The Day Aberystwyth Stood Still

Chapter 7

Calamity and I sat stiff-backed on a bottle-green chesterfield next to a Georgian window overlooking Laura Place. It wasn’t much of a ‘Place’ really, any smaller and it would have been called Laura Mews. But it possessed an air of modest affluence. It was the sort of square where you might expect to come across a film crew and a horse and carriage clip-clopping across the cobbles; just the sort of address, in fact, to which country doctors retired. We stared at a mantelpiece crowded with knick-knacks – framed photos, china figurines, a Toby jug holding letters from abroad, a brass shell case acting the part of a vase for dried flowers, a brass bowl containing hairpins, matches and a bottle of eye ointment.

‘I’m not sure I’d like to be treated by a doctor who moonlights at executions,’ said Calamity.

‘I know what you mean, but it’s not really moonlighting. It was a serious duty. If you are going to hang people, it stands to reason you need a doctor in attendance to certify the death and things.’

‘It doesn’t seem right for a doctor. Don’t they swear some sort of oath to preserve life?’

‘People thought differently about such things back then; they weren’t so squeamish. I’m sure he probably can hardly believe it himself, looking back.’

‘Still, it’s a bit ghoulish.’

‘You’re the one who dug up his name from the Cambrian News . . .’

‘Yes, I know. We have to ask him. Iestyn Probert. That’s quite a common name. They might have executed more than one. Maybe he’s forgotten.’

‘I’m sure he will remember the Iestyn Probert who took part in the raid on the Coliseum cinema; everyone else seems to.’

‘I’ll let the doctor know you are here,’ said Mrs Lewis, his housekeeper, from the doorway.

The gloom in the sitting room was as palpable as plasticine; you felt you could grab it from the air and mould it into shapes. Heavy velvet curtains, kept in check by sashes of braided gold, hung from curtain rails; closely packed lumps of mahogany furniture pressed down on the spirit; a grandfather clock stood sentinel and delivered tocks like water dropping in a cave. The tops of all the chests and cabinets were arranged with black-and-white photos, pictures of frozen happiness from the ’50s. A car, an Austin perhaps, with shiny chrome trim, amid the tufts of marram grass overlooking a beach. Caravans were discarded on the dunes like children’s blocks; a woman in a headscarf and sunglasses sat amid a picnic and gazed at the camera; from her expression, the mixture of tenderness and gentle reproach, it was possible to imagine the photographer peering inexpertly into the viewfinder of a Rolleiflex camera, giving instructions. Who was she?

‘You promise we’re going to see the farmer who saw the flying saucer after this,’ said Calamity.

‘I promise, even though I would like to put it on record that I think it’s an unpromising avenue of inquiry, although not as unpromising as advertising a black 1948 Buick in the Cambrian News.’

‘It’s a ’47, not a ’48.’

Mrs Lewis showed us up. The door was ajar at the top of the stairs and darkness seeped out, perfumed with the faint smell of formaldehyde that clings to the lives of old doctors. We walked in; there was a rustle of sheet; two ferret-bright eyes shone from amid the shadows.

‘Good morning,’ he whispered.

‘We’re sorry to disturb you . . .’ I began.

‘I wasn’t doing anything – apart from dying. Come into the light. It’s nice to see you whoever you are. I don’t get many patients these days; they don’t like my bedside manner. Isn’t that what they told you?’

‘They told us you were a fine doctor,’ I said.

‘They told you I was an awful doctor.’ He put on a cartoon voice: “I sent my little boy to him with tonsillitis and the damned fool told the boy he was dying”. Isn’t that how it goes? Well, I make no apologies for not sugar-coating the truth.’

‘You told a little boy he was dying?’ asked Calamity.

‘I tell all my patients they are dying; it’s the only diagnosis I can make with any certainty. You’d think they would be grateful. Set against the implacable fact of their mortality, what does a cold or case of tonsillitis matter? It’s all too trivial for words.’

‘Ultimately, yes,’ I said. ‘But it’s not trivial at the time.’

‘Tell me, do you follow the latest scientific developments?’

‘Not too closely.’

