December (82 page)

      
'You're a sound engineer, Prof. You're
supposed
to hear these little ... resonances.'

      
Resonances.

      
A woman dying.

      
There's only one woman here.

'Is ... is Mr Beasley
there?'

      
'No, he's not. Who's that?'

      
'Doesn't matter, honest. I'll call back.'

      
'No. Don't go. Please don't hang up. I know your voice, don't
I, from somewhere?'

      
'Yes, you do. That's Shelley, isn't it? It's Barbara Walker, Ginger
Hodge as was.'
      
'For heaven's sake, it is, too.'

      
'Oh look, I'm sorry, it's just I promised Weasel, and I didn't
want to sound like I was going behind your back.'

      
'God, Ginger, if there's anything you can tell me. I'm ... I'm
just going out of my mind, if you want the truth.'

      
'What's ... ?'

      
'It's Vanessa. She went off with Weasel and they've just... disappeared.
Vanished. One mysterious phone call and then nothing. She's got Down's Syndrome,
Ginger. She's got very poor eyesight, there was talk of a heart-murmur ... I
can't sleep, I can't...'
      
'Oh, Shelley. You haven't told the
police or anything?'
      
'Not yet. Weasel's devoted to her,
I mean he wouldn't ...'
      
'No, he wouldn't, I can tell you
that. Oh, I wish I'd called earlier. I didn't want to ring from the office, in
case ... I mean, they're not nice people at TMM. It's not like Epidemic was.'
      
'Ginger, I'll do anything.'

      
'Well, look, there's a lot of stuff I'm not sure about, so I don't
want to say too much. But I do know where Tom is. At least, I'm pretty sure.'
      
When Shelley puts the phone down,
she's appalled, hot with anxiety and absolutely furious at herself,
      
Why on
earth
didn't she realise?

      
Yet it seems so terrifyingly bizarre and so utterly unlikely that
Tom, of all of them, should have acquiesced ... agreed to return to the place
which has given him the worst moments of his life.

      
Unless ...
that woman
... that insane woman ...
      
Shelley stands trembling in the
hall, Martin Broadbank watching from the bottom of the stairs. He's been here
all day, running his business from her office, breaking off to calm her when
she goes into her headless chicken routine,
      
It's seven-thirty p.m. Shelley
contemplates a journey.

II

Unhappy Ghosts

Aelwyn.

      
It's been a long haul, my friend.
      
Eddie sits in his armchair, his
papers on a coffee table. Marina is watching the television; such a placid
woman, doesn't know what he'd do without her.

      
The TV screen might as well be blank for all it affects his concentration.
If there's one thing Eddie can do its focus.
      
Aelwyn.

      
In this mood, Eddie doesn't care who he bothers at home. The
eminent professor of Welsh Literature at Aberystwyth he called an hour ago was
not what you'd call cordial. How did Eddie get hold of his phone number? Who
the hell was he anyway? If he wanted this kind of information, why didn't he drive
over to the National Library like anyone else?

      
Eddie had to throw a few heavy names at him, Department of
Education high-ups who didn't know Eddie Edwards from Adam, but this professor
wouldn't find that out tonight.

      
'All I want is top-of-the-head stuff, I'm not after a biography,'
Eddie said. Always so difficult to find out what these academic bastards really
think.
Everything has to be a considered,
annotated response, with appendices and a bloody index. Takes him ages, like pulling
bloody teeth, but he gets there in the end. And if Professor Vyrnwy Pritchard
should ever discover that Edward Edwards never made it to chief education
adviser and has in fact been safely retired for many a year … good.

      
Aelwyn.

      
This man, like many of these bardic figures, is an enigma. Perhaps
the greatest enigma of his profession during the medieval period.
      
In those days, bards were hacks,
see.

      
If you were a medieval chieftain who wanted your mighty victories
commemorated in poetry and song so that other chieftains would be less inclined
to chance their arm against you, what you did was to hire yourself a bard.
      
The bard would sit around in your
castle for a few weeks, getting well pissed up on your wine, and at the end of
this period would produce some bloody awful piece of illiterate doggerel full
of lurid verses about you slicing people's arms off with your mighty
broadsword.
      
Aelwyn was different.

      
Aelwyn was not inspired by bloodstained battle-axes and intrepid
acts of vengeance by the valiant Welsh against the brutal Normans.

      
Aelwyn's work was dedicated to the promotion of what, in twelfth-century
Britain, was a deeply unfashionable commodity: peace. Hence the name applied to
him,
Breuddwydtwr.
For most of the
Middle Ages, the notion of peace was strictly for the dreamers.

      
Nothing remains of the man's apparently prodigious output: he
was part of an oral tradition; if he committed anything to parchment, it has
not survived. More out of legend, is Aelwyn, than recorded history, as Eddie
has suspected. How could anyone survive, the historians ask, in such violent
times when his message was one of conciliation and mutual understanding? When
he stood up for the common people against the warlords? When the only chiefs
and princes he was prepared to exalt in his verses were those who did not abuse
either their power or the local peasantry?

      
So, as men such as this were thin on the ground in the strife-border
country of the twelfth century, how did Aelwyn survive?

      
The answer - according, again, to legend rather than history -
is in the personality and attitude of the bard. He hardly fitted the image of
what might today be called a wimp. Aelwyn, it seems, was a tough customer, with
an abrasive tongue, who would travel on foot with a harp over his shoulder but
a sword at his belt.

