Last Tango in Aberystwyth (2 page)

‘Who says she's a tart?'

‘They're the only sort of girls I associate with.' He slapped the knee of the blonde. ‘Ain't that right, Toots?'

The girl dragged her gaze away from the ceiling and treated
him to a smile that came and went faster than a flash from the lighthouse. ‘Sure, honey.' Then she pressed her head against his chest and cooed. Jubal spoke across the top of her head.

‘She wants to be in one of my pictures; they all do.'

‘It's probably more fun than watching them.'

He flinched slightly and said, ‘Tell me what you really want, peeper, is it money? And please dispense with the witty dialogue, it's tiresome.'

I didn't know what I was doing there, really; just looking to see if the Dean's name induced any reaction. So far it hadn't produced even a flicker. So I said, ‘I've come to ask why your boys threw Dean Morgan in the sea.'

He addressed the rugby-shirt crew. ‘Have any of you boys thrown a man called Dean Morgan into the sea recently?'

They exchanged questioning looks among themselves and then said in unison, ‘Not us, Boss.'

‘Looks like there's been a mistake,' said Jubal.

‘Your boys are probably confused. His name's not actually Dean, that's his title. He teaches at the college in Lampeter. He was found last night floating face-down in the harbour.'

‘How tragic, I hear the tides can be very strong.'

‘They must have been, they broke his neck.'

There was a slight heightening of tension, and an air of mild surprise at the news of his death, which was understandable because I had just made it up. The people in the room turned their attention to Jubal. All except the girl, who was rubbing her cheek against his chest and making a long drawn-out ‘Mmmmm' sound. Jubal laughed. Not the hammed-up stage-laugh of someone trying to conceal something. But the carefree laugh of someone who knows you've thrown in your wild card and you couldn't have been further from the truth if you tried.

‘Well, shamus, he seems to have made an excellent recovery from his broken neck. He telephoned me five minutes ago.'

I thought for a second about an appropriate expression. He
could have been lying and probably was. But then again so was I and he knew it; just as I knew that he was, and he knew that I knew that he was, and I knew that he knew that I was. I put on the bright wide grin of an idiot.

Jubal said, ‘Tell me, peeper, do you really have a message from Judy?'

‘Of course.'

‘Why would she give it to you?'

‘She's a friend of mine.'

‘Is that right! A close friend?'

‘Oh so-so.'

‘This is really interesting. What does she look like?'

I hesitated, caught in the headlights of an oncoming train.

Jubal laughed. ‘Go on describe her.'

‘Er … well, you know …'

‘Come, come, shamus! It shouldn't be too difficult, I'll give you a clue: tonight she's wearing a leopard-skin coat …'

The girl turned and gave me a sickly-sweet smile. And then everyone in the room except me laughed. As the tears slid down his reddening face, Jubal waved a hand at me and said to one of the tough guys. ‘Throw this trash into the sea.'

That was the signal for them to take out their blackjacks, put a hood over my face, and play a tune on my head.

When I regained consciousness I was lying at the base of Constitution Hill, a cold tongue of sea-water licking my face like a faithful dog. Dawn was breaking through thick woolly cloud and my head was throbbing. They had dumped me just above the high-water mark which meant that, all things considered, they must have liked me.

THE BATTERED, GREEN Crossville bus pulled up with a sigh of brakes and disgorged an old man in a cheap suit. He put two suitcases down on the floor and then squinted at the morning sun glittering on the sea. From the bus shelter, a mother and a little girl eyed him suspiciously. The man took a breath and said, ‘Smell that, Señor Rodrigo?'

A voice answered from the suitcase, ‘Back in Aberystwyth. Same old smell.'

The man looked down at the case. ‘Yes, the same old smell.'

‘We said we'd never come back.'

‘We always say we'll never come back.'

‘But here we are again.'

The woman grabbed her little girl by the arm and dragged her briskly up the Prom, casting doubtful looks behind as they went. The old man watched them go for a while, his face lined with the wistful sadness that is the lot of the lifelong outcast. Then he bent down, the whole world on his shoulders, and picked up the cases. They were covered in faded stickers and the most faded of all said, ‘The Amazing Mr Marmalade'.

