housekeeper of mine who no doubt at this precise moment has her ear pressed to the keyhole. They said I’d done my fiancee in, you know, those shrew-faced gossips from the village. Said she was buried in Tregaron Bog. How their pointy tongues wagged until the following spring when Rhiannon came back for a week. That wiped the smile off their faces. That’s the one thing they never forgive, letting them down like that. You can see it in their eyes, the look of reproach. How could you! How could you make us believe we had a murderer in our midst and then spoil it all like this? That’s the great paradox upon whose meat I daily feast: they cast me out, not because I murdered my fiancee, but because I didn’t.’
A man sat on the bench in that section of the castle that projects out into the sea. He was reading the Bible and waiting for me. He had called me the previous week and I had put the meeting off a number of times. The breeze flicked his thin, sandy hair into his eyes and made the collar of his tan-coloured mackintosh slap his face. I knew he had noticed my approach but he affected not to. He was the president of the remembrance society that had been formed to remember Marty, who had died on the cross-country run when we were in school. I sat down next to him and stared out to sea. It looked like porridge.
‘Funny thing about ruined castles,’ I said. ‘They always fill up with earth. Where does it come from?’
He said nothing.
‘It’s always cold up here, isn’t it? Do you ever wonder what it must have been like, standing on the tower wearing iron clothes?’
Glyn gently closed the Bible and said, ‘I didn’t come here today to talk about castles.’
‘What did you come for?’
‘You never come to our meetings.’
‘I don’t see the point.’
‘Only because you refuse to look for it. One evening two or three times a year, how much of a sacrifice is that?’
‘Why should I have to make a sacrifice?’
‘We all have to make a sacrifice. The world isn’t a theme park. We were put here for a purpose, even if we are but dimly aware of what it might be.’
‘That’s your opinion.’
‘It’s the Lord’s opinion.’
‘Marty was fifteen and had tuberculosis but no one knew. The inquiry cleared Herod Jenkins. I loved Marty and grieved for him, but I can’t hate. It just won’t come. I guess I’m not a good Christian.’
‘Don’t insult my religion.’
‘You are the one insulting it. Didn’t Jesus preach forgiveness?’
Glyn turned to me, his face strangely impassive. ‘Where? Where does he preach that?’
‘Forgiving those who trespass against us and stuff.’
‘He clearly didn’t mean it to apply equally in all cases. And besides, our community is not about forgiving, or blaming, it is about remembering and celebrating Marty’s short life. If you came along once in a while, you would know that.’
‘Didn’t Jesus also say something about worrying about the living, not the dead?’
‘He said the Lord our God is a God of the living, not the dead. But we are not Gods. You presume too much.’
‘You twist my words; what do you want?’
Glyn held the Bible up between his palms as if drawing inspiration from it. ‘You heard that Herod Jenkins is standing for mayor?’
‘Yes.’
‘A monster.’
‘So don’t vote for him. Vote for Ercwleff. One of God’s children, your ideal candidate.’
‘He’s a simpleton. A choice between a fool and a monster is no choice. We need a proper candidate, the town needs a proper candidate.’ He deliberated for a few seconds. ‘We want you to stand.’
The hairs on the back of my neck stood on end. ‘That’s absurd.’
‘Why is it absurd?’
‘I have no interest in politics.’
‘That is a recommendation.’
‘I already have a job.’
‘It need only be for a year.’
‘There are hundreds of reasons. I don’t want to.’
‘No doubt, but sometimes our desires and our duty do not coincide and in such cases a man, a real man, knows which is more important.’
‘I couldn’t do the human cannonball bit. I’m too tall.’
‘You think Ercwleff is doing it himself? We can supply a surrogate; that part is easy.’
‘And what about the fist fight in the pub car park?’
‘Ercwleff is going to take a dive in the fifth. That makes Herod the winner; you only have him to beat. Think of it! Think how old he is now, while you are young and in your prime.’
‘He would tear me limb from limb. Age has nothing to do with it; he’s my former games teacher. It doesn’t matter how old or frail or infirm he is, he will always be tougher than the boys he taught. That’s how it works. I would rather fight an anaconda.’
‘Do me a favour, Louie, think about it. For Marty . . . no, not for Marty, for Aberystwyth; do it for your beloved town.’
‘It’s not my beloved town. Where do you get that idea from?’
Glyn put the Bible up to his chin and pondered.
‘Anyway, what’s wrong with Ercwleff for mayor?’
He tried a different tack. ‘Have you never wondered why Preseli wants to elect his idiot brother as mayor?’
‘Yes.’
‘And what answer did you arrive at?’
‘None.’
‘He’s doing it to pay us back. For the humiliations they suffered as children. When Ercwleff was born, his father was too drunk to help and his mother sent Preseli to fetch the doctor. He was drunk, too, so drunk he could hardly see. He used the coal tongs as forceps and deformed Ercwleff’s skull. The mother died, but not before naming him Ercwleff and making Preseli promise to watch over him all his life. Preseli promised her he would, and throughout school he was his brother’s protector. They had a school rabbit and one day Ercwleff accidentally broke its neck, he wouldn’t stop hugging it, you see; even as a kid he was very strong. They made him spend the rest of the term in a dog kennel at the back of the class. Imagine the mockery. You know how cruel children can be – they discovered a wonderful trick for making Ercwleff cry. All they had to do was say the police were coming to take him away. The threat must have seemed very real to him because even by the age of nine or ten he had seen two uncles and a cousin depart the district in this manner. They teased Ercwleff relentlessly, and Preseli would get into fights protecting him; but he always seemed to be the one who got blamed for starting the trouble. You know what teachers are like in situations like that: they assume as a matter of routine that the boy from the bad family started the trouble. Such ignorant, unthinking dolts . . . so blinded by their own prejudice . . . They don’t see how by singling the child out, and treating him as a black-hearted good-for-nothing, they create the very thing they condemn. When the four o’clock bell rings, the teacher has forgotten all about the casually dispensed retribution earlier in the day, but the child remembers. Nothing festers in the heart more than such injustice meted out by adults, those towering figures who are forever declaiming their own moral infallibility. Yes, the child remembers.’
‘How did Preseli get to be mayor?’
‘After National Service he went abroad and was away for a long time. He came back a different man; educated, worldly, sophisticated to a certain degree; and he had money. Joined the police out at Ystrad Meurig. He did quite well, made a name for himself clearing up crimes, usually by fitting people up. Then his career got a boost for catching the gang that robbed the Coliseum cinema; went into politics. No one knows where he went when he was abroad; he just incubated his revenge.’
‘So this is it? His revenge? He comes back like some Welsh Heathcliff and makes Ercwleff mayor?’
