The Dylan Thomas Murders Page 3

  * * *

  I felt buoyant and pleased with myself. It had been a good interview, and Rosalind Hilton had asked me to come back to talk some more. Maybe I should have gone straight home but I didn’t, and in retrospect that may have been a mistake. I drove, without really thinking much about it, to Fern Hill. Perhaps I was taking myself too seriously, but I wanted to know why we were being sent unsolicited spiders and puppy tails.

  It took only a few minutes to get there. I parked the car, and got the torch from the boot. Not that there was much use for it because the moon was full and shining brightly. I padded cautiously up to the farmhouse. I stopped at the edge of the yard. I could hear owls, and no doubt they were watching me as I watched the house. Something was whimpering in the barn but I couldn’t make out what it was. The vinegar scent of burning oak disinfected the air, which stank of rotting flesh, perhaps a sheep somewhere in the trees at the back of the house.

  One of the downstairs windows was lit up, and cast a yellow light onto the cobbles of the yard. I moved slowly and quietly forwards. I could see him in the square of the window, as if I had chanced upon a portrait in a secluded part of a gallery. He was crouched over the desk, his chin cupped in both hands. His two index fingers were behind his ear lobes which he pushed absent-mindedly back and forth. He was looking at a notebook in front of him, and once or twice he would take a pencil from the pot, try to write something, and then put it back again. As he did this, he would glance at one of the photographs on the desk, and then at the other, shaking his head as he did so.

  I found myself thinking of paintings I knew but I couldn’t quite conjure them up. A Rembrandt, perhaps, a man huddled over a kitchen table...Van Gogh looking at his face in the mirror...and then, without warning, I was taken over by a vision of myself sitting at a table. I wasn’t outside the farmhouse at all, I was inside another room, in another house. In front of me was a plate, with four fat sausages on it, at which I picked with my fork. I heard a great whooshing noise behind me. I looked round just as the fishing rod peeled into my back.

  “Eat those sausages,” thundered my father.

  I jumped to my feet in shock. “I hate fat sausages,” I cried out.

  “They’re just the same as thin ones.”

  “In that case, why can’t I have thin ones?” I retorted, and this time the rod came down across the side of my face.

  I felt angry but also disappointed. I rushed forward and hit him. He fell back into the armchair, sprawled like a boxer on his stool, waiting for the trainer’s sponge. Blood spurted from his nose and drenched the front of the white shirt that I had ironed for him before going to school.

  He stood up from the chair...and I was outside the farmhouse window again. I saw him cross the room, and heard the door open. I crouched so low that I could feel the cool of the ground on my face. He stood in the doorway looking across the yard, sniffed the air several times, and then fumbled with his trouser zip.

  “Do not come, gentile, into my good night,” he whispered. A stream of water splashed onto the cobbles with such force that it sprayed sideways across my hands and face. He went back inside and bolted the door.

  I ran across the farm yard and back to the car. I remember nothing of the journey home. There was a fine smell in the house as I came through the front door, and Rachel called from the kitchen: “Ready to eat?”

  “What you got?” I asked, making my way to the bathroom to wash away the stink of urine.

  “Red cabbage.”

  “And?”

  “Sauté potatoes.”

  “And?”

  “Bratwurst.”

  * * *

  The next morning I drove to Rosalind Hilton’s, and took some home-made bagels with me. I know how to get on with the natives. She found some smoked sewin and cream cheese, put them on the coffee table between us, and was ready to talk.

  “People think that Eliot and Thomas were chalk and cheese. Well, to some extent they’re right. Eliot liked order and discipline around him, Dylan lived in chaos and dirt. Eliot was cool, reserved, the great chiller, you might think, but Dylan was warm, out-going, in public at least.”

  “Eliot the Harvard graduate...”

  “And Dylan, the failure at grammar school...”

  “The banker and the scrounger, the cat lover and the cat hater...”

  “Dylan had an absolute craving for sweets. Eliot sneered at them. Pointless self-gratification, he said. That rather sums them up, I think,” said Rosalind tartly.

