AMP: Artists' Meeting Place and Resource Collective

For earlier Chapters and an explanation of this dreadful story, see blog: The Cardiff Grandma. WARNING: This novel contains fake Welsh.

In the previous episode, in a NYC establishment with the bartender glued to the TV affixed to the wall, the mysteriously limping Peppet finds his prey…

The Cardiff Grandma Chapter 4b

“You’ve dropped something Mr Tresovian” Peppet said(with a rising intonation) as he reached the lone figure.The figure was amazed; how could this stranger tell that he’d recently imbibed another hit of acid just by looking at him? He had been sat minding his own mind and not drawing attention to himself… hadn’t he? Was the stranger some kind of DEA agent? Had they started to train ‘sniffer men’ to replace sniffer dogs? Why was the floor ablaze with burning leopards? What day was it? What planet? Where was his gun? All these questions immediately came to the figure's attention at the same time.

“Looks like a piece of sky to me”. As the seated man slowly raised his head from the jigsaw he had been so studiously working on, desperately trying not to look like a man who looked freaked and in the midst of a particularly vicious trip.

‘Sky? Jigsaw? Yes, that would explain it,’ the tripping man thought to himself, ‘that’s why I could figure out four across.’

“You ARE Mr Tresovian?” Peppet leaned in, pausing to glance behind himself to see whether anyone was listening. Nobody was. “You ARE… The Cornishman?”

There was a pause while the active parts of Tresovian’s brain processed the questions.‘Cornishman’ that sounded familiar. Where had he heard that before? Finally a reply came.

“I am(?)”. There was something in the man’s reply that didn’t seem right to Peppet. Something in the intonation perhaps. Of course, being merely a fleeting disturbance to the local atmosphere Peppet couldn’t put his finger on it. Was it a low mid rise? Perhaps a mid low fall?

Peppet decided to continue. “You’re not an easy man to find Mr Tresovian” he said, “not easy at all. Mind if I sit down?” he continued as he pulled up a chair and sat down. “My name is Wiggton” Peppet lied. “I’ve been waiting for you for a month now, they said you were due in New York on St. Roderick’s day. A whole month…”

The Cornishman sat impassively, listening to Peppet and occasionally adding another piece to the jigsaw. Even with his drug addled mind Tresovian couldn’t fail to notice, or to be annoyed by, Peppet’s irksome habit of repeating himself.

“… but here you are and here am I. Sir I represent some people who are very keen to meet you…” Peppet reached into his coat, pulled out a large bundle of 25 Euro notes, and flipped his thumb over the top of the bundle. “Very keen.”

“Keen”, repeated The Cornishman. “Very keen . Well, it would seem that you are indeed keen indeed. Outstandingly, even keenly keen. Whence this ‘keenness’ ? Whence this Bre’r Peppet? Whence whence whence?”

Peppet acted exactly like he was gazing at The Cornishman, and The Cornishman obliged by giving a credible imitation of a man being gazed upon. In fact, nothing could have been further from the truth. Each was thinking about what he felt was being thought about by the other and that was The Incident. The Incident which had preceded their encounter and brought it about it as inevitably as spilling coffee on a white shirt.

Suddenly Peppet wondered something. He’d introduced himself as Wiggton. Tresovian had addressed him as Peppet. How had he known his name was Peppet? It was the name that appeared on his birth certificate, it was the name his father had gone by, but beyond that, he’d always felt a rightness to it, a sureness – he just knew. And then Peppet wondered something else – how had The Cornishman known? And how had he known his given name was Wence? It could have been a shot in the dark, but…Peppet gave no sign of discomfiture.

“I believe you meant to say “Bre’r Wiggton,” he said with two gees.

Tresovian’s face lit up like a flashing “Reduce Speed Roadwork Ahead” sign. He leaned forward on both elbows and another sky piece, which stuck to his bare forearms. Hardly noticing them as he peeled them off and squashed them back into place, The Cornishman said excitedly, “Peppet means Wiggton in Polypponesian. The really interesting thing is how both are related to “Eninac” in Lokeek„, the language of a tribe of Native Americ --”

His field promotion weighing heavily upon him, Colonel Peppet massaged his limp miserably. “I’m not here for an etymology lesson, Mr Tresovian,” he cut in. “I think you have something for me. I think you have something for me and it would be best to just give it to me and be done with it.”

Tresovian’s face extinguished. Thrusting a dirty hand in his shirtpocket, he caught himself, pulled it out again and fitted it in at the end of the left elbow. It sounded strange saying it that way to himself, but because of the foreshortening caused by the perspective, that’s where it belonged. “You’ve got something for me, too, and you’ll get yours only after‚ I get mine.”

There it was, then. The classic Cornish-English standoff. Ever since Cymru had gained its independence, the Corns had become intractable – intractable and disobliging. Disobliging and uncooperative. So uncooperative as to be uncool, which is what one gets for looking up uncooperative in an electronic dictionary.

Peppet sighed and handed over the envelope. The Cornishman’s eyes glinted as he swiped up the envelope,-- “or ‘sobre’ in Spanish” he thought with inward delight -- and he carelessly tossed the crate he’d been seated on across the table.

Peppet jammed it into his trenchcoat pocket. It created an unsightly bulge and he’d have been slightly less miserable had he opened it up and removed what it contained, so he didn’t. He stood to leave, and started for the door.

Halfway there he heard a shout, “Hey you miserable bastard – how about a crowbar!?” It was the bartender, he’d turned uglier. Peppet was about to retort with a fucking expletive but noticed the menacing looks from the other patrons. Grunting, he detached the tool from his beltloop and tossed it onto the bar. He’d probably wind up needing it later, it was the last he had, but what the hell – he’d do anything to get out of this godforsaken country where a man was required by law to carry a rifle longer than his own leg stuck down his pants. Peppet limped out the door and back into the whirling snow.