Last Tango in Aberystwyth (27 page)

‘Well you don't look very happy today!'

‘It hasn't ended yet.'

‘You throw happiness at me as if it was the touchstone of man's existence whereas statistically it's the very absence of it that seems to define us. Happiness? It's crap.'

‘You say you love her and you don't even want to make her happy?'

‘I deal in facts and certainties, Louie. Not candy floss. Any rational analysis of the world makes it clear that I cannot promise her happiness. But I can make her happier. You see, despite
everything, we still have each other. And now, in her modified form, at least no one will try and take her away from me.'

‘Is that so?'

‘Yes, Mr Knight, it very much is so. That, if you will forgive me underlining it, is the whole point. Because I know that despite your fine words you no longer want her. While I still do.'

‘What makes you so sure?'

‘Oh I'm sure,' he said. ‘Very sure. In fact, that's why I brought you here. Because I knew once you saw her you would hate her.'

‘I don't hate her.'

‘Perhaps. But you do not love her.'

‘She's not the same girl.'

‘Oh you're back-pedalling now, Louie. Back-pedalling. The tragedy for you is, she
is
the same girl. You could stay here all week and chat to her and you would never be able to deny it. The only thing that is not the same is physical. The tits and the bum – or what was that bollocks again? The cold wet tongues of hair on the goosebumpy skin. That was all you desired and it's gone.'

‘It's not true, Brainbocs.'

‘Really? Tell her then. Go and tell her that you still love her.'

I paused and my indecision filled him with glee.

‘You see! You can't bring yourself to do it.'

‘Why the hell should I?'

‘To save Calamity, of course.'

I turned to him and stared at the smug self-assurance on his face. Again Brainbocs made efforts to calm himself, breathing deeply and counting the breaths. And then, much cooler, he said. ‘You may protest and throw your teddy out of the pram, even call me a load of schoolyard names, but underneath it all you're not stupid. The deal I'm offering you is one you cannot possibly refuse. Tell Myfanwy you don't love her and I will tell you where they have taken Calamity.'

I rushed at him again but again I was too slow. Or Brainbocs was too quick. Another lightning fork flashed inside my ribs, picked me up and threw me to the ground with terrifying force. I convulsed and writhed on the floor, as my heart beat so powerfully I thought my chest would explode. Brainbocs looked on impassively and, once the convulsions had subsided, said, ‘You stupid fool.' Rhodri threw a tureen of cold water into my face and I dragged myself wearily back to the chair.

Brainbocs continued, ‘I can assure you, Louie, you will get tired of that before I do. But enough of this. Let us seal the deal.'

‘What if I don't co-operate?'

‘You have no choice. You would be stupid to refuse because it is in your best interests. You love Calamity like a father. You no longer love Myfanwy, despite your brave words. So to give her up will not be so very hard except for the wound it will deal to your honour. And set against the welfare of Calamity, what is that?'

Was he right? His words had twisted me so much that I hardly knew any more what to think.

‘Tell me what they have done with Calamity,' I eventually said.

Brainbocs drove his car over to a bureau and fetched a pile of papers. ‘I can't tell you exactly where, you have to understand. We're not in this together, if that's what you think. Mrs Llantrisant has no more love for me than she does for you. But I know how to find out.'

‘How would I know you are not lying?'

‘You wouldn't but when I explain it to you, you will know it to be the truth. You will feel it in your water. And besides, all you have to do is tell Myfanwy you no longer love her. If I double-cross you, you simply say you didn't mean it. You can't lose.'

‘So where have they taken her, what does Herod hold sacred?'

He lifted the pile of papers.

‘It's not, as you might first imagine, anything to do with rugby or beer, nor even as I had secretly suspected the exciting smell of adolescent boys' fear. It was something more primal than that and dated back to a time shortly after the war in Patagonia. A time when he had all the normal appetites of a healthy young man. A man who could still laugh and love, whose soul had not yet been torn apart by the memory of that terrible conflict. This man had a love affair with someone. Can you guess who?'

I narrowed my eyes and stared in disbelief and hate at the little worm.

‘Go on have a go.'

‘Mrs Llantrisant?'

