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‘We’ve got all this countryside for the next three days, Joe. Plenty of time to be stretching our muscles.’
That sounded like a promise. Jauntily he made his way back to the coach.
The van bore the single word BREAKDOWN like a command, and its engine coughed asthmatically as if eager to obey.
Merv scowled and said, ‘Listen to that. And he’s coming to mend my machine.’
‘Not to worry,’ said Joe. ‘Best barbers always have the worst haircuts.’
‘Oh yeah?’ said Merv. ‘Well, if he draws in his breath sharply when he sees my engine, I’m going to hit him with Percy.’
‘You’ll need to aim low,’ said Joe as the van halted and the driver slid out.
He was square-shaped, about five by five, with no visible neck, so that his head sat on his shoulders like a traitor’s displayed on a city wall. Joe was reminded of Starbright Jones, another Welshman he’d met on a recent case, who’d been carved out of the same rough granite. The memory made him smile – he’d grown quite fond of Starbright – and the smile won an indifferent nod, or maybe it was directed at Merv’s scowl, and without other greeting the man went straight to the bonnet.
There was no sharp intake of breath but there was a note of incredulity as he said, ‘Just the oil pump you want me to sort out, is it?’ like the Good Samaritan told that half an aspirin and a Band-aid would do.
Percy twitched and Joe said quickly, ‘What else you got in mind?’
The man said, ‘In alphabetical order …’ and listed half a dozen areas of trouble or potential trouble. His alphabet was erratic but his diagnosis confirmed many of Joe’s own fears.
‘Better take a look then,’ he said, interposing his body between Merv and the Welshman. ‘Want a hand?’
He got a pro sneer in reply, which might have annoyed a more self-regarding man, but Joe took it in his stride and after ten minutes, when his assistance had demonstrated he was no know-it-all amateur, the man thawed a little and let it be known his name was Nye.
‘Nye Garage they call me, from the job, see? Round here knowing what people do is important.’
This might have been a lure but Joe ignored it. Professionally he’d spent a lot of time experimenting with subtle techniques for getting people to talk and the sum total of his wisdom was, if a man wants to know something, best way usually is to ask.
Eventually Nye got round to it.
‘Trippers, is it?’ he said, glancing at the lounging choristers. ‘Going to the seaside?’
‘Look like trippers, do we?’ said Joe grinning.
‘Don’t look like mountain climbers,’ said Nye.
There was no gainsaying this, and Joe replied, ‘We’re singers. A choir. We’re on our way to the Llanffugiol Choral Festival.’
He spoke with modest pride, confident of making some kind of impression. After all, this was the land of song where a good voice vied with the ability to run very fast with a pointed ball as the gift most desired from your fairy godmother.
He was disappointed. Nye looked at him blankly for a long moment. Perhaps he was deaf, thought Joe. Or tone deaf. Or maybe it was his own poor pronunciation.
‘The Llanffugiol Choral Festival,’ he said carefully, blowing out the double-L sound with a singer’s breath.
‘Never heard of it,’ said the Welshman indifferently. ‘Pass me that wrench, will you, boyo?’
Boyo, Joe had learned from Starbright, wasn’t a racist put-down but a term of familiarity in Welsh-speak. He passed the wrench and would have liked to discover whether it was just the festival or Llanffugiol itself Nye hadn’t heard of, which would be odd as Merv had assured them they were only half an hour’s drive away. But Merv was lurking menacingly and an enquiry could have sounded like a vote of no confidence in his navigation, so Joe held his peace.
It took almost an hour for Nye to finish and another ten minutes to tot up his bill. Merv looked at it and indulged in an intake of breath so sharp that in another it would have merited a very severe whipping from Percy.
A full and frank discussion followed with Joe as arbiter. Finally forced to admit the justice of the claims, Merv produced his clincher.
‘Don’t carry that kind of cash,’ he said, producing his wallet to demonstrate its leanness. ‘Joe, we’ll need a whip-round.’
Joe, imagining Aunt Mirabelle’s reaction if he went to her with a collection plate, shook his head firmly.
‘It’s your coach, Merv,’ he said.
‘It’s your choir,’ retorted Merv.
For a moment, deadlock. Then Nye broke it by reaching forward to pluck a credit card from the open wallet.
‘Plastic’s fine,’ he said.
On the passenger seat of his van was a credit-card machine and a camera. As Merv with ill grace signed the counterfoil, Nye snapped him, then again full face as he looked up, and finally he took a couple of the coach after cleaning the dust from the numberplate.
‘Souvenirs,’ he said. ‘I like to remember my customers.’
