the night club: hair wild and blowing freely in the wind, her gaze scanning the horizon for that sail. She flung herself into my arms and hugged me. We broke off and kissed, and then she pulled away and looked down.
‘When I found your caravan empty, I thought you were going to leave without saying goodbye.’
‘I was, but I changed my mind.’
‘Why not change it again and stay?’ I asked.
‘You know I can’t.’
‘Why?’
She looked at me and shook her head gently. ‘I’m going back to Cwmnewidion Isaf, to be with my people. I’m going to look after my dad.’
I stared into her eyes, trying to think of things to say.
‘I don’t fit in here in this town, Louie, I was just visiting. I’m a bit like Skweeple.’
‘Maybe you should stay a bit longer.’
‘I want to look after my dad. I’ve never had a dad.’
‘I could move to Cwmnewidion Isaf. Do they allow caravans?’
‘Only horse-drawn ones.’ She smiled.
‘I don’t want you to go.’
The smile faded. ‘You would never fit in among us Denunciationists.’
‘I could try. They allow stills. We could make gin.’
‘I wouldn’t want you to. It wouldn’t be you. A rabbit and a fish can fall in love, Louie. But where will they build a home?’
‘Couldn’t we build a dam, like beavers?’
‘They might turn us into hats.’
‘As long as we were the same hat, I would be happy.’
She shook her head, kissed me sadly and prepared to climb into the back of the Buick. She paused, and said, ‘I think it’s great that you’re the mayor now.’
I smiled. ‘It feels strange.’
‘You’ll get used to it. When is the human-cannonball flight?’
‘One day,’ I said. ‘One fine day.’
‘On that day I’ll come back.’ She climbed into the car and sat next to Jhoe.
Sauerkopp shook our hands and wished me well with the new job. He parted from us with the heavy heart of one who knows our paths will not cross again and feels regret for it, but knows too that there is no remedy because there are many things in this world that must be borne and cannot be helped. I put my arm round Calamity’s shoulder and drew her close to me as we watched the white-walled tyres grip the turf and the great car turn with regal ease. As it drove off, two faces peered through the small porthole of a back window and we watched until they shrank to dots and passed over the hill. Calamity looked up at me. ‘Please don’t be ingrokked about Miaow.’
I hugged her and told her how glad I was that, despite the truly terrifying odds thrown up by the universe, Calamity and I happened to be sharing the same planet, the same epoch and, best of all, the same office. And in a region of the solar system where the rain seldom lasts for more than a week. She pressed her face against me and spoke into the folds of my trenchcoat, saying how grokked she was that I was the new mayor. I laughed, and together we walked slowly off into the wind that never stops blowing.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank my agent Rachel, and Helen and Erica and the rest of the team at Bloomsbury.
A Note on the Author
Malcolm Pryce was born in the UK and has spent much of his life working and travelling abroad. He has been, at various times, a BMW assembly-line worker, a hotel washer-up, a deck hand on a yacht sailing the South Seas, an advertising copywriter and the world’s worst aluminium salesman. In 1998 he gave up his day job and booked a passage on a banana boat bound for South America in order to write
The Louie Knight Series
First published in Great Britain 2011
Copyright © Malcolm Pryce 2011
