Aberystwyth Mon Amour (7 page)

I looked at her with a stern, schoolmasterly expression. ‘Now don’t you tell tales like that.’

Myfanwy looked at me awkwardly. ‘Honestly, it cost nothing.’

It took a second or two before I understood what she was saying.

‘You didn’t steal it?’

‘No, of course not! I put it on … on … a slate.’

‘A slate?’

She twisted her hands.

‘A slate?’ I repeated.

‘Yes … yours actually,’ she said brightly.

‘Where?’

‘At the Deli.’

‘I haven’t got one.’

She joined her hands together in front of her, stretched the arms and smiled sheepishly.

‘Well, I suppose you have now.’

We wedged the hamper into the back seat of my Wolsely Hornet and drove through town and up Penglais Hill. I suppose I should have been annoyed but really I felt like a kid on a school trip. I didn’t need to ask how she managed to get the man at the Deli to put thirty pounds’ worth of food on to the slate of someone who never visited his shop. I could picture the scene only too clearly: Mr Griffiths standing there looking awe-struck and imbecilic as if an angel had appeared in front of the counter; his thick-rimmed spectacles misting up and his pink sausagey face, edged on either side by two broom-heads of wiry black hair, turning crimson. I could see him shooing away the assistant and adjusting his tie as he assumed command of the situation. He probably didn’t dare look at her, in case he mistakenly looked at the wrong place. She probably told him he was handsome and he probably lost control of his bladder for a second. I could see the shaking of his hands as he put the produce into the hamper, and then the slight pause when she asks for the champagne, and then the shakes getting worse. He was lucky she didn’t ask for the deeds to the shop.

At the top of Penglais Hill we turned left and took the old route to Borth. The sun was hot, the windows were open and Myfanwy sang as we drove. It was like sailing a ship over an ocean of grass as the road went up and down over the hills and dales. Every hillside was chequer-boarded with cows. The constant rising and falling of the landscape had a hypnotic regularity and you thought it would never end. But then the car mounted the final hill with that suddenness that never fails to surprise and we were on the roof of the world, staring at nothing but blue: the washed-out blue of the hot sky, and the darker indigo of the cold sea rolling in from the Bay. We pulled into a driveway in front of a five-bar gate and got out. The hillside curved steeply away down to Borth and the wind was fierce, buffeting the car and making the loose cloth of my shirt flap with a sharp sound. Down below us, extending for almost ten miles, was the huge flat expanse of the Dovey estuary and stretched across it in a thin straight line was a straggle of houses. This was the town of Borth: tinselled up with inflatable swimming hoops, buckets and spades in summer; and in winter nothing but dust and creaking shutters. At the far northern extreme, lost in the haze and a desert of sand dunes was Ynyslas, goal of our picnic; and beyond that, on the other side of the estuary, were the dot-sized houses of Aberdovey. From here they looked achingly close, but so formidable a barrier were the estuarial tides, that Aberdovey often seemed like another country.

Myfanwy inserted herself between my arm and my body, to shelter from the wind, and pointed out toward the dunes of Ynyslas.

‘That’s where Evans the Boot’s Mam lives. I thought we could drop in and say hello.’

I looked at her with a mild sensation of having been subtly manipulated.

‘That’s if you don’t mind.’

We parked midway along the main street and climbed on to the high concrete sea wall, which neatly divided town and beach and blocked any prospect of a sea view from the guest houses on the road. On the beach holidaymakers from the Midlands were encamped in three-sided tents made of deck-chair material, but so wide and long were the golden sands, the illusion of being alone was not hard to enjoy. It was a beach created for buckets and spades and sons burying dads.

The land between Borth and Ynyslas is taken up by a golf course and we strolled gently between the rough of the links and the smooth of the ocean. Fifty yards ahead of us a lone figure could be seen tramping through the knee-high grass. His tattered army greatcoat and forlorn demeanour marked him out as one of the veterans from the war in Patagonia in 1961. We stopped walking and watched his slow, dreamy progress. Patagonia: the Welsh Vietnam. Even after a quarter of a century the scars on the collective heart had still not fully healed. Patagonia, a harsh tract of land on the tip of South America, a world of searing beauty and withering cold; difficult to find on an atlas and known only because Welsh settlers went out there in the nineteenth century. A story that began in adversity and ended in tragedy seventy years later when the Indians turned against them. It was a war of independence that soured a generation and left behind the legacy of the Vets: soldiers in a ghost army that haunted the lanes of West Wales. Each carrying in his heart the story of a military adventure that no one wanted to hear.

