The Day Aberystwyth Stood Still

Chapter 17

I awoke encased from chin to toe in short-crust pastry. There were other men, lying next to me, each encased in a similar sarcophagus. The scullery maid moved along the row of human pasties dipping a brush into a bowl of egg yolk and coating the pastry. She sang a ditty about the ruination of a milkmaid who met a squire on the road to the fair. The pastry was still soft and malleable. I sat up. The maid shrieked and dropped the bowl of egg onto the stone flags, where it shattered into jagged shards. I wriggled like an escapologist and the front of my casing began to unzip. I pulled my arms free and pushed the pastry down like a sleeping bag with my hands and stepped out of it. The maid shrieked again. I walked past the other pasties; the faces stared up at me, blank and immobile, like prey that has been stunned by the sting of a giant spider and awaits its fate bound neatly with silk. They were the faces of my companions from the fourth-year rugby class. I jumped down from the tabletop onto a wooden stool, then let myself hang by my fingers from the edge of the stool and dropped to the floor. I rolled over and stood up. The maid continued to squeal. I looked round, searching for a means of escape; the door to the giant’s counting house was ajar and I ran towards it, but the floor was vast, like many football pitches side by side, and I suddenly knew how a mouse feels running across the kitchen floor. Suddenly the giant loomed up in the doorway and howled with laughter at the sport before him. His feet formed a suede mountain range. The suede stopped at the knee in a big, floppy turnover, and beyond that twin pillars clad in green tights rose like gasometers to the leather jerkin, cincted at the waist with a thick iron-chain belt from which the heads of children hung, dripping gore. High above this in a place where only eagles dare was his face, cloven by the horizontal crease we children of the damned had learned to call a smile. It was Herod Jenkins, my former school games teacher. He spat out a chewed-up bag of bone and gristle and indigestible rugby jersey and roared with laughter; he jabbed out with a foot in an attempt to stamp on me. Fortunately the dim-witted maid had not bothered to take away my belongings before encasing me in pastry. I still had my leather purse. I tugged at the strings and pulled out a talisman, a piece of paper. I held it out towards the giant. ‘I’ve got a note from my mam!’ I cried. ‘I’ve got a cold.’ But Herod Jenkins just laughed and told me boys with colds were even more delicious. The magic had failed. I turned and fled. The giant came in pursuit, trying to stamp on me as I zig-zagged wildly across the stone floor. Up ahead the maid swatted down with a sweeping brush and now my way was blocked by the hem of her skirt, which lay in folds on the ground. I lifted them and climbed in. She screamed again, but the sound was muffled now in the pitch-black, strangely warm bell chamber in which I found myself. I ran blindly and blundered into a foot; it lifted as she began to hop. I clung on to her shoe and climbed up, using the walls of her sock as rigging to get out of harm’s way. The hopping became wilder, each jolt stunning my consciousness and threatening to dislodge me, but I held on. I reached the knee, which was raised high so that the thigh was horizontal to the ground. Daylight flooded the cathedral of underlinen; the giant had lifted her skirt and was peering up now from the floor and laughing. Just above the knee the flesh was encircled by an elasticised rope thicker than a man’s waist and from it folds of cloth ballooned upwards like the sails of a galleon. Except this galleon had perhaps belonged to the Flying Dutchman or the Ancient Mariner: the cloth was grey and mottled with the overlapping smudges of ancient stains. It did not seem that maid washed her drawers more than annually. The giant’s hand swooped in and grabbed me as easily as a butcher grabs a rabbit from a hook and drew me out into the air. The maid screamed once more. The giant held me aloft, gripped by his tree-like fingers. He peered at me quizzically and I stared with dread and terror and grisly fascination into the twin dark eyes. They say that the way to fend off shark attack is to punch the shark’s nose, and I considered this possibility now. Before I could decide whether it would only madden the giant further, he opened his mouth and I found myself plummeting down a manhole without end.

I fell through the darkness, tumbling slowly, biffed and butted by half-chewed tomatoes and boulders of Rice Crispies which rained down like a meteor shower. It came as no surprise to me to discover that my former games teacher bolted his food, but the revelation that he ate Rice Crispies in the afternoon was a dagger to my heart. Down and down I fell into the abyss. Then there was a splash and for a while I was unconscious.

