by Stead Jones
He was forever testing me – the penalty of having passed the scholarship to the County School. ‘John Masefield,’ I said.
Owen chuckled. ‘Salvation through education,’ he said. ‘We’ll have you down the library to read out the situations vacant for the proletariat…’
‘A teacher died today,’ I said. ‘In class…’
Owen dropped his knife. ‘Good God,’ he said, ‘is it possible to have too much education?’ But by then, unaccountably, I was in tears, and they were both rushing to comfort me. ‘Tell me, Lew – get it out of your head.’ And after I had done so Owen, in a local preacher’s voice, went on about death and Mons and Vimy Ridge. ‘Out of our hands, see… Don’t be upset.’
‘A greater Power,’ Meira joined in.
‘Forget it,’ Owen said. ‘What d’you say – come to the Palace with us? Second house? Pay-day today…’
Down Lower Hill Gladstone Williams would be waiting, but I couldn’t resist a chance to go to the pictures, so it was the Palace that night, the visitors all around, wet macs steaming, the air smoke-blue and tropical hot, and the dying forgotten.
But, some time in the early hours, Evans Thomas was there at the window, eyes burning, mouth twisted and ready for the bite. I had the light on quick, and in a shaking sweat was clawing for the curtains to keep him out, for in my nightmare I had been convulsed with laughter – standing on my desk, roaring – as he fell down like Buster Keaton, fell down and got up, fell down and got up again…. I clung to the curtain and in a while managed to tell myself it was a dream. But once back on the bed I was overcome by black remorse – a man dies in front of you like that, and all you can do is laugh, make a comic film out of it – and I became stiffened there, my arms tight around my knees, unable to move, unable even to cry out for Meira, as if paralysed, only my mind thundering as the hours of night passed and the window grew light…. If only I had gone to see Gladstone…. Then, as if in a film again, I was in Gladstone’s house and it was two years ago and I was telling him about my mother, about finding her like that, and how I had thought it funny, had actually laughed: and how the shame of that was like a knife turning in me. ‘Pushes on the comedian, something sad,’ Gladstone was saying. ‘Cap and bells and all.’ And he was on his feet, arms waving, dancing, being the Jester for me in order to stem my tears. ‘Never be afraid to open the door and ask the Jester in,’ he cried, then stood still and grave, adding almost fiercely, ‘Always, Lew. Always.’
My arms and legs were mine again. I stretched and lay back – let the Jester in, like a prayer, let the Jester in – and in a while, as the day climbed over Porthmawr, slept.
Impossible to predict, certainly at that moment, that it was going to be a summer for the Jester.
II
Gladstone was trying out various signatures on the sand.
Adolf Hitler Jones, he wrote. Then after it he added A. H. Jones, BA, BD. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘it might have been Adolf Hitler if he’d been born in Berlin, or somewhere like that.’
The Rev A. H. Jones, BA, BD, was minister at Capel Mawr, and they didn’t make them any bigger than that. A. H. stood for Alvared Hounsdow, as we all knew, but Gladstone liked playing around with names. ‘Adolf Hitler Jones, BA, BD,’ he went on. ‘The famous Welsh-German, or German-Welshman… Lew, you never know, do you? It could be his real name. I mean, nobody calls him anything except A. H.’
We were sitting at the unfashionable end of the beach. It was the only place for us with our bathing gear. Dewi and Maxie had their sisters’ knickers on, a bit modified, but with moth holes in the wrong places; I was wearing a pair of khaki shorts which Meira had picked up in Capel Mawr jumble; the little ones were in knickers and underpants – the ones they wore all the time – and they didn’t hide much, especially when wet. But Gladstone, of course, had a proper pair of bathing trunks, Marks and Spencer, blue, with a white stripe down the leg and a white belt with a chrome buckle. Gladstone always managed things right.
‘Clarke Brentford,’ he wrote with his stick. ‘That’s a nice one. Clarke with an e – for distinction and affectation.’ He had a voice like a girl’s, not high, but with a girl’s sound to it. ‘Mussolini Morgan,’ he wrote. ‘I like that, too. It sounds like an Italian tenor who does juggling as well. Anything’s nice when you’ve been launched as Gladstone Williams.’
‘Chief Lord of the Navy, Gladstone was,’ Maxie said.
