‘That is my opinion, yes. This way he pays back all the teachers who punished him and all the kids who mocked his brother.’
I cast a glance at Glyn, who stared straight ahead, out to sea. He talked of adults declaiming their own moral infallibility, but I never met a man more richly deserving of that description than him. I stood up. ‘A man who hugs a rabbit to death would make a pretty good mayor.’
‘Nothing’s ever serious for you, is it?’
‘Ercwleff would make a better mayor than me.’
He stood up and faced me, placing himself between me and the sun. ‘For sure. They say he saw an angel once, so he’s got the right connections. All I can say is, it must have been a pretty bloody stupid angel. Just think about it, that’s all I ask. Think about it.’
He strode off into the grey wall of sky, dwarfed by the borderless expanse. The intensity of purpose was painful to behold; he was like a needle in the celestial sewing machine, darting here and there, up and down the town, leaving incomprehensible tracks sewn into the ground.
There was a fair being set up on the Prom at the junction with Terrace Road, as part of the mayoral election. The human-cannonball barrel, resembling the scarlet horn of a mythical beast, was anchored in front of the bandstand and pointed towards Constitution Hill; the catching net was just before the shelter by the wishing well. The other stalls consisted of a tombola and white elephant, Punch and Judy, and a permanent donkey-ride base. Meici Jones was striding around with his head held high, his bearing almost military. He chatted with holidaymakers in a manner which even at a distance struck one as expansive; a girl accompanied him and occasionally handed him leaflets which he signed and passed out to onlookers.
When Meici spotted me, he broke away and marched over.
‘Louie, excellent of you to come,’ he snapped in the manner of one who has just inherited the Prom and decided to open it to the public. He grabbed my hand and pumped it.
‘You got the job then? Congratulations.’
‘Thank you, Louie. Your support means a lot to me.’
‘When’s your first flight?’
‘Mission, Lou’, we call them missions. I’m still training at the moment, down on the recreation field at Plas Crug. I hope to be operational in about three weeks. Come, you must meet Chastity.’ He grabbed my tricep and propelled me across to meet the girl.
She looked about nineteen or twenty and wore a knitted two-piece mouse-coloured outfit and had a supernumerary arm, about the size of a wooden spoon. Meici excused himself to go off and sign autographs and discuss ballistics with some tourists. Chastity watched him go with a longing that suggested he was going off to battle.
‘Isn’t he amazing?’ she said.
‘Yes,’ I said, ‘there’s no one quite like Meici.’
‘I’ve always wanted to fly, ever since I was a little girl.’
‘Are you on holiday?’ I asked.
‘Yes, we’re from Shawbury in Shropshire; I’m here for the summer with my aunt. We’re staying at the caravan park in Clarach, do you know it?’
‘Clarach, yes . . . an interesting place.’
‘I think it’s dreamy.’ She was young but had a quality that made her seem much older, as if she had spent the past hundred years imprisoned in an enchanted wood; maybe it was the clothes – the knitted suit, the fawn socks and sensible, round-toed brown leather shoes – it all evoked a claustrophobic, walled-in upbringing. You could trace the hand of someone much older directing events. If you asked her the name of a pop star you knew she would cite enthusiastically an old crooner – Sinatra or Dean Martin – derived from a stack of worn LPs that her auntie played on Sunday evenings after church.
‘Some people find Clarach a bit quiet,’ I said.
‘Aunt Marjorie and I chose it for precisely that reason. The doctors told her to go somewhere quiet for her nerves. She has terrible problems with her nerves. I had to give up learning the harp because of them.’
‘In which case I would say she has made an excellent choice in Clarach. There isn’t a single incident mentioned in the records dating back to 1734 of a visitor to Clarach getting overexcited.’
Chastity’s eyes flashed. ‘Goodness!’ She reached into a pocket in her cardigan and pulled out a notepad and pen. ‘I must make a note of that. Aunt Marjorie will be pleased. I forget so easily, you see.’ She opened the notebook with her right hand and pulled the cap off her pen with the little wooden-spoon arm and held it in her little hand like a lobster pincer and wrote, ‘Records date back 1734 no overexcite’.
‘What exactly is wrong with her nerves?’
‘We don’t know. Fuss upsets her. That’s why we had to get out of Shawbury. It wasn’t easy finding somewhere with less fuss than Shawbury.’
‘I can imagine.’
‘It was my job, really; that’s why I’m glad to have the facts at my disposal. The one about 1734 is excellent.’
‘I can give you some more if you like. Before the last Ice Age, Clarach was the gateway to the legendary kingdom of Cantref-y-Gwaelod, which now lies sunken beneath the waters of Cardigan Bay.’
Chastity opened her mouth in goldfish-like wonder. ‘A sunken kingdom! How thrilling!’
‘According to popular belief, you can hear the bells of Cantref-y-Gwaelod ringing out on moonlit nights, although perhaps you had better not tell your auntie that.’
‘No, no, I won’t; she’d be a bag of nerves if she found out there was a sunken kingdom on her doorstep, ringing bells at all hours.’
‘But that’s ancient history; it’s very quiet now. Archaeologists tell us that the Pleistocene age is the last recorded instance of there being more than five people on the beach at Clarach at the same time.’
‘Golly!’
‘Have you walked the other way, to Borth?’
‘Not yet, but we are planning to. There’s just so much to do. Meici says he will show us the way if he can get some time off from flight school.’
‘It’s not really hard, you just follow the path up the coast.’
‘I’d feel safer if Meici was with us, we might fall among thieves.’ Chastity’s gaze flicked away, over my shoulder. ‘He looks so strong in his space suit, it must be wonderful to fly through the air like that.’
‘The journeys are quite short, though.’
‘I’ve never met anyone like Meici before. He’s the only person I know who has read
‘I think I saw the movie with Hayley Mills.’
‘The book is better. Hayley Mills is too pretty, she would have had lots of friends and nice things in school. I never did. Meici and I play the Glad Game sometimes. He’s much better at it than me, though. Yesterday he said he was sad that he had no friends at school but he was glad because it meant he knew what it must have been like for me.’
‘That’s very touching.’ I noticed Meici had stopped signing autographs and was staring at me with what appeared to be irritation.
‘Yes he’s wonderful. You must be very proud to have him as a friend. He’s so philosophical. He told me yesterday that when he’s flying and looking down on the people on the Prom, they all look so tiny, like ants, and he says all our problems look tiny too.’
I said goodbye and as I wandered off I was aware of Meici watching me through narrowed eyes.
We drove out to Borth against the incoming tide of lunch-time traffic. Huw Pugh, the farmer who claimed to have witnessed the alien visitation, lived out at Ynys Greigiog, along the shores of the estuary. You could get there directly by going inland, but to drive that way without making a needless detour through Borth would be to display the wrong attitude to life, the attitude evinced by those who are too busy to stop and admire the view, unaware that this is largely what life is for. It’s just a simple road, ruler straight for 3 miles, between the railway line and the shore, parallel to each; a few shops; a railway station whose primitive simplicity evokes those halts in the Wild West where the gunslingers wait three days for the train and shoot the only man to step off the train. The road and
