Make Room for the Jester (14 page)

‘Lew – come round, can you?’ he said, not facing me directly at all.

‘They’re at the pictures,’ I said. ‘I’ll leave a note.’

It wasn’t until I reached his house that I saw why he had shown me only one side of his face. The other bore a bruise below the eye, a bruise which seemed to grow and darken even as I looked at it.

What happened to you, then?’ I asked. ‘Have a fight?’

Gladstone shook his head and knelt by the fire and made a great business of tidying up. I crouched beside, him. ‘Harry Knock-Knees, was it? That crowd?’

He smiled then, but went on shaking his head. ‘Big fool – that’s what I am! Big fool!’ He stirred the fire with the poker. ‘Do you ever do things, Lew, that make you crumple up inside afterwards? Just thinking about them makes you feel all withered up? Do you?’

‘All the time,’ I said.

He stood up and walked the length of the room and back again. ‘Lew – I went up there. Tonight – just before it got dark.’

‘To the Point?’ I got to my feet as well. ‘You didn’t cop that there, did you?’

He nodded, then turned away hastily. I knew I was
saying all the wrong things, but I couldn’t help it.

‘You never had a
fight
with the Vaughans, did you?’

‘Not a fight. I was thrown out.’ He came back to me and seized my arm. ‘Lew – this doesn’t matter.’ He jabbed his thumb hard in the centre of the bruise. I winced for him. ‘This doesn’t matter at all…’

‘Marius Vaughan hit you?’

‘It doesn’t matter, Lew. He didn’t hit me. Just sort of pushed me out and I fell. Knocked against the door as I fell.’

‘Pushed you?’ was all I could say.

Gladstone brushed the hair back clear of his forehead and tried to smile. ‘Well – I made a mistake, didn’t I? I went up there. Nosing around – that’s what I was doing. Lew – I shouldn’t have gone…’

‘Well you did,’ I said. ‘You did – and that was no reason for throwing you out.’

Gladstone clapped his hands impatiently. ‘I wasn’t thrown out, Lew. Nobody did that to me.’

‘Pushed then,’ I said.

‘He just asked me to leave, that’s all. And we sort of collided – had a collision – and big fool me fell against the door.’

He looked at me, waiting for me to comment, but there was nothing I could say.

‘I shouldn’t have gone up there,’ he went on. ‘Sit down, somewhere, Lew. Don’t stand looking as if you’re going to take on the whole town.’

‘Not the whole town,’ I said. ‘Just the Vaughans.’

His hands came up in despair. ‘No, no, Lew. Don’t be childish, now. It wasn’t the Vaughans. It was me. I should
never have gone up there. Never in a month of Sundays, I shouldn’t… I should’ve minded my own business and let them be.’

I moved to the old rocking chair by the fire and he went over to the couch which was his bed. He sat down heavily, then clasped his head in his hands. The silence seemed to go on forever, and how to break it was beyond me.

Then he stirred and smiled. ‘Heard some good news about you, haven’t I? Congratulations, Lew. Always said you were going to be an intellectual.’

‘Oh – hell,’ I said.

‘Never you mind hell – you’re going to be an intellectual. I know it. And an intellectual man, Lew, is the finest there is.’ His eyes, suddenly, were no longer dulled. ‘That’s what I think – an intellectual is
different
, Lew. He’s got
style
. I like people who have style – know what I mean?’ He was sitting forward eagerly now, not talking to me or to anyone – just letting words and ideas wipe out, for a time at least, what had happened to him up at the Point. ‘I wish I had real learning inside my head. I wish I was an intellectual man with style – with a style of his own… and I’ll tell you something else, Lew – I wish I was a cosmopolitan as well – not a stuck-in-the-mud native of Porthmawr. A real cosmopolitan, able to move freely about the world, mixing with high and low, able to talk about the
big
things,
important
things, like art and music and books. That’s what I wish.’ He sighed deeply, then leaned forward to stir the fire into life. ‘Ashes,’ he said, ‘that’s all you’ve got here. Ashes and mud. The trouble with us, Lew, is we’re sunk in the mud of Porthmawr respectability. This is the primeval swamp of respectability. They invented the word here. The
clean front and cuffs – and the dirty shirt underneath.’

He put the poker down. ‘They ought to have maps in school – like those average rainfall ones, only these would show the distribution of Hypocrites per square mile.’ He grinned, and I knew he was feeling better. ‘Be black all over, this place would… brighten up the old Geography lesson too, wouldn’t it?’

‘Fair enough,’ I agreed.