  “Did they have anything in common?”

  “Oh, yes, love of the sea for one thing, and molly-coddling mothers, for another.”

  “They were both frail children,” I said, as if Rosalind needed an explanation. “And sickly for most of their lives.”

  “Isn’t it curious that they both married in secret and to women obsessed with dancing?”

  “I understand Dylan and Eliot were rather puritanical about sex...”

  “...and neither was very good at it,” interrupted Rosalind.

  I wanted to ask how she knew but I was a little taken aback by her frankness. I decided to leave it for later. I could see that Rosalind was impatient to continue.

  “Drinking was important to both of them,” she said, “but other things, too. Dylan loved his bed, sucking a beer bottle, eating cake, reading trash novels. Eliot had his detective stories, and was totally obsessed with murders altogether.”

  “And politics?”

  “Dylan was never political, except when it suited him, but he found Eliot’s right-wing views distasteful. He was very upset when he heard about Eliot’s tirade against the Jews. Eliot had given a lecture somewhere, and talked about America being invaded by foreign races. I knew nothing about Eliot’s anti-semitism until much later, and saw no signs of it myself.

  “I’ll say one more thing about Eliot and the Jews: he may have thought a society should be based on blood-kinship, as he put it, but he certainly didn’t put that concept into practice himself – not when his trousers were down, anyway.

  “Well, that brings us nicely to sex. My parents, you understand, were communists and free thinkers. They passed to me no hang ups about sex or related matters. From my early years, I was always encouraged to think for myself, and to care little for convention.”

  Rosalind paused. I wasn’t clear whether she was having difficulty in recalling events or whether she was looking for courage to continue.

  “My first full sexual encounter was with a Baptist student called Mansel, whilst we were on a painting excursion in Snowdonia. It was a chilly experience. Thereafter, there were a number of men, mainly students, or others interested in the arts. We saw ourselves as part of the bohemian rainbow, and this sharing of our bodies was perfectly natural. I want you to know this because I would want no-one to believe that, when I went to London to visit Dylan, I was a sweet and innocent country girl who was cruelly exploited by a rapacious poet. On the contrary. As I remember things, it was I who did the taking to bed, and when I got him there, I found that I was more experienced, or at least adept, in these matters than was he.”

  “When was this?”

  “Early in 1938. After that, we met once or twice a year, and then quite frequently when he moved to Talsarn.”

  “And Eliot? How did that begin?”

  “We became good friends on his visits to Tyglyn. I was always in and out of the Faber house. He liked to walk with me along the river, and he would write whilst I sketched. He would always take his binoculars in case we came across an interesting bird. My father was a twitcher too, and Eliot helped him log the kites. They got on quite well, and Eliot loved talking in our front room with Dad.

  “They argued a lot about Germany and what was happening in Europe. I remember vividly one occasion in 1940. They had talked all afternoon. They came out of the front room after tea. My father took Eliot to the door. Both looked flustered and over-wrought and shook hands rather stiffly. Eliot walked down the path without looking back.
My father shouted after him: ‘Mr Eliot, why do you and Mr Pound sneer at us so?’ It was as if the world had ended. All those church services and eisteddfodau for nothing!

  “When Eliot came down the next year, I sensed there was something different about him. He certainly seemed more approachable, less guarded. I was a little frosty after what had happened the previous year, but I found, to my dismay, that I also wanted to ingratiate myself...I think I must have felt our future was in his hands.”

  “How was he different?”

  “He seemed more inclined to touch me, which was extremely unusual for Eliot. He would take my elbow over a stile, tap me on the shoulder to draw my attention. That definitely hadn’t happened before. One day we went out along the Beech Walk and turned up the hill. It’s quite a steep climb, and when you get there you can see the sea. We were about half way up when I lost my footing and slipped. Eliot put out his arm and caught me round the waist. His hand stayed there until we reached the top. I turned to thank him, and kissed him on the cheek. He held my hands and said: ‘This is our last summer together. They’re selling the estate.’

