Make Room for the Jester (13 page)

Dewi brought the barrow over. It was the kind used for shifting beer casks, without any sides to it, but with a big iron plate sticking up at the front. ‘Not a
dignified
carriage,’ Gladstone remarked. It was heavy, too – heavier still once we had propped Ashton Vaughan on it. We made him sit up, his back against the iron plate, and we put his suitcase on his lap to keep him down. ‘The point of balance,’ Gladstone kept saying, but we can’t have found it before we were clear of the yard because Ashton fell off twice.

No one noticed us – no one said anything, anyway – and once on the road the going was easier. ‘Two of you on either side to see he doesn’t come off,’ Gladstone ordered. ‘We’ll be there in no time.’

It was downhill all the way to the Square. Ashton only fell off once – at the feet of Llywelyn Philips who had been a missionary in Africa. ‘What’s the matter with that man?’ he cried, nearly climbing out of his celluloid collar.
‘Leprosy,’ Dewi replied, as we propped Ashton back again. Now and then, before we reached the station corner, I looked back, and Llywelyn Philips was still standing in the middle of the road watching us.

When we stopped for a breather by the station, I was all for cutting down one of the back streets to the harbour, but Gladstone insisted that it was shorter through the town, and he didn’t care who saw us. ‘We’ll have his coat over his face, though, for
decency’s
sake,’ he said, and we covered Ashton Vaughan’s sagging head with his old mac.

Station Road was crowded, as I knew it would be. It looked as if all Porthmawr was out to take the evening air, or watch the antics of the visitors, or see us pass through. Then I heard the first roar of laughter which always preceded the coming of the Rev A. H. Jones, and there he was, arm in arm with his wife, on our side of the road too. He was pointing things out to his wife, and laughing because it was such a funny world – and we might have passed him unnoticed had not the wheelbarrow hit a stone and tipped Ashton off again.

‘My goodness!’ Mrs Jones screeched. ‘It’s a man!’

‘Steady! Steady! Steady!’ the Rev A. H. Jones cried, not to us but to his wife. Then he flung his arms around her and stood on tiptoe looking down at the inert figure on the pavement. ‘Good gracious,’ he said, ‘is he dead? Wherever are you boys taking him?’

‘To the bonfire,’ Dewi said, as we hoisted Ashton back on the barrow.

The Rev A. H. Jones let go of his wife, fixed his glasses on his nose, and ventured closer. He was over his shock now, and curious as a puppy.

‘Gladstone Williams!’ he cried. ‘Again! What are you up to, boy?’

‘Not
up
to anything,’ Gladstone replied as he draped the mac over Ashton’s head. ‘It’s poor Mr Vaughan. He was on his way home, poor man, and was taken ill. We’re putting Christian principles into practice, you might say.’

‘He’s drunk!’ the Minister cried out. All the people watching must have heard him quite clearly.

Gladstone gripped the handles firmly. ‘Drunk or sober, still in need of Christian charity,’ he said. ‘Would you like to help, then?’

The Minister leapt back. ‘Certainly not!’ he gasped. He reached for his wife’s hand. ‘Myfanwy,’ he said, ‘Myfanwy…’

‘Whatever is Porthmawr coming to?’ she said. ‘Is
that
Ashton Vaughan?’

‘Steady! Steady!’ said the Rev A. H. Jones.

‘And is
that
Gladstone Williams?’

A quick nod.

‘Goodness,’ she said, ‘oh, goodness… hold me, A. H.’

‘Plenty of room on the barrow,’ Gladstone said as we set off once again towards the Square.

It was all very embarrassing, I thought, especially as Ashton had come to and was now singing under the mac. But I stuck close to Gladstone and tried not to look at anybody. Perhaps that was why I never saw Super Edwards until he was upon us, blocking our way, his hand up, as if we were a bus or something. ‘Stop!’ he cried. We were in the middle of the Square. ‘Stop where you are!’ Constable Matthews was at his side in an instant. We could tell what Ashton was singing now. It was ‘Rock of Ages’.

‘It’s a drunk,’ the constable said.

‘Take the mac off him,’ the Super ordered. The constable did so. ‘By God,’ said the Super, ‘it’s Ashton Vaughan!’

‘He’s all right,’ Gladstone said.

‘I can see that,’ said the Super. ‘Where d’you think you’re taking him, then?’

‘To his brother’s,’ Gladstone said.

‘Good God!’ The Super looked thunderstruck. He knelt by Ashton’s side and sniffed.