‘And let’s have textbooks as well. Guides to the young – how to tell a hypocrite, how to detect a fraud.’ The idea delighted him. His eyes were shining now. ‘We’ll line them up for inspection – the people with two voices, Lew, one for posh English, one for poor Welsh. The ones who come back from England and
can’t remember
any Welsh, poor things. The ones who pronounce Porthmawr ‘Pommower’ to suit the English. The ones who tell us to love Wales – in
English
!’ He sucked in his cheeks and did an imitation for me. ‘Then there’s the other crowd – the ones who want to shut everything out that isn’t Welsh. We’ll have them in as well. The ones who say no to everything… all frauds, Lew bach – and we’ve got them here in this little half and half town. I tell you Owen Glyndwr would spit right in their eye. He had
style
, Lew. He wasn’t a respectable fraud forever changing to suit the company….’

The excitement left him suddenly. ‘What’s the use?’ he said, and for a moment he was silent again.

‘Lew – honest to God, some days I feel I’m choking here,’ he went on. ‘Don’t know what stops me getting the little ones together, packing a bag and away to go…’

‘Go on, then,’ I said, keeping my voice light, but worried all the same because he was so serious with it.
‘You’d never go. Told me yourself…’

‘Not
for ever
, maybe. But – there must be somewhere to go to, Lew, somewhere nice.’ He picked up an old school atlas – it had Porthmawr Council School stamped on its cover – and opened it at the middle page. ‘Plenty of places here – the Mediterranean Sea, Athens, Rome, Alexandria…. Oh, hell, spoilt for choice, once you’ve worked out the getting there.’ He closed the atlas and threw it down behind him. ‘It’s either go away, or stay. And if you stay you have to be like the Vaughans.’

‘Never,’ I said, looking at the bruise on his cheek. ‘What did you want to go there for? You shouldn’t have gone.’

He stood up quickly. ‘I know. I know I shouldn’t. You’ve
no
idea how
ashamed
I feel about it. I was interfering, breaking in on them – acting like all the people in Porthmawr would.
Spying
, Lew…’

‘What made you go, then?’

He paced up and down the kitchen, his hands tightly clasped in front of him. ‘I wanted to see for myself, I suppose. I couldn’t wait. Wanted to find out if it was working out – if they managed to bury Jupiter at last.’ Standing there directly under the light he was all skin and bone, somehow. His arms were limp at his side, the palms of his hands turned towards me, appealing. ‘
You
know what I mean, don’t you?’

Why does he have to ask me? I thought. What makes him think that
I
understand? But I nodded, though: there was nothing else I could do.

Then the children upstairs began to cry, and before Gladstone had moved from his position under the light they had come tumbling downstairs and into the room,
and were pressed against him, little old people in their nightshirts, faces puffed with sleep and tears.

‘Now then,’ he said as he crouched down to them. ‘Now then, what’s this?’

‘Had nightmares,’ Dora sobbed.

‘Not
all
of you?’ He was touching them and kissing them and smoothing back their hair. ‘Not at the same time?’

‘It was terrible,’ Dora said.

Gladstone felt Walter’s bottom. ‘Not wet the bed, have you?’

‘Never,’ Walter said firmly.

‘Tell me, then. What did you have nightmares about?’

‘Chips,’ Walter said.

‘And cockroaches,’ Mair added.

‘That’s a mixture, for sure.’ Gladstone smiled, and Walter and Mair smiled with him. ‘Recovered now?’ They nodded. ‘Then off to Lew by the fire, while I talk to Dora…’

They came running to me and occupied my knees. They smelled of old feather bed and sleep, and were nice and soft and warm.

‘Only me had the real nightmare,’ Dora sobbed.

‘Grammar,’ Gladstone cried.

‘Only me
have
the real nightmare, then,’ she said.

‘Oh, God,’ he said, picking her up, ‘come over here by the fire and tell me…’

Dora buried her face in his shoulder. ‘I’m going to have a baby,’ she cried. ‘That’s what I was dreaming about – having a baby.’

Gladstone sat down with her and held her close. ‘Some day you will – not now.’

‘It was a baby with blue eyes, and it came out of my belly. Out of
here
…’

Mair giggled foolishly on my knee.

‘Where did all this information come from?’ Gladstone asked sternly. ‘Who’s been talking? That one next door?’

Dora pressed her face deeper against his chest, but there was a nod too. ‘Said I had a big belly, and that was because there was a baby in there – and it would come out, and there would be blood and everything…’

Gladstone smiled and kissed her ear. ‘Such ignorance,’ he said softly. ‘Such crazy old talk…’

Dora’s face emerged, puffed and tear-stained. ‘Not true, then?’

‘Not true,’ he agreed. ‘A baby comes from heaven…’

‘From my belly, she said.’