‘Hope that card’s good, Merv,’ said Joe, as they watched the van hiccup into the distance.
‘Makes no matter,’ said Merv evilly. “Cos I’m going to run that squat little bastard off the road when I overtake him. Everyone aboard! Let’s get this wagon train a’rolling.’
It was now early evening with the sun lipping the western hills and curls of mist patterning the surface of the stream.
‘How far to go, Mr Golightly?’ enquired Rev. Pot as he climbed aboard.
‘Fifteen, twenty miles, maybe a little more,’ said Merv vaguely.
The Reverend Percy Potemkin had not spent half a lifetime curing souls without developing a sharp ear for human vaguenesses. But he was not a man to rush to judgement. His gaze met Joe’s and asked for confirmation that this lack of precision was merely a form of speech. Joe loyally gave an optimistic smile. But he knew that if his friend had a fault, it was his reluctance to admit the possibility of anything being wrong till the trout came belly up in the milk churn.
At least the engine had a sweeter sound now. Someone started a chorus of ‘To Bea Pilgrim’, but their hearts weren’t in it and after a while most of the travellers settled down to inner contemplation or sleep.
Joe studied his information sheet. Llanffugiol, it told him, was a substantial village which in recent years had become the focal point of musical life in this area of rural Wales. This was its very first Choral Festival so there was no list of previous winners, but there was an impressive roll-call of top choirs which had been invited to take part. It was a bit less impressive if you studied the small print and worked out those which had actually accepted at the time the info sheet was sent out, but it still contained enough first-class opposition, like the German Guttenberg Singverein, to make this a tough competition. But Boyling Corner’s triumph three years in a row at the Bed and Bucks Choriad had clearly given the chapel choir the beginnings of a national reputation which they were determined to live up to. As Rev. Pot said, ‘We sing for the Lord not for glory, but if the Lord fancies a bit of glory thrown in, who are we to argue?’
Their accommodation was in the dormitories of Branddreth College, a boys’ boarding school a couple of miles out of Llanffugiol. There was a sketch map showing the relation of the college to the village, but nothing to relate the area to the outside world. Written directions had been sent and these were now in Merv’s possession, so all should have been straightforward, but Joe’s heart misgave him when he recalled Merv’s cavalier attitude to route-finding in his taxi. During daylight hours he used the sun, at night the stars, and when the weather was overcast, he fell back on instinct. ‘Salmon and swallows do it every year,’ he said. ‘And if man’s no better than fish or fowl, he’s got no right to be organizing the World Cup.’
Well, it would be instinct tonight, thought Joe, glancing out of the window.
Darkness was falling fast, accelerated by the mist which had long since escaped from the river and was now printing its bloomy patterns on the outside of the glass.
Merv’s threat to the wellbeing of Nye Garage had proved empty as, despite the apparent debility of his van, they hadn’t overtaken it. Indeed, they hadn’t seen anybody to overtake or be overtaken by for over an hour, which was just as well as the roads seemed to be getting narrower and narrower.
Suddenly the coach halted. In the headlights through the mist it was just possible to see a triple parting of the ways. There was a signpost, and Joe’s heart, always a buoyant organ, rose sharply as he made out the letters Llan. Merv got out with his flashlight to take a closer look and Joe joined him. It was crash-dive time again. True, each of the three arms pointed to somewhere beginning with Llan but none of them was Llanffugiol.
‘Merv, don’t you think it’s time to look at a map?’
‘Been looking at a sodding map for the past half-hour,’ said Merv, like an atheist admitting to prayer. ‘Trouble is, none of the funny names on the sodding map match any of the funny names on these sodding signposts!’
‘What you going to do then?’
‘Take the middle one till we reach the place mentioned then consult the natives,’ he said. Then, his irrepressible optimism returning, he added, ‘Maybe there’ll be a pub!’
He climbed back in the coach and called, ‘Not long now, folks.’
‘So he knows where we are?’ said Beryl as Joe returned to his seat.
‘Don’t think so,’ said Joe.
‘Don’t think so? Joe, isn’t it time you got on that phone of yours and rang someone to ask for directions?’
‘Yeah, maybe. Only you can’t ask for directions less’n you know where you are. Soon as we reach this village we’re heading for, I’ll give it a go.’
But no village appeared. The coach was now full of anxious and mutinous muttering. Rev. Pot went up the aisle and started talking to Merv. Joe knew it was strictly none of his business, but an accusatory glance from Aunt Mirabelle sent him to join the debate, which was getting so heated that Merv brought the bus to a halt in order to bring both arms to the discussion.
‘Well, whose fault is it, then?’ Rev. Pot was demanding. ‘You’re the driver.’
