After Brock (24 page)

‘Gwyn ap Nudd is the head of the Good Folk (or to give them, as Don does, their Welsh name, the Tylwyth Teg) and that made him a natural for the ruler of this realm, though he had competition for the post. It's all feasting and fun in Annwn, no kind of disease or misery…'

‘Like Heaven!'

‘Yes, very like Heaven. But whether it actually is Heaven or not is a moot point, Don says. You just go there when you've kicked it, as far as I can make out; no question of judgement, or whether you're worthy. Well, that isn't the traditional Christian view, or wasn't at one time.'

Pete had never been quite sure what this Christian view entailed. He'd long noticed that newspaper announcements, as well as the Sunbeam Press's condolence cards and the subse-quent gravestones, spoke of folk who'd just died as going straight to their eternal rest, as being under God's good care, so perhaps the alleged judgement wasn't as severe as some were pleased to make out.

‘The Berwyn's local saint – St Collen, who gives his name to the town of Llangollen – was a bit of a puritan, I gather, a hermit-like bloke, and he believed that there
was
a strict test for where you went after death. But simultaneously there were all these arrivals into Annwn, just down the road; not over the rainbow but over the waterfall. So he thought he'd better do something about it, and suggested Gwyn ap Nudd and himself had a meeting. Which they did. The Church has it that Collen came off better in their debates, but Don Parry says it's a toss-up about who came out top, and in fact posterity has given both of them crowns.'

‘I see,' said Pete, ‘and this Annwn itself…?'

‘Is the place of utter peace and joy. For any and everybody who goes there.'

‘I get it!'

And he did. For though he was positive he had never heard the word spoken or seen it printed, what lay behind its two syllables was surely something he had known about all his life, even before he could speak? But it alarmed him to think any more like this.

To help him move his mind on he inquired: ‘And – what does he look like, this Don Parry bloke?'

There followed a pause, during which Sam let a Long Vehicle overtake them. Perhaps he hasn't heard what I just asked, Pete thought, and anyway it doesn't really matter because I'll be seeing him for myself shortly. Then – ‘You're not going to believe this, Pete,' Sam said, ‘but he looks like you. Oh, I know, he's twelve years older, and he wears a small beard, while you've just turned eighteen and ain't got no beard, though with your kind of stubborn stubble, you might think one day of growing one. But otherwise I reckon you look pretty alike. Same build, same colouring, same habit of slouching, and of stooping when you run.'

Pete was astounded hearing this. Never had he imagined that this hero in Sam's eyes would resemble himself. He could think of nothing appropriate to say back.

Anyway Sam had, for the time being, worn himself out with talk. Shropshire was all about them now. Hills swept upwards to culminate in vapours rolling down from the sky, farmhouses presented themselves as randomly spaced dark shells of one-time habitation, which might or might not reassert their normal activities when, many hours later, morning broke. If it ever did!

Woods were fringing the country roads now rather like reeds do ponds. Shropshire has far fewer real woods than the boys' Herefordshire; night accentuated this, while making what woods there were seem denser, more inimical. Once an owl flew out, with a fierce, intent, insouciant face, a surreal white for the seconds of his visibility to them by the car's headlights – and probably both boys thought of the badger which had lumbered to safety not so very far from here on their previous drive through this territory… And then here, almost on cue, came another of its kind. Once again Sam had to brake while the animal, his great white stripe all but glowing in the darkness against the black of his long-snouted face, moved across the road, but at a far greater speed than his cousin of January 4. On this occasion Sam, his head full of Don Parry and his tales, was less interested by the creature though just as concerned that it crossed the road unscathed.

Pete, on the other hand, positively welcomed the badger. And in retrospect was to welcome it even more heartily. This sight of this animal, eager to get over the road, to reach the safety and warmth of his or her sett on a raw yet damp night on which extra-terrestrials might or might not have visited the planet, gave him a needed sense of perspective: there was clearly satisfaction to be found just accomplishing little tasks essential to preserving existence. Once again he resolved that when this adventure was over, he would pay badgers the kind of attention he had hitherto given to less sensate subjects. There were lessons to learn from even a glimpse of so self-possessed a being.

