Trevor, William - Children Of Dynmouth

‘My God !’ the Commander murmured.

He smiled at them, holding on to the back of a chair, swaying a bit. He said he wanted to show them the thing about the charades. He had invented a comic act, he said, which he was going to do at the Easter Fête. He had to dress up as three different brides. He had to dress up as George Joseph Smith as well: he was trying the suit on for size. He’d chosen the dog’s-tooth one because he reckoned it was the kind the man would possess.

‘Stringer took us into Tussaud’s, down to the Horror Chamber. Did you ever see Miss Lofty, sir?’

‘You’ve had too much to drink, Timmy,’ she whispered.

He nodded at her, saying that once upon a time he’d searched high and low for her wedding-dress. When he couldn’t find it he’d remembered where there was another one. A wedding-dress wasn’t an easy garment to come by.

‘Get into your clothes immediately, boy. Cut along now.’ The Commander’s voice was sharp, like a splinter of something.

Timothy laughed because the voice sounded funny. Bloody ridiculous it was, going into the sea every day in bathing togs.

‘Could you make a pair of curtains, Mrs Abigail?’

She shook her head, not knowing what he was talking about.

‘I was saying it to Mr Feather and he said to ask you.’

‘We’ll talk about it another time, Timothy.’

‘Have you got a sewing-machine? Only you couldn’t make curtains without a machine.’

‘No, of course not –’

‘D’you think your sister has a sewing-machine?’ She nodded, trying to smile at him.

‘No problem then.’

‘I’ve made a request of you,’ the Commander said in the same splintery voice. ‘Take off my suit immediately.’

‘It would please us if you put on your own clothes again, dear.’

Children did dress up, she thought, trying to think calmly. It was a children’s thing, they enjoyed it. And yet it wasn’t like that at all. It wasn’t a child dressing up just for the fun of it. It was a child made drunk, his mouth pulled down at the corners, his eyes glassily staring, sweat all over his neck and face. In the dog’s-tooth suit he was grotesque. What was happening was like something you’d read about in a cheap Sunday newspaper.

He mentioned Opportunity Knocks, and Hughie Green, who might be staying in the Queen Victoria Hotel, in Dynmouth for the golf. Nobody had ever done a show like that on Opportunity Knocks. There were acts with pigeons on Opportunity Knocks, and family acts, and trick cyclists and singers and kids of three who could dance, and dogs smoking pipes, but he’d never yet seen a show that was comic and also about death. You’d have each of the brides acting like she was struggling against George Joseph Smith and all the time George Joseph Smith would be winning, only you wouldn’t actually see him, you’d have to imagine him. And when she went under the water the lights would go black and George Joseph Smith would appear a few seconds later in the dog’s-tooth suit. He’d tell jokes, standing beside the bath with the bride in it. You’d know she was in it because a bit of her wedding-dress would be draped over the side, only of course she wouldn’t be there at all because it was a one-man act. ‘Ah well, best be getting back to work,’ George Joseph Smith would say when he had them bringing the house down. The lights would go black and the next thing you’d see would be another bride struggling against the murdering hands of the man. After he’d drowned each bride George Joseph Smith had gone out to buy the dead woman her supper, fish for Miss Munday, eggs for Mrs Burnham and Miss Lofty. It was a peculiarity with him, like his passion for death by the sea. George Joseph Smith had once stayed in Dynmouth, in the Castlerea boarding-house.

While she listened to all this, Mrs Abigail repeatedly believed she was dreaming. It was just like a dream, a nightmare that held you and held you, not letting you wake up. A child had perpetrated a comic act about three real and brutal murders. In a marquee on the lawn of a rectory he expected people to laugh. He appeared to believe that some television personality might by chance be there to see him.

‘D’you ever see Benny Hill, Mrs Abigail? Really funny, Benny Hill. And Bruce Forsyth. D’you like Bruce Forsyth when he gets going?’

‘Please.’ She still spoke softly, with a reasonableness that suggested the plea was being made for the first time.

‘Benny Hill was an ordinary milkman with pint bottles on a dray, cream and yoghurt and carrots, anything you wanted at the door. Opportunity knocked for Benny Hill. It could happen to you, Mrs Abigail. It could happen to anyone.’

‘Quickly now,’ the Commander limply ordered. ‘Get a move on, Gedge.’

But Timothy didn’t get a move on. He wagged his head, not attempting to rise from the chair he was sitting on. He mentioned the teacher called Brehon O’Hennessy and the drear landscape and how there were people like last year’s rhubarb walking about the streets. You had to smile, he said, but you could see the man’s point of view. Mad as a hatter he’d been, a real nutter, yet you couldn’t help getting the picture. He laughed. He spent a lot of time himself, he said, following people around, looking in windows.

‘Is Miss Lavant her sister, sir? Only Lavant’s fancied Dr Greenslade for twenty years and he won’t lift a finger in case he’d be struck off. Isn’t it awful, Miss Lavant wasting herself on a married man? Isn’t it a terrible story, Mrs Abigail? Your sister in a predicament like that?’

She nodded, not knowing what else to do.

‘There’s worse than that in this town. The time she gave me the sweet I thought maybe she was going to kidnap me. I thought she was after a ransom, two or three thousand –’

‘My wife has no sister. Will you kindly cease, boy.’

‘Miss Lavant’s the one I mean, sir. She gave me a sweet –’

‘Miss Lavant is not her sister.’

Mrs Abigail dragged her eyes away from the child, startled by the note of panic in her husband’s voice. He wasn’t enjoying being angry any more. His face was blotchy, his lips quivered as he shouted, his eyes were quivering also. Something was happening in the room, something that had more to do with Gordon than with the child dressed up in his clothes. She could feel it gathering all around her, cloying and thick and heavy. Gordon was hunched, appearing to be terrified, his eyes staring. Timothy Gedge was smiling pathetically. She wanted to weep over both of them, to ask Gordon what on earth the matter was, to ask Timothy the same question in another kind of way.

Still smiling, he spoke again. He’d witnessed all sorts, he said: the dead buried, kids from the primary school lifting rubbers out of W. H. Smith’s, Plant on the job with his mother, his legs as white as mutton-fat. He’d witnessed Rose-Ann and Len up to tricks on the hearth-rug, and others up to tricks in the wood behind the Youth Centre, kids of all ages, nine to thirteen, take your pick. He’d seen the Robson woman from the Post Office buying fish and chips in Phyl’s Phries with Slocombe from the Fine Fare off-licence, and Pym, the solicitor, being sick into the sea after a Rotary dinner in the Queen Victoria Hotel. He’d seen the Dynmouth Hards beating up the Pakistani from the steam laundry in a bus-shelter, and spraying Blacks Out on the back wall of the Essoldo. He’d seen them terrorizing Nurse Hackett, the midwife, swerving their motor-cycles in front of her blue Mini when she was trying to go about her duties at night-time. There was wife-swapping every Saturday night at parties on the new estate, Leaflands it was called, out on the London road. He’d looked in a window once and seen a man in Lace Street taking out his glass eye. He’d seen Slocombe and the Robson woman up on the golf-course. In Dynmouth and its neighbourhood he’d witnessed terrible things, he said.