Say Goodbye to the Boys (2 page)

‘Oh, been out to those pubs again Harry?'

‘Philip.'

‘Excuse me!' And giggling up the stairs, the swish of her silk dressing gown ahead of me in the dark ‘Philip, I meant!' Into a room with long velvet curtains and velvet cushions on the sofa piled high, and the tinkling of glass ornaments everywhere, and the spicy perfume, and the radio, and a pink shade masking the light. The nearest thing, in Emlyn's words, to a whore shop in Maelgwyn town.

Lilian, small and plump – ‘something to grab hold of, eh?' – moves around on tip toes, playing at a little girl. Her eyes are brown and quick and she is all glances of invitation, daring you to touch and fondle. Her blonde hair is permed tight. ‘Mind my hair,' she says. ‘Don't want my hair messed up, see. Remember. Advert see.' A Polish name, but her accent is out of the Rhondda.

‘Got time for a bit of cards, then?' It is the ritual. ‘You sit there; I'll sit next to you.' Among the velvet cushions of the sofa. ‘What's new, Philip?' Her short, soft fingers dealing out the cards. She chatters and makes jokes, double meanings everywhere, and sits even closer, warm flesh against my thigh, and she wins every hand in the game. Cheating I knew. ‘Used to play strip poker in the old days. Used to play bridge too – only that was too clever for me, and Ridetski used to beat me when I overbid. With his fists I mean.' Ridetski, her husband, had been stationed at one of the camps near the town. She had come to Maelgwyn with him; wasn't a local. ‘This old place – proper dead, isn't it? Mind you – might buck up again when the visitors come. Oh what a shame, Philip – you've lost again. What were you doing at my leg then? Felt you!'

She always wins the cards and the stake – half a crown. ‘Oh poor Philip.' Her hand inside my shirt. The game abandoned, Lilian very playful, very
expert. She opens her mouth wide to laugh, her
tongue nudging at the side of her lips. A smooth, white throat. Ridetski walked out on her during the war. Was not expected back. ‘Let's see.' She checks the score on the back of the envelope. ‘Oh dear, Philip. Never mind. Now pay up. Pay up first.'

And once she has the coin in the palm of one soft hand, she lies back on the sofa and smiling all the time, pulls me towards her. Always on the wide sofa among the velvet cushions, never through in the bedroom. Her fingers digging into your back, all groans and giggles. Then she pushes you away, goes skipping to the bathroom, returning full of jokes and ready for more if you want it. A bit of slap and tickle. No demands, except one. Secrecy, or the promise of secrecy. ‘No spreading anything around about me, hear. Got a nice little business.' Always that. And her winning the cards. She opens the door first, taking a glance about. ‘Only cats around. Cats and naughty men who won't go home to bed. Come again won't you Philip?' And you leave her giggling and you walk home across the sleeping town, a distant sea breaking on a wide, empty beach, a siren or two for the waiting ships. Lilian Ridetski, a beautiful arrangement, not a string attached.

Emlyn flopped down beside me on the cabin top. He had spots before his eyes. Did I know that nobody in the whole of the medical profession had been able to explain those spots? He looked down at me. ‘Hey – you been thinking about Lilian?'

‘Does it show?'

‘I'm psychic, young man. You went on Friday night, didn't you?'

‘Where did Philip go on Friday night?' Mash was awake, crouching by the cabin, but even his torso seemed to fill the sky. ‘Always talking about visiting. Who's this Lilian?'

‘The ex–serviceman's best friend – bless her.'

‘And all who sail in her,' Emlyn added.

Mash's flat face was blank and puzzled. ‘I don't get it.'

‘You can say that again!'

‘But go on. Tell me.' He looked down at us, huge and pleading.

‘Just a place to pop in and chat,' Emlyn said. ‘A late night stop off.' Mash nodded, waiting for more.

‘Maison Collette,' I said. ‘Seen her haven't you?'

Mash beamed. ‘That Mrs Ridetski? Mrs Lilian? Oh, yes, I've seen her.'

‘Well then – that's where.'

‘Her?' A grin split his face. ‘She's all right that one. I'd say she was all right that Mrs Ridetski. Can I come?'

‘Down, Rover,' Emlyn said.

‘Ridetski,' Mash said. ‘Some Welsh name...'

‘What about Louise Gobrilmov?' Emlyn said. ‘In form five, remember? She was Welshier than Owen Glendower.'

