Last Tango in Aberystwyth by Malcolm Pryce Page A

Solitaire.
    â€˜It’s OK, mate,’ the guard said. ‘They’re not real. They’re fake ones, like in a joke shop.’
    â€˜You allow people to give him things like this?’
    â€˜He makes them himself.’
    â€˜But the regulations?’
    â€˜Regulations against most things but there’s not one against making fake poo.’ He returned his attention to the cards and I looked at Custard Pie. The last time we had met we had been dropping through the incandescent white clouds, flying in low towards the lake of Nant-y-moch.
    â€˜I know why you’re here,’ he said in cold monotone devoid of any inflection or feeling. ‘You’re looking for the Dean.’
    â€˜You’re well-informed.’
    â€˜There’s nothing that happens in this town I don’t know about.The only thing I don’t know, in fact, is why you think I will help you.’
    â€˜He may have gone to join the clowns.’
    â€˜Of course he’s gone to join the clowns. But why should I help you? The man who took away my liberty?’
    I looked at him and considered. ‘He threw away forty years of scholarship to go and get his arse slapsticked all day in front of a jeering crowd. Most people wouldn’t understand what drives a man to do something like that. I certainly wouldn’t. But you would.’
    â€˜So?’
    â€˜So you could probably find him. You could predict his next move better than anyone else in the whole world. It would be a feat of such audacious brilliance that I thought an egotist like you wouldn’t be able to resist.’
    A contemplative look appeared in his eyes. ‘As a project it would not be without interest. I might even enjoy it, but what of it? I have passed the stage of doing things for the sake of enjoyment.’
    â€˜With your genius for understanding the comic mind –’
    â€˜Or even the deranged comic mind –’
    â€˜If you say so.’
    â€˜Tell me, Louie, do you think I am mad?’
    I hesitated.
    â€˜Or are you smart enough to see the sadness where others see madness or badness?’
    â€˜All I see are good guys and crooks. I don’t need it any more complicated than that.’
    â€˜Oh but you do, Louie. You do.’ His voice took on an insinuating quality that suggested that he had thoroughly examined my psyche and found it wanting. ‘You do. That’s your curse. I know you, Louie. I know that sometimes you lie awake at night and try to fight off this monstrous thought that just won’t be driven away. How can we really be held responsiblefor our actions? Whether it is nature or nurture that fashions us it makes little difference, does it not? Give me the child for seven years and I will give you the man. Can I be blamed for becoming what I became? For what I had no power to avoid becoming? And if not, how can you justify punishing me?’
    I smiled. ‘Maybe. And maybe not. But if you helped save the Dean no one could argue about the rightness of that.’
    â€˜Are you really such a fool that you think he can be saved? Yes, I can find him and send him back to his college to spend another twenty years marking essays, but do you really call that saving? Some people might call it the opposite. They might say only now is he truly saved.’
    â€˜Except that his new world won’t make him happy. It may even kill him.’
    â€˜You’re right. There is no happiness for him now. He has entered the world of the clown and discovered to his dismay that, laugh as he might, there is nothing funny about it. Nothing at all. We huddle round the camp fire and laugh merely to drown out the howl that comes in the night. Save the Dean? Louie, I can’t even save myself.’
    I waved to the guard; the interview was over and had accomplished about as much as I imagined. As I walked away the prisoner hissed a word. I stopped and he hissed it again. Three words, or four. I turned and