- 1 -
No one knows where weevils come from. The humanoid aliens have been falling to Earth through the Rift for decades, but though physically powerful they're relatively shy, only attacking when threatened. Dressed in identical, amazingly hard-wearing coveralls which they're clearly not intelligent enough to have manufactured themselves, the current theory is that on the world they come from they're either worker drones or slaves. The weevils have taken up residence in Cardiff's sewers and we mostly leave them be. Fortunately, they have short lifespans and are not prolific breeders or we'd be overrun by them. They're only really of concern to Torchwood when they come to the surface and start frightening people. Then we have to act. On this particular occasion, Gwen Cooper and I had been tasked with herding a small family of them back down to the area beneath Churchill Way where they'd been nesting. Afterwards, exhausted, we laid down our weevil spray and cattle prods to sit on a roadside public bench together and catch our breath.
"That's one hell of a wide sewer down there," I said.
"It's not a sewer, Toshiko," said Gwen, "it's the old Dock Feeder Canal. It was built in the late 1830s, became redundant, and was decked over some time around 1950. That decking is what the road surface of Churchill Way was laid on top of. There's been talk of opening the canal up again and turning it into a green public space, but who knows if that will ever happen."
She looked around her wistfully.
"That's Guildford Crescent over there," she said, pointing to a small side road. "There used to be a Victorian swimming pool on that street. It's where I learned to swim when I was a little kid. It closed in 1985 and is gone now, like so much of the Cardiff I used to know."
After we separated, and after shaking the mud off my boots, I dropped into the HMV shop on Queen Street on my way home to pick up the newly-released DVD box set of films featuring Margaret Chadwyck, my favourite actress from the early days of Hollywood. When I got back to my Pontcanna flat, I plunked this down on the coffee table and dropped the chain of my lover's telepathic locket over my head. Instantly there she was smiling at me, my phantom girlfriend Mary, the love of my life. How I longed to reach out and stroke that beautiful face and kiss those luscious lips, but we couldn't touch in the real world, only in dreams.
"Margaret Chadwyck?" she said, noticing my purchase. "I didn't know you were a fan."
"Very much so," I said. "Watching her films on TV as a nerdy child who looked awkward in everything and considered herself plain I always envied her poise, her beauty, and how glamorous she was."
"I find it hard to believe you could ever have thought you were plain, Toshiko."
"You were never a small girl," I replied, "so you don't understand the insecurities a human child can feel."
"The insecurities no, but as it happens I *have* been a human child."
"What?! How, when?"
"A strange tale for another time. I suppose you know what happened to Margaret Chadwyck?"
"When I was older I learned about how she disappeared in mysterious circumstances during a visit to Wales in the 1930s. She became something of a minor obsession for me then. After joining Torchwood I looked up their files on her but was disappointed by what I found. Given how high-profile she was and how embarrassing it must've been to have a world-famous Hollywood actress vanish while on Welsh soil, Torchwood had of course been assigned to the case after the police turned up nothing. Unfortunately they didn't discover anything out of the ordinary either. So it remains filed as a normal missing persons case. Whether Margaret Chadwyck fled willingly or was the victim of foul play no-one can say to this day."
"I can," said Mary.
- 2 -
I knew better than to interrupt Mary when she was about to launch into one of her stories, so I settled down on my couch to listen, hanging on her every word as always.
"I remember back during the Depression when half the ships in the docks had no work and so were laid up," she began, looking thoughtful. "Coal exports from the South Wales Coalfield totalled nearly nine million tons a year before then, much of it shipped out in the holds of locally owned tramp steamers, but when the Depression bit that fell below five million tons. It was a blow the docks never really recovered from. Back then, in pre-Cardiff Bay days, Butetown and Cardiff Docks were collectively known as Tiger Bay. The Hayley Mills movie of that name captured the look of the area, but precious little of its culture. It was where you'd go to buy weed and where you'd find the more edgy and 'outlaw' parts of society, including a club catering to lesbians. Male homosexuality was illegal at the time but lesbianism wasn't thanks to Queen Victoria - bless her - not believing that women did such things, nor did I ever do anything to disabuse her of that notion. But despite not being illegal you still knew to keep it on the down low. In the summer of 1935 I was calling myself Mary Milenski and working as a private eye. Determined to prove to myself I could do the job without the aid of my telepathic pendant I'd consigned it to a drawer in my desk some months earlier. Which brings me to the story of
HOW I MET MARGARET CHADWYCK AND JOHN F. KENNEDY
I was sitting at the tiny bar of a dingy new basement club - new club, old basement - watching women slow dancing and snogging on the equally tiny dance floor and just generally checking the place out, when she walked in. She was a gorgeous redhead, far prettier and more stylishly dressed than any of the club's patrons. Glancing around, her gaze met mine and she smiled, making a beeline directly for me. Resting her elbow on the bar she indicated my cigarettes with a nod of her head.
"May I?" she asked, her accent American.
"Please do," I said, offering her a light when she took one.
Her leaning in to accept the light gave me an opportunity to study that lovely face, one I was sure I'd seen somewhere before.
"Thanks," she said, leaning back and exhaling a stream of smoke towards the ceiling.
"Mary Milenski," I said, offering her my hand.
"Gertrude Baum," she said, shaking it, "Trudy to my friends, and Sydney Storm to the studios. You can call me Trudy."
"So you want us to be friends?"
"Oh, I think so, don't you?" she smirked, with the assurance of a woman used to her looks getting her what she wanted and confident they would work on me. She was right.
