Read From Aberystwyth with Love for Free Online

of a boy who had rescued a baby from a burning building I might have been touched by his gentle aspect and said he looked a little angel.
    ‘The only member of the Slaughterhouse Mob still alive is the chief typographer down at the rock foundry. We can go and see him.’ Calamity took out another cutting. ‘This is the only photo the newspaper could find of Gethsemane.’
    It was a school nativity play: shepherds in dressing gowns and tea towels on their heads; a Roman centurion; a crib; Mary and Joseph; angels.
    ‘Gethsemane is the robin redbreast.’
    She had bird’s feet made out of rope, a dark cloak and a cardboard beak. In her eyes there was a certain wistful awareness: staring out across the years from the grey fog of a tattered old photo, it betokened the early understanding of what life held in store for a misfit doomed to wear a cardboard beak when others among her peers were centurions or angels.
    ‘The guy playing Joseph is Rwpert Valentino, the star of the TV soap North Road . We can check him out, he hangs out every night after the show at the railway station buffet.’
    ‘How did you find that out?’
    ‘It’s in the scandal pages in the Cambrian News . He’s got a girl who works there.’
    ‘OK, that’s good stuff. Anything else?’
    Calamity slapped the back of her hand against one of the news reports for emphasis. ‘This lady, Mrs Mochdre, interests me. Gethsemane’s aunt, the one who took her to the Pier that morning. Last one to see her alive, that’s always a red flag.’
    ‘Not always.’
    Calamity scowled at me and carried on. ‘She’s married to the Witchfinder, keeps pigs, used to be pretty big in the ABLL.’
    ‘What’s that?’
    ‘The Anti-Bearded-Lady League.’
    I blinked. It seemed like an appropriate reaction.
    ‘A lot of the champs on the Pro-Bearded-Lady circuit from the forties and fifties used to come from the area around Abercuawg,’ Calamity explained. ‘Mrs Mochdre used to campaign against it on grounds of idolatry or something. I thought we could talk to a few.’
    ‘A few what?’
    ‘Bearded ladies, get them to dish the dirt – there can’t be much love lost between them and Mrs Mochdre.’
    I looked at her through narrowed eyes. Calamity inspires a curious mix of emotions in me: pride and a desperate desire to protect her from the bad things in this world; I want to stop her from even knowing about them, even though she probably already does. Maybe this is how fathers feel all the time. Is this how Eeyore feels when he sees me?
    There are certain subjects we never discuss. Her father is one. He does not live in Aberystwyth; according to her mother he lives at the racetrack, but no fixed racetrack, in England, or sometimes the Republic of Ireland. The other subject is boyfriends. I do not think Calamity has a boyfriend, and her behaviour and dress do not betray any interest in that direction. I know how painful it would be for her if I mentioned it, with that clumsy well-meaning insensitivity of adults who have forgotten the grief of their own youth.
    She wears jeans and T-shirts and arranges her hair in an untidy spiky pile that is somehow arranged in its lack of arrangement. She is not a tomboy but she has a slight fear of girly things. On occasion I have seen her wearing eyeshadow but so little the lack of confidence shone through.
    Calamity tilted her head to one side to express mild puzzlement at the reverie that had caused me to be silent.
    ‘Talking to former bearded ladies seems like a . . . a . . . a very left-of-field way to begin a case,’ I said.
    ‘Exactly,’ said Calamity. She paused and said with a casual air that was slightly forced, ‘I thought we could use it as an example of superseding the paradigm.’
    ‘That sounds like a good idea.’
    ‘I think so too.’
    ‘What does it mean?’
    Calamity pulled a piece of paper from her back pocket, and unfolded it. ‘I saw it in this month’s Gumshoe magazine. It’s called “The