The boys half-expected Llanfyllin, which stands within sight of the Berwyn Mountains, to have some, if not all, of the atmosphere of a town on the edge of a danger (even a war) zone. Police cars (hadn't Don Parry said that the constabulary had already received an overwhelming number of frantic calls?), ambulances, a taxi or two bearing eager newshounds, reporters and photog-raphers … but where were
any
of these? Answer – nowhere; this could have been any freezing January night, with every right-minded person tucked up in bed. Even so, as they drove three or four miles away from the town along the B4391 and then exchanged this road for B4580 (by means of a sharp, ill-signposted turning that Sam very nearly missed), expectations of seeing preternatural lights in sizes and shapes that would blow their mind assailed them – and how could they help this? Their gaze moved constantly to the partially fogged-over massif that was the Berwyn Mountains. Nor could they refrain from speech. ‘Hey, wasn't that a ray of red light? Just over there? To our left?' ‘No, look straight ahead, Pete – I'm sure my eye just caught – well, something like the bright
zigzag
in Don Parry's story? Gone now, fuck it!' ‘That doesn't mean, it won't come again. In fact, if you…' ‘For Christ's sake, moron, let me keep my eyes on the road, can't you? This is hardly the M1 at high noon, you know.'

Very true, it certainly wasn't. The road was taking them over a little bridge, beneath which audibly rushed the swollen waters of the River Tanat. This formed the long awesome valley separating the Berwyns from their lower foothills. The sound of the river was good to the ears, sweet, musical: Pete liked it. It made him experience a rush of gratitude to Sam for having brought him all the long way out here, even if they never were to see a UFO – and God knew, there was a quite reasonable chance that they might not. A bigger chance surely, for all Don Parry's story, than that they would.

But just assuming they were fortunate enough, if that was the right expression, to be granted a vision, wouldn't it be far better for Pete to have got off his chest the matter of his subject for
High Flyers
? Of course! A hundred thousand times ‘of course'. He repeated to himself but more emphatically his earlier sentence: ‘After we've arrived in Llanrhaeadr, I will fucking
force
myself to tell him!'

He himself was not as clued up about the mountains in front of them as he had been about the Shropshire hills, though he did know quite a few facts… They were not so staggeringly ancient as sections of the Long Mynd and the Strettons, yet ancient enough in all truth, from the Ordivician age, 500 million to 430 years ago, and the Silurian, 430 to 410 million years back. They had seen much violent volcanic activity, and contained many examples of tuff – rock formed from volcanic ash. They contained no fewer than twenty-four peaks of over 2,000 feet, and the two highest (the two Cadairs above which this mysterious brilliant mass had been seen) neared 3,000 in height. As Sam had already reminded him, their famous waterfall, Pistyll Rhaeadr, had the longest single drop of any in both England and Wales, at 240 feet, and was situated at the back of the township that was their destination, and was now at last visible as an almost lightless huddle, Llanrhaeadr-ym-Mochnant.

And at some point on the range you could apparently wander into Annwn, even when still living…

‘Next task! Finding old Don. I've got the address of his house, don't you worry, and its whereabouts, I gather, couldn't present less of a problem. Right in the main street just before you get to the turning to the right which says ‘Waterfall'. Don said, more than once, for us not to worry what hour we arrive. Someone or other, probably himself, will be up and around, even on a shitty night like this, so help us! He was bloody fucking insistent we came, believe you me, Pete! But in fact, we've made really good time, I've done us all proud. I'll become a chauffeur if all else fails me. Fourteen minutes past eleven.' Pete looked at his own watch on which you could press a little knob so it was luminous in the car dark. Yes, truly, fourteen minutes past eleven it was. 23.14. Three hours one minute since he'd crept out of his bedroom at Woodgarth.

By now surely his parents would know he'd gone out? Were they worried? Mystified? Angry? Dad certainly would be home from the Civic Society; he might easily have taken it into his head to bid Pete a stiff if kindly good night. Or again the wretched Julian might have noticed the complete quiet behind the shut door, and come into Pete's room to investigate; he was the noticing, prying sort all right. Would make a fine private eye! But did Pete care about all this compared with the great adventure still ahead? Like hell he did! Had the family shown care for Pete in the only way that mattered, understanding of his temperament and tastes? They had not. So why should he bother himself about causing them a few minutes' anxiety?

