After Brock (23 page)

But Pete's diagnosis in no way put Sam off his stride; he clearly judged it an irrelevance. ‘You wait,' he said, turning his head so that those deep-brown eyes with their still contracted pupils could bore their beams into Pete's, and make him see events as he himself was seeing them, ‘you just fucking wait. This bizarre shaking was just beginning to subside when they heard a bang such as neither of them had heard in all their born days. Ear-splitting, like the hugest load of TNT being tipped out from a great height onto the land. Susie screamed fit to bring the house down completely, (and this is a couple, Pete, who, for obvious reasons, try their darnedest to stay quiet in all circumstances!), and asked: “Is the planet breaking up?” Well, old Don couldn't simply say No, could he? He didn't know any more than she. Thought it was possible, because this was just how it felt.
That
the planet itself was breaking up…
' There was real relish in Sam's repetition. ‘Not your usual
earthquake
story, huh?'

Pete wasn't at all sure of this point, in fact those grooves in his brain could probably release not a few eye-witness accounts of the phenomenon (from Indonesia, Turkey, Iran, Japan) which might well corroborate Don's story, so placing the upheaval at Llandrillo decisively in that category. But he could see, from the bright glint of Sam's tea-coloured irises, that he had a lot more to tell, and that it would be sensational.

‘The banging went on for some while, though Don knows only the time it began – which was 8.30…'

‘But that's only just over an hour ago!' exclaimed Pete, for hadn't he noticed the exact time on leaving his bedroom? ‘So we're talking about something that may not yet have finished…'

‘That's why I'm here to take us to the Berwyns now, moron,' said Sam, ‘so why not let me get on with the story, and then we can set off prepared? Don and Susie saw through the windows of the cottage that other people were hearing the bangs too. So pretty soon they went outside to join the crowd on the main street of Llandrillo, everybody scared shitless. For now they could see right above the mountain they call Cadair Bronwen – the Mountain of Love with the cairn to King Arthur at the top – a great mass of blue and orange lights, with irregular white little dots of brightness at its edges.'

‘Fucking hell!' said Pete, ‘And all the others in Llandrillo noticed this – this
mass
?'

‘Every man jack of 'em,' Sam assured him, ‘and among them the very guy Don and Susie least wanted to see, Susie's husband, Tom. Jealous pillock, with one hell of a terrible temper. Don judged it best to scarper as quickly as he could. Otherwise, as he wittily put it, there'd be another kind of almighty bang at ground level, and he didn't want to hang around for
that, thank you very
much
! But before he managed to get into his car and take off, he realised – like all the other witnesses – that this brilliant mass in the sky was pointed in the direction of Corwen and the north. And he heard from a babble of voices that many folk watching had actually dialled 999, and were expecting the police to arrive any minute. A young farmer friend of Don's, John Roberts, said to him: “I've heard a lot about flying saucers, and there is one now, going through the air…”

‘Flying saucer, that's what old Don had had in his mind all along. All the shakes and noises were just signals of their arrival on Earth… Anyway he's now left Llandrillo to head for home where he lives with his mother, wondering how she must be coping. For if you could see this huge thing in the sky from one side of the Berwyns, wouldn't you be able to see it from the other, the Llanrhaeadr-ym-Mochnant side?'

‘Sounds a fair assumption,' said Pete.

Sam withdrew his flesh-stirring nearness, and shifted his bum in his seat so that he was once more the driver – if imminently rather than actually. He's establishing his own authority, his special relationship to these happenings, thought Pete – and, sensing this, he couldn't suppress a resentment against his friend for his (habitual) insistence on superiority. No, he told himself, I won't tell him about my own involvement with UFOs just yet. I'll wait till he's in a slightly more modest, equalising frame of mind.

‘Convinced so far, my friend?' Sam was, condescendingly, inquiring, ‘Don would hardly have bothered to ring me up (and in a pretty sane manner, all things considered), to tell me of events in his neck of the woods if he hadn't felt something big was occurring. Something he felt Yours Truly should know. “One of your UFOs!” he called it,
our
UFOs, you might say, eh Pete?'

