Nowhere Near Milkwood (7 page)

I can’t be overthrown. Part of me is always somewhere else. There’s just too much. And my public body on the balcony can be assassinated again and again by headshot after headshot. The skulls from the museum are a perfect fit. I pretend this is a coincidence. My assassins are usually followers of the old President who fear I have usurped his position. I probably haven’t. Sometimes it is Percy who assassinates me. I am happy. But my scars still throb. The surgeon who operated on me is the same fellow who invented the celerycopter. He’s efficient but weird. Complete separation was impossible. I would die. My individual bodies were not separated but
relaxed
. They are connected now by long taut fibres. At night, when I am completely alone, I can play these fibres like the strings of a zither. I can even play the forbidden note, my favourite note. And because my tower casts such a total shadow over the streets and squares below, blocking out the whole sky, I can send down one of my lesser bodies with a bucket to collect inspiration from the moonless gutters of the future.

Somewhere down near Cardiff Docks lies a road which doesn’t exist in our space-time continuum. Like many roads, it has its fair share of shops and houses and even a pub. However, these buildings are no more real than the road itself. Some people declare they are phantom structures left over from another age. The argument runs something like this: if men and women can become ghosts, why not bricks and mortar? I have to agree with them. Not only have I explored this road myself, but I have often entered the pub for a drink.

It is an odd pub with a stranger set of patrons. The beer it sells is strong and not respectful of brains. It is brewed on the premises by the barman, who is generally only known by his first name and his final wink. He is called Hywel and was born far to the west in the village of Lladloh. Why he left his home to work in Cardiff is a minor mystery not worth solving. It seems he was once a baker, but lost his nerve in an incident with a highwayman, and now prefers to serve anything not in a tricorne hat, whether man or monster.

He accepts payment mostly in tales. One evening he resolved to take more care with his accounts and asked me bluntly if I would invent some new stories for him, to balance his books and fill up this one. His pub was already crowded with professional authors, so I declined and pointed out that I was the only one of his customers who never composed fiction. Unfortunately, he considered lack of talent to be an ideal qualification for his fraud. He wanted the style to be clumsy but light, to cheat the Inspector of Metaphors if he called.

So if you are ever near Mountstuart Square and you happen to see a road that wasn’t truly there before, take a chance and walk down it. The adventure will be absurd but safe, a brief flirtation with rare spooks. The pub in question is the friendliest tavern you may hope to visit, and a pint costs less than whatever you pay when you order beer in your sleep. No, that is untrue. I am not permitted to depart unless I find a replacement for my unbearable task, and for that I am desperate enough to trick even you over this impossible threshold...

Although the TALL STORY on Raconteur Road is a pub that doesn’t exist, takings are always high. Its richest patrons are the potbellied council overseers who step through its doors during lunchtimes. They step, as it were, into another dimension where imagination becomes reality and truth takes a siesta on one of the benches in the beer garden.

The landlord of this dubious establishment is none other than Hywel Price, a beery auroch of a man, whose hands are too large for the piccolo and yet too small for the fiddle. Consequently, he can neither short-change customers nor assail their eardrums with unwanted music. This is doubtless the source of his popularity.

When I entered the tavern yesterday afternoon, business was brisk. So brisk indeed that Hywel had decided to close the bar. He was leaning with his elbows on the counter, talking to Flann O’Brien and declaiming on subjects he knew nothing about. This is a peculiar habit with Hywel. It is probably why his popularity won’t last.

“Now take your modern rainbow,” he was saying. “It has neither the consistency nor the vibrancy of your good old fashioned rainbow. When I was a lad, rainbows were something special, but your modern rainbow looks tired and a bit worn around the edges. Personally I blame the Martians. That’s where all these newfangled rainbows come from. They just don’t make them like they used to...”

I coughed and signalled for a drink, but Hywel ignored me. His voice took on the drone of a wasp caught in a jar that had once held Mrs Owen’s jam: anger mingled with relief. I attempted to win Flann O’Brien over to my side by tapping him on the shoulder, but he was completely absorbed in his Guinness. The TALL STORY tends to be a pub where everybody talks but nobody listens.

“And that’s another thing about your traditional rainbow that your modern ones don’t have,” Hywel continued. “A crock of gold, that’s what! There used to be a crock at the end of every one when I was small. Well do I remember hauling back a big pot in the evenings after a summer downpour. There was never much gold in them though; just an apple, an orange, a few brazil nuts and a penny. But that isn’t the point. We were happy in those days.”