"I think I'd like that. In fact," I said, throwing back my Scotch and taking the initiative, "why don't we leave this dump and go back to my place, where we can get better acquainted?"
"What a splendid idea!" she grinned, taking another drag on her cigarette before stubbing it out. "Lead on, MacDuff."
My flat above the modest office in Grangetown I worked out of as a private investigator was small but tidy, not that Trudy noticed as we stumbled towards the bedroom together, kissing, and pulling each other's clothes off.
Afterwards, as we lay there together, gazing into each other's eyes, I had a question for her.
"So what brings a Hollywood starlet to Cardiff?"
I'd eventually recognised Trudy from a couple of movies in which 'Sydney Storm' had bit parts.
"William Randolph Hearst," she answered. "He's considering financing a movie set in Wales starring Margo Chadwyck and me. He brought us over with him on the SS Normandie to scout locations.
Sydney Storm might only be a bit player so far, but Margaret Chadwyck was a genuine star of the silver screen. Now 34 and ten years into her film career, she was a veteran actress who had effortlessly made the transition from silent movies to the talkies. Her last movie had been a steamy melodrama called 'Maui' and her leading man Cary Grant.
"Margo does not travel light," Trudy continued. "She had more luggage than the rest of us combined, including six steamer trunks and one of those vertical numbers as tall as a man for her dresses to hang in. Thing is damn near a wardrobe. Still an' all, it was a very enjoyable voyage and only took us four and a half days. We're both staying at Mr Hearst's castle over here. It's only twenty miles from Cardiff so I used my contacts to find out where dykes gather, got the word on a new joint, and took a taxi here. And boy am I glad I did!"
She leaned in to kiss me, and one thing once again led to another. It was the most enjoyable night I'd had in months. The next morning, after I'd made us both breakfast, Trudy regarded me thoughtfully.
"Mr Hearst is hosting a banquet tonight," she said, "and he's happy with us bringing guests, so why don't you come along and see how the obscenely wealthy live?"
"Tempting," I said, "but I don't have anything appropriate to wear to a soiree like that."
"Oh, pish tosh," she said, "that's the last thing you need worry about, Mary. We're the same size and Mr Hearst bought me lots of beautiful gowns for the trip. There's bound to be something suitable hanging in my closet back at the castle."
"Who else will be there?"
"Marion Davies, of course," she said, naming the woman widely believed to be Hearst's mistress, "Margo and her fiance Harry Conway, who's also her manager; Lenore Bushman, the daughter of Ben Hur actor Francis X Bushman; the philosopher Bertrand Russell; businessman Sir Charles Miller; a reporter from LIFE magazine named Joanna Smith; and the son of one of Mr Hearst's business buddies, a good-looking kid still in his teens who happened to be over here looking at colleges. Charlie Chaplain has visited in the past, but not this time, alas."
Many regard Chaplain as the greatest comic actor who ever lived, but Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd were always more to my taste.
"Let's take a taxi over there now," said Trudy. "I have a four-poster bed it would be a shame not to make full use of."
"Wouldn't that be indiscreet?"
"The rich live by different rules than the rest of us," she said. "Few of them bat an eyelid at homosexuality."
How could I resist?
Telephones in private dwellings weren't common yet, but since I needed an office phone for my business I had an extension in my flat so we didn't need to seek out a public call box to summon a taxi. I called the same guy who had brought us here from the club last night, one of a couple of people listed behind the bar whose discretion could be relied upon. During the thirty minute drive I reviewed what I knew about our destination and our host.
William Randolph Hearst had first visited Wales in 1922 and been so taken with the place that he decided to buy a castle here. He was quoted as saying "when I saw some of your great castles such as Caernarfon and Conway, I decided to acquire something on the same lines only smaller, more domestic." In 1925 he did just that. St Donat's Castle just outside the town of Llantwit Major was in a state of disrepair when he bought it for £45,000. He spent a further £300,000 for immediate improvements which included running a water main from Bridgend. He also bought a couple of castle ruins in the north of England and cannibalised these to make repairs. Hearst was a fabulously wealthy newspaper tycoon and also a big-player in Hollywood, so the locals hoped that he would bring the magic of Hollywood with him when he moved in. They weren't disappointed. Movie stars would pop into the local pubs for a pint, with gigantic cars squeezing along country roads and bringing with them stars like Charlie Chaplin, Constance Talmadge, and Douglas Fairbanks Jr. I was living in London at the time, but this was more than just a local story and so was reported in the national press.
We had reached Llantwit Major and were driving through its narrow streets when Trudy shouted out: "Stop the car!"
The driver pulled over to the pavement and we got out.
"What's going on?" I asked as she paid the fare.
"Just spotted one of the other guests and this is the perfect opportunity for the two of you to meet," she said.
So saying she led me over to where a young man dressed in a short-sleeved white shirt, white slacks, white shoes, and wearing an expensive wristwatch was taking photos of the place and completely oblivious to us until Trudy tapped him on the shoulder. He turned and on seeing her his face broke into a large grin.
"Trudy!" he said, giving her a hug. "What a pleasant surprise!"
His accent was American and he was tall, brown-haired, handsome, somewhat on the skinny side, and looked to be about 18 years old.
"And who's your beautiful friend?" he asked, noticing me.
"This is Mary Milenski," she said, "and Mary this is..."
"John F. Kennedy," he said, offering his hand. "My friends call me Jack."