Last Tango in Aberystwyth

Wordlessly the barman poured the clown a drink, then himself one, knocked it back and washed the glass.

Finally the clown spoke. 'Just because I take your drink doesn't make you my friend.'

I shrugged.

'It doesn't mean I like you.'

'Of course! it means you like to drink.'

'Exactly. If I said no, I would be cutting off my nose to spite my face. You wouldn't want me to do that, would you?'

'You never know, it might be an improvement.'

Calamity nudged me and pointed at a woman passing the window. She walked, almost marched, with military stiffness and wore a Prussian-blue tunic and matching skirt set off by a well-polished Sam Browne belt. The left sleeve of her tunic swung emptily. I said to the barman, 'Isn't that Mrs Bligh-Jones from the Meals on Wheels?'

He pretended to glance over his shoulder and without even looking said, 'No that's Mrs Parker from Mansfield.'

I screwed up my eyes. 'No I'm sure it's Mrs Bligh-Jones. You can tell because she's only got one arm.'

'No you're wrong, mate.'

'But you didn't look.'

'Yes I did.'

She walked up to a chalet and the door opened. A man stood in the doorway in a dressing-gown. It was Jubal.

'Doesn't half look like Mrs Bligh-Jones to me; and that's Jubal isn't it?'

The barman leaned across and grabbed my chin in the vice of his index finger and thumb, jerked my face towards his and said in a cold, bitter voice, 'Are you calling me a liar?'

I snatched my face free and signalled with my eyes to Calamity that it was time to try somewhere else. We walked out and carried on walking into the centre of the dreary Kamp.

We passed a small collection of fairground rides, the horses and miniature spaceships covered with dusty tarpaulins. There was a flash of movement from behind the centre of the carousel. It was a little girl, grubby and bedraggled, her hair long and wild and matted; she must have been one of the feral children said to live on the fringes of the Kamp. On seeing us she darted behind one of the cars. We stopped and I crouched down and called to her. Slowly she moved forward and peered at us from behind a prancing pony.

'Are your mummy and daddy around?' I asked.

She shook her head.

'Are you on your own?'

She nodded.

'We're looking for the clown's Johnny. Do you know what that is?'

She nodded.

'Will you take us to him?'

She considered.

'I'll give you some money to buy a hot dog.'

She nodded and scampered off, assuming without even bothering to check that we would follow. We did.

The colony of Johnnys was located towards the back of the Kamp, in the cages that had formerly housed the animals. There were four of them, sitting idly about on upturned boxes and staring boredly into space. None of them wanted to talk to us, but eventually a man who said I could call him Bert came to the bars. I showed him the picture of the Dean and he confirmed that he had been a Johnny for a while.

'But he had no interest in learning the art,' said Bert morosely. 'He was just a dilettante. Kept going on about the fact that he was a professor and deserved better. I mean, big deal! I used to be an actuary but I don't ram it down your throat —' The man stopped suddenly, his attention distracted. I heard the sound of feet scraping deliberately on the pavement behind me and the miasma of cheap aftershave enveloped me. I turned and found myself face to face with a thin bony man in a black tie and dinner jacket. Next to him stood two Kamp security guards twirling their nightsticks. One of them went up to the bars and ran the truncheon along like a child rattling a stick along some railings. Bert leaped back and joined his friends.

The man in the dinner jacket spoke. 'I'm awfully sorry to interrupt your fun, sir, but it appears your holiday has come to an abrupt end.'

'Really? It's a bit sudden isn't it?'

'That's often the way of it on holiday; it seems like you've only just arrived and already it's time to go home.'

'We have only just arrived.'

'As I say it can often seem like that. It's a trick the mind plays.'

'And we were having such a nice time. I can't believe it's over.'

'You're not the first, sir, to remark on the fleeting nature of human happiness. If I may be permitted the observation.'

I looked at Calamity and she responded by dramatically stretching her eyebrows and chin in opposite directions. I turned back to the manager. 'Nice aftershave.'

