Make Room for the Jester

by Stead Jones

  ‘We could make a real little home here,’ Gladstone was saying. He’d stretched himself out on the bunk and had little Walter crouching on his chest. ‘We could be safe and snug here, winter and summer. I’d like to stay here forever. I would really.’

  ‘All of us, too?’ Maxie asked.

  ‘All of us, if you like,’ Gladstone agreed. ‘We could catch fish from the harbour and pick up plenty of wood for the stove there. Go after rabbits now and then, too – just for a change of diet…’

  ‘Chips, too?’ Maxie, I’d heard, even had chips for breakfast.

  ‘All the time,’ Gladstone said. ‘Potatoes are cheap enough.’

  The children had all gathered to him now, their eyes full of pictures – even Walter’s, only God knew where he was looking.

  ‘We could all live here. Like that, would you?’

  ‘Yes,’ the children said in unison.

  ‘No rent to find, like at Lower Hill.’

  ‘No,’ they agreed.

  ‘It would be lovely. Big fire in the old stove, and candles on winter’s nights, and the wind howling outside. Could soon fix little bunks for you children.’ They all nodded eagerly, especially Walter. ‘We could get the food going on that old stove there. And there’d be nobody to interfere.’ We were all nodding in agreement now. ‘Nice by ourselves. Separate bunks. Not like now – all of you in that old bed.’ Gladstone’s mother had married again after his father died. Dora and Mair and Walter were from the second marriage. The second husband had packed his bags and left soon after Walter’s birth. ‘Think of it, will you? We could make some money fishing, and sell firewood, and go after the lobsters for the pubs. Then there’s blackberries and mushrooms. Oh, we’d make enough to keep the lot of us…’

  Dewi sighed. ‘My mam would never let me.’

  ‘Mine neither,’ said Maxie.

  ‘It’s a great idea, though,’ I said.

  ‘None of you coming?’ Gladstone asked with a smile. ‘Ah, well, it’ll just have to be me and the little ones, then. We’ll keep visitors, shall we? Like Mam used to. And Mair can be chief bottle-washer, Walter waiting on, and Dora can be the maid.’

  ‘Maidth of honour,’ Dora said. She was very affected and had a lisping spell now and then.

  ‘And what shall I be?’ Gladstone asked them. ‘Go on – tell me.’

  ‘The Prince of Wales,’ Mair whispered shyly.

  Maxie, made restless by all this talk, had got up and was pacing the cabin. He had the stump of his Woodbine on a pin, getting the most out of it, but it was about finished, and since Gladstone had told us nothing was to be thrown on the floor he carried it over to the stove.

  Gladstone was saying, ‘Shall I tell you about Llywelyn, the last Prince of Wales?’ when Maxie cried out.

  ‘Jesus, there’s a fire in the stove!’

  We were crowding around him in an instant. He’d dropped the lid on the floor, and had had his ear pulled by Gladstone for doing so, but he was right all the same. There, in the dark depths of the stove, was the last glowing piece of wood. I could smell it now, brackish yet sweet, and full of mystery.

  ‘Some bugger’s been in,’ Dewi said.

  ‘A tramp,’ Maxie said. ‘It’ll be a tramp…’

  ‘Last night,’ Gladstone agreed. ‘An old fire…’

  We were grouped around the stove, looking at one another uneasily. This was disturbing.

  ‘A tramp,’ Maxie suggested again.

  ‘Just passing through, maybe…’

  We all looked at Gladstone for his verdict. ‘That’ll be it,’ he said. ‘Can’t see any other signs around the place. Mind you…’

  There was a crash on the sagging deck above our heads.

  ‘My God, what’s there?’ Dewi said.

  Loud swearing came clear through the thin planking. Then heavy footsteps and the sound of something being dragged.

  ‘A ghost!’ Maxie’s whisper broke the terrible silence that had fallen over us.

  ‘A bloody good swearer, too,’ Dewi said.

  ‘No ghosts in the afternoon,’ Gladstone said grimly. ‘Might be Harry Knock-Knees. Quick, children, behind the stove there.’ They scuttled to the dark forward part of the cabin. ‘We’ll stand here,’ he went on. ‘Ready for him.’

  My heart was pounding against my chest. ‘Might be more than one,’ I said in a voice that sounded strange.

  ‘Twin ghosts,’ Dewi said. His eyes were shining. He had that top of the telegraph pole look.

  Gladstone held my arm. He stood shoulder and head above us, his waved blond hair shining. He looked like the Greek statues in the history books. I stopped trembling.

