Make Room for the Jester (16 page)

‘I tried to tell them what was behind this tragic business,’ Gladstone said, ‘but they wouldn’t let me speak….’

‘Talks nice….’

‘Quiet, man. Let him tell us….’

‘I tried to tell them why Ashton Vaughan shot his own brother dead. There were mitigating circumstances.’

Someone laughed loud and coarse.

‘What’s them? Catching, are they?’

‘It’s about Jupiter,’ Gladstone said. ‘You don’t kill your
own brother for no reason. Jupiter – that’s what’s behind it all.’ I cringed inside for him – not because I thought he was wrong, but because I knew they wouldn’t understand… and any minute that police station door was going to open.

‘Sixteen years ago,’ Gladstone went on, ‘Jupiter Vaughan was shot dead by his brother Marius Vaughan. It was an accident, though – might have happened to anybody. But Jupiter Vaughan was special. He was young and beautiful.’ The same coarse laugh broke across the crowd – not just one laugh, though, but many. ‘And this boy’s death is what caused Ashton to kill his own brother. They couldn’t live with that death, either of them… that’s what’s behind it….’ Gladstone’s confidence ebbed, his voice trailed off.

‘Sherlock Holmes has spoken,’ a voice cried.

‘Give him a chance, man,’ a deeper voice said.

Gladstone almost slipped off the wall. The sleeve of his jacket was caught in one of the railing spikes and he was trying to free himself. ‘Look,’ he said, anger coming through, ‘these two men, from the day he died – the day Jupiter died – were broken by his death. Not like ordinary men at all…’

‘Damn right you are there, boy.’

‘They were scarred. They were broken men.’ Gladstone cried out above the din.

‘Bloody rough, they were, for sure.’

‘Aye – and better than us, don’t forget.’

‘You don’t understand – you don’t understand. They weren’t
bad
men.’

‘Not so bloody much.’

‘Lording it over us…’

Gladstone was speaking again, but I couldn’t hear him now for the noise.

‘The Vaughans never loved anybody except themselves,’ a voice broke through.

‘It was remembering all their lives this terrible thing that had happened to their brother,’ Gladstone said in the hush that followed. ‘They were broken men, both of them. Ashton didn’t mean to kill his brother. It was Jupiter’s death lay between them…’

‘Get off the wall, nancy boy,’ the same voice cried, and I knew then that it was Harry Knock-Knees. ‘Talking cock you are.’

I saw Gladstone’s mouth open and close, but the noise of the crowd drowned everything. They were urging Harry Knock-Knees to pull Gladstone down, they were telling Gladstone to come down and see Harry off. It was a riot, suddenly. I was watching Gladstone so closely that I never saw the police station door open, never saw Super Edwards and the two constables rush out. The crowd backed away so quickly that we had to turn and run to avoid being trampled. By the time I looked again, Gladstone had been pulled down off the wall, was being marched up the police station steps between the two constables. His tie was off, and there was a rent right to the shoulder in one sleeve of his jacket.

Super Edwards remained at the gate, pointing and waving. ‘Everybody move on!’ he ordered. ‘Causing a public disturbance. Have you no shame?’

‘Bloody Hitlers!’ someone shouted, and for a moment it looked as if the Super might take them on by himself, but all he did was lower his eyebrows and glare. The crowd
knew that glare, knew his memory for faces, too. Slowly they retreated towards us, but I wasn’t really watching them. All I could see was the half-closed door of the police station through which Gladstone had been bundled.

‘Gone to the cell!’ Dewi whispered.

‘Have to bail him out now, for sure,’ Maxie added. ‘Disturbing the peace is worse than bigamy.’

‘Shut up,’ I yelled at him. ‘Close your silly mouth!’

Maxie jumped back as if I’d hit him, but I didn’t care about Maxie or his feelings. Inside I was curling up for Gladstone, sick for him almost. Why had he bothered to tell them what he thought, how he felt? Didn’t he know, for God’s sake, that you had to keep things like that private?

Super Edwards kept Gladstone in the cell until eight o’clock that night. Gladstone had a talking-to, and a warning, and was told to go home to await farther questioning. By then, of course, all Porthmawr knew about it, and the jokers were out again.

Next day it was worse still. There was Gladstone, hanging on to the police station railings, on the
front
page of all the papers. Even Polly was amused when she wasn’t telling me how disappointed she was because I’d failed to get in to the inquest.

