The Day Aberystwyth Stood Still (15 page)

‘Who do you work for?’ I asked.

‘No one any more.’

‘Who did you used to work for?’

‘An organisation.’

‘In what capacity?’

‘In many capacities.’

‘How about naming one?’

‘I have been many things in my time: healer, mystic, prophet, mendicant, heretic, counsellor.’ He stood up and walked towards the hole. ‘If we cannot help one another on our journey through this dark night they call life, what good are we?’ He prepared to putt again.

I grabbed the club and wrenched it out of his surprised hands. I threw it across the concrete floor. ‘Look here, you infuriating mystic in flannel. Since you walked into my life I’ve lost a desk and a door and been thrown violently against a wall by a group of people claiming to be the Aviary. Does that mean anything to you?’

‘Naturally, I have heard of the Aviary.’

‘Who are they?’

‘They are part of the Welsh Office.’

‘That tells me nothing.’

Without the golf club to hold, his hands twittered with uncertainty; he reached into his pocket and brought out a pack of Parma Violets. ‘I’m not sure if information regarding the Aviary is relevant to your inquiry.’

‘You don’t get to decide what is and what isn’t. When someone throws me against the wall and threatens much worse, it’s my decision. Either that or there is no inquiry.’

‘If you cancel our arrangement now, you won’t get the £200 back.’

‘And that’s another thing – you haven’t paid me yet.’

‘I haven’t?’

‘You know damn well you haven’t.’

Raspiwtin smiled.

‘Just start talking. What are you doing in Aberystwyth?’

‘I told you, looking for Iestyn Probert.’

‘He’s dead.’

‘I have grounds to believe he is still alive, having been resurrected by aliens, and that he will return to this area for a rendezvous with them.’

‘So far you have produced no grounds whatsoever apart from a load of gossip and rumour.’

‘I have more substantial grounds –’

‘Where are they?’

‘In my pocket.’

I blinked. ‘In your pocket? Perhaps you might like to take them out.’

‘I do not think the grounds –’

I slapped the pack of Parma Violets out of his hands. He looked taken aback by the sudden violence.

‘Look,’ I said. ‘Either you start co-operating a bit or I play crazy golf with your head.’

He stared at me in fear or wonder and reached into his jacket pocket. He brought out an envelope and handed it to me. ‘Be very careful with this. It is a top secret interdepartmental memo from the Aviary dated 1966 detailing the conclusions of their investigations into the Iestyn Probert case. Do not ask how I came to have it in my possession.’

I waved the envelope. ‘But this, you say, is about Iestyn Probert. Back there at Sospan’s you said something different.’

‘I did?’

‘You know damn well you did. Some cock-and-bull story about resurrecting the universe every morning –’

‘Hardly cock-and-bull –’

‘You have two stories, one cock, one bull. They can’t both be true.’

‘Of course they can. It all has to do with what we call proximate and ultimate causes. If I tell you I am hungry and you ask why, I could give two different but not contradictory explanations. I could say, “Because I haven’t eaten since breakfast.” Or I could say, “I am prey to a bodily discomfort resulting from fluctuating levels of the hormones leptin and ghrelin,” and I might add that, in truth, my hunger was the result of an evolutionary survival strategy developed to ensure that this particular agglomeration of self-replicating molecules called a human being acquired sufficient fuel to continue the chain of replication. That would be the ultimate as opposed to the proximate cause of my hunger.’

‘Why stop there? Why not go back to the Big Bang?’

‘Because I don’t want to try your patience. I merely wanted to explain that, yes, I am here because I seek Iestyn Probert, but above and beyond that desire lies the landscape of my spiritual desolation, which plays a major role in this particular desire. What I referred to back there at Sospan’s was my
apostasia
– the fall from the grace of belief that resulted in my conviction that the redemption I sought could only be supplied by Iestyn Probert. My
apostasia
had many stages.’

‘Start with the first.’

‘The first . . . the first . . .’ his words trailed off, it seemed that a thought that caused him pain had slid into his consciousness. ‘I guess you could say I am here because of a girl, a love affair that ended tragically, as do they all, I am told.’

‘Finally you make sense.’

‘It may please you to think so, but in truth the fate of this girl was an early chapter in that book whose summation was that nothing makes sense. She was Burmese. I was working among the Karen refugees on the Thai border. She was perhaps fourteen or fifteen years old, working as a maid in a household where we can be sure maids from Burma were not treated very well. I used to see her occasionally around the village. There was no one lower on the social ladder than this girl, and yet she smiled often and seemed to me to embody in its purest form the simple piety and meekness that we were told characterised that carpenter’s son from Nazareth. She was not a special girl, there were thousands like her living similar lives of sheer hopelessness, and yet for me at that time she became special. I confess I developed a passion for her that went beyond mere wonder at her simple piety. In truth, she ravished my soul. I flattered myself she found my attentions not unwelcome, and, though not a word had ever passed between us, I fancied that a secret accord had arisen between us, a bond of love silent, unvoiced, but burning in each breast. I arranged for a message to be passed to her, assuring her of my earnest in this matter and sounding her out. She did not reply in kind, for to do so would have been too indiscreet, but the day after she gave me an even more beautiful smile than any she had given before and I knew then my cause was not hopeless. The next day she left town and it was communicated to me that she had gone to visit her parents in Hpasawng to ask their permission in this matter. It was a day’s trek to the border, which was nothing unusual, and she set off at first light carrying with her the money she had earned through six months’ toil. To us it would have been a miserable pittance, perhaps as much as £50, maybe a bit more. Possibly even less. By evening she had arrived at the border post, where the captain of the Burmese guard called her into his office and took her money away. Then he raped her and shot her.’ Raspiwtin paused and dabbed his eye with the knuckle of his index finger. ‘Of course, nobody cared, apart from the peasants who were powerless to do anything. The captain was not even disciplined. But I cared. When the news of what had happened filtered back to my mission, I held out the cross which was attached by a chain to my neck and spat on it. And nothing happened. That’s when I knew: He didn’t care.’ He rubbed his sleeve across his face; he was crying openly. ‘I’m so sorry,’ he said. ‘I’m so terribly sorry. Forgive me. When I think of that poor girl, it is too much, too much.’ He turned his back and walked off towards the castle.

