Nowhere Near Milkwood (11 page)

The three friends were mountain climbers who had trekked to the roof of the world. They had encountered many dangers on the way and each had taken a turn to plunge down a crevasse. Bound together by ropes as well as friendship, it seemed they had all escaped death by the narrowest of margins. One by one, they had praised their luck and had agreed that teamwork was wonderful.

After the end of one particularly difficult day, as the crimson sun impaled itself on the needle peaks of the horizon, the three friends set up their tent on a narrow ledge. The first friend, who had survived the first crevasse, boiled tea on his portable stove and lit his pipe. Stretching his legs out as far as the ledge would allow, he blew a smoke ring and said:

“The wind whistles past this mountain like the voice of a ghost, shrill as dead leaves. The icy rock feels like the hand of a very aged corpse. Those lonely clouds far away have taken the form of winged demons. Everything reminds me of the region beyond the grave. I suggest that we all tell ghost stories, to pass the time. I shall go first, if you like.”

Huddling closer to the stove, the first friend peered at the other two with eyes like black sequins. “This happened to me a long time ago. I was climbing in Austria and had rented a small hunting lodge high in the mountains. Unfortunately, I managed to break my leg on my very first climb and had to rest in the lodge until a doctor could be summoned. Because of a freak snowstorm that same evening, it turned out that I was stuck for a whole week. The lodge had only one bed. My guide, a local climber, slept on the floor.

“Every night, as my fever grew worse, I would ask my guide to fetch me a drink of water from the well outside the lodge. He always seemed reluctant to do this, but would eventually return with a jug of red wine. I was far too delirious to wonder at this, and always drank the contents right down. At the end of the week, when my fever broke, I asked him why he gave me wine rather than water from the well. Shuddering, he replied that the ‘wine’ had come from the well. I afterward learned that the original owner of the lodge had cut his wife’s throat and had disposed of her body in the obvious way...”

The first friend shrugged and admitted that his was a very inconclusive sort of ghost tale, but insisted that it was true nonetheless. He sucked on his pipe and poured three mugs of tea. Far below, the last avalanche of the day rumbled through the twilight. The second friend, who had survived the second crevasse, accepted a mug and nodded solemnly to himself. He seemed completely wrapped up in his own thoughts. Finally, he said:

“I too have a ghost story, and mine is true as well. It happened when I was a student in London. I lived in a house where another student had bled to death after cutting off his fingers in an heroic attempt to make his very first cucumber sandwich. I kept finding the fingers in the most unlikely places. They turned up in the fridge, in the bed, even in the pockets of my trousers. One evening, my girlfriend started giggling. We were sitting on the sofa listening to music and I asked her what was wrong. She replied that I ought to stop tickling her. Needless to say, my hands were on my lap.

“I consulted all sorts of people to help me with the problem. One kindly old priest came to exorcise the house. I set up mousetraps in the kitchen. But nothing seemed to work. The fingers kept appearing on the carpet, behind books on the bookshelf, in my soup. I grew more and more despondent and reluctantly considered moving. Suddenly, in a dream, the solution came to me. It was a neat solution, and it worked. It was very simple, actually. I bought a cat...”

The second friend smiled and sipped his tea. Both he and the first friend gazed across at the third friend. The third friend seemed remote and abstracted. He stared out into the limitless dark. In the light from the stove, he appeared pale and unhealthy. He refused the mug that the first friend offered him.

The first two friends urged him to tell a tale, but he shook his head. “Come on,” they said, “you must have at least one ghost story to tell. Everybody has at least one.” With a deep, heavy sigh, the third friend finally confessed that he did. The first two friends rubbed their hands in delight. They insisted, however, that it had to be true.

“Oh it’s true all right,” replied the third friend. “And it’s easily told. But you might regret hearing it. Especially when you consider that we are stuck on this ledge together for the rest of the night.” When the first two friends laughed at this, he raised a hand for silence and began to speak. His words should have been as cold as a glacier and as ponderous. But instead they were casual and tinged with a trace of irony. He said simply:

“I didn’t survive the third crevasse.”

“I didn’t like that story,” I said to Hywel, after he had finished the tale of the three mountain climbers, “and I no more believe it than any of the others you have told.”

While he had been talking, the TALL STORY had filled up slowly with faces new and familiar. I recognised various workers from the nearby County Hall. They rattled their chains and gnawed at their manacles as they waited to be served.

“Actually that tale is absolutely true,” Hywel insisted, “but I admit that I made up the nonsense about the dragon. In fact, I could tell you another story about Anna and Gareth.”

“Only if you make it brief,” I mumbled.

“It concerns a goblin...”

To be honest, I was tired of Hywel’s more outrageous flights of fancy. I said: “Put that one on hold and try something more culturally relevant than usual, will you?”

“Cross my heart,” Hywel replied, but he did no such thing. “This one is so true you can have a year’s supply of free drinks out of me if you disprove it, I swear!”