‘Just as well; you’d stick a paperknife into your heart if you did.’ He raised a feeble finger and pointed at Calamity. ‘Tell me, little girl, do you like flowers?’

‘They’re OK.’

‘Of course you do. You like bright colours, too, eh? All little girls do –’

‘She’s not so little.’

‘The soft peacock of the hills and sky; the deep, coagulated carmine of the rose; the custardy yellow of the daisy’s face, fringed with those perfect spears of white that yet somehow contain within their lucence a hint of the sky’s azure . . . You like colours, don’t you?’

‘Maybe.’

‘They are lies, all lies. Tricks and falsehoods, more deceiving than a lover’s tongue.’

‘I don’t believe you. How can colours be lies?’

‘Because you see, little girl, they are not properties belonging to the things we see, not intrinsically; they are fictions invented in our own heads. Yes, there is no doubt of it. Outside our bodies, beyond our skin, there is just electromagnetic radiation – radio waves that have no brightness nor colour. Ask yourself, where are these colours? If you chase them down the rabbit hole of the eyes, along the paths of nerves to their home in that porridge we call the mind, what do you find? Nothing but palpitating lumps of goo and slime.’ He swept his arm up and pointed through the window to his garden and, beyond it, the universe. ‘Everything we love about this world, all the beautiful things, are fictions our mind invents to conceal from us the insupportable truth: that the world is a colourless, seething quantum soup wrapped in endless night. Tree and flowers are just outlines we draw on to the darkness.’

‘If I felt like that I would find it hard to get out of bed in the morning,’ I said.

‘Do you think staying in bed would change anything? Mrs Lewis tells me you want to know about Iestyn Probert.’

‘You remember the case?’

‘Vaguely. He was lucky enough to be hanged young.’

‘Most people wouldn’t call it lucky.’

‘Of course not, but most people are fools who are scared of the dark and so persuade themselves that this torrent of empty days that we call life is preferable to the darkness that awaits them.’

‘We heard you certified his . . . er . . .’ Calamity paused.

‘Death? Can’t you say it? Are you frightened of a word? You poor, feeble, mouse-hearted things. Death is our friend, the only friend who keeps his appointment, who never lets us down. Death the lover who never forgets our birthday, who never jilts us for another, gentle death . . .’

‘Have you always been so unhappy?’ asked Calamity.

‘What makes you think I am unhappy?’

‘You hate flowers.’

‘No, you are wrong. I don’t. There is nothing to hate. It is not the flower’s fault. A flower has no intention, no more than a rock has. A flower is just a little machine that blind chance over endless geological epochs has contrived into an arrangement that produces copies of itself. What is there to hate? The only hateful thing is the myth of the flower that we create for ourselves.’

‘But have you always felt like that?’

He made a bitter smile and paused. ‘No, there was a time when I loved flowers too, when the colours of which we spoke brought the same uncomplicated joy to me as to the rest of my fellow herd.’ He reached across and picked up a photo from the bedside cabinet. ‘I keep a picture of Rhiannon to remind me of my conversion from that happy state. She left me, you see, when the world was young and we bestrode the sun-burned dunes like gods. We were betrothed and thus immortal like all young people, invincible, at least for an hour. She left me at the acme of my earthly bliss, beached on an Ararat of woe.’

‘Why did she leave?’ asked Calamity.

‘Who knows? They never tell you the true reason, do they? They think they want to spare you, but really they want to spare themselves. Suffice to say, for a season we played in our own walled garden of delight, and then autumn came and she was gone. Anon, the park keeper locked the gate and melted down the key.’ The muscles of his shoulders relaxed, he exhaled slowly, as if released from the grip of the memory. ‘Iestyn was nothing. A cheap crook who pulled off a cheap raid on a cheap fleapit of a cinema and somehow stupidly contrived to kill the poor policeman who gave chase. For this the boy was hanged. He was dead. They generally are once you’ve dropped them from the end of a string.’

Calamity looked disappointed. ‘You couldn’t be mistaken? We heard . . .’

