. . There are plates and somewhere too the ants maybe, yes, there are always ants on such occasions. You don’t notice them at the time, but later when you take out your photograph . . . my advice to you is secrete it well in a drawer you never intend to open. Then one day it will ambush your heart with such a torrent of sweet remembrance that you will be slain by the exquisiteness.’ He took out a chequebook and scribbled me a cheque; he pushed it across the desk. I put the flat of my hand down on it. He drained the glass in one gulp, wished me luck and left without another word.
Chapter 20
Up beyond the summit of Constitution Hill, past the place where the Cliff Railway ends and past the wooden hut that serves teas, past the post embedded in concrete that holds the coin-operated telescope that ends as suddenly as life, there’s a track that leads across the cliffs to Clarach. And up there too is a small radar station, unmanned but with a small place for parking off a track that leads past the many farms that dot the hills overlooking Aberystwyth. The wind never stops blowing up there, even in the depths of summer, and the grass is yellow and spiked and long and never stops dancing. This was where Sauerkopp had parked his car one afternoon at the end of May.
The old wooden carriage of the Cliff Railway creaked and groaned. From under my feet the trundle of the cable vibrated through the wooden floor. Like the brass weights of a clock, the two cars swapped places six times a day. This was the heartbeat of Aberystwyth. The up car ticks, the down car tocks . . . The town fanned out in the rear window, tiny and remote; the respiration of the sea was suspended. The car shuddered and groaned, emitting a bellow like a cow at dusk to signal arrival at the summit. I clambered out onto the inclined platform and struggled into the wind. Up here you could discern the curvature of the earth so clearly; one big circle, a globe, a planet.
Sauerkopp was sitting at the wooden picnic table outside the cafe, drinking tea from a styrofoam cup. There was one there for me too. He was dressed in black: black suit, black tie, black silk handkerchief peeping out of his jacket pocket, black pigskin gloves and black shoes. He had a charcoal fedora with a black band on the table and wore a black flower in his buttonhole.
I sat down.
He looked up and smiled. ‘I bought a tea for the new mayor.’
I picked up the styrofoam cup slowly, twirled it between my palms and enjoyed the stinging heat.
‘So Jhoe is Iestyn,’ I said. ‘We finally find him and are still none the wiser because he can’t tell us anything apart from weather reports from Noo. Apparently the rain has stopped.’
Sauerkopp chuckled. ‘It looks like the rainy season is over, at least for another three hundred years.’
‘Yes, now would be a good time to visit.’
Sauerkopp stared out to sea; in the wind his eyes narrowed and glittered.
‘So, is it true?’ I asked. ‘The revelation that drove Mrs Bwlchgwallter nuts? Did Ercwleff violate Skweeple?’
He shrugged. ‘Who knows? Preseli left Ercwleff to watch over him and he got the silver suit off with a tin opener. Maybe he was just being friendly. Either way it looks like Skweeple didn’t survive the ordeal, so they threw him in the lake.’
‘So he never made it back to Noo.’
‘I don’t know that either. The aliens came back and resurrected Iestyn to ask him what happened. I don’t know if they found Skweeple again. Maybe they did: if they could resurrect Iestyn then I don’t see why they couldn’t do the same for their own kind. Unless too much time had passed. Maybe he’s still in the lake. Who knows?’
I bowed my head into the steamy warmth of the tea. ‘Calamity believes it all happened just like you say, but I’m not so sure.’
‘She’s a smart kid, smarter than you.’
‘Someone once told me the Aviary disseminates disinformation.’
‘It’s true.’
‘And one way they do that is forge the truth in order to discredit it. It seems to me,’ I said, ‘that if there really were such things as genuine contactees and the organisation you work for wanted to prevent anyone taking them seriously, if you wanted to somehow suppress the truth like Raspiwtin says . . .’ I paused.
He looked at me. ‘Go on.’
‘A good way to do that would be to spread stories like this. Maybe even arrange for the contactee to be hypnotised and claim later that he disgorged all manner of nonsense. After all, a person under hypnosis would have no way of knowing afterwards whether it was true or not.’
‘No way at all,’ said Sauerkopp.
‘You could claim he said anything you liked.’
‘Yes, it would be like someone claiming you talk in your sleep. How could you dispute it?’
‘The poor bloke coming out with a story like that would be mocked.’
‘What you describe is a classic disinformation campaign. But that’s not what happened with the farmer. What he described in the hypnosis with Mrs Bwlchgwallter really happened. And now, a quarter of a century later, they came back to see Iestyn.’
‘For old time’s sake, I suppose?’
‘Why not?’
We both sat hunched over, anchoring the styrofoam cups with our hands lest the wind tipped them over.
‘And yet,’ I said. ‘And yet . . .’
‘The “and yet” is always the interesting bit.’
‘If there was nothing to hide, why would you be here hiding it?’
Sauerkopp looked up and over my shoulder into the distance. ‘Out there somewhere in the far reaches of our universe there is a planet identical to ours in every detail except that the two men sitting here on the summit of Constitutional Hill this afternoon are drinking rum.’
I took out my hip flask and poured rum into the tea. ‘Where does Raspiwtin fit into all this?’
‘Officially he’s an ecclesiastical policeman from the monastery on Caldey Island, investigating the rumours about Skweeple. If he finds out it’s true that Ercwleff violated Skweeple, he’ll put a Zed Notice on the town. Have it razed and ploughed into the ground. But he’ll never find any evidence. Old Sauerkopp is too smart for him.’
‘What about unofficially? What is he really up to?’
‘What did he tell you?’
‘Lots of things. He told me about his time in Burma, and in the Vatican laundry, but mostly he said he was here to save humankind from making war. He said if he could prove there were aliens out there we would all stop killing each other. Was that all moonshine he was telling me?’
‘No, I think he’s serious.’
‘It sounds like quite a noble plan.’
‘It is. The trouble is, it wouldn’t work out the way he thinks. It would be a catastrophe. That’s what my job is all about. Keeping well-meaning fools like him in check.’
‘Why? If there are aliens, why are we not allowed to know?’
He looked at me as if the answer was obvious.
‘Why?’ I asked again.
He sighed. ‘Yes, I know. People think the revelation that we are being visited by aliens would be just so wonderful for Planet Earth; but the truth is, it would be a disaster. Do you own stock?’
‘Couple of share certificates in the Rock Factory left to me by my aunt. That’s about it.’
He forced a smile. ‘How much do you think they would be worth the day after the aliens landed at Cardiff Arms Park? Believe me, the reaction from the mob wouldn’t be pretty. I don’t care greatly for religion, but I’m not sure I’d want to wake up the day all those billions of people who had devoted their lives to it suddenly found out it wasn’t true. For a lot of them it is the bedrock of morality, the reason they don’t kill or steal or violate your daughter. Would you like to be around when they find out they’ve been duped? The ultimate sanction, the penalty you pay in the next life, is no longer valid? Goodbye governance, law and order, goodbye everything. We’ll all be finished, including you.’
‘Don’t humanity deserve to know the truth?’
