Trevor, William - Children Of Dynmouth

Quentin did not reply. Timothy said:

‘If you want the wedding-dress you can have it, sir.’

‘I’d like it.’

The boy left the room and on the way he turned the light on. He returned with an old, torn suitcase and a flat cardboard box. He opened the suitcase and took from it the carrier-bag with the Union Jack on it. He handed this to Quentin. The wedding-dress was still in it, he said, he hadn’t even taken it out. ‘There’s this,’ he said, holding out the cardboard box, ‘Abigail’s dog’s-tooth.’ He suggested that Quentin might like to return the suit to the bungalow in High Park Avenue, since he was returning the wedding-dress. There were other things in the suitcase, he explained, but they had nothing to do with his act. He’d known he wouldn’t be putting on the act as soon as the boy had handed him the carrier. He’d said to himself as he walked away with it that all along the act had been a load of rubbish.

‘You must leave those children alone now.’

‘They’re no use to me, Mr Feather.’ He laughed. ‘Opportunity won’t knock, sir. I’ll get work in the sandpaper factory. I’ll maybe go on the security. My dad scarpered. Like Dass’s son.’ He laughed, and Quentin realized that the Dasses’ son was one of the people whom Timothy had had conversations with on the streets of Dynmouth. He recalled the rather unhealthy appearance of Nevil Dass, the hot-house appearance of a youth too heavily cosseted.

‘I gave him the idea,’ Timothy said, ‘when I told him about my dad. “You just walk out,” I told him. “Don’t ever come back.” He was down in the Queen Victoria Hotel for two hours, plucking up courage on Double Diamond.’

‘Timothy –’

‘There was just the thing about the entrance fee, sir. Fifty p I give Dass.’

Quentin gave him the coin, apologizing because he’d forgotten about it. Timothy said it didn’t matter. He began to talk again about Stephen handing him the wedding-dress, how he’d walked away with it and had then sat down on a seat on the promenade, not wanting to go on with his act any more. Miss Lavant had passed by and had smiled at him.

‘She gave me a sweet one time when I was a kid, a bag of Quality Street she had. She’s always had a smile for me, Mr Feather.’

Quentin nodded, preventing himself from saying that Miss Lavant’s sweets and smiles were beside the point.

‘It never occurred to me till yesterday, sir. She gave birth to his baby.’

‘I’d like to help you,’ Quentin said again, and Timothy laughed again.

‘Did you ever hear it said, sir, that Miss Lavant and Dr Greenslade –’

‘Timothy, please.’

‘Only she gave birth to his baby, sir.’

‘That isn’t true, Timothy.’

‘I’d say it was, sir. She gave birth to it, only she couldn’t keep the kid by her because of what Dynmouth people would say about it. She removed herself from the town for the birth. The doctor goes with her, saying he was in Yorkshire on medical business. The next thing is they get the kid fixed up with a Dynmouth woman so’s they can see it growing. D’you get it, Mr Feather?’

‘That’s the purest fantasy, Timothy.’

‘D’you get the picture, though? Forty or fifty a week the Dynmouth woman’s paid.’

‘Oh, don’t be silly now. You know as well as I do a child was never born to Miss Lavant. Dr Greenslade is a happily married man –’

‘It never occurred to me till yesterday, Mr Feather, when I was sitting on the seat and she smiled at me. She was scared out of her skin the time I was walking along the wall of the prom. “Come down, please,” she says in that voice of hers, holding out the bag of Quality Street. It’s like something on a television thing, Crossroads maybe, or General Hospital, or the one about the women in prison.’

‘You’re talking nonsense, Timothy.’

‘The man walks into this room, Mr Feather, and the baby’s there on the table. He takes one look at it and the next thing is he’s shouting. It’s not his baby is what he’s saying, no more than it’s hers. He’s not going in for any pretending over a baby unless he comes in for a share of the cash, bloody ridiculous it is. She goes up to him and tells him to stuff himself and in a flat half-minute he’s belting the old lorry up the London road. Isn’t that the way it happened, Mr Feather? Isn’t it true?’

‘Of course it isn’t true.’

‘If you close your eyes you can see it in this room, the two of them standing there, rough kind of people. She’s an awful bloody woman, as a matter of fact.’

‘That’ll do, Timothy. And if you go bothering Miss Lavant –’

‘We have the secret between us, sir. I wouldn’t mention it to another soul. I’d quicker burn than mention it to Miss Lavant. I wouldn’t embarrass her with it.’

‘You watch too much television, Timothy.’

‘There’s good stuff on the telly. D’you watch it yourself ever? Does Mrs Feather tune in at all? Only there’s women’s programmes in the afternoon, cooking hints, what to do with a fox-fur, anything you’d name. There’s educational programmes, not that Mrs Feather needs education. Only there’s good stuff for the ignorant. You know what I mean, sir?’

‘Forget the story you’ve made up about Miss Lavant, Timothy. It’s childish, you know.’

‘When she smiled at me yesterday I could see a resemblance. Did you ever notice the doctor’s cheek-bones? He has sharp cheek-bones, like a person I could mention not a million miles away.’

‘Please, Timothy.’

‘If you tell me to forget it I will, Mr Feather. I’ll put it out of my mind. I’ll promise you that, sir.’

‘Thank you.’

‘Easy as skinning a cat, sir. All right then, Mr Feather?’ He moved towards the television set. He waited with his hand on a knob, politely.

‘I’m always there,’ Quentin said, and Timothy laughed. He turned the light out as the clergyman left the room.

He secured the flat cardboard box on the carrier of his bicycle with a piece of string that was tied to the carrier for such a purpose. He hung the bag with the Union Jack on it from the handle-bars.

He cycled to High Park Avenue and rang the bell of Number Eleven. When Mrs Abigail answered the door he handed her the box, saying he believed it was her property. He was sorry, he said, unable to think of anything better to say. He was sorry Timothy Gedge had been a nuisance. With some reluctance Mrs Abigail took the box from him. It didn’t matter about Timothy Gedge, she said, as long as he never came to the bungalow again.

He cycled to Sweetlea and there, too, said he was sorry that Timothy Gedge had been a nuisance. It was very kind to have supplied curtains for the stage. ‘Curtains?’ Mrs Dass exclaimed softly, from her sun-chair in the bow window, and her husband confessed that he’d found an old set of blackout curtains that were just about right for size.

It wouldn’t be necessary, Quentin told Mr Plant, to convey the bath from Swines’ yard to the rectory garden: Timothy Gedge’s act would not be included in the Spot the Talent competition because it wasn’t suitable. Mr Plant seemed doubtful when he heard that. He’d promised the boy, he said, he never liked to break a promise. ‘I’ve talked to the boy,’ Quentin said. ‘I’m sorry he was a nuisance, Mr Plant.’ But Mr Plant denied that Timothy Gedge had been a nuisance in any way whatsoever. He liked to do his bit, he said, for the Easter Fête or for any other good cause. If a bath needed moving he was only too willing; if it was to stay where it was, no problem either.

‘I think this is yours,’ Quentin said in Sea House, handing Stephen the bag with the wedding-dress in it.

He felt foolish, doing all that. He saw himself: an ineffectual clergyman on a bicycle, lanky and grey-haired, a familiar sight, tidying up. He remembered the child’s face when he’d tried to explain to her about devils. Timothy Gedge had used him to practise a fantasy on.