‘That’s right, I’m the driver. I just follow directions. You know so much, why don’t you tell me where to go, Reverend?’
‘If I wasn’t a man of the cloth, I might just do that, brother,’ thundered Rev. Pot.
Out of the corner of his eye, Joe thought he glimpsed a light moving way to his left. He blinked. Yes, there it was. Looked like a single headlight. On a tractor maybe. Some farmer out working late. Maybe some crops were best gathered at night. Joe was a little vague on matters agricultural.
Joe turned to the disputants and said, ‘Why don’t we ask that guy?’
‘What guy?’
‘That guy … where’s he gone?’
The light had vanished.
‘You seeing things now, Joe?’ said Merv sceptically.
‘No, I’m not. I’ll go talk to him.’
He grabbed the flashlight Merv carried under the dash and got out of the coach. It was so dark and alien out there, he felt like he’d just been beamed down from the Enterprise. Hastily he switched on his light. That was better. Still alien but not so dark. There was a gate into the field where he’d seen the light. He unlatched it and stepped into what felt like a bog. Did the Welsh grow rice? He shone the torch down and saw it was a pungent mixture of mud and cow dung.
‘Oh shoot,’ he said. But he wasn’t going to retreat. He reasoned all the farmer had done was switch off his light and engine till the coach went on its way. Reason? Maybe he was shy.
He aimed the beam forward and squinted along it. Nothing but its light reflected from the drifting mist wraiths. Then his straining eyes glimpsed something more solid. A shape. A sort of vehicle shape. He’d been right.
He began to move forward. As he got nearer he saw that it wasn’t a tractor after all, but one of those farm buggies with the big tyres. But before he could take in any detail, the headlight blossomed again, full in his face, dazzling.
‘Hi there,’ he called, shielding his eyes. ‘Sorry to trouble you but we’re a bit lost. Wondered if you could give us some directions.’
Silence. Then a muffled voice said, ‘Where to?’
‘Place called Llanffugiol,’ said Joe. ‘Where the Choir Festival is.’
More silence.
‘Never heard of it,’ said the voice.
The buggy’s engine burst into life and it started moving forward. For a second, Joe thought it was going to go straight over him, then it swung away in a semicircle and bounced off into the mist.
He raised his flashlight and for a second caught the driver’s back full in its beam. Long narrow body in a black fleecy jacket. Matching narrow head, bald or close-shaven, could have passed for that guy who played the King of Siam in the old musical. Maybe I should’ve tried singing ‘Getting to Know You’, thought Joe.
Then the mist closed behind him.
Joe returned to the coach. He tried to clean his shoes on the grass verge, but the smell of the countryside came in with him and he didn’t have any good news to compensate.
Merv rolled his eyes heavenwards as if the farmer’s response was Joe’s fault, engaged gear noisily and set the coach rolling forward along the narrow road once more.
Even Rev. Pot seemed to have forgotten his duty of Christian charity.
‘Now that’s real helpful, Joe,’ he said sarcastically. ‘So what’s your guess? I mean, just how many miles away do you think we are if folk round here haven’t even heard of the place?’
‘Half a mile’s a long way in the country,’ said Joe, his anti-rural prejudices now in full cry. ‘These natives probably never been out of their own village.’
Rev. Pot gave him a glance which had he been in the exorcism business would have cast Joe back into the outer darkness, no problem.
Then Merv said, ‘Hang about. Look, that has to be civilization.’
He was looking ahead. The mist was of the ground-clinging variety which occasionally permitted glimpses of treetops while their bases were hidden at ten paces. Joe saw what had caught Merv’s eye. There was a distinct glow in the sky, the kind of light which could only come from a substantial settlement.
The road ahead rose steeply and as the coach laboured up it, the mist began to fall away behind and the glow increased. Then they reached the crest and saw its source was much closer than they’d imagined.
Far from being a substantial settlement, it was a solitary house. And the reason it was casting such light was it was on fire.
Merv ran the coach through an open gate and came to a halt some thirty yards from the building. Joe got out. Even from this distance he could feel the heat.
The others crowded round him.
It wasn’t his charisma that attracted them, it was his phone.
‘Better ring for help,’ said Beryl.
He pulled out the mobile. Someone said, ‘You see that?’ and pointed.
On the side of a small outbuilding someone had sprayed the words, ENGLISH GO HOME!
‘This the welcome they keep in the hillside?’ said Merv.
Joe stabbed 999.
‘Shoot,’ he said. ‘Not getting anything.’
‘Wouldn’t say that,’ said Merv. ‘Best service I’ve ever seen.’