And then, of course, despite his thoughts of just the moment before, Pete did feel guilt for his continuing deception. For Sam to say ‘our' – and about this of all topics – wasn't that as great a piece of generosity as he was capable of? Didn't that speak of some warmth for Pete in his cool soul?

‘Now you get the gravity, don't you? So I think we should head off right away. There's a lot more to tell you, but I can do that as we go. We'll never ever forgive ourselves, my friend, if, when we get there, it's too late, and the… the
visitation's
ended. Evaporated… though I think that unlikely,' he added ominously, as one speaking out of further, undisclosed knowledge. On edge he might still be, but Sam Price was, no doubt about it, enjoying himself pretty well. Just like when swooping down solo from The Devil's Chair. He always needed drama, didn't he: an apparition on a long run, a spliff, a rock-stack central to a frightening legend, and now this! Sam Price's constant enemy was boredom, and he clutched at what would best dispel it.

(And, whispered an inner voice, can't something of that accusation be levelled against yourself, Pete Kempsey? Why else all the pride in your IQ and radio appearances?)

‘Well, here I am, Sam, ready for the off!' Pete said aloud, thinking ‘Ready? I have no coat with me, no jacket, no scarf, no money, and only sneakers on my feet. But what can any of that matter when flying saucers have landed? And virtually in our backyard.'

   

Because it was mid-week and late in the evening, because there was this prevalent fear that petrol would soon be rationed, the A49 was emptier of traffic than Pete had ever seen it. They shared their northward stretch of it principally with long-distance lorries travelling well under the regulation 50mph. After Craven Arms they'd turn north west towards Welshpool and then Llanfyllin. This small town with a square at its centre is the Gateway to the Berwyns from the south. Had they not been travelling on so misty and cloudy a night, they would then have seen the range they were headed for looming against the (invaded?) night sky. But in truth they were to have little awareness of the proximity of the mountains until they had actually gained their destination, Don Parry's home-town of Llanrhaeadr-ym-Mochnant…

And how would they both respond to whatever was awaiting them there, above their heads or, even more alarmingly, before their very eyes? What figures would they cut in future UFO annals? Would they be classed with those Swedes who ushered in a whole era by looking up aloft at a cigar-shaped trajectory? Or with the Mustang-flying mates of Lieutenant Thomas F. Mantell who perished through following an irresistible shining whiteness – which might have only been the bright shine of the planet Venus? Or would the historian place them with Carl-Gustav Jung who didn't mind whether his UFOs belonged to the dreaming or the waking world?

   

For the first ten miles of their northward journey, Sam was in full narrative spate: ‘So there's old Don Parry making for home along the B4391 worrying not only about what he's left behind in Llandrillo, but about what lies ahead in Llanrhaeadr. All the tremors and explosions could well have scared his poor mother out of her wits! Anyway he couldn't be sure they'd come to a stop, could he? Still wasn't when last he spoke to me…

‘Once, Don says, you've left Llandrillo and the Dee valley, it's high and really desolate country until you descend to Llangynog and get back down into the Tanat Valley. So he's going across the southern flank of the Berwyns: treeless moor, not a house in sight, only rock. And he thinks to himself, so where's that bloody blue-and-orange mass gone to? Is it still hanging above Cadair Bronwen? By now he's nearer the other great peak of the range, Cadair Berwyn, which is higher still. So what does he do but park the car? He's got guts, Don has.'

So much had Sam absorbed Don Parry's intense relation to his own experiences of an hour back that Pete, by this time somewhat disoriented himself, began to wonder if this ‘character' hadn't taken over Sam's body, voice-box and all. ‘Yup, Don not only parks the car, but gets out of it, looks up into the sky. As you can see for yourself, it's not clear tonight, but this UFO – and maybe that's what we should start calling it, Pete – was so goddam brilliant its light pierced the cloud layer. Don says what he saw was about 1,500 feet up, and moving ever-so-slightly along. More orange, even orange-red, than blue, and shaped like a rugby ball (which would please old Don, who's a Wales afi-cionado). At its base those very small lights he'd noticed earlier were twinkling and dancing about in zigzag formation. Don just stood there beside his car watching them, hardly knowing whether he was frightened or happy.'

