Singing the Sadness

‘Jee-um?’ said Joe. ‘Sorry, don’t know Welsh unless it’s in a song.’

‘No,’ she said, laughing. ‘Gee Em. General Motors. Little local joke. Someone in the States once said, what’s good for General Motors is good for the country. Well, there’s some round here look at things that way too, what’s good for them is good for the rest of us. Don’t know who started GM, but it stuck.’

‘So who are they?’ asked Joe.

‘Councillors, Chamber of Commerce, Freemasons, top-cops, the usual. They look after themselves and we look after their tail-lights. But none of this is your concern, Mr Sixsmith. Day after tomorrow, you’ll be back over the border, safe and sound. Will you have some more? If not, I’d better get on. Lots to do, what with your lot and the reception …’

‘Reception? What’s that?’ asked Joe, noticing with surprise that the scone plate was empty. He was tempted to take up her offer of more, but virtuously decided against it.

‘Tomorrow night, in the college assembly hall. Haven’t you read your welcome pack? No, maybe you’ve been otherwise engaged. It’s a get-together for everyone concerned in the Choir Festival. Better to have it after everyone’s settled in and got the opening nerves out of the way, says Mr Lewis. Keep everyone interested and on their toes. Keeping me on my toes, that’s for sure.’

‘I bet. Sorry to have held you up. That was really great,’ said Joe.

He stood up and headed for the door. Except there were three of them and he couldn’t recall which he’d come in by. Not good for a trained PI. Well, self-trained.

He chose one confidently and opened it. He found he was looking into a small windowless room occupied by a chair and a bank of four TV monitors.

‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘Enjoy television, do you?’

‘What? Oh, them. It’s the security,’ she said scornfully. ‘Waste of money, I think, but I wasn’t asked, was I? Not my money, anyway.’

‘Bet it was you had to do the clearing up after the workmen though,’ said Joe. ‘And keep them topped up with tea and stuff. Worth spinning a job out an extra week for them scones of yours.’

She smiled and said, ‘You trying to get on the right side of me, Mr Sixsmith? Well, you’re succeeding. But fair do’s to Mr Lewis, he had Electricity Sample do the job while we were on holiday a few years back. That’s right, Barmouth, where else? Everything done and tidied when we came back. At first I hated the idea of those cameras looking at me as I went round the school but I don’t notice them now. Mr Lewis said it was a good selling point to parents, knowing their kids were being watched over all the time. Could be right. Not that Williams bothers checking the screens that much, and if he did see an intruder, he’d probably send me or Bron to check him out!’

Joe laughed and said, ‘Bet you’d sort him out too. Thanks again.’

He reached for another door handle.

‘Want to get back into the college, do you?’ said Mrs Williams.

Joe had made another wrong choice. Faced with only one remaining door, he finally made it into the rear courtyard formed by the college’s two main wings.

He spotted Dai Williams at the corner of the left wing, in what looked like lively debate with a youth of about eighteen or nineteen. They stopped talking as Joe approached, then the young man, who was slim to the point of emaciation and had a pale poet’s face in a net of fine black hair, turned and moved away at a pace just short of running.

‘Dai, your wife’s a treasure,’ said Joe. ‘That boy looks like he could use some of her tender loving cooking.’

‘Young Wain? Don’t feed you up over at the Lady House, that’s for sure.’

‘He lives at the Lady House?’ said Joe, concerned at the implications for his dinner.

‘Well, he would, being their son. Got a damn sight better fed when he was with the other boys being looked after by my missus, I tell you.’

And now Joe recalled Mrs Williams’s knowing smile when he’d refused her offer of seconds.

‘So he went to the college, did he?’

‘For a bit, till his ma sent him off to one of those posh English places where they train you up to rule the working classes. Lewis said it wouldn’t look good running a school and not letting your own boy be educated there, but he didn’t object, not when it was her money, not his, paying the bills.’

‘Help them with their finances, do you?’ enquired Joe.

Williams showed his home-grown teeth in a grin and said, ‘Could say that. For certain I know how much it hurts Mr Lewis to part with money, believe me. Very close relationship we have. Feudal, I mean. Master and servant. Doesn’t fancy any closer relationship between our families though.’

He cocked his head on one side as though inviting Joe to work this out.

Joe worked it out.

‘His son and your girl, you mean?’