‘It’s all arranged.’

The Super got to his feet again. ‘Does Marius know? By God, won’t he be glad to see him!’

We didn’t bother to comment. Gladstone gripped the handles firmly. We took our places ready to move off.

‘Shall I make a charge, sir?’ Constable Matthews asked, stepping in front of us.

The Super shook his head. ‘No. No charge. You
sure
you’re taking him to the Point?’

‘Quite sure,’ Gladstone said.

‘Where did you get the barrow, then?’ the constable asked.

‘On loan,’ Gladstone said wearily. ‘From the Harp.’

‘And Marius knows he’s coming?’ the Super persisted.

‘All arranged,’ Gladstone said. ‘The breach is healed. All’s well with the Vaughans.’

‘Good God,’ the Super said, ‘when is the day of judgement then?’

‘Can we go?’

‘Aye. Get him out of here fast as you can. Smells worse than a public bar. Get going…’ The Super was
grinning all over his face. ‘That man had better be very careful,’ Gladstone said as we carried on across the Square. ‘He’s likely to find himself on the mat before the Chief Constable.’

Once clear of the town and on the road to the Point the excitement died in us, and tiredness even overtook Gladstone. The stops became more frequent, the longest of all by Marius Vaughan’s gate. We all had a pull on a fag there and listened to Ashton’s muffled snores rise on the still, evening air.

Then Marius Vaughan’s car came from the direction of the house. We opened the gate for him and stood there waiting. The car came to a halt. Marius wound down the window. He didn’t really look at us at all – only at the wheelbarrow.

‘What’s that?’ he asked, pointing.

‘Your brother come home,’ Gladstone replied grandly. We all felt rather proud at that moment. We had accomplished something. But Marius Vaughan, where I was concerned, soon altered that.

‘Good God,’ he said, more like a military Englishman than ever, ‘is that the only way you could bring him? Like a pig from the market?’

We were tired and hot, and this wasn’t the kind of talk we wanted to hear. Dewi at my side cleared his throat, all set for argument, but Gladstone took no offence.

‘Well – you know how it is, Mr Vaughan. Told you he needs looking after…’

‘You wheeled him across the town in
that
?’ Marius went on. ‘Had he no money for a taxi?’

‘Never asked him,’ Dewi said sharply.

‘Then you should have done. Making a bloody carnival of it! I suppose he does know where he is?’

‘He told us he’d come,’ Gladstone replied, still very gently. ‘He was all packed and everything, but he got in with a crowd at the Harp…’

‘Well, good God,’ Marius kept on saying. ‘On a bloody wheelbarrow! Good God!’ Then he tossed two half-crowns through the window. They fell on the dusty road with a chink that was somehow insulting. ‘The taxi would have cost you that,’ he said. ‘You may as well have it…’

Gladstone picked up the money. ‘You don’t have to do that, Mr Vaughan.’

‘Oh yes, he does,’ Dewi said grimly.

‘Didn’t do it for the money…’

‘Don’t be silly, Gladstone. Don’t give it him back.’

‘Take it!’ Marius snapped as he revved up the car. ‘Carry on to the house. Hand him over to the housekeeper. She’s got a room ready for him…’

The car began to move off, Marius still looking intently at the bundle on the barrow. ‘Please, Mr Vaughan,’ Gladstone said. ‘It’s all right. We don’t want this…’ But the car gathered speed and left us standing in a cloud of fine dust.

Gladstone turned to us, holding the two coins as if they were dirty. ‘He needn’t have done that,’ he said. ‘We didn’t do it for money…’

‘You mean we didn’t do it for five bloody shillings,’ Dewi broke in angrily. ‘He could have said thank you very much as well, the bastard! Five bloody shillings!’ He looked at Ashton on the barrow. ‘All the trouble we’ve had with that bugger. We should have dumped him in the bloody harbour…’

Tempers broke suddenly. Dewi and Gladstone had a real set to. Gladstone threw the money on the ground. Dewi picked it up. Gladstone knocked it out of his hands, and Maxie scrambled after it, crying out that one
half-crown
was lost…. It was a poor end to the day.

Gladstone and I carried on to the house, leaving the other two scrabbling on hands and knees in the dust. Neither of us spoke. There was only the occasional squeak from the barrow and Ashton’s irregular snoring to break a silence that was as heavy as doom.

