Trevor, William - Children Of Dynmouth

But with all this argument, contrived for his own reassurance and for retailing to his wife, the Commander failed in the end to convince himself. The truth kept poking itself up, like a weed in a garden. You pushed it away to the back recesses of your mind, but it crept and crawled about and then annoyingly broke through the surface again. The truth was that the unfortunate boy had somehow pried his way into an area that was private, an area that naturally didn’t concern anyone else. Commander Abigail didn’t even like the area: it caused him shame and guilt to consider it, he tried not to think about it. That occasionally it ran away with him was a simple misfortune, and was always distasteful in retrospect.

Progressing slowly, seeming older by years than he had seemed on this beach the day before, more bent and huddled, the Commander shook his head in time to the steps he took. It puzzled him beyond measure that the boy should have stumbled upon this private area. He racked his brains, he cast his mind back. Pictures he did not wish to see passed before him in dazzling procession. Voices spoke. He saw a figure that was himself, the villain of his peepshow. His own face smiled at him and then the pictures ceased. Again, more in control of matters, he cast his mind back.

When the boy had first come to the house he’d been more of a child and had naturally been treated as a child. Once or twice, when gesturing him into the dining-room for supper, he’d laid a hand on his shoulder. Once or twice, while the boy was squatting on the floor polishing the linoleum surround, he had playfully touched his head, as in passing one might pat the head of a dog. There was a game they’d played a few times when Edith was out of the house, a rough-and-tumble sort of thing, perfectly harmless. There was Blind Man’s Buff, and a thing called Find the Penny, in which he himself stood like a statue in the centre of the sitting-room while the boy searched him all over, rifling through his pockets for a hidden coin. A perfectly harmless little game it was, and had afforded both of them amusement. Naturally enough, they hadn’t played it since the boy had entered adolescence.

That had been, and was, their innocent relationship. Yet the boy had insinuated so knowingly that the Commander had begun to wonder if perhaps he suffered from lapses of memory. Had their rough-and-tumbles not been as he recalled, had their Blind Man’s Buff ended differently? Or could it be that the boy had taken his spying into the Essoldo Cinema? He pushed that from his mind, and his mind filled instead with the face of a lad on a bicycle who’d once been friendly, and the face of another who didn’t mind playing Find the Penny in the hut on the golf-course. There was the red-haired cub scout who liked talking about his badges.

He turned and walked, more slowly still, back towards Dynmouth.

Like Dynmouth’s Essoldo, the Pavilion in Badstoneleigh was old. Swing-doors on either side of the box-office in the small foyer led to an inner foyer, carpeted and dimly lit. On brown walls there were large framed photographs of the stars of the thirties: Loretta Young, Carole Lombard, Annabella, Don Ameche, Robert Young, Joan Crawford. There were cigarette burns on the carpet, and here and there the brown of the walls had been rubbed away to reveal a pinkish surface beneath. There was a kiosk which sold confectionery.

The auditorium itself was rather similar, brown-walled and patchy. Lights were kept low, to cover a multitude of small defects. The upholstery of the seats had once been crimson: it had faded to a faint red glow, balding, springs occasionally exposed. Pale curtains with butterflies on them had once been a blaze of colour but now were nondescript. The smell was similar to the Essoldo’s smell: of Jeyes’ Fluid and old cigarette smoke.

In the stalls Timothy Gedge sat three rows behind the children from Sea House, with the carrier-bag by his feet. Having eaten two packets of bacon-flavoured potato crisps, he had purchased another tube of Rowntree’s Fruit Gums, which he was now enjoying while waiting for the lights to dim. Once Stephen looked round and Timothy smiled at him.

The dim lights were dimmed some more, and advertisements for local shops and eating places began. There was a film about the construction of a bridge in Scotland, two trailers, a list of future attractions, and then Dr No. The plot, familiar to Timothy, presented no new depths on a second investigation. Attempts were made to destroy James Bond by shooting him, placing a tarantula in his bed, poisoning his vodka, and drowning him. Each attempt failed due to the mental and physical inadequacies of its perpetrator. The story ended happily, with James Bond in a boat with a girl.

The lights went up and a picture of the confectionery kiosk appeared on the screen. An attached message announced that sweets, chocolate and nuts were available in the foyer.

Timothy rose when Stephen and Kate did, glad that they had decided on refreshment. ‘Cheers,’ he said, standing behind them in a queue.

They knew him by sight. He was a boy who was always on his own, often to be seen watching television programmes in the windows of electrical shops. He always wore the same light-coloured clothes, matching his light-coloured hair.

‘Hullo,’ Kate said.

‘I see you over Dynmouth way.’

‘We live in Dynmouth.’

‘You do.’ He smiled at them in turn. ‘Your mum just married his dad.’

‘Yes, she did.’

They bought packets of nuts, and Timothy bought another tube of fruit gums. When he returned to the stalls he sat beside Kate. ‘Care for a gum?’ he said, offering them both the tube. They took one each, and he noticed that they nudged one another with their elbows, amused because he had offered them fruit gums.

Diamonds Are Forever took the same course as its predecessor. James Bond ran a similar gamut of attempts to bring his life to a halt. He again ended with a girl, a different one this time and not in a boat.

‘We’d easily get the half-five bus,’ Timothy said, offering his gums again, blocking their passage and the passage of two elderly women who were endeavouring to pass into the foyer.

‘Come along then, please,’ an usherette, elderly also, cried. ‘Move there, sonny.’

In a bunch the women and the three children passed through the swing-doors into the brown foyer.

‘We’re going back by the beach,’ Kate said.

‘Great.’ He blinked against the sudden glare of sunshine on the street. He could see they were surprised that he’d latched on to them, but it didn’t matter. He walked beside them on the pavement, three abreast, so that pedestrians coming towards them had to step out into the street. He swung the carrier-bag with the Union Jack on it. It was hard to know what to say to them. He said:

‘D’you know that Miss Lavant? She fancies the doctor, Greenslade.’

They’d seen Miss Lavant on the promenade and about the town, always walking slowly, sometimes with a neat wicker basket. Kate had often thought she was beautiful. She hadn’t known she was in love with Dr Greenslade, who had a wife already, and three children.

‘She fancied the man for twenty years,’ Timothy said.

It explained Miss Lavant. There was a nervous quality about her, which was now explained also: her nerves were on edge as she slowly perambulated. Her eyes, always a little cast down, were being well behaved, resisting the temptation to dart about in search of Dr Greenslade.

‘She’s in a bedsitting-room in Pretty Street,’ Timothy said. ‘To the left of the hall door.’ He laughed remembering again how he’d insisted that Miss Lavant was Mrs Abigail’s sister. ‘I looked in the window once and she was eating a boiled egg, with another boiled egg in an egg-cup across the table from her. She was chatting sixteen to the dozen, entertaining Greenslade even though he wasn’t there. Three o’clock in the afternoon, everyone out in their deck-chairs.’