He snorted. ‘You heard? You heard he was still alive? You heard perhaps the story of a strange alien-looking woman who bought his cadaver, paid for it with some antique coin, and lo! a week later, like Jesus, he walked among us again. You prefer such nonsense to the sober, evidence-based professional opinion of the physician who presided at his hanging, who noted, and marked it down on his report, that the fifth cervical vertebra had been snapped by the force of the drop, as indeed was inevitable. This doctor who in all his years never saw or heard of a case in which a hanged man with a broken neck came back to life. What contemptible superstitious nonsense you bring to my bedside.’ He put the photo back and turned it to face away. ‘You are worse than that imbecilic housekeeper of mine who no doubt at this precise moment has her ear pressed to the keyhole. They said I’d done my fiancée in, you know, those shrew-faced gossips from the village. Said she was buried in Tregaron Bog. How their pointy tongues wagged until the following spring when Rhiannon came back for a week. That wiped the smile off their faces. That’s the one thing they never forgive, letting them down like that. You can see it in their eyes, the look of reproach. How could you! How could you make us believe we had a murderer in our midst and then spoil it all like this? That’s the great paradox upon whose meat I daily feast: they cast me out, not because I murdered my fiancée, but because I didn’t.’

A man sat on the bench in that section of the castle that projects out into the sea. He was reading the Bible and waiting for me. He had called me the previous week and I had put the meeting off a number of times. The breeze flicked his thin, sandy hair into his eyes and made the collar of his tan-coloured mackintosh slap his face. I knew he had noticed my approach but he affected not to. He was the president of the remembrance society that had been formed to remember Marty, who had died on the cross-country run when we were in school. I sat down next to him and stared out to sea. It looked like porridge.

‘Funny thing about ruined castles,’ I said. ‘They always fill up with earth. Where does it come from?’

He said nothing.

‘It’s always cold up here, isn’t it? Do you ever wonder what it must have been like, standing on the tower wearing iron clothes?’

Glyn gently closed the Bible and said, ‘I didn’t come here today to talk about castles.’

‘What did you come for?’

‘You never come to our meetings.’

‘I don’t see the point.’

‘Only because you refuse to look for it. One evening two or three times a year, how much of a sacrifice is that?’

‘Why should I have to make a sacrifice?’

‘We all have to make a sacrifice. The world isn’t a theme park. We were put here for a purpose, even if we are but dimly aware of what it might be.’

‘That’s your opinion.’

‘It’s the Lord’s opinion.’

‘Marty was fifteen and had tuberculosis but no one knew. The inquiry cleared Herod Jenkins. I loved Marty and grieved for him, but I can’t hate. It just won’t come. I guess I’m not a good Christian.’

‘Don’t insult my religion.’

‘You are the one insulting it. Didn’t Jesus preach forgiveness?’

Glyn turned to me, his face strangely impassive. ‘Where? Where does he preach that?’

‘Forgiving those who trespass against us and stuff.’

‘He clearly didn’t mean it to apply equally in all cases. And besides, our community is not about forgiving, or blaming, it is about remembering and celebrating Marty’s short life. If you came along once in a while, you would know that.’

‘Didn’t Jesus also say something about worrying about the living, not the dead?’

‘He said the Lord our God is a God of the living, not the dead. But we are not Gods. You presume too much.’

‘You twist my words; what do you want?’

Glyn held the Bible up between his palms as if drawing inspiration from it. ‘You heard that Herod Jenkins is standing for mayor?’

‘Yes.’

‘A monster.’

‘So don’t vote for him. Vote for Ercwleff. One of God’s children, your ideal candidate.’

‘He’s a simpleton. A choice between a fool and a monster is no choice. We need a proper candidate, the town needs a proper candidate.’ He deliberated for a few seconds. ‘We want you to stand.’

The hairs on the back of my neck stood on end. ‘That’s absurd.’

‘Why is it absurd?’

‘I have no interest in politics.’

‘That is a recommendation.’

‘I already have a job.’

‘It need only be for a year.’

‘There are hundreds of reasons. I don’t want to.’

‘No doubt, but sometimes our desires and our duty do not coincide and in such cases a man, a real man, knows which is more important.’

‘I couldn’t do the human cannonball bit. I’m too tall.’

‘You think Ercwleff is doing it himself? We can supply a surrogate; that part is easy.’

