The Unbearable Lightness of Being in Aberystwyth by Malcolm Pryce Page B

because there was plague in Talybont. And then he brought you forward a bit more, and guess what?’
    ‘I turned into Francis Drake.’
    ‘No, you were a lamplighter in 1849. And I asked you if you’d heard about the fire at the mansion and you said yes and what a terrible thing it was and I said, “Do you think the stable boy did it?” And you said, “Of course not, he was fitted up by the peelers.” Calamity stopped and then added, ‘Amazing eh?’
    ‘Lamplighter,’ I said quietly.
    ‘With a long pole to light the gas.’
    ‘I thought we were supposed to find out what happened at Ynyslas.’
    ‘Oh,’ said Calamity, slightly deflated. ‘You didn’t really say much about that, except you mentioned seeing an old soldier, and he had a tattoo on his forearm that said “Deeper than the love”.’

Chapter 5
     
    THERE WAS A police tent erected over the spot from which Myfanwy disappeared and beyond that, at the shore of the estuary, was Cadwaladr. He was loading things into a boat. We walked towards him with a slight reluctance since he appeared to be engaged on an unusual activity – gainful employment. Cadwaladr was one of the veterans of the war fought in 1961 to defend the Welsh colony in Patagonia. You often saw these men in their tattered greatcoats drifting from town to town, riding the boxcars, or just wandering; searching the land for an answer that no one seemed to have to the question, why Patagonia?
    Since the beginning of time, men have looked across the sea and imagined a land beyond the horizon where life would be easier. As boys, we stood on the shore and looked at Aberdovey, imagining that the girls over there were sweeter. And from time to time we met men from Aberdovey in the pubs of Borth with strange looks of disappointment on their faces. But why did the settlers in the last century, with all the world to choose from, opt for the southern tip of South America? What blinded them to the golden rule of colonisation? That ancient wisdom which says, it’s hard to grow crops in a land where they have penguins.
    The historians are silent on the subject, but I suspect it has to do with that great unsuspected dictator of human affairs, the smart aleck. The man who stands on the dockside as you leave for the promised land and scoffs. The Great Smirker. There’s always one, and he was probably already there in Africa when the apes came down from the trees and decided to walk to Europe.
    Men will put up with almost anything rather than face the derision of the Smirker. And so the Welsh settlers did what all pioneers do when they arrive and find that the brochure lied. They shivered in crofts made with bricks of turf and wrote home saying how great everything was. It’s another California. Salmon jump from the river into your hand. Birds lay their eggs straight into the frying pan. The rivers are lemon-curded with gold.
    When the soldiers arrived in 1961 and wrote home saying it was crap, they weren’t believed. Their complaints dismissed as the customary ball-aching that soldiers at the Front have always done. Of course they are not happy, what soldier sitting in a trench ever is? Of course they say the place stinks, when did a soldier ever admire the scenery?
    Still to this day they are not believed. Cast out as ungrateful moaners, lacking in gratitude for the unique chance given them to die in South America. Lost souls who perished in the service of the unacknowledged dictator. Their only epitaph: they died that he might smirk.
    The boat was big enough for four or five people and bore the name
Persephone
. Cadwaladr was loading tins of creosote. He stopped and looked up, nodded slightly, and reached out a hand. We shook.
    ‘Hope we’re not disturbing anything,’ I said.
    ‘Just finishing for the day. Taking them to the other side for tomorrow morning. You can come along.’ He ushered us into the boat and climbed in himself to sit facing us, with his back to Aberdovey. He started rowing