Wild People

‘I remember Colin. What about him?’

‘We went over to Bath and sorted it out for you.’

‘Sorted what out?’ she asked, puzzled.

I felt that it was time to add a rider. ‘I was eighteen. I wasn’t very subtle in those days. My social skills weren’t too highly developed.’

‘Tell me about it,’ she chuckled. ‘But what did you sort out?’

‘Didn’t you ever wonder why he didn’t bother you again?’

‘I got a new boyfriend.’ She paused. ‘Are you trying to tell me something different?’

I winced at the crassness of the memory. Feeling the shame now in the retelling. ‘We boot-polished his private parts and took a Polaroid photograph and told him we’d post it on the student noticeboard if he didn’t leave you alone.’

‘Glyn!’ she screeched. ‘How could you? That was horrible.’

‘It worked,’ I protested righteously.

‘No it didn’t. Going out with a rugby player worked.’

I didn’t try to correct her. ‘Have you any idea where Edgar Fiske is now?’

‘Why? Are you going to apologize?’

I thought of the set-up in the Scots pine stand. ‘I think it may have gone past the time for an apology.’

‘I think you should. God, Glyn, that was such a horrible thing to do. Poor Edgar.’ She was silent for a moment. ‘Edgar and his partner Michael are running a little gallery and tea room in Yeovil. You’ll find him in the telephone book.’

‘Edgar Fiske is gay?’ I asked, surprised.

‘Of course. That’s why he was pretending to be interested in me at college. He didn’t want the trainee PE teachers finding out and making his life a misery.’

A tea room in Yeovil? Suddenly it looked as though Edgar Fiske had lost his sting.

Okay, gay men could be vindictive too. But not usually if their life had settled into a comfortable and contented pattern, which would appear to be the case with Edgar Fiske.

Back to square one. With Edgar Fiske disposed of, there was really no one I could think of out there with a big enough grudge against me.

Was I going to have to consider Jessie Bullock again?

No. It couldn’t be. I shook my head to reinforce it. She was an eighteen-year-old girl from the foothills. The Mid Wales equivalent of fucking Heidi. And the Heidis of this world didn’t draw down the wrath of professional snipers.

Now that I was home, had no pied wagtail, and had run up against another brick wall, I found that I wasn’t yet ready for the isolation. I didn’t want to be here alone when the night came down.

Dinas, the town that Jack Galbraith had exiled me to, hadn’t quite achieved the tourist bonanza it had hoped for when it had promoted itself as having more abandoned Primitive Methodist chapels per head of population than anywhere else. Consequently the Chamber of Commerce was currently debating whether to give up on failed religion and to try and ride the coat-tails of the town’s dead lead-mining legacy instead. It was that kind of vibrancy that kept the tumbleweed moving.

I bought some basic foodstuffs in the convenience store and made my way to The Fleece across the empty market square, past the Victorian gothic clock tower, and the statue of a shepherd with a tilted traffic cone on his head.

The Fleece had been a coaching inn until a smarter and more enterprising town had stepped in and pinched the mail trade. The place now doubled up as my unofficial city desk and recreational centre. Its owners, David and Sandra Williams, who had both spent some time out in the wider world, were also the nearest things I had to best buddies in Dinas without feathers.

I went in through the door to the rear bar. It was early, and the place was quiet enough for David to be making a show of polishing glasses behind the front bar. He held one up to the light with the scrutiny of an ever-hopeful opal miner.

I saw myself in the mirror behind the bar. My gait was still stiff, and the jolting motion it produced, combined with my discoloured, unshaven face and the plastic carrier bag of groceries, gave me the look of an old lush on automatic pilot treading the well-worn nightly path to the beer tap.

I sent out a silent prayer for this to please not be the future I was seeing.

David turned round. He did a jerky double-take when he saw me. ‘Jesus, Glyn …’ He ducked his head into the service entry between the two bars and yelled, ‘Sandra!’ He emerged smiling. ‘We weren’t expecting you. You should have called and I’d have come over and got you.’

‘Thanks, but I need the practice.’

He took a step backwards and appraised me, following it up with a wince. ‘You’re not a great advert for the health service.’

‘Don’t knock it, you should have seen the before pictures.’ I climbed stiffly onto a bar stool.

He started pulling me a beer and looked at me seriously. ‘We were all fucking devastated, you know that.’

I nodded. ‘Thanks for the card.’ It had been signed by David and Sandra and their cat, and by two of the old regulars who had probably thought they were putting their names to a petition to repeal the Corn Laws.

‘We would have come up to the hospital, but Emrys Hughes said you weren’t allowed visitors.’

I smiled ruefully. ‘They didn’t want Joe Public seeing the levels of luxury and excess their taxes were keeping me in.’

He chuckled and let it run out to a questioning expression. ‘Do you want to talk about it?’

I lifted the pint glass he slipped across the bar. ‘I’m not going to avoid it.’ I took a drink. It tasted good, and it helped me avoid it for the time being.

‘Glyn!’

I swung round on the stool to see Sandra coming through from the kitchen, her apron balled into one hand. She caught me into a hug, her cheek pressing tightly against me. I smelled old shampoo and cooking oil in her hair.

She pulled back to look at me. She had tears in her eyes. ‘It’s so good to see you home again in one piece.’

The door to the front bar opened, interrupting the return-of-the-prodigal tableau. Four young-farmer types entered in a whirl of noise and motion. One by one their sweeping glances lit on me, and their animation wilted. It was as if all the juice had been suddenly sucked out of their batteries. They stared at me like they were one entity for a moment, before carrying on to the bar in whisper mode.

David moved away to serve them. Sandra was watching me anxiously. ‘I gather there’s been talk?’ I quipped, trying to lighten the moment.

‘It’ll pass. They just need something to gossip about.’ She touched my hand comfortingly.

Right, until the next time I was seen to fuck up. I had been in this situation before. As an outsider I made a convenient Jonah. Why blame global warming when you had me in town?

I took my beer over to a corner table.

‘How are you doing, Capaldi?’

He startled me. I spun in my chair to see Emrys Hughes standing over me, a sheepish smile on his face.

He looked awkward. Trying not to shuffle from one foot to the other. I had an image of this shambling bear of a man crowded into a small lift with a posse of diminutive female Chinese acrobats, knowing that any movement of his was going to nudge tit. If he had been feeling guilty for being partly instrumental in what had happened to me I could have felt sorry for him. But I didn’t credit him with that degree of sensitivity. What was probably cutting him up was having to be in my proximity now that I was even more of a social leper.