‘Need any help?' I offered.

He shook his head. ‘Been carrying them for forty years.'

‘I could take the small one.'

He jerked slightly. ‘Yeah, I know, and throw Señor Rodrigo in the sea.' He strode off, crossed the road, and entered the Seaman's Mission.

I remained standing there for a while and then walked up the rest of the Prom to the wooden jetty by the harbour. The
autumn wind was warm and blustery and held in it the promise of a season about to change. At the end of the jetty, I turned, and contemplated the vista of the town steaming in the morning sun as if still damp from its soaking three years ago.

Looking back, it was surprising how well the old place had stood up to the great flood. The waters had passed over Aberystwyth like a giant car-wash and picked it cleaner than an alley-cat does the bones of a kipper. But not much had actually been knocked down. We all held our breath that fateful night, closed our eyes, and when we opened them again most of the town was still there. True, most things that could be moved had gone. All the tables, chairs, spinning-wheels and grandfather clocks; all the Coronation mugs with their hoarded sixpences; all the tea cosies, the dioramas and stereoscopic views of Llandudno; all the ointment from the backs of drawers, and the lengths of orthopaedic hosiery; the china figurines, brass elephants and hairbrushes with four generations of matted hair. And, from the their picture frames atop the steam radios, a sepia generation of young men from the Great War were lost again, only this time at sea. It was all sucked out into the insatiable drain of the ocean. Even the seaside rock disappeared in a lurid pink slick before slowly sinking to rot the teeth of the bottom-dwelling fish.

But the buildings remained, by and large. Here and there – like missing teeth – there were gaps in the rows of shops on Terrace Road and Great Darkgate Street. Little squares of rubble, filled with oily puddles, flapping polythene and broken dressers housing families of rats. And bounded on each side by the image familiar from the photos of the Blitz – sides of houses torn away to reveal the contents, floor by floor, like dolls' houses open to view.

The city fathers from Dresden who came to advise on the rebuilding found little to advise upon. You call this a moonscape?
they said. This is a walk in the park! Just do what we did in 1945. Gather together all the Old Master oil paintings with views of the town; all the watercolours and prints of the main civic buildings; all the etchings and lithographs and work from that; rebuild. Roll your sleeves up. Don't dwell on it, move on. And so we did. In the absence of canvases by Canaletto and engravings by Dürer we resorted instead to something more modest: a nationwide appeal for old holiday snaps and postcards of Aberystwyth. Predictably it produced its fair share of pictures of the Sphinx and the leaning tower of Pisa because, as anyone who's ever been stopped by a traffic cop knows, everyone's a comedian these days. But the steady stream of ash-trays, salt and pepper shakers, and souvenir barometers with views of the town were enough to get us started.

We were also helped enormously by the Bucket & Spade Aid concert put on by the end-of-the-pier performers. From all round the coasts of Britain they came – birdsong impressionists, organ-grinders, ventriloquists, stand-up comedians, skiffle practitioners – all joining in to raise funds under the slogan, ‘I say, I say, I say, my dog's got no nose!'

By the time I returned to the bus stop my partner Calamity Jane was there waiting for me. She was wearing a shiny black leather coat and a black beret and looked ready to assassinate someone. Not even seventeen and so well versed in the ways of the street, a girl who in many ways knew more about it than me, who always got to hear the word, whatever it was, long before I did and always paid a lot less for it. An hour late and holding a new camera with a strangely furtive air.

‘Calamity!'

‘Hiya! Where've you been?'

‘Where have
you
been, more like, we've missed the bus.'

‘I've been testing my new camera. Do you like it?'

She pushed it towards me.

‘Will it squirt water in my eye?'

‘Nope.'

‘Then I like it a lot better than the old one.'

She grinned. No matter how hard she tried to act the wised-up bingo-hall hustler, the imp in her always bubbled through. I couldn't resist smiling when I saw it. The sly cunning that mingled strangely with that charming innocence, the look of bright wonder and belief that the tarnished streets couldn't cloud. That look in her eye that Eeyore said made putting on a silver star still worthwhile.

