Calamity turned green at the thought.
‘Where is your aunt?’ I asked.
‘She’s gone home to Shawbury. She was very unhappy about me marrying Meici.’
‘Where is Meici now?’ I asked.
She wrung her hands. ‘I don’t know. For two days he was sick and all the while he was so upset about you; after you shook his hand like that he cried and said you were the best friend he had ever had. Yesterday he called the mayor and said he didn’t want to lie any more and send you to prison. The truth is, he doesn’t know who shot him, he didn’t see. The mayor was really angry. He said he would fire Meici from the human-cannonball job. So last night Meici drove up to see him; he took his human-cannonball uniform to hand back, he was going to quit. But he hasn’t come home.’
We put Chastity in the cab, squeezed in between me and Calamity. Each time I changed gear my hand rustled past the muddy silken cloth of her wedding dress. We turned the van round and headed for Capel Bangor. Before we could make the long cross-country trek to Ystumtuen we had to head south first, to Ystrad Meurig, where the mayor lived. It was probably the only time an ice-cream van ventured so far into those badlands.
The house stood at the interstice of dry-stone walls which held the hill in a net of rock. With its neat white- washed walls the place looked like a piece of cotton wool caught in a spider’s web. The hills had the dry, faded green that betokened a wiry coarseness of grass in the deep country, one that paralleled the lives of those who walked across it. It was a world where compassion was atrophied by the bitter wind that never seemed to stop keening. The lane to the farm narrowed to a single track and dropped beneath the level of the fields till it was almost a groove; on either side, spiky yellow grass scratched against the sides of the van, and above our head curious sheep looked down imperiously from behind wire fences. We drove over a cattle grid and onto the muddy expanse of cleared ground before the house. Away to the right at the foot of a stone wall Ercwleff was digging.
We made Chastity stay in the van, got out and walked over to him. He seemed not to have heard the van arrive and carried on digging, oblivious. A pile of clothes lay at his feet.
We coughed and he stopped and turned.
‘Hello Louie and Miss Calamity,’ he said. He looked pleased to see us.
‘Hi Ercwleff, are you having fun?’ I asked.
He grinned.
‘Not chopping desks up today?’
‘That was a good game, wasn’t it?’ he asked.
‘Yes, I really enjoyed it, didn’t I, Calamity?’
‘You sure did. I’m really sorry I missed that game.’
‘We’re playing a hiding game today,’ said Ercwleff.
‘Wow!’ said Calamity. ‘You’re so lucky. You’re burying clothes.’
Ercwleff made an enthusiastic hurr-hurr sound. He pushed the pile at his feet into the hole. As it tumbled in we saw that it was a human-cannonball outfit, together with a white, blood-stained shirt. ‘Meici had a nosebleed,’ said Ercwleff, ‘and ruined Preseli’s shirt.’
‘Where is Meici?’ I asked.
‘He’s sleeping. Preseli has taken him to the lake where we took the angel.’
‘Do you remember the angel, Ercwleff?’ asked Calamity. ‘It was a long time ago.’
‘Yes, Preseli brought him here and let me play with him . . . but he went to sleep.’
‘When do you expect your brother back?’ I asked.
‘I don’t know. It’s a long way to the lake. It’s up at Cader Idris. They are going to send a car for me later for the boxing match. We’ve got a special plan to win, but you mustn’t tell anyone because it’s a secret.’
‘Oh, we won’t,’ said Calamity, ‘we cross our hearts and hope to die, if we tell a lie.’
‘I mustn’t hit him. Preseli says if I don’t fight I will win. Do you want to play the hiding game?’
‘No, we . . . er . . . have to go now. We need to borrow the shirt.’
Ercwleff’s brow clouded. He looked confused.
‘Your brother asked us to fetch it,’ I said. ‘He changed his mind about the hiding game.’
‘Yes,’ said Calamity. ‘He’s got a new game now, he said the hiding game is boring. And he told us to get the shirt and give you some ice cream.’
