The Day Aberystwyth Stood Still

Chapter 4

The waiting steam train snorted puffs of strongly perfumed smoke into the blue sky. A man and a boy stood next to the engine, both identically dressed in neatly pressed black trousers and white shirts, open at the collar. The boy was listening to the side of the engine with a stethoscope.

Every railway station has a zone way out beyond the normal hubbub. Most people are too lazy to walk that far, but once you pass a certain point, beyond the front of the longest train, beyond the final pillar where the last awning peters out, the atmosphere changes; noise drops off, a wind that has been absent from the cauldron of the town centre cools your brow. The only sound comes from the soles of your shoes. This is where the narrow-gauge steam train to Devil’s Bridge stands awaiting orders.

The boy wrote something down in a notebook.

‘I hope she’s well enough to travel,’ I said with a smile to his father.

‘I bring my boy up to be observant,’ said the man.

Calamity and the boy stared at each other with the muted suspicion that kids of similar ages feel when a chance encounter brings their parents together.

‘Most trainspotters just write down the numbers,’ I said.

‘We are not trainspotters,’ said the man. ‘We just like machines.’

‘We’re not allowed to have them at home,’ added the boy.

‘Except the plough, and the hair clip and the gallows. Although, of course, in these corrupted times our gallows rot and the hangman’s children cry out for hunger in the night.’ The man put his hand gently on the back of his son’s head. ‘To us, a big train like this is almost like pornography.’

‘You must be Denunciationists,’ I said.

The man smiled.

‘Are you Upper or Lower? I can never remember which is which.’

‘We’re Lower Denunciationist, from Cwmnewidion Isaf; we have no beards because the Lord in his mercy allowed us to use the engine of the scissor. It is those chimp-faced fools from Ynys Greigiog who abjure the very necessary act of grooming.’ He reached out a hand to shake. ‘I am James the Less.’

‘Louie Knight, and this is Calamity.’

The engine wailed its impatience and the guard blew a whistle. I opened a compartment door and allowed the man and his son to enter. We climbed in after them and slammed the door. Calamity pulled a face, as I knew she would, when her bottom hit the hard polished wooden bench.

‘Just try and enjoy it,’ I said. ‘The scenery is nice at least.’

‘No upholstery,’ she said. Two words that encapsulated an entire world view.

The engine squealed again, and tugged, picking up the slack like the anchor man in a tug-of-war. The carriages groaned like cows calling to be milked; unconsciously we clenched our muscles in sympathy. We began the long, slow trundle to Devil’s Bridge.

‘The line to Devil’s Bridge was built by Chinese immigrant labour between 1865 and 1869,’ said the boy.

‘And some Irish,’ added his father.

‘It’s like sitting on a roundabout in the park,’ said Calamity. ‘Even war chariots used to have upholstery; cushions are not a luxury.’

James the Less received that statement with a look of surprise. In Cwmnewidion Isaf cushions were obviously kept on the top shelf at the newsagent’s next to the magazines on steam traction engines and those lawnmowers you can sit on.

‘Devil’s Bridge gets its name from a folk tale about the Devil, who used to exact tolls from travellers wishing to use the bridge across the gorge,’ said the boy. ‘The Irish navvies resented the Chinese workers, partly because they ate strange food: dried oysters, dried fish, dried abalone, seaweed and dried crackers, all imported from China. And they took baths in empty whisky kegs filled with rainwater, perfumed with flowers.’

‘That would offend me, too,’ I said.

‘Are you on holiday?’ said the boy.

‘We’re looking for the outline of a d . . .’ Calamity checked herself and looked at me, unsure whether she should divulge details of our intentions, and aware that it was to me that Raspiwtin had given the information about Iestyn Probert’s old house. I grinned and completed her sentence. ‘Duck. We’re looking for the outline of a duck in the hills, caused, they say, by the run-off from the old lead mines.’

‘We’re paleo-ornithologists,’ said Calamity.