‘Demonstration at inquest,’ she read out. ‘Police warn crowd. Disgraceful!’ She drummed her fingers on Gladstone’s picture. ‘Mind you, Lew – they’re hushing it up. Any fool can tell that. The powers that be are hushing it up. Where was
she
, for instance? No word about
her
, is there?’

Polly was a dribbling witch, suddenly, crying for blood
like the old crones around the guillotine did in all those pictures I’d seen about the French Revolution. I was wasting my time talking to her.

‘Was she there?’

‘Never saw her,’ I said.

‘Well – what
did
you see, then? Only your friend like a monkey on the wall?’

‘Gladstone’s all right,’ I said.

She pulled at her long nose. Was it the light, or something? Had I never seen the spying fox behind her eyes before? ‘Wants watching, if you ask me,’ she said. ‘What did he mean – about Jupiter?’

‘It’s a theory, that’s all.’

‘Not right in the head, that boy. With your brains you shouldn’t make a friend of someone like that.’

Forcing me to answer, urging me to defend Gladstone and so tell her things. Had she always got me to talk, to tell the tale, in the same way? ‘Matter of opinion,’ I said. ‘He’s a brilliant person.’

‘Fancy! He’ll need to be brilliant, too – all the trouble that’s waiting for him.’

‘What trouble?’

‘Wait and see. You don’t think they’re going to let him make a laughing stock of himself – getting his name in the paper, and a picture – without…’

‘What can they do?’ Old curtain shifter, I thought. Old prophet of doom. ‘It’s none of their business.’

‘He’s only a boy, and he’s got too many crazy notions, don’t forget. What did he say, then? Tell me again what you think he was trying to say.’

I looked at the Captain asleep like an enormous child
in his chair. ‘Why don’t you ask Tada?’ I said, and was sorry straight away because it was a blow, and must have been very unexpected, and must have hurt, too.

‘I see,’ Polly said in a voice out of the North Pole, ‘I see. Perhaps we’d better go. We are obviously not in a good mood.’ She turned her back on me, picked up the magnifying glass and began to examine the paper again. As I was leaving, she called after me, ‘Won’t bang the door, will we?
Tada
might wake up and tell me.’

I was four inches tall as I went out, and very angry. I’d seen through Polly, I kept telling myself, but I wasn’t really pleased about it.

‘Can any man afford to be naked?’ Rowland asked. ‘That is the question we would have to debate, if we were detached enough to want to debate anything. Can any man, we would ask ourselves, afford to unclothe – no, no, that’s a doubtful metaphor – to
unmask
is better. Can any man afford to unmask – to show his face to the world, his real face?’

‘You were there, Mr Williams? Never saw you.’

Rowland took another pull at the bottle. ‘Among the vulgar and the uninformed, boy. Oh, Gladstone Williams, what an error you made.’

‘Shouldn’t have done it, should he?’ Rowland drunk at this time of year! It was incredible. Only on Armistice Day was he ever on the bottle, and then only on ruby wine, I’d heard. But today the liquid looked lighter, more like whisky.

‘You’ll excuse me, Lew Morgan, passed matriculation and all set to be a Civil Servant? I
never
offer a drink. It’s against my Methodist principles.’ He was in his Sunday best, even wore a collar and tie. ‘Made an error of
judgement, our friend did – possibly an error of taste as well. He has backed, if you will excuse me, a
dying
cause,’ Rowland giggled. ‘I was near the photographer, you know – that representative of the great British Press – and I jogged his bloody arm, I did! But to no avail, apparently. No – our friend, our mutual friend, has made the faulty assumption that because men have attachments of gristle and skin on either side of their heads, therefore they can hear. And understand.
Fatal
mistake, Lew! The world, let me tell you, is deaf, stone deaf. But, as I said, were we in debate, we would have to ask ourselves only one question – a fundamental question – did I tell you I was a fundamentalist, Lew? A dusty fundamentalist with wood chips in his hair and resin clotting his nostrils – that’s what I am… and we would have to ask this question – can any man afford to show himself to the world?’ He waved his arms and grinned foolishly, then had to sit down. ‘Oh, Gladstone, Gladstone, you haven’t a chance – and that’s from the man who has debated like hell, but never made the gesture himself. You haven’t a chance, boy. That you may be right is not the point at issue – who the hell said right is might? What you must understand is that you are in error, Gladstone. You have shown yourself. And that’s the error only the mad make – and you know what they do with the mad, don’t you, Gladstone?’