I grimaced at this prospect, for a TALL STORY year is made up of twelve bitter months, and eight is my usual limit. Unlike ordinary months, in which all the days are used up before moving onto the next one, Hywel’s variety always leaves a few at the bottom and he collects the dregs into whole Winters of Discontent, Summers of Love, Broken Springs and long Falls down the Stairs. It is awful.

“Go on then,” I stammered.

Hywel stretched and gestured at his customers, seated at various tables throughout the tavern. People were chatting to each other, making plans or jokes, loathing or loving comrades, rivals and relatives, exchanging trivial or profound insights, just spouting gibberish when necessary. They included Byron and Julian, the former delving in his pockets as if searching for lost dice, a criminal frown on his brow.

Also Claire and Peter Elliot, crouched over a map of Ireland, marking out possible hiking routes with little flags on pins. Under the map, heads creased the paper at the right places to represent the hills. Two of these heads belonged to Flann O’Brien and James Stephens and this incidental acupuncture had cured them of sundry ills. Alas, most of that ill was their talent.

The main point which Hywel’s gesture jabbed into me, though without medical justification, was that his patrons were
communicating
, however inelegantly. All except one, who sat alone. He was a pale individual with white eyebrows and colourless eyes, though he didn’t seem old or unhealthy. It was almost as if he was a new type of human being. I thought he was drinking Guinness, but in fact he cradled an empty glass. Despair at his inability to make contact had filled it with a black swirling bile.

“A tragic situation,” whispered Hywel.

I rolled my eyes. “He doesn’t have any friends. I suppose you want me to go over and talk to him?”

“You misunderstand. He’s not a lonely man. He’s the
loneliest
man, and that’s more serious than having no friends, in the same way that a knob of butter is worse off than a pint of milk. The latter can be returned to a cow’s udder with a syringe, but the other is forever divorced from the mother beast. Why? Simply because butter is a fatal illness of milk. When milk is badly shaken on a voyage it becomes travel sick and vomits its own content outside its form. Thus butter will never get better!”

“Are you implying that society can reabsorb lonely men if they have luck and faith, but that the loneliest man is fated to stay isolated for eternity because he has curdled himself beyond the typical definition of humanity? I’ll soon fix that!”

I was about to walk over to the peculiar fellow, but Hywel held me back. “It’s a cultural thing. That’s what you wanted, isn’t it? A story about diverse ways of living. Anyway, it’s impossible to befriend that wretched soul. Shall I tell you his name? It’s pronounced something like this: Asdgfxfkh Kuhfoashfubv.”

I frowned. “What language is that?”

Hywel flicked away a slave with his grimy cloth. “Now we’re getting to the point. That man is a Faskdhfgasdhian, from a little known, indeed completely forgotten, ethnic minority. Where is Faskdhfgasdhia, you ask? It’s not a foreign country but the original name of that island you see across the bay. No need to look.”

The windows were too misty anyway, and the TALL STORY is always at least one narrow alley and three imaginary corners away from the Cardiff waterfront. But I knew which island he was referring to. In our language it is called ‘Flat Holm’ and is hardly a noteworthy feature of the local horizon. Slurping waves like a greedy saucer a few miles south of the city, its only claim to glory is as the site of the first reception of speech by radio transmission. On 11th May 1897, Guglielmo Marconi sent the three words ‘Are you ready?’ to his assistant George Kemp, who was standing on the island and presumably was.

“That’s an arrogant twisting of history!” boomed Hywel, as if he’d read my thoughts, “for in very olden times Flat Holm, or as we ought to call it from now on, Faskdhfgasdhia, had a lustrous civilisation all its own, unique and bashful, brave and odd, spicy and tortuous. When it was suddenly destroyed, sometime between the Dark and Magnolia Ages, it was as if it had never existed! For the inhabitants kept no written records and their dwellings and artefacts were constructed from seaweed. Without physical evidence of their culture, they were wiped from the official annals of human endeavour!”

“And yet there were some survivors?”

“Quite a few at first, yes. They emigrated across the shallows to Cardiff. One of their most respected Prophets had said that the island would sink into the waves for a washing. That’s what happens when your homeland resembles a saucer. A hundred families made the crossing in a huge canoe. They settled in an obscure part of the city, between Blanche Street and Beresford Road. Later the island rose again but they didn’t go back. The same Prophet predicted it would eventually be haunted by a disembodied voice. Maybe he anticipated that radio message, or possibly I invented that bit. I can’t remember.”

“Did they flourish in their new enclave?”

“Not really. They were an introspective people and found it easier not to mix with outsiders. They didn’t even bother to learn any other languages. So inbreeding and nostalgia became their guiding principles. They were ignored by Cardiff Council and this neglect was taken to such extremes that people actually found it difficult to see them. You know how it is when you stop noticing the wallpaper in your house, however exotic the pattern? That’s because it doesn’t try to interact with you. It just hangs around aimlessly.”

I understood. “Ditto the Faskdhfgasdhians?”

“Slowly they started to die out. Eventually there was one couple left. Then less than that.”