‘How fascinating,’ said the boy. ‘What sort of duck exactly? Dabbling duck, diving duck, eider duck, ferruginous duck, harlequin duck, long-tailed duck, mandarin duck, Muscovy duck, ruddy duck, swallow-tailed duck, tree duck, tufted duck, velvet duck, wood duck . . . ?’

‘Just so long as it quacks,’ she answered.

‘I think there’s one by Iestyn Probert’s old house, out at Rhiwlas,’ said James the Less.

The train moved so slowly across the landscape that its timetable might have been described in geological epochs. Yet for all the languor the engine itself was a source of fury, coughing a series of cumulonimbus clouds into the sky with each chuff, interspersed with wild Cherokee war whoops. The flood plain of the Rheidol passed gently by.

‘I met a Deunciationist priest once,’ I said. ‘He had a red beard.’

‘That would be Jude the Schemer. For many years I loved him as a brother and would have laid down my life for him, until the fever seized his brain.’

The boy rested a restraining hand on his father’s forearm. ‘Do not grieve, Father.’ He turned to me. ‘My father has taught me to love all God’s creatures, with the one exception of Uncle Jude, who is a loathsome heretical swill bucket.’

‘It was always the way with Jude,’ said the old man. ‘He never knew the virtue of moderation. The Lord teaches us that we are all born in corruption and for this we are to be damned to everlasting hellfire. But some there are, one or two lucky blighters, a handful here and there, who through no merit of conduct are to be saved, and this will be made known to them in the privacy of their hearts and this is the true way. But Jude the Schemer, he perverted the words of the Lord and claimed that no one was to be saved. Not a soul! All damned, every last man Jack of us. Such blasphemy! Is God a monster? No, of course not.’

‘You see, sir,’ said the boy, ‘we seek goodness wherever we go and we love God even though the doctrine of eternal depravity has in all likelihood blighted us and condemned us to everlasting hellfire, condemned in the courts of his goodness before the first brick of this prison earth was laid. And for this we love him most of all.’

‘How does he feel about machines?’

‘The Bible is not clear on this point, but I will bare my back to my father’s chastening rod of birch later, and he mine, and thus God will be appeased.’

We were quiet for a while, each enjoying the simple loveliness of the Rheidol valley gliding past. It seemed to gain in splendour through the action of the train’s chuffing. A smile spread unbidden across my face, and the boy on seeing this assumed it was addressed to him and smiled in return. I felt touched.

‘So, are you going into farming when you grow up?’ I asked.

‘He hopes to become a forensic linguist,’ said the old man.

‘What’s that?’

‘The application of scientific techniques to evaluate the authenticity of documents based on information contained within the document,’ said the boy. ‘Linguistic and stylistic analysis, stylometrics . . . to help investigators in civil and criminal trials.’

‘Poison-pen letters,’ added his father, ‘and farewell letters from murder victims faked by the murderer; ransom demands . . . he can turn his hand to anything.’

‘Principally the assistance of prosecutors and attorneys pursuant to exposing the twisted workings of the criminal heart,’ said the boy.

‘Where does listening to the train come into it?’ I asked.

‘I am thinking of expanding the scope to include the characteristic “voice” signature of steam locomotives. In terms of specialisms it’s terra incognita.’

‘My boy can find out from examining the text whether the cops fabricated a statement,’ said James the Less with evident pride.

‘He’ll find plenty of work in Aberystwyth, then.’

‘That’s what I told him. A nice steady job with a good future.’

‘The technical term is co-authorship,’ said the boy.

‘Is that so? I hadn’t heard it described like that before; most people call it fitting up. Just so long as the cops don’t turn honest you’ll be a rich man.’

‘We have no use for riches,’ said his father. ‘His purpose is solely the betterment of humankind. He did a project for his school on the confession of Iestyn Probert – he used to be a member of our community – the police claimed it was Iestyn at the wheel of the getaway car in the raid on the Coliseum cinema. A policeman was run over and this was why they hanged him. Iestyn claimed he wasn’t driving and the police faked his confession.’

