The Day Aberystwyth Stood Still (4 page)

‘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.’