‘And what about the fist fight in the pub car park?’

‘Ercwleff is going to take a dive in the fifth. That makes Herod the winner; you only have him to beat. Think of it! Think how old he is now, while you are young and in your prime.’

‘He would tear me limb from limb. Age has nothing to do with it; he’s my former games teacher. It doesn’t matter how old or frail or infirm he is, he will always be tougher than the boys he taught. That’s how it works. I would rather fight an anaconda.’

‘Do me a favour, Louie, think about it. For Marty . . . no, not for Marty, for Aberystwyth; do it for your beloved town.’

‘It’s not my beloved town. Where do you get that idea from?’

Glyn put the Bible up to his chin and pondered.

‘Anyway, what’s wrong with Ercwleff for mayor?’

He tried a different tack. ‘Have you never wondered why Preseli wants to elect his idiot brother as mayor?’

‘Yes.’

‘And what answer did you arrive at?’

‘None.’

‘He’s doing it to pay us back. For the humiliations they suffered as children. When Ercwleff was born, his father was too drunk to help and his mother sent Preseli to fetch the doctor. He was drunk, too, so drunk he could hardly see. He used the coal tongs as forceps and deformed Ercwleff’s skull. The mother died, but not before naming him Ercwleff and making Preseli promise to watch over him all his life. Preseli promised her he would, and throughout school he was his brother’s protector. They had a school rabbit and one day Ercwleff accidentally broke its neck, he wouldn’t stop hugging it, you see; even as a kid he was very strong. They made him spend the rest of the term in a dog kennel at the back of the class. Imagine the mockery. You know how cruel children can be – they discovered a wonderful trick for making Ercwleff cry. All they had to do was say the police were coming to take him away. The threat must have seemed very real to him because even by the age of nine or ten he had seen two uncles and a cousin depart the district in this manner. They teased Ercwleff relentlessly, and Preseli would get into fights protecting him; but he always seemed to be the one who got blamed for starting the trouble. You know what teachers are like in situations like that: they assume as a matter of routine that the boy from the bad family started the trouble. Such ignorant, unthinking dolts . . . so blinded by their own prejudice . . . They don’t see how by singling the child out, and treating him as a black-hearted good-for-nothing, they create the very thing they condemn. When the four o’clock bell rings, the teacher has forgotten all about the casually dispensed retribution earlier in the day, but the child remembers. Nothing festers in the heart more than such injustice meted out by adults, those towering figures who are forever declaiming their own moral infallibility. Yes, the child remembers.’

‘How did Preseli get to be mayor?’

‘After National Service he went abroad and was away for a long time. He came back a different man; educated, worldly, sophisticated to a certain degree; and he had money. Joined the police out at Ystrad Meurig. He did quite well, made a name for himself clearing up crimes, usually by fitting people up. Then his career got a boost for catching the gang that robbed the Coliseum cinema; went into politics. No one knows where he went when he was abroad; he just incubated his revenge.’

‘So this is it? His revenge? He comes back like some Welsh Heathcliff and makes Ercwleff mayor?’

‘That is my opinion, yes. This way he pays back all the teachers who punished him and all the kids who mocked his brother.’

I cast a glance at Glyn, who stared straight ahead, out to sea. He talked of adults declaiming their own moral infallibility, but I never met a man more richly deserving of that description than him. I stood up. ‘A man who hugs a rabbit to death would make a pretty good mayor.’

‘Nothing’s ever serious for you, is it?’

‘Ercwleff would make a better mayor than me.’

He stood up and faced me, placing himself between me and the sun. ‘For sure. They say he saw an angel once, so he’s got the right connections. All I can say is, it must have been a pretty bloody stupid angel. Just think about it, that’s all I ask. Think about it.’

He strode off into the grey wall of sky, dwarfed by the borderless expanse. The intensity of purpose was painful to behold; he was like a needle in the celestial sewing machine, darting here and there, up and down the town, leaving incomprehensible tracks sewn into the ground.

