The only thing I remember about the drive to Ynyslas were the looks of horror on the people's faces as they darted out of the way in Bow Street; and then the fists raised in anger in my rear-view mirror. Ten miles and thirty junctions and not once did the accelerator leave the floor. Not once were the brakes engaged until I was driving on sand. And I don't remember the dash across the wide sands of the estuary or through the sharp marram grass. All I remember is the relief that exploded inside me when I finally saw Cadwaladr.
He sat wind-blown on the dune top, a can of Special Brew in his hand. He pondered for a while what I had told him, and then said, 'Are you sure they've got her?'
I took a deep breath and spoke in monotone as if reciting a ghoul's shopping-list. 'Calamity has been visiting Custard Pie. He tricked her into helping him escape. Now Calamity has disappeared and no one can find her. What does it look like to you?'
'It's possible they haven't got her, it could be she's on a damn fool's errand to bring Pie in herself. Maybe she blames herself for him escaping and wants to make amends.'
'I'd love to believe that. But I don't.'
Cadwaladr sipped the beer and considered the situation. 'If Custard Pie has teamed up with Herod it will be tough to catch them,' he said.
'Are they really that good?'
He didn't answer immediately, but stared out to sea, eyes watering in the breeze and focusing on infinity as his thoughts drifted back across the years.
'In Patagonia I fought alongside them for a while — in the early campaigns. I used to watch them go out on night patrol - faces all smeared up with charcoal and paint. When they came back at dawn they'd always have a prisoner with them, some poor terrified conscript, trussed up like a turkey at Christmas. We never asked who he was or where he was from; we just knew if we wanted any peace and quiet that day we'd better stay out of earshot of the interrogation block.' He shook his head sadly. 'I can still remember the cries coming from those cells. They say in all that time there was never a man Custard Pie couldn't break.' He paused and took another sip of beer. 'But if you really want to know what they were like, just look at what happened to Waldo. Remember me telling you about the goalkeeper in the Christmas Day football match?'
I nodded. 'You never finished your story.'
Cadwaladr took a long drink from the can, as if to impart the necessary gravitas to the story of Waldo. Then he started to speak with a slow shake of the head, as if even now he couldn't believe it.
'Waldo was an Everyman. He stood for all of us. Just a little kid thousands of miles from home in a land he'd never heard of, seeing things that were too much for his heart. They say the reason he signed up for this psychological experiment at the sanatorium was he'd heard it was something to do with memory and all his life he'd been trying to lose his — trying to banish the memory of a certain week. Just one week. It didn't seem like a lot to ask. Like a lot of guys he tried to drink it away. But no matter how much he drank, it would still be there in the morning, like his shadow.
'The incident took place right at the end of the war. A few weeks before we were shipped home. Waldo was cut off in the wilds, alone, and pinned down in a ravine by a sniper. That sniper in turn was pinned down by Waldo. It was stalemate, neither could move without getting shot by the other. This went on for a week until finally the other guy's morale collapsed and he made a break for it and Waldo shot him. The bullet got him in the stomach - the wound we all feared most - but it didn't kill him. Waldo spent the next three days listening to his cries of pain coming from behind a rock. At the end of the third day, as the man's moans were getting fainter and fainter, a dispatch rider turned up and told Waldo the armistice had been signed a week ago. Waldo was shocked. All that time they had been trying to kill each other, and yet the war was over; they had been brothers all along. A tremendous burst of love surges through the veins of Waldo and he rushes over to the stricken man and weeps. He takes out his first-aid kit and tries to save him. "My brother," he cries, "my brother! It's late in the day, but do not despair!" Waldo reckons if he can staunch the bleeding, and stabilise him, they can get him back to a hospital, and he might make it. In that instant saving this man becomes the most important undertaking in his whole life. It's as if the sun has burst through the cloud in his heart. Ever since he was a kid he has been confused about who he is and what he was put on this earth for. And now he sees with a rare clarity that for one tiny fragment of time he can perform an act that has meaning, a truly moral act — perhaps the only one he will ever perform in his life. Waldo was not a bookish type, not a thinker, but squatting down in the mud of I hat ravine holding a wound-compress to the bullet holes in the man's stomach he understood it in a way that was deeper than words. This pure human act of salvation that could stand as a bigger symboclass="underline" to redeem all the terrible carnage and slaughter of the past three years. Then the dispatch rider comes over and says, "Hey, isn't that the guy who dived in the box?" And by God it was. Suddenly, the piercing sharp clarity of Waldo's vision has fled. The idea of salvation and brotherhood have vanished. Instead lying at his feet is the little jerk who fucked up the Christmas Day game.
'"You dived didn't you!" they shout at him.
'"Save me, my brother," he pleads. "Save me that I might go back to my little farm in the Sierra Machynlleth."
'"Don't change the subject, you're the little rat that dived in the box, aren't you?"
'"Holy Mother of God," he cries. "I swear on all that is holy that I didn't."
'"Yes you bloody well did!"
'"No, it wasn't me. It was someone who looks like me. My cousin Gabriel — he is a bad man, always making trouble, a bastardo!"
"That's it!" they cry. "Turn your comrade in to save your skin."
'"No, my friends, it is not true. Please save me. Think of my wife and daughter Carmencita who is only two and knows nothing of the villainy of this world. Must she grow up an orphan because of Gabriel's treachery?"
'"You should have thought about that before you dived in the box!" Both are incensed now. Not only that he did the terrible deed but that he should lie about it here on his death-bed to the only men in the world with the power to save him.
'So they try to extract a confession. They write it out for him and hold it under his nose. "Go on," they said. "Admit to the dive, and we'll save you."
'"On the bones of the saints, I swear I didn't," he cried, his breath getting weaker and weaker, since Waldo has removed the wound-dressing now and the man's rich crimson gore is staining the bed of that ravine.
'"You Latin footballers are all the same," says Waldo. "You're always diving! This is your last chance to absolve yourself before you go to meet your maker."
'But he refuses. And while he slowly dies, they break open a bottle of tequila and drink to victory and then dip their arms in his blood and laugh. They laugh. Two years ago on the shores of Lake Bala, Waldo would have cried to see a bird hit by a car. And now he laughs. Who can ever fathom the mysteries of the human heart? The enemy soldier went to his grave refusing to accept that it was a dive and left behind a daughter Carmencita and a legacy of knowledge concerning the villainy of the world about which she had known nothing and now knew all.