      
Aelwyn could hold his own. Aelwyn took no shit.

      
And he had a following. There were few villages in Gwent and
Powys and Hereford where Aelwyn was not welcomed with rejoicing, where food and
ale and a bed would not be prepared for him.

      
Man of the people, see.

      
But in the eyes of the Norman, de Braose, and his kind, a very
dangerous man. A rabble-rouser.

      
It was entirely typical of de Braose that he should invite the
famous pacifist to his castle to witness the signing of the treaty with Seisyll
and the border Welsh. Reasonable, too, that Aelwyn should fall for it - well,
Seisyll did, didn't he?

      
Eddie leans back in his chair and closes his eyes.

      
He sees Aelwyn fleeing the carnage at the dinner-table. A shout
goes up that a witness, the worst possible witness, has escaped.

      
But Eddie can't hear it. He's convinced now that it never came,
that shout.

      
Consider the situation. How did they know? When did they find
out? If Aelwyn had slipped away unseen it would not have been until later, when
the bodies were disentangled, that his absence was noted. If he had actually
been seen escaping, they would have caught up with him in minutes. Men on
horseback? And him on foot?

      
He certainly would never have made it to the Abbey.

      
And yet the story says he did. That he stumbled towards the lights
and the smoke of what, at that time, could have been no more than a grouping of
huts, perhaps with a stockade around it.

      
Sanctuary, sanctuary.

      
Eddie stands up. 'Off to the Dragon for a pint, my love.'
      
'Bring some toilet rolls from the
shop then, would you. Save my legs tomorrow.'

      
Zap wags his tail. 'No, no, not tonight, boy, I'm sorry.'
      
Eddie sets off, along the dark and
freezing street, from the old vicarage to the new vicarage. In his overcoat
pocket, two heavy torches. But he's far from sure about the wisdom of this.
      
For on such a night ...
      
No. On
this
night.

Lee hurls a drumstick at
the wall.
      
'What's
up
with these bastards?'

      
Prof is alone in the studio with the transatlantic megastar. It's
the opportunity he's been waiting for.

      
Lee,' he says. 'What the fuck are you doing here?'
      
The reason they're alone is that
the band have had five attempts at 'The Ballad of Aelwyn Breadwinner'; each
time one or other of them has walked out of his or her booth shaking his or her
head. It's not working. Is this cold feet or what? So they've gone through the
ruins and across the grass to the canteen to try and work it out.

      
When Prof asks the question, Lee looks at first kind of hunted
and then kind of hostile.

      
'You don't need this hassle,' Prof reasons. 'You don't need the
money. You're not, with all respect, a guy renowned for being kind and
sentimental. And what've you got to be sentimental
about
? By all accounts, they put you through the mill last time and
the bloody album never even got released! Need I go on?'

      
'Well ...' Lee hesitates, one hand pushing back his curly pirate's
locks, it's partly contractual, obviously.'
      
Prof carries a stool over to the
drums, 'if you don't mind me saying so, Lee, that's crap. Nobody has a contract
like that.'
      
'Part loyalty, too, man,' Lee says
uncomfortably, 'I got a lot of help from Sile Copesake. Sile found me the
breaks. Shit, you know this business. One day, Sile says, I know you prefer drums,
but don't neglect the guitar, yeah? Well, I used to play a bit, nothing
virtuoso, just the chords. But I was surprised how well it came along after
he'd said that. Then he says, like, there's this band could use a drummer. And
so I go in as drummer and after a year or so I'm fronting the band. You know
how it is.

      
'He's got a piece of you, hasn't he?'

      
'Shit, Prof, this is not something I talk about, all right?'

      
'Because you're shit scared of him. He put you where you are,
he can take you down again. But it's more than that. We've all heard stories
about Sile Copesake. Not a nice man, basically. And he scares you, Lee. Not
least because you can't think
why.'
      
'Why what?'

      
'Why he's got to have you here. On drums. Nothing else. Not
even back-up vocals. What's that gonna do for album sales? Lee Gibson: drums,
sod all. Point is, it's just like last time, when you were just a session man.
Everything just like last time.'

      
'Not exactly everything. Prof. You weren't here last time.

      
'Nor I was. Russell Hornby was producing, and young Barney
Gwilliam was turning the knobs. You hear about Barney, Lee? You hear about
Russell?'

      
'Yeah. Unfortunate.' Lee's playing nervously with his other drumstick,
pushing it through his fingers, it happens, in this game. It's not unusual.'

      
'OK, then,' Prof says conversationally. 'Let's start with Barney.
Terrific sound engineer. Very sensitive boy. Barney could pick up on the nuances,
know what I mean? Very thin-skinned. That boy could
feel
the music. No surprise, then, that when he came out of that
session, hearing all that dark,
resonant
stuff over and over again through his cans, he was polluted,' Prof taps his
head. 'Up here.'

      
'You don't know
what
kind of other problems he had, man.' Lee twirling a bit on his stool, eyes
flicking from side to side.

      
'You and Russell, on the other hand, were not so sensitive. You
both thought all this picking up vibes stuff was total crap. You had
thick
skins. And anyway, on drums, you
were beating it out of you as it was coming in.'