The Day Aberystwyth Stood Still (17 page)

‘I don’t see what satisfaction there is in just telling.’

‘It’s the most fundamental human need of all, the act of bearing witness. Think of all the people in history who have been massacred. The bad guys drive into the village and round everybody up. They load them onto the back of a truck. They drive off into the forest and stop at a clearing. The villagers are forced to dig graves. They do it because they know there is no redemption. They listen to the scrape of the shovel on dirt, the birds calling in the woods, then straighten up at last from the digging, aware of the puzzling paradox that they are proud of having done a good job of the hole, and then the crack of rifle shots sends the startled birds flapping into the air. What is the last thing the poor victims think before tumbling down? They hope someone from the village escaped and will tell the world what happened. Even though that knowledge, that acknowledgement, won’t make any difference to them, won’t save them and won’t make their deaths easier, it is still the last hope. They couldn’t bear for the world to never hear of it, the terrible way they died.’

‘So are you a Christian?’

‘No, but I admire Christ. Even though he did his best to put me out of a job.’

A park keeper walked past. Miaow reached into her handbag, took out a camera and rushed over to the man. He took the camera and peered through the viewfinder. Miaow sat down again but this time nestled her head onto my shoulder and we both squinted into the blue sky. The man clicked the shutter and brought the camera back, but, seeing or sensing that now was not the time for Miaow to move from her position, head pressed to mine, he bent down shyly and put the camera on the tartan rug. It was like watching someone place an offering at a shrine. It was a simple Instamatic camera, without adjustments except for the shutter press. But this meant that, paradoxically, it was the acme of the camera-maker’s art, because the inevitable fuzziness of the image would perfectly mimic the effects of memory.

‘What brought you to Aberystwyth?’ I asked.

‘Do I need a reason?’

‘No.’

‘I told you, I’m studying.’

‘I thought you might be looking for Iestyn Probert.’

‘I’ve never heard of him.’

‘I found your card in the ruins of Iestyn’s house. You’d written “Ask for Miaow” on it.’

‘Someone else must have done it, not me. It could have been anyone, couldn’t it?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I suppose it could.’

It was evening by the time we got back to Aberystwyth. It had grown chilly and the streets were empty, the damp tarmac gleaming beneath the street lights. We walked along Terrace Road towards the sea, without thinking about it. The same invisible force that sucked the water back from the land pulled at us too. The sound of a public speaker drifted over from the Prom, getting louder as we walked. Miaow slipped her hand in mine. On the Prom the emptiness became less stark, couples walked past holding hands, and a group was gathered round a man on a small raised platform who was addressing them with a microphone. He was short and squat with arms that seemed disproportionately long for his torso. A quiver ran involuntarily through my loins, it was Herod Jenkins, my old school games teacher. Miaow turned sharply.

‘Louie, what is it?’

‘Nothing.’

‘You’re squeezing my hand so hard . . .’

‘It’s Herod Jenkins, he used to teach me games.’

‘He can’t hurt you now, silly.’

‘I know, I know. It’s . . . it’s like a dog that was beaten once long ago who sees his old master in the street again. Even if he saw his old master in a coffin being lowered into the ground he would still tremble. It’s involuntary.’

His words reached us; he was talking about the New Sparta he would build in the ruins of Aberystwyth once elected. Did we need one? The original Sparta didn’t sound very attractive.

Miaow frowned, sensing that something about the mood had changed, as if it was our wedding day and someone had reported seeing the Ancient Mariner at the bar. I turned and smiled. ‘On our first day at big school he gave us a talk about how it was going to be. He called us all milksops and pansies and told us we had had it too good for too long but things were going to change. He offered us a choice: shape up or ship out. We were eleven.’

‘They always make that speech, Louie.’

‘On that first day at school he said there would be no more free rides, those who lagged behind would be left behind. One boy put his hand up to ask if this applied to him because he suffered from asthma. He said he had a note from his mum.’ I peered into her eyes as if my words contained an urgent revelation. ‘Herod pretended to be sympathetic and related a story of his time as a prisoner of war in Patagonia. He told how one morning the commandant called the prisoners together and appealed to them for help. He said a number of llamas had died in the night and they didn’t have enough to pull the plough so they were appealing for volunteers. He said it would be a great help to them and also a nice day out on the farm, but if they didn’t fancy it or were too busy he would understand and would make sure the table-tennis room was left open back at the camp for them to amuse themselves.

‘ “You, boy, no talking at the back!” Herod called out to me; heads turned to look.

‘ “If you’ve got something to say,” he said, “perhaps you’d like to share it with the rest of us.”

‘ “Mr Jenkins, I just wanted to ask, in this New Sparta you describe, will there be room for everyone, the weak as well as the strong?”

‘He peered at me over the heads of the throng. People began to mutter, as if my question had chimed with their own misgivings. Herod Jenkins raised his arm and swung it across, appealing for calm. He paused for effect, then said, “There is no such thing as weakness.” The muttering started again. “Weakness is a state of mind, born of sloth and idleness. Those who truly want to be strong will be strong. And those who can’t be bothered, who prefer to sit on their backsides and shirk their duty, they will be weak. But it is their choice.”

‘ “What about sick people?” I asked. “Are they sick because they are too lazy to get well?”

‘He stepped towards the edge of the podium and screwed his eyes up. He nodded as he recognised me.

