The Day Aberystwyth Stood Still (21 page)

When you think of the endless variety of life on Earth, the mind-boggling permutations, you have to reflect that there’s nothing special about the bipedal model; in fact it seems to be inferior in just about every department to other animals. Losing the fur was clearly a dubious idea; it means you have to get a job to pay for an inferior replacement made from stuff that isn’t as warm, isn’t as waterproof, doesn’t fit so well or wear so well. We’re covered in hide that cuts too easily and leaves purple welts where the cops interrogate you. Even on Earth our ascendancy seems to have been the fluke result of a pretty rare combination of circumstances. And yet the people from space seem to have followed the same improbable evolutionary path. They are bipedal and furless too, more or less. The areas in which they depart from the paradigm – pointy ears, slightly different eyes or different number of fingers . . . these things testify to the poverty of imagination of the beholder. Having hallucinated an alien that bears a remarkable resemblance to us, they add a few differences for good measure, but they take the first ones they think of. In the ’50s, Beings from Outer Space came from Mars and had dials and knobs on their consoles. Nowadays, the term ‘Outer Space’ has fallen into disuse; it’s passé and bespeaks a feeble grasp of the infinite possibilities of what lies beyond our planet. If we ask the farmer I’m sure he’ll say the aliens had liquid-crystal displays. When we get something more advanced, they’ll get it too. It seems in terms of technology we are always one step ahead of the aliens.

When Mrs Pugh opened the door to the farmhouse, her face was white and she was trembling. She looked at me with relief, but I don’t know why.

‘Thank God you’ve come,’ she said. She led me into the sitting room, past a hall table on which the business card I had given to Mrs Bwlchgwallter stood propped against the phone. Huw Pugh was crouching in a foetal position on the floor in front of the fireplace. He was sobbing.

‘There was a terrible scream,’ said Mrs Pugh. ‘And then Mrs Bwlchgwallter ran out past me into the garden. I found him like this. He’s been like it ever since. What should I do?’

I walked back to the phone in the hall and called an ambulance. At the same time, I slipped the business card into my pocket.

‘They’ll be here in a minute,’ I said. ‘There’s nothing more I can do here. I’ll go and look for Mrs Bwlchgwallter.’

She wasn’t in the garden and wasn’t on either of the main roads, the one that led to Ynyslas or the one that led to Tre’r-ddol, which meant she could have been anywhere. I decided the best option was to assume she would find her way home and look for her there. I drove to Borth to see Calamity and tell her what had transpired.

The ancient forest once belonged to the Iron Age kingdom of Cantref-y-Gwaelod, which, legend says, sank beneath the waters of Cardigan Bay. Geologists blame the Ice Age but folklore claims it was all down to some chap who got drunk at a party and left the gates to the dyke open. That was the end of the Welsh Atlantis. But we still have the tree stumps on the beach at Borth to remind us of the lost golden age. Even as I parked the car I could see Calamity and Jhoe at the water’s edge.

I walked across the sand to the discoloration that looked from a distance like rocks and no doubt was taken as such by the casual observer. They were both sitting in camping chairs, staring out to sea. As I got closer the tree stumps resolved from the mass of brown colour. They were like dinosaur teeth embedded in the sand and flossed with seaweed.

Jhoe looked up and recited,

The big blue tube’s just like Louise

You get a thrill from every squeeze

Burma-Shave

Calamity said, ‘He knows them all.’

Jhoe gave us another:

Don’t lose your head to gain a minute

You need your head; your brains are in it.

Burma-Shave

‘What are you up to?’ I asked.

‘Jhoe’s been telling me about Noö. He says the rainy season lasts for two centuries, and I’ve shown him the sand dunes and the war memorial. He didn’t like it. Too ingrokking.’

‘Earth-man,’ he said, turning to me, ‘your violence appalls us. Sometimes, on this planet, I feel so ingrokked. So terribly ingrokked.’

Calamity tried to help him up. ‘Please don’t be unhappy. We can take you back to where you came from, if you like.’

‘Such a thing would not be possible for many of your centuries.’

‘Are you from a hospital, Jhoe?’ I asked.

He shook his head. ‘I am from Elysium, beneath the moons of Noö.’

‘Why did you come to Aberystwyth?’ I asked.

‘As a penance. Once, many aeons ago, my people said the thing which was not. So here I must languish.’

‘Are you sure you are not from a hospital, Jhoe?’ Calamity asked. ‘It doesn’t matter if you are. We won’t tell anyone, unless you want us to.’

‘We have no hospitals, we have no need for them. I am so ingrokked.’ He knelt down at the water’s edge and put his hand on the seaweed mane that clung to the tree stump; he ran his fingers through it as gently as a mother stroking her daughter’s hair.

‘Because if you were from a hospital, we could take you back, couldn’t we, Louie?’

‘Yes, we would be happy to.’

‘And we would come to visit you.’

Jhoe seemed not to be listening but stared out across the remains of the forest, lost in a reverie. ‘I remember when all this was fields.’

Calamity looked at me in anguish. I put my arm on her shoulder and drew her to me for comfort. Who was Jhoe?

‘Over there,’ he said, ‘is where I kissed a girl once. We used to come on holiday to Cantref-y-Gwaelod. If only you could see Earth as she was then. In the days when . . . she was a shepherdess, and all this vale where now the sea churns the sand was the home of her flock.’ He looked round, his eyes filled with an intense longing. ‘If only you could have seen it before . . . before all the bad stuff, when the earth was young. You would have been so grokked.’