There was a fair being set up on the Prom at the junction with Terrace Road, as part of the mayoral election. The human-cannonball barrel, resembling the scarlet horn of a mythical beast, was anchored in front of the bandstand and pointed towards Constitution Hill; the catching net was just before the shelter by the wishing well. The other stalls consisted of a tombola and white elephant, Punch and Judy, and a permanent donkey-ride base. Meici Jones was striding around with his head held high, his bearing almost military. He chatted with holidaymakers in a manner which even at a distance struck one as expansive; a girl accompanied him and occasionally handed him leaflets which he signed and passed out to onlookers.

When Meici spotted me, he broke away and marched over.

‘Louie, excellent of you to come,’ he snapped in the manner of one who has just inherited the Prom and decided to open it to the public. He grabbed my hand and pumped it.

‘You got the job then? Congratulations.’

‘Thank you, Louie. Your support means a lot to me.’

‘When’s your first flight?’

‘Mission, Lou’, we call them missions. I’m still training at the moment, down on the recreation field at Plas Crug. I hope to be operational in about three weeks. Come, you must meet Chastity.’ He grabbed my tricep and propelled me across to meet the girl.

She looked about nineteen or twenty and wore a knitted two-piece mouse-coloured outfit and had a supernumerary arm, about the size of a wooden spoon. Meici excused himself to go off and sign autographs and discuss ballistics with some tourists. Chastity watched him go with a longing that suggested he was going off to battle.

‘Isn’t he amazing?’ she said.

‘Yes,’ I said, ‘there’s no one quite like Meici.’

‘I’ve always wanted to fly, ever since I was a little girl.’

‘Are you on holiday?’ I asked.

‘Yes, we’re from Shawbury in Shropshire; I’m here for the summer with my aunt. We’re staying at the caravan park in Clarach, do you know it?’

‘Clarach, yes . . . an interesting place.’

‘I think it’s dreamy.’ She was young but had a quality that made her seem much older, as if she had spent the past hundred years imprisoned in an enchanted wood; maybe it was the clothes – the knitted suit, the fawn socks and sensible, round-toed brown leather shoes – it all evoked a claustrophobic, walled-in upbringing. You could trace the hand of someone much older directing events. If you asked her the name of a pop star you knew she would cite enthusiastically an old crooner – Sinatra or Dean Martin – derived from a stack of worn LPs that her auntie played on Sunday evenings after church.

‘Some people find Clarach a bit quiet,’ I said.

‘Aunt Marjorie and I chose it for precisely that reason. The doctors told her to go somewhere quiet for her nerves. She has terrible problems with her nerves. I had to give up learning the harp because of them.’

‘In which case I would say she has made an excellent choice in Clarach. There isn’t a single incident mentioned in the records dating back to 1734 of a visitor to Clarach getting overexcited.’

Chastity’s eyes flashed. ‘Goodness!’ She reached into a pocket in her cardigan and pulled out a notepad and pen. ‘I must make a note of that. Aunt Marjorie will be pleased. I forget so easily, you see.’ She opened the notebook with her right hand and pulled the cap off her pen with the little wooden-spoon arm and held it in her little hand like a lobster pincer and wrote, ‘Records date back 1734 no overexcite’.

‘What exactly is wrong with her nerves?’

‘We don’t know. Fuss upsets her. That’s why we had to get out of Shawbury. It wasn’t easy finding somewhere with less fuss than Shawbury.’

‘I can imagine.’

‘It was my job, really; that’s why I’m glad to have the facts at my disposal. The one about 1734 is excellent.’

‘I can give you some more if you like. Before the last Ice Age, Clarach was the gateway to the legendary kingdom of Cantref-y-Gwaelod, which now lies sunken beneath the waters of Cardigan Bay.’

Chastity opened her mouth in goldfish-like wonder. ‘A sunken kingdom! How thrilling!’

‘According to popular belief, you can hear the bells of Cantref-y-Gwaelod ringing out on moonlit nights, although perhaps you had better not tell your auntie that.’

‘No, no, I won’t; she’d be a bag of nerves if she found out there was a sunken kingdom on her doorstep, ringing bells at all hours.’

‘But that’s ancient history; it’s very quiet now. Archaeologists tell us that the Pleistocene age is the last recorded instance of there being more than five people on the beach at Clarach at the same time.’