  “The next day he asked me to go to New Quay Fair with him, and Oaten drove us over. We walked around the booths, and I put my arm through his, though he took no interest in me or the booths, and seemed to be searching for something else. It turned out to be the boxing ring. Well, actually it was nothing of the sort, just a patch of grass squared off with rope and fence posts. We stayed there most of the afternoon. Some big bruiser from Bristol was taking on the local farm lads. Eliot was fascinated, he screamed and shouted for all he was worth. The man from Bristol made short work of most of the lads. Except one.

  “I felt someone pushing their way through the crowd from the back, and the people making way for him, almost respectfully. He was quite young, stocky like a prop forward, huge hands. And he was black. That really shocked Eliot, I could see.

  “He was well known to the locals, for they cheered and cheered when he climbed in the ring. He took off his shirt, and laid it carefully in one corner. He took out a small tin from his pocket and rubbed his body with grease till his chest gleamed like cocoa in candle-light. The man from Bristol was taunting him, I can’t remember what he said, but nowadays we would say it was racist. The young man took no notice, and calmly came to the centre of the ring.

  “The referee started the fight and then quickly jumped out of the way. The two men moved around each other cautiously. A few blows were landed, but not many, and then a handbell was rung to end the round. As the young boy turned to go back to his corner, the Bristol man hit him on the side of the head. Well, that made the crowd absolutely livid and for a moment we thought they’d invade the ring and lynch him.

  “The second round was pretty bloody, and I can only say that Eliot was engrossed. I doubt if he knew I was beside him, or that half of west Wales were shouting their heads off behind us. It lasted far longer than it should have, because someone forgot to ring the bell, or if they did, no-one heard it. Eventually, the local policeman climbed into the ring and dragged the two men apart.

  “As the third round started, someone shouted some comment about the Bristol man’s legs. The crowd burst out laughing. The young boy lost his concentration, and was hit badly. He staggered back across the ring and fell on the grass. The crowd went silent again. Eliot whooped with joy and gave me a hug. He leaned forward and kissed me. You might describe it as passionate.

  “The young boy staggered to his feet, and they threw a bucket of cold water over him. He came forward, quite steady and snarling. He threw one punch to the Bristol man’s face, squashing his nose and mouth, and he collapsed. The crowd cheered wildly and some started singing ‘Bread of Heaven’. He was up on eight, and staggered back to the ropes. The young boy moved in, and that was it. The Bristol man pretended to stumble, the boy hesitated and was caught on the side of his face. His legs gave way, and he dropped to the grass. And there was Eliot, leaping to his feet, arms outstretched in joy, suddenly twisting in mid-air as if he were a dog catching a fly. Then he dropped to the ground, and was scrabbling round on his hands and knees, looking for something in the grass. He jumped up with this wonderful smile on his face and held out his upturned hand. It was a blood-smeared tooth, lying there like a beached seal pup. He unscrewed the top of his cane, put the tooth in the top, and screwed it back on again. He took me in his arms, and kissed me again.

  “We caught the little bus back to Ciliau, though I felt like making my own way home. The incident with the tooth had upset me. We sat in the front seat and Eliot talked, rather incoherently as if he were drunk, about the time he had spent in Paris. It was early evening when we arrived back at the house. The Fabers were out. Eliot rang the bell in the drawing room and asked Annie to prepare some food. He paced about, still muttering about Paris, and took two or three sizeable whiskies. After we’d eaten, we walked down to the river, and came back up the field to the Beech Walk. By now, we were holding hands. We stopped at the walled garden, and went down the path to his shed. He shuffled his papers about, had another whisky from a bottle that was hidden in a bag of compost, and said something silly about not being able to get a decent bottle of Irish whiskey so the next best thing was to put the scotch in peat.