I picked up the putter and ball and returned them to the kiosk. I read the document. It was a fragment, a mimeographed mimeograph of a typewritten carbon copy, covered in marks and obscure annotations and signatures next to meaningless numbers and letters.
TOP SECRET/AVIARY EYES ONLY
. It described the interrogation of the woman who had laid out the body of Iestyn. She admitted handing over the cadaver to a tall blonde Scandinavian-looking woman with four fingers and piercing blue eyes with catlike irises. The woman paid her with an Iron Age coin. The document looked authentic enough, but how would you know? I walked back to the office and left it for Calamity to read.

A distant clock struck 9.00 and the sound of Welsh hymn-singing drifted across on the night breeze: ‘
Nid wy’n gofyn bywyd moethus.
’ The words of the old hymn ‘
Calon Lân
’, which I had sung in school with only a vague idea of what the words meant. Something about a pure heart being worth more than gold or pearls. Mrs Lewis would be singing it tonight while awaiting her bribe, unaware of the irony.

The crowd gathered to sing every night at the public shelter that cut into the face of the hill beneath the castle. Except for the front few rows, it was open to the skies, and the water slapping against the rocks across the road provided a gentle percussion section in accompaniment. When it rained the singers got wet, but this didn’t seem to diminish their ardour. I joined the back of the throng and stood erect with the self-consciousness one feels as an outsider among the faithful. Mrs Lewis sidled up to me, nudged my elbow and indicated I should follow. She crossed the road and walked up to the railings where they formed a sharp angle and from where you could see both sections of the Prom in their entirety. The tide was in and the sea gently butting the wall gave off a fine aerosol which puffed across the town like the fluid a gardener uses to spray aphids; it fizzed orange round the street light and collected on Mrs Lewis’s spectacles.

‘Did you bring the money?’ she asked.

‘I brought the money. Tell me what you’ve got.’

‘Let me see it first.’

I dug into my pocket and scooped out a fistful of screwed-up five-pound notes. She peered at them longer than I thought necessary, her tongue flicking in and out like a lizard’s; she nodded. I stuffed them into the breast pocket of her coat. She cast a glance around us even though it was clear no one was within earshot and took a step closer.

‘It was the night of the robbery,’ she said. ‘Whole county was looking for them. We heard it on the radio in the kitchen; they said the robbers were armed and dangerous, and had been spotted heading east towards Ystrad Meurig. There we were, huddled round that radio, gripped with fear when there was a knock on the door. Of course, it could have been anybody, but we all jumped. We knew straightaway it must be the robbers. The doctor told me to wait in the kitchen while he fetched his gun. Then he opened the door. On the step was this Iestyn Probert and this other chap. Iestyn Probert said there had been a car accident and his friend needed help. The friend was a strange-looking fellah. Not very tall, no more than 5 foot, if that, with a pretty, boyish face, more like a girl, and blonde hair to his shoulders. His eyes were piercing blue and his ears seemed slightly pointy. He looked frightened. The doctor told me to phone Preseli Watkins at the police station. They took the boy upstairs and put him in the guest bedroom. I made some hot soup and took it up to them. Iestyn Probert was very hungry and wolfed it down. He was not much more than a boy himself; so young and scared. And his friend, there was something very uncanny about him.’ She stopped talking and stared at me intensely. I noticed her hand was held out, palm upwards. I dug out a handful of coins and placed them on her outstretched palm. She continued with the story with the seamless automaticity of a laughing-policeman machine.

‘He was wearing a strange metallic suit – covered him from toe to neck – and we couldn’t get it off, so the doctor couldn’t examine him. He looked so lost and frightened. The doctor asked him where he was from and he wouldn’t answer. Iestyn said he was called Skweeple and was from somewhere called Noö. Skweeple was watching us with fear in his eyes like a timid deer. Then, all of a sudden, he cried out – more of a shriek really, just once. Iestyn Probert must have guessed straightaway that this meant danger, so he made a run for it, leaving the boy with us. Immediately after that we heard the sound of a car pulling up outside. Preseli came straight in through the door while Iestyn was still climbing through the bathroom window. He escaped over the garage roof.’

‘What happened to the boy in the silver suit?’

‘Preseli took him away. He said he would find a way to make him talk.’ She stopped and looked out across the sea. She shook her head. ‘I knew what he meant. Violence. I could never abide it. Not then, not now.’ She paused and licked her lips, then said in a whisper, ‘For another £3 I’ll tell you about the lady from the sweet shop in Ystrad Meurig.’

I made a look of slightly bored inquiry. She pinched my lapel between index finger and thumb and hissed, ‘They disappeared her!’

‘Disappeared?’

In answer, she gave me the sort of emphatic nod gossips deploy to indicate that the information, though it sounds far-fetched, is nonetheless true. ‘Off the face of the earth.’ She pushed her upturned hand towards me and I deposited three pound coins in her cupped palm.