‘I know you did, but I’m here anyway. I’ve come to fetch you.’
‘It’s too late.’
‘No it isn’t. It’s never too late.’
‘You said if you love someone, let them go.’
‘That’s right, I did. But I’ve been doing some thinking about that, and it seems to me there are two schools of thought. One you find in gift shops, written on trinkets adorned with pink hearts, on little notebooks and diaries and teddies and stuff; it says, “If you love them, let them go.” And then there’s the other school of thought, the Louie Knight school, which says, “If you love someone, don’t let them go.” The first one is fine if you live in a gift shop or if your supply of happiness on this earth is as plentiful and uninterrupted as the gas that comes through the mains. But if you’re like me and you find that most of the time the gas is cut off, you can’t afford to be so prodigal.’ I picked up her case. ‘You’re coming with me.’
‘Why should I?’
‘What do you mean, “why”?’
‘Why? Why?’
‘Why? God, I don’t know, dammit Myfanwy. Because . . . because . . . my life is nothing without you, and if you go now I will die like a dog in a marketplace in an unknown town and strangers will spit on my corpse and throw rocks on my grave. That’s why.’
Myfanwy stared at me in wonder.
‘And also because you are a silly goose.’
The old lady nudged Myfanwy and said, ‘Well, go on then, you silly girl. What more do you want? Jam on it?’
The caravan looked like an iced bun. Thick snow was piled up on the roof, on the step, even on the crappy vinyl washing line that strung the caravan to a crooked pole. A faint breeze stirred the falling flakes and made them dance, made the sky tingle. The Lyons Maid sign outside the shop swung silently; the only sound was the crunch of our footsteps. Everything shone or glistened; all the grey and drabness had been erased; the sharp edges, the junk and bric-a-brac, milk bottles and gas canisters, TV aerials and dustbins, had all been softened and cushioned; the contours of the world rounded and worn away as the falling snow veiled the earth and revealed the deeper contours of the heart. All gone, invisibly mended; even the defiling plod of Tadpole’s hoofprints across the roof of my home. The caravan park had been glazed with crystal.
Myfanwy climbed out of the car and raised her face to the dark sky, the edge of her cheek gilded by the strange milky efflorescence that filled the world. I opened up the caravan and conducted her inside. I lit the soft yellow lamps; rummaged around and found rum, mince pies and Ludo; and set them on the table. I walked back outside to the bins and threw away the envelope containing the wire trace on the Queen of Denmark.
I’ll find out soon enough. One fine day, when I take that slow boat to Ultima Thule; in springtime, when the golden light returns, and the thaw begins. I can see it so clearly. The sea is darker than a bluebottle’s eye; the timbers creak and groan; the sails tug and the rigging sings in the breeze. Off the starboard bow we see land, empty except for the crocuses and lichen and wild seabirds. A single polar bear emerges from the long winter hibernation with that puzzled look on his face, the one that says, ‘My, oh, my! That must have been some night I had last autumn.’ I turn and offer some smoked seal to the Inuit pilot and say, ‘Tell me, fellah, what’s the name of this beautiful place?’
And he says, ‘My people call this place Louie Knight Sound.’
Also available by Malcolm Pryce:
From Aberystwyth with Love
The latest instalment in the wickedly funny Aberystwyth series sees Louie Knight, Aberystwyth’s only private detective, swapping the train to Dovey Junction for the Orient Express and trying to unravel a murder mystery that is bizarre, even by his own exceptional standards . . .
It is a sweltering August in Aberystwyth: the bandstand melts, the Pier droops, and Sospan the ice-cream seller experiments with some dangerously avant-garde new flavours. A man wearing a Soviet museum curator’s uniform walks into Louie Knight’s office and spins a wild and impossible tale of love, death, madness and betrayal.
Sure, Louie had heard about Hughesovka, the legendary replica of Aberystwyth built in the Ukraine by some crazy nineteenth-century Czar. But he hadn’t believed that it really existed until he met Uncle Vanya. Now the old man’s story catapults him into the neon-drenched wilderness of Aberystwyth Prom in search of a girl who mysteriously disappeared thirty years ago. His life imperilled by snuff philatelists and a renegade spinning wheel salesman, Louie finds his fate depending on two most unlikely talismans – a ticket to Hughesovka and a Russian cosmonaut’s sock.
ISBN: 9781408801024 / Paperback / £7.99
(Published May 2009)
I would like to thank my editor Mike and agent Rachel for all their help and friendship.
MALCOLM PRYCE was born in the UK and has spent much of his life working and travelling abroad. He has been, at various times, a BMW assembly-line worker, a hotel washer-up, a deck hand on a yacht sailing the South Seas, an advertising copywriter and the world’s worst aluminium salesman. In 1998 he gave up his day job and booked a passage on a banana boat bound for South America in order to write Aberystwyth Mon Amour. He spent the next seven years living in Bangkok, where he wrote three more novels in the series, Last Tango in Aberystwyth, The Unbearable Lightness of Being in Aberystwyth and Don’t Cry for Me Aberystwyth. In 2007 he moved back to the UK and now lives in Oxford.
THE LOUIE KNIGHT SERIES:
Aberystwyth Mon Amour
Last Tango in Aberystwyth
The Unbearable Lightness of Being in Aberystwyth
Don’t Cry For Me Aberystwyth
First published 2007
Bloomsbury Publishing, London, Berlin, New York and Sydney
Copyright © 2007 by Malcolm Pryce
The moral right of the author has been asserted