real beauty when she is — four stabilisers, two hundred cabins with en suite, global positioning system and four cappuccino machines.'
'And all made out of gopher wood, I suppose.'
'Gopher wood and South American hardwoods from sustainable plantations. And modern high-performance plastics for below the water line.'
'Where's the ship?'
'Up at the school; special woodwork project:'
'And you're selling tickets for it.'
'Me and the other travel agents.'
'Are you going?'
Geraint faltered. 'Er . . . not immediately! Someone has to mind the shop.' He burst out laughing. 'Hey don't be going on at me! I get ten per cent on each ticket, so where's the harm? At worst they'll have a nice day out on Lovespoon's new boat. Come on. I've just put the kettle on.'
Outside the shop I took out the slip of paper Calamity had given me and looked at the address. Clarach. Four miles out of town and I could make a detour past the school on the way. It was lunch break when I arrived but though the playgrounds were full of children the games field was deserted. It was one of those numerous paradoxes that govern school life. Vast stretches of green fields which the municipality had set aside for play were out of bounds during playtime. Armed with the knowledge from Geraint I could see now that the new building, which I had initially thought resembled an upturned beetle, did indeed look like the beginnings of a ship. An Ark. Brainbocs, the finest schoolboy scholar of the century, had written an essay about the lost kingdom of Cantref-y-Gwaelod. Now his teacher Lovespoon was masterminding a scheme to reclaim the land and sail there in an Ark. What did it all mean? And, more to the point, how on earth were they going to get the boat to the sea? It was five miles away.
*
I found Dai Brainbocs's Mam in her cottage overlooking Clarach. It was the side which faced north and, permanently shielded from the sun, lived in sodden perma-gloom like the homeland of the Snow Queen. I parked my Wolsely Hornet in a lay-by set aside for undiscriminating picnickers and walked along the path cut into the side of the hill. The leaves underfoot squelched and the air had the cloying dampness of a tropical rainforest. The stones of the mouldering cottage had a cheesy consistency and water dripped from the eaves; where the drops fell there were malevolent looking white flowers that probably didn't grow anywhere else in Britain outside Kew Botanical Gardens. I knocked and called out, but getting no answer I pushed the door and went in.
Ma Brainbocs sat moving rhythmically back and forth on a rocking chair in the kitchen. She didn't see me, her head had fallen forward on to her chest and as she rocked she intoned the words 'all gone, all gone' softly to herself. I stood in the kitchen doorway and watched, aware as I did of a dark rheumatic chill seeping insistently up my legs from the floor.
'All gone,' she moaned, 'all gone, my lovely boy.'
'Mrs Brainbocs?'
'All gone, all gone.'
I placed a hand gently on her shoulder and she looked up with unfocused eyes.
'All gone, my boy, all gone.'
'Yes,' I said. 'He's gone. I've come to talk to you about him, about David.'
A gleam of comprehension appeared in the waters of her eyes and the mauve iris of her mouth slowly opened like a sea anemone's vagina.
'Dai?'
I nodded.
'He's gone.'
'Yes.'
'They took him.'
I knelt down and looked into her eyes.
'Who took him, Mrs Brainbocs?'
'That teacher.'
'Lovespoon?'
'Yes!'
'Do you know why?'
She looked at me now, her eyes slightly narrowing and whispered, 'Because of what he wrote.'
'About Cantref-y-Gwaelod?'
There was no answer and for a while there was silence in the room except for the sound of her hoarse rasping breath. I looked around. There was not much: a spinning wheel; a festering mattress in the corner; empty sherry bottles. I walked over to the stove to make her a cup of tea. There was no food in the house; instead I picked up a baked beans tin from the floor and washed it out under the tap, then I filled it with rum from my hip flask.
'This will do you good,' I said, holding it under her nose.
Two cold trembling hands gripped mine and drew the tin upwards. As the fiery spirit flowed inside her, she began to speak again with renewed strength.
'It was the Druids.'
'They took your boy?'
'Killed him.'
'Are you sure?'
She nodded and looked up at me, with a new determination.
'Of course I'm sure.'
'What was the essay about, Mrs Brainbocs? Can you remember?'
Her eyes dropped and focused on the hip flask in my coat pocket. I refilled the tin and handed it to her. She snatched at it and drank too greedily. A cough erupted from her throat and the pale warm liquor mixed with her saliva and dribbled down her bearded chin. I patted her on the back as if she were a baby.
'Please try and remember!'
'I don't know,' she said when the coughing subsided, 'I told the police everything I know.'
'Did he make a copy of it?'
This time she looked directly me with the fire of certainty burning in her eyes. 'Of course he did. Boy always did that. Always made a copy. 'Case anything happened.'
'Do you know where he put the copy?'
'Yes.'
My heart leaped. 'Yes!? Where?'
She grabbed my forearm and pressed weakly as if confiding her last secret. 'He hid it in a well-known beauty spot.'
'Well-known beauty spot?'
'Yes.'
'Which one?'
She shook her head. 'I don't know. He didn't say.' She reached out again for the baked beans tin. I refilled it but this time held it out of her reach.
'Which one?'
She shook her head back and forth like a frisky horse.
'I don't know. I don't know . . . !'
I poured some of the rum on to the floor and she gasped in horror.
'No ... no ... please don't!'
'Which beauty spot, Mrs Brainbocs?'
Fear crept into her eyes. 'Please give me a drink. Please!'
I turned the rum flask upside down. The liquid started to gush out. She jerked herself forward and the words tumbled out as she said anything that might stop me wasting the precious rum.
'I don't know. He wouldn't tell me. He couldn't. Boy was so excited he could hardly talk. Wouldn't hardly eat. Then he went away for a whole week. That's when he met her, y'see. That's how he knew for sure. Wouldn't eat at
