by Stead Jones
‘And you realise that in the words of our Lord Jesus Christ we are told to cast aside the Bad and clasp our arms tight around the Good?’ She hugged herself to illustrate the point.
‘Mrs Meirion-Pughe,’ Gladstone said gently, ‘they were both good men. I only spoke up at the inquest…’
‘Good men?’ she cried. ‘A murderer! Is a murderer a good man, boy?’
Gladstone sighed. ‘It’s possible…’
Mrs Meirion-Pughe seemed to do a kind of dance of rage. ‘What are you saying, boy? You’ve been baptised, haven’t you? Been received in as a full member of the House of God? Been taught in Sunday school, if nowhere else, that we must live by the principles He laid down, He who died for us….’
‘The pity of it,’ Gladstone said. He was very serious now. ‘That is the pity of it…. The poor man…’
Mrs Meirion-Pughe flailed her arms. She was as near to being out of control as she ever would be. ‘What did you say?’ she cried in a voice that wasn’t far off a scream.
‘Softly, if you please,’ Gladstone said. ‘You’ll waken the children.’
‘Blasphemy!’ she cried out.
‘No, no, no,’ said Gladstone. ‘It’s just that you’re approaching things wrongly…’
She leapt at him and seized him by the shoulders. ‘Blasphemer!’ she cried. Her mouth was wet with spit, and the spit came as she talked, too. Her eyes were wide and glaring, like the eyes in the Boris Karloff films at the Palace. I felt I ought to be afraid, but this wasn’t the pictures: this was real.
‘Where is your mother?’ she cried.
‘Stop it,’ Gladstone said. ‘Stop it!’ She was a powerful woman, and was rocking him none too gently.
‘Where is your mother?’
‘Steady, steady,’ the Rev A. H. Jones said.
‘At the Harp, waiting on,’ said Gladstone. ‘Give over!’
‘Waiting on!’ Mrs Meirion-Pughe shrieked. ‘Consorting with drunken, lustful men!’
‘Quite so,’ Gladstone said. ‘She’s a very sensitive person who needs love…. Now, give over!’
He shook her hands away. ‘You need beating,’ she said. ‘You need beating until you are senseless. The Evil needs beating out of you!’ She charged back at him, then with a terrible swiftness struck him across the cheek. It wasn’t a hard blow, but it was loud.
The Minister leapt up. ‘Mrs Meirion-Pughe,’ he called. He pulled her away from Gladstone. ‘What are you doing, my dear woman? You mustn’t strike the boy.’
She was beyond control. ‘Must beat the Evil out of him,’ she was saying. ‘Beat him and pray for him… I’ll pray for him. That’s what I’ll do. I’ll pray. She fell to her knees, hands clasped, head lowered.
The Rev A. H. Jones looked down at her, and the distaste was obvious in his face. ‘Mrs Meirion-Pughe,’ he said softly, but very distinctly, ‘get up, woman!’
Her head snapped back so sharply that her hat fell off. She unclasped her hands, then picked up her hat. With a terrible, menacing slowness she got to her feet, and with the stiffness of a soldier turned to face the Minister. Her chin stood out, hard, rock-like, and above it the long beak quivered, examining the air.
‘Were you speaking to me, A. H.?’ she asked in a frozen voice.
The Minister’s hands fluttered. ‘Now, now, Mrs Meirion-Pughe, please…’ He was trying to take her arm – he always liked holding on to people when he talked to them – but she was rigid and unyielding.
‘I asked you a question,’ she said. ‘Were you speaking to me?’
The Rev A. H. Jones was hopping nervously from foot to foot. ‘I did – ha, ha – well, I did speak to you, certainly…’
‘In that tone of voice?’ She was a good two feet taller than him, and she hung over him, somehow, as if preparing for the pounce. ‘Whilst you have been warming your hands at the fire I have been doing your work.’
‘I was going to…’ the Minister mumbled.
‘Exactly!’ she cried. ‘Going to. But when? Tell me when?’
‘Now then, Mrs Meirion-Pughe, ha, ha,’ was all he could say.
