Last Tango in Aberystwyth by Malcolm Pryce Page A

could go to the Indian,’ Ionawr said hesitantly, reading my face to gauge my reaction.
    â€˜That’s not the sort of place to take a lady, even one …’
    â€˜One what?’
    â€˜Oh nothing.’
    â€˜I know what you were going to say. Even one like me.’
    â€˜No I wasn’t.’
    â€˜Yes you were. Don’t deny it, it doesn’t matter. I know what I want to eat: something traditional Welsh like my grandmother used to make when I was a kid.’
    â€˜That’s a bit of a tall order.’
    â€˜They do caawl at the Chinese.’ She took my hand and pulled me. ‘Come on.’
    I hesitated.
    â€˜What’s wrong?’
    â€˜Did you hear that?’
    â€˜What?’
    I thought for a moment and then said, ‘Oh nothing.’ We carried on. And then I stopped again.
    â€˜We’re being followed.’
    â€˜Are you sure? I can’t see anyone.’
    â€˜I’ve felt it since we left the game.’
    I sent Ionawr on ahead and slunk into a doorway and waited. The footsteps got louder and louder. When the guy passed I grabbed him and threw him into the doorway.
    â€˜Oh my Lord!’ said a voice. It was Smokey G. Jones, her tiny head projecting from the collar in her coat like a light bulb. ‘Don’t kill me, please!’
    â€˜Mrs Jones! What are you doing? I thought you were following me.’
    â€˜I was. Only I didn’t mean any harm. I just wanted to ask you. No harm at all.’
    â€˜Ask me what?’
    â€˜If you’d have a word with her, please, Mr Knight, just a word.This arthritis is something terrible. It’s all them cups of tea in me fighting days.’
    â€˜Have a word with who?’
    â€˜Miss Calamity. She’s cut me supply down. I need me placebo, Mr Knight, I can’t get through a day without it. But she’s gone and cut me supply.’
    Just then Ionawr reappeared and Mrs Jones stopped and looked at her. ‘Hmm.’ She sniffed. ‘What baggage.’ She walked off.
    It was often mayhem in the small take-away but tonight it was quiet. A few students, a few locals sitting on the hard-backed chairs, stupefied by drink into a morose silence, killing time softly like holidaymakers at a strike-bound airport. At the counter a Chinese girl in her mid-teens was doing her homework, a curtain of silky black hair falling forward to protect her from the gaze of the customers, falling in a delicate curl like the clef on a musical score.
    I coughed and she looked up.
    â€˜Can I help you, sir?’
    â€˜I hear you sell caawl now.’
    â€˜Yes,’ she said. ‘Would you like some?’
    â€˜Is it good?’
    â€˜People who know about these things say it is. Personally I’ve never tried it.’
    â€˜Quite an unusual dish to find in a Chinese restaurant.’
    â€˜We Chinese have to adapt.’ She wrote down the order and handed it through the serving-hatch. ‘And it brings in the crowds.’
    â€˜Isn’t it a bit dishonest?’
    She shrugged. ‘I don’t know, is it? In my grandmother’s province they have a tree that gets pollinated by bats, so the tree gives off a perfume of dead mice. No one complains about that.’
    â€˜Except maybe the cats.’
    She smiled and took our money. ‘Anyway, lamb stew with lumps of cheese – it’s not so very hard to make.’
    â€˜Ah! but the cheese has to be added with love,’ I said.
    Someone by the door farted and his mates burst into crude guffaws of laughter. I fought the urge to look round and waited for the prickle of shame to subside.
    The girl said, ‘We add all our ingredients with love, our customers deserve nothing less.’ She took the cartons of caawl and placed them carefully in the paper bag. ‘I’ve seen you before somewhere, but you’re not a regular.’
    â€˜With my father, maybe, on the Prom. He’s the donkey-man.’
    â€˜Ah of