Myfanwy screamed and buried her head on my chest as we swept round a corner and through a curtain of fluorescent sea weed. I wanted to see if she knew any reason why her cousin Evans should have a piece of tea cosy with a Mayan pattern on it. The train crashed out through the final gate and into the warm sunshine.
'Myfawny?'
'Mmmm?'
'I know this sounds silly, but did your cousin Evans have any interest in the Incas?'
'The who?'
'Or the Aztecs; or anything like that?'
She leaned her head against my chest and looked up, smiling. 'I'm so disappointed, we never saw the woman breast-feeding.'
'You screamed enough, anyway.'
'I know but that was at the fake ghosts.'
'If they were fake, why did you scream?'
The train ground slowly to a halt and the rest of the passengers started taking off the hard hats.
'They were fake screams.' She sat up and started unbuckling the safety belt. 'Next time you can take Pandy.'
I sighed. 'Look, will you stop trying to pair me up with your friends!'
'I'm not, but she wants to go, and she's too frightened as well.'
'What about the knife in her sock?'
She put her arm round my neck and pulled herself on to me. Hair pressed warmly against my face cutting off all the light and filling me with an overwhelming urge to sleep; I pushed her gently back and asked her again.
'Was he into the Aztecs?'
She pursed her lips in a pretence of thinking and then said: 'To tell the truth I don't think he listened to groups much.'
I dropped Myfanwy off at her flat overlooking Tan-y-Bwlch and drove uphill to Southgate and then turned left into the mountainous hinterland beyond. The sun was shining in Aberystwyth but as I climbed it clouded over until soon I was driving through a chilly fog, in a world of drystone walls and cattle grids. Frightened sheep clung to the banks on either side of the road, wondering desperately how they were going to get back into the fields from which they had somehow escaped. As the mist thickened, I drove through sad unenchanted forests of conifers planted in uniform rows by the Forestry Commission, occasionally passing sticks set in the fence, with rubber shovels to beat out fires. From time to time glimpses of Nant-y-moch reservoir glinted in staccato bursts through the trees. And then the trees stopped and I found myself at a crumbling, weed-filled church yard on the slopes overlooking the reservoir. The church where Marty lies buried. I parked and made my way through the crooked slate teeth of the graves.
It was never officially established that he had been consumptive. And so many well-meaning friends have since tried to assure me that he wasn't. But how would they know? Were they there that day in primary school when we had our BCG jabs? When Marty was so terrified of the needle that I took his place in return for a month's supply of Mars bars? Perhaps if he had lived in town things might have been different. But he lived here on this sunless northern hillside overlooking the reservoir. I looked down at the simple headstone and then let my eyes wander across to the placid gunmetal waters pent up behind Nant-y-moch dam. Marty once told me that there was a village lying at the bottom of the lake; he said that it had been flooded when they built the dam and the man who printed the leaflets telling the people to quit their homes had got the dates mixed up and they all drowned. Marty said he never got any wedding invitations to do after that. It still makes me laugh.
The blizzard that took Marty had held Aberystwyth in its grip for three days and for once we had made the tragic mistake of allowing the candle of hope to flicker in our hearts. Experience had taught us, years before we were to go out into the real world to find the lesson confirmed, that the best policy is always to expect the worst. But this time as we watched the TV footage of helicopters air-lifting bales of hay to stranded livestock we thought that this Friday, at least, games would be called off. But Herod Jenkins was not one to be so easily cheated of his sport. In his book the only meteorological conditions severe enough to cancel games were to be found on Saturn. Marty hated rugby. For him it was a pagan game, a modern embodiment of the ritual rape-fest of the Beltane feasts. The goal posts represented the vulva of the fertility goddess Wicca and the ball was a symbolic sperm. It was a compelling thesis but didn't save him from being sacrificed on the altar of Herod's madness.
Nothing could ever have prepared us for the shock of that day. We were used to the fact that the normal laws of the land didn't operate on the games field, but this time the physical laws seemed suspended as well. It was as if we woke up in the morning on the ceiling to find that gravity had been reversed overnight. Marty stood there holding the one talisman known to grant immunity from persecution — the note from your Ma - and Herod rejected it. A bit of running around would be good for a cold he said in words which have gone down in medical history. And so saying he went inside to don his arctic parka. Marty stood there whiter than a ghost and shaking. The inquiry would later find that the note had been forged which meant that Herod was morally absolved. But Marty wasn't fit, even if the note was false. He looked at me, his one friend, for help and I said, 'Marty, we won't go.' Four words that would shape my thoughts and deeds for the rest of my life. 'Marty, we won't go.' What could be simpler? It was plainly madness to go out on the field that day and if we all refused, what could he do? If we all stuck together our will could prevail. We would simply refuse to move. Marty embraced the plan with enthusiasm and managed to unite the whole class behind his mutiny. Herod came back outside with his whistle and Marty stepped forward and said, 'Sir, we're not going.' Herod blinked in astonishment and turned his full attention on the boy: fragile and shivering, awkward and scholastic - all crimes in a games teacher's eyes — and then he smiled and turned to the rest of us. 'Oh really?' he said. 'And who else is too cold to go for a little run?' There followed a split-second's silence and then everyone jeered; it was plain that Marty had been tricked and no one else had had the slightest intention of refusing to play. Not one of them stepped forward. Finally, drunk on the glee of victory, Herod turned his gaze to me, whom he knew to be Marty's confederate, and said, 'Well darling?' And I cringed like a beaten dog and said nothing. We all played rugby that day and Marty was sent on a cross-country run, alone. He looked at me just before he left and in his eye was that unforgettable heart-breaking look. Not of reproach, which would be so much more easy to live with, but of understanding. And also something else: that searing farewell of the prisoner as they apply the blindfold, and his eyes take their last drink of this beautiful world.