‘Golly!’

‘Have you walked the other way, to Borth?’

‘Not yet, but we are planning to. There’s just so much to do. Meici says he will show us the way if he can get some time off from flight school.’

‘It’s not really hard, you just follow the path up the coast.’

‘I’d feel safer if Meici was with us, we might fall among thieves.’ Chastity’s gaze flicked away, over my shoulder. ‘He looks so strong in his space suit, it must be wonderful to fly through the air like that.’

‘The journeys are quite short, though.’

‘I’ve never met anyone like Meici before. He’s the only person I know who has read Pollyanna more times than me. I’ve read it fifteen and I’m going to start again in August. Have you read it?’

‘I think I saw the movie with Hayley Mills.’

‘The book is better. Hayley Mills is too pretty, she would have had lots of friends and nice things in school. I never did. Meici and I play the Glad Game sometimes. He’s much better at it than me, though. Yesterday he said he was sad that he had no friends at school but he was glad because it meant he knew what it must have been like for me.’

‘That’s very touching.’ I noticed Meici had stopped signing autographs and was staring at me with what appeared to be irritation.

‘Yes he’s wonderful. You must be very proud to have him as a friend. He’s so philosophical. He told me yesterday that when he’s flying and looking down on the people on the Prom, they all look so tiny, like ants, and he says all our problems look tiny too.’

I said goodbye and as I wandered off I was aware of Meici watching me through narrowed eyes.

We drove out to Borth against the incoming tide of lunch-time traffic. Huw Pugh, the farmer who claimed to have witnessed the alien visitation, lived out at Ynys Greigiog, along the shores of the estuary. You could get there directly by going inland, but to drive that way without making a needless detour through Borth would be to display the wrong attitude to life, the attitude evinced by those who are too busy to stop and admire the view, unaware that this is largely what life is for. It’s just a simple road, ruler straight for 3 miles, between the railway line and the shore, parallel to each; a few shops; a railway station whose primitive simplicity evokes those halts in the Wild West where the gunslingers wait three days for the train and shoot the only man to step off the train. The road and houses, beads on a string, are a single thread thinner than a tripwire. Borth is a cheerful haven of demotic pleasure. The land between the railway and the sea is scrub, like a tramp’s coat – weather-stained and trimmed at the cuffs with marram grass. In winter everything is closed and the shutters squeak. But in summer, everything is bright, silver and blue. Dark spots dance before your eyes from the endless brightness. It is a vinyl-scented trove of rubber rings, spade, buckets and mats. The eyes ache from squinting and the distant roar of the churning water has the effect of muffling all sound, near or far. Sand gets in your eyes and between your teeth; in the milk and the butter, in your bed and in your toothpaste. And every evening, inflatable rubber dinghies wildly unsuited to the sea transport children like little Hansels and Gretels over the horizon to Greenland.

Mrs Pugh opened the door to the farmhouse and feigned delight. She looked like a mouse in a bonnet. We told her we were old friends of Farmer Pugh and had come to offer our sympathy following his recent close encounter of the third kind. She led us into the kitchen where she put the kettle on and then took us upstairs. Huw Pugh lay beached on the big pillows of a big bed. The room had bare stone walls and funereal black oak furniture. He stared at the ceiling with the intensity of an Old Testament prophet.

‘I’ve got someone to see you,’ said Mrs Pugh. ‘Isn’t that nice, an old friend from long ago.’ She made a few cosmetic changes to the arrangement of the bedclothes and then hobbled past us out of the room.

There was a pause. We stood in the doorway, hesitant to enter the room of a stranger. He moved his head and stared at us, narrowing his eyes as he tried to focus.

‘Rhys? Is it you?’

We shuffled our feet.

‘No, no, it can’t be . . .’

‘Good afternoon, Huw,’ I said.

‘Rhys? No . . . it’s . . . it’s not possible. Not after all these years, not after all that’s been said.’

I looked at Calamity. Her face blazed with silent imperative, urging me to act the rôle of the mysterious Rhys.

‘Nothing’s impossible, Huw, for a man whose heart is strong.’

‘But . . . you . . . oh dear Lord! Come closer!’

