‘The Buick and the Men in Black are just a little hocus-pocus we do to blow smoke in the eyes of the masses. After all, if a man has an alien contact some people will believe him. But who’s going to believe that man when he reports visits from the Men in Black and nonsense like that? Jhoe dresses like one because he is delusional. I’m the genuine article. I’ve got the car, the hat and the suit. I wear it to funerals too, and get to charge it on expenses. It’s one of the perks of working for the Aviary.’
‘Mrs Bwlchgwallter made a tape of the hypnotism. How come you are not worried about it? Shouldn’t you suppress that too?’
‘I’m not worried because I already know where it is. In the boot of my car.’
‘Calamity guessed it was hidden in the gingerbread alien, but someone got there first. Was it you?’
‘No, it was Miaow, while you were sick. She offered to trade: she would give me the tape in return for me getting you off the charge of attempted murder. I was going to anyway, but it suited my purpose to agree. That’s how the gun ended up in the mayor’s possessions.’
I absorbed the information. It made sense. ‘There are two things I don’t get. You must have kept Iestyn’s whereabouts concealed from the Aviary all these years. Why do you protect him? Your job should be to deliver him up to them.’
He looked at me and became serious. ‘I guess you could call it atonement. You remember me telling you once I’ve never killed anyone? It’s true, but I was once responsible for a man’s death. A very cruel death. He was from the Denunciationists out at Cwmnewidion Isaf, and he got arrested for stealing a tractor. They put him in the penitentiary at Tregaron Bog, just in transit. It was only for a few days, and we were heaving at the seams, so I put him in the segregation block. It was the weekend the riot broke out. He was the one I told you about in the end cell.’
I let out a soft gasp as the horror of that sank in.
‘Besides, I’ve grown quite fond of Jhoe over the years.’ He looked at his watch and said, ‘Time, I think, to drive Jhoe and Miaow home to Cwmnewidion Isaf.’
I placed my hand on his arm. ‘What made him go like this in the first place? What made him lose his sanity, do you know?’
He grinned as if he’d been hoping I would ask the question. ‘The aliens showed him something . . . something wonderful . . . too wonderful. A thing not of this earth, a thing so beautiful, so glorious it blew his mind the way a 40-watt light bulb pops when you put too much current through it.’
‘Am I supposed to know what it was?’
‘They showed him the engine to the flying saucer.’
And then Calamity appeared over the brow of the hill, walking with the gentle gait of one for whom many of the mysteries of the world are slowly being resolved. She held her arms folded tightly in front to keep her parka closed in the fierce wind, and hobbled at a half-trot half-walk up to meet me. She grinned, and the hair blew across her gentle face.
‘I’ve seen the Buick,’ she said, eyes sparkling with excitement. ‘It’s amazing. You must come. It’s on the track over the hill.’ She took me by the hand.
Viewed from behind, the car in the lay-by had the streamlined profile of a crouching hare: bulbous, muscular thighs swelled out on either side above the rear wheels, and a tiny rear window was inset like a porthole. The panels of metal were painted in deep, lustrous black like the lacquered lid of a Steinway concert grand. They don’t paint cars that way any more, they don’t make anything like that any more. It was an old car, hailing from a time when every part had to flair or swoop or shine, and the nose had to grin like a chromium shark. It was the sort of car that had spent its youth at drive-in movies beneath the huge, flickering, popcorn-scented faces of Humphrey Bogart and Katharine Hepburn. You wouldn’t hitch a caravan to a car like this, that would be heresy; instead you would choose one of those beautiful silver zeppelins, the Airstream trailers, made from aluminium skin and riveted like the fuselage of an aircraft. Together you would make the pilgrimage to the Promised Land along Route 66, the Mother Road, the one Steinbeck called the Road to the Great Second Chance, where Burma-Shave signs flickered along the way. Or you might, as today, make a different journey along the B4576 to Cwmnewidion Isaf. It was a beautiful old glossy black American car and looked about as unobtrusive on the verge of the road on top of Constitution Hill as Flash Gordon’s rocket. They say you never forget your first sight of a black 1947 Buick.
Two people were standing next to it. Jhoe and Miaow. Jhoe came running up to us like a fawn, while Miaow held back shyly. Jhoe took my hand and shook it warmly. ‘I have a daughter . . . she’s taking me home,’ he said. ‘Home with my daughter. I’m so . . . so . . .’
‘Grokked?’ I offered.
His eyes filled with tears. ‘Yes, so very grokked.’
‘Jhoe says we can go and visit him in Cwmnewidion Isaf whenever we like,’ said Calamity.
‘That would be great,’ I said. My words drifted as my gaze sought Miaow in the background.
Jhoe stood aside. ‘Go and talk to her.’
I struggled into the wind. She stood on the summit, outlined against the sky, much as I had imagined her in the night club: hair wild and blowing freely in the wind, her gaze scanning the horizon for that sail. She flung herself into my arms and hugged me. We broke off and kissed, and then she pulled away and looked down.
‘When I found your caravan empty, I thought you were going to leave without saying goodbye.’
‘I was, but I changed my mind.’
‘Why not change it again and stay?’ I asked.
‘You know I can’t.’
‘Why?’
She looked at me and shook her head gently. ‘I’m going back to Cwmnewidion Isaf, to be with my people. I’m going to look after my dad.’
I stared into her eyes, trying to think of things to say.
‘I don’t fit in here in this town, Louie, I was just visiting. I’m a bit like Skweeple.’
‘Maybe you should stay a bit longer.’
‘I want to look after my dad. I’ve never had a dad.’
‘I could move to Cwmnewidion Isaf. Do they allow caravans?’
‘Only horse-drawn ones.’ She smiled.
‘I don’t want you to go.’
The smile faded. ‘You would never fit in among us Denunciationists.’
‘I could try. They allow stills. We could make gin.’
‘I wouldn’t want you to. It wouldn’t be you. A rabbit and a fish can fall in love, Louie. But where will they build a home?’
‘Couldn’t we build a dam, like beavers?’
‘They might turn us into hats.’
‘As long as we were the same hat, I would be happy.’
She shook her head, kissed me sadly and prepared to climb into the back of the Buick. She paused, and said, ‘I think it’s great that you’re the mayor now.’
I smiled. ‘It feels strange.’
‘You’ll get used to it. When is the human-cannonball flight?’
‘One day,’ I said. ‘One fine day.’
‘On that day I’ll come back.’ She climbed into the car and sat next to Jhoe.
Sauerkopp shook our hands and wished me well with the new job. He parted from us with the heavy heart of one who knows our paths will not cross again and feels regret for it, but knows too that there is no remedy because there are many things in this world that must be borne and cannot be helped. I put my arm round Calamity’s shoulder and drew her close to me as we watched the white-walled tyres grip the turf and the great car turn with regal ease. As it drove off, two faces peered through the small porthole of a back window and we watched until they shrank to dots and passed over the hill. Calamity looked up at me. ‘Please don’t be ingrokked about Miaow.’
I hugged her and told her how glad I was that, despite the truly terrifying odds thrown up by the universe, Calamity and I happened to be sharing the same planet, the same epoch and, best of all, the same office. And in a region of the solar system where the rain seldom lasts for more than a week. She pressed her face against me and spoke into the folds of my trenchcoat, saying how grokked she was that I was the new mayor. I laughed, and together we walked slowly off into the wind that never stops blowing.