If you are leaving town, the road east along Llanbadarn is not the prettiest, but it gets the job done. You drive past some nice houses for a while, then follow the floodplain of the Rheidol; before long you begin to climb through ancient hills where the eternal contours are obscured by undifferentiated rows of Forestry Commission conifers. The dark rows between the trees flicker past at the periphery of your field of vision, dark enchanted aisles into oblivion. The manufactured uniformity of the trees is unpleasant and conceals like a cheap suit an immemorial world; ancient stone hills criss-crossed with the tracks and the stone remains of our ancestors. The world here is old and misty, always misty, and it feels pagan. Somewhere beyond Ponterwyd you fall off the map into a desolate place designed for fugitives to hang out in and slowly starve; the sort of land where someone on the run would eventually get so spooked by the emptiness that he would turn himself in, even if it meant going to the chair; because the touch of the man who applies the electric conducting jelly to your temples is still a form of human contact.
I drove onto the grounds of the circus and parked behind some bales of hay. A passing dwarf pointed out the trailer belonging to Mrs Llantrisant. I went over and knocked. Her voice, thin and feeble, bade me come in and I found her lying on a bed, propped up by pillows, and watching a small portable black and white TV. Her hair was loose and fell across her shoulders in drab grey skeins like darning wool. On her forehead in the centre was a livid red sore.
‘I wondered how long it would be before you showed up. I said to Herod, “You mark my words, he’ll be here before Christmas.”’
‘You were right.’
She pulled her glasses higher on her nose and scrutinised me. ‘You’ve lost weight around the jowls. And your hair is thinner, and I can see some grey.’
‘That must be me getting old.’
‘You don’t know the meaning of the word. You’ve still got that pleasure to look forward to.’ She reached out, pulled back the curtain, and sighed with exasperation. ‘Mist still hasn’t lifted.’
The Perspex window was so scratched it was difficult to tell whether the mist had gone or not; but I didn’t say it.
‘You can take some lion droppings home if you want, put them on your garden. Not that there’s anything worth growing this time of the year. I’ve always hated winter. It’s the spring I like. But will I see another one?’
‘You should go home, where people can take care of you.’
‘I’d rather die out here than be in prison.’
‘I haven’t come to turn you in.’
‘It wouldn’t be up to you.’
‘If you’re sick—’
‘What I’m dying of no hospital can cure. There’s a hex on me.’ She touched the red spot on her forehead, uncannily close to the place where Tadpole’s mum had stuck her pin. She took a glass of water from the side table and drank slowly, making loud gulping sounds. From far away there came the sound of cheers and gasps. An elephant trumpeted in vain for the far-off plains of Africa.
‘Do you believe time is an illusion, Mr Knight?’
‘I don’t see how it could be.’
‘Some people say so. All the moments of time exist at once, like the different cards in a deck. The sequence is a human construct. Do you believe that?’
‘It means nothing to me.’
‘Me neither.’
The hand holding the glass fell to her chest, as if the effort of holding it was too great.
‘I know why you’re here. It’s about Father Christmas. You want to know who killed him.’
‘I know who did it: the Moth Brothers. I want to know why, who authorised it.’
‘No one authorised it.’ She sighed. ‘Yes, I see the doubt in your eyes.’
‘Father Christmas has always enjoyed immunity in this town.’
‘You think only I could give permission to change that. You think his death means I’m losing my power. Rest assured, Mr Knight, my sceptre is not broken, despite the scene you see before you. The people who did it have been punished.’
‘I know. They were found in a fishing net.’
The elephant trumpeted again and there were more thin, distant cheers. Mrs Llantrisant’s attention was diverted for a second.
‘He’ll be on soon. You shouldn’t hang around, Herod won’t take kindly to seeing you here.’
‘I have no more quarrel with him.’
‘Is that why you knocked him out of the plane with a cricket bat?’
‘My lawyer says he jumped for the ball.’
‘Don’t joke with me, Mr Knight. You’ve never understood how much it grieves him, have you? It crucified him, that boy not coming back from the cross-country run. He never got over it.’
‘He got over it the same afternoon.’
‘That’s how much you know about it. I hear you’ve raffled the cricket bat.’
‘No, I lent it to the Rotary Club just like I did last Christmas. You pay fifty pence to take a swing with it; the money goes to the deaf school.’
‘Who’d pay fifty pence for that?’
‘A lot of men in this town passed through his games lessons over the years. They still remember. It’s surprising how many want a go with the bat. They bought a new adventure playground with the proceeds last Christmas.’
‘They should go down on their knees to thank him, not mock him.’
‘Thank him for what? The nightmares?’
‘For preparing them for life. It’s a teacher’s job to prepare the child for what he finds beyond the school gates. It’s not a bed of roses, in case you haven’t noticed. You need guts and vim in the heart. He gave them that; he didn’t like it, but he knew where his duty lay. Nobody would have thanked him for turning out milksops like you.’
‘This is Aberystwyth not Sparta.’
She snorted.
‘I think it’s time I went. Are you going to tell me why the Moth Brothers did the hit?’
‘There’s nothing to tell. There’s no mystery. They did it of their own volition, without authority. For kicks, I suppose. Well, they won’t do it again.’
‘Is there anything you need from town?’
‘Nothing that lies in your power to give.’ She took her eyes off me and spoke to the ceiling. ‘You know, I expected disillusionment at the end of my life. But I thought it would be better than this.’
I bought a ticket and took a seat at the back. Herod stood inside a large cage placed in the centre of the ring, wearing a leopard-skin suit. He was in his sixties now and the leonine locks that were part of his act were stained with dark dye. Thick mascara lent him a freakish aspect like Bela Lugosi in some long-lost silent horror movie. Torn-up telephone directories littered the sand around his feet. He preened and displayed his muscles while a smaller cage was rolled into the arena and wheeled into the bigger cage containing Herod. Inside, asleep, was the Methuselah of tigers. The fur round his muzzle was snow white with age, and elsewhere his coat was ragged and threadbare like a boardinghouse carpet. One ear was missing; the tail was half the length it should have been; ribs poked through the skin. There was a roll of drums, the door to the cage dropped open with a dramatic clang, the crowd gasped, and nothing happened. Herod walked over to the cage and bent down to pick up an iron stick. Despite his age his body seemed in good condition and probably had many more telephone books left in it. But you could see the real toll of his life was on the spirit. It showed in every sinew of that bear-like body.
He jabbed the iron stick through the bars at the tiger’s rear end. The beast stood up, took a lazy step forward and slumped down again. Herod jabbed again, harder, and with a growl of irritation the tiger rose with great weariness and hobbled forth. He walked on all threes and kept one hind leg aloft betokening some injury or thorn contracted years ago and never removed. The crowd held its breath and the tiger continued to walk straight ahead towards the bars of the big cage, towards the audience. They began to pull back in fear, even though a wall of iron staves stood between them. The tiger walked straight into the bars and growled once more in irritation, taking a lazy swipe with a paw. It was clear he was blind. He lay down to sleep and Herod walked over and grabbed him and started wrestling. The tiger permitted this latest indignity with an air of weary submission. Perhaps he was too tired of the routine to care any more. Herod performed a judo throw and thrust the big cat down hard onto the sand of the arena. The crowd gasped again. The person in front of me turned to his companion and said, ‘They can smell fear, you know.’ But it was not clear whether he was referring to tigers or games teachers. Herod stood victoriously with one foot on top of the inert animal and preened to the crowd. I left my seat and made for the exit. The last I saw was Herod bending down, with a worried look on his face; pressing his ear to the tiger’s chest, checking for a pulse, and then applying mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. The crowd hissed its dissatisfaction.