‘ “It’s you, isn’t it? Louie Knight. I remember you. The troublemaker. Of all the milksops that ever crossed my path, you were the worst. Yes, I accept some are too sick to play their part. But you? Louie Knight? What excuse do you have for standing on the sidelines and mocking? Oh yes, I remember you well. You were not sick or halt or in any way infirm. The Lord blessed you with healthy thews. And yet you refused to take part. What excuse do you have?”

‘ “Quite often I was sick, I had a note excusing me from games, but you mocked me for it. What right did you have? Are you a doctor?”

‘He flashed with indignation. “A note from your mum, you say? Let me tell you the truth of this world, boy. If you take a lion cub and separate it from the pride and bring it up in a marble palace, if you feed it milk and dainty roasted goat flesh each day of its life such that it never learns to hunt, is that a kindness? No! And if you then turn it loose into the wild, having no comprehension of the struggle that awaits it, will it survive, do you think? Has your kindness, your diet of milk and kid, helped the lion to make its way in the world? Just so does it come to pass with men. When I was fighting in Patagonia, I learned that on the field of battle, which is but a metaphor for life, there is no note from your mum!”

‘ “But this is Aberystwyth,” I shouted. “We’re miles away from Patagonia!”

‘ “There is no distinction in the geography of the soul. All places are one. In Patagonia when I thirsted I drank the tears of the penguin; when I felt the ravening pains in my belly I chewed on the tapir’s foot. When I was weary I did not take the chinchilla for my pillow, but the armadillo! Not once did I cry out in the night for a note from my mum. When I fell into captivity I did not waste time cursing my fate, my thoughts were only for escape. I did not petition the commandant with notes from my mum! You know what would have happened if I had done that? You know what he would have said?” Herod Jenkins sneered and shouted, “You want to know what a note from your mum got in Patagonia? This!” And he ripped his shirt off to show us the stripes on his back.’

We wandered down to the wooden steps where they post the tide tables. Out in the darkness the end of the Pier hung over the water, studded with lights like an ocean liner. Is there any sight more calculated to thrill the heart than a big ship at night? There is something deeply affecting about those lights floating over the watery wilderness. Maybe it is the contrast, the interface of two worlds separated by a membrane of painted steel. Outside salt, and flung spume, endlessly dark, an abyss so profound it would take you twenty minutes to reach the bottom. On the other side of the steel, men and women in evening dress, warmth and light and a theatre performance in which they act out the play called
Don’t Mention the Iceberg
. We carried on walking until the harbour. The jetty brooded and the beacon standing proud at the end flashed like the light of an angler fish. The symmetry of the concrete was broken by the silhouettes of two fishermen, a man and a boy; the dark lines of their rods waved like the whiskers of a dim-bodied crustacean. A breeze rose, fish-scented, from the water and raised goose bumps on Miaow’s arm. She shivered and pressed herself against me. I linked my arms behind her and she turned to look up at me.

‘Do you know why they call me Miaow?’

‘No.’

‘Because of my green eyes.’

‘They’re nothing like a cat’s eyes.’

‘Why not?’

‘The green is the wrong shade. Cats’ are more like the digits on a luminous watch.’

‘What are mine like, then?’

‘Do you really want to know?’

‘Of course!’

I pushed a filament of hair away from her cheek as if it were blocking my view and stared intently into her eyes. ‘The green is paler, like a phial of seawater held up to the light, and there are flecks of grey radiating like the striations in a slice of lime. At the rim of the iris there is a thin dark band that acts as a frame around a grey-green disk . . . it’s like watching the full moon through a bottle of absinthe.’

‘Do you want me to cry tears of absinthe?’

I shook my head. In the black waters of the harbour the town lay inverted like a nebula; skeins of shining gas hung like a necklace from the street lamps of the Prom. It was beautiful. Miaow peered into my face, her hair drawing forward like curtains to block out the world. She kissed me lightly on the lips. ‘I won’t let Herod Jenkins hurt you.’

Chapter 11

I
slept
badly and arrived late at the office next morning. The new desk had been delivered. It was already installed, and a man, who probably hadn’t been delivered with it, sat on the client’s chair with his feet on the desk. His shoes were black leather, badly scuffed, his trousers turned up and shiny with age. He wore a mackintosh that looked like it had spent six months tightly rolled up at the bottom of a packing case; his thin brown hair was congealed in a slick of police-issue hair cream. It was the cop who had sat sneering in the interrogation room the night I was taken to see the Aviary. He was eating an ice cream.

I slapped his feet off the desk. They fell to the floor with a thump.

He grinned. ‘I knew I wasn’t wrong about you.’

‘I like to be introduced before I let a man put his feet on my desk.’

The grin widened. ‘You can call me Sauerkopp.’ He raised a foot and crossed his leg. ‘They say the chief of police has a good relationship with you. That’s always a mistake in my book.’

‘Mistake for who?’

‘Everyone.’

‘And what makes you think I give a damn what’s in your book?’

The phone rang. The visitor picked up the phone, listened and said, ‘It’s a girl, wants you to find her lost handkerchief.’ He spoke to the receiver. ‘Sorry lady, he’s a dick, not a Boy Scout.’ He hung up and smiled. ‘Another big case slips through your fingers.’

‘Did you come for a reason or were you just passing?’

He reached into his jacket pocket and took out a Polaroid. He threw it towards me. I picked it up. It was the corpse of a woman, hair wet, face bloated.

‘Recognise the party?’

‘It’s Mrs Lewis.’

‘Someone tied her to one of the supports under the pier night before last, just before the tide came in. Ain’t that a shame!’