‘Sharp,’ said Williams approvingly. ‘Yes, young Wain was sniffing around there a while back. Mrs Williams got upset, like she was leading him on. Took them both by surprise, I think, when I made it clear last thing I wanted was any child of mine getting mixed up with Wain. I sent the boy away with a flea in his ear and promised him a boot up the arse if he bothered Bron again. Don’t think the High Master liked the way I talked, but seeing as we were in total agreement for once, he didn’t complain.’

Joe, who wondered how much real understanding of his daughter the caretaker had, said, ‘Ever think of moving on?’

‘Why should I?’ demanded Williams sharply.

‘Well, all this hassle, you don’t seem crazy about the Lewis family, and this is all right for an afternoon out’ – he made a gesture which comprehended all the visible landscape in this – ‘but it’s not what you’d call lively, is it?’

‘My missus been saying something, has she?’ said Williams. ‘Or our Bron? Oh yes, they’d like the bright lights and the big shops, but me, I’m all for the quiet country life, see, so long as I’m head of the family, this is where we stay. Anyway, what’s it to you?’

‘Nothing,’ said Joe. ‘Just chatting. None of my business. Sorry.’

‘No, that’s all right,’ said the man magnanimously. ‘I like a good natter. You ask all the questions you like, Joe.’

Remember, a Private Eye is also a Private Ear, said Endo Venera, Joe’s American guru. Never miss a chance to get people talking. You never know when it will come in useful.

He said, ‘So what’s this Wain do now?’

‘Bloody student, what else? Went off to America after he finished at school, working holiday they called it, more holiday than work if I know him, then back to some English university, Manchester, is it? Welsh university not good enough for him. He’ll end up a bloody Englishman. Started already. Few months over there and he’s back here telling us how to do things, just the way those bastards have always done. Useless load of wankers, the whole bleeding race of them. Best argument in favour of ethnic cleansing there’s ever been.’

Joe was momentarily knocked back by what felt like a Pearl Harbor attack out of a clear blue sky. Then it dawned on him that Williams was speaking to him as one member of a disadvantaged ethnic group to another. He thought of pointing out that the only disadvantaged group he belonged to was Luton Town Supporters’ Club, but decided against it. There were interesting tribal relationships here he’d like to find out about before he declared an interest.

‘So how does Mr Lewis take all this? I mean, he’s Welsh, isn’t he?’

‘Cardiff Welsh,’ said Williams dismissively. ‘Learnt the language from books and now you’d think he was descended from Cadwalader. Hates it when he hears Wain called Wain.’

Joe considered this for a moment but it was beyond him.

‘Why? When it’s his given name?’ he asked.

Williams wiped his nose on the back of his hand and laughed snuffily.

‘Owain’s his given name. Like in Owain Glyn Dŵr, see? But the boy started calling himself Wain soon as he got old enough to see what a prat his da was. Gets right up Lewis’s nose, I tell you. Best not to take notice, I say, but he’s not easy-going like me. You got kids, Joe?’

‘Er, no.’

‘Wise man. Meant to bring joy, they say, but look around you, what do you see with parents and kids? Lot more sadness than joy, I tell you. Oh, yes, sadness whichever way you look.’

He’s going to start singing, It’s quarter to three and there’s nobody in this bar but you and me, Joe, any moment, thought Joe. He’d heard the Welsh were a melancholic race but this was getting real heavy for such a bright sunny day.

Time to lighten things up.

‘Sadness, eh? Few nights in the sickbay with your wife would soon sort that out.’

It struck him as he spoke that there was some slight ambiguity here. He’d certainly caught Williams’s attention.

‘What’s that?’ he demanded.

‘No, just meant that she acts as matron, doesn’t she? And you talking of sadness made me think of something I just saw, some kid called Sillcroft, I think it was …’

Now all traces of melancholy had vanished from the caretaker’s face to be replaced by cold menace.

‘You some kind of reporter, Joe? You here sniffing around for a story?’

‘No!’ denied Joe indignantly. ‘Just saw this kid’s name scratched on the sickbay locker, and it said sadness alongside it, and I thought that with Mrs Williams taking care of him, and her cooking and all, that would soon cheer up most kids I know.’

Being transparently honest wasn’t much help when you wanted to deceive but when you wanted to persuade someone you were telling the truth, it came in real handy.

Williams’s face cleared.

‘Sorry, Joe. It was just that … well, never mind. Nothing to bother yourself about. Tell you what, fancy a drink tonight? I know a lot of the boys down the Goat and Axle would like to make your acquaintance. If you feel up to it, that is.’