I told Calamity to get the bus back to town and check out Mrs Bwlchgwallter’s shop in Bridge Street. I set off for Taliesin. The one surviving Richards brother was not difficult to find. He sat in the corner of the pub, his head slumped forward, chin on chest, like a marionette with a broken string. I put a pint down in front of him and he turned to look at me.

Saliva dribbled over his bottom lip. ‘Did Frankie send you?’

‘Frankie’s dead.’

‘If it’s about the girl . . .’

‘It’s not about the girl.’

He heaved the sigh of a man for whom the act of inhaling is a chore. ‘What’s he doing these days? Still using the blowtorch is he?’

‘I bought you a pint.’

‘That’s kind of you.’ He took a deep draught. ‘Why now? I mean, after all this time, all these years . . . I thought . . .’ He stopped and shook his head. ‘No, Frankie never forgets. I just wondered, that’s all. Why did he never come sooner? I was waiting. I knew, after all the trouble . . .’

‘Frankie’s dead.’

‘To tell you the truth,’ he said, ignoring me, ‘I’m happy. Happy that this day has finally arrived. A life spent looking over your shoulder is not a man’s life, it’s a dog’s. I decided that long ago. When it came I would go quietly, and with dignity. Just make it quick, that’s all.’

‘Frankie’s dead. I saw him die. His last words were of you. He asked me to tell you: Of all the blags you pulled, that one on the Coliseum was the best.’

The old con twisted his head to face me. ‘He said that?’

‘Those were his very words. The silly old bastard was proud of you. He just wasn’t the kind to show it. He said, they don’t make them like Old Richards any more; old school. That’s what he said.’

He repeated the words in a reverential tone. ‘Old school.’

‘Caeriog and Siencyn, and Iestyn.’

He looked surprised. ‘Iestyn? He didn’t rate him, did he?’

‘He mentioned him.’

‘Iestyn was the reason I spent all those years inside sewing mail bags. Siencyn and me wouldn’t have stopped, you see, but Iestyn was driving. He was soft. He was no good. He got out to see what we’d hit. I mean, what sort of robber stops during the getaway to take a pedestrian to the doctor’s?’

‘So you left them both?’

‘I make no apologies for that. There was no other way. We was born on the wrong side of the tracks. They don’t thank people like us for doing a good deed. One thing I’ve learned in this life, the folk at the top are every bit as rotten as we are. They just wear nicer hats.’

‘I wouldn’t disagree with that.’

‘That doctor, spends all that time checking your heart, he should take a look at his own.’

‘You’re not wrong.’

‘He thinks he’s better than a man like me, but it isn’t so. Things I could tell you about him, they’d soon wipe the smile off his face.’ He turned to me. ‘If you see Iestyn, tell him I’m sorry about what we did. There was no way we could stop.’

‘I’ll tell him.’

‘They say he’s back in town. He’s been seen. Hard to believe. Just tell him. I’m too old for fighting battles.’

‘I’ll be glad to.’

‘I’m not scared. The Lord could take me this afternoon and I wouldn’t turn a hair. But, the thing is, I want to tell him. I want him to know, I’m not sorry for driving off like that because there was no way we could avoid it. But I am sorry that they hanged him and not us. That wasn’t right. Normally there’s nothing you can do about it. But if he’s alive, well, I could say to him, I’m sorry they hanged you. That would be something, wouldn’t it?’

I touched his arm and squeezed. ‘Yes, it would. The thing is, though, I need help to find him.’

‘I’m no good to anybody any more. Drink my pint is about all I can do.’

‘What do you know that would wipe the smile off the doc’s face?’

‘I never blab.’

‘I know, and that makes you a true man in my book. But sometimes you have to make exceptions. I’m not trying to trick you, but is it right that your silence protects a man like that? What’s he ever done for you? Tell me what you know, it may help me find Iestyn.’

His brow furrowed as he considered my words. After a while he seemed to make up his mind. ‘We were working in the garage, me and my brother, in Llanfarian. This was before Iestyn arrived in town. The doc bought his fiancée a car from us, a 1963 Austin A35 in petrel grey. When she walked out on him some folk said he’d done her in; Sheriff Preseli started asking questions. Then we did the cinema job and were banged up. A year later she returned to Aberystwyth for a couple of days to collect some things. Driving the same car and all, so that put the wagging tongues to rest, and Preseli went round personally telling the gossips to give it a rest. He said he’d met the woman and so the rumours that the doc had murdered her should stop. And they did, mostly. Funny thing was, though, the engine was in the habit of overheating so they left her car at our garage to have it checked out. My father told me about it. He said it was a different car. Almost identical, with the same number plate, but there were one or two differences only an expert would recognise. The car they originally bought from us had been a 1963 with a 1097-cc engine. But when she came back in 1966 the car was the 1962 with the 948-cc engine.’

I stared at him, wondering how much credence to give to his story. He sat, head still drooped forward.

‘Maybe they just changed the engine.’

‘Wouldn’t have fit in the chassis; it was differently configured.’

‘Or maybe your dad made a mistake.’

‘But what sort of mistake? The number plate was the same, couldn’t have been mistaken about that. The car was different. One thing my dad knew about was cars. I tell you, it wasn’t the same car but someone had gone to a lot of trouble to make it look like it was. Don’t you see? The woman who came back, who was she? Did anyone see her? Yes, I know, lots of people saw her from a distance, but who spoke to her? Who saw her up close? Only the doctor and Sheriff Preseli as far as I can tell. If he did kill her, and the rumours all got a bit too much, well this would be a way to stop them, wouldn’t it? Easy to arrange: find a similar car, get a woman to dress the part, make sure no one meets her . . . you see what I mean?’