by TP Fielden
‘No trouble at all, as it turned out. Or only a bit.’ He told the story of Danny and his mum. ‘How about you?’
This was the joy of working on a local newspaper – you got interested in other reporters’ stories, you got the inside information from them, but you didn’t have to do anything towards collecting it. You always knew more than appeared in the newspaper and, on the basis that knowledge is power, that made you a powerful figure in the local community. Or, as you stood in the rain at a bus stop on the way back from the Agricultural Show, your feet covered in mud, you could try to convince yourself it did.
‘I’ve made progress on the dead girl,’ said Judy seriously. ‘I’ll tell you later, I have some calls to make just now. How’s the story going?’
‘Finally under way. Shouldn’t take long now.’
Judy Dimont doubted that but was pleased for him – it looked as though he was getting the hang of it. Though he could do with a shave.
‘You could do with a shave, Valentine.’
‘Haven’t been home. Those Urges drink a lot, y’know. They’re living in their van. Quite comfy though – reminded me of my days in tanks.’
‘Get it finished soon. You can come and help me.’
Valentine yawned and scratched his tousled hair. ‘Be a pleasure. Can I just ask you about – you know the Ben Larsson story? There’s a lead here I wanted to ask your advice about.’
‘Not now, Valentine, let’s talk it over later. I want to go and see your, er, cousin Miss de Mauny.’
‘Again? More riveting stuff on the plight of womankind?’
Miss Dimont shot him a glance. ‘Don’t scoff, Valentine. You should be so lucky as to be one of us.’
The young man laughed and held her gaze. ‘You can be awfully stern.’
‘When there are idiots around like you, I need to be. It really is a most valuable asset.’
The young man returned so swiftly and so energetically to his keyboard he might have been playing Rachmaninov.
If you had to pick a time of day when Ransome’s Retreat was at its finest, it had to be late afternoon. By that time the sun had passed over the headland and was backlighting the house and gardens, sending shadows over the sizeable drop on to the rocks far beneath. The energetic squawkings of birdlife, now that beaks had been fed, had given way to a quieter music, heralding, but with no great sense of hurry, the forthcoming dusk.
On the terrace, at an ancient wooden table, sat Pernilla Larsson and her son Gus Wetherby.
‘He’s asleep?’
‘Lamb gave him his usual.’
‘Good,’ said Gus. ‘Let’s get on.’
His mother put on her dark glasses. She wanted to hide the sense of betrayal she felt.
‘It comes to this,’ said Gus, self-importantly. ‘The Rejuvenator has had it. The Daily Herald has seen to that. Some urgent action now, or you can forget all this.’ The merest flick of his hand was enough to tell the tale.
‘Ben has spoken to the local newspaper,’ said Pernilla. ‘That girl Hetty Betty. They’re going to print a correction.’
‘Mother,’ came the irritated response, ‘it’s the local rag! Who’s going to take any notice of that? In a day or two all the other national newspapers will wake up to a story they should have cottoned on to years ago.’
‘You know, this could kill your stepfather,’ said Pernilla anxiously. The crisis at Ransome’s Retreat could not be greater and she was caught between a husband who refused to lift his head out of the sand and a son whose ambition and, yes, greed had robbed him of any sense of loyalty.
‘Might be better if he did pop his clogs. He’s a busted flush, Mother.’
‘Gus! He paid for your fees at Harrow. He’s treated you always like a son.’
‘And I’m going to save his reputation,’ said Gus, who may or may not have meant it. ‘If he can’t be persuaded to alter course, and quickly, he’s dished. We need to get him out of here. You do realise, Mother, that if one person suddenly takes it into their head to sue, there’ll be a rush of people to the courts, and we’ll be bankrupt.’
Gus stood up and walked over to the terrace wall. ‘It needs positive action. Announce the New Rejuvenator. Acknowledge publicly that the old one was based on complicated gadgetry and wishful thinking.’
‘You can’t say that! It’s tantamount to an admission of fraud. Your poor stepfather!’
She’s decorative, thought Gus Wetherby, and with a backbone of steel, but she isn’t always very quick on the uptake.