‘I’m Lew,’ I said.

He looked at me and blinked rapidly. ‘So y’are. By God, so y’are.’ He had a spell of soundless laughing, then got to his feet and did a jig in the restricted space between his bench and the pile of timber on which he had been sitting. He picked up a mallet and began to beat time to the
tune he hummed. ‘That’s what’s wrong with us, Lew – we’ve no
dance
music.’ He nearly fell over as he tried to turn around. ‘Today, no work, boy. Know that? It’s not November the eleventh, is it? They’re not out at the war memorials, are they? I’m not drowning the Somme… but I’ll not touch tool or wood just the same. Today shall be for rational debate, nothing more.’ He saw himself mirrored in the window and came to a stop. The smile left his face. Then he began to swear. ‘Rowland Williams,’ he cried, ‘you…’ and it was all the swearing I knew and many, many more I’d never heard but knew to be swearing by their hardness and viciousness and the spittle forming on his lower lip. God was there and the body, and private parts and the faeces, and sex… obscenity on obscenity, until I thought the timbers of the old workshop oozed filth, and I jumped up and made for the door, afraid.

‘Stop, Lew!’ he cried. ‘Oh, stop, stop…’

‘Going to see Gladstone, Mr Williams.’

‘But stop! Don’t go! Stay, Lew – stay for me to tell you I’m sorry.’ He came up to me and placed his rough, horny hands around my ears and rocked me. ‘You never heard,’ I could hear him saying, ‘what can I say to you? Never heard me, did you, Lew? I’m sorry, boy –
sorry
. Oh, God, what can I do?’ Then he brought his face close to mine and kissed me on the forehead. I flung myself away from him, so violently that I banged my head against the door. I was dazed for a moment and went down to my knees. I saw Rowland back away from me. ‘Oh, Jesus Christ,’ he was saying, ‘oh, Jesus Christ.’ He choked on the words.

I stood up and tried to speak, but my mouth was dry and no words would come out. I wanted to tell him it was
all right, that I understood, that I knew he hadn’t meant anything wrong, that he was sorry about the swearing… but I couldn’t say it. He stood there by the bench, his shoulders shaking, and I couldn’t say anything.

Then he seemed to grip himself, to mould himself right again. ‘Lew,’ he said softly, in his old Sunday-school voice, ‘the moral seems to be, don’t get drunk, except on Armistice Day.’

‘That’s right, Mr Williams,’ I said, laughing too loud.

He made his face smile. ‘Rowland Williams the wit,’ he said. ‘Old snake-tongued Williams.’ He raised the bottle and drank. ‘Off to see Gladstone, you said?’

‘Think I’ll be going, then.’

‘Aye – I’m sorry, Lew.’

‘It’s all right,’ I said, too warmly, ‘it’s all right.’

‘Aye – well. Going to see Gladstone, then?’

I opened the door, tried to be slow about it in case he thought I was running away. ‘Be going now,’ I said.

‘Come and tell me what he says, though – everything?’ he pleaded.

‘All right,’ I said, and closed the door behind me before he could start apologising again. It was raining, and I was glad of the freshness of it on my face.

‘This morning,’ said Gladstone, ‘I had Super Edwards for an hour. Said join the Army, boy. A fine life is the Army.’

The four of us had the fire stoked up with driftwood, and we had chips out of paper. Upstairs, the last scream of the evening had been drowned by sleep. Martha, of course, was out.

‘Why don’t you join the Army, lad?’ Gladstone went
on, imitating the Super’s voice. ‘Why, I said, is there going to be a war, Super? Never again, he says – read the papers. Never again. You could join as a boy, he says. It’s a good life. Plenty of good discipline. He kept on talking about discipline all the time. Discipline and fresh air. Besides, he says, you want to get away from here. Looking after children isn’t for a boy of your age. Not manly…’ Gladstone grinned as he lit a Woodbine. ‘Martha was here. Ever since she saw my picture in the paper she’s been treating me like a film star – until the Super came, that is. Then all she said was that’s right, Super – you tell him – lowering the family name like that. The
family
name
, think of that! And all he kept saying was discipline is a necessary thing.’

‘My Uncle Ted joined the Army,’ Dewi said. ‘Always talking about spit and bloody polish, he was.’