At the phrase
‘Yes!’ said Calamity pointing. ‘It’s an ice-cream van.’
Ercwleff looked in wonder.
‘Have you seen one before?’
‘No.’
‘Listen!’ said Calamity. She darted off back to the van and climbed in the cab. A moment later the ice-cream tune started playing, tinny and anaemic, but still the only sound for miles around except the occasional bleating of sheep.
Ercwleff gasped. He looked at me; I nodded encouragement. He ran up to the van. I picked up the blood- stained shirt.
We left Chastity with Calamity’s auntie in Capel Bangor and drove up into the wilds of Ystumtuen. The hills, worn smooth by the wind, have the knobbled surface of dough and are smudged with conifers that were planted long ago to replace the forests denuded by the First World War. In their shadow lie the remains of lead mines abandoned after there was no longer any need for bullets and church roofs.
The grass coating of the hills is torn and scuffed, like old shoes, and the crofts and farmsteads are tenanted by sheep and brambles. The Mr Whippy song rang out across the hills, causing the sheep to temporarily abandon the urgent business of their lives. Even the birds stopped calling and listened for a while. We pulled into a passing place on the road overlooking the valley in which Iestyn’s house was situated and waited. Sheep bleated, the wind sighed, and Mr Whippy tinkled cheerily. And then the miracle happened. A man appeared from out of the woods, walking towards the van with a rapt expression as if indeed Calamity had been right; no man from the Denunciationists’ community could possibly withstand the lure of this symbol of forbidden technological fruit. It was Jhoe. He was Iestyn Probert. And I had never seen him look more grokked.
Ercwleff and Herod Jenkins walked round the ring, arms raised, wearing silk dressing gowns; a cassette player played the ‘Dambusters March’; the crowd roared. The ref drew the two fighters into the centre of the ring, holding each by the wrist. ‘Ladies and gentlemen of Aberystwyth,’ he began. ‘It behooves me now in accordance with the powers invested in me to present two new aspirants to that most sacred of offices – Mayor of Aberystwyth.’
The crowd cheered. I scanned the ranks of people, mostly the usual familiar faces of the burghers of Aberystwyth, in holiday mood. But interspersed among them were faces I did not recognise: hardened, tough- looking types from the farms in the hinterlands. They looked like hired men, hired for a purpose that almost certainly wasn’t good. Were they the mayor’s men? Here to cause trouble? They made me uneasy. The people on either side of them looked intimidated.
The ref continued his speech. ‘In performing this duty I am mindful of the centuries of tradition that weigh down upon me; countless generations of men before me have stood on this spot and presided over the sacred rite by which we elect our mayors.’ The crowd grew restless and called for the fight to begin. ‘Other lesser, meaner, towns,’ the ref continued, ‘prefer the lowly ballot box, but as you all know, a ballot is no measure of a man’s true worth, whereas no one can fake the test of mettle that derives from the crucible of the boxing ring.’
The contestants slipped off their dressing gowns. Herod Jenkins flexed his biceps and splayed his back to the cheering crowd. The ref recited the thesaurus: ‘All the way from Talybont, the tracksuited Torquemada, scourge of our school days and mocker of our manhood . . .’ Boos rang out and doughnuts rained down on the canvas. It all unfolded as it had done in my dream of the Giant’s Castle: ‘. . . the goofing, suet-souled, swede-faced,
The bell dinged and the fight began. Herod Jenkins stepped forward, punched Ercwleff on the nose. He didn’t follow up with a second blow, but stopped and looked puzzled. Why didn’t Ercwleff attempt to fight back? The pause lengthened, the crowd grew restless; slowly, Ercwleff turned his other cheek and presented it to his opponent. The crowd gasped, and a strange thing happened: men and women began to cross themselves. Whispers passed through the assembled ranks like a breeze through ears of corn. ‘He turned the other cheek!’ they said. ‘Holy