I woke up on the shore of an inland sea, washed up like a Robinson Crusoe, above my head a domed, cavernous roof. The water lapped gently, rocking me back and forth; the surface sparkled like a moonlit lake. I crawled up the beach, which had the texture and polished, bulbous surface of lamb kidney. I struggled to my feet. Up ahead I saw a light flickering and moved towards it. The noise of conversation reached me, the light began to dance and resolve into flames. A group of women were gathered round a fire, three old crones with Punch-and-Judy hooked noses and hair wilder than the quills of a porcupine. They were stirring a cauldron set on a tripod over a fire of brushwood. The flashes from the fire revealed in brief half-glimpses sparkling pac-a-mac coats above blue suede orthopaedic boots. They were singing:

You can burn my house, you can steal my car

Drink my liquor from an old fruit jar

But don’t you step on my blue suede ’paedies . . .

As I approached they stopped stirring their cauldron and turned to me.

‘Hssst! He comes!’

FIRST CRONE

All hail, Louie Knight, Thane of a caravan in Ynyslas.

SECOND CRONE

All hail, Louie Knight, Thane of Stryd-y-Popty.

THIRD CRONE

All hail, Louie Knight, Mayor of Aberystwyth.

LOUIE

What nonsense you talk, weird sisters. Aberystwyth already has a mayor.

FIRST CRONE

Has yes, and soon will have anew.

More to the point, ’twill be you.

LOUIE

It is an honour that I dream not of.

SECOND CRONE

Oh yes, that’s what they all say.

ALL (Singing)

You should have been a chimney sweeper,

Your bottom warmed by fire.

Instead you were a dirty peeper

With a halo and lyre.

The fire went out, and suddenly there was silence, except for the far-off din of the giant’s heartbeat.

‘Tarry a while, midnight hags!’ I said. ‘I would talk with you.’ But the only answer was the echo of my own voice returning to me from the white cliffs of rib.

I continued walking. My eyes grew accustomed to the dark and I came upon a hall and in the centre of the room a vast round table; around it were seated boys in the decaying cobwebs that had once been school uniforms; their arms were wires of pale flesh poking like coat hangers through the torn shirts. Their eyes had the stare of dead fish. All of them were there, all those boys whose notes from their mums had been rejected over the years, preserved at the age they’d been when they’d run out across the threshold of this world. A boy put a gentle hand on mine. I looked round. It was Marty.

‘Hello, Louie,’ he said.

‘Marty!’ My voice rasped with awe.

‘I told them you would come, but they didn’t believe me.’

‘Where are we?’

‘With friends.’

‘I dreamed I was eaten by Herod Jenkins.’

‘It was no dream, Louie.’

‘What’s the table for?’

‘We are the Counsel of the Swallowed. You mustn’t fret. It’s not so bad here.’

‘What do you do?’

‘We do what we can, Louie.’

One of the wraiths, his face half-obscured by the black webs of his decaying school cap, piped up, ‘We have found a way to give him indigestion.’

I backed away and walked off to the far corner of the room, where an arched door led onto a spiral staircase of stone slabs. I began to climb. It led to another great hall where I met Doc Digwyl wearing a nightshirt and carrying a candle. He greeted me excitedly and told me to follow him. The steps stretched high up into the blackness. He climbed and I followed, higher and higher. Occasionally he would stop and turn and beckon as if we were pressed for time. Higher and higher we climbed; the air got thinner and a wind whistled past. A faint disk of light appeared above our heads, like the moon through thick cloud. We reached a landing and a door opened leading onto a chamber. Miaow, wearing a pointy Rapunzel hat and carrying a suitcase, ran out and gasped when she saw me. ‘Louie!’

‘Come, there is no time,’ said Doc Digwyl, ‘the fight is about to begin.’ He grabbed my arm and pulled.

‘Oh Louie, I’m sorry,’ said Miaow. ‘Everything’s turned out wrong, I’m so sorry.’