I nodded. “Right! So this chap is the very last member of his race? I can guess how he feels, standing on the edge of a genetic, linguistic and social abyss. But to extend your metaphor – if the wallpaper is stripped away, won’t we suddenly notice a bare wall of crumbling bricks in our cosmopolitan environment?”

Hywel shrugged. “Who knows?”

We remained silent for a few minutes, and he took this lull in the profundity to serve his other customers, but by this time they had all been whipped back to work by potbellied overseers, who had selected drumming music on the ancient jukebox.

“This man – what’s his name? – Asdgfxfkh Kuhfoashfubv! – has no way of relating to anybody else. No shared values, customs, concepts. He is utterly divorced from modern life.”

“Correct again. No comedy in this tale, eh?”

An abrupt moral impulse seized me. I clicked my fingers at Hywel and cried: “The pickle jar.”

Normally treating him with such rudeness would result in me having the jar forcefully set down on my head, which is actually what happened, but I was prepared for it, and it was the only way I could be certain of getting quick access to it, without yet another story nested inside this one, and I didn’t care for a diversion. My hat cushioned the blow, and I left the vessel perched there as I stepped over to the poor soul. He had a look of extreme relief on his face when he saw that I acknowledged his existence, but I waved him back and offered him the jar with a deep bow. Maybe that gesture was an insult in his culture, for he blushed red. But for the sake of contact he repressed his feelings. He took the gift but didn’t know what to do with it.

“There’s joy in pickles,” I said.

“You’ll have to show him how,” Hywel called to me. I unscrewed the lid and swallowed a gherkin whole.

Then I left him to it. I didn’t want to look too soft, in case the act became a real part of my character and weakened my career hopes. By the time I had returned to the bar, Hywel had sharpened and polished a reprimand. “That was so irresponsible!”

“Not at all. It was an attempt at empathy.”

“Would you give a terminally depressed man a loaded gun? Shame on you!”

I was confused, but not for long. Unable to bear his situation any longer, the last Faskdhfgasdhian had followed my example deliberately badly. He had stuffed not just one but several dozen gherkins into his small mouth at the same time.

“He’s committing suicide!” I wailed.

“Worse than that,” said Hywel. “When the average man kills himself, the world loses a single individual, a cell in the body of society. But what this chap has done is to wipe out an entire civilisation, with all its components. At a single choke he has eradicated a complete system of ethics, language, laws, aesthetics, fashion, science, religion. It’s the ultimate crime. It’s
auto-genocide
!”

“An indigenous religion, you say? I wonder what form that took? We will never know for sure now...”

“We can speculate,” retorted Hywel. “I reckon the Faskdhfgasdhians were monotheists. Probably because I’m too lazy to envisage more than a single god for them. He was usually depicted as a clown holding a rake. A bumbling gardener, if you please.”

“What do you base that reasoning on?”

Hywel leaned closer and winked. “Essentials of plot. Were you born yesterday? Now shut up and weep!”

I bared my teeth. “No! If I’m partly responsible for this disaster, it’s up to me to put things straight! I intend to do my best to revive him. First aid and all that stuff.”

“Too late! He’s stopped breathing.”

I rushed over to the casualty, who had collapsed onto the floor and was lying quite still. His throat bulged with gherkins. I roared: “Sound the alarm! Call for a doctor!”

“Ja!” barked Karl Mondaugen from a nook.

“Not you. We don’t need a doctor of cryptozoology. We want a medical practitioner. Where’s Dr Walnut?”

“Struck off decades ago! By a child with a catapult.”

“Then I must pick him up.” I hurried out of the pub but didn’t get far. No time to explain why.

“What do you intend to do now?” sneered Hywel.

“I must unblock his throat!” I whimpered, as I returned to the side of my patient. “Any suggestions?”

“Perhaps you could try lubricant?”

“Not tonight, Vaseline!” I muttered darkly.

“What was that?” demanded Hywel, but I shrugged and he didn’t press for an explanation. He scratched his head and sought to recall the brief medical training he never had. In a nonexistent pub, that’s feasible. He almost giggled as he called:

“Try the
kiss of life
!”

I groaned. I rarely care to kiss men, partly on account of their stubble, partly on account of mine, but mostly because I’m still in love with my past achievements. Mind you, I have a mistress too: my future hopes. Can’t choose between them.

“Not sure I can manage... do my best...”

The smell of vinegar was abominable. My lips just wouldn’t attach themselves to his. I tried pushing my head down with my arms, but they refused to work. The nearest I got was nose to nose, and that’s still a handkerchief’s breadth away.

“Ugh! How do women cope?”

Hywel cried: “Have you started yet?”

As I shook my head to reply in the negative, something incredible happened. The unmoving body beneath me sat up and spat out a stream of gherkins, most of which struck my face. The Faskdhfgasdhian known as Asdgfxfkh Kuhfoashfubv was better. He had got over his minor case of death with amazing abruptness.

I recoiled. “How did I accomplish that?”