During the week that followed I saw nothing of Gladstone. It was a very wet week, unfit for any visits to the beach, but that wasn’t the only reason. The truth was that I’d had enough of the Vaughans – more than enough; the holidays had been given over to them, had gone quickly in their shadow, and I knew that Gladstone, were I to go down Lower Hill to his house, would still want to talk about them. So, apart from odd afternoons with Rowland Williams in his workshop, I stayed in and read Zane Grey and Edgar Wallace and talked to Meira and played draughts with Owen. I was like Dewi – I’d had a bellyful of the Vaughans.

We had spent the five shillings Marius had thrown at us on fish, chips and peas – a big feed in the cafe behind Johnson’s Chips. Gladstone had talked of the Vaughans non-stop while Dewi and Maxie and I had pulled sly faces
at one another. Gladstone was jubilant. ‘I
never
thought Ashton would agree. Never. But we managed it, didn’t we? We brought them together again. We succeeded where others have failed – old Super Edwards can put
that
in his pipe and smoke it.’ I wanted to say that Ashton hadn’t really gone of his own free will, had in fact been carted there dead drunk. And afterwards Dewi had called our journey across town a bloody farce. But we said nothing. If Gladstone wanted to see it as a triumphal procession, then fair enough. We let him talk. ‘Two scarred men, Lew, all their passions dying now, and both with the same sickness. But they’re together now, as they should be….’ He carried on like that all the way home, and that’s how I left him – eyes shining, face drawn and pale with excitement. I decided there and then that I would have a rest. I would wait until Gladstone had got over the Vaughans.

A wet week, and the visitors dwindling. Give it a few more days, Owen said, and there would be only the seagulls after a boat, and he would be back on the dole.

‘Nice when they’re gone, though,’ Meira said. ‘We can have the place to ourselves…’

‘Lovely, that is,’ Owen said.

‘Poor things – going back to them big, dirty towns…’

Owen made a move on the draughtsboard. ‘Very nice for us living in lovely old Porthmawr with no work, too. The gentlemen of Porthmawr – and all the work they do is sign on the dotted line. Know who said that, Lew?’

I shook my head.

‘The Rev A. H. Jones, that’s who. From the pulpit. It was a bit of fair social comment, coming from a man who’s working the ass-end off his breeches…’

‘Owen!’ Meira said, very sharp.

‘Only quoting, cariad,’ he went on. ‘Quoting my betters.’ He gave me a wink. ‘Not so long left of the holidays now, Lew?’

‘Results on Wednesday,’ I said. I had tried my Senior, and everybody knew how important
that
was – that and the Central Welsh Board.

‘Think you’ve passed, Lew?’

‘Don’t know,’ I said.

‘Pass or fail – it’s back to school for you,’ Meira put in. ‘Been paying in that club of Mrs Davies – enough for a new rig-out for you, boy.’

Owen and Meira, I decided, were the only two people I felt really secure with. I didn’t belong to them, of course, but most of the time their kindness made me forget that. I didn’t want to go back to school at all, but I would do if that was what they wanted. And that night I prayed that I had passed the Senior because I knew it would please them. And on Wednesday the news was good.

‘Matriculated as well!’ Owen cried. ‘Meira, he’s got the bloody matric!’

‘Don’t swear,’ Meira said through her tears. ‘Oh – pity his mam…’

‘Been living with a bloody genius,’ Owen went on. ‘By God – it’ll be college and all sorts for you now, boy.’

Straight off this niggling contempt I had for them came back. I was ashamed of it, had tried all I knew to scrub it out, but it was there – especially when they were like this – all emotion and kindness and love.

‘Have him a teacher, shall we, Meira?’ All Porthmawr hated the teaching profession, but they thought of nothing
else for their sons and daughters. ‘Safe job – all them holidays…’

I turned away in disgust. A foreign correspondent was what I wanted to be – a foreign correspondent who was also a poet.

‘Teacher, Lew?’

I shook my head.

‘What then? Civil Service?’

‘Never mind now what he’s going to be,’ Meira said. ‘For a start, he’s going back to the County, going to try for his Higher. Might make a Minister out of him…’

‘Oh, no,’ Owen protested, ‘he’s not joining the black battalion. For sure he’s not…’

‘No need to get excited,’ Meira said. ‘Only a suggestion.’

‘Wales and Spain,’ Owen went on fiercely, ‘too many bloody priests, that’s what…’

I left them arguing and went up Lower Hill to Rowland Willams’ workshop. Rowland was standing at his bench, a half-finished coffin in front of him, a book propped against it. He looked up as I entered, then slipped a piece of paper to mark his place in the book, closed it and placed it carefully on one side. ‘You’ve come to talk,’ he said, ‘so I’d better get some work done. You can’t read and talk, but you can work. In fact, you have to.’ He pointed a chisel at the coffin. ‘There’s someone waiting for this…’

‘I passed,’ I said.