‘You’re leaving?’

‘I have to, Louie. I’ve explained it all in the letter. It’s on the table, next to the Jack Daniels. I knew you would find it there.’ She pointed behind her to a writing bureau.

The doc pulled more vigorously and I found myself following him but looking back in dismay, yearning to return to Miaow and the letter.

‘Don’t forget,’ cried Miaow waving. ‘On the desk.’

‘Read it later!’ shouted the doc, ‘We must hurry.’

We continued to climb. The light above our heads grew stronger and acquired an outline in the shape of a disk; the disk became more distinct and turned into a cave entrance. I followed the doctor in. We found ourselves in a cavern the colour of seaside rock, made from pink, translucent flesh; the walls were smooth and curved in giant whorls like those of a satanic cockleshell. The walls spiralled up to a hole in the roof from which daylight streamed. Water dripped from the walls making discordant sounds like a kitten dancing on a xylophone.

I looked up and around at the cavern walls.

‘What do you think?’ he asked in a reverential whisper.

‘It’s . . . it’s eerie.’

‘Yes, precisely. That’s where we are: in the giant’s ear.’

‘Why have you brought me here?’

‘Follow me!’ He took me by the hand and dragged me into the cavern. In front of us on a raised dais there was a hospital bed upon which lay a girl in a wedding dress being attended by anxious nurses.

The bride groaned and a nurse placed a compress on her brow. She looked at me and waved feebly. It was Chastity. ‘I didn’t see you at the wedding, Louie.’

‘I was at the back, in the trees.’

‘Did you enjoy it?’

‘It was beautiful.’

She emitted a groan and the doctor rushed forward; the baby’s head appeared from beneath the white taffeta and was drawn out by a nurse, who handed it to Doc Digwyl. The baby was silent, regarding the room through wide, unblinking eyes colder than a fish’s. It wore a little suit, with short trousers and a jacket, and all was sodden and slicked with natal slime.

‘Looks just like Meici,’ I said.

Chastity grinned.

Doc Digwyl tied the umbilical cord, then fished out a pair of wallpaper scissors and cut. Chastity applauded: ‘Bravo!’

The baby turned to me and said, ‘Remember, Louie, the giant is wrong: the community must make sacrifices for the weaklings, not the other way round.’

The nurses wheeled the hospital bed away as Chastity waved like the Queen in the back of a golden coach.

‘It was nice knowing you, Louie.’

‘It was nice knowing you, Chastity.’

‘Come!’ said the doctor. ‘There is no time to lose. I just heard the bell.’ He clambered forward over boulders of wax up to the hole. I followed and stood beside him in the earhole. Cool air streamed through. Doc Digwyl nudged me. ‘You see, the cochlea is the seat of our sense of balance; we are well-placed. I’ve got money on Herod Jenkins to go down in the second.’

We looked out onto a boxing ring. Ercwleff, in silk shorts, sat on the stool in the red corner. The referee turned towards us, reached down and hoisted Herod Jenkins’s gloved fist up past us. ‘In the blue corner, all the way from Talybont, the tracksuited Torquemada, scourge of our school days and mocker of our manhood –’ boos rang out and doughnuts were hurled onto the canvas. ‘The only full-time professional Jungian archetype of horror, the dimly demonic and sincerely satanic, half-man half-troll, the hairy, the scary, don’t ever call him a fairy, ladies and gentlemen, it’s your friend but not mine, school games teacher and honorary Neanderthal, Herod Jenkins!’ Boos rained down and the seating thundered with a thousand stamping feet. The referee held up Ercwleff’s hand. ‘And in the red, the ponderous pachyderm from Pontrhydyfendigiad, the gormless, grinning, gaping, gurning, goofing, suet-souled, swede-faced Über-dumpling, one of God’s children but thankfully not one of mine . . . Ercwleff!’ Cheers filled the arena, the bell rang, and Herod Jenkins stepped forward and punched Ercwleff on the nose. There was a split second as the world waited to see what Ercwleff would do. The crowd held its breath. And then he slowly turned the other cheek.

‘Looks like I’ve lost my bet,’ said the doctor.