‘Fucking hell!' said Pete again.

‘But by the time he'd got back down to Llanrhaeadr, he couldn't see this any more. On the other hand lots of people were out and about in the main street. Practically everybody he bumped into had met somebody from Llanderfel and Llandrillo, or spoken to 'em over the phone, and were gobsmacked at what they'd heard. Llanrhaeadr itself had felt some shakes and bangs too, though not everybody there had done so, and never as badly as at Llandrillo. Quite a few in the district had rung the police – in fact the cops must be fucking inundated this night with all the 999 calls they've had. And Don himself felt he had a duty to tell as many people as he could asap about what was going on. That's why he got in touch with his new young friend, Sam Price. He knew he'd be the guy to take his news seriously.'

Pete's head swam as Sam his ventriloquist came to the inconclusive end of Don Parry's tale. Were they really out on something as prosaic as the A49? Was it the mapped workaday world of road signs and traffic lights on either side of the car windows or had he exchanged it for another that Sam Price and Don Parry's fused imaginations had brought into being? Small towns, villages, hamlets, farms, lonely houses, were all entering that state of rest supposedly central to night times – even though, were he still at home, he would not have gone to bed yet, would be still, maybe, struggling with Thomas Cromwell as viewed by G.R. Elton… Would his parents have noticed his absence yet?

Now he was in the doghouse, they'd even stopped calling out: ‘Good night, Peter, sleep well!' as they always had done, his life long. (Or had they, after all, gone on wishing him this, and he'd not heard them, because he'd shut his ears even more determinedly than he had his bedroom door, over which he'd now hung a sign: WORKING. KEEP OUT. THIS MEANS
YOU
!) 

Don't think about Woodgarth, he told himself, it's too late now. What's done's done! ‘Tell me more about Don Parry,' he asked Sam to distract himself. If the land around him was really under the dominion of this magnetic guy, he might as well be better informed about him. ‘Apart from his sexual prowess.' This was the right note to hit; Sam grinned collusively. ‘Does he
only
work for your father?'

‘Hell, no – though the Old Man thinks highly of all he does for us.' Pete noticed (not for the first time) Sam's casual, unconscious use of the first person plural when talking about Price's Menswear. ‘He does all manner of freelance work, Don does: for a local builder's, getting material at low costs, because of all his many contacts; for a bakery shop in Llanfyllin (which we'll be passing through later); he's quite an expert on flour. But his real interests are artistic. He's the creative type. He wants to make a huge mural of the King Arthur story, with glass and minerals inserted in it, and install it right in the middle of Llanrhaeadr. Minerals, because they're basic to Britain, and glass, because it shines with promises for both this world and the next.' More ventriloquism, obviously.

‘Why the next world?' queried Pete. This nocturnal expedition smacked too much of that already, he thought. After all hadn't even the UFOs chosen
this
one for their activities?

Sam turned to him with a knowing smile of curious, uncharacteristic sweetness. ‘Because the next world
starts
near Llanrhaeadr-ym-Mochnant, my friend. At the waterfall above the town, Pistyll Rhaeadr – a 240 feet drop, highest in England and Wales…'

Pete grunted impatiently here, implying it was unnecessary for Sam to tell him this sort of fact. (‘Peter Kempsey, what is the name of the tallest single-drop fall in England and Wales?')

‘You could describe the fall, to quote Don, as Nature's equivalent to the Pearly Gates. Climb to the top of it, and you could find yourself in Annwn.'

‘Annwn?' Here was a name Pete did not know, here was info he definitely didn't possess.

‘A.N.N.W.N. Annwn. The Celtic Otherworld. The Land Above the Falling Water. The country ruled benevolently by Gwyn ap Nudd.'

‘And who's
he
when he's at home?' He felt a decided pang of jealousy. Sam had clearly been spending a deal of time recently with this Don Parry character, had been the recipient of many of the guy's more unusual stores of knowledge (as well as of his tales of women) which – until this minute – he had not thought fit to share with Pete. Besides it was just a tad irritating that Sam should be now addressing him as some expert on Celtic lore when he was no such thing.

Yet who knew better than Pete how you can feel at home with a subject after a very short acquaintance with it?