Free Don’t Cry For Me Aberystwyth by Malcolm Pryce Page B

shell case from the Great War; framed photos of various dead people, and a south-coast seaside resort where a young couple grinned awkwardly into a camera forty years ago. A brass letter holder stuffed with letters and cards, none of them from abroad. The accumulated detritus of a life, all that was left of the good times two people had shared. Put them all together in a box and sell them through
Exchange and Mart
, you might get the cost of a second-class stamp.
    ‘I’m so sorry,’ said the girl, dabbing her eyes. ‘I . . . I . . .’
    ‘Take your time,’ I said gently. She was somewhere in her mid-twenties, wrapped up in a bilberry-coloured mackintosh which looked like it might be quite an expensive model, belted tightly at a narrow waist. Her hair was cropped in a pageboy bob, ivory colour, the way they did it in Flemish paintings back in the time when the Flems went in for painting. She was very pretty, withclear blue eyes and tear-stained cheeks which some would describe as pellucid. It was the sort of complexion they use to advertise cosmetics even though you never get a complexion that good using powder. Two weeks ago her father had gone to see the new Clip movie and after that he had walked down to Trefechan Bridge by the harbour, attached a length of cord to the central light fitting, and hanged himself from it. He swayed like a pendulum in the breeze all night and was found in the early light by a fisherman going to work. If he’d been my dad, I would have cried, too.
    She picked up a tissue and with a determined effort to move things along blew her nose with a sharp and unseemly ‘parp’ sound.
    ‘You say he hanged himself after seeing the movie, but does that imply simply a temporal relation like saying it was after the six o’clock news, or are you implying there is a causative connection?’
    ‘I’m sorry, I . . .’
    ‘I mean, when you say “after” do you just mean after the movie, or do you mean he killed himself because of something he saw in it?’
    ‘Because of what he saw, yes, there is no doubt about it. No doubt whatsoever.’
    ‘There’s usually doubt about these things . . .’
    ‘You didn’t know my father. His life was ruined by that dog.’ She gave me a look which challenged me to make light of such a claim. I left the gauntlet where it lay. ‘You’ve seen the stuffed Clip at the museum?’ she said.
    ‘Plenty of times.’
    ‘What do you think of it?’
    ‘I don’t generally think about it. To me it’s just a dog in a glass cage.’
    ‘What about the smile? Do you agree it’s like the
Mona Lisa
? Mysterious, enigmatic, but with perhaps a little less guile?’
    ‘Not really. All collies look like that.’
    ‘My father hated that expression. It destroyed him.’
    ‘That’s quite a strong opinion to have about a stuffed dog’s smile.’
    ‘For you perhaps. But my father was a taxidermist. He had a wonderful career ahead of him. He could have been one of the greats . . . perhaps the greatest of all. With work on show in Moscow town hall or the Sorbonne. But life is full of what-might-have-beens isn’t it?’ Her head was lowered but she raised her tear-filled eyes as if to seek my complicity in this bitter truth. ‘Oh yes, he never stopped finding fault with Clip. There was never a day when he did not criticise the piece for various technical failings: ears too sharply angled, tongue too pink, the line of the spine not straight enough . . . but he knew they were irrelevant, like criticising Michelangelo for getting David’s head out of proportion. Secretly he knew the truth: it was an act of divine creation. Angels must have reached down and anointed the stuffer while he worked. The day my father saw the unveiling of Clip at the museum he felt like Salieri when he first heard the music of Mozart. His heart was shattered. He spent the rest of his life on his allotment; never stuffed another piece. With time, of course, the pain subsided. But then they re-released