course they were not going without at all, some other poor wretch was. Since the food in the camps was never more than barely enough to keep a man alive, then it follows that the extra food they fed me must have led to the death of another man, and his death still weighs heavily on my conscience. But I loved these two men deeply because they fed me, which is the greatest act of love you can show to a man in the camps. They also used their power to get me an easy job as a clerk in the office, and that too meant the difference between life and death. If it was not for those two criminals I would surely have perished that first winter. I loved them, for how could I have known what they had in store for me? How could I have known that on the day of my arrival in the camp Ivan won me in a card game?
‘As winter approached its end they informed me they had an escape plan and I was invited to go along. Even then I was too ignorant to understand their scheme, to understand what evil, what horror these men had planned in their wicked hearts. We climbed over the wire in May at the first hint of spring. Escape was virtually impossible and successful escape, almost unknown. It is so far – thousands of square miles of empty tundra where even the wolves struggle to survive. There is no food and finding fuel is difficult. The local people if they catch you will turn you in. In the past it was not so; in the time of the Czars, there was a tradition that they would leave milk and bread out on the doorstep overnight to help escaping prisoners, because Siberia has always been the land of exile. But under Stalin those who aided or gave you succour would end up in a camp themselves; even for failing to report having seen you was enough to get them a ten-year stretch. The task was truly hopeless. But some there were who preferred to die trying rather than serve their twenty-five years of hell. Many were the times during that journey when it seemed that Death had finally come for me and each time some miracle intervention by my two companions stepped in to snatch me from the edge of the precipice. Each time they saved me, my love for them grew deeper. We crossed a frozen river and the ice cracked beneath us and I fell in; those two men, those two evil merciless murderers, both risked their lives to save mine. Then later we were attacked by wolves and this time I was surely done for, but my two friends fought them off with fire. Another time we were attacked by a bear and they drove the bear off with rocks. Thus in the company of these two scoundrels I crossed the vast frozen wastes of that land and also traversed the inner continent of the human heart. There I discovered the darkest wisdom ever to be found in such a vessel, far down in the deepest, dimmest cistern of the heart where only lunatics visit. I began that spring the journey that would bring me here to the Promenade in Aberystwyth, I discovered the terrible wisdom and became the most celebrated, most famous cartographer of the human heart, second only to the woman whose fate haunted me the whole time, the mother forced to abandon her suckling child and entrain for Siberia.’ His voice acquired a croak and we could tell without looking that his face was creased with pain. ‘Perhaps I shall not finish this story tonight.’
Ffanci put her arm round him and reassured him. We left the shelter and walked slowly along the Prom, taking turns to drink from the bottle. At the Pier Vanya suggested we go dancing. I expected the doorman at the Pier to create difficulties with regard to Ffanci but it appeared that Uncle Vanya had already befriended this man during his short stay in town. ‘He is a great bear of a man,’ explained Uncle Vanya, ‘and so am I. We have an understanding.’ We walked down the carpeted corridor with windows overlooking the blackness of the sea, towards the dark smoky cavern at the end. Disco balls twirled and threw flashes of light on to the corners and niches where couples hid. A man in a penguin suit holding a small flashlight showed us to a table near the back. The tables were set in a circle around an empty dance floor; it was not yet midnight, still early. Some druid wise guys were seated near the front with young girls eager to make an impression sharing their table. Here and there, dotted around, there were members of the cast of
I took Uncle Vanya aside and suggested it might be kinder not to bring up the reason for his being in Aberystwyth, about the quest. He agreed and went to the floor to dance alone, completely oblivious to the impression he made. Ffanci ordered a brandy and Coke and said, ‘There used to be proper dancing when I was young. Waltzing and things.’
‘I hear you used to be quite a famous singer.’
‘Oh yes, back in the forties. Skegness, Scarborough, Weston-super-Mare, I did them all, all the lovely old piers, the lovely old songs . . .’ She began to sing in a frail soft descant:
It’s a lovely day tomorrow
Tomorrow is a lovely day
Come and feast your tear-dimmed eyes
On tomorrow’s clear blue skies . . .
The words faded out.
I said, ‘After that you became the schoolteacher?’
‘It was just a little school I ran for a while . . . all the children, I loved them all. But after Gethsemane was . . . after she went away, they stopped coming to my school. I had to close. Then I went on my travels. When it rains I wonder if she is getting wet. When I’m cold I wonder if she is cold too. When I buy new shoes I wonder what sort of shoes she wears. Sometimes I get a new dress from the charity shop and I wonder what sort of pretty dresses she likes to wear.’ She turned to look at me. ‘I’ve spoken to Llunos. The girl they found by the lake wasn’t Gethsemane, it was an actress. Some students paid her as part of a rag stunt.’
‘That was a wicked thing to do,’ I said.
Ffanci made a half smile that seemed to dismiss the significance of the event when set against the broader canvas of her life. ‘I suppose they thought it was funny . . . How could they have known what I . . . They wouldn’t know. They are so young.’
A waiter brought two more drinks and Ffanci moved her hand holding her drink in time to the music with the simple side-to-side movement of a puppet.
‘Is it true you and your sister were courted by the same man?’
‘It wasn’t . . . Alfred wasn’t like that, I don’t care if he was just a balloon-folder, he had dignity. All the girls were sweet on him. Including my sister, but he never requited it, that was just her jealous imaginings. He used to drive the tram for a while, when balloon-folding times were lean. I know what they say, that I . . . you know . . . when I fell pregnant, those gossips said I did it on purpose to trap him. It’s not true. I would never have dreamed of doing such a terrible thing, it just happened the normal way these things do. He loved me, you see. That’s what my sister could never forgive. I don’t blame her for that, we’re all human and jealousy is as human an emotion as love in a way, isn’t it? You can’t stop yourself sometimes, I know that. But you have to make the best of it, don’t you? We all do. Why she had to go and marry that Witchfinder, I really don’t know. It’s not like she didn’t have suitors. And she had made it quite plain she couldn’t abide the chap. Then she goes and does that. It’s almost as if she did it to spite me, to punish me the only way she could, by punishing herself.’
A body came between Ffanci and the glittering ceiling lights and a shadow passed over her face. I looked up. It was Arianwen. I stood up, she stepped forward and kissed me on the cheek. She whispered something into my ear but I couldn’t hear what she said in the noise. I bent down over Ffanci Llangollen and pointed to Vanya. ‘That man there is my client,’ I said. ‘You can ask him about Gethsemane. I wasn’t going to tell you; I wanted to protect you, but I realise I don’t have the right.’
Arianwen and I left by the exit at the back and emerged on to the iron walkway that led out to sea and ended in an iron precipice where the end of the Pier had long ago been blown away. Flashing coloured bulbs lit up her face and cast it again into darkness.
‘You are so amazing,’ she said. ‘You returned the tape and the stamps.’
‘Think nothing of it.’
‘Wasn’t it dangerous? Meici Jones must be in with some bad people.’
‘It wasn’t dangerous.’
‘He’s been following me. Or at least I think it’s him. Someone is anyway.’
There was silence for a while except for the sigh of the surf on the rocks twenty feet below us. We stood separated and joined by an unresolved tension.
‘Why don’t you like me?’ she said.
‘What makes you think I don’t?’
‘You’re not interested, I can tell. They tell me you used to go out with Myfanwy.’
