TP Fielden - Died and Gone to Devon

They’d known each other for twenty years but now their roles were reversed, and Judy worked for Rudyard – Richard – Rhys. It was not an arrangement which suited either.

‘Freddy Hungerford,’ grunted her editor. ‘There’s been a complaint. Where were you on Friday?’

Drinking cocktails with a fascinating old lady, a lady who at a very late stage in life decided to make herself a fortune by putting young men on a stage who stripped themselves to the waist and shouted into microphones. Who went around getting young girls in the family way, and then left town.

‘I got stuck out at Wistman’s Hotel. Snowed in – had to spend the night.’

‘I hope you’re not thinking of putting that on your expenses. There’s nothing in the diary to say you should’ve been out there.’

‘I went to interview Mrs Phipps to see if I could get a piece out of her about next year’s season at the Pavilion Theatre.’ It was a lie, but lies never count when it’s the editor.

‘I don’t want any more rubbish about noisy beat groups – look at all the trouble they caused last summer,’ grumbled Rhys.

‘She’s thinking of Pearl Carr and Teddy Johnson.’

‘Who?’

‘Pasty-faced woman, man with a straw boater and bow tie. They croon sickly songs at each other.’

‘That sounds a bit more like it.’

Actually, Mr Editor, she’s going to have Gene Vincent – ripping off his leather jacket as he mounts the stage at full revs on his Triumph Bonneville. That’ll increase your heart rate a bit when he hits town.

‘Rr… rrr. Anyway, Freddy Hungerford – apparently Betty rubbed him up the wrong way at the Con Club on Friday night – when you should have been there, Miss Dim – and he wants an apology.’

‘Don’t call me that! I’ve told you, Richard, I am Miss Dimont, or I am Judy. I am not the other thing, and well you know it. Anyway, Betty’s at M’sieur Alphonse having her perm done, she can pop over to the club the moment she’s finished, it’s only round the corner.’

‘No,’ said Rhys, fishing in his pocket for a box of matches and not meeting her gaze, ‘I want you to go.’

‘And apologise for something Betty said?’

‘You can do it better than her.’

‘For heaven’s sake, Richard! What did she say, anyway, to upset the old goat?’

‘I have no idea. Just get round there and smooth him down.’

‘And have his hand up my skirt? No thanks! He’s retiring in the spring and finally we’re going to be represented by a woman who’s diligent, caring, and knows what she’s doing.’

‘Not necessarily. Could be the Liberal who wins.’

‘Same thing – she’s a good candidate too.’

‘I suppose you would say that of the Labour contender as well.’

‘Certainly! It would just be nice to have an MP who actually turned up here occasionally and cared what went on in the constituency.’

Rhys lit his pipe and a foul smell instantly filled the room. ‘Off you go. Smooth him down. Find some story to write. I see John Ross spiked the piece Betty wrote; there has to be something else worth saying.’

‘I suppose you mean his forthcoming peerage? That the lazy good-for-nothing has bought himself a coronet and an ermine robe?’

‘Don’t be so impertinent!’ snapped the editor. ‘You’re the chief reporter on this newspaper and my personal representative – an apology from you will go a long way. Hop round there now!’

‘Just got to finish the Caring Volunteers story first, Richard.’

‘Oh bugger the volunteers and their blithering care. Get round to the Con Club and get down on your knees!’

‘I don’t sleep much, do you?’ he was saying.

Miss Dimont could take it or leave it, but it was Mulligatawny who needed the requisite seven-and-a-half hours, trapping her feet under the eiderdown and prompting dreams of having been manacled and thrown into a dungeon.

‘I have the usual quota.’

They’d met in The Nelson but there was a bit of a scuffle going on so they’d come outside until it was sorted out. Apparently, the Tuesday night crowd tended to get a bit excitable.

‘I find the thoughts keep coming and it seems a waste not to get them down on paper,’ David Renishaw went on. ‘How about you?’

Miss Dimont found his conversational style a little alarming. Though he offered nuggets about his life, each sentence ended with an interrogative, as if he were trying to break into her house and steal her valuables.

‘Rest is essential in our job,’ she said, firmly. ‘Otherwise you lose concentration.’

She didn’t know why she was saying this, but Renishaw unnerved her. She was trying to get to the bottom of why he was here in Temple Regis, what he was running away from (that surely had to be the case?), and why he was interested in Pansy Westerham and her violent death all those years ago.

They were sitting outside The Nelson on a wooden bench. A small green square hemmed by fishermen’s cottages lay in front of them, illuminated by the winking lights of the neighbourhood Christmas tree. It was extraordinarily warm and as she unbuttoned her coat, Judy thought of dear Geraldine Phipps, still up on Dartmoor in Wistman’s Hotel, looking out of her window towards the snow-capped Hell’s Tor a mile distant.

‘Extraordinary, the meterological variances in the area,’ said Renishaw, looking up at the sky. It was if he was reading her mind. ‘Sun, snow – all at the same time.’

‘I was with a friend at the weekend, over in Brawbridge. Snowed in. She needed an extra Plymouth gin to keep out the cold.’

‘That wouldn’t be Geraldine Phipps, by any chance?’ asked Renishaw quickly, turning towards her.

In the glow cast from the Christmas tree he seemed strikingly handsome, but of course that was probably the light. She’d decided on first sight he was not to be trusted.

‘Let’s talk about you, David. It seems extraordinary that someone as gifted as you should want to come and work on the Riviera Express. How so, may I ask?’

‘I needed a change.’

‘From what?’ Good, now it’s me asking the questions, she thought.

‘Canada isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.’

‘Meaning?’

‘Land of infinite promise. You work hard, you get ahead. You don’t like one place, you go to another. Nobody bothers you, asking questions.’

‘Like me, you mean? Asking questions?’

He looked up at the sky again, smoothing back his hair, tamping down the irritating curl. ‘You’re an exceptionally clever woman, Judy, I don’t mind you asking. It’s all the others – with their official forms and their fact-checking and their overbearing manner…’ his voice trailed off.

This seemed a bit of a contradiction, but I’ll leave it lying where it is for the moment, thought Judy. ‘So what do you do while the rest of us are wasting our lives snoozing?’

‘Think up things.’

‘Such as?’

‘Well, everyone has a novel in them, so sometimes I tap away at that. It started out as an autobiography but in everybody’s life there are bits which are plain boring, or you don’t want to revisit, and you need to skip if it’s going to be at all readable. So in the end it was just easier to change the names and make it into a novel.’

‘How’s it going?’

‘I’ve called it On the Road to Calgary. ’

‘Would that be a tribute to Jack Kerouac? Or do you think you’ll end up being crucified?’

Renishaw turned to face her and leaned forward. She caught a whiff of something exotic – was it his hair cream? – and involuntarily drew a deep breath.

‘Calgary, Alberta. Where they have a stampede. I worked there for a time on the Calgary Horn. Cattle country. It’s a bit like the wild west out there – you’re an instant star if you can lassoo a chuckwagon to your ten-gallon six-shooter.’