I walked over to the bed. ‘You’re looking well, Huw.’

He continued to stare at the ceiling, but reached out with his hand and grabbed my sleeve. ‘Promise me you’ll do it quickly . . . no . . . no . . . I have no right to ask such a thing; did I promise an easy deliverance to our sweet brother? No. But at least show me mercy, permit me to say one small prayer first. Just the one to the Lord Jesus.’

‘No, Huw.’

‘No? You’d slay me without more ado? You, who had half a lifetime to savour this act of fratricide; only now do you make haste to fulfil the vow you made? Do you think Ifan would object to a little prayer? Gentle Ifan –’

‘No, Huw, I come not to kill you.’

‘Not?’

‘Not.’

Confusion creased his features. ‘And the vow you made to our dying mother?’

‘They lied to you, Huw, I never made such a vow. She went to her grave not knowing; I thought it best to spare her.’

‘You have a big heart, Rhys Pugh.’

‘What good would it have done to tell her?’

‘It would have broken her in two. You did the right thing.’

‘Only me and you know.’

‘And Sioned.’

‘Oh . . . er . . . yes and Sioned.’

‘If it hadn’t been for her, none of this would have happened, would it? When she told me what he’d been doing to her – his own flesh and blood! His own sister! Well . . . you know what happened. Who could have stayed his hand on hearing such things?’

‘Who indeed!’

‘Still, it was wrong. To kill a brother . . . I deserved your curse.’

‘No longer. I come to embrace you and beg forgiveness for the years I cast you out from my heart.’

Tears filled his eyes and overflowed, big drops fell down the sides of his face and thudded the counterpane. ‘Oh Lord! Quick, pass me my specs – they’re on the table somewhere.’

I looked at them lying on the bedside table. Calamity picked them up and hid them behind a flower vase.

‘I can’t see them, Huw.’

‘Is there someone else there? I sense a presence.’

‘My daughter Eluned. I never told you.’

‘A daughter!’

‘Yes.’

‘Wonder of wonders! How old? No, not you. Let me hear her speak.’

‘I’m eighteen, Uncle Huw,’ said Calamity.

‘She sounds just like you. Quick, dear niece, hold your uncle’s hand.’

Calamity pulled a face and placed her hand in his. ‘I’ve prayed for this reconciliation every day,’ she said.

‘She’s studying Law now,’ I said. ‘At Bangor.’

‘My oh my! A Pugh at university, who’d have thought it! Makes a change from the debtors’ prison.’

Mrs Pugh brought in the tea and left without a word. We drank politely, trying to change the subject.

‘We read about you in the papers,’ I said.

Huw Pugh nodded and answered dreamily. ‘Yes, it was a great strain; having to tell all those lies, having to pretend all the time about Ifan. I had to keep making phone calls to relatives and folk, asking if they’d seen him, even though I knew he was dead in the cellar. “We think he might have lost his memory,” I’d say. “He might be wandering around all lost. You will look out for him, won’t you?” And I’d say to mam, “See? He’ll be back next week, you mark my words. He won’t be able to keep away from your home cooking much longer, not if I know old Ifan.” ’ Huw Pugh wiped his eyes with the sleeve of his nightshirt. ‘You remember Old Gelert the dog? He used to bark at the cellar door, and scratch at it. And if I went near him, his hackles would rise and he would snarl. If I put food out, he wouldn’t eat it. I told mam it was just a reaction to losing Ifan and she would say, “But what’s that got to do with the cellar? Ifan used to be scared of the cellar; he never went near it.” Eventually I decided the only thing to do was get rid of the dog. Smash his head in with a brick, I thought. But he was a clever bugger, that dog – he knew, you see. He knew what I was thinking. It’s funny how they can tell, isn’t it? I spent a whole month trying to catch him and all the time when my back was turned he’d be there whining and scratching at the cellar door. It was doing my head in. Then I had an idea. I dressed up in Ifan’s clothes and came back down the lane like he always used to. Well, I tell you, that fooled him, he came bounding up the lane, barking and yapping with joy until he was about 5 foot away, then he screeched to a halt like they do in the cartoons; amazing it was, he left skid marks in the dirt; you wouldn’t think a dog could do that, would you? But I tell you, he did. It was too late, though, I had him by the collar so there was nothing he could do. Bashed him in good and proper, although he fought like a tiger. Then I left him in the road so it would look like he’d been hit by a car. I was almost high and dry until mam came back from the shops early whooping with joy, saying she’d seen Ifan in the lane with Gelert. “He’s back!” she cried, “he’s back!” She wouldn’t be persuaded neither; she went round telling everyone in the village she’d seen him. That’s why they had to commit her. After that, I waited a while, then moved the body to Tregaron Bog.’