But Mash was not to be side-tracked. ‘You'll let me join, all right?' He appealed to Emlyn, for him the leader in everything. Mash drew closer and touched Emlyn's shoulder. ‘I'd like to join. I would.'

‘Get your filthy hands off me,' Emlyn said, then he smiled. ‘Not promising anything, mind – but we'll see what we can fix up. But no more swims in your Sunday best – OK?'

Mash gave a whoop, jumped high in the air, and the
Ariadne
rocked beneath us. ‘Great!' he said. ‘Isn't it a great day? “Summer's got a fine warm face”.' He came out with this quotation now and then. The only one he knew, Emlyn claimed, just about the only thing that had stuck in his memory after all those years at school, all that private tuition. And what is more Emlyn was positive that the line came from a poem in the school magazine for 1937, a poem written by a boy in form two by the name of Edward Mortimer, whom I couldn't remember.

Emlyn remembered names and details that I had totally forgotten. Louise Gobrilmov – the family had been refugees from somewhere, and she a little dark girl with big eyes – but I only remembered the details through him. ‘“Winter has a cold embrace, Summer's got a fine warm face”,' Mash said. And he nodded and smiled and flexed the huge muscles in his arms. ‘I can join, can't I?'

‘After you,' Emlyn said, ‘she won't know we've been!' And we laughed and lay back, the day opening up around us, the fine warm face of summer above.

 

II

 

 

 

 

One step inside the Market Hall and you were in another age. Built by a speculator in Edwardian times it retained, after two wars, the atmosphere of those days. A step back in time to gas lighting, a penny bazaar look about the place. Around its perimeter were tiny lock up shops, in the centre open stalls for use on market days. All goods were on display because the shops had moveable shutters instead of windows, and there was a smell about the place – of fruit and meat and hung up leather shoes, and the public toilets – that was special, evocative. It had a sound of its own too – ringing, hollow, echoing – and the light in there was different from any other place in the town. Here my father had his bookshop, with which Laura now had to struggle. The wrong place, of course. Most of my father's ventures had been miscalculated.

That day when I had come back the other shopkeepers had given me a hero's welcome. From Mollie Ann Fruits to Isaac Moss Cobblers, from one end of the hall to the other they had come shuffling, first a wipe of the hand on a skirt or the backside of a trouser, then a firm grip. They were all elderly, all immensely dignified, all highly articulate. Rachel Boots and Shoes had even come forward with a verse, and Harry Morgan Second Hand Furniture had left a dead cert customer standing. Tom Parry Butchers had advised me to watch my health because your blood thinned in the tropics, and Nell Lewis Crockery had said, ‘Well, I never, well I never' over and over again, just as she did when she watched the men having a piss in the gents. It was she and her sister Kate who had set up the mirror, their shop facing the urinals... Small traders, who had known my father, and who catered for bargain hunters and thin purses. I was glad to be in their company once again. But it was a hell of a place for a bookshop, a second-hand bookshop at that.

‘Rushed off your feet, are you?' I asked Laura. She was sitting on a high stool outside the shop, a mug of tea on a pile of books, reading the
Daily Mirror
.

‘My feet are perished,' she replied. That was something else about the Market Hall; it only had a few windows, and these were high up and black with years of grime, and so it was always cool in there, even in a heat wave. ‘Ice box this old place,' she went on. On winter days she took a hot water bottle with her. That morning she had a paraffin lamp going.

‘What time did you come in last night?'

‘What time did you come in?' I countered, and she blushed.

‘Told you I was going to the vestry to that social evening, didn't I?'

‘That finished at nine,' I said. ‘Who kept you out after that?' Laura Roberts, nearly ten years a widow, had a friend, a real man about town named William Wilkins, a bachelor and master baker and chapel deacon.

‘None of your cheek,' she said, dimples in her face. ‘I heard you come in. You fell down the stairs. Twice.'

‘Was he up there with you? What did he say?'

She gave me a push. ‘Oh be quiet – you and your dirty mind! You go and do that job for me and wash your tongue with caustic soda.' She clouted me with the
Daily Mirror
. ‘Go on!'

Some of the shelving at the back of the shop had collapsed under the weight of books and she wanted it fixing. I edged my way around leaning towers of learned works that no one, surely to God, had read or would ever want to read. My father had followed every sale in the county and Laura too was still buying. ‘You ought to ask the kids over on bonfire night,' I called out, and turned a corner around some sagging shelves and found myself looking at a real live customer. ‘I was talking to Mrs Roberts,' I explained.