It would have been easy to plead weakness or a prior engagement, but when a man’s trying to make amends, it’s a pity to turn him down.

‘Quick one early on, maybe. I need to be back …’

‘To get yourself an early night. Point taken. Suits nicely. We keep country hours round here, early to bed, early to rise. I’ll take you down about five thirty, then. Now I’d better get some work done. Never know who’s watching, do you?’

He glanced sideways towards a distant copse of trees with a house behind them. The Lady House?

‘Mr Lewis, you mean?’

‘That’s right, Joe. Don’t want the High Master on my back, do I?’

The idea seemed to put him in a good humour and he went off chuckling.

Joe watched him go, then set out himself in the opposite direction to ponder these matters. But not for too long. He was temperamentally unsuited to pondering for more than a few minutes at a time. If a panful of puzzles didn’t come to the boil quickly, best thing to do was stop watching it and leave it to get on under its own steam.

He turned his attention to more personal strategies. Now he’d accepted two invitations out, his picture of Beryl returning from the village to find him lying pale and interesting on his sickbed was fading fast. Even if he’d been the kind of lowlife who could play on a woman’s tender feelings to get his wicked way, then glance at his watch and say, ‘Oh, sorry, gotta run, they’re expecting me down the boozer then I’m going on to dinner,’ he doubted if he could have got away without a lot more fire damage.

This needed thinking about. Also he was beginning to feel quite knackered. As horizontal was his best thinking position as well as being therapeutically attractive, he returned to the sickbay and lay on his bed to think about it.

It was here that Beryl found him a few hours later, fast asleep, looking pale and interesting. She lay down beside him and woke him with a kiss.

‘Oh, shoot,’ said Joe when he realized what was happening.

‘Shoot yourself,’ said Beryl. ‘Don’t you know it’s bad manners to sound disappointed when a girl kisses you? And what are you doing with your clothes on?’

‘Soon get them off,’ said Joe hopefully.

‘No, thanks. You’re well enough to put your clothes on, you’re well enough to keep them on,’ said Beryl rolling off the bed. ‘So what have you been up to?’

He told her, giving a pretty full account, except it didn’t seem worth mentioning Bron’s massage.

‘Don’t know why I bother with you, Joe,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘You fool us all into thinking you’re sick, then you pack your social calendar fuller than Fergie’s.’

‘It just sort of happened,’ he said. ‘Sorry.’

Beryl laughed a deep throaty laugh which ran over a man’s libido like a hot tongue.

‘Nothing to apologize to me for,’ she said. ‘I’m just glad you’re feeling so much better. Not sure if Mirabelle will see it that way, though.’

‘So how was your day?’ asked Joe.

‘Interesting. We were greeted by the head of the Festival Organizing Committee, the Reverend David Davies …’ She smiled at something.

Joe said, ‘What?’

Beryl said, ‘They call him Dai Bard ‘cos it seems he writes poetry and he won the crown at some eisteddfod. Only the young ones thought of him when that Bruce Willis film Die Hard came out way back and they started calling him Bruce the Juice ‘cos he likes the old claret. They got a good sense of humour, this lot, if you listen closely.’

‘I’d laugh only it hurts,’ said Joe with uncharacteristic sourness which he immediately regretted. ‘Sorry. Only there hasn’t been a lot to laugh at since we crossed the border. So he’s a bundle of fun, is he, this Dai Bard? Talks in limericks, maybe?’

‘Well, no,’ admitted Beryl. ‘Certainly talks a lot, but doesn’t look like he’s having fun. In fact, he looks more like Hermann Goering having to tell Hitler the war’s not going so well.’

Joe pondered this. Beryl could be pretty round-the-houses sometimes.

‘Worried?’ he concluded.

‘You got it. He kept on being interrupted to go into a huddle with some other committee member. I got the feeling there’s a lot of crisis management going on which they’re not too keen to let anyone know about. Like the time they found the dead bat in the operating theatre.’

‘Down Luton ‘Firmary? I never heard about that.’

‘There you go,’ said Beryl. ‘But the hospital management were lucky. They didn’t have Mirabelle on their case.’

Joe knew what she meant. His aunt had antennae like antlers and a sunflower’s objection to being kept in the dark.

‘So what’s the word?’ he asked.