  “I took his hands, pulled him towards me and put his head on my shoulder. I put one hand on the back of his neck and the other around his waist. He went completely limp and folded into me. I stroked the back of his head and he started to moan. ‘Tom,’ I said in my best encouraging voice, ‘please kiss me.’ And he came to life...it was as if I had just pulled the plug on the Hoover dam. There was another passionate kiss, and he started fumbling with the buttons of my cardigan. And then disaster! An uproar in the garden. We could hear someone running down the path. Eliot leapt away from me and sat down at his little desk. I took up a studied pose at the window, looking down across the river. Oaten burst in, and was clearly disappointed to see that it was only Eliot and me in the shed. ‘There’s bloody poachers hiding about,’ he cried and went off down the garden.

  “Anyway, it was all shattered by Oaten’s interruption. We walked back up to the house and I wondered how I might ever again pull Eliot back into some semblance of ordinary humanity. I needn’t have worried because he was plotting his own escape. Annie brought us some coffee. Eliot diligently laid out the cups and poured the coffee and milk. He passed the cup to me, and I asked for some sugar. He had some ready on a spoon. He dropped it in the cup and immediately the coffee started to fizz, and scores of little fish popped up on the surface. Eliot was in hysterics. I was annoyed, it seemed such a childish thing to do. He came over, lifted me from the chair, and said: ‘I’ve only ever known dull duty.’

  “We embraced, and he whispered: ‘My sweetest Volupine.’ We went upstairs to his room. There wasn’t much in the way of preliminaries, not least because the room was so chilly. Eliot was hesitant at first, and there was a spot of embarrassment over his truss, which he didn’t really want me to see. Anyway, I’ll spare you the details. Sophisticated he was not, but he was certainly lustful. We were at it all night, playing Bola, as he called it. A few weeks later, I realised that I was pregnant.”

  “And Eliot was the father?”

  “Or Dylan.” She paused, and looked away into the fire. “Dylan came to see me the following week.”

  “Did you tell them?”

  “Dylan seemed rather taken aback, if not a little shocked. But we went for a long walk along the Aeron and by the time we’d come back, he was more like his usual self, and quite excited at the thought of another son, as he assumed it would be.

  “Eliot was different. He seemed pleased at first, but when I told him I couldn’t be sure that he was the father, that it might as easily be Dylan, he was furious. No, not with me, but with Dylan, for some reason. He wasn’t at all rational about it and went off in a rage.”

  “And what happened?”

  “I stayed good friends with them both. Dylan would drive acros
s to see us once or twice a year. I saw a lot of him when they were in New Quay, at Majoda.”

  “And Eliot...?”

  “He came less frequently, but wrote quite a lot.”

  “And the child...?”

  “A boy, born the same week as Aeronwy, but a year older. That was always a problem for Dylan, two birthdays in the same week. I felt sorry for Caitlin, he wasn’t with her when Aeronwy was born, and she assumed he’d been pubbing. This was the time when she realised that Dylan had become two people, as she put it, though she didn’t know the reason. Anyway, he did his best for her. He left here soon after Waldo’s first birthday party, and rushed up to London in my father’s old dressing gown. It was terribly cold and that’s all I could find in the house for him, but he was too late for Aeronwy’s birth.”

  “And that was his name? Waldo.”

  “Waldo Sweeney Hilton. I asked each of them to choose a name for him, and that’s what they picked.”

  “What did he like to be called?”

  “Oh, definitely Waldo.”

  I wondered if appearance would provide any clues so I asked her who he looked like.

  “He has Eliot’s height and build, but it’s Dylan’s nose he’s got.”

  “Does he know about them?”

  “They were uncles to begin with, but I told him the day that Dylan died, the whole truth.”

  “How did he take it?”

  “Very badly. I’m sure it’s why he failed the scholarship. He became very introspective. And he really missed Dylan. He didn’t visit very often, but when he did he made such a fuss of Waldo, especially on his birthday. Dylan loved birthdays, and he only once missed one of Waldo’s.

  “Mind you, he lost interest when Waldo started growing up. He only liked them when they were babies. By the way, have you noticed there are no proper families in Milk Wood, except Butcher Beynon’s?”