Last Tango in Aberystwyth

'He did what?'

'He went to be a Johnny — a Clown's Johnny,' explained Ben.

'He wanted to join the circus, you see.'

'Just like them all. They all want to do that. We see them, don't we?'

Bill nodded. 'All the time. Everyone wants to be a lion tamer.'

'Or walk a tightrope.'

'Or eat fire.'

'Or even just balance balls on the sea-lion's nose.'

'But all they get to do is be the lousy Johnny.'

'But of course, what they don't realise is, there's only one way into the circus

'Oh yeah, and what's that?'

They hesitated. Some strange force was holding them back.

'Go on! What is it?'

'We can't say.'

'You want the prize for reporting the Quietus, don't you?'

'Of course we do, but we can't say, it's rude!'

' OK, suit yourselves. I've got three other ventriloquists coming round later on. I'll sign their Quietus forms instead.'

Bill leaped up and shouted, 'No! You big swine! We got there first!'

'So what's the only way of getting into the circus?'

'OK then, you asked for it,' said Bill. 'It's ... it's ... it's through a lady's thingummy!'

'A lady's thingummy?'

'We don't know the proper name,' said Ben. 'It's Latin.'

I took out my pen and signed the form.

Chapter 7

Meici Moondust laughed. 'Basically,' he said, 'the only route into the circus is through the birth canal. You have to be born into it, you see, born to a family of maniacs. A family so fucked-up they have you on the tightrope as soon as you can crawl. People who buy you sequins for your birthday and a safety net for Christmas.' He lifted the cornet above his head and adroitly licked the globules of melted vanilla as they ran down before they reached his knuckles. 'If you can't do the act, whatever it is, absolutely perfectly by the time you are four you'll never be good enough for the circus. But you'll always be good enough to be Mr Johnny. He's the stooge, you see. All he does is have pies put in his face or ladders swung round at him, or he gets slapsticked on his arse all season. The only reason the job even exists is because after years of taking it themselves the clowns decided they'd had enough and created the post of Mr Johnny. And people queue up for it.' Meici Moondust turned aside and spat. 'When I was a compere out at the Kamp I saw five or six get off the train from Shrewsbury every month. Accountants and clerks and insurance salesmen ... you name it.' He spat again. 'Clown's Johnny. If you see one look the other way.'

*

Calamity and I stepped over the remains of the demolished wall and on to the field of cleared debris that had once been Woolie's. A thriving market had grown up in the rubble.

'I just can't believe it's gone,' said a confused old lady.

'Neither can any of us,' said the woman from the Saint John's Ambulance Brigade.

'It's been a terrible blow for everyone.'

'We used to come to Woolie's every year. Used to drive all the way from Walsall.'

'A lot of people did.'

'They said I was daft because I work in Woolie's in Walsall. But it's nice to have a change, isn't it? And now it's been washed away.'

'Drink your Bovril love, drink your Bovril — you'll be all right.'

We ordered some tea from a stall and Calamity took out her list. 'Bucket, spade, mess-tin ...'

'We need a mess-tin?'

'That's what it says in the brochure.'

'This is scarier than I thought.' As a sleuth in Aberystwyth I generally went undercover a lot less than people imagined. And when I did it was usually to dress as someone come to read the meter or something. Not as a means to go and stay at Kousin Kevin's Krazy Komedy Kamp in Borth. The brochure was specific on this point: Children and pets welcome. No private investigators.

'Why can't we just go and talk to the Johnnys down at the pub in the village?' asked Calamity glumly, even though she knew the answer.

'They don't allow them out. You know that.'

The first spots of rain fell from the dim, grey sky.

She tutted with resignation. 'I suppose we'd better learn our catchphrases then. The first one's "Bore da! How's your pa!"'

I winced. Calamity dug me in the ribs. 'Go on, say it.'

' OK, then, here goes,' I said as if about to swallow medicine. 'Bore da! How's your pa!'

'Yeah not bad,' said Calamity, 'but try and sound more as if you mean it.'

The windscreen wipers made a gloomy whine and our spirits sank lower and lower as Aberystwyth receded in the rear-view mirror. We drove over Penglais Hill and down through Bow Street, turning left at the garage for Borth. Calamity skimmed through the brochure.

'Do you believe the stories about this place?'

'Which ones?'

'The one about the zoo?'

'I've heard a few about the zoo.'

'They say an animal charity donated some toys and the monkeys gave them to the holidaymakers out of pity.'

'I heard last winter all the animals got eaten.'

'What about the one about the birds not singing?'

Before I could answer we rounded the bend and saw the outline of the Kamp up ahead. Suddenly, unaccountably, we stopped talking, as if we had just walked into the room in a haunted house where once, long ago, someone had been walled up alive.

'Gulp!' said Calamity.

A guard checked our reservation at the first checkpoint and then raised the red-and-white painted bar and waved us on. A quarter of a mile further on we were at the main Kamp perimeter. We parked and, as thousands of holidaymakers before us must have done, looked up at the grim wrought-iron gates and above them, written in the same black iron, the words, 'Welcome to Kevin's'.

After we'd checked in and spread the straw out in our room we went for a walk round. The place was quiet, maybe because it was low season or because most of the inmates were off on a work party. The enamel hot dog sign squeaking in the wind, the doors banging and the newspapers gusting across the cheap concrete crazy paving lent a strange unsettling air to the place. Like a ghost town, or ... or ... Calamity put her finger on it: 'Everyone's been abducted aboard a UFO.' We walked into a store selling milk and newspapers to ask directions. It was open but empty, no customers and no one behind the counter. We moved across to the amusement arcade. It seemed even emptier, the bingo section shrouded in a gloom that suggested it had been many years since the lights flashed and a river of prizes fell into the excited laps of chip-guzzling families from the Midlands.

In the centre of the Kamp we found a darkened entertainment complex. Rows of seats set in clusters round tables in arrangements intended to disguise the fact that the seats had been bought wholesale from a cinema. There was also a stage with the curtain down. Finally in an adjoining saloon we found some human beings. A clown sat hunched over the bar guzzling glasses of vodka. The barman in a tatty magenta blazer filled it up each time without asking. We sat at the bar, a couple of stools down. They both looked at us with a glare of hostility before returning to their drinks.

'Can I get you men a drink?' I asked cheerily.

The clown halted his glass midway to his mouth and looked inquiringly at the barman. The barman gave a tiny almost imperceptible shrug. The clown slowly turned to me. He wore a filthy lime-green jacket with orange patches crudely stitched on. Underneath there was no shirt, just a grubby vest, with food stains on it. His face had a U-bend of a laughing mouth painted on in bright red, but his real mouth was set in a bitter sneer that went in the opposite direction, as if one of the mouths was a reflection in water of the other.

I gestured to the barman to give the clown a drink. 'And one for yourself — that's if you drink while you're on duty.'