Don’t Cry For Me Aberystwyth (7 page)

Tinker, tailor, seaside-rock maker, crazy golf pro, hobo, clock winder, beggar man, mayor. He came, too, and was humble enough to leave his chain at home. Flickering neon signs fizzed in the rain-drizzled streets: Eats, Whelks 24 hours, liquor and sadness.

Tinker, tailor, mason, Rotarian, hotelier, donkey man and hotdog seller, shepherd, nightwatchmen, and people who are just nobodies. They stand in Peacock’s with their bitter spouses discussing socks. Nobodies who sit on the Prom watching nothing. Did they ever expect it to be like this?

Tinker, gaoler, Soldier for Jesus, librarian, whelk catcher, beggar man, ex-con, bent cop. They all came. And while they danced, while the music played, they could forget for a while;
take a trip to the washroom and wash their faces in a tributary of the Lethe. Tinker, tailor, mudlark, warlock, fisherman, stovepipe-hat stockist, effigy maker, gravedigger.

And the people on my client’s chair.

It was a private nursing home paid for by an anonymous benefactor. I didn’t know who; perhaps some high-ranking druid, an admirer from the days when she sang in the Moulin Club; or a member of the town council. For the first two months I had footed the bill but it wasn’t easy. No one ever got rich fighting crime, just ask Eeyore – a cop for thirty years before he became the donkey man; more collars than a Chinese laundry, and he ended up just as poor. Aberystwyth, queen among towns for irony; perhaps nothing was more so than this: that there was so little money to be made in law enforcement when there were so many villains, so many laws to be enforced.

It had been built as a seminary some time earlier in the century. One large grey three-storey block to which a reluctant architect had seemingly had his arm twisted into adding some decoration. He’d probably read all the latest architectural journals and wanted the purity and elegance of Bauhaus, dreamed of winning a major prize somewhere far away and prestigious. But the Church fathers – perhaps fearful of the warlike reputation of the townspeople – insisted on turrets and battlements. So he’d scribbled on a pointless turret, some arched windows and an oaken door studded with iron. Then he quit and caught the train to Shrewsbury. Now it sits serenely in a nice park at the top of a hill overlooking the town. Slate quarries and gorse towards the back, and a paddock of horses. Gorse is not a great thing to have in your garden; it seldom lifts the jaded heart. But every spring it burns with buds of yellow flame, and when you see the same fire reflected in the eyes of a mare aglow with pride for her foal you always wish you’d brought some sugar lumps along.

It was a good place to recuperate. The wind could be bad in
winter. It could knock you off your feet sometimes, and rattle the windows so violently it made you stop your darning and turn round to stare anxiously at the panes. Sometimes it howled in a way that was unsettlingly human, as if the wind collected all the voices of wanderers who had been lost in its storms, and replayed them. But it wasn’t always like that, and in all seasons the view was wonderful. It gave you perspective. Instead of being witness to a myriad trivial heartaches and sorrows, betrayals and acts of meanness, you looked down and surveyed the broader sweep: the heroic little town thrust out into the bay, the sea slowly gnawing away at the edges like a mouse with a piece of cheese. From up here you could see the long, straight line of the Prom and the characteristic zig-zag at Castle Point like a cartoon lightning bolt; or, depending on your mood, the valedictory blip on the heart monitor of a man who has just died.

Myfanwy lay in bed, propped up on pillows, asleep. The watery winter sunlight made her cheeks glow like amber. She looked well. Someone had disfigured her chestnut tresses with two childish yellow ribbons. The sort they tie to oak trees when someone comes out of prison. They sat knotted on either side of her head in some strange insult. I knew she would have hated them. They were redundant: it was not possible for her hair to be a mess any more than a lion’s mane can be dishevelled. It was the same colour as the chestnuts in Elm Tree avenue.

Gently, I undid the ribbons and put them on the side table. She had been like this almost four months now. The doctors said there was nothing physically wrong as far as they could see. She just seemed happier asleep. In the moments when she woke up, she was often sullen, and withdrawn, cold almost, like a kid who ate a piece of pie baked by the Snow Queen. I wondered if she blamed me for what had happened in the summer; or resented me for bringing her back from the dream world. Or maybe it was the loss of her voice, her very essence, that had hit her hard. But she looked well today.