Flann O’Brien finished his pint and remarked that he knew a man who had chased a rainbow all over County Wicklow only to find an old Wellington boot at the end of it. The situation was growing desperate. I realised that drastic action was called for if ever I was to be blessed with a drink. On a sudden impulse, I cried:

“I knew a man who chased a rainbow right here in the city. It happened two years ago, during that heat wave that set tongues a-lolling and eyes a-rolling. We were all waiting for a drop of rain to soothe our fevered brows and eventually a lonely blue cloud answered our prayers. There has never been a sweeter shower or a more magnificent rainbow.”

“Oh yes?” Hywel looked up. I had finally attracted his attention. His fingers flirted with the pump handle of my usual. I licked my lips and sweat stood out on my brow. “Go on,” he said.

“Well it also happened to be the week that the Reptile Circus was in town. Don’t you remember?
Dr Slither’s Performing Snakes and Salamanders!
Anyway, what occurred was that the reptiles were allowed to splash around in the castle moat to cool down. There were big snapping caimans and crocodiles, enormous pythons and thick tongued monitor lizards. There was even a Komodo Dragon.”

Hywel gave me a cynical look and opened his mouth to resume his conversation with Flann O’Brien. I saw my chance slipping away. In blind panic, I added:

“Well I had this friend who decided to follow this rainbow I mentioned, to see if there really was a crock of gold at the end of it. I told him not to go, but off he went toward the castle. He had to hurry because the rainbow was already beginning to fade.”

Hywel turned back to face me. I had won a reprieve but still had to prove myself. I said:

“This friend of mine finally reached the Castle moat and there, lo and behold, was the end of the rainbow! So he took his shirt and shoes off, placed them neatly on the side, pinched his nose and jumped in. Down into the depths he sank, faster and faster. But he never came up again...”

“Why? Did he find his crock of gold?”

I sighed and shook my head sadly: “Alas no! It wasn’t a Croc after all. It was a ‘Gator.”

Hywel burst into forced laughter and the bar was back in business. I took my pint of dark out into the beer garden and sat on one of the benches next to sleeping truth. That is the trouble with the TALL STORY on Raconteur Road; every time you want a drink you have to tell one.

I was sitting in the TALL STORY, listening to one of Hywel’s sombre and unlikely tales, when a thin nervous looking man added a comment of his own. Now there are two things about the TALL STORY that every prospective customer ought to know. The first is that it does not exist; the second is that Hywel must never, under any circumstances, be interrupted.

How he became landlord of a nonexistent pub is a secret that Hywel likes to keep to himself. Indeed, considering his size, strength and (even more importantly) the sheer nastiness of his pickle sandwiches, it seems probable it will remain a secret forevermore. And this is surely nothing to complain about. Some things are best left unsaid.

Anyway, Hywel was discussing the habits of the ghost of Hugh the Miller, who still haunts all wholemeal loaves and Danish pastries within a quarter of a mile of the spot where he died; he fell in a lagoon. Students and young couples picnicking on the shore have been known to find bloody fingers in their soft rolls and, once or twice, even a nose.

“Like all ghosts he has grown too fond of the place where he died. He despises intruders and does his best to frighten them away.”

It was at this point that the thin stranger shook his head and made his comment. Hywel turned purple and shuddered. I stood meekly and waited for the storm to break. The little fellow said:

“Ghosts are not fond of the place where they died. You are mistaken there. Ghosts become bored very quickly with one area and long to move on. Many ghosts are actually itinerant spooks; travellers and strollers. The romance of the road is in their congealed blood – or lack of it. That is why they linger at crossroads. There is so much choice that they find it difficult to leave.”

I studied the little man more closely. He was dressed all in black, with a dark cape, a top hat and muddy boots. He had long greasy hair and bushy side-whiskers. He carried a spade and there was the stench of the grave on him.

“Of course,” he continued, “some phantoms simply can’t afford to live that way. They have to work for a crust. Instead, they spend a lot of time each year planning holidays and then they generally look down on their freer counterparts. Who can blame them? They pay their taxes like everyone else.”

“And who might you be?” Hywel had managed to control himself. I had thought for one moment that I was about to witness a throttling, but now it seemed Hywel would content himself with merely a stomping and a gouging. I swallowed my drink hastily and held my breath.

The little man lowered his gaze modestly. “I collect ghosts. I have quite a few now. I keep them in glass bottles in my cellars. I am thus able to offer my guests a selection of spirits.” He chewed his lip and tears rolled down his dusty cheeks. “Unfortunately, I don’t get many guests. None in fact. So I talk to the ghosts instead.”

“Well that’s all right then!” roared Hywel sarcastically. “I didn’t realise I was in the company of an expert. So what is your name, friend?”