‘I told him I wasn’t in agreement with the war machine,’ Gladstone went on. ‘Told him I was basically a pacifist.’ He rubbed his long, thin nose thoughtfully. ‘He seemed to go blue when I said that. Then he said he could charge me – disturbing the peace, inciting a mob to violence, interrupting an inquest on dead men… I ought to be ashamed of myself. Had I been carried away, or what? Well, I said, the coroner asked if there was anyone who could throw light on the case, so I got up. He meant the police, the Super said…. But you never mentioned Jupiter, I said…. The Super lost his temper then. Jupiter’s been dead and buried these sixteen years, he said. Life isn’t a fairy tale – that’s what you’re making of it. A fairy tale… They’d been to France, I said, they’d seen all that dying, but it was the boy’s death that broke them…. They were
rough men, he said. And we had a really interesting argument, except that Martha kept interrupting. You can’t just say he shot his brother dead, I told him. What do you know about it? he says. What do you know about the law?’ Gladstone rolled his chip paper into a ball and threw it in the fire. ‘It isn’t a question of law, I said. It’s just that you ought to account for things. The discussion went to pieces after that. He said join the Army, make a man of you… I said I didn’t think the uniform matched my eyes… stuff like that. Very common it was. Write to Wrexham, he said. Gave me the address, too.’

I was horrified. ‘Not going to, are you?’

‘Not until they come and fetch me…’

‘All over town they’re talking about you,’ I said.

‘Let them talk. The Vaughans are in the earth now. Someone’s got to speak for them.’ He touched the fading bruise on his face. ‘I should never have gone up there – only I thought I could help them.
Saint
Gladstone, that’s me. I should have known that nobody says thank you for help.’

‘What about
her
?’ I said.

‘Eirlys? I bet they’re dissecting her too, aren’t they? Poor woman. I expect she was too overcome with grief to show her face.’

It was a rough night outside, the rain sweeping up Lower Hill, but we heard the knocking on the door through it all. Gladstone leapt up and went to the window and moved the blind aside. ‘Oh, my God,’ he said, ‘the Rev A. H. Jones and somebody else…’

Maxie, Dewi and I were at the back door almost before he had finished speaking. Once in the backyard we could scale the wall and be clear and away.

‘Lew!’ Gladstone called. ‘Come back!’

Maxie and Dewi charged past me, one of them knocking over the cinder bucket.

‘Can’t,’ I protested. ‘Not my place…’

Gladstone gripped my arm. ‘Moral support,’ he begged. ‘There’s
two
of them.’

I let him lead me back to the fireplace, then he went to open the front door. When I next looked up it was into the shining, smiling face of the Rev A. H. Jones. Behind him towered Mrs Meirion-Pughe, long beak twitching as she took in the room.

The Minister bounced straight for me. ‘Edward – isn’t it?’ he cried.

‘Lew,’ I said.

He slapped his forehead with the palm of his hand, but gently so that he wouldn’t upset the line of his wig. ‘Of course! Of course! Lew Davies.’

‘Morgan,’ I said.

‘Morgan,’ he agreed smoothly, ‘of course.’ He pinched my arm and said success, bravo, well done, matriculated, many a great man has come from a poor home, many many many a great man, onwards now Llywelyn…

You old comic, I thought, why do you have to talk like that? He bounded past me to the fire and held his hands out to it. ‘Thank our dear Lord for a fire on such a dreadful night,’ he cried.

Alderman Mrs Meirion-Pughe, with the gesture of the soldiers in the costume films, swung off her cloak and handed it to Gladstone. ‘Hang it up, boy,’ she ordered. ‘A terrible night to be out.’

I looked at her thick, bright-green frock, the rows of
yellow beads at her throat, the rubber overshoes on her feet, her noble chin with the immense beak above it… and I was saying comic, comic, comic to myself – and so was Gladstone, for his eyes were shining.

‘Do I smell cigarettes?’ Mrs Meirion-Pughe cried. ‘Not been smoking, have you?’

‘It’s the children,’ Gladstone said. ‘They always go through a packet before bed…’

‘Boy!’ she said in a voice of thunder.

‘Softly,’ said Gladstone. ‘Don’t want to wake them up, do we?’ He brought a chair for her to sit, but she waved him aside. ‘Going to be difficult, A. H.,’ she said. ‘Told you so, didn’t I?’