Last Tango in Aberystwyth Read online

  But the buildings remained, by and large. Here and there – like missing teeth – there were gaps in the rows of shops on Terrace Road and Great Darkgate Street. Little squares of rubble, filled with oily puddles, flapping polythene and broken dressers housing families of rats. And bounded on each side by the image familiar from the photos of the Blitz – sides of houses torn away to reveal the contents, floor by floor, like dolls’ houses open to view.

  The city fathers from Dresden who came to advise on the rebuilding found little to advise upon. You call this a moonscape? they said. This is a walk in the park! Just do what we did in 1945. Gather together all the Old Master oil paintings with views of the town; all the watercolours and prints of the main civic buildings; all the etchings and lithographs and work from that; rebuild. Roll your sleeves up. Don’t dwell on it, move on. And so we did. In the absence of canvases by Canaletto and engravings by Dürer we resorted instead to something more modest: a nationwide appeal for old holiday snaps and postcards of Aberystwyth. Predictably it produced its fair share of pictures of the Sphinx and the leaning tower of Pisa because, as anyone who’s ever been stopped by a traffic cop knows, everyone’s a comedian these days. But the steady stream of ash-trays, salt and pepper shakers, and souvenir barometers with views of the town were enough to get us started.

  We were also helped enormously by the Bucket & Spade Aid concert put on by the end-of-the-pier performers. From all round the coasts of Britain they came – birdsong impressionists, organ-grinders, ventriloquists, stand-up comedians, skiffle practitioners – all joining in to raise funds under the slogan, ‘I say, I say, I say, my dog’s got no nose!’

  By the time I returned to the bus stop my partner Calamity Jane was there waiting for me. She was wearing a shiny black leather coat and a black beret and looked ready to assassinate someone. Not even seventeen and so well versed in the ways of the street, a girl who in many ways knew more about it than me, who always got to hear the word, whatever it was, long before I did and always paid a lot less for it. An hour late and holding a new camera with a strangely furtive air.

  ‘Calamity!’

  ‘Hiya! Where’ve you been?’

  ‘Where have you been, more like, we’ve missed the bus.’

  ‘I’ve been testing my new camera. Do you like it?’

  She pushed it towards me.

  ‘Will it squirt water in my eye?’

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘Then I like it a lot better than the old one.’

  She grinned. No matter how hard she tried to act the wised-up bingo-hall hustler, the imp in her always bubbled through. I couldn’t resist smiling when I saw it. The sly cunning that mingled strangely with that charming innocence, the look of bright wonder and belief that the tarnished streets couldn’t cloud. That look in her eye that Eeyore said made putting on a silver star still worthwhile.

  We’d been partners now for three years, and I’d done my best to look out for her, to stand in for the father she didn’t have and keep her on the right track. It wasn’t always easy, as the newly acquired camera proved. The black market that sprang up in the aftermath of the flood had proved an irresistible lure to a girl like Calamity.

  I looked sceptically at the camera. ‘That looks like quite an expensive bit of machinery.’

  She gave it an appraising look. ‘From one of my debtors.’

  ‘What do you need it for?’

  Calamity moved half a step closer and took a quick look up and down the Prom.

  ‘I’m taking Aunt Minnies.’

  ‘That’s good.’

  She nodded in agreement. ‘I think so too.’ She pointed the camera upwards. ‘It’s got an East German lens. They’re the best for this sort of thing.’

  ‘Aunt Marjories, eh?’

  ‘Minnies.’

  ‘Aunt Minnies?’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘I was just thinking we should probably get some more of those.’

  ‘I’m going to put them on file.’

  ‘You’re just dying for me to ask, aren’t you?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You know what.’

  The next bus was over an hour away so we went to the Cabin coffee bar in Pier Street and sat in one of the booths looking out on to the street. After extracting as much mileage as she could from my ignorance on the subject, Calamity explained what an Aunt Minnie was.

  ‘It’s a word the spies use; it means pictures that tourists take that then become of interest to the intelligence community because they accidentally include something top secret in the background. Like a Russian missile or a defector.’