‘This is how you do it,’ he said crisply. ‘You simply say what fools people have been to buy this wonderful piece of equipment, and then misuse it. Trials by our company have proved that it was too complicated for most people. Cite all the wonderful letters we’ve had over the years, and then come out and say that yes, there have been complaints, but it was the idiots who didn’t read the instructions properly.
‘The sooner we do it, the easier it is to nip this thing in the bud. Another week and it’ll be too late.’
‘Ben won’t agree to it. He doesn’t see the problem.’
‘He’s old. I think it’s time you took him off to Argentina to visit the ranches, they need looking over. Go for a couple of months and leave things to me. But get him away quick or we’re finished.’
Pernilla Larsson lit a cigarette. A butterfly danced by.
‘All right,’ she said slowly. ‘We’ll go.’
Just then, the old inventor walked over to join them. His wife looked aghast at this unexpected entrance.
‘Oh … Ben … Ha! Ha!’ she laughed awkwardly, patting her hair and smoothing her skirt. ‘I thought you were having your nap.’
‘No more of those damned sedatives,’ said Ben Larsson angrily. ‘No more whispering in corners! No more lies and deceit! I know what you’ve been up to …’
‘Don’t know what you’re talking about,’ answered Gus guiltily.
Larsson looked at him. ‘Don’t waste my time! Lamb told me everything. It was that or be sacked, and he never wants to see his native Yorkshire again.’
‘Who can blame him?’ said Gus sourly. ‘It rains a lot in Yorkshire.’
‘Just at the moment when I need my family’s support, more than at any time in my life,’ said Larsson, rising on the balls of his feet, ‘they betray me. You want me out of the country so you can renounce my lifetime’s work and put in its place some gimcrack piece of gadgetry which you think will save my reputation – and,’ he added sourly, ‘your inheritance.’
‘It’s not quite like that,’ said Gus, but the bluster was going out of his voice. ‘Ben, you have to realise these newspapers will crucify you unless you do something positive, and do it now.’
‘Like launch the Youthenator?’
‘It’s a good name,’ said Gus defensively. ‘Catches the mood of the time. Borrows from your legacy without saying it’s the same piece of kit. Modern, up to date. Suited to the needs of the post-war generation. Not those Lazarus League weirdos.’
The inventor walked over to the table, picked up a teacup and suddenly threw it to the ground. He opened his mouth but no words came. Beneath his golden Devon tan he had gone remarkably pale.
‘Ben,’ said Pernilla urgently, ‘come and sit down. Your heart, my dear, your heart …’
‘My heart,’ said Larsson faintly, ‘is broken.’
His stepson took no notice. Ben Larsson had not become as rich as he had without using every trick in the book from bullying to blackmail.
‘You knew the Rejuvenator didn’t work all along,’ he said savagely.
‘You don’t know what you’re talking about,’ came the contemptuous reply. ‘For your tenth birthday I gave you a specially inscribed copy of A New Electronic Theory of Life. Did you ever read it?’
‘No need,’ said Gus airily, ‘not while the money was rolling in. But look, Ben, I’ve learnt the business. And I see where you went wrong in your calculations all those years ago. Those electromagnetic currents you
harnessed – it was the right theory but wrong application. If only you’d …’
‘You know nothing,’ retorted Larsson bitterly. ‘What’s that phrase – a little knowledge is a dangerous thing? – you think you know it all but you know nothing. I am a chemist, a healer, I have studied in depth people’s lives and their ailments, I have a real care to make people’s lives better,’ he paused. ‘Lamb showed me your drawings.’
His stepson reacted angrily at the news of this betrayal, jumping forward, looking almost as if he was ready to swing a punch at the old man. He knocked against his mother and her dark glasses fell to the terrace. Sobbing, she knelt to pick them up. Both men ignored her.
‘You’re a fool, Gus. You don’t pay Lamb his wages, I do. You don’t look after him, I do. I doubt you even know the names of his children. It might have appeared he was going along with your plan to force me out of my own business, but only to discover what you were up to. I’ve seen the drawings and the prototype you had made in the workshop – yes, the workforce still know on which side their bread is buttered! – and that contraption you created is just a gimmick.
