Don’t Cry For Me Aberystwyth (5 page)

We stood in the doorway and knocked, Calamity doing her best to look sick and woebegone.

The door was opened by a girl wearing a red flannel shawl over a white blouse and a black-and-white checked skirt; on her feet were shoes with shiny Tudor buckles. She looked younger than the photo in the newspaper – about nineteen, perhaps – and prettier. She smiled.

‘I’m so sorry,’ I said. ‘My daughter has had a nasty turn. Could we trouble you for an aspirin?’

‘Oh, you poor little mite,’ said the girl, automatically lowering herself a few inches as if Calamity were a five-year-old. She pressed the back of her hand against Calamity’s brow.

‘All I need is an aspirin,’ said Calamity with thinly disguised hostility.

‘She really isn’t very well,’ I said.

We were invited into the kitchen and seated at a table of unvarnished wood. The old man of the house sat in a rocking chair next to an open fire. He had thin white hair and white whiskers, and bright pink cheeks. A book rested on his knees, old and worn like a Bible or some ancient religious tract. Reading glasses lay on the book. Another man, much younger, stood with his back to us, staring out of the window. He stood stiffly erect, without the softness of the old man. Three stovepipe hats hung on a stand by the door. The girl picked up a sooty black kettle from the hearth, brought down cups and saucers from a Welsh dresser set against one wall, and made us tea.

‘You have a nice cup of tea, now,’ she said, ‘and I’ll have a little word with the spirits to see what we can do for you.’

‘Please don’t go to the trouble,’ I said hastily. ‘She’ll be fine. All she needs is to sit down for a few minutes and a little aspirin.’

‘Nonsense, it’s no trouble. It’s a pleasure to be able to help you.’

‘That’s if you are who you say you are,’ said the man standing at the window.

The girl screwed up her face in consternation. ‘Peredur, please!’

He about-turned like a soldier on a parade ground. ‘I mean no disrespect, but who are you? We don’t know. You could be anyone. We don’t take kindly to strangers bringing the troubles of Aberystwyth here like mud on their shoes.’ He wore a tight black jacket, cut like a frock coat, and had a dog collar. His face was young and glowed with the conviction of the zealot.

The girl walked over and put her hands either side of his face. ‘Please, Perry.’

He jerked away.

‘Look,’ I said, ‘we didn’t mean to cause you folk any problems. Maybe it’s better if we leave.’

‘No,’ said the old man. ‘Please do not be offended by Peredur’s sharp tongue. He forgets his manners sometimes.’

‘We’re not offended,’ I said. ‘We understand your caution. These are dangerous times. Why, a department store Santa was murdered in town last week.’

There was a palpable increase in tension in the room.

‘I expect you heard about it,’ I added.

‘Yes,’ said the old man. ‘We read about it – Arwel does work in the village and he brings us the papers sometimes.’

‘And we have a wireless,’ said the girl with a nervous look at Peredur. ‘We sometimes listen to the BBC.’

The back door opened and a man came in carrying a shotgun and with a leather bag slung across his shoulder. His hair was thick and curly, jet black. He pulled a dead hare out of the bag and slung
it down on the table. Dark blood where the jaws of a trap had closed was congealed in a ring around the hare’s hind leg.

‘This is my brother, Arwel,’ said the girl. She poured him a tea. He nodded but didn’t offer to shake my hand.

‘These people are from the city,’ the girl said.

He nodded again but said nothing.

‘Fancy that!’ said the old man. ‘Tell me, I hear they have cappuccino in Aberystwyth now. Is it true?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘It’s true.’

The man smiled and gave a slight shake of his head. ‘My, my. And an escalator? I hear there is an escalator there now?’

‘No, I don’t think so. I think the nearest one is still in Shrewsbury.’

He looked slightly crestfallen, as if a trip on an escalator was the one dream still left burning in the embers of his life.

‘Oh, yes, of course. Shrewsbury, not Aberystwyth.’

‘Have you been on one?’ asked the girl.

‘Yes, many times.’

‘We were wondering,’ said the old man. ‘Do you need special shoes to stand on them?’