We'd been partners now for three years, and I'd done my best to look out for her, to stand in for the father she didn't have and keep her on the right track. It wasn't always easy, as the newly acquired camera proved. The black market that sprang up in the aftermath of the flood had proved an irresistible lure to a girl like Calamity.

I looked sceptically at the camera. ‘That looks like quite an expensive bit of machinery.'

She gave it an appraising look. ‘From one of my debtors.'

‘What do you need it for?'

Calamity moved half a step closer and took a quick look up and down the Prom.

‘I'm taking Aunt Minnies.'

‘That's good.'

She nodded in agreement. ‘I think so too.' She pointed the camera upwards. ‘It's got an East German lens. They're the best for this sort of thing.'

‘Aunt Marjories, eh?'

‘Minnies.'

‘Aunt Minnies?'

‘Yep.'

‘I was just thinking we should probably get some more of those.'

‘I'm going to put them on file.'

‘You're just dying for me to ask, aren't you?'

‘What?'

‘You know what.'

The next bus was over an hour away so we went to the Cabin coffee bar in Pier Street and sat in one of the booths looking out on to the street. After extracting as much mileage as she could from my ignorance on the subject, Calamity explained what an Aunt Minnie was.

‘It's a word the spies use; it means pictures that tourists take that then become of interest to the intelligence community because they accidentally include something top secret in the background. Like a Russian missile or a defector.'

‘And who's Aunt Minnie?'

‘They call them that because there's always someone's aunt in the foreground.'

‘It's a bit of a long shot, isn't it?'

‘You never know. Some of this stuff will prove useful one day, take my word for it.'

I handed her a photo of Dean Morgan that had arrived in the post. ‘We'll just have to hope no one defects this afternoon, we've got a real job. If we're lucky, we might even get paid.'

Calamity scrutinised the photo. ‘Preacher man, huh? How boring.'

‘This is the sort of preacher man who would be right up your street. He's from the Faculty of Undertaking.'

‘They teach that?'

‘You have to learn somehow.'

‘So what did he do?'

‘He's been teaching the Undertaking course out at Lampeter for thirty years. Then one day he decides to visit Aberystwyth.
He hasn't been heard of since. The worry is, he might have become part of the curriculum. The client is a girl called Gretel. She's one of his students.'

‘You'd think she'd be pleased her teacher had done a bunk.'

‘They're not like that out at Lampeter.'

*

Gretel had called three days ago. I told her to come to town, my office was on Canticle Street, but she giggled at the very idea and said, ‘Oh but I couldn't!' as if Canticle Street was in Gomorrah. So I agreed to go to Lampeter and asked her for a description. She said she would be wearing a brown Mother Hubbard, a black headscarf and big wooden beads. And she was quite fat. I thought that shouldn't be too difficult but when our bus turned into a main street lined with dreamy old sandstone colleges, I saw six other girls just like it.

The pub on the high street was easy to find. The Jolly Ferryman, two doors down from the souvenir shop selling bonsai yew trees. A pub with olde worlde bow windows and panes of glass like the bottom of a milk bottle – the sort that make your vision go bleary even before you've taken a drink. When I walked in a fat girl in a Mother Hubbard waved from the window alcove.

Gretel introduced herself and her friend Morgana and asked us what we wanted to drink. Morgana said amiably, ‘You and your daughter must be tired after your long journey from the city.'

‘I'm not his daughter,' said Calamity. ‘I'm his partner, I'm a detective.'

‘What city?' I said.

The girls broke into a peal of giggles like silvery bells, and covered their mouths with their hands.

‘Why, Aberystwyth of course!'

A number of people in the pub looked round sternly at the mention of the name. I ordered a rum and Calamity ordered a whisky sour which I changed to a ginger beer. When the drinks arrived we chinked glasses and I said, ‘So why undertaking?' The girls paused politely as if allowing the other to go first. Gretel said, ‘Strictly speaking, I'm not doing “undertaking” as such. I'm doing media studies.'