to the grey moss-like growth on her upper lip.
'You know,' I said, 'I used to come here a lot as a kid.'
'Oh yes, we used to be very popular with the schools.'
'My favourite part', I added with exaggerated casualness, 'was the Cantref-y-Gwaelod section.'
Mrs Jones stopped chewing her doughnut and put it down on the plate. Her hand shook. 'I'm afraid', she said softly, 'that's not one of my specialities.'
'Still over by the section on two-headed calves is it?'
The trembling got worse. 'Y . . . Yes, I 'spect it is.'
'Perhaps we can walk over there, later.'
'I ... I ... I think it's closed'
'Oh what a pity, I've been thinking of doing some research; a sort of twentieth-century reassessment —'
Mrs Jones cut me off sharply. 'I'm sorry, I can't help you.'
'It wouldn't be any bother. Mostly theory. I'd be approaching the subject from a modern oceanographical perspective. I'd need the tide tables for the Dark Ages, of course —'
She put her hands to her ears and whined like a child.
'No, no, please stop, I don't know anything about Cantref-y-Gwaelod, really I don't.'
'What are you scared of?'
'Nothing, nothing ... I ... please, I have to get back.'
She stood up suddenly, the squeal of her stool making the whole room stop talking and look round. Then, lowering her voice to a harsh whisper, she hissed: 'Just fuck off, right?'
I grabbed her arm before she could escape, the dirty white wool coarse under my hand. 'Not until you tell me what you're hiding.' I tightened my grip on her bony arm and she winced in pain. Everyone in the room was watching in astonishment.
'Nothing!' she hissed. 'I'm not hiding anything. I know nothing about Cantref-y-Gwaelod.' Again she tried to struggle free, but I held on grimly.
'Who killed Brainbocs?' It was wild card thrown in to see if it had any effect on her. It did.
She gasped and cast an involuntary glance over to the fireplace by the door. I followed her gaze. There was a rectangle of bright paper above the mantelpiece where a picture which had been hanging a long time had recently been removed.
'You want me to end up like him? Like Mr Davies? Is that it? Is that what you want?'
'The old curator?'
'Yes!'
'Did he help Brainbocs with his essay?'
She whined and struggled like a cat caught in a trap.
'Where is he now? Mr Davies?'
'Just fuck off!'
My grip broke and Mrs Jones rushed through the tables, knocking drinks over as she went. Oblivious to the stares, I sat looking at the fireplace and the spot where Mr Davies's portrait used to hang.
* * *
The next day they re-opened the Ghost Train and Myfanwy rang to tell me she had two tickets. I met her outside the railway station, next to the sign saying 'What is the purpose of your journey to England?' There was something I wanted to ask her, but it was such a stupid question, I kept avoiding it. 'After Myfanwy's next scream,' I told myself. And then when she screamed, I put it off until the next. There was no shortage of screams; this was the only ghost train in the world with real ghosts. Before privatisation it had been the only ghost train operated by British Rail. It started life as an educational project by the Cardiganshire Heritage Foundation. A disused lead working had been turned into a theme ride depicting the history of lead mining in Cardiganshire. Narrow-gauge steam trains hauled holiday-makers and school-trippers up to the mine and then were exchanged for pit ponies which pulled the wagons through the galleries. It even won an award from UNESCO for responsible tourism, but then came the terrible accident. A wheel spun off and hit a pit prop bringing the roof down and killing a party of day-trippers from the Midlands. When the place re-opened two months later funny things started happening. The ponies whinnied eerily from their stables every night and in the morning they shied and refused to enter the mine. Strange sounds were heard and disembodied lights were seen floating inside the tunnels. Soon passenger numbers dwindled and it looked like the train had reached the end of the line. But then word began to spread and a new breed of passenger arrived: not people with an interest in industrial archaeology, but UFO-hunters, megalith lovers, spontaneous human combustion ghouls and lads on stag nights. And so was born the world's only genuine ghost train. In addition to the curtains of fluorescent sea weed, and plastic skeletons through which the electrically driven wagons now trundled, thrill-seekers could also look out for a woman carrying a head under her arm with peroxide blonde hair. Or a man asleep on a bench with a copy of the
Myfanwy screamed and buried her head on my chest as we swept round a corner and through a curtain of fluorescent sea weed. I wanted to see if she knew any reason why her cousin Evans should have a piece of tea cosy with a Mayan pattern on it. The train crashed out through the final gate and into the warm sunshine.
'Myfawny?'
'Mmmm?'
'I know this sounds silly, but did your cousin Evans have any interest in the Incas?'
'The who?'
'Or the Aztecs; or anything like that?'
She leaned her head against my chest and looked up, smiling. 'I'm so disappointed, we never saw the woman breast-feeding.'
'You screamed enough, anyway.'
'I know but that was at the fake ghosts.'
'If they were fake, why did you scream?'
The train ground slowly to a halt and the rest of the passengers started taking off the hard hats.
'They were fake screams.' She sat up and started unbuckling the safety belt. 'Next time you can take Pandy.'
I sighed. 'Look, will you stop trying to pair me up with your friends!'
'I'm not, but she wants to go, and she's too frightened as well.'
'What about the knife in her sock?'
She put her arm round my neck and pulled herself on to me. Hair pressed warmly against my face cutting off all the light and filling me with an overwhelming urge to sleep; I pushed her gently back and asked her again.
'Was he into the Aztecs?'
She pursed her lips in a pretence of thinking and then said: 'To tell the truth I don't think he listened to groups much.'
I dropped Myfanwy off at her flat overlooking Tan-y-Bwlch and drove uphill to Southgate and then turned left into the mountainous hinterland beyond. The sun was shining in Aberystwyth but as I climbed it clouded over until soon I was driving through a chilly fog, in a world of drystone walls and cattle grids. Frightened sheep clung to the banks on either side of the road, wondering desperately how they were going to get back into the fields from which they had somehow escaped. As the mist thickened, I drove through sad unenchanted forests of conifers planted in uniform rows by the Forestry Commission, occasionally passing sticks set in the fence, with rubber shovels to beat out fires. From time to time glimpses of Nant-y-moch reservoir glinted in staccato bursts through the trees. And then the trees stopped and I found myself at a crumbling, weed-filled church yard on the slopes overlooking the reservoir. The church where Marty lies buried. I parked and made my way through the crooked slate teeth of the graves.
It was never officially established that he had been consumptive. And so many well-meaning friends have since tried to assure me that he wasn't. But how would they know? Were they there that day in primary school when we had our BCG jabs? When Marty was so terrified of the needle that I took his place in return for a month's supply of Mars bars? Perhaps if he had lived in town things might have been different. But he lived here on this sunless northern hillside overlooking the reservoir. I looked down at the simple headstone and then let my eyes wander across to the placid gunmetal waters pent up behind Nant-y-moch dam. Marty once told me that there was