‘Prime Minister,’ Gladstone hissed.
Maxie was the thickest going. He had been in the same class for years. His real name was Will, but he had a boxer’s face so he was Maxie to everyone, even his mother.
‘Beethoven Jones,’ Gladstone wrote. ‘Is that how you spell Beethoven, Lew?’
‘Ask me another,’ I said.
‘Composed the “Messiah”,’ said Maxie.
We threw sand at him.
You’re the smartest, Lew,’ Gladstone said. ‘Scholarship and everything. I wish I had brains.’ He wrote William Shakespeare Hughes on the sand. Gladstone was seventeen, the oldest among us, and he was, as he said, practically a non-starter in the Porthmawr Education Stakes. ‘I didn’t go to school much, you know,’ he said. ‘I’m not really sorry, but it might have helped me to concentrate. Of course, I’d have gone more often, only Mam kept on having the babies there. She had to have someone to give her a hand, after all. Besides, I found school very restrictive.’ He wrote Tennyson Keats Cadwaladr on the sand, and with a flourish added Professor of Comparative Alcohology, Bangor University.
Gladstone had the best vocabulary, English and Welsh, in all Porthmawr. But Dewi was all for swearing. ‘Too bloody right it’s restrictive,’ he said. ‘School puts bloody years on you.’
‘Language,’ Gladstone said.
Dewi was my age, and until I had got the scholarship we had shared the same desk. As well as being an artist at swearing, he carried more scars than anyone in the town – on his knees, hands, face, even through the close-cropped hair on his scalp you could see them – and they were all the result of doing things the hard and daring way.
‘I don’t like dirty language,’ Gladstone went on. ‘The world’s plagued with dirty talk.’
We all nodded, even Dewi, because Gladstone was the leader. Not because he was older, though, not even because he was very tall and slim and handsome, but because he had authority. Gladstone could tell you he put peroxide on his hair, and waved it now and then, but you didn’t start thinking he was soft or anything like that. He had this girl’s sound to his voice, but you were held by it just the same.
‘William Wordsworth Williams,’ he wrote. ‘A lovely old poet.’
‘It was the schooner Hesperus,’ Maxie began.
‘Wrong poet,’ Gladstone said gently, but firmly.
We lay back on the warm sand then, the four of us, while the children fought and played. I was with my friends and the sun was back in the sky, and I had almost forgotten that they were burying poor Mr Evans Thomas that day. Behind us Porthmawr looked warmer, gentler – not the way it did in winter, or when it rained. The sun was crimson and amber and gold through my closed eyes, and the wind tasted of salt. Poor Evans Thomas had died of natural causes years ago. All I wanted now was for the clocks of the world to stop so that it could stay like that for ever.
‘When you leave school,’ Gladstone was saying, ‘what are you going to be, Lew?’
‘Gangster, me,’ Dewi broke in. ‘Going to have a mob and live in Hollywood.’ Dewi saw nearly all the pictures that came to Porthmawr’s three cinemas. ‘A mob and molls,’ he added.
‘Nobody asked you,’ Gladstone said.
I kept my eyes closed and said, ‘I’m going to be a poet.’
Maxie tried again: ‘It was the schooner Hesperus…’
‘Shut up,’ Gladstone said. ‘A poet? Seriously?’
‘Yes,’ I said.
I felt the fine sand falling on my face and knew they had sat up.
‘Tell us a poem, then,’ Maxie said. ‘Tell us one of t
hem…’
Gladstone yelled at the children because they had buried little Walter. Then he said, ‘Got a poem handy, Lew?’
I kept my eyes closed and said, ‘Thousands’.
They all considered that. ‘Like the National Eisteddfod?’ Dewi asked.
‘All singing that,’ Maxie said scornfully. ‘Singing and sopranos…’
‘Oh – imagine Lew winning at the Eisteddfod,’ Gladstone said. ‘Going to the front in his nightie. I’ll lend you mine, Lew.’
I sat up. ‘I wouldn’t try for the National. I wouldn’t try for anything.’
‘Because of the nightie, Lew?’
I had been working on this for some months. ‘Because that isn’t a poem,’ I said. ‘Writing to order isn’t a poem.’
Gladstone nodded. ‘Quite right,’ he said approvingly.