‘No, not at all.’

‘And is it true that when the step reaches the top it re-appears moments later as if by magic back at the bottom?’

‘Yes, I suppose you could say that.’

He shook his head at the wonder of it. ‘Fancy that!’

‘We met a man in the village once,’ said the girl, ‘who came from Aberystwyth. He gave father a coconut. How about that!’

‘It was from the funfair,’ the old man added quickly, for fear I be misled into a misunderstanding about the climate of Aberystwyth. ‘He won it in a contest. Have you ever seen one?’

‘Yes, I’ve seen one or two.’

‘They say the coconut tree provides more materials for man than any other tree on earth. They eat the fruit, and cook with the milk. From the trunk they make ships, and the husk gives
them matting; the leaves can be woven to provide shelter, and this is only the beginning of what that marvellous tree does. Burning the husk wards off insects—’

‘Oh, father, don’t start on your silly old tree stories.’ She turned to us and smiled. ‘Father used to be a rocking-chair maker. All he ever thinks about is wood.’

Ignoring his daughter, the man continued, ‘And do you know why a Stradivarius violin sounds better than all the others? It’s because of a mini ice age they had in the fourteenth century. The long cold winters made the spruce trees grow slower so the rings were more tightly packed and this extra density gives a Strad its unique sound.’

‘That’s very interesting,’ I said politely.

Peredur cut in impatiently. ‘I’m sorry if you have had a wasted journey but we have no aspirins here. There is a pharmacist in the village.’

It was time for the wild card.

‘Hey you’re not the girl in the papers, are you? The one who was going out with the dead Father Christmas?’

She flinched and looked down at her shoes.

‘My daughter gives her free time to play harp to the poor holiday-makers at the Kamp,’ said the old man. ‘And for this the papers print lies about her.’

‘I may have met him once or twice,’ said the girl with a slight stammer. ‘But that’s all. Nothing more. Peredur doesn’t . . . doesn’t like me talking to men.’

‘Why, is he jealous?’ I laughed.

Peredur flushed. ‘I regard that as impertinent!’

‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ I said, ‘I didn’t mean to cause offence.’ Even though that was exactly what I meant.

‘Perry, please!’ said the girl.

‘The imputation is abhorrent to me,’ said Peredur.

‘Oh, now! The man didn’t mean anything by it.’

Peredur spoke through gritted teeth. ‘Banon, I flattered you
with the hope that your heart was not like the hearts of other women in this town – a toy, a sailing boat sent hither and thither by the storms of trivial passion and adolescent sentimentality. Perhaps I did you too great a compliment.’

‘Come on, folks!’ I chirruped. ‘It
is
Christmas!’

They all looked astonished by this remark; silence fell with the suddenness of a guillotine. The girl began to polish her silver buckles. The old man found something interesting to look at outside the window. Peredur fixed me with a cold stare. He spoke slowly and enunciated each syllable lest I miss one. ‘It is precisely this loathsome trivialisation of the sacred truth of the Christ Mass represented by the . . . the institution of the department-store Santa Claus that I abominate.’

‘Christ Mass is a time of grieving in this household, you see,’ said the girl. ‘We’re Church of the Sacred Insubordination.’

‘I don’t think I’ve heard of that one.’

‘We are an austere Church,’ said Peredur. ‘Our beliefs are considered too severe for many of the people round here. We believe that the truth about God is contained in the Old Testament and that the New Testament is a perversion of his message by His Son.’

‘Jesus lied you see,’ said the girl.

‘Like a lot of children he disobeyed his father,’ added the girl’s father, giving her a meaningful stare.

‘But . . . but . . .’ I struggled for a response. ‘What about the bit, you know, “A new commandment I give unto thee, that ye love one another”?’

‘He made it up,’ said Peredur.

‘He was very naughty,’ added the girl.

‘And for two thousand years mankind has been deceived.’

‘Are you sure about this?’ I asked.