‘Let’s not dwell on the past,’ I said.

‘No, you’re right,’ he said.

‘Now we need to get you well again. Tell us about the flying saucer.’

‘Oh that,’ he said without interest. ‘First, come and give your brother a hug and let him feel your love.’ He reached his arms out.

I looked at Calamity. Her expression said plainly that here was a challenge that could not be ducked. I leant forward into his embrace and dug my arms under him, clasping him in a bear hug. He squeezed. ‘Oh Rhys,’ he croaked. ‘Rhys, Rhys, Rhys.’ The bristles of his unshaven chin, hot with tears, rasped against my cheek. ‘Oh Rhys bach . . .’

I let my hug go limp but waited patiently to be released.

‘Sometimes I used to stand on the railway line and think, Welshpool is only an hour away. I am no more than an hour from the love of the brother I have wronged. But really I knew the distance between us was unbridgeable, or so I thought until the Lord blessed this day.’

I extricated myself and stood up. ‘Tell us about the alien, we’re all agog. Is it true she wanted to make love to you?’

‘She did, but I’m afraid she was in for a bit of a disappointment.’ He stared up with a sheepish look. ‘You know how it is first time with a girl. We all brag about it down the pub, don’t we? But when it comes down to brass tacks . . . well, it’s not the same. Especially if the girl is experienced. To tell you the truth, Rhys, I can’t do it unless I’m pissed. It’s different then, isn’t it? And then doing it on a table inside the saucer . . . it felt all wrong, sort of clinical. She was ever so nice about it, she said I shouldn’t worry because she’d done this loads of times, but that’s what worries you, isn’t it? I mean, I wasn’t expecting her to tell me I was the first, but we like our little illusions, don’t we? And there was another thing: the table was in the centre of the room and there were two other blokes, aliens like, operating a console set against the wall and looking over their shoulders at us and then flicking buttons and levers on the console, and it was almost like she was responding to their inputs. She said, “Please don’t worry, earth-man, your semen will be safe with me.” And then she looked confused and asked what was wrong, and I asked, like, if she had any music and she said she would sing to me and bugger me if she didn’t! “Myfanwy” she sang. Quite good, too, but it wasn’t what I had in mind. The mood was all wrong, you see. Then the blokes on the console pressed a red button and she told me she loved me and couldn’t bear to be apart from me. It still didn’t do any good and so then she cried and said this had never happened to her before. Then I woke up sitting in the car, and twelve hours had passed.’

‘In the papers it says you couldn’t remember much about it,’ said Calamity.

‘I told the press I couldn’t, but I was lying wasn’t I? I’m hardly going to tell them the truth now, am I? It’s bad enough all me mates laughing down the pub as it is. Imagine it if I told them I couldn’t perform!’

‘We heard they asked about Iestyn Probert,’ I said.

‘They did, and I told them the Proberts are not from round here, they used to live over at Ystumtuen, but they’ve moved. I didn’t say they hanged Iestyn because it didn’t seem nice if they were friends of his.’

‘Maybe they told you lots of interesting things but you can’t remember them,’ said Calamity hopefully.

‘Maybe they did, but if I can’t remember them, they’re not much use to me, are they?’

‘We were wondering, maybe you should be hypnotised to stop you getting nightmares.’

‘I’m not getting nightmares.’

‘But you will,’ lied Calamity. ‘They always do. We could arrange a hypnotism session to straighten you out. You know Mrs Bwlchgwallter from Ginger Nutters? She could do it. I mean, you must be curious to find out what happened.’

‘Not really, to tell you the truth.’