The movie tells the famous story of the Mission House siege. The men of the 32nd Airborne are bivouacked at the Mission House, marooned in bandit country. Clip heroically passes messages between the Mission House and HQ a hundred miles away, by using the legendary secret passage of the Incas that only he knows about. The situation is desperate, and General Llanbadarn, returning from Buenos Aires, decides to stake all on a bold, audacious, and some would say suicidal reconnaissance patrol. The men are afraid. Very afraid. On the eve of battle there are whisperings of mutiny among the ranks. And then lo! in the light of the silvery moon an angel appears among the men, plucking the terror from their hearts, filling them with courage. An angel on a white horse holding a flaming sword aloft. Next day at dawn the men ride out and fight like lions. Losses are heavy, the battle desperate, but the day is won and the honour of the Legion saved. Clip, though he manages to limp back to camp, dies from his wounds and pays the ultimate price. Tadpole was inconsolable.
Normally when the first bar of signature tune starts up there is a stampede for the door, but tonight the people of Aberystwyth, many openly weeping, remained seated in a mark of sombre respect. There was still the famous epilogue, a simple device of white type on a black screen. Most of the people there that night knew it by heart and whispered the words under their breath, like pilgrims reciting the Lord’s Prayer.
Bright Paw’s death on the killing fields of Patagonia was not in vain. His brave spirit and noble example provided a rallying point for the growing disaffection at home. Confronted in the streets and lanes of Wales with the spectre of so many blind and amputee dogs, of hounds unable to return to the hayrick or pasture, in their gaunt and haunted eyes the look of a dog that has lost his youth by the age of four, the people rallied. There was a revulsion against the pitiless and mindless slaughter, an unstoppable groundswell of public anger. Within six months the decision had been taken to bring the dogs home
.
The men, of course, stayed on for another three winters.
After the movie we went to the Indian restaurant in Eastgate Street and sat at a table in the window. Tadpole, cheeks still glistening with tears, examined the menu carefully, while I glanced nervously at my watch. We needed to be quick, because the pubs would be chucking out soon and the Indian restaurant would become a scene which made the battlefields of Patagonia seem a picnic.
‘Oh, Louie, I don’t know what to have. It all sounds so good.’
‘Don’t agonise. It’s not really good, it’s just well written.’
‘Oh, Louie, you’re such a cynic.’
I tapped my fingers and stared out at the darkened street. Across the road a man in a fedora stood in an alley. He met my gaze and hurried off. I’d seen that hat before but I couldn’t remember where.
‘How about telling me the name of this guy.’
‘Which guy?’
‘Oh, come on, Tadpole, please. I took you to see Clip didn’t I?’
‘Yes, and it was so wonderful.’
‘So tell me about the soldier who was tortured and who used to cry out, “Hoffmann!”’
‘Oh, him.’
‘Yes, him. Tell me his name.’
‘I don’t know his name.’
I flushed with anger and snatched the menu out of her hand. ‘You said you’d tell me his name.’
‘No, I never. I never.’
‘Yes, you bloody well did. It was a deal.’
‘I didn’t say I’d tell you his name. I said I’d take you to see him.’
I paused, slightly taken aback. ‘So when are we going to see him?’
‘We just did.’ She giggled.
I looked at her in cold fury as the implication became clear.
‘He was there on the screen.’
‘It was a cast of five thousand!’
‘That’s not my fault.’
I stood up and threw a tenner down on the table. ‘Here, enjoy your meal.’
‘But, Louie, you said you’d buy me dinner.’
‘That’s right, but I don’t have to sit and watch you eat it. No wonder no one liked you at school.’ I stormed out and as I passed by the window I saw in the corner of my eye Tadpole sitting grief-stricken, her fist pressed into her eye, her mouth disfigured into a figure-of-eight. It was a pose I was starting to get quite familiar with.
I hurried down Eastgate Street towards the office and saw up ahead the man in fedora and black and white shoes. He turned into Stryd-y-Popty. I quickened my pace. He was waiting in the shadow of the door to my office and I grabbed his arm and dragged him into the light; but it was the wrong man. It was someone wearing a Jew’s broad-brimmed hat and sporting a long grey beard; a man in a coat full of holes. Elijah.
‘There’s been another death,’ he said and tut-tutted in a manner that suggested it wasn’t anyone close.
‘Is that a fact?’ I said.
The man in the fedora slipped out of the doorway across the street and hurried towards Great Darkgate Street. We both watched him slink away.
‘You have a friend,’ said Elijah.
‘I thought maybe he belonged to you.’
‘He’s not my friend.’
‘Who is he?’
‘I really don’t know.’
‘Maybe if I bang your head against the wall it might help you recall.’
‘There is nothing to recall. It is you he is following. Such visitations are commonplace in cases involving Hoffmann.’
‘So who has died?’
‘A girl, an innocent girl. You’ll read about it in tomorrow’s paper.’
‘Why should I care?’
‘There will be more.’
‘More papers?’
‘More deaths.
Chapter 8
NEXT MORNING Calamity bought a copy of the newspaper and read it as we walked up the Prom.
‘It’s Emily Bishop,’ she said. ‘The girl who rang about the ad. The fan of Kierkegaard.’ She handed me the paper. ‘Do you think there’s a jinx on us?’
‘What makes you say that?’
‘She was from the college in Lampeter. The last student we had from there didn’t last long, either.’
‘At least we got to shake hands with that one. I’m not even sure if this one counts. All she did was ring.’
‘Still a bit spooky, though.’
‘Maybe they’re accident prone in Lampeter.’
‘Or maybe we are.’
I crossed the road at the junction with Pier Street and Calamity followed.
‘Aren’t you going to tell me where we’re going?’
‘Can’t you guess?’
‘The Cabin isn’t open yet.’
‘We’re not going there, we’re going to the hobby shop.’
‘What for?’
‘If you want to find out about a man’s secret weaknesses, those shameful vices he would rather conceal from the light of day, where do you go?’
‘Lots of places. Depends on the vices.’
‘Yes, but as a guiding principle you talk to the madam, the procuress, whoever it is who supplies his shameful lusts.’
‘OK. That’s good, that’s psychology. I approve of that.’
‘You see, there’s something puzzling me about Bark of the Covenant. It tells the story of the Mission House siege. Now, on the odd occasion when you actually turned up in school, you must have done the history of the Patagonian War, right?’
‘Yes, although my memory of it is a bit cloudy.’
‘What did they teach you about the Mission House siege?’
‘I don’t think we did it.’
‘That’s right, nor did we. No one did, because everyone knows it was a military disaster. None of the veterans from that war will talk about. it And yet in the movie it’s a famous victory. The murdered Father Christmas goes to see it and says his life has been fulfilled. You don’t normally say that after to seeing a film, do you?’