‘Lot of snarl-ups. Mobile toilet people turned up with nothing but men’s urinals. Herd of cows got into the main competition field so it was covered with cow pies. French choir thought the dates had changed and almost didn’t make it. And the Germans arrived a day early and found there was nothing ready for them. Took the Dai Bard half a day to persuade them not to head for home.’

‘Probably helped looking like Goering then,’ said Joe. ‘Well, let’s hope they’ve got their bad luck out of their system.’

‘Mirabelle doesn’t believe in bad luck, she thinks God’s trying to tell them something.’

‘Like what?’

‘Like they should stop worrying about these foreigners and concentrate on seeing a home-grown team wins.’

‘Maybe someone is,’ said Joe lightly. ‘We probably count as foreigners ourselves, and I recall we had a hard time finding anyone who’d tell us how to get here. Even the signposts had been bust.’

‘Joe, you’re not getting a fit of the great detectives again, are you?’ she said warningly.

‘This Welsh air’s turning you into a comedian,’ he answered, grabbing her hand and pulling her towards him.

She wasn’t putting up much resistance when the door opened and Bronwen looked in.

‘Ooo, sorry,’ she said, smiling broadly and running her delicate pink tongue round her vibrantly red lips. ‘Thought I might finish that massage, Joe, but I see you’re in good hands. Da says he’ll pick you up round the back in twenty minutes. That be long enough for you?’

‘Yes, thanks. I’ll be there,’ said Joe.

The girl mouthed, ‘Bye’, and withdrew.

So did Beryl.

‘That, I assume, is the caretaker’s kid you mentioned,’ she said. ‘And what was this massage you didn’t mention?’

‘Massage? Thought she said message,’ said Joe unconvincingly.

‘Don’t think so, Joe,’ said Beryl. ‘And if you’ve only got twenty minutes, I think you should come with me to make your confession to Rev. Pot and Aunt Mirabelle. Though from the sound of it, twenty minutes ain’t going to be half long enough.’

Chapter 6

Beryl was right. Mirabelle in particular wanted to nail Joe to the floor till she’d finished quizzing him, and in the end he had to do a runner in mid-sentence, and even then he was late getting into the courtyard.

An old red pick-up was being revved impatiently on the cobbles, shedding a shower of rust with each vibration. Joe climbed into the passenger seat, apologizing profusely and trying to keep as much distance as he could between himself and the snuffling Williams.

Then he was hit by something soft on his left side, and Bronwen’s voice said, ‘Shove up, won’t you?’

Rev. Pot could have made a sermon out of the competing claims of the yielding warmth of Bron’s haunch on the one side and the hard angularity of the handbrake on the other, but both sensations were rapidly relegated to the realm of the inconsequential by the furiousness of Dai’s driving. Alongside him, Jehu was a slouch.

The hedgerows were so overgrown that there scarcely seemed room for one vehicle, yet soon they were hitting fifty which felt like eighty in these narrow winding tunnels.

It took Joe three mouth-moistening attempts to say, ‘Know I was late, but I ain’t in this much of a hurry.’

‘Hurry?’ said Williams, surprised. ‘Who says we’re hurrying?’

‘Your speedo for one.’

The caretaker took one hand off the wheel and blew his nose into what looked like an oily rag.

‘Round here you don’t drive by the speedo, Joe,’ he said. ‘You drive by the clock. Two minutes later and I’d be driving round this bend at two miles an hour.’

They took it on two wheels, or so it seemed to Joe. To his right he caught a glimpse of an open gate and a stampede of full-uddered cows about to emerge.

‘Ifor James’s beasts,’ said Williams. ‘Brings them to the milking parlour same time, spot on, every evening. You can put your life on it.’

‘Think we just did,’ said Joe, thinking nostalgically of the quiet pleasure of doing the ton down the Luton bypass in Merv Golightly’s taxi.

He contemplated drawing attention to a potentially fatal flaw in Dai’s road-safety strategy, to wit, the intrusion of strangers, but a sign saying Llanffugiol flashed by and thinking they’d soon be stopping, he held his peace.

It wasn’t a very big place but it seemed to have everything necessary to a not-very-big place, like a little shop, a little chapel, a little church, a little village hall, a little war memorial, and, the Lord be praised, a sizeable pub.

Only it was called the Grey Mare not the Goat and Axle. Also it was receding fast, as was a field full of marquees which must be the site of the festival.