‘Matric?’

I nodded.

Rowland scratched his nose and looked me over carefully. ‘Any book you like,’ he said. ‘Take it and keep it
for ever.’ Piles of dusty books stood up like gravestones on the workshop floor. Rowland, although a carpenter, had never got around to making shelves for them. ‘Look around you,’ he went on, ‘take your time and pick one…’

‘For passing? I’d rather you chose one.’

It was the right thing to say. Rowland grinned then turned to spit in the fire. ‘Diplomat you’re going to be, Lew? Knew I’d like to pick one, didn’t you? All right. Let’s say that one, shall we? Anton Chekhov –
The Cherry Orchard and Other Plays
.’ He picked up the book and passed it to me after wiping the dust off its covers. ‘You read it some time, Lew. When you’re about twenty – read it then….’

I sat back on a stool and leafed through the pages while Rowland talked. It was a great honour to receive a book from Rowland, especially a book that had belonged to him. He had taken up his work again, was planing slowly, sending small curls of wood into the air, talking all the time. ‘Drudgery, that’s what this is. If you’re creating something it’s all right. Making something – like the great sculptors, like Michelangelo. People like that. Seeing something, feeling for it, shaping it. That’s all right. But this – this stuff’s no good at all.
Mending
, not making. Mending and coffins, coffins, coffins. By God, there’s not much art about an old coffin, is there?’

He was launched now on a subject, a small, dark man, full of secrets – a dirty man, Meira said, but I didn’t think so – talking quietly as the rain swished on the workshop window and made the fire spit. Soon he would get emotional, and then tell me that the trouble with the Welsh was an excess of emotion. I hugged my knees and listened only occasionally. The exams were passed and I was warm with success.

‘…Lost an eye in the last one,’ Rowland was saying. ‘What will it be in the next, I wonder?’

I was all attention, suddenly. ‘Is there going to be a war, Mr Williams?’

He rubbed his thumb across the bristles on his chin. ‘Sure as tomorrow…’

‘Serious, though? I saw the news in the pictures. War like the last one?’

‘Worse.’ His voice hardened. ‘They all want one, you see. Building up for the big bang, all of them…’

Ever since I had started going to the pictures I had seen films about the war – all the guns and the grey men running in the mud, and the poison gas…. War scared me worse than Frankenstein. All I could think of when someone said war was Warner Baxter in a steel helmet swallowing aspirin and waiting to go over the top.

‘All over Europe,’ Rowland went on, ‘men limping or carrying an empty sleeve in a pocket. Men with trenches across their hearts…. All of them crosses, Lew. All that one minute silence. Mockery, Lew! Mocking the dead! Scars everywhere, and men lying awake…. All those names, Lew. Jesus Christ!’ Rowland threw a chisel on the bench in disgust. ‘It’s coming again. No doubt about it…’

I had a pain deep in my stomach as he spoke. Whatever you might say about Rowland – that he was small and bandy-legged and didn’t wash much and had hairs growing out of his nostrils, stuff like that – yet you knew he spoke the truth, that he was a genuine man.

‘Thirty-eight when they took me last time. Too old, Lew. A man’s
very
sensitive, time he gets to thirty-eight…’

‘Will it change everything, though, Mr Williams?’

Rowland took up a plane and squinted along the blade. ‘The last one did,’ he said softly. ‘Can’t see any reason why the next one shouldn’t do the same.’

‘Honestly?’

‘Bound to,’ he said flatly. ‘Nothing else for it.’

I wanted to run away from the workshop then. It was all so inevitable. Nothing anyone could do about it. But outside the rain swept down and I stayed, feeling the way I felt at the pictures with all those guns thundering against the roof of the Palace.

‘Marius Vaughan was in the war,’ I said, just for something to say. ‘Lost his leg.’

Rowland nodded. ‘Captain in my unit. He’d have a word with me sometimes – us coming from the same place, him a boy, me already an old man, like. He was hard, Lew – much too hard, as if he feared men. I knew a boy come from over Llandrindod way – and he was all for shooting Marius Vaughan.’

‘Great God,’ I said.

‘Never did, though,’ Rowland went on. ‘Was blown to bits first… Oh, hell, aye – there’s scars everywhere, even on Marius Vaughan, I shouldn’t wonder…’

‘That’s what Gladstone says,’ I broke in.

