Trevor, William - Children Of Dynmouth

Old Ape ambled past him on the way to the back door for his dinner and his scraps, carrying a red plastic bucket. Timothy addressed him, gesturing, but the old man ignored him.

‘Hullo,’ a voice said, and then another voice said it.

He looked and saw the clergyman’s two children, known to him from past association.

‘Cheers,’ he said.

‘We got cake,’ Susannah said.

‘We ate lemon cake,’ Deborah said.

He nodded at them understandingly. Any cake they could get hold of he advised them to eat. He said they could have a picnic if they brought some cake out into the garden, but they didn’t seem to understand him.

‘We’re good girls,’ Susannah said.

‘You’re good definitely.’

‘We’re good girls,’ Deborah said.

He nodded at them again. He told them a story about a gooseberry in a lift and one about holes in Australia. ‘You’re out with a blonde,’ he said, ‘you see the wife coming?’

They knew it was all funny because of the funny voice he put on. He was doing it specially for them.

‘Ever read books?’ he said. ‘Tea for Two by Roland Butta?’

They laughed delightedly, clapping their hands together, and Timothy Gedge closed his eyes. The lights flickered in the darkness around him, and then the limelight blazed and he stood in its yellow flame. ‘Big hand, friends!’ cried Hughie Green, his famous eyebrow raised, his voice twanging pleasantly into his microphone. ‘Big hand for the boy with the funnies!’ All over Dynmouth the limelight blazed on Dynmouth’s television screens, and people watched, unable not to. ‘Big hand for the Timothy G Show !’ cried Hughie Green in Pretty Street and Once Hill and High Park Avenue. Like a bomb the show exploded, the funnies, the falsetto, Timothy himself. Clearly they heard him in the Cornerways flats and in Sea House and in the Dasses’ house and in the lounges of the Queen Victoria Hotel. From the blazing screen he smiled at the proprietor of the Artilleryman’s Friend and at his mother and Rose-Ann and his aunt the dressmaker and at his father, wherever he was. He smiled in the Youth Centre and in the house of Stringer the headmaster and in the house of Miss Wilkinson with her charrada. He smiled at Brehon O’Hennessy, wherever he was too, and in the houses of everyone in 3A. He thanked them all, leaning out of the blaze in order to be closer to them, saying they were great, saying they were lovely.

In the rectory garden the twins still laughed and clapped, more amused than ever because he was still standing there with his eyes closed, smiling at them. The most marvellous smile they’d ever seen, the biggest in the world.

Commander Abigail was not a heavy drinker, but after his gloomy morning walk he had felt the need of consolation and had found it in the Disraeli Lounge of the Queen Victoria Hotel. He had entered the lounge at twenty past two and had ordered a sandwich and a large measure of whisky, which he’d consumed quickly. He had attempted to obtain more whisky, but was informed that the bar was now closed until five-thirty. Unable to face his wife in the bungalow in High Park Avenue and fearful of meeting her in one of the shops if he hung about the town, he set off for another walk along the beach, striking out this time in the opposite direction from the one he’d taken that morning. With the passing of time, he began to think that he’d taken far too glum a view of the situation. His foremost maxim – of never admitting defeat, of sticking to your guns through thick and thin – came to his aid and offered the first shreds of comfort since the unpleasantness of the night before. At half past five he returned to the Disraeli Lounge and at ten to eight, his spirits further lightened by his intake of whisky, he entered the bungalow, whistling.

‘Where on earth have you been, Gordon?’ she demanded as soon as he appeared in the sitting-room. She was half-heartedly knitting, with the television on, the sound turned low.

‘Walking,’ he replied briskly. ‘I reckon I walked twenty miles today.’

‘Your dinner’ll be as dry as dust.’ She rose, sticking her knitting needles into a ball of blue wool. Laughter emerged softly from the television set as a man hit another man in the stomach. She could smell the whisky even though the length of the room was between them.

‘I want to talk to you,’ he said.

‘If you’re drunk, Gordon –’

‘I am not drunk.’

‘There’s been enough drunkenness in this house.’

‘Are you talking about young Gedge?’

‘I’ve been sitting here worried sick.’

‘About me, dear?’

‘I’ve been waiting for you for six hours. What on earth am I to think? I didn’t sleep a wink last night.’

‘Sit down, my dear.’

‘I want to leave Dynmouth, Gordon. I want to leave this bungalow and everything else. I thought I’d go mad with that woman this morning.’

‘What woman’s that, dear?’

‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, what’s it matter what woman it is? You’ve never displayed the slightest interest in what I do. You’ve never asked me, not once, how anything has gone, or where I’ve been or whom I’ve seen.’

‘I’m sure I’ve asked about your Meals on Wheels, dear, I remember distinctly –’

‘You know perfectly well you haven’t. You’re incapable of taking an interest in me. You’re incapable of having a normal relationship with me. You marry me and you’re incapable of performing the sexual act.’

‘That’s not true.’

‘Of course it’s true.’

‘You’re sixty-four, dear, I’m sixty-five. Elderly people don’t –’

‘We weren’t elderly in 1938.’

Her bluntness astounded him. Never in their whole married life had she spoken like that before. No matter how tedious she was in other ways, he had always assumed that it wasn’t in her nature to be coarse, and certainly she’d never displayed evidence of the inclination. Prim and proper had always been her way, and he’d appreciated her for it.

She returned to her chair and sat down. The two sharp points of red that had come into her cheeks the night before were there again. If he wanted food, she remarked unpleasantly, it was in the oven.

‘We had a nasty experience last night, Edith. We’re both upset.’

He crossed to the window table. The decanter, diminished by Timothy Gedge, still contained a few inches of amber liquid. He poured some for them both, and carried her glass to her.

She took it from him and sipped at the sweet sherry, reminded by its taste that he bought it specially because she didn’t like sweet sherry. It was at least fifteen years since he’d carried a glass across a room to her.

‘Young Gedge didn’t know what he was on about, Edith. I’ll tell you one thing, he’ll never enter Number Eleven High Park Avenue again.’

‘The drink you gave him brought the truth out, Gordon. He spoke nothing but the truth.’

‘Well, it’s not our business –’

‘It’s our business what he said about you.’

In the Disraeli Lounge he had planned what he’d say. He had prepared the sentences in his mind. He said:

‘I didn’t really notice that he said anything about me, dear.’

‘You know what he said, Gordon.’

‘As far as I could gather, what he was saying was some nonsense about the Easter Fête. Well, I dare say there’s no reason –’

‘Are you or are you not a homosexual, Gordon?’

He remained calm. Signals operated in his brain. Further prepared sentences came readily to his lips. He returned to the window table and poured himself the dregs of the sherry. He remained by the table, holding the edge of it with one hand because the table was shaking.

‘For young Gedge to say,’ he said quietly, ‘that he has seen a person watching boys playing rounders hardly makes that person a homosexual. I am a normal married man, Edith, as well you know.’