The next afternoon an anonymous package was delivered to the office. It was addressed to ‘Louee the dirty double-crosser’ and contained the broken shards of an Airfix model and the charred remains of a correspondence course, The Old Black Magic.
Chapter 15
Two days later, as I drove through Borth at lunchtime, I saw Mrs Mochdre waiting at the bus stop. I stopped and offered her a lift. She hesitated, torn between the agony of putting herself in my debt and the equal displeasure of waiting for a bus. She got in, squirmed in the seat and grimaced an expression of gratitude. I drove off.
‘I heard an interesting thing the other day,’ I said with a false note of cheeriness in my voice. ‘About you and your sister Ffanci Llangollen.’
‘Oh yes?’ Mrs Mochdre peered up at the clear blue sky and claimed to see a cloud. ‘Looks like it might be changing, finally. It will be nice for the garden, bit of rain . . . I expect.’ She sounded unsure and continued watching the sky with a mixture of anxiety and distrust as if the vagaries of summer weather were designed to spite her personally.
I said, ‘I heard you and your sister used to court the same man.’
Her face froze but it was difficult to see whether at the impropriety of the suggestion or because of the tender memory I had brutally dragged up.
‘I don’t know where you heard—’
‘He was the balloon-folder, wasn’t he? He couldn’t choose between you and then whoops-a-daisy! Ffanci Llangollen gets pregnant.’
Mrs Mochdre stared fixedly ahead, glaring.
‘Some people might think there was something a bit quick and convenient about it, almost as if the chap was being given a helping hand to make up his mind.’ I peered across at her, she kept her head fixed staring forward, wearing a face of stone. ‘Perhaps if she wasn’t the prettiest—’
‘My sister was always the pretty one—’
‘Well sometimes it’s not about that, is it? Not always. Maybe if he liked the pretty one but there was something about her elder sister that was . . . was . . . deeper, something he liked and satisfied him and touched him deep down in his soul, well, I can see how the elder one, even if she wasn’t the pretty one, in fact especially if she wasn’t . . . She knew she wouldn’t get many offers in her life, while all through her teens and early twenties she sees the boys rolling up at the door courting her sister and never one for her and all along she has to wear that face of bright airy joy and pretend she is just happy for her fortunate sister . . . that could get a bit wearing after a while. In a situation like that I could see how the elder one might feel aggrieved . . . might feel as if the chap was a worthless chap after—’
‘Don’t you ever say a word against Alfred Walters! Do you hear? Don’t you ever!’
I was stung into silence by the venom of her response. If I was a cop this would be the point where I smiled inwardly and thought, ‘Gotcha! I’ve found the button to press.’ But I didn’t feel like that. I wasn’t a cop, and I never wanted to be. I never wanted to feel triumphant at a moment like this. I said no more and we drove on in awkward silence. Mrs Mochdre had pressed her knuckle into her mouth and remained staring fixedly at the sky. As we drove up towards Commins Coch I shot a glance across. Her eyes were wet. She saw my look and said, ‘Some busybodies oughtn’t to poke their noses into things they don’t understand.’
There was a man and a dog sitting side by side on the beach, facing the waves. I went to join them. It was Uncle Vanya and Clip the stuffed sheepdog from the museum on Terrace Road. The sky was filled with shredded cloud; a strong breeze churned the sea to foam, the surface dancing with seams of gold in the bright late-afternoon light. The breeze was scented with vanilla and stewed tea, and seaweed and vodka. An empty bottle lay at Vanya’s feet and a half-full one stood erect between the paws of Clip. Vanya’s hair was wet.
‘My friend Clip has been explaining everything to me,’ said Vanya. ‘I understand it all now. I see what a terrible waste my life has been. Clip doesn’t say much but the things he says strike home.’
‘Isn’t he cold without his glass case?’
‘Sometimes, Louie, your comments perplex me.’
‘Why did you steal him from the museum?’
‘He wanted to come, I didn’t steal him.’
‘Why is your hair wet? Have you been for a swim?’
‘The man who owns the rock foundry, the one whose son is in a wheelchair, I helped him.’
‘Was he in trouble?’
‘He fetched an ice cream for his son and while he was away the boy dragged himself out of the chair and down the steps to the beach. He crawled on his belly into the sea.’
‘You saved him?’
‘Yes.’
‘That’s a great thing that you did.’
‘Mr Barnaby gave me something very precious as a reward: a phial of his panacea Ampersandium. Would you like some? I poured it into the vodka. It makes the taste of life less bitter on the tongue.’ Vanya passed the bottle across. I took a small drink to be sociable, but I could see this afternoon he was far advanced along a road that I had no wish to take myself, the one that always ends in tears. ‘We must drink, my friend, because it may be we will not meet again for a long time.’
‘Are you going away?’
‘Yes, I have an urgent journey to undertake.’
‘The case isn’t closed yet.’
‘It is for me. I will send you another sock as an indication of my complete satisfaction with the services you have rendered.’
‘I don’t need any more socks, the first one was enough. I would prefer you to stick around until I can finish the case. It’s still full of mysteries.’
‘But I am the client and I have learned enough to satisfy me.’
‘What have you learned?’
‘Under the searching and intelligent gaze of Clip, all mysteries have evaporated.’
I said, ‘You talk of leaving and we still have not found out what happened to Gethsemane.’
‘The answer to the mystery is to be found in the Museum Of Our Forefathers’ Suffering in Hughesovka. It took dear Clip to make this apparent to me. As soon as I saw him I knew the truth: it was never intended that my life would end with the happy consummation I sought. Some men are born broken, never to be fixed. The moral of my tale is contained in the dark wisdom of the camps.’
‘What happened after you escaped with Ivan and Yuri? You never finished that story.’
‘I am finishing it now, on this beach with the help of Wise Clip who has been kind enough to corroborate for me the essential truth it contains.’ He put the bottle to his mouth and threw his head back as if gravity unaided was too slow a method of bringing the drink into his gullet. ‘At some point during our terrible journey,’ he said, ‘I sprained my ankle and could not walk. Ivan and Yuri took it in turns to carry me. This piece of bad luck put an intolerable strain upon our fellowship. My two friends began to quarrel and then one night there was a terrible fight and Ivan slew Yuri. I will never forget how the blood stained the moonlit snow. I said that we should bury him as best we could, but Ivan was indignant and said, “Why on earth would we want to do that?” I said, “Because it is the Christian thing to do.” He scoffed. “You don’t want to bury him?” I said. And he said, “Why waste good meat?” It took me a while to understand his meaning. “Surely,” I said in horror, “you do not mean to eat him?” “Of course I do,” he answered. “If we do not we will surely die.” “But he’s your friend,” I said. “There is no way I would ever eat Yuri.” Ivan laughed in a way that chilled the marrow, a laugh that would have shamed even Satan, and said, “You won’t eat Yuri? Now that, my friend, is ironic.” ’ Uncle Vanya stopped sadly and made a small wave of his hand, a gesture that somehow was meant to sum up the contingencies of fate. ‘This is the dark wisdom of the camps. There is only one way two men can escape and hope to survive. They must invite along a third man, preferably a chubby one, who does not yet know the dark wisdom of the camps.’ He emptied the vodka bottle and reached into a bag lying next to Clip and pulled out a third.