‘Close. Her sister, Mrs Bligh-Jones.'

I looked startled.

‘Ah, you didn't know they were sisters. Oh yes. And bitter love rivals.'

‘But Mrs Llantrisant had Bligh-Jones assassinated.'

‘Hell hath no fury and all that. Yes, Herod and Mrs Bligh-Jones did what all seventeen-year-olds with the spring sap rising in their green shoots do given half a chance. The record of it is all faithfully transcribed in here.' Brainbocs waved the sheaf of papers. ‘Detailed descriptions of Mrs Bligh-Jones groaning and convulsing on the grassy hillside and doing out of wedlock what she spent the rest of her life hurling scorn at other girls for doing. The two of them engendering a child. Yes, Mrs Bligh-Jones and Herod had a love-child. But alas only for a while. For a single day only. A frail little kitten that popped its head out, decided the world was a vale of tears, and went back to wherever it was he had come from. They called him Onan. And Mrs Bligh-Jones gave birth to him in a cow byre because Herod had abandoned her. The only question now is, which cow byre?'

‘You mean that's the sacred place?'

‘Yes, up on Pumlumon somewhere. You remember all that fuss about the Meals on Wheels expedition that got stuck in the snow up there? That was all Bligh-Jones's doing. She knew he was up there, driven by some terrible, deep-seated instinct to find the place where his son was buried. That's where Herod's hideout is and where, unless you get a move on, they will kill Calamity tonight at moonrise.'

When he finished there was silence for a while. I looked towards the console and then back at Brainbocs. ‘I just tell her I don't love her and you tell me where the cow byre is?'

He nodded. And then Myfanwy spoke.

‘It's all right, Louie, you can say it. I already know anyway. You don't love me now. You hate me. Go on say it. No don't, please don't, please don't! Oh what does it matter? I know it anyway. Why didn't you write, you pig? I hate you for that … oh no I don't! Forgive me … I know this is all my fault. You never really loved me, it was Bianca you really loved, wasn't it? Don't lie to me, I know … you deserve better than this anyway, it's over for us, we're finished, look at me – just an old lump of brain in a tin of chicken consommé … that's what it is you know, chicken soup … just a brain now … I never was very brainy, was I? My worst feature all that is left of me … Go on leave me, say you don't love me … but say you did once … in Ynyslas, remember? Oh, Louie, remember how we kissed that day … I was so happy … Louie, say you did once, say you did once, Louie say you did …'

Brainbocs picked up a walking-stick and banged the console with it. ‘Sometimes the speech circuits can get overloaded.'

And then Myfanwy started to sing in a voice punctuated by sobs.

Once on a high and windy hill
In the morning mist, two lovers kissed,
And the world stood still …

‘It's amazing, isn't it?' said Brainbocs. ‘I haven't given her full stereoscopic vision but she can still cry –'

I couldn't take any more. I walked over to the console, looked at Myfanwy and then back at the evil dwarf schoolboy. He was singing, too, now. The thin, out-of-tune, reedy sound of a youth whose voice will for ever remain on the cusp of breaking; singing the descant to Myfanwy's electronic soprano.

Then your fingers touched my silent heart
And taught it how to sing
Yes, true love is a many splendoured thing …

It was enough. Tears in my eyes, I said into the microphone, ‘I love you Myfanwy. I always did. You were a bitch to me sometimes, but it never mattered. I always forgave you. So I hope now you'll forgive me too –'

‘No!' screamed Brainbocs as realisation dawned. ‘No! You bastard, no!' He rammed the throttle forward and sped his car towards me.

‘Hope you'll forgive me –'

‘No!' he screamed.

I turned to face Brainbocs as he raised the remote. And I smiled at him, a graveyard smile, as he pressed and I gritted my teeth. The shock shrieked through me in spears of blue and silver fire. I spun round and convulsed, but used the force, the momentum, to carry me forward to the console.

‘No!' he cried and pressed the remote once more. But he said he'd made the belt from camera flashes and even I knew you had to wait a few seconds for them to charge up again. I grinned at him and reached for the console. Brainbocs jabbed with impotent
fury at the remote and then hurled it aside and raced his electric buggy forward.