  ‘And who’s Aunt Minnie?’

  ‘They call them that because there’s always someone’s aunt in the foreground.’

  ‘It’s a bit of a long shot, isn’t it?’

  ‘You never know. Some of this stuff will prove useful one day, take my word for it.’

  I handed her a photo of Dean Morgan that had arrived in the post. ‘We’ll just have to hope no one defects this afternoon, we’ve got a real job. If we’re lucky, we might even get paid.’

  Calamity scrutinised the photo. ‘Preacher man, huh? How boring.’

  ‘This is the sort of preacher man who would be right up your street. He’s from the Faculty of Undertaking.’

  ‘They teach that?’

  ‘You have to learn somehow.’

  ‘So what did he do?’

  ‘He’s been teaching the Undertaking course out at Lampeter for thirty years. Then one day he decides to visit Aberystwyth. He hasn’t been heard of since. The worry is, he might have become part of the curriculum. The client is a girl called Gretel. She’s one of his students.’

  ‘You’d think she’d be pleased her teacher had done a bunk.’

  ‘They’re not like that out at Lampeter.’

  *

  Gretel had called three days ago. I told her to come to town, my office was on Canticle Street, but she giggled at the very idea and said, ‘Oh but I couldn’t!’ as if Canticle Street was in Gomorrah. So I agreed to go to Lampeter and asked her for a description. She said she would be wearing a brown Mother Hubbard, a black headscarf and big wooden beads. And she was quite fat. I thought that shouldn’t be too difficult but when our bus turned into a main street lined with dreamy old sandstone colleges, I saw six other girls just like it.

  The pub on the high street was easy to find. The Jolly Ferryman, two doors down from the souvenir shop selling bonsai yew trees. A pub with olde worlde bow windows and panes of glass like the bottom of a milk bottle – the sort that make your vision go bleary even before you’ve taken a drink. When I walked in a fat girl in a Mother Hubbard waved from the window alcove.

  Gretel introduced herself and her friend Morgana and asked us what we wanted to drink. Morgana said amiably, ‘You and your daughter must be tired after your long journey from the city.’

  ‘I’m not his daughter,’ said Calamity. ‘I’m his partner, I’m a detective.’

  ‘What city?’ I said.

  The girls broke into a peal of giggles like silvery bells, and covered their mouths with their hands.

  ‘Why, Aberystwyth of course!’

  A number of people in the pub looked round sternly at the mention of the name. I ordered a rum and Calamity ordered a whisky sour which I changed to a ginger beer. When the drinks arrived we chinked glasses and I said, ‘So why undertaking?’ The girls paused politely as if allowing the other to go first. Gretel said, ‘Strictly speaking, I’m not doing “undertaking” as such. I’m doing media studies.’

  ‘Are you hoping to write for the parish magazine?’

  ‘Oh no! Not that sort of media. I mean I’m studying to be a medium.’

  I said, ‘Ah.’ And then after I’d thought some more, added, ‘I didn’t know you could do that.’

  Gretel smiled and looked down at her clogs. ‘You don’t believe, I can tell.’

  ‘I didn’t say that, I’ve got an open mind.’

  Morgana nu
dged her friend. ‘Make some ectoplasm, that’ll shut him up.’

  There was another peal of giggles and this time they both laughed so much the wooden beads clacked.

  ‘Oh I couldn’t!’ squealed Gretel. ‘Not after what happened the last time.’

  The barman threw a suspicious look in our direction as if he’d read our thoughts and didn’t need any reminding about the last time. Gretel added, ‘Besides, it takes me half an hour just to get an eggcupful!’

  ‘I expect a little goes a long way,’ I said helpfully. ‘Tell me about the Dean.’

  Gretel picked up her beads, fingered them for inspiration and, prompted by subtle but insistent nudges from Morgana, gave me the background. He’d been at the college for many years and in all that time hadn’t said boo to a goose. There wasn’t any record of him ever having said anything to a goose, in fact, but if he had you could be sure it would have been more polite than boo. Then one day, out of the blue, he astonished everyone by announcing his intention to go away for a few days.

