a glove puppet and so probably has had lots of hands up him – no crude jokes if you please! – and those hands moved around inside to make it seem he was alive.”
“I still don’t comprehend what you’re getting at.”
“If we accept the molecule interchange theory, he must have picked up traces of all the people who ever controlled him, absorbed some of their personalities, mannerisms, even their essential life force!”
“We’d have to track down every one of his previous owners to work out his average personality,” I speculated.
Catherine pouted. “Yes and no. Kelvin has his own sense of self that is unique and greater than the sum of its parts. I don’t accept he’s just an amalgam of his operators. Besides I don’t know exactly how many people have ever played with him in that way.”
“You might be the only one?” I ventured.
She shook her head. “There were others, but I can’t specify an exact number. Maybe two or three, maybe a hundred.”
“Do you believe he’s genuinely alive?”
Catherine shrugged. “I don’t know, but he’s certainly capable of sentient thought and behaviour. That’s why he’s so independent and hates being stuck in the house all day.”
“Where is he now?” I wondered.
“Travelling again. Who knows where? He’s probably taking part in a week long rave on some exotic beach. That’s his scene sure enough, mixing it up with the other alternative puppets.”
“Surely he’s too floppy for that?” I objected.
“I know what you’re thinking – my hand played the part of Kelvin’s skeleton and he doesn’t have a spine of his own or any other supporting bones. That fact never bothered him when he was on his own. Maybe he has a way of stiffening up we can’t imagine. Or perhaps he maintains some sort of connection with the shape my hand made when it was up him.”
“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