  The footsteps stopped and started again. A thud, as the man came down into the well, followed by more swearing. The man, whoever he was, stood outside the cabin door now, breathing heavily. Suddenly he began to sing in a high, quavering voice. It was a hymn – Yn y dyfroedd mawr a’r tonnau – and he was slurring note and word. We smiled at each other with relief. A boozer! Someone full of drink and music come to sleep it off. And he was Welsh, too.

  The cabin door crashed open. I saw a pair of brown trousers, brown shoes caked with harbour mud, a big brown suitcase. Then the man stooped to come in through the low doorway. He saw us, and remained stock still, his mouth sagging with shock. He came in slowly and made himself tall. He was breathing hard, one shoulder hanging lower than the other, a wreck of a man. He dropped the case to the floor with a thump. The children came running silently to Gladstone.

  ‘Gentle Jesus!’ the man said. ‘How many more of you on a gentleman’s yacht?’ He had a deep furry voice now.

  No one answered him. My tongue was starched tight to the roof of my mouth.

  ‘What’s this – a Sunday-school trip?’ He removed a green hat and threw it on the bunk. ‘My yacht, and half the children of Porthmawr aboard!’ He was thick-tongued all right, and we could smell the drink clear across the cabin. ‘Trespassing…’

  ‘Excuse me,’ Gladstone said, ‘but this boat doesn’t belong to anybody…’

  The man had very pale blue eyes which fixed themselves on Gladstone. They had a staring match.

  ‘You the leader?’ he asked.

  ‘Naturally,’ Gladstone replied.

  ‘By God,’ the man said, shaking his head. ‘By God, I’ll have to sit down. Puffed. Puffed.’ He took a cigar end from his pocket and stuck it in the corner of his mouth. He had a long, haggard face, the lines deep enough for scars. The skin was peeling across his temples. He had the remains of red hair.

  After a few minutes’ sitting on the bunk he was on his feet again, pointing at Gladstone. ‘Name?’

  ‘That’s my business,’ Gladstone said.

  The man sat down heavily. ‘Good God – all Wales is a secret society.’ He pointed at Maxie. ‘Your name, then?’

  ‘Mussolini,’ Maxie said. The children tittered.

  ‘Cheeky,’ the man commented calmly.

  ‘And mine’s Charlie Chaplin,’ Dewi said, ‘and we’re four against one.’

  ‘Gentle Jesus,’ the man said, ‘you in the South Wales Borderers, then?’

  ‘This is our boat,’ Gladstone said firmly. ‘You’ve no right…’

  The man stopped him with a wave of his hand. ‘That’s where you’re wrong, kid. This boat is mine. My yacht…’

  ‘Prove it, then,’ Gladstone said. ‘Go on – prove it. Nobody’s owned this boat for years.’

  The man took a swig from a dark green bottle and showed yellowed teeth in a smile. ‘Take you to see my solicitors, shall I? The honourable Messrs Jones, Jones, Jones and Jones.’

  We didn’t know what to say to that, not even Gladstone. We knew all about the power of solicitors, though.

  ‘Got you, haven’t I? Can show you papers. You been having a den here, haven’t you? Trespassing on a gentleman’s yacht.’

  ‘We cleaned it up,’ Gladstone said. ‘We did a lot of jobs on it. We fixed the roof…’

  The man looked upwards. ‘I
’m very grateful. Looks as if I’ll have a dry berth tonight.’ He broke wind very loudly.

  ‘You’re not going to live here?’ I said.

  ‘Where else? What’s your name, then? Mickey Mouse?’

  ‘Lew Morgan,’ I said.

  ‘If it’s any of your business,’ Gladstone added quickly.

  The man took no offence. ‘Lew Morgan? There always was plenty of Morgans in Porthmawr. Morgans Butchers, Morgans Post Office, Morgans Dairy, Morgans Fish and Chips. Oh, hell, aye – some of the elite of the place was Morgans. There was a Morgans Big Spit once, if I remember.’

  We smiled in spite of ourselves.

  ‘A Morgans Come-to-Jesus, too.’

  ‘Not in front of the children,’ Gladstone said sharply.

  The man’s heavy eyebrows went up. ‘Got to be careful, have I? What did you say your name was?’