‘No! No! No! Stop! Please!' And then with bestial ferocity Brainbocs launched himself from his chair, his tiny hands reaching out in wild despair to grab my coat. Like a maniac he fought to clamber up me, to bring his face close to mine in a lethal embrace. He was so close now I could feel his hot breath scalding my ear. I could hear his teeth millimetres away – snapping on empty air like the jaws of a terrier trying to catch a wasp – as he tried to bite through the carotid artery in my neck. ‘No! No! No! Stop!' he screamed.

‘Forgive me, Myfanwy,' I said, and then pulled the plug out from the wall-socket.

FOR MAYBE A whole minute or so neither of us spoke. Brainbocs lay face-down on the floor at my feet, the remote control a yard away, almost within reach. I kicked it under the sideboard. The console was now in darkness; the lights dead; the electronic hum gone. And with it too whatever it was that Brainbocs said was Myfanwy. Finally he twisted his head on the floor and looked up at me. ‘Curious. This funny thing called love. Of all the reactions I had computed, the one thing I didn't expect was that you would kill for it.'

I bent down and scooped the broken-hearted dwarf into my arms and then put him tenderly back in his wheelchair. And then the tiredness swept over me. I could have slept standing up. The lights flickered and went out. Not just in the house but down in the valley too. I slumped into a chair and held my head in my hands. All the reserves of strength seemed to have been drained from my body.

The butler walked in holding a candelabra of lighted candles. ‘I fear we have some problems with the electricity …' He stopped as he took in the scene in front of him.

‘Yes,' I said. ‘There's been a loss of power in here too.'

‘So I see,' he said in a thoughtful voice. ‘So I jolly well see.'

‘I'll be phoning the police in a while, if you … er … if you …' I was almost too tired to speak.

‘Time to go, eh?' he said.

‘I think so.'

‘Would you permit me, sir, before I leave to straighten Mr
Brainbocs's tie for one last time?'

I shrugged. ‘Be my guest.'

The butler walked up to Brainbocs and punched him with pure venom full in the face. ‘That's better,' he said, and then walked to the door.

A fat bead of blood appeared in Brainbocs's nostril and trickled down his upper lip. Tears welled up in his eyes. I walked over and held out a handkerchief to him. He misinterpreted the gesture and flinched in anticipation of another blow.

The loudspeaker crackled on the wall and a voice, the voice of a dead girl, shouted, ‘Go on, Louie, bash him up!'

I twisted round suddenly and the butler pointed at a set of doors to the left of the console and said, ‘I think someone had better go and untie Myfanwy, don't you?'

I walked across and swung the doors open and there she was. Tied to a chair, and staring at the proceedings on a TV screen with a microphone in front of her, but seemingly unharmed. Myfanwy. I attacked the cords with fevered hands and soon she was free and in my arms and squeezing me so hard I could feel my ribs crunch. ‘Oh, Louie!' she groaned into my chest. ‘Oh, Louie!' And I pressed my face against the top of her head and breathed deeply the lost incense of Myfanwy's hair. Finally she pulled back, looked up at me and said, ‘You switched me off, you pig!'

*

I called Llunos and he told me Calamity had turned up. She had walked into the police station an hour earlier and turned herself in for the Custard Pie break-out. He was going to send me a car, the fastest one he had, because she was driving everyone mad down there and they were considering arresting her for vagrancy or something, just for some peace and quiet.

* * *

We didn't wait for the police car, we borrowed Brainbocs's 1960s era Rover instead.

‘Why didn't you warn me,' I asked as we drove through Ponterwyd and west towards town.

‘If I gave the game away he was going to kill you. He said he had a power setting on the belt that would kill you instantly; he demonstrated it by electrocuting a pig. The deal was I had to answer all your questions and convince you that you were really talking to me. Then he would make you the deal: renounce me and he would tell you how to find Calamity.'

‘What would have happened if I didn't renounce you? Told you I still loved you?'

‘He said you would never do it, you would never let Calamity die; but if you did he would let us go. We could be together.'

‘Really?'

‘He said if you did that, if you sacrificed an innocent child for me, he would be quite impressed and would have to admit that maybe your love was even greater than his.'