching the cop, it’s quite a good likeness, why cut it out?’

‘I was ashamed.’

I took out my wallet and removed the scrap of paper I had torn off the envelope that had contained the séance tape. I waved it under Eeyore’s nose. A look of surprise and delight flashed across his face. ‘My, oh, my! That takes me back,’ he said. ‘Haven’t smelled that in years. You know what that is, don’t you?’

‘I’ve got an idea, but I’d prefer to hear it from you.’

‘We used to smell that a lot in the old days, very distinctive it is.’

‘Yes?’ I looked at him the way a dog watches his master reach for the tin opener.

He said simply, ‘Tram. That’s the smell of a tram.’

Sospan’s box was open again. When he saw me, he looked bashful and busied himself with unnecessary chores. ‘I went on a journey, you see,’ he explained. ‘On the train – I got a good deal off Mr Mooncalf. I was going to seek my fortune, but to tell you the truth, the further I travelled the less I found I really wanted to seek my fortune. I missed Aberystwyth terribly and it occurred to me that I already had a fortune, here on this beloved Promenade. I began to ask myself, why am I doing this? Why am I running away from a paternity suit? And then an incident occurred that changed my life.’ He paused and the skin of his neck became suffused with a pink tinge. ‘It’s a bit embarrassing, to be honest, but while on the train I met a lady in a stovepipe hat. A Russian girl. A thoroughly nice girl she was, and . . . well, I don’t want to delve into the intricate details of the business that we transacted, Mr Knight, but this lady was kind enough to initiate me into certain practices . . . ones that, it may be, I have wrongly neglected; timeless rites, I suppose you would call them, that pertain to the sacred communion between a man and a woman . . . ones that the Lord back in that first garden . . .’

‘It’s OK, Sospan, you don’t have to explain. I understand.’

He smiled with bashful relief. ‘In the early morning, as I lay in my berth watching the condensation running down the chill train compartment window, I reviewed my situation and experienced a passing and unfamiliar melancholy . . .’

‘Oh yes?’

‘It was a peculiar mood that I understand has been known since ancient times as post-coital tristesse.’

‘I’ve heard of it.’

‘In the cold light of that dawn it became clear to me that I had been the victim of a cruel hoax. I realised that the charge of siring a fish through the vehicle of ice cream, as laid at my door, didn’t hold water – if you will forgive the pun. I decided to return to the town I love.’

‘Perhaps it’s still not too late to have a son by the conventional method,’ I said.

For answer he gave a thin smile that said more clearly than words that, in this respect, the die had been cast long ago and he had become reconciled to it. ‘What can I get you?’ he asked.

‘Any of the autumn specials left?’

His face brightened. ‘I might just have one or two tubs still.’

‘What was the tree that survived the atom bomb blast in Hiroshima?’

‘Ginkgo.’

‘I’ll have one of those.’

I took the cornet and wandered the Prom. It was late afternoon and September had arrived. That soft month poised between the edge of summer and the rim of autumn, when quite often we are given a taste of summer that frequently eluded us earlier in the season. There were fewer people on the Prom. The beginning of the school term had drained the town of visitors; the paddling pool was an empty rink, but all this afforded the necessary quiet for contemplation. The sun was still warm, though the slight wan tinge to its shining made clear that it had passed its acme, not just in the technical sense, for this, so the druids tell us, took place in June, but in a spiritual sense. I had an appointment with Calamity at the railway station. She had spent the past few days out at Abercuawg. The water there was so low now, they said, you could walk down the main street. For some reason that I could not name I had a disinclination to go myself so I had sent her on a special errand with a pair of wellington boots in search of something that would bring a degree of closure to this strange and unsettling case.

Llunos had let Mrs Mochdre walk. She wouldn’t sign the confession and the word of a mechanical gypsy wasn’t enough to take before a judge. But that didn’t mean Llunos had given up. He was a patient man and happy to bide his time. He just needed to build a case. Obligingly, the Witchfinder saved him the trouble by dying of a heart attack while leaving town suddenly. For a man in his seventies that’s a tough decision to come to: leaving everything behind, everyone you know, everything you’ve worked for. But he had compelling reasons. It must have been something to do with that look in his wife’s eye, a look he had never seen before, when he came home one day and found the cattle stunner missing from the secret hiding place. And then when for the first time in thirty years of wedded misery she volunteered to tie him to the bed with his own handcuffs . . . In that moment, he must have heard the soft insistent whirring that signifies the final curtain being wound down. They call it the slaughterman’s lobotomy but there are other options besides lobotomies. Yes, it’s tough leaving town at any age and his heart registered a violent and final protest in the back of the bus to Aberaeron. The following week, when news leaked out about her role in the disappearance of Gethsemane Walters, Mrs Mochdre put her head in the gas oven and left it there. Llunos was angry about the leak and worked hard to find out who was responsible. His anger puzzled me for a while until I remembered our conversation outside the interview room when he said he was going back to the old ways. That’s when I knew: it was Llunos who leaked the information.

I turned into Terrace Road at the point where Eeyore said the trams once turned. At the far end of the street the railway station sat blocky and angular, as if built from giant sugar lumps. It had a lemon tinge in the afternoon sun. Everyone travelled by tram in those days and there is no great mystery about how an envelope could acquire that distinctive scent. And yet, my inexplicable contention that it reminded me of the mother I never met is not undermined by this.