‘Shouldn’t do it, that’s all,’ I said. I’d nearly sorted this out a few nights before, but now the idea escaped me – like trying to remember what happened next in a dream. ‘A poet shouldn’t do that.’
Gladstone smiled and gripped my arm, but the other two looked at me with blank wonder. ‘What’s he to do, then?’ Maxie demanded.
‘Shouldn’t do anything,’ I said heatedly. The stuff about being a poet had slipped out. I’d never told anyone else. ‘Just write it down, that’s all,’ I said.
Both Dewi and Maxie nodded, but blankly.
‘I wandered lonely as a cloud,’ Gladstone said, as if to explain it all.
‘Wyt Ionawr yn oer,’ Dewi put in.
‘Welsh or English, which do you write?’ Gladstone asked.
‘English,’ I said, and that was another lie. I hadn’t written anything yet.
They all nodded approval. ‘Wales is the best country in the world,’ Dewi said, ‘but the language is old-fashioned.’
Gladstone considered that carefully. ‘It’s the best language all round,’ he said firmly, ‘but there’s too much talk about good Welsh and poor Welsh; and good Welsh is too stiff altogether.’ He held up a fistful of sand and let it trickle out slowly. ‘The poems are nice, though. But we’re all half and half here, aren’t we? English and Welsh all mixed up. Maybe…’
‘There’s no pictures in Welsh,’ Maxie said.
‘Know why that is, don’t you?’ Dewi put in. ‘That’s because Hollywood isn’t in Wales.’ He turned to me. ‘Lew – say a poem. Go on.’
Gladstone clapped his hands. ‘Come and listen, children. Lew is going to tell us a poem.’ Dora and Mair and Walter scrambled across and crouched facing me. They all stared at me, except Walter who had cross-eyes – but probably he was staring too, in his way.
‘All right, Lew?’ Gladstone asked gently.
I was in a panic now. Cornered. I didn’t have a poem ready, and I knew I could never remember one which Gladstone, at least, didn’t know.
‘Can’t do it,’ I mumbled. ‘They’re not ready yet – my poems.’
They all looked disappointed, but Gladstone took over smoothly for me. ‘Don’t force him,’ he said. ‘Lew’s not ready to tell us – and he’s quite right. You can’t force flowers to grow, can you?’ I knew then that Gladstone had seen through me, knew that relief was at hand, too. ‘Tell you what,’ he went on, ‘I’ll give you one of mine. Not a real poem, Lew – just a bit of an entertainment.’
He told one none of us had heard before – about a fisherman who found pearls in the seaweed bubbles, and how he collected them for his sweetheart, and how the pearls all became tiny fish on her neck. I swear he made it up there and then.
‘Don’t understand,’ Maxie said.
‘Why did they turn to fish, then?’ Dora asked. Dora was eight and wriggling with questions.
‘I don’t know,’ Gladstone said. ‘You should never ask a poet to explain…’
‘Very good,’ Walter croaked.
‘Got a meaning,’ Dewi agreed. ‘Like a sermon in chapel.’
‘It’s not a sermon,’ said Maxie. ‘Just a poem…’
‘Just a po-em,’ a new voice echoed behind us. ‘Just a bloody pansy po-em!’
We were on our feet in a flash, hustling the children to shelter, picking up our clothes and making for the nearest sand dune.
‘Harry Knock-Knees!’ the children screamed, but we didn’t need telling. Harry Knock-Knees and Wil Fawr and the rest of them, and they had been sitting there above us on the sea wall, listening to every word.
We pulled on our clothes and stuffed the children into theirs whilst Dewi and Maxie began to reply to the stones which were already zipping through the sand above our heads.
‘You children stay down,’ Gladstone ordered. ‘Anyone up and off goes his head!’ The children huddled down.
‘They’re six to our four,’ he went on, ‘but we’re all right for stones.’
