Calamity said, ‘I can’t see why they had to escape from the Nazis just for teaching some lousy kids to sing.’
‘At the very least,’ I said, ‘you’d expect Julie Andrews to do some kick-boxing or something.’
‘Or dynamite the bridge so no one could follow them,’ said Calamity.
Sospan put the magazine back under the counter.
Chapter 4
The waiting steam train snorted puffs of strongly perfumed smoke into the blue sky. A man and a boy stood next to the engine, both identically dressed in neatly pressed black trousers and white shirts, open at the collar. The boy was listening to the side of the engine with a stethoscope.
Every railway station has a zone way out beyond the normal hubbub. Most people are too lazy to walk that far, but once you pass a certain point, beyond the front of the longest train, beyond the final pillar where the last awning peters out, the atmosphere changes; noise drops off, a wind that has been absent from the cauldron of the town centre cools your brow. The only sound comes from the soles of your shoes. This is where the narrow-gauge steam train to Devil’s Bridge stands awaiting orders.
The boy wrote something down in a notebook.
‘I hope she’s well enough to travel,’ I said with a smile to his father.
‘I bring my boy up to be observant,’ said the man.
Calamity and the boy stared at each other with the muted suspicion that kids of similar ages feel when a chance encounter brings their parents together.
‘Most trainspotters just write down the numbers,’ I said.
‘We are not trainspotters,’ said the man. ‘We just like machines.’
‘We’re not allowed to have them at home,’ added the boy.
‘Except the plough, and the hair clip and the gallows. Although, of course, in these corrupted times our gallows rot and the hangman’s children cry out for hunger in the night.’ The man put his hand gently on the back of his son’s head. ‘To us, a big train like this is almost like pornography.’
‘You must be Denunciationists,’ I said.
The man smiled.
‘Are you Upper or Lower? I can never remember which is which.’
‘We’re Lower Denunciationist, from Cwmnewidion Isaf; we have no beards because the Lord in his mercy allowed us to use the engine of the scissor. It is those chimp-faced fools from Ynys Greigiog who abjure the very necessary act of grooming.’ He reached out a hand to shake. ‘I am James the Less.’
‘Louie Knight, and this is Calamity.’
The engine wailed its impatience and the guard blew a whistle. I opened a compartment door and allowed the man and his son to enter. We climbed in after them and slammed the door. Calamity pulled a face, as I knew she would, when her bottom hit the hard polished wooden bench.
‘Just try and enjoy it,’ I said. ‘The scenery is nice at least.’
‘No upholstery,’ she said. Two words that encapsulated an entire world view.
The engine squealed again, and tugged, picking up the slack like the anchor man in a tug-of-war. The carriages groaned like cows calling to be milked; unconsciously we clenched our muscles in sympathy. We began the long, slow trundle to Devil’s Bridge.
‘The line to Devil’s Bridge was built by Chinese immigrant labour between 1865 and 1869,’ said the boy.
‘And some Irish,’ added his father.
‘It’s like sitting on a roundabout in the park,’ said Calamity. ‘Even war chariots used to have upholstery; cushions are not a luxury.’
James the Less received that statement with a look of surprise. In Cwmnewidion Isaf cushions were obviously kept on the top shelf at the newsagent’s next to the magazines on steam traction engines and those lawnmowers you can sit on.
‘Devil’s Bridge gets its name from a folk tale about the Devil, who used to exact tolls from travellers wishing to use the bridge across the gorge,’ said the boy. ‘The Irish navvies resented the Chinese workers, partly because they ate strange food: dried oysters, dried fish, dried abalone, seaweed and dried crackers, all imported from China. And they took baths in empty whisky kegs filled with rainwater, perfumed with flowers.’
‘That would offend me, too,’ I said.
‘Are you on holiday?’ said the boy.
‘We’re looking for the outline of a d . . .’ Calamity checked herself and looked at me, unsure whether she should divulge details of our intentions, and aware that it was to me that Raspiwtin had given the information about Iestyn Probert’s old house. I grinned and completed her sentence. ‘Duck. We’re looking for the outline of a duck in the hills, caused, they say, by the run-off from the old lead mines.’
‘We’re paleo-ornithologists,’ said Calamity.
‘How fascinating,’ said the boy. ‘What sort of duck exactly? Dabbling duck, diving duck, eider duck, ferruginous duck, harlequin duck, long-tailed duck, mandarin duck, Muscovy duck, ruddy duck, swallow-tailed duck, tree duck, tufted duck, velvet duck, wood duck . . . ?’
‘Just so long as it quacks,’ she answered.
‘I think there’s one by Iestyn Probert’s old house, out at Rhiwlas,’ said James the Less.
The train moved so slowly across the landscape that its timetable might have been described in geological epochs. Yet for all the languor the engine itself was a source of fury, coughing a series of cumulonimbus clouds into the sky with each chuff, interspersed with wild Cherokee war whoops. The flood plain of the Rheidol passed gently by.
‘I met a Deunciationist priest once,’ I said. ‘He had a red beard.’
‘That would be Jude the Schemer. For many years I loved him as a brother and would have laid down my life for him, until the fever seized his brain.’
The boy rested a restraining hand on his father’s forearm. ‘Do not grieve, Father.’ He turned to me. ‘My father has taught me to love all God’s creatures, with the one exception of Uncle Jude, who is a loathsome heretical swill bucket.’
‘It was always the way with Jude,’ said the old man. ‘He never knew the virtue of moderation. The Lord teaches us that we are all born in corruption and for this we are to be damned to everlasting hellfire. But some there are, one or two lucky blighters, a handful here and there, who through no merit of conduct are to be saved, and this will be made known to them in the privacy of their hearts and this is the true way. But Jude the Schemer, he perverted the words of the Lord and claimed that no one was to be saved. Not a soul! All damned, every last man Jack of us. Such blasphemy! Is God a monster? No, of course not.’
‘You see, sir,’ said the boy, ‘we seek goodness wherever we go and we love God even though the doctrine of eternal depravity has in all likelihood blighted us and condemned us to everlasting hellfire, condemned in the courts of his goodness before the first brick of this prison earth was laid. And for this we love him most of all.’
‘How does he feel about machines?’
‘The Bible is not clear on this point, but I will bare my back to my father’s chastening rod of birch later, and he mine, and thus God will be appeased.’
We were quiet for a while, each enjoying the simple loveliness of the Rheidol valley gliding past. It seemed to gain in splendour through the action of the train’s chuffing. A smile spread unbidden across my face, and the boy on seeing this assumed it was addressed to him and smiled in return. I felt touched.
‘So, are you going into farming when you grow up?’ I asked.
‘He hopes to become a forensic linguist,’ said the old man.
‘What’s that?’
‘The application of scientific techniques to evaluate the authenticity of documents based on information contained within the document,’ said the boy. ‘Linguistic and stylistic analysis, stylometrics . . . to help investigators in civil and criminal trials.’
‘Poison-pen letters,’ added his father, ‘and farewell letters from murder victims faked by the murderer; ransom demands . . . he can turn his hand to anything.’
‘Principally the assistance of prosecutors and attorneys pursuant to exposing the twisted workings of the