There were still a few children playing in the paddling pool. They ran back and forth in the limited confines of the blue-tiled rink, like dogs in a wood, insane with a joy invisible to the rest of us; an ecstasy that seemed to express nothing more than the uncontemplated joy of existing.

Light, scent and music are the keys to the hidden chambers of our hearts. A musical phrase, a few bars of a song that played every day on the radio unnoticed during a forgotten period of our lives. The scent of ointment from the back of a drawer, or sunlight on the afternoon sea, late in the season as today. Sometimes the water scintillates like a shattered mirror; sometimes the light dances like moonlight on a pelt; at other times, when there is no breeze, the surface of the sea appears vitrified, a syrupy sea of molten glass with that same pale green translucence to be found in bottles of Victorian lemonade.

He said it was His human condition that let Him down, but where would I be without it? Sitting in an empty office staring at a client chair that was covered in cobwebs. It’s the engine that drives everything. Though every case is different, really every one is a symptom for the same underlying malaise. In a world where the churches are locked people go to the doctor but all she does is give them bottles of pills and after a while, when the joy begins to pall, they can’t help noticing the void in their heart has not been filled. At such times, they go to the witch doctor; his name is Louie Knight. It can be a risky policy sometimes. He’s careless with his clients – the Chief of Police called him the undertaker’s friend – but he knows a secret that is not vouchsafed to a great many people; it’s a secret revealed to him in a story he once heard about the convicts from a penal colony in Siberia surviving twenty years’ hard labour and dying of a cold two weeks after their release. The secret is this: don’t look down. It’s like those animals in cartoons that run off the edge of a cliff and carry on running. They are fine until the moment they look down. Vanya had always known the quest was futile but he also kept that knowledge secret from himself. That is a marvellous trick. Maybe, too, this was what God was trying to tell me about Sadako and her origami cranes; it wasn’t about whether it worked or not, the mere act transcended such considerations. This is the medicine they buy from Witch Doctor Louie. It’s called Ampersandium. It’s not perfect, but it works as well as anything can. The alternative is to be like Mrs Mochdre and spend the rest of your life pickled in sourness and your own bile.

I missed Vanya. Of all the clients who had sat across the desk from me, he was one of the very few I actually liked. I grieved for him, but I didn’t kid myself I could have saved him and because of that I know the pain will fade. I grieved for Arianwen too and with her I am not so sure. Despite all the comforting words people give me I know in my heart her death was my fault. I should have foreseen it. That’s what I get paid for.

I don’t know whether Old Barnaby killed Goldilocks and his sister, and really I don’t care. As a witch doctor it’s not my job to tie up all loose ends, that’s what cops are for, and even they understand that sometimes ends are best left untied. If Goldilocks and his sister really are in the foundation of the dam they are probably better off. Life didn’t deal them much of a hand; sometimes life doesn’t and there is nothing in all the world you can do about it except play with what you’ve got or quit the game. Now they are at peace. And they have a concrete headstone provided by the Corporation, which is more than most people get; the biggest ever, too; not even Barnaby will get a bigger one than that.

Calamity was waiting on the platform holding a small package wrapped in newspaper. She grinned at me and I did not need to ask how she had got on with her errand, the glee burning fiercely in her eyes already told me. I reached out and tousled her hair, aware of an upsurge of love in my heart. I made a mental note that if she ever wanted to start out on her own again I would definitely stand in her way. Calamity’s place was in my office, because sometimes even witch doctors get sick.

We walked down the platform to where an old lady stood waiting with a small suitcase at her feet. It was Ffanci Llangollen, the singer who once made a trademark of singing about how it would be a lovely day tomorrow. When a great tragedy struck she went on the road and continued to sing, travelling on nothing but the fuel of hope. We greeted each other. Clasped under her arm was a folder from Mooncalf Travel, covered in the stickers of the grand hotels and the railway companies and shipping lines. We told Ffanci we were sorry about the loss of her sister and she thanked us graciously.

‘No shopping trolley,’ I said with the deliberate banality that sometimes helps us through the difficult moments.

‘They don’t allow them on the Orient Express, so Mr Mooncalf was kind enough to give me this nice suitcase. I feel just the part now, like a dowager. He’s been ever so helpful, gave me the tickets gratis on account of my recent . . . misfortune. He wished me luck on my quest. He mentioned you: said you seemed to have got a wild fancy into your head about the tickets he gave you last time. He seemed quite put out about it. A simple oversight, he said, which you have misinterpreted out of all proportion. You will go and make your peace with him, won’t you?’

‘We’ll go directly after seeing you off.’

She smiled and waved something which she was clutching in her hand. It was a talisman.

‘A ticket to Hughesovka,’ I said.

‘Not just there but all the way to Vladivostok if need be.’

‘It’s a big continent.’

‘I know. I once met a man who surveyed it and told me it was as wide as the human heart. I have never given up hope. And I never will as long as my heart beats. This isn’t just a ticket to Hughesovka, Mr Knight, it’s a return – for two.’

Calamity unwrapped the newspaper package and revealed a little girl’s sandal. It had once been bright red but time and mud had now reduced it to the colour of burned umber. The guard blew his whistle. Calamity gave her the shoe.