He snapped a book shut and stuffed it back on the shelf and gave me a dirty look. A tall, spidery old man, gold-rimmed glasses very low on an inflamed nose, a cigarette-yellow, gone-to-seed moustache. He had a trilby perched on his head and wore a black overcoat that was frayed at the cuffs, a scarf around his neck.

‘Be so good as not to bellow,' he said, silver in his voice.

I swept books off a leaning shelf. The old man was muttering to himself. I banged a hammer under a shelf and went on banging; to hell with trade.

‘I am looking for
The Historical Essays of Thomas Babington Macaulay
,' I heard him say.

‘Ask Mrs Roberts,' I said as I aimed at a nail.

‘Mrs Roberts has never heard of Mr Macaulay,' he snapped back. ‘Haven't you got a catalogue?'

‘No,' I said, and kept on banging. Maelgwyn was littered with old men like him, spindle-legged old coots who had retired from business and who always looked tipsy with all that sea air. And this one I'd seen before, not getting enough kick from the ozone, dipping his nose into a glass of gin around the pubs. ‘We've got bags of Bunyans if you're interested,' I told him.

‘Ignoramus,' he growled, and reached for another book. There was a cigarette in his mouth now. He kept on flipping it against the tip of his long, hooked nose. Then taking it out had a coughing spell which sent him into a rage. He reached into his pocket and held out a card. ‘Here laddie.
The Historical Essays of Thomas Babington Macaulay
. Can you remember that – Philip Roberts?'

I looked at the card. Didn't touch it. Just looked.

‘Well take it; take it.' He had bright blue eyes, the eyes of a young man. I took the card. It said ‘
Amos Ellyott
', a London address crossed out and ‘
Flat 2b Ocean View, Maelgwyn
' written underneath. ‘If you find it, bring it. Understood?' He stared, waiting for me to acknowledge.

‘You'll be lucky,' I said and started hammering again.

He had to have the last word. ‘I have been blessed with good fortune all my life,' he yelled at me, and whipping the scarf around his neck headed for the door.

When I had fixed the shelf, I went over to
Laura and said, ‘that old buzzard wants a copy of Macaulay's essays. Even wants them delivering. And he knows my name.'

‘He called me a stupid woman,' Laura said. But Mash's father who had been talking to Laura thought that it was wonderful.

‘Marvellous man,' he boomed, ‘but you know who he is surely? I have it on great authority; one of the nation's great criminologists! He was, I am given to understand, an advisor to Scotland Yard,' MT went on. Everyone called him MT: he insisted on it. MT stood for Meirion Trevor. MT stood for motor transport. And wasn't that appropriate considering that he owned the finest, most up to date garage business on the coast? MT loved the superlative and was given to weak jokes. ‘Mind you,' he'd say, ‘MT by name but not by nature.'

‘Amos Ellyott is a wonderful old man,' he assured us. ‘A man of distinction. An asset to our town.' MT was an enthusiast, quick to praise everything and everybody.

A tall man, though not as powerfully built as his son, he had Mash's face, flat and broad, a tiny nose lost in the middle of it. He wore, invariably, a bow tie, and had a liking for suits of heavy tweed, often sporting a pair of plus fours – not a common sight in 1947. MT was the sporty gent who swept his way around the town, talking, enthusing, always on his way to a meeting somewhere.

‘One of the top men at the Yard, they say. We truly have some distinguished citizens don't we Laura?' He clutched at her arm which startled her. ‘But never mind about Mr Ellyott, Laura. What about these boys of ours? Aren't they a great bunch? And having a whale of a time – up to all manner of misdemeanours – but fair play, Laura, fair play. Served King and country and by God they deserve it!' He clapped a hand on my shoulder. ‘Philip – this old boat you've got. Having a smashing time on it, aren't you?'

I had a feeling that I would always be ten years old in MT's eyes. ‘We've got to run her ashore this afternoon,' I said.

‘I'd have a boat – well, if I were younger. But still I keep myself fit, off on the old run every morning.' He swept in closer. ‘But what were you up to on Sunday morning? Never saw him in such a state.'

‘Who's that?' Laura inquired.

‘Marshall, that lad of mine. Comes home sopping wet, Laura! What were you up to? High jinks? A bit of wrestling and ducking eh?'

‘You won't catch me wrestling with Mash...'

‘Oh I bet! Oh dear me! But what did happen Philip? Did old Emlyn trip him up? Over he goes in the drink?'

‘Missed his footing,' I said. ‘He was getting out of the dinghy and he was in before we could catch him.'

