Trevor, William - Children Of Dynmouth

He had a funny way of talking, Kate thought. Yet he made her feel sorry for Miss Lavant, a woman she’d hardly thought about before. It wasn’t difficult to imagine the bedsitting-room in Pretty Street, on the left of the hall door, and the two boiled eggs in two egg-cups.

Stephen felt sorry for Miss Lavant also, and resolved to examine her more closely. She never walked on the beach, and without ever thinking about it he had assumed she didn’t because she didn’t want to spoil her shoes. He thought he’d once heard someone saying that about her, but it now seemed that reason wasn’t the right one: the beach was hardly the place to catch a glimpse of Dr Greenslade, with his black bag and his stethoscope, which he sometimes wore round his neck on the street.

‘I wouldn’t mind a beer,’ Timothy said, adding that the only trouble was that the Badstoneleigh supermarkets wouldn’t serve a person who was under age. ‘There’s an off-licence in Lass Lane,’ he said, ‘where the bloke’s half blind.’

On the way to Lass Lane they told him their names and he said his was Timothy Gedge. He advised them not to come into the off-licence with him. He offered to buy them a tin of beer each, but they said they’d rather have Coca-Cola.

‘You eighteen, laddie?’ the proprietor enquired as he reached down a pint tin of Worthington E. He wore thick pebble spectacles, behind which his eyes were unnaturally magnified. Timothy said he’d be nineteen on the twenty-fourth of next month.

‘Gemini,’ the man said. Timothy smiled, not knowing what the man was talking about.

‘You often get loonies in joints like that,’ he remarked on the street. ‘They drink the sauce and it softens their brains for them.’ He laughed, and then added that he’d been drunk as a cork himself actually, the night before. He’d woken in a shocking state, his mouth like the Sahara desert.

They walked towards the seashore and sat on the rocks, beside a pool with anemones in it. They drank the Coca-Cola and Timothy consumed the Worthington E, saying it was just what he needed after being on the sauce the night before. When he’d finished he threw the beer-tin into the pool with the anemones in it.

They began to walk towards Dynmouth. The sea was coming in. There were more seagulls than there had been that morning, on the cliffs and on the sea itself. The same trawler was in the same position on the horizon.

‘Are you at school then?’ he asked, and they told him about their two boarding-schools. He knew they were at boarding-schools, but it was something to say to the kids. He said he was at Dynmouth Comprehensive himself, a terrible dump. There was a woman called Wilkinson who couldn’t keep order in a bird-cage. Stringer, the headmaster, was rubbish; the P.E. man went after the girls. Sex and cigarettes were the main things, and going up to the Youth Centre to smash the legs off the table-tennis tables. There was a girl called Grace Rumblebow who had to be seen to be believed.

‘D’you know Plant?’ he said. ‘Down at the Artilleryman’s?’

‘Plant?’ Stephen said.

‘He’s always hanging about toilets.’ He laughed. ‘After women.’

He explained to them what he meant by that, about how he’d run into Mr Plant in the small hours, wearing only a shirt. He described the scene he’d witnessed in his mother’s bedroom, during A Man Called Ironside.

They didn’t say anything, and after a few moments the silence hardened and became awkward. Kate looked out to sea, wishing he hadn’t joined them. She stared at the petrified trawler.

‘Your mum on a honeymoon?’ he said.

She nodded. In France, she said. Smiling, he turned to Stephen.

‘Your dad’ll enjoy that, Stephen. Your dad’ll be all jacked up.’

‘Jacked up?’

‘Steaming for it, Stephen.’

He laughed. Stephen didn’t reply.

His face was like an axe-edge, Kate thought, with another axe-edge cutting across it: the line of the cheek-bones above the empty cheeks. His fingers were rather long, slender like a girl’s.

‘Your mum has a touch of style, Kate. I heard that remarked in a vegetable shop. I’d call her an eyeful, Kate. Peachy.’

‘Yes.’ She muttered, her face becoming red because she felt embarrassed.

‘He knows his onions, Stephen? Your dad, eh?’

Again Stephen didn’t reply.

‘Did you mind me saying it, Stephen? He’s a fine man, your dad, they’re well matched. “It’s great it happened,” the woman in the shop said, buying leeks at the time. “It’s great for the children,” she said. D’you reckon it’s great, Kate? D’you like having Stephen?’

Her face felt like a sunset. She turned it away in confusion, pretending to examine the grey-brown clay of the cliff.

‘Dynmouth people can’t mind their own business,’ she heard Timothy Gedge saying. ‘They’re always like that, gassing their heads off in a public shop. The best place for Dynmouth people is in their coffins.’ Laughter rippled from him, quite gently, softly. ‘D’you ever go to funerals, Kate?’

‘Funerals?’

‘When a person dies, Kate.’

She shook her head. They progressed in silence for a moment. Then Timothy Gedge said:

‘Ever read books, Stephen? The Cannibal’s Daughter by Henrietta Mann?’

He laughed and they laughed also, a little uneasily. In a woman’s voice he said:

‘When’s it unlucky to have a cat behind you?’

They said they didn’t know.

‘When you’re a mouse. See it, Stephen? Cross an elephant and a kangaroo, Kate? What d’you get?’

She shook her head.

‘Dirty great holes all over Australia, Kate.’ He smiled at her. He said he was going in for the Spot the Talent competition at the Easter Fête. ‘As a matter of fact,’ he said, ‘I’m looking for a wedding-dress. I have an act planned with a wedding-dress.’

‘You mean you dress up as a bride?’ Kate said.

He told them. He told them about the bath in Swines’ building yard. He repeated the information he’d passed on to the Abigails and to Mr Plant: that George Joseph Smith had bought fish for the late Miss Munday, and eggs for Mrs Burnham and Miss Lofty. They didn’t comment on any of it.

‘I often saw your dad about the place, Stephen,’ he said. ‘With a pair of field-glasses.’

‘He’s an ornithologist.’

‘What d’you call that, Stephen?’

‘He writes books about birds.’

‘Is your mum’s wedding-dress in a trunk, Stephen?’

Stephen stopped, staring down at the sand. The toe of his right sandal slowly drew a circle. Kate looked from one face to the other, Stephen’s screwed up with bewilderment, Timothy Gedge’s smiling pleasantly.

‘I saw your dad with it, Stephen.’ He spoke softly, his smile still there. ‘I was looking in the window of that Primrose Cottage.’

They didn’t say anything. Both of them were frowning. They moved on again and Timothy Gedge went with them, swinging his carrier-bag.

‘You didn’t mind me looking in at the window, Stephen? Only I was passing at the time. Your dad was packing his gear up. He took the wedding-dress out of the trunk and put it back again. A faded kind of trunk, Stephen. Green it would be in its day.’

There was another silence, and then they ran away from him, leaving him standing there, shocked to stillness by their abrupt movement. He couldn’t understand why they were suddenly running over the sand. He thought for a moment that it might be some kind of game, that their running would cease as suddenly as it had begun, that they’d stand like statues on the sand, waiting for him to catch up with them. But they didn’t. They ran on and on.

He took a fruit gum from what remained of the tube. He stood there sucking it, watching the seagulls.