Stones and insults came over in showers, but we were used to both. Once a week, regular as the rain, we fought it out with Harry Knock-Knees and his gang. They were rougher than us, the harbour crowd, but we usually held our own so long as we had stones. Man to man, fist to fist, we wouldn’t have stood a chance…. But every time they attacked us like this, I had the feeling it was only Gladstone they were after. ‘Bloody old Pansy,’ they roared now. ‘How’s your knickers then, Pansy?’ They always left me alone whenever I saw them: Gladstone was the target. ‘Big cowards,’ he shouted back. ‘Attacking little children.’ ‘And big girls,’ they jeered, ‘don’t forget the big girl!’ Gladstone rushed forward in a frenzy, picking up and hurling stones as he went. Maxie and Dewi and I, moved by his example, heaved more furiously, following in his wake. And, as on previous occasions, Harry Knock-Knees and his gang broke and ran for it. We followed them to the foot of the sea wall, whooping like Apaches, the stones still flying. Only the crash of broken glass somewhere beyond the wall halted us, and without even waiting to find whose glass had gone, and where, we were back to the sand dune in a flash, and on from there, the children flying in front of us like the Israelites when the Red Sea nearly got them.
‘Make for the boat,’ Gladstone cried as we charged through the visitors. ‘Must have been Davies Ice cream.’
During another fight, one of the windows in the ice-cream cart which Davies wheeled along the narrow road behind the sea wall had been smashed. It seemed logical to suppose that the same thing had happened again.
We stopped running once we were clear of the beach just in case the police were around. We were by the harbour now and could afford to stroll. The tide was out, the white yachts and fishing boats sitting on the mud, their masts slanting. Up on the mudbank that no tide ever reached was the Moonbeam, which was, for the time being at least, our headquarters.
She was a scarred and battered old has-been, mastless, peeling, warped and leaking. It was a good job the tides never reached her because she would never sail again. She had been a fishing boat and she still smelt like it; she hadn’t an owner, so far as anyone knew, but now and then one of the boozers from the town occupied her and slept the night under newspapers in her cabin. We had taken her over at the beginning of summer and Gladstone had set us to work on that cabin. We had scrubbed and patched and fixed a broken porthole and reassembled the stove. One night, I knew, the Moonbeam would fall apart in a high wind, but that cabin would hold firm.
We walked to her across the mud. Like the Moonbeam, the harbour had seen better days too when the small coasters called every week. But now it was mud crisscrossed by rotting ropes and rusty chains. One day those ropes would snap, I used to think, and the walls and storehouses along the quay would crumble and fall into the water. The decay had set in, all right.
‘We had them running,’ Dewi said. He had a new cut above his left eye – only a small one, but he let it bleed.
‘Trouble over Davies Ice cream,’ Maxie said gloomily.
‘Only for Harry Knock-Knees,’ Dewi said, and we walked on laughing, as the gulls wheeled and called, until we came to the planks which gave us a fairly dry way to the Moonbeam.
&nb
sp; Gladstone waited with me until the children had followed Maxie and Dewi along the planks, then he took my arm and said, ‘Do you really want to be a poet, Lew?’
‘Only talking,’ I said, not looking at him.
‘Oh, but you must be one,’ he said. ‘You look like one.’ He prodded the mud with the toe of his shoe. ‘D’you know what I want to be, then?’
I shook my head.
‘I want to be the finest man in the world,’ he said.
III
We sat around in the cabin of the Moonbeam and discussed the fight and planned repairs.
‘We’ll get little curtains on the portholes,’ Gladstone said. ‘And some paint. Woolworth’s have cheap paint…’
‘I know where we can get some paint,’ Dewi said.
‘Stealing?’
Dewi winked. ‘There for the taking. Back of Williams Painters. Easy.’
‘Thou shalt not steal,’ Maxie said. We told him to shut up.
‘Seen the tins,’ Dewi went on. ‘Easy. Only a bit of glass on the wall.’
Gladstone nodded. ‘Well – we’ll have to think about it. We need some paint and that’s a fact…’
‘I’ll go now,’ Dewi said.
That was the trouble with Dewi. Pinching in broad daylight was better than pinching after dark. The risk was everything. Dewi was always the last to leave a raided orchard, and afterwards he would push apple cores through the police station letterbox. We had to control Dewi.
‘We’ll talk about it later,’ Gladstone said, indicating the listening children. Gladstone was more careful than a woman with them: we hadn’t to swear in front of them, and they weren’t to hear anything bad. ‘Best to give them a nice, clean start,’ he used to say.
We sprawled around on the cabin floor. The harbour smelled like a corporation tip through the scrubbed boards. I was smoking one of Dewi’s Woodbines and feeling pleasantly drunk.