‘So far, I have been able to demonstrate certain features of the confession which indicate strong prima facie likelihood of police co-authorship; of particular interest is the non-standard frequency of the word then.’

‘Non-standard,’ said James the Less.

‘Then?’ I said.

‘Normally people making statements say “then I”, but police diction is notoriously stilted and basically – what is the phrase? Up its own backside, I believe – in police statements there is frequent post-positioning, namely, “I then”. I amassed a database of police statements and witness statements for comparison and found “I then” to occur once every 119 words in police statements but not at all in witness statements. Except in the statement of Iestyn Probert, which evinced nineteen occurrences. This was statistically highly significant. I’m hoping to get Iestyn a posthumous pardon, but some rumours that he is still alive render the undertaking problematic.’

‘Would he have even known how to drive?’ I asked. ‘I mean as a Denunciationist . . .’

‘That was his tragedy,’ said James the Less. ‘If he had stayed in his community where he belonged, none of it would have happened. But the fever seized his brain. It always starts in adolescence. You get feelings, we all do, about . . .’ – he shot a swift guilty glance at his son – ‘. . . engines. Motorcars are the worst because you can see them pass by the fields as you till the soil. If only Iestyn had spoken to one of the elders . . .’ He shook his head ruefully at the waste of a young life. ‘They could have told him, as I tell my boy, how to manage the temptation. But, like so many young men before him, he dreamed of running away to Aberystwyth and becoming a mechanic. I remember him sitting on the hill at the end of each day, staring into the west. It was no surprise when the news came that he had gone.’

After we passed Cwm Rheidol, Calamity began to scan the adjacent valley side with a pair of small binoculars. Just before the station at Rhiwlas we saw the duck-shaped discoloration on the hillside.

‘I’d say it was more of a drake,’ said the boy.

We left the train at the station and climbed down the steep hillside to the ford at the bottom.

‘The sky’s always bluer when there are clouds,’ said Calamity.

I didn’t answer but pondered the phenomenon. She was right; the surrounding sky was bluer because the clouds were brighter, as if illuminated from within.

There was a bridge at the bottom made of slabs of slate laid on stones embedded in the stream. We crossed and climbed over a stile, then began to climb. From the train in the valley below the discoloration in the hillside had, indeed, looked a bit like a duck. But as we climbed towards it, the outline became less and less distinct. The path reached another stile which led onto a rough farm track and we proceeded up what was presumably the duck’s leg.

‘If you ever have some butter that you don’t want to melt,’ I said to Calamity as we climbed, ‘it might be a good idea to put it in that kid’s mouth.’

‘Either that or my fist, I can’t work out which would be best.’

I laughed. ‘I’m just glad you didn’t do it there and then.’

‘Why do you think the aliens asked about Iestyn Probert?’

I didn’t answer.

‘I know what you think. There are no aliens.’

‘Got it in one.’

‘How come they knew his address?’

‘Don’t you think it’s more likely that the farmer invented the whole story?’

‘Why would he do that?’

‘People are funny.’

‘All the same, don’t you think it’s odd? This Raspiwtin bloke has been looking all his life for Iestyn Probert, and then some aliens turn up looking for him, too.’

‘Odd, yes, but not uncanny. My guess is Raspiwtin’s story is largely fiction and he got the name from the newspaper on the way to the office.’

‘He said we’d find Iestyn’s old house by a duck’s bill in the hillside, so the story can’t be all fiction, can it, because we’ve found the duck.’

‘You think so? Looks more like a drake to me.’

She paused and turned to me with a grin. ‘Do you think the duck stain might be deliberate as some sort of a sign to the flying saucers?’ asked Calamity.

‘No.’

‘It would make sense.’

‘In your universe perhaps.’

‘It happens a lot. Plenty of ancient monuments are laid out in ways that only make sense from the air. In South America there are loads.’

I rolled my eyes.

‘Your mind is closed,’ said Calamity with amusing pomposity.

‘It’s not closed, it just has a strict door policy. I don’t admit riff-raff.’

‘UFOs aren’t riff-raff. Loads of people have seen them.’

