From Aberystwyth with Love by Malcolm Pryce Read Free Book Online Page A

picked up the brush from the glue pot and smeared it on the axle of the flywheel. I sat down again. The man came in and put my blindfold back on. I heard the cigar box snap shut. The man walked over to the dresser on my right, I heard a door being opened, a drawer opened and shut. Then we left. Behind me, the resin slowly thickened and turned to stone, fusing two pieces of wood. All I had to do was ask Meici Jones about reports of jammed wheels on his patch. Piece of cake. It was my first act of spinning-wheel sabotage.

Chapter 4
     
    Meici Jones stood with his hands on his hips and complained about death taking away his customers. ‘It’s a dying business, all right. The young ones aren’t interested in spinning, and the rest get fewer each year. The number of funerals I attend! You wouldn’t believe, sometimes I wonder if it’s worth it. It costs me more in dry-cleaning getting me togs ready than I ever get out of the will when it’s read.’ He shook his head in disgust. ‘It’s not like the old days. What did you say your name was again?’
    ‘Louie, and this is Calamity, my niece.’
    Meici Jones sized us up, and nodded. ‘Mooncalf’s a good guy.’
    ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘one of the best.’
    ‘I do a lot of business through him, a lot.’ He tapped the side of his nose. ‘The sort of business that if you asked about it I’d have to say was none of your business, if you see what I mean.’ He was short, in his thirties, with the melancholy eyes of a spaniel. ‘I was quite surprised when he said you and your niece wanted to learn. Not many people do these days. You hoping for some action on the bequests and legacies stuff, are you? You’re wasting your time if you are.’
    ‘No, it’s for the coming apocalypse.’
    ‘What’s that then?’
    ‘You know, end of the world, nuclear Armageddon. Civilisation will be destroyed, it will be back to the hoe and plough, armed marauding gangs infesting the radioactive countryside, a man will need to survive by his own wits. Spinning will be an essential.’
    ‘I hadn’t thought of that.’ He stood back and surveyed the scene. His Cavalier estate was parked outside our office in Stryd-y-Popty, the boot raised. Sample cases and bits of wood and rubber were strewn around the boot. ‘Let’s see what we have here, then. Good salesman always runs through the checklist.’ He pulled a sample case forward and opened up the lid with two snaps of the fasteners. Bits of spinning wheel, cut into sections, lay embedded on green velour in form-fitted depressions. The high-gloss finish flashed in the sun like a welder’s torch. ‘This is what the guy in The Day of the Jackal used to keep his sniper rifle in,’ he said. ‘The ladies love it when I tell them that. That’s what it’s all about, you see, the old black magic; know what I mean?’ He picked up a quadrant of wheel rim cut from deeply polished mahogany. ‘Look at that, quality that is. Last a lifetime it will, not that we want it to, of course, but you can always go back and bugger the thing up every now and again, can’t you? You’re in luck, as it happens, Mrs Eglwys Fach was on the phone, her wheel’s jammed up. Might be able to get her to take a new one.’ He banged the side of my head with the piece of spinning wheel. ‘Feel that? This is from Marmaduke & Sons. Best there is. Marmaduke Semi-Saxon horizontal, sheathed bobbin, slip-backed flyer with five-speed twin treadle complete with Teflon-coated dérailleur gear change by Shimano of Japan.’
    He closed the case and ran his hand across the various items in the boot, talking to himself as he mentally ticked them off. ‘Gasket, polish, order book, resin, spare treadle, distaff balance, counterweights . . .’ His hand came to rest on two stovepipe hats. ‘Not forgetting the most important thing of all . . .’ He turned round and said with a wink, ‘Couple of stoveys for the ladies!’
    We drove up Penglais Hill, windows wound right down,