treat the lads to a visit from a real angel?’
‘You mean, you think he actually had a girl ride a horse through the camp pretending to be an angel?’
Eeyore nodded. ‘Why not? Soldiers are notoriously superstitious. It wouldn’t be difficult to fool them. A bit of fancy dress, moonlight, a girl on a horse.’ He paused and said softly, ‘I’m glad you never had to go off to war, son.’
Caleb was asleep on a pile of empty liquor bottles. Tiresias was running in his wheel but stopped and stared when I walked in. It was his big day, but he didn’t know it yet. Caleb snored. I shoved him with my foot and he rolled off the bottles; he snored some more. I glanced around the room and my eyes alighted on a hammer and some nails left behind by the council workmen who had boarded the place up. I picked them up and began nailing Caleb to the floor. Not through the flesh, because I didn’t want to wake him, but through the fabric of his clothes. I’d seen this done before and knew that after a few nails it was impossible to get up without assistance. I put five nails into the sleeve of the right arm and moved over to the left.
He woke and blinked as he tried to work out what was happening. He tried to move but his right arm was pinned and I was sitting on his left, nailing it into the floor. He raised his legs and kicked but you need good abdominal muscles to keep that up and you don’t get them from a lifetime watching laughing policemen.
‘What on earth are you doing?’ he said.
‘I’m nailing you to the floor.’
‘I can see that. What I mean is, why are you nailing me to the floor?’
‘I always do this to people who lie to me.’
‘Have I lied to you?’
‘You told me your name was Eifion.’
‘It is.’
‘That’s not what I hear. I hear your name is Caleb Penpegws.’
‘Whoever told you that is a liar.’
‘Well, that’s possible. Everyone is a liar in this town; it gets on my nerves sometimes.’
‘Why are you here?’
‘To wish you a happy Christmas.’
‘Sod off.’
‘Yes, I’d like to. I really would. There’s nothing I’d like more than to walk out of your sty and back down the Prom to my partner, Calamity, who I love dearly and who I have missed terribly. And then to take her and maybe that Joe guy, because I like him too, even though we’ve only just met, take them both down to the harbour to my father’s house and eat some mince pies and, you know, generally wassail among friends. While Eeyore poured the drinks I would phone Myfanwy and tell her to come and join us because there’s no one in all the world I would rather be with right now than her. But alas! Here I am standing wet and cold in your filthy room and really not happy at all.’
I finished the left arm and moved on to the feet. After five minutes he was pinned down like Gulliver in Lilliput.
‘Why don’t you go and join them all, then? Leave me in peace?’
‘Because of all the people who will be spending miserable Christmases this year on account of me. A nice family I met out near Talybont, for example. The guy there made rocking chairs for a living and now he’s dead. Why is he dead? No reason that I can see apart from the fact that his name went up on my board. And there was this Absalom guy, lying dead, brutally mutilated, the Chinese meal still undigested in his stomach. Why is he dead? Someone knows, but I’m damned if I do. And there was a girl who answered an ad in the paper, a girl called Emily, a fan of Kierkegaard. I never met her because she’s dead, too. I never met her, but she was probably a good kid. Studious and sober. I mean, when was the last time you met a trouble-maker who read Kierkegaard? Then there was poor Miss Evangeline. And so it goes on. The reason I am here and not enjoying the company of friends is all these dead people are dead because of something to do with me and a guy called Hoffmann; and something terrible that happened out in Patagonia, something so awful it made the chaplain lose his wits.’
‘I don’t know anything about nothing.’
‘You mean you don’t know nothing about anything. If that’s true the next half-hour is going to be very painful for you.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘The best way to find out if someone’s telling the truth is to hurt them very badly and see if they stick to their story. Never fails.’
‘What are you going to do?’
‘Don’t be so impatient. you’ll find out soon enough.’
‘Go and fuck yourself.’
I laughed. ‘You know, for a man nailed to the floor you’ve got a lot of chutzpah.’
There was a Pyrex salad bowl lying in the corner of the room. I’d seen it the first time I came and now as I looked at it a plan took shape in my mind. I ripped open Caleb’s shirt and exposed a belly of quivering lard. Then I picked up the salad bowl and up-ended it, placing it firmly on his belly. The fat pressed upwards and sealed the bowl. I fetched some firelighters. Caleb followed me with his eyes.
‘Watch closely, now, you’re going to enjoy this.’ I opened the door to Tiresias’s cage and picked him up by the tail.
‘What are you doing? You leave Tiresias alone.’
I lifted the salad bowl and popped the mouse under it then remade the seal. The mouse ran round in frantic circles in his new glass prison, occasionally jumping up and testing the glass walls with his paws.
‘What are you doing?’
‘You’re a Classics scholar, you should know this one. I think the Romans invented it.’
I lit the firelighter and held it aloft, a waxy brick of greasy white chemicals which burned with a fierce but almost invisible flame. I put it on top of the dish. I took another firelighter and added it to the pyre. I rolled up my sleeve and placed my elbow on the Pyrex dish to test the temperature. It was starting to get hot in there for poor old Tiresias.
‘I read about it somewhere so I can’t absolutely guarantee it will work, but theoretically what is supposed to happen is this: the mouse starts to get hot and goes a bit nuts and then he starts to get very hot and tries to escape. And the only way out he can see is to burrow through the floor. Normally that’s not too great a problem, but, as you will be aware, the floor in this case is your stomach.’
‘You’re mad. Tiresias would never do that.’
‘You know him better than I do, but I wouldn’t be too sure of his loyalty. Rodents can be very fickle. Rats, especially, who are but distant cousins to the mouse, are notorious turncoats when their life is threatened. They sail with you in the hold all the way from Byzantium; eat your grain and drink your water; and then the first sniff of smoke they’re off down the gangplank.’
Caleb leaned forward and watched in horrified fascination. ‘He’ll never do it.’
‘I’ve got ten quid that says he does.’
‘He loves me.’
‘Each mouse kills the thing he loves.’
Caleb glared.
‘Anyway,’ I continued, ‘you mustn’t take it personally. Instinct drives him to it. It shouldn’t be interpreted as a waning of his love.’
We watched the mouse scurrying around frantically, trying to get away from the heat. Then he turned his attention to Caleb’s belly. Caleb screamed. Who wouldn’t? Mice have got sharp claws and sharp little teeth and Tiresios was gnawing Caleb’s belly, his tiny muzzle already frothing pink with blood.
‘Apparently they can gnaw through steel.’
Caleb yelled again.
It turned my stomach just watching, but I forced myself to appear unconcerned. A picture of nonchalance.
‘What do you want to know?’ he cried.
‘What’s the terrible thing that drove the priest mad?’
‘I can’t say.’
