“Like an electromagnetic imprint?”
“Yes and my wrist is aching right now, which suggests he has been dancing for several days already at that rave.”
“Do you miss him? Would you like to see him again?”
“Yes, but I can’t imagine he’ll ever return to Wales of his own free will. It’s too grey here, too prosaic. Searching for him would take too long. He could be in Brazil or Goa or Madagascar...”
I pondered this problem deeply. I tried to imagine a glove puppet, any glove puppet, dancing without an operator — handless — around a huge fire on a beach, adorned with tribal jewellery and henna markings, listening to pulsating music under the shimmering stars. It was not an unpleasing image but was it feasible? Personally I think they can do it, perhaps not without difficulties that humans don’t have, but with certain advantages too. Humans have to re-hydrate after so many hours. Puppets don’t.
I thought I knew a way to entice Kelvin back, but before I could propose my idea, Catherine told me this story:
“I once heard about a glove puppet, a panda, caught trying to smuggle drugs across the border, don’t know what drugs, which border or even what type of panda – giant or red – but that’s not important. Anyway it was arrested and hauled off to an interrogation room but it wasn’t forthcoming with its answers, sitting there in silence almost as if dead. Buckets of cold water and slaps had no effect; it just wouldn’t move or talk, so one of the officers insisted on doing a body search. That was a mistake because the moment he thrust his hand inside it to feel around for the contraband, the panda came alive again – which is natural for glove puppets – and it began winking and pointing at the officer as if he was a secret partner in the crime.”
“It framed the officer! How cunning!”
Catherine nodded. “Don’t trust pandas too much, they’re about as reliable as owls. You look distracted, what’s up?”
“It has just occurred to me that if we change the character of Swansea – turn it into an exotic place – more exotic than Goa or anywhere else – into the most exotic place in the world, then Kelvin might find himself drawn here regardless of the grey skies and drizzle of Wales.”
“A good idea, but how can it be implemented?”
“Let’s put our heads together,” I said.
* * * *
Castor Jenkins will usually pause at this point until someone buys him another drink. Whether he gets it or not, and he mostly does, he’ll gaze for a long time out of the window at the Porthcawl seafront, the rocks and the sea. This sea is actually the estuary of the broad River Severn and on the far side, the cliffs of Exmoor loom impressively. To the west are visible the lights of Swansea, that ugly-lovely, beery-leery, sentiment draped town. If cities are female, Swansea likes to rouge its nipples with lipstick.
Unluckily for metaphors, extended or otherwise, cities don’t have a gender, that convention is just wishful thinking.
“So what happened?” Frothing Harris will ask.
“Did you come up with a plan?” Paddy Deluxe might add.
Castor Jenkins never wipes his nose on a tissue if he can help it. The sleeve is the way he does it every time.
“Yes, but we had to change everything, every last cultural atom of Swansea, or at least we thought we did. Turned out that once the chain reaction began, it did the job itself. The music, the food, the ambience: all were transformed in a way staggering to behold. We ended up with a place resembling a cross between Havana, Atlantis and Lwachtrop!”
“Where the heck is Lwachtrop?”
“A town on a distant planet... Orange skies... None of us have been there yet, but you’ll understand one day. Now I’m getting ahead of myself, a horrid habit! I’ll quickly explain what happened... Without Catherine’s organisational skills I don’t think it could have worked. First we interfered with the local music scene. Have you been to any gigs in Swansea?”
“Never. Oh wait! I went to see the progressive combo King Crimson at the Top Rank on December 6th, 1972.”
“We’re getting old, my friend... Anyway, the scene is dominated these days by folk duos and soft rock bands, most of them boring beyond belief. There are many good musicians1, but generally the standard is bland, the tempos are slow, the guitarists tend to noodle, the vocalists often warble in nasal fashion, not the sort of music one might expect to find in an exotic paradise... It was essential to give the scene a mighty kick up the bass drum, so Catherine and I hatched a plot that utilised the forces of chaos.
“We got ourselves into an administrative position – I can’t recall how – and deliberately double booked, or triple booked, bands. In other words, more than one act would turn up at a given time to play on the same stage. The cacophony that resulted was mostly blisteringly bad, not always, but it sounded like nothing local, nothing Welsh. It sounded exotic, like nothing previously known above or below the equator. Then we set off as many fire alarms as we could. The people rushed into the streets while the music kept going (the musicians couldn’t hear the alarms above the polyrhythmic din). Swansea suddenly was a city of street parties, of dancing under stars.”
“Stars? How do you expect us to believe that?”
“You’re right, it was poetic licence. What I really meant was: the low-lying featureless nighttime clouds saturated with oily moisture. But under those the inhabitants of Swansea did dance, and the music pulsed, throbbed and squealed and gained a momentum of its own, started to fit together, to become funky and nice, and feet on the pavement slabs moved faster, and hips gyrated in the style known as sensual, and bosoms and groins were thrust back and forth, and it was astounding to behold, incredible to witness, invigorating to describe, and that’s how it was, and this was the beginning of the chain reaction I mentioned. Before an hour had passed, Swansea had metamorphosed in a way that not even I might have anticipated. The effect was extreme.
“‘If this doesn’t summon Kelvin,’ I remarked, ‘then nothing will.’
“Catherine nodded. ‘You know something? I feel he’s on his way already. My guess is that tomorrow he’ll be back.’
“We joined the fun, drinking and dancing. The process was out of our hands now, beyond our control; the change was unstoppable and that’s the way I liked it. I fell asleep just before dawn on the beach, with a dune for a pillow. Sleeping on the beach in Swansea is unheard of – the place is just a venue for empty chip wrappers to blow along, isn’t it? I love chips but I loved the change more. When I awoke my head was light. I blinked in disbelief. The path parallel to the beach, where joggers and cyclists like to damage ankles and tyres, was shaded by palm trees. Where had those come from? Surfers rode giant clean waves, shark fins cleaved the blue water further out.
“I found Catherine rocking in a hammock with a caipirinha in her hand, her eyes inscrutable behind sunglasses. She sipped her fruity cocktail and smiled in languorous recognition. I noticed that she was wearing a sarong. I seemed to be the only person in Welsh trousers.
“‘This event defies logic. It’s too magical,’ I protested.
“‘What’s the trouble?’ she purred.
“‘Palm trees don’t spring up overnight, dirty seas don’t become clean in less than twelve hours, a whacking great Sugar Loaf mountain isn’t upthrust from the seabed quite so readily. I thought we might change the atmosphere of this town, not its actual landscape!”
“‘Just accept it for what it is,’ she answered.
“I didn’t find her attitude helpful, so I left