'Thank you, sir, I mix it myself. Nothing fancy, just a few things I find in the garden.'

'Next time go easy on the slugs.'

He winced slightly. 'Most comedic, sir. Now if you would care to make your way to the carpark.'

'Couldn't we just extend our stay by half a day?'

He shook his head in bogus melancholy. 'Sadly not, we're fully booked. No room for any more guests and alas, although you would be highly suitable for the role, we are already supplied with a clown.'

'And if he goes sick you could always recite your aftershave recipe, couldn't you?'

He winced again.

'I want to see the manager.'

The security guard answered. 'You're looking at him, pal, this is Kousin Kevin, he owns the Kamp.'

'Don't sound so impressed, he can't even spell!'

Kousin Kevin took hold of my cuff. 'If you wouldn't mind, sir.'

'What if I do?'

The security guard waved his nightstick. 'Actually, bigmouth, we'd prefer it if you did. We don't like snoopers in our camp.'

We filed our way back in the direction of the car, guards on either side marching in step. No one spoke and the silence was lightened only by the soft strains of a dance tune from the swing era drifting over the eaves. As we cleared the last of the chalets we stopped involuntarily and stared before the guards urged us on. In the auditorium — deserted only a few minutes before — the ellipse of a single spotlight could now be seen bobbing across the darkened dance-floor like a drunken moon. And stepping jauntily through it, as if their shoes were glued to the light, were Jubal and Mrs Bligh-Jones, dancing to the 'Chattanooga Choo-Choo'.

On the drive back to town I pondered the significance of what I had just seen. Mrs Bligh-Jones was the Commander-in-Chief of the Meals on Wheels, which made her a pretty powerful person in town. But it hadn't always been so. Two years ago she was just another bit player ladling anaemic gravy over sprouts that had been boiled to death.

Her rise to prominence neatly illustrated one of the many ironies of the flood: so often the chief casualty had not been bricks and mortar, but things more intangible, like reputation. In this case the credibility of the druids. For as long as anyone could remember, they had been the town's official gangsters: running the girls, the gambling, the protection, and sending so many of their enemies to 'sleep with the fishes' it made the sea snore. But it all came to an end with Lovespoon's vainglorious Exodus aboard his ark. They lost a lot of good men on that boat and the ones left behind, their credibility shot, were never quite able to compete. This was when the carpetbagger gangsters moved in and no one had a bigger carpet-bag than Bligh-Jones. She alone had been the one to recognise the simple truth: in the moonscape of rubble and potato soup kitchens that followed the receding waters there was a new weapon abroad. Hunger. And the casually issued threat of a withheld bowl of gruel could be far more effective than any blow from a druid's blackjack.

We might never have heard of her, either, if it wasn't for the tragedy on Pumlumon mountain. A story that has since become one of the defining legends of the rubble years. It started out as just a routine sweep in the Meals on Wheels van, the sort they often made into the foothills, looking for wayfarers to succour. But then a storm blew up and they received a mayday from high up on the mountain. Common sense told them to turn back, but they pressed on and before long they had passed the Bickerstaff line, that imaginary line that demarcates the point beyond which a safe return is no longer possible. Morale soon snapped in the sub-zero temperatures and the leader, Mrs Cefnmabws, lost her grip completely and ran off ranting into the storm. Then as the women argued in the fierce blizzard with icicles hanging off their eyebrow ridges it was the ruthless will of Mrs Bligh-Jones that forced them on, forced their rebelling sinews and surrendering flesh to scorn the pain. They were stranded for three months on that cruel mountain. Two of them died from pneumonia and Mrs Cefnmabws turned up the following spring preserved in a block of ice like a mammoth. The only ones to make it down were Mrs Tolpuddle, who refused to talk about it; and Bligh-Jones, who lost an arm to frostbite. It didn't hold her back, though. She returned to town a heroine and promptly began carving it up into mini-fiefdoms for her lieutenants.