‘Loads of people have seen something they personally weren’t able to identify.’

‘They can’t all be hallucinations.’

‘Why not?’

‘I saw one in Pwllheli. Are you saying I didn’t?’

‘You saw a light in the sky; there are lots of things that cause lights in the sky. And because you had read about flying-saucer sightings recently, you interpreted it as one. Five hundred years ago you would have called it an angel or a wheel of fire.’

Calamity made a raspberry sound and then we both suddenly stopped our ascent. The track we had been following ended abruptly in a flat section of ground cut into the hillside; it was overgrown with grass, brambles and gorse, but the rectangular outline signifying the foundations of a house were unmistakable. Lumps of masonry littered the brambles. Two rooms were still standing, open to the sky; slats of wood and bits of plaster lay entangled in the undergrowth like twigs in hair. Off to the right on a raised piece of ground there was a grave. Calamity walked over and knelt down. I joined her. Time and weather had effaced the writing on the simple stone which protruded from the turf like a tooth, but at the foot, encased in a clear plastic sandwich bag taped to the stone, there was a business card. Calamity took it out, read it and handed it up to me. It was for Jezebels, the nightclub at the caravan site. In colours of scarlet, mauve and black the silhouette of a lady in a stovepipe hat raised a leg clad in fishnet stockings; in the foreground was a martini glass. I turned the card over; on the back someone had scribbled in biro, ‘Ask for Miaow.’

A voice interrupted our thoughts and we looked up. An old lady, bent at the waist and carrying a basket, hobbled down the hillside towards us. ‘Haven’t seen any Bishop’s Trumpet have you, dears?’ she asked. The curvature of her spine forced her thorax forward and she looked sideways and up at us. Strands of silvery hair, pinned in a bun, slipped out and veiled her face, which was ruddy and kindly. Her back was alive with the agitated flapping of some birds trapped in a net slung across her shoulders.

‘What’s Bishop’s Trumpet?’ asked Calamity.

‘What indeed! You’re from the town, I can see.’ The woman pushed her basket, laden with freshly plucked roots and leaves, towards us. ‘I’ve got me Foxbright and Marly, me Blue-Dog, Purple Trolls-foot, Night-feather, Trollop-me-Bright, Bog-Grail, Prim Willow, My Lady’s Hymen, Fan-white, Silver Milchgrüssel and a pinch of Satanicus, but I’m blessed if I can find any Bishop’s Trumpet.’

‘We can help you look, if you like,’ said Calamity.

‘That’s very kind of you, but we won’t find any today; the spirit of the mountain is being grumpy. But you could help me carry my basket back to my cottage, it’s just over the hill. Would you do that?’

I took the basket and we followed her up the hill and then down the other side to a small cottage on the edge of the Forestry Commission plantation. We went through a garden gate and waited while she took the net over to an aviary in which birds of all descriptions fluttered about. The woman released the new birds and took us into her kitchen, where she put the kettle on without asking. ‘You will stay for tea, now.’

‘We wouldn’t want to be any trouble,’ I said.

She looked at me in wonder. ‘Trouble? To make a little cup of tea for the next mayor of Aberystwyth? How strangely you talk!’

I stifled a startled look and said, ‘I think you must be mistaken there. The next mayor of Aberystwyth will probably be Ercwleff.’

‘That’s what you think, is it?’

‘That’s what everybody thinks.’

‘It’s not what my cat thinks.’ She sat down with a groan, her rheumatic limbs clearly aching.

‘I think you must be feeding her too many kippers.’

‘Eightball doesn’t eat fish, and she’s never wrong about the mayoral elections.’

‘What do you do with the birds?’ Calamity asked.

‘Lots of things. I use the feathers for me cardigans, the feet to scratch me back, but mostly I use the croaks to black me hats.’

‘What sort of hats?’ asked Calamity.

‘Stoveys, of course. Best stovepipe-hat blacker in all of Wales I am. You ask them, they’ll tell you, get Auntie Pebim to black your stovey if you want it to stay black.’