Rowland’s bushy eyebrows went up. ‘He’s a character, that Gladstone, and no mistake. Reckons Marius has a scar, does he? Thinks about people, Gladstone, doesn’t he? Concerned about people.’ He picked up the chisel and held it so that it was pointing towards his good eye. ‘How would I feel, d’you think, if I jabbed this in my eye, Lew? Be a bit stupid, wouldn’t it? Not much sense in doing it?’ He turned and pointed the chisel at me. ‘Know what – I
was not so far from Marius Vaughan when that shell copped him. Saw him carried off…’ Rowland looked at the smears of rain on the window, considering things carefully. ‘Know what, Lew? I reckoned Marius Vaughan wanted that wound – was after a scar all the time. And not like the rest of us. Not to get out of that hell. No – I reckon he wanted hurt. Really wanted hurt.’ It was very silent in the workshop, but somewhere in the distance a dog was howling. I was being told something, and I couldn’t quite grasp it – like it is in a dream.

Rowland shook himself, then picked up a long piece of elm and carried it over to the sawing bench. ‘Give a hand, Lew,’ he called. I went over and watched him measure off. I wanted to ask him to explain, but somehow the moment had passed. He began to saw through the wood.

‘No art in this job,’ he grumbled. ‘No art at all for the man with one basic qualification for an artist. Know what that is, Lew?’

He wasn’t going to explain about Marius Vaughan. I shook my head.

‘Not the matriculation, I can tell you that. No – that’s only good for getting you in the Civil Service, God help you.’ He stopped sawing. ‘Lew – the one basic qualification for an artist is intolerance. After talent – intolerance. Now, I’ve no talent, Lew bach, but I’m sodden with intolerance…. Hold the wood, boy.’

He finished sawing, then carried the wood back to his bench and fixed it in a vice. ‘A patcher-up, that’s what I am. A creator of man’s last resting place – and by God the dead are
uninteresting
, aren’t they? Ashes to ashes and dust to dust, if it’s a box you’re after, Rol Williams’ a
must. Doesn’t scan, Lew, but not bad, eh?’

I went back the next afternoon, hoping he would start on Marius Vaughan again, but that day we had the Spanish Civil War, Herr Hitler, and the League of Nations.

Even during this week away from Gladstone, the Vaughans still managed to come through. I was thinking about Marius Vaughan being carried away on a stretcher, and Rowland Williams watching, and the rain coming down, and the mud everywhere, when Eirlys Hampson came running out of her shop and called after me.

‘Head in the clouds you’ve got,’ she said, laughing. She always seemed to say everything through a smile. ‘What were you pondering on, then? And what’s the idea of passing without even a wink?’

I was in the shop now, very embarrassed because there were knickers everywhere, but liking it all the same because Eirlys was making a fuss, flirting with me all the time.

‘Just thinking,’ I said.

‘Aye – and take your eyes off those private clothes, old brainbox,’ she said, shielding my eyes. ‘For shame on you.’ She smelled nice – of powder and scent. She was wearing a silk blouse and I could see her shoulders and her arms through it. ‘Now, tell me Lew Morgan,’ she said, ruffling my hair, ‘how’s the Vaughan Society going on, then?’

‘Don’t know what you mean,’ I said.

‘You got him to go back, didn’t you?’

I nodded. There was a woman in the shop doorway looking in. I felt myself blushing because I was going to be seen in there, alone with Eirlys.

‘Miracle worker, your friend Gladstone.’ The woman
came in. ‘Oh, damn,’ Eirlys said, lowering her voice and not smiling. ‘Thought we might have a chat about how our mutual friends are getting on at the Point.’ She gave the woman a look that would have turned away a dog. ‘Anyway, call again, love – will you?’

‘All right, Mrs Hampson,’ I said.

‘That’s a good boy.’ She came to the door with me, her arm around my shoulders, holding my head against her breast. ‘This old bitch,’ she whispered, ‘be here for hours, ask to see everything, then finish up buying a penny elastic….’

My face was burning when I got out to the rain, but I thought she was nice all the same. It didn’t strike me for a long time that
she
should have known how things were at the Point without calling me in.

The Vaughans kept coming through. It was annoying, but it was inescapable. They were different from anyone I knew in Porthmawr, and because they were different, even without sight or sound of them, they intruded on me all the time. It was a relief when, at the end of that week, Gladstone’s inimitable knock came on our front door.