‘It won’t work, it’ll never work. You’re no better than a snake-oil salesman – no care for the people you sell to as long as you can take the money and run. In a matter of months you’ll have ruined your reputation, and mine too.’
Pernilla was cradling the broken sunglasses in her hands. ‘You’re both right,’ she sobbed, ‘and you’re both wrong. You, Ben, have no idea what damage that newspaper article has done. You may as well shut the factory, unless you let Gus have his way.
‘But you, Gus,’ she said, angrily turning to her son. ‘You promised me this thing would work. If, as your stepfather says, it doesn’t – then what’s the point? Why go to all that effort when you know you’re going to be found out?’
Gus Wetherby was unmoved. ‘So what if it doesn’t work?’ he sneered. ‘At least it won’t do any harm like the Rejuvenator.
‘Look, Mum, we live in a new age. People don’t cling to the past like they used to. These days, things come and go – look at jukeboxes, they’re all the rage now but where will they be in ten years’ time? Hula-hoops, coffee bars, permanent waves? Even those Lambretta scooters?
‘They’re all the fashion now but they’ll die a death, as everything does in this day and age. Look at this beat music – that won’t last. Early closing day, the Communist Party, shillings and florins and farthings – they’re all for the scrap heap. So if the Youthenator has a short life, so what, who cares? Once everybody’s bought one and tried it out and got bored with it, it’ll just go into the dustbin along with all the other rubbish. Then we just reinvent it for the next generation. Or we sell it on to Africa – those post-colonial nations with all their problems and diseases could do with a dollop of hope. They’d love the Youthenator.’
There were tears in old Larsson’s eyes, whether real or not it was difficult to see. ‘I’ll kill you first,’ he whispered. ‘I’ll kill you! Do you think you can just come and ruin my lifetime’s reputation, just because you feel like it?’
‘Nobody will notice, Ben. I’ve got a great plan which – sorry, old chap – will make everybody forget the name Ben Larsson. This beat group – Danny Trouble and The Urge – they’re on every front page in the land. Radio and TV and magazines can’t get enough of them. They’re huge, they’re massive, and they’re the future.
‘Even you, Ben, know the headlines they’ve created since they’ve been down here playing the Pavilion Theatre.’
The old man looked with steely contempt at his stepson, but there was no stopping him. ‘I’ve talked to their manager Gavin Armstrong – we were at Harrow together – and he’s got them to endorse the Youthenator.
‘When they do that, every household, every kid, will want my machine. They’ll be told it will give them a fillip, give ’em a thrill, just what everybody’s looking for these days! Some of these kids take drugs, but this is legal!
‘Don’t you see, Ben? My God, you’re so out of touch with what’s happening!’
The old man stood up. ‘You’ll ruin my reputation. Sooner than let you do that, I’d kill you.’
His stepson sneered. ‘Not me, Ben. Let’s face it, it’s you who’s dead in the water.’
THIRTEEN
The town was filling up nicely. The annual game of musical chairs played by householders had already begun, with the owners of the larger establishments moving to smaller ones while those in more modest properties moved into flats. Short-term discomfort was rewarded by gratifying boosts to the bank balance from these holiday lets, and there was a smell of fresh paint everywhere. The shopkeepers of Temple Regis got out their best smiles and strapped them on.
The Riviera Express – the elegant steam train, not its newspaper namesake – began its sterling work of depositing holidaymakers on the platform of Regis Junction to start their week or fortnight in this heavenly backwater. Even the palm trees, cunningly planted at the platform’s edge to make newcomers believe they’d just entered paradise, seemed to have acquired a new sheen. A beguiling breeze tossed their tendrils prettily in the air.
Temple Regis did not have the de luxe air of Torquay, nor the kiss-me-quick jollity of Paignton. It had instead all the assurance of a middle-aged country solicitor – well dressed, efficient, dependable and encouraging – and while its residents were not snobs they instinctively knew their town was a cut above the competition.
