TP Fielden - The Riviera Express

‘A summer season?’ she prompted hesitantly.

Finally, he spoke, though his lips did not move very much as he did so.

‘ Over . . . my . . . dead . . . body ,’ said Raymond Cattermole.

Unlike Miss Dimont, Betty Featherstone played no part in the War and, actually, it would be hard to imagine what useful contribution she could possibly have made. Despite her breezy charm and outward competence there was something missing which, had she been put in charge of men’s lives as Miss Dimont was, might have led to some tragic outcomes.

Not that you would get Rudyard Rhys to agree with that, for the editor was a man of very firm opinions and his opinion of Betty was that she was the right sort for the Riviera Express . How Miss Dim had got herself a position on his staff – well, that was another story.

It was not that Mr Rhys was soft on Betty, but it would be fair to say she knew how to twist him round her little finger. When he marked up the diary – that is to say, allotted the known stories for the week ahead – Betty always ended up with the best. Miss Dimont might have asked herself whether this was because the editor knew the plum jobs were usually the easiest – in Betty he had a useful but totally uninspired reporter – and it was better to leave the more difficult work to be handled by her. Wisely, she did not waste time thinking up the answer to that.

Betty had arrived only recently, the veteran of one or two failed engagements (there may have been more), but she looked optimistically on the world of love and her continuing part therein. Her regular features, permed blonde hair, undulating figure and conservative choice of clothes somehow marked her out for what she was – competent, unexciting, and by now in her thirties, a stranger to life’s more exacting challenges. But there was more to her than that.

That business of not telling Miss Dimont about the foul play was typical.

‘Oh dear, Judy!’ she wailed when tackled. ‘I just – you know Derek and I had been having a tiff – I just forgot!’ And you didn’t know whether that was the truth or not. What can be said for certain is that she rarely did anything for Miss Dimont which took her out of her way.

The double-death sensation at Temple Regis had been handled extremely competently by his chief reporter but Rudyard Rhys, a belt-and-braces man if ever there was, could not leave well alone. He was nervous of his chairman and he was nervous of public opinion. The bonus of having a celebrity scoop in Temple Regis could easily be outweighed by any further developments uncovered by Miss Dimont which might tarnish Temple Regis’s golden reputation. You could never tell with stories like this – they were, to some extent, an unexploded bomb and he didn’t like it.

He ordered Betty to keep an eye on her colleague and let him know if she felt things could be done better. Betty blushed and smiled – was she pleased to be put in a position of supervision over her older colleague? Glad her superior journalistic talents were recognised by old Rudyard? Or was it jealousy, pure and simple? For Betty could never quite get the measure of the woman who sat across the desk from her. Miss Dimont seemed to live a unique life, at once both deeply involved in the community and at the same time set apart from it. Betty needed constant reassurance about her looks and femininity; Miss Dimont did not. Betty could not exist without a boyfriend knocking about; Miss Dimont lived alone. Betty talked a lot about men; but though Miss Dimont was far from immune to their charms, she chose not to share her innermost thoughts.

And then there was the War. Nobody knew quite what Judy Dimont had done, but whatever it was you knew instinctively she would have executed her duties as she did on the Riviera Express – diligently, accurately, speedily, and in a wholly exemplary manner.

There were many in Temple Regis who talked about the conflict and their part in it; but then again, there were others who did not – not through shame or embarrassment but because they preferred it that way. They knew who they were, it did not take a regimental blazer badge or a jewelled lapel brooch for them to identify each other. You saw them in St Margaret’s Church on Remembrance Sunday, usually sitting towards the back, united in their reluctance to display the shining emblems a grateful nation had planted on their chests. Miss Dimont was one of these lone wolves, quiet people who shared memories only with themselves.

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