He was looking for lost golf balls which he could sell for his evening’s meal. There was a sudden shout, a sharp crack, and the old soldier spun to the ground; felled by a golf ball. We ran towards him and from the fairway the party responsible for his misfortune came over at a more leisurely pace.

He was sitting up rubbing his head when we arrived.

‘Are you OK?’ said Myfanwy putting her hand on his shoulder.

‘Sure, sure,’ the soldier said distantly. ‘Not the first time I’ve been hit by a golf ball.’

As he spoke we looked up to watch the arrival of the golfers. There were five of them, although we could only see four because the fifth was inside a sedan chair. The Druidic crest at the front told us it belonged to Lovespoon. The first of the party to arrive was Pickel who cartwheeled towards us like a circus tumbler. Behind him came Valentine in tartan slacks, three-tone golfing brogues and a sleeveless diamond motif sweater over a floral pattern shirt. He was pulling a squeaking trolley. At the back of the group, standing by the sedan chair, was the school games teacher, Herod Jenkins.

‘I think he may be concussed,’ I said looking up.

‘Bloody idiot!’ Valentine spluttered. ‘I’ll give him thomething to be concuthed about. Tell him to move his arse tho we can get on with the game.’

‘He needs to rest a while.’

‘Not here he doesn’t.’

Myfanwy spoke: ‘You should say sorry to him, you could have killed him.’

‘You can shut your mouth you little tart!’ said Pickel.

‘Why don’t you try and make me you smelly little piss-pot!’

‘OK, OK,’ I cried trying to wrest control of the situation. ‘This man is injured –’

‘Well he shouldn’t go jumping in front of golf balls, then, should he?’

‘Oh he jumped did he?’

‘Of course he did, didn’t you thee? He dived, tho he could make an inthurance claim or something.’

‘Does he look like the sort of guy who has insurance?’

‘Don’t you be fooled by him, I know his sort –’

There was a sharp clicking sound and we all looked round to the sedan chair. A hand protruded through the curtains, like that of a Bourbon monarch. The hand waved impatiently and Valentine hurried over and poked his head inside. An uneasy silence ensued, broken occasionally by the sound of Herod Jenkins cracking his knuckles. I found myself unable to resist staring at him. Even after twenty years the sight of the man who sent Marty to his death on that cross-country run sent tremors of fear through my soul.

Valentine returned and spoke to me. ‘Mr Lovethpoon extends his compliments and has asked me to remind you of the deadline we agreed for thunthet this evening. He says the thun thets at 21.17.’ Then, turning to the rest of the party, ‘OK, we’ll drop a thtroke and move on.’ They sauntered off.

‘Ooh they give me the creeps!’ shivered Myfanwy.

The soldier sat up and crossed his arms over his knees. His coat was torn and stained and his hair long and matted, splaying out from beneath the famous green beret.

‘Thanks for your help. My name’s Cadwaladr.’

‘Louie and Myfanwy.’

He nodded. ‘I know, the singer. I’ve seen the posters.’

Myfanwy smiled. ‘Are you feeling all right now?’

‘Oh sure. It was only a little knock.’

‘It sounded pretty loud to me,’ I laughed.

‘No, no. It was nothing. It was the hunger that did it, y’see. I fell over from weakness, not because of the golf ball.’

There was a moment of puzzlement until we realised that the old soldier was staring longingly at the hamper.

‘Of course!’ I reached inside and broke off a chicken leg and handed it to him.

‘No no!’ he protested. ‘I didn’t mean that. I wouldn’t dream of taking your picnic.’

‘It’s all right,’ said Myfanwy, ‘honestly it is!’

‘Yes, please be our guest.’

‘Absolutely not,’ he insisted, ‘I won’t hear of it; although if it’s all the same to you I wouldn’t mind just trying the chicken to remind myself what they taste like. It’s been so long you see.’

Myfanwy and I exchanged glances.

‘Well, I suppose here is as good a place as anywhere.’ We dragged the hamper off the fairway and up to the top of one of the dunes. Then we found a sandy spot with a commanding view of the ocean and began our picnic. Cadwaladr ate with the hunger of one who no longer has to worry about keeping the wolf from his door, because the beast has grown so thin you can fend him off with a stick. Chicken and bread, champagne, strawberries, ice cream and gateaux, it all disappeared.

‘That Welsh teacher,’ said Myfanwy after she finished eating, ‘he really thinks he’s something.’