‘Is it hard to black them?’ asked Calamity.

Auntie Pebim scoffed politely and rolled her eyes as she recalled the magnitude of the task. ‘It is if you do it properly. The hardest part is not the herbs, of course. If the spirit of the mountain wants to give them to you he will, or if he’s being a pest like today, he won’t. You also need a Bible that’s been used as a pillow on the deathbed of someone who died of meanness, but they are getting harder to find these days. People are turning away from God.’

‘What about the croaks?’ I asked. ‘How do you collect them.’

Auntie Pebim poured the boiling water into the teapot. ‘First you get the birds to build a nest and lay an egg; you can’t hurry that, you just have to make the circumstances right and wait for nature to take its course. Then, when the chick is about to hatch you put a bell jar over mother and egg and wait. Soon the chick hatches and the hen fills the bell jar with croaks of love, caw, caw, caw. Then you remove them and fill the jar with oil and from this you can distil out the caws. That’s not easy. Eventually you end up with a little drop like quicksilver.’ A cloud darkened her brow. ‘Of course, that’s the light way. There’s a darker way, too, where you put a poisonous spider in the jar and it kills the chick. Then you collect the lamentation of the mother, the Stabat Mater.’ She brought the teacups over to the table.

‘We were wondering who the house belonged to back there,’ I said.

‘Which house?’

‘Where we first met you.’

Auntie Pebim thought for a second. ‘A house, you say? I suppose it’s possible; but I can’t say I notice things like that, too quick for my old eyes, you see. One minute here, the next gone. I tend to notice slower things like the rise and fall of the mountains, the changing levels of the sea and the ice ages – things like that. Even the growth of trees is a bit quick for me.’

Calamity and I resisted the temptation to exchange glances. ‘That’s a shame,’ I said. ‘It must have been there quite a while; there’s lots of masonry lying around.’

Auntie Pebim’s voice took on a dismissive tone. ‘Masonry! To me stone is no more substantial than the fluff of a dandelion on a windy day.’

‘Most people find it quite substantial,’ I persisted. ‘Enough, at least, to build houses lasting hundreds of years.’

‘I wouldn’t trust it myself,’ she said.

I looked around at her croft, which seemed to have followed convention in being made from stone.

‘We heard Iestyn Probert used to live there,’ said Calamity.

‘Iestyn Probert? Oh yes, so he did. Nice boy. The family moved after they hanged him.’ She tutted and opened a packet of digestive biscuits, letting the contents fall onto a plate with plinking sounds like sonar.

‘How awful,’ said Calamity.

Auntie Pebim peered at her and considered for a while, then said, ‘If you have a little bird in a cage and you release the bird, does it matter if you damage the cage?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Calamity. ‘Probably not.’

‘There you are, then. Iestyn’s spirit is free now of the prison of the flesh; it has passed on to the real world. His body was just a broken beaker, no longer needed. I don’t imagine he pines too much for a moment’s pain when they stretched his neck and made him free. Would you like some jam to take back with you?’ She stood up and hobbled over to the pantry and brought back a jar of dark-coloured jam.

‘Isn’t this the real world?’ asked Calamity.

Auntie Pebim smiled indulgently at our spiritual impoverishment. ‘Oh Lord, no, who could bear it if it were? The only thing that makes our travail bearable is the knowledge that this – the material world, as you people from the city call it – is a chimera.’

Calamity looked confused. ‘I thought the material world had to exist because it’s made of . . . material.’

‘Is that what they teach you in school these days!’ Auntie Pebim turned to me. ‘You’ll have to do something about these schools when you are mayor.’

‘I really have no intention of becoming mayor.’

Auntie Pebim smiled. It was clear that my thoughts on the matter counted little against the opinion of Eightball. She wrapped the gift of jam in some muslin and showed us out. ‘You know, it’s funny you asking about Iestyn Probert. Some travellers were asking about him last week. They looked Norwegian, with four fingers on each hand. I couldn’t tell you much about them – it was Eightball who answered the door.’