Always ready to spot new trends in the competitive business of selling sunshine, they were not so quick to pick up on the beat boom which was sweeping the country. By accident they’d landed the most famous band in Britain as their guests, but they were mistrustful of the benefits Danny Trouble and The Urge might bring, preferring to put their trust in the old fail-safes – donkeys on the beach, speak-your-weight machines, the Winter Garden dance hall, and the noisy funfair with its dodgem cars and coconut shies. And of course the glittering Grand Hotel.
Outside one of the town’s more faded attractions, Mrs Phipps sat in a deckchair with a Plymouth Gin at her elbow. Her grandson wandered out of a side door with a bucket and some rolls of paper looking as though he might make himself busy for once.
‘What are you doing, dear?’
‘Putting up the Sold Out signs, Granny.’
Mrs Phipps took a sip and raised her still-photogenic face towards the sun. ‘Is that wise, darling? I’d say we aren’t above 75 per cent.’
‘We aren’t. But, don’t you see, the moment word gets out there are no tickets left, the fans go mad and the price goes up? They’ll pay anything to see Danny and the boys.’
‘But how do you dispose of tickets when your sign says quite clearly there are no tickets left?’
Gavin looked down at his grandmother pityingly. ‘I know a chap, Granny. Black market. He demands three times the cover price and creates the pressure. Nothing more exciting than seeing The Urge with an illegal ticket.’
‘Darling, is that strictly ethical?’ asked Mrs Phipps, who really didn’t care. Business had never been better, and she was enjoying the sensation Danny Trouble was causing in town. Her faded celebrity and rackety life created a distance between her and hard-working Temple Regents, who kept civilised hours and did not drink Plymouth Gin at eleven in the morning.
Gavin splashed glue on the posters which pictured Danny and the boys looking particularly menacing, then adorned them with his ‘Sold Out’ signs.
‘That looks good,’ he said. ‘Right across Tommy’s face. Lord, he’s a snotty one, Granny.’
‘We used to have them all the time in the old days. When I recall that Lupe Velez! We were in Transatlantic Rhythm together, dear, at the Adelphi, must have been 1936. She hated her costume so much she rehearsed in the nude. She never washed, you know, and had no idea what undergarments were for.’
Gavin had heard this one before. ‘The boys don’t wash much either. But then when you’re living in a van, why bother?’
‘
I thought you were going to get them some rooms.’
‘They seem pretty comfortable where they are.’
‘In a van?’ said Mrs Phipps incredulously. In her West End days, she used to slum it at The Ritz between performances.
‘Well, maybe I should,’ conceded Gavin. ‘Anyway, I’d better go and get them their early-morning tea.’
‘Not up yet?’ The old Gaiety Girl, who was always immaculately presented, started her lengthy beautification process early in the day.
‘We were up late. Had that reporter chap from the local rag over, Valentine Ford.’
‘Waterford, darling, I knew his grandfather. A regular stage-door Johnston.’
‘Mm-hmm, ever the siren, Gran. See you later.’
Gavin strolled into the theatre and prepared some mugs of tea. A woeful-looking menagerie, far removed from the demigods on stage last night, started to limp in. Danny Trouble was wearing a duffle coat which doubled as a dressing gown and, as it swung open, it was evident that he’d become a star of the Lupe Velez persuasion.
‘Manners, Derek,’ said Gavin sternly. His style was to treat the musicians with a mixture of encouragement and restraint, like a housemaster at a minor public school. A cautionary word usually kept them in check, for despite their rebel reputation they were earnest and diligent.
‘Oops!’ said Danny, and re-established his modesty with a bashful smile.
‘Bacon and eggs coming up,’ said Gavin, ‘then I’ve got something really wonderful to tell you.’
‘We’re Number One again next week?’ said Boots McGuigan, the bass player, from behind his copy of Melody Maker.
‘All that and more. One egg or two?’
The others drifted in and Gavin allowed them their breakfast and a fag before calling for their attention.
‘I’ve got some pretty fantastic news, chaps,’ he said adopting an important tone. ‘Bloke I was at school with lives down here, and has come up with a wheeze to make us a huge dollop of extra money.’
‘Speaking of which, when are we getting paid?’ said Tommy sourly.