‘Ah – thought it would be something like that.' He sounded relieved. ‘These boys of ours, Laura – they're a caution.' He removed his gold watch from his pocket. ‘Well, look at the time. I must be bustling... Good morning to you both. Philip – you must come to the house. See my good lady. Don't forget!' He waved his hat at us, then went charging into the gloom of the Market Hall, greeting each shopkeeper in turn.

‘The human dynamo,' I said.

Laura looked past me at someone and pulling her purse out of her overall pocket. ‘End of the month,' she whispered. ‘Here comes the moneylender.'

George Garston believed in looking poor. A shirt without a collar helped, so did an old, patched jacket and a pair of cord trousers at half mast. But even in a suit from Savile Row, he would have looked poor and hangdog and furtive. Sallow skinned, he was always in need of a shave. There was a smell of wet ferrets about him and something ferret-like in his approach.

‘Morning missus.' A quick glimpse of yellowed teeth.

Laura treated him to silence, a sure sign of distaste with her. She held out the money. He wrote in his book with the stub of a pencil, the owner of Market Hall collecting his rents. They said he had property all over town, more property than anyone knew.

‘Home for good now, Philip?' he said without looking at me.

‘That's right, Mr Garston. When's your David due for demob?'

I said it to annoy. It did, too. ‘David is at a London University studying for his doctor's examinations.' Only a brief fight in him, then the whine was back in his voice. ‘Got rejected for his medical, see – with his chest.' He took the money and shuffled away, one shoulder sagging.

Laura shivered. ‘Always feel like having a good wash when he's been.'

After that I helped her sort out yet another tea chest full of books which she had bought blind from an auction.

‘The way we're going,' I said, ‘we'll have to take the bird man's shop next door.' The bird man had gone bust, the shop empty now. There was a stairway at the back of that shop, the only way up to the top floor of the Market Hall. The top floor was identical with the ground floor, but never opened now, never used. Still, the Hall was a handy place for a bringing a girl on a wet night. All dry places had to be noted and remembered. I had already tried our shop with a girl named Susan Todd, and she had gone home crying because a set of
The Children's Encyclopaedia
had fallen on her head.

Laura said, ‘You didn't tell the truth about his son – MT's son – about how he got wet, did you? Is he having trouble that boy?'

‘Not so you'd notice it,' I said, and suddenly I remembered that day, long before the war, a hot stifling day, and I was in our backyard, and the gate had swung open, and there stood Mash. In both hands he held a viper, tail flicking, and he was saying ‘this one's bit me twice!' My father came running from the house and made him drop the snakes on the stone floor, and his heel came down on their heads, and Mash stood there crying. All at once I remembered that... A boy with vipers. His arm came up like a balloon that night. We went to visit him, Emlyn and I.

‘Wounded in the head, wasn't he?' Laura was saying. ‘I saw you shiver then.'

And I said I must have been thinking about old George Garston, man of property, who had come on a fair pace during the war to end all wars.

The Crescent had been the best part of town a long time ago, a terrace of substantial, three-storey houses with steps leading up to the front doors and neat, protective railings all along. But it had, in Laura's words, gone down, the richer moving out to newer properties along the front and less successful people moving in. It backed on to the railway line, seemed to lean forward over the street. The railings had gone to the war effort and the houses were naked and exposed as a result. A downcast street now, limp grey curtains behind the windows and woodwork yelling for paint. Emlyn's house especially so. I remembered the Mortons in brighter surroundings, a spacious white house with flower beds and shrubs, a pony named Scouser in the paddock, but that was before Idwal Morton's fortune had taken a dive.

He opened the front door for me. ‘Come through to the morning room,' he said. ‘Will you look at this place? Christ. I'd sort it all out if only I knew where to start.' He removed a pile of newspapers from a chair and told me to sit. We were in the kitchen at the back of the house, smell of old food in the air, the sink cluttered with crockery.

He had an
Express
spread out on the table, a pencil in his hand. The pencil shook. ‘Studying form. Don't back anything. Just what you might term a hobby.' He looked at the print through a magnifying glass, squinting, lines fanning upwards across his huge forehead to the crown of his bald head. A grey wasted man who gave the impression he'd forgotten you were there. But as a boy I had always liked him, probably because he was like that, didn't fuss, didn't go in for head-patting. A two-bottle-a-day man, the know-alls said, but not any more. Idwal Morton, an old grey cardigan over his shoulders, had retired into long silences broken only by small, ironic remarks. ‘Help yourself to the killers,' he said, indicating the cigarettes.