  ‘No right to ask,’ Gladstone replied. ‘Only with a warrant – that’s when you’ve a right…’

  ‘Well up in legal matters, I see. All right’ – he banged his hand against his knee – ‘tell you what I’ll do. This is my boat. The nearest thing I have to home in Porthmawr and the land of my fathers. But I’ll tell you what – you can go on using it as your den. I’ll only be needing the place at night, anyway…’

  We looked at each other wonderingly. This wasn’t the kind of agreement we were used to. Most people, if they didn’t chase us away, generally began to talk about the police. Dewi’s face said there’s a catch in it, but Gladstone was smiling.

  ‘On what terms?’ he asked with dignity.

  ‘Terms? Don’t ask me to talk about terms. Just come along when you want.’ He held out his hand. ‘You can shake on it, can’t you?’ None of us stepped forward, except Walter, who was mad keen on the handshaking business, but Gladstone yanked him back. ‘By God, suspicious sons of Wales you lot are, all right.’

  Then Gladstone stepped forward. ‘My name is Gladstone Williams,’ he said. ‘What’s yours?’

  ‘Gladstone Williams? Bet you don’t like that, do you…’

  ‘That’s got nothing to do with,’ Gladstone snapped.

  ‘Fair enough, kid. Got to admit it’s better than Lloyd George Brown. Knew a feller called that, once…’

  ‘Was it you lit the fire?’ Dewi asked.

  ‘It was cold in here in the early hours,’ the man said. ‘Came over just as I was. But I’ve brought my kit now, see…’

  That seemed to settle it. He was moving in. I felt my resentment rise. He had no right to barge in like this, even if he really was the owner. I turned to Dewi for support, but Gladstone was speaking again.

  ‘May we know your name, sir?’

  I was surprised at Gladstone, angry too. There was no need to be so polite to a broken-down old boozer like this. No need for adding sir, either.

  ‘Certainly you may know my name. It’s Ashton Vaughan.’

  ‘Ah,’ Gladstone said, nodding his head. Ashton Vaughan, I thought: one of the Vaughans, the one who had gone away a long time ago. I’d heard about him too – it was something bad, everything about the Vaughans was bad, but I couldn’t remember at all clearly.

  ‘A bit before your time,’ the man went on as he stretched himself out on the bunk. ‘You weren’t around, I’d say, and that means we can start with a moderately clean slate. Gladstone – you and your gang here can come along any time you like. That clear? But now it’s time I had a siesta, so I’ll grant the lot of you shore leave.’ With a wave of his hand in the direction of the door he dismissed us.

  This isn’t right, I thought, and I could see Dewi felt the same, but there was Gladstone hustling us out, tiptoeing even, holding his finger up to his lips.

  On the peeling deck I said, ‘He can’t do that. Do you realise he’s just taken over our boat?’

  ‘Too bloody true,’ Dewi said.

  But Gladstone insisted we get off the Moonbeam before there could be any discussion. He had a small mutiny on his hands by the time we were on dry land.

  ‘Listen,’ Dewi said, ‘he’s pinched our boat.’

  ‘He’s Ashton Vaughan…’

  ‘What’s that got to do with it?’ I said. ‘It isn’t his boat…’

  ‘Just climbed aboard and kicked us off. We ought to go back and have it out with him…’

  ‘It might be his boat,’ Gladstone said soothingly. ‘He’s Ashton Vaughan. They’re rich people…’

  ‘Not any more,’ Dewi said. ‘Used to be rich. Now they’re just as poor as we are…’

  ‘Shouldn’t have come off,’ Maxie said.

  ‘What should we have done, then?’ Gladstone asked, his temper rising. ‘Think we should have thrown him off, do you?’

  ‘Why not?’ Dewi said. ‘He’s just a bloody Vaughan…’

  ‘What are you talking about?’ Gladstone asked. ‘What do you know about the Vaughans, anyway?’ The afternoon degenerated into a long semi-quarrel all the way home. ‘He’s Marius Vaughan’s brother, come back,’ Gladstone kept on saying, as if it were a great event. ‘Put the bloody flags up, shall we?’ Dewi asked. And I was with Dewi all the way. We’d lost our boat – just walked off, quiet as mice – lost it to Ashton Vaughan of all people. I couldn’t understand Gladstone at all. I’d never heard anyone say a good word for the Vaughans in Porthmawr.

  IV

  But it was an important thing, the return of Ashton Vaughan. I knew that as soon as I told Owen and Meira. They made mouths as big as sparrow chicks, although Owen had to spoil it by saying he had heard something…. That was one of the troubles with Owen – you couldn’t tell him anything, especially if you were in the County School.