‘From heaven, and there’s no blood. Pink and shiny and hungry, that’s how it comes. All ready for you to love.’

‘From my
belly
, though,’ Dora protested.

‘Well – it’s a nice belly…’

Dora’s head came up. Her chin began to tremble. ‘It’s true, then? What she said is true?’

Gladstone gave an elaborate sigh. ‘Answer me a question, that’s all. How old are you?’

‘Eight,’ Dora said.

‘Then it can’t happen for another ten years – at least. Answer me another – are you married?’

She giggled. ‘No. Of
course
not.’

‘Can’t have a baby without a husband,’ Gladstone said quickly. ‘Impossible. Ask anybody…’

‘Annie next door did. Mam said she did…’

Gladstone did his sigh again. ‘Well – he was a kind of a husband she had. Not a proper one. Believe me, or believe me not – no husband, no baby. And in any case you’re not old enough yet…’

‘But when I’m old enough – from my belly?
Not
from my
belly
.’ She shook her head. ‘No – not from there, eh?’

‘Where d’you suggest then? From your arm? Your head? Your big toe?’

‘Silly,’ she said.

‘Well – it’s got to come from somewhere, poor pink and hungry thing. Never thought of that, did you?’

She shook her head slowly, but the idea struck her as being right. She smiled. ‘From my belly,’ she said.

‘When you’re married, too,’ Gladstone went on. ‘Don’t forget
that
.’

Dora came off his knee. ‘It’s very disappointing,’ she said, ‘but if you say so, then it must be right.’ Another thought occurred to her: ‘How did it get in my belly, then?’

‘One thing at a time,’ Gladstone said smoothly. ‘That’s the secret of a long and happy life. Best you understand what I’ve told you before we go on to lesson two. Not going to cry any more, are you?’

‘Not at the moment,’ Dora said. ‘Anyway – it’s very disappointing.’

‘I know,’ Gladstone said, ‘I know.’ He wasn’t acting it up because I was there. ‘The trouble is it gets more disappointing as you go on…’

‘Like ice cream?’

‘And toffee apples.’

Dora giggled. ‘What’s that on your face, then?’ She touched the bruise very gently.

The price of one question too many,’ he replied, looking at me.

We had
Oliver Williams-Hughes-Jones
by Charles Dickens after that – the revised version, Gladstone said. He hurried it a bit, though, because it was late, and didn’t make much of Fagin Price in case the children had another nightmare. No sooner had he got them back up the stairs than Dewi and Maxie burst in.

‘This time of night,’ Gladstone said. ‘Who threw you out and from where?’

‘Not tonight,’ Dewi said. ‘Three times last week, though. From the Palace.’

‘Just thought we’d call round,’ Maxie said, ‘as we hadn’t been…’

‘What happened to your face?’ Dewi asked.

Gladstone said something about falling out of bed, and I felt special because he wasn’t telling them a truth. I realised then, too, that I wasn’t the only one who had decided on a holiday from the Vaughans.

‘Oh,’ Dewi said, ‘well – thought we’d come as we hadn’t seen you for a bit, like.’

‘Don’t apologise,’ Gladstone said, ‘just get the Woodbines out.’ So we had the fags going, and Gladstone made some tea, and Dewi swore like the Royal Welch, and Maxie told us how the pictures last week needed something to brighten them up – preferably a human mole. It was an occasion and a party all of a sudden.

The clock was striking eleven when Martha came in like someone in a drama, her face white, tears like rivers on her powdered cheeks, lipstick smeared.

‘Gladstone, Gladstone,’ she cried. ‘Oh, my God, my God.’ She threw herself down on the sofa.

Martha often came in like that, often threw herself on the sofa and moaned away and showed all her legs. It was ‘moods’ Gladstone always said – women over forty had moods all the time, and it was best to leave them alone. We carried on with our game of Pontoon for matches, and smiled and winked at one another. It could have been ‘moods’, it could have been gin – no matter which where Martha was concerned. None of us, not even Gladstone, looked on her like we did other women. Martha was a special case, a comic and a dead loss. We liked her, but we knew she was hopeless, so we let her be.

‘Oh, God, God, God,’ she cried. ‘Oh poor little Jesus Christ, our Lord, Amen…. Gladstone, Gladstone!’

‘Pay pontoons only,’ said Gladstone.

‘Speak to me, damn you,’ Martha cried.

‘And five-card tricks,’ said Gladstone.

Martha sat up on the sofa and clasped her ears tight and began to scream. Gladstone was over to her at once, his hand on her mouth.

‘Quiet, woman,’ he said, ‘you’ll wake the children.’