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, Wolfcastle leaves Ddwwchllyff to the call girl: In the distance a dog barks as the lights of the house fade behind him.

The Cardiff Grandma Chapter 3a

Ddwchlyff finished playing with the dimmer switches and moved calmly back to where he was sitting before he stood up.

Miss Casselberry removed her coat with practiced hands and swayed long-legged across the genuine Shmeirutza carpet to the narrow door, and noticing for the hundredth time the brilliant organization of this small interior space, she withdrew a hanger.

“What are you doing with my coat, Miss Casselberry?” Ddwwchllyff asked, a cold edge to his voice..

Miss Casselberry did not show her inward irritation at herself –“Dammit! That wasn’t supposed to happen!” she thought— and instead seemed genuinely surprised.

“Oh dear! I meant to get an empty one,” she said, “Silly me!”

“We’ve got work to do, “ Ddwwchyllff said briskly “I’ll silly you later.”

Together they went into Ddwwchyllff’s unanticipatedly large library. Miss Casselberry sat down at the desk and picked up the receiver of the telephone. Ddwwchyllff’s famous distrust of desktop telephones was little known outside of his small cadre of fellow colleagues, but in that privy group his idiosyncrasy was often fodder for jokes – jokes that no one could ever remember later, no matter how hard they tried.

“Who am I calling first?” asked Miss Casselberry, concealing a broad smile.

“The ‘pharmacy’. Ask them if my ‘prescription’ is ready,” Dddwwchllyff replied and gave her the number. She briefly lost all sense of feeling.

It was to be the same routine as always then. She’d been assigned to infiltrate this household and learn where it was that Ddwwchyllff got his information, even, if possible, to discover his pick-up point. But Ddwwchyllff played his cards damnably close to his chest. She watched him for a moment as he laid a jack on a king. Unless he left the room long enough for her to jimmy the lock on the chest, she’d never get that information…. She went wistfully to work, the raspberry-red painted nail at the tip of a long slender forefinger creating a reddish-purplish blur as it whirled the rotary dial through one number after the other in blinding succession. Not once in her long career as a call girl had she misentered a sequence, not even with machine guns whizzing overhead and dogs – how many had there been? One? Two? – barking, barking as if they’d gone mad…Connecting with the party on the opposite end of the line, she obtained the information and returned the receiver to its Bakelite‚ perch. “Your prescription can be picked up at C ardiff I nternational A irport on the 7th floor of the P acific r im a rrivals t erminal.” She turned to look at Dddwwchllyff but Ddwwchllyff wasn’t there. And his gin and tonic had disappeared from the top of the grand piano along with its twist of lime.

Probably.

(to be continued...)