‘The evidence is there in the gospels but people just don’t have the eyes to see it. Has it never struck you? The startling difference in the personality of God between the Old and New Testaments? How do you account for such a thing? Do you suppose
God, the divine and immutable, underwent a personality change? Or that He is somehow schizophrenic? That He perhaps drank a potion like Dr Jekyll to transform His character? It is absurd. The true God, as revealed by His prophets, is stern and vengeful, quick to anger, jealous and terrible to behold. And yet He is fair and loves us after His fashion, but demands obedience. He is, in fact, like most fathers. He wants only what is best for His children but He is wise enough to know that the route to their felicity does not lie through the fields of softness and indulgence. “Spare the rod and spoil the child” was never more truly written than about God’s children. What He categorically is not is sentimental. And yet the New Testament, the outpourings of Jesus, is a febrile, toffee-coated chocolate box of vile and corrupt sentimentality. Love thy neighbour? How can a man in Aberystwyth follow such a precept? Oh, yes, I know they will say it is not literally true but we are not shilly-shallyers here, sir. For us a gospel is precisely that: gospel. The true and undiluted, literal word of God. If it says we must turn the other cheek, we suppose it to mean that. And yet who could take such a precept seriously? Is it not obvious, when you consider it, that Jesus was taking the piss when He said that? Love, forgiveness, charity . . . it is all the grossest sentimentality, foisted on a credulous world by a disobedient son. He was a terrible disappointment to His father.’

Calamity sneezed. ‘’Scuse me.’

‘Oh dear!’ cried the girl, seemingly grateful for the opportunity to divert the conversation from Peredur’s gloomy liturgy.

‘You poor little thing, all the time we’ve been prattling away and you there still suffering. Wait a moment.’ She put her face into her hands and started to groan. She groaned for a whole minute and then looked up.

‘I’ve spoken to the spirits and they recommend a little salve of wormwood, betony, lupin, vervain, henbane, dittander, viper’s bugloss, bilberry, cropleek and madder. That should do the trick.’

‘All I want is a goddam aspirin,’ said Calamity.

‘Don’t use bad words, Mary-Lou!’ I said with the sternest voice I could muster.

‘One of my salves is much better than a silly aspirin,’ said the girl. ‘You just boil it up in sheep’s grease, place under an altar, sing five masses, strain through a cloth and use it to anoint your face after meals.’

‘It works best at five-night-old moon,’ said the old man.

‘Oh, Dad!’ laughed the girl. ‘You are so old-fashioned!’ She smiled at us conspiratorially, adding, ‘If you replace the viper’s bugloss with blackthorn bark and boil it in ewe’s milk it’s good against goblins, too.’

‘And if you say, “Wizen and waste shrew till thy tongue is smaller than a handworm’s hipbone,”’ said the old man, ‘it’s effective against a chattering woman.’

The girl flushed. ‘Oh, Dad, really! You always go too far. You know I don’t like to hear such talk.’

The old man winked at us and said, ‘See what happens? I send my daughter to the school in Talybont and they send me back a feminist.’

We stood up and I said, ‘Maybe we’ll try a chemist.’

The girl showed us out to the car. I slid into the driver’s seat and she bent forward and whispered with a nervous backward glance at the cottage in case Peredur was in the window, ‘I’m sorry about Peredur. He’s frightened, you see. They say the man was killed by gangsters and it is better not to get involved.’

‘Is it true what the papers say, about you and . . . the dead man?’

‘You mean Absalom? Most of it is lies, of course.’

‘You knew him?’

‘You mustn’t tell Perry.’

‘Oh we won’t.’

‘You see . . . I went to Aberystwyth. To see
Bark of the Covenant
. Perry would go mad if he found out. He thinks Clip is a graven image. He hates idolatry.’

‘Of course we won’t breathe a word.’

‘I met him in the queue for the movie. He was a Jew, you see, and I was wearing my stovepipe hat because they told me I would get a concession on the ticket if I did. And Absalom saw my hat and thought I must be a Jew and started talking to me. He asked me what tribe I was from.’ She giggled.

We forced polite smiles.

The girl looked over her shoulder again and leaned further into the car window. ‘I had dinner with him afterwards. But you mustn’t tell Peredur.’