‘I saw it as our duty,’ she went on, ‘to come here on this dreadful night to try and show this misguided youth – get me my cloak, Gladstone Williams – point out the path of righteousness’
‘Quite so, Mrs Meirion-Pughe. I was going…’
‘But what did you do?’ she went on, and it wasn’t really a question at all. ‘You made yourself comfortable. We can be too comfortable, can’t we?’ She snatched her cloak from Gladstone’s hands and swung it over her shoulders. ‘You warmed yourself by the fire,’ she said as she rapidly buttoned the cloak all the way down: it nearly reached the floor. ‘Warmed yourself,’ she said again as she stamped to the door. ‘What does self-denial mean, I wonder?’ Then, before she went on, she delivered the parting shot. ‘I shall see you again, my boy.’ This was to Gladstone, but she used exactly the same tone when she said to the Minister, ‘I shall call a meeting of the deacons in the morning. I shall make a full report.’
As the door closed, the Minister sat down with a thump. He remained there for some time without speaking, his hands tightly clenched in his lap. Gladstone and I looked at each other: we were both sorry for him.
‘Cup of tea?’ Gladstone suggested, but the Minister was too stunned to hear.
Then, suddenly, he was on his feet. ‘I must go,’ he said as he clamped his hat on his head. He bounced across the room to the door. ‘Think about it, Gladstone. Think about what the good lady said,’ he cried. He kept his back to us. ‘I must go.’ He opened the door. ‘A terrible night, terrible…’ And he was off into the street.
Gladstone went to the door and closed it. When he came back to the fire he had a smile on his face which I took to mean that we were going to discuss his visitors.
‘She’s a religious maniac,’ I said.
He stirred the fire thoughtfully. ‘People like that,’ he said.
‘And he was scared.’
‘Lew,’ Gladstone said firmly, ‘tell you what – let’s not speak about what happened to anyone, eh? I mean – well, let’s forget about it, keep it to ourselves, shall we?’
I nodded, but all the same I resented the way he’d said it. I felt much younger than him at that moment, and uncomfortable – as if it was my duty, as well, to go out and leave him alone.
XVIII
Sunday night, the last night of the holiday that old Evans Thomas had ushered in with a death.
All week I had seen nothing of Gladstone, but Meira had told me often enough that he was being visited by the deacons. ‘No good, that boy. Don’t you be seeing him any more, understand? Don’t want those deacons and that come-to-Jesus woman all over my kitchen.’ I hadn’t carried the tale about the Rev A. H. Jones and Mrs Meirion-Pughe home, although I knew that the holy falling out would have been hot news. But since they were on about Gladstone all the time, and how a County School boy with a matriculation certificate to his credit and everything shouldn’t associate with a funny one like that, I kept it to myself. Besides, wasn’t Mrs Meirion-Pughe just a demented old woman, and the Minister soft as sponge – and didn’t I want to be like Gladstone and feel sorry for them?
On that Sunday night I recognised his knock and was out with him on Lower Hill before Meira and Owen could start their objections.
‘Let us have a cold walk in what has become an icy town – or are you afraid of being seen in my company?’
‘Don’t be bloody silly,’ I said.
‘Some fresh air, then – it’s been all hot air recently. Terribly fatiguing, you know.’
He looked tired, too. There were dark shadows under his eyes, and a rash of pimples had sprung up along his cheeks, and there was a desperate gaiety about him.
‘Still bloody, and more or less unbowed as well,’ he said, ‘though I’m beginning to wonder what part of the Square they’ll burn me on.’
Rapidly we walked the town. Porthmawr without the visitors had shrunk already to winter size, and
was quieter than falling snow. Out towards the beach everything was grey, even the gulls.
‘My little grey home in the west of Wales,’ said Gladstone. ‘How I do love thee – in spite of what you are. Lew – it’s been a bloody procession. All the Big Noises from the Big Seat, all dead comic in a sad sort of way, and they’ve just discovered the existence of me. It’s a Crusade, Lew. Did you ever think how the Heathen felt? Did anyone? All those people on their white chargers, with red crosses blazing on their shields, coming for you… and me on a black donkey – a black donkey with a limp, and only my sense of humour as a spear. And my sense of humour is rusting away, mate – getting blunt as hell.’
We walked over the dunes and on to the beach. There was a smell of coming winter everywhere; firm wet sand and no footprints. The sea was the grey of dark ashes. We threw stones at it.