I listened to her breathe, watched the gentle rise and fall of the sheets. I smoothed them out and then ruffled them again. Listened to her breathe: like the sea on a windless day, slow and soft and pitched precisely on the threshold of audibility. I pressed the back of my hand to her cheek, like a mother checking the temperature of a pale child, like a boy stealing an apple. And then I leaned forward to kiss her cheek. Strange, the mild sensation of guilt that the motion evoked. As if standing over the sleeping form of one’s girlfriend was a forbidden pleasure. Myfanwy would not have begrudged a kiss, I knew. But all the same . . . Maybe it is the vulnerability that is revealed in a sleeping form. It makes you feel like a peeping Tom, his eye to the keyhole, watching two lovers at play in a walled garden. And you know the slightest noise, such as the crack of a twig underfoot, will reveal your presence and destroy their joy; sully it with the pall of having been observed.

I leaned forward to kiss her cheek below the ear.

‘Hello, Louie.’ A voice crashed through the serenity like a felled tree. ‘She looks lovely, don’t you think?’

I jerked round to face the intruder. It was a nurse, with a fat boyish face, standing stiffly and shapelessly in a white pinafore dress. The dress was too tight; the buttons strained and divided her torso into segments like a giant millipede. Damp patches of sweat darkened the fabric of her blouse under her arms. Her hair was straw-coloured and cropped in a way that suggested a pair of kitchen scissors and a head bent over a bowl on a kitchen table, a bowl which on other occasions would be used to soak feet.

‘I made her look nice. I knew you would come today.’

I smiled uncertainly.

‘You don’t remember me, do you?’

‘Er . . .’

‘It’s OK, you don’t have to pretend. My name’s Glenys. We were in the same class in school.’

‘Oh . . . I . . .’

‘You don’t remember, I can see it in your face. Please don’t pretend.’

‘It was so long ago.’

‘Yes. It doesn’t matter. You needn’t worry about me. Why should you? You’ve come to see Myfanwy. She’s much better. Would you like me to wake her?’

‘No, please. Don’t wake her.’

She needlessly plumped up the pillow. ‘The ribbons are mine, I wore them for my second baptism. I knew you would like them. Are you sure you don’t want me to wake her?’

‘Yes. I’m quite happy sitting here.’

‘It’s ever so easy. You just put your hand over her mouth and hold her nose. She wakes up in a jiffy. I do it with all the patients. You’re looking well.’

‘Thanks. You too.’

‘I’ve put on weight, specially round the knees.’ She looked down and my gaze followed of its own accord. She was wearing tan woollen tights on legs without shape, the tights wrinkled at the fat ankles. Below them were black sensible shoes with scuff marks on the toes. ‘It’s all this running around after the invalids, you see. They treat me like a bloody servant. My legs were my best feature in school.’ She began to smooth down the bed and apply herself to tidying chores. I wished she would leave.

‘Five years I sat behind you and you never turned round once.’

‘As I say—’

‘I sent you a Valentine card and you thought it was from the girl from the estate. You asked her out and she said no.’

‘I remember that.’

‘She’s dead now, so they tell me. Brain haemorrhage.’ She picked up a litter bin and walked out.

Myfanwy sighed and shifted position. There was something deeply calming about that sigh. A sign that wherever it was she was wandering, whichever somnambulant world closed to us, it was nice there and bathed in warm sunshine. Perhaps she was
walking through the marram grass at Ynyslas in summer. The day we had our first picnic. A hot blue sizzling day when you had to squint to look at the sea; a day of champagne and strawberries and whispered words; a day I keep locked away in a vault and seldom take out, for fear that exposure to the sun will fade it, and the joy it brings will seep away, like a perfume slowly loses its scent with time.