  ‘Trade should be up in the pubs,’ Meira commented in her best acid-drop manner. ‘Should be some fighting too, I shouldn’t wonder.’

  We had the Vaughans all through tea. Owen said, ‘I wonder if that one on the Point knows?’ Marius Vaughan had his big house right at the tip of Graig Lwyd, with the ocean on his doorstep. ‘Bet the bastard hasn’t heard.’

  Meira gave him a row for using dirty language in front of me, but all the boys in Porthmawr called Marius Vaughan a bastard. A word with a lot of meaning, I thought.

  I took the news to Polly who lived next door, and by the time she had finished I knew that Ashton Vaughan’s return was one of the most interesting things that had happened all summer in Porthmawr.

  ‘Well,’ she said, ‘you do interest me, Lew. How terribly interesting. I wonder if brother Marius knows?’

  Polly always spoke English to me, and it was always high-class English for a few sentences at the beginning. Later on it became less so, more homely, more like the English everyone else spoke in Porthmawr. She had been my Auntie Polly when I was small, but now she insisted that I call her Polly, ‘Auntie is so old sounding,’ she’d say. ‘Call me Polly – not pretty Polly, of course.’ She said it without a laugh; she never went farther than a grin.

  Polly had her father living with her – the Captain – and he was stone deaf and silent as a planet and eighty odd, so she was always glad of a bit of company and someone to talk to. I always liked going there, too, because Polly’s special interest was murder. In her black dresses with her hair high in a bun and her pale, oval face with the great hooked nose in the middle, she had the look which spelt the law and courtrooms and cross-examinations for me. Besides, her living room was full of the sea – pictures of ships riding seasick storms, pieces of quartz from Brazil, the skin of an Indian snake in a glass jar, trim ships snug in green bottles, a dried fish big as a football from Madagascar, Chinese plates on the wall, and surf breaking in the big shells on either side of the blackleaded fireplace. It was fine there on winter nights with the old man snoring in the rocking chair and Polly talking about the great murderers.

  ‘So Ashton Vaughan is back at last.’ Her black eyebrows, thick as a man’s, swept up. ‘Are you quite certain, Lew?’

  ‘That’s who he said he was.’ I tried a description. ‘He’d been drinking,’ I said.r />
  ‘That’ll be him! My word, won’t this cause a stir in the old town…’

  ‘Why, then?’ I said. ‘Why should it?’

  Polly went mysterious – the way she did when sex came up. ‘Events of the past,’ she whispered. ‘The wheel going full circle.’

  I’d realised at tea, as Owen spoke, that I had heard a great deal about the Vaughan brothers. Polly, however, brought it all into sharper focus. In 1920, she said, Marius and Ashton Vaughan had fought it out, with knives, down there by the harbour. It had taken all the policemen in Porthmawr to part them; that scar on Marius Vaughan’s cheek was a relic of that night.

  ‘Then Ashton vanished from sight. Hardly a word of him until today…’

  ‘But why did they fight?’ I asked.

  ‘Brothers born to hate,’ Polly replied, and left me hanging on for more. It was a fatal mistake to cross-examine her. I had to wait until she was ready to tell me.

  ‘Their father,’ she continued, ‘went to sea with Tada there. As a matter of fact, Marius Vaughan always has a word to say to Tada.’

  Polly said it as if it was an honour or something – just as Owen had admitted that the Vaughans were better than that crowd of shopkeepers up on Hillside: the Vaughans had fought it out brother against brother, but they were somebody and it was an honour when they spoke to you. It didn’t make sense.

  ‘Poor as a church mouse, their father’s family was, but my word he picked up some money from somewhere, that man did. Robbing poor sailors, I shouldn’t wonder. Serving bad food on those ships of his.’ She touched the Captain’s hand to see if he was still warm. ‘More money than I’d care to mention in coasters in those days. That’s what Tada used to say. And he used to wonder how William Vaughan made it, I can tell you. Born in those old houses used to be by the gasworks there – the ones they took down in 1930. Those old slums. Made all that money. Built that big house on the Point. Bought up all that property from the old Estate.’ She lowered her eyebrows so that I could no longer see her eyes. ‘Ways and means, dear. There must have been ways and means.’

  She jumped up suddenly and put the ear trumpet to the Captain’s ear. ‘Do we want to wee-wee?’ she roared, so that the Chinese plates did a dance on the wall. The Captain shook his head, opened one small blue eye and gave me a wink, then closed it again.