‘Hypocrisy,’ said Gladstone, ‘fraud and deceit and humbug. They’ve got to be very special words for me. Hypocrisy – my cunning foe. Did I tell you they’ve bought Martha? A few bob and a loaf of bread and a packet of tea – and she’s talking of starting Chapel again. Still gets out every night, though. Imagine the inner struggle in her breast, Lew. Gin or Genesis? Oh, it’s a black and comic world, all right.’
We walked along at the sea’s edge. We were the last men, I thought. Only us and the gulls were left. The bombardment had been and gone; the bombers out of the newsreels had circled and dropped their burden. Only us.
‘I’ve had the good doctor, too,’ Gladstone was saying. ‘Dr Gwynn of the hairy hands. He says things like if there wasn’t any Christ it would be necessary to invent one. Then he tells me he’s adapted that from a famous Frenchman’s famous saying. A twister, Lew… religion and Jesus Christ are a necessary safety valve – that’s what he says. Good psychology, Lew… when you think of it, I’ve got quite a wide choice: I can be hysterical like Mrs Meirion-Pughe, or I can be psychological like Dr Gwynn. And no matter which I choose – they all lead to the right road.’ He flung a stone viciously out to sea, and wrenched his shoulder – which made him smile. ‘Tell you what, Lew, let’s go and look at the old Moonbeam, shall we?’
We walked back across the beach and on to the mud where the old boat lay. She was much as we had left her, except that the cabin door had gone. ‘How long is it, Lew, since he came aboard that day – breathing seven kinds of beer over us? Oh, by God, it’s the Vaughans they always come back to… Old Abraham Evans even asked me how much money I’d got out of them. “You never did it for nothing,” he says, and if he hadn’t been so old I’d have thrown him out.’ He sat on the edge of the bunk and tapped his heels on the floor. ‘Came in through that door, a tall, wrecked man in tweeds, straight from every bar in the world and crying out for pity…’
I felt uneasy down there in the gloom of the cabin. ‘Go on deck, shall we?’ I said.
‘I’ve got a better plan,’ he said. ‘Let’s go and see Eirlys.’
‘Now?’ I said. ‘Eirlys Hampson.’ I felt my knees go weak. It was all wrong, what he was suggesting. One of those wrong things he came up with now and then – like talking to those men outside the police station, like wearing a Panama hat, like telling the Sunday school that the missionaries ought to stay at home – wrong like that, yet not wrong at all really, except that by the act you revealed yourself. ‘I can’t,’ I said. ‘I definitely can’t.’
But ten minutes later, when it was dark, I was standing with him at the door of Eirlys’ shop, and he had his finger on the bell.
She came to the door straight away, and although I hung back a bit I could smell her powder and scent, was caught instantly by her laugh. ‘Two men!’ she said. ‘In you come quick, before anyone sees you and gives me a worse name than I’ve got already. Straight up you go!’ Her giggles ushered us up the stairs. ‘On Sunday night, too,’ she said.
Above the shop there was a smart, bright room. Everything in it looked new – the couch and two chairs, the big wireless purring out dance music, the ornaments along the mantelpiece, the polished table which held a vase full of shining roses: polished and rounded and smooth, everything. She had a bright-eyed budgie in a fancy cage, and he looked new, too. ‘Sit you down,’ she cried, ‘don’t stand about looking awkward.’ She covered the budgie’s cage with a cloth that had the same pattern as the curtains. ‘Always cover him up when gentlemen come to call,’ she said, laughing still. I sat down nervously. The cushion was of velvet and whistled under me.
‘Hear the whistle?’ she said. ‘Special those. Full of air, see. You want to see some of the faces of the people who’ve sat on them for the first time.’ She switched off the wireless and looked at herself in the oval mirror above the fireplace. ‘Bet I look a sight, don’t I? Caught me on the hop, you did. Just out of the bath! Good job I was out, though – else I’d have had to come down in a towel!’ Her laughter filled the room. Gladstone made his face into a smile, and I did the same. Eirlys didn’t look hollow-eyed, or ravaged by grief, or anything. She was wearing a dress with red flowers on it, and the smell of her powder and scent was everywhere. She had a red, permanent smile on her beautiful mouth, and already I felt we were tramps, and out of place, and was worried in case she was laughing at us.
‘What’s Lew Morgan looking at, then?’ she demanded. ‘Got a spot on my nose, have I?’
I blushed. She looked at me so directly, so wide-eyed. ‘No,’ I said.