I walked to the window and looked out at the town. A woman wandered in and sat on the chair I had vacated. She was in a dressing gown, and wore her grey hair in pigtails like a Red Indian squaw. Her features were finely drawn and hinted at lost beauty. There were bandages on both her hands. She took Myfanwy’s hand and spoke.

‘I do envy you being able to sleep like this. I haven’t slept a wink for thirty years—’ She made a tiny startled movement, like a gazelle which picks up the scent of a predator on the breeze. ‘Who’s that?’ she whispered. ‘There’s someone here. Someone by the window . . . I can smell liquor.’ She sniffed the air. ‘Captain Morgan rum, if I’m not mistaken.’

‘I’m sorry, I was . . .’

‘A man! Oh, you must be Louie.’

‘Yes.’

‘I’m blind, you see. Myfanwy always talks about you.’

‘That’s kind of you to say.’

‘How old do you think I am?’

‘Oh, I . . .’

‘Don’t say it, you’ll upset me. I’m only forty-six. That shocked you, didn’t it?’

‘No.’ She looked twice that.

‘I can tell from your voice that it did. I’ve had a hard life. I’m the oldest resident. Did you know that? That’s what fooled you, you see. I haven’t got my stick. That wretched nurse keeps hiding it.’

‘Is Myfanwy your friend?’

‘Yes. My name’s Evangeline . . . Miss not Mrs. I was never married. Who would want me? Oh, but there was a time, oh yes, a time when I was desired.’ She stood up. ‘Well, I must be going. I know better than to play gooseberry to two young sweethearts.’

‘You’re very welcome to stay.’

‘This place used to be a seminary, did you know that? “Seminarium” means nursery garden, from the Latin for seed, like semen. A place where they grow priests; you need to spread a lot of dung to do that. I knew a priest once, many years ago; he used me as a seed bed but they didn’t believe me. He was a beastly priest, or was it the other way round? Heigh-ho, there is a willy grows aslant a brook . . .’ She paused as if trying to recover a lost train of thought. ‘I was desired once, too. But that was long ago.’

She stepped slowly to the door and I said, ‘Does Myfanwy really talk about me?’

‘All the time.’

She reached the door and added, ‘Myfanwy says you drink too much rum. I think she was right.’

‘It’s my aftershave.’

‘Well, then, you drink too much aftershave.’

Before leaving, I dropped in on the doctor. He was sitting at his desk showing a series of cards to a small mongrel dog who sat on a chair. The cards showed pictures of various objects that might interest a dog.

‘The vet says he needs worming,’ the doctor explained without looking up. ‘Please take a seat.’

I pulled up another chair to the desk.

‘That’s their answer to everything: worm tablets. But what’s the point of removing the parasites if you don’t address the fundamental psychosomatic causes?’

He held out a card with a picture of a cat and the dog growled. The next card had a bone on it and the dog licked his nose.

‘You see!’ said the doctor as if this proved something.

‘Dogs have psychological problems, too?’

‘Of course. They have two eyes like us, a heart like us, two lungs like us, a brain like us. Why do people suppose they don’t also have the same neuroses?’

‘I’ve just been to see Myfanwy.’

‘Yes, she’s looking better.’

‘She seems to sleep a lot.’

The doctor paused and put on his concerned face. ‘She seems a bit – how should I say it – a bit reluctant to join the party. It’s as if she’s happier in dreamland or wherever it is she goes.’

‘I can understand that.’

‘We need to coax her back. We need to help her see that life is worth living and she will be happy again.’

‘How do we do that?’

The doctor put the cards down and made a steeple of his fingers as he warmed to his theme. ‘One thing you could do is bring in an item with sentimental value for Myfanwy, something that has associations of happier times. It doesn’t have to be anything dramatic – a photo or an ornament or something. Just leave it in her room. It could help.’

‘I’ve got some of her records, she gave them to me after our first date. I think she would like those.’

‘Excellent. That would do splendidly. We could play them to her; music has the most remarkable curative properties in this respect.’ He returned his attention to the dog. The next card showed two dogs copulating and the patient wagged his tail.

Downstairs in the hallway I ran into the nurse again.

‘Hello, Glenys,’ I said with forced cheeriness.