I laughed. ‘That’s because he
is
something. Grand Wizard on the Druid council, head-teacher, prize-winning poet, scholar … war hero as well, so I hear.’

Cadwaladr spat out a piece of chicken gristle. ‘War hero my foot!’

We both looked at him.

‘I fought alongside him in ’61. I don’t remember him being carried around in a sedan chair then. He was just like the rest of us, a scared, skinny kid who just wanted to go home to his Mam.’

‘It must have been terrible,’ said Myfanwy.

The old soldier nodded. ‘I was seventeen at the time, never been further than Swansea before, and then only to see Father Christmas. The thing I remember most is the cold. And the food – all that school potato.’ He laughed bitterly. ‘As a gesture of solidarity the school kids at home were going without their dinners so they could send them to us. Until we wrote asking them to stop.’

He chuckled and took out a scrap of newspaper and some tobacco and proceeded to roll a cigarette.

‘Lovespoon won the Cross of Asaph, didn’t he?’ said Myfanwy brightly.

The soldier nodded. ‘For sitting on his backside the whole war in a plane.’

‘He won it for the raid over Rio Caeriog.’ A shadow of pain passed across the soldier’s face on hearing Myfanwy’s words and she added quickly, ‘We … we … we did it in school.’

Cadwaladr laughed bitterly. ‘I bet they didn’t teach you my version of it.’ He paused, as if about to recall the bitter events of those far-off times, and then thought better of it. He shook his head and said in a tone of remote sadness, ‘No, I bet they didn’t tell you that one.’

He didn’t say any more and concentrated his attention on the cigarette. The rolling paper added a faint rustling to the sighing of the wind in the marram grass. We stared at the old soldier and Myfanwy gave me a helpless look, angry with herself for having mentioned the one battle that no one wanted to talk about. Rio Caeriog, a slowly meandering river in the foothills of the Sierra Machynlleth mountains. The most famous or infamous battle of the conflict. They said it was a great victory and handed out medals like sweets. But no one who came back ever wanted to talk about it.

I started to pack away the remains of the picnic and Cadwaladr stood up.

‘Thanks for the meal, it was lovely.’

‘Where you going?’ I asked. ‘Maybe we could give you a lift.’

‘Don’t see how. Not unless you’re going nowhere.’

‘Just tell us where you’re going, we can drop you off.’

‘No, really, I’m going nowhere. As long as I don’t reach there too soon, I’ll be fine.’

Myfanwy looked at me and I shrugged. ‘We’ll see you around anyway.’

He nodded and then trudged off. We watched as he walked down the wall of stones to the sand and on to the water’s edge. Then he turned in the direction of Borth and followed the line of the sea; he didn’t look back.

Half an hour later we were sitting on the veranda of Evans the Boot’s dilapidated wooden bungalow, drinking tea. The garden looked out on to the estuary and was filled with bric-à-brac: a rusting child’s swing; an upturned boat with rotten planks; a swampy pond with an old pram in it; and a number of car tyres strewn around the spiky grass. A channel filled with slate-coloured water and a simple piece of wire strung between two concrete posts served as a fence. In the distance across the constantly sliding estuarial waters, was Aberdovey, that Shangri-la of restless Aberystwyth misfits.

Surprisingly, given the temperament of the son she had borne, Ma Evans was a gentle and thoughtful lady: two soft grey eyes, a bun of fine white hair and a face worn with the myriad cares that came from bringing a rebel into the world alone. She shook her head sadly.

‘Nope. This time it’s different. He’s gone before, but this time it’s different, I can feel it.’

‘You mustn’t give up hope, dear,’ said Myfanwy.

‘You can’t fool me. A mother knows. I knew it as soon as the police came round. You know why? They were polite. First time in fifty years they’ve been polite to me. Called me “Madam”. I knew then something bad had happened to the boy.’

Myfanwy picked up the tea pot and refreshed the cups. ‘That still doesn’t prove anything.’

‘They had a special dog with them. Wanted to put it in his bedroom. “What for?” I said, “you’ll frighten the cat.” They said it was a whiffer dog or something. Had a very delicate sense of smell. “Well, you don’t want to be sending him into my boy’s room then,” I said, “the pong in there!” Well, of course they wouldn’t listen to me. I wouldn’t let them but they had a warrant, so what could I do? That was a novelty as well, going to the trouble of getting some paperwork. So they send the dog in and he’s sick. Wouldn’t go back neither, just sat in the garden howling. So then they went themselves. Should have seen them when they came out. Green as Martians, they were.’