‘Not going to the village pub, then?’ said Joe hopelessly.

‘No. More at home in the Goat, you’ll be, Joe,’ said Williams. ‘Your kind of people, see.’

The renewal of terror as they plunged back into a green tunnel prevented Joe from riddling this assertion. After what seemed an age, they drew up in front of a long single-storeyed building in leprous whitewash standing alone at a five-lane crossroads, and Joe climbed out with the unsteadiness of a round-the-world sailor finally hitting home.

‘Don’t know about you, boy, but I’m ready for a drink,’ said Dai, heading for the open door beneath a weatherbeaten sign proclaiming this was the Goat and Axle, prop. John Dawe Esquire.

A chorus of greeting swelled at his entrance, cut off as by a conductor’s baton when Joe followed.

‘Boys, meet Joe Sixsmith,’ said Williams. ‘You’ll have heard about the woman who got trapped in Copa Cottage last night. Well, Joe’s the hero who pulled her out.’

‘Bloody hot fire,’ said someone. ‘It’s grilled the bugger black.’

No one was given the chance to laugh as the tall barrel-chested man behind the bar, presumably John Dawe Esquire, brought his hand down on the polished oak with a crack that set the ashtrays jumping and said in a basso profundo, ‘Anyone thinks that’s clever can find another pub to drink in. Mr Sixsmith, you’re most welcome. Let me draw you a pint. And take heed, Danny Edwards, this is going on your slate.’

Edwards, Joe presumed, was the young man who’d made the crack.

He remained seated, looking resentful, and there were others who didn’t move either, but sat there either indifferent or neutral. Some – two or maybe three, he only got a fleeting impression of retreating forms – felt the need to leave as he came in, their exit marked by a sudden gust of rock music as an inner door opened then closed behind them. Joe hoped their exit was coincidence rather than comment, but his unease was soon dissipated in the unmistakably genuine warmth of the half dozen or so who crowded round to shake his hand.

They were all men in the bar. Bronwen had vanished, presumably heading straight for the source of the music. Certainly there was little here to attract such a bright young denizen of the modern era. In fact, Joe doubted if this particular bar had changed much in the past hundred years. Its small windows created perpetual dusk, which was no great deprivation unless you wanted a good look at the uncarpeted floorboards, the low ceiling stained with enough nicotine to dye a thousand lungs, or the dusty photos of depressed-looking men in stiff collars which crowded the flaking walls. Was sadness endemic in these parts? Joe wondered. Like one of them cancer clusters some folk reckoned existed round nuclear power stations. Or maybe some apparition of something bad that had once happened appeared from time to time and sent you plunging into the depths. Sights and sadness. He recalled the two odd ailments scratched into the sickbay locker’s paint. Perhaps there was a connection, cause and effect, the sights bringing on the sadness.

But the jollity of the chief welcomers quickly seemed to communicate itself to the others, and he began to feel that maybe there were worse places to be than sitting here among Dai Williams’s cronies, modestly retailing details of the Copa Cottage rescue to a continuo of admiring applause.

Even Danny Edwards had come out of his sulk and was showing a lively interest. At one point he turned to a neighbour and said something in Welsh. Instantly the landlord, who was addressed familarly as Long John, said, ‘English, boyo. Show some manners. We don’t have much to be grateful for, but at least the bastards gave us a common language to curse them in, isn’t that right, Glyn?’

His question was aimed at a slight pale-faced man in a corduroy jacket, sitting at one end of the bar, rather apart from the others.

‘Yes, indeed,’ he said in a soft voice. ‘If they could have foreseen the communications revolution, there’s no way they would have been so keen to teach English to their subject races.’

He glanced at Joe as he spoke with an including smile.

Here’s another got me pinned down wrong, thought Joe.

‘Only did it ‘cos they were too thick and idle to learn anyone else’s language themselves,’ said Edwards.

‘Not sure about that,’ said Glyn, the pale-faced man. ‘I’ve heard from my language colleagues at the comp. that it’s often the settlers’ kids who are quickest and keenest at picking up the Welsh.’

‘That’s right,’ said someone else. ‘And if we’re so clever, why aren’t we in charge of our own country, that’s the question.’

Joe said, ‘Thought you were, this Welsh Assembly and all.’

There was a brief silence then Long John said, ‘Don’t let them blind you with their propaganda, Joe. They’ve got assemblies in schools, but it’s still the staff who run the show, eh, Glyn?’