‘If I can.’
‘I want you to meet my partner Calamity Jane, she’s only seventeen and four-fifths. She sent a fax to your organisation. Can you pretend you came because of the fax?’
He pondered for a second and a smile spread across his face. ‘Sent a fax to the Pinkertons, huh?’
‘Yes.’
‘She sounds like quite a bushy-tailed sort of kid.’
‘She’s a great kid. Sometimes she’s filled with so much enthusiasm I wonder she doesn’t explode.’
‘I used to be like that. Of course I’ll pretend. Came here as soon as we got the fax. If she’s looking to set up some sort of associate partnership, that would be just dandy. We Pinkertons have been looking for some representation in Aberystwyth for a while now.’
I had already begun to like Joe Winckelmann.
We picked up a video of the Butch Cassidy movie at a hire shop and drove out to Ponterwyd. I parked behind the caravan and left Joe Winckelmann in the car. I found Mrs Llantrisant where I had left her, lying on her bed watching a portable TV. It was a soap and she stared at it glassily as if the mini-dramas that are the staple of such programmes were an opiate for her troubled soul. She cast me a glance and said mechanically, ‘He’s not here, if you’re looking for Herod. He’s gone, for the carol concert.’
‘I came to see you. I’ve brought a video for you to watch.’
She scowled. ‘I never watch the things.’
‘You’ll enjoy this one. It features your grandmother, Etta Place.’
She looked thoughtful, the scowl melting softly at the mention of the name. ‘My mother left me a Bible with a photo inside, a picture of Etta and those two cowboys in New York.’
‘I’ve seen it.’
‘All through my childhood I wanted to know who those people in the picture were.’ She shuddered as a twinge of pain ran through her. ‘Ooh!’
‘Are you OK?’
‘Just a twinge. I get them from time to time.’ She reached up and touched her forehead. The red spot that had been there last time had opened into a sore. A pale orange excrescence dripped down.
‘It’s that woman, Tadpole’s mum. Don’t think I don’t know. And I know who’s put her up to it and all. That Dinorwic-Jones.’
I stood there helpless, wanting to scoff but rendered helpless by the evidence on Mrs Llantrisant’s brow.
‘I know you think it’s all superstitious nonsense, but I’ve been around a while longer than you and I know about these things.’
‘Have you had anything to eat today?’
‘No, there’s no point. Food won’t help me if there’s a hex on me.’
‘What would happen if I found the photo and took the pin out? Would that help?’
‘But how would you find it?’
‘I know where to look.’
She made a sour expression, the look of someone who hates to concede ground, even when it’s to her advantage. ‘Well, it might.’
‘Then you’ll need food to re-build your strength.’
I slipped the video into the tape player and switched it on. ‘Take a look at this while I drive to the village and get some hot food.’
I apologised to Joe Winckelmann, who was still sitting in the car, for taking so long. He waved it away. He had waited all his life for this, he said. What was an extra half an hour? I drove to town and managed to find a fish and chip shop open and returned about forty minutes later.
Mrs Llantrisant was sitting up, holding the remote-control like a sceptre and replaying the scene with the bicycles over and over again. Tears glistened on her drab white cheeks.
‘Oh, Mr Knight! Do you know, I’ve never ridden a bicycle. My, oh my! And Sundance . . . He’s so handsome . . . Who’d have thought it? My grandfather so good-looking he could have been a movie star.’
We ate our fish and chips and watched the movie to the end. Mrs Llantrisant’s hand moved rhythmically from the chips on her knee to her mouth, accompanied now and again by the other hand dabbing away the tears. Yet at the end when her grandfather runs out into the market place, into a hail of bullets, and stands immortalised in a freeze frame that turns into sepia and then black, the tears washed down unabated. I let her cry. Like sleep, it’s about the only thing that works.
She turned to me. ‘There was a time I would have been ashamed – born out of wedlock like that. All my life I’ve looked down on such people; but it’s funny, Mr Knight, today I see it differently. You know, I think I’m proud of them.’
‘I would be, too.’
‘You can tell Sundance loved her, can’t you?’
‘Yes, I’d say he loved her. He just didn’t know how to say it.’
Mrs Llantrisant nodded. ‘That’s right. She was too hasty, the silly girl. I guess you can’t see it when you’re nineteen or whatever she was. When it comes to love and things, you can’t see the wood for the trees; you get it all wrong. And yet at my age it all looks so obvious. When she tells him she’s thinking of going back home she doesn’t mean it, does she? You can tell she’s just aching with every ounce of strength in her little young heart for him to say, “No, you can’t! You mustn’t!” And what does he say? He says, “Oh, all right, that’s fine if that’s what you want to do.” But he doesn’t mean it, does he?’
‘No, I guess he doesn’t.’
‘Of course he doesn’t. He’s just another young fool who doesn’t understand what’s going on in his own heart. It’s the disease of youth, and by the time age brings the cure, it’s too late. He says, Go if you must, if that’s what you want to do; I won’t stand in your way. But what he means is, my life is nothing without you and if you go now I will die like a dog in a marketplace in an unknown town and strangers will spit on my corpse and throw rocks on my grave; and that will be my end; but I will never tell you these things because I love you. Even though I could never bring myself to use those words, you know I love you, and because of that I will never tell you what to do or where to go. If you want to go back to America I will let you, even though it will kill me. And the reason is this: all my life I have never been able to abide bars on a window or the feel of shackles on my flesh. The greatest gift I can give you is what I crave most, freedom. The stupid man. So typical. And so she doesn’t tell him she is carrying his child and she leaves. But instead of going back home like everyone says, she finds herself on a ship to Wales. Oh, Mr Knight, I’m quite overcome. What a beautiful film.’
There was a bottle of sherry on the side table and I fetched two teacups from the kitchenette and brought them over. I filled them to the brim and handed her one.
‘Happy Christmas, Mrs Llantrisant.’
‘And a Happy New Year. Don’t forget about the pin.’
‘I won’t.’
She drank the sherry in three greedy gulps and reached for the bottle. I passed my cup over.
‘Pity we don’t have any mince pies.’
‘There are some in the cupboard.’
I walked over to fetch them and she continued, ‘This reminds me of Christmas with Eichmann.’
She saw my expression of surprise and added hurriedly, ‘Of course, I didn’t know who he was then, did I? I’m not one of those Nazi sympathisers, if that’s what you think. I lost a good cousin in North Africa to Rommel. He sent me a picture of him and his mates frying eggs on a tank. How we laughed. They all died, though, those boys.’
‘Tell me about Eichmann.’
‘I knew him as Ricardo. Ever such a gent, he was. Just goes to show, doesn’t it? I never understood that thing with the Jews. We had one here once, the draper. Very respectable man.’
‘And you met him in the library?’
‘I was checking my family background. Of course, the names of Cassidy and Sundance didn’t mean anything to me. I suppose you could say he picked me up. We had a tryst. I can remember every detail of it. It was a cheap hotel on the Plaza de la Constitucion, across from the railway station. It was a corner room on the top floor with a rickety old bed with broken springs and a picture of the Madonna hanging over the bed. All through the night as he made love to me there were flashes like artillery shells from the trams passing outside the window, and I could hear