‘Right, then – just keep your eyes to yourself,’ she said – said it with a big smile. ‘Poor old me,’ she went on, ‘all alone with the News of the World, I was. All alone and in the doldrums.’ She rolled her eyes at us. ‘When I was a little girl, nobody seemed to move all day Sunday. Just ate and sat still as frogs… and I feel the same today – as if moving’s all wrong.’ She held out a packet of cigarettes. ‘Have a fag, shall we? Go on – it’s all right.’
We shook our heads.
‘You have a puff, don’t you?’ she insisted. ‘Go on – let me lead you down the primrose path.’
Gladstone took one, but I went on saying no. I was sure I’d make a mess of it, anyway – drop ash on the carpet, even be sick….
‘Very charming room you have here,’ Gladstone remarked in his high-class voice. I squirmed for him, especially when she replied, ‘By jove, old thing, you’re right,’ in exactly the same voice.
She sat back on her chair and pulled her legs up under her and showed a lot of silk stocking. I tried, but I couldn’t keep my eyes off her legs. She rested her head back and showed a wide, plump throat, the powder making lines on it. ‘Three years,’ she said to the ceiling. ‘That’s how long I’ve been back in this hole. Ever since old Auntie died. Sometimes I think I’ll sell up and get back to Manchester.’ A quick look at us. ‘Ever been?’
‘We’ve not been anywhere,’ said Gladstone. ‘Have we, Lew?’
‘Plenty of life there,’ she went on. ‘Nobody watching you all the time, either…. Know anybody anxious for a ladies’ clothes shop going cheap?’
Rounded and smooth and clean-looking, yet there was something blowsy about her too, something that Meira would call common. Little things – the way she was sitting, the cast of her mouth sometimes, her hand holding the cigarette, this laughing all the time – added up and made her a painted doll; but she was still beautiful to me. I couldn’t stop looking at her.
‘Get clean away from this hole,’ she was saying. ‘It’s a dead man’s town, that’s all.’
I saw Gladstone stiffen, the way you do when you’ve felt a sharp pain. I thought he was going to say something, but he only glanced at me and brought the cigarette up to his mouth.
‘A dump. Ever noticed the way they open doors, here? Just enough to sneak in and sneak out again without letting in too much fresh air.’ She laughed, then sat up and stubbed out her cigarette and smiled. ‘You’ll know all about that, won’t you, Gladstone Williams?’
‘I went to the funeral,’ Gladstone said calmly. ‘I said my piece…’
She giggled. ‘I
know, boy. Always knew you’d make a name for yourself. Picture in the paper and all…’
‘Didn’t do it for that…’
‘I know – but there you were in the front page. Oh – I did laugh.’ She hesitated. ‘I was pleased – that’s why I laughed. Anything to shake this lot up, eh? Had an old cow in the shop yesterday morning, and you know what she said to me? “Not in mourning, then?” – that’s what! Oh, I had her out in the street before she could turn round, I can tell you. Told her to bugger off – excuse my French! Oh, yes – I know how narrow-minded they can be, too.’
‘That’s awful,’ Gladstone said with real feeling. ‘Dreadful…’
‘You’ve not to bother,’ she said with a laugh as she settled herself back again. ‘And don’t you bother, either. They’ll have you dancing up and down like a puppet on a string, if you do.’
‘Not me,’ Gladstone said quietly. ‘They won’t have me dancing…’
She laughed. ‘I should think not, but mind how you go all the same. Those Vaughans weren’t worth it…’
She carried on talking after she’d said that, and I wasn’t quite sure if I’d heard her right. Neither was Gladstone: he turned to me, making a silent appeal, but she was looking at me then, and all I could do was nod.
‘You know, I’m glad you came,’ she was saying. ‘Really am. I wanted to have a chat with someone – not just anyone, mind – a girl’s got to be careful in this little room… oh, God, yes. But – we were all associated with the Vaughans, weren’t we?’ She kept on smiling as she talked. ‘You might say only us really knew much about them… and if I was to tell somebody all I know, they’d only start talking like that cow in the shop, start saying sour grapes… that kind of thing. You know how people are, don’t you?’
‘We didn’t come to pry into your affairs,’ said Gladstone.
She giggled. ‘I know. I know. We’ve been in league, you and me, ever since I let old whatsisname have it with the milk jug – that right?’
I remembered the milk flowing along the bald head, and started to like her again.