“Alas!” The little man shook his head. “I’d rather not say. It seems to put people off. Just pretend I’m an ordinary customer. Now let me tell you about one of my favourite specimens. He’s quite a decent spectre.”

I was about to reply that there was no such thing as a customer in the TALL STORY who could be considered ordinary. It is, after all, a pub that lies in another dimension, somewhere between dawn and sunrise and adjacent to both infinity and eternity. But before I could even begin to explain all this, the mysterious stranger had launched into his anecdote.

“His name is – or was – Jocky McJocky and he was born in a castle near the remote Kyle of Tongue. There is a mountain there called Ben Hope which he used to climb without hope; he was a dour fellow when alive. After his death, his spirits improved and he took to haunting his fellows with great glee. Can you guess what happened? Well, he became a tourist attraction. Americans would relish the chance to spend a night in a haunted castle and, in the early hours, would often hold conversations like this:

RONALD: What’s that noise?

NANCY:  What noise?

RONALD: It sounds to me like a dim rumbling from afar.

NANCY:  Oh, that’s probably just the head of Jocky McJocky, executed in the courtyard with a rusty axe for drowning Lord McBroth in a pot of soup. He rolls his head up and down the corridors.

RONALD: I see. But what’s that other noise? That hideous screeching and wailing?

NANCY:  Oh, that’s just the old woman.

RONALD: What old woman?

NANCY:  The old woman who made the soup.

As you can imagine, McJocky soon had his fill of tourists. Whenever he materialised in front of them, headless and bloodstained, they would insist on taking a photograph. They were never able to develop the prints, of course, but that didn’t stop them from coming back next year and trying again.”

The little man paused and licked his lips. He adjusted his hat and made a series of pained faces. It was obviously an uncomfortable fit, his hat, for he kept holding on to it with both hands as if it was about to spring into the air. Hywel leaned over the bar until his nose was within an inch of the stranger’s own.

“So what happened next?” he demanded.

The stranger sighed and rolled his eyes. “He eventually decided that he needed a holiday. Now tell me, where would you expect a ghost who lives near the beautiful wooded Kyle of Tongue to go on holiday? Where would a soul used to rugged landscape and natural wonders go to find peace of mind?”

“Transylvania,” I suggested.

“Shangri-La,” countered Hywel.

The stranger shook his head. He twiddled his thumbs in some mordant satisfaction and uttered a little laugh. I was reminded of the rustle of bat’s wings in a cave lit by a single candle – that is going out. His laugh became a whimper.

“No, he moved into a bedsit in Birmingham for two weeks, living (if that’s the right word!) on chips and lard sandwiches. He started drinking cheap lager and sitting in front of the television all day. He wore a string vest and picked his ghostly nostrils with an insubstantial finger. He forgot to wash under his arms and never brushed his hair. He claimed afterward it was the best time he has ever had.”

Hywel turned to face me with a look of disbelief etched on his ruddy features. I gazed at the bottom of my glass and wished for a rain of stout. I even contemplated making my farewells. The little man nodded.

“When the holiday was over, he returned to the drab comforts of an entire castle, with its silks and gold and home brewed mead. But every year he dreams of returning to the simple life of egg on toast and damp wallpaper. He’s been saving up to buy a time-share there.”

At last, Hywel could contain himself no longer. He seized hold of the stranger’s collar and half-dragged him over the bar. “Before we accept your tale as true,” he said, “we need to have some proof. How is it that you are in a position to collect ghosts when no-one else can?”

The little man was just about to reply when the doors burst open and a crowd of dead Irish writers stampeded toward the bar. It was lunchtime, of course. I recognised many faces among the poets and authors: Joyce, Beckett, O’Casey, Brian Merriman, Yeats, Flann O’Brien, Brendan Behan. But I soon lost sight of the little man. His hat was knocked off in the crush and then he had disappeared in a sea of thirsty bodies. Hywel had released his grip when the first literary foot crossed the threshold.

I peered around frantically and finally spotted him creeping toward the door. Without his tall hat he appeared ludicrously small. I was still curious to hear more about his collection of ghosts, so I called after him: “Mr Burke, you’ve forgotten your hat!” He turned around to face me with a scowl and then vanished through the doors. I was desperate. “Mr Burke!” I cried again.

Hywel had been pouring a continuous stream of velvet pints, but my shout attracted his attention. Leaving the Irish writers bellowing in dismay, he relaxed his grip on the pump handle and frowned at me. “How do you know his name?” he demanded. “He refused to give it.”

When Hywel demands something, it is best to let him have it. And so now I held up the little man’s hat – which I had picked from the floor – and reached inside it. What I pulled out explained everything at once to all who were present. It hung there by its ears and twitched its nose.

A Mad March Hare.