  This revelation led to looks of disbelief being exchanged between the two girls. I was about to say it didn’t seem like such a big deal when we were interrupted by raised voices at the next table.

  A young man put down his glass sharply. ‘Oh really, Jeremy, next you’ll be telling me, like, Osiris never happened or something!’

  ‘I’m just saying –’

  ‘Perfumed unguents, wax, spices … you know all that goo they make balm out of. Alexander the Great preserved in honey …’

  ‘Oh sure, spare me the O level stuff please! All I’m saying is wrapping in cloth and burying in dry sand was accidental and wasn’t a chief mortuary concern …’

  ‘And I suppose the settlements at Abu Qir don’t exist either?’

  ‘Sssh, you two, keep it down!’ said some of the other students at the table. ‘You’ll disturb the other drinkers.’

  There was a murmur of approval round the table. ‘Yeah, it’s getting late anyway, we’d better go back and study.’ They began to finish off their drinks.

  We turned back to our own conversation.

  ‘Maybe the Dean just felt like a holiday,’ said Calamity.

  Gretel blinked in disbelief. ‘But Dean Morgan would never do anything as frivolous as that! And besides, he didn’t say he was going to Aberystwyth, that’s the funny part. It was Gwladys Parry the cleaner who saw him just by coincidence on the Prom, coming out of the Excelsior Hotel. Well, we couldn’t believe it. The Dean in Aberystwyth! I rang the Excelsior Hotel straightaway and they said he had already checked out. Then a few days after that he rang me from that number I gave you –’

  ‘The speakeasy?’

  ‘Yes. But when I called him back it was really strange, I could hear the sounds of … well … a party or something in the background and the man who answered said …’ She half-closed her eyes as she tried to remember the exact formulation, ‘“It is the club policy to neither confirm nor deny the presence of any patrons on the premises.” But I knew it must have been a wrong number because the Dean would never go to a party.’

  ‘It’s unheard of,’ said Morgana.

  ‘What did he call you about?’

  ‘Oh, he said to cancel his milk and I was to take his cat and the litter of kittens she’d just had and drown them.’

  I took out the photo. It was just a stiffly posed shot of a priest in a dog-collar, taken for some yearbook or catalogue and obviously cut out of one.

  ‘That’s the best I could find.’

  ‘Maybe he just wanted to go and play bingo or something,’ suggested Calamity.

  ‘But why would he want to do that?’

  ‘For some light relief. Must be pretty spooky looking at stiffs every day.’

  Gretel gave an understanding sigh. ‘Yes, I know what you think – we must be really boring because we do what we do, not like those students in Aberystwyth. Everyone thinks the same.’

  ‘Or they think we’re really ghoulish,’ said Morgana. ‘Just because we do experiments with worms and flesh.’

  Gretel nudged her friend. ‘They’re disappointed because we’re not like the Bad Girl.’

  They giggled again.

  ‘Who’s the Bad Girl?’

  ‘Oh,’ said Gretel throwing her nose up. ‘We don’t talk about her.’

  ‘And you’re wrong anyway,’ added Morgana. ‘Undertaking’s a lot more exciting than you think. Do you know …’ she exchanged a conspiratorial glance with Gretel, ‘we each get a cadaver at the beginning of term to practise on, just like being a real doctor. Fancy that!’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Gretel. ‘And some of the ones from Aberystwyth have died violently. I found a bullet hole in mine.’

  ‘And mine had a crushed larynx!’

  ‘And we get to go on some great field trips – the catacombs or crypts … at Easter we’re going to Golgotha.’

  ‘All the same, none of this is any reason to think he’s in trouble.’

  Morgana nudged Gretel. ‘Tell him about the other thing.’

  Gretel took a breath and leaned closer in. ‘A week after he went, a man came looking for him. A really strange man.’

  ‘You mean strange for Lampeter,’ asked Calamity, ‘or strange for a normal town?’

  I kicked her under the table.

  ‘He was dressed funny and was unfriendly,’ said Gretel.

  ‘Rude,’ added Morgana.

  ‘What did he look like?’