The little town proper of Llanrhaeadr was heralded by a Victorian school building after which the road swung right, then left into the main street. ‘Girls' and ‘Boys' said the letters over the doorways, bringing back bad old days when the children of the place were rigidly separated by gender and not allowed to use words in their own first language. Even if anarchy was about to descend on the UK because of governmental stubbornness and incompetence, even if this part of the country was being disturbed by aliens, there were a few things, Pete thought, to be said in favour of being alive now rather than back then…! Unlike Llanfyllin, Llanrhaeadr was not deserted, despite the hour. Men and boys stood in talking groups in front of the grey-stone, slate-roofed houses of its principal street, with only a few women among them. All turned round as they heard – loud enough in the dead quiet of the hour – the engine of Sam's Beetle, as though, thought Pete, they were afraid an extra-terrestrial might be driving it. Or, failing that, the Head of Scotland Yard himself with tidings of further visitations… Off the very tarmac of the street worry, insecurity, fear rose up, and these qualities had also barricaded the houses, so that their drawn curtains looked like so many metal portcullises.

Sam parked the car without difficulty, but with many troubled, curious eyes playing on him, parked it right opposite the last house but two in the row before the sign ‘Pistyll/Waterfall'. Pete's heart beat faster. There returned that feeling that he was enacting something long planned, that he had known all his life that this Pistyll Rhaeadr was a place in his destiny. But this knowledge had risen to the reachable surface of his mind only these last cold minutes. Don Parry's house stood a few feet back from the pavement and was approached by a short path. The date 1845 was engraved over the front door, and above that, set in the wall, was a plaque bearing some commemorative words in Welsh; Pete couldn't even make out the lettering, and obviously none of the sense of this. ‘You'd best stand away while I beard the Parrys in their den! Don won't mind you being here at all, but I can't answer for anybody else…'

Pete had rather assumed that Sam would have told Don that his great mate was accompanying him. But perhaps he had judged it better not to tell him. Pete observed that a public-school assurance had spread itself over his friend as soon as he switched off the engine and prepared to disembark. That Darnton education? Or simply the result of having access to a bit more money than most youths his age? Al of a sudden Pete felt what he surely was: a junior partner in a madcap enterprise, Sam's less sophisticated shadow. Both boys crossed the road, but while Sam walked up the diminutive path and knocked on his friend's front door, Pete went and stood near a little gaggle of men, by the window of a general store named GREATOREX in capitals. Established in 1935 its lettering proclaimed, followed by the announcement of ‘Drinks, Bread & Cakes, Wines and Spirits'. Soothingly humdrum commodities (even if the shop selling them had shut many hours back) on such a night of near-apocalypse.

Sam was having the door opened to him by a woman in her mid-sixties, tall, with wild, woolly, grey hair. She was wearing tortoiseshell-rimmed thick spectacles, a fluffy pink cardigan and a long plum-coloured skirt which didn't disguise legs of an extreme thinness; these gave her the appearance of an animated Dutch doll. She didn't have the worried look of most faces out in the main street. On the contrary, considering she was confronting a total stranger at gone quarter past eleven on a night already distinguished by the uncanny, she appeared quite remarkably unfazed, you could even say, at ease.

Pete had positioned himself so he could hear everything the pair was saying.

‘Mrs Parry?'

‘You'll be Trevor Price's boy? That right?'

‘That's right.'

‘Yes, I've been expecting you, though I didn't think you'd have made it over here so quick. I can see for myself you're who you say. You have a look of your dad about the mouth. Don drove me over to Leominster before Christmas, and introduced us.'

Sam flushed, but didn't look altogether displeased.

‘Is Don in?' Sam asked.

‘Don's gone out; some of the lads press-ganged him into going with them, and he's never a one to say no to anything, my Don. So you have two options, Sam (it is Sam, isn't it?). You can wait in this house with me for him to return. Or you can go out somewhere to see what you can.' She made the occurrences, thought Pete, sound like a fall of snow or the Tanat overflowing its banks.