  ‘We couldn’t see his face,’ said Gretel, ‘because he wore a muffler and had a wide-brimmed hat pulled down low –’

  ‘With a black feather stuck in it.’

  ‘And he wore a long black coat like the ones the medieval Jews wore – you know, like the ones they sell in Peacocks for nineteen ninety-nine.’

  ‘The gaberdine ones.’

  ‘Then a few days later the Dean called again, and I told him that a man in a Peacocks’ coat was looking for him and he sort of cried out and said, “Oh my God, I’m doomed!”’

  ‘What I don’t get,’ said Calamity, ‘is why he contacts you and not a secretary or something?’

  ‘Because’, said Gretel, ‘we’re his friends, we do voluntary work for him and things.’

  ‘What sort?’

  She shrugged. ‘Oh nothing special, alms-giving mostly. Just like students anywhere, really.’

  I let that one pass.

  They paused and then said together, ‘And of course we do his laying out.’

  I fought the reflex to choke. ‘You do that for the Dean?’

  ‘Well, you can’t expect him to do it himself, can you?’ said Morgana huffily.

  ‘And he pays us for it,’ said Gretel. ‘We’re lucky to get it. I mean, how else are you supposed to survive on a grant these days?’

  As the bus drove up the main street to turn at the top we saw through the back window a fracas on the neatly trimmed lawns of the college. The two students who had been arguing earlier in the pub were trading blows, surrounded by the rest of their group who were excitedly egging them on. From the cloisters on either side of the lawn, scholars and tutors poured forth in a flapping black gale of academic gowns, like starlings or startled bats, running like the wind and shouting dizzily with excitement, ‘Scrap! Scrap! Scrap!’

  Chapter 3

  THE EXCELSIOR WAS one of those crumbling, fading hotels that stood in a gently curving row on Aberystwyth Prom facing the sea. It was a hotel that spent the summer dreaming of better days, and wore its four stars on either side of the main door like combat medals. Like the motoring organisation that awarded the stars, it was a refugee from the world of A and B roads and button B telephones. A world in which a lift was considered an American contrivance and shared bathrooms at the end of the corridor were the norm. People still wore jackets and ties here and took luncheon and, perhaps most damning of all, it was the world that gave us Brown Windsor soup. Inside the hotel the floors creaked as you walked, like the innards of a wooden ship. It was an old, rickety do
wager of a hotel and if it were possible for a building to get arthritis and walk with a stick this one would. I knew all this because once, for a season many years ago, I had worked there as the house John. An underpaid sleuth with a cubby-hole and a nightstick and a remit to keep one eye on the shifty characters who walked in off the street and an even beadier eye on the dodgy ones who worked there.

  In the old days, as with all hotels with pretensions to grandeur, the door had been opened by a man dressed as a cavalry officer from the Napoleonic wars. But he had long since gone and today I had to push the heavy brass and glass door open myself. Inside the lounge, little had changed. The swirly carpet, the antimacassars; the horse brasses … And the same cast of characters: the greasy manager’s son at the bar in a tatty white shirt and bow tie, eternally polishing a pint glass; in the bay windows sat members of that travelling band of spinsters and widows who spent their lives wandering from hotel to hotel in a predetermined route round the coast of Britain. Shrivelled old women who appeared at the same time each year with the predictability of migrating salmon and who insisted on the same room and ordered the same food. And every day at dawn they crept downstairs to place their knitting on the vacant armchairs signifying possession for the day like the flag on Iwo Jima.

  The only other residents were the travelling shawl salesmen and the doily traders. There were two sitting at a table near the bar, talking doily shop in the impenetrable slang of their trade. Strange words and familiar ones used in strange ways. The weave, the whorl, the matrix, the paradigm; a disc, a galaxy, a web, a Black Widow and White Widow; a Queen Anne and a Squire’s Strumpet … I listened to them talk for a while. These were the strange, forlorn men you sometimes passed when you went for a drive – parked in a lay-by and crouched over a map. Next to it, a local newspaper opened to the death announcements with one of them circled in ballpoint. A grubby life lived according to the simple credo that with doilies, like snowflakes, there were never two alike.